Episode 200: Fireside Chat - How To Manage It All with David Munson (Recast)

it really just makes things a lot simpler if I could start with the end in mind first. So this way, for example, as agency grows, I know that my marketing budget is also going to grow. My team member budget is also going to grow percentage-wise accordingly. So just starting with the end in mind, looking at the model that I want to build and then building it. And then over time, as those percentages adjust, they adjust accordingly as well. So many times we see agencies stop spending on marketing or their marketing doesn't keep pace with their gross revenue. I mean, those were the first keys that I would take out if I was, you know, starting all over again and had to do it from scratch.

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 Hamner, your host.

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If you own multiple businesses or multiple locations, this is the podcast for you. We're so excited to have David Munson, founder of Club Capital, successful insurance agency owner himself. Look, there's so many people listening to this podcast that have multiple businesses, have multiple agency locations. How do you manage it all? You got team different places. How do you just get pulled in so many different directions?

How do you do it?

This podcast is gonna teach you how to do it. Pick up on some of the best practices that he does. I think you can get a lot out of it. Chris, couple things from you.

Well, number one, shout out to David because not only is he my boss, but he's also my insurance agent. And number 2, the best thing that I can say about David is that he truly develops leaders at his agency. I know a few people who are either aspiring to be an agent soon and who have come to be great agents in Maryland. So shout out to Andrew and Glisa. Once again, without further ado, let's go ahead and get into it.

Let's do it.

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David, this is long overdue. We are so excited to have you on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Awesome, thank you Bradley, and thanks Chris. Appreciate, uh, being on.

So I think that we have to start with you especially, but we do this with all of our guests, is just about your story and your background. Both for your insurance agencies and then obviously Club Capital and how that began. So, for people that don't know you, don't know your story, why don't you give us a little bit of your background?

Sure. I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, and grew up soccer player, playing club soccer growing up, and then went down to IMG Academy and played for my junior and senior year down there and ended up playing at College of Charleston, played soccer there, and ended up going to College of Charleston there. Studied international business and finance there, and, uh, you know, after school was really looking at what type of career I wanted to get into. I was looking at international business, international finance, and different avenues I could go. And I had this background in my family with agency and, uh, decided to explore that. And that's how I started to get involved with insurance.

So you have a long-standing background in your family with insurance agency ownership. So can you just talk about that and just how that has influenced you as a business owner today? What are some of the things that you've taken away from just their years of being in the business?

Sure, yeah, obviously something I'm really proud of. My mom's father was, uh, actually initially a State Farm agent up in Matauchie, New Jersey. He kind of really created a legacy for my entire family when he was an agent before there was an agent aspirin program or any training program. My father, my uncle, and my aunt were all essentially team members in my grandfather's office, helping run his office, all in training to become their own agency owners. And before my grandfather retired, they all came on to be agents in different parts of the country. My aunt came on in New Jersey, my uncle came on in New Jersey, and then my father ultimately came on in Maryland.

So talk to us. We had Mike on, he was our very first podcast that we dropped back in December of last year, and he gave his story of how Club Capital got started. But I want you to talk about that from your perspective, is how did Club Capital get started, where's Club Capital today, and even a little bit about where the company's going.

Sure, yeah, just kind of piggyback off that story, kind of how I got into agency. I pretty much grew up in an agency. You know, I think it's really important just to kind of hear that background. When my father opened his agency and him and my mom were working in the office together, that was pretty much where I was after school every day. My brother and I had our own little playroom in the back room, so after school, that's where we went. So going into college, going down the road, that's kind of the furthest thing I ever wanted to do as it goes with kind of what your parents do. I finally talked with other people outside of my family and kind of came back to it. And that's how I decided to launch my agency in Bethesda in 2011. We built that up over several years and since launched a MOA, a second location in Potomac. And a few years back had the idea to start Club Capital and can obviously go into that part a little bit about the vision and the why behind Club Capital.

Yeah, I feel like that would definitely be good. How did you think to come up with the actual bundle, like the all-in-one bundle that Club Capital is for agents?

