Episode 310: All in with Mike Michalowicz

What if you could step out of the day-to-day and see your business from a whole new perspective? Welcome to Above the Business, where we empower you to rise above the daily grind and embrace a higher way of business ownership. It's time to build your business by design. On today's episode, we have Mike Michalowicz. Mike is our first 4-time guest on the podcast. If you've read any of Mike's books before, we've talked to him about Clockwork, Profit First, Fix This Next, and now his newest book, All In: How Great Leaders Can Build Unstoppable Teams, comes out in January of 2024. You are going to get so much in this 20-25 minute episode. Mike and I cover so many different topics regarding leadership, how to get some great players on our teams, how do we develop them even if they're struggling, how do we develop them into superstars? And then furthermore, we're going to talk about how do we keep some of the best players on our team. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Mike Michalowicz. Mike Michalowicz, welcome back to the podcast.

It's a joy to be with you again. Thanks for having me back.

Excited to have you. So we're having you back. You've got your newest book that's going to be coming out at the time of this recording and just a few weeks from now, January 1st or January 2nd, I believe. Yeah, yeah, all in. And tell us about the— your journey and genesis around this book, where it came from, and what sparked you to obviously begin to, to put your thoughts into this.

Sure, sure. So I think the best context is, is the subtitle. It's How Great Leaders Build Unstoppable Teams. And how— what the genesis is, how it came about, was maybe 5 or 6 years ago, I'm paying attention to readers of my other books of what their needs are and engaging with quite a few folks. And there was real challenges around recruiting, retaining people, raising the bar for the organization. And then COVID hit and it was, it was double down. So I was like, my gosh, this is what I need to write about. I'd been collecting and researching for quite a while, but when COVID hit and a little bit prior, we started testing aggressively on how to build a, a really remarkable team. And no surprise, it all boils down to the leader, how they manage the team, how they present themselves and so forth. We tested it out in 100 companies or more. We actually have a service-based organization that was delivering and continues to deliver these teachings. And then once we had nailed it, we codified to put it into the book and now it's coming out January 2nd.

That's awesome. All right.

So let's talk about—

yeah, you're right. I mean, the, some of the guests that we've had on, and then even just the business owners that I'm around, attracting top talent and then really being able to keep top talent and then having people engaged into the work has been a real challenge the last few years. Uh, I share with you a text message just as an example of this. So let's talk about first attracting and finding some of the, the top talent and where the struggles have really been and where it's been really seemingly exacerbated over the last few years. Where your thoughts around as a business owner, as a leader, being able to find some of the best talent out there?

Yeah, so I'll give you what I believe is the ultimate way to recruit extraordinary talent. But I'll start off with the challenge. The challenge is most organizations are following the same route process or rote process. We, we post an ad online, um, have a job, here's the parameters, looking for a top candidate, must have a 4-year college degree, and we hope someone comes to us. But, but top talent employees, people that are the right fit for your organization, because I actually do believe everyone is top talent when put in the right role. Everyone is an A-player in potential if they're matched up with the right role. It may not be a fit with your company. So we gotta find the right people, that are the right fit. Well, we're just, we're, it's kind of two ships in the night. We're, we're, we're launching out a, a message hoping that the right people are looking at the right time by chance at the right ad to find us. So the odds are very low. To make it even worse, we then go through an interview process, which is an obscenely ineffective way to find talent. Answer my question. We know, where is the red light? Is it high on the light or is it low? And if you know that, clearly you're observant of something. No, all the data shows that is nonsense. It's useless. So then what I did is I, I conducted a study of all industries to identify Is there any industry that has a disproportionate success in getting extraordinary talent? And I found it, and it's a near trillion-dollar industry. It is the sports industry. Think about professional sports and the quality of performance from those athletes. It is unbelievable. And this is true in college sports too. So I said, what's their recruiting process? Do they run an ad saying, looking for, you know, running back for our football team? No, they don't. They run camps. And this is the hack that we need to deploy. I actually played sports in high school. I was a lacrosse player among a few other sports, and I wasn't particularly good, but it's good enough. And I went to a camp in the Northeast called Hobart. What was interesting, they have 300 student athletes and we're all practicing and improving our skills. Certain athletes, I was not one, got tapped on the shoulder and they said, hey, there's another field over here we'd like to play at. They were vetting out the players that were best qualified for them and teaching them additional skills. But here's the beauty. Every athlete, including myself, got better because of that camp. Everyone improved, and the few were cherry-picked to play at Hobart. I ended up playing in college in part because of that camp. So everyone got better. So we need to deploy the same strategy. How do we improve everybody and cherry-pick the best? My favorite example is, uh, I put in the book, Home Depot does this. Next time you see like, we're building a birdhouse kind of thing at Home Depot, uh, bring your child. That's a recruiting camp. What they do is you go there, you build a birdhouse. The, the host, the, the Home Depot employees are observing how people are participating. They will tap you on the shoulder if you participate the most, you're supporting other parents, you're really into it. They'll say, my gosh. You're showing a lot of potential around this. You ever think about working at Home Depot? We'd love to have someone like you. And they, they find their best talent this way. We can do the same thing. Run workshops, camps. They can be online, in person, demonstrating or allowing people to acquire skill and then cherry-pick the people who show the most potential. They're going to be A-fits for your company.

