Mastering the Champion's Mindset with Dr. Rick Jensen

00:00 - Brent Kelly

So what can a sports psychologist and performance coach, who's worked with 33 golf major championship winners, as well as winners of all four Grand Slam championships in tennis and works with high-level financial advisors, teach your agency about growth and leadership and results? A lot. On today's Agent Leader podcast, I have the distinct pleasure of interviewing Dr. Rick Jensen. He's an author, he's a speaker, as I mentioned, a performance coach and he's going to share the mindset and the behaviors of champions. Can't wait to share this episode. Enjoy. Welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. This is the podcast for insurance agency leaders to learn, to grow, to develop and ultimately become a best version possible leader who leads best version possible insurance agencies. My name is Brent Kelly. I'm your host. It is a pleasure to be with you and I am truly honored.

 

00:57

Today we have a very special guest and we were talking a little bit before we officially hit record that he's going to have a very unique viewpoint, which I am so excited to have on the Agent Leader podcast and there's been solo episodes and agent leaders and we love those. But today I have a doctor the doctor’s in the house, although I may call him by more less formal names throughout the interview but Dr. Rick Jensen. He's a sports psychologist, he's a performance coach, he's a speaker, he's an author of two books Drive to the Top and Easier Said Than Done. He works with financial advisors, he works with golf pros. He's also been part of some of our events in the past and I will tell you right now no pressure here, Dr. Rick, but no pressure here. But he's going to bring a ton of different ideas and, I think, a unique way of thinking about things for the Agent Leader Podcast. So with that, welcome Dr. Rick Jensen to the Agent Leader Podcast.

 

01:58 - Dr. Rick Jensen

Thanks, Brent, it's great to be with you, as always.

 

02:05 - Brent Kelly

Wonderful. Well, I want to start off and we'll leave this wide open. I want to get the audience to know you. I mentioned some of the things that you are and that you do, but I'd love for you to share a little your background, some of your experience, and obviously you've got a couple of different, unique demographics of who you work with. You've got golf pros, you have financial advisors, which, of course, is very similar to our audience in the insurance industry and, if you want, maybe even talk about some of the higher level accomplishments that some of your clients have had, without any major name dropping. That's up to you. So please, share a little background.

 

02:37 - Dr. Rick Jensen

Well, I'm a licensed psychologist, so I can say to the audience that Brent brought a shrink on to work with you for 30 minutes, so we'll see where that goes.

 

02:47

And for me, I specialized in what I refer to as performance psychology, different than others that might look at clinical or counseling psychology, where people are working with ill populations who are struggling and they're needing counseling or therapy.

 

03:02

For me I work with high achievers and I've kind of over time, specialized in the world of business and in the world of sport, and then even more, I'd say, in the last couple of decades, within sport, focused on professional golf and tennis, and then within business, focused in the financial services arena in that area. So my clientele for the last 20, 30 years has been either PGA and LPGA touring pros on the professional golf tours, and then I work with the WTA and the ATP tennis stores as well. And then in business it's financial service firms from all the wire house basically Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Wells Fargo, and then some of the independent providers banks, credit unions as well and, as you said, the financial services world. As I've spoken with you and Roger over the years, very, very parallel processes going on between what you see in the insurance agency business and in the financial services business as well.

 

04:03 - Brent Kelly

Yeah, and it'll be so interesting in this conversation and I said, a unique perspective of just really understanding the mindset and the beliefs and how that contributes to behavior. So excited to dive down there because you've got such a unique experience and viewpoint in that. But I mentioned this to you before we officially started recording that you know this audience. We've got a lot of golfers. I know you mentioned both golf and tennis, but maybe if you would, without you don't have to name drop but just maybe share a little bit about the level whether it's major championships or success of people you work with, because I want people to really understand that you're someone that you've worked with some pretty high level people, to say the least.

 

04:44 - Dr. Rick Jensen

Yeah, I have. I think that's because I'm old. When you've done it as long as I have, you end up work. You better have worked with people because you've been in the game for a long time. So, yeah, and I think my license kind of keeps me from disclosing clients names. But yeah, the clients I've worked with in golf have won 33 major championships over the years. I've worked with winners of all four Grand Slams in tennis. So in golf, but again, when you're in it as long as I have, if you haven't done that, you're not really working with the group. So I always say it's not so much tied to just I'm in those environments. And once you're in those environments you work with enough men and women who have succeeded at a level that you get a lot of credit for things that may. Yeah, I would argue that they're. They're at that level because of a lot of things they're doing and I'm a small part of that.

 

05:40 - Brent Kelly

Yeah, but only 33 major championships in the Grand Slam winner. So you know, but you've just been doing it for a while now. There's great credibility and you and I were discussing.

