Micro Moves, Massive Results

Big change isn’t always the answer. Shane and Tonya break down how small, strategic adjustments can create a massive impact on your agency. From tweaking processes to rethinking priorities, learn how to stay nimble, lead with clarity, and build momentum one micro move at a time. 

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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 Tanya Lead.  

Tonya: Welcome to IA Forward. And Shane, welcome back from Chicago.  

Shane: Glad to be back. I love Chicago. It's a huge city. When people say they go to New York City, LA or. 

Houston, even like when you go to Chicago, you can go to Chicago and not be in certain parts of Chicago. We were downtown down by the river and it was a really lively city. I don't know what I was thinking it should be. It was awesome. I went to Wrigley Field. I went to a Cubs game. I can't imagine a better environment to watch a baseball game than Wrigley Field. 

I'm sure Fenway fans would argue there. But it was incredible as a baseball nut and someone who appreciates history and nostalgia, it was so modern in terms of what they've done to Wrigley Field over the last several years, upgrades and things. But without taking away the [00:01:00] feel of old Wrigley Field, I was amazed. 

Just to be simple. I was amazed and yeah, I don't get amazed very often.  

Tonya: I don't think I've ever heard you use that phrase before. Yeah,  

Shane: things don't really shock me or impress me. Maybe that's a way to put it. I was thoroughly impressed.  

Tonya: Going to Fenway is definitely on my bucket list, so I will have to make sure to add Wrigley. 

Shane: I did have a hot dog, actually two hot dogs at Wrigley, which it was. Awesome. Amazing. It wasn't a little wimpy weenie, right? It was a real ballpark dog, so that was special.  

Tonya: I'm not quite sure I can get it back together about you just announcing it wasn't a wimpy weenie in the middle of a podcast. It wasn't, but I get it. 

I totally get it. I was going through some old graphics recently looking for something that I had put together several years ago. And I came across a logo that I designed for an event that was called Bent [00:02:00] Not Broken. It was one of my favorite things that I ever designed for this specific event. It was a fundraiser. 

I. For a young lady who was very dear to me, seeing that logo made me think about how business owners start to look at things. Is your agency made where it can be bent? For some reason, I've never understood why, when there needs to be a course correction. Instead of making small adjustments, business owners have a tendency to try to overhaul bigger entire business, and it's not a small adaptation. 

It turns into some kind of massive change when a little minor tweak would do.  

Shane: Tweaks are necessary, minor bins. I think this is one of those things that I have mixed emotions about it because I spent the first half of my business career with a lot of change going on. What are we changing this week? As the business matures and [00:03:00] has matured, we look back and think about why some of those changes had to happen and tweaks were necessary. 

There were times where. It needed a tweak and I did an overhaul. That's an important thing for business owners, agency owners to understand. As your agency grows, as you hit different phases, you're going to have to evaluate what you're doing and you're going to have to make adjustments to that. I heard a phrase at. 

The software council meeting that I was attending from the leadership there, the president of the organization was making a roadmap presentation, helping us understand as agency owners that run our businesses on software. He made a comment that I really hadn't thought about, and he said, every year we re-underwrite the business. 

It caught my attention because my first thought, when you say re-underwrite, that's PTSD stuff for insurance agencies. You've built this book of business, you've written all these policies, you've [00:04:00] built a client base with a particular carrier, and when a carrier. Starts to re-underwrite the book. What that means is we're gonna go back through the book of business that you've built with us and we're gonna reevaluate it all and see if we like the book of business. 

Still, it happens more in commercial than it does personal. When that happens to you. It's not good. That means there's problems in the book potentially. Maybe they've changed the classes of business that they want to write, and it is very disruptive to the agency environment, is to have an insurance carrier re-underwrite the book that you've built with them in this sense. 

This is a large organization with thousands of employees. We re-underwrite every year to decide where we are going to invest our dollars, what's important, what features need to be built out, what components need to be added. So what he meant with his phrase of re-underwrite the [00:05:00] business is part of their strategic plan. 

It's what they do every year as they go into the next year. It caught my attention because as we grow, as we invest our time, as we invest our dollars. And we think about how to take our businesses to the next level or keep our business running smoothly. I want to grow, I want to double or triple in size if it's, I want to have a steady growth of 10% a year and build a lifestyle business, I. 

Yeah. Both scenarios require that you evaluate, tweak, and adjust to the changing business environment. It requires that you be nimble. That was something that caught my attention. Re-underwrite where we invest. I love that phrase. I think I'm going to borrow that and think about that when I'm planning for our organization. 

