Cultivating an Environment of Growth

Welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me for another episode. Honored to have you as a listener. And as always, the purpose of the Agent Leader podcast is to help you as an agency leader, to help you gain clarity in where you are, where do you want to go? And guess what? How are you going to get there? To help you think about consistent habits, what are some things that you as an agency leader can do more consistently? And of course, make a commitment. Hopefully you're making a commitment to yourself, your team, your community, your clients, whoever it may be. But to be that best version possible. And today we're going to talk about just such an important concept. And I've intertwined some of this in my previous episodes. But it just hit me as something that's so relevant, so important that I want you as a listener, just to take some time to think about it in your own world. And that is your environment. And how is your environment currently affecting you? Now, before I get into the content today, just a really quick sneak peek. There is something that we are doing at Sitkins. Now, depending on when you're listening to this podcast, sometime mid of quarter four, so I would say Thanksgiving ish, right around there, we're going to be making a very important announcement for agency leaders and your entire team. Some of the many, many years of learning that we've had as an organization, coupled with the use of technology, some really exciting things that are coming to agency leaders in 2021. So stay on the lookout for that. You can always visit our website@sitkins.com S I T K I N S to learn more and to stay updated on some really important things coming your way. So with that, I want to get into the content for today. And again, it's around cultivating an environment of growth. Cultivating an environment of growth. Now, I say that cultivating. I live in the Midwest, so, you know, we cultivate things here in the ground. So it's how do we prepare, how do we improve our environment? Of what? Of growth. Of how to get better. Now, growth could be certainly financial growth. We talk a lot about that, and profitability and sales and retention, but also just growth as a leader and whatever your specific position is. And whether you're running your entire agency or you're leading your sales team or you're a sales producer or you're dealing with clients day in, day out, we all have influence. And so we've got to really be cognizant of our environment now. Now this has Never been more important. And you know, I always get, I always try to be careful of saying those big phrase, never been a more important time. But I think it's pretty safe to say in this year with, with COVID the pandemic, with it being an election year. In fact, I'm recording this the day of the election, so of the presidential election, of course, some of your local elections that are going on as well. So there's just a lot of uncertainty. There's a lot of information that comes our way, whether it be news, whether it be our friends, whether it be social media that can be distracting. And not just distracting, it can downright be negative. It can hold us back from being our best version possible for doing the things that we really want to do. And one of the things that's easy to say and hard to do, I'm raising my own hand, is the fact that we cannot allow things that are outside of our control to control us. Right. And it's easy to say, hard to do it. Do not allow things that are outside of your control to control you. And you know, again, I just. The obvious things right now are news and social media and again, just being a political year, I mean, I mean, I don't care what side you're on. I think we're all be excited when it's over, right? And whatever that looks like and who knows how that's going to look. But just the fact that we can hopefully get back to just being focused on the things that we can control. Now, obviously there are things within those, you know, the news cycle and political things that you can control, I guess mainly your vote, your vote and your voice. But after that, you know, not much. And we get caught up and what if this. And what if this. And again, the same with COVID And there's some real issues there. I understand that. But I'm amazed at how much time we, as individuals and through coaching calls that I have and just some of the resource and mentors and people I work with, how much time we spend in just with our mindset, with our anxiety, whatever you want to call it, on things that really, quite honestly, we don't have any control over. So I'm going to talk today about again, your environment and the importance of it and some things you can begin to consider in your environment. And I want to lead off by a quote from W. Clement Stone. I love this quote. He said this. He said, you are a product of your environment. So choose the environment that will best develop you toward your objective. Analyze your Life in terms of its environment. Are the things around you helping you towards success, or are they holding you back? Let me just read that last line again because I want you to think about that in your own world as an agency leader. Are the things around you helping you towards success, or are they holding you back? Right. We can't hope, wish, want something, yet surround ourselves in our environment. That's really what our environment is, right? Those things that are around us with things that aren't helping us get there. Now, it's never going to be perfect, but I think we need to take time and be very intentional and very aware again, of what's going on in our environment and if those things in our environment are indeed helping us get to our desired destination, or if they're not. So