Built 4 The Moment: Your Next Pro Move

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You can be good at what you do and still hesitate when it is time to do something new.

You do not have to solve your whole life today.

Start with the move in front of you.

What Built 4 The Moment means to me

Built 4 The Moment means moving through the hard parts and bringing the lessons with you.

The obstacles. The trials. The moments that make you question what you are capable of.

For me, it means learning to fail forward faster. Not rushing past what happened, but learning from it and adjusting. My goal is to carry the lessons forward without letting bitterness or anger decide what I do next.

That does not mean nothing hurts. It does not mean doing everything alone. I have needed support, and I have had people willing to give it.

There are athletes who have accomplished more than I have. There are people who know more about business than I do. That does not erase what I have to offer.

I have my experiences. My perspective. My way of explaining what I learned. And there are people I can help with that.

There are also people whose gifts I can make room for. I do not always need to be the person standing on the stage. Sometimes my contribution is being the stage that allows someone else to be seen and heard.

People may look at what I am doing now and think I came out of nowhere. This has been a twenty-plus-year journey.

I have been recording, writing, journaling, learning, and building throughout it. Much of that started as a way to work through my own life. I thought I was on a healing journey. Along the way, I was also discovering my gifts and building a toolbox I could eventually share.

My mother was ill when I was growing up. I was the oldest, and responsibility was part of my life early. I did not have many of the ordinary teenage experiences other people had. I was learning to be resourceful and find a way to help my family.

Later, I needed help developing other skills: how to speak, how to interact in unfamiliar settings, how to carry myself in rooms I had not grown up in. Media training, etiquette training, coaching, and experience all became part of that work.

There were people who opened doors and let me see what actually went into their success. They did not just show me the finished result. They helped me understand the preparation behind it.

I want to do that for somebody else.

At thirteen, I made a promise to find a way to help my family. I did not know every turn that promise would take. Looking back, I can see how the experiences, the work, and the people who helped me prepared me for what I am doing now.

That is why I call it Built 4 The Moment.

Your gifts may not look like mine. Your experience may be completely different. You do not need to be a professional athlete or have a long list of accomplishments to begin recognizing what you bring.

You can start with who you are, what you have learned, and the person you want to become.

This resource is a place to begin.

I had to learn the chessboard

When I entered corporate, I had experience as a professional athlete and in running businesses. That did not mean I immediately understood this new environment.

For roughly the first nine months, as I remember it, I was learning the acronyms, the language, and how everything connected.

I call it the chessboard. Who are the key players? What do they need? What am I responsible for? What information am I missing, and who can help me understand it?

One day, I was running a meeting. We were stuck on something, and I remember someone feeling that they had not been included.

I stopped and opened the floor. We went around the room so everyone could contribute. I also made sure we recognized the person with the most expertise in that particular area. That person had context the rest of us did not have. Our job was to ask the questions that would help us understand it.

That was when something connected for me.

I had done this on a basketball court. Learn the roles. Understand the options. Recognize what is changing. Put people in position to use their strengths.

I still had things to learn. But I could see where what I already knew belonged.

I just needed to understand the chessboard.

I could be coached and still need a minute

I had leaders and teammates who gave me a roadmap. They knew I was new. They helped me understand what was expected, and they corrected me when my work needed improvement.

I remember being excited to give one of my first presentations on a virtual call. My manager gave me some tough feedback. When I tell you he blew that presentation up, he blew it up.

I thanked him, turned off my camera, and stepped away.

When I came back, a teammate I had also played with in college said she would have been in tears after that feedback.

I turned my camera on and said, "What do you think I was doing in the bathroom?"

I had gone to cry for a second. Then I came back.

That manager had already built a relationship with me. I knew he wanted me to do well. I told him I did not want him to stop coaching me. I was going to make the changes, bring the presentation back, and let him review it again.

The feedback hurt in the moment. I still wanted to learn from it.

For me, becoming more comfortable meant leaning on my strengths, understanding what needed work, and building a process I could follow. It also meant taking that process to someone who had context I did not have.

