Delegate to Elevate with Beaux Pilgrim

Beaux Pilgrim of IA Blueprint joins Shane and Tonya to discuss how virtual assistants are transforming independent insurance agencies, including better documentation, improved retention, and freeing up producers to actually produce. If you’re overwhelmed, understaffed, or just tired of doing it all yourself, this episode will change the way you think about building your team. 

Learn more at IntegraPartnerNetwork.com.

Transcript

Annoucer: [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 and I are thrilled to have one of our very favorite guests joining us again this week. We would like to welcome the fabulous. 

Be Pilgrim from Reed Insurance and IA Blueprint.  

Beaux: Always good to be here with you guys.  

Shane: I think you're the reigning champion of Yeah. Returning guest, so I appreciate that. We'll get you a medal or something.  

Beaux: Okay. All right.  

Shane: I'll wear it proudly.  

Tonya: I want you to know that one of the first things that Shane ever said to me, it was when we were discussing coming to work and what the job looked like, I was told I could never make the Integra logo. 

Sparkle or be glittery.  

Beaux: I think that's wise after I first met Tonya for the very first 20 seconds. Yeah, I can see why you said that.  

Tonya: Beyond that, for today's podcast, Bo [00:01:00] has an incredible way to help agents create this blueprint for success. Be has a small town, very small town agency, and the idea that he has gone from Vidalia, Louisiana to virtual. 

It is just an absolutely incredible story.  

Beaux: Yeah, so I am, uh, I've been in the insurance business for 31 years and about, let's see, 2021 on the tail end of COVID. I was desperately needing an employee and started looking. Went down the virtual route, but I was really nervous about going down that road because I'm in a very small town, Huntington's, incredibly small town. 

My town has got 4,000 people in it, and I'm not a suburb. You draw a 50 mile radius around where I live and there may be 30,000 people. I'm close to nothing. Corn fields, bean fields, cotton fields is what's around me, the Mississippi River, and you have to drive a couple hours. I travel somewhere. I gotta drive at least two hours to get to an airport. 

And that's not [00:02:00] because it's traffic, it's because it's just highway. It's a hundred miles. Whenever I first started looking for an employee, I couldn't find someone that was gonna meet my standards. I had a buddy suggest to me to hire someone from the Philippines. I thought, you know, what have I got to lose? 

If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. Hired my very first employee from the Philippines and was just blown away. One was just the quality of the person I could hire for the education, the skillset, the motivation, and drive to just work. I hired this person and I had this idea of how much work they could do. 

She blew that out of the water and easily doubled what we were able to do with that position. I felt like I hired three people instead of just one person. We wind up completely reorganizing. Personalized and commercial lines departments and had this person help us with a lot of the workflow. Shane was talking about how Integra having virtual assistants, having fully remote employees that like they can't come in for a day or something like that, how it's helped them to be better to take care of systems. 

It did that for us where [00:03:00] it forced us into developing more refined systems. We had systems already, but we got a lot better and was able to continue to grow our agency and scale it. Really easily, very economically, but more importantly, just really well with really good themes that then helped push us to get our processes even better. 

It's amazing transformation for our agency. I'm not looking back. At all, so much so that I decided to start IA Blueprint. Told the story to a couple friends and they asked me to help them. One of 'em talked me into starting to do this for others because he told me about his sad story of being in business. 

I, he'd been in business 10 years longer than me, and all the employees that he had hired just never had that sort of success with it. So I decided to try to do that so I could help. They're small businesses to be able to continue to grow and scale their business.  

Tonya: There are so many virtual assistant companies out there now. 

When you started IA Blueprint, this wasn't as common in the insurance [00:04:00] world. What makes IA Blueprint so different than what else is out there?  

Beaux: I think a few things. I think one is how intentional we are with the placement of employees. If you got a business, you got customers that you don't like to work with, right? 

I've had 'em. We've all had to let go of clients before and it's no fun to work with bad clients, much less bad employees, and so I've been very intentional from the beginning that we handpick every last employee that we place with an agency to make sure they're a good fit. We go through a super rigorous. 

Process of vetting the employee. We've got 12 steps in our hiring process. Incredibly rigorous to make sure that they're a good employee, that they don't have anything hiding in the closet, and that they're going to be a fantastic team member. We look at not just their skillset, but also the personality and look to their background and all these different things to make sure that they're gonna be a good team member. 

