Episode 367: Retaining The Best with Steve Suggs

Welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast. This is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have a repeat guest many of you are familiar with, Mr. Steve Suggs. We've done several episodes. I think this is maybe over the years the fourth time we've had Steve come on the podcast. I love being able to come at different angles with recruiting and with team development with Steve, and we really cover two big topics. We talk about compensation plans and we talk about retaining our best people. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Steve Suggs. Steve Suggs, welcome back to the Above the Business podcast.

Appreciate the opportunity to be here. Thanks for having me.

I always enjoy our conversations. I've learned a lot, uh, from you over the years, and I know that our listeners have. We usually do background and origin story. We're certainly not going to do that. We'll link the episodes that you've come on in the past for people to go and, and, and get to know you. But I know our— a lot of our listening audience is going to be familiar with you, so we're going to just jump into it, uh, today. One of the things when I— especially if I have a repeat guest, I love to be able to try to think about what are the things that either I or especially they are seeing in their day-to-day since the last time that we talked— had David Peterson on recently. We did, we did this. And so one of the things, Steve, I wanted to ask you that has always been there— it really seems like it's more prevalent than it ever has been— is business owners making and being in some cases forced to, but they're changing their mindset around just compensation for their team members. And what I mean by that specifically, to give context, is out the door are the $12,000, $15,000, $20,000 low base salaries that people had in the past. That no longer is the case. And specifically, business owners are having to look at raising what they have paid people previously. What have you seen and what is the, uh, uh, from a recruiting standpoint, of having appropriate, not overboard, but appropriate compensation and incentive plans, including base salaries, to be able to recruit really great people?

