88. Time, Effort, and Money: The 3 Investments For Your Success

Hey. Hey. Welcome back to Friday Bullpen Sessions. My name is Andy Neary, and this is episode 88. We are going to dive into a very, very important topic today, and that is you need to start investing in your own success. But before we dive into that, I want to give you another opportunity to invest in your own success. The Broker Branding Academy has officially launched. Enrollment for the Academy is here. The Academy will kick off on February 2nd. So if you're an insurance professional and you're looking to make 2021 the best year you've ever had from a sales perspective, but you realize what 2020 did to your business, you realized it changed the way you connect with your prospects. And now that we're all online, we're connecting with our prospects much differently than we used to. You know, your strategy needs to change, and it starts with your brand. It starts with your message, and it starts with how you are sharing that message far and wide. If that's you, if you're like, hell, yes, Andy, I need help with that, and I need it to take my career to the next level. The Academy is for you, so do yourself a favor. All you gotta do is text the Word Academy to 414-622-1462, and that'll give you an opportunity to learn more about the Academy so you can take your 2021 to the next level. So click text and let's connect to see if it's a fit for you. All right, let's get back to today's topic. Investing in your own success. This is a topic that means a lot to me because if you would have talked to Andy Neary ten years ago, I didn't know what investing in myself meant, Quite frankly. I was just looking for the cheap way out of everything, the cheap way to grow my career, the cheap way to climb the ladder. I was famous for asking people, asking to pick people's brains, right? You get that opportunity to connect with a colleague of yours that's having massive success or.

A boss, a coach, whoever, and you want to just spend those 15, 20 minutes with them sucking all of the knowledge out of them that they've taken years to accumulate and several hundred thousands of dollars in some cases to accumulate, but you want it for free. You want them to take all of the knowledge that they have spent the time, effort and money acquiring, and you want them to give it to you for free. You see, that's where I was 10 years ago. I wanted the free ride to success if I just surround myself with the right people and I Just ask for help. And I just ask to have coffee with them. I asked to have lunch with them. I will accumulate enough information so that I can have the success they're having and it is going to be great. And guess what happened? Every single time, a year later, they're still growing and I'm still stuck. You see, what I realized a decade ago that I have applied to my life within the last six, seven years is that there is no free ride to success. Yes, you will have the opportunity to surround yourself with people who will sit down and have coffee with you. You will have an opportunity to sit down and have a mentor or two. But at the, at the end of the day, if you truly, you truly want to live out your full potential, you want to meet those lofty goals you're setting for yourself here in 2021, you have to start figuring out how you are going to invest in yourself. Now, there's three ways you are going to invest in yourself. You're going to invest in yourself with time, you're going to invest in yourself in effort, and you're also going to have to invest in yourself with money. So let me dive into the steps you can take this year to invest in yourself in all three ways so you can far exceed the goals you've set here in early January for your 2021 goals. Now, I hope that you have set some pretty dang lofty goals for yourself this year. I see a lot of people who are resorting to what I might call easy goals this year, mediocre goals. Why? 2020 was pretty rough for a lot, you know, why have high expectations? Let's face it, we live in an environment right now where the only thing we can expect is not to expect anything.

So why should I set big goals? Well, here's what I'm going to tell you, and this is a phrase you know, I can't take credit for. People have said it hundreds of times. I'm forgetting who I need to give credit to for this quote. But when you set goals, the big one of the biggest failures you can make in life is setting a goal so low that it's easy to achieve.

And I see a lot of insurance professionals, a lot of business professionals in general right now just setting really easy goals. Now, there's nothing wrong with celebrating small wins to give yourself some momentum to get back in the game, if that's what you need right now. But what I do want you to really try to focus on this year is even though we are still in living in a Very strange environment. I want you setting big head, hairy ass goals because it is going to require you to man up, woman up, and suck up.

