Episode 209: What is Your Ironman?

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. Today we have a guest on the podcast with a topic that we have not yet talked about. But just to set the table today, we want to help everybody either watching or listening today identify what their iron man is. Matt Crismore, welcome to the podcast.

Mike. Great to be here. Thanks so much for having me. Honor. It's an honor, so.

No, you're welcome. Thank you for spending a few minutes and your willingness to share with the ultimate goal of helping other people. And I know that's your heart always you want to help other people with whatever it is they want to be helped with. And you recently accomplished something which is, was a personal situation for you and your willingness to share from that personal situation to help others admire that greatly, Matt. So thank you, Mike.

There's no secret about Ironman. We, we love talking about it. Okay. You know, that's almost the heart of then achieving, you know, finishing. The goal is to not talk about it.

Right, Right. So I'm going to get you to talk about it, but before we get you talking about it, let's talk about something else, which is who is Matt Crismore? You're in the insurance industry. You're actually an independent insurance agent.

Thank you, thank you for that reminder. It was a long road to get here, so.

Yeah. What's your road been like? Share with us. Who are you? Where do you, where are you from? City, State. A little bit about you personally if you'd like, in your industry journey.

Appreciate that.

Yeah.

So I was, I was born in little town Peoria, Illinois. Great midwestern town. Good, good childhood background. My, my folks, my dad was in sales for 45 years and in the, the apartment business. So definitely learned a lot of work ethic and a lot of sales acumen growing up. We answered the phones actually growing up, you know, in the household. So definitely got a lot of good life lessons growing up in that environment. So then I went to the school at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri. My folks actually have a, a lake house at Lake of the Ozarks, which is not far. So just fun, fun to spend some time down there. Not too far from college. Then I went into the mortgage business in Chicago. I had always wanted to move to Chicago since I was a little kid and accomplished that and stayed there for a couple of years, got definitely cut my teeth in the mortgage business in the early 2000s. A lot of stories that I can share that we don't have enough time for. But then moved down to St. Louis about 18 years ago, was a branch manager, Wells Fargo Financial for total in the mortgage business about six years until 08 came around. And then I decided I need a little bit more stable path to where I could grow my business. And I knew about the business model of insurance and that's what ultimately led me to getting in the game. And at the time, Nationwide Insurance had a great training program that had a base salary plus, you know, a lot of growth. And they were trying to move westward with agents. And so I got in that program, achieved a lot of success, kind of made a valid commitment that I'd never write another resume again. And so took a lot of hard work, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, making calls till, you know, 7, 7:30 in the evenings. But I knew that failure just wasn't an option. So that is, that kind of brings me towards, I guess, today. I've been in the insurance business for 14 years now. Nationwide did cut us loose as an exclusive channel. Now I'm an independent agent as of almost three years ago. So it's been a great transition. And along the way, I got married 14 years ago, actually, and then have two boys that are 10 and 6. We live in St. Louis, Missouri. I'm a quick, quick drive to an office building that I own and have a staff of about six and achieved a lot of success and really enjoying life and have a lot of, you know, other hobbies kind of. People kind of laugh and say that I have too many hobbies, but it's, it's fun. That's kind of what I'm into. So you take it away. Mike, what else you want to know?

Thank you for sharing. Congratulations on what you accomplished so far. And, and I didn't know that about you, that you grew up in a household. I think I knew your dad was in sales, but I didn't know the details. But about the fact that that's what you heard, you know, the message from the top of the stairs, if you will. Your, your growing up life was making calls, Making calls, Making calls, Mike.

I got my first commission check at age 7.

I was on the. I was on the phone with one of my dad's clients, and he was very impressed with how I handled the conversation. The guy said, here, just take my money. Your kids a riot. And my dad put a third of that commission check into my savings account. So it was pretty cool opportunity.

Wow, that's awesome.

Yeah.

Good job, dad.

I guess I was clicked on sales early after that.

I think that's fantastic. So lesson for everybody out there, you know, start him young. And bigger than that, what I just heard, and I've learned this over the years in, in business. Kids and animals.

Kids.

Kids and animals. Kids and animals. That's just something that people are drawn to emotionally. And as far as, you know, real life relationships, they related to the kid.

Yeah.

