Building Your Agency Like Jeter Played Ball

Drawing inspiration from baseball great Derek Jeter, Shane and Tonya discuss how focusing on daily consistency, foundational systems, and small wins can create powerful long-term momentum. Whether you're building a personal lines powerhouse or scaling your team, showing up, doing the work, and building on base hits can take your agency further than any one home run ever could. 

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Transcript

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

Tonya: Shane, can you believe that it's August already?  

Shane: I cannot. I guess I have such a good spouse and so many good people around me that I don't think about time. 

I know that's a big deal for a lot of people. Actually never think about it.  

Tonya: August means something big to me, and that means football season is almost here.  

Shane: Yeah, that's good.  

Tonya: I just really look forward to August because everything on ESPN starts to shift what I'm seeing on my social feeds start to shift toward college football, and it just brings me joy. 

Shane: I think ESPN just stays on football year round. I don't think they give any other sports much credit at this point. Now, college football doesn't get the same thing that NFL gets. But I think you're right on college football, which is both of our favorite sports in terms of [00:01:00] if we're gonna watch something, we're gonna watch college football. 

Tonya: It's hot as heck in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, most parts of the south. But we know that once August gets here, football season's about to start, and there's going to be a weather shift and it's gonna start getting cooler, and then it'll get hot again. But we'll have a few of those little cool days. Mm-hmm. 

That starts to create a mindset shift for me.  

Shane: August is really hot. July is really hot in the south. August is even hotter. October can be absolutely lovely. It can be hot still, but it can also be incredible and. I think it's getting closer to October and you get in the middle of those conference games. 

It's not the blowout early September games. Of course, that's changing with the bigger conferences we're getting. We're getting games right outta the gate, 1st of September. You're getting Ohio State, Texas first game of the year. It's changing a little bit. I don't know if that game's in Texas or not, but if that game's in Texas. 

[00:02:00] It's gonna be hot. If it's in Ohio. If it's in Columbus, then okay. Maybe a little better. That first game. I don't know if it's an August date or a September date. Officially, it's  

Tonya: August 30th.  

Shane: Surely they're not playing that game in Texas.  

Tonya: It's at Ohio State.  

Shane: Okay. That makes more sense.  

Tonya: And it's an 11:00 AM game. 

Shane: At least they're playing in Ohio. May not be as hot. Shouldn't be as hot, obviously, is what it would be in the middle of Texas at the end of August.  

Tonya: LSU has the six started game that day at Clemson, which is my least favorite college team ever. And we're actually trying to decide if we wanna go to that game or if we wanna go to that Texas, Ohio State game, or if we just wanna stay home  

Shane: as a. 

Aggie household. I'm not gonna go watch Texas. I'm gonna go Clemson every time. If I've got that choice in front of me, a game in that environment is bucket list kind of stuff. It'd be kinda like watching LSU play at LSU. The environment is just incredible. Kyle Field A and L, just incredible.  

Tonya: All of that said, [00:03:00] today we're gonna talk about mindset shift. 

We are so focused on the outcome, growing the agency, growing our book. What would happen if we looked more at finding value in the process?  

Shane: This is an incredible topic in. It's really difficult for salespeople to break things down, to eat the elephant one bite at a time. It's really difficult for salespeople to do this, to change this mental. 

Picture, what's the first thing that all salespeople do? They wanna understand the compensation schedule. They wanna understand if they sell this many, whatever it is they're selling, and they do this, then they're gonna end up reaching their goal and the goal. Always becomes the point. That always becomes the focus. 

And a lot of salespeople never actually make their goals because they just stay focused on that end point. They don't do the daily, [00:04:00] weekly things that lead up to that success. That's. What happens to a lot of agents starting agencies, a lot of agencies that are trying to go from solopreneur to scale. How do I scale? 

What do I do? How do I go about it? And it just becomes this big giant blob of an idea. And then we don't get anywhere the. Paralysis analysis takes over and we don't actually take the little steps that we need to do right now that we need to do tomorrow, and we don't stay disciplined with that. As a lifetime sales and marketing person who has learned to enjoy process, it's a learned thing for me. 

I enjoy solving problems. Playing engineer for the day, solving operational problems, getting involved with our operational team, trying to solve things. I've learned to find some joy in that, whereas 10 or 15 years [00:05:00] ago, I would've absolutely avoided that like the plague.  

