Episode 203: Fireside Chat - How Your Daily Choices Determine Your Success with Scott Grates

Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we've got a recast of an episode I did with Scott Greats. He's an awesome business owner, entrepreneur, and had just a lot of really good— I remember key takeaways that were things that you could implement in your business right away. So we thought we would recast this episode for all of you. For some of you, you are new listeners. Uh, and certainly since we first initially released this episode with Scott, we've added on, um, several hundred new listeners to the podcast. So enjoy this recast with Scott Greats.

This idea of win the day, and I piggyback that with, listen, success is an everyday thing. It's not a once in a while thing. It's not because we're running a promotion thing. Not because I just heard this guy in a podcast and it made sense and we should do this, and then it fizzles out. So there has to be certain non-negotiables. There has to be this mindset and focus around success being an everyday thing.

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation? Check them out at club.capital. This podcast is brought to you by Autopilot Recruiting. Join over 1,200 State Farm agents in putting your recruiting on autopilot. Any successful insurance agent will tell you how important team is. Finding those rockstar team members doesn't happen when left to chance. It happens through consistent recruiting. You never know when you're going to lose a team member, and the key to an incredible team is constantly searching for the best talent. Autopilot Recruiting is a continuous recruiting service where you'll be assigned a recruiter that has been trained to recruit on your behalf every business day. This recruiter will take over and revamp your career plug, send out assessments, do prescreen phone interviews, and schedule your in-office interviews. All you need to do is to show up and give a thumbs up or a thumbs down. This ongoing service is extremely affordable and a no-brainer for taking your insurance agency to the next level. Listeners of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, go to autopilotrecruiting.com and use the code Club Capital to get started. Again, autopilotrecruiting.com. And use the code CLUBCAPITAL to get started. So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world, yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we've got a recast of an episode I did with Scott Greats. He's an awesome business owner, entrepreneur, and had just a lot of really good— I remember key takeaways that were things that you could implement in your business right away. So we thought we would recast this episode for all of you. For some of you, you are new listeners, and certainly since we first initially released this episode with Scott, we've added on several hundred new listeners to the podcast. So anyway, enjoy this recast with Scott Grates.

This podcast is brought to you by Autopilot Recruiting. Join over 1,200 State Farm agents in putting your recruiting on autopilot. Any successful insurance agent will tell you how important team is. Finding those rockstar team members doesn't happen when left to chance. It happens through consistent recruiting. You never know when you're going to lose a team member, and the key to an incredible team is constantly searching for the best talent. Autopilot Recruiting is a continuous recruiting service where you'll be assigned a recruiter that has been trained to recruit on your behalf every business day. This recruiter will take over and revamp your CareerPlug, send out assessments, do pre-screen phone interviews, and schedule your in-office interviews. All you need to do is to show up and give a thumbs up or a thumbs down. This ongoing service is extremely affordable and a no-brainer for taking your insurance agency to the next level. Listeners of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, go to autopilotrecruiting.com and use the code Club Capital to get started. Again, autopilotrecruiting.com and use the code Club Capital to get started.

Scott, welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Thanks for having me, guys. Absolutely.

It's a pleasure to have you here, Scott.

Looking forward to it.

We always like to start with people's background and origin stories. So why don't you give us, how did you get to where you are today? Just kind of take us back from wherever you want to begin and lead us forward to the present day.

Yeah, absolutely. So my degree was in journalism. I was going to be the next great sportswriter. And what happened to me is I acquired a lot of debt in college and I realized, I'm going to date myself here, but the newspaper was starting people around $6 an hour when I got out of college and I said, well, that's not a winning formula. And so I was one day reading the paper, again, dating myself. And there was a posting right next to college for a retail furniture sales position. And I said, well, geez, how hard can that be, right? Selling some sofas and whatnot. And what I found out, it was very difficult. In fact, it was one of the most difficult sales jobs I ever had. And I cut my teeth in retail and spent a couple of years there before moving on into some higher-level sales. But my background's interesting. I've been a victim of circumstance a few different times. I went from retail into real estate, sold home construction, became one of one of the top 5% producers nationally with a pretty large home builder. And then the housing bubble hit. And Chris, I know you kind of lived through that down in the DC area. That's where I was at the time. And we moved back home to central New York. My wife and I, we had our first child and we said we wanted to be around family. I got into the mortgage industry, worked my butt off there for a few years and became a top 5% producer in the mortgage world. And then the financial crisis hit and in 2008, I was one of 6,500 people to lose my job with the company I was with. And a window closes, a door opens. And I was just sick of working so hard for other companies to ultimately just be a name and number on a spreadsheet. And I wanted to do my own thing. And just by chance, we were having dinner with some friends and one of the friends was a team member at a pretty large captive insurance agency. And she said, hey, let's do our own thing. And it was kind of like laugh, laugh over a couple of drinks. Then I went home and I'm like, you know what? That's not the worst idea. I was intrigued by the residual. I'd always been in the month-to-month grind of sales. And so I pulled different. I started recruiting. I started calling all the major insurance companies and kind of pitched myself to the recruiters and created a new market opportunity within the town I lived in. And that was in 2009. And so 11 years later, Here I am. So, uh, it's kind of neat because coming in external, I didn't know the difference between comp and collision when it came to insurance, but I did sales and I knew there was a very specific needs-based, value-based sales process that I had used at a high level in real estate. And then again, in mortgages to be successful. And I knew if I applied it to insurance, I'd find the same level of success here. And that has been the case. Hopefully I'm not a curse. Hopefully I don't bring down the entire insurance industry like I did mortgages and real estate, but that's the story and here we are today. Wow.

