Tag: cost

The Cost of Success

On the morning of August 7, 2021, 88 female distance runners gathered at in Sapporo, Japan. They were set to embark on a 26.2-mile journey for Olympic gold.

The field was littered with accomplished athletes – record holders and outright marathon winners who hailed from all corners of the globe. Among them was a 27-year-old Wisconsin native named Molly Seidel.

Seidel hadn’t racked up any marathon wins or set any records at that distance before. In fact, she’d only raced in two marathons before jetting off to Japan.

She’d done well enough in one of those races – the United States Olympic Trials Marathon – to earn her spot at the starting line. But few were expecting much from her as she took on the world’s best.

The weather in Sapporo was brutal that morning. Bright sun baked the streets, and high humidity made the air feel heavy.

The conditions evened the playing field somewhat. So, as the race reached its final few miles, there was no breakaway leader. The alpha pack remained largely intact.

The expected contenders were in that pack – runners from Kenya and Ethiopia. But so was Molly Seidel.

The TV commentators looked on with astonishment. Would Seidel hold on? Or would any number of factors – the pressure, the conditions, the fatigue – cause her to fade?

Less than twenty minutes later, the answer emerged.

A Kenyan runner crossed the finish line first. Another Kenyan was the second across the line.

But the third runner? That was Molly Seidel.

Seidel had secured a Bronze medal – only the United States’ third ever medal in the women’s Olympic marathon. And she’d done it in style – finishing a mere 26 seconds behind the gold medalist.

With one incredible race, Seidel had become an American hero. Her post-race interview – where she told her family back home to Have a beer for me – went viral. Her face was on TV screens from coast to coast. Her following on social media and the workout app Strava grew exponentially.

It was an incredible story. But one that would carry a heavy price.

What do we do after an accomplishment?

It seems like a silly question to even ask. For in American society, there is but one answer: Accomplish more.

Successful entrepreneurs look to capitalize on the next big idea. Oscar winning actors yearn to tackle the next big role. Musicians seek to launch the next big album.

And athletes seek the next big competition.

I know this as much as anyone.

As regular readers know, I’ve taken up competitive distance running in recent years.

I’ve done this for many reasons, including fun and fitness. But I’ve also yearned to push my limits.

I had this objective in mind when I signed up for my first half marathon. I’d never raced anywhere close to that distance before, and I was more than a bit apprehensive. But I trained diligently and set what an aggressive goal for my finish time.

As I made my way into the starting corral, I was still unsure if I’d hit my goal time. But 13.1 miles later, I looked up at the clock and found I’d beaten it by 10 minutes.

I was elated, but I didn’t celebrate for long. By the end of the day, my focus had turned to my next half marathon, where I aimed to post an even better time.

I did just that, lowering my personal best by nearly three minutes. So, once again, I set my sights on an even better performance in my next race.

I attained that as well. And I was on my way to tackling even loftier goals when injuries got in the way.

That broke the spell. With my running future suddenly murky, I was left to ponder what was already behind me. What I’d attained before and might never accomplish again.

This swing from highs to lows was brutal. It nearly destroyed me.

But it wasn’t all that unique. Many distance runners must contend with it. Including Olympic bronze medalists.

Molly Seidel followed up her podium performance in Sapporo with a fourth-place finish in the 2021 New York City Marathon. She set a personal best in that race.

Seidel was on her way to a similar performance in the 2022 Boston Marathon when she injured her hip. She had to bow out of the race 16 miles in.

Suddenly, the next goal wasn’t right in front of Seidel. There were no personal bests to chase, no marathons to win in her immediate future.

Instead, an arduous rehab awaited Seidel. Along with the real possibility that her best races might be behind her.

But Seidel didn’t have the luxury of coming to terms with this in private, as I had. She was a professional runner at this point, with sponsors to please and a livelihood to maintain. Plus, she had millions of runners across America following her every move.

Each workout she posted on Strava would be scrutinized. Anything she said on Instagram would be commented on.

