Start with Why

Hey there everybody, this is Randy Schwantz. Welcome to another episode of Agency Growth Machine. I hired a marketing consultant to help me out and one of the assignments he gave me was to watch Simon Sinek do his TED Talk on Start with Why. It made me go pull the book off my shelf again and as I’m reading through it, thinking through it, mapping it out just a little bit, here’s what’s kind of hitting me; what Simon does a good job of is comparing somebody like Apple to somebody like Dell. They’re both computer companies. They both have all the capabilities in the world. They both have huge bank accounts. They both could be making amazing things, but Apple seems to trump Dell and other computer makers, like Lenovo in big ways. And why is that? Well, what he’s saying is that Steve Jobs, who’s the genius over there, has this kind of Why thing. Hope you tune in to hear the rest… Listen below. Or click here to read a transcript.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the agency growth machine podcast where it's all about transforming potential into profit. And now your host, Randy Schwantz.

Speaker 2: 0:12

Hey there, everybody this is Randy Schwantz. Welcome to another episode of Agency Growth Machine. I hired a marketing consultant to help me out and one of the assignments he gave me was to watch Simon Sinek do his TED Talk on Start with Why. It made me go pull the book off my shelf again and as I'm reading through it, thinking through it, mapping it out just a little bit, here's what's kind of hitting me; what Simon does a good job of is comparing somebody like Apple to somebody like Dell. They're both computer companies. They both have all the capabilities in the world. They both have huge bank accounts. They both could be making amazing things, but Apple seems to trump Dell and other computer makers, like Lenovo in big ways. And why is that? Well, what he's saying is that Steve Jobs, who's the genius over there, has this kind of Why thing. His Why was: Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo, we believe in thinking differently. And so the way we started to challenge status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly. And we just happen to make great computers also. Do you want to buy one? So in it, Simon talks about his golden circle where it looks almost like a target and at the bullseye would be the Why. The next layer out would be the how and the third layer out would be the what. Most people start with the what and move to the how and then they move to the why. So what is the why? Well, we sell insurance, how do we do it? By doing some sort of a risk management deal and Why? To help save you money. And he's just going; that's so mundane is what he's saying. So I'm challenged by it. I'm sitting there thinking about the same thing myself, and some will use some of Steve Jobs still; everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently and the way we challenge the status quo is this: We believe that motivated, confident, organized producers with a great plan will always outperform those who lack motivation, lack confidence, are disorganized and have a weak plan. So we build training and technology that's complete. It's simple, easy to use and user friendly and we just happen to have a great growth program. So what I'm coming to the conclusion is, that your why is really what you believe, it's your philosophy. It's that driver, it's the reason; it's the purpose. It's why you do what you do. And if you got clear on that, perhaps you'd be a better producer. And if you're an agency leader, if you got really clear on that, your agency would be stronger. So I keep thinking about that. You know, everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. So I start thinking about what is the status quo? Well, if you go back to Steve Jobs, the status quo was Sony for a long time. Sony Walkman, Sony, they had the little cassette tape player and then they had the DVD player and that was the status quo and what I remember is Sony was dominating the market and I remember one day getting on an airplane and a guy had something about the size of a deck of cards in his hand and he had his headphones plugged into it and was listening to it. In fact, it was smaller than that and I kind of go, I just stopped. I asked what is that? And he goes, that's called an iPod. Oh, that's interesting. That's the first time I'd ever heard of it and I said, what is it? He said, this thing will hold like 2000 songs. And, as I was walking down the aisle of the airplane, I had my bag with all my clothes in it. I had my computer bag with my computer, and it also had a Sony Walkman in it. And I had a whole stack of what, 10, 12, 15 CDs that I was listening to and I'm sitting there going, you mean that little tiny thing? Not really bigger than a box of matches and it will hold almost 2000 songs and I don't have to carry this big, old Sony Walkman and all those CDs.. Wow, that was Wow! So I went and bought one immediately; started downloading music and loaded a whole bunch of songs on there and all that sort of stuff. So to put up with that was the status quo. So go back to Jobs: We believe in thinking differently. We believe in challenging the status quo. So I was sitting there and went okay, well I like to think I believe differently and challenge the status