Episode 267: High Level to Eye Level with Michael & Courtney Weaver

Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have Michael and Courtney Weaver, founders of Weaver Sales Academy. We had Michael on— gosh, it's been quite a while. We'll actually link it in our show notes, the episode that he came on. And we talk about all things in this episode, from high-level to eye-level things. I love whenever conversations go from, you know, theoretical, what's kind of happened from a macroeconomic perspective, all the way down to what are some things that I can take away listening to this episode when I'm working out, driving home, cutting the grass, hitting golf balls, whatever, and actually implement in the business. And I think this is going to be exactly one of those episodes full of a lot of different strategies, some mindset things, and tactics for you to implement right away. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Michael and Courtney Weaver.

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 advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation? Check them out at club.capital. Ambition is the first step towards success. It's time to level up your agency, and Coach P Consulting will help you do just that by using the same strategies he used to sell over 700 life insurance policies in 2021 alone. Now, this is not your regular one-and-done type coaching. You'll get personalized coaching 2 days a week, every week of the month, and you'll get a live look behind the scenes of his team training and an office that's performing at the highest level. There's a reason Coach P Consulting is the fastest growing coaching company for insurance agency owners in the country. Coach P will train your team alongside his own and show you the exact steps they are taking to achieve Chairman Circle, Exotic Travel, and Multi-Line Presence Club, and be one of the few agents to be selected to have a third office. So whether your goal is to be at the top of your local market or amongst the best in the country, this training will give you the strategies and the tactics to get there. For just $250 a month, you'll get high-level coaching each week from someone who is already getting it done at that level, and his strategies work, and it's time to put them to work for you. Sign up at coachpconsulting.com and get your first full month for free when you mention the Club Capital leadership podcast.

Michael and Courtney, welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

What's going on, Bradley?

Hi, Bradley. We're excited to be here.

I'm excited to have you back, actually I should say. Welcome back to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Hey, at least I'm not flying solo this time.

That's right, you have your partner in crime.

Partner in crime is here. The, the brains behind the operation is here today.

That's right, that's right. Uh, Well, before we hit record, we were talking about just kind of strategy of the, of the conversation. And I think let's kind of get, let's go high level. Um, I, I like the idea, by the way, of going high level in conversations and then kind of bringing it down to eye level of like, okay, that, that's good, but then let's bring it down to some tactical things. But I think that I haven't had some conversations in quite a while about what is going on from a macroeconomic perspective with all insurance companies that's happened over the last 6 months or so, maybe, maybe year. And so I think it's actually good timing for us to have that conversation. Uh, Michael, I'll ping you first. What are you seeing out there? I mean, you've got your pulse, you're always reading articles on a daily basis. What are you seeing out there, um, and what are some of the challenges that we're facing now and probably going to face for the next couple years?

Yeah, absolutely. Great question, Bradley. So right now, the P&C industry is under— it's under a lot of stress. I mean, last year, just about every P&C provider out there took a loss. I believe State Farm was around $14-15 billion, and everybody else followed suit. I mean, it's not like they were the only ones out there losing money on the P&C side. So I mean, just here recently, Travelers announced that they're shutting down Now, they didn't come out and say we're shutting down all new business production, but with the parameters they, they put out there, they basically are telling their agents like, we're not accepting any new business. State Farm just made, just made an announcement in California that they're shutting down the fire and commercial lines. What else? Allstate, they're completely out of California. Farmers has kind of halted some of their, some of their P&C production in California. You got Florida. So many companies last year went on their— insurance companies are going under. The insurance companies don't have enough insurance to pay for the insurance claims they're experiencing. So a lot of this is from obviously catastrophic losses.

All right.

Some states' regulations just aren't, aren't great for insurance companies. And so that's why you're seeing states— insurance companies pull out of states like California, New York. You've got some, some buying limits going on there with a lot of insurance companies. And so, and then inflation doesn't help anything. I mean, it's really the a whirlwind that just happened with COVID So COVID happened and every insurance company, bam, let's lower the rates because not as many people are out on the roads. Well, then what happened is a ton of money got pumped into the economy, which no one would have known. That caused inflation to skyrocket. Not only that, then more people got out, back out on the roads, more claims and more catastrophic losses. So it's just like the trifecta of everything that could have went bad in the P&C industry. Did go bad. And from everything that I'm looking at, no one really knows when inflation— I mean, this is going to be a really hard, I think, 24 to 36 months for insurance companies and how to actually rate their customers correctly.

All right. Yeah. And if you think about that, thank goodness I'm not the person having to make those calls about like what to do from a big picture perspective, you know, I mean, Courtney, I'm really curious. I, from the conversation that we had, uh, several weeks ago when I came on your podcast, I think you, you really strike me as someone who really is in touch with the mindset of certain things. So I'm curious, how much, if any, should an agency owner give their, you know, stress about some of these things? And what should the— how can they— what's the right mindset to have? I'll just ask it that way.

