Episode 129: Implementer of the Year – Finalist Interview #1

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit podcast. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or are well on your way to the success you desire, with the right people, processes and promotions in place, you will be unstoppable. And now I'd like to introduce your host, Mike Stromso. Greetings everybody. Welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. These next few podcasts are going to be very special podcasts because I am privileged to be able to get a few minutes with the three finalists in this year's Implementer of the Year program contest at the Be Unstoppable Boot camp. And the first one out of the gate is the unstoppable Bill Butler, who coincidentally was our original first implementer of the year. And we don't limit anybody in any way. And the Unstoppable Profit producer programs, we allow full, complete and beyond high achievement growth. And so Bill submitted again and he was selected by the judges as one of the three finalists. Bill, congratulations.

Thank you very much, Mike. Thanks for having me today.

You are welcome. So what we wanted to do for everybody out there in the world is find out what is going on in the head of these high achievers, share it with you all and if you are coming to the Be In South Pole Bootcamp this year you can, you will get to see it live. You are going to get 19 minutes or so of their best of their best presentation and sharing with you how they have done and how they have achieved the amazing accomplishments they have achieved so far. But that is not all. I know none of them are done. So anyway. Hey Bill, to get us started today, take just a minute, tell us your name, where you are from and if you want to give a couple details about your agency, that would be great.

Sure, absolutely. So again, thanks for having me on the podcast again today. Mike. My name is Bill Butler. My agency is located in Apple Valley, Minnesota, which is just south of the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. About a half an hour. Agency has been open since 2002. Started by my mom and dad and then I joined them in 04. Took over as president of the organization in 2017 and we started out as primarily a personal lines agency. That was kind of what we where we're starting as and we're transitioning more to I would say niche commercial insurance and a couple of key areas and preferred personal lines so package policies.

So you've identified your ideal clients and you know what you want to write and you deflect anything you don't that's correct. It's a good idea.

Deflected some today.

Fantastic. So, Bill, go back, think about when we first met.

Can you talk about some of the things that were going on then when we first met in the agency?

Absolutely. So I first attended my first UPP session boot camp back in 2014. Doesn't seem like that long ago, but the years keep churning by. And you know, where we were as an agency at that time, we were.

Just doing whatever it was more or less whatever came at us, versus having a focused.

Being focused about what we were doing and intentional with who we were trying to attract as clients, what we were doing for marketing, and then just kind of all the back end processes that we had as an agency and didn't really have a cohesive idea about that. And so when I attended the first boot camp, the first thing that really stuck with me was that there's a very powerful quote by Jim Rohn and it talks about, if you want more, you have to become more. And I realized that I wasn't investing enough in myself to become more at the time. And so that was one of the key things that I took away from my first boot camp. And then also just how to implement some structure in the agency with regard to how to attract people. My parents wanted to retire in 20, 18, 19, and so how to attract people to replace them was a key component. And then also just how to implement some processes on the back end. I have a military background, so I'm very. We call them SOPs in the army, Standard Operating Procedures. So just really how to implement some of those SOPs or standard operating Procedures at Butler and Associates to do things, you know, the Butler way. And so, you know, that's where some of, you know, all of this kind of evolution of what we were doing started.

Yeah. And I remember back at that boot camp we had Kyle Maynard, if you remember.

Absolutely.

Who came in and spoke with everybody at boot camp. And he didn't have any arms or legs. And he climbed a mountain in Africa.

Mount Kilimanjaro, I believe.

I want to say it was Kilimanjaro. I didn't want to be wrong, but I believe you're right. So if he could do that, I mean, what's limiting us? Right. And that was a turning point for a lot of people. So, Bill, I am so pumped. So you've been in UPP coaching for a number of years. You're on fire. So talk about all the successes and the other things that have happened for you personally and and professionally. Since you joined the program and you're living your dream to an extent, or you can at least envision what's in front of you in the 20 mile march.

Yeah. And you know, I would agree with everything you said and the interesting part about coaching and what I've taken from my military experience, where you really get what you, you know, you get out of it, what you put into it. And that's what I've realized. You know, the couple things that I would say about UPP coaching and just the overall process of seeing these things put in place is looking at other professional insurance agencies versus amateur insurance agencies. And that's not a slight on anyone. It's just, it's kind of the Jim Collins good to great concept. I'm a big fan of Jim Collins and there are a lot of really good agencies out there. There's a lot of good agencies, but it can be very easy to be good in the insurance industry. And so the evolution of trying to become a great agency has allowed me to, you know, as you say, often live life on your own terms, get to choose the clients we want to work with, evolving the agency we want to have, envisioning, you know, the lifestyle we want to have for ourselves, for our team members, being able to, you know, have a team member say, hey, you know, I need Friday off. I got to deal with some family issues and being able to allow them to do that and being able to facilitate that, you know, that makes me feel good as a entrepreneurs, a business owner, as a team leader, to be able to facilitate the lives that my team members want to have, but then also build the organization that I want to have. And visualization has been a big part of that. And just looking at the other agencies and coaching has allowed that as well.

