Host: Tim Martin
Guest: Heath Oakes
Episode 14: Run Forrest, Run – Heath Oakes Interview Part 1
May 24, 2014
Welcome to Success is Voluntary, a podcast devoted to helping you become the salesperson you were always meant to be, where it’s all about helping you learn the techniques and tools that will enable you to win in the increasingly competitive world of voluntary benefits. Welcome your host, a guy who has hired and trained over 2,000 voluntary benefit salespeople in his career, Tim Martin. Success is Voluntary, selling voluntary benefits.
Tim Martin: Yes, my name is Tim Martin, and you are listening to episode number 14 of Success is Voluntary. I’m telling you, you are in for a treat today. I’m going to be interviewing Territory Sales Manager Heath Oakes. I first met Heath Oakes about a year ago when he became the territory manager for North Texas, which, of course, is the Dallas and Fort Worth area. I’ll be honest with you.
At first, I was skeptical about Heath. His track record was impressive, but I wasn’t sure if he was genuine or had just memorized all the right things to say. As I have come to know him, I have to tell you there isn’t a disingenuous bone in Heath’s body. You’re going to hear his passion and energy level today, I promise. As Heath himself would say, if this podcast doesn’t light your fire, your wood is wet. Without further ado, let’s welcome Heath to the show. Hey, welcome to the show, Heath. How are you this morning?
Heath Oakes: Hey, I’m good. How are you doing?
Tim: Man, I am so good, but I’ll get better.
Heath: Yeah, I know. That’s right. Well, if I was doing any better, I might have a twin.
Tim: Oh, that is a scary thought. That is a scary…
Heath: I don’t know many people who would be happy about it, but I could use one.
Tim: There you go. Just for extra time. Right?
Heath: Yep. Yep.
Tim: You can definitely give some stuff to that person. Well, I gave the introduction to you, Heath. I said when I first met you about a year ago, the first time I really got a chance to talk to you, and I told you this, I was a little skeptical at first. I saw you, and man, you had a lot of passion, but I didn’t know if you just had memorized all the right things to say, because you meet leaders like that. They say all the right things, but they don’t necessarily live it out.
I’ve watched you over the last year, and you’re the real deal. I’m proud to know you, so tell us a little bit. I always let the guests introduce themselves, so tell us a little bit about your journey, and how you got to where you are so far, and I know that’s not the end of the story for you. You have a long ways to go. You have a lot of upside left in your career, but tell us how you got to where you are now.
Heath: Well, first of all, I want to say I appreciate that because coming from somebody who has had the success that you’ve had a long time, as well, that really does mean a lot to me, but I grew up in Deep East Texas. Obviously, you can tell by my accent, way out in the woods. You definitely wouldn’t confuse me much for growing up in the North.
I grew up out in Deep East Texas. My dad was a preacher, and my mom worked in a cafeteria. I grew up in a single-wide trailer house, and we worked hard. I had great parents who showed me the right from wrong and always led that by example. I got out of high school and I started selling cars and did very well. You know, I was salesman of the month my first month and then six, seven months into it…
I mean where I come from, you make $2,000 a month, you’re up there on the income scale, but then my first month I made almost $10,000 selling cars, and I said, “Okay, this sales thing is pretty cool.” The ethics and leadership that was shown there didn’t line up with how I was raised, and so I started selling insurance in the Medicare world for a pretty well-known carrier.
Tim: Wait. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You were selling Medicare? What were you, like 17 at the time? No, I know you weren’t that young.
Heath: I was 18 and 19, so I was literally a month away from turning 19, I believe.
Tim: Holy cow.
Heath: Yeah. Yeah. I was selling Medicare, burial life policies, and long-term care, and I got in and got my teeth kicked in, went as flat broke as you can get. I kept busting it out, and I realized I needed to just get out and talk to people, and so I just really hit the streets knocking door-to-door, you know, 100 percent commission, 1099. By the end of my fifth month with this large carrier, I was the number one agent in the country. I made about $90,000, and that all came in about the last two months.
Tim: Nice.
Heath: I said, “Well, this thing is pretty cool. I think I found out what I’m going to be doing for a while.”
Tim: No kidding.
Heath: A guy got ahold of me and said, “Do you want to start your own insurance agency?” I’m like, “Yeah, sure, but I don’t know what the heck I’m doing. I’m just talking to a lot of people.” He goes, “Well, just do that, and teach others how to do it. Then you’ll make more.” I said, “Okay.”
