5 Life Lessons After 5 Years In Business

Hey. Hey. Welcome back to the Bullpen Sessions podcast. My name is Andy Neary, and this is episode 300. Yes, 300 episodes. Five years of doing this podcast. And today we're going to reflect on the last five years. In fact, in this episode, I am going to share five life lessons I've learned over the last five years that have had a massive impact, not only on me personally, but in growing my business. And I wanted to share these five lessons today as we reflect on episode 300 of the Bullpen Sessions podcast, because I think they could have a big impact on you. A lot has changed in my life since 2019, especially making the decision to go all in on this business, Complete Game Consulting, going all in on myself, my health, my fitness, who I'm surrounding myself with failure, you name it. There's so much to be learned over the last five years. So why not do a podcast episode about it if it can bring you a little value? So I hope you tune in, hope you enjoyed today's episode. You're going to learn lessons that have had an impact on my life and my business, but five lessons that can unlock your success. All right, here we go. Hey. Hey. Welcome back to today's podcast. Episode number 300. Wow. Yeah. 300 episodes.

Today, I'm going to reflect back on the lifespan of these 300 episodes. And my goal today in this episode is to share five life lessons that have changed my life and my business, because I think. I think they can do the same for you. And I'm going to use the time span of the 300 episodes to really talk about where I've applied these five life lessons. Because when I go back to when I started the podcast, I started the podcast right around the same time. Complete Game Consulting was a side hustle. I was still selling health insurance, but I made a decision that if I was gonna grow that side of the business, I should probably have a podcast which can help create more reach. And so it just so happens that the start of Complete Game Consulting really occurred at about the same time that started the podcast. And there's so many things that have occurred over these last four or five years that I wanted to share with you. These five lessons that have really impacted my life. I think they could do the same for you, especially if this is where you are right now, if you are an insurance professional feeling a bit stuck, your business feels stuck. Maybe you own your own agency and you feel like growth has stagnated a little bit and you're kind of coasting kind of like a Boat out at sea without a rudder, just floating on top of the water and letting the water take you where it may. If that sounds like you right now, I think you're going to really like today's episode. My goal with this episode is to give you a little motivation, talk a little bit about where my business and my life has changed a lot in the last five years. But I don't want to just use it as a hey, I want to share my story with you. I really want you to take the lessons I've learned that have had a profound impact on me, my health, my life, my business, and just overall success. And I think these are lessons anybody can apply. And if you're feeling stuck right now, here's where it gets really frustrating. Number one, you know you could and should be doing better, right? And number two, to make matters worse, you might be looking out at your peers in the industry, and you're seeing your peers have a ton of success, and you're wondering when that same luck is going to fall on your lap. Well, I got bad news. There's no such thing as luck. There's only preparation. And I think people who appear lucky are those that have prepared themselves to receive what appears to be luck to fall on their side. Really what it is, though, is preparation. They are prepared to succeed, and that's why success consistently finds them. And so what I want to do today is dive into these five lessons. Because when I look at who I am, who the business is, what the business is in 2024, I am so grateful for the lessons I've learned, the people I've met, the mentors I've had.

That I just want to open up that part of my life with you, because I think what you're about to learn can really shape where you go from here. So let's dive into the first lesson, and I'm going to go in chronological order here. You know, rewind back to 2018, 2019, when I really decided to kick off this podcast Bullpen sessions. I can remember episode one. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do the podcast at the beginning, my goal is actually to interview former, current, and former pro athletes just to talk about their experience of what it took to get to pro sports and especially those that are no longer playing, how they transitioned, what they learned in pro sports to have success in other parts of their life. It sounded good at the beginning, but it was really hard to get people on the podcast. So I have since gravitated the podcast. The real shift Came. For anybody here who is interested in possibly using a podcast to grow your business. The real shift came when I made a decision about, I don't know, close to 7,500 episodes ago to make it all about insurance professionals. Bring it back to the people I serve. I am hosting a podcast that is directed at driven insurance professionals who want to strive to be their best. When we made that decision to make it clear and focused on that, that is when we saw the podcast start to take off. But going back to when it started, you know, the first life lesson I've learned in the last five years that has has have a profound impact on my success is investing in myself. You know, I go back to 2020. It was the fall of 2020, and I had just started Complete Game Consulting again as a side hustle. I was still advising selling health insurance. And I knew at that point I couldn't serve two masters anymore. And a decision had to be made whether I was gonna go all in on the business Complete Game Consulting, or just kind of let it be what it is and keep selling health insurance for the rest of my career. And I made the decision to go all in on growing Complete Game Consulting. So in the fall of 2020, I made a decision that at the beginning of 2021, I was gonna let go of my book of business. But something happened right as the fall of 2020 hit us. Not only pandemic, not only the pandemic and the lockdown, but my business got hit because I had some of my larger contracted coaching opportunities let me go. And I can remember it was late September 2020. I was down to only a few couple clients on the coaching side, on the complete game consulting side. And I was really stressed out because this is something I wanted to do. But at that point, I wasn't quite sure if this was going to be a success. And I had that hard conversation with myself that maybe I just need to keep selling health insurance, and that's what I'm supposed to do. But.

