Episode 193: The Number One Reason Why People Fail

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit podcast. This podcast will give independent insurance agents all of the tools to grow your business and live life on your terms. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or 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 Stromsol.

Foreign.

Welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. I am here with my episode partner, Mr. Joel McKinley. Joel. Hey, how's it going?

Hey, what's going on, Mike and all of UPP Nation.

It is going fantastic and we are excited about this podcast because we're going to pull from the trenches, something that we practice. Should we tell them? Oh, you know, we should consistently. That is the cause of how we get so much shiitake done all the time. And we want to share it with all of you because we know, let's be true, let's be clear. All progress starts with the truth. Right?

Right.

We know that about 30 days from now you're going to be falling back into the same old same old. And you ain't gonna be getting it done and you're gonna be whining and crying, I'm not getting it done. Excuse, excuse. Either you'll find a way or you'll make an excuse. Right. So before we get started this morning, we were talking pre production about something and you said it and I said, that is freaking awesome. Go ahead and tell everybody out there what happened.

So this morning, as part of my own personal and daily development routine, I listen to my Darren daily, every morning. And on days where I get to drive my kids to school, we like to listen to it in the vehicle on the way for their mindset as well.

Wait a minute, you've got your kids on self improvement already, right?

It all, I mean Mike, when you start them now, it builds that routine for a lifetime.

Yeah. So just tell everybody out there, how old are your kids?

10 and 6.

So you got your 10 year old and 6 year old on a self improvement trek on a daily basis. I'll probably caught that. Back to you, Joel.

Right, so this morning, you know, this morning's was called when will life get Easier? And he poses that question right off the bat. And I immediately paused and we're at a stoplight and I asked my son, I said, you know, all right, when does life get easier? And he just looked at me stone faced, straight face and he said like, duh, dad. He looks at Me and says, when you get better. And I was. I wanted to, like, punch holes in the ceiling because I was so excited, because I was like, yes, he's got it. He doesn't understand everything that it means.

Right.

But the seeds have been planted and they're starting to grow.

Well, he doesn't know the pain that's coming before him and what it's truly going to take to get better. Right, right.

What he's also told me, he said, well, it's easy when you do what's easy, your life will be hard. When you do what's hard, your life will be easy. So he just said, when you get better.

Wow. So that is fantastic. And maybe that quote is something that could appear in his future. I don't know. So, great job, dad.

Let's dive in today. You know, we've been talking about how we can better help agents everywhere across North America, whether it be our coaching members or. Or anybody within UPP Nation. And we're constantly looking for ways to encourage, inspire, give new thought processes, or more importantly, just those critically important daily habits. And we were talking about accountability. We were talking about one of our coaching members who wants to get his team members into those same vital, very, very important habits, which include accountability, which I was super excited about. So we had a little session about that. That is fantastic. So, you know, people are silent, waiting to be led. One of the things that you and I have been talking a lot about over the last couple of weeks came from a recent book that came out by David Goggins called Never Finished. And I know you've been through it. I've been through it twice already, and there was a chapter in that book. And we're going to talk about that today. We're going to fold this into your future in this year, because this podcast is coming out in January. So let's be clear. What does everybody do, you know, right around right after Christmas gets done, what do they start thinking about Joel McKinley?

Well, they start thinking about their New Year's resolutions and everything that they're going to change in the coming year.

Right.

Which is great.

New year, new me.

Right, Right.

New year, new business. Right, Right. Based on your observation of working with agents in accountability about how long does that last?

Well, I mean, I would venture to say it probably the first quarter, depending on the person. A lot of them, they get excited and they start and they take off at that starting line and they sprint. But what happens when you sprint starting out a race?

Well, you start getting tired pretty quickly or you're out of breath, and then it starts messing with your mind.

Right? And then all of a sudden, your mindset's not in the place that it needs to be. And then you start doubting yourself. Shall I go on?

