Episode 442: Mastering the Art of Client Retention with Troy Korsgaden

Welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast. My name is Bradley Hammer, your host. Today's episode, we may redo that. On today's episode, we have a repeat guest that I know so many of you are familiar with, and it's so great to have him back on the podcast for his annual visit to the Above the Business podcast. And that is Mr. Troy Korsgaden. He has come on so many different times. I love being able to get the insights from Troy, and this time is no different. We talk about 2024, the challenges and the opportunities that 2024 faced. We lean out going into the future. What's going to stay the same? What's going to change? And what are some specific things that you can do in 2025 to be able to grow your small business? Without further ado, here's my conversation with Troy Korsgaden. All right, team, thanks so much. Have a great day. Bye. Troy, welcome back to the Above the Business podcast.

Excited to be here, Bradley.

Excited to have you, as always. Well, I, I feel like I ask this every time, uh, you're one of the few 4-time, uh, returning guests, but I want you to share, coming out of 2024, now that we're a little bit into 2025, can you just, uh, kind of encapsulate 2024 as a whole and the things that you saw, the, the messages from that you got across the insurance industry and for the entirety of last year?

Yeah, lots of opportunity, just still a lot of disruption that my phone still rings off the hook the way it did a year ago. And it's still ringing off the hook. You know, everybody's trying to figure out how to retool their opportunity. So I just, I just really look at 2025, the rate and disruption has not stopped for the consumer, for the client. It will continue to flow through the system even though the rate may have been taken 6 months ago or 8 months ago. And it doesn't matter whether it's auto or home or business insurance. Everything's affected by this. And so there's just a lot of opportunity if you have the right mental mindset.

Hmm. One of the things that seems to be people going into this year coming out of 2024 they wanted to be able to step— the general analogy would be they wanted to start really looking at 2025 as the year that they were going to be able to start to really grow. And when I'm referring to growth, I'm not referring to the overall book size of growth. I'm referring to customer growth. I'm referring to, you know, we grow 250, 500 customers in a year. And somebody shared with me, they said, Look, I have the desire to grow, but every time I push on the gas, I feel like I'm getting pushed on the brake even further. And so we're just seemingly not going anywhere. And they're getting that from a lot of challenges that's happening with a lot of long-term customers are actually being disrupted and starting to, to, to, to leave. What is your advice for someone to go in and actually be able to devise a plan to keep some of these long-term customers, number one, and then number two, actually still be able to acquire solid households so that they can actually grow the book?

Well, let's take them one at a time. I, I agree with the folks that are speaking into your ear. I get it. Uh, people are in play. They're in play for a number of reasons, uh, because of the disruption in the industry. You know, homeowners rates, for one, have doubled over the last 3 years, you know, 45%. That's still double. In the client's mind, that's unsustainable. So where they might have had a loyalty factor before, they're going, hey, I got to protect my family. And I get that. But if you give somebody enough reasons, they'll stay with you, just like when you sold them. If you give them enough reasons, they'll buy. And so I think as an industry, I may sound like a broken record, but I've been preaching this for years. People are not doing a proper review. They're, they're doing rate drills and they're having rate conversations, but they're not sitting down and what I say is bifurcating and cutting it in half and going, this is a rate conversation and that needs to be done, and this is a review and that needs to be done. You need to do both, but they need to be separate conversations. And that, Bradley, is a lot of work. And this is a time when people need us more than they ever have before. They really, truly need somebody to hold their hand through this maze of madness. And you've heard me say that before. So I get it. I'm not discounting the fact that that's real. But we've got to take ownership of this and we've just got to say, look, There are only so many tricks in our bag of tricks. You can only do deductible changes so many times, right? After the second or third time, there's nothing else to change. You got to get back to the fundamentals of why people buy insurance. Because they want security and they want peace of mind. And that is only done when you sit down and you do the annual review with them and not talk about price. Price comes up, it's an issue. But talk about their coverages to be able to pay a claim in the future. Talk about how things have changed. Talk about what other carriers are doing in the marketplace, what other clients are doing in the marketplace. They want somebody to guide them. They want a sherpa, but it needs to be done under the right conditions. And combining the rate conversation and a review is a mistake. And so if we get back to the fundamentals and we engage the client throughout the year, and 2 of those engagements have to be the review, the other one has to be the rate conversation done at a different time, and then sprinkled throughout the year, Bradley, I'm touching you with other products and information so you can make decisions that are best for your family and/or your business.

