Six years after representing the United States during the 1984 Summer Olympics, Kavanaugh traded the soccer pitch for the boardroom and co-founded World Wide Technology, a Missouri-based technology giant that generates $20 billion in annual revenue as of 2025. Like the two soccer players, the 63-year-old said he like many other entrepreneurs are able to build a successful business because they share the same qualities that separate elite athletes from the rest: a willingness to outwork the competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want to be great\u2014you can\u2019t put in an average or sub-average level of input and work ethic,\u201d Kavanaugh told Fortune<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re willing to put the time and the effort in and you have the desire to continue to learn, and you apply that in areas that you actually enjoy doing\u2014 the odds and the probability of you being successful is very good,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n For Kavanaugh, though, talent alone has never been enough. The people who ultimately succeed are the ones who continue pushing through setbacks while making everyone around them better. That, he argued, is where leadership comes in\u2014and why he sees two different approaches between Messi\u2019s and Ronaldo\u2019s success.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom a values perspective and a team orientation, I feel like Messi brings the best out of Argentina,\u201d Kavanaugh said. \u201cI\u2019m not sure that Ronaldo does the same for his team and country, but that actually takes it to the importance of leadership: there\u2019s all different ways\u2014some leaders are very vocal, some lead by example.\u201d<\/p>\n Kavanaugh believes Messi embodies the latter: someone who inspires rather than commands. He believes the Argentine captain motivates teammates through his actions\u2014a leadership style that helped Argentina win the 2022 World Cup and make another deep run at this year\u2019s tournament. Basically, talk is cheap.<\/p>\n \u201cI think leadership is, especially in business and in sport, it is something that is very powerful when it\u2019s done the right way,\u201d Kavanaugh said. \u201cIt can really move people and organizations and companies in a very, very positive way.\u201d<\/p>\n Though\u00a0 Kavanaugh today\u00a0boasts a net worth of $7.7 billion and is part owner of St. Louis\u2019s Major League Soccer Club, his success was far from guaranteed.\u00a0<\/p>\n The son of a Missouri bricklayer, Kavanaugh grew up learning the value of hard work and responsibility long before he stepped onto a professional soccer field\u2014or the corner office.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere are athletes that are born with all these natural athletic capabilities,\u201d he said, adding that he was \u201cnot one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, Kavanaugh knew that he could train himself to compete with those who were naturally talented. As a kid, he looked forward to practice and hated when bad weather forced sessions to be canceled. Because his family couldn\u2019t afford college, earning an athletic scholarship wasn\u2019t just an opportunity\u2014it was his path to higher education.<\/p>\n In the early 1980s, he landed a spot at Saint Louis University, where he caught the eye of U.S. national team scouts. Kavanaugh went on to represent the United States at the 1983 Pan American Games and the 1984 Summer Olympics. But reaching the sport\u2019s highest levels didn\u2019t spare him from failure.<\/p>\n Courtesy of World Wide Technology.<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cI got cut numerous times throughout my younger career,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I continued to grind through it, get better.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe higher you play, the more you\u2019re going to get critiqued by coaches, and the more direct and challenging it can be,\u201d he added. \u201cYou either perform\u2014or there are consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n Those experiences, Kavanaugh said, taught him that resilience\u2014not raw talent\u2014is often what separates people who keep advancing from those who plateau. Learning to respond to failure, he added, ultimately proved more valuable than avoiding it.\u00a0<\/p>\n He takes this lesson into the boardroom and with everyone he works with.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI look at young kids coming up today [and ask], \u2018Are you running towards work, or are you running away from it, and are you trying to avoid it?\u2019\u201d The latter, he said, is a \u201cproblem.\u201d<\/p>\n In an era of rapid AI-driven change, Kavanaugh said having effective leadership\u2014including a team-based culture\u2014is \u201cmore important than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n When push comes to shove, resilience may mean that work-life balance won\u2019t always resemble a perfect 9-to-5 schedule. Kavanaugh said while he believes work-life balance is important to strive for, there are seasons when work inevitably takes priority.\u00a0<\/p>\n Building World Wide Technology, which has repeatedly appeared on Fortune<\/em>\u2019s list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For, often meant working 12- to 18-hour days for extended stretches. Those long hours and hard work were necessary when there was just one last shot at the goal.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou need to strike when the opportunity is there,\u201d he said. \u201cAt times they will go away and not come back.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #U.S #soccer #player #built #billionayear #company #resilience #matters #talent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jim Kavanaugh never became a global soccer icon like Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo. Unlike Messi and Ronaldo, one of whom still graces our screens on the World Cup stage,… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13225,2412,1039,2413,424,913,426,1285,630,2379,199,9452,7660,1146,4769,2100,470,2025,599,4978,5746,3042],"class_list":["post-11804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-billionayear","tag-building-your-career","tag-built","tag-career-advancement","tag-career-advice","tag-career-success","tag-careers","tag-chief-executive-officer-ceo","tag-company","tag-founders","tag-matters","tag-player","tag-professional-soccer","tag-resilience","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-talent","tag-tech-industry","tag-u-s","tag-view-from-the-c-suite","tag-work-life","tag-work-life-balance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Rejection helped turn Kavanaugh into a soccer Olympian\u2014and a billionaire businessman<\/h2>\n
![\"Team](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image.jpeg?format=webp&w=1440&q=100\"\/)
<\/div>Great opportunities rarely arrive at convenient times<\/h2>\n