Episode 13: Craig Wiggins on Leadership Through COVID-19

Well, you know, leadership's easy when things are going good, right? When things are going good, it's easy to be a great leader and be respected and admired and all that. It's when things aren't so good or when people are scared. So I think the first thing that you should do, and we did this early on, back late February, early March, when things started looking like they were going to go in a bad direction, I think you got to make sure that your team knows that you have their back. Welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, where you will learn to grow your business, grow your leadership, and grow and develop your team. And now tune in to another great episode brought to you by your hosts, Bradley Hamner and Chris Ferretti.

I was really excited to have Craig on from the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. He's somebody that I've wanted to have on for quite some time. We touch on a number of different topics. We obviously touch about his background, leadership in crisis throughout the COVID-19 situation, value proposition selling— exactly what is that and then how to do it— building a team and all the things you need to be looking for on the front side to be able to build, recruit, hire, and develop a successful team, and just the importance of growing yourself as a leader. And the thing that I thought was interesting is that throughout all of those broader topics that we discussed was just the undercurrent of positivity of him as a person and how important that is in his leadership. And I think that that's obviously evident in not only his own organization and how successful they've been, but how he's been able to transition that into his CWC coaching and how he's been able to help others throughout the country. So what are a couple things that you picked up that you thought were important?

Two words: decisiveness and empathy. Just like Dan Peña says, it's okay to be wrong, but it's not okay to be in doubt. And when it comes to empathy, it's how you can utilize it to make your team more productive. And what I mean by that is if you learn what's going on in the team members' lives and what's driving them, and you can articulate how the company goals is actually in basically parallel to what those drivers are, then it's going to lead to more productivity out of your team. And I'm glad that Craig actually broke it down. So I'm excited to see what our listeners are going to get out of it. With that being said, let's get started.

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Appreciate you inviting me. Good to be here.

So for people that don't know you, obviously I know in the Allstate community with everything you've been doing with your agencies and with CWC, but for those that don't know you, can you give a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are, owning, being a mega agency within Allstate? Can you just Give a little bit of background about it.

I started from scratch back in 1996, not an educated guy or anything like that. As a matter of fact, I barely graduated high school and I started college, but as soon as I found out you could leave whenever you wanted and they wouldn't call your mom and your daddy, that was pretty much the end of college for me. So I don't have a college education. I just had a relentless desire to be successful. So I tested for Allstate a couple of times and scored low potential both times. So I really had to fight and claw to get a contract and finally got one, got a guy in Birmingham to either— I just tied his time up where he just had to say yes, or I sold him. I'm not sure which one it was, but I got the deal and got an opportunity and really started off really poorly. It was during a time when Hurricane Andrew just come through the Southeast. So our state plan in Alabama was 1.8 cars a month and 0.9 homes a month is what they expected per agency. So it was really difficult time. I had to really sell a lot of life insurance to stay afloat, but about 5 or 6 years in, I started figuring some things out, started having some success. And then in 2008, my youngest son was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. And that really changed the way I looked at life and people and leadership and that type of thing. And that's when things really took off. Things really got good. And luckily later that year, we found out he was misdiagnosed. He didn't have cystic fibrosis. He just had symptoms of that. So It's been a very interesting journey to say the least. And I certainly didn't start very well. It took me some time and been through a lot of things, made a ton of mistakes, but it's been good. And a lot of the things that happened, I'm glad they happened or it wouldn't have made me who I am today. So sometimes going through those ups and downs can be a really good thing. And I think for me it was. So now we've got 4 locations in 2 states and also have another company where we work with agents all over the country and staff and help them help train and coach the owners on leadership and that type of thing. And it's going really well.

So one of the things you mentioned there, as leaders— and everybody that's listening to this podcast are leaders within their own companies and their own agencies— we always want to feel like that when we look at somebody else's end and we compare it to our beginning or our middle, it's not fair to be able to do that. And so for you to say all the challenges that you faced early on and then in those first 5 to 10 years or so and that you did have those struggles makes it down for other people to be able to realize that it's not always going to be just this upward climb up into the right, so to speak. And so can you talk about a little bit more just about how failures have shaped your own journey and what you've been able to learn from that?

Oh yeah, no question. I mean, I think a lot of times, especially when people first meet somebody that is, you know, quote successful, they see all that they have today, whatever that might be, whether it's a big company or big team or assets or whatever. But man, the overnight success stories, at least in the business world, they're not very common. There's usually a lot of sleepless nights and pain and worry about not only yourself, but the people that you're responsible for, you know? And I think people lose sight of that a lot of times, that it's really, if you have a staff, if you have a group of people in your company, at least the best leaders that I know, they worry more about them than they do theirself. What are you going to do to make sure that everybody there has an opportunity to provide for their family. So yeah, there's a lot of heartache and a lot of ups and downs and sleepless nights. And, you know, I can remember staying up all night trying to figure out where I was going to get business the next day. Who was I going to call? You know, this was back before you really had the power of the internet and literally going through like the Yellow Pages of the phone book, looking at different occupations, thinking one occupation might spark my memory of somebody I know that does that. And I could call them, you know, that was how you kind of Or at least I prospected back then years ago. So yeah, there's all kinds of failures, but you know, I think that's what makes people who they are. And when you have those types of situations that go wrong, it's like I tell people all the time, you have to be decisive in business because even if your decision is not a great decision, you're still going to learn from it. Right. So either you grow because the decision was a good one or it didn't work out like you thought. And you learn from it. So being decisive is key. People that can't make decisions and put things off, put things off and don't take any action because they're scared of what might happen. Those are the ones that really limit their growth. So as long as you're not making reckless decisions, if you're trying to figure out which way to go with something, that's just a great way to learn and get better. And yes, you will make some mistakes with that. I've made countless mistakes with all those types of things, but I was lucky enough to learn from some of those things. So the next time it happened, I could identify it maybe a little bit quicker, knew what to do a little bit better, and then things start rolling in the right direction. So there's a lot of ups and downs, no question about it. Sometimes people just don't, they don't realize that. They don't understand that unless they've been through a similar journey.

