Think vs. Thing

You know, oftentimes agency leaders and their teams will tell me that this is the thing that we believe is holding us back. Maybe the thing is a process or a strategy or a specific action they're not taking. And while that may be true in terms of the outcome, to some degree, what I found and what we found in working with hundreds of agencies and thousands of professionals is that it's not the thing ultimately that's holding them back. It's how they think about the thing. We'll talk about that specifically today. It's not the thing, it's how you think in today's Agent Leader Podcast. Welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. My name is Brent Kelly. Thanks for being part of this episode today. Excited to be with you. And I'm excited to bring back a recurring guest. And the reason that we keep bringing him back is that apparently he's providing great value to all the Agent Agent Leader Podcast listeners. Roger Sitkins, CEO and founder of the Sitkins Group, is with us. Roger, as always, welcome back to the Agent Leader Podcast.

Well, Brent, thank you. It's always fun to get together and share some ideas, some things that'll help agencies get a lot better.

Well, today we're going to talk about thinking and we're going to take this in a few different areas. And I think it's such a simple, yet such an impactful topic in conversation. And I let the audience know right away that this podcast episode and, and some of the notes and outline that we put together today came from an authentic conversation that wasn't designed to be about this. Sometimes Roger and I have conversations that, I don't know, maybe they go off track a little bit. Roger, is that fair statement? So, so it went off track, but I think in a good way because what we began to talk about was this idea. And of course, as we always talk about agency results, how can we help agencies get better results? What does that look like? And how those are tied back ultimately to how we think, why we think the way that we do, how our thinking is impacted in different ways. And of course, Roger came up a number of different ideas and things that I want to, I want to dive deep with Roger today and more importantly, share with you, the Agent Leader audience, some of these ideas. Now, before I get into that, I want to remind you that we do have a brand new tool that's on our website. It's the Agency Transformation Scorecard. This is a super simple and very effective tool that you as an agency leader and your agency can go on any time of the day 247 go to sitkins.comscorecards so go to sidkins.comscorecard it's a simple sample of a, of a agency transformation scorecard that it's going to measure you against key areas and see how your agency is doing. And then from there we'll send some follow ups to help you on your journey. All but all being part of that best version possible experience. And as always, that's the mission. The mission here today, I know Roger feels much the same way, is that our mission is to educate, empower, power and equip you, the independent insurance agency leader and your team to become that best version possible. So with that, Roger, you ready to dive into some thinking discussion?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

All right, well what before we get into some of the thinking? I don't know. I know we've got, we've got some video people that watch on video. We've got a lot of people that listen to audio only. But you have something on your head. Do you want to, you want to share what's on your head?

Well, it's, it's a cap. Those of you that are watching can see it. Obviously those are listening, can't. But the cap has a saying on. It's no practice quoting. It's says practice, practice quoted with the universal slash like no smoking. And it's, it's, it's a good example of how you think because how you think, Norman, is going to drive your behaviors. And so what we know with the best agencies, the best producers is they say, look, no practice quoting. I've got a super qualified people. That's an attitude we have and another, you know, tied to it. The best day to lose the sale is the first day. If you're going to lose a sale, lose it early. Because we've all had that happen where we get into a selling situation, we go, you know what, this is just practice. These people are never going to move, they're never going to buy. So the attitude here is don't waste time, energy and effort on people that are not willing to at least get a true second opinion, not just a quote because they're trying to keep their current agent honest. So it's a great example of how we think drives our behaviors, drives our results.

Well, that's a great example and we'll talk about many, many more of this. It's one thing to, that's why I love it as a, as a hat because part, I mean he had on there, people go, no practice quoting. What's that? And you start to talk about it. And what really boils down to what we're going to talk about and dive deep today is ultimately, again, it comes back to, well, why do people think that way? Or should that be something I should think about?

Or.

