Sometimes, it's OK to be terrible

The 5K is my maudlin effort to emulate my incredible wife, who started running this time last year and in about a week will compete in her first marathon. I am so proud of her. And so I want to run a 5K. I'm already in good enough shape for it, she tells me. I just need to work in my running form.

Black belt will happen. We train MMA all the time. The trick is timing it so my wife and I black belt at the same time our kids do. It's not often that an entire family black belts at once.

The push-ups, sit-ups and squats are part of the black belt thing. I just need to exercise on the days I'm not specifically training. Exercise every day is a good thing, and not just for your body. It's a discipline for the mind and the spirit. You can't let yourself quit, even for a day.

The role-playing game thing is just me being a geek. Never mind.

Reading 25 books shouldn't be so hard now that I've finished my third and final Dark Britannia novel. That project took me seven years to complete, during which time I often went a full year or more without reading fiction at all. Didn't want to sidetrack the creative side of my brain.

I still want to write something creative every day, even if it's just jotting down a journal entry. It's a unique and perishable skillset, creative writing. No sense in letting rust build up on the gears.

Drawing.

That first one is, for me, the biggest one. See, I was a really active comic book penciller when I was a kid, and I dreamed of drawing comics for a living. The kicker is I just wasn't all that great at it, I had no formal instruction, and once I learned I could complete stories in a fraction of time by typing them out rather than by drawing them, I kind of put away my pencils. But I miss it terribly, so I decided I would spend this year learning how to draw again. My family, for Christmas got me a correspondence course from the Kubert School of Cartooning — a certified college for those who want to draw comics or cartoons professionally — and I cannot wait to tear into it. At the same time, though, I'm fairly terrified because I have friends who are bona fide comic book artists.

One of them is Scott Johnson, who produces a ton of licensed work for Marvel on things like licensed consumer merchandise. Another is Ramon Perez, who is currently pencilling issues of the X-Men (a major gig) and who won several Eisner awards last year (the comic industry's top honor) for his work on A Tale of Sand. There are plenty of others, too. I am friends with some seriously, seriously talented people, and the artwork I produce is going to be pitiful compared to them.

See what I mean? I did this on my whiteboard the other day during lunch. The right arm is all off, and the sword is crooked. Clearly, I have a long way to go. But I figured I'd keep at it and keep posting my work publicly for two reasons. One, it keeps me honest. If I stop, folks will wonder why, and I'd hate to have to tell them it's because I bailed on my goal for the year. Two,  going public makes me confront my fear of failure in this regard. And that becomes something more than just being able to draw decent comic book stuff. It's about not being afraid of failure in any endeavor, personal or professional.

I don't try to write sales articles very often because I have never held a sales position, and I have too much respect for the challenges sales professionals face to try to pass off spurious advice to folks who only ever eat what they catch, so to speak. But the life and health world is very much a sales industry, and that sales force is facing some challenging, challenging times. Ask any health agent. Ask anybody wondering how an imposed fiduciary standard would impact their practice. Ask anybody who is grooming a successor for their own practice. Ask anybody who saw Glenn Neasham take it on the nose and think, "That could have been me." Ask anybody who is trying to recruit new blood into the business, knowing that over the next 10 years, the distribution channels are going to be empty if new professionals aren't found, and found quickly.

You think 2012 was a wild and wooly year? 2013 will be just as turbulent. And if there is one thing I have learned about life/health sales, it is this: those who are ready, willing and able to adapt, to evole, to learn new skills, to take smart risks…those are the folks who will flourish, even amid times of incredible uncertainty. 

The thing is, the insurance world is one that tends not to embrace change with a huge amount of enthusiasm. There is entrepreneurship and innovation, but there is also a certian love for things that work in this business that reinforce a culture of sticking to what you know, to not rushing into things, to not taking any unnecessary risks, to not stick one's neck out. And I suppose that's all with good reason. After all, it has helped keep the industry around for a long time. But given the unprecedented territory in which the industry finds itself in these days, more and more producers are going to have to venture far outside their comfort zone in order to see new opportunities and to deliver fresh value to new clients if they want to continue to enjoy a successful career. They are going to have start drawing superheroes amid friends who have already made quite a name for themselves doing it, so to speak, and they will have to admit to themselves that at first, these fledgling efforts are probably going to leave a lot to be desired. At first.

It takes a certain willingness to disregard one's own inadequacies to learn a new competency. Sometimes, it is okay to be terrible at something if you are committed to getting better at it. If that were not so, few industry veterans would have stayed in this business past their first few sales calls.

So while I flail away with my pencils and pens, I hope that you will also confront those old limits that have defined your careers so far and remember that the only limits we really have are the ones we place on ourselves. If you're up for a good laugh, check out how my drawing efforts progress over on Facebook. But along the way, let me know what it is you're up to as you expand your skills in 2013. I'm willing to bet that among my readers, there will be more than a few success stories to be told by the beginning of 2014. All the best.