Episode 305: Imagine ….

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 Stromso.

Greetings and welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Prophet Podcast. I'm bringing you this podcast at the request of many who continually ask me at the end of every year to share with them the thought process that I started sharing three, four, five years ago because of my investment in myself. You see, if you want to have more, you've got to become more. Yeah, we have a new year coming up, new year, new you, and all of that. But here's the bottom line. If you want to have more, you have to become more. Because you attract exactly what you are and who you've become. So I love to share these three simple steps heading into the new year, because ultimately, at the end, at the end of the day, what an incredible opportunity we have, not only heading into a new year, but every single day in every single way, we get to. We don't have to do anything. We get to get out of bed, we get to have health, we get to have a roof over our head, we get to sleep in a warm bed. And maybe there's some out there that don't have these things, and my heart goes out to them, but I know that if it's at all possible that you're going to get up, you know, in the words of Michael Irvin, when he, when he launched his hall of Fame speech, when he got inducted in the NFL hall of Fame, get up, look up, and never give up. So my encouragement is never give up. And so I want to share these three simple thoughts with you, and I hope that it encourages you, that it inspires you, that it gives you maybe the. The icing on top of the cake of your plan for the coming year. Because at the end of the day, why not you and why not now? Because, like one of my favorite quotes says from Irma Bomback, when we stand before God at the end of the, of our lives, I would hope that we could say, I used everything that you gave me. So let's use everything that we've been given. And here's some thoughts to help you with that. And please write this down if you need something to write with and write on pause this right now and grab it. Because when I first learned this, it changed my world forever. Okay, so before I give you the three things, I want to say this right now and I'm going to repeat it towards the end of the podcast first hand. We're standing here on December 31st, one year from now. We're standing here on December 31st, 1 year from now, and it's been the most incredible year in my life. It's been the most incredible year in my business that I've ever experienced. We're getting ready to celebrate the incredible life, the incredible business year that we've had like nobody else's business, because it's been that phenomenal. My question for you is why? Why was your life so phenomenal? Why was your business year the best one ever? What made that happen? So let me give you some thoughts to fuel that. Okay? Number one, think about what would make your life more joyful. What would make your life more joyful? So think about three things with regard to the joy in your life. Number one, what are the things you love doing? What are the things that you love, love, love to do that you could do those every waking hour of your life? You never get tired doing it? Me, coaching. I never get tired of coaching. I love, love, love, love to help other people. What would make your life more joyful and what do you love to do? Encouragement. Goal? Do more of that. Under joyful, what are the things you tolerate doing? Ah, you really don't like to do them, but you have to do them. I get to take out the trash. I get to empty the dishwasher. I get to tolerate certain things. And I know that's a pretty much lame example, but what are some things in life that you tolerate doing? You don't love to do them, but you tolerate doing them. There's another one for me. Accounting. Don't love to do it. I tolerate doing it, but I got to do it. So I want to move to do less of that. Okay? And the third, what are things that you hate to do? What are things that you hate doing? In every way possible, eliminate those from your year. Find somebody else to do it. Here's an easy one for you. Go back to your most recently filed tax return. Look at your AGI, your adjusted gross income. Divide that by 20, 80 hours. That is your value per hour. Okay? And if you could pay anybody else that amount less than that amount of money per hour to do something in your life, pay them and do more of what you love, you will be more Productive. I will guarantee it. You'll be happier. Everybody around you will be happier because you're happier. What would make your life more joyful? Do more of what you love, less of what you tolerate, and eliminate the things you hate doing. Number two, what would make your life more fulfilling? What would make you feel more fulfilled? You know, listening to Jim Collins, the great Jim Collins, the author, books Good to Great, Great by Choice and so many others. The Flywheel effect. You see Jim, to make his life more fulfilling, he organizes his world more. If you're failing to plan, you're planning to fail, according to Benjamin Franklin. And I found that to be absolutely true. What would make your life more fulfilling? Plan for that fulfillment. To use Jim's example, Jim plans for simplicity. He keeps it simple. I keep it simple. I'm going through a book right now called the One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Pappas, the One Thing. And it's not ironic that they recommend in that book that you should invest four hours per day doing that one thing that fulfills you. So why not you and why not now? Collins, when he organizes his life simply with simplicity, not complexity, he spends more time in the creative. His strength, strength zone, his personal talents, gifts, vital functions, his superpowers, all of that. He spends more time there. He designs his life that way. He said, I want to. I'm going to spend about a thousand hours in the creative and the creative zone, which is his sweet spot. And doing the math on that, over 365 days. That's 2.73 hours per day. I just said in the one thing they say four hours in your sweet zone, doing, getting to that one thing. So what should you do to make your life more fulfilling? You should be doing the things you love doing for approximately anywhere from two to four hours a day in your strength zone, in the areas your personal talents, gifts, vital functions. Build everything around you. While you're doing that, you'll be more productive, you will get more done, you'll be happier, you have greater influence and impact on other people and your life will be more fulfilling. The third one for you. What would make my life more successful? See, there's two sides of life, as we all know, right? Personal life and there's business life. So I'm going to break it down. But what would make your life more successful? Let's start with business. The first item for your business life, your team. If you've got a team of business people together, everybody achieves more. What do you need to do to make your team the best that it can be. And I know those are hard answers sometimes. Maybe somebody's got to go, maybe we need to release him back to the workplace. We need to recruit new people. We need to do this, we need to do that. So for your business life, number one, what do you need to do with your team? It's your most important customer. Number two, what do you need to do with your vendors? Where do you need to cut? Where do you need to upgrade? Where do you need to improve? Everybody that's contributing to your business, what do you need to do with your vendors to make your life more successful? Number three, what do you need to do with your clients? How can you improve with your clients? Again, do you have some people that need to be released? You have need to upgrade