Episode 321: Why Accountability is Critical to Scale Your Insurance Agency with Joel McKinley

Welcome back to the Scale Your Insurance Agency Podcast, the show built for independent agency owners who are done being the bottleneck in their own business. I'm Daniel Metcalf, and every week I'm joined by my co-host, Mike Stromso, one of the most respected operators in the independent agency world. Between the two of us, we bring you the real levers that move a $3 to $20 million agency from successful but maxed out to systemized, scalable, and running without you holding it all together. Here's what we focus on. Mike brings the people side, leadership, team development, niche sales mastery, and a three-piece system that helps agencies build a business worth owning. I bring the machine side. AI, automation, and workflow design that frees your team from the operational drag, eating your margin and your time. Together, we're building a framework that can grow an independent agency 4X to 9X without burning out your people or your checkbook. If you're an agency owner who's tired of growing by hiring, who knows you have a capacity sitting on the table, but can't figure out how to unlock it, this is the show for you and your weekly edge.

Hey everybody, welcome to the next episode of the Scale Your Insurance Agency Podcast. I am your co-host, Mike Stromso. My teammate Daniel Metcalf is off this week, but we have a very special guest. But, you know, it's it's elevated to all new levels in the current environment. Would you agree with that, Joel? Absolutely, Mike. And it's needed more than ever. Because as things continue to change, you know, when technology does the work of machines, people finally get to do the work of humans. But doing that work of humans in the current environment is where accountability is needed more than ever. Would you agree, Joel? Well, you can't automate accountability, Mike. Yeah, exactly. So, us humans, you know, we need to make sure that we stay on track. And I want to jump into it. Accountability is critical to scale your independent insurance agency. And after having implemented a complete accountability program in our own independent insurance agency and really understanding deeply why it's so very important, uh, I am super grateful for that for the last roughly six and a half years. Mr. Joel McKinley has been our accountability coach uh in UPP, in Onyx, and serving independent insurance agents to keep them on track. So, Joel, let's start off with a question about clarity. Okay. Because clarity is so vitally important, especially when it comes to accountability. So, what are some practical ways that people can think about clarity and more importantly, great organizations? And we're privileged to serve many great organizations. How do they get crystal clear from an accountability standpoint so that every team member knows exactly what is expected, what success looks like, and most importantly, who owns each responsibility?

So, Mike, uh in my time in the Army, we had a very simple four little segments that give a task and take it all the way through to completion. And what I found is that it's not common in business. But you you give four things. You give the task, the conditions, the standards, and always a time hack. So I'll unpack each one of those things and kind of give them to you. So the task is what needs to happen, and that needs to be clearly communicated to the entire team, but most importantly, to the person that's going to own that task. Then you give the conditions. So, what are the tools and resources that they have in order to make that task happen? Say they want to roll out their referral program, which we hope that everyone listening to this has an implemented referral program, but what do they have that they can do that with? What resources, what technology, and everything that they're going to have in order to complete that task? Then you want to give them the standards. What does done look like? What needs to be happening when that task is complete? And finally, you give them a time hack. When does it need to be done by? Or before. But if you give those four things, what is the task? What do they have to do? What tools and resources are you going to provide them to get it done? What done specifically looks like, and when does it need to be done by? And when you have all four of those pieces, you can continuously check in with them to find out where they are, are they hitting any hiccups or are they fast-tracked and they can move on to the next thing?

Well, the deadline, right? And we're finding that so vitally important right now in serving independent insurance agents across the nation. And, you know, one of the things that has been a shift in a big, big way as we elevate the accountability and the expectations for agents that we are privileged to serve is you know, pushing the responsibility to report back on whether they accomplished that deadline or not. Nothing gets something done like a deadline. Say it again, please. Nothing gets something done like a deadline. Nothing gets something done like a deadline. 100%. So that's fabulous stuff. So let's talk about how accountability relates to trust. And I had the privilege of meeting and seeing Mr. Stephen M.R. Cubby recently live. Uh, and he took my thought processes on trust to a whole new level. But Joel, accountability and trust. How does accountability strengthen trust inside of a business? And what happens to a team culture when accountability is inconsistent or missing? What happens to trust inside the team in that situation?