Yeah. So when I was an agent starting out, I leaned on a lot of other agents, just like we all do, for help and success and just how to structure your business correct. A lot of what we get trained coming into it is on the product knowledge side and on the marketing and sales side. So I leaned a lot on other business owners and other agency owners that were more established and frankly more successful than I was. For that advice. So I had a payroll company that somebody recommended. At the time, I did my own books, you know, through QuickBooks and was doing it yourself. And then I asked the successful agent on who they recommended as a CPA. There was a CPA firm that handled a couple hundred agencies around the country. I started using them. So that's kind of how I got started. After a couple years of doing that, I just realized, hey, I didn't open my business to want to do all that behind-the-scenes back-office work. I was looking for a firm that could consolidate those 3 services and just saw a lot of value in adding those services together to really look at agency in a different light than just the way it was before.

It sounds like you didn't want to be working in the business but on the business, as cliché as that sounds.

Yeah, you know, that cliché gets thrown around quite a bit. But, you know, when you talk to a lot of agency owners that are just starting out or even a couple years in, they didn't open their agency to work in their business. Of course, you always have to work in your business to some degree, but especially on the day-to-day operations in terms of your books and your payroll and certainly your accounting. A lot of them didn't open their agency with the vision to do that. So I saw the vision with Club Capital as combining those 3 services, helping elevate the agent out of that role and allowing them to have better analytics, better data, so they can run a more successful business.

So what was that time like? When was that that you actually went from whatever that moment was of, I can't find this solution, to I'm going to go start my own business. I mean, that's a big jump to get to that point. I always find that time fascinating whenever you're talking to other entrepreneurs, whether it's opening an insurance agency, opening a second location, or just opening a brand new company like you did.

I mean, what was that like?

Yeah, for me it was, there was a couple pain points that I had and number one was just doing my own books. So yeah, I just wasn't, uh, You have the grand ambition of getting it done every single month and being on top of it. But we all know in reality life sets in and time comes in. So there's a little bit of a pain point there. There's also a pain point with, even though I was happy with the CPA I was using and they service hundreds of other agencies around the country and do a great job, their comparison data they would send me was once a year and it was rearview in nature. So from my perspective, that was another pain point. Just the way agency was going, I wanted my data to be up to date so I can make real-time decisions and comparison data. And I really thought there was some value add in combining the business analytics and forward-looking thinking into agency where most traditional CPAs are more rearview looking, historical in nature.

There's a—

I don't know, for some of our listeners, they may be familiar with the name Russell Brunson. And in one of his books that I was reading recently, He talks about how so many businesses and entrepreneurs are created from a problem that the entrepreneur had, and then their product or service was the result of them figuring out the solution to that problem. And he goes on to say that our mess becomes our message. Our mess becomes our message. I don't know, I just think it's so fascinating that exactly what you're talking about is that the thing that you were frustrated about and the solution you were looking for wasn't out there and you decided, "I'm just going to go and do this for myself," one, but then also how that's become and has helped so many hundreds of agents around the country.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was really a scratch-my-own-itch type of thing. I was upset with my process and the way it was. I saw what could be done with the comparison and I just wanted it for myself more than anything. So I said, "Hey, let's go." I was talking about it, thinking about it, brainstorming on it. And found the right team to make it happen and bring it to life. And that was the game plan from there.

I love the serendipity of how the team came about because, I mean, we don't have to get too deep into it, but correct me if I'm wrong, but you ran into one of the employees of the partner at a gym and then just struck up a conversation and then the gears started turning from that meeting, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Funny enough, we advertised quite a bit for the agency and I was working out in our gym and Somebody approached me in the locker room and they said, "Hey, you're David Munson. I saw you, recognized you from your sign." And we got to chatting and had a networking meeting over lunch. He wants to introduce me to Javier, our other partner at Club Capital. So it's just kind of a random serendipitous type of thing where he saw our ad and recognized me and put the meeting together. Javier and the Golden Group are doing something very similar for nonprofit groups and restaurant groups in the DC metro area. I shared my idea of agency and what we could do to help solve this problem for my agency. And we just put our minds together and started to get going.

So just talk about, because I think people will find it interesting, you're a visionary entrepreneur. So where is Club Capital today and where is it going into the future?

