March 2014
Tips
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rS
e
v
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t
Bes
5
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D LTH­—
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FR DING WEA
BUIL
Achiever of the Year
AMAZON
CEO JEFF BEZOS
What Achievers Read
Proven
Ways
to Stay
Positive
Lessons in
Staying Ahead
of the Curve
6
ALL DAY,
EVERY DAY
Strategies for
Boosting Your
Willpower
ROBIN
WILLIAMS:
“I’m a work
in progress”
SUCCESS.com
4 Simple
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Lost Client
SUCCESS.com
March 2014
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Corner Office
Performance Culture
A growing Kansas business demands hard work
and makes it worthwhile.
Jim Motavalli
is a SUCCESS
contributing
editor.
He wrote
the “Four
Disruptors”
article for the
February issue.
at stake, the more cutthroat a business is likely to be. All
the hedge fund managers in Greenwich, Conn., probably
didn’t pay for their Ferraris by being nice to people.
But what works on Wall Street—at least some of
the time (recent high-level indictments considered)—
is probably not going to work on Main Street. And
Kansas-based Advisors Excel built its business the oldfashioned way—with honesty and care not only for its
clients, but its employees, too. Today, by staying true to
its values, Excel is one of the fastest-growing insurance
marketing organizations (IMOs) in the country. IMOs
work with insurers as subcontractors, and Excel has
made itself a big player in the industry.
C ody Foster is co -founder and ow ner of the
company, which started less than a decade ago with
three employees but now has more than 200. Foster
says he learned a few things after eight years of growth.
There are things he would do differently, he says, but
his core values influenced the company’s culture then
and now, and it’s fair to say Excel was built with the
kind of integrity that sometimes eludes bigger companies (even if their ethics policies say otherwise).
“In any business, no matter what field they’re in, the
competitor with the best value proposition is going to
win,” Foster says. “We felt we had a good value proposition…. Things began picking up pretty well, and it
turned out that what we thought was missing from the
marketplace really was missing.”
A major lesson learned at Excel in the early days is
the virtue of hard work. It seems obvious, but Foster
says it’s often overlooked as a priority, especially when
a business is starting out. “When it was just the three
of us, we worked really hard—sometimes 24 hours
straight—and did everything ourselves,” he says. “If
your life is on the line to a degree, it’s amazing what
you can get done.”
36 SUCCESS MARCH 2014
COURTESY: ADVISORS EXCEL
➽➽NICE GUYS don’t always finish first. The more money
Advisors Excel
co-founder
Cody Foster
The company was launched on Feb. 1, 2005, only
three days before Foster’s first child was born. Still, he
kept his eyes on the prize—making Excel viable. “I put
a lot of extra pressure on myself to make sure we could
do it,” he says. “We were making a lot of cold calls, just
pounding the phones, to try and convince people to
work with us. That’s not necessarily the best approach
to prospecting, but when our budget was limited we
relied on it.”
Although that was a big virtue in building Excel, it
turned out to be a deterrent as the company got bigger.
It’s a not-uncommon problem, sometimes called
“founders’ syndrome.” Out of necessity, the original
partners have to know and act decisively in every
aspect of the business. But once they’ve added many
new managers, they have to be ready to let go. “It’s
great to be on top of everything going on in your organization,” Foster says, “but when you reach a certain
size you can’t do that anymore.
“We could have done a better and quicker job of
delegating, of trusting the people we had put in charge
© 2014 SUCCESS. All Rights Reserved.
COURTESY: ADVISORS EXCEL
of certain areas. It’s hard to let go of things you’re used
to doing all the time, but it was important to identify
where our strengths and talents lie, and focus on
getting the highest payoff.”
Missteps have been few for Excel, however. “We’ve
had some failures along the way, but none of them
have been colossal,” Foster says. “It’s a cliché to say you
learn more from failures than anything else—I think
you learn more from studying your successes.”
The company’s greatest success is in its values—
primarily in having a performance culture. Even
though it started small, Foster bristles at the notion
that Advisors Excel is a “family” company, because it
implies a lax working environment.
“It’s not a family culture; it’s a performance culture,”
he says. “Working for us means having the most hectic
workdays you’ll ever have. We don’t have room for
people who don’t meet their goals, but that’s from 8
a.m. to 5 p.m.—you work really hard while you’re here,
but we want people to have balance in their lives. We
know in the great scheme of things that there are a lot
of things that are more important than this job.”
Ensuring that workers have a life might not be a
concern at many financial institutions. But Foster,
who was raised in a small farming community,
At the 2013 World Series of Sales, an event
bringing together Advisors Excel’s top producers,
owner Cody Foster inducts elite performers into
the new Advisors Excel Hall of Fame.
Hear Cody Foster’s convo with Darren Hardy
on this month’s SUCCESS CD.
believes in investing in people for the long haul.
“Working 20 hours a day isn’t sustainable in the long
term,” he says. “I love the business, love our company,
love the people who work with us, but I also have other
priorities in my life. I do want to win, don’t get me
wrong—we’re all about winning—but not at all costs.
We don’t see our employees as interchangeable—
they’re a valuable part of what we do.”
Some might scoff that Excel isn’t ready to swim
with the sharks in a very cutthroat business. The
company’s results speak for themselves, however:
Excel had $3.6 billion in annual production in 2012
(up $900 million over 2011) and now partners with
850 leaders in the insurance business.
In return for the growth, Excel’s hardworking staffers
earn their annual trip to Cancún or some other fun
destination—if and only if the company hits its numbers.
After all, Advisors Excel has a performance culture. S
© 2014 SUCCESS. All Rights Reserved.
SUCCESS MARCH 2014 37