I can remember the moment in late September 2020 when I made a decision that would alter the trajectory of this business and the trajectory of my life. And it was the moment in late September 2020 when everything seemed to be going against me, that I made the decision to invest in me. I went all in on my success. And in a matter of two days, I invested in the following. Number one, I hired my own business coach, Christina Lacure, who I am still with today, five years later. That was gonna cost me over a thousand dollars a month. Number two, I invested in a mastermind for entrepreneurs. I wasn't born an entrepreneur. I wasn't born into a family of entrepreneurs. I needed somebody to help me create the mindset of an entrepreneur if I was gonna grow this business. So I joined a mastermind, which was about 6 to $7,000. And the third thing I did is I actually invested in a retreat for men. I'll call it a retreat. It's. It's run by now friend of mine, Kyle depias. I didn't really know Kyle at the time, but I decided to sign up for this men's trip that was going to go to play golf at.

I am totally losing it right now. It's in North Carolina, and I'm blanking on the name of the course. It's one of the best. One of the best courses in America. Wow. Pinehurst. Brain fart. Pinehurst. A trip to Pinehurst. But it was also a mastermind. It was surrounding yourself with other men who were playing at a high level. That was my ultimate goal. I wanted to surround myself with men who were playing at a high level. In a matter of two days, I spent over $17,000 in my own professional and personal development. Now, did I have the money at the time? Hell no. But I knew if I went all in on myself, things were going to change. If I put what I learned into action, if I held myself accountable to the people I was surrounding myself with. And I will tell you, that is where everything started. That is where momentum started swinging in my direction. So how does that apply to you? Well, what are you doing right now to invest in your success? I'll be very honest with you. In this industry, I watch a lot of people, we have conversations with insurance advisors every week who know they need help with coaching or mentorship. They know they need to invest in themselves or they know they need to get it better. They want to get better in their career, but they're just unwilling to invest in themselves. We hear it every day. We talk to advisors every day who are interested in our help, but then they immediately want to see if somebody else will invest financially for them. They want to see if their boss will invest, their agency will invest. That is not investing in yourself. That's hoping somebody else invest in your success. You can't do that. You've got to go all in on your own success. The only one who can go all put all the chips in on you is you.

So if you're feeling stuck right now, you feel like you need to be re energized you got to invest in yourself, make the investment, put the risk on the table that you are betting on your success. There's not a better way to put the pressure on to make sure you have success than investing in you, even if it's money you don't have. I didn't have $17,000 in October 2020, but I'm like, this is what I have to do to go all in. This is what I have to do to tell the universe I'm playing for keeps. Are you doing the same right now? That's life lesson number one that has occurred in the last five years. Second one is learn to love failure. That's something I struggled with as an athlete, right? I again, you could be like, how did you struggle with that, Andy? You played baseball. Baseball is a game of failure, right? If you're a batter, you fail seven out of 10 times, you're in the hall of Fame, you hit.300. But I was not, I did not deal with failure very well. In fact, it is one of the reasons why I often I ha. I have and sometimes still battle self worth issues. When I was a pitcher, if I got rocked, man, my, my image of myself was not very good. I hated failure. I avoided failure. I didn't do the hard things in life because I didn't want to fail at em. I only wanted to do things I was already good at. But when I realized that growing business is all about failure and you have to learn to love failure because in every failure there's a lesson to be learned. That's when I realized I had what it took to grow this business. I can specifically remember a day in 2021 when I just got my ass kicked. I think we lost a couple clients. I was told no by a couple big opportunities. Everything that could have gone wrong that day went wrong. And when my mind.