Well, usually when this topic comes up, I focus more on the concept than details, uh, because obviously it's so different from city to city and from market to market. So getting into numbers of what's a good base salary, and that type of thing is a little difficult. So I always start by just conceptually thinking about compensation. The first thing is to realize that every insurance agency is a sales organization. You know, the days of having a big service organization, obviously that's important and obviously that has to continue. But with insurance companies pushing agents to sell more, sell more, sell more, and with companies having a very hard time finding agents to come in and take over existing agencies because of retirement of agents and that sort of thing, you've got a lot of these companies that are allowing multiple office agencies. And so compensation is really focused in this world and today's world on the concept that first and foremost, this is a sales organization. And so what that means is that agents, they have to have a focus on hiring people who are really, really good at finding new business and growing that new business and multi-lining that new business. And then there are team members who must be focused on servicing that business, but also have the capacity to pivot and multi-line while they have that customer on the phone. And a lot of what I'm seeing there is that, um, since it is so difficult to hire that person who has the ability to service and pivot, that a lot of agents are simply settling for that person who can just do service work. Because if they don't have the service work being completed, it puts a lot more pressure on the agent. They have to pull salespeople from selling to help out with the service work. So the desperation of just getting the service work done is causing a lot of agents to hire service people who are just incapable of pivoting and multi-lining at the end of that service transaction. So if you want to build a sales organization, it's critical to have enough salespeople who are totally focused on selling and not being pulled away to do service work and to hire service people who are capable of servicing and selling. So that is an organization that is has to have a compensation that's based on pay for performance, which means it's a, it's a lower base pay with incentives for making commission, making larger commissions for people who can sell life and health insurance, and having a commission structure that causes people to function just like an agent functions. An agent has a scorecard, so they know the formulas for maximizing the compensation that's flowing from the home office into that agency. Well, so therefore it's important for agents to build a scorecard for their selling team members and their service team members, helping them understand the, the mix of products premium targets, uh, the number of policies to sell every month, uh, so that everyone is focused on, you know, maximizing, uh, the amount of commission that they can earn every month. Now here's a common thing that I see. They find somebody through either a really good interview process or a seat-of-the-pants process. We see both of those, but they find somebody that appears to have a lot of sales experience and sort of fits the mold of what they're looking for that will ramp up quickly because of that sales experience that they have. And to put icing on the cake and to make that person even more attractive, they're already licensed. So they see somebody as a plug-and-play individual. Well, all of a sudden now that person is coming in and wanting a higher base than the selling team members who have been there for 5 years. And that's putting agents in a, in a difficult situation because they really want to get this person, but the person is not willing to come in for that lower base. And so, and, and the typical situation that you see there is somebody who's further along in their career You know, they've been making 6 figures or a little bit higher, and for various reasons of wanting to spend more time with their family, get off the road, not have to travel as much, they're, they're wanting a career change and into something different. Well, what's difficult is when you have that career changer who is at that higher level of income. They have a mortgage, they have expenses that may even exceed what the maximum amount of money that they can make, even if they're a higher producer in a State Farm office. So it makes it difficult for the agent who's trying to make this decision to hire somebody who they think is going to be a big producer. But that person is actually— has a success level and an income level that is above and beyond what's capable of making there in that office. And so a lot of agents, they're tempted to give that person a higher salary. And it creates a lot of problems because if the other selling team members find out this person's base is a lot higher, all of a sudden now you've got to bump up everybody's base. So that's a, a common problem that I see that, that does cause a lot of frustration. So that career changer sometimes is just mathematically impossible for that, for a situation like that to work. The person's not going to be able to make as much money as they thought they were going to be able to make, and the agent's not going to be able to pay that salary. So, which means that when they're targeting candidates, they have to become a little bit more focused if they're going after these career changers. To get them a little bit further back in their career path where they don't have that big mortgage. They haven't hit that 6-figure income yet, uh, so that, that person can afford to come in at that lower base. And I always encourage agents that to really not, um, allow people to negotiate a higher base just out of desperation of trying to get that person. Because if they're— if they are who they say they're going to be, they're going to make the money that they want to make. And so it takes a lot of discipline and a lot of courage to willing to take the risk to keep the base where the agent wants to keep it and not allow to be negotiated out of that. And that's the same. This holds true on the service side. I mean, I've, I've talked to agents who are wanting, wanting to bring somebody in, in a service pivot role and pay that person a $5,000 or $10,000 higher base than their highest paid current service person or even their office manager. And so it's, it's a very difficult situation. Um, and sometimes you just have to keep looking because you don't want to back yourself into a corner.

Definitely something that can blow up on you pretty quickly if not handled correctly. I think that there's an element of being really clear on the front side as to what your salary range, your base range is, and sticking to that. And then saying, here's the base. This is what your total estimated commissions and bonus is going to be for the year. So your total compensation package is $60,000, $70,000, $80,000, et cetera. I think it's great insight as to sometimes you just have to keep looking. And as I was listening to you, I was just thinking, sometimes it's just square peg, round hole. It's just not going to work. If they demand that, need that, then sometimes it's just not going to be able to work. Even— and I think that this is where, like, you can get kind of conflicting messages sometimes.

What— not, not on—

in a podcast, but even if you're just anecdotally talking to other business owners, is that you'll, you'll hear an idea of never let an A-player go. Like, if you have an opportunity to bring an A-player on, bring them on. Well, I think that that's right, but it's also missing a part of, yeah, but how much is it going to cost me to do that? Do I have the cash flow to do that? Is that the right thing to be able to do at this, at this time? And so I think that's the challenge of businesses was sometimes we get conflicting messages about those types of things when the reality is you thought you were going to pay 30 to 35 and they were going to make X amount. Now they come in and they say, hey, I'm not taking less than 50. and then boom, you're paying a $50,000 salary. People find out about that, and now you're in a situation where you just blew the salary ranges out of the water. I've seen it happen, um, many, many times over. I'm sure you have as well.

