Not everyone can teach

I’ve played volleyball my entire life.

Started when I was a kid (my dad played professionally).

Played in high school (2x state champion and 2x finals MVP).

Played in college (2 national tournament appearances, 3x conference player of the week).

Played after college (multiple pro tournament appearances).

I love playing volleyball. And I’m pretty good at it too.

But I don’t coach volleyball.

I’ve tried, I just don’t care for it much. And kids deserve someone who actually wants to coach them.

That someone is not me.

And the other day, while warming up for a beach volleyball training session of my own, I was reminded of why not everyone should coach volleyball.

Just because you know how to play, does not mean you know how to coach.

On the court next to us, this guy was coaching 10+ high-school aged players.

Every time I looked over, they weren’t playing.

He just kept talking.

Pausing drills after 2 attempts to talk for 10+ minutes.

Not even letting them try to figure things out.

It’s an incredibly inefficient way to run a practice or training session.

I should know, I had several coaches throughout the years do exactly that.

Nobody on that court looked like they were having fun.

It’s because they weren’t getting better at volleyball, they were just standing there being lectured.

And this is one of the most common pitfalls of coaches.

They talk too much.

They do this for one of two reasons:

1) they want to appear like the smartest person in the room (annoying, but common)

2) they don’t know how to get their point across efficiently

Let’s skip #1 for now, and focus on #2.

If someone tries to explain something to you, and they can’t do so in a reasonable amount of time, or in a set of words that makes sense to you, they do not understand it nearly as well as they claim to.

And thus, they should not coach or teach or whatever.

Lately, I find that many SEOs have a solid understanding of how to rank pages.

But they lack the advanced level of understanding required to teach it to someone who has never heard of SEO.

So they ramble for minutes on end, never really explaining anything.

It’s annoying, and I’m sick of it.

So I compiled my 10 best SEO tips into a 10 minute video.

No nonsense. No fluff.

Just 10 minutes of value, so straightforward that a 5th grader could comprehend it:

Kai