Episode 128: The Bottom Line - M.I.T. Yourself
In this short-form leadership podcast, host Bradley Hamner (joined by a co‑host) launches a new weekly series called “The Most Important Thing.” The episode focuses on the single most important action a small‑business owner can take for themselves: protecting their confidence. Hamner argues that confidence erodes when entrepreneurs dwell on challenges instead of celebrating wins. He recommends a habit of weekly win‑capture during a Sunday‑night (or Monday‑morning) planning session, reviewing the past week’s successes and recording them. He extends the practice to team one‑on‑ones, suggesting leaders start meetings by sharing wins before discussing metrics or shortcomings. The episode includes sponsor messages for Club Capital (accounting and advisory for insurance agencies), DirectClick (Google Ads/SEO for agencies), Coach P Consulting (sales coaching), and Rock Solid Assistants (virtual assistant hiring). Throughout, Hamner references other leaders (Michael Hyatt, Donald Miller, Tim Scherer) to illustrate how confidence must be actively maintained as a business scales. The tone is conversational, instructional, and motivational, aiming to give listeners an immediately applicable habit to boost confidence and, by extension, leadership effectiveness.
Chapters
So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable?
That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers.
I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.
Welcome to The Bottom Line, a new weekly podcast series that we drop every Thursday to complement our weekly Monday podcast interviews with the industry leaders. These podcasts are going to be designed to give you short, impactful, and value-driven information that you can start using right away in your business. I value your time and attention and will do my very best not to waste it. Just get what you need and go. So with that, let's get into today's episode.
Are you an agency owner looking to grow your revenue, increase your bottom line, and better manage your taxes? Club Capital is here to help. Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agents in the country, providing monthly accounting, tax strategy, and CFO services. Way more than bookkeeping and your everyday run-of-the-mill tax prep, Club Capital is focused on providing financial and tax advisory services that help you plan and forecast your agency's performance. Their financial dashboards and agency forecasting tools help you better understand your agency's historical performance, create, measure future targets, and see how your agency compares to your peers around the country. Imagine what it would be like to understand the impact to your bottom line when deciding to hire a new employee, or forecast the impact rate changes or commission rates will have on your business. With over $200 million in tracked annual revenue and $140 million in tracked annual expenses, Club Capital has the data and the team to help you make better informed decisions for your agency. They will help you turn that back office stress into the backbone of your agency's success by giving you the tools to take your agency and your leadership to the next level. Visit club.capital today to book a solution overview with one of our business consultants. Club Capital, way more than a CPA firm.
Hey everyone. So over the next couple weeks, I'm gonna do a series called The Most Important Thing. There's actually a book that I wish I could tell you who the person was that recommended. In fact, I don't even know if somebody recommended it. I think it was on a website and it was, for whatever reason, interesting enough. And I think it has to do with money and it's called The Most Important Thing. So I got it. This was maybe 2 or 3 years ago, and admittedly I haven't read it yet, but it did get me to thinking, what is the most important thing? And I could never settle on one, but I did settle on 3. And that is, what is the most important thing that you can do for yourself? What is the most important thing that you can do for your team? And what's the most important thing that you can do for your business? And so over the next 3 weeks, I'm gonna take each one of those and share with you my thoughts. It's been helpful for me to be able to think through these things, and I kind of go back to 'em, and I've shared 'em obviously with some other business owners as well. And so I hope that it serves you and your business and where you are as you continue to grow in your leadership. And so this week is, what is the most important thing that you can do for yourself? You know, business is hard. Business is hard. In fact, it gets harder. You know, the faster you want to go, the further you want to go, the more challenges and difficulties that you're going to face along the way. And if you've been a small business owner or even identify as an entrepreneur, You go through these emotional roller coasters. You go through times where we wish that it wasn't through the failures and the difficulties that we learn the most, but it oftentimes is. And maybe you're not like me, but I certainly have had times even recently that I began to, uh, have doubts about my ability to lead or my ability to grow a business or my ability to figure something out and realizing I don't have the skills. And at the end of the day, I think the most important thing you can do for yourself because of the challenges is to protect your confidence. And so I think there's a few ways to be able to do that. One of the ways is at the end of the day, whenever you begin to plan your day, looking back on the day that just happened, write down here are a few good things that, that, that, that happened today. Here are some wins. I especially think it's important whenever you're doing your planning for the upcoming week. A lot of people like to do that on Sunday night. That's my preferred time. I think that's the time that I found most business owners enjoy doing it. Some have tried Friday afternoon, some have tried Monday mornings, but Sunday evenings is when most people begin to take, you know, maybe taking Saturday and Sunday off and you start turning your attention to the week ahead. And so when you begin to reflect back on the, the past week, if you can build the habit of looking for the wins and genuinely looking for that, you're going to find more wins. And even in the most challenging of times and of weeks, you can find the wins if you're scanning for them and looking for them. It really becomes, what are you scanning for? Are you scanning for the wins, or are you scanning