Episode 152: Fireside Chat - Become The CFO of Your Business with Micah Cannon

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. Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation. Check them out at club.capital.

Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we bring back Micah Cannon. He's the COO of Club Capital. This is a new series we decided to bring to all of you, these Wednesday episodes. We're going to provide a ton of value. There's so many different things that we wanted to be able to share talking about updates with taxes and financial planning, and then just even webinars that Club Capital has hosted so we could recast those. We knew it didn't really fit on the Monday interview episodes and then on the solo episodes that we started doing a few months ago. We're now going to move those to Friday, but we wanted to create something so we could provide more value to you, our community. And then the podcast has really grown. And so we're excited to begin to bring these Wednesday episodes to you. And today's first episode, we begin talking about CFO services with Club Capital, kind of how that came about and what the value is and how you can think about having a CEO, CFO, or really becoming the CFO for yourself and your small business, your agency. And so without further ado, here's my very first fireside chat with Micah Cannon, CEO of Club Capital.

This podcast is brought to you by Autopilot Recruiting. Join over 1,200 State Farm agents in putting your recruiting on autopilot. Any successful insurance agent will tell you how important team is. Finding those rockstar team members doesn't happen when left to chance. It happens through consistent recruiting. You never know when you're going to lose a team member, and the key to an incredible team is constantly searching for the best talent. Autopilot Recruiting is a continuous recruiting service where you'll be assigned a recruiter that has been trained to recruit on your behalf every business day. This recruiter will take over and revamp your CareerPlug, send out assessments, do pre-screen phone interviews, and schedule your in-office interviews. All you need to do is to show up and give a thumbs up or a thumbs down. This ongoing service is extremely affordable and a no-brainer for taking your insurance agency to the next level. Listeners of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, go to autopilotrecruiting.com and use the code Club Capital to get started. Again, autopilotrecruiting.com and use the code Club Capital to get started.

Maka Cannon, welcome back to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Thanks for having me, Bradley. Good to be a guest again.

Yeah, man. So obviously we decided, uh, not long ago that we were going to start having some fireside chats. We had a lot of different just announcements and other things are really exciting going on with Club Capital. And I really thought that this first conversation that you and I would have would center around some things that I've actually talked about on the, on the podcast itself, and that's CFO Services. But before we get into the in-depth into CFO Services, I thought actually it'd be good if we kind of go back a little bit. Why don't you just take people back around the journey around Club Capital and how the services and the model has been able to continue to grow and expand to be able to serve, obviously, your customers at the highest level. And then we can kind of get into where and how CFO Services fit into that.

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, so CFO Services is definitely an evolution, uh, of, of what we've been providing, uh, to the market for the past 4, 5 years, um, and is, is definitely something that, that you know, was intentional. It was something we knew we would be offering at some point, but really timing of us offering this is really based upon feedback from clients, you know, which is kind of the best thing that we can hope for, you know. But CFO Services really is a stepping stone from that base level of having good financials for your small business. And that's really where Club Capital started. You know, Club Capital Services and Club Capital as a whole, we offer financials, monthly financials and tax services to insurance agents specifically. And that was our goal from the very start, is to have those types of specialized services built specifically for the niche of insurance. you know, from the get-go, right? And so what we did is we started offering just those two general services with the, the kind of backbone of the insurance mindset from day one, which, you know, was in, gosh, late 2016, early 2017. And we have been kind of perfecting that model over the last 5 years and, and growing pretty significantly within the insurance space. Specifically on the State Farm and Allstate side. And we've been getting incredibly good at delivering financials on a very routine basis at a very cost-efficient manner to agents. So how good can we be at the cost point that is right for agents? And that's not as easy as it sounds. It honestly took, took years. It took partnerships. It took technology investment for us to be incredibly efficient at delivering really the, the output and the reports that we wanted that clearly show financials compared to, you know, past numbers compared to other agents, doing financials for agents in a way that they haven't really seen before, but still doing it at a cost-efficient, uh, in a cost-efficient way. And so That's taken, you know, 5+ years to do. And we obviously have the entire CPA side of our business, right, that does end-of-year tax preparation and filing for the businesses as well as for all the owners and their families. And so what and where we're at now is really going to the advisory side for both sides of our firm, right? And the two sides of our firm are one, the tax side, and the other is what we're now calling, you know, we did call it just monthly accounting before, but we're calling it finance and advisory services, right? So we have finance and advisory and tax. And really what we are doing now is, is expanding, you know, both sides into the advisory realm and taking, you know, really a lot of our time. And this is where advisory services tends to be more of your time and your team's time rather than just the product itself. Right. And so that's where CFO Services is, is specifically on, on that finance and advisory monthly accounting piece and taking bookkeeping, the base level of financials for your, for your business, and then starting to, to really be able to analyze it, you know, meet with our team and forecast both the revenue and expense side out so that you know how your agency is doing 6 months, 12 months, even 3 years down the line.