Yeah. And to kind of put a cap on this discussion too, is that most, especially on the service side, individuals applying to service jobs, they do not realize that they are applying for an industry or a small company, a small organization that is a sales organization, a sales-focused organization. And I encourage agents on the front end to help those candidates realize that, that this is not a job that is a low-stress job where you're going to come in here and answer the phone and take care of people and love on them and, you know, and help us retain them. But this is a job where you must accept the responsibility that your job is to make sure to get really, really good at becoming a risk advisor with the attitude, I want to make sure that people don't go to bed unprotected. And there's going to be a lot of pressure on the management side for you to get really good at the advising part of that. And to be— you're going to be held accountable to daily production activities and monthly sales production. And if, and if that's not a stress level that you're wanting or expecting, then, then you need to, you know, look for a job somewhere else because a lot of agents sort of soft pedal that. And then people get in there and they're like a deer in headlights. I didn't know it was going to be this hard. I didn't know every day I'm going to be withstanding, having to withstand this much rejection and this much pressure.

Yeah, you know, I think the one thing that I, I loved the way you said it is they soft pedal it. They soft pedal it as opposed to being very honest and upfront as to, uh, to what it is. It's almost like you, you start to kind of position and sell the person on the role as to being very clear as to what the outcomes and what it is that you're expecting the role to, to actually be. I wanted to kind of pivot a little bit and talk about one of the angles. I don't know if we've had a discussion about, uh, that I can recall, but it's around team specifically. But it's really around retaining some of our best talent. And I know at your company, Kristin, you can probably share with me however many, um, assessments now at this point you all have, you all have conducted. So your data, you don't have anecdotal data. You have actual real hard data on this, but I also know that you've had many, many conversations with someone who is looking for someone to fit, let's just say hypothetically, a sales role and you've advised and shared with them, it's probably not going to be a great fit. And I'm sure there have been some people that have gone on to do exceptional in that business owner's opportunity, even in spite of maybe the, the assessment not playing that out on the front side. But my guess is more often than not, somebody steps into a role, they may do well for a period of time, but then they begin to kind of regress. They begin to kind of fall back out of favor after the first 3 months, 6 months, year, or something like that. Why do you think that is?

