Episode 71: Mike’s in the Hot Seat

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. 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 Stromso.

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. This is Andrea Wyatt coming to you live from the Living Agency Laboratory. And today we're flipping the switch a little bit. Because I've had so many agents reaching out to me with so many questions, I thought it'd be a great idea to bring on the one, the only, the unstoppable profit producer, Mr. Mike stronso, to the hot seat today. Hey, Mike, how are you doing?

Unbelievable. How are you doing, Andrea?

I'm doing great.

Fantastic.

So I thought we'd start out today with a little bit about a brief background of how you got started in the insurance industry.

Well, you know, it goes back much further than that. You know, I was thinking about, you said, give me some history, and a lot of people don't know the depth of this history. So I'm going to go way back. It started when I was about 8 years old and my dad had a Jack in the Box restaurant, and he brought me to work and he said, hey, why don't you work the drive through today? When somebody hands you bags of food, just hand it out to the customers and smile. And so I learned to hand out fast food food through the food window to customers, and they go, oh, that's awesome. How are you doing? What's your name? And all this kind of stuff. So I learned customer interface and customer interaction at a very young age is to go up to the top of the building and do the books with my dad. And I learned all about entrepreneurship and all about business. I asked him for a job when I was 12, and it's his then restaurant that he built from scratch. And he said, I'll give you a job under one condition. I said, what is it? He said, you need to work harder than everybody else here, because if you don't, I'm going to fire you. And as long as you agree to that, you can have the job. I said, I'm good with that. And so I learned the value of hard work, but what I learned was the value of hard work equals freedom. Hard work equals freedom. That happened again at 19. It happened again at 23. So. So as I continued to grow and figure out what I wanted to do, I was working in the restaurant business at 23. And I was finding that I wasn't home hardly at all because the restaurant business is 24 7, 360. Well, not 24, 7, but seven days a week, 365 almost. And I wasn't seeing my family and it was really tearing me apart. And so my dad, who was actually in the insurance agency business at that time, said, hey, why don't you come to work for me? And I said, insurance agency? You freaking crazy. Get away from me. Me and my dad were best friends and so I resisted for, I'll say, probably a year or more. But just, you know, the draw of being away from the family was just driving me nuts and I finally gave in. So 121 of 86 I went to work in the insurance agency business. And that's where I started. I cut my teeth for almost 11 years working in another agency, just learning it all. I did everything. I sold, I serviced, I handled claims. The policies actually used to come to the office via snail mail or, you know, horse drawn carriage somewhat, but anyway, and so I used to go in at nights on the weekends and you know, go through the policies and check them and then make sure they got mailed out. So that's really where it started. And then I wanted to start on my own. I had built a bit of a following through a second job that I took in 1989 to pay for, excuse me, 87, to pay for our daughter who was born in 88. And so I started building a following that area. And so that's kind of the beginning of how I started on my own in 1998 in an area from scratch. And as they say, the rest is history. But heading upon almost 35 years in the industry. I love what I do 98% of the time. The only that I don't that 2% has to do with that first P. And I'm sure we'll get into that a little bit more.

So we are going to get that a little bit. So. Okay, now let's fast forward a little bit to 2010, 2011. You know, agency business is booming. Things are great. You made a decision at that point to start a whole new journey. Tell us a little bit about that.

Well, I did. And one thing that I learned.

Prior to beginning that journey is it's okay to listen to people who know more than you do and run with it. And that was a big, big game changer for me. So once I had learned how to do that, I had a little bit more than a decade of doing that. And so I had created a lot of infrastructure, a lot of thoughts on how to do things and so forth and so on. So with that, a lot of people started saying, hey, we noticed that you grew really, really fast and you're doing this and you're doing that. And then in 2009, an incredible event happened.

It was a big stretch and it wasn't in the budget completely, but we asked a young lady to become our marketing director. And that was kind of the beginning of the beginning. She agreed.

