With Scott Grates, Agent and Insurance Agency Optimization Coach
Length: 5:59
In this audio track, Agent Scott Grates dives into the importance of confronting self-limiting beliefs and fears in order to achieve greatness in the insurance (or any) industry.
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TRANSCRIPT
Today, I’m gonna ask you to give me permission to get real with you.
Because that’s frankly what a coach does. That’s where the improvement comes from.
So sometimes I have to confront people on the stories that they’re telling themselves. And when somebody tells me what’s holding them back is the fear of failure, or in other cases, fear of success.
It’s time to address the four real issues that I typically see preventing them from greatness. All right, so let’s talk about it.
The first is the lack of clear, meaningful goals. If you’ve ever told yourself that you have a fear of failure or a fear of success, the first question I would ask you is simple.
What are your goals?
And then from there, I’d want to make sure those goals we’re both clear and meaningful. Because here’s the thing, when you’re ambitious or when your goals are ambitious and they’re big enough and clear enough, it’s very easy to get into the action piece of it. You’ll practically be pumped up to do it. You’ll wake up every day excited to tackle the day and move yourself closer to the accomplishment of your goals.
So clear, meaningful goals will conquer that supposed fear of failure.
So my first suggestion for you is to look inside yourself. Dig deep, and identify what exactly it is that you want. All right? Challenge yourself to dream big or dream bigger. Write it all out in specific detail. That becomes a commitment. And then create new goals based on what you discover about yourself when you’re looking in there.
Okay? So the next thing I want to talk about is, I guess, challenging you, asking you, do you lack the clarity on the disciplines required to succeed?
So other people who say they have this fear of failure or success, the reason why they’re, they’re not more successful or is because they failed the next step after creating goals, gaining clarity on how to achieve them.
It’s the one thing, it is one thing to have goals, but it’s another thing to know how you’re going to achieve them. What’s the plan?
When you don’t have that clarity? It feels defeating. All right? You don’t know what to do next. You’re looking out into the distance and you’re just guessing, okay? But once you’ve figured it out, you’ll see exactly what you need to do and feel energized and hopefully excited to attack every single day.
So the key, talk about this a lot, it’s reverse engineering your goals, creating those big goals, and, and turning them into small actions to create them that clearly define a winning day. And especially when we talk about clearly defining What your winning day looks like in relation to those big annual goals or monthly goals.
So you have to commit to those actions and activities, those daily disciplines, and inject some form of accountability to make sure that they get accomplished. And finally, do you have the work ethic to follow through?
Now, this is a big one. Okay? Started off with some saying, I was gonna have some real talk. When people say they fear failure or fear success, it boils down to one thing, okay? They simply don’t want to do the work.
Oftentimes, they don’t possess the work ethic necessary to achieve these large victories. Now, if that stings a little, okay, it is time to look inward. Be honest with yourself. It’s time you either lower your aspirations to meet where your work ethic is, or you step up and commit to doing the work on a daily basis.
Now, I hope no one promised you that success in the insurance industry was going to be easy, because I’m here to tell you today that it’s not. It takes work. It takes a lot of work and a ton of discipline.
The freedom that attracted many people to this industry can be a double-edged sword. It it requires you to be willing to do the work, because if you don’t step up and do the work, it doesn’t matter to anyone but yourself and your family, okay?
If you don’t do the work someone else will.
They will make their calls.
They will follow the multi-line sales process.
They will consistently pivot from service to sales.
They will help those prospects see the value in doing business with them, and they will earn dozens of referrals each month.
They will live the life that they always wanted.
So it’s time to get real with yourself. Do you have the work ethic to succeed without someone hovering over you 24 7? If not, it’s time to find a solution or frankly, a different career path. Do you have the mental toughness to keep doing the work?
Fear of failure goes hand in hand with fear of rejection, pure and simple. To achieve success as an insurance professional, you have to accept that you are going to face rejection. Lots of it, in fact, okay? And that can be very difficult to handle. That’s why not everyone can hack it here. It requires exceptional mental toughness and the ability to bounce back after each and every setback.
It certainly helps to know your numbers, so you can play the numbers game and look at it from the perspective that every time you get rejected, it’s getting you closer to that next, yes.
The only real way to develop that mental toughness is from practicing, putting yourself in the fire and working yourself out of that fire.
Now the question is, are you willing to go there?
