This newsletter is being sent to 46 individuals this week!
It’s a simple fact.
Depending on what statistic you look at. Attention spans are at an all-time low. I’ve seen it be reported that humans have an 8.25 second attention span on average. Goldfish can focus longer than that!
We’ve all been there before. You send an e-mail to your team, staff members, executives, whomever. Really detailed and thought out. Explaining who needs to do what and by when. Only for some individuals to respond to THAT VERY E-MAIL and say…
“What do I need to do?”
After going through that experience a time or two, you make sure to shorten your e-mails.
Thinking…maybe it’s me?
Only to realize that even when you cut the e-mail in half, you still receive the same questions.
I don’t know that there’s a specific answer to fixing this. I’d be a hypocrite to say that I’ve never made the same mistake in scanning an e-mail quickly with my eyes and responding.
However, try a few of these things when composing your next email to a group of individuals with multiple key points.
Use numbers or bullets to break up the e-mail
Bold or underline key points to make them stand out
Review your message and look at it from the recipients standpoint
Highlight key points in the intro and ending of your message
Simply pick-up the phone
Episode #89 - James Williams
“Who am I? My title was head coach, my title was basketball coach — and now I’m not a basketball coach. Who am I?” - James Williams
He has coached AAU, high school (Kings Ridge, Norcross, and Charles Drew), Rust, Voorhees and now at South Carolina-Beaufort. He worked for Cabral Huff (Episode 83) at Voorhees and then took over for him as the head coach. Topics include: wanting to be the coach he never had, a young players family situation inspired him to stop drinking, what he learned from coaching elite talent in a high-expectation program, COVID, being fired and servant leadership.
Episode #90 - Rob Beckmann
Coach Rob Beckmann explains his journey coaching high school, junior college men's basketball and junior college women's basketball. He has made stops at State College of Florida, Independence Community College and now is the head women's basketball coach at LSU Eunice. He is coming off of back-to-back conference championships and Coach of the Year honors! We talk about what he learned being let go early in his career, building programs, what he loves about the junior college level, mentorship and continuous learning.
Book Review
(2024)
Action instead of overthinking
Love rejection
Unlimited upside of just asking
No = Not Now
Follow-Up = Twice as likely to get a Yes
Customers want solutions not ideas (helping not selling)
Ask your customers for feedback (Raving Fans/Zone of Influence)
Look for something working in one category and bring it to another
Study your own unhappiness and think of solutions that would sell to improve it
Pivot and change along the way
Everyone is interested until they have to pay
How many potential customers are there?
Who is one person you know that would really like this?
What would make this a no brainer for you?
What would you pay for that? Subscription model or one-off price?
Double down on what works
Beer Mode and Coffee Mode
Big fan of David Perell! He’s one of the first people outside of athletics that I started following towards the end of my coaching career. I thought his newsletter was fantastic and it’s actually where I got the original idea of starting my original newsletter back in 2021.
This is one of my favorite pieces that he wrote.
Worth Your Time
It’s not a video but an article this week. I don’t know Coach D.J. Eliot personally. He’s a follower of the Fired Coaches Podcast account on X. He’s been coaching Division I football since his playing career ended at Wyoming in 1998.
Thinking of him and his family. RIP Drue.
Fired Coaches Podcast started in May 2020. The podcast interviews coaches, scouts, media and others connected to the sports world that fell from the mountaintop. They were either fired, resigned or told that their contract would not be renewed. Level does not matter. The story does.