Man, what a great, just a different way of looking at it and using the sports analogy. Big, uh, sports fan, specifically college sports.

Oh, me too.

Auburn football. And so, oh, I love it. Deal, during the, during the summer, can Auburn get some of these 10th graders, 9th graders, 10th graders that showing potential into their camps, and then they'll recruit them in their junior and, and, and senior year to be able to say, like, you're right, hey, we got this kid on campus, we saw that what he was able to do or basketball or whatever that may be. So that's a great analogy. But then to bring it down into actual business, I never knew that Home Depot did that. Now that obviously makes me really sad because Home Depot never tapped me on the shoulder.

Never tapped me.

But you know, it's a little race car.

You got better at building a workhouse, uh, birdhouse. I do want to share something, uh, and maybe it's Auburn specific. The War Eagles run these camps, but they also pull from the, uh, the transfer portal, you know. But here's what's interesting: the kids in the camp are developed to the War Eagle, the Auburn standard. They don't have to unlearn things. It's the kids that come through transfer portal who have all this amazing talent who actually many times have to unlearn certain skills they learned at another school to be acclimated to how this system works. So if you can build someone, you generally get someone that's more qualified than having to make them unlearn and then relearn. It works, but it's a little bit more difficult. All right.

So you used language now a minute ago that I love to use, which is around A players. So let's say though that we have some people on our current team. We have an organization of 10 people and not everybody is an A player. We have some people that are solid players. Maybe there's some C players. You mentioned, how do you take someone who's struggling, maybe even a D player, and we're thinking about, you know what, we need to replace them to be able to develop them them and make them into a superstar or an A player? What are your thoughts around how we actually do that?

