Episode 164: A Culture of Ownership

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. This podcast will give independent insurance agents all of the tools to grow your business and live life on your terms. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or 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 Stromsol.

Greetings and welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. I'm pumped and excited to bring you something and do something on this podcast that I've never done before. And what I haven't done before is I'm going to share a teaching thought that has happened over the last seven to 10 days. Based on my working with agents all over North America and my own personal study, I'm going to share something with you. Ideas and visions of future possibilities and opportunities that I strongly suggest that you take bits and pieces of this and implement in your own business. Because, listen, things are changing and something's going to change before the top of the hour, which is just a few minutes away, because things are changing that fast in business and in life today. The core, at the core of this change, in my opinion, is cultural transformation. Culture transformation, meaning the culture of your business. Because culture eats strategy and everything else for breakfast. As first said by Peter Drucker, culture is everything. And the culture that you've got going on within your insurance agency, business, or any business, for that fact dictates how your, your business is growing, how you're ticking up, if you will, as far as the percentage of growth, whether it be organic growth or your ability to attract a potential acquisition candidate to your business, it all rests on what's going on inside of your business, your culture, who you are. Again, I remember this teaching opportunity that I had years ago. And as I thought about it before I went out, I got to the point where I said, look, pretend you've got your fingers right. If you are watching this on YouTube, you can see me doing this. And if you can't, just hold your hands up in the air. If you are, by the way, if you are driving, don't let go of the wheel. But if you get your fingertips and you dig them into your chest and rip your chest open, what people see inside of each one of your team members, that's at the heart and core of your culture. That's who you are as an organization. And it's ultimately the final responsibility of the leader to dictate what that culture is and More importantly, not only what the culture is today, what it is tomorrow, but what it is next week, next month, next year, because it is constantly changing. That is why we have to transform our culture to be one, not necessarily of accountability. And yes, don't get me wrong, accountability is important. But our goal as leaders in business is to create a culture of accountability. And within that culture of accountability is ultimately the end goal is a culture of ownership. And I'm not suggesting that everybody within the organization is going to be an owner, but we want everybody to be empowered. And that's a key word. If you're taking notes, you want to write this one down. We want everybody to be empowered.

To be able to act and operate and to make this their decisions on their own without the intervention of anybody else, as if they were an owner. So we want to get and help people transform their businesses to get to a culture of ownership. What does that look like? I'm not done. It's a mission that I'm on. I'm. One of the absolute identifying factors that I've seen within business nowadays is the first P, the people processes in promotion, which are the three Ps of our three simple three step blueprint, the operating system. It is the excellent people. And at the core of the excellent people is the culture. So we have got to work on our culture. We have got to take care of our culture just as much as we take care of our own health. This was continued to be identified over the last seven to 10 days as I continue to work with agents all over North America. And case in point, I'm going to go over a situation that just happened and it's a prime teaching point for what I want to share with you today. So this agency, and I'm going to change the names to protect the privacy of the agency. But let's say Stan and Susie are the two agency owners. Okay. We are in a coaching session with Stan and Susie and they are talking about the fact that we need to continue to uptick the percentage of growth within their agency. The revenue growth, which is ultimately the only thing you can deposit are revenue growth. Right. By the way, every agency should have at least three and not much more, not many more than three. I recommend three agency goals that they are in pursuit of every single year. And that is the item that we're foundationally bouncing everything off of as we operate within our culture. Our culture should be reporting back to. In a way, those goals, where are we at? Are we hitting them? Are we falling short? And what do we need to do that's taking ownership. We need to take ownership for the fact, as a collective whole, not just one person, the entire culture, must take ownership for the fact that we're either hitting them or that we're not. And if we're not, why not? And we got to empower everybody to do what needs to be done to hit that, including new creative ideas, maybe doing things the way we've never done them before. So this agency needed to uptick even more as far as their growth numbers. And I know the agency well enough to know there's things going on within their culture that need to be fixed before they can take that step. Yes, they're doing fine. Yes, they're continuing to operate and thrive in some instances, but not consistently. And I happen to know, because I know the agency well, that they need to improve their culture. So I'm on the session with Stan and Susie, and we're talking about how we're going to do this. And I went to Susie and I said, susie, let me ask you this. You want the uptick? Do you know where that starts?

