Planning Your Purpose After Perpetuation with Mark Rollins

Brent Kelly:

When most agency leaders consider perpetuation of their agency, whether it's one year, five year, 10 years, or 20 years plus, typically we think about it and prepare for it financially, which is certainly critically important. But what about the emotional relationship and even spiritual toll perpetuation can take on agency leaders? Well, on today's Agent Leader podcast, I have an incredible interview with Mark Rollins. Mark not only was a super successful insurance agency leader, but he now runs a company called Retirement Transformed, and recently wrote a book called The Evolving Man. This is an interview you do not want to miss because we go places that we've not gone before on this podcast talking about vulnerability, authenticity, and really understanding the impact that perpetuation, whether sooner or later, will have on you individually as a leader. Enjoy the show.

Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly. This is the podcast for insurance agency leaders to help you grow, develop, and ultimately become your Best Version Possible, which is our overriding theme or reminder. If you want to learn more about the Best Version Possible book, the Best Version Possible process, you can go to sitkins.com. Now, in today's episode, I have a very special guest, someone who I have a high level of respect for in a multitude of areas, quite frankly, someone who I have the pleasure of getting to know over the past several years and is a long time friend of the Sitkins Group, a longtime friend of our organization, and more notably, more recently a I'm going to use this Mark, World famous author I've got, if you're watching on YouTube, his new book, fantastic book. We're going to spend some time talking about this today, the Evolving Man. So I've got Mark Rollins with me today. Mark, welcome to the podcast.

Mark Rollins:

Brent, it is an honor, a privilege to be here with you. I'm so excited to have this coffee chat with you this morning.

Brent Kelly:

Yeah, and I told Mark, I tell all of our guests, I said, I really do want this to be like we're having a cup of coffee. And I've known Mark for a while now, and again, our organization and Roger Sitkins has known Mark for a while and there's some great stories, but I haven't talked to Mark for a while. So this really is a bit of a catch up for me as well and for the insurance agency leaders and to listen to this. A couple of different things that are really going to jump out and we'll see where this conversation goes. But Mark is a former, very successful insurance agency leader, and I want to talk to Mark a little bit about that and his experience, what he learned, also selling his agency and then the transformation into his new career, his new company, and then of course, the book.

And really take a deeper look and don't freak out here listeners, but a deeper look into the emotional level, what's really going behind the curtain, so to speak. Oftentimes, whether it's fears, doubts, concerns, you have it from any type of leader. So I'm really excited to have a different perspective maybe than some other podcasts that we've had. So Mark, I would like to start off just to give some background so people get to know you better. Obviously I mentioned you're an insurance agency leader in a prior life and spend a lot of time doing that. So if you could share with the audience your story from that perspective, and then we'll move forward.

Mark Rollins:

Sure. I am 67 years old. I am in a second marriage with Jody. We've been married 15 years. We have six kids between us, we're the modern day Brady Bunch. I have three sons and Jody has three daughters, and Jody also had a career in insurance working for Chubb, and we live on Marco Island, Florida. So it's certainly warm down there in the summer, but we do enjoy the lifestyle that has allowed us by being outside a lot. My business career started right out of college. I majored in insurance. I went to the University of Hartford and came into the family business, and I was the third generation in the business. And working from my dad was interesting. When I came out of college, it was my dad, he had three partners and six legit secretaries with the pumped up hair, and they were smoking cigarettes and they had their IBM typewriters and we had no computers, no fax machines, just pads of paper and rating was done out of books. So it started off really at a very manual type level. And over the next 38 years, we evolved, like many of your agencies have evolved getting our first Apple rating computer and a fax machine and computers. And I think that honestly, the big change for me was when I did meet Roger Sitkins who helped us go from your regular local independent agent into changing and transforming how we ran our business to become a pretty well-known regional firm in Westchester County, New York.

Brent Kelly:

Yeah. And Mark, you talk a little bit about that and we'll get to your book. I certainly want to spend some time there. If you talk about that family dynamic and that agency, you also, just for the audience, you found a niche in your agency. So if you could share a bit about that. And then from there, I want to get to the exit part, what was going on there, but start with the niche. I find that very interesting.