What a story that is. Yeah, definitely can relate to the housing bubble crisis. In fact, I actually had two jobs prior to coming to Club Capital. I was in the mortgage business myself. And number one, congrats for being in the top 5% in your company. And I believe you said in the country because that in mortgages are very, very cutthroat and very competitive. So the fact that you were good, you know, that's a big accolade. So congrats on that. When I was speaking to Bradley about you coming on board, he mentioned that you're big on winning the day, on winning the moment. Can you elaborate on exactly what you mean by that?

Yeah, absolutely. One thing I learned when I started looking at my agency and then kind of transitioning into training and coaching other agents is we put so much emphasis on annual goals. And annual goals are certainly important, but what 2020 especially has taught us is that we don't have the capacity, we don't have crystal ball, we don't know, there's too many variables when we start planning for a year. So listen, it's good to know what the annual goal is, it's good to meet as a team and discuss, come up with actions and activities around how we plan on getting there, but then we chunk everything into very small pieces. And we work off of the 12-week year, which I stole from Brian Moran's book. I've been using that for years, but then even the 12-week year was too long. And so we started looking at, all right, what does a successful week need to look like with this week period? And then I realized, hey, listen, people like kind of bailing in Fridays or they'll get 2, 3 days in a row and they'll kind of take their foot off the gas. And so I really broke it down to this idea that and I'm a big sports guy. No different than when you leave a ballgame like last night, you know— well, this is going to air later, so the World Series reference— but you know that the Dodgers won the game, right? The Dodgers won the World Series. Why? Because there's a time. We look at innings in baseball. We look at 60 minutes in football. Then there's a scoreboard. And so, my thing became with the win-the-day mindset is when my team leaves at 5 o'clock each night, do they know if they won or lost that game, won or lost that day? The clock becomes easy to track, but what's the scoreboard look like? And so really, we've broken it down not only to the day, but to every single conversation and interaction within that day. How do we optimize? How do we maximize? How do we go wider, dig deeper into each of those conversations to have winning conversations, which will ultimately drive us that winning day. And so each morning, the way we do this is, and I don't tell my team what their goals need to be. The team knows because they build their own business plan. They have their own actions and activities that they've created. They've made these commitments. But then from an accountability standpoint, what we do is each morning we have truly just a 5-minute standup meeting. And a lot of these through COVID have been electronically. Where we share with each other, here are the 1, 2, or 3 things that I absolutely positively will get done today. These are my essentials. This is my essential list. This is what I'm going to commit to. And then they go out and they either do it or they don't. But then the next morning we start with, hey, yesterday I said I was going to get this, this, and that done. Here were my results. And our goal is zero zeros. Whatever we set for a goal, we never want to say the word zero. We want to get at least one in every category that we talk about. We want to win each of those. And these are all positive, right? These are win or lose, because failure is okay as long as we fail forward and learn. So we kind of share with each other. That's the accountability piece. Here was my commitment to the team. Here's what I did, right? We high-fived the wins. We talk about what could have went better with the losses, but ultimately They know if they won or lost that day. They put a big W on the calendar, which hangs in the break room next to their picture. And our goal is to create a whole chain of W's, winning days, build that momentum. And quite frankly, just don't break the chain, which is what we have posted on the wall. So every time we get another W, we don't want to have to start over. So we have that focus to win every single day. So it becomes an accountability piece to make that commitment, share it, verbalize it, right? So it's one thing to have the goal, another thing to write it down, but then the power comes in verbalizing that to the team. Hey, here's my commitment. Here's what I'm going to do to help this team move forward today. And then the accountability piece comes tomorrow when I know that I've got to stand back up in front of you and tell you how I did. And you'll find that Type A's, productive people, people who want to win, the people we want to hire and want on our team, They rather just get it done than come with the excuse as to why they did. And so, it's been a pretty powerful exercise. And I know that's a long answer, but that's how we go about that.

No, that's fantastic. I mean, I've got a lot of questions about this and I completely agree with so much of what you just mentioned. A few things. Look, win the day has gotten thrown around a lot as a kind of a catchphrase. I think the University of Tennessee football team has talked about win the day. And so, that's not uncommon. But what is uncommon is the way that you've wrapped that mindset with some additional skill sets and tool sets, right? So we talk about mindset, skill set, tool set in our coaching program. And I love what you've been able to do is take that concept, that mindset, and that daily huddle and actually wrap it around a structure so that your team can be committed to it. So here's my question. There has been a lot of people that have tried to implement daily huddles and have not been able to do it. They try to do it, they have an idea. And so, how long have you been doing the daily huddles? And what is your recommendation for an agency owner who hears this and says, "Man, that's a really good idea.

I think I want to do that.

That makes sense for me to be able to take—" Even if they're running their business off of a quarterly rhythm, to your point, things slack off in a week. So, you've broken it down to that daily concept. But if somebody wants to implement that in their business, what are your recommendations for them to be able to actually get traction on that versus it's just another good idea that they try doing and it falls by the wayside.

