Don’t Lose Your Agency Identity at Baggage Claim

When Southwest Airlines starts charging for checked bags, it’s more than a policy change; it’s a brand identity crisis. Shane and Tonya discuss how staying true to your agency’s unique strengths, rather than chasing trends or comparisons, is the key to long-term success and avoiding burnout. 

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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 out of the ballpark are your hosts, Shane Tatum and Tonya Lied. Welcome to IA  

Tonya: Forward. Shane, this week I want to talk about something that's weighing heavily on my mind and the mind of so many travelers across this great nation. 

Shane: Where to eat when you get where you're going? What do you mean?  

Tonya: No, the change of Southwest Airlines in that you now have to pay to take your luggage with you on Southwest starting in May. Now, I know you don't check luggage, so this is not a big deal for you, but for people like me that check luggage and copious amounts of luggage because you never know what's going to happen when you arrive, this is a travesty. 

Shane: So you're an overpacker.  

Tonya: Absolutely. Are you shocked by this?  

Shane: I'm not shocked at all. And I'll tell you what's aggravating me [00:01:00] about this is Southwest is cowering down to investor pressure. I get it. It's the board. They're losing their way on this decision. And the really crazy thing is there's a lot of There's a lot of financial data and opinions about market share loss, that market share loss is going to outweigh potential revenue from baggage fees. 

It's glaring. It's almost as if there's a group of people who are saying, we don't care. We want to look like everyone else, instead of understanding the unique position that Southwest has created for themselves over multiple decades, and it's just ideas over  

Tonya: reality. They've gotten rid of their open seating policy. 

You can now pay more for premium seating. Did you see where [00:02:00] they're going to do a super cheap economy seat with all of these restrictions? But the thing about this baggage policy that really gets me. is they have had some major concerns about flights being late because of challenges that passengers are having with luggage in overhead compartments. 

It's actually causing their flights to be late, which is causing problems with the FAA. So let's fix this major problem with the Federal Aviation Administration that we're having. By charging people for baggage, which creates more overhead baggage challenges.  

Shane: 100%. It doesn't make sense in so many ways other than top line revenue projected. 

And again, the unique market position that has been built over the years. Forget about the marketing for a second. Let's just look at [00:03:00] this from the millions or whatever the number is of travelers that are so endured to Southwest. Like that's their airline. I fall in that category. If I can go Southwest, I'm going Southwest. 

But from an executive standpoint, and I feel like there's a lot of disagreement between the executives. The people running the company and the board, which is doing what activist investors that have put the board members into the seats want done. Running a business on the numbers from afar, which is not necessarily what I feel like I hear from the executive team. 

And this reality that you're going to put yourself in the same category. As say, American or United or Delta, or on the flip side, worst case scenario, which is potentially very possible, Spirit. Southwest has [00:04:00] a carved out place in the middle, in my view. If you want a first class seat, if you got to fly internationally, you're going to go United, American, maybe Delta. 

Or maybe in your part of the country, you're always going to go Delta. In Texas, Houston, you're going to go United, Dallas, you're going to go American. Two airports that I absolutely do not want to ever go into by choice because they're extremely large, the hubs for those two airlines. But take me to Love Field and take me to Hobby in Houston all day long because I can get in and out of there. 

It's like a convenience store. I can get in and out. They're eliminating themselves from this carved out exclusivity in the middle. I honestly do not know which direction they will fall because I'm not sure they can control that. I don't know that they're going to be able to control consumer behavior very much with some of these decisions. 

So, this creates a lot of unknown speculation for the future of Southwest [00:05:00] Airlines, and it's, oh, shame, don't be dramatic, a baggage fee decision can't take them backwards that far. Yes, it can. Like, you know, should I take us back to the decision for New Coke? It nearly ruined a hundred year old company that nobody thought could ever be destroyed. 

And little decisions can make big impacts, huge impacts, on consumer sentiment. And this is totally left field, totally not my thing, and I'm not excited about it at all.  

Tonya: Going back to New Coke, yes, if you don't have a clue what we're talking about, look it up. It happened. Coca Cola changed their formula. 

