Today I want to discuss one of the biggest problems I see with producers in our industry today. It doesn’t matter if you’re young or old; if you’re not making what you want to make, you need to listen to what I have to say.
I’m one of those guys that pay attention to everything around me at all times. I notice stuff, and it’s probably one of the things that have helped me be somewhat successful in my career in sales. This past weekend, my family did what every middle-class American family from the suburbs does. We went to a pumpkin festival on a farm. And not only was it a pumpkin festival, but it was also a doctoral-level class on how to expand your revenue stream and entrepreneurship. They had a fricking cannon that would shoot a pumpkin 500 yards. Insane. They had every kind of horrible food for you physically, but fabulous tasting, that you could imagine. There was an entire area with monster trucks, classic cars. There were games and toys for the kids, a petting zoo, animals they could ride. And then there were the people that were there to sell their wares, the craftsman. The ladies who stay up late at night after they work or take care of their kids all day create things that other people will buy because we have to have them, right?
Something caught my eyes, though. When I was walking around, I saw a sign, and it struck me. It said, “If you do what you need to do when you need to do it, someday you’ll be able to do what you want when you want to do it.” Think about that for a second. If you do what you need to do, when you need to do it, now, someday, you’ll be able to do what you want, when you want to do it. See, people, this is a problem with our industry. It’s a problem with producers in general because you can earn money relatively quickly and in pretty good sums. But do you ever fully maximize your potential if it’s leaving as soon as it gets made?
The epidemic that I see is somebody goes out, they get a little taste of the sweet nectar of commissions, and then they take time off. And when it’s time to come in and hit next year’s numbers, there are no prospects in the pipeline. There are no appointments set up. And now they’re stuck at the same size book, but feeling like they’re starting over from zero, because they haven’t built the process, they haven’t filled the pipeline. They haven’t made the calls. They haven’t made the marketing drops. And this is something that reaches far beyond the insurance industry into society at large because the truth of the matter is we don’t know how to delay our gratification.
Amazon, and all of these other places, have done everything they can to give us instant gratification. I can order something. I ordered a drone. Crazy, right? A drone. Not a high ticket item, but it was probably about 1000 bucks. Less than an hour later, it was in my hands. Spoiled? Yeah, I am. And I think that’s dangerous. We can’t approach our insurance careers like we shop on Amazon. The paychecks are sexy. The process isn’t. It’s a grind, every single day, for you to have those behaviors that you need to be successful, not for today, not for this month, not for this year, but your entire career. And if you’re a young agent, now’s the time you build that foundation. You create the foundation that’s going to hold your behaviors for the rest of your career. And if you do that the right way, you’re not just going to kill it in commercial insurance; you’ll be able to do whatever you want, whenever you want to do it.
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