In the 1994-95 season I was a sophomore forward at Ohio State. We finished 6-22 and 2-16 in the Big Ten. Three years earlier the program had been in the Elite Eight. People who follow Buckeye basketball remember that season as one of the hardest the program has had.
I played in eleven games. Most of my work happened in practice. I did not understand it at the time, but that year was an education in the part of building anything that nobody puts on a highlight reel.
The next practice still happens
A losing season does not cancel the schedule. After a bad loss there is film, then practice, then travel, then another game. Nobody gets to skip the work because the last result was bad.
Running a company through a hard year is the same. The payroll still runs, the customers still call, and the plan still has to be followed. The owners I trust most are the ones who show up the morning after bad news and do the ordinary work well.
The scoreboard is information
Losing teaches you to separate the result from the reasons. Some losses come from things you can fix: turnovers, missed assignments, poor conditioning. Others come from the other team simply being better that night. You have to know which is which, or you spend your energy on the wrong problems.
In business, the monthly numbers play the same role. A bad month is information. The job is to find out what it is telling you, fix what can be fixed, and not overreact to what cannot.
Hard seasons show you who people are
When a team is winning, almost everyone looks committed. When it is losing, you find out who keeps working, who keeps encouraging the guy next to him, and who starts looking for someone to blame.
I think about that when Creek Equity looks at a management team. I want to know how they behaved in their worst year, not only their best one. A team that held together through a bad stretch is usually a team that can be trusted with a good one.
Your role matters even when you are not starting
A reserve forward on a Big Ten team spends most of his time making the starters better: guarding them in practice, running the other team's plays on the scout team, being ready when called. It is not glamorous, and it matters.
Every company has people in roles like that. They schedule the trucks, close the books, and answer the phone. They rarely get credit, and the business does not work without them. I try never to forget it.
Rebuilding takes longer than anyone wants
Programs do not turn around in a season. They turn around through recruiting, development, and patience, usually over several years.
That is a large part of why Creek Equity invests its own capital and holds companies for the long term. Some of the best businesses we look at are coming off a hard year. With patience and the right support, a hard year can be the start of something better.
Scott Zack played forward for Ohio State in 1994-95. He is an investor and entrepreneur in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and the owner of Creek Equity. More of his writing is at scottzack.net.