Mike, some of the agencies that we work with early on, when they haven't built accountability into the agency and they're developing their processes, that creates a lot of difficulty when they don't have the the trust there when an account manager is working on a process and in their documented written process, the next step is to pass it down to a VA. Well, if that accountability and trust is not there, oh I can get this done in five minutes. Let me let me just let me not pass this process down because I've got it. I can handle it. But what needs to happen is that accountability of no, you pass that down to the VA. And as the VA is able to accomplish that task for that account manager, they build that trust and it's incorporated into the agency, making their cost per transaction more effective and more efficient. We just went through with an agent, uh, one of our member agencies that went through and did a deep dive into the cost per transaction. And his numbers of what he was doing was astronomical when it wasn't passed down because the trust and accountability wasn't there. But he completely shifted his mindset and said, we must pass these tasks down for the health of the agency.

Ah, the health of the agency. Tell me more about that. I mean, when you say the health of the agency, what's at risk here?

Well, I mean everything they've worked for their entire their entire lives and building their business. If they're not doing things and passing things down to the level they need to be at, say the agent said $20 makes $20 an hour to keep the math simple, but they're doing $10 an hour tasks every single time they do that, they're stealing $10 an hour from their agency. And you have to ask the question by not passing this down to the next level, am I comfortable stealing $10 every hour from my agency? The answer is yes, keep doing what you're doing. I don't think the answer should be yes, and I don't think they would be either when they're looking in the mirror truth.

Yeah, I I've heard you position agencies. I've seen it live when you challenge them and say, why are you allowing your teammates to steal from the agency? And they get very uncomfortable when you bring it up in that manner. But one of my early mentors in my life personally also, you know, coached me to that effect because he owned large businesses. And he frankly said one day at breakfast, he used to take me to breakfast just to, you know, help me understand the right ways about life. I didn't know it at the time, but now looking back, I see it very clearly. And he said, you know, if your teammates are goofing off, if they're playing on their phone, if they're shopping during work time, et cetera, et cetera, they're frankly stealing from you. And while that feels harsh, it's reality. And we identify that in agencies that we work with, and I'm thinking of one right now. But let me get back to the topic at hand, Joel. So when trust is missing or has been diminished in some way, what can be done to repair it and move forward? Well, I mean, Mike, it's accountability.

Well, it starts, it starts little, Mike. And when you when the trust is not there, you have a bunch of individuals working inside of an organization, but they're all working as individuals. So when you start setting the conditions as the leader of the organization, you have to set the conditions to build trust between teammates. And that may start as, hey, pass this task down to the VA and have the VA send you an email when it's done. Hey, this task is done. And over time, those little this task is done builds that trust of, yep, I know I can pass this down to Mike, and Mike's gonna get it taken care of, and I can move on to the thing that only I can be doing within the agency.

Uh-huh.

Like Mike, I know, I know you love your football analogies, but the quarterback doesn't play on defense. Why? Because he's the quarterback, and that's the thing that only he can be doing.

Right. 100% agree. Thank you for that. I appreciate that. So let's talk about culture. Because Peter Drucker said that culture eats strategy and everything else for breakfast, and I've added on lunch and dinner. So, in business, why do you believe, Joel McKinley, that accountability is one of the most important protectors of company culture or complete agency culture, standards, and most importantly, you were talking about agency health a couple of minutes ago. Why? Why do you believe accountability is the protector of all of that?

Oh, too easy, Mike. Unless I'll f I'll send it back to you with a question. Mike, what makes people happy?

If they can achieve what they set out to achieve on a given day.

So you taught me this, Mike, and it was evidence of progress. Okay. So accountability gets to the evidence of progress because accountability gets to the results. And ultimately, what do you pay people for? You don't pay them to fill out a time card, you don't sit pay them to sit at a desk. You pay people for the results that they get. And accountability is how you track and measure the results. So and everyone in your agency wants to get paid, they have to generate the results. And how you, as the leader, get them there is holding them accountable to the results they said they signed up for. And that's part of your hiring system, is you lay out this is exactly what you're gonna do, and you hold them accountable to it. Accountability creates this situation for lasting momentum.

