Episode 308: Successfully Staff Your Business with David Williams

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 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.

Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have David Williams. Now, if you've listened to our podcast for any amount of time, our Monday interviews, I always ask the very first question, tell me your background and origin story. And I think David does the best job of anybody of telling his background and his origin story, how he got started, what shaped him from his childhood and made him into the person that he is today. You know, I think to myself, we all have a backstory of some sort, and for good and bad, whether it's the— our childhood through with our parents or our grandparents, things that have happened to us, both good but oftentimes bad, uh, challenges, health challenges, challenges with, uh, our parents growing up or our siblings growing up, or maybe you lost someone that was really close to you. All of those things ultimately affect who we are today. And that is certainly the case with David. I think I asked him this one question and then he goes for an extended amount of time sharing his backstory. But I think it is really a fascinating journey. So hang with this episode until the end and you can see all the things David has been able to accomplish as an entrepreneur and a business owner. By using some of the setbacks and challenges that he had early in his life. Without further ado, here's my conversation with David Williams.

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. 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's 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.

David Williams, welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it, Bradley.

Excited to have you. Well, we always start with background and origin story. Always love to hear how people got to where they are, what their journey has been. So why don't you take our listening audience a little bit around your journey business and where you are today.

Yeah, yeah. When I look back, you know, I kind of look at my journey as a story of faith. I mean, that's always something I lean in my life pretty heavy upon. But, you know, kind of rewinding back where my entrepreneurship journey started, I was a store manager at Circuit City at the time. So, you know, I grew up as a kid that dealt with a lot of labels, you know, dealt with bullying. I was told that, you know, Growing up in life, I had a learning disability. I wouldn't amount to much academically, so I should work with my hands. And I started to kind of live into those labels. And, you know, same thing with baseball growing up as a kid. It was, I didn't have a lot of God-given talent. I think a lot of people on here can probably relate to those, some things in life that seem to come easy for every other person. It just doesn't come easier for you, but you love it 10 times more than those other people do. And that was kind of like the story of my life growing up. Kid. And that's how baseball was. I just had no talent whatsoever, but I loved the game. But I had a dad and I would say he was my very first mentor, you know, my parents. And, uh, the one thing he really instilled in me, you know, outside of my faith, uh, he was very religious, uh, was just relentless work ethic. And I saw how he got things done, work ethic. And I really started to realize that as a kid at a young age, the way to close the gap between everybody else if I didn't have the talent, I didn't have the skills, the know-how, is just outwork everybody in the room in a world where nobody wants to work. And I realized very quickly that I could get myself on the same level of everybody else, but if I work hard enough, I could actually flip the script, reverse the gap, get up here. That's exactly what I did with, uh, baseball. Went on to play college baseball for a year, but then it ended up hurting my arm. Wanted to go pro, but you know, not everything ends up the way we want it to be. And here I was, I thought I was starting over, walking into a career. I took tool and die, but I didn't— not knocking the trade, great trade, but I just didn't have a lot of heart and passion for it. So I took what I thought was gonna be a part-time job at the time at Circuit City and turned into a career. And I thought I was starting over and I'm going to this job as a lonely car stereo salesperson. And I realized that same work ethic that just kicked in while everybody else was worried about this or worried about that or talking about the night before. I just came in and hustled. Very quickly became the top salesperson in the company, got noticed, became one of the youngest store managers in Circuit City history. My career started to take off in retail. And those that, you know, came from the corporate world, what do you do? You get caught up in that box and you're like, I wanna grow next level, next level, be a DM. I got promoted to be on an innovation team 'cause creativity is one of my strengths, coming up with creative new business concepts for Circuit City. For the company. And then one day, you know, life happens to us, right? I woke up, life happened to me, and I couldn't walk. It was just— started having immense back pain, neck pain, barely moved. My ankles were swollen. I was coming in on a cane, crutches. And my next, you know, mentor I had in life with my GM at the time, he's like, hey, you gotta go off of work, figure out what's going on with you, take care of yourself. So I did that. Doctors found I had this condition, ankylosing spondylitis. It's a severely debilitating, very painful condition. Your system attacks itself, causes a lot of pain, swelling in the joints. And the doctor straight looked me in the eye, he's like, the one thing I want you to come to terms with, this is not only an expensive disease to treat, but most people end up on long-term disability at some point in their life. Than have to, you know, face that being in the place that you are where it's already aggressive. I was at this, you know, it's kind of tipping point because that really shook up my world because I had bigger intentions than being a guy sitting on a couch on long-term disability. And I think that's where my faith really kicked in. I knew like God didn't put me on this planet to be some guy on a couch. I was being faced with these challenges. At one time I thought they were happening to me. But I started to realize they were happening for me so I could understand maybe the challenge of others and help other people that were going through similar things. So I decided, you know what, this isn't going to be my life. Uh, I pushed myself to get back to work at the 6-month mark before I was ready health-wise, just so I didn't lose my job. And, um, came back to work. I'm broke because I didn't work 6 months. My bills were stacking up, got into medical debt, started to get back into the swing of things. And, uh, you know, all of a sudden, you know, I felt like I was in the back of a corner of a boxing ring, like the Rocky scene where he's just getting torn up by Apollo Creed. That was me. Um, and all of a sudden I found out that, uh, you know, from a customer walking into Circuit City, that was like, Dave, I'm so sorry. I'm like, what are you sorry about? They just put on the news Circuit City was shutting down, laying off 25,000 people. So that literally wrecked my world. I had to process that because That was all I knew at the time, you know, facing all these other challenges. So that I was just really shook up. And again, doctors were saying, hey, maybe it's a sign to go on disability again. So I prayed on it, stood in my faith, and then decided, you know what, I'm going to do the opposite, something crazy. Sat home, wrote out a check for a million bucks, and obviously didn't have a million bucks, but to me, and it wasn't about the money, but it was about a visual. I wanted to look at that every day because I was a visual type of person. If I had something to chase and something to focus on that was important and meaningful to me, I got it done through my work ethic. So the reason it was meaningful to me is I knew my wife deserved a life that was better than the couch and her just getting by. She deserved something grander. I did. I knew I needed to create a life on my own terms because I couldn't be in retail anymore, working on my