Oh, Mike, you're. You're nailing it. That's exactly what happens. And they start to pause, and, you know, then they slow down, and they immediately, what do you do? You fall back into what's comfortable. You fall back into old habits, old routines, and all of the things that you said you wanted to stop doing to get better in the new year.

Well, a comfort zone is poisonous.

It is.

So stay out of it. Don't do that.

So I wanted to. I was like, well, Mike, you constantly talk about your morning routine, your night routine, and all of the things that. That have made you successful over 35 years, but they didn't happen overnight. And I think people may miss that in that it is at a continuous journey to continue to get better, to reassess and reevaluate what am I working? What's working, what's not. And, Mike, it starts with, you have to tell yourself the truth. And you have to tell yourself the truth every single day. And sometimes, like I told you with my 2023 goals, I said, mike, I got to look in the accountability mirror, and I got to be willing to get ugly with myself. And it's not talking down to myself, but it's, hey, the truth is kind. And we. I learned that from one of our platinum coaching members at Mastermind when they said that it was this massive.

Aha.

So many people in your. In your own personal little echo chamber you share with your friends, and they'll, oh, you're doing good enough, but you don't need an echo chamber. You need to look in the mirror and say, no, you're not. You're not doing everything that you're capable of.

Right.

You're doing what you're comfortable with.

Right. It's back to that mindset. Right, Right. That's why it's so important to have a. A group of people who care deeply about your success, who are willing to push you up to the next level or pull you up to the next level, if that's what needs be.

Yep, exactly.

And to stand by your side. And that's why I'm so grateful that you're part of. Of our UPP team helping people with that accountability piece, which is so vitally important. Joel McKinley is also our director of AFY, which is accountability for you in UPP. Let's get back to Goggins. Yep. Talk about somebody who doesn't is not even part of his vocabulary. This comfort thing who always pushes through. Just incredible. He's a beast. You know, I was talking with another member about the guy, Meanie Goggins last week and she goes, the guy's just a beast. And that's a very common thing. So he didn't have it so easy growing up and.

All of that. And he chronicles that his story can't hurt me and then never finished as well. It continues to go on. But there's something that happened in his life in chapter five, which is kind of along the linement of something I'm going to say in just a minute that for me, it hit me like that, two by four, Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. And again. And it just reminded me that, yes, this is the one of the main things that I've got to make sure is consistently present every day. And Joel McKinley, you know, the one reason that people don't achieve their goals or they don't achieve what they set out to, even in personal life. Right. What's the one reason they don't?

I would say it's probably consistency, Mike.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Right. Lack of consistency. And so what Goggins is talking about in chapter five is, is one of the partners of consistency. It is lack of consistency. And then we learned from Brian Tracy.

That there's no such thing as time management.

And I remember when I learned that, I was like, wait a minute, everybody's always told me time management, right? Well, that's what Brian says. He goes, well, yeah, everybody says a lot of thing all the time. The world says a lot of things all the time. Right?

Right.

But just because the world says it doesn't mean it's the right way or the best way. Right? So Brian Tracy said, it's the choices that we make as to what we do with our time. There is one thing you must manage, however, and that's your focus.

Right.

Consistency plus focus. And then here comes Goggins in chapter five brings in the big D, which I learned from John Wooden as well. John Wooden said, discipline yourself so no one else needs to.

Right.

And so let's talk about being a disciple of discipline and making sure that we're disciplined. So that lack of consistency never enters the world of anybody who's listening or watching this podcast. All game.

All game, all in.

Let's go. Let's start it off with this. I've got some of the chapter pages here in front of me. And you go ahead and chime in with whatever you've got. Sound good? You got it good.

Born.

So I'm looking in the chapter and you know Goggin's grandfather, Sergeant Jack gave him a gift. It was a free gift that caused David Goggins to become who he is at a young age. Probably 10, 11, 12 years old. Roughly.

Yep.

And I'm looking at the page. It says when a half assed job doesn't bother you, it speaks volumes about the kind of person you are. And until you start feeling a sense of pride and self respect in your work you do, no matter how small or overlooked those jobs might be, you will continue to half ass your life. You just happen to have a history of people helping people not half ass their life as one of our heroes being an US Army Ranger and a drill sergeant.