 

05:48 - Dr. Rick Jensen

I think that the applicable part of that is what are those people doing differently than? Like I've always said, where I yeah, in golf, I work with people who won 33 majors, I've worked with way more people who have lost 33 majors. Like, the number of people that I work with that have not won majors are 10 times that, and so that's why we say the difference maker isn't necessarily me, it's them. And what are the people who are winning majors doing differently than those who are not? That's the part that gets me up every morning. That's the fascinating part. I think that would apply to this conversation.

 

06:24 - Brent Kelly

Yeah, it's a very unique perspective and being able to see that from that viewpoint is incredible. Well, yeah, I mentioned the sports, but obviously there's the financial side and you mentioned some large companies and the amount of people you've worked with. Obviously, in my world, in our world, this podcast typically independent insurance agency leaders, owners, professionals of all kinds Obviously there's a similarity with financial advisors and I love to get your perspective on this and, again, you can take this wherever you want. But what do you see in working with the business professionals as a number one challenge or maybe a couple of the key challenges that they face and from what you see and we know there's more than one, but the ones that really jumped to the top of the page and what have you done, or what do they do to help overcome maybe the top challenge or two that they typically face?

 

07:17 - Dr. Rick Jensen

I think it's an interesting time to ask that question because I think when I got into the business I would have answered very differently than now. Because now I have the perspective of how the industry has changed and I'm curious your point of view too, Brent, in terms of how this applies to the independent agent is. What I see very much today is the game is changing rapidly from one in which advisors, certainly in the financial services space, used to be more transactional it was a game of kind of they were brokers and they were selling financial products and now they've moved towards what they'll refer to as a transition to advisory where they're getting paid for their advice. Even their comp plans have changed in a way that they get paid because of that. But probably the most significant challenge they deal with is you have certainly those who have been in the business for a while. They used to make commissions and production off of activity, so it was very activity based make dials, get in front of people, sell them something, sell them an idea, sell them a product and they would drive things off of just commission. Today that market the level of their advice, the differentiated advice, the specialized advice that they provide, and they're moving more that way.

 

08:37

For me it's very comfortable in that way because I have been paid for my entire career. I'm paid for advice. I don't sell golf balls, I don't sell tennis rackets. I don't sell golf balls. I don't sell tennis rackets. I don't sell financial products. So all the people that I coach and consult with are paying me for the level of my advice. So for me it's very comfortable to be there.

 

08:56

For many advisors they haven't been there for years. They're having to make that transition and that's again part of the. I think technology has done quite a bit of that in terms of the access that the client has to information, to products, the access that their competition have to the same. The product side, the asset management side, has become a commodity. People can get it. And then I think with the advent of AI as we move forward, it's going to be even more so where people are going to have access to information.

 

09:27

So the real issue is how does the advisor differentiate him or herself from others that way? If there were a secondary area, it's that I really specialize in business growth Like how do they attract more clients? And they struggle with that as well, certainly as they become more experienced those early on, when they first start. They again play in traffic. That's the language they use, like get out of the office, be with people with money, talk with them about opportunities and they can land business.

 

09:58

But as they build their businesses, they now have to service that book of business that they have and they're not playing in traffic as much now. So I have to help them, kind of like okay, once you're a mature business or agency, how do you grow at that point? How, what kind of brand have you established? How have you developed advocacy networks so you're generating referrals off of other people who are out selling your value proposition, so that you don't have to be out there all the time? And those are probably the two major areas I spend time with advisors on.

 

10:31 - Brent Kelly

Yeah, there's definitely parallels. You know you asked my thought on this. I mean, I agree, and you know part of this is, you know, technology, as you mentioned AI. I mean it's going to continue to rapidly accelerate. We all know that, and I know this sounds simplistic, but I mean the question I always will ask professionals and leaders in the industry is that what are, what are some things that humans can do that technology never can? And because you know, that question becomes harder because technology can do more and more, but you've got to continue to up level your I'm putting quotes here, by the way “humanness.”

 

11:07

But when you think about not only the risk advice, the benefits analysis at a deeper level, but being forward thinking, to be able to be collaborative, to be able to truly understand that relationships are more than just a transactional phone call, but really understanding, connecting emotionally with people, and there's realness to that.

 

11:21

So I think it's just to me the continually the challenge of well, how do I you know, I used to be able to just to sell insurance policies very transactionally. Well, anybody can do that. In fact, technology can do that way faster and, quite frankly, better in many cases. So the challenge in the insurance industry, of course, is that certainly from the P&C side, for example, is you know you get paid by that actual transfer of business, but it's the risk advice and the analysis and the research that's behind that. What you're actually getting paid for the other part is just one day a year. So that, to me, is one of the challenges that I see people have and it sounds like very similar in the financial services business is how do we up that game?

 

12:05 - Dr. Rick Jensen

And, as you said, it's becoming more of a relationship game. Where before it was a transaction game, it's now. What does it take to build a trusted relationship with somebody to where you're their first call when they do have a concern or an issue that they just know? Oh, I should call Brent, of course, and so they're really calling you for your experience, your knowledge, your history and your resources outside of the, hey, this policy discussion, and I have a question about it. It's more. Here's my business situation I'm trying to solve. For these issues. You seem like the right person I'd want to talk with, and that comes through a relationship that I would have with you over years.