Yeah, I'm totally with you. I think that there's a great saying by Dan Peña who says that, "I may be wrong, but I'm never in doubt." And I really like that. And it basically speaks to what you're saying, that you have to be decisive. And not just be decisive, but believe that what you're doing is the right thing. Even if you're wrong, you have to be 100% in conviction that what you're doing is the best thing that you could be doing at that point in time. And at the time of this recording, we are doing it in the middle of COVID-19, basically. I mean, we're all aware of all the negative aspects of it and how it's impacted the economy and how it's impacted people's daily lives, but I'm confident that there's going to be some silver lining to it, some positive side to it. And to me, It's giving business owners the opportunity to be the leader of a winning remote team. And I think that they can also just learn good leadership skills, like learning to manage a team when you're not physically there. So what are some things that a business owner could be doing right now to improve their leadership, to work on their leadership?

Well, you know, leadership's easy when things are going good, right? When things are going good, it's easy to be a great leader and be respected and admired and all that. It's when things aren't so good. Or when people are scared. So I think the first thing that you should do, and we did this early on, back late February, early March, when things started looking like they were gonna go in a bad direction, I think you gotta make sure that your team knows that you have their back. And we actually called a meeting and told all of them, look, you don't worry about your job. We'll figure this out together, whatever that situation may be. Some people, depending on the business and what kind of business they're in and the assets that they have and the cash and everything, they may not be able to have that kind of reassurance, but I think you have to do something to make sure that your team knows that you have your back. I literally told them, look, don't worry about your job. Your job is going to be here. We're going to get through this one way or the other. And we did end up having to send a lot of people home remotely. And a lot of those people work with folks face-to-face and really didn't have a lot to contribute, but we still kept things going. And I think when things go bad, it's kind of like when you're on an airplane, you hit a little turbulence, And everybody looks at the flight attendant. The flight attendant's all freaked out, then they probably get a little freaked out. If she's all calm, reading a little magazine, kind of kicked back in her chair, nobody thinks anything about the turbulence. So I think a leader, you got to do the same thing. You got to be calm. You got to focus on what you can control and you got to communicate. You got to talk to your people and make sure they understand what's going on and really reassure them that things are headed in the positive direction based off what you can do. And I think good leaders, they should do that all the time, not just when things get bad, but that's where people really show their skills and their ability to lead. And for people, if they're following or not, because if things get rough, when things get rough, that's when you either shine or you let your team down. So for us, it was just a matter of reassurance. It was a matter of communication, constant communication. Obviously, we'd already had a lot of experience with Zoom calls and that type of thing, but we even did more of those, did more check-ins with people as a group, individually, and just did as much as we could. And now pretty much everybody's back working in the office now. I think that's really what it boiled down to for us. It was just a matter of keeping everybody together, looking out for one another, and really good communication about what was going on and what was going to happen to them. Because a lot of times I think owners or leaders in general, If they don't hear things from their team, they assume everything's fine. And a lot of times that's not the case. Sometimes people don't want to speak up. They don't want to say anything. I think you need to have conversations with people and make sure that they're okay. There's a lot of stuff going on right now. A lot of things in the media and on social media and in the world that just is very scary for a lot of people. And sometimes owners, they dismiss a little bit of it because maybe they're in a pretty good situation financially, whatever it might be. And and then sometimes their team are not, and I need to talk with them about that and try to help them work through those things. I always try to help my people get whatever they want. If I help them get what they want, whether it's peace of mind, assets, certain goals, if I can help them get what they want, then I almost always get what I want. So that's the way I go about it, and I had to learn that the hard way early on. I wasn't like that at all. I was more of a intimidation, fear kind of manager, wasn't a leader at all. And then when I started to truly show other people that I cared and help them get the things that they wanted, that's when things really took off. So now in this moment in time for us, it really wasn't that difficult, to be honest with you, because we have a good culture, we have a good team, people respect one another, we're already in a pretty good spot. So for us, it really wasn't that big of a deal.

You just said so much, and it's all very valuable. Number one, truly being a leader and not being somebody who just says, hey, do X, Y, or Z, or you're fired. And I think that many times when you're in the world of sales, that's something that you hear very often. So it's good to hear from a successful leader that that's not a model that you should follow, that that's not good leadership. Another thing that I wanted to touch on is simply the fact that business owners now have the confidence of basically knowing that they can take their business and be location independent because of the fact that they're being forced to either learn this skill of being able to manage a remote team or basically like you're out of business. So that's been, to me, another positive aspect of this situation. What do you think, Brad?

Yeah, I mean, obviously some people have been more familiar with having remote teams. Other people have not been familiar with working remotely and leading remotely. So I think it's kind of a mixed bag. I mean, honestly. I think that there's a lot of similarities to what we're facing right now in crisis of leadership. And Craig, I'd love for you to kind of touch on this. But I was thinking about how what we're going through really compares to an emergency room situation. So if you think about the ER, it's crisis mode every day, not just in COVID-19. Because you touched on almost every single one of these, but 4 things that are recurrent in an emergency room are also recurrent in a crisis situation like we're facing in leadership. And that's constant communication, flexibility, speed of action, or what you refer to as decisiveness, and then fourthly, extreme focus. So it really has pared down the things that you can focus on working remotely with your teams. And you have to obviously communicate constantly with your team, have extrinsic flexibility, speed of action, extreme focus. What are your thoughts on those 4 things, Craig?

