Episode 236: What Do You Focus On? with Ryan Hanley

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.

Hey.

Greetings, everybody. Welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. And I am actually under the influence. Yes, I am under the influence, but I'm under the influence of Ryan Hanley, and I'm effing ready to go. So I'd love to introduce my friend, Ryan Hanley. Hey, how you doing, dude?

Dude, It's. It's so exciting. I'm so excited to be here. You know, the audience may not know this, but we've really only gotten to know each other well over the last year and in probably even less than a year. But it's been so much fun because even though I feel like. Even though we haven't, like, known each other well for a long time, I feel like in a very short amount of time, we've become very, very good friends. And it's been so meaningful to me. So just just being on the show and having an opportunity to find time in your busy schedule for. To chat like, this is amazing for.

Me now it's mutually amazing and I'm equally grateful. I mean, I think the first time that we even connected was like a decade ago back in the Haunted Mansion somewhere.

That's right.

Maybe Austin or whatever.

It was one of Peter Van Archdrike's events.

Yeah, yeah. And we were in a contest to see who could outwit each other from a marketing perspective and then present what we had. But yeah, yeah, I am super grateful as well. It's been an equally joyful. Really getting a lot closer and getting to know each other better. So in that effort, because of our mutual blessing, let's just give back to the people out there. And we have a couple things that we want to share based on our adventures this year.

Yes.

To help everybody out there. So let's get it started. But just in case. And I can't believe this would be the even possible. But if somebody doesn't know who Ryan Hanley is. Give us your 30 seconds.

Yeah, well, I'm. Although my. My ex wife would say that my. My ego. I have a huge ego. I like to believe that I don't, so I'm happy to Share my, my humble story with anybody. I've been in the business for 17 years. I live in, well I live in upstate New York, so east coaster, but not in the fun part. Not New York City where we're in the middle. I grew up in a town of less than 900 people in the middle of nowhere.

Found the insurance industry basically. My ex wife's father, it was basically the dowry for her hand in marriage. He basically pulled me out of a Christmas party and sat me down. And you know, I heard you're not loving where you're at, which is true. I was working for American Express in New York City and it was brutal. I was like a number, not a name. You know, I was in a building with 5,000 people and was, it wasn't for me. So he basically pulled me out of this Christmas party, sat me down in an old like it's like out of a mafia movie. He like made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Like we're both in high leatherback chairs in this, in this, you know, wood paneled office. His son, my future brother in law was so standing over his shoulder and he basically said, hey, I want you to come sell insurance for me. And I didn't have anything else going on as part of it. And the other part of it was I was very interested in trying sales. I had done kind of big corporate consulting and I just realized that big companies are not for me. That has been a recurring theme in my life as it has gone on. But I loved it.

I loved the entrepreneurial nature of it. I realized very quickly I was a pretty, pretty crappy salesperson in a traditional sense. And that's where digital marketing, that's where digital marketing came into my life. So basically 18 months into that job my father in law sits me down and fires me. And I did what any self respecting young man would do in that situation. I literally got down on my knees and I begged him not to fire me and have to go tell his little girl that I have been fired by her dad. And he gave me an extension. But I knew something had to change. And that's where I found digital marketing. And then my career really has been the expertise that I have in digital marketing and specifically inbound marketing for insurance agencies. And so eight years into working for that agency I kind of hit a glass, a ceiling. My name was different from theirs. They were a very traditional family agency. I was never going to own it. I was never going to be more than a producer. That was not okay with me at that Age. So I parlayed that. I became the Chief Marketing Officer TrustedChoice.com I built agency Nation. I was fired from there, went and worked for Bold Penguin, worked there for a year. That was not a tremendous fit for a bunch of reasons, but ultimately I had a family member get terminally ill and I couldn't travel anymore. So I had to come back to Albany and I was traveling a lot so I had to stay in Albany. There wasn't really anything here. So I became the CEO of a fitness franchise. Took a six location locally owned fitness franchise and in nine months we went from 2100 members to over 3000 members. We had shovels in the ground on two new locations. Our brand impressions, reach, etc. All the things that matter in that business in terms of how you market and activity based marketing. We're through the roof. We're absolutely killing it. And I was loving life. I showed up every day with Lululemon and part of my job was finding a different location at noon every day to work out with members. And it was awesome. You, you know, how's it going? What do you like? You know, I just, it really suited me very well and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed being around all the fit people and all that kind of stuff. Unfortunately, I made the business too profitable for him. He became reinvigorated by the business and sat me down one day at 8:30 in the morning. I'm in Blue Lemon, he's in a suit with his attorney and I didn't see this meeting coming obviously. And he said, you've done a tremendous job. Thank you so much. But the business is fun again and we no longer need your services. Have a nice day. Verbatim. That was it. Never spoke to me again.

