Grabbing opportunities, preparation, personification, and time management are leadership essentials. With these aspects, leaders can thrive and businesses can grow bigger and better. Today, Ben Baker chats with Dr. Billy R. Williams, the Founder and President of Inspire a Nation Business Mentoring Services and the CEO of the Williams Family Investment Group. Dr. Williams introduces us to the reality of business and highlights five reasons why a business should be a business. He also talks about how companies should be focused in this pandemic to move forward in this new normal. Learn how you can grow your business from a leader’s perspective in this timely episode.
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Listen to the podcast here:
The Key Factors Of Growing Your Business With DR. Billy R. Williams
Billy R. Williams – Inspire A Nation
I love having you guys come with me each and every week. Keep emailing me, keep asking me questions. I get questions every week at [email protected]. I get wonderful comments. People comment on Spotify and iTunes. If you go to YourLIVINGBrand.live, you are going to be able to hit a button to subscribe. Subscribe where you are. Tell your friends, join the community. We love having you on the show. In this episode, I have a phenomenal guest coming to you from the Texas region, down in Dallas, Billy R. Williams. Billy, welcome to the show. What a great way to bring you on board.
Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I’m honored to be here. I know your guests are specially selected, so I appreciate the fact that I was one of the selectees.
It’s great because you come from an amazing background and I’m going to let you tell your own story. The background itself is fascinating. We’ll start off with your military going into business and your laser focus on the insurance business is amazing to enable you to have the success that you are. Why don’t we start off by you telling the audience a little bit about you, where you came from? What drives you? Where are you now? Where do you want to be going?
I came from a military background. My dad was military for 35 years. I was military for a little over twenty years. What drove me was the fact that I was a product of the ‘60s. I was a product of race riots, affirmative action, and everyone trying to be equal. Everything that happened in the ‘60s and ‘70s. What it did at that time was it galvanized my family to say, “The only way that you’re going to not get caught up in all of this, not let it hold you back and not become a statistic is you have to have more education than everybody and you have to work harder.”
My dad was the smartest man that I ever met in my life. He was into these little sayings and all those little sayings used to stick in my head. I used that and leveraged it. When I said work harder, I don’t mean to work physically harder. For him, it was about working mentally harder and he had this one saying, “Wealthy people make complicated things simple. Poor people make simple things unnecessarily complicated.” That’s something that always stuck in my head. From there I leveraged that. I’ve always had a lot of ego and tried to minimize the arrogance. Ego is what we do. Arrogance is what we refuse to do. I tried to be one of those people that I wouldn’t refuse to do anything valuable.
There are some people like, “I won’t clean a toilet or I won’t do this.” I will do anything if I thought I’d learned from it. If I had a lesson from it. If it put me in a better situation. I also had that ego, which is what you do that said, “I cannot work you. I may not be as smart as you, but I’m intelligent so I can figure it out.” I took that and drove with it. I’m not a very smart person. Meaning, I don’t remember things well. I don’t read it and instantly get it. Some people, jumps off the paper at them. I’m not that person. I may have to read it 5, 6, 7, 8 times before I get it, but I have the work ethic to read it 5, 6, 7, 8 times until I get it where most people don’t have that work ethic. What some people would call a weakness or shortfall, I’ve tried to leverage that into a strength. That allows me to go deeper into learning things than most people do because I have to learn it so deep just to understand it where most people can skim it and get by with it.
It does because it gives us a good understanding of the mental space that you came from. I’m like you. I grew up with a father in the construction business. We owned a commercial renovation company. From the time I was 11 or 12, I was on the job site sweeping up, cleaning up, getting coffee and cigarettes for the guys, hauling drywall and pulling wire. My dad’s attitude was, “You don’t work for me. You work for the onsite foreman. If they fire you, you’re fired. If they tell you to do something, you do it.” I learned at a very young age what real hard work was. Digging a ditch that was 6 feet deep, 3 feet wide, 120 feet long so we could lay a pipe down there. I did that by hand more than once.
I learned that I don’t want to do that anymore. One of the amazing lessons that my father taught me is that you have a brain, use it. There’s nothing wrong with working with your hands. There’s nothing wrong with being a person who is in the construction of your entire life. They do amazing things but you need to sit there and say, “What am I destined for? What am I capable of? What do I have the true skills to do?” Be able to take the time and the effort to figure that out and work hard to make it happen. Because like you, there are times I need to do things 5, 6, 7 times over. My son can read something. He’s got it. It’s in his brain for the rest of his life.