let me go through some things to consider, and the first thing I want to share is this. I did a podcast episode recently about managing change and understand, you know, what change means, how we manage change. And I actually use the word instead of change, you should use the word improvement. So whatever you want to use. But if we're going to make change, and in this case, I want you to think maybe more individually as we're talking about your personal environment. But change equals choice, right? Change is a choice that we have to make. You have to make a decision. Seems pretty obvious, right? But oftentimes, again, we want and desire change, but we're unwilling to make a choice to accelerate or at least start that change, whatever it may be. You know, I really want to make more money. I really want to live here. I really want to do this. Yet we don't make the choice, first of all, to start that process of change. Now I'm going to be using some information, want to give credit where credit is due. Many of you know from previous podcasts, I spent a lot of time as part of the John Maxwell team, actually for about four years now, and continue to learn to be mentored through that program and be able to share some ideas. And he's got John Maxwell in his book, the 15 invaluable laws of Growth, one of my favorite books ever. 15 invaluable laws of Growth. He has an A chapter around the law of your environment. And he talks about three things to consider in this. And I just want to share that it's pretty simple, but I think sometimes you take it for granted. Number one is you can change yourself, right? So you're going to start working on yourself in different areas, but not your environment. Now, let me just stop here because I Think it's important as I get into environment, what does that really mean? Well, I said it's the things around you to keep this really simple. To me, your environment are the people that influence you. And that could be in multiple levels and areas. And it's also the information that you consume. And some of it we have to consume certain information, but some of it, we choose to consume information that may not always be the best things to get us to our goal. So you change yourself, but you don't change your environment. So you don't change the people you associate with. You don't change the information you consume. Well, you can still grow, but it's going to be slow and it's going to be difficult. Now you could change your environment. So you begin to say, hey, I'm going to associate myself with different people, better influencers, positive people, mentors, coaches, peers that have done well, whatever it may be. But guess what? I ain't going to change a thing about myself. I am who I am, right? And guess what? Growth is still going to be slow. It may be less difficult. Why? Well, because you have to change yourself, but you've changed. Come some of your associations. Now obviously you put these together. This is where we want to go. And this is what I want to talk about today. If you change your environment, your associations and information and you begin to say, how do I begin to change myself, growth will be faster and more successful. Right? Kind of a duh moment. But I want to read a quote, and this is a very popular quote from Charlie Tremendous Jones. I love this quote. I heard it many years ago. Charlie Tremendous Jones was a, he started off his career as a life insurance salesman, very, very successful and, and then got into speaking and training and coaching and all these kind of things that he did, wrote books. And here's what he said. I love this. He said, you will be the same person in five years as you are today, except for the people you meet and the books that you read. You will be the same person in five years as you are today, except for the people you meet and the books that you read. Now, I first heard this, I don't know, 20, 25 years ago, I might have first heard this quote when I was just getting out of college or starting my career. And like a lot of good quotes, you're like, oh, yeah, that's cool. But it's one thing to hear and see a quote or a statement. It's another thing when you start to see it lived out, right? You actually, number one, you have Personal experience in your own life, and you begin to know that you're very close. Associations, friends, people you've worked with, business colleagues. You start to see this play out. And one of the things I've joked around before, and I do this in one of our producer fit programs, talking to producers, is I always share the idea that, you know, people think you've got to have all this experience. And by the way, experience is helpful, but without applied experience, it doesn't really matter. And one thing I say is, you know, people say, well, I've got 20 years of experience or 30 years of experience, but have you ever met someone who doesn't really have 20 years of experience? If you're really honest, they have one year of experience doing the exact same thing. 