Well, it's multifaceted. Um, sometimes it, it, it could be related to The agent just did not do a very thorough job on the front end at measuring all the dimensions that must be measured to determine whether or not this person is going to do well. And which gets into using a recruiting system. So that I think would be at the top of the list. Hiring out of desperation, not following the system. You know, in today's world, just like agents teach sales skills to their salespeople to try to help them become an expert salesperson and expert risk advisor, it has become critical that business owners become an expert at a hiring process, which means they learn what to look for. They use tools and processes to measure those things. They gather an initial— they gather enough of the right kind of information so that they can weigh, am I making a high, moderate, or low-risk hire? So that's number one. Number two, once you have hired a person, having a ramp-up process, obviously you're going to give them sales training. There's a lot of that out there. Um, you're going to give them product training. The thing that I see that's missing the most is helping that person find meaning and purpose in the job. Hmm. And there's a process for doing that. I recommend to agents that maybe during the hiring process, but at minimum the first week, especially for a salesperson, or if you have a service person who wants to service and pivot and close, that you take that individual through an IFR. Because they need to know what it feels like to be doing what they're going to be doing with other people. And you also want to make sure that that per— that, that candidate or new employee takes your advice and purchases the insurance that they need so that they have their insurance and financial services pumping on all cylinders. That way when they're advising other people, they're able to say, I do this, here's why I think you should. So that's selling with a passion, selling with a purpose. They're selling out of their own pocketbook. And so you want to make sure they have the right pocketbook. What that does is it creates a passion for the job. The next thing to do is that people do things for their reasons, not yours. So sit down and calculate how much money would this person make if they hit the sales targets that I've set for them? Not minimums, but the maximum amount that you want them to sell, either through 100% selling or through pivoting. And if they hit those targets, how much money would that person make? And then you sit down and have a coaching session where you're asking, um, this, this new team member How much money do you want to make? Not just to get by, but to get out of debt, to have disposable income, to hit some financial goals that you're not hitting right now. When you ask it that way, they're more likely to either say the number you just calculated or something higher. Now you have a personal income goal. You're never coaching to a team goal anymore. You're never coaching them to your quota. You're now coaching them to their personal income goal. That helps them find meaning and purpose. Now, to put that income goal on steroids, you say, okay, let's think about the next 12 months. What are you going to do with this money to make your life better? You're trying to get them to talk about paying off debt, buying a house, paying off a house, getting a new car, paying off credit cards, something that's going to make their life better. So a goal has to have a number tied to it. It has to have a deadline tied to it, and it has to have— an income goal has to be very specific as to what they're going to do with the money. And then you engineer the matrix and say, okay, here's the policy mix, here's the amount of premium. You'll earn more if you get really good at selling life and financial services. And here's how many quotes per day you're going to have to do to hit that goal. And you get them focused on those metrics for the purpose of hitting that personal income goal. And then you have this conversation with them. Each month is only about 20 days long. At the end of the month, we're going to hit the reset button. And you're going to start all over again. And I want to help you avoid the trap that at the last week of the month, you're behind on your production. So now all of a sudden you have to wrap up the number of daily quotes that you're doing just to catch up, or you're not going to hit that income goal. So what I'm going to help you focus on is if, for example, you need to do 8 quotes a day. And let's assume Monday is the first day of the month and you only do 4 quotes. And you think, well, I'll just do 9 quotes the next 4 days and I'll be caught up. Well, on the second day of the month, you do 4 quotes and you think, yeah, I'll just do 10 quotes the next 4 days and I'll be caught up. See how quickly you can get behind and you'll never catch up? So I want to work with you to hold you personally accountable. To the metrics so you hit your personal income goal. So we're going to get focused on 8 quotes a day. Don't go home until you get your 8, and never miss a day of 8. Win every day. That way you're not sweating at the end of the month because you're, you know, you, you needed, you know, 160 quotes for the month and you've only done 100, and you've got to do 60 quotes the last week of the month. It's impossible to do. You'll never catch up once you get behind. So helping people understand the concept that this is not pay to try, you're getting paid for results. And I even have some agents who've gone as far as saying that I'm gonna pay you a base salary for 8 quotes a day, and you've gotta earn your base every day, not 8 hours a day. I'm not gonna pay you to try. I'm gonna pay you to do. 8 quotes a day, 40 quotes a week. And if you don't want to work evenings, you don't want to come in on Saturday, you've got to earn your base through hitting that quote target. Then ultimately you have to earn your base by validating that base salary that's being paid out. You got to sell more so that there's a return on the base that's being paid. Um, I'm surprised at how many agents don't even know that number. If you're paying somebody a $35,000 salary, what, what do they need to sell each month to not just pay you back, to make you a return on that base pay? That's a number every agent should know. Um, so getting somebody ramped up quickly is setting that personal income goal, um, working the metrics, and for the first 90 days, visiting with that team member where you basically ask the question, tell me your metrics from yesterday. How many quotes did you do? How much did you write? Whatever those metrics are, they're reporting those metrics to you. That's— you're holding them personally accountable to their own goal. And then the other thing that I see that, that really impacts retention is just letting team members get away with poor performance. It's so difficult to hire people All of a sudden now you're lowering the standards, and the really good team members are watching you do this. They're watching you let these poor-performing team members get away with things, and that is a culture killer. So keeping those standards high, where if, if after a reasonable amount of time this new team member is dragging everybody else down and dragging the culture down and lowering the bar for everybody else, being very brave and getting rid of them early. And so having this coaching system and process in place right from the very beginning is going to have the greatest impact on retention. Another thing that we found out is some recent studies that we've done is that you can actually hire somebody who's too smart. And if somebody has a high intelligence level and they've been working in a job in a field that is more complex than the job that they're applying for, it's unlikely you're going to retain that person. Because they're not going to be challenged and they're going to get bored. Now, there are some really highly intelligent people who are completely satisfied with the job that you're going to hire them to do, but those are typically people who do not have, uh, additional education. Um, they do not have a useful major, let me put it that way, you know. You can be smart enough to go to law school, but you settled for an undergraduate degree in psychology or 14th century poetry. And, you know, we, we hear all of these very expensive degrees, useless degrees that people get, and I see that every day, all day long on resumes. And so you can have an intelligent person who might have had that degree, and they'll come in and do a great job for you because they don't have a lot of options, even though they have a college education. And sometimes that combination works. Where you'll see turnover within the really high intelligent people is looking at their work history, where they have been in jobs that are above, um, this particular job they're applying for with an agent is above their capacity to work, and they won't be there long. They're looking for a placeholder until the right job comes along, and you want to avoid that.

