Josh (00:00:05) - A thoughtful listener before we get going. Did you know that my company up My influence.com has launched more than 200 business podcasts. The host of our shows are amazing leaders and collaborators. Folks I want to connect you with. Maybe you deserve your moment in the spotlight as a guest of one of these amazing shows. Just go to up my influence.com, where you can see more than 50 shows that are actively seeking business leader guests like you to celebrate right now in front of their high caliber audiences. Just click on the podcast tab and up my influence.com, where you'll see shows like Experienced Focused Leaders Podcast. If you're seeking insights on transforming customer experiences, you can't miss the Experience Focused Leaders podcast with your host, Alex Shevchenko. Alex, the CEO and founder of relay two, brings his rich background from Stanford MBA, Wharton BSc and the University of Pennsylvania B.A.. He's a smart dude. Along with his real world experiences of building organizations across global hubs to the forefront of this engaging podcast. Now, each episode is a deep dive into the world of customer centric strategies where Alex and his guests, seasoned business owners and industry veterans, share their invaluable insights.

Josh (00:01:32) - They discuss the latest trends, offer practical advice, and reveal the secrets behind exceptional customer experiences and business growth. Are you a business owner who values customer experience above all? Then this podcast is your go to resource. Better yet, if you've got unique insights and strategies that have helped you stand out in your industry, we'd love to have you as a guest on the show. Share your story with a community that's as passionate about customer experience excellence as you are. Tune in to the experienced, Focused Leaders podcast for your weekly dose of inspiration and practical tips. Let's push the boundaries of customer experience together. With us. Right now it's hike. High devotion hike. It's great having you. You are the author of the book The Power of Mindset, and you're also the agent and owner of Hike Tide Aviation Insurance Agency. Hayk. Thank you so much for joining us.

Hayk (00:02:33) - Thank you for having me. And good morning. Josh.

Josh (00:02:35) - Yes. All right. Well yeah. You know, please share with us a bit about your work and kind of the impact you have in the world and some of your claim to fame.

Josh (00:02:43) - You're a sought after keynote speaker as well, which we'll talk about that as well. But yeah, please give us an overview of your work.

Hayk (00:02:49) - Yeah. No thanks Josh, I appreciate that. First of all, thank you for having me on the show. I'm very, very excited. As a continuation of an immigrant, they came to America to pursue the quote unquote American dream. I was very fortunate to find my American dream within the sales industry, uh, insurance and financial services. I did really well. So I, I didn't know that I had a fairly solid gift in teaching, motivating and keeping team members accountable. I got very good at that early on in my early 20s. Now I'm in my in my mid coming to late 30s. At this point, uh, team has broken lots of sales records around the country. So I've been asked to speak a lot. And throughout my journey of speaking and developing my business and helping others develop, I ended up building a coaching system around it.

Hayk (00:03:29) - So I've been teaching a lot of professionals to replicate the systems that we've been using to generate the success that we have, which turned into writing the book. Uh, and actually, the book is not as much business. It's more about my American Dream story. It talks about the balance between family, fitness, finance, friendship. And there's one thing I realized as a leader of my business is we immensely lack teaching mindset, mental strength, fitness, that kind of stuff. And I realized the more I focus on the things that the industry, the sales, you know, the professional industry doesn't focus on, you know, the better my team did. So I had passion for teaching people about how to be mentally strong, how to be fit and run marathons and do those kind of things. And I realized the better I'm coaching my team. So somebody in the leadership position, I realized, I'm going to take the matter of my own hands and teach people how to be mentally more balanced, and that turn into the result of the book The Power of Mindset.

Hayk (00:04:19) - I ended up publishing about four years ago.

Josh (00:04:21) - Yeah. Um, so tell me more about like, what do you mean by mindset? Help me or help everyone kind of understand what you're referring to.

Hayk (00:04:30) - You know, this whole industry issue, I think in in professional industry, everybody's learning how to do things and what to do. And if you go back to what is it, there's a, let's say, a business or a company like Apple or Microsoft that tend to outperform most other competitions. Well, the company has their Y identified much better as far as what they all know what to do and how to do it. But why does one company or one small business within a town do so much better than most? And I've come to a conclusion that they have their Y identified more and better. And when I notice businesses that I consult the the leader that has their Y identified more and they're out there to serve the community, build great jobs within the community, teach, coach, mentor, train.

