Episode 269: The Biggest Risk Is Not Taking Any with Chad Hufford

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.

Greetings, everybody. Welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. This podcast is a long time coming. Chad Hufford, Correct.

Chad, that's correct.

Has been very, very busy in his own right and we've been trying to get together for a couple months, but finally the day has come and I am excited. I am pumped to share with Chad and learn from Chad over the next, you know, 20, 30 minutes or so, because we're going to talk about nurturing a mindse of high performance, which is all of you choosing the hard right, which is something that some of you do. 20%, 80% of you may be resisting it, but we're going to help you with that and sustaining success and achievement over time. Chad Hurd, welcome to the podcast. Mike.

It's a pleasure to be here and excited to. To chat with your audience and help them create a better future.

That's what it's all about, and that's why we're here. To impact people's lives personally and professionally is our core purpose in upp. And I know Chad and getting to know him very much in alignment with everything that we think, everything that we teach. But, you know, if anybody doesn't know Chad, who is Chad Hufford? And Chad, by the way, is in wealth management and growth, which is also something that we teach independent insurance agents. So give us a quick intro. Who is Chad Hufford?

I'm a husband, father first get six kids. I know you do as well, raising and homeschooling them. Up here in Anchorage, Alaska, I own Veritas Wealth Management. It's a boutique wealth management firm where our focus makes sure people don't run out of money or purpose in retirement. And it's just, it's. It's an amazing opportunity to impact people's lives and not just change the direct the trajectory of their finances, but. But really help them achieve a more abundant life.

Exactly. I mean, the opportunity is there. We, we can achieve whatever we want. There is no upper ceiling unless we're not focused on. I love what you said. The purpose.

Yeah. I think too many people view retirement as a finish line. Like, okay, I've hit this. I've crossed this barrier, and now I can kick back and relax, and I've got, you know, 20 years of Saturdays ahead of me, and I'm. I'm all about it. I mean, I know you're down there in Southern California. I'm stuck. Stuck up here in Alaska. I like to get to warm places. I like the beach, but not all the time. And those things should be punctuation marks. They shouldn't be the entire sentence. And when I say sentence, I'm not saying sentence like you're sentenced to this, but that in the story of our life, we have so much opportunity, once we hit a place of financial independence, to impact the world in a whole new way. We don't need to go to our jobs. We don't need to produce a paycheck. We have our investments producing that. That income protection for us, and we can go out and do what's mostly meaningful and impactful to us and. And really just pursue life with our ears pinned back.

So, yeah, and you're. You're speaking our language. Grow your business, create wealth, and have more freedom to live life on your own terms. And that's exactly what that is. So, you know, the people that you work with, the people that you teach, and you teach this mindset as well, and that's why we're so privileged to have you with nurturing a mindset of high performance. So what kind of mindset does it take to sustain the high performance? And then I want to pull out of you a little bit about choosing the hard right. Okay, well, if somebody isn't there yet, help them. Yeah.

Sustaining high performance. We talked about this a little bit before the show started, but a lot of people are worried about being perfect or. Or, you know, think about, like, a gym on January 1st is crazy. It's teaming with people. People crawl over machines. And then, of course, you have the Instagram crowd taking selfies and all that stuff. Won't get into that. But go there six weeks later on, like, Valentine's Day, and the gym's empty, not because it's Valentine's Day, but because people didn't sustain. They quit. Now, you don't need to have a perfect workout plan. There's no such thing as a perfect diet. There is no perfect treadmill. You just got to get on the thing and run, you know, and in so many ways in life, it's the same way a lot of people on the sidelines of their life waiting for perfect or waiting for permission to be invited into something and we have to step into that and we have to execute consistently what most people only do occasionally. And also to have a bigger vision for what we're trying to accomplish. If, if my goal is to simply produce enough wealth to quit working, that's not big enough. I can quit my job now. The government will take care of me. I'm not suggesting that to anybody. But if, if that's all I wanted was to not work, you know, my six year old doesn't work. My goals have to be bigger than the lifestyle that my 6 year old is work is living right now. So I think we have to, number one, create a bigger vision for what we're trying to accomplish with a lot of meaning and purpose behind it. Second, we need a blueprint or a roadmap to connect that future vision with what we're doing today. How do my current actions impact my future? And what is the ripple effect? What are the consequences, good or bad, of my decisions today with that person that I say I want to become and what I want to be doing in the future.

