So What is the difference between Ordinary and Extraordinary, think about this in the literal sense. What is the difference? Well, the difference is the word EXTRA. So do you want to be an ordinary pro or an extraordinary pro? Well, an extra ordinary pro , puts in the extra, like Scott did Let’s not even go that far, let’s look at you as a student. What is an ordinary student? Well, an ordinary student is one who may do EVERYTHING that is required of them, always be on-time and turn in everything required. And this is EXPECTED. Even if some others do not do this, you really have not raised the bar yet, they have just lowered it for themselves and trust me it does not help. Well the great thing about being a student, apprentice or just getting started is that it is OK to make mistakes. At our school, we had a racquet facility that was owned by the college and this was what we called our “LEARNING LAB” this is where we could experiment, try new things out and if we made mistakes, or if something didn’t work out, no big deal. This how you learn and that was what we were doing. An example in my days as a PTM student , we would have a group of 4 go out on the weekend and each student had to give a 25 minute lesson on a specific topic. I might have done the serve, another might have done volleys, another groundstrokes and another strategy. It didn’t matter. What did matter was that we got out there and that meant we had to prepare a bit on what we were going to teach and then hopefully progress through the 25 minutes successfully, but if we didn’t, NO BIG DEAL, and we learned from it and it usually never happened again. We would also used constructive criticism to help each other out. Now, here is the kicker. Guess who kept getting better? WE WERE……….. Now here is a bigger kicker, guess who will probably get the nod when it comes to a good internship? WE WILL……… Well, it probably isn’t the person who just goes to class and the workshops. Sure there are some naturals out there, but as a director, if they do not seem too enthused about getting better, I might give the nod to someone else. So bottom Line: We are going to be talking a lot on this podcast about all of the “EXTRAS” that you can be doing right now and what you will need to prepare yourself for the industry and make yourself MORE attractive to head pros, directors and off court managers. And you need to be practicing this stuff over and over and over. REPETITION BUILDS CONFIDENCE and confidence is what directors and head prod are looking for.
