The real secret is finding comfort in those abilities, knowing it's enough to just "do your job."
Because sometimes that's all it takes to create something that stands outs.
A potent combination of confidence and effectiveness can probably take you further than you think.
Josh Witt, president of The Insurance Group, talks about his journey to discovering his agency's true identity.
Joey Giangola: Mr. Josh Witt how are you doing today, sir?
Josh Witt: Hey, doing well. How are you, Joey?
Joey Giangola: Josh, I am doing well. I'm doing well. I want to know this before we go any further. And is there an area of your life where you maybe refuse to do something easier? You just kind of forego the easier option, whether it's out of stubbornness or just out of perceived, I don't know, improvement?
Josh Witt: I don't know, because I would say I generally take the easy route, so I don't know that I can say that.
Joey Giangola: All right.
Josh Witt: I try to take the path of least resistance.
Joey Giangola: Well, I mean, I guess my silly question, I was going to go with like, I'm a sucker for shoveling some snow versus like a snowblower. I don't know how often they'll those problems affect you down South, but...
Josh Witt: Yeah.
Joey Giangola: But I feel like there's always perceived, like a snowblower might be easier. Yeah, you never know. I mean, I was hoping you might have had like, "I hand wash my dishes still." I don't know something crazy.
Josh Witt: No, I hire somebody to mow the yard that, it should take me 30 minutes to mow because I don't want to do it because there's a slight incline in the back. So I take the easy route there. I don't, I'm trying to think of anything that I really do. I don't know. Some, I probably, there's probably some things I should do in the agency that I still have my hands on, but nothing of any consequence, I'm pretty boring, Joey.
Joey Giangola: I mean, outside of this maybe interesting character revelation we have made for yourself out here during this first few minutes, I was going to shift it over to the agency and there's generally a conversation of, we need more technology, we need to make things easier, we need to make things better. But I was curious if there is something that you feel is just better, the way it's been done, like where just the handshake sometimes needs to happen. There's a thing that just needs to be the way it's been for at least for now, until something better presents itself. Is there something you're holding onto, maybe? Maybe there's something that you're holding onto personally that you're in control of in the agency?
Josh Witt: I probably should hand over more of my book of business and not handle some of those things, but I think that's true. Any producer that moves into an ownership role that I think that's the biggest thing they struggle with is not giving up their book of business. And I think I've done a pretty good job over the last few years of, from an operations standpoint, getting out of the way of some of the stuff like I could get, find myself sometimes too far involved in processes. And I finally have taken a good approach to tell somebody else what the process is, let them teach other people and let them record the videos. Instead of me recording the video that says, this is how we're doing this, say, "Hey, Jennifer, can you record a video on this process and send it to Marble Box or whatever?" I don't think... I think if you asked me that question two years ago, that's a, you'd hear a totally different answer because I was doing too much stuff.
Joey Giangola: Well, I mean, obviously book of business is about as personal as it gets because it's what got you to the place of ownership and being where you're at. Is there any soul searching sort of introspective conversation you've had with yourself that has made you understand maybe where to take it in the future and how to maybe let go of some of it or more of it that you want to?
Josh Witt: I think as you, I've got a 10 year old and a 6 year old about to be 11 and 7. I think when you start to see, maybe you didn't go to a ball game or you didn't go to a practice or something like that, you start to figure out why wasn't I there and how can I get rid of that? I, again, I think we done a good job of making sure that's in the hands of the right people. Like the people that are good at doing their job, we let them do it kind of when you mentioned just the agency as a whole and soul searching or whatever, kind of thinking about what we might talk about today. I thought like, what do I do? What do we do? Like, I don't, you've got Grant on the West Coast.
