Tim Connon Of ParamountQuote On The Self-Care Routines & Practices Of Busy Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders
An Interview With Maria Angelova
Drinking turmeric tea before bed helps you feel good it is an anti inflammatory and it helps my morning headaches stay away. If you have anxieties over your health drinking turmeric and other healthy spices helps ease your mind and improve your health.
All of us know that we have to take breaks in our day to take care of ourselves. “Selfcare is healthcare”, the saying goes. At the same time, we know that when you are a busy leader with enormous responsibility on your shoulders, it’s so easy to prioritize the urgent demands of work over the important requirements of self-care. How do busy entrepreneurs and leaders create space to properly take care of themselves? What are the self-care routines of successful entrepreneurs and business leaders? In this interview series, we are talking to busy and successful entrepreneurs, business leaders, and civic leaders who can discuss their self-care practices and self-care routines. As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Tim Connon.
Tim Connon grew up in Florida and looked up to his father who was a security salesman at the time. Tim wanted to be just like his Dad and at an early age learned the value of sales skills. He grew up and got licensed to sell life insurance and founded his own agency ParamountQuote.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! It is an honor. Our readers would love to learn more about your personal background. Can you please share with our readers your personal backstory; What has brought you to this point in your life?
Sure, so my personal story is I grew up watching my Dad chase success and he found it in security sales. He became the top salesman in the country with his company and managed to provide a good life for me and the rest of my family. We always had things like good food and great Christmas gifts, he care a lot about providing a great life for all of us in the family. This led to me feeling the same when I had a family some day so when I got older my Dad got into the life insurance industry and was experiencing the same success so I decided to follow him into the industry as well. We both worked at the same agencies competing against each other it was a lot of fun and we were both doing well. At this point though we always found problems with the agencies we were working at, they would treat us like employees even though we were independent contractors always using the company provided leads to help us make sales as leverage over the agents working there. I eventually had enough and decided to chase my own dream instead of fulfilling someone else’s dream. This led to me establishing my company website for ParamountQuote and doing my own marketing to generate leads.
What is your “why” behind what you do? What fuels you?
What fuels me is the same thing that fueled my Dad, providing a good life for my family. I am not materialistic I could care less about having success if I don’t have anyone to share it with. My “why” is my family being able to see my wife enjoy getting nice things or just going out to dinner once a month is all I need to keep me working hard.
How do you define success? Can you please explain what you mean from a personal anecdote?
Success to me is simply living with enough money to keep yourself debt free and own your possessions including your home, cars etc. Success to me is not having to rely on people or loans for anything you want in life and of course the happiness and freedom that comes with that.
What is the role of a growth mindset in your success? Can you please share 3 mindset mantras that keep you motivated, sane, and propel you forward?
A growth mindset in my success means that if I lose a sale with a client I get to go back and learn what may have gone wrong and write notes on it. This allows me to identify what I did wrong and correct it so I do not repeat the same mistake again increasing my chances of success.
My 3 mindset mantras are “just work the numbers”, “I am in control”, and “everyone loves to speak to me”.
You are by all accounts a very successful person. How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
Yes the way I use my success to bring goodness to the world is training other agents to be just as successful so they can give their families a good life.
Can you share a mistake or failure which you now appreciate, and which has taught you a valuable lesson?
A big mistake I made was quitting the industry for a few months. I got frustrated and decided to look into different career opportunities and as a result I missed out on over 10 extra referrals from my existing clients. This is when I realized that I should’ve never almost given up completely because I would have had those 10 extra sales. I learned the importance of having faith in what I was doing and have never forgotten.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Resilience, even on a week where I had no sales and lost over $1,000 in marketing expenses I just kept going and got a sale that covered my missing marketing cost and more by the weekend.
Patience, I was patient with a client that had me on the phone for over an hour talking about a lot of different things not pertaining to our conversation about the product. Most agents would have hung up on a person like that but I stayed and got them helped respectfully.
Faith, I built a website that was meant to rank at the top page of Google and had no idea if my SEO efforts would work. This required an extreme amount of faith and within 8 months several of our articles ranked on page 1 of Google and we received traffic.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting new projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?
Since well sell final expense insurance we are working on a funeral planning guide to include for our clients. This will help them plan their funerals ahead of time before they pass away.
OK, thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the core focus of our interview about Self-Care. Let’s start with a basic definition so that we are all on the same page. What does self-care mean to you?