Mark Rollins:

Well, when I first got into business, my dad said, he gave me a telephone book and a telephone, and he said, the world is your oyster. You're going to sell business insurance to any business that will buy from you. So I started off cold calling on strip malls and I would do warehouses, retail stores, lawyers offices, advertising agencies, whatever I could find, quick print shops, gas stations, and it was just such a challenge for me mentally to constantly have to get into the head of a different type of business. And it wasn't until I actually decided to specialize in a niche, which for me was nonprofits.

And I just became all consumed with the business of nonprofits. I studied them, I read books about them, I researched them, I read tax returns, I interviewed people, what makes nonprofits tick. I joined all of the nonprofit membership organizations in my area, and I became over a 15 year period, the Go-to Guy and the Go-to company to ensure you're a nonprofit. And we were so good at it, we were actually able to, I think you guys call it walkaway power if you still have that use that term. But being in a niche and really, really being in that niche, that is the best way to succeed and thrive as an independent agent without a doubt.

Brent Kelly:

And we see this still, I, we've got a lot of our agency partners that certainly have a specialization or a niche. Others are still very fearful or hesitant for different reasons, and I can understand why. But I think one of the things, Mark, without going too much in the details of that, I think what I heard you say between the lines there is you really get to understand at a very deep level the people you're communicating with.

Mark Rollins:

Well, yeah, you're able to go in and have a peer to peer conversation with the CEO of the business, whether it's construction, nonprofit, medical, whatever your niche is, you could talk to them about business and you know what their big risks are, and you can talk about that. You're never really talking about insurance, and you become the true trusted advisor to help them put together an insurance program that meets their needs. When you are down in the trenches and you are getting three years of loss runs and you're copying the policies and you're hoping you're going to get the business, and you have six companies give you quotes, they're getting annoyed, they're getting frustrated, I'm getting frustrated. The client's frustrated and you give them a quote and they're just going to give it to their current agent. So actually for the last 15 years of my career, I was 100% broker of record letter because I just did such a good job connecting with the CEO. And if we didn't connect, that was fine. I went on to the next one.

But you're fooling yourself if you think that copying policies and getting quotes is the way to go, you can do okay. You can get by, but it's not fun.

Brent Kelly:

Yeah, we talk all the time. Mark, this has been kind of a newer concept, I guess I don't know how new of a concept, but we verbalize it more now, is that so many agencies are getting good results. They are getting good results, but there's a trap. And I think what you're expressing is, yeah, you can get good results doing that. You can do okay, you can survive, but there's a deeper level. I do want to share, if you would, Mark, again, whenever you want to share, it's up to you, but just kind of moving to the end of the exit, I want to get into some of the thoughts around this. We always talk about this. You've heard Roger say this before, that you eventually, you're going to leave your business. We all are. When, how, where we don't know all those things yet. But from a perspective, when you took over the agency, give a size and scope of the agency because I want to make sure the audience knows you were successful in this, you did really well, and then you left the business. So if you could kind of give a distinction of where you started, where you ended, and then I want to get into what happened in the exit. How did that all transpire?

Mark Rollins:

Sure. I have to think back, it was a while ago, but when my dad turned 65, Chuck and I bought the agency from him. And at that time we had three offices. We had 55 employees, we had $3 million of revenue at a 10% profit margin and 6,500 customers. So it was a good size firm if you're measuring it by headcount. But over the next 15 years, Chuck and I took that from three offices to 1, 55 people to 25 people, 6,000 clients to 2000 clients, 3 million in revenue to 6 million in revenue, and a 10% profit margin to a 35% profit margin. That's a valuable company. And we continued to stay on that path, and it was not easy. I mean, we had to sell clients, we had to convince our team that they weren't getting fired. It all happened through natural attrition, but we started to run the company, we wanted to sell it, and we did that for 10 years. And then we started as we turned 50, like when are we going to do it? Our kids weren't coming in, we weren't going to sell it internally, it was going to be an external perpetuation. So we dipped our toe in the water one year and started that process.

Brent Kelly:

And as you started that, first of all, I hope everyone heard that because I mean, in essence, I'm not great at Math here, Mark, but I mean, in essence, you doubled the money part and you halved the expense other part to a degree just at a very basic level, which as you said, made the company extremely in different ways. They're certainly extremely profitable. So here's what I want to maybe turn the page a little bit. I think this is where it's been really unique speaking with you, Mark, obviously with this vision, you've talked to me and this has been a while back, but about just a story of your dad and okay, now I'm going to the point where I can sell this business and it will be very profitable. It's going to be financially great. So financially one part. Awesome, great. You're on Marco Island, all these things.

