4 lessons from being cut from the national team roster [#74]

Hey there & happy Monday! 

First of all, a big thank you to everybody who reached out last week to check whether I was okay. I missed last week’s newsletter – kind of unintentionally, but I simply had too much stuff going on at Generalyst to write something meaningful. 

I’m okay and thriving. And incredibly thankful to have people looking out for me, checking in to see if everything’s okay. 

Now, today, I want to answer an interview question I ask in every interview: “Tell me about a situation in which you failed. What happened, and what did you learn from it?”

It’s very personal. It’s about one time I got cut from the national team roster, and the 4 things I’ve learned from that experience. 

Let’s dive in. 🤿

It’s spring 2023. I’m walking through the park on a Wednesday off, thinking about the past few months. I’ve poured my heart and my soul into Lacrosse training the past 2 years: lifting 3x a week, attending practice as often as possible but at least twice a week, doing footwork & conditioning on the side. 

All with the aspiration of making the national team and representing Germany at the World Championships in San Diego. 

Today’s the day of roster cuts. March 15th. I’m jittery. Refreshing my email every five minutes for the entire day. 

At 18:01, I receive an email from the head coach with the subject line: “Invitation to Worlds”. Am I in? 

I open the email. It reads: 

“It is with mixed emotion that we write you, as we see you as a potential contributor to the roster in San Diego, but at the moment we see you as an alternate.”

Which means that I’m only on the roster if someone else gets injured. 

It catches me completely off guard. How? How are these dudes on the roster more deserving of the spot than me? 

I did everything the coaches asked from me: took on leadership responsibility, always showed up, did extra work in my free time, studied film. 

It feels … unfair. I don’t understand. Yet. 

2 years later, I understand. It was a more formative experience than I’d like to admit. With every struggle come learnings. This time, 4 different ones: 

1. “You can’t coach tall” 
2. Be so good that they can’t ignore you
3. The Law of Reversed Effort 
4. A coach’s (or manager’s) ultimate responsibility 

Let’s take a look. ⬇️

1 – “You can’t coach tall” 

A few days later, I meet our head coach. I ask: “why did you cut me?” 

His response surprises me: “the other guy is taller, and we felt like that’s what we needed to put together the best possible defense.” 

Well, damn. Not much I can do about that. But sometimes, the things inherent in your nature can give you a massive advantage:

If you’re an American man who’s taller than 7 feet between 20 and 35, there’s a 1 in 7 chance you’re playing in the NBA. (Actually. Info comes from a guy that studies NBA stats for a living.)

In some disciplines, factors that cannot be coached have an outsized impact on the game: 

→ In the NBA (and, to a degree, for Lacrosse defensemen), that’s height. 

→ In the NFL, that’s athleticism: there are several examples of players who barely played American Football before being signed by an NFL team (Antonio Gates, Jimmy Graham, Jordan Mailata come to mind). 

→ In business, that’s soft factors like bias for action, curiosity, emotional intelligence, and raw intellectual horsepower. 

When I’m selecting candidate for Generalyst, I look for these exceptional traits that you can’t coach. If someone’s smart, has a hard work ethic, and is intellectually curious, I’m very confident they can learn pretty much anything (which … makes them a fantastic generalist). 

Skills can always be trained. Hire for the factors that cannot. 

2 – Be so good that they can’t ignore you

I didn’t just get cut because I wasn’t tall enough. There were 5 total spots for defensemen. In fact, I’m taller than 2 that made the roster. 

At the end of the day, I got cut because I simply wasn’t playing well enough. That’s the harsh truth. If I truly was as good as I thought I am, then I would’ve made the team. 

This is the first step to taking ownership: recognizing that you might just not be at the level where you aspire to be. 

I see this a lot in hiring: candidates apply to be a Founder’s Associate at a hot startup, but they show up with mediocre grades, only corporate internships, and zero proof of getting s**t done. 

The competition is tough. Get better. 

→ Build proof of work (such as an online portfolio, a side hustle, writing) 

→ Spend time tweaking your story to highlight your uniqueness 

→ Hone your meta skills 

→ Double down on your strengths 

As a Lacrosse player, this meant for me: 

→ Continuing to play in as many high-level games as possible (eg. playing in the Czech league on top of the German one, attending national team training camps in all Lacrosse disciplines)

→ Working with coaches on injury prevention, film study, and footwork 

→ Understanding my role on the field better and doubling down on this (I’m more of a defensive quarterback than a physical defender, so I should put myself in the middle of the defense) 

So that eventually, success becomes inevitable. 

3 – The Law of Reversed Effort 

“The harder you try to get something, the less likely you are to get it. Focus, but don’t lose your peripheral vision.”

I tried really hard. Every play, the thoughts running through my head were: “don’t fuck up”. Well, your mind is a machine for manifesting the things inside of it. So while the guy next to me, with nothing to lose, played his heart out, I was stuck in my head … and began making mistakes. 

I had forgotten the ultimate goal of playing Lacrosse: having fun and enjoying the process. 

Humans notice this. 

→ In dating, when you’re “needy”, you become less attractive to the other gender. 

→ In negotiations, the person with the better BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) usually wins

→ In hiring processes, the person that doesn’t really care too much about the job gets the first offer 

Important caveat here: the law of reversed effort only applies when other people are involved. If you want to run an ironman, there’s a direct correlation between effort and achievement. 

4 – The Ultimate Responsibility 

A coach in sports or a manager in business has one ultimate responsibility: to put the team on the field that’s most likely to win. 

Coaches might say: “we want people who display leadership ability, put in the effort, show up on time, etc.” 

But at the end of the day, they want people who help them win. Regardless of the how. 

Same in business: a business shouldn’t be a “family”, it should be a championship team – if you’re not contributing anymore, you should get benched or even cut. If you’re in sales, put in a lot of effort, but ultimately don’t generate revenue … well, then you’re performing worse than the person who’s closing revenue. 

That was a rough day. I’m immensely thankful for the learnings from it. Now, I approach the process differently: still working hard, doubling down on my strengths, but always remembering that sports are meant to be fun. Not another chore.

If I wanted to work more, I’d just work more. 

Will this be a better approach? Time will tell. Roster cuts are coming soon, and I have no idea whether I’ll be on the roster or not. The only thing I know for sure is that I’ve enjoyed the hell out of the process so far. 

And that's what matters.

Great day to have a day today. Do what needs to be done, and have some fun with it. 

LFG 🔥
Dominik

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