So that we have a good culture, but then [00:05:00] also that translates over to the client because of us doing that, our retention with employees is over 90%. Same thing with clients. It's over 90%. We've been doing this for almost four years. The national average is somewhere between 50 to 70% retention in this business, and I think it's because of hiring process and the placement process. 

Followed by the degree of support that we provide to our employees. We support them. We give them mentorship. We do a lot of check-ins to make sure that, not just that are they doing their work, but how are you doing personally? How are you doing mentally, what's going on in your life? And supporting them so that they know that they're cared for here. 

And that will translate to a happier, healthier culture that also will help those small businesses.  

Shane: We have three IA Blueprint virtual assistants, so we are putting our money. Where of mouth is, we have been exposed a little bit around our documentation, our [00:06:00] processes, our culture. We didn't really know how to work differently with our IA blueprint, virtual assistants, virtual employees, so we decided we're just gonna embrace that. 

They're part of our culture. When you have to learn how to train remotely, when you have to learn how to share your processes remotely. To Bo's point, I'm not talking about, Hey, come in for a couple of days and then there's some follow up documentation. No, they are not coming to Huntington, Texas. To sit down for a week and let somebody point at the screen. 

There's prob, I know there's way to vir, there's ways to virtually point at the screen. Screen shares, all that, but it created a whole new pathway for us to understand how to get better and it's actually helping our. In office licensed professionals that have been with us for 20, 25 years. It's helping us be better at communicating with [00:07:00] them. 

It's helping us be better across the spectrum, and I think that's one of the things that drew me to B'S philosophy with his culture was that these individuals. Are human beings. They are not a robot. They're not ai. Our first hire, Nico has been with us for over a year. He's got a one and a half year old. 

But when he came on board with us, he had an infant and we figured out that the work Nico was doing for us was gonna be better served for him to actually not work our hours. I know that's one of the big deals is they will work your hours. Their 13 hour difference, he's 13 hours ahead. I try to get him to send me the lotto numbers, but it doesn't work that way. 

Beaux: No, it  

Shane: does. But we figured out that Nico, the work he was doing was actually better that he work on his. Day and our night for his specific role, which happened to marry up really [00:08:00] well with the fact that he's a dad and a husband and he has an infant, and he gets to be with his family in the evenings instead of. 

Going to work in the evenings. I think that was a big part of why of doing business with IE. Blueprint was the fact that these are real people, right? It's not a number out there. I think that's where the industry went wrong in the virtual employee industry early on, was. Sales pitch of if you don't like 'em, get rid of 'em. 

It just didn't feel good, like nothing about it felt good until Bo shared his plan, what he was going to do and how he was going to approach it. These are real people. When you go over to the Philippines and you spend a week with people and you get to know people, and you get to see them in their natural habitat, you understand that. 

There's not a lot [00:09:00] of difference. Culture may be a little bit different in different things. They may raised a little different, whatever that is, but they're people, and I think that comes from his faith background and certainly resonated with me.  

Beaux: We all have different philosophies or part of whatever our creed is or whatever helps us to make decisions. 

One of those I've had for a long time is the importance of doing stuff that you love that's meaningful to you. That you focus on that the money follows and takes care of it. Obviously there's some things you can, some things you do that aren't gonna make any money. If you can fit a need and then you have character behind it and think about the people and try to bring up all those people around you that are connected to that thing you're doing, you create something beautiful, something people enjoy being a part of. 

And the, whenever I did this, yeah, I first was thinking about the small businesses. I just knew the story. I've talked at Integra conference several times about hiring, and I'd hear all the stories about how hard it was to hire people [00:10:00] leaving, or sometimes stealing clients or other things. And again, I would just feel so sorry for them and thing, how'd you get it so wrong so many times and not realizing. 

It was a gift I had that they did. Hiring people is a hard thing. It's not the easiest at all. But then whenever I got to start knowing the people we were hiring and saw how much of a difference it was making in their lives and helping them. To give them an opportunity for a much better life that they didn't have otherwise. 

Not because they weren't qualified, but because just where they just happened to have been born in the world. You see that, that you're able to help them so much and give them an opportunity where we can connect 'em to a small business owner that's gonna appreciate them, and that's an amazing thing. I think, uh, very thankful for you guys because I know that is your heart too. 

We're picky about who we work with, not just the employee, but also the client. I love partnering with people who have the heart and the attitude like you guys [00:11:00] do. This works out great for him. It happens to work out good for us too. I know that y'all care about your employees, whether they're virtual or. 

