From NFL Dreams to Insurance Success: Winning Insights from Matt Hughes of First MainStreet

Two characteristics of great agency leadership and great agency performance are often overlooked. Resiliency and being coachable. On today's Agent Leader podcast, I interview Matt Hughes, growth and sales strategist with First Main Street. And Matt gets authentic and vulnerable, tells his story and what he's learned in these two characteristics. You gotta check out this podcast. There's so many great takeaways. Enjoy. Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. This is the podcast for agency leaders to learn, to grow, to develop, to become best version possible agency leaders so you can lead best version possible insurance agencies. My name is Brent Kelly. I'm your host. It's a absolute pleasure to be with you on this episode and I keep bringing some great guests. I've got another one here with me today. I've got Matt Hughes, who's the sales and growth strategist for First Main Street Insurance, part of True North, a great organization. I've had some other guests from this organization and known Matt for a long time. I know he's known the Sitkins Group for a long time and so excited to have Matt on today. He's going to share some great ideas and thoughts I know based on past conversations that you as an agency leader can take back and use with your team in many ways, so many. Matt, first and foremost, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me, Brent. I'm happy to be here.

Well, I'm excited to dive in and as always, you know, this is about having a, a cup of coffee or tea or glass of water and having some real talk and conversation. Matt, as we get started, I know again, I've known you for, for quite a while. And by the way, side note, he may mention this, he may not, so I'll go ahead and say it. Now, Matt is a college athlete. Well, former I should say, but get big guy, played lineback at the University of Iowa. I have to say, as a side note, I am a University of Illinois grad. I didn't play there because I'm not as big and strong and as awesome as Matt. But we've had some fun back and forth and I know our current head coach used to, used to work and coach Matt, so we've got some, some crossover there. But anyway, if there's some Midwest football fans and you want to learn anything about the University of Iowa, reach out to Matt. He's your guy. All right, Is that, is that fair, Matt?

Bo that's fair. I'm always help. Always happy to help talk about football in particular.

All right, well, if people listen to the podcast and thank you for being a listener. If you've listened to previous podcast I love football analogies, so there's a likelihood it may come up somewhere in today's conversation. So, Matt, start with this. Just tell the audience about yourself, you know, your little background, you know, within the agency, what your role is there. Just give a, you know, overall scope of your role and then, of course, a little bit about the agency as well.

Yeah, no, I've been in insurance since 2007. You know, after my career at Iowa, I played a little bit in the NFL with the 49ers. Blew my shoulder out. I thought I was going to get into some coaching. Did some coaching at University of South Dakota, got into medical sales for nine years. But the reason that I didn't continue on as a coach was because I. I always had aspirations of being a good husband, a good father, being somebody in the community. And I knew that coaches at the college level, they're gone, they're recruiting. You know, I spent two years there. I was like, I. I just can't see myself doing that. But after my last job in medical sales, I was covering five states and I had my third child at the time, and. And I was gone all the time. And I looked in the mirror, I said, you know what, Matt? You're. This isn't who you are. This isn't what you. You wanted to do and what you wanted to be. So someone came up and said, man, Matt, you know, a lot of people, why don't you get in this insurance game? And. And I looked at him, I said, there's no way in the world I'm ever going to pedal insurance. I'll never forget saying that to myself. I'm never going to get into that world. But I did. You know, it was a way for me to challenge myself. It. It was a way for me to use the relationships I built over the years. It was a way to stay competitive and, and because I always want to win. But it was a way for me to. To do something that I'd never done before and, and to. To take on that challenge. So I got into Insurance in 2007. Actually, I started with True north. And, and this is. This podcast is about being real. I failed. I failed my first go around at True North. You know, I. I didn't do what I needed to do from an engagement and learning perspective. I kind of had an ego that I knew what to do. And I think I went to Sitkins Profit three times before I finally figured out I didn't know more than Roger and it was time to implement the strategies. So long story short, I found a specialization within Insurance Associates of Iowa City. We built that up and sold it to now went to vgm and I grew into a management role within BGM where we did specialty programs and then I was, had the opportunity to come back to True north within First Main street about four and a half years ago. So to me that was the biggest, it was a true blessing because to come full circle and to take that time to grow and to develop and, and then for the, the group that brought me into the industry to bring me back was it made me feel good, like, okay, we're a different person now than we were back then and now we're able to do bigger things. So been here for four and a half years. First Main street is an, is an awesome company. It's, we provide perpetuation to small town agencies across the Midwest. We have over 50 locations in Iowa. Now we're in South Dakota, Minnesota as well as we have one location in Tennessee. And I get the opportunity to coach our producers and, and to teach them how to be successful, how to use my experiences to, to, to, to find success and maximize their careers. So it's been a blessing and I've loved the industry. I wish I'd have done it. I wish I wouldn't have wasted the nine years in medical sales honestly, because think I'd be a little bit further ahead. But it's, it's been a, it's been a fun ride. Yeah.

