Are you interested or committed?

Foreign. Kelly here. And welcome back to another episode of the Agent Leader Podcast. I'm honored and humbled that you're with me on today's episode. Excited to kick things off and to share some content with you that it's really important content, and it's also really challenging content. And I know that you wouldn't be a podcast listener, you wouldn't be a podcast listener to the Agent Leader Podcast if you didn't like to be challenged or think a little bit differently. Hopefully raise some different levels of awareness on where you currently are versus where you want to go. And today's content is based around a quote and a thought from Ken Blanchard. And this has been used in many areas, but he talks about, are you interested in getting results or are you truly committed? There's a difference of being interested and being truly committed. You know, I know that, you know, one of my main jobs as a coach when I work with agency leaders, when I work with producers, is to ask the right questions, to get them to really stop and pause and think about what they're doing right? And is that working? Is that. Is that helping them get the results that they want, not that I want, that they want, and then challenge them on some new ways of looking at some new ideas, some new strategies, some new habits, some new behaviors to implement to get consistency as they move forward. And, you know, as I grew up playing sports, sports in my life, whether it was a football coach or a basketball coach, you know, there were times that they would challenge me that would make me uncomfortable. In some cases, I may even get irritated or mad at them, like, oh, stop challenging me, or who are you? But if it was with the right intent, and it usually was with the great coaches, is that I knew they wanted me to be my best version. I knew that they wanted me to get better. And I always tell my kids now, you know, when coaches challenge you, certainly in sports, but it could be in music and theater and certainly in business and a lot of different areas of life. When people challenge you that do care about you, it's because they see potential in you and they don't want you to ever hold back. And so that's what I love about the coaching profession, that's what I love about working with agencies, is that I can see things sometimes, maybe they don't. I see more in people than they often see in themselves, or some maybe see the challenges they have a little bit differently. And then ask questions around that to get them to think about different ways to get to the end result. That they're looking for. And so that's what today's content's about. It's about, are you just interested in doing something or are you truly committed? And with that, I want to share three mindset shifts, or mindset principles, whatever you want to call them, questions and things you need to think about that will help you answer that question. Truly is, am I just interested? So whatever it is you want. And I've talked about this before in different podcasts, whatever you want, are you interested or are you really committed? And the first one is, do you tell yourself that I will do something or do you tell yourself I must do something? And my guess, if you think about your life, there are probably areas where you have a little of both. Right, I will do this. Now, what's funny is I base so many things off my kids. As a father of five children, they're just great examples. They have great stories because of just the things that they're learning and leadership lessons that I learned just at home. And I can tell you that if I ask my kids whether it's they took the garbage out or took the dog out, whatever it may be, right, the dishes, it's, oh, I will, I will. Which means I'll get to it when I can, but I may or may not succeed in this task, I will. And so it's just really kind of like, eh, if I feel like it now, that's an interested person, right? If there's something in your business that you know, are you going to be proactively scheduling calls with future ideal clients? Are you going to proactively doing a marketing campaign? Are you going to proactively put in a continuation process or relationship management program, a targeted account strategy for your future ideal clients, whatever it is. And I'm just throwing out some things that we teach our clients at Sidkins now. I will, I will versus really understanding it's not I will, but I must, right? I must. And by the way, not everything can be an I must. This goes back to prioritization, scheduling. What is your true priority? And it also goes into the question of why do you do what you do? Why do you want to do what you want to do? So the I will versus I must is really a question of heart and the question of why, why do I want to do it? And I've said many times before that when you find your why, you do truly find your way. I mean, think about this. I know this is pretty simplistic, but for most people we set our alarm clocks, isn't it funny sometimes that, you know, if we're going to work or whatever, and I know we have different schedules, but you set your alarm clock. I set an alarm clock, but I often wake up before it, which is interesting. It's a side story. But I set my alarm clock because. Why? Well, I've got to be somewhere. I have to go do this tomorrow. And this is true with kids, right? I mean, you've got, especially teenage kids. If you have teenagers, they could sleep forever, right? So you set an alarm clock yet if you said, tomorrow morning we are leaving for Disney World at 6am right, or whatever the case may be, or some cool thing, all of a sudden it's like, I must wake up. They don't just set an alarm clock. They set like four alarm clocks and make sure you wake me up and whatever it may be. And there's an urgency. So the idea of I will versus I must is a heart question. It's a why question. I also believe it's an urgency question which really leads into my next thing of is what you want to do, your result that you want to get in business? Is it not just I will or I must, but is it soon or now? I'll do it soon, I'll get to it soon, or