Visibility or Sustainability? Defining Your Agency’s Path

Shane and Tonya discuss the rise of insurance influencers, the pressure to chase visibility over sustainability, and the challenge of rethinking your agency’s direction to create a business that aligns with your goals and works for you. 

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Transcript

Announcer: [00:00:00] This is IA Forward. Your Playbook for Success is an independent insurance agent. Here to help you knock it outta the ballpark are your host, Shane Tatum and Tonya Lied.  

Tonya: Welcome to IA Forward. Shane, I don't know about you, but my social media is being flooded more and more. With videos and ads on how to build my brand as an insurance agent,  

Shane: oh, it's everywhere. 

Uh, a tip, the secret sauce, the end all be all to how to be the next superstar. The brand I spend most of my time on LinkedIn, I'm sure it's all over Facebook and Insta and other platforms. It's crazy that everyone. Is going down this be an influencer. I guess that's what we would call it, like micro influencer, business influencer. 

It's all influencer, it's all brand building influencer kind of stuff.  

Tonya: It's so interesting to me [00:01:00] that for $17, I'll teach you to do this, or for $129 you're gonna. Be a millionaire or for $25,000, I'm gonna teach you how to do it. And you dig in to these people are paying for something because it's slick or maybe not so slick, but it sounds good. 

But when you look at what that person has accomplished, really. Either you can't find it or when you look at it, it's maybe a half truth. It just doesn't feel good to me. The thing about the insurance industry and how we are represented in the media and how some of the big guys represent us in their advertising, that's not who we are. 

I just wanna know, are we trying to build an agency? Or are we trying to build a brand?  

Shane: When you say agency, I immediately interpret that as a sustainable business, a solid business. Are you building an agency or a sustainable agency? Are you building a sustainable [00:02:00] business or a brand? It's a really good question for agencies today. 

That are seeing across this spectrum of people who present themselves as super successful. They're no longer in the agency business. We don't really get the rest of the story. Did they sell? Are they financially independent? Did 'cause they, they built an incredible business and sold it for a huge amount of money, and now they are sharing their wealth of information with the rest of the world and the industry. 

Or is it a situation for those that can't teach? That's the other question I have in mind. What's the rest of the story? What's being left out? Because we're only going to see the good stuff in the brand building advertising for. What are they're selling when we buy this stuff or get pulled into it? US salespeople tend to get sold by the shiny new object or the loud or slick [00:03:00] comparisons, the thief of joy kind of thing, looking across the spectrum and saying, that's what I want to be. 

We tend to get sold, and by the way, I'm gonna do this for you for 89 95 a month. There's something missing. If we really just get down to it, there's always going to be something else that's not being talked about.  

Tonya: I'm the marketing person. I believe in the idea of building a brand. Brand building is not bad. 

It is what I do and what I've dedicated my life for the last E 30, however many years we wanna not even think about, but to me, sometimes you have to think, okay, what were you trying to build when you started? When you started your agency, what was it that you. Wanted to build. And do you ever step back and say, okay, this thing that I'm building, this whole brand that I'm building doesn't even align with my goals, [00:04:00] and that creates burnout. 

The idea of building with purpose versus building out of pressure. If you're so pressured to be this insurance influencer, if that's not what you wanted to build when you started, it's not gonna be good for you long term.  

Shane: I have a situation right now counseling a young man that's built a really great high performing sales independent agency, like their sales behemoth, small agency, but writing a lot of business, doing a lot. 

He's not having fun. He's not in a good spot. He's got this. Incredible ability to generate sales, which is building a brand within his referral partner network. But it's reached a point where it's like a runaway train. The brakes have failed. He doesn't necessarily know what to do. A lot of salespeople, especially rainmaker salespeople, don't know what to do when success happens because there's an operational gap, a [00:05:00] business gap, how to build a successful business that's different and a lot of your. 

Best salespeople aren't always the best business people, which is the core function of why we started this podcast, how to make the producer to agency owner leap, and it's gonna continue to come back around. And right now it's amplified because of the influencer. Popularity. I think this is probably going to end up being one of the most important topics that we talk about. 

We could probably talk about it every single time we publish a podcast and still be relevant because there's always something else to talk about within this idea. Do I build a brand? Am I building a business? And I know we always talk about, man, they got a strong brand that's gonna make their agency more valuable. 