You know, Matt, this is probably not going to shock you or, or the audience, but you know, as many people as I talk to, whether it's in our programs or coaching or podcast, doesn't really matter. Or different events. Like, you know, there's, there's like the 1%. It's like I was really wanting to get insurance and I got in there and everyone else is like I did this and whatever and some person talked to me and I was like, okay. And here I am, whatever x many years later. So I think we all know it's a great industry and something I hear all the time and maybe if you agree with this, is that, you know, the insurance industry itself, certainly from a sales perspective it's a really hard job and it is, I mean it's a really hard, challenging job but it's an amazing long term career. And you know, just thinking about, you know, you're talking about being a coach and you know, I love that too in the coaching aspect but you know, just to go there for A second. I mean, you'll see, you know, whether it's a college head coach, it's made it, you know, and it's like, yeah, but did you know the 10 or 15 or 20 years they put in of like just chaos, you know, to get there? And by the way, the majority of them don't make it to that. You know, it doesn't mean you can't, but it's just there's so many challenges there. And I, I do have a question within this. I want to. I took some notes right away just from your intro and I. Things I want to get your thoughts on. First of all, thanks for your transparency in talking about the first time you failed. And I think what I find time and time again, that the highest level performers, first of all, we all fail in different ways, but I think the highest level performers and achievers and leaders are authentic and vulnerable about that, to be able to apply that from what they learned. And you know, there, there's a, there's a, there's an essence. I think of two things. Number one, do you have the toughness or resilience to get back up off the floor when you get knocked down? And number two, are you willing to be coachable? And, and maybe you could speak on one or both of those, Matt, because I'll just say this to the audience that don't know you as well as I do, you are extremely coachable.

Right.

We talk about that like, hey, I, I don't know, or I'm willing to lean in. And so just from your perspective, I mean, whether it's you personally, Matt, or working now with agents and producers across the state of Iowa, and obviously you guys are expanding to all other states now. How do you see that work in whether it's resiliency, toughness to get up and then just being coachable, how do you see that working in from a personal and professional development?

Well, you know, you talk about being vulnerable and, and my story is one that for probably the first 10 or 15 years of my career, I hid from because I was embarrassed about the path I'd been on. And this is probably good a time as ever to kind of go into that. You know, when I say I was, when I was in medical sales, I was making great money supporting the family and I went into insurance thinking that I would own it and thinking that it was going to be easier. You know, it's all about shaking hands, kissing babies, all that stuff. I'm good at that. Right? I can, I can do that with the best of anybody. But there's a lot more to it. There's a lot more discipline, there's organization, there's a lot of, you know, tactics, there's strategy. There's things that I didn't know and I took for granted and the nest egg that I had built for my family and the, the lifestyle that my family had been accustomed to slowly had whittled away to the point where I was, you know, basically broke. I had ran up big time debt on credit cards. I, I had entered debt reductions deals with, with, you know, companies so I could somehow swim out of debt. I mean, and I think the day that that changed my life was I went and I wrote a physical therapy company in Iowa City, Iowa. And I was just on the cusp of saying, you know what? I'm, I can't do this. And I was starting to look at medical sales jobs to get back into that field. And I was fortunate to meet the, the CEO or the CFO of a physical therapy company in Iowa City. And we wrote the business and I fell in love with that industry. I fell in love with the, the commonalities that we had in our past. And I knew the value that that industry brought to what I enjoyed in the football. They always kept me on the field, all this and that. So that CFO said, you know, Matt, we really appreciate what you did for us. I wonder if you could do this at a bigger scale to help more physical therapy practices. I was like, you know what, if you can help me do that, if we can develop a program for that, I, I think I could do this. I think I can stay in this industry. So he's like, okay, well, let's, let's go. I want you to go to this national conference. It was in Washington D.C. and I was like, let's go. So I, I borrowed money to get a plane ticket to get out to D.C. i went in and I checked in at the hotel. My credit card declined. And so I had to call my parents to see if they could help me with the, the hotel room. But in the, in the back of my mind I'm like, it's okay, because tonight I got invited to dinner with eight of the most prominent physical therapists around the country. My life is going to change tonight because I'm going to be at this dinner in the presence of. It probably represented 500,000 of, of commissionable revenue at that table. So I was like, wow, this is going to be absolutely huge. So even though I was a little bit down that I was realizing really Quickly that all the things that I worked for, it was, it was gone. But I knew that I had this dinner coming up that night. So, you know, I got checked in, went to the dinner. We said, it's like one of those Ruth's Chris steakhouses. You know, you open the menu and everything's a hundred dollars. And, and my heart sank because I was like, I can't afford this. I. My credit card got. Just mounts at the hotel. What am I going to do? So I, I did the, the, the funny thing, you know, I made a joke about it. I ordered a side salad and a water. And I told him I was just trying to watch my figure, you know, and, and you know, in meantime, they're pouring wine, they're eating steaks, and then the, the moment of truth comes and the waiter comes to the, to the, to the, to the table and says, how are we going to do this, Bill? And I'm sitting there saying, gosh, everybody on your own, please. Everybody on your own. But he's. But the group says, now just put it on one. We'll split it up evenly. So my portion of that dinner was like 250, 300 bucks. So I went from as excited as I've ever been to be at a dinner to as embarrassed as I've ever been because I had to ask one of those PTs who are the most influential in the country to help me pay for my dinner. So I left that dinner embarrassed. And I remember just walking around Washington D.C. for about three hours, and I sat on the curb at one point and I was just like, matt, you know, this is not you. You're better than this. You're a winner. You're disappointing, you know, your wife, you're disappointing your kids, you're disappointing your company, and most importantly, you're disappointing yourself. And I'll never forget, because I made a commitment and I had already been through Sitkins Profit three times as I sat on that, in that and that curve. And I, each time I went there, I was like, yeah, this is great stuff. This is great stuff. Then I got back into our office and I reverted back to the same old stuff, but I sat on that curve and I said, you know what? I'm going to do something about this. I'm. I'm going to dedicate myself to the discipline, to the strategy, to being the number one agent or risk advisor in the country, calling on physical therapist. I'm going to be the best. And long story short, I know it's been a long story. I apologize, but I left. And over the next 10 years, we wrote about 2500 physical therapy practices across the country. And it was a huge turnaround. It opened up doors, it's opened up doors still today, but it really just, it was, it's about being disciplined to the strategies, being vulnerable, telling the story, connecting with people, and good things happen. So that, that's, that's kind of a long winded version of answering your question, but that's, that's how I got to where I'm at. And it's been a roller coaster ride to say the least, but one that I don't, I would never change one bit about even the embarrassment of that situation. I can look back on it now and, and appreciate it for what it is, but understand I came out on the other side.