Sure. Just to go from where we were, I mean, I was obviously the first user and we started out with a couple of close family agency friends and family to get on our kind of our first user base to test it out. And many of those are still clients of ours today. And really it was trial and error about what worked, what makes the solution better, et cetera. So we can iterate, iterate, iterate, and truly make a value-added product for agency, not just something else that's already out there. I think our true value-add and where we're going is that small businesses around the country, including insurance agencies, they don't have the luxury of these big data type analytic tools to run your business. For the most part, we're obviously mom-and-pop small businesses, but we have incredible purchasing power when we add in all of our locations together. So if we can collect data across the board in terms of number one expenses, and then also on ROI, I think there's incredible potential that we can look at in terms of just running a more efficient business. We're not on an island. Whenever I would go to an agency meeting, we would all talk about, hey Bradley, what do you pay for your payroll? Or what do you pay for marketing? I just always wondered why that was such a big secret. Why is that? That requires flight time and meeting, and it's top of mind for everybody, but why don't I have that information right away? So that's the idea behind it. And what we're doing now is starting to pull out what are the threads of the top-performing agencies around the country? Where do they spend their money? And how can we help other agents, especially starting off, spend their money more efficiently? If you look at it, I don't care what agency size you are, if you're just starting out or you're 5 years into the business, 10 years into the business, over the next 5 years of agency, you're probably going to spend upwards of $1 million on expenses. So, just in terms of how are you investing that money, are you investing it the best way you possibly can for your family, your employees, your business, your stakeholders? And that's what Club Capital is all about and just doing it on a broader vision.

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I hadn't prepared this question, but it just made me think you're the first user. This came from your vision. What are some of the things that may be myths that have been debunked that you had years ago in your business that after now seeing the data from so many small businesses around the country has made you rethink how you invest in your businesses?

Well, I mean, certainly the past couple of years just with our industry, I think have been changing quicker and quicker. So just being able to quickly log into the analytics and as I plan out for my agency for next year, I'm able to quickly see anonymously, of course, which agencies' revenues went up the most and then digging into their data and seeing where they spend. So I'm just able to make, I think, better business decisions because I'm not just looking at my own data set. I'm able to look at the top performers, the top 10% of who's doing well. And, you know, Micah and the team at Club Capital can share with any of our users on how to do that and how to get that done. But just in my annual planning and quarterly planning, just analyzing the expenses, where we're spending money, are we spending it in the right marketing sources, and are we spending it in the right areas?

One myth that I think can be debunked for almost every agent is that revenue is king. There is some truth to it, like you definitely do need revenue, but you really have to watch profitability as well because That's where you eat from. That's where you pay your mortgage from. That's where you feed your family from. So I feel like that's just one myth that I can think about. I'm not an agent myself, but I work with almost 300 agents now, almost on a day-to-day basis. So that's one myth that comes to mind. What do you think, David?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think you hit it right on the head. I mean, all of our users, depending on which parent company you're with, right? The parent company, they care about revenue, right? So everything on their side is top line driven either by revenue or by sales. And that's how they compare agents. And that was always one of those kind of biggest myths out there for me was, hey, I think we should be compared based on profit, not necessarily top-line revenue. I want to know the agencies that are squeezing the most out of the lemon per se, rather than just getting the most top-line sales or top-line revenue. I want to know who's bringing home the most and what are they doing to run their business most efficiently to do so.

Yeah, 100%. I mean, give me a business that's bringing home net income of $100,000 off $500,000 in revenue. Versus a business that's bringing in $50,000 of net income at a million dollars in gross revenue. So I completely agree with that. Why do you think that is? Do you think it's just the forces outside that people just don't talk about it? Because I agree with you, I had the same experience early on, is that the things that most small businesses talk about— what's your revenue growth targets, what's your profitability targets for this year— those things that are very common in the small business world just don't seem to be talked about at all in the insurance agency world. Almost like we're just not going to go there. Why do you think that is?

You know, I think a little bit of it is just the culture, right? And it's certainly driven from some degree from the parent company, right? So they want to make it based on competition and who's bringing in the most revenue. So there's just a natural piece. They don't care as much about that bottom line as a business owner would, right? So they're incentivized to drive up that top line number and they make it competitive and people play in that game where they try to drive those numbers up so they can be top of the charts. So I think there's a little bit of design to it. I'm not saying that that's wrong, but I think you also just need to look out for your bottom line and the profit as well.

David, I'd love to dig in for you to give maybe one or two things that you've actually seen from some of the data from all of these agency owners. And what's something that somebody can take away regarding their own financials, whether they're a Club Capital member or not? That they could use in their agency today?

