Are You Bulking Or Cutting?
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Body building requires complete dedication. Body building is an excellent anology to life and the success that we can create through determination, dedication, and hard work. I’m not a body builder, but I work out as often as I can. On top of working out I also eat appropriately. The most obvious analogy to draw from body building is that of working hard and achieving your goals - if you don’t work hard you wont get what you want. But I have a different parallel to discuss that is a bit more interesting…
Body builders are always in either one of two modes: bulking or cutting.
The idea behing bulking is to eat lots of good food and lift heaps of weight. When you are bulking you are saturating your body in an environment where it has everything it needs to grow. The aim is to grow muscle, but fat gain is always unavoidable. Typically athletes will perform this type of work in the off season, and body builders will pretty much live in this phase.
While body builders bulk to gain muscle mass an entrepreneur’s ultimate goal is to bulk their income. In order to do this there is the need to set yourself in an environment that is most conducive to profit. This may mean things like:
* Doing the required market research.
* Getting the design down, the code created, and the tests written.
* Hanging around in a semi-stable job that pays the bills while you work on your plans of world domination.
* Doing all that boring stuff you know needs to get done.
* Staying focused.
* Out sourcing that work you know someone can do better than yourself.
* Working those long days after hours to get your venture off the ground.
The point of this phase as an entrepreneur is to create an income despite the emotional, monetary, and physical costs.
As an athlete or body builder leads up to competition time they will enter a cutting phase. This is where they try to reduce their body fat by performing more cardio-vascular exercise and reducing their calorie intake. To an entrepreneur this is the phase where they have created a satisfactory income stream and are now looking to cut the extra baggage they may have accumulated along their way. Using the previous bulking points, this could mean:
* Consolidating your market research given hindsight.
* Ironing out existing bugs and possibly reworking the design slightly in anticipation of the future.
* Leaving that 8-5 job you’ve always hated ;)
* Dropping back the work load slightly and enjoying life a little.
* Losing yourself in other passions and maybe not thinking about your venture for a little bit.
* Taking on staff at a rate less than you have been paying those external consultants.
* Recouperating by working fewer hours.
Most of us are still at the bulking phase. Actually, most people don’t even start bulking. If you are bulking, just remember that half arsed won’t get you anywhere. If you’re not going to eat the right foods and lift as hard as you can every time you’re in the gym then don’t bothor starting.