quo. What is the status quo in my business? In my business, the status quo is you hire a producer. You let them come to work. You run crappy spreadsheet Liars' club sales meetings. You send them off to technical school to learn more about coverage. You do very little skills training in the area of selling. You don't drive them to be more productive as a general rule. Managing data is optional. Do it if you want to. Growing your book is optional. Fundamentally, dude, do it if you want to. Setting great goals is optional. Do it if you want to. It's all those things that are kind of status quo in our industry and so I created distinction between old world, new world. Old world, there were all those agencies that could care less and they just kind of do their thing. Most of them are kind of geekos from some insurance carrier that took over an agency and they're running it and that's what they do. They just believe in leaving everybody alone and get good at coverage and please don't make any E&O mistakes and as long as you're not a problem, I'm okay with you. The new world is saying: No, producers are an asset to us and we need to grow them. So going back to growing them, my whole model is this: I believe that motivated, confident, organized producers with a plan will always outperform producers who lack in motivation, lack in confidence, are disorganized and have a weak plan. So then I go, but what's my purpose in business? I think it's real simple. My purpose is to try everything I can to help producers become even more motivated, even more confident, even more organized and with an even better plan. So let's go break that down a little bit because for me, it drives me every day. I'm always thinking, how do I do that better? How do I help you guys become better? How do we break the old stupid paradigms and things that slow us down, hold us back. How do we recreate leaders that become coaches that make us better? In fact, Frederico Molinari I think is the dude's name that just won the Open, the Scottish Open in Carnoustie. And afterwards I got a text from a friend of mine and he was showing me Frederico's, I'm not sure if I'm saying his name right, but his sports coach who is famous over in Europe. Both psychologically and sports psychologists, all this stuff and what he does is he puts Frederico instead of just doing random hit ball, hit ball, hit ball, hit ball. What he's doing is he setting him up to like what would happen in a tough competition like that last day of the Open, which is said to be one of the most prestigious wins in all the world and Frederico just handled it like a champ. I mean it was amazing. I mean, I don't think he had any birdies in the whole tournament. So the sports psychologist said it's not about the outcome, it's about the process. You know, it's like he'll line up on the ball and know where you're going to go. You make a good swing. It just keep working on the process. So then his practices are hitting the 99 yard pitch into the green, 170 yards into the green, at 320 yard into the left side of the fairway. And then his practices are not just out there just striping hitting balls, but hitting it to a target with pressure going through the process to build, to hit that outcome or that target. All right, so how does that tie it all back in: motivated, confident, organized producers with a plan way outperform. So I keep thinking about what's the process to get you more motivated, to get you clear on your purpose about why you do what you do. And so I think it comes from two sides. It comes from inside out and outside in and inside out are the things that you're doing for a reason. Why do you do what you do and, you know, you've heard my story if you've been around anytime, you know, part of my internal motivation has always been about freedom; financial freedom. I mean, with four kids, you've got to pay for four cars, four universities, four weddings, got to fund my own retirement. I wanted to get ahead of the curve and have freedom rather than be behind the curve and have financial stress. Big motivator for me. Maybe not a motivator for you, but if you were really on your game, you know that at some point you want all the financial freedom in the world to be able to, you know, some people call it FU money, so much money that it's just you and nobody has any control over you. And so the only way that's going to happen is either you're going to start a business, be an entrepreneur and sell it and make a ton of dough. But if you're a producer, you get that kind of money by being very astute, building a book of business, making a lot of money and then saving a lot of money over a 15 or 20 year period of time, which sounds like a long time. But nevertheless, 15 years from now you're going to be 15 years older anyway. And you might as well be saving, making and saving the money now because that's how you build up that big, huge nest egg. So when you get clear on how much that is, in other words, if you have a million dollar book and you get paid 30 percent, you can pay 300,000. Most people think you're a stud. Well I don't with 300,000, because what's going to happen? You're going to pay Uncle Sam about 130 of that off the top out of$300,000. So then now you only got 170 left. You're going to live on$100,000 lifestyle at least. And now you've got$70,000 a year to save. If