The Business of Your Body

Have you ever considered the similarities between taking care of your body and managing a healthy business? There are more than you might think.

My first career was in high-tech and biotech corporate finance management. My areas of focus were cost accounting (assigning value to inventory assets, calculating costs and profit margins for individual products) and budgeting/forecasting. Both areas of finance are more open to interpretation than other accounting disciplines and, therefore, tend to provide more latitude in practice but are also potentially much more consequential in a company’s strategy to achieve optimal performance.

So what’s the common thread between running a successful business and living a healthful lifestyle? The top level answer is that both are meant to provide the same thing for those involved: A better life.

But beyond that broad definition of the shared objectives of a fuller, more bountiful experience, there are more specific comparison points that are worth exploring. And they are metrics that all relate to the same simple concept: Value.

Here are three focal points for most businesses and their healthy lifestyle counterparts, as well as how to get the most out of each when it comes to exercise and healthful eating.

Resource management/optimization – In both business and life, you have limited resources. So the trick is to use your resources in a way that best exploits their capacity for productivity and increases the resources you have going forward. Nothing does this more effectively than a well-designed and executed fitness program. Exhausted? Stressed? Feeling overwhelmed and scattered? Research supports the conclusion that working out regularly reduces stress, clears the mind, improves physical and emotional stamina and actually enhances cognitive function and decision-making skills. And you can’t find three hours a week for this array of benefits?

Return on Investment – Given that the goal of any business is to multiply and increase the value of the resources initially dedicated to the endeavor, you won’t find a better, more reliable, predictable and sustainable ROI producer than living a healthful lifestyle. Our bodies were made to incrementally tolerate more taxing challenges and to improve their capacity for performing at consistently higher levels. That is our birthright. But accessing that capability is uncomfortable and tests our resolve, which I personally think is another hidden benefit. If it was easy, it wouldn’t develop the self-discipline so valuable when applied to other areas of our lives like work and relationship management. I trained a very successful businessman who got up early to head to the beach and surf a couple of hours before work each day, and had done so since he was a teenager. Do you think he was psychologically worn down from work stress or unwilling to rise to the challenges of the pressure-filled risk/reward environment presented by the high-tech industry?

Growth – Commerce is based on the idea of expansion and ever-increasing influence on individual, organizational and, hopefully, societal prosperity. But personal happiness is closely tied to the perception and controlability of the quality of one’s own experience. So it stands to reason that personal growth, like growth of a business, provides a more enlightened perspective, more independence and self-mastery, and a sense of being a stakeholder and chief contributor to that condition. Making choices that support a more rewarding physical experience, including increased vitality and slowed aging effects (both mental and physical) actually precede and provide a stable foundation for the ability to enjoy the other, non-physical aspects of one’s life. Have you ever known anyone who regretted making these life choices a priority?

It’s great to strive for a stable, rewarding career and personal financial independence. But you might also take a moment to ask yourself if the success you seek is not at least as likely to reveal itself in a choice you can make today, without risk or dependence on a boss, investors, customers or a business loan.

Dan Taylor, ACE, NASM-CPT, is owner and head trainer at Pleasanton-based Tri Valley Trainer. They offer personal training and small group fitness solutions and an innovative, medically endorsed web-based group healthy eating coaching program.