Episode 168: Winning The War For Talent with Andy Arter

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.

Hey, welcome everybody. Welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. I am super pumped and excited about this one because it talks about the first P. And if you have been paying attention to our podcast or anything that we teach in our coaching circles, you know the first P includes the three words. The three words that you must be doing every single day in every single way. Not only the insurance agency business, but every business should be practicing these three words every single day. And I know you know what they are, but let me remind you if I may always be recruiting. Now, who are you going to be recruiting to and with and around? And where is your prospect pipeline, if you will? Well, that's why I'm pumped and excited to have on the podcast today, Mr. Andy Arder. Andy, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, Mike. It's awesome to be here with you.

Hey, you're welcome. And it's been great to get to know you. We've had a couple different conversations and the more I've learned about Andy and what his team at Team Hired is doing to help agencies across America, I thought, perfect, I'll introduce more and get to know you more on the podcast so more people can have access to the depth of business that you guys have built. And we want to learn a little bit more. But before we go there, let's learn a little bit more about Andy. Andy serves as the national Sales director for Team Hired and he's been in business a number of years. Actually worked for Grant Cardone, who I've studied also a very high energy guy, to say the least. He's got an awesome family. And Andy, I'll let you tell us about a little bit more about your position on Team Hired and your family and anything else you'd like to add.

Great. Yeah, happy to. So I came into Team hired August of 2020. So next month it'll be my two year anniversary and it's gone by very quickly, I think mainly because we are so busy. I mean, I came in at a time where Covid had sort of derailed people's plans for the year. They had gone out and tried not at All a little bit, but, yeah, and those major blows, I mean, they had an impact, but I think that the reaction time in business on the people side was something that sort of loomed and hit a lot slower. It wasn't as apparent as toilet paper off the shelves at the store. And what I saw when I came into this business, still very much the climate today is agencies that had been able to hire people for a very long time without any, you know, any bells or whistles. They could spend a few hundred bucks maybe on a job board. They'd have an abundance of candidates walking through the door. And then all of a sudden, it's like, what happened? You know, I run a job ad and I get two applicants, or I put up a Facebook post and ask for referrals, and, you know, nobody wants to work in the office. And so when we, you know, we as a company, as an organization, look at the market right now and we look at the major challenge, it mainly has to do with, you know, a disparity basically, in expectation. Like, the way that people expected to hire a couple years ago is completely different now. And we joke about it here at Team Hired. We say, you know, it was the tango for 20 years, and now it's the salsa. And so you've got to switch up the tango, and you got to go dance the salsa and maybe do things a little bit different, a little bit uncomfortable, a little bit out of the box. So that's something that we really harbor here, is innovation. And there's not a month that goes by that we're not changing something in the way that we go after candidates. And we were founded by a couple very successful Allstate agents in the captive world, Dave Williams and Tom Bianco. And I was attracted to these guys because, number one, they grew two $25 million agencies with Allstate from scratch, which is not an easy thing to do. I knew that if I came here, I could find success in the industry. The other thing that I noticed about them is, is that they, you know, they had already gone out and spent a lot of money with recruiters. And I figured if these guys have already spent money with headhunters and recruiters and job boards, and they think they have a better way of doing it, and they're in the top 25 agencies in the country for Allstate, you know, there's probably a good bet that whatever they're doing has some. Some merit to it. So what we do specifically at Team Hired is. Is we recruit for insurance agencies, and that's It So we're very focused on the agency. We work directly with agency owners and we've got experience with about 4,000 agencies across the country hiring and recruiting talent. For me, biggest part of my life and team hired a huge part of it. But even the biggest part of my life is my family. And I've got a wife of almost 8 years, got a 5 year old son and we live in the west coast of Florida, like the Gulf Coast. And I'll tell you what, like I know your audience is going to appreciate this. We really have built this life to be a life for the family. It's not about Andy's off doing business, Sarah's off doing, you know, her thing. It's really a lot more about making it, you know, making it a family experience. And it's something I learned from Grant. He's like, we don't need to, you know, divvy up family from business. This is your life and your family life. It has business involved and you've got, you know, your, your church and you've got your community and you've got all these goals. So that's something I picked up from grants that served me well at Team Hired and that I work with a lot of agency owners on to make sure that, you know, when they're bringing in talent, that they're thinking about these things. How can I attract a 22 year old to my business or a 25 year old with a family and make sure that I can accomplish all of my goals with them, But I'm not going to, you know, quote unquote, burn them out by only doing the business lane. So anyway, that's a little bit more background. Plus, you know, I got to throw in there three dogs and one cat because animals matter, right?

Exactly. Well, yeah, you didn't mention the cat and the piece that I had, so it's good to know about that too. Fending for him his or herself all the time. Right?

Yes, indeed.

