You Thought Forrest Gump was Good at Ping-Pong

There are two stories I'd like to share to prove that mastery comes with strategic practice. The first story is cute. While making a secret Santa with my son Kye in the basement, I was painting meticulously. Kye marveled and said. "Wow, Dad. You're really good at that. When I get bigger, I'll be able to do it too." I said. "Kye, it's not getting bigger that will make you better. It's a lot of practice. I've been painting for 35 years." He got it right away. It's not how many years you've been alive. It's how many reps you put in. Do you follow this simple mindset?

Once you get better with practice, you will start to notice a phenomenon take place. Your body will just do the best version without you thinking about it. It's called Unconscious Competence and it's where you have a routine that is excellent, efficient, and unbreakable. That's what we need to win in anything. And it's what we need to be able to optimize our solo cleaning businesses. I won't dig into this now, but there are 4 levels to work through: Unconscious Incompetence, Conscious Incompetence, Conscious Competence, and Unconscious Competence.

It takes lots of reps to master these 4 levels. There's another mindset we can borrow from weightlifting too. You can bulk up with high weight and low reps. Or, you can build lean muscle with precision movements, maximizing the negatives of the exercise, through lower weights and high repetitions. That's what I want you to do in your solo cleaning business. Lower the weight and work with precision slowly at first. Master the 4 levels until you reach the pinnacle, then switch to high weight and optimize with speed.

That's the process. Let's close this podcast with a story I've never shared publicly. But if you can get past the funny parts and the title of the competition, you will possibly catch the biggest nugget I've ever shared in the Solo Cleaning School Podcast.

The movie Forrest Gump came out in my freshman year at Penn State. I was an engineering student with homework until 3 or 4am every night. It was brutal. My freshman classes had 300+ students and my sophomore had 100. That's why many said that engineering was pre-business as the drop outs went into the school of business. I couldn't possibly work straight through, so I'd mosey to the freshman commons with my ping-pong paddle, wait my turn, and play until I lost. That's how it worked. The winner would stay on the table accepting new challengers. After a month or two, I improved my already excellent game to become the best freshman ping-pong player. I was already the best in my high school, or at least tied with Scott Shalom, who was a year ahead of me. How did I know I was the best freshman. Simple. I would get on the table when it was my turn and I would stop playing when I was tired. I didn't lose. I was good! There would always be the same pack of Chinese students hovering around the tables and they would cower when I showed up. I was arrogant for sure!

Read the rest of this article at the Solo Cleaning School website