David VS Goliath Podcast – S1 – Episode 38 – Kelly Donahue

Speaker 1:
Coming up today on David versus Goliath.

Kelly Donahue:
It’s the willingness to get so uncomfortable because what you want to achieve is so important to you that you’ll go through that discomfort.

Adam DeGraide:
Just ask for the money.

Speaker 1:
Welcome to today’s episode of David versus Goliath, a podcast dedicated to helping small businesses leverage technology to not only help them compete against their large competitors, but win. Your host is currently the CEO of Anthem business Software, a three-time Inc. 500 recipient and a serial entrepreneur with a passion to help small businesses everywhere find, serve, and keep more customers profitably. Please join me in welcoming your host, Adam DeGraide.

Adam DeGraide:
Hey everyone, it’s Adam DeGraide. It’s going to be another special edition here of the David versus Goliath podcast, where you get education, inspiration and activation. Today we have Kelly Donahue from Agency Performance Partners, an amazing woman. You’re going to love this interview and it’s going to be a ton of fun.

Adam DeGraide:
Today’s episode is brought to you by Anthem Software, where you can find, serve, and keep more customers profitably with their all-in-one solution of CRM software, marketing services that get results, and a training lab to help you grow your business, built specifically for small business. Every business has a song. Let their software and marketing system sing yours. Visit anthemsoftware.com for 120-second video tour. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Adam DeGraide:
Also, you can visit us at davidvsgoliathpodcast.com. There you can subscribe for our newsletter and apply to be on the podcast. That’s right. If you have a small business and you have a story to tell, we want to hear it right here on DVG. Make sure you go fill it out. If you got a question and you want me to help you with your business, it’s free advice. Go ahead and fill out the form at the Ask DVG section on the website and I’ll get back to you personally on it. Looking forward to it.

Adam DeGraide:
Also, coming out right now, it actually should be out at this point, I promoted it last week as well too, my solo album that I’ve teased throughout the last several months, Adam DeGraide, The Calm, is out and that’s on Apple and Spotify music players all over the place. Go and search for Adam DeGraide, D-E-G-R-A-I-D-E and you can hear a little piece of the music. Right now, here’s a small snippet from the album.

Adam DeGraide:
Be sure to go download it, check it out, share it with your friends and family and hopefully it brings you calm and peace. Well, we’re not going to have that today on this episode. We’re going to get fired up because we have Kelly Donahue with us. Kelly, welcome to the David versus Goliath podcast.

Kelly Donahue:
Well thank you for having me, Mr. Adam DeGraide. It’s been a little while.

Adam DeGraide:
It’s been a hot minute, but I always look for great people to have on the podcast and you kept coming to my mind because I’ve watched with admiration on the sidelines your career over the years. For the watchers and the listeners, Kelly and I worked together in a past life at a company called Astonish Results and Kelly basically ran the thing even though we didn’t give you the title of running the damn thing, you know you basically did. You’re amazing. You worked at the training, client implementation, and from that, after we sold the business, you started your own and Agency Performance Partners was born.

Adam DeGraide:
And basically you are a no-nonsense, get to the bottom line gal, who goes into businesses, agencies specifically, and you help them retool, refocus, adjust, maybe not necessarily redo the entire thing, but try to find areas of strength, areas of weakness, and help them redirect, right? Accentuate the positive, redirect the negative. And it was always a pleasure working alongside of you and watching your career go along.

Adam DeGraide:
So for the listeners and mostly viewers by the way, this is mostly a visual podcast, so smile. There she is everyone. She’s smiling. Give the watchers a good overview as to exactly what you do and why you’re so passionate about it.

Kelly Donahue:
Oh, well it kind of all started when you and I met and that crazy little company known as Astonish, and I’ll just say this if any insurance people are listening, this was before the insurtech storm that came by and I’d like to say we were the infants of insurtech and now insurtechs like Fintech, a really big crazy word out there, but I think it was amazing some of the things that Adam, that I learned from you, and what you brought to the table of just really encouraging agencies to grow and have a sales process and challenging the beliefs that you had to just be a little sleepy business. So, Adam single-handedly created rock stars in the industry. I don’t know if insurance agents handle themselves as rock stars. You also might have single-handedly increased the sales of Robert Graham shirts for at least five to 10 years.

Adam DeGraide:
By the way, some of it is still going by the way. I see them rocking their Robert Grahams online.

Kelly Donahue:
Yeah. I mean, definitely if you didn’t own some ownership or have an influencer contract, you should look into that for sure. But no, I mean, here’s the thing, I love small businesses and the niche that we have is people who want to grow. So, that is the key and you know what, Adam, as you know, working at Astonish and a lot of the high-growth companies that you get the pleasure of being a part of, growth is messy, right? Growth has challenges. Growth has people problems. You’re going to break everything in your agency or business and have to rebuild it three, four, five times because as you grow, you get more people, more people, more problems. And so we like to say that agencies get the privilege of working with us because you’re growing and that means you have the good problems to have, not the bad problems. Bad problem, phone not ringing. Good problem, too much coming in and we got to figure out how to take it and run with it.

Adam DeGraide:
Yeah, there’s no doubt about it. I mean, it was a fascinating time working with that many agencies and I actually interviewed Jackie Mack, as you know she’s going on-

Kelly Donahue:
I saw that. Yeah.

