Building Success from Setbacks with Mark Shipp of HUB International

What can you, as an agency leader or sales leader or producer, learn from a multi, multi million dollar producer. In fact, a producer who was fired early in his career only to have the success that he has now. Well, we're going to talk on this podcast episode in my interview with Mark Shipp about mindset and what that really means, about consistent processes and about the fact that everything he does is, is not about him. It's about serving the needs, the wants, the desires and the outcomes of the other person. Enjoy today's Agent Leader Podcast. Welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. This is the podcast for agency leaders to learn, to grow, to develop and ultimately become their best version possible. On this episode, I have a fantastic guest with me. Someone, in fact I told him before we started recording officially that I hear a lot about. I feel like I know this guy because he's been part of our organization different ways, long term relationship with our founder and CEO Roger Sitkins and has grown a very substantial book of business. And I'm sure we'll talk about that. But welcome to the podcast, Mark Shipp. Mark is the executive senior Executive VP at Hub International. So Mark, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Absolutely. Well, again, we're going to talk about a lot of different things with Mark's experience and successes and challenges. And I also know he's someone who has accomplished a lot but wants to give a lot back. And I know he'll be able to share some of that on this podcast. But Mark, before we get into all my extremely challenging questions for you, please provide the audience some background, maybe your history in the business, a little bit about your book, your specialty. I'd love to share just some, some background information on, on you. You do?

Sure. Well, insurance is a family business for me. My mother was in the insurance business her whole life. I worked my way through college with a variety of jobs, specifically one in construction that I really, really liked. Towards the end of my college career and you know, I was pre law and thought I wanted to be a construction lawyer. Decided after doing an internship at a law firm that I needed to pivot and do something else. So to work for about six months. My mom looks at me and she's like, Mark, I think you'd be really great insurance farmers. Supposed to have a decent training program. Why don't you go check them out? So I pregrudgingly did and went over there and kind of, you know, was there for a year, found, found insurance to be fun and challenging and rewarding and got my first insurance job, commercial insurance job. After working for farmers for a year, working with my mother and the agency that she was working for and started off somewhat successful, but not really ended up getting fired because I didn't produce. I had a, I had a, you know, a desk and a phone book and go sell kind of, kind of support. And my mom, you know, she was very technical, but she wasn't a sales oriented person. She didn't know really it was all about the coverage forms and being a super coverage guru geek. And that was kind of her thing. And that's how she would say, I'll just go, I'll make them hurt and show them where they've been misinformed about their current insurance program. And that's not the skill that I could have starting as a new producer and didn't really have any, you know, management and didn't really have any kind of support structure. It was just that, you know, here's your, here's your desk, here's your phone book. Go. And, you know, started to really, you know, become a student of insurance at that time and you know, really, you know, but really the focus was how do we get new business. And after I lost my job with that firm, I worked in the car business for about six months. Okay. And it taught me professional selling skills. You do, you know, feature advantage, benefit presentation, all these strategies and tactics for selling cars to people that didn't know they were going to buy them that day and, you know, different ways to approach strange people and to get them to entrust you and, you know, get them excited about that car. And I found it to be somewhat fun for that, for the period of time I was doing it. And after getting fired, you know, I was like, my, my ego was bruised, you know, going into the car business. By the second month I was there, I was their top salesperson. I sold like 30 cars in one month and got the biggest cash bonus you could get that time. And I was on, I was on fire. So I was like, yeah, this is time for me to really start looking at the next insurance agency. I went to another brokerage, American Pacific Insurance Brokers at the time and they were small agency marketing oriented. And they gave me a tiny, tiny draw and said, said, we've got these programs, we've got this and that and we'll give you this marketing support. Go. I read this book that time called Insurance Commander. It's written by a guy named Baxter Dunbar. And he talked about having a process, having, you know, doing a diagnostic risk questionnaire. Having a process. And I, I followed this book to a te and it helped me just absolutely explode at the time. So I decided to focus on tree. Tree care companies at that time. Just had the marketing support of that agency and I was a road warrior. I just wrote all kinds of business and had a great time, had great success with, with my process. And then what I discovered at that time was it was good to have a couple of areas of specialty at that time. It was meat, meat distributors and processors and tree care companies. And I had a. I, I could, you know, it would. Because me being a little bit ADD or a lot my, my wife would tell you so made it. So it was more interesting to have a couple of different markets to, to play with and have fun with and dominate and have, you know, so you could really build out your process for each of those. That agency got into financial trouble, ended up finding Ogilvy Hill Insurance, was a producer there and they provided equity in the book. I turned equity in the book into stock in the company. Came ended up becoming a third owner of the agency. Two brothers I had were, that were my partners. Didn't get along that great and one left and, and I became the president of the agency. We sold to Hub, you know, almost 15 years ago now. And it's been. Been a great success story working with Hub. It's just, it's the, you know, we kind of have a moniker of, you know, having a boundaryless agency. And that's perfect for me because I'm able to extract resources to the benefit of our clients from all over the country. And it's, it's so fun and just great people. You know, it's a, it's a people business and I love working with great insurance people that, that love their clients. And that's, that's really been my focus. Yeah.

Fantastic.

It's.