And take big hairy actions if you want to achieve those goals. And this is where the investing in yourself comes in. You see if you're setting easy goals, hey, I just want to have a win this year. So I'm going to set them super low, not have a bunch of expectations. You're not going to put any time, effort or money into that because hell, let's face it, it's easy to hit. But if you are setting those big goals, man, you have got to figure out what you are going to do and invest the time, the energy, the effort and the money to make it happen. So time. My question for you right now is on a weekly basis, what are you doing to work on your craft? I talked about this in last week's Friday bullpen session in getting back to the basics, the greats, the ones you're looking up at right now in your industry, we're having massive success. I promise you they're getting back to the basics every single year. It's like spring training in baseball. It's like the famous story I told of John Wooden. No matter how successful his team was the previous year, they could have gone 40 and O with a national title. Those first few practices were spent learning how to put their shoes and socks on the right way. So what are you doing each and every week to learn how to put your shoes and socks on the right way? What are you doing to hone your craft, to practice, to get better? You know, one area I coach my clients on to grow their brand, connect their audience, is becoming really good at public speaking speaking. And when you be, when you can become good at public speaking, you are going to elevate your business. You're going to elevate your prospecting opportunities, your ability to connect with the right people. But where both people fail is they feel that public speaking is nothing more than standing on stage for 15 minutes and just talking. When the reality is the the keynote speakers you see out there, the ones making 25, 50, a hundred thousand dollars per keynote, the amount of hours and effort they put into practice and the money they put into surrounding themselves with teachers who are going to make themselves a better speaker, would blow you away. So my first piece of advice is look at your week and I want you designating time every single week to honing your craft, to practicing what you do every single day, every single week. That's where you have to start is put the time into getting better. Now the good news is that doesn't require any money. That just requires a little time and a little effort on your behalf. Now, where does the effort and the money come into play in investing yourself? This is where my career has changed forever. You see, back in 2014 when Amy and I decided to move out here to Colorado, I've shared this story multiple times here on the podcast. That's where my story began. That's where my brand started to grow. Because I went to work for an insurance agency that didn't know what marketing was. I was their only producer require responsible for sales. And I was now in a market, nobody knew who I was. Right. I had to grow a brand. I had to become a known entity. And the first place I went to is investing in myself monetarily, self development. And I can still recall the first investment I made while I was working at this insurance agency. And that was in a online course coached and taught by Darren Hardy. And for those who don't know, if you don't know who Darren Hardy is, look him up, Google him. He's got a fabulous, he got several books. The one I absolutely love is the compound effect. I used his living your best life, your best year ever journal for a few years. He's a fascinating man, a man full of knowledge. But I made my first monetary investment by buying one of his online courses. And it was a course on time management and productivity. And so it was about an 8, 9 week course. Every week a new module was unlocked into my room, my library that I had purchased. And so every week I'd get a chance, sit down, learn from him, take notes. And that is really where my self development journey began. Now from there it went into reading books. Right? Again, the good news is with books monetarily, it doesn't require a big investment, right? It requires you the time to read them, requires the effort to read them. But you can see here we just have a sampling of our library here at home, of books that I have consumed over the last six or seven years that have helped me, it's helped Amy me take our lives and our careers to the next level. So the next place I looked to was reading consumption. Now this is where I do see a lot of people make a mistake. And I know you might not agree with me, but when it comes to reading, yes, I'm asking you to be an avid reader. Now today you can read online, you can listen in audiobooks, but be an avid reader. But here's what I'm going to ask you to do. Don't just focus on books that pertain to your area of subject matter expertise. I come from the health insurance industry and if I were to ask many producers to list the last 10 books they've read, I'm willing to bet they are all tied to health insurance in one way, shape or form or the health care system. And there's fabulous books out there tied to both, but they just consume only that and they're not getting better at the other areas of their life, whether it's time management, productivity, mindset, discipline.

