The first ever Australian keynote address at the ISSA Cleaning & Hygiene Expo by Winter Olympic gold medallist Alisa Camplin certainly wasn’t one to miss, especially for those looking for the inspiration to further their career or achieve business success.
While training for the Olympics and running a cleaning business may seem like a chalk and cheese combination, attendees soon realised Alisa’s gold-medal approach could be applied to running and managing a successful cleaning organisation; as Alisa said, her ‘boring blue triangle’ goal planner has been pivotal vital for everything she has ever wanted to achieve in her life, both professionally and personally.
“I have no doubt that planning, hard work and preparation were vital to my success,” she began. “Since I was a little girl, I knew I always wanted to go to the Olympics. I began training for marathons, and while I was good at it, it didn’t take me too long to soon resent the loneliness of long distance running. And that was a massive problem, because you cannot be great at something if you are not passionate about it.
“You can fake being passionate, but faking it doesn’t sustain it. So you either really need to hold onto the passion you have for what you’re doing, or find ways to reignite it along the way. If you can’t, then that’s when you should find something else to do. And that is certainly what I did when I began to pursue aerial skiing.”
Alisa did deliver her story with a word of warning – “Any time you want to move in a new direction or try something new, there are always going to be stop signs. There are setbacks, challenges, obstacles, distractions and sadly, people.
“But nothing worth having in life ever comes easy,” she reminded everyone. “So identify your stop signs, and have the courage and confidence to put them down, to stop making excuses and have a go!
“People used to ask me ‘why?’ all the time. And the reasons why you want something will change so many times. But the motivation to act and stay motivated through the hard times must always come from within.”
*Click here to read more of the highlights from the ISSA Cleaning & Hygiene Expo’s education sessions.