Yeah, I love the question, Bradley, and it's something that we fight ourselves all the time is the personal accountability, right? And another phrase I love to throw out there is what I refer to as the knowledge-action gap. As agents, we become knowledge junkies. We love to learn things and to know things, but if we don't do anything with it, if we don't take action, the knowledge is just wasted energy, frankly, right? We talk about non-negotiables. And there are certain things that just have to be non-negotiable. And this idea of win the day, and I piggyback that with, listen, success is an everyday thing. It's not a once in a while thing. It's not because we're running a promotion thing. Not because I just heard this guy on a podcast and it made sense and we should do this and then it fizzles out. So there has to be certain non-negotiables. There has to be this mindset and focus around success being an everyday thing. And understand there's about 250 workdays in the year. And we tend to overthink what is a pretty simple business. Because if you take your numbers and you just multiply them, one activity, one action per team member, and if you've got 3 or 4 team members, that becomes 1,000 actions and activities if you're consistently doing it over 250 days. And so the answer to your question, if you're looking for a tip or trick or mindset around this, you have to have an accountability partner. And it's no different than going to a gym, right? I'm in Central New York. It's cold up here. It's dark. It's like a kind of a miserable place for 4 or 5 months out of the year in the winter. And so if Bradley and I commit to each other that we're going to be at the gym at 6:00 AM tomorrow, okay, I'm going to wake up. It's going to be cold. It might be snowing. I probably don't want to get out of bed at 5:00, 5:15 to meet him at 6:00. But you know what? I know Bradley's going to be there. And so, because of that, I push myself and I'm there for him. Now, if I didn't have Bradley waiting for me at the gym at 6:00 AM, would I go? Maybe, maybe not. And we love to pound our chest and say, "Well, I'm the toughest on myself," or, "I'm my own hardest critic," and I'm calling BS because we're not. We're the easiest on ourselves. We give ourselves passes and we start justifying that we're not doing things. "Well, it's not a big deal." I'll be there tomorrow, or I went yesterday. Or so my suggestion would be partner up with a like-minded agent to implement this and say, hey, we're going to commit to doing this and share results with one another and have the courage to look each other in the eye and say, I'm not going to be easy on you. And I don't want you to be easy on me. Right? No time for pity parties here. Let's have some tough love and get this thing done.

I love that. Before we transition to the next big topic I wanted to discuss with you, I don't know if you knew this whenever you picked up the— about don't break the chain, but Jerry Seinfeld, early in his career—

is that where you got that from? Yeah, completely stolen from Jerry Seinfeld. Yeah, I love it. I love it.

I love it. Okay, well then, since you brought it up, tell our listeners that story about Jerry Seinfeld and about his concept of don't break the chain.

Yeah, I mean, listen, the comedy circuit is a grind, and tells a great story. Sure, it's on YouTube or out there somewhere. I'm not even sure where I heard it, but but it's like the business we're in, cutthroat, competitive, and certainly not easy, right? And so he made the commitment to himself that he was going to write material every single day, that there was going to be no excuses, no reason, right? He was going to control his own actions and activities. There's so many things we can't control, but we can control our actions and activities. And he set the goal to write new material, whether it be for the sitcom that wasn't a thing yet, or just the, jokes or whatever. And he had a big calendar on his wall and he put a red X on every day that he wrote material. And he said, as long as I don't break that chain and I keep writing new material every single day, day in, day out, good things are going to happen. And obviously they did for him. So that's— yeah, I stole them like all of my stuff, Bradley. I mean, I'm just a compilation of all of the great ideas from people in my past, for sure.

Well, I mean, same thing with me, same thing with Chris, same thing for a lot of us. I mean, we are a product of the experiences and the books that we read and the people we surround ourselves with. And so, I don't think it's stolen. I think it's just borrowed. I mean, listen, the best way to learn is through experience, but it never has to be your experience. That's why we can read books and listen to podcasts and hear from people like yourself. All right. So, I want to throw something in here. There's a great book. I've referenced this book before, but it's called The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, and he talks about resistance. And I think that's a fantastic— it's a short read. You can read it over the weekend. The Weekend, where he talks about overcoming resistance. He's specifically talking about it from a writer's perspective. Everybody listening to this podcast may not be a writer, but there's a concept there of just getting started and continuing that grind and that discipline. If you're going to do this, maybe pick up that book and then obviously implement some of the strategies and tactics that Scott just went over. Scott, another thing that you mentioned whenever we were kind of talking about our podcast is needs-based selling. Really, one of the things I thought that was pretty interesting, the way that you mentioned this to me whenever we were talking prior to the podcast, is the use of story in your conversations, the use of story. So, talk to us about your concept and your thoughts around needs-based value selling and how you use story in your conversations. [Speaker:ADAM] Yeah, absolutely.

