"What are the challenges facing Independent Agents?" and 8 Questions with Marit Peters
Question 1:
What attracted you to the insurance industry?
Marit:
I'm not an insurance person. I don't know insurance technically. I unexpectedly fell into the association world.
In 2001, I knew somebody who knew somebody who said, "You should work for me," and I became the Communication & Education Director for the Independent Insurance Agents of New Mexico Association. Then I got picked up by our chairman of the board who said, "You should come over and work at our agency." It was a large agency—about 120 employees. That's where I really started to dabble in organizational design and development. In 2004, I left the industry for about 10 years.
What attracted me back is the culture of independent agents. I think that independent agents are some of the most philanthropic people I've ever met. They give back to their communities. They care about their communities. They're leaders in their communities. They're also a really fun crowd. They tend to be successful people.
I've worked in industries where the culture is pretty toxic. People aren't happy. They're not making money.
I like that this community of people tends to be entrepreneurial and care about their communities. There's going to be a variety of them, but at the end of the day, they do tend to be the salt of the earth. That's what I like about independent agents.
Question 2:
Tell us about your background. Where did you grow up?
Marit:
I was born in the Central African Republic and I grew up in Africa through high school. We had no running water or electricity where I was born. My parents were the only non-African family in the whole area.
I'm a twin. I was born with a twin sister named Letta. She was a whopping 4.1 lbs., and I was 3.10 lbs. My mom figured out that she was having twins about five days before we were born—six weeks early. I have an older brother as well, Christoph.
Question 3:
You grew up in Africa and went to school in Minnesota. Why don't you have a more of an accent?
Marit:
Good question. First of all, I grew up in Central Africa and then Nigeria. When I was a little kid in Central Africa, I grew up speaking French, Sango and English. I was trilingual, because the Central African Republic had been a French colony, and then when we moved to Nigeria. It had been an English colony. Most people spoke English.
I went to an American school, an international school. Secondly, my parents are from the Midwest, so I grew up in a home with parents from Minnesota and Wisconsin. Plus, we would go back and forth to the U.S. throughout my childhood. I chose to go to college in Minnesota, not realizing there were warmer places like Texas. That was quite a shock—going from Africa to Minnesota!
Fun fact: I graduated with a high school class of 36 people, and it had 25 different nationalities. I grew up around a very diverse group of people.
Question 4:
You studied Urban Geography at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. Why didn't you do that as a career?
Marit:
My parents gave me this advice for which I'm forever grateful: Don’t worry about taking the fundamentals. Just find whatever classes look interesting and take those your first semester.
I went through the curriculum and there was a class about cultural geography, which I thought was really interesting. I actually ended up with a double major: Sociology and Anthropology, and Geography with a focus in urban geography. That made sense since I grew up overseas and traveled the whole world before I turned 18, so I was interested in cultures. I thought it was fascinating how landscapes affect culture and how culture affects landscapes.
I was actually planning to get my master's degree in urban planning, but when I was 20 years old, I worked at city hall as a summer intern. I worked for the city planner to put together proposals that went in front of the city council, like when somebody wanted to make their garage one foot deeper than their property line. Everybody came to complain. It was really ugly, stupid politics.
So I decided not to go into urban planning. I said, “I can't stand politics, so I'm just not going to be involved in it.” Guess what? People are politics. I thought by not working at city hall and with city planners, I'd never have to deal with politics? One of my most ignorant statements.
Question 5:
What episodes of your podcast “Mornings with Marit” do you recommend and why?
Marit:
It's funny, we intended to launch it in February and did not realize what a helpful platform it was going to be for COVID-19.
We launched it at “Joe Vincent,” which is our leadership conference in January. The first episode was in February and then COVID hit. We went from what we thought would be one-time per month podcast to six episodes in six weeks.
One of my favorites is called “The Idea of a Designed Purpose” with one of my favorite speakers, Stephen Harvill. He walks-through how to think about time and use of your time in a different way.
We're used to going to work and doing certain things. So how do you actually become more purposeful in the way you use your time during COVID-19?
We talk about freeing-up your mornings 100% for deep work. You start-off with the stuff that's impactful, and then take a break at lunch. In the afternoon, do all your collaboration. Your responses. Your emails. And everything else.
It has actually made me change what I do and how our whole organization operates regarding scheduling meetings. This has freed us up as a team to get critical work done and still make time for collaboration and innovation—without interrupting each other all the time.
Question 6:
What are the challenges facing independent agents now?
Marit:
I think the biggest one we see right now is finding and hiring great talent. That's a constant challenge. "Where am I going to find my next great salesperson as my people retire?"
Insurance is not an easy industry to just pick up. I don't think that people really maybe respect or realize the level of technicality required to be a really good insurance agent.
When people think about insurance, they tend to think, "Well, I can buy a policy online with whoever."
It's actually a complicated art. You can't just plug and play people. It takes years of development and growth. Some people think, "I can watch something on YouTube and know it. I can become an expert instantly." But insurance doesn't lend itself to that. It's a harder industry to have a perpetuation plan.
Keeping up with technology is also huge deal. We know people struggle with that and data, which is the space you guys work in…getting your people to buy-in on how important it is to understand your data is just as big a challenge as getting them to put the time in to produce their data. Shifting from reporting to analytics to business intelligence and what that means for your business is a challenge.
As agencies mature and change ownership, I think leaders may struggle with the cultural needs of the next generation. There are a lot of agencies that have a top-down philosophy that would say, "I'm the boss. Here's what you're going to do." Top performers today think, "I want to be part of the solution. I want to be part of the culture, shape it and be part of a team. I want to work on the business. Not just be in the business."
Question 7:
How are you helping AgencyKPI form its team and culture?
Marit:
I have had the luxury of working with AgencyKPI from the very beginning and hopefully setting your team up for success. This project has been fun because instead of coming in and retrofitting a culture or team member roles, we could build it the right way from scratch.
We used The Why Institute to talk about people's “whys” and the organization's “why” such as, "Why do we exist? What do we believe in? How are we going to go about our work? What do we bring?”
I believe this grounded the team in their “whys,” focused them, and set the trajectory for AgencyKPI.
AgencyKPI’s “why” is:
To make a difference and have a positive impact on the industry.
”How” you do that is: By finding a better way and sharing it.
”What” you bring is: Clarity to your clients.
We also use KOLBE, which is a talent assessment for how people solve problems, work together and communicate.
Using these and other tools, have, I believe, created a great foundation for AgencyKPI.
Question 8:
You are a child of the 1980s and the early 90s. In America, we share a lot of pop cultural references, like 80s music, MTV, certain TV shows and movies, etc. But you didn't have any of that since you were in Africa.
Have there been cultural references you don’t get because of where you grew up?
Marit:
There are jokes that I just don’t get and comments that just go over my head.
When I was a sophomore in college, there was a movie, Forrest Gump. I thought it was the dumbest movie I'd ever seen in my life. I didn't get any of the cultural references.
I didn't get that it was part of this whole thing that happened in the '60s with Vietnam. I didn't get it. I just thought it was a bunch of abstract scenes. If you watch it—and if you don’t know those things—it just seems absurd. Of course, it won the Oscar that year, but I just didn’t get it.
On the reverse side, if you ask me, "What's your favorite song in the world?" My husband would be so embarrassed that I've even commented on this…it's “We Are the World.”
It was in the '80s. In Africa, it was a huge deal! When that song came out, it was played everywhere in Africa. Everywhere.
For me, when I hear that song, it takes me back. I'm a kid again, and that's who we were then.
Actually, on a serious note, the past year proves to us once again that we are one world, and we can only solve our problems by working together.