Right. In some cases, it's like, why would I ever practice quote. Well, I've never thought about that in that concept today. And so some of these, what I'm, what I want to lead to, Roger, are these, these breakthroughs in thinking. And you have a great story of, I think, one of the most powerful breakthroughs that I've heard. Your friend that you spent a lot of years with. We still have conversations today. He's still very, very successful in the marketplace today. You give him a very special name. So I, I won't steal any more of your story.

Share with the audience yeah, anybody that's been through our producer program already has heard the story about Grind Gringo. This is a great producer, great agency, became a great friend of mine. He actually went on the first mission trip we did to Nicaragua, and he's about 6, 7, about 280. He's a big dude, to say the least. And most of the Nicaraguans are a little shorter people, you know, and they're, they're wonderful people. And I always say, boy, there but for the grace of God go I that we would live there. And they're, they struggle, to say the least. But when he came on the job site, people, they looked up at him, they went, grande de Gringo. But the story starts when he was a producer at Solar. When he first came to our producer camp, it was held on Fort Myers Beach. And he called me. It was the second or third session. He called ahead of time and said, hey, coach, I'd like to go fish. I'd love to fish there. Could we book something? I said, sure. So he came in, we got a fishing guide. We went out. But about 12, 1 o', clock, the storms came in the afternoon, summer storms came in. We got chased off the water. So we were sitting at a beachfront restaurant having some chicken wings and some cold beers and just talking about things. And I looked at them and, and I said, how big do you think your book of business can get? He said, well, I'm at about 650 of commission now. 650,000 commission now. And you may be 700,000, but I think that's probably it. And I looked at him. There's certain people, you just, you can look at them. We see this all the time. You look at him, say, there's something in there waiting to come out. Now of course we refer to it. There's a best version possible waiting to come out. And I looked at him and I.

Said.

Still call him that. I said, you know, I see a million dollar producer in you. He said, what? I said, I see a million dollar producer in you. And it was really strange because it was almost like I heard a click in his brain where all of a sudden he went, oh. And I said, well, what would a million dollar producer look like? And we talked through that and we told the story for a long time now and he bought into it at a very, very deep level. He finally believed it. See, he had some self limiting beliefs. This is one of the things we're going to talk about here a lot today, but you know, eliminating those self limiting beliefs. But all of a sudden he said, yeah, you're right, I can do it. Well, I'm here to tell you that his book of business right now is bumping up at 7 million of commission income. Now that's not every producer in the world, but he believes it. He believes things now that he never believed before. Matter of fact, he is consistently writing accounts that pay more in commission than what he had total when we had that discussion. But he changed his thinking. He changed his thinking. That's the key to it.

Yeah, you know, I just comment on that and we're going to, I want you to dive more on this, what I'm going to share here. But you know, in our, in our producer camp and I've shared this, I think at some point in the podcast, you know, we really do build a foundation and in particular our first session is about best version possible and you know, designing your future and identifying what are some of the self limiting beliefs that you may have had so far that are preventing you from becoming that best version possible. And oftentimes, you know, this isn't shocking. I understand where it comes from is that whether it's an agency leader or producer, like yeah, we'll tell you about the result. This is the result. This is the result. What's the result? What's the result? And you listen to GRANDE Gringo, what's $7 million? I mean, gosh, give me that result. Well, it all starts with how you think and you know, as we build things back and it's something we share all the time is it's beliefs, behaviors, result. And Roger, you touched on that, that okay, here's this result. What are the behaviors that get you to that result? And of course those behaviors Align back to your ultimate beliefs. And what we find so often is that our beliefs and our behaviors are disjointed in many cases. Right. Or, or what we say about our results or what we want to result. Our behaviors, they don't align with that either. Right? Like, well, this is what I want, this is what I actually do. And the reason why I don't do what I want is because I don't believe in what I need to do. And I know this is. Well, that sounds confusing, it's semantics, but it's true. And so often, you know, even in our first session in particular, and we reaffirmed this throughout the program, is that if you're designing your future as a producer, one of the questions is why? Why do you want that? Here's the other part. Why not what, what has been happening that's preventing you from that? So I don't know. Again, I didn't mean to try to steal in your thunder, Roger, on this, but the police behaviors results, I think has been such a critical piece. And we don't, we don't say results, behaviors, beliefs, we say beliefs, behaviors, results. So in, in your point of view, Roger, why is starting with beliefs so important in what you've seen and learned.