Yeah. You know, some people, whenever they hear about CFO services, they, they think, I've read the books, Traction, Scaling Up, etc., talking about a CFO. In the small businesses that you're serving, nobody has a CFO on staff. It's not necessary for them to have a full-time $150,000, $250,000 a year CFO. And so sometimes it can feel— they, they think, man, is that a little too much? Is that a little too much for me to, to take on? Can you just kind of speak to that point about really some of the problems that this CFO Services solves for the everyday business owner who is— they're trying to grow the business. I mean, they're in their business, they're meeting with customers every single day, they're leading their team, they're working on their marketing efforts. Kind of where does this fit in for that business owner that's still wanting to grow but realizes they just don't really have enough time? Is this maybe a little too much for me to have to take on for my agency? Where does it really fit in?

Yeah, so, you know, definitely I think every small business owner, you know, has definitely had this thought at some point of, you know, do I need a CFO or or the question of, wait, am I the CFO?

Right?

Am I? I think I am, right? And so especially within, you know, the market that we serve, you know, there's definitely no direct need to have a full-time CFO. I mean, it just, it wouldn't fit into any budget that you would have or that we would create for you. CFOs are definitely expensive and the better they are, the more expensive they are, right? And so, you know, having a direct CFO for this size company, unless you're trying to scale, you know, into that, you know, $5 million plus mark on an annual revenue is likely just not necessary. And so what CFO services do, there's, you know, other firms that provide and what we provide is being able to, to have someone, you know, that is a CFO or can provide those types of services so that you can start being that CFO. And so I think there's a clear delineation here between, you know, some of the services we provide and maybe some, some other services. When we look at our CFO services, one of the big goals that Club Capital has with this new product and service line is to help you, the business owner, be a better CFO, right? You are the CFO in your business. You do not have the budget for nor need for a full-time CFO. Hiring an outsourced CFO, they typically work between 6 to 8 different clients, is still too much. Yep. Is still too much. So like when you look at these virtual CFO services that are out there, right, virtual CFOs are true. You are hiring that, that CFO, right? And that maybe team, right, that typically work on maybe 6 to 8 clients at a time is still very expensive. What our services are designed for is really just to make that next step towards, towards that, right? So it's a little bit in between general bookkeeping, right, and having financials and then having a, you know, a CFO. It's bridging that gap. And we're really in the right market, I think, for, you know, for our specific client base, really to just provide the types of tools that they need as well as the guidance on our end from very skilled accountants to show them what should they be doing as the CFO? Yeah, right. And so that's really where our CFO services come in. We don't want to be that CFO. We're not going to— we haven't priced it where we're going to be your virtual CFO, right? We've put— we've come into, into the market in a place where we really want to be able to give you the tools and that skill set. And these are some of the things you talk about, right, to other business owners, the skill set, tool set, mindset, right? We want to be able to do that for agency owners through CFO services. So we'll provide the tools, we'll go through it with you, and we'll kind of teach you how to use them so that you can be that CFO. Part of the thing when a lot of agents will say, I think I'm the CFO, you know, a lot of times it's like, do you even have the right tools at your disposal to be making the decisions a CFO would make? And it starts with the financials, which is just general base services. Every business needs to have it. But outside of just financials, and this is, you know, I think really good thinking for other people to think about, CFO services is about looking through, you know, the windshield of the car, right? General financials are about looking in the rearview mirror. And that's great, right? It doesn't discount general bookkeeping. But the aspect of bookkeeping is looking at what has happened, right? What has already happened? How have we been doing? CFO services is okay, great. Let's understand by some of our past performance as well as, you know, things we know and some assumptions that we can make, what will happen in the future so that we can make decisions normally ahead of time instead of where a lot of businesses tend to make them is in real time.

