Click #5 - Trivial Many to Vital Few

Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode. And if you're playing along at home or you've been keeping track of what we've been doing on this podcast, this is part number five of an eight part series that we're doing around clicks. And those clicks are those breakthroughs, those new ideas or maybe an idea that's gone dormant for you as an agency leader to help you break through, to give you that click to move your agency to the next level. And for the fifth time in this fifth part of the series, I have my very special guest. He's a CEO, founder of the Sitkins Group, and he's helping us dissect these clicks, these breakthroughs. But he also has a very special hat on today. I know many of you are listening only I, I love to listen to podcasts, but we also have a YouTube channel where you can watch these podcasts and if you can't see if you're listening right. Roger Sitkins has a very special hat on that he's worn for many, many years. So, Roger, for the watchers, you could, they can see it. For the listeners, could you explain what your hat's all about today?

Well, it's a, it's a baseball cap, a coaching cap, and it has the, like the universal no smoking sign. It's got a red circle with a red slash through it. It says practice quoting. Because our whole thing is stop practice quoting. Stop unpaid don't practice quoting or unpaid consulting. And it leads to the whole theme where we talk so much about relentless preparation and I say, hey, you know, practice everything except quoting. So it was a reminder today. And the other thing is that I had some, some real world. I had some skin cancer, zapped, and, and my wonderful bald head looks even worse with all the zaps on it. So I covered it up with my favorite cap.

All right, well, I love the cap and I told you, I said, regardless of anything else, I love the cap. And you and we were talking before for know we Sitkins Group has been doing this for a long time and one of the, the coaching outfits was the ball cap and the whistle, right. The no practice quoting, which again became, it's interesting for me. And again, just side note, as I travel around and work with agencies, you know, you, you find someone that will be, hey, I, you know, I did some Sitkin stuff 20 years ago. It was great. Really helped my agency get some momentum. Is Roger still wearing that cap or does Roger still have that whistle yeah. And so today I can say, yes, Roger is wearing that cap, but it's a great cap. No practice quoting. And by the way, a little, little preface. We're going to be talking about the next couple of weeks on this clicks. We're going to get into some stuff about differentiation and a big part of that is no practice quoting. So, Roger, I appreciate you kind of setting the stage. So before we get into today's content, which is going to be the click is about moving. The click is from the trivial mini of all the things you could do as an agency to get into the vital few, what's most important. So before I get into that, I do want to mention our book, which again, video is behind us. The best version possible and the best version possible books available@sitkins.com bv to get your copy there. We continue to get some great feedback and people really appreciate the book. Not even for the content, Roger. I think what people really like in talking to agency leader and leaders and producers, they go, you know what, I can read all this in a couple hours. It's not this big 500 page behemoth. We really got to the point in the book. And so again, check it out, get some great feedback. Sitkins.combvp so Roger, I want to get into click number five with you. And you know, I have to be careful because I say this is my favorite click or this is my favorite thought. But this is such an important thought and principle, this idea of, of moving from the trivial many to the vital few. And I want to set this up with some, some thoughts that I usually give insurance agency leaders or things that we hear. And here's the question that I ask insurance agency leaders all the time, and I'll ask you as a listener, is this, do you need or want more things to do? You know, do, do you want more things to do in your agency? And of course, I'm guessing if you're listening, whether you're in the car or, you know, you're at the kitchen table or you're watching on YouTube, you're probably saying, no, Brent, I'm good. I got enough things to do and join the club. And when I talk to agency leaders, certainly for the first time, if we're having a conversation and they want to learn more about what we do and how to impact their agency, one of the first things that I tell them is listen. My goal and our goal at Sitkins is not to give you more things to do. It's to help you focus on the right things, the most important things, get rid of or push off the distractions, but do those important things more often and with more intention. In fact, one of the rallying cries that we have in working with agency leaders and their members is this. We've got to understand the concept of what must be simplified so that we can focus on what really matters. And when agency leaders get focused, they start to get momentum. They start to get obviously the clarity, the consistency and the commitment that we talk so much about in the best version possible, in the best version possible, experience. So, Roger, I want to set that up and then I certainly want to dive deep with you today and get your thoughts on this. And the first question I have is why is this click, you know, this breakthrough, this thought of moving from trivial many to the vital few, why is it so important to insurance leaders today?