And that's exactly what I got. Silence. I said, susie, if you want there to be an uptick in your growth, it starts with you. And of course, I held up to Susie, one of my now infamous mirrors of truth. There's only one person that stands between you and success, and that's you. I said, susie, all right, you expect your team to do these things. You want your team to do these things. However, what are you doing yourself? What are you doing yourself to improve yourself every single day? What are you doing every single day to self develop yourself, to put yourself in absolute growth mode to the level that you expect your team to also grow and to help your business grow. Explain to me what you're doing exactly.

And again, silence. You see, we can't expect our teams to do anything that we are not willing to do ourselves, bottom line. So it starts with leadership. Leadership and training. Leadership and training. The two keys that I have identified across the spectrum in North America that agencies need to do a better job of. But that is where this culture of ownership, based on my recent studies, has really started to permeate my mind. And the thing that I am going to do today is I am going to come to you with ideas and that I haven't completely formulated and implemented yet. A lot of the things that we talk about here on the podcast or talk about with other people are things that have already been experienced. This has not been experienced yet. So I ask you to give me comments, shoot me an email, communicate with me however you can reach me. Let's keep this collaborative effort going because we need to transform culture in business in today's world, to create cultures of ownership in insurance agency business and otherwise, to give people permission to do what they need to do, to create the client experience, to create the team member experience, to create the community experience, to compete to, to create the carrier vendor experience.

The bottom line, it's all about the culture and what you are leading within your agency business. So let's get to work on transforming our culture. This particular agency, when they said, all right, where do we start? I gave them a number of things that they could do to begin to do this right now. And they had a game plan when we got done. One of the things that I've identified that are not always present in every business and I believe in my heart of hearts that every business should have identified at their core who they are as an organization, what the values are that they believe in, and to use a simple term, core values. We created core values within our agency business. We've created core values within the unstoppable Profit Producer program, our small but humble but mighty team. We have values. We have core values that we operate within, we praise within our core values. We discipline within our core values. We hire with our core values and we terminate with our core values. It is at the core of who we are. The great thing about that, like goals, we are pointing to an outside third party thing.

Meaning the core values. You know, Stan, based on our core values is what are these activities that we're doing to better serve our customers, to better serve our teammates, to better serve our community members? Are they reflecting our core values as an organization? And if they're not, can you help me understand why? There's another little takeaway for you. Good leaders ask great questions and they shut up. Seven to one. Two ears, two eyes, that is four. One mind, that is five. One heart, that is six. One soul or gut, that is seven. Seven to one. You should be using those in relation to your mouth, right? So ask great questions and shut up and help them come from within their selves to ultimately empower them, to give them the ability to have ownership in any given situation and to do something with it. So let me share with you our core values as an agency and then I'm going to share with you the eight characteristics that I've learned about and this is what I want to work together on. I'm going to give you an example for each One of them. But I want to continue to work together as an industry to develop these so we can continue to, to create a culture of ownership. And I will say this now so I don't forget because a large part of this conversation I want to give major props and this is not the agency I was referring to, by the way. One of our other coaching agency members, Kelly Herron from.

