The Magic of the Moment

Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me on another episode. Hopefully, you are safe and you are well and you are sane. Still, all that continues to happen in 2020. It's been an interesting year, as I said a few times on here. So again, I'm wishing the best for you and your loved ones out there in the world. The purpose of this podcast, as always, is to help you as an agency leader. Whether you're a principal, a producer, or service team member, it doesn't matter. To help you gain clarity, to help you build consistency, and to help you make a commitment to become your best version possible. These are things that we talk about all the time. And I want to share today another conversation from my heart about something that I think is an important discussion to have as a coach, as a consultant, as a trainer. My goal, my responsibility, my job is, is to help insurance professionals get results, to help them understand where they are, where they want to go, and how they're gonna get there. Right? To understand. This is my goal, this is my dream, this is my aspiration. Help me help my agency get there. And we do that through resources, through services, through tools, through training, through peer connections, through asking great questions, through thought processes. You go down the list. There's a lot of different things that I do and our team does to help agencies and insurance professionals get to that desired destination. As I was thinking about that, though, and certainly in this world in 2020, something really came to me as I was having some conversations this week and some coaching calls, is that sometimes I think we're so worried about this final destination. The goal, the vision and all those things are important. So please don't misunderstand me. But we get so caught up on the end that we forget about where we are and what we're doing. And the magic of the moment. True. The magic of the moment. I have been working the last couple years. One of the things that I have learned and learning and still struggle with is meditation. Now, whether you do meditation or not, that's your call. But one of the goals of meditation is to help train your mind to be present, to be able to focus on one thing, to be where you are. And if you're like many insurance professionals like me, with goals and dreams and you're a hard driver and all these things you want to achieve, and you always got these thoughts in your head, that's a really hard thing to do. It's a really hard thing to do. I've got five kids I've talked about that on previous podcasts. Five kids, they range in age from 16 to 2. So I still have some young ones. But one of the things that kids say now, if you have raised kids at any time, if you have young kids now, if you've ever taken any type of kids, nephew, grandkid, neighbor's kid, I don't care who it is, and you've gone on a long or longer car trip of any kind. One of the things that kids will say, and you probably know where I'm going here, is they'll ask this question. We all know what it is. You ready? Are we there yet? Are we there yet, dad? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? And at some point you're like, okay, I'm gonna turn around and do something I shouldn't. Okay? Because it just gnaws at you because, you know you've got another hundred miles or 200 miles or, gosh, I hope not, 500 miles, whatever it is, to get to where you want to go. And you just go, no, we're not there yet. But as I was thinking about that, and it's back to the idea of the magic of the moment. I think there's a story to be told, there's a lesson to be learned around that with kids, we can learn so many lessons from young people, from kids in particular. And it got me thinking that, you know, because my child in this case is in the back seat, so worried about that we're going to go to the lake or the beach or grandma's house, I don't care what it is, but. But they're so worried about where we're going to go that they don't appreciate and think about where they are. And as adults, as human beings, we often do the same thing. We run into the same problems that we're so worried, at least when we think about it and wonder about it and have anxiety about, oh, we're not where we want to be yet, or here's the vision. How are we going to get there? And again, these are all important things. Please don't get me wrong. We talk about vision and mission and having key performance indicators at Sitkins all the time. But because of that, we're so worried about the end that we don't focus on the present now. And one of the things that we even talk about at Sitkins all the time is that you can't manage numbers. You can only manage behaviors. And sometimes we get stuck, for example, on numbers of what the final Number is going to be that we lose track of the things that we could actually do or should be doing to control them. So that's one aspect, but there are a couple others that I want to talk about. I think when we get so focused on the destination and we lose sight of the process that we're on and the journey that we're on, two things happen besides the fact that we try to manage numbers and not behaviors. But two other things I think stand out to me. Number one is we simply don't appreciate where we are. And I think gratitude, appreciation is really important, certainly in today's world. I mean, my guess is this year for you, 2020 has been a challeng. I mean, every year is a challenge, but this in particular has been a very challenging year. Duh. Right. We all know that we've had new obstacles, things that we've never experienced before, changes in our business and how we're going to do things. Those are. That's a lot. It's a lot to