And so your dad, you know, got Matt up there probably for two reasons. One, because they know he knew they like kids. And two, he wanted to help Matt further himself. So. And bigger than that, I'm not going to get into the weeds as far as what that third turned into, but I'll suggest it was a nice little add on to everything else. So, you know, I, I know this about you, Matt, and, and I'm not going to go too deep into this because you don't like to be the forefront, and I respect that. But, you know, you worked hard. You worked hard after 2008, and you worked really, really hard to build something very special. And you built a very special agency. And that's going to lead into what I really want to get into today. You built a very special agency. We first met maybe 2021. 2020, 2021. You came to one of our boot.

Camps two to three years ago.

Yep. Yeah. And so you like the environment. You saw it as an opportunity to maybe shift your thinking a little bit as far as the agency business. I'm super grateful that we're now in our second year as one of our UPP platinum coaching clients, and we've been able to turn the corner and think about things differently. So fantastic. So thank you.

Thank you, Mike. You know, at the time, I just wanted to know what I didn't know out there. Honestly, I got so much good feedback when I went to kind of pull the resources of other agents of, hey, who do I go to for. For coaching and more knowledge and Mike Strong. So Mike's crown. So Mike Strom. So. So you've delivered, you know, you. You lived up to all that online reputation of what people were saying about you. So here. Here I am still.

Well, thank you. I want to shift the conversation here because I'm like you. I don't want to make this about me. I want to make it about helping others achieve. So let's go there, shall we?

Let's do it.

Okay. So we learned about each other when we first got together in the coaching circles. And I found out that you like bicycling and I'm a road bicycling guy, you know, double sentries in the whole nine yards. And we both found out about each other that we like to exercise and we like to challenge ourselves physically. And it got into the conversation that you have done half Ironmans. And then you recently told me, I think when you were here at the house for your one day that you were going, you had invested in yourself to do a full Ironman. And just for everybody out there who doesn't really know what that is. Matt, what is a full Ironman?

Yeah, good. Good question. So it's, it's a long day. It's a long endurance adventure day of exercise, that's for sure. So it is Ironman's the name of the company. And the event is a 2.4 mile swim followed by 112 mile bike ride followed by a full marathon. It's. Yeah, it's the full money. It's, you know, you can encounter all sorts of conditions and whatnot that can make or break it. But it obviously requires an enormous amount of training to complete an Ironman. There's only nine done in the United States per year and there's about 1850 participants. So there's only 15,000 people per year that complete an Ironman. I'm sorry, that sign up for an Ironman. I'd say about 80% of people who do sign up do finish.

So there's nine Ironman events a year and how many people total on average.

Somewhere let's call it 1850 was the one I just didn't in the Houston area.

Okay, awesome, awesome. So you've done the half Ironmans, which is half of what you just said, but a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride. And I've done enough of those to know that that in itself is an accomplishment. And then 20 and you said a marathon. But just for everybody's knowledge here, that's 26 miles of running. And wait, back to back to back.

Right, right. So.

Long day.

Long, long day.

And, but, but I had to pack in.

Say it one more time. I'm sorry.

Oh, it just said long day. It's a lot to pack in for, for sure. And it just, it, it is kind of an enormous event and there's just so many different nuances that go into it. Your nutrition plan is one of the most important. And you don't just show up and do this thing. You know, it took me about six months worth of training, six days a week on average, about 15 hours a week, one rest day for, you know, a week per six months. And not to mention, you know, kind of a lifetime of building up to this. I've done, you know, a couple half marathons, a full marathon, you know, 10 other smaller distance races. So. And. And I, you know, I. I had had some successes in some of these doing it on my own, but I decided I wanted to crank it up a notch and to really go for a full ironman. I decided I really needed to invest in a coach. And the reason or part of what brought me to that was the success that you and I have had in business coaching, Mike. I know that's one of the questions is why get a coach? And honestly, I don't want to say I was anti coach previously before our relationship, but it was a little too cheap. Honestly, I. I didn't find the value. I was just too much of a skeptic. I thought, oh, I. I can. It's YouTube or I can find out all this information on YouTube. I can do my own thing. I don't know what kind of value this would bring. And I was dead wrong. And I just. Two to three years ago. Okay, so what I've learned about coaching over the last couple years with you and then with my experience with my iron coach, ironman coach, is this is. It's a huge leverage of your time, Mike. What do I mean by that? If. If I'm trying to do a new marketing campaign and I'm trying to reinvent the wheel, or if I'm trying to go out there and learn about nutrition plans, I'm spending a lot of time and energy doing that. When folks like yourself, you've been in the business for 35 years, you've got it all done, give it to us on a silver platter. So if I'm spending all that time and energy myself, then I'm wasting time that I could have just invested and you'll just give it to me. So that was kind of my experience with coaching. It's just a huge leverage that I can give a little bit of money and get back a lot of time and energy and know to be validated that I'm doing it properly. I got a lot of encouragement from my ironman coach when I really nailed a workout that was exactly to the metrics that he wanted. Okay. Just like for you as well, when we're working on something, you'll give me a lot of feedback on no, you need to change this or that is done perfectly. Spot on, Matt. Great job. That encouragement and validation is huge and I think it's overlooked, or at least I overlooked that. So it's nice to know that we're doing something properly to achieve the desired outcome. Also.