Adam DeGraide:
Yeah, she’s gone on to do some fun things as well too. And I’ve been jokingly telling her that I’m going to have her on in the corner every once in a while as like the fairy godmother. She comes with like little advice in the corner. I got to do that.

Kelly Donahue:
She is pretty magical so I can see that.

Adam DeGraide:
I got to do that. But you know, you would go out in the field, right, you’d go to an agency back in those early days and you could tell the ones that were going to be successful almost immediately, right?

Kelly Donahue:
Oh, 100%.

Adam DeGraide:
They had the right attitude, they were not overly prideful, but they were confident and they were committed to success. And I think what happened so often is that we lamented so often that we wanted their success more than they did. And what I’ve discovered over the years is there’s no amount of faith I can have for your business, Kelly, other than rooting for you on the sideline type of thing. But only the person who’s running their business can make that difference. And over the years now, you’ve consulted hundreds, maybe even thousands at this point, considering you look at the Astonish relationships as well, what is the one ingredient that you’ve seen where you walk into a situation and you know they’re going to be successful. You can talk to that business owner and you say, “Ah, I’ve got a chance of really making a difference.” What does that intangible that you find?

Kelly Donahue:
Yeah. I mean, everything that you said, and I’ll add one more log on that fire is that they are committed to their goals for their life, for their family’s lifestyle, for the legacy that they want to leave, above and beyond all the discomfort that’s going to take to get there. So it may take 80-hour weeks. It may take firing your sister. It may take going ahead and saying, “Yes, you’ve had this accounting person forever but they’re doing a terrible job.” So it’s the willingness to get so uncomfortable because what you want to achieve is so important to you that you’ll go through that discomfort.

Adam DeGraide:
Yeah. I remember I would do a couple of talks, as you know we would do the CEO groups, and one of the parts of the actual talk, I would get to the end and I would say, “At some point guys, you might have the wrong person in your business and it might be your cousin, your uncle, your brother, your nephew, and if you’re going to pay them just because they’re family members, you’re better off not having them answer the phone, not having them actually work in the agency, just put them in the back and tell them to research how much tea there is in China, or Subway’s hiring, right? So there’s an application. They can get that.

Adam DeGraide:
But it is interesting to see how difficult that can be because when you are consulting small business, like I have never stopped working with small business. It’s been my passion since I started my first company. And even Anthem today that I’m running now, we care so much about small business, but those are the difficult decisions that sometimes have to be made, right? You know you might have the wrong people in the wrong seats, or you just might have the wrong people. And you know, people is one of the pillars of success in a business. What advice do you give them? How do you practically help somebody that has decided they have somebody in there that they love, but they really don’t belong there? How do you coach them through that?

Kelly Donahue:
Well, I’ll tell you it’s been the biggest heartbreaks in me owning my own business. You know, people that you could afford to have on when we first started, because you can’t afford seven-figure, six-figure salaries. You can’t. You got a bootstrap. So you can afford the entry-level talent and they’re very loyal, they’re very good people. Doesn’t mean I don’t want to have a drink with them, but as the business grows, you outgrow them.

Adam DeGraide:
Yeah.

Kelly Donahue:
Right? And it is really hard because you feel, “Hey, I’m loyal to them. They got me to where I am. But I also know I’ve given them every other chance to get trained, to take the next ring, to develop, to go that next mile and not everybody wants that.” And the heartbreaking thing is that this is business, this isn’t friendship, this isn’t anything else, and sometimes you have to part ways with people that have been great to you, but they’re no longer the right fit for the role.

Kelly Donahue:
And I coach a lot of agency owners to say think of yourself like a CEO, not an insurance agent or a small business owner, that your job is to be the steward of the resources of that business. You need to hold yourself accountable and if you have resources that are not maximized, that are overpaid, that are not supporting everybody else, you’re going to lose the rest of them.

Adam DeGraide:
Totally.

Kelly Donahue:
It’s a hard thing to fire somebody who’s been with you from the start, but they’re just not cutting it. And I second that with you need to know the metrics of your business because the numbers don’t have feelings.

Adam DeGraide:
Yeah. So what are some of the metrics that you actually try to uncover with an agency or any small business?

Kelly Donahue:
Yeah. I mean, I think the first thing is every job description has to have KPIs, right? How are you measuring this person? Doesn’t matter if you’re the receptionist, you got to pick up in two rings, that’s a KPI. You can’t let phones go to voice… whatever it is, there’s metrics for everything. It helps with clarity on the employee’s end to know what’s expected of them and it helps you identify are they doing a good job.

Kelly Donahue:
Because I think another challenge you have in small businesses, and I think you’ll identify with this, is you’re running around and there’s fires burning every single day, right? I’m sure in all of our emails right now, Adam, you and me, there’s fires burning right there, right?

Adam DeGraide:
I’ve got 46,000 unread ones.

Kelly Donahue:
Yeah, perfect. So you’re in a different stratosphere of where the fires are.

Adam DeGraide:
Exactly.

Kelly Donahue:
The hardest part is that there’s fires burning every day, but there’s good things that happen every day. And again, as the leader of the organization, you’re a firefighter, you got to put out fires, you got to be a fire preventer, but you also have to celebrate those wins because people need to feel winning. And when you have a culture that’s winning, they want to win more. It’s like an addiction. When you have a culture where it’s kind like this is broken, this is broken, this is broken, this is broken.

Adam DeGraide:
That’s right.