Whether they're on this side of the ocean or the other side of the ocean.  

Shane: Yeah, it's  

Beaux: a big ocean. It is a very big ocean. It takes a long time to get over. It takes a while.  

Shane: It takes a while. It really does. And by the way, just to, Vidalia is twice the size of Huntington in a battle.  

Tonya: Really?  

Shane: Oh yeah. They got a McDonald's and a Walmart. 

You have a Lufkin. We do. We have a Lufkin, which is a small town that's a big city to us 'cause it's like 40,000 people and Lufkin has a Walmart and a couple of McDonald's, which is pretty big. And they got two Chick-fil-A's now, which is a whole nother couple. Really? Oh yeah. That's like they have a Raisin Kings  

Beaux: though. 

Shane: They have a Canes. Have arrived. Have arrived. Might as well be metro  

Tonya: back to virtual assistants  

Shane: somehow. I  

Tonya: will say that I am so blessed. To have Kathleen who is absolutely incredible, and by the way, celebrating her birthday this week. So shout out to [00:12:00] Kathleen. I have loved getting to learn about her culture. 

I know that's not part of her job, but learning about what her life looks like. She's taking her first vacation days since being with us for a year, and I am the person that thinks you should take your vacation dates. Because I think that's part of, that's part of your salary, right? That's part of your compensation package. 

And I'm always like, Kathleen, like you have vacation days. She's taking her first three vacation days this week. I did not know that you spend your birthday over several days with your family in the Philippines. Learning about her birthday celebration and what this looks like there. I've absolutely loved that. 

But because of Eye Blueprint, because of this position she's in, she is the first member of her family to own their own house. She lives by herself, which is very unusual, and she's in her early twenties. I didn't own my own house in my early twenties, and I [00:13:00] see how proud she is of that. She has been spectacular to work with as a marketing person, having somebody that is very organized, very left brained to chase me around and I will say she has sent three messages. 

Since we have been recording this, because she's, Hey, have you done this? Or I need this, or What do you think of this? And it's fantastic to have that other side of me that I need to be successful. And she's just an absolute joy to work with. One of the things I think people get wrong when it comes to having a virtual employee is they forget that they're people. 

And yes, fantastic to have someone that you're paying less than if you're having labor that is US based, but she's still one of our team members. A few weeks ago, Instagram had a big challenge, Instagram in and of itself, and Meta had a big challenge in some of [00:14:00] the software. That we thought it was a software issue, and so I reached out to the software company in trying to fix a problem that wasn't actually our problem, but we didn't know yet was our problem. 

Our account got deleted, not our Instagram account, but our account with our scheduling software. So what that did is it deleted three months worth. Of social media that Kathleen had scheduled out that was not recoverable. Wow. So I reached out to her and I'm like, Hey, can we have a call real quick? You haven't done anything wrong. 

I need help now. She got on the phone with me and I told her when had happened. When I tell you the look of horror that came over her face for about five seconds. When I explained this to her and then she said, ma'am, which is what she always calls me, which makes me laugh, but that's cultural, right? She goes, I've got this. 

I will fix it. And I'm like, tell me what I can do to help. I know you're gonna fix it. Tell me what [00:15:00] I could do to help. You could do it after five. I'll step in, I'll work on it after hours. You could take it back over in the morning. And she was just, no, I've got this. I'll get it fixed. I don't know this because she didn't want me to mess it up after hours. 

I bet you. So that that stayed after a little while. I was like, I think she just didn't want me to mess this up. But she did a fantastic job of fixing this and I think about it and had someone come to me and said, Hey, I know you've been working on this. I know you've got three months worth of social media set up for us, and it's gone. 

I probably would've been in the fetal position for about five to 15 minutes and she was just like. Okay, let's fix it. And I love that about her. It wasn't the end of the world. It wasn't dramatic. It was Okay, let's do it.  

Beaux: Yeah. Kathleen, I hired Kathleen when she was 19. She was young. This was her first real job, and I remember I talked with her. 

Hannah talked with her, I don't know how many different times, but she struggled the very first [00:16:00] several months 'cause this was her first job working with us and also working the night shift. But she hung with it and developed herself, invested in herself on top of the character she already had of not wanting to give up yet. 