come at you. And so it's been a tough year, I think. I see right now agencies are going well, you know, I don't know that we're going to hit our 2020 goal or this is going to throw everything out of whack. And I understand it's going to make some. Some significant differences. We had these conversations all the time, but because we're so worried about what the end number may be, we don't sometimes go, you know what? You have done some really good stuff. And then we talk about some of these things. Well, yeah, I guess we did do this, right? We did do this because if we don't take time to appreciate the moment and have some moments of gratitude, we're going to live in a constant world of, you know, internally of stress and anxiety and worry and frustration that never ends. That's a tough place to be. You know, I think of back to the analogy of the kids on the trip. If my child is in the back and all he's worried about is grandma's house or going to the lake. And in the moment we drive and in our drive, there's the most beautiful sunset or rainbow or the scenic area or heck, a really pretty house, it doesn't matter what it is that we're so focused on the end that we don't even appreciate some of the things that are happening right now. My first thing that I would say is that I hope that in this year, in this challenging year that maybe you're not. You don't think you're going to get to your destination, which, by the way, quick side note here, I hope you never get to your actual destination, because if you get to your destination, then what, right? Then what happens? But that's a different podcast, right? There's part of that, the fact that, you know, if you get to the end and you're done, well, then what? Hopefully you're always looking to grow and develop and change. And yes, we have goals and things we want to hit, but then it's, how do we then take the next step, the next level? Because we want to be our best version. But back to the appreciation that you're taking some time through this journey, through this process, and by the way, in many cases, a very difficult, challenging process to say, you know what? I've done some pretty good stuff. Maybe it's not everything, but right now I'm doing some good stuff. So take some time to appreciate. And here's the second thing. The second lesson of this is that if we aren't present, if we don't understand the power and the magic of the moment, we can't make the proper adjustments necessary to get to the desired destination that we're speaking of. I love the book the Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. And in that book, in the early chapter, he talks about these minor adjustments and tweaks that we have to make. And then if you're an airline pilot and you leave Los Angeles, California and fly direct shot to New York City, that if you're just one degree off, right, just one degree off, you'll end up 150 miles away from the final destination of New York City. 150 miles off. I think you'll be in Albany or Delaware is what he said in the book, right, Versus New York City. Well, that's a problem. That's not where you wanted to go. But what pilots have to do consistently is they have to make these slight adjustments and tweaks, these little 1% course corrections. And if you're not present, if you're not going, okay, what did I learn today? What are some wins that I want to replicate? What are some losses that I need to acknowledge and fix and address? If you're not making those adjustments every day, every week, you're going to end up, even if you think you're on a desk to get your destination, you're going to end up getting the end and going, wait a second, this isn't where I thought I was going to be. So the idea of the magic of the moment is, number one, appreciate Take some time to appreciate some of those things that you're doing well. And number two, consistently continually learn, evaluate and grow from your experiences. Heard the song before. Life's a journey, not a destination. Well, the journey is where, again, the magic of the moment happens. And so as I said, I'm going to keep this podcast short today. And as you approach this summer season, if you're listening to this, shortly after I release the podcast and really whenever you're listening to this, but if you're in the summer right now, we're in 2020, take some time this summer to appreciate the things that you have done in this difficult environment we live in. And also ask yourself, am I being present in the moment so that I can learn, evaluate and adjust to make the proper minor course corrections to really get to that desired place that I'm looking to go? Looking to go. So with that being said, I want to thank you for being a listener. Also, if you want to help us out at the Agent Leader Podcast, help our team out, help share this message, please leave a rating and review on whatever platform that you listen on. Also, a note that coming up in September, depending on when you're listening to September, we have our upcoming Virtual Producer Fit program which we are getting great responses from. It's just so cool to be able to interact with these people. I know it's digitally but in a different environment. But make it very live streaming. So much roundtable, so much discussion, so much peer to peer conversation. So that's coming up September 10th. As well as our sales management, our CRO Chief Revenue Officer program is in September as well. Starts September 10th. So go to sitkins.com, go to programs or you can just go to sitkins.com programs to learn more about what we have coming up. We'd love for you to be part of our peer group. Learn, grow, adjust, evaluate and really be your best version possible. Thanks for being a listener. Talk soon.