Growth Is Optional. Leadership Is Not.

Foreign welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. This is the podcast for independent insurance agency owners for leaders and committed insurance professionals to become their best version possible. Not just by growing, but by leading better, by thinking clearer, and operating at a higher level. Each episode we're going to focus on strategies, behaviors, and leadership disciplines that separate good agencies from the truly elite agencies. My name is Brent Kelly, and if you are ready to raise your standards, your thinking, and challenge yourself to become the person and build the agency that you want, well, you're in the right place. Now. The first thing I want to share is this. We are back. We are back after our hiatus. If you are an Agent Leader podcast listener, we have been on pause and you know that for basically the fourth quarter of 2025. And there's a number of reasons for this. Certainly we've made some updates and improvements and you'll see that throughout 2026 and beyond to the podcast. And also we've been busy with stuff. And by the way, we don't love the term being busy, but a few things have happened and transpired. In 2025. We had a Agent Leader Mastermind Summit that we led in October. That was our key focus. And in the midst of this, our CEO had a health emergency. Now, here's the good news. He's doing great. He's better than ever. And Roger Sitkins, in fact, is going to be one of my first guests on the relaunch of the Agent Leader podcast here in 2026. But we took a break. We wanted to get focused on where we needed to be focused, raise our own standards, and then come to you with the highest level podcast quality possible. So over this next year, I'll be leading some solo episodes like this on key topics and areas and and also be bringing in some great agency leader guests and some key influencers in the insurance agency marketplace. So we're excited to be back. I'm excited to be back and can't wait to have more discussions with you all. Now, today's topic, what's the focus today? Well, I'm gonna talk today about another trap. Now, if you have been a listener, and again, I know we had a hiatus, but if you've been a listener to the podcast, we talked over the past year or so about some of the good results traps. In fact, we'll probably talk more about those because we continue to learn more about some of these traps, these good results traps that hold agencies back. They're doing pretty good, but there's a much higher level and the trap I'm going to be talking about today is the leadership assumption trap. Yeah, the leadership assumption trap. In fact, oftentimes when I initially talk to agency leaders about leadership skill, leadership development, leadership growth, they often just kind of go, we're kind of doing some of that stuff until we go deeper. And then we realize that leadership is not just a birthright right? It's an earn right? And oftentimes we celebrate growth and leadership is assumed. Now, let me first of all say this, that we love growth. In fact, we talk a lot about whether it's organic growth, growth in revenue per relationship, growth in revenue per employee. We can go through a number of KPIs, obviously, profitability, growth for an agency, agency value. All of these things are really good, but they typically stem from great leadership. And you can do good enough and still get good results. But what would the next level look like? Now, I mentioned that we had our summit, our Mastermind summit in October, and we had agencies from all over the country in Canada come in and had some great conversation. Not only are we able to teach some of our key principles at higher levels to our agency members, but we learn a ton. And I can tell you, those people in the room, the private clients that we have the pleasure of working with, they take leadership very seriously. And the result is higher growth in a number of areas. Now, one of the things that I want to share with you, the listener, right now, is that what is the purpose or meaning of leadership? Well, there's a number of definitions that we could talk about, but ultimately the greatest purpose of best version possible leadership is that your focus as an agency leader and leadership team is to help grow and develop your number one asset, which is your people. That is the focus. And there are multiple levels to this. We'll talk about this over many podcast episodes. But I just want to talk today about are you assuming that. That you're simply being a good leader or developing a leader or developing your people, and we can all fall in those habits. And in fact, what I find for most agency leaders is that there's nothing malicious or even intentional about not leading well. It's just we're busy, we're doing lots of stuff. I'll get to that when I can. And because our results are probably okay or good enough, it's not a major focal point. But I'm going to talk today about some areas where we start to feel the true weight of the leadership assumption trap. Now, one of the things that I'll talk about this is that this comes from one of my favorite books on leadership. So if you haven't read it, read it. And if you're watching this episode, I'm holding it up. The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. You may have heard the book, some people call it the Leadership Bible. But the very first law by John Maxwell, who's a great mentor of mine and pleasure of being in his coaching groups, is