Episode 301: How Your Team Takes Ownership For Their Agency Role with Joel McKinley

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit podcast. This podcast will give independent insurance agents all of the tools to grow your business and live life on your terms. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or well on your way to the success you desire, with the right people, processes and promotions in place, you will be unstoppable. And now I'd like to introduce your host, Mike Stromsol.

Greetings, everybody. Welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. Welcome back, friends, and I want to share with you today where we help independent insurance agency owners grow their business, create wealth, and have more freedom to live life on their own terms. But today we're diving into one of the most misunderstood and absolutely critical drivers of growth and productivity, which is accountability. And I have learned in my own agency journey of over 35 years that accountability is critical to achievement. I'm thinking back to accountability session with one of our team sessions with my agency team where we were talking about bringing on new team members because we were growing very, very quickly and we had to keep adding team members. And in that team session, some of the team members were going, well, we need to do this and we need to do that to onboard them and we have to go slow with the training. And one of our team members held the other team member accountable by saying.

No. The way to help them grow because they don't have any experience is to put them in the chair and teach them through on the learning by doing it. That was kind of my, one of my very first insights of learning by doing it, not hearing about it. Nowadays we teach in principle, the see do teach principle. And I don't want to get off on that. Let's be real, everyone. In today's fast moving marketplace, accountability is no longer about checking boxes or leading people. It's about creating a culture where everyone owns.

Their results.

Joining me today again is the unstoppable Joel McKinley. Joel McKinley is our Director of AFY at UPP. He does a great job at helping people own their impossible goals, helping them own their future through accountability. Joel, welcome back to the podcast.

Thanks, Mike. It's good to be back.

Grateful to have you back, man, and keep up the great work that you're doing. And I continue to think about the statistics that we pulled up recently on the most recent month in the accountability circles. Not everybody's showing up.

Well, Mike, everybody loves the word accountability when it's outward facing, but when they have to look at that mirror of truth and see that accountability starts and ends with them That's a tough pill to swallow for a lot of people.

Why do you think that is?

Well, Mike, we love accountability for other people because it's justice. It's holding them accountable to what they said they were going to do and the results that you want. But when that accountability gets leveraged on you and you have to face the truth of did I do what I said I was going to do? Because no one wants to be a liar.

True.

God, I'm digesting that myself because, I mean, I'll be totally transparent, vulnerable here. I'm not a super fan of being held accountable either, but I know I need it and I'm learning to more easily accept the challenges and the responsibility that goes with accountability. And it's so vitally important because ultimately I, I think. Let me know your thoughts on this, Joel. It's trust, isn't it? I mean, at the leadership table, as an example, you've got to have trust around the leadership table. Would you agree 100%?

You gotta, it's the trust. But you have to understand where it's coming from. Accountability from the wrong place is judgment, is criticism, is critiquing. And that doesn't feel good for anybody. Nobody wants that. But when accountability is being leveraged because the person cares about you and what you put forth and the results that you're able to generate, you have to receive it as this person is telling me, because they care about me and they care about where I'm going.

Ah, no one cares how much you know until they know you care.

And the truth is kind.

The truth is kind. But let's, let's build on that for just a minute. I, I know that we were both sitting in a mastermind session live with some of our UP members down in the great state of Texas a couple years ago, and that's where that first surfaced.

And it, it didn't have any impact on me. It didn't stick with me whatsoever that I remember it to this day.

Right. So recap for us the situation and share share with our listeners and audience why the truth is kind is important in that mindset.

Well, it's where it, it's where it comes from. But honestly, it's, you know, it's. If you have food stuck in your teeth, you know, not everybody will walk up to you and say, hey, you have food stuck in your teeth. But a person that is okay walking through that uncomfortable situation, it's uncomfortable for them and it's uncomfortable and embarrassing for you. But a person that says, you know what? I'M going to walk through this, I'm going to tell them the truth, because then both people are able to move through it. You build that trust, you build that rapport between the two of you, but you're able to fix the situation when somebody tells you the truth.

Awesome. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm reflecting back on a conversation that I had just yesterday with a super agency influencer and leader in financial.

