4 Unexpected Lessons From Pickleball That Apply to Business

Talent can really create momentum. Like, you can build a lot of things up with talent and natural skill and natural draw, natural charisma, all of those things. But maybe you notice that they don't have a really big business or they feel like they're always capping out. It's because it's the fundamentals that are going to be scalable.

And we're back with another episode of.

He Said, she said.

And I am back from pickleball lessons. Actually, I'm back from three and a half hours of playing pickleball today. I'm so sore. But before we get into that, because I learned some really cool things that apply to business. You guys are going to love these. I wanted to congratulate you, babe, because you are crushing your glossy holiday sale. And I'm so proud of you.

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December 18th.

December 18th. Buy two, get one free. Okay. So I've been wanting to get better and better at pickleball. And we belong to this country club in Newport beach here, which is a tennis and pickleball club. And it is like a who's who of business there. And it's great networking. So I've. I've been wanting to get, like, I want to go from good to great so I can really play well there and I've got a buddy named John who also is trying to do the same thing there. So he has roped me into taking pro lessons, and I'm so glad that he has. So the guy that is giving us lessons, he is such a good coach that he coaches two people that are in the top 50 pro pickleball players in the country. And so obviously, we're gonna get pretty good pretty quick working with this guy. Well, there were a few lessons in there that applied to business that totally stuck out. And that's what I came home and I was telling Lori all these analogies, and she's like, this has to be. Or he says. She said, so the first lesson is this. He said to us before we even had a paddle in hand, he goes, matter of fact, he goes, put those paddles down. This is the most important lesson. It has nothing to do with you holding the paddle. I said, okay, what's that? And he said, it's mindset. And specifically, it's the mindset of assuming that the ball is always coming to you, even in the least likely of scenarios. And he said, it's the mindset of being ready. You must always assume the ball is coming to you in any scenario, because that way you're ready, and it shaves a half a step or a full step off of your motion. It's all about being in mentally in the position to be able to react faster to the opportunity in front of you. And not only did that help our game significantly, but when you think about it with business, how many people are you envious of? Where you're like, why are they always getting the opportunities? Why is their business going so well? Why am I working so hard not getting a break and feel like this person's getting a break? Well, it's because they have the mindset of being ready for the opportunity that's in front of them. They have the mindset that the ball is always coming to them. They hell call the law of attraction even. And that's not where I was going with this. But that also applies. Having the mindset that everything is coming to you will make more things come to you.

So if we're translating this into business, just like Chris is saying, opportunities don't go to lucky people. They go to ready people. They go to people who are positioned and ready. Because if you think about the amount. Amount of opportunities that have probably come your way that you haven't even recognized because you're not prepared for it, or maybe you've been in a room where there's someone who could offer you something that could be a massive opportunity, but because you're not ready, you wouldn't even bother going up and asking for it or introducing yourself to that person. We are always in rooms of opportunities, but it just determines if they're going to come to you by your readiness.

So lesson number one, always assume the ball, AKA the opportunity is coming to you. And his mindset first. He literally made us learn that before picking up our paddles. Then he gives us the paddles and he says, lesson number two is this. You guys are young, athletic guys and I was watching you play. That's what he said to us because he watched us play a little bit beforehand first and said, and I can tell that you think that you can make up for any lack of talent by using your speed or your athletic talent out there. He said, the problem is this. In this game and in life, fundamentals beat raw talent every time. And guess what? He's not wrong, because I've got a real example of this. So after we had our lessons, after we were already like a hundred percent better than before the lessons, we went and we played some pickup games with some guys at the club. And you kind of rotate through and you play whoever's up next. Well, we were standing across from two guys in their mid-70s. Now, no disrespect, but these guys were statues. They were so, like, I don't know, sore or stiff, whatever the word would be. They couldn't bend over to pick up, pick up the ball. And I'm not exaggerating, they couldn't move. So John and I felt bad. We're like, oh God, this is gonna be terrible. Like, you know, maybe we'll be nice to these guys. Lori. They beat us two games in a row, 11 to 3 and 11 to 5. Why? Because they understood the fundamentals. They knew exactly where to be. Like, being in the put yourself in the right position matters more than talent. They understood exactly how to use their paddle to get me on tilt. They get me going one way and all of a sudden they hit it the other way. It's a one guy had a no look hit. I'm not kidding. So he had this little talent where he would look the other way and then hit it the opposite direction. Now he's a statue. He couldn't move to save his life, but he didn't have to. He was always in the right position and he knew how to get us on tilt. And so these two guys in their mid upper 70s that literally physically couldn't Move beat young John and I 11 to 3 and 11 to 5 because they understood the fundamentals.