Great and very blessed by that. But what about this thing called our mind and our spirit? And I think I know Mark, when I talk to agency leaders, again, I have some that go, oh, I'm never going to sell. Well, eventually you'll others that say, Hey, I plan to sell in three years. And again, there's the financial side and we help agencies with that as a form of processes and behaviors and strategies and alignment and all these things, but then they sell and it's like, now what? So I'd like if you could, again, everyone's got their own story, but if you could maybe share Mark your story of what was going through your mind outside of financially, but just again, spiritually, emotionally, whatever, and then what you did to begin to prepare for this next phase of your life.

Mark Rollins:

Well, it's a great question and it's a question that many people struggle with, particularly if you're an entrepreneur and you're identified as the CEO of the Rollins Agency in my case or my dad was. But when you leave that and go into retirement and hopefully you're financially secure, so that's not a problem. Retirement can kill you. It killed my dad when he was 65 and he left, left a little begrudgingly he wanted to stay, but he wasn't working. He was in Florida the whole time. So we finally worked it out where we paid him really well. He had an expense account, everything was fine financially, he was set, but what he wasn't prepared for is what happened to him next. And I joke about this a little bit, my dad's generation, my dad did not invent the three martini lunch, but he certainly perfected it during his career.

And when he left at 65, he took that talent with him. And unfortunately, you've heard the term 10 x your business, 10 x this and that, he 10 x that, and in 15 years he was dead. And it was so sad to watch as he entered retirement, he had no plan for his non-financial life. He didn't ever recreate his identity. He didn't really know how to spend the 40 plus hours of free time that came his way, and he really spent those 15 years unfulfilled. Sure, he was in Florida with my mom. He played golf three days a week. He'd go out and have drinks with his buddies and then go home and take a nap and wake up, take my mom to dinner and repeat that all over again the next day. And that's just not sustainable.

So the day my dad died, I was actually at the quarterly meeting for Brown and Brown, the firm that bought us out, and Powell Brown was speaking. I'm in the third row aisle seat, really paying attention to what Powell was saying, and my phone had rung for the third time, and I realized I better take a look. And I saw it was my sister-in-law. So I kind of walk out while Powell's talking and everyone's looking at me, what are you doing? And it was my sister-in-law to tell me my dad died. And at that moment, I realized that I didn't want to have that kind of retirement. I called Jody and we talked about it, and I flew home that day and we had the funeral and everything. But that was a real rude awakening for me to realize that is not a good plan for retirement, to sit back, take it easy, enjoy the fruits of your labor and do nothing. And that's what my dad did. And Jody and I have now created a business to help people make sure that doesn't happen.

Brent Kelly:

And I want you to talk about that because again, I mean the story you shared there, Mark, obviously I understand the emotion, the sadness there to see that someone you love that transpires. I think it's really interesting and exciting from this standpoint of to watch you and Jody create a business that addresses a problem that many people don't even know that's a problem or even think about it. So if you would, again, plug away on what you guys do, because what you do matters, it really does. And I can see that with people you work with, but tell about the creation of the company with you and your wife, what you do, whatever you want to share about it. It's important stuff.

Mark Rollins:

Sure. Well, like I said, retirement can kill you. And Jody and I actually, even after my dad died and we had that wake up call, ended up going down a pretty slippery slope. So we sold to Brown and Brown in 2013. I thought I would stay for 10 years or more, but after three years of using their money to buy agencies, I kind of got burned out. We went from 25 employees to 80 in five years, and that was a lot of work, 6 million in revenue to 18 million in revenue. So the idea of work of staying on it works for a lot of people. I have a lot of my peers are still working. They're 70 years old and they love it. That's great. But I got burned out and I stepped down from becoming the office leader after three years. And that's when I got into trouble.

I remember the first day, that first Monday, I walked into the office and the weekly leadership team meeting that I ran for 38 years was taking place and I wasn't even invited. So I went through this whole process of who am I now? What am I going to do? Clients weren't calling me. There was no line out my door. So I started coming into work early, coming into work late like 10 o'clock and going home at two. I had nothing to do. I remember this one day, opened a bottle of wine at two o'clock, my favorite Pinot Noir, Belle Gloss, and I poured myself a glass and I turned on the TV like I did every day. And I had fallen in love with daytime tv. I was watching Ellen and Oprah and all of these shows, and then I'd fall asleep. Jody was still working.

