833: The SUPER simple strategy that changed my life! (And business... and tennis game... and EVERYTHING!)

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Hey, what is up?

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Welcome to this episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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As always, I'm your host, brian Lofermento, and in this Solo Sunday episode, I'm going to share with you the one strategy that totally transformed my tennis game.

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And there's a reason why I'm sharing this with you.

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It's because this strategy will help you win more, whether it's in life, in sports, in business, in literally anything.

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I'm excited about this one.

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Let's dive in.

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So if you've been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, then chances are you already know that one of my favorite hobbies in the world is tennis.

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It's a sport that I picked up a little bit later in life.

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Soccer was always my life, as a kid and as a young adult, and when I moved to Los Angeles in my mid-20s, I picked up tennis, and I have never looked back.

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I absolutely love tennis and I've dove deep into the world of tennis strategy and how to improve as a tennis player and especially as an adult learner.

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In the sport.

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There's so much more that I have to catch up on because I didn't grow up playing it.

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So, whether it's the technical aspects of your swing, dynamics and strokes, or the actual strategies and tactics that go along with winning a tennis match.

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It's been so much fun to go deep into that world and, as all of you listeners know, I'm a big believer that everything we do in life is just a microcosm for life, and business is one of those things.

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So I think that there are business and life lessons that we can find in literally anything and everything.

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So I want to tell you this tennis strategy that completely transformed my game.

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Now, tennis is a really unique sport in that it's, as far as I can think of, it's the only sport where you warm up with your opponent and, as a result of that, it means that the game actually begins before the game actually begins.

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And the reason is is because in soccer and basketball and baseball, you're always warming up with your teammates.

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You guys are running drills together, you are passing the ball together, you're doing all of those things.

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But in tennis, you hit the court with your opponent and you're, you know, 78 feet apart from each other, hitting the ball back and forth to each other.

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So you can go both get a feel for the ball that day and both get a feel for your strokes that day.

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But it also gives you a glimpse into your opponent's strengths, weaknesses, tendencies, habits, preferences All of these things start to reveal themselves as soon as the warmup, and so that's something that I didn't really understand, and the more that I got to work with incredible tennis instructors, some of which have been here on this podcast.

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You all have heard from Ian Westerman, who's the CEO of Essential Tennis, quite a few times here on this show, including, I think, most recently in episode 499,.

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Ian is an incredible entrepreneur, one of my favorite human beings on planet Earth, without a doubt.

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Ian is incredible, and he's also an incredible tennis coach, an incredibly talented I wasn't sure if I was going to go incredibly talented tennis player or coach, because he's absolutely both, and he's also a great YouTuber.

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But the more that I work with the likes of Ian, for example, the more that I realize the best tennis players identify a strategy as soon as the warmups, and then they commit to that strategy, and so for me, as a beginner tennis player, what I used to do was I'd hit the court and I would just want to mix things up.

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I would want to have my opponent going that way to their forehand side, then the next shot.

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I'd want to get them running to their backhand side, then I'd want to hit a drop shot and bring them closer to the net.

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Then I would hope to hit a lob, a high lob, and make them chase it or hit it out.

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You know, that's the nature of tennis is unforced errors.

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Basically, what I'm telling you is that I thought the key to success was diversifying, was confusing.

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Your opponent was doing all of these different things, chopping and changing and that's when I was introduced to this tennis strategy that one tennis coach calls it the battering ram.

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And we're really gonna talk about the battering ram here in today's episode, because the battering ram strategy basically tells you that once you've identified a winning strategy, do it over and over and over and over and over and over again.

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And so for me, it's funny, because when I found something that worked in tennis let's say, my opponent has a really weak backhand I would hit to that backhand.

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What happens when you hit to someone's backhand side?

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They go all the way to that side of the court because they have to retrieve the ball.

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Now, what's tricky to me as a newer tennis player back in my, when I picked it up in my mid-20s is that if they're over on their backhand side, the entire forehand side of their court is completely open, so naturally I wanted to hit there, but the battering ram strategy says to actually do the opposite.

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If you've identified the winning formula, is their backhand hit to their backhand again, and again and again.

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When you hit to their backhand and they go retrieve it and they hit it back, do it again and then do it again.

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And it feels so counterintuitive to me because in tennis there's just one court.

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It's the two of you are sharing one court together, and it's so appealing to hit it to the open court.

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And I think that so frequently in life that is something that we all tend to do is that if we're posting on Facebook and we go over to our Instagram and we see that that's empty, we're just like we should probably also post on Instagram too.