So, people buy based on emotion, not based on logic. And we have this, what I refer to as the curse of knowledge in our industry. We know so much about insurance and different products and policies and protection and how it all works. And we love to regurgitate this all over our prospects and customers. And it makes sense, but it doesn't move anybody. It's not emotional, right? And I use the car buying experience as the greatest example of this, because when you go onto a car lot, a car salesman's first goal is to get you behind the wheel for a test drive. And the reason is, as soon as you get in, right, you feel how the leather seats feel and you smell that new car smell. And then you start driving and it handles better than your car and it accelerates faster than your car. You like the way it makes you look and feel as you're driving it, right? Now, all of a sudden I'm on that lot and I'm like, hey, I went in there with $400 a month or whatever is my budget. And now this thing is like, man, I gotta have this car. And if it's gonna be $440, $450, now price becomes secondary because I'm emotionally attached to this vehicle. Well, in insurance, our product's not sexy. There's no sizzle, right? It's a logistical need and people kind of get it, But they don't buy based on logic, they buy based on emotion. So how do we create the sensory and this emotional attachment to our products so that people will move? And how do we take what is an invisible product, something we can't see, touch, feel, smell, it's an intangible, and how do we make it visible? How do we make it real? And the way we do this is through the use of story. And so I'll kind of do this in two parts if it's cool with you. The first thing I'll start with is kind of the ending. There's just two stories that I would encourage every listener to have: a story around liability and a story around personal injury. And then kind of branch off of each of those with all the things that can come up in situations that you've had or your company's had or other agents that you know have had. Because every single day across America, there's thousands of claims, right? Talk to a claims adjuster. With your company and get some of these stories, these real-life examples. And the other thing I'll encourage people to do when it comes to stories is never make the story about the person you're talking to, because as humans, we have a natural condition to never be at fault. Nothing's ever going to happen to us that's going to create a chink in our armor, so to speak. We're not going to get sick, we're not going to die, we're perfect drivers, we're never at fault, right? This is just the natural instinct. So as soon as we start telling people, hey, if you're ever in a situation where you're sued or you hit somebody or you do— you know, people like, wait, whoa, whoa, what are you talking about? That doesn't happen to me. Like, I'm a great driver, right? So what we do is we tell stories about other people without using their names. We say, hey, based on my experience— and we see claims every single day here at my agency. We insure over 4,000 great drivers like you. And as sure as the sun comes up tomorrow, I'm gonna have 1, 2, maybe 3 or more claims. At this agency in this community. Now, we never know whose day it's going to be. Could be mine, could be yours, could be someone else in the community, but there will be claims. And so it's my mission to make certain that when your day does come, you're 100% properly protected. You know exactly what you have and why you have it, because we've customized the coverage based on how you want to be taken care of at time of claim, because that's the insurance part of the insurance. Everyone wants to talk about cost upfront. Nobody wants to talk about cost when it comes to claims. What they want to talk about is, hey, Scott, how you gonna take care of me, right? What's the coverage piece of this look like? So what I'm gonna do with you is I'm gonna share a couple stories to bring to life things we've seen here at the agency, bring those situations to life, and then you tell me if you were ever in that situation, how would you want me to take care of you? And so that's how I frame it. And then I share a liability story, I share a personal injury story, And then it becomes what I refer to as option selling. I'm saying, hey, you have a couple options. If you ever find yourself in this situation, we can take care of it this way or this way, which one sounds better to you? And so then they are telling me exactly how they would want to be protected if they were in that situation, because now they can see it after I share the stories, they can see it, they can visualize it. They understand, they know the intersections I'm talking about. They may even know the accident or have an accident in mind and they can visualize it. And so, really, telling is not selling. We don't tell people what they need. We simply educate people. We guide them through a conversation. It's all about them, not us. We're just guiding and we're sharing facts and stats and data along the way to educate them. But ultimately, it's, "Hey, we insure everything in our lives, whether we realize it or not." And essentially, two different ways to do it. You can do it through an insurance agency, an insurance company where you make small monthly payments. And when something happens, the insurance company is going to come write a big check to make you whole again, to indemnify you. Or you can make those monthly payments and that becomes self-insurance. Now you don't have to make the monthly payments, but when something does happen, now you've got to take care of it financially. And I'm not here to tell you which is right or which is wrong. That's 100% up to you. My job is to make sure you understand how it works. Paint a picture of things that we've seen here in this community. And then you tell me how you'd want me to handle that. And so it takes the sales piece of it out of the equation and really just creates a value-based educational conversation where they are ultimately making the decision. I do business in a small town. I tell people all the time, I live here. I work here. I shop at the same Walmart. Yo, I'd rather not have your business than have it the wrong way. "And so when you need me the most, I want to deliver the highest level, but I can't do that unless you tell me how you want to be protected." And now the conversations on the backend become more comfortable when you're doing the right thing on the front end. Where do I sign? Man, I can't write out of state. I wish I could.

It's actually interesting that you talk about essentially quote unquote selling, but in reality you're just presenting them options via storytelling. I think that that's It's definitely a different approach from what I've heard in the past. Typically in the past I've heard of asking uncomfortable questions, like really getting to know the client and then asking some questions that can really hit home. Like, I'm not even going to get into it, but just very uncomfortable questions, which are good, by the way. Asking uncomfortable questions can allow the client to ask themselves, you know, like those questions that, just like you're saying, they would never see themselves in that situation, right? But it would be good to see if this were to happen, how would I want to be taken care of? Another way that we've heard of upselling is called your world presentation. I don't know if you've heard about it before. Yeah, absolutely. It's a different approach and it incorporates both and also the touch of storytelling. So good on you for that. I can definitely see why you were crushing it in mortgages now.

Well, you know, the funny thing, Chris, is I joke, but I'm serious. I tell people that, you know, listen, I just see we've got over 8,000 policies and we've never sold a single insurance policy. And I mean that sincerely. When you're doing it the way we— like, close, then you did it wrong on the front end, okay? Because the close just truly be the— you mentioned, I made a note here as you were talking because it was great, about the probing questions, right? And we call this disturbing complacency. And that is a piece of our sales process, right? This is a psychological journey that we take people through. And it's important for us to ask questions like, hey, Chris, tell me about who you're currently insured with. And they answer the question. And then I say, well, tell me about the coverages that you pay for each month and why were those coverages so important to you? Why did you choose those? Or how'd you go about selecting those? And our goal, frankly, is to get the person to admit they have no idea what they have or why they have it, right? Oh, I've got full coverage, or I've got what they gave me, or I've got what I had, or what my parents— whatever it is, right? And so we do use that piece of it in a nice way with those probing questions or conversational disturbing their complacency. And then we come back and we support them. We build them back up because the very next thing after they say they know what they have or why they have it, because that's uncomfortable for people. They don't want to admit that. I say, hey, Chris, we talk to dozens of people every single day that want to do business here at our agency. And I ask that question every single time. And the number one answer I get is people don't know what they have or why they have it. So don't feel bad. You're not alone. Okay. But that is a problem because I'm guessing you're spending a lot of money on your insurance every month, aren't you? And everyone says yes. And I say, so shouldn't you know what you have and why you have it? And they say yes. And we refer to this as the yes train, right? There's a tactical question to get them bobbleheading up and down and put them on that yes train throughout the process. And that's when we transition into our value statement, why we're different. Why we're better, and how this experience is going to be much different than everything else they've ever dealt with in insurance. And that's why we are who we are in this community, and that's why people want to do business with us. And then we set the agenda. We say, hey, the rest of our time I'm going to share— I'm going to be a couple boring but necessary questions. I'm going to share with you a couple stories about how insurance works when you need it most, and then you tell me exactly how you want to be protected, and I'll create a custom quote just for you. Does that sound good, Chris? Sounds excellent. And you're bobbleheading, right? You're saying, "Yeah." So that's the stuff that we work on every single day at the agency to make these conversations just sound comfortable and without having to sell.

