Episode 201: The Bottom Line - Business Legos

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Welcome to The Bottom Line, a new weekly podcast series that we drop every Thursday to complement our weekly Monday podcast interviews with the industry leaders.

These podcasts are going to be designed to give you short, impactful, and value-driven information that you can start using right away in your business.

I value your time and attention and will do my very best not to waste it.

Just get what you need and go.

So with that, let's get into today's episode. Are you an agency owner looking to grow your revenue, increase your bottom line, and better manage your taxes? Club Capital is here to help. Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agents in the country, providing monthly accounting, tax strategy, and CFO services. Way more than bookkeeping and your everyday run-of-the-mill tax prep, Club Capital is focused on providing financial and tax advisory services that help you plan and forecast your agency's performance. Their financial dashboards and agency forecasting tools help you better understand your agency's historical performance, create, measure future targets, and see how your agency compares to your peers around the country. Imagine what it would be like to understand the impact to your bottom line when deciding to hire a new employee, or forecast the impact rate changes or commission rates will have on your business. With over $200 million in tracked annual revenue and $140 million in tracked annual expenses, Club Capital has the data and the team to help you make better informed decisions for your agency. They will help you turn that back office stress into the backbone of your agency's success by giving you the tools to take your agency and your leadership to the next level. Visit club.capital today to book a solution overview with one of our business consultants. Club Capital, way more than a CPA firm. Are you an agency owner looking to grow your revenue, increase your bottom line, and better manage your taxes? Club Capital is here to help. Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agents in the country, providing monthly accounting, tax strategy, and CFO services. Way more than bookkeeping and your everyday run-of-the-mill tax prep, Club Capital is focused on providing financial and tax advisory services that help you plan and forecast your agency's performance. Their financial dashboards and agency forecasting tools help you better understand your agency's historical performance, create, measure future targets, and see how your agency compares to your peers around the country. Imagine what it would be like to understand the impact to your bottom line when deciding to hire a new employee. Or forecast the impact rate changes or commission rates will have on your business. With over $200 million in tracked annual revenue and $140 million in tracked annual expenses, Club Capital has the data and the team to help you make better informed decisions for your agency. They will help you turn that back office stress into the backbone of your agency's success by giving you the tools to take your agency and your leadership to the next level. Visit club.capital today to book a solution overview with one of our business consultants. Club Capital, way more than a CPA firm.

