Episode 10: Chris Jones on Building a Winning Culture

We have some struggles like every business is gonna have, but ultimately at the end of the day, if your team wants to be around each other, if your team is working for you because it's you and the culture that you've created, not something different, that's what's gonna keep people long-term. So I think you gotta step back and you gotta think about, well, what is my culture? We've been up to 20 people working in the agency and it's 2 different offices. To try to keep 2 different offices in 2 different locations with 20 people, to try to keep a strong culture there, It does become a struggle, but I can say that we're people who eat together. Teams that eat together, play together, stay together. Welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, where you will learn to grow your business, grow your leadership, and grow and develop your team. And now tune in to another great episode brought to you by your hosts, Bradley Hamner and Chris Ferretti.

Chris, we've been really fortunate to have a ton of great guests on the podcast already. This has gotta be one of my favorites. Chris Jones, top agent in Seattle, Washington. We touch on so many different things. We talk about his background. We talk about local events and advertising and local marketing. And we really get into culture and we talk about team development. A couple of things that really stood out to me, number one is how someone influenced his mindset to be able to think bigger and how important that is to surround yourself with great people that are doing bigger things than what you're doing. Local events, being present in the community. I mean, they don't just say it, they actually do it. And he tells a great story about how that got actually started for his business. And then he's really intentional about working on the business. And specifically about developing the systems and processes in his business to create a consistent customer experience. Those are just a few of the things that we touch on. We went a solid hour and a half on this podcast. Chris, what's a couple things you picked up on?

Two things that I really enjoyed about talking to Chris, one of them is seeing how disciplined he is with his money. He's been a very successful agent for a number of years already. He's 11 years deep in the game. And it wasn't until about 1 or 2 years ago that he was still driving an '05 Toyota Corolla with $200,000 with 100,000+ miles in it and broken AC. And once again, he's had tons of success, tons of money to buy a much better car, but it's interesting to see how he stayed disciplined, why he stayed disciplined, and I'm happy that he shared that with us. Another thing is his philosophy with hiring and maintaining great talent. I love that he takes ownership over every aspect of his team. He really supports his team members. No matter how many times they have to take the test to get licensed, for example, if he sees potential in you, he will continue to invest and invest and invest in you, you are successful. So that's a true sign of a leader. This was one of my favorite podcasts for sure. I would love to have Chris again. And without further ado, let's get started.

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Glad to be here, man. Long time coming. I've raised my hand and begging to get on this.

Hey, yeah, man, thank you for being here, for sure.

And just for our listeners, I get confused, so my name is also Chris, but for for the rest of this podcast, I will be referred to as Ferretti, which is my last name. So Chris is Chris Jones, the guest, and Chris Ferretti, me, will be called Ferretti.

You could call me Chris Joneses number one, you know, if you wanna change it up a little bit.

There you go.

Spice it up a little bit.

We actually have another agent that's a client of Club Capital whose name is also Chris Jones, by the way. I don't know if I told you that.

You didn't tell me that, but we have a chat group on my phone right now of the Chris Joneses, and I've saved them all in my phone as Chris Jones evil twin. So we have a little group on our phone whenever we get each other's emails to send them back to each other. It's pretty hysterical that no one can quite figure that out inside a billion-dollar corporation.

You would think, man, you would think.

Well, Chris, for those that don't know you and don't know a little bit about your background, why don't you just talk to us about how you got to where you are today? Obviously you own two successful insurance agencies. So for those that don't know you, why don't you give us a little bit of background?

So I started my State Farm career June 1st, 2011. I had no money. I had no insurance experience. In reality, I had no business being an agent. But what I did have was a really good work ethic, and I had the ability to figure things out, what I'd like to say, a little faster than what the average Joe would be. Once my mind kind of grasps around something, I tend to just take that idea and just run with it. So I had no clients, nothing going for me. So what I did was I basically got hold of every sales book I could I talked with agents all around the country. I think that's probably one of the best parts about being a State Farm agent is you can call somebody 24/7 anywhere in the country. They'll pick up the phone and they'll give you a tip or two of like what they're doing or how they're kind of approach the business. So I reached out to as many people as I possibly could, tried to get as much information as I could, read every sales book that I could, and we came out of the gates wildly successful. June 1st, 2018, 2017, opened up my second agency. Again, started with no clients, but this time I had a little bit more money in my pocket and knew a little bit better of like what I wanted to do and how I wanted to approach that. It's just been a constant evolution of my business since the day we started. Probably the most interesting thing about being an insurance agent is it's not as boring as people would think. It keeps evolving, keeps changing, and the pace of change seems to only be increasing as time's gone on.

So I do have to ask a question. I mean, the last few years you've been one of the top 10 agents in the country, which is pretty remarkable. There's so many people that are listening to this podcast, they work their tails off, they have the same kind of work ethic, they read all the books, they listen to the podcast. I mean, I'm sure some of the same books that you've read. What do you think it was about you that has allowed you to take that information and actually transform your business? Because knowledge is different than actually execution.

You know, and I always say this, like everything in all my presentations, all my talks, nothing is original. Everything I have is stolen. I'm the youngest of 5. So I always thought that when I was growing up, I would see my older brothers, they do something wrong, I'd be like, "Well, not do that," or they do something right and I would mimic it. And I just feel like I have the advantage of being this youngest of 5 with the big family that I kind of grew up always looking at what other people were doing and being able to emulate that. And that's just kind of transferred over to insurance, I think another big factor that's a big difference is I was highly intentional when I was getting started of focusing my time of working on the business versus working in the business. So I would work in the business Monday through Friday, half the day Saturday, and then working on the business the other half of Saturday and all of Sunday. So when I first started legitimately, I would be working 7 days a week, 50, 60, 70 hours a week every week. And that was just my thing is I didn't know what I was doing, so it took me longer. So I just had to do it the hard way and do the heavy lifting when it came to it. I was at an advantage. I had no family, no shoes, no problems, no girlfriend, no kids, no money, no problems. I mean, that was just my situation. So I lived and breathed the insurance game, and I did that for multiple years. I also reinvested because I didn't have a lavish lifestyle. I mean, I drove a 2005 Toyota Corolla until like a a year ago. So, 10 years in the insurance business, multiple agencies, driving a car with over 200,000 miles on it, but I was able to reinvest at a rate that most people couldn't reinvest at because they just had to have that money.

Yeah. So, you just said so much right there that I actually want to unpack. One of the most important ones that you just said, which was I was intentional about focusing to work on the business versus in the business. I mean, look, that's the premise of the book, The E-Myth, and so many people have read that book. Can you tell me specifically what you mean when you said, "I was working on the business versus in the business?" Because look, you're still in your business, right? I mean, you work in your business. You're super active in both of your agencies, okay? But what do you mean whenever you say on versus in? What does that mean to you? Because I think a lot of people get that misconstrued.

