If you have been anywhere on the internet (you are reading this after all) there is endless debate on work-life balance and working your ass off for happiness.
Everyone has their own personal experience and I personally believe it might have something to do with the position you are in. The article about work-life balance that goes out to the masses wasn't thinking of insurance producers building a book.
Before I get into the lessons learned from working a set 8 hours a day, let's start with a quick story of how I have credibility in this subject.
While reading a book all about the benefits of work-life balance (there are a lot), I started to paint this blissful picture of happiness that incorporated frolicking through a field of flowers.
While I was building the largest book of business in our brokerage, I decided to start this work-life balance tactic to expedite my destination of "true happiness".
It started one Monday morning when I walked in bright and early to tell the office I would be working 9am to 5pm without any deviation. I proceeded to tell everyone that when I got home I would not answer any emails or phone calls from my clients. Their response was nothing short of a blank stare.
I can only speculate what they were thinking, however from reading their faces I think it was a little of, "what happened to Kari" and "well we will see how this goes".
But here is what I knew at the time, I was ready and jumped in head first, after-all I am trying out this new work-life balance thing.
My first week was great. I felt refreshed, happy, and calm. This was it, I found my field of flowers to frolic through! How easy and as a millennial the instant results felt like I hit the jackpot.
That was until my emails, phone calls, and new business submissions started to pile up to over 400+ unread emails, 20+ voicemails any given day, and ultimately my production revenue started to decline.
The benefits of a more relaxed approached to the work day along with having more "me" time was a welcomed break from the 16 hour crazy days I was putting in as an insurance broker.
However, when the email started to pile up, follow ups were hitting me from everywhere, and my revenue growth was taking a nose dive, I started to simply notice and reflect on what is truly happening.
What I Noticed Working a Set 8 Hours a Day & Lessons Learned in my Insurance Sales Career
First a foremost I noticed that my productivity struggled, I lost my intention, and overall buy-in into my work drastically declined.
Here are other things I learned during the 8 hour work day boundary with set hours:
You Waste Time Worrying About When to Leave
This affected me the most with the new boundary. I would constantly look at the clock making sure I lived up to the work-life balance and left work "on time". It was almost something to obsess with.
Instead of picking up a new client or a phone call at 4:45pm, I would let it go to voicemail, so that I could leave at 5pm.
I started to inadvertently conditioned my client's to not call me late in the afternoon. Thinking back, I wonder how many clients I lost this way.
It would be so easy for them to say, well I know she will not pick up her phone this late so I will call her competitor who will! Just because you aren't working, doesn't mean your clients are following suit.
You should work to get a job done, and more importantly work to help your client. As an insurance sales professional your job is to find insurance solutions for your client. It is to help them. Sales is not about us. The more you help your clients, the more they will help you. It is a 2-way street.
Selling insurance and the demands that go into an insurance sales career (especially during a hard market) should still be enjoyable and rewarding at the end of the day, where you are not looking at the clock multiple times a day, wondering when you can leave.
If you are counting down the clock to the minute you can stop working, find a new job. That one is not working out!
The hard market is not a fun season to be an insurance sales professional in, however, it doesn't mean it should be miserable where your mental health is declining. If you are feeling burnout, extremely overwhelmed, defeated, and stressed to the point your health is declining, it might be time to see what other insurance sales positions or focuses are out there. Teaming up with a career consultant that specializes in the insurance industry would be a high asset to you, your health, and your career.
NOTE: If you think your feelings are deeper it is always a great idea and encouraged to reach out to medical professional to discuss your feelings.
You Will Fall Behind
If you want to be the best, you must put in the work and do things others are not willing to do.
This could mean working longer hours. If you are the last one in the office and working on something that excites you, keeps you motivated, and you feel awesome about it, then who cares!
Personally, when I am the last one in the office after a long day working on a new account, I feel unstoppable, accomplished and motivated.
The more behind you are with your workload, the more unanswered emails you have, the more it will kill your personal brand with each unread email and unanswered voicemail.
Put yourself on a 24 hour rule. Every single person that reached out to you must receive some sort of response from you directly within 24 hours. Even if it is an acknowledgement of their email.
This will help you set healthy boundaries (unlike what I did) and buy you time to find a more comprehensive answer to your client's request or question. Which will help build your brand and reputation with that client. Do this over and over and you will increase productivity, bind more insurance, and build a book of loyal clients. Sounds like a good deal to me!
You Will Create a Poor Customer Experience
There are many things that can kill a company or a career and poor customer service is one of them.
Unanswered emails and voicemails is a poor customer experience.
When you work less hours, you get behind and in the end are rushed to get caught up or even worse you will have less coming in.
In the process of trying to get caught up, you rush through tasks, sacrifice your intention, miss details, and give off this vibe that your clients are not important to you.
What Happens Next?
Your prospects and clients stop reaching out. Simple as that.
When the quality of your work goes down, combined with the difficulty of receiving a response, so does your value. When you dwindle down your value so does the amount of calls and new business you get in.
Your clients need you when they have a problem. If you are nowhere to be found, they will find someone who is available no matter if they can solve their problem better than you or not. Simple as that.
I found the more available you are for your clients the more business you will receive and the better the relationships will be with them.
It Will Cause a Lot More Stress in New Places
When things are not going right anymore, it can cause a lot of stress. It will be new stress, and it will be more unhealthy stress. This type of unhealthy stress is energy sucking putting you on the fast track to burnout and unfulfillment.
You will find that you are constantly trying to tread water and simple tasks seem harder than before. The work that you once thought was enjoyable now feels like you have to peel yourself up off the floor.
