Episode 210: The Bottom Line - Tiny Habits

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 I think about this podcast from time to time as kind of a spotlight. And let me share with you what I mean by that. I mean that I am the spotlight trying to help share things for you to be able to focus on. That's a key distinction versus me in the spotlight. I don't believe I'm in the spotlight at all. In fact, I think my role is to not say, look at me, but instead 'Look at this. Consider this. Maybe think about this.' And trying to put, you know, the guest we have on the Monday episodes and now our Wednesday episodes and even these 8 to 12-minute episodes that I do for you on Friday is just to try to begin to serve you and for me to be the spotlight, not in the spotlight. And so instead of 'look at me,' 'look at this.' And so That's exactly what I want to try to do in this really short episode that I'm just calling Tiny Habits. And so I haven't actually done this before. There's a lot of times that I'll hear something, I'll read something, I'll listen to something, and then it may spur a thought. But today we're going to make sure we put in the show notes a link to a podcast that I just listened to again, uh, just a few hours ago. With Craig Groeschel, and he was on the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast. Obviously, I've mentioned Craig many times. I know many of you listen to his leadership podcast, and he is just an incredible leader himself. He is a man of faith. Regardless of what you— your beliefs are, he is an unbelievable leader. He just came out with the book The Power to Change, and it's just been over the last 6 to 9 months or so that I've spent more time diving into habits and what does that mean. And so there's a few books that I would kind of point you to, and then I'll get to the bigger point for today and the reason why I felt compelled to, to share this episode or share this content with you. Uh, there's a few books. Tiny Habits written by BJ Fogg is fantastic. I think the seminal book now is Atomic Habits by James Clear. The Power of Habits is written by Charles Duhigg. High Performance Habits, you may not have heard of that one, but High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard is a fantastic book. And then the most recent one that I just finished, which is called The Power to Change, written by Craig Groeschel. So those are the 5 books all around habits that I've dug into, read all of them, uh, that have impacted me and my thinking. But that's actually not the reason, uh, that I'm sharing this. Those are awesome books for you to dive into. I'm sure Many of you have already read some of them. But on the podcast with Carrie, and we'll make sure again, we put a link in the show notes, is towards the end, Carrie asked Craig, what are some of the habits that you believe that are kind of the ones that are the high mileage ones, the ones that, you know, if it's kind of like Archimedes said, if I could have a lever long enough, I could move the earth. You know, what, what are a couple of those habits? And so he was looking for 2 to 3. Now, previous in this conversation, they had talked about sleep for quite a, quite a bit. They talked about fitness, they talked about, uh, just discipline of regimen of their days and structure, etc. It was a great conversation. Again, give it a, give it a listen. But towards the end, he asked this question, and so I'm thinking he's going to say, well, you know, um, uh, exercise, um, you know, daily habits of reading the Bible again if you're, if you're a person of faith, um, you know, uh, meditation, or what, what you eat, etc., whatever that's going to be. Well, he said, you know, I think that there's really a couple. Number one is, uh, learning habit, uh, because what you learn is going to determine what you eat and how you sleep, uh, etc. And then number 2 is a thinking habit, because your thoughts can either become your enemy or your best friend, and your thinking determines what you do. And then lastly, a friendship habit, because that impacts everything. So what you learn, what you think, and who you're with will determine everything else. I immediately listened to that several times, went into Notion where I keep all of my, uh, notes and thoughts where I, I place things. It's kind of my second brain, so to speak, and started sharing that. And then I called some of my close friends, my community, and shared that with them. They were like, oh yeah, that is really good, send me that podcast. And so I thought, you know what, I'm actually going to share it with all of you. In fact, it was one of them, Rob, I want to give him a shout out, he said, I think that you just got you a solo episode, uh, to share with everyone. And so I felt inspired to, to share it with all you this evening. So what you learn, what you think, and who you're with will determine everything else. A learning habit, a thinking habit, and then a friendship habit. And, you know, I— when I think about friendship, I think about the power of community, which I've mentioned so many other times on different episodes. That is not what I expected him to say at all. Again, I thought it was going to be something around nutrition and working out and all those things. But it makes so much sense because what you're digesting, and I hope that these episodes serve you, these Fridays, the Monday episodes, the interviews that we, that we do, the, you know, we take time to try it. I take time to try to make sure we're curating some of the best guests. And so listen, some con— some concepts or some guests may resonate with you more than others. I've had friends reach out and they've shared, hey, that was a fantastic episode with so-and-so. Um, when they said this, this really impacted me. Well, I, I don't remember that impacting me the same, just like whenever I share my key takeaways. So many of you may have topics, um, that resonate with you more than others. Maybe it's a, a Friday solo episode, uh, that we do, but this one really impacted me. It's got me thinking. You know, what are my habits around learning so I can continue to be a student of the game, whatever that game is—business, life. And then thinking habits. I've talked about The Power of Thinking Time, which was highly influenced from, um, an amazing entrepreneur, Keith Cunningham. Um, but not just thinking time in the business, but how are my thoughts impacting what I do on a daily basis. And then lastly, the friendship habit, pouring in the time to have a small group of friends. And Craig actually talks about having, you know, 3 to 5 people that you're really, really close with. Otherwise, you know, it takes time, it takes frequency of, of connections with people to really have deep, meaningful connections in, in your personal life. And certainly even in business as well. So, uh, definitely give this, that episode, uh, a listen. And again, I hope to continue to be a spotlight for all of you to say, hey, look at this, listen to this, watch this. And if you like this sort of thing, uh, then I'll continue to, to share some of these. All right, everyone, till next episode, lead well.