How Strong is Your Foundation?

Why do you get up every single morning and why should anyone care? That was a question asked to me a few years ago that has continued to help fuel me each and every day. And it's a question I want to ask to you because it's truly foundational in every single thing that we do. And I'm going to talk about how strong your foundation is on today's Agent Leader podcast. Hi there, this is Brent Kelly with another edition of the Agent Leader podcast. Now, I live in a small town. I mean, I mean a really, really small town. In fact, it has one just one four way stoplight that continuously blinks and if you go about 10 blocks in any direction, there's a really good chance, in fact, there's a great chance you're going to be in a cornfield or a bean field. Now a few weeks ago I was speaking at an event in Chicago and Chicago is only about 100 miles from my small town and always love to visit. I've got many friends and some family in the Chicago area so I'm there quite a bit. But every time I'm there, I'm sure I still appear like a tourist because I find myself always looking up at the tall skyscrapers when I'm downtown. Whenever I visit, I'm always looking up and like man, aren't those cool. And just kind of checking things out. And it always fascinates me, it really does. How you could build something so tall and so strong. In fact, I was reading an article not too long ago, it was entitled how to build a 2073 foot skyscraper caught my attention. I just was like okay, how do you build a 2073 foot skyscraper? Now the article is a few years old but describes how they built the Shanghai Tower in China. Now it's funny because now there's a race where in fact when I grew up as a kid, the Sears Tower, which is now the Willis Tower, which the tallest building in the world. Now it's not like even in the top 10. But the article on the building in Shanghai talked about the core structure, the design and the elevators. But what really caught my attention was the deep foundation. Check this out. So Shanghai is an earthquake zone. And the site which is located on a river delta and I have a picture up on my blog on this has soft clay heavy soil. So before lifting a single beam, engineers drove 980 foundation piles into the ground as deep as 282ft. Then they poured 2.15 million cubic feet of reinforced concrete to create a 20 foot think thick foundation mat 980 foundation piles down 282ft with 2.15 million cubic feet of Reinforced Concrete to create a 20 foot thick foundation mat. Now, maybe you don't care, but I think that's pretty amazing, right? And while the finished building is beautiful from above, I mean, you look at that picture and again, I've got one on my blog site, but you can just type in Shanghai Tower on Google. It's a beautiful building, but from above it looks amazing. Everything is rooted in its foundation. At the foundation though, it's not sexy, it's not even visible right from the outside. But the foundation is what gives the entire building strength and integrity. Now, you may be thinking, what in the world does have to do with insurance, insurance leadership, any of that stuff? I believe it has a lot to do with insurance leadership. Whether you're leading yourself, your team, or your clients, every single one of us has to have a deep, and I mean deep and strong foundation. I believe this principle. You can't go up without first looking within, right? Just like a skyscraper that starts by going down and then up. You as an insurance professional, anyone looking to achieve success in their life must first look within themselves, at their core purpose before they're going to have success on the outside. It starts with knowing your purpose. I posed a question at the beginning of this podcast before we started off, and the question came from author and speaker Simon Sinek, who said, why do you get out of bed every day and why should anyone care? Think about that. I mean, very basic, but why do you get out of bed every day? And why should anyone else even care? Because when you find that out, that becomes your purpose. Who you are, what you do, what you stand for, what you believe, the values you bring to the market, everything. Because too often I see insurance professionals that are focused on what they do, how they do it, but they're not really sure why. They're focused on what they do and how we do it. But why do you do it? Because. So if you're listening to this or if you're on my blog and read my blog, I have no doubt that anyone there has a desire for success in their life. I know by you listening to this and already listening to a few minutes into this, you have some semblance of desire of success in your life, or you'd be doing something else. Yet actually defining success and then knowing your purpose is much more challenging, right? To say, if I was in a room of 100 people and I often ask this, you know, who wants success everyone's going to say, me, me, me, me. Well, how do you define it? My mentor and leadership expert, John Maxwell says this. I love this quote. He says, what if you climb to the top of the ladder of success only to find that it was leaning against the wrong wall? Don't you love that? What if you climbed to the top of the ladder of success only to find that it was leaning against the wrong wall? Let me ask you a question. Have you ever known someone who chased and chased and chased and chased success only to feel unfulfilled when they arrived? Arrived? Maybe that's you. I know I've been in that situation. That's because success is not a destination. Success is always a worthwhile pursuit. Success is built upon a firm foundation that can't be shaken. Success is knowing your purpose and living it out each and every day. So let me just wrap this up with a question to you and then I want to introduce you about my purpose. I think it's important that if I ask you, I should probably tell you a little bit about mine. So let me first ask you, what's your purpose? Why do you wake up every day and why should anyone else care if you don't really know? Spend some time, spend an hour, spend a day, spend a week, spend a month, spend several months. Thinking about may not come to you all at once, but by putting this into your subconscious and actually marinating a little bit and thinking about it, why am I here? What am I really trying to do each and every day? Because oftentimes we shortchange ourselves, don't we? Well, I just do this and I just do that. And that word just as powerful. But what is your purpose? It's one of the most challenging, important questions you can answer. And I can tell you I've struggled with this myself. And actually over the past many months, I've been really fortunate. I've been working with a group of like minded insurance speakers, trainers, consultants who either are currently in the business or have been in the business. And we created something called Agents of Growth. And here's the thing, when we started Agents of Growth, actually before it even existed, we were just having conversations about how we could come together and collaborate and help insurance professionals achieve more. We didn't talk about what we were going to do or really how we were going to do it. I mean, that was maybe part of the conversation, but that wasn't the purpose of the conversation. We started with why, because we realized that if we didn't have a deep why, a true purpose, and foundation of why we should get out of bed every day and why, why you should care. Then it wouldn't matter what we did or how we did it. Now, while all the members, there's four of us and I'm not here to talk too much about it today, but while all four of the members of Agents of Growth, we have different backgrounds, different experiences and skills. We know our purpose. We know our purpose. We spent some time talking about it. It's simple. So here's our purpose. Our purpose of Agents to Growth is to provide purposeful and inspiring business growth for insurance professionals. Every day I wake up, how can I provide purposeful and inspiring business growth for insurance professionals? I don't want to just be a motivational speaker. I want to be a motivational teacher. There's a difference between motivation and inspiration. They're both important, but they're different. I want to help inspire you so that you can become all that you desire to be. And I also just want to invite you too. We do a 30 minute free mastermind community call every week. I'll put some information on my blog and on our LinkedIn community, but just go to LinkedIn and if you're not connected with us, not part of the group, check out Agents of Growth Community. We would love to connect with you there. We're not here to spam you or throw you anything. We just want to give you value, get to know you and come together as a like minded of community insurance professionals trying to achieve more with greater purpose. So hopefully you enjoyed this. Today's podcast on the Agent Leadership Podcast, I am Brent Kelly. I'm excited to be here and I'll be coming at these every single day. Hold me to that. Although you never know. I may miss a day or two, but I'm going to try to be doing this every single day and get ahead so I can provide value to you, the insurance professional. Help you become a better leader, a better person and maximize your your potential. Thanks for listening. Today's Agent Leader Podcast again, my name is Brent Kelly and I'm so glad you joined me today. Each and every podcast is brought to you by Agents of Growth. You can Visit agents of growth.net until next time, this is Brent Kelly and we desperately need insurance leaders, powerful leaders, strong leaders. Won't you join us? Thanks.