Right?

They're going, what's— you know, I hired somebody, now what, right? Um, and so what we want to do is get ahead of those.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's a huge distinction that people really pick up. And it's kind of like, you know, I've had this conversation offhand, we should probably start just recording those every time we talk. We should just record them because we just turned it into a podcast. But yeah, it really is about, you know, budget. And it's not to— I think it's really, and not just an exception of what people were getting before and the importance of that because you want to be able to get the financials, look back and say, how did we perform? But it really is a big difference between actually now forecasting and looking forward. And I think that analogy about the windshield versus looking in the rearview mirror, it's not about whether or not, you know, you only look at one. It needs to really be both. And it is equipping the business owners with the acquisition of additional skills along with the proper tools and even the mindset to say, okay, well, how frequently should I look at this? And then also, what's the right mindset for me to have around the investment in my team? I mean, you and I've had so many conversations around just people you've talked to that are fired up coming back and they're going to hire a whole sales team, right? 5 people. And, and without the actual right windshield ahead, they would have no idea that they were going to run out of cash in 3 or 4 months. Can you just speak to those type of— maybe even allude with obviously not indicting what a person in particular, but just sharing some of those type of decisions that having these school skills and these tools can help people to be able to make better decisions in their business?

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I think, you know, where we can help and where our team ends up helping a lot with these is, you know, you know, again, not being the CFO, we're not making the decision for you, which I think is a clear delineation, you know, for a lot of business owners is, okay, I don't want to sign up for someone to give, give give away control of the business here. I can— without equity, I can tell you we're definitely not, not going to take any control of the business or of the decisions. But we want to try and help you think about the way we might make decisions, right? If we were in your shoes, here's some of the things I would look at, right? And so, you know, our general services and we, we continue to provide, you know, know-how and videos and knowledge base articles. You know, around just general financials. Um, and so some of it is, is really helping people understand that the difference between the three financial statements, right? A P&L is not the only thing you look at, you know, as a business owner and trying to understand how well is my business doing. Um, but really understanding the difference, um, between profit and cash flow is, is definitely a big one. Um, the more debt you have, you know, out on the business, the, um, you know, the, the the harder it can be to kind of sometimes gauge, you know, how well am I doing here when you're just thinking, wow, I seem to be profiting quite a bit, but I don't see that in my bank account. Right. Which is definitely what a lot of business owners will say is, is starting to understand that. And so we do that generally. But what CFO Services does is really, you know, some of it is allotting just more time to really work with you and work with some of our senior finance specialist to, to really dive through that and understand what that means, right? What are the thresholds you need to have? What are the targets you need to have for your specific agency, your specific business, that makes it, you know, to where the margins are right for you? Yeah, right. A 10% operating margin for one business, or, you know, if you if you hail 20% as a good, you know, target to have just because other people have it, you know, depending on, you know, what the financials are of your business or the things going on in your own personal life, that might not be the right target for you to have. Yeah. And so really trying to get behind that and understand, you know, what are the goals we need to have for your business so that we can help you achieve them or to help you forego decisions where all of a sudden you're not achieving the goal that, that you need, right? Which is where definitely we see some people run into sometimes when they just make quick decisions. You know, we'll get onto calls sometimes, we say, how are things going? You know, has anything kind of changed or, or, you know, come up over the past month since, you know, we've had, you know, another meeting and, Yeah, we've hired 4 people. Okay. You know, initially the last time we met, the plan was to hire one and the financials looked great for that. You know, what happened here? You know, and I just, they were great. I think, you know, we're doing really well right now and I just think let's get it while it's hot. Yeah. Right. And You know, at the end of the day, that's your decision to make. But, you know, what our team does is say, great, let's model this out and see how this is going to look.

