As far as I'm concerned, learning how to delegate and what to delegate is probably the entrepreneur
of the business owner's most important skill.
Doing it all yourself is recipe for failure.
So I guess my advice is if you can outsource, outsource, do that when you have employees
in the office or now we're hybrid or remote or what have you, but in your organization
determine what tasks they're best at, what they're better than you at, and keep those
things that you're better at.
Welcome to the Executive Connect podcast, a show for the new generation of leaders.
Join Melissa R. Skog as she speaks to a wide variety of guests that bring new insights into
leadership, prosperity, and personal growth.
While no one has all the answers, by building a community of open-minded and engaged leaders,
we hope to give you the tools you need to help you find your own path to success.
Welcome to the Executive Connect podcast.
Today I'm excited to speak with Stacey Julianki, Chief Riegel Officer at Florida Nitsala Insurance
Company, to talk about his journey into a billion dollar business.
Welcome Stacey.
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be on your show and I feel honored to be
here. I know you get a lot of great guests, so maybe I'll live up to the rest of them.
We'll find out at the end of this, right?
Absolutely.
And I'm like I normally do. I'm just going to jump right in and ask you a few questions.
So can you share with our listeners some key strategies and decisions that have helped you
to put your heart in the middle of the day.
I'm going to ask you a few questions.
Jeff Bezos did and Steve Jobs did.
But a lot of people don't.
They kind of come in.
And these heavy hitters already.
And I didn't.
I came in as an individual, corporate lawyer,
we also want the agents who sell our policy and recommend us happy.
So he brought that perspective of being an agent
and what agents want and what agents need in order to succeed.
So again, we didn't start off as some high-falutin presidents
of some insurance company.
We started off as two regular guys who came from
you know, normal middle-class backgrounds,
and but we decided we wanted something more
and we thought we could do it.
We were crazy enough to think that we could start an insurance company.
And then we got some people who actually had some money
to join us and get that dream off the ground.
So I think that's the perspective that I bring.
Which is fantastic, just hearing your story
because Florida Peninsula is one of Florida's top.
It's one of the largest homeowner insurance companies, isn't it today?
It is, it is.
And we're part of what we call the Windward Risk Manager Group.
And we have Florida Peninsula Insurance Company.
Edison Insurance Company.
And as of last week, we got approval to start
Ovateon Home Insurance Exchange.
So we have three insurance companies under a belt,
along with the claims processing company,
Acacia's Agency.
We also have a reinsurance advisory and reinsurance company.
So we have a bunch of companies under our kind of holding group.
So we've really grown beyond that.
But yeah, we started off and then we were Florida Peninsula Insurance
and since then, we've grown into those other areas.
And we're really kind of a full service property company.
And when you add it all up, we're definitely in the top maybe four or five insurance carriers
in terms of homeowners and property in the state of Florida,
which is one of the biggest states in the country, especially for insurance.
Congratulations on that and your team.
And you touched on it a little bit at the beginning delegation.
I think that's something a lot of people I interact with,
or leaders I hear about have a hard time delegating in cases where,
oh, I'll just do it. It takes me five minutes or 10 minutes to explain.
So I want to kind of jump into talking a little bit about delegation
and what, from your perspective, are some key principles for effectively delegating any task.
And how do you apply that to your team?
As far as I'm concerned, learning how to delegate and what to delegate is probably the entrepreneur,
the business owner's most important skill.
Because again, as we talked about the beginning, doing it all yourself is recipe for failure.
And so, for instance, in my personal life, I don't write my own checks.
I'm not good with the finances. I'm a lawyer, I'm an adjuster, I'm a coverage guy,
I'm an operations business person, but I'm not a financial guy.
And so I have a bookkeeper for years, write my checks and balance my checks book.
I'm not good at that. I delegated that to somebody.
So I'm freed up to be a husband and a father and a business person and to run my business that way.
But in the office, it's important to delegate because until recently, when we started the company,
we started this company in 2004, launched it in 2005.
We had eight employees, six of us were the founding partners.
We only had two employees working for us.
And now we have over 300 employees.
At the beginning, it was hard to delegate. But what we did before we had the employees is we outsourced.
We delegated those functions that we didn't know how to do or couldn't do as well to outside people.
So the stuff that we delegated were things like answering the phones.
Why hire 30 people to answer your phones when you can hire a service that will do it professionally for you?
You need licensed people, they'll do it. You want it 24 hours?
