Swing Big. Miss Big. Win Big.

Great ideas don’t build successful agencies, action does! Shane and Tonya discuss why taking big swings (and sometimes missing) is the only way to truly grow. From overcoming analysis paralysis to tuning out the noise of social media “experts,” they share real-life stories and practical advice for agency owners ready to stop overthinking and start swinging for the fences. 

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 outta the ballpark are your host, Shane Tatum and Tonya Lied.  

Tonya: Welcome to IA Forward, Shane. I was going through some of my notes from our recent Integra partner agent conference and I came across a quote that I absolutely loved, and it is from Jeff Breor. 

Executive director of the Independent agents of Dallas, you've got to get in there if you want to be a great baseball player. You can read every book about baseball, every book on how to have a great swing. But until you get in there and really start swinging, you're never going to get it.  

Shane: Do the work. The people that risk failure read the books, learn. Draw it out on the whiteboard, but never actually pull the trigger to start. There's a lot of risk of failure. There's a lot of, what if I'm not good at it? What if I'm this? What if I'm that? And [00:01:00] you can't ever become your full. Capable person, your full ability. 

You can't ever do that just by reading about it unless you have at bats against live pitching. You can read about it and then you can go to the T and hit off the T, and then you can do some front toss and you can look like a million bucks. But then you face live pitching and it's different. And if you don't have live at bats, then. 

You don't really know if you're making progress or not. You gotta get in the game. You gotta do it.  

Tonya: I've talked with so many business owners over the years that have fantastic ideas, but they're so afraid. They're gonna make a mistake. They're so afraid it's not going to work, that they never even think about reaching their potential  

Shane: ideas sometimes get in our way of success. 

My own career, my own path to [00:02:00] this point, a lot of ideas. Many of which never got off the whiteboard or never got out of the mole skin and never made it into an actionable thing. And I know that there are the situations where people go too fast, and I'm not necessarily talking about, Hey, try every single item that you come up with, but this sort of failure to launch or failure to start, failure to do. 

Is a big problem because you do get to this point where it's okay if I do this and it doesn't work, then am I gonna get a second shot? Am I gonna waste money? Am I gonna lose my money that I spend on this? There are some things that you should go through in terms of just evaluation, manage. What I would say is your downside risk. 

What's the most I would lose if I tried this? If it's a financial situation, if it's just your pride, we're not talking money. We're just talking pride. That's the thing. That should be the easiest. I failed so much [00:03:00] over the years. I don't know if you've seen it. The Derek Jeter, they really enjoyed watching him play for the Yankees through the years. 

He was my wife's favorite player. She loved the Yankees, she loved Derek Jeter. The problem with all that is, is that this started when Derek Jeter and I are like the same age, like we're like a year apart, and so. It's not great when you're 28 and you're a washed up juco and then a, eventually a Division one college baseball player that never made it into the professional area. 

Derek Jeter recently, just in the last few days, few weeks, I. Gave the commencement address at the University of Michigan, the school that he was supposed to attend, had he not been drafted in the first round by the Yankees. And of course, he's a big Michigan fan. We know the history there. You know Tom Brady, Derek Jeter, Brady's a late round Michigan draftee. 

There's just a lot there. Sorry, Ohio State fans, but. He's a huge Michigan fan from Michigan, but [00:04:00] never went to school there. He gives this commencement address and I encourage everybody to go listen to this address. It's only 16, 18 minutes long. He does exactly what you would expect. Hall of Famer, Derek Jeter to do in giving a speech. 

He has very specific points, very specific things. He has a plan. He executes on that plan. His commencement speech is a microcosm of his career in the way he approaches life and is extremely successful, not only from a baseball, professional baseball athlete standpoint, but now as a businessman, philanthropist, all these things. 

And one of his major points, which I say this a lot, is he talks about failure. He talks about You're going to fail because I talk to my daughter, youngest daughter who's a college athlete about failure a lot and learning from that failure and you're going to fail. And it's better to risk the [00:05:00] failure than to not risk at all for those that sit on the sidelines their entire life. 

I'm sorry. That's miserable. Because you're doing a lot of what ifs. When my youngest daughter entered college sports, I said, this is the hardest thing you're ever going to do. I don't want you to have any regrets, so leave it all on the field. And we created a phrase called Fail hard. And the whole point was, if you're gonna fail trying to do something great, fail trying to make an incredible play. 

