As an athlete, Tatyana McFadden has conquered a lot of overwhelming odds. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, with spina bifida, McFadden was paralyzed from the waist down. Abandoned at an orphanage that was too poor to afford her a wheelchair, she adapted and walked on her hands for the first six years of her life. Now, at age 26, McFadden is a 10-time U.S. Paralympic medalist, a 12-time medalist at the IPC World Championships, and a marathon champion. She achieved three grand slam marathon sweeps in London, Boston, Chicago and, most recently, in New York.
Tatyana, nicknamed the “Beast” by fellow racers, has a simple winning formula that can very easily be applied to achieving success and growth in business. She knows her limits, she practices discipline, and she puts forth a tremendous level of hard work and dedication to her craft. This formula can be applied similarly to successful acquisitions.
- Knowledge is knowing what you know and what you do not know: When a company understands its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, it can develop strategies to beat its competition through acquisitions. Acquisitions allow you to amplify your internal strengths, once you have gone through the hard work of identifying them.
- Discipline is an essential element that binds goals to achievements: When a company focuses on its goals, it can plan for the future and factor in long range thinking such as acquisitions. Successful acquisitions take a painstaking amount of practice, preparation and process
- Invest in time, money, and training: The expression, practice makes perfect, holds true. To optimize success, companies need to invest in themselves, their infrastructure and their employees. It is always best to have a long-term source of capital when financing acquisitions because it puts less pressure on the acquired business to perform.
- Acquisition growth goals: No goal is impossible with the right amount of knowledge, discipline, training and working capital. If this is done properly, you will have a successful acquisition as well as an increase in the overall value and performance of your company.
There are many different ways to go about successfully financing acquisitions. Begin your business’ acquisition challenge by planning out your goals and staying true to course. Invest time and training into your business and your team to keep everyone as motivated and competitive as possible. As McFadden stated, “Each race is going to be hard, so it’s all about staying focused on [one’s] goals.”