So you may have exception to this, uh, what, uh, a specific client shared with me. I think you'll like his overall strategy initially, but you may, if you, and then using him specifically because I think it's representative of a lot of people that are going to listen to this podcast. So, uh, they are having a very solid push this year to run appointments. And the, the business owner themselves has the target to run about 250 appointments throughout the, throughout the year. And so with that, they set the target, they set the outcome of those, some outcome targets, but like what actually gets produced from those appointments that he's going to run. He shared it with his team. He broke it down for his team to be held accountable to it. All the normal things that you would expect them to do, even went through some training. Started running some appointments for, you know, the last month or so. And his exact words were, these are terrible appointments. All these people want is just to complain. He used a different word, complain about rate. And so he chalked it up to these are bad appointments. Given what you mentioned about the rate conversation and then the review conversation kind of be, you being different. How would you speak into that about how to be actually separate the two practically for, uh, this business owner and also for the customer?

You bet. So it, it, it's very simple and it's easy to do, but it's also easy not to do because we get so many of these conversations where somebody goes, hey, my rate went up $25, you ruined my life. You know, they, they spill it all on you, and it's easy to go, oh man, this is rough, man. Do I really want to set myself up for this?

It—

those are usually defensive calls. We think they're offensive, but the truth is they're not appointments under the right conditions. So what I would say to this person is, look, let's first look at how we're setting up the appointments, and then I'll come back to this after I, I go through this to make sure we go into detail. But I'm going to call them up for reviews, not based on the renewal. We're going to call them up based on the alphabet. That sets the stage for all the other engagement calls that I'm going to have. So I'll give you an example. If your name is Anderson or Brown, you get a call in January every year to come in and we give it our all. If I've got 1,200 households, that's 100 people I got to call approximately. I'm not going to get them all in, but I'm going to try each one of them at least 5 times to get them in. I'm going to get in about 70% of them. And of those folks, a couple months later, they're going to get a call on something else. Could be life insurance, could be business insurance. But throughout the year, they're going to get those calls. Because I know that rates are still an issue, right? I've got to have rate conversations. And so I'm strategically going to call these folks not at the same time. I'm going to call them up, but I've conditioned the Andersons and Browns that the, the world is still disruptive. The price of lumber, we still don't know what it's going to be a year from now. We don't know what roofing is going to be a year from now, up or down. Because of that, we bring you in to review to make sure we're giving you all the proper coverages to pay a claim in the future. Bradley, you do want your claim paid in the future, correct?

Absolutely.

We want to make sure you're getting all the discounts you deserve because we don't want you to pay too much for your insurance. You do want all the discounts you deserve, correct, Bradley?

Mm-hmm.

Now look, if I do my job, and I promise you I will, Bradley, over a 5-year period, you'll never pay too much for your insurance. How do I know this? Because if I give you all the discounts you deserve, some years we're going to be low, and that's why people are flocking to us right now. And then the next couple of years we might be high, and then the next couple of years we're a little bit low again, and then the next year we might be a little high. But over a 5-year period, if I give you the discounts you deserve, and I give you the right coverages to pay a claim in the future, you'll never pay too much for your insurance. Now let me show you what you've got, and then let me show you what other people are doing in situations similar to yours, and then let me show you what I'm recommending to all our VIP clients just like you. So now I've controlled the conversation. They know we're going to talk about rate because I mentioned discounts. We're going to talk about coverages, and they're probably going to have to raise their coverages. They buy insurance for security and peace of mind, so I've got to control the conversation. So back to this agent that you're working with, or agency principal or owner, we need to get the right person in the right conditions in front of us and say the right things, have the right language. Then during that review I'm— we're going to call you throughout the year and we're going to talk about other products and services. And I, I can give you a hot tip that can help this person sell 100 life apps just if they follow the client engagement schedule. 100 life apps all on their own, never fails if they do it correctly.