Yeah, well, first of all, thank you for, for being vulnerable on that and sharing that. You know, even though I know it's, it's been a while and there's been success behind, I'm sure it's still not your favorite thing probably to talk about necessarily, but I think there's some huge clues that come out of this because by the way, I, I, I will make a bold prediction. I guarantee that a number of people listen to this podcast and go, I've had a moment like that. I, I, I've had a situation like that. Now maybe it's not that exact thing or whatever because I tell a story. It's pretty similar actually. What, what you had mad at this. And you know, I, one of the things that we talk about leadership, you know, obviously there's leadership of people, but you've heard me probably say this before, Matt, the hardest person to lead is you. It's, it's looking in the mirror and going, gosh, am I leading myself as I should be? And the problem with that is you have two choices. You either look in the mirror and go, it's time to be honest and pull all the layers back and just be real, better or worse. Or you go start putting on mask and you hide. And that's what a lot of people do. And so I, I, I, I want to phrase that. First of all, thanks for sharing that. And I think there's so many lessons because it's very easy. And you said, I'm going to go do this thing. And actually, you know what? I think I'm just going to quit and go back and do this. But you, you hung in there and persevered and what I wrote down and I don't know if you want to speak more into this or not. But at some point there, as you said, you're walking through D.C. you're like, I'm going to make a decision. I'm making a commitment to myself that I'm going to be, and I'm using my term, a better version of Matt moving forward was that, I mean, just to get your take on that. I mean, there's one thing to make a decision when you're walking and go, I don't want to feel that again. I don't want to deal with that again. But when you made that commitment, it's one thing to make it in your head. But what were like some of the first actions, you don't have to get like specific because it could be all over. But like, it's one thing to say I'm going to make a commitment. Or as you said, I went through profit and there's some really good stuff there, but I haven't really applied it. Like what, what's it, what's a starting point for someone to build some habits and momentum areas where maybe they've been falling short in the past?

Well, I tell you what, what that meant for me and what resonated in my head was some of some information from profit when it said specialists make more money and specialists specialize and also specialists want to work with specialists. So I went back to my notes and I, and, and quite honestly, my notes weren't very good. So what I did was I, I re registered for the next profit. That was probably the first thing I did and it was in Florida and I still have the notes from that session. And every. I, I went through that profit session differently than I'd ever done before. It wasn't, it wasn't about getting through the class and then going to have beers with the rest of the classmate, which, which is cool. That's, that's a fun part about it. It's, it's building those relationships and things like that. But what I, what I, what I was intentional was about every note that I took during Profit at night I went and I typed them up again and then I highlighted areas of improvement that I could do better in and highlight things that really resonated. And I did it every, every day. And then when I got back, I rewrote the notes again and I had a separate tab which were things to do next and, and ways to, you know, implementation because it wasn't going, I wasn't going to fall back into the trap of going, saying that's a great idea and then doing nothing. I was Going to make those little small changes. And it started with the really basic thing of the producer, perfect schedule. It was about organizing my day and being intentional about. Because, you know, I was going into a specialization where there's 38,000 PT practices across the country. So there's no shortage of leads, there's no shortage of opportunities. But you have to be intentional about prospecting and making time to do that. And every day I prospected for an hour in the morning and hour and afternoon every day, day. And we got to the point where we were writing between 30 and 40 practices a month. But. And another thing that happened in. In that realization was I was the. The. What was it? Sou. The source of all knowledge in the universe. That's what I was projecting to pt. So there was even growth once I started having success. There was growth that happened in, in my life because I was the guy who would tell the PT practice owner, man, I am your dude. I don't care if it's midnight on Sunday. If you need something, you call me. I got you. Unfortunately, people did. And what happened to my capacity was it went way down and I wasn't. I had an HPT team, but I was using her mainly as a service, a servicer to create certificates and do all that stuff. She wasn't a true HPT team member. So what happened is I got to about 300 practices and I hit a ceiling because I was sitting there trying to do everything. And one of the other principles that I. That I then veered into was the HPT concept and to let letting my account manager do what she does best in service. And what happened at that point, we grew from three hundred to a thousand. Once I gave up the, the thought that I had to be everything to everyone, but I let our team start taking things. That ceiling got lifted and we grew to a thousand. Then we grew to 2,000. And quite honestly, we could have kept on going and we didn't have to add staff because we had it down. We were efficient and we were letting the team. We're. We're empowering the team to do what they do best, which allowed me to do what I do best, which is build relationships and trust and to lead practice owners. So there's so many concepts within the program that has helped me throughout the years, and they still are. There's still new information. I'll never learn it all, but we continue to work every day to be the best version of ourselves possible so that we can help those that we get an opportunity to impact.

