Episode 142: T-E-A-M

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. I am pumped and excited to bring this to you because this is a topic that has been swirling within our platinum and elite coaching circles, consistently out of the gate. And I want to make sure that I bring you an up to date latest version of Together, Everybody achieves more. Yes, the definition of team is Together, Everybody achieves more. And I get asked a lot. You know, Mike, if you were starting all over again based on what you have learned over 36 years in the industry, what are some of the things that were the keys to the achievement you had so far? Without question, the. One of. One of the, I should say one of the key glue factors, glue factors that held us together, that kept our team together, that kept us thriving and growing more was the consistency. Consistency plus focus plus plus discipline equals higher achievement. The consistency of our team meetings, our team huddles, and everything surrounding that fact. So today I'm going to bring you the latest thoughts. I want you to find something to write with, find something to write on and take notes that apply to you on how you can implement this in your agency business. Because if you have a team, great. If you don't, then we can help you with recruiting, interviewing and all of that. But you have a team. Even if there's only two of you, this is the time working on your business, not in it, that is the absolute key. And your team meetings should be without interruption. No phones, no nothing. Everybody turns their cell phones over. Nothing. You're working on your business together, so you know you've been in them, right? Meetings that go on and on and people are just talking so they can hear themselves talk, right? And what's supposed to be, you know, two minutes goes on sometimes for two hours. Structure, my friends. And an agenda is the key. You see, it's what you do in meetings that's a waste of time. If all you do is talk endlessly without solving issues, with getting, without getting shiitake done, then yeah, you're wasting your time. What if, however, your meetings were productive, helping you solve your issues and saved you time, and you went in and you got shiitake done, okay? So to restate that, it's what you do in meetings that may or may not be a waste of time. Don't waste your time, go in prepared. I will tell you this always, always, always, the more I prepared, the better the result was. And so at the end of the day, make sure that you have your rock solid agenda, always prepared, you're always ready. And we want your team events, your huddles, everything else to be absolutely off the charts. So let me share with you a few tips to running successful team meetings, huddles, events, etc. And I will tell you this. One of our platinum coaching members recently had their very first off site full day meeting and training event for their team. It had been something that they had wanted to do for quite some time and once they got into coaching, they learned everything they needed to learn. How to, how to be able to do it. And not only how to be able to do it, but how to be able to do it right. And that's all we want for anybody, is to teach them how to be able to do it right. I got text messages afterwards that it was off the charts, that they got accomplished what they wanted to accomplish. They are on the fast track for higher achievement. Makes my heart so happy. But really at the end of the day, it was in the planning where all of it came together to be that phenomenal event. So keep in mind this, you should be planning away from the office events a couple of times a year if you need a day. If you're thinking, well, you know, we just can't close the office down. Well, you've got holidays which are considered bank holidays, which a lot of teams are still working those days, you know, President's Day as an example is one of those. So shut your office down. The consumer public's not going to be shocked if you're closed on a bank holiday. So shut it down and work on your business. Okay? Out. Think the whole situation, my friends. You got this. You can do it, right? Here's some things to do to run successful team meetings, okay? You only want three topics or less. Don't over complicate it. Keep it simple. Your team needs it to be simple. They're not as complex as you are. They never will be. Okay? And if I've got something that I identify prior to an upcoming team meeting that I think is super, super important for the agenda, what I do is I just go to my Outlook calendar for the team meeting and I start pasting it and writing notes in the body. That way it's always there. Therefore, therefore, a couple of days before the Meeting. When I'm starting to prepare, I go in the body of the appointment. Boom. There are my notes. Okay, so just add things as you need to. Okay. High five the team or fist pump the team as they walk in prior to the meeting. I do that when I walk into the office. All of the time. I high five and I fist pump. And in the environment of remote operations, you can still do virtual high fives, you can still do virtual fist pumps. Don't miss the effect of that connectivity. Right. Start the meeting off right. We always played music before the meeting. The music stopped when the meeting started, but