Tell you what, you know, the things I wrote down were offensive strategy.

Yes.

Control and intentionality.

Yes.

You're in control of the conversation. There's an intentionality behind it. You're not playing off of your back foot with it. But I have to tell you, I want you to completely debunk this because I literally had somebody say this. Okay. Yeah, but I'm afraid to call people because honestly, if we, if we actually call them and talk to them, they're going to actually find out about it. So I'd rather flamingo the thing and stick my head in the sand and just like hope that they don't leave. And that's honest. Again, I appreciate the person sharing that because it was, it was, it was an honest response. What would you say to that person?

So, so number one, that is what's happening. 80% of our, our brothers and sisters are literally hoping that people don't notice. Well, that's foolish. I mean, again, let's just use homeowners rates. Let's don't use auto rates because we can say that in the last 3, no more than 4 years, homeowners rates for the industry have gone up 45%. Who's not going to notice that?

Yeah. Okay.

Now, auto just keeps coming at you, coming at you. And then all day long, the spend for, you know, people to get a quote is going up, up, up, up, up. And there's a reason for that, too. So we got to get on the offense so they notice, number one. And number two, They vote with their wallet. If you don't get on the offense and say, look, this is why you bought from me. I promised you I wouldn't desert you at a time you need us most. This isn't an easy conversation. It isn't. Okay. But my doctor doesn't shy away from me when I got a health problem. Okay. We got to get on the offense as an industry. And I'm not blaming any one person or their teams, but it is a team effort.

We—

they answer the phone. We answer the phone. It's the way we answer the phone. It's the confidence in which we speak. You know, the language that we use, the way we say things, the way we, we bring our voice down when it's serious, right? This is serious stuff. People are scared. I don't know about you, Bradley, but I went to Walmart the other day and we got eggs. My wife leaned over and she says, $19 for eggs. Wow. Yeah, I can afford all the eggs I want, but not everybody can do that. And I even wince. Maybe I'll start eating less eggs. Okay, it's scary out there for people.

Sure.

Yeah.

3 years ago, it was February of 2022. Okay, 3 years from today, it'll be February 2028, and it'll be here before we— before we know it. I love to bring you in at the first part of the year. We— that's historically, uh, when we've had our, our, our, um, uh, time together. Forecast out 3 years. What, what are you seeing? And then, look, nobody has a crystal ball. Nobody has a crystal ball. There's no way to, to be able to, to see that. But we are past an election, um, and whether that has impacts to— and it has impacts to a lot of different things regardless of political beliefs. Um, what, what are you seeing out there with what you believe is going to happen? More of, less of, the next 3 years?

Here's what, here's what I see today, and it'll be the same 3 years from now. There are a certain segment of people that have always wanted the lowest rate. It's been that way since I've been in the business since 1983. Nothing's changed. Now, the numbers of people may have changed some, but, you know, the industry thought 15 years ago, 20 years ago, Bradley, that technology was just going to make everything cheaper and everybody would be buying from technology. I never had that point of view. I thought that technology speeds things up. It makes things easier. It is more cost-effective. It makes life simpler in some cases. But 3 years from now is going to be the same as it is today. People want an advisor. More people buy from a personal agent today than they buy from technology, and it'll be the same 3 years from now. Now, there'll be people that are using technology with agents or without them more today, more tomorrow than today, but the reality is it's pretty much going to be the same. Now, they'll have holograms. That's going to change things, right? We'll be talking to people in their offices through a hologram. That's coming. It hadn't come as fast as I thought it was going to come, but it's going to come. And there'll be other technologies that make things simpler 3 years from now. But the truth is, when the going gets tough, I want to be sitting in front of somebody. And I'm a consumer, right? I buy insurance. I was just working on my umbrella today.

Mm-hmm.

Part of it's done through a call center at the umbrella. Part of it's done online. But I still needed my agent to make sure they added some properties that I'd bought. And they weren't getting it done through the technology. So you— I still believe 3 years from now, Bradley, people will want somebody, and it's, it's the people who bring value that are going to get them, and they'll pay more.