is it I will do it now? Right? I will do it now. I share the story sometimes at the training events that I'm doing, if I'm speaking based around the law of diminishing intent. And I've got two older brothers and both great guys. I got an older sister as well. I'm actually the baby of my family. I'm an oopsie baby. My sister's nine years older than me, and my brothers are 13 years older and 15 years older than me. So my oldest brother, I actually live very close to him. He's got two daughters. His youngest daughter is pretty close in age to my oldest daughter. They're just about a year or so apart. But we were at a swim meet. This has been a few years ago now. And it's just funny. I tell him that I share this story. So I'm not trying to pick on him because I do the same thing, but it was just a great example of this law of diminishing intent. And my brother comes back, we're at a swim meet, and this is the very end of June, like the last week of June, so June 30th or something like that. And he comes back from the concession stand at the swim meet, and he's got a hot dog and A nachos and a soda or whatever. I mean, he's holding all this stuff in his hand, and he looks. He looks right at me and says, see this stuff? I said, yeah. He said, this is the last time you're going to see me with this stuff. And I said, okay, what you doing? He said, well, I'm going to get on a fitness plan, right? I'm going to start eating better. I'm going to start working out. And he was kind of telling me the stuff he was going to do. And I said, well, that sounds awesome. I said, well, when are you officially getting started? And I said, after the holiday. Now, remember, this is the end of June. So my brain is thinking after the Fourth of July. And he says, oh, yeah, yeah. He goes, labor Day. I said, what? He said, labor Day. He goes, you know, the summer's really busy. I've got. My daughters have camps and different things, so it'll probably be Labor Day. And now when I tell this story live, people always chuckle. And I said, do you think that he actually went on this diet and fitness program? And the answer is no. The law of diminishing intent simply says the longer we wait to do something, the less likely it is that we'll ever actually do it. And I want you to think of some areas in life or business, personal or work where you have knowingly wanted to do something. And you say, soon, I'm going to get started. Sooner or later, I will do this. I will start this fitness program. I will become more intentional in my sales process. I don't care what it is. And then the longer you wait to do it, you just kind of forget about it and it fizzles out. If you are interested in getting results, just interested, you will say sooner or later, if you are committed to getting your tangible result, you will say, what now? Now is good if it's important. And I'll challenge you right now if something's really important to you, that you get a result. And this, again, could be a result that I'm talking to. I know I've got a wide audience here, but it could be a sales result, it could be an agency growth result, it could be a people result, Whatever it is, a lot of different results. But if it's really important to you, why wouldn't it be important to you today? And if you say, well, this is really the most important thing yet, I'm going to wait three weeks because I have other things that are going on that are busy, well, I think you're missing the point. And by the way, I deal with this, too. I have to be very honest with myself. I'm like, well, this is really important. Shouldn't I be doing this today? Shouldn't I be very intentional about scheduling something around this today? Not tomorrow, not next week. Because guess what? As I said, the law of diminishing intent says the longer you wait to do something, the less likely it is you will ever actually do it. So interested or committed? First of all, it's I will versus I must. Secondly, it's soon versus now. And this is the last one. This is big. People that are interested say, I can't, I can't. Now, why do they say I can't? And we had this a lot. I can't. Well, maybe it's because they simply don't think that they have the know how, the knowledge to do it right. I can't because I don't. No. Now, maybe that's true, maybe it's not. Maybe they say I can't because at the end of the day, it's fear. And I've talked about this in earlier podcasts. In fact, one of the last ones I released was talking about moving from comfort to growth. And there's a fear zone that we get into. So maybe it's I can't because I have a level of fear. Maybe it's I can't because I don't even know where to start. And that's the mindset of many interested people. And by the way, what these are are excuses. In fact, the Ken Blanchard quote talking about interest and commitment says there's a difference between interest and commitment. When you are interested in doing something, you do it only when it's convenient. When you are committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results. We say this a lot. This sounds pretty harsh, but excuses are for losers. They really are. Excuses are for losers. And one of my favorite acronyms, and I got this from Robin Sharma, apr, not annual percentage rate, but absolute personal responsibility that it's on me. Right? And so when we have people that are interested in doing something, again, let's just use an example of a producer trying to hit a sales goal. Well, they're going to say, I can't. How are they going to define the excuses? I didn't have the time. They didn't get back to me. I don't have the skill set yet. We don't have the right resources. The carriers didn't give me the right pricing. The markets hard, market soft. I don't care what it is you're going to hear a number of excuses. Committed people say, I'll learn, I'll learn. Not that I can't. I'll learn. I'll figure it out. I will find a way to make this happen. Because the focus and the power and the end of my result is so, you know, it's so impactful to me that I'm going to figure this out. I will learn. And there's a huge difference in that. You know, what's interesting to me