Well, when we're dealing with the insurance agency leaders that really want to grow their business, and I'm assuming that's who's listening to us today, one of the things we find is they love the bright and shiny, the bs, the bright and shiny. And they love great ideas. And there goes another squirrel, there's another bright and shiny and they're always chasing an idea and they, they get this attitude, especially, you know, again, sales oriented people, well, that's a great idea. We can do this, we can do that. And something that hit me a long time ago because I'm a voracious reader and studier, as you know, is there are always great ideas than there is time or capacity to execute them. Or what we do is we're trying to execute too many things at a time and our team doesn't really know what's going on. So they think, well, are we focused on this or are we focused on that? And then of course the team winds up, as we've said before, the team will wind up going, don't worry, this too shall pass because they'll have another new idea and another new idea. So the key thing here is to realize that you can't do everything, you know, like you always say and you just did, you know, do you need more things to do? Do you need another new idea? And rather than reacting to every click, ping, ring and ding that we see as we're out there in social media and studying, we say, look, I guess everything could have an impact, but too many things have like very little impact, right? So the key is to find out what are the vital few, the core strategies, the core beliefs, the core attitudes, the clicks, if you will, that when we get focused on them, we get tremendous results. And it comes back to our favorite law, the predictable imbalance in the universe that 20% of what we do gets us 80% of our results. Whether it's 20% of our customers, 20% of our producers, 20% of our think, 20% of what we do personally gives us 80% of our joy. Okay? So getting down to the point, say, you know what, what are the vital few things that I'm actually going to do versus another great idea I'm going to chase that will get replaced by another great idea that gets replaced by another great idea? And so when we look at this and we say, all right, if it's true that 20% of what we do and do is a bunch of different things will get us 80% of our results, let's find the 20% and let's stay totally focused on it. As you know, one of our, our great elite 50 sales mastery producers, he's at 4.2 million of commission. We talk about them a lot.

What was that amount?

He asked? 4.2 million of cases.

Okay, I should make sure. I want to make sure.

Figured it out. Okay. But he came back, not this last session, the session before. And even though he's been hearing this for decades with me, he said, you know, I just had another breakthrough rather than 80, 20. Everything I do now is 20 80. We said, okay, Jeff, tell us more. He said, well, I'm going to figure out that I'm going to focus on the 20% all the time and not even worry about the 80. So he started right off and he said, I'm going to really focus on those 20% of the clients and replicate, which we talk about. But now he has a laser focus on it. But then he said, personally, everything, every time I work with a client or anything I'm doing, I say, what are the 20% activities that I've got to maximize and get the 80% out of the way? That's taking time, energy away. Okay? So this thing is just stop trying to chase everything. Because, you know, again, for us, most of us, everything's a great idea versus saying, nope, I'm only going to. I'm only going to get focused on the vital few. Maybe there's a new phrase, the vital, vital few, and keep knocking down what I'm doing and master it. Master it. Don't. Don't just say, I'm going to do this and do that. Mastery. And we always say mastery. When you've mastered something, you know it so well. You do it without thinking you're in the zone. And then you could also teach others because it comes from your heart. So that's my opening comments. You find out the vital few, period.

Yes. So many good takeaways there, Roger. And I mean, as you were saying that I wrote down, I said this before, but it's true. It's like, you know, when everything's important, nothing's really important. And you look at how agencies operate in many cases and you know, well, that's important. That's important. That's important. Well, yeah, I mean, there. But what level. And I think the word, you know, I continue to say around this principle and this idea of the vital few and as you mentioned, the power of their 8020 rule, which, which has been around forever. A lot of people know it. They just don't do it very well. And, and the word is leverage, right? Like, I want to get greater leverage. And I mean, you think about. And again, this goes back. I'm getting, like, some nightmares in my head now. All of a sudden, I was thinking about my school days where you're, you're going through science or, you know, some of the early aspects of physics, and you've got that, you know, the, the, like the seesaw thing, right? The fulcrum, it's in the middle. Well, it depends on where it's placed, right. Like, it takes a lot more energy and effort depending on where it's at. In some areas you put it, and things just pop right up. And that's kind of like with agencies is going, listen, we've got to identify. And maybe I'm setting my next question up here a little bit, Roger. But that's okay. It's my podcast. I can do that. But one of the things that we've been working on so hard at Sitkins is to take all of those years of experience that you've had, Roger. And the organization and looking at my background and knowledge and our teams and all the agencies and putting that together together and saying, gosh, of all those things. And there's a lot of things that work. What's really important and what I love, what we are creating and this is coming out to the world here very soon, is the fact that there's really four areas. Yeah, I mean, there, there, there's four areas now. There's depth of these. But what happens is agencies don't focus enough. They find the next bright and shiny. So you can take that however you want. Rodrick. And I'm, I'm teasing the audience here a little bit but my question to you, and if you know, wherever you want to go with this, is how can an agency begin to determine what's really important? Like, you can say, well, that makes sense. Roger and Brett. Yeah. 80, 20. And there's a few things that are more important than the others, but how do I know what they are? How would you answer that?