Wow. Fantastic. And there's just the thing that hit me on this is I've done this too and I met you, I kind of talked about it where we joke about have you ever taken a bunch of notes and stuck it in a drawer? Right. Six months later you're like, oh yeah, I went to that program. Or it doesn't have to be the Sitkins program, although we believe in it obviously and it has results. But anything that we're learning and I think a big part of this and what you said, Matt, is, you know, to be able to take things and rewrite them and rethink in your own words and your concepts and then as you said, to have, whether it's a to do list or an action item list or what it is. But like my big thing that I keep talking about with agencies and I, I know we probably talked about this before is that there's momentum makers and momentum takers. To me, there's nothing more deflating than have a bunch of great ideas and things that you write down that you do nothing about. Like it at some point deep down you're like, well, here I go again. You know, I guess I'm being the same old Brent, you know, whatever it is versus you know what, I took 75 notes and you know these things and I filtered them down, I rewrote them. What really stands out is I've got to do this one thing tomorrow. And then you do it and you, you build belief and confidence and guess what? Now you're not a, a person that's a failure or a non doer. You're an action taker. And those are momentum makers. And even though they seem really small, I always tell producers in particular, like just fine little momentum makers and just like you played football, there's little things that back in your, you know, your, your psyche, you're like, I put the work in, I did that. Now I have a competitive advantage. I don't know. Is that you're not.

Yeah, no, I, I couldn't agree more. That the discipline, there are so many correlations that, and I, and I hate to do it. I know you're the same way you sports analogies, but it really is to be a good football player. The analogy, it's a game of inches, right? You can, if you, if you, if the wrong first step, you're going to be just an inch behind. It's all about the game of inches. And it's no different in our industry. It's, it's the little things, it's doing all the Little things and being disciplined to them. And it's not hard. Right? And as Roger says, it's just not easy. It's not for everybody. People try to take shortcuts, people try to do, they do it their own way. But in reality, if you just follow the path and you stay disciplined to the path and the, the, the strategies that are implemented, you'll win.

Yeah.

You know, and that's, that's the best part about it. And you know, the other thing that, that really helped me, you know, when we were building was it was low risk practice. You know, it was, it was becoming conversational and comfortable in the delivery of the value proposition and practicing it because nobody wants, and everybody can tell when you're talking to a robot and, and it, when I talk to our producers all the time, I'm like, I don't want a bunch of mats out there saying it things exactly how I say it. When you, when I teach you an executive briefing now. And I, I gotta be honest, when I started and I was just getting underway in the specialty and I built our executive briefing, I was doing most of it because we were doing it countrywide. I was doing it via zoom like this, and I had every word typed out on a piece of paper for every slide. And I would position it under the camera so that I could read it. And they wouldn't know what I was reading, but I know they could tell I was reading it and it wasn't good. But what happened is I started, then I started recording myself. I'm like, that's awful. And, and so then I would, I was like, but I'm not comfortable enough in the delivery of this. So I wasn't doing low risk practice. I was doing high risk practice because I had prospect on the other line and I was reading it. So then I was like, okay, I'm not comfortable just to get rid of the notes. I'm just going to write down key concepts of each slide so that I can talk to them and be there. And then ultimately I, I got to the point where I didn't need it all because I've done it so many times. But what I, the people on my team, the producers on my team, don't go through that, don't read stuff. Do the little practice with me. I'll make myself available. Do it to the mirror, do it with your wife, do it with your kids, whatever. Do as much practice as you can so that you can become conversational and comfortable so that you don't have to low risk practice in a high risk environment. That was another huge thing that it was a takeaway that learn from the school of hard knocks. I did it wrong. Yeah. But I learned a good lesson from it and I try to put that with our, with our team every day.