Yeah, I agree with all of that. And the other thing that I would add in there during this period of time is, and you mentioned flexibility, I think sometimes you also need to have some empathy for these people and what they're dealing with, especially those. I mean, think about it, man. These people have got kids in daycare and everything is pretty tight as it is. And then all of a sudden they have all this stuff thrown at them. They got to work remotely. They got their kids at home. Now the schools are asking them to do e-learning from home while they're working, while the dog's barking, you know, all this stuff going on. And You need to have a little empathy about that situation and realize that, hey, you know what, maybe we have some standards and expectations of what we require when everything is normal and everything is good. Maybe don't like completely relax them to say, hey, just do whatever you want, but understand that it may be a lot more difficult for those things to actually happen and that it's not all their fault that they're being put in this situation, right? And have some empathy for that. We have a couple here that they're not performing like that they normally would. And is that causing them any type of disciplinary action or anything? No, because I understand it's a temporary thing. Right. And there may be some businesses out there that they just decided to go completely remote because everything's perfect. For us, I still think having a culture of people that are around one another when it comes to this, the social part of what we do with accountability and coaching and leadership, all that, I still think that really matters. And I don't want to go where we're all remote. I don't like that. So during this period of time where I feel like I knew it was going to be temporary, then I would kind of let my guard down a little bit on that because I wanted to be empathetic of what was going on with them. And I realized it's difficult, especially if you have small children. I mean, my kids are old enough now where it's not really that big a deal. When you got a 14 and 17-year-old at home, it's not a problem. You have a 3 and a 5-year-old at home or a 6 and a 9-year-old, and they're having to go through learned, still doing what they were doing in school, and now you're responsible for that while you're still responsible for your job. It's a huge amount of stress on some of these people. So I think being empathetic of their situation, helping to guide them through that and let them know that you're understanding of what's going on, I think that's really important as well.

And I totally agree with that. You have to be so empathetic on so many Zoom calls with kids climbing over and everybody's apologizing. You just say, hey, listen, Nobody has to apologize anymore for that. It's fine. It's not a big deal. We'll get through it. All right, so let's transition. I want to talk about, obviously, get into some insurance-specific things. So, value proposition insurance selling. I mean, value proposition gets thrown around a lot. So, it's really a two-part question for you. So, number one, what does selling with value actually mean? How do you interpret that? And then number two, and more importantly, how do we actually do it?

I mean, first of all, people say that all the time. You got to value sell. You got to value sell. In our business, the value proposition of a local agency is your relationship, your advice, and the education that you can offer for your people, recommendations, that type of thing. It's not just service with a smile. I think that's what people have to learn. So the days of just quoting and quoting and quoting and hoping that you save somebody some money on their car insurance, to me, those days are long gone and have been for a while. If you're going to be successful now, It's all about, you know, if I'm talking to Bradley and talking to him about his insurance, it's about what you need and why you need what you need and going down that road. It's not about, hey, what do you have now? Let's do an apples to apples comparison at the very end. After 20 minutes, I hope that I'm at least a dollar a month cheaper than what you have. That's not really what we're about. We want to do the right thing. We look at it very much like a doctor. You go to the doctor's office, and they're gonna weigh you, they're gonna take your blood pressure, they're gonna take your temperature, and there's not gonna be any negotiating about any of these things. They're just gonna tell you, here's what we're gonna do, this is it, right? And you do it because it's important and because they're the professional and they've got the license and they're trying to figure out what's wrong with you and they're trying to get you better. Well, right, we go about it the same way. We have a conversation. It doesn't matter what GEICO wrote for you or what some other captive agent wrote. We're going to figure out what you need and we're going to have a conversation to determine that. And then at the end, it is what it is. The price is what it is. And hopefully you just go up front and pay the bill just like you would at the doctor's office. Now, not everybody's going to go along with that, and that's okay. There's a lot of direct shoppers out there that if you don't save any money, they're just not going to change. And that's okay. But there's a lot of people that still value the advice of a local agent and want that relationship and need and understand what you're talking about once you explain that to them. See, most customers, insurance customers, only thing they know about their insurance is how much they pay, how much they stroke that check for every month. They don't know what liability or uninsured motorist or any of these other coverages are. So what we have to do is we have to stop and explain that to them in a way that's not salesy, you know, that's more of an advisory type role, just like a doctor would when he's explaining to you what's wrong with you and how he's going to treat it. What medications are you going to prescribe? We do all of that that way, and we don't do it in 15 minutes or less, right? And we don't allow the customer to control the conversation. Could you imagine walking into a doctor's office and saying, you know, I was on WebMD last night, man, I already know what's wrong with me, and here's what we're going to do, and here's what you're going to prescribe, and I got to be out of here in 15 minutes. They would laugh you out of there. So why do we allow that to happen in our agencies? Why do we let customers tell us what they're going to need? And rush through that. If that's the way they're going to be, you know, this just may not be a good fit for them, right? So there's a process to that. I know you asked me how we do that. It's a process that we go through with our people, you know, that takes 30 to 45 minute conversation, to be honest with you. But when we finish up, when we're hired— not if we're hired, most of the time we're going to be hired— now we have reasons to be hired. Now there's something that we can talk about where it makes sense for them to come with us. And anybody can do that. So I think if you're an agency that's quoting apples to apples, if you're an agency that's always talking about price, we can't control the price. Why would you talk about something that's gonna be a huge disadvantage the vast majority of the time, right? Let's focus on what we can control. The coverages, the relationship, the advice, those types of things. There's nothing we can do about price. There's no coupons, there's no Black Friday, there's no sales manager to call to reduce the monthly rate. It is what it is. So instead of focusing on those things, let's focus on what we can control. And if we do a good job with that and we position that correctly, if that customer doing it the right way and explaining it in a way where it makes sense to them, there are people that will pay more. People are buying coffee every morning that costs $5, $6, $7, right? Would they not pay $2 or $3 more a day for insurance to make sure their family's livelihood and financial situation is not completely turned upside down forever? Yes, they will. It's just how you articulate it. It's how you talk to people. Nobody wants to be sold anything. Bradley, if you need a suit and you go into a store to buy a suit, you already know what you want. And a guy walks up and says, hey, can I help you? What do you say to that guy? What do people say? I'm just looking, right? Every time, that's what you're going to say. And you went in there to buy something. So you're talking to a customer, you can't use language that forces them to be defensive about whatever it is you're trying to sell. It has to be Advice. It has to be recommendation, has to be education. So we go through a whole process that I think does a really good job with that. I learned that early on years ago. You know, my main location is in Huntsville, Alabama. If you look it up, we're the number one city in the country for tornado damage, not tornadoes, but tornado damage. So rate increases here have been, they've just been a way of life. My company's always first on rate increases. So I had to figure out how am I going to sell, how am I going to compete when I'm always higher? Well, it came down to those other things— coverages, relationship, advice, truly being there for somebody. I'm not just giving service with a smile. So people throw that around a lot in our industry— value-added selling, selling on value, whatever you want to call it. What it really boils down to is your ability to do those things. If your agency is not going out of your way every time you talk to a customer to give advice. That's your biggest value proposition, the advice that you can give based off the relationship you have with that customer. That's what differentiates you from your competition. Geico can't do that, Progressive can't do that. Most of the other captives are not going to do it. So when you do it, it sets you apart. And maybe you don't get everybody, you're not going to get everybody, but what if you got 1 or 2 more households a day by doing it that way and you're doing it the right way, the right coverages, so you can sleep better at night. You know, there's just so much that goes into that. But what I tell our people and the people that we work with across the country is you're the number 2 professional in anybody's life, the second most important professional in anybody's life. The doctor's number 1 because if you're not healthy, it doesn't matter. But after that, if we don't do our job right, there's nothing a CPA or an attorney or anybody else is gonna get them, you know, especially staff. People really is. And they just come in, a lot of times they're very transactional and they're missing out on conversations and asking questions that could truly make a difference in somebody's life. So we try to teach all this. We're trying to instill this in their mind that what they do makes a difference for people and they can be a positive impact on somebody's life. And it's all about the questions that you ask, the conversations that you have. And then at the end, yes, that's value selling. But what we're really trying to do is just treat people like family so that something happens to them, they're in a good spot.

