Episode 197: Recast - Agent Spotlight: The Art of Leadership with Joel Laird

With leadership, I think that there's a lot of relationship capital that is required to be able to inspire behavior. And I think that there's this like gentle balance between if you don't ask things of people, if you don't ask them to step outside their comfort zone, that relationship capital is going to atrophy. And if you over-ask, then it tears the muscle and it requires some rebuilding. And there's some beautiful value in knowing that you've got to ask for people to be able to step outside their comfort zone and support them to be able to do that and allow allow them to fail and make sure that it's not atrophying.

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 another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

My name is Bradley Hammond, your host. On today's episode, we have a recast of an episode I did back, gosh, almost 2 and a half years ago with Joel Laird. He's an awesome business owner in the Tennessee area, and we thought we would recast this episode. He shares so many great nuggets and has done such a good job of growing his business, but also really just has a great perspective on how to lead a team and how to grow and develop, um, yourself as a leader. Without further ado, here's the Recast with Joel Laird.

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.

Joel, really excited to have you on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Thanks for having me. It's really good to see you guys.

Absolutely. So I was super excited to have you on. I think that your background is something that people are just going to be able to really learn a lot from you, from being a business owner, going into leadership, coming back and being a business owner, and now owning multiple offices. But for those that don't know you, why don't you just give us a little bit about your background, both personally and professionally?

Yeah, I grew up in Montana. I was actually born in Canada but moved to Montana when I was in 5th grade and grew up there, kind of rural Montana setting. Played high school sports, played college sports, played football specifically, football and ran track in college, and I started a sales career at a Dodge Chrysler Jeep dealership in Helena, Montana. I was stacking them deep and selling them cheap. But, uh, moving the metal.

I love it.

Moving the metal. Yeah. And quickly realized that I loved sales, loved it. Just loved being able to help people get what they ultimately did want, but wanted something that was a little bit more meaningful for my career than just influencing my own pocketbook. So after a couple of years of quite good results at the car dealership, as soon as I got done with school, I realized I wanted a career that was in sales but had a little bit bigger, broader picture than me just driving a nice car and having a nice house. And so, it kind of got me thinking about what I wanted to do. I looked at all different avenues. I looked at financial planner, I looked at going in the banking world, looked at insurance, financial services, looked at a lot of different things and arrived at insurance largely because you really can't control your own income and it's that really wonderful income that's recurring revenue when it's done right. And so, really wanted that, wanted to be able to build a team and things like like that. So, opened up a State Farm agency as a new market or scratch agent in Bozeman, Montana with zero policies, zero customers, zero anything. This was December 2008, like right as Chicken Little was correct and the sky was literally falling. Montana was kind of insulated from the economic recession, but Bozeman was not. Bozeman is kind of a— they call it Boz Angeles, a lot of California influence. So, Bozeman was very, very much impacted by it. Opened up the agency there, did well for a year and a half, and then there was retirement and an agent that was fired up in northern Montana. Montana, two agencies. And my agency field executive, he came to me and asked if I'd be willing to take over those two opportunities. And it was closer to my parents. And so my wife and I talked about it and we decided to hop on that. And we moved up to Havre, Montana, the thriving metropolis of Havre with, uh, in the middle of Hill County, population of about 10,000 people. And it's probably about half the size of Tennessee, that county is. I mean, it's massive. Anyway, so we were there for about another four years or so operating two agencies My other agency was in Malta, Montana, which is 90 miles east of there. So I logged a lot of miles going back and forth between those two towns. We had both Brooklyn and Paisley, my two children, while we were in Havre. And then I became a sales leader for the company I represent. And in Los Angeles, I was there for about 3 years leading and supporting some agents out in the Los Angeles area. It was kind of like the Beverly Hillbillies going from a town where the nearest airport was about 200 miles away to the middle of Los Angeles.

I remember my first change.

I mean, that's a huge change.

Yeah, from rural Montana to Los Angeles.