Down in Georgia. Okay, great agency actually referred me to a operating philosophy within business and I kept digging and digging into the philosophy because I wanted to learn more about it and I found a book. Okay. And the book is the Florence Prescription. And I love the thought process of the book. I strongly recommend that you grab the book and get into studying it. The Florence Prescription by Joe Ty T Y E because that is where I've learned this thought process for a culture of ownership. Yes, to be clear, accountability is important. But having people within your business who own what they do every single day so they can self function for the majority of the day without this constant interruption, so vitally important. So let's get back to core values, who we are internally. So our agency core values, there were four of them. And by the way, core values there should be somewhere between three and seven. You don't want to have too many. You don't want to have too many. Core values were one for our agency, a servant's heart and the sub sentence on that dedicated to serving our team, our clients and our community. Core value number two, this is how we play. Fun, enthusiastic, energetic and competitive. Number three, core value in the agency we believe in growth. To have more, you have to become more. And core value number four in the agency team sia, it's more than business and that's what we created. And by the way, creating core values and happens over time, it's not going to happen in one 30 to 60 minute meeting. By the way, one of the things for Stan and Susie's agency that we talked about as well was building in this culture transformation into their team meetings as well their ongoing habitual communications about the business and where they're taking the business together. Let me give you the example of the core values for our humble, small but mighty UPP team. Our six core values, Growth. We are growth minded, integrity, doing what we say we are going to do. Impact, impacting people's lives personally and professionally. We are passionate about what we do all of the time. We are committed. Commitment is the thing you said you were going to do long after the mood you set it in has passed. And number six is Gratitude. We believe in being grateful. So with relation to core values, I'm going to give you a list. And if you want to stop and go and stop and go on this, please do and write these down. This would be a starter list that I got from one of my colleagues. It's a great starter list. Ok. Excellence. No. Number two. Love to win. Number three. Be compassionate. Number four. Exhibit honesty, integrity. Number five, Be hungry for achievement. Number six. Enthusiastic, energetic, tenacious and competitive. Number seven. Do the right thing. Number eight. Serve the customer like nobody else serves the customer. Number nine. Do what you say you are going to do. Number 10. Never be satisfied. Number 11. Continuous self improvement or self development. Number 12. Exhibit professionalism. Number 13. Encourage or empower individual initiative. Number 14. Be growth oriented. Number 15. Treat others with respect. Number 16. Provide opportunity based on merit. No one is entitled to anything. Number 17. No cynicism. Number 18. Be humbly confident. Number 19. Fanatical attention to consistency and detail. Number 20. Understand the value of reputation. Number 21. Have fun. And number 22, encourage teamwork. Number. Now that was a lot of information. I understand that. However, what you want to do is start with that list and then work downward from there. And it's a process. It takes time, but that is at the beginning of beginning to develop. Rip your chest open who you are as an organization. I was talking with some of my teammates just this morning about better serving our customers, agents across North America. And we got onto the conversation about Patriots versus mercenaries. And I spoke about this a couple of months ago to a large group of agents. And I gave them the example of what a patriot is versus a mercenary. And we built on that this morning because when you create a culture of ownership, you've got patriots within your organization who are going to do these things. You don't have an organization full of mercenaries. And if you do, if you want things to change, you've got to change. Because if you don't change, nothing will change for you. All right? And I'm looking at one of my favorite quotes of all time from the late, great John Wooden on change. Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be. Back to patriots and mercenaries. You want to have a team of Patriots. Patriots fight for a cause. They fight with their heart and they're loyal to the end. And what we had, the conversation we had this morning with regard to patriots and mercenaries with my teammates. Mercenaries have accountability to the person that pays them. Okay? Patriots have ownership of. Because they bought into the organization. They bought into the organization. It doesn't mean they have stock ownership. Patriots have ownership because they bought into the organization. And Patriots fight for the cause. They fight with their heart and they're loyal to the end. So that's what you want, a team full of patriots. Now back to mercenaries, which you don't want to have a team full of mercenaries. Mercenaries fight for money. They fight for the paycheck and they can be bought away at any time. And the add on for that from this morning's conversation, mercenaries have accountability to the person that pays them. So ultimately it's a mindset. It's a cultural mindset within the organization. And what are you doing to develop the right kind of cultural mindset within your organization? A culture of empowering ownership. What does that look like in your business or agency? And if it's not the way you want it to be again, I strongly recommend Grab the Florence Prescription. It's available on Audible, it's available on Amazon. For the book, start going through it. It's a game changer with regard to how to better think about your culture and your organization. Remember, people in your organization, it starts with you. Back to what I said for Susie. I said, Susie, if you want to expect people to do anything in this realm, you have got to be doing it yourself. So you have got to change. And if you are willing to change, everything will change. Not only for you but for your entire team. Because people are silently waiting to be led.

And if you are going to transform your culture, you have got to take the steps to coach them, to lead them on why this is important. I have got another quote here on why it is important to coach them. A coach's most important job is to get people to do what they don't want to do in order to achieve what they want to achieve. Everybody says they want something, but in many cases they are not willing to do what it takes. A coach's job is to help them understand why why it's important. So I want to share with you the eight characteristics of a culture of ownership and I strongly recommend that you write these down and see if you can begin to share these with your team. Now here's Let me give you a key teaching point as a leader in business and I'm going to slow down for this one because I want to make sure you get it.