Yeah. So let me qualify what an ABC is. An A player typically is someone who sees their role at your company as part of their identity. And that's why they feel compelled to perform at the highest level because it's an expression of who they are. You and them and their company, your company is one and the same. A B player is someone who sees it as a job. It's a form for supporting income, but there's not an identity association. It's a source of income. The C player sees it as a necessity. I have to do this. And often it's an evil necessity. So guess who's evil? You. And they can become cancerous to an organization, hence the letter C. So can a C player become an A player? The funny thing is, hell yes. Hell yes. Now, this is not true for everybody. And we do need to realize that if we can't help someone transform in our organization, The best transformation is to invite them to work at an organization that can work with who they are. So everyone's an A-player, maybe just not with you. How you do this is by deploying psychological ownership. There was research in the 1980s led by a guy named John Pearce that kind of got abandoned, and I'm trying to bring it back because it is a whirlwind— or not whirlwind, it is a goldmine of impact. Psychological ownership is where someone feels that what they are doing is part of them. The identity, a player mentality. The example I'll give you is with rental cars, because we can deploy this in our business. Next time you rent a car, look at how you behave with that car. When you get out of that DMZ, you know, lights flashing, spikes go down, you finally leave that place. If you're like me, I'll do donuts in the parking lot. I'll, I'll race up to the light. I'll, I'll definitely floor it the second the light turns green. Why do I do that? Here's the rule: when we're forced to comply, we will seek to defy. It's human nature. I'm told that the rental place— fill the tank. If it comes back without being full, you're in trouble. Not any scratches, you're in trouble. Dent things, you're in trouble. Not clean interior, you're in trouble. They don't say you can't floor it, so I don't— I will floor because I'm forced to comply. Instead, what we want to do is if you Help through nourishment, people will flourishment, I guess. So if you, if you nourish, they will flourish. It's probably a better way of saying it. Think about the car you own. The car you own, you have control over it. You gotta decide when you use it. You gotta park it where you want to. You have intimate knowledge around it. You understand how all of it functions. You know the kind of weird buttons that you would never know. And you can personalize it. You can put something on the side, the rearview mirror or something like that. Those 3 elements give us a sense of control and allows us to nourish the experience with it because we feel more connected with it. And then we start to flourish. We take care of the car we own because of those 3 elements. Now, here's the greatest irony. I don't legally own my car. The bank does. I'm making car payments. Psychological ownership is different than legal ownership. So when it comes to our C players or B players or even our A players, if we want them to elevate their game, Give them opportunities for ownership. So instead of saying, here's what you gotta do, and if you fail to do it, you're outta here. And if you do succeed, I'm gonna give you more responsibility. That's a comply and defy. Ownership is subtly different, saying, hey, there's many things you can do here. What would give you the most satisfaction and joy to do? Move people toward their natural propensity. If you do this, how could you make it your own? So now we're giving them ability to personalize it. How, how can you learn more about this so you know it inside and out? That's called intimate knowledge. And where can you take this? How, what's your vision for it? Control. When we start giving those 3 elements, people start embracing it. Real quick, I got a practical story. There's a smokehouse called King's Smokehouse down in Texas. The owner, his name is Stephen King. It's a coincidence. He ain't that guy. And, his employee Joel was a C-level player, would show up late, was filthy, but he had this guy. He gave the guy ownership over something small, and that's the next key. Start very small. There was a, a bar they had and he said, hey Joel, anything here that you want to take charge of that is totally your thing to own? And the guy says, I'll handle like the bar mats and stuff and the straw box. Sure enough, when people pull straws out, they explode everywhere. Steven started taking responsibility because he owned it. He could personalize it. Started to improve not just with that, he started improving other aspects of his life because he had a sense of identity now. Then over time, it was only a few weeks later, they said, hey, there's this cooler with the, the soft drinks and beers and stuff. I want you to own that. What, what do you envision for this, Joel? And Joel's like, you know what, I like to have things organized so the label always faces out. He'd sit there meticulously positioning the labels. So now he had a sense of pride in stuff he owned. Fast forward 3 years later, Joel is our number 1 employee. He's the front, front of store. He manages the entire store. For a guy who is incapable of working just 3 years later as a C player. It's all about ownership. That's the key. Hmm.

Let me ask you a question around one of, um, uh, someone I was actually talking to just yesterday. They have a really solid player, been with them, I think, 4 to 5 years. And what he has done is he's moved this person back and forth from effectively a customer service position and then over into a sales position. And so he has used the words this person is an A player.

Yeah.

And so he keeps moving them back and forth because he feels like they can do those different things. I think we would all agree, like, being in sales and then being in customer service has very different skill sets. For sure. He's moving them around and she's like, what? He said, well, she can do this and she can do this. My point in saying this is that I think that sometimes we have people on the team that we really like and that we think that they're capable of things and we put them in a position they can do it. But over a long period of time, it's like, well, and so how do we, what, what is something that we would then have with somebody to figure out?

Yeah.

Something we can do to figure out long-term, this is really where that skill set is, where they can sustain. What, what are your thoughts around that?

Yeah. Cause that, that scenario makes me a little nervous. Uh, she's becoming a crutch for the organization at a certain point. She may say, what, what's my future here? I'm, I'm ping-ponging. That's, that's dangerous.

