The 20-Mile March: Why Consistency Beats Intensity
There’s a well-known idea in business circles sometimes called the 20-mile march: pick a pace you can sustain in good conditions and bad, then hold that pace no matter what the weather looks like. Push too hard on the easy days and you burn out before the hard ones arrive. Ease off when things get difficult and you never build the discipline that carries you through. The organizations and individuals who compound success over years tend to be the ones who mastered a steady rhythm, not the ones who sprinted in bursts.
For an agent building a book of business, the 20-mile march might look like this: a set number of calls every single day, a set number of appointments every single week, regardless of whether last month was your best month ever or your worst. On the good weeks, resist the urge to double your pace and skip the follow-up work — the goal isn’t a great month, it’s a great decade. On the slow weeks, resist the urge to shrink down to nothing — showing up for your minimum is what keeps the pipeline alive until momentum returns.
This is one of the most underrated advantages of building a career here. Insurance and financial services aren’t feast-or-famine industries by nature — the need for coverage doesn’t disappear in a slow quarter. The agents who struggle are usually the ones riding emotional highs and lows with the market or their own motivation. The agents who thrive are the ones who’ve built a march they can walk in the rain.
If steady, compounding progress sounds more appealing to you than chasing a hot streak, it might be worth a conversation about what that daily march could look like on our team.
