How To Win at Ever Increasing Levels

Hello and welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks for joining me on another episode. Excited that you're with me today and hope you're ready to lean in. I'm going to be sharing some important information today with you that really, again, all these things that I talk about in this podcast, I want them to move from information to transformation. So hopefully you're taking a note or two or many and then filtering down to what's most important. You know, what are you getting out of each of these podcasts? What's one action item that you can take? Because without action, it's just ideas that float in your head or maybe eventually disappear. So, again, I really want you to have a pen and paper ready as I share some ideas today and then begin to filter down what is the one thing that I can do as an Agent leader to take the right action in this particular area. And that's where you really start to get results. Now, the purpose of every Agent Leader podcast is to help you, the Agent leader, gain clarity, consistency, and to make a commitment to become a your best version possible. And I am excited. I'm always excited right when I come on here. I'm excited just to share some ideas with all of you as listeners. But I'm super pumped up today because today marks day number one, or session number one, of our Virtual Producer Fit program. Now, we have run four virtual Producer fits in the last year. This is our fifth one, and this is by far the biggest. We have 160 committed insurance producers that are going to be joining me here later today after I get off this recording. It's just exciting to see so much energy and passion and people that are really wanting to make some changes in their business and ultimately their life, right? To gain the freedoms that they want. Now, bad news is, obviously you can't get into this current program. In fact, we could have got to 200. We wanted to cap it at 150. We made a few little exceptions. We're at 160, but we were going to be over at 200, really, if we had allowed more people in. But our next session starts again May 5, so not too far away, if you're listening to me, this shortly after I record this, I'm at the very end of March, but about another month or so. So we're going to be launching a new Producer Fit. So you have about a month to sign up and register to get in if you want. If you're an individual producer, you want a few of your producers From a team to get in, you can go to sitkins.com profit that's for producer fit. P R O F I T sitkins.com profit and also if your entire agency wants to get involved with all of our programs, including Producer fit, you can look at our all inclusive model where Producer fit is included for as many producers as often as you want to go through our programs. That's@sitkins.com a I am. Alright, so let's get into the content for today's podcast and it's going to be about winning, W I n win and hopefully everybody on here listening. If you're an insurance professional or an agency leader, you're a producer, service professional. Again, you have influence in the marketplace. You want to win. But like all things that we talk about at Sitkins, maybe not all things, many things, we have an acronym. So WIN isn't just a win. Right? We want you to win, but there's an acronym to win which stands for what is normal. So when we talk to professionals about winning or W I n to win, the question I would ask you is what is normal in your agency today? If you're a producer, what's normal in your production business today? Whatever role that you have specifically, what's normal for you today? Here's something I want you to consider and certainly I want you to write down if you got a pen and paper because as you think about it, you're like, wow, that's true. And may make me happy or sad depending on where you're at. But here's the idea. Wherever you are, it's your current normal. Wherever you are, it's your current normal. Now again, I don't know where your agency at is, where your book of business is at, or where your relationship levels are at in the business. It could be a number of things. But wherever you are today, whatever that is, whatever it looks like, whatever it feels like, that is your current normal. And something you know, I challenge the producers, in fact, I'll challenge them today in our camp is this, that your current results are directly related to your current decisions. Your current results are directly related to your current decisions. So if you don't like your results, you just go back and say, well, what decisions have I made or what decisions have I not made in my business, in my career? And I think one of the things that I see that happens with agency leaders when it comes to this idea of win and establishing the current normal for you and your business and then of course what you want it to be is that Oftentimes where I see people miss out on it as I'm coaching and I'm training and working with agencies and professionals individually, within agencies, is the fact that we use softeners and that professionals use softeners. What do I mean by softeners? Well, the reason why we often don't change even if we don't like, think about, well, my current normal isn't really where I want it to be. Even if we don't like it, we often resist. And it could be fear, it could be apathy, it could be a number of things, but typically we get around it by using softeners like this. Well, it's not that bad. I'm still better than she is or he is. Right. I'm just really too busy right now. I've got a lot of things going on. And so we take things even though we really know in our heart of hearts, right? If we really had to be honest with ourselves. And that's something to write down as well. Stop lying to yourself now. You can't see my hand, but I'm raising it. I do it too. I rationalize. I have softeners. I lie to myself. Well, you