Just looking at the analytics and taking what you want out of your business first. There's been a lot of publicity around the book Profit First, whatever you want to call that concept, but just looking at what you want to get out of your agency and working it backwards. Okay? So figuring out what that net number is, figuring out percentage-wise what each line item of your budget is. To me, in doing this and in planning all my businesses, it really just makes things a lot simpler if I could start with the end in mind first. So this way, for example, as agency grows, I know that my marketing budget is also going to grow. My team member budget is also going to grow percentage-wise accordingly. So just starting with the end in mind, looking at the model that I want to build and then building it. And then over time, as those percentages adjust, they adjust accordingly as well. So many times we see agencies stop spending on marketing or their marketing doesn't keep pace with their gross revenue. Those were the first keys that I would take out if I was starting all over again and had to do it from scratch.

So many small business owners, insurance agencies otherwise, they sacrifice so much into their business for so long. They put in their own equity. They put in thousands of dollars, if not sometimes hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars of their own money. And you're right, they forget to actually— how am I going to extract the equity out of my own business by paying themselves first and what do they want to get out of it. So I think that's fantastic to begin with the end in mind.

Yeah. And then just understanding your cash flow too. There's newer agents out there, just understanding your cash flow, how that works. I think you can never know that well enough in terms of just planning your business, being able to forecast your business. It allows you to invest in your business quicker, to scale quicker if you just know when the money's coming in. So that's just something I wish I knew a little bit earlier when I first started out.

I mean, you brought up Profit First. One of the things that I enjoyed about that book is that basically he pointed out something that we've all known all along, but just never really put words around it. But like, people tend to live their life around the balance in their bank account. And what I mean by that is like, if they see that they have money today, then they're like, sure, then I can eat out. If they don't have any money, like on a bank account, then they're like, I'm going to wait till my next check and then I'll eat out then. And speaking to hundreds of agents or just hundreds of business owners, period, agents or not, I realized that that behavior doesn't change when they make the switch from being a regular civilian to being like an actual business owner. And because of that, they tend to not make progress as quickly as they could if they were being more proactive with their planning. And that's what I have seen the biggest benefit of just working with something like Club Capital. Wouldn't you agree, Dave? Like I said, just being more proactive when it comes to your financial planning.

Yeah. I wouldn't even say proactive, but just having a system in place. And we could talk about personal finance here or business finance for this matter. But it's the old adage, right? The people that win the lottery, they end up bankrupt in the next 5 years, right? The NFL player that he makes it rich and he has a 3-year career and then he's broke after 10 years. There's a reason in place that those adages exist is because usually they don't have a system to grow their wealth. So same thing with your business. You have to have a system in place to extrapolate the profit. And I think humans by design, we're bad at essentially doing things automatic. So as you're comfortable and as you can, obviously put things on autopay, put your savings on autopay, pay yourself first. If it's automatically going into savings, you don't have to do it manually. It's going to help you save more over time. These are simple things, but we just kind of get out of the way of our own— human nature. And you could do the same thing with your business if you set up the right financial ecosystem so it all works together.

Yeah. I mean, I think even automating, as you and I have talked many times offline, automating your distributions, knowing what those are going to be, automating those so that the money is automatically going to go from the business account into your personal account, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it doesn't have to be all of it. There's always going to be some variability going on depending on, you know, profit and expenses that month, but you know, a certain amount where it's automated. And automating your savings for quarterly taxes and estimated tax payments, right? So that money's already taken out. So April 15th comes around, you're not searching for where to pay the bill, right?

Yeah, yeah, sure. You know, I know you've mentioned it again, we're kind of on this automation part, but just really looking at how can you automate any checks that you have, if it's rent or anything else, to have those on automatic bill pay from the bank. I mean, it doesn't seem like much, but I think it ultimately begins to be something that you're thinking about all the time is how can you automate things so you're not having to worry about those. And I think it also helps with the discipline. So it means you've prepared on the front side for certain expenses and you don't have to worry about your willpower in the moment. Am I going to make that savings? Am I going to put money in the savings or am I going to put money away for taxes? It's automatically done for you. And, you know, it's kind of what Netflix has been able to do. I mean, or why people can pay Some gym memberships are $9.99 a month, $9 a month, because they know if they get 2,000 people paying $9 a month, nobody's ever going to cancel that. So I think the more that you can make it easier, the better.

