Me, Inc.

Foreign. Welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. I am honored, I am excited, I am humbled that you are joining me on today's episode. And the purpose of every Agent Leader podcast is help agency leaders like yourself to gain clarity, build consistency and to make the commitment necessary to become your best version possible. I started last week a seven part series. I mentioned I may have some interruptions with guests along the way, but a seven part series based on the seven core strategies, the Pro Fit or professional fitness strategies of Sitkins Group. And if you don't know, I am the vice president of Sitkins Group, so it's a good alignment for me. But I'm doing this for a couple reasons. Number one is certainly I want to share these strategies with you, the listener, because they are vital. They are absolutely crucial to agency success and they're based on 35 years of results. They work. And so just like a puzzle, you know, all the pieces are different. They may be different shapes, they have different things on the top of the puzzle, but they have to fit together. And these core strategies that I'm sharing with you and last week was based on high performance teams that teamwork within the agency, all of these pieces that I'm going to share need to fit together. Now some may apply to you more than others. As of today in your agency, you can't necessarily work on all of them at the same time, but I want to highlight them to you on this podcast. Also want to invite you and remind you and a big reason why I'm is that we have our annual networking event coming up March 11th through the 13th in Cape Coral, Florida. Beautiful Cape Coral, Florida called Profit Net Professional Fitness Networking. And we've got a few dynamic outside speakers that we don't just bring in just because we've heard them speak before, but they align with what we believe in and how we can help you as an agency move forward. We're also gonna have high level networking event throughout the entire few days, both during our sessions and outside the sessions and course there's going to be coaching and training just as a workshop to give you specific action items, not too many to help you filter down to give you some specific action items for you to take back to your agency moving forward. So a lot of fun, also a lot of learning at the same time. And again, I'm one of those if you're going to spend time and energy and money to get on a plane, most likely for many of you to get there, obviously we need to have a good time. We've got to have some fun. But also there's got to be something where I come back and go, wow, that was one of the coolest things I've ever been part of. And I don't want to sit here and make big promises, but I will promise you this. You're going to come back with actionable things that you can immediately apply to your agency that I really believe is going to change your lens on certain things that maybe you've been doing for a period of time. So definitely want to invite you, remind you Profit Net just go to sitkins.com profitnet to learn more and to go ahead and get registered. We'd love to see you in Cape Coral March 11th through the 13th. All right. With that, let me dive into today's next core strategy, the Pro Fit strategy. And this is a concept, an idea, something that we can dive very deep in with our Sitkins network members and the individual team members of the agency. But here's the title. ME Inc. ME Inc. It's understanding that every member of your agency team should have their own Me Inc. Their own company, that they have behaviors and roles and strategies and results associated with it that are all part of WE Ink, which is of course, the agency. Zig Ziglar, one of my favorite speakers. And if you haven't heard of Zig Ziglar, I mean, come on, it's Zig Ziglar. He's got so many great stuff out there. Just go to YouTube or search him. But he has great quotes. One of my favorites is the idea is that you don't build your business. And I can change this to you don't build your agency. You build the people and the people build your business. And so if I had to take this idea, this concept of ME Inc. That's a core strategy, a professional fitness strategy at Sitkins, and say, well, why is this so important? Well, it's because if we don't have a true game plan and work directly with our team members, whether it's the service team, the production team, the management or leadership team, if we don't talk about what is your company, what are your roles and responsibilities as part of WE Inc. We are missing absolute important and I would say imperative principle to grow your agency. It's so vitally important. And it seems pretty obvious, you know, when you think about it, we need to develop and grow our people to grow our agency. But if I ask the majority of agencies out there, agency leaders, and say, what is your growth plan for each and every Individual member of your agency team. My guess would be that most of the responses would be blank stares or. Well, you know, we have some different things. And I would probably be told about the continuing ed that they go to or that, you know, that they go to some different carrier programs that talk about coverages and all that. And believe me, those are really important. But I'm talking about a candid, real conversation with all of your team members on understanding