Most weekends in my early twenties, I was driving six hours through snowstorms from Montreal to New England. While my friends were out, I was chasing the chance to scout one more basketball game, find one more talented player, and have the opportunity to meet one more coach.
For those who don’t know, scouting is the behind-the-scenes work of watching hundreds of games, evaluating players’ skills, and trying to predict who can successfully make the leap to the next level. It’s competitive, typically unpaid when you start, and requires years of grinding before you see any return.
I was doing everything I could to get my lucky break. But for most of my journey, I wasn’t making money. I was burning cash and caffeine. Those years on the road taught me lessons that I still carry with me into business school.
If you told me in undergrad that it would take five years before I stopped losing money, I probably would have quit. I thought success would find me after a year or two, but it didn’t. Whether it’s scouting or starting a business, success usually takes longer and costs more than you think. If you can’t stomach that, you won’t last.
If I knew that the end result of my work would have been making some money, attending my dream business school, and making lots of new friends, then every day would have been the best day of my life. All the hard work and sacrifice have paid off ten times better than I could have predicted when I first started this journey. Entrepreneur Alex Hormozi has talked about how people overestimate short-term pain and underestimate long-term upside, and I have seen this truth in my own story.
As a scout, I built my own model for evaluating players based on four factors: role, coachability, physicals, and feel. Later, I realized I was evaluating players the same way investors evaluate startups: consistent criteria, not just gut feeling.
These standards help prevent the biggest mistakes. At Fuqua, we’ve learned about these same principles in our Leadership, Ethics, and Organizations class. A good system outperforms individual talent!
Scouting taught me that success is about endurance, belief in the upside, and disciplined decision-making. Those same lessons shape how I approach business school, and they’ll shape how I lead after Fuqua.
The post What Basketball Scouting Taught Me About Business appeared first on Duke Daytime MBA Student Blog.
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I'd be glad to learn your thoughts on this story : What Basketball Scouting Taught Me About Business
For those who don’t know, scouting is the behind-the-scenes work of watching hundreds of games, evaluating players’ skills, and trying to predict who can successfully make the leap to the next level. It’s competitive, typically unpaid when you start, and requires years of grinding before you see any return.
I was doing everything I could to get my lucky break. But for most of my journey, I wasn’t making money. I was burning cash and caffeine. Those years on the road taught me lessons that I still carry with me into business school.
Lesson 1: It’s going to be harder and take longer than you imagined.
If you told me in undergrad that it would take five years before I stopped losing money, I probably would have quit. I thought success would find me after a year or two, but it didn’t. Whether it’s scouting or starting a business, success usually takes longer and costs more than you think. If you can’t stomach that, you won’t last.
Lesson 2: We underrate the upside.
If I knew that the end result of my work would have been making some money, attending my dream business school, and making lots of new friends, then every day would have been the best day of my life. All the hard work and sacrifice have paid off ten times better than I could have predicted when I first started this journey. Entrepreneur Alex Hormozi has talked about how people overestimate short-term pain and underestimate long-term upside, and I have seen this truth in my own story.
Lesson 3: We fall back on our systems.
As a scout, I built my own model for evaluating players based on four factors: role, coachability, physicals, and feel. Later, I realized I was evaluating players the same way investors evaluate startups: consistent criteria, not just gut feeling.
These standards help prevent the biggest mistakes. At Fuqua, we’ve learned about these same principles in our Leadership, Ethics, and Organizations class. A good system outperforms individual talent!
Scouting taught me that success is about endurance, belief in the upside, and disciplined decision-making. Those same lessons shape how I approach business school, and they’ll shape how I lead after Fuqua.
The post What Basketball Scouting Taught Me About Business appeared first on Duke Daytime MBA Student Blog.
More...
How does this impact your International MBA decision?
I'd be glad to learn your thoughts on this story : What Basketball Scouting Taught Me About Business