I remember my first agency meeting when I had everyone there. I just did a little introduction and I said, so this was my view last week, and it was an overview of Havre, Montana, and all like 200 houses that you saw there. And then the next slide was the cityscape of Los Angeles. It was like, well, this is where we're leaving, this is where we're coming. And it was— couldn't be two more different things. But I learned a whole lot there and really, really enjoyed my time there serving the agents in the Northridge territory and And really beyond that area as well. But my wife and I ultimately made the decision that we wanted to be closer to family and her family's from Millington, Tennessee, just north of Memphis. So we drew about a 5-hour driving circle around Memphis and looked for opportunities. And there was one that popped up in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. We didn't know a soul from Murfreesboro and frankly had never even been here. I had to look it up on a map in terms of where it was, but realized it was just outside of Nashville. And so we moved down here without knowing anybody. This would have been December 2017— no, December 2016. So 3, almost 4 years back. Yeah, December 2016 is when we started agency here in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and this town's been unbelievably warm and welcoming to me and my family. It's our home now. And then December of last year, so it would have been December of— I'm sorry, August of 2019, we opened up our second location in Smyrna, which is just 10 miles closer to Nashville from Murfreesboro.

Well, man, I appreciate you sharing your background. And I don't think I knew that you actually had really multiple different opportunities in Montana. So you've really had so many different situations in different parts of the country with different team members, different cultures, etc. And so I think it's really shaped, obviously, who you are as a leader. And so I'm really excited to dig into really the art and the science of leadership with you today.

Looking forward to it!

I would just ask you, like, what's of leadership? What are a couple of the elements of that you really want to try to focus on today that you love about leadership? And I love your background. I mean, obviously, you and I have gotten to be friends, but your background is amazing. Being an agent, sales leader, back into agency, now having two agencies, you come at it from a perspective that just quite frankly, very, very few people are going to have. And I know you know that. It adds to the quality and just people are going to listen to that because you just come at it from an angle that most people don't. And Chris, now that you know that, a little bit of background, that's why I'm having Joel Laird on the podcast. Boom.

Yeah, we actually don't see a lot of back and forth. Like, I think I know of only two agents, one of them who's our client, that have done the agent, sales leader, and then back to agency again. So I feel like that gives you a unique perspective. And obviously that's— something's working out because you're a MOA.

So yeah, well, lots do it, but not very many do it very well. When I was thinking about making the shift back into agency, like some real tough conversations I was having with myself, my own internal dialogue is like, lots of people do this, but not very many people do it very well. But those that do it very well do it to an extremely high level. Like for instance, Hunter Wyant, he was an agent, AFE, and then back to agent. And he's won Trophy Club multiple times. I mean, he's one of the best agents in State Farm. Currently has or frankly, probably ever has had. There's some that have done it at an amazing high level, but it's a very, very small portion of them. What's her name? She won Trophy Club again last year. Sarah, I can't remember her last name. She's in Minnesota. Anyway, she was also an AFE, an agent AFE and then back. But you're right, there's not very many of us that do it at a high level. Most of them do it at a very, very low level.

Well, what are some of those key aspects of leadership that we could kind of narrow in and zoom in on today?