Results, not activities, right? Not activities. Uh-huh.

We hear over and over again everybody's busy. I'm so busy, I'm so busy. I don't want anyone to ever be busy, but I always want them to be productive. And productivity is measured with accountability.

I agree with that, but let's talk about standards within a business. And I've also learned in my research and ongoing knowledge and learning more about how accountability works within a business that every culture drifts, and Nightingale said this in the Strangest Secret as well. Everybody falls to the lowest acceptable level, right? And so many times a culture drifts towards the lowest tolerated standards. How does accountability protect the standards? Especially the standards that uh an agency may want to strive to achieve.

Well, Mike, I you tell me the mind works in images. So if we're in a bowling alley and you want to bowl strikes, but you're not a great bowler, you put up the little bumpers in the gutter to keep you from going in the gutter. That's what accountability is. It's to keep you on the lane. And even if you don't bowl a strike, you're still knocking down pins each and every time. But if you don't set accountability to keep you on the lane, I mean you're gonna get gutter balls every time. We put up guardrails on on dangerous highways so people don't roll off a cliff.

So, a question out of left field for you. Let's say that you know we have a teammate uh in our business, even though, and you put up the guardrails or the bumpers, right? Like the bowling lane analogy to keep it out of the gutter, but that teammate still jumps over the guardrail and falls off track. What should we do? What what do you recommend an agency leader do in that situation?

Well, if is the person uh still a good culture fit, and and is it something that is, hey, this person hit uh you know some type of difficult situation, or is this person, hey, we've they've shown who they are and they're no longer a good culture fit because the answer would be different. If the person is still a good culture fit, you need to put in a performance improvement plan and hold the person to that and say, hey, we understand you got a little derailed, but we need to put in a stricter guideline. Maybe we need to elevate that bumper to be even more severe or move it even even closer to get you in the straight and narrow to get you back on the path. But that's to be taken into consideration with what is the you can train people's skills, but you can't train character. Did that person reveal a character flaw or a skill deficiency?

Uh-huh. Yeah, and there's two kinds of relationships, right? Personal and professional. And in business, we're talking about a professional relationship, nothing personal against a person. We have standards, which we've created, and these are the minimum acceptable standards.

And Mike, when you say your standards are at a certain level, say you hold your hand at the very top of your head and you say this is our standard. If you allow anything lower than that, you have just redefined what your standards are, not for that person, but for the entire agency.

Got it. Love this. Great stuff. Next, let's talk more about results and how accountability relates to results. And how can we position accountability, Joel, to drive results? So, what separates agency organizations that just talk about goals from organizations that consistently execute and achieve results through accountability? How can we line that up so that we consistently hit our goals and beyond? So, Mike, have you ever heard the expression well done is better than well said?

I have, Mr. Ben Franklin. It's one of my favorites. So I'm gonna flip that that that saying. I'm gonna completely try to change your mind on that to never love that saying ever again. Uh-oh. Because I believe that well said gets to well done. Tell me more. So you, as the leader of the organization, you have to say with clarity or well said, clarity, specificity to get to the results of well done. Because if the leader is not clear in what they say, what their expectations are, how could you possibly ever get to well done? It needs to be well said and well done.

So, what's your recommendation as far as well documented as an example? So I can let's say I share with you, we need to do this, we need to do this, we need to do this in order to reach our goals. And we say it, but in today's world, there's so much going on, and three hours later I've forgotten what you said.

Well, that's why I don't believe that well said needs to be conversational between the teammate and the leader. It's a two-way conversation, and it needs to be a two-way two people or the leader and the people that they lead communicating back and forth to create that well said together. Because if you're just constantly chirping at me and I'm just, you know, filtering it in, my mouth is shut, I'm not asking any follow-up questions, or I'm not asking any clarifying questions, then perhaps am I part of that decision, or am I just, you know, a handheld voice recorder that hopefully I memorized everything?