They'll hire people in different parts of the world to answer your phones.
So you have to decide what you need to take.
What is the best thing that you know how to do?
What do you hit but act? And what do you just not want to deal with?
Do I want to sit there answering phones? No.
Do I want to make sure that do I want to sell my policy? Yes, I do.
Do I want to market? Yes, I do.
Do I want to deal with customer issues that are large scale problems if they arise? Yes.
But answering phones, mailing out the policies, receiving the money, depositing it in the bank.
No, I'm not doing that. And so we delegated to great outsource partners at the beginning that helped us grow.
And so that was the first type of delegation.
But once you're in the office, you have to make sure that you don't hold on.
What is that 30-spectacle hold on? Hold on loosely.
But don't let go. Don't let go.
But you do have to have other people doing the work.
And so what you want to do is you want them to do the work.
You do not want to micro-manage because then you're just doing the work yourself. That's silly.
But you also want to audit their work.
I'm not saying that you should let people do something in your business and never look at it.
Even if they're super smart people, it has to be something that goes for your values and your mission in the company.
So you need to audit the work they're doing, but you don't have to do the work they're doing.
So I guess my advice is if you can outsource, outsource, do that when you have employees in the office or now we're hybrid or remote or what have you.
But in your organization, determine what tasks they're best at, what they're better than you at, and keep those things that you're better at.
And make sure that you oversee them, but that you don't get into the weeds because you're wasting your time and you're frustrating people.
I don't need a boss or a partner telling me, this is how you have to write that sentence.
Because as long as there's those spelling errors, you write the sentence the way you want.
You format the letter the way you want.
You handle it the way you want as long as it gets done into the quality levels that we've set.
So I think that's what I would say to most people in the business world.
I love it. I think managing teams and delegation, you know, is key to be able to let people do things the way they do it.
And I always say keeping them on the yellow brick road.
So give them the autonomy to do their job, the best of their ability.
And if there's things in ways that it could do better or they're not doing, sharing that with them and getting and really collaborating with people to service your customers.
The way that's your brand and is well received in the industry.
So kind of zoning in a little bit deeper, pulling that on you back a little bit more in the world with everybody who wants everything in an hour or yesterday.
And people are overloaded with technology and really cognitive overload.
How do you, you know, maybe up and coming executives, how do you help them manage large teams of people and complex problems where it's high stress.
And so you have people that are delegating tasks and you're still overwhelmed with all of the things that are coming at you.
So how do you manage, I guess the better question is how do you manage large complex companies and problems that you can delegate some of it.
But at some point, a lot of times I hear from leaders that they're constantly being bombarded.
They delegate one thing and 12 more things happen and they delegate something else.
And they're just constantly being pulled all day every day.
So there are lists of things to do, you know, five things today, 10 things tomorrow. How do you manage that in high performing teams?
Well, the first thing I'm going to tell you is that there really is no absolutely easy solution.
People are going to be overwhelmed in today's day and age.
People want it fast. They need it now. They're not willing to be patient for the most part.
And so you have to adapt to that. You can train your customers in a way to say, listen, you wouldn't want to order a pasta dish, I'll say because I'm Italian.
You wouldn't want to order a pasta dish and it comes out 30 seconds after you ordered it.
You'd be very suspicious of a gift that came out of the kitchen in 30 seconds, right?
So sometimes speed isn't always what the customer really wants, what they want is quality.
You know, they don't want to wait 30 days for a claim to be processed or they don't want to wait at 45 minutes for the phone to be answered.
But when you do pick it up, they want to make sure that you answer the question correctly.
So I don't want to oversell the speed item. I think we need to train people that especially customers that if you want something good and something done right, it's going to take time.
Whether that's food or whether that's insurance, if I come out and do your claim and a day later, the claim is closed, you're going to think I didn't look at everything.
So I need to make sure that people spend time on claims or policies or marketing to make sure that you have exactly the highest level of quality before you put it out into the world.
But I really think you said that.
Yeah, no, I really feel like some people want everything so fast and something they got to put back and say no.
I don't want it so fast. You want it done right. If I can do it right and quicker, you know, what is it? There's there's there's there's you want something cheap.
You want something fast and you want something high quality, but you only get to pick two out of those three right. There's a triangle. You can't have all three. You can pick, you know, cheap and fast. You could pick, you know, good and fat. You know, but you can't pick all three.
And so what we're trying to offer is the best of all world, but there's going to be some time delay in that there always will be.