it set the vibe, it set the tone. And we got to the point where we asked every one of our team members what their favorite music was and we kept a list of their favorite music and we just alternate as the team meeting weeks went on for the favorite music. It's what the team likes, not what you like that sets the tone. Okay? So we get that list. Every once in a while we do a motivational video. I get to view lots of videos, Instructional, training oriented, motivational and the such. So every once in a while, don't do it every time, but every once in a while when the, when the time is right, when the training is right, where you might be able to show a video, do it. Okay. It's situational and so impactful. I can't tell you the situations over the years where people come out of the meeting. They're, you know, some of them, they're teared up and they're like, oh my gosh, that changed my mindset. It's that team of huddle, of glue, of keeping it all together. You can bring in outside guests either online or offline. Most importantly, as a leader, the key to being a higher achieving leader and a better leader, based on my observation so far, ask great pointed questions and you've got to shut up. Okay? And the better the question, the more revealing and internalizing the question, the better the result. When people can't boom like that come off with, you know, something as the answer, that means they're growing at that moment and you got to let them grow. And sometimes you have to wait. Okay, six to one, six to one. Now. Two ears, two eyes, one heart, one mind to one mouth. That is the six to one. Ok? So make sure you use them in that proportion. In addition to that, smile, no RBFS smile. Okay? They're watching everything you say and everything you don't say and they're watching everything you do and everything you don't do. So Set the tone. You are leading them. They're watching that. So make sure you smile as you deliver information. Now, as far as the actual agenda is concerned, there is a lot of ways that you can go about this. I'm going to share with you some of the best things that I've done over the years and that we've done as a team over the years. I recommend that you structure your agenda, however works best for your situation for your team based on what you want to accomplish. Because I know all of you have team goals set and I know all of you have shared your team goals with your team. You've trained them on how you're going to get there and you set the vision for your organization. Great job. Now you get to revisit.

In our team meetings, by the way, our team meetings, 30 minutes. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, done. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, done. It's a business meeting only. It's not social hour. It's not social time. Set the expectation, start on time, every time. No bs. And generally we didn't bring in food. Food causes complacency. We might bring it in from time to time, just as a nice add on once in a great while, but not the norm for sure. Not the norm for sure. Ok. So keep in mind that team meetings are the glue that binds consistency and synchronicity within your organization. It keeps your team cohesive and allows for feelings and ideas to come out into the open. And it's okay not to agree. Okay. Make sure again, you come prepared and always prepare one to two days before and keep your agenda and your outlook calendar. And then when we start the meeting after we shut off the music and everybody's ready to go and I've got their attention, the first thing that we do is we ask somebody to read our core values. One of the. And somebody always raises their hand online or offline. Somebody who wants to read our core values today. And we repeat our core values in every meeting. Next question. Who wants to read our promise? Our promise is, if you will, a mission statement of sorts, but we call it our promise. It's our promise to our team, our clients, our communities. Somebody reads that and I would say, situationally, we have a numbers meeting. That's when you read your agency goals every single time. People need to be reminded. They need to hear it at least seven times. And I found myself saying a lot lately. Jack Welch of GE fame, incredible entrepreneurial story. Okay, took the company from 19 billion to 410 billion, he said, and growing his organization to that level, the messaging within my team, they need to hear it so many times they want to barf. And I know that's extreme, but they need to hear it that many times. You can't just set it and forget it. And you've got to build in the emotion. So here was our schedule for the month. And of course you can go off of this, right? And the best of the best growth years that we had, we had a team meeting every single week. Every single week. All right? The first week, we reviewed our client service report cards or other incoming feedback. Situations from clients, good, bad or indifferent, they got shared within the team in an open forum. We read live and out loud our reviews, our Google reviews, our testimonials, any other feedback that came in. Our case studies work was reviewed live and in person. And that is the meeting when we did our team member of the month award. I will suggest for the years that we did the team member of the month award.