Would you also agree that the business that you write whenever you're giving advice, making recommendations, and giving people what they need, also that business is a lot stickier too and stays on the books a lot longer?

When you sell on price, you're gonna die on price. If that's what you're gonna rely on, we tell them, look, even if you are less, don't focus on that. Why make a big deal out of that? Because The minute something happens and it goes up, they change a car, have a rate increase, whatever. Now all of a sudden price is a big deal. You were the one that said it was a big deal to begin with. Now you're trying to defend that. So yeah, what we want to do again is just do the right thing for that customer and put them in a position so that they're going to be taken care of. And then the price is just the price. And you're right, it's going to be better business, retains better. It's easier to service because when you do that, typically you get everything in their household. So it's a lot less expensive to service a book of business that is cross-sold than a book of business that has a bunch of monoline policies in it. It's just easier, it's cheaper. But for me, it's also about just doing the right thing for somebody. When that policy goes out, like, we have floors on our liability limits here. There's certain places we won't go beyond, we won't go lower than that because I don't want my name on that out there. I don't want something happening to me, be responsible for that. So Absolutely. It's definitely the best way to grow your book for sure. And you get more referrals and they buy other things. They're more willing to listen to your advice on life insurance or something else. So to try to do it on price is just kind of crazy.

Yeah, it's basically the difference between being a clerk and being an actual risk advisor, a professional. Like when I was listening to you talk about the comparison with the doctor, it sounds to me like some self-talk has to happen with the business owner within the agent himself. Basically becoming empowered and confident enough to make the recommendations that the customer needs, despite the customer coming in and saying, "Hey, I want a quote on this car right now. Give it to me in 15 minutes." It's having a process and a mental image of how you want to come across to them. That to me is huge. And I think more agents should take advantage of the advice that you're giving right now.

Before I got on this call, I was on another call with one of our members, one of our coaching members, and That's what a couple of his staff are dealing with is just the lack of confidence. You know, a lot of times that's why they can't be assumptive during the entire process. Like when you go to the doctor's office, they're all very assumptive of what they do because they know what they're talking about, right? And there's not going to be any negotiation about any of this stuff because they know they're the expert. Well, that's what needs to happen in the agency, whether it's the owner or the staff. You have to understand that you're the expert. You're the one who has the license. You're the one who knows what you're talking about. And to allow someone else to control that conversation, that's not a good spot to be in. You've got to teach your people to be very assumptive about things and be confident about things because they know more than the person they're dealing with. And they— not just that they know more about the definitions, but they know why that person needs what it is they're recommending. And they got to believe in that. We also talk a lot about internal objections. External objections you get from customers. Internal objections are the ones you have for yourself. Sometimes these people that are trying to sell high liability limits, umbrella policies, life insurance. When you get in there and really start asking them what they have, they don't have that stuff. They don't have an umbrella policy because they don't believe in it, and that's an internal objection. So you have to believe, you have to know in your heart that these are the right things, and this is why, so that when you start talking to people about it, you have some conviction and some passion in your voice And it comes through and then that's what's going to lead you to getting that deal done at the end. If you're just very black and white about it and there doesn't seem to be a lot of energy from what you're saying and that customer can kind of feed off of that kind of in a negative way, then you're probably not going to get that deal done. They have to believe why you're saying what you're saying and why that matters to them. And you've got to be able to articulate that. So yes, having confidence from the owner all the way through the organization about what it is you guys do, what you're all about. And really comes down to like your culture, where everybody believes in the common goal and the mission of what everybody's doing there to truly help people and treat people like family. That has to be something that's led from the top down and something that's talked about all the time. And people have to actually lead by example and do it. And if you don't, then customers can tell when you're faking. If you're faking it, it's not going to work out.

So you mentioned something there that I've never heard before, and that's internal objections versus external objections. I mean, I've heard objection handling for a long time, And I've never heard it put that way, but internal and external objections made me think about a couple podcasts ago. We had Seth Proiss, the guys from MyVation and Racing Snail, on, and he was talking about intrinsic motivators with the team and extrinsic motivators with the team. But I really did like that about internal objections because I agree with you. If they're not carrying the proper amount of limits themselves on their own policies and what they need to have, it's really hard to be authentic and genuine to make a recommendation to somebody else. If they don't actually believe in that themselves?

