Episode 39 : Team First

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.

Welcome to episode 39 of the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. This is Mike Stromco coming to you live from the Living Agency Laboratory. And today we will be talking about team first. People keep asking our team, which of the three Ps should I start with? My answer is always the same. Let's talk about the people on your team. If you had to do it all over again and started your agency today, we would you hire every one of them again. And then I shut up because we've got two ears and one mouth. If you would answer me with an affirmative yes, without thinking, without doing anything else except your immediate gut reaction, awesome. Great job hiring and recruiting your gifted team of a players.

But here's the key. You must consistently implement. Not think about it, not talk about it, not. You must consistently implement all of the time. Because if you will implement, you will grow your business, you will create financial wealth and security for you and your family. And more importantly, you will have freedom to live life on your own terms. And at the end of the day, my friends, that's what it's all about. We want you to be able to control your destiny. Is it going to be easy? No. Are there going to be wins and lessons? Yes. But the good news is, especially in our highest level coaching programs, we have your back. We are right behind you every single step of the way, guiding you, protecting you, making sure that those lessons are minimized and encouraging you and motivating you to get to the next level. Always together. But you know, let me ask you a question this morning. What happens when. What happens when that tough day comes? Now let's be honest right now, because all progress starts by telling the truth. Have you ever had those tough days? Absolutely. You have. I still have them more often than I care to admit and enjoy going through, but it's part of the progression on the way to the top. See my friends at the end of the day, way up on the top levels where the high achievers hang out, there aren't too many people because they're not willing to go through what it takes to become more, to have more. So also, my great encouragement for you today is when those tough days come, you must be crystal clear on your why. Because when your why becomes big enough, your how becomes easy. Let me say that again. When your why becomes big enough, your how becomes easy. You've got to be crystal clear in your why. In my world, I got at least three why's that come to mind? And I'm not going to go through all of them today. But I'll start with my primary why, which is this amazing family. I am so blessed and grateful to have all of them all of the time. Just knowing when it gets tough. I just look up at my Y wall in my office. It is an amazing, amazing piece that was created for me. I am so grateful to our teammates that participated to put that together for me in my 30th anniversary in this fantastic industry. And I just look at the why wall and I take a moment and I look at the why wall and it brings me back in and reminds me why I do what I do and who I'm doing it for, more importantly. So let's talk about the first P this morning. This is a very recent updated picture from our first P team. Amazing team. So grateful for every one of them. My encouragement for you, among many, many other things, is we constantly update our team and our team visuals and our pictures as often as we can because it's important to be consistently bringing out new information, relevant information, current information to the marketplaces in which you're trying to connect with, attract, etc, otherwise. So this is the current picture. We have our smiley balls, which is based on the rebranding process that we went through. What was developed through our rebranding processes, we was that we inspire happiness. So we have these little marketing pieces. They're smiley balls. People love them. What's better to laugh or to cry? Well, obviously it's better to laugh. So we try to inspire happiness in every way. I mean, I was talking to a team member recently who's wearing their inspiring happiness shirt around the community and people were just connecting with it magnetically. It's just a fantastic thing. So here's the key. Hiring a world class team, most importantly, and if you're going to take away one thing from this today, and I hope you take away lots of other things, by the way, I did not remind you, you should have something to write with and write on if you don't already. You should be taking notes because don't think it, ink it. Don't think it, ink it. You got to be writing these things down. And the first thing I want you to write down this morning if you haven't already. Always be recruiting. Always be recruiting. All of the time, every way, every single day. You've always got to be recruiting. You do not know when that next team member is going to leave and move on to another opportunity is going to leave because their spouse is moving out of state, got transferred, etc, etc. You just don't know. You've always got to be recruiting because it takes not only, I don't know, sometimes a month or two to find the great next great team member. It takes another month or two to begin to train them. Then it takes another month or two for them to get on board. My friends, at the time, okay, you have to. While you're always recruiting, you have to remember, always recruit the right people as well. Okay? You've got to have the right person in the right seat on your bus. Remember, it's a higher, slow fire, fast endeavor to get a world class team member onto your team. And you must be satisfied with only excellence. Do you want crappy people taking care of your clients? Heck no. You've got to be satisfied with only 18 players or excellent people on your team all the time. You cannot be satisfied with anything less because that's what you're going to get. If you are satisfied with less, you're going to get less. Trust me my friends, I've been through that lesson more times than I care to admit. Alright? And next, your hiring systems must be systematic, right? And automatic. 24, 7, 365 so I want to share with you something today that we created which is our automatic systematic way to continually attract the next great team members into our organization. And it revolves 24 7, 365. We constantly have ads running all of the time in multiple forums and this is something that we can put out to the world. If I'm out at an event and somebody says hey, are you looking for great people? I will simply say yeah, just go to our dedicated URL, which is jointeamsia.com jointeamsia.com and auto forward it's forwards to this website. Now I want to show you what people almost instantly connect with when they go to this website. And this was is what begins to.