Right.

What kind of comments do you have for that?

So Mike, the thing that I took away from that chapter is do you remember Sergeant Jack gave him initially he gave him a very detailed and structured list. These are the tasks that you're going to do. And then he showed him the exact standard that he wanted them to be.

Achieved by right now.

You notice later on Goggins didn't need that list anymore. He started waking up even earlier and would inspect already.

Right.

But that was the structure. So like looking at the planning, your plan that you and Anita talked about the night prior, Sergeant Jack initially created that for him and he built it into a habit into Goggin's mind so that Goggins could do it for himself.

So he helped him install the mindset that he needed.

Right.

And his Sergeant Jack's way. I'm looking at one of the pages didn't involve whining and scheming and feeling sorry for yourself. It was about gritting your teeth, taking pride in everything you do and dealing with it head on no matter what.

No excuses.

No excuses. Ryan Blair said, and I'm sure other people have said it as well. You'll find a way or you'll find an excuse.

Pretty simple. Let's talk about some more. Take. Go ahead.

So coming, coming through with that something that I've created for this year was if you oftentimes you can call a friend or I guarantee everyone knows someone that they can call and they can just share with the things that aren't going right and the person is going to feel sorry for you and give you that comforting pat on the back. But have you ever tried listening to yourself give those reasons that you would normally share with A friend, you know, I have not. So what I've learned is that if I ever was ever to listen to myself give my reason, reasons for not doing something, I would realize I'm making an excuse.

So for 2023, I now have a little PO personal voice recorder. Not a phone, because phones are distracting. You're going to get caught up in social media and everything else. Don't use your phone.

Amen.

A little voice recorder. I carry it in my pocket and anytime I'm like, well, I'm not gonna go to the gym right now, or I'm not gonna do this workout, or I'm maybe I'll just go grab a cheeseburger or something, I have to grab the voice recorder and tell myself, hey, I deserve this cheeseburger because I'm not going to work out. Because I'm a little sore from yesterday, hearing my own voice played back, telling myself, that excuse. I'm not allowing that excuse. There's no way. There's no way I'm going to make excuses to myself because I owe it to myself. And deep down, you, you know, you're making an excuse and if somebody else validates it, you'll let it ride, but you're not going to validate your own excuse. You know how many times I've had to record and my own personal excuse on this?

How many?

Never. Because I never want to hear myself make an excuse to myself.

Wow.

Never had to use it. But just having it is my own personal accountability partner.

That's a great investment. Great job. Well, I look forward to catching up later on this year. See how that's working out for you and see how it's improved your consistency and your focus and your discipline.

Right. And Goggins talked about that in the previous chapter before Disciple of discipline was. And I was like, wow, I would never want to hear myself making an excuse.

Heck no. I mean, we've got to be our own biggest critic, right?

Absolutely.

Our own greatest accountability partner.

Right.

But if we want to take it to another level, that's why we bring in others as well to help us along the path. So, you know, he goes on to talk about adults. Adults fall into the same trap. And he's talking about a ever softening society. Yep. Oh, you know, covet caused this and this and that and, you know, I want to work remotely or whatever. Whatever, whatever. I get it. Right. But just because we have that privilege of doing this or doing that doesn't mean that we should ever become soft. And that's exactly what you were Just talking about. Because every one of us, he says it's just another frog in the soon to be boiling water. That is our soft ass culture. Yep. Okay, so. But we gotta catalog ourselves and we have to teach ourselves. We have to get into those habits consistently.

Absolutely. And Mike, something with that. You know, I know you wake up now before your alarm ever goes off. You're up and atom and that's built in.

I don't set an alarm anymore.

But I would ask most of you, PP nation, do you set an alarm to wake up in the morning?

Why do you ask that?

