"Episode 8: Start Having Team Meetings To Move The Needle!"

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 everybody to another episode of From the Field. I'm here with my co-host Josh Rickennaw. Josh, how's the day? Hey guys. Everything good?

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Oh, we're doing good, man. Just uh sitting around trying to keep it keep it between the fences, right? Well, you're looking good. So that's all you can all you can control.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

You're too kind. So hey, so I want to jump into a topic today that uh comes down to the overall idea of meetings. You know, when do they work, when don't they work? And I'm gonna lead with kind of my perspective of what I see. I'm gonna talk about two different sets, and then I'd like to hear uh kind of from your vantage point what your thoughts are. So let's start first with the agency owners. So we've talked in previous episodes about the cohesiveness of a team being able to look at KPIs, keeping people rowing the same direction for a couple of reasons, right? One is to stay productive. The other one is to make sure that the agency owner is not frustrated when they feel like the right things aren't being done, or they can actually be in a position where they are giving credit where credit is due when they have a team member that's doing a phenomenal job. I see across the board, I see some really successful agency owners that they have a Friday meeting every single week and they have it built out to where they have a template for it. Uh they know what's going to be discussed, everyone's going to be on the same team talking about their victories, what things need to be worked on. And everybody inside of that meeting, they understand what success looks like and what the KPIs are. I see other people, and sometimes they're successful reps that don't ever hold meetings with their team, right? Or maybe it's a monthly meeting or even just once every six months they get together, but there's really no rhyme or reason to how they go about doing that. I have to say, in my experience, I do see more success coming from the people that have the team all on the same page and they run those weekly meetings. On my own, I have a monthly meeting, but I have an in-person quarterly meeting for my entire team. So everybody that's inside of my district gets together quarterly. It's funny to me because even when it's quarterly, overall our attendance is pretty good. But you have some people on your team that they avoid those meetings like the plague. So you don't know whether or not it's it's you or they just don't see value in those. But you feel like you set those things up because it's to move everybody forward, but not everybody views it that way, which is totally fine. But in your experience, whether it comes back to your team and the meetings that you set, or if you, through your leadership, you actually have meetings to attend. Uh, how do you decide whether or not to attend those or not? I'm just kind of curious from my perspective. Um, because when people don't show up, I find myself thinking to myself, what can I do different so they find value in actually being here?

SPEAKER_00 3:03

Yeah, the old this meeting should have been an email, right? Um and then, you know, it usually always comes from down high or up high. We're we're supposed to have a meeting once a quarter, we're supposed to have this. I I have to. And then the you know, the manager starts off the meeting going, this isn't gonna be one of those, you know, this isn't the boring meeting, this is gonna be productive. And then you show up and it's the exact same meeting you've been to a hundred times and you want to walk out the second you are. Guilty. I'm sure I'm guilty sometimes on that. I try not to, but I'm sure I'm guilty. Oh, buddy, we all are. Yeah. But here's my problem. I have like the angel and the devil. Like, I don't like meetings, but I know done properly, they're very effective. Sure. And so it's a very tough thing that I just don't like them because I just think in general they can fast forward. Um, but I also have seen them be super productive. I do see things like recognition being more important just because I that's not something that I strive for. You know, that I don't want media recognition. That's not why I want to have a meeting, but there are people that really appreciate it. Right. And I've seen smiles and honest appreciation from people. And I've also noticed how important some recognition can be. So I've seen very, very well run meetings and poorly run ones. But uh, you know, I we had a colleague one time and and you know him, we were at a goal setting meeting, and I was like, what's your number one goal? He goes, to not come to another one of these until next year's goal setting meeting. You know, I mean, we we we know those meetings. So here's my thing. I I believe, you know, that I've got some great mentors and and and Michelle Hubert, I lean on her a lot when it comes to meetings, to the soft skills. Um, she's worked her way from being an agent all the way up through leadership and you know, now is is doing consulting. And she talks about how important it is to keep everybody on the same page. And and I do think of it like this like you're on the road. If you just get a little bit off path, but you recorrect or or get in the same room once a week, you very rarely get all the way off path. And and it's about those quick hitters that are you on there. Now, what I've chosen to do is my team's gotten bigger. We rarely have everybody in there. Okay. Rarely. But this department will meet weekly and then we'll share the information. And with software nowadays, my goodness, we have no excuse not to meet. That new operating system that we're running from Korsgotten, uh, it's got a team rhythm function in there that we've adopted for the last two months that is saving me hours every day. Okay. Um, our best estimate after going to this meeting software is 40 work hours a week that we've saved on a team of nine. So, you know, if you've got six people in a meeting and you shave a half hour off, that's three hours. Right. And that's how I look at it. So I think they're a necessary evil, and I hate that term, but done well, they're productive. Done poorly, they are very disruptive.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

So if I'm an agency owner, is it the intentionality around my team meeting that matters? Or what is it if I'm not having right now, if I'm not having team meetings, what are the main things I need to be doing or focused on inside of those to move the entire organization to where we want to go?