And so you asked about managing teams and I guess my first thought is you can't cure normal. It's normal to be overwhelmed. It's normal to not to always have lots to do and you're not going to get away from that.
If you think there's a product that will make this easy, you do not need to be in business.
Everybody who's in business no matter what level you're at, you already know that it's going to take a lot of hard work and it's going to be a lot of headaches.
And you're going to keep ad vill and motrin and tile and all in business, my friend. Right. You know, welcome to adulthood. Hope you like ad vill.
So that's how it is. So what I would say is, yes, look for products and computerized items that will help you stay on task.
Don't waste your time with stupid meetings, but have a meeting when necessary to go over to make sure that everybody is doing what they have to do.
And divide tasks up appropriately once you divide it up the task appropriately though, if you're graded social media, I give you the social media part when we launch this company.
We just did we launched probation home insurance exchange.
That's not if it's been years since we launched another company the last time we launched Edison.
After we bought it and relaunched it was 2010. So we're just, you know, it's been a long time since we had launched something that large.
And there were a ton of moving parts were regulated industry. And though it's even harder to do that.
We can't just start selling policies. We have to have state approval and regulatory approval and approved forms and we have to run actuary numbers.
And so what we did is we utilized once a week, not every single day, everybody had a certain task and at the end of the week we went through the list.
We had a project manager who asked everybody what they did, what needed to be done next and what was stopping them from going forward.
So in one instance in order for us to get our middle of chef to credit cards and certain things like that and payments for our bank.
We had to give them our insurance number or an AIC which is kind of a it's the number of your insurance company with the network association of insurance commissioners.
But we were still waiting on that because we had to get our actual certificate of authority from the state to request that to give it to the banks and the credit card companies.
So we understood what we needed first to go next and we heard that because every week we didn't keep asking why don't we have this we knew that we needed a to have the to have see.
So you've got to make sure that you have either a product or a way of tracking items and then you delegate we talked about delegating those small tasks to the individuals that have to do it and then follow up.
Don't have wasteful meetings if you don't have any new information but set a regular time and make sure that people have that info and find out what they need next what's on that shopping list next in order to get to the end result.
But if people think there's some easy solution that hey I managed huge projects and I don't you know I'm waking up at three in the morning thinking I forgot something.
That's the way it isn't when I retire and I've got my fly fishing rod and plan the piano in the afternoons then I'll worry about it but right now I'm knee deep in it and you know in the heat of battle you just going to have to put up with the bullets flying over your head.
I absolutely agree I was just chuckling when you were saying that you know people I've gotten emails from people will send me an email it says 10 o'clock in the morning and five minutes later they're like did you read my email I'm like no I didn't read your email and I.
I laugh because this is the world we were in and so I use a lot of really like you mentioned do we need to have a meeting are we just meeting to meet do we need to waste that hour so really.
Laying out your day at the beginning of the day and and we've become you know a culture where every email needs to be responded to right away the problem if you're in response mode all day you're not moving your business forward so.
You know the tool that I use is turning my email off and really focusing on what are the things I need to get done oh there's seven meetings on my calendar for which I'm not needed at because I can delegate to the people on that call three of which I am which frees up four hours so I think you you nailed it is it is a lot of hitting the ground running and and but really thinking where you need to be and if you don't need to be somewhere don't show up right.
I agree and I'll decline meetings or I'll click on maybe you know and they'll say you're not I'm not going to show up and I'm like look you don't need me I'm chief legal officer of the company and you're going to be going over individual files and listen to something really big you don't need me and sometimes I intimidate you know I'm funny I don't take myself that seriously but you know sometimes when people are the chief legal officers in this meeting the whole meeting changes I don't want that I want you to tell me what you need and get.
What you need and we'll try to help you get it done so I don't need to be in a meeting it will actually sometimes run smoother you know my business partner cland he's he serves as the president of the company kind of runs the day to day operations underwriting sales marketing and if he walks into the room even though he is the nicest teddy bear sweet guy hysterical but he walks into a room and you know the some of the employees you don't know him as well get very intimidated and it cuts down the conversation.
So if you don't need to be there don't but you like you said plan your day out in the morning or the day before figure out where you have to be because you've actually got it not just be responding there's actual work to do to push the business forward what our next plan how are we getting to the next level how are we serving our customers even better and if all you're doing is responding to emergencies you're not going to get to that level and I think too many entrepreneurs business owners like you said they try to respond too quickly you know what's the best way to do is to get it done.