There's no question, man. I mean, we do workshops here at the agency. We'll have 12 people come in from around the country, mainly producers. We do a lot of coaching and leadership workshops too, but most of our workshops are for people that are selling. And we usually get to this question at some point during the day. We'll ask everybody, you know, how many of you in here believe that everybody should have an umbrella? And everyone, I'm gonna raise your hand, everybody should have an umbrella. Every once in a while there'll be somebody, nah, I don't believe somebody should, we have to kind of squash that. But for the most part, they're all like, yeah, everybody needs an umbrella. And we talk about how important that is. And then the next question is, well, how many of you have an umbrella? And there might be like 2 hands go up and we're like, that's an internal objection because you don't believe in what you're saying. And I challenge people all the time, owners, look, if your people don't have an umbrella, get an umbrella for them and tell them they don't make enough money in the next 30 days to pay for that umbrella, then just buy it for them because they're going to close so much more business. By owning what it is they're recommending because the way it just comes out in their voice. And then what if that customer does ask them, right? What do you carry on yours? No, I got state minimum. I just think it's right for you. I don't do— I think you should come on. That doesn't work, right? So challenge your people to stop selling from their own pockets back before they knew what they're doing. And a lot of people, that's just the way they operated for a long time. Some of them still operate that way. Some people have been in the business for 20 years, they still have state minimum limits. You know, they're just lucky nothing's ever happened. So yeah, getting your people to believe in the buying of what it is you're doing and what you're trying to get them to do with your customers, that's huge, no question.

There we go, that's 100% true. And I feel like the employee can't even communicate like, hey, before I actually didn't have a full umbrella policy until I learned the benefits, and here's what they are, and here's why you should get an umbrella policy as well. I think that story can actually resonate with the client and allow them to see like, hey, this person that I'm speaking to is not just a salesman. Like they were clueless at one point, then they saw the value in it and then they got it. So therefore I can trust them because they have been in my shoes before.

Absolutely. Absolutely. No question about it.

And I feel like no complete conversation about leadership is fully complete without talking about building a team, like anywhere from recruiting to interviewing to hiring, et cetera. In my opinion, you know, employees are by far the biggest asset that any business can have. And when I speak to business owners, they tell me that that's also the part where they struggle the most. So what process would you recommend to business owners out there for basically building a team? That's once again recruiting, interviewing, onboarding them, etc.

Yeah. Well, look, staffing, it never gets easy. I think it gets easier. As you go, but it never gets easy because there's just so many different things that you're dealing with that can go on. And you know, our whole process is we're trying to peel back the layers of the onion as early as possible, right? When we're recruiting people, when we're interviewing them, I'd rather fire them during the interview than 6 months later once I figured out they're not gonna work. And when we start working with agencies, that's what we find a lot of times is they don't have a process in place They get all excited about somebody because they got a license and they're taking their comp plan and they interviewed well, and then they come in and there's nothing there. So for us, it's all about, again, communicating first when we start interviewing somebody or talking to somebody. Experience is really not that important on the sales side, maybe on the service side, but on the sales side, we're looking more for ability. If I'm running the Dallas Cowboys, I need a quarterback. I need somebody who can play quarterback. Not somebody knows the playbook. I need somebody who's got the ability. So this is the same thing. We can teach them insurance, we can teach them all the specific things they have to learn about the technical part of it, but I need someone to talk to folks who could pick up the phone. I need that type of personality. And once we identify that, once you feel like we're in a good spot there and this might be a good fit, then we're going to start asking them questions, very specific questions about activity that they're going to have to do when they come on board. For example, they're going to have to make between 80 and 100 phone calls a day. Chris, how does that make you feel? And if we get any negative pushback, any red flags at all, that's probably not going to be a good candidate. So like everybody listening to this, think back on the people that didn't work out, the ones you had to fire or they quit. What could you have done differently to keep that from happening? That's what I've always done through my whole career. Every time I lose somebody, it's like, all right, What could I have done differently? Maybe the exit interview could help you with that. Sometimes it's not appropriate depending on the situation, but you can always look back on what you did or didn't do. So it could be very simple things like computer skills. Sometimes people, they can walk into a room and light it up and sell anybody anything, but they can't learn your systems. Maybe what you need to do is have something in the beginning. If you give them a little bit of a test to see if they're okay on a computer or not, there could be a lot of things though. The main thing though, is that you communicate your expectations and your standards when it comes to the activity that they're going to have to do. And you discuss your non-negotiables. Non-negotiables are no stealing, no forging, no gossip, you know, all those types of things. And really communicate well with them on the front end, all those things that you remember that cause people to leave, and get that done on the very front end of the cycle instead of 6 months later. And what will happen is Yes, you will run some people off. You will cut some people out. You will tell them this is not for them. That's fine. It is so expensive to hire people and train them, whether it's you or somebody else, and spend all that money and time to then 6 months later lose that person. You are so much better off, even if you end up hiring a lot less people, to do that in the very beginning. No question about it. So, you know, our whole hiring process is really designed around that. And there's a lot of specifics that go into that, you know, regarding the phone interview, the face-to-face the follow-up, all the different things that we do. Right now, in the middle of this whole deal with COVID right now is a great time to be interviewing, great time to be recruiting, great time to be trying to hire, because a lot of people out there, you know, are looking for work, and a lot of people would be really, really good in an agency, no question about it. A lot of these service-oriented folks, they'd be really good. But just kind of as a nutshell, we look for ability, not experience. We always require them to get a license before they come on board. And we're going to be very clear and communicate our expectations and our standards, not just of the production, but of the activity levels that are required to lead to production. Because when you start holding them accountable, you better have gone over what it was you're holding them accountable for before they started. Otherwise, it's going to be a surprise. You're not even on the same page, and now you can't unring that bell and you have a problem. So the more that you do on the front end the more likely that person is to be successful and end up being a good hire for you.

All right.