Not necessarily. I firmly believe if you grow your [00:06:00] agency to a size level, that you get on the radar of one of the larger m and a private equity backed, whatever, publicly organizations who might come in and just throw money at buying your book. They don't care about your brand. They don't even care about you. 

They just want. To buy your book of business. They're buying revenue and they'll pay a little more because they have arbitrage on their side. They can pay a premium for your book of business and immediately have equity in that book because they're going to scale it to a different profit level in terms of percentage of profits. 

Okay? They don't care about your brand because they can instantly grab your book and your revenue and go building. The brand has to support. Building the strong business. Otherwise, you end up with this off the rails, out of control thing, or you end up the flip side of that with this poorly [00:07:00] performing agency that's not operationally strong, which means you have. 

E and O problems potentially around the corner or over the horizon, or you have a big churn in staff because people don't like chaos. That might be okay with a little bit of chaos. If it's fun, call it fun chaos, but they're not okay with dysfunctional chaos. So operations becomes really important. 

Running your business well becomes really important, which is why we can't just say, I'm gonna build a brand. I'm gonna be an influencer. I'm gonna do this. And we see this back to your core question. We see this on social media right now where the portrayed successful thing is build this influencer brand, and that's where the money is. 

Tonya: People don't wanna buy insurance. The most successful influencers are people that are pedaling and using things people want or enjoy within the insurance world. It's [00:08:00] really not gonna happen. It's just not. Now, I'm not gonna tell you that people aren't gonna hop on TikTok. Or YouTube if they have a question and watch a video that answers their question, yes, that happens. 

Absolutely. But if you are wanting to build this thing of being an insurance influence, think about it from a marketing perspective. The influencers that you watch, the influencers that you follow are people that have to do with things that you find fun. Interesting that you want to as part of your life. 

For most people, that's not an insurance agent. Last week, my husband and I were going through our budget and when he found out how much our car insurance was, he goes, we just need a new insurance agent. Excuse me, do you know what I do? Let's come back. What pays our bills? And he's, can we at least shop around to see if there's [00:09:00] something cheaper? 

Do you know what we do? That's been done. We've been in this hard market for multiple years now, and even living with someone in insurance, my husband had absolutely no idea. What had happened to automobile rates. He is not going to follow an insurance agent as an influencer,  

Shane: I understand that we have to remove those rose colored glasses, so to speak about what we do. 

I'm not, I'm not against this idea of building a brand and influencing, et cetera. I, and again, I'll say that like you said, that I'm lean to the marketing side. For clarity. I just want to be clear on that. And I do agree that should be a, an element of fun. If you have that personality, if you have that ability to get in front of a camera, do a podcast, whatever it is that you are drawn to, bring some element of fun entertainment to the spectrum, that will probably [00:10:00] help. 

But it. It is a slippery slope. I want to say a little bit of caution there. Not every customer or prospect you're after is going to love the idea of a goofy, fun insurance professional. Let's use our examples around our attorneys, our CPAs, our medical professionals. I don't want to be crusty with my thought process. 

I'm not saying it can't be done, and I'm not saying there's not a place for it, obviously. Progressive, Geico, even State Farm, other big brands have done advertising that's fun. They've tried to make insurance more fun. But when I've got a problem and I go to my doctor, or I've got big financial tax questions and go to my CPA, I'm not choosing those people based on their brand influence they've built with their funny TikTok. 

And I know there's a place to show the lighter side or the personality side of the profession. I'm not [00:11:00] against that. There's also a place for, hey, when I got a problem and I need professional help, I want to go to a professional. Those things aren't necessarily connected. I'm not gonna choose who I go to as an attorney based on the. 

Influencer brand they've built. Think about that for a second. Maybe there's a place in your market for being the fun, lighthearted insurance guy or gal, but most of the time in what I call grownup insurance, let me register my car. It meets state standards. It meets state standards. I'm talking about grownup insurance, like. 

I got assets, like I got stuff,  

Tonya: the clients that we actually want to have a sustainable business.  

Shane: Yeah. There's a reason that all of the major carrier brands fight over the same customer. It's because they have stuff to protect, they have assets, they have needs, and there is risk management, [00:12:00] professional level stuff that can get damaged. 