feet, dealing with the pain that I was, and I darn sure wasn't going to live on the couch the rest of my life. And then, uh, wanted to be my hero's hero. Last part of that check. My heroes, those are my parents. Wow. I grew up, I grew up, my brother, you know, he went down the wrong path, hung out with the wrong people. Uh, no longer with us. And, uh, my dad really took that to heart. So he was the hardest working man I ever met. Still to this day, the hardest working man I've ever seen. Uh, entrepreneurs, I always had that entrepreneur spirit. Down. He had two businesses, a gutter business. He put gutters on houses. Another business was, uh, snowplowing, right? But he did both consecutively just to afford things he couldn't afford for me and my sister, to keep us busy in private baseball lessons, music lessons for her. So we just didn't have the time to get into trouble like my brother did. Um, but I knew when I watched him, they, you know, they, we always fought about money and they always fought about money in the household, right? And, um, I knew there wasn't a lot of it because of that growing up. And they never put new clothes on their back. They never took vacations. It sure as heck didn't save for retirement. So I knew deep down, one day I had to die when they were older because, um, they wouldn't be able to do it for themselves. So that was a big part of cashing that check too, is to do the things for them that, uh, payment for, you know, it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be here today. So that's why that check really meant so much to me. But problem was I was so far away from that, my bank account, nowhere near it, had like a zero and maybe two zeros in it. And so, you know, I kind of leaned on my faith, prayed on it. Come across one week, a friend of the family that's in the insurance business and young buck doing really well, had a scratch agency. And I'm like, man, that's what I need. Mailbox money, passive income, try to help, you know, my health and everything I got going on. I'm like, sign me up. I'm going to sign up with insurance agency. And all of a sudden, you know, the naysayers, every problem, doc saying no, saying, hey, don't start a business. Statistics show 70% of businesses fail. You got health problems, you'll surely fail. But to me, the thought of failing was a lot less fearful than the thought of like living this life where I just existed. So I was like, well, I'm gonna figure it out. Prayed on it some more, walked into work one day and there was coincidentally an insurance agency about 50 feet away in the same shopping mall adjacent around the corner. It's open across from DMV. They're taking down the shingle, they went out of business. And I'm like, that's not a freaking sign, um, I don't know what is. That's gonna be my insurance agency one day, that's my location. Because it just made all— even though I didn't know a lot about insurance, I knew a thing or two about business and people and leading people in sales, and it just made sense to me to have an auto and home insurance company right across from a DMV. Figure that person just probably wasn't taking advantage of it. They're all hanging out on the cell phone every time I walk by. So I'm like, that's going to be my location. Start to get my insurance license at night. But the problem is, start a business, you got to have money. I didn't have it. So everybody's like, go work for somebody first. And I was like, I'm just done working for people. It wasn't in my heart. And, uh, oh, then I say this a lot, I pray because it's just like my foundation. I am, and I try to follow that. Um, and things are spoken. And I believe a lot of times when we pray for what we want in our life, those that are spiritual out there, those that are religious, and those pray, you know, a lot of times think, poof, it's going to happen. It's a, um, a miracle, right? Um, I think miracles do happen, but more times our prayers are answered in the form of opportunity. So I started to pay attention to those opportunities. And, uh, you know, one day I came in and sure enough, liquidators come to me and said, Dave, hey, all the open merchandise we got to get rid of for pennies on the dollar, whatever you can get rid of it. What open merchandise is, display models, customer returns, defective merchandise, miscellaneous accessories. And it was almost like I didn't even have a chance to think. I just— the words came out and I'm like, what if I just made it easy on you and I bought up all the merchandise from every Circuit City store around here? I don't got a lot of money, but, uh, what if I just made it easy? They agreed. I cashed out my 401k, took the rest of the change that was in there, had about $7K after, uh, all the fees and whatnot, bought up about $70 grand worth of electronics. I was so caught up in the moment, never communicated it to my wife. Showed up with some truckloads with merchandise one day, filled the living room. She gets home from work and like, what's going on? I don't have a living room anymore. I'm like, well, trust me, um, this, this might be the answer to what we're trying to do. And she's like, all right, when am I gonna have a look back? So I bought fixtures, uh, that were on they're blowing out at Circuit City, built like a little mini Circuit City in my basement, cataloged it all, organized it all while I was getting my insurance license. While I was shutting down Circuit City, I started, uh, you know, taking the spare moments that I had to, um, list all that stuff on eBay and started getting, uh, uh, sales off of it, selling all that merchandise, start paying off all my debt where I need to be so I could start my agency and then come up with it. Come up with the capital. And then sure enough, I ended up coming up with the minimum capital, which at the time, it's a lot less then than it was now, it was $25 grand. But, you know, that wasn't a lot. That was enough to survive 2 months. If I didn't come in and make magic happen while I was dealing with all these other health challenges and everything else, I was going to be living in the setbacks that, you know, doctors were telling me I was going to be. So to me, it was like my back was against the wall. Do or die. Started going to, uh, you know, class for training. She had to go to training to learn about insurance. So I, I drove this beater down. I didn't pay for flights. I drove this beater down to New York. Sister lived down there at the time, so I had no AC driving all the way down to New York City. Got to my sister's place that ironically didn't have any AC. And it's not that they didn't have it, she had like 5 other roommates and they were actually in protest around the electric bill that I was just kind of in the middle of that and therefore the AC was shut off. So I'm literally getting ready for training, doing my hair, I'm melting, I'm like driving down in this beater, I'm sleeping on an air mattress. Don't recommend it, but it was, I was trying to save every dollar I had so I could put it into business. Got that done, came back, and then the trainer's like, all right, we're gonna train for 2 weeks and then start selling. I'm like, well, I literally got a shot clock at 60 days to live, survive. Um, that's just not in the cards for me. So I know how to sell, I know people, um, I got that game down. What I want you to do is I'm going to go sell and then you're going to teach me as I'm selling. So literally, uh, very first day I started just dragging people out of the line and got to have 2 staff at the time. And it was great that they forced us to have the staff because I had one on the left, one on the right. They're seeing me work like a maniac, like my life depended on it, because it did. But it was the best form of training that I ever did with any one of my team members, because through osmosis, it's really hard when you're sitting— this was a very small office, so they're sitting each 4 to 5 feet away from me— very hard not to show up when the boss is just freaking being relentless. And I think without even realizing that, I was training my people to be mini that were like showing up at a different level they never would've showed up on because I was the tone setter, grabbing these people, facing the fear that so many of our producers, you know, they get caught up in call reluctance and fear if they can or cannot do it. That wasn't an option in my agency 'cause