Over the years, you have to believe in yourself, number one. And again, this gets back to get rid of those self limiting beliefs. If somebody has done something, you can do it, it's doable. All right, and so we start off with the whole psychographics. What do you think? What's your vision? What's your mission? What are you really committed to? And something we've talked about before. There's a huge difference between being motivated and being dedicated. And are you motivated to do some things better? Well, yeah, for short term. But are you dedicated to do it? Is it a driving force in your life that you're saying, these are my beliefs? I want this for my family, I want this for my book of business. I want this for my team at the agency. Okay, so what are the behaviors and strategies that you've got to make normal? One of the many acronyms we talk about when what is normal? So what are the things you're going to make normal that you're not only motivated to do, you're dedicated to do, and you hold yourself accountable to do them. And then when you get to the results part of it, as you mentioned, it's pretty simple, so easy. Example, let's say that I'm, I'm motivated and dedicated to having a higher closing ratio and working with future ideal clients only. But then I look at my closing ratio and it's 33%, 40%. When I really am committed to getting up to that 75 to 80%. What are the things I'm doing wrong behaviorally? So I believe it, I look at the actual results. So anytime the results are not congruent with what we think we want, we have to go back and look at how good of a job are we doing executing what we said we were going to do. Another example, obviously everybody in the world would say referral, a targeted referral, Not a random referral, but a targeted referral where you're going after somebody you specifically want because you have, you have, first of all expertise in that field, that industry. You've got the markets, you know, the things that can make it different. You know, how you can help them control their total cost of risk or total cost of benefits. And you say, that's someone I want to get introduced to or referred to. Okay, that sounds really good. But if you don't have a reverse referral process in place that you consistently practice, get very conversational and comfortable. And then actually when you're meeting with a client, you give them a list of, here's some people I'm thinking about calling out, who do you know? What can you tell me about them? Well, that sounds pretty simple, but it takes a lot of dedication. It takes dedication to say, I want to work on referrals only. I was with a large group of our producers three or four weeks ago, and this is an in person event which doesn't happen much anymore in this Covid aftermath. But I threw out to them, I said, how many of you right now are working primarily on referrals? And the good news was the vast majority. And I said, just threw it out. Why is that important? Of course they started yelling at things. Well, it's a higher closing ratio, you know, it's easier here, it's easier there. I said, you know, it's not easier for you, it's easier for your team. It's easier for your team to, when you're working on a referral because they're not wasting capacity chasing down markets, getting submissions and et cetera. So if I believe that's what I really believe, I want to work on the referrals only. But if I don't have the reverse referral process in place, if I haven't identified who I want to be referred to, if I don't actually ask, what a surprise. And then if I don't actually follow up probably not going to get the results I want. So this all ties together. So I guess a big message here is pretty simple. If your results are not what you want, go back to your behaviors. Go back to your behaviors. Are you doing the things that are pretty much predictable and guaranteed to get you the results you want? It's straightforward, but again, it sounds simple. It's not easy though. We've talked about this so many other times that doing the work, the hard work now is what it really takes to get the results that you want. So you can take the easy way or the hard way. Do the hard stuff now, have an easy life later. Do the easy stuff now, you'll have a hard life later. Comes back to what do you believe? What do you do? What are the risks?

