Episode 359: Navigating Difficult Times with David Peterson

Welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. Well, he's back. David Peterson, Coach P, is back. You know, we've had him on here, I think this is maybe his fourth time to come on. I told him afterwards I thought that this was his best podcast up to this point, at least for me personally. I picked up kind of the most things that are both kind of high-level and then also tactical things you can implement. Right away. Well, let's get into it. Without further ado, here's my interview with David Peterson. Coach P, welcome back to the Above the Business podcast.

Good to be here, Bradley. Thanks for having me.

Excited to have you as always. So every time I always love to be able to bring you on to have 3 or 4 bigger topics, things that are kind of happening right now, both for what you are experiencing in the business As well as what you have noticed from your coaching clients that you work with. Before we hit record, you mentioned to me and you shared a stat that I think people are going to, when they first hear it, they're going to say, oh my gosh, I've never even thought in that level of scale. You onboarded, this is new team members in 2023, you onboarded 27 people. Now, I did go to Auburn, but that's roughly 2 people a month. Every 2 weeks you're onboarding someone new. But you shared with me some things and some challenges that you're actually now working through in 2024. Talk to us about that.

Yeah, sure. So, um, it is a big number. I was shocked by it as well. Um, my, uh, My chief of operations is actually the one that went back and gave me a number. And I was pretty shocked as well. I knew there was more than usual, but I wasn't keeping up with it. And it wasn't intentional, but, you know, the last few years have been really good in the insurance industry and we had the opportunity and we have created a recruiting machine over here. And what really started rolling was we were just getting a ton of referrals. Over the past 18 months where people were being thrown at us left and right. And, you know, referrals can be tough because you automatically put on your rose-colored glasses when you have them in front of you, and you start to, um, not necessarily change your process, but you can, you can kind of make excuses for people, and you automatically like them a little bit more. So one, I'll just go ahead and say, like, you got to be very careful there when you're working with referrals, is that you do realize that They're normal people like everyone else. You shouldn't treat them differently. But anyway, we were fortunate. We had a lot of people coming at us and we were in an environment where we could bring people on and we did. And what happened, and I was aware of it while it was happening, is that when you have that type of growth that fast, you're going to have waste. You are absolutely going to have inefficiencies. You are going to not have the greatest ROI because you just cannot spend as much time needed with every single person. And I was very aware of that. So what our big goal was for 2024 was to focus on tightening up, becoming more efficient, and going back and looking at those team members that we were able to bring on over last year and say, all right, hey, we've brought in this talent. We may not have done the best job in the world with onboarding and accountability expectations. Let's clean it up this year. Let's intentionally slow growth down a little bit and let's spend time improving our ROI. And that's what we've been focused on over the last, you know, I'd say 4 to 6 months. And it's a new challenge for us that we're now facing with massive growth.

What is a metric that you have possibly put in place or looked at from an ROI perspective, like a team member? There's actually, I've heard this ratio before, like a labor efficiency ratio, or what are some of the things that you've looked at to be able to see, or has it been more of a kind of a gut feel that, you know, I think we've gotten a little bloated here?

Sure. Well, you know, you mentioned you went to Auburn and I went to Alabama, which means I'm not great at metrics and ratios and numbers in general. So I'll say I haven't necessarily put any of those metrics in place. But what we have done is we've been more intentional at looking at the separation of talent. So we've always been good at keeping our, our hand on the pulse of that gut feeling, right? Is this person doing the things that we want out of someone on our team? And the more you look at it, you can have someone checking all the boxes and doing all the right things. But if they've been with you for, you know, 6 to 12 months, the numbers still aren't there. You have to start looking at them a little bit closer and say, hey, look, are they fit for the job? And so what we did to go back to your question of, you know, ratios or algorithms or whatever it may be, For the first time ever, we started putting in a little more structure of when do we have to change that person. So putting in a development plan and saying, all right, these are the numbers we're gonna look for. And if it happens 2 consecutive months, we're gonna put an action plan in place and give them a 30-day window and then look at it again and say, all right, maybe it's time we either you know, move them to another department or move them out. And in the past, that was much more of a gut, and it was easy over the last 3 years because business was so good. It was kind of hard to fail, right? But even during that time, if we have— let's just say, for example, someone is at $75,000 of premium and you got someone at $30,000 of premium in normal times you're happy with $30,000 premium. But when there's a $40,000 difference, you got to start asking yourself the question, is, is this one down here at $30,000, are they really that good? And what does that look like when the market tightens up? And, you know, that's what we've been experiencing over the last, I'd say, 9 months is markets start to tighten and you really learn what kind of person you have. So now we're, we're much more zoned in on what do those numbers look like? Are we, are we watching them on a monthly basis? And do we have an action plan on the back end to possibly move them out if we need to?