it was straight up survival. They started emulating me and then lo and behold, in my very first month, you know, we were one of the top in the region. Didn't know what I was doing, but we were top in the region. And then we became one of the top in the company. We ended up scaling to multiple locations. I think we had 4 or 5 agency locations, 50 employees. We kept doing scratch agency after scratch agency and ended up building the business up to about $22 million in recurring revenue. And then that check, you know, probably halfway along that journey, you know, I ended up cashing that check. I did it at the age of 34 and a half, which was 6 months earlier than my goal. But I freaking looked at that thing every single day, that, you know, what it meant. And I was able to make some magic come to fruition in my life. My wife, the life she deserved, built a life on my own terms where I could like take care of myself, take care of my health, do a lot of unorthodox things, put thousands of dollars into my health to get off all the medications I was on, start doing like You know, blood testing, gut health testing, freaking cold plunges, nutrients, supplements, you know, all sorts of different, you know, things that I did that were outside of traditional medicine that I got off all the meds, docs that I couldn't get off of, got my, you know, symptoms down by about 50%. Comes to my parents, I was able to take care of all their bills, which I still do to this day. I bought them their first brand new car ever in their life, which was Cadillac. And then I exited that company after a while. It's just, it was getting to the point where scaled the business. Big part of it was with our team. We didn't want it to be any old other company. So we focused a lot on culture and I wanted to make this my ideal scene. And what do I mean by that? I think everybody can relate. Nobody said, hey, when they were a kid, I want to be an insurance agent. Mom and Dad, we didn't have a passion to be an insurance agent. But what I did was I tried to make my passions and things that mattered most to me, which was impact and impacting others and the lives of others, into my business. So it allowed me to create a life for myself, but I also wanted to create a life for others. That's exactly what I did here. So anybody that come into my agency, whether they're telemarketer or not, they deeply understood that their goals were my goals and my goals were their goals. So it was a team effort. So if they started as a telemarketer, they knew the path that they— what they needed to do to show up. If they showed up, they could become a licensed sales producer, a senior licensed sales producer, they could become a team lead, they could become an agency manager or sales director, and then all the way to owning their own agency. We built a lot of young leaders that way, had a great culture. One of the ways we'd always teach our team is, you know, you hear a lot of insurance agencies that talk about metrics. Why don't you have the quotes in? Why don't you have sales? Why don't you have the dials in? Dials don't make people work. They don't make people tick. Talking about numbers and sales, that doesn't like, get the heart, right? So I wanted to— hey, what are important? So every one of our team members, we do vision board consistent in every quarter or every 6 months. Hey, what are your personal goals? I want to own a new house. I want to move out of my apartment. I want to have a car. I want to put my kid through school. What are your professional goals? I want to be an agency manager. I want to own my own agency. So we would have that on a bulletin, deeply understand what all their goals are, and then ask them, well, now as your leader, You do know if you want these things, you have to show up at a different level above and beyond the expectations of your role to get those things. And do I have your permission to hold you accountable? Because I wouldn't be a good leader if I didn't hold you accountable to get to those goals. Yes. So now all of the, you know, all the conversations in our business, in our agency, really it wasn't about the number, but it's like, hey, if you're not showing up today, what's getting in the way? Well, I'm having— it's typical stuff that you deal with. With employees, team members, because what happens? Life isn't easy. The financial disruptions, you have relationship disruptions, deaths in the family of people we love. Um, there's so many things that go on in life that can have our mind elsewhere. We're in work. It's the last thing somebody wants to hear. Well, you didn't have enough dials in, you didn't do enough quotes today. Um, but you know, the type of conversation we would have is, hey, you see on your computer— because we'd have it on their computer like that house you want for little Johnny or little Jane. I get it, life's tough, right? That's why I got an open door and I'll talk to you anytime, go on lunch anytime. But is it fair to Johnny or Jane, they got to wait another day, another week, or another month get into that new house because you don't want to show up? I get it, it's not to discredit what's going on in life, but is that helping or serving them? And is it or not like your responsibility? And did you Or did you not tell me to hold you accountable because you deeply want those things? Well, that's what exactly what I'm gonna do. Unless what you told me was BS. I don't think it was BS. You don't think it was BS. And I think by having that, knowing that, hey, we, we cared about their journey, cared about where they were wanting to go. It created this culture where everybody showed up at a much different level. There was accountability of personal excellence in all walks of life, even outside the work. You know, outside of just the scope of work. You know, we would encourage everybody to be in the best version of themselves health-wise, encourage everybody to, you know, make important financial decisions. Okay, maybe you don't need to get the new iPhone, maybe you don't got to go get another car, especially if it's going to cost you a freaking 15% interest rate. But, you know, let's take a look at your credit report so we can get you in a better position. So we, you know, really kind of maybe step in in some of these cases kids didn't have a dad and be that, you know, father figure, parental figure that needed to give them advice they've never gotten before. Um, and I, I believe putting that first, serving our internal customers first with our team members, and serving our external customers and not chasing money, but chasing those two things, very thing through our business that exploded our business, things that kind of, I think, drive all our other companies today. Because we exited that company eventually, those people got to a place where they're ready to go off off on their own. They're with 5, 6, 7 years, and here they are, they're going to go buy somebody else's agency. And it was in a place for me, it was just— I felt, and it was time to move on. So I ended up selling and exiting, selling, uh, my agencies to all of them. Their dreams came true, came to fruition. And now I'm here, I'm at a, at a tipping point again. Yeah, I gotta get checked. But I'll tell you, in that moment, which should have been very exciting, it literally flashed me back circumstance. I felt it was a moment of scarcity. I'm starting over. Was I a one-trick pony? Can I do it again? What if it failed? What if it doesn't work out? What if I just got rid of our nest egg, or, you know, the very thing that allows us to have the life we had? So it was a, you know, I'd say a difficult decision and a difficult transition. But lo and behold, I wasn't starting over, and I realized what I built up here and the skill set that I had. Knowledge that I had, um, nobody could ever take away from. And, you know, that resulted— got into a partnership, built another insurance agency, like, bigger in a fraction of the time with partner. Ended up, uh, uh, starting a staffing and recruiting company, Team Hired. We're now the largest staffing and recruiting company in the insurance space. And we did that really with no marketing dollars, but it was off the philosophy of it's word of mouth. Uh, you know, my dad, when he ran his business, I'll never forget, um, because he was not only one of the hardest working, one of the most integral person I ever met. We're