 

12:48 - Brent Kelly

And the other part too. I want to get your thoughts on this, and again in any perspective. But you're talking to some very successful people I know you do all the time, and one of the things they talk about, especially from a business insurance side but it's this idea of, well, yeah, I technically do the insurance stuff. The bigger question I ask myself is how can I help this business move forward, like, how can I help you advance your business in some way or another? Now, there's some tools and levers that we're gonna have to do that, but ultimately, that's what they're thinking and they operate.

 

13:19

Much more and you talked about you know I've always gotten paid for advice. That's where I'm at as well, about you know I've always gotten paid for advice. That's where I'm at as well is that you have to think and consider yourself a consultant, and what do great consultants do? Well, they ask really good questions, they're really prepared, they find ways and nuance in your business that no one else is talking about, and you know I'm just from your perspective. Those are some things that you're seeing as well as, and maybe my question here isn't you know, wherever you want to go with this is how are you seeing professionals differentiate in this relationship economy outside of the transactional economy Well one.

 

13:54 - Dr. Rick Jensen

They're becoming more specialized in terms of they almost serve niches today, as opposed to when it was a game of just hey, every transaction is a dollar. It didn't matter what niche I was in, because everything was an opportunity to sell something when, when it becomes a place of advice, I've always said for myself as a psychologist, I don't market myself as a general psychologist, I don't market myself as just a licensed psychologist, because that has so many meanings to so many different people and there's so many markets that psychologists can serve. So for me, I'm a performance psychologist, particularly in pro golf and tennis, and then I do financial services work, which they call practice management or business development. In that space I narrow my markets because it elevates my ability to provide more specialized advice, and so as I become more specialized, I can charge more as I become more specialized. A pro golfer on tour is not going to. If they start struggling with their game or they choke at Augusta National and they're not playing well, they don't run down to their local mental health center and look for a licensed mental health professional to help them with their golf game. I would hope that my name would come up in a conversation among their coach, among their caddy, among other players. Certainly my name's going to come up before someone that's just listed in psychology today, and that's what I see is going on. More, when you're paid for advice, you have to start to ask yourself how would I differentiate? And so sometimes that's through target markets, other times that's just, from frankly, the value of your advice.

 

15:29

I've always said, as I've had more experience, people aren't coming just for me, they're coming for my network, because I work with golf coaches, I work with caddies, I work with club fitters, I work with physios, I work with biomechanics, outfitters, and now I'm kind of a portal by which elite athletes can access all these other resources and they don't even have to work in my firm. All these people I'm describing have their own businesses, but I have a vast network of people that I kind of convey to my clients. Let me be your first call. I'll quarterback this. You don't need to go any further than me, and I would imagine agencies are in the same place, right, or they don't have to house all these other networks, but they certainly want to have those networks available to again, the business owner who might be, you know, the higher net worth individual who might need some risk protection.

 

16:21 - Brent Kelly

Yeah, such a great point and I was just thinking obviously in your model is true, it's like if it was just I'm Dr. Rick, the performance coach, to what, to who? Right, it's like I don't know. But when you get very specific and nuanced, like you said, and certainly this translates obviously to the professional side of things I made a note here it's like when you're the central part of a unique and distinct community, you have leverage and that's a big thing that you know, I know you've created and that you see in working with athletes and professionals, and certainly that I see as well. And so for the audience here it just comes back to that and I know we say this all the time, but specialists make more money than generalists. Why? Just because. Because they can do things and they have certain value that generalists can't provide, because they know more about their target audience than most people, and I think that's a really powerful phrase that you just said there.

 

17:16

All right, I want to get into because of your background, obviously in psychology and working with. This is in working, you know, certainly again with a few different key areas that we've talked about in your books drive to the top. You know you talk about key behaviors of some of the top performers, and I don't care whether this is sports or business. One of the things that, just to give you some context, we talk all the time, rick about is beliefs, behaviors, results. You know people want the results, but what are the behaviors and what do they believe about those behaviors? And really getting into the mind and, of course, the actions, so you can take this wherever you want, but I just when you think about just performance, because this is the world you live in right. Performance. What are the success clues that you've learned from the greatest performers? Either how they think or what they do?