Yourself out of a job, work myself.

Out of a job. So that's where Rogue came from. And for the last three years I have been growing a commercial insurance national commercial insurance agency called Rogue Risk where I put all the. That I've been saying to people over the last decade and a half. I actually put it to use and have been highly successful. So that's me.

I said that same thing to my wife this morning because there was something she needed me to do. And I said, well, I'm going to get back to it later. And then I thought I might as well start paying attention to what I teach other people. And that, that little handle is Ohio. Only handle it once. Yeah, I had the item in my hand and I just have to get off my ass and, and move a chair over so I can get up on a wall and handle it, but I did. So that's a little help for everybody out there. Ohio, only handle it once.

Yeah, I, I, and I think that's a, I mean, that's a good, we were talking about Jordan Peterson and his rules for life. I think that's a good, a good rule for things. The hard part with that becomes when you get handed too many things, you know, and, and it, that falls apart in situations where we're not properly prioritizing what we work on and we don't have good boundaries or we're not delegating properly because then otherwise we get handled. Handed 20 things and trying to only handle something once when you have that many things coming in becomes overwhelming. And you know, that's, I think, where stress and anxiety come in. But if we are properly focused, saying no to the right things, we have good boundaries, good, good delegation or outsourcing, then 100%. I couldn't agree with you more. Get the shit done and get on to the next thing.

That's right. That's right. There's so much to do. So that leads me to the first thing that I wanted to talk to you about today. So we've all made lots of mistakes many, many times. And you know, I am on your channels and I get Finding Peak and I picked up great value out of Finding Peak as of late. And so I just want to touch on three topics that have made a big difference for me in my life and I'm going to try to pull it out of you to share with everybody here. Those. And you talked about recently that you made a lot of mistakes so many times as have. We all have, we've all made those mistakes. Right. So you talk about how to avoid these mistakes. And you said every influencer on social media pedals hard work. And you said, to be clear, I'm not anti hard work, but hard work is only part of the equation.

Yeah. So this, so I, I'm doing 75 hard right now and, and I'm a big reader as it is. But in, but in building my schedule around the 75 hard program, which I'm happy to go into but is not necessary, part of it is reading and I have been reading a massive amount. And what's been really interesting to me is not necessarily the individual anecdotes that I've taken from each book, but the through lines of these books. So, so the reason, and a lot of people tell you, hey, pick 100 books that are amazing and read the same hundred books over and over again. You don't need more than that or the same 50 books, et cetera. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. There are so many shitty books. And I will toss a book two chapters in right in the garbage and go on to the next one. I don't have any love affair with shitty books. That being said, one of the through lines that I have found in these books has been the. Has been this simple equation that I put into that newsletter, which was I was using Newton's second law, force equals mass times acceleration as a primer for success equals value creation times hard work. And the reason that I wrote that article was because I see so many people that are working so hard and I think.

It'S easy to bang on people who aren't working hard. And frankly, they if you're not working hard and you're unhappy, I want to caveat everything I'm about to say in the rest of this podcast. This only applies if you are unhappy with where you currently are. If you love your life and everything's great, then nothing I'm about to say is necessary or even might not apply to you. I am speaking specifically to the people who wake up and say, I could do more. I want more. I want to be more. I want to be better for right things like that. I want to be better for my children. I'm going to be better for my spouse. I'm going to be better for my team. Whatever it is.

Hard work is the baseline. It's the, it's the bar, it's the, you don't get to ride this ride unless you, unless you're this tall. That's hard work. If you're not working hard, you got no shot. Because I'll tell you, just the people that I know that, that are unfocused. But hard work, they're going to beat your butt every day. Hard workers are going to beat people who don't work hard every day. Now, here's the difference that doesn't necessarily equate solely to success because there's another piece of the equation that we forget. And this is what I wanted to highlight and the mistake that I've made. I have worked incredibly hard on projects and a good friend of mine said to me, he, he said, you know, we're, we're, we're. It's actually the accountability partner that I chose for my living. Your best year ever, he said to me, you're the reason that you are not where you want to be is because you work hard on low leverage projects. Okay. And that was a very necessary, very real and very honest cake in the dick that I needed. Because it's true, I, I would put my work ethic up against literally anyone that, you know, maybe like the Elon Musk's of the world. I probably don't work that hard, but I'm the next, I'm the next one. I'm the next level down. My issue in life is that I have worked on some very low leverage projects. And that's where the value creation aspect of this equation comes in, is that let's say we could somehow put numbers to value creation and hard work one to 10, right. So in this scenario.

