Skin in the Game
Skin in the Game: Why You Can't Get Anything Worth Having for Free
This topic came up a few weeks ago with a client of mine. We were talking about his personal life — some people around him who'd gotten jealous, who were making things harder for him just because of where he'd ended up compared to where they were. And the more we unpacked it, the more obvious the difference became. He got to where he is because he put skin in the game. He risked something. The people giving him a hard time hadn't. They played it safe, they're not where they want to be, and they're not willing to risk anything to change that.
You can't get something for free. And if something is actually free, it's probably not worth much.
What putting skin in the game actually looks like
With this client, skin in the game meant money, time, and ego. When I first started training him his posture was rough and his confidence wasn't where it is now. He put something on the table he was genuinely okay losing, because he understood that if the return came, it'd be worth more than what he risked. That's the whole trade. You have to be willing to lose in order to get anything back.
My dad had his own version of this from years ago, training for his first Ironman. He was excited, sharing his progress, and one guy — completely out of shape himself — left him a nasty comment calling him a show-off. Pure envy. That guy didn't have the courage to put his own skin in the game, so watching someone else do it felt like an attack. That happens. You put yourself out there and some people are going to want to take a shot at you for it, especially the ones standing still.
Should you even share the process?
Here's where it got interesting. I told my dad that sometimes I just don't want to share anything — I'd rather post the result and skip the process entirely, partly because of people like that guy. But I also think hiding the process does people a disservice. It hides the sacrifice, the struggle, the actual work that got you to the finish line. If you only show the highlight reel, everyone else just sees the result and has no idea what it actually took.
My dad made a good point back — when people see "ran 100 miles" or "finished an Ironman," what they don't see is the one, two, three years of grinding that came before that single day. The race is just another day. It's the training before it that's the real story, and that's what's actually worth showing people, even if it makes some of them feel a certain way about it.
There's a difference in how we each think about this too. He grew up without a way to share any of it — no social media, nothing. I grew up with it built in. So there's this weird reversal now — older folks are posting everything, and guys my age are starting to pull back, some of us even going the other direction, ditching the smartphone, going analog. Different generations, different relationship to being seen.
Delayed gratification is basically the whole game
At the core of this, skin in the game is really just the willingness to give up something you want right now for something you want more later. It's hard to put your shoes on and run when you're tired. It's hard to walk into the gym when you don't feel like it. But that trade-off — sacrificing the immediate thing for the future thing — might be one of the most human things we can do.
I've got a client who put it perfectly: "I operate under the understanding that I'm going to want more tomorrow than what I want today." So he doesn't spend everything he's got right now, because he knows tomorrow's version of him is going to want even more. That reframes the whole thing. You're not depriving yourself. You're just handing something better to your future self.
My dad deals with this constantly coaching runners. The excuse is always the same — didn't have time, the run was supposed to be an hour and I didn't have an hour, so I skipped it entirely. His answer is always the same too: if you can't do an hour, do fifteen minutes. It still counts. It still adds up. He's got a young athlete with a heart condition who can only build up in small increments — 15 minutes, 20 minutes — because that's what her body and her doctor allow. And even she sometimes skips the fifteen minutes entirely. That's not really about time. That's missing skin in the game.
The if-then formula
Here's something practical that's helped me and my clients actually close that gap between intention and action. It's simple: if this happens, then I do that instead. If I don't have an hour to work out, then I do 15 minutes. You plug that equation into whatever excuse usually shows up for you. Instead of "if I don't have an hour, it's not worth going at all" — which just gives you permission to do nothing — you shrink the ask down to something you can't reasonably say no to.
Make the sacrifice small enough that you can still feel proud of showing up. Because that's really what this comes down to — knowing you did something for yourself, even if it wasn't the full version of what you planned.
Why I actually care whether I show up
For me, the thing that made skin in the game click wasn't fear of disappointing someone else. It was fear of disappointing myself. When I was studying music, my teacher would tell me to practice an hour a day and I'd show up without having touched my drums. He wasn't the one I felt bad for. I felt ashamed of myself — I had talent and I didn't use my time to actually get better.
That's where self-respect comes from in all of this. You show up, even if it's not the full hour, even if it's not everything that was asked of you, because you respect yourself enough to not let yourself off the hook completely. Nobody's grading you on whether you hit 100% of the assignment. The only person keeping score in a way that actually matters is you.
A quick story my dad told me
My dad brought up a movie he and my mom watched recently called The Forge — a Christian film about a 19-year-old kid whose dad walked out on him, left him with a mother who was deeply religious and a habit of playing video games and basketball instead of building anything for himself. His mom eventually pushed him to get a job, and he ends up talking to a guy at a gym who offers him work and hits him with three questions before he'll even give him the job: What do you actually want to do here? Where do you want to be in five years? What do you want people to think when they look at you?
The kid needed a week to come back with real answers. What stuck with my dad was the kid's answer to the last question — he wanted to be respected. And the way you get that respect isn't by demanding it. It's by respecting yourself first, in the small, unglamorous, daily stuff — physically, mentally, spiritually — the things people take for granted or skip entirely because no one's watching.
No excuses, just ten minutes
I had a client walk into the gym yesterday for the first time I've ever actually seen her walk in — normally she trains with me elsewhere. I asked what she was doing there and she said, "I'm just doing ten minutes. You told me a little bit goes a long way, so I'm putting some skin in the game right now." Ten minutes. That's it. But she showed up and did something, and that's the whole point.
Everyone has ten minutes. You're already spending ten minutes scrolling your phone or watching something you won't remember tomorrow. Ten minutes of lunges and squats costs you nothing you'll actually miss.
The takeaway
If you don't put something on the line, the return just isn't going to show up. That's it — that's the whole principle. Not everything, not the full hour, not the perfect version of the plan. Just something real enough that you can't talk yourself out of it. Shrink the ask down until there's no excuse left, and then go do the ten minutes.