Yeah, absolutely. And then the more you can make it, you have less mental fatigue about the administrative stuff, right? So you can apply your kind of unique strengths and unique gifts to hopefully grow your business or spend it where you want, spend it with your family, etc. But just free yourself out from that administrative task, and that's what we're talking about here. So you can look at the big picture and not be stuck in the weeds as much as you can.

I think it's a natural segue because we're talking about freeing ourselves up. Well, you own multiple businesses. You've obviously done a lot of these things to help free your time up because you are pulled in so many different directions. Can you just talk about how you've been able to balance being across different locations within your insurance agency, another company? Obviously, you have a young family with young kids and you want to be able to spend time with them. I'm sure you want to still get out and play soccer. I mean, how have you been able to find this balance?

Sure. So, it's, you know, obviously a work in progress, as I'm sure it is with a lot of us. First off, I think just my nature, and Bradley, you spent some time with me, and Chris, you know me now, but I'm pretty even-keeled. So, just allowing things to roll off your back. A lot of times things are important, but they're never as important as they sometimes we make them out to be. So, I think just having a good nature can sometimes help out with that first off before we start. And that just allows you to tackle problems as they come up. And then from there, I mean, it's really about building your team and building the people around you to help execute on the vision and the mission that we set out to do. We've done that with our team at Club Capital. I'm very proud of who we have on the team and what we've been able to build. And that's really bringing people into that vision and allowing them to take it and run with it and make it their own. Same thing with the agencies that we try to do is Bringing a leadership team that can help run the agencies, give them more ownership over the business where it's not just me on the door, but we have a team that's there to make sure the job gets done.

What would you say are like some things that you do to really empower people to basically become leaders? Because I have had multiple interactions with different people at your agency, one from just visiting and others because you actually are my agent, and I feel like every one of them that I speak to I can see them becoming an agent at some point in time. I don't really look at them as team members per se. And when I say that, I don't look at them as people who think that this is just a one-time thing that they're doing for a while. So what do you think that you do that gets them feeling like that? Or do you simply just get so lucky that it happens with hiring great people, period?

I don't know about the certainly lucky. I know Bradley, he talks a lot about the hiring part on the Club Capital coaching. But Chris, I appreciate it and obviously appreciate your business being in the DC area. We're proud to be your agency, of course. Yeah, I mean, again, just trying to bring in that shared vision. So trying to see where they're going and what they see out of their career and just aligning that with our agency vision and where to take them. We try to give a passion about the business too. I'm very proud about my legacy and where I came from and how my family has grown up around the business. So I try to instill that. Even with people that are coming in that are coming in from the outside. And to that extent, we've been able to foster 4 or 5 agents, team members that have come through the office or been associated with the office to go on to open up their own agency. So to some degree, we're looking for that, Chris, but other ways, just aligning their personal value and vision with where the office is.

Can I give a quick shout out?

Yeah, go for it.

Shout out to Andrew and Kalisa, man. Yeah, I actually met him at your office and then he's now an agent himself in the Maryland area in Catonsville. So if you're listening to this and you're in Maryland and you're not going with David, definitely stop by Andrew's office for sure.

Yeah, Andrew's a great story. I mean, he interned in the office and he was at the University of Maryland and after internship came on full-time, worked a couple years and now opened up an agency in his hometown in Catonsville. So yeah, he's done a great job and just really cool story to see him come through. Kind of make it his own now. So we call him the Godfather in our office because we got a big picture of him up on the wall.

So depending on what suit he's wearing, he actually looks like the Godfather too.

Like he could be a character.

I think that I would be remiss if I didn't ask you a few questions just about some best practices in your business. I mean, the pins and the plaques and the awards and then incentive trips. I mean, you all have been very, very successful in your insurance agency. What are just some of the things that— obviously, you've hired really, really good people, you've empowered them, you've trained them well, and maybe that's some of the things you want to touch on, but just what are some of the things in your actual insurance agency that have, you believe, that have really been some of the keys to your success?

Yeah, I think some of the keys to the success definitely has been our team and the ability to build that up, like you said, Bradley. Really, the ability to blend a P&C agency with a financial service agency, and I think With a lot of agencies out there, that's really where the opportunity comes. It can be one of the most challenging parts for a lot of agencies, especially starting out, and I get that. But being able to combine both an insurance agency and a financial service agency, I think, is really where the opportunity lies right now. I feel like we've been able to do that pretty well over the years and being able to transition from a P&C conversation to a financial service conversation and align with their vision and and extract value in that way as well.