You know, the more that— and included in that technology is AI, which you and I have spoken, spoken about in, in the past and will continue to be more and more relevant, but in that it does seem that there's even more of a shift to where people value community with other people and want to actually have a relationship. Yes. Yesterday, context is a little bit different, but very similar. I was meeting with small business owner, uh, does exterior remodeling. I introduced him to a good friend of mine who is the president of a local small bank here in town. This business owner needs a, you know, does exterior remodeling stuff and is in the need of a line of credit. Okay.

Yeah.

Well, there's every bank that's in California here, Truist and, you know, PNC Bank and there's Regions and there's like now Chase Bank and U.S. Bank. There's all the normal banks. You know what he wanted? He wanted to sit down and shake hands with somebody and have, you know, get— he didn't— did they talk about percentages of the loan? He didn't care. He wants somebody to be, in his own words, on his team. That's a great example. Don't you, don't you think that, and like, the advisor can fit inside of that as well?

Yeah, I, I know so, but let's use that same example, which is a great example, and I believe that people do want that. But then there's folks that are, that are blowing people off to the 800 number. They're blowing them off, assuming that's what they want. You don't want to assume for the client. You want to give them high-touch everything. We call it unrivaled service. How do you do that? Yeah, you provide it if they want it anywhere, anytime, anyhow, they get it. But don't assume that they want it through the email. Don't assume that they want it on a website or through a call center. Ask him, how do you like this guy? He just wanted to shake somebody's hand. Heck, man, if I have a claim, you know what I want? I want a hug because I'm having a bad day. Yeah, I'm serious, man. That's what people want. They still want a hug because their car got wiped out.

Sure. Right. Totally. Yeah. You know, and another example, and it was such a good reminder for me. I, I learned such a valuable lesson last week. Um, I got an email from one of our community members, and he said, hey, I love the community, but I need to step away for, for, for this reason. And so I got the email, a day or so later picked up the phone and called him. Well, I actually reached out, and then we, and then we had a call. But before we even had the call, he said, hey, I just want to tell you I reached out to 2 or 3 other people and said the same thing. You're the only person that called me. I didn't think I was doing anything. I didn't think I was doing anything special. He said, that makes me just actually want to work with you because you actually give a dang, you know, about it. What is your thoughts around some of the people that you do— maybe you do have a review, you check all the boxes, you, you try to do all the right things, and they say Troy, we love you, but at this point we, we really do have to go. We really do need to make a change. We've, we've found it somewhere else and we feel comfortable make that change. What are the things that you, that you feel are the things we can do to make that transition smooth so that we can get them back? We can get them back in the, in the future. What's the right way to do that so that you're, you know, not burning a bridge?