Should have told me just to stop, just to quit, I remember going to bed that night when I failed horribly the entire day. I remember going to bed that night excited. I remember going to bed excited that even though today sucked.

I get to get up and do this all over again tomorrow. And it was in that moment when I woke up the next day and I was still excited to get up and get after it. Even though the day before was an absolute failure. That was the moment I realized I can do this. Though I wasn't born into a family of entrepreneurs, I was taught to play it safe my whole life. Here I was taking a risk, growing a business, growing, investing in myself, going all in on Myself. And that moment of waking up the day after a horrible failure feeling equally excited and eager to get after it, I'm like, I can make this. I can do this. And so my advice to you is, you have to learn to love failure. If you've. If you've gone 1 for 20 this year, when it comes to proposals, you're not winning much business right now. You're constantly coming in second place. You feel like your year has been a failure. What can you learn from that? What can you gleam from that to make you better? Where are you falling short right now? Where is failure giving you the answers you're not looking for?

This is a game of failure. Sales is no different than playing baseball.

You're gonna fail more often than you're not. And this is something nobody teaches when you get into insurance sales. How to fail, how to fail fast. This is why when we teach people how to sell. I'm not your traditional sales coach, but I do talk about how to disqualify a prospect as quickly as you can, how to sell with exclusivity. Let people know why you're not going to be a good fit, and if somebody says no, awesome. Move on to the next.

You see, failure is just a lesson if you approach it the right way, and if you approach it as a lesson to be learned, you actually never fail. You just try something, and it didn't work. You know, this. This love of failure has really shifted our team's excitement in the last few months. You know, we have adopted, and I apologize, I'm about to use a very, very bad word, so don't think any different of me, but we have adopted a model that. I get. It has kind of become cliche because a lot of people are using it right now, but it's really, really helped us in growing as a team at Complete Game Consulting. But it's the. It's the motto of fuck around and find out. So many people are caught thinking about what to do next because they're fearing what happens if it fails. I don't know. Fuck around and find out. Because if it fails, try something else. We tell our clients this every week when they are contemplating a change, a move, a strategy. Try it. The worst thing that can happen is it doesn't work and you need to do something else. And I knew in that moment, when I woke up eagerly excited to attack that next day, it was a game of trying new things to see what would finally work. And lo and behold, it has helped our company have a ton of success over the last four to five years. So life lesson number two, love failure. How about number three? This one has nothing to do with business, but it has a massive impact on my life, which ultimately has. Has had a huge impact on my performance in the business. 2021, August, I develop a leg infection while speaking on the road. I come home and I find myself hiding, hospitalized for six days. And while I was in the hospital, believe it or not, I was still coaching some of my clients from the couch in the hospital for you listening in. And you were one of those clients. You remember those moments. But sitting in the hospital bed, you have a lot of free time, right? And I had my. Had Amy bring my iPad. And so here I was scrolling YouTube, just digesting educational content and I came upon this guy who called himself a hybrid CEO, hybrid athlete, and his name was Nick Baer. He is the CEO of Bear Performance Products, Bear Performance Nutrition, bpn. And I just started digesting his videos because he is a CEO of a big supplement company. But he also calls himself a hybrid athlete in that he lifts a lot. He lifts heavy, but he also runs a lot. He's also into the cardio side, right? Think about fitness. Some people are into the gym, not as much the cardio. Some people are into the cardio, not much of the gym. He's in the boat, he was in the both. And so I started digesting his content at that point. I'd always been into exercising. I hit the gym four to five times a week. But truth be told, since my last Ironman, I really hadn't done any long distance running. I'd done a lot of sprinting, but not long distance. But when I left the hospital, kind of with a newfound purpose after dealing with this leg infection, I made it a commitment to become a hybrid athlete myself. So I started adopting this mindset with my workouts that I was going to hit the gym multiple times a week, I was going to get out and run multiple times a week. And I have to tell you, that was 20, 21. Three years later. That hybrid athlete mentality has had a massive effect on my body, physically, on my mind when it comes to clarity and how I show up and perform every day in the business. And we often get told, and I say we because people say the same thing that my to Amy, to Chris. How the hell do you guys get so much done with a team of three? It's because of how we take care of ourselves. And when I think about that hybrid athlete mentality, as somebody who runs a business now, I understand I don't have kids, so I have more free time than a parent who might have kids. But adopting that hybrid athlete mindset, and really what I'm saying here is I became a student of health. I'd always worked out, I tried to eat healthy, but I really didn't become a student of understanding. Why am I doing what I'm doing? And it was in that moment when I left the hospital, I'd made a commitment that I'm now going to focus on cardio and lifting to become stronger and more cardio, cardio effective, more cardio positive. But I'm also going to study why I'm doing what I'm doing. I'm going to be a student of the game. When it came to what I'm putting in my mouth, and I will tell you, my body transformed, my mind transformed and my performance in, outside and inside the business has completely transformed. So you feel stuck, you feel like you need to be re energized right now. Look at your health. Are you showing up every day? Are you exercising? Are you getting out and getting steps in? Are you eating well? Look at what you're doing to your body and putting in your body. Because your body is a machine and food is fuel. And how you take care of your body, what you put in it, will determine how you show up in business and for everybody else in your life, that decision, leaving the hospital after my leg infection, little did I know three years later I'd be feeling healthier, more in shape, stronger, eating better than I ever have because of finding Nick Bare with Bear performance nutrition. So Nick, if you're listening, thank you and I'd be honored that you are listening. But anyways, let's move forward. So life lesson number three. How you take care of your body, what you feed it, how you take care of your mind, all matters. That is all. It all determines how you're going to show up on the field of play called business.