Why do business owners struggle with accountability?

I'm sorry, could you say that again, please?

Why do business owners struggle with accountability?

A lot of business owners are very entrepreneurial. Entrepreneurs are individuals who are somewhat self-made. They're self-driven. They're self-starters. They typically didn't need accountability to get to where they are. They were accountable to themselves and they make the assumption that everybody else is just like them. And you're hiring individuals. The only time that you might hire somebody who's just like you is if you hire an agent aspirant. And so one reason that they don't hold people accountable is they, they don't feel like they have to hold themselves accountable. So they read their biography into the life of everybody else. I do it. You should be able— I should do it. You should be—

good line right there. They read their biography into the lives of everyone else. That is good. That is a, uh, that, that's, that's what I call a circle. I'm circling that one. That's a good line.

Well, it's the biggest trap that we fall in as parents. Let me tell you what it was like while I was growing up, son. I walked 5 miles in the snow barefooted with a hot potato in my pocket and had it for lunch. You know, we have to avoid that as managers and coaches and parents. I stole that from Stephen Covey, by the way. I don't have a lot of original things, but that is the biggest trap that we fall into. So I always encourage agents that accountability is critical for every single person in the office. Some individuals can earn the right to be weaned off a lot of accountability, but a culture in the office is what— once you hold somebody accountable for 3 months, you've trained them to hold themselves accountable. The purpose of a sales meeting should be accountability for everyone. A wise person once said that when you set a goal, go public with it. And having a sales meeting at least once a week where all of the metrics, everybody's putting their metrics up on the board, service people who are responsible for pivoting metrics, sales people, and they're having to report their metrics to the team. That's going to change behavior right there because if I know that I've got to report my metrics to the team and compare my goal to my actual results, I'm going to make better decisions at how I use my time. I'm not going to fiddle in between telephone calls. I'm going to be dialing the phone. I'm going to be focused on either being in front of somebody quoting them or finding somebody to quote, which— that's the job description of a selling team member. Other than filling out the application, if you're doing anything other than those two things, you're unemployed. And then a service team member is either you're doing service work and pivoting to sell something else— that's your job description. You're doing anything else, you're unproductive. And those things will help, um, stay focused on those metrics that are being reported at the weekly sales meeting, which gives public accountability to the team, which improves time management.

You know, one thing that I hear a lot from you, the Justin, you have a lot of, uh Good, strong language, but one thing that I would summarize some of the things you share is just very clear outcomes. This is what I'm expecting you to do. This is what I'm going to hold you accountable for. This is our exact recruiting system that we have. We follow this process. We're just not doing it flying by the seat of our pants. There's actually structure in, in the organization that if nothing else holds us as the business owner accountable to ourselves, because we are so entrepreneurial that we can fly by the seat of our pants, which is a strength in a lot of ways and a lot of settings. It's great in unstructured environments that don't need it. It's fantastic. You take a business owner and throw them up into a group of people at a BNI meeting or, you know, some, uh, talk. A lot of people can thrive in that environment. But when structure and organization is needed in the company, we default against that because That's not what we wanted. We wanted freedom. We got into this to not be told what to do. I don't work for you, Steve. You're not going to tell me what to do. And so therefore, anything that looks like structure, process, and routine, we tend to push against hard those things that look like that. Final thoughts from you.

