Episode 283: Imagine….12/31/2025

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, and welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit Podcast.

Imagine. We're sitting here on December 31, 2025, and you just had the most incredible year of your personal and business life. I want you to imagine with me for just a moment.

What happened. What happened in 2025 that made your personal and your professional life so absolutely incredible. Maybe even close your eyes for just a moment.

Imagine what made it so incredible.

Now that you have the beginning of clarity on what made it so incredible, I have three questions that I've developed to help you contemplate and more importantly, to help you get crystal clear on how to make 2025 the absolute best year of your life, both personally and professionally. It's not going to take a lot of work. All you need is something to write with, something to write on, and these three questions and about 30 minutes of your time to get really clear. And I strongly encourage you, get away from the norm, get away from your office, maybe even get out of your house. Go to your favorite place, the mountains, the beach, a park, the library, whatever works for you. But get to a place where you can just think and reflect and contemplate and begin to design the most incredible year you've ever had. Remember where you've been, where you are, and more importantly, where you want to be in the future are the three phases. And don't look back unless you plan to go there. Yes, learn from what happened, but don't look back and don't focus on that. It's not going to change. The present is a gift, and that's what I want you to execute with today. And then your future. There is absolutely no limits on anything that you can achieve, except, according to Earl Nightingale, those that you make for yourselves. And I don't want that for any of you. I want it to be the most incredible year your life. So let's get started. The three questions that I want you to contemplate, and more importantly, the answers to these questions. Your answers to these questions. You guys ready? Here we go.

What would make my life more joyful?

What would make your life.

More joyful? Let's break it down into three separate topics. What would make your life.

More joyful? First.

Get clarity and write down the things that you love doing. The things that you love doing. Write them down. Get clear on what they are, all of them.

Number two, things you tolerate doing.

Do less of those, but do write them down for clarity. Again, number two, things you tolerate doing and the encouragement. Do less of them as quickly as possible, but do write them down so you have clarity. And the third one, things you hate doing.

And the encouragement, do none of those, but do write them down so you have clarity on what the things that you're not going to do are. And my great encouragement, if you don't have anybody to do those things, find somebody. Find what we call the who. Find the who to help you get those things done quickly. It will change your life forever. How do I know? I've done it and it's absolutely true. It will change your life forever. So the third thing, the things you hate doing.

Identify those and don't do any of those. That was the first question for you. I hope that helped. Number two, what would make your life more fulfilling?

What would make your life more fulfilling? I have studied and studied and studied for years, many of the greats, including Jim Collins and many others.

About how they organize their business day.

And I've learned that your business day should include two things, primarily just two.

Most importantly, simplicity. Simplicity. Keep it simple. Employ the kiss method. Keep it stupid simple. Don't overcomplicate it. Just get shiitake done. Simplicity, number one. Number two for the highest achieving creativity. Keep it simple and work in the areas of creativity or your personal talents, gifts or superpowers as much as possible. Again, ideally, you want to be operating in the areas of your personal talents, gifts, personal talents, or personal gifts or superpowers the majority of your day.

There's a one. There's a big reason that I'm writing the book that I'm writing right now. It's called the Power of Three. If you want to jot this down and keep your eye on it. Powerof3book.com powerof3book.com because in the evolution of my life, personally and professionally, I've learned that once a person identifies their top three personal talents, gifts or superpowers and then learns to operate within those top three, the majority of their day, it's an incredible, wonderful life and you'll be happier, you'll be more full of joy, you'll be more productive. And when you're done at the end of the day, you'll make a greater impact for your family or your loved ones or your friends or all of the above. Why? Because you're going to be happier and you will bring more to the table and to an extent, you will impact people. And that's our goal and what we do to impact people's lives personally and professionally. That is the goal at upping impact people's lives personally and professionally. And you'll begin doing that more.

By who you become through this process. So I've created tools that I use to track what I do to track my time. So I'm specifically investing my time in those areas. And then I'm delegating, in the words of the great Rob Bowen, our UPP member, not tasks, but I'm delegating, delegating projects and I'm empowering others to do everything else. So I'm operating in my areas of my personal talents, personal gifts or superpowers. Let me give you another example. I've done math on this as well. So if I had 1000 creative hours in 2024 operating in my sweet spot, right? And I divided it by 365 days, that equals 2.73 hours per day. 2.73 hours per day. Imagine the possibilities of the things that you can get done when you are clear on only doing the things that only you can do. And again, that bring you the greatest joy, that make you the most productive that you can be, the skill set that is your best skill set and where you bring the greatest impact to your business team and to the other lives around you. So question number two. What would make your life more fulfilling?

Question number three. To create the most incredible year of 2025 for you and everyone around you, what would make your life more successful?