Fantastic stuff. I'm going to veer off track for just a minute. I heard you say this recently in a session about complacency in the insurance industry. And it's super easy to be good, but you know, you are heading towards the great level. If you are not already there, what causes you to continue to get up every single day in every single way to continue to pursue the great and continue to play on the great field.

I keep going back to it and it is in Good to Great by Jim Collins and he talks about you can put the same amount of effort in your agency every day to be good or you can put the same amount of effort in to be great, but it comes down to having a vision and focus to be able to know where you're going. And that's one thing that I've learned over the last few years through my own personal growth and professional development is that if you've got a vision and focus of where you want to go, it really helps drive the decisions you make on a day to day basis about customer service, the processes you put in place, the team members you hire, and then by having that, it's your guidepost about what you should be working on as an entrepreneur. I deal with insurance stuff. I was just quoting an auto policy for a client today because their premium doubled because they added a youthful operator. And so I've got to jump in and do those things as a leader in the organization based on what's going on. But at the same time, I'm the one driving the ship and so helping give the team the vision. They know what they should be working on every day as well. And so because they'll just, they've got blinders on, they'll just kind of go with what's in front of them. And if you've got a vision overall for the team, it really helps build that great organization versus just, you know, whatever the carriers want you to write, whatever the client who calls in wants. You know, we had somebody call and say, hey, I want you to insure my party bus today. That's not my target market. Um, you know, talking about deflections on a line party bus. So helping guide the team and have that vision and focus can help you take your business from good to great.

And they are silent and waiting to be led, aren't they?

They are, absolutely.

Even though they may not be aware of it, they are silently waiting to be led. And you do a great job of that and congratulations on your success so far. So I'm not going to ask you to spill the beans because there are two others vying for the coveted Implementer of the Year title this year. But in your own words, give us just a quick overview of what you have accomplished so far in the people, processes and promotion strategy world inside Butler and Associates that you've implemented since we met and just help everybody get a flavor on what they need to be thinking about. More importantly, they need to make a decision on, take action on and, and create a game plan with.

Well, it's not a secret because as you mentioned, I was the first implementer of the year. I threw my name in the hat and.

Just showed up and put a submission in 2018 and was fortunate enough to be a finalist then. And I'll talk about that because some of those things have evolved for our agency. But overall, the three tenets of, you know, your coaching program and just, you know, really business in general, if you read books or listen to podcasts, it's really about getting good people in the right seats on your bus, putting in good processes for them to follow and then promote it. And, you know, there's plenty of business out there to be had. You know, really we don't have to work really hard to get people calling your phone. So it's really about finding good people. So implementing a hiring process and being, you know, dedicated to an HR program within your agency, whatever that looks like for you, and we've implemented what I think is a very good one, and then giving those really good people who are in the right seats the right processes to follow. And so if you hire somebody who doesn't have any insurance experience, they don't know how to process a policy change. But if you give them step by step and they've got the right attitude and they're coachable and they have, you know, they're intelligent enough to do it, they should be able to follow a multi step process. And if you lay it out for them, they now, you know, you can. My most recent hire, he knew the first question he was going to get asked was did you go check the intranet? We have an agency intranet. Did you go check the intranet before you come, ask me a question. And so, you know, giving your team member, hiring good team members and having a process to follow and then putting good processes in them in place for them to be able to excel within the organization and then you're managing the process instead of managing the team. And so if you've got good processes in place with good team members, you don't have to manage them, they'll manage themselves. You just need to manage the process they're following. So those are, you know, overall, that's really what I've spent the last five or six years really putting in place at the agency. And just now over the last 18 months, have we really started to work hard on the promotion piece.

And two things, and if I'm stepping out of bounds, stop me. But first of all, A1, because you've done the work and implemented it in a very high level way. You had a situation where one of the team members came to you and said, hey, this happened. I'm thinking about this. But because of what you built, it was able to overcome that.

Absolutely. So there's a lot of pressure in the marketplace for team members right? Now either looking outside or didn't want.

To give too much information because, you.

Know, and so, you know, I think every agency owner out there should definitely be looking to retain the team members they have. But then also, I think the second part of that, Mike, is if you identify somebody who you want to bring on board in your organization, you better have a process that you can implement immediately to bring them on board, because they're not just looking at your agency, they're probably looking at five or six other opportunities at the exact same time. Or if they're not looking for an opportunity and you happen to come across somebody you want to bring on board, you need to be able to act swiftly but still be able to follow the process to make sure that they're the right fit for your organization and you're a right fit for them. And so, you know, we had the opportunity to bring a team member on board, actually is the best man of one of our current team members. And he was working for a different insurance carrier and said, agency, you know, different brand out there, have, will have will say, and two months in the insurance industry. He said, yeah, I'm not really happy. And I said, well, tell me more. And found out that he really wasn't, really wasn't what he thought it was going to be. Within two weeks, he was onboard at our agency, rocking and rolling after being in the insurance industry for two months. So, you know, being able to adapt on the fly with your hiring process, whatever that might be. But having a framework in place is critical when there is a lot of pressure out there in the marketplace and I think we're all looking for good people.