100, you know, 10 times 10 is going to be the, the top, the top number you can get. Right. So if I'm, If I'm say a 10 on work ethic, but I'm only working on a project that has a 1 in value creation, then my success is only going to be a 10, right? Where say you, Mike, you could be, you could only work half as hard as I do, but you could be working on a project that delivers a five in value creation and now your success level is 25 and minus 10, two and a half times more. So the, the, the, the mistake is thinking that pure, that value creation without hard work can get you success or that hard work without value creation could get successful. Neither is true. It is finding a high leverage, high value thing and then playing a massive amount of effort to it gets you the most success possible for that particular activity. And that was the, that was what came through, what I was hoping to put through in that newsletter.

That is awesome. So, you know, one of the mantras that I've latched onto this year is the better the question, the better the result. So goal is to ask the hard questions. But what I just picked up, among many, many other things, you just said, thank you so much. High value, high leverage. So the higher the value, the higher the leverage, the better the outcome or your desired outcome.

That is awesome. I mean.

Yeah.

And so true.

Yeah. And I think one of the, one of the things that, and so I'm going to take. This is going to be a slightly broad stroke, but hopefully people can run with this. I came from a very poor family of two incredibly kind, loving parents. They were divorced, but both individually were very loving, but neither one of them had any business or life sense. And the fact, and considering the home situations that both of my parents came from, the fact that they're alive is A is a miracle to begin with, let alone that they could raise a child who's actually a functioning member of. So I give my parents tremendous credit. However, all that context is to tell you I never grew up with any kind of business or entrepreneurial or financial education. So I find that individuals who come from similar situations, and there are always exceptions, but most of us tend to not understand this idea of leverage. And it's something I've only really learned in the last five or six years. And it is.

To me, it is like this secret code that the people we envy in a success way. Right. And not taking them. Taking the negative connotations of envy out and just using it for a pure sense of the word.

The people that we envy, they. They think leverage in everything they do. If they're gonna. If they're gonna contribute to a charity, how. If I give a thousand bucks, how much is the charity getting? How much are the people getting? You know, like, they're thinking high level. They're thinking, how much does my business get back? Does this make my wife want to have sex with me more? Right. They're thinking about all the things that that particular activity could have. Right. If they're working out, it's not just, I'm going to go to the gym and push some iron around. It's what are the core activities that I can do to get insert whatever result they want in the shortest amount of time so that I can leverage 45 minutes a day to get max physical benefit. Like, they're always thinking leverage. And I miss that for a large portion of my life.

Yeah, I'm. I'm looking at. You just made me pull out my book. I don't know if you've seen this one. 177 mental tough.

It's on my list. Paradiso sent me it. I haven't read it yet.

Yeah. So anyway. Aha. Stay tuned.

Yes.

So emotional creatures crave validation and acceptance. I just read that secret this morning. Secret number 64.

Yeah.

So. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Spot on. So find the leverage.

Yeah.

And do the hard stuff first.

Yeah.

I don't know if you've seen this. Have you seen the video by Carol Lawson, the Duke basketball coach?

No.

I'm gonna send that to you because we finished up our boot camp recently with that video. And it talks about doing hard better. And she's talking to college female college basketball players. I mean, that's just life. You got to do hard better because the hard shit's going to come. So you either make a choice of Doing the hard stuff or the easy stuff? Which leads perfectly. Thank you for the segue into the next topic. Easy is for the ordinary.

Yeah.

So you started this out and saying, are you giving at the end of the day when you put your head on the pillow, look in the mirror, whatever it is, have you left, left the best version of yourself on the field that day and every day?

Yeah.

You said, hey, we all f up, we all have bad moments. It's reality. Right. Failure. But it's, and of course it's easier not to give your best.

Yes.

But is easier better? And you went on with some examples. Tell us more.

Yeah, so I, this has been something that has come out of really the last two years. So when I got, when my, I guess separated from my wife. We're not divorced. We've been divorced for two years.

I.

I did a lot of introspection. I, I, I, I try to be as self aware and as self evalatory. Evaluatory. I'm not going to pronounce that word properly as I possibly can, if that's even a word. I feel like I'm making it up.

As I can be because I want, whenever, when it's my time to go, which hopefully is a really long time from now, I want to be able to.