Eventually, you will start to think the hard times will never end. Unfortunately, many quit before they truly understand why they lost the happiness and enjoyment of being an insurance sales professional.
Your job and career will always have stress, however it should be stress that drives you forward, motivates you to solve the problem, and makes your work harder (healthy stress).
If you start to feel discouraged that it will never get better, it might be time to look inward and really have a heart to heart with yourself to see if you lost touch with your goals and purpose.
If you can relate to any of the above, you might want to look at investing in a career consultant that specializes in the insurance industry. They will be able to relate to what you are going through, they will help figure out the root cause of the burnout and the feeling of defeat, and will help pick you up and put you back on track.
You Will Become More and More Unmotivated
When you feel stress and unrest the majority of the time you are at work, it will start to demotivate you.
I don't care how ambitious and driven you claim to be, at the end of the day we are human and humans do not like prolonged stressful situations. Queue the high cortisol.
When I worked 9am to 5pm I noticed that I was more motivated to get home and sit on the couch than I was working with clients and solving problems. Doesn't sound like the Top 3rd Insurance Producer in America does it?
I can guarantee you, I did not win that award at 26 & the various others by running home to sit on the couch.
There will be a lot of outside distractions in your life. Both in your personal or professional life. This is life.
The difference between successful and average is the amount someone lets those distractions take over.
Keep your eye on the end game and stay dedicated to yourself. If you are happy and feel fulfilled working longer hours, then do it!
You Will Spend More Time Doing Valueless Things
The more I thought about working my exact 8 hours a day, the more I found myself chatting around the office with co-workers about their weekend or nightly plans.
(chatting with your co-workers is not valueless, but there has to be a healthy balance)
My focus was off of bringing in new business deals and creating the most kick ass brand I can, to going home at 5pm.
It is important to understand that the job you are hired to do is both for the company you work for and more importantly to support you through your journey of self discovery, maturity, and success.
When you steer away from the job you were hired to do, so does the support of others. Be true to who you are, keep your eye on the end game, stay true to your brand, and kick ass!
As I sit here tonight writing this post the best way to describe my experience working 9am to 5pm was a vacation. Seriously, I felt I was on vacation in a way!
One morning I woke up and thought to myself, Kari, what do you want out of life?
When you are old and look back at your life what will make you think, wow I am proud of what I accomplished? Is it sitting on the couch? Is it shopping? The answer is no.
That is when I came to the conclusion I was killing my personal brand, my career, my book of business that I worked so hard to build, and needed to make a change fast.
The Hard Truth in Your Insurance Sales Career...
Without a strong personal brand you don't have a career as successful insurance professional.
People were seeking me out, because I was available, I worked hard for them, and I made shit happen. In the most simply put way, this is my brand to my clients.
And the funny thing is... that is exactly what I want my clients to think about me.
I don't want them to think I am nice or am a pretty face. I want them to think that if they come to me I will find a way to make it happen and will not stop until I have a high quality insurance solution for them.
I want them to think of me as an extremely hard worker and that I am extremely knowledge in the risk and the insurance solutions available to manage they risk(s).
The amazing part of building a personal brand is exactly that, you get to build your brand the way you want it.
When I am sitting at home or at the bar with friends, I am not building my brand within the industry. Neither are you.
You might meet a new lead/prospect at the bar, but I guarantee you that is NOT where you build the brand of being a hard-working, credible, and knowledgeable sales professional. You do that with education, planning, intention, and+ while being in the daily grind.
My question to you is, what is your brand?
If you are unsure of what your brand is or cannot instantly say it with confidence, check out my online course Credibility Boost Camp: Building Credibility Without Experience.
Did you know? "74% of salespeople fail. In contrast, 20% of salespeople do well but could improve and 6% of salespeople are classified as "elites." These numbers come from assessments of over 650,000 salespeople across the country" "The study also mentions that of this massive 74% subset of salespeople, the majority (3/4) can be trained to be competent at sales."
All of my courses are built and taught by me, an award-winning insurance producer. I will teach you exactly the foundation of how I built my career and brand that helped me grow my book 300%+ 5 years in a row, to building the largest book of business by revenue and account number, and in turn, win multiple awards as an insurance producer.
They are self-paced online courses with evergreen access. Which means you can go back and reference them as long as you want. There is no expiration.
Being put on a time limit caused more unhealthy stress when the work I was doing was fulfilling me. It demotivated me more than I ever thought was possible since I loved being an insurance producer, and in reality almost killed my career as a successful insurance producer.
Work-life balance of 9am to 5pm works for someone people, however, in a sales position it will eat you up and spit you out. Especially when you are in the years of building a book, both in revenue size or account number.
Bob Marley once said, "The people who were trying to make this world worse aren't taking the day off, why should I?"
We can flip this into more of a perspective for us. If your competitors are not taking the day off or aren't rushing home to sit on the couch, why would you think you will become more successful than them?
There will always be someone working harder than you, that's okay, because they aren't you. To be a successful insurance producer you have to put yourself out there where your leads/prospects and clients are.
You don't need to work more hours, you need to intentionally find where your clients go and show up there.
Then work the hours needed to solve their problem with exceptional quality.
The next time you leave exactly when acceptable, ask yourself, will this make me proud 10 to 20 years down the road? If the answer is no, don't leave.
Do that extra task, answer that extra email that helps your client, and build the brand of you!
You are capable of greatness.
"With ambition, a little bit of dreaming, and a whole lot of passion we can change the world"
Until Next Time,
Kari Kohal, MBA, AINS
Owners & Managers: Email me about group programs.
Disclaimer: I am not a healthcare professional. The information provided is for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. Please consult with a healthcare professional for any medical concerns or advice.
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