With about six to eight weeks to go in the 2022 – 2023 regular season, if you haven’t prepared a plan for how you are going to prepare for the 2023 – 2024 season you are already behind those that have long-term and short-term planning.
Maybe you plan on going to a bunch of pre-draft camps? Indeed, that is a plan for failure, but it’s still a plan, I guess.
Maybe you plan on looking at your options at the end of the current season? It is a plan, but again it is another that will not lead to success.
Maybe you are looking forward to the multiple drafts that leagues will have this Spring and Summer? That too is a plan, but again not likely to succeed unless you are already talking to those teams in leagues with drafts.
Reality has a way of slapping all of us in the face from time to time. Myself included in that statement. However, when you get slapped, will it be so hard that you need to step back and recover from it, or does your plan still allow you to keep moving forward?
If you think planning does not play a major role in how or if you reach your goals, and you are relying on the old “if you’re good enough they’ll find you formula”, then you probably need an adviser more than any other player.
Industry secret;
If by 16 years old, you are not being identified as being in the top three percent of players at your position, you are behind about two thousand players at your position in your age group around the world.
If by 16 years old you are not being talked to from scouts at high levels, your odds of making the highest levels decrease exponentially for the next two years, and then incrementally for the next two to three years.
While there is no need to panic at 18, you had better have a plan based on short-term goal setting, benchmark achievement that leads to the next step in a long term plan.
If you are 19, you better be feeling the pressure. If you are 20, you better recognize that what you have been doing up to this point has not worked.
So, as we wrap up this season, I ask again; What is your plan? What is the plan for Spring? Plan for Summer? Plan for early Autumn?
Whether it’s the USHL, Major Junior, or Tier II in the US and Canada, if you do not have a plan now, you are behind all of those that do.
The other day I was talking to a family of a potential 20-year-old client. We discussed all aspects of that players situation. At the end of the conversation, I was told that they would get back to me after Easter because they were going on holiday and that they had a lot of planning to do for that trip.
When I pointed out to them that easter was a few months away, and their urgency to plan a vacation took priority over the urgency they just expressed having to create a plan to get to Tier II, it started to sink in.
Delay, delay, delay. Life is full of delay’s and most of them are created by ourselves.
We delay things because of time or other priorities. We delay things due to money and other financial wants. We delay things because we think we have enough time, when in fact the only thing we run out of faster than money and and other priorities is time.
You can never buy or get back time. Isn’t it TIME you created and acted on a plan? Because time is running out.
Joseph Kolodziej – Adviser
