My career after my career: Why athletics makes me a better entrepreneur

How I would have loved to participate in the Olympic Games this year! Sadly, it did not work out, due to the circumstances around my return match against Fury. Another gold medal was simply not meant to be. 

I still remember how excited I was to meet Sergey Bubka at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996 and to have my picture taken with him. He was the flag bearer of the Ukrainian team – and of course I could have no idea that I would have the honor of performing this task for the closing ceremony. 

I have the Olympics to thank for many things — my gold medal was the start of my career as a boxing professional. But that’s not everything: I experienced an incredible atmosphere and understood first-hand the actual idea behind the events: international understanding. In spite of wars and crises, athletes from the entire world meet to compete against each other. Even children compete in their schools and athletic associations in hopes of being able to compete in the Olympics one day. Meeting and getting to know the people in Atlanta who had made it after years of training gave me an incredible feeling. 

And something else became clear to me: All athletes who compete in the Olympic Games are not simply passionate athletes, ambitious water sportsmen, or obsessed boxers. What unites them is their physical strength and their willpower, but also their creative spirit. That is how the founders of the Olympic movement phrased it. And that is exactly what I observe in myself time and again: What distinguishes me as a boxer and longstanding world champion is mental strength and physical vigor – “brains” and “power.”

Now it is time for me to prepare for the end of my career as a professional athlete. For the last couple years, my team and I have been developing my career after my career. Not as a sports commentator, mentor, or coach, which is what many ex-professionals do, but as an entrepreneur. I founded Boxstall K2 Promotions and my marketing agency Klitschko Management Group a number of years ago because I wanted to be active in business and take my career into my own hands. In the meantime, I have founded other establishments and made other investments. I am especially proud of the continuing education program “CAS Change and Innovation Management,” which teaches the basics of self and challenge management and which I initiated at the University of St. Gallen. The first run-through this year was received so well that we are going to have a second round in the coming year, and we are even going to expand our cooperation with the University considerably. 

I did not need to reinvent myself to become an entrepreneur

I do not consider this jump from professional athlete to entrepreneur to be a reinvention of my person, as it is so often called: my career after my career is a logical further development of my activities. I continue to combine body and mind and transfer what I learned as an athlete to business.

We are currently working on fitness products and services that can help everybody exercise their bodies and get fit. At the same time, I am by no means neglecting the category “mind,” and have been imparting my experience to the knowledge workers of this world: executives, managers, freelancers... I have to admit: I had to do a bit more convincing there! A boxer who wants to teach something to experienced business people? Some were pretty skeptical. The success of the continuing education program I mentioned above at the University of St. Gallen speaks for itself, to name just one example: there, I convey what people in the economic world can learn from top athletes.

Endurance, flexibility, coordination, and concentration, to name just a few catchwords. Concentrating on one goal is a very important guarantee of success, in my opinion. In sports, it helps athletes prepare themselves optimally and blend out everything that is unimportant. In the economic world, I rarely see such concentration; if the entrepreneurs don’t lack it, the employees do. I also consider respect for competitors and other market players to be extremely important. People who act conceited will have no success in the long term – neither in athletics nor in the economy.

Let us bring the idea behind the Olympics into the economic world!

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we had more Olympics in our economy in general? By that, I don’t mean sponsoring the games or individual athletes.

- Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, as with athletics, there were more young people who wanted to be entrepreneurs and started having fun in this field early on? At competitions for founders, planning games, or other initiatives? That way, we could have more engaged (young) entrepreneurs and would have to put up with fewer blasé managers who act without conviction and blood, sweat, and tears.

- Imagine fair play were anchored in the corporate policies of all organizations and businesses and explicitly mentioned in the objective agreements of the employees. If that were the case, the most important thing would always be better results and competition (with sportsmanship). Bullying, discrimination, and corruption would then be unthinkable.

- And wouldn’t it be nice if the people in the economic world worked not only with their heads – their minds – but also paid more attention to their bodies? If they ate healthfully, took time to exercise, made sure to get enough sleep, and protected both themselves and their colleagues from self-exploitation? 

There is so much sports and the economic world can learn from each other. I am happy to pass on my experience. Let us start transferring the Olympic ideals to the economic world as well. Because: we are the driving force!