Don't Let the "Metrics" PARALYZE YOUR SUCCESS [Friday Bullpen Sessions Episode 40]

Shut your mindset.

Shut your mindset.

Hey, welcome back. It is Friday. You know what that means? It is time for Friday Bullpen sessions. My name is Andy Neary and this is episode 40. It's going to be one of my favorite episodes I've done to date because it's a topic that is near and dear to my heart. The metrics of life. Are you paralyzed by the metrics of life? Whether it's comments, it's likes, it's watching what your colleagues are doing and it seems like they're all having this massive success and you're just trying to figure out how can I have that success too? This episode is for you, right? Because let's face it, we are a society of instant gratification. We want to see instant results. And the easiest way to do that is with statistics on social media. It's likes and comments. It's sales in your business. You want to see those instant results and all that does is bring stress, anxiety. It has you comparing yourself to your peers and you're letting it drive, not only drive your business, but you're letting it drive you crazy.

Because right now I want to teach you, I want to share with you how you can get back to the basics and focus on what you need to do. Focus on your own results so you can start having more success. You can start creating, creating different results. Speaking of which, if you want different results, if you're looking for the right answer that's going to take your business from where it is today to where you want it to be. You're looking for the right tribe of people, of high achievers in the business world that are all looking to try to take their businesses, their sales results to the next level. I want you to go check out Complete Game Mastermind. I've put a note in the links below. Go check it out. It is a five month program designed around three things, designed around giving you high end coaching that's going to help you take your business, your mindset to the next level. It's built around community. Imagine surrounding yourself with 11 other 12 other high level achievers who are all trying to accomplish what you are and who are going to help you take your business to the next level. And it's designed around coach accountability. If you know you should be taking certain actions, you know you should be moving your business forward. But you're just caught in paralysis by analysis. You need to be held a little accountable to take action. Go check out Complete Game right now. It's probably a fit. I want you to apply. I want you to learn more. And let's jump on a call to see if this is a fit for you today. All right, let's dive into today's episode. Shift your mindset. Are you paralyzed by the metrics of life?

You know.

Watching behavior on social media over the past hell few years has really driven my desire to want to have this conversation with you today. You know, I have watched, fortunately, I've watched my social media awareness and following grow pretty drastically over the last 12 months. And it's easy to get sucked in by the metrics of social media, right? It's easy to find yourself on a daily basis going into your LinkedIn profile and seeing how many do, how many followers do I have today? Or posting that video, that blog, whatever it is, and immediately diving in an hour later to go, how many likes does it have? How many comments does it have? Do people like my stuff? But you know what, man, that's a rough way to live. I've been there. Early on when I was trying to grow my social media following, I was all concerned about the stats. And what happened by being so focused on the metrics of social media is it actually drove what I posted. So instead of posting from my heart, posting what matters to me most, stuff I believe in, I just wanted to post this post content that would do well in the metrics. So instead, I would just post what I thought the algorithm of LinkedIn want, what I thought the algorithm of Instagram wanted, of Facebook, whatever. And I got away from who I was. And it drove me nuts. Yes, I had. I grew the following. I got the likes and I got the comments, but at the end of the day, did nothing for my business.

And so that's what I want to talk about today. And again, I think about being driven by, you know, having your life, your business, being driven by the metrics. It brings me back to, you know, my career in baseball, especially at the professional ranks.

If you have ever been an athlete, I don't care if it's at the high school level, the college level, or the professional ranks, you will totally understand what I mean about allowing yourself to be compared by stats, right? Especially when I got to the Milwaukee brewers organization. Every day you were compared by stats. You know, as a pitcher, my entire performance was based on my stats. Wins versus losses, strikeouts per nine innings, earned run average. Was I averaging more than one strikeout an inning as a relief pitcher? There were certain metrics that scouts would look at to determine whether or not I deserved a promotion, whether or not I Maybe deserve a demotion or whether or not I actually have a future within the organization.

Literally. Stats, height, weights, production at the high school level or the college level determines how high a baseball organization might draft you, which also determines how much they're gonna sign you for. Everything is determined by stats.

And I've said this before in previous episodes, another very interesting phenomenon at the professional sports level is you're even compared to your teammates. You know, one thing that surprised me actually, when I got to the Helena brewers was the reality of, yeah, I love my teammates. We're trying to win games, we're trying to make the playoffs, but at the end of the day, we're actually all competing with each other, right? Because I'm in the bullpen with, I don't know, six, seven other relief pitchers who are all trying to get promoted. My coaching staff is technically competing with each other because they're trying to get promoted to the professional ranks. I immediately think of one of my coaches I had with the Ogden Raptors, Ed Cedar. He's an example of a coach who actually had succeeded at the minor league level and elevated himself all the way to the Milwaukee brewers organization, where he's now the third base coach. But coaches are competing with each other. Heck, umpires are competing with each other in professional baseball. And the same holds true whether you're playing professional golf, professional basketball, professional football. I don't care. And so what happens as a result is it's so easy as an athlete to get paralyzed by the metrics. It's so easy to allow yourself to spend too much time comparing yourself to your teammates, to others. Because, man, you know, Greg had a really good game yesterday. Came in relief. He pitched a solid three innings. He had six strikeouts and three innings. He lowered his ERA from 3.1 to 2.6. Man, I've been trying to get that promotion, too. Now it might be Greg who's getting that promotion. And you can just let this stuff drive you crazy. Well, the same phenomenon is going on right now in the business world, in the social media world. You are constantly comparing yourself to your peers. You know, having spent 17 years in the insurance industry, I see it all the time. People going to these conferences, these webinars, these masterminds. I don't care where you're connecting with peers and they're talking about, I'm going after this size of group. I just wrote this size of group, and I've written this amount of revenue this year. Life is great. And instead of cheering for them, which I hope you do, because if they're your peers, you want to have them, watch them have success. You also start comparing yourself, and instead of happiness for the other person and happiness for their success, you start dwelling on your failure. Oh, man, I'm not having as much success as Mike's having over there. He just wrote a half a million dollars of business this year. What the hell am I doing? Who am I? I'm not having any success. And the second you start comparing your metrics to his metrics, anxiety enters your life. Stress enters your life. And now you start pressing, because instead of being focused on patience and consistency and playing the long game in your career, now you go for instant wins. And when you go for instant wins, you become a desperate salesperson. If you're in the sales profession, you start chasing silver bullets. You want that overnight success because instead of understanding what it took for Mike to get to that half million dollars of business, you want to get to half a million dollars tomorrow. And that is not a way to grow your business, at least long term. That is not a way to have success, and most important, that's not a way to be happy. You see, one of the biggest mistakes I made in my early business career is when I left professional baseball and I got into retirement planning for a very short time. And then in the insurance world, I allowed that comparison, limiting belief to continue to drive what I did so I would be focused on everybody else's sales metrics. I can remember when I started in the insurance business with Federated Insurance so many years ago, and I was part of a district and.