You know, hopefully I just get like hit by a bus or something. It's not cancer, but you know, whatever I, you know, I've seen, unfortunately, and I know we all have. Who's listening to this? But hopefully it's something quick. But we'll see. Um, you know, if it gets really bad, I'll just jump out of a plane and experience that or something. Um, so we long, long story short, I, I want to get to that moment and be able to say to myself, you know, wherever I end up in life, whatever success looks like. And, and there's a million ways to define that. It's not just pure economic or status or whatever could be love of a great woman, tremendous relationship with my, with my kids and their kids and you know, so whatever. I want to know that as my, as the seasons of my life progress, that I, in each one of those seasons have given the best version of myself to that season in the way that was appropriate to it. Right. So that doesn't just mean I'm a really hard worker and I work as hard as I can and I made as much money as I could. That's great. But I've also lived that life and you know, to some extent, it's the reason that I'm divorced today is because I traveled all over the country. I was doing 50 speaking gigs a year. I was, you know, doing all this stuff, chasing this dream of being financially successful, etc. And while I reached high numbers from a personal income standpoint, my relationship with my spouse was terrible. You know what I mean? It just, you know, not that we didn't get along, but we just didn't really have one. We weren't together and, and it wasn't what she signed up for. So it wasn't like that was part of the deal or something we had discussed when we first got together. So, you know, thinking through each season and then saying how do, what do I have to do to be the best version of myself in this season? So like one of those things for me is personal fitness. I stay fairly fit. I'm in top, probably top 1% of adult males for my age at any given time. I'm in that fitness level. I'm certainly in the top five because I can do the whole deadlift, squat, bench thing. I think it's, you can bench more than your body weight. You can squat your body weight and a half and you can deadlift two times your body weight. I can do that. So that puts me in the 5% of all males in the world for strength.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And, and I don't mean that to brag, but what I'm saying is like that's an important thing to me. Like that's part of being my best. So I focus on that and I get, dude, I get all these friggin messages from people that are like, oh.

I wish I had the time.

You have the time, you just don't make the time. And this goes for everything in your life. That's right, prioritization. This is the number one thing that I have taken from I, I, there's like a, you know, this is gonna sound weird maybe to some people, but like I'm still friends with my ex wife so I don't think about this isn't like some nasty thing that like people should feel sorry about. Like we weren't really meant to be together and we have two beautiful children and we co parent very well so life is fine. But like I think about myself like pre divorce and post divorce because it was such a, it was a moment where I took full stock of who I was and said I'm going to change parts of myself that I don't believe. I believe I have let become lethargic or less than what I could be for whatever reason. And you know, one of those big things was prioritization. I. I write in a journal almost every day. I don't want to say every day. Almost every day. Say no to more.

Say no to more. The next line I write every single day. What you focus on is who you become. What you focus on is who you become. And then the last line that I write every day is tell the truth. I write those three lines every day and almost every day in a journal. Sometimes I just write them on a notepad, just. Just to write them, just to. Just to put them in my brain, right? To like, it's manifesting basically, say, nor to more stuff. What you focus on is what you become. Tell the truth. If I can do those three things every day, I'm usually the best version of myself because the tell you truth part is, in my opinion, might be the most important. And, Mike, this is one of the things that.

This is one of the things that I work the hardest at.

I committed to not breaking promises to myself.

I said, I'm going to make a few promises to myself. I'm going to be fit.

I'm going to be. I'm going to be.