 

18:06 - Dr. Rick Jensen

Yeah, Well, the thing that comes to mind initially is what I would say is that the foundation of that belief, whether it's the belief system in psychology we refer to it as achievement motivation it's their motive to achieve. And I don't, you know, there's still. You know, is that something that you're born with? Is that something that you is, kind of nature versus nurture? You know, did you learn that because you were around other high achievers and they imparted that on you? Was it your family? And how your parents rate? There's debate about that. There's still research, to kind of say, and the research always comes down to it's a little mix of all of that. But clearly, once you start working with elite performers, you see really quickly that certain people are just wired to achieve, they are looking to achieve mastery of their craft. So when you get around Serena Williams in tennis or you know, I've been lucky, I've been around Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus,Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Djokovic, Nadal, these guys they're wired differently. So at a core, they are trying to master a craft. They're not necessarily doing it for money at all, they're not doing it for the physical trophy, they're trying to see how good they can get and they're trying to be at the top of their trade, and that's what. And in business, no different. In business, you know, I see with financial advisors they just want to be the go-to advisor for business owners in their community, master. And if doing that means I have to learn more about business succession or lending or risk management or financing or, you know, valuation, they're going to go learn all that because they feel they need to learn all that to become the top of the pack that way. So I always say that's the fuel that drives them. Then, as you said, the behaviors are kind of like what do I need to fulfill that, that achievement, that mastery? And then the behaviors become things like, just simply like the will to work. There they'll put in more hours than will other people initially. What I see is they certainly are willing to work, but then over the years they learn what we call in sports science deliberate practice, which is the efficiency of the work.

 

20:42

My role with athletes and business owners is oftentimes create increasing productivity. It comes from the science of deliberate practice. Meaning if Tiger Woods is practicing for an hour on a range, does he get an hour of production out of that practice? Yeah, if they're working on their craft for a month. Do they get a month of production out of that work? There's many athletes that put in the work but they don't necessarily so they might stand right next to another athlete working just as long, but when you actually see the productivity that comes out of that work elite performers, the deliberateness of the work is so, so much better. They just aren't wasting time on what I call necessary non-essentials, so they're spending time on the parts of the game that are most important.

 

21:32

I remember Greg Norman. I was on the range with Greg Norman. He was number one in the mid 90s, early 90s to the mid 90s, and I was on the range with him in 1995. And we were talking about his practice and I asked him just the simple question like how do you allocate your day? He would practice from sunup to sundown like every day just a workaholic in terms of golf. And I said well, how do you actually distribute that practice? How do you know what to work on? In his words, where he says I work on the parts of my game that cost me the most shots in competition. And I thought it was just, it was an athlete's way of it's what their science of deliberate practice basically says is having an understanding of what are the parts of the game that actually cost the most results.

 

22:18

If you were to either master them or not that way and I find that true with financial advisors, and I'm sure you see that with agents as well they have this keen ability to go. You know, with financial advisors it's really about I need to spend time in front of people with money. I need to be coaching and consulting them and solving problems with them. I don't need to be sitting at my computer screen managing assets or allocating funds or doing a trade or onboarding a client. They hire and delegate all those other necessary non-essentials to other people, because what's important for advisors is to be consulting with people with money. I've always said with golfers it's they spend their day hitting a ball with a stick at a hole. Um, that's how they spend their time. And then the issue is what kind of drills do we do while we're doing that? But they're not spending time booking their hotel rooms, filling their planes with gas. You know, cleaning their golf clubs. They're just not doing that. Other people are.

 

23:18 - Brent Kelly

Wow, there's a lot of nuggets into that. So, thank you, and I just it hit me thinking from an agency leader and a professional standpoint. I'm just sitting here and hopefully if you're listening, you wrote this down, I did. It's like thinking about if you're an insurance producer, an agency leader, to say what are the parts of my game that are costing me the most money, and then you add the deliberate practice and I just very quick, as funny as you said, that it takes me back.

 

23:45

I had my first real memory of this. I don't know if I was a sophomore or junior in high school, but I was at a basketball camp and we had, you know, practice and games and stuff all day long. It's pretty busy, it's a summer, it's all you're doing. And then we went and had dinner and our coach you had individual coaches of the group said hey, before you head back for the night to your dorms to get some sleep, because I want you to put up another hundred shots. The shooting came and so I'm out in the court and I'm just basically I'm thinking how fast can I get 100 shots done so I can get out of here? Right, and this is typical 15, 16 year old thinking, and I remember the coach came over and he kind of put his arm and said hey, how's it going, brother? I go. That's pretty good, coach, he goes. How many shots you got up? I go. I'm probably about 50 already. He goes. Oh, that's great, he goes. Are these deliberate, like game shots, or are these just going through the motion shots and I just stopped and I'm like, okay, I'll start over, you know, cause I knew where it was going.

 

24:48 - Brent Kelly

But it's so true. And again, I just take a second here because I just think from my audience listening to this there's such great, just great, such thoughts and great thoughts into that of am I deliberately practicing the things that are costing me or could cost me money? And if I'm not, what am I doing? So really, really good stuff. You, I do have a thought question from a leadership, and I don't know if there's an answer to this or not, but I know, as you were saying, things like some people are just wired for it. How can, well, first of all, can a leader, and, if they can, how can a leader best tap into someone's achievement mindset? I mean, I know some people are wired differently, but like trying to get into, like the heads of people to say, ok, there's more in there, is there anything you've seen or you've noticed, or you people you work with, trying to really tap into what gets them to go?

