Play to the end: Finish Q4 committed to 2023

I want to push you to do the 1% extra that not only helps you finish 2022 strong, but also helps you start 2023 even stronger. I call myself a recovering athlete who is now in financial services, but the lessons I’ve learned through playing basketball are invaluable — the biggest lesson being that a growth mindset fully committed to continuous improvement is everything.

And I’m going to tell you the bottom line first — commitment isn’t convenient. Let’s talk about what commitment looks like and how you can put a plan together to accelerate your success this year.

It starts with practice coupled with self-confidence. One of my coaches used to say, “Practice makes perfect practice.” This means that repetition is needed to build muscle memory (and not just bodily muscle, but mental muscle) so that you have the self-confidence, mental stamina and focus to walk into any situation and play through it.

The more you practice, the greater your self-confidence. The greater your self-confidence, the more you want to perform and see what you can achieve. And most important, the greater your self-confidence, the stronger your inner will and inner voice are to keep you focused on your goals so that you can ignore all the naysayers who always will surround you.

Financial services is a social industry, and it’s easy to compare yourself to others. This is why it’s critical to surround yourself with teams of people who have the same goals and play by the same rules as you do. There always will be people telling you that you aren’t doing well enough to make it in the business, or that you gave it a shot and it didn’t work out so you should try another profession.

If you looked at my basketball statistics, you’d understand why a lot of people thought I should quit basketball. Just over 7% of all high school athletes will go on to play in college. If we look at Division I men’s basketball, that percentage drops to 0.9%. That’s just college — think about the odds of getting to the pros! Let’s agree then that you can’t succeed by focusing on popular opinion — you must develop the inner resolve to focus on your everyday practice because this, and only this, will drive the results you seek.

The final four minutes

December is like the final four minutes of thefourthquarterinbasketball.It’swhere all the year’s practice comes to fruition. It’s the ability to hit the free throws con- sistently under intense pressure because you’ve put in the work all year. Now is not the time to let up. December is the time to double down, just like you would do in the final minutes of any game. You need to commit to playing through to the buzzer. And then you need the commit- ment to know that 2022 is over and 2023 is a whole new game that you can under- take with a fresh perspective, but now you have all that muscle memory that you built up in December supporting you.

I would even say that how you work in December completely foretells how you will to go into January. If you optimize your work efforts in December, January will be exciting and you’ll look forward to getting back to it. If you just undertake convenient work in December, January will be twice as hard.

Proven techniques for performance abound in our industry. But here are the five things that I do to make my practice perfect:

1) I don’t think of my organization as an insurance agency, I think of my organization as my business that sells insurance products. This allows me to keep a distance between myself as the founding player and the business, which is a team that has its own needs. This distance gives me objectivity so I can clearly see what is needed in December and January to elevate our outcomes and accelerate growth.

2) Morning time is my time. It’s my time for personal development before I give my time to the business. I work out every single morning, whether it’s dark out, cold out, raining out, snowing out — none of this can matter. I am committed to me, and my team needs the best version of me to show up.

3) Even though I’m the founder and the ultimate coach of the business, I’m still focused on being a teammate. Every one of our advisors who works with my organization knows that they’re supported, and I’m working just as hard to improve them as I’m working to improve myself and our collective futures. This type of teamwork is infectious, and advisors consistently outperform what they originally think they could do. This creates a perpetual positive feedback loop and unleashes positive energy.

4) I still need a coach — especially in the final minutes of a game where strategy is everything. I joined NAIFA long ago. I sought out mentors and advisors, and I still go to them to bounce ideas in order to keep me inspired and to share best practices. Everyone needs coaches, and their value is the most obvious when the pressure is on.

5) Appreciate the journey while paying it forward to others. December is a natural time for reflection, so take a few moments. Assess your performance, give yourself credit for your growth, and visualize how the more you achieve the more you can give back to others.

If you focus on coupling your success with others’ success, you will not only finish December strong, you’ll also burst into January ready to blow your previous stats away.

Chris Gandy, LACP, is the founder of Midwest Legacy Group in Lisle, Ill. He serves on NAIFA’s Board of Trustees and is NAIFA’s 2022 Diversity Champion. He may be contacted at [email protected].