You know, I think entrepreneurship is kind of like the Resilience Olympics. I think, um, anytime you open up a business, there's always the mindset that you have to be willing to look for the window when the door shuts. Like, that is always your mindset. And I think especially in insurance, you have to control the controllables because We are built on change. Rates are going to change. The underwriting change, like, changes our industry. So I think when you look at that, you have to look at where's the opportunity. So if P&C is changing, rates are changing, what's the next thing that you're going to offer? Well, you need to start looking at your financial services because that industry is solid. So this is really, as scary as it can seem, from a mindset perspective, it's giving you an opportunity to step into an area that you may not have paid a lot of attention to. So I always look— I like to look at things as what's the lesson here and what's the best possible outcome, even if it sucks. Like, what can I take from this? Where's my window?

Mm-hmm. Michael, what are some very specific things? Now, I think I want to ask this from the perspective of someone who is not in one of those states that is having major things like— I can't remember what companies had just completely pulled out of California. That in and of itself would be a whole conversation. But let's not talk about that. Let's talk about major rate pressure that somebody is feeling where you've got a lot of upset customers. The team is being stressed to the max. They're overworked, right? I mean, you get all this like super much more higher churn that's happening. What are a few things that you're sharing with your clients about what they can do? So now I'm kind of pulling this back down to a day-to-day thing to be able to start addressing some of those.

Yeah, that's a really great question. And kind of what Courtney said, it's controlling the controllables, focusing on the opportunity.

All right.

Even in the states that you are affected, can you get licensed in another state? Where does the company want to grow? Where are they profitable? What zip codes are they most competitive in? So I would say that even in some of those states where it's really tough right now, what states can you focus on? But let's, let's focus on the states that aren't affected necessarily and being shut down right now, but everyone's being affected by rates right now. Yeah, first and foremost, attitude is everything. Um, and so not only does it start with you, the leader, but that's going to that's going to fall into your team as well. And so you got to have the right players on your team. I mean, if you have, if you have someone in the office that is constantly negative, constantly bringing the team down, that person's got to go, um, or they got to have a mindset shift. All right, that, that's the first step that you want to take with that. But I am a firm believer, look, we can talk production, we can talk tactics, we can talk strategy, but it all starts with you. It all starts with the mindset. It all starts with the attitude. It all starts with being optimistic. Um, if you're constantly talking about all the bad that's going on, then you're going to attract more bad. And look, the insurance industry is not easy. I understand that. You're taking, you're taking rate increase calls every day. You're taking claims calls every single day. You are potentially talking to energy vampires all day long. So how can you make sure that you facilitate an environment as a leader that you're able to shield you, you and your team from the energy vampires, that you don't allow those energy vampires to suck the positivity out of you and the good things that are going on. So that would be the first thing that I would say.

And I want to get— I want to get more granular with that because that's, that's still like, you know, we're talking about attitude. Let's talk about opportunity from a day-to-day perspective. So when these customers are calling and they're calling in about rate increases, regardless of what state you're in, because they are calling and they have questions, are you looking at as that as an opportunity to have a conversation with a customer, or are you looking at as a service call? So everyone that's calling in, this is an opportunity to review current policies. Hey, you know what, I don't see any notes about life insurance on file. I'm so sorry that I haven't brought that up to you before. Talk to me a little bit about who your life insurance is with. Like, these are all opportunities that we can do on a day-to-day basis. And also looking at your calendar like, let's set up your day instead of focusing on, okay, all of this is happening externally. Let's set up your day to where we're focusing on needle-moving things. So are we focused on prospecting? Are we focused on retention calls? Are we focused as a leader on hiring and training? What does that look like? What does our day look like to where we're not just playing whack-a-mole and we're not just going, oh, the sky is falling? Like, how are we being proactive and seeking those opportunities?

Yeah, I, I actually want to, uh, double tap on that for a second because I think that that's actually a really good example. It's like you could have people that have not called in in years, right? And so somebody calls in, well, you can look at it and say, oh man, so-and-so is, is upset. It's a really good customer and they're— they, they haven't called in in 4 years. They've just paid their bill consistently. Well, thank goodness they called in because now you have an opportunity to save it versus the alternative would be it's an email or it's something else that says cancel, right? We've already, we've already made, made the move. So that in and of itself is just a really important, like, pivot right there to say, oh, actually it is really an opportunity. We're not just giving her mental masturbation, for lack of a better term. It's like, actually, that's a real thing. All right, that's one. Two is I think about back this a little bit more on what Michael said a minute ago too, so I just want to touch on his. And I think that— I think the— this is me personally, this is like a concept for me— is that I think the most important thing that you can do as a business owner is to protect your confidence. And because like there's so many things that we have to do, and like if you lose your own confidence of like I don't think I can handle this. I think it's, it's almost like the strategies don't matter. Like you can give them the strategies, like do this, say this, whatever, and they work with you guys. But like, if my confidence is shot, the team's gonna pick up on that. Does that make sense? Do you agree with that, Michael?