You have spoke on the, on the podcast before, specifically around the first 90 days or so of getting someone up to speed. And I would encourage people to go back and listen to some of the other episodes that we did on that. But now I'm going to move towards, let's say, that month 3 through month 12 or so, or maybe even month 15. So that way you're in the first year that they've gotten trained and up to speed. At what point, what are those intervals and check-ins, so to speak, that you're looking at to make sure that someone is hitting the metrics that they need to hit for you to be, for them to be a profit center and for you to get a positive ROI? Sure.

So we're doing a 30, 60, and 90-day review for onboarding. Now the first 30 days, that is their onboarding time. So there's no results that we're looking for. So in that checkpoint, we're really looking to see, are they the person we thought they were in the interview? Now we're getting feedback on onboarding, doing skill checks, right? Are you progressing as we think you should? Are you showing us the, uh, uh, personality characteristics that we're looking for, right? Have you been Attendance issue, tardiness. Do people on the team like you? Are you outgoing? Are you positive? Are you holding yourself accountable? And similar at 60 days, but now we're getting our first month of production, right? And we don't, we don't necessarily have any expectations in that first month as far as results. We're now really looking at the activity. All right, what kind of work have you put out? What do your call numbers look like? What do your quoting numbers look like? Are you able to overcome objections? Are you following our process? And then at 90, our second month, and now we can really hold them to some numbers. And, and my expectation is actually the number I mentioned earlier is $30,000. Now that's going to be different on different markets, but that's what I'm looking at. And then from there, they're falling into their, their manager's hands. And they're meeting with them every other week. And every other week they are monitoring their activity. What does the call volume look like? Are you hitting 50+ calls? What does the quoting activity look like? Are you hitting 5 quotes a day and/or 3 sales a day or a combination of the two? Are you doing those things and looking at those every other week and helping them get to that $30,000 mark? And if they're not consistently doing that after 2 months of that is when we're going to step in and say, all right, we're going to, we're going to create an action plan here and see if you can shake it off in the 3rd month. And if not, we need to look at our solutions.

You ever had a situation to where someone is doing the activity, they're not getting the results, and then through just, I don't know, 3 to 6 months of prolonged coaching, they just took off like a rocket ship and they became a true A-player. I even use the term A-player, and I'm going to even get your definition of that in just a second. But like, they really took off and became one of your, you know, top producers, and heck, might even have stepped into a leadership role at this point. Because not everybody, not everybody steps into the NBA and starts just, you know, doing what they're doing. Jalen Brunson for the New York Knicks right now is absolutely on a tear. Anthony Edwards is on a tear in the NBA right now. Those guys in their rookie years were not doing that. I mean, it took them a little bit of time to be able to build up to it. What has been your experience with team members there?

I've had them as well, and, and this is the rub, and it's where so many agents want that answer, and I, I think it's almost impossible to give. And what I've always defaulted to is this: if the results aren't there, is the activity is the activity and the personality there. And this is where we will stick it out with a person. So some of, you know, I've got 4 people coming to mind immediately that it didn't hit until somewhere between 6 and 12 months. But the reason we stuck with them is because they were giving us everything that we were looking for. They had a positive personality. They weren't giving up. They were coachable. They took accountability. They weren't making excuses. Right. And because they were giving to us what we were looking for, we kept pouring into them. Now, ultimately, do I think there has to be a cutoff at some point? Yes. Right. Some people don't have the talent for this, which is where you have to realize as the business owner, Have I put them in the right seat? Right. So you at the same time, you've got to be watching that they have the skill set for what we're trying to do. There might be another position in the company that would work well for them, but as long as someone is pouring back into me, I'm going to give them my all to make sure that they're successful. So if you see the signs, right, and this is where I think some business owners will make excuses for someone they just like. I, you know, mentioned that with referrals. If you see the red flags and the results aren't there, that's when you have to make a decision to move on. If the person is making excuses, if the person is not taking accountability, if the person makes negative comments, you got to pay attention to those. They're showing you their character, and you mix that with poor results That's all you need, right? So that's easy. The tricky part is when there's no results but there's all green flags.

