Episode 265: Never Lose Again – Part 1 – with Joey Coleman

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 everybody. Welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. I have been looking forward to this one and I know I say that a lot, but I was just downstairs checking in with the boss, AKA my bride, and I said to her, I said, honey, guess what I'm doing in about 15 minutes. She goes, know what I said? I've got Joey Coleman on the podcast and this one is going to be absolutely amazing. You know how much I love his books. And she said, that's awesome, honey. Joey Coleman, welcome to the podcast, sir.

Mike, thank you so much. Thanks to your lovely bride for the welcoming space for me as well. Super excited for our conversation. I've been looking forward to it as well.

I did tell her that she would have privy access to the preview.

Nice. I like it. I like it.

I'm not sure what that's going to get me in a few days. Maybe nothing, but I give it a shot, right?

There you go.

Joey, I don't know if you want to do it or I can, it does not matter. But you want to give us the brief bio?

Sure. Happy to. So for the last 20 plus years now, I've been teaching companies around the world how to keep their customers and keep their employees. And the way we do that is through a series of keynote speeches. You know, virtual talks, in person talks, workshops, books, consulting engagements, all built around as Mike is kind enough to be holding up my two books right now. Then never lose a customer again. And then never lose an employee again. Methodology and both of these methodologies focus on how can we create the kind of remarkable experiences, especially in the first 100 days of the relationship, that will keep our people coming back for more, whether those people are our customers, whether those people are our employees. I've had people ask me, can I apply this to my dating life? Yes, it works there too. What are the things we can do to show up with the other humans in our lives in a way that makes them say, ah, I would like some more of this. I'm enjoying this. This is great. I feel seen, I feel valued, I feel appreciated. And that has what I've spent the last 20 years doing. Prior to that, I had a really eclectic career. I was a criminal defense lawyer. I worked in business consulting. I worked for the United States Secret Service. I worked in the White House Counsel, President, Office of Counsel to the President. I worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. I' had an eclectic past. But all of those things kind of brought me to where I am today in the sense that in all of those roles, in all of those positions, it was about the experience you created for other humans and how those experience could help you personally, professionally in your life to have the kind of interactions that made you excited about your life. Which is why I was excited to come on the show, because I know the show is not only about your business and what you're doing to kind of grow your revenues and grow your profits and grow your impact, but also about your personal life. And I really see for many entrepreneurs, for many independent insurance agents, for many business leaders, that importance of recognizing what am I doing professionally and personally. And where do those two things intersect? That's I think, where the sweet spice of life lies.

100%. We are in human relationships. And I love that you said that other humans in our lives. Because as much as technology continues to advance, it's the human existence and experience, man.

I haven't met a business owner who sells to anyone other than humans. I haven't met a business owner that has anyone on the payroll that isn't a human. Although, yes, we can talk about AI, but they're not on the payroll. Those are tools you're buying and they're valuable and they're important. Don't get me wrong. But the human condition, the human experience is still the thing that I think makes us a unique species on the planet.

100%. So let's dig in and let me tell you the quick story that I told you I was gonna tell. Okay?

Alrighty. Sounds good.

It was this book right here, Never lose a customer again. And I was trying to think back. Who introduced me to this book? I don't know, is one of my business buddies, I'm sure. But I've been through both of your books at least three times. And so this book was shared with one of our members. His name was Ben. And I said to Ben, when we did a check on with check in with him, I said, ben, how's it going? What do you have planned for the year? He said, my number one goal this is to implement all of never lose a customer again in my business. I said, dude, that's awesome. How can I help? He Goes well, just hold me accountable and keep me going so I get it all implemented. I said, that's fantastic. Joey, guess what happened.

What happened?

This agency has obtained record levels of growth and achievement.

I love it. That's fantastic news. Ben, congratulations. That's awesome. I'm so excited that the frameworks and the ideas and the concepts in the book have been serving you and your team so well.

Yeah. Fantastic. So I was super happy for Ben, and they're doing great stuff, but, you know, I took it back, like I told you, way back, a number of years. When we talk about onboarding, when we talk about the first hundred days of a new relationship, AKA team leaders hire other team members to work on the team, it's that first 100 days that is key. And we have developed systems to love bomb is what we call it. But I think the same thing, right? We want to show the love and bomb them with the love. And we start the minute they sign, which might be two weeks before, you know, with notes and videos and all that. So based on your achievements and everything that you've done in this particular realm, as far as bringing on new team members, what are some high points based on your experience and your teaching as far as Never Lose a Customer Again? Well, I. Dude, I completely misspoke. I'm already over in the other book. So let's go back to Customers. Never Lose a Customer Again. Same thing, right?