I mean, leadership is so much— there is some science with it, but I think that it's the majority, it leans a lot heavier on the art side of it. I think management is much more science-esque and leadership is much more art-esque. So there's not really hard rules is what I've found. It's more some guidelines and some principles that you want to work through because every single situation is going to present itself a little bit differently and everyone that you're trying to lead is going to present themselves a little bit differently and needs a little bit different tactics. Some general things always run through my mind whenever I'm trying to lead and do so at a high level is that the cost of leadership is self-interest. That's always something that's just like always rolling through my head. And this is purely stolen out of Simon Sinek's book, Leaders Eat Last. But there's kind of an unwritten social contract between leaders and followers where the leader is the best fed, the best compensated, the best opportunities, the best training, the best development, all that sort of stuff. And the followers are okay with that. So long as the leader doesn't violate their obligation. And that is whenever there's danger or challenge or something bigger than what the people that they're leading are able to take on, that the leader goes first and takes on that challenge first and foremost because they are the most prepared to be able to do it. And I think when that social contract breaks down is when you have leaders that are kind of cowering behind the walls of their office or whatever. I mean, I think back to my first year coming back into agency, we had some pretty challenging results. That was like rates. We took these like back-to-back-to-back double-digit rate increases. Seemed like everything we were quoting, we were like not $20, $30 per month more, but like double or triple whatever someone was paying. It was just a challenge. And we were doing okay in financial service areas, but the P&C, we were just really, really struggling with. And I kept trying to coach it and coach it and coach it. And I was spending the majority of my time in financial service appointments. That's why— that's life premium and health premium and mutual funds and all that was looking good. But it wasn't until the day that I moved my office out to the front, like literally right in the front of my office where I was the first person to be able to catch everyone. And I probably worked out of there about half the time, just literally trying to handle everything within the office. It's a bad way to put it, not handle it, but to demonstrate it, demonstrate how we wanted like a really high-quality customer experience and a service level to look like, demonstrate how to do something as simple as transfer the phone and make sure that the person that's getting the transfer has there's an authority built into that person that's getting the transfer or doing a sale and actually demonstrating how we wanted to be able to do pivots, how we wanted to make a connection, some of those sorts of things. Once I started doing that, things really, really took off. I guess that's what I mean by leaders eat last and the cost of leadership is self-interest, and it's not something that can be faked. It's probably the first thing that runs through my mind.

A couple of things that you just mentioned right there that I want to just kind of go back to is when you said the cost of leadership is self-interest and you referenced Simon Sinek's book Leaders Eat Last. There's another book that I just I just got introduced to not long ago. It's leadership pain. And it basically is the cost of leadership is how much pain can you endure as opposed to being devoid of pain as a leader. And to me, that speaks exactly to what you were just saying.

Yeah.

That led me to another thought too. This probably wouldn't be one of my top 3, but I don't know if it was my grandpa or my dad that instilled this into me, this thought. But one of them used to always say that crops need storms to grow. And so do people. And the challenges and the failures that we go through in life, they're only failure when you complete it and don't get back up and learn something from it and move forward. But I know a lot of my bigger failures in life have led to some really, really beautiful things to come from it. But yeah, I think that speaks volumes to kind of the mindset that you want to be in of, you know, like, life does have some pain in it and you've got to be able to embrace that to be able to grow and learn. In terms of developing, like, deep rich relationships. I think that God built us with requirements to have tension in our lives to be able to grow. So, I'll use an analogy. Before Chris hopped on the call, you were talking about how you were working out and getting back in shape, turning your Corona six-pack or your Corona keg back into a six-pack or whatever. But, when you're going through that process, what you're doing is you're literally micro-tearing your muscles so that they grow back stronger. And, if you don't use your muscles, they atrophy. Like NASA space program, Bradley, you can probably tell me more about this being in Huntsville, but whenever someone goes to space, one of the things that they're most concerned about health-wise is that all of their muscles atrophy. And so they have a lot of really regimented workouts that they have to do while they're in space so that they can literally just stand up and walk when they get back to Earth's gravity because their muscles haven't had to work. And so they atrophy when they're not used. And if you overuse them, they tear. And that's really bad. And With leadership, I think that there's a lot of relationship capital that is required to be able to inspire behavior. And I think that there's this like gentle balance between if you don't ask things of people, if you don't ask them to step outside their comfort zone, that relationship capital is going to atrophy. And if you over-ask, then it tears the muscle and it requires some rebuilding and requires a whole lot more rebuilding than it would have if you just would have been able to stay in the middle. And there's some beautiful value in knowing that, that you've got to ask for people to be able to step outside their comfort zone and support them to be able to do that and allow them to fail and make sure that it's not atrophy, that relationship where— I think the same is true with kids as a parent or as a spouse or with friends. Like, I mean, Bradley and I were good friends, and I would say that one of the reasons why we're good friends is because I don't view you as accepting me as who I am. I mean, if I want someone to accept me as who I am, I'll just drive through the Chick-fil-A line and they don't care if I'm wearing my PJs at 3 o'clock in the afternoon on a Tuesday. Like, they're still going to say, "My pleasure," and "Yes, sir," and all that sort of stuff. I want people in my life who are friends. And how I would find that is somebody who is going to hold me to who I'm capable of becoming and not necessarily accepting me as who I am. Like, expects me to be able to take steps forward in the way that I want to be able to take steps forward. So anyway, that would probably be number 2 that I want to— discussed a little bit.