She's been a lot of fun to watch and see how she's grown and developed and get out onto her own. Yeah. Yeah, she's a excellent example. And you see that again and again with the people you're able to work with. Were you able to give them a much better life and an independence? We've hired so many people that whenever interviewing, they're like, they tell me about their stress level and thinking, what's going on in your life? 

That's so stressful. But then I see them months later and they enjoy work. Life is a lot better. I see 'em going on trips and different and enjoying life, moving out on their own, having some independence while still helping to support their family back home. Very rewarding to see the positive difference we're making out these people's lives. 

I think you touched on it just real lightly there for a second about the, that there it's less money. It is less money. It's a lot less money than you can hire somebody here, but it's not about [00:17:00] that. Our slogan is that we're working with really driven entrepreneurs or business owners. Help connect them with exceptional global staff. 

But it's not about necessarily the amount of money, even though it's gotta make sense and you're able to leverage that for your business because it is a lot less money. But understand, you're not getting a discounted employee. You're getting an exceptional employee that just because of the economy of that world where they live in, you're able to get 'em for a fraction of the cost of what you can here in the states. 

They're truly  

Shane: exceptional people. That's one of the things that's really hard for agency owners to understand. It took me a while to get my head around this, and that was the quality of work. Many of them have college degrees. You could have situations where you think they're not capable of something, but really problem is that we don't really know how to communicate. 

We want, and sometimes we don't even know what we want as agency owners. I've, I've been having different discussions with AI [00:18:00] provider about that. And what are people struggling with? Ai, it's because we don't know what we want, and until you figure out what you want, you're like, okay. I think it's a really cool idea to have a virtual assistant. 

I don't know how to manage people well, and I'm having trouble finding people here, so maybe I just need to hire somebody that will do some of the things that I don't like to do. Tonya mentioned, keep prompting me. Keep after me until we figure out what we want. It doesn't matter if you hire that person domestically or internationally, you gotta figure out what it is you want them to do for you between the documentation of your processes, how you work. 

So many agents work just out of their brain, like their memory, everything's in their head, right? And until you get that out, which a virtual assistant can help you do, by the way, they can help you get to where you need to go, then you have to decide what you want on top of how you want it. They will [00:19:00] do it. 

It's not a matter of they're not capable. I think that's the thing that hit me the hardest, but we have to spend that energy, that time explaining to people what it is that we want, because guess what? As much as I would love. For people to read my mind, they can't read my mind, and I have a few people I'm married to one of them who happens to be our accounting manager. 

Look, if she can't read my mind after 30 years of marriage and working with me for 25 years, then no one can read my mind. Right? I just finally was like, you know what? I don't know what I want. Half the time I gotta be better and I gotta be able to write that down and explain that. And it is amazing how much better that has made my relationship with leadership level folks in our organization. 

People like Tonya who we're like polar opposites, but then so many times we're like the same in some ways. I have other people in my organization that are on my leadership team, [00:20:00] executive staff that I feel like. Understanding the virtual assistant world and understanding how to work with global employees has helped me work with my local Main Street, east Texas employees better, and that's the thing I didn't expect. 

I did not expect that it would help me be a better communicator or at least think about being a better communicator. I don't know that I'm a better communicator. Yet, but it's something that I'm conscious about that I'm trying to get better. Yeah,  

Beaux: at the core of that is definitely one of the common problems that we see. 

I talk to every client and the number one thing that I do when we talk is I help them think through. What can this person do? Because they come to me and they just think, I need another, I need more capacity. I need more people to do stuff. And a lot of times what they think is, I need another Karen that's in my office to do what Karen's doing. 

I just need another person to do that too. And that's not what they need. They need to start thinking about how do I [00:21:00] break up this work and segment it out to different people that are really good at these different things. Business owners typically are really bad at hiring. They're also typically really bad at training. 

It's okay. You can't be good at everything. It is okay to admit that you're not good at hiring or training, but you need to be good at running your business and making decisions and then seeing what it is that you want. And then also. Knowing what you need to get off of your plate and the plate of your employees and giving it to another person. 

I've been reading a book, uh, called Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martel. Love his whole idea. And the thing that he says in this book is at the core of this whole conversation of why do you hire another person? 99% of the people are gonna say, because I wanna grow my business. And that is the absolutely wrong reason to hire somebody. 

You buy them as the business owner and then also when you're thinking about your employees, you hire, I back their time so [00:22:00] that they can focus more time on those key things that they're really good at. There's a basic principle. If you find that thing you're really good at, that you love. And it makes the most money for you, you will be more wealthy and more happy doing that. 