You're saying that it hit me. I'm gonna get your thought on this. It's just impulse in my head. So you can just tell me if this is, this is ridiculous. But we talk about false beliefs or self limiting beliefs, right? I think I have a. This isn't the right word. So I have to think about this a little bit. But I think a lot of people have pretend beliefs and what I mean by this is they say things of what they believe because they think other people would like to hear it, but they don't really believe it. Right. I mean, I'll just stay on the topic of referrals for a minute because I think this is an easy one that people can grasp, right? Because I, and I think most people go, yeah, it's probably true, but I mean we talk about the ultimate growth strategy in our programs, right? What it looks like, what it means, how to do it, you know, the end result of some of this thing, when you start to look at the results, if you do something like the ultimate growth strategy, which for the audience here, if you've never heard this before, it's pretty basic but really powerful. Just imagine the top 20% of your book of business, if you had them fully rounded out, you had a retention and a contin continuation process and you were asking and earning referrals from the majority, the vast majority of your current clients that by the way, already pay you the most, right? And people hear it and go, well, that would be a pretty incredible result that we run through numbers. And they go, wow, that would change my whole life, that would change my whole business, that would change the whole trajectory of my career. Yet they don't do it. Many of them, Some do, right? Very successfully. Many of them don't or they don't take the full plunge. And part of it is, I think this comes back is because if you would say someone, are referrals really important to you? Yes. Do you, you know, are you more effective working on referrals? Do you believe that? Yes. They, they, they say it, it's lip service belief. It's pretend belief. But if you really believe, wow, I really believe that. My best business model, my best success, the best way to help clients at the highest level, best way to empower my team. The best. The best. I really believe this and why this is important. Your behaviors will align because at a heart level, you believe versus this idea of. Yeah, I like the idea of the result. And yeah, I think my boss or someone would like me to say it, but my behaviors are never indicative of what I actually need to do. There's, there's dis, there's disconnect across the board. So I, I kind of rambled there. Roger, reel me back in if that makes any sense.

No, it makes absolute sense because you're, what you're talking about, Bren, is the imposter syndrome.

There you go.

Okay. They say they want to be a great producer. They say this, they say that. And to the outside world, they're doing pretty good because it is a great business. But the reality is, deep down in their heart, when they're all alone, they're going, you know what? I'm an imposter. And we challenge them. Obviously, the name of the book, etc. The best version possible. Are you right now an imposter? As far as moving towards being the best version possible, are you absolutely. Not just motivated, but dedicated because you know what it will mean to everything that's important to you in life. Okay? Because now you're going to be getting the results. And again, there, the thing that drives me crazy, and I've been doing this for a long, long time, is that when you do the right things, the results are predictable and guaranteed. I mentioned that earlier. When you do the wrong things, those results are also predictable and guaranteed. So, so stop being an imposter and start saying, well, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, or, you know, one of my favorite sayings here in the South, I'm fixing to fixing to do this, I'm fixing to do that. Versus saying, you know, I've got to get back to the basics. I've got to master the basics. Okay? And when we can get them to do that, what we're doing, of course, is what they're doing. Is they're changing their behaviors, and when you change the behaviors, you change the results. It's that simple. It's just not easy.

Yeah. I want to make a note here. You said something earlier I was going to comment on, and obviously, this is the Agent Leader podcast. We have a lot of different audience members that listen to this, but a lot of agency leaders, right? Certainly in terms of. Of managing or leading their teams. And as you were talking about, you know, your Grande Gringo story and other things that we talk about, I heard something from John Maxwell. You know, I'm a big John Maxwell fan, but he said, great leaders see more and see before others. They see more and they see before. You know, you kind of hear that, okay, that's. That's trendy. That's cool. But you think about that as an agency leader, and that's what you did with Grande Gringo. And why I want to stop here is, you know, these things that Rod are talking about, you know, so often is it's. It's. It's. It's something that your team can do. They just don't see it yet. For whatever reason, they just don't see it yet. And you, as a leader, if you say, listen, I can see more and I can see before you, like, in essence, back to Brian the Gringo, I see a bigger, better, brighter future that you don't even see yet. Let me help you paint it right. And you start to do that. That taps into their why.

Right?