So I'm going to be researching this and I'll get back to you as soon as my research complete is complete that's it now they know you got it right as not like which even worse they email you and then if they're in the office they walk into your office to ask you if you got the email.
What isn't the whole purpose of emails you don't walk in my office and ask me if I got it no do you want to get my office and I work hybrid I'm three days in the office two days remote or in meetings and so when I'm in the office sure people want to walk in but don't send any email just walk in and say hey what do you think about the Jones deal and we'll talk about it you know.
It's funny I know I have all these things that keep popping in my head you can't make this stuff up and I think you know I have a lot of friends there entrepreneurs and the ones that have been very successful is they they lead themselves and they like you mentioned in the beginning they delegate the things they don't need to do like you know building or whatever it is that they're not good at and they really know themselves and what they're good at and what they're not good at and they delegate out.
And they build teams of people around them where they're weak and I think you talked a little bit about letting your people lead and I think that is something that you know a lot of is hard for a lot of leaders that I've heard in my time as a leader.
Oh I can't let you know a junior person sit in on senior meeting because I'm the senior person and so you know talking a little bit about that you know you're the senior the chief legal officer you have people below you and how do you build trust in your people below you to empower them to make decisions where they don't have to go back and say okay Stacy here these 20 things are you okay with this and this and this and this and this and this and how do you empower your people to take action.
On things well first of all you have to make sure you don't you're not someone who fire hoses their idea that I don't know if you've heard that term we use that in our office you coming with a great idea and someone just just turns on the water and fire hoses you and says now that I give terrible they'll never work and then you're not going to bring up an idea later.
So it all company we don't do that and if we see that we're doing it we take a step back and say wait I apologize I might have been fire hosing you I don't mean to let's discuss your idea because sometimes ideas not every idea is great right there are seas of greatness and almost every idea and it's important that we hear you out because
at one point you will come up or someone will come up with an idea junior person that will change your company it's happened in our company it happened it and law firms where I've worked at where they said we should go into a certain area of law and we had never thought about it we researched it and it became something that started generating at that time 30% of our law firm revenue.
So my my real thought process is to make sure that I am open minded to people number two I also want to make sure that I support them it's been said that your success is really related to how often and how well you give away the credit.
So if I take credit and I'm stcg and I'm you know no it's not going to work I give my junior people and people on my same quote level my partners credit I will say that it was this person's idea even if it was 50 50 it was the person's idea they came up with that I give them a lot of credit because not only do they grow in their own eyes like wow you know he's giving me credit.
It also their abilities and their responsibilities and the confidence they have the confidence that the rest of the board or the other leaders have in that individual grows because they're like wow you really here she really came up with that idea and so you push your own people so you got to support them and support them publicly so in that team's meeting in that zoom meeting in that physical meeting in the office you have to say yeah Jane or Joe they came up with this idea I was really impressed and you know wow Jo and Jane came up with that idea.
That's terrific you want to make sure that you give away credit the people who all the credit you know those people they're the ego centric there I don't like those people I don't want to work with those people it doesn't mean you can't be proud of yourself right you graduate or medical school you should be super proud of yourself you started business that gets to a billion dollars I'm proud of myself and everybody that help does get there but to walk in and think that I'm the guy who did it all that silly it's kind of productive and it's not true.
So you let people know that could be again with that kind of of of assistance and backup and props as we say it can also be with bonuses we give out bonuses again insurance company so you know we're always careful about how we spend our money but if people do a good job you damn light there entitled to some bonus okay and it's got to be reasonable but you want people to know that we appreciate what you've done and we're also going to compensate you for it and that goes a long long way into the day.
Yeah I just heard something recently with a friend of mine who is a executive at a major hospital here and they were talking about finding the lower you know the janitorial team and and lower non executive people to come up with solution to their biggest problems so some of the lowest tiered people in organizations are solving some of the largest problems for these mega businesses and the most important thing is the most important thing is to have a better job is to do that.
And so I think you nailed it is really getting you know there's seeds of greatness I love that in every idea whether that's today or tomorrow it's up to the the leaders to make that decision but I think you know breaking making and creating an environment where no matter what your title is your empowered to share it and creating a culture like that will really drive businesses forward because a lot of times the the higher you get an organization is the farm.