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And then we see others posting on TikTok and we see our own TikTok account with not many videos and we say, well, we should also be posting to that too.

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And then we listen to a business podcast and we hear the guests or the hosts talking about how important LinkedIn is, and we look at our own LinkedIn and we say, well, that's empty, maybe I should start posting there as well.

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And we're doing all of these different things quote unquote always hitting into the open court without any level of success.

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And I think that the battering ram we can talk about it in so many different ways.

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This is not the first time we've talked about this concept here on the show and it's certainly not going to be the last time.

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I've previously equated it.

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I love in the world of personal training and fitness.

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A lot of personal trainers call it same stuff, different shirt, and so on Instagram we see so many different fitness and exercise things where they're showing hey, today you can do these animalistic movements, tomorrow you can lift weights, then you can do long distance running, and they're always switching things up.

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But if you talk to the upper echelon of the best of the best in personal trainers, their personal philosophies are always same stuff, different shirt, figure out what's what works and do the same stuff every single day.

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Just wear a different shirt, hopefully.

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And so that's what's funny to them.

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The more conversations I have with them and obviously I know some incredibly successful business owners that have personal fitness businesses that are seven, eight figure entrepreneurs and they tell me they're like yeah, we don't share this on social media because it's boring.

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Nobody wants to see same stuff different shirt.

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They want to see all these different new things.

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But the more mature I get, not only as a person but especially as an entrepreneur, the more that I realize it's the battering ram strategy that really is the key to success.

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Is that when you find that strategy that works, or when youing ram strategy, that really is the key to success is that when you find that strategy that works, or when you pick that strategy that works maybe you don't know that it's going to work just yet you have a lot of evidence that supports it and makes it worthwhile to investigate.

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Use the battering ram strategy.

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Just keep on doing it day in and day out.

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Ignore that open court.

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Resist the urge to complicate things simply for the sake of complicating things.

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Keep it simple.

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It's something that I think about so frequently and in my own marketing, for example, I have really I have one primary marketing strategy and I just do that one primary marketing strategy.

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I've been doing it for literally years now.

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I'm never tempted to change it.

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I'm never tempted to experiment with it.

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I will fine tune it and I will optimize it, and I'm always going to do a little bit of AB testing so that I can get even better at my preferred marketing channel.

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But that's what I do day in, day out.

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Everyone on my team knows it.

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We do the exact same thing every single week, marketing wise.

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Why?

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Because it works.

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Now, what happens inevitably when it doesn't work every single time?

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Well, that's what the battering ram strategy is all about In tennis.

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Every time I hit to my opponent's weakness which let's just keep picking on the backhand, because for a lot of players, the backhand is their weakness it doesn't mean every time I hit to their backhand it's going to be a point for me.

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It doesn't mean that they're going to have an unforced error, but it does mean that I should keep going back to it.

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I've already identified that as a winning strategy based on the evidence that I've already established, and so in order to actually test it and in order to actually get results from it, I need to keep going to it.

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I can't give up on it too early.

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Now, let's say I keep going to the opponent's backhand and they just sort of figure it out and they start turning around.

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I'm not dumb, I'm not crazy.

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I'm not going to keep doing the exact same thing over and over when it's not working.

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Of course, there comes a time where you start trying another strategy.

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But the key to the battering ram and that's why this episode keeps on coming back to that is that once you do find that winning strategy, maybe for me it's hit to their forehand, maybe it's hit with a lot of topspin, maybe it's to slice everything, because they're really bad when the ball stays really low on the court.

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Whatever it is that I find as the new thing that is a winning strategy, I need to stick to that.

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Find the winning strategy and then battering ram it like crazy.

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It's not sexy, it's not exciting, it doesn't look good on social media to keep doing the exact same thing.

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Nobody posts the exact same thing every single day on social media.

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But guess what?

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We're not talking in this episode about how to win at social media.

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We are talking about how to win in business, in marketing, in sales, in sports, in a new hobby, in anything in life.

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It's to find that winning strategy and keep on doing it.

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I always think about that quote it's one of the most impactful quotes of my life and shout out to Nat Harward, who's a near and dear friend to this show.

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He's been on the show a bunch of times, more times than I can count.

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He for sure holds the guest record for how many episodes he's been on this show.

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He's been on the show a bunch of times, more times than I can count.

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He for sure holds the guest record for how many episodes he's been on this show.

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But his email signature he always writes pound the rock.

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It's like what I associate with Nat Harward and I always think when I think about pound the rock, I think about that quote.

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Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times, without as much as a crack showing in it.

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Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two.