SPEAKER_00 6:13

Start small. Okay. Right. I think it's palatable to have a 15-minute meeting, to have a 30-minute meeting. If you start with one hour state of the unions every week, it's yeah, no way. I mean, just maybe your team's different than mine, but you're not gonna do it. I think you start small, just like we do with calendaring, and you figure out what is absolutely required. What does everybody really need to know? Um, I think it's important we start off with a quick win. That is one to two sentences. What's one good thing that happened? It could be personal, professional, it could be anything. It goes around the room. It's better than one of those weird icebreakers. You know, we're not doing shows. It's not two truths that a lie. It's not one of those corporate icebreakers. Hey, just tell me something good that happened in the last week. And sometimes it's my puppy did this, sometimes my grandkid did this, sometimes, hey, I I had a great conversation with so-and-so yesterday. Hey, I helped this. But it goes around the room and it starts off on the right, right path. And then we we really template it out. It's two to three minutes for this department, two to three minutes for this department, two to three minutes for this department. We go through anything that we have on the update. We've got the whole agenda printed out, trying to get out of there in 15 to 20 minutes. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

And and your team members or your departments, would you uh agree that you have and and they have a very defined idea of what's expected throughout that week? So when they're giving an update, they're comparing that update, I'm guessing, against what the KPIs are, what you've actually created as success for that role.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Yeah, I mean, it's it's good to look at the scoreboard, right? So here's where we are, this is what's been put down so far, this is what we have left in the month, in the game, in the quarter, in the year. You know, are we going to win? And that competitive atmosphere is good. You should be looking at the scoreboard, um, you know, when it comes to that kind of stuff. So I I think it can be done well. I I think that we've all been burned so many times by bad meetings that that we're probably a little shy, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. Uh sure, it really does.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

So let me ask you a leadership perspective. So, other people watching this that may be in a similar similar role to my own, obviously you're a top producer, right? So when it comes down to um me setting up a one-on-one with somebody that is is not supporting the clients inside of their book of business and they're not showing up on the scoreboard. This is it's a sales career, right? You're putting people in a better position, but like you said, the scoreboard does matter. So the underperformers, I think, expect that we're gonna sit down and we're gonna talk. You get to your top performers like yourself. I'm just curious from your perspective, how how do you want to be approached by by leadership relative to, you know, a 30-minute or a one-hour monthly meeting? Are you open to that? Is that something that you would rather not have to worry about? I'm just I'm curious for you to be totally transparent as to how you think most high producers view those meetings.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Look, we have some of our best producers that don't come to them, right? Okay. I mean, it it that's I think every company does, I think anybody does. Um, when you start getting up to the the level that you don't have to be there, either don't. Um, we have a colleague, uh a former you know manager of mine, uh Joe Youngman, and and Joe gave me a piece of advice, I think, that changed my perspective in a positive way. He's like, look, if you go to a meeting, whether you think it's boring or not, and you can't take away one good idea from that meeting, shame on you. Sure. Like, out of everything that's said, you can't improve one thing, like that's on you. That's not on the manager. That's just you being calloused. And it it it challenged me because I was kind of mad. I'm like, I don't need to go to this meeting. You know, this is this is stupid. We're just gonna have an underwriter and have a you know, somebody from this person or whatever product you want to sell. And when Joe challenged me, it hit. And I haven't missed, you know, but but one since then. And you know, he's he's moved on and is more successful in in doing other things. But I I thought that was a neat challenge to say, like, hey, that's that's kind of on you. Like it may not all be tailored to you, but if you can't take one thing, that that that that is on you.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Yes. And and you know, it reminds me of something that that I see that always makes me smile. Like I uh I oversaw what was a 50 plus year representative and in inside the organization was a Hall of Fame member, um, a legend, right? And he would come to meetings, and if you took everybody's notes combined, he probably had more notes per meeting than they did. And then I I would have other people that came in and they didn't even bring a pencil or a pen, no notebook. There would be four or five people in the meeting that that literally walked in with nothing. And I would jokingly say, I guess you're expecting some good information today.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Where's my free words, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Right. It's like, oh my. So yeah, that's that's an interesting, interesting take right there. And that's a that's a really good point from that standpoint. The other thing I try to do if I'm having meetings, if I can't determine ahead of time value that's going to be in that for you, then I will usually kick that back and say, you know, hey, I want to connect. If you're if you're good time-wise to connect, let's do it. I don't have anything that's earth shattering today. So if you need the time back, let me know. And I think a lot of my top producers, um, it's probably 50-50. Half the time they'll say, you know what? I I really could get caught up in this. That'd be great if we can if we can reschedule. And the other half of the time, they want to make sure that we connect for whatever reason. So I think giving that back to you sometimes to make that decision is appreciated.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