Wow. Join Sitkins. No, that'd be a good.

Hey, I'm good with that, Roger, because we will help really well.

And as we always say, look, what we do isn't for everybody. But when we look at all the things that we talk about and we try to put it into a great place, we found there's just too much like you're saying, it's like a big basket or a big barrel. We throw another idea and throw another idea, throw another idea. We said, no, what we've got to do is we've got to get ourselves laser focused as coaches, as consultants, and say, what are the four things that matter the most? And we've talked about this a few times, but it's. It's real simple, not easy. As we talk about simple, it's, number one, we've got to get everybody aligned. We have to have agency alignment. In other words, we've got to be playing from the same playbook, or I use the analogy the other day I said, could you imagine an orchestra where everybody in the orchestra has a different sheet of music?

Right.

It wouldn't sound too good. All right, so the number one is agency alignment, getting everybody aligned. So we're getting sales, service, leadership, admin, and ops all aligned, going to the same goal. Next thing we have to do is green zone. And we've mentioned this several times already on the podcast, but of everything I've ever done, maybe the stickiest is the green zone. There's a red zone and a green zone. The green zone. We've got to get our producers tss that KPI of tss time spent selling. We've got to do everything we can to get the producers freed up to spend 80% of their time, energy, and effort. The greens are. Then we've got to get totally focused on retaining and replicating our best clients and finally obtaining new clients. And when we get that laser focus, we say, so there's really only four things. Well, yeah, every one of them is deep, but has a lot of topic in it. But the key is to be able to put some name around it, to get some structure around it.

Right.

So this brings up, you know, I've used the term DEEP A couple times. We've certainly used it before. But one of the things that we saw as consultants and one of the things that we see in agencies because we have all these great ideas, we go very, very shallow. We do a little bit of this, a little bit of that. It's sort of like being just sitting at the waterline with the tip of the iceberg and we go shallow on a trivial many things. We can try this, we can try this, we can try this versus saying no, let's get laser focused on the most important issues that'll have the highest impact and stick with it and go deep and deep. Surprisingly, another acronym which we use is Delivering Excellence in Every Process. Delivering Excellence in Every Process. So if we take a whole concept of a green zone, right, that's sticky. But what do we have to do to get exceedingly deep on our execution and make sure we do it all the time? Because if we're staying above the waterline and chasing too many things, we're semi successful. And as we've said on this before, I've heard you say it when others are on with you that it's a great business, you're going to do well no matter what. But that's shallow execution versus saying no, I'm not going to do 20 things. I'm going to focus on four things. And those four things, I'm going to go exceedingly deep and I'm going to find and pointing those on video with us. We're pointing to a copy of the book. I'm going to go deep and get to the best version possible of that part of my agency and then we can get all of those parts together. The vital few working in concert aligned. The results are predictable and guaranteed. I mean it's industry leading results. So there's my sermonette on it.

No, it's great. And I obviously kind of led you there a little bit, but I, you know, as you were saying that again, I mean we talked about deep and we have talked about that as an acronym before and that all stemmed and we've done a podcast on this. Roger, previously. It's been a while. But you're talking about when we, when I first read. I think I know who read it first but we read the book Deep Work by Cal Newport and. And you. That kind of started the, the thing of my gosh, like where is it that we. And certainly the agencies, we're just not. We're getting so distracted and so as we've talked so much, even the last year of like you Know, what do we need? What must we create to take all these things that we know that work and give people focus in those particular areas, in just those areas and a proven process they can follow within those areas. Right, that's, that's part of it is, hey, I want to go deep, Roger. This alignment thing makes sense, but what's the roadmap to that? Right, this green zone makes sense. What's the roadmap? What's the process there? And, and to be able to say, listen, communicate in these areas and we're going to help you do that and you're going to follow, follow a road map there. So again, I, I led you there, but I, I wanted to get your thoughts because again, listen, what we do, we believe in it. We see results with agencies. We see the freedom it creates and we're passionate about helping agencies do that. And one of the things that I know that frustrates me, I'm sure it frustrates Roger, is that we see agencies continually get distracted in the bright and shiny, the noise that quite honestly is easier work, but it just doesn't get very good results and getting back to what, what truly works. So Roger, one more question and we can take this a number of ways. In fact, I was thinking about this question. I can give the positive side and maybe I can get the negative side or you could go wherever you want. But so an agency gets focused on the vital few. They say, listen, we know we can't do everything. We're into the most important things. I want to know the positive impact or outcome that an agency can feel and see. Like I want some, have some tangibility here and then the other side, which again, you can take whatever you want, is what's the cost if they don't. So I'll throw, I'll throw that difficult question over your way.