When that marketing director, Andrea White came on, that's when things really got really, really good. So we had that going on and a lot of people had seen all the things that we had implemented and taken action on and had started. And they said, how did you do that? I said, it's really simple. Just do this, just do this and just do this. And they said, we can't figure that. Will you help us? And I'm going, well, it's simple. Just do this, do this. And so they kept coming and they kept coming. And it came to a point where I said, all right, I'm going to see if I can help some people. So I started helping some people and we do some one on one coaching and this kind of stuff. And it really got to the point where that wasn't systematized well enough. So I had the idea to start doing one day boot camps is what we called it back then, or Agency Mastery Wealth Academy, I believe was the original name. So the Agency Wealth Mastery Academy one day is how we started out. And so we started that in 2010, 2011, and people started coming and so all of a sudden they said, we need more than one day, we need two days. And so all of a sudden the Agency Wall Mastery Academy turned into two days. And then we started doing them multiple times a year. And they kept coming and people kept coming, so forth. So at the end of the day, we found that we had something really, really special to share with so many people. And what we, the feedback that we got was that, you know, when they went back to their agency based on what they had learned, because we gave them all the tools, we had these big binders, you know, really, really thick with all the tools in them. And they come back to us a couple months later and they say, you know, that strategy surrounding some of the processes and some of the promotions, we went back and implemented it and it worked. I said, what happened then? They said, our business is growing. I said, that's fantastic. And so we had so many of those situations where people came Back it became an absolute no brainer. So formally, the UPP program, the unstoppable Profit producer program was born at the beginning of 2013 and we haven't looked back since. And it's been just an incredible journey. And there's nothing better than teaching and inspiring people who want to be taught, inspired. And when they take that and they go do something with it and their life changes forever, it doesn't get any better than that.

No, I second that one. Feeling blessed every day to be part of this journey with you. So thank you.

Thank you.

Now, I've been getting a lot of questions lately.

Throughout all the teachings that you do in the program, you talk a lot about the philosophy of the free peace. Can you tell me a little more about that?

Yeah. So through the evolution of the program, as we grew and our events became bigger, I remember 2014 was our first. The event got really big, Our big annual event got really big. In 2015 it got really big. And that was so awesome having so many people come from all over North America to join our event. So we decided that we had to have something more foundational that they could get their mind around, get their teeth into and really take back and make it a foundation for their agency business. So because I continue to learn from people who know more than I do about a lot of things, one of our multiple mentors and coaches, I was talking to one of them about this and we in our brainstorming session over a whole one day came up with the three Ps, People, Processes and promotion. And then I know that you and I came back and we put that together, we started designing exactly what that meant within the insurance agency business. So today it's absolutely foundational. You know, as far as many of our members who have access to what we call emergency calls or now emzeetings, if you will.

You know, we joke, it's not a joke, but we jokingly throw around that 80% of our emergency calls are about the first P because it's always something with the first piece. And the other thing that's really, really key for anybody that's listening to this. And I hope you're listening and I hope you're taking notes because this is the key.

It's important that you also identify that one of the biggest keys is you. And we have this fun little visual I was just sharing this with on my last z eating today about the only person stands between you and the everything that you want this world is you. So it does start the mirror of truth and the first P is involved in that. So it's all about having excellent people on your team, operating within world class processes and systems and then just promote the heck out of it. And so what's going to happen is you're going to grow your business, you're going to create financial wealth and security and you will have more freedom to live life on your own terms. The three Ps were developed over now 34 years of research in our industry. And so that personal development and that personal research comes from me. And that's what I share with people, everything that I've learned in that journey of personal research and development. A lot of people say, Mike, why should we even listen to anything you have to say? It's pretty simple. I've been there. Oops. I've been there, I've done that. And I'm still doing it. And still doing it is the key. I, I'm in the trenches every single day. Just like any agent that's watching and or listening to this. I live it and breathe it just like you do. It's not some old opinion of something that might be years old. It's real current information that is consistently changing. Will Rogers said, if you just sit there, you're going to get left behind or you're going to get run over. And that's absolutely accurate. Things are consistently changing and if we want things to change, we got to change. There's no other options.

