When I began my professional career I brought a quote with me that I had heard from a band I enjoyed during my college years. The quote was “Satisfaction is the death of desire”. For reasons unknown to me at the time, the quote stuck with me. I unofficially adopted it as my mantra in an effort to always keep going, striving for more and never accepting anything less than the absolute best for yourself.
Fast forward a few years later where I had a good(not great) job and beautiful fiance. When she said yes to my marriage proposal I knew that I had hit the future wife jackpot. However, something happened along the way that proved my desire had in fact died. I once had a desire striving towards a healthy sustainable lifestyle. I had been an athlete all through high school, enjoyed going to the gym in my downtime and generally took care of myself. That all went to hell when I went to college.
I had become satisfied at some point with my lifestyle. I ate what I wanted, when I wanted and only exercised when my fiance begged and pleaded with me to go on a hike. I was satisfied being lazy, eating garbage and being generally apathetic to my own well being. As soon as we got engaged we jumped right into getting our engagement photos done. I was horrified when we got them back. My fiance looked so pretty, petite, and healthy while I, on the other hand, looked bloated, swollen, and unenergetic. I immediately thought about my supposed life mantra and how I was not sticking to it or even coming close to living by it. Because I had become satisfied with being an oaf, my desire had died along with my stamina, muscle and cardio regime.
I got depressed with it and finally confided to my fiance that I didn’t like the way I looked and felt. I told her my biggest fear was to be seen in public with her and have people whisper “Why is she with that fat slob?” I know this isn’t necessarily reality but we are all guilty of pointing out mismatched couples. My desire to be healthy came from my new lack of satisfaction in myself.
Now we can fast forward to the present. I am down 30 lbs in the last 6 months, I maintain two gym memberships(one for boxing and one for weightlifting), I adopted the paleo diet while working with a nutritionist and I workout at least 4 days a week, sometimes doing a double session of training on the weekend.
I relate this to the insurance industry in that I’ve been to so many different agencies where I meet producers, CSRs and even agency owners who are just satisfied, even though they are losing business, talent, and revenue. They no longer have the desire to be better than the day before and as a result, their business is suffering.
The point of this is that I challenge you, the reader, with the questions “Are you satisfied with your business? Do you think that you’ve done the best you can and now it’s time to kick back? Do you have a desire to be greater, to make more money, to sell more and to be a better leader?” If you don’t feel satisfied in your business, we can help at Agency Performance Partners. Give us a call today and we can help reignite that desire in your agency to be better than the others!
