Finding Consistency Off-Court

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to episode number 20 of the Tennis Business Academy Podcast.

Today’s topic is off-court consistency.

We’ll cover what I mean by this and why I think it matters.

The idea for this episode actually came from a certain type of comment that I get regularly from listeners or Academy members.

And this comment goes something like this: 

“David, all these things you recommend us doing all make sense and I can see the value in doing them. But I just don’t have the time to do them. I spend way too much time on-court or dealing with day-to-day emails and phone calls, handling requests from members etc. that I don’t have time to think about planning ahead or doing any extra stuff.”

The detail of the comment changes depending on who’s saying it, but the gist is always the same.

They see the value in doing some of the things I recommend, but they don’t feel like they have the time to complete any of them, because the day-to-day stuff just consumes all their working hours.

Now, I’m going to challenge this notion, of course, but before I do, let me just say that I get it.

I’m a coach myself and even though I don’t spend 30-40 hours on court a week right now, I have in the past.

And I’ve also had a management job in consultancy where I was responsible for a team of 20 people and received some 40 to 50 emails pretty much every day.

So, I completely get how and why having a lot of stuff going on day-to-day makes it seem nearly impossible that you’ll ever have enough time to do the things that you know are important for the future of your business or club.

And I also understand that if you listen to one of my podcast episodes, or if you attend one of my webinars, or an in-person course then you will probably hear me cover multiple ideas or cover one idea in detail.

And that might have made you feel overwhelmed.

But what I don’t say on those courses or webinars or on the podcast episodes is that I don’t believe in trying to do all these big things all at once.

You’re busy. I’m busy. We’re all busy.

It’s not feasible to do lots each week, each month, each year.

I completely get that that’s impossible in the real world.

But what I do believe in is consistency and forward momentum.

Just like in a game of tennis, consistency is what matters most.

Any decent tennis player knows that winning a match isn’t about hitting fancy shots every once in a while.

It’s about staying consistent throughout the whole match.

We should take that same idea and apply it to our businesses and clubs.

Winning at business isn’t necessarily about implementing lots of things this week or next week.

Winning is about being consistent and working on the business every week, so that it keeps moving forward.

Even if it’s only a small step forward.

If you can afford to spend 10 hours a week outside of your day-to-day responsibilities to work on the business, then great.

Use them!

But if you can only spare 2 hours a week outside of your day-to-day tasks, then use them too!

Or 1 hour. Or half an hour.

It doesn’t matter.

What matters is how many hours you’ve spent on it overall.

The only difference is that if you’re able to spend more hours on it each week, then you’ll finish the job quicker. Which is certainly an advantage, I’m not denying that.

But if you spend less hours each week you can still get it done, which is what matters the most.

Finishing the project or task is more important than when you finish the project or task, if that makes sense.

Yes, the quicker we can do it the better.

But if you can only do it slowly and incrementally, then that’s still good!

Let’s take an example.

Let’s say that you want to write and implement an email onboarding sequence for the new players that join your club or coaching programme.

And let’s also say that you’ve decided that you’re going to send 6 emails across 4 weeks to welcome them, introduce them to what you do, etc.

And for the sake of argument let’s imagine that writing these 6 emails + setting up the email marketing tool and testing that everything is working will take about 20 hours of work.

Now, if you can spend 10 hours a week working on this, then the onboarding sequence will be live and running in 2 weeks.

Great - fantastic result!

But let’s say that you don’t have 10 hours a week. Let’s say that you can only afford to spend 1 hour a week on this project.

If that’s the case, it’ll take you 20 weeks to put it all together.

That’s nearly 5 months to complete this project. Not ideal, right?

But, and here’s the important thing, it got done!

Yes, it took 5 months, but it got done.

And now, every single player that ever joins your programme going forward will benefit from your onboarding sequence. And most importantly, your club or coaching business will benefit too, since you’ll be providing a better experience for your players which is likely to lead to more customer happiness and customer loyalty.

And I’ve used the example of 1 hour a week. Find 2 hours a week and all of the sudden instead of nearly 5 months you can do it in less than 2.5 months and move on.

And ultimately that’s what matters the most.

