Episode 24 : Intranet

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. This podcast will give you all the tools to grow your business and live life on your terms. Millionaire agents and entrepreneurs think and act differently than others. This podcast will give you a simple, proven three step blueprint to grow your business. Over the past 31 years of research in your industry, Mike Stromso has created a unique philosophy called the three people Process and production Motion. This outside the box thinking and guidance provides agency entrepreneurs just like you the knowledge and tools you can quickly implement to explode your agency business. He has been there, done that, and he's still doing it. 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 Stromco.

Hey everybody, it's Mike Stromco and I'm coming to you live from the Living Agency Laboratory. Welcome to episode number 24 of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. I want to ask you a favor. If you've been listening to these and you think you're receiving value, maybe even great value, would you tell somebody else about the Unstoppable Profit Podcast? There's absolutely no cost and, and we are all over the place on the Internet. You can just point them to the URL unstoppable profit podcast.com encourage them strongly to subscribe and they'll be in the loop. We are getting tremendous positive feedback. Thank you so much for your kind comments, your suggestions or just tell, you know, the, the pat's on the back that you keep sending down to us. We are grateful for that and please like, let us know what you think. And by the way, if there's a topic or somebody that you would like to see interviewed, just let me know. There's a really strong chance that I'm connected to that person somehow some way in my journey over the last almost 31 years. So today we're going to be talking about building your intranet.

Not Internet intranet. And what the heck is that? Well, I'm about to explain it to you and by the way, like, you always should make sure you have something to write with and write on. There's something to be said about it going up your arm to your brain when you write it down. Unfortunately, my parents many, many times said, michael, sit down. You're going to write, I will not lie or I will not disobey or whatever, whatever, but I got to write it. 50 or 100 times because I chose not to listen to them. There's something about writing it down. So, building your intranet. See, in our world, you're familiar with the three Ps, people, processes and promotion, right? If you will hire excellent people for your team, install world class processes and systems and simply promote the heck out of it, you will grow your business, create financial wealth and security, and you'll have more freedom to live life on your own terms and friends. What this means for you, it's really simple. Three very simple words called peace of mind and at the day. That's what we want for you. And what that means for you is when you go to lay your head to rest every night or you're out enjoying time with your loved ones or your friends or whatever, you're going to have that time to do it. And it's a rocking place to be. Alright? So in our world, these processes and systems, the second P, are vitally, vitally important. And for us, candidly and transparently, it's something that we cannot invest enough time in.

So we have these big goals that we're working on to try to get there. But systems compromise everything we do. Whether it be a marketing system, an internal operational system, a communication system, organizational systems, or even agency management systems, they're all part of our second P, our overall processes and systems platform that everybody has access to on a daily basis. With so many systems in place though, you know, back in the old days, you know, as I think back, I started adding people, I added a first person, I added a second person. And I think at that point it was back, there was three of us. And then we decided to do our first acquisition. And shortly after that we added one more person. So I think there were six of us. And it was a crazy busy time and we were all over the page. We had no organization, we had no processes and systems. Everybody was flying by the seat of their pants doing whatever they wanted to do. They were what we call Burger Kinging it. Yes, Burger King. They were doing it their way because they wanted it their way. All right, well, if you know anything about business structure, it can't be their way. It has to be the business way. And while I'm not naive enough to think that it's never going to be completely perfect, it's never going to be completely perfect. You're gonna have people that are gonna go off in their own direction. For the most part. Everybody has to do it a certain way.

Alright?

So.

Fortunately we found task organizers and we got them installed into our Business, which brought us some structure.

When we get the mail, it's done this way. When an incoming bulletin comes via email, it's done this way. When we make a change on an auto policy, it's done this way. When we make a change on a business policy, it's done this way. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. After a period of time, we had hundreds of these task organizers installed in our business and it become protocol. And it was fantastic. I had some pretty excellent people on my team. We had to let some people go and bring some other ones on. I learned how to hire. So we had excellent first p. We had world class processes and systems churning. And I had found marketing or the promotional aspect.

Right.

People, process, promotion was all starting to hum. And then I had that freedom. My business was growing. I was starting to have some financial success and I was having some freedom. And I was at my home office one day and I thought, you know, it would be really cool if I had a system that if I worked it for 30 to 60 minutes a day and did nothing else, that would lead my team and give them the information that they needed.

And so I did it. I went searching for.

The system that would provide that to me. So I went out searching the marketplace and I ultimately found.

A template system that would be known as our first intranet. And my vision and my goal of that would be.

If I would just invest 30 to 60 minutes a day and give them all the information they need, all the systems that they need to be able to run their day.

If you have excellent people on your team, all they have to do was work the system. And so I created it. And candidly and transparently, it was.

Three to six months of blood, sweat and tears. It wasn't easy. If we want what's easy in life, in the words of Les Brown, we've got to do what's hard. Or if you want your life to be hard, go ahead and do what's easy.

Your choice, right? So I built the Internet, right?

And I announced it to the team and I sold them on it. We're in the sales business. I sold them on the vision of it and why it was important.

