When basketball stars like Sue Fowl retire, they might not use their killer crossover or deadly jumpshot within the “real world,” however one talent that can proceed to serve them effectively (and which many civilians lack) is teamwork.
“Every athlete has that in them,” Fowl mentioned throughout a mainstage interview at Fortune’s Most Highly effective Ladies Summit in Laguna Niguel, Calif., on Tuesday.
Throughout an viewers Q&A, an attendee requested the WNBA legend what abilities from her taking part in days she’d discovered most helpful now that they have been over. Fowl pointed to a litany of abilities that she had developed over a lifetime taking part in basketball. That mentioned, one talent—teamwork—stood out greater than some other for its means to assist individuals discover widespread floor.
“Sometimes I joke, if the country was run the way sports teams are, we’d be in a better place,” Fowl mentioned. Athletes “just have an understanding of what it is to interact with each other. Every athlete has this skill set without a doubt.”
Fowl, who retired from the WNBA in 2022, was the consummate workforce participant throughout her stand-out profession. She is the league’s all-time assists chief, with 3,234 over the course of her profession.
The overlap of enterprise and sports activities
Enterprise leaders and elite athletes have all the time thought-about themselves minimize from the identical fabric. Each are high-achievers, carry out in high-stakes conditions within the public eye, and are terribly—even unnervingly—aggressive.
For male athletes, changing into businesspeople when their careers finish is changing into more and more widespread, even anticipated for some gamers. Michael Jordan earned a signature model at Nike, that’s now a popular culture and trend icon. Jordan additionally purchased his hometown NBA workforce in Charlotte, the Hornets, which he just lately bought for $3 billion after shopping for it for $275 million.
Upon retirement, Fowl, too, had her eye on an analogous profession path. After feeling somewhat uncertain about her {qualifications} for all times off the courtroom, Fowl realized the life abilities she developed as an athlete would translate to the enterprise world.
“I feel like I woke up when I retired,” Fowl mentioned. “I was like ‘oh, I can walk into these different rooms and I can actually have a voice, because what I’m bringing to the table is a little bit different because of my sports background.”
Along with teamwork, Fowl added that objective setting and self-discipline had additionally served her effectively in her post-playing days. Fowl identified that that having began taking part in sports activities within the first grade—she is now 43—these have been amongst abilities she’d honed over a lifetime.
Fowl now has a number of enterprise ventures. She has an aptly-named media firm Togethxr, which she began alongside soccer legend Alex Morgan, Olympic gold medalist snowboarder Chloe Kim, and Olympic gold medalist swimmer Simone Manuel. Earlier this 12 months, Fowl’s different media firm A Contact Extra, began alongside her fiancee the U.S. Ladies’s Nationwide Staff star Megan Rapinoe, signed a podcasting cope with Vox Media.
Nevertheless, maybe her most important transfer in enterprise got here this spring, when she formally entered the possession group of the WNBA’s Seattle Storm, the workforce at which she spent her whole 20-year profession.
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