the fact that there's a law of the lid that basically says this leadership has a multiplying effect. And it's true. And that leadership, and this is what John says in his book, leadership ability is always the lid on personal and organizational effectiveness. Your ability as a leader and your leadership team is ultimately the lid on your agency. Now, as an agency grows and scales, this is where we run into issues. Now there are a lot of areas where agencies grow. You have a startup agency that just hustles and bustles and gets to a certain point, maybe a million dollars of revenue. We'll see agencies that are a million dollars in revenue and maybe they've got a few people now on their team and they, they get to 2 or 3 million dollars in revenue. And those are all really good things. We have agencies that we work with that we're in that room, that 50, 60, 80, 90, $100 million plus revenue agencies. And they can get stuck. There's more complexity, but there's still the law of the lid. There's always another level that we can learn. Maybe you've heard this song, Mo Money, Mo problems. I think there's truth to that. I think oftentimes more than that is more people, more problems. In fact, there's always a funny line that I heard years ago that said, leadership would be really easy if it just weren't for the dang people. Leadership would be easy. Now, let me stop here for a second. We're having some fun. But the first thing is the most important person for you to lead is you. In fact, the most challenging person for you to lead as an agency leader is you. Because ultimately you set the stage, you set the standard, and that people are watching you whether you like it or not. So the hardest person to lead is yourself. You know why it's hard to lead yourself? Because you, you know the truth, right? We know if we're really putting in the time, the effort, the energy, if we're doing the right things, the right time for the right people. So that's where it starts. But ultimately, as we add more people, right? More people, more problems. So I want to talk about some core distinctions between growth, our Agency's growing. And by the way, you may have already noticed that the market is shifting. So some of the growth that you probably experienced in the last year, two or three, is like, ooh, some of that was just kind of happening because the market, well, now we've got to be more intentional. So what are some things that we see as distinctions between growth and leadership? Well, one thing that we often find is that, well, gosh, I just mentioned this. My revenue increased. Organic growth went up. Well, a question I wrote in my notes here is, is that because of leadership or because you're good or because you get kind of lucky or things were just kind of happening? Now, we talk all the time, and we mean this with love at the Sitkins Group, is that this is a really good business. Like, you could not do much and still have pretty good deal of success. But when revenue increases, we have to think about this. Is this because, again, a marketplace adaptation? Is this because something happened or is this because of consistent, focused effort? Because here's what often we find we're growing, we have some revenue growth, and then we plateau. The answer we typically or the question that people ask and the answer around it is, if we just had more people, what would it be like if we could just find more people? Now, adding people to your agency team isn't a bad thing. In fact, it's required as you grow over a period of time. But what we often find and we talk to agencies about, is that if you throw people at a fundamental problem, you still have the problem. You just have more people. So think about that for a second, right? Hey, we got to go to the next level. Well, the answer is we're not going to change standards. We're not going to change leadership. We're not going to change communication. We're not going to change how we do things. We're just going to add more people. That'll fix it. And that's how a lot of agency leaders think. I understand it, but as I said before, you still have the problem. Here's another issue we find in leadership growth and where agencies run into problems is that leaders have a very hard time of letting go. They have a very hard time of letting go. And I understand where it comes from. Again, whether you are running a large department at a large agency or maybe, again, you started your agency from scratch or maybe in the early foundations of your agency, you're involved in lots of things. It's your baby. I'm not going to let go of my baby because what if this person screws it up or doesn't do exactly what I did or how I did it, that's where you run into problems. Leaders have often a death grip on their agency. In fact, when I talk to agency leaders on a lot of the coaching calls, especially as we kick off this year or if a new agency comes on board, I'll tell some of the agency leaders in the executive team, we start thinking about all our roles and responsibilities or One of your main goals for the next year is to see how many things you can quit, right? I mean, that's the one time it's good to be a quitter because you've got your hands in so many things. Well, what does that cause? Well, you can never grow because you're only one person and can only do so many things. We also devalue the team that we're bringing on. We're often involved in things that quite frankly, we're not very skilled at. So we actually devalue