And it started working. And it started working in a really cool way. See, an intranet is a computer network that uses what we call Internet protocol technology. And we're able to share information through that operational systems or even computing services. The original intranet that we built back then was on a piece of software called Microsoft Front Page, which is now outdated. And it's no longer around.

And the goal is this. The goal is to have everybody have an organized world at their fingertips, at their desktops, every single day with minimal cost, so that they can be uber and ultra productive in their own world all the time. See, the other cool thing is it's yours, it's proprietary, and you and your team are the only ones who can access it with a click of a button. And you have almost everything that you need at your fingertips to do your job efficiently and with laser precision. The intranet is housed on our own server, not anybody else's. And that's the cool thing about it. So see, when anybody in our organization clicks on a browser, whether it's Firefox, Internet Explorer or even Google Chrome, you get to decide. Because my greatest encouragement is whose business is it? It's your business, so you get to decide. But whatever that home screen is, it pops up. And what pops up there? Not Facebook, not Google, not anything else. The intranet, which is your internal protocol for your business organization. Okay. Nowadays we use an Internet software called Microsoft SharePoint, which is extremely functional. The reason I ended up with that, candidly and transparently, we have business partners that have revenue well in excess of ours, like in the billions. It's what they use. Success leaves clues. And I followed their success and I was able to learn.

In big ways how they use it. So that's. We followed suit and it's absolutely very cool. The great thing is nowadays, with hours, I've taught people through processes and systems how to update it. So anytime an update needs to be done, it just goes to somebody on the team and they generally update it. If it's something more of a complicated nature or sometimes a motivational nature, that's on me and I do the updating there. To give you an idea of a few things that we have on our current intranet, picture me this, if you will. Alright, so you click on a browser and.

Your monitor reveals the intranet. Okay. What you see in ours is, the first thing you see is agency goals. Why? Because people are silently waiting to be led. So you've got to give them something to work for, a direction, if you will. By the way, I'm looking at my calendar today and my calendar says passion without direction can be a train wreck. Right? So they're passionate about helping people, but if they have no direction, it's a train wreck. So you've got to have goals. Again, people are silently waiting to be led. Also on there is agency announcements. Also on there is a team calendar, a Team calendar for long term planning, like vacations for the rest of the year or short term planning, which is our in and out board just for the week. Right. That's part of our digital direction provided to every team member every Monday morning is to update their in and out board for the week. It's to update their directional technology like their voicemail for the week, like if they're going to be out at any point, forwarding their emails, not sending autoresponders that I'm out of the office. No autoresponders that say, now catch this. Listen very closely. Autoresponders that say your emails automatically been forwarded to my teammate who's already working on your request. I hope you caught that. Software systems can make that happen automatically. It's got our conference room calendar on it. It's got a complete employee directory. It organizes all of our company logins, billing contacts, claim contacts, underwriting contacts for all of our companies, our vendors, our accounting.

Our money recon forms, all of our marketing, our referral flyer, our master giving lift, our referral list, our client of the month list. We have production log tabs specifically for our sales team logging their meeting notes and any process that they need. We have a team page with team meeting notes, wheel of fortune tracking sheets, employee handbook, office closures, office supply list, team phone, direct dial list, travel expense statements. I think you get it at this point. The lists go on and on. All there, all in one place, all for everybody to see at their fingertips. 24 7, 365 Excellent people working within world class processes and systems and you simply promote the heck out of it. In addition to that, attached to our intranet is the task organizers and ultimately the back end agency production log. You see, by putting this visionary backbone of your processes and systems up for your entire team to see. It does take a lot of, a lot of work up front. Like I said earlier.

You know, you got to do the work first. And it did take some time. But the payoff in terms of organization and cohesiveness, I don't know that it can be measured. It's absolutely magical. It's absolutely phenomenal. And you are in the driver's seat of your dashboard. And what does that mean for you? Well, it means it will completely organize the operational side of your business. The processes, the procedures, the it, the phone systems, as well as being a filing system for the heartbeat, the operational processes and systems of your business. Everybody goes to one place to find pertinent files and information. Friends. It's an absolutely magical place to be when you have excellent people working within these world class processes and systems. So all you get to do is promote the heck out of it. You will grow your business, you'll create financial wealth, and you will have more freedom to live life on your own terms. Friends, I hope you can see the vision. Remember, vision is the art of seeing things that other people can't see. People are counting on you to be that visionary, to have that vision for the future of our of your organization. And what do you want that to be?

See, it's your business. You can create whatever you want. I hope this gives you even more ideas to create the platform, the foundational platform for your business, for your people, for your processes, for your promotions so that your hub is ready to fire on all cylinders every single day. Until next time, because you said you would go out there and take action. This is Mike Strompso coming to you live from the Living Agency Laboratory. I can't wait to connect with you again on the next Unstoppable Prophet podcast. Until then, make a difference, be unstoppable and leave no regrets.

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 now go out and make a difference. Be unstoppable and leave no regrets.