She'd come back home like five o'clock walk in the door saying, what's up? How was your day? And I would lie to her and say, oh, it was great. I had a sales call. I closed a case. It was all BS, but I got myself in trouble. So we both became semi-retired at the same time in 2017, and we started to do what we thought we wanted to do, which was to travel the world, have a lot of fun. We found ourselves gaining weight, having a hangover every single day, feeling unhealthy, eating like crap and not being happy.

So we pivoted and we really started to work on our physical wellness, our mental wellness, the relationships, because you lose a lot of relationships when you retire creating new relationships. We worked on our marriage and then we worked on this component we call wisdom sharing, where you actually start to give back. People started to notice the change and they said to us, what are you guys doing? You look great. You sound great. You're happier. What's going on? Can you help us? So we started a company called Retirement Transformed, and we created online courses. We did one-on-one coaching, and then ultimately created a YouTube channel about three years ago. And it's just been an unbelievable journey for us.

Brent Kelly:

Yeah, again, admittedly, I told you, Mark, I see the stuff you do. I don't see everything because I've run my own business and kids and all of that. But from a distant perspective, it really has been fascinating and intriguing to watch your videos, your growth, your engagement. And I would anybody, again, whether you're retired, thinking about retirement or even like me, probably a long way from there, go check out what they're doing at Retirement Transform, because it's really compelling. And I think, Mark, the thing that you shared, and these are maybe a bit cliche words, but they're important words. You talk about identity and I think about purpose.

I can see myself already just from a perspective of being a bit younger, I'm 46, but how much of my identity and purpose is driven in what I do every day at the Sitkins Group, which by the way, I appreciate and I'm happy about, but I'm wondering if you'd strip that away if I'm not careful over the years, what happens? So I think it's really interesting. I know the agency leaders, because you're in the middle of these fires all the day, every day. And like you said, Mark, these relationships we have are often built through relationships with our clients and our colleagues and the community. And all of a sudden that's all gone and you go, gosh, who am I? What am I trying to accomplish next? And by the way, I just got to give a shout out. I love, Mark does a great job in social media with videos. I don't always comment, Mark, but you inspire me where I see Mark up at whatever it is, five or six in the morning doing his workout, talking about why he is doing a workout. I'm going, here's a guy that doesn't have to do any of this stuff, but he's doing it. So I don't know if I even had a question there.

Mark Rollins:

Well, I think I'm going to say something. You said, I get up at five o'clock and I go to the gym and watch the sunrise, and I journal and I meditate, and you said, I don't even have to do that. Well, I think you do have to do that, and that's a big pivot and the strength that I'm having and the courage that I'm having to let people know, you don't have to get up at five o'clock, but you do have to get up when you're retired at the same time every day and have some kind of routine that sets you up for the day. You cannot get up mope downstairs, turn the TV on, have coffee and breakfast and watch TV for three hours. You cannot do that. I'm telling you, it's premature death coming, knocking on your door. I tried it and it doesn't work.

It just doesn't. And I see it time and time again. But I want to back up to identity too, because when I think back on all the networking functions I went to and the 38 years of my career, when I would meet somebody, they would say, tell me a little bit about yourself. Well, I'm CEO of insurance agency. I'm fourth generation. We've done this, we've done that. We've bought companies and this and that. I never introduced myself as a husband or a dad of three or someone who likes to play golf. That all came out after. So I spent 38 years working on my brand as an insurance professional. And then the day you retire, you're not that anymore. And my dad used to always have this saying, I used to be this. I used to do that. I used to go to Rotary, I used to do this, but he never created the new, I think back now in my 38 year career, Brent. And it was 100% training to prepare me for what I'm doing now. I had no idea at the time, but I have let myself open up and be vulnerable and be honest and clean up my regrets

And say, you know what? There's more that I can do to help the world than just talk about my insurance career. It was great. It made me financially independent and I helped a lot of people and a lot of families along the way that was practice for this.

Brent Kelly:

There are a lot of places to go there, and I want to make sure I'm careful on how I do this. We could go a lot of different paths here, but I think one thing you hit me, Mark that you shared there that hit me and this kind what Dan Sullivan talks about, I always make your future brighter than your past and those kind of things. But it is interesting already in my mid forties, I'll have conversations with people I haven't seen for a while. And you think about the percentage of the conversation is, oh, do you remember when or wasn't that cool? Versus, Hey, what are you doing? What's next? What are you aspiring to? And I know that may sound trivial to me, but I don't think it is because I could see myself and I'm not there yet getting 10, 20 years down the road. And it's like, if all I'm talking about is the past, why not just die?