And if she didn’t post anything to those places, her followers would notice that too.

The expectations were sky-high. There was no room to be human.

This all took its toll on Seidel. So, she started speaking out about the mental challenges she was facing. And she eventually took some time away from the sport to reset.

It wasn’t a universally popular decision. But it was the right one.

Molly Seidel found herself in an impossible situation. And she did what she needed to make it manageable.

As I write this, another Olympic Games is in full swing.

There have been plenty of memorable performances. And a few surprises on the level of Seidel’s bronze medal run in Sapporo.

But behind all the glamour and athletic glory, there’s been a steady conversation going on. An open discussion about what these venerable athletes must contend with.

You see, most athletes at the Olympic games are not set up to capitalize on their success. The International Olympic Committee does not generally pay medal bonuses, and most national delegations only pay a modest reward to their decorated athletes.

These are the remnants of a system formed by elitist 19th-century aristocrats obsessed with the spirit of amateurism. It was an impractical system then, and it’s no less impractical today.

(The fact that the rapper Flava Flav is financially supporting the United States Women’s Water Polo Team is both noble and absurd.)

And yet, the system remains.

What Olympic athletes don’t get in money, they get in attention. Over the course of two weeks, they have the eyes of the world upon them. Literally.

It’s a spotlight many would crave, an opportunity wholly worth seizing. But it only comes around every four years.

Add it all up, and you have accomplished athletes gaining massive followings overnight, but without a corresponding gain in dollars. They’re stuck in the purgatory of notoriety – carrying all the pressures of fame without enjoying the spoils of it.

It’s no wonder that these athletes are forced to chase the next Olympic cycle and the next world record. Their relevance relies on it. Their followers demand it. Their finances might depend on it too – if they’re lucky enough to amass corporate sponsors.

And it’s no wonder that so many of these champion athletes – Caeleb Dressel, Allyson Felix, Simone Biles, and others – have nearly broken under these pressures. Much like Molly Seidel, they’ve found themselves saddled with the impossible.

We seem to have reached an inflection point. We can no longer hide behind the myths of athletic heroics carrying the day. There’s no denying the humanity of the athletes who captivate and inspire us. Not anymore.

But it’s what we do with this moment that matters.

Will we commit to giving talented athletes more than our attention? Will we provide support in all facets – from financial to medical to emotional? Will we offer up some grace if their journeys take a left turn, or if they feel compelled to step back?

Will we be better than we have been?

There’s only one real answer. Only one response that will stand the test of time. Only one path that will stay on the right side of the moral boundary.

Let’s make sure it’s the one we choose.

Success needn’t be cost-prohibitive – whether it’s found on the athletic field or beyond its boundaries.

It’s time we make it right.

The Cost of Free Choice

As we sat down at a table at a Mexican restaurant, my friends gave some advice.

Don’t worry. You won’t even have to look at the menu. They only serve nachos, enchiladas, and fajitas. Simple enough.

Simple enough. But also, kind of complicated.

The nachos, you see, were smothered with cheese – an ingredient I could not digest. The enchiladas were smothered in sauce, making a mess inevitable. (Oh, they also had cheese, for good measure.) And the fajitas required extra effort to assemble.

Where were the steak tacos I was craving? Or, to that end, the tamales or flautas?

Not at this restaurant. And so, my options were crude.

Order the fajita platter I didn’t want. Or go hungry – and explain to my friends why.

In essence, there was only one choice. So, when the waiter turned to me, I blurted out Beef fajitas, please, without a hint of hesitation.

My friends were right. I didn’t even have to look at the menu.

There are many reasons why this restaurant kept its menu so tidy.

Convenience. Simplicity. Tradition.

But also cost.

Mexican food, you see, often draws upon common ingredients. Corn tortillas. Flour tortillas. Salsa. Grilled steak. Grilled chicken. Peppers. Onions. Spiced rice. Refried beans. Cheese.

It’s the way that these items are assembled that comprises a menu. It’s what makes tacos different from enchiladas or burritos or chimichangas.

