Call Me Speedy

I have always had a tough time with popular thinking around competitiveness and winning.

Seems straightforward (so goes the popular thinking) as to how to prepare, execute and win in… sports, business, entrepreneurship, life.  

Even when I was little, I had a hard time. I first played on a soccer team at age 5. And for 5 years, I played on the championship soccer team for our region. I felt like I was okay at soccer, not the best. My dad told me I was fast, and even gave me the nickname “Speedy”. I kind of didn’t believe him. I just felt decent at soccer, not great. And I didn’t see myself as fast.

We won all but maybe 2 games in all those years. I have some memories of playing. Mostly running. Mostly I remember running. 

I do remember the satisfying feeling of winning a 50/50 ball in the midfield and running fast, crashing through the other player and coming out with the ball. I was learning how fun it was to win the ball. I mostly remember those little wins though. I don’t have any memories of winning games at all, or celebrating after the game. Just all the work along the way that was “winning”. 

My senior year I went to soccer tryouts and made the team as a midfielder. I hadn’t played since age 10. Like many high school programs, the team was dominated by a group of players that had been playing together and were the starters every year in high school. I was the outsider. I got some playing time but mostly sat on the bench during games. Every day after practice I took shots at a field nearby the school at a local church. My good friend from the soccer team, Brett, went with me most of the time. I mostly took crazy hard, long shots on goal from outside the box. I imagined winning the game on these amazing shots. I remember so many of the shots I took on the church soccer field. I don’t remember much about high school soccer practice though. 

Actually I do remember that when we did sprints, only one guy, Earl, was faster than me. I would look to the side at the end of a 40 meter sprint and he would beat me by 2 or 3 feet. His thighs probably weighed more than my whole body. I rationalized it was due to thigh size. Of course he was faster than me. My thighs were like interesting looking sticks. They were sticks, yes, with some things on them that looked a lot like muscles but hard to see if not at the right angle. But that is all I remember about practice. Just the running. And my lack of thighs.

We made it to the city Championship Game. We were definitely the team that could win, but the other team was the higher income high school. And they seemed to be more confident than us. We had our starting group that had all their successes against the opposing team’s players for years and years. Though it still felt like we were underdogs. We drove up to the game in much crappier cars and many of our players seemed lucky to have even found a ride. 

The guy that started in front of me in the midfield was a foreign exchange student. He walked up to me as we warmed up for the game and said his stomach was hurting. He waved the coach over to us. He told the coach, who was some kind of character from a movie… very old, didn’t move well, didn’t know anything about soccer, and had the demeanor of Ron Swanson from the TV show ‘Parks & Recreation’.

I still remember looking at the guy’s face as he told the coach his stomach hurt. He was lying. He was attempting to get me in the game. The coach didn’t hesitate and just turned to me and said, “Ok. You’re in.” I was really surprised and pretty excited. I wasn’t nervous.

In the first few minutes of the game, an errant ball came out of the opponent’s box bouncing. I immediately sprinted toward it and pulled the trigger on a full volley (taking the ball out of the air versus making a touch or two to settle the ball). I struck the ball probably 10 or 15 meters outside the box and I could see it headed to the left post, hovering like a knuckleball about 2 or 3 feet above the ground. I could see the goalie diving toward it and magically my striker popped into my vision and he headed the ball in a full dive to the other post, scoring the first goal of the game. I played the entire game and did the 2nd half as striker. I never scored but was constantly putting pressure on the other team, narrowly missing opportunities to score and frustrating our opponent. I do not remember the end of the game. I know we scored other goals. I know we won. I just remember all the little wins. Many of them were me running faster than the other team over and over. I remember running.

In college I played volleyball (which is sort of an understatement really since those who knew me would say that it was my life). Proof of this is searching my name and suggestions include “Rolly Keenan Can’t Lose” which was my website back when that was unique… and I think I am number 4 on the all time list of most articles on the rec.sport.volleyball newsgroup —that was the equivalent of blogging or some other kind of content/communication space like twitter and medium combined. I did win a lot of games playing for my college team and probably more often playing in outdoor 2 vs 2 tournaments. What made me look a little different was my lack of mistakes when I played. Win or lose, I would win points and win accomplishing what I knew was the right pass, the right set, or the right shot on the court. Similar to other endeavors, I don’t remember much about the wins, but I remember in detail certain plays. I remember each little win. 

As I entered adult life, my business career started in outbound, cold-calling, sales. I did some math recently and by my estimation, I made roughly 500,000 cold calls. I remember a lot of them. I recorded them in my head. I missed my sales goal, and activity goals my first month on the job. I was there for 9 years and never missed another month. I do remember some of the wins, the big contracts, the steps that lead to deals closing or deals being lost. But mostly I remember all the little things that got me to the signed deal. All the little battles. I guess that is me remembering all the running. I remember running.

In my work in management consulting from 2006-2013, I led the charge for something people don’t normally do in management consulting… or at least they don’t do it all at the same time. I searched and found new potential clients, architected work for them, contracted that work, and then managed that work (often multi-year contracts) while finding new clients. I have some awards and trophies for some of the outcomes of that work. Signing the contracts is actually kind of fuzzy in my mind. All the countless conversations, pivots, and decision-making advice with prospects and clients is a clear memory. Similar to my cold calling days, many of those conversations are recorded in my mind. Word for word. Again, I mostly remember running. 

At this point, probably worth saying that I remember running a little faster than everyone around me. I was faster in soccer (ends up my dad was right). Now I was faster in business. Not faster to close a deal. Faster in all the little ways. All the 50/50 balls. 

I am not saying that this is the way to win. I am only saying that this is the way that I win. I hope that someone reading this can take some comfort in knowing that winning can look very different for each person. Outcomes matter so I don’t think I would feel like I was winning at all if I played sports and played my role in business perfectly and lost all my games and lost all my deals. So don’t get me wrong, the scoreboard matters. 

It is just that… outside of a few anomalies, people don’t win by focusing on winning. And some of these people (you hear it a lot from athletes every day on TV but you can hear it from business people if you listen closely), don’t really know why they are winning either. So they give their best explanation and it comes across as advice and people try it and it doesn’t work for them. It makes a whole industry of self-improvement books, leadership books, and the speaking and consulting that go along with it. Most of it is terrible advice.

So with my stories of sports and business, as I’ve been reflecting at the end of 2022, I hope you can think about it all and how it might apply to you… how can you take some element of what has worked for me (since I was 5) and change it to make it work for you. 

I win by running. Faster than everyone around me. I don’t look frantic on the outside. And I don’t work a crazy amount of hours (I know people that do (like working 12hr days and on weekends too), so I am comparing myself to them. 

Every 50/50 ball that could be mine, I run so fast through that conflict that I generally come out with possession of the ball (soccer analogy). At the net, I get way more blocks than should be the case at the level I was playing at when I’m only 5’11” (volleyball analogy). And in my personal life, when very challenging obstacles appear, I run through them, even if it takes years of stamina to come out with the win. 

I can’t control most things around me. Not in sports, not in business, and not in my personal life. 

However…

I watch for 50/50 balls to win. I go for the block when no one else thinks I’ll get it. I work to make every move as efficient and effective as I possibly can. I over-prepare for every potential change in the “game”.  

And I’m fast. You can call me Speedy.