Pat Williams - Your Formula for Success: Finding the Place Where Your Talent and Passion Meet

Telling My Secret

We all have a unique gift or ability, like our very own superpower, which lives at the intersection of our talents and passions.

David Hassell, entrepreneur and adventurer

O nce, over dinner with legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, I said, Coach, if you could pinpoint just one secret of success in life, what would it be?

He thought for a moment, and then he said, The closest I can come to one secret of success is this: A lot of little things done well.

In the spring of 2014, during a chat with my editor, she said, So you asked Coach Wooden that question about one secret of success, and he said, A lot of little things done well. Pat, what if someone asked you that question? Could you pinpoint one secret of success?

I didnt even have to think about it. Theres a simple formula for success that I have followed throughout my career. I said, When your greatest talent intersects with your strongest passion, youve discovered your sweet spot in life.

My great consuming passion has always been sports, especially baseball. I was not merely a baseball fan, I was a baseball megalomaniac . I played baseball whenever I had the chance, from the time I was seven years old all the way through college at Wake Forest University, and finally in the minor leagues in Miami, Florida.

But while baseball was my greatest passion, it was not my greatest talent. I was good, but not great. After two years in the minor leagues, it was clear that my career as a professional baseball player had reached a dead endbut my career in professional sports was just beginning.

I found that my greatest talent lies in the realm of leadership, salesmanship, and promotion. In other words, I had great front office talent to match my passion for professional sports.

As a result, Ive had an exciting career in sportsnot as a player, as I had envisioned myself in my boyhood dreams, but as a sports executive, first in minor league baseball and later in the NBA. Ive had the privilege of helping to assemble an NBA championship team (the 198283 Philadelphia 76ers) and helping to found an NBA expansion franchise (the Orlando Magic). Ive spent more than fifty years applying my greatest talent to my greatest passion in lifeand my life has been more fun than a theme park thrill ride.

Over the years, Ive met successful people in every walk of life. In almost every highly successful man or woman Ive met, Ive recognized a quality Ive found in myself: these highly successful individuals have learned to apply their greatest talent to the pursuit of their strongest passion in life. They are doing not only what they do well, but what they love most. That is why they are successful.