Agree. And the present is a gift. And you know, back to not being perfect, we talked about this. I believe before we started as well, that things are good, never perfect. And if we fail on any given day, tomorrow's gonna be there, right?

Absolutely. Failure is not final. And I think a lot of folks were concerned about stepping out the unknown. Yeah, we might face some rejection. We might, we might face what we feel is failure. But if we're willing to learn from it. Failure can be an experience. Experience, but an experiment. And my back, my background is actually in biochemistry and before I got into finance, I actually have a biochemistry degree. And we didn't call it failure. That was just okay, that was an experiment. It didn't go the way that we planned. So we're going to reiterate and we're going to learn from it and we're going to come out of the gate a little bit better next time. And it still might not go the way we want, but the idea is that we keep trying, we don't stay down. And I think so many people in life, Mike, are worried about not being knocked down by life. And if we, if we're more focused on how to get back up rather than not being knocked down, I think people would see a lot more progress and purpose in their life.

I love that. Failure is an experiment. It's a mindset.

Absolutely.

And that's just part of the high performance mindset, right?

Absolutely. And yeah, it's being able to. Iterate roll punches a little bit and going into something it doesn't, doesn't mean we're not planning. I mean in those experiments we did a lot of research, we planned a lot, we designed it incredibly intentionally and that's how we should live our lives. With incredible intention and purpose. But realizing that things aren't going to go as planned. Eisenhower, General Eisenhower said no plan survives first contact with the enemy. So he also said the plan is useless, but planning is priceless. And the idea is that we are constantly iterating that plan. The plan might get thrown out as soon as our plan has first contact with life, but it still gives us a tangible reminder or a tangible accountability. I should say with are our current actions in alignment with where we're trying to go now? We might. We're going to hit some obstacles, we're going to hit some detours, but we want to have a roadmap again.

Showing us or giving us the guardrails of the path that brings us to, to where we want to be and to let us know what to do to get back on track when we, when we veer off.

The things you just said, I love it. I want to make sure I got this right. You said the plan is useless, but the planning is priceless. Did I get that right?

In a matter of speaking. I don't remember the exact quote, but the, the idea, the way, the idea though is that yeah, once, once you hit the battlefield, the bullets start flying.

Right.

Plans change really, really quickly. But the planning is what prepares us and people who go into situation, whether it's an actual battle, whether it's a business, whether it's a financial plan. I mean our financial plans, we, we meet with people annually to, to tear the thing down and build it back up because things change. And with Eisenhower, quote, his mindset was planning prepares you. It prepares you for those pivots to be able to adjust and reiterate when things don't go as planned. So you have to go in with a plan. You can't be married to it. But the plan is what prepares you to make those in the moment decisions that you didn't see coming.

I couldn't agree more. I was just studying that this morning. I don't see my book and I'm not going to go find it. But you know, the planning thing, we have a document that we use in working with independent insurance agents called planning or planned. Our strong recommendation is you fill it out the night before.

Right. To plan your coming day. Yes, but you're talking. I Heard you say it twice, at least. Road mapping into the future and planning out your future, what you want to happen, and having a vision, which I love everything you're saying about that. But as an encouragement for people in business and personally, there are so many people who don't plan to win, so to speak, or don't plan to succeed. Why do you think that is?

Well, one of the questions we ask people, it's more of a statement, it's a rhetorical question. We say, you probably don't have a plan for running out of money in retirement, but do you have a plan not to? And so many people wake up every day treating their life like an accident. They're just trying to get through the day and they, they're not intentional. And again, no plan is perfect. But what planning does is it allows you to act on a strategy so you're less likely to react to this crazy world around us. And a lot of people live in a state of reactance. They're just reacting to other things rather than purposefully executing on a strategy. And I think a big reason why people don't do this is we, we don't have a clear vision of what we want our future to be. We. We treat our future self, Mike, almost like it's a different person. Like the 2025 chat is a whole other individual. And, and I don't have to worry about those consequences. You probably remember the old Seinfeld show. He did a Seinfeld episode or a standup morning guy versus nighttime guy. And.

