Play the Swing You Brought - Ep. 31

Every founder chases their "A-game," but the truth is that your peak state is a variable, not a constant. In this debrief, Jarome uses a powerful metaphor from golf - playing the swing you brought to the course today - to dismantle the dangerous idea that your best is a fixed standard. This episode isn't about lowering your ambition; it's a masterclass in strategic acceptance and intelligent adjustment. You'll learn the system for navigating the imperfect rounds of business, how to win when you don't feel 100%, and why the most critical skill isn't always peak performance, but the ability to manage your misses and secure a gritty win.

✨ Why This Matters for You

This episode provides a mental model for high-stakes performance when conditions are anything but perfect. You will learn to:

• Reframe your entire concept of "your best" from a rigid, unattainable benchmark to a dynamic capacity that changes daily, freeing you from the tyranny of "should."
• Distinguish between productive adjustment (the mark of a pro) and emotional reaction (the path to compounding a bad day).
• Master the art of the "gritty win"—the ability to find and execute the one critical move that advances your mission, even when your energy and resources are low.

📝 Key Takeaways

• Your Best is Not a Fixed Standard: Your highest quality output is variable. It changes based on sleep, cash flow, personal stress, and team dynamics. The goal is not to hit a static "best" every day, but to give 100% of whatever capacity you have available today.
• Adjust, Don't Abandon: When facing an "off" day, the tendency is to either force a failing strategy or collapse completely. The professional response is to adjust the plan—change your target, alter your risk level, or choose a different tool—without abandoning your core principles or long-term standards.
• The Danger of "Should": The word "should" (e.g., "I should have more energy") keeps you in an argument with your present reality. True progress comes not from fighting your current state, but from accepting it as the starting point for your next strategic decision.
• Manage Your Misses: Peak performance isn't just about maximizing your ceiling; it's about raising your floor. The best outcomes often come not from perfect execution, but from effectively managing your mistakes, eliminating the catastrophic downside, and maintaining emotional equilibrium through volatility.

🚀 Put It Into Action

• Define Your "One Thing" Daily: At the start of each day, take a moment for an honest assessment of your true capacity (energy, focus, resources). Then ask yourself the question from The One Thing: "What is the one thing that, if I accomplish it, will make today a win?" Make that your non-negotiable priority.
• Conduct a Reality-Based Strategy Check: The next time a project or day feels "off," pause. Instead of forcing your original plan, identify the specific conditions you're facing (e.g., low team energy, unexpected client pressure). Consciously choose one strategic adjustment—like leaving the "driver in the bag"—to align your actions with reality, not your ideal state.
• Perform a "Bad Day" Debrief: Don't just discard your tough days. At the end of a day where you didn't have your "A-game," spend 10 minutes journaling on what that experience revealed. What data did you collect about your own grit, your team's resilience, or your systems' weaknesses? Use these rounds as the most valuable source of intel for future growth.