That's where the Coca Cola Classic thing came from, because they tried to go back and fix it. But that was one thing. Brand changing decision. Southwest has made two in this year. First of all, when they got rid of their open seating policy, I was like, okay, I get it. They're going to try to board faster, maybe [00:06:00] fix this luggage challenge that they're having. 

And then this happened. And from a marketing perspective, they say that all good publicity is good publicity. But I have yet to see a single positive thing from a consumer Or an employee about this and okay, I am a Southwest flyer. You know this. I fly Southwest everywhere. Southwest is not my favorite airline. 

It is my second favorite airline because I am from Monroe, Louisiana, the home of Delta Airlines. And I like the comfort that Delta will give me. I have noticed over the last six months that Delta is less expensive than Southwest. The prices of Southwest have been steadily going up. I understand profitability. 

I get it. But if I have the opportunity to fly an airline that is a little more luxurious, offer some [00:07:00] more options, some more legroom. I'm going to go there. The only reason that I have stuck with Southwest is the fact that I can travel with my luggage. Now that Southwest costs more than Delta and I'm going to have to pay for my luggage, I'm gone. 

Shane: It's a tipping point and I don't get it. They may win this battle. This may be like Shane and Tonya, you're wrong in the end, but I don't get it on any front. I don't see the successful ending that these decisions are going to lead to if you're going to make it like everyone else. If you're going to just Follow the crowd, which has never been the Southwest culture ever. 

You're not going to get Delta United or American travelers because you're going to create some leg room seating and charge for bags. So you're actually just going to squeeze the blood out of the turnip with your existing customers and hope [00:08:00] that you don't run them off. But now there's no reason for you to fly Southwest with these changes when Delta is less expensive and makes you a more comfortable ride. 

For me, maybe I keep going, maybe I'm part of the market share that stays and does whatever. Just because of the airport proximity for me.  

Tonya: Shane, what does this have to do with the insurance world? If people are still listening to us, they're really starting to wonder that. And this is what I see independent agents do all the time. 

They start their independent agencies, they are their own brand, and then they start looking around, and they start playing the comparison game, and they start saying, What if I did what that person's doing? That person is successful. Think that they're making more money doing X, Y, Z, maybe because they're telling you, maybe because it's a perception, and you stop doing what you're doing well. 

[00:09:00] Because you see somebody else doing something else. What in the world?  

Shane: Every day we see this and year in and year out, these mistakes happen. It happens to us. We battle this in our agency network. We battle this in our retail operation. One of the most, two of the most disciplined people in our organization. 

It's very well known that my wife is one of the most disciplined people in the accounting portion of our business. And thank goodness for all of us that we have that type of an accounting manager. She keeps us on the rails. She keeps the discipline. The other one is Tara Graham, our Retail Managing Director, manages our original agency footprint here in East Texas. 

And there's been many conversations over the last five years where I've said, Hey Tara, how about this? Hey Tara, how about this? And kudos to Tara for being able to professionally, confidently, And in a disciplined [00:10:00] way, tell her boss, we're doing well here. We just need to let this play itself out a little bit longer. 

And I can just hear her sweet voice very professionally, but confidently. It's not certainly not a do what the boss says approach. Just stay the course. Just keep things in the right lane, keeping the main thing. And because of that discipline. We have an identity in East Texas, and we have a very strong, forward marching set of goals that just continue to do that. 

We haven't looked across the city, across the county, at the other agencies and said, Hey, what if we did more like they do? We did that for 20 years. And we didn't get anywhere, and we struggled. A few years ago, when Terra took over our retail operation, it became more around, who are we? What can we be great at? 

When you look at agencies that start from, [00:11:00] especially that start from scratch, and we partner with a lot of individuals that start independent agencies. If you got down to the core, what does the Integra Partner Network do? About 95 percent of the time in our history, We help agents start independent agency. 

