Midyear Micro Moves for Maximum Impact

It’s halftime of 2025, and you’re still in the game! Shane and Tonya break down what winning agency owners do in the second half of the year with small shifts and smart strategy. 

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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 Tonya Lied.  

Tonya: Welcome to IA Forward and welcome to our second half of the year episode. I can't believe it's time for this.  

Shane: You never think that it's time for it because you can't slow time down. 

I had this whole thing about stopping time a couple of years ago with the ages of my daughters, and it's the first time. I really had that moment where I wanted to stop time. People, different parenting or different parts of their life, even if you don't have kids, they find themselves in a season of life where they're like, I just really like where I'm at right now and I wish I could just freeze time. 

That is something that I hear people actually say quite a bit. I've never been that person When it comes to business, every year seems like it just goes faster. It feels like you have these plans and goals. The first quarter [00:01:00] goes through and you're like, oh, okay. It's just the first quarter and then you're coming up on the halfway mark of the year and you're like, crap, I'm not where I wanted to be for me this year, I don't love the fact that we're halfway through the year. 

However, I know that you can always use that momentum to be better in the second half of the year.  

Tonya: Okay, coach, it's halftime. Let's talk about how the game's going,  

Shane: the time to make adjustments. The team that makes the best adjustments from the first half always pulls away in the second half. I hate to say it to some people that are tired of it, but that's the Kansas City Chiefs. 

That's it. They're always better. In the second half. People say, oh, it's okay that we're behind my homes, will figure it out. Andy Reed's magic of adjustments. Belichick as a coach was just an incredible adjustment guy. Of course, Belichick had Tom Brady, so there's that too. Just like Andy Reed has Patrick Mahomes. 

Teams that make an adjustment are always going to beat teams that don't make an adjustment. [00:02:00] Playing any kind of game is about making adjustments.  

Tonya: We can't have that conversation without Nick Saban at Alabama. Masterful. And making changes for the second half.  

Shane: I'm a baseball guy as everybody knows by now, so it's even different making adjustments in the game of baseball. 

Maybe it's a better illustration to use baseball over football because it's halfway through the year, so you could call it halftime, but the game of business is more fluid than the game of football. It's more like baseball. Baseball has no halftime. Baseball has no intermission. Hockey gets two half times, if I understand that, if I'm, I'm not a hockey guy. 

That's right. Yes. Baseball. I. You can't stop it. You're in the fourth inning and it's coming at you. You're in the fifth inning. Sure. We have the seventh inning stretch, but that's for the fans. That's not really for the players. The only thing that players get at the major league level is about every three [00:03:00] innings. 

They get the ground crew coming out, smoothing over the infield dirt.  

Tonya: Okay, y'all. I have to share the visual. I just had of college Shane singing, take me out to the ball game in the dugout for the seventh inning stretch.  

Shane: Yeah. Not doing it. It never happened. It would've never happened because baseball is fluid. 

It's so much closer to the game of business to me, and again, I know I'm biased, but you don't really get halftime in the game of business. You just get the continuation of yesterday and. You get tomorrow and you get today, and then you get next week, and it's just this fluid thing. However, the winners in the game of baseball, the consistent winners are the ones that make adjustments in the fluid nature of the game throughout the game, from at bat to at bat. 

Even from pitch to pitch, which is really, you're gonna really get it down to a [00:04:00] microcosm, it's a pitch to pitch adjustment. It's not even an at bat to at bat adjustment. It's not even an inning to inning adjustment. I was looking at a box score last night, and I noticed that they were in the seventh inning and one of the teams had used six different pitchers. 

Six pitchers we're using pitchers now. Maybe we always have against one player, like a matchup scenario. Like we're gonna bring someone in for a third of an inning to try to get an out on a specific hitter, and then we're gonna change that pitcher again, whether it worked or whether it didn't work. And that's this baseball adjustment, this fluid nature. 

It's a great pause moment In business. I'm more of a quarterly assessment, but midyear point is for sure an area where if you're not making daily or weekly adjustments as you play the game, there's this really magical time midyear to make this midyear assessment.  

Tonya: The most [00:05:00] common mid-year feelings of small business owners are fatigue, distraction. 

Overwhelm and the need for momentum.  