Work for agencies nationally. And we were both speaking at an event yesterday and she asked me about, you know, how do you think I did and how can I improve? And I love that mindset, obviously. And I told, I said, hey, do you want me to sugarcoat it or would you like the locker room version? And because of the depth of our relationship and the trust that we have, she goes, I want the locker room version. And I told her and she goes, that's amazing. I didn't see that. But she accepted that truth as complete kindness from an improvement standpoint. And so I think the trust is so important and the depth of relationship is so important. Let's get to it. And just for everybody that might be watching this, if you're watching this on YouTube, just go to our YouTube channel and search Mike Stromso, Unstoppable Profit producer, or just go to Unstoppable Profit podcast and please do share the link often. But if you go to unstoppableprofitpodcast.com and you see the video portion of this, you'll see behind. Joel McKinley is Army Ranger. And he learned firsthand about accountability over 20 years as a servant for all of us and a soldier. Most importantly, thank you for your service, Joel, to our country and for our freedom. He was a 20 year army vet, an Army Ranger, a drill sergeant, and when he first started serving the members of our UPP community now six years ago and more now, counting more than six years ago, he tried to strip them down from everything they thought they knew and build them back up the UPP way. But that's not the way we roll. So he's rounded into form, is doing a great job. Let's get into talking about how you're helping agents grow their business, create wealth and have more freedom, but more importantly than that, to raise the floor and scale. So let's just start it off. I'll start with this question. You take it wherever you want because I know you've been out there speaking and helping agents recently and I'll let you take that any direction you want. So how do you build a culture?

Because back there's that culture word again. Peter Drucker said culture eats strategy and everything else for breakfast. How do you beat a cult? How do you build a culture where accountability is owned? Owned, not enforced?

Well, good question, Mike, because two weeks ago I was speaking at a room full of independent insurance agency entrepreneurs and very successful leaders and I started my presentation and ended my presentation telling them where accountability is. It starts and ends with you as the leader. As the leader, that means you go first. That's what it means to lead. You go first. But also, like Simon said, you also eat last. So you have to take the first bite and the last bite of accountability and leadership in your organization. And if you expect your team to receive accountability, you have to be the example of that first. And if you win, great. Share it as a team win. But when you fail or learn, as we like to say in upping, share your, your lesson with them as well. Here's why what I was working on didn't work and here's what I'm going to do to fix it. And what that conveys to your team members is, wow, even if he doesn't do what he said, say your team member doesn't hit their business production goal, great. What are they going to do about it moving forward in order to make sure they hit their goals? And you've already shown them this is how you take accountability in order to reach the goal that you want.

That's, that's a great point. And I was actually having a conversation late yesterday after speaking at the event with a super high performing agent out of the Northwest who has grown exponentially in the last 10 years now up to 40 plus team members doing acquisitions, moving and shaking very, very quickly. A great agency entrepreneur. And he was talking about a situation with one of high level leaders in the production realm. And you know, he was trying to figure some stuff out. And we were having a conversation in a group of, you know, people skilled in this area. And my comment was.

And we talk about this a lot, right? The question is the answer.

Yep, better the question, the better the result.

That's right. And I said the question is the answer. How about pushing it back to his side of the table and asking him to come back and give you what he believes the solution is. And that very successful agency leader said, I've never thought about it like that.

So let's talk about accountability and maybe leading people down that accountability path. You were speaking in a. And I happen to be in the room as well. You did a fantastic job. In that event, I can See you growing and helping more agents. Great job on that. So what are some other big takeaways for you at that session to share with everybody here?

Well, Mike, at the end of the session we closed it out and I and I'll cover more on this. But ultimately it's everyone, regardless of how successful they've been so far, that's the clearest indicator of failure into the future is past success. Because people often will rest on their laurels. I've already achieved so much, so I'm already at this level. But that's where you will stay. And Earl Nightingale said in the strangest secret, we have to decide how far above this plateau we want to climb. And having an accountability partner that you meet with consistently and it has to be consistently, it can be a no fail mission. Someone that you are going to show up for face to face and share. Here's where I'm at. If I'm off track, this is how I'm going to recalibrate and get back on track. Or here's what I've already accomplished. Clearly I have more capacity to take on more and do the next thing instead of prolonging it to until your quarterly planning session. If you have all of your goals done in the first month, why are you waiting to set a new goal?

