Your pulse is beating in your ears like a drum. A band is tightening around your ribs, toes, and head to the point you can’t feel any of them. Sulfuric acid pumps through your muscles. Worse, you see yourself falling behind the pack. The jammer is gaining feet, and now laps around you. You had one job. You fall, and it feels like it takes an eternity to pick yourself up again to keep skating. You ultimately go home, beaten and bruised, but not defeated and determined to get better. Come Thursday, you are back at practice.
Roller derby is hard. Not just "kind of a challenge" -- no, It is a life consuming obsession that costs many players thousands of dollars, significant others who have a hard time understanding, emotional turmoil, physical and mental strain, and the sport often sets you apart as an outsider amongst others.
Sounds kind of like a startup, doesn’t it?
I got home from practice tonight at 10. It was grueling. While I was questioning myself why I always seem to find myself getting pulled back in to this sport, no matter where I lived, I realized that it is because it is the physical manifestation of everything I love about the startup world.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that there were some strikingly similar parallels that I saw between my beloved sport and the insanity of the startup world.
1. Most Seek the Image. Others Seek the Passion.
Think of a roller derby girl. If you are like most Americans, you will probably think of some image of a Drew Berrymore character from Whip It. A tutu, black eyeliner, tons of tattoos, crazy hair (and crazy eyes) that parties way too hard and wears fishnets. Come the time for tryouts, there are always girls - “fresh meat” we call them - that want to join. An honest 75-80% are there with this image in mind. They want to be seen by others as a badass outsider. However, they never make it through the third practice before realizing they have no dedication, yet they still call themselves “derby girls” to their friends to see their expressions.
Now think of an entrepreneur. Most people think of the likes of Zuckerberg, Musk, Thiel, and any number of others. Now think of all of the “wantrepreneurs” out there that are chasing that same phantom of an image and lifestyle. These are the ones that ultimately never make it when the going gets tough.
You have to love what you do. Your heart has to be in the right place and most importantly you need this burning drive and passion to keep working even when you have majorly screwed up or simply feel like taking it easy.
2. If You Take It Easy, You'll Fail from Stagnation
“Good enough” should no longer exist in your vocabulary. You are not good enough. You can still work harder and improve. You can work on basic skills (like skating or learning a new coding language) or you can just push yourself further and become more dedicated. There is no way to take it easy in a sport without ultimately falling faster than you can regain ground. The same is true for a startup. If you start stagnating, then you are losing ground as your competitors grow stronger and learn the nuances of their industry better. You should be constantly amazed at how much you were able to accomplish. We will never reach 100%. We can never be truly perfect, so that leaves an infinite amount of ways that we can progress towards that. We may not be able to be perfect, but we can have our goals to be the best and feverishly work towards that.
3. Own Your Bruises
People are scared to fall. It is human nature. We don’t like to be uncomfortable or to be hurt. This, however, makes us too scared to take risks and to do what is needed to push ourselves further. I always tell the Freshies that make it past the first month that they need to earn their bruises, like entrepreneurs need to “earn their no’s”. For each time you fall, you know you tried to push harder than you were comfortable. You tried to up your game. Most importantly you know how to fix it the next time. There is this idea of calculating risk on the fly. You need to look at a situation and in a split second decide if it is a good risk or a bad one. Sometimes you are wrong. You will need to own up to that, and pick your ass up off the ground. Own your bruises because each one is a lesson learned and proof of your dedication to improving.
4. Fall Hard but Get Up Quick
In roller derby, if you are knocked over, it is your responsibility to get up off the ground as soon as possible and you are not allowed to try and take down a bunch of others like bowling pins as you tumble to the floor. Don’t sit around and mope that an investor turned you down. Get back up and keep moving forward. Also, don’t try to take others down with you just because you fell. If that happens on your own team, you all are hurt in the long run. If you do that to an opponent, you can get disqualified and you will get a bad rep for being that asshole. You will become toxic to your own team for your actions if you don't just own up to them, get back up, and keep going.
5. Wear All the Hats, Act Quick, and Communicate Quicker
Roller derby is a brainy sport. Our rule book is well over 100 pages now with this newest revision.
A basic overview of everything going on: you have an hour split in to two 30 min halves.
Every half is made up of 2 min or shorter jams.
You have your blockers and one jammer. The other team has the same.
You need to get your jammer to lap the opposing team while trying to predict and block their jammer’s and blockers’ moves to stop them from making points or stopping your jammer.
You are both an asset and a liability, as is everyone on your team. You have to predict the strengths and weaknesses of each team and if something goes south, like you jammer falls, then a split second decision needs to be made to call of the jam to prevent the other team from scoring.
Meanwhile, you have 4 other girls on your team that you have to communicate with to act as one cohesive unit. If one person falls too far behind, then they are out.
If the jammer is coming up the blockers need to make a wall to stop her or they need to break up the opposing team’s wall to let their own jammer through.
And all of this is happening in a loud venue with bright lights and you are so exhausted you are about to vomit.
In a startup, you need to be aware of what you are doing, what the competition is doing, and how to communicate effectively with the rest of your team to showcase each person’s strengths to get the company to the next level. You have to be a group of individuals moving in unison for a singular goal. It takes a lot of work, but once it is achieved it makes a team nearly unstoppable even in the event that the unexpected aspects of life are thrown at you.
6. The Obvious Advice: Perseverance
No heartfelt life lesson about startups would be complete without a nod to the virtue of perseverance. This is that nod. You will get your ass kicked six ways to next Tuesday in roller derby. That is just a statement of fact. You will be tried. Most likely, you will want to pack it up, go home, and binge watch Netflix and forget about trying to do something so crazy, difficult, and utterly consuming.
The trick is to remember exactly why you love it. Remember the sense of accomplishing the impossible. Talk to your teammates that are always pumped. They will help relight that fire under your ass and fan it enough until you feel the burn to push yourself further. This is identical to the feeling you get running a startup. You will be tried. There will be days you win some, and days you lose some. It is a marathon made up of short sprints, just like derby.
You have to learn how to handle this intensity and use that to work just a little harder. The crazy thing is that once this is in your blood, it is impossible to leave. You miss it when you are away. This is why there are serial entrepreneurs and lifelong derby girls. This roller coaster is loved. The experience and people that we get to meet stay with us for years. More often than not, you will always find yourself back in the rink wither with a new league or a new startup and yarning for that taste of adventure once again.
As always, keep on rollin’