some of the worth. So here's something to think about. Where in your agency can you do a better job of educating those around you? Where can you as a leader do a better job of empowering, lifting up, adding value to those people? And what do you need to give them to equip them? Right? Because leaders often get too involved in everything. And part of that is they're afraid or concerned of letting go. But that's what great leadership is. That's what empowerment is. It's giving power so that you can do what you need to do at higher levels. And here's another thing that we find. As your agency grows, you're going to have more stuff to do. There's more activity, and activity feels productive. And here's the deal. Activity does not equal or meet accomplishment. It doesn't, it doesn't mean you're doing well, it just means you're busy. In fact, oftentimes we find with agencies, whether it's the agency leadership team, department heads, maybe it's the producers, the service team, is that we're really, really busy, but we're busy doing things that we're not equipped to do at the highest level. The easiest, easiest example, we talk about this all the time on the podcast in the past, is that we have producers doing non producer things. They're doing service work, they're doing who knows what? Maybe they're trapped, maybe they're hiding, but we're not busy in the right areas, which means we're not really productive. Okay, so what is a, a leading a top level elite best version Possible agency. What does it look like? What are some things that we see? I've seen as far as working with agencies that are having great success, Number one, hopefully you're taking notes here. Clear standards, Right? Clear standards. If you don't have standards for how your agency operates, there, there's no standards now. Maybe there's some type of culture that's built, but people want to know what the standard looks like in your agency. And it's really hard to find the right people or let go of people if you don't know of. Define the standards. What do you stand for? Which, by the way, is part of the word standards. What do you stand for? Because if you don't stand for anything, I heard this before, you'll fall for everything. If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for everything. So that's number one. What are your Define clear standards. This is not only what we do, this is who we are and why we do it. Right? That's super important. Aligning your agency leadership team. I see this far too often, and one of the things that we do in our organization and working with agencies that come on as new private clients is we start with alignment and actually starts with alignment of agency leaders. We see this oftentimes when an agency is interested in what we do and how we can help them grow and scale and better lead their agency into the future. We have initial conversations with their entire agency leadership team. I'll ask a number of questions. In fact, part of it is, how would you rate yourself in this area? And I'll oftentimes have one agency leader say, oh, we're an eight in this area. And another agency leader's like, I think we're a three here, right? So there's obviously a huge disconnect now. It's good to have those conversations. That creates awareness. But just imagine your agency, what kind of messages are being sent if we have these varying perspectives on key areas in our agency. One of the examples I'll use, and this is one of many, but if you are a parent, right, with your spouse, and one parent has one way or standard of philosophy, and one parent has another, the kid is going to go where there's the least resistance. I don't know if that's the best or not, but that's where they're probably going to go. We see this with agencies all the time, that we maneuver in different people and it's a huge hindrance. And oftentimes a leadership assumption is, oh, we're all on the same Page here. Do you know that or are you hoping that. Which really comes on to the last thing I want to talk about, which is about intentional decisions, that we have clarity specifically on who we are, where we're going and how we're going to get there. Because when we have clarity, we understand that less is actually more. We don't have all these ideas that continue to compound. This leader thinks we should do this, this leaders think we should do this. Or maybe it's just one leader that because there's not clarity on decisions and where we're going, every idea is a good idea, which of course creates chaos. So here's the focus. We, we talk talk oftentimes with our agency members. And I want to share with you on this podcast that you all want to get your mba. And this is not the typical mba. This is mastering the basic activities. Mastering the basic activities, doing the fundamental things so well that it creates excellence across the agency. This goes back to like doing less, being a quitter. We talk about critical success factors. I'll talk about that more in upcoming podcasts. But you can't have 15 critical success factors. You just can't. Right. Because this is about execution, not ideas. Right. Execution is not ideas. So some things that I want to share with you, some real world practical examples and things that we see that jump out. Three things that typically we find that agencies struggle most with in leadership assumption or where again, they're struggling in certain areas. Number one, I've already talked about a little bit, but it's lack of alignment. Not