Episode 175: 2022 Best Of The Best Episodes

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. So in today's episode, this is our third year doing it, we do the best of the best. Now this is hard for us to do because there are so many amazing guests that we've been fortunate enough to be able to have on the podcast in 2022. So we try to pull just a few of the short snippets to remind you and maybe get you to, to go back and listen to some of the full episodes with these guests. So without further ado, let's get into the best of the best for 2022.

Have you ever tried online marketing before and weren't sure if it was working? Maybe your rep talked about all the impressive features and stats and said things were going great, but you didn't know how all that tied into raw new policies written. Well, that's not the case with DirectClicks. DirectClicks is the premier Google Ads and SEO option exclusively for State Farm agents.

Why?

They're 100% results-oriented with an exclusivity guarantee. Every review call you have with your account manager focuses on what really matters to your business, and that's leads and call-ins received. Everything will get broken down to cost per lead received. By investing with DirectClicks, you're going to free up time and energy to focus on what's most important in your agency and doing what it is you do best. This will be the best investment you make for your team by spending confidently and scaling your agency today with exclusive online marketing partner DirectClicks. Visit us at directclicksinc.com. Ambition is the first step towards success.

It's time to level up your agency, and Coach P Consulting will help you do just that by using the same strategies he used to sell over 700 life insurance policies in 2021 alone. No, this is not your regular one-and-done type coaching. You'll get personalized coaching 2 days a week, every week of the month, and you'll get a live look behind the scenes of his team training and an office that's performing at the highest level. There's a reason Coach P Consulting is the fastest growing coaching company for insurance agency owners in the country. Coach P will train your team alongside his own and show you the exact steps they're taking to achieve Chairman's Circle, Exotic Travel, and Multi-Line Presence Club and be one of the few agents to be selected to have a third office. So whether your goal is to be at the top of your local market or amongst the best in the country, this training will give you the strategies and the tactics to get there. For just $250 a month, you'll get high-level coaching each week from someone who is already getting it done at that level. And his strategies work, and it's time to put them to work for you. Sign up at coachpeakconsulting.com and get your first full month for free when you mention the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

You have to have a culture where people want to be there. And they're around people that they want to be hanging out with, right? So people say it all the time, I don't put up with drama, office toxicity, like whatever. So many people do, right? They say that all day long. But if you have Allen Iverson on your team, are you, are you going to kick them off or not? And a lot of people say that they would, but most people don't. And we really try and protect that office culture more than anything else. And if someone's not a good fit, no matter how great they are, we're going to make some changes. And I love, love, love the way you opened your question to me, which is, not everyone is me. I'm not Tyler, I'm not you. We all have different strengths and weaknesses and personalities. And what I recommend to everyone is that you lean into those, right? It's It's awesome that we're all different because we can be all successful in our different ways. You know, I think of Al Clark. Um, Al Clark's one of the greatest State Farm agents, if not the greatest, to ever live. He's not far from my office. Um, if I, if I remember correctly, he's got like a master's in psychology. Like, as far as personality goes, I don't think we could be much different, right? But we run our shops in successful ways, but in our own way, right? So my advice is for you to find your way and lean into it.

So first question is, or statement is, if you have a 4-year college degree, please remain standing. Everybody else sit down. Some will sit down, some will remain standing. And I'll say, all right, if you had, um, sales experience prior to being recruited by your insurance company that you work for right now, Please remain standing, everybody else sit down. If you had an insurance license before being recruited to the industry, please remain standing, everybody else sit down. By the 4th question, everybody's seated. Every once in a while there's like one, but for the most part everybody's seated. And I say, hey, look around, not one of us is qualified to be here right now. And so when you're posting jobs, you don't necessarily want to put in all of the unicorn boxes that you want to check, right? And that's what a lot of agents do. They They put everything in there. It's like they're picking their next spouse, or they put everything they wish they had in there that they don't have. And then they wonder why nobody's applying. But what it screams to the candidates and the applicants or potential applicants is simply, you're not qualified to work for me, so don't even bother. And so my challenge to agents is get all that out of there, strip it down, cast a wide net, get the whole world to apply, and be willing to step up to the plate and interview some people because there's some amazing people that are not getting a look. And some of those folks are better than the qualified people, whatever that means. And I have numerous— one, one story I'll share. I was speaking to an agent and, and she was a customer of my recruiting service, and she said, hey, I'm not, I'm not quite sure about my recruiter. I said, well, who's your recruiter? She told me her name. I said, she's awesome. What are you talking about? You know, tell me more. And she said, well, I haven't interviewed anybody in a while. I said, okay, well, do you think maybe you're being too picky? And she said, well, I don't know. I said, well, let me, let me tell you a story and then I'll ask you a question. My most recent sales team hire, she was a cook at a nursing home and she lives in a trailer park. My question for you is, would you interview her? And she looked down and she looked up at me and said, no, I wouldn't have. And I said, that's your problem. That's why you're not interviewing enough. That's why you're not hiring enough people. This girl was in her third full month with me selling 30+ Ronnie Waddell, 40+ fire. And a lot of insurance agents would never have even interviewed her because of the part of town she lived in, or because of the previous experience on her resume or lack thereof. And I'll tell you what, those are the folks that we can afford. Those are the folks that don't have 5 or 6 other job offers. Those are the folks that aren't necessarily looking around after 3 or 4 months because they're getting burned out of a certain task they're asking to do every single day, all day long. These folks are super appreciative of the opportunity. Now, I'm not saying you can't go out there and find that qualified person, whatever that looks like in your eyes, and do that too. And through consistent recruiting, you'll find that A-player unicorn or whatever, but don't wait for that. You're gonna be waiting for a while. There's some really great people. We just gotta look through a different lens at these people and give some folks an opportunity. And I'll tell you what, I was one of those people. I would've never ever been interviewed by a lot of agents. Infantry Marine, right? No college degree at the time. The one I was working on was criminal justice. Nothing about me screamed like this guy's got it, right? Nothing about me. Thank God my agent gave me an opportunity. And so I'm passionate about getting other folks opportunities. And it's agents that are willing to do that. They typically figure out like that, that's, I think that's our sweet spot right now.