I get it. Well, thank you for sharing and what a journey so far. And thank you for your openness and willingness to share more about helping agents across North America. And you and I, you mentioned the captive side and that's where you've got a lot of experience, but you're trying to get your toe in the water and learning how to better help the independent insurance agency side, which is a whole other sector. And we've had this discussion offline, if you will, that it's a little bit different arena and you understand that and I appreciate that and I certainly understand that I after 35 plus years. So let's dig in and just get to the core because business principles are business principles and that's the bottom line. So once we identify how we can reach people, then that's where we bring a whole nother way to identify whether a person is a good fit for our team and more importantly than that, whether we are a good fit for them. And as we go forward in the forever changing environment, which is business in today's world. And great identification on your part. Good job. Ready for the first one, first question, Andy?

Man, I am so, I am so ready for the first question. I am pumped.

Fantastic. Me too. Yeah. We have put together some questions that we thought would be helpful for everybody. So, you know, Andy, why, based on the current environment that you help people in, is it so challenging to find great candidates who want to actually show up? And that showing up may be at home or it may be in an office. And more importantly, and I love the way that this was positioned. Do the right work.

Yeah.

And it's the right work that's the key. Because what are we looking for at the end of right work? It's results. Right.

Amen. Yep.

Why is it so difficult?

So I want to draw a comparison here because everybody in the insurance space, you know, understands, especially business owners, the game of sales and the game of conversions and how to go out and successfully convert leads to paying customers. Right. And hopefully repeat long term paying customers. And when we look at the hiring, you know, game plan, it's, it's very similar. I've got leads of people that may want to work for me. I'm going to work that pipeline. I'm going to convert them to a, you know, offer. And, and some of those offers, it's kind of like a quote, right? I send a quote. Sometimes they buy, sometimes they don't. Well, I make an offer, sometimes they accept, sometimes they don't. And sometimes customers come on board for six months and they quit. Other times we've got 20 year clients at the agency. Well, same thing for employees. Sometimes they come for six months and they quit and other times they come for 20 years and they're great long term team members. So I think that's going to be helpful in this comparison as I talk through that. Because one of the main reasons we see that people are struggling with the hiring market right now is that the conversion rates have shifted and they've shifted for a couple very distinct reasons. When I say conversion rate, I'm talking how much money you put into recruiting versus how many hires you get on the other end. Right. Cost of acquisition. And what people are used to doing is spending a few hundred dollars, maybe they don't even have to do this back in the day, but maybe a few hundred dollars on job boards or, you know, a lead source or a software or whatever network they have to offer referral bonuses. And it was not uncommon to get four or five hundred applicants. And you look at the reason behind that and it's very much like, and again, I'm going to use this sales comparison. Let's pretend that all of those applicants, for instance, are our customers. But then let's also imagine that they only have one or two insurance companies to shop with. Right. Well, I'm probably going to naturally get a lot of leads because they don't have a lot of companies to go out and shop for their insurance. And so naturally, just based on the fact that they don't have a lot of choices, if I spend money on a job board or I'm out there, you know, on social networks and it's an uncompetitive space, then it's going to be very easy for me to attract, you know, if not everybody, a good number of those applicants. The challenge right now is that there's been a major shift because number one, there's far more job postings than there were just a couple of years ago. There's almost this desperation. People are throwing so much money at it, so much time, and they're getting good at it, right? Like they're, they're figuring out how to write subject lines in their job ads. They're figuring out how to incentivize candidates to actually show up to that interview and not no show them. They're figuring out how to be more.

Can I ask you a question real quick? Sorry to interrupt.

No, you're fine.

Is there a large percentage that don't even show up nowadays?

Yeah. So from a statistical standpoint, it's about a 1/3 show rate and that's pretty. And then you look at retention and retention is only about a 1/3 annual rate as well. So you cut down in thirds and it's easy to go from 10 applicants. And I got a hold of three of them and of those three I offered an interview to, one showed up and I made that offer and it didn't accept. And so you start to play that game and I think you look at those ratios and you say, okay, if I was doing X and it got me this result, but then I've got to do probably triple the activity or figure out a different way to crack that code open to get to that same result. And the problem is when people don't make that change and they expect the same strategy to work just the same. And that one in 60 applicants was looking for remote work in 2019 now. And this was as of February 2022, little outdated. It's a little 60 minutes episode. Real good one. I was sitting there watching it, you know, I was like, why am I watching 60 Minutes right now? All of a sudden we're talking hiring. One in seven employees wants to work remote right now. One in seven versus one in 60. So you've got two things going on there. You've got people that went home and didn't work for a month or two or they worked remotely and they got a flavor of that life. And then you've got an abundance of job openings and very few candidates. So I think it's a combination between different expectations, lower levels of commitment and loyalty to companies. The mindset of many candidates right now is I'm going to find the best thing for me and that's what matters the most. And that's it. Because I can right now I can go out, not to any company, but most companies. And if I can speak well, communicate, I'm coachable, I have a job and probably a sign on bonus wherever I want. So you know that that's also, I think, going to be probably one of the biggest challenges people have to, they have to overcome. You asked another question. Kind of as a follow up to that and to be honest with you and your audience, I lost track of it. So if you could help get me back on track, Mike, I'd appreciate.