Kelly Donahue:
Yeah it is broken, we’re growing. We’re going to break everything. We’re going to break windows and glass and people and dishes. Everything’s going to break in the next five years if you’re growing.

Adam DeGraide:
Yeah.

Kelly Donahue:

[crosstalk 00:13:41]

Adam DeGraide:
But you know, it’s funny no matter whether you like Donald Trump or not, he had this saying that he used to say all the time, “We’re going to win. We’re going to get sick of winning and then we’re going to win some more.” And I always used to laugh at that because it’s so true. Life is filled with so much garbage and business is filled with so much garbage, you got to take the time to celebrate the moments of success.

Adam DeGraide:
Now for agency performance partners, when you started, did you guys sit down and think about your own KPIs or did you kind of just say, “Let’s get to work?” I ask this question because sometimes those of us that are really good at this stuff, we just get to work, right?

Kelly Donahue:
Right. It’s funny that you say that because I left a really well-paying job, you know a six-figure job, full benefits, everything else, came home one day and told my husband, we’d been married for like seven minutes, and I was like, “Hey, I think I want to start my own company.” And he’s like, “Huh?” And I kind of like bread crumbed it for a few months and I kind of got him on board, and I love telling this story actually.

Adam DeGraide:
I like that you bread crumbed it. You bread crumbed it a little bit.

Kelly Donahue:
Well, you got to like… I think-

Adam DeGraide:
I like that. I like that.

Kelly Donahue:
So the initial metric we had was literally I would come home every day from work, working like 80 hours, and my husband would be like, “Did you sell something today?” Because it was just me. So he was a sales coach and I’d sometimes sit on the step or in my car and be like, “I’m going to go in that door and he’s going to ask me if I sold something today and I didn’t sell anything today.” So, that was the original KPI when it was just me. But as you know, Adam, I think it’s hard for small business owners to get those metrics because it’s messy and it’s not always clear. It depends on what systems you’re using. I know you guys have a great system. Your accounting is kind of a mess because you have an entry level bookkeeper that’s just really like putting stuff in QuickBooks until you can grow and get more of an advanced financial perspective on things.

Kelly Donahue:
So, that was our real basic, but I do say this, I’m curious what you think, I don’t think it matters that you have 10 metrics, 17 metrics, 75, you have to define winning. Just what is winning today? Early on at the company, I had to come home and tell my husband I sold something. That was winning.

Adam DeGraide:
I think you said it great. In the beginning it’s not necessarily how many different metrics you have because you can metrics yourself to death too.

Kelly Donahue:
Oh, and half of them aren’t right, lets be honest.

Adam DeGraide:
The most important metric in any business is, did you sell something today. And as you know, I’ve always been a big believer, one of my sayings at Astonish was just ask for the money. For the love of God and country, would somebody ask somebody for the money? And nobody would ever do it, right? We would always talk about it. We’d hear these great phone conversations with insurance agents or any small business. I’d listened to thousands of them at this point in time. And only like 15% of the businesses, Kelly, after they’ve told people why they’re so amazing say, “And are we ready to do this now?” They get to that point where they’re so afraid to do it. And I can imagine that’s how you felt when you came home.

Adam DeGraide:
Now we got to take a break from our sponsor, which is Anthem Software, who makes this show possible by the way and they need to sell stuff all the time. Check them out right now. Here’s a special message from Anthem Software. We’ll be right back.

Speaker 4:
Anthem Business Software System is designed to specifically help small businesses just like yours find, serve, and keep more customers profitably. We do this by providing you with the most powerful software automations and marketing services to help your business compete and win in this ever-changing digital world. Take a short video tour at anthemsoftware.com.

Adam DeGraide:
And we’re back with Kelly Donahue, the magnificent, fantastic, no-nonsense founder and operator and CEO of Agency Performance Partners. Now, I say there’s five smooth stones in business. You’ve got plans and goals, people, tools, process, and courage. So we’ve talked a little bit about your own business with your plans. Your plans were, “Did I sell something today?”

Kelly Donahue:
That was it.

Adam DeGraide:
And I’m sure today now it’s progressed a little bit beyond that. And then there’s people-

Kelly Donahue:
We deliver on what we sold.

Adam DeGraide:
And then there’s people, right? So once you have plans and you grow beyond yourself, this is where one of the greatest challenges comes in. And I was reading on the sheet that you sent before the show that early on you made some poor choices in people that really impacted you. And that sometimes can be the end of a startup or the end of it. You don’t have to get into details or name names.

Kelly Donahue:
Sure.

Adam DeGraide:
But I think for the watchers and the listeners, Kelly, they would love to know what happened with those early people selections with you, what almost happened to you as a result, and most importantly, how did you rectify it?

Kelly Donahue:
Yeah. I mean, I can sum this up into like three scenarios. So the first one is you start getting a taste of growing so you want to open 10 businesses. So, it’s like we could have a business for that, we could have a business for that. Oh, I got the money, let’s go start a business for that. And I had like five or six businesses and honestly I couldn’t be the type of CEO I wanted on them, so I had partners on some. And I’ll tell you what, in retrospect, I think that it’s very rare that true partnerships do amazing. You have to be super selective.

Kelly Donahue:
It is, in my opinion, sometimes more important than who you select to get married to because you can get married in Vegas in 10 minutes, but getting rid of a business partner is actually far more complicated and far more difficult. And you have to know that you have the same vision, you have to have the same conversations. What if you get divorced? What if you get a drug problem? What if all these things happens? What if I want to go this way and you want to go that way? You know, it is really difficult.