The skit or the bit was basically one person almost split into two personalities. Nighttime guy who is always screwing up. Morning time, guys life. And it was so funny because it's so true. We make decisions that we know are going to harm us in less than 24 hours, maybe less than 24 minutes, but we make them anyway. And we treat our future selves almost like it's another person.

So what can somebody do? And I know you have a background in performance psychology, and I think that's where you're speaking from and trying to help people with at this point. But, you know, so what can we do to keep nighttime guy or gal away from us? So the daytime guy or gal is in the high performance realm the majority of the time.

I think a really good question to start with is, am I stealing from or serving the future version of me? Like this decision, this choice I'm about to make, this commitment I'm about to make in 10 years, am I going to be proud of this? And it Just gives us a little bit of a pause. It isn't going to prevent us from making a bad decision, but it allows the logical part of our brain to catch up a little bit and at least balance things out with the emotional part of our brain. Because a lot of our decisions. And you know this, Mike, a lot of our decisions are actually emotional. And then almost simultaneously, we back them up with facts and logic, but the decision is already made up. Like, we've already decided we're going this direction now we're looking for reasons to support that. But the decision was made emotionally. But if we ask ourselves that question, am I stealing from or serving the future version of me by stealing from me in 10 years, it slows us down a little bit. And you already mentioned that. I think the other big piece is that idea of road mapping. Or if you think of it like a blueprint, you wouldn't want to live in a house that was built without a blueprint. Why would you want to live in a life that's created without a blueprint either? And what a blueprint does is it. It connects what we're doing today, what we're building today, with what we want this thing to look like down the road. And both of those strategies are ways of connecting our current self with the future version of us.

100% agree. And in addition to that, we also help agents with blueprints and roadmaps and vision organizers and the such. But the incredibly powerful segment of that is being able to reverse engineer the future.

Yeah.

So I'm sure you probably do this when you're helping people as well, and correct me if I'm wrong, or you see it a little bit differently or do something differently if you're looking out, say, three years down the road, five years down the road, 10 years down the road, and you want to be at this point in serving your future self versus stealing from your future self.

What are some. Do you think about it in the same manner as far as reverse engineering? Or. Go ahead.

Not only do I think about in the same manner, I use the exact same term, reverse engineering. So this is the. This is the biochemistry nerd coming out of me. This is exactly what we do is saying, okay, this is where you say you want to be in 10 years. This is what you want your financial life and. And your life in general to look like. So what are the actions today that align with that? How can we take. Because if I tell. If I tell you, if you come in and we. We go over some of your goals and I say, Mike, well, you're going to probably need, I'm just gonna make A number up. $4 million of invested assets to replace your current income real quickly. What your brain is going to do is say, that's Future Mike's problem. $4 million, I can't even wrap my head around that. That's a number that's too big. I will let future Mike worry about that. Well, if we do reverse engineer that and we take that future goal, we back it into what you need to do today, this week and this month. Maybe you need to save an extra $2,000 this month in order to stay on track. I know I'm just making things up, but, but now we're talking about an everyday goal that's like what, 60 bucks a month or 60 bucks a day to get $2,000 a month? A little bit more than that. So now it's not future Mike's problem trying to come up with 4 million. Now current Mike has to find $60 a day, so it's harder to procrastinate. But on the other, on the flip side of that too, that's something we can wrap our minds around. You know, maybe $2,000 a month is going to, again, I'm making that number up. I just pulled it off a bus. But, but maybe that's going to be a huge stretch. But it's much more tangible than the future version of me having a 4 million dollar nest egg. So it, it breaks a big goal down to bite sized chunks, but it also makes every day matter because too often we plan big goals, we have big objectives, but we kick it down the road. I, I just finished writing a book a few months ago, actually just came out a few weeks ago. And it was, I had to remind myself of the same thing because I, I would get overwhelmed by the blank page, like, oh my goodness, I have to write a book. And like, no, no, no, today you need to write for an hour. Or maybe it was to write a thousand words, but I had to break it down to something tangible. So I wasn't worried about finishing a book today. I was worried about I need to write for an hour. I need to execute this plan and break it down into daily disciplines that I can commit to for a long time.

So I'm looking at creating a high performance habits, become future focused. Choosing the hard right over the easy wrong is all of that. As far as putting it into something actionable.

Having that roadmap and that game plan and, and how do you discipline yourself? Who holds you accountable so that's a.

