The Wrong Scoreboard
Unexpected climbs and what winning actually looks like
I used to measure my team’s success by zoom attendance.
Busy dads. Professionals. Guys managing careers and kids and mortgages and training.
And I was counting who showed up to a Tuesday night video call.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize I was looking at the wrong scoreboard entirely.
The right scoreboard was transformation.
Guys finishing races they never thought they could even start. Staying consistent through seasons of life that would have broken their old selves. Showing up for their families in new ways because of what endurance training taught them about hard things.
That was always the real measure.
I just wasn’t looking at it.
The Call
I got on the phone with one of my athletes a few weeks ago.
He’d been carrying something heavy into the call.
A business he’d poured years into hadn’t panned out the way he wanted. A client had stiffed him a significant amount of money. He’d made the decision to take a W2 job to protect his family and keep the business alive on the side.
By the scoreboard he’d set for himself years earlier — entrepreneur, building something, fully his own — he felt like he lost.
Like his dream died.
And then almost as an aside, like it wasn’t the most important thing he’d said in the whole conversation, he mentioned something.
His son’s athletic director had pulled him aside recently.
This guy was a former SWAT team director. Not someone who hands out compliments easily. And he told my athlete that his son was the kind of young man other kids look up to. That his own fifth grade son specifically admired him. Called him out by name as someone who was kind and good.
My athlete shared it quickly and moved on.
I stopped him.
“Do you hear what you just said?”
What Winning Actually Looks Like
Here’s what his scoreboard said:
Business failed. Now has to answer to a boss. Entrepreneurial dream dead.
Here’s what was actually happening:
Fastest promoted guy at his new job. Still running the business on the side. Debt free after years of grinding. A son who other kids look up to because of who his father modeled being every single day.
He was winning by every measure that actually matters.
He just couldn’t see it because he was looking at the wrong scoreboard.
The Elephant Mountain Climb
Last year, I coached this athlete through Elephant Mountain 50 miler.
There’s a section in that race I’ll never forget.
Mile 20. Back half of a 13 mile stretch between aid stations. Heat of the day.
And out of nowhere the course threw us into a dry red desert canyon.
Steep. Technical. Exposed.
We hadn’t seen it coming.
Our pace dropped to over 20 minutes a mile. Moving but barely. The watch saying we should be somewhere we weren’t. The aid station feeling impossibly far away.
In that moment everything in your body is telling you something is wrong.
You’re behind. You’re slow. You’re struggling.
But you’re not losing.
You’re mid race.
The climb is part of the course. The slow miles are part of the process. The suffering isn’t a sign that something went wrong. It’s a sign that you’re still in it.
His life right now is that climb.
Not the penalty box. Not a timeout. Not failure.
Mid race on a technical section he didn’t see coming.
And he’s still moving.
The Reframe
Here’s the part we never pause to admit.
There’s another guy out there in the exact same situation who made different choices.
Who went into business debt to keep up appearances. Who lied to his wife about the credit cards. Who let the wrong scoreboard drive him into decisions that cost him everything that actually mattered.
This athlete protected his family. Stayed out of debt. Kept his integrity. Kept building.
And raised a son who a former SWAT team director specifically called out as a young man of character.
You don’t get that result by accident.
You get it by living your values out loud every single day in front of your kids even when it’s hard. Even when you feel like you’re losing. Even when the watch says you should be somewhere you’re not.
That kid sees his dad do hard things and not quit.
That’s the whole lesson.
The Question Worth Asking
What scoreboard are you using right now?
And did you actually choose it?
Or did you absorb it from a peer group, a family expectation, a version of success you decided to chase before you knew what you actually valued?
Because here’s what I’ve learned from years of coaching athletes and entrepreneurs through hard seasons:
The moments that feel the most like losing are almost always mid race.
Not the end.
Not failure.
Just a climb you didn’t see coming on a course that’s longer and harder and more worth finishing than anything you originally signed up for.
Keep your eyes up.
You’re still in it.
Ryan.
Where did you come from?
Reframing the problem. Looking at problems from a different perspective…that’s my jam. And I didn’t really think that many other people even knew about it. Yet alone apply it in life…
Are you my long lost son?
You rock young man!