If we could just take a second, I do have a quick question. So you were saying how leadership is basically an art and management itself is a science. Can you give me an example of like how you manage the art and the science? Like what are some tangible things that you do to walk that line between being a leader and being a manager? Like an example that I'm thinking about is, for example, having weekly meetings where you have one-on-one with the person and tell them, hey, this is what you're doing well. This is what could be improved and here's what we're going to do this following week and then we'll touch base next week.

Yeah. As a general rule, I think the management, like you said, is a lot more science and, and that's like just kind of checking the stuff that you want to have done. You know, like I just had a meeting with one of my team members, Rob, earlier this morning, and we pulled up a bunch of management stuff like, hey, how many quotes have you done? How many times have you pivoted to this specific product line? What's the size of the pivots that you're making? So, if we're talking about life insurance, are they $20 a month, like really, really simple products, or $2,000 per month, more holistic, almost in financial planning realm type life insurance play? And we talk about those things and what's going well and what's going bad and things like that. That's kind of the science. I mean, the numbers are what the numbers are. If someone's getting in the batter's box often enough, they'll get enough hits. But I guess the why behind it becomes the more intrinsic leadership process that's a lot more artful. In terms of understanding where someone is in life. One of my old agency managers, the guy who hired me actually, he used to always say that anytime there's a performance problem, it's a skill issue, a will issue, or a hill issue. And so if it's a skill, it's pretty management-based. It's just like, hey, here's the product, here's how we talk about it, here's the conversation points that you want to be able to get into. Like, I mean, it's just product training or enough quotes or whatever. It's very managerial. When it's a hill issue, oftentimes that's something that's in someone's way. So, I'm thinking, I won't name names, but I've got team members in my office who have gone through divorces during the time while I've been here. It's a very, very big hill that they're dealing with. I've got team members that had bankruptcies, team members that have lost parents or grandparents. You can still expect them to be the best version of themselves on that daily basis, but it's not necessarily the best version of theirself if there's a huge massive hill in between them and where they want to go. And then as a leader, you've got to be able to make some decisions around that of Is this hill worth waiting for? There's a real question that you need to be able to work through them. And lots of times in my one-on-ones with team members, I'm talking to them about, about their marriage or about relationships with their parents or whatever. And that has nothing to do with the daily management of it, but I need a really, really good, well-grounded human being to be able to work in the office and to be able to give me their best effort. And so that's what I mean by it's a lot more artful and it's never necessarily the same size. It's all— I might give very, very different advice to one team member versus another just based on me knowing enough about them to care deep enough and understand kind of how they're looking at the world and where their challenges might be.

So I've heard skill or will a lot of times. I've never heard skill, will, or hill. I love that. I'm stealing that. I will credit you for the rest of my life on that one.

All right. I stole it from someone else too.

So a lot of the best ideas are actually stolen or borrowed. Whenever you're mentioning that, it just really reminds me the book that's gotten mentioned on this podcast quite a bit. We did the podcast with Craig Wiggins when he talked about Radical Candor and Kim Scott's book where she talks about the difference of Radical Candor versus Rūnus empathy and so on and so forth. And just that balance of caring for people personally and challenging them directly. Let me ask you, how do you balance whenever somebody is— they do have a hill in their life that they're climbing, divorce, bankruptcy, etc. How do you lead through that but at the same time still continue to try to push the business forward? How have you done that?

