In an interview on The Deal with Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly, Jerry Jones – owner, President and General Manager of the Dallas Cowboys, was asked how he built the most valuable sports franchise in the world. Here…a man who had lived several lives settled into his chair and told the truth without announcing that he was telling the truth.

Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly kept trying to steer him toward the mythology — the $140 million acquisition in 1989, the lawsuits with the NFL, the Cowboys becoming a billion-dollar creature that prints attention for sport. And he while he answered those questions what I was drawn to was how much more there was to the story, beyond the part that most is attractive to us as readers and listeners.

He said the Cowboys were losing a million dollars a month in those early years. That in those days, he couldn’t rent a car because his credit was shot. He shared that he often borrowed money he had no business touching because he trusted himself to sort it out later. He didn’t romanticize it.

I’ve lived long enough to know that that part of the story always gets edited out when people are tracing the line from ‘Point A to Point Glory’

We love formulas. I’ve fallen for them too

The idea that if you line things up neatly enough, follow the sequence, stay disciplined, stay aligned, stay whatever… you will eventually slide into the win. Except life has a sense of humour, and business has an even sharper one.

Growing a Business is like Playing a Game of Cricket

There are days you swing for six and connect with nothing but air. Other days you tap the ball almost accidentally and it rolls just far enough for one clean run. And occasionally the thing you’ve been building quietly in the shadows surprises you with a boundary you didn’t see coming. But none of it follows the pretty diagrams. None of it cares for the narrative arc we try to impose after the fact.

What struck me in Jerry’s story wasn’t the bravado. It was the ordinariness of the struggle. The repetition. The debt — literal and otherwise. The way you wake up the next week after a decision and there’s no music swelling in the background, just the consequences sitting at the foot of the bed like a silent roommate. And you get dressed anyway. You take the meeting anyway. You try again anyway. Not because you’re certain but because you’re committed. And sometimes commitment is the only thing holding the entire enterprise together.

We forget, watching these big franchises and polished leaders, that they, too, have lived whole chapters underwater.

They’ve smiled through months where the numbers told a grim story. They’ve stood in boardrooms pretending to feel confident while carrying private calculations they hope nobody asks about. It’s comforting in a way — not because misery loves company — but because it restores a little honesty to the room. It reminds you that the curve, not the line, is where the real growth happens.

There’s something steadying about hearing a man worth billions admit he spent years improvising his way through loss after loss, trusting the long arc even while the short arc made him look foolish.

It makes you reconsider your own impatience. Your own internal deadlines. The places where you quietly expect yourself to have already figured it out. And the strange relief that arrives when you allow the journey to be jagged, which is the only way journeys come.

Risk isn’t a heroic leap.

It’s the slow, sometimes humiliating, often uncertain practice of living with your decisions before they’ve proven themselves. The willingness to hold the line even when the scoreboard makes you look unwise. And the quiet understanding that success is usually a latecomer, not a companion.

Strategic Reflection Prompt

1. Where are you judging yourself for not being “further along,” when the truth is that you’re in the very season every real builder passes through — the season of uneven innings, unglamorous decisions, and slow accumulation?
2. What shifts when you stop demanding a straight line and allow the truth of your own arc to be enough for now?

About Giselle

I’m Giselle Hudson — Organization & People Development Sensemaker™, MCODE® Legacy Coach, writer and musician. I help leaders and independent professionals close the gap between strategy and execution by making invisible friction visible, so direction can finally translate into results.

If execution isn’t matching intent and you can’t quite see why, message me on WhatsApp. We’ll start with a brief Clarity Conversation to understand what you’re facing and decide together whether a focused Sensemaking Session is the right next step.