John Wooden had a unique strategy for recruiting players to UCLA:
Instead of drooling and begging them to come play for him like other coaches did, he let them make the first move.
He didn’t want to twist a student’s arm to play for his team and figured that if the player wasn’t eager to join them, it wouldn’t work out.
This strategy is how he got Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (who was known as Lew Alcindor back then) to play for him.
All the schools in the nation were tripping over themselves to get Abdul-Jabbar, acting like drunk guys hitting on a beautiful woman at the club, but Wooden let his results do the work for him.
Wooden played hard to get instead and that drew Abdul-Jabbar to him.
The same strategy should be employed by coaches with potential clients.
Instead of chasing after prospects and employing a hard-sell, I prefer to be as visible as possible and let the clients come to me.
When they reach out, they’ve been following me and are already sold on us working together.
Speaking of coaches …
If you have something (a product, program or service) that helps coaches, but you don’t feel like chasing them with unsolicited DMs, check out my Super Partner package which is opening up soon.
It’s for just one exclusive partner for a whole year, and you can get the details and book a chat with me about it here:
