First Ingredient: Attitude

Let’s first define attitude- it is a position of the body or manner of carrying oneself. An individual’s attitude can significantly influence one’s outlook on life in numerous ways; you could be having the worst day of your life, but if you just tweak your attitude, you can instantly change your mood, reduce your stress and in return turn your day around. Having the right attitude can help you at work in building relationships with your staff members, as well as in social relationships with your friends and family. Having the right attitude can change your mindset completely, and that mindset will help you figure out the difficult situations that surround you on a daily basis. For example, say you’ve just recently lost your job and you haven’t heard back from any other job offers you’ve recently applied to, so you decide to throw in the towel and give up. Do you really think that this is the answer to the problem? Absolutely not! That’s the type of attitude that is cancerous and in many situations can spread within your agency rather quickly when people have the wrong attitudes. The easy solution is to obviously remove the cancer from your agency, but in most situations it’s just not that easy. My solution is to get involved and help the person with their mindset so that they can turn things around and see things in a positive manner. I always remind everybody every day about the importance of each day and how it can make a difference in someone’s life. Your agency needs a positive attitude, with positive people, and positive things will happen.

Second Key Ingredient: Vision

Our vision is what leads us in the direction that we are going. A key aspect of that direction is getting everybody in the agency to understand and comprehend what that vision is and what direction it is taking us. Another key component of that vision is timeframe and having a goal that can be achieved. These key ingredients within vision are what help your staff members get up every day and come the work excited and ready to bring on the day. A strong vision will allow your staff members to understand the agency vision and will help them overcome any threats, weaknesses, or any other type of negativity that is thrown at them during the workday.

Third Ingredient: Leadership

I think leadership is one of the most important aspects of business. Whether you’re just starting out in your agency or your agency has been around for 50 years, you need great leadership in order to continue to succeed in today’s economy. Becoming a great leader requires practice, and most of these individuals have learned through their failures and bumps in the roads to become the leaders that they are now. In order to become a stronger leader we need a few key ingredients: ambition, control, direction, and guidance in the right attitude. Another key to great leadership is having great mentors. If you get a free moment one morning, ask the people that are your friends in this industry to be a mentor and to work with you. Leadership is constantly evolving, so to become a better leader, you need to commit your time and energy to focus on becoming a stronger leader.

Last Ingredient: A Competitor

Are you a competitor and have you surrounded yourself and your staff members with other competitors? Competition is a key ingredient is because you and your agency need to be willing to go after ever piece of new business you can. Sitting back and waiting for something that’s never going to arrive is simply not in the equation of a successful agency. Going after things and making things happen is what breeds opportunities for your agency. I like to use athletic quotes frequently to share with my staff about how I’m feeling each day, and one in particular I love is from Larry Bird – “I always pick the sour loser to play on my basketball team because they are not used to losing.” You can look at this quote in many different ways. Some people may not like this quote, but I see what Larry Bird is getting at. For someone to join his team, he wants that person to give 100% and go all out to win that basketball game. I always say that if you don’t play a game to win, why play the game at all? Competition is extremely important to an agency, and creating a competitive nature is key to the future success of your agency.

These four ingredients are the key components in creating a winning agency. Don’t allow your agency to miss any ingredient because with one missing ingredient, your cake will simply not taste like a Betty Crocker cake.