Shane: Fatigue is not a good thing, but I'm tired right now too. Over the last couple of weeks I've told my wife I cannot find energy. I have got to figure out what's going on with my energy and her go-to is electrolytes. 'cause when you kill sugar, when you do different things with your diet, the problem with no processed foods. 

Is that you lose electrolytes, so you gotta figure out how to get your electrolytes going.  

Tonya: I second that.  

Shane: Yeah. You know that it's a hundred percent right. She's not wrong. And, but I can't just, I can't just guzzle a bottle of salt either. So there's this balance between hypertension and creating high blood pressure and electrolytes fatigue is a real business owner thing. 

It's driven by. First, mental fatigue. Mental fatigue will lead to [00:06:00] physical fatigue for sure.  

Tonya: So let's look at the first half of the year. What did you hope to accomplish in Q1 and Q2? What went well and what fell flat?  

Shane: I'm gonna take that as not a rhetorical question. You actually want me to answer that. 

For our business, I feel like we've continued momentum pretty well. Coming out of 2024, momentum has continued and the energy has been consistent as an organization, and that's a good thing because I do not believe that the market cycle of 2025 is gonna be better. Has fully fleshed itself out in the insurance space, in the property and casualty space. 

I still feel like there are some carriers who are still trying to figure out did they make the right rate move? Have they made the right coverage moves? I. And then there are other carriers who are market share grabbing right now. There is such a Jekyll and Hyde feel [00:07:00] within the independent agency channel. 

I feel like our organization has good momentum moving into the second half of the year, and I feel like that's one of the best things we've done maybe for several years. Maybe it's market conditions for whatever reason, but. I feel like for the first time in two or three years, we've really kept our momentum coming out of a solid 2024. 

Tonya: A big one to think about is what habits have crept in that are dragging you down. What have you taken on that you really didn't need to?  

Shane: I have a daily calendar item that pops up from, I believe it was like 20, 24 Word of the year. This muddled together right now, but discipline. So I have a calendar item that pops up at 7:00 AM every morning. 

It's a recurring calendar and it simply says discipline. That's all it says. The calendar item is discipline. That is probably the biggest business owner. Distraction. The lack of discipline, discerning between [00:08:00] opportunity and distraction is a real business owner concern. When to chase the opportunity, when to ignore the opportunity it is. 

Super amplified when you are a salesperson, and since independent agencies are started and ran ultimately by salespeople, it's probably our biggest issue, lack of discipline. If you have reached a point in your agency's lifecycle where you have key people around you, and those people happened to have been hired because they were more disciplined than you, you hired your weakness. 

Then you're probably feeling a lot better than the individuals that have not made it to that place yet, because when you have just yourself as a salesperson or when you have decided that you're just gonna surround yourself with other salespeople. And you've got nothing but salespeople running around. 

Discipline the struggle, the squirrel moments are real, [00:09:00] and it can really kill our momentum. It can really take us, uh, down a path that operationally hurts us down the line. It may feel good in the moment. And this feels great. We're writing more business. We're growing like crazy, but there is a reckoning coming without operational discipline at some point. 

And as Tonya would say, don't ask me how I know this. I've been there and I've done that, and still to this day, I struggle with it. And I have those people. I literally am married to one who. Well, remind me of the, Hey, we've done something like this before and it didn't work. Why do we want to do it again? 

Because it's shiny and it sounds good. That's why we wanna do it again, because that's the salesperson mantra. That's a big problem for us, and we do have to reset ourselves. This is an opportunity to do that. And to grow out of the fact that we naturally don't have great discipline in our [00:10:00] makeup. I don't want you to think that's me getting onto you. 

That's what makes you so great at what you do. It's not a terrible thing that you don't have great discipline. It's just recognizing that you probably don't have great discipline because you're a great salesperson. That's the main thing here.  

Tonya: Basically, you're looking for clarity over chaos.  

Shane: Clarity over chaos is great. 

Discerning direction is great.  

Tonya: Shane. You know this about me. This is when I set my yearly goals. December does not work for me. I know that most people do. That's when most people set their goals. If I set goals in December, beginning of January, going back to fatigue after the holiday season, just not the mood for it. 

