Resilience: How to Thrive Through Challenges

Shane and Tonya explore what it takes to thrive through challenges, from navigating a hard market to managing client expectation, and reveal their Words of the Year for 2025. Tune in for insights on staying steady, pushing forward, and embracing the opportunities that come with adversity.

IA Forward to can help you take your agency from good to great. Learn more at iaforward.com, and follow IA Forward on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.

Transcript

Announcer: [00:00:00] This is IA Forward. Your playbook for success as an independent insurance agent. Here to help you knock it out of the ballpark are your hosts, Shane Tatum and Tonya Lied.  

Tonya: Welcome to IA Forward and welcome to the end of your free trial month. Even though Shane said this year we did not get a free trial month. 

Shane: We're not doing it. We're not doing it.  

Tonya: I accidentally got a subscription to stamps. com this month and I don't even know how that happened. I called them. And ask them how that happened and how they got my credit card and the girl really couldn't even tell me that. And I know that's why there are services for this, but if somebody doesn't watch their credit card, it is bizarre how things can pop up. 

Shane: Something's gotta give. If I'm a free trial creator, I want people to do free trials. If I'm in the business, subscription business, I want free trials. And it reminds me of this old saying that my dad had when I was younger. He was notorious about not [00:01:00] buying insurance.  

Tonya: That's most agents.  

Shane: Yeah. And so his saying was, insurance is for selling, not buying. 

And that was just the same. If you work for Netflix, you love free trials. If you work for any subscription based organization, you love free trials. If you are a consumer or a business owner who buys things on subscription, then you don't love free trials because free trials turn into forgotten monthly recurring expenses, not monthly recurring revenue. 

Tonya: You know what we haven't shared with our listeners during our not so free trial month this year?  

Shane: I do not. What have we not shared?  

Tonya: We have not shared our Word of the Year. Wow. I've actually even made a logo out of your Word  

Shane: of the Year. You did. It's also our conference theme this year at the Integra Partner Network. 

And do you have a Word of the Year? I have. We just haven't shared that with each other. We always normally do that earlier, maybe before the year starts. We're past 250 episodes. We're like the Empty Nestor version of Podcast [00:02:00] Now. It's go with the flow. Oh, we're late. So here we are.  

Tonya: We're the Tony Sachery's of insurance podcasts. 

Shane: Seasoned. I love seasoned. At some point, 50 episodes was a big deal. Thank you guys for downloading that. We got a big bump on our downloads for our 250th episode. So that was cool.  

Tonya: Oh, yeah. Thank you. Confetti. Okay, so your word of the year for 2025 is  

Shane: resilient.  

Tonya: Oh, that is the independent agency channel right there in one word. 

Shane: 100 percent the independent agency channel over the last couple of years. And I'm actually so excited to talk about this at our. Partner agent conference in April, because what's hit me over the planning season and goal setting season and reflection season that is the last couple of months, quarter of the year is we're about to hit the five year anniversary mark for COVID lockdown. 

Tonya: That is crazy. I can't even fathom that. [00:03:00]  

Shane: Yeah, March, around 15th or so, somewhere like that, middle of March 2020, I still remember the video of Mark Cuban, who at the time was the primary owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team. I still remember the video of him at a game, courtside, getting the email or notification on his phone and just the jaw dropping look that he gave when the announcement was made. 

The NBA was one of the first movers. Outside of just the society as a whole in shutting and canceling down the season. And so that was just dividly, like, where were you when this happened? Where were you during 9 11? Where were you in the 2008? Housing crisis when the market crashed, like where were you and this, where were you when Covid Lockdowns were announced and I was in Galveston at the beach. 

We were on a spring break getaway. We had a, a house rented on Crystal Beach, a house full of my daughter's friends. I was getting [00:04:00] ready to build a. Fire on the beach, a fire pit, dig out a fire pit and light a fire for them on the beach. That was their wish, their dream was to go sit and roast marshmallows on the beach at night. 