Yeah.

What, what we need to do is ask people what they want, but then give them opportunities to explore. Inevitably most humans have a growth desire, meaning we want to learn and expand ourselves. The rule here to follow is stop matching people's talent to titles. Instead, match people's talents to tasks. And because many organizations are based upon titles, they do these dramatic shifts. You're customer service and bang, now you're sales and bang, you're customer service. Instead, what are the elements of customer service? Maybe the elements are customer communication and follow-up. Maybe it's email responding, but maybe it's also data entry and other things. Then write down what you need for the salesperson. Maybe it's, it's, it's closing the hard deal. Maybe it's, it's farming clients. Maybe it's other components. Maybe there's some data entry there too. Then look, where does your person, this A-player, naturally show their interest? That's often an expression of their talent. And if it's, say it's in the farming phase of sales, which is very similar to customer service, it's, it's, it's being in contact with customers. Put them in a farming kind of role and any task you have that's related to that, put them in that category and say, listen, your title is A-star or A-player. We're not gonna give you a sales title, but we want you doing things where you'll excel. Then find someone else in the organization who loves data entry and maybe They're filling up part of the sales role and part of the customer service. By blurring the title lines, you no longer have that pyramid structure of an organization. You start building a web-like structure, and webs are more flexible and far stronger. Match talent to task, not to title.

Oh, that's, that's beautiful. What a great answer. Okay. Let's talk about retention strategies. Yeah. My opinion is, and I think you would agree, that too often we focus on the front end, both with sales, like how are we going to get more customers? How do we get customers? How do we get more customers? We don't even think about keeping the ones we have.

Right.

And the same thing is really true with our team. How do we get A players? How do we get A players? How do we turn C players into A players, etc.? Important. But then also, how do we retain some of our top talent? And this has been a recurring thing that I've seen myself last few years. Some of the best people the text message I shared with you before we hear it. Yeah.

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They're not leaving because of leadership, the cost.

So I'll give you a little secret. The vision you and I have for the business as business owners or business leaders is not the vision for our colleagues. And that's the grand mistake. I, Bradley, I made the biggest mistake ever. I walked out of my, this is a prior company I owned. We were doing computer crime investigation. I sat in the office for about a full day and I figured it out. My gosh, we can do $10 million in revenue, which would've been the biggest company that I've ever owned up to that point. We were doing about $6 million and I, I see the leap now. I came outta the office, I called my 30 colleagues together and I said, this is the year we're doing $10 million. I had Eye of the Tiger by Survivor playing in the background, all the cheese, and no one got excited. At the very end of that, my personal assistant at the time, Patty, came up to me and said, Mike, if we do $10 million, you get the new house, you get the new car. But why should we care? And that was the epiphany in retrospect. I was like, oh my God, a corporate vision is the vision of the leader or owners of an organization, not the entirety of the organization. Everyone that works there has their own vision. Someone wants to buy a new house, someone wants to learn a new language, someone wants to play guitar, whatever it is. We all have these personal visions. What we need to do is extract those as a leader of the organization. So we do it through one-on-one meetings here at our company. We have it every week. You get sometimes 5 minutes, sometimes 10 minutes, sometimes a little bit longer. But we'd say, hey, what's going on? And tell us about your personal dreams. And as we get that, what we do is we document it. I actually wrote off the screen here. I have my own dream board for my personal dreams. We as an organization recognize that. So every quarter we sit down and say, what did you achieve? You learned how to speak French. Amazing. And we actually have a wall here dedicated to personal dreams. When the leader of an organization cares about the individual dreams of a person they work with, that will reciprocate in that person for supporting the dream of the leader or the organization. It's reciprocity. Now, one last thing. You don't have to fulfill the dream. This is not, you know, Make-A-Wish Foundation. We're not gonna gift it. We just need to keep it in front of people and aware that we're concerned or interested in them achieving what they want. And If we can offer some blocking and tackling, making some introductions, affording flexibility in their work schedule so they can achieve those dreams, all the better. But by keeping it at the forefront, they will keep your vision at the forefront too.