What'S really important is the accountability, Mike. There's no way that I would have gotten up on a random Tuesday two months into my training and said, ah, I'm really not feeling it, I'm beat today. And called up my OR just left a blank into my calendar with my coach not doing it. It just was not, absolutely not an option. So having that accountability is just absolutely paramount. Like when you and I are working on something together, there's, there's. I always want to do more. Two or three steps more. Hey, Mike, here's my agenda for my meeting that, you know, we, we talked about is really important. You suggested it three months ago and now I'm implementing it. It feels good because I get a good feedback from you.

Fantastic. Thank you for sharing. And I want to thank you publicly as well. So you were out here late last year for your one on one session and you decided to ping me. Hey, Mike, you're running and this kind of stuff, why don't we run together? But I don't think I told you this because I knew that was coming from an accountability standpoint. A mutual accountability standpoint. I had to up my game because I knew, you know, this Iron man athlete was coming to town and I was going to run four miles with him. It's like if I don't get my game up, I'm gonna not only embarrass myself, but I'll, I'll hold you back. And I know I probably did that day. But you know, it was, it was a fun run and we had a good time. Early morning, get out and you know, learned more about each other and that was, that was a really good morning. So thank you, man.

Mike, that was a great experience and I appreciate you sharing that and that makes me feel good that you want to, you really try to up your game to get to my, my level. It brings me to one of the points that you'd asked. It says what, you know, what made you decide to do a full. And it does. It came back to some friendships that I've had. I had a good buddy of mine who Got into it during. He bought a bike during COVID boredom. You know, I've been riding for 15 years prior. He got into it and just went 110Nutso on the sport and decided to do a full when I'd already done like playing a halves in the past and all this other stuff. And he did a full and, you know, did well and achieved well. I wanted to do that. Right. So I had to up my game and then achieve because I didn't want to be left out. But my point is we rise to the level of friendships and competition that we're surrounded with. As you know, we're the average of the top five people we hang around with. Right. So I love that competitive spirit amongst. Among friends. And that's a great example of that on both sides.

Yeah. And we experienced that in Atlanta recently in our coaching groups. That's part of the reason we have those. We rise to the level the people in the room and we challenge each other.

Yeah, yeah. In, in sport, in business and, and everything else. We're talking a lot about, you know, ironman and triathlon right now. But this, there's so many parallels to, you know, whatever, whatever people want to get into, they can challenge themselves to their own major accomplishment. And I don't care if that's, you know, building a well for underprivileged kids in a foreign country or growing their business to, you know, x X amount or training their kids to, to achieve some level in sports or whatever, whatever else it could be. You know, there's, there's a lot of parallels there.

And 100 and I think that's the main message that we wanted to share with everybody today in this session, and I know that was big on your heart, Matt, thank you for that. Is the fact that what is your ironman? I mean, Matt's Iron man was 2.4 mile swim, 112 miles on a bike, and a 26 mile run just to wrap it up. But whatever it is people want to do in the world, they can do it, right, Matt? Especially when you set your heart, you make a conscious, intentional decision to do it. Then you figure out the metrics that work for you. And you talked about having a coach along by your side. But the other thing that I wanted to fold into this whole thing, whatever your ironman is out there, everybody that's either watching or listening, whatever it is you want to achieve in the world, one, you can do it. But two, there's two key things that, you know, looking back on Matt's accomplishment, preparation and coaching preparation. And coaching. Right. You want to have somebody by your side, you need to do the preparation six months, six days a week. And I know you weren't always thrilled to jump out of bed and do what you needed to do, but because you had that coach to, you know, pull you along, you prepared, you prepared, you prepared. You had somebody to guide you along and to pull you along, and you accomplished it. So whatever people's iron man is in their world. And you gave some great examples. You want to build a school in Africa for underprivileged children, great. You want to do something in your local communities, fantastic. You want to create a family foundation to carry on the legacy of your family, great. Whatever yours is, it can be done. Right, Matt?