That's what we do. And we grow up with them. And we mentor them, guide them, and we help them with market access, and we help them with decisioning and tools and all of that. But we don't tell them they have to do it the way everyone else has to do it. We let each of those partners Do what they do best, but the reality of it is to Tonya's point, even the most successful ones in that group of people from time to time start drifting due to the comparison game and have to do a course correction, just a little bit of drifting one way or another. 

Over the course of a couple of years, you can end up in a place that you are going to have a hard time getting back to success, and you can take yourself out of the game. You can mess up your momentum. There is a huge [00:12:00] need for discipline around what made you successful, and just continuing to do the successful thing, and continue to be successful, versus Trying to be something that you're not or trying to be something that someone else is and Bo Pilgrim He said something in the last year about stop chasing other people's dreams Start focusing on your dream stop chasing someone else's dream Just because you see it or hear about it from someone else doesn't mean that needs to be your dream  

Tonya: And beyond this fear of doing something different or not doing what everyone else is doing, so many agents start on a path, but they really don't take the time to define what makes them different. 

So when they start to drift, they don't even realize that they're drifting. And it may start with something simple like seeing a marketing material for another agency and thinking, Oh, I'm going to grab that [00:13:00] or starting to use generic. phrases on your socials or in marketing. There's two of them that drive me crazy. 

And that is, we treat you like family, or for all your insurance needs. And I always say that's the laziest thing on the planet that you can ever say, because some people don't want you to treat them like their family do. And for all your insurance needs, it's just a bunch of words that doesn't mean anything to anybody. 

Mimicking. Any kind of competitors content instead of telling your real personal authentic stories is a place that you can go off the rails, much like Southwest has at the Integra partner network. We have a series of best practices, things that we know work, but that doesn't mean that we require them. 

That doesn't mean that they work for everybody. It could be that what are best practices aren't always [00:14:00] best for you in that moment. They may be best practices for you in the future, but that term best practices, I see people grab a hold of those things sometimes. Where they totally don't fit who you are and who your agency is, but it's, well, if they're doing it, it must be the right way. 

Shane: Franchisors of various industries create systems, and everybody does it the same way, okay? Chick fil A's. One of my favorite franchises to, to talk about, think about, I can go to a Chick fil A anywhere in the country and I can get just about the same exact level of service. I did a big study on Chick fil A on another franchise, Curves for Women. 

I don't know if that has survived or not, but that's a franchise out there. Have no idea, haven't checked on it in 10 years. Our compensation structure actually was adopted from the Curves for Women. Franchise. So there was a lot of things and I looked at franchises because of systems, [00:15:00] although we're not a franchiser. 

And although we don't advocate everything being cookie cutter, we do talk about best practices because a lot of times agents are like, how do I do this? How can I be successful? What do I need to do to be successful? Because what happens is a lot of agents want to be successful, but they're skipping a step in understanding Who they are, how they work best, how they can be successful as an individual. 

And we look across the spectrum, we look at a Chick fil A, and we go, Wow, franchises are incredible. They used to not let you own more than one store. So Chick fil A was a very unique franchise. It has been a very unique franchise in that it's unlike McDonald's where they want multi store owners. Some of our insurance industry exclusive company agent systems have moved from, we want you to have one location, one agent, to we want you to have multiple locations and run these.[00:16:00]  

I even noticed that one of our local state farm agents here in East Texas has become the state farm agent in a town about an hour and a half away. I don't see that much.  

Tonya: I didn't even know you could do that.  

Shane: I didn't know either. That was new information to me. And insurance is so different than the franchising systems to me. 

I know there are successful insurance franchises. I'm not knocking that. I'm just saying to me, insurance is truly local, personal, and extremely relational. And to think that you should do it exactly like someone else in town, someone else that you saw, someone else that you are admiring on social media. 

Maybe you should if that's who you are. But the first question that has to be answered that we skip, we just gloss over it, we skip over it, is who are you and how do you [00:17:00] actually work the best? What is your true function as the agency owner? Are you the rainmaker? Are you the best salesperson? That's generally true. 