Big part of our coaching, is holding people accountable to that plan. But the blueprint or the roadmap or in our case the financial plan also holds people accountable. That it is a document that says, here is the path that you need to follow and there is some accountability and it helps with choosing the hard right because you can see the progress you're making now. You can't necessarily see that in the day to day. So let's just say somebody's saving for retirement. They've been putting money into their 401k for 20, 30 years. Then the economy takes a dive and their 401k starts going down. It doesn't look like they're making any progress if they're focused on the, the temporary outcome. But if they're focused on the input, okay, I'm putting in, you know, 15% of my paycheck or whatever it is, they're still making progress, they're still executing what they need to do. But without a roadmap, without some sort of, of plan or blueprint, it's really hard to see that because the 401k is looking more like a 301k. We're going in the wrong direction here. Right. So without a plan, all you see is the mess or the confusion or the chaos in front of you. With a plan, you can say, I'm making the sacrifice today, but I can see the payoff in the future. I can't, I can't taste it yet, can't enjoy it yet, but I can see the pathway. I can see the course that I'm moving down. And it's much, much easier to do the difficult thing because as you and I discussed, the best things for us in the long run are almost never the easy things in the short term.

The best things for us in the long run are never the easiest things in the short term.

Absolutely.

That's, that's really, that's part of choosing the hard right.

Yes. And it's the. What is going to serve us most in the future is usually going to be difficult. It requires some sacrifice. But without a plan, what a lot of us end up doing is we end up choosing the path of least resistance. And you think of a river, you know, it's all squiggly and scraggly and you're going to be in Alaska here in a few weeks. We're covered in rivers and none of them are straight. None of them are straight. So a river finds the path of least resistance and it gets there eventually. But the Folks that are listening to this show, they're the people that they, they want a straight line, which means you're going to have to dig that ditch. You're going to have to create a channel between where you are and where you want to be and not take the path of least resistance and, and actually carve this thing out, which is going to take work. It's going to take some difficult things and to, to mix metaphors here. You're going to be swimming upstream because our society is choosing the easy path, they're choosing the path of least resistance and it's not going to get them where they need to go.

Well, that's why they're not going to be in control of their own destiny.

Yes.

And that, that's a benefit of choosing the hard right and sometimes becoming more future focused. And the value of creating those high performance habits is being able to have more control over your destiny or having complete control of your future, whether it be with regard to the wealth or your business or anything else.

What you're talking about is reclaiming agency. It's taking ownership of your life in the direction where it's headed. And a lot of people choose to focus on everything that's outside of their control and they miss the things that they can influence. And what it does is it creates a state of learned helplessness where we give away our control, we give away our agency a little bit every day. We blame others. And this is where society does. Like, nothing's my fault, it's got to be your fault or somebody else's fault, the president's fault or the other political parties. It's somebody else's fault, but it certainly isn't mine. Well, that's really easy in the moment. But what that does is it guts us for the long run. It takes all our power away from us and it puts us in a place where we eventually learn that we can't do anything about our current circumstances. So what you just said is taking ownership and taking responsibility and executing what we can do to take control of our life and the trajectory of our future.

Well, and that's the benefit of fighting through the tough times because you'll soon realize that, oh, I can do this. And I did it again, and I did it again and I did it again. And, and really it might not have been as bad as I perceived it really is. Or you know, if I wanted to spend 60 bucks on going out to dinner and I chose to eat in at a cost of 15 or 20 bucks and I put that 40 bucks towards my future. I survived anyway.

Right, right. And what you make is a good point. Life is all about trade offs and I mean you got to live in the present too. I'm not saying that you live under a bridge, you know, eat top ramen for the next 40 years and you know, then you're wildly wealthy. But.

You'Ve got to learn to people have to make those trade offs so they, they're serving their future selves enough that they're not over indexed on the moment. And again, too many people live in the moment and they're not even thinking about what is this decision really costing me in the future. And you know, if we think of, if you think back to your life, I'll think back to mine. All the best decisions that we made were pretty difficult in the moment. The things, maybe it was, you know, going to college, starting a business, some of the, the hardships, raising a family of six kids, like that's not easy. But there's tremendous blessings. But the best things in our life that you and I have right now, Mike, almost none of those came from easy decisions.