So, I mean, I'm listening to, uh, talk right now and I'm wondering what the onboarding process for an employee is because it sounds like it's very structured. So I'm wondering how you train your employees and how you bring them on board. And the role that role play plays in your agency and how often you do it. Yeah. If you could please elaborate on that.

Yeah, absolutely. And again, you know what Bradley had asked earlier about the accountability piece and how agents kind of missed the boat on that, or they start it and then it fizzles out. You just hit on role playing and man, if I can name one differentiating factor in the agencies that are getting it done and the agencies that are continuing to struggle, is they're not practicing. And it's mind-boggling to me that we just expect to show up at 8:59 or 9 o'clock and just be on point and the best version of ourself. It is so counterintuitive with how professionals in every other industry act. And again, to use the sports reference, right? I mean, you watch any ball game at any level. My kid plays varsity soccer, high school, right? I mean, he was there an hour before last night's game warming up, taking shots. Practice and passing, right? I mean, hydrating. We focus on the things that we eat, and, but then as insurance professionals, we just show up and we just want to wing it. And we go, wow, how come we're not getting better? How come? So I'm belaboring the point, but it's a huge point is that practice absolutely positively has to be a non-negotiable at your agency. This is all muscle memory stuff. What you're hearing as I go through these scripts and word tracks with you is literally 20 years within different industries, but the same conversations, right? Just replace insurance with housing or insurance with mortgages. But it's really just all about you and how to guide you through this conversation to understand what's important to you. And then you tell me what you want and I'll provide some solutions for you. So 8:30 every morning, the team meets and that's non-negotiable whether I'm here or not. And most days I'm not now, but at 8:30, there's a just 5 minutes each. That's it. And again, people overthink roll. They think it has to be this big, huge production. No, man. We use a 10-step sales process. We use a 4-step referral process. We use a simple onboarding process. We use transition statements and value statements. So I might just say, hey, tomorrow, let's just work on our value statement, right? Or let's just work on our transition statements, or let's just work on our liability story, right? So each person takes something a little bit different and spends just 5 minutes or so speaking it, saying the words. Different than a major league baseball player off a tee, like a 6-year-old does, right? Or a golfer on the driving range. It's muscle memory. So now that first person that calls in, you call, or the walks in or whatever, you've already warmed up, you're primed, you're ready to go. You've said these things. And now what you're doing is you're a step ahead. You're already thinking, all right, where am I going with this next? What's the anticipated objection I'm going to get? And now I can be prepared. If you're not, If an objection ever stumps you, or if anything ever stumps you in this industry, it's because you're not prepared. Because there's only so many different ways conversations go. Let's not overthink what's a pretty simple business here, right? I mean, we're not putting people on the moon, right? We're talking about risk and how we protect against that. So preparation and yes, the role-playing. And if you don't like the word role-playing, practicing. If you're going to get better at anything in life, you got to practice. And agents just don't consistently, but it has to be a non-negotiable. And I would recommend the other mistake where they try doing certain days and just the whirlwind of the day kind of sucks you in. So anything you can do before hours or while the office is closed is much easier.

So a couple of things on that. Number one, I love the fact that you break it down into modules. That way you can be like, hey, today work on transitions, today work on referrals, today work on the intro, today work stories, etc. Doing that, it takes the fear that some people might have of like going through an entire interaction with their colleagues and allows them to actually work on what they actually need to work on. So it's good that you have modules and thank you for sharing that strategy with us. One thing that you talked about that I want to talk about as well is referrals. So once again, when speaking with Bradley, he was saying that you believe that referrals are the best source of leads, which definitely believe that as well. But you take it to another level. Can you talk about your process and mindset about referrals?

