Getting Fired - A Competitive Advantage Was listening to @thepivot podcast with Mike McDaniel and got to the part where he got fired - coming to the realization on how much of your identity is wrapped up in an NFL job. Walked out of my car before my chess match tonight and went down to the field where I got my first high school coaching job - Roosevelt HS. We practiced and played down here. No fences, not much support. I had very little idea what I was doing but had a head coach in Matt Nelsen who mentored me on the finer side of coaching team sports. He let me do more and more skill work and he taught me the ropes on relationships with players. We won a good amount. The following year he’d go on sabbatical and I’d get the head job. I took what I learned from Coach Nelsen and the little I’d researched on skill development, and we won some more. Roosevelt HS Freshmen won more games than JV and Varsity combined. We had success. Kids had fun. And we played hard. I got fired at the end of the year. Nominally it was due to the head coach just not being comfortable with new ideas and people like me. People like me. Funny to say now. Look around - there’s young coaches everywhere in baseball with strong technical skills. Shit, 40 of them came from the company I started before I even took this field as a HS coach. McDaniel said that he had to turn getting fired into a competitive advantage. That he now knew he had to work that much harder, to learn new concepts. The clarity of vision of getting canned is like nothing else - of this I promise you. I felt much the same way. Insulted, yes. But given the gift of clarity? Definitely. But I’ve never believed in proving haters wrong. I told a big leaguer years and years ago that such beliefs are ultimately destructive - because what happens when you win? What happens when no one doubts you anymore? You invent demons. Doubters. Haters. You start to see ghosts. I’m not saying people can’t use it as motivation. But I’ve seen many people destroyed by it - in gambling, finance, pro sports, and fame. No, getting fired gives you clarity on what you need to work on more. That the world isn’t ready for your idea yet - and maybe it never will be. But I was willing to go out a failure as long as I did it on my own terms. That’s the other side of the coin of proving haters wrong. Maybe they’re right. I can live with my haters being right if I still gave it everything and outworked everyone. No one can take away the work I’ve done, no matter what the external success may be. Now, off to play a game that’s almost as frustrating as being fired from a winning high school program. Chess.
It’d be poetic if I lost a grinder of a game tonight but I posterized a new player in like 11 moves. Such is life.
@drivelinekyle @thepivot Great read, Kyle. However I think that’s volleyball, not chess.
@drivelinekyle @thepivot Kyle- great read on a Saturday morning. Thanks for posting! Much like you, being fired changed my career. Corporate didn’t want me. And I didn’t want them. Now the firm I co-founded and help run does 8 figures in revenue and employees 20 people. Chess. Keep going!
@drivelinekyle @thepivot Loved your share my man. Thanks for the perspective. I’ve been fired 3 times. Took the high road and got better. 👊
@drivelinekyle @thepivot Getting fired kept me humble and hungry.