7 Eagle Traits to Transform Your Insurance Agency

What in the heck do eagles and characteristics of eagles have to do with your independent insurance agency? Well, on today's Agent Leader podcast, I'm going to share with you seven tangible characteristics of eagles that'll help transform your agency to become its best version possible. Welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. My name is Brent Kelly. I am your host. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode. Excited to be with you and as I said on the intro, to share with you, characteristics of eagles. Now, I'll say this right off the bat. I'm not the first person to write or share ideas of eagles in leadership and some of the parallels, but what I do want to do today is give you seven practical seven tangible things of these characteristics that your agency can begin to do. You know, our mission here in this podcast is to help educate, empower and equip independent insurance agencies to become their best version possible. So I want to take this content today and make it directly relatable to independent insurance agencies. So whether it's one or all seven of these characteristics, you can begin to take these back to your own life and your agency to make progress to get your agency moving forward in the right direction. Now, before I get into the content, the seven specific qualities or characteristics of eagles, I do want to share with you some really exciting news. We have talked as a team at the Sitkins Group to make our content more and more relevant for you and certainly the listeners of this podcast. And we've developed a page. It's on our site. You go to sitkins.comscorecard sitkins.comscorecard and it's a transformational scorecard. It's a way that you can go in there at any time of the day or night and go to this page, sitkins.comscorecard we'll make sure we have it in the show notes and get a checkup on your agency, see how you're doing. In fact, we're going to. We've made it to where not only you can give yourself ratings, no one's looking over your shoulder, but you'll actually get feedback right away of what zone your agency is in so that you can make the right responses and decisions moving forward. So go check that out. Sitkins.comScorecard we're excited to have that as a complimentary gift to all of our leaders and those that go to that page. So check that out as soon as you can after you listen to this podcast. All right, so I want to get into the seven characteristics, and first and foremost, I know most of My podcast listeners are audio only podcast listeners. That's how I listen to a lot of podcasts. But we also are on YouTube and we also have our page on our website that you can watch this video and if you are watching this, great, you can see what I'm doing. If not, just use your imagination for about 10 seconds here. But if you look on my chest, there's the Sitkins Group and we've got our logo. And if you look at this logo and you just, you can go to our page too and check it out, you'll see the logo there. We've got it in many different places. It's just a cool logo. If you look a little closer, you'll realize that there's more to just being a cool logo. It actually has the head of an eagle built into the logo. Right? There's that idea, that head of an eagle. Well, why do we have that in our logo? Because we believe at Sitkins there are some great characteristics, powerful characteristics that eagles have and possess. That's part of who we want and work with. And the agencies that, that think and act like eagles, like there's a community there, there's a different way of thinking. So it is really important for us at the Sitkins Group. And I realized, gosh, I don't think I've shared that on the podcast of what some of these qualities and characteristics mean and how they certainly impact and affect you. The independent insurance agency leader. Now, let me start by saying this, on leadership, and this is not the first time I've shared this, but the hardest person to lead you, the hardest person to lead above anybody else. We think of leadership and it's so often, how do I lead my team, how do I lead my clients, how do I lead my community, how do I lead whatever, right? And it's involving other people, which is certainly highly, highly important. But all leadership starts by leading that person that you look in the mirror every day and that's the hardest person to lead. Why? Well, because quite frankly, if you're honest with yourself, and now we can lie to ourselves, but if you're honest with yourself, we know all the truth. We know all the truth. We know all the things that we should be doing that we're not doing. We know all the little narratives that we tell ourselves, the stories we tell ourselves, we know this. If you look in the mirror and you go, okay, let's be honest. So when I give these characteristics, regardless of your position, I say this quite often. I mean, certainly this podcast designed for agency leaders, but for producers, for service professionals, for managers of an agency, this will all apply to you because there's a micro you. And then of course it leads to a macro, all the people that you lead of these characteristics and there's a lot of different ways that you can look at them. So I want to make that note right away, by the way, for all the agency leaders listening, again, this is another example of just kind of going through this list, these seven, and going, how well am I doing in this area? How well are we doing in this area as an agency? And again, being honest with yourself