All right. How do we differentiate between the vision of where the business is going and then our personal dreams? I want to make sure that we draw a distinction, but also how those work together specifically. So like we have a 3-year vision of where we're going, which actually ends December of 2024. So all these things I'm a part of end next year. So next year's 1-year OKRs will finish next year's 3-year vision, and then we'll set another one that will obviously end in 2027. Thoughts about how we pull the dreams, my personal dreams, the personal dreams of the team, into the vision of the organization?

Yeah, I would start off with, and this is taught through Jim Collins' work and some other amazing authors, is what is the big purpose of the organization? Ours is to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. And my job as a leader of the organization is to beat that drum. That is a personal calling of mine, but I want the business to be an expression of that. So everyone has clarity on this is what we're trying, this is our purpose or our why, as Simon Sinek would say.

Mm-hmm.

After that is what's the big promise? The big promise is our end user may not care about our desire to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. They care about the impact on them. The number one form of impact we intend to have is to simplify entrepreneurship. So we're in perp business to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty, and we're doing it by simplifying entrepreneurship. So my team needs to know those two key components, then all the KPIs, metrics, all the numbers support that. So now there's an awareness of the reason around it. So you have to give people the reason. Then we look at everyone's individual goals. We ask them same questions. What's the vision for your life? I want a, a connected family. Um, I want, uh, you know, whatever it may be. Then we say, and what's the way you plan to get there? You know, for us, it's, it's quantity of time, not, not just quality of time, but quantity of time. I want my family to be together a lot. One of my colleagues here has actually a few of our colleagues now have aging parents and they're like, you know, time is short. So let me say, what are all the little metrics or the little metrics, the metrics or achievements you want around this? I'd like to be with my, my mom for 3 to 4 dinners per week. Okay, write that down. I want this and that. And once we identify that, we are then tracking those individual goals that they're achieving while also displaying what the corporate corporation is doing. We're like, listen, By the corporation achieving the outcomes we want, it's a source of income for all of us. It supports all of us and allows us in turn, in part, to have that availability to live a lifestyle that brings a little more comfort and so forth. So we can see the connection. We always are cheering equally for both. And I'm telling you, when you cheer strongly for your colleagues' individual dreams, they will, they will shout strongly in support of the corporate dreams.

Oh, it's so good. All right. So yesterday I was meeting with a guy who has been in a number of different industries and he's wanting to start— he's starting his own small coaching business. He has one now and he's wanting to kind of grow it. And I was asking him, what are you going to teach? And he said, you know, like leadership development. I said, okay, that's interesting. What does that actually mean?

Yeah.

And he really stumbled for a second. He's like, I really don't know. So that tees up that. I said, well, you might want to figure that out a little bit. But this tees up this question. You mentioned in the book and talk about in the book leadership that drives profitability. And given the fact that you wrote the book Profit First, I'm really curious, what do you mean about leadership that drives profitability?

Yeah, profitability can be interchanged with sustainability. Most organizations— I focus on small business predominantly. Most businesses are in a check-to-check survival and therefore leadership is really sourced out of desperation, and that is not sustainable. It's this constant, are we gonna make it? And what are the, you know, what are the problems, we're having and, and how are we gonna fix this? And we better sell more. It, it's constant panic to panic, check to check.

Mm-hmm.

So leadership that brings about profitability is leadership that brings about sustainability. And now we can focus on larger goals. So every transaction in the business needs to drive health to the bottom line to the entirety of the organization. I also believe in open books. So our organization, we have open books. People know, except for individual salaries, we don't share that. People know the expenses of our organization. They know the profitability of the company. It's all shared. And every quarter we, we present it and we actually even do a profit share with all of my colleagues. So everyone knows how we're doing. The beauty of this, this candor over profitability and sustainability of business when the business struggles and every business does, and we just went through a tough year this past year, but we're a-okay, is it brings about a rally. When you're candid about the healthy times, you can also be candid about the struggle. But instead of this ping pong, which is manic, you know, it comes up every so often, we're like, okay, we got to button down the hatches. Things are a little bit tough right now. And the team rallies and says, we got this. And sure enough, We went to a little bit of a slow period. We're coming out this final quarter in 2023, going into 2024, perhaps the strongest we've ever been.