A hundred percent. I mean, don't rest on your laurels. Comfort zones. I can't remember what it says under it, but I have a shirt. I had it on this morning. They don't lead to higher achievement. We've got to become comfortable being uncomfortable.

Comfort zones breed complacency.

Boom. Complacency kills. Never arrive. Never act like you've arrived. Never be settled. And casualness results in casualties.

Oh, I like that.

Those are my four that I've got on my post right there. Let's get back to helping agents. So what would you say to an agency leader who does not have any type of accountability or knowledge about accountability in an agency? What would you say to help them get in the right mindset to be to install some accountability in their business?

If they don't have accountability, I would say so everything's perfect. You don't need to change or do anything different. You're completely comfortable with where you are. And you know, if any attrition or anything like that happens in your business, if your retention rate plummets, you're, you're good with that. Are you ready to retire? If the answer is no, then you must in place accountability within your agency not only for yourself, but also for your team, because you're not going to attract a players for team members if there's no growth plan laid out where you. You can plug them in in the interview and say, all right, if I decide to bring you within the agency, if you're a good fit for us and we're a good fit for you, you will not be able to sell them on you being a good fit for them if they don't see any path to getting better.

Let's dig into that for a minute because I opened that door yesterday when I was speaking with that group of agency leaders at that event, and that is the absolute key.

Because when I interviewed my client, the 1.4 billion dollar revenue entrepreneur, and asked him the question, what is one thing that you've done that's made all the difference in helping you achieve your current level, what would that be? He said, simple. When I evaluate all the decisions I've made and how I got there, there is one common theme, and that's team together, everybody achieves more. So yesterday I touched on this and you just said it. If you're not making accountability be part of your culture.

You'Re missing the opportunity to attract great future team members. Would you agree that, Joe?

I absolutely agree. And Mike, for anyone that's listening to this podcast, if you have not listened to the podcast that you recorded last week with Natty Lewis, you have missed out. Do not listen to it while you're driving because you will have pages full of notes coming from Natty. And if you are fortunate enough to take action and be at Grand Mastermind in November, I can't imagine how many notebooks people are going to fill at her session because she dropped so much gold. And she said in meeting with CSRs and agencies that she worked with, she was asking, you know what, what is it you do? What, what results do you try to garner? And. And all of them could list off the tasks that they do, but none of them owned the results for how they made the client feel. I love that she said that because in tying into accountability, say you want someone to make 100 calls, okay, but what's the quality of the call?

If they make 10 impactful calls, is that not better than making 100 bland calls that could have just been a robot? So when you're holding people accountable, it's not just that the task, it's to the result. Ah.

Love that, Love that. And you know us independent insurance agents, especially if you've been in the chair for, you know, 40 years now, for me.

We are task and activity driven. But as leaders, what we should be sharing with our team is the desired outcome or result. And you have to be able, you have to help them be able to see it in their mind.

Absolutely.

It's the future self operating now. Right, Go ahead.

It's the difference between being busy or productive and in with busy and productive. Part of, part of the talk that I gave two weeks ago was asking if your teammates are busy or productive. If they're busy. Leaders move to friction in any circumstance. The leader needs to be where the friction is in the agency. And you can do three things with busy. You can delegate, eliminate or automate and allow your team members to generate better results by being productive with their time, not busy with their time.

That's a great point and I'll be transparent here. Again, last week in my account accountability session, I personally have had accountability partner for 13 years and I get to meet every Friday morning at 6am Pacific with my accountability partner. But as we were wrapping up last week, I was talking about what I have for the coming week and we made sure we're on point for this coming accountability session this week. And I said, well, I've got a really busy week.