and I don't share any of this to be critical on you. I don't know you personally unless we work with you that's listening to this. But I do want you just to take some time and reflect and go, how well are we doing here? And what are some improvements that we could make in this particular area? So let's start with characteristic number one, which is vision. Eagles have great vision. Now there's a lot of things we could talk about vision. By the way, I'm not an eagle expert, so I'm not going to give you all the data there, stuff out there, how far eagles can see and all this kind of stuff. But I think one of the things that hits me with vision and obviously eagles that, you know, they can look out and go, I can see things specifically what I want and then they go get it. The first thing that I want to share on vision for agency leaders is do you have a compelling vision? What I mean by that is what you're looking for and looking at, is it compelling to you? Do you get excited by it? This to me is so important and it seems common sense, it's kind of the blinding flash of the obvious. But if you're not excited about what you want, if you're not compelled by where it takes you, you're not going to be very aggressive in going after and getting it. But I do see this with agency leaders all the time. And if I would ask them, hey, tell me specifically what it is that you want. What does your agency look like in three years? What do you want one year from now? Heck, 90 days from now. 90 days. In fact, this is one of the things that we talk about with our private clients is 90 day action plans and accountability. What's the next 90 days? And it helps you get what focused, right? So I'd ask you the same thing. Do you have a compelling vision or picture of the future? I heard this years ago and I love this mindset this concept that leaders see more and they see before others. Now, that starts with you, right? Leaders see more. I see more than most people see, and I see before other people see. And when that more and before is compelling, you then can transfer that to those around you. This is true in leading your team. This is true in leading your clients. I have a compelling picture of vision for you and this relationship and what we're going to accomplish for the future. Of course, the same is true with your team. So here are some things to think about in the power of vision and why this applies to you so much is, number one, it gives you clarity to make good decisions. When you've got clear vision. This is what we want and why now, by the way, let me take just a quick aside here. Is that going to be perfect? No. Right. There's going to be micro shifts in this. There's no perfect. There's no linear line. Doesn't go like this. Right. It's a straight arrow to the top. There's going to be ups and downs. But at the end of the day, you still know where you're going. Right. But it gives you clarity to make decisions. And let's face it, being a leader, whether you've got a team of one or a team of 100 or a team of a thousand, is really hard because there's constant decisions to be made. And when you don't have clear vision of where you're going and what you stand for and what we're all about and what it's going to look like, decisions become really hard. Decisions are already hard. Making decisions, it's always a challenge. There's so many decisions to have, there's decision fatigue. But when you're really clear and keen on what it is you want and why, when there is an opportunity, which sometimes could also be something that would lead you to a bad action you're going to take. Right. Problems are often opportunities that we just didn't see very clearly. Right. So part of this is that you're able to say, you know, this is not going to be a good fit. Even though this seems pretty cool, this seems pretty good, it doesn't fit our clear vision of the future, so we're not going to do it, or we definitely need to do this and go deeper because this fits our vision. So, again, this is a really important. Again, number one characteristic is, is that eagles have great vision. Does your agency. Do you have clear vision? If someone said, what do you want? Why do you want it? Can you articulate it clearly and hopefully you can, if not take some time and really digest this, because, again, it seems obvious. It seems like I already know this, but when you really dive deep, most people are guessing to a degree. And I want you to get really clear on what you want. All right? Number two. Eagles are. They're fearless. Eagles are fearless. Now, by the way, I love this quote. I wrote this down from Nelson Mandela. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to triumph over it. Right. Courage is not the absence of fear. Right. It's the ability to triumph over it. Meaning that we're all going to experience fear. When I say fearless, that means that I have no fear. No, no, no. You're human. You have some fear. Now, maybe you hide it, maybe you disguise it, maybe you put it in different places. But I do love the quote from Nelson Mandela. It's not the absence of fear. It's the ability to triumph over it that we're going to take it on. And to me, the biggest thing here that you can learn from Eagles or anybody about being fearless is the fact that the best agencies, the best agency leaders, they push themselves and their team out of the comfort zone. They push themselves and their teams out of the comfort zone. Now, maybe this is you, maybe this is someone you know, but have you ever heard someone say, that's the way we've always done it. Why do