"Episode 4: The Hiring Mistake Most Agency Owners Make (Specialist vs Generalist)"

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Being an agency owner isn't for the faint of heart. Strategy, market conditions, building a team that lasts. This is From the Field, where Josh and Joe help you do it all without losing your mind.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Welcome to another episode of From the Field Podcast. I'm with my good friend and co-host, Josh Rickenaugh. Josh, how's the morning going? Great as always, buddy. Oh, you can't beat that. She got a W the other night on the football field, so that was a win.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

We'll take them when we can get them and hopefully stack a few more.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Absolutely. Absolutely. So that said, today we're going to jump into a topic that's kind of expanded out and building on what we talked about prior. And that is the idea and a question I get a lot that comes back to specifically if I hire somebody, what am what am I hiring them for? So just uh I'm gonna use kind of a real world example. I'm gonna give you my take on it, Josh. And then I want to hear from your vantage point since you're dealing with it daily, what your thoughts are. So if I take something like building a home, what would be awesome is if I could just hire somebody and they could do the framing, the wiring, the drywall, you know, the plumbing, they could just do it all. I would have one point of contact. Uh, I wouldn't be in a position to where I had to deal with multiple people and everything would be great. But I think in reality, things don't necessarily work that way. But when I look back historically over the last 20 years of how we hire people into our agencies, it seems like that is the the way the kind of the way of the past or the way that was preferred, because it felt more efficient. So if I could bring one person on and I could teach them to do a little bit of everything, it's far better than having multiple people on my team. So what I found over time is I'm dealing with so many agency owners and I see different success levels, I see very different takes with the successful reps because they tend to hire to specific positions and have things laid out to where they have people that are specialists in different areas. So they're not hiring a bunch of generalists, if you will, or one generalist to do everything. I I see some people that have large books of business that have one person that they have responsible to cover every single piece of their agency when they're not there. And what I find over time is that's leading people to be frustrated. Um, so my question to you, with the fact that you've scaled up and done such a good job and you deal with so many great agency owners, is what are your thoughts? And the one thing I know from knowing you is I know for sure there was a time where you felt like the generalist model was the best model. So as this kind of came to be, um I I've I've seen you kind of shift. So I know a little bit going in of the direction you're gonna go, but it's been interesting to watch you feel strongly one way and then to watch that kind of shift the other direction. So what are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_00 3:03

Yeah, that whole should I specialize? You know, should we, should we specialization? Should we have, you know, topic-specific people that we hire? And and I was totally against it. I mean, I I thought, hey, I'm I'm a small, you know, agent. I've got one employee, I need to hire somebody else. They just need, I need to replicate myself, right? Like that was the idea that I had that they would do this, that I would hire somebody and you know, train them the way that we were probably trained, you know. And a lot of these people watch this world, which is, hey, go down to the mothership and uh spend a week or two, we're gonna call it, you know, agent college or whatever we're gonna call it, and and teach it 97 products in two weeks and uh you know, have a good time and and and then ship you home. And if you're still around in six or months or nine months, we bring you back and say congratulations and a bunch of people are missing, you know, and then make it two more weeks. Now you're now you're an agent and go sell everything, right? You know, and and that's how we were taught. So it's it makes sense that that's how we we hired. But to me, the the thing that turned me from a skeptic into you know a believer in specialization was I was looking at it the wrong way. Specialization doesn't mean you hire somebody that only understands wind endorsements on a home policy. And if they have a question about something else, they have to call somebody else in your office. That's that's not how specialization works. Specialization, the way that we're talking about it in scalability of agencies, is just talking about what do they focus on. So if my main reason for hiring is appointment setting, I can get someone up to speed on setting appointments in two weeks.

unknown 4:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

And then I they're definitely going to do other things in my office besides that, but I'm specializing in training them that so that they're up to proficient, competent in two weeks. If it's billing, I can have someone billing proficient in two weeks. And then they're up to, you know, they're they're they're at least revenue neutral as fast as possible. And I think if you really look at all the people that you talk to that are frustrated agency owners that have hired somebody and they've done this, and if you're watching this, I bet it's happened to you. If it hasn't, I hope it never does. But you spend two months uh putting an ad out there, interviewing, getting somebody on board, and then they do the background check and you order them their computer, six months training them, and then something in the world happens and they leave. And you're eight months in, you've got zero money back, and you're like, I'm never doing that again. Like I'm not hiring, screw I'll just do it myself. You know, that was dumb. I wasted it. That to me is the generalization versus specialization, right? Like that's what I never want to get myself to. Like, so I'm hiring to a specific thing first that is the fastest to be revenue neutral or profit, and then everything else is gonna get backfilled. So I think that's that was the kind of shift. It really was how I was looking at it, not really, you know, not understanding the term specialization as opposed to the implementation of it.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

That makes sense. I got a one-off question for you. Do you find that you have less stress when you've got some specialized roles from the standpoint of if one of those people end up leaving? I just had it happen on our team out of nowhere. Someone we did not expect a good team member just left. But the role was well defined. So the ability now to hire somebody into that role, uh, do you find that to be less stressful when it's defined compared to, like you said, now I've got to teach somebody every single part of the business?

