Much to everyone's annoyance, boredom, and disgust, I occasionally go on about my extraordinary ‘basketball career’, which finished properly almost 40 years ago!!
I was influenced by some truly brilliant people at that time, and it formed me as an individual.
Got me into dentistry, actually, probably wouldn't have got there without the basketball, wasn't clever enough.
Perhaps the most influential person was John Ward, one of my coaches for school and also the assistant head teacher.
He was a wise and wily man. He coached so much basketball at our school to such a high level that during one year, we had a team in every national cup final, boys and girls.
One of John's things, though, was this ‘First to be a basketball player, you need to look like a basketball player’. He was obsessive about the way you turned up, particularly for games, how you looked, how you warmed up, how you behaved.
It just became second nature to us, but it's not second nature to most.
What John was talking about was branding. He taught us never to look at the opposition in the warm-up, but to just be disciplined and secure.
I think we won many of our games before the game had even started.
Branding is really important, and the words and the stories around branding are critical nowadays.
In a vacuous world where everything seems empty, or at least more and more empty, people are looking for meaning, people are looking for connection, people are looking for ‘people like us do things like this’.
The first step to being a basketball player is looking like a basketball player.
The first step to being a dentist is looking like a dentist.
The first step to being a business owner…
I'm sure you get it.
Blog Post Number - 4240
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