That's okay. My fault for interrupting you, but I heard that. I said holy Toledo. No wonder there's a huge amount of opportunity. Yes, but sometimes frustration on behalf of business leadership because of the fact that, wait a minute, we're offering a career opportunity, a great career opportunity, and people just aren't showing up, they're blowing it off. I mean, makes you wonder what's going on. We won't go into that realm today, but we're talking about the challenges to find great candidates who actually want to show up and, and do the right work. And I think we just kind of answered that right. So let's jump onto the next one real quick. So Team Hired has helped thousands of agencies find excellent candidates and get them together to see if it's a great fit. How are agencies adapting in today's environment to actually compete in such A competitive hiring market.

Yeah. So a couple ways I see agencies adapting and I'm gonna separate this out independent from, from captive. Because it's two completely, it's two different games. Right.

Like, and it's important to know that because the consumer public doesn't. They think insurance, they think insurance, they don't understand what the difference is between captive, independent, direct, et cetera. Right.

Yeah. And you educated me on our last conversation because I told you that whenever we've worked with independent agencies, as we start to grow in your space, that the expectations are totally different from a captive agent who they're looking for. Totally different. And I didn't know why. And you explained to me sort of the environment of we want career minded long term team members, we want a family atmosphere, we want people that we can invest in and make part of this business and part of the brand long term. Whereas, you know, for a lot, and I definitely don't want to say all because I know many, many that do a great job at this, but for a lot of captive agencies, you know, they're being taught and being directed in a certain, a certain style of business which a lot of times is run like a machine. And I'm not saying anything against it. They help a lot of people with their insurance, they help pay out their employees a lot of payroll. It's all good. But it's a different mindset, I think, than somebody who founded their own insurance agency with their own logo on it, their own vision, their own systems. They can take on any carrier they want or they can deny any carrier they want. You're independent for a reason. And so independent agencies typically have, you know, very independently minded people. And so I think just because of that, one of the main things that we see inside of the agency, especially captive agencies, is when we set expectations or we're setting in our mind who's that perfect candidate. One of the ways in which we can sort of innovate or dance a little bit of a different dance, which I think is what you're asking is to think about it from this perspective is either a, if I'm looking for a certain quality of person and I can't find them and hear me out on this, because it's gonna be. And a lot of people might say, oh man, that's really backwards. But there is an opportunity, I think, to come in and create a trainee program and don't treat it as I'm hiring somebody as a number. In fact, if you spoke to the founder of Team Hired, he'd say I don't have employees, I have team members and it's an attitude towards my, my group and my team. Right. And so when you look at that, it's like you could have a training program and if you can't find that rock star, you can go hire three entry level people who are not expecting to make the rockstar money. In fact, they were just working at Enterprise Rent a Car. They were making $22,000 a year plus tips. And they would love an opportunity to come in and make, you know, 15 bucks an hour with you and have an opportunity to train on the phones and have a clean office to come into. They don't have to work Saturdays necessarily. And so that would be one approach, right? Let me hire three people and maybe they call my age leads and that's how I break them in. I have them do some shadowing, be very intentional. Let me set up a schedule and say this is your 90 day trial period. If you don't like it, that's fine. I'll help write a recommendation letter to your next business. If we don't find a fit with you, we'll let you know about it as soon as possible so we don't have to waste your time. But if you think that this is worth a shot, it could really pay off long term. And, and we just want to make sure this is a good fit for everybody. But then in my mind, I know that I've got a 1/3 retention rate on an annual basis. So if I hire three and I do a good job training them, supporting them, paying them, and I don't get weak, right, I got to be strong for them and serve them, that I should have at least, at least one out of those three workout. And I would argue you should probably have all three workout if you're doing things right. But you can't prevent the candidate who doesn't like the industry, you know, leaves on you, whatever, there's always going to be situations. But that would be the first sort of way that you could innovate and approach the market, which is let me go out, have a trainee program and then I'm not paying them as much as an experienced person that's going to demand higher pay. And so if it doesn't work out, it's not as painful for me and I can just factor in a cost of doing business that I might need to spend, you know, $4,000 to hire three people. But I didn't try to save and only spend 1500, hired one and they quit on me and I'M back at square one. So the whole idea behind hiring three is hopefully this pads me enough that if I lose any of them, I'm not losing steam and I'm not going to lose out on 10, 20, 30 grand in business this month because I'm short staffed. So that's one strategy. The other is to say, well, if I'm not finding the talent I want in my local market, let me go out and look statewide or nationwide. And I know this is something that's very popular with some and it's very unpopular with others. The unpopularity, I believe stems from the idea that remote team members aren't able to be held as accountable and probably just won't perform as well at a remote distance. But the thing that we're missing in that statement or that idea, and I've heard it plenty of times, is that when you go national, Instead of having 2,000 candidates, you might have 300,000 to choose from, right? Not that you're going to go talk with 300,000 people, but the chances that you find somebody who has the right life experience that you can trust them without knowing them, that you know what, given their experience, I actually think they would be a success and they don't need me to be breathing down their neck. I can do a daily check in on Zoom. I'm going to buy them a bottle of wine or whatever they like, some snacks and ship it to their front door as a congratulations for joining the company and make them feel special because they're not in town, they're in Houston or whatever. I'm going to pay 120 bucks a month for a high speed Internet connection and proactively think about objections they may have for working for me. They're going to be doing business from home. Maybe I Go get a $1,200 Samsung wrap around the baddest screen you've ever seen in your life and I ship it to them. I don't even care if they steal it, right? But I'm going to create this experience for this person who's 300 miles away where they go, I literally hit the jackpot. Like, this is unbelievable. Not a bunch of oversight. They trust me, they're basing this position and you know, they wouldn't give this to anybody based on my experience. And so that's one way that I would also think about tackling this is if you really just want that, that gunner, that person that's going to come in and start writing a bunch of business and they've got the business Acumen. And you don't have to give them a strategy. They're asking you for a credit card so they can buy. Go. Go buy some tool, right, to find that person. I think if you're not finding them locally, it may be time to just consider looking further than just the bounds of your town. Even somebody 200 miles away that once a month you guys meet halfway and have coffee together, you know? But if I were an insurance agency trying to sell sales, right? And I'm trying to sell policies right now and get more sales, and I'm working the same pool of leads, and I'm not quoting business, I would look at that from a sales and business standpoint and say, you know what? 1000 leads is not enough. What if I took it to 100,000 leads? I could be a bad closer and probably still close. A lot of premium from that. And that's the kind of situation, if you can put yourself in hiring. What if I don't even have the best comp plan? I'm not the best leader. I still have some processes that need worked out. But if I talk to enough people, I'm bound to find one that's willing to jump on that ship with me and go for a cruise. So I hope that's. Those are a couple, like, actual strategy or approaches that I might take as opposed to maybe just trying to hire one local person and hope that it works out, if you will.