is that when, whether I'm doing an outside speaking event or an internal training for the Sitkins Network, but typically I see this more in outside speaking events or the first time I show up somewhere and the first time I started speaking outwardly, I was most nervous to speak in front of people that had already gotten or getting great results. There's that little level of fear of, you know, who am I to be speaking to you? You're a million dollar revenue producer or you're a 25 million dol dollar revenue agency. I don't care what it is. I'm just throwing numbers out there. But there's that fear because, oh well, the best people. Here's a thing that I learned very quickly. The highest achievers take the most notes. I can tell you every time, almost every time, the people that are already getting great results are taking the most notes. And I would couple that by saying the people that are on their path to great results are also taking a lot of notes. It's not because it's just me speaking and they have to take notes. This is anywhere in life. They're always learning, always learning. The people that get average results or that are just interested, they know everything already, just ask them. They know everything. And so it's this idea, this mindset of the growth mentality that I'm always looking to learn, I'm always looking to grow. There's always one little thing that I can tweak. There's always one different advantage I could get. And so why would I ever hold back on that? And so those are the things that we see oftentimes with agencies. And so I just want to share that in this podcast and just ask you specifically, I want you to think about the one goal it is that you want to achieve right now, the one outcome, the one result that you really want. Now if you haven't defined that yet, that's the first place to start. But whatever it is that you say you want, it's easy to talk, right? But whatever you really want, are you interested in getting that result that would be cool. That would be a good idea. That would be a neat place to be. Or are you truly committed? I posted this on LinkedIn, this concept, and I got some great comments and people were thinking about it. Someone shared with me on LinkedIn. I've heard this before, but it's been a while. If you want to put a difference of who's interested, who's committed, just think of breakfast, right? The chicken was interested. The pig was truly committed. Right? And there's a lot of truth to that. And the bottom line is, what does that mean? Obviously, you don't need to sacrifice yourself. Hopefully you don't get that crazy, right? But the idea is this. You do need to sacrifice your time, you do need to sacrifice your motives, you do need to sacrifice your money. In many cases, are you willing to invest into something you've got to be able to sacrifice? In some cases, relationships, those that aren't serving you well versus those that help you grow and achieve more. So there is a lot of sacrifice. Maybe not like the pig, but you as whether you're an agency leader, whether you're a sales producer, whatever your role or title is, whatever is the goal you want, are you willing to commit? And commitment takes sacrifice, and sacrifice takes discipline, and discipline takes consistency. And those aren't fun words, I get it, but otherwise you're kidding yourself and that's what I don't want you to do. So if you're listening to this now, love for you to comment or reach out to me or email me, but I want to know what you're committed to, what you're committed to and the sacrifice that you're willing to make to get that commitment. I have as I continue to grow and talk to people and attend different events and whatever it may be, when I was younger, I'd always think I'd see successful people and I don't want to say I just thought they were all lucky, but, oh, they got a break or whatever the case may be. I think we all have breaks that we get. But the difference is, are we prepared for them and do we take action on them? That's a different podcast. But when I talk to successful people and people are really doing things, not only are they typically very humble and value givers, that's consistent, but they've also worked their butt off and they've committed, they've sacrificed. They just have. They've sacrificed to get where they're at. And so whatever it is you want, if you're not willing to sacrifice, then you're kidding. Yourself, you just are. And so that's my final call to you again is are you interested in whatever you want? Are you truly committed? And the three things I said ask yourself Is it I will or is it I must? Is it soon or is it now? Is it I can't or I'll learn? So just three mindset shifts to think for yourself. Are you interested? Are you committed? So hope this podcast was helpful to you. You got some value added. It got you thinking a little bit differently. I always like to challenge leaders in different ways and this is one of them. So also, if you're an agency leader and you're looking to grow your agency and a lot, not just revenue wise, certainly growth with the development of your people, growth with development of your processes, growth with developments of behaviors and strategies, growth in your relationships both internally and externally, we'd love to talk to you. At Sitkins, we work with a we have a private network, the Sitkins Network. We work very closely with agencies. We coach, we train, we consult, we work with you to help you become your best version, design your outcome and help you get where you want. And just to be your guide, your partner in this, in this process. And we're having a lot of success with IT agencies. But reach out to me, reach out to our team@sitkins.com you can check out all of our programs@sitkins.com but love a chance to speak with you and just hear from you either way. But appreciate all, appreciate all my listeners out there. My last call. As I always ask if this podcast is adding value to you in any way, I'd love for you to leave a rating and review for me. It helps me reach other insurance agency leaders and with that, wish you all the best and your success. Thanks.