Welcome to this week's training. The frameworks, tactics, and know-how you need to kick arse and take names in the trenches. Today: 4 min read.

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I ran into one of my old colleagues the other day. He’s a great guy, but he’s currently on his third shop in six years. He’s talented, he's smart, and he's a hard worker, but he just never seems to be able to fully put it together.

In my 12 years of being in this business, I’ve seen this exact movie play out literally hundreds of times. It’s crazy to look back at everyone I’ve worked with who didn’t make it and see where they are now, and it got me thinking about all the real reasons why producers fail.

Now, the most common answer you'll hear in the industry is a lack of agency support and training. And look, that’s absolutely a massive issue. But I’m not going to beat that drum today. Let's look past the low-hanging fruit and talk about the self-inflicted causes.

Here is what I firmly believe after over a decade in the trenches: Most producers do not fail because they are lazy. They don't fail because they lack talent or ambition, either. They fail because they fall headfirst into one or more of the following traps.

They’re afraid of rejection. Straight up. Now, this rarely looks like a Producer cowering in a corner. It looks like "high-activty low-productive busywork." It’s avoiding the uncomfortable work of dials and door-knocking and falling into unproductive meetings, constant reorganizing, and endless research. Not to mention, BNI’s or doom-scrolling LinkedIn under the guise of "networking". You will end your 10-hour day feeling exhausted and productive, but you spent 80% of it punching the clock instead of doing the actual, uncomfortable work that generates real revenue.

If you don't know your exact conversion rates, how many dials it takes to get a conversation, how many conversations to get an appointment, and how many appointments to close a deal, your goals are just guesses. I will say that again for the people in the back… if you don’t know your conversion rates YOU’RE JUST GUESSING. You can work 10-hour days, but if you aren't treating your production like a trackable math problem, you are just crossing your fingers and hoping.

This is one that doesn’t get enough air time, for obvious reasons. Newer Producers frequently get paired with a established Producers who were seeded all or most of their book, married into the agency, or rides on favorable house accounts. They might be fantastic at client service, but they have absolutely no idea how to prospect with cold outbound and build a book from zero because they’ve never actually done it themselves. It’s the blind leading the blind. You aren't failing to learn, you're just taking hunting advice from someone who only knows how to farm.

This one is less common, but it’s just as deadly. If you don't deeply understand coverages, forms and endorsements, contractual risk transfer, and the the broader mechanics of risk management you are nothing more than a glorified form-filler. But technical mastery is only half the battle. You also have to know the market, like which carriers actually have an appetite for the risk, what their specific underwriting guidelines look like, and how to sell a risk so it flies through underwriting. You simply cannot speak credibly with a CFO, a sophisticated risk manager, or a top-tier underwriter if you don't know the marketplace and the fine print better than the incumbent.

If you don't have a specific, structured process to follow or you refuse to stick to one, you are just winging it. When you try to work deals without a repeatable playbook, you automatically cede control to the insured or the incumbent. You end up constantly pivoting, reacting, and changing your strategy on the fly. You let the prospect dictate the rules of the game, always in a reactive, defensive posture, which walks you right into the trap where you are perceived as a commodity vendor forced to compete purely on price.

Charlie Munger was a massive advocate of a mental model called Inversion.

He famously summarized it by saying:

Munger believed that complex problems are much easier to solve when you look at them backward. Instead of asking how to succeed, you ask how to guarantee failure, and then you invert those behaviors. So, if we take the 5 career-killing traps above and flip them, the playbook for success becomes obvious.

To guarantee success, do the following:

Protect Your Prospecting Window: Separate your hunting time from your busywork. Measure your success by revenue-generating tasks accomplished, not by how many hours you sat at your desk.

Fly by Your Instruments: Know your daily activity numbers so sales shift from an emotional rollercoaster of rejection into a predictable math problem. What are my KPI’s today? Now do them.

Find a Hunter Mentor: Only take advice on how to build from zero from someone who has actually hunted and won their own book from scratch. There are plenty of hunters willing to help if you look for them.

Become an Industry Expert: Master coverages, contracts, carrier appetites, etc. When it comes to risk management in your niche or area, be the go-to resource.

Run a Proprietary Due Diligence Process: Stop reacting, pivoting, and being a commodity. Install and strictly enforce your own unique, proprietary diagnostic playbook that keeps you firmly in the driver’s seat from the very first handshake. Become a Broker of One.

Success in this business isn't about working yourself to the bone. It’s about building a predictable, repeatable machine that protects your time, your energy, and your focus.

Once you stop gunslinging and start running a proven system, the game completely changes. Link to our’s here.

If you know a colleague who is currently spinning their wheels in one of these traps, do them a favor and pass this on. A rising tide raises all ships.

-MS