Absolutely. And I have got so many notes. Based on what? The gold nuggets that you kept dropping time after time and time again. By the way, I don't know if you've seen these in our recent sessions, but you're dropping gold nuggets.

Actually, funny enough, when you brought that up for me, and I'm going to be dead honest with you, Mike, because you're a super straight shooter with me is I was like, that's kind of cheesy, right? But then here's the wild part. I've thought about those things, like, for an accumulated 10 minutes, which is like, a lot of thought time, right? Like when I'm walking around the house or I'm like, on a call and I exit and I get off a call, I just think, like, you know what? He proved to me exactly why he's doing that. He branded himself in my mind. I've seen your face in my mind just because of that golden nugget you just showed me. So I need some props, too. All I have is a TV remote. That's no good.

Well, let me give you another One today only. And if you're listening to this podcast, you can also watch it on YouTube. Just go to Unstoppable Profit Producer on YouTube. Go search that on YouTube and go to our page and click on videos and you'll see all of the podcasts there visually. Because what I'm going to show Andy next is going to distract him for at least 20 minutes now, not just 10. Andy, everything that people are looking for is out there in their own acre of diamonds, including their next great team members.

Imagine the acre of diamonds is right out there beneath their feet. Everything they ever want, including all the candidates they ever want. And you're here to help them. Great job, Andy.

I love that virtual high five.

Virtual high five, buddy. So, you know, I'm just going to do piggyback on a couple of things that you just. Based on the gold nuggets you just dropped. It is rampant in my view of businesses out there. And this is no disrespect to any human being, don't get me wrong. But we can never continue to get better enough at leadership and training. People are silently waiting to be led. And they are. You know, the late, great Zig Ziglar said, motivation is like bathing. It is recommended daily. Well, training is like bathing. It's recommended daily. Recruiting is like bathing. It's recommended daily. Apprenticeships program. Apprenticeship programs. Training programs like you were talking about. Absolutely spot on. Great identification. There is a program out there, a software program that people can use if they're looking to build a remote team to make sure that everybody is doing what they need to be doing every single day. Okay. And that's active track. So go check that out. We've got members that use that. Right. However, I learned yesterday my own personal development training that don't mistake activity for productivity. Very key point.

Oh, can I throw in a quick story on that?

Yeah, go ahead, man.

When I was working at a previous career position where people made a lot of phone calls, right? There was this one young gentleman who used to sell knives for a living, and he came in and, man, his activity was the best they had ever seen. I'm talking $300 a day consistently. He didn't make it. So he didn't produce enough. He left. I was given a lot of those leads to call, and I ended up calling a lot of angry people. And I realized that the activity thing was not combined with the right approach and Grant. Some first lesson I learned at Grant's. I remember they took us in a conference room and they're like, it's three A's, activity.

Approach and attitude. And you got to have all three of those in check. And whenever we are having a bad day, bad month, anything, whether it's hiring, recruiting, leads, your business is like, we would go back and audit. Like, how's my attitude right now? Because if that's off, then nothing else really matters. How's my activity level? If I have the perfect strategy and the perfect chess game, but I never show up to the board, it never really mattered anyway. And then also, what is that activity level like? Am I actually putting myself in a situation to. To reap the benefits of the marketplace or am I just going to scratch the surface? So to me, it was a very clear example of that, that somebody probably, he had the right attitude. He had the biggest smile I've probably ever seen in my life, seriously. And like, wavy, wavy hair and nice suits. And his activity was just unbelievable. He worked so hard, but he didn't sell a dime. Not a dime. And that just came from having the wrong approach. It was the wrong strategy. So I love that you brought that up. And I haven't heard a lot of people talk about that, but I think, like, it's. It's very important to recognize the fact that if it's not producing results, but it's the right activity level, like, maybe I need to shift my focus over to the approach now. Right. Like, the activity is there. I have the effort. Now it's about strategy.