Hayk (00:05:09) - They tend to do better, but the ones who focus on their products, they're pushing a product there tend to suffer a little bit more long term. And I think the Y goes back down to the mindset like, what do you do it for? Do you have kids? Do you have family? You know, do you have other things outside of work? Is work the most difficult thing you do or do you do something else outside of work? The challenge yourself. So when you do come to work, in many ways it's marriage counseling, it's therapy, it's recovery. And then you take that home to and I always talk about the fact that, you know, you don't just come to work, you take work home and you don't just go home. You take home to work as well. So I think there's a balance piece that a lot of leadership is missing, and we don't talk about it. And which is what I try to make a point on with my book.

Josh (00:05:46) - You know, you talk about the four factors of true success to gain happiness.

Josh (00:05:51) - What are they?

Hayk (00:05:53) - You know, as an immigrant, I was brainwashed. You just come to America and you become overnight millionaire. Not the case, of course.

Josh (00:05:58) - Yes. That's what we all of our entertainment, uh, supports that. Of course, Hollywood.

Hayk (00:06:03) - Has ruined it for a lot of immigrants.

Speaker 3 (00:06:04) - Yes.

Hayk (00:06:05) - And we just thought you come here and things happen. But I think one one thing that is missing within that is this doesn't talk about, you know, because we come from a country where, you know, rules and regulations are built to many ways suppress you. Right? So we don't come here respecting rules and God's rules and men's rules. And the the issue is like, I came here with a big hole in my heart thinking financial tank is going to take care of all my issues. And I remember I worked really hard, you know, got to making good money and I was out of shape, £260 and I wasn't successful at all. That did not look like the American dream.

Hayk (00:06:35) - I was brainwashed to think in my early teens to think that's what it was. So I decided to run a marathon and two, and then got into Iron Man. And then I noticed less time. Less is more or less time in the business was helping me influence my leaders better, helping me be more balanced, and I brought fitness back into my life. I brought relationships back in my life and I got married, had kids, and then kind of had to take a step back and realize, just like, why do I feel more successful now than when I was just focusing on one part of my life? And I realized, you know, there's people that make a lot more money. There's people who are a lot more fit than me. There are people who have bigger families and bigger circles. But why did I feel like I'm like this most energetic, positive person within my circle? And the answer came back down to the the balance between family, fitness, finances and friendship. And every year I kind of rebalance.

Hayk (00:07:22) - Like this year, I'll focus more on racing. This year I'll focus more on opening up another location. Next year I'll spend more time with family. So and I notice as long as I'm balancing things out and I've accepted the fact that it's never going to be perfect, things got better and easier, and it's several hundred pages of me trying to explain that. So that's like in summary of to make it short. Josh.

Josh (00:07:42) - Yeah, and there's someone I really curious about. This is um, by the way, to folks that, as you can imagine, like as you've described being an Ironman athlete, when you mentioned that you used to be £260. For those who aren't seeing hike right now, hike, you're not a £260 man. Um, I'm.

Hayk (00:08:01) - About I lost about 55, £60.

Josh (00:08:04) - Yeah. That's incredible. Um, you know, to those who may have not considered this, why is, you know, kind of spending some time on our wellness or our health or fitness. What's the connection between that and maybe professional success?

Hayk (00:08:23) - I think a lot of issues just we're trying to fix him directly, as in, I want my business to get better, I want my marriage to get better, and we're just focusing on that.

Hayk (00:08:31) - But this should be a result of something else. And I know most of us have some kind of a childhood trauma or something that happened to us during the young years that took away our confidence. And there's very few things we control, like we don't control the mood, our spouses when we come home, like we don't control which clients going to call, which one of our employees is going to cause an issue or problem. But I think what we do control is that physical fitness piece of our life. And for me, it's very important to have some control over something that gives me confidence that maybe at some point it was taken away from me as a kid, moved to America 13. Pulled away from a mom, brother and sister that had a hole in my heart, right? So I think having something that gives me confidence was absolutely needed. And the more confidence I built within the fitness tank, I realized financial tank got better. As in, I directly controlled what I could in the indirect issue, which was the financial tank got better relationships got better, right? So I think often we are focused on the wrong things, the indirect versus the direct.

Hayk (00:09:28) - Um, I use fitness to fix everything. I coach my team members to it, and I can tell you how many people I've gotten with absolutely no background in sales or business or consulting, and I've just led them through fitness and everything has gone better in their life. They got married, they started making multi six figures, like one thing after another, but I really am learning more about the fact that the more you control of what gives you confidence, the more you have confidence within the other pillars of life, which is your family or your financial tank.

Speaker 4 (00:09:55) - Yeah.

Josh (00:09:56) - I share just a bit about how you work with clients, like what you do, how you provide that service. So your agency kicks butt and it's, uh, you know, in the world of, uh, so if anyone's come in contact with you or seen you speak, your agency is a bit of a standout. You might maybe just sharing a little bit about that and then kind of share, like how you work with other insurance professionals and leaders.