Hey everyone, so there's this new, uh, store that opened up in Huntsville. I'd never seen it before, didn't even know what it was, but it's called Bricks and Minifigs. And minifigs stands for miniature figures, and that's basically— it's a Lego store. Well, I thought when we first walked in there it was just a locally owned store, and it is, but it's actually a franchise. There's about 70 different locations around the country. Maybe I'll do an episode about that because when you walk in there, it was so incredible. My kids have been a little bit into Legos at different times, not super big into Legos at this point. They're 12 and 8, but in the past, my son especially, Cooper, was kind of into Legos for a period of time. So many of you can definitely relate to the idea of Legos. So I want to give you this kind of a— paint this analogy. And so I'm calling this episode business Legos. You know how whenever you go to Target or Walmart and you see a Lego set and there's different ones in this store, Bricks and Minifigs, they have some from, you know, I think maybe 50 to 75 pieces, you know, obviously for 4-year-olds, 6-year-olds, so on and so forth, all the way up to one that they have that is, I think, like 8 or 9,000 pieces. I mean, it would take you— there's no telling how long it would take you to finish it. But what I want you to think about is on the box, it gives you a picture of what the— on the front of the box of what the completed project is going to look like. And so there's Star Wars themes and there's themes of race cars, etc. And, you know, depending on what you're into, there was even one that I saw that was a LEGO set for the Friends TV series. So Legos has obviously partnered with a lot of different companies out there to be able to come up with these different Lego sets that you can begin to put together based on the things that you're interested in. So I think it's pretty cool. Anyway, well, on the front of the box, you get to see what the finished product's gonna look like, but as soon as you pull it out, what do you have? You have these kind of bags, and if you open up all of those bags and just spread 'em on the table, you would just be like, oh my gosh. Kind of a big mess. There's pieces really everywhere. And I kind of think about it the way we may do whenever you go into social media and you see someone that has the big house, the nice car, the big team, apparently kind of rolling in all of it. And you begin to kind of think, well, golly, what are all the pieces to be able to get there? I see the finished product. Maybe that's something I want. Maybe it's the nice watch, maybe it's the cars, maybe it's the houses, maybe it's none of those things. Maybe it's the freedom that you'll be able to have to do what you want when you want, and just to be able to have the money to do so. Whatever that finished product is for you, you see your business as a conduit to make that happen. But whenever you kick over the box, you see all the pieces scattered everywhere, and sometimes you don't really know where to start. I was having a conversation with someone the other day, about a week ago, and we were having this exact talk— thought is, where do you actually begin? There's seemingly all of these things that needed to be fixed, all these problems in the business, and they just couldn't get clarity around kind of where to start. But, you know, LEGO solves that problem for kids and, uh, kids at heart. By giving them very detailed instructions. You ever thought about that? Well, what if you could have the exact same thing for your small business? See, I think that's what entrepreneurs and business owners and founders sometimes can feel like that they're missing is what to do in what order. And there can be a formula to that. And if you begin to think of it like Legos in your business and building it quite literally brick by brick or brick by minifig, brick by minifigure. You can begin to build the pieces to your business, but it takes time. It's the right habits. It's the right things in the right order. So you can do the right things at the wrong times as well. If you begin to put something together in Legos, but you do it in the wrong order just because you think that was the order it needed to be done versus following the actual detailed instructions, maybe your race car, your Friends set, maybe your Star Wars set is not going to look exactly the way it does on the box because you went out of order. And so I think about, well, can you actually get that formula? What is formula in the small business? How do you begin to build it? Is there some way to do that? Well, I think that there is. And the thing about— for many of you, you're already in business, and so it's not starting with a blank slate. I don't have just all of the pieces, you know, started out in nice little piles. We are, we are already going down the tracks. We are wanting to go faster. So I can't take the the vehicle over to the side, repair it, replace the tires, etc., then go fast. We are already moving forward and it begins to get more difficult. I was actually asked on a podcast the other day, do you think it's actually easier to architect the business a certain way from the get-go, from the jump, or whenever there's a business already in motion and then getting that business to get turned around? And I said, I think that that is a really great question. I think if you have the skills the tools and the mindset from the get-go, it's best to always— to already start with that structure. What's the CRM that you like to use? How do you love to be able to build your sales team? What are the marketing channels that you're familiar with? Um, where does work actually happen? How would you actually begin from the get-go? Even down to what is the bank that you would use. I know that seems so insignificant, but The more that you're wanting to build other companies, the thing about it is the, the tools that you use can be the same. The software that you use is the same. The project management tools is the same. One of my mentors, he and his partner Daniel and Mike, the last 7 companies that they have launched have hit $1 million in top-line revenue. In 12 months. I would say that they have the formula for how things need to be. Now, what exactly is that playbook or what is that formula? It could be a formula. It could also just be an operating system. Think of it like your small business OS, right? You have iOS on your phone or you have macOS. What is the operating system that you believe that if you were starting all over, starting from scratch with a business, what are the principles that you believe in? For me personally, I think about 5. I think about, you know, my involvement, leading myself first, because I think that's the most selfless thing that I can do is try to be better for the team, make sure I'm putting myself in the best position to be able to succeed and give the best that I can for others, number 1. Number 2, is having clarity, clarity, the vision, the direction that the business is going to go. I think number 3 is alignment, alignment through scoreboards, communication rhythms. How do you run your meetings? How often are the meetings, etc.? I think about who, how you're going to attract, develop, and retain A-players. I think about how are you going to keep score in the business, the scoreboards and the dashboards in the business. And then lastly, you got to get down to brass tacks and think about execution. Think about what's the marketing efforts? How are you going to convert those leads? So in other words, sales, and how are you going to manage the cash in the business? Those are the 5 critical areas, or the formula that I personally think about when it comes to a company or the business I'm involved with or someone else, and begin to kind of think about if that business is already started, it's already in motion, what are the areas that we need to plug in? What are the biggest things that we say, hey, if we focused on this, we would be able to propel the business forward faster? And if that area is there, what's the next one? And begin to kind of prioritize from there. But that's if the business hasn't started, then it's much easier to be able to lay out and work through those principles. Those are mine. That's kind of the operating system, the methodology that I believe, I believe in the Ray Mecker 2 Architect methodology that I think is is the best formula to begin to think about a business. But what are yours? What are the principles that you believe in that if you did, even if you haven't, but if you did, and you were gonna go start another business, or you're gonna share with someone else, have you documented what your business process is? In other words, your business Legos, your brick by brick. And then if you have, have you shared that with your team? Does your team know the things that you believe that are important? I think documenting that process, that system, that operating system that you believe in the business is really critical because whenever something goes wrong, and inevitably it does, you have something to revert back to. So I hope that analogy of thinking about a Lego set that you would have and having that picture, but then inside the box, there's just all of those pieces scattered around the table. Are you going to begin to try to do it yourself and just kind of start putting the pieces together? Or is there actually a framework? Is there a formula? Is there a detailed set of instructions like Lego gives you to begin to build that so that at the end, what you saw on the front of the box is actually what you ended up building? Everyone, hope this served you. Till next episode, lead well.