Uh-huh. So it most importantly, you've got to fit the style of the leader and the teammates of an organization.

And continue to provide that motivation and that uh that guidance throughout the process in order to get to the desired results. Got it. But it leads to being a coach and a mentor as the leader of an organization and not just an order giver.

So let's talk about a situation, and what I'm thinking about is the speed of addressing problems. Okay? Because that's directly related to results. I mean, you know, if there's activities that need to be done, calls that need to be made, follow-ups that need to be done, account reviews that need to be done, marketing that needs to be done, and it's not getting done. How important is addressing problems quickly versus, shall we just say, sweeping it under the rug?

Well, when you sweep it under the rug, you send a message to the rest of the teammates that are that are getting their stuff done on time as why am I working so hard? Why am I putting forth such effort when mediocrity is allowed? So I actually have a note stuck right there that says, Don't study mediocrities. He's an ancient philosopher that many, many people in today's business world are studying. And it's not Socrates, it's mediocrities.

Mediocrities. Back to what you will tolerate and what you will accept, not only most importantly for yourself, because if it's meant to be, it starts with me, right? Right. Especially if you're in the leadership chair. Good, good stuff. So, you know, why do people start their business? Why do people make a decision to leave a comfort zone and working for somebody else or being part of a larger organization? They want to set out on their own. And something that I am paying a lot of attention to every single day right now is a thought process. There's a lot of producers out there whose contracts are getting restructured in our industry, and they're setting out on their own to open their own agencies. Okay. And one of the things that, and I know this in my own life from an entrepreneurial standpoint. One of the reasons that, and I'll just be real here, not every day is rosy, right? I mean, I too have days and they're not rosy, but you know, the exchange for the freedom that I enjoy and we enjoy as entrepreneurial leaders is absolutely worth it. And I think that any business leader, they're also in pursuit of that freedom. So let's talk about accountability and freedom. Okay. And when I was researching this to get ready for this podcast, many leaders fear accountability.

I think well, Mike, so when you're when you don't Have accountability in the agency right now. The fear of accountability is because everything is operating like the wild wild west. And the leaders are afraid of that pendulum swing in the opposite direction. So when all of their teammates and everything is just kind of running like the wild wild west, they're afraid of that pendulum is going to swing and they're going to be seen as an authoritarian or a dictator, and everything's going to be my way or the highway, and you can't do anything. But what that leader needs to be able to implement is accountability multi-directionally. Accountability starts with yourself. So the leader needs to be able to come and say, hey, here's what I'm going to do. Here's the results that I'm going to provide to the team before they ever start expecting accountability from their teammates. And oftentimes, I believe, you know, you said the freedom and the empowerment of being an entrepreneur and being able to do those things. Well, when they they think, well, accountability has to start with me. I'm going to lose that freedom. I'm going to lose that autonomy. But that's not the case at all. It moves what they've always wanted in the direction of getting done. But there's the fear they can't see over that wall yet.

Yeah, and this goes back to the culture in a way, um, as I'm listening to you. Because if if people well, first of all, leaders fear accountability. Uh the what I just wrote down in my notes is chaos, right? Right. If you don't have that accountability and you don't have consistency, consistency uh in your business uh across all teammates for accountability, then the chaos begins to creep in. But you know, the other question is are all of your teammates a players? Right. Right? Because A players, they want, I'm looking at my list of things that A players truly want. And one of the things they want is the chance to do something significant and a chance to work with special people around them. And if leaders fear accountability and are not enforcing it consistently, then it's sending that message to the rest of the teammates, hey, it's lackadaisical around here. You know, we can free fly whoever we want. I was, I don't remember who I was recently studying, but it was the analogy of uh, you know, the businesses, and I I don't know, maybe it was Google and some other ones uh where they have ping pong tables and and basketball hoops and soda machines, and it's just you know, they kind of do whatever they want to do, and that's part of their culture, and that's fine, but is that truly the right culture to serve people at the highest level, or do you have those standards of excellence? So great stuff. Great, great stuff. Thank you, Joel. So the people, the processes, and their promotion, our simple three-step blueprint, our framework in UPP and Onyx, accountability, and how it helps develop the people. Because you know as well as I do that 80% of the emergency uh outreaches that we receive, it's not the people, it's not the promotions, it's the people. It's always the people. Yeah. And uh, I can't remember the author, it was a book, um Dave Anderson. And uh, you know, I forgot the title of the book, but he said in that book multiple, multiple times. Up your business is the name of the book by Dave Anderson out of the great state of Texas, and he said in that book, and I'm I've listened to the audio book multiple times. He goes, It's the people stupid. It's the people stupid. Yes, it is the people. So how does accountability develop people? And how can leaders of independent insurance agencies create an accountability culture that one develops people, that two builds confidence and continues to build confidence for its teammates, and three, without making team members feel I'll use the M-word, micromanaged or punished in some way.