Oh, hell yeah. And if your confidence is shot, their confidence is shot because they're the ones that are taking most of the calls throughout the day. They're the ones usually doing the customer interaction. And what you said, I want to circle back to what you all were talking about, the customer experience. You're there, you're talking to customers that may have never called What you just said, I think, is a huge takeaway. I want to reiterate this is actually saying thank you so much for giving us a call and the opportunity to review this for you to see if we can help, like actually thanking them. Like, I don't, I don't want to overlook that. What you just said is critical right now during this time period.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's good. I mean, that's a takeaway somebody can have to be able to make sure that the very first thing you're saying is thank you for the opportunity to get to talk to you about this. So, okay, let's pivot. No pun intended.

I know.

I really was not actually thinking that. Maybe that is pun intended. Pun intended.

I like it.

Okay, we're not going to pivot to financial services. All right. So, You mentioned something that you talk about, Quote 3. I got to know what— no, I've never heard that before. I want to know what that is. So I'll let either one of you take that. It makes me think of like Web3, which I still don't even know what Web3 is. I've got to do some research on that, figure out what that is. But whatever, neither here nor there. All right, Quote 3, what is it?

Now, that would be an episode in itself, but all right, so Quote 3. So Quote 3 is something that is extremely powerful. Extremely simple, but you got to be disciplined. Alright, so Quote 3 is the number one way for any insurance producer to become a top 1% producer income earner in the industry. It's talking and presenting in a value-based relationship manner to 3 new prospects every single day. Now that, that is a full-blown multi-line sales conversation from the auto to the home to the life, whatever that— wherever that conversation leads. And it's discovery-based. So that, that's a relationship where you got your elevator pitch, then you're, you're building rapport, you're having a discovery conversation around their struggles, their problems, how you can solve it. You're putting together an entire proposal with multiple products, multiple coverages, having an educational value-based storytelling conversation, and then asking for the sell a minimum of 3 times. If you do that every day, 3 times, it's not hard. Like, anyone can talk to 3 people that don't do business with them. But it takes discipline. It takes prospecting. It takes jumping on the phone. It takes social media. But if you can do that, we've measured this, we've tracked this. It is the easiest way to go from zero to six figures in 12 months as an insurance professional.

Hmm. Man, it sometimes the most, um, you want to Concepts are the easiest.

Yeah, you want it, you want it to be hard almost because then that would be hard. You're like, okay, that makes sense on why I'm struggling. And it's just because it's simple doesn't mean that it's easy.

It's not easy. It takes discipline.

This actually, Bradley, was born our first year of agency is where this kind of came about. So we went new market and it was Michael and I and then we had two sales professionals. And what we found was we were tracking so much of activity that we were burning them out and they were so focused on the calls instead of the conversation that they're like, yeah, I'll just keep hitting my calls. I'll just keep hitting my calls. And it wasn't getting us the results that we wanted. And we're like, wait a minute, we're tracking this, we're motivating this all wrong.

And so that's really where it came from. This is important. I think that this is where I love this term. I don't know if you've I've heard this term, but people over-index. I've picked that up and it's like, oh, it makes sense. So it's like, no, no, no, measuring the inputs matters. If you're— if you've read 40x, 40 Smarts of Execution, like, okay, everybody gets that leading indicators, right? That gets— that gets said a lot. It's like, no, no, we're not saying not— you're not saying don't measure it at all, but there's this over-indexing of like Oh, we've just measured that. Everything else takes care of itself. Well, guess what salespeople end up doing? They just over— they just make sure that they do that because that's what you keep harping on, as opposed to being able to have the actual right balance. But to say, no, no, no, all that stuff leads to this. This is the main metric. This is the metric that matters. Is that fair, Courtney?

Yep, absolutely.

