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Embrace the Process, Not the Results

I’ve been coaching soccer now for more than ten years, and it is the one thing in my life that has remained constant. My coaching philosophy is simple, Better People, Better Soccer Players, Better Athletes.

Recently I took over a group of girls that are raw, and throughout the season I’ve preached falling in love with the process and letting the results come naturally. After working with one of my clients, I recently discovered that this lesson could be taken from the soccer fields and applied to our businesses.

You see I was a good player, not a great player, but I was skilled enough to play at a high level throughout high school. The funny thing is, I can probably only recall a handful of moments from my playing days; the 40-yard screamer my junior year, the clinching penalty in the regional tournament, the left foot volley to put us ahead in a tournament final.

But, if you were to ask me to recall moments from my time coaching, I could rattle off a hundred instances in vivid detail. Andrew making a diving save to secure a win, Colin scoring the winning goal in a tournament championship, Samantha scoring three goals against a boys team.

As a coach, I focus most of my most effort on getting my players to fall in love with the day to day process. And here’s why. My girls prepare all week for one or two games on the weekend. They’ll practice Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to play a competitive game for an hour. They’ll practice and workout all winter to prepare for games in the Spring. No one runs a 40-yard sprint in the cold just because they enjoy it.

As athletes, they’ll spend the majority of their time preparing for a single moment, and if they hate what goes into training for the game, they’ll burn out and stop playing altogether. If their love of the sport is only defined throughout a 60-minute game, that may or may not go their way; they’ll never find success or gratification.

In today’s world of instant gratification, we find ourselves looking towards winning the game now instead of embracing the process. With the girls, I battle the fact that they are playing against teams that are winning more games than them. As entrepreneurs and business owners, we fight social media and see someone we know on vacation in Hawaii or Grant Cardone flying around in 10x Air.

The High of Winning is Short Lived

The high of winning is short lived. When my girls win their game, we get ice cream and then you know what? It’s back to work on Monday. When I close a big deal, we celebrate with dinner and then it’s back to work on Monday. If you consistently find yourself chasing the win, you’re going to wake up one morning stressed out and miserable.

I hate goals; I think they’re lazy… They’re finite, they imply an ending, or conclusion. If your goal is to make $100,000 and you succeed year one, what’s next? If your goal is to close a particular deal, what’s next? What happens if you fail?

Wins are a result of embracing the process. A win means you’ve done everything necessary to achieve a particular outcome. You don’t learn anything from success… Learning and growth come from your most significant losses. The ones that keep you up at night.

Failure Defines Winners

If you ask an athlete or business owner to recall the most defining moment in their career it is most likely from a loss or failure. It’s in your losses that you adjust your day to day processes to work towards achieving the next win. When my girls lose it’s because we didn’t execute well enough as a team and as a coach, I address it on Monday. When I lose a deal or client, it means I didn’t execute well enough, and as a business owner, I address it on Monday.

Embracing this cycle of growth relieves the stresses of executing. When I walk into a meeting, my mental state will not be defined by the outcome. Why? My business and my successes are determined by the process not a single moment. For every failure, I’m that much closer to a defining win.

Over the last five years I’ve built multiple 7-Figure service businesses, invested in a few more, and currently, have clients in 23 states, and with each company, the goal is the same. Clients bring me in to increase their revenues from x amount of dollars to y amount. The process? Well, that’s entirely up to me. Whether it be developing and executing a digital marketing strategy, helping the owner put processes in place, or even investing in the company everything I do is very much about the process and I LOVE EVERY SINGLE MINUTE OF IT.