Let's reevaluate. Do we want to keep spending money here? Do we want to keep spending money there? Do we have the right organizational structure today? Are we using our talent in the right way that [00:06:00] fits their ability to excel? Are we using our talent in the right way that is going to take our business? 

To the place that we want to take it to. And so those are all those things that stir up thoughts to me from a leadership standpoint are, wow. Okay. That's game changing for me.  

Tonya: I love the word nimble. I always think of that word being used about athletes. When you look up the definition. It says Quick and light in movement or action, agile. 

But I love the second definition, which is quick to comprehend.  

Shane: Mental, our mindset capacity is something that I really had not thought a lot about until I. Sidebar conversation with a couple of other agency networks around the country and being able to stay nimble as you grow. It's always been physical to me as well. 

Staying nim, nimble meant are you moving fast enough? Are you physically adjusting as an [00:07:00] athlete? Are your feet nimble and. Are you able to move from a business standpoint, that second definition of comprehend in business? Nimble means, can you see the market? Can you comprehend the direction of the market? 

Can you make adjustments to the change that growth brings your organization? Because. Growth is going to change your organization. You create a structure. I'm a big advocate of creating an org chart at employee number zero, which is you, and building out that org chart based on your wildest dreams, and slowly over time or quickly, if you're growing fast, replace yourself in various blocks within the org chart. 

That's just the way I think about things. The reality is when you start out day one. And you try to think about the vision of the future, and you create, let's just make up a 12 block org chart with different [00:08:00] functions. The reality is that five years in your org chart may not actually be 12 blocks. It may be eight blocks, or it may be 22 blocks, or it may be completely different than your original. 

Starting point nimble to that point is being able to comprehend what you need to do based on the results that you're getting or the direction your business has gone. Because the market is a dictator, it's going to show you different opportunities and should you jump into those opportunities or stay the course, those crossroads. 

Of decisions that you have to make along the way is the difference between really succeeding and failing within your business. As we know, Simon Sinek advocates, the best businesses are the ones that. Are still in business. The whole point of business is to stay in business. It's not, yeah, we're gonna make some money. 

That's one of the ways we stay in business. But [00:09:00] staying in business is still the goal, and so being able to be nimble and comprehend what's going on quickly and making those adjustments and tweaks, it's a necessity. It shouldn't drive us crazy. If you're a business owner and it's driving you insane, maybe you're actually a salesperson. 

Part of that adjustment is not to give up your ownership. Maybe it's to hire you, an operational person who can help you comprehend that faster. And so there's all kinds of different ways that you can approach this.  

Tonya: As a business owner, I see so many people that get stuck in an all or nothing kind of thinking. 

And when you're in all or nothing mode, that creates that perfection paralysis where you do nothing. You're waiting for the right time. You're waiting for the next big thing because you're only focused on making big changes. If you can make [00:10:00] minute changes every week, every month, then that perfection paralysis goes away. 

And by making those small changes six months a year from now, you're where you need to be.  

Shane: Big. Gigantic changes are much harder for your people to adjust to,  

Tonya: and they're much harder for you to make and adjust to. Yeah.  

Shane: Even though we're probably not honest with ourselves and we say that we can adjust quickly, the truth is that we don't adjust quickly. 

We may say something, but we, our action may actually do something different. And one of the things I wrote down a couple years ago when I created my very first one page business plan, which. Some of the folks here, Robbie, Mike, make fun of me because it's actually a two page business plan, but it's front and back. 

I print it front and back. It's still one sheet of paper, so maybe I should, maybe I should call it the one sheet of paper business plan instead of [00:11:00] the one pager, but. It's much cooler to call it the one pager. So created the first one pager, which was not easy because we have our retail operation and our partner network, and all of that has to blend together in the one pager. 

One of the things I put on the one pager was that I. We need to follow the evidence of what is working. The implied statement is, be nimble with that. Follow the evidence, see what's working. Be honest with yourself. I think that's the part that's probably really hard for us is being honest with ourself, like being able to evaluate. 

Decisions you made previously that have led you to this point, and then say, are those decisions still the right decisions? And if they're not being able to make different decisions that take you into the place you need to go. Part of that is following the evidence for us, and I hope for you as an agency owner and [00:12:00] not chasing what somebody else's idea is. 

We've talked about that before on this podcast. What's working for you? But we don't. As human beings, as business owners, we don't always have the clear ability to be honest with ourselves about what's working and what's not working. It's almost like we're afraid to admit to ourselves that this is working and this other thing is not working, and we're somehow emotionally tied to the thing that's. 

