Originally posted on Facebook HERE
Well… it’s early again, so… more of a “looking at my back window” post today than actually looking out of it. Tree’s up. I had absolutely nothing to do with that. But I do like it. Takes a lot of effort. And… this week I’ve been thinking a lot about effort. It seems like so many people want to give the least they can, but want a lot in return these days. That’s a weird way to live if you ask me. I want to give 100% effort in everything I do, always. And I mean everything. You ask me to sweep the floor, I’ll do the best job I’m capable of (if I accept the task — but that’s beside the point here). I’ve never been a fan of cutting corners. On anything. When you start cutting corners, letting things slide… allowing yourself to do things you didn’t really give your all to… you only hurt yourself. In your heart, you start to see yourself as “less than”. Less than you’re capable of. Less than the people around you who do give their all. Less than your business, your family and you yourself deserve. We need more people to realize the value of giving “more than”. Exceeding expectations. Taking pride in a job well done. I’ve helped train a lot of financial advisors in my day. Many of them have gone on to have extremely successful careers, too. But along the way were plenty of people, who — when I showed them my process, how we did things at our office — would say “you do all this for every client?”… and I knew — I had a corner cutter that was going to pick and choose a couple things, but disregard the bulk of it. And that their success was going to suffer because of it. One of the things I loved about the two bands I’ve had the most success with in my career — the Twistin’ Egyptians in the 80s and Road Trip Band in the 90s/00s was our attention to detail. Everything was watched, thought about, and monitored. We spent a lot of time on grooves, dynamics, tempos, and what we could do to improve the live shows. Road Trip recorded everything. All the live shows, all the practices. The leader of that band is one of the best band leaders I ever played with. Probably the best, actually. You want “attention to detail”? Holy crap, we had that. I’ll never forget back when I was in the band, we did the song “Play that funky music”. It was a fan favorite the first few years I was in the band. We did like 100–150 shows a year back then. Played that song every night. We practiced every Wednesday, too. No exceptions. Practice was almost never called off. No cutting corners! One night we got to practice and he pulled out the original recording of “Play that funky music” and we spent a bunch of time on a song we had been playing for years because the tapes from the live shows sounded like we had gotten sloppy with it over time. And that’s when it really hit me how important it is to pay attention to all the details. We hit the stage every night with confidence because, at least to me — I felt like we were the best cover band in the state. We put in hours of work to get to where we were. We covered all the bases. And to this day, that band remains my favorite Wisconsin cover band in no small part due to the work ethic that comes from strong leadership at the top. In my current business, I see advisors that start to “mail it in” at the end of their careers… to “coast”, you know? That will never be me. You hire me, you want my help, I can’t feel good about it unless I’m giving you as much if not more than what you’re asking me to do. I’m going to hit it hard. Hard enough that when you work or spend time with me in any fashion — as a musician, a client, a friend or a family member… it won’t take you long to see how I am. I have a lot of passion. You’ll know it. You’ll feel it. I don’t know any other way to be. So, don’t talk to me about taking the easy way out — I see that as a great way to get less out of life. I’d rather move forward knowing I did my best, always. And once the passion starts to wane, it’s time to move on, right?… life is too short to mail anything in. Give it all you’ve got, so when you get to the end you can look back with pride on a life well lived. Because when you focus on giving “more than”, you will raise the bar for everyone around you. And that is something worth living for.