Fail trying to be the hero. Not selfishly. I don't mean that could be putting the bunt down for a sacrifice bunt. It could be a squeeze play. It could be anything. Not from a selfish standpoint, but want to be the one standing in the batter's box with the game on the line. Winning run at third two outs, full count. 

Want to be that person. Want the ball hit to you for the final play. [00:06:00] The risk is you fail. The risk is you don't become the hero that day. The risk is you make an error. We created this go dive and not make the play risk it. 'cause if you don't dive, you don't know if you've made the play or not. And I think about that with Jeter's commencement address. 

He's very adamant you are going to fail. And he tells the story about. The fact that he committed 56 errors or something like that, his first year of professional baseball, which is really difficult to do. That's a lot of errors. He's right. That's a lot of errors. And he failed, and he succeeded because he failed. 

We have success at the Integra Partner Network because we failed. People on our leadership team are successful in their roles because they have failed. If you learn from failure, then you're better for failure. And that's something that is really critical to understand here. If you're one of those folks that's sitting on the sidelines that's afraid to take that next [00:07:00] leap after reading the book, then you're never really gonna get. 

Anywhere you've gotta take that step. You've gotta have the at bat, you've gotta risk the failure.  

Tonya: Let's talk about what that failure looks like and what it feels like. With the passing of my father and my mom moving to the Pensacola area, after that, my life has changed a great deal. And one of my very dear friends, my very first competitive ballroom partner and his wife moved to the panhandle a few years ago, and we've seen them socially and they're really great friends of ours. 

And Rodney came to me in January and said, Hey look, I think that you need to do something for you. And both he and his wife are doctors and Rodney's a doctor slash pharmacist. And he said, I really think that you need to do something for you. Let's dance. And I [00:08:00] basically told him I didn't have time for this. 

And he says, no, let's just get together. One day a week, we'll get in the studio, we'll do something that just allows you to focus on you. And then he said, let's plan to compete at Peach State, which is an event in Atlanta in March. And I said, no. Then he said Yes, and we went back and forth and he said, what do we have to lose? 

What's the worst thing that can happen? Then my brain went to that, okay, this is gonna be a comeback, and you start to get in your head, and I'm gonna work really hard and this is gonna be fantastic. And a lot of people went to support us. And when I tell you that this was a disaster. This was a failure of magnificent proportions. 

It was a failure at the level that nobody would even look at us after. Like people would avert their eyes because it was so incredibly bad. And we were talking and having this conversation, and then he's, are you [00:09:00] okay? And I said, yeah, I'm okay. Nobody died. Nobody got injured. We just weren't ready to get out on the floor. 

And yeah, it was bad, but in the big scheme of things, it's okay and we keep going. And it changed my mindset of this idea that dance or sports or whatever you're doing has to be flawless. Nothing that we do in life is ever going to be. Flawless. No matter how hard you work, no matter how hard you try, it's not gonna happen. 

And being fearless is so much more important than being flawless. And that particular day, had I been worried about being flawless, I wouldn't have gotten out on the floor and neither would he. But we just said, okay, let's go out there and be fearless. And we gave it 100% and it was 100% bad, but we did it. 

And there were a whole lot of people on the sidelines that didn't try.  

Shane: There is [00:10:00] just this. Assumption in society, again, we pick on social media a lot that is social media created in a way you could be videoed now and go viral and it unbeknownst to you that you're being videoed. My wife and I, when our girls were younger, our girls loved to make videos of us in our natural state and then send them to their friends. 

Now. They never posted them, so they never posted 'em because they were afraid of the severe backlash that would've happened for posted them. There's this element there that we believe that we're supposed to be perfect, which to your point, completely unattainable, never going to be that way. Even the people that you see are not obviously perfect. 

The whole thing of celebrities without makeup is one of those realities. You see 'em in the movies, you see 'em in the fashion magazines. You see 'em in their glamor. Environment and then you see them without all of that, and they are very normal. Very few celebrities [00:11:00] are super supernatural from a standpoint of the way they look is the way they look. 

I. And we could go through all of these things about just why we are the way we are and why we seek this perfection. And the reality of it is that we're never going to attain it. And that goes for your business as well. That goes for your agency. The process probably is never going to be perfect. The sales pitch is probably never going to be perfect. 

It can get better. It can always be improved, and if you're not always willing to try and improve it, then you're not making progress. Understand that point is not perfection. The point is to be as good as you can be, and that doesn't have to be as good as someone else. It never has to be that. I think about some conversations with our retail director, Tara Graham, and our retail environment. 

