What is your purpose?

What is it you truly want out of your business? What is your ultimate purpose? What is truly important to you, and how are going about achieving those goals? In our industry, it’s very easy to get caught up in the race to grow our businesses. Our goals are often built around monetary success rather than lifestyle goals.

Several years ago I had a coach tell me something very revealing. He said, “Jim, don’t let someone else’s success become your goal.” You see, we look at what other advisors and agents are doing, and our nature is to think, “If he can do that, I know I can do that.” So, if we are asset gatherers, and we see someone bringing in $40 million a year in new assets, we identify that as our goal. Or, we see someone write $1 million in target premium life insurance, and we decide to build our business plan around achieving that $1 million number.

But that’s not what this is all about. Whenever you are defining your goals for your practice, instead of starting with your monetary goals, begin with your life goals. What do you truly want out of life, and how is the business going to serve you in the pursuit of those ideals?

For me, I have three things that define what I’m all about. Number one is my faith. Number two is my family, most importantly my wife and my two daughters. And number three is all of those that I serve, including my friends, clients, colleagues and employees. As I define what I want my business to become, it simply must begin and end with these priorities.

How big do you want to become?