Taps into the beliefs of, wow, maybe you're right. You know, I. I shared this on another podcast. So, again, I apologize for if you've heard this before, but, you know, I've had so many impacting, impactful coaches and mentors in my career, and I had a coach that I hired. I don't know if I've shared this with you, Roger, before. I shared on the podcast, and I mean, to think about the imposter syndrome. This is right before I met you. And, you know, we were getting through our series of coaching calls. I was paying for coaching, quite frankly, at that time, I probably couldn't afford, but I wanted it. And she sent them to me. She said, listen, like, you have no ide of the brilliance inside of you. And I said, what do you mean? I'm struggling here. I'm not doing well here. This isn't happening. I'm frustrated here. I'm. You know, she's like, brent, stop for a second. Like, there's brilliance inside of you. And I say that. Not about me, about anyone. Like There is true brilliance inside of people. They just won't allow it to happen because of these, this head trash, these, these narratives they put in their mind because of what happened five years ago or three years ago or last year or quite frankly, yesterday. So again, I'm a bit on the soapbox here, but I just think it's important for leaders to understand of what an awesome opportunity, responsibility to be able to ask the right questions or be able to navigate people to go, wow, I never thought about it that way before. So, Roger, you're moving around. I don't know if this is resonating with you.

Well, it absolutely is. It's a great saying. If you think you can or if you think you can't, you're right. Okay. And that's one of the keys to all of this. And all too often, like we say things, you want to work on referrals only, isn't that the best way to work? Yes, but they immediately, in their mind, they have all the reasons why they can't. So they change up. They take a positive thought going, if I worked on referrals only, it would be better for everybody. I'd certainly make a lot more money. And as an agency owner, what if our strategy was every, every. And we've talked about this, this is going to sound very simple if you've never heard it before. This takes a tremendous amount of pigheaded discipline. Okay, but every, every is that every new client is a targeted referral that we've gone after, we've been referred to. And then because the client experience is so great, within 18 months, every new client gives us a targeted referral. Why? Because we've earned it and we have a process that drives it. So every, every, that sounds great, but all of a sudden, people start telling you all the reasons they can't do it. Well, how come you're not working on referrals only? Well, because of. How come you're not in the green zone 80% of the time as a producer? Well, because. Well, because. And then that. That great guy you talk about. Doctor. Yeah, but. Yeah, but this and. Yeah, but that. You've got to get rid of those things. You've got to as an individual. It's tough for all of us. I'll be the first one to raise my hand. You got to look in the mirror and challenge that person. You've got to look in the mirror and say, why aren't you doing this? Then more importantly, how can I do it? And one of the things that's really fun is to just to think forward. Maybe I hope everybody would do this, but think forth as a leader and let's pretend we already are at the end of a journey. So as an agency leader, I could say, well, in a year from now, I want all my producers in the green zone 80% of the time. And a year from now, I want to have executed what you talked about, the ultimate growth strategy. Round out, retain and replicate A's and B's. A year from now. Every now we've got all these things lined up and now you take yourself forward and say we're already there. Then you turn around and look back at the journey you went on. It's kind of a reverse engineering. I'm not sure what the proper term is, but all too often what we see is people that start here and look in the future, they see all the obstacles and the best people take the obstacles and turn them into strategies. Well, I couldn't do that because of this. Well, let's assume you did do it. What did you do? What did you do? I think we talked about this before. I know we certainly have in our, in our programs. But it's a concept of that's not possible unless. Because all too often people hear these things. They, they get a new belief in their head and they immediately say, well, that's not possible. Or they say that's impossible. You know how you phrase it? And the answer is, you're right, that's not possible. Unless what? And when you can start answering the unless what questions or until questions, then you start saying, well, wait a minute, I just changed my belief. I've just changed my belief. Good. So what did I do to spend. What, what did we do as an organization where our producers were in the green zone doing only four things. Sales, relationship management, continuations, and pipeline building. What did we do as an agency to get there? Other than of course joining sickets? What did we do to get there? Well, we did this. We did this, we did this, we did this. Oh, that's how we got there. And so if we can begin with the end in mind, that right away is starting to change our beliefs because we begin with the end in mind. And whether we're saying, you know, no practice quoting, no unpaid consulting, we've got earn and generate referrals, we've got to make sure that we have a high performance teams, not high maintenance teams, whatever they may be. If we sit there and say it already happened and then look back now those negative, those yeah buts start going away. And I have Better beliefs. But as you said, the leaders, the best, would see before others. But then they've got to cascade that new vision to everybody on the team and getting people to buy in. People understand why we're doing this, because of this, this, and this. Again, it takes such discipline, Brett. And that's maybe. I hope that. I hope that's maybe the biggest message here is, you know, what do you believe? Are the behaviors congruent with that and are the results what you want? And you start just saying, that's what we talk about all the time. Constantly reinforce it. It's really cool when it happens.