[Speaker:CHRIS_BREMER] Yeah, absolutely. Again, I spoke with people that I was never smart enough to overthink this business. What I did a couple years after starting is I really broke down— I'm not a big numbers guy. I kind of just go with feel and gut. And if things are going well, then I'm good with it. I don't overanalyze numbers and get caught up in that. But Being new market and external, after a couple years I realized something that was standing out in my business, which was I was broke. I was king of the spreadsheet. I was writing all this business, but I had no money. And I started breaking where the money was going and I realized I was about $45,000 per year in advertising and marketing. And then I started looking at my ROI in each category and where I was spending pretty much the least amount of money was on referrals and networking and centers of influence. And where I was getting the highest ROI was where I was spending the smallest amount of money. So again, didn't take an MBA from Harvard to figure out that maybe we should key in on this referral process a little bit. And so we burned the boats right around year 4, where we really got just about everything. We said, if we're going to do this at a high level, let's not fall back on reactive stuff. You know, internet leads, waiting for a lead to come in, mailers, waiting for someone to call in, right? And that's like goldfish stuff. We talk about the shark the goldfish. We're either going to go out and hunt food or going to wait to be fed. So, the shark mentality and burning the boats was, hey, we're going to live off referrals. We set a goal of 1,000 in a little tiny community here and I've only got a few team members. And I said, we're going to get 1,000 referrals in a year. And so, that was like our 4-minute mile. And the very first place we started was with our customer experience. And again, in an overly commoditized, highly competitive industry, how are we going to stand out, right? Seth Godin wrote the book, The Purple Cow, referred to marketing clutter. How are you going to cut through marketing clutter and be noticed in a field of black and white and brown cows? You've got to be purple. And so the first thing we did is we really honed in on our customer experience, what the agency looks like, smells like, feels like. I shopped my own agency, shopped other agencies to see what other people were doing and to figure out how are we going to be diff— how are we going to be better? And the other thing we really hone in with on the referrals is this idea of earning referrals. All right. We talk about we have to earn referrals. We are not entitled to them. If we do the bare bones minimum, which is what so many agencies out there are doing, they're doing data entry, they're doing apples to apples crap, right? They're just data in. All right. Compared to what you have, here's what I can do. And if they can give you the same or better coverage and a lower rate and give you a little bit of value proposition and you move like that's not sales, that's just Fishing a barrel, right? My third grade can do that. So I said, you know, how are we going to wow people? How are we going to blow people away to the point where people that do business at my agency leave here and think, I'm glad I do business with them and I want to tell my friends and family about it. And people who don't do business here yet are thinking, damn, I want to do business with that agency. And so we really got deep into every specific piece of the customer interaction. So that's where we start. And then I also challenge the team. I challenge everyone who's listening. To think about who you refer. I mean, if we do the bare bones minimum and I say, "Hey, Chris, for a $10 gas card or coffee card, can I have the names of everyone that's closest to you?" Chris is going to be like, "No, I'm not going to give that up for a $10 card." But we do this every single day. And so, I look at who I refer and I'm like, "There's like 4 or 5 people in my life that I refer with confidence and everyone else." You know, if someone says, hey, do you have someone in this industry? I'm like, nah, not really. Because if they don't do a fantastic job, that reflects poorly on me. They're like, Scott, why'd you refer me to that person? Right? So I want just the opposite effect. When people refer someone to this agency, I want people to be like, damn, Chris, I'm so happy you sent me to them. That was the greatest customer experience ever. It was so much better than anything I've ever experienced in insurance. So this whole idea of earning it, you've got to do everything right on the front end. So that when you get to the end, how with confidence you can ask for the names of friends and family because now you're worthy. A couple of little tips and tricks we do with customers with the onboarding process, have them take out their cell phones and put our agency number into their cell phone. We say, hey, look, we're 24/7. You need anything, here's the phone number. So I want that to be in your contacts while they have their contacts out. We present them with this customer satisfaction survey. And this is an opportunity for my team. This is where we sell. And I say all the time, we only sell two things. We sell the power of the appointment, whether it's face-to-face or spend some time over the phone, and we sell the importance of the referral. And this is how they make their living. This is how they feed their families. If I did such a fantastic job for you, if this experience was at such a high level for you that you feel I'm worthy of good scores on this satisfaction survey, this is how Scott evaluates my performance and pays, right? And so, I'm not asking you to lie, but the nicer things that he sees on here, the better it is for me. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to put together your welcome to the agency packet, get you your ID cards, a couple things for you to sign. While I'm working on that, if you can fill this out, that would mean the world to me. And they leave the room. And that satisfaction survey can say whatever you want it to. But they're all going to be things that are going to have customer circle and yes, they're all yes, no questions. They circle yes, yes, yes, 5 or 6 of them. And then they say, hey, did I do a good enough job where you'd be comfortable recommending some of your friends and family to me? Yes or no? All right. Circle yes. Then it's if yes, name, number, relationship, 3 or 4 lines we put on there and we find that people will fill those out. And so that's a process that we use with new customers. With current customers, we do just— we ask for one. What I found is if you ask for 2 or 3 or 4 referrals, sometimes you get none. If you ask for one, sometimes you'll get 2 or 3 or 4. And the way that works is you come in and just— it's something as simple as making a payment or a vehicle change or whatever. We're engaging you in conversation. We're offering you a beverage. We're offering you a snack. We're giving you some sort of gift from the agency, asking about your family. And then before you leave, okay, we always express gratitude. Okay. We say, hey, Chris, we know you've got a million options there when it comes to insurance. We just want you to know we're thankful and grateful that you continue to choose us. And let me ask you a quick question. Is there one person that you know that is as awesome as you are that maybe we can have a conversation with about insurance too? And then we ask for that person and then we introduce the gift card or whatever your promotion is. We say, awesome. Now, thanks for referring your brother to me. If he accepts a quote, doesn't need to buy anything from us, but if he just listens to a quote that we can offer, we give you a $10 gift card for every single one of those. And what will happen is sometimes people are like, oh really? Well, here, call my sister or call Bradley or whatever it might be. So that's the second piece of it. And then the last piece of it, and I'll shut up, is the centers of influence. We have a list of 100 or so, right? The list changes each month, but about 100 centers of influence, especially focused on mortgage brokers and realtors and those who work with first-time home buyers are fantastic. Car dealers, attorneys, barbers, beauticians, auto repair facilities, anyone in our neighborhood that's talking to people. We have a team of 5 including me. We each take 20 of those businesses or thereabouts and we divide them by 4. So once a week, about 2 hours a week, helps get us out of the agency, gets us off the island, so to speak. We go out and we're not, again, we're not selling anything. These are just relationship visits. We go in, in the winter with little agency ice scrapers, pens, pads, obviously business cards. In the summer, we got like hand koozies. This time of year, we've got calendars for 2021, but we always go in with a gift and we always just go in and have a conversation and we say, hey, keep us in mind. Perhaps someone that we can help, we'd love to do that. And so what happens is when we break up this list of 100, divide it by 4, we're seeing 25 centers of influence, 5 apiece from each team member, consistently on a rotating 4-week basis. So every 4 weeks, we're through the list of 100, and then we're kicking those back up again. And this isn't quick and easy. OK, again, it takes a commitment because these people that you're going to for the first time probably already have relationships with people, and that's OK. We stay in front of them, top of mind awareness, right? If you ever have someone who's looking for insurance, here's where the best option in this community, and we give them our value statement. We leave them some goodies. We say, hey, well, if it's okay with you, we'll stop back in 3, 4 weeks and just kind of bring some more goodies for you. We've been doing that for years. And so, you know, the center of influence referral influx is huge. And so between the onboarding, current customer pivot that we use, to referrals and the centers of influence, we land between 800 and 1,000 referrals each year. And most importantly, we've got to earn them. We got to be that purple cow, do things different and better. So that's the process, and it's really just a mindset and a culture that we've built around referrals.

