Episode 174: The Bottom Line - Favorite Books of 2022

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 everyone, so every year I'm now going to finish with some of my favorite books of the year. If you go back and listen to some of the episodes I did, I did one with Chris, I think it would have been 2020, we talked about our favorite books of that year and I went through several different ones and I talked and really was pretty proud of myself that I said I wanted to read 36 books that year, and I was able to get through 36 books. But I will tell you, I think I've mentioned this on some episodes before, that it ended up feeling like a chore, that I was just churning through books to get through books so I could hit this arbitrary goal that I just really pulled out of thin air, to be honest. And so I read a lot fewer books this year, but it was a lot more intentional with the books that are read. And so what I'm going to share with you are 5 or 6 of the top books. And what I'm going to do is I'm just going to give you the books instead of kind of stringing you out. And what are they going to be? I'm just going to tell you what the books are and, and if they— hopefully it serves you. So, uh, number 5 is Measure What Matters. Number 4 is The Psychology of Money. Number 3, The 5 AM Club. Number 2, Lead Like It Matters. And then number 1 is Shoe Dog. And then I'll give you kind of a bonus one. Actually, I'll give you kind of a bonus 2 books is The Almanac of Naval Ravikant and The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. I'm not going to go through— I don't think it's a good use of your time and attention for me to go through every single thing and say, you know, why those books stood out and all the details and favorite quotes and all that. I do that in Notion. That's where I keep track of all the books. I've migrated everything. I was an Evernote person. Now I moved everything to Notion. That's where I keep my book excerpts. But what I'm going to share with you is just some high-level things about why those books really stood out to me more than some of the other books. So number 5, Measure What Matters. This was very influential because when I was working with some business owners throughout the year, uh, you've heard me say I'm not a big goal setter. I don't love to use the word goals. I love to use objectives, targets, outcomes, priorities, etc. Instead of goals. I think goals come a little bit too synonymous with wishes. And then also, I think it unintentionally for me has made it to be more where I'm at today is not good and where I want to be in the future is good. And that wasn't necessarily a healthy place for me. So Measure What Matters helped me tremendously. We now, across all the companies, use OKRs, objectives and key results. And it came from management guru who first originally started with MBOs, management by objectives, and then it migrated over into OKRs. And so I love the idea of OKRs, objectives and key results. Objectives is the what, key results is the how you're going to do it. And so let me give you an example. If you wanted to say, uh, that you want to improve your sales process in 2023, or you want to improve your customer experience, well, in an OKR you could definitely do that. You could make that the objective, and then you could say, here are the key results that support that objective. And what I found was, for myself and then for others, is trying to get people pinned down into 3 to 5 for lack of a better term, goals seemed restrictive. And if you follow typical goal-setting framework, you've heard SMART goals, or some people will refer to them as SMARTER goals. And, you know, it has to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. Look, I get all that. Well, in an OKR framework, what that allows you to do is to say, look, here is our objective. We want to improve our customer experience, or we want to improve our sales process. Okay, now let's drop down and have some key results that actually have some specific numbers. So it's not in the absence of numbers, it's just how it actually is structured. And everybody that I've done this with, and for me personally, has loved it. In the book Measure What Matters, written by John Doerr, he was a big guy with Kleiner Perkins, a venture capital company, for a long time. He wrote a fantastic book. Now I'll tell you The essence of the book is what I just mentioned to you. It goes into some details, especially first couple chapters, and then the rest of the book is really more anecdotal stories of companies that have adopted it. So you can really get— it probably could be more of a 3 or 4 page PDF and you get the essence of it. But I really do love OKRs, and that book helped to influence me in that. Number 4, Psychology of Money. I think this book, as a business owner, along with Mike Michalowicz's Profit First book are two just phenomenal books to read in regards to financials and cash. It's not a book about business financials. I think that if you consider the Profit First book as kind of a hard skill structural, this is the character traits, the habits, The psychology, the soft skills that goes along with money. Um, I've had everybody— I'm actually giving everybody on my team this book, uh, for Christmas to help them on their own personal financial journey of to saving money and building wealth. It is a fantastic book. Uh, tried to get Morgan to come on the podcast. Hopefully we'll be able to get him on at some point in the future. But for you personally, but also for your team, individuals, and your family, that is a phenomenal book. I think it's a great book again that goes along with— totally different, two different sides of it. You know, Profit First is very structural sound of how you allocate money, but you know, if you don't have the discipline, you allocate money to a profit account as Mike says, but then you just go into that profit account and start taking money out, like what good is it? And so what's the discipline, the psychology— obviously it's called The Psychology of Money to allow yourself not to do that. All right, number 3. So this one sat on my, I guess, to-read list for a really long time, and I was like, what? Why is this book being recommended so much? I just don't get it. And it's called 5 AM Club, written by Robin Sharma. He too is somebody that we're trying to get on the podcast. He's written several books, and I thought it was going to be more of a traditional business book about all the different science and the studies around why you should get up at 5 AM. And it wasn't that. It was told more in a fable story format, fictional story. And I will tell you, it takes maybe half the book for it to kind of get going, but the second half of the book is fantastic. Now that's actually kind of different from the majority of books. Especially business books, they'll give you what you need to know in the first 2 chapters, and then everything else is reiterated after that. 5 AM Club is not that way. It's actually the opposite. And so, uh, I, I really encourage you to, to