You know, sell them, to bring them into the mindset of organization. They either like it or they don't like it. But I will tell you, everybody that we've interviewed loves, loves, loves this environment. So let's take a look at this.

Here at Stromso Insurance Agency. We believe in inspiring happiness, person at a time.

We believe in passion.

Motivation is weak and excitement fades.

We believe in impact. You do make a difference, make it positive. We believe in action. You can think about it and talk about it, but without action you accomplish nothing. We believe in growth. To have more, you have to become more. We believe in being punctual.

We respect each other and our time.

We believe in excellence. We have a zero tolerance for mediocrity. We believe in courage. Believe in yourself, be you. We believe in serving others. You don't need a reason to help people.

We believe in kindness.

No matter how big or small, no act of kindness is ever wasted. We believe in being grateful. Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions. We believe in team because together everyone achieves more.

My friends, that is an incredible message that continues to go out into the world. And I'm so grateful to our team that was so helpful in getting that recorded. And you can do that, you can do that starting right now. You can do it starting today. Here you can begin to create and craft the message that you want to go out to the world. It's just a phenomenal event that continues to happen because we continue to have excellent people fall into our agency funnel all of the time. In fact, recently we had two or three really good opportunities, meaning new team members that we were speaking with that had gone through the first interview, et cetera, et cetera, even through the aptitudes. We decided after we got to a certain point that we weren't going to continue because we just had so many prospects. What a great position to be in. So what you see in front of you are ads that are up on that website all of the time that we want them to be there. We're always recruiting for multiple positions all of the time. And these ads were specifically written and crafted to attract the.