Here's your coverage, here's your price. Do you want it? And they do it all day long and it's a numbers game and it works. However, that's not the model for the future. So stand up a new process, which is to give presentations. So instead of just giving a quote, you want to stand up a new capability, keep giving the quotes like you were doing, but at least a couple of times a day, at least give a presentation, 2, just to start and see how it works. You're presenting a solution mindset instead of a quote mindset.

If you asked, what would you do if you wanted to build an asset? You know, most people would say, okay, well, rent or paying into a mortgage. I'd rather buy a place if I could so that I was paying into an asset. I think that's a pretty common understanding. But when we think of the salary dollars that we're paying every month in our business, is that rent or do you own that? And if the experiences of your people and the best practices of your people and all this stuff that's going up in their heads is something you're financing as a business owner, well, don't you want to capture it in someplace that you can keep it if they leave? That's what documentation is all about. It's about building that asset.

Right now you've got these— I call them fake fiduciaries— because they're out there, they're saying, oh, I'm a fiduciary, I'm a fiduciary, I don't do annuities, but I'm a fiduciary. Well, you can't be a fiduciary— be like a carpenter saying, I'm not going to use a wrench, I only use screwdrivers and hammers, I don't believe in wrenches. That'd be stupid. And so then you've got some insurance people that won't ever talk about investments. Oh, everything should be insurance, insurance. That's not true. It should be insurance and investments. It should be annuities and investments. I've never said annuities instead of investments. I've I think that's where we got to focus, that there is a proper mix and a proper balance. You shouldn't put all of your money any one place.

When people are wondering, oh, okay, why is he doing well this year? I attribute that to the coaching concept from those two organizations that is taking me to the next level. I had the content, I had the knowledge, I had the enthusiasm, but it didn't take me to where I needed to be till I was willing to spend the money and hear somebody else expand what I had. That took me to the next level.

People are wondering how to mitigate long-term care without the heartburn that goes along with traditional long-term care insurance, which is sort of a use-it-or-lose-it proposition. And when you show them that you can get a death benefit that doubles as long-term care, you get a death benefit that you can receive in advance of your death for the purpose of paying for long-term care. That's a winning strategy for a lot of people. So it's really a balanced approach, and I think we do our clients a disservice when we approach everything in the spirit of permanent life insurance does it all and it's the best alternative out there. I think it's a complement. It's one of multiple streams of income that can get us to our tax-free goal.

What do you mean you coached her? He said, well, I told her the word track, and we went over What? And he goes, I know she's doing it right because she has the right answers. I said, no, no, you know she's asking the right questions, but she's not pivoting from those questions into the value and the impact which she needs to make. And so again, you can't adequately say that she's doing right or wrong because you don't know what she's doing. So you're not coaching. I say, here's my challenge to you before you make an assessment. Is she in the right position or not? You need to make sure you invest in her and prepare her, right? Scrimmage with her and then sit in that meeting with her and see if she's saying the wrong thing. Because really, in our world, especially in financial world, I always tell people selling is hard because selling, you have to get someone excited about something. In most cases, they're not ready to buy yet. When people are ready to buy something, they don't need to be sold. They just buy it. Hence Amazon. But insurance is even harder. This is why insurance is so hard, and even investments, right? Because if I— if you want to sell me a whole life policy or a universal life policy or a life policy in general, hey, I got to pay for something that I never get to use, and if I do get to use it, something really bad has to happen to me, right? So before I get value, something bad— that's a tough sell. But because it's so tough, it's more imperative than anything we do.