Why are we that way? I don't know, but we are. Sometimes I look at things and I'm like, it's not working. Or I think it's working, but it's really not working, and everybody can see that it's not working except for me, which is a really hard place to be as a business owner. Yeah, it's working, but what it really means is you're emotionally tied to it. 

You're so emotionally tied to that decision that you can't really see that The evidence is telling you, it's screaming at you. That doesn't work, and maybe we invested a lot of money in it. We just like the way it makes us feel or the thing that we're doing, but [00:13:00] if it doesn't work and you have clear evidence that it doesn't work, it's okay to shift. 

It's okay to make a tweak and go a different direction.  

Tonya: If being nimble is about small adjustments, sometimes you have to start with yourself. What happens if you ask yourself every Tuesday or every Thursday? What is one thing that I can adjust over the next seven days? To make things easier, faster, more effective. 

Don't do it on Monday because you don't ever accomplish anything really that you try to come up with or start on Monday, maybe doing it on Friday for the next week, but starting to think about those little things that you can adjust, like the rudder of a boat. Small adjustments. The rudder of the boat can take you to a different continent over time. 

Think about that one thing you can change that might make a different. If it doesn't, that's okay, but what if it does?  

Shane: I saw a post [00:14:00] from our good friend, Charles Spect and the Millionaire Producer Podcast, and you're not gonna love this 'cause it's a shot at the branding marketing world. But there's some truth in this around small, independent agencies or producers. 

You gotta take this for the context that it is. Charles trains producers, mostly producers, but in our context of the agency network world, we have a lot of one to three person agencies. There's a lot of connection points in there from just the way business is operated. He made a comment that sometimes you need to stop worrying about building the brand. 

And make some phone calls. And I think there's that reality too, is sometimes we put things in our day, in our week that feel like we're doing something because it's building a brand, it's working on a process. It's whatever business owners have to deal with. And really [00:15:00] we're still in that phase. That we just needed to make phone calls instead. 

We just needed to do the real work. Sales organizations like insurance agencies are sales organizations at their core. I understand there's servicing work on the back end. I understand there's operational things. One of the things that I call. Within our own agency network is we have the 10 to 20 person agency that started at one or two people. 

That has grown tremendously. And then we have the guy or gal that started three months ago, six months ago. And there are still one person, right? And they want to hear from the successful, larger agency about how they got there and they wanna learn from them. And a lot of agents that have reached this next. 

Level, this new pinnacle, they are saying, you just need to do these three things, or you just need to do this and this. They've forgotten what it was like in their first six months. They've [00:16:00] forgotten that while they're over here working on workflow automation, improving their operational efficiency, they're growing their brand. 

This other startup agency over here is I just need revenue. I, I need to pay bills and get off the ground. Sure. Aspire Dream about being at that future level, but understand that sometimes what you need to do year 1, 2, 3, maybe even through year five, is you pick up the phone and call people and you need to be on, you need to be in sales, build, book building mindset and. 

You're the talent, like you're the superstar, the rainmaker. I've only had one or two people over the last 15 years reach out wanting to start an agency who were not salespeople. They were historically operational people, account management type people, and they did not survive. They did not work because they weren't salespeople. 

The successful [00:17:00] agencies. Started with salespeople a hundred percent of the time. This isn't a jab at you, Charles, if you're listening. 'cause you were a salesperson. You're in a sales training consultancy now. But there are other people in the consulting world today. Who were operational people who failed as agents, but you are fantastic at helping other people take their agencies from level one to two, to three to four because you understand the operational nature of how to do things, how to design workflows, how to design automation things that takes an agency from two people to 10 people. 

But the truth is that you were not a great salesperson, which means you weren't very good as an agency owner. And I'm okay with that. Because you found your place, you found your opportunity, you found your business. All of the successful independent agencies were sales superstars in the beginning, which is what started their agency. 

Don't let yourself get distracted [00:18:00] with becoming operational too fast in the beginning. You need to be the rainmaker and you need to pick up the phone like Charles says, and call some people. Don't get overwhelmed by that, but know that over time. You do have to become nimble and you will eventually have to make some decisions because you're exhausted and tired of being the rainmaker. 

You're gonna transition into that operational CEO person and hire other producers and give new rainmakers an opportunity, or you're gonna hire the operational guru so you can continue to be the rainmaker. It's not a difficult decision. It's a follow the evidence decision and be honest with yourself. 