So in business, this is really where, if you think about it, talent can really create momentum. Like you can build a lot of things up with talent and natural skill and natural draw, natural charisma, all of those things. But fundamentals are the things that create scale. So a lot of people, you'll kind of see that people who maybe are good at something can get out there, they can wow people. But maybe you notice that they don't have a really big business or they feel like they're always capping out. It's because it's the fundamentals that are going to be scalable. Okay, taking a moment for a rich girl tip for you. If you're somewhere between 500k and a million and trying to scale beyond that and feeling weirdly stuck right now, I'm going to tell you something that no one in your circle is going to ever tell you. You're not stuck. You're just surrounded by people who can't take you where you want to go. So we need to be honest. You've outgrown your current circle. You've outgrown the rooms that you're in. And probably a whole lot of the advice that you have been getting is only going to have you regress or keep you stuck exactly where you are. So rich girl rule number one, proximity is a power move, you guys. You can't scale from asking people who haven't built what you want. And number two, if you're the one mentoring everyone, you're in the wrong room. So trust me, Chris and I have learned this the very expensive way. I have to tell you, this is going to hurt. We once paid 75k each for a mastermind where we were the most successful people in the room. Cute for our ego, Terrible for our business and our pocketbooks. That was one of the most expensive, expensive lessons we've ever had to learn. No one was stretching us. No one had the answers that we really needed to scale. No one was playing much bigger than us. And we will never do that again. You guys. Everything changed when we finally got into the spaces where people talked investments, systems, scale and hiring like CEOs, not just hustling more rooms where conversations literally collapse. Timelines, you guys. And that's why we created the elite entrepreneur Mastermind. It is two, three and a half day luxury in person retreats with incredible experiences and it's monthly challenge solving calls, it's direct access to Chris and myself. It's a curated high level network where money moves faster because everyone is thinking so much bigger. Thinking big and making millions of doll is the baseline in this room. So if you're ready for that type of room that finally matches your ambition, if you're done being the biggest thinker and pouring into everyone in your space and not getting poured into, just go to Instagram and DM me the word apply. Or you can go to show notes and you can click on the link below that says Elite Entrepreneur Mastermind. I will send you all of the details and from there we can book a call if you have more questions. You guys don't forget about rule number three is to not wait for your circle to elevate you. Get in the room that literally upgrades your entire identity. And we also have the mentor collective Mastermind. If you have not hit over 500k yet. So go and check that out. And I am so excited to spend time with you in these incredible in person rooms next year. So you need clear messaging that people can instantly understand. You need an offer that solves one specific problem well, you need simple systems that reduce decision fatigue and reduce you doing the same thing over and over and over again. And these are all different things in your business that you, you literally need to focus on. And they are the fundamentals of your business.

I love that you brought up the people with all the charisma. You're like, oh my gosh, they get a fast start in their business, but they hit a ceiling. Just like us on a pickleball court. We lean on our athletic ability. But guess what? You hit a ceiling and get beat by a couple 70 year olds. This is good news for all of you listening. If you feel like you're not naturally talented or if you're not naturally smart or naturally charismatic or like, oh gosh, I don't understand numbers. I don't understand that. Right, because that's a real thing. A lot of people are like, I'm not naturally inclined to be good at this. It doesn't matter if you learn the fundamentals, you can be way better and have no ceiling compared to the person that's getting by on their charisma or the one or two things that they're naturally good at.

And a lot of burnout is coming from wasted movement.

Oh yeah, waste energy.

Meaning maybe you're posting without capturing your leads. So you're doing all of these posts, you're doing all of these emails, but maybe you don't have a clean cta, maybe you don't have a clean many chat. Maybe you don't have a place for these people to go so you can post, post post all day thinking you' going to capture some people in the dms. But these are not systems that are scalable and you're creating a ton of audience attention without conversion strategy. So you're working harder instead of smarter.

Yeah, our instructor talked a lot about he said if you're tired after the first game you are absolutely doing it wrong because you shouldn't have a lot of wasted energy out there, including the number of reps that we took, how to properly hit a ball on a return, how to properly hit a ball and reserve. And he was so anal about always have the paddle here when you start, always have the paddle there when you start. Always be right here with your body because if you don't take a larger swing, if you don't waste all this motion, it saves your energy, it saves the time and you can react quicker. So fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals will always make up for anything else.

