What have you been doing to grow your business lately? Are you like a lot of advisors who have responded to the chaos by putting everything on hold and trying to wait it out? Or have you realized that growing your business in bad times can still be done successfully if you have the right mindset? Not only is now the perfect time to grow your advisory business, but it’s also an essential time to put the right pieces in place for the future. In fact, did you know that what you do today will determine your success in 2022? You read that right—I didn’t say 2021. I said 2022. Here’s why.

2022 Starts Now

Where you are now is a reflection of where you were 18 months ago. It takes that long for habits to really get ingrained, for mindset to evolve, and for efforts to turn into results. That means that if you start now, you’ll start seeing big time improvements in your business (and life) by spring of 2022.

Change takes time. Most entrepreneurs don’t want to believe that because they want instant results, but it’s the truth. You can’t make adjustments today and expect them to turn into big results tomorrow or next week or even next year. Playing the long game might not be exciting or fun, but it’s the only way to experience sustainable success.

What to Work On

So what should you be working on right now that will help you crush 2022? These are the most important:

Mindset  Gratitude and a growth mindset where you view problems or failures as challenges meant to help you improve are the mindsets that will lead to success and fulfillment. If you’re focusing on the negative or stop trying when the going gets tough, now is the time to make a change.

Efforts  How much effort are you really putting into your business? And are those efforts focused and strategic or are they all over the board? If you aren’t making focused efforts to grow your business, this might be the time to hire a coach or take a course that will help.

Discipline  One of the perks of being an independent advisor is that you have flexibility. However, this can also be a drawback if you don’t have the discipline to get all your work done in a timely manner (or the discipline to stop working at a reasonable time every day.) The definition of discipline is the practice of following a code of behavior. What is your code? How do you adhere to it? Discipline takes time to develop. If you start putting the pieces in place now, 2022 will be a whole lot easier.

Habits  Have you gotten into the habit of scheduling all your work obligations first and leaving your life for last? If you’ve been doing this for months, you could be experiencing burnout and need to develop the habit of scheduling life first. This is just one example of how one habit can have long-reaching results and that you may not know what those results are until months into the future. Other habits you could work on include getting up earlier to have an hour of reading or learning time, having weekly lunches with mentors, and journaling at the end of each day.

2022 may seem like it’s a long way off, but it will arrive quickly. Make the changes necessary now to make sure you’re on the right path to making 2022 a huge success. Have questions or want to chat more? Please reach out!