So you mentioned a lot of things there that I got to touch on because I think it's so important. There's one statement that you made that a lot of people may pass by, but to me, I think it's crucial. The fact that when you've lost somebody, whether you've had to let them go or they left on their own accord, and you would follow up and say, "You know, what could I have done differently and what can I learn from that situation?" As opposed to what I see— in fact, I was just on a call right before this podcast myself with someone who constantly points the blame at the other person who left. It was their fault. I didn't do anything wrong. They were an underperformer, et cetera. You've learned from it, and you've continued to improve along the way versus trying to make an excuse and just point it to the team member who didn't work out and not thinking, well, you know, what could I have done differently in the interview process? How could I have seen what I see now in the interview process. So I loved your analogy of peeling back the onion as quickly as possible so that 6 months down the road— and the second thing is the cost of turnover is way more than what people actually think that it is.

There's no question about it, man. What happens is, especially smaller agency that maybe only has 1 or 2 people in there, and they get no buy-in, and they gotta have somebody. And I've been there, I know what it's like. And you get so excited about somebody who might be a good fit And you go home and you tell your wife, man, I had this great interview today and she's going to be awesome. And then you didn't take the steps necessary to make sure that they were awesome and you make a bad hire. And then you got to deal with that and live with that and pay all the money out. And look, you're right. At the end of it, whatever happens, you got to own it, right? Owners need to start owning their decisions. Everybody is where they are because of the choices and decisions they made, not somebody else. It's not the president, the economy, your peers, your carrier. It is you. Whatever you do will put you in a position to be successful, not successful. So when you're making hires and somebody doesn't work out, you need to own that process. Yes, every once in a while maybe somebody slipped through, but the vast majority of the time it was because you did not do a good job with hiring them, plain and simple. And most of the time it comes down to expectations and standards. You don't talk enough about what you need that person to do specifically to get them on board and be successful in that job. And then they just come on and they're like, well, I'm just gonna do the best I can. Look, people are wired to get by. That's just the human instinct, the animal instinct in everybody. Whatever you do today, if there's no negative consequence to that and it got you through the day, chances are you're gonna do the exact same thing tomorrow and again and again and again. Before you know it, now you got a pattern, there's a habit. And then going in there as an owner trying to break that habit I mean, think how hard it is to change yourself and you're the owner and you're going to try to ask a staff person to change what they've been— that doesn't work. So you got to start them off on the right foot. You got to communicate expectations of what it is specifically they have to do, have weekly goals the first month, then a second, a third month goal that they have to meet. We like to have a sense of urgency. Let's get rolling. It doesn't take 90 days to get somebody up to speed. You should know in the first week or not, whether or not this person's going to work out. And if you handle that interview correctly and you start the onboarding process correctly, you follow up with some accountability and some coaching and some training, you can get people rolling really quickly. But you gotta own all this stuff. Anybody listening to this as an owner, you gotta own what you do. Take responsibility for all of it. Give credit when things go well to other people. Extreme ownership. But when things go bad, man, you have to own that. And everybody around you needs to know that you're owning that and you're not blaming anybody else. You're pointing that finger at yourself. Hey, I failed at this. I'm going to learn from this and get better the next time. And that will help you with everything that you do.

I see that you got a nice deer behind your left shoulder there. Do you also go duck hunting?

I don't duck hunt. I've hunted just about every— I've hunted deer and turkey mainly, and I've been invited a few times, but duck season always interferes with deer season, so I just haven't been. But I'd love to go.

All right, well, I'll come pick you up. I'll take you to Arkansas one day.

Okay, I got some buddies that go out there and I would like to do that. I would.

You'd love it. Well, the reason I bring that up is because I use the analogy recently about some of the best duck hunts I've ever been on is the ones when we went out and we said, listen, specifically we're hunting pintails and/or canvasback or greenhead. That's all we're shooting. We're not going to just shoot anything that's in the air. We really know what we're going after. We know specifically what we're looking for. And so there'll be ducks landing right in front of us, but they're not what we're looking for. And I do feel like that what you're saying there about being very clear what the expectations are in the business, you know what you're looking for ahead of time, not just, well, let me just pull anybody in and then hope it works out.

Yeah. When you hire somebody and you hope things work out because you're just praying for it, I mean, that's not a good strategy. That's not a good process. You've got to be very clear. They need to know People want structure. It's like sometimes you start role-playing, it kind of pushed back on that a little bit. People want to be trained. They want structure. They want to know there's an opportunity. They want to know things are run well. A lot of small businesses, they kind of fall a little short there because they just kind of sometimes do things by the seat of their pants. You need to have more structure. People sometimes have a tough time competing against large corporations because a lot of the things that the corporations do, well, in that small business, that's something that you can do. You can have a really good handle on the way you onboard people and the way you hire and recruit them and train them and get them up to speed and do it one-on-one or shoulder-to-shoulder as much as possible. But a lot of times people, they just skip that step and then they wonder why they keep having all these people that either don't do well, very mediocre, or just constant turnover. So definitely just think back on what happened in the past and what you could do to make that better the next time. And We have a complete process in our platform, CWC, where we go through everything, all the documents necessary to do it, but go through each step of it. You know, when you start to make ads to start recruiting people all the way through in the development process of that person, because it's so crucial. Your staff are the biggest investment in your business, and you need to think of it that way.

So we've spent a lot of time, obviously we started off with your background, leadership in this crisis scenario with COVID Then we transitioned to the value proposition and how that got into discussing about development with a team. And then we talked about building a team and how important culture is and what's the right process and communicating expectations of accountability and activity. I really want to transition now and I want to ask you about the importance of growing yourself as a leader. So transition from the team now to how important it is as a leader to constantly be growing learning and improving themselves as a leader. And then the second part I want you to talk about is obviously Joseph has been a huge part of your organization and is, and a lot of people want to be able to try to find somebody like that in their organizations to develop and grow. Can you talk about that process, what that was like, and just some things, tidbits for people that want to have somebody like that in their organization?