Not only was it hard, not only was it extremely uncomfortable, it was very risky. And all the biggest ones were very risky. And it really came from a place of unknown. But you know, let's talk about something else. Because you teach and speak, you teach and speak on fitness and on faith.

I do, yes.

So you know, part of, because I'm a man of faith and I, I lifted that up and I said, look, you know, I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm going to give it my all and I'm going to give it my all by doing the best thing, the right thing to the best of my ability. And you know, it may work out, it may not, and I may fail a lot.

But, and there's going to be hard rights, but I'm going to get up the next day, you know, fall down seven times, get up eight. Right.

And you're going to learn from those failures and transform them into experiments. Right?

That's right. That's exactly right. And you know, those who fail more really win more and succeed more.

Yeah, it's funny you said that. I was, I, I'm not trying to pat myself on the back right now, but I was, I, I, I won a fairly prestigious award a few years back and they were asking backstage about to, to go out and accept this thing. They wanted a, this rah rah acceptance speech, like, well, do you have a secret you can share with the audience, what led you to this? And I said, well, I failed more than anybody in this room. That's why I'm here. That wasn't what they wanted to hear. So they're like, yeah, don't talk about that. Let's just, you know, we'll just shake your hand. But that was the truth. Like, I. I failed more than anybody in that room. And you talk about risk and a lot of the risks that. That people are afraid to take. Their risks to our pride, their risks to how we think people view us. They're the risk to our feelings, but they're really not risks to our health and our state of being or our. Our true security. But because they're. They're risk to our presence, we end up. We end up bypassing them. And you talk about some of the risks that you took. I mean, I started my financial practice in 2007 on the very eve of the largest financial meltdown since the Great Depression. And there were some huge risks there. And in fact, if I would have known how big those risks were, I don't know that I would have been courageous enough to take them. But I was young and naive, and nobody had any clue that the whole thing was going to unravel the way it did. And by the time that we did, I was already in the thick of it, and I'm too stubborn to quit. I don't know. But. But there. There are huge risks, but I think the biggest risk is not taking any. The biggest risk in life is sitting on the sidelines, looking out the arena and waiting for permission to be invited in. We have to be willing to step into the arena, get out of the sidelines, and get into the driver's seat of our own life. Yes, it's risky, but it's not nearly as risky as staying on the sidelines.

In the complacent, comfortable chair.

Yes. And so I think. I think comfort leads to complacency, and pretty soon complacency leads to compromise. That's the progression. So we got to be really careful when we start making those comfortable decisions where we choose the easy path. And again, I'm not saying you can't be comfortable. You can't have nice things. But if your life is characterized by comfort, complacency and compromise are probably going to follow shortly thereafter.

Well, and sooner or later, you're going to be in a. A point where maybe you haven't achieved the levels of growth, of wealth, of freedom that you want. You're wondering what the heck went wrong. It's because you made that decision at that particular time to stay where you were.

And I, and I think to your point that if you're the type of person who, who faces challenges on a regular basis, it's easier to face the next challenge. I mean, just, just think of, like, when you're working out, when I can tell you're an active guy, you take care of yourself when you're, when you're on a walk, when you're on a hike, taking an extra few steps is not a big deal. But when you're cozy in bed and the alarm clock rings, it's hard to take that first step out of bed. In fact, most people start their day off with defeat by hitting that snooze button. So we have a tendency to just maintain, you know, an object that, that is in motion remains in motion. The object that is still typically remains still. But if we allow ourselves to get really comfortable when the challenges do hit, we, we are less likely to be able to face them head on. But if we are used to facing challenges, if we're inviting, even inviting challenges into our life, when life does throw us a curveball, I think we're better, better prepared to meet them.

So let me ask you a question out of left field and just give me your best shot. I think you've got one of the best answers. So you talk about nurturing a mindset for high performance. What's your number one tip for anybody that might be out there that might be thinking, I just have a tendency to roll over and hit the snooze button. Everything's going to be fine. I know there's more out there. And I know that I could not only hit my goals, but exceed my goals if I would get up just 30 minutes earlier every single day. But I can't overcome it in my mindset. What's your number one mindset tip for people out there?

Progress beats perfection.