A player so they can simply, you know, immediately implemented. It's all there for your immediate implementation as part of our coaching program. So it's great, great stuff. So let's talk about how to apply how to get people into your funnel. Most importantly, Your ads have to be specific. In addition to that, it has to have specific instructions or directions or actions that you want people to take. And if they can't follow those directions, then frankly we don't want to talk to them. Alright? They have to be able to follow instructions. We have multiple directionals within our organizations and you know, carrier manuals and all that kind of stuff. People have to be, you know, able to follow directions. And if they can't follow directions, we get them out of the way right away. So we tell them exactly what we want, what we expect, what we don't expect, and again, they can't follow that. Then they are out of the funnel immediately. And unfortunately there's maybe 80 to 90% of the people immediately disqualify themselves in today's world. Which you know, breaks my heart, but at the end of the day I'm only gonna invest any time whatsoever, or my team is only gonna invest any time whatsoever only in the people that are the best of the best. And that's all we want to talk to. So this is a little bit about our interview process. We do a quick face to face interview in our office. Just very, very short, eight questions or less, just to get to know them a little bit. Because at the end of the day we want to make sure they show up on time. We just want to look them in the eye and see who they are. We get a really strong indication of who they are in that first interview through the strategic created questions that we've developed. Because it elicits the information that we're looking for to determine if we're going to go to the next step. We also do a phone interview. Now you can do the phone interview first and the second interview, it doesn't matter, but those are the first two things. And we do the phone interview because at the end of the day, my friends, they're going to be on the phone a lot and they're going to be on the phone a lot with your customers, your prospects, your community members. And if they don't have good phone skills, you don't want them. So you've got to get that out of the way as well. Then we do aptitude testing. We have to do. We have to do up to three different kinds of aptitude tests depending if they're sales, that's when we get the third one in there. So we do all of that and then after we put all that together, we do a review and if we still like what we see, we'll go on to the Next interview, which could be more of a one on one interview. Or it could be a team interview. Absolutely. Then we might do a third complete team interview. But at the end of the day, my friends, this is what it takes to evaluate a world class individual to get onto your team. And like I said, if you want excellent team members or a players for your team, you've got to go through these steps. It's not easy. Hire slow, fire fast. Always be recruiting. Always be recruiting. Hire slow and fire fast. And great encouragement for you today. Hire the best, not the best available. You can only be satisfied with the best, not the best available. Number two, you've got to motivate your team, okay? Lead by example. They are watching every single move that you make and every single move that you don't make. Trust me, they are watching. I had an event that happened in my world a few months ago. It just reminded me in such a big way that people are watching every single move that you make. Ask me sometime about my experience with Michael. It will remind you of that. Ok? Remember, teamwork makes the dream work. The definition of team is together, everybody achieves more. Together, everybody achieves more. And there must be reasons and rewards to be installed. Because you know what I learned from Nordstrom? In my study of Nordstrom and I'm constantly studying the best of the best all the time. My study of Nordstrom, I was reminded that there's two things that people want more than money and sex. Two things they want more than money and sex. You know what it is? Praise and recognition. Praise and recognition. You got to have reasons and rewards there to reward them for their actions. So this is our long loved Wheel of Fortune activity that we do in our office. We do it every month for our team members who perform the activities that we need to have performed consistently all of the time to elevate that experience for our clients, our prospects and our communities in every way every single day. Activities, equal opportunities. Activities, equal opportunities. Opportunities when converted equal. The results that you're looking for to get you to your goals. And we're not going to talk about that today. But goals, you must have goals not only as an agency, but you as an individual agency entrepreneur. You got to have goals. Knowing your destination is all you need to get there. Okay, so this is a Wheel of Fortune activity. We also have an easy thing that you can implement starting today, right now in your business and it's simply called what we effectively called the JAR program. Okay? So every month you can come up with a theme and what you can do is you can put $21 bills in there. And because there's a route, about 20 working days a month, or you can put $25 bills in there. Depends on what you're after. Okay. If you're collecting social proof, testimonials, reviews, I might go as far as to put a $5 bill in every jar because those words of praise, the social proof, the testimonials, and the reviews are absolute gold. But, you know, if you're cost conscious, totally get it. Put a dollar bill in there and just ask them to perform a certain activity every single day. And, you know, sometimes, you know, it's not about the size of the reward, it's just the fact that you are rewarding it all. Okay, so there you see some visuals and some ideas for you for every single month. January, February, March, April, May, June, July, etc. One of the funnest ones that we ever did was the first of July. We said, let's find out where people's favorite place to go on vacation is. So we started asking and we got some magical answers. And the feedback from our team was amazing. They were going to. People love that question. And sometimes I couldn't get on the phone because they would not stop talking about how amazing their vacation was. But think about that psychologically for just a minute. How amazing is that when you're breaking bread and sharing relationship and building relationship over, you know, sometimes the most memorable and most important things in people's lives. And now in our agency world, we have a place within our agency management system to document people's favorite place to vacation. Because think about this for a minute. When things go wrong with an account, do they go wrong with an account? Sometimes they do. Claims don't go well, they're not happy about this, they're not happy about that. They got a premium increase, whatever it might be. We go to look at that place and find out where their favorite vacation place was. And we go, you know, by the way, Susie, when's the last time you were in Maui? And Susie will pause and go, oh, wow. It's interesting that you remember that. I remember our trip to Maui. It was so incredible. See, all of a sudden you've got them in a position where they're more positive and they have a positive feeling in heart. So then you can move on and get back to what you're trying to accomplish from a business standpoint. See, it's all about that working relationship that you're continuing to build. Okay, so let me share some other ideas with you. Bonus opportunities for your team, referrals, premium increases, you can bonus off of that number of applications per month or per week, whatever that might be. You can bonus off that rounding accounts and BOR and aor. Ask the team what they want. If you don't know what to do, just suggest to the team. Hey team, I'm looking for ways to reward you guys based on activities. What do you want to be rewarded for if you just ask them. And most importantly, shut up. Ask the question. Use your two ears, not one mouth. They will tell you everything you need to know. So what's the feedback been like? So we have new team members that when a new team member comes onto our team, we have a specific process and system in place to onboard them and we have specific things that we do even before their first day of the agency. So we write them handwritten notes, encouraging them and motivating them that we're looking forward to their time in the office. We have a video that we've created, it's a seven minute video that's about Sia and we're constantly updating those particular messages because we're creating a brand new about Sia or what we call affectionately in house, the SIA way. It's our way of doing business, it's our way of doing things, it's our way of what we believe, etc. Etc. So this is some feedback from a team member who got out to our team and on her first day she had balloons, she had a gift bag, she had a welcome card signed by all the team members. It was her desk and it was set up just for her. Etc. Etc. Etc. She said thank you for the Amazon gift card. I'm sorry this is so late. I appreciate it so much. I also wanted to thank you for the card I received at home. I feel so welcome and cannot thank you enough for the opportunity you've given me. So just great feedback. And then when they get on board to our team, we onboard them with 30 day sprint emails. And so what this is, this is an opportunity to learn what's happening every single day. In the first 30 days of their time on your team, we ask them to just brain sprint every single day. There's no right or wrong answer. Grammar is not important. Don't worry about the spelling or anything like that. Just tell us what happened today, good, bad or indifferent. So this is day 10 for an example of a 30 day sprint. Happy Friday. Today was great. We're making great progress. I've been able to be more hands on today and Help as much as I can. Monday we're gonna be starting to send new accounts to me so I can follow and track them. I'm also gonna be able to help out more with getting things signed, payments being processed and all that stuff that is distracting the sales team from selling more. I can't wait for next week. I hope you have an amazing weekend. It's just awesome. And what this does, it also helps you become a better trainer and to train that person and to onboard that person so you keep them growing and flourishing and becoming more for your organization which helps you grow. It's fantastic. And don't forget to celebrate your team. Ok? We do birthdays, we do anniversaries, we will shut down the office without question and go out to lunch. We have a team building event coming up. We're going to shut down the office half day. We're going to go build team before one of the significant holidays during the year. It's just an amazing, amazing opportunity. Don't forget to celebrate your team. Your team, my friends, is the most important thing you've got. If I were to ask you a question, what's more important, your team or your clients? I'm going to suggest your team because without a excellent a player team, they cannot properly take care of your clients, your prospects and your communities. My friends, it's really that simple. And at the end of the day I wanted to encourage you with the third number three on the third P which is leadership. Why you must become a better leader. If you want to have more, you must become more. They are watching every move that you make and if you are not where you want to be from a leadership standpoint, my friends, it is on you. You have to become more. Okay? You must have the confidence to stand alone. How do you gain that confidence to stand alone? Well, the first thing you should do is invest in yourself. You should become part of a, a high quality mastermind group where you surround yourself with high achieving leaders in your industry. We have that available for you. Just ask us. And the question that you should always be asking yourself is would you follow you? Would you follow you? Can you emphatically answer that question? Absolutely, yes I would. Follow me. And if you cannot just simply become more, there's so much opportunity out there to become more. And I'm going to share something with you in just a couple of minutes. Develop the leaders around you. My goal in the world is to continue to develop leaders within our organization every way, every single day that's possible. And we're excited about It. So this is our leadership team. I could not be more grateful for them. Their goal is to write and keep as much business as we can, and every person on the team has a specific place that they contribute towards that. It's just a phenomenal, phenomenal opportunity. Our leadership team was in Las Vegas and we took the opportunity to go to Zappos to learn more on how to become great leaders. It was a great collaborative environment. Phenomenal stuff. Did you know Zappos as an example? After two weeks on their team, they offer people one month's compensation to leave. They will simply say, if you don't like it here, here's one month's compensation and we'll part friends. And, you know, they want to find out if the person on their team is committed.

