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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Maybe as an agency owner, you’ve been standing on the sidelines watching these changes occur and seeing your customer base erode. What Zukerberg is saying is, “change or die”. As a business owner, you really don’t have a choice. We all need to embrace the fact that the strategies that once worked are no longer working. The pace of change is accelerating. It’s a fact of business that MUST embrace sooner than later

It’s not just about where the modern consumer is spending their time. It’s also about what attracts them. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, says,

“If you define your company by the product, it dies. You have to define it as a great culture that can create great products”.

You see it’s not just about what you’re selling. The internet has provided instant access to information, and for that reason, products have become commodities. If you don’t believe me, just look at one of the biggest players in the auto insurance market. Their unique selling proposition includes a gecko and idea that you COULD save you 15%. They understand that they modern consumer not only wants to get a great price on something, they also want to be entertained in the process.

The good news is that Astonish Results can help you create that culture and give you the tools to attract those elusive modern consumers.

So stop waiting on the sidelines. Don’t “do nothing”. Call Astonish Results now for a free 180 second tour of the greatest culture creating, modern-consumer attracting, strategy building, digital marketing system in the world!

Every once in a while I think it’s a good idea to ask these questions. We can begin just going through the motions and lose the passion and drive that got us where we are in the first place. It makes sense to revisit these key questions.

It’s amazing how many people live unsatisfied lives because they fail to ask themselves these fundamental questions. At Astonish Results we encourgage our employees to dig a bit deeper and find out what makes them tick. I encourage you to do the same. You'll be glad you did.

(1)   What Happened?

(2)   What is Happening Now?

(3)   (If we made no change) What Will Happen?

(4)   Why and How Did it Happen?

(5)   What’s the Best Next Action?

(6)   What’s the Best / Worse That Can Happen?

You’ll notice that the first three questions are surface level questions. They give you basic information regarding the problem you're facing.

Questions 4 through 6 give you real insight into what is going on. They tell you WHY something happened and HOW LIKELY it is to recur (maybe it was just a glitch).

This is a great set of questions to ask when a process in your business is not going the way you’d like it to and you’re not getting the results you’d like.

Every company has problems or areas which need improvement. It’s fairly easy to determine what those issues are by talking with your staff and asking simple questions. Once you’ve determined where your staff is falling down or not meeting your expectations, it’s time for metrics. Have that employee report to you some measurement that indicates if they are getting the job done or not. The simple ask of having them report it will act as a built in form of accountability.

So next time you find that an employee is missing the mark, make sure they are reporting some performance metric to you on a daily or weekly basis.

In the lab, we had a clearly defined process which we implemented before we began measuring ANY client samples. Our analyst would spike a blank water sample with a know concentration of the compounds we were interested in quantifying. These were called QC (quality control) samples.

Our laboratory collected historical data on all the QC samples which were analyzed. This would allow us to predict or determine the accuracy of the measurements we were making. In other words, we KNEW how CONFIDENT would could be in the measurements we were providing our clients. This was really important because our product was the measurement. Our clients would then use those measurements to make decisions.

Why do I say all this? Well, if you’re measuring things in your business (you are measuring things right?) then you should also have some information regarding how confident you are about those measurements. Just measuring things is not enough. You need to understand WHY you’re measuring things and WHAT those measurements mean.

In mathematical terms, the measure of the variability of measurement is called the standard deviation. If you’re familiar with Excel, it’s pretty easy to calculate. The standard deviation tells you how precise or spread out your measurements are which also tells you something about the PROCESS that was used to generate that measurement.

Let me give you a real world example. Say you’re measuring the number of closed deals your company is generating and you’ve measured this for a year. Let’s also say the average is 100 deals per month.

How confident are you that you can predict how many deals you’ll close next month? By calculating the standard deviation you can determine a confidence limit. To do this, calculate the standard deviation and multiply that times 3. Add this number to the mean of your monthly sales and you have your upper control limit. Subtract this number from the mean and you have the lower control limit. You can now be 99.9% sure that the number of closed deals will fall within this range.

You may be shocked to find out that the range between the lower control limit and the upper control limit is quite large. For example, if the range is 20 – 130, your process for generating sales may have some problems. Your job is to figure out why and this is what metrics can reveal.