My wife is the same thing. Me? You have to tell me something 5 or 6 times. I got it but I don’t internalize it until I’ve actually physically done it. I love that about you. What I wanted to dive into because you’re focused deep and hard on the insurance business. That’s your jam. I want people to find out, first of all, a little bit of context about what exactly you do in the insurance business and I want to dive into the process. I think that we’re at a stage where we need to be starting to talk about what’s next. What are the next things that the business owners need to be thinking about? What are the next things that are going to make business owners successful?
Over the last several years, there have been a lot of lazy business owners out there because they’ve just gone from success to success. We’ve been in a great market. It’s kept going up and up. The Dow keeps going up and up, unemployment was down and we’ve reached a stage where that’s not the truth anymore. We need to sit there and say, “Now that things have changed and we have a new normal, what’s next?” Give me a little context about what you do and then let’s get into the process.
Your business should allow you the time and resources to give to your family, passions, community, and religious institutions. Share on XWhat I do is very simple. I’m an investor in insurance agencies, not insurance companies. I do have some company stock, but I primarily try to invest in insurance agencies. I’ll paint a scenario. This is the easiest way to understand this. Let’s say I go into an agency and the agency’s been around for years. They don’t have good processes, good accountability, good staff or good whatever. I can say, “Let me buy 10% or 15% of your agency and let me bring in my management system, our processes that we’ve proven to make over $1 billion in premiums, and let me help you to take this agency to a whole new level. That way, my 15% share becomes more valuable. At some point, you may want to sell this thing, and when you sell it, what I bought into it for maybe $100,000 for 15%. When I sell it five years later, that $100,000 investment is now worth $250,000.”
I’m an investor in the insurance industry and insurance agencies, which means that everything I look at is about revenue. If it doesn’t increase the premium, increased policies, increased retention, increase referrals, or make customer service easier and more effective, it has no place in an agency. That’s the way I look at things. I’m looking at it not as the end-user or as the day-to-day operator. I’m looking at it to say, “Does that task, does that process, does that operation, does that person generate revenue?” If they don’t, how do we get them to generate revenue or how do we get rid of them?
Let’s dive into that step-by-step. When you first go into a business and we all know this is going to vary from business to business. No two businesses are the same, but there’s got to be trends. What do you find are the number one things you’re seeing within the companies that you see that you’re sitting there going, “They could be doing this so much better?”
Number one is why they’re even in business. I use a lot of numbers, acronyms, and all that stuff. I feel like that businesses are in business for five reasons. I call it The Five Ps of Business and this is in my eBook ICECREAM: Lessons Business Owners Learn the Hard Way. Your readers can go to IceCreamLessons.com and download a copy of the handout and the eBook if they want to. It’s free. I feel like a business should be in business for five reasons. Number one is passion. Your business should either be your passion or fund your passion.
If you’re in business just because you need a job because no one else would hire you so you decided to hire yourself, but it’s not your passion, I don’t think you’re going to do well in that business. People quit jobs, we don’t quit our passions. Number two is a product. Does your product add value to people’s lives? Does it make them feel safe, secure? Does it make their life easier to free up more time? What kind of value does your product add to people’s lives? If your product doesn’t add to people’s lives, it’s a waste of time. Next is profit. Are you being responsible for earning your profits and managing your profits?
I know some people would come in and say, “Billy, I’m going to look at the P&L. I’m going to look at this and I’m going to look at that.” I’m going to look at your profit and loss statement, but I’m also going to look at what’s driving the profit and loss statement, and what are you doing with the profits once you make those profits? Are you just making profits to fund your boat? Are you making profits for the pool boy bimble account? Number four is philanthropy. Your business should allow you the time and resources to give to your family, your passions, your community, your religious institutions. If you’re not doing any of that, then that tells me that you’re very self-centered or very selfish. Those are things that I’m going to be aware of.