Tonya: There is a cultural obsession in the United States with the win, starting with sports, academics, business trophies, likes, rankings. 

There's such a downside to that kind of thinking. It creates so much burnout, disappointment now. Now, I love competition. You know that I am an incredibly competitive human being, but at some point, that competition, that obsession with the win. Takes over and it actually keeps you from being successful.  

Shane: We mentioned the Texas Longhorns unfortunately earlier in our podcast. 

And speaking of the Longhorns, I don't know if you've seen some of the comments from Scotty Scheffler, PGA tour Champ. I think he's number one in the world. He's been number one in the world for a little while. He was very ecclesia of him. He was talking about fleeting joy, how he struggled with. The fact that he was finding [00:06:00] less and less joy in winning. 

I thought that sounded comical. I'm thinking about all these other guys on the tour who aren't winning and they're going, listen to this dude. He's not finding joy in winning, and he's won so much like he's dominated. But his point was he, he used the word fleeting a lot. It's so temporary, and I contrast that with other things that I watch and a lot of people share. 

It's around quotes, interviews going back the last 20 years with Derek Jeter. Derek Jeter's, time and time again on. These interviews of people asking him what drives you? And he's winning. But beyond that, what do you enjoy winning? There's nothing that ever comes out of Derek Jeter's mouth except winning. 

It's all about winning. Here you have Scotty Scheffler, a guy currently at the top of the game in his sport golf, and you have Hall of Famer, Derek Jeter. Michael Jordan would've been the same kind of comment. It would've just [00:07:00] been about, it's all about winning. It's all about winning. That has. Become culture like that sporting the United States, the world, different sports, really just the global. 

Obsession with winning. It's such a success driven environment. That's all we see. We do not see that there is opportunity in the loss. We do not recognize that there's opportunity in how you handle the loss. Even Derek Jeter. Even Michael Jordan, the greatest of the greatest. They didn't win every single time. 

That's one of those things that really, to your point, is all of this. Obsession with success. What does success mean? I think it can hurt us if we're not careful.  

Tonya: Talking about Derek Jeter, one of my favorite quotes of his, there may be people who have more talent than you do, but there's no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do. 

Jeter [00:08:00] really got that. It was about the work. It was about the process. You don't accidentally show up in the World Series. Everyone makes mistakes. You just have to learn from 'em.  

Shane: If you haven't seen the documentary series, the Captain, I think it's just as good as Michael Jordan's the Last Dance. And I think those two things for any salespeople, any anyone who needs motivation should watch those two things. 

How do those things that they're talking about apply to you and your business, you and your agency? I think you can apply it to your preparation, which would be our process. Preparation was a huge part of their world as competitors. The relentlessness of the practice environment that Michael Jordan would talk about, supposedly the greatest basketball game in history took place. 

As an inner squad with the dream team, I think it was 1992, the Dream team, and [00:09:00] they just divided up the teams and they let 'em play. And the Olympic team coach, then the Pistons coach, Chuck Dailey, was basically just this best basketball players in the world. 10 of them, I think, maybe 12 of them for an hour and a half, just went at each other. 

And there's video footage of this. It was practice. It was not an Olympic game. It was not anything for any prize. It was just pride getting better, making you better Jeters the same way he talks about times of losing the World Series or not making it to the World Series as being the huge motivator. He went immediately to work on getting back to winning the World Series the next year. 

It is the relentless effort of waking up every day and doing the little things. Doing the little things you have to do today, the little things you have to do this week. And I [00:10:00] even hesitate to tell a salesperson the things you have to do this week. Like it really is about what do you have to do today? 

Is your pipeline staying full? Are you dealing with all the little things? Do you have the processes right? Because you may need to back up and look at the processes and you may need to spend energy there so that you can launch to the next level. You can't grow your agency without some thought about the foundation that you're building on. 

It's just going to be really difficult to do that, to just sell. You've got to have some thought put into this.  

Tonya: How do we define success using. Progress as a metric as opposed to a financial goal.  

Shane: It's a matter of understanding what you want, and that sounds silly to answer this question, but most agents don't know what they want. 