Everybody listening to the podcast wants to sell more life insurance, period.

Everybody.

Okay.

Okay.

The David Munson number one tip.

Number one tip. But, you know, again, I don't think there's any secret at this point. I know you guys have had some great guests on here that have shared their best practices. Kind of our bread and butter and the way we've gone about it for 8, 9 years here and spoken all around the country about is really just going through it through the liability conversation. Something as P&C agents, we're perceived experts in that area. So using that liability conversation as a fact-finding to fact-find assets, fact-find income, et cetera, it allows you to get into a deeper financial service conversation. And if that ultimately leads to life, that's where it goes. But that essentially opens the door to talk about the whole financial world from there. So leveraging that liability for every single one of your clients, making sure you're doing the right job by them and making sure that they're protected accurately there. but also fact-finding the rest of their financials. And if you do that correctly, usually you're going to find some good life insurance need as well.

Yeah, I would say life insurance and income replacement too. I recently had a consultation at your office actually, and one of your employees walked me through the income replacement and what happens in the event that I get disabled suddenly. And he put it in very simple terms. Like, just imagine having a job that pays you, like, let's just say $1,000 less, but in the event that something does happen to you, they'll pay you 80% of your salary. So like even putting something in simple terms like that allowed me to wrap my mind around it. Like I didn't feel like I was being sold.

Yeah, that's the way we try to make it. We're solution-oriented and obviously need-based. We're just looking at your individual expenses. And Chris, I'm aware of your recent consultation and just kind of looking at the expenses and seeing, okay, hey, what can this do for you? And your numbers are obviously different than the next person coming in the door, but looking at your individual situation, what's going on in your world, and then, you know, what are some of the obstacles that can get in the way, and then what are some solutions to take care of that. And that's not necessarily a product, but it's more about the implications and what that does for Chris Reddy, right?

Yep.

Are you ready for the world-famous E9 rapid fire?

Go for it.

What's the last book that you read?

Currently, it's, uh, The Road Less Stupid. Hey! Recommended by the one and only Bradley.

Oh man, that's a great book. Who inspires you?

Recently I've been inspired by Jürgen Klopp. So he's the coach of Liverpool. Liverpool brought him in 4 or 5 years ago. Just recently announced they won the English Premier League title. Last year they won the Champions League title. Just an incredible coach and manager. Come in and turn around a team in 4 or 5 years. So he's been my very recent inspiration here this past week.

All right, other than the Club Capital podcast, what's your favorite book or podcast or blog that you love the most in business?

Sure. Okay, I could go rapid fire on here real quick. So favorite book is— for business book is Principles by Ray Dalio. Really think that just sums up the a lot of different business books that kind of puts it all together for me. Favorite podcast is the Tim Ferriss Podcast. I just love the different minds that he has on there. And yeah, not too much of a blogger, but favorite podcast and book right there.

Man, the Tim Ferriss Podcast. Tim Ferriss changed my life for the better. I love that guy for sure.

Yeah, he talks a lot about automation and finances and personal and business. So got a lot of ideas from him initially.

You've traveled the world through incentive trips. What's your favorite place?

Yeah, I've been fortunate enough to travel quite a bit with my wife, Amanda, and probably my top individual trip was we took a trip down to Peru and went down the Tambopata River, which is a kind of a tributary to the Amazon. It was just an adventure that the two of us went on before kids, and I don't think she knew what she was signing up for when we did it, but it was quite an adventure. We took a canoe 7 hours down the river, essentially, and stayed way out in the middle of the Amazon and came back. So she enjoyed it at the end, but initially it was quite a shock when we got there.

Club Capital is super forward-leaning, high-tech. Non-native iPhone app that you love the most?

That's a good one.

Don't say something boring like the Weather Channel. Don't say that.

I'm trying to think right now. I'm pretty simple in that regard. I'm pretty boring. You can strike this question, probably.

Oh no, we're leaving it. We're leaving it. They're getting to know David Madsen. We're leaving that one. Okay, next question.

Uh-huh. What is one thing that you cannot live without?

