Seven Beliefs Holding You Back

Welcome to the Agent Leader Podcast. My name is Brent Kelly and I am your host. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode. Today, I'm going to talk to you, the agency leader, about beliefs that are holding you or your agency back. In fact, I'm going to speak about seven. Seven beliefs. Now, are there more than this? Probably. Are some of these crossing over to each other? Probably. But seven beliefs that I see and that we see in working with agencies across the country and talking to agency leaders that are holding them back. When I say holding you back or holding the agency back, it could be holding you back from the true results you want, organic growth, profitability. Could also be holding you back from better, improved relationships. It could be holding you back from true financial freedom. It could be holding you back from living out your true purpose of what you really want.

Let's face it. We're all guilty of this. If you're not watching a video, I'm raising my hand. The level of our thinking will determine the level of our results, and we have to be really careful on how we think. Sometimes, unless people call us on it, and I've been on the other side of this where I say something and somebody challenges me and says, "Sounds to me like maybe it's a thinking problem or a belief problem." I want to address some things that we see. As always, the purpose of this podcast is to help you, the agency leader, to gain clarity, build consistency, and make a commitment to become your best version possible. These beliefs, these belief barriers or barriers to belief that I'll be talking about today, they inhibit you as an agency, as a leader, as a leadership team, as a sales team.

They hinder you from that best version possible. Now, if you want to grab a copy of our book, Best Version Possible, please go to sitkins.com/BVP to get yourself a copy. You're going to see and hear a lot of these things that I'll be talking about today, and that will give you a roadmap for your agency. If you're an agency leader, an agency team, and you want to learn more about what we do at The Sitkins Network and how we work with agencies to get them to their best version possible by getting focused on the right areas and eliminate some of these belief barriers that we talk about, go to sitkins.com/experience to learn more about that as well.

I want to talk about these belief barriers. Again, there's a different perspective on all of these, and I want to share what they are and give you some examples of what we see in each of these areas. Here's the first one, and this may sound trite, but it's really important, and I think sometimes, we notice it in how people say things, or at least the meaning behind their words, so to speak, versus the words themselves is where we'll often hear this. This is this; the belief that yesterday is better than tomorrow. That our past is better than our future, in essence of what I'm saying.

Now, most people, and you probably wouldn't say, "I believe that my best days are behind me." Maybe you're not saying that, but in how you are approaching things, sometimes you can hear this. You can hear this in people talking just in random conversations with friends. Maybe you've had this or heard this from your friend group where you talk about the good old days all the time. That 80, 90% of what you talk about with people is, "Remember high school? Remember college? Remember 10 years ago? Remember how great that was?" By the way, I'm not against talking about great experience in the past, but is the focus of your conversation as an agency leader and with your team and with your clients about the future of what's to come or what you've done?

One of my favorite conversations I've had was with a high level producer, a multimillion dollar level producer, and the question was asked, what's the best sale you've ever made? Or what's the biggest sale you've ever made? He said, "Well, I don't know. I haven't made it yet." Now think about this. This is coming from a multimillion dollar producer who's made a lot of great big sales. The question was, what's the best sale you've ever made? Which is the question about the past, and his answer was about the future. Just think about that for yourself as an agency leader. What do you talk most about? Where are you focused most around? What's in front of you? What's to come, the solutions around things or what you've already accomplished and done? I don't want to see your trophy case. I want to see your vision and your strategy for what the new trophies are going to be on that trophy case, because you're always looking to expand and grow.

Number one is this idea that our belief is that yesterday is better or was better than tomorrow. Secondly, a belief that, again, maybe not as always verbally spoken, but sometimes can be read in between the lines so to speak, is that fitting in is better than becoming world-class. Fitting in is better than becoming world-class. Now, if you've heard my podcast in different... Past podcasts, I talk a lot. I bring in the fact that I've got five kiddos. You learn a lot from your kids. One of the things about having teenage daughters, which right now, I have three of them, is the fact that there's a pressure to fitting in. There's aspects when that's important. You're fitting in with the culture and dynamics of certain things, of course, but sometimes, we play down to the level of our competition, so to speak, and that we try to fit in with certain things and standards that inhibit our greatness.

If you've got kids like I do, sometimes you're like, "Gosh, you're better than that. You're more capable than that. I see more." That potential word that sometimes we like or we don't like depending on how it's used, and then it's about playing, again, down or into your competition. Maybe if you're a sports fan, you see that when your team sometimes plays down to the competition versus up to the level of what it's capable of. A lot of that is mindset. "Well, this is just how it is, and this is how I'm going to play." With insurance agency leaders, I see this too. I had a conversation several years ago with a very successful agency leader on the East Coast, and we were having some fun and having a great conversation over dinner, and this person was having great growth rate and great profitability and a lot of different successes.