Absolutely. Two. Two quick thoughts, Mike. That again, kind of helped me along the way. Or just to kind of summarize. My mantra has always been just to quickly, shortly summarize what you're just saying. Dream it, plan it, do it. So it starts up here with a dream. And then you've got to get the planning and foundation, all the vision of all the nuts and bolts. What do we got to do? Just takes a lot of brainstorming work. And then the execution piece comes. And having a coach is certainly a huge aspect and a help to that. And then writing down your goals, timelines. So that's a huge help. But to keep you on pace, I read a lot of audio or listen to a lot of audiobooks. Mike, When I was in training, just to kind of keep my, my mind limber and I bet. Yeah, to gain that perspective. I know you and I both listen to a lot of David Goggins for, for instance, that was a huge one. He's doing Moab240 for an ultra distance marathon. 240 miles, guys like through the, through the night. And all this adversity of bad injuries and stuff, it made my training seem just shrunk. Right. So for everybody else out there, find whatever you're into and find somebody who's like 10x in it and have way more adversity than you. That perspective really shrinks it down a lot. Oh, whatever I'm doing is not so bad. It really helps you to keep your mind limber, positive and force through.

Right. Case in point. I was on a preparation session. Aha. Preparation, coaching. I was on a preparation session yesterday for something we're going to be doing to help agents pretty soon. And I, we talked about the fact that, you know, who's somebody out there that we commonly know who's had it very difficult. Who's overcome at a massive level. And you know, one of the people on that session said this person. And it just happened to be that. I know that person. I've spent time with that person. So we'll use that story to encourage people, you know, he's overcome this. So on the days when it seems a little dreary and dark, we can do this. And more than that, we can do it together. I love that. Dream it, plan it, do it. I hope you're inking that one, not just thinking that one. Great thought process. So, Matt, you've accomplished it. You set out to finish the Iron man in X amount of time.

What was your goal under 13 hours.

And you set the goal of 13 hours. You prepared yourself for six months, six days a week. You had a coach by your side showing you the right way. What did you finish at?

Happy to announce at 12 hours and 49 minutes.

Yeah. So fantastic. Congratulations on that. But, you know, bigger than that, how is that going to help you? And this is what I want to help everybody get clear on. And you may or may not have a complete answer, but whatever comes to your mind in your heart. So how is that accomplishment? And I know that's why I ride centuries and double centuries on a bicycle because I remember when I first finished my first double century after I was challenged. Right? Double centuries, 200 miles at one sitting. I thought I finished this. I feel like I can achieve a lot more than I ever thought I could. Right. So how does your completing the Ironman in under time support you personally and professionally going forward?

You know, that's a great question. I have had some time to reflect on that over the last two weeks since finishing. And it's, there's not, it's not a coincidence. Mike, you're a marketing guy. You like branding. So the Ironman brand, one of their taglines is anything is possible. Okay. And so that is, you know, it's just kind of 100% true. It's kind of show me that I can tackle very large projects and complete it. And again, I know that everybody doesn't want to go out. I'm not trying to inspire everybody to go out and do an Ironman. But the kind of the mantra of this, this conversation is what is your Ironman? So whatever is important to you, dream it big, know that you can achieve that goal. But it's going to take a lot of hard work, preparation. It might take a coach and just, just learn. Just put every. All your passion, put 110 in. It's incredible. If I would have redeployed my efforts through this last six months into something different, I'd have a. A different set of circumstances or results that were equally amazing. But I know that I can do that in something else. The next six months. Just gotta start dreaming of how I'm gonna redeploy those. That mental equity that's, you know, escaped my head from Ironman and go into something else. And I know that I can achieve some. Some really large results because I've already proved it to myself.

Yeah.

Aha.

You proved it to yourself.

So to an extent. And I know you don't like to get into this too much, but just quick yes or no, that elevates your confidence when things get tough in business, Right?