That changed our culture phenomenally for the positive. And by the way, what is the ultimate desired end result from team meetings? Culture, my friends. Culture eats strategy and everything else for breakfast. You are setting the tone for your culture in your leadership of the team meetings. And if you have a larger organization and you are thinking to yourself, well, Mike, I don't have time to run a team meeting. I train somebody else to run them. And ultimately, at the end of the day, I wasn't always present for them. But it got done and it got done and the tone was set, the vision was continued through the agenda and the way they were set up. Okay, so recap, week one, client service report cards, other feedback that comes in, claim service reports, Google reviews, testimonials, case studies, and anything similar, good or bad, and read them out loud in front of the team, let the team take it in, experience it, and, you know, just come from within. Super, super important. Then we did the team member of the month, and that's a whole nother program. Okay, week two was our bind hit ratio sheet week and the numbers powwow. We got down and dirty with our numbers every single month. Our buying hit ratio was if you're doing 100 quotes and you only close 30 of them, my question always is, what happened to the other 70? Why didn't we close and what can we do to get better to close those other 70 super, super important. So we created a buying hit ratio sheet which is built around our agency goals and it helps us stay clear on that People and processes are important there. I've got people and processes who create the results of that buy and hit ratio sheet ready for the meeting. And they knew that it needed to be done. So week two was simply our numbers pow wow. Our buy and hit ratio sheet number three, agency goal status and update. Agency goal status and update. So during the team three, excuse me, week three team meeting, where we're talking about the agency goals, the status and update, we just simply share with the team, hey, this is our identified targets. Remember, without goals, you can't hit unidentified targets. Knowing your destination is all you need to get there. So you simply have a conversation. Hey, these are our team goals. And I like the thought process always from an engagement standpoint around the horn or what you do in a mastermind fashion with your team is just simply go around the table or around the visual, if it is online, whatever it looks like, and say, hey, do you need any support from us? Or what more can we do to help you help the team achieve its goals? And normally during this third week as well, if that is not all consuming enough or you have other things on the agenda, that's a good week to fill in the agenda with other items that you need to work on. But it's a specific meeting, specific meeting to talk about the agency goals, to talk about things that, you know, need to be done, to help everybody become more, to accomplish more. And so what does it look like around the horn? Well, we just simply go around the table and I set the person running the meeting myself or somebody else running the meeting sets the tone. So, hey, one of our team members. These are the goals. And by the way, I was working with a platinum member the other day, and this was an idea that we had, and I thought it was a good idea. Laminated sheets, okay? We have our core values on five and a half by eight and a half laminated sheets. You could put your agency goals on that as well and pass those out to everybody for the entire year. Or you could create placards to put on their desk or whatever it takes, okay? But you want to keep them in front of them at all times. So during the third week meeting, you can put the agency goals in front of them around the table, so to speak, or you can just bring them up on the screen. You can say, hey, who wants to read our agency goals? And somebody always wants to raise their hand because on any given day, somebody's got that. The positive desire to get involved more so than others. So then you just go around the horn and say, hey, what more can we do as an organization to help you and however you're contributing to the achievement of our goals. So you got to make sure that ultimately at the end of the day you got a collaborative environment. Collaborative, engaged environment. And there's always going to be a couple who on that given day don't, you don't feel like they want to be engaged. You got to keep pushing through. You got to keep pushing through. As a leader, it is your position. I was going to say job, but it's your job. It's your position to lead them no matter what. Okay. Week four is training oriented. Week four is training oriented. Procedures, marketing, new products, policy changes, whatever, whatever. But it's training oriented. We had full on training sessions that did go more than 30 minutes. But at the end of the day some of our best results in the training as an example was when we pre dispositioned a team member to be part of the training that particular day. It might be a team member who has expertise in a certain area. We'll bring them in and they're kind of a co trainer that gets great engagement from the team because it's not just always me they're hearing from, they're hearing from one of their peers, the people that they're in the trenches with every single day. So week four is training oriented. Motivation is like bathing. It's recommended daily. Training is like bathing, it's recommended daily. You've got to consistently be training. And week five, now twice a year you get a huge opportunity for week five. Make it count, make it count. Have a departmental leader or a team member come to the table and take the reins if that makes sense. One of the greatest things that we have done in those week fives, if you don't have anything on the agenda again, we just go back to around the horn, get the meeting started the normal fashion, et cetera, et cetera, get the juices flowing. And then we just say, hey, today simply we are going to go around the horn and we want everybody to share the biggest obstacle, challenge or opportunity they've got on their desk. And we're going to all solve it together. It's a magical time. So we just go, you know, Erica, what do you got going on in your desk? Capri, what you got going on your desk? Jen, what you got going on your desk? And they share their biggest obstacle, challenger, opportunity right there live in the forum. And we help them come up with a solution for that situation right there on the fly, right there on the spot. And it is just a fantastic environment. I mean they all get to hear it live. They are hearing each other's solutions and everything else. And it helps them grow, it helps them become more. It helps them grow and become more together. Keep in mind reminder, stay on time. It is a business meeting. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Okay, you want to motivate your team. They're looking for the motivation. You've got to continually provide that again, you can show a video or do something else fun. You want to get them growing and learning together what we also do. As an example, if we have a brand new team member and it's their very first team meeting.