Most business owners, most salespeople don't like doing paperwork. They don't like doing renewal quoting. They don't like doing a lot of different things. They do 'em because either they don't know what they want or they're unwilling to let it go. 'cause they hate it so much. They think everybody else hates it too. 

And it's just not the truth. We hire for people who love doing renewal quoting, who love doing, chasing down signatures for applications, who love rebuilding our pipeline of three months worth of social media. That love doing, that thrive on it. And for me, that'd be a nightmare. I couldn't do it. But they thrive on that. 

And his quote is, don't hire to grow your business. Hire to buy back your time. And what it means is it's not buying back [00:23:00] your time so that you can just have free time. It's so that you can constantly upgrade what you're doing with that time. We all know the 80 20 principle, 80% of your revenue comes from top 20% of what you do or your clients. 

It's the same thing with everything else that you do. 80% of your effectiveness comes from 20% of what you do. If you can offload that other 80%, spend more time on that 20, how much more are you gonna be happy and grow? So you trade it out. You hire so that you can. Free up time of stuff that you're doing that you hate. 

That's the best way to think about it. What am I doing that I just do not like doing? Make yourself a list, come up with it and then hire somebody to do that stuff. And then you take that free time that you just got, spend it more on that stuff you really love to do. And you'll be more successful, you'll be happier. 

The people around you will be happier because you won't be so grumpy.  

Tonya: If I could have Kathleen for eight hours a week to do all of this [00:24:00] stuff in my personal life that she does. For us in a business capacity, I would be the happiest human on the planet. I would have her paying my bills, I would have her chasing me saying, Hey, remember Tonya, you need to be doing this and this on Sunday, and all of the things. 

And I really think that if I had Kathleen one day for me in five days for Integra. My life would run so smoothly.  

Shane: I know. Maybe you can talk to your boss about that. You ought check on that. You can probably hire her separately outta your billfold. But on that point, what I love about what Tonya's saying there, I was actually about to, that was running through my head as Bo's talking, and then Tonya stole a little bit of the thunder of the thought. 

Because as a business owner, you do have that freedom. Right? Yes. Tonya. As we're talking about our agents, our agency owners, you actually have the ability to blur that a little bit, right? Yes. And that is something that if I was a solopreneur, it's a little more [00:25:00] difficult to think about from my perspective today, because we're an organization, agency network. 

There's 35 employees, maybe even more than that now. I think there's actually a few more than that. So we have org structure. We have. Executive team, we have all that. So just understanding that where I'm going with this is I'm going to, if I was to start an agency today, or I was in a solopreneur environment, the first hire would be an IA blueprint, virtual assistant. 

That would be the person that became the core. Help me with this documentation as I prepare for the growth of the future. What I see a lot of agency owners do is the first person they want to hire is someone to do the same thing they're doing, and that is not necessarily the best first hire is because then you just have two people that have the same mindset running around, bumping into each other in [00:26:00] chaos, but higher. 

That virtual assistant who loves to make your world better, like literally gets up every day and goes to work that says, Mr. Or Mrs. Agent, my goal is to make your day better and helps you make your day better. You will be amazed of letting go of some of that stuff, of having someone doc. The lack of documentation is a huge thing. 

That person you hire. Through IA Blueprint can be the cornerstone of getting that documentation right, and maybe they do bleed over a little bit into some of that. Keep my personal life a little more on queue. You're an agency owner, you're a business owner. Nobody's gonna tell you can't do that. Like you can do that. 

If I was not running a little bit larger of an organization and I was gonna start an in independent agency. I was gonna, of course, join the Integra Partner Network. The second thing I would do after joining the Integra Partner Network is hire a virtual [00:27:00] assistant, because that's what's gonna help me get over the hump. 

That's what's gonna help me be the rainmaker, grow my business, and hire the future people. That's what's gonna allow me to hire the licensed CSR and train them well because I've got all this documentation done. Tonya's onto something there in the sense that it's about buying back time, and that's what you're making your life better and you're making their life better. 

That's what is amazing about the whole concept  

Tonya: though. Let's talk about some of the objections. I talk to a lot of agency owners and Shane and you, this is the first place send people when they are looking at hiring, but there really are concerns, especially with what's going on in the world right now. 

There's concerns about these maybe having access to. Payment details or social security [00:28:00] numbers, driver's license info, access to their agency management system, and access to passwords. How do I monitor what they're doing? This is a real thing. I'm not making this up. You know this. You hear this, so let's talk about it. 