He gave me some contracts, so I started Oakes Insurance Agency from my apartment bedroom. I hired my first guy, Paul Ward, still a good friend today, and built that agency to about a $2.5 million book within about 18 months and had about 20 or so agents out working East Texas, went from apartment to a big office. When Obama got elected, with Obamacare, I was selling individual stuff, a lot of individual health.
I saw the change coming, and so I sold off that book and decided to make a move to the supplemental world and found Colonial Life in the middle of ’09, got rid of all that book, and started a scratch office. In 2010, we were the number one office in the country, and once again, I’ve continued to find really, really good people, and I found some really good people who made me look even better than I really was. I’m all right with that, and I can admit that.
Tim: There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s called wisdom. You may not have known that at the time, but that’s called wisdom. Absolutely.
Heath: Yeah, I just thought it was just the smarter thing to do. Just find people better than you, and you’ll be all right.
Tim: Right.
Heath: And 2010, we’re number one in the country, and they come after to me to be territorial sales manager for North Florida, South Georgia. At 23 years old, I’d be, by far, the youngest corporate executive (state manager) ever with the company, and it was next to dead last in the country. We went out there in January of 2011, and sure enough, I get lucky, and I find a couple of other really strong leaders.
As a team, we took it from next to dead last to fifth in the country by the end of the year, to number three by the end of the next year, and they gave me the opportunity to come back to the great state of Texas and take over North Texas, which is one of the largest territories in the country, and be back home close to my family. I moved back in middle of last year, of 2013.
By the end of 2013, I was able to, once again, come to a talented team, find a couple of key players again, and we were awarded the territory manager of the year for 2013, which was a phenomenal achievement and had several of my people become territory managers and districts of the year. Once again, when you see all the awards that all of my people win, you can tell my secret is pretty easy: find people better, and you’ll be all right.
Tim: Wow, that’s so important, what you’re saying there, and that’s, again, one of the things that really impressed me about you. When you left Florida, you didn’t leave it in a vacuum. I’ve seen that so many times in this business and outside of this business. When the leader leaves, the organization implodes because it’s all based upon their personality, and the reality is some of those guys you raised up, they’re doing great. How many of them are now territory managers? Is it two or three? I can’t remember.
Heath: Four.
Tim: Four.
Heath: Four.
Tim: Only four. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to slight you there. Four. Four of them have become territory managers. I know that some of them are doing, obviously, even better than others, but they’re all having great success.
Heath: Absolutely. Yeah, I mean they made me look really good for a long time.
Tim: That’s awesome. In fact, one of them you’ve known, like, since grade school. Right?
Heath: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ty is one of them. We grew up together since we were two years old. He grew up in a single-wide trailer house not far from me. We get out of high school. I went to selling, and he went to the Marines. He gets out of the Marines. I had a Mercedes, and he said, “What the heck are you doing? Are you selling drugs or something? I know you said you were in insurance. How do you have a Mercedes?” You know, like where we’re from, there are no Mercedes at all, so he’s like, “What the heck are you doing?”
He was going to school, and I walked him in and showed him one of my bonus checks. He said, “All right,” so he got his insurance license. I looked at him about a month later when they offered me Florida, and I said, “Do you want to move to Florida with me?” He goes, “Sure. Why not?” Didn’t even ask, came to Florida with me, and he was top 15 in the country within 2 years. Now he is a territory manager over two states.
Tim: That’s awesome.
Heath: You know, just three and a half short years later.
Tim: Three and a half years into his career, and he’s running two states for Colonial Life. That’s an incredible story and, again, shows you, when you hang out with sharp people, good things happen. He happened to find the right guy to hang out with. That’s amazing. That is amazing.
Heath, you know, I think a big part of your success, at least what I can tell, and I don’t work with you day in and day out every day, but as I talk to you and as I observe you and your teams, I think a big part of your success is that you set expectations right from the beginning. I mean when you were having people… You’re in Florida, and you’re asking guys who have never even been in the insurance industry to go out and get an office, tell me about that. How do you think that that helps you by setting big expectations for these guys?
Heath: Yeah, absolutely. The first thing is I never set out to say, “I want to make this kind of money.” I just want to strive to be the best that I can be for anybody I can be and help others become what they want to be. Whenever we go out there, first of all, I find people who want more than what they have.
I don’t want somebody who just says, “You know, I’m okay with the regular, ol’ mundane,” and I don’t mean money. It may be, “I want to change this many lives or make this amount of money,” or whatever it is. First of all, you find people who want more, and from the get-go, the expectations are set that you have to want more. I don’t like to lose. My teams don’t lose, and if you are okay with saying, “You know what? Well, you win some; you lose some,” no. You win. We all win. We shoot to win every time.
