How I Built a $37 Million Insurance Agency In Less Than 7 Years

Title:  How I Built A $37 Million Insurance Agency In Less Than 7 Years

Author: Darren Sugiyama

Copyright: 2010

ISBN:  978-1-304-88298-1

www.DarrenSugiyama.com

Foreword: Providing Clarity

There are so many different types of people that I’ve worked with over the years. Some of them have been extremely driven … and some have been extremely lazy. Some have a do-whatever-it-takes attitude, and some have an excuse for everything. Some have been people of their word, and some live their lives based on situational ethics.

One thing I’ve found in my business life—as well as in my personal life—is that there are some things you can teach people and some things you cannot teach people. Integrity, honesty, character, work ethic, and humility are things of the heart, and things of the heart cannot be taught. These valuable qualities are just part of who that person is. Believe me, I’ve tried to change people, attempting to motivate them to be more ambitious, more driven, more honest, and I have failed miserably each and every time. That’s one of the biggest misconceptions about great leaders.

A great leader doesn’t seek to change people. A great leader doesn’t try to motivate people. A great leader doesn’t attempt to convince people to change their ways. In my opinion, the definition of a great leader is one who helps people clarify what their actual goals are. A great leader gives their disciples step-by-step, systematic directives on how to accomplish these goals.

I’m not a motivator.

I’m a clarifier.

My job is to provide ultimate clarity to my people.

For my clients, I provide the kind of clarity that makes it easy for them to pull the trigger without hesitation or reservation. My entire goal is to give them such a unique experience—an experience that provides such clarity—that they cannot think of any reason why they wouldn’t want to work with me.

Not one.

When I do this, everyone wins, especially my clients.

When dealing with my employees as their leader, my goal is to provide the kind of clarity that makes it easy for them to execute tasks with precision. They need the kind of clarity that never leaves them confused, wondering what they should do next. They need the kind of clarity and certainty that makes them never want to work for another employer.

This clarity creates an environment based on trust, full disclosure, and mentorship. That’s why my employees are both successful and loyal to me.

I provide them with clarity.

So why am I sharing all of these things with you?

I truly believe that my job is to provide you with the same ultimate clarity that my clients have, the same ultimate clarity that my employees have.

This is the ultimate clarity that you’re lacking in your business right now.

In business, clarity answers two very important questions:

What exactly should I do right now?

How exactly should I do it?

This book is the very beginning of your personal journey toward discovering the answers to these two important questions.

The answer to these two questions will prove to be the foundation of your business success. Without them, you will live the rest of your business life feeling frustrated over 80 percent of the time, and in my opinion, that’s no way to live.

Once you know exactly what to do and exactly how to do it, things become easy to do. Personally speaking, when I don’t know how to do something, I get confused.

When I get confused, I get frustrated.

When I get frustrated, I feel overwhelmed.

When I feel overwhelmed, I freeze up.

Now, you don’t have to be a genius or have a Ph.D. in human psychology to know that frustrated, overwhelmed people don’t perform very well.

They don’t perform well in sports.

They don’t perform well in social settings.

And they sure as heck don’t perform well in business.

Here’s an example of what I mean:

My wife and I recently had our first baby boy, Estevan Kane Sugiyama. When Estevan was born, our friends and family showered him with gifts.

To give you perspective on how many gifts I’m talking about, my wife, Emilia, had four separate baby showers. We got duplicate sets of just about everything. We are very blessed to have so many people in our lives that love us.

That’s the good news.

The bad news was that someone had to assemble all of these toys, and unfortunately, that someone was me.

The first box I opened was a baby bouncer. It was a relatively simple apparatus: only about seven parts with a baggy filled with a few nuts and bolts. This was not a complex apparatus, so I figured the assembly would be relatively easy.

Oh, was I wrong.

The first thing I did was open the pamphlet with the assembly instructions in them. They were so confusing that I seriously thought that the manufacturer had made a mistake and put the wrong instructions in with the product.

When I realized the model number on the instructions matched up with the model number on the box, I thought to myself, Who’s the idiot that wrote these crappy instructions?

I was confused.

I was frustrated.

I froze up.

I just sat there and stared at these stupid instructions for about ten minutes, then crumpled them up, threw them across the room, and yelled out several obscenities.

Frustrated and downright angry, I decided to attempt to figure this out on my own by looking at the picture of the fully-assembled baby bouncer on the box.

What should have only taken me fifteen minutes to assemble took me over an hour, and I was not a happy camper. The instructions were terrible, and thus I was left to figure it out on my own.

Now, think about your business.

Think about how you recruit and train new employees.

Are they having a frustrating baby bouncer assembly experience?

You may say no, but think about this question before you answer it.

Remember my definition of clarity?

In business, clarity answers two very important questions:

What exactly should I do right now?

How exactly should I do it?

Do your sales producers know exactly what to say to a prospect to book an appointment?