Has been growing in Deep East Texas and a combination of some local [00:12:00] acquisitions along with community relations efforts that have spurred this natural organic growth. We have agencies in our immediate area. I. In the Texas forest country that have agency ownership retirement, a couple of large agencies that have sold to out-of-state organizations, which has left a void for local ownership. 

We've been able to achieve organic growth through that. And what's happened is. The adjustments with personnel, the introduction of different departments, the creation of a service center. In the last couple of months, the hiring of a service center director leads us down this path of, okay, we need to look at how we're structured and the comical, fresh, raw conversation. 

Shane, me, I get accused sometimes of. Enjoying change a little too much and needing to change something, and [00:13:00] why are we changing this? And the reality of it is that as you grow, change is inevitable. You can't keep the same structure when you're a one person agency and be really good at what you're doing. 

When you're a 10 person agency. It won't be the same. And the funny conversation is, Tara coming to me with the proverbial hat in hand. We need to make a tweak. We need to make a change. And I'm like, aha. How does it feel? Now you're in my seat. This is great. Of course, she's a hundred percent right about it. 

She's thinking about the business and she's looking at what's going on and. We need to make adjustments, we need to tweak, and it's going to be for the betterment of our people. It's gonna be for the betterment of our clients. It's gonna make our business stronger. And if we're just sitting there on paper all the time, or reading about what somebody else is doing, you gotta get in it. 

You gotta mix it up. You've gotta stand. That growth leads to adjustments. It's [00:14:00] not just what somebody else is doing or what you read. It's what works. One of the elements that I wrote. Just in the last year was pay really close attention to what works. Look at the evidence of what works. Then ignore what other people are saying necessarily that if your stuff works for you, then do that. 

If other people are like, this is how I do it and this is how everybody should do it, because I'm the king or queen of the world of the insurance agency growth business, and oh, by the way, you can now buy my services for X number of dollars, does that work for you? I don't know. Why are you trying to do what somebody else is doing? 

Because their social media said it was better. That's a big part of what's going on in the industry right now, and we have a lot of agency owners that I am so pumped about that are moving into the independent agency space, getting a little bit overwhelmed [00:15:00] because they're seeing people talk about. How they should do it because they are doing it this other way. 

And the reality of it is that we have a lot of agency owners that are already doing it really well, and they should just tweak what they're doing and keep doing that. That's what works for you. So keep doing that. And that's a big part of what's going on is that's part of back to reaching for that perfection or trying to be something that you're not. 

And not looking at the evidence of what works for you.  

Tonya: The majority of our partners that are part of our Integra partner network came from. The captive industry, it is hard to start over. It is so difficult to start over and you've built this successful agency and you wanna do something else, and you feel like you're stuck and you're miserable, and it goes back to. 

The idea of you are not a tree you can move. It is [00:16:00] scary. It feels like failure. It feels like you're giving up this thing that you've worked so hard to build and you are in a way, but. When you're building something for yourself and you can do it your way, it's so much greater.  

Shane: It is, and it's more fulfilling. 

It's more valuable if you do something, I'll pick on like the Edward Edward Jones or the Raymond James, or that whole branching concept in the financial area. I'm not against that. I've got. Really good Edward Jones representative here in our community that we work with. So I'm not knocking that as an option. 

I'm saying as an independent insurance agent, as a property and casualty independent agency, you're building this brand that is, I. You. That is something you're creating that is a part really of who you are. Like you, the blood, sweat, tears, thought process here, the sweat equity that goes into that. And there's a lot of fulfillment in that [00:17:00] in, in my view of things and. 

If you're doing that for somebody else's brand, as a franchise, as a representative, as a whatever of something, whether it's McDonald's versus the local restaurant, and just to use an example that you, you've created this mystique about this. Thing. There's just so much more to it now. Do you make more money? 

I don't know. McDonald's franchisees obviously make a lot of money because they keep growing McDonald's franchises and there are really good franchises and there are some, obviously some other franchises that aren't so good. And I, I love the growth of those things. I'm a franchise kind of follower in that way because it's interesting to take systems and how to make that better, et cetera. 

The independent agency system. It is unique to the owner, the founder of that agency. It is such a refreshing, bootstrapping kind of thing that I just feel like gives you a lot of joy [00:18:00] and fulfillment in creating something. It's a business that can be done that way. It doesn't require the McDonald's University how to flip the hamburger, how to make the fries. 

It doesn't require that, which is fascinating. That's something that's always been interesting to me. And that's why I would encourage someone to try and risk the failure and try the idea that you have of how to grow your independent agency the way you want to grow it.  