Yeah. So what's interesting about customers and employees, and in many ways, we'll focus this conversation on customers, but, folks, the principles that apply to customers apply to your employees and vice versa, Right? In fact, when I was writing the second book, which was about employee experience, the first draft, I just took the draft of the original book, Never Lose a Customer Again, did a find and replace. Replaced every time it said customer with the word employee. And then I read the whole book to see if it still made sense, and it did. Now, that's not the book that became the second book, but that was just to test my own assumptions that are all these things I know to be true about what customers are looking for, what they want that they desire, the same things that employees are looking for. And the answer, as a general rule, is yes. One of the things you do remarkably well, Mike, based on what you just shared, is we need to start from the very beginning of the relationship. And in fact, I would posit we need to start even before the relationship begins. When someone's a prospect, a prospective customer, to preview for them what the experience of being a customer is going to be like. Because lots of times the old world version of sales, it was a lot of, well, when you join, this is how you'll be treated when you become a member. These are the perks you'll have, et cetera, et cetera. And I understand the premise behind that. We were creating kind of a future state vision and trying to get people to be excited about the future state so they'd sign up today. But in this day and age, it's a lot of, what have you done for me lately? Energy and mentality. And so the best way to give someone a clear understanding of what it's going to be like when they become a customer is to start treating them like a customer before they become a customer. Giving them the status, giving them the attention, giving them the focus and, you know, the energy and the attitude that is going to make them say, oh, if this is what it's like as a prospect, if this is what it's like as a potential customer, how much better is it going to be as an actual customer? This is already remarkable. This is already amazing. And so that's why I think it's so important to early and often be making those deposits in the Carmic bank account that say, you matter. I see you, I value you, I appreciate you. We're excited to have you involved with our organization.

Just to make sure all of you caught that. The karma bank account. You're making bank deposits in the karma bank account from moment one. Right?

Exactly. And the main reason for that, to be clear, is, Mike, you are going to stumble as a leader, as an organization, you're going to make mistakes. I make mistakes all the time. We could bring my family members on to talk about all the mistakes I make regularly, right? Be very easy. But here's the thing. If you have made those deposits in the karmic bank account, when you slip up, when you make an honest mistake, when something doesn't come across exactly the way you wanted, you aren't able to hit a deadline exactly as promised, whatever it may be, where you fall short. You've already made enough deposits that you're withdrawing from the karmic credit you've already created as opposed to, oh, sorry, it'll never happen again. It's like, well, if. If you're having to say that and you haven't done anything beforehand to make me want to believe you, I'm not going to start believing you. In a time of crisis or in a time of deficit, we need to do that in advance. And that's why I like to start this stuff before you've even become a customer. And then the contracts you send, the invoices you send, the way you conduct sales meetings, the way you do follow up, the messaging on your website, the signature line of your email, every interaction with a customer offers you the potential opportunity to be remarkable.

Absolutely. And you know, from a credibility standpoint, if you say you haven't done these things and say, well, that won't happen again, that won't happen again, you lost credibility. But if you're doing these things and you misstep, you're going to draw even closer based on my experience. Because you're real.

Exactly.

You're imperfect. You're human.

Yes. None of your customers, despite what you may think, leaders, none of the people you do business with are expecting perfection. What they're expecting is a high level of service, a high level of delivering on the product or the experience that you promised. And they're expecting that if there is a mistake, if something does go wrong, that you're going to fess up and be honest about it and take responsibility for it. I have two young boys, an 8 year old and a 10 year old. And one of the things we talk about all the time in our household is the only time I'm really going to be upset is if you make a mistake, something goes wrong and you try to blame it on someone else, or you try to act like you know, well, it's, it's not my fault. And it may not have been your fault, but it's still your problem. Okay? So just because something's not your fault doesn't mean it's not your problem. And the opportunity for all of us is to say, hey, this didn't live up to the standard I wanted it to. I'm so sorry. Here are the steps. I'm making sure that it doesn't happen again with others as well as you. And here are the things I'm going to try to do to make it right. It's okay to be human 100%.

I, I got my backside handed to me back in the 1980s when I first started. Six months in, I was doing direct mail. This guy got on the phone. I was trying to just do everything I could to sell the account. And he said, would you mind if I asked you a question? I said, yeah. He goes, you haven't been in the business very long, have you? I said, no. He said, how long? I said, about six months. He goes, let me do you a favor. I just got done with 30 years in the insurance Industry, myself. And the favor is when you don't know, tell them you don't know. If you make a mistake, tell them that you made a mistake, and you will go far. I am so fortunate he did that, because every time that I said I blew it, we screwed up. Within the next week, I got a couple of referrals.