What would make your life more successful? Now, I'm going to break this question down into two areas. Your personal life, your business life. And I'm going to start with your personal life. Because we encourage, and this is exactly what we teach, we want to help people create a life that's supported by their business. In other words, we want to help them create a business that supports their life so they have the time, freedom to live in the way that they want to live, where they can make the greatest impact, to be able to live out their dreams and their choices, build a business that supports that, not to live their life supporting their business. We don't believe that anybody should live their life supporting their business. They should have the time, freedom, and that's why we're entrepreneurs. That's why we have businesses or that's why we do what we do. So we're going to break your life down into two areas. Again, question number three. What would make your life more successful? So in these two categories, list all of the things below each of these topics that you will do to make it your best year yet. Ready? In your personal life.

What are some things that you need to do.

To physically make you the best you can be and or take care of your health so that your health will be the best it can be? Your body and your health, what are some things that you need to do to make it the best that it can be in 2025? And so you will make that a daily habit, not just a goal for January and then by the end of January it's done. No, that you will implement for the rest of your life. Personally, I get up and I exercise every single day. I get up and I stretch every single day. I get up and I do my sit ups and push ups every single day. That's just me as an example. And then as far as my mind is concerned and the rest of my health, I have other things that I do to take care of that. So what about you? What do you need to do that you're going to create that lifelong habit? Number two in your personal life, your family.

What does your family situation look like and what do you need to do to make it the best that it can be in the year of 2025? So when you're sitting at the end of 2025, you say, if you it was the absolute best year that I've ever had, what does it look like for you? Next topic. In your personal life, your friends.

What do you need to do? How do you want to live? How do you want to support? How do you want to socially interact with your friends and other people out there in the world? What do you need to do consciously, intentionally, to make it the best year of your life? Regarding your friends and your other social circles, write them down, get clear on it, get intentional for everything that you want for your life and then make it happen for yourself. I'm going to give you a tip at the end that's going to help you do that. Next, for your personal life, your lifestyle and your experiences, what kind of lifestyle do you want to live? Design it, Create it for yourself. Now, whether you have kids at home, whether you have grandkids, whether you have other family members or other loved ones, what do you want your lifestyle to be like? Do you want to intentionally schedule A date night every week with your spouse or every couple of weeks with your spouse or every month or somebody else. Just a get together or something like that. My greatest encouragement. Or even a vacation, maybe that dream vacation that you keep saying you're going to do. My greatest encouragement. Block it. Put it on the calendar right now. Put it on the calendar right now. Block that time and book it right now before the end of the year. That way you have something to look forward to. Make that plan right now. Commit to it. Remember, commitment is the thing you said you were going to do long after the mood you set it in has passed. So what do you want to do.

Next? Spiritual and emotional? Are there some things that you need to do to improve yourself, to get better? Things that you can do spiritually and emotionally to make your life the very best that it could be in 2025? I encourage you jot all of those things down and then we're going to work to implement every one of them. So that's the first part of your life. And the, and the question what would make your life more successful? The second part of making your life more successful is your business life. So think about this one and jot them down.

What would make your business life more successful Regarding your team, what do you need to do for your team with your team to help your team, to support your team? What do you need to do to get out of the way and let your team do what they do? How can you help your team grow? How can you help your team develop personally and professionally? What do you need to do in support of your team? Remember, together, everybody achieves more team. There is no I in team. What do you need to do to make 2025 the best year ever for your team? Number two, under your business life, your vendors, other people that support you, it could be your tech stack, it could be your carriers, it could be other vendor people out there in the world that support you in what you're doing. If you have a VA team, support them as well. What do you need to do to support these people so that 2025 is the best year ever? In addition to that, not only that, how can you praise and recognize all of these people? That's a good one to write down. How can you praise and recognize people? You know, people generally will never say, you don't need to do that anymore. Because people crave two things more than sex and money. Praise and recognition. As a human species, that's the way we're designed and built. Generally speaking, unless you overdo IT people love ongoing praise and recognition. But make it specific and don't overdo it. Make it spontaneous. Okay? Number three in your business life, your clients. What can you do for your clients? Maybe that you've never done before or something new or a way to elevate the value that you provide to them. What do you need to do in 2025 to make it the best year in the history of your business? Write them all down for your clients. Next, your brand positioning. What do you need to do to elevate your brand positioning? Maybe you don't have a brand or a brand positioning. The good news is you got technology on your side. Go into GPT or your favorite search engine and start designing your brand positioning. You can do it just like that. You have no excuses. Like Ryan Blair said, two, one of two things are going to happen. You're going to find a way or you're going to find an excuse. One of those two is going to happen. You'll find a way or find an excuse. Find a way. There are no excuses nowadays. There's so much technology and knowledge and everything else at our fingertips.