Yeah. And to add to this, you can push activity. Look, activity, activity, activity, activity. Obviously, the rule of large numbers, like the more activity you do, eventually the production is going to hit. But the problem is, is the burnout. You're not going to build a team that number one is fulfilled. They're not passionate. They're just in doing, checking off tasks. All right. And so if you're trying to build a culture of winners, you have to set them up for success. When we went from tracking the calls to the quotes, we even kind of I would say learn from that lesson because we at that point in time, I was like, get 5 quotes a day, 5 quotes a day, 5 quotes a day, 5. Well, what happened? They were consistently getting 3 quotes, maybe 4 quotes, but typically 3 quotes a day is what they could do every single day. But they were closing 1 of the 3 households every single day. It was around a 33% closing ratio. And so that's so, so many times we can push for 4 quotes, 5 quotes. But if your team is consistently losing every single day, you're not stacking wins. And somebody that's not stacking wins is not going to be confident. And if they're not confident, they're going to— they're going to be burnt out. They're not going to feel good about what they're doing. And that's how we establish the Quote 3 Method. And in working with insurance professionals across the country, all companies, it just simply works. Again, not easy, but it works.

You know, I'm not— I'm not a huge— I'm not like a huge baseball person. But at the time of this recording, it's tonight is the College World Series final. In Omaha. And, um, you know what, often in the law of large numbers, when you mentioned 33% made me think about this, is that people will throw out, oh, if you bat.300 in the, in the bigs, you know, you're going to whatever. And so they use this as like, there's the law of large numbers, you just got to make it through the 70%, you'll get to 30%. Here's the thing though, what they don't say is, yeah, that's true, okay, in, in baseball. There's not an exact perfect parallel to business, meaning it's not like the 7 times you strike out, right? It's not like every single time you whiff, you know, a lot of those balls, they hit a nice ball and the guy makes a good field, good play in the outfield or whatever, but you still put the bat on the ball kind of thing. Whereas in business, if you're just swinging and missing, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, and then you're throwing out there this, these euphemisms of like, I just keep swinging, you know, it's like I'm losing my confidence here.

Yeah, yeah, you're, you're exactly right. And I want to break this down even more.

All right.

Because 3 conversations a day. So we might be talking new— what I'm talking about is the new business P&C. Obviously, I'm going to encourage you to incorporate financial services into that conversation. But even if let's say you had someone that was only life insurance focused in your agency, if they have 3 conversations a day with current customers, That is 15 life insurance conversations a week. That is 60 a month. Do you think if someone is having 60 full-blown life insurance conversations a month, they are going to crush it in life? Your, your team would write more life insurance than they've ever written. Like, and that's just one person doing it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got a question for— I don't know if you've ever been asked this. Where is— is there ever a blend for a transactional sale versus an in-depth, full-on discovery conversation? And those may not be— terms matter, words matter. So I'm going to say a full-blown discovery conversation. Feel free to correct me if you guys are like, no, no, no, that's not how we would say it, versus like, no, churn and burn, transactional, boom, boom, boom, in and out, whatever. Like, what's the actual balance? Because as much as we would love to have hour-and-a-half-long conversations going through every single financial thing. We realistically know that is not happening. Okay.

Yeah. So I don't think it has to be an hour and a half, but I also don't think it can be churn and burn because if it's churn and burn on the front end, then when the— for example, if you're transactional selling life insurance with Otto and it's just a churn and burn and you're selling everything off of rates, all right, when they leave you in 6 months, that life policy is going with it more than likely. All right. More times than not. So I believe that transactional selling can be done in a value-based manner. All right. Because you're having that discovery conversation up front where you're asking family, occupation, recreation, the, the FOR analogy, right? You're getting to know if they have kids, where they work, all right, their debt.

All right.

What, what's of most important to them? If you're doing your job right on the front end of the P&C sales conversation, all right, you're asking the discovery questions already. You're figuring out where their debt is, like if they have a mortgage, for example, car loans. All right. You're knocking that off just in conversation. How many kids they have, what their kids like to do, more than likely how old they are, what they do for a living. If you know what they do for a living, you automatically know the average income they have. Like, if you're asking these simple questions, you're discovering, you're fact-finding what's important to them. So in the presentation, when you talk to them about life insurance and let's say somebody did have a home, hey, Mr. and Mrs. Customer, let me ask you real fast before we get into the homeowner's policy, what's your mortgage payoff protector look like? Meaning that in the event something happened to you, your family would receive a check large enough to be able to pay off the mortgage so they wouldn't have to worry about how they're going to make that next mortgage payment.

Hmm.

Well, I don't— we don't have anything. Well, let me ask you, would it— would it be important to you? They're going to say yes. Why would it be important to you to make sure that your family wouldn't struggle financially, not knowing how they're going to make that next mortgage payment? Maybe they have to move school districts. Why would that be important to you to make sure you have a mortgage protector, payoff protector in place?

Hmm, that's good. That's good nuggets. Somebody needed to rewind, rewind and transcribe that. That's good. That's given, that's given some good, good, good stuff right there. That's awesome. So I think one of the things that you mentioned, the sentence that you said right before that is really valuable. You said, yeah, you just still do a transactional sale in a value-based way. Like, I think that that is even a reframe to say if you just immediately go, this is transactional sale, and then you basically throw everything else out and don't actually still have and see that there can be a value-based sales conversation in a transactional sale. I think that was super valuable for me.