Yeah. Because it is so rare. It is so rare, not only in a business context, but in our context as humans, that somebody says, yeah, that's on me. Sorry, I. And even I'm not expecting you to take responsibility for things that are outside of your control. But I fly on airlines a lot. And one of the things I love about the airline I fly, Delta Airlines. Okay. I fly them exclusively, is that if there is a delay due to weather, they will immediately come on and say, so, sorry, we've got a delay due to weather. We are really committed to flying you safely, and it is not safe for our plane to take off right now. I know that we have fallen below what you were expecting for this flight, and we apologize. Now, what's fabulous there is they didn't make the weather, but they're acknowledging that the thing we paid for isn't exactly getting delivered on the way we want. And it's like. But we're reminding you that more important than your plane leaving on time is your plane landing safely. So let's keep focused, folks. And I recently had a situation where there was a huge storm coming through Nashville, Tennessee. I was there. There were a bunch of people in the waiting area waiting for the flight, and there was someone who was really irritated that the flight was going to be delayed. And I get it. I fly a lot. I understand. And when they were kind of lamenting, I said, well, you know, I also know it's really important that we get there safely and we land okay. And if I look out on the tarmac right now, the way the winds are going, it doesn't look like it's that safe to take off.

Yeah.

And what happened immediately is I saw our entire energy shift, and this passenger was like, you know what? You make a good point. I hadn't really looked outside. Now that I look outside, I'm happy we're on the inside. And suddenly the delay is in our best interest. Right. It's okay to not have things go, well, just to your point, fess up and say, hey, it's not where it is, but here's what we're going to do to try to resolve it.

That's right. Let's jump into one more Item. And then I definitely want to jump into your most recent book, Never lose an employee again. Never lose an employee again. But customer experience.

What'S the difference between, say, customer service and customer experience?

Customer service and customer experience are used interchangeably by a lot of people, and I understand and respect that. I see them as two very distinct things. However, I see customer service as what happens when the customer needs you, they have a problem, they have a concern. When they come to you, how are you responding? How quickly are you responding? Are you giving them the answers they need, et cetera, et cetera. Customer experience is how are they feeling? And the thing about customer experience is that can be architected in advance. Customer experience is a proactive choice to design and build a series of interactions to create certain emotional feelings in your customers. Whereas customer service, which is also important, is when things are going awry or amiss, is there that responsiveness and that reactiveness to solve for the problem or the need at hand? So I think they go hand in hand, but I think they're two separate things.

100%. I agree. And that's what you're doing with the first hundred days, which are all outlined in the book. So if you don't have it, just grab the book. If you have it, pull it off the shelf again and revisit it. And make sure that you've got everything operating within your business because it will create that feeling, that level of experience that your customer expects and will take it up another standard. And then you simply need to do the check ins, you know, based on everything that Joey teaches to keep that level at its highest level and you will earn more other opportunities for sales with referrals and everything else. So great, great stuff. So thank you for that.

Oh, thank you, Mike.

And I'm sure you observe the same thing that I do traveling all over the country and beyond. I know you've been in 52 countries. And by the way, before we jump into never lose an employee again, I just must ask because you didn't cover this in your intro, you also rode down in a volcano. I can't remember what country you were in, but the line that I read in your long bio was he said he rode down the volcano. Did he have the volcano or did the volcano have him?

Yeah, I've had a couple of volcano experiences. The one where the volcano definitely won was mountain biking down a volcano actually in Hawaii. I've been on volcanoes in Sicily and in some other places, but the one in Hawaii, we were coming down, the brakes failed. Let's just say there was a choice for me to go off the cliff or to try to make myself as big as possible as I was sliding across the road into the gravel to go off the edge of the cliff. And I, I had grown up riding motorcycles and dirt bikes, and so I knew how to lay a bike down, but I was like, I need to grab onto this boulder or else I'm going between the two boulders and I am going to go off the cliff about 80ft down to the rocks below. So, yes, the volcano definitely won. It was Joey, not Joe versus the volcano. It was Joey versus the volcano. Volcano one, Joey zero.

In this case. I'm glad the volcano won.

I appreciate that.

So today's world more than ever, and this has been going on, in my view, especially the last five years or so up to the date of this recording in 2024, that the landscape for great team members, and we like to call them a players, the best, not the best available. And everything surrounding that has become more difficult than it's ever been. And your book, never lose an employee again. And by the way, everybody might, a lot of people might be watching this because we distribute this both via audio and video. So if you're on the video, you're looking at it right now. Was very, very timely. And the great thing is, for everybody paying attention here, please, if you don't have something to write with and write on, please pause right now and grab that. And now that you're back, write down joeycolman.com vault. Do they have to have access with like a receipt or something?