Finally, does your business personify who you are? Can I look at your business and see you in your business? If you’re telling me you’re quiet, you’re humble and you know all this other stuff, but your business is loud, boisterous. If you got $20 million in ads bragging about how wonderful you are but you’re telling me you’re a humble person, that doesn’t fly because that’s not the personification. I look for those five Ps, Passion, Product, Profit, Philanthropy, and Personification. Even though I’m looking at reports and I’m looking at other things, all those reports are doing are breaking those things down into the five Ps for me.
It’s interesting because you and I look at businesses slightly differently because the businesses that I tend to come into are the businesses that have gone through either rapid growth and they’ve lost their purpose. Where they’re in mergers and acquisitions and one culture is killing the other culture, where there are communication issues. For me, it’s the Cs. It’s not the Ps. The thing is a lot of it comes down to what is the purpose. Why did you get into business in the first place? Who are the people that care about your business and how do you help them? It’s amazing how many companies can’t answer those questions. They got into the business because they were, they wanted to do X. In your particular business, they wanted to sell insurance. A one-person company became a 15-person company, became a 25 person company. In their heart, all they want to do is sell insurance. What they’ve done is they’ve put people around them to help them do what they want to do, but they haven’t built a business.
I see that all the time. What happens is the insurance industry, someone will say, “I want to be an insurance agent.” They realize they get so busy that they have to hire someone to help them to run their insurance agency. They bring them in but they don’t train them for that person to actually be a value add. They train them for that person to take over stuff they don’t want to do. They don’t want to answer the phone or they can’t answer the phone. They don’t want to send out the different emails. They don’t want to knock on the door so they hire people. Before long they don’t realize that they just built a company in their own image and all of their weaknesses have transferred over to the other person. Because even though you don’t like knocking on doors, if you don’t hold the people who are supposed to knock on doors accountable, they won’t knock on doors either.
A lot of businesses end up winging it and what happens is they get lucky. They’ll get 2 or 3 people who get what the business is all about. Those 2 or 3 people are the rudders that run that business, that guide that business. That’s why you’ll see a lot of businesses shut down or are diminished if one of their key people leaves because the owner didn’t have the vision. It was the key person who had the vision and was keeping the ships straight. When that person left, everything went to hell in a handbasket.
Eventually those 2 or 3 key people, like law firms, insurance brokerage and everybody else, they’re going to say, “What do I need this honor for? I’m the one who’s bringing in all the revenue. I’m the one who’s got the relationships with the clients. I’m the one who’s doing all the hard work. Why am I doing it for this person? Why am I not doing it for myself?” If companies aren’t built with culture, purpose, and vision, that’s exactly what happens. Those key people leave and then all of a sudden, a $10 million company becomes a $2 million company almost overnight.
In the military, we have this thing that says, “Culture eats plans for lunch.” It does. You can have all the best plans in the world, but if your culture is not where it needs to be, then all those plans mean nothing. That’s just the way it works. You had asked me about the process.
The process is a good conversation to have.
Let me take you into an insurance agency. I walked into an insurance agency. I’m looking for the five Ps. I’m looking at different reports. I’m looking at different activities. I’m looking at different actions. What I don’t do is I don’t talk to the people at first. I let the numbers and I let the reports tell me the story of the agency because people will paint whatever picture they want to paint, but if the numbers don’t line up with the picture you’re painting, I’m going to believe the numbers. I will look at revenue per producer. I will look at how many leads you generated. I will look at how much revenue you’re generating per line of insurance that you write. I will look at which salesperson is writing what line. I look at all the reports and numbers.
If you can’t give me those reports or give me those numbers, then I know you’re winging it. The agencies are just running itself. The first thing I look at is, what are the numbers telling me about your agency? From the numbers, I’ll sit down and I’ll look at the technology. I still haven’t talked to the people. Seventy percent of your numbers are driven by your technology. Whether you are a, “No. Billy, I’m not a tech person. I still got files, file cabinets, and I still got whatever.” How are you using the phone? A phone is a piece of technology. How many outbound calls are you making? How many inbound calls are coming into the agency? How many emails are going out? How many emails are coming in? How many actual packets are we generating and sending to the carriers?