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And I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

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And that's what I think is so powerful about the battering ram, about pounding the rock, about this quote that I just shared with you, about the stone cutter hammering away at the rock, is that when you keep doing what you know will work, then it starts to work and you start to win and you start to get results.

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We could literally apply this to anything.

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Look, I mean it's something.

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Myself and so many of our guests use a lot of fitness and health analogies because inherently it's very simple.

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We all know how health and fitness works.

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We know exactly what you can do to lose weight, to gain muscle, to get a six pack.

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We already know it's literally not rocket science Eat right, exercise, that's it.

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Those are the two ingredients.

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So if you and I know that works, we don't have to worry about complicating it, we don't have to worry about switching it up.

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We just have to stick to the winning strategy over and over, and, over and over again, and that right there is.

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The only difficult part about life, about business, about fitness, about sports, about anything is do you have that discipline to keep on going back to that winning strategy, as boring as it may be?

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And so for me, this battering ram strategy it's a constant reminder and fortunately I love to play tennis and so every time I step on the tennis court it is this reminder.

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And for you, I hope that this episode is your first and foremost reminder to put it on your radar, and I hope that you build this into your daily, weekly, monthly workflow and introspective time that you hopefully carve out for yourself is to really think about the battering ram and say, okay, what are those winning strategies.

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What's the strategy that I know that it works?

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I either have enough evidence, I know it intuitively or I actually have experienced that it works, and then I just need to do that.

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How can I just battering ram this thing like nobody's ever seen before?

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Because that's really the key, and I think it's so important for all of us to remember that we, as humans, love to complicate things.

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We, as humans, love to do different things.

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Variation is such a key part of life.

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Take it for me as someone who, back in 2012, 2013, when I was running my marketing agency, we constantly were whiteboarding all these different marketing funnels and workflows and sales processes and internal processes and client onboardings, and we quickly realized, as we got serious about scaling to six figures and beyond, we said let's just find out what works, let's just go to what works.

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This worked to get us that one client.

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Let's just keep doing that over and over and over again, and then we'll make that thing more scalable along the way.

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It's super effective.

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It's not always sexy and it's not always talked about, for those exact reasons, but the battering ram strategy is a powerful one and I invite you to take it on board in your life and in your business and in your marketing and in every pursuit that you have.

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That's it for me today.

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I am so excited for this week's episodes.

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We've got some really unique and dynamic guests coming on the show this week.

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Holy cow, we've got just three outrageously interesting and fascinating episodes from entrepreneurs and people who I really deeply respect and admire and who I personally cherish and appreciate and loved sitting down with and tapping into their business minds, their minds when it comes to succeeding in life and in business and in all the ways.

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Just to tease you a little bit, tomorrow in our Mindset and Motivation Monday episode, we're going to hear from Eric Bergland and that conversation centers around one key question of how do you hold people accountable?

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How do you hold people accountable?

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If you take a second to think about your answer to that today, you can probably make something up.

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You could probably come up with some sort of answer.

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That may or may not sound good, but Eric's going to call that out tomorrow and he's going to reveal a way that we can really hold our people and ourselves accountable with some really powerful questions that put so much of life and business into perspective.

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Then, in Wednesday's episode, which kicks off our May month of content climbing the ranks in the Fortune 500, becoming a CFO within the Fortune 500, to then pivoting and starting his own business.

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That really focuses on the blueprint for success in leadership, but also as a person on this planet, because so many ways we want to live out our best self-belief, our best mentorship for others, our best Attitude, our best highest version of ourselves.

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So you definitely don't wanna miss Eduardo's episode on Wednesday and then Friday.

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We've got such an awesome couple, hans and Katarina Wolf.

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They together own an interior design company and they're doing things a little bit differently in that space.

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So, whether you're into interior design or not, you're gonna wanna hear the way that they think about customer service, customer experience, delivery, onboarding, technology, business operations.

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There is some really cool stuff waiting for you in Friday's episode.

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So I'm not going to say anything else.

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You got to pound that subscribe button because we'll see you, as always every Monday, Wednesday, friday, saturday and Sunday here on the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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Hey, it's Brian here, and thanks for tuning in to yet another episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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Hey, it's Brian here, and thanks for tuning in to yet another episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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If you haven't checked us out online, there's so much good stuff there.

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Check out the show's website and all the show notes that we talked about in today's episode at thewantrepreneurshowcom.

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And I just want to give a shout out to our amazing guests.

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It's for real me, and I'm excited because I'll see you, as always every monday, wednesday, friday, saturday and sunday here on the entrepreneur to entrepreneur podcast.