Episode 192: The Bottom Line - Beating The Odds

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. 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. Hey everyone, so I've got a really simple concept, idea, thought that I want to share with all of you today. You've heard me say often that business is hard and it gets harder the further you want to go, the faster you want to go. And I actually think that that's a really healthy disposition. It may not sound initially that way, but I think it's actually unhealthy to think, man, if business is so easy, why am I having a hard time? And so if we get this idea in our head that it's supposed to be easy, then whenever it does get hard, we kind of become a little resentful maybe. And, and I think I heard, uh, on a podcast I was listening to— it was actually on YouTube, but it is a podcast, uh, that the guy said, you know, our reality minus expectations equals happiness. Now, I won't do a breakdown of that on this episode, but I do want to share with you that I do believe that the more we realize, man, business really is hard, then we can begin to do certain things to try to bend the odds in our favor. And so I'm calling this episode Beating the Odds. So let me share with you a couple of statistics that stand out, and it will be interesting to see if this changes over the next couple of years since COVID But prior to COVID, I'd done some research, and that research shared with me that— or what stood out to me is 96% of small businesses in the US never see their 10th birthday. And of the ones that actually survive, 96% of those never cross $1 million in top-line revenue. The odds are simply just not in your favor. And so if you've crossed the million-dollar mark, you are beating the odds. If you've been in business longer than 10 years, you're absolutely Beating the Odds. In 2011, my mom was diagnosed with cancer, breast cancer. She went through chemo, radiation, put it at bay, went into remission. It came back. She ended up having surgery. It went away— or surgery and chemo again. And then it has come back a third time. It actually came back in February of 2020— or 2020, excuse me. Uh, one month before COVID we thought we were going to lose her. And the type of cancer that my mom has, uh, breast cancer that has now metastasized to lung cancer is called triple negative. And many of you may have had a family member, um, that has had that, or maybe even yourself. And so my mom is beating the odds simply for that type of cancer for her to have lived now going on 12 years. Since the time that she was initially diagnosed, she is absolutely beating the odds. I'm so thankful and grateful that we've been able to have these past 12 years with my mom to be able to see my kids grow up. But what does this mean for you and in, and in business? Well, given that those odds are not necessarily in your favor, what can you do about it? You just throw your hands up and say, well, you know what, maybe hopefully I would get lucky. Well, you know, I don't love to fly. I enjoy traveling quite a bit, but I don't always love to fly. In fact, Ellie, who does our podcast, was actually just sharing with me this morning that she's going to be taking a long international flight coming up soon, and like 14 hours or so. And Usually, I actually do pretty well on those flights. Once you're 30 minutes into it, or at least when I'm 30 minutes into the flight, I'm like, well, I'm up here in this tin can now at this point. And so sometimes, I actually enjoy the longer flights because you kind of— for me, at least, it eases my anxiety a little bit, and I kind of get into the flight. So by the way, I never thought I'd be sharing that on the podcast, but here we are. And so— but if you think about the odds of something happening in a plane crash, they are incredibly— or something happening, period, in a plane, let alone a crash, is very, very, very low. The odds are absolutely in your favor. If you thought about if the odds of getting into a plane crash were 96%, that it was not going to make it 96% of the time, you would never do that. Yet in businesses, as entrepreneurs, founders, business owners, We do it, and a lot of times some of us are crazy enough to do it multiple times. And when you start to begin to share— and I'm not a math wizard— but if you start to begin to see that sometimes somebody has been able to start a business, has been able to cross the million-dollar threshold, keep that business for a long period of time, they're beating the odds in two different factors. And then if they do it again in a second business and they— and that business survives, or maybe they even exit that company and then they cross another business that has crossed $1 million, you begin to see that it is not from luck. There is something, there are some elements there that are similar across the board. Now, I love starting companies. I love getting them to a certain point, and then I kind of lose interest if I'm totally honest with you. I kind of have at times in the past have had shiny object syndrome. That's why I love to adopt the mantra of to repeat successful actions. A lot of times I say that because I'm trying to reiterate that to myself. Do the boring work that it takes. And that's an identity habit that I'm trying to instill myself as much as anything. And so the point is, is that when you begin to look at the track record of success, and I know that in investment returns, people will say, well, future— past performance is not indicative of future performance. I'm not so sure about that in business. It seems to be that if someone who has had a consistent track record, it does not mean that they have not had failures in their past and that if they have failed, that, that, that in and of itself means that they're going to fail in future ones. In fact, in business, a lot of times there is a tremendous amount of failures in someone's past, but they use those failures and they continue to come back and they learn from them and they improve. So what ends up happening is 1 1 ends up not becoming 2, but 1 1 4. There's these compounding behaviors. This is compounding learning that happens whenever they've been able to successfully get one business off the ground. Now, I'd say Elon Musk is an extreme example because of the riskiness of his businesses. But for those of you that have entrepreneurs, maybe in your family, in your community, maybe yourself, have you ever taken the time to kind of look back, step back away from it yourself, or had a conversation with someone that has started multiple companies to say there's something you were doing. There are some elements there that tend to or seem to be giving you a little bit better odds. It tends to be bending the odds in your favor and try to pull through some of those common threads and some of the things that you believe in. Is there a certain way that they are certain, even Is it the software