So, working in the business, the best case example is like running a client appointment. So, doing a review, maybe calling back a lead, something of that sort, it's a money-making activity. So it's a good activity for you to be doing, but that's working in the business. Working on the business, that would be like me doing a process improvement. So for instance, I have somebody who says, I already have insurance, making a note card for my whole team saying, well, that's great, most of my clients have insurance, we give our biggest discounts to people who already have insurance. And then programming in my response and dialing that in and then disseminating that to the whole team, that's working on the business.

So just to clarify, it sounds like working in the business is actually like carrying out certain tasks and activities. And then when you're working on the business, like you're changing processes.

Yeah, exactly. Might be creating an email template. We do a lot of that stuff. You're tweaking a word track that we have, working on new objections that we have. Might be creating a training video, you know, explaining their coverage, something of that sort. It's going to be all on the business. As I've grown and as my agency has expanded, as my producers have expanded, I spend more and more time working on the business than in the business. But originally it was basically Monday through Friday, half day Saturday in the business, and then the other half of Saturday, Sunday on the business.

So I also want to ask this question regarding on versus in, because when you're scaling not only just one business, but you're also scaling to two separate agencies, I'm assuming that working on the business, creating those systems and processes email templates has allowed you to be able to have consistency of what you're saying, but at the same time be able to scale the business. Would that be accurate?

I mean, absolutely. And I have this weird obsession with McDonald's. I don't even like McDonald's, but man, I just admire— they make a crappy burger and they sell it more than any other burger place in the world.

Why?

Because it's consistent. It's the same thing. Every single solitary time. It's convenient. The kids have to have the Happy Meal. I mean, they've really figured that out, but it's not the world's best burger, yet they sell more of them than every single solitary business. That is just something that I admire on it. I'm like, well, how do we get it more of a process? How do we make this more of a repeated experience from start to finish when we're talking insurance? How do we McDonald's our business?

How do we super-size our business?

Yeah, I mean, not only is it a crappy burger, but if you eat enough of them, they'll kill you. So that goes to show you that, I mean, it's not what you do, it's how you do it.

Yeah, I'm— Surprise Me 2 just came out, so Amazon Prime free movie, so, you know, you can, you know, watch that too.

And this podcast is brought to you by Amazon. Yeah, I'm just kidding, they're not sponsoring us yet. So I actually do have one question, and I did not know that you drove a Toyota, a 2005 Toyota Corolla until 2 years ago, you said?

Yeah, a year or 2 ago. Who knows? I can't remember when actually. I still have it. That's why I know it's memories.

So to me, I find that super impressive. I look at that as discipline. So how would you say that you manage to stay disciplined with your money considering that you were very successful, you are very successful. So the whole time you've had the money to buy a car that's much nicer. Not to say that it's not, that a '05 Corolla is not nice. I'm just saying that you can—

It's not.

It's not.

And the air conditioning doesn't work because whatever. You know what my family would always say is when you're a Jones, you don't have to keep up with the Joneses. The other half of it too, when it comes to the car thing, was, you know, we did a lot of vehicle loans. Financing, a lot of vehicle refinancing. And when you see dealerships rip off your clients left and right, it makes that whole experience not like a fun, awesome experience. You just see all the tricks of what they did, how they work through with the clients.

It's—

hasn't been the most positive experience with it. So it's something that if I could put it off, I did. But it was also that I knew I had certain goals. I knew I wanted to be a certain size of my agency and I just had to get there. And the less money that I pulled out for myself, the more money I could invest. The faster I could grow that. And in reality, when it came to all the other investments, all the other stuff that I've done throughout my life, this has been the single best investment. Every dollar I've put in has netted me more money. So how much more money can you put in? That's kind of the idea.

So basically you bet on yourself.

Yep.

I think in order for you to have that confidence to bet on yourself, you've got to have a very clear picture of what it is that you want. Would you say that you had a really clear picture? Because you said that you knew what you wanted, But how clear was that?

You know, it's interesting. So one of my mentors in the business, he's a huge agent out in Baltimore, D.C. area. And when I was a brand new agent, he had flown me out there to come talk to his team. And I remember I wanted— growing up, my mom always said, spend other people's money like you spend your own. So I took a red-eye flight that had like a connection overnight in Dallas. It was something stupid. It was like a $200 plane ticket when this guy could have flown me first class and would I would have been gladly able to do so. And I came to his office, I'm all jacked up. I get there at 8 in the morning, it's really 5 o'clock in the morning, West Coast time. And I just start talking like a million miles a minute. He's like, "Chris, how much coffee did you drink today?" I was like, "I haven't had any." He's like, "Maybe we should not give you any because I can barely keep up with you when you're excited and talking." Seattle thing, lots of coffee. So, when I was talking with him, he had shared that he's like, "Yeah, I've got maybe about 12,000 cars insured." At least that's the number I remember as it was. So from that day, I had a target of 12,000 cars. I think the biggest agent in Washington with State Farm is, you know, maybe like 7 or 8, maybe 9. So we knew that it was a substantially larger amount of where to go. So I just let that be my ceiling versus what my people were doing.

That's why I think having mentors is That's a very good thing. Not just mentors, but targets that you have, because realistically speaking, if you had never met this guy, then your ceiling would've been $7,000 and you would've just taken that for granted. That would've just been your ceiling no matter what. However, the fact that you happen to just know this person, they happen to share that they insured 12,000 vehicles, inspired you to then go and say, "You know what? That's going to be my ceiling." Which goes into another thing that I'm a huge believer in, which is we are going to accomplish whatever it is that we set out to do. Because once again, if nobody had ever told you that they insured 12,000 cars, you would not know that that's a possible thing. And suddenly somebody did tell you that, and then you set that as your goal and you didn't stop till you got there.

Yeah, yeah. Not there yet. Not quite there yet. But when you think about it, we all have What is your idea of doing good? Like, I'm doing great. Well, how does that define it? Each person's different. Some people will run a lower cost of acquisition or a lower expense ratio on their business, and that's how they define success. Everybody's different, and that's what's kind of a fun part about our industry and our businesses. There's no one clear definition of what does success mean. Success to somebody else, an agent I talked with as I was going through this, he goes, my son has played tennis all the way through college and he played out of state. And his definition of success is, I have never missed a single tennis match my son has played in from preschool all the way through college, even being out of state. And that's how he defined it. He never had to miss a match, never had to miss a game. And I thought that was really cool. It's just something that's interesting. And not a lot of other industries I feel are the same way where your definition of success is individualized and tailored to you. What do you want?

Yeah, you get to decide, you don't have to, right?

That's right.