That's a phenomenal job of building culture and his employees are family. That's not our deal. That's not us. That's not what we do. We've got have great respect for our employees. I think they've got respect for, for each other and for myself, but we're not family. Okay. All right. We got Brandon that is writing books and traveling and doing his thing. And he's doing a phenomenal job at that and got Carruthers that's out slaying these major accounts and all this kind, what do we do? What do I do? And I was like, I don't really do anything, but then it got me thinking, I just do my job. I come in, I hold my producers accountable. I hold my account managers accountable. Our producers produce, our account managers manage accounts, our accountants account, our bookkeepers keep books. We just all do our job and that's working out well. And I think that's okay. I think it's okay to just go do your job and not feel guilty about it.
Joey Giangola: Well, I fully support you in that. As you've made this a much bigger existential, again, identity crisis.
Josh Witt: Exactly.
Joey Giangola: I mean, I don't know that I necessarily was searching for, but since we're here, I'm going to take it and run with it. And well, so the thing is in, and again, my time knowing you, Josh, I would say that the one thing that has stuck out to me is the, I don't want to say lack of nonsense, but maybe the focus that I've always picked up on, is that there are people that are running around with sort of things that they sort of anchor themselves to, but you kind of know what works for you and the agency. And is that maybe something you didn't until this moment, or is this something that you've always relied upon at different points in your life?
Josh Witt: I think I've always at least in, since buying the agency in 2016, I think you... Since then, I've figured out what works for us and what doesn't work. I don't know how to go get mortgage broker referrals and do those things in personal lines. I know how to grow a commercial book. I know how to... I can pick this thing up and I can make 50 phone calls and I'm going to write an account. That'll work, like that's... And I just know how to do that. And then we know how to take care of our accounts, to where they're not shopping us every year and managing the relationship as much as we can. And I think that's good. I think we do a good job of that, but you look at the things that everybody else are doing and you think, in IOA and the Mastermind and all these things, you see these people doing all this cool stuff, and you're like, "Man, I got to do that. And feel behind, I feel like I'm not doing what they are doing." And I don't think you have to.
And I think that's a big thing to learn is you want to take the things that they're doing and implement them. You don't have to do it all right now. And if you just do it over time and focus on what your business is, you'll be successful. Our, I mean, our first year of ownership, I think most people know this, but in our... So we bought the agency in July. In October of that year, October '16, we were told our biggest account wouldn't renew in October of '17. So they gave us a year's notice. Wasn't our fault. They took it inside of a larger program. Our initial goals were to grow the agency. Well, very quickly, we were punched in the mouth and told, "Hey, you better figure out how to survive the agency."
And we did that. And then the second year we looked for, let's just try to be flat. Let's try to not be, we need to not lose any more revenue. Then the third year we're trying to grow a little bit. Then 2020, you're just trying to survive COVID. We ended up flat there. Great. We had a little bit of growth in '19. We're flat in '20, and 2021 we had our best year ever. We didn't do anything. 2021 didn't look that much different than 2017, 2018. It's just, we had slowly implemented Marble Box and a focus on the management system and having defined the processes, all that kind of stuff. We didn't do any major things. But we did a few things and we stuck to what we know. I would love to have way more video in our agency. Like there's people doing so much cool stuff with video, but it's not there right now.
That's not what we need to be focused on right now. And that's okay. It's that part, it's that, that's okay, that's been the biggest thing to figure out and not to get... I was talking to, actually my wife about it this morning. I was like, if I'd gone to IOA when I was three... Or to Innovation, when I was three years into the business, that would've been the worst possible thing that could have happened for me, because I would've felt so... I was too immature to understand that you can't keep up with the Jones's on everything, but being in it 10 years later, I think I went, my first year was probably '17 or '18.
Then I was smart enough to realize, okay, we can't go do it all overnight. Like, let's figure out a couple of things. And, luckily the people at those conferences will tell you, don't try to implement everything overnight. The first year I tried to do too much stuff. But the second year I was like, all right, this is what we're implementing. And that has made all the difference in the world because I'm not beating my head against the wall, trying to chase the latest shiny object.
Joey Giangola: That shiny object is definitely a problem. And there is maybe sort of subtle undertones of passive insurance shaming that happened. How do you maybe give somebody advice to take enough that's needed for your agency, but again, not completely like transform and completely copy what somebody else is doing, but make something your own and just take enough or a little bit. Is there anything picked up on to make sure that you're getting something, but while not completely turning your agency upside down?
