From cancelled meeting to an 8-figure deal in 40 minutes.

Early in my career, when I was coming through the agent ranks, I once spent 9 months trying to get a meeting with a particular Premier League manager in London.

Endless rejections, endless follow-ups, but eventually I locked the meeting in through sheer belligerence.

Then, on the day, 45 minutes before we were due to meet, he called to tell me the owner of the club, who was based up north, had summoned him to his office, and so our meeting was off.

I knew immediately that I should try and salvage this because, had I tried to rearrange, it could mean waiting another 6 months. So, off the cuff, I asked him how he intended on getting to the train station.

Slightly confused by my question, he replied that he was getting a taxi.

So I offered to drive him to the station instead. Without wanting to stereotype the manager's German background, he did comment that he loved the efficiency of my suggestion!

That 40-minute drive to King's Cross Station became our meeting.

Most importantly, during that drive, I found out exactly what positions he was looking at that summer. I went through my players (I brought player CVs and video highlights) and I started laying the groundwork for a deal that we eventually closed in that forthcoming transfer window.

And that deal became the biggest transfer I'd done in over 2 years, and a huge step up in my business's trajectory.

But here's the missed detail that is most important...I had already sent that very player to him several times by WhatsApp message and email and heard nothing back.

Because the reality of it is, very busy people often don't read their inbound messages, or they skirt over them for anything urgent or of high importance.

What got him interested in my player was the 40 minutes in the car, face to face, explaining why my player fit his system and the gap that he was looking to fill. After that he was then willing to spend time doing his own due diligence on the player.

In my Sports Business Accelerator, I talk about the 100-point shot. Where 1 call or meeting or deal can unexpectedly propel your career forward by 5/10 years.

Seneca, the Roman philosopher, says that luck is where preparation meets opportunity.

It applies perfectly to my situation, because most people would let the cancelled plans go, but I had fully prepared for this meeting and took a very small chance on a weird suggestion, and it turned into the deal of the year for me.

In sports business, opportunities rarely follow the perfect pattern, and often you have to catch them before it's too late, because the best deals don't hang around.

It's worth noting that I could only make that move because I was already inside the industry. I was an agent. I had players worth talking about and a reason for the manager to give me his time.

The hardest step by far is the move from outside to inside the industry, and hustle by itself is rarely enough.

That's the whole reason The Game Plan Sports Business Accelerator exists.