Commit to Being a Lifelong Learner

It's easy to rest on your laurels and view that framed diploma on your wall as the culmination of your education. However, the best financial planners are those who don't view graduation as the end of learning. Instead, it should just be the beginning. The best planners and advisors are lifetime learners who dedicate time each day to gaining new insights and applying them to their career. Sure, it takes time but here are four reasons why you should commit to being a lifelong learner in order to build a successful career.

1) Learning is More Convenient Than Ever

When people think about learning, they often associate it with the formal education acquired from a classroom or lecture hall. While there are many benefits in pursuing specialized certifications and advanced degrees as part of your ongoing insurance agent education, you can continue to learn daily in a variety of informal ways, such as listening to audiobooks or relevant podcasts by financial experts on your commute.Additionally, professional blogs, online journals, and local financial planning courses are other tools that can help you continue to develop your skills and knowledge outside the workplace.

2) Increase Your Value to Clients

The most tangible benefit of ongoing learning may be that it makes you more valuable to clients. When encountering a problem, clients look for answers from individuals with the most expertise — those who can offer the fullest perspective on the problem and are likeliest to develop a solid solution. Ongoing learners are also more likely to have information outside their wheelhouse. By gaining information from a complementary business sector, you are likelier to have "outside the box" insights that others may not.

3) Be an Innovative Thinker

One of the reasons that lifelong learners can more easily develop dynamic solutions is that their minds are more flexible. Albert Einstein always maintained that asking questions and using your imagination was a more vital quality than simply having great intelligence. Lifelong learners are driven by curiosity. The more they learn, the more they want to learn. Through continued learning, you develop innovative ways of understanding and completing various tasks. This is an important skill as most creative financial planning ideas are not made by developing an entirely new way of doing things. Rather, ongoing learners devise a better way of doing familiar tasks.

4) Stay Current and Confident

When thinking back on their financial planning courses, most of your peers would probably admit an uncomfortable fact: They felt a lot smarter back then. And why wouldn't they? At the time, they were immersed in financial theories, absorbing practical wisdom from mentors, and engaging in discovery every day with their learning cohorts. You can recreate this experience every day by reading business publications and trade magazines and collaborating with professionals in seminars and trade associations. The agent who commits to a lifetime of learning will always have an edge over the agent who stopped sharpening their skills years ago. Plus, your clients will be grateful that they are being taken care of by the very best.

For more information on how additional education can help your business, be sure to download our guide: 7 Ways to Kickstart Your Financial Planning Career with the FSCP® Designation.