I actually think that we haven't even scraped like the tip of the iceberg or like the surface with your background and everything, because I want to go back to your Hawaii days, your Singapore days. I want to know about those days and how they helped you be where you are today, because once again, you did say that you are a quick learner, and I'm picking up that your family has a lot of influence in the confidence that you have in setting a goal and sticking to it. So would you mind just going deeper into that, please? Just like your background and your family and how that has shaped you.

Yeah, it's interesting. So again, kind of saying, you know, youngest of 5, I grew up, I mean, youngest of 5. My mom didn't work. My dad is a Boeing engineer, still a Boeing engineer. He's thinking about retiring until the whole market just crashed last week. Now he might be pushing it off a little bit longer. I went to a local community college just up the road from where I grew up and then started getting real serious about college, real serious about about kind of the rest of my life, what that was going to look like. Again, I had business, was paying my bills, making pretty good money at the time, and my definition of pretty good money when you're 19, 20 years old, but I wanted something more. I ended up getting an academic scholarship to University of Hawaii. So having never been to Hawaii, never had the money for like the Hawaii vacation with a family of 7, yeah, right, off I was on an airplane headed to University of Hawaii. I did an international business degree and they were the ones that had a really high-rated program at that time. So off I went, and part of the program was you had to either take 4 years of a foreign language or you had to live abroad as an international exchange student for a year. So what happened was I was taking Spanish, and Freddie, well, you can quiz me on my Spanish some other time when we're not recording and a million people are gonna listen to it, but it was bad. Languages, my brain doesn't work that way. I barely write and read English, much less any other language. So I was maybe gonna pull a C, maybe a D in Spanish. So I had to drop the class. Otherwise, I would potentially risk losing some of my scholarships that I had. And I had to go to plan B. Plan B was being an international exchange student. Obviously, language is tough. So I chose Singapore because what a lot of people don't know is Singapore's national language is actually English, so I could still make friends, I could still communicate, I could still get around. But when I was in Singapore, I found out that just because their national language is English doesn't mean that there's not a lot of other influence. The impact it really had on my business, we service 3 languages. We have a big Chinese-speaking book of business, specifically Mandarin. We have a huge Hispanic, you know, arm of the business, which is all serviced in Spanish and the same in English. So we really service 3 languages very, very heavily, and I think a lot of that has come from me living abroad and having to figure out how do I get a cell phone in another country when they require what's equivalent of a Social Security number with it, and everyone I talk to, I can't really communicate effectively with them. So, that's been one of my passions is making the insurance process easier for people whose English might not be their first language or they might not speak English at all.

Yeah, I would say one of my favorite things about calling into your office is actually like hearing the 3 options. Like, this is a worldly office. Like the fact that you have to hire people to service clients that speak 3 different languages, like to me, that's incredible.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, one of my good tips is you can't grow through anglo. So servicing a minority market has been really good business and it's really fulfilling when it's at the end of the day, when you have somebody who is there, they just, they had no no idea what they had had. They had had insurance that they bought from somebody, and when they actually understand what it can do for them, how it works, they have protection for their family, and they get it, that's just incredible. And then the referrals, you know, walking in with someone's cousin, auntie, uncle the next day after they buy insurance, that's something that we found very unique to our Chinese and our Hispanic clients. So it allows us to be able to grow and grow through a very profitable, very sticky way of doing it as well.

You know, that's actually a really great segue because one of the things I wanted to speak to you about today, and of course it's pretty ironic with what's going on with the coronavirus, but local advertising and event marketing. I mean, for anybody that follows you on social media, we know that you have a lot of different interests, and I'm sure we'll probably get to that at some point on the podcast. But I want to talk to you about your marketing efforts. You know, we've had Martina with Uptown and Maddie Jones with DirectClicks talking about about online marketing and SEO and social media, and you're active on all of those, but talk to me about your local advertising and event marketing that you do because we were just talking about the different demographics that you serve. How has that impacted your business? Because I've heard you speak about that and it's had a tremendous impact.

I mean, the community marketing has been a game changer for me. And what's interesting is I can remember like a light switch, like the day it all changed. And it would be really cool if we could put a link to the video on the podcast with it. I'll get you the link of where it comes because the local news did a special on this particular day. But essentially, we've got a guy that hangs around Bobble. His name's Will. Will is pretty severely autistic, and he likes to hang out at this coffee stand that I'm literally standing up in my office looking right across the street at. It's called Becca's Brew. So Will hangs out there. He just kind of, you know, does his thing. He's super outgoing. Going very friendly. He's the type of person that never has zero gunshyness about approaching a stranger, saying hello, and kind of just making their day. Well, one day at the coffee stand— this is a pretty new coffee stand, so she's a struggling business owner as well— this person comes up in the drive-through and was less than nice to Will and questioned Becca about why she has this guy, you know, hanging around her stand, and it makes her uncomfortable. And Becca just said, you know what, the coffee is on me, please don't ever come back. And she posted this experience on our local community page of Facebook groups that are out there. Some of them are political, some of them are this, some of them are that, but there's a bunch of community groups. And this particular one has about 25,000 people who are all members of the community, local, right here. And it just so happened the next week was Will's birthday. So she just posted, "Hey, he's still upset about this. Would anyone be willing to do something for him with the community? We'd love to just like welcome him there." and our community showed up in force. No other way to say it. We had a tent out there. I think he got about 5 birthday cakes that day. The police showed up. There's a local little people who make signs, and they had happy birthday giant 3-foot lettering for him out there. And all of this completely unknown to Will. And essentially he walks up and we threw him a surprise birthday party. In the middle of a parking lot on just a little street in my community. And what changed for me was that very next day I had 3 people walk into my office saying, "Hey, here's my policies from a prior insurance company. I'm here to get a quote. I'm here to see what prices." It had none of that to do with it. He's like, "Nope, I wanna do business with you. Make it work, write it up." So it was like someone walked in there like, "Here's my credit card. I'm here for insurance." and that in my career had never happened to me. And then all of a sudden my phone started ringing and I had clients. They're like, "We just saw you guys on the news. You guys are the agency." It was a game changer for me that I had avoided community involvement. I didn't want people to know who their agent was. I wanted them to know my brand, State Farm, because that had the brand and that was how I was going to sell it. But when they started becoming loyal to you and they had chosen to buy insurance from you for that reason, there was an emotional attachment to it. That client referred, those clients grew, they're still with me to this day. I don't feel like I'm in danger of losing them. It was just a total different way of growing the business. But really, at the end of the day, you felt really good about what you did. You felt good about making some kid's day and making it just really special for them. And when you watch the movie— like, this might be a great time to like pause the podcast, hop over to the link, and watch the movie— if you don't shed a tear just a little one, or at least kind of get that choked up in your throat, and I don't know what's wrong with you, but it is one of those things that it's just a really magical moment that has really affected— in reality has changed my career from that day since. So we've evolved and we've grown from that day, and we just said, well, how can we get more involved with communities? How can we grow? How can we have more of these kind of special moments? Now, remind you, I was a professional DJ since I was essentially a child, so I have all sorts of DJ equipment, loudspeakers, I've got all the State Farm tents and tables and chairs and all of that. And we just said, okay, where can we go where people are gonna gather, preferably for a party, and we're just gonna bring the party, we're gonna be the life of the party. So we found that there's a ton of apartment complexes that will always do tenant appreciation or client appreciation events. And if you say, hey, I'm gonna be your DJ for free, all we'd like to do is be a part of the event, bring the party, they go, oh my gosh, are you kidding me? Absolutely, let's do it. Other times we've grilled hot dogs for them. Never do hamburgers. Hamburgers are a lot of work. Hot dogs are like, they're precooked. You can't get anybody sick. They only have mustard and ketchup and then you're good to go. Hot dogs, hamburgers, you gotta chop onions and tomatoes and lettuce and I want cheese on it, no cheese on this, why is the bacon? They're a mess. Don't ever do that if you end up going this. Hot dogs are the way to go. And then we just started doing more and more events. We bought a cotton candy machine. Because when you put a sign at a swap meet or flea market that says free cotton candy, if you have a kid, you got anybody who's probably under 10 years old, you cannot get out of that fair or event or swap meet or whatever the case might be without giving a kid the free cotton candy. And it takes forever to make, so they're standing in line. And then we just get to be ourselves. We get to be personal. We get to be engaging. And that's how we've been growing the book. We do all the other stuff. We do some pay-per-click, we do some internet leads, we do some direct mail. We have kind of a big marketing mix. But this is just that icing on the cake. It's that real sticky business of where it kind of comes from.