Kelly Donahue:
So it sounds good to have business partners, but you really got to think through that. I had a lawsuit and battled out getting a business partner out of another business, not Agency Performance Partners. And the other thing I’ll tell you know, because I know you have a big small-business following is you have an inclination to want to hire your friends.

Adam DeGraide:
It’s so true by the way and in some cases that’s not bad if they have proven skill sets, but in other cases it could be not the best choice, no doubt about it.

Kelly Donahue:
But you have to have boundaries. It’s kind of like when you work with family as well, it’s just a lot similar. In Agencies, we tell people you’re not going to call him dad at work, you’re going to call him Mark. And it’s the same thing with friends. I’m the CEO and I’m in the CEO hat right now. I know your wife is sick or got kidney stones or whatever it is, but CEO here says, “If that’s the case, go take time off, but we need you here and we need you operating.” And friends don’t always know your CEO side. So, I don’t know if you remember when COVID hit, everybody learned what their spouse sounded like at work because everybody was working at the dining room table. It’s kind of like friend Kelly is much different than CEO Kelly.

Adam DeGraide:
I can tell you that for sure folks. I’ve hung out with Kelly as a friend. She’s way more serious when she’s talking about work. There’s no doubt about that.

Kelly Donahue:
That’s true. So, that’s the biggest thing I say is you got to be careful who you hire. And now, again, you’re there to be a steward of the business’ resources and if you’re wasting it because you have too many feelings, you got to get rid of your feelings. And that’s the other thing I’d say. I think the most successful business owners don’t have feelings. They’re sort of dead inside and that’s okay. You can’t let your emotions take over your business decisions because your emotions are to keep you safe and they’re not there to give you the courage like you said with one of your pillars.

Adam DeGraide:
The most difficult thing I ever had to do in my life, I’ll never forget it, it was painful, was fire one of my dear friends and business partner. It was very painful and probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life up to this day because I’m not a big… I’m not a dead inside guy. I’m definitely no-nonsense in a lot of respects and I can definitely be cut to the chase, as you know, but if you hang out with me and you get to know Adam a little bit, there’s a softer side to me that I find myself sometimes holding on to people a little bit too long and I’ve had to give that part of the business to other people that have more of a stomach I guess for it. And that, “We’re just going to get it done, rip the bandaid off.” I’m the guy that’s kind like… You know, you talked about bread crumbing it with your husband?

Kelly Donahue:
Yeah.

Adam DeGraide:
I’m kind of like, can we… is it possible…

Kelly Donahue:
One more chance.

Adam DeGraide:
Is there… And I’d leave a bread crumb.

Kelly Donahue:
Did we do everything we were supposed to do?

Adam DeGraide:
Yeah, two years later they’re still torturing me and I’m like, “Oh dear God, what have I done?” But that definitely is something that’s really. Now, in Agency Performance Partners now, obviously since that time, and you’re continuing to build your team, do you find it difficult to find good people and what is the process you’re using to find them? How are you hiring people? How do you recruit them? I mean, you’re excellent at training other businesses how to train their people. How about yourself? Have you done that for yourself yet?

Kelly Donahue:
Yeah. I’m going to tell a quick Adam DeGraide story and I’m going to answer that question because I use this in agencies. I’m like, “Guys, I worked for a CEO where if he came to my desk and I couldn’t recite the mission statement, he would fire me on the spot.” And people are like, “What? That’s crazy!” I’m like, “If no one knows why we’re all here today, is it that crazy? It’s not that crazy.” And so I think that goes into there’s a soft spot, but there’s also the idea that we can all be great. And that was a statement to me that was like, “We can all be great. This is actually silly. No one’s actually going to get fired for not knowing the mission statement. We’re at fault if we don’t know the mission statement.” And that was like the transfer of ownership, not onto the leaders, but onto each employee that they needed to-

Adam DeGraide:
And to the point of that, Kelly, my whole point was that if everybody doesn’t know the mission, then everyone’s making it up. And if everyone’s just making it up, you’re going to have massive problems, right? So if the phone rings in an agency and someone’s really good at selling auto insurance but hasn’t trained the person that gets the next call for auto insurance and they’re making it up, one might be better than the other, but there’s no consistency so that’s why I’ve always been so big on slogans, missions, because they’re more than just that, they speak to where we’re going, right?

Adam DeGraide:
So my new slogan is, Anthem Software, every business has a song, let our software sing yours. Well, my software better do that because if it doesn’t do that, we’re on the wrong boat, right? We got the wrong cabin. And so that’s interesting.

Kelly Donahue:
It’s true, but I also thought it was brilliant because it transferred ownership to the team. It wasn’t that somebody had to tell you and beat it into you. It was like you as an employee here have to know this and it’s your responsibility to do certain things. And I think sometimes in businesses it’s so much like, “Well I didn’t get trained.” Everyone wants to throw fingers. It’s like, “No, it’s real basic.”

Kelly Donahue:
But on the hiring side, I mean honestly things have come together really nicely over the last year and I can say very adequately that some of the team members we’re going to add on over the next year, we have forward commitments on, but they’re working out. When you get six-figure employees, it’s not just here’s two weeks notice and we want to be respectful. We’re all in the same industry. I can’t go crazy, right?

