Condition yourself for change and opportunity

Change can be your greatest opportunity if you see it coming. If you ignore change, it will bury you. Change is like a muscle, and the more you work it, the more you think about it, the more you talk about it, the more prepared for change you are going to be.

You need to condition yourself for change, which you can do using a tool called a SCEPTIC, which stands for

• Society
• Competition
• Economics
• Politics
• Technology
• Industry
• Customers

Here is how it works:

Every few months, gather with colleagues, including other financial advisors, to talk about the SCEPTIC shifts you see happening. This means what do you and your colleagues notice happening in society with competitors economically, politically and technically? And ask yourselves what, if any, of those changes do we need to be paying attention to right now?

The thing about change is you can turn it into an opportunity — if you see it coming. If you start to predict the future, you can position yourself for whatever shifts are coming in the marketplace. If you wait for change to happen, it’s too late; you’re catching up.

As the marketplace shifts, if you take the time to think now about creating opportunities in the marketplace, you can position yourself to take advantage of those opportunities. You can position yourself to succeed no matter what the future holds.

This was excerpted from the 2022 MDRT EDGE presentation “How to condition yourself for change.”

Meridith Elliott Powell, an award-winning author, business strategist and president and CEO of MotionFirst, is an expert on business growth, sales, leadership, change and uncertainty for more than 20 years. 

Prepare for a successful future with these MDRT member-exclusive ideas:

• Watch “Business planning in changing environments”
• Watch “3-dimensional planning for business owners”
• Read “Are you working hard but losing money?”