I'm gonna ask this question I've never asked you before, and I don't know if it's a— if it's even a fair question to ask, but I'll ask it anyway, and we'll— and we'll see what you say. What do you think your success rate is with new hires?

Oh man, that's a great question, and I wish I knew the answer.

Better.

Um, overall, I know it's high. Um, we keep the majority of people that we bring on. Um, I can think of a few we offboarded last year. Um, one was the husband of my top producer. Um, so that was one that, you know, you, you interview and you're like, okay, you kind of make excuses for, um, probably a bad fit at the beginning. Um, lost 2 others due to moving away and the remote thing did not work out well for them. Um, but other than that, you know, the majority of them are still with us and doing well. So I'm not sure of the percentage. You got me curious now. I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to go dig into that and get you a number for our next conversation. But, uh, overall It's, it's pretty high.

Let me ask it maybe even this way. What would you even define a successful hire as? Because I mean, you're hiring, I mean, you're hiring so many people. It's not everybody's in sales. I mean, you're hiring marketing and you're hiring service people and you're hiring leadership people. I mean, it's, there's a lot of different positions, but how would you even define a successful hire?

Successful hire is somebody that you want on your team. If they are an asset and you see them and they bring you joy, that's a good hire. I've got a woman that I brought on last year, and as far as ROI, if I'm looking at like, what is she bringing in right now? It's got to be pretty low because there's no real numbers that, that come in. But I met a woman who had been a stay-at-home mom for a long time. She volunteered a little bit at her church and kids had moved out of the household. And I just got a great feeling from her. She wanted to get back to work on a part-time basis just to be a part of something, right? That's all she was really looking for. And she just— she made me feel good. Like I trusted her. I liked her. And I hired her and brought her on part-time to be our customer relations specialist. I'd never had one of these roles before, but someone to make sure their customers are getting the attention they deserve when they deserve it, right? Someone passes away in your family, there's a graduation, a baby, a marriage. I want to make sure that as we grow and become larger and larger, we don't lose the small-town feel that we started with of knowing our customers. I want a handwritten note sent out to a customer. I want a gift card given to say thanks when a special occasion happens. And, and I brought her on to do that, and we have continued to give her some more things because we just like her. When we give her something, she gets it done. When she is in the office, everyone likes to see her. She brings positivity and joy. And she does something that brings value to our clients. And while I cannot put a number or an ROI on her position and I can't see a specific result from it, I know that her being there improves the culture and the joy in our office. And that is a successful hire.

You know what I really like about that is that, again, we've detailed this out. We've talked to Alex about this too, about like a really strong recruiting system. Like, what does that actually look like? You know, what do you follow the system? But I think the other part that you're sharing is that you're also looking at these things, which is kind of like, what's the gut feel that I'm getting from this person too? Do I actually like being around them? Not just did they score well on the XYZ assessment? That's important too. Um, but also what's kind of feel that I get. All right, this is gonna be really random. You just got back from Hawaii. There's a reason I'm gonna ask this question. Did you go surfing while you were out there?

I did not. So we, uh, we did not work any surfing into this trip. I had some friends do it, but it just was not on our itinerary.

So I feel like that sometimes business, we feel like, like we're riding the wave, and then there's other times We get dumped by the wave and we're being crushed. And I feel like that that's how this has been the last few years. And you were talking about this before we hit record, that it was like, man, it was manna from heaven, I think was your exact quote. People are riding the wave, man. Things are good, you know, come off the wave and go get a mai tai or something like that. And then it's like, man, I'm getting crushed. It's like coral at the bottom, getting cut up. And so the things that people were doing before when the environment was easy is just not necessarily working now. Can you just speak specifically around, or maybe not specifically, maybe generally actually is what I meant to say, generally around what you have seen in the flip with the environment that's people are experiencing right now. And then we'll get into some tactical things on what you've done and then what you're sharing with your clients to be able to do.