Big time. Big time, Mike. And, you know, there's just this learning aspect of everything too. You are very confident after you've learned an enormous amount and kind of earn some stripes and then you just keep elevating. Raise the bar higher and higher.

Right?

And then think to yourself, what else is possible? You know, I've done this, Iron Man. Fine, check the box. Move on to this. Do I want to develop some real estate?

I don't know.

I know that I can. What do I need to learn to do it?

Yeah.

Then it goes on. Onward up there.

Case in point. And I have to apologize again, I don't know that we got you into the circle. We were out running early morning at most recent boot camp. So if you make it a boot camp this year, make sure that we connect because there's a group that we go out running in the early morning, and that'd probably be a good group to be in. But I remember that early morning group. We were talking about.

The escalation of progress personally and professionally. And I remember describing to one of our members about that. It's like a stairwell, right? You accomplish. You get up to the next step, but your goal is the top of the stairwell, right? So whatever that is for people out there, you know, what is your desired outcome, right? So you just keep doing what needs to be done to go up to the next step. So, you know you've gotten up to the next step by. Over. By achieving that. You set out to do something and you did it, and you did it better than your goal, which is fantastic. So I mean, whatever. People's Iron man is out there, right, Matt? They can do it.

That's. That's right. And just, you know, on that day and when you're out there running with those Folks, you're surrounded with the right people and I know you, you do that when in business. Mike, you've got your, your inner circle that is very, very high achieving. So keep constantly raising that. Those people surrounded by you will raise you up and just bring positive thoughts over your mind and challenge you to get to those next levels as well along with you. And winning is fun, collectively, 100%.

And it's better to win together than to win alone.

You got it.

So fantastic. Matt, thank you for being, with your willingness to share your story and everybody out there, what is your Ironman? What do you want to accomplish? What might be a little bit unrealistic, audacious, if you will, that you want to accomplish personally or professionally? We're simply here to encourage you to go do it and to prepare, maybe have a coach along by your side to get to your desired outcome. Matt, as we wrap it up today, anything else, sir?

That's it. I think we, I think we covered it all. So it was a lot of, a lot of fun and hope. Hope your viewers get a lot out of it. So yeah.

Matt Crismore, thank you. Thank you for sharing your experience in your Ironman accomplishment. Thank you for sharing a little bit about your business and we can't wait to see what you do in the future because you're doing great stuff. And now we're going to look to step it up to the next stairwell. Great job. Love it.

See you there.

I, I will be there, believe me. So I'm going to be at the top of those stairs saying, come on, Matt, you can do it. Thank you. And best to Karen and the family and keep doing it and don't reinvest that time as well. So great stuff. Hey everybody. Thank you. Thank you for being on the podcast and if this is your first time on the podcast, welcome. My name is Mike Stromson. I'm widely recognized as a leading author, speaker and coach for the independent insurance agency industry. You can learn more about what we do @unstoppable profit producer.com if you're interested in attending one of our live or virtual events, you can find out more about our virtual events@uppfaststart.com and our live events is at be unstoppablebootcamp.com all of our events are designed with our best money making Strategies developed over 35 years in business as a proud independent insurance agent. All designed to help you grow your business, create wealth so you two can have more freedom to live life on your own terms and do what you want. To do in life, whether it be accomplishing an iron man and finishing under time, whether it would be building a foundation, helping kids, whatever you want to do, that's what we want to support. We want to support you in having a business that supports the life of your dreams and to drop a Chrismore ism if you will. Dream it, plan it, do it. And that's what we want to help you with. And if you got great value out of this podcast, please simply go To Unstoppable Profit podcast.com share that link with somebody else that you care about to help them, to inspire them to do it as well. So thank you for that. And of course we're out there on all the channels, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, stitcher, on our YouTube channel. We are there for you to help you every week to inspire you to the next level. So hopefully that's helped you. Matt, again, thank you for being on the podcast.

Absolutely. Have a great day. Appreciate it.

All right, I'll see you on the top. I'll see everybody at the top. Join Matt and I and a lot of others at the top. If there's anything more that we can do to serve you, to help you, just please reach out to us and let us know. And again, if you know somebody who would benefit from this podcast, please share Unstoppable Profit podcast with them and drop your comments in the comments below this if you're watching it on our YouTube channel or on the podcast channel of your choice. Until next time, everybody remember you got this. We believe in you. I'll see you on the next podcast.

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