Episode 177: The Bottom Line - 2022 Log of Lessons Learned

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 I started sending myself messages. Many of you may do this, whether it's in a journal or maybe it's in a private email address or something like that, that you send yourself just some thoughts throughout the year. And so I call them my log of lessons learned. And so I thought I would share just a few of my log of lessons learned with all of you from this past year. Now, most of mine that I'm going to share today are business-focused, uh, on the business side. I have some log of lessons learned personally, uh, I might share those one day. Uh, this is going to be much more on just the personal— or excuse me, on the business side for these log of lessons learned. All right, so here we go. Number 1: Success is determined not by what I know, but how fast I learn. I would also say to this, it's not just how fast I learn, not by what I know and how fast I learn, but in addition to that, who I know. Uh, because, you know, Dan Sullivan has the idea of it's who, not how, and I agree with that. But sometimes it's also just about, can I curate the, the right books, the right podcasts, the right people around me so that I can learn? And whether it's trying to learn copy, trying to learn how to launch a podcast, trying to learn how to grow a podcast, the acquisition of knowledge, the acquisition of skills is incredibly important. So lesson number 1: success is not determined by what I know, but how fast I learn. All right, lesson number 2: my self-worth is not the same as my net worth. I don't know how many of you have had that feeling in the past where, you know, depending on how well you're doing in the business or how well you're doing financially or how much money you have in the bank account, you begin to look at yourself better or worse in some cases based on how much money you do or don't have, and that's not the case. And so, um, had some situations throughout this year that just kind of reminded me of that, is that my self-worth is not the same as my net worth. Lesson number 3: a focused fool can accomplish more than a distracted genius. A focused fool can accomplish more than a distracted genius. I mean, if you think about that, there's just so many things pulling at our, pulling at our attention all the time. And someone who is just singularly, singularly focused on one thing for a long period of time can accomplish more than someone who is so smart yet they're constantly distracted. That one, I wish I knew who said that one. That is not me. I did not come up with that, but I picked it up and I thought about that so much. Is a focused fool can accomplish more than a distracted genius. Log of lesson number 4: 5 miles in, 5 miles out. If in business you have gotten maybe your culture let's just take culture as an example, is just not where you want it to be and you want to begin to change it. Look, if it took you 5 years to get to that point, it's going to take— it may take you 5 years to change it. It may not take that long. But the reality is, is that we want to take the shortcut to success or to changing things. Life just doesn't work that way. If you walk in 5 miles— I love to duck hunt. And so when we would walk in We were all so excited about the walk. We used to hunt at this place south of where I live, and it was a long walk at 3:30 in the morning. You're carrying a bunch of things. It's cold, it's wet, it's rainy. But we were so excited to be able to be out there with our buddies and go duck hunting. And then on the way back, we always used to think, man, it's a long walk to get out here. And it was probably a mile and a half or so through basically swampland. And it's a mile and a half in, it's a mile and a half out. And I think a lot of things in business that way. So that one has, has really impacted me this year. 5 miles in, 5 miles out. Log of lesson number 5: Not all progress can be measured by ground gained. Somehow, sometimes we have to recognize progress through losses avoided. If you know much about investing, they will share with you the importance of Really, it's not just the home runs we're looking for. It's a lot of the advance the runners, a bunt, advance the runner over a long period of time and avoid some of the big losses, especially as you get closer to retirement. Well, very much similar, I think, in business. Sometimes it's not just about progress, but sometimes it's about, hey, avoiding some of the big losses. So, not all progress can be measured by ground gained. Sometimes we have to measure success by losses avoided. Log of lesson number 6. This is similar to the one earlier, but it has a little bit different nuance. I talked about your self-worth is not the equivalent to your net worth. Similarly, in lesson 6, my identity is not in business success or in business failure. My identity is not in business success or business failure. I don't know about you, but sometimes if you've had success in business, you begin to kind of maybe get a little cocky, maybe begin to think, hey, everything you touch is— you can get emotional about it and think everything, you know, it's time for me to go hire 3 people, 4 people, 5 people all at once because the last 2 people have been a success. Or at the same time, maybe 2023 wasn't a good year for you. Maybe other people were doing well, but this— you had some setbacks, uh, in the business. Maybe you had some, some turnover. Maybe you just did not hit some of the key targets that you want. That's not your identity. That's what you do. That's not who you are. So, your identity is not in business success or failure. All right. Lesson number 7. This was a big one. Far too often, I have dramatically underestimated the amount of effort it takes to be successful. Get rich quick, want to try to get it done, grow the business to $1 million, whatever. I've just dramatically underestimated the amount of effort it actually takes. To be successful. You've heard me talk about, you know, beating the odds and business odds, like how challenging business really is. And when I think about that overall, I seem to remember that. But sometimes when it's an individual project or one thing, I begin to kind of think, oh, we'll just get that done in a week, we'll get that done in a month, we'll get that done in a quarter. And I just seem to constantly underestimate the amount of effort it takes. And so, it's one thing I'm going to go into next year is to think this is going to be really hard. This is going to take a lot longer period of time. This is going to take a lot more of resources, money, time, capacity of the team to do it. And I think I'll be better served with that. So, lesson number 7, for our too often dramatically underestimate the amount of effort it takes to be successful. And finally, lesson number 8 in log of lessons learned, No matter how far down the road you are, you're the same distance from the ditch. That one singular thing, if there's one quote, if there's one lesson that has stuck with me more than any others, the last two probably have, and especially that one. No matter how far down the road you are, you're still the same distance from the ditch. It allows you to see, yeah, I'm, I'm so far down the road. Allow yourself not to be complacent, to be grateful for what you have, but at the same time realize there's still work to be done. I hope my log of lessons learned have given you some things just to consider for yourself. What are the log of lessons learned for 2022 for you? And what do you want 2023 to be? How are you going to use some of the lessons you've learned this year to shape what you want to happen in 2023 and beyond? I hope that was serving to you, to be able to share some of the things, uh, from my life and from the businesses. I've got several other ones. Some of them, uh, I'll leave more private for now, but nonetheless, maybe I'll share those at some point. But Those are some of the top ones for me. All right, everyone, appreciate you. Thank you for making 2022 the best year, and I can't wait to serve all of you in 2023. Till 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 DirectClick specializes in helping insurance agencies leverage Google Ads and SEO to drive inbound phone calls leads, online visibility, and even organic traffic. You can be confident in knowing exactly how well your ads are working and getting support in what really matters in your business. Get exclusive online marketing support today when you visit directclicksinc.com. 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