I would say yes, they do. And they have a routine. They get up and they make their coffee and they get dressed or tea and they get dressed and then they have to leave for work at a specific time based on traffic. But how are they closing out their evening? How are they closing out their night? Do you set an alarm that it's time to get ready for bed? Do you set an alarm at your bedtime? Do you set an alarm that this is my time to shut off all electronic devices to let my mind start to wind down so that I sleep well? Everyone I've ever asked, why would I set an alarm to go to bed? I said, when you were a kid, your parents taught you, hey, 8pm is your bedtime. We are trained to do that as children. But then all of a sudden we stop having. And it's so that you can perform and do well in school and get ready and be ready to go. Why do we stop doing that as adults?

Because there's nobody to hold us accountable and nobody maybe giving us the right way.

Right.

Absolutely true. So, and that's a great point as well. I've learned that in my own daily training and improvement and everything else. And I started doing that probably within the last two years. No electronic anything. About 30 minutes before I go to bed, I try to read and put something positive into my mind before I go to bed. And one thing that I started doing last year and it's changed everything forever for me. I get into bed, it's completely dark in the room. There are no electronics, period. I mean, in, in my days, for many years of my life, I used to like to turn on Sports center and go to sleep. None of that anymore. I get in bed, it's dark in the room, and it's me and my mind and my thoughts and I go to sleep.

How much better do you sleep now?

Oh, I sleep fantastic. But bigger than that, when I get up, my mind is in the right place. I Don't know if you've ever waken up and your mind is reeling about all the things that are wrong and.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Well, what you trained your mind to think about subconsciously is what it's going to be thinking about while you're sleeping and is what's going to be in your mind when you wake up. Right back to those consistent daily habits.

Right? Right.

You must become a disciple of discipline with your daily habits. Okay? And he says you must recognize that if you've fallen off, if you don't change it, you're going to perpetually be off. And we can't let that happen. Okay? He is, he says, I am proof that rebirth is possible through discipline. And discipline is the only thing, the only thing capable of altering your DNA. I mean, let's be clear. If you were dealt some bad DNA cards and some of us have, all of us have to an extent.

Right, Right.

Discipline is the only thing that's going to change it.

So I was having, I mean, I was having a conversation with a, with a very close friend of mine about this and they said, well, I grew up with these disadvantages. And I said, okay, well, I grew up with these disadvantages. Mike, if everyone grew up with disadvantages, are they disadvantages?

No, they're teaching their teachers.

If everyone has disadvantages, then no one does.

Aha.

No one does.

It's an equal playing field.

Right. You just have different disadvantages, which makes you just like everyone else. And everyone has opportunities as well.

And then he goes on to say, with discipline as your medium, your life will become a work of art.

So that's where the planning comes in. Right?

Right.

But when you become disciplined, you don't have time for the rest of the bs.

Right?

Because you've created the plan.

And we bring tools into our life, like a recorder that helps us self correct immediately and move back to where we need to be.

Right. You own your time.

Right? Exactly. And he goes on to say, and I'm not, I'm not banging on technology or anything else, don't get me wrong here, but I think this is important to add this in. Our phones and social media have turned too many of us inside out with envy and greed. And as we get inundated with other people's success, their new cars, their houses, their big contracts, resort vacations and romantic getaways, we see how much fun everyone else is having and we feel like the world is passing us by. So we get into a poor mindset about it and start bitching and moaning, wondering why we are not there where we want to be. And I wrote my own self note in there is this, you.

Don'T let it happen.

Everybody has, in the words of the great Les Brown, everybody's got great greatness within them through consistent focus and discipline. You've got to pull it out of yourself and make it happen for yourself.

Right? And Mike, the thing about social media is people are only giving you a glimpse of their life. They're only giving you the highlights. So when people are looking at that, they start to turn it into a competition against the other people's highlights instead of a competition against themselves.

That's right.

The only person you have to beat is yourself from yesterday. That's it.

That's right. Absolutely.

And Mike, for people that don't like the word discipline, because I could see how that rubs people the wrong way. They don't want to be disciplined. Okay. Structure yourself. Become a disciple of structure.