I said, "What's been one of your keys to your success?" He smiled at me and said, "See this room?" I said, "Yeah." I looked around at all these different agency leaders and he goes, "I'm not trying to be critical or be funny, but the truth of it is what I do is I look at what most of them do, and I just do the opposite, because most are okay with being average." You've heard us talk about on this podcast before that the agency model, the independent insurance agency model is a fantastic model. You know that, but it can allow us to be semi-successful sometimes because we can get away with bad habits, bad mindset, lowering our standards and still, compared to the rest of the world, be pretty darn successful, but knowing deep down inside that if we really want to be the best, to be world-class, we can't always be like every other agency. Every other agency just quotes insurance and transactional thinking, and we're going to do okay to get ahead just enough versus saying, "You know what?"

I did a podcast on this recently. What is our culture of excellence? What does world-class look like? Why would we not aspire to that to be the best that we possibly can be? Again, I think this idea, this mindset of I'm going to fit in and blend in more than truly setting the standard and think about this, do I want to be a comparison point with all my agency competition, or do I want to be that point of comparison that everybody else is compared because what they do is at such a different level. That's a great belief versus we're going to fit in. That was number two. Number three, a belief that I see oftentimes in initial conversations is asking about the business model that they have, and what happens is the belief is that we're going to replicate what happened last year, even if it isn't very good, versus revising our model to making us that top level. That we replicate versus revise. That we do the same thing again and again and again.

You've heard the definition before. What's the definition of insanity? Well, it's doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result. We see agencies that are doing it get okay. Agency leaders that are doing okay, producers that are doing okay, and they replicate a model, quite frankly, that isn't very good. Something that we say all the time to our agency members part of The Sitkins Network is that your current business model is perfectly designed to get you the results you're currently getting. Your current business model is perfectly designed to get you the results you're currently getting. When you think about this, am I replicating a model that is maybe a 5 or 6 out of 10? Or should I revise to figure out what is that business model, my new level of thinking, that will get us to the 8, that 9, always looking for that next level of 10? What would that be?

It's a huge belief to think about for yourself as an agency leader. Am I replicating good stuff? Am I replicating the average stuff? Am I replicating even some bad stuff just because it's what we've always done? That's a really important belief to consider. All right, I got four more here. These beliefs that I wrote down get a little deeper into the weeds, so to speak, but let me share these four. Number one is this. This is a belief I hear a lot of agencies and producers. We can't write larger accounts or even we don't write larger accounts. Now, when I say larger account, it certainly depends on your agency, where it's located. There are factors that I'm not blind to that fact. Those are real things, but there is a mindset, and this comes back to the last one that I mentioned, replicate average, is that just because you've written small accounts in the past doesn't mean you need to or should be writing small accounts in the future.

If you say, "Well, that's what we do. That's what our vision is, our mission," okay, but for most agencies, they don't really know. They just write it because they've always done it. It's comfortable, it's convenient versus going, wait a second. If we were going to up our game and begin to write accounts like the ones that we have at the top of our book of business with more intention, with more frequency, being more proactive in our approach, being better prepared for that, why would we do that? Well, the why is because they're much more profitable in many cases, and by the way, oftentimes, your better clients appreciate your relationship and risk advice more than others. There's just a greater depth to those. Again, we know that, but why don't we? Again, it comes back, to me, a level of comfort.

One of the things that hits me on this is that of a mindset. If you're not preparing yourself to write larger accounts, and by looking at this and just understanding, looking at your book of business, we talk often about 80/20. The power of 80/20. It's real that 20% of your clients give you 80% of your results. Well, let's replicate those right back to that last belief, but if you're not preparing yourself to grow in the type of account that you write, as I tell producers, as you get better every year, and you should be getting better every year, shouldn't your clients? That doesn't make sense? Most people agree with that, but you've got to prepare for the type of client you want to write, not hope that if that opportunity arises, that you may be ready because you won't.

I had a mentor years ago who said something to me. I'll never forget this. I was working on growing my business at the time. We're always looking to do that, but I had a different business. This is prior to when I was working with the Sitkins group and I was looking at growing my speaking and consulting business on my own, and I was talking with this mentor of mine and I was explaining my situation. I was explaining the type of situation I wanted to be in, the type of people I wanted to work with, the type of speaking engagements I wanted to be part of, and he said, "I love that, Brent. I love your vision of where you want to go. Now let me ask you a question." I said, "Sure."