Even though you may not be heavy technology, we all still have to have some vision of technology. It goes right back to what I was saying about the other things. If your technology doesn’t tell me the story that you’re telling me, I’m going to believe the technology. An agent will say, “Billy, my people are generating $5 million in premium a week. We’re sending that up to the carriers and we’re closing deals left and right and we’re doing this.” I was like, “That’s great.” Your reports reflect that. Your reports say that you are sending up $5 million in business. You’ve got ten people that are doing that. Let’s look at your actual issue. How many of those $5 million that you’re sending up to write is actually issuing?
They’re converting from quotes to policies.
That tells me right then and there may be something broken in your paperwork. There may be something broken in your sales cycle. Each number tells me something about your business. In the simplest form, I look at leads, quotes, sales, and revenue. Each number tells me something different. If you’ve got a bunch of leads coming in but they’re not turning into quotes, then that tells me your people are not following up on the number of leads that you have. They’re either following up at the wrong time or you’ve got a bunch of crappy leads that you’re paying for and stuff is falling out of the crap.
If your lead to quote ratio is good but the quotes aren’t turning into sales, then again, that tells me something about your agency. People are talking but they can’t close or they’re talking to the wrong customer. You’re talking to a lot of people but you’re not talking to qualified prospects, so that tells me something about your agency. If you’re quoting and selling but the revenue per sale is low, then that tells me your people are price-driven. It tells me that either your people can’t sell and so you’re just throwing enough stuff at them. That stuff is falling out though you’ve never taught them how to actually close a deal.
They don’t know the difference between someone researching and someone ready to buy because you’ve never taught them from a sales standpoint. At its simplest level, the numbers and technology tell me the culture of your agency. Once I’ve got what the numbers and the technology say, then I’ll start talking to the staff and see if it lines up with the culture that the numbers and the technology are telling me, or if the staff is just repeating what the agent says because they know that’s going to keep them their job.
The basis of all of the problems that we run into is time management. Share on XThere are a lot of people like that out there. I laughed because we deal a lot with marketing and sales. Marketing says, “The sales guys, we give them all these leads and they’re not following up with it,” and the sales guys turned around and says, “We get all these lousy leads from the marketing department.” A lot of it comes down to nobody talking to one another and sit there going, “What do we need as a company to move forward as a company?”
It’s always a communication issue. Even when we look at the numbers, the technology, the culture, everything, it’s always a communication issue. Because if I know that I’m getting a bunch of crappy leads and they are not turning into quotes, I need to communicate that to somebody. Whether it’s the marketing department or whomever. If its quotes to sales are the problem, I need to communicate that. Even with my technology. My technology, the way I look at it is it has a KPI or Key Performance Indicator, just like a normal staff person would have a KPI. If my technology is not being utilized in the best way possible and it’s not driving the KPIs that it’s supposed to, that’s a communication issue. Somebody set up this technology without communicating what the real KPI for the technology is supposed to be. At the end of the day, it’s always a communication problem. It’s just people who don’t look at those different things as communication issues.
What’s the biggest challenge you find with leadership?
Weak leadership. By weak leadership, what I mean is they don’t have a vision. They don’t train. They don’t hold people accountable so they don’t set the culture. I know you hear all the time, “It’s the culture,” but something has to establish the culture. Leadership is supposed to establish a culture. In the insurance industry, what I run into most of the time is, again, most insurance agents wanted to be salespeople. They didn’t want to run an insurance business, they wanted to do sales.
Now, they’re forced to do HR, counseling and training stuff they never planned on doing. They were just hoping to hire someone who would already know how to do it. That’s why we have so much recycling in the insurance industry. You hear people go, “I’m going to hire this person who just came over from State Farm,” or “I’m going to hire this person who just came from Travelers,” or “I’m going to hire this person who used to work at Safeco and hire this person who used to do that.” I’m like, “Why are you hiring them?” “Because they’ve been in the business for a long time. I got to teach them anything. They already know everything.” You are going to rely on someone else teaching your revenue stream.
You’re getting somebody else’s bad habits.
Because it’s a luck of the draw, now and then, 1 out of 10, 1 out of 20, you’ll get someone who can pull their own weight. Most of the time, 8 out of 10 or 9 out of 10, they could pull their own weight if you trained them and held them accountable and made them understand what the KPIs are that are going to make their job effectively, but most agents won’t take the time to do that. We talk about everything being communication. The basis of all of the problems that I run into is time management. They don’t make the time to train. They don’t make the time to hold people accountable and spot check. They don’t make the time to counsel you. They’re so busy doing all these other things.
