I coach my daughter's flag football team. Nine year olds. I did not realize it was basically a part-time job.

Week one, I showed up and assumed the kids knew how to play. They, meanwhile, assumed I knew how to coach. We were both wrong. We won anyway, somehow, because the other team was even less prepared than we were.

That taught me the wrong lesson for exactly seven days.

The next team we played was clearly more prepared, and they crushed us.

I got home that night and the thought that wouldn't leave was this. I didn't even give those girls a chance to win today.

Not they weren't good enough. Not they needed more practice. I hadn't done my part.

So that week I watched video on coaching youth football. I sent YouTube clips of plays to the parents. Just have them watch these, we'll be fine. And I bought a clipboard so I could write plays down.

We won the next game.

But I noticed something. I was writing up new plays every week, and it was still confusing them. They're nine. So I stopped. I locked in on a few standard plays and kept those same ones on the board all season.

That was the actual fix. Not more plays. Fewer, run until they were automatic.

We didn't lose another game. We won the championship by a wider margin than I planned on.

Took me about five weeks to learn what every coach eventually learns. You need a playbook.

Here's why I'm telling you this.

Showing up is the price of entry. Showing up prepared is the part people actually feel.

So when I sign on with a client or a partner, the first thing I do is have Claude build me a Notion board. Day one, before the first real meeting. Almost nobody bothers, which is exactly why it lands.

Here's how to actually do it, because this is the part worth stealing.

Talk, don't type. Open Claude, connect Notion, and say what you need out loud. "Build me a project board for a client engagement. Columns for status. Fields for deliverable, due date, owner, and notes." It builds it. You never touched a template or dragged a single column.

Keep talking to it. When something changes, dictate the update. "Move the launch to the 12th and mark the landing page in review." No clicking into the board, no hunting for the row. This is the part that keeps a system alive, because the reason most people abandon their project boards is the friction of updating them.

Let it read your email. Connect Gmail and tell Claude to scan for updates on the project and push them to the board. Client moved a deadline in a thread you half-read on your phone? It catches it. Your board stays current without you being the one keeping it current.

That's the whole thing. You walk into every meeting already organized, and it costs you about ten minutes of talking.

That's usually all excellence is. Preparation the other person wasn't expecting.

The personal corner.

I can coach a weekday afternoon game because my work doesn't own my afternoons. I get paid for focused calls, booked by people who already know me.

That flexibility isn't luck. It's a setup, and it's one you can copy.

If you want the playbook version of that, I wrote one. It walks through getting your first or next paid client, and it's free: terryrice.co/everyexpert

The girls could always play. They were waiting on me to bring a plan.

Keep building,
Terry

P.S. Here's that guide again: getting your first or next paid client.

P.P.S. Want to talk something through directly? Book me here: everyexpert.com/terryrice