Owning your own brokerage or agency may seem like a far off dream, but one broker who successfully made the transition says all it takes are big dreams, firmly rooted in reality.
“I’ve been speaking to a lot of young guys who are looking to own their own agency, and I truly believe that anything is possible,” says Chad Mackenzie, of Mackenzie Insurance Group Inc., The Co-operators, in Edmonton, Alta. “I’m that guy who watches motivational videos. I truly do believe it.”
With the cohort of Baby Boomers poised to leave the industry in greater numbers, there will be a call for those who have passed their early ‘trial by fire’ years to step up and take on greater responsibility.
And while dreams are important, Mackenzie told Insurance Business, it is important to ground those dreams in the cold light of reality.
“I was a claims adjuster, initially on a catastrophe team – it was a big jump for me with a young family to come over to the sales side” says Mackenzie. “What I loved was that the different agent/owners were all realistic with me in what I needed to do to accomplish my goals to ultimately get ownership.”
It was hearing the facts – and not sugar-coated, pie-in-the-sky rhetoric – that prepared Mackenzie to eventually take ownership of a brokerage.
“When people were real with me and I could see what the journey was ahead of me, I was fine to tackle it,” he says. “But if it was made out to be easier than what it really was, I very well could have failed during that process.”
But once you are there – the real question can be: how do I achieve success? asks Mackenzie. The key to finding successful people to grow your business is the same that any successful broker has done while climbing the ladder to the top: training and constant learning. (continued.)
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But it is easier said than done.
“It’s hard, because I do believe you can teach people, but they have to have the mindset that anything is possible,” he says. “If they truly believe that on their own, they can accomplish anything on their own.
“They can learn how the products work; they can learn how to sit one-on-one with a client, put on a presentation. But they have to have that believe that they can accomplish absolutely anything.”
A mistake Mackenzie sees many brokerages making is hiring employees using a carrot of unrealistic goals and rewards.
“You will have some employers who will just bring employees in because they are competing in this market to hire, and they will show unrealistic goals or unrealistic income levels, to try and sway someone to come over to that side,” he says. “That is a recipe for failure.”
Instead, there should be a search for potential – especially from those who actively ask for help and mentoring to improve themselves.
“Mentoring is all important. And most people want to be a mentor,” says Mackenzie. “If you’re a young male or female in the industry who is willing to just ask somebody questions, go to somebody who has been in the industry for a long time.”
Mackenzie likes to share a story of the industry veteran who has been around for 35 years, showing clients the same product year after year.
“All you are is one person who has one year of experience 35 times,” he says. “Or you could be that person who goes and asks questions to seniors, to young people – to anybody – and gets as much information as possible. And after seven years in the industry, you can have 35 years of collective experience. And that’s what I have chosen to do.”
