By Helen Thompson
You’re a young advisor with a great career in full swing. You’ve finally nailed the basics and you feel great about your future. But there’s something still missing, you think. Perhaps it’s something in your personal life. Perhaps it’s something in your business. Either way, 37-year-old Todd Hudson knows that feeling. His company, Hudson Insurance Group in Wilmington, Del., focuses on employee benefits for small businesses.
The courage to change
A few years ago, Hudson knew he had to change something if he was going to take his business to the next level: He needed to bring in a new associate. More than that, he needed the courage to bring in a new associate. “When you have a 50-person company, you don’t need to have courage to bring a new person on,” he says. “But when you’re a two-person company, it’s a big difference.”
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It can be harder to take a step back and look at the big picture—things like family, friends and quality of life. |
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Hudson, a member of New Castle County AIFA (Del.), had realized he needed to take this important step as he worked on completing NAIFA’s Leadership in Life Institute, which is sponsored through his state association. There, through feedback he got from other LILI participants, he realized he needed another sales and service person. “I realized that I needed someone to take the lead on work I was then doing so that I could free myself up to do bigger and better things,” he says. “LILI helped me find the courage to actually hire someone.”
The leading edge
During his LILI experience, Hudson discovered other things he could do to grow, both in his business and in his personal life. These five things, in particular, are the ones he found to be the most memorable.
- Create a business plan. Hudson had been in business for 11 years and had never gone through this important process, which he credits with helping him discover his most pressing need. As part of the LILI process, he was given pointers on how to do the research and create the business plan. “We went to different websites, pulled out the benchmarks, wrote up a plan and then brought it in for critique,” he says. “Everyone makes suggestions, such as ‘Perhaps you want to try it this way,’ or ‘Did you think about doing this?’” With those suggestions, he was able to go back and complete a final version—in which he figured out how to approach the new hire and also restructured his business for better focus and organization.
- Be open to other people’s ideas. You may find yourself the youngest person in the room, or you might be in a room full of your peers. Hudson found himself getting feedback from people with a wide range of experience levels, and all of it was helpful.
- Read more. Reading Stephen Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People reminded Hudson that reading is a valuable activity, too. “That’s another of the really great things I got out of LILI: remembering the joy of picking up a book and reading it,” he says. “When I took the course, they said I had to read six books in six months. I hadn’t read a book in six years!” Now, having reacquainted himself with the practice of reading, he reads regularly. Next on his list is Good to Great, by Jim Collins, and he raves about The Kite Runner, a best-selling novel by Khalled Hosseini that Hudson admits he never would have read before LILI.
- Know your priorities. Sure, it’s helpful to have a list of things you’re working on and know what to do first. But it can be hard to take a step back and look at the big picture—things like family, friends and quality of life. “There’s no doubt that having to write your own eulogy does wake you up to the fact that we’re not on this planet for very long,” Hudson says of one LILI activity. “That’s what Stephen Covey means when he says, ‘Begin with the end in mind.’”
- Don’t stagnate. Just because you’re doing fine is no reason to sit back on your haunches. Set up an interval period so that at certain points, you can take stock of how you’d like to develop and what you will do to accomplish growth. Hudson is at that point now. “I have to admit that the further you get from the class, the further you get from the LILI principles,” he says. He’s looking into ways to brush up, such as the LILI 7 workshop that will be offered at this year’s NAIFA convention, although, as a three-year veteran of the National Membership Committee, he hasn’t had a chance to do that just yet.
And next year, he’ll be stepping up to chair the National Membership Committee, so he expects to stay very busy. In fact, with his NAIFA involvement, his successful business and his active home life (he and his wife have a 2-year-old son and a 3-month-old daughter), Hudson is looking forward to getting a little more sleep!
To learn more about the LILI program and download a candidate application, visit www.naifa.org/benefits/lili.
January 2007
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