Episode 146: The Bottom Line - Low Info Diet
In this Club Capital Leadership Podcast episode, host Bradley Hamner opens by framing the core challenge for small‑business and agency owners: growing leadership, developing teams, and scaling profitably. After a brief sponsor spot for Club Capital’s accounting and advisory services for insurance agencies, Hamner dives into the main theme – a "low information diet." He explains how he previously consumed a flood of books, podcasts, courses, and workshops without a clear focus, which left him "a mile wide and an inch deep." He advocates intentionally narrowing learning to a few high‑impact areas (e.g., marketing, culture, feedback, habits) and then immersing deeply in the best resources for those topics. He shares concrete book recommendations (e.g., The Culture Code, Radical Candor, Atomic Habits, Dan Kennedy’s No‑BS series, Russell Brunson’s traffic guides) and explains how to select mentors, podcasts, and courses that align with the chosen focus. Hamner uses a personal analogy of finishing everything on a plate to illustrate why limiting the amount of content you start is crucial – if it’s not valuable, put it down. He encourages listeners to assess their skill gaps, pick one or two areas to improve, and then consume curated, deep‑dive material, rather than trying to learn everything. The episode ends with a call to action to apply the low‑info‑diet approach, thanking listeners for their time and promising future episodes with guests like Mark Miller.
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. 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 and 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 team, so if there's one thing that I love more than business, it is personal development. I love listening to podcasts. It was really my love of listening to podcasts that prompted me to come to the Club Capital team to ask them about starting this podcast. I love reading books. You should see how many books that, uh, I have at different places. Although I've mentioned before that I've really cut down on the number of books that I've read this year, I got to the point to where I was reading books just to try to hit a goal as opposed to actually taking the information in. That's a little bit about what today's episode is really all about. And so for many of you, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably the same way. You probably love, uh, investing in courses. You might list love going to workshops. You love being on different teleconferences to be able to learn from your peers. You love having conversations with some of your peers, going to chamber events, just learning. And the process of that is really maybe what Dan Sullivan would call a unique ability in and of itself, your ability to just digest so much information. Well, I'm the same way. The problem is that I found at one point, and it was really recently, this was for me, and maybe this was helpful, I hope it's helpful for all of you, is that I was taking in information just to take in information, as opposed to taking in information based on me trying to get better in a specific area. So I was reading something, there's a book, uh, somebody had actually recommended multiple times called The Psychology of Money. Many of you may have read it. Then I've been reading and studying a lot around just marketing and digital marketing itself, not just SEO and pay-per-click like DirectClicks does, but just actual digital marketing in this space. What does it look like with on YouTube and Facebook and TikTok, for goodness sakes, and all these other places? Well, so I'm studying around money and finance, and then I'm studying general business books, and then I'm taking in leadership podcasts, etc. And so I ended up kind of being spread a lot, uh, really thin in a lot of areas as opposed to going very deep in just a few areas. And so, uh, I've decided that I really needed to go on a low information diet. And what I mean by that is not necessarily to stop reading books, not listen to podcasts, not invest my time. In fact, I think some of the best returns I've ever gotten has been investing in my own development. I'm sure many of you, it's been the exact same way. Instead, think about— really spend some thinking time. Most important thing you can do for the business is to think about the business and to say, what are the skills that I'm lacking? And then what are all the books, some of the best books around that area What are some— maybe the course or a mentor or somebody else, and let me go deep on this for a period of time. And that's exactly what I've done. And so I kind of put to the side some of the personal development books, put to the side a book like The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma, the book The Psychology of Money, which I was really enjoying. I set that to the side for a period of time. I set aside the book The 5 AM Club, and I set aside some other books that were great, just general personal development. Books. And I said, I really want to go deep on some marketing. I really want to understand this. And so I started to read books. I mentioned this before around Dan Kennedy. So I read a lot of his No BS books. I read, read some books by Russell Brunson around driving traffic to certain areas and really wanted to begin to think, okay, what do— who are all the best experts in this area? And How can I curate the content, some of their podcasts, etc.? And that has been really helpful because I didn't really necessarily pick up on the fact that I was a mile wide and an inch deep. So I would encourage you to think about this. What is an area, or maybe two, that you say, you know what, from a place of humility, this is really where I want to get better? Maybe it is around culture. And so you go and you pick up the book The Culture Code, and you pick up on other books. Maybe it's around giving feedback. And so you look at— read a book around Radical Candor by Kim Scott, which is a fantastic book. There's another book on feedback, um, thanks, called Thanks for the Feedback. So you say, hey, I really want to be better at that, actually coaching my team. Well, those are two great books. Um, and of course you can listen to Kim's— Kim Scott, uh, who she's gone on different podcasts. You could read books by Simon Sinek, great leadership books. Maybe it's about you want to establish better habits and you really want to ingrain certain habits around drinking water, exercising, meditating, praying, journaling, etc. Well, go read Atomic Habits, go read, um, Oh, there's Tiny Habits is a great book. And so you could begin to digest all the information around tiny habits. And I'll say this last thing. I was— when I was growing up, my dad always told me to finish my plate. I don't know if any of you have had that shared with you. Always finish your plate. And so guess what I did? I would work to try to always finish my plate. And still it's very hard for me. If it's on my plate, I'm going to finish it. And so I needed to do some things about using smaller plates and just not putting as much in front of me, because if it was in front of me, I have a hard time not eating it. And so, uh, the same way is true with books. I would have this idea that if I need to finish whatever it is I start. And so if I started a book, even if I didn't really like it and I felt like they were just sharing the same information over and over and over and over again, that I had I had to finish the book because I started it. Excuse me. I don't believe that now. If a book is not good, put it down. If this podcast— if you've gotten what you need out of this podcast, stop it. Your time and attention is precious. We've had guests on before that I'm sure some of you immediately resonate with. You hang on every word that someone shares. And then the next episode, maybe the topic, maybe the guest that I've had on is just not something that really resonates with you. Um, that's understandable. Full transparency, same thing with me. I've had some people on where I was like, oh, this is a fascinating discussion to me. I absolutely love it. You could probably tell in some of them even. And then other ones, great people. I'm not certainly going to share who those people would be, but maybe not as interesting of a topic or their personality, etc., didn't jive. And then other times I've really jived with people. We've had hour-long discussions after we hit record and we've even stayed in touch since then. And other people, not as much. And so really allow yourself to consider what are some of the skills, the beliefs, or the traits that you feel like that you're trying to develop? I just mentioned a few— leadership, culture design, giving feedback to your team. Maybe it's recruiting. There's some great books around recruiting. Go read Steve Sugg's book, Can They Sell? And we're having Mark Miller on, an executive with Chick-fil-A, in a few weeks. He's got some amazing books on recruiting and culture and leadership. Allow yourself to go deep in those areas. And then at the same time, if there is a podcast or something that you feel like, you know what, I just want to go here. And focus on these areas instead of being so generalized and just reading. I mean, there's just a never-ending amount of good books, podcasts, courses, et cetera, that you can take. You just can't do it all. And so allow yourself to be able to go on a low information diet. Truly, I just mean go deep in a few areas, learn from the very best, and then what do I need to learn now? What's the next thing? And I think it's been helpful to me to do that. and I hope that that idea is helpful to you. Appreciate you so much giving me your time and your attention. As I always say, I do hope that you got a great return on your investment in these few minutes. All right, everybody, till next episode, lead well.
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