How BIG Is Your Thinking?

Welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. My name is Brent Kelly. It is my honor, my pleasure, that you are joining me on today's episode. And today's episode is going to be focused around you as an agency leader. My question to you is, how big is your thinking? How big is your thinking? I've had the pleasure the last couple weeks, as I often do, I get a chance to travel around quite a bit and, and lead trainings and sessions and be part of masterminds and groups. And the last few weeks, I've been part of some sessions that we have put on at our own group, the Sitkins Group, with our private client members, the Sitkins Network. I've also did some outside events, was part of a mastermind group that had a couple days together. So a lot of learning and sharing and just observing over the last few weeks. And so I look back through all my notes and always try to reflect on some things to grow. And I started thinking about this podcast, you know, of all the things that I had just experienced the last couple weeks and the agency leaders and the events that I've been a part of, what did I learn and what was the biggest result, the biggest learning that I had? And to me, it was this question on thinking of how big is your thinking? Because I truly believe, and this goes back to books like Think and Grow Rich, right? It doesn't say Wake up and grow rich, but think right, to think and Grow Rich. And I read that book back in my 20s and I read it and I thought that was fine. And I didn't really get it. And then I read it again, I go, you know, some of this makes sense. And then I read it again, I'm like, wow, there's a reason why this book is a classic. But I truly believe that our results, and this is true in any industry, but certainly the insurance industry, I see it all the time. Our results are directly proportionate to the level of our thinking. And I believe that. If you don't like your results, check out your thinking. Now, obviously, you know, thinking is part of it. You've got to act and you've got to execute and all of that. But I think one of the biggest problems that I see with agency leaders and this, when I say agency leaders, again, if you have influence, whether you're a professional of any kind in the insurance industry, producer, agency, manager, principal, that if you aren't spending the time to really think about your thinking, you're missing a great opportunity. You're missing a great opportunity. There's a great Quote by George Bernard Shaw I actually shared this quote at a recent event. I heard it a few years ago and I love it. And I think it's. At first time I heard, I laughed at it. And then I'm like, wow, it is so true. And here's the quote. 2% of us truly think. 3% of us think that we think. And the other 95% would rather die than actually have to think. And every time I share that at an event, people always chuckle because we laugh, because it's sort of true. Right? And I'm guilty of this too, like to think. And I don't mean daydream, I don't mean just to kind of, you know, I had a passing thought in my head. You know, I was driving to an appointment. We all have those. I'm talking about true strategic, deep level thinking. Asking yourself questions that are impactful and spending the time to really answer them, that's really hard work, right? In fact, most of us, and again, I'm part of this too, sometimes we start to actually have to think about a problem or the solution to that problem or something we want to do. And we get a few minutes into it and we go, ah, I'm going to go check email, or, you know, I better go onto Facebook, or I've got to go to the bathroom or I'm going to go get a drink, whatever it is, right. It becomes hard so that we get up and that we leave. So there's three questions in particular that I want to ask you as an agency leader today, outside of the one main question, right, the title of this podcast, which is how big is your thinking? So three questions that I want you to go through as an agency leader. And if you're not driving, take some notes and just write these down and think about your thinking, be honest with it and just go, you know, where am I at in this area? Because again, as I explore and talk to agency leaders of all kinds, there is no doubt, it's not just a theory. There is a direct proportion, a result between our thinking and our results. So the first question I want you to consider as an agency leader is this. When am I taking or making the time? It's probably the better question. When am I making the time to think? When am I making the time to think? Now, you may think, that's a crazy question. What do you mean, Brent? When am I making the time to think? Well, I can tell you some of the greatest leaders in modern history talk about this often. I mean, some of the names that you certainly know it's Bill Gates, it's Warren Buffett, that say, I make sure every single day I have some window time where I just look out the window and think, think about my business. One of my absolute favorite books the last couple years is called the Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham. Just a great title, the Road Less Stupid. And Keith is very successful, if you read the book, I mean, and know his history. Very, very successful businessman, entrepreneur. In fact, he built multimillion dollar businesses. But here's the cool thing, or maybe the sad thing is that he lost it all. He lost everything. And he talks about stupid tax, doing stupid things, but then rebuilt it all back and more. And one of the things that he talks about in the Road Less Stupid is the, the foundation of the book is you got to have thinking time. And one of my favorite quotes in that book, he says this, he said, running the wrong way enthusiastically is stupid. Running the wrong way enthusiastically is stupid. And I tell you, I've again, just the last couple weeks re emphasized this to me. I've had conversations and watching, and this is not to judge agency leaders, but just to observe that some of them are running really enthusiastically the wrong way. I mean, they're