This goes back to one of my dad’s saying, “The denominations that you think in will determine the quality of your life.” Some people think that answering a $5 phone call is more important than making $1,000 sales call. The denomination that you think determines your quality of life, but the denomination that you think in also determines how you utilize your time. That means if I think that my time is worth $100,000, I’m going to make sure I’m doing $100,000 tasks with my time. If I don’t know the value of my time or I think I’m just lucky to be here and have a job, I’m going to do whatever falls in my lap. I’m not going to have a plan to utilize my time. Most agents don’t have a plan to utilize their time or their staff’s time. It still boils down to time.
It’s a story that I tell on stage that years ago, there were two of us in the office that were selling about the same amount of money. Say we are each selling $750,000 worth of printing material but I had twenty clients and he had 300. The size of the job that I was doing was twenty times the size of every job. I may have done fewer jobs but there was far more revenue. The ROI was because less of my jobs went wrong. As 1/10 of 1% of the jobs I did went wrong where his job went wrong all the time because he was trying to manage small jobs at the same time. I get exactly what you’re saying that it’s how we spend our time and what we think is important dedicates us to how we drive ourselves moving forward.
I hate leaving things generic for people. The first thing that I would tell your readers to do, number one, write out where your time is being spent right now in a day. I spent two hours here, I spent an hour and a half year and it’s not going to just be one day. You’re going to have to do it for all the weeks so that you can get a real picture of what’s going on with your life. One day as a snapshot. I don’t need a snapshot. I need a portfolio of what’s happening with your life.
Would a month be better?
It doesn’t turn out more. I’ve done it for three months, but I can get people to write out a week. Sometimes it’s about what they will do, not what they should do. If I can get them to write out a week, I can get a good picture. It’s the same thing with your finances. If you will write down for one week, everywhere you spend your money and what you’re spending your money on, of course, you’re going to have outliers. Maybe this is the week that you bought new computers. That’s not average. You’re not going to buy new computers every week, but the little things that you do, the little habits that you have about your money, about your time, about all those things, that’s what putting it on a calendar will show you. It will show your habits and your habits are the foundation of your culture. Your habits determine your actions and your actions determine your culture. By taking that time to write it out all out for a week, you’re coming up with a time budget just like you would a money budget. Once you see what your budget currently looks like, then you can start to modify it and put the higher denomination things on the calendar that maybe weren’t on there before.
It’s a big rock philosophy. You put the big rocks in the bucket first, then you put the pebbles, then you put the sand. The big rocks are the things that are the most important to your company.
It’s another way of saying the same things.
You came up with a phenomenal quote and I’m trying to remember what it was off the top of my head, but I needed to get it in because it was so poignant. Do you remember what it was?
It was something my dad had said, I’m sure.
My challenge is with most companies and I’m sure you see this. I want to talk to you about it just a little bit. Companies moving forward, what are the things that you think that companies need to be focused on in the next six months, a year, two years as the economy has changed, gets tighter, as we move into a different type of business cycle. What are the things that you think are going to make companies successful and thrive in this new normal?
This is all my opinion. I don’t think we need to do very many things differently. I think we need to do more things consistently. Going back to one of my dad’s sayings, “Consistency always looks like success from the outside.” In 2008, 2010, I was able to get into more agencies as an investor than any other point in my investment career. That was because agents had lost the consistency of marketing, technology, and training. They had lost all of that. I came in and they were like, “You’re a godsend because you’re getting us back on track and you’re reminding me of all these things that I used to do.” We need to get back consistent.
What does that mean? For a lot of businesses, they didn’t have to market. They didn’t have to prospect. They didn’t have to pick up the phone. They didn’t have to do podcasts. They didn’t have to do anything. They could basically throw out a YouTube video and business would roll in because that’s what people were doing. They weren’t following up. It takes five times on average to follow up with a prospect. They had so much business falling in their lap that 1 or 2 follow-ups and they had moved on. They forgot all about it. I think that the real change is to go back to what we know that works and do it consistently.