Absolutely. I like your analogy there. I think that's— there's a great correlation. I mean, life is a wave. Life, business, all of it. While I did not go surfing, I did enjoy quite a few mai tais last week, so I got to enjoy some of your story there. And you're right, the last 3 years, if you've been in insurance, you've been riding the wave and life has been good. And then as profitability sets in, a lot of the companies out there are looking at the doom and gloom and they've had to tighten up and Unfortunately, a lot of them have had to downsize or remove lines or change what they're doing. And that's life. There's going— we're not always going to be on top. And we have to prepare for those things. And we've got to make changes to our business that could have been working yesterday. They're not going to keep working today. And that's one of the reasons we decided to make some of the strategic changes going into 2024 is Let's get smarter. Let's get more efficient. Let's tighten up. Let's get into other lines of insurance, right? Some of the things that I have been focusing on in business and with our clients is coaching them on, hey, are you diversified into other lines of business? If auto and fire is not going great right now, are you strong in financial services? Do you have a commercial arm? If you can't write certain types of risk, are you going after the risk that is valued right now? Do you have a play to go after high-income quality business, right? And making that shift, sometimes it can be large, sometimes it can be small. But the great thing about what we do is that if you're willing to change, which any business needs to, there is always an opportunity. There is opportunity around us at all times, and it may look different. And unfortunately, some of us can get negative and go hunker down when those changes happen, which more often than not is the case, which is why we see some people running for the hills and people downsizing and losing their jobs. But for those that are aggressive or willing to change or on growth mode, This is where we can pick up great talent in the form of team members. This is where we can go grab unbelievable business in the form of new clients as long as we continue to diversify. So you can't be scared of that wave breaking every once in a while because there's, there's opportunity down at the bottom of the seabed.

I love some of those things that you mentioned, get smarter, tighten up. Diversify, go into more high-income, high-quality business. Did you— I, I, I like this maxim, or maybe this quote, I'm not sure. You're thinking 5 years ago is your baggage today. Uh, maybe 5 years ago is going back a ways. I mean, that's pushing it back to 2019, and that's even pre-COVID, so a lot has certainly changed then. Maybe let's go back 3 years ago, 2021, Right. What are some other specifically— I'm talking about mindset things, like this is for you as the leader of the organization— of the way that you thought around maybe business, just growth of the business 3 years ago and how that is fundamentally different today, right now?

So didn't have a clue. How quickly we could grow. If we go back, you know, right before COVID I don't think anyone knew what was about to happen. And you want to be poised for it, right? And that's where some people get in trouble, is that they're not, they're not poised for the opportunity and they miss it, right? So if I was on the back end of that, unfortunately, this one kind of strung out for about 3 years. But I mean, let's say it was a shorter cycle. Let's say it was 2 years, and I realized that it's happening. So then I go try and staff up, and it takes me 6 to 8 months to get people up to speed. And so now I've staffed up, and now all of a sudden the cycles come in and the, the tightening happens. So now I'm possibly overstaffed because now I don't know how to to change what I was going after, people have to be ready for it. Right. And this is why— and I've talked on your podcast before about this growth mindset— is that we have to be set on never turning off good talent. Right. As long as we have strong talent in front of us, we have to bring them on because as long as we bring on high-quality people, we're going to find the opportunities. Now, what happened over the last 3 years is we didn't really have to go hunt for it. It was hitting us in the face every day when we opened the doors, right? As long as we were breathing, we were, we were gonna find it, right? And if we have that type of talent on the team, when the market shifts, we've got the type of people that can go hunt, right? They are okay with change. They have seen obstacles before, they've overcome them, and they know how to hunt, right? So You can't slow down. You can't stop because when you do and the cycle is good, you're gonna be late. And then when the cycle is bad, you might find you have people on your team that can't handle it and they, they fall to the challenge, right? So, you know, if you ask me to go back 5 years or to go back right, right before COVID hit, the answer is no. I had no clue what was gonna happen. But fortunately, we were ready for it because of two principles. One is don't miss talent. If it's in front of you, bring it on. And then two, be ready for change. It is never, ever going to slow down. And we have to be willing to change. We have to be able to throw everything out the window that's made us successful and say, hey, that's not working right now. We need to do something else. And if you can't do that in business, you're, you're going to struggle.

I didn't have this word in my vocabulary before. I think I heard it maybe in the last 3 months or so, but being and seeing yourself as an opportunist, I think you, I think you, you, you strike me as that because the, the context of the conversation that I was on a mastermind and we were on a Zoom call and we were talking about this very thing that opportunities come It's the, it's the business owner, the founder, the entrepreneur that sees themselves as an opportunist that they're going to capitalize on. Everybody else, it's flying by them. It's right in front of them and they don't, they don't see it, don't take advantage of it. And then boom, it's passed us by. You know, it's, it's just, it's just passed you by versus if you're poised for it. I love that word, actually poised for the opportunity and seeing yourself as an opportunist. Then when it comes, you can actually begin to take advantage of it. The second thing I want to say is, were you a Bulls fan growing up?