Self care means to me that you take care of your body and mind. You follow an exercise and eating schedule that allows you to be and feel healthy.
As a successful leader with an intense schedule, what do you do to prioritize self-care, and carve out regular time to make self-care part of your routine?
First I meal prep for the entire week over the weekend. I always carve out my time to go to the gym right after the office closes for the night. My gym is 24 hours so no matter what I always keep my gym clothes with me and go get a workout before I go home. I have these time blocks set aside in my daily schedule on my computers.
Will you please share with our readers 3 of your daily, or frequent self-care habits?
I drink 16 oz of water at 10:00 Am, 1:00pm, 4:00 pm, 6:00 pm this equals my gallon of water a day
My wife and I drink a cup of tumeric tea every night before bed
My wife and I also take a mile walk every morning around our neighborhood before work.
This is the main question of our interview. Based on your own experiences or research can you please share 5 ways that taking time for self-care will improve our lives?
First of all self care like exercising releases endorphins in the brain that trigger happiness this alone can lead to improved mental health and focus. I stopped working out for 4 months and quickly feel into a depressive state but once my wife and I got back to exercising it went away within days.
Another way is getting enough water if you do not drink enough throughout the day you will become fatigued and dehydrated. This leads to feeling sluggish this is why just a little bit of water at a time spread among 8 hours can keep you hydrated and feeling optimal.
Meal prep is a big one for me, cooking on the weekend a bunch of food to be prepped for the week so you do not have to worry constantly about what recipes or foods to go to the store and get greatly reduces anxiety. It also saves a tremendous amount of time. Me and my wife used to constantly ask each other what was for dinner and would get frustrated if stores happen to be closed when we got home from work. Meal prepping fixed this completely for us now we always know what is for dinner and it takes 10 minutes to heat it up.
Drinking turmeric tea before bed helps you feel good it is an anti inflammatory and it helps my morning headaches stay away. If you have anxieties over your health drinking turmeric and other healthy spices helps ease your mind and improve your health.
Taking a walk in the morning is the best way to start the day, experiencing the cool morning air and the twilight of the sun can really improve your mental health it has for me. These walks help my wife and I to wake up and become alert throughout the day. It helps us feel productive and happy knowing we stick with a routine that we could easily be lazy about and ignore. This helps you feel centered throughout the day.
Sometimes we learn a great deal from the opposite, from a contrast. Can you please share a few ways that NOT taking time for self-care can harm our lives?
If you neglect self care this can lead to eating bad food like constant fast food which leads to weight gain. With weight gain comes mental issues and insecurity which drastically increases stress. This insecurities can lead to a whole host of other mental problems that worsen over time.
What would you tell someone who says they do not have time or finances to support a regular wellness routine?
I would tell them they may want to consider if some of those things are true or excuses. We often times find ourselves making up excuses to take the path of least resistance and avoid taking time for our wellness. I would also tell them there are no finances needed for wellness with the abundance of information available for people today they can easily find home workouts to start their wellness routine.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we both tag them :-)
I would love to have breakfast with Ryan Reynolds, he knows the discipline and routine needed to be in the shape he is in for his movies and he sticks to it. I would love to sit down with him and just listen to his routine and what he may do similar to me or anyone else.
What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?
Visit our website ParamountQuote.com we post blogs on there frequently educating readers about burial life insurance.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.
About The Interviewer: Maria Angelova, MBA is a disruptor, author, motivational speaker, body-mind expert, Pilates teacher, and founder and CEO of Rebellious Intl. As a disruptor, Maria is on a mission to change the face of the wellness industry by shifting the self-care mindset for consumers and providers alike. As a mind-body coach, Maria’s superpower is alignment which helps clients create a strong body and a calm mind so they can live a life of freedom, happiness, and fulfillment. Prior to founding Rebellious Intl, Maria was a Finance Director and a professional with 17+ years of progressive corporate experience in the Telecommunications, Finance, and Insurance industries. Born in Bulgaria, Maria moved to the United States in 1992. She graduated summa cum laude from both Georgia State University (MBA, Finance) and the University of Georgia (BBA, Finance). Maria’s favorite job is being a mom. Maria enjoys learning, coaching, creating authentic connections, working out, Latin dancing, traveling, and spending time with her tribe. To contact Maria, email her at angelova@rebellious-intl.com. To schedule a free consultation, click here.