That actually brings up a question. Last question I'll ask you is someone— this just came up actually again this week— is somebody asked me the direct question is, I just don't know how comfortable I am in sharing some of the business financials. I've never done that before.

Yeah.

And so for someone who is wanting to have transparency and openness because they said, yeah, my team thinks I make $1 million a year personally.

Exactly, exactly.

That's what they think, you know. And they were like, we don't— I don't do that at all. But then they start getting fearful of these kind of things, and then, you know, they, they get in their head about it. But where would you recommend that someone— the, the mindset behind it, and even like tangibly how to just get started, possibly?

Everyone knows the finances in their mind if you're open book or not. The problem is the in the mind part. So like you said, if a business does $1 million in revenue, many employees will default to saying, oh my God, the business owner's taking home $1 million. They're crushing it. So we all come to a conclusion. It's human nature of what our situation is. We have to. And if we don't disclose it, often it's the wrong case or the worst case. So By doing open books, people know the reality. What's also interesting is you don't have to disclose confidential information. So we package all salaries together. Um, so it's, it's blurred. Admittedly, if someone made the effort, they can go through and figure out everyone's salary. But I find that there's very little motivation for anyone to do that because there's no quid pro quo. It's not like, what that person making? Is it a dollar more than me? And if that person exists, we need to coach them through that. That's a, a behavior that's not supporting our organization, or maybe coach them out of the organization to be somewhere else because that's not the goal of the organization. Open books. I was hesitant to do it myself, but I started doing it about 15, 20 years ago. And my gosh, it just opened up this strong communication chain. People understand the pulse of the company and have become far more supportive, particularly, and it doesn't happen often, but particularly when there's a tough time. People can see it coming with me and they have a, a sense of security. The last thing I wanna share is Maslow's hierarchy of needs starts off with physiological needs, food, water. The second level is safety needs around finances and other things. Doesn't mean fueling people with tons of money. That's not financial security. It's an awareness of their financial situation and the health of your organization. If they work for it, the financial health of your organization is part of their financial security. Yeah.

Yeah, that's so good, Mike. I always love having you on. I take—

thanks for having me—

2, 3 pages of notes. People want to connect with you, social, also find out when the book is coming out. Where would you point them to?

I would love for them to visit my website because the All In: How Great Leaders Build Unstoppable Teams is there. You can get free chapter downloads. That's all my other work. It's right for the Wall Street Journal. All those articles that you have to buy through Wall Street Journal, you can get through for free through my site. It's mikemotorbike.com. As you go to Mike Michalowicz, no one can spell that, but Mike Motorbike, the nickname from grade school, it's the only G-rated nickname I ever had, uh, is the site to go to.

Awesome, Mike. Appreciate you. Hope to have you back on in the future.

I'd love to. Thanks, Bradley.

