Episode 117: Your Mindset is Your Skillset

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or are well on your way to the success you desire, with the right people, processes and promotions in place, you will be unstoppable. And now I'd like to introduce your host, Mike Stromso. Greetings, friends. This is Mike Strompso bringing the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. I am pumped and I am excited because this revelation came to me last night when I was doing part of what I am going to share with you today, which said, and especially after some platinum group coaching calls yesterday, helping a lot of people who were in a position where they needed what I am going to share with you today. And let's be clear, I am not removed from needing to improve this, but it is something that I have worked on for the better part of over 25 years. And I want to share with you today what I have learned and what I want to share with you today is about our mindset. Because our mindset is our skill set. Our mindset drives everything that happens in front of us, ultimately behind us, and it really dictates what, what happens during the waking hours of our day. And bigger than that, not only the waking hours of our day, even our subconscious time when we are sleeping. Whatever you put into your mind comes out of your mind, your heart, your mouth and everything else and what you write. So your mindset absolutely is your skillset. You've got to take care of it. You, you've got to nourish it. You've got to feed it in every single way. I get this question a ton, Mike. How do you keep the attitude you keep, how do you keep the drive that you keep? How do you keep getting done, what you get done? We can't, you know, we observe what's going on and it's unstoppably relentless. It's because of my mindset. First, I feed my mind first. First I take care of my mind. I invest in my mind and everything else. And I want to share with you today just some of the lessons and that I have learned in working on my mindset over the years, because it's something that a lot of people ask me about and I want to share it with you here today. So let me go back, first of all, to my daily habits, my daily habits that really are at the top forefront of my mindset. And it causes my mindset to be what it is. And ultimately, at the end of the day, that. And this is what we Want for people that we are so privileged and honored to work with in the UP program. It's three words, my friends. Peace of mind. We want peace of mind for people. We want them to feel that quiet confidence, that peace of mind every, every single day in every single way. And ultimately at the end of the day, it starts the day before. You've got to plan your day the day before. So I'm not going to go into your planning your.

Life and planning your business, which supports your life, which is a completely different subject matter. But it really starts with planning your day to day before because it works on your subconscious as I talked about while you're sleeping. So when you know where you're going because you planned it the night before, that's a great thing. So you get up ready to go now. So what do you do with your mindset first thing, every single day? My great encouragement for you is to have a habitual routine, a good, positive habitual routine every single day to feed your mind. Ok, so let me just think back and I am flying from the hip right here. Ok? So I wake up every morning. By the way, write this down as well. If you're making notes or pause, get something to write with and write on and write this down, please. Ok. So at the end of the day or the beginning of the day, better said, we have to understand mentally that we operate within the 8 by 8 by 8 philosophy. 8 by 8 by 8. I learned this from Napoleon Hill in the book Think and Grow Rich and some of his other trainings. That we primarily have eight hours a day that we should rest. Yes, we should rest. Up to now, some people don't sleep eight hours. I get that some people are good with six hours, seven hours. You know, my sweet spot is about seven hours. If I am super tired, I will go a little bit longer than that. But that is my sweet spot right now. In my life. In my prior years I didn't need that much. But as I continue to get older, I need a little bit more. So know how much sleep you need and you have got to get your rest. That is one thing that I do not sacrifice is, is my rest. If I don't get my rest, I'm not at my best. If you don't get your rest, you're not at your best. Ok? So know that eight by eight by eight. So eight hours of rest you have. We're given eight hours to work, to invest time to earn income, to support our families and everything else that we're working for. Now I Get it as well. Some people are working more than eight hours. I get that, I get that. But here's the bottom line as far as your mindset being your skill set.