You're absolutely spot on results. You can't deposit activity in your bank account. You can only deposit results.

Yeah.

Great identification. And lastly, knowing who your ideal team member prospect is, what does the ideal team member prospect look like? What does their profile look like? And being clear on that. Right. And everything else. And I asked somebody this in one of our platinum coaching sessions just this morning, and it's the same answer that I get. And we're on visual as well. I say so and so. Who's your number one client? They're thinking about it. They're going through their head. All of their clients, they deal with thousands of people potentially. Well, it could be a lot of different people. I said, no, your number one client is your team members. And I love that your leadership thinks the same way. They are team members. They are not employees. Together, everybody achieves more team, baby. I love that, by the way. Hey, so let's jump into another question. Ready?

Yeah.

So what have you learned? And share with us your best thoughts, thought processes on best practices for team member retention. Yeah.

Okay, so we're into the acronyms big time here. Okay, so I got another acronym for you. And we call it the three C's. I like it.

So when Team Hired was born in 2017, we've been in business about five years now. One of the things that Dave and Tom wanted to do early on is learn from our candidates. And so they did dozens of exit surveys with candidates that didn't accept the position. They also were able to do some analysis of existing team members. And look, they both had a combined, like 20 years of all state experience as well over 50 employees each. So they also learned from their team and their friends in that time period that there were some. Some just real keys into why somebody would leave. And the few things I'm going to remove from this table right now are a death or sickness in the family, a crazy person, somebody who doesn't like the industry anymore. Or we'll just call it like the dog ate my homework, right? Like, sometimes we just have people just boop, like, where'd they go? And I think that's part of just working with human beings in general. And that's gonna happen. But what about the controllables? And we're all about, like, what is in your control as an agency. Because the worst thing you could do right now is layover and say, I'm a victim to this hiring market. So it's like, how do you put yourself in the driver's seat? And. And the three Cs? And I'll go one at a time. Compensation. And I'm going to break this down real quickly for you on compensation. Few key factors. Number one, there's no reason why I should be grossly underpaying people compared to other agencies in my market, no matter what type of agency they are. Because inevitably, if this person working for me is intelligent, and we want everybody working for us to be to some extent intelligent, hardworking, probably more importantly. But they're going to figure out, right? Like, my market value is greater than this. So that's an easy one. What people don't talk about as much on compensation is the actual formatting and the way that you help somebody play that game every day. And you think about like a compensation plan, it is sort of a game, right? If you've got commissions tied to it, especially even if you have service people, I'd recommend have commissions. That's a whole nother topic. But when you have incentives built into this thing, but you present it in a way that's confusing. As a sales guy myself, right.

If it's hard to understand how to make money. My impression is it's going to be hard to make money there. If it's easy to understand how to make money. Like, hey, you mix this lemonade and this pitcher and you go out on the doorstep and you put a 50 cent sign and when cars drive by, you wave them down and every once in a while you'll sell them a picture, you pour it in the glass and there it is, right? Like that's something that is very easy to understand and I understand the mechanism of that. So if anybody is listening to this right now who has not gone back to their compensation plan in a while, I would recommend looking at it through the lens of either a existing team member or a new team member. And did they understand the hours of operation? Seriously, I'll break it, break down real simple. Hours of operation. Is there a base pay? If so, how much is it and how often is it paid? Are there commissions and is there an easy place to see that like a table that says, hey, if you sell 20 grand a month in business, I'll pay you 6%. If you sell 30 grand, I'll pay you 7%. But more importantly, have I laid out and done the math for them with examples. So if you sell on average 20 grand a month, your average commission will be X number of dollars. But then we would take it a step further and say if you sold an average of 20 grand a month in premium, and this is generally speaking, I get it, different product lines, different carriers, things like that. But on average, if you're hitting this tier all year long, we've already done the math for you. Base pay plus commission, you'll make about $42,800 a year. About if you want to get to 50,000, here's how you do it. If you want to get to 60,000, here's how you do it. So you set the expectation with a new team member that in this position you can make 40, 50, 60, 70, 80. Where you fall on that scale is going to depend on your production. And here's how you get there. And so simple one page, just hit those bullet points and I'm more than happy to mike to share that out with you. With a team hired template. If you want to share it with any of your audience and they contact you, give it to them. Here's my video and audible permission. Give it to them. Because it's not a difficult thing to do to correct and it only takes you a couple days of deliberation and tweaking numbers. But compensation is a deep Topic. So I'm going to move on to the next, and we could always, you know, if anybody wants to go deeper on that at a later date, I'm happy to. But the second is culture, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this. But when we talk about culture, I think of it like, people will spend more time during their waking hours with you than they will their own family. So I better make sure it's quality time. Go ahead.

I saw best waking hours.