Friends. That is great leadership and onboarding, and it's just a phenomenal organization. That's one of many, many, many other things that we learned at Zappos that day as the leadership team leader. Leaders are readers, and readers are leaders. So these are some of the books that have been studying among many, many others, you know, the five dysfunctions of a team. I've read it three times, of course, the iconic Jim Collins. Good to great. I've really gotten into understanding more about Traction by Gino Wickman. And then I fell into his other book, how to Be a Great Boss by Dino Wigman. And my goal right now is just to let go of the vine. I don't want to get in the way of anybody within our organization. I want them continue to flourish, continue to grow, continue to become more. So in our effort to also do that, we created the SIA Library for anybody on our team or anybody in our communities. We want them to become more. I actually had an opportunity to check out a book myself because I had given away all the books. The book was fanatical prospecting by the amazing Jeff Blunt. And I'm studying again because I need to up my sales game. And that's one of the best sales books that I know of. And so I couldn't find a copy and I needed to see it while I listened to it. So I checked it out of our library. It is fantastic and just another opportunity. We've got books, we've got audios, we've got CDs there in the library that anybody can check out anytime. Anybody within our communities, we want to encourage personal development and growth all of the time. So there's the library within our office where people can check things out. And then lastly, to reiterate, would you follow you? Would you follow you? You've got to be clear on the answer to that question. Friends. That was just a brief overview of.

A few things you can immediately implement in your agency. And if you would like more more, check out our upcoming Boot Camp with three full jam packed days with game changing strategies to grow your business, create financial security, and to have more freedom to live life on your own terms. Visit bunstoppablebootcamp.com today. That's beunstoppablebootcamp.com or call 800-770-9984. You got this. We got this. I can't wait to see you there. And I can't wait to meet you and help you.

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