Turning PRO is not about talent or titles. It is about the actions you repeat every day.
I have four high energy boys. When they were younger, Jennifer and I focused on giving them exposure to all kinds of sports. Most of the sports we picked were out of convenience, namely around carpools. Over the years, the boys played lacrosse, rugby, water polo, rowing, wrestling, boxing, martial arts, football, and soccer.
As they progressed through high school, we allowed them to focus on one sport.
For Charlie, my second son, the sport he loves is playing goalie in water polo. By his sophomore year in high school, Charlie decided to stop playing his other favorite sport, rugby, and go all in on water polo. He wanted to transform his play into being the best goalie in his year group. That was the year he decided to turn PRO.
In our family, we make yearly goals. For my boys, those goals are typically focused on two areas: grades and sports.
He wrote down his goal in the present tense on one side of a three by five card:
“I am the best high school water polo goalie in the country.”
On the other side, he wrote down a couple of key actions that he committed to taking every day. He signed the card and carried it in his cell phone case, where he would look at it daily.
I checked in with him weekly on his practice of the actions he wrote down. When the actions changed, he created a new card.
He followed this goal setting process through the remainder of high school and now does it in college as well. He is currently a junior at the University of Southern California.
Read more about goal setting to make this your best year yet!
I call this goal setting process Turning P.R.O.
When each of my boys decided they did not just want to play a sport for fun but wanted to be their very best, we would initiate a mindset shift. We focused on turning them into a professional student of their respective sport.
My oldest son Henry started our family sports training tradition with rowing. He set an example for his brothers, who now follow in his goal action footsteps.
Turning P.R.O. is about transforming yourself through thinking and acting like the best pros in your field. To be your best starts by having a mindset like the best. This technique works for sports, business, music, art, or whatever you seek to do where you want to be the best you can be.
Transformation is what I call change squared. When you transform yourself, you are not just changing one thing. You are embracing a series of changes that build upon each other for a true transformation.
Transforming yourself requires commitment, patience, dedication, and persistent action. It does not happen overnight.
Transformation happens over long periods of focused work, and even then transforming is never complete. You can always be better. It is not a destination as much as it is a journey of improvement.
When I use the term Turning P.R.O., I am using it as a phrase of action.
To initiate your transformational action plan, you must first do some homework.
Start by finding out who the best are in the arena in which you wish to compete. There is always someone who has gone before you, someone who has been a pro in the environment where you want to perform.
Find them. Study them. This might mean watching how they train, how they prepare, how they recover, or how they think about their craft.
What makes them great? God given talent only takes you so far. The best take their talent and combine it with disciplined and focused actions. Turning P.R.O. only works if you have first done this homework. And the homework is never done.
The pros are always improving their practice, which means you must keep studying how they are improving at their craft. Starting this homework is actually the first action in Turning P.R.O. By studying pros, you begin the transformational process because the act of studying them starts to change your mindset.
No transformation happens without action. And the more purposeful and focused the action, the faster the transformation.
Practice makes perfect, but is only as helpful as the quality of practice you do. Practice the wrong actions and all that happens is bad practice in the wrong direction, which leads to poor performance.
When you practice, practice the way the pros in your arena practice. Sure, you are not at their caliber today, but your mindset should always be one like theirs: “I am training to be the best in my business each and every day.”
When you speak to other pros, you will find they are intentional about every action they take. They view each action as an opportunity to get better at their craft, whether it is swimming or sales.
Professional training is never done. The best in class always seek ways to improve.
The moment you think you are good enough is the moment you are not. When you think those thoughts, you are no longer thinking like a pro.
Professionals are relentless in their focus on finding incremental improvements. I have been on the speaking circuit for fifteen years, and after every speech I look for ways to improve. My speaking abilities can always be better.
Another way of saying relentless improvement is never be satisfied. You can always be better.
Only you know if you have given your best effort today.
Every professional must own their effort because they know their outcomes are up to them. Professionals are their own toughest critics. They coach themselves and demand the very best from each action they take.
This mindset is hard to embrace because we can be our own worst enemy on the transformation journey. Our brains seek the path of least resistance. We want to do the minimum required to complete a task.
Turning PRO means pushing yourself beyond what you originally thought was possible. This is what pros do every day, and this is what is required to transform your performance.
When you practice these actions, you change your mindset.
At first, it may feel like your performance is going backward. That is normal. You are practicing new techniques, and improvement takes time.
The compounding effect of your actions is building like pulling back the resistance of a slingshot. Each day you conduct professional practice, you are preparing yourself for a future slingshot forward in performance. The tension you feel is not resistance. It is preparation.
Your improvement will not happen in a straight line. It will feel lumpy. Sometimes you will take a big leap forward, followed by days or weeks of a slump. Again, normal.
So long as you are owning your effort, practicing professionally every day, and relentlessly seeking improvement, your performance will improve.
Just ask Charlie, or his younger brother John.
His journey of Turning PRO is far from over. In fact, it is just starting.
Meanwhile, his younger brother John is Turning PRO at the University of Washington, where he became the first true freshman in the program’s 136 year history to start at left guard.
John went on to earn five True Freshman All American honors and Big Ten Honorable Mention, the only true freshman lineman to earn all of these honors in 2025.
The moment you start acting like a professional, you begin becoming one.
So here is my question to you. You have the capability to be a pro at something. Are you willing to do the work to be a pro?
If you are, get ready. You are about to change your destiny. That is what transformation does. It transforms your performance, which changes your outcome. This is exactly what I teach as an inspirational keynote speaker.
You have nothing to fear and everything to gain. Start by choosing one action you will practice like a pro tomorrow.
Embrace it. Start Turning P.R.O. today.
Alden