One thing I cannot live without?

Well—

Yeah, I think— can't say family, please.

That's everyone's answer. One thing I can't live without is probably a good cup of coffee. That gets me going in the day and really gets me started. So yeah, I enjoy a good cup. I know Bradley, him and I were just talking about pour-overs right before this episode. So, you know, good cup gets the day going, gets the mind going. So I'd say that for now.

All right, I think I know what you're gonna say, but you might answer it a different way. What's your favorite non-work hobby?

Soccer. So Not necessarily playing, but I watch a lot of it now. I watch it from a different perspective from when I was playing. So I enjoyed playing during my career, but I love the game in terms of just watching the management behind it and just seeing the systems and strategy and what makes teams successful.

All right, last question. David, it is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. What's the best leadership advice you've ever been given?

The best leadership advice is go follow somebody that's doing what you want to do. Sometimes being a leader is— you think you got to go step out on your own and be out there. I've achieved a lot of my success by just following the people that have what I want or where I want to be. So don't be afraid. To be a good leader, I think you have to be a really, really good follower too.

You know what's amazing is that in our last episode, that's exactly what the person said.

That's what Joel said.

That's what Joel said.

Said.

He said that— I mean, almost verbatim, basically was saying that— he was basically saying great leaders are also great followers.

Yeah, absolutely.

Wow, look at that, man. That also means that great minds think alike, or read the same stuff. They read the same billboard.

David, it's been great having you on on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. We appreciate your leadership and everything that you do for Club Capital. Hey, thanks for your vision of bringing all of this together, and it's been long overdue. Obviously, we want to have you back on. We could talk about for hours about so many different things— insurance agency, running a business, and obviously where Club Capital is going and how Club Capital helps other insurance agencies. So appreciate your time. Thank you for your leadership and Hope that you'll come back on.

Absolutely. Thank you guys for having me and appreciate all you do.

Yep, take care.

I really love talking business and I love talking sales.

I think Devin did just a fantastic job, so hopefully that served all of you.

Big podcast shout out to our sponsors: DirectClicks, Club Capital, Coach P Consulting, and Autopilot Recruiting. You know the value of being able to make really good decisions as a business owner But you got to be able to know exactly how that affects your financials. And so you can be able to make better decisions. Can I work with Autopilot Recruiting so I can bring on a bench of A players? And then when I do that, do I have the cash? Do I have the profit to be able to invest in Coach P's consulting coaching program twice a week? I know I need to do that, you know, but how's it going to affect my current profitability? How's that affect my cash flow on a monthly basis? And I know when I bring these sales team members on, I want to be able to get really great leads for them on a monthly basis. And how am I going to know how much I can spend? And so if you begin to not know how much is your budget to be able to invest in a company like with DirectClicks, or so that I can invest in Google and pay-per-click ads, etc., all of this stuff comes together. And these are obviously incredible people and podcast sponsors that we have, and we're so grateful for their partnership that they're Fantastic people that know your business. So if you're looking to be able to grow yourself online through really great leads, go to directclicksinc.com, directclicksinc.com. And when you're ready to make the investment on recruiting A-players, we say that often, you know, the value of being able to do that on a regular— when I say regular, like daily basis, but maybe you've not been able to just kind of execute on that. But if you're able to offload that to a company that knows exactly what you're looking for, it can give you some of those best practices and TipsKing can do it for you and put high-quality candidates in front of you or your hiring manager on a regular basis, that is invaluable. The few hundred dollars you'll spend on a monthly basis to invest in them and invest in the software that you'll need to use, man, you will get multiple times that return on investment because you'll get fantastic people. I read something the other day that A-players are 4 times more productive than someone who is not an A-player. Now, whether that's true or not, the point is getting really great people on your team is crucial. And you know that.

All right.

Go to autopilotrecruiting.com.

Let them know that you heard about them on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Coach B is one of the best in the business whenever he is able to share not only with the business owners, the agency owners, but also with your team. And so you kind of really get the best of both worlds. You're learning on a once a month agency only call. Call just for agency owners to be able to kind of get behind the scenes of maybe his financials or how he structures compensation, maybe some things that you wouldn't necessarily have in front of your team. You'll get that call, but also your team is going to be able to hear from his team members about how they're getting it done. So go to coachpconsulting.com. All right everyone, till next episode, lead well.