A thoughtful, active listener and a kind partner to whoever I'm with in a relational standpoint, right? I'm going to be a great dad. I'm going to be. You know what I mean? These are promises that I'm making to myself, and I am not going to break those promises to myself. I might break a promise to you. I don't want to, but I might. For whatever reason life happens, I am never going to break a promise to myself. And that is all of this and telling yourself the truth, right? So, like, when you get to the end of the day and I haven't done my second 75 hard workout, and I really don't want to do it, I cannot do it. You're not watching me. You have no clue. As long as I put on Instagram that I finish that day, you know, that I. I'm not breaking that promise to myself. I promised myself that I would go through this program the right way. I'm gonna do it. I promised myself that I wouldn't eat junk food. Wouldn't. I don't, you know, I don't have a sweet tooth to begin with. Not gonna eat junk food. Kids can have junk food, you know, on. On the nights that they are. I can be with people having junk food. It's all good. I made a promise to myself that I'm not gonna do that. So, like, these Kind of things, these mantras, these are fucking hard, bro. And like, and, and instead all the things that create guilt, that create jealousy, depression, fear, anger, frustration, insecurity, all of these things come from easy choices. I'm going to say that again. All of the negative things in your life, right? There are extenuating circumstances. The universe happens. I get that. Take your edge cases out for a second and think about the core aspects of your life. The things that you are the most fearful of, that you're insecure about, that frustrate you, that make you angry, right? These things are all because you make easy choices day to day and not the hard choices, right? Your back hurts. Want to know how your back hurts? Because you're not doing the proper stretching and strength training exercises that you need to do to every single day to make sure your back doesn't hurt. I had tremendous foot pain for a long time. Every day my feet just hurt. You know what I had to do? I have special strength exercises I do for my feet. And now all my shoes are old man style wide toe box shoes, which thankfully has come into style. But you know, I have, I rock wide toe box shoes. And so they're not the coolest looking sometimes. I mean, you can find cooler ones now. But like, and I have to do these special trunks, training exercises, etc. Guess who doesn't have foot pain anymore? Me. Because I had to. But I had to do the work. I had to every day do these things. And it goes for everything in your life. You want to be a better communicator, right? You have to learn, maybe go do some courses. I have to ask honest feedback. Mike, when I express this message to you, are you hearing what I'm saying? Is it coming across? How could I communicate this better? What's the best way that you want to hear? Right? We don't want to do that stuff. So that's easy. Easiest for the ordinary to me is.

Just a way to remind myself that I the last thing in the world, the biggest knock you could make on me is, hey, he's just a. He's just another dude. He's just an ordinary guy. I don't want to can be an ordinary guy.

So if you didn't catch what Ryan just said about the easy solution or easiest for ordinary. Stop this right now. Back and listen to it again. Because what you just said, if I didn't hear what I just said, you wouldn't hear what you just said. If you weren't, if you were listening, you would have heard, right?

Yeah.

And, and, and it's the listening. And, and I can't agree with you more. Especially we were at an event together about a month ago and we heard that message loud and clear again. But because we were in that environment, I think we were both influenced greatly by it. It's the flipping lies that we tell ourselves.

And we give ourselves permission. Oh, we're going to blow it off. Nobody's going to know that one right there. That's not only a lie to yourself, but society's telling you lies. They're telling you lies all day long. So if you're going to pay attention to everything society is telling you and let it get into your head and influence you, hey, that's your choice. But is it the best choice? And I want to jump into the last one because.

Can I, can I make, I want to make one final point on what you just said.

Go ahead. Yeah.

So, so 60. There's a stat that just came out. 60% of America is obese. 40% of America is extremely obese. Okay? Joe Rogan said something on his podcast the other day.

How many obese 80 year olds do you know? I'm going to give you the answer. It's zero. If you're obese, you don't live to 80. You just don't. So take, take that in for a second. Right? Take that in now. Why are, why are so many people in America obese? I think part of it, sure. There's more sugar. You know, there's. You can go back and watch some documentaries on how the sugar Lobby basically paid three doctors $64,000, which is crazy to think that that's it to, to lie to, to Congress about sugar versus salt. And it's why we still to this day think that salt's not good for you. Salt's one of the best things that you can put in your body. So I don't want to get into that. The reason that I think we make these decisions, that we're willing to say it's just one bag of chips, Mike, it's just one cookie, right? I can have three beers a night. It's fine. I'm fine. The next day, it's because of secularism. We have given up. And this is, again, this is why. And I don't want to get political, but it's why WOKE even exists. I mean, WOKE is just a religion. It's just a religion. That's all it is. It's secularized people who've lost their touch with God or whatever, higher power, whatever tree they want to worship, and they've turned it onto these social issues. So when we stop believing that there is a higher purpose than ourselves, it is very easy to lie to ourselves. Very easy to lie to yourself. But when you know that God is listening or whatever, insert whatever religious figure you think you know, you believe in, fine. You know, most of the people in the world, whether it's Islam, Judea, you know, Christian values, Mormonism, believe in God.

Even if it's just generational thinking, right? And we can get into generational trauma if you're interested, because I find it highly interesting. But, but this idea of, of. Of I am all that exists. I, I show up, I'm a, I'm a blip on the radar. Two molecules come together form me. I live for a little while, talk, think, have all these experiences, and then I die. And that's it. There's no higher power. There's no one who relates to than. Than stealing from a store, lying and cheating your way through jobs and through school and through relationships. Lying to yourself, making easy decisions means nothing because you have no one to answer to to yourself. And, and on our own, we are weak if we have not developed discipline. So I believe that. Okay, let's say you don't believe in God. I believe in God. I believe everything that I do. You know, whether you want to think I'm fucking crazy or not. I believe that someday I'm going to have to answer to St. Peter for the decisions that I make and how I act, right? And whether St. Peter is real or however it fucking works. When you get up there for me, it is very easy for me to imagine St. Peter going, man, this was shitty. Why'd you do that? I don't want to have to answer those questions. Or at least I don't want to have to answer too many more than I'm already going to have to answer for. So, so, so you can look that way.