Hey there, agent leader Brent Kelly here want to take just a few seconds to remind you that now is the time to create your true best version possible agency. If you go to sitkins.com bookacall sidkins.com book a call, we'll get to know more about your agency, conduct an agency assessment and provide your agency with a customized plan to help you avoid some of the pitfalls, frustrations, challenges and roadblocks to get your agency to true ultimate freedom and become its best version possible. It all starts by going to sitkins.com bookacall it's, it's, it's so true. And you know, I, I, I use music ed sports because you know, we'll put them together. But I mean it's just think and when I say it out loud and I talk to agencies and producers like oh yeah, but it's like if you played football or you were in band, like it's like showing up to the game or the concert and it's the first time you're reading the music or looking at the play sheet and, and so you might be able to get through it, but you're like thinking your way through it and it's, it's not very good. Typically it's one of the first times you've done it in many cases, versus putting those reps in behind the scenes that when the lights are on right and it's time to perform that you're not as worried about thinking about every step you've done it, you've downloaded that again and again and again and now you're fully present, you're fully in the moment, you're fully listening, you're fully all in the zone, so to speak. And that to me is the higher level of performance. And I, I don't, it, it still befuddles me. It doesn't surprise me anymore. But it befuddles me that we've got people that are in the game, so to speak, that are going out. They haven't practiced, they haven't rehearsed, they haven't really put much time in and then they get frustrated of why, well, I didn't go very good or I should be doing more. And it's like.

You know, you're, yeah, you're right on and that I just had this thought pop into my mind. You know, we use the term that success leaves clues. And if you look at some of the best athletes, performers, they don't just go out and show up and get it done. They, they, they are polished. And when you watch it and you see it happen, you're like, wow, that's. But you don't see what happened behind the scenes. When I was with, when I was with the 49ers in 1999, Jerry Rice was on the team. He's best wide receiver of all time. And I can tell you that there is zero doubt in my mind why he is the best of all time. It wasn't the most talented, he wasn't the fastest, he didn't have the best hands. But what I remember most about my time, which I got hurt early on but I, I am so blessed to be even had been on the field with him. Yeah. But. And, and here's, here's the contrasting views. Terrell Owens was also on the team right to and so you have Jerry Rice best of all time to probably the biggest attitude of all time. And you watch the difference in pre practice Jerry Rice it doesn't matter if he's on the one yard line going out and he runs a two yard slant. He would catch the ball, he would tuck it and he would run 99 yards and score. Every time he caught the ball in practice, pre practice, whenever he scored, he sprinted to the end zone. Every time to catches it, you know, he, he tosses it around, runs back. He doesn't give that burst. It was just a difference of. Of. He had all the talent in the world, biggest guy fast, all that stuff. Jerry Rice Success leaves clues I guess is my point. And that was one of the, the things that I re that I got out of that experience that I'll never forget. There is a reason he is the best of all time. And it showed up on Sunday and you saw it and we all saw it on Sundays. But he did it throughout the week and he did it throughout the year and he practiced like it was a game and he did it better than anybody. And that's why he was the best of all time. Yeah.

You know, one of the things Matt, I love that, you know we talk all the time at our group about standards. Like we all have standards. Just depends on where they're at. You know. And this is just that case, you know, Jerry Rice standard was that every time I touch the ball, this body goes to the end zone. That's my standard. That's what I live by, and you know, so I would ask you as an agency, the listener and your team, what are your standards? What are they? And you know, it's one thing, oh, we're going to do this and this, but then you don't, your behaviors don't align with those standards. Well, obviously we know there's, there's a lack of integrity, so to speak, somewhere in there. And by the way, we all struggle with it. I'm not saying it's easy, but you've got to have some level of that. And I want to ask you, Matt, I want to go back to something you said earlier. I think it'd be great learning this. I heard something, I may screw this up a little bit. So I apologize, whoever I'm screwing this up for that said this. But I think the person that you are most equipped to help is the person that you used to be to some degree, right? Like the person you're most equipped to help. So right now I want to flip this a little bit from your role as a leader, right. And working with team members and sales professionals in the organization and just kind of thinking about this, like from your perspective, Matt, and maybe I'll ask on both sides of this, what are you said success, these clues? I think so does failure. But, you know, going back to thinking about who you were and what you've overcome, what are some successes you see? I mean, for agency leaders listening right now, they're going, these are some things that I see other producers doing or that I work with that have demonstrated long term success. And maybe here's a thing I see that you could tell pretty quickly it's not going to work or they're not going to be as successful. So you can answer one or both, Matt, but what jumps out at you?

The keys to success in this industry, in my opinion, organization, being organized with your time and being disciplined to strategies. You don't have the strategies. And here's the, the thing that people always think is that I gotta create and I gotta develop my own way. The great part is there's. And again, it goes back to the saying, success leaves clues. Or Robin, duplicate it, whatever you want to say. There's people that are having success doing certain things and you just got to be disciplined to them. So the discipline and organization piece are, in my mind, the two critical indicators for making sure you're going to be successful and the strategies that are behind those. Discipline in the organization. They can vary as long as you commit to it. And that's really, you know, when you think about keywords, and they're very cliche, I guess, but discipline and commitment and then consistency, you know, those are. Those are the things that are going to create win. So they're going to create a successful career, but you got to stay true to them. On the flip side, it's just the opposite. If the ones that I see that aren't being successful are the ones that. That truly haven't committed, you know, to, to be in discipline. They haven't committed to the teachings. They, they, they. It's all the opposite of what we said you had to be successful in. The ones that aren't seeing it, they're doing the opposite. They aren't committing, they aren't being disciplined, they aren't organized. And it's. It, it seems simple. It sounds simple, but it really is. You know, it. It really is simple. If you do that, if you figure out how you want to. Who you want to be and how you want to do it, and you commit to it and you stay disciplined to it, you're going to win. Yeah. If you don't, you're going to be frustrated. And I've played both sides of the aisle. I've been on both in this career. I've done them both. I can tell you what, it feels a lot better to be successful. I know that's the probably the dumbest statement you've ever heard, but it's true. I've been on the other side and. And it was miserable. It was embarrassing, it was disappointing, everything. It was the lowest of the low as far as feelings can be. And I'm not saying I've made it to the mountain either. I'm not on top either, because every day I still wake up thinking I can do better, thinking I can help others, and thinking I can do more. And I think that's something that drives me. I don't know that I'll ever. I can guarantee I'll never make it to the top because I want to keep on climbing. I want to keep on pushing myself to the next level and pushing those people that are around me to the next level, too, because I get. Which I. I love what I do because I get the opportunity to push myself, but also I get the opportunity to impact other people's lives and to help them avoid the pitfalls that I have experienced. But some people are going to do it anyway, right? Sometimes you just have to hit rock bottom before you realize that there's another side. And I'm trying to help people see the light before that happens. I don't want them. And I say it all the time, I don't want you to have a DC moment because. And they know when I say DC moment, that was the day. That was my low point. And then I started climbing out of it. I don't want people to. If I can help people avoid the DC moment, I'm a happy person. But I also know that some people are going to have to have their own DC moment before they flip it, before they change it. But I'm trying to help shortcut it a little bit.

