"Episode 7: Where Do I Spend My Time!? 1st Year Agency Owner"

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 0:14

Welcome everyone to another episode of From the Field. I'm with my co-host, Josh Rickenaugh. Josh, how's the day going?

SPEAKER_00 0:21

It's going well. It's it's hot here in central Illinois. So uh abnormally warm this time of year, but we're enjoying it.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

It's insane out there right now. I mean, that is for sure. So before we get started today, just want to remind you, depending on what platform you're listening or watching us on, uh, when it comes to Instagram and TikTok, we're at FTF Guys. And if you're going to YouTube, you can find us at From the Field the same way you can find us on all of the major podcast platforms. So we appreciate you tuning in. So kind of kicking off, Josh, you know, we have talked and we've asked all the listeners if you've got something that's on your mind to make sure to reach out to us. And we want to make sure that we cover that topic. So we recently just had somebody come out of corporate training that's currently the role that they're in. And they talked about the fact that there's not enough videos or information when it comes back to specifically what are the two or three major things that the new representatives coming on need to be thinking about. So whether that be scratch or that be in a position where they're coming into a book. Um, so today I'd like for you and I to kind of go back and forth and compare notes. What comes to mind for you? If you had someone that was new coming into the business, what do you think the major thing that they need to focus on starting off would be?

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Yeah, and I love that we talked about it. It does depend on how you're coming in. Uh, I started off scratch. I thought I wanted a book uh with a captive. My uncle, who a certified financial planner, you know, 20 plus years in the business, was like, no, you're not getting a book because if you do, you're just gonna run that book. That's all you're ever gonna do. You're gonna be busy being busy and you're never gonna grow. So his point was, you know, to get out there and hit the ground running. So for me, first and foremost, you're not gonna be great at everything when you start. So it's about finding the one or two things that you want to go into as fast as you can and then go full speed there. I mean, 80%. And if that's client acquisition, if that is centers of influence work, that's where 80% of your day should be spent. And I think too many people walk in and just try to learn be everything and kind of touch everything when they're walking instead of just picking what is the thing you're best at and go do it and do it really, really well. Um, I'm not sure if that's what you see from the leadership role that people walk in too often and just try to be a little bit good at too many things. Yes. Instead of, you know, really good at something. I mean, is it is that just something I feel or kind of what do you see from leadership?

SPEAKER_01 2:43

No, I I agree with you. I think you've got to pick your your one or two spots that you want to excel in. And then you've got to be inquisitive. A lot of the times, depending on the company that you're coming into or what your leadership looks like, uh, there's a lot of people willing to help. But for some reason, people that get hired into this role sometimes, I think they feel prideful and the fact that they can't ask. And I think they'd be amazed at how many people want to help if somebody's willing to put the put the work in. And I think one thing you and I have seen a lot of the times is we see people come on board and they're always getting ready to get ready. They don't know enough yet, right? So they don't actually take action and they don't, they don't fail at anything and they don't get traction because they feel like they have to know everything about everything to even start to build the business.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

The old PhD and getting ready to get ready. You know, uh don't worry, when I start this, I've got the tracking figured out for it, right? Don't worry, I I'm just getting ready so that when I do start it, boy, I've got the spreadsheet dialed in for how I'm gonna measure what I haven't done yet.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

For sure. And one thing I'd like to say is for anybody starting off, uh, take you, for example, Josh, world class, right? One of the best in the industry. But if there were times in that first year where you look in the mirror, and I I remember this thought. So you can tell me if this is one that resonates with you. I can remember three or four months into my career, I was in an appointment in Macomb, Illinois. And I remember thinking to myself as I was trying to advise this client, if I'm the expert in the room, these this person's in trouble. That's really what I thought to myself because I I think we all feel like we don't know enough early on, and and that's just part of the the maturation or the evolution of becoming great at this.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

