2.
What We Can All Learn from Coach John
Wooden There
is one man who is my own personal hero,
and that is coach John Wooden, the
former basketball coach at UCLA. To me
he is the greatest model today of
someone who has achieved great success,
while also remaining extremely humble about
his accomplishments.
When
it comes to success, there are few who
can equal this man not only in
basketball, but in other
professional fields as well. As a player
in high school in Martinsville, Indiana,
John Wooden led his team to the state
championship one year, and his team
finished as the runner-up to the state
champions in two additional seasons. During his years playing
basketball in high school, he was
selected to the All-State team three
years in a row.
At
Purdue University he led his team to the
national championship, and he was
selected to the All-American team for
three consecutive seasons. In
addition to this, in his final year at
the University he was named College
Basketball's Player of the Year.
In
his 40 years of coaching at both the
high school and college levels, he never
had a losing season. In fact, his teams
won more than 80% of the games that they
played. And in his final
years of coaching at UCLA, his teams won
the national championship 10 times in 12
years.
He
is one of only two players enshrined in
the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a
player and a coach. And the annual award
for the greatest college basketball
player in the country is named after
him. It's called The Wooden Award.
But
it's who John Wooden is as a human being
that has set him apart form the rest of
the basketball community. He is a
spiritual man who is true to his
principles, and he is also very humble.
When
he was approached by UCLA one year ago
about dedicating and naming their
basketball court after him, he initially
wasn't very excited about the idea. But
when the school later offered to include
his wife Nell's name along with him on
the court, his level of interest began
to increase.
Nell
was the love of his life, the woman he was
married to for over 50 years, and
someone he has missed dearly since her
passing more than 15 years ago. He finally
allowed the UCLA court to be named after
both Nell and himself, but only after
the University agreed to put her name
before his when writing their names on the court.
The
players he coached for 40 years
continually mention how much Coach
Wooden taught them about how to live
their lives successfully as adults by
the principles he instilled in them
during practice. And his Pyramid of
Success, a system he designed
illustrating the foundational building
blocks for achieving great success in
one's life, has become legend.
In
addition to everything already
mentioned, in
2003 Coach Wooden was awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom by
President George Bush in a ceremony at
The White House. This is the highest
honor that any private citizen of the
United States can be awarded by our
Government.
But
for me one of the greatest experiences
of my life
came in in 1998 when I had the pleasure
of going to lunch with John Wooden. I
approached him as an anonymous fan and told him how much it
would mean to me to spend some time with
him one-on-one, and he graciously
accepted the invitation. And after our lunch
he invited me into his home where we
spent some time together talking in his private
study.
Amid
all of the incredible basketball
memorabilia he had in his study, Coach asked me
to listen to a recording that he
considered to be very
personal to him. He then played me a
recording of one of his former players,
Swen Nater, singing " Wind
Beneath My Wings" in a heartfelt
honor and tribute to the Coach.
As I felt a lump in my throat and my
eyes getting wet, I was transfixed as I
watched who many consider to be the greatest Coach of all time,
peacefully
sitting back in his chair, taking in the
beauty of this very special message from
one of his former players. It was a very incredible
moment that I will always, always remember.
In
spending two hours with my personal
hero that day, I also learned a great
deal more about competitive greatness.
Coach Wooden is living proof that we can
all rise to the top of our professions
while being humble, continually
caring about others, and giving our best
to make a difference in other people's
lives.
And
if
there is one additional tool I can pass
on to you right now that I learned from
this great man, it would be this:
Coach
Wooden believed firmly in preparing his
players for games. He believed
that when a team prepares properly in
practice, they maximize the probability
of executing at the
highest level of excellence during the games
themselves.
I
can think of no greater parallel between
this and what you experience in your own
real estate career. Success in your real
estate career depends largely on how
effectively you present yourself to
others. With this in mind, how much time
do you spend preparing and rehearsing
your presentations before you actually
deliver them in person to your clients?
In addition to this, how often do
you rehearse in advance how you'll
handle the objections your clients
and prospects normally throw at you
during your presentations with them?
When you continually work on your
presentations and on overcoming
objections, you'll find yourself
successfully enrolling a higher
percentage of your prospects in working
with you exclusively. This means that
you'll make more money every single
year that you're working in your real
estate business.
Just
as Coach Wooden firmly believed in
practice and preparation for his
players, the better prepared you are to
deliver your presentations and respond
to what your clients and prospects will
say to you, the
faster you'll see your results in your
real estate business begin
to really accelerate for you.
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