Let’s stop celebrating England’s win at Headingley for a moment, and cast our minds back to Lords and the 2nd Test.
Heroic defeat – and none more heroic than the England captain Ben Stokes. At lunchtime on the final day, with the result still in doubt, Sky ran a speech over a video of Stokes.
I was so struck by the speech – and its relevance to TAB – that I looked it up: The Man in the Arena by Theodore Roosevelt.
"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs; who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds. Who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
I’m not sure that I’ve ever read anything that more accurately parallels the life – and the journey – of an entrepreneur.
Do you remember starting your business? Even floating the idea of starting your business?
Remember the critics? The people who talked about the security you had in your job? About the number of small businesses that fail? The long hours? The 101 ways in which you could stumble? And that you were wrong anyway: that if you really were going to do something as stupid as start your own business, you should do it differently.
And some of the doubters were those closest to you. They took plenty of convincing. There was a lot more than money on the line…
Despite all that, you went ahead. Handed in your resignation. Stepped into the arena. And over the next few years your face was ‘marred by dust and sweat and blood.’ By the long hours; by the difficult decisions you had to take – and by the knowledge that the buck irrevocably stropped with you.
You carried on ‘striving valiantly.’ And you erred. God only knows how many times you erred. But you dragged yourself back on track. Carried on ‘coming up short.’ Making mistakes but – crucially – learning from those mistakes: never making the same mistake twice.
By now, though, you knew something with absolute certainty.
You’d made the right decision. You were still making mistakes: still making tough decisions – sometimes about people who’d been with you since the start. Still putting in the long hours: still having sleepless nights.
But ‘great enthusiasm?’ Damn right: you bounced out of bed every morning. ‘Worthy cause?’ And then some. You were building something worthwhile. Taking others with you on the journey. Contributing to your local community – and starting to get the rewards of the dust, sweat and blood.
You’d ignored the doubters and the critics. You’d started the business – and it was the best decision you’d ever made. You knew that if you had your time over again, you’d do exactly the same. You would risk failure and all its consequences – because if you never risk failure, you can never know the ‘high achievement’ of success.
How high? Higher than you could ever have imagined…
As everyone reading this blog will know, The Alternative Board is with you in the arena. Your colleagues around the TAB table will do their best to make sure you don’t err and ‘come up short.’ Their faces, too are marred by dust, sweat and blood – and by years of experience, all of it yours for the asking. They’ve experienced high achievement – and they’ll do everything they can to help you get there.
But in the final analysis, you’re the man – or woman – in the arena. That is why I consider myself uniquely privileged to do what I do: work with hundreds of ‘men in the arena’ every single week. People who are as far removed from ‘cold and timid souls’ as it is possible to get. People who’ve looked defeat in the face and – to borrow Arya Stark’s line – said ‘not today.’
There’s nothing I – and everyone in TAB UK – won’t do to help you succeed as you ‘dare greatly’ and, ultimately, ‘know victory.’
Have a great weekend: the arena will welcome you back on Monday morning…
