Missed the Mark, Found the Lesson: High School Memories and 2025 Motivation

They say history has a way of repeating itself, and funny enough, 14 years later, it feels just like that.

Throwback to 2010.

I was enrolled at a vocational technical high school. I was a senior with probably one of the worst cases of senioritis possible. You know the type, the one with the car, a part-time job thinking they knew it all, and was one of the top seniors in my vocational shop. AKA Billy Badass when it came to printing presses.?

In my senior year, I took part in what's called SkillsUSA. For those who don't know, it's a competition with various levels like regionals, states, nationals, and even international. It's a place where students who are learning different trades and fields can compete with their knowledge and expertise in those fields amongst their peers. I won a regional competition, which ended up being held at our high school and was mostly a written test. It wasn't until the state level that you had to perform the physical work along with the written work. It was huge to win regionals because it meant an overnight trip and competing against others who had won their regional sessions across the state in my trade, and they had various backgrounds and levels of training. I felt at the time I would truly be tested, as I didn’t know the capabilities of my competitors.

It was at states that I realized I didn't know everything. Most of the competition was going fine, including the design work in the computer lab and setting up my paper for industrial cutting and layout. But it was when I went to run the actual press, that Billy realized he wasn't such a badass after all. Our school had different presses than what was at the testing site, with a little bit of a different process for printing than what I had used and trained on for my four years at high school. I had the technical knowledge on how to run this press, but I couldn't get the machine to run right being that it was my first time trying it. This was the most frustrating day of my whole high school career. Yes, that includes things like MCAS, senior finals, and the other trials of high school. I ended up turning in my graded pieces which looks like a bad laser printer error. Honestly, if they had taken it over to the medical student testing area, they probably could have used it as a Rorschach test.?

After I had finished my turn on the press, I went up to one of the instructors and explained to them my frustration, explained how I knew about the process and that just never got hands-on one to train before and didn't think in lead up to the competition that that machine would be there for us to try working on. I'm not saying I would have sought out that machine to train on because knowing myself back then I probably still would have thought I had it in the bag. What a dummy I was back then.

Ended up taking home a silver medal which was amazing considering how much of A failure I felt like from the test. Keep in mind that the gold medal winners from each trade then got to go on a week’s paid trip to Kansas City to compete at the National level. At 18 for a kid who never really left his state other than a couple of trips when he was young, it would have been a huge opportunity. A few weeks after the competition I found out my scores and that I miss gold by HALF A POINT!?

Why is this relevant 14 years later?

This year, I was chasing a few goals, both personally and professionally. These goals were heavily reliant on me to put forth some of my best work, focus, and dedication. Professionally, I was chasing what is called an Achiever award. For those outside of the printed merch field, it's equivalent to a president's club, hitting a certain number in sales for a year, and it's a big deal in our community and is celebrated as such. So, this year, I chased this goal hard. I put in a ton of effort, eliminating some of my distractions and not taking on many additional tasks not related to achieving my goals. This week, as we tabulate here at the end of the year, I'm going to miss this goal. What's worse, it looks like I'm going to miss it by another HALF-FREAKING POINT! ?OK, technically, it's 5% of the sales number, but it feels just the same!

However, I would like to think that with 14 years of experience, books I've read, mentors who have guided me, and just life experience in general, I can handle this setback a little bit easier than back then ha-ha. So, how do we take ownership and examine the positives and the outcomes?

First is taking ownership.

No one did this to me, and I need to examine where I fell short and processes or procedures, where I put my focus and time, and how I can maximize effort to production. I try to do this every year around this time anyway, but this year puts a much bigger frame on it.

2nd what are the positives?

I grew my sales by over 30% and lost 60 lbs. this year!!! F*** yeah go Javi! Side note – maybe it’s the fact that I’m nearly the same weight I was in High school that is bringing these feelings up ha-ha.

Neither of those are small feats nor should they be looked at as small accomplishments. Just because we didn't hit the overall goal doesn't mean we didn't smash others as well. Take the victories, drink the wine rum, and move forward.

3rd What are the outcomes?

Graduating from high school I didn't get a chance to compete again in SkillsUSA. Just like an Olympian might not have another four years of training at peak performance to go for gold yet again if they fall short. And while there are plenty of Mikaela Shiffrin and Shaun White-level players in the merch sales world, I do get to have another shot at this. So, it's the time to commit to 2025. Get back to fundamentals. Clean up my runs, and lay it all out on the course, because while silver metal is great, I'm going for the Gold.