🔗 Stay Connected

• Subscribe to the No Trade Secrets podcast so you never miss an episode.
• Connect with Jarome on LinkedIn
• Share this episode with a fellow founder who is building with intention.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to another No Trade Secrets debrief session. Today's reflection comes from golf. So there's this phrase or idea in golf that you have to play the swing that you brought to the course that day. Not the swing you had on the range last week, not the swing you wish you had, not the swing you think you should have by now, but the swing you actually have today. One of the hardest parts of performance is accepting that the version of yourself that you have today is not going to always be the perfect version. And being able to accept that and still find a way to compete, still find a way to score. So, like in golf, when you're hitting balls on the range before a round, you can immediately realize, oh, my driver's off today, or I'm hitting my irons then. My tempo just feels off. I don't feel confident today for whatever reason. My body might not feel great, might have aches, it might be stiff, or my timing might be out of sync. And a lot of people make the mistake of trying to force the swing that they wished they had that day. And start trying to chase fixes and you know, fix the swing mid-round, which leads you to start searching to make emotional adjustments, to abandon the core principles of and the fundamentals and the foundation. And before you know it, you turn one bad swing into five bad holes. Because in golf, the scorecard in the course does not care what swing you wish you had, it only responds to how well you manage the swing you brought today. And so the acceptance part of this, don't get it confused with lowering standards. If you just don't have it today, it doesn't mean you give up or accept mediocre results or lose your ambition or use that as an excuse for performing poorly. It just means being honest about your current situation, your current conditions, and being able to adjust your strategy to align with your reality. So in golf, as I progress and work on my swing, things in my swing change. I still have a lot of bad habits. And my driver can be my best club that I bring to a round, or it can be my absolute worst. I can either hit it long and straight, or a big slice that'll go out of bounds most of the time. And if I bring this the driver that slice is bad, then it would be insanity if that's what I'm doing repeatedly, and that's the swing I brought that day. To continue doing the same thing and aiming in the same spot and swinging the same way and expecting the result to be able to be fixed mid-round. So I adapt. If it's not a big slice, maybe there's some holes that I can aim a little bit further lift and that play the slice and it worked. Maybe I choose a different club and I leave the driver in the bag because all it's doing is hurting me. In business, this can be seen in examples like if your energy, your team, your cash flow, capacity is just not where you want it to be, don't pretend it's perfect. But also don't make reckless decisions based on your ideal state. You need to adjust intelligently. And the reality is that your best that day is not going to be the same. Your best just will not be the same every day. Like we always use, you know, the phrase, like, do your best, as if your best is a fixed thing. But your best changes. Your best on eight hours of sleep is different than your best on four hours of sleep. Your best in a calm season is different than it would be in a chaotic one. Your best when cash flow is strong is going to be different from when you're under pressure. Your best is going to be different in business when things in your personal life are harmonious versus when you have a lot going on on that side of your life that could be draining you. So sometimes your best could look like being able to think strategically and think deep and lead from having a lot of clarity, creating something amazing, having hard conversations, but then on other days, your best could literally just be getting through the essentials. Your best could be making sure that you get through the day and don't react emotionally. Because your best is not a fixed standard, it's the highest quality response available from the version of you that showed up today. Now, there's a danger, I think, in fighting that reality. Because, in my experience, one of the fastest ways to make a bad day worse is refusing to accept that it's a tough day today, or comparing today to a day where your best was a lot better and you were able to show up more. Because then you're going to be disappointed and you're sitting at the bar to compare today to a day that the variables were different. And the word should here keeps you in this argument with your reality. I should be performing better, I should have more energy, or I should be able to do this. But you can't manage something that you can't even bring yourself to accept. And so business is full of imperfect realms. One of my favorite books that I read recently is Dr. Barbara Teller's golf book called Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect. And it really changed the way that I approach going to play golf, especially as a fairly new beginner, and someone who wants to get as good as I possibly can in golf and have high ambitions, but don't have any of the evidence yet to show that. Business is not a game of perfect. As a founder, we will rarely, rarely ever get perfect conditions because we're constantly playing with incomplete information, different team member dynamics, cash constraints, client pressures, customer pressures, changing, evolving priorities, emotional fatigue, market uncertainty. And the job here as a founder is not waiting for clean conditions because I think you will find yourself waiting for a long time and sitting on the sidelines for the majority of your founder journey. But the job is to make the best possible decision with every decision and choice you're faced, with the conditions that are available and right in front of you. As it relates to your team, you may not have the perfect team yet. But you still need to coach and delegate, clarify expectations, help them grow. You may not have the optimal cash position that you want or be meeting or hitting all of the numbers that you wish you were, but you still need to lead clearly. You need to prioritize expenses, you need to manage your collections and make disciplined and informed financial choices. And sales, I feel like this can come up, especially because of how much energy goes into that. You may not feel super confident or energized each day, but you still need to show up, make the call, follow up, and keep the pipeline alive. And as a leader, I think maybe the most important one, you may not feel emotionally sharp. You may not feel inspired that day. You may have things going on outside of business that are draining your energy and your emotions, but you still need to show up and avoid transferring your frustrations to the team. So what do you need to do? You need to adjust. Don't abandon. Because a bad round of golf does not mean abandoning the entire game plan. All it means is adjusting your club selection or your target lines, your risk level that day, your tempo, or your strategy. And it's the same in business. Because when you're having a day that is just off, a lot of leaders often either force harder or collapse completely. But I think the better option is to just adjust the plan without abandoning your standards. And even in golf, when you show up and you have a bad round and you just don't have it that day, the score still counts. And I truly believe that it's in those days that there is the most to learn from and the most that amount of data that you can take to grow and be better in the future. It's such a useful mirror. And I really think it brings out a lot about your character and how much grit you have. Because the easy option is just to call it in when a day sucks and say, fuck it. I don't have it today. So since I don't have a hundred percent of what I'm able to give on a good day, then I will give zero. No, give a hundred, I think giving a hundred percent each day, giving your best each day, it's not your best or out of your best of what your complete ceiling is on the most perfect day with the most perfect conditions. Giving your best each day means whatever you have available, whatever's in the tank today, give all of that. Because being able to do that continues momentum, even if it's not as much momentum that you would build on a perfect day, you're still taking a small step forward, and that keeps continuing to compound over time. That day moves on, the week moves, you move a needle, maybe not as much as you wish you could or wish you would have, but you move the needle a little bit, you moved a little closer towards the bigger mission, bigger picture of what you're building towards. That builds confidence, it builds process, builds consistency. And in golf, for me recently, I shot my best ever round, which was seven strokes better than my best score I've ever posted. And when I reflected on that round and then thought also how did I feel my swing was that day, I don't feel like I had my best swing that I've ever brought to a round. But the outcome doesn't show that, and then conversely, days where I feel like I my swing feels great, I can have a terrible score. And so I was trying to figure out and unpack why. Like I didn't really hit the ball great at all, but what I realized was I managed my misses. I managed any emotional roller coaster events that could happen up and downs. So I was able to move on from a bad hole immediately and not carry it on for multiple holes at a time. I didn't I removed overthinking almost entirely for that round, for whatever reason, and just trusted my swing that I had that day. And so not every shot was great. I would go to say that no shot was perfect, but I eliminated almost entirely my misses and the things that would usually detract from a good round and would become negatives. So my ceiling for my swing wasn't as high, but I had less downside in a framework that's really helped me over the last few years in business, especially have some kind of consistency and be able to, on those days where I don't have my best, be able to win the day with what I do have came from the book The One Thing by Michael Dell. And it's become a framework that I apply every single day on the good days and the days I don't have at all. And it's to ask myself, and I think it's in it's especially important for me to use this framework on the days where my best is not that much, is okay, what do I have today? But what is the one thing that if I can accomplish just this one thing today, it will move me closer to where I want to be, and then figure out what that thing is, and come hell or high water, I'm going to get that one thing done because that is by definition going to make today a win, even if it is a gritty win, that's what I'm gonna do, and that has really helped me make sure that I have more days turn into wins, even if they're just little wins than not, and so to summarize or just to close on, you're not gonna have your best swing each day, but the ability in golf, business, life, or whatever it is, to be able to accept what you bring today, what you have in the tank today, accepting what your best is on any given day, and playing with that. That's going to set you up for a lot more days that end with a W.