Over the past two weeks we've walked through Unimpeachable Character and Sincere Candor.

Today we're closing the series with the third and final core value: Competitive Greatness.

Be at your best when your best is needed. The enjoyment of a hard challenge.

Why this one, last: I saved this one for last on purpose. Unimpeachable Character is WHO you are. Sincere Candor is HOW you communicate. Competitive Greatness is HOW you perform. You can't get to the third one without the first two. A competitive person without character is dangerous. A competitive person without candor is delusional. But when you stack all three…. that's when you get someone who is genuinely elite.

Or as I like to say - a fucking weapon.

I also want to be SUPER clear about what makes this value easy to fake from the surface.

Most people think they have it. And honestly when things are going well, they probably do. But "competitive greatness" that only shows up on good days is absolutely not true competitive greatness. The real test is what happens when the conditions aren't ideal, when things are messy, confusing, unclear and ambiguous - when you're tired and under-resourced and your teammates, clients, and goals don’t care.

I watched this play out firsthand at Gym Launch. We had a sales team back in 2016 that was incredibly results-driven, when numbers were up, everyone was "competitive." When numbers were down it was like the air got sucked out of the room and everyone acted pissy. First they would blame marketing, then they would blame leadership, then they would threaten to quit, all from a bad week or two. And what I realized was: their competitive drive was wired to the scoreboard, not to an intrinsic standard of excellence inside of them.

It was not Competitive Greatness. That's CONDITIONAL greatness :)

As the company grew, that was one team that I focused on turning around the fastest, I put in a leader who LIKED the challenge of the ups and downs, who enjoyed exposing his team to ambiguity, and reinforced with the team that we were not a ‘soft’ team who needed an abundance of leads to feel good, we were a team that CREATED opportunity when things didn’t look as such.

The people I've seen embody this value for real are the ones who get MORE locked in when things get hard, not because they're immune to pressure, but because they've decided the standard isn't negotiable regardless of circumstances and they enjoy the hard challenge of PROVING THAT TO THEMSELVES. That is where self confidence, trust and resilience is built.

What it actually means: Being at your best when it's hardest to be. Holding your standard when it would be easy and acceptable to lower it. Caring about the quality of your work not because someone's watching, but because you find it unacceptable to deliver anything less. And genuinely finding energy, not dread, in the moments that most people want to avoid.

What it looks like day-to-day:

What it doesn't look like: Performing only when it's easy. Caring about output when people are watching and letting it slide when they're not. Competing with the person next to you instead of competing with the best version of YOURSELF.

Worth highlighting - competitive Greatness here is not about beating your teammate, this isn't a zero-sum game internally. What we're competing against is the standard: ours, the industry's, and what our customers and partners deserve from us every single day. When you make it about another person, you'll always find a way to stop once you're "ahead."

When you make it about the standard, there's no finish line that lets you off the hook. Love you guys 🚀

– Leila

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