First of all, you find those people, and you set those expectations from the get-go. I tell them all they have to go in and sign an office lease. When I started my agency at Colonial Life, we got rid of the book. We had some other bad things go wrong, and we signed a lease on an office that we couldn’t afford, but we negotiated five months free upfront.
We figured, by the end of five months, we could afford to pay for it. That’s really what I’ve done with all my guys. If they’ll sign a two-year lease, I’ll help negotiate three months upfront, and they have to get to work because they have about three months before rent is due. They don’t have the money now, so we’re going to win, and so expectations are set.
I have systems in place. If you want to follow them, you can make a lot of money and achieve what you want. If you don’t, if you do it your way, I can’t guarantee you anything. It’s clear from the get-go. If you want to win, be on this team. If you like to lose, then you’re not going to fit in here.
Tim: Boy, there is so much we could explore just in those last couple of statements there. It’s so funny. You talk about people who want more, or if they’re okay with “win some, lose some.” I do something called a comp report, where I line up all my people in multiple categories and score them. Obviously, somebody is going to win that, and unfortunately, somebody is going to be on the bottom of that comp report. I mean, that’s just the way it is.
I had a guy, one time, tell me, “Well, Tim, somebody has to be on the bottom.” I said, “You’re probably not the right guy for me to work with. If you’re okay with that and that’s your justification, that somebody has to be on the bottom.” I said, “That’s fine. I get it. If you were hitting on all cylinders and you just got beat, I can live with that, but because these numbers are so pathetic and you’re okay with being on the bottom, we have to make a change.”
Heath: Oh, yeah. One of my favorite Vince Lombardi’s quotes… He said he, later in life, regretted saying, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” He said, later on, he regretted it because people were taking it out of context, because he said, “You should never go into anything expecting to lose. We’re going to win,” and he goes, “But if you give everything you have on the field and, at the end of the day, you didn’t win on the scoreboard, if you gave it everything you had and put everything you had into it, you just ran out of time.”
Tim: That’s right.
Heath: Okay?
Tim: That’s right.
Heath: Then he goes, “I’m not telling you to where you go beat your kid if they don’t win in something and you chastise them for it, no, but you’d better always shoot to win, and you’d better never expect to lose.” The only thing you should ask for… The Navy SEALs talk about it. They have, at the end of every day, their list. After all the PT times and stuff, the last 15 people that are at the bottom of the board always have to go through 2 hours extra of the stuff which nobody wants to do at all, right?
Tim: Right.
Heath: But inevitably, there’s going to be 15 at the bottom. What did he say? Every six-month training, everybody is always there at some point.
Tim: Sure.
Heath: The people who spend more time there are usually the best by the end of the training because they’re stronger than everybody else, so I welcome the hard times and the hardships because you only grow from them a little bit better, but I never expect to be there.
Tim: Boy, that’s great. Wow, so that’s interesting. I had not heard that, that those guys at the bottom 15 actually have more work to do every night, so that’s really interesting.
Heath: They call it circuses.
Tim: Yeah. You sent me an article. In fact, I’ll link to it. There was a great article about Navy SEALs and some great leadership lessons out of that, and nobody ever quit. I thought that was really interesting. Nobody ever quit in the middle of the exercise. They quit dreading the next exercise.
Heath: Yep.
Tim: I’ll link that in the show notes. By the way, just letting people know, if they’re listening to this off of iTunes, the show notes will be at www.successisvoluntary.com/014/, as in episode 14, so www.successisvoluntary.com/014/.
All right. Well, let’s talk a little bit. I wrote a blog article a while back called “Spare Me Your Creativity.” You and I have had this discussion before, as well. Talk to me about Forrest Gump and, when you’re recruiting, why you are looking for Forrest Gump.
Heath: Yeah, no, absolutely. I am Forrest Gump, and I tell people all the time, “All I want is I want to find Forrest Gumps.” Everybody kind of looks at me at first because they always kind of relate to Forrest Gump to being a little bit slow, but I think if you go back and watch the movie, Forrest Gump was an All-American in Alabama playing football. He was the Olympic champion at playing Ping-Pong. He was a war veteran with a Purple Heart. All that stuff, right?
Tim: Right.
Heath: He was a multi-multimillionaire building a shrimp business from nothing, so to me, there ain’t nothing slow about that, right?
Tim: Right.