Okay, I'm passionate about this, so keep me honest. Don't let me just talk too much. First off, let's answer that directly, which is, if I give it my all, some people will stay with me and some won't. I mean, that's just the way life is. I'm grateful for the years that they let me serve them. I truly am grateful, and I mean that. Just like you picked up the phone, you thought that was just table stakes. I think it's table stakes to say I'm grateful. Now, I don't, I don't usher them out and go, I want you to leave. I say, look, I'm really sorry to have you leave, but let's make this easy for you. There's going to be some things that need to be done. And if anything gets screwed up in the transition, you're not going to have a good experience, a new experience with the new person. I'm here to tell you, I'll do whatever it takes to make this smooth on my end. Now, I also want you to know that I want you to think of me anytime you have a question about insurance or financial services, anytime you have a service need, you can call me at any time. I'm your discussion partner. I don't need to receive a commission from you every time you do something. I've never felt that way. In fact, I have no idea what we make off of you. All I know is that I serve you. So I want to continue in that capacity. So with your permission, I would like to continue to touch you at least 7 times a year because that's the way we treat our VIP clients. I get their permission and now they're still a part of my client engagement. Now, Bradley, I want to stop now and tell you it's the same thing when I'm, when I'm trying to get new business. If I'm selling auto and it doesn't matter what company I'm with, if I quote 100 people, I'm going to get 20 of them. Doesn't matter what company I'm with. Every company has a target of at least 20. Some are going to get 14%. Some are going to get a 23%. Some will get 30% once in a while, but they're going to adjust their rates accordingly to get to the 80/20 in auto. So what happens to the other 80%? Well, most agents do what they call quotes not taken, and they re-quote and they re-quote, and they're trying to polish a pit that only was interested in price. And so you're going through the motion again, and it's still 80/20. So how do you get over that? You sell more by quoting through presentations what the solutions are that your agency, your firm, your practice— we call it practice management— what your firm offers, which is not just a quote on an auto or a quote on a home. It's providing solutions to protect their family in the event of a tragedy. So let's say that I don't get 80% of them. I use the same philosophy that I just described to you. I say, look, I know we can't help you right now, but we really value you and we'd like you to be one of our VIP clients. Now, with our VIP clients, we consider ourselves discussion partners, and I want you to feel comfortable in calling me before you ever get advice or before you ever get service. I want you to think of me first. So we can have a discussion. I'm a discussion partner. In the future, if I can ever help you with a solution, I'd like you to consider it. Do I have your permission to put you in and touch you at least 7 times a year, not to sell you something, but just so you'll think of me the next time you have a question about insurance or financial services? So now I've positioned myself to get the right people under the right conditions in the future and not re-quote them going back to the client that's an existing client. If I lose them, and I did, I was an agent for 35 years. I lost people. I lost them to rate. I lost them because they didn't like my hair. I lost them because they thought I was too direct. Okay. Or maybe somebody on my team, you know, irritated them. I don't know. I lost them just like everybody else. But we lost less of them because we kept them in the relationship. We didn't just go, 'I can't help you, try again in a year.' A year's too long.

You know, in all of our conversations, I've never brought this up and explicitly said this, and if I had taken a couple minutes, I would have, I would have had a longer list. I'm going to read off, I'm going to read off, uh, just a couple of bullet points. Okay. VIP.

Yeah.

Presentations. Yes. Advisor. Yes. Discussion partner. Engagement. Relationships. Yes. Maybe with the exception of relationships, I think the majority of the words that you use are not in the, the part of the vocabulary that a lot of agency owners, agency principals are using on a day-to-day basis, and therefore their teams are not using that. Tell me about how you think about the value of words.

So first, let me tell you why they don't have this language in their vocabulary, as you put it, because the industry— God bless them, everything I have came from the insurance industry— has programmed people to think, here's your coverage and here's your price, do you want it? Because in a macro sense, in the big sense, it works. It's like a casino. Yet as distributors, as practicing agents, practice management, we have a smaller checkbook and we have a smaller reach. The numbers work, but they don't work the same way as if you're dealing with a million quotes as you are with 100. And I'd like to go back to your friend with the the 250 appointments if you want to get back into that. The numbers will work and you can make the analytics work, but it's not the same as quoting a million people. So, there is a shift now, just so everybody knows. I can say this with total confidence because I get to see where the market is going to go, not because I'm intelligent, because I listen. 15 years ago, it moved to the transaction. They, they, they— it worked. They sold lots of insurance and it went to advertising and it went to getting the phone to ring and the digital to work. And it worked. Nobody's saying it didn't, but the long-term view of the customer, of the client, is really more within each household. And so by doing just transactions, you get just that one thing. If you want it all— and for us as, as owners, people that own a practice, it's better for us to have 1,000 people with 4 lines of insurance than it is 4,000 people with one line. Same commission. It's just a lot harder to make a profit and be manageable if you have 4,000 people with one line. So The company may dangle you around and give you trips and tell you you're the greatest until you implode. It really is to serve people and don't worry about the commission up front. It'll come. So, so the language piece of it is what I would be working on in 2025. If, if you know, this is what we work on in Practice Management and in our community that you and I have talked about, language matters. It really does.