I mean, think about it, you know, five days. Let's just say randomly five days a week. You know, 8:30 to 5. Right. Five days a week. It's people's best waking hours of their existence.

Wow.

So we need to make it a good one. Right.

Wow.

Back to you, man.

Absolutely. No, thank you for that. I pick a golden nugget. Actually, that could be a diamond.

I've got more. Well, that was a gold nugget and a diamond combined.

It was a combo. It was a bundle.

There you go. Oh.

Aha.

Bundling gems.

Exactly.

So that's something where I think anybody, any one of us could walk into our business today and look at it through a different perspective as well. And it's funny, the way Dave kind of broke it down to me early on in the business was like, look, I'd walk into my Allstate and I'd look for dirty desks, like, if I saw dirty desks, or I'd do a gauge on the room and look at how many out of my team members here are stressed right now visibly. And if there was visible stress, if there was messes, like visible things, then I would correct it immediately and swiftly and in a positive light. Like, not like anybody's in trouble. It's like, my fault. Right? Like, let me go fix this, because that's me protect. That literally is your retention sitting in front of you visually that you can correct today. And so if you've got a disgruntled employee that's been with you for four years and they're telling all the new kids that, you know, this is honor. So unfair. And the leads are getting really dry. And it's not like it used to be. Like, that person is probably costing you tens of thousands of dollars, but more importantly, they're costing the morale of that team and their experience every day. And so, you know, some of these things are tough in your culture to correct. Right. Some of it comes down to dealing with tough people, but that's you protecting the rest of your team and. And, you know, At Grant's office, I think I could share this. It was sort of a shared sentiment that when we lost somebody who was toxic to the mission that was working against, they saw it as like, hey, if you're not on board with this thing, like, there's no reason for you to be here. Go find something that you love, but we don't need it. And I would almost always see a lift in production from everyone around. It's like the morale was lifted. And so that's another, you know, another piece of that, maybe the darker side of protecting a culture or correcting that person and helping them. And the other thing I'd say on culture, and I'll move on to the last point here, is like I've never once with Dave and Tom felt like when my performance wavered or things weren't going perfect in the business, like they were judging me or coming down on my head or that like cultural issues or whatever it is that's going on, that they take full responsibility for it. And I really feel like, you know, if they're, they're watching this, like I feel this way about these guys. It's like they really serve the team. And I think with them being like servers of the team, right, we want to serve them and it's this, it's this counterbalance relationship where they protect that culture and in return we protect the business, you know, And I think that's like the thing we need to realize. They go hand in hand. And the third point is career path. So I don't think this is going to be as hard for, for your audience to maybe grasp. And it's just that, you know, looking for somebody that would be with me for the next five or 10 or 20 years is what we want. And so we need to understand that people oftentimes get, I don't know, antsy. They want change in their life. People like to refresh things. If I just sit in this chair every day and do the same thing for the next 20 years, and I don't have no change in responsibility, no change in pay, no forward looking mission in my life, nothing I can build on, and even more importantly, if the owner that I'm working for hasn't taken the time to understand what's important to me and what I would like to see for my future, then they may know nothing else than to keep me in the seat for the next 20 years. Right. And so when we talk career path, it starts in the interviews. It starts at the time that you sit down with somebody and you See that you'd like to hire them to say, you know, and really not just, this is not a two minute conversation. This is a 30 minute conversation that should probably happen at a coffee shop. Right? And it's like, tell me more about what you're looking to accomplish, what's gotten in your way in the past from doing that. Do you want to be a business owner? You do. Great. Oh, you don't? Okay, what do you want? You want management opportunities, like dig into people's experiences and this is where you find out more about their family, what drives them, what they really want to achieve. And I would just try to pull out as much as I could from somebody long before I hired them. First of all, it's going to show me how they tick, what makes them go, right? What's their motivator? Do they just want money? A lot of people like that just want money, or is there some sort of a goal here for them? Are they on a path? And so what I've found is that when I've hired personally people that are not career minded, they almost never work out. So that would be one of the requirements. Almost is like, I want career minded people. But number two, a big mistake I've made is not understanding somebody's career goals. Or the third sin is understanding them but not living up to your end of the bargain. Right. And so I think it's really important to understand, like, number one, you don't know what their career path looks like. You can't invent a career path for all of your team members, and it's going to work for all of them. Each career path is different. It's why it's called a career path. So I want to individualize that, get to know them better. We got a guest on the show. He's trying to hop up here with me.

Hey, what's going on, buddy?

Yeah, he's trying to get in and give some hiring tips. But this career path, everybody's recruiting, right? Everybody's recruiting here. Dude, you've never been a guest appearance on a podcast. And today's your day and Mike's gonna freak out that I'm gonna name. His name's Bo.

Hey, Bo. Hey. I've got a great career opportunity for you, buddy. And it includes biscuits and treats and incentive bonuses when you do the right thing, man.

Dude, that sounds great.

I don't have Golden Nuggets, but I got a dog. It's all I have to, like, pull up.

So, Mike, to summarize, he's your best friend.

I Mean, that's so much more than a gold nugget or a diamond.

That's true, that's true. I won't minimize you to material possessions, bud. Sorry.