Heath: But all along the way, Forrest Gump didn’t ask questions. He just did what was told of him. He just did it faster than everybody else because he didn’t ask questions. When he was at Alabama, they saw how fast he was running the ball. They said, “Forrest, what we’re going to do is we’re going to give you the ball, and you run,” and he took off running.
They said, “Don’t stop,” and he didn’t. He went through the end zone. He went straight down through the walkway onto the field, and so then they had to put stop signs whenever he scored to stop him. He didn’t ask questions. He just took it and ran, and he scored, and he became an All-American.
He didn’t know anything about shrimping. He just went and threw nets out and figured it out along the way. Ping-Pong…he just started playing it. In the war, they said, “Forrest, do this,” and he ran back and forth. He didn’t ask questions, so I look for people who go, “Look, I’ll do whatever you need, and I’m going to go run as fast as I can.” I have a different purpose in life. I’m not going to ask questions. I’m not going to get slowed down. I’m going to be the best. Basically, ignorance on fire, and that’s…
Tim: Ignorance on fire, I love that. Yeah, you don’t need to know how the watch is made to tell time. Right?
Heath: Yep. I honed in my craft of knowing what I needed to know about every arena, in time, but at first, you just need to go. Just go. Run. Do it. You’ll learn along the way.
Tim: Hmm, boy.
Heath: I always tell them smart people go one of two ways, if I sit down with somebody who’s really smart, because I’m not very smart at all. I’m no scholar by any means, and I’m not going to be the smartest guy in any room we’re in. I can promise you that, but smart people go one of two ways. They’re either so smart that they try to think of new and creative ways to be successful, and it never happens, or they’re smart enough to listen to exactly what I say, when I say it, how I say it, and they’re going to make a lot of money.
Tim: Yeah. Yeah. When I look back at my success and people ask me about it, I say I was smart enough to not try to change anything. I was smart enough to say, “I have no clue how to do this business, so if they’re telling me to go out and make 20 drops a day, I’m going to go make 40.” Whatever they tell me to do, I’m going to do it, and I’m going to do extra of it because I don’t know any better. I’m smart enough to realize I don’t know.
You’ve run into it. We’ve all run into it. Somebody who was a marketing major and thinks they can write a sales letter that they can mail out and it’s going to create all sorts of business for them. Of course, they want you to split the cost of mailing it or pay for the mailing, and they’re shocked when you go, “Uh, no thanks.”
Heath: Heck, you know, I’m okay with people trying it their way, because I’m hardheaded. I am super hardheaded.
Tim: Sure.
Heath: If I have people who come in who want to try it their way, I let them. People ask me, “How do you stop people from running into a tree?” I don’t. I reach over and push the throttle. I make them hit it quicker because if they’re hardheaded like me, they may have to try it their way. When they hit that tree, if they get out, like I did, and go, “Okay, you were right; I was wrong,” if they do that, that’s going to be a good person to work with.
If they get back in that driver’s seat and go toward another tree, I wash my hands of them, because they have an ego. I don’t have time for an ego, and egos, you’re never going to work through. Hardheaded and ego are two different things. Hardheaded, you may have to try it, but you’re quick to give up and go, “Okay, you were right. I’m wrong. I tried it. What can I do now?” Egos will keep going because they want to prove themselves right, which will never happen.
Tim: Boy, I’m glad I had you on right there. I just learned something. That’s fantastic. That’s fantastic, the difference between hardheaded or stubborn, whatever you want to call it, and ego. That’s great. Tell me a little bit about why you’re so passionate about voluntary benefits. I know that you got into the car business to make money, and you’ve made money wherever you’ve gone. I know you have a huge passion for this industry. Why VB? Why not life insurance or medical or anything else? Why are you so passionate about this particular industry?
Heath: Well, voluntary benefits are just where I saw the way it going. I saw that health insurance and things were becoming worse. I grew up where my mom had a lot of health conditions, and if it weren’t for different plans that could pay to help keep light bills, we wouldn’t have had anything.
I’ve seen people’s lives dramatically change because of a $30-a-month policy that they didn’t realize they had on their family, and they get a $20,000 check, and they’re able to save their house. They’ve cried. It’s stuff that people can afford. It’s stuff that the real working American can afford, can pay for, to protect their family.
My mom says all the time, when I was a kid, they don’t know why that stupid insurance company kept letting them pay that accident policy because they definitely got their money’s worth from me because they were probably losing as much… We were in the hospital, stitches and broken bones and things of that nature. It just kind of comes from the blue-collar world. People can afford the policies. They don’t jack up on all the time. They write them checks, and they pay them a payment.