I mean, who wasn't that was in our age group, right? It's hard, hard not to respect that timeline right there.

It's my third NBA reference.

I didn't expect to do that today, but, uh, um, you can't not focus on college basketball, I think.

For those of you that don't know the underlying messaging that he is putting there, okay, there's, there's a, there's quite a bit of banter that happens. Uh, the worst thing that happens is that he actually doesn't send me messages whenever Alabama does well, whenever I'm expecting it. And I think that actually makes it, uh, for me harder. But anyway, we won't talk about Aiden Holloway. Neither here nor there. Uh, did you watch The Last Dance?

Oh yeah.

Okay. The very beginning, the very— I think it's within the first 2-minute monologue of episode 1. Phil Jackson says, we built something that people wanted to be a part of. And I was like, oh my gosh, what an amazing definition of culture. And you have said, and I want to make sure everybody's picked this up, when he's talking about referrals, he's actually not talking about a referral system for clients. He's talking about referrals for team members. Okay. Referrals for customers. Sure. That's great. We've talked about that. I'm pretty sure we've talked about about that before. He's talking about actually other people who's saying, no, no, no, you need to come be a part of this organization. Can you just speak to that? And I guess I did somewhat compare you to the Chicago Bulls, which then I'll have to—

man, yeah, I'll take that. Um, I want to go— before I do, I want to go back to your opportunist comment, um, and just say for anyone listening I think all that is, is a mindset, right? And it takes, it takes work, but I think once you're there, you're there. And I'm very aware that I'm an opportunist because my wife reminds me of it all the time. She's not. And probably one of the reasons we work out well together is that, you know, we, we think differently, but she always kind of poke some fun that for me everything always works out. I'm not a planner, but things always seem to work out no matter what situation I'm in. And I'll say they work out because I accept whatever the results are. Anything works out, right? Um, and last week our trip to Hawaii is a great example of that. We had an unbelievable time getting there. We were— we, we had bad storms hit Dallas and, um, we got delayed so much that we weren't going to make our connection. And I realized that, so we kind of stopped packing and I called American and they're like, you know, this was Saturday morning, hey, we're not going to be able to get you out till Monday, sorry. So we had kind of just said, uh, whatever, we're gonna miss a couple days and Anyway, I didn't give up, and I called someone else that books our travel, and I'm on the phone with them, and she said, 'How far are you from the airport?' I said, '12 minutes.' She said, 'Hang up right now and get your butt to the airport. I can get you on a flight, and we're going to fit you in. Uh, it's gonna work out.' So, well, we had stopped packing, so all of a sudden, just frantic, throw everything into a suitcase and haul butt out the door. And we get there. Not only did she get us on the flight, she got us our business class reservations. Everything's rocking and rolling and we made it on the flight. I look at my wife, I'm like, poof, worked out, right? Whereas she's dying. She's like, what do we pack? I forgot stuff. I don't know where the kids are. Just losing her mind, right? She's not seeing it as an opportunity and I'm just happy as a clam, right? And we keep sitting there and we keep sitting there And she's like, we're not gonna make our connection. So I'm like, hey, we're gonna be fine, it's gonna work out. She's like, no, we need to get off this plane because once we get to LA, we're stuck in LA till Monday. I was like, babe, it's gonna be fine. So anyway, we take off, we make up a little bit of ground in the air, make up I think 5 minutes. We get there, first up at the door, like, okay, open the door, open the door. The bridge isn't here. The bridge isn't here. Bridge opens up. We have 12 minutes before our next flight leaves, and I'm pretty sure they're supposed to shut the door at 10 minutes before. We've got about half a mile to run and we got two staircases to go up in LA. I'm carrying 100 pounds on me. I got her bag and my bag. And once I get up the second flight of stairs, I'm done. I'm gassed. Like, I feel like I'm about to die. My legs are jelly. And I turned the corner and that lady is still there. She got her hand on the door and I scream at her, I said, we're here, hold on. We get on the plane and I sit down possibly having a heart attack. And I look at my wife and I'm like, babe, we made it. It worked out. And now what is she thinking? There's no way in hell our bags are gonna make it. Yeah, we got on the plane, but our bags aren't gonna be there. I'm like, babe, We made it. We're gonna be in Hawaii. No luggage or not, we'll go buy some. But it all worked out, right? So anyway, back to your opportunities. It's, it's only about the way you look at life, right? And you can choose to see it any way that you want. Um, and, and I think that mindset will take over in any situation you're in. And what happens, what's amazing there is that things do work out because you accept the results and you're happy with them.