Adam DeGraide:
Yeah. You got to be careful with that.

Kelly Donahue:
Yeah, but I mean, I’m excited about it. I’ll tell you the number one recruiting strategy I tell people is this, as a CEO, it’s part of my job. So if I fly to North Carolina, I know three people in North Carolina that are potential and I’m dating them. Let’s go to dinner, I’m in North Carolina. I get to know their family, they’re friends. I want to be the first person this person calls when it’s time.

Adam DeGraide:
You’re bread crumbing them.

Kelly Donahue:
I’m bread crumbing them, yeah or I’m going to give them resources or I send them gifts. I see on Facebook they had an anniversary, it’s like, here’s a gift card. I am constantly looking for the next level of talent and things because I don’t really want to go on Indeed to be honest with you. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but the team that we’re building needs to have trust in the same values and things like that and they need to get to know me and I need to know their families because, great news, your butt’s going to be on an airplane half the time. I don’t want this to fall apart in six months because you don’t believe in the mission. And so I have a whole roster of 25 people that I think would be good fits and heck if 10 or 15% of them work out, I’m winning.

Adam DeGraide:
That’s smart.

Kelly Donahue:
I’m a believer that the top talent isn’t going to look on Indeed. Now, entry level, mid market, that’s great.

Adam DeGraide:
I was recently offered a job through LinkedIn.

Kelly Donahue:
Oh.

Adam DeGraide:
Yeah. It didn’t quite pay what I make.

Kelly Donahue:
Oh.

Adam DeGraide:
But you know what, it was a nice little offer that came through. I was like…

Kelly Donahue:
Makes you feel good.

Adam DeGraide:
They read my page. They thought I’d be perfect for this job apparently.

Kelly Donahue:
Yeah. I mean talent is a big, big thing and constructing the right team with the right values and the right mission and the right work ethic is huge. So I don’t see anything more important than that. Its taking care of the resource, the business.

Adam DeGraide:
So when they come on, Kelly, and you find these right people… First of all, one little tip for small businesses. We’ve had incredible luck recently with LinkedIn. So LinkedIn has made a big effort to become part of the recruiting. We’ve had some really great talent that we’ve been able to source through LinkedIn. So just a little tip there. Now when you get these people on board, they’re already naturally gifted. Sometimes when you have someone that comes on board that’s naturally gifted, it can be great and it can also be a challenge because they have their way of doing things and you may have your way that you know you need to do the things. And do you actually role play with your own team? I can imagine. I can just try to picture this. I’m a new trainer with Kelly and I’ve been training for years and Kelly’s like, “All right, I’m going to be the insurance agent. Go.”

Kelly Donahue:
We go even one step further. Every quarter we have what’s called a sales showdown. And so we fly everyone in every quarter and we get together and people who are in a sales and training consulting role have an extra day and we actually fly clients in and they know the deal because we put their staff through it. So I’m like, “You are here to torture the snot out of everybody.”

Adam DeGraide:
You call it a sales showdown?

Kelly Donahue:
Sales showdown, yeah. And there’s a winner at the end, like whoever delivered the smoothest and there’s prizes and stuff. You break people down, you got to build them back up again.

Adam DeGraide:
You got to bring me in one time to smash these people down. I’ll have some fun with them.

Kelly Donahue:
Oh listen, game on. But yeah, I mean, we do it and we say, “Hey, we got to eat our own cooking.” And you know it’s funny a lot of people are like, “I hate role playing blah, blah, blah, blah.” And I’m like, mm-hmm (affirmative) but it works.”

Adam DeGraide:
Who likes role playing by the way? Nobody likes role playing. I mean, but at the end of the day, it’s great. As a matter of fact, one of my favorite role playing videos of all time, I wish I could show it. I wonder if I can show it. I probably can’t because it’s owned by NBC. There’s a scene in The Office where Dwight Schrute was being trained by Michael Scott on how to do a sale over the phone. Have you ever seen that?

Kelly Donahue:
I think I have. Yeah.

Adam DeGraide:
Oh my gosh. It is awesome. And Jim is supposed to be the client. And so Dwight’s trying to sell Jim. Dwight can’t do it. You know, Michael finally does it. Total nonsense. Jim buys a million dollars worth of paper and he’s like, “See? See how easy that was? Did you see how easy that was?” You got to look it up. It’s The Office. It’s on YouTube. Dwight Schrute being trained by Michael Scott on a sales phone call, sales phone call training. It’s hilarious. You got to go check it out. Anyway, I apologize. Continue on.

Kelly Donahue:
That’s okay. We learned that from you. You still have all the sales people come in and destroy each other on a Saturday. It’s funny because they all say the same thing, “I never get that question,” and then next week they get that question on a sales call. It’s like the universe telling you needed that answer.

Adam DeGraide:
Do you actually work with agencies and say, “Here are the top 10 objections. Here are the top 10 answers?”

Kelly Donahue:
Yeah, on pretty much everything from a cross sell to new business to prospecting. Here you go. And you know what I find? Scripts are hard for a lot of people because I can write a script that works for me. I can be kind of funny and charismatic, but there’s some sales people that are different. I say it’s your starting point, you got to make it your own, but it’s unacceptable to not have it mapped out and have some script.