And the COVID lockdowns happen, announcements, NBA season shuts down. That was almost five years ago and it has been a snowball headed downhill. ever since, especially in the independent agency system.  

Tonya: My word of the year this year is an old fashioned one. It goes back to the 1600s, and it's not used a lot in today's world, but I love it, and that is equanimity, which basically means being even keeled, to quote Shane. 

And it's maintaining calm and balance in the face of stress or uncertainty. It's characterized by an evenness of mind, and it's the capacity [00:05:00] to pause, notice, and reflect on your actions and reactions.  

Shane: I knew you were going to pick something hard to say. Can you give me the origin of the word?  

Tonya: It comes from the Latin words aqueus, which means even and level, and animus, which means mind or spirit. 

Shane: Are you  

Tonya: impressed?  

Shane: Why did you do this to us? I can't spell it. I'm not going to be able to pronounce it, but it's your word, not my word. So there you go. Resilience from the Latin verb maybe? Which means to rebound or to reclove it. I like recoil. That's good. Resilience dates back to the early 17th century. 

So choosing some old words today. We need to know where we come from. We need to know where we've been if we're going to be successful going forward.  

Tonya: I loved the idea of equanimity because it's about letting go of expectations and attachments to the idea of specific outcomes that you have in mind and [00:06:00] remaining calm when things don't go your way. 

As planned, because things never go as planned, especially in the marketing world, and especially as a producer, salesperson, business owner, going back to covid, who in the world had that planned? That was not on anybody's 2020 bingo card.  

Shane: Now, the conspiracy theory is they're going to say there was some plannings to that, No, we know that probably was not planned and no society was not planning on it who sits around and says, Hey, we'll have a pandemic. 

We should prepare for that. My dad was heading down before he passed. He was headed down a path of being a doomsday prepper.  

Tonya: My dad was one of those. Yes. And let me tell you when I have been stuck in my house for Several days due to snowmageddon on the Gulf Coast because it hasn't snowed here since the 1960s and the most snow that we have ever gotten in this part of the Gulf Coast is like two [00:07:00] inches and we have 9. 

5 inches of snow. So I wish I had the doomsday planning because last night I was to the point of trying to figure out what we had to eat. And there was slim pickings in there. We had fish because we always have fish. But besides that, it was  

Shane: questionable. I saw some place that got like 10 inches. Anything south should never get 10 inches. 

Anything.  

Tonya: Here in Pensacola, people have the screened in pools. Yeah. The the screened in pool rooms here in Pensacola. Lots of people have the screened in pool rooms on the back of their homes, and those cannot handle the weight of 9 to 10 inches of snow. By the way, just in case  

Shane: you were wondering insurance claim. 

That's one of those things that insurance claim waiting to happen, but not covered because people forgot to tell their agent that they had that. Of course, it's become pretty common from talking to some [00:08:00] Florida friend agent friends that You, it's so standard now that they've probably, do you have a pool, do you have a Florida room? 

It's probably a common question, I would guess at this point. That's one of those gotcha moments for insurance agents where people forget to add the, that it aren't standardized. So maybe it's becoming more and more standardized and that's now a common question.  

Tonya: Let's talk about why we choose a word. And, and for me. 

There's a few reasons. One is that it can adapt to change throughout the year, and another one is that it replaces the idea, for me, a traditional resolution, because resolutions created in December, January never work, but I can take this word and let it serve as a guiding principle, I guess, for me, Throughout the year, and it creates some clarity and focus on both the business [00:09:00] side and the personal side. 

So I always try to choose a word that will work both places for me.  

Shane: My word of the year is normally an internalized thing that starts first and foremost. With me, I go through and think about and pray through all kinds of planning things and think about words of the year I write down maybe candidates for word of the year. 

I Google things I search and it normally is internalized. And then, of course, I share that with my leadership team and you're a part of that. And then it would then become something that I start to externalize. All the way through to announcing it to our agency network and to our partner agents. And it doesn't mean that everybody has to adapt that word as their theme, but it just is that process for me. 