just, we're gonna do this and we're gonna do this and we're gonna do this and we're gonna do this. Like, no, you're not. You know, and again, who am I to say what they're not going to do? But my point of it is that they've got all these different random ideas that really haven't been filtered down and thought through how we are really going to execute. Again, that comes back to thinking. It's not just a passing thought. It's okay. What do I need to know? Where are we today? Where are we gonna go? How are we gonna get there? What does that look like? Who are the people we need to get involved in? What are the steps we need to take? All of that is strategic thinking. And so for you as an agency leader, the first part is you just got to make time to actually spend some time thinking. Now, I'm an early morning person. I know some people say I'm not a morning person. That's fine. But here's what I would tell you. Can you schedule 10 minutes, 15 minutes in the morning as you wake up before you get into all the email and all the junk? I could do a separate podcast on productivity on this, but just to spend some time and thought, what do you have to accomplish that day? Certainly. But even just thinking deeper about your business, asking yourself some important questions that you need to think about. Maybe you do it at lunchtime, maybe you do it between meetings. Maybe you find some time in the evening. Whatever it is for you, it's one of those things that if it is a priority to you, and hopefully it will be as I talk through this podcast, that you're going to schedule some time to think. And it doesn't have to be two hours. I mean, you know, hopefully you build up. It's like, it's like for me, I learned to meditate. This is really hard for me to sit still and quiet. And I started doing a minute, right? That was hard. I used to not journal. I started to journal and I would do it for just a little bit. Write a few words on a piece of paper, and then you get better at it. You go, man, this is really important. This is really helping me. I want to do more of this. The same is true with thinking, right? So just find some time that you can schedule thinking time into your day. I know we're all busy. I know we have a million things going on, but I'm telling you, one of the things that I've shared this on a previous podcast, but John Maxwell's phrase of you're either preparing or repairing, you're either preparing or repairing. And thinking gives you a lot of time to prepare versus spending more time than we do reactively repairing. So first question is, when am I taking the time or when I'm making the time to think? So write that down. Think about it. When are you going to be able to do that? Here's my second question for you. As an agency leader, when it comes to thinking, how am I limiting my thinking? How am I limiting my thinking? What do I mean by this question? I think every one of us, whether we would admit it or not, have some level, maybe you've heard this term before, of the imposter syndrome, the imposter syndrome that people are, are eventually going to figure out who I really am, right? I mean, I don't care if you're running an agency with $30 million of revenue, $3 million of revenue. You know, sometimes someone's really going to figure out who I really am. Or I talk to producers who have 1, 2, 3. We have producers that have $4 million revenue books of business, and you talk to them and they still struggle in many cases with confidence, right? And the things they need to do. So regardless of whether you've. You've made it, so to speak, financially or you haven't or whatever struggle you're on in life, or whatever you're. Your path is that we all have this level of imposter syndrome and we actually limit our own thinking. Right. We think in our mind. This is interesting. It's something maybe to write down is that we often find ways of why something won't work versus understanding thinking about why it will. Right. Well, this won't work because. And actually there's an imaginary character that we've created at the Sitkins Group that we share sometimes from stage called Dr. Yabut. Evil Dr. Yabut. Yeah, but I know this makes sense. Yeah, but I could do this. Yeah, but our agency could get to this. Yeah, but. Right. And we find all the reasons why it won't work versus, you know, this is why it will. Now, does that mean it's always going to work? Well, of course not. But I'll tell you, big thinkers will find reasons and think about why it will. Yeah, we can do this. We can make this happen. Now, of course, this is a question of attitude as well, of how you see things. Some people say, well, it's either the glass half empty or glass half full. Well, obviously it's been around for a long time. But I will tell you, big thinkers and result motivated people will always ask the question not of, whoa, why won't this work? But why will it? And so my challenge to you with this is, is your vision big enough? Are you limiting your thinking? And some of you have probably heard the term, you know, big, hairy, audacious goal, bhag goals. Well, I always tell organizations and tell producers is, hey, I want you to have a big vision, but now you gotta start small. Just because you have a grandiose vision of what you want, right, doesn't mean it's going to happen tomorrow or next month. I think we know that hopefully, but sometimes it becomes overwhelming. I don't want to think big because I know I could never imagine myself getting there. You just got to take the first step. You just got to take the first step. So ask yourself the question, how am I limiting my thinking? Think of ways where maybe you're self sabotaging that. You're letting your own negative thoughts, your own negative energy get in the way of actually thinking big, bigger of what you could become instead of looking outside and go, man, I wish I could do that, or that's something I should do, or why am I not living in the house that I want to live? And why am I not giving back to my community as much as I'd like to. These are questions I ask myself. You got to say, well, how am I limiting my