Yeah, absolutely.

Soldier of structure, if you will.

Most importantly, just be consistent. Just be consistent with the game plan that works for you that not only gets you to your goal, but helps you exceed your goals, whatever that might be. And remember, the power of three goals don't over complicate it for yourself. Okay? He goes on to say, a drive for self optimization and daily repetition. Self optimization and daily repetition. You're doing it yourself. You got your own game plan, your self discipline, self structured, better said now. Okay? And daily repetition, AKA daily habits. It'll build your capacity for work and give you confidence as you take on more with structure and dis or discipline, whatever you want to call it, as your engine, your workload and your output will double, then triple. And the other good thing is discipline does not have a belief system.

Okay? So if you are disciplined or structured, there will be no stopping you. Wait a minute. You will be unstoppable. Yes, exactly. And that's all we want for everybody, you know? And bottom line is we begin to wrap this up. Whenever I had a purpose or task in front of me, I didn't consider it done until I completed it to the best of my ability. When is something done?

When it's finished.

When it's finished. Right. I'm not done when it's not done when I'm tired. It's done when I'm finished. Right.

Winners don't quit when they're tired. They quit when they're done.

Yep, Yep. So great chapter, you know, so many takeaways. If you don't have the book yet, go ahead and pick it up. There's a picture of Sergeant Jack with David when he graduated with one of his accolades. Great, great stuff. But I think about it all the time in the fact, in my own journey as I move out there to help more people, to bring something to the world to better help people. We can't do what we do in UPP without consistency, without focus and without discipline.

Right.

So case in point, you know, I sent out the rowing in the same direction yesterday.

Did you receive it?

I did and I invested by 10 minutes of, of quiet focus, time to review and make sure that everything that we're working towards I am refreshed on. And it's constantly top of mind awareness.

Absolutely. And I, I've taken on a whole new platform as far as my own self accountability and self structure within my own world. As far as my goals, how I plan my week and everything else. I'm super pumped and excited. I've created a new tool for that which I'll soon be launching out there for everybody to use and implement in their own world. It's my divine purpose is the name of the tool, my divine purpose. If you need something to tag on to, you can go ahead and jot that down. It's. It just makes your ongoing consistent planning sessions even simpler. Let me say that again. It makes your ongoing consistent planning sessions for yourself, for your business, for your life even simpler. Does that sound good?

It sounds good to me, Mike. What I'm taking away from that is you're saying, listen, I've got this, this planning, your plan and I've got this. But you're never set on this rigid structure. This is the way it is. This is the way I always do it. You're constantly re evaluating and reassessing to make small tweaks to gain that little bit more of an edge, to continue to be more and more competitive.

Absolutely. I, I guess back to the book. I'm never finished.

Never settle.

Never settled. I got it right over there. Don't be settled. Never act like you've arrived. So never arrived. Never be settled. Never arrive. And the big one, complacency kills.

Don't let it happen to you. Great stuff. And back to, you know, the ongoing adventure of your son, Jameson. Congratulations on that by the way. You know. Hey, what did he say again? Remind everybody.

He said, when you get better. When is the question was when does your life get easy? He looked at me and said, when you get better.

When I get better. That's what I'm in pursuit of, the daily pursuit of getting better. Every Single day. If you've ever seen a picture of the blue shirt that I wear. When people come for their private one on one coaching sessions, you got to get better every single day. If you're not improving, you're following behind. If you're not improving, you're falling behind. It's on you. It's on you. In the mirror of truth, there's only one person standing between you and everything that you want in this world. And it starts with you. You've got to own it. You got to own it every single day. Rent is due in every day, every day. And so we've got, we get to pay the rent and so we got to show up every day and we've got to leave it all on the field every single day. So absolutely constantly. But the other thing, let's give them one other little gold nugget as we begin to wrap it up here.

Let's bring it.

So last year, in my pursuit of getting better every single day and all of the time I invested in a third coach.