One of the best authors or speakers, I think, on that topic is probably Brené Brown. She talks a lot about empathy and she talks a lot about boundaries. When someone's going through that, so I guess two things need to happen. First, for someone to like truly open up to you and share what they're going through with you, they need to feel safe to be able to do that. And if you don't have a full picture, You're just going to be frustrated with the team member. Like, why do they keep showing up to work late? Why are they not so motivated? Why do I see them just like almost sulking? Why are they not sitting up straight in their chair? Like all those things will drive you crazy. And if you haven't made it okay to be really vulnerable in a situation, they're never going to share with you, hey, my dog just died, or my grandpa's really sick, or going through a bankruptcy or going through a divorce or something like that. I guess so the first thing is, is just being open enough and being human enough with them to be able to understand so they can feel comfortable enough to be able to kind of let you know what their real picture is. And so once you've got the real picture, you've got to be really, really kind about it. It's probably not the right word that I'm looking for. You need to be warm and welcoming of those sorts of things. But at the same time, there are boundaries that need to be in place of what's acceptable and what's not acceptable. It needs to be able to be talked about and you guys need to— so two people or a group of people need to be able to come together and, and create some boundaries on there and we need to be able to protect each other. I mean, you know, at the end of the day, I think that we're all designed to be able to live in communities. It's not like we're some part of the animal kingdom where we live by ourselves forever. I mean, I've got a family. Even if someone was single, they're typically involved in a whole lot of other community things. We crave that community environment. I think why we crave that is because there's a lot of protection that comes in with that. And so for someone to be able to feel protected that when they're not performing at their best, that someone's going to have their back, but also knowing that that can't persist. And it's okay to be at a vulnerable space right now, but we need to be able to heal and move forward from it. And we talk about this every day in my office. I need the best version of you today. That's kind of a little tagline that we do. And I think the beauty in that statement of we need the best version of you today is that not all days are going to be perfect, and some days are going to be a challenge, and some days are going to be really difficult, and some of them are going to be really, really good. And the best version of yourself on a Tuesday that you're in a great mood might be 2x what your best version of yourself is on a Wednesday where things maybe haven't necessarily gone so well for you. And so, talking about those things, being open and honest with them and having a place where they're comfortable enough to be able to share some of that with you and then coaching them through that but with some boundaries in there that are non-negotiables. So, like some things that we always do, some non-negotiables here in my business are we do everything in a very virtuous manner. We're never going to take advantage of something or a situation or whatever. That's just not something that we do. And especially with having two offices and me bouncing back and forth and not necessarily having eyes on everything all the time, I need my team to have that sort of environment where they're going to call each other out in the event that someone does something that might not necessarily be of the highest virtue in terms of what we're trying to do and how we're trying to accomplish things. We're always going to treat each other with dignity. That doesn't always mean that we're in the best mood and, you know, everyone's always just slapping hands and hugging and like, there's challenges and there's going to be rubs and there's going to be friction and things like that, but that we're going to deal with each other with a lot of, uh, and treat each other with dignity, and we're going to support each other always in all situations. And so like just some basic ground rules, some electric fences that we all know that we're not going to touch, we're not going to approach, but then having a lot of grace within those kind of more gray areas.

Whenever you're describing that about treating people with dignity, everything you do is in a virtuous manner, you know, basically you're describing— I don't know if you call them this in your office, but in our coaching program, one of the very first things that we do is establish your core 4 values. In your office. And that's obviously what you've been able to embody. So it's no secret to your leadership and the success that you've had, that you actually have those and you talk about those in a consistent manner with your new team members. And then you embody them, because it's one thing to do them, put them together, put them on the wall. But if you don't actually have them as something that you're discussing, it was just a nice exercise for a few hours, and then it's worthless. So I think that's really, really powerful.

We do have a third one and our third one is that we always make a connection. That's our other one. Whether a sale's made or not in a transaction, we're always making a connection. So like whenever we get done with a call, whenever I hear one of those team members, the thing I often ask them or ask myself is like, what's something unique that I learned about that person or that my team member learned about that person on the call that's beyond I work at Nissan or something like that. Like, what are they into? What are their kids' names? Like those sorts of things. But those are probably our three. We don't have four. Maybe I should come up with a fourth, but those are our three.

