The marathon metaphor is lazy. Entrepreneurship isn’t about endurance alone—it’s about strategy, precision, and knowing when to be aggressive versus when to play it safe. It’s not a straight line where you just keep running. It’s a series of high-stakes decisions where one mistake can compound into disaster.
I recently spoke with Vents Magazine about why startup leadership is more like a golf tournament than a sprint—and why that distinction changes everything.
Here’s what stood out:
Every hole is a new game, and your last shot doesn’t matter. In golf, you can’t let a bad shot ruin your round. You reset, refocus, and execute the next play. I talked about how my Division 1 golf career trained me to compartmentalize setbacks instantly. Most founders carry their failures like baggage—dwelling on a lost client, a failed launch, a missed opportunity. The ones who scale? They move on in minutes. That mental reset is one of the most valuable skills I brought from the course to the boardroom.
You’re not competing against other players—you’re competing against the course. One of the biggest realizations I shared was this: in golf, the real competition is the course itself. Wind, terrain, pressure—those are your obstacles. Business is the same. Your competition isn’t other founders; it’s market conditions, execution gaps, and internal friction. At Pabs Marketing, we obsess over optimizing our game, not reacting to what competitors are doing. That’s how we’ve scaled multiple ventures to seven figures—by focusing on what we can control.
Strategic patience beats aggressive impatience every time. We dove into how golf teaches you to play the long game. Sometimes you lay up instead of going for the green. Sometimes you take the safe shot to set up the next one. I explained how that same strategic thinking drives our approach: we help founders build strong foundations before scaling, so when growth comes, it’s sustainable. Most startups burn out because they sprint before they’re ready.
If you’ve ever felt like your business is more chaos than strategy, this will reframe how you think about leadership under pressure.
Read the full article on Vents Magazine →
The best entrepreneurs don’t run the fastest—they make the smartest moves under pressure.