35 Years of Pro Coaching Proved This One Thing About Success

0:00 Most people think the gap between where they are and where they want to go as being a talent issue, or that they're not working hard enough, or that they're not good enough yet or will ever be. But I've spent 35 years proving that wrong with the pro athletes that I work with and locker rooms all around the world naively, which is just crazy. I've been recorded over 250 episodes proving it right on this very podcast. I've been doing this wrong, and here's the fix. Most people think the gap between where they are and where they want to go as being a talent issue or that they're not working hard enough or that they're not good enough yet or will ever be.

0:59 But I've spent 35 years proving that wrong with the pro athletes that I work with and locker rooms all around the world naively, which is just crazy. I've been recorded over 250 episodes proving it right on this very podcast. So today I'm going to tell you the five mistakes I've been making on this very show, and of course what I'm going to do to fix them. Because if you're going to trust me to help you perform under pressure, I need to hold myself to the exact same standards. And the whole job of a high performance coach is giving people clarity before action.

1:49 You don't walk onto a tennis court every day to coach a player and figure it out, you know, on the by the seat of your pants how the player will succeed. You go out there with a vision, a plan of how they will play and a philosophy that you've developed over the years and a system that's going to help them get there. Of course. Yeah, I, I've revert. I've rehearsed the thinking. I know what I'm going to say and I know what I'm going to help them learn to do when that pressure arrives. And I teach that to every athlete that I work with.

2:25 You know, it's so important to plan performance before you go out there to deliver. But with this podcast, it's like I kept picking up the racket and and hoping for the best. About a month ago, I got a report that laid it out absolutely plainly and my short clips were getting good traction, but the full episodes not converting as well as they as they could. And you know, people coming to the channel and leaving. And the reason is that I was recording conversations and calling them episodes. There's a difference.

3:10 A conversation is, as was explained to me, to people talking, which I've been doing, but an episode is something engineered to land, and I was doing the equivalent of training hard but never having a cohesive match strategy. In fact, all the effort and none of the real architecture of a very good podcast. So here are the five mistakes I've been making, and I'll be quick because they're simple, but I didn't get it. Number one, thinking and writing about a good topic. However, there was no plan of an outcome in mind other than to share my thoughts.

3:56 Secondly, there was no hook. I was opening with Welcome back to Locker Room Power and in this day and age, losing 1/3 of the audience before I'd said anything that was worth people hearing. Thirdly, I was inviting guests before deciding topics, and my content calendar was basically run by invited, inviting, talented and interesting people, not by what you, the audience, actually need and maybe want to hear. And fourthly, my editor can only clip moments that exist. I wasn't engineering them in, I was assuming they'd be there and really didn't understand this thing at all.

4:43 And lastly, I had no system for my solar episodes, which is ironic because solar episodes are one of the most powerful tools a podcaster and a podcast host has, and I wasn't using them. I think here's what most podcasters get wrong that I'm learning. We think that the recording is the work. It isn't the recording. It's the last thing you do. Planning is the work. The hook is the work. Knowing the one moment that you're going to build in, in the 1st 10 minutes, that's the work. If you do as I've been doing and sit down to record without that, basically you're not podcasting, you're just having interesting discussions.

5:35 The best athletes of course I've worked with really improvise under pressure. They've already lived through the hard yards and the moments that they know will come in a crisis and they are prepared for it and they've gone through a lot of experience to handle it. The match is really about focusing purely on great execution, which is hard enough, but you need to be prepared for it and that's what great content is. Pre lived, pre planned, then delivered. I just did not connect that an authentic labor of love and needed to still be produced with high performance protocols so that you, the audience could gain more and I can potentially reach a lot more people.

6:28 We never stopped learning and this is an example of it and we never stopped evolving. But I don't have any regrets. It's just about now taking the next step and having consulted an expert, the clarity was to decide whether I choose to take this podcast to the next level because he said, understand this and you know, this hit me like a ton of bricks. You're not running a podcast, you're running a performance system. And every performance system needs a plan before essentially relate you to me needs a player so you as a coach and you know what you're doing for you get a player.

7:17 So from this episode Ford every solo recording and newly recorded interview starts with a different brief one with a very clear message topic first hook written out in full three clip moments built in before anyone hits record. That's the new standard and that's what you can expect from me going forward. So if this resonates with you, please share it with someone who's who you know, who's maybe putting in real hard work, but not seeing any of the results that they really deserve. Because the gap is almost never talent OR effort alone.

8:05 It's almost always a high performance environment and a good system. I'm David Samuel, this is Locker ROOM Power and I will see you on the next solo episode, which for the first time, I already know exactly what message will land. Thank you. For watching Locker Room Power with David Samuel, if you enjoyed the episode, hit subscribe and leave a comment on your favorite platform. See you in the next one.