Mm-hmm.

Right. So anyway, I had to, had to share that cuz I, I loved your comment there and I think anyone on the planet can have that type of mindset if they choose to. I love that. That's great.

That's a great story too. Yeah. It is really how two people can see the exact same situation differently, differently, and you're going through the exact same thing. So yeah. I think that's great.

You want me to go back to your question now?

Yeah.

So you asked about the culture, uh, being a part of something great and having a place where people are referring employees. I mean, it is pretty wild and it's, it's awesome, right? And all we've tried to do here, and, and y'all can go back if you haven't heard any of my podcasts before, one of my probably first ones I did with you guys was about recruiting and culture and how we set that up. We were very intentional about creating a place where people wanted to be. So I love what you said about Phil Jackson, the Bulls, is that creating something that people want to be a part of. That was my goal 10 years ago, was be a destination employer. And the Cliff Note version of that call that we probably did for an hour was was be special, be different, love your people, truly care about them, you know, spend time with them, get to know them, incorporate their family into what you do, know their why, bring up their why, spend as much time as you can with these people, get to know them. People, people always get nervous when I say this, but, but cross the lines, right? You're not supposed to talk about race and religion and politics at work. I throw that stuff out the window because if you're really going to be tight with somebody, like, you gotta, you gotta pull those barriers down. Because if I'm only, if I only know half of you, are we really ever going to be that close? Now you got to do that in the right context, right? But, you know, I love it when I see my team members just ragging on each other and poking fun because they, they respect each other and they love each other and they're comfortable enough to do that. So we foster an environment where, where we break down those walls and we become tight like a family. And we give them flexibility and freedom and we trust them, right? We don't— we look for reasons to keep them around. Whereas I have learned that some businesses look at them as an expense and look for reasons to get rid of them because they don't have the trust. If you trust unlocks so much from your people. And that's why they tell their friends about us. They get in here and they realize that they love the environment and they love what they do and they tell their friends, they say, hey, this place is different. You need to come check it out. And we really grew drastically with our remote employees because of the flexibility that we allowed some of our people. They realized, hey, like my friend that lives in Tennessee, my friend lives in Arkansas. They could do this and be a part of our team. And the floodgates opened. So it was intentional. And it's amazing to see the fruits of that labor that started 10 years ago.

I want to call something out earlier when we were talking around how many people that you onboarded, 27. We talked around 30, 60, 90-day checkpoints, skill checks, attendance. Are you tardy? We had to offboard some people. And yet on the other side, there's culture, togetherness, get to know people, destination employer. Here's what I'm trying to draw for people, is you can have both. You can hold people to a high standard You can demand excellence and you can love on your people. It's the same. It's the same. It's not— it seems like I actually just got this message from a business owner, and he said, I just seem to go from one extreme to the next. I'm too nice, and then I'm too hard, and then I'm too nice, you know, and they take advantage of me, and then, uh, go too far, you know, and then they think that I'm a, you know what, a-hole. Right? And, and it's like everything in between. Like, have you heard this? I know you have, right?

I actually love your story because I, um, those words sound like they came right outta my mouth. My, my COO is relatively new. She's been with me for about a year and a half now, and she's, she's new to management and this was a big struggle for her. Everything was SOS, right? And she's freaking out over the smallest things and Um, I had to explain to her that concept right there is that we're like a balloon, right? We are going to give them freedom and be loose and have fun until things are about to pop, right? And they start to stretch our limits, and then we have to come in and we got to deflate that balloon. We got to tighten up and we got to put in more rules and say, hey, look, these guidelines have been pushed and we let off a little bit and we expand and we can, and we contract. And this, when I explained to her, this is a successful business. And you know, the other thing I thought about when you were telling your story about your business owner is the best coach I had in my life was a raging a-hole that I was scared to death of, but at the same time, my absolute best friend that I loved and would do anything for. And he was both roles perfectly. And he could be the psychopath that you didn't know if he was gonna kill you or not because you knew that he loved you and you knew he would do anything for you to be successful and hold you accountable. And you want to hold your people accountable and you want to fill your team with people that want to be held accountable because the people that don't wanna be held accountable, they're not the people for you. Yeah, they're, they're not the good ones.