I don't sometimes know what I want. You've experienced that. I'm trying to figure it out. I don't know. We have a really hard time [00:11:00] being patient and pausing to the point of figuring out what we want, because we see it as procrastination. We see it as we're not doing activity, so we're not gaining ground. 

We've gotta be doing this activity 'cause that's gonna take us down this path of success. Sometimes you need to stop and evaluate. Sometimes you need to pause, reflect. And decide, this is what I really want this to look like, and I get it. Sometimes you just gotta go and then you're gonna pause and do that reflection down the road. 

And that's okay too. Like I actually would say if you're at zero, you gotta go. But at some point, you know you gotta be able to pause, reflect. See what's working, see what's not working. I had a really awesome conversation with one of our partners the other day, Todd West. Todd is thinking about scaling and he's thinking about his business. 

Todd's a former college baseball player and so we have a lot of connection points there. Todd has. Treated his agency [00:12:00] since day one using statistics like, like literally like measuring your batting average in your, your on base percentage as using baseball kind of analogies. And he's measured that as he's gone through the process. 

I think it's led him to a lot of success because he was able to measure. Adjust, I would say it was pause, reflect, measure, adjust. He's gone through this process and continued to grow through it, and now that he is at this step, where do I want to go? Do I want to go service center with my agency network? 

Do I want to go hiring people? Do I want everyone in the same office? Do I want fully remote, decentralized kind of environment? These questions. Don't sound like a lot of important stuff, but all of that is important. How are you as a personality? Can you manage someone? Honesty [00:13:00] about yourself will help you make some of these decisions, and it's okay to say. 

I think I'm gonna be a terrible manager, or I am a terrible manager. That doesn't mean you're not successful. If you admit that you have weaknesses, it actually is gonna help you become more successful because you admit that there are some weaknesses and you really don't need to spend a lot of energy trying to correct yourself. 

You just need to find the path that works for those weaknesses. And that's not necessarily Todd's specific situation because. He has some management in his background. Just thinking about my conversation with him, I think it was refreshing because. You've got this really successful agent and really successful agency owner who's still in the solopreneur kind of environment, looking to decide what does he want things to look like, and I think that's step one. 

What do I want this thing to look like? Do I want to create a people heavy behemoth or do I want more of a [00:14:00] lifestyle environment? They think I just need more people. You get the wrong people. You don't have the right hiring process, you don't have the right training process. More people can actually create more work for you. 

It doesn't actually mean you're gonna have less work to do when you have more people, at least in the beginning. How do you buy back your time? That's where Todd is. He's trying to figure out the best path forward for him to buy back his time. I just thought it was really refreshing. I loved his thought process. 

I think he's embracing the baby steps. He's embracing how do I set the foundation? To go from point A to B2C, and you can't just skip steps. Skipping steps is what people do that fail.  

Tonya: Thinking about Derek Jeter during his career, he wasn't the guy that was chasing home runs. He wasn't the guy that was chasing headlines. 

He made an incredible career out of base hits. He showed up every day, stayed consistent and got on base, [00:15:00] and that created greatness. And sometimes we forget. It is not about writing that huge chunk of business. Sometimes it's just about making that next phone call.  

Shane: The craziness of that analogy about Derek Jeter is that his nemesis created by the media because they were in the same draft class, because they had a, a similar background moving up through into the minor leagues, to the major leagues. 

Was Alex Rodriguez. Alex Rodriguez was the anti Derek Jeter. When you really get down to it, and they even ended up in a rift and it's talked about it in the documentary. The Captain Rodriguez was awarded this incredible contract. He never really won. They won a little bit at Seattle, but then he went off to Texas where they didn't win because they spent all their money on him, and he eventually ended up with the Yankees, which is where he won. 

Ironically. Alongside Derek Jeter. The [00:16:00] argument among the sports pundits and all the people who discuss this is always the question of who was greater? Alex Rodriguez or Derek Jeter Rodriguez got caught up in steroid scandal. Jeter was the captain. It's well documented that. Derek Jeter dated many different women, mostly models. 

Derek's a good looking dude, and you've got this environment of celebrity, followed him around, but it was more about the Yankees, right? It was as much about the fact that he was named a captain. And there's not many captains in the New York Yankee history, and they don't always have a captain, and you've got this. 