No, and and there's imposter syndrome at every point of the game. Uh, I'm in a mastermind group with people that are core to the table, doing very well, and everybody's still like can you believe who calls us for questions? Like this person asked me, like, I don't know. And it's like, but you know, now we are the ones that they're asking for. So that's that's natural, it's there. Uh, one that that I think of, and I I mentored a new agent one time and he asked me, he's like, Well, you know, I'm trying to do what you're doing. And I want to hear your opinion on this because he walked in, I'm 10 years in the business. At that point, I'm in my mid-30s. Sure. He's in his mid-20s, and he's trying to do in his 20s what I was doing in my 30s. So he's watching my day and he's trying to mirror it so that he can be productive. And I said, buddy, you're you're not gonna beat me at this game. You got to beat me at the game that a 25-year-old needs to play. Right. All right. At that point, I had three kids under the age of six. I had to go home at night. Like, I wanted to be a good husband. I told him, you can't touch me from 7:30 a.m. until four o'clock in the afternoon. Right. But I can't hang with you from 4 p.m. until 8 p.m. Like I can't go to realtor functions. I can't go to networking groups. I can't take, you know, clients out for dinner right now, but you know, once, once a week or an entertainment. So it was more about him competing against that version of himself and what inning he was playing the game in and not trying to fast forward to the inning that I was playing it in. Yes, that makes sense. Does it does it seem like that? Because I watch people walk in and they look at somebody like, I like what he or she is doing. I'm gonna try to do that, but they're not doing what they did when they were new. They're trying to jump in where they are and just skip a bunch of the steps. And I think it's a huge mistake.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Yeah, it's I think it's tough when you see the actual uh the built agency where you want to end up at, because like you said, you want to plug and play, right? You you don't you don't want the steps to get to where that's at. You just want to be able to jump right into it. So I think I think that's a natural thing. But as you said, I think people have to tailor their plan uh based on what their life situation looks like, where they can allocate time. Uh, and that changes depending on the life stage that we're in and what we've actually built, how much staff we have, how much we've outsourced. I think that's very true that people come in and immediately they look at the top rung of the ladder and say, that's where I want to be. I'll emulate that. But if you haven't built the ladder, you can't just jump on the top rung. So I think I think you bring up a good point. Um, I've got a question for you, kind of on the marketing side. So another one that I see oftentimes is I see a lot of people coming in, uh, especially if they come in scratch. And they may have a they may have a natural market, they have no referral networks built out, and uh really everything is just kind of thrown together. They feel overwhelmed. And it is overwhelming coming in. But one thing I've noticed with really good startup reps is they do a good job of being able to identify what has a short tail and what has a long tail on it. So the ability to know your quick wins over here when it comes to your natural market, getting referrals, being able to build that out, and then being able to segment over to what has a longer tail, which is going to be those relationships possibly with lenders, realtors, other professionals that might take three months, six months, nine months to really come to fruition where you start to build that pipeline and make your life easy. So I I've really noticed uh uh uh the successful reps do a really good job of splitting those into two different things, where the newer reps that struggle, all of it is just one uh, you know, really one marketing bucket and they get themselves completely bogged down.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Yeah, I think it can even be chopped up a little bit more, but it's it's it's very similar to what you said. Like you're at 60, 40 is probably what you're gonna recommend. There's 60% on ultra short-term things that you know you need this month, you need to survive, you need to add clients, and 40% medium and long term. I think you can really call it 60, 2020, you know, where 60% of your time is is meant to be the things you need this month. 20% is those medium range, those, those um developing, you know, relationships, local partnerships, those kind of things that you're doing where you're you're you're creating good business and referral partners. And then 20% is your long-term, right? That's your education, that's the really building the foundation and doing that. So so I even break it up a little bit more than you did, but I do think a 60, 40 split between immediate, what do you need this month, this quarter, that kind of stuff for production, new client acquisition. And then what are you doing that when that list of your cousins and brothers and sisters runs out, right? Everybody comes in with that list. And you know, I think what they're not thinking of is we've all felt victim to this. You know, whether you are refer to a prospect or you purchase a lead or however it comes to you, we work it. If you don't get that prospect of that client, they just throw it away. Right. They they don't thank them for their time, ask them if it's okay to follow up with them in six months and call them in, you know, six months, every six months until they till they say yes or stop calling. You know, and I've heard people say, I hear from you more than I hear from my current agent. Sure. You know, these are people that were, we might have quoted them three times before they come over. Yes. But when you're new and you're trying to just everything is coming at you, it's hard to have that medium and long-term view where you go, hey, I I want to talk to this person in six months again. I, you know, not just, oh darn, I didn't get them. I need to get somebody for this month or I'm gonna lose my contract, but I'm gonna need someone to talk to in six months. I'm gonna need somebody to talk to in 13 months, I'm gonna need somebody to talk to in a year and a half, you know, and pending those long-term uh, you know, chances and not losing those one, you know, as a one-time hit.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

Yes. And I remember you talking about one of the uh agency owners that you have a tremendous amount of respect for, that's one of your peers, that they basically have built up, you know, the ability to call people for years in the future because they have done such a good job of taking the people that either left or said no and have a systematic way to file that away. So now all of a sudden they're able to continue to grow just based off what they've accrued over a number of years. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

You know, his story and how he does that, he has an old school penned drawer, the old pending files, right? And it's there labeled January through December. And this dude sits there, and if he he quoted you in January in your auto, he moves you to July. You know, if he quoted your home in January, he's keeping that in January. Next January's gonna quote you again. Sure. And I explained that in a low-tech version to new agents because we have technology now. You know, you don't just have to have that penned drawer, that old file cabinet that you're hoping, you're just recycling the same names and getting them from. We have technology that'll pin it for us. Right. It can even leave the notes in there and even be better. It can be drip marketing campaigns, it can be everything else. But I just love the idea that every month he opens up a drawer of people he can call to see if they want to do business. Like, what a nice way to start your month instead of, oh man, I'm down to my final, you know, two on my project whatever list that the company made me have to start. And I had to prove that I had this many cell phones. So I just got in Facebook and wrote down the first 250 names, and I don't really know the bottom hundred of them, but but I'm gonna call. Right. So I just think it's a great low-tech uh application that we can then look at in today's technology world.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

