John Boudreau's Blog

I watched a program on TV the other night hosted by Jon Stossel. The topic was, “What Makes America Great?” You can see a blog post about it here. It seems like we’ve heard a great deal about what’s BAD about America and not enough about what’s great.

One of the reasons mentioned was entrepreneurship. America has grown to be the country it is because it has been friendly to entrepreneurs. I believe we should be doing everything we can to support this, but it seems we are moving away from this trend as a company.

I’ve also just finished a book by on VC called, “Mastering the VC Game”. The author, Jeffrey Bussgang described the venture capital environment in the US, China, Vietnam and Europe. Again, the US invests the most money in start-ups, but other countries who were once non-democratic are following the US lead.

I had the opportunity to attend a family reunion this past week. My wife’s grandfather had 9 children and his wife passed away when the youngest was 5 years old. The Halvorson / Johnson clan has over 190 members. We spent breakfast, lunch and dinner together and I got a chance to speak with many small business owners. A common theme emerged. Small businesses are hurting. We spoke about the fact that there is no shortage of good ideas, but there is a shortage of capital. Just like social fabric of our country is built on families, the economic fabric of our country is made up of small business. These companies are the source of most of the jobs and revenue which fuels our economy.

This is WHY Astonish Results exists. We are passionate about helping independent insurance agencies grow. We believe in small business. We also believe in the original social network – the connection of these small businesses which each other in the context of local geography.

We’ve lost that connection and have become increasingly isolated.

That’s WHY we exist. We believe in the independent agent. We believe that small business is the ultimate economic and social engine. We believe that the independent insurance agent should be at the center. Fueling the growth of small business fuels the growth of America.

I’m reading a GREAT book called, “Start with Why”. I’m only a few chapters in but I’ve already gleaned tons of insights.

The author, Simon Sinek takes a look at why some businesses develop strong loyalty while others don’t. He takes a look at companies like Apple and Harley Davidson. These companies have an extremely loyal following. Their customers are willing to pay more for their products and will fanatically defend their choice to any naysayers.

So what is it about these companies? Sinek makes the point that these companies are focused on the “WHY” not the “WHAT” or “HOW”. If a company can focus on inspiring people to become customers instead of manipulating them, those new customers will be much more loyal.

Here’s a quote from his book, “..and so the downward spiral of price addition sets in. In the drug world, these addicts are called junkies. In the business world, we call them commodities. Insurance. Home computers. Mobile phone service.” Sinek is making the point that insurance has become a commodity and those who sell insurance do so by focusing on price. This is a game you cannot win. Maybe you’ll get the customer, but another insurance company or agent will always have a better price (or be better at fooling your customer they do). Once this carrot is dangled in front of your customer, they’re gone.

The solution, according to the book is to “Start with Why”. People buy WHY you do things not WHAT you do. You must clearly articulate your WHY. It’s your purpose, cause or belief. By starting with WHY you’ll create greater customer loyalty because the WHAT will be secondary and you won’t have to use the manipulation techniques to get that new customers, you’ll INSPIRE  them.

If you’ve owned a company for any length of time you realize a majority of your challenges involve people. You need to get your people to do what you want them to do. You also need your employees to “get along”.

I’ve realized is that it’s not always a good thing for employees to “get along” with each other and see things the same way. It’s a very rare person who can step into the shoes of another and see an issue from the other person's perspective. It’s your job as a manager or C-level executive to get the team to play together and win.

One reason why an employee is so good at what they do is because of their personality. This is a result of how their brain works. An engineer / scientist type usually sees things in black and white terms. Their brains are wired that way. You WANT a person engineering something to think in black and white terms. That allows them to engineer the final product correctly. Conversely, a salesperson is all about building relationships, rapport and ultimately convincing the buyer that they need the product they are selling. They see the world in grays NOT black and white.

Check out this article on CNN Money regarding Facebook and how it is taking on Google. In my mind Google is more reactive, it just serves up content that it posted on the web once it spiders said content and puts it in the vast index.

Facebook is different. It's fun to use and a lot of people us it. It's twist on what Google does and it's in realtime. It's personal (granted you can't search for the most valid content on say "potty training", but that's what Google's for right?).

Since businesses are always looking to advertise where the consumer is, they will naturally begin migrating over to Facebook as the platform evolves. I nice combo would be a google-like search engine on facebook, that allowed the user to stay in one spot. Check on movie times, while they checked out their friends latest status update.

If you're an insurance agency, you need to begin thinking about ways to utilize this tool to your advantage because it's not going away.