He's listening.

They do listen. They do listen.

So compensation, culture and career path. It's three easy guidelines that are easy to remember, easy to go back and audit your business as often as you'd like, and plenty of people connected in your network that know much more than I know about it or any one person. So I think the beauty of this industry is like, if you want to go deep on any one of these topics, there's. You can go solve all three of those problems today, you know. Really?

Absolutely. That's fantastic stuff. So just to make sure that we cover all the bases, my last question for you. I mean, I always, every time that I speak with you and interact with you, I feel like we could go on for hours and we could. However, I know you've got other appointments coming up, a lot of people after your time. So are there any other top hiring mistakes that people should avoid in today's marketplace? Anything else come to mind?

Yeah, I got one big one. And this is what Team Hired was built on. Literally built on. And it's actually something that if somebody doesn't like or fights us on, we probably can't engage in business on. And that is that for many, there are too many barriers to entry to enter the conversation with the company. And the reason there's so many barriers is agencies are trying to protect their time from the wrong candidates. And nobody has extra time right now at least. I mean, they don't want to make the time to sit on an hour long interview and find out that this was a complete waste of my time. And so when you look at barriers to entry, you know, I think about it like this. It totally made sense in 2018, 2019 to use all sorts of front end assessments, all sorts of, you know, maybe, maybe I have two phone interviews. I mean, I remember a company at one time that I applied to, you know, just on a whim, way back in the day. And they had like a phone call and then a zoom call and then I had to fill out an assessment. But I was competing against like 300 other candidates for one role. And so I did it right. I invested my time. But now what If I have 300 job postings and one candidate? Which of those 300 job postings are going to get that candidate? I guarantee it's not the one that has an hour long process to even talk to Them, it's the one that says we're hiring, got a great culture, great pay, lots of opportunity. If you're interested, come on down to the show. We'd love to talk with you. So I would almost look at it more as like an American Idol audition type of a mindset that I'm going to open my, open my doors essentially, right. I'm going to open up maybe outside my comfort zone and say, okay, I'm going to remove some of those things on stage one and I'll reinsert them at stage two or three.

So aha, yeah, go ahead. I'm not going to remove, continue.

Like I'm not going to remove the assessment. I'm not going to remove the vetting or the reference checks or the background check or any of that. If I want to figure out this person's blood type, by all means, right? Probably not. But jokingly, like, if you want to do that vetting, let's do it. But think about it from the candidate's perspective.

When you look at their experience, they're probably talking to the Data tells us five to 10 other companies right now, or at least looking at them. And your initial steps with them are going to be everything about what it would be like to work for them. What's my impression of them as a company? And look, if you're Google hiring a $300,000 a year software developer role and you want to put somebody through 20 months of interviews, there's probably some people that'll hang with you. But when you're hiring a sales role in the insurance industry, which is mainly commission based and there's plenty of other companies in other industries as well, we're not just competing against insurance now. We're competing against automotive, cell phones, rental cars, you name it, chipotle, I mean CVS. I heard a Burger King in Bellevue, Washington's paying $23 an hour plus benefits, they one, you know, if you're an agency in Bellevue, Washington right now and you're paying $15 an hour on a commission based sales position, right? And you start to look at like I want somebody to take an ideal traits assessment and I also want them to do a can they sell and a disc assessment and an omnia and come in and do all this stuff, you know, the result of that is candidates saying, I'm at the bar, there's 30 beautiful women or men, whatever side of that coin you're on, right? And you know, this person walked up to me out of that 300 and said, get in my Ferrari. We're going to Bible study and I'm like, I'm in, right? But then you've got all these others that are like, you know, hey, what's your credit score? How many kids do you want? Do you have dogs? And imagine a first date where I'm grilling somebody on their value system, who they are, where they've been, but there's very little in return to tell them who I am. I would just think of that as like a creeper at a bar that I don't want to talk to. Right? So, you know, in a kind of a joking manner though, you think about a candidate experience right now, the world at their fingertips. The days of CVS paying $3,000, sign on bonuses for cashiers, right? You look at that and you think to yourself, well, what if I just balance it a little different? What if instead of 90%, I'm going to figure out the candidate and maybe if they're lucky, they get to ask a few questions about me and I make it more of like a 60, 40 or maybe this, maybe a 50, 50, like. And Mike, I'll break it down to you this way. When you lower these barriers to entry, it doesn't mean you get weak on your expectations. It doesn't mean you lower your quality standards. What it means is you're going to get more conversations. It means that the other companies are sending sales leads to a landing page where the customer has to fill out 50 questions just to get an insurance quote. And you're the one that's like, call 1-800-insurance and we'll quote you right now. Now, they may not be a good buyer and that qualification will save you from some of those people. But if you can think in terms of larger numbers, get people in conversation. And look, if I can get a thousand candidates in front of you today, right? A thousand candidates in front of you today and you have enough information to go by to at least figure out, like, who's good and who's not out of that group. I guarantee you hire somebody today, today with a thousand people. But if you only talk to three people this week, we can't do that for you. So, you know, the challenge there is like, if you're putting up too many barriers too early, you risk being the 9010 counterbalance and it's clear as day to the candidate. Or they just don't want to spend their time. They're like, I'm 20 minutes in on this assessment, I'm done with this. Like, I don't know, they don't know anything about you, your personality, why it would be great to work for you. So why should we expect them to invest valuable time when they could go invest it with other companies that are very aggressive in hiring right now? So to your point, I could talk about this stuff with you all day and I got to shut my brain off a little bit. But if anybody wants to connect or needs help or wants to go through any of this or just has follow up questions, Mike, we're always here and we'd be more than happy to elaborate on some of this stuff.