Adam DeGraide:
Otherwise, Tim Sawyer always says it, people are making it up. It’s crazy. It’s unbelievable. So you’re with Kelly Donahue, probably the smartest person right now, one of the smartest trainers in the world out there, especially if you’re an insurance agent. Make sure you check her out and look her up. You’re also with your handsome host, Adam DeGraide here on the David versus Goliath podcast. We’re going to take another break from another important sponsor and then we’re going to come back, switch gears, have a little fun and then talk about my favorite subject with Kelly, which all of you who know it is, it’s going to be courage. Stay tuned. We’ll be right back. Here’s another message.

Speaker 4:
Noreast Capital has an exciting new program we offer to equipment and software dealers. It provides you the appearance of a private label captive financing program. We call it Our Financial Services. Using Our Financial Services, you can offer your customers your own financing program, including industry specific payment calculators and unique payment options. Noreast Capital administers a private label program tailored to you and your customers’ needs. Learn how we can help you reduce receivables and qualify for your own private label finance program.

Adam DeGraide:
And we’re back with Kelly Donahue. Kelly, give us a big smile and a thumbs up. Woo. Look at that. It’s awesome. This has been a ton of fun. Now, Kelly, a couple things. Number one, you collect contracts. I actually asked you what you collect and this is the best answer I’ve ever had on DVG. So if you’re ever on the show, you’re going to get something that says do you collect anything and then people will tell me what they collect. And her first line was she collects contracts and I punched the-

Kelly Donahue:
I thought you’d get a kick out of that.

Adam DeGraide:
I punched my wall. I was like, “Yes, she collects contracts!” Exactly because by the way, at the end, it doesn’t matter as long as they have to sign on the line that is dotted and you collect contracts. The other thing you collect is expensive red wine.

Kelly Donahue:
I just saw you were at Opus One.

Adam DeGraide:
So, what do you collect? Do you actually collect expensive wine? I was recently there.

Kelly Donahue:
Well that was a joke because I asked my husband, Andrew, I was like, “Do I collect anything other than contracts?” And he, he was like, “Well we do have a pretty nice red wine collection.” I’m like, “Yeah, we do.”

Adam DeGraide:
And you don’t think about that, but that’s a collection because you drink it, but it’s a collection you drink.

Kelly Donahue:
It’s like a consumable collection. Yeah.

Adam DeGraide:
Yeah.

Kelly Donahue:
So I go through phases where I actually stop drinking just because like I want the clarity and stuff like that.

Adam DeGraide:
Yeah. Who doesn’t? Who doesn’t? Yeah.

Kelly Donahue:
Yeah and so I’ll go through phases. Sometimes the wine collection stockpiles because we’re members places. It just starts coming in and I’m like, “We have to do something about this.”

Adam DeGraide:
We got to start drinking again.

Kelly Donahue:
Yeah. I’m not ready to say I’m never drinking again, but I’m also ready to say I’m going dry for a while.

Adam DeGraide:
I have a great story to tell you about this. So in my previous life with my ex-wife, we went to Italy and we went to a wine tasting and we were there for, I don’t even know how long, three hours or whatever it was.

Kelly Donahue:
Yeah, which is a long time for wine tasting.

Adam DeGraide:
So now remember, we’re in Italy, right? So I get this form and I’m filling out this form in Italy and I figure I’m going to buy a couple of cases. I get back to Florida. About a month and a half later, my wife at the time, she comes in, she goes, “Adam?” I’m like, “Yeah?” She goes, “There’s a giant truck in the front of our house.” I said, “What do you mean?” She’s like, “They have pallets for us.” I said, “Pallets?” She’s like, “Yeah, they have three pallets of wine.” So I didn’t buy three cases apparently, Kelly

Kelly Donahue:
You bought the vineyard.

Adam DeGraide:
I bought the vineyard and now I have no place to store it. This is Florida. It’s 95 degrees out. I have all this expensive red and white wine. So you know what I did? Every day, I would put a case in my car and whoever I came in contact with for like the next year, “I was just thinking of you. I got some free wine for you.” Because I had nowhere to put it. And that’s a true story by the way. Very, very true story. And you know, just tells you, when you drink too much, you order stupid things and three pallets of wine was a little too stupid.

Kelly Donahue:
At least it showed up.

Adam DeGraide:
Yeah, it did show up. What is your favorite red wine to drink?

Kelly Donahue:
So, you lived in east Greenwich, Rhode Island for a minute, and so there’s some good restaurants downtown that we have a wine box and everything with and Manny over there kind of fills us up. So I’m not one of those people who knows all the wines. There’s some in Washington state that I really like.

Adam DeGraide:
Oh yeah, yeah.

Kelly Donahue:
The reds. But kind the go to is always Caymus, which everybody… everyone loves Caymus. It goes with everything. Its kind of like the easiest scenario, but we’re big Tuscans, the big bold reds, all that stuff.

Adam DeGraide:
I got a little secret for you here.

Kelly Donahue:
Oh…

Adam DeGraide:
Have you ever heard of Abacus?

Kelly Donahue:
I have not personally, but anything in a box.

Adam DeGraide:
Okay. So Abacus is from ZD Cellars. So ZD is a great Cabernet. They have some good Chardonnays and Sauvignon blancs as well too. I met the guy who runs it and owns it. And Abacus, what’s cool about it, is its been here for 23… I think that’s 23, right? Double X.

Kelly Donahue:
Yeah. It looks like it.