Yeah, I love it. And it's so true. And as a leader, team leader, heck, as a parent, right. If you've been a parent, you've experienced this where it's like, I can see that crash. It's right there. And I've lived it and I know it. And no matter what I say, you're just going to have to experience it, apparently, you know, so there, you know, the other side is. Once in a while they go, you know, maybe you get a little crash and you go, okay, how'd that feel? Not good. Let me help you avoid the next one, okay? Because I. I've done it. You know, Matt, it's funny because about the simplicity of stuff, and you're right, you know, simple but not doesn't always mean easy. I like these three words together. I like words that start with the same letter. This is maybe just my speaking brain, but I always talk about, you know, clarity, consistency, commitment. You probably heard us talk about it, but it really is. I mean, if you want to break it down to simplicity, clarity, what do you really want? Like, where do you want to go? What does it look like and envision that consistency, or what are the specific things I needed to get there, which you talk about being intentional on my calendar this week. What needs to be in there to align with this clarity? Some things I'm going to be enjoying to do. Some things I may not, by the way, but I'm going to do them. The last part is the commitment is just I do what I said I was going to do, you know. And what do you mean? Well, I put in 90 minutes of pipeline development and gosh darn it, I got to that block of my calendar and sheesh, I got a few emails that came in. Yeah, no, that wasn't the commitment you made to yourself. You didn't do the thing you said you were going to do. And we all as individuals struggle. But when you get through that, the thing that hit me too, and I wrote this down, Matt, I don't know if you agree with this or not. I think you will, but have you ever, I'll just, I'll just ask you. Have you ever not felt like doing something, you know, you should do? I mean, a lot. Sure. I mean it could be anything, right? From picking up the phone to picking up a weight. I, you know, I don't care what it is. Like, I don't really feel like doing that right now. And I had someone say to me, he's like the best do not feel themsel into actions. Because guess what? It's not going to happen. They act themselves into feelings. And you said it and I wrote it down. It's like, you know, when I did those things, I felt great. And not only yes, I can just using working out, it's like, I don't know, but I made a commitment I was going to do this. And then you start and you do it and you get done. You go, I'm glad I did that. I feel better. And not only that you physically feel better, but your mind knows that you did something you agreed to. And there's another momentum maker.

It's accomplishment. You know, it's the little wins along the way. It's the first downs. You know, it's not necessarily the, the grand slam or the, the 90 yard touchdown pass. It's. It's making the first downs and accomplishing little goals. I think that's, that's a huge part of feeling and feeding yourselves small wins along the way. But when you add up the small wins, they create dramatic, huge results. But you always gotta, but you're in your, you're gonna, you're gonna have to punt sometimes, right? There's. Sometimes you're not going to hit that first down and you got a punt and you got to play defense, right? And that's cool. That's just life, right? But what a journey it is.

Yeah, man, I gotta chime in. I don't want to get overly sitkin specific because you mentioned a few things, but it just hit me as you said this. That's a great example. I love that analogy. Sometimes you have to punt because we would tell producers specifically, you're not always going to have great weeks. But the difference is, right, the average or they get in the head trash is they have the bad week and they say something like this or they think something like this, yeah, that wasn't going to work anyway or never mind, whatever. It wasn't a big deal. It wasn't even that important to me. I didn't even care that Much where the best go. Okay, maybe this week I punted, but I'm right back on the field next week or I'm right back in the game. And that, to me, is a key difference. In fact, the reason why I was smiling is. And you know this because you've been through our program so many times. Times. Just for the audience, a little tease. We always tell producers, how many great weeks do you need to have every year? You know, how many great weeks are you going to have every year? Like, well, you know, there's 52 weeks. So 50, maybe two I take off. Or, you know, 40, like have 42, 10 weeks. You could screw up if you could have 42 really good weeks. And by the way, real talk, that's probably very likely because there's holidays and there's vacations and there's things that just come up and there's things called life. And your kid gets sick or you get sick. I don't know what it is. But if you could do 42 out of 52, you've got a great career. Great career. And just compound, compound, compound. So I want to. I'll piggyback the song because, Matt, you mentioned high performance team. You mentioned producer, perfect schedule. Anything else jump out? I mean, you. Because you've been through so many of our things, and I'm always interested. Anything else that jump out, you go. But this was really a game changer for me, my business, whatever, working with producers, etc.