And as we get into stuff, I hope the audience heard like, oh yeah, I started insurance and I got fired. Because where you're at today is, is pretty incredible. And again, I don't know how much that you want to share, Mark, but I, I, you know, I mentioned you, you built a substantial book of business. Right. And, and you've talked about some of the, the failures already or at least early on, the learnings you have and couple. So I'm, I'm going to ask this question maybe in two parts or however you want to do it. First of all, I'd love for you, if you want to share with the audience kind of what you've been able to grow to. Because I think it would say a lot of people that I talked to earlier, like, well, I don't know if this is going to be for me. I don't know if it's going to work. I don't know if I'm good enough and, and what's possible. And then I also want, if you would. We, we. We talk all the time in our programs. I mentioned Roger Sitkins talks about you and the mindset shift and the story of Grande Gringo, which is from your trips you had Nicaragua and the fact you've had some mindset shift changes. So, hey, I guess put these together. I'd love to hear kind of what you've grown to like, what it looks like today based on some of your, your past situations you just mentioned and a little bit about the Grande Gringo story because Roger talks about you guys having chicken wings and talking about life and business. And I want to get your perspective because I always hear Roger's side of it. I want to hear how true that is. So share some of that if you would, Mark.

Sure, sure. So. So I, you know, I think that if. I'll start with the Grande Gringo stories. Gringo. Grande. Okay. So, you know, we were part of the Sickens 100. Roger put together with Mark Rollins, a group of interested agency owners that were part of the sickens 100. And what an amazing opportunity that was to give back to and you know, really start. Was a start of becoming a global citizen and really understanding the plight of other cultures, other, other countries and just the people and how absolutely awesome they were. Well, the average Nicaraguan is about 5, 2. And they see me walk in the door, I'm 6, 7, and they're like, you know, they're bewildered. And you know, we're out here, we're, you know, we're in 90 plus degree heat with whatever humidity index was, and we're, you know, hand mixing concrete and throwing brick. Well, we're throwing brick with these, with these, you know, Nicaraguans and I don't think they ever saw Gringo work that hard, you know. And I'm, and I'm, and I'm able to, to throw them, you know, hand them bricks very high. And they're like, they were just amazed by all that. It was, it was super fun and just really rewarding from the perspective of what kind of impact you have on the family. So, you know, your ticket to the game to go to this trip was to support the organization there at Bridges to Community and Building One Home. And you'd Build a home for this Nicaraguan family. And it would provide them with shelter that was hurricane proof for generations and keeps them out of the dirt, keeps them out of, you know, disease infested, you know, areas and you know, just some much more clean, clean living. So that was, that was extremely rewarding. And they came up with the name Grando Gringo for me know and it was, it. I would go back there today and they would still remember me.

Wow. Yeah, we, and just again the audience won't know this but we do our, our producer Fit program which is our sales training. The very first session, Roger opens with a story because it's about changing your thinking.

Yes.

And he's clicks and he has a picture mark of, of you standing there with you know, a Nicaraguan child I think, but know the size difference of, of him on your shoulder. And it's a really cool story. And so now I gotta, I gotta ask the next part. Did you guys actually have chicken wings somewhere and talk about your next click of business and what does sound like?

So, so this, so this Roger story is two faced. So I talked Roger into going fishing with me before one of our training camps and when we went fishing and I was just kind of about close to 900,000 in revenue in my book at the time. Yep. And I had some kind of like internal like head trash about well what when I get to the million, what am I giving up in my life? What can I, will I still be able to have that balance and blah blah. And I started having all this, you know, am I, am I trading this for you know, balance in my life and yada yada. And you know, really it was, it was just getting through the, the fear, the you know, the false evidence appearing real, you know, and, and once you take the borders off and your limitations off and you really focus on others and what you can do to make a difference to not only your agency but your clients. What is it that you can do to, to be a resource to them if they can't live without and then understanding their business better than anyone, you're able to assist them make those businesses better. If your focus is to make the business better, everything else changes. It's like you're connecting them with resources that are not insurance related. You're connecting them with things into focuses about, you know, when you have an industry like the tree care industry, my focus is very simple. Let's keep companies from killing people. And to me that's very simple but very, you know, it's very impactful.

Yeah.

And what can we do to make. And I know the work I've done, a lot of it's. You can't, it's not measurable. But you know, the work, a lot of work that I've done in supporting the industry in tree care has prevented that, you know, different programs I've helped create with, you know, industry associations and different, you know, things. And it's, it's what we say is our goal is to, to utilize both our internal and external resources for the improvement of your business. And if we can't do that, there's no reason for you to talk with us.

Yeah, yeah, it's well said and it's interesting, you know, and when I would talk to very successful producers like yourself, Mark, and again, part of this is building multi million dollar books of business, you know. Oh, and you talk to some people that are struggling, it's like, well, if I just do enough of this or this or this and they get stuck. And there's part of that. And what you're getting to is the mission.

Yes.

The why behind it.

The why? Yes.

Like, why does this matter? Because, well, if I make this connection, and I want you to speak into this, not me, but if I make this connection or this extra touch or build this relationship, I can help this person, this organization to accomplish things and move them forward in places they couldn't without me.

Exactly. Exactly. But back to the chicken wing. So it's.

Yes, please.

So we're having chicken wings together in Fort Myers and we're having this conversation after fishing. But the, the one of the most memorable times over chicken wings is after we were there with our week. We're over this, you know, at this kind of palapa style restaurant and they're with the whole group of agency owners and it's overlooking like the Nicaraguan volcano. And you would have thought we were in the Sahara desert for a month. I mean the piles of chicken wings that we ate, I mean just absolutely so hilarious. And you know, the, the 60 cent beers that we would have there just, I mean it was like you, it was such an amazing afternoon to kind of just like relax in this plava style restaurant and gorge on chicken wings and beer. It was so fun. I mean it was such a memorable time. Great. That's great.

Yeah, it's, it's funny. I mean to hear that again your side of it because Roger talks about it, it just, I mean the impact it had on him and obviously, you know.