Well, accountability, accountability should be done individually, one-on-one, when standards are not being met. Uh-huh. So, in addition to that, accountability should not be about being a disciplinarian. Accountability should be about coaching and mentoring. So when you're leveraging accountability on your teammates, when you have a good culture in place, let's let's let's start it with that. When you have a good culture in place and you're leveraging accountability on somebody, it's coming from a point of how can I help you overcome this struggle? Or how can I help you amplify the results that you're already getting? And when you're doing it from that place in your heart and in your mind, and as the leader of the organization, you're doing it in order to move the entire team forward. And that accountability doesn't come from a bunch of individuals doing a bunch of individual tasks that you as the leader now try to piece together to meet the organization's needs or goals. When that accountability comes from, hey, I'm gonna help this person move their portion forward, it helps the entire organization. And that's where accountability is really important. But in addition, if you have a sales or a service team, they should be leveraging accountability on each other because they are on offense or defense moving the ball or pushing back all together. They're rowing in the same direction. And Mike, peer pressure worked in elementary school, middle school, high school. And guess what? Peer pressure still works today. If the accountability is always and only coming from the leader, that's where the teammates push back against it. Uh-huh. So it needs to be a good mix of leader accountability, but also you need to be accountable to the person to your left and right.

Correct. Well, I mean, you've told me multiple times that uh in the army, and by the way, just uh in case you haven't heard Joel McKinley's story yet, uh, he is a 20-year Army veteran. Uh, he is an Army Ranger, uh, he was a drill sergeant as well. And so this is where he learned accountability at its highest level. But Joel, you've told me about times when you were taught uh in the army that who are you looking out for first?

The the first person you have to look out for is yourself. You got to take care of yourself first because you're no help to anyone else if you're not in the fight.

Right. And next to you, who else are you looking to after that? Looking for after the person in your foxhole. Yeah, that's right. And so if we're talking about developing people and a culture of accountability, and we're preparing ourselves first, most importantly. Secondly, we're looking out for the person right next to us in the foxhole. Yep. What does that look like? And what is your greatest encouragement for leaders to teach their team to always be looking out for the person next to you in the foxhole instead of coming to leadership?

So the so the first thing you always have to point to, Mike, is it's never about the person individually. It's about where is the organization going? What does the organization need to do? What are we here for? What is our core purpose? What is our cause? What is our passion? Who are we here to serve? And ultimately, when you're taking care of yourself, your portion, and you're now taking care because you're healthy, if you're good, that might you like to use the airline flight attendant, put your mask on, and then help the person beside you. Now, here's something that's often missed. If you you and one other person are sitting beside yourselves in the plane, sitting beside each other in the plane, you put on your mask, you help the person next to you, right? Who does the flight attendant move to? The person who needs the help. Leaders move to friction because the flight attendant, in that case, is now the leader of their assigned section. So you take care of yourself, then you help the person beside you, and the leader always moves to the friction point. So when everybody is taking care of their part, then helping the person beside them, the leader is very clear about all right, who do I need to move to to help now? Right. And leaders always move to friction. You should always be in your agency looking. Where is the friction? Is it in my technology? Is it in whatever it may be? Leader, always be looking your organization. Where is the friction? Where can I move to to help free that friction point up?

