Hiring

Wolfington urged partners to consider how adding a new person to their team could change the game. 

That person, whether full-time or contractor, can help the business owners focus on what they do best. It could be, as partners discussed at the Wednesday pre-AMP’d conference, a marketing resource.

“You are one hire away from completely transforming your organization and changing your life,” Wolfington told the audience.

Many agents go a long time before making that first hire. Bret Hickenlooper, for example, ran his agency SUMO Communications for 11 years without any full-time employees.

And that decision, he said, stemmed from the entrepeneurial grind that is building an agency.

“Most people left a job where they were making good money. They were probably good salespeople where they were working, and they were making a great living,” Hickenlooper said. “It takes them four to six years to replace that. And once you’ve replaced it with a residual income, you become reluctant to share it with anyone.”

But Hickenlooper said he found himself tired at the end of 11 years.

“I was worn out and stretched very, very thin. I thought, ‘I need to hire some people, or this is just going to wear me out completely.’ So I hired some people,” he said.

And quickly he found that those employees could do even more than he thought they could.

“I realized that I could introduce these people to my customers. And sometimes, whether I want to admit it or not, they like them more than me. They’re ordering more from them than they would have ordered from me, because I hired the right people. And all of a sudden the business really started to grow,” he said.