Yeah, there's so many things, you know, obviously in. In our world today, it's about value creation. So adopting a unique sales process is huge. And because that's what I tell. I tell our producers all the time, don't be like everybody else. Because our industry has done an amazing job of commoditizing what we do and not adding value. And it's like nails on a chalkboard. When somebody. When I hear the words, let me quote your insurance, I just want to jump out of my skin because that. I don't even let our producers say the word insurance. I. I mean, there's certain things that when you're talking to people, you open the same old files, and then they immediately shut down and they don't want to talk to you anymore. So, you know, the whole concept of new files is huge. How. How do you not sound like everybody else? Points of differentiation. How do you differentiate yourself from everybody else? I challenge my producers all the time. I challenge, what are your three to five pods? And then they tell me, I'm like, okay, those are okay. But does the agency up the street, do you think they're saying the same things? Yeah. Well, then we need to go deeper, right? We need to get better. So points of differentiation. Unique sales process is huge. Going back to. Even as you start to have success, knowing your numbers, the 80, 20 rule, you know, and in growing in a way, and understanding the value proposition that you're given to your top 20% and making sure that you can replicate the top 20%, you know, there's just so much. And then one of the most important things, if you deliver on a unique sales process, you deliver value. The next thing and the next cadence is the reverse referral process. Going to them with a list and saying, here's five people that I notice that you're connected to. Is there any, you know, can you help me? Can you introduce me? Can you. Can I use your name and introduction? And then plus. And who's not on this list? That should be Roy. Because I. I understand cold calling is hard and nobody wants to do it, so. But if you do this the right way and you open enough new files and you deliver value, and then you can create a pipeline full of referrals.

Yep.

Life is pretty easy, you know, So I mean, I just spewed a lot of different concepts in a very short time, and there's more that I could do, but that those are the types of impactful strategies that are taught that. And it's not hard. It's just not that easy. You got to be disciplined. You gotta have. You gotta have consistency, you gotta have commitment. You gotta do all that stuff. You just gotta go do it. And the one thing that, that comes out of profit is we teach you. You guys teach so much, you learn so much, and what you got to do, it goes back to like, you know the book, I read this quite a bit. The one thing, it's like, what's the one thing? Right? If, if I just took in all this information, what's the one thing that I can implement today that's going to make an impact this week? Right. You know, and then maybe set up a, A timetable. I knocked that one out. What's the next one thing? What's the next domino that I need to push over that's going to help me get better? So there's, there's an endless amount of things that, that people can, can do and grow from within these programs, but it really becomes. It's all great, it's all awesome, but if you don't implement them, what, what good really is it? Yeah. You know?

Yeah. Well, yeah, there is a lot there. Just, just for the, the audience. If you've not, you know, experienced some of this, hey, come check out our stuff. We'd love to talk to you about it. But the other part of it, and Matt, you hit it. I mean, we're very intentional. Use the one thing concept from that book all the time because there's such power in it. Of focus, of. Okay, you've just, you've just digested this stuff for a while. First of all, are you open to being coachable and thinking about it? Yeah. Okay, Right. You've digested it. You know, you've heard us just a million times. You know, write down top three. Now take your three and pick one. And what's the action item like? For me, this is not about information, and this is any program, by the way, but this is not about information. This is about your transformation. The only way you're going to have any transformation is that you actually implement or execute at least one action. So let's get that going. And like I said, you start to get visible results in progress. You get the momentum. So I appreciate you sharing that, Matt. All right, Matt, do you have time for one more question?

Sure.

All right. And you can add anything else you'd like, because this is. I, I, I say this to so many guests, but I, I, I, this has been fun, like time flies. Like we were talking for this long, and I really, I want to talk more because it's, it's fascinating. It's good stuff. But my last question is something I ask every single guest, and it's the advice you would give to your younger self. And I don't know, you know, what part you want to go to. Maybe it's, you know, maybe it's the DC moment. I don't know, maybe you want to go before that because you didn't want to experience that. But if you were to bump into the younger version of Matt Hughes, right, maybe you're starting your career again. You can go back to wherever you want. But early, right, early on in this. And that younger version of you said, oh, old, older, wiser. Matt, I only have 30 seconds. If you could give me one piece of advice that you could tell me right now that's most important, what would it be?