So I still invest in three coaches because I need to get better all of the time at a higher level, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. With that being said, my newest coach helped me find my own, what I call now my own personal style.

Because everybody's got three, three personal gifts, talents, their top three vital punks, functions, their superpowers, whatever you want to call them, they're all the same thing. But they've got three things that they do really, really well, that they're passionate about, that they love, love to do. Okay? So when you can operate within that and find your own personal style of delivery of those items, that's where it gets really, really good. And that's why this pursuit, consistent focus, discipline, pursuit or structured pursuit of getting better all of the time is so vitally important. Because nobody's going to do it for you. They'll help you. I, we will help you. But at the end of the day, there was a, a brand new first year platinum coaching member here just a couple of days ago. Left him tons of information.

Tons of tools, tons of knowledge, tons of strategy. By the way, you wanted to know one of the things he wanted to know. I said, do you want just, you know, some bullet points or you want great detail? He goes, I want great detail.

His question was, I want you to tell me how you start your day from the second you get out of bed or from the second you wake up. I thought that was a great question from a fairly new agent in the industry who's going big places. So that's critically important to what we're just talking about today, right? That consistency every single day. Joel McKinley, thank you very much. We hope this has helped everybody. Anything to add as we wrap up today?

Yes, Mike. You know our podcast is on YouTube and it's on all of the, all of the platforms. So this is a great subject. And I would love if people that are watching on YouTube drop a comment down below with your biggest tip for achieving your goals, for sticking to a routine, for structuring or discipline yourself or leave it in the comments on whatever platform so that we can all learn together.

Absolutely. So it's not only on YouTube, but you know, it's out there. It ends up on the UABs unstoppable agents and Broker Society. It's within all of our internal platforms. It's also out there on Spotify, Stitcher, Apple Podcast and so much more. So if you see this out there and you want to get involved in the conversation, remind everybody again what the item that you want to collaborate about is.

Yeah, leave us a comment about what your biggest tip, your strategy for achieving what you want to achieve, for conquering your goals, for structuring your life, for structuring your day, disciplining yourself. What are your great tips? What are your great strategies so that we can all learn together.

Absolutely. And sometimes it's just one little strategy that can change everything.

Big doors swing on little hinges, right? Fantastic stuff. So put it out there everybody. Let's help each other continue to grow, continue to get better. And it's that learning from each other that can change everything. So Job McKinley, thank you. Thank you for bringing it like you always do.

Thank you Mike. And thank you Up Nation.

Absolutely. Thank you Unstoppable Nation. And if this is your first time on the podcast, welcome. My name is Mike Stromsel. I'm widely recognized as a leading author, speaker and coach for the independent insurance agency industry. You can learn more about myself and my amazing team and our program@unstoppable profit producer.com if you're interested in learning more about one of our virtual or live training programs. Our virtual training platform is up fast start.com and of course our live training portal is be unstoppable boot camp dot com. All of our events are designed with our best money making strategies developed over 35 plus years of experience as a proud 100% of the time independent insurance agent. And we develop all these strategies and share them with you so that you will grow your business create wealth so you will have more freedom to live life on your own terms. We help you install everything that we just talked about this morning and so much more into your business to create that kind of environment. So please make sure to subscribe to all of the channels or you can find us on those channels out there. Like Joel mentioned our YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube, search Unstoppable Profit Producer. Go to the videos. They're all there. Make sure you subscribe Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and so much more. We're out there, so go find us. We want to connect with you. And if you enjoyed what you learned today, please go to unstoppable profit podcast.com go up to the top and click subscribe so you don't miss one valuable episode to learn all of the strategies that we bring to you every single week. And if you know somebody else who might enjoy this podcast, please send them that URL unstoppable profit podcast.com so they too can continue to learn and grow consistently with focus and discipline every single day. Don't McKinley, you got this.

I believe in you.

I believe in you too. You are unstoppable. That's the good news, everybody. You got this. We believe in you. Get out there, make a difference. Be unstoppable and leave no regrets. We'll see you on the next episode. Everybody take care.

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