Rodriguez Jeter kind of thing created by the media, and all Derek did to your point, is get up every day, go to work, go through the process and become a winner. Some of Alex Rodriguez's stats are better home runs, things like that, but Derek Jeter's got. The World Series rings, the Hall of Fame kind of thing around. 

He's the Yankee captain, and it's [00:17:00] arguable that he's even more popular in retirement. And so now there's Derek Jeter as a dad, and Derek Jeter as a husband, he was so focused on his craft that he refused to get married. He refused to start a family while he was playing baseball. That's another deal. So talk about figuring out your plan. 

Like having a plan. We can take that and we can, we can put that into our world and we can learn a lot from that, that little things we do every day. Our building blocks that lead us well beyond this financial goal to the financial goal. Plus, it'll still get you to your financial goal. It'll still get you to your size goal, but it'll be way more fulfilling to have gone through that process. 

As an agency owner, I've embraced the process I love. Figuring out the process today. Whereas 20 years ago, I would've been just sell more. Okay, [00:18:00] just sell more. And that's not always the answer. Sometimes it's the right answer. Most of the time it's pause. Look at the process, figure out. If you've got the foundation set to grow on it,  

Tonya: you talk about the flywheel and momentum creating this momentum, and that's really underrated in the business world. 

It seems like we are all so concerned about that one big swing that. We forget that the base hit keeps the ending alive. It doesn't win the game, but it sure keeps that ending alive and it creates this idea of the infinite game, a base hit after base hit. You're gonna win  

Shane: that because we love Moneyball. 

We know that getting on base is one of the best statistics in all of baseball, and we know this, and you're continuing down the baseball. Statistical area here, how to bring that back to our agency, single. I think there's two glorious statistics [00:19:00] in baseball that I've come to learn that produce runs and producing runs is the name of the game from an offensive standpoint, getting on base and doubles. 

Singles for sure getting hits, but getting on base and being able to have a really good walk to strike out ratio. And when you include doubles, you end up with this other statistic That's really good to go along with that slugging percentage. If you look at slugging percentage. Exclude the Aaron Judges of the world, right? 

And the guys that's gonna hit 40 to 50 home runs every year. You gotta exclude those guys from this conversation because we're just not those guys. Take the really incredible superstar, one percenters of the equation, and let's just look at everybody else. You're gonna come back to Jeter. Jeter was one of the most prolific doubles hitters. 

In the game. He was also really good [00:20:00] at Walk to Strikeout ratio. He put the ball in play, so he had some singles, he had a lot of walks. He got on base a lot. Then he would sting you with a double. What the double does is the double eliminates the need for the bunt because now you've gotten to second base, you're in scoring position. 

If you can hit a double with less than two outs, you're a gem to an offensive minded team. When you look at on base percentage, you need the ability to hit doubles. That doesn't mean you have to hit a lot of home runs to have a really incredible slugging percentage. How does that apply to our agencies? 

You don't have to be about writing super large accounts. I, I hooked a big fish. What you can be is about the equivalent of those singles and doubles, and that's why I see. So many agencies going into the independent agency space today and being really strong personal lines agents, small commercial agents, and they're just [00:21:00] doing this consistently with an automation mindset. 

The process, their policy per customer ratio is going through the roof because they're getting more share of wallet because they're doing this process day in and day out. They're not getting bored with it. They're not letting that big prize get in their way. Some of these agency owners that I'm seeing, they're doing this to the tune of five, six, $700,000 a year in personal pre-tax income. 

They put that work in to lay that foundation. Look, I know. Big commercial producers. There's nothing wrong with that. We've had Charles Spect, and he's a big commercial guy, and I love commercial guys, and this isn't anti commercial statement. Knowing that you've got this agency where losing a few accounts doesn't put a dent. 

And you are running a personal income [00:22:00] range, four or five, $600,000 a year doing it in an environment where you can go on multiple vacations. You've got the boutique feel about your customers, love you. That's an incredible business that was not built by looking at this goal out there. It was built day by day over the course of 4, 5, 6 years. 