When you're engaged in dealing with important stuff, your clients, your profession, your career, your boss, your personal relationships, you know, all that stuff. Most people have a whole lot more commitments about that than they think. And well, they have a lot more commitments than they've acknowledged and made objective, but they got it spinning around. It'll wake them up at 3 o'clock in the morning. Oh my, should we get cat food? Or what am I going to tell my boss about? X, Y, and Z. And all of those kinds of things, I just discovered the methodology about how do you externalize those things, capture them, and then sooner than later, you know, make a good decision about, okay, what do I need to do about that so I could park it in the right place or remind myself of the right thing or just do that right now if I need to do that. Then became globally known as GTD, or this process of how do you keep yourself clear So you can be present and available whatever you're doing.

Most business owners, as we are growing our business, act as a superhero. We swoop in, we save the day, we have everything in our heads, we can fix everything. But until the business doesn't have us around, we can't tell if the business will ever operate without us. Therefore, my hypothesis was if we remove an owner from the business for 4 consecutive weeks, and the business can run on unabated, likely can run on into perpetuity unabated. So let's get the owner out for 4 weeks. What's interesting is by doing that myself, all of our— the readers have gone through and reported back to us is that it doesn't run perfectly in her absence, but it reveals what needs to be fixed next when they're gone.

What are the adjectives that would best describe the business team that you want to be, right? Helping them get very, very clear and weed through the words to find the the ones that truly resonate, right? And so, and then once you've done that, speaking to the values and the philosophies and those things that you want to describe you, and talking about that as a team on a regular basis. So many times we'll write that vision statement out, slap it on a binder, put it on the shelf, and we never look at it again. And I think those teams that really have such a solid, enjoyable meaningful culture are the ones that talk about what do they believe in and what do they value as people and as professionals and as members of their community, and they do that on a regular basis. I think that makes a big difference, you know, talking about how you want to make a difference in, in your town, in your community, in the work that you do. What do you find rewarding? Also, what you are excited about and proud of in your work and about what this business is accomplishing, whether it's just becoming an employment for people in your community, or it's having a direct impact on the community members.

On and on and on. And like people said, there is no research on what attracts top talent. I said, this is, this is the craziest thing I may have ever encountered. Like, nobody in the world has ever studied this. And we just kept getting no, no, no, no, no, no. So we wrote a really big check and we commissioned a study on what attracts top talent. And, and we, we found they want 3 things. One, they want a better boss, meaning they want to be well led. Now, you may be thinking, doesn't everyone want to be well led? Well, at some level, but for top talent, it's a condition of employment. They're not well led, they're an immediate flight risk. So they need to be well led. The second thing they want is a brighter future. You say, well, doesn't everybody want a brighter future? Well, top talent looks at the future differently. To typical talent, the future is Friday. But to top talent, they come into a job interview with different questions. They want to know, what am I going to learn? How am I going to grow? How is this going to be preparing me for a brighter future? This job, this role, these tasks. And third is they want to be part of a bigger vision. And so once we realized this, we said, we actually think this will help attract and keep top talent. But, but we learned— I'll call this an indirect finding of the research— you may provide those three things, but if people don't know it, you don't get any credit.

Yes.

So we had many of our operators who were doing that, but they couldn't get people because they weren't telling the story.

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. The best use of money is to buy back your time, and one of the best ways to do that is with a virtual assistant. Rock Solid Virtual Assistants brings together top business leaders with exceptional virtual assistants to build successful relationship-driven teams. The services they provide range from graphic design and marketing to executive admin assistance and everything in between. There are many virtual assistant companies on the market to choose from, but at Rock Solid, their processes and passion for what they do place them at the very top of that list. Not only is their hiring process exceptional, which nets them the very best assistants, but they also provide superior support to their teams for the duration of your time with them. The matching process at Rock Solid is unlike any other, and they have the track record to prove it. Their hands-on approach has proven to increase the success rate of their teams exponentially. So if you're looking to build a rock-solid team for your business, reach out to Tracy and the team for a no-pressure discovery call at rocksolidassistance.com. They value your success as if it were their own, because it is.

So there you have it. There is our best of the best for 2022. We wish you and your family happy holidays and Merry Christmas. Thanks for making 2022 the best year ever for the Club Capital Leadership Podcast and for Club Capital. We will see you guys on the other side in 2023. Until then, 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 the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

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