The Hard Part

I spent years coaching tennis before I ever stepped into business leadership. I didn’t know it at the time, but those years on the court taught me more about running a successful team than many of the management books I’ve read since.

I worked with all kinds of players, including those of different ages, levels, and personalities. But over time, I noticed something consistent. You could give the exact same instruction to two people, and they would respond in completely different ways.

The first type of player would hear what I said, nod, and try to apply it. They’d come back next week and hear the same feedback again. They’d try it again, still half-tethered to their old habits. Week after week, we’d repeat the cycle. They were engaged, polite, and hard-working, but they didn’t improve. Not really.

The second type of player would hear the instruction and commit to it, word for word. Even when it felt unnatural. Even when it made their shots worse in the short term. They understood that if their performance was ever going to improve, they’d have to let go of what felt comfortable and lean into what was necessary.

These players got better. Sometimes fast. Always meaningfully.

The truth is, progress in any area, sports, business, or leadership, requires you to get a little worse before you get better. Because if what you’re doing now was good enough to get the result you want, you’d already have it. Growth means doing things differently. It means doing things you’re not good at, yet.

In tennis, that might be a new grip, a new footwork pattern, a serve toss that feels all wrong at first. In business, it’s things like giving hard feedback, holding a standard, correcting behavior, or learning how to hire and train instead of doing everything yourself.

A lot of business owners are good at the thing they do. They’re great technicians. But if they want to grow - really grow - they can’t stop there. They have to become great leaders.

That means building a team. That means developing other people. That means doing the things that feel unnatural at first, like delegating, coaching, correcting, and, sometimes, letting go of people who aren’t a fit.

It’s uncomfortable. It takes patience and discipline. But I’ve been on both sides of it, and I can tell you with certainty: this is the work that creates leverage.

If you want to build a business that lasts, that doesn’t exhaust you, you have to lead. You have to be the person your team needs, not just the person who knows how to do the task.

That’s the hard part. But it’s also the part that sets everything else in motion.