Beaux: Sure. Some different vendors or companies tracking where they watch everything the person does. I don't do that. I believe in hiring, delegating well and then trusting them to do the work and having a good idea of what the work is that should be done. Shane talked about the documentation and tasking out correctly. 

The other thing is very demeaning and who wants to have their every moment tracked? I don't. If I was an employee, I'd be gone. I'm not working for somebody like that. If I've got any self value, I will not work there. Do you really want someone that's got so low of self value that they're willing to be scrutinized like that? 

What about the stress level? We hire very well. We've got 12 steps in our process of vetting this employee to make sure that. One, they can [00:29:00] do the work. Two, they've got the experience. Three, they don't have any sort of secrets hidden back where they've got problems with a previous employer or law or any violations inside the government. 

We vet 'em to make sure that they are just their person that's looking for a good opportunity to have a good job and provide for themselves, and that's what we do. We've been very good at that. Our. Retention speaks to that, then we stay engaged with them. We don't just put 'em in a spot, a virtual cubicle, and just leave them there. 

We stay in communication with them and check in on them on a regular basis to make sure that they're supported and basically they're happy that life is going good for them. Then after that is the security measures that we, we've got a vendor that we work with. We outsource the security part because I can't be good enough at it. 

So I found the very best that I could to take care of that security part for us to provide us with a cloud server that handles all the security stuff so that it can't be breach. They took the [00:30:00] time to talk with me to understand my business model and my business so that they could answer all the questions, because the reality is there's no way I can understand all the things that I need to understand about it. 

So I hired somebody. That's all they do 24 7 is make sure that your data is safe and secure. And so I trust them to do that, and we've had zero issues. Absolutely zero  

Shane: issues with it. The environment there, just on a very specific cloud or virtual desktop, a very secure environment. I believe this is the case. 

This is something I am underneath the hood and very aware, something that I've vetted with Beau from the beginning. One login. The way this, the way the thing works to my understanding, Beau, is if there was a discovery of a problem. If there was a discovery of an issue, we're all risk managers. It's a one click, one login shutdown. 

That was an aha moment for me. This ability to board, it doesn't take days to offboard someone. [00:31:00] If there was a discovery, it's a single click. Single, single login shutdown. That's huge. That's a big deal. If that's your hangup. As an agency owner, it's actually easier to shut down offboard, an IE. Blueprint, virtual virtual assistant than it would be to afford your employee in your office. 

Yes, actually it is a lot easier, number one. It takes a  

Beaux: few moments. Yeah,  

Shane: we have, we've had a few people to offboard. It's a lot locally, local people to offboard and man, I just, I think it's really. One of those things that's just, you're not really being honest with yourself when you say it's a security problem for me, man. 

The stuff that folks in your local office have access to and the ability to offboard those people if they're doing something wrong is monumental compared to virtual assistant.  

Beaux: Yes. Yes. A [00:32:00] hundred percent. Yeah. It's super easy. We got the workflow for it too. It's a process and it takes. Moments, course, they completely shut somebody out. 

If there was either some sort of breach, we never had a breach, or there was like some sort of an issue with the employee where we terminated an employee, it's, it takes moments.  

Tonya: I will say it's not a perfect process, right? Because these are team members, whether they're domestic team members in the Philippine. 

Things happen, right? Understanding that these are people, these are your team members. One of the funniest things Kathleen and I had happened doing social media. I sent her a Hank Aaron quote. Coming out of the I Forward Podcast, I never thought that somebody wouldn't know who Hank Aaron was. She went in and created this cute little graphic with a Hank Aaron quote and an American football, and it got posted to our social media. 

Shane reached out to me and he's, I know it's like the end of baseball season, the beginning of, did you do [00:33:00] this on purpose? And I'm like. No, I didn't. So I will say you have to communicate. There may be things that we make the assumption that everybody knows who Hank Aaron is, and that's part of learning as a leader. 

It's not just about creating systems, it's not just about delegation, it's about communication. That made me a better communicator. Shane laughed about it, and we went in and we got it fixed. The same thing could happen, or a similar thing could happen with a domestic employee that maybe didn't understand exactly what I was asking for. 

So it's not perfect, but no employee is perfect. You have to figure out what works. Going back to the idea of systems, I will say this. When we were onboarding Kathleen, one of the things I said to her was, this is my process. This is how I do this. However, if you have a process that works better, [00:34:00] tell me. 