I've already done it. And to me, I just love what you shared there. And I'm going to share one more thing, and you can comment on this if you want, but I did a unique exercise the time, this is interesting, through a different program I was doing where I wrote my eulogy, that is not an easy thing to do, by the way. It's very personal obviously. And I'm sitting here saying, write your eulogy. And what's interesting, and I got very emotional doing it because what I realized was all the things that I wanted to write about were the things that I was spending the least amount of time doing. Now that happens in career, but I think about my wife and my family and all these kinds of things, and I'm like, is that going to be my eulogy? I did this and helped this many clients like, you're dead. Nobody cares. That's important. It's part of the story, but it's not the story. So I just want to show that as you were because it hit me as I was doing it. I'm like, wow, what am I trying to do? So I don't know if you have any comments on that Mark.

Mark Rollins:

I do. I do. I have a lot of comments. Do we have another two hours?

Brent Kelly:

Let's go. Let's go. Let's do it.

Mark Rollins:

So my wife, Jody has this saying, it's not hers. She didn't create it, but she read it somewhere. And we talk about this a lot and we talk about your tombstone. And your tombstone has the date that you're born and the date that you died. And in the middle is the dash. And we talk a lot about what is the dash in your tombstone? Now, when I was 55 years old and sold Rollins agency, and if I had died at that point in time, I'd have a pretty damn good eulogy because I was a good dad, I was a good husband, I was a good brother, I was a good son, had a lot of friends. I had amazing career built a beautiful business. But if that's your eulogy at 55 and then you retire and you spend the next 20 years doing nothing, nobody gives a damn about that stuff. So old it doesn't matter.

So really when you leave your career and move out into the world, it's almost like graduating college again. You've graduated, what are you going to do? And I think where people struggle, we are not trained or taught that this is what we should do when we leave our career. The word retirement was first used in I think 1551, and it meant to leave your job, but back then you'd left your job pretty much you died where you got sick. There was no 30 year career. People are living today past a hundred. So I'm 67. I still have a long way to go, but we have these little voices in our heads, and you probably have it too, Brent, and it's like, well, I wish I could do this, or maybe one day I'll do that. One day I'll do this. I tell people, you should journal about that. Have a separate book, Brent Kelly 3.0, and just start writing your vision and your thoughts and your dreams about retirement because you got to let these voices come out and that's when you start to figure out what it is you're really meant to do.

Brent Kelly:

Mark, another question here we might again, this could go as long as it needs to be because I really enjoy this conversation. I think this is in relation to what you're saying, but maybe not. I'm curious, how much time do you spend in silence?

Mark Rollins:

I spend, it's such a great question. I haven't really thought about that. Every morning I have an hour of silence. At least I get up at four 30, go downstairs, make a cup of coffee. I'll get granular here. I have 12 ounces of water with some lemon in it, then I have my coffee. But wherever I'm at, I look for where the sun's coming up. So I will go find the sunrise. And if it's pouring rain, obviously I don't. But I sit there and I read 10 minutes of Scripture.

I will journal in my phone or a journal in my book. I have a brown journal with a tree on the front of it that I bring with me, and I'll write some thoughts for the day. But I'm not talking to anybody. I'm listening to myself thinking about the day. And when that hour is up, I head home and I have coffee with Jody or I go to the gym depending upon the day.

I do spend, my mornings are really, really important to me. And when I stick to that morning routine, I crush the day. When I get out of sync, I wake up late or I decide I don't feel good. Whenever I don't do it, I have a lousy day. And that's okay because a lot of times I say to myself, you know what, tomorrow I'm not setting the alarm. I don't care when I get up. I'm not going to go to the gym, I'm not going to journal. I do it on purpose and then it's okay.