Adam DeGraide:

23. So what he does is that every year they make their Cabernet Sauvignon reserve, they save a little of it, and then they create a blend the following year called Abacus. So this is 23 years of aged different Cabernet Sauvignons all blended together. And if you like expensive wine, this is very expensive. But I bought a few of them while I was there and I saw that on the sheet and I said, “Oh, I got to bring it and help…

Kelly Donahue:
Bring it in, yeah.

Adam DeGraide:
Obviously these guys are suffering for money, so I figured I’d promote them for free here on the David versus Goliath podcast. But anyway, enough about wine, I could talk about it all day long. And it’s funny because Kelly, last week I interviewed Anthony Sabatini and we talked about the business of politics and it got to this point too. And his thing was wine as well and so we talked a little bit about wine in the last episode as well.

Adam DeGraide:
Now I want to ask you, before we get to courage, there’s one question I’d like to ask you. You’ve been on the road for years. What is the worst day you’ve ever had?

Kelly Donahue:
Oh my gosh. I don’t even… You’re going to think less of me, but I’m just going to say it because I think you’ll understand. So, I get kind of crispy towards like December, it’s the holidays, it’s like-

Adam DeGraide:
Yeah, you’re fried, you’re fried. You’re done.

Kelly Donahue:
I’m fried and the break is coming, but I’m fried. So again, I was in one of my drinking phases at that point in time, so I was in the sky lounge and the flight keeps getting delayed. So every delay, it’s like, “Well let’s have another drink. Let’s have another drink.” So I’m not saying I was in my top form.

Adam DeGraide:
Clearly not in your top form.

Kelly Donahue:
I was happily into puddle form, but I’m doing it, I’m doing it, I’m doing it. I’m like fine, whatever. So it looks like we’re go. I go down to the gate. It’s like 11:30 at night. Everything’s in pandemonium. Everyone’s going to get in at 2:00 AM. No one’s happy. It’s Christmas time, blah, blah, blah. But like I’m immune to this stuff because I’m like, “The plane was broken. I don’t want to get on a broken plane. This is part of life.” So I sit down next to this woman, I’m waiting to get ready to board and she’s just gone crazy. She’s like hitting me and I just don’t like it when people touch me that I don’t know. And so she’s like, “Can you believe this? Can you believe this?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I can, the plane was broken.” And I just put my AirPods in and I’m like, “Don’t talk to me.”

Kelly Donahue:
Because like I’m done. I’m done. And she’s just like, “This is an outrage. I’m going to demand I get in first class.” I’m like, “That’s not going to work.”

Adam DeGraide:
Nope.

Kelly Donahue:
I’m in first class. It’s just not going to work. You should just take a Xanax. You should just chill. So she keeps going and going and going. And she’s just like, “Well, I’m outraged.” And I was like, “You know what, I’m sorry. I’m not going to get on this airplane. You might get my first class seat because if the airplane goes down, I don’t want to die next to someone like you.” And I walked away and based on my half in a puddle, I was like, “Holy… I was just the biggest rudest human. I can’t go back there and I don’t know where I’m going to go because I can’t get on that airplane.”

Adam DeGraide:
Yeah. So did you end up having to go find a… stumble around the city?

Kelly Donahue:
No. I went to Delta and this is why I’m such a Delta loyalist. I went to Delta and I was like, “Listen, I’m diamond. I did something I’m not very proud of and I need to know how this can be settled up.” She’s like, “No problem. Here’s a hotel room. We got you on a first class plane tomorrow morning. It happens to people who travel as much as you.” I didn’t pay for a hotel room. I didn’t do anything. And I just walked away and I called my husband. I was like, “I’m not coming home tonight.” He’s like, “Oh, is the plane not taking off?” I was like, “No, not exactly. I was just really rude.”

Adam DeGraide:
Not exactly. That’s a great story. I have so many bad stories, but one of them just recently happened. We were flying back from… Oh, where the heck were we flying from? Oh yeah, we were flying from California, from San Francisco and on the way back from San Francisco, pilot comes on and says there’s a medical emergency.

Kelly Donahue:
Ugh.

Adam DeGraide:
And so…

Kelly Donahue:
Mid flight or on the ground?

Adam DeGraide:
Mid flight, so we have to land. We land in Memphis and they basically wheeled this dude that I guess he died in the flight. It was terrible. And then everyone is basically on the flight. They keep us on the plane and then all these people come in with hazmat suits on saying, “Just a few minutes, we’re going to clean the plane.” I’m saying, “Should I be in a hazmat suit?” I mean, should I?

Kelly Donahue:
Like full on coroner…

Adam DeGraide:
No amount of Dr. Fauci masks are going to work in that scenario. And at the end of the day you had all these people, we’re freaking out. It took them like 25 minutes to clean the plane. So you would understand, I mean, I was on a plane that should have been six hours, but for 11. But it does, like to your point, these things happen.

Kelly Donahue:
And you’re [crosstalk 00:41:34].

Adam DeGraide:
These things happen in life. These are true stories. This is probably the largest segment I’ve ever done that hasn’t been about business, but it’s been fun. Although, we can turn it into business.

Kelly Donahue:
Well, its about business travel.

Adam DeGraide:
Its about business travel and Delta’s excellent customer service. So in closing, because we are running short on time, courage, I talk about it all the time. It’s the stone that David used to slay that Goliath, right? He had five smooth stones in his back pocket, but courage was the most important one and it only took one stone to do it. In your case, you had a great-paying job. You were living the life so to speak. People would be like why would you want to leave that to do what you’re doing now? So number one, it’s a two part question, number one, what was intangible for you that gave you the courage to go out and be the amazing Kelly Donahue we’ve always known you to be on your own? And number two, what advice do you give to someone right now who might be in that exact scenario and its their time to do the same thing?