Good. Go ahead and throw out some contact information.

Perfect. So easiest way probably I'll give you my email first. Andy A n D Y Just like the kid in toy story@teamhired.com and that's not team hire but team hired. So h I r e d.com also they can reach me on my LinkedIn, just Andy Arter a r t e r on LinkedIn. You, search team hired. I'll be right there. I'm on Facebook. And then more importantly than myself would be the company and how to get a hold of us. So the company as a whole is teamhire.com and if you go on there, there's a lot of information. We talk about recruiting services, we've got clients sort of talking about their experience. But one thing I'll say about our company is if there's things you want help on, whether you're going to spend money with us on hiring or not, we're not walking into a sales conversation. We're going to walk into a conversation about how can we help, what problems are you trying to solve. And if our hiring services happen to align, then great. That's awesome. But if anybody wants to reach out via teamhired.com, they can do it there. They can reach me personally on that email. And I'm always happy to take those, those inbounds and help out however we can.

All right, we're going to do a fast Q and A here.

Cool.

And it's only involving three subjects.

Okay.

We used to say higher slow, fire fast. Is that gone?

Higher fast, fire fast.

Got it. Okay. You took it to the third one already?

Yeah.

Higher slow, fire fast. And we said higher slow or fire fast. Now it's hire fast, fire fast.

It's. I got a call from our owner one day and he's like, I've never done this before, but I just offered a job to a guy on the phone and I've never met him in person and I'm going to do it. And if it doesn't work out, we're going to get rid of him fast.

Right.

And, and, and it's just this. He's like, we're, we're, we're just going too slow. We're going too slow right now, and we're getting beat at every single punch. So this is team hired, a hiring company talking about how to hire better for ourselves. And we've gone from 12 employees to 50 in the last 18 months by using our own hiring processes for ourselves. But part of that is hire fast, fire fast, and then don't expect to fire people. Give them the support and training and set clear expectations so you don't have to, but be willing to if you have to.

Right, Interesting. I will give that some definite thought.

Cool. Cool.

Andy, it's always good to connect with you. Thank you so much. And I will also connect with you when we're rapid wrapped up here to get that generous offer of information. And if anybody has any desire based on Andy's generous offer, it's probably on their website as well. Teamhire.com or. No, it's not. Okay, fine. VIP.

It's a Fort Knox.

Yeah. Thank you. VIP. Very important person at Upp Life. Upp Life. L I F like Frank e.com go send an email to VIP life.com just put team hired offer or team hired what template?

Yeah, that's fine.

Team hired template. I like that better team hired template in the subject line. And we'll get that to you. So just send an email, it'll go to our team, and we'll make sure we get that back to you again. Andy, thank you.

Yeah, Mike, thank you so much.

Let's definitely keep in touch. It is a changing dynamic out there in the world, this ability to recruit, attract, hire, onboard, retrain, motivate, and everything else that's going on in the world. And we need to continue to keep our finger on the pulse. You've helped us do that, so thank you.

Absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you for joining us.

Yeah, no, my pleasure. Thank you. Hey, if this is your first time on the podcast, welcome. My name is Mike Stromso, also known as the Unstoppable Profit Producer. I'm widely recognized as a leading author, speaker, and coach for the independent insurance agency industry. You can find me@unstoppableprofitproducer.com if you're interested in attending one of our virtual or live trainings. We'd be happy that you joined us to learn how to grow your business, create wealth, so you too can have more freedom to live life on your own terms. Our virtual trainings are at uppfaststart.com that's uppfaststart.com and our live events are at bunstoppablebootcamp.com both events again are designed to share some of our best money making strategies developed over 35 years of research in your industry. On my side 100% of the time as a proud independent insurance agent. Again, designed to help you grow your business, create wealth so you can have more freedom to live life on your own terms. And please make sure that you subscribe to our podcast. If this is your first time here, just go to unstoppable profit podcast.com, go up to the top hit subscribe so you don't miss one valuable not only gold nugget but diamond in these podcasts. It just takes one great idea to change everything. Also, the podcast is available out there on all the networks like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Of course our YouTube channel as we talked about. Again, Andy, thank you for being on the podcast, sharing gold nuggets, diamonds and bo.

Thank you so much Mike. I really appreciate it.

All right, thanks everybody for joining us. Until next time, get out there, make a difference, be unstoppable and leave no regrets. You got this and we believe in you. We'll see you next time.

You love the podcast but don't know where or how to get started? Come join our next virtual training. While seats are still available. Register now@uppfaststart.com that's upping faststart.com.