Ask Shane: Tough Questions, Honest Answers

Every once in a while, we put Shane in the hot seat, and this time, the questions don’t hold back. From navigating what to do when a top producer plateaus, to handling tricky referrals and ownership conversations, this "Ask Shane" episode digs into the real challenges agency owners face every day. Tonya and Shane explore growth, culture, communication, and the hard choices that come with building a business.

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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. Shane, it's been a long time since we have done an Ask Shane episode, and I love those. 

Shane: It's the hot seat.

Sometimes I worry that I'm gonna stick my foot in my mouth on some of these, but hey, it's okay. It's all right. Well, I'm always willing to put myself out there. 

Tonya: At some point, almost weekly, you stick your foot in your mouth. 

Shane: This is actually true. That's a pretty good point. If it's a common occurrence to stick your foot in your mouth, then why not just do it all the time?

Tonya: I am a huge Pat McAfee fan, which probably shocks you, but I ab, he's absolutely brilliant. I mean, he is an incredible marketer. His knowledge is amazing. I just think he's great. My husband does not agree. He does not understand my obsession. 

Shane: It is a, it's a surprising thing [00:01:00] that you're a fan. He is the most, not Tonya thing in the world, in my opinion.

Anybody that shows up in ripped out sleeves, I think that's where they have gone wrong. Whether it was ESPN or or ever. That wanted to polish him up. I thought it was great when he showed up in the cutout sleeves, that is who he is, like that's his brand. He's just like the redneck showed up at the ball.

It's an interesting thing. He doesn't bother me. I don't know that I would put him on the, I love him stage, but I do like him. I do think he's a grand marketer, for sure. 

Tonya: Let's start with our first Ask Shane question. We've got a producer on our team who has been crushing it for years, consistently hitting numbers most people would dream about lately.

It feels like she's hit a ceiling. She's still performing great, [00:02:00] but I can tell she's leveled out, not chasing bigger accounts and not as excited about breaking her own records. How do I push a top producer to the next stage once they've plateaued? 

Shane: Different agency owners are gonna take different approaches here.

I'm gonna give you two scenarios and I'm gonna let you decide as an agency owner what your culture is going to be and what you want it to be. One is that if you're an infinite game person like I am, then you have to have finite games within the infinite game. That is just the nature of sales and. If you are of the mindset and the culture within your agency that salespeople need to be selling, salespeople need to be growing and always trying to achieve the next level, and there should never be a plateau.

That is a reasonable ask as an agency owner and [00:03:00] I fully support that. There's gotta be clear communication, clear expectations, and there's gotta be clear goals that you are setting, that you're putting out there. And I would tell you that that a requirement on your end as an agency owner, there is time.

So if you come in and go, Hey, you're not performing at the same level as you once were, I need you to write this ship. In a month next week. This is sort of that culture that you're gonna have a hard time getting that person moving ahead. If you are setting expectations that you want things to keep climbing, growing, and to find out what's going on in their world, setting a longer term ramp up there to get them from point A to point B is always going to help you get that person headed in the right direction.

Spend time and energy. Put some runway out there for these new expectations. I'm [00:04:00] going to assume the reason the question's coming in is because this agency owner is frustrated because they were getting something naturally, and now that's kind of run its course and they're gonna have to put some energy into motivation, energy into growing this person to the next level.

On the flip side. If your culture is, what do you expect when someone reaches a plateau? Someone reaches a ceiling, naturally have kids reached an age where there's activities where they're just tired, and so they're gonna continue to do what they do, but they're not gonna do more than that. I think that's a cultural question.

Personally, I'm okay with that, but I'm also okay with adding another salesperson. And so if you're gonna ride this one horse. Then you kind of gotta choose option A. But if you're going to say, well, all's fair here, I've been writing this one producer, they've kind of plateaued. They've hit a season of [00:05:00] life that is different.

Maybe they're not as hungry. I'm not gonna pull the rug out from under 'em. I'm not going to change compensation. But what I am going to do is look for superstar number two. And so I think that's also fair as an agency owner to take a look at in this perspective. 