The other eight hours. Eight hours to rest, eight hours to work. What do you do with the other eight hours? That is where the rubber hits the road with regard to your mindset, you've got to continue to work on your mind and feed your mind during that eight hours. Now, part of feeding the mind is also investing in giving back to other people. Maybe working within a charitable organization, definitely spending time with family, your loved one, your spouses or whoever else. That's all part of that eight hours. Ok? So make sure you have that balance in life. The balance wheel of life must always be in effect as well. Back to the daily habits and routines. It's based on that philosophy and that thought process. Eight by eight by eight. So I get up in the morning after I've had adequate rest and I exercise. It's what I do right out of bed. I found a couple of things that work well for me. I found a bicycle many, many years ago. So that's my preference. I jump on my bicycle. I've got circuits around where I live and I am fortunate to live in an area where it is not. Weather doesn't affect my routines the majority of the year. So I just get up and go. And I've got various circuits based on how much time I have. And I just exercise. I am also fortunate to be able to swim in my backyard. I've also done triathlon. So, you know, I've got all that going on. So I just choose what works for me. But I exercise. I feed my body physically, which feeds my mind. Okay? So I exercise. I come home and you know, the funny thing about the endorphins are just flowing when I'm exercising. I'm just rolling. I'm starting to think about things. I mean, sometimes I will stop and I'll dictate myself a message because the endorphins are flowing and the ideas are coming so fast, I don't want to forget about them. I'll dictate myself a message for review later. Okay, so that's number one. Okay. Number two, after I get home from my exercise. By the way, let me back up for a minute before I leave on my exercise. I have already. I get up and I put my coffee in the coffee maker. I set out the things for my breakfast. My vitamins and all that kind of stuff are sitting right there on the counter. It's all laid out before I leave on my exercise routine. So I missed that part. Sorry about that. So set everything out for my nutrition before I leave on my exercise. Then I go on my exercise mission, whatever that might be, come back for my exercise mission. Then I have my personal quiet time. Now, whatever your belief is, if you have a spiritual belief, if you don't, that's fine. Some people do meditation and all that kind of stuff. I have my own personal spiritual time and that's what I do right when I get home because I'm feeling it, the endorphins are flowing and I am just kind of rolling at that point. It is a great time to connect spiritually for me. That is what I do. Ok, so after that quiet time, I get up and I go back in the house, hit the go on the coffee maker. And at that point, I've been with my bride for more than 30 years now and I started this, I will suggest, five, six, seven years ago, roughly. I sit down every single day and I write a Thanksgiving note to her and really what that looks like. I find something that has happened in roughly the last week or so or even yesterday that I am thankful for surrounding her. I try to identify something, even the smallest thing like doing the laundry or cleaning the bathroom or something significant that she's doing to help me that I'm thankful for. I sit down and write that note. And that note simply starts with happy, happy. Fill in the blank. So today's Tuesday. Happy, happy Tuesday, my love, is what I put. And then I go on. Thank you so much for blah blah, blah. I have a certain ending to the note and I leave it on the dashboard of her car. She's a night owl, I'm a morning person, so she's generally never up when I'm up at that time of day and I leave it on her dashboard. It's the first thing that she sees every single day. Now you might be thinking, well that's cool and everything good for her. But you know, the giver I will suggest in that situation gets just as much as the receiver. I get just as much out of doing that I hope as she does in receiving it. So it's just been an awesome little thing for us. Okay? So I write that note while the coffee is going on. When I get done with that, I go over and I put my nutritional items together. Frankly, at the end of the day I have a shake for breakfast and a shake for lunch is my normal routine barring anything coming in other into the world like a Business lunch or something. So, so shake, shake healthy dinner. Shake, shake healthy dinner is how I roll. And I do my best to eat healthy. I'm not perfect. I challenge with that as well. So my shake that I put together, I put together the shake, the shake is done, the coffee is done. I get my shake and my coffee together.

Get all that together. I go up to my home office or I still go to my home office, even if I'm going to the business office, I invest the time in my home office because that right then and there, when I go to my home office, that is my hour of power. It's my hour of power. It is my best hour of the day. It's my highest performance hour or so of the day, sometimes two hours. I knock off the most important things that I've got that will make the greatest impact to people around me during that time, right then and there, what has to get done that day gets done, or at least significant, mostly done during that time, and then I can empower somebody else to do it. So at the end of the day, that is my sweet time and it's my uninterrupted time. By the way, during all of this time, I have not turned on my phone or anything else. Yes, I don't turn on my phone, I generally don't look at my email, etc. Etc. During that time. That is the time. That is the time to make impact, to get shiitake done, if you will. So at the end of the day, that is how I start my day. And ultimately at the end of the day, I've trained my mindset to be in the moment during that day. Now what do I do when I start that process, that hour or two of power? I don't start with work either. Ok. What I do start with is I feed my mind with something nutritional. And so for me, I've also got a group, and I call them my Faithful five. I've got a group of buddies and you know Jim Rohn. I'm going to talk about Jim Rohn a fair amount on this podcast because of the fact the man that I never met, Jim Rohn, has influenced my life so