This interoperability makes ingredient costs a minor concern. Everything except the meat is generally affordable – no small detail in an industry with tight margins.

But preparation costs? That’s a different matter entirely.

It takes more work to, say, season grill a carne asada to perfection than it does to roll some shredded chicken in tortillas and smother the whole plate in sauce. It takes more work to assemble grilled skirt steak into tacos than it does to bring it to the table wholesale as fajitas.

This restaurant we were visiting was known for running a streamlined kitchen. Minimizing preparation costs were the ethos of its menu.

It’s a menu the restaurant has long mastered, to critical acclaim. But for someone like me, it took the words free choice off the table.

Literally.

Being saddled with one undesirable option at a restaurant might seem like a first world problem. And indeed, it is.

But this frustrating moment represents the tip of an iceberg. An iceberg sabotaging the fundamentals of our society.

We claim to live a land with liberty and justice for all. And for the most part, we do. We are free to vote, work, and entertain ourselves as we see fit.

But the options we have when exercising that free choice? Those have a cost.

Consider governance. As a representative democracy, we elect leaders to run our country’s affairs on our behalf. Those elections are open to nearly every American adult, free of charge. And myriad efforts to restrict these rights have been quashed over time.

But the choices on our ballots? Those are not nearly as open as our right to choose from them.

Not just anyone can make a serious run for office. To be viable, you need sterling credentials, a semblance of name recognition, and money. A lot of money.

You don’t rise from nothing to become President in America. You just don’t.

The earliest occupants of the office – our Founding Fathers – were wealthy plantation owners. Despite humble origins, Abraham Lincoln gained acclaim as a lawyer before pursuing the White House.

Even modern-day outsider candidates — Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan — had a leg up over everyday Americans. Obama earned a law degree from Harvard University, while Reagan earned acclaim as an actor. Each amassed a small fortune before even turning to politics, let alone pursuing the highest office in the land.

Make no mistake. Politics is awash in money. Money provided by special interest groups, by mega-donors, and by the politicians themselves. There’s a reason why the size of a candidate’s war chest matters as much as their poll numbers.

This creates a contradiction.

When we step into that voting booth, we exercise free choice. Free choice among options who paid to play.

The people whose names are on that ballot don’t seem much like us or relate to our lived experience. If we were to draft a list of who would best represent us, they likely wouldn’t make our Top 10.

And yet, here we are, left to choose between them. To decide whether Option 11 or Option 14 should be our Number 1.

We might want tacos, but we’re offered enchiladas or fajitas.

Free choice carries quite the cost. Make no mistake about that.

That’s just the way it is. Some things will never change. That’s just the way it is. Yeah, but don’t you believe them.

Bruce Hornsby and the Range rose to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart on the strength of those lyrics nearly four decades ago. Hornsby and his band found acclaim. And yes, they earned quite a bit of money in the process.

The central premise of those lyrics remains a work in progress. We are still working at breaking barriers, eliminating preconceptions, and defining what’s possible.

I believe in that work, and the mission underpinning it. But I also believe it’s critical for all of us to be clear-eyed about something fundamental.

We may have been bestowed the right of free choice. But the power contained within that right is minimal.

Sure, we can help determine who sits in the Oval Office. Sure, we can help determine which automaker sells the most vehicles.

But there are other forces — capitalist forces — that put those options on the table for us in the first place. And it’s within those forces where the true power lies.

It’s my sincere hope that someday, that process will be more accessible. That we’ll be able to determine what makes the menu, not just what we want to order from it.

But that’s a long way off.

In the meanwhile, maximizing the power of our free choice means getting comfortable with three words:

Follow the money.

I am. Are you?

Getting What You Pay For

The scene of the crime was a Motel 6 in El Paso.

The motel was a stone’s throw from the interstate. Across the highway lay rose a vast desert landscape and a mountain range.

This Motel 6 seemed straight out of central casting for a modern Western movie. Perhaps it would be a place where bandits rested their heads between small-town bank robberies. Or where hired guns staged an ambush to recover a stolen briefcase of drug money.

