🗝️ What my son's first 5K taught me about your business
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” - Benjamin Franklin
🔑 This issue at a glance (2-second summary)
Preparation is the quiet edge behind almost every win that looks effortless.
Winners do the boring work first
A couple of months ago, my 12-year-old son signed up for his first 5K (a 3.1-mile run). Before that, he had never run more than a mile without stopping.
I encouraged him to train more for it, but preparation isn't really his jam right now. He's the king of winging it. At age 12, it usually works. People forgive him, and he learns fast.
Then race day came. Somewhere past mile one, the pain kicked in. It was a shock to his system. He pushed through and finished, and I was proud of him for that. At the end, he admitted his legs were burning.
Of course they were, buddy. That's why we prepare.
Most businesses run the same play. The sales call, the pitch, the big hire, the new tech rollout. They count on talent and hustle to carry them. Even with A.I., the pattern holds: a survey this week found 86% of small business owners using it still need more guidance to get real value.
The winners do the boring work first. They research the room before they walk in. They rehearse the hard conversation. They know their numbers cold. They map the process before handing it to a person or a machine.
None of that is sexy. All of it compounds.
My mentor Les Brown taught me this years ago. Early in his career he was booked to speak to a room of doctors. He's a motivational speaker, not a doctor. He could have winged it. Instead he went deep studying that audience, their language, their struggles. By the end of his talk, attendees were calling him “Dr. Brown.” Real doctors assumed he was a doctor too because he spoke like one. He was that well prepared.
I do the same. When I keynoted the World Ticket Conference this summer, I knew very little about ticket resale. So I flew in two days early and sat through the whole thing. I learned their language, soaked up industry knowledge, spoke to attendees. By the time I spoke on the final day, my keynote solved real problems they had been wrestling with for years.
I noticed how many people thanked me for staying. Most keynote speakers fly in, speak, and leave.
Preparation is a signal. It tells your client, your team, and your audience that you give a damn. It is the simple secret behind almost every win that looks effortless from the outside.
Winging it might work at age twelve. After that, the prepared win.
Winners take action
Pick one meeting or project on your calendar this week. Spend 15 extra minutes preparing beyond what you normally would. Pull up the past emails. Scan the person on LinkedIn, Instagram, or wherever they post. Find a recent win to acknowledge, a project they just launched, or a shared interest you can open with. Do this for one month straight, every meeting that matters, and watch your win rate quietly climb. The payoff: you walk into every room as the most prepared person in it, and the other side feels it before you say a word.
The tools you need
Challenge: Your brain can only hold so much context. Back-to-back meetings, different people, different threads. By meeting number four, you are winging it from memory.
Solution: Give your A.I. agent a skill that preps you automatically before every meeting.
Whenever there is a meeting on my calendar, my A.I. assistant pulls up every past email, every Google Meet or Zoom transcript, every Plaud transcript from in-person conversations, and my notes with that person. Then it tells me where we left off and what matters most to them right now.
It does not stop at a written brief. It also generates a short audio podcast of that debrief and delivers it to me on Telegram. So I can prep for the meeting while I am driving, walking, or getting ready, with zero recall required on my end.
This works because I record almost everything. Zoom and Google Meet have native transcription. For in-person conversations, I wear a Plaud necklace (get one here). It captures the audio and syncs to A.I. automatically. Everything feeds one context pool, so nothing gets lost.
Try this in 10 minutes:
- Capture the transcript of every Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet call you have this week.
- For in-person meetings, grab a wearable recorder like Plaud so those get captured too.
- Copy and paste this into your AI assistant: “Let's develop a pre-meeting prep routine. Keep an eye on my calendar, and an hour before every important call or meeting, identify the person, company, objective, attendees, meeting notes, and links, then research my email, sent mail, CRM, notes, past transcripts, files, and relevant public sources. Rebuild the relationship chronologically and verify what they want, what I promised, deadlines, fees, objections, buying signals, and open loops. Never guess. Flag conflicting or missing information. Then give me a private briefing I can read in under three minutes: the single most important outcome, who they are, where things stand, what they likely care about, risks, my recommended approach, three smart questions, and the best next step. Include useful source links, and always check sent mail before calling anything overdue. Keep it concise, strategic, and actionable. Also include an audio podcast version I can listen to while I'm on the go.”
This week on the pod
On the most recent episode of King Moves, Is Winging It Costing You More Than You Think? | Ep. 153, Justin and I unpack what he calls the 8th wonder of the world.
He hit me with a question that completely reframed how I think about the long game. It may make you look at things differently, too.
If you have ever put in work when no one else was watching, and wondered whether it was worth it, this is your sign to keep going.
Stop playing life on hard mode. Automate your success.
Until next week,
Ethan King
Actionable Simplicity™ for ambitious leaders
Keynote Speaker | Author | CEO | Strategist
P.S. Before you think I'm throwing my son under the bus: I'm super proud of him, because he starred in his first commercial, which aired this week (watch it here). #prouddadmoment
P.P.S. Catch me live at these upcoming events:
Public:
- Build My AI Team Live, your AI-employee-building walkthrough on your computer: Oct 26 and 27, 4–6pm ET both days
Private:
- Oct 20: EO Fort Worth, Build Your Digital Dream Team (also open to EO prospects with qualifying businesses)
- Oct 23: Copilot training for a payroll & HR company
- Oct 29: EO New Jersey, AI Beyond the Hype, Part II
- Nov 4–5: EO El Salvador, Two-Day Immersive Workshop
- Nov 12: EO Iowa, AI Beyond the Hype, Part II
P.P.P.S. Want to bring the private training to your team? Just reply to this email to learn more.
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