Or are you more operational? Are you a better sales manager than a salesperson? That would actually be me. Now, people might be like, Oh my gosh, really? I'm a good persuasive speaker, probably. That doesn't necessarily mean that I'm a good closer or a great salesperson. Okay, I believe I'm a little more ideal marketing operational combo than I am a true salesperson. 

Number one, it drives me crazy to start to finish a sale. I have reached this point in my career where I've learned that I don't need to be the one doing some of that work because I never actually get a lot of things finished. I just start new things. That's not a good [00:18:00] salesperson. Number one, that doesn't lead to a great sales successful track. 

However, if I was going to start an agency today, I would be able to operationally set it up. I would be able to be a great sales manager. I would need to invest some capital because I'm going to need to hire some salespeople. I'm going to be a good sales manager for them. I'm going to be a good operational manager for my accounts managers and CSRs, and I'm going to. 

automate things, and I'm going to use technology as well as anybody in the country. That's just a view. The guy down the street that's going to start an agency might be just a flat out rainmaker and may need to hire an office manager operational person to take care of everything else. That doesn't make one of us more successful than the other. 

But if I try to do what that guy or gal is doing as a rainmaker, or they try to do what I would do, As an operational person, we're both going to fail because we're not doing what we're the [00:19:00] best at. We're not being honest with our own individual character traits in those situations. The agencies that are the most successful that I see understand who they are first, and they don't try to emulate other people. 

They just do what they do day in and day out every day. They don't get bored with being successful at what they do.  

Tonya: And here's the thing. If you start doing what other people are doing, you're going to lose your brand identity. A business that doesn't feel like yours is exhausting. That is a total recipe for burnout when you are expending energy trying to be something you're not, or trying to emulate this other thing instead of being your authentic self. 

And we want you to remember. Why you started your agency to begin with you wanted to create [00:20:00] something that's yours. And when you start imitating someone else, you're probably chasing trends, and you're going to be grabbing a hold of tools. that you're not going to use, so you're wasting money, then you're creating stress and guilt because you've bought this stuff and you're not using it, but you feel like you have to use it because you've paid for it, and it creates this inconsistency within your brain and within your strategy. 

Your execution goes awry, relationships actually start to be a challenge, and ultimately you're going to burn out because of it.  

Shane: But here's the cool thing. Here's the really cool thing. Sometimes you got to do that. Sometimes you got to fail. Sometimes you got to spiral. Sometimes you got to have the epiphany ha moment to realize that you're pretty dang good at what you do if you stay in your lane. 

If you stay where [00:21:00] you're good, that's the thing. We may be talking about the reasons not to do certain things, but there's a ton more reasons to do the things that you do well and do them over and over again. We see agents that are fantastic, for instance, at mortgage referrals. And having a lead source and having this referral source and they have systems and they're set up for it. 

Within our agency network, we have other agents that are watching a group of agents that are incredible at having a referral network within the mortgage industry. And they want to do that. And so they look across the spectrum, even within the comparison game within the agency network and go, I'm going to go build a referral network around mortgage companies. 

And then they fall on their face and they don't have success and they spend a lot of energy. And it becomes very evident to me, I see why they failed. They're not in a metro area. They don't sell the same way. Okay. There's a lot of things you don't see within [00:22:00] different agencies that have different structures. 

There's agent over here that doesn't have a mortgage system referral concept might be running a policy per customer ratio of 2. 4, which is incredible. The agency running a mortgage referral concept, blowing it out of the water might be sitting there at 1. policies per customer because they have to cater to their mortgage source. 

They have to take care of the customer that the referral is coming from. First and foremost, it's not actually the insured that becomes the most important piece in that type of a referral system. It's actually the referral source that becomes the most important piece. So it's the tail wagging the dog. 

And this other agency over here is doing really good things, being very successful, but doesn't have that system in place, but has more of a, I want to be your full time agent, I want all of your insurance needs, I want to be [00:23:00] your risk manager, and has this high policy per customer ratio, both of these models are successful, but they're completely different models. 

