Goals, strategy mindset…
"You're just lucky."
"You know the right people who helped you out."
"You were just in the right place at the right time."
_____
These comments have been said to me over the years. As I have looked back at my journey and the pivotal moments and key lessons I've learned, I wanted to share some of them here.
A big part of reaching your goals is movement and learning - keep moving and keep learning. These are some of the main concepts I've learned about, followed up by my personal insight and reflection.
1. Building an organization, a reputation and a network takes work. It doesn't just happen, it wasn't just luck, I didn't know the right people.
2. Programs, partnerships and publicity didn't just happen out of nothing.
3. I had no roadmaps or guide on building Petrichor or my consulting business. I built a plan around what we wanted to achieve.
Key takeaways
I started Petrichor Football Association 7 years ago with a good friend and we have both learned a lot from the process. Many of the lessons from this have been essential to my consulting work helping clients around the world build strategy, development and professionlism into their federations and clubs. These are questions and topics I processed and built a plan around.
What are your goals? Where do you want to be in 5 years?
What does 'success' look like to you? Is it a destination, job, position?
My primary goal was to do my best to provide innovative and sustainable solutions for the reason we work in Cameroon in the first place, and to provide pathways, structure and framework for football development.
I wanted to design our work to stand out while providing a different and collaborative approach to the future of the game. Being known as a leader in a sector forces you to grow, experiment and be ok with failure (as long as you learn from it).
Embracing these mindsets and lessons have helped up become the largest girls football development initiative in Cameroon. We run a league with 550 girls under 17 yrs old while providing coaching education for women in the game!
It's important to pinpoint your goals and work backwards from there, building your strategy and roadmap to get there.
Goals + Action + Hard Work
GOALS:
With the long term goals clear, it's time to build the roadmap.
Work backward from your long term goals placing the benchmarks and micro wins that you want to see placed in between. Who do you need help from to get there? What tools do you need? What support system do you have?
Be in the right place. Let me explain.
You have to put yourself in places where you have a high chance of meeting the right people and learning the key lessons. That rarely happens if you never leave the house. It takes networking with the right people, providing value, asking for advice AND THEN IMPLEMENTING IT.
Research your industry: Where are the leaders meeting? What events sparks innovation and change?
If 1 in 10 meetings result in a partnership, a mentor or just a good connection, this proves that you need to be active in growing your network within your industry. Do it.
ACTION:
You can know all the right people, have millions of dollars and the right plan, but without action it's useless.
Get started. We didn't know where Petrichor would end up or how it would grow. We tried things, failed, changed, adapted and grew a lot over the years - but we kept moving. We're continuing to learn, fail and grow as we speak.
You can dream up an amazing plan and create a roadmap that would impress all the strategists but without action it's useless.
HARD WORK:
For me the concept of 'luck' is a blend of hard work, consistency and showing value. Call it what you want but the people I look up to work hard, are consistent and provide value.
I believe that our partners at LALIGA saw these values in us and this was a big reason to pursue partnership.
Learning mindset
After adopting these concepts over the years, I've realized how much there still is to learn. Incorporating a learning mentality into your journey will help you stand apart, be innovative and create impactful projects.
I help football organizations, clubs and companies build roadmaps and strategies for success around the world. I am in shock sometimes when I realize I'm in meetings with Real Madrid, or get to help industry leaders I admire build women's football strategy. I did not imagine I'd travel to 10 countries this year, work with some of the biggest clubs and speak at international events - but I'm not surprised. Hard work, high value, consistency and humility can take you a long way.
Maybe it's time I set some higher goals.