I did not have to be the smartest person in the room. I needed to learn how to work with the people in it.

The playbook other people wanted

Later, I spoke to more than 1,100 Nike employees about my journey.

I remember standing on that stage and saying, "I'm 6'5. I take up space. I feel more comfortable when I'm walking."

So I walked, and I shared what coming into the company had felt like. The imposter syndrome. The learning. The leaders who helped me. The playbook I had put together to help me do my job.

Being good on stage did not mean I was not sweating. My teammates knew that afterward I would need time on my own to recharge.

After the meeting, I went for a walk. When I came back, my team was celebrating. Hugs, daps, all of it. They told me people had really connected with what I shared.

Then I checked my email.

There were requests for one-on-one conversations. Requests for my playbook. People who wanted to learn more about the process I had described.

I thought, are they serious?

They were.

I met with many of them and shared what I had learned.

Because if someone was willing to pour into me and share all those things with me, who am I to gatekeep?

That is the reason you are reading this for free.

Separate who you are from what you do

Basketball was something I did for a long time. It was not the only thing I could contribute.

I had practiced solving problems, preparing, adapting, learning from feedback, and working with people who saw things differently than I did. I had also developed skills through family responsibilities and my own businesses.

Moving into a new role did not make those experiences disappear. But I needed to understand the new situation before I could use them well.

You may be facing a change in your work, a different responsibility, or a personal next chapter. Start by looking at what you bring and what this situation actually requires.

Do not stop at a title. Find an example.

If you write that you are resourceful, remember a time you found a way through a problem. If you write that you help people work together, remember what you did that helped them contribute.

Then be honest about what you do not yet know. A strength is something to draw on, not a reason to skip preparation or support.

Put it on paper

Use these prompts to begin a small playbook for one situation. Your answers can stay private. You can skip a question or take a break. There is no requirement to revisit painful experiences.

Signal.

Name the situation in front of you. What is changing, or what are you trying to do?

Write one thought that makes you hesitate. Then separate what you know from what you are assuming. Is there information, time, access, or support you genuinely need?

Set your job title aside. Name one strength or quality you bring, and a real example of using it. Consider how it might help here.

Set-up.

Clarify the ask. What needs to happen, and why does it matter?

Write down what you need to learn or practice. Name a person, resource, or source of feedback that could help. Where other people are involved, consider what they need from you as well.

Choose one quality you want to develop in how you approach this situation. Describe what practicing that quality would look like.

Pivot.

Choose one manageable action. Write when you will attempt it, what support or preparation it needs, and when you will review what happened.

Afterward, consider what helped, what remained difficult, and what needs to change. Taking a next step can include asking for help or revising the plan.

You can use the separate action sheet or write in a notebook. The point is to leave with something specific you can work on, not another label to give yourself.

Bring the lesson into the next play

As I remember Pat Summitt teaching us, we were coaches on the floor. She could not call a timeout for every decision. We needed to know our responsibilities, make judgment calls, and keep learning.

When we made a mistake, she would tell us, "Get it back."

A rebound. A defensive stop. A steal. There was another way to contribute on the next play. We could review the mistake in film and work on it in practice.

And when a teammate found you for an open shot, you pointed at them. We always pointed. They had helped create the opportunity, and they deserved the credit.

That is part of the playbook I brought with me: prepare, contribute, learn, and recognize the people helping you do it.

You do not need my career to begin doing that in your own way.

A note before you go

I truly hope this helps you recognize something you can use and choose a next step that matters to you.

You are welcome to DM me an honest testimonial about your experience with Your Next Pro Move. Tell me what was useful, what was unclear, or what you tried. A few sentences are enough. Share only what you are comfortable sharing.

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There is more I would like to share. If there is a subject you would find helpful, you are welcome to mention that too. I have been creating and documenting for years. Your question may help me decide what to bring forward next.

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Until next time,

Michelle "Shell" Snow
Built4TheMoment.com