Exercise, health, fitness, you name it. If you want to live the life you know that you are, you are you, you desire that you expect, you have to get good, you have to consumpt, consumpt, consume knowledge, excuse me, on different areas of life outside of just your business. So when it comes to reading, yes, you're going to find health insurance books on this shelf that if you're watching this right now, you'd see. You're going to see books on health care, but you're also going to see books on spirituality, books on mindset, books on health and fitness, books on positivity, books on marketing, all the stuff that are going to help me become the person that I need to be to achieve the goals I want to achieve. So step two was after I purchased Darren Hardy's course, I just became an avid reader. Up until that point in my career, I was not a big reader. I did not read many books. Now.

Fast forward a few years.

And within the last 24 months, I have made some massive investments and some massive decisions.

In my personal growth and my career growth that has changed the trajectory of my life forever. You know, it was two months, two years ago that I was sitting.

As a W2 employee selling health insurance for an insurance agency in Omaha, Nebraska, and I had this itch, I had this drive that I wanted to become a coach. And up until that point, though, I have to admit it was a little scary because I was 41 years old. I had never been an entrepreneur in my life. I'd always been a W2 employee. I grew up in a family where you were a W2, right? You just earn a paycheck, put food on the table. So I didn't even know what entrepreneurism meant. And then the opportunity presented itself to me again. This was about 24 months ago. I'd been listening to a podcast for the Love of Money by Chris Harder, a gentleman who is a mentor, a coach, and has become a friend of mine. And I was Listening to him talk about money mindset. And that is exactly, you know, at that time, what I needed to hear. And out of his mouth on one of these episodes came the opportunity I had been waiting for. And it was a mastermind called Fast Foundations. It was going to be a mastermind of five or six month mastermind dedicated for startup entrepreneurs. Folks that had never really done, maybe gotten into entrepreneurialism before, were about to start their first business, maybe just even had an idea and didn't know where to start. And I'll never forget making that call to Chris saying, hey man, I'm a W2 employee right now at an insurance agency. I don't even know if this is a fit for me, but let's talk, let's see if it's fitting. And after a 15, 20 minute phone call, Chris gave me the blessing, gave me his blessing to join the Mastermind. But I had a big decision to make. It was about a $6,000 investment. And don't get me wrong, it was scary as hell at the time. I had the money, but did I want to let go of $6,000 to invest in a mastermind that I didn't even know what the results were going to look like. To invest in something that I wasn't even sure I was a fit for yet.

But I did. I laid down that $6,000. And trust me, the, the, the, the while I was handing this $6,000 over to him, or at least clicking the sen button online, I felt uncomfortable as hell.

But that is where the journey of self development truly started for me. Because I have never looked back since that day I went through that mastermind, Fast Foundations. I realized, number one, hell yes, I am an entrepreneur. Hell yes, I can grow a business. But here's where that has led. It has led me to make so many more investments in my own growth and time, effort and money. Once that Fast Foundations was over, I re enrolled for another five, six thousand dollars into that same mastermind because I knew it was now phase two. Phase one was, was I an entrepreneur? Phase two was, hell yes, I'm an entrepreneur. But now what's next? How do I actually grow this business to the next level? And then the big, the big investment came about four or five months ago. And this is what I want to share with you. And I'm sharing this with you to, to prove a point, to make a lesson, to teach a lesson, guys, if you want to have the success you know you're capable of, if you want to live to your full potential, whether that's in your business, in your life, it is going to take you, it's going to take a commitment in time, effort and money. And there has never been a penny that I've spent that I have never regretted when I spent it on my own growth. Now this fall, I was feeling a little out of place. I had stopped working with a coach I was not a part of, a mastermind. And quite frankly, I was struggling with my circle of guy friends because I didn't have that many. And so this was now a matter of trying to up level my career and up level my life. And I knew something was missing. I knew I needed to make a move to not only set my coaching business, my personal life back on the right track, but I needed to make a move to let the universe know I was here to play for keeps, that I meant business. And so here's what happened in a matter of two days and I'm going to share the numbers with you again. Not to say, hey, I had the money to invest. I'm here to show you how painful, how hard this was, but what has happened since. In a matter of two days, I not only reinvested or rehired or I should say hired a coach, a new coach, a new one on one coach to the tune of well over a thousand dollars a month.