So many people don't set goals during that season. For the same reason. They're just exhausted and trying to do the year end things, and there's not time to make your goals so. My goals get made end of June, beginning of July for the next year. I'll tell you what I'm looking at right now. And basically it's this [00:11:00] idea of looking at what adds value and what no longer adds value. 

It's like doing an underwriting session, and one of the things that I'm looking at is a 48 hour rule. No more impulsive stuff if it happens and 48 hours later. I still am thinking about it. It's still a part of who I am. Then let's really look at it. I know that sounds weird, but it's working really well over the last two or three months for me, and I'm gonna set that as a goal for the next year. 

One of the things that is really important is setting three non-negotiables. Whether that is for a day, which is what I'm doing, or for a week, setting those non-negotiables, these are the things that I'm going to do no matter what, whether it's business, spiritual, family life, physically. Sometimes the things that are most important are the things that go away [00:12:00] the most easily when business takes over. 

The third thing I'm working on right now is. Revisiting my calendar. I did this with one of my teammates earlier this week. Let's look at everything and what actually reflects your priorities, or is it reflecting everyone else's priorities.  

Shane: I was recently at an agent council meeting for Easy Links. Our primary software vendor, which is now owned by Applied, that was in Chicago. 

Some of those sidebar discussions and the approach, so to speak to business. At a software vendor was really interesting to me because it, it hits on some of the things that you're talking about and the statement was made that we re-underwrite. That's really hard for you to say. Re-underwrite the business every year. 

Going into planning, that was a statement made by someone on their leadership team when you're. Making investments in software and what to develop. It's very expensive to develop a feature. It's [00:13:00] very expensive to develop something on a software platform that is mature. Certainly in a mature environment, you're trying to stay on the front edge, but you can't mess up what people have become accustomed to. 

The stability of people running their businesses, waking up every day, logging in and running their businesses. On this software platform. Software is really interesting to me. Even though I'm not a software guy and I don't really understand a lot of it, it's changed so much to the software as a service model, the web-based model versus when I first started in this business, which was you bought the software, you licensed it, paid for support, and you loaded the software on your. 

Server on your computer and you operated, but you weren't operating that software in an environment with 200,000 other people. You were logging into your server operating on that software. And if you didn't want to take the update, you didn't have to take the update, at some point they're gonna [00:14:00] say, we're no longer supporting updates prior to 4.1 0.2, or something like that. 

They're gonna put their version in there and then you don't have a choice. You gotta take the update or stop paying for support and you're on your own sitting on an island with web-based software. Which I don't know anything that's not web-based software anymore. At least even in a hybrid, Microsoft 3, 6, 5 OneDrive, like it's hybrid, it's cloud, it's local. 

So if there's an update that's pushed out, you don't have a choice. You're taking the update, you can say to your iPhone, you're not gonna take that update for only so long before your iPhone stops working correctly. It's just a reality. And so when you're on the development side, when you switch over to the software companies view, you are making decisions about what to develop. 

What area to add enhancements to? What to improve. I love the fact that they made the comment that they always re-underwrite the business every year as part of their planning, like. [00:15:00] To your point, am I spending energy on my calendar in things that I shouldn't be spending my energy on? Am I dedicating time, my most precious commodity to something that I shouldn't be spending time on? 

That is a really big. Put an asterisk by that and circle it because that gets us more than anything else, especially as agency owners, we should. Always re-underwrite our business in the sense of what we're spending our time on, what our direction is. It doesn't mean you should just change to change, but it means you should be in a place where you can make those mid-game adjustments. 

It's just like baseball, it's fluid ongoing, and making adjustments is re-underwriting the business and seeing where you're gonna spend your energy.  

Tonya: It helps to have someone do this with you because you're gonna look at your calendar and say, I have to do all the things. Very few people have the discipline to do this on their own. 

[00:16:00] When someone does this with you, it is amazing the clarity that comes with it, because they're gonna question it. While your brain is thinking, I have to do this, somebody else is gonna say, but really, do you have to, can someone else do this or does it need to be done Having a mentor, someone you respect. 

Or even if your spouse is a good thing to sit down and do with someone else.  

Shane: We are unfortunately, in a time of society where we wear our emotions on our sleeves too much, in my opinion. Some of that could be ego. Some of that could just be like, I don't really like being told that I'm doing something wrong or that I'm not doing it right. 