20 or 30 years, right? They've never changed themselves. They've never really altered their environment. They talk to the same people. They read the same things, if they read anything, right? And they haven't really changed. So this quote, you will be the same person in five years, except for the books that you. Or except for the people you meet. And the books that you read are real. Now, it could be, when I say books, it could be podcasts, it could be YouTube videos that are, you know, TED Talks, whatever they are. But, I mean, you get the point. And Jim Rohn, another one of my favorite mentors, Jim Rohn, calls this bread for the head, right? Those things that you're feeding yourself, it's like when we feed our body. If you feed it junk, guess what happens? You don't look so good, you don't feel so good. If you feed your body good stuff, you feel better and look better. Same with our brains. And we forget that what are you feeding? What is coming into you? I mean, again, I mentioned the beginning. I live in the Midwest. If we don't give the soil, if we don't give our crop, excuse me, great soil, air and clean water, guess what? It ain't gonna work. And the same is true with us as agency leaders. We have got to feed ourselves the good stuff. So here's some things just I want you to think about. This would be, I guess, the action plan, so to speak, based on this idea of cultivating an environment of growth. And I say this for both you personally and also your agency as a whole. Number one is this. I think you need to have an assessment, right? And we all do this. I do this as well. And here's the assessment. Just two parts of this pretty simple question, but something I want you to consider. Who Am I spending too much time with? Who are people right now in your life or in your business that you're spending too much time with? You know, they are not the people that are going to help you to get to where you want to go. Maybe it's comfortable, maybe it's easy. Maybe they make you feel better than what you know, what you know, hey, at least I'm better than they are. But you know, deep down in your heart, I need to be spending less time with those people, right? So who are the people that you're spending too much time with? And of course, the obvious flip question is, who are some people you need to spend more time with? Maybe it's a different person in your office if you're back in your office. Or maybe it's some peers or colleagues or people in your community or it's mentors or coaches or whatever it may be. Who are those people that you spend more time with? And one of the things that I love to see, it's always one of my favorite parts of our programs. And we've done this certainly when we've done in person sessions and this year, doing all of our virtual sessions, we have a number of breakouts and interaction. We want people from across the country to interact. We want to ask you challenging questions and talk amongst yourself in small groups and release that collective genius. But you've got to be with the right people, right? Here's the good thing. I know about our programs, and this is not. It is what it is. But people pay money to get into our programs that want to achieve more. Guess what? Those are good people to hang out with. That's true with anything. So we've got a really good quality group of people. And it's always amazing. I always say, what's the power of one great idea? What if you're an agency leader in Nebraska, or I don't care what state you're in, Florida, Maine, I don't care where you are, and someone from a different state says, hey, you know, the best idea I ever received, and here's what we did, it was this. And you go, oh, my gosh, I haven't thought about that. Thank you so much for sharing that. Like, what's the power? What's the value in that? And sometimes we take that for granted. So the first assessment is people, right? Who are you spending too much time with? Who do you need to spend less time with? The second part is the environment is again, just that bread for the head, that content that I mentioned is, who do you need to listen to or what do you need to listen to more of, what do you need to read more of, what do you need to watch more of? And what do you need to listen to and watch less of? It's the same thing. I am not anti entertainment. Right? I love to watch. It's good to get away and do that. But I can tell you if your entire life goals or every night is to watch, you know, the next binge on Netflix every single week, and I know most of you listeners aren't doing that, but guess what? You're gonna have people that are taking time to read a book about business strategy or marketing or communication, you know, how to understand P and L statements. I don't care what it is. Hey, you know, what can I learn that's new that's going to help give me a competitive advantage? And hopefully you're just a natural, curious person. I think one of the things that I see time in and time out, certainly with our mastery programs, and this is something that the first time I ever did a presentation as I was kind of beginning my speaking coaching career, and this has been, what, almost 15 years ago now, I guess something like that, 15, 14, 15 years ago, is that I went and spoke to a group of people that were my peers that I had an agency that I was with, and then I had left and came back, I did a presentation for them. And the people that I was most nervous to speak to, which was the big producers, right? The people that had had success, that were doing very well financially, people that I had high level of respect for, they were the people I was the most nervous because I thought, who am I? Who am I? And I was doing something specific on digital marketing at that time. But guess who took the most notes? Guess who asked the most questions? Guess who came to me afterwards, said, you know what? I really appreciate that I got this really great idea from what you shared. Just one idea. It was the best people. It was the top people. Those that weren't doing so well. I mean, just you've been here. Certainly if you're running an agency, the ones that are struggling and aren't doing so well go. I already know that. I don't need to know that. I got this right. It's a natural curiosity because the best want to be in an environment where they're always challenged and encouraged and they're curious. They're curious. What else could I learn today? They're never going to stop growing. So here's some things, saying all that to challenge yourself in A better, brighter environment. Number one, I