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The third lesson he gave us was to stop staring at the score. Instead Work the plan. He said, listen, just like in business. Now, he drew his own business analogy here, by the way. I don't know if that's a coincidence or what, but he goes, just like in business, you don't sit and stare at your bank account all day long expecting it to grow. He said, instead, you stare at the plan and you analyze the plan and you work the plan all day. And then as a result, the bank account grows. And so this is the same thing in pickleball. You don't, like, concentrate on the score and hope that you're going to score more. You have to concentrate not to go back to the fundamentals, but you have to concentrate on the fundamentals. You have to concentrate on the plan. When you're playing partners, there's a very specific plan called stacking, like based on who's left handed, who's right handed. There's all these things that you have to do in order to work the plan.

All right? So just like Chris said, in business, you're not going to grow by obsessively checking your stuff. I don't know about you, but I've absolutely posted reels before and then just stared at it for an hour. It was like, what am I? What is this weird addiction that's happening right now? I'm like, no, you post it because that's the plan. You get off and you go do something else that is a part of the plan. Like so many people get stuck refreshing their Shopify, refreshing their Instagram, going and checking their emails. They're doing so much busy work and checking in on so many things that they're not actually getting to the work of what moves the needle. So every day in your business, ask yourself, when you're doing each task, is this moving the needle? Is this bringing dollars in? What is this doing?

And I've got a fourth lesson that is like nothing. He taught us instead, it's something I observed and it was this. We joined this pickleball club, I don't know, six, seven months ago. And I had all the intentions of going one, to have more fun in my life. But number two, because I know that matter of fact, the owner told us there's a higher concentration of billionaires, you know, nine figure millionaires like hundred million and up that are members of the club there than any other paid club in the area, which is hard to believe. This is Newport Beach. And so the networking there is off the charts. And I've been meaning to go for that, but guess what? Despite my good intentions, I wasn't going. I was making excuses. I gotta go to the gym instead, or I got this meeting instead, or, oh, it's not enough time to just dip in for a couple games or it feels awkward to go figure it out. I had all the excuses, right? So we're paying for this membership, not using it. But I wanted to really go badly. Enter John into my life. He joins the club and he's like, hey, we're gonna start going every single Thursday. I found this dudes club and it's great networking. And he said, hey, we're going to take lessons. Hence why we ended up taking lessons today. Hey, we're going to spend Saturday. We're going to play a couple games at a time, then we're going to take this lesson and then we're going to play a few games afterwards and end up spending three and a half hours there playing. I wouldn't be doing this without having a friend or a person in my life that said, hey, I know you have this goal. I'm going to make us do this. And now I'm so happy that I've got somebody. You know, for the past few weeks now, I've been going, making me do this. And so the fourth lesson is, guys, if you are putting something up, if you're procrastinating, if you can't make yourself do something, you know, that you should or want to be doing, yeah, it's partially your fault. But more importantly this time to analyze why you don't have somebody in your life that's saying, hey, I know this is important to you. I'm going to make you go and grab you by the hand and say, we're doing this. We can't do it by ourselves. Despite our good intentions, we're always going to run out of energy. We're always going to run out of time. It's very important that you are critical about who's in your life and are they pushing you towards your goals or are they allowing you to make excuses?

We're so grateful for you guys. I hope that this helps you really look at the different things, not only to open you up to new networks, new business ideas, but also when you're happy. It's going to reflect in everything that you do in your relationships, your life, and you're going to become a magnet for those opportunities.

Speaking of opportunities, guys, we have now passed the halfway mark for filling up the elite level Mastermind. That means seats are running real quickly. Matter of fact, we have four more invitations out there. I know for sure. Three of them are going to say yes after doing their interviews. So we're actually way past the halfway mark. So don't delay. I know it's like the holidays and I know you're like, oh gosh, I'm not thinking about masterminds till next year, etc. Don't delay because you're going to miss out on ours. This is the most hands on, most lock arms, most talented room of 30 businesses that you could ever wish to be in. If you have a seven or eight figure business, so go to Chrisharder Me Mastermind. It's hybrid coaching and mastermind. So you get the group, you get the collaboration and you get the one on one coaching with me. You get the text access to Lori and I. I mean this is the one where like okay, how can we help be responsible for your business success this year. So if that sounds good and if you have a seven or eight figure business, technically if you have a business over 500k, you're allowed to apply for it. Go to chrisharder me forward slash mastermind. That is chrisharder me m e Forward slash mastermind.

You guys, this will literally collapse time for you. Don't spend another year trying to figure it out on your own when you could actually reach your goals this year and beyond. Okay, we will talk to you next week. Thanks guys.

Sam.