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Yeah. And so what it is, the exercise of specialization itself will make you less nervous. And what I mean by that is if I had to onboard you, Joe, you're gonna, you're gonna move to Peori, Illinois, and you're gonna be my new appointment center. I have a set of SOPs that I've built to train you, to get you up to speed in two weeks, to be proficient, to be a profit center in two weeks. So those are already written out. That training is there. If you leave unexpectedly, the next person comes in, they have those exact same systems already set up. So what it does is it forces you, like the idea that you have to get this person up to speed so fast, and it's very, very focused on a specific topic is gonna make you better and able to actually onboard that person quickly and turn them into profit. So it gives you confidence, kind of not directly. It's because you had to go through the exercise to get them up and running. So it's not that daunting to replace them. Like you've set up the systems the whole time. That makes sense. And if you haven't done it yet, the next one you do, next one you hire, right? Have them document all their processes as they're going through this, build that operating manual for your agency of how you do it. So next time you're training on anything, I mean, hell, put a pin in this, right? Next time you're training any position in your agency, you should be building a standard operating procedure manual for it. Because you never know when they're gonna leave. So if you have people that have downtime, like if you look around and they're just, hey, clean the office, nobody left a call, document one procedure per day, right? And then build that manual so that if people leave, man, you're still golden. Like that's that's what we that's where we want to be. Um it's great advice. It really is. Hey, for you though, so this is something that I I I've kind of always wanted to ask, and and it's like we always talk about this kind of once we get down to the agency owner level, but I do w wonder at the leadership level. Like, if if I'm looking up, are they encouraging you or do you think it's a good idea to be a generalist once you're a leader? I mean, because I feel like we expect you to know everything about everything, or are you seeing peers and colleagues that are specializing a little bit? You know, that's like their emphasis. Like, what do you see up there? Because I don't I don't hear, you know, above my pay grade.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Yeah, that's a that's an interesting question. Um, and you probably get different, you know, perspectives from from different leaders. But uh in my opinion, there's certain things in my role that I have to be specialists at. So, an example, I've got to be great at coaching, empathizing, communicating. I've got to be able to adapt when I'm talking to um my one o'clock compared to my three o'clock when it comes to one of my team members. The communication is different. Uh there when it comes to interaction, I've got to be a specialist. Now, once it bleeds outside of that, we've got all the different product lines, all the things that we get asked on a daily basis. And I think I think the big thing is putting your ego off to the side. Sometimes, you know, it's it's it's just funny because they they term you a leader. So suddenly you feel like you are responsible to have every answer or to be great at every single part of the business. And I think you really shortchanged your team, if that's your perspective. So I give an example uh for myself, like let's talk about product lines. If I had one of my team members come to me on the life insurance side, I wouldn't outsource that anywhere because I feel like that's probably my biggest strength. But if somebody came to me and wanted um the best information possible when it came to commercial insurance, I have people that are my peers that are world class. So I would not hesitate to set up a three-way call and continually try to try to improve um from my own perspective, it's specializing a little bit more in that area. But there's nothing wrong with not knowing the answer. So it's it's a blend of both. There's certain things that you're gonna specialize in. There's other things it's okay not to know as much as uh a resource that you have. You've just got to be willing to say, hey, I've got a resource that's better than me in this particular area and it's gonna benefit you as the team member. So I've got to put my my ego to the side and get the best person in front of um the person that needs help, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

And that probably drives, you know, credibility from those agency owners that are underneath you, right? I mean, if they ask you a question and you're saying, hey, I, you know, I could help you, but I actually have a contact that might be the best contact, you know. So let's let's connect everybody together and say, let's get the best answer, not just the one that you could probably give from a generalist perspective.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

You know, I think you're I think you're right on. I think the other thing that comes from that is they are more likely to admit to me that, hey, I struggle in this particular area, where a lot of the times that you know people redirect because if um the person in their their chain of command per se is asking them about a particular area and it's not going well, they redirect to something else. But if they feel comfortable that, hey, you've shown the fact that you're vulnerable enough that you don't know everything, I don't actually know what I'm doing in this spot. Now all of a sudden you can have a different coaching conversation. So um I'm hopeful that's what it does. So that would be a good thing. If uh if we flip that coin around though, what about you? So you you mentioned the fact or your role, you mentioned training, which uh makes me laugh because I I think you're right. So many, uh pretty much every company sends you down, you've got your your two, three weeks, all of a sudden you should be a specialist across the board. Um, how do you view the agency owner role from the standpoint of do you need to be a specialist in one area, multiple areas, all areas, or can you be a generalist across the board and have a really successful operation?