know, it's really pretty good. Well, maybe, but that's not my best version. That's not your best version. But we tell ourselves these little lies sometimes. They're the little lies that add up. Well, it's pretty good. It's not too bad. I'm okay. It's at least better than this. And they're little half truths. Sort of true, but not your full truth. When I challenge you right now on this podcast today is to think about what do you want your normal to be? What should it look like? And if you're running an agency, what are the normal language and behaviors that people are having? What are the normal language and behaviors from you? If you're a producer, what does a normal week look like? Not with the softeners, but at your highest level. At your highest level. See, that's what we want for you. And I challenge you right now. I want you to win at ever increasing levels. When I think of specifically, and the easiest one here is producers, right? Because they're out there trying to grow their book of business. When I think of the elite producers, those that are in our elite program getting the average book of business a million dollars, we've got some in there that have two and three and a half million dollar books of business. And I talk to them and I asked them, I said, is it about money or is it about winning. Every single time they'll say, winning, winning. It's winning. It's winning. Well, then what does that mean, winning to them? Because it's what is normal? Well, it's the fact that I owe it to myself. I owe it to my clients. I owe it to my agency to perform at the highest level, because anything else is selling myself short and selling the people around me short. And that's not to add pressure to you. It's just the fact that so often we subdue ourselves to some level of complacency or average, and then we soften it. Yeah, it's okay. And so I just really want you to think about that. Where in your life or in your business right now are you using softeners? Well, I really can't get to that because. And other people do it that way, so I'm just going to do it that way too. What is your fullest expression? What is your fullest expression? I challenge myself with this, and I have coaches around me that challenge me because I find myself doing it as well. One of the things that we like to share at Sidkins, I'll share with you on this podcast, besides acronyms, is we actually have a zip code that we challenge our professionals with. And that zip code is 8941-089410-89410. Well, what does that mean? Well, it actually is a zip code in Western Nevada. So if you look up 89410, it's a zip code out in the middle of nowhere in western Nevada. But we use it. The fact. As a mental approach, the fact that we, we want to challenge you as an insurance professional to always be an 8 or 9. So always trying to say, what is the 8 or 9 out of 10? We know there's not perfection, but what's that 8 or 9? Always looking for that new level of 10. Where can I be an 8 or 9 looking for a new level of 10, then I'm playing at a really high level. But I'm not just going to be satisfied because here's the thing, you're either growing or you're not. You're growing or you're dying. There's no status quo if you're an 8 or a 9 in a certain area, which is pretty darn good. And you just say, well, that's not bad. If you're not looking for that next level of 10, a new approach, a better way, a slight tweak here, how to master something at a better level at a higher level, you Will eventually step back to a 7 or 6. Happens every time I see it with professionals. You know what? We have people that come back to our camps after many years. Why? Because they started to lose focus and get out of that current normal that was helping them grow. They began to get a little bit complacent. It's human behavior, right? They start to plateau. But what happens when you plateau too long is you begin to dip down, right? You begin to slide back. So think about that. Eight or nine, looking for a new level of 10. Because really it just comes down to our behaviors. It comes down to our behaviors. Here's something that's going to really shock you. Great insurance professionals make great behaviors normal. It's just what they do. You do this every. I do this every single week. And part of this comes back to consistency. It's the vital few things average insurance professionals do. Average behaviors, right? They make that normal. And of course, the worst insurance professionals, they make the worst behaviors normal. And guess what? Here's a big caveat of why this happens too often, and I've mentioned this before in this podcast, is that there's a level of semi successful you can, in this business, thank God for the insurance business, right? If you're in the insurance business, it's such a great industry for so many reasons, but you can still have really bad behaviors and be somewhat successful in this industry. Why? Well, the first of all, the bar is low. I mean, I'm always amazed at some of the most basic things because oftentimes I talk about what is normal or some behaviors and people think, okay, well, I don't have the 12 step in depth selling system with all the things lined up and all the things rehearsed every minute, all those kind of things. Listen, you know, one of the first things you could do is plan your week in advance. You know, one of the things you could do as a producer is just get out and do selling stuff more often. You know what you could do as a service professional? Practice how to handle objections. Make sure we're rounding out accounts. You know, you could do an agency leader. You can shape, make it. You can make sure that once a week or certainly once a month, you have a state of the agency meeting where you're being clear with the vision and the purpose of the agency keeping people in tune. Some of these things aren't overly hard, but as we always say at Sitkins, it's easy to do. Which