What My Tennis Coach Taught Me About Business

I am a terrible tennis player, but I love my coach. I only see her over my summer vacation and this August I learned more from her than just tennis. I learned lessons in how to be a better leader and entrepreneur.

1. Like your clients.

Irem Hepkorucu, my tennis coach, genuinely makes me feel well liked. She will send short, thoughtful notes throughout the year, ping me as it gets closer to the summer and then she writes me a lovely thank you note after I go back to New York.

Work with people you like, or you can grow to like. Show them you care about having them as clients.

2. Provide good service.

In addition to her professional demeanor--she's always on time, court is always clean, she always looks crisp, even in sports cloths--Hepkorucu anticipates my needs. She'll give me a dry t-shirt, a ride home, a fresh bottle of water or even a snack, depending on the situation.

Anticipate what your clients need, even before they do and be ready to take good care of them. Without breaking a sweat.

3. Concentrate on the balls coming in.

Hepkorucu tells me, "Don't think about the balls you missed. Think instead about the ones coming in." To this day, there are failures and missed professional opportunities I rehash and remember. They're the "tennis balls" I missed. My tennis teacher made me realize if I worry about the past, I won't recognize what is possible in the future.

Remember there are plenty more opportunities coming at you, but you need to be in position, looking forward, not back, and ready to receive them.

4. Feel. Rest. Get ready.

In tennis, there are about 20 seconds between the balls. The way Hepkorucu explained it, you have 5 seconds to be sad or happy, 5 seconds to rest, and 10 seconds to get prepared for the next ball. And that is the key to winning--making time for your feelings, making time to rest, and then getting ready.

At work, find a rhythm between each day, each meeting, and each project. Then give yourself time to celebrate a win or mourn a failure, get some rest and then get ready to play the next round.

5. Use metaphors.

Metaphors help us understand things that are difficult or new to us. When Hepkorucu​ uses metaphors for various movements--curtsy, broom, and accordion--I learn and remember them quicker.

Find metaphors when you explain new ideas. They'll stick and be more easily understood.

6. Visualize.

My favorite, being a visual person, is when my coach reminds me to visualize. When playing, don't think of how to hit the ball but where you want the ball to land. Visualize the spot. That is how you get the ball to go where you want it to go.

To me, this is just like design. Whether you're designing your life, your work or your next product. You can make happen what you visualize. 

7. Fear your fear. 

This year I feared I was too out of shape, too busy, too old, too ---- (fill the blank) to play. I only played because I wanted to see my teacher and because once I made the first appointment, I couldn't back out. Five minutes into the first lesson, I felt like an idiot. I had almost let fear get in the way of a great experience.

Fear fear itself. Make the appointment, take the decision, write the email, announce the news, play the game. 

This article first appeared on Inc.com on August 14, 2018

What Are The Lessons You Can Learn From the Future of Cake

Less is more.

In this case specifically, less sugar, more sweet.

The best news this week was that soon we will be able to indulge in sweets and feel less guilty. DouxMatok, a small Israeli startup based in Tel Aviv founded in 2014 by father and son duo Avraham and Eran Baniel, has invented a new way to use less sugar while keeping the taste the same.

It turns out that sugar is highly inefficient. Only 20% of it sticks to our sweet-taste buds with 80% disappearing into our digestive track. Baniels invented a way to add food-grade silica to sugar to act as the perfect vessel to carry more sugar to our taste buds directly. The result is sugar that is 40% more efficient than regular sugar. 

Imagine changing desert recipes that call for 1 cup of sugar to almost 1/2 a cup in a few years. A truly "sweet" example of less is more, a quote attributed to the architect Mies Van Der Rohe.

Here is what we can learn from Less Is More, a paradox that is at the heart of many powerful ideas and innovations that we're familiar with:

1. Have less of a good thing with more of the benefits. 

Doux Matox is a great example (which stands for double sugar--Doux means sweet in French; Matox, in Hebrew) of how to achieve having less of a good thing with as much if not more benefits. But so is Uniqlo feather coats and thermal underwear, which generate more heat in the winter but are thinner than other winter garments. As a result, you stay warm without looking like a snowman. 

Take a beloved, precious, luxurious but expensive or unhealthy ingredient and use less of it to more effect.

2. Create a small kit of parts with just as much richness.

How can you make a richer system with less parts? Imagine minimizing an office system from 300 pieces to 20 and still making almost an endless variety of different work settings. That is what I worked on with the Resolve System office furniture system for Herman Miller which as a result was 1/3 the weight of traditional office systems and those of its competitors. More recently, I worked on a similar problem with the Overlay Boundary System, helping to define space within the open office without cutting them off from others and the environment around them.

Reduce the parts to make a system richer.

3. Choose less stuff for more joy.

Marie Kondo asked us to dump our closets, bookcases, and pantry in the middle of the room and then hold each item in our hands and ask ourselves does it bring you joy? If it did you kept it. If it didn't, you lost it. Similarly but in a different vein, Graham Hill, founder of Treehugger became an ambassador for less space, less stuff so that we can be freer to have more joy. 

Does it bring you, or your user, joy? If not, drop it.

4. Create more clarity and focus by simplifying.

Boil the world's best search engine to one white page with a simple logo and one interactive field where you type in your search. That's Google. Few experiences exemplify the power of vastness meshed with simplicity.

Find simplicity in complexity.

5. Minimize breaks to strengthen the whole.

Space X engineers use friction stir welding to create large but light expanses of aluminum sheeting, something that wasn't  done before on a spaceship. Issey Miyake's Pleats Please clothing don't have seams--they're woven three-dimensionally and then heat cut. They're a feat of engineering and design, and a commercial success since the 1970's.

Every time there's a break, a seam, a connection, explore how you can delete it 

Next time you need inspiration to think differently, think less is more. 

This article first appeared on Inc.com on August 7, 2018