He said, "Right now, if that type of situation, that type of opportunity presented itself, that you strive in your mind and what you want, are you prepared to deliver upon that opportunity at the highest level?" I said, "Well, certainly, when that comes up, I would start to really dive in," and he said, "It's too late. It's too late." I would say this with producers. I would say this to agency leaders as you want to grow your business that if you are not preparing for the highest level opportunity that you want, that you strive for, and that opportunity presents itself, it's probably too late, and because of that, someone else is going to take that opportunity. Someone else will take action upon that. Someone else will have a competitive advantage over you because now you're playing catch up.

Now you're trying to catch up to the competition or catch up to the fact that you might have missed that moment. Prepare for what you want. Don't prepare for what you've already done. Now, you should always prepare for all kinds of things, but just understand the mindset that I'm trying to share with you today. Prepare for what it is that you strive for, prepare that it's already happened, that when that opportunity arises, you go, "I'm ready." We're ready, and we're going to take action. When you say, "We can't write larger accounts," I think a lot of that comes down to preparation. All right. Here's one that... Again, this is a huge belief for us at Sitkins because we see the power of this. "Well, we can't really work on referral only, Brent." We can't work on referral only, or we can't work on majority of referral only, because there's always going to be some other business to a degree.

Maybe 80%. Well, why couldn't you work on referral only? "Well, because there's always going to be other business. It doesn't always work that way." Let me ask you a question. If you truly had the highest level client experience and a continuation process that we teach and share with our members, but a continuation that defines the documents, that delivers through stewardship and promise report that you are proactive in market conditions, that you are proactive on next steps, that you are proactive in a lot of different areas that most agencies are reactive on.

If you are proactive and prepared, back to what I just said, to have a true reverse referral process, you've identified future ideal clients at the highest level, you communicate why those clients would be important and effective in your unique process and how that relates to your current client because you've delivered upon that. Why couldn't you? Because here's something. Your best clients want to help you. Your best clients want to see you succeed. They really do. Now, if you make it hard for them, or if you're not professional about how you do it, you haven't earned the right, then it would be difficult, but when you do the right things and people say, "Well, we really can't work on referrals only, Brent. That's not realistic." It isn't realistic if you haven't done the right processes and preparation and procedures to earn the right and prepared to ask in the right way.

To me, that comes down to the fact of because we're not prepared, we can't do that. Again, much like what I said in the previous belief. Right, number six. "I know we hear stuff about differentiation and all this stuff, but at the end of the day, Brent, if you want to be real, you're not really going to differentiate outside of some of the pricing and some of the basic coverages and things out there that we see. We really can't differentiate at the highest level. That sounds nice, but that's not realistic." Okay. Okay. Here's the deal. If you want to be a quoter and floater, if you want a quote on every account, because every account's a possible opportunity and you don't want to define future ideal clients, and you don't have that positioned and why it matters to them, not just to you, you can't prove it, you can't back it up.

You're not asking differentiated questions at the highest level, you don't have a unique approach, you don't have a unique process that you use, you haven't leveraged the tools and resources that other agencies don't have or that other agencies have, but quite frankly, they don't do a very good job of it, well then no, you're not going to differentiate. You will be down to, "We have good people, we have good pricing, we've been around for a long time," all those generic things, versus truly being able to become that point of comparison as I mentioned earlier. What is your unique approach? How do you as an agency view things differently than almost all the other agencies out there?

Do you take the underwriter's view in how they approach things? Are you proactive in these key areas? Do you have a unique process? One of the things that our private clients have, which is a huge advantage... Now, you can create some aspects of this on your own, but we want to help make it easier for agencies to do this, are risk concierge program, which is the set offense. Do you have a set offense or a selling system when you're having conversations and your team's having conversations, your producers are having conversations with future ideal clients, opportunities in the marketplace to say things like, "The goal of this meeting is to better understand how you manage risk"?

Are you talking about true or total cost of risk and what that actually mean and walking them through and sharing with them a unique process and system that you have developed that changes the conversation? If you're not doing those things well, then no, it's very hard to differentiate in the marketplace, and you will very quickly come back to a transaction provider, a quote giver. By the way, my belief, you shouldn't be offering quotes anyway. That's what everyone else does. We don't offer quotes. What we do is through asking proper questions and preparation, and our unique approach is help you design and design together a true risk management program that fits the needs of your business to help your business move forward.

If you're looking for a quote, there's a lot of other options out there, but that's not going to serve you at the highest level, and that's not what we do here at our agency. There's a differentiated approach you can take. Does that take more work? Yes, it does, but it works when you do the work. When you do the work. All right. My last one, number seven. This is a huge one. This one is the cherry on top of all this, so to speak, in beliefs. It does come back a little bit to the first belief, but I want to take it a bit further. Here's the belief, and again, this is something that most agency leaders are not going to verbally say, but it's really more in their actions and certain things that we see, is this, "I'm done learning. I'm done expanding. I'm done growing."

