This article is part of our Transformations series, a series of in-depth articles detailing the stories behind high achieving young authors & entrepreneurs.
The Long Run: Finding Purpose in the Journey
How Yasmeen Sharara is running her own life and career one mile at a time
As Yasmeen Sharara strolls across that stage to receive her diploma after four years of grueling work, sacrifice and struggle, a quiet voice repeats a refrain over and over again in her head: ‘Are you making the wrong choice?’ She’s grown up with the weight of sacrifice of parents who emigrated from Lebanon with little more than $20 in their bank account on her shoulders. With her new book Why We Play, she shares her journey off of that expected path to discover and began to follow her purpose in the business side of sports. While she may not know her own next step, Why We Play offers an intimate portrait of a woman ready for whatever is thrown her way.
“I think writing this book helped me realized that I have exactly what I want to do in mind,” Yasmeen Sharara confided with a smile.
As I talked with Yasmeen just a few days before graduation, her ever-present smile belied a bit of dread. The challenge of writing a very open and personal book — especially one where you put yourself out there to be judged, evaluated and critiqued — is that you make your hopes known to the world. She confided she was nervous that when those closest to her read the book they’d realize “You’re not the person I thought you were.”
For most twenty-one year-olds, sharing your hopes and dreams isn’t something you do. Why? Well if you don’t achieve them you’re a failure. And no one wants a bruised ego, sympathetic texts or any of that garbage. But Yasmeen’s book opened her up to just that.
While her book is a fun read full of good stories, portraits of the sports business and lessons about the transformation going on for marketers in order to reach her generation, more than anything her book is a love letter to the sports marketing profession.
But here’s the thing:
The profession has yet to return her calls.
“I know exactly what I want,” she said. “Now, it’s just getting it. I’m willing to let life take its path for it. I think before I would have been one of my friends who went for a job just to get a job. I don’t want to do something I’m not happy about. I want my heart into it. I’m willing to just wait and see.”
In some ways writing a book is a crazy way to try and land a job, right? Imagine if in the 1989 John Cusack movie ‘Say Anything’, Diane hadn’t come out to kiss Lloyd when he proudly held up that boombox. That movie would have royally sucked. And yet here Yasmeen sits — boombox raised high and no one’s called. Whoa, right?
But for Yasmeen, now this is just one more obstacle in a series she’s faced in even getting her book written and published in the first place. So maybe waiting a few weeks or months for a call from Kevin from Under Armor or Phil from Nike isn’t such a big deal…
“Growing up my biggest dream was to become a doctor. My dad is an infertility doctor and worked really hard to get to the place where he is at today. He told me that when my parents first got married, they sometimes only had $20 in their bank account and times were tough when I was a baby. The thing is, no matter how tough times were financially, my dad absolutely *loved* his job. I can say the most consistent thing in my life was seeing my dad walk into the house after a long day at work, expressing how excited he was that a patient’s pregnancy test came back positive. It wasn’t like it was an irregular occurrence, on the contrary, it was a really regular one, but my dad’s excitement levels never changed. He was always *so* happy. Looking back at it now, I understand as to why I wanted to be a doctor just like my dad — his passion inspired me.”
Fady Sharara emigrated to the US from Beirut, Lebanon when his eldest daughter Yasmeen was just three years old. They immediately put her in French school and encouraged her to take advantage of all the opportunities the United States offered their children.
“Having come from a family fresh off the boat from Beirut, Lebanon, and being entirely French-educated since I was 3 years old, but growing up in the U.S. I always felt somehow *different*. Never completely on the outside, but never entirely fitting in. I mess up English idioms, I look *exotic* as someone once put it, and my family travels. All the time. I think it led to an interesting dynamic at home — too much family time can drive me crazy, but at the end of the day my parents are the reason that I am who I am today.”
In spite of the perceived pressure a first generation child feels, Yasmeen’s parents encouraged her to find her own way. Her dad “always said to do something I love because it would make waking up early to go to work something I look forward to, and not a task.” In spite of that openness, Yasmeen found herself drawn to the ‘family business’ and began taking a heavy science course load in high school and contemplated focusing her college applications on schools with strong pre-med programs. I guess I just “always played by the rules of the game” she said.