Yeah, yeah, honestly, that's exactly what I was about to say. I mean, there was so much gold in that mindset, skill set, when you talk about that, and then the tool set. I mean, you talked about the document that you use, the yes/no, but most importantly, it starts with the mindset that you've established in your office and the culture around all of those things. But the mindset, skill set, tool set, I think was fantastic. Scott, thanks for sharing all of that. I mean, that was fantastic. We've had a lot of guests on the podcast talking about different angles to come at marketing, and referrals has come up at several different times, whether it was a guest agent we've had on or a coach or consultant. And I just love the specifics that you've been able to give there. So thanks so much for giving so much value. Absolutely. I do have to say, go back, we were talking about practice earlier, about role play. I really wanted to cue up the Allen Iverson. We're talking about practice YouTube video. That's what I wanted to pull in. We're talking about practice. Practice, not the game, not the game, practice.

There are a few exceptions, right? I mean, if you are as talented as Iverson was, then I guess you can have a little less practice. But, you know, truth be known, he had plenty of practice. Through the years.

Oh, that's very true. He was already at the pros.

No doubt about that.

No doubt about that. All right, Scott, man, this has been fantastic. And I hope that we'll be able to have you on in the future. But let's go ahead and transition into the world-famous E9 rapid-fire questions. You ready?

I don't know if I'm ready, but I'll give it a shot.

What's the last book that you read?

Well, actually, I revisited The 4-Hour Workweek. I've read it before, but Tim Ferriss' 4-Hour Workweek.

Just so you know, that's my favorite book and I have it in multiple languages because I have picked up lessons from him, you know, like to learn other languages from it. So great book. What book do you recommend the most to others or would you recommend?

The Slight Edge, hands down. The Jeff Olson, The Power of Small Things. And this goes back to winning the day, right? That this is the small, seemingly insignificant thing are easy to do, they're easier not to do. And that's the problem that too many of us fall into. So The Slight Edge is a must-read.

I have to say, I've mentioned a lot of books on this podcast. Every podcast I mention books, and it's always commented about my library that I have at my home and the books that I have. But let me tell you, The Slight Edge book is the single book, along with one of my friends, that got me into reading because it talked about the concept of, can you read 10 pages a day? And I thought, well, yeah, I can read 10 pages a day, right?

Remember that, Scott?

And it was just because of that one thing that I fell in love with reading, just— I don't know how many years ago it was. And that one thing has changed my life. I love it. All right, if there was a movie made about Scott Grates, who would you want to play in that movie? Who would you want to play you in that movie?

Listen, it wouldn't even make sense or fit because we have almost nothing in common, but Matthew McConaughey, in my opinion, is the coolest dude out there. Going back to the days, the Confused days when he was Wooderson and the cool Southern drawl. And like I said, he's tall, I'm short, he's skinny, I'm fat. But if I could pick one person, it would be him.

He just came on Joe Rogan's podcast on Spotify recently.

I don't know if you've listened to that.

Some of the Joe Rogan podcasts I don't care for that much, But that is a fantastic interview with Matthew McConaughey. I actually learned a lot about him and have a lot more respect. So give that podcast a listen, actually.

I'll check that out. I haven't heard it. Thank you.

Yeah, he actually talked about his basic computer use case, so would definitely recommend checking it out. What do you do every day that you wish could be automated?

Emails. I refer to it as email jail, and I've gotten really good about creating email blocks where I only check them and reply to them in certain blocks. But if I could fully automate, I would almost love a personal assistant to just take care of my emails and only send me what I absolutely positively have to see and respond to. So I would never open my own email again. Tim Ferriss. Yeah, right. There you go. Piggybacking off of the Four— you can tell I'm reading The 4-Hour Workweek.

Who would you like to sit— let's say that we're able to travel again to Europe. I love Europe. I know Chris does. Let's say you're able to travel to Europe, you got a 10-hour flight. Other than Matthew McConaughey, who would you like to sit next to on that flight and why?

Is this dead or alive? Yeah, sure. I'll get really funky on you here because planes weren't even around back then, but Abraham Lincoln. I'm big on leadership, big on leadership courage and doing the right thing even when it's not the popular thing. And I think there's a dude that, you know, obviously he was assassinated, but if he wasn't, he was probably gonna put himself into an early grave just with the amount of stress that he carried. And the whole Civil War era is interesting to me. And yeah, again, just, I guess that would be my answer just as far as leadership, leadership courage, putting others ahead of self for a betterment of the world. You won't be around to see it, that ripple effect of change, which he helped create.