I love Mike's podcast because we— they're 20, 25 minutes long or so. He gives great, succinct answers to the questions. He gives stories around kind of this anecdotal evidence, basically, of what the topic is that we're discussing. I think certainly the idea of camps— I've never considered that. And so whenever you're, you know, got to get people to the camps for sure, but the story of recruiting and how sports teams do that, you know, there's some analogies with sports and business that don't always work. This one, though, does. I thought that was great. And then even bringing it to Home Depot, I certainly never have gotten tapped on the shoulder for that. I think also just his— how do we define what an A-player is? I mean, we throw around A-players, but what does an A-player actually look like? Now, his definition of A-player, B-player, C-player was interesting. I've never considered that, but that— I thought that was a key takeaway for me. And then I thought lastly, whenever you talk about retaining A-players and just You know, the, the people don't care that you want to build a $10 million organization, but what do they care about? They care about their dreams and their aspirations and their vision for the future. And how can we tie our, our personal dreams to what the business is doing? But also, how can we tie our team's dreams, aspirations, and the vision for that, for their future, and how they can see the success of the business is able to help them to be able to get there? I love that. I thought that was really fantastic. And pulling that into your one-to-ones. Check out Mike's book. Go to mikemotorbike.com if you know how to spell his, his full name, and go to his website there. Got a ton of resources. He's just got so much content he puts out there. Certainly follow him on socials. And I have already— truly, I did, uh, pre-order this book on Audible, so I'm really looking forward to diving in whenever it comes out in January. A big shout out to our podcast sponsors, Club Capital, Coach P Consulting, and Autopilot Recruiting. You know, I was thinking about, as Mike was talking, I was thinking about Autopilot Recruiting and how, you know, you could run this camp idea and what that would look like depending on whether you're in insurance or whether you're in, you know, other industries. Like, what would that look like? And you could actually work with a recruiter of Autopilot to be able to build this type of camp possibly. I think there's, you know, people have talked about group interviews and, and, and I think that that's kind of where I was going, but also not even just group interviews, like bringing people in to actually do some of the job and then tapping people on the shoulder. And then, you know, you pay them for their time, etc. So there's, there's a lot of different ways. And admittedly, since I just heard this idea, I'm not really sure exactly how you go about executing that, but it certainly has my mind spinning. But the point is, is that you could work with someone at Autopilot Recruiting to help you to be able to do that. So go to autopilotrecruiting.com. autopilotrecruiting.com. You know, when we talked about, um, yesterday, uh, when— well, let me first say this. When I was talking to Mike, obviously, about developing people, certainly I was thinking about Coach P. And then yesterday I was on a call with, uh, one of my team members who's moving into, um, sales. And so When we were, uh, having this conversation, this training conversation was about 45 minutes and we recorded it. And I was thinking to myself, man, it is just so important to develop your team members, to pour in. And this came up on a call yesterday, and I say that often, but truly these things do actually come up. Um, so it's ironic how whenever I'm doing a podcast, the things that we end up talking about on the podcast have recently come up. And so I try to give some even stories and anecdotes that support all of you. And when I was, uh, got done, she said, Liz said, you know, this was, this was actually really helpful to me because some things are just caught, not taught. And so when you jump on a call with Coach P, some of the things that you get, like you get the word tracks and you get, but you also get the mindset, you know. And if you think about when documenting, like, say, a sales process and how you do things and how he does things. Sometimes you need that nuance and you need those kind of little details around the edges, and you'll pick that up when you work with Coach P. So go to coachpconsulting.com. Coach P consulting dot com. So I was just working with some of our Blueprint clients just this past week, and we were talking about business financials, and it was super surprising to me, but then also at the same time not surprising at all. So many of them shared with me, you know, I just never was taught any of this. No one actually sat down with me and showed me how to, like, read financial statements. I don't know how to read the dials, the income statement, the balance sheet, cash flow statement. And if I don't know how to read them, I don't know what to do with them. And if you're in that boat, you're not alone. You're not alone. Like, it's not a— there's not a business school that we go to to start our businesses, but that's where Club Capital can really help you. So if you're an insurance agency owner, go to club. Capital, and they can help you to be able to start understanding. They can give you the tools, but they can give you the mindset. They're going to give you insights to help you kind of see, hey, where can we dial this up or down? What are the things that we can move? What are the ranges of success for my marketing, for my, um, vehicle, for my property, for my building, and all of those kind of things, so that you can see what other people are doing without seeing their actual numbers. But you can see generally what are the most successful people doing. How much are they spending in marketing? Where Am I at— am I at 2? Is that good? Am I at 8%? And those type of things can really give you great insights to help you to be able to make better decisions in your business. Go to club.capital. And finally, you know, it is incredibly important to be able to have some great software that actually works. If you're an insurance agent, go to todayapppro.com. todayapppro.com. They work with your corporate CRM. So you don't have to have any worries there about whether it's going to be approved. You can take some of the custom word tracks possibly that you got from Coach P, and you're able to put those into the Today App Pro's software right where the action is actually happening for your sales reps, for your customer service team, etc. They have a beautiful user interface, are always adding and customizing updates. And again, you don't have to worry about whether or not it's going to work back and forth, is it going to be approved, etc. Go to Today App pro.com. All right, everyone, till next episode, lead well.