That was a great segue to bring us into my next question for you. Recently you've introduced a brand new training and it's called the Unstoppable Profit Producer Fast Start program.

So talking about change, why did you decide to develop this program?

Well, it was in response to so many questions and if you will, asks of people out there in the marketplace.

Many, many people attend our boot camps or they see me speak after the boot camps and they say, we want to know more about your programs. How do we get involved with the three Ps, the people, the processes and promotions so we can implement those in our agency. So as I'm so privileged to share and to speak all over North America, you know, I was speaking in January, I was speaking in February, speaking in March, and I would do a webinar and helping other people in that particular realm and they would say, how do we get more, you've got some programs, how do we get into those programs? Whether it be our Gold plus or our platinum level programs, how do we get in? And our response was, well, generally we open those up after our Boot camp in October. So at the ask of the marketplace, we collaborated and said, wait a minute, we don't want to hold people back, we want to make this available to them all of the time. In addition to that, this pandemic arrived. And through the pandemic, people still were really, really hungry for everything we were teaching. We do a million dollar niche boot camp where we teach everything about how to become a million dollar revenue niche agency. Through all of that, people were hungry for more. They were hungry for more and they told us and we identified that. And so we wanted to help people. And because we couldn't have live events anymore, we felt a greater need to help people. So what do you do when there's a need out there? You create it. And it's the creativity and the thought process behind all of that. So out of this adversity, and our core belief is that we're not just going to go through this adversity, we are going to grow through this adversity. And at the end of the day, growth is what it's all about. Because if we want to have more, any individual, if you want to have more, you have to become more. Because we attract exactly what we are and who we become. And we want to support people in everything that they want to become, holding nothing back. So we developed UPP Fast Start as a monthly opportunity to learn more about the three Ps. And so what it is, UPP Fast Start uppfaststart.com is the website, you can go there and find out all about what goes on during these private one day events. And it's intentionally structured to be a small group. We have a limit of the number of seats that are available. So once the seats are filled, the seats are filled. And we want it to be a small group because it's an opportunity for sharing and, and for growth and for teaching. And so we teach all about the latest, the most recent strategies and tools and other things that need to be implemented in a growing agency business. Surrounding the people, the excellent people, how to hire the best, not the best available, only hire the best. And we just got done revamping our recruiting and hiring system. We have a brand new partner. I know I shouldn't have probably mentioned that because it's not out to the public area yet, but we have a brand new partner that's involved with that. So we are going to make this even better. And we just got done with the whole new line of questioning and new strategies to get the best on board, not just the best available because at the end of the day, you can only be satisfied with a players. You cannot be satisfied ever with with anything less than a players. Because if you are satisfied with a players, that's what your clients and your communities and your prospect and your teammates have to live with every single day. You can't be. You're only as good as your weakest link. It's really that simple. Okay, so you can only have excellent people on your team. Once you get the excellent people on your team, then you introduce them to world class processes and systems. And we've got the whole process and system dialed in so that people can take the strategies and the tools and customize them for their own business. One of the best things that happened in the process realm, I was working in the industry. I started in the industry before computers. We had these things called pencils. They had racers on them too. And I had a manual and a calculator and a singular piece of paper that was a rating sheet. And if somebody called with three or four cars, I said I might not be able to get back to you until tomorrow. With four cars. It's going to be, it's a lot of work. But I had to do all the rates manually. I learned to rate commercial insurance manually, how to rate a GL policy, but I understood the inner workings. And then computers came on the scene. We had one in the corner and we had a clipboard up on the wall. And if you wanted to use that one DOS based computer, for those of you who are more seasoned out there in the crowd, the DOS based computer, you had to sign up on the clipboard to use it. So if Andrea called and she had four cars and say, Andrea, I got the computer at 3:30 today, I'm going to get back to you by 4, I was golden. So then we got a computer on every desk. And I remember the team leader of the organization came by one day and he goes, what do you think of this new computer? I think it's great. But what are all these things? These, what do you call those things on the, what is that, a desktop? He goes, yeah, they're icons. I said, he goes, click on that one right there. It's Microsoft Word. I said, what is it? He goes, I'm not sure yet, but it's got these things called folders. And you should make a folder and you should call it Ms. Docs, Mike Stromso Docs. I said, okay, I get it. He goes, make that folder and anything significant that happens in your industry journey that you develop and or otherwise save a copy in that folder today. That's part of the infrastructure that we share with everybody. I've got my entire history and yes, I have it backed up on big portable hard drives at our kid's house way away from here. God forbid there's ever a wildfire. But anyway, at the end of the day we have that and that's just a tiny portion of everything that we share about world class processes and systems within the insurance agency business. And so you've got excellent people working within your world class processes and systems and simply all you do is promote the heck out of it. And again, you will grow your business, you will create wealth and you'll have more freedom to live life on your own terms. And the reason that I sit here today. Thank you for the opportunity to share today, Andrea.