Man, that's awesome. I love the fact that your story started whenever you were just giving back to the community. And then that has started— you didn't go into it trying to get business from that initially. I mean, now obviously you do these events to try to get business, but that's not how it started. I do want to ask you, so you can answer this two different ways if you need to, but what is your— your marketing spend on community events, local advertising, and event marketing in relation to your overall marketing spend in other areas? SEO, pay-per-click, internet leads, etc. What does that look like for you?

Well, you know what's interesting is I'm really blessed by my carrier that for the vast majority of the events, they're subsidized 50% by my carrier. State Farm has pushed this community involvement, and I know we've got a lot of State Farm agents that are listening to this, but we've got a lot from other companies and other carriers as well. But my carrier subsidizes 50% of an event that I do. So if I go out and I spend $200 on hot dogs, it's only $100 of where it comes from. The reality of it is, is we're always trying to piggyback on somebody else's event. So if an apartment complex is throwing a community appreciation event, most of the time they're gonna have budget for pizza or hot dogs or something of that sort. They might not have the grill, they might not have some other things, but we're gonna be the one that kind of piggybacks on that. We just did a whole bunch of Valentine's Day events Unfortunately, we had 3 St. Patrick's Day events lined up, but with the coronavirus, not the most popular thing to have large gatherings of people, which is exactly what we're looking for. But for Valentine's Day, this stuff is cheap, guys. The biggest expense you're gonna have is having your team go and work the event and set up the event and develop the relationship with the apartment manager. That's the real expense when it comes down to it. All the other stuff is so inexpensive when you compare it to some of the other avenues of marketing. So one When it's said and done, I have someone who's, he's a very versatile player. Tim is amazing. He is in charge of setting up these events and the planning of the events. You know, he's been with me for almost 4 years. He was somebody who was highly engaging, but he was not a very organized salesperson. So when you have a good person and you're looking at developing them, you kind of find what they like to do. Because one of my coaches back from football day, he basically had said, What you're good at, you like, and what you like, you're good at. And Tim likes doing events. He likes building those relationships with those centers of influences. So I let him do what he likes to do. He didn't like making a ton of phone calls to people. He doesn't like staying organized in a computer system because that's what it takes to be really successful when you're working a lot of leads. But it's one of those things where we just found an avenue that he really liked and he really has excelled at it. So that's a big portion of my marketing budget because essentially he's a full-time marketer. He does other stuff for us. He follows up on forums. He does some other office activities when events are slower, but that's his primary function of his job is to do that. And that's the majority of the marketing budget that we're spending on it.

I actually think that the very last part of what you said actually speaks volumes about the type of culture that you have. I think in any sales-driven environment, turnover is a very huge problem. And I appreciate the fact that you basically just said that you had a guy who wasn't necessarily the best at staying organized and just doing other things that require some other activities that are necessary for you to be a top-performing salesperson, but you then found something else that he was good at, which shows me that you have a culture that doesn't just basically churn people left and right. It's like, what can we find for you to actually stay with us and be an A-player?

I mean, training, licensing, recruiting, hiring, it's exhausting, it's expensive. Now I'm not saying that you can just have any person just sit back and collect a paycheck, that's not at all what I'm saying, but it's one of those things when you have a good person, they have that work and they're fun to be around and you wanna be around them, they're engaging, that's where maybe you find a role that fits their personality, fits their strengths. That's really where it is. When we're talking back on the leads, the marketing, the budget, you gotta kind of think of it too, I compare a lot of it to internet leads because before I got into the event game, I was like the internet lead king. I would buy as many as my credit card would allow me per day, and we were pretty good at closing them. But at the same time too, the marketing laws became stricter around them. We couldn't just quote somebody without ever talking to them anymore. That wasn't allowed by a carrier, wasn't the right thing to do. I had $3,000+ going out the door, and I was running like a 35% lapse count on that business. So when we're talking like budget and where it goes, it's the quality versus the quantity approach, where if you're killing it in the internet game as a captive carrier, 3, maybe 4, 5% that you can get off of that, versus when you might have an event lead, you might be 50 to 80% close ratio, but you might not get 10 a day coming in every single solitary day. So at the end of the day, it's a quality versus quantity. But when you think about it, if you were gonna buy a lead from a vendor, and we just think of it as what are 5 leads worth? What if it's just 5 names and numbers? What if it's just 5 names and numbers but they let you quote them? What if it's 5 names and numbers that let you quote them but now they know what you're about, they know that you're fun, they've met you in person, and they're exclusive to you, and they're never resold 6 and 8 and 10 months later? When you think of it from a cost and a benefit standpoint, It's not just, I did an event that cost me $100, I got 5 people to say yes to a quote. It's more than that when you really start dialing it down. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it really does. I think as you were sharing that with me, one of the things that really just came to my mind is the fact that you're in all of the different marketing mediums. I mean, you're not just saying I'm only local, you're doing all of it to be diversified. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the name of the game. You have to. At this point in this stage of the game. We need a lot of stuff coming in in order for us to hit our growth numbers. When you have larger books of business, you have just more people walking out the back door. That's inevitable. If you're very active and engaged and you haven't been around for 45 years, your business is just more susceptible to change in the rate of time that that happens. So I gotta do multiple different things as the mix to combat that. But this is just, you know, the icing on the cake. It's not the whole cake itself.