putting gutters on somebody's houses and he didn't have a lot of margin. He gave some of the cheapest rates that were out there. He had the best quality and he was the hardest worker. And, uh, he put the gutters on somebody's house and it was off like an eighth of an inch. Impact the way they were, and nobody would have known. But he's like, listen, I never put my name on something that's not perfect. So, um, that's why I never have to worry about customers, ever. Um, so let's take them down. And ripped every gutter off that house. We stayed up late that night, put them all back up on his own time. Um, took a loss on that, but it was a valuable lesson to me that, you know, if you take care of your customers at a level I think internal customers and external, you keep them at a high level that nobody else does, you're gonna have a level of business and customers and team members flocking to your door at a level that nobody else gets. And that's all, we never focused on money, we just focused on serving other people and giving to other people. So in our recruiting firm, we went to work for free for some of the right people trying to create branding. Let's be like, hey, we want to earn the right for you to be a raving fan. And if only if we do a great job for you, want you to go tell other people. We kept serving and serving, perfecting our product service, you know, it's eventually we got it to, you know, I haven't found a recruiting company yet. Um, there might be out there. I just haven't found them. It's got over, you know, close to 5,000 online reviews, got about 2,000 positive Google reviews, about, about 700 Better Business Bureau reviews, about 600 Facebook reviews. Views, and on our website probably 2,500 video testimonials from our customers. And that's all we eat, live, and breathe, customer experience. How can we dial in? How can we deliver best to our customers? Putting that first and, you know, the revenue came, the word spread, and, you know, we built into a big brand on the team hired side. Then, you know, became a strategic partner in a CRM company, Ricochet 360. And that partnership led to a concept for our next venture. We created our own software over the past couple years that automates the hiring training process in companies, solving a lot of problems. Jarvee was launching the market. Started to get into real estate. I started intentionally investing in masterminds and finding mentors because I started to recognize patterns. Every time my life went somewhere magical, it was like, You know, I think back to my first mentor, my mom, my dad, my baseball coach, my district manager, you know, they all had very similar principles. I was blessed that they kind of instilled my life. It all looked a lot like hard work, no magic bullet. And they all believed in those same principles. And even when I got into the insurance business, I didn't do it alone. I started knocking on the door, people that, you know, were crushing it in life to figure out what they're doing. How can I do it better? How can I create a better mousetrap? Learn from principles that they had to, uh, do those same things myself. And then I started investing in, uh, probably to the day of about half a million dollars. I do, uh, you know, maybe almost six figures a year in personal development, going to masterminds, going to events, and hiring coaches and mentors in every aspect of my life, from health coaches to business coaches, mind coaches, like you name it, to help me get to where, you know, really help me get to where I want to go. And, you know, just that's kind of my journey that allowed to, I guess, be where I am today. And that's through that, started doing some real estate, built a big $15 million real estate portfolio, started doing Airbnbs. And then just recently we just got a passion project, because again, one of the biggest passions for me is giving back to other people. So we started a mastermind for kids. I was talking to one of my mentors, Tim Storey, about, you know, man, imagine if we had mentors like this when we were kids, we'd be on a starship somewhere. And I was like, what if we did that? We brought in some of the best and brightest minds and educate it is. So we just recently, for a 2-day virtual event, and, uh, brought in, um, some of the best speakers in the world— Eric Thomas, Dave Meltzer, Danilo Delgado. We had Cole Hatter, Tim Story, Jimmy Darts, a lot of these big-name speakers. About $1 million speakers donated their time, and we just poured into kids and, uh, parents. No real money behind that. We did it for free. And we broke a Guinness World Record for the most amount of kids and parents to learn about financial literacy. So we did that and then got that kind of launched our kids, our Kids Mastermind, which is trying to take at-risk youth kids and other kids out there that have the desire to learn, to try to fill in the gaps of things in school. And I think, you know, where that comes full circle is, you know, I look at, there could have been like a, Like a half a degree of, uh, shift any moment in my life down the wrong path, took me down a path. My brother did, it's no longer here. But, you know, imagine a kid that's got a community of right people around them, right kids, right like-minded people, and learning about things that set you up for success in life. Help prevent a lot more statistics or Gary Williams out there. So No, I guess I say all that to, you know, to say this, you know, all that led up to me kind of really living in my passion. I didn't grow up an insurance agent, but I use it as a vehicle to be exactly where I want to be in this moment, impact people I want to do, to create the legacy on this earth that I want to create, and really, really try to, really try to serve others. And I think a lot of people get caught up in the minutiae, like the chase of magic bullet, whether it's in their insurance agency, their business, whatever it might be. Because we live in this instant gratification world. Heck, if a reel comes along and it's too long, people can't keep their attention longer than 30 seconds, let alone— they try to start a business and what happens? Not easy. It's not as easy and as flashy as the dude laying across the Lambo makes it look. And, uh, they give up too fast. But I'll tell everybody on here, anybody that's listening, the path to success, it's simple, but it's not easy. It's not a magic bullet, but it's simple. And, you know, I think it looks like having the right heart passion for what you're doing. And it looks a lot like hard work showing up every single day. And I'll leave one last thing before we dialogue, got any other questions. There's a parable that my mentor says, uh, Tim Storey, and he talks about some of the greatest farmers in the world. What are the attributes they have? Well, they got to have a lot of faith. You know, they go in, they got to till their land, plant seeds, spend a lot of time getting the ground right. But then it all comes down to faith, consistency, and work ethic, showing up every single day. But like, that harvest, because they gotta water day after day, week after month after month without seeing any significance of result because nothing sprung up from the ground. So they gotta have faith that something's going on underneath there, and they do that day after day after day for months, sometimes years. But byproduct of that is a harvest of abundance. And I equate a business and insurance agent the same way. But what would happen if the farmer didn't show up one day, two days, few days? Ah, no big deal, I've done it every day. For the year, but I'm going to take the week off. Well, good chance that that harvest is going to die. And I look at it the same way in our business, you know, it's like we're building a foundation, building something. It's like that farmer, decide not to show up and train our people, decide not to show up, focus on what's most important, decide not to put the work in, get caught up, um, that's the very thing that prevents that abundance, that prevents that harvest no matter what. And The encouraging thing for that is as simple as it is, that path to success, uh, not many people are willing to follow it. So if you're one of the few that take that simplicity and keep the main thing the main thing and go all in on that, um, you'll live legends above anybody else in this world. Not many people that, uh, are put in work.

