Preparing to Win with Bill Sweetenham

In this inspiring episode of We Are Selling, host Lee Woodward sits down with legendary Australian swim coach Bill Sweetenham to explore the power of preparation as the ultimate key to success. Whether you’re an athlete, real estate professional, or striving for excellence in any field, Bill’s insights are a game-changer.

Discover why it’s not the will to win but the will to prepare to win that sets the greats apart. Learn how to convert nerves into excitement under pressure, and why flawless preparation builds self-confidence, self-belief, and personal pride. Bill introduces the concept of performance days–a weekly rehearsal strategy to win the day, no matter the challenge.

Lee draws parallels to the real estate industry, emphasising how preparation–like rehearsing conversations and lead generation–can give you the edge over competitors.

Tune in to uncover actionable strategies to make preparation a lifestyle, seize the moment, and achieve your goals. Because when you’re prepared, success isn’t just possible–it’s inevitable.

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Transcript

Lee Woodward: 0:00

Welcome to We Are Selling, the weekly podcast and pod tips for the real estate community brought to you by Realtare. Realtare is the platform of choice of real estate professionals who are powering their career with the implementation of pitch, sign and sell. My name's Lee Woodward of the Realtare Academy. Let's get started with this week's coaching and content tips. As a real estate industry educator, you come to observe why the greats have a breakthrough and their repeatable performance. And it is because they have incredible preparation, belief in themselves and what they can do. Today's podcast tip on we are selling is about selling yourself on the importance of preparation as it will stay with you forever. Today's incredible knowledge is delivered by Bill Sweetenum, the Australian swim team coach and a person who internationally has developed some of the very best athletes, swimmers we have ever seen. Bill, my question for you is about preparation. Some people think they need to do a little bit. Some people, they understand the incredible outcome of preparation. What is your view on this? And let us know what you've seen internationally, what goes on. I

Bill Sweetenham: 1:23

think you have to have great self-belief that you can be the best, but never ever believe you are the best. I think the opportunity to be the best is always there. Duane Fangio, a great Formula One driver, always said, Never believe you are the best, always believe you can be the best. And I think that resonates through achievement at the top. When you ever see Michael Jordan, any of the great athletes, do something spectacular in sport, the common quote after that performance is, it was easy, this was easy. It's only easy because their preparation is clinical, it's precise. It's rehearsal and rehearsal and then more rehearsal. I think once or twice you might get away with a great performance on luck or chance, but luck and chance have never been good to me. It's always been guaranteed for me that you haven't got to be the best person in the game, but you've got to be the best prepared person in the game. No good having skill if it's not the best prepared skill or talent that's not the best prepared talent. It's not the will to win, it's the will to prepare to win. It's the will to do all the little details because under that pressure, that immense pressure that high-level competition, whether it's in selling or arts or music or circus acts, you're going to have to perform in a set of circumstances that are not normal. I remember my first time at the Olympic Games and I walked into the arena, a thought hit me. I was aware, acutely aware, that the presence of of abnormal was there and there was a lack of normal. There was nothing normal about the Olympic environment but there was a huge emphasis on the presence of

Lee Woodward: 3:05

abnormal. Bill, every person listening to this audio right now thinks that under pressure I buckle, could be a lack of preparation but I get scared. I've got to ask you, how is it standing at those blocks in the Olympics and what's going through everyone's mind, especially in these words you've just used of abnormal?

Bill Sweetenham: 3:27

I think great achievement and great success comes from people who are predatory in their ability to seize the moment, and take advantage of opportunity. And the only way you can do that is to be the best prepared athlete or coach or team in the game. You have to be superior in your preparation to every other athlete or team that you're coming up against. If you can be superior in preparation, that develops self-confidence, self-belief, and personal pride. And personal pride is a great motivator. And personal pride is that you've done things that other people have only thought about. They haven't really dotted their I's or crossed their T's. You will then have the ability to convert the nerves, and everybody's going to get nerves under that sort of spotlight. into excitement. So the ability through a perfect or a very flawless preparation allows the athlete the ability to initially get nerves but very quickly convert them to excitement of the challenge. And that's why you have gladiators in sport who can stand up and know that they've done the preparation Everything that could possibly be done has been done and they very rarely falter through nerves. They falter through lack of preparation. So preparation has paramount in the performance of the athlete when it comes to being on automatic pilot to do all the little things right without thinking about them. In sport, one of the strategies that's worked well for me and I've delivered it to a lot of young people who've come back to me over years and said, Bill, the greatest thing we did with training with you was that we did performance days. A performance day happens once a week where the athlete picks a day of the week and on a rotational basis, it might be Monday this week, Tuesday next week, Wednesday the next week, they get up early in the morning, they do some stretching, they have a checklist and they get ready for their perfect performance. Now, when I say performance, I don't mean just swimming. It might be a school exam. It might be setting their driver's license. It might be going for a job interview. but they have a strategy. So by 8.30 in the morning, they've had a flawless start to the day and they're going to win that day. Whatever that day brings, they're going to win simply because it's a performance day to them. It's a priority day where whatever's thrown at them, they're going to win the day. So a performance day relates to win the day. If they know they've got a school exam coming up, they can be better prepared for their exam. If they know they've got a swimming competition or they've got any stressful, they have to appear in court or the job interview, whatever. They have a strategy to prepare their mind first and their body second for a performance. If that's rehearsed on a weekly basis, it means that it becomes very much the brain leading the body rather than the body trying to lead the brain. So that's a strategy that I put in place for every young person that I deal with. On a weekly basis and rotational from day to day, they have to have a performance day and they should let me know when that's happening and we can look at their step-by-step rehearsal of a performance day so it gets stronger and better. And if you can do that, your preparation is accumulative. It doesn't just happen. People think, oh, competition's coming up. I'll start to do it right next week or the week after. It's a lifestyle of habits that has to be put in place very early in an athlete or a young person's life so that they are conditioned to being under pressure. They are conditioned to accepting and acknowledging that pressure is going to come with any performance and therefore they can do it better.

Lee Woodward: 7:12

Thank you, Mr. Bill Sweetenum. To my podcast audience, I got so much out of that with the words of the will to prepare to win. We've all got competition, but if you're following your checklist and you're doing your rehearsal and rehearsal and rehearsal, and in our world, which is different to sport, that is your listening conversation. What you say on the phone when you're doing lead generation and learning that preparation will be the gap between you and somebody else. Great success comes from seizing that moment. And the importance of that performance day, many years ago, John McGrath would say, I only list on a Wednesday and Thursday. But that gave him the self-confidence and personal pride to suit up, put the shoes on and make sure it was a performance day. That's what a listing day is for us. I believe we all have a shot at the title if we're prepped. If you're not, you deserve nothing. You'll talk about the marketplace and why it wasn't fair to you. Bill mentioned about converting We'll see you next time. by Realtare. Realtare is the digital one platform solution for real estate professionals that would like to use pitch, sign and sell. I'm Lee Woodward. Thank you for listening. At the Realtare Academy, our full interviews and entire training library is available for all our Realtare community members. Call 1300 367 412 or visit Realtare.com. Thank you for listening Thank you.