CELEBRITY
In 6 Words, Kansas City Chiefs Tight End–and Taylor Swift Boyfriend–Travis Kelce Explained How to Reach a Big Goal: It worked for winning the Super Bowl, and it will work for you too.
Do you want to reach an ambitious goal, one that seems impossibly out of reach? Take some wise advice from Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. Forget that great big audacious goal, at least temporarily. Instead, focus your full attention on the task immediately in front of you, the first step toward getting there. “You can’t get too far down the road,” he said.
Kelce has been traveling the world this off-season, sometimes with his significant other, Taylor Swift. This week, he was back in Kansas City for some workouts and a press conference. At 34, he was asked about his retirement plans (none for now) and what he and Swift like to cook. (“Taylor makes a great Pop Tart and cinammon roll,” he said.)
He was also asked about the biggest question facing the Chiefs right now–whether, having won the Super Bowl in 2023 and 2024, the team can be the first in NFL history to “three-peat.” “The NFL Network had a bunch of experts on and they all agreed it’s almost impossible to win three in a row,” one reporter told Kelce. “What do you say to that?” Another asked about the team’s internal conversations. “Have you guys verbalized three-peat amongst yourselves?”
“No, it’s really only come up when I’ve got cameras in front of me,” Kelce responded. And, he said, thinking ahead to a bigger goal would not have helped the Chiefs win the last Super Bowl. “You know, we didn’t get to back-to-back by always talking back-to-back,” he said. “We got there by trying to figure out what’s the best way to get better from last week and yesterday. And I think that mentality is key in something like this. You can’t get too far down the road.”
Whether he knew it or not, Kelce was echoing advice that productivity experts and executive coaches all agree on. The best way to reach a big ambitious goal is to break it down into baby steps, figure out what the next step is, and then focus on doing that one thing. It doesn’t necessarily mean you forget the big goal completely, but you don’t focus on it. “Obviously, there’s a goal set, but there’s a bunch of them that are set before that,” Kelce explained. “Like trying to win the division, trying to get to first place in the AFC. Those kinds of things are more obtainable right now than thinking about the three-peat at the end of the year.”
Kelce’s insight is even more valuable for entrepreneurs and business leaders than for a football team. Why? Because the NFL season is extremely short, compared to almost everything in the business world. Five months from now, we’ll all know whether the Chiefs succeeded or not in their quest to three-peat. Building a successful business can take decades. And while the Super Bowl is a single, winner-take-all event, for most businesses, and most business founders, there are many different ways of achieving success, and your definition of success will likely change along the way. Staying fixated on a single long-term goal could blind you to other goals and opportunities that may come up along the way.
There’s a growing audience of Inc.com readers who receive a daily text from me with a self-care or motivational micro-challenge or tip. Often, they text me back and we wind up in a conversation. (Want to learn more? Here’s some information about the texts and a special invitation to a two-month free trial.) Many are entrepreneurs or business leaders who know the importance of taking on big goals one small step at a time. What’s the next step toward yours?