This year was different. Resilience was not an internalized scenario for me, and it was a word that started [00:10:00] externally looking at our people internally, our employees, our teams and looking at our work. Agency network. Our partners are independent agency owners. I didn't go. Oh, we're coming up on the five year anniversary of covid. 

I want to think about something that says rebound are pushed through the trials. That actually wasn't how it happened. It actually was the hard market. And the market conditions, the struggle with market capacity and educating consumers and business owners, customers to understand the insurance market and not always understanding the insurance market and people getting mad at us as an industry, as agents, as frontline people. 

It actually started there, and I said, you know, what's a word that would maybe help these individuals, individuals that listen to our podcast? So it actually started as an externalized [00:11:00] thought, which is really new for me. Normally, I start with me, because that's what most people do. What's my theme? What should my guiding principle, what all that? 

It was so different this year for me.  

Tonya: Many times our theme for our Integra Partner Network conference comes from your word of the year. And it's the opposite of that. This year, part of choosing your word came from the word for conference.  

Shane: It was and you hinted at the word. Originally, we were trying to come up with a conference word theme and I like resilience. 

That's good. It just got externalized from there and It wasn't as deep of a thought this year, but that's okay. I had plenty to do and I've been busy enough and I didn't need to spend extra energy necessarily on creating my word or coming up with the word of the year. It is though, so perfect to me. It went about. 

The last five years, even up through the last 12 to 18 months that independent [00:12:00] agencies have gone through, and it fits into the infinite game, which we talk about the insurance agency business being an infinite game strategy, and you're still here, you're still in business. You've made it through once in a century level pandemic, or maybe even more than that. 

You've made it through inflationary stuff. You've made it through insurance, pricing, carriers catching up, carrier bankruptcies. I get a lot of calls from private equity, large, publicly traded, global. Insurance broker distribution models, wanting us to join them, wanting us to talk with them, getting to know us and I want to meet people. 

I want to get to know the process. We're not trying to sell our business and we're not for sale or anything like that. And that's not our plan. But I like to listen and one of the really interesting things is [00:13:00] people are talking like valuations are still high for the agency broker space and valuations continue to be hitting new trends. 

And there are agency owners that are exhausted and saying I'm done. And I understand that especially those that are nearing or at retirement age that I don't mean this. Negatively towards that group that group of people it is a good time to think about it because you're near retirement age Or you're at retirement age Valuations are high. 

You don't have the energy to grow it more. It is a good time I totally respect that but i'm looking at us you're here five years later No, I'm not selling, I just worked my butt off for several years. We're coming near the end of the hard market over the next little bit, months, maybe year. I know we're on the downhill slide from the heavy lifting. 

Like, I want to enjoy some fun times again. And so, there's a little bit of that too. And resilience to me, and hopefully to our [00:14:00] listeners and our agents out there, resilience is something you can latch on to and say, you have been resilient, you are. Congratulations. You are resilient. That's a big characteristic. 

You can latch on to and feel confident in and be excited about  

Tonya: equanimity from a business perspective. Is about empowering others and being able to mentor them with calmness and patience and helping others find balance amidst the idea of competing priorities and chaos, decision making under stress. So that is very internalized for me, but also gives an opportunity to be very external. 

With my team and hopefully affects the people around me in a positive way.  

Shane: I'm just going to be open and honest with you. I'm going to struggle saying it. I'm going to, I'm going to say what's your wow. Maybe your, your [00:15:00] W O Y. It's a fantastic word. Because that is business ownership, that is leadership in business, leadership level, that is a standing forever requirement. 

The ability to be the calm in the storm, the ability to not let the moment get the best of you, it's hard to do that. And some people aren't wired, and it has to be learned. Some people are not wired. Some people are wired to panic. I've learned that through the years. Some people are wired to feed off of running around with their, like, their hairs on fire. 