Mm-hmm. I am totally open to doing things a different way, if it is more efficient and if it works better for you and oh, I think that's great feedback. I think I gave her eight systems and she came back and said, these are better than what I've done except this. And we made the adjustment on that one because it was better. 

Beaux: Oh yeah, a hundred percent. As the business owner, the boss, would we like doing things our way? It may not be the best way because what we really should be focused on is what are the results, not on how it's done. We need the results, not how it's done. If we're able to help them to just get done what we want done. 

Who cares which they go left or instead or right. We want them to be happy in their role as well because they're gonna work harder to get it done. I do the same thing with my executive assistant and my team. I just try to paint the idea this is what I want done and I have found, the more I then take a step back out of it, how often I am blown away. 

About the results because I didn't muddle it up. I'm great at [00:35:00] casting the vision. I'm great at knowing what it is that I want done. I'm not always the best at everything in between. Be okay with doing that, letting go, let go of the reigns.  

Tonya: What pain points do you see your virtual employees solving versus what do agency owners need to keep domestically? 

Beaux: Some of the biggest pain points is having sales staff doing administrative tasks. That A CSR or a processor should be doing. If you've got a good salesperson, they're terrible at data management and processing applications, they hate doing it, and you're doing them a disservice, you need to offload that. 

You'll make them happier and more productive and they will sell more. You don't want that becoming a bottleneck. Another is if you've got a renewal team managing your renewals for your agency. Let that person, they're good at. Explaining coverage to your client and keeping that revenue inside of your agency so they don't go somewhere else. 

They're really good at that. Offload the [00:36:00] process part of it, checking all the different carriers for what are the better options, offload all of that. Offload the application process itself of chasing down signatures. Those are some of the biggest things, but there's other things too, like just download management. 

Who likes doing that? That's, I don't know if either one of y'all have ever done that in your life, but gosh, that's monotonous and boring and poke your eye out with a sharp stick kind of thing. If you're a salesperson or a manager, you don't want to do that. Offload that to somebody meticulous about data, offload that so you have better data, but if you got bad data in your system, it's your fault because you didn't offload it to someone good at that. 

That's some of the biggest things that I see is the quote, some the quoting process itself, application management and basic data management. Those are the biggest pain points. Going back to something Shane was talking about earlier, I just really wanna circle back to that, is in this whole thing of hiring to buy back your time, too many times people go into it not knowing what it is that they want and the wrong [00:37:00] frame of mind. 

I'm happy to talk to people. To help them think through that. I've put together several case studies, pain point documents, things like that, that I can give to you for personalized agency. And also we can just talk about it. Whenever you're first shifting to hiring employees, at some point you've gotta stop thinking about multiplication and this case. 

Kind of division. When I say division, I'm talking about duties and responsibilities. You get to a point where you gotta start thinking, I don't need one more person. I need another department. That department may be one person, but still it's time to start thinking about departmentalization. I've got a sales person, a renewal specialist. 

Processor because when you do that, your team will be able to multiply their productivity and we can help you think through that with a virtual  

Shane: employee. I think the thing that's hurt us a lot in society is this idea that multitasking is awesome. Multitasking is the enemy [00:38:00] of good progress. Non multitasker, like she, Julie, has taught me the art of. 

Doing one thing at a time and finishing that thing fully. And if we were to both sit down side by side and start working and I was to do it in a multitask environment, it's almost the tortoise in the hare being played out in an office setting. Like she would be sitting there working on a task list or a list of things that she's gonna get done. 

She's going to start on those things. I'm gonna feel like I am out pacing her. When we get to the end of the day, my experience is she's going to have run circles around me. And I just say that because when you start talking about maybe it's time for a department, maybe the department's just one person at first, I'm big on build your org chart for the future. 

Build it for what you want your end game to look like. The whole goal is to not be a [00:39:00] multitasker, and I know. You solopreneurs, you small one to two to three person agencies out there listening to this are going, this guy's insane. We're so busy. I know I was there and it is busy and it's crazy busy, but it's not better to run around with your hair on fire. 

Doing 10 things at once. That's not your answer. I really think what Bose's talking about there, and again, you've got a partner that's not just find me a virtual assistant. It's help me make my business better. Sure, we're gonna hire this person for this role, but it's also about tell me about your business. 

And that's one of the things that's really valuable about the I Blueprint relationship, the willingness to understand what you're looking to accomplish and helping you get from point A to point B.  

