Usain Bolt — 8 Olympic gold medals, the fastest man in history — was interviewed recently about Gout Gout, an 18-year-old Australian sprinter who is already turning heads worldwide. The kid is running times that are making people uncomfortable: in the best way. Comparisons to Bolt himself are everywhere, and for once, they don’t feel like a stretch.
Someone asked Bolt what advice he’d give him.
He didn’t talk about training. He didn’t talk about technique or competition or managing expectations. He said he hoped the kid finds the right people around him. That was it. Not a training tip. Not a mental performance hack. Just — make sure the people in your circle are the right ones.
Here’s why that matters. Bolt knows exactly what happens when the attention starts coming fast. He lived it. You go from being a kid with a gift to a commodity almost overnight. Everyone wants access. Everyone has an angle. And most of them aren’t wrong because they’re bad people. They’re wrong because their interests and your long term success are not the same thing.
Then he said this:
“If you mess up at track and field, then it all goes away.”
The fame. The platform. The income. None of it exists without the performance. And the performance doesn’t survive without focus. And focus doesn’t survive without the right people protecting it.
I read that and immediately thought about this industry. Because I have watched that exact sequence play out more times than I can count. Agents come up fast, start making real money, and suddenly have more people around them than ever. New partners. New opportunities. New voices. And within eighteen months the production that created all of that attention has quietly fallen off a cliff. Not because the market changed. Not because they lost their skill. Because nobody in their circle was honest enough to say hey, you’re drifting. Get back to the work.
The ones who build something that lasts almost always have the same thing in common. Not the best brokerage. Not the best leads. A coach who told them the truth. A mentor who had been through it. A peer group that held a standard. Someone who cared more about where they were going than where they were right now.
Bolt wasn’t giving Gout Gout a motivational speech. He was giving him the most practical advice available to anyone at the beginning of something big: figure out who your people are before the noise tells you who they should be.
This one hit closer to home for me personally. I just started training for the Long Beach Marathon in October. And the first thing I did wasn’t download a training plan. It was figure out who was going to hold me accountable to actually getting to the starting line. Same principle. Different track.
So here’s what I’d actually do this week. Two things. That’s it.
Audit your circle. Not your contact list. The actual people you listen to. Write down the three to five people who influence your decisions most right now. Then ask one question about each of them — are they invested in where I’m going, or just where I am right now?
Find the voice that’s missing. Most people in this industry have plenty of cheerleaders. What they’re missing is someone who will tell them the truth when they’re drifting. A coach. A mentor. A peer who has already been where you’re trying to go. If you don’t have that person right now, finding them is the most important business decision you can make this quarter. Not the new CRM. Not the marketing plan. That person.
Bolt had decades of hindsight when he gave that advice. You don’t have to wait that long to act on it.
Win the Day.