Yeah. And. And I'm going to reinforce one of the things you said earlier. But it just hit me again, some of these things like, you know, it's what you believe. And then I would go further and why do you actually believe it? Yeah. And I mean, I know it's part of our conversation today, but I think I've shared this with you as well at some point. But it just. There's so many things in life that I think of, examples of other areas outside of insurance that it's the same type of thing. Right. Different actions and different results we're looking for. But, you know, again, I'll just use myself on this. But remember years ago when, you know, I realized, like, I was starting to get a lot of shape, say the least, the. The belt got a little bit. It just. Whatever. And I'm like, I want to do some stuff on this. I'm like, anybody. Like, it's like, this is. Here's an example, I guess I want to share of this is that if I didn't do anything and nowhere am I near perfect on this, but if I didn't do anything, like, it's not the end of the world. Like, life isn't that bad. It's okay. I'm still better than other people. Right. All these things. And by the way, pretty good parallel that we hear a lot of producers. If I don't do anything, it's still okay. But I was starting to think about this of like, well, why do I want to do this? And the reasons why. Initially, I thought I wanted to get in better shape. Right. And all these kind of things was because that's just what I'm supposed to do. That's what someone else said, or that maybe I'll look good or whatever it was, it was superficial. And, you know, I'll never forget when I saw. And again, this isn't to be negative to this person, but I saw a gentleman about 20 years older than me, very much struggling to walk up stairs or bleachers at a basketball game. And I had these little kids, and I'm thinking, that's me. Like, that's me. And that why became why? Because I owe it to myself and my kids, right? It became bigger than me. And, and I say all this too. And I wrote this down, Roger, if this, if this something, we could start using even more on our. In our programs. But, like, I'm gonna give an example of this, and I want to get your thoughts. Like, one of the things that we try to instill to our team or to our attendees of our programs and producers is I will never lose to someone more prepared than me. That, that. Now, that would be a belief, right? My belief is I will. Now, here's the deal. If I say it, it might be true. If they say it and actually believe it, it is true. So my thing is, well, do you believe that you will never lose to someone more prepared?

Yes.

Why do you believe that? Why does that matter? And then what behaviors are mandatory to make that true? If you really believe that, what behaviors? And by the way, you tell me, what do you think, what behaviors would be absolutely necessary to align with that belief you just told me? Because let's talk about if this is really true. And by the way, how will your results look if you achieve that? How will your life be different? What will it feel like? Oh, my gosh. Right. So to me, it's just tying this all together. So again, I went on another rant. Sorry about that. But that, I mean, let's just use an example, because you wrote that down. One of the things about this idea, I will never lose to someone more prepared than me. And you've dealt with this for years. Where do you see this getting out of whack?

Well, it's, it's. This is going to sound so basic. Take professional athletes, take Broadway stars. Take movie stars, take bands, take orchestras. What do they all have in common? They practice. They practice. Okay. Golfers. Guess what? They practice. And a lot of you that are golfers take lessons. Go on. There's called the practice range. Why? So you can get better. You can get better. And it drives me crazy when I see that, that agencies and individual producers, they'll actually go out and work on an account. They do all the work on it. They get the final presentation together proposal, which I hit the.