Yeah.

Winners want to be held accountable. And as long as they know that you're doing it for them and not for you, you can do it. It's all the same.

Yeah, I agree with you that I think one of the things there is, it goes into also who they are, because if you have someone who is an A-player, wants to be challenged, wants to be coached, they can go through that. I also, in my very first career— well, actually, I guess my second career out of college— my first boss, Sharma, she— unfortunately, this was years ago, but she passed away from cancer. Oh my gosh. So I won an award. It was, it was Rep of the Year. There was a corporate— it was a corporate job. And I say that to say that the next week off of that conference that we got from winning that award, she was all over me to the point to where it was like, oh my gosh, she hates me. What in the world? And finally, she had rode me so hard on— in meetings that we went to, you know, she would challenge me. I was like, Sharma, what is the deal? Like, you were all over me. She said, because you got more in you. You got more in you. That's why. And I thought, oh, and I look back on that so profoundly because she was like, I'm going to get everything out of you that I can. And I appreciated that so much. But in the moment I was like, oh my God, what? She hates me. She is so nice to everybody else and she is just absolutely ruthless with me. But yet she knew that that's what I needed. That's what I wanted and that I could, that I could take it. And, you know, I do think, and this doesn't apply across the board. I don't think it's a prerequisite that you have to be or have a background in athletics to, to be successful. I don't think that that's the case. But I do think that there are some things around people that have been in positions— athletics is just an example, I think even music or so— in other words, they've, they've been accustomed to failure. Is what I'm getting at, right? They, they have, they have missed the shots, they've missed the layup, the game-winning layup. They've, you know, uh, taken, uh, you know, they dropped the, the pass in the state championship game to win the, you know, win the football game or whatever it may be. And so then whenever they get in this, they're not afraid of failure. Does that make sense? You know, that they, they say, yes, this is what it takes.

It makes a lot of sense. People are scared to death of failure. And, you know, I agree with you. I don't think it takes athletes, but athletes are very accustomed to failure and they know that it's not going to break them. Yeah. All right.

Last question I want to ask you. So before we hit record, I said, did you— how did you enjoy your trip? And he says, great. And then I said, were you able to take time off? Like, really take time off? You know, uh, Dave and I have built a relationship over the years. And so you said, yeah, I did, I did. I was totally off. I said, man, that's awesome. I want to ask you about that, uh, because I'm going to assume that it wasn't always that way. And you even shared that some people that you know, very, very successful, were not able to do that. They were talking about, you know, at night after having a drink, going back, checking things, etc. How much of that is mindset for you? How much of that is actually some systems and some things that you've put in place that have allowed you to be gone for however many days you were gone and actually be away? Come on, people know what I'm talking about. You go on vacation, but you're not really on vacation. You're actually back at the office, but your physical body is in Hawaii or Bahamas or wherever it is.

Sure. You know, it— I took, I took my laptops. Because I completely anticipated working and doing stuff because I, I truly enjoy it. I mean, it is my drug. Um, you know, I could, I could sell my laptop forever and, and be a very happy camper. Um, but I didn't open it. I was gone, I think, a total of 11 to 12 days, and I, I never once got on and connected to the internet And the reason why is, you know, I'm a person that doesn't really stress out. I'm sure it's in there, but it doesn't really show itself. And I realized once I got there and I disconnected that I needed it, I felt different. I felt lighter. I felt less burdened. I felt like I wasn't on the hamster wheel constantly trying to complete endless activities that I just am never going to finish. Right. I may have said this on the last call that we were on. People ask me all the time, how do you do all that you do? And my answer has become, I'm always behind on things, right? Um, that's, that's how I do it. Um, and I, I felt that when I got there, and I was able to not connect because we have an unbelievable team of people that I trust completely. I know that they're going to handle it. I know that everything's going to be fine. I know that they're going to step in when I'm not there and things are going to continue to run smoothly. And what's even more amazing is I did not get one text message or phone call or Marco Polo from anyone on the team saying, hey, I need this, or asking me a question or doing something. Everything was handled. And yesterday I came back and we had a, we had a red-eye. I landed at 7 AM and obviously, you know, dealing with jet lag and just worn out, didn't sleep a ton on the flight. So I got home, but got my kids to school, did the morning routine, and then I went to bed and I slept yesterday. And so I took off another day and still didn't hear anything from the team. And I truly, truly appreciated the fact that I've got people that I trust and are capable of handling all of it without involving me. And that, that means a lot. It really means a lot to me to know that they support us and they know what their mission is and they're going to do it.