Like, can you do it like mentally? Can you do it? Are you gonna get up every day and be happy? If your job all week is to rework an automation or workflow, or hire a, a leadership team and manage those people, what is gonna make you happy? [00:19:00] Every day because some agency owners think they want to be that person, and really they don't. 

They like the idea of it, but it's like. They're the Hall of Fame player that can't coach because they're great players, but they're not great coaches. Sometimes you just need to stay in the game and keep playing.  

Tonya: I wanna go back to what you said, talking about Charles spect, and sometimes you just need to make some phone calls. 

I am so over full thinking a rebrand is the answer. Sometimes there's a reason for a rebrand. Absolutely 100%. But in the independent agency world, you are your brand. You personally are your brand. It's that way in small business period. I sold for an organization that had a very strong brand for 20 years. 

Every organization that I sold for in the first 20 years of me had strong brands. They were well known [00:20:00] in the marketplace. No question, but my people didn't call the 800 number. They didn't call the brand. They called me a few months ago, got a phone call from a former client. Now I've worked for Integra for eight years. 

I got a call from a former client complaining can I help them? And I was like, I haven't worked for the organization for eight years. I can put you in touch with the person that can help you. And they said, but nobody helped me the way you did, so can you help me and tell me what the challenge is and see what I can do? 

Even though I worked for an organization that had a well-known brand, I was still their person and when they needed help. Seven years later, I was still their person. If you are spending all of your time trying to build your brand. Or you're spending money and energy trying to rebrand because you think that's gonna help, [00:21:00] that's not where you need help. 

Sell something, pick up the phone. Talk to somebody that's gonna rejuvenate you way more than trying to figure out where to spend money. Or create your next logo. A few weeks ago, Shane and I were in a video call and a guy walked behind my chair. Shane got distracted for a minute. It was my bug guy. It was Mr. 

Dawn, and I can tell you that Mr. Dawn is. Fantastic. And he is welcome In my house anytime. I don't actually know the name of our exterminating company, but I know that Mr. Don's my bug guy, people that get so concerned with brand and as the marketing person, this is like the last thing I should be saying when it comes to job security. 

But you personally, as a salesperson, as the bug guy mm-hmm. You're the brand. We  

Shane: are in the middle of a valuation within our retail organization. About this very thing. Follow the evidence, see what's [00:22:00] working, and then why is it working? What needs to be tweaked, what needs to be adjusted, and all of this is because of growth. 

It's as we've grown. When I served on the school board, one of the things I learned in school board training. Is there's policy and there's practice. One of your responsibilities, I believe there's three responsibilities for school boards across the country. Hire the superintendent, set policy, set the tax rate. 

That's your responsibility. If you're a school board member and you're doing more than that, then you need to evaluate yourself. That's what I learned. That's what I saw. That's what worked. When we were setting policy, one of the first things we would do is ask the campus leadership principal, superintendent, what's our practice? 

Is our practice matching our policy? We would have this policy buried in some obscure manual that said, we did this, and we would look at the principal and the principal would say, no, we don't do that. We do this other thing. We're like, [00:23:00] okay, do we like that? Is that. Good. Is that the right way to do it? If it was overwhelmingly yes. 

That's the way we've done it for years. That's the way we need to keep doing it. It is the best practice. The whole point is to align practice with policy. So we would change the policy. We're not talking about laws, we're talking about local policy. We would change the policy to match the practice. One of the evaluations. 

Over the last year is just what you said. We have salespeople in our retail organization specific to personal lines. We have salespeople, account management people, and we've recently introduced a new service center concept. In that service center concept, we have transactional service reps. There's a list of seven or eight things that the frontline service reps do well. 

Within 30 days of launching this service center, the account managers. Immediately felt a capacity increase in this stress relief. Like [00:24:00] basically all the, all the one and done transactional things in personal lines went away and the account managers became retention specialists. And then we looked across at the sales executives and the sales executives keep. 

Playing account manager. Why? Because the person that sold them the policy, that's who the client wants to go back to. That's what happens. Just like in your situation eight years ago before you came to Integra. This was your client and now your client comes back to you wanting your help because she can't get what she was getting before. 

This is what happens. People will certainly allow someone who answers the phone to tell them how much they owe on their bill or send them an ID card, but when they have a problem. What they want to do is talk to the person that they trust, so BLT believe and trust that is who they want to get to. We had this for years [00:25:00] successfully sales separated from service. 

We've had salespeople and account managers, and we are evaluating, is that still right? That's our policy, but what is our practice? And we're actually rethinking this, and we may adjust this in a different way because the service center added a whole layer of opportunity for us to make this adjustment. 