If we're not careful, and so there is the flip side to get on TikTok and be funny. I'm not saying there's not a place for it. Again, I'm just saying it's a slippery slope. Be careful with it. That doesn't automatically equal successful insurance agency business. Just because you build a really cool, fun brand or an influencer level brand in the insurance industry doesn't equal. 

Automatic financial success or a great business. Those two things aren't necessarily related. We've seen it within the B2B agent realm. People who are selling things to agents, selling the next solution, selling the next tool. There's some micro influencers are industry influencers out there that do really well on the brand building influencer. 

Level, they got a lot of followers. I have no idea what their financial state is, what [00:13:00] their business is. A lot of them no longer are in the insurance agency business. We're never gonna know the answer to that. It may not be any of my business unless it comes up to this place where they're trying to sell the industry on something, but they really don't know how to execute it. 

As a business on their side. There's a lot of disruptors over the years. This is not new. A mentor of mine had lunch with him and his wife last week when I was out in Santa Barbara, took me to this wonderful place, Julie and I, to this wonderful place. Matter of fact, it's probably the most amazing place I've ever been. 

Just a restaurant in nice little area. He was cleaning out and had this stack of CDs. I don't even think they were DVDs. Right. So this is from the early two thousands, mid early, mid two thousands. So it turns out before there was podcast, there were subscriptions, CD subscriptions, to predecessor to podcast. 

[00:14:00] It was basically. Insurance industry influencers, recording discussions, and they mailed them out. So there's been influencers in our industry that go back decades, and there will be future influencers that come along when we're gone, retired, whatever we're doing. So there's always going to be someone selling things, selling ideas. 

Independent agencies have to cut through that. And understand, am I running a really good business here or am I just spinning my wheels with this brand idea? It is in conflict at times. I'm not saying, and I don't think Tonya is saying brand building is a waste of time. Nobody's saying that  

Tonya: since my title is managing director of brand strategy, I'm definitely not just wanna make that clear. 

So I still have a job, but hour after we get done recording this and Shane goes, Tonya is saying that brand isn't important. Do we need to keep her  

Shane: brand is important. But running your business is [00:15:00] equally or more important. If you build a brand and you don't generate revenue and you don't generate sustainable profits and business growth, then building the brand is not your answer. 

Those two things go hand in hand. That's what resonates with me. We can't just build a brand. Like we can't just increase our followers. We can't just do the thing that puts us in the limelight. Like there has to be sales, there has to be customer service, there has to be operational efficiency because we just build these brands and we just pedal brand building and we just pedal services to help you build your brand to what end. 

That's I think the point that we're trying to make today. Is, what's the end game? What are you building? That's the question Tonya's asking.  

Tonya: I wanna talk about how building the brand becomes the burden and the challenge to me wanting to be the insurance [00:16:00] influencer, it can really become this very dressed up burden. 

And it's, it's, if you put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig. Was that a good, was that a good Texas  

Shane: worth? 100%.  

Tonya: One. So if building this brand is causing you to be working more hours, but you're making less money, or you keep adding tools and services and carriers with no strategy, or you haven't been able to take a break in months, here's the one that's really trigger Shane. 

But if you dread Monday, then you are building a burden.  

Shane: Yeah, it all of the above. And. I've always joked for years that Monday's my favorite day of the week. I love my job that much, and that's probably, what's that called? An ick. I think that's the slang now, ick. It's probably some people's icks that I walk through the office on Thursday and say only three more days until Monday. 

That drives people crazy around here. It's still [00:17:00] fun, but I do mean it like I really. Do enjoy Mondays. You should enjoy your Monday if you're building a business, right? It should be fun to go to work every day. It should be fun to help people. Our business is so important to the economy. For it not to be a joy for it, to be a burden isn't a good thing. 

It's such a good business. Financially, it should be a joy. It's such a flexible business. It should be a joy. And so there's so many reasons that agents get off the rails and find themselves stuck in this burdened, overwhelming world. A lot of it is operational. A lot of it is they outsell themselves, and then it becomes a pride thing. 

You have to back up and go, okay, what am I really good at? What do I do every day That. Makes the cash registering. Am I the rainmaker? Am I the brand building influencer? But I need salespeople. What do I do [00:18:00] and how do I make my business successful beyond just top line revenue? One of the big things that happens that I see a lot of really good salespeople become agency owners. 