We have a list to get to know them better of some 60 items and we just ask one of the team members, hey, ask the new team member actually to get them engaged. Say, hey, what's your favorite number? And if they say number 14, we go to number 14 on the list and we name that item like your favorite place you've ever vacationed before. And we won't make that new team member go first. We'll ask the rest of the team members to go and they start talking about all this stuff and we're just getting to know everybody better. It is kind of a lighter moment, but it is fantastic. It is fantastic stuff. Teach them, teach them and lead them to collaborate better as a team. Ask great questions and shut up and have the teammate give their answer or their input. If you have an uncomfortable or unpleasant situation to bring up, get it out there and work through it as a team. I never call any single person out individually in a team format. That's always one on one. But it's always okay to praise and recognize publicly. Okay, always praise and recognize publicly, always reprimand privately. The incredible leadership thought process guru John Maxwell said leaders become great not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others, not delegate. Empowerment is what you're looking for. You're looking to train up leaders around you and your goal is to have a bunch of leaders surrounding you making their decisions on their own. Once you've implemented the team meetings within your organization, you're going to start to experience changes. The attitudes are going to be better. They're going to have patitudes, more, not baditudes, which is bad attitude. Team members will take more ownership in their duties, team collaboration will strengthen and the culture will become better within your team. How great would it feel if you walk into the agency every single day or arrived wherever you arrived and your team is smiling, high fiving, working together and actually producing results? There's one thing that makes people happy in business. Evidence of progress. Make it happen for yourself. That's all you've ever wanted, right? Yes, we do have our good days and bad days transparently, especially when it comes to the first P. But at the end of the day, it is your responsibility, friends, to lead the team. People are waiting to be led. They are watching everything you do and everything you don't do. They are listening to everything you say and everything you don't say. And you've got to be answering this question every single moment of every single day. And it's the greatest leadership thought process I've ever heard so far. Would I follow me?

Would I follow me? What's your answer? If you've got work to do. Hey, regardless of our past, you got a spotless future. Get onto your incredibly bright, massive future in front of you. I hope this has helped you get out there and do it. You're going to learn through it. You're going to learn through it and from it. So just get out there and take the action. Thinking about it's not going to do it, talking about it's not going to do it, only action.

And if this is your first time on the podcast, welcome. My name is Mike Stromso. I'm widely recognized as a leading author, speaker and coach for the independent insurance agency industry. You can find me at Unstoppable Profit Producer if you're interested in attending a virtual or live event to learn to grow your business, create wealth so you too can have more freedom to live life on your own terms. Our virtual event portal is upfaststart.com uppfaststart.com our live event portal is beunstoppablebootcamp.com both events are designed to share with you some of our best money making strategies proven over 36 years of research in your industry to help you grow your business, create wealth so you too can have more freedom to live life on your own terms. Also, please make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss one episode@unstoppableprofitpodcast.com Unstoppable Profit podcast.com podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts Spotify, stitcher and our YouTube channel, Unstoppable Profit Producer Gotovideos. Thank you for joining us. And until next time, get out there, make a difference, be unstoppable and leave no regrets. See you next time everybody. 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.unstoppableprofitpodcast.com com now go out and make a difference. Be unstoppable and leave no regrets.