3 Lessons on Legacy and Living from a Weekend with Friends

Hey. Hey. Welcome back to the accelerate your insurance sales podcast. Andy Neary here. How you doing today? I'm going to talk to you about three lessons on legacy and living that I just took away from a weekend with friends. Now this episode sounds eerily similar to the episode I did a few weeks back. Three lessons on leadership in life from the Northwoods. We actually spent the weekend with a lot of the same people. Kyle depias, the gentleman who has the cabin in the Northwoods. We just spent a week recent weekend up in Minneapolis celebrating his birthday and he brought a group of friends from near and far from the Minneapolis area and all over the country to celebrate his birthday. And he just wanted to create an experience which is what he is great at. If you're not familiar with Kyle, check his stuff out on LinkedIn. He does what we call guys trips. I've been on several of his trips. If you've seen me report on my trip to the Camino last fall, that was Kyle who put that trip together and he is amazing at putting together experiences. But in this example, we all came together to experience his birthday and I was first. First before I even get into lessons, I was impressed with how many people traveled from all over the country to be there. Right? It would be so easy to say, oh man, Kyle, I'd love to be there, I just don't have the time, gotta jump on a flight. But the people who came from all over the country just impressed me because it tells me the kind of guy Kyle is and the impact he has on other people, which we're gonna talk about in, in this ep because I'm going to talk about the three takeaways I had from from the weekend. In fact, I'd say the three takeaways we had because Amy came with me and it was just a great weekend despite the weather being a little less than desirable. We actually kicked off the weekend by driving up to Minneapolis on Friday, drove four and a half hours and I did a podcast episode on Friday afternoon with Luke S. Leeson from Informed. In fact, that episode just went out last week. I hope you loved it. His energy is awesome. But after that was done, then it was on to Kyle' birthday celebration. And it was just a weekend of doing things he likes to do, you know, On Friday afternoon we did a workout together. So one of the one of his good friends in Minneapolis owns a gym. And then after the workout was over, we headed over to a sauna cold plunge facility in Edina, Minnesota. Spent an hour or two there and then was off to dinner. And then on Saturday, it was a few hours of pickleball, followed by a little more sauna, cold plunge. And then we went to the Minnesota United soccer. Soccer game on Saturday night, which I had never been to a professional soccer game. That was cool. Just the energy inside a soccer stadium. You know, I'm a baseball guy. Problem with high that I have with baseball is there can be a lot of dead time in a baseball game. But in soccer, the fans cheering, they got the drummers on one end of the stadium. It was just a really cool experience. But what I want to talk about is the. The lessons I took away from the two and a half days hanging out with just a solid group of people. And these are folks who come from all walks of life, a lot of very successful people, especially successful in business, which I'm going to talk about a little bit. But, yeah, there was just so much to be taken away from the weekend. And I'm going to share three with you that really hit home for me. And the first one is legacy. You know, on Saturday.

We spent two, three hours playing pickleball at a facility in southeastern Minneapolis. And when we got done playing, we spent a few minutes inside the party area, as they call it. But what we did is Kyle's wife, Lois, had us go around the room or just asked, would anybody be willing to share.

An experience or a moment or something about Kyle that has impacted who they are? And one after another, we just went one at a time and just started relaying our experiences of being a part of Kyle's life. And as we started going around the room and just hearing the stories of how Kyle has impacted so many, it just got me thinking, what's my legacy? If I were standing in a room like this, what would people say about me?

And what I realized in that moment is success.

Is not about the stuff you have. Success is about the impact you leave on others.

And this was no more true than this room. There were guys in this room that are worth seven, eight. Heck, they could be nine figures.

But stuff, money, none of it mattered on this day. It was all about, what kind of impact are you leaving on other people. You see, Kyle, in fact, didn't even want us to bring gifts. He said, no gifts for the weekend. All I want to do is create an experience. And so as we went around the room and just shared how Kyle has impacted us, it really hit me about legacy and got me thinking about the legacy I'm trying to leave. You know, how am I impacting other people? And I share this because, you know, in an industry like insurance, where it we often really put up successful people on a pedestal, especially about what they have that could be the size of their book, the car they drive, the house they have, it's not about that. Success isn't about stuff. It's about impact. So I ask you that question. You know, as you look at what you're doing today, whether it's in your business or personal life, are you defining success by who you're impacting and are you impacting people and how are they impacted by what you're doing or who you are? I know I'm going to get a lot more focused on this as we move ahead because when I look at the business Complete Game Consulting and I just look at who I have in my life, whether it's my family, Amy, friends, how am I leaving a legacy with them, how am I going to be remembered? And so I ask you that same question. That was the first big lesson I took away from that weekend. This episode is brought to you by True Captive Insurance. What if you could take full control of your healthcare strategy without the financial burdens of traditional insurance? At True Captive Insurance, they make that possible. As the only captive in the nation that puts up the majority of collateral on your behalf, they provide financial flexibility from day one, making them an advocating partner for their customer success. True Captive's fully customizable plans and cost saving strategies ensure you never have to choose between affordability and quality care. It's time to break free from the limitations of conventional insurance.

