Future NFL Hall of Famer Travis Kelce Shows It’s Not How You Start, It’s How You Finish.

On NFL draft day when collegiate football players are selected to join NFL teams, you can see the joy on their faces. These young men with so much in front of them—their grins tell a whole story. 

But what about the day they have to finally hang up their cleats? The way players handle their path to that day says even more about them. 

At a time when he had nothing else to prove, Travis Kelce just proved everything. 

Whether it’s a new recipe, new book or new career, beginning something is easy. Anyone can walk up to a mountain with a backpack and say they’re ready to climb. But few actually reach the summit, few see the original idea through to its conclusion. It’s even easier to slough off at the end if you’re a proven star. 

But on Christmas Day, though, Kelce chose the road less traveled. He chose to finish strong.

For the Kansas City Chiefs pass-catcher, on what many presume to be his final game at his home Arrowhead Stadium, Kelce went out with his head held high. The future Hall of Famer, who recently announced an engagement to global pop star Taylor Swift, finished the Christmas game with five catches for 36 years—all without several of his best teammates who were injured, including star quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Mahomes backup, Gardner Minshew. 

In fact, he was playing so well in this game that on the last play, with the Chiefs hoping to score and send the game to overtime, the opponent, Denver, chose to double-team him to make sure he couldn’t get open!  

After the contest, which saw K.C. fall to the division rival Denver Broncos, the 36 year old Kelce will make a decision about his career in the offseason after talking with “family, friends, [and] the Chiefs organization when the time comes,” he said. But no matter what he says in the spring, Kelce has already made a major statement. 

FINISH is one of my two favorite words, because how you finish matters. I had the chance to have this conversation with an employee several years ago. He was leaving our company for another job and offered a typical two-week notice. I encouraged him to use that two weeks to show his true self, to work the last day as hard as he worked on day one. He did so with such passion that when we needed some part-time work a year later, he was my first call. We continue to work together today.

In an era when athletes tend to sit out as many games as they play (hello, NBA!), Kelce could have easily bagged the last few games post-Mahomes’ injury and called it a year/career. No one would have batted an eyelash if he asked to be added to the list of the infirmed. But Kelce knows that it’s not about how you start a season or career, it’s how you finish it. 

Of course, that speaks volumes. Not only does it show his coaching staff and teammates that he’s one of them, in the trenches game after game, even after elimination from playoff contention. But it also tells the fans and those who have supported K.C. in the good times that the team’s stars won’t abandon them during lean ones. 

How you finish something says more about you than how you start it. Especially when the stakes are removed. Football fans all over the country should dole out props to No. 87 for not sitting out this final string of games and for being so competitive that Denver’s defense even had to double-team at times. 

Kelce could have watched the game from the luxury box with his beautiful fiancé, instead he walked home with more bumps and bruises. 

That effort should inspire all of us in the business world, too. Success—indeed, achieving a lasting legacy—isn’t easy. It’s not about how good you look when everything is proceeding according to plan. The measure of a company and its leaders is how they perform in difficult times. How they get up when knocked down. How they FINISH! 

Teams don’t win it all in the first quarter and careers aren’t made by early flashes alone. A marathon runner must finish the race to be counted. The greats know this—Kelce knows this. At a time when he could be chillaxing with his pop star bride-to-be, he is instead playing every game like it’s his last. 

That’s how we should all take the field.