Yeah. First of all, in terms of growing as a leader, There's a lot that goes into that. And a lot of things I've done right and a lot of things I've done wrong. I guess probably the biggest thing that I would recommend folks is surround yourself with people that are going to bring you up. There's a lot of people out there that, you know, whether your peers you went to school with, could be even family that are constantly bringing you down and are negative about things. And I think frankly, you need to try to figure out how you can stay away from those people. You need to surround yourself with people that are going to help you do more. Even if it's somebody that's not necessarily in your industry, it could be somebody in another industry, but people that you look up to, that you admire, that you want to be more like, and surround yourself with that group of folks. You know, people are kind of like the average of the 5, 6, 7 people they spend the most time with. If you see successful people out there that you can develop relationships with, I would certainly do that. I think so much of what we do is tough and being positive. I cannot stand being around negative people. It drives me nuts. It doesn't matter what the situation is, there's always something that we can look at as good, and there's some positivity comes up. Like right now, this COVID thing, there's plenty of good that comes from this. All the time that people have been able to spend with their family and really do things maybe they couldn't have done before, and just there's always good, right? So me, what I want to do is I want to be around people like that. I also want to be around people who will hold me accountable and kind of challenge me and maybe push me on things that maybe one of your friends would never do, or people that might be a little further behind you would never do because they don't think that's their place. So it's always good to have folks that might be a little bit above you. You know, it's like the people in our program, mentoring program, I'm very blunt. I'm very like, this is what you need to do. And I'll tell them why. And I will call them on those things because I know, not just because that's just how I'm wired, but I know that's effective. I know that when people hear the real truth about things, Sometimes when you call them on their you know what, that will get them to take action on something versus just always pandering somebody. So who you're around says a lot. And I'm not a huge reader of books. I'm not one of these guys who reads a book a week like a lot of people like to do, but there is a book out there called Radical Candor by Kim Scott that I would definitely recommend everybody read. It's a great read on not just— and this kind of transitions to the second part of your question, but It helps you identify yourself as a leader, but then also helps you identify the qualities and the characteristics of the people that are around you and what kind of leaders they are. And you want people who challenge people professionally, but show people that they care personally, right? When someone knows that's how you feel about them, that's where you get the ultimate amount of growth. Okay. So Joseph's really good at that. When you're working with somebody and you're holding them accountable and you're trying to develop them, They have to know, your team, they need to know, the people that they're working for you, they have to know that you care about what happens to them personally, but you are challenging them professionally. There's so many people that they just enable folks, they don't say anything at all, they're just lazy managers and just hope it gets better. Maybe they just run every meat with a fist on the desk and they don't care about them one bit. They have all these different styles and you'll read about these in the book. Okay, the book is great, but identifying that quadrant where you are challenging people professionally while you're showing that you care about them personally, and you have people around you that you're developing a leadership, kind of like Joseph, which we'll talk about in a minute, to do the same thing, that's when things really start to happen. Your leadership style, it's kind of like— and I know you got an Auburn football in the background, but I'm a huge Bama fan, okay? And whether you're a Bama fan or not, everybody should be able to learn something from Nick Saban. Nick Saban runs a fantastic organization. He's not cool mom. A lot of owners like to be cool mom. They want to be friends with their employees. They want to be the ones that buy them beer on Friday night. You need to be the head coach of your organization. You need to challenge people. You need to hold them accountable. Who's going to be better for their future, cool mom or head coach? I think head coach will 100% of the time. And sometimes people don't want to do that. They don't want to be that person. They don't want to micromanage. They don't want to hold people accountable to things. You have to do that. You have to do it in a way where they know that you care. So we always try to find out what motivates somebody, what specifically they want to do with their money, what kind of goals they have, and then we build plans to help make that happen. And then we hold them accountable. It's all about making their goal happen, not about me or the agency, but about helping them buy that house or pay off that debt or buy that car. We make it all about them. 'Cause staff really don't care how much you make. They care how much they make, right? So we need to think about that and put it in those terms. Now, when it comes to Joseph and people in that type of position, again, you gotta look and see what kind of leadership qualities does this person have? Where are they failing? Every leader I've ever hired to go into that position that failed, it was because they didn't have radical candor. They couldn't challenge people professionally while they shared the code, they cared about them personally. It was one or the other. Most of the time it was because they tried to be friends with them. And that doesn't work. You can still be friends with them. Okay. You can still be friendly with them, but man, you got to challenge them professionally or they're never going to grow. So that process of bringing somebody on and going down that road, and we have a whole course on our platform design to teach people how we go through that. The gist of it is you want to bring somebody in. They can complement your weaknesses, not necessarily just like you. That doesn't really help you as much, but they, but you gotta obviously be able to trust them. And then they've got to be able to lead people. They got to challenge them professionally while they show they care about them personally. And then you have to empower them to do that. One of the best tips I can give anybody when they're trying to develop a leader, let your leader, whoever it is, or they want to be the leader, let them run meetings. Don't have a meeting with your leader sitting right next to you and you run everything. And then you join the meeting. Now you want that other person to hold everybody accountable and be the guy, but they're not the guy in the meeting. They need to be the guy in the meeting. They need to run everything because the people there in the room are going to look at that person as either position of authority or not. If they're not even running the meeting, they're not going to listen to that person. It's time to hold them accountable. So there's a whole process with that in terms of getting somebody on board to be that right-hand person. And comp is definitely an issue. A lot of things go through that process. But Rattle Cander is a great book. If you've never read that, first half of it's kind of boring, but second half is really good and it gets into what it's really all about. And that's what it's about. And you kind of think about your own style. Most people don't do anything, or they're an enabler. They're an enabler. They just like— you see people on American Idol trying out for American Idol, and they start singing. They cannot sing, but somebody's told them that they could, right? They're enabling that person to go out and try, thinking that yes, they can do it when they know they can't. Don't do that. When you know somebody's not a good fit, send them down the road. Let them go do something else. Let them get started with another part of their life, right? So there's things that you got to do as a manager, as a leader, to help your people And that book does a really good job of going through all those different things.

Yeah, that is a fantastic book. It's one I've recommended a lot. And so for people that haven't read it, we're going to actually put a link in the show notes to this book. But whenever she's talking about caring personally and challenging directly, and whenever there's the best combination of both of those, that's what she refers to as radical candor. But if you care personally, but you don't challenge directly, she refers to that as ruinous empathy. But if you don't care for the person, and you don't challenge them, she refers to that as manipulative insincerity. Manipulative insincerity. And then if you challenge people directly, but you don't show that you care personally, that's obnoxious aggression. And so just even that matrix right there that boils it down to me was impactful. I love that book. I read it about a year ago and I've recommended it a lot. So I totally agree with you. And it's interesting that you bring that up about how trying to find somebody in that position that Joseph's in has to be able to have that radical candor. I thought that was really interesting way that you put that.