I'll tell you what, That is the best background and origin story that we've ever had on the podcast. That was pretty amazing. I could pretty much say, all right, David, that was amazing. Tell us where we can find you. See you. That was actually— people probably love not hearing from me very much on that, but I do. I've got to double tap on a few of those things.

Okay.

I've got like literally, I've got 3 pages of notes just on what you just mentioned. No, that's good. One thing I just want to say though to everybody listening is what is your story? What's your origin story and background? You know, there's a great book, Donald Miller, Building a Story Brand. But I'm just curious, if you go speak at a real estate office or a mortgage broker office, you have an opportunity to tell your story. Do you have the ability to articulate your journey up to this point? Why are you doing what it is you're doing? So, David, I think you did an exceptional job. Clearly this is not your first rodeo in, in doing that. Um, so I've got a few things that, that I'm going to hit around on, kind of some, uh, hot topics based on what you just said there. And so one of them I want to go to, like, obviously you mentioned your faith. I'm a person of faith myself, but that's not what I'm going to talk about. Regardless of where you are, where your standing is listening to the podcast, I do want to— I do want to share, like, if you're not watching this on YouTube David, super fit. You can tell, like, you've obviously poured a lot into your health. I'm curious around two things. One, you had a personal health situation that put that to the very forefront of where you had to basically, right? You had to, you had to actually actively do that. And now you have the funds to be able to invest in health coaches and do some of these higher-level things that obviously probably don't are not cheap. What I really want you to share, though, is your thoughts around somebody who is where you were in the early years of your agency business. Okay. First 5 to 10 years, they've not had the big exit, they can't cash that check yet, etc. And the importance of prioritizing their health. We nibble around on that on the podcast. Uh, sometimes, I mean, we don't talk about that a ton, but I do feel like it's worth taking maybe 2 or 3 minutes to talk about, um, but as a catalyst for us to be able to achieve more in our businesses.