Josh (00:10:22) - Yeah. Yeah.

Hayk (00:10:23) - Just so, so to kind of put things in perspective, we represent represent the biggest name in the insurance industry. And there's about 20,000 agencies. My team finished 19th in the country last year. And December were number three for that one month. So they're really, really doing a good job. So I can't take credit for my team. And shame on me if I'm the leader who puts my name on a door and says, it's me. It's not. It's my team. I'm nothing without my team. I'm the conductor. They are the they're the violin. They're the piano. That the cello. Right. So I have detached myself from customers. So I'm not customer facing. I'm working on a business. Not in a business. You know, I've got at this point, 12 full time people that work under me so that I have access. I have 12 bosses. Right. So my time is built to coaching on the spot, to directing and to delegating and making sure that things are getting done correctly.

Hayk (00:11:08) - I used to be customer facing and I have a formula I use within the business and I say, you know, first couple of years you really get what you do at your craft. And Josh, you mentioned some of your audiences, you know, business owners and entrepreneurs. And I think the reason why most of us die off long term is we don't learn to replicate ourselves in the business. And my thing is, if you replicate yourself, it should be a blessing, not a curse. That's why it's extremely important for me to play the game before you teach the game. And I think first three years has to be spent mastering your craft. By year five, you want to be non customer facing, you want your team to do what you're doing. And I think a lot of leaders struggle with this because they suffer from God paradoxes and they can't delegate and they suffer from the if you want things done right, do it yourself, which is the absolute killer of any anything that you want to expand within the business.

Hayk (00:11:57) - As in you teach, you delegate at 70% and you coach on a 30. Uh, by year five you want you do not want to be customer facing. And by year seven you want leaders to run your team. And you know within your ten that's there's a saying took me ten years to become overnight success. It truly was. Year ten was when I really realized I have a self-sustaining business. And I had to detach myself from customers, even though it costed some relationships. But a lot of the ones that respected the business rules are happier now than when I was picking up calls, but because I was broke at that time, right? Do you have time or money? When I had no. No money, I had all this time I was doing all the work and later I had to change that to now I have more money. I use the money to buy more timers and hire better, delegate better and coach better.

Josh (00:12:39) - Your website is HIK. T? Org. Um. That's h a y k t dawg.

Josh (00:12:47) - Explain just a bit about that and also your other website 100 app team member.com who should be reaching out and what do they do.

Hayk (00:12:56) - So through t.org is where we book some of our, you know, keynote speaking. And also it helps promote the book uh directs people directly to the Amazon page. Uh, the app team members more for the insurance professionals that are representing a coach. So there are people sign up for monthly membership, and they have access to our live training videos and access to about 60 plus, uh, videos be recorded and put in specific sections to help train professionals in the industry better.

Speaker 4 (00:13:22) - Yeah.

Josh (00:13:23) - And again, those two websites, 100 app team members. Com. when you go to that website, you can click Get Started now so you can see exactly you know what is included in the membership. I'll just say like it's very accessible. So, you know, for folks that are insurance professionals, um, you know, learn from one of the best, you know, if you're not investing in your growth and improving, man, you spend a lot of time frustrated, stagnant, spinning your wheels.

Josh (00:13:50) - And if that's frustrating to you? Certainly if you know someone in the industry, please pass along this resource. Um, that this may be a really, really great tool for them. You said you've got there's a lot here. It's pretty beefy.

Hayk (00:14:03) - Um, yeah. I spent a year of just recording and doing free study sessions, and then, uh, took a couple more months to have a developer put it together. So the content on there is actually at the highest level I've guest speakers from, you know, within the industry, some of the top people, uh, you know, different categories. So I've tried to organize that to be I mean, I'm really hoping to build the top insurance training platform. There is, uh, there's a huge need for it. I've been asked to do it for a long time. God blessed me with the time to be able to do it, so I pulled it off. In the last year and a half, we've been really working on it consistently.

Josh (00:14:35) - Yeah. Your book, The Power of Mindset is on Amazon. It's super highly reviewed. It's you got a lot of reviews, it's ranked pretty well. And again, you can get that. It's on both in Kindle audiobook and of course hardcover soft covers. So again like thank you so much Todd I'm pronounced Tada Boston I thank you so much. It's been so great having you.

Hayk (00:15:00) - That was good. Josh, thank you so much for the time and thanks for all you do.

Josh (00:15:08) - Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up my influence common Guest. If you're a listener, I'd love to shout out your business to our whole audience for free. You can do that by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or join our Listener Facebook group. Just search for the Thoughtful Entrepreneur and Facebook. I'd love, even if you just stopped by to say hi, I'd love to meet you. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world.

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