you do it that way? Well, that's the way we've always done it. Now, there could be a lot of reasons for that, but a big one that jumps out frequently in the agencies that I talk to and work with, certainly initially, is the fact. The reason why they've always done it that way and they want to continue to do it that way is because it's comfortable. It's comfortable. I know what it is. I know what to expect. I know what's involved. I pretty much know the outcome. Maybe there's more that we could accomplish, but at least I know what it is. It's that dreaded comfort zone. And we say this all the time. The comfort zone is a really nice place to live. Why? Because it's comfortable. But nothing grows there. Like, for you in an agency, if you find yourself getting complacent and comfortable, it's really easy to get trapped there because it's comfortable, it's convenient. Now, I'm not saying you've got to do all the stuff that's just wildly crazy, right? But if there's places where you're feeling some tension, well, maybe we should do this. And you find that resistance and go back to your comfort zone. And I would challenge you to take it a step further. Right. I take it. Take it a step further. What are some examples of this in insurance agencies where maybe we get comfortable and then we go and we start to kind of push, maybe make a little bit of progress and we kind of bump against that wall. And by the way, imagine that's just an analogy, a picture to think of. Imagine the comfort zone as a true bubble. You're in this kind of bubble, and it's like, this isn't so bad. I know where I'm at. And the minute you push out of that comfort zone, right outside that bubble is fear, doubt and confusion. Right? Fear. I'm scared to do this. Doubt. I don't think I can. Confusion. I'm not really quite sure what I should do. So you know what? Let's just go back into our bubble. Well, what are some examples of this? What about having authentic conversations with team members that, you know, you should be having? Maybe team members who aren't performing at the level they should be performing? Well, you know, I mean, it's not horrible. They're not really hurting anybody. They're doing okay. Last week they were better than the week before, which, you know they're going to go back right up and down. And again, this is just about personnel and performance. And oftentimes we will resist and put those off. Why? Well, because it's extremely uncomfortable. And by the way, these all tie together because if you go back to clear vision, if you know what you want and where you're trying to go, if it doesn't fit that vision, it becomes easier to make that decision to go, you know what, I need to have this conversation with you. But authentic conversations, this could be authentic conversations with your carriers, right? Authentic conversations with community members, certainly. Authentic conversations with clients. This could be, hey, the market's crazy. We're seeing incredible increases in premium. Well, I can't say that, Brent, because then they're going to get upset. Well, it's authentic and real. Now, again, you've got to position this in a smart way. I get all that. It's not the point of this podcast. The point of it is, are we putting some of these conversations off because of fear, doubt, or confusion? What's another example of fearlessness that doesn't happen enough in agencies where we get caught in the comfort zone? What about low risk practice? Now some of you are going, what the heck does that mean? Brent? Low risk practice is the practice that you do in the dark, which by the way you'd think there would be no fear in that. But maybe it involves role play, maybe it involves submitting a video to someone as you practice your presentation or practice conversations, or practice a 30 second commercial, or practice asking for a referral. By the way, these are all things that we ask agencies to do in different ways. And what's really interesting, it's not surprising anymore because we've done it long enough. But it is interesting that producers, and I'll use them as an example because this just happened, that we ask producers to deliver a 30 second commercial, which by the way, I don't care what you call it, and we don't give a script, right? But the point of the 30 second commercial is can you tell your story that's compelling, that's interesting, that's unique, can you do that? And quite frankly, most producers can't do that very well. Most of our sales leaders don't do a great job of it either. So we asked them to do some low risk practice. And part of this is, hey, we want to help you get better. But isn't it interesting that oftentimes half, sometimes more of the people that participate in our program don't actually submit a 30 second commercial? And I would ask myself, well, why? There's no harm in it. They're out having conversations in the real world. And even if you think, well, the 30 second commercial, that's hokey or whatever, but it's about communication, it's about getting better, so just practice it. And I've always asked myself, why? But here's the reason. I mean, ultimately there could be a number of reasons, but ultimately it's like it's uncomfortable. I'm exposed. I have to be authentic with myself. Maybe I'm not very good and now the world might know it or I have to be aware that I really know it because if I just don't do it, then I can just say I'm pretty good. But when I do it, even if I don't send it to somebody, it's real. Right? So again, these are things just to think about. But where else do we have fear? We don't