No, no, basically. So here's the thing. When we were creating the book, one of the challenges of being an There are always things that you want to put into the book that you run out of space. I have a tendency to write big books. If I was smarter, I would write shorter books. Right. The really talented people in the world write short books. I write longer books. But the goal is to have it be a playbook that you can use for the rest of your career, for the rest of your business. And as you have. And I so appreciate this, Mike, come back to it again and again and read it a year later or two years later. And so what we did is we created the Vault, which is basically an electronic repository of examples that I couldn't fit in the book, but I still thought people should have access to. So there are additional. There's already 50 case studies in the book from all seven continents. There's even more case studies in the Vault. There are some Downloadable forms that you can fill out. There are examples. One of the things we talk about is how do you create an ad or a job listing that attracts the right candidates? We have a bunch of them in the book, but there are many, many. So there's a whole PDF where you can deconstruct. Well, how might you apply this in your own business? So, yeah, the Vault is another additional resource for folks that want to go beyond the book.

It's the neverending gift that keeps on giving.

That's the hope, anyway.

Christmas all day long. So let's start with this, because it's been my experience leading businesses over 35 years, that it's all about culture. And I believe it was Peter Drucker who said, culture eats strategy and everything else for breakfast. So you talk about engaged employees or team members. Same thing. We say team members, engaged employees, and culture. You know, based on everything you've learned. What does that mean when you create that?

Well, Mike, what it means is that you're able to achieve your goals as a business faster, more effectively, more efficiently, and with a greater overall impact. I, too, prefer calling them team members over employees. The reason the book is called Never Lose an Employee Again is I'm trying to get many of the organizations that still think of them as employees to start shifting. And they're the ones who are actually losing people. The people who think of them as team members aren't having the same retention issues that those who think of them as employees are. But when we think about having an engaged employee, it's someone who loves the work they're doing. They feel seen, they feel valued, they feel appreciated by their boss, and they feel like they are contributing to something bigger than themselves. They have a sense of personal growth and professional growth, but they also have a sense of personal impact and professional impact. And I think this in many ways, and I say this respectfully. You and I have been in business for many years now. Some of the newer folks coming into business, or even some of the folks who've been in business for a long time, are like, joey, I don't know that I signed on for this. I'm just trying to run a business. I'm trying to run an insurance agency. I'm not trying to be somebody's future. Well, then you're going to have a hard time attracting top talent, because that's what talent expects. They expect someone who is not only going to provide them a space to grow and thrive, but someone who's going to push them and someone who's going to Expect them to increase their knowledge and be committed to, you know, a growth and learning mindset. If that's not the kind of leader you want to be, I might be so brazen as to suggest you should think about a career other than being a leader. Because that's the definition of a leader historically and it's more true today than at any point in human history because of the things that are happening in the workplace and in the environment of humans. Relationship with work.

100% agree. That is great stuff. And let me share something. We're kind of into peas around here. People, processes, promotions. I'm looking at the five Ps with regard to the best, not the best available. And the first one is the people. I mean, the best want the chance to work with other special people. The best. The best alongside the best. A players with a players. They want to have a purpose in what they're doing and please get ready to build off of anything that I'm saying here. They want to see a path. They want to see a path to their future, to their future growth. They want to grow personally. They want personal growth. Oh, and the PayCheck is the fifth. And it's not always in first place, contrary to what some might think.

Right, Mike? 100%. In fact, it's rarely in first place. And if it's in first place and if you as a leader thinking, but I pay them, that probably tells me you're not paying attention to all the P's that came before that. Now let me be very clear. You have to pay your people a livable wage. If you want top talent, you have to be ready to pay top dollar. I see so many people and I meet so many people after my speeches are like, oh, Joey, talent is so hard to find these days. And I'm like, really? Where are you looking and what are you offering? And they're like, well, we pay minimum wage, but we want a players. A players don't get paid minimum wage. I'm sorry, they don't. And I understand that may throw your business model into, you know, a bit of a meat grinder. And you're like, oh, we got to redo some things. But if you want top people to come to your business as customers and you want top team members or employees to serve those top customers, you better be willing to pay top dollar. This is a math problem. It's pretty straightforward. Now, what you shared earlier about the path is something I found really interesting, Mike. You know, what is the path forward for the individual? Most of the research that has been done on why employees quit is based on sample sets of about 500 employees. Now, if you know anything about statistics and data, a sample set of 500 is not that really robust of a study, but I understand people are doing the best they can with the resources and tools available to them. When I was writing never lose an employee again, I found some research done by the work Institute that looked at a sample set of 234,000 people who had quit. 234,000 people who had quit their jobs across 17 industries. And they went to these people, and it's because it's a third party asking, not the employer saying, oh, why are you quitting? Which, by the way, lots of times employees who are quitting will not necessarily tell you the truth because they don't want to hurt your feelings, they're not sure how you're going to react, etc. They asked, why are you leaving? And if you ask the typical CEO today, why are you losing people? A great majority will say, well, they got a better paycheck somewhere else. They're getting more money somewhere else. And that was true for 9% of the respondents.

