In 1989, I was the head soccer coach at DePaul University. It was a remarkably good learning experience even though my salary came out to exactly $11.51 per day ($4200 divided by 365 days) for recruiting, scheduling, coaching, driving the team bus, and countless one-on-one meetings with the players. In truth, I would have paid DePaul for the opportunity. I was 27 years old and it was my fifth and final year as a college coach.

Our starting goalkeeper that year was Rich Horwath. Rich was an exceptionally focused, intense, and prepared player. His leadership, passion, and skills helped us to be competitive in every game we played against our very tough NCAA Division I schedule. After that final season I stayed in touch with Rich for about six more months, and then we lost track of each other.

Twenty-one years later, I was walking through the bookstore in the Orlando airport. I scanned the business section and saw an intriguing book , Deep Dive: Mastering the Three Disciplines of Strategic Thinking for Competitive Advantage. I had been looking for a good book on business strategy so I started flipping through it. Wondering who wrote it, I looked for the author’s name. It was by Rich Horwath. I thought to myself, “I knew a Rich Horwath. I wonder if these two guys are related.” I flipped to the back cover, and there was Rich staring me in the face as though he had never changed. I bought the book and started reading it immediately. It was an exceptionally well-written and clear book on a topic that often becomes amazingly complicated.

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