When you're talking with your team.

About anything new, like beginning to implement new strategies with regard to our culture, you definitely want their buy in. Because like we talked about this morning with my team, Patriots have ownership because they bought into the Organization and what it believes, meaning the core values. It doesn't mean they have ownership in the business. Okay, hope you got that. Next, when I'm talking with a team of people, I will say if we want to achieve one of these goals or all of these goals, we're going to need to change the way we do some things. And I would like to share with you today my thoughts based on the highest achieving agencies in North America on the way they do things. And I would like to hear your ideas and your feedback so that we can continue to work on the plan for the entire agency. Now think about how I just said that I solicited their ideas and their feedback. I'm not asking them what do they think we should do. I want to hear their input, their ideas, their feedback so that we as an organization collectively can create a plan that we can follow. And that was one of the things that we talked about with Stan and Sally and the agency before we disconnected in our session this week. I said, you also need to have a plan. This is my plan, my vision organizer. It's not only got our core values, it's got our goals for the quarter, for the year, the things that we need to be working on, the issues. You've got to have a plan because the eight.

Characteristics of a culture of ownership is based on you having a plan that they can buy into, because Patriots have ownership, because they bought into the organization and the plan of the organization. Okay, so I'm going to give you the eight characteristics of a culture of ownership. And, and again, my great encouragement is that we work on this together as leading entrepreneurs in the independent insurance agency industry to begin to develop this. And when you come up with something, share it with somebody and help make a difference for them as well. So the first characteristic is commitment. Everybody has to be committed to the cause, to what the organization is trying to accomplish. You've got to get the buy in. And it starts with having a plan. Agency goals keep the agency healthy. This is what we're trying to attract, convert, pursue, etc. Super complicated business plan. Get clients, keep clients. It's that simple. Okay? So there's got to be commitment. And everybody has to be equally committed to what you're trying to accomplish, helping them understand why it's important. That's back to the coaching. A coach's most important job is to get people to do what they don't want to do in order to achieve what they want to achieve. Number two is engagement. You've got to promote the engagement within your Organization. Ok, so how are they engaged? Well, it's team interaction. And you know, the thing that comes to my mind is our team Member of the month program where we socially all vote for the Team Member of the month and recognize that person and cheer them on and lift them up and hold them up. Everybody is engaged. The other thing that we talked about with Stan and Sally the other day is make sure at the beginning of every team meeting, their weekly team meetings, in addition to their department huddles within the week. Start every huddle, start every meeting with somebody reading their core values, somebody reading their promise or maybe their mission statement, somebody reading their top three agency goals. Quick. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Done. It could all be done in less than 60 seconds, but every single time it gets done so they're engaged and committed on what we're trying to accomplish. Number three is passion. Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion. According to Hegel, and this is right out of our PX3 program book. What are you deeply passionate about that you want weaved into your career daily and shared with the world? Leave a mark on the world that can never be erased. Something you must be able to do or do better, like speaking or videos or storytelling or networking, etc. Etc. Effective communication. So number three is passion. We got to fuel that passion within the organization. Number four is initiative. And that is really back to empowering people. How can we better empower people to do the things that they need to do? Give them permission to take initiative. Let them know it is OK if it doesn't work out perfectly or we have failure. I have your back. And I remember saying that so many times over the years. Hey, this is what we're going to pursue. This is what we want to accomplish. Remember, because it's brand new. If it doesn't work out, if you follow the guidelines that we set before you and it doesn't work out, don't worry, I have your back. And I can tell you that I Learned in my PX3 sessions with my team, they would tell me, mike, it's so important when you tell us that you have our back, that means everything to us.

Give them permission to be empowered and take initiative. The fifth characteristics of a culture of ownership is stewardship. Stewardship. Having possession of any task, any activity, any one thing, whether it be physical or intangible, and you possess it and you are responsible for it. You are a steward of that item. Case in point, like depending on your spiritual belief, we are simply stewards of everything we've Got okay. Stewardship is number five. Number six is belonging. They belong to something. Patriots have ownership because they bought into the organization. Patriots fight for the cause. They fight with their heart and they're loyal to the end. They belong to something that's fighting for something. We're fighting for the relationship that people have with their independent insurance agent who works for them first. That's belonging to a cause.