Absolutely. And framework keywords. Framework.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Having a framework in place, absolutely critical. So with that being said, I mean, what I'm going to say next applies to all facets of the three Ps, the people, processes and promotion. You know, why should people do business with you over and above any and all other options available to them? Why should a team member come onto your team over and above any and all other options available to them? And they've all got many in both realms, why should somebody stay on your team over and above any and all other options available to them? And that story that we were just reviewing was about that huge opportunity came up, but because of what has been built and the future that's before them, because of what's been built by Bill and his team. Great job, Bill. I don't care what that opportunity looks like. It's not the opportunity I want. I want the opportunity that is at Butler and Associates. So kudos to you.

Thank you, Mike.

Yeah, no problem. So way to build it. And I'm just excited to see what the future holds as far as the Butler evolution, if you will. So, Bill, let's go back. So I'm excited to witness with my own eyes what's going to happen at boot camp. Good luck on that. What would you say to the person who might be either listening to or watching this podcast on YouTube? What would you say to them who's sitting there thinking, well, you know, Bill's done all this stuff. I don't think I can do it. He's a different kind of cat. Or should I jump into some kind of coaching program? Or should I even come to boot camp? Or should I go to UPP fast start and check it out? But I don't have the time. Money's an issue I can't afford right now. Or maybe I'm already as successful as I want to be. What would you say to them, Bill?

I would say.

If you're not growing, you're losing out. The day we stop learning is the day we stop growing. The day we stop learning is the day we stop earning. And so you have to continually invest in yourself, in what you're doing, whether that's. I highly recommend coaching Michael Jordan head coaches. Anthony Hopkins has coaches. The most successful professionals in the world have coaches, whether that's athletes, business, what have you. And so I highly recommend coaching because it gives you some structure, some backstop, and just. Even. Just a sounding board. We generally, as entrepreneurs, we have a pretty good gut. We should trust our gut. But sometimes you just need somebody to sound bored off, you know, and as far as, you know, people saying, well, look at what Bill's done or look at what Mike's done, or look at who, you know, whoever out there in the. In the world. You have to. You have to kind of set that aside and say, you know, what was. What a big turning point for me was, is closing my eyes and envisioning the agency that I wanted to have. What it looked like, what was I wearing, what kind of car was I driving, what was the carpet look like? What kind of clients did we write? What did the office furniture, how many team members. And as you envision the agency you want to have and how you want to run it, it will help guide your decisions. And then you're naturally going to make the decisions that guide towards that vision you have for your agency. And, you know, for me at Butler and Associates. And you Know, our niche commercial. It's, you know, I created that vision in my mind a number of years ago and it just seems to happen now that I keep making the decisions that I need to make to make that vision happen. Whether that's implementing a marketing program, implementation, implementing a welcome kid or retention nurture program for commercial clients or personal clients, implementing a process or a new proposal to assist team members to close new business. And so you just wind up having that vision. But then you implement strategies, processes, procedures, hiring strategies to be able to facilitate that vision that you create for the agency. But it's all about having a vision, making a decision. But then we've all gone to training seminars, we've all read books. You've got to take action. And that's one of the things that I think has separated me from, from some other people out there. Just my, my ability to, you know, make a decision that there's something that we need to do within the agency to help facilitate the vision and putting all of my energy towards making that happen. My wife will, my wife Shannon will say I'm a little neurotic about stuff. Once I start a project, I don't stop till I finish it. Even if it's 14 hours till I'm done working on it in the backyard but, or you know, in the garage or at work, if I'm going to make a process or a checklist or something, I throw all the effort into it till it's done. So I don't have 25 projects happening at once. I work on one project until that one project's finished and I move on to the next one. And that's helped, help get me where I am today is that focus and drive on one project at a time.

The one thing correct.

It'S less confusing that way.

Right. It also helps.

It does help in giving you a sense of accomplishment because I think we all run into trying to juggle too many things, make sure payroll's done, meet with the insurance carrier, answer an email, deal with the bad claims problem and you know, that's where the Implementer of the Year program, the Implementer of the Year contest that you run through upp, so helpful because it does give, you know, we're very hard on ourselves as business owners and entrepreneurs about, you know, we're not where we want to be and it gives us an opportunity to look at. Yeah, I actually have done quite a bit more than I, I thought I have accomplished. And so that self reflection piece is very good. So even if you don't have A contest to enter. It's a good, it's a good thing to do is sit back and take stock of what you've actually accomplished because that can help fuel the fire to get more done.