Look for the smallest step in the right direction. So that person who needs to work to wake up 30 minutes a day to work out, wake up two minutes earlier tomorrow and do 10 push ups. And then the next day wake up four minutes earlier and do 20 push ups. And you do. You string a few of those days together. Pretty soon you are waking up half an hour earlier. And now you could do a full workout. Or maybe it's somebody who wants to read more.

Don't.

Don't wake up 30 minutes earlier and, and try to read a full chapter. Wake up two minutes earlier and read one page because you need to create A new identity for yourself, that I'm the type of person who gets up early and does X, Y and Z. Otherwise we're going to end up like those people at the gym on, on January or on February 14th. There's six weeks into the year they've already quit. But too many of us start our goals that way. We, we try to make too much progress too quickly and it's not sustainable. We need to be able to design our progress to be sustainable over time. And like I said earlier, it's doing consistently what most people do occasionally. But consistency is hard. So, you know, if you haven't worked out in 20 years, starting next week, doing Navy SEAL workouts, probably not the best strategy. But we do that in so many areas of our life and we wonder why we're burnout or why we can't stay with something after a week or 10 days. So don't, don't be afraid to start small, but stay consistent.

Do consistently what most people won't ever do, if I get that right, but, or something to that effect. But it's small steps.

Yeah, it's doing consistently what most people only do occasionally. So there's a lot of people that, that, that save for retirement, but do they save every single paycheck and enough to make it hurt a little bit? Probably not.

Sure.

People pay off debt here and there, but do they relentlessly pay off debt all the time? Probably not. Everybody's worked out at least once in the life, but do they do it three or four times a week? So it's doing consistently what most people only do sporadically?

100%. I'm looking for a quote that I heard yesterday, but I can't find it about change. And you know, if we want, Jim Rohn said if we want things to change, we've got to change. Because if we're willing to change, everything will change for us.

Go ahead. Sorry.

That's fine. Go ahead.

I was gonna say a lot of us are, are looking for our circumstances to change, for life around us to change. And I think in order for our circumstances to change, we have to change first. It's, you know, if you put, I've got a 16 year old daughter and you know, she's learning to drive right now. She has to become a better driver. That's what's going to make her a better driver. I can't give her a Ferrari and expect she's going to be a better driver. That's changing her environment and her circumstances. But unless she becomes a better operator, that vehicle she's going to wrap that Ferrari around a tree or a light pole. So she as the driver, has to change. She has to become a better operator. And I believe that we can try to manipulate our circumstances, but unless we become a better operator of the life around us, our life isn't going to change that much. Or at least it won't be sustainable.

Progress beats for perfection.

Absolutely.

Progress beats perfection. I'm thinking about the Compound Effect, which is a book that I read many, many years ago by Darren Hardy in that same realm. But he talks about that. Just get up two minutes early and two minutes more and two minutes more. Sooner or later, it would be where you want to be. It's been said a lot that it's 21 days to a new habit. Somebody that I currently work with talks about 66 days. And if you get to day 31 and you fail, not nobody died. Get up the next day and start over. We can do it.

Yep.

We'll at least have 31 days under our belt at that point. Right.

James Clear writes about this in his book Atomic Habits. He said if you fail, if you. If you miss one day, just don't let it become two. Because what you don't want is that Ms. To start becoming its own habit. So, okay, so you. You binge watched Netflix and ate a carton of Haagen Dazs ice cream last night.

All right.

Still get up early the next morning, work out, like, start fresh. Each day is a blank slate.

That's right. That's right. So I 100% agree with that. I did not feel like doing anything that I needed to do yesterday morning, but I pushed through it and today I felt better. I don't know why that happens, but it doesn't matter. You know, great encouragement for people that I saw on my desk calendar that has a new quote every day, and this is probably six, nine months ago, roughly. Don't look back unless you plan to go there.

I like that.

Yeah. So don't look back. The present is a gift. Open it and we have the future in front of us. Great stuff. So based on all of your risk taking, fighting through things, choosing the hard right, and, you know, working on a mindset for high performance and sustaining the success that you've achieved so far. Congratulations, by the way. We'll wrap it up with this. If you had one big tip for anybody out there that's listening to either take the next step. And I know you just said, you know, two. Two minutes. Two minutes. But is there anything else you have for everybody out there to help them, you know, sustain and overcome the hard right and everything else.