you do it well, do it right, you save$70,000 a year for 20 years. That's 1.4 Million Dollars. I don't want to confuse you with the math, but you get some compounded growth on that. It's probably worth a couple of million dollars. And now you're in the mode of financial freedom. You're in the mode of becoming a multimillionaire. It's just not that hard. And getting clear on that is huge. The flip side of it is now you get clear, what do you want to do for clients? You want to quote on their insurance? Hell No. You want to make something bigger and better than that for your clients. And that's your purpose. Why? Why are you out there? What are you trying to make for them? You know, some people call it kind of a risk management. I call it becoming a cost control consultant where you're really helping them control their costs of insurance. But that's your motive. What's your motive? Why are you doing what you do both inside out and outside in. And then the third piece of motivation is the effectiveness of your culture. When you got a great culture that wins; wins a lot, wins all the time, wins by BOR. Most of your fellow producers are winning it. You know, 70, 80 percent of the accounts they work on. They're writing, big accounts. They're writing huge new business year after year. When you got that kind of culture, what's cool is you believe you can do it too. So now inside motive could be the financial freedom. That's what it was for me; outside motive was to create something better for my clients so that you as a producer, stay more motivated, more confident, more organized and better plan, or that you as an agency leader, you can easily provide that to your producers so that you keep them on the edge of performance all the time. And this is a performance game. It's like a sport. You always have to be performing, so then you move to the next piece. Confidence. Confidence is huge. Confident people always do more than unconfident people. I mean, you know, confident people knock on bigger doors. Confident people ask tougher questions. Confident people ask for introductions, confident people you know, ask and get, get the closure. Confident people just do things that people who lack confidence don't do, and there's no magic in confidence. I mean, I've been studying a lot, reading about it a lot. Confidence is just a feeling. That's really all it is. Now the question you got to ask is, what drives that feeling? And I've assessed that there are two things; skills and knowledge, so let's go back to golf. When you've got the skill to back swing, forward swing hit the ball and you know how to hit the golf ball and then you have the knowledge of where the sand trap is. You know how the wind is blowing left or right or in front of you. You know where the lake is, you know that, so now you can stand up over that ball and with confidence, hit it. You've got the skill and you've got the knowledge. When it comes to selling, when you've got the skill and the knowledge; knowledge of what? Knowledge of the incumbent, what they're good at, what they're bad at, knowledge of yourself, which you're good at, what you're bad at. The skill to ask questions. Get the buyer to see the incumbent is not doing their job. The skills to ask the questions, get the buyer clear on what they want, the skills to work the buyer through how they're going to tell the other guy it's over, the skills to build, to put together a great proposal with the written service timeline so that now you're moving out of price coverage, and then you get your BOR. So skills and knowledge when you know how equals confidence. Now here's what's interesting; it's incredibly interesting how many salespeople hate to roleplay. Well, I'm one of those freaks, because I love to role play. I mean it's just fun and when you've got a process that you're role playing, it becomes more powerful than when you're out there doing a bunch of random stupid crap. So most of the reasons I think that producers don't like to role play is because when you get into role play it's a bunch of random stupid crap, rather than here's the process, step by step, by step, by step mapped out, let's learn it. Let's get it ground in, over and over and over and over and again, and then you can start to expand it to some of the random stupid crap, if you will. You know the things that when producers, when buyers go weird on you and you need to go there as well, and so the point here is when you're motivated, you know your purpose, you know your reason, you know why you want to go out and grow a huge book of business. You know how you want to help people by doing it. You know how you want to help yourself by doing it. All that is your motive, your reason, your purpose, what gets you going. That's your why. Confidence. Confidence is the feeling driven by skills and knowledge. So when you have a sales process or red hot introductions process, a renewal process, a written services timeline process, and when you have processes in place, now you can go build a skill to learn that process. It becomes replicatable. It becomes predictable for you. As it becomes predictable, you start to have more confidence. As you start to know more about yourself and about your competition, now you can go in and find a prospect's pain with ease, so you feel confident. Confident people always outperform people