Continuing education might bring back memories of banquet halls and a slow clicking clock. Try reframing it into continuing engagement, Iroquois Regional Vice President Kevin McKay spends 7 minutes with the Trusted Advisor and gives an inside view on how he helps people stay in the know as well as his own personal development. Have you ever gone through the steps of an experience transformer? Or considered your 25-year plan? Kevin McKay walks through both in this episode.
Edwin K. Morris (4s):
Welcome to the trusted advisor podcast brought to you by Iroquois group. Iroquois is your trusted advisor in all things insurance. I am Edwin K. Morris. Our guest is Kevin McKay and he draws on 32 years of experience in the insurance industry. Kevin was an agency owner and producer prior to joining the Iroquois team. Kevin is now responsible for both member and carrier relationships for his seven state Iroquois region. How do you communicate in your organization? I hear there’s a Tuesday newsletter. What’s that all about?
Kevin McKay (38s):
It’s yeah, 20 minute Tuesday. It’s not a newsletter. It’s actually a webinar that we host and we try to host at least once a month, it starts at 10 ends at 10:20, and it’s usually laser focused on one idea, one concept, and it’s usually carrier driven. We don’t want Travelers to give us all the things that Travelers does. We’d rather have them focus on cyber liability, for example. So it starts at 10 ends at 10:20 folks can stay on for a longer period of time for questions and answers. But other than that, it’s just on topic. Those 20 minutes
Edwin K. Morris (1m 11s):
What drove that to even happen? What, what, why did you create this?
Kevin McKay (1m 15s):
I, I’m not a big fan of webinars, especially long ones. So if we guarantee it, it’ll start at 10 and, and, end at 10:20, and it has some content that’s important, that’s usable and functionable right away. I think it made sense for us instead of a broad brush overview of something and carriers like it, our members seem to like it. We have good attendance and it seems to, it seems to work.
Edwin K. Morris (1m 38s):
It’s a great way to get the information out there in a quick and editable, short burst versus the normal transfer of knowledge, which is in a memo or a long email, or like you say, like an hour long webinar, which you could have condensed in five minutes if you’re really would have worked at it.
Kevin McKay (1m 54s):
Right. And we also, we do bribe our members to be on. If they stay on from 10 to 10 20, we send them a $10 iTunes gift card.
Edwin K. Morris (2m 3s):
Monetizing that motivation. I see.
Kevin McKay (2m 5s):
Yeah. And at the end of it, we’ll ask five questions in an email format. And as long as they answer the five correctly, we’ll send another gift card. That is awesome. We want to make sure they’re paying attention.
Edwin K. Morris (2m 17s):
You’ve incentivized the learning, right.
Kevin McKay (2m 19s):
And to pay attention. But I think of a CSR, that’s $10 is $10, I think, and happy to do it.
Edwin K. Morris (2m 24s):
Sounds like an investment to me. Going along those lines of communicating and working with folks, what about the coaching sessions?
Kevin McKay (2m 30s):
Do you mean strategic coach out of Toronto? This guy named Dan Sullivan. Probably at the beginning of my career, I met a couple of folks that were in the insurance industry that attended his seminars or workshops in Toronto. And they were pretty successful guys. One guy went on to start USI and a great guy talked about it. So back in 2007, I went to the classes for the first year, and then I’ve been going ever since. So it gives you one day a quarter to focus on what you do and your goals and what you’re trying to achieve in business. It’s not just insurance people. It was only one insurance person in the class. Probably the one that I attend is probably seven authors that have published books, mostly entrepreneurs, a couple of doctors, like I said, lawyers, one guy that owns a 40,000 acre farm.
Kevin McKay (3m 12s):
Just everybody has that same idea that trying to improve on what they do and make sure that we’re trying to support and improve the folks around us from a business standpoint. So it’s great
Edwin K. Morris (3m 21s):
What’s a common theme that comes out of that, that you you’ve latched on to? What’s the goodness?