that we want to help you build your company and understanding all the principles that go into that that align with WE Inc. Our company, that we can work together. It's about alignment. And I've said this on previous podcasts, you're not always going to agree on everything. But we do need to align and just think about what that means for everybody involved. So what I want to do today is share three key areas around ME Inc. Now, I could spend. I mean, we spend just in our producer camp. We do this with our producers. We. We spend several hours talking about ME Inc. Because here's the reality of this is that so often we look for external results. You know, organic growth, bigger sales numbers, higher client retention. Obviously those are outcome stats, outcome numbers that we need to know and want to improve upon. But we don't look internally to get the external results. And ME Inc. Allows you and every member of your team to look internally to say, what do I need to do to help produce we ink the external results. So three key areas that I want to talk about. Number one is in ME Inc. Every member of your team should know what their future should look like, what they want it to look like. What is their best version possible? Imagine if you just sat down with your team member and said, you know, Joe, you know, Sheila, you know, whatever your name is, I really want to help you be your best version possible. What does that look like to you? When you're performing at your best and you're living your life at your highest level, what does it look like and feel like? And you're probably going to hear some very emotional things that come out. Maybe it's obviously more income, more vacation time, more travel, more time with their family, better relationships with their clients. I mean, it could be a number of things, right? But what does your best version look like? And sometimes you think about closing your eyes and thinking about best version, and people kind of chuckle and say, oh, yeah, close your eyes and imagine. But it's amazing how powerful our brains are. And we don't take enough time to really sit and contemplate and think about what Would our best version really look like? How would we perform? And then to think about what are those things that are standing in the way. So the first part of meank is designing your future. That starts with best version possible. I mentioned earlier, if I'd ask you a few questions, what is your team's growth plan and what is the future that they want to create? And then the third question is, how can you as an agency, the WE Inc. Help them build that future? And again, you're not always going to agree. It's not always going to match up perfectly, but it's pretty amazing when you align, saying, listen, I want to understand what your future looks like. We really as an agency want to help you be part of that. Right. We want to help you build that future. How powerful is that for a team member? It's huge. Another part of designing your future is to really be honest and understand. And this comes from both internal perspective and external is do we have people? As Jim Collins said, on the right seats on the bus, do we have people? And Dan Sullivan, a strategic coach, I've been through his program, great thinker, always talks about unique abilities. There are certain abilities that we have that when we do them, we love it. They're energy giving. We get more energy when we do them. And then there's some things that we do that are just kind of so. So take it or leave it. And there's some things that we do that absolutely SAP us of energy. Now, for example, if you have someone who's really good in the service side of things in your agency, right, they love service stuff. They like the reactive calls to be able to serve people at a high level, answer their questions and you take them and put them in a conversation or presentation in front of a future ideal client, they're going to be nervous, scared, and they're not right skill set and they're going to be drained of energy. And you probably say, well, of course, that's why they're a service person. Absolutely. But you have to ask yourself and have this conversation, what are you? The unique abilities of your team. Now, I think many of you who are listening to this, I know a lot of the agencies out there, we do some type of personality profile. So take the time if you haven't done that to do that, but also have a real authentic conversation with your team. Again, back to your best version possible. Well, I can't be my best version possible if I'm doing roles and responsibilities that don't fit my unique abilities. My strengths though, my superpowers so the first, again, key area of ME, Inc. Is helping them design their future, their best version possible, understanding their roles and responsibilities and what fits their strength. That's number one. Number two, you've heard me if you've listened to this podcast probably more than once or twice because I think I talk about it on at least every other episode to some degree. But number two is helping your team, their ME Inc. Their company, develop their skills. And it seems pretty common sense when I say that, but I will tell you again that most agencies haven't had a conversation about okay at this role and responsibility. And I'm going to use a producer because it's pretty easy. As a 15 year