Yeah, so you know what I'll say there first and foremost is if you're not taking care of your health now, because if you don't take care of your health today, you'll be spending your wealth tomorrow, probably get back your health. And, uh, reason I say that is I firmly believe what triggered it, what I got, it's genetic. But they say something triggers it, extreme stress, whatever it might be. Nobody taught me to take care of myself. Nobody taught me to take care of my health, eating right, working out, all that stuff. So when I was a young fuck at Circuit City, um, I just worked freaking around, just never looked out for myself. Doing the wrong things. And I think because of that, you know, eventually that all took a toll, and that probably was the very thing that triggered the condition that I had to live with for years. Um, now I would never change that for the world because I think it built me into who I am, but I tell people that, that are listening, I promise you, if you don't put that first now, like, at some point in your life, it might happen, but it might happen in a way that's a lot less desirable than it is today. And I would say, you know, some of the things that got me out of that, so, you know, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, right? Sometimes at that point, and, uh, doctors, I was on different medications. So while I'm building businesses, still struggle with health, I still, I'm not perfect with my health today. I still face battles. And, uh, but when I, when I started to get the funds, what I started to do is look for, um, half outside the norm, right? So we get caught up in our blinders the same way we do in our— same old thing, the same old way, you get the same old result. Gotta be different ways out there. And I started obsessing about it and treating my body like a business. And I started looking at like, who's conquered their autoimmune challenges in the past that I could model after? What are the common themes? And I found that success leaves clues, and a lot of people were doing the same things. And started doing a workout regimen, started obsessively finding doctors that have helped other people. Um, you know, built a team of doctors. So I got a team of doctors to this day, and I measure everything in my body like KPI. So I'll do like $10,000 worth of blood work in a quarter or every 6 months at least and look at my hormone levels. I look at my gut health. I look at, um, um, all my blood levels, my inflammation markers. I look at my micronutrient levels in the blood, like everything, and, you know, really studied it deeply, everything that makes our body want efficiently. And, uh, did all that, got the data back, and made some very drastic changes in my life. So they said, hey, the best diet to have is, uh, um, you know, anti-inflammatory diet. So I went on a keto carnivore diet, and, uh, that was a game changer for me. And, you know, while it might sound kind of boring, uh, man, when you're waking up with pain every day and it's so debilitating, don't even want to wake up, It's, it's a freaking motivator. Um, so to me it wasn't about enjoying like food at, you know, anymore about like eating to live rather than living to eat. And, you know, my diet now, I wake up, I'll eat a dozen eggs, I have 2 pounds of grass-fed meat or poultry throughout the day, or salmon. Um, you know, put in 3,500, 4,000 calories and, you know, less than 30 carbs, and I'll measure my blood if I'm in ketosis or not, because I know when I'm in ketosis I'm feeling the best and there's less inflammation in my body. I do, you know, workouts once, twice a day. 75 Hard, I do that like twice a day. I'll get up early in the morning, I do a workout routine. Like, my day just doesn't start right. That gets rid of a lot of the stress of starting the day. Actually, before that, I lay on a PEMF mat. It's a grounding mat. Wake up, I work out, and then I do a 4 to 5 minute 39-degree cold plunge.

Um, after that, that's cold.

Honestly, it's one of the— if anybody that's seen those cold plunges online, because at one point I was watching, and not another guy in a cold plunge tub watching in a video online. What is this thing? But I swear, when I bought one, it was probably one of the biggest health game changers ever. Lowered my inflammation, lowered my pain, helps with anxiety. Anybody that had it, it just resets you, gets you in a place of mindfulness, but it releases a lot of positive chemicals in the body. Um, so that was a game changer for me. I have a medical-grade, uh, infrared sauna that I use. And then I started, you know, I reached a plateau, so recently I started adding more of that. So now I do peptide therapies because as we get older, we stop producing some valuable things in our body, and the peptides replace that but also trigger the cellular memory to start reproducing those things, reversing the aging process, promoting healing, and hormone replacement. Just recently went to New Hampshire and did stem cell injections all up and down my back, PRP therapy, NAD therapy, um, and, you know, just desperately chasing to get back to that perfect health version of myself. If I can get maybe my pain from 50% curated off all the meds, I can get to 80, 90%. Um, that's, that, that, that's a, that's a home run, uh, for me. Not everybody needs to do everything that I just described. If you just show up, you work out a few times a week, eat the right things, and, uh, you know, take care of yourself with the right nutrients, that's, that's a great way to be proactive and then layer some of these things in after. To me, it's no choice. I, I dedicate super discipline with it. I have to spend about 2 hours on my health day. If I don't do that, I very quickly regress and I'm back in a lot of pain, inflammation's kicking back up. So it's like an ongoing management strategy just to stay in a place where I'm, I'm feeling good, I'm feeling sharp mentally, any pain.

Yeah, I, I think for everybody listening, like, that is an example of a, like, at a, at a master class level. And part of it is, like, obviously you enjoy it, but part of it is, like, just where your situation— not everybody has to go that far. But I think two things that really stand out to me: number one, I started to treat my body and my health like a business. That, that, that was something I wrote down that you said. And then obviously, if I don't take care of my health today than I'm going to spend my wealth tomorrow trying to get back what I had. So I, I, I—

KPIs in our business, why not measure KPIs in our health? You know, there's ways to do that now. And I even wear one of these too. It's an Oura ring that measures sleep at night. And believe it or not, I'll notice a difference. So as my sleep is off, um, like I'm feeling it the next day and I try to be real intentional about— I mean, there's a, you know, the 4 AM club and not sleeping for 3. I think that That's BS and it's overrated. Half the people I see that are preaching that, that are saying that, like, I mean, you can get just as much done productively in an 8-hour day with a good amount of sleep. Like, don't sacrifice sleep and all these other things that put you in the grave early.

Yeah, totally. I, I, uh, I got a Whoop, uh, a few, a few months ago and, and the Whoop more than anything else has helped me so much around my sleep. And, uh, just paying way more attention to how much deep sleep do I get, how much REM sleep do I get. Because I would have told you before that, oh, I mean, I sleep 8 hours, whatever. And I've kind of realized, no, I may be in the bed for 8 hours, but that's actually not how much sleep that I was getting. I was getting a lot less sleep than I actually thought that I was getting. All right, here's, here's my, my, my biggest kind of overall businessy question I want to give you, okay? So you mentioned, hey, I sold that. Am I going to be a one-trick pony? I mean, was that a one-time and done thing? Obviously you shared with us, no, that was certainly not the case because you developed or acquired certain skills. You have a mindset and then you probably have some tools along the way, right? Mindset, skill set, tool set in some form or fashion. And if it was— and if everything you had today, your real estate portfolio, all the businesses were taken away from you now, you would do it again, maybe in different industries, maybe go back to the same industries if it was all taken away from you. So here's my question for somebody that is wanting to get to the type of place that you are at, okay, financially, okay. and with their businesses, their business financials, they want to be able to grow and scale their company. What are some of the skills that you feel like that you did develop over time that if you were mentoring a new business owner or an early stage business owner entrepreneur, what are the ones that you personally would prioritize to them and say, look, these are the skills that I developed over the time. This is the mindset that I developed, etc. What are some of those things?