who lack confidence, helping build a whole team of confident producers is not that hard for you Sales leaders, but you gotta have a process that you're working them through. You can't just be random. Then we move to organization; as a producer, as a sales guy, as a sales woman, you need your whole prospect database and your client database with you everywhere you go, when you've got some free moments sitting in a prospect's office waiting to see somebody, you can be flipping through that stuff, email and call, talking to, communicating with us, setting up your plan. If you got it in the palm of your hand, when you sit down and you've only got 90 minutes to set up appointments for this week, man, you need everything incredibly well organized; there's your business, there are your buyers, there's their email address, there's their phone numbers there's their LinkedIn profile. There's the incumbent, there are all the notes of what you've talked about in the past. There's the renewal date, there's how much revenue it is, all that stuff just right at your fingertips to where you can just queue up 20 or 30 phone calls, click one boom, next, boom, go next, boom, go next, boom, go next. And work through that really fast. That is organized. It makes you highly efficient so that the things that are task oriented, you can get through them fast. So again, what drives me, is to help jack you up, get you motivated, build your confidence so you believe you can go tear down walls and it gets you so organized that you're so efficient that you tear down those walls and now you've got a plan, a great plan, not a weak plan. I mean, I think of it like this. I'm now in Raleigh, North Carolina. If I wanted to go to California and visit, first of all, it's on the other side of the world almost. I mean it's like a four and a half, five hour flight, but California's probably 700 miles long and if you start way down in San Diego, you move to Orange County, then you move to LA and then you've got a whole bunch of random stuff along the way. Then you're finally in San Francisco, then north of San Francisco's Marin County, it goes on up and then you're getting to some mountainous area and I think you finally get up to Oregon. Well, with 700 miles there' are a thousand things you could do there. If you don't have a plan, you probably won't get to the right destination. You won't see the things you want to see and you'll have missed out on most of what it means to go to California. So the same thing with building a book of business. If you don't have a plan for specifically how many accounts you need at what size you need, at what submission rate, what closing rate, so that you know exactly how many appointments you need this year and then you break down how you're going to go get those appointments. And between making cold calls, working red hot introductions and other business type activities, maybe cross selling or, going to association meetings. If you don't have that all planned out, then how the hell are you going to go do it and you won't, it'll just be a bunch of random stuff. And so again, I go back to: What's my why. If, Simon asked me, what's my why I say I want to break the status quo. I hate the status quo. What I want to do, is I want to help producers be more motivated, more confident, more organized with a better plan so they can go produce like crazy, make a ton of money and have them become multi millionaires. My whole goal is making multi millionaires and I've already been involved in making a lot. I would just like to help make a lot more. That's where the fun is. And then knowing that that's possible for every producer on the planet. Then when we can help create better coaches in organizations so that they can, they can be there for you, supporting you through getting clear on your goals, getting better at building your confidence, getting you more organized, and then really helping drive that plan. Then it's a huge win, win, win, win, win, win, win. So there you go folks, Simon Sinek's book, Start with Why. Man, if you haven't read it, just Google it and you'll see his TED talk on YouTube: What's your why? What's your reason? What's your purpose? What do you really believe? And I think once you get that, then that's going to be very attractive for you as a producer, it's going to be be very attractive for you as a sales leader and it's gonna make your value proposition even better, right? And then it will be more fun doing what we do and it gets us out of the boring, mundane crap of I have to go sell another insurance policy or get another account on the books? So cool stuff, man. Hey, look, if you're one of those agency leaders that wants to take your agency to what we call the proverbial next level, if you want producers that are more motivated, more confident, better organized, and with plans and in a way that now you can help support, coach and drive it so that you can now build your own wealth in your agency. Then you ought to get a hold of us and let's talk about a system we have called the iWin agency growth system that will help you build motivated, confident, organized producers with a plan. And you go to my website, thewedge.net. That's where you'll find it. And look everybody, man, it's been great being with you again today. I wish you well and can't wait to talk to you next time. Thanks.