Growth is a scary word especially when dealing with small, charming rural towns. But the reality is Cambridge is shrinking. And not at a sustainable rate. Andrew, founder of The Valley, had over 100 students in his graduating class at CCS. I had roughly 70. My brother (who is just 4 years younger) has only about 50 classmates. This is a problem. We need to get Cambridge back on its tracks.
I sent a message to my co-founder a while back about how we wanted to structure our company culture to build a winning team. A town is not much different than a company, or a sports team. So I want to repurpose my message into a blog post for The Valley because I think it is very applicable to building a stronger community and restoring Cambridge back to its previous economic state.
I was fortunate enough to train with some of America’s best athletes while living at the U.S. National Training Site for Greco Roman Wrestling. High performing athletes, championship teams, and successful towns (in our case) often embrace the three following things.
Confidence. Positivity. Support.
Confidence: Belief is a prerequisite to victory.
All the world team members at the NTS had one thing in common. Those guys were absolutely delusional. My roommate (Olympian Payton Jacobson) had something like “Olympic Champ” written on a whiteboard in our dorm. These guys believed in themselves first. Truly with all their heart. Cambridge is capable of greatness. Commerce can thrive here. It has in the past. And it can in the future.
Great towns, companies, and athletes are confident. Not arrogant. Arrogance is when you think lesser of other people. Confidence is the ability to drop ego entirely, and not care what other people think because you know you have what it takes to be great.
“You’re too smart for this sport”
Multiple time U.S. world team member Benji Peak told me this one day while we were wrestling. I had no clue what he meant at the time, but later it clicked. You genuinely have to be dumb enough to believe in yourself. No overcalculating. Focus on execution.
A good place to start: Next week actor and founder of The Bridge Mike Ford will be giving a talk at The Valley on creative confidence. He is going to drop the cheat codes we need as a community to be more confident and make things happen. Hope to see some of you there!
Positivity – Positive people (and towns) are invincible.
Positivity is the ability to fall hard, but get back up with the same swagger you had from the start. Truly positive people are impossible to knock down. As a town we can’t get discouraged when there is a failed venture, or a setback. The reality is, those are bound to happen. Having the belief that we can solve any problem that comes our way is key to success.
Out of all my years wrestling at NMU, I don’t think I heard a single negative comment from the best guys in the room. It was always positive. The focus was on improvement. Even after some of the most devastating losses.
Support – Winners move together.
Everyone at the NTS moved together and had each other’s back. That said, some guys on the team had beef. Disagreement is unavoidable. It’s a part of life and reality. Especially living in a town where hundreds of unique people live.
The difference with winning teams however, is even if they sometimes disagree internally, the second anyone challenges the team (or a member of the team) all of those disagreements were set aside, and it was a group effort to rally behind and support the person who was challenged. If someone called us out on social media before a match, you best believe we were all in the comments rallying behind our guy.
As a town, and at the county level, if we set aside our differences and work together, doing so will improve our effectiveness significantly.
If you have a venture (new or existing) let us know. We want to help connect you to the right people so we can collaborate stronger as a community. Our goal is to help lower friction, so we can move together.
Don’t hesitate to reach out. My email is charles@thevalleyhub.com.
I hope my repurposed message was useful. Until next time,
– Charles Dill