Yeah.

And so being able to kind of do that and then, you know, sometimes say, okay, you know, we can squeak by here, it looks like, you know, or it says, hey, you know, based upon this, based upon the way the cash flow is trending and where, you know, what's current in the business operating account, you might need to look for some more additional funds, you know, either cut some expenses or additional outside funding will be needed, you know, within the next 6 months, right?

I think it's one of those things where it helps give the business owner a little bit of a, a little bit of a check, right, on their emotions. And you just mentioned one about things are going great, I'm fired up, we're on fire, my bank account says it's got extra cash in it, so therefore I'm going to double down and go higher and 3 more people instead of 1 that I said. And then the reverse of that could be true. Things are struggling. We start cut back, cut back, cut back, you know, to try to be able to conserve. And being able to have someone who's an objective, kind of a third party to be able to look at this logically, to be able to say, what's the right decisions to be able to make here? Maybe there's not enough investment in the business from a marketing perspective as a really good way, you know, They're only investing 1% of their top line revenue. Well, it's gonna be really hard to grow when you're only investing 1% of revenue back into the business from a marketing perspective. So I think it's helping that business owner is what I hear is not make every decision in the business based off just your emotions in the moment, but, or for that week, but also being able to see what's a sound business practice and let's go model that out.

Yeah, I think in addition to not only being able to help agents, you know, know that they have the tools to be able to help them make decisions, right? Because some of what we want is them to say, look, reference your financials before you make a decision, right? Reference your goals before you make a decision, right? Is what I'm going to do now, you know, going to help me achieve my goals? And a lot of times the answer is yes, you know, but what we do from our side is we say, what about financial goals, right? I mean, I think a lot of times, you know, hiring more people, selling more, Of course that helps us achieve our goals. That doesn't— I mean, if that was the case, you know, every business tomorrow would hire 2,000 salespeople, right? If that is the case, right? It's just, does it fully make sense financially to do that? Right. And so let's run that to ground. Right. And so in addition to having the tools, what I think is really important too is to stress especially for sole business owners, which much of our clients are, um, you have someone else to bounce ideas off of as well. And again, we are not the ones making the decisions for you, and I don't want the liability behind, you know, helping you make some of these decisions. But, um, I think, you know, specifically in, in the market that we are today, um, we focus on the insurance side everyone is generally a sole business owner, right? There are couples, you know, that tend to have some business partners and things like that. But especially for those that are sole business owners, there's no one else checking them on decisions that are being made. And being someone that, you know, I, one of the owners of Club Capital and in a partnership that we have, it is immensely valuable to be able to bounce ideas off someone else. Now, in this case, they have vested interest, you know, but, you know, but that's really what we want to be able to bring to agency owners as well, is that, that other voice of saying, hey, talk to me about some of the decisions you're willing to make and maybe do so before you make them, right? So that we can help say, you know, hey, that looks like a sound financial decision. Right.

You know what? I have to comment on that real quick. I've actually thought about doing an episode, um, solo episode on this very thing. You mentioned the word voice. So often looking back on it, Mike, and my own journey of business ownership, I'm sure you could speak to this yourself too, and your team could, is that a lot of the decisions that I wish I could take back have to go back to, I only had one voice in the conversation and it was mine. I only had one voice in the conversation. And so therefore, I was regurgitating the same thing over and over, convincing myself. I mean, the level of self-deception we can have truly as humans, let alone business owners, is pretty amazing. And the voice that I only had in the conversation was one versus allow— coming from a place of humility, allowing someone else to have a voice in the conversation. Thoughts?