go after accounts that are a little bit more challenging, that are bigger. Right? We don't have conversations as leaders with higher level talent. Well, I don't know, that might be uncomfortable. And again, whether you go ahead with something or not isn't the point. The point is how often do you restrict yourself? Your team is restricted because of fear, because of doubt, because of confusion. Right? Eagles are fearless. They Just go after it. Right? They go after it. And by the way, that's where all growth occurs outside of your comfort zone. All right, Number two, Fearlessness. They're fearless. Number three, tenacious. Eagles are tenacious. Now, the word tenacious could have, I guess, several different types of meaning, but I want to share tenacious in the term of ego. Basically, if they grab onto prey, they're not letting go. Right, Like, I got you. Now, how do I want to present this from an insurance agency leadership? Well, to me, this is about an idea. Tenacity to me is about, are you playing the long game or the short game? Like, which one are you playing? If you're playing the short game, you don't really need to be that tenacious. Up and down, up and down, up and down. Get your food, drop your food, get your food, drop your food. Long term is a process over an event mindset. Now, I say this in terms of development and training as well, and oftentimes we'll see agencies or individuals to say, hey, I got some training, or I did this one thing, which, by the way, isn't terrible. But that's not tenacity. Anybody can show up once. Anybody can go to a seminar or a workshop or. Or watch a video. Tenacity is doing it again and again and again and again and again. It's a process. Right? And this comes back to the vision. This is who we are and what we do. You know, I've talked before on this podcast that the agency culture. Culture is the language and behaviors that are normal in your agency. That is culture. Well, to build an agency, again, whether you have 1, 2, 10, 100, 1,000 people. Right. Obviously, it gets more challenging with more people. But if you're going to have a culture with common language and behaviors that we all can buy into it, that requires tenacity saying the same thing again and again and again. An example for a leader. I heard this years ago from a mentor of mine. He said, the minute that you think you've communicated something too often, you're finally getting close. If you haven't written anything down, that might be the first writer down, or hopefully there's been more. But make a note of that. The minute you think you've communicated something too much, you're finally getting close. And this certainly involves consistency. But tenacity is doing it again and again and again and again. Yeah, that's boring. Well, results that are great aren't boring. Culture that buys in isn't boring. Moving the needle over a period of time isn't born boring. Right. I mean, you could have exciting where you change your message. Hey, here's the new thing. And by the way, as a leader, I know I've been guilty of this. I'm very aware when I write, okay, where do I fall short on these things? That's why I'm asking you. But to get better at saying, this is the one thing we're going to do again and again and again, again. This is true for leaders, this is true for producers. Oh, it gets boring. Yeah. And that's when it's just starting to work. Right. And sometimes we get bothered by mastering the basics. But mastering the basics are. We're going to get you to where you ultimately want to go. And again. Great. Commonality or similarity with the characteristic of an eagle being tenacious. All right, number four, I love this one. Eagles are hunters. Eagles don't eat dead stuff. At least primarily, right? Eagles are hunters. They don't eat dead, dead stuff. Well, you think about this in agencies. If you're an agency leader looking to find better team members, you often. I'm looking for producers. Are you hunting or are you finding dead things? I mean, just. I'll ask that question. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm asking the question, are you hunting? Do you have a person in mind, a characteristic in mind, a type of mind, and you're always hunting and looking, or is it, hey, who's left over? Who else? Can I get that even though they weren't great there, maybe I can resurrect them. No. Like, who do you want? What do you want? A part of being a hunter is certainly being proactive versus reactive. Are you making things happen or are you just picking up pieces as you go? Right. As an example of hunters, they don't eat dead things, right? They're hunters. What are some examples of this that I can give you as an agency leader and agency team, do you have as an agency and certainly as producers in particular, do you have a future ideal client list? Not a suspect or, I always say, a database of hope of prospects. But do you have a future ideal client? Like, what do we want? Right? Like, I mean, whether you like hunting or not, hunters don't go out if they're quail hunting and they're looking for something else. They're hunting for quail, right? That's what they're hunting for. What are you hunting for? What is the characteristics, the type of clients, the demographics, the psychographics, the size that you're wanting to go get? Do you have that with clarity. And are you doing the preparation necessary to go do that? Do you have the right equipment? Do you have the right preparation? Do you have the right mindset? One of the things that we teach in our programs is to have a targeted account strategy