Uh, there are people that are very successful that work better under pressure. And they create the fire because they're not great at whatever. And then the fire comes and they're the people running towards the fire. And they are, [00:16:00] wow, that was fantastic. What just happened? We went from this thing over here to being out of sorts to this great result. 

It just is so important that we are that way as leader.  

Tonya: Going back to resilience, let's share Shane's secret to success of how to build a resilient agency, learning from failure, fostering innovation, staying adaptable, all of the things that are important to being resilient.  

Shane: So, In my early days, I was the accounting manager, bookkeeper, moonlighting as a producer. 

So I was a producer, but I was also in a small family owned agency. I was having to keep the books. I was having to do the bookkeeping. And while I had a finance background, I did not have an accounting. Background as a matter of fact, I wasn't a fan of accounting and I find that to be true with a lot of finance people like they love finance because they don't like accounting [00:17:00] and accounting people like accounting because they don't like finance accounting people. 

Finance is too blurry. Accounting people need like this structured stuff and they need they need things to balance to the penny.  

Tonya: One is very gray and one is very black and white. My  

Shane: wife Is our accounting manager, but also a finance degreed individual. And I learned from her and as she would go through things, when something would be out of balance, or I would say, can we do this? 

And she would say, we can try, we can always back it out. And it was like. What? I was so scared of the journal entries and the accounting process and agency billed invoicing and accounts receivable processes and I was so nervous to mess that up early on that it was this fear. There was this fear [00:18:00] about it. 

And she showed me that, you know what, it's fixable, we can fix this. And she showed me, helped me know that, hey, at one point in time, before those days, I was the easygoing, relaxed, Matthew McConaughey type attitude. I was that guy in college and early. And then this business accounting, bookkeeping, run a business thing consumed me and created this. 

Oh my gosh, the world's on fire kind of thing and she brought me back to that center of it's going to be okay. That's where we have come through this and resilience is what you just keep pushing through. I love to quote movies and I'm a chick flick. Guy, I'm not ashamed and sleepless in seattle. What am I? 

Yeah, there you go So there's a line in sleepless in seattle where the kids called in to the radio host [00:19:00] show and the dad tom hanks on the phone and it was like Dr. Marsha, Dr. Marsha Fieldstone, Radio America, there you go, there's your roots coming back out back to the radio industry and he like relaxes and embraces the question from Dr. 

Fieldstone. How do you get through it? And she was everything to me. He had lost his wife and she's everything to me and you just get up and you just breathe in and out. He said it way better than I did. But you just get up and you breathe in and out and you start a new day. You go through the day. That is resilience. 

Whether we've experienced tragedy in our life, loss of family members, failure in business, failure as an insurance agent, or we made a mistake, E& O claim, the fear. of an ENO claim. We had an ENO claim and it was painstaking. It was arbitration. It was enough to make you crawl into a fetal position. We just got up and we kept breathing in and out [00:20:00] and we were resilient. 

Our people were resilient. That's how you build a business, an insurance agency, an independent insurance agency, and you build it with the mindset of just continuing to get up every day. And. Customers have been way more vocal, of course, over the last couple of years, and insurance isn't the only thing that has increased in their life, but you may be the one that got it. 

You may be the one that got the vent, and I feel like that is a lot, there's a lot of truth to that. Insurance is easy to vent to. It's like, why don't you, maybe you're accessible. Maybe that's the other part of it, is you're accessible. I'm paying 24 a month, the increase is 350 percent and the insurance increase was 48 percent and you're lucky because it was 48 percent and you're venting to your CSR, this person who is a mom, a dad, a [00:21:00] daughter, a husband, a wife, et cetera, you're venting to this person like they're the evil people. 

But you don't call up Netflix and do that to the CEO. So the locality and feel of our industry in the community, people we go to church with, people we see at the school events that are our customers, because we love marketing local and we love being local. It's, there's this friction because we feel like we've betrayed them, even though we're not in control of this and we have options and we try and we do different things. 