Yeah, no, absolutely. Um, I mean, we just see it time and time again. I mean, again, CFO Services, we wanted to have something like this, uh, you know, we always knew we wanted some sort of advisory type service around this from the start, but really the service that we offer today and the training that we provide our entire team around this is based upon what we've seen over the past 5 years and becoming experts within our space and knowing the industry so well and seeing how 600+ other agents are doing it right and making some of these decisions. Or, oh, I've seen when people have made this decision before, here's how it went, right? You know, having that context is super helpful. You know, when going into, you know, to make what can be, you know, what is normally a very impactful financial decision for the owner in particular. Right. And because what we want to remind people is every financial decision that they're making, it's for the business, but it impacts profit, which 100% impacts you. Right. You are the sole owner. So every financial decision, every expense you decide to have your business make is, you know, that much less on profitability.

Yeah.

Right. So yes, can things have, you know, ROI and tremendous ROI? Absolutely. But remember that it is affecting your income first. Yeah.

You know, I was thinking about this from, from my own journey, and it's a great thinking time question for some of you out there that are listening to this. How much money would you have in your bank account today if you could rewind any 3 of the biggest financial mistakes that you've made in your business? I mean, It would be a lot more than it is today if I could rewind this right now. Have I learned from this? Yes, I have. But the reality is, goes back to if from the get-go I had another voice in it and had a— okay, not literal invested in terms of equity, but wanted to see me succeed, wanted to be able to say, hey, we want you to be able to maximize this opportunity of your business. So that you walk away with more money, I would have made a lot different decisions. Yeah. And sure, would I have been— would I have— I would have had checks and balances. I would have had checks and balances, period, in my business. And so hopefully just that question alone has spurred some of you to think, yeah, maybe I need to have somebody else in the conversation. You want to just touch on real quick and then you can— well, share with people how they can, you know, get in touch with somebody on the team. And but what does it actually look like? Okay, so somebody's listening to this and saying, okay, give me the literal— this sounds good, I'm kind of bought into it philosophically, but what does the actual experience look like? Can you speak to that, Michael?

Yeah, sure. So, um, and I'll speak to this from the lens of, you know, I think maybe not being, uh, you know, a current Club Capital client, um, as well. So, you know, our base services, you know, are on the finance and advisory side of our business, our monthly accounting, right? And so monthly accounting is about providing monthly reports to you published every single month automatically. We have a full dashboard where, you know, with tasks that remind you of recurring tasks every single month, which are likely things that you have to upload to make sure that our team, you has everything provided to them every month. But the idea is to really automate the monthly financial side of your business as much as possible. All of the reports are published by the 20th of the month, every single month without fail. You meet with our account manager by default, you know, once per quarter, but can have it, you know, every month if you would like. But what CFO Services does is really you know, piggybacks on top of our normal services. We make sure that we meet with you every single month. You'll meet with a senior member of our Finance and Advisory Services team, and we make sure to not only do a monthly review and, you know, variance analysis of your financials. And, you know, for those not familiar, variance analysis is the thing that, that you know, CFOs and accountants do, right? We are looking for things that are out of the ordinary, right? Looking for how things compare to previous periods, the last month, same month of last year, etc., right? We're trying to look at that and we want to do that with you, right? So you understand your financials. But then what a lot of the CFO services do is around modeling, right? So we really— I'm interested about the future. Right. That's awesome. We already know here's how the financials are. Here's how you ended up. Here's how you compare to your goal, right? Because what we really want to do every month is not just say, here's how you did compared to last month and here's how, how well you did compared to last year. Those are the things that we should be doing regularly anyway. But we— the third thing we want to say is, how are you doing compared to how you wanted to do?

Yeah. Yeah.

Right. Which is so important.

Yeah.