Again, and people that are listening to this, you think back on leaders that you've tried to hire that have failed. I guarantee you the reason they have failed when you get right down to it is because they did not fit in that quadrant. They were in one of those other quadrants and that doesn't work. You can't get people to do more when they don't know that you care. And when you're not challenging them professionally, you squall.

All right, man, this has been awesome. Uh, hope that we can have you back on in the future, but we ready to transition into some rapid fire.

Sure. All right.

Last book you read?

Leadership by John Maxwell.

What book would you recommend the most to others?

The one we just talked about. Anytime we do a workshop, I actually draw the matrix that Bradley's talking about, and we spend about 15 minutes on that. That is a must-read. That and Rocket Fuel. Rocket Fuel will be another really good one.

Rocket Fuel is a good one too. Who is someone that you follow that motivates and inspires you?

Man, there's a bunch of people. Outside the industry, probably my dad is number one. That's kind of an easy one, I guess. Inside the industry, there's a guy named Jeff Baird that I think a lot of y'all don't know who he is, but he's somebody in our industry that I admire the way he does things. Sometimes I learn from people who, they may not necessarily be as big, they have as many locations, but there's things that they do that inspire me to do things a little bit better. Better. Another one is Greg Blanchard. Greg Blanchard's a guy that his book is probably about a third the size of mine, but he has an amazing circle of people that he can influence. And I learn a lot from him by the way he goes about doing that.

Now you've traveled the country speaking and doing trainings all over the place. What's your favorite place to travel to?

Vegas, baby. That's my favorite place for sure. It's closed down right now, but it's definitely the best.

Alright, so when we can open it back Where's one place you would love to travel to that you haven't been to?

Oh, that I haven't been to? That's a really good question because me and my wife were talking about this the other day. I mean, I've been traveling so long, been just about everywhere I'd want. I guess the one place we've never been to I'd like to go to is the Grand Canyon. We've never been there.

When you aren't coaching and teaching, what do you love to do in your free time?

I like to hunt and I like to fish. Matter of fact, as soon as we leave here, I'm taking my son on a senior trip. We're going fishing for 3 days.

All right, so favorite hunting story or hunting memory?

Probably my favorite one, and this happened last year. You know, I have a farm in Tennessee, and around Christmas time I offered up an opportunity for a kid that had never killed a deer before to come and hunt on my farm. And his dad, who was in the military, had been in Afghanistan and been shot in Afghanistan and he brought his son who had autism, who had a really difficult time where they hunted back home just because the way it was set up. And they came to my farm and he killed his first deer that afternoon and we got it all on video and everything. That was, that was really cool. I mean, I've had some amazing memories of my kids, but that one, just the circumstances involved and all that, it was, that was really neat deal.

What has to happen in a day for you to call it a good day?

What has to to happen in a day for me to call it a good day, right? I'm a pretty positive guy, so as long as I wake up, it's a good day, man. We're gonna have a good day. As long as my family is healthy, I can find something to make that a good day, no question about it.

What's the legacy you hope to leave behind, and what's next for Craig Wiggins?

I want to be a positive impact on people. I want them to think about ways where they can help other people get the things that they where they can help other people develop. That's really what I want to try to do. And that's what we've been doing for several years now. I mean, the agency has accomplished— I got Allstate Hall of Fame this year. So I've won just about every award that I could win within the company. And it still drives me to work with my team, to see them get better and to get them, you know, the things that they want. But now it's just so much about just trying to help other folks. I mean, there's so many people that's struggling struggling in our business that if they just had better information, they know a little bit more about this or that, they could do so much better. So that's what we're trying to do now.

Craig, you've been an awesome guest. If people want to know more about you and CWC Coaching, what's the best way for them to be able to get in touch with you?

Our website is just craigwigginscoaching.com. They can go check us out there. You can email me at craig@craigwigginscoaching.com. Reach out anytime. You can get me on Facebook. I'm very accessible. You send me a message, I will return it. I'll call you back. We'll be glad to have a conversation with you, try to help you. But any of those resources— the website has a lot of stuff on there. And look, even if you don't become a member of our program, if you're in this business, if you're in the insurance industry and you want some help, you want somebody to talk to, to kind of understand maybe a little bit more about what you could do different, I'd be happy to help you. So feel free to reach out.

Hope you'll come back on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast in the future.

Absolutely. I appreciate the invite. Appreciate you guys having me. You guys are really good at what you do and, uh, appreciate the conversation.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much, Craig. Bradley, what a great episode that was. Did you notice how with everything we talked about, he's got a process for it and he doesn't deviate from it? One prime example of this is when he talked about hiring and how he's got a system from interviewing to recruiting to onboarding, et cetera, and how that helps him run a more successful agency. What did you get from it?

You know, I totally agree with that. A few things that really popped up is, I mentioned this on the podcast, but internal objections. I never really heard this distinguishing part between internal and external objections. Secondly, I just thought it was important, the fact that he looks at internally, he looks inward whenever someone doesn't work out to say, hey, what could I have done differently with that person or maybe in the interview process? Number 3, communicating your standards and your non-negotiables on the front side and what those are, which means you've got to be clear with what those are yourself. He talked about Radical Candor quite a bit. We do recommend that book as a fantastic book, and it's really the intersection between caring personally and challenging directly. So it was great having him on. Obviously you can tell why he's been successful, not only in his own insurance agency, but with Craig Wiggins Coaching. So we hope to be able to have him on. Hey, we want to give a shout out to our friends at DirectClicks. If you're interested, looking at being able to get more inbound leads for your insurance agency, Give Matt and Maddie Jones a call or visit their website at directclicksinc.com. Again, that's directclicksinc.com. Chris, until next time, lead well and stay classy. [MUSIC] [MUSIC]