I'm sure that you're familiar with Simon Sinek and he's got a TED Talk about why, how, and what. I just can't stop thinking about the leadership portion that you've talked about so far. So when I hear you speak, I think that leadership is the why, because it's hard to define it. And then management is the what. So like leadership is why we do things. And then management is, are the actions that you carry out on a daily basis. So, I mean, you're talking about the different values that you have and how, when you carry out the what, which are, for example, the one-on-one meetings, you practice things like empathy by asking people, hey, what's going on with your life? Tell me about you. But at the same time, having boundaries, like you were saying, it's like, hey, despite you having this going on, we want to work through that. But at the same time, we still have a job to do. And because we still have a job to do, some behaviors are not acceptable. And these are the boundaries that we have to have when we're in the office. I can help you outside of it, but this is what we have to do. So yeah, I don't necessarily have a follow-up question, but it's just a lot of the things that were going through my mind as I was hearing you speak. What do you think, Bradley?

I guess one of the things I was just thinking about, and I would love your take on this, Joel, is whenever you're really giving of your time, whether it's through social media forums, conversations with other agents, you do a great job of connecting and you're just so willing to give and to give advice. I know this has happened to you. I was on the phone with an agent just earlier this week that's really struggling with some really big things in his team. I mean, it's, it's a toxic culture. It's just not good. And the biggest thing that I see is a lack of self-awareness with the agent about how they speak to their team members and how that is not helping the situation. What do you To that person or those people that you've talked to that you can just tell they're super smart, they know the business, they have good systems, they have good processes, but it's just not been wrapped around and they can't seem to build the culture that they want. What's some advice that you can give them?

Well, I guess I'll rephrase it with a question and it's not rhetorical, but how many people can you really control? One. The only person I control is me. And those are the only actions I can control. Now, I can influence a whole lot of other behaviors. But at the end of the day, I control one person and that's me. And so anytime I've got a performance issue, anytime I've got, like you mentioned, a toxic culture, I've dealt with them before. Anytime we've got team member issues, whatever, the first place that I'm always looking is in the mirror. Are they modeling? Because I mean, if you're doing a good job leading, your people are going to model your behavior for good, bad, or indifferent. And so the first place I'm always looking at is in the mirror and how have I influenced this behavior that either I really like or that I really don't like. I mean, it doesn't necessarily always have to have a negative But how do I control my own actions to be able to then demonstrate an appropriate adult way of being able to handle things and work through some of that stuff? And so, like, just some little examples. I used to have an agency in Montana, went into leadership, now have an agency here. And if we transplanted one of my team members from my Montana agency to Tennessee, it would feel completely and totally different because I led a lot differently. And I really led I'm not calling myself a genius. I'm using some language from the book Good to Great. One of the leadership styles that is articulated in the book Good to Great is the one genius with 1,000 helpers. It's like one person that has all the ideas and then you have a bunch of people that go and implement it. I think that you can drive some results that way but my goodness, is it ever exhausting as the leader when everything rests on your shoulders. Here in Tennessee, after going to leadership and just observing a whole lot of other agents and how things worked well and how things may have not work so well. Taking a lot more democratic might be the right way. I'm sure there's like an actual leadership term for this, but I try and enlist my people in as many decisions as I possibly can and support their decisions even if I don't necessarily agree with them. So with my office setup, I've got Michael who runs my Murfreesboro office, I've got Andrew that leads my Smyrna office, and those offices are different. Both of them have kind of taken on the stance of the manager for each one of those offices with a little bit of me sprinkled in there and a little bit of all the other ingredients of the remainder of the team members. But To answer your specific question about where someone might be challenged in the event that they're dealing with a toxic culture, it first needs to be about them. Have they treated their team members in a toxic manner at all? And has that created any resentment or any issues? Or have you always treated your people with grace and dignity and stuff like that? I mean, if ever there's a question on a commission where we're talking about a team member, just giving you a real tangible example, I always err to the side of the team member. Even when it hurts. One time, a couple years ago, I put together this massive bonus for financial services at the end of the year, and one of my team members landed the case of his life during that time period. And so I ended up paying out like twice what the overall agency revenue was going to be on this one thing, and just kind of grinned and bared it and paid it out, and did so with a smile. Now, I wasn't necessarily smiling when I was writing the check, but when I was delivering it, I had a big smile on my face. Yeah, and I was really proud of the team member that was able to do that. But That's the sort of stuff that I want to model so that my team members— I mean, yet to this day since I've been an agent here in Tennessee, yet to this day have I had 2 team members come to me and go, "Hey, this was supposed to be my commission." "No, it was supposed to be my commission." I deal with that all the time in Montana. I deal with that here, none. It's not that I had bad team members in Montana and good team members here. It's that I'm a better leader now than I was then and I gave a little bit better perspective on how we wanted to treat each other and how I was going to treat my people and in turn, the expectations that I had about how they were going to treat me.