Remove you are out of the actual business and I think you touched on it a little bit at the beginning where you were bottom right so you've seen all all layers all things you can you instantly have that commonality with your staff hey yeah back in the day I was doing this I was taking out the trash when I was you know the first 10 employees at our company and so I think that that gives you more credibility with your people and because sometimes I think executive.
I think executives are you know like people see them as super heroes right I'm never going to be an executive I'm never like that guy or that girl I don't have those skillsets but I think you hit on it and touched on it a little bit at the beginning it takes time and to to to learn these layers I don't know if you have any other thoughts on that you know I do one of the one of the items that you started hinting at which I really want to point out to business leaders is to remember that it's not just that you want to do the right thing and you want to do that.
You want to get the right thing and you want to get people's opinion because you want to you know pump them up and you want to get their ideas yes you do but they're also lower to the closer to the problem that you are so I also have an associate in risk management and we talk about risk centers and so you have the guy at the top saying well this is what dangerous in that area this is what we should be looking for no you have the guy or the gal that's actually doing the stamping on the you know on the press say look we could this is dangerous and here's how to make it safer you know I'm the executive I've never
pressed metal but you go down to the factory workers and they say this is what we need they are in the line stop asking the generals what they need ask the private athlete infantry men or woman what they need in order to defend themselves right it's the same thing it's not just that that we we know a lot and we do a lot of knowledge from our level and I've been through there but you know what it's changed in 20 years it's changed in 30 years and so I need to know what's going on what are they seeing what are coming up and what are they doing?
and you know what the most kind of me saying well I would have said this two years ago but I didn't want to say anything no you are in the front of the option you are there how is what's going on I mean take a look I always say I don't want to have the Nova moment the Chevy Nova they went to go sell it in Latin America and they have anybody who spoke Spanish are in their marketing team they would have realized that Nova means Nova it means don't go means doesn't go they were trying to sell the Chevy doesn't go
the Chevy doesn't go in in a car chair that that's the dumbest thing I and they're you know have somebody who speak Spanish on there I want to speak Spanish my wife's Hispanic and so you know have someone who understands that right otherwise you you just try to sell something that can't be sold it's I don't want that Nova moment I want to make sure that I get the people who are quote at that level in the trenches because I was there but didn't need the information so I can solve the problem if you do that you're going to be there.
You're going to be successful 99% of the time.
Absolutely I love it I love your energy Stacy I love how passionate you are and just on this area of delegation so want to just kind of enclosing one last question any kind of final thoughts and delegating and leadership that you want to share with our executive listeners.
Number one I would say try not to be a control freak I think those of us that are business owners and entrepreneurs and those of us who are also parents right we want to control everything and sometimes right you gotta let your kid pick what they want to eat listen they don't like the spinach don't eat spinach maybe they like something maybe they're like corn maybe like broccoli maybe like carrots you don't force me to eat spinach.
It's the same thing at work we don't have to force everything every square peg into a round fuller vice versa we have to let we have to let people figure out what works best for them some people like to work on an apple computer some people like to work on a windows computer we have both in our office because virtually all of our system they're in the clouds so it doesn't matter.
The point is why am I gonna force everybody to use a system they're not that they're not into I love apple products but I don't understand apple computers like apple laugh if I don't I don't understand the language how it works I I get the wrong thing I keep getting definitions coming up I don't understand it I like windows some people hate windows and they like why do you have to force people into one thing figure out how they best work and let them do it that way you've got a step back it's okay my life my work I don't understand.
My work I'm not going to control everything because what I want to control really is the outcome not the input I want to control the fact that we're going to make money serve our clients well serve the customers well serve my employees well serve my agents well and serve the community at large well but I don't need to tell them exactly how that has to get done I have the higher smart people and let them do the job.
And so that's the last thing I would say to entrepreneurs business owners and people out there that are on the way to becoming business owners are executives it's it's in everybody they've just got to keep doing that and you know follow some of our advice follow the advice to hear on your podcast because there's always a lot of good information coming out on the weeks.
Yes thank you for that Stacy and I know one of the things I've always subscribed to and I love hearing what you just mentioned is find your gift and give it away and I think you're doing a tremendous job sharing your gift and your energy with the world and it absolutely shows in your business and so I just want to thank you thank you your busy man I want to thank you for being here today on the executive connect podcast.
Thank you so much for having me and I'm a huge fan is terrific much appreciate.
You've been listening to the executive connect podcast if you have questions or ideas on how to bring leadership to your next level email us at executive connect podcast at gmail.com
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