All right, so I want to pivot because you mentioned about how costly it is, and I totally agree with you, how costly it is to have turnover and to lose people and how long it takes to get somebody licensed and get them onboarded, and then let alone have them actually producing and becoming to get a return on their investment when a new team member comes on board. So I want to talk to you about hiring and recruiting and most importantly keeping your A-players. And so So, I know you have some unique thoughts about that. So, just talk about your team. I mean, the people is the most important asset that we have in this business. So, talk to us about what your thoughts are on the people side of the business.

Well, I mean, the first thing is like when you're interviewing someone or you're having them join your team is I always ask, is this someone that I can spend 9 hours a day with, 5 days a week? Is this somebody that's engaging, nice enough, someone that I want to spend I want to spend this kind of time with? Because at the end of the day, if they're not someone I want to spend that kind of time with, then it's not going to be a good fit for me. So that's the first thing is, do I want to be around them for that period of time? Because I am going to do a bulk of the training myself. The next thing I'm looking for is, is this an upgrade job and do they have the potential, or is this a downgrade job? I don't want to take somebody who was a CEO at a tech company and lost their job and they just need a job. I'm looking for somebody that this is an upgrade for. I'm looking for somebody who worked construction, who had a job where it is. I'm looking for somebody who is a single mother who has a family to depend on and they want a stable, steady job with this crazy environment, crazy time that we're going through. You know, my number one goal to my team is we're not going to do layoffs when this economy turns, if it turns to where it goes. I want people to know that we're going to take care of them. So that's the first, you know, couple things that I'm looking for when I'm recruiting. Then beyond there, the whole licensing aspect. I've talked with countless agents that say, you gotta have your license before you come work for me. Well, with me you don't. I will develop you while you're inside my agency. You got to be able to make a phone call. You got to be engaging. You got to be able to do— as one of your previous hosts of the show was— that you got to be in a high rejection, high activity environment. You got to be comfortable with that. If you can't get comfortable with that, that, that's a deal breaker where it comes. But the licensing aspect, not everybody is great at taking standardized tests. Some people get extreme anxiety when they walk into the testing center. One of my gals, it took her over a year to get licensed. She took it 12 times at her own cost in order to pass just her P&C license. But that's somebody who has shown extreme loyalty to me. I'm gonna be extremely loyal to her, but she also makes 75 phone calls a day. She did all of the late pay, non-pays. She did a whole bunch of lead generation. So that's someone who's willing to put in the time and the work. We took her from one of my other team members' daycares because her daycare would be bouncing checks. And strangely enough, her daycare has laid everybody off in this virus thing. She came to me the other day, she goes, man, thank God I'm not at the daycare anymore. I wouldn't even have a job right now. Yet you, you know, I'm making more money every Everything was good. That's the kind of person that I want. But does she struggle with tests? Absolutely. But that's a huge financial commitment for somebody at that level to do. And that's the person who's not going to quit on you at the first sign of shaky waters ahead.

I just got to take a second to applaud that employee of yours. Like that's a sign of perseverance, like discipline, not quitting. That's exactly what you want in an employee.

Carla is not the only example of that. We've had other people. That have gone through. Not everybody's just good at standardized tests. Like, it's, it's just the system what we have. It's the ticket to be able to get to the dance, but you have to be able to pass. And with her, it was— it's not that she's not a smart person, it's not that she's not intelligent, she is. It's just that she would get nervous, super nervous, like dripping sweat, like they're at the gym nervous while you're taking a test. That's just gonna mess with your mind and where it comes from. So it just took enough time going in there, getting comfortable, where, you know, those nerves work off. It's the same thing. The first ever sales call I made, I'm shaking on the phone, like my hand is fluttering after the fact. But after you 100, you just get used to it, of where it goes. And that's just what Carlos— it's just not an isolated incident. I've had lots of other team members that take 2 and 3 and 4 times. And I just talk with agents all over the country that they're like, well, I'll pay for 3, or I'll pay for 1, and if you can't pass it on the first or second try, I'm off to the next one. Man, that's a lot of interviews, and that's a lot of turnover you're going to face.

Man, I have to tell you, I mean, Chris Ferretti is right about it's a lot of perseverance, but I have to tell you, I mean, I really applaud you for continuing to believe in your team and the people that you bring on board and not giving up on them because you just said it. Most people would, after 1 or 2, let alone 3 tries, would have said, "Sorry, it's not going to work out. Best of luck to you." Where did you get that from? Where did you decide, "Hey, listen, I'm going to continue on pushing and we're going to find a place." place for you in this business? Because that's rare.

It's one of those things where I think when your team member realizes what you put into them upfront, again, when we talk about investments and betting on yourself, when you convince somebody else that they're worth it and they're willing to bet on themselves, again, that's that person that sticks with you, not for like a year or two, but that's the person who sticks with you for 3, 4, 5 years. I have one of my original team members still with me Since 2011, he runs my Boston office and he's fantastic. He's going to go into— start his own agency here shortly. And I'm like at my wit's end trying to figure out what I'm going to do to be able to replace somebody with that kind of knowledge and that kind of loyalty, that kind of skill set. But at the time he came to me, he was so nervous he couldn't even make a phone call. I had to pep talk him up for 45 minutes to make his first ever sales call. It's just— I feel I feel like when you invest in your people, you're gonna get more than you put in out. Is it gonna cost you time, money, and effort? Yes. Is every single person worth that investment? Certainly not. But when you identify those traits of loyalty, perseverance, it's an upgrade on the job, they show up every day, sick, tired, whatever the case might be, those are the people that I wanna build my team around and that I wanna be around. And also just somebody that, coming back to the base model, Somebody that I can spend 9 hours a day with and not get sick and tired of talking with them. That's the people that we want. I think that's more where people really identify and figure out.

Now, would you say that the process that you have today, because I mean, to me this sounds excellent. I do think that nurturing talent might be a lot more money up front that you're paying, but long-term, just as you're saying, the loyalty that you're going to have from those people is going to be a lot higher than somebody that you hire 3 months ago, fire them, hire and fire, you know. So would you say that you've had that process and like that mentality about recruiting and keeping talent since day one, or was that developed with all the books that you read?

