On January 27th, 2023, we closed a case that qualified us for MDRT’s Top of the Table in one transaction.
You know what that means if you’re in the MDRT circle. Essentially, we closed a single case that earned us a high six figures commission check.
Sure, it was 27 days into the year that we checked that goal off our list, but it’s taken 14 years of relentless focus and action to get to this point.
Let me tell you how it all unfolded.
I’ll take you back to 2012.
Here’s a photo of me 11 years ago. I was morbidly obese at 138 kilos. I worked 80-hour weeks running an insurance brokerage serving hundreds of clients. It’s safe to say I was a workaholic with little to no balance in my life. I didn’t have time for my health, squeezed in family time whenever I could, and barely took a weekend, let alone a holiday.
At age 34, I hit a wall.
My daughter Leiah was born, and it was time for me to get my Life Insurance in order.
But the Life Insurance company quoted me 100% more than the average guy my age for a policy. They didn’t expect me to live past age 75 with my lifestyle.
Now let’s fast forward 11 years.
Here’s a photo of me today. I now work four days a week, take on six new clients a year instead of 132 (phew!), I train for and compete in ultra-races worldwide and take multiple vacations and lots of quality downtime with my family every year.
I’m not writing this article to toot my horn or showcase my accomplishments. I’m writing it because I learned valuable lessons along the road to where I am today.
These are things I wish I knew and had put into practice sooner.
What Changed: My First MDRT to One-Check Top of the Table
I attended my first MDRT conference in 2007.
I was young and ambitious and ready to find my formula for success.
After studying all the most successful advisors there, I left with a goal and a conclusion: I wanted to achieve Top of the Table status, and the way to do it was to insure 150 lives! (Those were the two badges of honor I saw pinned to many chests at the conference).
Little did I know that I was embarking on what was going to be one of the most exhausting spells of my career. That was the beginning of those caffeine-fueled 80-hour work weeks.
Year after year, I saw the number of clients creep up, and my income climbed incrementally. I made it to the Top of the Table, but I was still only at 132 lives – 18 more to go until I had both shiny badges on my chest, too!
It took me another four years, until 2012, to realize that there was another way: A much narrower, laser-focused path to the Top of the Table that involved working only with your Right Fit Client.
Since then, I have had one success strategy: Find and land my right-fit clients and achieve all my financial and business goals serving them and only them.
A Goal Without a Plan Is Just a Dream
I knew my business and life had to change. But I didn’t know exactly how.
So, I went ahead and established three very clear goals:
I set an income goal.
I set a clear family time and downtime goal.
I set a health and fitness goal.
My family time and fitness goals meant that I didn’t have the liberty to work 80-hour weeks anymore.
I had a tight cap on the number of days and hours I could work, and I needed to make my income goal within those days and hours.
Specifically, after I had marked family vacations, travel, and weekends on the calendar, I was left with 169 income-generation days that year.
A small shift or a new micro-habit wouldn’t cut it. This required me to disrupt life as I knew it entirely.
With the support of a solid program and coach, @Dan Sullivan’s Strategic Coach, I started to disrupt.
The Right Fit Client
The biggest shift came for me in the form of a concept called The Right Fit Client.
Over the years, I’ve gotten sharper and sharper, tightening the criteria for who my right-fit client is. These are clients with whom connection is effortless, clients I would serve if money weren’t an object. They are people with whom I could and do have lifelong relationships. (Are you seeing a pattern here? #ItsNotBusinessItsPersonal)
My Right Fit Client today is the High Net Worth or Ultra High Net Worth Entrepreneur.
- They are typically from the Indian subcontinent or the Middle East.
- They are high-performing entrepreneurs with a growth mindset.
- They operate with immense integrity and are people of high values and virtues.
- They have families and a deep, intrinsic motivation to create a financial legacy that lives on and supports their loved ones long after they are gone.
The next big challenge was finding and connecting with landing these individuals as clients.
With careful deliberation and focused effort, I tackled this challenge successfully.
After speaking about my journey on stages and online for the last few years, I’ve been asked repeatedly how exactly I made it happen.
And so, I decided to turn my approach into a blueprint to help other advisors do the same.
As a result of applying this blueprint, here is what my team and I accomplished:
- We exponentially grew our income year after year while working with fewer clients every year
- We stopped breaking our backs, working nights and weekends to hit our goals – growth became effortless
- We have consistently produced TOT-qualifying results for 14 consecutive years as of today
- We achieved our Top of the Table numbers (high six figures) in a single client transaction this year
- We are now creating a repeatable model to hit that result multiple times a year
I believe these accomplishments resulted from a clear goal and a focused action plan toward achieving that goal. Furthermore, I also believe I’m no different from anyone else who decides to act on the fire in their belly.
In Part 2 of the Road to the Top of the Table series, I will share the four key steps of the ‘How to Find and Land Your Right Fit Clients’ strategy.
Don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter so that you can follow this mini-series and other resources to help you along your journey to the Top of the Table and beyond.
P.S. I am considering starting a mentoring circle for a few aspiring advisors who want to achieve Court of the Table and Top of the Table qualification. If this sounds like something you want to be a part of, please drop me a DM to let me know you’re interested, and we’ll reach out when we have more details.