But then that customer vents to you. So it's just being resilient through understanding that they're probably not venting about you. They're venting at you. And who knows what Got them in this mood four hours earlier because it could have been their teenager It could have been their teenager. They got them in this mood. 

Tonya: I don't have teenagers I have a perfect dog and when I found out yesterday That between my [00:22:00] insurance rates going up in the new assessment my house note went up 600 a month if I did not understand what was going on in the Florida insurance market A 600 a month increase would have probably made me extremely upset at my insurance agent. 

I wouldn't have really been upset at the agent, but I would have been called them and said, Hey, look, what in the world, but I know what's going on. And it's 600 a month. Let's figure it out. Also the same day, the heat went out on the left side of my house, but 600 a month is huge. And the idea of people getting hit with that, not knowing anything about our industry, I get it. 

Shane: That's why we have to continue to be resilient, to have the conversations, like don't shy away from having the honest conversation, but back to [00:23:00] equanimity, using both of our words of the year here, being resilient, back to equanimity here. Being able to have the conversation with the upset customer is a huge part of our value and not take that with us, not carry it to our spouse or our home at night or whatever. 

The next customer conversation or the sale that's coming the next, the new customer that you're trying to write, or okay, here's the really one that gets us as agents carrier marketing rep or underwriter, that one will get us into a reputation problem with one of our most important partners, if not the most important partner and being able to do this resiliently with equanimity. 

And being able to be the calm in the storm raises our value, it creates that value, and I still believe, I'm going to continue to believe that this is the best [00:24:00] business model in the world, independent agency system, and the independent agency channel, it allows us to be so much more than an exclusive agent Environment or a call center, a salesperson for a direct channel. 

It just allows us to be so much more, have so much freedom, but there comes with that a closer feel to the customer. And the reality that our business model choice model is that we can actually do something about it. The exclusive agent, that's all I got for you. That's all I can do. We can adjust your deductibles again. 

It can get rid of some of this extra coverage that you have, save you a little bit of money. I can take you back from 600 a month increase. I can get you to 585. You want to do that for 15 a month? Do you want to lose 150, 000 worth of coverage? Is that good math? What do you want to do? We have a different choice, even though we have had capacity problems [00:25:00] in the industry, we still have more choice than the single carrier offering. 

And maybe that's part of the expectation. We've created that expectation for the customer. We have to balance that. We have to make sure that the customer, it may not be the right move for them to move from an endorsed packaged H03 to a non endorsed H03. It may not be the best interest to move your policy from carrier A Who's giving you full replacement cost on your 17 year old roof to company B who wants to put you on a roof schedule, ACV. 

Because OR says, no, we're not going to write you unless you replace your roof. Because we're not writing roofs that are 17 years old right now. So there's lots of different ways that we can use these words of the year to, I believe, just get up, breathe in and out in Tom Hanks's words. And keep doing what we're doing because even though sometimes it doesn't feel like we're winning we are winning We are winning market [00:26:00] share. 

We are winning our businesses go back to your revenue last year Don't your taxes are about to come due you're gonna see you probably had one of your best years ever in 2024 in terms of Taxable income.  

Tonya: I'm going to leave us today with this quote from Kobe Bryant. Everything negative, pressure, challenges. 

It's all an opportunity for me to rise.  

Shane: Attitudes of choice, make a great one.  

Tonya: Bye  

Announcer: y'all. At the Integra Partner Network, we understand that carrier access is the key to your agency's success. That's why Integra offers direct access to top rated personal and commercial carriers, ensuring your agency thrives in today's Challenging market and with our comprehensive research Resources, profit sharing, and bonus opportunities, technology, and peer support, all while you retain 100 percent of your book with no penalties to exit. 

Integra is ready to empower you and your agency to find sustained growth. Find your way to Integra. Visit IntegraPartnerNetwork. com today. [00:27:00] That's IntegraPartnerNetwork. com.