Tonya: A third option would be to move her. Or expand her role into a leadership position.

There is a reason she has been a fantastic producer. How can you put her into a mentorship role to help encourage your other producers? Many times when you put someone in a leadership position. It changes their mindset. It may increase their producing because they're focused on setting that example. 

Shane: I think that's also a great third option.

Just know that when you [00:06:00] do that, don't just have automatic expectations that this person knows how to manage, knows how to lead, knows how to mentor. So again, you are going to have to make some investment of time on your end. To mentor the mentor or the prospective mentor in that case? I love that as long as that individual desires that I use the case of my brother-in-law for several years, pretty much annually, I would say going back about five years now.

I have a superstar producer in our agency that is a part of my family that I can have very. Black and white blunt conversations about things he has intentionally pushed back on managing, moving into a leadership role, anything that takes him away from that pure sales [00:07:00] producing environment, and he's okay.

With being pushed by me to take things to the next level because he's asking me not to do that to him. And that relationship is strong enough that we can have those conversations. But in return, he's like, I wanna keep growing, I want to do more. So as an agency owner, just letting that individual know that you see, you know, having the data.

You know, hey, this is what you were doing, but now you've kind of flatlined, here's what your last six months, here's what your last year looks like. You know, do you want to go, you know, door number one, or do you want to go door number two? And if it's, well, I don't really want to mentor, I don't really wanna manage.

It's well, as an agency, we need you in a sales role to keep growing, to keep producing, to keep climbing. So. Here's what I need to happen, and here's what we need to talk about happening. So I think [00:08:00] that's the trade off. My brother-in-law and I have had those conversations and his trade off is, no, I want to be pushed on the sales side to do better.

I want you to, not so much manage me, but push me. Give me the critical feedback. Give me that clarity of taking things to the next level. How can I take things to the next level? 

Tonya: I received a call from a commercial referral from a current customer. Two days later, my customer that referred him called me with some information about the referral and advised that I steer far and clear.

I haven't quoted the referral yet. What should I do? 

Shane: First and foremost, you as an agency owner, you as a producer are fully within your rights. To not do business with someone, you don't have to give a reason. You don't have a market, you can't do it. There's all kinds of [00:09:00] little ways to back away. It's out of your expertise.

I'm not asking you to lie. Whatever the right response is for the scenario. If you discover something, you can either ask the customer or the prospect, which most people aren't going to do, like, Hey, I found out that you. Lied on the last application and you do this type of business. Most people are not so great at conflict that they're willing to do that with a prospect, someone they don't really know yet.

So I think there's this element of, do I back away from it? Do I keep going, but try to uncover what I've learned from this referral source. If you have this firsthand knowledge or this, I guess it's secondhand knowledge of this strong. Reliable source. Then I'm either going to ask the question, is this there?

Does this exist? Or I'm going [00:10:00] to say, okay, I don't need that in my life. I don't need to create my own stress. Business ownership in and of itself is stressful enough, so I don't need to do that. I don't have to do business with anyone, and I simply bow out. Of the opportunity, how you bow out of the opportunity comes down to the situation, and there's a couple of different ways to do that.

Tonya: This is a question I know the answer to, but I want you to answer it and give your reasons to our listeners. If you were buying an agency, would you change the name or keep the current one? 

Shane: I love the way you phrased that. The first thing that come to my mind is how much energy we spend. In relationships, particularly within our marriages, trying to decide what we're gonna eat.

Are you operating the agency? Are you buying a second location? I don't know that I have enough information, so I'll give you a couple of scenarios in how I would look at this. [00:11:00] If you are buying the agency and it's personalized, you're buying Bob Smith Insurance, and your name is Randy. Talbert, you are now Randy Talbert operating Bob Smith Insurance.

Probably going to make that brand transition. I'm gonna change the name, et cetera. If you are buying an agency for your existing agency and you're going to roll that agency in, I can tell you through experience. Change the name to your agency. Do not try to run multiple brands across multiple marketplaces or communities.