Tonya: To quote Jeff Brior again, if you've met one independent agent, you've met. 

One independent agent.  

Shane: That's right. And it makes us so unique and it drives our technology providers insane because they can't create one way to do it. Like standards have always been this thing, the proverbial accord forms that everybody loves to make fun of in our industry. Now we have things like Ivans and download and file formats, and we have, we've created our own [00:19:00] little unique environment to transmit data. 

And you have these AI companies coming along that are like, this is crazy. What are we doing? And you have in texts trying to be disruptors. And the reality of it is that sometimes. Yeah, I'm not against disruption, but sometimes standardization is okay. Don't forget you're in the insurance business. You're not in the technology business. 

Technology's a tool. So again, I say this with our AI partners. I say this with our InsureTech partners. Look, my goal for the Integra Partner Network and my role as leadership there is. Is to be able to help agents discern between, look, should I invest in this or should I just keep doing what I'm doing? 

Keep the main thing. The main thing. You're an insurance agent, you're a risk manager, you're, you're an insurance advisor, you're not a technology company, so don't confuse yourself. Operations are a part of your business operations. Are not your business. [00:20:00] A lot of agencies get just absorbed with their operations and forget they're in the insurance business. 

Look, if you're not looking at the client as a retail insurance agency and working your way backwards, you're forgetting things. If you're looking at your people. Only, and you're saying if we just move this piece over here and this piece over here, I say this 'cause I'm guilty of it. I've done this before. 

This is one of my failures. If we move this piece over and do this and move this around and do this, our world's gonna be better. And then we get into it and it's, Hey, we forgot about the client. This isn't gonna work. Oh yeah. We have a client that pays premiums, that generates revenue for us. Start there. 

Start with your client. Work your way back. You're saying  

Tonya: don't let the bureaucracy get in the way of success.  

Shane: Don't do that. And as we grow in our agencies, we forget that we're in the insurance business sometimes, or we forget that if we don't ma sell insurance policies, manage our client's risk, be [00:21:00] available to our clients. 

If we don't do all those things, then all the efficiency in operations is irrelevant.  

Tonya: I'm so sick of people yelling at me on social media to buy their insurance solutions. I just wanna say, bring it down. Don't yell at, I don't need people to yell at me. Let's have a conversation. But the yelling needs to stop. 

Especially the yelling in front of the $200,000 car. I'm like, I know that car does not belong to you.  

Shane: It's this culture thing that's going on. The other one, and again, we want to, we try to always be the positive ones. As the best we can, but picking a fight and yelling at multi-billion dollar insurance companies that they're stupid is not a good way for the industry to improve. 

First of all, you're not the first to do that. That's been going on for four or five decades. Okay. And the newest. [00:22:00] Freshest approach is to go out there with, you're the end all, be all technology, solution, ai, whatever you are, and that all insurance companies are dinosaurs and all agents that keep doing it this way are dinosaurs and idiots, and if they don't do this, they're gonna die. 

That's been said for. 50 years and they haven't died. What is a little bit interesting is the misunderstanding about our industry when you're trying to actually sell in our industry or be a B2B operator in our industry, and you're telling your potential clients that. They're dumb, they're old, they're not capable, and yet they're the ones that continue to make the profits and stay in business and continue to grow. 

They're keeping the main thing and hey, I'm all about disruptors and being a disruptor. I'm not saying you can't be a disruptor. I'm saying the messaging as a disruptor is the concern that I have. [00:23:00] And that's the part, that is the thing that happens about once every eight to 10 years. There's a new cycle and unfortunately for me, I'm in that third cycle and about to start my fourth cycle. 

I was part of the yelling in the late nineties, early two thousands. Okay. There's part of my failure is I was part of that yelling, and I don't think the yelling works. I think it's a turnoff. I think really specifically in this day and age, it's a turnoff. So it's not cool. Maybe there is a, a portion of the industry that's yelling with you. 

Fair enough? There's another huge portion of the industry that's going, eh, you're not serious. You're not a serious founder, you're not a serious marketer. You're not a serious whatever. That's not going to bring the real change that you're trying to bring to the table. You're trying to be a disruptor. 

You're trying to bring this new thing. You're trying to sell your success. On others, [00:24:00] but telling everybody that they're dumb and idiots and they don't know what they're doing and we, and you do that is gonna be a little bit hard for people in the masses to grab ahold of.  

Tonya: I'm almost wondering if. We are doing nothing because there's so many people yelling at us. 