Yeah, I would say, you know, applies here and I think it applies a lot of places in life, right? Don't do it alone. And what I mean by that, I think the power of partnership— look at some of the greatest teams on earth and greatest athletes on earth. They don't get to where they are by doing it themselves. They have a great team and they have a great coach. So, you know, find great team by, you know, your colleagues and Peers that are out there that are already doing things that you desire to do. And I think success leaves clues. Very quickly start the roadmap, the commonality between everybody doing so you don't have to reinvent the wheel. And then hire a good coach that's been there, not a coach that hasn't done it. It's just a coach, but a coach that's like lived in shoes that have freaking, they've earned their stripes. That can help you along the way. I can assure you that will accelerate everything. And then keep the main thing the main thing. I see very easily people could get in the trap of, um, trying to do everything and everything, uh, trying to avoid maybe the hard work and go place of comfort. And what does that look like in an agency sometimes? Well, oh, I don't have any service staff running to do that, so I got to pick up I don't have time to sell and that, maybe you really, what it is, you gotta look in the mirror and say, you gotta get better at selling. You gotta get better at the main things that are creating revenue in your business. And are you doing the right things in your business that's gonna get you to a place where you're working on your business rather than in it? Or are you hiding somewhere in your business and you just need to come to reality with it? Because what I would always do at the end of the day, It was like a no-excuse mentality. Anytime something went wrong for the day, the month, week, um, you know where I'd find the answer? Go right in the bathroom mirror, look at Dave, what the heck? And there's always something that I could differently, no matter what the circumstances of the situation. And if I kept the main thing the main thing and just relentlessly put in the work, just like farmer does until the solution's there, you don't got to do it forever, but eventually after you figure it out You can't be a good leader, I think, good teacher, a good coach unless you've done it yourself. That's why, like, even when I start a new company, I gotta earn the right to become CEO, and I'll live into that position until I master it. Put a person alongside me, hustle alongside that person until they're 50 to 60% of me, work my way around the whole organization until I've created a clone of mini-mes and mini-Daves that do that. They walk like I walk and talk like I talk and do exactly what I need them to do. And then I earned the right to become the CEO, the visionary, the, the creator where I thrive. But first you got to build that foundation, keep the same thing, not shiny object syndrome. You know, that's another thing I see getting in the way that's failure for people, because what are you looking for? You're looking for the easy road. Well, what does everybody else do? What are you doing? Oh, I'm going to try that. Didn't work. Try Well, I'll tell you, all these things work because they're working for somebody else, but it's the second you hit resistance and it's hard, you stop doing it. There's a lot of people out there that need to hear this because I needed to hear it at some time. And people sell you clouds, sunshine, and rainbows, but that's not reality. Come here, put the freaking work in, and I'll tell you, whatever you focus on and go after it laser focused, and you put the work in consistently at the level that nobody else does, you're gonna get the result. That nobody else gets. That's, that's the truth, man.

That's good stuff.

Don't do it alone.

Hire a coach. Keep the main thing the main thing. I think those three are absolutely amazing because you're right, business is hard and it gets harder. And one of the little— I don't know if it's a maxim or a mantra that I tell myself— is when I get frustrated or I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm in it to where it's like, oh man, this is really hard, I'm frustrated and I'll tell myself, yep, and this is why business is hard and this is why I'm built for this and not everybody is. It's just like my own internal thing of saying like, I'm built to be able to manage this. David, this has been exceptional. I want to have you back on for round 2. This would be great. I've got so many threads I'd love to pull on. All right, so people want to connect with you, David. They want to know about what you guys do. Where would you point them to?

Yeah, you could just email me at davidwilliams@teamhire.com. So davidwilliams@teamhire.com, that's the email to our recruiting company where we serve insurance agents all around the country with solutions and we're always happy to serve, but great places.

Awesome. David, appreciate you, my man, and have you back on in the future.

All right. Thank you. I appreciate you having me.

