Don't wish it was easier, wish you were better
I had the pleasure to sit down with FA Licensed Intermediary and author, Matt Klienman, we talked setbacks, taking responsibility and thinking outside the box.
Matt Kleinman is the Director at New Vision Football and an FA Licensed Intermediary. He also wrote the book Show Me The Mon£y!: An insider's guide to becoming a top level professional footballer.
📺 Watch our interview here:
⛰️ Setbacks
We’re all likely to suffer setbacks in some capacity; it’s how we view them.
I’m a firm believer in you grow through adversity, that those are the times that you grow the most, through adversity.
It’s also the time when you form your support squad…
…I don't see life as being a solo sport, I think it's a team sport, you need good people around you, you need supportive people who get you and who love you and support you in order to help you through those times of adversity, failure, whatever you want to call them.
One of my favourite quotes is the Japanese saying ‘Nana korobi, ya oki’, translating to ‘fall seven times, get up eight’ and Matt lives by this mantra too.
To me, as a 43 year old man, the measure of a person's success is based on how often they can fail, learn from that failure and then bounce back from that disappointment and keep persevering until they achieve their goal because life is about perseverance, you're going to get knocked down, it's about how you react to that knockdown.
Today, rather than avoid something in case I might fail, I try to adopt the attitude ‘if I can't, I must!’ and front it head-on so I’ve learned to get perfect later and not stop from trying something just because it might lead to failure.
Success doesn’t need to be fast.
As Matt rightly says, enjoy the experience and forget about being perfect.
🌼 Sowing seeds
This is a wonderful metaphor for life and how we should plan ahead. Success doesn’t just happen.
Take responsibility for everything you do in your life because, as you said before, you can only control the controllables. I don't think enough people take responsibility for how their lives turn out, they're always looking to pass the buck or blame to somebody else.
In Chapter 2 of Build the Invisible, I talked about the steps I took early on in my career and how I sought out inspirational authors, set weekly targets of reading articles, listening to podcasts and figured out where my interests lie.
The fruits of our labours won’t usually be visible immediately. But if we are patient, those good seeds will eventually yield good results.
The one thing I try to live by is ‘don't wish it was easier, wish you were better’
There are no better words of wisdom than these and if it were simpler, surely everyone would be doing it.
📦 Think outside the box
Matt describes himself as a people person and loves finding opportunities to connect the dots and marry up his two passions: working within sport and engaging with people.
It’s not all about the big gestures; it can be the smallest act of kindness, which shows you’ve thought about the other person.
I believe in adding value. The more value you can add to somebody and the more you can contribute without actually wanting anything back, it's funny how it repays itself.
And if you want to really impress and be remembered as someone who thinks creatively and enhances the lives of others, maybe you need to think a little differently.
I don't think I’ve every had any prospect come to me and offer some value, essentially what you're saying is [considering] a value-add before they come and speak to you. I don't think I’ve ever had anybody do that to me, albeit I’ve had lots of people approach and say “I would love some work experience in this industry…, what are the chances of coming and shadowing you, I’ll do anything for you, I’m happy to come in and do it completely unpaid for a while.
“I can't think of anybody that's come to me with anything that's been creative or innovative to try and get some work experience and I haven't heard of anything in any other industries where I’ve heard of people being particularly innovative.”
Feels like an opportunity waiting to be taken right there…
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