Stepping Over Dollars to Pick Up Dimes - Mistake #5

Welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. My name is Brent Kelly. I am your host and thanks for joining me for another episode. Excited to share the final mistake of this five part series, the five biggest mistakes that agency CEOs, agency leaders make. And if you haven't listened to the prior sessions, what are you waiting for? No, go, go back if you haven't yet. Certainly these don't have to be in order so you can listen to this one and listen to the other mist in any particular order, but today is kind of the summary, the summation. If I had to say there was one overall high level mistake that agencies make, it would be this one, which leads to everything else that I've talked about so far. As always, the purpose of the Agent Leader podcast is to help you as an agency leader, whether you're the CEO, sales leader, manager, whatever profession you have, whatever role you have in the insurance industry, you are a leader because you have influence. But the help agent agency leaders like yourself help you gain clarity, right? To understand you have awareness, to do the right things, to help build consistency, to find the habits that you need to do and just to make a commitment. You know, certain times I'm hoping in what I say on this podcast that at some point at something you go, you know what, darn it, it's time I commit to this, whatever it may be. Maybe it's something I said directly, maybe it's just something that inspires you in a different way to get you thinking differently. But that's one of my goals and when I speak and train and coach is to hopefully help, maybe turn on some light bulbs sometimes, right? I this too, where I am listening to a podcast or a training or a mentor that I'm working with or another one of my peers, someone on my team, and you go, you know what, you're right, you're right. So you know, those are the moments where we actually, we gain momentum and we start to make the positive improvements that we want in our business and our life and to get the results that you're really looking for. So that's my goal for you on this podcast. I do want to remind you, as I have the last few episodes, that that on September 28, and I know that about when this podcast releases, it's gonna be getting really close. So this may be passed, but if not, if it's not September 28th yet, you still have time to register for our CEO Bootcamp. This is a five session interactive bootcamp. Roger Sitkins, myself, we're gonna have other agency leaders doing Roundtables and interaction. We're gonna be open for Q and A to have specific questions that you have as agency leaders. And I can just speak from my, my own mentorship that, you know, Roger himself has been doing this for almost 40 years in working with agencies and has worked with over 4,000 insurance producers and thousands of agencies in different ways. And so it's amazing what you can learn and pick up. And that's certainly not to sell what I'm going to share with you short by any means. But I will just tell you from my own experience. Roger someone, when you have an opportunity to ask him questions and lean in and listen, I highly recommend that you take up that opportunity if possible. So go to sitkins.com sitkins.com CT CEO Bootcamp sitkins.com CEO Bootcamp Otherwise, just go to Sitkins and click on the program button and you'll see as one of our many programs that we offer to agency leaders out there in the marketplace. So with that, I want to get into mistake number five and I'm going to do just a really quick recap of the first four. Number one was running the wrong way enthusiastically, which is lack of a strategic plan process. Mistake number two was wearing busy as a badge of honor that we reward busyness and activity versus results in different areas. I see agencies make mistakes there. Mistake number three was ignoring the power of Pareto, which is the obviously the 8020 principle that I've talked about several times. And then last session I talked about replicating average that most agencies look and talk, work with the same type of clients that every other agency does. And they don't really take the time to figure out who they want to work with, why they want to work with them, and the true differentiation they make to change the conversation. So those are the first four mistakes. Again, you can go back and listen to those in any order. But let's get into mistake number five and I will tell you that if today sounds like a little bit like, oh well, of course you're talking about this, Brent, because that allows people to go work with you in Sitkins. Okay, I'm okay with that. You know, I want to provide you as an agency leader, great value on this podcast. But here's something I'll tell you. Same thing I would tell anybody who is in any form of business or sales of any kind is that if you don't believe in what you're doing, then don't talk about it. But if you do, you owe people the opportunity to work with you. I mean, I would say that for anybody. I say this to insurance producers, that if you don't believe in yourself and what you bring to the table, you don't believe in your company, you don't believe in the value that you bring, you don't believe in how you differentiate, and most importantly, you don't believe that people's lives or businesses are better after doing business with you, then you shouldn't talk about it. But if you do, you should. And so today, here's what I'll tell you the things I'm going to talk about mistake