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(Related: Kobe Bryant's Work Ethic)
I recently worked with Ron, an advisor in Cleveland. Ron is one of the most knowledgeable advisors I know. He has every designation you can think of. He studies tax law so that he can advise his clients of the tax consequences of everything he recommends. He reads insurance policies and annuity contracts cover-to-cover, and he learns everything he can about his clients, because he's not satisfied just finding a suitable solution or plan for their particular situation. He tries to find the perfect solution or plan for them.
But despite all his knowledge, Ron was struggling to provide for his family. He was living proof that knowledge is not Power. Applied knowledge is Power. Power comes from reaching out to lots of people and offering to share your knowledge. And that wasn't happening for Ron.
Ron didn't need more information. He already had enough information to be incredibly successful. What he needed was a transformation. He needed to be taking relentless, persistent, intensely focused action to get himself in front of clients with that knowledge.
The specific strategies or systems he used were less important than the level and intensity of the action he took.
In my experience, there's only one thing that distinguishes top advisors from the rest of us, and it's not the system or strategy they used to reach that level of success. It's their access to relentless, persistent, intensely focused action — every hour of every day.
Top advisors seem to have access to that kind of intensely focused action, but clearly, Ron did not. And without it, he couldn't apply his knowledge on a massive scale.