But the crime in question wasn’t anything that illicit. The crime was simply that I was staying there.

I had chosen this Motel 6 for two reasons. The brand name and the price.

I was heading to El Paso to see my alma mater play a football game. The team rarely played within driving distance of me, and I was excited to go to the game. But I was also making less than $20,000 a year in salary. So, I would need to budget for this trip.

Knowing I would be spending three nights in El Paso, I looked up hotel rates for several bargain chains. This Motel 6 was the cheapest by a good clip, at about $39 per night before taxes. I jumped at the opportunity and booked a room.

It wasn’t until I’d arrived — after a 5-hour drive across the West Texas desert — that I realized what I’d done.

For the bed was a rock, as firm as the carpeted floor in my apartment back home. I turned side to side, trying to find a comfortable sleeping position. But there was none to be found.

And the shower was a house of horrors. There were only two temperature options — ice cold and scalding. I was forced to alternate between them as I frantically tried to wash up each morning.

As the days went on, my frustration grew. There might not have been bed bugs or dirty sheets, but this was clearly the worst hotel I’d stayed in.

The lack of a good night’s sleep or a consistently hot shower left me exhausted. It helped doom my El Paso trip to infamy.

I was frustrated at Motel 6. But mostly, I was mad at myself.

Because I had neglected a cardinal rule: You get what you pay for.

Growing up, I didn’t have to think much about compromise.

My parents prioritized quality over everything else. When it came to the food we ate and the clothes we wore, price was not the first concern.

Don’t get me wrong. We had plenty of nights finishing off leftovers for dinner. And my mother took advantage of those seasonal clothing sales at The Gap. But these occurrences were more the results of our choices than the cause of them.

It was a different story whenever we visited my grandparents, though.

My mother’s parents had grown up in the Great Depression, and they still had emotional scars from those years. So, they had one condition for choosing the food to put in their pantry — rock bottom prices.

If my grandfather made pancakes, we’d top it with the cheapest syrup the grocery store had to offer. Oven-fried chicken would be coated with the lowest-cost bread crumbs. Burgers and meatballs were prepared with the most affordable meat.

I didn’t think much of these spartan food options at the time. I was just a boy, and I was excited to spend time with my grandparents. Plus, they spoiled me rotten everywhere else.

But by high school, I started to recognize the effects.

I was spending a lot of time away from my parents, and starting to make financial decisions on my own. And even though I was a novice, I often gravitated toward the bargain bin.

This seemed prudent at the time. Why would I spend extra on anything, when I could stretch my dollar? Especially at a time where I was relatively low on dollars.

I never gave much thought to what I was giving up in the exchange. At least until those sleepless nights in El Paso.

Our society is obsessed with a good deal.

Sure, we like to splurge every now and then, just to feel special. And some of us immerse ourselves in luxury as a marker of status.

But by and large, we’d prefer to buy something at less than its sticker price.

Bargain shopping makes us feel powerful. It makes us feel as if we’re in control of the buying process. And our attraction to it is profound.

Our love of the deal has helped make Black Friday and Cyber Monday into de-facto holidays. It’s coaxed grocery stores into displaying perennial markdowns. It’s led dozens of retailers to bombard our email inboxes, promising 20% off a purchase with a coupon code.

But beneath our obsession with bargains lies a fallacy. We are attracted to a good deal because we imagine that by paying less, we get more value.

This is simply not true.

For the world of business is built upon simple premises. Revenues must be greater than costs and supply chains must be resilient.

Restaurants can’t provide a steak entrée at the price of a McDonald’s happy meal. Absorbing that cost would run them out of business.

The same goes for just about any other type of company.

Less price means less value. All those sales and deals are simply window dressing.

That value loss might come in the form of cheaper material, a less wholesome cut of meat or an overly firm hotel mattress. Regardless, we can see the signs if we look close enough.

There is no value hidden in the couch cushions. You get what you pay for.