That internal pressure and drive suddenly began to unravel as she started to examine how as she took more and more science courses and seriously contemplated a career in medicine, she became increasinly unhappy. Coupled with the normal pressures of being a high school girl, she found herself beginning to descend into darker places.
“I felt like I lost sight of who I was and could not control how I felt about sciences, no matter how much I tried to like it the way I used to as a kid. This resulted in a really bad eating disorder when I was in 11th grade. It was so bad that my doctor was not sure if I would make it. He wanted me admitted to a hospital.”
At that low point, the girl who ‘always played by the rules of the game’ was lost and uncertain of what to do. It was her dad’s confidence in her that led her back from the brink. “My dad had faith I would get out of it on my own. With an eating disorder, most people rely on someone to help them find their way back to recovery — I did it all on my own. It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do.”
That moment forced her to reexamine everything. She looked at her choices, her path and her passions and built herself back up one step at a time.
It was that moment, she admits, that made her appreciate the strength that women like her gained through sports. “ It is also one of the reasons that I am so involved with sports — it is an industry that welcomes strong, healthy women.” And she didn’t simply walk out to a better place: Yasmeen ran.
Runners know that certain sense they get when they put in their headphones, turn on a playlist and just start a run. A bit of trepidation, a bit of exhilaration and a bit of freedom knowing it’s just you and your pace that matter now. Running may be one of the only activities where there are no teams, no interplay with others… just you against yourself. Step, step, step.
For Yasmeen, her journey to author almost never happened. She was set to graduate in nine months and had never had any serious thoughts about entrepreneurship. How did she find herself in an entrepreneurship class where I’d decided to have 32 students write books to learn how to launch something?
“My roommate Maryn is the reason I signed up for this class,” she said. “I wouldn’t have done any of this without you or Maryn. I remember she was like, “We’re going to write a book. It sounds really cool.” I honestly thought that the project will be at most maybe a 50 page paper and I wouldn’t hear of it again once I submitted the final.”
And yet five weeks into the class, I was uncertain she’d actually make it through the process. Walking out of class one night after five weeks together, Yasmeen and her roommate Maryn flagged me down, “Got a second?” they asked me.
As I walked through campus towards my home, Maryn confided she felt like she didn’t have anything she wanted to write about. So we chatted about her interests, her summer plans, her fears and ultimately came to a place where Maryn’s face lit up — “really? I can write about that?” she asked. Maryn went from a strongly considering dropping the course to her face radiating with joy for the prospect of the topic we’d just brainstormed.
I turned to go and saw Yasmeen, who had been silent the entire walk. “What about you?” I asked. “What’s your dream job?”
She paused. I saw her contemplating something. She pursed her lips to the side and began to speak, looking at Maryn before pausing again. I simply let the silence stand.
Finally she broke. “Can I email you after I think about it?”
I smiled, nodded and turned to head home. Maryn called after me, “Thank you so much!” As I turned back, Yasmeen was clearly still considering something. But I wasn’t sure she trusted me enough to share it.
Three days later a note arrived for me. And that was the moment when she started to write her book — and I was pretty sure nothing was going to stop her.
Purpose. Purpose is the extent to which a person engages in activities that are personally valued. Are you actively doing things you personally find satisfying, fulfilling and important?
When you see Yasmeen’s book, you’re immediately drawn to its cover. The bold design, the simple visual of shoes clearly on a run. You’ll see a published book. A book that reached #1 in her Amazon category. A book that is a clear proposal to the world of sports marketing.
But what you miss is the fact that this book only was published because it is the first true manifestation of Yasmeen’s purpose. There were dozens of times when she could have stopped or just decided to take an easy out. And yet she didn’t regardless of each step and every obstacle she encountered.
- Her mentor described her as ‘all over the place’ in their topic selection meeting.
- She was one of the last people to settle on her topic.
- English is her second/third/fourth language (depending on how you look at it) and had to push hard, get help and push even harder to write a compelling story.
- Her first draft was “intriguing, but unfocused” and would need pretty serious revisions over winter break to get her book to be accepted for publishing.
- I was told that she may want to change her cover by a representative to a book marketing firm — a cover that she’d fallen in love with the moment she saw and would never change.
- She was the very last author in our group to reach #1 (and only after she spent 24 hours straight running around campus begging people to buy it)
- And now she’s graduating with a clear picture of what she wants to do, but without a job doing it (yet).