I love that. Again, it came to me and part of this, again, I'll be very open on this is because I do get up early. Most times what hit me and I've noticed has been a number of years is I used and kind of changed. You'd get up and you'd go, I'm going to have some time for me and think. And it feels like year after year after year, even though I would still get up early, it became, well now do this and now do this and now do this. And there's always input and there's a podcast and there's this, and there's just always things I'm trying to learn. And those things are good. I am a huge proponent of that. I know you are as well of professional personal development, but to sit still in your own thought, and you mentioned journal and to dream a little bit and to think a little bit, and I think here's something that this may lead into the book discussion. I took a lot of this from your book, is to be really honest with yourself. That to me is what's hard about silence. And I'll just be very personal as you start to think about some of these things, which again is good. But I wanted to ask you that. I know you've done meditation and things you've talked about in the past, but I don't know, do you think people have a hard time sitting in silence today in general or just being honest with themselves?

Yeah, absolutely. They do.

Brent Kelly:

I just wanted to set this up, the Evolving Man, the subtitles, life virtues men's men don't want to talk about. Now I do want to say this for all the agency leaders, it's obviously directed towards men. Before we went live and recorded this, Mark was telling me women have gotten as much out of this book as men. So it really is for men or women, but obviously it's directed towards men life virtues. Men don't talk about, and I think about, I'll set this up my way, and you can take it from here, Mark.

I don't know if this is, I saw it was a comedy skit or whatever, I think it was a comedian, and he's talking about playing golf with his buddy for four and a half hours or whatever. He's five hours and she's like, oh, well how's he doing here and how's he doing after this divorce and whatever. He's like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It's like you spent five hours with this guy and you didn't find out anything. He's like, no, we're guys. We don't talk about that stuff. And so what I love about this book is there is certainly an authenticity. So Mark, I want to start off with this. Why did you write the book? We'll just keep it that wide open. Why did you write the book? And then we'll get some more details into it.

Mark Rollins:

As a business owner and as an entrepreneur, I always had a dream of writing a book. And I actually had three books that I kept the idea going for years. And I had the titles and I had the chapters, and it had to be the best insurance brokerage, CEO ever had to sell insurance, like a champ, a leadership book. Am I really good at leadership? Well, I probably read a thousand books on it, so I guess I know a little bit about it. But these books, I never wrote one word. Not one word ever came out for any of those chapters.

And I met a publisher three years ago on a Zoom call. She was hosting for someone else. I was involved with some guy helping us with our YouTube channel, and she is a book channeler and she helps people channel books through their heart versus their brain. And she said, if you think back on some of the favorite books that you ever wrote, they were written by people writing from their heart. When you read a real heavy business book, I am just trying to think of some of the books I read, even Good to Great book,

But it's heavy to read. You got to pause and stop and think. She taught me how to write a book from my heart, and I didn't know what I was going to write about, but I knew that I struggled a lot as a man, being vulnerable, being vulnerable with my wife, being vulnerable with my kids, being vulnerable with my team and listening, passion, love, kindness, humility, ego, what's my legacy going to look like? All of these things that I didn't pay attention to and didn't really do a good job at. So as I started writing, it just started to build itself. And this channeler, Kira Brenton who's amazing, when we started talking about the book, she said, I picture you because as a caring guy, and I picture you holding men gently in your hands and lifting them into an arc where you are now going to take care of them and teach them and nurture them. Some mother vision she had, she said, you are at the riverside and you're at the best fishing spot ever. And you're not keeping that a secret. You're bringing all your friends say, I know where we can catch the most fish. Come with me. We'll do it together. So all of this was coming out and then the book was born and I just started writing. And I'll tell you, when I was writing this book, I'd go back two weeks later and read something I wrote, I don't even remember writing it.

It was an incredible experience and it was just amazing. And people say now it's easy to read and it's heartfelt and it's not too heavy.

Brent Kelly:

Yeah, it is. I mean, it is easy to read in the sense of, I can sense that it just you, you're telling the story from your heart, right? We say a conversation from your heart, and this certainly comes out. What's interesting here, and again, it talks about life virtues. You talk about 12 life virtues and obviously this podcast, I'm not going to ask you, nor would I have to go through all 12 of them, but I do. I want to read them to the audience because I think there are things again that I think most leaders, in many cases I should maybe say most, but I think many leaders just kind of take for granted or really don't put a lot of thought and time. So you talk about listening, vulnerability, humility, forgiveness, regrets, relationships, gratitude, ego, compassion, empathy, curiosity and learning and kindness and generosity. And I don't know if this is a fair question, I didn't prep you for it, but which of those virtues, and again, I don't know, if there has to be a pecking order, that's probably not fair because they're all extremely important. Which one of those virtues as you were writing them, had the greatest impact on you? Or maybe open your eyes in different ways you didn't expect?