Or.

Generational trauma, the decisions you make, the trauma you instill on yourself, translates down three generations from you. And you are impacted by the pre. By the trauma from the previous three generations before you. So just understand that whether you believe it or not, you are resonating in the universe, whether it's through God and spirituality or simply through the ideas of generational trauma, which is really just a secularized version of religion and spirituality. What you do impacts everything around you. And when you can start to think on a bigger scale, very, very difficult to lie to yourself. It's very difficult to break your own promises because now you're saying if I'm. If I'm a lazy fat bastard who can't get up off the couch, I can't expect my kids to be successful, hardworking, integrated parts of society. Because I don't do that. I come home, blast a beer and sit in the recliner and watch TV for four hours before I pass out. If that's your life, you are impacting the lives of your kids and everyone associated with you around you, whether you like it or not. And I think that not. That's very preachy. I don't mean to be. I just believe so strongly that. That the core to not breaking promises to ourselves is believing that our decisions have a larger impact than just on our physical being.

Generational trauma. And I was just reading about that, in fact, last week's podcast with retired Lt. Col. Oakland McCullough talking about the same thing. Yeah, absolutely. Relevant. So I want to make sure I get this one in.

Yeah, yeah, sorry.

The last thing that I want to know. Hey, it's all good. Great stuff, man. Thank you for speaking from the heart. You know, not too many people do that consistently all the time. And that's another reason that I am so privileged to be under the influence of Ryan Hanley, because he does speak from the heart all of the time. And you hold nothing back. And I love that I need to be doing that more often myself. Not that I ever hold anything back, but I need.

Yeah, I was going to say I feel like I'm in good company.

Exactly. That's why we get along so well. So figure out your one thing and do it every day. And I, I told you recently that I don't respectfully, totally agree with that because I'm a power of 3 guy. But, you know, we're distracted. Of course we are. We're distracted beings, but we talked about that. What's the highest leverage activity? What's your primary objective every day? You know, is it checking email? You know, tackling $10 an hour tasks or whatever they are or whatever society. Are you lying to yourself again? Whatever you think is going to make you feel the best. Right? But the thing that I love about the one thing and studying this and listening to you talk about it, you get into the power list. You know, win the day, win the week, win the month, win the year. But what I want to pull out of you is win your life. And you were just talking about that a little bit. Have you ever considered what winning your life looks like? So equate that for us in your thoughts. The one Thing every day to winning your life. Yeah.

So I'm. I, if I'm being candid, I'm still working on what my one thing is. Right. I don't think I, I'm. Like I said, I'm doing this year. I'm.

Do we ever totally figure it out anyway.

Yep. I'm doing living. I don't know if you're. We show the video, but I'm. I'm doing the living. Your best year ever book. I have an accountability partner this year. Yep. You've been doing it for a while. We talked about it.

Yeah.

It's something I've wanted to do for a while. Focus has always been an issue for me. In part, it's. I have a very high, high level of ADHD that was undiagnosed for most of my life. And not that I've really changed. Like, I'm not medicated or anything. And not, not that there's a problem if you are, you aren't. That's a personal choice. But. But it's the knowing that now allows me to build the tool sets to deal with that and understand that awareness of anything. Right. It's awareness. Yeah. It's just awareness. Self reflection and awareness.

Yep.

And like, I don't like the word self criticism because to me that's very negative. I like self reflection. I was using self evaluation before. I meant self reflection. You know, I like self reflection better because one, it feels more tangible, like you're looking in a mirror. And two, I feel like it allows you. We have to be forgiving of the things that we don't like about ourselves. Doesn't mean that we shouldn't work to continue to change them. But we also. It's like a weird balancing act. And I think you get this a lot if you spend time with God and with the Bible, that it is possible to at one time be both unhappy with your actions or. Or your behaviors and want to improve them and be okay with who you are at the same time. That is, that is an okay thing. And I think it's very important because what I find with especially the concept of the one thing when I talk to people about it is that they get very insecure if they're unsure what their one thing is.