That reminds me of Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. Basically, he says that everything is your fault, good or bad, everything is your fault. Just take ownership of it. And it's awesome to see you display that. I can tell you from experience that Bradley definitely displays that. Like, I'll forget something and then he will be like, Chris, I'm sorry that I forgot to remind you. Like, it's like, clearly it's my fault, but he still will take it upon himself to take unnecessary blame. But that just shows you how good of a leader he is. I mean, you seem incredibly knowledgeable about leadership, but how did you get there and how do you sharpen your leadership skills today?

So honestly, what it's been is I've just been unbelievably blessed to have some really, really good leaders in my life. So my dad was an amazing father, but also a really, really good leader for me growing up and still is to this day. Or former bosses, I've had some amazing bosses and I've had really, really terrible bosses, and you can learn a whole lot more from the good ones, but you can also learn some really, really valuable insights from the bad ones. And so just kind of taking some of that stuff, committing it to memory, remembering how some certain things might have made you feel, whether it was good or bad or indifferent. Like, this is a really, really small little tiny thing, but when I was an agency field leader, I was talking to my boss and I requested some time off for a little vacation or something like that, and And he said, you know, you don't have to ask me that stuff. And I said, what do you mean I don't have to ask you for time off? There's like an approval slot needed. And he said, no, no, no, that's your time. I trust you to be able to make your own informed decisions on what your calendar looks like and what you can do and what you can't do during that given time period. And if you need time off during something that's really, really important, I'm just going to assume that whatever you had going on in your personal life is more important than this, and it's okay. And I'm going to trust you with that. And I remember walking away from that conversation thinking like, I'm like, that's really, really awesome. But then also looking back on it a little bit more, like he put a lot of ownership on me within that conversation as well of like, I need to make my own decisions. And so we've got that rule in my office too. It's only been abused by one person and that person really kind of abused a lot of stuff that we had here and they're no longer here because they just weren't good for our office. But my team members, I always tell them like, don't ask me for time off, put it in the calendar and take it. But I expect that first you talk to your peers because It's always miserable whenever someone's out in a relatively small office environment where we got 5 or 6 people. We lose like 20% of our workforce whenever one person leaves. Like, there's a lot of heavy lifting that the other people need to do, and it sucks when you're on the other side of that, and it sucks when they're dealing with your side of that. We all need to take time and things like that, but make sure that it's cool with your peers. If it's cool with your peers, like, you don't have to ask me, just tell me. That sort of stuff. Those little small things, I think, add up to a big difference. But in terms of like learning this stuff, I mean, honestly, a lot of it has just been school of hard knocks, honestly. But then also having a really, really candid conversation with yourself, which frankly is a little bit more difficult than having a conversation with somebody else. Because at the end of the day, I'm the one that has to own that candidness when I'm self-talking myself of like, hey, I really didn't handle that that well, or maybe I didn't introduce the role very well to this new hire, maybe that's why he or she didn't thrive here, or whatever it is. Because at the end of the day, we own it.

Well, I hope everybody hears that. Humility, vulnerability as a leader, how much pain can you endure, building social capital within your team. I mean, all of these are really what we're talking about is soft skills and really the art of leadership. I mean, I think that's what the title of this podcast should, quite frankly, be is The Art of Leadership with Joel Laird. I mean, that's really what we've been talking about.