Right. So important because you might be, let's just say, you know, revenue was up $10,000 over last month or profit was up $10,000 over last month. But if what you wanted was $20,000 and you had planned for $20,000, right? Well, you know, then did you do as good as you really thought you were going to do and plan to do? Right? And you have some expenses coming down the line because you expected $10,000 more, right? So it's really about that next level of trying to understand you and your business a little bit more. So we work with you very individually to build out models that are incredibly 100% unique and specific to your business. We forecast every single line item of revenue. And every single line item of expenses so that you can very clearly see the roadmap ahead, right? Whether that's good, whether it's a little bit shaky right now and we can help you, you know, make some, you know, changes, some decisions to maybe get it back on track. But we help you set that right revenue expense target, a budget for you so that you can understand where you're going to be And so you can really have some things to track against on a monthly basis.

Love it. Yeah, I think the part that you— that just stands out to me is the fact that how are you doing relative to a period of time in the past? So comparison. So just seeing the number is one thing, but then seeing it relative to last quarter, last month, last year, rolling 12 months, all of those things give you tremendous amount of perspective. But number 2, the fact is, how are you doing relative to what you want to do? Which means that you would have set out some financial goals to begin with, right? And I think for all of everyone listening, if you're an agency owner, business owner, every activity in the business has a trickle-down effect ultimately to your financials in some way, shape, form, or fashion. Those activities was— I think a lot of people can, can logically see activities, uh, affecting sales numbers, retention numbers, customer counts, etc. But it's going to that next level to say, how is this going to affect my financials? I think that's great. Micah, I did want to ask you one last question. Is there anything else around coming up, maybe the tool itself, that you think would be pertinent for people to be able to know?

Yeah, absolutely. There's, there's one specific area of the tool that's definitely stood out for a lot of the clients utilizing CFO Services today, and that's an area of our platform in the forecasting part of our tool that is called Microforecasts. And what this is, is really the ability to forecast and look at the financial impact of all of those decisions that you have been kind of thinking about, or you wake up, you know, in the middle of the night thinking, you know what, I should do this, or what if I did this, I think this would be good return, right? Or what if I invested into this different marketing channel? It is that area of the platform to really forecast those decisions, right? And so what do I mean by this? Let's just take, you know, I think a very popular one here. Is, you know, what if I hired a new sales team member? What is the true ROI on that? Right. And I think people have been trying to do this, you know, back of the hand, on the napkin, in some Excels for quite a while. Right. And so our tool, you know, just does a really good job of doing that. You can kind of build it in a kind of separate area than your normal forecast. You don't have to kind of mess up everything that's going on there. And you can really build— and what, what this is, is it's a mini P&L, a mini profit and loss sheet that shows what is the expected, you know, incoming revenue from a new team member based on these sales, these specific sales that they will have, and, you know, the premium that they're writing versus the expense that you should have for them. And that could be salaries, payroll taxes, you know, some additional marketing that you're doing because you have this new team member. And so we can really look at the incomings versus outgoings, the profit and loss of this team member and understand what is the initial investment that you're making? And how much do you have to fully invest? You know, kind of how many months is it negative? How much do you have to fully invest in a new team member before it starts coming back around? Right, and it's profitable, and it starts paying off, right? So an example is, wow, okay, it takes about, you know, 8 to 12 months for somebody to become profitable, but then it takes another 8 months before I actually get fully paid back on it. And so understanding that and just the visual of that itself has been super impactful for agents, and it helps them actually make decisions and also time their decisions, right? So a lot of what CFO Services is not about telling, you know, we're not just the naysayers, right? I think a lot of times people look at accountants and be like, no, every time I tell them, they're like, don't do that. No, it's not always about don't do this, but it can also be about, hmm, it looks like, you know, might be better to do that 3 months from now because it fits better into your, into your financials and your cash flow. Right. And so that has just been a super valuable part of the tool that I definitely did want to mention, you know, for people here today. Yeah.