This has become one of my pet peeves and maybe it's older shame. I don't know what it is that's taken me down this path. But Tonya's point, having someone that can give you a different perspective, an accountability partner. Maybe if it's not [00:17:00] your spouse, maybe it's, if you respect, you're gonna do the same thing for that person. 

So let's just. Make this go both ways. It's not necessary. It doesn't have to always be like you to a subordinate and or whatever. It can be a peer, it can be a accountability partner. It can be a mentor, and it can go both ways to an if it maybe makes you feel better. That's the type of accountability partner. 

Maybe you need what I see a lot of times, even myself, like I have to catch myself doing this if I have someone questioning me, why do you think you need to keep doing that? The first. Natural instinct is to get offended. What do you know about my life? The natural human instinct is defensiveness about what you do every day and how you do things. 

True growth is having someone question whether or not you're spending your energy in the right way. I see a lot. Of people. Unfortunately, business owners and agency owners fall in this [00:18:00] category where they don't like being questioned. It's great to be questioned. We gotta get our emotions under control. 

We gotta be able to say, okay, this person that I've asked to do this with me is trying to help me. Here's the deal. You have this emotional questioning. It's good to have that accountability. It's someone that's trying to help you. They're not questioning you because they think you're awful or doing a terrible job to be questioned if it's done the right way. 

Is actually to question in love. There's a loving way to do that, and it's for the betterment of you. Where society has gone is when you're questioned, you fight. That's what happens. Like people just defensively fight back and it's, whoa. Wait a minute, can I not ask a question? Like, Hey, you asked me to look at this with you and now you're mad at me. 

What? What's going on? I see that a lot, and I would encourage you [00:19:00] to do something to set yourself in a good place with your emotions before you go into this accountability process, which I highly encourage. To Tonya's point, I very much. Encourage you to do this with someone else. I do this with a mentor. 

I do this with my wife, and yes, I do a lot of stuff on my own, but I do have people that ask me questions and say, are you sure? I had this happen yesterday, a check-in strategic plan call, and it was like, why? I probably had the word why got asked way too many times in that call, and it was. Hard, but it was right and it was good for me. 

Tonya: There's three real questions that you wanna ask yourself in a midyear reframe, even before you start to have that conversation with someone else. And it's because your goals that you set in December or January may not actually fit your current situation. When we went into the hard market [00:20:00] 9,682 days ago, people had goals that had to shift realigning goals where you are today. 

Number one is do you need revenue? Where's your revenue? Are you where you need to be? Number two is, do you need to offload any tasks? Do you need to hire somebody? Number three is when you start going through those two, you start to have this, I need to change a system, I need to do this, I need to do that. 

And think to yourself, do I need that system change? Do I need a system reset or do I need a mental recharge?  

Shane: I'm gonna add on that one of my go-tos just in the business standpoint is expense creep. One of the best ways to grow. Is to control expenses, and that sounds counterproductive, but it's really not. 

Sometimes you do have to spend money to make money. What I'm talking about is, are you spending money on the wrong things? Expense creep happens over time. Just [00:21:00] like when you moved into your house, the carport. Was originally for the car and now it's not for the car. You know who you are. Those people know who they are, and now it's for everything else that doesn't fit in The carport sits outside on the driveway. 

My wife would never let that happen, by the way, and not  

Tonya: my husband would need her.  

Shane: Yes, however, you go into any neighborhood in America on Saturday and garages are up on true carports, closed in carports, 50% or more of the houses, the carport slash garage is. No longer a carport. It's not for the car. This is what your expenses look like the longer you're in business. 

You have to have a clean sweep. You have to have a, do we need this? Are we using this? It gets harder the bigger you get because you can hide an elephant in your p and l if you're not careful. You just don't realize the dollars that are being spent on stuff that your people aren't [00:22:00] using. You have to dig into that expense. 

Creep is one of those areas that should always be looked at. Probably semi-annual at least. At the very least. I'd love the, do you need revenue question? I know we're sales organizations as independent agencies, so we're always selling, we're always trying to grow. But what does that mean? What type of revenue do you actually need? 

Do you just need revenue or do you need the right revenue? Because there is a difference, but you gotta make sure that revenue isn't gonna cause you problems down the road in service load. I love this for commercial producers. And I know you need some at bats when you're starting out in commercial, I know you need to do some things. 