number five today. Yes, we specifically at Sitkins can help you with this. We believe in what we do, but guess what? Other people can too. My biggest thing is, yes, we are very confident in what we do and how we help agencies. But the most important thing that I want you to get out of today in this podcast is that no one does it all by themself. If you say, well, I'm a self made millionaire, I'm a self made woman, a self made man, bs, no you're not. People have helped you along the way. People have helped you along the way. So without further ado, what is mistake number five? Mistake number five is this. Stepping over dollars to pick up dimes. Stepping over dollars to pick up dimes. Now, you could say this phrase in different ways and it was kind of catchy, but the bottom line is this. What does that mean? It means that in the agency world, there are opportunities that are right in front of you in many agencies to help you become that best version or help you improve in a certain area. But so often we step over those to do Shiny Object syndrome stuff. Well, what about this? Or we could try that. Or we could do this or this would be cool. Or what if. And again, I'm not against looking for things that make your agency better, but if it becomes like everything you do and the very basic, simple, important, impactful things we don't ever do, well, what does it matter, right? It's typically what Shiny Object Syndrome is, and I am guilty of this in many areas, and I have to have my awareness up high, my antennas up high, is that it allows you to look at things to avoid doing the hard work, the deep work, the important work, the impactful work, right? If I have to have this conversation or if we do this or if we change strategy, it would work and it would be a huge impact. But guess what? It would take work. So let's go do Shiny Object. There's got to be an easier way. There's got to be a microwave solution because this seems hard. This seems hard. One of the most alarming stats that I see with insurance agencies, it comes with development and training of your people, right? And so when I talk about this mistake of stepping over dollars to pick up dimes, as an agency leader, I would challenge you. Where are you investing in yourself as an agency leader to be a better leader? And then secondly, where are you investing in your team, whatever their role or responsibility, to help them be their best version possible? There's been some studies out there from. It was from a training magazine I was looking through. It says that service industries and the insurance industry certainly is a service industry. The best practices shows that about 2% of their budget is around training and development of their people. Now this could be training, develop of any kind. I mean, communication, sales skills, service skills, I don't care what it is. But it's, it's development for their team. It's about 2% of their overall revenue. Now here's the thing with insurance agencies, even the best insurance agencies, this is crazy. The typical investment for insurance agencies is 0.4% of revenue. 0.4% of all the revenue goes back into training and development of what I believe is truly the most important resource of any agency. That's their people. And you know, maybe you've seen this before. I've been on different sides of this in my own personal experience. I've talked to many people, I've talked to many specifically insurance producers. But this is service teams as well. Whereas they get brought in to an agency and the expectations are figure it out. We have a few things, but figure it out. We're not really going to provide you with any specific tangible training or development tools and resources. You know, I came up the hard way. That's the only thing I always hear from agency leaders. Well, in my world, my day, we just had to figure it out the hard way. Okay, good for you. So because you came up the hard way, let's not give our team any advantage to be their best. It doesn't make any sense. And I think in some cases it's not even an arrogant type of statement. It's just they're busy. It's back to what I said earlier about being busy. Ah, we're so busy, got all this stuff going on yet we will step over these dollars which are in our people to pick up dimes, to do all this other stuff around it. So even with the best insurance agencies, 0.4% goes into training, development of their team. As many of you know and have heard before. If you listen to this podcast, I'm a big fan of John Maxwell and his leadership development. I don't know if I heard this directly from John or another speaker at one of the events that I was attending, but, you know, he says something like this, or whoever said it said this. He said, you cannot give what you do not have. You cannot give what you do not have. And, you know, the phrase is pretty simple to understand, but when you think about yourself as a leader, you think about your team members, whether it's yourself or them. We can't give what we don't have. Now, we're never going to have it all, right, as far as knowledge and resources and skills. But the more that we can attain and get, the more that we can give out to others. Which guest does what? It helps us become a better agency. It helps us serve our clients at a higher level. It helps us to better culture. You can go down the line of the things that it does for improvements, but you can't give what you don't have. Another key influencer, to say the least, is a guy by the name of Warren Buffet. You may have heard Warren's