take a look at that book. It gave— it gives a lot of concepts and frameworks, and I love having a framework. The 5 steps to this, the 3, you know, uh, disciplines for something. I love that, and that book does a fantastic job of it. And I really like Robin, and he's had a big influence on me, uh, as to building the habit of around journaling. So definitely pick up that book. Number 2 is Lead Like It Matters, which is written by Craig Groeschel. Love Craig Groeschel. He has a fantastic podcast. I know many of you listen to his podcast. We too have tried to get Craig on. Obviously he's incredibly busy, has an unbelievable following, not just on social media. Look up to Craig as a Obviously never met him by no means, but I think he's just an amazing person, family man. He is a pastor of a church in Oklahoma City. To my knowledge, I think it's actually the largest church in the country, Life.Church. But his leadership podcast is unbelievable. And his book, Lead Like It Matters, look, is written to a faith-based audience. It is for pastoral leaders, but it's the "it" aspect that he talks about, lead like it matters. So how do churches in that case, how do they get it? How do they lose it? How do they keep it? And it really is a fantastic walk around culture because when you think about culture, we've talked about culture on this podcast so many times and we'll probably continue to do that. But culture becomes really hard to define it. And that's what I loved about diving into that book. And he has talked about it's still a great book to listen to or read if you're not in faith-based or even if you have different beliefs. But it really, you can apply it to so many different businesses. I did this with a small group of men. We did use the workbook and we did it for, I think, 10 weeks. We broke down the book and we had a leader each week. And so, I highly recommend doing that, utilizing the workbook. It gives great questions and we just change the questions from, say, a church over to our businesses. So that's a fantastic book. And I love the way that he takes sometimes complex subjects and breaks it down into very simple, easy-to-understand language. So number 2 was Lead Like It Matters. And then number 1 is Shoe Dog, written by Phil Knight. I think this was, again, this was one of the books I, you know, thought, oh, it's just going to be the story of Nike. And it is, but I had no idea. And, you know, Phil Knight is, I think I saw, maybe worth $50 billion. But the trial, the tribulations, the setbacks, the failures, the many times, so many things that could have happened along the way that none of us would have ever heard or known the brand. Nike. And look, whether— whatever you stand for, don't believe in because of what they stand for, etc., but it doesn't matter. It is an incredible story of perseverance and entrepreneurship. And I found myself at the very end fairly emotional just around some stories of his family and etc. And it actually basically takes you up to the time, and I I think in 1989 is when they eventually went public. And so it stops there, um, and then of course the story continues on. So I hope he ends up taking it from writing another book from that point forward. But he really goes all the way back to the '60s and takes you to present day. And, um, I, I tell you what, I, I'm gonna re— I'm considering rereading that book over the Christmas holiday season because it was so good and has just honestly gave me a lot of inspiration around, you know what, just give time time. Just keep doing things, keep showing up, keep trying to deliver and provide value to people, and good things will come. You know, one of the things from that book is volume is the answer, time is the ingredient. And that's why obviously one of the reasons why we went to 3 episodes a week is we just want to continue to provide value for all of you. Through that volume and then just give it time. So volume is the answer, time is the ingredient. So I'm going to give you two final books, uh, just kind of bonuses that really were impactful to me in 2022. And that is The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry and The Almanac of Naval Ravikant. If you've not read or heard about Naval Ravikant, phenomenal book. It was really kind of co-authored with— by Tim Ferriss, which many of you know. Um, he's an entrepreneur, investor, kind of a modern-day philosopher in a lot of ways. That is a phenomenal book. I'm just going to leave it at that. Um, it gave his— I've quoted him on here, uh, several times, and I'm also considering rereading that because I read that at the beginning of the year. And then the last one is The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. The title alone says a lot, okay? And if you find yourself just kind of running ragged, especially at the time of this podcast at the very end of the year and you feel tired and worn out, I encourage you to pick up that book. And it has some very practical tips. And also he tells his journey himself about just being to burnout. And I can relate to that myself back in 2015. And there'll be some weeks that are incredibly busy. As the time I'm recording this, last week was really busy. This week was really busy. And pushing to get to the end of the year to be able to take some time off. So those are my books, my favorite books of 2022: Measure What Matters, The Psychology of Money, 5 AM Club, Lead Like It Matters, Shoe Dog, and then a couple other bonus books, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry and The Almanac of Naval Ravikant. I'm trying to branch out into reading less just straight business books and reading some fiction and reading some more self-help and personal development. And so I'll be curating some books. If you have some book recommendations you think would be great, send them my way. And I try to, as much as I can, some of the people that we have on the podcast, read their books or at least, you know, honor them by reading the first few chapters or getting the idea of it. Obviously, I can't read all of them. I think I'm going to stick to about 12 books in 2023. I think one book a month is good. I've got some that I've already been starting and I'll share some more along the way. Maybe I'll do a solo episode next year, halfway through the year. And some of the books I'm reading right now are incredibly impactful to me. I almost put them on there, but I'm not finished with them. So I'm going to wait on that. There's one in particular that I think I may do a solo episode on and certainly going to try to have the author on because it's had such a profound impact on my life already. And I'm only halfway through the book or something like that. So anyway, all right, everyone, hope this served you. Hope that gave you some reading material. Going into the holiday season. Appreciate all of you. Until next episode, 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 Direct Click 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 in 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 rocksolidassistance.com.