means, guess what? It's also really easy not to do if something's easy to do. And everything that we talk about at Sitkins, there is nothing I mentioned before that is rocket science. Oh, my gosh. How in the world could anyone ever think of that? No, it's about doing the vital few things consistently well. It's about winning at ever increasing levels. It's about taking what is normal and up leveling it 1% every week. Could you imagine? Just think about this for a second. This is where I want to get the simplicity of this, of what is normal. You're not going to do it overnight. It is a process. People don't like when I say that. Oh, it's going to be a process. I don't want a process, I want it now. But just think about this. If you would improve and we could talk about a number of different areas, but if you could make an improvement, a slight improvement. I'm talking 1% improvement per week. Per week. I think you could do it per day, but per week. And you even took two weeks off. We said two weeks. I'm not going to improve. Guess What? You've improved 50%. But that's not the truth. Because the truth of it is there's just compounding interest. If you're familiar with that, that's 1% on top of 1% on top of 1. But just at a very minimum math level, it's 50%. By doing what? How did you get 50% better this year? I got 1% better every week. I took a look at some of the basic things that I was doing. Habits, behaviors that were average at best, and I up leveled them 1%. I made slight changes. But here's the thing. I didn't deviate. I didn't quit. I love to work out. I didn't always like to work out, admittedly, but it's become an absolute habit for me. I mean, if I don't work out, I feel crazy. But it's taken me a while. But one of the things I've even struggled with is that I look at like, you know, you look at these before and after photos and you're like, who? I want to look like that dude. Well, guess what? That's a process. It takes time. We don't like that. And so I just want you to think about what are you really trying to get to? What are you really trying to get to? So here's my challenge for you, My call to action, and I'll wrap it up. Is this because this is really a mindset, right? Mindset podcast that I want to share with you. But going back to what I said your current results are directly related to your current decisions. So with that being said, what are your long term goals for what is normal? What are some of your long term goals for what will be normal for you and your business moving forward? I want you to take some time. If you're driving, you can stop the podcast here. I'm going to wrap up in a minute anyway. But just take some time and say, what are my long term goals? If there were one, two or three things that go, this is going to be my new normal. It's not going to be perfection overnight, but I'm going to strive in this way. This is going to be the things that I'm going to do. What would they be? It's easy to write things down, it's easy to talk about strategies and easy to talk about just different ideas. That's easy. The hard thing is to say, this is one area of my life, my business, that I am going to be fully committed to improving on every single day, every single week, no exceptions, no softeners. Because here's a softener that's going to happen. And I've been here too. You start something, you feel good about it, and then you say about two weeks in, as it gets hard or you miss a day or you have a bad week, by the way, that happens. Instead of saying, you know what? I'm going to get right back at it. I'm going to continue because this is important to me. We say this. It wasn't that big of a deal anyway. I mean, I don't know. I listened to this podcast this guy talked about. I was thinking about an area in my life that I wanted to prove. I was thinking about what that would mean for my business, for my life, for my future. And then it got kind of hard and complicated in my own mind and so I just kind of quit. It's not a big deal. It was okay before anyway. It wasn't that bad. And here's the thing, the truth of it, it probably isn't that bad. But is that how you want to live your life? Is that how you want to lead an agency? Is that how you want to lead yourself? It's not that bad. It's pretty good. Are you going to continue? We have used this term before to find the things that you do well. Success leaves clues and build upon them to make regrets. We did this great. We're going to do it again, Again and again. Or you can look back and go, man, I've got a lot of regrets. Coulda, shoulda, would have done these things if I would have we could have done xy. I could have done this with my family. I could have been able to hire more people. I could have been able to serve more. I could have been able to give back to my community. I could have been able to get that vacation house that I wanted. I could have been able to. I don't care. You name it. It's your life. So what is normal? What is normal for your life and for your business? My challenge to you. All the best. And if this podcast and other podcasts have added value to you and your life in the insurance business, please leave me a review on itunes, Stitcher, wherever you're listening to this, I would certainly appreciate it. And also again, if you are interested in our upcoming Producer Fit program, which may be bigger than what it is now. And by the way, when I say big, it doesn't mean you're lonely. We do small breakout groups all the time, which makes us great. So we can impact a lot of people and still give you a very intimate kind of feeling throughout this program. But if you're Interested, go to sitkins.com profit Again, sitkins.com pro fit or if you want to learn about our all inclusive membership, you get access to every one of our programs at one low monthly cost. It's sitkins. Com aim. Thanks again. I wish you all the best in your success. Go be a great leader.