greatly, I cannot even begin to tell you. So he said you're the result of the five people you hang around with the most. And so I've surrounded myself personally with five guys who are kind of my go to buddies, if you will. And we collaborate a lot. So I have some personal study, personal development study that I work on that we collaborate. And so when I get Done with that, I inspire them when I get done with my personal time and my hour of power. So I study for that. And then I have multiple other areas of study that I study during that time to feed my mind and personal development acumen and business development acumen. In addition to that. I am always studying a book. Now, my study of book primarily starts with audio, not with the book itself. But know this, when I invest in a book, I buy the audio and the book, the audio and the actual physical book at the same time. Because if that audiobook is worth anything at all, I will go back to the book. I'll start going through the book, I'll dog ear highlight, dog ear highlight, fully take it in through the written word in the book after I've studied the audio. That's just me. Okay? So I generally consume anywhere from two to four books a month if I've got a fairly normal month going on. And that, my friends right there, feeds my mind like nothing else. Now, the other thought process for your mindset, and this is my greatest encouragement. I was speaking with an agent, an agent team, husband and wife team yesterday, and we were discussing my journey. They wanted to learn more about my journey, you know, how I've gotten to where I am, et cetera, et cetera. They were inquiring about our coaching program and they wanted to know more. And they said, what was the point when it all changed for you? I said, the turning point? They said, yes. I said the turning point was the day that I started investing in myself to improve my mindset and to continually improve myself. That was the turning point when everything changed for me. And I saw the look on their face because we were on Zoom. I just kind of felt that they got that moment. And part of that moment, the continuing part of that moment is it fuels my mindset. That investment in myself fuels my mindset. The constant learning, the constant teaching fuels my mindset. It keeps my mindset full of the right stuff, not the wrong stuff. Speaking of the wrong stuff, one of the greatest turning points in my life with regard to what I feed my mind. I'll suggest eight or nine years ago, I stopped watching the news, stopped watching the news. I finally convinced my bride, after a number of years, to quit taking the newspaper. So none of that comes into my mind, into my area of influence. I don't watch the news at all. It's been a wonderful, wonderful transition. I get enough of what I need to know from various sources that are around me. So my mindset is constantly being filled with the Right. Stuff only. And I proactively and strategically dictate what goes into my mind all the time. I would encourage you to do the same thing, the other thing that's in my world with regard to my mindset. So I've got that hour of power. I'm working on helping other people, my faithful five buddies. I'm working on my own study. I've got two or three areas of study that I do every single day, and I do those. And once only at that point, once I get done with all of that, do I jump into everything else that I've got going on. It's strategic, it's habitual. It happens in the same way every. Well, I will suggest 98% of days, stuff comes up, fires, flame. I get it, I get it. But at the end of the day, in a normal world and day, that's what happens. And that's how I get done what I get done. That's how I stay so consistent. That's how nothing seems to interrupt the pattern that's evolving in front of me and the created opportunity for growth in front of me as well. There is one very other important thing that I wanted to bring to the table is accountability. Because sometimes Stephen Covey said accountability breeds responsibility. And I have had an accountability partner, let me think, probably about seven to eight years, and I've had multiple accountability partners. The accountability partner that I have right now in my life is the best one that I've ever had, with all due respect to the priors. But I show up every Friday morning at 6am Pacific for my accountability session. Come hecker, high water, even on vacation. Last week we scheduled a session to make sure I didn't miss. And I don't miss. My accountability partner doesn't miss. Regardless of what's going on in the world, it's a wonderful, wonderful place to be. And it's so vitally important because just knowing that that accountability session is coming up regardless of what's going on in my world is critical. Critical to my progress, critical to my planning, critical to my actually getting stuff done, being accountable to somebody else. And it helps mutually both ways. By the way, that accountability call is 15 minutes each way. That's it. It is 30 minutes. Boom. Done, over. No long sagas, no drama, no nothing. 15 minutes each way, wins, lessons, fixes, losses, what you're grateful for, a little bit about your plan and your workflow and all that kind of stuff, and that's it. Okay? So it is planned and it's ready. The other thing that has Become a great encouragement for me is what I've learned from people that I've studied in my life, and that's what fuels my mind. So as a big takeaway for today's session, please continue to learn from so many incredible people out there who have figured out a lot of things right. You know, I've learned from Mark Twain. And one of the things that, you know, a lot of people that I get to collaborate with, get to talk with, talk about worry. And the other thing that I am blessed and fortunate and grateful for is I generally don't worry about anything. Okay. Why? Because I try to be as good as I can be in the mirror of truth. You know, the only person stands between me and success is in the mirror of truth. So I got to make sure that I'm doing the right thing every single day in every single way to every human being out there. Again, I'm not perfect, but I'm doing the best I can. So when I look in the mirror, I'm good. So I generally don't worry about anything. I do the best that I can do. You know, one of the things that's fueled that mindset, by the way, and happened to me when I invested in myself. And speaking of investing in yourself, you should take, when