plan. What do you mean? It means that oftentimes I want to write such amount of business, and I think these are kind of the sort of people I want to write and. But we don't have it targeted. Who exactly are these types of people? What is your targeted account strategy plan and what's the action accountability associated with it? Right. That's what you want. So make it easier for yourself by doing some of the hard work up front. And again, the same thing is true with hiring talent on your team. Not easy. But have you specified specifically who you want and why? I'll give you an example from an agency, a results example. And this goes back several years ago. I've actually had the sales leader who led this on the podcast before. He did a great job with this. We talked about having a top 100 list for your agency, a top 100 future ideal client list. And there's a lot of different ways you could do this. I'm not going to get into specifics. The bottom line, it was visible and it was actionable. It was measurable. Right. If you look at this board like, this is who we're hunting for. They had producers that had a list of about 10 each. So that got them to 100. They had about 10 producers with 10 future ideal clients. Keep it very generic. What was interesting was at the end of the year, they wrote $751,000 of new business revenue. I'll say that again. 751,000. Not premium revenue based on that board. And that wasn't all they wrote. They wrote a lot of other stuff, too, but because they were hunters, they got focused and got great results. How focused are you and your agency in the areas that matter the most? All right, number five, this one might seem a little bit unique. I found this very interesting in reading of eagles, you think about vision and hunters, and I think most people go, yeah, I get that. I get that. This one, I didn't know. Eagles possess great vitality. Great vitality. What do I mean by that? Well, they're able to live longer. Well, how do they do that? Well, they do that. And again, I don't know all the specifics, I'm not an eagle expert, but they, in essence, they kind of shed some of the stuff they don't need to get Focused on what they do need to continue to grow and evolve. They shed some old stuff. Now, when I think about this, I'm like, wow, this is directly correlated to what we teach all the time and talk about, which is the power of the 8020 rule that 20% of the things you do, the right things you do, give you 80% of the result. And there's been numbers of books written around 80 20. We see 8020 is true with carriers. We see 8020 is true with our team members. We see 8020 is certainly true with our clients. Right. That 20% of our clients produce 80% of our revenue. So bottom line, when I say vitality is what are the things that you, as an agency, as a professional, as a person, need to give up so that you can continue to go up? What are the things that you need to give up so that you can ultimately go up? Right. I mean, like, the more that you collect, so to speak. And this is probably a silly analogy, but you keep adding stuff to yourself and walking around, eventually it becomes too heavy and you just stop moving. Now, this is certainly true with clients we see with agencies all the time. In fact, we look at two different models. There's a horizontal stagnation model, which means that you have too many clients that pay you too little money, and eventually you stagnate. You just go, well, I guess that's it. I'm out. I'm full. Full. And maybe you plateau at a part that's okay, and we're livable. And this comes back to the fact that we're complacent and we're comfortable. So let's just stay there for the rest of our careers. Then there's the vertical acceleration model, which is exactly like it sounds, vertical acceleration, where at some point, agencies, producers, they make decisions, hey, listen, we've got a lot of stuff that's holding us down now, a lot of different ways that we could do to free ourself up. Maybe there's another person or agency or a different department that can handle this. All these kind of things that we get into. But ultimately, the bottom line is that we've got to find ways to free ourselves up so that we can continue to grow from the top. And by the way, any human being, in my opinion, deep down in their core and their soul, whether they want to admit it or not, desires, growth. And if you've grown anything and then you just plateau and stop and you go, well, I finally made it. I mean, you see this with celebrities and all kinds of people that have Made it. Well, that's it. It's not just getting there, it's the quest desire, it's the fact that I'm getting better, I'm improving myself, I'm growing, I'm challenging myself, I'm not dead yet. You think about this characteristic of an eagle vitality. It's like they start to shed things where most birds just get old and die and they go, no, I'm not done yet, I'm going to take some things off that are holding me back or preventing me from continue to grow. Let's face it, we're all going to die. But the point of it is, while I'm still here, I'm not going to act like I'm already dead, right? And so often with agencies and professionals, they'll say things like, well, I've made it, or at least I've made it to a place that I'm comfortable. Maybe that's a better way of terming it it. Maybe they don't say it that way, but that's how their actions live out. And I always say that, you know, what got you here. If you really want to go to the next level, what got you to where you are isn't going to get you to where you want to go. So