The third option is the agency has a brand in the community. It's not tied to a person. It's more of a generic, like an Integra insurance or rocket insurance, some generic name, not an individual person's name. [00:12:00] I think maintaining that brand. And becoming the owner of that new brand, I would probably not change the brand at that moment.

My brother-in-law and sister, I have two sisters operate Huntington Lube Center, which is a oil change in our local community. Quick lube oil change facility in our local community that was purchased and it's been Huntington Lube Center since its beginnings in the late nineties. And that. Now is in its third owner.

None of those owners went in and changed the name, the brand of Huntington Lube Center. It didn't become Johnson's Lube Center or Smith's Lube Center. Huntington Lube Center just continued on. It's a small local brand, but it's a strong local brand and it has history and it has. A known quality in the community three years ago, my [00:13:00] sister and brother-in-law, and they have taken that brand and uplifted that brand and polished that brand, and they have made that brand even stronger.

And so I do think the scenario on this is, you know, is it a personal named agency? Is it a generically branded agency, or are you going to buy this book slash agency as an existing brand? The different scenarios we've talked about. I think the big one that people really mess up on is trying to run multiple brands.

So you've got your brand, you buy a neighboring towns agency, and you try to keep that brand. I have not seen that work. Well, it's expensive. At one point in time we were Integra Financial Group and we owned Huntington Insurance Agency. We owned. At Felix Frank Insurance Agency in Atlanta, Texas, and we [00:14:00] spent a ridiculous amount of money trying to keep those brands separated local.

And we really should have just went with Integra day one in 1998, and it took us till about 2008 to figure out that we needed to rebrand every location to one single brand. 

Tonya: In a traditional married household, who would you say is the decision maker for insurance? 

Shane: Statistically it is the woman. I don't know that it's still 80%, but it used to be like 80% of the time.

I don't know that data. That's data I was very familiar with 20 years ago. But in personal insurance, this is the way that most households in America. Operate. As you reach into the high net worth arena, it tends to shift to the majority of the time it's demand. It's just the [00:15:00] nature of the data and the way that works out.

I don't know if that's because you have more scenarios and high net worth of stay at home moms. Just the opportunity to have a single household income. I don't know if it's just more prevalent in high net worth. Or there's some other statistical set of data there, but that is typically what we see that 20% in that middle America mass customer.

The exception to that is when you have a business owner, it tends to have that individual either switch who handles the personal finances. Or continue with who handles the personal finances? I'll share my personal story here. When I first got married, my wife handled our personal finances. She also became our bookkeeper and later our accounting [00:16:00] manager here at Integra, which has grown into quite the undertaking about 4, 3, 4, 5 years, maybe around the same time that she came in.

To the business and, and becoming our accounting manager. She walked in one day and said, she found scripture that says, the household's my responsibility. So she basically laid all the bills, you take care of our finances, and I fully respect her of that. I'm kind of being tongue in cheek there, but it's, it's something that we had continued discussions about and I agreed and accepted that responsibility, that shift.

She was handling all the bills at work. She was handling all the financials at work. We happened to work together and we shifted and I took care of the personal finances. I am also. More of the business owner in our household. That's my personal perspective and what statistical data says. This is [00:17:00] not just the shame opinion here.

This is what stats tell us. 

Tonya: That's definitely what it looks like in our household. All insurance decisions are in my lap. My husband has no idea even what insurance costs. In fact, something got said. About a month and a half ago about our car insurance, and he found out how much our car insurance cost. He just couldn't believe it.

And he's like, well, have you talked to somebody else? Have you had anybody look at it? Have you gotten a quote? And I just gave him this look. And he looked back and I said, you realize that this is. What we do for a living. Obviously if there were better options out there, I would know about them. But in our household it definitely is me as the female handling all of our insurance.

I did learn something this week though about insurance. If your husband breaks down on his fishing boat, 35 miles [00:18:00] out in the goal. The boats. Us people are Geico. I didn't know that. 

Shane: Interesting. I wouldn't have known that. I don't even know who Boats Us is. 

Tonya: Boats Us is the insurance that if your boat breaks down, they come tow you in.