Lesson four.

Growing horizontally before you grow vertically. This is something I learned from a business mentor. Actually, he's a, he's a partner of mine, Samson, Jagoris and Samson, if you're listening, man, I don't know if you know how much this, this lesson has had a profound impact on our business. But just the concept of before you can scale, so before you can grow, you gotta grow horizontally before you grow vertically. What does that mean? Well, everybody is so focused in business these days to grow vertically. How fast can we scale our revenue that what happens is you hit a ceiling, right? Because your revenue will be capped at some point because you are at capacity, you haven't hired enough people, you're still trying to do everything yourself and you can't take any more clients on. And I see this impacting so many independent agents today. They start an agency, they are so focused on the lifestyle, so they're trying to optimize and maximize revenue that they're forgetting you've got to grow horizontally before growing vertically. What does that mean? You're going to have to give up short term profit by hiring the right people to take stuff off your plate so you can grow vertically in the long run. Stop being so focused on short term profit, putting money in your own pocket. If you want to grow a sustainable business, maybe one you try to sell someday, you got to grow horizontally first. You got to hire the people to do the things you shouldn't be doing. And that's where I was stuck early on in this business. I was doing all the doing. And when I realized that if I'm going to have any success growing this business, I've got to go find the right people to take the things off my plate that I shouldn't be doing, that's when everything changed. That's when I hired Amy Essig, who is basically our chief experience officer. She runs everything with our clients and she's a master at it. We've since hired a social media team to not only help with our content, but to help with client content. We've hired an ex, I've hired an executive assistant. She's actually been with me all along. I hired, we hired Chris Floria to run sales, help us with marketing, We've hired outside video editors. We have built this team because we shouldn't be doing that stuff. All that stuff was keeping us from scaling and I had to give up a lot of short term profit to make that happen. But at the end of the day, we would not be where we are today from a growth and a revenue perspective if I had not made the decision to grow horizontally. And I thank Sampson for that advice. So look at your business right now. Even if you don't own your agency, where can you take things off your plate? Where can you hire. Maybe it's an executive assistant to go through your inbox every day to control your calendar to see who gets on it, who doesn't. Where can you go horizontal before you grow vertical? Sometimes you got to invest in the business before you can take investments from the business. That's a life lesson, a business lesson that has had a profound impact on this business, we would not be growing today, we would not be seeing the 20 plus percent growth every year that we're seeing if I had not hired the right people. And if you're an agency owner right now, listening and you're a one man band right now and you know you are the one keeping you from growing because you are too afraid to give up profit, to hire an account exec, to hire somebody to run the book so you can keep going and keep going out and selling, you are costing yourself a chance to grow.