 

26:24 - Dr. Rick Jensen

Well, it really again that question about, certainly by the time, leaders who are on this call hire others. I've always said a lot of times I can't tell you how many times management and financial service firms want me to like infuse motivation into their producers or infuse motivation into their staff, and I say to them and what you learn as a psychologist is you don't really infuse someone with motivation. Motivation is not something you do upon someone else, it's something, something someone owns. So it's my own motives. Like I have motives for some people. My motive might be to achieve, to master, to be the best of the business. Others might be to spend time with their wife and children. Others might be to go fishing. Others might be to put a you know some paint on their face and go to the football game. People have their motives, and why they get up and do things every day is very different from one person to the next. So, from a leader point of view, I many times point out to leaders it's so, so important to hire the right people, to source people, for whether they have achievement motivation in a particular industry is of utmost importance, and we see that. Think of the money that NFL and NBA and professional sports leagues pay for recruiting and scouting, and what they're scouting for is not just can you run fast, can you jump high, can you throw a ball. They're looking for achievement motivation while they're doing that, because they want to know when you leave college and come into the NFL, are you willing to get to the top of that pile, because that's another level of success, or are you going to be comfortable that you just signed a $50 million contract and now you're good to go? So if your need was just money and now you were looking for compensation, many times those athletes burn out because they're not wired for success in terms of their craft. But they got the check they were looking to get and that's, I think, in the business world. We're dealing with that oftentimes.

 

28:24

I've always said the real issue there is, on the front end, hiring the right people. And if you hire somebody with that, then you can train them in a lot of the X's and O's. And the real way to hire is look for their history. If you can study their history of passing, anyone that can kind of go hey, they started somewhere, they were new. Hey, just look at in high school. They went from junior high to high school, went to a new high school, they didn't have a spot on the baseball team and all of a sudden they were starting shortstop within the first year. Well, how'd that happen? You know somebody who became student government. It's why you see colleges look for leadership qualities. They're looking for somebody who kind of took a lead in an opportunity and actually kind of got to the top. It's why college sources they're sourcing for actual leadership qualities, because it's an indicator that somebody went from zero to not from nothing to the top over a period of time by engaging in certain behaviors no-transcript, and of course they get in and they go.

 

30:04 - Brent Kelly

The test was right. Do you have an opinion one way or another? I know there's so many different, so I don't want to get into specifics. But just in general, are you a believer in those kind of things for sourcing and when you're hiring people, or does it depend?

 

30:17 - Dr. Rick Jensen

We're highly trained in testing as psychologists, so I think you know. But that also makes you skeptical about their application in other environments. Really, what's unfortunate in the business community is there's a number of tests that were created for other environments. They might have been created for a clinical environment where you might test somebody's personality to determine kind of how they might communicate or interact. Well, those testing agencies need to make money so they frankly go and find other target markets. So where a test might have been developed initially for research purposes or clinical purposes, they find out, wow, the business community is actually a much, much larger environment and they spend money on these things.

 

30:59

So you'll see the DIS profile, the MBP I mean the Myers-Briggs profile, all different versions of that frankly not applied. The way they should be applied is my experience there. So, yeah, I always say you need the test to tease exactly what it is you're looking for. And if you're looking for achievement motivation, you need to test for achieve for that. You're not going to get that from a Myers-Briggs in the hope that you could, because the Myers-Briggs isn't designed to test for that? Um, yeah, and that's why, as you watch, like sports leagues, they'll use some of that.

 

31:35

Their HR departments will tease out some of that, but they spend most their money looking at history. They're watching the guys play in college. They're interviewing their college teammates. They're interviewing their college coaches, their assistant coaches, the quarterback. They're talking to people who saw that person working in the environment. To me, it's the biggest flaw in business is we don't do that well in business, we ask someone to. It'd be like someone in the NFL going send me your resume and then on the resume I write that I run fast, I jump high, I catch balls and I have friends that will tell you I do that too. I mean, it's a little silly how we hire people in business for very important positions yet we have no experience with you or insight into their actual work behaviors prior to them coming.

 

32:26 - Brent Kelly

Absolutely true. That's so true. I'm just nodding here, going, wow, yeah, you get me thinking differently. So I want to move to another subject, so to speak, and I know obviously you've known Roger Sitkins, our CEO, for a long period of time. You guys chat. We were mentioning before that you've been a part of a couple of our events that we had I think one I was there and one that I wasn't there but one of the concepts I know we like to talk about this with clients, so we borrowed it from you I'm sure Roger's told you this many times but this idea of outcome stats and performance stats and of course, you've got a story from a golf perspective on this. But if you could and again I'll leave this wide open where did that come from? What have you learned? And maybe how would you see this concept applied to insurance agencies and, of course, it's true for your advisors you work with as well.