It took me years to recognize the value trap. But that miserable trip to El Paso shattered any illusions.

Now, I purchase with my eyes wide open. I look up the cost of what I want and think about what I can reasonably pay for it. If the two prices don’t line up, I consider what I’m giving up by paying less for a bargain-bin alternative.

Sometimes, I proceed anyway. Other times, I hold off until I can meet the asking price of the more quality item.

None of these tactics are earth-shattering. And yet, there are still many who fail to follow them.

These wayward souls perpetuate the value trap. They go through life blissfully unaware that we get what we pay for. And they open themselves up to the letdown of unrealized expectations.

It’s time for those masses to wake from their idyllic slumber. To see the world for how it really is. And to adjust their habits accordingly.

So, let my experience serve as a cautionary tale. And stop seeking more than you’re willing to give in return.

You get what you pay for. Ante up.

On Disruption

On a recent ride in a New York City taxi, I asked the driver how he was doing.

“Not great,” he admitted. “Business has been slow. Uber is killing us.”

He then detailed all the ways the rideshare giant has made his job more difficult, his taxi medallion less valuable.

The troubles stretch far beyond Uber’s cut-rate prices, he explained. The allure of easy fares has flooded the streets with competing drivers — many of whom have a poor grip on New York geography and get lost constantly as a result.

Some of these confused Uber drivers ferry people around as a side hustle; others drive after getting fired from their day jobs. Either way, the result is the same. More traffic congestion, more accidents and more headaches for those who have decades of experience driving the street in the familiar yellow sedans.

When I mentioned that city leaders could take action against this new wave of rideshare drivers, the cab driver told me they already tried to.

“Uber won the court case,” he said. “They’re here to stay.”

My mind took me back home to Dallas for a moment. I thought about the new logo I’ve seen plastered on the back of most taxis there recently.

The logo is for the Curb app, which allows customers to hail a cab from their smartphone. It’s a neat innovation, but in the Ridesharing Era, it’s a day late and a dollar short. A solution that doesn’t fully account for the problem.

You see, Uber didn’t take off by perfecting the taxi experience. By making it cheaper or more efficient.

No, it took off because it reinvented the entire way we approach travel. Just like Airbnb reinvented the entire way we approach hospitality, or Apple reinvented the way we use our mobile phones.

This is what disruption is all about. It’s why it works time and again.

The Curb app shows just how blind disrupted industries are to the siege outside their windows. It underscores why we actively seek out the next disruption. Why we antagonize The Way It Is in favor of The Way It Could Be.

Yet, we must be careful with this approach. Because much gets sacrificed in the crossfire.

No one is shedding a tear for the demise of payphones or CDs. These items were bulky and inconvenient. Using them required an annoying amount of planning and effort. Their disruptor — smartphones with streaming capabilities — proved to be far superior.

Yet, we should be more cautious when evaluating the impact of the Rideshare Era. Yes, catching an Uber can be more enjoyable or affordable than taking a cab. But by riding the wave of disruption, we leave many cab drivers in the dust.

These drivers have worked tirelessly to make a living for themselves, and made huge sacrifices just to get that opportunity. They’ve proven their worth — only to see the rug pulled out from under them by an upstart who will accept nearly anyone as a driver.

There are no fairy tale endings in this story. For as we rush to dismantle the structures of old, good people get sucked into the maelstrom. And there’s no life preserver to rescue them.

This is the cost of disruption. It’s real and it’s raw. And we are directly responsible for causing it, through complicity alone.

This is a discomforting reality to face. But face it, we must.

So, what can we do to fill this void? To reconcile our participation in the modern-day Torch and Pitchfork Mobs?

We can start by being more conscientious. By looking wholeheartedly at the toll our seemingly altruistic ambitions bring. And by doing what we can to ease the burden placed upon those we displace, such as venerable cab drivers.

This approach will get us out of our comfort zone. But it will also ensure that no one is left behind.

And that’s the type of disruption that can truly change the world for the better.