Well, I shared it in the intro. We all have a story that has shaped us, for right or for wrong. And actually, I'm recording this outro a few days after the recording with David, and the, my church that we go to, um, they do At the Movies. And I hadn't seen this movie, but they use movies to tell different stories and get a message out. And so one of the movies, if you hang with me in this analogy, was called Saving Mr. Banks. And it's the backstory about the person who wrote Mary Poppins and how Walt Disney pursued for a number of years to get the rights to do the movie Mary Poppins. And so I admittedly have not watched this movie. But here's the point of me telling you this. One of the things is that the message that was being told was that we— how much are we allowing our past to negatively impact our present and our future? I think that for myself, there have been times that I have allowed the past, and specifically in business, to really be an anchor to hold me back. I have shared openly on here challenges around leadership or marketing, anything around business, honestly. And, um, some of those things can absolutely and have been anchors that I've held back in my own mind about what is possible for today. And then what is possible in the future? And so I say that from this episode with David and how he used some of the, you know, the decisions he makes now around his health and the amount of time and the money that he spends around his health and his personal development. But I think if you only heard that without hearing some of the backstory, it wouldn't necessarily make sense. But yet when you hear someone's backstory, it does, and you hear their journey. And I think that for each one of us, we have these journeys that we've gone on for good and bad, whether it's in business, uh, whether it's been in our personal life, in school, et cetera. And so I wonder, what are some of the maybe anchors, uh, that you have, some of the things that are not pillars, that's different, but some of the things that are holding you back from being able to move forward? And I think it's Keith Cunningham says, sometimes all we have to do is to be able to get the anchor an inch off the bottom and we can begin to pull forward. And I think that there are times that, um, setbacks or mistakes that we've made can really keep us from being able to be more present, but also to be able to have a big future. And so I'm a big believer in setting a 3-year vision specifically for the business. That's what we, we share, and it's been personally for me one of the best things that I've done. But you can set that 3-year vision. But if you have those things that are holding you back, kind of anchoring you from the past, whether it's childhood or high school or college or even early in your business career, it can really hold you back and slow you down, or even honestly stop you from being able to move forward. But if we can get those anchors and can we can work through whether it's the mindset or the limiting belief that we may have about what's possible, then if we can get it an inch off the ground, we can begin to make forward. Sometimes we don't even have to get the anchor in the boat. We just had to get it a little bit off the ground. So I thought I'd share kind of my personal story and kind of how that story of Saving Mr. Banks really reminded me of that because she held on to the anchor from her father in that, in that movie. And it was holding her back from being able to move forward with signing over the rights to Disney and to Walt Disney himself to be able to do the movie Mary Poppins. And so as I was watching that, I was, and I wasn't even thinking about this episode with David at the time, but I was watching that and hearing that story and I thought to myself, yeah, I mean, that's so true, um, that things have held me back, I think held all of us back. And if we can actually address them, lean into them, then we can begin to make forward progress. And maybe it's not signing over the rights to a movie, but maybe it's something else in your life. Appreciate you listening. I hope this episode, as with all of our episodes, serves you. At the time of this, uh, recording, when this is going to be dropped, we are just on the cusp of announcing something really big. The biggest announcement in the podcast history, and I don't say that lightly. Truly, on December 1st, something big is coming, so you're going to want to make sure that you stay tuned. To, uh, the episode that we're dropping on December 1st to hear kind of what is coming very soon. A big shout out to our podcast sponsors: Autopilot Recruiting, Coach P Consulting, TodayUpPro, and of course Club Capital. You know, I love tech.

I really do. I, I, I don't think I'm a techie person, but I definitely—

whether it's AI or different softwares You know, software really needs to be user-friendly. It needs to be beautiful to work with for me to really like it. There's been some software that I've worked with in different aspects that have, you know, some people really love them, and I just didn't love the aesthetics. I didn't love the beauty of it, and it was seemingly overly complicated. I won't mention any of those on here specifically, but that's not the experience that you're going to have if you work with today app. Go to today app Pro. I think your team is going to love it. You will love it. It will work with your corporate-approved CRM, so you don't have any issues there. You work with Coach P and David to be able to get some really specific word tracks about whether it's on the customer service side of your agency or on the sales side of your agency. You can take some of those word tracks that you get, and you're able to do custom word tracks right where the work is absolutely happening. Many times We've talked about, uh, referrals and, and, and growing your business through referrals. And well, you probably have a script with that. You not only have the overall process, but you've got some scripts like exactly what you want your team to be able to say. And you can do that right in the beautiful application of Today App. Go to todayapppro.com. And if you want to work with David and his team on developing your team so that you actually have world-class scripts, go to coachpconsulting coachpconsulting.com. It is almost as I was sending out some Voxer messages to, um, some clients over the past few days leading up to Thanksgiving and getting some reflection on them. One of the recurring things that came up was team, and, um, they all shared about how they became better leaders within their teams, but then also they really upgraded their teams this year. And many of them had worked with Autopilot and are working with Autopilot Recruiting. Whether you are right where you need to be, and if you are where you need to be from a capacity and staffing of your team, now is the best time to be looking. And then certainly if you're in a situation to where you're short, you've just lost somebody that was unexpected, you need to be able to find some quality candidates and people that are going to go through that initial process of interviewing and screening the resumes and asking some of those initial questions so that you don't have to, so that when they get to you, they're already pre-screened. Autopilot Recruiting is the best place for you to be able to buy back your time so you can focus on the things that grow the business, such as developing your current team, developing those marketing strategies, and higher level thinking. Autopilotrecruiting.com. Autopilotrecruiting.com.

Recently with a group of business owners, we were going through and talking about cash.

We were talking about business financials. And at this point, it's not surprising, but if you're someone— and I'm going to speak to a specific person today— if you're someone that has just never been taught what it means to actually you know, read the dials or the financial statements in your business, you're not alone. I promise you, you're not alone. I did not know how to read them. I did not know what I was looking at. It's like I sat in the cockpit of my business, saw these really important dials that people told me were important— income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement. I happen to call them dials, um, and I didn't know how to read them. Um, I didn't know what— I mean, I kind of knew what they were, but not really. I just didn't know what I was doing, and I was too— let's just say egotistical, or maybe prideful is maybe the better word— to raise my hand and say, I don't know what these mean. And I would fake it enough to be able to do it. I think I've shared a little bit of that story, but I really did not know how to read them. But when in business, I realized I needed to know what I was doing. Not just for tax planning purposes, but actually to know how to utilize these things to help me to be able to make better decisions. If you're listening to this podcast, you want to be a better business owner, and it's not about you turning into being a CFO, okay? Or specifically, not even trying to be an accountant, okay? You don't need to be an accountant, but you do need to have some skills And being able to read the dials in your business and being able to understand them enough to be able to make some logical decisions and get away from the emotional decision-making. Club Capital can help you to do that. And if you're especially an insurance agency owner, they work with hundreds, if not thousands, of insurance agency owners, and they can help you to understand the skills They can give you the right tools. They can even give you the mindset and the perspective that you need to be able to leverage those things and make really good decisions in your business. Go to club.capital, book a no obligation demo, speak to somebody on the team and see how they can turn that backside of your business into something that actually fuels the growth for your small business. All right, everyone, till next episode and stay tuned. To the big announcement on December 1st, Friday, December 1st. The biggest announcement we've been working on for maybe 6 months or so. I think it's about 6 months. Um, so really excited about that. Till next episode, lead well.