name before because, well, he's the richest guy in the world. So, you know, you get known for those kind of things. Now, whether you like Warren Buffet or not, he seems to have some pretty good information and ideas out there. Obviously done pretty well in investments, to say the least. He has a phrase to ask Warren Buffett, of all the investments that he's ever made that have produced millions and now billions of dollars, what's the best one you've ever made? He says it every time. He says, the best investment that I've ever made is an investment in myself, investment in my own learning and development. You think about just insurance agencies as a whole, it's even a better investment because I don't know what your plans are with your agency, if you have ownership in the agency, if it's at some point to sell or not, that's up to you. Whatever you want to do, short term, long term, but just the valuation. I mean, this is such a great business, as we said so many times, but $100,000 in profit equals a million dollars in agency valuation. Just basics. Now, again, are there fluctuations in that? Well, of course there are, but Basically it's about 10 times $100,000 in profit for your agency results in about a million dollars of agency valuation. So not only is it a great investment in your team, but it's just A great investment in your agency. But we oftentimes again step over these dollars, even if it's millions of dollars to pick up dimes, because this is good enough and this will keep us busy. And I don't have time to think about, you know, I don't know how to train them or I don't know what to do. Well, let me just talk about three areas of where you can really make investments either in yourself or your team. Right, Three areas to think about. Number one is mentors. Mentors. Now, I've had multiple mentors in my life and I'm sure I'll have many more. I'm always seeking more mentors. You know, a mentor is someone who has been somewhere that you haven't been before and can share some of that knowledge and information. Could be someone in your office right now. I know for me as a young sales producer, I had mentors that were producers who were really successful producers. And I learned way more. Right. In many cases of just spending a day with someone who is really good at what they do and just ask them questions and just observing them than anything else. Mentors come for people in your community. Mentors could be obviously through books. There are mentors in books. You read a book, it's a mentor, they're sharing their information and knowledge. So are you investing in mentors? Number one? And by the way, some of these things will cost you money, but they'll all cost you time. So you've got to make a decision. Is it worth it? Well, I think it's a great investment. As Warren Buffett said, the best investment you can make in yourself. So one of those investments is in mentors. Secondly is coaches. And again, I may be self serving here, I don't care. One of my job and our jobs at Sitkins as coaches is to help people get to places that they wouldn't on their own. That's what great coaches do. I played sports growing up. I had some really good coaches, I had some average coaches. But all the coaches in one way or another helped me get to better places in my life. They helped me see things, they gave me new information, they held me accountable, they provided resources, whatever it is. But coaches help me think differently, act differently, perform at a higher level. And that's what great coaches do. And that's what our goal is with agencies and insurance professionals is you have somewhere you want to get what's blocking you and how can we help you get that result you desire. And the last thing to share would be your peers. My guess Is you've been to an association event or a continuing education event, maybe an event like one of our Sitkins events. You know, the most powerful thing that we see in our particular events, whether it's on site and now virtual, because we do virtual roundtables, is to be able to share and network, learn failures, successes from your peers, the people that are doing it every single day, just like you are. And, you know, there's so much to learn from our peers. Now I will make one caveat. I would challenge you to spend time with peers who will encourage and challenge you. Not peers that you're just better than because they're no good. And I say that with a chuckle. But there's some truth to it, I think, all the way back to when I was in junior high. So I grew up in a very small town and I played different sports, one of those being basketball. And in my small town as a junior high kid, I was one of the best basketball players on my local team. And you know, I thought, okay, I'm pretty good at this. And you know, even if I don't work overly hard, I have some natural skills and things that make me about the best on my team. So good for me. And then there was a summer when I was part of a travel team and I became involved with a team which had better players on my team, number one. And then we would travel and play much larger, you know, wasn't schools, but different teams that were put together that summer. And, you know, the first thing I noticed right away was that I didn't start on my team anymore. I was a seventh grader on a seventh and eighth grade team, and there were a lot of players on my own team that were better than me. I learned that very quickly. And then secondly, it was the competition, the people I was around. And one of the very first games I was in, I came out of the floor. And the one thing that I was very confident in myself was that I could shoot. I was a good shooter. And so I get the pass and I'm over in the corner. I'm going to shoot a shot from the, the right corner. Comes off my fingertips feeling pretty good about it that split second. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I see this kid in the corner of my eye taking a leap off from somewhere in the middle of the lane, you know, a couple steps, jumps up with his hand in the air and just gets a piece of the ball, deflects it and then taps it out to mid court and he chases it down and I'm trying to catch him from behind, can't catch him, he's too strong, too fast. And he goes up as an eighth grader, maybe he was a seventh grader, I don't know. But he goes up as a seventh or eighth grader and dunks the ball. Boom. Rattles the rim. My eyes get huge, my face goes white. I realized very quickly that I had a long way to go. And I sat down on the bench, I came out of the game and my coach, who passed away years ago, great coach, put his arm around me and said, hey, Brent, you're not playing small town basketball anymore, are you? And I said, no, coach, I'm not. Kind of had a laugh about it. He was trying to make me feel better, I think. And then he said something that I'll never forget, and it's why I'm telling the story to you, is he said, listen, the only way that you're going to achieve your full potential, your best version possible. And I don't know the specific words he said, but obviously to be that best basketball player I could be is I had to continue to surround myself with people that were better than me, that would challenge me. And that's one of the things that I love. It's such a cool experience when we're doing a program again, whether it's on site or virtual, and you can see just the body language of someone going, wait a second, this person is achieving results that I didn't think were possible or I didn't know how to do that. And then the bigger revelation comes is, you know what? I could do that too. Now there's things I gotta change. There's some habits, I gotta make some improvements, whatever the case may be, but they're not anything like super special. They do the right things consistently. They've made a commitment to doing it. They know where they want to go, whatever it may be, right? But this idea that this collective genius, that's what peers, surrounding yourself with great peers does for you. The last thing I'll share on this particular topic is this. If you're the smartest person in the room, and I don't know what room that is, your local community room, your agency room, a virtual room, whatever room it is, if you're the smartest person in the room, it's time to find a new room. That is idea of investing in yourself. And again, there's the three areas I talked about, mentors, coaches, and peers. And when you do that, when you invest in yourself, when you, when you, when you Say, you know what? I'm tired of stepping over dollars. This mistake that I mentioned to pick up dimes, that there's real fruit, right? There's real return right in front of me. If I'm willing to make that commitment yet, I'm going to avoid it by distraction or shiny object syndrome or whatever it else to get to the heart of my improvement, whether it's myself personally, my team, my agency, so that we can go out and serve others at the highest level. You're making a mistake, right? You're making a mistake. And I said at the beginning of this, yes, we would love for you to invest in yourself in one of our programs. We can really go deep with you and help you think about things differently and then begin to apply them. But if your first step is something else or you want to try something else, but you're willing to invest in yourself and your team, good for you, right? There are a lot of places to do that. But I will say, I said at the beginning of this, we have an upcoming boot camp. If you want to learn more about it, go to sitkins.com CEO Bootcamp CEO Bootcamp or go to sitkins.com and click on our programs to see the number of programs that we have to help agencies invest so that they are not stepping over these dollars just to pick up dimes. People say, well, what is your real goal at Sidkins? Well, certainly we want to help people think bigger, see bigger, but they have to do bigger so they can live bigger, better lives and whatever that means for you. It's not just money. It's freedom. The freedom of your time, the freedom of relationships, working with the right clients and the right people on your team, doing the things you want to do, the freedom to have clarity on where it is you want to go and the future that you want to create. That's all part of the freedom. And so, again, we would love to help you with that. And I just hope you listen to this podcast today. Maybe something inspired you to do something again. Whether it's with us, that's your choice. But I just want you to do something, something to invest in yourself and your team. You owe it to yourself, you owe it to them, and you owe it to the people that you serve. Also, just as a note, if this podcast, this episode, and I was pretty passionate in this episode, hopefully you can feel and hear my passion. But if this podcast in general has been helpful to you and your agency, love, I really appreciate a review on itunes or stitcher or whatever else that you listen to this podcast and truly, I wish you and your team all the best in your success. Thanks for listening.