People care about you. They care about the fact that you took care of them, that you, I. Are the trusted advisor. Many agency owners want to go a different direction. I feel like it's probably the headlines. Comparison is the thief of joy and they don't, they wanna exit with the golden parachute type structure of lots of money maybe, or maybe it's. 

Tonya: I'm seeing it in second and third generational agencies.  

Shane: That makes sense because hard times make hard men. Anyway, there's a whole meme about that and good times make weak men. And [00:26:00] the thing about. Picking on third generation is. Third generation is has never really known a lot of times in a successful business, the hard times, and I'm second generation. 

If the third generation were to come into our business, they would not understand that. Dad worked five or six hours on Saturday. Dad worked till six or six 30 or seven every night. There were days in the early beginnings of our business where the grind was. Overwhelming. And now do I do that? No different work today different. 

I have a different opinion today about that, but I also have to remember how hard it was in the beginning. And we don't know that in the third generation, my kids would come along should they decide to get into the business or should I decide to hire them. They would not know those difficult beginnings. 

That's not shocking that you see that sort of exit grow. Change the [00:27:00] brand. You've gotten sucked into the corporate success of Microsoft, apple, Facebook, and Insta, and all the things that these big brands. Think about this. I had a mentor tell me the other day, Starbucks, we understand Starbucks today. We know the brand, we know the size of it. 

Go back to 1981 and when they decided to name it Starbucks coffee. What did that mean that. Probably was the dumbest name at that time. If you think about it, with a mermaid as your logo, it made zero sense. What is this Starbucks. This is the reality. What is that? And so what is an Integra like? Where do we come up with some of this stuff? 

I'm making fun of ourselves here. Microsoft was nothing. Bill Gates and his nerdy friend in the garage, Microsoft meant zero. It did not matter. It was not Apple. It was Steve Jobs before the [00:28:00] success, and then it became Apple, and then they went back to Steve Jobs. He was such an important thing. The person behind the company was so critical that they had to bring him back to survive. 

To get back to their roots. That's a great example of letting your brand run the train, so to speak. It's back to the BLT. It's the believe and trust is where you want your agency brand to go.  

Tonya: Going back to where we first started with this conversation today, I had a mentor years ago, tell me that small hinges swing big doors. 

Make the small adjustments. Don't try to push the big giant door open. It's too much. Put those small hinges in place every day, every week, every month. Make those small adjustments. You're not trying to make one big adjustment. You're not trying to turn an aircraft carrier immediately. You wanna be his boat. 

You don't wanna be an aircraft carrier.  

Shane: [00:29:00] Small is the new, big is a book I would recommend. I love. The idea of always staying nimble and trying to stay small, the larger you get. I know it feels like the answer is bigger, but that is not always the answer. Sometimes boutique oriented businesses are way more successful than large machines. 

I don't necessarily care which direction you go. I just want you to be extremely passionate and excited about the direction you decide to go, and it's okay if you decide to stay small. It's okay if you decide to be a boutique type operation instead of trying to grow. Sometimes I. I question. Unless you become a certain size organization, the value of actually selling your insurance agency versus setting your insurance agency up in ways that will be a perpetually revenue generating business, there's a lot of [00:30:00] one to. 

Three to four, let's just call it five or under agency size in terms of personnel who are thinking that they're building this business, that they're gonna sell for a gazillion dollars. And the reality of it, it's probably not gonna generate the windfall that you think it is. Certain sizes. Sure. Fifteen, twenty, thirty people, let's just call it three to 5 million. 

In, in, in revenue. Okay. You probably gonna generate some revenue, probably gonna generate some, a pretty good windfall. But the 250,000 to million in revenue, you're probably gonna be disappointed. The sales price, that's just what we see going on out there. However, you may have this ability to set up this five, six, $700,000 a year top line business to spin off really nice. 

Almost annuity like payments to you over a long period of time. I see value in [00:31:00] doing that. I think that's really good. I love that model and so I think we should just all be aware that this aspiration to to build this thing and then sell it for a lot of money. It's not the norm that's 10% of the marketplace. 

Keep that in mind as you think about where you want to go and how you want to make these adjustments and follow the evidence that shows you what's working and what's not working.  

Tonya: I'm gonna leave us today with this quote from Vince Lombardi. It's not the strongest team that wins. It's the team that adapts best to change. 

Shane: Attitude, the choice. Make a great one.  

Tonya: Bye y'all. At the  

Announcer: 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 resources, profit sharing and bonus opportunities, technology and peer support, all while you [00:32:00] 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.