You know, uh, I, I think it might have been, um, well, I actually, I can't recall exactly where it came from, but one of the models— I really love models and frameworks because it helps me to make sense of what would be otherwise really complicated things. And this is like one of those things that I, I actually don't only believe that it's true, but I think it's the truth. And that is in business. I think that there is acquisition, there is getting new customers. Yes, there is. You've got to retain the customers, keep them as long as you can so that they continue to buy. In insurance, that is renewing. And then there's ascension. It's, it's actually going deeper and getting those customers to buy more of the thing that they have. That could look like increasing limits, and then it could be cross-selling to other products. And so that AAR model has worked. Every business, whether you're a donut shop, an exterior remodeling company, an insurance agency, needs to get customers— acquisition— needs to get the customers to be worth more— ascension— and needs to be able to keep the customers as long as possible on the retention side. One of the things that I feel coming out of this conversation is really what you're saying there is understanding the importance of that middle section of deepening. And like you were saying, like, it's better to have fewer customers that have deeper, broader— both broad and wide relationships with you because it makes the business stickier, they probably refer more, etc. Talk about that. You, you may not use that language. Again, I like the ascension. I heard somebody on a podcast, uh, it was actually Mike Weinberg when he came on the podcast, he used the word penetration. You're penetrating deeper into the, into the household Thoughts on that?

So I love the way you think, and I think you're spot on. Let me— but for the listener, to get where you want to go, you've got to go from the beginning. And what happens is, I love the carriers. I have close relationships with the carriers. However, as an industry, we still are focusing on the transaction and hoping they buy more later. Yeah. So you've got to have a strategy in your practice that says, I'm going to attract the right person under the right conditions. I'm going to present to them the total solution. I'm not going to sell them everything. You never do. But you're going to try from the beginning. You're going to onboard them correctly. You're going to everboard them correctly. And then you're going to be there. You're not going to have to sell them anything. You've positioned yourself by choosing the right person to be dealing with before you ever presented. Then you present to them correctly, and then you onboard them correctly, and then you everboard them by client engagement that never stops. Because I call you up, Bradley, I'd like to talk to you about some life insurance, right? You go, it's wrong day to call, man. I'm having trouble. My kid wouldn't get out of bed, trying to get them to school. You know, blah, blah, blah. But I call you 2 months later on an umbrella and you go, hey, yeah, I'd like to talk about that. And by the way, that life insurance, I want to talk to you too. We've all had that happen.

Mm-hmm.

But we need to make it happen, not through sales, not through campaigns. They're through engagement, surrounding the client with all the things that they need, but hitting them right at the right time by hitting them a minimum of 7 times a year. And if you're good, 12 times a year. And again, back to your buddy on the appointment goal. That's awesome. But we can show them how to get 2 life appointments a day, every day. Easy, right person under the right conditions. Same thing with umbrellas, same thing with reviews. It's easy if you break it down the right way, but the language is so important in setting everything up and getting them to be conditioned from day one to think of you every time they think of insurance and financial services.

Every time that you come on, we cover something new. And then at the same time, there's probably maybe 50% of the things that we discuss is Chief Reminding Officer. Do you feel like when you travel the country that sometimes, I mean, you love to travel, you love to fly. Do you feel sometimes it's Groundhog Day, like you just flew from, I don't know, Iowa you say the same thing, and then a year later you're like, did I not just come from and say almost the exact same things? But yet we need to be reminded oftentimes more than we need to be taught.

Well, two things. I always throw in new stuff, right? And it's easy because everything's changing, but I've never changed my message. Yeah, fundamentals don't change. I love what the philosopher says: beware of the person selling you new antiques. Okay. It's just so, so I'm— whether people like me or not, every time you talk to me from a live stage and a boardroom to a podcast, you and I having lunch together, I'm going to remind of the fundamentals because they haven't changed. They're not going to. It's going to be delivered differently. The time I call you is going to be different. How I meet with you may be different. But the reality is the fundamentals don't change. And that's why when you ask me that 2028 question, have me back on. Half of what we talk about is still going to be the fundamentals. Half of it, at least.

I love that.

Yeah.