And I'm perfectly okay letting everyone know you know, and try to just lead by example. I guess I'm not totally dialed in on my one thing yet. I'm getting better. I'm. I'm more and more aware of what things are not my one thing. Right. Which Helps me with my say no to more shit stuff. You know, there's things that. There's things that in the past, I just want to be like, sure, I'll do that. That now I'm like, I'm sorry, I can't. And it's not. I don't mean it to be personal. It's that. That's not. As I dial in on my one thing, I know for a fact that's not what it is. So I think it's kind of getting closer and closer. The reason that I say one thing versus power three or five or whatever is not that you can't have three goals or five goals. I think that's fine. I do think there needs to be a hierarchy. I think there's one defining thing, and then there are other things off of that, right? Like I'll tell you, I don't have. So in the living your best year ever, you get you. You choose three banner goals for the year, right? So if I only chose one, I'd be breaking this thing and.

You know, not living up to its expectation. And I want to work the process. So. So for me, I have a. My one thing for this year for a bunch of reasons, and I don't mean it to sound superficial, but I have a personal income goal that I would like to hit this year. And the reason that I've chose that as the marker is because there are. There's at least one of the other goals that I've chosen and most likely the other goal as well in my banner goals. They. They will serve that higher purpose, right? If I hit X and I hit Y, then. Then they're all building towards Z, which is my. This top level goal, which is a personal income goal that I have. Because there's certain projects that I want to do, and if they come to fruition, then it'll. It's kind of like the only executable number of pulling these various things together that I want to do. And so I think there needs to be a hierarchy. And when there's a. When you get. Because if you just have. I want to be the best jazz pianist and I want to be a tremendous Little League baseball coach, and I want to be a great. You know, if I feel like if they're too spread out, it is very, very difficult to hit your thing. Now, that doesn't mean at a certain point in your life you might say, look, my one thing is I want to have a really nice balance between these important activities in my life. That could be your one Thing is finding a rhythm that allows you to enjoy a multitude of activities. At this point in my life, that is not what I want. I do not want balance in my life right now. Balance would be the opposite of what I want.

To me it is. I'm going to over index on.

Business growth with a, with a fail safe on being a good parent. That's kind of like my fail safe trigger. That's kind of how I've set it up. So if it isn't pushing me towards this business goal, this top level goal that I have, if it's not getting me there, I don't care unless it triggers this. Being a good parent fail safe, that's the only things that will get through that. And that's how I've set it up.

If you don't focus on one thing, then you don't know what to focus on, right? You don't know who you are. That's why I say all the time what you focus on is who you become. If you are, if you focus on writing, you will become a great writer. You will become a writer. You are a writer because you write. If you, if you spend half your week golfing, you're a golfer because you focus on golfing. That's what you are. You may not even be an insurance agent anymore. You might actually be a golfer because you spend more time thinking and doing golf than you do insurance. So you can't be upset if your insurance, if your insurance stuff doesn't grow or are you aren't where you are because what you focus on is who you become. And if you give more mind space to one thing over another, then that is what you are. So, so that what that forces us to do just. And then I'll be quiet here for a second is really think about who we want to become. Because then you back into what to focus on. Who do you want to become, Mike? Who do you want to become? You want to be a great spouse, focus on listening, focus on giving, focus on grace, focus on being present, focus on the things that make you a great spouse because you want to be a great spouse. But if you don't focus on listening, being present, giving grace, you're not a great spouse because you're not focused on it. You might luck into it once in a while, but you're not going to be that thing.

The only one thing that I have to say right now, Ryan Hanley, is I am so blessed and fortunate that I have control of this and I'm going to go back and listen to this, at least with all due respect, three times. All right. This has been absolutely phenomenal, man. But what I just wrote down, based on what you just said, invest your time. And it's all about time choices. We all have choices. With the 24 7, 365, we're blessed to have. Right. More mind space to your highest priority and your highest leverage items. And you know, if somebody's saying agent out there and they're more focused on golf or whatever they're doing, riding their bike, which, you know, from time to time I have that choice myself. But you've got to stay focused mentally on that one big thing, that one big goal.

And you know what a more applicable example is, Mike, for an insurance agent is they're focused on answering task based emails all day instead of selling and then they bitch about sales growth. You're a service person.

Yep.