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The second lesson was just, oh, it was so good because it was just a side conversation we had with one of the, one of the guys, guys that was there at the weekend. His name is Garrett. Amy and I were having a conversation with him as we all gathered in the hotel lobby to get ready to go to the soccer game. We were just having a little sidebar conversation and he made a comment that really struck Amy and I and got us thinking about how we're living our life. He said, you know, he just recently moved his family down to Arizona and they were having a hard time, you know, making friends, getting to know people in their neighborhood. And what he said was, everything changed when I stopped living from the backyard and started living in the front yard. And what he meant by that was, you know, instead of just hanging out in his backyard in the privacy of his pool, inside the walls that are surrounding his house. What would life be like if he got out in the front yard and started meeting his neighbors, started saying hi to people who come by the house? And he said the moment he did that, it just changed everything for him because now he's great friends with his neighbor. A gentleman in his 70s, knows everybody in the neighborhood. Heck, he ran into a guy at the gym who walks his dog by the house every single day. And he said, hey, you know, you walk your dog by the house every day, yet I don't know who you are, and you are a part of my life, so I want to know who you are. And he met. And he introduced himself and Amy, and I just thought, isn't that awesome? And we are very guilty of living our life from the proverbial backyard, right? We love just doing our thing in the summers. You know, hanging out the pool, just being by ourselves. We spend a lot of time. Time where we're not out engaging the community. And after having this conversation with Garrett, I think it made Amy and I realize that we need to spend more time in the front yard. We need to get out and meet our neighbors. We need to get out and be in the community and get to know the people that are in our community. It's one thing we struggled with while we were living in Colorado. We just never felt like we got out and became a part of the community or got to know our neighbors. And so that conversation was awesome. Again, I share. I share the statement, Garrett made life changes. When you stop living from the backyard and you start living in the front yard, how powerful is that? So that was a huge lesson that we took away from just living life. Right? And the third lesson from the weekend that I think is going to have a profound impact on our business happened to be a conversation that we got to have with one of my mentors, Chris Harder. So after the soccer game was over, this was really kind of the last time we were all going to be together before everybody departed. On Sunday morning, we came back to the hotel, and at this point, it was 10, 10:30. Now, if you know me, normally at this point, I'm like, yo, peace out. I'm going to bed. But Amy and I decided, you know what, we need to stay up. We need to spend some time with people. And we ended up being out or at the. In the hotel lob well past midnight. And I think in making that decision, we put ourselves in the position to have this conversation with Chris. And it's. I'll share this. It's something Chris, I'VE heard Chris say in the past, which I still try to leverage, you know, in my business specifically, is you have to leave room for the magic to happen. And when I heard him say this a few years ago, what he was referencing was, you know, when you get on phone calls with people, especially today, we do everything over zoom, right? If you're so jam packed from call after call after call and you literally have to cut people off at the end of the end of a call to jump on the next one, you're not leaving space for the magic to happen. And what he meant was, when you get done with a meeting with somebody or you're done interviewing somebody for a podcast, are you leaving that white space to just have a conversation, see how things are going on in their life, or just catching up? Because you do not know what's going to come out of that conversation. Your next amazing business opportunity could come out of that conversation because you left a little space for that conversation to be had. And so Saturday night we made the decision. We're staying up, we're going to hang out with these people, we're going to converse with these people. And what ended up happening is we found ourselves in a awesome conversation with Chris Harder. Again, mentor of mine. He I was part of his Fast Foundations mastermind a few years ago. I will fully admit this business, Complete Game Consulting, would not exist without Kris. It was Kris who challenged me in 2018, maybe 2019, to quit being a P U S Y and think bigger. That changed everything for me and my business. But here we are, Saturday night we we start having a conversation with Chris and we talked about a lot of things, life and business, but we got on a conversation about where, where things are going in the business world, specifically with our artificial intelligence. And the longer we conversed with him and he has a very good pulse on what is going on in the tech world, looking around the corner and what's coming next with artificial intelligence. He knows his network is unbelievable. So he knows the people who know. We got really excited and he shared some amazing business strategies for Amy and I to leverage AI to grow our business. And one of the things I love about Chris is he does not have to do this, but he is a giver. He just shares. He strategizes with you. Amy even met noticed it on Saturday when we got done playing pickleball. He's like, she's like, I watched Chris literally go around the table and say, how can I help you? You know, and that's. And literally diving into business strategy with people. But on this Saturday evening, it was Amy and I who were, who were on the, the bulk or the, the end of this conversation. And he just started sharing some ideas with us on how we could be using artificial intelligence to scale up the coaching business without having to hire a bunch of new people. And we just got unbelievably excited. And the takeaway from this isn't necessarily just the conversation itself. It was amazing. And I'm going to share a couple things about that here in a minute. But it was the fact that I look back and I go, this is why you got to leave space for the magic. You know, you can go to conferences, you can go to networking events, retreats, you name it. And sometimes all it takes is one sidebar conversation, one conversation in the hallway between breaks or on a break between sessions. And you're like, this is why I came. And I'm not saying this is why we came to celebrate Kyle's birthday by any means. We were there to celebrate Kyle's birthday. But that one conversation with Chris late Saturday night.