production veteran, so to speak, I've had a lot of practice in this. But talk about okay, if you're going to be a high level insurance producer, what are the specific skills and training that you need to be working on consistently to help you maximize your potential, to maximize your performance? And the question we have to ask are we going to do low risk practice or high risk practice? Well, what's the difference between low risk practice and high risk practice? Maybe you already know the answer, but I'll tell you. High risk practice is when you are out in front of your best future ideal client and you screw up the presentation or with your biggest client and you didn't come in prepared to ask the right questions. That's high risk practice. You're going into a high leverage situation, a lot of money on the line and you're now practicing. You're practicing in front of your client or future ideal client. Well, what is low risk practice? Well, that's taking time to do role play in your office. It's recording yourself on video or audio. It's having an accountability partner somewhere that you're going to work on some of these things. It could be anything from presentation rehearsals to telephone conversations. And this could be for sales or service understanding. What's your elevator pitch? How are you going to present yourself in the marketplace? Are you practicing how you're actually going to ask referrals, the power questions you need to ask, being prepared, having an executive briefing. Again, a lot of these are sales stuff, but this is true from the service side as well. What does it really look like? What does it really look like? Low risk practice versus High risk practice. So part two of me, Inc. Is how are you developing your skills? And I am amazed that most people, they're ME Inc. They wouldn't even be able to identify the specific skills they need to work on and they have a growth or action plan of how to do that. So ME Inc. Part two is having preparation and practice and skill development. Skill development. Number three of me, Inc. If you want to build a great me, Inc. And within your agency, it's about personal accountability. Again, if you've heard this podcast before, you've heard me talk about a culture of accountability. We've learned a new word, a cadence, a culture and cadence of accountability, meaning that we're going to have a culture that the normal behaviors and language and actions of the agency and then a cadence. Are we doing this consistently? Most agencies don't have a culture nor do they have a cadence of accountability. See, every person in your agency is a profit center. And I don't mean to treat a person as just a profit center only when it comes to number, but there's truth behind that. Few of the things that we preach and teach at Sitkins is to never allow a profitable account to subsidize an unprofitable account. I also believe that we should never allow a profitable producer or profitable teammate to subsidize an unprofitable producer or teammate. That we are a results oriented agency. Now, we have to agree on what those results are and I'm going to get to that in a second. But we have to understand there has to be some skin in the game. We have to agree upon what my roles and my responsibilities and my results and my behaviors must be. Otherwise we're just guessing. Now, individually, this is outside of leadership in ME, Inc. And we do focus on this very highly with the insurance producers in particular, I always share there's another acronym you need to remember. It's called apr. I don't mean APR is an annual percentage rate, but APR is an absolute personal responsibility. One of the things I would love to help with culture, this takes a long time is that we are all going to be responsible for our actions. And sometimes it may not even seem fair. I've got five kiddos. I've shared this before, but I can tell you with my kiddos several things that I hear is that it's not my fault someone else was supposed to do it or I forgot. It's not my fault someone else was supposed to do it or I forgot. These are common excuses that I hear. And in a great agency we are going to understand and write down and talk about the specific actions, behaviors, strategies, results you want to get and then say this is what I'm agreeing to. Which gets into a concept called reverse performance management. And Reverse performance management is A win win. I can tell you, most people at least, certainly performance based people, people that are of high quality, they want to know what they need to do to be successful. I mean, could you imagine playing a game of any kind of. I don't care if it's basketball, football, hockey, whatever game. I mean, I don't care if you're playing a board game with your family and you start playing and you don't have any idea if you're winning or losing. Now maybe that's somewhere in the culture today. We're all just playing to get a trophy and just as long as we had fun, I'm all for fun, but let's face it, I mean, think about just taking kids and if you put them out there and say, we're just going to play some basketball and they go out and play and they're like, what's the score? Oh, don't worry, just have fun. And then you say, okay, now we're keeping score. Does it not change the dynamic, the level, the intensity? Of course it does. It's not just to say that it's only about the number