Trap #1 – The Cost of Not Having a Clear Plan

Is your agency getting good results? Well, I've got some good news, got some bad news. Good news, you're getting good results. The bad news, these good results could very well be traps that are holding your agency back from becoming its best version possible. On the next seven episodes in a new series I'll be releasing, I'm going to talk about seven good results traps. How to see them, how to avoid them, how to escape and break free from them. Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly. I am your host. It is a pleasure to be with you on this episode and I'm super excited to kick off today a seven part series for agency leaders. If you're an agency leader and you're looking to take your game, your agency, your people to the highest level to become that best version possible, you are absolutely in the right place. You are absolutely going to love this series. A seven part series that I'm going to be kicking off today. You know, one of the things that we've learned, I learned as I go out and travel and speak and work with agencies is the fact that many agencies are getting good results. They're getting good results. In fact, when I was recently at an event, I would ask the entire group of leaders, you know, how many of you think this is a great business? They raised their hand. How many of you are getting really good results right now? They kind of look around because it's a subjective question, but they, yeah, I guess I'm getting pretty good results. And let's face it, as good as good results are, what we see and we find is that these good results are often the things that are most holding agencies back from what they really want from true freedom from that best version possible that we talk about. And so on the seven part series, I'm going to address seven specific, specific traps or gaps or blind spots, whatever term you want to use that often hold agencies back from that best version possible. In fact, I love the term blind spot because if you've driven a car and you probably have, we know what a blind spot is. It's the thing you can't see. So what I really want this podcast series to do above all is to help shed light into an area or two or more that you go, you know what, I thought we were doing pretty good here, but I realized we're nowhere close to what's possible. And by the way, caveat, no agency is perfect. Your agency isn't perfect. Right. This business is hard as much as there are good results. And we'll talk about the good results trap. We have worked with agencies like yours for 40 years as organization. We have all been part of agencies that do coaches and consulting for the Sitkins Group. So we've been there, we get it. It's not easy. We're. But from an outside perspective, when we can shed some light on some of these potential blind spots, it's going to help you gain awareness. And to me, when you have awareness in certain areas, you then can create or take the best actions. So we're going to talk about all these, all these areas over the seven weeks, one by one. Right. As we go through these. Because as I said before, running an agency is hard and obvious problems are. Get this. Obvious, obvious problems are obvious. In fact, I'll give you an analogy of this and why this series and these episodes are important. Because the things that we often work on, they're not bad things. In fact, in many cases they're important things. They're good things. But I think sometimes we miss the point of potential deeper issues or deeper things that are happening in our agency that will have a longer lasting impact. So here's my analogy to this. If in your living room there was a large hole in your wall, you would probably say, ooh, I don't like that hole in my wall. We need to fix it now, by the way. Makes sense. I wouldn't like a hole in my wall either. And you probably should fix it, right? But this is an idea of something that's very visible. It's obvious. But guess what? It doesn't actually have any structural issues. Most likely to have a hole in your wall. It just doesn't look good. It's annoying. So we jump on those kind of things first. Now, at the same time, hopefully your house doesn't. But what if you had a true crack in your foundation, something that is hard to see. In fact, maybe it's not even always visible unless you're in the right place. Or again, you've got the right light to shed on it and all of a sudden you see this crack in your foundation. And guess what? For the next several months or maybe even years, you might be okay. But at some point you it's going to cause a major problem, a major issue which will be much more time consuming, much more expensive for you and your family. Again using this analogy. So this is a bit what we're going to be doing through this series is shedding light in areas where there may be cracks in foundation that these are important issues and so often the urgent will supersede the important, right. The urgent will supersede the important because it's what we see first is what's going on. We're just reacting to stuff. So sometimes we feel like we're a bit in survival mode. So I want to give you some time to go a bit deeper. In fact, I want to take it an extra level as a gift to you, the agent, leader, podcast listener. And this is something we have not done before. So please hear me, this is a big deal. We're excited about this. We want to help be a guide for you, the independent insurance agency leader, to become your best version possible. So here's what we're going to do. If you go to sitkins.com bookacall we will conduct a personalized, individualized assessment for your agency based on key areas, then deliver to you a plan, a summary that you can use in any way that you want. That's it. So go to sitkins.com bookacall and you'll set up this call and then we'll walk you through the process. You will talk to one of our coaches or consultants and, and then at this point we will run an assessment and deliver you a plan that you can use whatever way you want to use it. But we'll give you some different options here. There is no cost to this other than time, the investment of time, which by the way, to me, this is one of the best investments of time you can possibly use. So it'll be in the show notes again. Sitkins.com bookacall bookacall alright, so let's dive in to these traps. What do they look like? What do they mean? And we're going to start with trap number one. So again, step by step, we're going to go through this trap number one. Well, what is it? Here's the trap number one. There is no clear strategic or financial plan. There is no, here's some keywords here. Clear strategic or financial plan, right? So oftentimes we confuse tactics with strategy. We confuse tactics with strategy. By the way, tactics aren't a bad thing. We need to have tactics in our agency. But so often we are so deep in the business and we're trying to survive every day that we haven't taken a step back to go, do we truly have a clear strategic and financial model? In fact, this is your agency's business model, right? This is your agency's business model and your current business model. I've said this in this podcast before, your current business model is perfectly designed for you to achieve the results you're currently getting. Now again, those results for you could be pretty good. They might be kind of good, they might be average, they might be okay, they may be bad. Right? Whatever they are, your current business model is perfectly designed for you to achieve the results you're currently getting. So part of this is taking a step back and going, is our business model leading us to the place that we ultimately want to arrive at? By the way, when you start to do a bunch of tactics and, and no strategy, or don't take the time to have strategy, what can happen is that you climb a bunch of ladders only to realize you hopped on the wrong ladder. You're climbing up, trying to do a bunch of stuff. You get to the top or somewhere near the top, you look around and go, gosh, I didn't want to be here. Right? So we often see this with agencies that look back, go, I've been running so hard for three years, five years, seven years, 10 years, 15 years, that now I'm kind of here. And I don't know if this is where we want to be. Right? So taking some time to work on the business is important. The late, great Jim Rohn, I love this phrase. He's famously said this that if you don't plan your life, and I will add business, if you don't plan your life, there's a good chance that someone else will. And guess what they have planned for you. Not much. So get control back by having a business model. You know, one of the most powerful questions that I ask agency leaders is this. In fact, if we were talking one on one, I have a good idea that you can give me a number of answers when I ask you this question. You ready? Here's the question. What's frustrating you today? What are some of the frustrations you're dealing with? And I can tell you in working with agencies and asking this question, you'll hear a bunch of things. Well, this is frustrating. My people are frustrating me. Our systems are frustrating me. Our use of technology is frustrating me. Our lack of growth is frustrating. Not be able to replicate or repeat processes. Whatever. It is a lot of different frustrations that we, that we get. And it's normal because we've got these things in our head. However, when I ask agency leaders, please tell me.