Well, if you, if you look at most organizations where you have an entrepreneur who built up this great company and then went public, and now they have to be accountable to a board of directors. The board of directors in many cases replaces them. And the reason is because they're this very creative, seat-of-the-pants entrepreneur who was able to build this company up, but they really are horrible at running a company. And so they let them continue to have power and control over a certain aspect of that organization that helped get it to where it was going, which is typically new product development, and come in and bring in a CFO and a COO to keep the company on track. Well, as a small business owner, you don't have that luxury. Yeah. So you got to do a lot of things you don't like to do. You said, I don't like— why do I not like to hold people accountable? Well, you don't have to like it, just do it. I don't like to exercise, I don't like to eat right, I just do it because I know in the long term it's going to be beneficial. And, and most of the time, every day, all day long, we're doing things we don't like to do because we like the positive outcome that it generates. Yeah, yeah. And, and so the challenge of an agent running an agency is you've got to wear so many hats. So figure out what's the best recruiting system and process I should be using, what's the best coaching system and process I should be using, and stick to the process. Trust the process and educate yourself. Get really good at understanding human behavior. That's the number one thing that I encourage agents to do. When you start understanding human behavior, you're going to be a better recruiter, you're going to be a better coach, you're going to be a better parent, a better, uh, spouse, a better partner. It's going to have a tremendous impact in all areas of your life.

Steve. I learned so much, uh, from whenever you come on. I've got 2 pages of notes and about 4 things circled of key takeaways, lessons learned, things I'm going to put in my journal. People want to connect with you, where can they find you?

Easiest thing to do would just be to send me an email, and the easiest email address is stevesuggs, S-U-G-G-S, @mac, M-A-C.

Maryalyscat.com. Steve, appreciate you coming on.

Thank you so much. Always enjoy it.

That was great, my friend. That was awesome. Good stuff. Okay, that's better than okay.

It was good.

I, I, uh, legitimately have, uh I've ended up sharing on the podcast. You'll hear it whenever you hear the thing actually drop, is that when I write down, as I'm writing notes down, if I circle it, that's my, that's my process that I do two things with this. Number one is it— I will use the circles as my outro. I record my outro whenever we're finished here. Um, and the second thing I do is I do go into my— where I put my notes, like things I've learned throughout the year. And I will go in and put that down as lessons learned because then those are things that I'll use at the end of the year to reflect back on and to say, oh yeah, I remember when Steve said and reminded me to make sure I'm finding meaning and purpose in my team members and my team members' jobs. Oh, that's right. We are a sales-focused organization. Coach to the personal income goal. Uh, you— I pay you to do, not to try. I'm, I'm, I'm actually using an analogy there of one which is a, um, Cooper's basketball trainer says, hey, you're paid to make shots, not, not shoot, not take shots. You're paid to make them, not shoot them. He's 13.

Here is something that I've learned, um, that, um, is critical to managing a team. I just didn't say this online because I didn't think about it. A lot of people want to know, how do I improve the optimism of a person on my team? The number one way, and this comes from studies, not from my experience or anything else. If you want to improve, increase optimism, You have to create meaning and per— help that person create meaning and purpose in their life. And to create meaning and purpose in their life, you have them set that income goal, that whole process that I talked about. Just by having that goal by a certain date and what they're going to do with the money, their optimism, the needle will move dramatically. And then if you break that annual income goal down into a monthly income goal, every time they hit that goal, the needle's going to move again. So we have an, a low optimism epidemic in America, primarily because people have no meaning and purpose. Mhm. And so to coach people effectively, you have to help create me— help them create meaning and purpose for their life. And that's the primary reason behind goal setting and accountability. We're not doing it to just do it. Mhm. Mhm.