Yeah, well, I'll start with the cost. It's loss of millions of dollars. We've talked about this so often now and in today's environment, that $100,000 of increased profit, not revenue, but profit, which is quite frankly pretty simple to do. If you stay focused, it's worth 1.2 to $1.4 million of increased value as an agency leader. You know, we talked just the other day that it, it's their, most of them, it's their largest personal asset. So the cost of not doing it is regrets later in life. You know, I'll be able to get to it next time we start to kid around about someday aisle someday I'll is not a Day of the week. Someday I'll do this, someday I'll do that. Versus saying, no, I've got to get laser focused. And when we, when we see the best breakthroughs, and we've talked about this in previous podcasts, the one agency CEO that got up at the end of our session and said, that's it. We're doing one thing, we're going to do one thing, but we're going to do it exceedingly well. And we went from 3% to 9% organic growth in six months. And so when you get the laser, focus on that, first of all, the whole team understands, oh, I guess that's what we're doing. Because with all due respect, when they do say, this tool shall pass, they're right.

Yeah.

And they know they don't have to follow everything because something will replace it versus saying, no, this is something we do. This is something we do. And so when they can get focused on that, and they say, well, look at the results we're getting. Plus, there's not guesswork. I mean, I realize, and we've been guilty with it, as we said in our own company, where our team is going, oh, there they go again, there they go again, versus them saying, oh, that's exactly what we're doing. So the clarity, when people finally say, oh, that's it, that's where we're going now, they can show up to work and they can get in the zone. They can say, here's exactly what I'm supposed to do versus what we'll change this process, change that process, etc. So it's a matter of, number one, allowing your team to know the playbook, the sheet of music, whatever you want to call it. So they can say, here's exactly what I'm going to do today. Here's what I'm going to do this week, this month, this quarter. And then the key is the excellence. It's not partial use. Okay. It's not like, well, we'll kind of dabble in our toes and maybe a couple of our employees will do it. No, it's the deep, deep, deep execution. Because, you know, every strategy that you look at, certainly the proven strategies are proven. What a surprise. They work when you do the work, when you follow the steps, rather than saying, well, I'm going to kind of do it. I'm going to kind of. You know, I've used this before. I'm at my vacation home in Georgia, and I just love the saying, we're fixing to. We're fixing to. I mentioned this before. And so rather than fixing to do it, let's just do it. Let's just say this, this is one of the vital few, not a trivial minus a vital few that will get us at least 80% of our results. And we're going to perfect that process. That's what we're going to do. Creates that clarity. Communication is much better. Everybody goes, oh, okay, let's go. We know what we're doing.

Yeah, the word I wrote down, as you were saying that you mentioned clarity. And of course, that's one of our kind of key pillars around clarity, consistency, and commitment. But the other C there, which we use all the time, too. And again, this is everywhere in the marketplace. But it really is about culture. I mean, getting the vital few is saying, this is our culture, this is who we are. And Rogers, we define it. You know, that's the language and behaviors. So what people say and what people do, that's normal. And quite honestly, a lot of agencies like, what's normal. Well, it depends on the week, right? Or depends on the month, right? Depends on the day. And I, I love my sports analogies, and I just had none of them pop in my head because I was thinking back and I, I forgot what year it was. But, you know, I never see Roger, you played football and, and I remember we had a season where this was. I don't. May have been my sophomore year or something like this. I wasn't playing a ton of the varsity, but we were doing average at best. And I swear, every week the coach would come back, okay, this is kind of the new way we're going to do things. And you get to like, week six or seven and you're already not having great results. You're like, who cares? Like, I mean, even if you don't say it out loud, that's the mentality that people are thinking in their brains. And you're always trying to change something that chat. You know, I watched this thing. So here's what we're going to do. And the team's going, as you said, don't worry, this too shall pass. Like, what does it matter? He's going to change it next week anyway. And you think about agencies out there. How many of them are thinking that throughout their teams going versus saying, listen, this is where we're going. This is why we're going there. This is what it's going to mean for you. This is going to become the culture, the DNA, the language, the behaviors of our agency. Now you got to prove it. But that gets down to saying this is the vital for you. So, Roger, you're nodding your head. You want to add to that or comment?

