When my partner Lev and I started InsuranceAgents.com in his parent’s basement back in 2004, we felt like the tiniest fish in a giant pond. Our competitors were generating revenues of $30 million, $60 million, $100 million, $300 million. Within a year there were even more competitors that we were finding generating tens of millions in revenue themselves.
We did $252,000 in revenue in our first year. Which would put us somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.005% of the industry wide revenue. Not exactly striking fear into anyone’s heart at that point.
When we would talk to these larger competitors about working together we would typically be told to come back in 6 months, if we were still in business.
So what did we do? We grabbed a phone and started calling everyone, everyday. We had a relentless attitude that if the industry wasn’t going to pay attention to us, we were going to force them too. We called and emailed every lead generation company, every major insurance company, every major insurance website, and thousands of insurance agents nationwide every day.
If they told us to wait 6 months, we called back the next week. If they told us they would probably never do business with us, we told them yes they would and we would prove ourselves to them.
When you are the tiny new company on the block, no one will “give” you anything. You have to fight for every sale and every dollar of revenue.
No matter how small your company is, talk like your big. That’s probably one of the oldest rules in sales, but it really does work.
Finally we have gotten to the point where we are big enough and well known enough in the industry where the roles have finally reversed a little. Now it’s probably about 50% of the time going out and hunting down new business opportunities and 50% of the time these companies are now coming to us to try to negotiate deals.
It’s a great feeling to know that our amazing employees have created a brand that people now seek out and want to partner with. The hard work does payoff in the long run, but getting through those first couple years can be a nightmare. Remember, it’s worth it in the long run, so toughen up, grab that phone, and start making something happen.
Categories: Business Lessons
Tagged: business, business advice, business tips, ceo, closing, cold calling, competition, confidence, deals, entrepreneur, inspiration, Lead Generation, sales, small business, starting a business
Anyone who knows me will tell you I’m a very quite guy. I have attended many events such as parties, weddings, and social outings only to have people ask me the next day, “why didn’t show up last night?”. Not only had many of these people seen me at the party, but I was probably roaming around the place for hours.
To sum it up, I’m invisible in nearly any social situation. This does not bode well for business.
As time has gone by, I have had to learn how to adapt to a business world that not only demands that I be exceptionally outgoing, but requires that I do anything but blend in. To be honest, this could not possibly place me in a more uncomfortable situation. I’m miserable in social situations where I am the center of attention.
So, how do I deal with the stress of meeting business partners, attending conferences, business dinners, and conference calls? There is no elegant way for me to put it, I simply “survive”.
1. People want to talk to you: I try to approach any business interaction with the mindstate of, “these people are hear to talk to me because they want to hear what I have to say”. In reality, this could be the furthest thing from the truth and for many of the business interactions I have had, I was probably one of the least important people they talked to that day. However, to keep my confidence high and to prevent the social anxiety from strangling me, I keep reassuring myself that someone standing hear listening to me actually cares what I have to say.
2. It’s not that big of a deal. In the grand scope of life, I think we put way too much pressure business and money. There are so many more important things to worry about, that I really try to keep things in prospective when I feel the social anxiety starting to rise up. I remind myself that whatever situation I am in is just temporary, in the grand scheme of my life it will mean very little, and to just relax and try to be “in the moment” as much as possible.
3. You’re not going to make a fool of yourself. Don’t worry about always sounding ultra professional. I find so much of my anxiety comes from my obsession with always coming across as professional, knowledgeable, and confident about anything someone asks about business, my company, or our industry. This completely unnecessary pressure is 100% self induced. You don’t have to have a witty answer, an insightful comment, or in-depth knowledge of every topic that comes across. Don’t put that ridiculous pressure on yourself. People don’t like a know-it-all anyway.
4. Be yourself, but not for the reasons most people usually tell you. I’m not saying to be yourself for the chicken soup for your soul kind of reasons. However, in the business world when I say be yourself, I mean don’t distract yourself with trying to be something your not. I accept the fact that I’m very introverted, I’m a casual speaker, and I prefer one-on-one interaction. So, when I am approaching a business interaction, I talk like I have known the person forever and we are close friends, I talk casually without using much business lingo, and I usually single out one person in the group to focus most of the conversation toward.
That’s what works for me.
