In this Club Capital Leadership Podcast episode, host Bradley Hamner opens by framing the core dilemma for small business and insurance agency owners: how to grow leadership, develop teams, and scale profitably. After a series of sponsor messages highlighting Club Capital’s accounting advisory services, Coach P Consulting’s coaching program, and Autopilot Recruiting’s continuous hiring solution, the conversation shifts to a practical leadership exercise. Speaker B recounts a recent call with another business owner who was stuck on a staffing decision. By asking the simple reframing question, “What does the business need?”, the owner was able to step back from personal preferences and consider the business as an independent entity, leading to a pivot in roles and responsibilities that better aligned with organizational needs. The episode emphasizes viewing the business as a separate voice that can articulate its own needs—whether more structure, sales velocity, or client retention support—and using that perspective to guide hiring, restructuring, and strategic decisions. The episode closes with another sponsor plug for Autopilot Recruiting and a reminder of the episode’s central question.
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So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation. Check them out at club.capital. Ambition is the first step towards success. It's time to level up your agency, and Coach P Consulting will help you do just that by using the same strategies he used to sell over 700 life insurance policies in 2021 alone. Now, this is not your regular one-and-done type coaching. You'll get personalized coaching 2 days a week every week of the month, and you'll get a live look behind the scenes of his team training and an office that's performing at the highest level. There's a reason Coach P Consulting is the fastest growing coaching company for insurance agency owners in the country. Coach P will train your team alongside his own and show you the exact steps they are taking to achieve Chairman Circle, Exotic Travel, and Multi-Line Presidents Club, and be one of the few agents to be selected to have a third office. So whether your goal is to be at the top of your local market or amongst the best in the country, This training will give you the strategies and the tactics to get there. For just $250 a month, you'll get high-level coaching each week from someone who is already getting it done at that level, and his strategies work, and it's time to put them to work for you. Sign up at coachpeakconsulting.com and get your first full month for free when you mention the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. 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, what's up?
So I'm going to be recording this podcast and it's going to be an easy one. I just was on the phone with— actually, I was trading a couple of options and then jumped on a phone call with somebody just a little bit ago. And it kind of— I don't want to say inspired me, but made me think about all of you and Thought I would share this, uh, a little bit of a thought that was helpful to him, and maybe it would be helpful to you as well.
All right.
Hey everyone. All right, so, uh, was just on the phone, uh, was trading some boxer messages back with another business owner and jumped on a quick phone call with him for, uh, just a few minutes. And he was sharing with me some struggles with a particular team member that he was going to end up having some turnover with, going to need to make a change, and was kind of talking through that. And so I asked him, uh, he was thinking, you know, what's the best thing I need to do for this team member, and then what I need to do for the current team that I'm going to end up having. And those are all leadership challenges that we've all faced, right? You've all thought through that. You're good people, you don't want to just throw some people out on the curb, etc. So we get it. All right, so I asked him a simple question, uh, I said, what do you think the business needs? And he said, uh, what do you mean, what does the business need? And so I shared with him that oftentimes when I kind of feel stuck, if you think about the business as like, um, a team member or an entity itself, okay, like you are removed from the business. And so a lot of times we get very interconnected with all of these different things. But if you think of the business as an entity and you look at it and say, look, here is the business, this operates outside of me. Yes, I'm the founder, the owner, the entrepreneur, the, you know, whatever. But if I look at the business as an entity and I think, what is the business telling me that it needs? If the business could talk, what would it say? Now, I didn't say that to him. I didn't ask him that question, but I shared with him, what do you think the business needs? And he took just a little bit. Maybe 30 seconds and said, you know, I think the business needs this. And I won't necessarily go into that detail because I think it's irrelevant to his specific situation. But that reframing of a stuck or a challenge was really helpful to him because he was thinking about, okay, what do I need to do for this person? What do I need to do for the rest of the team? What do I think is best for me? But he had not considered the business itself. Itself as a whole. And so he was able to then take that and line up, or basically sequence, to say, okay, well, actually, I think the business needs this. And it was a pivot in his case specifically. It was a kind of a pivot in roles and responsibilities in the organization. And so the business oftentimes is saying, I need this, I need more structure, I need this organization, I'm lacking in, say, sales velocity with our sales acquisition team, or we're really struggling on retention of our current clients. And so we really need more people in a customer care role. And so that has been— and I don't really know where I got that from. Again, I try as often as I can to be able to point you back to the person, the podcast that I may have heard something from. And I don't recall where I got this from. I think I've had it for a few years. And but I certainly learned it from somebody. And so that kind of backing away, kind of pushing the problem away from me, and not having everything kind of stuck and seeing the business as a separate entity has been really helpful. So that's a super simple one today. So maybe the next time you're doing or faced with a, a stuck or a challenge, consider asking yourself, what does the business need? If the business could talk, what would it say? That's kind of a sub-question to that. So anyway, short, easy one today. Hopefully that helps all of you. Until next time, lead well.
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