If you could only eat one for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Pizza. You're in New York, of course that's the answer. I'm in New York. I'm of Italian descent, you know, it's, uh, and hence why I'm overweight. But, uh, yeah, I love every pizza. There's thin crust dish, put seafood on it, put pineapples on it. I know people get weirded out, but I'll take it all.

All right, pineapple.

So what's your most unusual talent?

You know, This might sound funny at the end of this because I did probably a lot of what sounds like boasting and bragging, but I am pretty humble. And so I guess my most unique talent would be just the humbleness and humility and being able to take somebody who doesn't see things my way and through just sincere, heartfelt conversation be able to at least have them entertain what I'm thinking or listen to what I'm You know what I'm saying?

What's something that I would never guess about you?

Well, I'm not going to try to get too deep on you here, but I battle social anxiety. And it's kind of funny because I put myself out there and obviously 2020 slowed this down, but I do a lot of in-person speaking, put myself in front of hundreds of people. Why I love coaching, teaching arena is because it's uncomfortable for me and I preach that to improve, we have to go beyond fear. And on the other side of fear is where some of the greatest things that we ever accomplish in life lie. And I say, "Placency is the enemy of progress." And I said, "To live that, I've got to do more of the things that scare me the most." And so things like this, and then putting myself in front, you know, I— someone calls and says, "Hey, we've got 200 agents at a conference. Would you like to speak to them?" I'm thinking about going, In my mind, no, man, that's scary as hell. But I say yes, I'll do it because it pushes me to get better.

It is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast after all. So what is the best leadership advice you've ever been given? Andre Morrison.

I go back to 2004 when I was in real estate. I was having a rough patch and he sat me down and he was my manager at the time. He said, look, he goes, you are never going to be as good as you when things are going well, and you're never going to be as bad as you think when things aren't going well. And it was really the introduction to this concept of peak valleys. We've been throwing out a lot of books, right? That's a Spencer Johnson book. But he told me, he says, Scott, don't let the highs get too high and the lows get too low. And that was 16 years ago. It rings true every single day. And so as a reminder, when things are going well, you got to ride that wave of momentum. Right. But you also have to anticipate that good times don't last, right? There's going to be a valley. But then when you're in that valley, you also have to realize that they don't last either. And so keeping that even keel and just understanding, living life with intention and having that intentional mindset that good times are great, but there can be some silver linings in bad times and just knowing that this too shall pass and we'll get through and get to a better place.

Scott, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, and I hope that you'll be able to come back and join us again soon. If somebody wants to get in touch with you, obviously you wrote a book, and if somebody wants to be able to pick up that book or wants to be able to get in touch with you, if you're able to help them or just have a chat, what's the best way for them to do that?

Yeah, absolutely. My website is agencyoptimization.com. The book is Insurance Agency Optimization, but if you go to agencyoptimization.com, you'll find ways to connect with me. If you want the book, I do it for just shipping and handling. So it's $6.95. I'll sign it for you personally, mail it. And my email is scott@agencyoptimization.com if anyone wants to connect with me personally.

Thanks, Scott. Appreciate you coming on. Yeah, thanks so much, Bradley.

Thank you, Chris. This is a lot of fun. I appreciate you. Really enjoyed it.

Thank you. Hey, thanks to our podcast sponsors that allow us to be able to provide hopefully all of you some tremendous value in your workday. Autopilot Recruiting, Club Capital, DirectClicks, and of course Coach P Consulting. Yes, they have been partners of ours, but they are truly some of the best in the business. If you're looking to be able to bring on some A-players, is what I love to be able to call them, you know the importance of doing that on a regular basis. But if you've heard this— me say this often— but have you actually taken the steps necessary You have a really documented process, step-by-step process in your business. Awesome. But for a lot of people, they know they need to be doing this, but they just don't want to go through the whole process. They don't want to go through looking and reviewing all the resumes. They just want to get down to get me some really good people in front of me so I can make some decisions to move the business forward. None better than Autopilot Recruiting. Alex and the team have really solved this problem. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com. Let them know that you heard about them on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. There's no surprise the reason why David has been one of the fastest growing, not just business owners, but also his coaching company is because the value that he's bringing. $250 a month to be able to hear what his team is doing twice a month and put your team members on that call. Tremendous value that he can help you to be able to unlock in your business. Go to Coach Pete Consulting. Inc.com. I was talking to somebody on the team at DirectClicks today, Ian, and he's an account manager with them, and they just do a fantastic job of diving into the numbers, knowing what it is that you're trying to achieve, and optimizing your campaigns. That's what they call them, their campaigns, to be able to make sure that you're getting the highest ROI in the marketing dollars that you spend. If you haven't already, go to directclicksinc.com. .com. I just today recorded an episode with one of the new managers with Club Capital. We were talking about what's 101, 201, 301, 301, 301, 301, 401 MBA level financial management, what would that be. So I'm excited for you guys to see or hear that episode with her next week. But regardless, even at any of those levels, you want to be able to have, you know, somebody that you're partnering with to be able to deliver the financials to you so you can do what only you uniquely do. Many of you have read the book The E-Myth by Gerber, and he talks about working on the business, not in the business. And a lot of people get that. Well, what does that actually mean? Well, one of them is, is what I would consider measuring time. And so that's actually you maybe at Starbucks with your earphones in, reviewing numbers and making decisions not just based off production sales numbers but off of your financials as well. And Club Capital can help you do that. Go to club.capital, book a no-obligation demo. You can see everything on the website. If you go there, exactly how much it costs and what the deliverables are, and what the investment is for you to be able to buy back some of your time. All right, everyone, till next episode.

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation? Check them out at club.capital.