Even better, I can find blue-collar people who want an opportunity to sell it to those people to help them protect their family, make a living, and change their lives with a career forever. It’s a win-win for me.
Tim: Boy, that’s great. I love what Steve Polk says. He says, “It’s white-collar pay for blue-collar work.”
Heath: Yes. Yep.
Tim: Yeah, and that’s what it is. I mean there is no tricky, easy way to market what we do. You have to roll up your sleeves and use a little elbow grease.
Heath: Yeah, absolutely.
Tim: Hey, speaking of elbow grease and getting started, I know you had some experience in the insurance world, but you had never done what we were asking you to do when you first came on. You said you were doing, predominantly, individual medical insurance.
Heath: Yes.
Tim: So you hadn’t really worked in the group setting.
Heath: No.
Tim: When they told you how many accounts you needed to open, what did they tell you? Then what did you guys go out and do? I know that you set some records that probably still stand, and I think maybe, like I said, Steve Polk might have encroached on a couple of them, but what did you guys do, first of all? I know you got a great assistant, and then you guys just went to freakin’ work. What all did you guys do?
Heath: Yeah, we sat down, and we knew that nobody had opened up a ton of accounts, and we had people in the business, they were 7-8 years in the business doing $1 million and getting there. We wanted to do that in the first year. We wanted to recruit more people. We wanted to develop more people than anybody else had ever done, and we sat down to write out our goals…what we were going to do, how to get to $1 million.
What was funny was at my first meeting at Colonial, they had a new manager up there. They had a manager who had been up there a couple of years talking about their success. They had them talking about it, and this person had not done close to $1 million yet, but they were counting on them. I go back, and I tell Scott, “Man, we may need to rethink our goals. This might be different in the individual world because they have people up there talking about how great they have done, and they have not done $1 million, and they’re 3 years in. This has to be different.”
Thank God Scott was not there at that meeting that day and got that like I did, because Scott goes, “Heath, look, we did the math. Numbers don’t lie. If we recruit this many people and develop this many people, then we’re going to open up X amount of accounts by running this amount of activity and cold calls and drops and teaching them how to do it and build their book of business for themselves. If we do this, these numbers will equal $1 million.”
I’m like, “You’re right. We have to do what we’ve always done, right?” In 2010, we contracted 78 agents, 138 cases, I think, and $1.3 million in premium in 2010, and I thank God every day Scott was not told we really couldn’t do it, like I was.
Tim: Isn’t that interesting? Isn’t that interesting? We put self-limiting beliefs, or we let other people steal our dream or talk us out of shooting for the stars.
Heath: Yeah, I was ignorant to this world, so I was assuming that something was different than the world I come from. I let that happen, and I’m one of those who never lets anybody…but I got sucked into it that quickly. It happens to all of us. It happens to the best of us.
Tim: Wow, that’s important. I think there’s some wisdom in setting attainable goals to a certain point. I mean you go back to SMART goal: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound. I mean those are all important things, but attainable, I think you have to have a stretch goal. I think you have to be shooting for something that makes you nervous.
Yeah, I’m going to cut it off right there for this week. I’ve been told by the “experts” that my podcast is too long. We want to keep it down to your commute to work, so we’re going to strive to keep it closer to about 30-35 minutes. Next week, we’ll have Part 2, the conclusion of this interview, and you’re going to hear this and a whole lot more:
[Audio]
Heath: Realistic is just admitting you’re a loser right away, because there’s no such thing as realistic. It’s not realistic that you would be a state manager at 23 years old with no degree. It’s not realistic to make $90,000 in your first 9 months in the insurance business. It’s not realistic to never make less than $100,000 since you’ve been 19 years old with no degree, with not very much education. That’s not realistic, but that didn’t hold me back.
It’s not realistic to have four territory managers across the country. It’s not realistic to get out of the Marines and spend three and a half years and be a state manager covering two states, but nobody else ever told us that. I get so sick of hearing the word realistic. That’s just you giving up. There’s no such thing as realistic.
[End of audio]
Remember everything is voluntary, including success. Take it in your hands now. Head over to www.successisvoluntary.com/iTunes/, and stay up to date with all the latest tips, news, and techniques in the world of selling voluntary benefits.
Tim: Boy, I hope you enjoyed Part 1. I promise you Part 2 is even better. Hey, do me a favor. Could you jump over to iTunes and leave us a rating for the podcast? It helps others discover it, and maybe leave a comment or two. Again, you can find the show notes for today’s episode at www.sucessisvoluntary.com/014/, as in episode 14. I appreciate you. I hope that you have a great week. Good selling.