Smaller accounts are easier and more attainable, and I've never been this guy that's like, don't write small accounts. I just think there's opportunity in that done the right way. But Charles Speck and the Millionaire Producer podcast guy, I saw a post from him the other day. Shout out to Charles here. 

The post, it's just the number [00:23:00] 50. It's just the number 50 and he's, you don't need a thousand clients, you just need 50 clients. And his point was that he backed his way into it. 50 clients that generate X amount of dollars worth of revenue, which means you don't have to find a thousand clients if you do the revenue right, if you go after the right accounts, if you. 

Are focused. If you're disciplined, actually 50 clients, you can make a really good living. You can be very successful as a commercial producer with 50 clients. He's right. There's truth in that. And you have a lot of agents out there that are almost writing commercial insurance defensively, like what's running at 'em? 

And there's no real intentional strategy.  

Tonya: They're afraid they're gonna lose a P and C client if they don't write their commercial. Yeah,  

Shane: the personal line stuff is running at 'em. That's an area that should be examined. And Charles is right, and it comes back to [00:24:00] discipline and focus. Tonya's right there. 

You need revenue, but also make sure it's the right revenue when you decide to jump out there. And I'm gonna grow, I'm gonna, I need more revenue  

Tonya: to our Gen Z and millennial listeners. If you haven't seen the movie Jerry McGuire, check it out.  

Shane: Yeah, it really is a great point of, it does make this point. It is this thing of bigger and more doesn't necessarily mean better. 

It doesn't necessarily bring happiness. Making enough money certainly helps these people that say money doesn't buy happiness. True statement. But making a good enough living certainly helps pay the bills, does lower the stress. That's just real coming at you this morning. And that's one of those things that, that I love about the Jerry McGuire movie. 

It is this shot at the excess and more is always better. And that's not necessarily true. It resonates with Charles. You just need the right 50 clients. I'm talking commercial that doesn't necessarily speak to the personal line side, but there's a number. You don't need thousands of [00:25:00] personal lines clients. 

You need a couple hundred personal lines clients written the right way, full time. That can do a lot for you. That can provide an incredible income for you. Done the right way with the right agency network. Give us a call. You can be a very successful, independent agency owner without trying to be the several thousand behemoths that is promoted across. 

Social media.  

Tonya: I want to challenge you to identify one micro move that you can do this week that makes the rest of 2020 be successful for you and your agency. Just one  

Shane: doesn't have to be big adjustments. You just sparked something here. Interestingly enough, my division one softball player, daughter. 

University of Kansas, Jay Hawk going into her senior year. One of the big things that we talked about coming into the last season, which was a really good season for her, she did well. She kinda had a [00:26:00] breakout season, was micro adjustments, micro move, micro adjustments, and it's never the swing when you reach that level, like as a hitter. 

You're never really needing to change your swing. It's usually mindset. If you're struggling as a hitter and you're a major league baseball player, you're a professional baseball player, you're a high level softball player in college, like more than likely you don't have a swing problem. You have a mindset problem, an approach problem, and you might need to make a micro adjustment in the box. 

I think it was Pete Rose. There's a video clip of Pete Rose. What do you do when you're struggling? He talked about micro adjustments. He talked about a couple of inches towards the pitcher, a couple of inches back towards the catcher, a little bit off the plate, on the plate. These were micro adjustments in the batter's box. 

And that's what Emma and I talked a lot about coming into this past [00:27:00] season. She did that and she continues to learn how to do that. Good hitters are not robots. Independent agencies, good insurance agents, owners, independent agency owners. You're not a robot making these fluid adjustments. Micro moves. 

These are really critical things. You don't need to overhaul your business. Most of you need a micro adjustment. You do not need major swing changes. That's probably never gonna work for you. And if you have employees, it's gonna disrupt those employees tremendously and it's gonna be a struggle. But micro adjustments, those are things that will take you from good to great or average to way above average. 

Tonya: Happy third quarter, happy second half of the year. I'm gonna leave us today with this quote from Kobe Bryant. I. You can't let your past failures define you. You have to let them teach you.  

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

Tonya: Bye y'all. [00:28:00]  

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