You really built the team and the team has built the business. It's built, really been built through the team. I think that just even sharing that can be an inspiration to a lot of people that listen to this episode about what is actually possible is that you can have scale and freedom. You don't have to sacrifice scale at the altar of freedom.

I could not agree more. And I think the whole goal of scale is freedom. And I need to add ultimately, because, you know, if I go back and look at 2023, I don't think I've ever worked more than I have currently. Because as you continue to scale, there are more and more people that need your time. You have to continue changing the business because now you're putting people in leadership levels that are gonna— are handling more of the day-to-day. So that means you have to keep spending more and more time with those people, even if it may be at a higher level. So the goal is freedom. It doesn't mean you're going to get it immediately, um, but there, there is an ultimate payoff for that, to where you can truly become the, the CEO of your company and you are not wrapped up in the day-to-day. It takes time, but, um, I, I think it's very rewarding, uh, once you get there.

I think that's a good way to finish. David, I want to say on the podcast, I appreciate you, appreciate your sponsorship and partnership with what we do at the podcast. I appreciate you as a friend. I learn as much from our conversations that we have, and I'm grateful for what you do to be able to go out and serve what you you know, share what you've learned and serve other business owners. Obviously I share it every episode, but why don't you share how people can connect with you personally and what you got going on at, uh, Coach P?

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, you guys can find us at coachpconsulting.com. If you want an entertaining follow on social media, you can find me at Saving with David. On Instagram. But if you want our email or phone number, go to that website, coachpconsulting.com. You can see what we do, how to reach us. I'm happy to chat with you someday. Love talking business, love learning from other agents and business owners. So I am, I'm always game for good conversation. So Bradley, as always, I appreciate everything you do. You are so freaking good at this. You're, uh, I get so much out of your podcasts and I look forward to every episode. Thank Thanks for having me on again. I always appreciate it.

Yeah, I appreciate you. If you really want to connect with Dave, you can go to Marco. That's his preferred method of contact for sure.

So Marco Polo, get on the train.

All right, Dave, appreciate you, bro.

Thanks, guys.

Hey everyone. Well, I thought that that was one of David's best podcasts. I've always enjoyed chatting with him. But I actually really thought that that was one of the better ones for me personally. And I think hopefully all of you got a lot out of that. I think that there's so many different takeaways that we can pick up from that. I think that the idea of the, the change in focus and realizing that, you know what, things are not the way they were 12 months ago, 2 years ago. And so we got to change in strategy is one that's not easy to make. But that's why we're in the seat that we're in as business owners. I think also even the very end, um, the conversation about, you know, what does it take to be able to get— be able to take a vacation like that and actually get away? I know many of you may share that, uh, that sentiment that, you know, going on vacation without taking work with you is— maybe right now it's a pie-in-the-sky dream, but it definitely can be possible. Definitely check him out at coachpconsulting.com. Obviously, big shout out to the rest of our podcast partners: Autopilot Recruiting, Club Capital, and TodayAppPro. I love working with technology that is easy to use and the team loves using, and that's exactly what you'll get whenever you work with TodayAppPro. Go to todayapppro.com and work with them to be able to get away from the spreadsheets, maybe some of the other complicated software that you're using out there for your bonus and your compensation Compensation plans and even your word track— word tracks, they pull all of that into one seamless source for you. TodayAppPro.com. Look, if tax season was not kind to you, or it was kind of a, you know, shot in the dark, I don't know what I'm going to get, and you want to get on top of your financials, book a no-obligation demo with Club Capital. Go to club.capital. Obviously, we were talking about the value of working with A-players whenever we were talking to David. You want to work with a team that can help you have a funnel and build a bench of people that you can bring on board. We had Alex speak at our 2-day intensive, and so many people in the chat were posting and saying, oh, I love my recruiter, it's been a great experience working with Autopilot Recruiting. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com. Till next episode, lead well.