Tell us, people want to connect with you. Tell us about your magazine. Has gone over fantastic. It is so high quality. I tell you, I was blown away about how well you and your team did with the magazine. But people want to know, find out obviously how they can connect with you, find out about your, your different program offerings. Troy, where can they find you?

Well, first, thank you for having me on today and for contributing to the magazine, because you were one of the very first people we thought of when we started to put the magazine out. So it has been successful. They can get it at korsgårdn.com/community. Coursegotten.com/community. And what happens is when you sign on there, they say, would you like a free magazine and a book called Net Gain Growth behind me? And you get a 30-day free trial into our community. You don't have to stay if you want to stay, and most people do. The reason is there's just a ton of resources, Bradley, and I don't want to turn this into a commercial. So just to say, that when you sign on there, you're going to see things as an independent distributor, business owner, what we call a practice management student, a student of your business. There's a lot of things that will help you with your business acumen and tools and support that maybe you're not getting today. And so from that, we've just got a lot of good stuff, and I'd love to talk to anybody about it that wants to reach out.

Awesome. Troy, as always, appreciate you, my friend.

Appreciate you. Thanks, Bradley.

I tell you what, I, I really do learn so much from Troy, and I appreciate his ability to take what can be complex and overwhelming topics and be able to simplify them into simple language and also specific actions to be able to actually take. So sometimes when I'm talking to somebody, whether it's on a podcast or otherwise, it gets a little hard of like, okay, that makes sense, but what do I actually do? And I think he just, just does an excellent job of being able to blend the two of those. I appreciate his ability to always bring in new ideas, but at the same time staying true to his, what he called fundamentals, and I would also add into there principles. So definitely go, go check him out. He's a great follow on social. You get to see all of his different travels around the country that he has, but he really does have an incredible pulse on what's going on, and specifically in the insurance industry. So go and check out— I'm gonna certainly look into his newsletter, which is truly high quality. I think you'll get a lot out of that. I'm going to shout out to our podcast sponsors: Club Capital, Coach P Consulting, Today@Pro, and Autopilot Recruiting. We were just going over the A-players playbook, the How Do You Attract A-Players Playbook. And one of the things when, as part of that playbook, it's really made up of 3 things. It's your A-player profile and your job descriptions. That makes up one section of the playbook. And the section 2 is really your recruiting system. Well, as part of your overall recruiting system, one of the areas that is the part that most people really don't like to do is the sourcing of candidates, the posting of the jobs, the reviewing of the resumes, the conducting the initial phone screen, etc. And yet it's part of it. If you think about your candidates as part of a funnel, it's part of the thing, one of the things that you have to, to be able to do. Autopilot Recruiting can help you take all of that off your plate. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com. Autopilotrecruiting.com. Another partner that you can work with to help you with your agency financials is of course going to be Club Capital. At the time we're recording this, we're getting up up on 20, uh, tax season 2025, looking back on 2024. If you're kind of going into that flying blind, not knowing what was your revenue, what was profit, what was my personal income, what were my percentages, what's my tax burden going to be, Club Capital can help you to have all of those answers and really know your financial numbers. Go to club.capital. One of the best investments I've ever made in myself and in my team is the development of myself. And my team really actually making the investment. Coach P can help you to do kind of kill two birds with one stone, so to speak, helping you to develop and also helping to develop your team. Go to coachpconsulting.com and let him know, and our partners at Club Capital and Autopilot Recruiting, you know, that you heard about them on the Above the Business podcast. Troy was talking about technology on the podcast, and also the tech that you use to be able to run your business matters a lot, and it matters to your team. When you work with TodayApp Pro. Go to todayapppro.com. You're going to get a seamless experience, going to work with your corporate-approved CRM. It's going to help you to put all the word tracks and your bonus compensation plans all in one place. todayapppro.com. Hey, if you like this podcast, you'll get a ton out of my web class if you go to blueprintos.com. blueprintos.com. You can register for one of my live upcoming web classes to help you to transition from being the operator of your business in the day-to-day to transitioning to being the owner of your business, go to blueprintos.com and register. Come attend one of my upcoming web classes. All right everyone, till next episode, lead well and go be great.