I would love to hear some other ideas on how to handle business social interactions.
Categories: Business Lessons
Tagged: advice, business, business tips, communication, conversations, interaction, introvert, public speaking, relaxing, small business, social, social anxiety, speaker, speaking, starting a business
February 9, 2010 · 1 Comment
I have been a victim of the new “shiny toy” style of business so many times. Where I’m laying in bed, think of a concept, put up the blinders, and get trapped in tunnel vision on a idea while completely pulling my work week off on a tangent. Or even worse, having an existing product that is successful and placing it aside because I want to try something different because of some article I read in BusinessWeek or Forbes.
It can be incredibly difficult to focus on one particular set of products or services and not succumb to the desire to chase every new opportunity that crosses your plate. It doesn’t matter if things are going great or terribly, there is always going to be some new “shiny” thing that grabs your attention and you will face the moment where you decide do I drag down myself down this new road or not.
In my six years at InsuranceAgents.com I can say without a doubt, it’s almost always better to not let yourself get distracted by new business concepts, new trends, and the like. Every time we dedicated 3, 6, 9 months to some trendy idea, some high risk experiment, it always distracted us from our core business of selling financial insurance leads and in the end the business suffered. Every time we buckled down and said, “NO more distractions!”, our business improved and our core product revenue would jump.
It can be so tempting when things come along out of no where and beg for you to try them out. These opportunities can seem so incredibly urgent at the time, but upon looking back on them now I can’t believe we wasted our time on them. It always starts with “oh, look what so and so is doing” and evolves into “why aren’t we doing it?” and then finally “we need to do this NOW!!”.
“Oh, look the iPhone came out. We don’t have an iPhone app for insurance quotes. We need an iPhone App NOW!!” “Oh look so and so bought a bunch of insurance domain names. We don’t have that many insurance domains….. We need more insurance domain names NOW!!” And so on and so on. Every time, money is wasted, man-hours lost forever, our existing products would be put on hold, and we would always lose in the end.
I’m proud to say that about 2.5 years ago we decided to buckle down and focus solely on our core products. No more distractions, no more business ADD. Since then our revenue has skyrocketed, we have added thousands of new clients, and we are a highly focused company. It wasn’t an easy process and I won’t deny to this day every time I hear of a new product or service offered somewhere in our industry my first reaction is, “We need to do this NOW!”. Luckily I am surrounded by an amazing team of talented people who help me stay on focus and prevent us from being dragged down the path of another 6 month long distraction.
It’s sounds cliche, but keep your eye on the prize. Understand what your core products/services are and try your hardest to stay focused on those and only those.
Categories: Business Lessons
Tagged: add, adhd, advice, business, business advice, business tips, ceo, determination, distraction, entrepreneur, focus, focusing, president, products, services, small business, starting a business, support, tips
It seems like common sense to save money when you run a company, but I am always shocked when I walk into a fellow internet company’s office and see solid hardwood desks, Aeron chairs, brand new computers with 24′ LCD’s, plasma TV’s hanging on the walls displaying nothing more then company slogans, and more art on the walls than most small museums. After five minutes walking around I start to wonder does anyone make money around here or do they just spend it.
What amazes me even more is that many of these companies run off of VC funding. If I was an investor in a VC and found out one of my companies was buying $1000 chairs and stocking the kitchen with 20 cases of Red Bull and organic food, I would be in that CEO’s office so fast his head would spin.
My partner, Lev, and I have gotten by very frugally from day one. We started off by working out of his basement off of three grey plastic folding tables we purchased at Home Depot. We used the family internet connection and ran an Ethernet cable out the bedroom window on the second floor down in through a basement window and down into a router I picked up from a local used computer store. He ran a food cart business on the side serving the Ohio State University area and stocked everything in his basement. So, lunches consisted of walking over to the corner of the room, opening a box of potato chips and Kit Kats and subsisting off of that. We did $252,000 in revenue the first year in business and the only reason we turned a profit was because of how frugal we were.
Now we aren’t working out of a basement anymore obviously. We occupy about 8,000 sq ft of office space combined between our Columbus and Chicago offices and employ nearly 45 people. However, in many ways we are still as frugal as we were then and that is certainly one of the biggest factors in our success and survival for that matter. We believe in putting all available funds into paying our people and building our services. That’s where the money should go. If I asked one of our employees, “Would you rather have a solid mahogany desk or a larger paycheck?” Take a wild guess what their answer is going to be.
