Every year, usually between March and June I get a lot of return phone calls from players and parents I spoke to the preceding year at the same time. Usually it is when they just completed another season and did not achieve the results we discussed the year before.
When the year before we spoke about specific things that would need to change or need to be done in order to achieve a different and better result. These same conversations ended when players and parents ideas are challenged and they decided once again to do things on their own expecting different results.
The second call usually starts out like;
“Not sure if you remember me but we spoke last year. Yeah, well we didn’t hire you at the time because we felt it was too much to spend. But we are ready to make the move now.”
Essentially this translates to;
We didn’t want to invest in better results because we thought we got enough information in one phone call to do things on our own. Now we have not only wasted thousands of dollars to get nothing more than we had before, but we have wasted an entire years sitting in the same place.
I guarantee a bunch of you just thought about yourselves, and how you had this situation with me or another adviser.
Decision making on and off the ice is critical. Making the wrong decision can cost you a lot more than money. It can cost you time, and you can almost never make up for lost time in this business.
If you are thinking about hiring an adviser, do it. Hire a good one and he will be worth every dollar. If you think you need one now, next year you will really need one and you will be a year behind those people that made a timely decision.
Shooters shoot. Play makers make plays. One tenth of a second too late and the results are not the same. There is no difference with how you plan your career.
Everyone wishes they bought Google at $50 a share, but in 2004 not everyone had the balls to buy a company that’s chief product was delivery of information. Those that knew the value of information and technology have made a fortune getting ahead of everyone else.
Your adviser is your personal Google stock. Better to buy and hold long term and get the results you want than to miss the IPO and pay $2600 a share 18 years later. Your always ends up costing more if you wait.
Joseph Kolodziej – Adviser