Do we need to add new technology? Are we going to use technology differently? Yes, but understand, this technology is nothing but a version of what we have always done. Instead of being on the phone, we’re on a Zoom call. Instead of putting out a huge, a yellow pages ad, I put out a Facebook ad. Instead of knocking on doors, I do postal mailing and drive you to my website where before when I knocked on your door, I left my card if you were interested, you go to my website anyway. I’m not a big believer that we need to do anything differently. We need to do things consistently and we need to understand that the things that are supposedly new are a different variation of what we’ve always done. I grew my insurance agency starting in 2004 April 1st. I grew it from a scratch agency to now we have over $1 billion premium under management.
The denominations that you think will determine the quality of your life. Share on XI use conference calls. I would go out to the parks on Saturdays and I’d give out my business card to the parents that were watching little Johnny, a little Suzy play soccer, baseball, football whatever they were doing out there and say, “I’m going to sit in my car and have a conference call in fifteen minutes and talk about heart attack, cancer, stroke, disability and things like that. While you’re sitting out here, why don’t you just jump on your phones, listen to me as I do this?” Now, people do webinars. They put out a YouTube video. In order to finish watching the video, you’ve got to put in your email address.
What I would do, I was using a free conference call back then. I would get the people’s phone number who called in and I’d call them back. Maybe I had 30 people call into that free conference call. It captures their phone number they’re calling from and I would call them back and say, “I want to touch base with you one-on-one. Because we were on the conference call, I couldn’t answer a lot of questions. What questions can I answer for you?” Obviously, you showed up. There was some interest and then I’d go from there. I want businesses to understand yellow pages is now Facebook, telemarketing is now conference calls. Yellow pages ads are now a version of YouTube videos. Conference calls are still conference calls, except now there are Zoom calls.
In the end, it’s all human to human marketing.
Instead of any of this is brand new. The reason why I want to stress this because a lot of people think of this as so new that they forget how to relate it to what has always worked.
We need to go back to realizing that you’re right, how people buy is from human beings. The more we can know, like, and trust the people that we work with, the more that we can see them as human beings that are going to be there for us, that are going to take care of us, that we can rely on, the more business we’re going to do with them. The rest of it is just technology, but it’s how we relate human to human.
It’s just technology and technology is there to help you enhance your job, not replace your job. As an example, whenever I was going after a bigger deal, I always did my research. I would go out and I’d go to yellow pages, look at their ad. I go to their website and see what I could find. I’d go out to Manta and see what was listed out there. I’d go out to Dun & Bradstreet. I did all my research before I would call that company and I would know you’ve got seven partners or you’ve got this or that. You acquired or you hired a new general manager. I would know so I could have that conversation. Now it’s so easy to do that research, but people don’t take the time to do it.
Now, I could go out to LinkedIn and pretty much find everything about you, your network, who you’re dealing with. I can go out on YouTube and see what you guys have out there. I can go out and look at your Facebook and tell a little bit more about your business. It’s so easy to do research nowadays, but again, it goes back to what I was saying about time. If we don’t take the time and make that a high denomination task, it’s never going to happen. We’re left cold calling and putting our videos and reacting to people who come to us. Let’s be honest, usually, your top prospects don’t just fall in your lap. The people who call me are the ones that have problems that I probably don’t want to deal with. The ones who are my preferred customer don’t fall in my lap. I have to go and engage with those people.
Because we engage early and because we engage in a far more digital format, by the times you’re aware that somebody is aware of you, they’re already 60% of the way through the funnel. They’ve already done their research on you. They’ve already Googled your company. They’ve always done the Yelp reviews. They’ve already been through your social media. They already have compared you to four other agencies. By the time they want to talk to you, they’re ready to talk to a human being and take things to that next level.
I love it when people have already done their research. What I hate is when someone comes to me and they haven’t done any research because now it’s like I have to back them up and go through the research with them where I was hoping they had done the research before. One of the first questions I always ask is, “When you did your research on me, what stood out to you?” If someone says, “Billy, I’m interested in you mentoring me,” or “I’m interested in you enjoying your mentorship for insurance agencies or investing in me.” I said, “When you did your research on me, what stood out to you?” If they can’t tell me anything, then I know this is not a person who’s even close to the buying phase because they haven’t even gone through the research phase.
