Where Did That Come From?

As a young girl, I was not competitive. I loved gymnastics, but did not choose to compete on a team. Same with swimming. I just liked the sports for fun and self-improvement.

In school, I earned good grades, and enjoyed the access those grades gave me to accelerated and AP courses, but I didn't feel compelled to compete for elite status. I just liked learning.

My measure of success has always come from doing more and learning more than before, and enjoying the process of growth. I compete against myself, not against others.

So it feels strange to me, now that I'm in my forties, to feel competitive. And I like this competitive drive! Except when I lose. Because then it really ticks me off. That's new, too.

Take tennis, for example. Having picked up the sport later in life, I'm not exactly great at it. But I'm addicted to it. I love it. I could play it every day and still want more. Last year, my first year on a team, I had a dismal record. Oh, it felt awful. This year, my record is considerably better. And the two matches I've lost so far were quite close. (Yeah, they still have to go in the "L" column, but it makes me feel better to tell you we weren't just clobbered.) I found that losing those matches got to me in a way that losing has never gotten to me before. I mean, I was really in a funk the rest of the day. Not an attractive trait at all. But caring so much about the losses caused me to think through how I play and make adjustments for the next match. So the passion - though negative - serves a useful purpose.

Now I'm preparing to open my business. True, I'm opening later than anticipated. (I'd initially planned to open now - in October 2010. But I couldn't find the right location in time, and I realized I could use some mentoring, so I postponed the opening until March 2011. It's better to start right than to start early.) But I don't consider the postponement to be a failure - just a change of plans. With any business, an owner needs to be able to adjust to present circumstances, so I consider this early decision as part of my training.

Already, I'm finding that competitive drive is very real with this business. In doing my research, I've talked with several business owners with shops of similar size and target market to my own, though with a different product mix. I have been surprised to find that some of them don't care if they make money. One told me it was her "hobby." Well, I like hobbies too (tennis, anyone?), and she's certainly entitled to run her business as a hobby. But I won't! No - I plan to make money. To pull customers away from the existing Cincinnati-area businesses in my market, toward my own. I don't just want success. I expect it. Yes - I expect to enjoy myself, too. For sure. But let's face it, business ownership is really hard work. I want to see a nice payday as a reward for all those long hours.

So I don't know where this latent competitiveness came from. But I hope it's here to stay.