It’s not about how quickly you are able to do these things. It’s about how many important projects you’re completing.

Because all of these added together will make for a better business or club which will be more successful over time.

And I gave the example of an onboarding sequence, but I could have said anything.

It could be about fixing your website, or creating a coaching curriculum or organising and running an open-day or learning how to run Facebook Ads or changing your booking system or setting up an online shop or anything else that you believe is important for the future of your coaching programme or club.

The more of these projects you complete, the better your coaching programme or club will become and the more chances you’ll have of being successful.

And that’s not even thinking about how some of these projects might actually save you time in the long run.

A transition away from bank transfers and onto a proper booking system, for example, will save you countless hours reconciling and tracking payments each and every year.

Hours that you can then invest on doing something more productive going forward.

And the other aspect of it, it’s that by spending time on some of these tasks that aren’t directly related to the day-to-day runnings of your business, you’ll gain new skills and assets that you can use in the future.

And as you gain more skills and assets, all future tasks and projects will get easier.

As an example let’s say that you want to create a marketing campaign to advertise the upcoming holiday camps.

And let’s also say that this campaign will include 4 emails, 4 social media posts and 1000 flyers distributed around schools near you.

Now, if you’ve never done this before, you will need to start everything from scratch and that will undoubtedly take a lot of time.

But by the second time that the holiday camps come around, you’ll be ready.

You’ll have the emails, the social media posts and the flyers from the previous campaign.

Sure, you’ll need to tweak those, but that will take a lot less time than creating them from scratch.

Not only that but you will have learnt what worked or didn’t work from the previous campaign.

So, maybe you realised that you started advertising too late.

So, this time around you’ll start the campaign 2 weeks earlier to give yourself a better chance of filling all spaces.

Go through this process 4 or 5 times and you’ll have it all down to a science, pretty much.

Where you’re maximising your business’ or club’s ability to fill up the holiday camps with minimal effort.

Which is a big win.

And this is what I call forward momentum.

The more accumulated time you spend on the tasks and projects that matter, the better you’ll get at them. And the better you get at them, the more results you’re likely to get. And the more results you get, the easier it’ll be to replicate those results next time and the more motivated you’ll be to do what needs to get done to get those results.

But it all has to start with you finding that hour or two a week at least. More if you can, of course.

And to find those you will probably need to be ruthless with your time.

Start by thinking about and writing down the things that you think need to be improved.

Is it your website? Is it your social media game? Is it your email marketing? Is it your coach development programme? Is it your court booking system?

What is it, that if you had all the time in the world, you’d be looking to improve right now?

Once you know what it is that you want to be working on, think through your week and figure out realistically how much time you’ve got to work on this important project and on which days and times.

Doesn’t matter how much time you actually have.

What matters is that you commit to spending that time working on the most important project every single week until that project is complete.

And once that one is complete, you move on to the next one and repeat the process.

You know, there’s a famous statement that goes like this:

“Most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year, and underestimate what they can achieve in ten years”. 

No one really knows who first made this statement, but it doesn’t matter to me, since I’ve come to realise that there’s a lot of truth to it.

In fact, I’d go even further and say that most people overestimate what they can achieve in a day, a week and a month!

And not just that, but also there’s this sense in today’s world that if you’re not doing it right now, then it isn’t worth doing or something.

I’m not sure.

But what I am sure of, is that like the statement says, most people grossly underestimate how much they can achieve in a few years, if they put their mind to it and are disciplined enough to follow through with what they think matters the most. 

Even if they’re only able to dedicate a couple of hours to it each week.

Because I can guarantee that all of these hours that you are able to invest in your business, in your club, in yourself, can and will add up in the long run.

And over a few weeks, a few months, a few years, they’ll add up to a lot.

And that’s the most important thing.

Alright, we’re coming to the end of this episode, but before I go I just have a book recommendation.

If you’d like to read more about the science of habit formation and how small, incremental steps can add up to massive change, then you should pick up a copy of a book called Atomic Habits, by James Clear.

It’s a great read that I highly recommend.

Ok, that’s it for today’s episode. As always I’ll be back next week with another instalment of the Tennis Business Academy podcast.

Until then and thanks for tuning in.