I think it's been an evolving process. Also, to be honest, I feel like when I get to the point where I have to fire somebody, that's not a failure oftentimes on the team member, that's a failure on myself. Either that's a failure upfront, I did not hire the right person, they didn't do a good enough job to job screening or talking with them, or I didn't do enough time developing them to give them the skills of what it takes to be successful in this business. So when you view it not as this team member sucks, I'm gonna get rid of them, but as maybe you suck, you should train them better or do a better job recruiting them. When you kind of go back, it's like the Deming management philosophy. Everything that's wrong in the business stems to the leadership and the person who did that. Either you hired the wrong person or you didn't develop them enough. When you take that mentality and that's your mindset, I think that's where it goes. And I don't want to be a failure. I don't want to have a bunch of notches in my belt of failures that I've gone through. It takes your viewpoint a little bit different with your team of, you know, it's a hard job. Not everybody can do it, but if I'm doing a good enough job upfront, really asking the questions, getting to know who that person is, then if I have the right person, it's just a matter of time to develop them. What we do is not easy, but what we do is simple. You know, selling insurance is a function of activity minus excuses equals results. So if we want to have more activity and we minus our excuses, we're gonna have more results in the end. And again, I stole that from somebody else. I normally do it with a Southern drawl and a twang to it because that's where I heard it from, but anyways, that's just my My viewpoint is if I have to fire a team member, that's not necessarily a reflection on the team member, that's a reflection of me. So let's develop people and not have that revolving door of employees coming in and out and in and out.

You know, honestly, Chris, I've gotten to know you more over the last year and a half, 2 years or so. And you've talked a lot about your marketing efforts and the training and development that you do, but everything you just shared over the last, say, 5 minutes about your hiring and people and your development and belief in people, I think, is the thing that sets you apart from everybody else and has gotten you to the point to where you are today. And so I really commend you for that. And I hope everybody listening to this podcast really did take to heart everything that he just said, because I think it's extremely powerful and very, very rare.

Yeah, again, I think it's just one of those things where mindset changes. When you have a mindset change, whether it be this amazing event for Will that kind of makes you rewrite your whole marketing book. Whether it be you have this team member, you're watching him just struggle with just the organization of— he's doing the calls, but it's just— he's saying the right things, just organization is really difficult. When you see those sort of stuff and you can identify what's making this team member successful or what's making this team not as successful, when you see those sort of things, you just stop back. It kind of goes back to what we were saying, working on the business, working in the business. When you take time to kind of breathe and then watch them and figure out what the weak point with them, it gives you something more to be able to work on. A lot of agents I'll talk to, if they're having a struggle, I'm doing coaching with them of, hey, this team member is really struggling. You start dialing into how many calls are they making, how many quotes are they doing, what are they saying with them. A lot of, again, business owners that I talk to, it's like they crack the whip and they say, sell more. Well, You're gonna get this, you know, the Montgomery Scott, you know, giving it all she's got, Captain. I'm selling everything I can. Like, that's gonna be the approach that it's gonna be versus stopping and saying, okay, well, what is it that's getting in the way? Can I help you develop it? Can I help you strengthen that? Can I develop you as a team member? Ultimately, that's a big investment that's gonna come back to you in full.

Yeah, so that's actually another really good segue because I just wanted to ask you, for those that are listening to this podcast, I know there's a lot of new agents. I was speaking to a new agent this morning that was struggling with their team, and they want to either get to the level that you are, or quite frankly, they just want to be better, right? They just want to define success. They want to be better. They want to produce more. They want to grow more, whatever that is for them. What's the biggest piece of advice you could give somebody that's wanting to create a high-performance culture that you have?

Well, I think first off, identify what is your culture. Like our culture, we are very casual. We are young. I'm in blue jeans every single solitary day. Seattle's a pretty dressed-down city, so that works for us. Other places doesn't work so well. What does it look like? We look like the Model UN club. I'm just staring out in my office right now and we got all the colors of the rainbow out there. That's part of the culture that I wanted to define. We're a very inclusive, very diverse workplace when it comes to it. I've got male, female, Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino, Salvadorian, another Salvadorian, they're sisters, half Mexican, half white, another full— it's all over the place when it comes. That's something that I wanted that to be and wanted that to look like. The other thing is we're a fun culture. We do a lot of activities. We try to do an activity every quarter. And I say try because that's something that I can do a little bit better job of. We've gone paintballing. We've done all just sorts of fun activities. We did escape rooms. We put that into the budget on the annual budget to just do stuff that's fun for a team. Sometimes it says a promotion or payoff. Sometimes it's for my birthday. We try to make this a place that people want to work because ultimately we have a tough job. You know, my retention people are gonna get screamed at something that's completely out of their control. My salespeople can't control the price of our product. We don't have a magical button to make us cheaper than what everybody else is. House is. We have some struggles like every business is gonna have, but ultimately at the end of the day, if your team wants to be around each other, if your team is working for you because it's you and the culture that you've created, not something different, that's what's gonna keep people long-term. So I think you gotta step back and you gotta think about, well, what is my culture? You know, we've been up to 20 people working in the agency and it's 2 different offices. To try to keep 2 different offices in 2 different locations with 20 people to try to keep a strong culture there, it does become a struggle. But I can say that we're people who eat together. Teams that eat together, play together, stay together.

I like that.

Yeah, man. I would say the very last thing that I would like to point out is that I really like the ownership that you take on hiring the right people. I think it's super easy to point fingers at anybody and be like, you know what? They didn't fit because their work ethic sucked or because X, Y, and Z. But something that I've noticed in in the many books that I read and the different encounters that I have is that great leaders take ownership. Prime example of this, and this is a very small one actually, but I'll say it on the air. I was in charge of getting the logo of Club Capital Leadership Podcast put together. And when I was dealing with the graphic designer, I didn't do a good enough job of making sure that they spelled Bradley's last name correctly. And when I got it back, I didn't even notice that it was spelled incorrectly and I just, you know, hit publish.

So tell me, tell me it said Hammer Time, because every time I talk to Bradley, I go, oh, stop. Not Hamner, Hammer. That's right. There you go.

It's a hammer. It did say hammer. And Bradley approached me, he's like, hey bro, is my name misspelled? And I was like, I don't think so, but let me take a look at it. And lo and behold, it was live on iTunes, Spotify, everywhere, misspelled. And rather than him like either throwing a fit, which would have been, you know, very acceptable because that's kind of a big deal. This man apologizes to me for not catching it when I first shared the logo with him. He was like, "I'm sorry that I didn't pay enough attention when you first sent me the logo and I'm sorry that I allowed you to post this live." I was so blown away. I was like, "This is a leader. This person right here is taking ownership over something that he had no control over. It was my responsibility." ability to get that detail correctly, and he took responsibility for that. Like, that blew me away. I was like, this is a leader. Like, I have to be more like this person.

