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5 similarities between kitesurfing and inbound marketing

I started kitesurfing right around the time we became a Hubspot partner to help manage the inbound marketing side of our business.

Both decisions – upping the inbound ante, and learning to kitesurf – have proven to be great thus far.

There are many similarities between inbound marketing and kitesurfing.

Here are 5:

  1. All the tools and gear in the world aren’t enough. Wanna kitesurf? Prepare to pay for gear. Here’s the thing, as with any sport gear ain’t enough. You can’t kitesurf without wind. Interested in inbound? Great. However, Hubspot, Infusionsoft or any other “must-have” tools are useless without content. Wind is the gas for kitesurfing. Content the fuel for inbound marketing.
  2. Consult the pros first and take a lesson. Only a serious moron would go kiteboarding without multiple lessons. Hello kitemares! Lots of bad stuff can happen at the bottom of a 13 metre parabolic kite. Similarly, only the foolhardy would spend the time, money and effort on inbound without seriously consulting the experts. There are so many great resources, and so many ways to get a free consultation, why take a “go it alone cause we know everything” approach your marketing
  3. Starting is the hardest part. For most newbie riders, the waterstart is the toughest aspect of kitesurfing. You’ve gotta just endure the failure. Same thing for inbound – starting is often hard. You gotta build a system for content creation, learn about new tools for managing your program and suffer through failures you never thought would happen. Persevere!
  4. Practice, and time. You won’t meet a more impatient mofo than me. All I wanna do is be 30m in the air doing jumps on my kiteboard, right now. Some of the clients we’ve worked with on inbound think results are going to be there in 6 weeks. Inbound, like kitesurfing takes practice and patience.
  5. Fun…eventually. I love to create content and watch what happens after it is released into the world. When we started doing this, years ago, it took time and patience for the activity become fun.  Same deal with kitesurfing. It becomes like a drug (I am just now at this stage) – but it takes awhile for that to happen.

 





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