When I was a kid I never thought I would be in the business of representing insurance brokers in business transactions. A career as a financial advisor didn’t immediately spring to mind. I did always have great plans for myself. I planned on succeeding my childhood hero, Roberto Clemente, as the right fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates. I always wanted to be a success. My father would always ask me the same question. What was I doing to become that success? We can all think up excuses and reasons as to why we’re not Roberto Clemente’s replacement. The key is to find a way to eliminate those excuses.
Lofty Goals
The team at Sukay & Associates recently spoke with a prospective client that wanted to grow his agency to have revenues of $25 million. It was a large but achievable goal. At that time, they had revenues of $7 million. They were very profitable but had grown despite access to key market carriers and a limited ability to produce new business. Their biggest problem was that their clients had a very small average account size. We asked a couple of simple questions:
1. Did they think they could grow to $10 million with their existing markets, producers and client profile? They agreed that it would be difficult.
2. Did they think they could grow to $25 million with their existing markets, producers and client profile? They agreed that it would be impossible.
3. What were they doing to change their markets, increase the number and quality of their producers and change their client profile? They had no answer.
Problem Solving
During my entire life I’ve been finding ways to solve problems. It is a blessing and a curse. If I wanted to become successful in my career life; I needed to find out what was holding me back and a way to get around those problems. After achieving a certain level of success in public accounting, banking, and the travel industry, we are now working on establishing a well-known brand in the insurance brokerage industry. Our goal is simple; we don’t want to be the biggest, we just want to be the best. In order to be the best, we need to take a certain path. If we wanted to be the biggest, we would need to take another path.
Sukay & Associates is a firm that provides advisory services to the insurance brokerage industry, but what we really do is solve problems. The first step in becoming the best is to establish a strong foundation for your agency. You can’t become larger or better if your foundation is not solid. Once you have established a strong core, we help you identify the path you need to take in order to achieve your goals. The establishment of those goals starts with the question; what do you want to be when you grow up.?
Life doesn’t imitate Jeopardy. You need to ask that question before you can come up with all of the answers.
What is the Value of Your Insurance Agency?
As financial advisors who represent insurance brokers in business transactions, we are commonly asked one question “How much is my agency worth?” It is the one topic that each and every agency owner wants to discuss. It would be nice if we had one simple answer; unfortunately, there is no simple answer. Click below to download our comprehensive whitepaper which details “The 9 Factors That Indicate Value”.
