Keynote Speaker Patrick Mahomes Shares Secrets to Success

Patrick Mahomes has been called many things, some good and some more on the negative side. But no one can argue against his ability to lead, especially last season when he guided the Chiefs to a 15-1 record in games they were trying to win.

Despite porous offensive tackles and the loss of his starting running back and two starting receivers, Mahomes still led the Chiefs to Super Bowl LIX. And at a special appearance this week, he shared how he did it.

As a national spokesman for T-Mobile, Mahomes appeared in an on-stage discussion at an employee event hosted by company CEO Mike Sievert.

“It starts with Coach Reid,” he told Sievert in front of a packed audience in Overland Park, Kan. “It starts with the organization that we're in. And, he has this standard that every single day you're coming there to get better or get worse. And I think we hold each other to that standard.”

That standard was in place when the Chiefs drafted him in 2017, Mahomes said. He credited veterans like Alex Smith and Travis Kelce for teaching him how to overcome obstacles.

“Everybody's a great athlete,” Mahomes explained, “but are you gonna find a way with the little things in order to take your game to that next level? And then there's a belief. Whenever you start winning, whenever you start having success, you believe in each other.

“And I think that's something that's extremely important. And is that we have a belief in each other that we're gonna find a way to win, no matter how the game's going, the outcome will always be in our favor.”

That favor has carried over into the Chiefs’ NFL record of 17 straight victories in one-score games. Mahomes isn’t immune to the critics, but he does have the ability to tune them out.

“It comes from a family-tight atmosphere. We go into every single game and it's not just, ‘I'm gonna do whatever it takes to win, ' it's, ‘I'm gonna do whatever it takes to win for the guy beside me. I'm gonna leave everything I have on that football field.’

“And even if you look back at the Super Bowl, we were getting blown out. There's no way around it. But you would never have said that a guy gave up on that football field.”

Mahomes said he recognizes he’s playing under a future Hall of Fame head coach in Andy Reid, and playing with future Hall of Famers at tight end and defensive tackle, if not more. He said that’s why he sleeps well every night, knowing he gave everything he had, with no regrets. But more importantly, he wants his teammates to feed off that.

“I think just playing the quarterback position,” Mahomes said, “you're gonna receive all of the praise and you're gonna receive a lot of the hate whenever you lose. And I think for me, it's always bigger than that. I'm one part of that process, win or lose.

“You gotta show that you're one of the first people to show up and you're gonna put in the work that you're expecting from others. So, you start off by leading by example. Then you use your voice … You want to learn the person that you're talking to, what gets the best out of them, and what can kind of shut them down. It's meeting the person, becoming friends with the person, learning what makes them tick, and then going out and just feeding them confidence.”

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