"I'm done learning. I'm done expanding. I'm done growing. I'm good. I'm where I want to be. I'm good." It's like when people say, "I haven't read a book in three years," "I haven't gone to some as aspects of coaching or development of some kind." Listen. If that's your approach, you're done. "I'm good. I'm all right. I've reached the mountaintop," so to speak. By the way, if you're good with that and that's where you want to be, God bless you. My goal here isn't to criticize any specific individual. It's just the fact that... What are beliefs that hold agencies, their leaders, their producers, their teams back? This is one of them. "I'm done." One of my favorite quotes is this, if you're the smartest person in the room, it's time to get a new room.

Who do you hang out with? What does that group look like? Something I learned growing up in a small town is that you can feel really, really big and important in a small town. I love small towns for a lot of reasons, but there isn't a lot of competition there, so to speak. You start to do some of these things. You're like, "Well, I think I've got this one pretty much figured out," and all of a sudden, you go to a different town and you realize, wait a second. There's a lot more for me to learn and to grow upon and to challenge myself with that's going to continue to help me move in a positive direction. By the way, here's my belief, and I think this is true. There's no real plateau. In certain ways, maybe in a book of business for a while, but you're either growing or you're not.

You're either growing or you're dying. You're going the other way. To me, life is about growth. Every opportunity you have to grow, you can take advantage of it. This is a big part of why this happens, is that you've got to get out of your comfort zone. Why? Again, people don't necessarily say, "Hey, Brent, I'm done growing." No, they're not going to say that, but they're basically, "I'm good. We've been doing it this way for six, seven years. Life's okay. I'm winding things down. I want to be comfortable." Listen. I think we all should do things that provide certain comforts in life, but once you get too comfortable and you get in that comfort zone in certain areas, you become very complacent. Once you become complacent, you can't fully expand. I would just ask you from a belief, and these are questions I ask myself, by the way. We all have these traps or these gaps sometimes that we miss. Blind spots.

Where am I getting too comfortable? Where have I gotten so comfortable that I've taken things for granted, and if I take a step back and I really analyze it, I'm honest with myself, I've started to slip? I've started to become complacent. I've lost my edge. Anybody who is a growth-minded individual always is looking for areas to expand their game, expand their craft, expand their influence. Not purely out of ego, but it's because of what you were created for. We're either expanding or we're not. Those are the seven beliefs. I wanted to throw these at you. These are important things. Again, a lot of this is learning through my own experience, through learning with agencies, learning with producers, learning with insurance professionals, learning in conversations, learning with peers, learning with mentors, and I just asked myself like, gosh, there are beliefs that hold us back, and I'm hoping as I went through this, maybe one or two of these really struck you.

If they all impacted you, well, great. Look at it and go, "Okay, what do I need to start? How do I begin to shift my mindset? What does that look like?" I will say this. If you're an agency leader and maybe you're in a growth path, maybe you feel like your team's in a rut, we'd love to have a conversation with you, a strategy call as part of The Sitkins Network. Again, we're not a fit for everybody. We know that, but just like I shared today in this podcast, my goal, our goal, our mission, is to be an agency growth partner. To be a partner in growth. Of course, in organic growth and profitability and agency value, but just growth from a mindset standpoint. To establish a purpose of, "Hey, listen, there's a lot more for us out there," and part of that is we're going to challenge you. We're going to encourage you. We're going to work with your teams.

We're going to challenge you teams to say, "Listen. How can we help you develop to expand beyond things maybe you thought possible?" Of course, surround you with coaches, but also other network members who are achieving great things, who certainly always want to find themself in a room where they can learn and grow and not be the smartest person in the room, because there's other people with different types of thinking that are growth minded that may be different backgrounds and experiences, and they can share and learn with each other. Again, I want to offer that as an opportunity. If you're an agency leader, you want to learn more about what we do and how we can help you grow to your best version possible, go to sitkins.com/experience to learn about the best version possible experience, how that may fit with you.

Again, we don't work with everyone, but those agencies that are truly committed to the highest level of growth and the best version possible, love to have a conversation to see what might be possible in a relationship between The Sitkins Network and your agency moving forward. Hey, listen. I love to do these podcasts. If this has added value for you today in thinking about some of these things, give me a rating and review. We'd really appreciate it.

I am lining up right now some guests, getting some invites sent out with some really great guests. Some of these are some of our current members that we've been working with that I know can share some great wisdom with you. Also, some other influencers and thinkers in the industry that will provide value to you. By the way, if you've got a guest idea for me to interview and that you think would be a great value knowing the purpose of this podcast, reach out to us, [email protected]. Love to learn more and see if we can add some more guests to this podcast. I appreciate you and wish you all the best and your success. Thanks for listening.