10,000 Kicks (3 Min Read)

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” – Bruce Lee

10,000 Kicks

After we published ​SHIFT​, I traveled the country teaching all-day workshops to promote the book. Teaching ballrooms packed with real estate professionals was daunting. Yes, I’d co-authored three best-selling real estate titles. No, I’d never personally sold a house. To raise the stakes, we were in the Great Recession and people desperately needed a path forward in the worst real estate market of our lifetime. One day in Kansas City stands out.

The host let me know we’d need to delay the start because a busload of agents from St. Louis hadn’t arrived yet. They had attended my class the day before and were coming back for more. For most trainers, this would be a cause for celebration. I chose to panic instead.

“But I don’t have anything different to share!” I told the host.

“Jay, you don’t need to say anything differently,” he said. “They are coming because they want to hear it again.”

Light bulb moment. When someone likes the message, they want to hear it again and again.

A few weeks ago, I got to attend a mastermind with ​Justin Welsh​ and hear him share how he built his audience of over 650,000 on LinkedIn in less than 5 years. His core strategy is posting advice for solopreneurs two times a day. That’s 730 posts a year. He struggled to come up with content to share. “Then I realized that I was in the concert business,” he shared. When you go see your favorite band, you don’t actually want to hear the new album. You want them to play all your favorite songs. That’s true for Taylor Swift, and it’s true for you and me.

“You don’t need 1,000 things to say, you need 1,000 ways to say the same thing,” he declared.

These days he plays his 180 greatest hits. He tracks data on engagement, comments, and click-throughs to target the content his audience L-O-V-E-S. Every 90 days, he goes back to the beginning and starts over. He tweaks. He adds current relative context. But the messages are essentially the same. And his audience keeps coming back to the encore.

We all need to keep hearing the same message. Sometimes it takes 1,000 repetitions (and some duct tape) for the lesson to stick. We’re growing and evolving, too. We’re not the same person we were the first time we heard a message. We likely learn a brand new lesson the fifth or 500th time. And the fundamentals rarely change. When we envision our future, our plans should be based as much on the things that never change as on the things that might.

Don’t be afraid to repeat your truth. The world needs to hear it again more than you might imagine.

One question to ponder in your thinking time: What lesson do I need to hear again and again?

Make an Impact!
Jay Papasan
Co-author of The ONE Thing & The Millionaire Real Estate Agent