Just get it done. Next, your associations, all those people that you associate. The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of my associations is my centers of influence. What do you need to do to elevate those relationships with your centers of influence? To acknowledge them, to give back to them, to support them. It's all about them, never about you. It's all about them and never about you. What do you need to do to elevate those to all new levels? To make the next year the very best that it could be? Next, learning and growth. The day you stop learning is the day you stop growing. So what do you need to do? Write it all down. Where? What do you want to do? How do you need to learn? What do you want to learn? What's missing to make you the world class business organization you already are in many ways. But what's going to elevate you to the next level? Write them all down. What do you need to learn? What do you need to learn about by topic? Could be marketing, could be processes, could be people. Maybe you want to get involved with UPP and learn everything that we teach because we've got it all dialed in for you. We will teach you everything you want to know and what's going to lead to the growth that you're looking for. Maybe you've had incremental growth. Maybe you want to blow it out of the water. Maybe you want to grow over a hundred percent or over 200% or over 300% like some of our client members have.

We're here to help teach you in your learning and growth in your business life next year. If you're interested in that, let us know. You can reach out to us via email@vip life.com VIP@upplife.com just write I want to grow in the subject line I want to grow. And we'll set up an agency grow session. Or if it's easier, call us 800-770-9984. That's 800-770-9984. Next, your finances where do you want your finances to be on 12 31, 2025? How far do you want to go? How big do you want to grow? Again, there is absolutely no limits on where you can get to. Maybe your bookkeeping is not where it needs to be. Maybe your ability to understand your P and L and balance sheet is not where it needs to be. Clarity on those numbers, the value of your book of business, possibly your revenue per team member is not where it needs to be. Where do you need to be? Where do you want to be? Most importantly, regarding your finances?

Get clear. Write it all down.

These three questions and let me recap them for you because I want you to spend some time reflecting on your answers to these questions once you have clarity on what you want in your life and you want your end of the year to look like on 1231, 2025. Remember, imagine we're sitting here on December 31, 2025, and we have just experienced the most incredible year in the history of our lives. What did it look like personally and professionally? Let me recap the questions and then I'm going to give you the action plan at the very end. And there was just three of them. One, what would make my life more joyful? Get clear on the things you love doing.

Do more of those. The things I tolerate. Do less of those. The things I hate doing. Do none of those. Number two, what would make my life more fulfilling? How can you be working in the areas of your personal talents, gifts, vital functions, your superpowers? The majority of the time? Get super clear on that. That's why I'm writing the book for you. The Power of Three coming out very soon. Go to powerof3book.com, bookmark that, because there's a lot more coming on that. And lastly, what would make your life more successful, your personal life and your business life if you didn't catch all of These stop right here. Rewind and rewatch. Or re listen to that section of the podcast. Because all we want is for you to be sitting here on December 31, 2025, reflecting on the most incredible, amazing year of your life, personally and professionally. And we want you to be reflecting. I cannot believe this all happened.

But if there's a word that is key to all this, there's two words actually. Intentionality. Be intentional. Intentionality and accountability. Intentionality and accountability.

Those are two words that are very prominent in my life and it has helped me get to levels that I never, ever, ever dreamt of. So what's your action plan? After you go through this exercise and get crystal clear or have a lot more clarity on what you want your life to look like from a business and a personal perspective, go to the end of 2025 and start from the end of the year and create your action plan. You've gone through and you've documented and you've gotten clear on your answers to all three of these questions. Now go back and start writing your action plan on the things you are going to do to make all of this reality. There's no reason you can't. There's every reason that you can. And if there's somebody out there who's telling you can't, respectfully, they don't belong in your circle of five. Surround yourselves with a community. Surround yourselves with like minded people who say, yes, we can get that and more. Is it going to be easy? No. In the words of the great motivational speaker Les Brown, Les said, I've been with Les multiple times. Les says if you do what's easy, your life's going to be hard. But if you do what's hard, your life is going to be easy. It's your choice. Which do you want? Our choice is to impact people's lives personally and professionally. And we want to help you. If there's anything that we can do to help support you, please let us know. If you would like to get a copy of the questions that I just went through, send us an email. VIP life.com VIP life.com and in the subject line, put Imagine 1231, 2025. We'll kick back the questions to you so you'll have them in writing in the event that you didn't get them all down. Because we want to help you. We want to help you experience the most incredible year so far. I hope this has helped you. And from myself, Andrea Wyatt, Joel McKinley and our entire UPP team, thank you. Thank you for allowing us to walk alongside you throughout this year or throughout the prior years.

Here's the good news. There are so many good things coming in 2025. When are investing more than we ever have before in ourselves through personal and professional development. And we're going to bring it like nobody else's business next year. So stay tuned, get ready. Put your seat belt on. It's not for the faint of heart. Remember, be intentional and imp and make sure you build in accountability. From our families to yours, to you, your loved ones, those you care about and everything around you.

Have a very Merry Christmas and a safe, prosperous New Year's celebration. I will see you in 2025 and I will already be running. Myself and my team, we will already be running. So get your plan together. If you don't have a complete plan for the 2025 year, that's on you. If you ever have any questions about how to do that, let us know. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everybody. Thankful and grateful for you. I will see you on the next episode.

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Today.