You know, and it it's also important, right? Everybody deserves a hand up. Nobody deserves a handout, right? Ronald Reagan. And we all got help when we started. So I don't think it's too much to ask to go to a few, you know, rah-rah meetings every once in a while and and and interact. And if you, you know, you take Joe's advice, you're gonna get something from it. And and you know, it's not that bad. But I will tell you this, I I had a bad meeting. And I I I can picture it. I'm sitting at my conference room table, and remember that old video game, The Sims from when we were kids? These characters were walking around, they had these little like diamonds or something above their head to show you who they were. Yes. I kid you not, I looked around the room and I could see everybody's hourly wage above their head. I just looked around and I'm thinking about how much money every minute I am paying to run this meeting. Sure. And I'm like, stop, meeting's over. And we stopped, and it's like, that's my fault. Like, if I'm running a meeting that I'm not happy to write the check for, that's my fault. And but what a like, I beat, I I I could see it, I could see numbers above their heads, and I'm like, this meeting is costing me how much? How much did that three minute thing just cost me? Right. And I did, and I think that's probably the challenge that agency owners should use, and probably even leaders, right? You guys usually get stuck picking up a thousand dollar lunch tab or something, you know, that that nobody thinks about because it's a $20 lunch, but when there's 50 people there, it adds up. Sure. You rented a hall, you did something. And like, if we're not happy we paid that money, we probably need to reevaluate the content of the meeting.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

So that's a great point. And let me ask you one other question too, because uh there may have been a time when you weren't running meetings and now you do when you see value in them and to keep people kind of moving the right direction. Sometimes I'll hear from agency owners, you know, I've had I've had this team for two, three, four years. I've never run meetings. How do I all of a sudden decide to start running them? The same way I hear that with with annual reviews where people haven't run them for four or five years and now they want to start running them and they say, my clients aren't used to sitting down with me. How do I, how do I re- like, how do I establish I have a new pattern or a new thing that I'm doing? What advice would you give to someone that's never run meetings, but now all of a sudden they want to bring everyone together?

SPEAKER_00 14:07

Ooh, you're gonna hearken back to one of my favorite quotes, right? Okay. The best day to plant a tree was 20 years ago. Next best possible day is today. Like we wish we could have been running them right for the last five years. Sure. We didn't. But we can start right now. And if you're intentional about it, you're open with it, you set out an agenda, you involve, you know, critique, you allow criticism to come in, but you keep it paced properly and you don't start trying to overwhelm. Just start small. And if you it grows, it grows. But there's no better time to start than right now. I mean, a month from now, you could have already been a month into it. So, like I said, I love that quote. I apply it probably too often, but it does help uh my decision matrix that if this is something I wish I had been doing, I I might as well get started doing it.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

Well said. Anything in closing that you think somebody needs to know if they're contemplating running meetings and uh and want to, you know, have the best version of that possible.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

I think for those, especially corporate employees that are involved in agency the way you are, right? Like I just want leadership to know that they have been good meetings. We've been to inspiring ones. We've been to ones that you know move the needle. And just because maybe not everybody's engaged, or sometimes it doesn't hit a home run, like it's important to do just as much for agency owners and producers from leadership as it is for us to do for our teams. So, you know, I I look back at the times where I've kind of been disgruntled or gone to a meeting with a you know less than perfect attitude, and then I left with something. So, you know, don't get discouraged if you're in leadership either, because whether they're a new producer or not, they might hear something today that they just needed to hear. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

And and one other one thing I will add that I think I've changed over the course of the last decade is you know, we go back to the old with them, right? What's in it for me? So I try to make sure that when I set up meetings, that I am conveying the information or presenting it from the standpoint of not just data, but what does this mean to you, to your agency, to your revenue, to your clients, in a way to where people say, oh, okay, I see the impact. So it's not just data and sometimes in corporate meetings, it's all data driven, right? It's it's all it is is a PowerPoint and data, and you have to figure out the with them. So I think if you're the one presenting the information, if you can do that for people, that you're gonna have a lot more engagement inside of those meetings.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

So hey, as we as we get ready to part for the day, let's let's remember, you know, Troy Korisgodden's Law of 72. You know, if you want to start meetings, schedule a time for yourself in the next 72 hours to implement something, right? If we wait longer than that, we're not gonna do it. You could hear this, you'd be listening to it in the car, you could be working out right now. Hey, this is good, I should get back into meetings. If you don't put something on your calendar to be intentional about doing this, in three days you're gonna forget about it. So, you know, that would be my encouragement of the day is if you think that you need to reevaluate what you're doing on these meetings, you do. And schedule some time yourself to put that on the calendar and get it done. Fantastic call out from the GOAT himself.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

So, with that said, just in closing, just a reminder, uh, you can find us on Instagram and on uh TikTok at FTFGuys, and then you can find us on YouTube at FromTheField in the same way on all the major podcasts will be from the field as well. So we've got a lot more feedback lately. We've been able to build out some of our um overall podcasts based on the questions that have been asked by you. So we appreciate you taking time and engaging with us, and we will continue to do everything we can do to be a good resource. So, with that, Josh, always good hanging out with you.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Keep them coming. See you guys.