That's what we do at the Integra Partner Network. We help agents. We help people start independent agencies. We partner with them. We help them start sales who become agency owners. Because that's their dream, to build their own asset, to build it for themselves. We are 100% behind that concept. At some point, you have to make the leap from salesperson to owner, or at least be able to put those hats on. 

You can stay the rainmaker and still be the owner. It's very difficult to stay the rainmaker and become the chief operating officer. You can be the rainmaker, CEO, I think I'm the rainmaker, CEO in a way. A little different today, but in a way I do not believe I'm Rainmaker. COO or VP of [00:19:00] operations, or office manager or whatever you wanna put in. 

Our business today has moved. Two. Yes. We have titles, we have leadership level people, and I have three or four operational people who have various pieces of the business. Our business has grown to the point that it had to be broken down into segments in a traditional agency. It's not necessarily the case. 

You basically need someone to keep the train on the tracks while you pump the steam in the train. And where things get off the rails are those agency owners, salespeople, rainmakers, who have a little too much pride and they can't get out of their own way and recognize they're not an operational person. 

It's very rare that an agency owner is an operational person. And the best salesperson, and it's very rare that an agency owner is a rainmaker salesperson, superstar, and the best operational person. So you have to fire yourself [00:20:00] in some ways. Most of us that start independent agencies, incredible salespeople, rainmakers, most of you. 

Need someone to keep the train on the tracks, an operations guru, it will pay you extreme dividends, not just financially, but insanity, reduction of anxiety, all of those things. And that's the piece that I see with this brand building thing. Most of the time it's the rainmakers that are building these brands while their operational side is in total chaos. 

Because they're also in charge of the operations.  

Tonya: Here's the thing, if you have chaotic expansion, you're never gonna have the focused, profitable agency. That was probably your why. To begin with, if you go back and look at your why, your vision. Is that still true? And if you look at your agency from the idea of what feels heavy and what [00:21:00] flows, what flows is probably gonna be selling, and what's heavy is probably gonna be the organizational side of it. 

And then when you add this idea that your business has to become this social media influencer, micro influencer. Because some guy is selling this to you for $89 a month. If you wanna talk about getting away from investing in the agency that you started out with, it's gonna be a challenge. It really is. 

Shane: You can't just grow your way out of this. Let me go back to firing yourself. I've had countless conversations with agents. Who were solopreneurs. We've encouraged agents to be solopreneurs, to understand the operational side, not to stay solopreneurs forever. If they want to, fine, if they don't want to, fine. 

It's a business owner choice, but the path that I see the most frequent is [00:22:00] Rainmaker Sells superstar. Doing well enough on the service and operation side to hang on, builds top line revenue to $400,000 a year. Puts a huge chunk of that in their pocket. Creates a standard of living that I caution them is not sustainable. 

You're generating $400,000 a year. Don't create your standard of living on $300,000 a year. Salespeople don't like to hear that They're making sales. They see this revenue coming into their account. They are growing their business, and they're like, I deserve all that money, but there's a reckoning coming. 

That's what I see. A lot of times there's a reckoning coming in that scenario because what happens is if you're generating top line revenue $400,000 a year, then you got some taxes and you're trying to put 70% of that money in your pocket. Then you're not building margin for growing the business to a [00:23:00] profitable operational basis. 

Agents look at me a lot of time with deer in the headlights are like a really crazy look and what are you talking about? I'm making X amount of dollars a year, and I'm like, I get it. You're making an incredible living. But the reckoning that's coming. Is that you're gonna wanna keep doing that and you're not building any margin for your operational and support and servicing staff because you're it. 

What if we backed off and said, let's create a standard of living around 25 to 30% of that top line revenue for yourself? And maybe you can bonus yourself in the future, but let's create some standard of living, some percentage of revenue that allows you to have margin, because this is the answer to, you need to hire someone to manage your operation, to be the support, service management, operational side of things, because you're the rainmaker. 

The number one answer to that [00:24:00] question is, I can't afford it. I can't afford to hire. An office manager. I can't afford to hire an operations guru. That's not true. You can't afford it because you decided to operate or to pull all the money outta your business, so you are just a contracted salesperson at this point. 