By the way.

The only reason I sit here today because not only do I love to do it, but it's when people take it and they implement it and their life begins to change. You know, one of our coaching members, Patty, who's going to be here for her one day, just a couple of days, came to one of our early boot camps and got all the information, took it back and implemented it, now has not only created a.

Nationally recognized insurance agency business that's ended up on the COVID of magazines across the country, now is a commercial real estate owner and has done many, many other wonderful things and has just through implementation of the three Ps, people processes and promotion. We have other agents like Bill, who dominates a niche in the Midwest and he now has the list and he is the sole provider for a very significant association and he is the sole recommended agent for that niche ready to continue to dominate a niche that he developed within the people processes and promotion realm. One of our other platinum members, Russ, is the dominating agent for a west coast niche doing phenomenal things. And one of our other members, Jesse, has created one niche just through an initial association where he just wanted me to share a few ideas and it exploded into a niche and he's taken the basis for that niche through development in our programs and he's transferred it to another industry and now he is the nationally recognized leader in that niche. The state of California calls him about insurance matters in this particular niche because he is the go to guy. So why do we do this? That's why we do it, because we are helping people, we are changing lives, we are creating legacies within families and businesses and, and just to have us to be a small portion of that development, it does not get any better and bigger than that. It's three words.

It's just three words. Peace of mind.

When I get to lay my head down every night, I've got peace of mind. And that's what I want for everybody else that is willing to listen to everything that we've got going on in the three P's. So that's why we decided to develop it. That's the results of us developing it so far. And we could not be more excited for the future of UPP Fast Start.

Well, and one of the best things about it too is with the next reality that we're in now, you know, this is a virtual event. And so you don't have to leave your home or your office, you don't have to get on a plane, you don't have to travel. So we're providing it for you on a platform that's amazing. And you got to embrace the change and the next reality. So that's right. Awesome. Well, now, who would be the best fit to attend the UPP Fast Start trainings?

Well, and I heard what you said, but I just want to repeat it and make sure everybody gets it. It's a virtual event. You can participate in the event from comfort of your home office or your regular office or anywhere you are that has a live Internet connection. Is it a full one day event? It's recommended for agency entrepreneur owners or partners and their leadership teams. We've had all of these people participate in the events because, you know, the thought process of the three Ps, the people processes and promotion and implementing those within the insurance agency business. It's a team effort. And you know, I've had a lot of people say to me recently because of the changes and the reinventions that we've made. I mean, just to be clear, our agency has reinvented itself three times in the last four years.

Failure, failure, reinvention, success. But as I was studying this morning in my quiet time that, you know, those lessons, we call them wins and lessons.

