Growing as an entreprenuer
How to play your game while not being blinded by the pros
I wrote a post last week about the similarities between English football and entrepreneurship. It laid out the idea of keeping possession, probing the defense for weaknesses, waiting for an opportunity and then striking. I want to elaborate a little bit more using the same ‘shared abstraction’.
I went to a college soccer game shortly after I wrote the post. It was close to my house, so I walked over. The field sits just under the “El” tracks at the Fullerton Red-Line station and it was a beautiful autumn afternoon. As I watched the game wear on, a new thought started to crystalize.
If entrepreneurship is like a soccer match, then college soccer is like being a first-time entrepreneur.
Think about it. College athletes have been taught the basic techniques of the sport, are good enough to progress from high-school into the collegiate world, have big ambitions about the next step, but are still young and learning.
I saw this first hand on a mid-September day in Chicago.
The game began as a strategic collection of passing and possession. Each team working the ball around the field to get a handle on the competition just like you see in the professional game. They tested the stability of the competition, lobbing balls into the other’s half with players running onto them. No real chances developed but you could see the influence professional soccer had on the game and the player’s thought process. There was poise, composure and patience.
And then the game began to open up. One team conceded a goal. In response to this setback, the losing team began to approach the game in a more direct way. Looking for the killer ball that would take them level. Instead of probing, holding possession and looking for the right opportunity, the team sent long-ball after long-ball into the competitor’s half. This made it incredibly difficult for the forwards to claw the game back. It was too easy for the defense to clear the ball out of their half and send the competitor’s forwards off on a counter attack. Panic had set in. The losing team had stacked the odds against themselves by taking this narrow-minded approach and allowing the winning team to maintain shape and spring forward on the counter-attack.
This panic and narrow-minded play is what I have begun to know as “The Dip” as presented by Seth Godin.
I came to the startup world with a developed set of skills (I founded a design consultancy, Rough-Hewn Projects, in 2009) that made me feel like I had figured it out. I leaned into these skills to make my first entrances into my new business. I immersed myself in a new, tech-enabled, world, looking to the professionals, the ones that made it, for my roadmap to glory, glamour and wealth. Every new issue of Entrepreneur or Inc. reassured me that big things were in store. I tried to make sure I acted on every article I read. Every 10 steps to Success, 5 pitfalls to failure, 8 ways to be happy. Emulating these successful entrepreneurs and believing their path to success was my own was my day to day. It was exhausting and as my path began to diverge from the ones read in the magazines, panic began to set in. Business is much harder than anyone can ever tell you. It is nasty, boring and incredibly hard stuff.
As this realization sets in, my approach narrowed. I was bogged down by the day to day, while reaching and stretching for the wins I thought were there for the taking. Each stretch only confirmed that a defender was there to clear the ball, making me no closer to my goal. And that’s even more exhausting than trying to live up to the image of a 5x ‘trep that just started a cool new project while doing yoga 5 times a week and sailing through the Mediterranean.
And then I realized that I was panicking.
I realized that I didn’t yet have the poise, composure and patience to posses the ball, search for an opportunity and then strike.
So that’s where I’m at. Instead of relentlessly lobbing and chasing long shots off into the dark. I am going to be methodical, strategize, move carefully and then…
STRIKE!
