401k Advisors: Adopt This Aviation Pioneer’s 3 Principles for Success

401k, retirement, GRPAA

F-14 Tomcat jet fighter on a carrier deck.

To succeed in life, you don’t need to have it all figured out—about 80 percent is acceptable.

It’s a surprising statement coming from someone responsible for landing jets at 160 mph on floating, bobbing, swaying aircraft carriers in the middle of the ocean—sometimes at night.

Nonetheless, it was the first of several points made by conference speaker Carey Lohrenz last weekend at GRP Advisor Alliance’s 2018 conference held on Coronado Island.

Lohrenz’s talk focused on overcoming challenges in the face of adversity, something with which she has extensive experience.

Prior to the early 1990s, women were prohibited by law from flying in combat. But she pressed on with her military training, held fast to her goal of achieving the impossible and became the first female mission-ready U.S. Navy fighter pilot of F-14 Tomcats when the ban was lifted in 1993.

Getting there involved purpose, focus and courage.

Using a string of military tales to illustrate her ideas, Lohrenz encouraged an audience of enthralled 401k advisor-attendees to utilize similar principles in their practice.

“When you are approaching your clients, when you are approaching your customers, you don’t have to have it all figured out before you start having these really important conversations. Eighty percent is good enough. Just start taking action. Start investing, re-investing, in these one-on-one relationships. Because if you don’t do that, I promise you—no matter how good your solution is, no matter how good your widget is, so to speak—somebody else will take advantage of that opportunity,” she explained.

She went on to emphasize the importance of purpose.

“If you dilute your focus, you dilute your power,” she said, adding that all team members (i.e., colleagues) must be on board and aligned on their No. 1 goal.

For teamwork to function at its best, everyone should strive to make everyone else look good, according to the former lieutenant. Team members need to believe in one another, trust one another and communicate effectively.

Next, Lohrenz shared a military-inspired catchphrase about focus and discipline: “If you lose sight, you lose the fight.” To stay on task and improve efficiency, she recommended starting each day with a Sharpie marker and three Post-It notes; writing down the top three most valuable things to focus on that day; and placing the notes in plain view.

“What that does is it starts changing your mindset. Instead of being reactionary to everything, you start driving the work you’re doing, and it starts giving you back more margin in your day,” she said.

To close, Lohrenz reiterated the need to be courageous—something that could’ve almost gone without saying at that point. Her entire career was based on being brave enough to fight for what others said she’d never accomplish.

“The fear of failure is one of the most universally paralyzing things we all suffer from, fighter pilots included. And what happens is that when we’re afraid to fail, we pass up really valuable opportunities,” she said. “We underestimate our ability to recover from failure.”

“When you think you’re playing it safe, somebody else is actually going first. Somebody else is willing to have the conversation where they might not know all the answers. And now they have your dream client or they have taken your customer, your long-term client. So don’t be afraid to fail. It’s just what you do with it afterwards that ultimately defines who you are and what type of advisor you will become.”

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