Well, I mean, I, I think back to, you know, high school and college football. My high school coach, Dick Mosley, Coach Mose, one of my great mentors in life. And I was fortunate he was in my life for 50 years. I've talked about him before. And in high school, you know, we're league champs and we did really well. We had eight plays. Eight. We ran them to the right and ran them to the left, so I guess we had 16. But if you scouted us, you knew what we were going to do. But we perfected them. We perfected them. We even had one. I saw a clip on this, not this play because that would have been black and white and thick filmed way back when. I saw a clip like this. Great touchdown. That was a kickoff touchdown. Okay? And there's a real long story I won't bore you with or the listeners, but we had, we started the start of the season pre, you know, pre. Pre season football. And he drew up a kickoff return. And we practiced it every single day, but we only used it one time. And it was against a rival that our coach really wanted to beat. And he said, we're going to run this play. We practice every week, every week, ran at one time, opening kickoff, touchdown. Okay, I don't think I've told you that story before, but Coach Mo just said, look, we've got to have. We didn't use the term vital few back then, but he said, look, we're just going to run eight plays. We're going to perfect them, and that's what we're going to do. And so that worked so well. And we just kept doing it. And that always stuck in my mind about, look, don't do a lot of things. Let's just do the core things. But practice, practice, practice. You know, you talk about Bruce Lee with his practice skills and everything, his commitment to practice, and just say, look, a great example. So simple. We've mentioned it so many times. How do you ask for a referral? How do you ask for referral? Okay, and do you practice it? And so, you know, this is, I think we mentioned two times ago, but as an agency leader, if you want to know if your people are conversational and comfortable, ambush them. Ambush. Just go up to them and say, ask me for a referral. Go up to them and say, hey, how do you handle your. How do you do the service handoff? How do you introduce your team to your client so that they, they get the red zone stuff and you stay in the green zone. Okay. Or just to say to the team, what's it all about here? I mean, do they even have an overall agency goal and focus where people can say, well, here's what it's all about. And certainly in ours it's, it's real simple. Now it's about retaining and obtaining ideal clients. Your listeners have heard it a thousand times. But then you have to say, okay, retaining and obtaining ideal clients, that sounds cool, but what do we have to do? What are the vital few things we have to do to retain and obtain ideal clients? And I guess teasing a little bit more now on our upcoming best version possible program is that in every one of those four key areas, as you know, we're boiling it down, there's only three things you've got to do in each area. If you master those, when you master those, predictable and guaranteed results. And so we have such passion around this now saying simplify, simplify, simplify to the point that everybody understands it and then have a laser focus on it. This is what we do. Here's our playbook. It's amazingly cool. What happens when people will do that?

And, and on that, you know, one of the things you'll see is how do we simplify the playbook, right? But then actually do it. Why are we doing that? So we can remember the very beginning. I said, what can we simplify? What did, what do we need to simplify so that we can get laser focus? And again, when you get focus, you get trick traction. You get traction, you get momentum, you get confidence, right? It becomes part of the agency. And that's just a big part of, of, of what we see great agencies do. I forgot the, the I'm going off memory here is Bruce Lee. Did he say, I fear not the man. Who's. Is it a thousand or ten thousand kicks? Ten thousand kicks. But who's pr. Who, who's mastered one kick in practice ten thousand times or something like that. I'm sure I just messed that up. But it's, it just comes back to that if just owning what it is that you do in the trivial mini. So the vital few versus the trivial mini. So Roger, thanks so much again for, for joining me on this. I, I love the conversation and, and you know, I certainly give you a few of the questions, but I told you, I just, I just want to chat with you and get your, your thoughts and take on, on some of these important things. We've got three more clicks we're going to get through. And obviously these are all important. They all do fit in in the model. But we're going to start to get into this idea of differentiation. You're going to hear more about that. What does that really mean as we get into to future clicks? So Roger, thanks again for the listeners out there. By the way, whatever podcast platform you're listening to, whether it's on Apple or Spotify, we're on a bunch of places I love. If you could share it, give us a rating and review. We're continuing to try to grow the audience, help more agencies become that best version possible. If you want to check out our book, please do sitkins.com bvp and so with that, I wish you and your agency all the best and your success. Thanks for listening. The Agent Leader Podcast is brought to you by the fine folks, the Rough Notes Company. They are publishers of the insurance industry's leading magazine and technical insurance content. Roughness Magazine Profile Successful agencies plus keen insights from respected experts on a host of must know topics. Rough Notes Advantage plus provides the tools to help your agency grow, providing authoritative information on complex coverage issues. Visit them and learn more@roughnotes.com.