Um, Bradley, let me reiterate just real fast, because I do get pretty passionate about this, all right? Because I'm not telling you to just sling $100,000 term 20s all day long, or whatever it is, because those typically are not going to stick. All right. So I really want, I really want you who's listening right now to really consider like, you are the person, you are the individual that has the opportunity to have a conversation with somebody that has never had a conversation before. They more than likely have never been talked to about the importance of life insurance, what it does for them, why it's important. And so I I think that that's more important to even talk about as well, because again, it can be done in a conversation. But if you're transactional selling auto, the auto is not going to stick either. All right. Like, I'm not a big fan of just transactional selling auto. Like, I'm going— I'm teaching— we're teaching having that discovery conversation and then having a relationship-based conversation, value-based, where you're quoting. Even if it's just P&C, you're quoting more coverage, more policies, you're bringing up the umbrella, you're, you're talking about the importance of higher liability limits, educating the customer on, hey, this is what your policy currently does and this is what can happen. This can be the repercussions of this policy if something happens. And so, so it can be done in the upfront sales conversation. I just want to reiterate that. But it doesn't— it just because you close life insurance over the phone doesn't mean it's transactional. All right. It's transactional if you're selling based off of price.

That makes sense. Let's talk about stuff that really, really matters. So the Oura Ring— you like the Oura Ring?

We love the Oura Rings.

These are sweet, bro. Yeah, I've got a Whoop, so I got a Whoop. I decided to go with the Whoop instead.

They're good, you know. I, I gotta, I gotta have a moment here though. I sometimes I don't believe her, so she'll, she'll say things about my sleep.

You don't believe her?

My activity— her— everything is, everything is— yeah, I would agree.

I think Sometimes it's fake news. Like, I slept like crap last night and it's like, oh, 92. I'm like, no way.

Yeah, lies, lies.

Yeah, yeah. I, I've actually wondered the same thing sometimes where I wake up and I think to myself, I feel pretty good, I can't wait to see what my recovery says. And then it says my recovery is like 44% or maybe less than that, 33%. You need to prioritize rest. And then I start to tell myself, oh yeah, see, I'm struggling today. And I think to myself, is this actually helping more than anything else? I'm not really, I'm not really sure. Because then I start just believing whatever it says, right?

And then you start justifying it and you're like, wait, is this the placebo effect? What's happening here? Am I— yeah, slippery slope.

I know it's, you know, you having a bad day? I'm going to my Whoop, my recovery. I'm down. Yeah, I'm down. I actually don't even know what mine is today, so I have to look and see.

Oh, all right.

So, um, I want to pivot to something we talked about, uh, before we hit record. And I think that this is actually a fascinating topic. So Courtney, I'll ping you for this one, is growing or scaling without adding, uh, headcount. Okay. And I think that this kind of is almost a universal thing for businesses, like, okay, well, if I'm gonna grow And let's just take the assumption that I, uh, and my current staff is maxed out on capacity. And so, which is obviously probably not true, but we think, okay, so the only way for me to actually do more—

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Because I gotta add more headcount to be able to do that. That's, I think, the thought that we have, the internal belief anyway. Courtney, thoughts on, uh, scaling and growing without adding headcount?

Yeah, so I think you bring up a, a great point. So especially in the insurance agency, there's core problem, and just, just what you said, if I'm not growing, my production isn't growing, it's because I'm lacking people. But that brings up problem 2. So let's say that it is people. Maybe you do need a person. You bring that person in here. What is to say that you're going to get any more production out of that person that you brought in than what you currently have? So if your current sales professionals are running at 50%, yet you're gonna bring somebody in here who's going to be a unicorn and they're going to run at 90%. How do you think that works? You don't have systems, you don't have training, you don't have accountability built into your current staff. So what happens is, if you played any kind of sports like we all did, you usually play down to your competition or you play up to your competition. So if your current staff is sitting at 50%, that A-player is either going to start playing down Or they're going to self-select out because they, they want to play with players. So the problem with that is what you really need to focus on is driving production internally with who you currently have and be really honest about that. If you're running at 50%, what does your training look like? What are your expectations? What's accountability look like? Start there. Not only that, looking at cost, what is the cost to bring a new person on? That potentially will leave in 60 days, 90 days, 6 months.

Yeah.

So that's really the thing that I see over and over and over again, not just in insurance agencies, but in business in general, is we need to pour into our current people, especially with what's happening with talent in the economy.