Beaux: So many times we don't know another way because we've been doing it one way all the time and it's good to talk to another agent that's done it or talk to me who's done it for a lot of agents [00:40:00] so that you can see there's another way. 

Uh, yeah, I'm happy to talk and it helps. I'm gonna finish with the personal story if I can, and really two personal stories. One of those stories is seeing the difference it made in my own business, and then I've had so many people that I've placed virtual employees with. They come back to me and, oh, this is the best employee I've got, or one of them, I've got This one, it just excites me every time I hear about it. 

We were like six months into it and said, yeah, we hired her. Her name is Bell. We hired be to help us with our retention. Our retention was below 90%, so we gave her this very specific task because of her efforts. Our retention is now over 95%. A year later, we're emailing, just checking in, and she says, Hey, we're building a brand new department centered around what Bell has done for us, and she's going to be in charge of this department for their agency that's located in the United States. 

Others have referred when they called me and the first thing they said is, Hey, I talked to Zoe and [00:41:00] they said that they've hired a boy from you and they've had him for however much time, and so they just love them. They talk about 'em all the time and how much they have helped their business and that they're one of the best employees that they've got. 

And that's amazingly rewarding to me as a business owner to see these businesses thrive. Not just because of their thriving, but also because of working together with us. But then part of it for me too is. The first time I went to the Philippines, went and had a banquet for them, for my employees, and we're there and we're doing small talk saying hello, and they're very shy people typically. 

And I'm a hugger and I hug 'em and I want my picture with every one of 'em. And they're appeasing me and we talk and just ask em, how was the drive? How are you doing? A story would be, yeah, I rode three hours to come to see you. Three hours. Golly, that's amazing. They're coming three hours. To eat with me for two hours and then ride back. 

This one girl rode on the back of a motorcycle for four hours. To come say hello to [00:42:00] me, meet with me, and tell me thank you for the opportunity. That because of coming to work for me and me paying her a better wage than a lot of other companies. And because I took so much pain in making sure that I placed her with a good employee, she's able to have a independent life and support her family and to be on her own like Kathleen's story and tears in their eyes telling me thank you and I didn't get it. 

Until I was there and saw that. But it helps you to see the difference that you're making in someone's life and that being in business isn't just about making the next dollar, it's about making a difference in people's lives. As you step up the ladder of life, you grab people by the hand and you pull them up with you so that they also come along and enjoy it and have a better life. 

And I think because of the effort that we put into that and of just continuing to try to support them. It's kinda like a wheel, right? We do it, we see the positive momentum and it just encourages us to keep on pushing harder to [00:43:00] do better. It's a win for the business owner, the employee, and for me personally, not just financially, but personally. 

It's definitely a good, it is been a good business for me and we love it, and we're highly motivated to continue to make sure that we work with. Business owners that are just highly motivated business owners that want to scale their business and are struggling to find teams, we will connect you to the best global staff in the world to make sure that you're able to meet your dreams because you know the business owner, the typical business owner starts a business because they've got this dream for their business and for their family because they start it for their family, right? 

Like they're working for somebody and they like, I think I can do this on my own. I can start this business, and I made a much better life for my wife and kids. So many times they either fail because they just can't scale. It gets to be too much work, and they have to go find something else and work for somebody that tells 'em what they do, or they create a better life for their family, absent of them, because they become a slave to that business. 

Well, they could come alongside [00:44:00] somebody like us to partner with us so they can have that better dream with their family. 'cause we will fill in that void that they have of training and hiring staff and getting them high quality people. That's what we do is help those business owners to have that dream that they really want to have. 

And then same thing for the employee. So many employees, they had this dream. That they want a better life for themselves. They learn about working with a company like ours, and too many times it becomes where they just get micromanaged to death and they're constantly being watched because of the software on their computer. 

They have high stress. And don't get paid as well as they should. They partner with us so that they have a placement with a employer that appreciates them and makes them a team member. They get a better life where they're able to afford a better life, and because of that. I think we're better. I think we're different. 

I think we're the exception in the marketplace.  

Tonya: Beau, thank you so much for joining us today for sharing more about the [00:45:00] A blueprint story, encouraging our agency owners to embrace the idea of Delegate to Elevate. And I want to let you leave us with a quote for the day.  

Beaux: Dan Martel. Don't hire to grow your business. 

Hire to buy back your time.  

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

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