One more thing, I was just looking through my notes and I just wanted to put this in here if it was relevant for you guys. This is really important. I believe in leadership, and that is that the best leaders are the best followers. It's not binary. It's not one or the other. I think a lot of the times you wear a leadership tag and we all kind of think of leadership as it's a one-person type thing, or I'm a leader because I'm a business owner. I'm not a leader because I'm a business owner. I'm a business owner because I'm the business owner. I'm a leader because people have chosen to follow me. And that's a lot different perspective. It's never earned. Well, maybe it's a better way to put it is it's earned every single day. And sometimes that takes being a really, really good follower for the people that you're leading. And so, it's not binary or as in you're a leader or you're a follower. I mean, like I think of my marriage. As the husband, I'm the head of the household, but at the same time, I'm following my wife a lot of the time. Other times, I'm leading her. And I think that in the best relationships, there's a lot of give and take within that.

That was awesome.

Yeah. Thank you.

I've got a number of little— quotes that I'm gonna have to give Joel Laird credit for. This is great. All right, E9 rapid fire. You ready?

Let's roll.

Last book you read?

The Slight Edge was a reread. That was the last one I read.

That's a good one. I like that book.

What book or podcast would you recommend the most to others?

You said one. I gotta give it two because I think they stand really, really well with each other, and that is The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and I think it's John David Mann, as well as Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek. Very different angles on it, but they're saying the same thing in a different way.

Those are all great books. If you were not doing what you do now and owning both of your insurance agencies, what do you think that you would be doing?

Some sort of professional leader or coach in some sort of a sales organization, I would guess.

Who inspires you? Who do you follow?

My wife and kids. I get a lot of inspiration from them. Peers. I find inspiration all over the place. I find inspiration in Dustin Johnson making that park putt on 16 after almost shanking it in the water last week at the Travelers. I mean, you can find inspiration in a whole lot of different things. So I guess just life in general.

All right, so you've traveled the world in incentive trips and just with your family, what is your favorite place that you've been to?

I'm gonna go with Bermuda.

Hmm, that's good.

Option 1B is Barcelona. Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain's pretty sweet, man.

I haven't been to Barcelona, but I've been to Madrid and I love it out there. What's one thing you cannot live without?

Golf. I think I have really a really hard time if I wasn't able to play a round of golf every now and then.

Yes, good answer, good answer.

I feel like I'm talking to Bradley's twin right now.

Hey, and I know, I know this is rapid fire, but I think my favorite part about it is I'm gonna shoot in the 90s if my mind is full of junk. What I love so much about golf is I've got to be focused in the moment, and I always just find that like things are just kind of circulating in the back of my brain and my subconscious while I'm out there, and focused on my round and what I'm trying to do in the given moment. And honestly, usually come back with a whole lot of clarity on whatever I'm worried about at the given moment, even though I didn't think about it while I was out there.

You didn't shoot 90 last time we played though. You didn't— which we gotta settle up that bet, by the way.

At Sweetens, at Sweetens, I think I shot a smooth 91 with those crazy pin placements. The rest of the rounds were mid-80s, which still isn't very good. Mid-70s I'd be happy with.

But the golfers, the non-golfers, have turned turn the podcast off at this point.

Clearly.

Yeah, seriously.

Chris is checking his email over there right now.

Another travel question. Okay, so what's one place that you'd love to visit that you haven't yet?

Tahiti.

All right, so you can't say golf, but what is your favorite non-work hobby?

Spending time with my kids, doing something outside, playing some sort of something, even if we're just throwing around a ball whatever, but just being outside with my kids, enjoying nature.

That's the right answer.

Yep.

All right, so it is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, so you've already dropped so many dimes on us, but what's the best piece of leadership advice you've ever been given?

Cost of leadership is self-interest, and if you want to lead your people, you've got to have their interest first and foremost, and it cannot be faked. It's got to be real. It'll come across if it's fake. Awesome.

Joel, thanks for coming on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. We really appreciate it and hope that we can have you on in the future.

Absolutely. Take care. Thank you guys for your time. It was really nice to meet you, Chris.

Likewise, man.