It’s the same thing if somebody applies for a job at your agency and they can’t tell you anything available out there on the internet. If they don’t have information at their fingertips when they walk into the interview, why are you hiring them?
Most people hire for availability, not actual ability.
That’s what they should be looking for. People with incentive, people who can think critically, people that can look at tasks and figure out how to work around them. Those are the people that we need to be hiring. Not people that can answer a phone.
This goes back to what we were saying upfront. That’s the best practice. Yes, you should hire for this or hire for that. If no one’s ever taught you how to lead, if no one’s ever taught you how to hold people accountable, if no one’s ever taught you how to be a leader because we learned to be a leader from other leaders. If no one’s ever taught you how to do that, even if you read it, you won’t know how to do it. It’s important to me that leaders understand that it’s leaders that create leaders. It’s reading to your blog and getting those ideas and listening to my podcast, The Fix My Insurance Agency podcast and getting those ideas. Talking to two people that are part of a networking group and being part of mastermind groups because that’s how we learn to lead is from other leaders.
Most people won’t take the time to do that. They don’t think it’s a high denomination task, even though it is. They won’t take the time to do that or they feel like that it’s not worth it financially. I’ve spent a lot of money going to a lot of leadership conferences and being a part of a lot of masterminds. I’ve spent thousands of dollars because to me it’s an investment in leadership. Most people don’t. They only want to hear their own message. If you only want to hear your message, that’s a cult, and most cults don’t do well.
That’s probably the best place to leave it. Let’s stop being cults and start being leaders. That’s why I created the Developing the Leader in YOU. It’s important to have great leadership. Billy, it has been an absolute pleasure. How is the best way for people to get in touch with you?
Go to my website, www.InspireANation.org.
I have one last question I ask everybody as they walk out the door. As you leave a meeting and you get your car and you drive away or you come off the stage because you’re like me, you’re a speaker, what’s the one thing you want people to think about you when you’re not in the room?
It goes to number five of the Ps, Personification. I want people to walk away and say, “This guy is doing what he says he is. He’s not full of crap. I can see in his practices and all the things he does that he’s just not talking, he does it.” If they can walk away and take that genuineness with them, then they’ll listen to other things that I say that can help them to improve.
Walk the walk, Billy. It’s probably the most important thing that people need to think about in their life and their business. It’s not what we say. It’s how we do it. Thanks for being on the show, Billy. I enjoyed the conversation.
Thank you, sir.
Important Links:
- [email protected]
- Spotify – Your LIVING Brand Live show
- iTunes – Your LIVING Brand Live show
- Billy R. Williams
- IceCreamLessons.com
- The Fix My Insurance Agency – Podcast
- Developing the Leader in YOU – Ben Baker’s course
- www.InspireANation.org
- https://www.Facebook.com/inspireanationbusinessmentoring/
- https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=7ez59210xLE&feature=emb_logo
About Billy Williams, PhD
Billy R. Williams, Ph.D. – CEO of the Williams Family Investment Group and President of Inspire a Nation Business Mentoring Services.
Dr. Billy R Williams is the founder and president of Inspire a Nation Business Mentoring Services, America’s best insurance agent and Small Business coaching and mentoring company, and CEO of the Williams Family Investment Group; a group of more than 150 partner agencies that produce over a billion dollars a year in new and renewal insurance premiums.
Inspire a Nation Business Mentoring works with many of the top insurance agents/agencies in North America and some of the World’s largest insurance carriers and companies.
Dr. Williams also provides expertise and wisdom to non-insurance based small businesses through his “ICECREAM For Business Leaders” training program.
“I started Inspire a Nation because I was sick and tired of all the b.s. that was being served up as “the best marketing hacks, tools, or services available.” Agents and small business owners need to get back to the reality of operating their business both today and in the future.
The reality is that there are 5 Best Insurance Prospects, 14 weekly tasks and 23 Core Processes that must happen in an agency.
If you want to be a top-level agency you must to master them.
We all know that Luck = Opportunity + Preparation + Time Management. I created Inspire a Nation Business Mentoring to help agents and agencies prepare to take advantage of as many insurance agency opportunities as possible by giving them an exact schedule to follow and step-by-step instructions on which processes, tools, task, and technology they should have working in the agency. This is the “Keep it Simple” method at it’s best!”
– Billy R. Williams, PhD
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