 

33:15 - Dr. Rick Jensen

It applies to any performance arena. It's just simple cause and effect analysis. It actually stems back there in my business training. Early on I was trained in what was called TQM or total quality management, and it was really embedded in the ability to do an effective cause and effect analysis. In other words, once you determine what your outcome is, or the effect, what are the main causes of that effect. And you could apply that to.

 

33:43

So in sport it's as simple as if you looked at professional golf or tennis, what really drives that outcome? And so I write about that in my first book, Drive to the Top. It's really about doing effective cause and effect analysis and then realizing that top performers manage the drivers of the outcomes or the performance. So in stats it's the performance, stats are the drivers and the outcome stats are like you might look at how many wins are your score. So in pro golf for years I've measured whether you know how many wins someone has how many majors, but you know if that doesn't tell you anything about what they need to do to alter that if they're not winning enough, and so you can then break that down to the next level and look at their scoring average. So you'll see on tour people who are major champions. Their scoring average is around 68, 68 and a half. But then you have guys on tour that their scoring average is 69 and a half 70. So there's a shot, shot and a half difference. That is quite a you know will be millions of dollars on the tour. That separates these players.

 

34:44

My job is then going okay. If there's a shot shot and a half, what causes that? What are the determinants of that? And even that changes over time, like golf years ago, anyone on this call will have heard the phrase you know you drive for show, you putt for dough. That's a common phrase among golfers. It's not even true today. It's not even true today. If I took the top three putters in the world, they're not inside like the top 40 players on tour. Putting does not correlate with success on tour. Ball striking does.

 

35:18

The best players in the world are basically Scotty Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, think of Victor. These are guys that are the best ball strikers on tour, from tee to green. It doesn't mean they can three putt every green, but what's very clear on like the PGA Tour today is putting has become more of a commodity. Everyone putts well and so the difference between the best putter and the worst putter isn't the difference maker on tour, it's their ball strike.

 

35:49

So how does that get into behaviors? I'm going to make sure when I'm doing a time allocation of where do you spend your time working on your game. I'm going to make sure that's what we're working on. Those are the skill sets. And then it's what drives ball striking and you get into equipment, practice, technique, coaching and it works. That's basically a cause and effect analysis and you, you guys, do that great. You do that better than anyone I know in the agency business. I hope I do that well with financial, with financial advisors, same thing. They're trying to generate overall revenue or production through assets under management. But then you can break that down in terms of average size of a client Again, the number of referrals, net new assets, business growth, retention. There's a lot of factors in there that you measure to determine where do you have gaps in your game.

 

36:41

The key that gets challenging in business and it was in golf early on for me was what I call benchmarking.

 

36:48

If I do all the measurement within my firm or within my sport, I still have to know what do the best of the best do. That's what separated my business, I think, from others was I had caddies early on, tracking data of all the best players, and then I had benchmarks of what the best player so I could say to a player here's how many putts you make in greens in regulation, here's how many fairways you hit in regulation, here's how far you hit the ball and here's what the top 10 are doing, and I could show them a gap analysis between what are the best of the best do and where they stand. That's what you bring to the table with Sitkins, right, you're able to bring to the table. We know what the best of the best do and we can do a gap analysis against your agency. I do the same thing with financial service firms. Just because I've worked with them so many years, I basically know what Barron's top 100 teams do versus those who are aspiring to be there.

 

37:47 - Brent Kelly

Yeah, absolutely, and I love the whole concept you bring, because, again, I love the sports analogy. Oh, that makes sense to me, but we talk about that too. I mean it's lagging leading indicators, whatever term, but it's this idea. Like we have agencies that are like, well, we're going to improve our retention, we're going to improve revenue. It's currently this, it's going to be this. And to your point it's like, okay, well, how are you going to do that? Well, we're going to sell more insurance, we're going to retain more accounts, right, and you know we talk about this.

 

38:17

Roger talks about this all the time. You can't manage numbers. You need to know your numbers. But you manage your behaviors and kind of going back to that earlier. And you know, in our world and for the audience listening just one example of this for producers you know there's a lot of things you could look at. A lot of people go. You know what's the size of your book and all those things. Those are important. But you start to think about wait, how many quality or quantity of at-bats are you getting? What does your conversion rate look like? I mean, how many first appointments are you communicating well that go to second appointments? What's your closing ratio and what's your average revenue per account. Those are just a few of those, but you start looking at it and going, oh gosh, I'm good at these three, but really struggling here, that's the area you've got to practice, the deliberate practice. Going back to what you said earlier, because there's a gap, there's a gap in your performance. We can fill that. Guess what? Everything improves so, what have you seen?

 

39:09 - Dr. Rick Jensen

I'm curious, when we were talking about the trend in golf I mentioned kind of over time it's become more about their ball striking, so I pay more attention there. In the agency world, what is the high priority performance measures today? What are the behaviors that are higher correlates than others? Because they're not all equal, right, not everything's equal. So in your world, what do you see as like? These are the ones that are higher correlates of outcomes than others.