Shane: So it's kinda like the roadside assistance for the coastal waterway, 

Tonya: but it's thousands and thousands of dollars as opposed to like the two or $300 it would cost for the tow truck to come get you. It's 

Shane: like AAA for the golf at the same price level. 

Tonya: But shout out to the Coast Guard because those guys were amazing.

They were calling me every 15 minutes to give me updates. Really incredible. And the folks at Geico Boats us were really good too. 

Shane: You like to do the Ask Shane podcast. I really think the stories of Tonya and Daniel would be a good podcast too, because it amazes me the kind of things that you guys get into, like without doing anything wrong.

Like [00:19:00] the circumstances, you're just going out to fish and then the next thing you know, you break down 35 miles from the coast. We have talked about y'all's honeymoon adventures on this podcast before. There are so many things that are not your own doing that you've ended up creating so many memories.

I'm not sure I would call 'em all good memories, but they're stories around the adventures of Tonya and Dave. 

Tonya: I'm gonna take that as a compliment. 

Shane: It is a compliment. You guys end up in so many things and it's like, what happened to you this weekend? That should be the new Monday morning update for me. Hey, here's what happened to us this weekend, 

Tonya: but I had a radio show.

That's what Dave and I would talk about on Monday. That makes sense. Why 

Announcer: not? 

Tonya: As an insurance agency owner, if you could sit with your day one self for five minutes. What would you warn yourself about and what would you promise them? 

Shane: I would warn myself [00:20:00] about writing anything and everything. The long term cost of building a book of business the wrong way.

Certain clientele, certain approaches to the sales effort will result in either. Heavier service requirements, lighter service requirements, the more of that client's insurance portfolio that you have back to statistical data, the better the retention is. Two or more, three or more, four or more policies.

We talk about policy per customer 2.0 or higher. When you look at the right personal lines, clientele, they have more than two. We talk about 2.0 being a great. Mark, because we end up writing that monoline auto policy or that monoline home policy. But most insurance buyers that you're after, that the average independent agency is [00:21:00] after standard.

Preferred Marketplace has 3, 4, 5 insurance policies when you include life insurance, which is something they need when you include the toys that they buy. It's the umbrella that they need. It's very easy. Auto home, umbrella, boat or motorcycle toy side by side. Life insurance. It's very easy to get up to four or five policies for a client, and that is something I would tell my young self selling policies does not equal the best long-term service environment selling clients.

Equals the best long-term service environment. The second thing I would say is be the best communicator. Learn how to be the best communicator that you can possibly be. Learn stoic comes into mind here. Listen, being the best [00:22:00] communicator means being a better listener. If you wanna build an organization, you need to become a really good listener.

You need to become a really good communicator, and I think those things are connected. You. You can't be a great communicator without being a great listener. Also be a responder to things, not the reactor. All of that is kind of connected to, you know, that sort of stoic nature of leadership, business ownership, and there was some things that I did in my first decade in business.

That I am not proud of things that people today that have, you know, like you, like Tonya, that haven't known me more than you know, seven or eight years, would not necessarily recognize the shame of 25 to 28 years ago, things that I reacted to incorrectly, things that I got mad about, which were really probably small things.

Letting things build up instead of having [00:23:00] hard conversations. In a professional problem solving kind of way, and it's still to this day, something that I continue to work on is how to communicate better. 

Tonya: This question is from the perspective of a producer as the agency's highest producing agent. Has anyone inquired with the owner about the possibility of acquiring part ownership?

How did you go about it? Was it worth it? I'm 50 and I want this job to be more of an investment than just a job. 

Shane: It really depends on the agency structure and how that looks. It can happen in personal lines. This is one that can be a little tricky in that there was an agency owner that took the risk and probably took the risk on you as a producer.

And you know now as the top producer within the agency, you want a piece of the pie. [00:24:00] Most of the time if the agency owner doesn't respond well, so number one, agency owner, don't react to this. You need to be open. You need to listen. Producer, how you communicate. This is really important. If you come in to this conversation with I, I, I like, I do this, I did this.