And I would look at both of those agents examples, both of those profiles and go, you're both successful. Congratulations. It's not one is more successful than the other. It's they're both successful. They've actually, one's built an insurance practice. One's built an insurance enterprise. I get into that all the time, practice versus enterprise. 

I don't care which one you build. I only care. That you build the one that fits who you are and that sometimes is a lost on people. They look across the spectrum. I want to be what that agency is. And my question to them 30 years later in the business instead of the way I was in my 20s and early 30s. 

Like, I understand because that's who I was. I was, I want to be like that other person. That was my mindset and it [00:24:00] destroyed our momentum. And I'm just saying here today, if you hear nothing else on this podcast, hear that you are good enough, you are capable, and that your idea is the idea you need to go with, not somebody else's idea. 

Tonya: Okay, my brain just went so Stuart Smiley, and I knew you were going to say, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough.  

Shane: And doggone it, people like me.  

Tonya: The interesting thing about the two agents you were just talking about is they do share a name, which makes me laugh. But neither one of them has tried to copy each other's model. 

And they're smart enough to know to pick their thing and make it their own. Now, that's not to say if you want to try something not to test it. There's a difference between testing and copying. You can do some experiments to see if something works for you, something works for your audience. We don't want you to be stagnant and never try something new. 

But I'm telling you, if the [00:25:00] strategy doesn't feel right pretty quickly, it's not right for your agency and it's okay to walk away. That's one of the rules that my husband and I set in our relationship very early on, is we don't eat bad food just because we've paid for it. And we don't stay at a show just because we've paid for it. 

We will leave at halftime, as he puts it, or at intermission. If we are not enjoying whatever it is, then we walk away. And that's okay. And it's the same thing within our agencies.  

Shane: The official term on the financial spectrum for that is sunk cost. I learned this from my wife, queen of throw it away. If you haven't used it in a week, you don't need it. 

I'm exaggerating. But her passion in life is to clean stuff out, to get rid of stuff. And I am super thankful because I would probably be a hoarder or a [00:26:00] clutter king. And maybe several years ago I would have, but today I would probably be better because now clutter drives me crazy. One of the things that It was so simple, yet so life changing for me was getting rid of the phone on my desk because I use the app for our voiceover IP on my cell phone. 

So I do not have a phone on my desk. Now that is not for everyone, right? If you're at your desk all day as a service person. Whatever, that's not necessarily for you. It was so freeing to me. Little things, getting rid of little things, creating space. I love that idea of just constantly looking at what I would call a narrowing over time. 

Don't go broader, go narrow. But do it better. Because you can, over time, as you get more successful, that becomes freeing. You don't have to write all the business that you had to write day one if you're starting an agency from scratch. You're trying to chase [00:27:00] revenue early on. And I can't blame anyone for chasing revenue early on. 

Over time, though, you shouldn't necessarily keep chasing revenue, because the more you narrow, The more you become an expert at what you're doing, the better you become at what you're doing and the more freeing it becomes when you lose some of that business that was the broad revenue chasing business because you're going to replace that piece of business with three or four pieces of business that is much more profitable. 

It's natural. A lot of agents freak out losing a client. That they've had for five years when they started with them But sometimes some of those clients that you had in the beginning Are no longer the right clients for your growth and focus as you grow. And so all of this is just Becoming who you are like it's a process. 

It's not looking across town or across The agency network and saying, I want to be like that guy or that [00:28:00] lady. It's just really being honest with who you are and doing what you do best.  

Tonya: Basically, what we're saying is don't lose your agency identity and baggage claim.  

Shane: Amen.  

Tonya: I'm going to leave us today with this quote from the great Herb Kelleher. 

Think small and act small and we'll get bigger. Think big and act big and we'll get smaller.  

Shane: Attitude to choice. Make a great one.  

Announcer: Bye y'all. At the Integra Partner Network, we understand that carrier access is the key to your agency's success. That's why Integra offers direct 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 is ready to empower you and your agency to find sustained growth. Find your way to Integra. Visit IntegraPartnerNetwork. 

com today. That's [00:29:00] Integra Partner Network. Dot com.