Now, offices are certainly not the only place that companies waste money. However, the mentality that drove us to keep our office expenses low overflows into many of the other services we pay for. We are always analyzing the services we pay for and figuring out whether or not we can do it in-house ourselves or if we can find a better but cheaper alternative with a different company. If we pay $5.00 for something, we demand to know why we can’t pay $4.50 for it and we will search out alternatives.
In my eyes companies serve only 3 purposes:
1. Delivering the best product possible for the client and insuring their 100% satisfaction.
2. Support your employees and their families as much as possible and your surrounding community as an extension of that.
3. Generate profit. I could care less when I hear a big revenue number. I only want to know how much you actually make.
I’m sorry, but I don’t see art, over priced outsourced services, Aeron chairs, and $2000 desks having anything to do with 1-3.
Keep it frugal and your business stands the best chances possible to maintain profitability and grow.
Categories: Business Lessons
Tagged: advice, business, business advice, business tips, ceo, cheap, costs, entrepreneur, frugal, low, president, saving money, small business, start up, starting a business, startup
This is the first part of a series of posts I will be doing to talk about my experiences with InsuranceAgents.com and watching it grow from a 3 person start-up to the successful 40+ person company it is today.
My style of management is far from ideal. I have certainly made a ton of mistakes and my entire life with this company has been a giant learning experience from day one through now. However, my partner Lev and I can see several critical aspects of how we have managed day to day operations that helped the company succeed.
The first thing that came to mind when I thought about why InsuranceAgents.com has functioned even through the toughest of times, was our ability to always be candid with each other.
InsuranceAgents.com started off in a basement and grew by hiring young aggressive college students who had a desire to be part of the start-up environment. This translated into a rather atypical business environment where bureaucratic management techniques didn’t exist. You could throw all of your business management books out the window, since none of the principles were in place with us.
What we had instead was an environment where we felt like more of a group of friends that happened to work together. Rather than teams of employees chasing paychecks and hoping for promotions like many companies. The result, to this day, is an environment that blurs the lines between executives, managers, sales, marketing, customer support, full-timers, part-timers, etc… While there is an informal chain of command, people feel comfortable being candid and open with each other without worrying about repercussions.
Beyond this, candid also means being open to all viewpoints. While it can be uncomfortable sometimes, our company culture has always encouraged people to not “candy coat” their opinions and to be frank and honest with how they are feeling. This may sound crazy to many managers or executives out there, but an employee can approach Lev or I and tell us that they are not happy with our job performance and our reaction will simply be to have them explain why they feel that way.
From previous jobs I have had, I would cringe at the thought of how awful it would be to tell one of my bosses what I truly thought of them. Looking back I certainly would have been fired or had my hours cut for doing something like that. However, I feel its critical that employees be able to communicate as honestly as possible with managers.
Being candid must also apply from the top down as well. I think employees deserve to know the state of the company in real world terms, not watered down business jargon. Telling everyone the company is “proceeding along a path of sustained growth with new opportunities on the horizon” is the same thing as saying “the management doesn’t care at all about your opinion, so we are going to give you bland business jargon that contains no useful information for you”. Management must communicate in terms everyone can understand and relate to, so everyone can be on the same page.
Having all the knowledge of the business operations held in the hands of a few while everyone else is kept in the dark is a recipe for disaster. Just look to companies like Amazon or Zappos to see how well open communication works and look to companies like Enron to see what happens when people share nothing with each other, kill dissent and open communication, and management holds all the information solely for themselves.
Candid also means providing useful information. Watering down the numbers or telling the boss that things are on schedule when they are actually behind is not being candid. You aren’t providing honest or useful information in that conversation. To walk away from a meeting or conversation with information you can actually use requires both parties to be open and candid.
At the end of the day, all that really matters in a company is communication. Nothing can get done when people don’t communicate to each other. However, nothing great can be achieved when people aren’t candid when they communicate.
Categories: Business Lessons
Tagged: business, business advice, candid, chain of command, communication, employees, executives, honest, honesty, integrity, management, open, small business, starting, starting a, startup, video