You know, behind my whatever shoulder that is, my left shoulder, I guess. Is my diploma from Auburn. And no comments about Auburn's football team right now, but I got my degree in finance. You and I have— I've been very vulnerable and open. So now here I am, mentioned on the podcast. I did not know the difference really in a small business perspective between profit and cash the way that I needed to. And so what you were just mentioning around people doing Excel or really just maybe looking at their bank account saying, well, I got extra money, I can afford it at the end of the month, I've got X amount left over, I think I'm be able to do it, but not actually understanding the difference between those two things and how it actually impacts my financial statements on a monthly basis. And then the part that's so important there is how long is it going to be able to give me a return on my investment in that team member and really calculating that and saying there's upfront cost of what it takes to actually get somebody off the ground and running. You know, there's how many months is going to take. They're not going to just walk in their door day one and start producing from the get-go. It doesn't just work that way. And so do you have enough dry powder, cash stored up to be able to weather that, assuming that they're going to be able to work out for the period of time? I think it's so, I think it's so, so great. I appreciate you sharing that.

Yeah, absolutely.

Uh, Mike, if somebody wants to like talk to somebody on the team, uh, and book a demo but actually kind of dive into what does this actually look like, etc., where would you, uh, point them to?

Yeah, so, uh, first off, if you're a current Club Capital client, please talk to your account manager about this, uh, stat. Uh, they definitely want to talk to you. They, they're all, um, you know, certified in our CFO services. As well. So please definitely reach out to them. If you are not, you can learn more about our CFO services by going to our website. It is just club.capital, and you can do /CFO-services, or you can just on the main page, you can schedule a demo in the, in the top right-hand side and talk to one of our sales team members. This has been fun. It has. Thank you so much for having me. I'm obviously an avid listener of our podcast, but it's good to be back on. I don't think I've been back on since the beginning, right? When we initially launched.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's going to change now moving forward for sure.

All right. Appreciate you. All right. Thanks, Bradley.

There's a few things I still always want to do a quick recap on my conversations, even on these Wednesday episodes. To help all of you. I think number one is helping you to become a better CFO as opposed to trying to go out to hire an expensive CFO. And I think it really is about the skill set, the tool set, and the mindset. How do you get the right skills that you can acquire, the right tools in your tool belt, and then also the mindset to help you to be able to make better decisions? I loved his analogy of windshield versus the rearview mirror and really the importance of having both. And then I think it's just also when we talked about having financial goals, you all have goals, targets, outcomes that you want to achieve in your small business, in your agency. But what about financial goals for the business and for yourself? And then hopefully that serves some of you around me just mentioning that if you could rewind any of the 3 biggest financial mistakes that you've made in your business, how much money would you have? And then also the fact of we talked about just having one voice in the conversation versus being able to bring somebody not really from the outside, but really knows your business to be able to help you to make better decisions in managing the financials so you can be more profitable and ultimately bring more money and to hire more people so that you can actually achieve more of the goals that you have. Before I let you go, big shout out to our other podcast sponsors that make all of this possible for us to be able to serve all of you. Coach B, Rock Solid Assistants, and DirectClicks. If you are wanting to, if it's not an executive assistant, I guarantee you may want a growth assistant. If you wanna grow, you wanna have somebody that's gonna be able to help you. Do the most important thing, which is to be able to help protect your time as a business owner, you need an executive assistant, or maybe what would be a better way to put it, a growth assistant. So reach out to Tracy and the team, go to rocksolidassistance.com. And if you're looking to want to be able to grow within your marketing, uh, SEO, pay-per-click, go to Direct Clicks, go to directclicksinc.com. And if you've listened to this podcast, you know the value and the importance of developing yourself. And there's none better, uh, for agency owners than Coach P, David Peterson. Go to coachpconsulting.com. Make sure you mention that you heard about him on the podcast and he'll give you your entire first month off. So hopefully you enjoyed our very first fireside chat with Micah. We're going to be bringing these to you each and every Wednesday. We really work hard to be very consistent with our drop schedule, and now we're going to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday drop schedule. I think this is gonna hopefully add a ton of value, whether it's an interview that we do on a Monday, one of these type of interviews we do on a Wednesday, or one of the solo episodes that I have been bringing to you previously on Thursdays. Now we'll be dropping those on Friday. All right, everyone, until next episode, lead well.

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 is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation? Check them out at club.capital.