possible, up to 10% of your income, your personal income, and reinvest it in yourself every single year. Not sure what that is. Go back to your tax return last year, look at your AGI, your adjusted gross income, and pull the 10% and invest it in yourself to get better. That's the turning point when I invested in myself to get better every single day. And I've got three investments right now that I invest in, coaches and otherwise in my circles, to get better every single day. And my investment actually exceeds that 10%. And it does not matter. I am grateful to be able to do it. Okay? So at the end of the day, I don't worry. I just roll because of that mindset, the mindset that I've created through the habits and everything else. Speaking of worry, I learned from Mark Twain. I never met Mark Twain either, but I've learned a ton from the guy. He said 80% of the things that I've worried about never happened. So my friends, at the end of the day, don't worry about it. It is probably never going to happen or it's probably never going to happen. And I was going to go into another learning situation that I learned from many, many years ago, probably 15 years or more outside of our industry, where I was learning from a live billionaire. I was in the same room with a live billionaire, learning from him that day with about 700 other people. And he just kept dropping gold nugget after gold nugget about his journey to a billion dollars. And he said two things that stick in my mind for this session. One, you don't know what you don't know. How simple is that? You don't know what you don't know. There's so much to learn. Keep learning. The day we stop learning is the day we stop growing. The day we stop learning is the day we stop earning more. All right, so you don't know what you don't know. And the other thing that he said, and I say this with all the sensitivity in the world, if you have recently lost somebody to death, my heart goes out to you. Our deepest thoughts and condolences and prayers to you. And however, at the end of the day, he said, when something goes wrong, think about it like this. Did anybody die? No. We can recover and we can move on. Earl Nightingale talked about the same thing in the Strangest Secret. There's many people out there who have lost everything, Lost everything multiple times. And because of what's in their mindset and what they've learned and who they become, they have recovered and recovered again. And you, too, can do that. So don't worry about it. Keep investing every single day. Create those small habits every single day. You know what I learned with my faithful five buddies last night in my own personal development?

We were talking about the battlefield of life, and it came up that the mind is a battlefield. And that's really what caused me to think about all of you and to do this podcast on. Your mindset is your skill set. The mind is a battlefield. Win the battle by installing the habits that you need to do to make sure that your mindset is in the right place all of the time. Okay, back to the things that have happened in the last few years concerning pandemics and everything else. At the end of the day, we grew through the adversity. Why? Because we made a conscious mindset decision to do that, and we did. Your mindset is your skill set. I am going to close with a thought again from Jim Rohn. Jim Rohn said, don't wish it were easier. Wish you were better. Improve your mindset. Don't wish for less problems because they're going to come. Wish for more skills. What's your number one skill? Your mindset? Don't wish for less challenges because they're going to come Wish for more wisdom. Where do you get that wisdom? Your mindset. Where do you get the proper mindset? You invest in it, you train it, you build it. And the good news is, my friends, the daily habits that you can create, especially in today's world of technology, with so much information out there, most of it is at no cost. And when you invest the 10%, that is where you move up to the higher level learning and the higher level benefit. My friends, I hope this has helped you. And again, I can't encourage you enough. Your number one skill set is your mindset. Invest in your mindset every single day, in every single way and you too will be on the path to an unstoppable life. Or as we say in the up unstoppable nation. Upplife. Because that's what we want for you, that cool, confident peace of mind. All right? So until then, get out there, make a difference, be unstoppable, leave no regrets. And if you're interested in learning more, we have a couple of options for you. First of all, this is the Unstoppable Profit podcast. It's@unstoppableprofitpodcast.com Feel free to share it with anybody out there that you know. We're on all the networks, Google Play, stitcher, et cetera, et cetera. So if you enjoy these podcasts, if you would share it with somebody else you care about that you know, we would greatly appreciate it. We want to bring game changing information all of the time that helps people in their journey to become unstoppable through the simple philosophy of the three Ps, people, processes and promotion, in that order. That simple three step proven blueprint developed over 35 years plus of research in your industry. So we want to help you with that. And we have two ways to learn as well. Online and live. Ok, so we have online events that are available to you throughout the year. Upfaststart.com uppfaststart.com It's a full six hour session taught personally by me all about the three P's we teach you. We give you a deep dive into what we've developed in our people processes and promotion in the insurance agency business over the last 35 years. And we share it with you to give you a deeper dive. Upast start.com and if you're interested in a live event, we have live events as well. Just go to beunstoppablebootcamp.com that's beunstoppablebootcamp.Com this is Mike Stromcel coming to you live from the Living Agency Laboratory. I am privileged. I am grateful to be able to share with you. Until next time, remember your mindset is your skillset. Get out there and work on it and every single day in every single way. I look forward to connecting with you on the next podcast. Until then, take care. Thank you for listening. If you would like to listen to more episodes or share this podcast with someone you care about, please visit www.unstoppableprofitpodcast.com now go out and make a difference. Be unstoppable and leave no regrets.