🏋️‍♀️ I hired an Olympian

Last week I hired an Olympian.

Here’s what I learned and how it will help your business:

Background: I play badminton recreationally regularly to a decent standard, but I thought it is about time I got some professional help. If it is something I am going to do regularly for the foreseeable future then I may as well be good at it. So I hired a badminton coach, Rajiv Ouseph.

I looked for a coach as I was inspired by another read through of the fantastic article “Personal Best”, and the progress my own clients have made recently. I know the power of coaching, so I was confident that the right coach would help me improve quickly.

He arrived 20 mins late, bad start.

When we finally got started, I saw the impact almost immediately. He identified part of my play that I thought was a weakness as a major strength, albeit an unrealised one.

I have always struggled attacking from the back of the court, defaulting to positional and trick play if forced backwards. He made a very minor tweak in the way I was doing things and within literally 5 minutes I could see the difference. I was skeptical at first, but I embraced his advice and saw an enormous improvement immediately. He took me from unconscious incompetence to conscious competence.

Despite playing for years and thinking I had a great overview of my playstyle and my body, he could see things I could not. He had the experience, and the external view point. He was right, he saw that a small change switched a weakness into a key strength.

His advice was almost the complete opposite to what the other players at my level (and slightly above) were telling me I should work on and try to improve. They told me to work on clearances to reset the rally, but he told me to instead work on back court aggression. He was right. The back court aggression comes with many advantages.

I have implemented his advice and it works much better. What might have taken me years of trial and error to figure out was learned in one session. I saw such a leap in performance after even one session, it was absolutely worth the investment.

So how does this impact your business?

It reminded me of three key lessons that have served me well:

1. If you want to be truly excellent at something you aren’t going to get there by copying the people at your level. You can’t become great by mimicking mediocrity. His advice helped me leapfrog an entire level and advanced my play by years.

   
   

2. There is significant value in something as simple as external perspective. Sometimes, we are too close to our own work to see what needs to change. An experienced outsider can provide insights that we might never have noticed on our own. It helps if they are an expert in your field, but in my experience someone simply being external is a big enough advantage. This applies to business and personal development.

   
   

3. Small changes can have outsized impact. I see this with clients all the time - often, 90% of what they’re doing is great but they just need someone to show them what to tweak or what to focus on for very significant improvement to happen very quickly. My coach didn’t suggest a complete overhaul but a minor tweak that had a massive effect. Sometimes the biggest improvements come from refining small but crucial aspects, rather than making drastic changes.

Look for people who are where you want to be. Reach out to them for help. Their experience and external perspective can leapfrog your performance to the next level and save you years of trial and error.

I shared this in my Work Smart Wednesday newsletter. Want the full set of related insights? You can read them here: https://worksmartwednesday.substack.com/p/work-smart-wednesday-january-29-2025

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