Yeah, and I'll tell you what, if it makes you feel any better, he's been saved in my phone as Hammer Time from the day I met him. So we talked about it before we were prepping for this podcast. Man, I gotta correct it. You're like, nah, don't correct it. That's you. Be you.

Just be you, man. Just be you again. Absolutely, absolutely. Well, I tell you what, I mean, at the end of the day, you do learn that. And I love the fact that Chris just takes so much responsibility for the development of his team.

And I'll say it one more time in case my team ends up listening. I really do love my team. Like, I am only as successful as they are. In order for me to make money, they have to make money. You know, we're in this really symbiotic relationship with them. But at the end of the day, these are people I spend more time with them than I do my my own family, and not by like a small margin, by an enormous margin. So they're the people that I care about. I want them to be successful. I about had a mental breakdown last Christmas. We had a little gathering and we had the whole team there, and I looked and the team had all the kids, and I was like, holy cow, I'm feeding 42 mouths here. I was always the guy that was like, had no responsibilities, and all of a sudden I'm looking around, I'm like, I'm responsible for all these people. And it was one of those things where we can't trade that. That's just what we do. And that's an amazing experience. When my first teamer bought their first house, when they had their first kid, when they got married, when you get to be there for a lot of these people's, like, big moments of their lives. And yeah, you're their boss, but you kind of create this special spot in their lives where you're their mentor, their boss, their person that puts food on the table at the end of the day. And now we've got all these scary, uncertain times ahead of us, and I think that's where where leaders are really gonna step up and we're gonna see some huge changes, I think, in the economy and the industry of where it is. And, you know, this is the time to step up your leadership game, point them in the direction of where it goes and march forward. Where uncertainty lies, there's also a lot of opportunity too. So it's one of those things where we've had several talks about it, especially in just these coming weeks where we're like basically on quarantine lockdown. We're ground zero in the United States, is a mile away from my office. With this whole virus outbreak. So it's at times like this where, you know, it's our time to shine.

Man, that was awesome. That was a great way to finish the podcast.

Drop the mic.

Yeah, you dropped the mic on that one. That was good. All right, you ready for some E9 rapid fire?

Oh Lord, I've heard the podcast several times, and all of a sudden when you say that, I like just draw a blank, and I'm like, oh God.

We've got some good questions for you. These are customized for Chris Jones, okay?

Oh yeah. Oh God. All right, let me stand up here and be prepared. I'm ready.

Last book that you read?

Last book I read was The Power of Mindset, actually written by a fellow agent, Hyke Patavosian.

Oh, check it out, check it out. I got that.

Wow, there it is.

And guess what? His podcast dropping today. Like, today is— let's go— March 19th, and we are dropping Hyke's podcast. So that's amazing that You're saying that, that is amazing. That was our lining, baby.

It's almost like it was planned. And then I look at my email inbox and it emailed to me 10 minutes ago. Not planned. I got it as a Christmas gift, not from Hike, by the way, who coincidentally is 5 miles south of me. And he was also a scratch agent. Me and Hike used to go on air quote dates where it was like our support group, our new market support group, where we would meet like once a week. Week for dinner just to talk about what was going on, best practices. So he's been a mentor of mine in the business as well. So that's kind of cool.

Yeah, man. Shout out to Haik. He's a great guy for sure. Well, I mean, besides Club Capital Leadership Podcast, what podcast do you recommend the most?

Okay, this is going to be really funny. So with the outbreak going on right now, the podcast I'm working on, it's actually more like an audiobook. It's called We're Alive, about the zombie apocalypse. That's the time in the world that we're in right now.

Oh, that's great.

Very relevant.

So if you didn't own your insurance agencies, what do you think that you would be doing today?

Okay, professional DJ is out because I kind of already been there, done that. I would love to be a motivational speaker. One of my favorite things is going to insurance groups, being on stage, going there. I have a natural stage presence. I've just been doing it since I was a kid. And that's just one of my favorite things to be able to do is to coach, help other people get better at the game that they're doing, make a little bit more money, be a little bit more successful, however they define that.

Nice. I can definitely see it. Who inspires you? Who do you follow?

So my girlfriend, Darian, she doesn't know she's out on the other side, but I'm planning on proposing on Saturday. So this podcast will drop after this goes down. So Wow. Big girlfriend right now, but it'll be future fiancée coming soon. Imagine if she says yes. But if she doesn't, don't worry, I've rehearsed the objections. I've got them all note-carded and practiced out. I'll let you know what to say to get her to say yes.

Wow, I feel so— this is awesome that we're doing this on the Club Capital leadership podcast.

Oh my God, is anybody chopping onions here, man?

I got allergies right now.

Oh my God, I am so honored. You heard it first here, folks. Can't even get a sentence out right now. That's amazing, man. Congrats.

Yeah, life's gonna change. All of a sudden that no responsibility thing is gonna get a little bit more responsibility, I'm thinking here.

Hey, I'll tell you what, you're putting your sales skills on the test here because I mean, hey, if she says no and this podcast drops, I mean, we're putting this in the podcast.

Yeah, no post-production allowed on that one, right?

No, no. All right, you've traveled the world through, you know, incentive trips and just on personal vacations, what's the favorite place that you've actually visited to?

Okay, so I'm just going to do this for Freddy and say Nicaragua. Amazing country. Oh my God, the beaches are there. I learned how to scuba dive and got certified there. I mean, I went all around the country. It's a beautiful place. I think Little Corn Island is my favorite spot. It's in the middle of nowhere. You had to take like a plane Then another plane and then a boat. And then you got there and they only had electricity at night to charge your phone, run the air conditioning unit. But it's unlike anything you've ever experienced. So if you ever have an opportunity, you're into diving, Little Corn Island, Nicaragua. Freddy, you know about that one?

I do know about that one. And if it wasn't for the virus, I would actually be there right now because my family's throwing a huge party next Saturday, like Saturday the 28th. It's like a sweet 16. Seen, but you know, like how Latin people celebrate the quinceañera, so like the 15-year-old. Yeah, it's gonna be huge actually. And frankly, the virus isn't really affecting Nicaragua, so they're carrying on with it.

Whoa, all right.

Yeah, but what's the one thing that you cannot live without?

I'm gonna say the one thing I can't live without is my dog Flanders. This dog comes with me to the office, she rides in the car with me She's basically with me 24/7. She doesn't always listen to me, like, you know, all children do, but that dog comes with me everywhere. And that's just something that I can't imagine my life without her at this point, being almost 3 years, 24/7.

I have one question that just came to mind. What's your favorite food, man? Because I see you post the most delicious food on Instagram, like sushi that you make yourself with friends to meat on the grill. I mean, everything. Everything, like, it's just mind-blowing. I keep telling you this every time that we speak, you have to open up a friggin' food truck, man.