I'm glad you said that because that reminded me I've got my own personal process that I go through on a semi annual basis to do that recap that reflection. But sometimes we don't give ourselves enough credit for what we have done. Us as high achieving entrepreneurs only look at what we haven't accomplished and we need to see both sides of it.

I joked when I first joined UPP that my, my to do list was 52 years long and unfortunately I've been in coaching for about five or six years now and it's still 52 years long. So you know, we were very hard on ourselves. We always want it to be perfect or that vision. But you know, we have to give ourselves some credit about what we're doing, where we're going with the organization. But if you're just plugging along being mediocre, continuing to be mediocre, you know you've got to make. That's where some of that self reflection can come in as well to decide. You've got to make a decision to push outside your comfort zone. And goes back to Jim Rohn. If you want more, you have to become more personally and that effort that you put in will then translate to success, whatever that looks like for you personally, professionally. And I've experienced both in the program being able to make decisions about where we're going to live. My wife and I moved in 2019 to what I consider our dream home. And.

Being a member of an organization like UPP where it gives me that vision, focus and drive of what my big why is can help facilitate that in your life. It's helped do it in mine.

We talked about that a lot in our group MicroMastermind session today and I know you're part of one of those as well. So excited about that. And that also brought another thought to my mind. And what we're talking about this morning was when your why becomes big enough, how it becomes easy because we all need that push and we've got all these other members around us to help us with that push. But the other thing I made a note about and you were talking about your team and we're talking about, you know, helping them get what they want. The road. The word I wrote down was capacity. Just give us a little bit of your view on capacity as we begin to wrap here. You know, I think that's one of the things. Yeah, you have team members that have a high capacity, and now you added another one that might have a higher capacity. And how does that really help push the organization forward because of your being able to attract high capacity people.

Having high capacity people on the team, even if they don't have any background in insurance experience is a force multiplier for your agency. And you know, I speak in the insurance world, we're insurance agents and so.

Or business people.

Business people. If you, if you have team members who have very high capacity.

It takes quite a bit for them to say, well, this is too much. And what you're able to do, then.

If they have the knowledge and ability, even if they don't have the skills within the insurance industry, if they have a high capacity, you can just keep pushing, work at them as long as you've got a framework and structure for them to work under. And they will continue to produce and feel good about it. Because people with high capacity, they're not low achievers. They want to help out, they want to do a good job. And so, you know, people with a high capacity want to use that capacity. And if they don't, aren't using that capacity, they'll go find somewhere else who, you know, will use that because they want their skills and abilities used and recognized. And, you know, people want praise and recognition more than anything else out there. And if you use them to that capacity and praise them and recognize them for that capacity, you will retain them and your organization, again, is a full force multiplier for them and the organization as a whole.

Great term, forced multiplier. We're going to build upon that, if that's okay with you.

Absolutely.

Let's grow.

Fantastic, Bill. Thank you so much. If you want to witness the full detail of what Bill Butler is going to talk about, go to be unstoppable boot camp.com beunstoppablebootcamp.com There's a very small window of time and availability of seats left. You can grab a seat, grab a plane ticket, grab your hotel room, be there. And Bill, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thanks so much, Mike. I really appreciate it.

No, pleasure's all mine. It's an honor and a privilege. Hey, for anybody who this might be your first time either watching or listening to the podcast, my name is Mike Stromso. I'm widely recognized as the leading author, speaker and coach for the independent insurance agency industry. You can find me@unstoppableprofitproducer.com if you're interested in attending a virtual or live event to grow, learn how to grow your business, create wealth and have more freedom to live life on your own terms like Bill is now. You can look learn about our virtual events@uppfaststart.com that's upfaststart.com or if you want to attend one of our live events such as the upcoming Be Unstoppable Boot camp, go to beunstoppablebootcamp.com that's beunstoppablebootcamp.Com Both events are designed to share with you some of my best money making strategies proven over 35 years of research and in your industry again to help you grow your business, create wealth so you too can have more time and freedom to live life on your own terms. And I was speaking to a huge group of agents just a couple of days ago and there are three words. We talk about the power of three here in UPP a lot and it is just three words that we want for all of you. Peace of mind. It is a wonderful place to be. Wouldn't you agree Bill?

I couldn't agree more.

Yeah. So till next time everybody get out there. Make a difference, Be unstoppable, leave no regrets. And remember, it starts with three things, a decision, action and a game plan. Go get it for yourself. Have a great day everybody. Thanks Bill. Thank you for listening. If you would like to listen to more episodes or share this podcast with someone you care about, please visit www.unstoppable. profitpodcast.com now go out and make a difference. Be unstoppable and leave no regrets.