Well, you know, back to Elon Musk, whether you like the guy or not, uh, he is renowned uh in the scaling world as somebody that eliminates friction because his goal is to always eliminate, eliminate, eliminate, eliminate until it stops working. All right, we've eliminated all the friction. Now we can get down to getting stuff done.

And if you think from a science perspective, you know, you may have been in high school science classes a long time ago, but you only change one variable at a time so you can identify what broke. All right, this is the part that broke, add that part back, let's change the next part.

So good. This is such good stuff, Joel McKinley. Thank you. Absolutely incredible. So I hope everybody was taking copious notes. And let me just do a quick recap as we wrap up today. First of all, accountability creates clarity. Clarity, the vision of the organization. Secondly, accountability builds trust. Imagine an agency where everybody trusts each other and everybody has each other's back. Trust. Three, accountability protects the culture. Your culture. I mean, in the minds of many great leaders, that's the health of your business. Number four, accountability drives results. Five, accountability creates freedom, not only for leadership, but for everybody in the organization to do only the work that humans can do. And lastly, accountability develops people. As we wrap up today, Joel, any other last thoughts? That's it, Mike. I want to add on one more thing, and we're gonna put um a way to contact us in the show notes. And if you heard something today and you're feeling or thinking, wow, I want to learn more about what Mike and Joel and Daniel and the entire team at Onyx and UPP are doing, there's a link in the show notes. Uh, just click on that link and you can set up an Onyx scaling session with us, and we'll take a deep dive into your organization and see if we can help you unpack what's going on from an accountability standpoint and operationally otherwise. But I've got a very special gift to offer as well, because I recently had the opportunity, as I said uh in the beginning, to meet Mr. Stephen M. R. Covey, who wrote the book Speed of Trust, uh, Trust and Inspire, and many other books. He's the son of Stephen R. Covey, who wrote The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Incredible man, incredible story. I'm looking at his card that says practice accountability. I've got it in my hand. Hold yourself accountable first, hold others accountable second, take responsibility for results, good or bad. Be clear on how you'll communicate what you're doing and how others are doing. Clear, back to clarity, right? Don't avoid or shirk responsibility. Don't blame others or point fingers when things go wrong. If it's meant to be, it starts with me. The opposite is to not take responsibility or own up. It's not my fault. So your goal this week, listen for that. How many times in your organization do you hear the words, it's not my fault? Tells a little bit about your culture, right? It's got ways to practice accountability. Here's what I've done, I'm responsible for. Please return and report your progress by back to deadlines, right, Joel? Right. How will we hold ourselves accountable for this? How will we how and when will we meet and track progress and more? So happy to share that. There's a way to communicate with us in the show notes. Shoot us an email and we'll return this card to you so you can begin to up your game or level up, as it said, on accountability. Mr. Joel McKinley, thank you very much, sir. Thanks, Mike. All right, everybody. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Scale Your Insurance Agency and the Scale Your Insurance Agency podcast. Again, in the show notes, if you something perks your mind and your interest today and you want to take a deeper dive into actually scaling your insurance agency and have a complete plan to be able to do so, click on the link so we can set up an Onyx scaling session and learn more about how that can happen for you and your independent insurance agency. And if you got great value out of today's podcast, please share the link with somebody else that you know and care about to help them also not only be more accountable, but to level up from an accountability standpoint and scale their independent insurance agency. Joe McKinley, have a great day, sir. Thank you. You too, Mike.

That's a wrap on this week's episode of Scale Your Insurance Agency. Quick reminder: everything we talk about on this show is built to do one thing: turn your time into profit. More revenue, more margin, more freedom without adding headcount to make it happen. If something landed for you today, please share it with another agency owner who needs to hear it. This community only grows when good operators help each other level up. Please subscribe, download, and share our podcast and all your other favorite podcast engines. And if you're ready to stop figuring this out alone, Mike and I are both in the field working with agencies right now. Please reach out. Find us on LinkedIn or on our websites, and we'll tell you exactly where your biggest opportunity is to scale. Until next week, build the system, protect your time, and scale the right way. See you next week.