 

39:38 - Brent Kelly

What would you say it is yeah. Well, one of them I mentioned I mean one that really jumps out is we can determine very quickly the size of a producer or an agency's book of business based on one important metric uh, the revenue per account, revenue per relationship, and yeah. But if you really look at it, part of that goes because there's underlying factors, right, do you have a minimum account size or standard? Do you have a niche focus that you can help with? That there's, there's a lot of things that go into that. Are you replicating by asking for referrals for your best accounts, or are you just generically asking for any account? Well, that's what starts to lower or raise that particular number and it makes a big difference.

 

40:17

There's a number of them, but that one really, as you said, that one jumps out and it's just amazing how some people don't think about it. And as simple as it is, and we joke about this, and not everyone necessarily wants to be a million dollar producer, but our joke is it's really hard to be a million dollar producer writing $1,000 accounts because you've got to have 1,000 of them, and people are like, oh, you're right. And so to me it's raising that level, which guess what else? To raise your revenue per relationship, you've got to raise your level of skill and your business acumen. So all these kind of correlate together. So to me that's a big one, and the other one's really simple.

 

40:53

I already mentioned this one too how many appointments are you having? You know, are you in the game or not in the game? And so there's a metric that's kind of hard to it, can be a little bit hard to measure specifically, but TSS time spent selling, how much time per week are you actually in the game? And this is a silly analogy, but I shared in fact, I just shared it last week is if you took Michael Jordan, my opinion the best basketball player I've ever played and instead of playing 48 minutes, he played 20 minutes. He's not going to score as many points, no matter how good he is, and so you just take basic things like this. So then it comes back okay, well, how do I get on the floor more? And so I'm, I'm going off on a side ramp, but hopefully that helped answer.

 

41:39 - Dr. Rick Jensen

No, I don't even think the side ramp though it's exactly, yeah, as you're saying.

 

41:42

I'm thinking that's exactly like I just say to advisors that I coach. I'm like, let me see your, just show me your calendar for the next three weeks and I can just see how many pre-scheduled appointments there are with people with money, and so if it's not populated with people with money in advance of meeting, they don't really have a structure in which those things should be scheduled out in advance and you can tell that right away. You see, you just see producers with hey, you look three weeks out and you can kind of look in an average week and you're going okay, you've got four or five appointments a day in front of people with money and you've got that for an extended period of time. And then you have a system to keep replenishing that and others don't they randomly have to run into. You know they're bumping into money just as they're kind of at their kid's soccer game or they're, you know they're out in the community, so they land money, but they certainly don't land it in a systemic, predictable way is what I see there.

 

42:39 - Brent Kelly

It's even going back to the very beginning. I mean, this is intentional focus of I'll just use my example, but to be a successful producer and this is really for any time it may change how many clients you have and all this, but I've got to have my calendar scheduled in a certain way so that everything is intentional. We talk about getting producers in the green zone, but you've got to have the week before it begins, versus a lot of people just show up and hope things I hope I bump into someone, I hope this happens versus this mentality of I've got to continue to create opportunities and, like you said, two, three weeks and then months in advance sometimes. And if I can do that, shockingly, all of a sudden my book of business grows. And yeah, so it's a great question. All right, Dr. Rick, I have one official final question than anything. Maybe if I didn't ask you I should have, or anything you want to add to this conversation. First of all, thank you. This has been. This is. I know it'd be fun. Thank you, this was a lot of fun.

 

43:36

My favorite question to ask for anybody is if you had to go back I'll phrase it this way If later today you go outside and randomly you come face to face with the younger Dr. Rick Jensen. Maybe he wasn't doctor yet, Rick Jensen, you're just starting your professional career and this younger version of you looks up at the current version of you or looks at you and says, okay, I got 30 seconds here. If you could give me one piece of advice that you'd share with me now, it's going to help me do things better, faster, whatever. What would it be?

 

44:12 - Dr. Rick Jensen

That's a great question. It would probably be. Yeah, what's coming out for me is like start sooner. I wish I would have it's kind of if I had a do-over. I wish I would have known earlier what I know now, and so it would be more like what would I have had to do earlier to know what I know now? I was still young and learning, so it would have been. I wish I was around better mentors. I wish I would have had the money to hire a coach before I did, or certainly be around people who could have provided that for me. I think like and maybe that's when I'm saying that I'm thinking is that a little self-serving for you and I? We provide coaching for a living, you know. So I think we're biased in terms of our value of that, but I think for me personally, it took me a while to figure out, to specialize. It took me a while to learn how to get in front of the better client, like now I'm in front of tour pros. I wish I would have done that seven, eight years earlier than I did. I figured out. I love working with financial service.