Kevin McKay (3m 26s):
I think, just having one day, there’s a lot of goodness to it, having that one day where you’re separated from work for the most part. And you’re engaged in talking from nine to five about business concepts and goals and, and some of the tools that I really use. There’s a, the experience transformer. If you like after this podcast, let’s say at the end of it, I’ll, I’ll do this experience transform and kind of go through it. What worked, what didn’t work, steps to improve it. And then the next time I do it, these are the steps that I will do to make this thing work out better. And we use that a lot in our agency meetings. In anything that you do, I think that helps. So there’s a bunch of tools that are very similar to that.
Edwin K. Morris (3m 60s):
Give me that name of the organization and/or course?
Kevin McKay (4m 5s):
Strategic Coach. And it’s out of the, home office is out of Toronto, but they have it in London, Chicago and Los Angeles, and a guy named Dan Sullivan runs it.
Edwin K. Morris (4m 13s):
And it’s, it’s well worth the effort.
Kevin McKay (4m 15s):
Yeah, it is. It’s, you know, it’s well worth the expense and the effort. And it’s very interesting because one, one exercise that you do and there’s folks in there from their thirties to 75 years old, and one exercise you do that I think is interesting, they do a 25 year plan and to watch somebody that’s 75 and walk them through what their 25 year plan is pretty interesting. And so that’s actually exciting to see how that works out.
Edwin K. Morris (4m 37s):
I’ve not heard of too many folks working on a strategic plan going much beyond five to 10 years. I can’t imagine 25 years. Right.
Kevin McKay (4m 44s):
Well, I guess you want to live a long life, family, friends, money and a purpose, right? That’s what drives it?
Edwin K. Morris (4m 53s):
Family, friends, money and purpose. Right. Is that your a, is that yours? Is that something you’ve come up with or is that…?
Kevin McKay (4m 59s):
No, I’m sure, I’m sure everything I say I’ve stolen at one point or another
Edwin K. Morris (5m 6s):
It bubbles up through the consciousness, right? What is the 25 year plan, what, what does that look like for you?
Kevin McKay (5m 11s):
So well I think it’s based on family, right? Health, profession, giving back to your community, individual goals, getting better at things, cleaning up messes if you have any and what you want to be doing in 25 years. And I think if you have that, you know, if you look at somebody that’s 70 years old, in 25 years, they want to be healthy. And then what steps do they do now to make sure that they’re healthy at, you know, a hundred years old
Edwin K. Morris (5m 33s):
And it’s kind of funny. It kind of goes back to my first indoctrination to Stephen Covey. And that whole idea that work in life does not equate to the one slice of the pie. It’s the whole pie and you have different slices and different facets of your life. And if you don’t put energy towards addressing each one of those pieces, it’s not going to do well.
Kevin McKay (5m 56s):
Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Edwin K. Morris (5m 57s):
And you also touched on community involvement, right? So that’s that citizenship, being a good citizen.
Kevin McKay (6m 2s):
Right. Supporting a community. I mean, it’s all part of the program, right? Making sure that you’re in, you’re involved and you’re giving back.
Edwin K. Morris (6m 9s):
Sounds good. Right. I’m buying it. You’re selling it, I’m buying it. I’m just thinking of all the people that don’t buy into that concept. There’s a lot of people that have stepped away from those roles, important roles of community building, citizenship, and it’s just either work, profit, and not much else.
Kevin McKay (6m 25s):
Yeah. But I, I think the majority of folks that I do know are involved in some, either coaching sports or they’re, you know, they’re, they’re giving back in ways that they, you know, that they can.
Edwin K. Morris (6m 35s):
I appreciate your time today and we hope to see you again on the next.
Kevin McKay (6m 40s):
Great, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Take care.
Edwin K. Morris (6m 43s):
Thanks for listening to this edition of the trusted advisor podcast brought to you by Iroquois group. Iroquois, your trusted advisor for all things insurance, and remember get out of the office and sell. This program was recorded live at the Cohen multimedia studio on the grounds of Chautauqua institution. I am Edwin K. Morris, and I invite you to join me for the next edition of the trusted advisor podcast.