would challenge you that whatever you're going to do is make some of your goals public. That'll help your environment. It's one thing to sign up for a marathon yourself, right? I'm gonna run a marathon this year. I'm just using that because it's an easy example. It's another thing when you tell several people and post it on Facebook, for example, right next May, I'm running a marathon and keep me accountable. Guess where you're more likely to succeed. We all know the answer. Secondly, set deadlines for goals. And you know, I believe that there's goals and there's growth, and we need both of them. But you've got to set some deadlines. I always challenge people when they're doing things. They say, well, I'm going to start doing this. That's awesome. When are you going to do that? Well, I don't know. Well, give me a date. When are you going to do. When are you going to start that? Or when is your goal to finish it? Because you got to have something to strive for. It's not Someday I'll right the worst island to live on. Someday I'll. Someday I'll do this. Someday I'll do that. So make your goals public. Set deadlines for goals again. Hopefully those are public. And then what do you need to do right now? I'm a person, too, and I've learned this a lot from some of Tony Robbins and stuff. I love that. I go through a lot of his training programs and follow along. And a big thing he teaches is, hey, listen, if you make a commitment to yourself of something you want to do, he goes, take some action. Right now, it may not be the full action because you can't do it right. I'm learning something at 4 in the morning. Well, I may not be able to take action at 4 in the morning, but I can do something, because even a small action provides momentum. So ask yourself, what do I need to do right now? Because if I put it off tomorrow, I may never do it. And you've heard me talk about this before. If you've been a faithful podcast listener, the law of diminishing intent. The law of diminishing intent says this. The longer you wait to do something you know you should do, the less likely it is you'll ever do it. But when you have an environment of growth, when you're consistently fed good information and you're surrounding yourself with people who both encourage you and challenge you, so you don't want People that just challenge you all the time and you never do anything right, that's not going to help you. There's got to be that combination. Hey, I want to encourage you because I see something really special in you, but I'm going to challenge you. You're not doing as much as you could, right? That's that kind of that balance that we're looking for. So that's the idea of a cultivating this environment of growth. And again, hopefully there's just something there that you can begin to think about and to take hopefully, an assessment in your own life of going, wait a second. If I'm really honest with myself, am I putting myself in the best position to be successful in my environment? Am I meeting the people and surrounding myself with those that I know are going to help me, or am I spending too much time with people that, quite frankly, are holding me back? And I know those are some really difficult questions, especially in some personal relationships. And by the way, you don't have to go to someone and say, I am now cultivating an environment of growth and you can no longer talk to me. Right. It doesn't have to be something that overt. You just have to be very aware. You know, I need to spend more time with these people and less time with these people if I'm going to really get to where it is I'm going to go. And those are hard questions. And then of course, it comes to, what is the information? What are some of the resources I need to feed myself, help me in this environment? Because guess what? It's tough out there. You've already experienced it this year and previous years, probably in your life. You know, if it was easy, everybody would do it, right? If it was easy, everybody would do it. Everybody would, you know, do all these things. But guess what? It's not. And most of us, we go back to complacency and we settle for average, and we allow our environment to be part of that. So I really want to challenge you, assess your environment, take action in your environment. Hey, thanks so much for listening to this episode. As I mentioned at the beginning, a little tease. There's a very big announcement that we're going to be coming out with. So depending on when you're listening to this, you may have already heard it. It may just be getting ready to launch. But we have learned, like you have a lot in 2020 about our clients, about teaching, about training, about allowing technology to serve us in different ways. You know, about the way to understand why training works in some areas and why it doesn't and what needs to happen to make it work. Because the bottom line is it's about results. I mean, that's, that's it, right? It's about results. I don't care what type of method you use, it's just got to work. And so there are three things. I'll just give you a little tease here. There are three things that we have seen that must happen together when it comes to training, coaching with agencies or you're. I'm not going to say it can't work, but boy, it puts you at a competitive disadvantage. And so putting these three things together and make it easy and accessible doesn't mean easy that it's not going to be work, but easy as far as to understand and to implement is something we're going to be coming out with very soon. So stay tuned for that. Also, if this podcast or any previous podcast has helped you, I would appreciate a review, a rating on whatever platform you're listening to. And with that, I wish you all the best in your success. Thanks for listening.