And my accountability partner said, oh, hold on a minute, I've heard you say that before and I'm tired of you saying busy. It's a productive week. And so what he did is give me a dose of my own medicine, which did not make me feel great. But here I am talking about it again. And that's where accountability comes in. When that trust is there, that person could say what they need to say because the truth is kind, right?

Truth is always kind.

And that now I will think about every time I say, I won't say I'm busy anymore, I'll say I'm productive. I teach that, but I don't practice it in my own mind. Which is where we need to change. Let's get back to team members. Because if you don't have a culture of accountability.

You can't attract the team members that you need to attract to grow your business, create wealth and have more freedom. Would you agree, Joel?

Well, they don't want to get on the bus that's going nowhere. Mike.

I hope everybody wrote that down.

They don't want to get on a bus that's going nowhere. And I've got in front of me the five things that a players or the best, not, not the best available team members want. And at the top of the list of those five is the chance to work with Special people.

Then number two, the chance to do something significant.

How can they do something significant? Because they're part of a culture that's doing significant things. They want the chance to ascend to great heights. How does that happen? Accountability is present in the culture.

So I shared yesterday and we've talked about this a lot so far, Joel, and this definition came down the pike from our own coaching that happened a couple months ago. This came down the pike and the first thing they talked about when we entered into that coaching program, believe it or not, of people, processes and promotion. Which one was it, Joel?

It's the people.

Always the people. It's always the people. And they get their definition of an A player and it's the best definition that I've ever heard. So I strongly encourage you to stop, pause and write this down. An A player is high, is a highly competent team member. An A player is a highly competent team member who excels in their position.

And aligns with your company culture. There's that word culture again. They think outside the box, reach company goals and help your business succeed.

They don't need to be micromanaged, they don't drop balls.

They tend to over deliver and are great at creating results.

There's a whole lot to unpack in that definition, Joel. But where does accountability play into what I just said?

Well, based on what you just said, Mike, I wrote down two words right there because they're both started and maintained by the leader and it's the culture and the goals. The culture is created by the leader. The goals are created by the leader. So if you're going to bring on an A player and they help achieve the company goals and they fit into the culture, both of those things are created by the leader and so it starts and ends with you.

But how do the goals play in then? Let's say you have a producer in the agency. And by the way, everybody, a full time producer, not a part time producer. In other words, 100% of their time is dedicated to attracting and converting your ideal client.

I hope you picked that one up. So a leader sets the goal, but doesn't the producer in this example need to agree and buy into it?

Is the goal that you create for the agency aligned with what they want and you get to tie those two things together to show them here's where the agency is going to and here's where you fulfill a big portion of that role and allow them to achieve the success. I mean, what makes people happy? Mike, you taught me this.

I think last year, evidence of progress.

And if you. It's just like the thermometer, Mike, you may remember this from way back in the day, which was a Wednesday. The thermometer they used to put in elementary schools when you're raising donations and you get to color in that thermometer and it keeps growing up. That works on adults, too, and sharing with them. Here's where we, we want to go, and here's where you currently are and continuing to share that. And that comes from consistent accountability. That doesn't, that thermometer doesn't get filled up just all at once. But showing those small wins over time that lead to the big, hairy, audacious goal. That's what keeps them moving forward. So if you're robbing your team members of showing them that you're robbing their production.

Well, stealing from the agency. No.

Oh, 100. You're always stealing from the agency. Anytime you're doing a task that is beneath your hourly wage, you're robbing your own agency.

I know you talk about that when you're helping our member agencies further themselves. Expand on that a little bit. What are you talking about? You're stealing from the agency.

So. So this is outside of our accountability, but it's important because I see so many independent in insurance agency entrepreneurs do this. Oh, this is, you know, this is just a change driver. I can do this really quick. I can do this in five minutes.

But if, let's, let's keep the math simple. If you're taking $10 an hour out of your agency, and that's a $5 an hour task, you're stealing the $5 of the team member that should be doing it. You're also stealing the $10 that you're taking to do it. So every hour that you do tasks like that, you're robbing your agency of $15 an hour every single time.