In many ways, this book was written because Yasmeen had to write it. Those obstacles mentioned and dozens more were never going to stop her. She used them to make the story more interesting.
“I think as I was writing it, I kept worrying that my topic was not interesting. I didn’t think most people will be interested in what I was passionate about. Because when I talk about sports marketing to my best friend she’s always, “Yeah, I don’t really care.” But to have gone through it, I was always, “No one’s going to care about this.” It’s different because I also have to talk about my experiences. I was like I don’t know if anyone’s going to care about me or my story. I didn’t know if I was interesting enough for someone enough to read it.”
What’s so compelling about Yasmeen’s book is because her experience of creating the book was one of overcoming obstacles, it actually tells Yasmeen’s story. The book means more to her than perhaps any other author I’ve encountered.
“It’s unreal. I’ve never ever thought that this was something that I would accomplish. I was telling my parents about this that it’s kind of me putting myself out there which is not something I usually do. It’s a huge step forward for me just in terms of who I am as a person. I think it’s made me see things a lot differently in terms of what I do. I think enjoy things a lot more just because this book has made me realized that everyone’s going to have their opinion of me but I just have to do what I want to do and not let anyone affect me.”
Her book, Why We Play, offers a unique interplay between her place as the author, the teacher and the fan — bouncing between her insights into the history of sports and how marketers have used it to sell products, lessons she’s taken from conversations with peers and professionals, and her personal narratives as a fan of the products that promote the athlete in all of us. And while the book could be described as a love letter to the companies she most admires and would love to work for — Under Amour, Nike, Adidas, Columbia to name a few — it’s surprisingly insightful as she offers marketers a new take on what it means to be an athlete from the ‘athlete in all of us.’
In some ways, her book reads like a scrap book — the collections of conversations, visuals, experiences, lessons and emotions of a woman who truly loves sports and the marketers who use your own love of sports to inspire you to buy from them.
Maybe love letter isn’t a bad descriptor of her book after all.
In some ways the fact that Yasmeen will walk across the stage, take her diploma and begin the next challenge — breaking into the industry she now knows better than nearly anyone at this point in her life — is fitting. It’s really a part of who Yasmeen is and has become: a fighter.
The moment she received her physical book in her hands, Yasmeen told me: “I’m going to get my book to #1. I will.” And yet as the time passed and her book began to drop from its debut at #10 in her category, I started to have my doubts. A week later the book dropped to #39 and I gave up hope (which is probably just when Yasmeen’s magical abilities emerge.)
I sent her a quick note asking her if I could help. She responded with: “I got this. We are back in business.” The next day after 36 hours of Yasmeen-magic, a message appeared in my inbox.
“I lived my whole life trying so hard to never disappoint my dad. I played my sports the way I did because I wanted something to talk about with my dad, I studied really hard to get good grades just to attempt at have him say he was proud of me. It took me until the day my book was published to realize that my dad has always, and will always be proud of me no matter what I do. The person that I was most worried about disappointing this whole time was myself. Everyone is their hardest critic, but I take it up seven notches — I never think what I do is good enough. I downplayed the fact that I wrote and published a book for the longest time until I realized, this is pretty damn cool and I should be proud of everything I have accomplished in my life so far.”
Anyone who has a shred of doubt about the girl who is holding up that boombox can rest assured: she’ll keep holding it until Kevin, Phil or whoever she’s playing it for comes out.
More than anything I learned that if someone truly knows their purpose — as Yasmeen does perhaps better than nearly any twenty-something I have encountered — there really isn’t anything that can stand in her way. And my job as a coach, mentor, teacher is simply to give her the support and tools to demonstrate what’s inside her.
From the woman who wasn’t ready to share her dreams with a professor to someone who won’t be stopped by obstacles thrown in her way, her book is a success story and something her dad described to me as so impactful: “the change was a practical metamorphoses.”
Indeed it was.
That’s why Yasmeen plays.
To connect with Yasmeen for speeches, presentations, interviews or consulting work, yfs3@georgetown.edu. Purchase Why We Play on Amazon. Watch her interview on Youtube at Signal Class.
To learn more about Signal Class visit www.SignalClass.com or to apply for an upcoming experience, visit www.SignalClass.com/apply.
