You may wonder, at times, if you know all there is to know about being successful. You begin to feel that you need to do research on what it takes to be successful, then do some thinking on it.
Alternatively, you may read “What Winners Won’t Tell You: Lessons from a Legendary Defender,” the memoir by former NFL defensive back Malcolm Jenkins, and try to follow the clues he presents.
Hard to believe, but when Jenkins was a boy, he tried to quit playing Pop Warner football twice. His father wasn’t hearing it, and told Jenkins, “You got to finish what you start” even when you hate it.
That lesson stuck. At 13 years old, Jenkins went out for track and excelled. He “wasn’t dreaming about being in the NFL” then, nor did he particularly want to play football in college. He “just loved to compete.” But after a week at football camp, he caught the attention of the right coach and everything changed. By time he got home from that camp, a letter with a full scholarship was waiting on his doorstep.
As a first-round draft pick, fourteenth overall, for the New Orleans Saints and later having played for the Philadelphia Eagles, Jenkins writes about being strategic throughout his 13 NFL seasons, being a good team-player, and about having the confidence to reach beyond and grab for success.
You can be accomplished, too, he says, if you remember, “for fear to win, you have to be afraid…” Don’t let other people’s opinions become “self-fulfilling.” Know who works for you, and be sure they have your back. Give back to your community. Learn where you came from. Be open to change in your organization and your outlook, and trust science. Finally, collaborate, cooperate, and “show up every day to get better.”
Is “What Winners Won’t Tell You” an odd choice for a business book? Yes…and no.
Deep within this memoir are many interesting and worthwhile nuggets of inspiration and advice. They’re buried in tales of football – so much so that if you don’t understand football even just a little bit, you’ll be too lost, too soon, and you’ll never find them.
Indeed, this book contains more football anecdotes, strategies, and swagger than there are the “lessons” promised. Still, the lessons are there, and the stories serve to illustrate the importance of them.
There’s a bigger issue in Jenkins’s memoir than hidden lessons, however.
Readers searching for inspiration may find a lot that rattles them. Not only does Jenkins use a great deal of profanity in the book, but there’s also an obscenity about women, as well as other casual but largely unnecessary insults flung here and there. Readers who can tolerate all of that may still find it disrespectful.
If you are obsessed with the game of football, or if you’re a fan of Jenkins and his incredible talent, you may find this book a must-read. If you’re neither, “What Winners Won’t Tell You” likely gets a thumbs-down.
Still, the book can be a worthwhile read if you view Jenkins as the investor he is in several businesses, including a venture capital fund with other NFL players; as an advocate for social justice and racial equality through his Malcolm Jenkins Foundation; or as a man who says he simply wants to “set up my community, my family, my friends,” “impact youth,” “be an example,” and “do business to have an impact.”
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