for only the challenges? And I think that as as a podcast listener, you've already proven to yourself and to us that you want to grow, or otherwise you wouldn't be taking the time to even listen to this podcast. And so because of that, oftentimes we will begin to kind of point out the areas that we need to improve and that we need to get better, or the areas that we're falling short of, the areas that are just not where they need to be. Maybe you're smoking it in these metrics, these sales numbers, the These marketing metrics are great, but there are some sales numbers that are not what they need to be. And I feel like a lot of times the but comes in. Yeah, we had a good month, but this. Yeah, we had a good week, but this. And it's interesting when I'm working with other people and I'll ask them to share their wins, they start to share their wins. And even in a win, how it will start to turn, you know, but Here's the area that's not where I really want it to be. And it's interesting to have people now, they have to check themselves and say, okay, wait, wait, wins, just wins, just focusing on wins. I think it's our human nature to do that. Well, if we only live there, our confidence can begin to wane. Our— if our confidence wanes, we begin to carry ourselves in a different way, and that begins to affect something that I'll talk about. Next week, uh, and it begins to affect the way that our team sees us. So I think above all else, you have to do everything possible to protect your confidence, because this is hard. You made the decision. Nobody pushed you into this. Um, you get to, you don't have to. You decided to make the entrepreneurial leap. I think it's Gerber in his book The E-Myth talks about you had some entrepreneurial seizure, if I'm not mistaken. That's what he says. And you decided to make the jump. And for a lot of people, it certainly has been this case for me. It's a lot harder than I ever thought it was going to be. So leading people and trying to grow a business is really, really challenging. And just when you think that you have it, like, if I can only get to this point, if I could get my monthly revenue number to this, if we could get to this point, all the problems would be taken care of. And what ends up happening is, you know, just more problems and more things surface. And if your team is growing, your business is growing, you're serving more customers. You have more customers that, you know, complain. You have team members that begin to continue to have issues. I think about, you know, Michael Hyatt, how much their company has grown. And, you know, they're doing well over 8 figures and have been for quite some time. And they have a team of maybe closer to 100 people. Same thing with Donald Miller. When I talked to Tim Scherer on the podcast— I don't know if it was online or offline— but He was sharing with me about, you know, the challenges that they faced whenever they were doing $250,000 versus the challenges they were doing that they faced whenever they were at $16 million a year. It's totally different. And he said, along the way, my confidence had to continue to level up and I had to do certain things because I realized at the time I didn't have the skills that I needed. I didn't think the way that I needed to think. But above all else, I had to make sure that I protected my confidence. And I think that that is so wise and true for all of us. And so, my hope to you today is that you install a habit, if nothing else, on a weekly basis to look back on the previous week and capture those wins. Because if you do that, install that habit, then when you look back over the quarter, And then of course, when you look back over the year, you're not just going to see the year as one thing, but you can see it as a lot of small wins along the way. So start capturing those wins on a weekly basis when you're doing your— we call it Sunday night planning— when you're doing your planning, whether it's Sunday night or Monday morning, to reflect back on that week. And I think you'll begin to see that you'll start picking it out. And then I'll even encourage you that when you're doing your one-to-ones with your team as well, start with wins. That should be the very first thing you share with them. That's my recommendation. I hope it serves you to start out and get them in the process of sharing wins. Because if you just jump right into their, their numbers, their scorecard, so to speak, it's easy to point out the things that they're falling short on. And there's a time and a place to do that for sure. So I encourage you to begin that habit yourself of capturing the wins and then Consider, uh, doing the same thing with your team as well. I hope this is— I appreciate your time and attention. I realize how valuable it is, and I hope that I've been able to give you a good return on it today. All right, everyone, until next week, lead well. If you're listening to this podcast, I know you're someone who has a growth mindset. You probably want to be able to grow your book of business as well. What DirectClick specializes in helping insurance agencies leverage Google Ads and SEO to drive inbound phone calls. Leads, online visibility, and even organic traffic. You can be confident in knowing exactly how well your ads are working and getting support in what really matters in your business. Get exclusive online marketing support today when you visit directclicksinc.com. You know how important it is to develop yourself and to develop your team. Well, if you're going to do that, you want to do it with the best. Work with Coach P Consulting to learn and implement the same strategies that he used to sell over 700 life policies in 2021 alone. You'll get personalized coaching 2 times a week and an in-depth look at how his office is run, and Coach P will train your team alongside his own. Get your first month free when you mention the Club Capital Leadership Podcast during signup. Visit coachpconsulting.com to get started. If you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you've heard me say many times, the best use of money is to be able to buy back your time. And one of the best ways to do that is by hiring a virtual assistant. Whether it's an executive assistant or creative marketing assistant, Rock Solid has a unique hiring process to net the very best talent, and they intentionally match you with a great fit for you and your team. They value your success as if it were their own, because it is. If you're looking to build a rock solid team for your business, reach out to Tracy and her team at rocksolidassistants.com.
[MUSIC] [MUSIC]