And it goes back to that whole idea of the confused mind does nothing. We put our plan on paper, we whiteboard it, we do whatever, and then another message pops up and it's, oh, maybe this isn't right. Maybe I should do this instead. And. Then it's maybe this isn't right. I'm going to try this. And we create this camel, which is a horse created by committee. 

And our idea never comes to fruition. And I see this happen with agents. I've talked with agents, I've talked to business owners outside of our industry, and I see this happen so many times, and my husband and I have [00:25:00] started. Talking about this new mantra and it's on the whiteboard in his office. It's on the board in my office, and it says never two days. 

And what that means is we can have a bad day. It's okay. We can skip doing the things that we know we're supposed to do one day, but never two days. And if we look at that from an ownership perspective, if you keep putting it off and keep putting it off because. Something better may be out there, then you're not trusting yourself. 

You're not trusting that you know how to best run your business. How to best own your brand. Okay, I'm gonna think about this, but I know what's best for me and I'm never gonna let two days go by. That I don't do what's best for my agency.  

Shane: One of the things that my youngest daughter and I have had conversations with throughout her season this year is she's had a great season, but she had [00:26:00] as most players, matter of fact, I don't know that any player on any roster hasn't had this. 

Derek Jeter included. It's okay to go, oh for three. It's okay to have an O for four, an O for three game. It's okay to have a bad defensive game. What you can't do is you can't combine those things across two or three games. To Tonya's point, it's okay to go O for three. It's not great to go O for three, two games in a row. 

It's not great to go O for three, three games in a row. And so there's this consistency thing that comes to mind for me when we're talking about our businesses. If you're in that, oh, for three scenario slumps are silly mental things, and slumps tell me is you didn't make an adjustment. And there's adjustments to be made potentially. 

And instead of going refuse to go, oh, for three a second time, lay down a bunt for a hit. Do something. Have an at bat, make an adjustment with what's going on. See more pitches. There are [00:27:00] things you can do, but if you just get back up there and keep swinging and being a robot. Then you're not really making an adjustment. 

And if we can take that and apply that to our businesses and say you had a bad day because you didn't feel like doing what you needed to do, or you yelled at your people or something happened and you wake up the next day and you refuse to make an adjustment and you repeat that cycle. And to Tonya's point, never two days in a row, it's okay. 

Let's look at what worked, what didn't work, and let's make that adjustment that's always necessary. And whether it's two days in a row, whether we're talking about two years in a row, maybe more applicable to our businesses, Hey, we thought we were doing right by going down this path where we tweaked our process or where we tweaked our approach. 

But the evidence. A year in is telling us this doesn't work. Now the next question is, does it not work because you didn't give [00:28:00] it enough time or does it not work because it just flat out doesn't work? Now this is why you get paid the big bucks. This is why there's no perfect answer, number one to that question. 

It's prayer, it's evaluation, it's looking at the evidence, and then it's stay the course or make a tweak. And I think about this. Watching others problem. And if you're doing something and you're successful, and I see this within our own Integra partner network because it's real. Like it's a thing around like agents. 

There's agents, group of agents having super success. There's a group of agents having success, there's other agents wanting to learn from that success that are earlier stages. And the successful agents and then what I would call the super successful agents. Some of that is perception and nothing more. 

It may not be actual on paper financial success. It may be that the ones. [00:29:00] Having success versus super success are living a different lifestyle. They may be exchanging extra earnings for extra vacation, extra comfort, the way they set up their business, how many hours a week they're working, whether they get to all games or not, or. 

Dance recitals are not, and all of that is connected to. Don't be afraid to do what works for you versus what everybody else is saying you're supposed to do. Just because somebody's saying you're supposed to do something doesn't mean that's what's gonna be best for you. One of my failures. One of my guilty things is looking at other people early in my career and trying to be that until it finally hit me that we needed to be what we needed to be. 

We needed to do our thing. We needed to make sure that it was working for us. Then grow out of that and keep growing along that path. Keeping the main [00:30:00] thing.  

Tonya: I'm gonna leave us today with this quote from Simone Biles. I'd rather regret the risk that didn't work out than the chances I didn't take at all. 

Shane: Attitude's the choice. Make a great one.  

Tonya: Bye y'all  

Announcer: at the Integra Partner Network, we under. 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 resources, profit sharing and bonus opportunities, technology and peer support, all while you retain a hundred percent of your book with no penalties to exit Integra. 

It's ready to empower you and your agency to find sustained growth. Find your way to Integra visit Integra. Of partner network.com today. That's integra partner network.com.