So you need to identify what it is you do and the wage that you should take for it and only do those tasks. Mike, how many times have you heard agency entrepreneurs say, I'm busy putting out fires.

More often than I care to.

How many of them are firefighters?

None.

When you, when you were sitting in the chair and you were putting out fires before you learned, if you went back and look at your calendar from the previous week, how many of those fires were actual emergencies and how many of them were noise and distraction?

80. 20 rules. In effect, 80% of them somebody else could have taken care of had I properly empowered and delegated.

But this is also the accountability. Looking back at your calendar and saying, all right, let me identify the things that I thought were fires that I thought needed my attention, that were distractions from doing my goals. If you go back and look at that, you train your mind to, all right, this is not something, this is an empower my team member and then I can hold them accountable to solving that problem so that I'm solving higher and higher level problems, which is what you want to be doing. That's part of what we do in our program is helping agency owners to work on their business. Instead of being in there trying to put out fires when you're not a.

Firefighter 100%, they should be working on their business 80% of the time or more. And that's our goal for everybody here. A simple computation, if you will go back to your most recent year tax return, your personal tax return, divide your AGI adjusted gross income by 2080 hours, which is standard working hours. I know you work more, but that's your hourly rate. And if you can pay somebody else below that number to do something, do it. You should not be doing it. Let me share with you something I picked up yesterday. Jfum, and I haven't had time to tell you about this yet.

What is the true cost of distraction in an agency?

So this is recent, this is, as of yesterday, information on how long it takes somebody to get back to where they were and recover after they're interrupted. Want to take a guess what it is? 15 minutes, 23 minutes and 15 seconds.

Non monetary impact, increased mistakes, slows decision making because of interruptions.

Wow.

Here's another thing that I picked up Yesterday. Current agency stats.

25.2% of the account manager's time is spent answering phone calls.

One of the highest compensated positions in an agency. 25.2% of their time is spent answering the phone. Talk about robbing the agency, huh?

How many people know those numbers and they could accurately say, all right, here's what my people are doing, here's what they're doing all of their time. I mean, how many of those tasks could be eliminated, automated or delegated?

100%. And I encourage people to reverse that. Automation.

And then delegation and then doing it. So let's keep moving. So in today's fast moving world, how does accountability need to evolve, in your opinion?

Good question, Mike. And realistically, I think we probably need to solidify the foundation of accountability before we ever think about evolving accountability. Just like when you're building your your business, the first thing you have to start with is the foundation of the business. Are Our core processes, documented and trained at every single level, are the people, the right people in the right seats doing the job before you ever try to promote the heck out of it. Because are you going to promote a bad product? Are you going to promote a bad business model, a bad strategy? Then you just promote. And everybody says, oh, well, they, this is who they are. So when you're getting back to accountability, the first thing that needs to happen is it has to be someone face to face. It has to be somebody that you own that gives you that face to face and says, here's what I did, or here's what I didn't do, and here's what I'm going to do about it, or here's how I'm going to double down on my successes. And then you can add in the things like technology and reminders and the apps and everything else, but if you're not doing it face to face with a person and having that connection, it's very easy, easy to silence a notification on your phone that says, hey, it's time for you to do this. I'll. I'll get to it later. It's very difficult to say that to a person that you're holding yourself accountable to.

100% agree. That's great stuff. So let me ask you one last question.

If every listener or somebody watching the video of this podcast took just one action, and you know, we believe in action, right? If they took one action after this episode in order to improve accountability in their agency, as the director of accountability in the authority, what should that be and what should they be thinking about and doing? Joel.

So this is something that I handed out a couple weeks ago in that room was I handed out an accountability commitment pledge. And, and I just asked him, hey, in the two days that you've been in the room so far, you've come up with three action items that you want to take within your agency. But every time people leave a mastermind, they leave a conference, they close that notebook or they close their computer, and where does it go? It's gone. How many of them actually take action on what they said they wanted to do? So first thing is write it down.

You know, print it out and keep a hard copy of it. Share that copy with another person.