There's nothing wrong with being a service person. But if you're, if it says agency, principal or producer on your business card and you're doing service tasks, you're a service person. Your, your focus is on being a service person. So you have to think, do I, do I? Should I just forward this on? Which is what you should do. Should I hire some help? Maybe, Should I? You know, but if you, if you're, if you want to become a great revenue production person for your agency and you are doing service based tasks or any kind of nonsensical $10 tasks in your agency, then you are not focused on being a great revenue producer. That is the more app. You know, the golf thing is kind of a, you know, more of a whatever example. But more often than not, it is, we are focused on all this stuff that, oh, the trash hasn't been taken out today. Tell somebody to take it out. What are you doing? This, this whole idea of I'm the agency principal so I need to take the trash out and vacuum look and open the mail. Yeah, I get it. Like, that's some hokey ass though. If you want to ask me. That's some B.S. you know, in my Facebook group, I'm gonna tell everyone that I still take out the trash. I don't care. That doesn't impress me. That's a, that's a five dollar an hour job. Your kid should be taking out the trash. A side job, not you. That's crazy. And like, but so, so what you're saying is you're the agency principal and I should respect you and appreciate what you do, yet you're telling me your focus is on these Meaning these tasks that have nothing to do with what you should be doing, that, to me, is not a badge of honor. That's bullshit. That's. That's social media fodder so that you look. You can. You look cool, you. But, you know, it's not actually helping grow your agency. So that's. Sorry, that's kind of where I'm.

It's all good. And, you know, what I heard of what you just finished up with was simply this fact, and I am on. I don't mean to preach either, but I'm going to say it anyway, again and again. Leadership and training. Leadership and training. So it's our job, if we're an agency principal, as an example, to lead people and to empower people to do. Not us to do it. It's to help them do it. Because you know what you're doing. And I learned this again from Oak Makoa on our last podcast. You are robbing them of a future if you're doing it yourself.

And you are robbing them from the ability to become a better leader themselves by stepping in and having it your way. So, Ryan, I think we need to get together again and further this conversation.

Because I know you wanted to stop. I know you wanted to stop at a half hour. Here's the. Here's the. The pin I'm gonna put in that second piece. You should be bored. As a leader, you should be bored.

What I learned this week as well, you should be useless. But same thing.

Yeah, yeah, you should be bored. You should be bored. You should be useless. Like, there are moments now, which I'm very proud of, where I sit here, and I'm like, I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do. And the reason is a little bit.

So.

Yeah, yeah. And. And the reason is because we have spent a tremendous amount of time getting my people in positions where they know what they're supposed to do. Now they come to me with problems. Here's the deal. Here's why. Here's why. This is not a problem. Because when they do have something, they need to escalate to me, I have the bandwidth to attack the problem and solve it versus running around a chicken with its head cut off trying to figure out what I'm going to do because I don't have any time. And now. Oh, things are. There's problems all over the place. You should be bored. As a leader, you should be bored.

Well said, Ryan Hanley. Thank you, man.

Appreciate you, bud.

You effing killed it, dude. That was that was absolutely awesome, and thank you again. I can't wait to get this out to everybody and help them. And I strongly encourage you, if you didn't do this, get something to write with. Get something to write on and go. Either listen to it again or watch it again on our YouTube channel, because huge value.

I appreciate. Dude, I appreciate the forum. I appreciate all of it. And when it's out, let me know and I'll share it all over as well. This was so much fun.

Thank you. I will. Fantastic.

All right, brother.

I just got a little piece that I add on at the end. FYI, forgot to ping you with that. Okay. There are people out there. This might be their first time on the podcast, so welcome. My name is Mike Strom, so 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 atunstoppable profit producer.com and if you got great value out of this podcast, please go to Unstoppable Profit podcast dot com. Go up to the top hit, subscribe. But more importantly, take that link, Unstoppable Profit Podcast, and share it with somebody that you know about, that you care about to help them. Because Ryan Hanley just dropped massive gold nuggets to help people and to impact people's lives personally and professionally. So please share it and please join us every week, because this is what we bring every single week. Things to help impact your life personally and professionally. Our podcast is out there on all the channels. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, our YouTube channel, Amazon, and beyond. Unstoppable Profit Podcast. So thank you for joining us, Ryan Hanley. Dude, you freaking killed it. Thank you so much.

My pleasure, bud.

No. Hey. All right, everybody. Until next time, you know, I've got a new thing and I was going to ping this in, but I'll take the opportunity. Now, my latest thing that I'm going to be pushing people with because I learned this this week from one of our members. How hard do you want to be pushed? What's your capacity? How uncomfortable are you willing to get? Because if your answer to any of those three questions is easy, we both challenge you to up your game.

Yeah.

Step up. Got this. We believe in you. I'll see you in the next episode. Thanks, Ryan.

Absolutely.

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