 

45:18

I was struggling with a lot of different businesses. I was kind of all over the place because I need to make money. I was trying to pay bills, I was trying to survive, so I was grabbing any revenue anywhere I could and I did that longer than I should have. If I had to do it again, I would have accelerated that process and gotten to a more specialized place in my business way earlier. And it was because I didn't know better. I was learning through trial and error and I was learning at my own pace in terms of reading things in, in kind of examining the world, and I kind of learned it. I feel good about that. But yeah, if I, if I had to coach myself, I would say go, get in front of somebody who knows how to do that earlier. So because if I would have started five years earlier, it would have extended everything forward. I'd be making the revenue that I'm making now five years ago and that would be would have been very helpful.

 

46:17 - Brent Kelly

That's. I always tell people there's no wrong answer to that question, it's your answer. And there's some people like, oh, I wish I would have thought of that differently. But I love that because it reminds me you know again the people that I work with, probably similar are the people you work with. Oftentimes maybe they don't say it, but I kind of hear and feel like when I get to this or when I meet this person, or when I have this, then it's all this like when I, it's like eventually then I'll do it. And from hearing your eyes like just start, just Nike, just do it versus waiting for this. Well, eventually I'll be ready, we'll just go. I don't know.

 

46:59 - Dr. Rick Jensen

That's what I remember, you'll know you might know the name I'm going to age myself here but Ivan Lendl. I think I've shown clips of things I've done with Ivan. Ivan was the most dominant tennis player like mid 80s and then Pete Sampras came along and beat Ivan’s records and all that, and then it's better and you kind of moved to Djokovic today. But when Ivan was dominating the game I can remember I had conversations with him and I used to just anytime someone's like at that level of the game, I always ask like why do you think what separates you from everyone else? Like what do you think it was?

 

47:36

And he would always talk about his willingness to do things that others would not do. And he used to say he would be like if I found a weakness in my game, I would work with my coach, we'd have a plan to do it. He goes, and then we'd have to, like we'd start. So he'd talk about hey, my backhand passing shot wasn't good. So we do all these drills to work on my passing shot. He goes, well, then I'd have to. I'd work on it in practice, but then I have to do it in a game that I have to do in a game under pressure, then I'd have to. That's not a short term thing. He goes, that he goes. For me that would take somewhere between 18 and 24 months before I would actually master one skill. I think what was different between me and others is I would take the 18 to 24 months to work on one thing he goes and other people would work on 18 things for one month and then they'd go to the next thing he goes and I'd watch guys do it. They couldn't stay. They thought like if it wasn't working within a month, it must not be the right thing and they'd fire their coach. They'd move to another drill. They change rackets, he says they just didn't have. I call it Stick-to-it-ness that way, and I found that incredible because I find that true.

 

48:59

I don't think much of performance. Is there some really important things that we have to do very, very well? We don't have to do 100 things well. There's five, six things we have to do really, really well. The issue is, to do them well takes a lot of time and a lot of deliberateness, and I think that's something all of us can learn from is do we know what those things are, build them into our business plans and then spend the next year to getting good at them. We don't need to just spend the next, Ivan would say. You know, again, he thought he would beat the other guys because they never really learned the skill to begin with, because they were too busy jumping from thing to thing.

 

49:39 - Brent Kelly

Such value there and all I could think of I shared in this podcast. We always tell agencies you got to quit the gimmick of the month club and you know, because part of that is what happens is and I don't mean we could probably go another hour on this, but this in today's world back to technology and all the different voices and things and resources it is hard to stay focused in discipline. Uh, because when you start to do real work and real practice, they're tough days. I mean there there's challenges with and you've got to be disciplined, which isn't easy. But I love that. Just do that one thing really, really well and it's a long-term approach. Last thing I have on here is certainly for the audience. How can people reach you, get a hold of you? Obviously, you mentioned your books. You do speaking. I know our audience has some crossover, but a lot of things you can do to add value. Where's the best place people can get in touch with you?

 

50:32 - Dr. Rick Jensen

Probably my website. My website has everything the books, my phone number, my email is all right there, and my website's wwwdrrickjensencom.

 

50:44 - Brent Kelly

Pretty straightforward. Well, hey, listen. Thank you so much. I appreciate taking time out of your busy day and your schedule to come on and do this. I know I've taken a ton of notes, I know that the agency leaders listen and hopefully you've taken a ton of notes, unless you're driving, don't do that, but go back and listen to it again. Any final comments or anything you want to say before we officially depart, Dr. Rick, no, thanks for having me.

 

51:06 - Dr. Rick Jensen

I really this has been a. It doesn't feel like work, does it? It's just a great conversation. Thanks for doing it.

 

51:12 - Brent Kelly

I agree, feel the same way. Well, thanks so much, and for all the listeners out there, if this podcast is out of value. Previous, please like, subscribe, share, do all the podcast stuff you want to do. We want to continue to get this message out, to create best version possible agencies.