thinking? What is actually stopping me from doing this? Oftentimes it's not external things, it's internal things. How am I limiting my thinking? Last question. When it comes to thinking big for you and your agency is this question, who is up leveling my thinking? Who is up leveling my thinking? Who are you spending time with now? Certainly, whether it's in person, on the phone, at events, reading books, listening to podcasts like this. I mean, I hope you know, one of my mission on this podcast, if I have one listener who says, you know what, I'm thinking differently, or I've taken a new step or I tried something I wouldn't have, that's different, I've helped to up level someone's thinking. So who is up leveling your thinking? Who are you surrounding yourself with? What resources? What people? One of the coolest things that I had the last couple weeks. So I was at a Mastermind event. I'll give a shout out to Jason Kass and his group at AI Brainshare. A lot of great people I had the chance to interact with. I was able to have a conversation around 80, 20. And then after me, Dr. Billy Williams, who does a lot of agency process, and he's an agency investor, very sharp guy, spoke on investing for agencies. And then we were actually able to share an Uber and spend some time having dinner together, just talking shop, talking business, talking life. And I asked Billy, one of the things that I really try to do, and I've learned this from a lot of my mentors, when you're around people that are successful and really just around people in general, is ask a lot of questions. Just ask questions and listen and take notes and think and all these kind of things. It's amazing how people's life experiences can affect you. And Billy Williams, again, is doing very, very well in his life and his business. And I said, what's the greatest piece of advice you've ever received, Billy? And he said, you know, the smartest guy, the person I respect most more than anyone in this world is my dad. And he said, my dad taught me something very early in life. And here's the question. What denomination are you thinking in? What denomination are you thinking in? I was like, what do you mean by that? And he said, well, you know, a lot of people, they think in denominations of dollars or tens or maybe hundreds, right? That's the mentality. Well, if I could just have 10 more dollars or 100 more dollars or even a thousand more dollars. He said my dad had think in not just thousands but millions. And so it goes back to thinking. It's a thinking question. I'm sitting there going, wow, that's an attitude and thinking question. Am I thinking? Actually goes back to my last question. Am I limiting my thinking? Are you thinking in tens or hundreds or are you thinking in thousands and millions? So what denomination are you thinking in? And who are the people that you're surrounding yourself with that are going to help you up level and think bigger? What's your environment? What masterminds are you part of? What coaching programs are you part of where people are going to ask you some challenging questions to get you think deeper? Right. And obviously those are things that we supply at the Sitkins Network, certainly. But there are a lot of great ones out there. I mean I believe that what we do at Sitkins is truly the best out there. If I didn't believe it, I wouldn't do it. But I also know there's some other really good people and organizations that also do a great job with coaching and masterminding and getting yourself in an environment of growth. But for you, you have to ask yourself the question, who is up leveling my thinking? So here's the bottom line. I'll wrap up with this and hopefully there's been some questions or something sparked in your mind of asking yourself the question. First of all, am I taking or making the time to actually think? That's step one, scheduling some time in my day. Treat it like an appointment with your best client because guess what, you are your best client. If you can't schedule 10 minutes or 15 minutes or 30 minutes with yourself, I mean, come on. Oh, I'm busy. I don't have time. Well, you don't have time not to, right? Because you're preparing or repairing. Number two is how am I limiting my thinking? In what ways are you self sabotaging? Ask yourself that question. Answer honestly. And lastly, who's up level in your thinking? Who are you not surrounding yourself with now that you need to? What are the books that you haven't been reading that you should? What are the podcasts that you should be listening to? What are you feeding your brain? What are you feeding your soul, who you surround yourself with that are going to challenge and encourage you to be your best version and to grow? So how big is your thinking? And again, hopefully this podcast has provided value to you today. It was something that was on my mind in my heart as I came back and was just kind of looking through my notes of being able to be at six different events in the last couple weeks and travel around the country and talk to different people. And at the end of the day, all of this kind of follows the model that we share at Sidkins. And which, you know, what is the professional fitness experience about for you as an agency? Well, it's about having clarity where you want to go and why you want to go there. It's about building consistent habits and behaviors, the hows and the what's. And lastly, it's about making a commitment. Making a commitment to yourself, making a commitment to your team, making a commitment to your community, making a commitment to your clients that you will be your best version possible. So if this podcast is serving you well, and I hope it is, I would love for you to share it with somebody. Leave a review or rating, whatever you listen, whatever platform you listen on, if it doesn't serve you well, then I apologize and don't listen anymore. But in all seriousness, I thank you for your time and your attention. And if we can ever help you at Sitkins and I can ever help you reach out to us, Visit us at sitkins.com S I t k dash I n s dot com all the best in your success.