I made the decision to re enroll again in the Fast Foundations Mastermind.

For another $5,000. And I made the decision to enroll into a men's trip, an experience run by a buddy of mine, Kyle Depieze, beyond experience that was going to cost me another 55, $5,700. So in a matter of two days.

I invested between 15 and $20,000 in my own business and personal growth. Now.

I wish you could witness how painful those two days were for me. Watching the me part with that money that was hard earned dollars that I had created in my coaching business.

It was painful, it was uncomfortable. That first night was kind of a sleepless night. But I knew when I invested, I knew when I made that commitment and I told the universe I was here to play for keeps.

Good things would happen. And I am here to tell you not only have I been happier than hell to part with that money, but the results that have come out of it, the coaching opportunities, the amazing coaching I'm receiving from my personal coach, Christina Lacure, the connections I made at that men's experience thanks to Kyle, putting together the beyond experience, the connections, the mentorship I'm receiving again from Chris and Lori harder by being a part of that fast foundations mastermind, I do not regret $1 spent on any of it. And then the big decision came.

Early November. If that wasn't big enough, this one was even bigger. In early November.

I knew it was time to take the next jump, the big leap and go 100% pot committed to my coaching career. You see, up until that point, I was, I had my coaching business, but I was still a 1099 employee with the same insurance agency in Omaha, Nebraska, maintaining and managing a book of health insurance business that was paying me a nice little sum of money every single month. But I knew again, if I wanted the universe to truly believe I was here to play for keeps, I had to make that full leap into coaching. So I made the decision on November 20th, on my birthday that I was going all in. And that was the day I let that employer, my employer, my partner know that as of the end of the year, I'm going to resign from my position as a 1099 employee because I'm going all in on my coaching business.

And the moment I did that, when I hit that send button in that email.

It was nerve wracking. It was a bit painful, but it also felt like an 800 pound gorilla was getting off my back, hell, leaping off my back. And here's the most beautiful thing.

The moment I made that commitment, the moment I told the universe that I'm here to play for keeps, I'm going all in on this coaching business, is the moment the coaching opportunities came in droves. It was like the floodgates were opened. And all of a sudden, from every single angle, every single phone call I was having with people felt like it was another coaching opportunity to help an insurance advisor make impact, help them impact their business, impact their career, impact their life. And here I am recording this video On Monday, January 11, now 100% committed to the coaching business, all in on it. And I couldn't have been happier. When I look back at the amount of money that I invested in my personal growth, in my career growth, growth in the last 12 months, it is scary. There are days I go, man, what could I have done with that money had I not spent it there and spent it in other areas of the business? But the only reason I am where I am right now is because of that commitment I made in time, effort and money to get where I am today. And that is the lesson, that's the message I want to share with you today is if you have these big lofty goals for 2021, and I hope you do what do you need to do to invest in yourself, in the time, in the effort, and in the money?

Because when you make that commitment.

Especially when you commit with your money, when you part with your money, you know damn well you are going to commit the time and you are going to commit the effort. So that is my plea to you today. If you have these big goals that figure out not only who you need to become to achieve those goals, but where do you need to turn, what do you need to do, who do you need to reach out to to help you achieve those goals? And then go to work putting in the time, the effort and the money to making it happen. Because as long as you do the work, as long as you put the time in, you will never regret the money you spent on your growth. So go make it happen today. Here is to a fantastic 2021. And when you commit the effort, the time, the money, and you let that universe know you are here to play for keeps, there's no going back and you will be blown away by the success you have next year. So, as you know, when clarity and confidence collide, massive action happens. So take the time, make the commitment and effort and money, and that massive action will happen, my friend. Have a great day, have a great weekend.