SPEAKER_00 12:06

I think an agency ownership, uh, you know, anything can work, right? So we're not talking about will this one work and this one won't. But, you know, I had to laugh when you were talking about, you know, the new agent experience because we just had somebody that went through that and they reached out to me because I was on a list or whatever about talking to, you know, growing an agency and this person wants to grow real quick and that. And listening to who they source in training, right? They're like, and this is how Josh does this, and this is how so-and-so does this, and this is how so they take somebody that's really good at everything and then show it to these agents that have been with our company for, you know, 30 days. And it's like, no one's going to do what the best person and all five of those things does at the same time, because none of those five people do all of those the best in the, you know. So it's I do find it funny that we show all of these best case examples and then kind of default these people feel like they should do all of those things well immediately. You know, where each one of those, like one of the people they were talking about works heavy in financial services and very light in property casualty. One of the people is all property casual, but it doesn't do anything. But they show the property casualty for that person and the and the financials for this person, and then it like imply that you should be able to do all of those. Yes. And it's like, come on. Like, I think that very similar to how I didn't understand what specialization meant for a team and scaling. I think I also didn't understand what specializing meant in in the insurance and financial services world. It doesn't mean that you don't do other things. It just means like, what is your natural fit, your niche to start in? You know, if you're in a small community, is it getting in the property casually? If you're in, you know, an area where maybe your background expertise is truly straight financials. Start with that. If you grow your PC afterwards, that's fine. You know, there's no right or wrong way of doing it. But I think that that idea of like doing every like jack of all trades, master of none, you know, is very applicable to what we do on both the leadership role for you, but also the agency side, man. Like the the model we show isn't exactly, you know, doable. Right. Some of these people out there in the world, and it's like, do all these. And it's like, really? Because there's there's not a lot of people are doing all those. So no, I think it's a great, you know, way to look at it. And I hope that you know, we're looking at it the right way now with the lens of you know 20 years apiece and kind of what we've seen and and and that, because everything's changing, man. I mean, it really is. And for me, the takeaway has always been, you know, what is the fastest way to to revenue, you know, profit? You know, how do I want to make somebody revenue neutral as fast as possible when I'm scaling up my agency? So if I'm adding a role, how does it pay for itself as fast as possible so that I can expand to the next one? And specialization helps you get there because it's just a faster path. It's what do you absolutely need from that to then expand? And if they can pay for themselves doing that part of it, and then you add more, now that's really where the profit, profit, profit comes from.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

That makes sense. Now, if I'm watching this and I and I'm an agency owner, I've had, you know, one team member for a number of years that does everything, and I'm interested in digging deeper. Is there any publications, books, things that you would suggest a person would dive into to start to build that out or to have some something in front of them that they can they can work off of?

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Yeah, I mean, I I do really enjoy uh the Power Position Your Agency book, you know, Troy Korsgotten's original publication from forever. That's the one I I still reread annually. I do think that is, you know, kind of the starting point. But practice management through uh, you know, Coors Gain is a is a core principle that we use here. It when I found what is now practice management, it it was kind of like the embodiment of what we were already doing. We just didn't have any of it formalized, right? It was like a written instruction manual to scale, but it was like, oh, that's that's why that works. You know, it was kind of like we we were doing it, we just didn't know why it was working, you know, and then that was that was kind of the publication that we did. So, you know, I do recommend reaching out there. Um, they have a tremendous, you know, following and also industry respect, right? It's not specific to any individual company. This just works. These are broad-based and and applicable across all companies. So I'd start there, but for the person that's had what you're talking about, I always think of like you and Betty, you know, it's like Betty's worked in my office for 20 years, it's just the two of us. Like, do I really want to grow or expand? Find the one thing that is the bugaboo, right? What's the one thing you would do if you had more time? What's the one thing you don't like doing and you avoid doing, but you know would grow your business? And higher to that, right? Like just higher to that and specialize in that. Draw up that dream job for that. Well, how would they solve it? And then once they can do that quickly, they've built the SOPs, dude. You can replace that job if they if they don't work out, but more than likely when they do work out, you can expand that role. And then you're really, really, really getting into profit, not just revenue neutral.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

That's perfect. And to me, that's a perfect spot to end it. So that gives a really good template to work off of. So, you know, for everybody watching, main thing is always please hop on, leave us some feedback if you've got something you want us to expand out on when it comes to the hiring process, who to hire and what to hire them for. And we really appreciate you taking the time to join us. So, Josh, as always, good seeing you. All right.