9%. One of the things move a little bit closer, you got excited, you moved away to the mic.

For 9% of the respondents, that was true. They left for a better paycheck somewhere else.

9%.

Mike. That made me curious. That made me curious as to what was the reason for the other 91%. Now, there were several reasons, but the biggest reason overall, 24% right. Almost three times, two and a half times the number of people that left for paychecks left for a singular reason. They didn't see a clear path forward for them at their existing employer. And what I mean by that, to unpack the research a little bit, is they were in a position where they didn't understand what their next promotion or their next role in the organization was going to be. So, for example, they might have been in the job and said, well, I'm a salesperson, but to be a sales territory lead, you have to have been in the job, and there has to be a sales territory lead position open. And the person who's my boss, whose position I would be taking, just got the job two years ago, and their three predecessors were all in the job for 25 years each. So they're doing the math, going, I got to wait in this job for 23 years before I'll get a promotion to be a territory manager. Now, what's fascinating is if they were to go to their Employer and say, is that true? I have to wait 23 years. And they're truly an A player. Most employers will be like, oh no, not at all. We're thinking about promoting you next year because you're so amazing. But the typical employee doesn't know that. And they don't know that because employers often are having conversations about employee performance in the past or employee performance in the present. They're not talking about how the employee performance is going to lead to future possibilities. Here are the roles, here are the positions, here are the responsibilities. Oh, and by the way, if you decide you don't like the division you're in, we've got eight other divisions that we'd love to have you work over there. If you decide you don't want to be in sales anymore but you want to be in account management, great, we'll take you over there. If you decide you don't want to be selling auto insurance anymore, you want to get into all you insure is boats, okay, great, we've got a boat division. But did you even know we have a boat division? And most employees don't. And so there's an opportunity to even in a small organization, and I would posit, especially in a small organization, show the opportunity for upward mobility over communication.

It's an under practiced art, 100%.

And I would. The, the research shows the best employers in the planet are talking about the next role or the next position with their team members every six months.

Every six months, yes.

It's not enough to do it annual. A lot of us came up in the idea of the annual review. And what was the annual review? Well, the annual review was something that usually the person doing the review was annoyed that they had to do it. You were more excited to be in the room than they were. You had a vision of how it was going to go and you showed up and it actually went a different direction because it had nothing to do with you or your performance. It had to do with how much budget they had and what they were going to be able to do and how they were playing three car money with all the other people on the team trying to figure out, well, who's going to get a little, who's going to get a lot, who's going to get promoted, who's going to not how are we going to handle this. Instead we should make conversations about someone's future. Not a one off occurrence. We should constantly be thinking about this. I talk about my, my assist. What many people would consider an assistant is my director of Details. Okay. That's her title. Her title is not executive assistant. Mike knows this. Faith was in communication with Mike to set up our conversation. Today we have a conversation about once a quarter about what's working, what's not working, what she's liking, what she's not liking, what she'd like to do more of in the future. And then about every six months it's a much more formal conversation of, okay, where are we now? Where do we want to be six months from now? Not only in terms of pay, but more importantly in terms of role and responsibility and the requirements of the job and oh, you want to, you want to make more money, you want to have more responsibility, you want to have more of xyz? Great. Here are the things that have to happen in the business for that to be able to happen. And I know a lot of folks listening, and I say this from a place of love, as a fellow small business owner are smaller business owners. You don't have teams of 3,000, you have teams of, you know, a dozen, maybe two dozen, maybe three dozen. Okay, great. It's actually even more important, it's more important for you to be thinking about how are we pathing out our team members careers.

It permeates throughout the culture.

Exactly.

Once you start it, it's a snowball effect going downhill. Absolutely. Great stuff. We developed a program called PX3. It's actually monthly, monthly check ins. So whatever it is, just do it. I mean we're not here to check a box like the aforementioned annual review or whatever. We're here to serve other human beings like we talked out right out of the gate. Other human lives is what we're doing here. And the late great John woods said, failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.

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