just lack of alignment with the leadership team, but lack of alignment with their entire team. We don't communicate well enough on what really matters. We assume people know what we want, where we're going and how we're going to get there. Right. Number two is capacity. There's too often that we have too many people doing too many things for oftentimes the wrong people and the wrong clients. The goal of capacity is to understand the right things to do at the right time or the right people in the right situation. And then of course, it's about having a plan or a process. A great example of this is does your agency have a selling system? Does your agency have a continuation process or a renewal system? Right. That we follow knowing there's some flexibility. Right. These are all things that we can assume we're doing well. That if we're really being honest, maybe there's some challenges there. Right. And here's another thing I want to focus on. Leaders often try to fix the execution Instead of leadership clarity, what do I mean by this? Maybe we're solving the wrong problem. Now, think about that. This is an idea. And again, this has been around forever, that we always are focused on the tactics, and we don't take enough time to go, wait a second. What is the strategy? Does this tactic support the strategy? Now, if you don't have a strategy, you won't even know. You just do stuff. Here's a pretty silly analogy, okay, but follow along with me here for a second. The ambulance comes in, it's got an emergency call. It races off to a home in the neighborhood. They rush in the house, There's a man who's having a heart condition. Maybe it's a heart attack, okay? But the EMT comes in there, and instead of working on the heart attack part of it, they go, oh, my gosh, this guy's got a cut on his knee. Let's bandage that first and then we'll get to the heart attack. Now, that may sound silly, but think about your agency. Are there times when maybe there's a very serious critical issue that needs the time, the attention, the focus, and instead we're working on the trivial things maybe just because we're busy, or again, maybe because we haven't really defined our strategic initiatives at the level that we need? And so here's some things that I want you to understand as a leader that should hopefully help you as you move forward. It's not just what you do. It's who we are. Maybe that's the first question. If you've got a mission statement or a vision built around this, there's gonna be some things that you can tie into this. But it's often, we do this and we do this and we do this and we do this and we do this. Well, those are all things that you do. That's fine. But who are you? What do you stand for? Why does it matter? These things are all critical. To set and define your path as you move forward. And then, of course, to define, to agree, and then implement accountability standards around that. All right, so let me ask you a few questions, some things to ponder that you can take back with your agency. And if you're listening as you're driving down the road, well, come back and listen later and write these down. But take some time. Just a few questions to think about. I'm not going to go overly deep here, but to get you started on this path. Right? So first question is this, and I've already talked about this. Is your leadership team aligned or are you just busy. Is your leadership team aligned? And again, Whether you've got two leaders, five leaders, 12 leaders, depends on the agency, depends on your structure. But if you're asking significant questions, do you have similar answers? And one of the things I took from Roger Sitkins in one of our conversation years ago is that you can disagree and you should disagree in a room together to be able to ask some of these difficult questions about, again, agency strategy or areas of execution. And it's okay to disagree there. But when you as a leader or leadership team walk out of that room, do you have the same message to your team? Right. That is critically important. Number two, do you truly have clarity or do you have good intentions? You know, our intention is to grow by X this year. Our intention is to add four more people. Our intention is to refine this process. Those are all good intentions. Or do you have clarity? This is where that process is today. This is exactly what we want it and need it to be. And this is exactly how we're going to get there. Now, I know that things can change when I say exactly how we're going to get there. But you have a defined path or plan in place, right? So do you have clarity or do you have good intentions? And then the last one, and this kind of overrides everything, is that is your current growth as an agency, which is part of leadership, is it intentional or is it accidental? And here's a very, very good indicator of this. If the market changes have directly impacted your growth, your growth was probably more accidental than intentional. Not saying it's bad, hey, take it while you can. But is your growth intentional or is it accidental? You know, we see this with producers too, and it's a great litmus test of, well, I wrote this account, you know, I got lucky. Well, it was lucky when or going back. And to realize what is your intentional plan or path to make that happen. All right, so a few things that I want to share with you as a wrap up this thought process around leadership assumption. Best version possible, which is our mantra. Best version possible. Leadership