I'm driving this. You're gonna get met with friction of you kind of wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the risk that I took on you. It's not a good way to have that conversation. Being able to frame this correctly and understand both sides, understanding the reality of you and your role as a producer, understanding what you're trying to get to, it's a fair question for producers to ask, assuming.

It's the right setting and a lot of agencies have kind of moved into, while it may not be exactly correct, it may not be a partnership, it may not be [00:25:00] a a law practice type scenario, but they've kind of moved down this path of granting equity opportunities or partnership opportunities. High performing producers as a retention tool.

What are we talking about? Are we talking about. Equity in the business. Are we talking about equity in your book? Because I think an agency owner would probably be a little more open to, if you're producing scenario, doesn't include equity in your book, you know, how might you gain or be vested in equity in that book so that it becomes an asset you can build into your retirement plan, which is generally where this thing is coming from, like most of the time.

The producer come here is coming from the future. I think you said the name, the age was around 50 of this particular producer. So they're looking over the horizon. They're the lead producer. They're [00:26:00] making good money. We will assume, but there's this sort of like, if I retire 15 years from now. Is there any payout?

Is there any kind of windfall? Is there anything that I can lean back on? And I think that's where this is probably coming from, and I think equity in the book is probably gonna be an easier conversation than a piece of the pie when it comes to the agency as a whole. Doesn't mean it's out of the question.

Be prepared for a buy-in if. Anybody watch suits? It's a good example of the show suits. You know, there's, there's senior partners, they're junior partners. In order to become a senior partner, you have to be invited into the partnership, and then there's a buy-in. You gotta write a check. If you want a piece of the equity in the agency, understand you're probably gonna be asked to purchase that at current market value.

Granting that equity in the [00:27:00] agency as a whole. Either through options or something like that. I see that happen less and less with the exception of regional and national brokerage organizations. 

Tonya: I always love our Ask Shane episodes and questions are so important. They remind us that the best way to continue to grow in business and life are to keep asking those questions.

Shane: I love learning. I love asking questions. I actually love being asked questions at this stage in my life more than really anything, so I actually enjoy this. I don't know if it's just an opportunity to talk more and throw more words out at people, or it's just sharing experiences, and I do enjoy that.

There's a lot of growth in making yourself vulnerable in that environment. Our agent conference, our Integra partner conference this past spring 2025. There was a whole [00:28:00] session that was kind of an ask me anything Ask Shane panel that turned into an Ask Shane live event, which was one of the most uncomfortable places that I've ever been.

It's one thing to be on a podcast and know that there's an edit button. It's another thing to be on a stage with a spotlight on you in the hot seat. In front of 150 plus people in a big ballroom. That was an incredible growth moment. I enjoyed it in hindsight, but I didn't love it in the moment because there was some really hard questions.

There was some questions that were asked and, and I think easy to lean on. One of our core values of honesty wins. You don't have to give people the answer you think they want to hear. That's not what we need to be doing when it comes to communication, when it comes to this [00:29:00] type of setting, you need to give the right answer, the truthful answer we get in these places and people get foot in mouth scenario by trying to not tell the truth, but number two, try to massage the answer in a way that people want.

You think people want to hear it? And that is not a good approach either. Telling people exactly the way you see it or the way it is in a lot of cases is always going to be a winning formula in this environment, and I actually enjoy these things. I'll probably do more live stage events in the future just because I think it went over so well.

Tonya: I'm gonna leave us today with this quote from Kobe Bryant. The more questions you ask, the more you will learn 

Shane: attitude to choice. Make a great one. 

Tonya: Bye y'all. 

Announcer: At the Integra Partner Network, we understand that carrier access is the key to your agency's success. That's why Integra offers direct [00:30:00] access to top rated personal and commercial carriers.

Ensuring your agency thrives in today's challenging market. And with our comprehensive resources, profit sharing and bonus opportunities, technology and peer support, all while you retain a hundred percent of your book with no penalties to exit Integra, it's ready to empower you and your agency To find sustained growth, find your way to Integra.

Visit integra of partner network.com today. That's integra partner network.com.