Josh Witt: Yeah, I think it has a lot to do with what your agency looks like. When I came back the first year from either the Mastermind or Innovation, whatever, and I tried to put out, "Hey, going to do these five things." My staff was like, this guy's crazy. Like we can't do it. And they were right. We couldn't do all those things, but the next year when I came back and said, "Okay, we're implementing Marble Box. This is our focus." And then the next year we're doing, I don't even remember what it was that year, but whatever it was, we just did those things. Stuck true to that, got it implemented all the way. I'm, one of my worst things is I get like 60% done with stuff and I move on to the next thing, but you've got to... You need to pick the one and get 90 or a 100% done with it.
Then you can start to move on to the next thing. And this year, right out of the gate, we changed up our commercial renewal process. And I bought a proposal template from AB Solutions. They jumped in epic for two hours, they put the solution in. Now I can go in and I can say, give me this renewal review on my commercial account. And it's like a summary of insurance. It gives me everything I need to know, building limits, all, it's got a place to write changes, all that kind of stuff. It's a very simple thing, but it's making our process so much easier because everybody knows, now we have it written down, that needs to be done by 90 days before renewal. Then that needs to be discussed with the insured by 60 days before renewal, then we can figure out our marketing stuff. And we wrote down the... We took what Kelly, from Agency Performance Partners, had helped us with putting in that renewal process. We worked the timeline with this renewal review sheet, put it all together. Boom. Now we've got this easy, I mean, really easy process.
Joey Giangola: What I wanted to kind of touch on there, is the patience maybe that is forgotten, in terms of, when you are able to focus on one thing. One, what was it like for the staff to know that, "Hey, listen, we're only going to maybe tackle one big project a year and that's going to be sort of our focus." And then two, was there a moment where you realized, I don't have to get off, there's no deadline, there's nobody punching my clock saying if I don't have all these things done by two years from now, they're going to take my insurance license from me?
Josh Witt: I think when our staff would see me go to these things, I guarantee you, they rolled their eyes when I got back, because they were like, here we go again, we're going to... He's going to roll out two or three things that we're going to do half of. And we're never going to do again. Actually David Evans, one of my producers and best friends in the office, I've had conversations with him and we hold each other accountable to some things and he will tell me, "Hey, if we're going to do this, we can't do it 60% and stop, let's do it a 100%. And instead of doing six things, let's do the one and do it a 100%." And so we've started just doing that. And I think you're right. It is patience. And probably part of my issue is that I'm an incredibly impatient person in general. Just backing up and saying, Hey, let's make sure we get this done right, and get it implemented. I think really actually helped. It's made a big difference.
Joey Giangola: Well, you talked about sort of the trajectory of the agency over the last four or five years, did you feel any positive momentum to where you said like 2021 being the best year ever? Do you think that's sort of the culmination of the work of actually focusing over the last two, three years, specifically on certain things and getting those things done?
Josh Witt: I would say some of it is simply, we stopped changing things and started doing what we were supposed to do. Billy, I talked to Billy Williams a couple of years ago. I said, Billy, man, we need some revenue. I need to hire a new producer. I got to go out here and get me some new revenue. And he said, well, what's that producer going to make you like. Billy? Nobody... Producers don't make you any money in the first year that doesn't happen, we all know that. He goes, mine do. I was like, come on Billy. I know exactly every time they pick up the phone, how much money it's going to make me. And I was like, there's no way. This guy's crazy. And he said, Josh, you've got a problem in your agency and you need to stop throwing money at it. You need to make your producers produce.
You need to make your people do their job. We, we kind of went through what our expectations are pretty producers were. And I said, you know what, we probably aren't meeting the expectations that we should. So I came back, had a conversation with our producers and said, Hey, this is what we need to have. Lo and behold, they start producing. It's weird. You start holding people accountable, they start doing their job. Huh? I worked with Kelly to help kind of wean us off of some salaries that we had from producers. And we did it over a... I did it over a longer term period than Kelly told me to, but that's probably a fault of mine, but over... It's amazing. You start doing that. And suddenly that activity picks up and then suddenly we've got a little more commission coming in a little more premium hitting the book.