Yeah, it's almost like— let's use— I'm totally making up numbers here— you're doing 90 autos a month with 3 people. Okay, just, just go with the math here. And then you're like, oh, we add a fourth, we're going to go to $120,000. It just makes sense. Okay, sure, we have a little ramp-up phase. And before you know it, you're past the ramp-up phase and you're still doing $90,000 and you got 4 people.

Mm-hmm. Yep, yep.

You just chopped up the numbers basically the same. And you're like, wait a minute, now I just added another $3,000 a month of overhead and we're doing the exact same thing that we were doing before, right?

And that happens a lot.

And when you're talking about scaling, what, what scaling is, is looking at what you currently have without adding expenses and driving production or making slight tweaks and driving production versus what you just said is you just brought on an expense and your profit stayed exactly where it was at or it goes down. I see that happen a lot because now as a leader you're having to manage 4 people. Instead of 3 people. So now your time is getting split.

So what is the— what— how will I know? Give me, give me something tangible here to be able to say, okay, no, I think that we're at that place where adding headcount makes the most sense. We're, we're, we've tapped out on— we've pulled all the levers. I like that imagery for some reason.

Yeah, it's like a slot machine.

Yeah, it's like slot— exactly. We were talking about that earlier. You have got slot machines on your mind.

It's because I want some money. On, baby.

I am just turning it up. Okay, Michael, I don't know if you've got flights booked back to Vegas soon or not, but like you need to get on that. Okay.

Hey, big money, no whammy, baby.

Let's go. She's playing with house money. She's got, she's up. Okay. Anyway, but if you lose that money, you're not going to tell me about it next time. You'll just—

I absolutely will not. No, I only, I only share the good. No, to answer your question there, I think you really need to track your KPIs. You need to be looking at what are the things that actually make a difference. And I think a lot of times insurance agency owners don't have awareness. So I think the first thing is to look at your team and what are you actually producing? What is moving the needle? So in your— to your example of they're doing 30 autos a month, what's their fire production? What's their life production? What does their day look like? How is their day spent? And then you can really evaluate based off of that. And I would track this too. I would raise the bar. So raise expectations with your current staff before you make any kind of change. So I would look at, again, training, development, expectations. I would look at your current KPIs. So what are we currently producing? And collectively get team buy-in. What are we capable of? Of, right? So if we're doing 90 autos a month, can we as a team commit to this? And why are we committing to this? We're committing to this for X, Y, and Z, whatever that looks like. So I think that's really the first step, is to kind of triage where you're currently at before you add anyone in. Now, I think where you would know that, okay, it's, it's time for me to add somebody else is are you happy with your current sales production? Are you happy? Do you feel like, okay, they are at capacity? You'll know that. I think a lot of times what we're doing with hiring somebody is that we're avoiding the problem of having to train or lead or coach the current person we have.

Oh boy, that's it. You just hit somebody too square in the nose right there. Yeah, that's good. That's good. So this— I'll solve the problem. I'll solve the problem instead of having the hard conversations. I'll avoid the hard conversations I need to have to get this person who is mediocre at best. They're a C player on the team. A person, maybe an A person, but player on the team. They're underperforming. So instead of me having that conversation and getting their production up, I'll just go hire an ad overhead.

Yep.

And hope it solves the problem, which we know never does.

Yeah. Hope and pray. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

I think that is really like that. I hope people land with that. That's, that's pretty good. Because I think that that happens a lot is I'd rather just avoid the— I'll just go hire and spend money instead of avoid the conversation that I actually need to have to get to raise the expectations. Yeah, I agree with that. Michael.

Yeah, we did that early on in our career. Like, that's one of my biggest— that was one of my biggest learning lessons or flaws as a young business owner is I, I put off firing someone and I hired someone else and that person didn't work because the culture was all jacked up. And then this person, they just continue to underperform. So eventually you're going to have to have that tough conversation. And that was a big learning lesson for me. And I still, this day, I still hate firing people, to be honest with you. So now we've hired someone that does the firing for us because it's like— I like tough conversations have to be had though, because if you feel that way, the rest of the team also feels that way. If they're letting the office down, that is a problem. If they're constantly falling short on goals, whatever their attitude is like, that's a problem.

Well, it doesn't even have to necessarily be a firing conversation.

No.

