Kobe Bryant's Work Ethic

"You'd walk in there and he'd be cutting and grunting and motioning like he was dribbling and shooting — except there was no ball. I thought it was weird, but I'm pretty sure it helped him."

He often kept other players after practice as "guinea pigs," to try out his new moves on them.

He put himself through intense workouts on NBA game days and at halftime he would watch videos of his moves and his teammates, to help them all improve during the second half.

When he retired from basketball and started doing other things, he cold-called businesspeople and entrepreneurs to learn more about them and their secrets to success.

Bryant told Bloomberg, "I'll just cold call people and pick their brain about stuff. Some of the questions that I'll ask will seem really, really simple and stupid, quite honestly, for them. But if I don't know, I don't know. You have to ask. I'll just do that. I'll just ask questions and I want to know more about how they build their businesses and how they run their companies and how they see the world."

I believe that almost anyone with a work ethic like Kobe Bryant's can succeed in whatever he does, and that whether or not you have that work ethic is a choice you make every day.

Bryant accomplished more in his all-too-short lifetime than most of us do. If you want help accomplishing more in yours, take a close look at your own work ethic.

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Sandy Schussel has been a coach and practice development consultant for insurance and financial professionals for the past 20 years. He is an approved MDRT coach and has served as the national sales training director for First Investors and Foresters. He is the author of two books, The High Diving Board, about overcoming fear and Become A Client Magnet, about attracting and keeping clients. Schussel's scheduling calendar is available here.