That's good. And let me give you one more question. So if you reflect back on your career and you really look maybe at the first two or three years of what you did compared to knowing what you know now, what you would do, is there anything that sticks out to you that you said, you know, if I went back and I and I knew what I know now and I started new, these are things that I would do that I probably didn't do the first time around. The first time.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Yeah, um, there is. And I think the number one is I would look towards my advantages and not my disadvantages. Uh, and and I mean this. Like if you're starting out now, I think this is a huge thing. I looked at what I didn't have. You know, when I started, uh I was scratch, and then eventually they gave me 13 clients. And I remember thinking, man, if all 13 people call me every day, I still I still got a lot of time left in my day. You know, what am I gonna do? And I looked at it as a downside. I don't have people calling me, they don't have life events happening, they don't have this, I don't have this. And I didn't look at the blessing of how much time and opportunity I had. I could be out there meeting people. I didn't have the fixed schedule and the things were gonna come in. When there was a bad storm in town, I only had a few people to worry about. You know, I didn't look at my disadvantages as advantages. And I think if I was doing it all over again or if I was telling my own kid to start, that's what I would do. It's just what you think is probably the downside is really the upside when you're starting in the industry. That that time, that effort to brand yourself, you are establishing your identity from day one. And very few times do you ever get to start that. So I think I would have really cherished that part more than than regretting what I didn't have and just really been excited about what I did have.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

No, that's good. And you you talk about advantages, a little bit different context than what you're talking about. But I also think no matter where you're at, I mean, it doesn't matter if you're the independent space, the captive space, what company you're with, there's advantages when it comes to the way you write business and the way you do things as a company. So I think learning those starting off and knowing like here are our competitive advantages and getting that to where it's automatic when you're when you're going out and talking to clients or prospects is another spot that I think takes far too long for new reps to get up to speed on. So if I was starting off, I would go to somebody that was inside the organization that was willing to share and say, talk me through when it comes to whatever the product line is, whether it's auto, home, life, commercial, whatever it is, talk me through what makes us different. So I'm in a position when I go in, um, I can I can leverage what makes us great as a company.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

As a customer, and and people are willing to share, like they really are. Um 20 minutes where we jumped on today, I took a call from a uh an agent who saw our podcast and he's in Vegas. And he had a question about AI integration. And you know, we're not using exactly the same systems as that, the other, but we talked about it. He's like, oh, that makes sense. And we idea shared for 15 minutes. And it's like, you know, you can connect nowadays with people in a way that you didn't used to have the ability to. And I don't think anybody ever tells anybody, no, you know, you can't pick my brain for 20 minutes, or no, I'm too busy. I can't possibly spend 10 minutes while I'm driving to practice to talk to you. People are available, they're out there to help. And, you know, we we love hearing the feedback. When people are commenting and posting and screen capturing and texting and messaging and doing that stuff and giving us ideas, this is great. I mean, this makes us feel better about what we're doing and and hopefully have a path forward in this. For sure.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

And and I'll add one thing to that. When I uh I remember 10 years ago, I've kind of gotten away from this, but I remember in that particular area that I was in with the new reps, uh, I would take uh a list of reps where we could look at production that was not even close to us. So I may take somebody out on the West Coast or a district out on the West Coast, and I would say, look at these numbers and tell me if you could ask one question to anybody what it would be. And they would say, I want to know how John Jones has 280 homes written in the first three months of the year. And I would say, Why don't you ask them? And and that's how I would challenge, like, hey, the data's there. All you gotta do is pick up the phone and reach out and try to figure it out. And too many people are scared to do it. And uh, you know, you bring up a great point there for sure. Is there anything additional that you want to add for new new people coming in that are watching this that will um put their mind at ease or help them in that first maybe six months to 12 months?

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Yeah, new agents. Listen, you actually want to start when you don't think you want to start. Um, and what I mean by that is our best agents, like the people I've seen that have been ultra successful, have always started in what they think is a bad market. Um, when you come in and everything's easy, you know, your rates are good, you know, this is that, there's no competitors in your town, you're the only agent. You know, all the things that we we make up in our head, uh, that's not really learning. Like when you can make it in the bad markets, the hard times, you're building a an anti-fragile business that's gonna be around for a long time. So, you know, for those of you starting off, if you think this is a hard time to start, this is probably the best time to start. You know, you you you really do want to start in hard times because it's gonna make everything else so much better.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

It's a great point. It's a good one to end on. We do want to give a shout out one more time to the listener that sent the question to us. We love being able to create the uh the actual podcast topic around feedback like that. So thank you. Um, and with that, we look forward to seeing you on the next one.