Fresh from ITV's Dancing on Ice, Olympic medal winner turned business coach Steve Backley shares his thoughts on taking on the competition.

For me competitions are there to be won, whether the odds are stacked against you or not. Therefore, to stand any chance of winning, what is required is dedication and training. Sometimes hours and hours of training. That’s why, when I was asked to compete in the ITV show Dancing on Ice, I relished the opportunity to go into training. Long after many of my co-celebrities had gone home, there was my partner Suzie and I still on the ice rink trying to perfect our moves. One day we realised we had spent a gruelling 9 hours on the ice, when the norm in the camp was 2 hours per day.

What I have learnt in the world of sport, applies equally in the world of business. As a sportsman, I focused on becoming outstanding at one thing: my dedication to training. This would ultimately see me through to the success of silver and gold medals and sustain me when times were harder and competitions were lost. When I was competing at the highest level, I travelled the world to try and understand the mental techniques that would give me the edge and complement my training programmes. I even trained alongside my biggest arch rival, Jan Zelezny, in order to find a way to better myself. This undoubtedly led to the both of us benefiting and pushing far ahead of the other competitors in our events.

In 1992, Claire Owen started up Stopgap, which became the UK’s leading freelance marketing recruitment agency with revenues of £26 million. The secret of her rapid success lay in taking the advice of a local business entrepreneur to ‘Do one thing, and do it brilliantly’.

So my advice to business owners is to consider how they can apply this philosophy to their business in the same way as Claire Owen.   My work with business owners through www.javelinstrategies.co.uk asks the question ‘To take your business to the next level in performance what one thing can you do that plays to your strengths, enhances your brand and outperforms all your competitors?’ This is something that you and every member of your team need to live and breathe, day in day out if your company is to have that much needed competitive edge.