the quality of your clients, you need to add more clients, you need to reduce the number of clients and increase revenue. There's so many things you can do. But to make your life more successful in the coming year in business, what do you need to do with your clients? Number four, what do you need to do with your brand positioning? How do you, do you have a brand position? Have you created a brand? Maybe you haven't. I just got done reading a book, Building a Brand Story by Donald Miller. Check that out. I suggest highly that will help you in a big, big way with your brand positioning. If you don't have one and if you do, what do you need to do to make your life more successful with regard to business in your brand position, it's your portrayal to the world of your culture, who you are, why you do what you do and answers the question why you? Part is part of the answer to the question why you over and above any and all other options available to them. Why, why, why, why? Why? It's your brand. It's who you are internally. Number five, what would make your life more successful in business with regard to your associations, which associations do you need to add? Which associations do you need to limit? Which associations do you need to eliminate? Jim Rohn said, you're the result of the five people you hang around with the most. What do you need to do with regard to your associations and who do you need to say no to more often? And what do you need to say no to more often? What would make your life more successful in business regarding your learning and growth? What do you need to invest in? Where do you need to become more? Where do you need to hone skills? Where do you need to invest to be able to grow more? Where do you need to invest, to be able to learn more. How do you need to learn more? And what facets do you need to create that impact of knowledge? What books are you going to read? What seminars you going to attend? What podcast you going to start listening to? What are you going to eliminate? What aren't, you know, maybe cutting, you know, fulfilling the need right now? Okay, what will make my life more successful in business? Regarding finances, what are the one to three things that I did in each of these categories that made my year more successful? And to finalize, finances, where do you need to be? Have you set a goal for where you need to be financially in business? If you have a team, do you have team goals? You have goals for your business, period. I hope you do. Knowing your destination is all you need to get there. If you don't have goals for your business, how in the heck can you pursue anything? Are you just going to be flapping out there in the wind? I hope not. What would make your life more successful Regarding finances? Again, what are one to three things that you will do in each of these categories that will make this coming year incredible? Or looking back, what are one to three things we did that made this year so incredible? We're going to celebrate like nobody else's business, part two of number three. What would make my life more successful in your personal life? What would make your life more successful in your personal life with regard to your body and your health, what would make your life more successful? You know, we. We have this affectionate little mirror of truth in our circles. It's the mirror of truth. Everything that you need, everything that you want is right before you in the mirror of truth. And it starts with your body and health. I mean, Cannon Lane, transparently. This morning, I didn't feel like getting out of bed. This morning I did not feel like going out before dawn for my exercise routine. But I did it anyway. Those days come. But what do you need to do to make it the most incredible year it's ever been? And you know what? When I get home after, I don't want to go out, but I push myself out. I always feel better when I get done. You ever felt like that? Of course. All we need to do is get started. So who's going to hold you accountable to that as well? Maybe you need to build in accountability for your business in your life as well. Number two, what would make my life more successful personally? How can you improve things with regard to your family? What can you do to continue to build your family? One of the things I was just studying today, was talking about make it a priority to hug your family members every single day to say I love you. If you're not close to them, text them I love you, or whatever it takes. But what can you do in the coming year to make it the most incredible year ever with regard to your family? What would make my life more successful? And personally, regarding your friends, how can you improve the depth, the depth, the significance, the meaningfulness of your friendships? What do you need to do so that when you look back on this year, it's been the most incredible year ever with regard to my family and my friends and my body and my health, it's been the most incredible year ever and is so successful in my personal life. What do we need to do to improve our lifestyle experiences? What's that trip that you wanted to take but never bothered to take the time to get it on the calendar? What do you need to do? I talk to a lot of people. You know, I'm tired, I'm burnout, I'm this, I'm that. I say, when's the last time you had a vacation? They don't know. When's the last time you took a trip that you will never forget? I don't know. I say, good, get out your calendar right now. We're going to block the calendar right now and we're going to schedule it because those lifestyle experiences, maybe it's with friends, maybe it's with family, maybe it's others you with others you care about. Maybe it's a church mission trip, whatever that is. What are those lifestyle experiences that will last forever in your memory banks and last forever in the areas of impact that you create and influence in your life? What would make my life more successful personally, regarding your spiritual and emotional growth and development, where do you need to grow and develop spiritually and emotionally? EQ is for is real emotional intelligence. You know, kind of flows over into business, but it can flow over into personal life as well. So I hope these thoughts have helped you. What would make your life more joyful? What would make your life more fulfilling? What would make your life more successful? And start with this in mind. We're sitting here, it's December 31st, one year from now. We're getting ready to celebrate the most incredible year, not only of my life, but in the history of our business. It has been the most incredible year that we've ever experienced. We've lived more, we've had more business success. It has been absolutely incredible. Start with a recap of those three things I mentioned. What would make my life more joyful? What would make my life more fulfilling? What would make my life more successful? Write them all down, get very, very clear and then design your life what it looks like at the end of one year from now. And then work backwards and make it happen for yourself. Just simply reverse engineer the best year that you've ever had in the history of your life so far. Personally and professionally, I hope this has helped you. That's what I do. I work through a book called Living your best year ever and I start long before the end of the year to design my life so that every year is a life that creates influence, impact and working to create legacy. So I hope this has helped you and from our families to your family and to your families to your teams, wishing you a very happy and prosperous new Year. Make the plan take action. You got this. We believe in you. I will see you in the next episode and again. Happy, Happy New Year.

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