You Don't Get Paid To Prepare

It's rarely a lack of opportunity.

Opportunities show up more often than people admit. The problem is what happens when they do.

If you're not ready, it passes.

Here's the thing about preparation almost nobody accounts for properly.

The ratio is nothing like what you assume.

Any keynote speech I haven't delivered before, I rehearse in full, from start to finish, at least five times. So a one hour talk costs me at least five hours of delivery practice before I've even walked on stage.

The entire point of those five practice runs is that the sixth time looks effortless.

It isn't effortless. It's rehearsed.

Same with mentoring calls. An initial sixty minute session usually costs me three to four hours of preparation beforehand.

Which brings me to the part that catches people out.

You don't get paid to prepare. You get paid to execute.

The preparation happens on your own time, at your own cost, with nobody watching and nobody compensating you for it.

That feels unfair right up until you realise it's the entire advantage.

Because it means preparation is optional. Nobody's checking. Nobody's making you.

Which is exactly why so few people do it properly, and why the ones who do look like they're operating at a completely different level.

They're not more talented. They just did the hours nobody paid them for.

And here's why this matters more than it sounds...

Opportunities are moments. Short ones.

The pitch.
The interview.
The room you finally get into.

You cannot prepare inside the moment. By the time it arrives, whatever you've done is what you have.

Which means every opportunity is really a test of decisions you made weeks earlier, when nothing was happening and nobody was watching.

So look at what's coming.

The presentation.
The conversation.
The thing already sitting in your calendar.

Then ask honestly what ratio you're running.

Because most people prepare at one to one, then wonder why they get outperformed by someone who prepared at five.

If you know someone who would benefit from reading this, please forward it to them. It may change the trajectory of their life for the better, and the catalyst could be you.