I think just reminding people that they are, they are the secret to either their, their failure or success. And again, a lot of people will focus on things outside of their control. You know, in my industry, in the financial services industry and wealth management, most of the world is focusing on interest rates, the economy, the presidential election, tax rates. You know, are they going to sunset these tax laws? We can't control any of that stuff, Mike. And if that's where we're putting all of our energy, we end up missing a lot of opportunities. So I think in closing, I would just encourage people to focus on what you can control. Yes, outcomes are important, but you, you can influence your inputs. You, you can control what you put into life every single day. And that needs to be where our effort and energy is, focusing on what we can control and learning to get, learning to let go of the things that we can't.

Focus on what you can control, which ultimately is going to control your output and your contribution to whatever it is in your particular day.

Yep. Our habits, our choices, our behaviors, those are the things that are going to change our life. And I, and I believe if people will step into the driver's seat of their own life, take responsibility. Take responsibility. That's where life change happens.

You're stealing from or serving your future self.

Absolutely.

Step into the driver's seat of your future self and take control. I love that. Chad Halford, thank you so much for sharing with Unstoppable Nation. We are grateful for your wisdom, your expertise, and thank you for helping people keep their financial picture in order. If somebody's out there and they're resonating with what you say, how can they contact you?

Veritas Alaska is our, our handle on Instagram. They can follow us on there again. Veritas Alaska, we got educational and encouraging content we put up every day. Our website is veritasalaska.com and don't worry about the Alaska part. We work with folks all over the United States. But as you know, Mike, Alaska has some cachet. So we kept it in the URL. We were founded up here in Anchorage and I've also got a book, forging Financial Freedom. It's out on Amazon right now and folks are feel I would encourage them to order that. And a lot of what we talked about today is in that book. And it's not just about finances. It's about mindset and creating a better future.

I want to, I'm going to Ask you to repeat that and slow down just a little bit. Say the title of the book a little bit more slowly, please.

Is Forging Financial Freedom.

Forging Financial Freedom by Chad Hufford.

And it goes so much more than just finances. It's about creating and engineering a better life and a better future through mindset in our and our perspective on how we deal with with life and the challenges ahead.

Fantastic. Forging Financial Freedom. Did I get that right?

That's correct.

Forging Financial Freedom on Amazon by Chad Hufford. That's H U F F F like Frank. H F F O R D. Check it out. I'm going to definitely be checking it out. I can't wait to get into it and learn more because our mindset is our skill set and we talk about that an awful lot here. You know, we have an unlimited future. We have an unlimited seal. There is no ceiling above us. We can achieve whatever we want. We can do whatever we want. We can impact whoever we want in any way. We just have to make the decision to do so and sometimes overcome the hard. Right.

Absolutely.

So, Chad, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing with everybody out there. You are making a difference and we appreciate you more than I can tell you. Thanks for joining us on the podcast.

It's been my pleasure. Thank you, Mike.

All right, everybody, and if this is your first time on the podcast, welcome. My name is Mike Stromso. 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 at unstoppableprofitproducer.com we pour everything that we've learned in 35 plus years as a proud independent insurance agent to help people grow their business, create wealth so you too can have more freedom to live life on your own terms. And we strongly encourage you to go to unstoppableprofitpodcast.com go up to the top, click, subscribe so you don't miss one valuable episode, so you can continue to get great ideas, great tips on how to not steal from yourself, but serve your future self and how progress beats perfection. Just like we learned from Chad today. Thank you for those nuggets, Chad, and so much more. So we pour it all in again with the effort to help you grow your business, create wealth and have more freedom. And you can also subscribe on many, many channels. We're out there on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, our YouTube channel, Amazon, and so much more. Chad, continued blessings to you and your family, your wife Tiffany, your six children. Great job dad. Great job, family and continued success in your business, impacting people not just up in the Alaska area, but nationwide. And again, drop the name of your book again please.

Forging Financial Freedom.

Forging Financial Freedom by Chad Hufford. H U F F O R D It's out there on Amazon so check that out if it makes sense to you. And until the next episode, everybody get out there. Make a difference, be unstoppable, leave no regrets and remember this. You got this. We believe in you. It just takes the next step. Go do it. We'll see you on the next episode.

Do you love the podcast but don't know where or how to get started? Visit www.upplife.com that's u p p l I f e.com to learn more about our coaching and mastermind programs and how you can join our community of growth oriented agency owners today.