Building Resilience, One Lap at a Time

Before taking on leadership roles at Walmart.com, PepsiCo, and Blue Nile, Cast first chased excellence in a different lane: swimming. In his youth, the clinical professor of strategy at the Kellogg School was an extraordinarily talented swimmer.  

He held national age-group records in the 200- and 400-meter individual medley (IM) and competed in the 1980 Olympic Trials for the 400-meter IM and the 1984 Trials for 200-meter backstroke and 200- and 400-meter IM. But competing at such a high level—and getting so close to his goals—meant that the setbacks were even tougher to take. 
 
After Cast was disqualified at the 1980 Trials and fell short of making the Olympics in ’84 in part due to a debilitating knee injury, he hung up his goggles and left the pool, both literally and figuratively.   

“I locked up swimming, and I put the key in the back somewhere where I couldn’t find it,” Cast says.  

Cast was so attuned to success at such a highly competitive level that he categorized these experiences as failures. And as he established his business career, he made little effort to draw connections between his accomplishments in the pool and those in the boardroom—until thirty years later, when Cast returned to the pool ... for his son’s swim meet.  

When he stepped into the natatorium for the first time in decades, it all flooded back: the smell of chlorine, the whistles, the stomach-knotting feelings that come with racing.  

Cast’s visceral reaction offered him an opportunity to reflect at long last about the lessons he learned from his pursuit of excellence in the pool. 

“Swimming formed me,” he says. “It gave me discipline; it gave me resilience and introduced me to pressure and disappointment.”  

Cast draws connections between his years in the pool and the way they inform his career as a business leader. 

Build your endurance 

Talent requires time and commitment. Being a master painter or musician can be all-consuming.  

The 28-time Olympic medalist Michael Phelps would swim 25–30 hours a week, across 80,000 yards, plus make time to ingest 10,000 calories daily just to power up.  

Cast wasn’t far from that, starting at age six and swimming through his mid-twenties, under the tutelage of the International Swimming Hall of Famer Stefen Hunyadi. Hunyadi pushed Cast to record times and took his protege to Europe several times for international meets.  

“I was the fastest in the country at age eight, ten, twelve, and sixteen. It was this man, this towering figure in my life, who is largely responsible.”  

Time management, teamwork, and determination have been cited as sports-centric values that fit well in the workplace. Cast suggests swimming offers “the ultimate in endurance.” His desire to work hard and chase excellence carries over from his time in the pool. While Cast refers to swimming as “the grind,” its lessons still register in his approach to teaching and even in his advice for entrepreneurs pitching their startups. 

And studies affirm that excellence isn’t something that happens right off the block. Typically, our best efforts and ideas take time. Swimming by its very nature is repetitive (some might even say boring or frustrating), one lap after another. This training has helped Cast learn he can usually find a way to “put another hour in” to improve an idea or get past a stubborn issue.   

Prime yourself to perform 

Swimming also demands mental preparedness and the ability to access practiced skills at the sound of a start buzzer.  

“I think of it as turning on peak performance in a moment—at the moment it matters,” Cast says. “In a pressured situation, it’s about applying tremendous focus while trying to keep your adrenaline level where it needs to be.”  

Knowing that you will be rewarded for grinding out that presentation in front of the mirror time after time or for reviewing that budget one more time before the deadline allows you to channel your energy and deliver with excellence when the moment arrives. 

Not every lesson comes from lane four, either. Cast has also found inspiration from other arenas. Once, Cast came across Geoff Colvin’s Talent Is Overrated, which described how NFL wide receiver Jerry Rice learned his Hall of Fame skills. 

“Every single thing that he had to do to become an outstanding receiver he unpacked into a series of steps that he then worked on, time after time.”   

Swimming is no different. The individual medley event in which Cast specialized combines four unique strokes—butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle—in each of which he had to develop competence separately: from pulls and rotations to kicks and flexibility.   

“There’s probably a list of 50 things you have to practice and master to be an excellent 400 IM swimmer,” he says.  

And it goes beyond sports. “Whether you’re a professor, a cellist, or a 400 IMer, you need that orientation around breaking your craft apart and honing each element. That’s what builds excellence.”  

Be gracious in defeat 

Someone else won the bid. My colleague got promoted before me. That other pianist played “Clair de Lune” better. Cast knows that every race, every project, every sales pitch can’t be a win. And that’s okay.  

“Learning how to lose is important, too” he says. “It’s part of putting yourself out in the arena.”  

When Cast lost to world-record holder Alex Bauman in a race, he was miffed in the moment. “I mean, I got beat,” Cast says. When Cast approached Bauman, the Canadian competitor said, “oh, I’ve been tested, and my VO2 max is insane,” according to Cast. Simply put, Bauman was built for that race better than Cast.  

It was a good dose of humility, and Cast was able to concede that Bauman was, in effect, driving a faster car. So have dignity in defeat.  

And look at Cast’s outlook now. On a recent mile-and-a-half lake swim with his fourteen-year-old son, he suggested, “all right, let’s warm up for maybe three, four hundred yards,” or a quarter of the distance. “Then we’ll get cookin’.”  

 “A bit later he tapped me and asked, ‘are you ready to start now?’ And I was already full on going,” Cast shared with a laugh. Truly, it’s okay to admit you’re beaten ... or that you won’t always be the top competitor—even in your own family. 

Keep the pool in perspective 

But when Cast didn’t make the Olympics in 1984, he retired on the spot. His last race ended, and still wet, he announced it to his Stanford coach. When he did so, he packed up his whole career and moved on.  

“I just put swimming in a little box,” Cast said. “I never cut myself any slack; I never saw my career as a success. I only saw that final failure at Olympic trials. I see now that it was a burden I carried.” 

Cast envied his friends and colleagues who went on to earn gold. At the time, he vowed not to fail again, in any endeavor. 

But as his son followed in his wake with a youth swimming career of his own, Cast, spending hour after hour in the stands of swimming pools across the Midwest, thought better of his experiences. He began to scribble lessons to himself and eventually reframed his swimming career.  

“It shaped how I work, how well I prepare for things, and even how I teach. The outcome wasn’t what I wanted, but the person it helped shape is here,” Cast says.  

While denial is a strong form of self-preservation, it can stall you from reaching greater truths and increasing self-awareness. Everyone gets disqualified sooner or later. Learn why, then get on the blocks and race again. Enjoy the process, not just the outcome. 

This is why Cast warns, “don’t make your identity completely wrapped around your sport.” In his younger days, Cast was fixated on results; he now suggests treating sports as a catalyst for growth. 

“ My sport is one input into who I am,” Cast says, “not the whole picture.”  

That’s why he encourages people to diversify. Because anything pursued with a high level of dedication and focus can become a powerful developmental tool that carries over into the rest of life. Even his intense, demanding age-group coach, Hunyadfi, took the time to expose Cast to Italian opera as they traveled the world.  

“All those things are wonderful preparations for life,” Cast says. “You just may not realize it at the time.”