So, and then you do feel the momentum that you talked about. Like when you start to see, Hey, wait a minute, this month we wrote X amount. And two years ago, we weren't anywhere near that. Absolutely, the momentum picks up. And then we were, in April of last year, we were able to pick up a small agency out of North Carolina and had some people come over and they're doing a great job, but we worked them into our process and said, here's kind of how we do things and worked with them instead of just accepting what they do, or trying to force exactly what we do on them. We worked them into our process and made it easy on them. Well, then you've got a producer producing out of state that's doing a good job. Suddenly your producers here are producing, writing some business. And yes, the momentum is there. That's when 2020... I think that's when 2021 kind of took off.
Joey Giangola: It must have been uncomfortable for you to make things uncomfortable for your producers and staff. What was that like? The conversations that you had, how did you sort of ease into that process and get everybody on board? Because I'm going to say you probably made it sound easier than it was. And I'm kind of curious what that process was like.
Josh Witt: From the producer's standpoint, it actually wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be because I didn't pull the rug out from my underneath them. We took their salary down over an extended period of time and said, look, all you've got to do is write this much business. And it wasn't an astronomical number. They just, I remember talking with one of them. I said, look, you don't even have to work that much harder. You've just got to really be putting in the work and working the right way. If you do that, you will write this business. It will happen. And you'll, your paycheck will never go down. It won't be that difficult. So that actually wasn't difficult. I had more difficulty in making changes 10 years ago when I was helping run the agency and didn't own it.
And I was 28 years old in an agency that had been in 50, around 40 and 50 years, trying to get people who were more than two times my age to do things. That was way more difficult because there were no conversations I came in and this is how we're doing this. This is what's going to happen. And looking back, I don't know that I would even change that because if I didn't have the staff then that was willing to have a conversation about things. This renewal review change that we made this year and stuff that we've made in the past. Actually, we just went to a little small business unit where we're just focused on... We put a whole bunch of accounts in a small business unit. They'll just basically get renewed so that we can focus on our larger accounts and doing more work on those accounts.
I didn't go in and say, my gosh, this is how we're doing this. I went and said... I called each producer, called the account managers. I said, Hey, what do you think we got to do about this? And that's the difference between 2008, '09, '10, '11, '12, and 2021, 2022. We had built a staff that was willing to work and change and do the things, whereas we had the typical back in 2010, '11, we had the typical insurance agency staff. They'd been here for 35 years, they were working at 40% productivity and had five years, two years, one year to retire. They didn't care. And when we finally got those people moved on and retired, or had the difficult conversations that we had to have by the time we got this staff in, it's just a different conversation.
It's not, it's no longer having to be a dictator. It really is getting the opinions of everyone. And I tell our staff... I'm like, we can talk about this. I want to know what you're saying. I may not implement every, I may not listen to every single thing that you say, but you may not like the result, but I'm going to at least have the conversation and hear your opinion and take that into consideration and make a decision from there even.
And so we've got one employee that's been here since way before I was. And she's the only one that's kind of made it through all of the transition. And she is quick to tell me that in 2010, 2011, I was a jerk and I'm like, Hey, I had to be. Put yourself in my shoes, what could you have done differently? And I think if you asked her that now she'd say you probably had to do what you had to do, but she's even said you've really relaxed from an ownership standpoint. Like it's, I don't think it's that I've relaxed. I think I just don't have to be that way anymore because we've got good people in place.
Joey Giangola: I want to know. I don't know if you have an answer for this, but I'm going to give it a shot anyways, do you have a tip for somebody that is maybe unsure of exactly, like you said, figuring out who the agency was? Do you have a tip for somebody, helping them figure out what type of agency they are? Is there something that they can do to sort of put themselves through their own paces to come out with a result of understanding themselves maybe a little bit better?