Number seven on the list of eight characteristics of a culture of ownership is fellowship. And what I wrote down in my preparation notes for this podcast, fellowship can be also meaning to trust each other. And this particular agency, Stan and Susie's agency, when I met with them live for their one on one private consulting session for six hours, I had notes that says we need to get back of a culture of being able to trust each other. There was issues in their culture where not everybody trusted each other. That's a problem, ladies and gentlemen. That's not a culture of ownership, excuse the term, that's a messy culture. So fellowship and the ability to commune together and to trust each other and to hang together, to have team health outings, to bond and build deep, significant, meaningful team relationships.

You know the definition of team. I know. Together everybody achieves more. And number eight on the list of eight characteristics of a culture of ownership is pride. They've got to have pride that they are a part of your organization. Case in point, let's say you are working for a charitable cause and everybody's got T shirts about the charitable cause. It's got the name of your business on the back. Does every single team member wear that T shirt with absolute pride that the cause that you're fighting for is a cause that they're willing to die for? Now, I know that's extreme. I'm not suggesting that it's that extreme. But from a mindset standpoint, they've got to have pride and wanting to tell the world that they are part of this organization and they are dang proud of it because we are fighting for something important.

Is that what your culture is all about? And the good news is, regardless of your past, you have a spotless future. So if you need to transform your culture, today is your day. I hope this has helped you get some really solid notes, some really solid ideas and thoughts to begin to transform your culture. If you have a culture of accountability now where everybody is on point, they are getting done what they need to get done, everybody is showing mutual respect and everything is well, congratulations. Let's up our game. Let's get it to a culture of Ownership, let's trans continue to transform our culture because when you do this, believe me on this one, it will convert to financial monetary rewards in the future because it is identifiable.

I can show you absolute proof in writing that that is absolutely true culture. It is identifiable and people can see it. Believe me on that. I hope this has helped you, I hope this has helped you continue to improve and hopefully ultimately transform your culture into a culture of ownership with where everybody within your organization owns what they do. And let me give you the eight again, the eight characteristics of culture of ownership. They're committed to what you're doing, number one. Number two, they're engaged with what you're doing. Engagements. Number two. Number three is passion. They're passionate about what they're doing. Number four is they take initiative, self initiative to what you're doing. Number five is stewardship. They are a steward of what you're trying to accomplish. What number six, they are belonging. They belong to what you are trying to accomplish. They belong to the cause. Number seven is fellowship. They trust each other, they fight together and they work. And number eight is pride. They are absolutely proud to be part of who you are as an organization. I hope this has helped you. Thank you for taking this first round of something brand new, something evolving on the podcast and let's go get it together friends. Right? Hey, and this is if this is your first podcast, welcome. My name is Mike Stromso. I am widely recognized as the leading speaker, coach and author for the independent insurance agency. You can find me @unstoppable profit producer.com if you're interested in attending one of our virtual or live events. You can find out more information about our virtual events@uppfast start.com and our live event portal is be unstoppable boot camp.com. both these events are designed with some of our best money making strategies developed over 35 years of research in your agency, my experience as a proud 100% of the time independent insurance agency and when properly implemented you will grow your business, create wealth and have more freedom to live life on your own terms. That's all we want for you. That's the only reason we do what we do here at upp. And please make sure that you subscribe to our podcast. Just go to Unstoppable ProfitPodcast.com, go up to the top clips, click subscribe so you don't miss one episode of this current relevant real world information from the trenches on how you can continually transform your agency business. So it's growing more valuable and you're having more freedom to do what you need to do. And you can also find our podcast out there on all the channels, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and again, go to our YouTube channel. Go to YouTube search Unstoppable Profit Producer. Go down to the video channel and there's all of our podcasts there. You can see my excitement as well as hear the podcast there. Thank you for joining us. Until next time, get out there and make a difference. Be unstoppable, leave no regrets. And let's get to work on transforming our culture into a culture of ownership. Oh yeah, let me say it one more time. Let's give major props and thanks to the unstoppable Kelly Herron, one of our platinum coaching members from Jack Bradley Agency down in Georgia, for the recommendation on the book the Pickle Pledge, which led to the Florence Prescription. Kelly, you are unstoppable. Thank you. Until next time everybody. We will see you next time.

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