Michael Hayman, co-founder of Seven Hills, writes for Real Business on being inspired by Olympic legend Duncan Goodhew MBE. Read the story below or here:

IS TIME ON MY SIDE?

The clock is ticking. Six months from today, the Olympics, the greatest show on earth, will gather an athletic elite to face a very clear challenge. Is your personal best enough to be a world best?

What makes a true world champion? What level of endurance, talent and inspiration gets you to the top?

Over the last few months I have had the opportunity to find out a few of the answers to some of those questions. I have spent time with an Olympic legend and the more I have learned of his story, the more I have come to admire not only his sporting achievements, but to understand the transferable lessons for business.

Duncan Goodhew MBE, is one of those rarest of the rare; an Olympic gold medal winner. Just dwell on that. To win a gold is to excel to such a degree that you are that one person in seven billion inhabitants of this planet with the talent to excel. A winner; the very best of the best.

Duncan’s story is a dramatic one. His gold was won as a swimmer during the Moscow Olympics in 1980. It is one of the most inspiring sporting moments of all time. A last gasp stroke pulled him through to win gold, to win for himself, to win for Britain.

Being a winner is not just a matter of being a consummate athlete. There is some intangible asset about an enduring world champion.

It’s something about empathy with an audience; it’s something about dignity rather than arrogance from supreme talent; it’s something about a love and fascination with life and what you do that endures, not for just one split moment of victory, but for a lifetime.

Yesterday, I co-chaired the StartUp Britain launch of its national enterprise calendar and Duncan was our final speaker.  The skills and presence of a champion were on full display, the spine tingling story of performance and achievement lit up the room. This man is a national treasure.

His message to start-ups was clear from the get go: it’s all within you, so don’t waste the time you have. Whether you’re training for a race or setting up a business, the concentration, stamina and self-discipline required are exactly the same.

You have to love what you do, be optimistic about your chances of success and have a clear understanding of what the winning line actually means to you.

His central question, and the one that certainly spoke to me was, what do you do not with your best days, but with your worst? His answer was uncompromising. You just can’t afford them. When winning and losing can come down to a split second, every four years, the mind focuses on what a self indulgence a bad moment, hour or day, can be.

I think business has vital lessons to learn from that mindset. I don’t know about you, but I often have days where I am not at my best. But what’s the cost to the morale of your team, the good will of your customers or the productivity of your business?

Success is rarely a product of negativity. Negativity is easy. It’s the preserve of the armchair critic, those that don’t, rather than those that do.

What’s more is that it’s also a characteristic that is within us all.  It just happens to be one that we can’t afford if we are in the business of winning.

The reason being because time, and how we use it, matters. The clock ticks for athletes and businesses alike. Using it positively is, therefore, the real characteristic of a winner. Making your bad day your best is the true Olympic challenge.

The countdown is on for the Olympics but it’s also on for you. Instinctively we may all acknowledge that the clock is ticking but all too often we don’t act upon that inner knowledge.

My lesson from Duncan was that making the most of every moment matters. So, what do you with the time on your hands? I’d say use it or lose it.

Michael Hayman is co-founder of the public relations consultancy Seven Hills. You can also follow Michael on Twitter.