Kelly Donahue:
Yeah, that’s a good question, Adam. So the first thing is there’s a word that always resonates with me, which is potential. So courage might be your word. Potential is mine. I don’t have kids. So like everyone’s why in my family [crosstalk 00:42:46].

Adam DeGraide:
That’s not true by the way. You have a dog named America.

Kelly Donahue:
I do have a dog named America.

Adam DeGraide:
That is the greatest dog name in the world, a dog named America. Anyway, continue.

Kelly Donahue:
Well, America, Miss America, Captain America, she’s got all sorts of things, but so potential is my word. A lot of people say my family’s my why. I’m going to be honest, I love my husband, but he’s not my why. We’re sort of independent people. We love building this life together, but I don’t wake up being like I’m doing this for my husband. That sounds like a little strange. I think for me, when I honed in on my why, it’s that if I was on my dying deathbed, my biggest regret would be not hitting my potential.

Kelly Donahue:
And I knew I had something big to give into the world and so I wanted to get out there and I knew where I was, I was not going to be in a position to do that. And so I could fast forward 10-15 years and be miserable and you and I both know people who have great jobs, but are not living their best life.

Adam DeGraide:
Totally, 100%.

Kelly Donahue:
And sometimes the obligations of life force people into that. And I said I’m not going to do that. What’s the worst that happens? I fail and I go get a job. I’m back at the same place. Who cares? And so that’s kind of what the catalyst for it all was I kept thinking what happens if I don’t. I’m going to turn into a person I don’t want to be and at 32 years old, that was more terrifying to me than filing bankruptcy or whatever would’ve happened if I failed.

Adam DeGraide:
Yep, that’s so true. I forget what this gentleman said a few shows back, a guy named Clay Cook. If you’re watching this, his episode came out a few weeks ago and he said, “Regret…” I’m going to actually look it up really quick because this is an important saying that he actually had. Give me one second folks. Look at this, live on the DVG podcast, Adam’s doing research on his own podcast.

Kelly Donahue:
Well, and I’ll say this while Adam’s looking that up, I have to give credit to Adam and Tim, because when you guys changed direction, there was a missing piece in the industry and I’m nowhere near the presence you guys had, but I was able to capitalize on the fact that people missed that.

Adam DeGraide:
Yeah, and that’s a real thing by the way. And I wouldn’t say you weren’t able to meet it. I think you’ve exceeded it. And I’ve seen some of your talks and some of the things you’ve done. You are dynamic and fantastic. And what he said was, “Regret is always in the risks you didn’t take.” And that’s from Clay Cook photo a couple weeks back, go watch that episode. But Kelly, it’s so true. Now what advice… For you it was about reaching your potential and finding your why, even Jackie Mack, a few episodes, she talked a lot about that, finding your why. What about for the person right now who’s on that cusp right there? They’re exactly where you were and where I was at one point in my life. What advice do you have for them?

Kelly Donahue:
You know, I think that the older you get the harder taking risks becomes because there’s more at stake, right? There’s bigger bills and there’s more kids and you get comfortable. But what I would always tell people is you could go follow your passion nights and weekends. I think we are in a situation personally in America where hard work is looked down on and I disagree. If you can have your job that pays all your bills and your family’s security and go work nights and weekends and pursue your passion until you can get up enough money to take the leap of faith. I think if you’re sitting here and you’re listening this and you’re not feeling like where you want to be in life, you’re not giving your kids the right message, you’re not doing it to yourself, and guys, life is short, who knows what could happen? The biggest losses that you’re going to have, the sun’s going to come up tomorrow, go drive for Uber if you need to. Who cares?

Kelly Donahue:
A lot of times the perceived risks are the fact that you don’t have faith and confidence in yourself and that’s where I would say start inside and go meet five strangers. Challenge yourself to do hard things every single day.

Adam DeGraide:
That’s great.

Kelly Donahue:
Put yourself in uncomfortable… Say every day I’m going to do something that’s not comfortable and watch, after a month, after two months, after 90 days, you’re going to realize I can do really uncomfortable things.

Adam DeGraide:
That’s right. Boy, that is great advice from Kelly Donahue. Kelly, have you had fun here on the David versus Goliath podcast?

Kelly Donahue:
I was looking forward to it all day. Top secretly, I actually took today off because I was traveling a lot, but I felt like this was not work related. This was fun related.

Adam DeGraide:
This is fun, man and I’ll tell you, you’ve given amazing advice to the watchers and the few listeners. I mean, we have so many watchers versus listeners, but this has been awesome having you on. Will you come back again in the future and update us?

Kelly Donahue:
It would be my honor and my pleasure. I want to tell everybody, this is one of my mentors. I would not be where I am here today. And you know, the stuff that Adam is saying, you should listen to because he’s 99.99% right. I won’t give you 100%.

Adam DeGraide:
No, I’ve definitely been wrong. It’s rare. But I definitely have been wrong. Kelly, it’s been awesome. Thank you so much. Folks, once again, an amazing episode is in the can here at the David versus Goliath podcast where you get education, inspiration, and most importantly, activation. We’ll see you next week.