Will this system work for my insurance agency?
Business Coaching for Insurance Agencies
My name is Nick Smith and I’m an agency owner with Farmer’s Insurance. I grew up in a middle class family all the way up until I was about 13, and then my dad lost his job and then all of a sudden he was gone, and I was being raised by my mom by herself. She was probably making 20 grand a year. In order for me to have a car, I had to pay for the car. I had to pay for the gas. I had to do everything on my own, so the independent thinking had to come early, if I wanted to do anything. I didn’t want to have a boss. I did independent things without working for somebody else. Even at 15, I had my own lawn company that I was doing 60 yards a week, and so I’ve always had my own thing for the most part. Then in my twenties, I worked for other people and I hated it, and always thought, “Man, I could be doing this on my own, better than he could.”
Owning my own business was something that I’ve always known and wanted to do, since I was 14, 15 years old. Little did I know how stinking hard it was going to be for the first five years. I mean, it was incredibly hard. In-laws have a moving company, so I worked for them during the day. I’d come in the office at night, and I’d make cold calls all night long, some design work on the side, designing logos and websites and stuff like that. So the first two or three years wasn’t just selling insurance, it was picking any odds and end jobs that I could pick up to make this thing work, because I had a wife who stayed at home. I had two babies at the house. I mean, I had to work my tail off.
A couple of years ago, man, I was stuck in a rut. I really, honestly was, and I couldn’t see it. Not because I was doing it wrong, it’s because I didn’t know any better. Rates were not good. Selling was difficult. Staffing was just unbelievably difficult to keep good staff, and here I was having a ton of turnover, and I was about ready to hang it up and sell out. I was just done. And that’s about when I got introduced to the Business Coaching for Insurance Agencies concept of the will of wealth and Thrive. Some of the specific things I’ve learned about running my business is systems and being organized. Before, I think I just kind of shot from the hip a lot of times. But, man, since I started this whole journey and I’ve developed systems for each of the employees, but not just the employees but for the position, so the fear of wondering when I’m gone, wondering if things are being done, I don’t have to worry quite as much.
Business-wise, finally got over the hump and we’re actually growing again, whereas before we were just declining, declining, declining, and now we’re back up, and we’re back over where we were a couple of years ago now. The training is ongoing, even from where I’m at now, I still feel like I needed to get further. The training itself is just, it’ll rock your world. It really will change the way you think and look at business, so all those things just kind of culminated into this big successful business that I feel like I have now. All that stuff has just been life-altering, man.
Marshall, hey buddy. Just wanted to hop on here and give you a quick thanks to the things that we’ve been implementing Business Coaching for Insurance Agencies system-wise. We’ve had record production in the past couple of months. We got the music going. We even got a smell machine going, so we, smells good when you walk into the office. We’ve got our script rolling, which has been game changer is the script, and all my team members now are following the script. It’s allowing us to make more sales, allowing me to help coach them, and it’s allowed me to hire another sales producer, just because it’s going so well. The other sales producer came from the group interview process, which has been game changer for me, cutting down my time on having to interview people and read résumés and all that nonsense that never matters. Thank you so much for everything you’ve done in our Business Coaching for Insurance Agencies, and I can’t wait to see what the rest of the year holds, buddy.