Now, when I say, exactly, I mean exactly.

Do they have a word-for-word verbatim script that has been proven to book appointments, and do you have the statistical data reports to back it up?

Do they know what the target booking percentage has proven to be over time?

Do they know exactly how to read the script? Are they taught about speech inflection—which words to emphasize and where the pregnant pauses should be?

Are they taught the psychology behind every piece of the script?

Are they taught how to break the prospect’s current emotional state and how to transition them into the appropriate emotional state to increase the booking percentage through specific words and phrases embedded in the script that communicate to the subconscious mind of the prospect?

Once they book the appointment, have you given them a step-by-step process to confirm that appointment?

Is there a step-by-step process to execute that appointment?

Do they know exactly what to say in that first appointment? Is it scripted?

Are they taught how to use B.I.T.™ Communication Techniques? In other words, do they have specific, step-by-step chronology of benefits, inside stories, and testimonials embedded in that first appointment script?

Oh, I haven’t even scratched the surface yet.

If you don’t have these specific, premeditated processes dialed in with every employee at your company, then you don’t have a system.

If there is no system, then there is going to be a lack of clarity.

And what happens when people—human beings—have a lack of clarity?

They get frustrated.

They get overwhelmed.

They freeze up.

Now, should your people be able to figure it out on their own?

Maybe, but they won’t. They’ll give up.

You may be right in that they should be able to figure it out, but it doesn’t matter.

What they should do is irrelevant.

You may be thinking, Geez, do I have to show them how to do every little thing, even things that are so obvious?

The answer, if you want to be incredibly successful in business, is yes.

This can be very frustrating for you in the beginning because creating step-by-step, dummy-proof systems that are truly dummy proof is not easy.

It takes a huge amount of work, vision, anticipatory thinking, and time. But the beautiful thing is that once it’s done, it’s done, and your stress level will get cut in half once a great system is implemented.

Once a great system is running things (and it should run about 80–90 percent of your entire business), you don’t have to baby sit your business like you are right now.

The system does the babysitting for you, but only if you design it properly with clear directives that give your people ultimate clarity.

This is what I do for my consulting clients. My clients hire me to design business systems for their companies that range from billion-dollar corporations all the way down to startup insurance agencies. I design a top-to-bottom system, custom-built for their specific business.

So let’s take a quick reality check.

Be honest with yourself.

If you’re the boss, are your employees having a frustrating baby bouncer assembly experience because they’ve never been given such detailed, specific directives?

And what about you?

Are you having a frustrating baby bouncer assembly experience in your own business life because you don’t have a systematized approach to execute your own tasks?

If you’re an independent agent, are you having a frustrating baby bouncer assembly experience because the parent company you represent has never given you a simple, step-by-step system to follow, one that has given you ultimate clarity?

I think we both know the answers to these questions.

Don’t feel bad.

Outside of McDonalds and Starbucks (and a small handful of other companies, including my own companies), I’ve never seen a System-Driven Business that functions in the way I’m describing.

The goal is to get your business dialed in with these systems I’m talking about so that instead of trying to invent the wheel while your wagon is moving (and about to crash), you can spend more time enjoying the ride while your business system chauffeurs you around. That’s why you started your agency in the first place, right?

Yes, you’ll make millions of dollars above and beyond your wildest dreams by implementing these systems, but that’s not the only reason you want to do this.

The main reason having a System-Driven Business is so valuable is it allows you to enjoy your own life, not having every little thing fall on your shoulders.

Build the system, and the system will build the company instead of you having to do everything all by yourself.

So, with that said, let the fun begin. Welcome to my world:

The world of the System-Driven Business.

Chapter 1: No Money, Big Vision & Big Dreams

No Money

I think a lot of people look at me and the companies I’ve built think that I started out with some sort of special advantage.

If anything, it was just the opposite.

It absolutely makes me cringe when I hear people say, You have to have money to make money. That’s the biggest crock of crap I’ve ever heard.

That’s what broke people say when they’re too chicken to put their butt on the line and really go for it.

When I first started out, I was broke.

Yes, I was driving a Mercedes, but don’t be impressed.

It was a twelve-year-old 190E that had over 109,000 miles on it. The dashboard was all cracked up from the sun, and the black carpet in the back window was so faded that it took on a greenish-brown tone.

One day it died on me, so I took it to the repair shop. The repair guy told me that it was going to cost $3,500 to fix it, but the car was worth less than the cost of repairing it. I ended up selling it to a junkyard for $900.

So there I was with no car and no money to buy a new one.

A friend of mine loaned me his extra car, a Saab convertible.

Again, don’t be impressed. It was thirteen years old.

The week after I started driving it, the clutch went out, and I had to cough up $550 on my credit card to get it fixed.

There were rusted out dents running along the passenger side of the car, so I went to the local home improvement store and bought cheap, black rubber mats, the kind they lay down on kitchen