Made everything, the four and a half hour drive there and back unbelievably valuable. Above and beyond the fun we had celebrating Kyle's birthday. Because Amy and I went to bed that night, I'll never forget. We walked into the room and she goes, so is your mind blown like mine? I said, yes. And we, even though it was well past midnight, we had a hard time going to bed because we were just so excited on, on where we can take this and the ideas Chris shared with us. And so, you know, as I look ahead at the business, I am unbelievably excited about what we're going to be launching here. Number one, you know, over the next month, by July 1st, I am excited to share we will probably have my clone available. We call Andy AI. This will be your opportunity to literally interact with me 247 via phone, via SMS, you name it. So we are going to make that AI clone available by July 1, which is going to give people unbelievable access to our coaching. Number two, we are adding AI tools into our current Essentials membership where not only do you go through our complete game marketing playbook, but you are actually working with AI coaches to complete your exercises and get coaching as you're completing the exercises. This is for me, it's so exciting. It wasn't a conversation of holy crap, we better do this to keep up. This was holy crap if we do this game over. And that's what got me excited. And so the takeaway from the conversation was, you gotta leave room for the magic to happen. And I ask you that question, where in your weeks, months, right now, are you stopping to have that cup of coffee, to just have that, heck, that five to ten minute sidebar conversation after a zoom chat with somebody where you leave the space for amazing opportunities to present themselves. Because if you are constantly filling your calendar, one call after another, one to do after another, which I am guilty of, you're not giving yourself any space to let amazing opportunities find themselves in front of you or find their way to you. So I wanted to share these takeaways from the weekend. Kyle, if you're listening, thank you for bringing some amazing people together. You are an amazing human being. It's obvious you have a massive impact on people and you did teach me a lot that weekend. Number one, it is not just about.

Stuff and things and homes and cars and money that define success. It is 100% about the impact you are leaving on other people. I am here to tell you, man, the legacy you are building for yourself and your family by the impact you're creating on others is unbelievable. It's something to be admired. Number two, start living from the front yard, stop living from the backyard. Garrett, if you're tuning in, thank you for saying that. Amy and I are definitely going to realize that from that we need to be out meeting people, we need to get to know our neighbors better, get out in the community. So I encourage you to do the same. And then leaving the space for the miracles, leaving the space for the magic to happen, let yourself have that cup of coffee, have that conversation with somebody, you never know, it will go and it could do unbelievable things for your business and your life. So, yeah, it was an amazing two and a half days in Minneapolis and I can't wait for the next, next weekend to hang out with friends like that. But I hope today's episode helped you out, especially when it comes to thinking about how you are leaving a legacy in your life, how your business is helping you leave that legacy and just how you live it right. It's easy to. It's easy to lead a private life and just kind of close yourself within the four walls of your house and not get out and meet people and be a part of the community. I know Amy and I are going to do a better job of that. And I know that it's experiences like this with good friends that always bring us back even more excited every time. So I hope it did the same for you. Be good. That's all we got for this episode of the Accelerate your insurance sales podcast. One of the most valuable things you can do to help us and other new potential listeners find our show is for you to rate the show and leave a review. So as a special bonus for you if you leave us a review, take a screenshot of your review and send it to me as a DM to my LinkedIn profile. I will send you a free copy of our LinkedIn Diamond Playbook, our proven four step strategy to grow your business on LinkedIn. So go right now, leave us a review, screenshot it, and send me a DM on LinkedIn. Also, please share this podcast with anyone you think would enjoy it. That's it for now.