And it has to be a named person, not I'm just going to give it to somebody, a named person. And nothing, nothing gets something done more than a deadline. So set a date. This will be done by this date, and tell that person, this is the date I'm going to have this done. Please check in with me or I will meet with you to let you know when that's done. And if they don't have that done for their quarterly goals, their annual goals, their three year and their ten year, laying out what they're going to do, you know, it's, it's the 10 year. You can completely reinvent yourself in 10 years or less. 100% agree, either by design or by accident. So if you're not doing it by design, you are setting yourself up to fail every single time.

And we do not want that for anybody. Joel, are you willing to help some agents out?

I'm always willing to help.

Cool. Send an email to vippplife.com that's VIP life.com and Joel will be willing to. And make sure you put accountability in the subject line.

VIP life.com send an email, put accountability on the subject line. And we will be happy to kick back Joel's accountability sheet so you can begin to take action. Not just words, meaningless platitudes. You're going to take action on accountability and begin to build your culture of accountability. I know I put you on a spot there. Are you good with that, Joel?

I'm good with that.

Because, you know 80% of the people won't do anything with it, right?

I think it's probably more than 80% that won't do anything with it, Mike. But the challenge is out there now.

That's right. But we know that's not you because you're here and you showed up for this podcast. Joel McKinley, any last thoughts before we wrap this up?

Yeah. If they want to learn more about accountability or be in a room full of people that want to hold themselves accountable and want to reach the next level, I would venture to say they should probably be in Arizona in November.

At UPP Grand Mastermind.

That's right. Where can they find out more information on that, Mike?

Well, I, I don't know, but you were mentioning Natty Lewis earlier and I moved on and I, I didn't mention it. That's up. Mastermind.com super simple uppmastermind.com It's November 7th and 8th. For all who want to attend and grow and build and scale their business, Natty Lewis is going to be there. I just got the updated visual of the list of speakers. Daniel Metcalf, Patty Lara's, Rob Bowen, Garrick Cathy and Randy Hill. The Hill Gang, David Call, Rod Hanks, Jesse Parenti, all agents other than Natty. But she's an expert in her own realm. It's going to blow people's mind. All agents who have highly achieved and they're going to share how they did it. I want we 100% guarantee that you will 10x your ROI from that event. And if you don't, you come tell us after day one. We will refund your investment investment to be there. We will give you $500 toward your travel expenses and we will part friends. That's how strongly we believe in what we do. That's upmastermind.com Great question, Joel. Thank you.

Oh, thanks Mike.

Any other last thoughts?

Nope. That's it.

Ladies and gentlemen, super, super excited about the future. It is absolutely unlimited. But like I spoke about yesterday, I was speaking about foundational work within the agency, people reaching their full potential. And because you showed up here, we know that you're committed to reaching your full potential. And if this is your first time on the podcast, welcome. My name is Mike Stromso. I'm widely recognized as a leader, leading author, speaker and coach for the independent insurance agency industry. You can learn more about what we do in our team and everything we're about at UppLife.

And if you're interested in attending our next live event, we just talked about it. Just go to uppmastermind.com join us in Arizona. We guarantee it will change your life personally and professionally. Because our core purpose at UPP is what Joel?

Impact people's lives personally and professionally.

Exactly. That's why we exist. Everything we do is designed to share with you some of our best money making strategies proven over 36 years of research in our industry and that research continues to elevate to help agents grow their business, create wealth and have more freedom to live life on their own terms. And also if this is your first time or if you haven't done this yet, please go to unstoppable profitpodcast.com unstoppableprofitcodpodcast.com go up to the top click subscribe so you don't miss one valuable episode. And if you got great value to this episode, please share that link. Unstoppable Profit podcast with another agent that you know that you care about who also wants to grow their business, create wealth and have more freedom. Any last thoughts, Joel McKinley?

Nope. Look forward to seeing everybody in Arizona so they can surround themselves and be the average of the five people they spend the most time with.

Yeah, yeah, they are all committed to growing. That's why they keep showing up in our UPP community. Fantastic. Thanks for joining us everybody. Until next time, create a culture of accountability. I'll see you on the next episode. Thanks, Joel.

Thanks Mike.

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