What do you do when you’re not the strongest or fastest on your team anymore? Or, if you’re an entrepreneur, when a competitor has more money, more resources, or some other advantage? You find a different way to be great.
That lesson comes from Travis Kelce, tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, who is perhaps best known for his romantic relationship with Taylor Swift. It’s a lesson that every entrepreneur and business leader can relate to,
In an interview with E! News, Kelce talks about how spending time with family and friends helps him stay grounded, and how much he loves the feeling of making a touchdown, whether the response is cheers, boos, or even dead silence. But to me, the most interesting part of the interview is about his evolution as a football player.
Kelce is 34, an age when many NFL players begin at least thinking about retirement. Kelce’s older brother Jason retired this year at 36. Travis Kelce has been playing with the Chiefs for 11 seasons, so it’s safe to say that he has more years of playing football behind him than ahead of him. And he freely admits that he no longer has quite the same athletic ability he once did. “When I was younger I was able to kind of put a little bit more wear and tear on the body in the off season. And as I’m getting older, obviously the wear and tear you gotta kind of save that for a lot of the season,” he says in the interview. He adds that he no longer has the running speed he once did.
A new focus on mentality.
But then he says: “What’s really kept me at the speed of the game has really been my mentality.” Think about that sentence for a moment. Kelce is smart enough to know what many entrepreneurs also must learn–that if you’re losing one form of competitive advantage, it’s time to develop another.
Kelce explains: “It’s really been how fast I can process things, how fast I can see things develop and have an answer, instinctually, right away.” He may not be able to run as fast as he used to, he says. “But at the same time, I can move quicker and get somebody to think. So trying to stay ahead of the game, understanding what’s going on on the other side of the ball so I play faster, understanding your opponent a little bit more.”
Learning to compete by playing smarter as his body gradually loses its ability to play harder means Kelce must use his mind in the game in a whole new way. For example, he says he does a lot of film prep to better understand the opposing team, and a lot of study to better understand his own team’s strategy.
“Why does Coach Reid love this play?”
“I’m so much more professional on the field now,” he says. When he was younger, he explains, he would arrive at practice expecting it to be grueling and focused on improving his fundamental skills. “Nowadays, I’m thinking more of why Coach Reid [head coach Andy Reid] loves this play. Why does Pat [quarterback Patrick Mahomes] like this route versus this coverage. And it’s more of a chess mentality of how we’re going to beat our opponents than it is just–I’m an athlete.”
It’s a process nearly every entrepreneur has faced at least once–the pivot. From one product to another, or from one target market to another. Kelce’s unique selling proposition used to be his speed, size and strength. Increasingly, these days, it’s his deep understanding of the game, and of strategies for winning it. Where many would just stubbornly keep doing what worked in the past, he’s smart enough to know that he must pivot if he wants to extend his beloved football career by a few more years.
There’s a growing audience of Inc.com readers who receive a daily text from me with a self-care or motivational micro-challenge or tip. Often, they text me back and we wind up in a conversation. (Want to learn more? Here’s some information about the texts and a special invitation to a two-month free trial.) Many are entrepreneurs or business leaders who have pivoted at least once, and more likely multiple times as they built their businesses. Like Kelce, they know that sometimes it’s worth it to completely change what you’re doing for greater success, or maybe survival. What would make doing a pivot worthwhile for you?