What you cheat on in the early light of morning will show up in the ring under the bright lights

Saturday was the first game of his soccer season this year.  And he moved up to the MLS Next league where the competition and scrutiny was even more fierce.

The first words out of his mouth were “Mom I’m scared.”

Scared of what?

“Of messing up.”

So we talked about how being nervous or scared when there is a lot on the line that matters to you is normal. 

How he has trained and trained and he knows EXACTLY what to do in any situation that happens in the game.  And how once he gets on the field and the game starts all the training, practice and repetition will kick in. 

So he doesn’t have to worry or overthink it, the daily practice will tell him exactly what to do. 

This applies to many of the things we worry about in life.  Sometimes we are truly caught off guard, but usually practice, repetition and training will kick in every time. 

It’s why musicians, dancers and athletes train over, and over and over.

This is why I love leading ‘labs’ at 2HLL with our attorneys.  It’s where we practice our ‘close’ at a sales consult, our ‘invitation to book a meeting’ at our workshop and how to handle objections.  Over and over and over. 

And not just for the newbies, for even the most experienced. 

It’s so easy to in a split second get distracted at the key moment of your close.  And fumble it. Then all the hard work you did to market, get leads, book meetings and learn your materials is a loss.  Because of a split second where something distracted you and you didn’t have the benefit of repetition to kick in and deliver.

Real examples I’ve experienced where something shatters your close in a second, and costs you thousands of dollars in potential new clients:

In a workshop:

• A sneeze
• A cell phone alarm goes off
• Someone enters the workshop room and the door slams
• Someone stand up
• A light in the ceiling flickers off

In a sales consult:

• A staff member knocks on the door
• A cell phone rings
• A bird flies into the window in the room
• A siren goes by

Repetition and practice will save you nearly every time.  And when you don’t stop practicing, you risk thousands of dollars of your marketing, networking, lead generation efforts.

So often when I talk to an attorney they want to go buy the newest marketing ‘thing’ or run more ads, etc. but they aren’t making time to continually practice and improve their close which means even if the new ‘thing’ performs well you are still losing thousands of potential client dollars.

“What you cheat on in the early light of morning will show up in the ring under the bright lights.” Joe Frazier, boxing legend.