is about intention, right? It is about focus. It is about clarity. It is not about perfection. So I wanted to illustrate that because it's important to know this isn't about you as a leadership team being perfect and having every answer right and saying all the right things. It's that you're on the same page, on the same path, going in the same direction. Right? And clarity, by the way, is a leadership responsibility. If you've ever been part of an organization and you have no idea what's going on. I can tell you, you don't feel better than when you do. Right. This is being very clear as an agency leadership team, whether you want to call them mission statements or vision statements or value statements or whatever they are. Do you have some form of a state of the agency meeting or agency wide meeting where you're consistently communicating the focus, the mission, the values of the agency? Because if you assume people just know because they show up at your office or they work for your organization, you, you are sorely mistaken. And people want to hear from their leaders again and again on these critical areas. Also, leadership means we're going to decide how the agency operates on purpose. And by the way, not making a decision is making a decision. Oh, this problem will go away. And we talk all the time at Sitkins, that a problem left unattended will eventually become a crisis. Oh, it'll be fine. I can't tell you how many times, by the way, we've learned this in our organization too, that if we don't address the problem head on, or at least be intentional about it, it's not going to go away. It's just going to resurface at a different time and probably when you don't want it to. Right? So leadership means making decisions that are intentional and that you operate on purpose. All right, so these are all the key areas of leadership. I want to talk about the leadership assumption, trap or gap that agencies often have. And let me say this, leadership isn't easy. Most agencies don't think about it at a level they probably should. And as I said earlier on in this podcast, it's often because things are doing or we're doing okay, the agency's doing okay. But imagine for a second if you did take leadership and raise the stakes. Understanding, first I have to lead myself. Clarity, intention, purpose, standards, what do those look like? And then of course, to communicate those consistently with the people that need to hear that message most. Now, I want to share this too. If growth for your agency feels harder than it usually should, or at least you think it should, it's probably a leadership signal. That's okay. The first step of making the right move in your agency is awareness. You know what? I've got shortcomings. And by the way, the best leaders we work with, they swallow their egos, right? That's one of the biggest things. I didn't do that. That can't be me. No, I would listen. None of us are perfect. We're all human. The best leaders of the Highest growth organizations that we have the pleasure of working with and serving, they are typically the most coachable. They are very aware of blind spots. They want those blind spots pointed out because they know back to what I said earlier, they are often the leadership lid holding their agency back. Is it about ego or is it about excellence? What's more important for you and your agency, your ego or your excellence? And listen, I've had some very difficult coaching calls, right? And not from our team, like, hey, that's not going well, Brent and I could sit there and defend and blame and be the victim. Or I could say, you know what, I really appreciate you bringing that to my attention. Let's take a look at that. Right? Ego or excellence. So again, if that is the next step that you want to take in your agency, one thing I do want to mention is, is that we are selecting a small group of private clients. We are very focused. We're only going to be working with 50 agencies in 2026, so we've got a limited number of spots available. But if you'd like to have an initial discussion, just go to sitkins.com bookacall there's no pressure. It's just perspective, right? So go to sitkins.com bookacall we'd love to have an initial conversation with you if you're interested. Learn more about your agency. See if there's an area that we could help you as you move forward. All right, so here's my final word of the day. Growth is optional. Leadership is not. Growth is optional. You may or may not grow. Now, again, good business. Most agencies are, but leadership is not. And great agencies don't grow by accident. They grow by intentional, clear and consistent leadership. Appreciate you being a listener. We're so glad to be back here on the Agent leader podcast for 2026. If there are things that you want to hear, reach out to. Myself and my team. Love to have conversations. As I mentioned, not only am I going to be sharing key concepts around agency leadership and performance and direction, also going to be having some great guests on agents and leaders that are going to share their stories, their experience with you, the agent Leader listener. Appreciate you listening and I wish you all the best and your success. Thanks. Foreign. 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 bookacall 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 blocks to get your agency to true ultimate freedom and become its best version possible. It all starts by going to sitkins.com bookacall now back to the show.