of results, but again, I think quality people, results based people always want to know are they winning or losing. And better yet, this is more important when it comes to growth for the agency. It's not just, okay, you won, you lost, but hey, you won, great job. How can we replicate that? You as a leader have opportunities to coach around that. Let's learn from it and build and take this momentum and keep springing or if we lose or we're struggling, hey, what's not working? Let's talk about it. So let me give you just one concept of this. And we dive very deep with our private client members around this because it is an absolute critical issue. And the reason why ME Inc. Is such an important strategy, it's one of our core strategies, is because if we don't get people to be accountable internally, how can we possibly expect our results? And what we're doing, talking to whether it's our clients or our insurance carriers to be accountable externally, you just, you just can't. You can't. At a high level, I think we know that, right? And we go, yeah, of course I know that. But it's back to, okay, how well are you doing in that? So for ME Inc. Here's something I would highly suggest. Outside of talking about your or talking with your team members about designing their future and what does it really look like and understand their unique abilities and how can we help them and then figuring Out a skill development program. Okay, how can we help you do some of these skill development practices to get you better, to help you improve every single week, every single month to be increase your skill level? Well, then it comes down to a form of reverse performance management. Meaning let's sit down and say, these are the things that I'm agreeing to. These are the results that I want. These are the behaviors and actions that I'm going to need to do to get that and let's sign it together. And I'll be accountable to you as a leader. And as a leader, you're going to be accountable to me to help me. And we're going to do this together. And we're not going to be perfect and we're going to have times and weeks and months that maybe we don't do the things that we need to do, but then at least we have a scorecard to say, you know what, I fell short here, but I'm going to pick it up next week. Most agencies are simply guessing. They don't have clarity, they don't have consistency, they don't have commitment instead of clarity. They have confusion instead of consistency. They have chaos instead of commitment. We have complacency. You know, it's good enough. I think we're doing okay. So reverse performance management not only helps the individual team member to say, this is really what I need to do, and by the way, we're designing this together. This isn't you as a leader just telling, these are the things you have to do. And if you don't do it, I'm gonna fire you. You can do it that way, but would you not get greater buy in and higher level performance if you say, let's talk about this together, and of course you're gonna lead that conversation. But when you have reverse performance management in place, which is part of me Inc. Guess what? People will report up to you as a leader and you as a leader can ask questions. And we call this I thought we agreed form of management. So if we've talked about specific roles, responsibilities, strategies, behaviors that an individual teammate needs to do in your agency, we've agreed upon that. We both signed it. My commitment to you, your commitment to me. And we come back, we have a meeting and they're falling short. You say, you know, Brent, I thought we agreed upon this. What's going on here? Help me understand why you're not getting this done instead of just saying, why didn't you do it? Go do it. We can say, let's figure out what went wrong and what you need to do to improve upon this doesn't happen again. And maybe me as a leader, as a manager, as a coach, I can help you. Again, it's always about ongoing growth. Three areas of ME Inc. Design your future skill development and preparation and practice and personal accountability. Again, there's much deeper areas to go in this, but for this podcast and for the sake of time, I just want to share those with you. But to go back to what I said at the beginning, as the great Zig Ziglar said, if you want to grow your agency, you've got to grow your people. And a great way to grow your people is to understand that they have a ME Inc. They have their own company, which gives them responsibilities, which gives them roles, which gives them a vision of somewhere to go. And we're all part of WE Inc. Our agency. So let's work on this together. Hope this is helpful to you. Thanks for listening to the AgentLeader podcast. As I mentioned on the outset, my main call to action to you right now and again, unless you're listening to this months later and it's already happened, if you are before the date of I'll just say March 1st, it probably gets too late then before March of 2020 and you want to be part of a really exclusive event High Level Networking Action Plan Workshop. Our profit networking event March 11th 13th in Cape Coral, Florida. Go to sitkins.com profitnet to learn more. We love to talk with you. We love to see you there in sunny warm Florida in March and help your agency become its best version possible. Thanks for listening and all the best in your success.