All of a sudden you look up and you're like, wow, this is pretty good. This is a really good business. I'm in a great spot. Unfortunately, those starting out, look at that agent and go, I wanna be that. They forget to ask that agent. How did you get from zero to the point you're at now? If you sit down and talk to one of those agency owners, you'll understand how much they enjoyed the process, or at least when they look back on it, they may not have enjoyed it in the moment, but when they look back on it, how much attention they put [00:23:00] into the process. 

From the first zero to four years of building on that foundation, there's a coach. Travel club, softball club, and the coach posts a lot and I still follow them even though I've been outta that for a few years. He calls 'em crowd pleasers. He celebrates the girls that hit home runs over the weekend. Derek Jeter made a lot of money playing baseball, hitting singles and double. 

And being an incredible defensive player. And there's a lot to be said about that because he hit enough home runs, he hit some home runs, but home runs are crowd pleasers. They're more fun. And there's probably an equivalency there of this big rush of riding this high net worth account or this larger commercial account, and, and that's great if that's what you're going to focus on, because you'll start enjoying the process of those accounts. 

There's also a lot of money to be made, a lot of financial goals to be met, and a lot of [00:24:00] security to be created by hitting a lot of singles and doubles in the agency game. I see this happening over and over again within our agency network,  

Tonya: having a husband. Who is a deep sea fisherman? I see a lot of correlation to this because the idea of hooking the big fish, that's what everybody wants to do. 

When people come in to visit, they wanna go out and get the big fish for the picture. They wanna have this big giant snapper or this big giant tuna, and there's a rush to catching the big fish and you've gotta fight it. You partner with somebody to get this fish in and you get the picture, but that fish doesn't taste very good. 

The fish that you bring home to eat is not the big fish. Those fish are nasty. Yep. The fish that feed you are those little baby young fish or those little medium sized fish. Those are the ones that you really wanna bring home right now. They're not the picture fish and you didn't get the rush from it. 

Those were the [00:25:00] good ones.  

Shane: You know those show hogs, those. Those show goats, if you're a four H or f, ffa, are out there. Same thing. Big fish. If you're a big hunter, you understand this. The gigantic big deer buck, the ones you've been tracking, gotten some age on 'em. They're not the best meat and. That's a great point of comparison, that Big Fish is not the best tasting fish, and I think that's a really good equivalency. 

I think it matters when you think about what do you want as an agency owner, that's step one to me. I keep coming back to that. We don't do enough to figure out what we actually want our agencies to look like. There's a book called Raving Fans. One of the first things about this older marketing kind of book, sales book is decide what you want. 

You don't have to look like. Everyone else, [00:26:00] or you can look like everyone else. There's no shame in that. I've seen many agents leave the exclusive agency system and replicate in the independent agency world exactly what they did in the exclusive agency system. The difference is they did it with choice. 

They did it with multiple carriers and they did it with choice. That is really good. I even wrote a paper 20 years ago, internal paper, and here's what we need to think about doing. We've helped a lot of agents emulate that. There's not anything wrong that with that, that idea of auto home, small business. 

That idea is great. I think the better position in that idea is to be in the independent agency system and have choice for your consumers, for your clients. I think the downside that the exclusive model or the direct channel brings these days is that it's the one trick pony. It's the one offering, and that is not where society has gone in [00:27:00] the world of Amazon, in the world of Walmart. 

It has not gone down this path that used to exist. Being a singles doubles hitter versus a home run hitter catching one big fish, unless it's a big bass classic type tournament, is not what wins. It's catching a bunch of four and five pounders, but if you catch legal limit three to five pounders for a total of five fish, you're gonna be in a really good position. 

It's the equivalent of hitting singles and doubles. Hitting a home run or a grand slam in a fishing tournament isn't gonna win you much unless it's a big fish tournament, unless it's designed for that same thing applies to our agencies. The successful agents understand the process, know what they want, build the process to fit what they want, and then do that day in and day out until one day they look up. 

Don't even realize it. That's my Todd West conversation, dude, you're doing really good. You've killed it. You are in a really good place. And just realizing [00:28:00] that you, you don't even realize it and you've made it. I think that's the most rewarding place is to not even realize you've made it and you made it. 

That's a really cool situation to me.  

Tonya: I'm gonna leave us today with this quote from Derek Jeter. I always wanted to be remembered as someone who played the game the right way.  

Shane: Attitudes the choice. Make a great one.  

Tonya: Bye y'all.  

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