Josh Witt: That's a tough question. I would, I think I would just say, I think you've got to look at what you're doing well and what you know you do well. I don't want to pick up the phone and prospect anymore. I'm still at the age and place that I probably should and probably could. I don't want to. So instead, go hire that person, go hire your weakness, go pay for your weakness. I know that's a simple business tip that's all always been around, but it really rings true.
So, if you could figure out what you don't do well and get that done for you, then you could focus on what you do well. Now, figuring out what you do well, I don't know, man. You just got to look in the mirror. I don't, again, I know what I don't do well. I don't know how to grow a personalized agency. I don't, I know what I do well, and that's because I was trained on that. I can't, I grew up commercial. I don't know any different, I'm a numbers guy. I'm an Excel spreadsheet nerd. I dump things in and look at activities by policy type or whatever, and figure out where we're profitable. And that's what I would focus on, but that's me.
Joey Giangola: All right, Josh, I got three more questions for you.
Josh Witt: Okay.
Joey Giangola: And the first one is, what's one thing you hope, you never forget?
Josh Witt: I hope that I never forget that I'm a blue collar worker. Like I'm always, I know how, I just work. And I think that's, my dad always worked, from the day I was 16 I've had a job. I've been unemployed once for one day. And I think that I just know how to work. Do I work 70 hours a week? Absolutely not. I'm not going to, I'm not... I've never worked 70 hours a week. When I worked with Ruby Tuesday, I probably worked 55 or 60, but I'm not... I, actually, it's funny, when I started with the agency, I'd come from Ruby Tuesday. Fast forward a year, a large regional agency came to me and they wanted to sit down and talk and having this conversation with this guy, and he said why are you, why did you leave the restaurant business?
And I said, well, I graduated from UT. I enjoyed what I was doing at Ruby Tuesday. I said, that was in... My now wife didn't love the fact that I was working 55 or 60 hours a week. He said, oh, okay. And then he makes some notes and we move on. And I said, what does it look like working for your agency? And so our producers generally work about 65 or 70 hours a week. And I was like, that's cool. I'm out. Like we can stop. I don't, I'm not going to do that. And could I be making twice as much money as I do now? Probably, but I'm not doing that. And I don't expect our employees to do that. If you're working more than 37 and a half hours a week, right now we need to have a conversation because, either you're not working efficiently or you're not delegating things correctly or something. So I don't want to overwork, but I never want to forget that I'm a worker just to, just what we do.
Joey Giangola: Now on the other side of that, Josh, what's one thing you still have yet to learn?
Josh Witt: I don't know how to be an agency owner. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I've had this conversation with Billy Williams. I said, Billy, what am I supposed to do? He was like, your job is to make other people do their job. And I get that, but I still have, there's still days where I'm like, I feel like I ought to be doing something else. Like I, there's... What are other agency owners doing that I'm not doing? And I don't know, so that's the one thing I'd like to learn. I don't, what am I supposed to do? Somebody clue me in.
Joey Giangola: Well, somebody might, I hope. I mean, I think you're doing all right, Josh. Last question to you, sir. If I were to hand you a magic wand of sorts to reshape change, alter, speed up, really any part of insurance, what's that thing, where is it going, and what's it doing?
Josh Witt: I would just get all of the carriers on one page and get technology from carriers to agents solved. There's such a divide between, especially on the commercial side. Personal lines is getting better, but get them all on the same platform to where their platforms are talking to our management systems. And we've got standardized data, which we should have with the ACORD forms. I don't understand why, that part baffles me, I don't understand why this is such an issue. Everything should fit somewhere on an ACORD form. Why can't you make that work? I don't understand that. And that's probably a rudimentary answer, but I just... That is the biggest frustration. We could be so much more efficient and so much more automated if carriers all talk the same language, and management systems all talk the same language, and everybody wasn't holding each other hostage for more money.
Joey Giangola: Josh, this has been fantastic. I'm going to leave right there, sir.
Josh Witt: Sounds good. Thanks, Joey. I've enjoyed it.