That's a man. That's a great question. And I've had that. And I've been thinking about it. I guess it's that there isn't an easy button. You know, life's not easy. You're going, you're going to have a lot of things that happen that you have to overcome and it, you have to understand it up front. There is no perfect path to success and there is no easy path to success. It's all about doing the little things and not taking shortcuts and being disciplined to yourself and most importantly, caring about others and doing what you, in everything you do. It. People can read fake and you know, it's blatantly obvious, but being, actually caring for others and putting others in front of yourself and, and giving without the expectation of getting is so huge in, in our lives. And, and, and I, I, I know that now and I, I've tried to always live my life in that way, but I know there's been times where I jumped off and, and let other things derail me. But when it, when it comes back to the, you know, giving and not expecting to get and putting others in front of yourself and really caring, that has springboarded me as an individual to, to the heights of where, where I want to be. And I'm reading a book right now and this is one that's, that's good. It's called the Art of Encouragement. It's by Jordan Montgomery. He's a personal friend of mine here in Iowa City. And it resonates, resonated so much with me because it's really. When you're doing something like we do, I know there's a lot of leaders on this podcast that are listening and we want results from our team. We want them bad. But that, but we, but it's like coaching a football team. There's not a one size fits all. You have to learn the art of encouraging and learning each person on your team and what makes them tick and what's their why. So that you can encourage them in a way that, that builds them up. And if we spend more time building people up and helping people see the bigger picture and really caring about and who they are, we're going to get way more out of them. We're going to get so much more because they're going to have that feeling like these, they really care about me. So I don't know if that completely answered your question. It was a long ways of version of saying there is no easy button encouragement and helping others and loving others. But, but that's how I truly feel.

Yeah, no, it's, it's a great answer. I mean, obviously there's no wrong answer to that. It's. I love the way you expressed it and you know, mentally for me. And maybe this will help leaders too. But I just, I think about that from leadership I can obviously to pour into yourself, to grow yourself, to become a better leader, to be a better human. You know, to me it's like there's a lot of people around you that do need encouragement, they do need your help. And if you don't fill your hook up, like, you can't pour into others very well. And you know, a lot of times you get leaders with empty cups because they're just, well, you know, and, and I think part of that, Matt, is, you know, the, the fact that you've been willing and able and coachable to grow yourself. Right. A lot of that is, hey, I've got to be a better me. But by doing that, you've allowed to pour into others to help them be better thems in leadership. And whether it's you read a book or you heard something, I'll just say this. I mean, one of the people ask me about, you know, hey, what's your favorite part of your, your job and your role at Sitkins and what you do? And it's like, it's super simple. I mean, someone will come to me at some point and say, hey, you mentioned something like nine months ago or three years ago and I might have said it in passing, I don't even know. And they're like, that, that, that made a huge shift in what I was doing and it's helped me accomplish X. And I'm like, wow, how cool is that? I mean, every one of you as leaders have that opportunity every single day. And the more that you're willing to commit to yourself, to your own growth, to your own discipline, it's going to allow you to be way more effective to everybody around you. So Matt, I think on that, because you're not big.

Yeah. You know, I, I, I, I, I couldn't agree more. It's, there's so much opportunity to make a difference, you know, and I've always been, even in my leadership, in my leadership, I, I've always said, I still say it. I'm never going to ask anyone to do something that I wouldn't do myself or that I haven't done myself. And I think that separated me within a lot of the people that I've worked with because they're like, why? The DART leader before has never sat in the seat. They've never done this. And I'm like, listen, I've sat in the seat. I've experienced this, the, the best of this industry and the worst of this industry. And I'm going To be real with you. But I want you to know more than anything else, I care about you and I want you to be successful. And I can lay out the perfect path for you to be successful, but we have to work it together. And I. You have to be dependable to execute the plan. Because. And we, we talk about all the time that you watch games on Saturday, Sunday. There's not one of those games that happen that there isn't a game plan put into place that they have to follow. How is life any different? Right. If you don't have a game plan how you're attacking every single day, you're going to lose the game. Okay? But if you go into every day with a game plan of what you're going to do and how organized you're going to be in discipline and, and I'm going to execute this strategy to the best of my ability. You go into every day like that, you're going to win more than you lose, but you got to have that mindset that it's a game plan that you're following, or else it's just a day and you're going to end up losing more than you win. And that. That's not where anybody wants to be.

I'm gonna end it at that. So. Well said, Matt. Listen, it's been. I knew this would be fun. I knew it would be good. I knew we'd have great conversation. I know we'd probably go long, all happened, which is great. So I just want to thank you for not only coming on this podcast, being a long time, you know, client and friend of our organization. You're the people we love to work with because you're always pouring in and learning. You make us better at the same time. So we applaud you for that. So want to thank you for all the agency leaders listening. If this podcast has helped you, inspire you, encourage you, as always, do the old podcast stuff like share, follow, subscribe, I don't know, all this stuff, just hang in there and share that. We want to. We certainly have a mission, a real mission to help agencies really become that best version possible. And these conversations are a big part of that. So, Matt, thanks so much. Appreciate you being on the podcast today. Wait, you're still here? Hey, Agent Leader podcast listeners, Brent Kelly again, I want to, first of all, thank you for listening to the Agent Leader podcast and your continued support. If you would like to have more content come your way, please help us by sharing the podcast, subscribing to the podcast, telling people about the podcast and if you as an agent leader are truly ready to take that next step in your agency, you're committed and want to be that best version possible agency. Don't wait. Go to sitkins.com bookacall sitkins.com bookacall we want to provide the blueprint for your agency to help you create more impact with less effort. And it all starts by going to sidkins.com bookacall alright, now you can actually go. Thanks.