It can be just an accountability or a tough conversation. But I think to piggyback and even hit you harder in the face, which you're not going to want to hear, is are you the kind of leader that would drive production like that? Because in order to coach and train and lead an A-player, you have to assess, am I an A-leader? And really do some work there too. So I think that again, the hiring is, is a lot of avoidance of kind of the root of the problem, but it's an easy fix. It really is. It's an easy fix because when you talk about leadership, it's really, are we focused? Are we mission-driven? Are we focused on growth? And am I focused on communicating clearly what it takes to win in this office and setting people up for So I think, I think that this brings on—

so if somebody gets, uh, I, I think 10 years ago Bradley would have heard, would hear this and would say, yeah, you dang right, that's exactly right, I'm gonna go in tomorrow and I'm gonna bust some tail. Please don't, no, don't do that, don't do what I'm about to say. But this is how I would interpret this. I'm like, yeah, that's right. I'm— I, I— this, this podcast got my juices flowing. My team is underperforming, and I'm gonna be the leader, and I'm gonna go in there and bust her tail, and I'm gonna have a, you know, all hands meeting, you know, at 8:00 AM. No, probably 7:00 AM, because that's just what— whatever. All right, to get to the point, ultimately, having a verbal conversation and raising expectations is part of the steps. Okay. And to say, no, no, I expect more out of you. But you said something. If you don't then give them the resources, the training, the coaching that's necessary, then you're, then you're just blowing smoke. They actually then are like, okay, fine, but help me out. You know, where am I actually struggling? Here's a, here's a word track to be able to use. Here's these kind of things. I'm going to wrap it with some accountability, etc. You can't just go in there and be like, well, Courtney, you're underperforming. You got to do better. And like, well, what are you going to equip me with the tools necessary to be able to do so? Is that fair?

That's fair. And I think you have to be open to receive feedback as well. So if you go in and you say, hey, you're underperforming, I'm going to give you these tools, you have to be open to what that— the back end of that conversation is, because they're going to give you feedback as well. So I, I think that's a You know, if you're going to crack heads, you need to start with yourself. You need to give them the tools. And I think I'm going to back up a lot here. 10 years ago, Bradley, I would say first you have to start with your vision and you have to make sure that your team understands what the vision is, why you're all doing what you're doing, and how they win. Like, they need to know how to win. And then you have to be okay with uncomfortable conversations on both ends. And it's not an easy thing for somebody especially as a leader, to hear that you suck, or you're letting me down in this, or you're micromanaging me, or you're not giving me the— like, that's a hard thing to hear. But if you want them to grow, you, you're going to have to grow as well.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. I mean, it's one thing to be able to give feedback, but being able to receive feedback is a skill too, to be able to take that the right way and say, okay, all right, Well, then I need to— how can I help? Right? I've raised the bar, raised the bar of what the expectations are, and I'm not going to— we're not going to accept that or tolerate maybe mediocrity or whatever that may be. Fine. But you've got to give and equip the team with what they need to be able to succeed and help them work with you guys to be able to say, okay, look, we don't have a documented sales system. We don't have that. Okay, well then Look, there are people out there that have successfully overcome this problem that you're facing in the business today. You just have to be willing to be able to make— pick up the phone and reach out to, you know, you guys to be able to do that.

Man.

Well, we've covered a lot of topics today. That's pretty good. Yeah.

Great.

So good.

So if somebody does, whether it's in that context that we were just discussing, Michael, or in another, uh, tell us what you guys got going on now.

Yeah, man. So Weaver Sales Academy obviously is, uh, so www.weaversa.com. Um, we have a lot going on. We just revamped the entire program. Um, we've got everything from our 8-week training curriculum for tenured team members where we're seeing a 40% increase in auto, fire, and life production within the first 90 days. We've got our new hire uh, onboarding for sales professionals, which is a 90-day plan. Um, by day— yeah, by day 90, they're up and producing what's averaging around 43 to 44 policies per month. New hire, never sold anything, never been in the insurance industry. We've got life insurance training curriculums, closing techniques training curriculums, Win the Day, new business acquisition strategies we just rolled out with. So, um, if you are— if you're currently struggling, um, you're not happy with 2023, you think your team is capable of more, you're not training on a consistent basis. Or heck, I'll be honest, we've been helping a lot of agents that have been opening up 2, 3 offices here lately, um, just because of the process of implementing consistent processes, sales processes, giving their team access to training material 24/7 on demand, um, has been a much needed, uh, in the industry. And so that's, that's all things that we offer and do.

And since we're in your ears, we also have a podcast if you want to check it out. It's the Insurance Buzz. So you can kind of hear what we have going on there as well.

Oh, and appreciate the swag you sent me. I like that. I love my coffee mug.

Isn't it great?

Isn't that thing sweet? That thing is good. I'm a coffee mug person, so I really love coffee, and, uh, so I love coffee mugs. So that was good. That was awesome. Um, hey, that actually leads me into bonus. I, I'm going to ask a bonus overtime question. I almost never do this, but I think that what you just mentioned, Michael, um, is, is worth What is an example of a system that an agent would have at one office that you have seen? They, they scaled, they grow to two, and all of a sudden the system that they have breaks, right? As an example, it's like, oh man, okay, well, that was working here. We went to two, didn't work. Makes sense.

