Going for gold: turning life experience in Olympic rowing into BD success
We saw a fantastic summer of sports with Team GB returning from the Paris 2024 games with an abundance of medals. It got Charles Cousins reflecting on his time as an Olympian and how sport set him up for success in his current role.
Going for gold: turning life experience in Olympic rowing into BD success
We saw a fantastic summer of sports with Team GB returning from the Paris 2024 games with an abundance of medals. It got Charles Cousins reflecting on his time as an Olympian and how sport set him up for success in his current role.
The rowing analogy is frequently applied in the business world - teams collaborating and pulling in the same direction to achieve a common goal. For the past 20 years rowing has defined my life and career.
I spent a decade as a full-time athlete on the Great Britain rowing team, but ultimately, a back injury prompted me to consider life beyond sport. This forced me to transition from being a high-performance athlete, world champion, and Olympian to entering the world of business development, starting from square one.
I couldn’t bring a long CV of experience; I hadn’t taken the latest courses and I needed to learn so much to just get off the starting line in a new career. Yet that transition taught me life experience, work ethic and an ambitious attitude are far more important than anything else.
Rowing is a tough sport; you train hard and race harder. The lessons I learned from my athletic experience have undoubtedly carried over into my career in sales and business development. It took me a while to recognise this, but that experience has equipped me to achieve success for my clients, my organisation, and myself.
Being data-driven means investing in collecting and actioning that data
My sporting career nearly didn’t happen. I didn’t attend a rowing school, my family wasn’t involved in the sport, and there weren’t many people in the village in rural Cambridgeshire where I grew up who sparked aspirations of Olympic success. I was more interested in hanging out with my friends, causing mischief, and skateboarding
In the early to mid-2000s, British Rowing achieved remarkable success with the 'World Class Start' programme, designed to discover and nurture rowing talent from unlikely places. The initiative used data-driven methods to identify potential athletes, with a particular focus on state schools where sports were not typically emphasised. By visiting schools across the country, they sought out tall, talented students to introduce to rowing.
British Rowing gathered anthropometric data and conducted strength and fitness tests aimed at uncovering potential, rather than simply measuring current fitness. This approach helped them identify hidden talent, compiling thousands of results nationwide to highlight those with the greatest chance of excelling in the sport.
Any conversation about business success inevitably touches on data. While most organisations claim to be data-driven, few truly invest the necessary effort in collecting and acting on data as effectively as they can. British Rowing, however, had a clear objective and committed the time and resources to gather the correct data, allowing themselves the flexibility to act on it. This combination of focus, investment, and execution helped uncover a generation of talent, with over one-third of Team GB's rowing squad at the London 2012 Olympics coming from their efforts.
In business development, it’s the same. There are hidden opportunities that can only be found by setting a clear goal, investing in collecting the right data and then making the space to take action.
Preparation, precision and consistency beat power
From the outside, an Olympic rowing crew at full speed appears calm and composed but, inside the boat, it's an intense physical challenge. Each athlete operates at their limit, carefully balancing the need to push hard without overexerting. Simultaneously, they must maintain mental clarity to execute the race strategy and deliver a flawless technique, perfectly synchronised with the rest of the crew.
While power is certainly crucial, brute force alone won’t work. Throughout the 2,000m course, there are moments of all-out sprints, but the key to victory lies in the precision of each stroke and the accumulation of around two hundred well-executed strokes. That is what defines the race – and that takes preparation.
In business development, especially in professional services, it’s not enough to have the best brand or the most renowned people, it’s about the preparation, consistency and precision of each interaction with your prospects. Every touchpoint with your prospects needs to be precise, tailored and deliberate. Consistent and precise touchpoints over time are what wins deals. It's not enough to have one big dinner with a client and think, "That’s my business development done for the year." Success comes from ongoing, steady engagement. Consistency is key.
“In business development, especially in professional services, it’s not enough to have the best brand or the most renowned people, it’s about the preparation, consistency and precision of each interaction with your prospects.”
Stay focused on the long term for lasting success
Olympic sports follow a four-year cycle, with world championships in the intervening years. While the ultimate focus is always on the four-year goal - often winning Olympic gold - teams break this down into more manageable short-term objectives. These include annual targets, goals for each training phase, and even specific aims for weekly sessions. However, at the core of everything is a clear purpose: to work toward that long-term, four-year objective.
Successful businesses operate the same way, they thrive when they plan for the future and avoid letting short-term targets drive decisions that harm long-term growth. In business development, it’s essential to maintain that long-term view, nurturing relationships with clients and prospects for sustainable success.
Businesses must look beyond short-term gains. Prioritising the future helps avoid quick, reactionary decisions that may seem beneficial at the moment but ultimately limit growth potential. In the short term that may mean making a deliberate choice to take a less-than-ideal course in order to win the more important engagements in the long term.
Don't put too much focus on what goes wrong when you are doing lots that’s right
As an athlete, I used to be bad about this. Whenever I evaluated a performance, I would zero in on all the mistakes. Just before the 2012 Olympics, we were racing at the final international meet, six weeks out from the Games. We had just made it into the A-final, which means finishing in the top three in a semi-final to progress to the medal race, where the top six teams compete for podium spots.
After the race, our coach asked us how it went. I immediately started listing everything we did wrong and areas we could improve. He cut me off after a few minutes and said, “You just did something we’ve been working toward all year—you made the A-final. I thought the race was great.” I agreed, saying, "Yeah, 95% of it was good, but it wasn’t perfect." His response shifted my mindset: “For this debrief, let’s spend 95% of the time talking about what we did well and what will keep us performing at that level in the future. We’ll leave the last 5% to discuss the few things that need tweaking.”
From that point on, I realised it’s important to focus on your strengths and maintain them. You don't always have to obsess over fixing what went wrong. You can still improve by reinforcing what you're already doing well.
Make small changes for big wins. Make big changes when winning isn’t possible
Winning involves adapting to change. While you should always adhere to your race plan, you may need to make small adjustments to account for varying conditions or unforeseen circumstances during a race. It's crucial to avoid making drastic changes; reaching your current position likely means you’re doing many things right. Instead, remember to build on your strengths while making minor tweaks to optimise your performance.
On the other hand, big changes become necessary when winning is no longer possible. Toward the end of my career, injuries made success at the Olympic level unlikely, so I had to find new sources of achievement. Recognising this led me to make a significant career shift, seeking my next big wins in a different arena.
Whether it’s rowing or business, life experience, work ethic and a golden attitude are what counts
In an era when a CV often holds more value than life experience, rowing has taught me that work ethic and attitude are the true indicators of success. I’ve witnessed numerous teammates and fellow Olympians successfully transition into the business world, utilising the skills, lessons, and mindset they developed through sports to excel in fields where they lacked years of experience
Whether you are hiring, or looking for a new job, keep that in mind and above all else…stay gold.
About Charles
Charles Cousins works as Vice President of Sales at Passle, the thought leadership software for professional services. Based in Oxford, UK and with offices in Washington DC and Chicago, Passle makes thought leadership simple, scalable and effective for some of the world's top services firms such as DLA Piper, Freshfields, A&O Shearman and DLA Piper. In addition to his current role, he continues to compete on the international rowing circuit and has successfully transitioned to Coastal Rowing, where he became both the European and World Champion in 2024. Coastal rowing is set to make its debut at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, but Charles has yet to comment on whether he will be competing for selection.