Yeah, I love cooking. It's kind of like my therapy. It's cheaper, it's healthier. I'm gonna go with Thai food. I think Thai food is my favorite. I can handle the spice. Also, Thailand is an amazing place to visit if you get an opportunity. Just make sure you eat the street food. Don't be one of those weenies. You gotta eat street food if you're in Thailand. 100%.

100% agree with that, man. That's my second favorite place in Southeast Asia. Singapore is number one for me right now.

Oh man, Singapore is a good place too. Gotta eat at the hawker centers.

Yeah, the hawker centers. You gotta eat that satay, baby.

Yeah, there you go.

All right, I have one Peloton follower and it is Chris Jones. So I was excited to ask you this question. It's kind of a multi-part question. So who is your favorite Peloton instructor and your favorite music and what's your best output/PR that you've had on the Peloton?

So we're quarantined, so it's a good time to have it there. Tunde Oyineng is my favorite instructor. She was actually an instructor. I've taken her class live. We had a payoff trip to New York. My PR is in her class live because it's so much more of an experience when you're there. But she was actually an instructor at a studio me and my girlfriend Darianne would go to down in LA. So we were friends with her, we knew her. My personal best is 465 on a 45-minute, because you know you got to be real specific when it comes to that. You do an hour, hour and a half, you can get that output more, but 45 is what I want. 465, and that's in class with her. And again, somebody's gonna come beat me, and I'm highly competitive, so Bring it on. I'm coming for it now.

I'm coming.

It's Chris's number one is my tag. I would love to see some more Peloton followers. If nothing comes of this podcast, at least I'll have some more people to compete with. Favorite music? Come on, 2000s hip-hop. Like, give me that time when I was like high school, junior high, 2000s. That's what it's all about for me.

Yeah, totally.

Bowling. What's your favorite non-work hobby, man? I'm pretty sure we already answered this one.

No, you haven't. I am a competitive Magic: The Gathering player. Remember that card game that the nerds played from the '90s? Yeah, turns out it's still going on. So I try to go to a tournament or two a week, still keep up on the new collections, on the new ones that come on there. It's a pretty involving hobby of mine, but it's like Playing chess, I feel like it keeps my mind sharp and just gives me something to do other than work and business, friends and cooking. It's just one of those other hobbies. I always say that people should have 3 hobbies, one that keeps them in shape, one that makes them money, and one that they do just simply because they love it. So sometimes people say the third one is to keep your mind sharp, but lame. But that's what I always say. You got to have 3 hobbies. If you can accomplish it all with one, good for you, but that's just kind of how it goes. So Peloton, we've got the DJ business, and then we've got my magic addiction.

I love it, man. That's great. All right, last question. You're off the hot seat. Best piece of advice you've ever been given?

It's got to be that activities minus excuses equals results. It really is one of those things where you can say the list is bad, you can say this is bad, the leads suck, we're not competitive right here. If you just got to, you just got to minus those excuses. And increase it. If it gets harder, so be it, it got harder. But at the end of the day, your results are up to you. So make it happen.

Love it.

Awesome. Chris, we can't thank you enough. We've gone about an hour and a half here strong. Really appreciate your time. This has been just amazing having you on and really appreciate you giving back. And I've gotten to know a lot more about you today. So thank you for your time.

Yeah, man.

Today's been awesome. Thank you so much. Helping with the self-coaching.

Yeah. Yeah. Social distancing.

Social distancing.

I appreciate you guys and thanks for what you do. You know, having free content to help us get better at our craft is something I think is just, it's an amazing giveback. With it, I've learned a lot about my finances through Club Capital. I think I'm one of you guys' OG members when it's said and done. Appreciate what you guys do on the other end too.

Thanks, man.

Thanks, Chris. Really appreciate you, man. Google makes it easy. Swipe a card, pay for marketing. Sure, you get a few more phone calls, but they have nothing to do with your business. The truth is Google can't understand the buyer's intent. Enter Matt and Maddie Jones, the husband-wife duo adding intention to your online marketing game. As a State Farm agent himself, Matt built his business by maximizing the volume and quality of inbound calls. His success led to the creation of DirectClicks, a company helping insurance agents across the country grow their business through online campaigns. They focus on Google Ads so you don't have to spread your budget across the internet. With attention to detail and transparency, they provide monthly review calls, exclusivity, and the lowest cost per click. So before you swipe that card, contact Matt and Maddie Jones at DirectClicksInc.com. Again, that's DirectClicksInc.com. Man, Ferretti, what a podcast we just had with Chris Jones, man. Dropping that he's getting engaged this Saturday. Of course, we're not going to drop this podcast for 2 or 3 weeks, but getting engaged this Saturday. I never thought we would be having something like that, an engagement announcement on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. But outside of that, you mentioned this in the intro where he talks about his team and not giving up on them. You know, and it really comes down to his team is loyal to him because he is loyal to them. And he said it on their about the cost of turnover and having to hire people and just the time it takes to get team members up to speed with the systems. And because he continues to believe in his team, I think there's no surprise why he's been able to build a high-performance culture. And he really works in the business. I mean, he talked about when we got off the podcast, he's got a new team member that's starting. He's going to go in there and train him himself. And so, he really takes ownership in that regardless of what the outcome is, he cares about his team, and he's gonna do everything he can to help make them a success. So what a podcast, Chris. What's a couple things you picked up on?

This is actually a continuation of a podcast guest that we had a while ago, Haik Tadevasyan, where he was saying that A people attract A players. So yeah, of course Chris is attracting and maintaining A players because he himself is an A-class leader. So I enjoy just listening and having him here to share the jewels that he had about leadership. And just how to run a good agency, the thing that stuck with me the most is the one-liner that he shared with us. And let me pull it out to make sure that I get it correctly. And that is that activities minus excuses equal results. So that stuck with me a lot because it's so simple to grasp and yet it's so powerful. So I'm definitely going to start reminding myself of that anytime that I get lazy or tired. And I hope that our listeners, if they're going to walk away with anything, anything, at the bare minimum, walk away with that. Start applying that to your life and see how much it's going to change.

Chris, I totally agree with you. I love that quote. I'm going to pick that one up and take with me after this podcast. What a great guest, Chris. Thank you for your time. Thank you for dropping all the pearls of wisdom that you did with us today. We want to thank our podcast sponsor, DirectClicks, Matt and Maddie Jones. If you're interested in online marketing, we spent a lot of time talking about marketing today, local advertising, event marketing. But Chris did mention that he still uses Google AdWords. He still uses social media and SEO. So if you're interested in Google AdWords, contact Matt and Maddie Jones there. That's directclicksinc.com, directclicksinc.com.

And until next time, lead well and stay classy.