Yeah. It's actually a lot of the conversation systems because you as the agent can only be in one office at a time. That's the biggest— that's the biggest feedback. The, the most feedback I'm receiving right now from agents that we're helping out with multiple offices is, I can only be one place at one time. Like, the traditional office is still crushing it, but I can't dedicate the time that I did at my traditional office with the people we have established to the new people. Because now we're running two businesses, we're managing multiple people, we're networking in different locations. So I would say the overall sales processes from start to finish with the, with the new office, with the new people, getting them trained in what it looks like to have that conversation, be able to have appointments with customers. That's, that's the feedback I'm receiving right now.

Yeah, that's good. All right.

Awesome.

Appreciate y'all coming on. Uh, love to have you back on in the future.

Yeah, yeah, man, thank you so much.

Well, a couple things stood out, several key takeaways. Whenever I kind of zoom out a little bit myself, one thing, it was like a quote, I've never heard this before, but when, um, when the door shuts, look for the window. Uh, I think when he said that, I was like, oh, I've never heard that quote before, that's pretty good. I also loved whenever Michael said, hey, you know, just because a sale may be transactional on the surface doesn't mean you can't still have a value-based conversation. Sorry, Ali, let me, uh, re-say that. You know, one of the things Michael said that I thought was really interesting is whenever we were talking about transactional sales, and he said just because on the surface that something's a transactional sale doesn't mean you can't have a value-based conversation with them. And I thought that that was really important and kind of a thread to be able to pull on from there. I also thought towards the end, the conversation that we had about being able to grow and scale your business without adding headcount really comes down to there is just untapped capacity that we just assume. And then we started to discuss, you know, the hard conversations that we're avoiding. Boy, isn't that true? I mean, there's just so many, it's like, man, I, I would rather just avoid having that conversation. And so I'll do everything, spend money and go around in circles just to avoid that conversation. And so I thought that part of it was really impactful. Love having them on. Go to weaversa.com, weaversa.com. Big shout out to our podcast sponsors, Club Capital. Coach P Consulting and Autopilot Recruiting. Look, have you ever considered being able to use your financials to be able to make better decisions in the business? I, like, I say that often, but I was just having a conversation with Mike about this, and truly, you know, in the conversation we were having is making sure that— and actually Courtney even mentioned this here— is like, what is the vision of the business? And like, really, what do you want out of the business and being able to basically reverse engineer that from a production numbers, but also how does that impact your financials? And so we can get so myopically focused just on sales numbers, which are clearly important for sure, and not see the tie and the connection to how that helps us to be able to bring in more revenue, which allows us to be able to hire more people, invest in marketing, um, and then and just be more profitable. So go to club.capital, book a no-obligation demo with somebody on the Club Capital team, and they can show you exactly how it works. What are the tools that they use that you get access to? Um, what are some of the skills that you'll learn? Maybe, uh, things that you're not familiar with, and they walk you through it. So if you're intimidated, you're not somebody that has typically, you know, good with numbers they're going to be able to work with you no matter your skill level, whether it's somebody, uh, somebody I know who was literally a former CPA. He's now an insurance agency owner. He obviously knows the financials, uh, for sure, and still works with Club Capital to be able to make sure that he is getting accurate financials, even though he certainly, probably as much as anybody, knows how to read those statements. Go to club.capital. You know, in the episode, Michael said he was talking about team and he mentioned about, you know, the quality of the team and the quality of the team certainly starts in your selection process, but even starts before that is, you know, people have said, we've even said, law of large numbers, which look, is there's certainly an element to that. Which is very true. But, you know, it really is about being consistent, consistent in the recruiting, consistent in putting quality, uh, people at the top of the funnel, so to speak, and doing it on a regular basis. And I think for a lot of business owners, that part at the very beginning is the part that they don't enjoy the most. They in fact actually hate it quite a bit. It's because you're filtering through a lot pretty poor resumes in some cases. Maybe the volume's not where it needs to be. And so it's just like, I made a post onto this platform and didn't get anybody, you know, to be able to apply versus being, you know, proactive. And that's where working with a service like Autopilot Recruiting really makes a difference. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com and let them know that you heard about them on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. And finally, whenever you bring those team members on, as we were talking about with Michael, developing them on a regular basis, like, so let's say we want to have that reset of the expectations conversation, which is really important. Okay, fine. But are we also going to make sure we give them the resources necessary that they need to be able to succeed? Well, if you work with Coach P, you're going to be able to get his work tracks and his sales strategies of the things that actually are working for him. Go to coachpconsulting.com and David will give you an entire free month off so you can test drive and see how it works for you. All right, everyone, this great episode. Till next time, lead well.

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, 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 advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation. Check them out at club.capital.