Mark Rollins:

Well, I will say that the first two chapters are there in the beginning because they're the two most important to me. And one is listening, and the second one is vulnerability. And I think the vulnerability, one chapter, the vulnerability topic is critically important, particularly for men. I think that if you can learn to start sharing your feelings with other men or your wife or your husband, whoever it might be, all of a sudden now your relationships go to a different level and they deepen and they strengthen and they allow you a safe place to talk about the things that are on your mind.

Whereas otherwise, you have no one to talk to and to go through life not being able to share what's on your mind or how you feel or what you're struggling with. It's a dark, lonely place. The largest group of people, the largest population of people in the United States that have successful suicides are men over the age of 65. Now, I have no science behind what I'm about to say, but I believe going through life in this dark place where you can't talk to people, she encourages that. I mean, it's, I'm so much better now at letting Jody know how I feel, how I feel about something she did that disturbed me. I'm this kind of person that doesn't want to say anything to hurt someone else's feelings,

But I'm not hurting her feelings. She says, if you're not truthful with people about how you feel or how they're doing, you're cheating them of learning the truth. So this is an ever evolving thing for me in my life, is vulnerability. I mean, I just keep studying it and reading about it more and learning about it more because it's a very healthy change in our life to be able to become more vulnerable.

Brent Kelly:

Yeah, agreed. A hundred percent. I mean, it's something I'm learning. I mean, I'd be very transparent. I struggle with that. I'm learning that even reading your book Mark, I mean, I'm like, oh gosh, it opened my eyes to stuff, but why am I not having that conversation? And certainly I think this is true professionally and personally with leaders. I'm not going to share that it makes me look weak or that I didn't, I'm not perfect. Well, guess what? None of us are. But you're right. I think the key to that is that when, listen, in my sense, when I've been able to be somewhat vulnerable with people, it's amazing the depth of the relationship and the honesty that starts to come forth on that, which is healthy. It's healthy. And I think the flip side of that is you're right. It just everything keeps within at some point it pops.

Mark Rollins:

Well, it goes back to your story where you teed this up about the two guys playing golf for four and a half hours, and what did you learn about that guy?

Nothing. Why would I want to do that? So it's funny because as I'm getting older, again, I'm 67 and I'm getting more spiritual, I'm thinking more about my legacy, I'm thinking more about how I can help others, but I also want to meet people that want to be more open and honest and vulnerable because those are the deep relationships that you can take with you through the rest of your life. It's funny, I've reconnected with four high school friends who I haven't seen in 40 years. They're in the state of Washington, Virginia, Westchester County, New York, and where's the other one? California. And I just found them, called them. The four of us are now having Zoom calls and stuff, and I haven't seen him in 40 years, but we had this time in our life when we were 12 years old to 20. That's huge growth for a young man. And we made a lot of mistakes. We got in trouble, we got chased by the police, our parents were woken up in the middle of the night, your son's been drinking and driving and all of this growth stuff that I can talk to these guys about anything and it's so safe and they're not going to put it on social media. It's nice to have people like that in your life. It's important to have people like that in your life.

Brent Kelly:

Yeah, that's so fascinating. It's really cool. I love to hear that. Alright, Mark, I'll try to put a bit of a bow on this with our time. I told you we'd be 30, 40 minutes, but I could maybe we'll do part two love to of the conversation, but I've got a couple questions I want to ask you. And one would be, and I know this could go a lot of direction, so take it wherever you want, but if you had an insurance agency leader, and I'm sure this happens to you still time to time, and they'd say, Mark, of all the things you've learned unpacked over the years and you could give me a piece of advice you think would be most beneficial to me, what would that be?

Mark Rollins:

Well, on the business side of things,

Brent Kelly:

Let's start. Yeah, start with the business side.

Mark Rollins:

On the business side of things, run your business. You want to sell it all the time. And number two, I was in sales. So there's agencies have the service team, the sales team. I don't know how else you break it up now, but gosh, you've got to differentiate yourself from your competitors and differentiate yourself in the way you run your business and the way you service your clients, including having a niche. Those are just critical to having a higher level of engagement and a more profitable company.