So lesson number four, before you can grow vertical, you gotta grow horizontal. Hire the right people so you can scale in the long run. And then the last life lesson, the one that has had by far the most profound impact on my career, my life, is.

The image you see behind me on the wall. Consistency.

I know I talk about it at length, I beat it to death. But I will tell you the thing that has had a bigger, more of an impact on my business in the last five years on my life has been consistency. And call it what you want. Tell me I'm too rigid with my calendar, tell me I'm too rigid with my, my non negotiables. But that is what has allowed this business to grow. That's what allows me to feel. The best I've ever felt at age 46 is because consistency. Whether it's my personal habits, my morning routine, how I plan my weeks, Consistency. The reason most people are not successful today is they are not willing to endure the daily monotony success takes that comes from the book. The one thing most people are not willing to wake up every day and do the boring shit it takes to be successful starts with a morning routine. What are you waking up and doing before the day starts? How are you putting yourself in the best position to win the day? Number two, are you attacking your big priorities every single day? What are you doing to take care of your body, your mind? What are you feeding your body? What are your non negotiables when it comes to work, relationships, diet, habits, exercise that you just will not break no matter what happens? This is why I have non negotiables in my life. This is why I plan my weeks every Sunday morning no matter where we're in. We could be in the mountains, we could be at home, we could be on the lake, I don't care. Sunday morning, planning, my week. Consistency, consistency, consistency. It is as true with habits, discipline, relationships, health, fitness, social media, content. The thing that is keeping you from success right now is your lack of consistency. Oh by the way, people distrust inconsistency. You got to be more consistent.

Look at the things in your life right now that you are not showing up and doing on a regular basis. What can you do to be more consistent? What non negotiables do you need to add to your life? You know, when I look at mine from a consistency standpoint, there are certain non negotiables in my life. I am unwilling to break, exercise, do it every day, plan my weeks, every Sunday, my morning routine, rock solid, has been for three years. And I don't share this to brag I'm sharing with. So you can look in the mirror and go, all right, where am I not being consistent right now? And what do I need to do to show up more consistently? So when I look back at these five lessons in the last five years since starting the podcast here, now that we're on episode 300, I hope these one or more of these lessons has had an impact on you in the last 25 minutes. And if they have, I hope, I hope you do something about it. I hope you take action. First. First lesson, invest in yourself, personally and professionally. The best thing to do is to go all in on you. Bet the house on you. Don't expect somebody else to invest for you. Number two, learn to love failure because you're going to do it a lot. If you're going to have success, you're going to have a lot of failure. So you got to learn to love it and use it as a lesson. Use it as learning so you can get better every day. Number three, how are you taking care of yourself.

Mentally, physically, nutritionally? What are you doing to make sure you show up every day for your family and your business? What you put into your body will ultimately determine how you show up and how you perform. View yourself like a business athlete. Number four, if you want to grow, you want to scale, think about going horizontal before you grow vertical. Go find the people to take the things off your plate you shouldn't be doing. So you can focus on growing the business and you can grow faster and, and be ready to support those new clients that are coming your way. And number five, consistency. Take everything you're learning here and then just do it every day. When you look at the wall and we've got the three words, consistent, persistent, patient. Consistent is do it every single day. Persistent is keep doing it long after everybody else quits and patience is enjoy doing it because there's no finish line. If you adopt that mentality to your business, you are going to outperform every one of your competitors. So I hope today's lesson helped. Again. I wanted to celebrate episode 300. 300 different interviews and solo episodes to hopefully that have hopefully had an impact on your life. Leave a comment Shoot me a note. Leave a review if you found this podcast so far to very, very beneficial to your career. We're on episode 300. We're going to be here for 300 more and I want to thank you for taking the time to tune in. And you know what happens, man, when you show up consistently every single day. You're going to get clear, you're going to get confident. And at that point, you become unstoppable. Be good. That's all we got for today's episode of the Bullpen Sessions podcast. One thing that would really help us both and other new potential listeners is for you to rate this show and leave a comment in itunes, Stitcher or wherever you tune in to listen to the show. Also, make sure to link up with us@completegameconsulting.com on social media and please share this podcast with anyone who you think might enjoy it. Until next time. Remember, clarity creates confidence. Confidence creates consistency. Consistency makes you unstoppable.