that they like to use across the companies? Is it, maybe they love HubSpot as a CRM, as an example. Maybe it's the way that they onboard, train, and develop their sales team. Maybe it's the fact that every single time they start a company, they always start it with 2 or 3 people. Maybe it's the way that they structure the equity in the business. Maybe it's the way that they go from an idea from an idea to having a little bit of creation of the product, whether it's digital or physical, to then building an audience. And you begin to kind of see that there's these elements, the way that they do things. What can you learn from that? I think that those people are beating the odds, not just by one company, and, and that's had success, stayed in business for a long time. But there are some things, there's these elements, these principles that they're pulling that's helping them. And to me, that is fascinating to see. You know what? If you start to begin to see that the chances of someone having multiple businesses that are successful and multiple businesses that cross the 7-figure mark, you begin to kind of sense, you know what, I don't think this is by chance. I think that there's something that they're doing here that maybe could help me to unlock some of the secrets. Now, the reality is there's probably none of them that are secrets. With the internet and ability to listen to podcasts and YouTube, etc., there really are no secrets. But it is the combination of how they put— they're putting everything together that they're doing across all of the different brands or the companies that they have. So if someone can be successful once, they could get lucky. They could have just had the right idea at the right time. In other words, they maybe hopped on the wave at the right time and they just were able to learn how to surf that wave, but then they've tried other things and it's not been successful. Um, and then other people just time and time and time again. And I, I will tell you, I think one great example would be, um, Marcus Lemonis, and I loved his show. Um, and many other people that are famous examples, but I mean, if you, if you followed his show, um, and even Tilman Fertitta, etc., some of the shows that are on CNBC. I think those are fascinating studies to see. You know, I bet behind the scenes, there's so much consistency to the way that they run those companies, the way that they put an operator in there, the way that they, that the CRMs that they use, the sales scripts that they use, the way that they onboard their team, because they have found a formula, a recipe for success. And so what are some of those elements for you? If you have one business, you've only had one business, but if you were going to start another one, what are some of the things that you would pull from the company that you have now? And say, I know this works. And if you could figure out what some of those are, then I think you could also look and see, well, what are some of the reasons maybe we have not had the type of success that we need to have? Now, I'm not advocating that all of you go out and start multiple different companies. Maybe that's not right for everybody. As a matter of fact, there is a very strong element to, or strong argument to be made that those who go out and start, try to start multiple companies are not going and going deep on any of them. And if they just focused all of their attention attention onto one company, they would be more successful. I get that. I think that that's a strong argument, something I've considered quite a bit over the last few years is, you know, what's the boat that I'm going to be rowing pretty hard? What's the boat that I want to be in when I'm rowing that hard? So even all of these ideas are just simply to get you to think and to consider. If I were to sit down with you over a cup of coffee and I said, what are some of the elements to your success? What are some of the things? And I try to ask versions of that on some of the Monday interviews, but if I said, what are some of the principles or elements or common threads that you believe that has led to your success? What would you say? What are 2 or 3 of those things? And then simultaneously, if I said, well, what are a couple things that you think is holding you back? Who can help you? Who do you think has been successful in those items? Maybe you should go out and consider buying them a coffee and talking to them on the phone. And, you know, I did an episode last week called the Bath Road Theory of Business. If you call 3 different people, you're probably going to get 3 different, slightly different ideas about how to overcome that problem that you may have. Maybe you've struggled with lead generation, being able to get quality leads. Maybe you've struggled with being able to find a really good team, or maybe you've struggled with finding a good team, but you can't get them up to speed as quickly as you would like to. Well, if you're struggling there, I guarantee there's somebody that would love to pour into you to be able to help you in whatever that area is, as long as you can identify. There's going to be 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 20 different ways to be able to do it. But the more inputs that you have, if you take the time to be able to make it your own, I think it will help you to be able to bend the odds in your favor and ultimately beat the odds. Look, this game of business is really— it is a game, and it's a game that we all love to play. I love the game of business. I love the challenge behind it. For me, I think, again, I enjoy the aspect of taking an idea and getting a business off the ground is incredibly exciting to me. But then I do, over time, I lose a little bit of interest into it at a certain point. That's something that I'm working through. I did in 2022. I'm going to be working in more, more on myself in 2023 is to be able to stay focused and disciplined for a longer period of time and giving time time. So I hope this is helpful to you. Business is hard and it gets harder. 96% of small businesses never see their 10th birthday, and the ones that survive, 96% of never crossed $1 million in top-line revenue. But if we begin to kind of look at the people who have launched multiple companies that have had success and they've been across, across $1 million across those companies, as an example, you begin to kind of see, you know what, I don't think that that's by luck. What are some of the things that they're doing that seem to be consistent threads across every single business that they have? And if they've done that, maybe if experience is one of the best teachers, it doesn't have to be just my experience. I could learn and shortcut my journey by learning from theirs. All right, everyone, hope this was helpful. Till 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 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.