A failure is a lesson, okay? A failure is a lesson. Nobody passed away. Learn from it and move on. So we had a couple of those lessons. Now we got the bigger success as a result of those lessons. And so we share all of that and the bigger lessons that we've realized through all of this. If you said, Mike, what's the, you know, we have a lot of strong teams within our organization, but one of the stronger teams within our organization is our leadership team. Could not be more proud of our leadership team. And we are Making huge strides in, in everything that we're doing. So that has been an awesome, awesome journey so far and we can't wait for the future. We have a definite plan and we believe in goals and we believe in working our plan and developing our plan and really keeping our finger on the pulse of the plan. It's critically, critically important. And we learned the value of that through our lessons over the last few years as well. So it's intended for agency entrepreneur owners and or partners and their leadership team people primarily, and then everything within our program. We have facets of our program that can help the team members as well as it makes sense.

Yeah. Awesome. Now where do they go to get started?

Well, it's super simple. We made it available for you. You can sign up in your underwear. You can sign up in less than that if that's your desire. It's available 24 7, 365 at upp fast start.com that's unstoppable profit producer upp fast f a s t start s t a r t dot com just go to upfastart.com and on that page, if the system for some reason raises its technology head, just call the phone number or shoot an email. The information is right there on the page. We'll get you signed up. And, and again, we're having these. But here's my great encouragement. You know, limited seating is available in these events. There's not a lot of people in the events and once all the seats are gone, they're gone. And so you would need to wait for the next session after that. But if you're interested now, take action now so that we can get one of those seats with your name on it so that you can begin understanding how, how you can implement the people, processes and promotion in your agency so that you will grow your agency, create wealth and have more freedom so that you too can live life on your own terms. So we are pumped and excited. And there's one other little caveat that I wanted to bring to the table. Because if anybody's sitting there listening and, or watching this and they're thinking, well, what do I have to lose? Well, you've got nothing to lose because you have absolutely no risk. Every transaction, every relationship within all of our UPP programs carries our 100% complete satisfaction guarantee. We don't have any unhappy clients. We're not about to start today. And if you're not satisfied in any way, just let us know. We'll refund your tuition and we'll park friends, because that's what we believe at upp. So honored and privileged to be able to share and thank you for allowing me to share today.

Thanks for letting me put you on a hot seat today, Mike.

Yeah, it's actually getting kind of warm right now, so maybe we can wrap.

This up part two, and I might have to get a little hotter right there.

I can handle a good amount of heat.

No, I appreciate that so much today. I just figured with all the questions, just little background and exactly what the program is about and how they can implement those three Ps into their agency and grow them and have the freedom. I mean, you just got back from a vacation. I think you were gone, what, seven, eight days?

Yeah. Completely disconnected, no email, no nothing. Nobody called me. So came back and, you know, I've got a quick story and if you'll allow me to. We'll just wrap with this. So I came back into the physical office and, you know, the beauty is, you know, even during these times of adversity, we've got multiple team members. They want to come into the office.

And work. What a blessing that is. Yeah, we've got masks on. Yeah. We're physically separated. You know, most of the people in all of our offices have the separated work area, so we're not. Nobody's at risk, but they want to be there. And I mean, I'm going, thank you. But it's back to the first P and having the right recruiting and hiring systems, and we've developed all of this over time. So, anyway, so I walked into the office when I got back from vacation, and she goes, oh, how's your vacation? Tell me all. One of my teammates said, how's your vacation? Tell me all about it, et cetera, et cetera. She goes, I'm going to let you go because you probably have a thousand emails and 20 phone calls to return. And I thought about it for a second and I decided not to say anything. And if she's listening, I apologize, R.W. but anyway.

Because I didn't have any phone calls to return and there were no emails in my inbox that I had to deal with that morning.

Back to the peace of mind. Right? That's all we want for everybody. And that's all we want for anybody out there either listening or watching this, because we want to share with you exactly how to customize that particular platform in your own agency, business or business, whatever that might be.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much again, Mike, and thank you to all of our listeners. Until next time. Go out there, make a difference Be unstoppable and leave no regrets.

Take action.

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