You're not really an agency owner. You're a producer. With equity in your book. You're not an agency owner yet, and that's the leap. I encourage agency owners, salespeople who are becoming agency owners. That's the big leap. That's the hardest because they can't see like that horizon, like they struggle to see over that horizon. 

What do you mean? I'm putting $300,000 a year in my pocket? I'm successful. Yes, you are. But you either gotta put some brakes on the train, slow it down a little, or think about the margin. You're gonna need to hire help if you keep going the direction [00:25:00] you're going, and it goes to 700,000 a year in revenue and you're putting $500,000 a year in your pocket. 

Your percentages are still the same and you still have no margin, and the answer's still gonna be, I can't afford it, which is silly. You just didn't create the right approach to building a sustainable business that's going to work for you. You're still gonna be working for that business. You're still going to be doing a lot of that work if you don't create operational pay margin. 

As a salesperson, what are you building? What are you doing in your agency? What is the horizon that you're trying to get to? I think this is an incredible topic.  

Tonya: If this podcast made you uncomfortable or mad. Or you thought the things we were saying were stupid, then I want to challenge you to sit down and spend 10 minutes asking yourself, what are you really building?[00:26:00]  

And it's gonna be uncomfortable when you have to have this conversation with yourself, because if it's made you mad, then it's hit a trigger and that's okay. What needs to change? What can you simplify? What can you realign? How can you reimagine your agency to get back to your actual why? So you love Monday and you're not gonna find it if you don't think about it. 

Shane: I was gone for nine days, not a lot. One of the struggles that I have today, which is an incredible place to be. Is I have a team that does their part. Well, I almost felt a little disconnect because my team was doing business while I was gone.  

Tonya: By the way, I heard this in his tone of voice yesterday morning during my call with him. 

Yeah. My  

Shane: disconnect is that I'm so used to information. And when you're the rainmaker, the founder and the creator, your [00:27:00] hands are all over it. I get it. I would love to have these conversations with agents out there. I'll have 'em all day long, every day because it's, I'm not speaking from a place of, this is easy. 

I'm speaking from a place of, this is hard and I'm still doing it. It may offend you. You may get frustrated. You may get mad at us. But the reality is, I'm still doing this. If I'm in the influencer realm, I'm obviously podcasting. I'm doing it too. I'm building a business. I'm trying to build a business that serves me, not me serving it. 

And that's a different place. Some of the influencer crowd. The success that I'm currently seeing from the work of the last five to seven years is that I've transitioned from. That place of having to do everything to this place of operational people, different, different elements in our business. The business continues to run when I'm gone, and [00:28:00] obviously the ultimate thing to do is build a business that can survive you. 

That's my goal. Build a business that can survive you. It's still gonna be a more valuable business if it's capable of surviving without you. One of the things that buyers, especially big buyers, private equity, there are a lot of private equity investment organizations out there that are not operators, and they love the idea of businesses that can be self-sustainable, that can operate without the founder. 

It's not founder dependent. That's the place that we're talking about. What are you building? What are you doing? What kind of business are you going to have? Five years, eight years, 10 years down the road? That's important because if you're just building a contracted sales thing, understand what you're going to be doing five, eight years from now. 

A lot of the things you're doing right now, you're still going to be doing those things. It's okay. A lot of people want that type of [00:29:00] business. I'm not saying that's bad. I'm just saying, I want you to know what's coming, and I want you to know what you need to do. If you don't want that, if you want to have a business that serves you, understand there's an operational piece here and you're gonna have to make an investment in there. 

Tonya: Still the best business in the whole wide world  

Shane: soon.  

Tonya: I'm gonna leave us today with this quote from Serena Williams. I had to learn to be honest with myself, I had to take a step back and figure out what I really wanted. Attitude to choice. Make a great one. Bye y'all.  

Announcer: At the Integra Partner Network, we understand that carrier access is the key to your agency success. 

That's why Integra offers direct access to top rated personal and commercial carriers. Ensuring your agency thrives in today's challenging markets and with our comprehensive resources, profit sharing and bonus opportunities, technology and peer support. Oh, well, you retain a hundred percent of your book with no penalties to exit. 

Integra [00:30:00] is ready to empower you and your agency to find sustained growth. Find your way to Integra. Visit integra partner network.com today. That's integra partner network.com.