we've got to make some changes. By the way, that comes back to being a bit uncomfortable, right? A bit uncomfortable. So I would just ask you for your own vitality as an individual, as an agency, what are some things you need to shed? Just be honest, it's dragging you down. And you probably know what they are, we all do. But it's a matter of what are some things we're going to begin to let go, give up so that we can go up. Alright, number six. Two more left. Number six. Eagles fly high, you probably know that, right? Eagles fly high, you see? Whoa, look at the eagle way up in the sky. They hang out with other eagles. They don't hang out with pigeons, they don't hang out with the ducks. They certainly don't hang out with the vultures, right? No. Eagles are big thinkers and they're doers. They live in abundance, not scarcity. That's the parallel I would make to independent insurance leaders, producers, professionals. They have an abundance mentality. And by the way, when I say they hang out with other eagles, right, what do I mean by that? In the insurance world, who are the people you're surrounding yourself with and you're surrounding your team with? Are you placing yourself and your team around people who think bigger and higher than Maybe you currently are right now. One of my favorite, my famous, not my famous phrase, one of my favorite phrases is this, is that if you're the head of the class, you need to go find a new class. If you're at the head of the class, you need to go find a new class. And so go find other people who fly high, who will challenge you, who encourage you, who will get you to think bigger and deeper. And this is a hard thing for anybody to let go. And this goes back to the last one a little bit, letting go potentially of some relationships that quite frankly might be comfortable, but they're restricting you from flying as high as you can and you should. So who you hang out with, who you learn from, it matters. It definitely matters. Alright, last one. And this is. They're all my favorite, by the way. I love all of these. I think they're great. But number seven to me is it comes down to what leadership ultimately is all about. Growing yourself and growing people. In fact, I've said on this podcast before, I believe that the number one goal, the number one responsibility, the number one role, whatever term you want to use of a leader is one thing to grow and develop your people. Yeah, yeah, Brenna, I know that, but I've got some other things to do and I've got my own things. Yes, you do. But if you are a leader, if you have people that are on your team, then your number one role, above anything else, in conjunction with other stuff, is to grow and develop your people. And I found this is really interesting that eagles nurture their young. They nurture their young. And again, this goes right in direct correlation with the number one job responsibility of a leader is to grow your people. I said this on the beginning of the podcast. You probably don't remember back that far, but our mission at Sitkins follows this in a similar but different way. For agency leaders, our goal, our mission is to educate, empower and equip. Right? Think about those terms for you as an agency leader, who, on your team, around you, and of course, yourself included, Right? What do you need to educate yourself and your team about? What about empowerment? What are some things that you need to give power to in different ways so these team members can grow and develop? And what tools, what resources do you need to equip them with to help them get there? Right? The best leaders focus on nurturing the young. And again, a great characteristic of eagles is certainly in correlation to what we see for agency leaders. Taking care of your people and by the way, people, and I've certainly shared on this podcast before is the number one challenge for agencies. And we can talk about lots of stuff in correlation to people, but it really starts and ends with people. How do I find, how do I keep, how do I develop my number one asset that we have in our agency, which is our people? When you think about eagles, they above all the things they do, they fly high and they have a great vision and they're hunters, they're tenacious, but they also nurture their young. Right? How well are you growing and developing your people? All right, there you have it. About 30 minutes. 7 characteristics of eagles how they apply to agency leadership, Agency success. I hope you found this useful. And as I said at the beginning, there's seven of them. Maybe all seven apply to you. I think they all apply to me in different ways. But maybe one or two really jump out at you. Right? What are those things? And again, looking and listening at what I just shared with you. What are going to be your next practical, actionable steps to be like an eagle. What do they say? Fly like an eagle. Alright, I won't sing the song, I promise. Hey listen, last thing as a reminder, I mentioned this at the beginning. We're excited to have an Agency Transformation Scorecard available for any of you. And again, whenever you're listening to my voice right now, if you're watching this video, go to sitkins.comscorecard sitkins.comscorecard and you'll see the Agency Transformation Scorecard. It literally will take you a few minutes to complete this and you will get a report back to show where you are and where you stand as an agency. It's going to be a great awareness tool for you moving forward. And with that, thanks for listening. I wish you all the best in your success. Take care.