I love that, team. Let's put that on— let's, let's put that on the podcast. That's bonus, bonus time from Steve. I think that's really good stuff.

Good.

That's why I actually started to continue the recordings afterwards is because sometimes we pick up some really good anecdotal things that come out of there to add to the podcast. Steve, it's been a pleasure. Appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

Right. Always willing to come on. Take care.

All right, my friend. See you. Bye-bye.

See you. Bye.

Well, you heard me say it on there about the things that I circle for takeaways. For me, it's kind of my process. I like to be able to write these things down. And then I go into, um, I go into my app that I use of choice, which is Day One, put this into my log of lessons learned. I was using Slack for that for a long time, a Slack channel to myself, but I actually ended up loving putting it in the Day One app. That was an app that I used for some personal journaling, journaling. So I just started a new journal in there. So that's a great app to use. Syncs really beautifully with your phone, iPad, etc. So what did I circle specifically? I think number 1, sales-focused organization. Number 2, helping people find meaning and purpose in the job. Number 3, coach to the personal income goal. Number 4, pay you to do, not to try. I shared with Steve afterwards, I said, yeah, Cooper's basketball trainer shared with, uh, tells him, hey, we, you're, you're paid to make shots, not take shots. And then lastly, uh, your team is not you. Now, he didn't say that. That's something I picked up, or I've actually done a podcast on. Your team is not you. And I think that if we try to read our biography, um, into their lives about how we see things, that, that, that resonates with me a tremendous amount because I used to do that. I used to think that everybody thought the way that I do. Now I get around other entrepreneurs and business owners, and indeed they do. Um, but with our teams, the team is not you. They just don't see things always the same way that you do. Love having Steve on. Connect with him, send him an email. I think that's the best way to get in touch. He is super prompt to be able to respond. Always enjoy having him on. Big shout out to our podcast sponsors, Autopilot Recruiting. Autopilot Recruiting can help you with this process. They can be a part of your entire recruiting system that you have and do and take part of. Some of the pieces of this, like your entire recruiting system, you work with Autopilot Recruiting, maybe reach out to Steve and his team to use one of their assessments that they have. And those pieces put together forms a very powerful system. And one of the areas doing the initial screenings, the initial resume reviews, the initial phone calls, et cetera, is really difficult for a half-assed entrepreneur. She or he is wanting to go faster and they know they need to bring on some people, but Autopilot Recruiting fits that, a role in, in a place that allows you to be able to buy back your time and still get great people. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com. I love whenever he was talking about a coaching system in place, and working with Coach P can be a part of that. It's not intended to be everything. Of course, you have to still be able to coach them, but if they they will associate you. You work with Coach P and have them to get access to Coach P and what his team are doing. Then they'll associate that with you because you're the one that actually helped them to get to that place. So go to coachpconsulting.com, coachpconsulting.com. You can give it a free test drive for 30 days and see what it's all about. If you're tracking compensation, bonus plans, and you have word tracks, but they're kind of scattered all over the place. One of the best ways to consolidate all of that into an easy-to-use interface is with TodayApp. Go to todayapppro.com. TodayAppPro.com. We can get away from the spreadsheets, use something that's going to work seamlessly with your corporate-approved CRM. TodayAppPro.com. Last and certainly not least, Club Capital. If you want to be able to get control, we was actually just on a boardroom call with my members earlier today talking about this very thing. And let me ask you just simply this: what is your plan for profit? Do you have a plan in place to be and become more profitable? If you're not profitable now, do you have a plan in place to be able to make that happen? That was just, just came out today in a conversation we were having about What is the profit now? Didn't know. What do you want it to be in the future? More than what it is. But there wasn't specific targets and there wasn't a plan to make that happen. I encourage you to work with Club Capital. They can help you to begin to put together a plan for profit. club.capital. All right, everyone, till next episode, lead well.