Brent Kelly:

So let me ask again, you could take this wherever you want it. It's a question to ask any guest. And so obviously you starting off your professional career, the young Mark Rollins, you were getting the insurance business, but there's a lot of life around that, right? So let's say that you're walking down the street later. This is a weird question, but you're walking down the street and there is the starting off his career version of Mark Rawlins. So whatever age, I mean you could be in your twenties, whatever, but you're a young professional just getting started and the younger version of you looks at the version today and says, listen, we've only got 30 seconds here. What's the one thing you want to tell me to help me be whatever it is most successful I can in my life?

Mark Rollins:

I think you have to be able to rethink all the time on what it is you're doing and why you're doing it. There's a great book called Think Again by Adam Grant.

It's the most fascinating book that I've ever read. And it teaches you to unlearn what you know to learn it another way to have an open mind, to be able to be open to suggestions and criticism and coaching. And that is really important. Instead of just going through life saying, I know how to do it, doing it the same way my dad did it, this is where we're going to do it. We're not any new fancy stuff. No, you've got to have the ability to adapt and humans are the best species on the planet at adapting. So we have to be able to adapt as we grow in our career.

Brent Kelly:

Fascinating. And again, I always tell you there's obviously no wrong answer to that. It's a fantastic perspective, Mark. It hit me, and I don't know if I heard this from Jim Rowan or another mentor or someone out there, but he always talked about being insanely curious

As you said that that kind of hit me on this. And I know there are many days and weeks where I just get into the thing and I do the thing and the thing and oh, this is what I know how to do this and this. And you take a step back and go, what if I was insanely curious? Why am I doing that? Why do I think that way? Why do I feel that way? Obviously you still got to run your life, but it's amazing when I have been able to do that and I'm learning how to do it better, the nuances and the depth and the different ways that I view things, which is super important. So I highly appreciate that answer. Alright, Mark, here's the plug. I want to make sure people can find you both in your business that you and Jody run and then where people can get the book. So tell us more about where people can find you and how to best find you for Retirement Transformed. And then of course the Evolving Man book.

Mark Rollins:

Well, there's two websites. One is markhamrollins.com, the other one is Retirement Transformed. Markhamrollins.com is more about me and my book, so I'd love to have you buy it. It's on Amazon. The Evolving Man is easy to get if you buy it and read it. Do me a huge favor and put a written review on Amazon as far as retirement transformed. The best place to start is our YouTube channel, which is on Retirement Transformed on YouTube. We just are close to 50,000 subscribers and on Monday went over 4 million views of our video. So it's very popular, it's doing really well and people, there's a lot of great information in there on what to do in this phase of life so that you thrive.

Brent Kelly:

And Mark, don't take any offense to this. When you're under video, you're great, but your wife Jody's way better.

Mark Rollins:

I know I don't take offense one in one equals 12 when Jody's at my side. I did okay today, but if Jody was here, it would've been better.

Brent Kelly:

I've obviously given you a hard time. No, I mean you two together. I mean, there's just a natural chemistry and enjoyment. There's so much knowledge and depth to it, but it's just, it's fun and you guys have great personalities. So I wanted to share that. Thanks Mark, so much for doing this. I said maybe we'll do a part two. I'd love to maybe find some different areas and go deeper. I know that the listeners are going to get great value from what you shared. Again, it's a different perspective in some ways that oftentimes we don't think about. Also, as a reminder to the audience, if you want to learn more about what we do at the Sitkins Group, work with insurance agencies. If you want to be like Mark in some ways, you go to Sitkins.com to learn more about us. And obviously if you want to set up a call with us and we do a assessment for your agency, we'll qualify this first, but get to know more about your agency. There's no cost to this, there's no obligation other than some of your time. Go to Sitkins.com/book a call. So let's go to Sitkins.com/book a call. We'll let have a conversation with you and your agency leadership team. So Mark, any final things before we officially depart here?

Mark Rollins:

No. What I would say to everyone who's listening to this, you included, no matter how old or how young you are, is that I want you to really think about life after insurance because there is one. There can be one if you want. It's an amazing time to grow and prosper as a human being. And you got to be able to move every single day so that you live longer and healthier and nutrition, mindfulness and all of that. And give back, figure out something that you can do to give back, whether it's volunteering or writing a book or whatever, that's going to give you fulfillment like you had during your career. So I wish you all well and it was such a pleasure to be on here with you today.

Brent Kelly:

Yeah, thank you Mark so much. Appreciate it. And with that, all the best and your success. Thanks for listening.