Beyond The Pitcher's Mound Ep. 9: Discipline Breeds Consistency

Hey. Hey. Welcome back to another video. So, just got done doing another awesome episode of the Black and White Truth of Benefit advising with my dear friend Kareem Cade. By the way, we're turning that into a podcast. Our mission with the episodes is to really make an impact on young advisors in the insurance industry. There isn't a whole lot of training for young advisors around topics like habits, developing habits, disciplines so that you can have long term sustained success. It's always typically based on industry knowledge, things you can do to go try to win business as quickly as possible. But really no one's out there working with advisors on how to develop those habits that you need to apply day in and day out to have long term success. So that's our mission with the Black and White Truth. And so we're excited to turn that thing into a podcast. So stay tuned. But what I want to talk about for this video is.

The word consistency came up in the podcast episode when Kareem asked me what I believe is the secret behind long term sustained success. The secret behind being disciplined. And to me, it's consistency. If somebody were to ask me what my superpower is, I'd say it's consistency. It is the reason that I was able to play pro baseball. I didn't have the height, I didn't throw overly hard, but it was my ability to show up consistently every day and put the work in on the things that really aren't that sexy. You know, working on my craft that allowed me to have a lot of success on the baseball field. And early in my business career in insurance, I did not understand that. It's why I quite frankly sucked at selling insurance. But when I realized that, that having success in insurance is just like having success in my baseball career, it was going to take me doing all the things when no one was looking, it was gonna require me to put in the work when no one was watching that would ultimately lead to my success. That's when everything changed. And you know, anybody can show up for a day, a week, even a month. You know, you look at those people on social media and they go to the gym for three days and then they're posting all these pictures on social media to make it look like they've been going to the gym for years. And you know, when I see that stuff, I say, yeah, give me a call when you've gone to the gym every single day for two years. And so anybody can show up for a couple days, for a couple weeks, but what are you doing to instill the Habits and discipline so that you show up every single day. You know, I think you arrive at a place that you have good habits and discipline. When people look at you and they say, man, how do you do, do what you do, how are you so productive? How are you so healthy? How are you so built, whatever that is, and you just say, I don't know, it's just what I do. That's when you know you have a discipline, when you really can't explain and you know, it's just become a non negotiable in your life. It's just that's what I do every day. It's that simple. And I won't go into detail, but I've shared this at length on, you know, some of the disciplines I deploy every single day that I think have had a massive impact on me personally and professionally. Number one, those cold showers, right? I know you can laugh at taking a cold shower, but really what a cold shower does for you first thing in the morning is number one, it's good for your immune system. But number two, it's a mental exercise because you're doing something that is very hard first thing in the morning, you're jumping in an ice cold shower. Heck, if you've got a lake near you or a river where you can jump in the ice cold lake or river, go for it. But what it's telling your brain is you do hard things and if that's the first thing you do in the morning, your brain's going, man, what else can I do? Today I talked about my habit of watching YouTube educational YouTube content for 20 minutes a day every morning. You know, you do that day after day, week after week, month after month. You look a year back, you probably got an entire semester's worth of education just watching YouTube. And you know, it's my habits of going to the gym, I don't think about going to the gym anymore. It's something I do every single day. And I don't share this to brag, but what I share this is, this is how you create long term success. Instill habits and disciplines and then just do it a day after day where you get to the point where you don't have to think about it. It's not my knowledge that has allowed me to build a successful business. Yeah, it helps. It's discipline, it's habits that is the secret sauce. And I think about the insurance industry where so many people are seeking quick wins. They just want the secret weapon to what do I say to the prospect to get them to say, yes, give me the perfect script, give me the silver bullet. There is none. The silver bullet is developing habits and discipline. You know, I gave an example on the episode with Karim today, just he and I were both at a conference together recently and I was invited to grab a dinner with some, some industry peers. But I knew the dinner wasn't scheduled until late at night at 8:30. And one of my habits, one of my disciplines, I do not eat dinner after 7pm I don't eat any food after 7pm because I know if I hold tight to that discipline, I'm going to wake up the next day with energy, feeling good, ready to rock out the day. So what I decided to do is I told the group that I would join them, but I actually went and ate dinner at 5 o' clock because that's my habit. And I joined them at 8 o' clock and I grabbed the cocktail and still had a great time networking, collaborating. And they. The point was I was able to still enjoy the opportunity to network, but I stuck to my discipline that I do not eat dinner that late. And so these are the kind of disciplines you've got to instill in your life, whether they're personal disciplines or something you do in business, because at the end of the day, they become your judge and your jury. You judge your success by whether or not you followed your habits and discipline every single day. And so that's the advice I wanted to give you today is, you know, there is no secret sauce to winning. There is no secret script or magic formula to what it takes to grow a business today. It's just applying some very solid, well defined habits to your life, wrapping them with some discipline to stick to those habits, then waking up day in and day out and applying those habits, following those habits, executing on those habits over the course of the next weeks, months, years. You do that, develop the right habits and apply them every day, you will have success. And whatever endeavor it is could be trying to lose some weight, trying to eat better. Maybe it's taking a walk with your family every night. You're trying to develop that habit or growing your business the way you know it should grow. It comes down to discipline. There's nothing more than that.

People can be smarter than you, people can have a lot more talent than you, a lot more resources than you. But man, if you got discipline, you got the habits and you can apply those every day, you're deadly. And that's what I'll leave you with when I talk about my, my superpower being consistency. You might be smarter than me, might have more talent, more resources. But I'm going to outwork you. I'm going to keep doing every single day, long after you give up. Because I know you're seeking short term success. Short term wins. So get that mindset. And man discipline habits are going to take you really far.