John Assaraf recounts a formative, embarrassing experience early in his career after buying ReMax of Indiana and moving from Toronto to Indianapolis to build the business. At an awards banquet he delivered an unstructured opening speech; his business partner, Walter Schneider, criticized the lack of practice and taught him a preparatory process. The anecdote becomes a broader lesson: pros practice deliberately ("You get praised in public for what you practice in private"), and achieving pro-level results requires clear vision, acquiring necessary skills/knowledge, conscious practice, and spaced repetition. The talk closes with actionable encouragement to plan, practice, and watch the next video.
Questions this video answers
ReMax of Indiana.
From Toronto, Canada to Indianapolis, Indiana.
27 years old.
Walter Schneider.
Chapters
Hey, John here. And one of the most embarrassing times in my career as a business owner also ended up being one of the greatest lessons that I ever learned. When I bought RE Max of Indiana and I was building my first company. Up until that time, I was a real estate agent, you know, making a lot of calls every day, making, you know, appointments to sell homes, to list homes. And then the opportunity to buy ReMax of Indiana became available, and I had to move from Toronto, Canada, to Indianapolis, Indiana. And I was responsible for building the whole infrastructure for the company. Sales, marketing, management, support, technology, all the stuff required to build a business. And something happened about 15 months into being the owner of ReMax of Indiana and the CEO that was so embarrassing. Let me explain. At the end of each year, we would have our awards banquet, and so all of our real estate agents, all of the brokers in the offices would come to celebrate the accomplishments for the year. And my business partner, Walter Schneider, was a seasoned CEO, and at the time, you know, his companies were worth probably $100 million back then. That was in 1986, just to put into perspective. And he said to me, hey, since you're the CEO, you need to do the opening presentation, and you need to do the opening speech, and you need to get people inspired, and you need to get people all motivated and all excited for the work that they did to give them the awards and to plan the next year. And so I was excited. And as a young entrepreneur at 27 years old at the time, I showed up to the hotel and people were in beautiful tuxedos and dressed to the nines, and we had a beautiful ballroom and we had a band, and I get up to speak and I do my thing, and I think that I have done just an amazing job. And afterwards, you know, people had fun. We gave out our awards. And the following morning, Walter asked me if he can have breakfast with me. And I said, of course we can have breakfast. Let's, you know, have some coffee and celebrate a really great awards banquet. And I get to breakfast and we do a little small talk. And Walter then says, what the hell did you do last night? I'm like, what do you mean? I got up, I motivated them, I got them all inspired, and I think it went great. He says, you didn't have an opening, you didn't have a middle, you didn't have an end. There was no structure to your leading them at all. You were all over the place. And what I can share with you is I remember being so embarrassed that my mentor, my business Partner basically thrashed my performance the night before. And then he goes on to ask me, did you do any practicing? And I said, well, what do you mean practicing? You know, I wrote down a few bullet points of things that I wanted to say and things that I wanted to cover. He says, well, it was terrible. He said, I was so embarrassed for you. And I could tell you at that time, I felt this small. And he said something to me that I'll never forget. He said, you get praised in public for what you practice in private. Let me repeat. You get praised in public for what you practice in private. He said, pros don't practice when they're on the podium. They practice ahead of time. And it was obvious to me you didn't practice. Your sentences were disjointed, your points were all over the place. He said, yeah, sure, you had some motivational things that you said, but it wasn't coherent. He says, as a CEO, as a leader, you. You have to be coherent. You have to lead by practicing and knowing every single piece of what you want to do, every single piece of what you want to say. And you need to know how you want them to feel. And you have to take them on a ride. And the ride you took them on was not a cohesive, coordinated ride. It was an all over the place ride. I said, wow, I'm sorry. I was embarrassed. I was ashamed of myself. And he said, listen, I'm going to teach you a process for when you are in front of an audience. And he showed me his process, you know, for how he thinks about his speech, how he prepares for it, how he takes the notes, how he may do some research, how he may ask people, you know, their opinions on stuff. Now, the point isn't about being a good speaker. The point I want to ask you about is this. How much are you practicing your role as a CEO? How much are you doing to upgrade your knowledge and your skills? How much are you doing to manage your weaknesses? How much are you doing to get better at your craft? It doesn't matter if you want to get better as a CEO of a business, one person or 10 people or a thousand people. It doesn't matter if you want to get better in your health or wealth or relationship or career. It doesn't matter what the outcome is. Pros practice what they want to achieve so that it is easier at game time. And there's a wonderful saying that goes like this. Amateurs practice until they get it right. Pros practice until they can't get it wrong. Amateurs practice until they get it right. Pros practice until they can't get it wrong. So from that day on, whatever goal that I wanted to achieve, I started off with the vision, the goal. And then I asked what skill do I need, what knowledge do I need, what do I need to prepare, what do I need to practice so that it becomes easier and easier and easier for me. And listen, life is complex, I get that. But all of the how to play at a very high level is already here. And you are going to have choices to make in life. Do you want to play at the kindergarten level, grade school level, high school level or pro level? If you want pro level results, you have to think like a pro, feel like a pro, and do what pros do. If you don't think this way, then there's going to be a mismatched expectation and a mismatched result between what you want and what you achieve. So get clear on your vision, get clear on your goals, understand what are the knowledge or what's the body of knowledge you need, what are the skills you need. And then you need to set up time to practice so that you become what we call is unconsciously competent. And the way you become unconsciously competent automatically is through conscious practice and spaced repetition. And whatever it is that you practice is what becomes permanent. Alright, so I've given you a lot to think about. I hope you enjoy this. What's next for you? How do you achieve more of your goals and dreams? I really want to help you achieve success faster and easier than ever before. Think differently, manage your emotions, take the right actions in the right order and you will achieve predictable transformations and results. Hey, this is John and if you like that video, watch the next video because it is packed with things that you can do right now to achieve success way faster than ever before.
