242. Success Tips From A Multi-Million Dollar Health Insurance Advisor with Dominic Franchini

You mentioned the lifestyle. Oh, I made it. Now I get to hang out a little bit. Now I get to, you know, reap the reward. Well, you know, what happens then? You lose all the momentum and all the foundation that you built and then your next two years are terrible again. And so, you know, I wonder many times over 19 years, have I made it yet? And the answer is never. Like, you've never made it.

Hey, welcome back to Bull Sessions. I am excited today to have an industry peer friend join the show for episode one of Bullpen Sessions 2.0. So I'm excited. Dominic Franchini is joining us live from Cincinnati, Ohio. Dom, welcome to the show.

Yeah, thanks, Andy. Happy to be here.

Yeah, man. Well, I just said I. I hope I pronounced it the right way. We were talking offline about the appropriate pronunciation, pronunciation of your last name. The Americans like to say Franchini, but it's truly Francini. Well, Dom, I had you, I wanted to have you come on the show because you have built an amazing business in the health insurance industry and it's kind of timely. I want to ask you a question around the recent acquisition. You're with the Horan or with Haran, I should say, in Cincinnati, recently acquired by Hub. How has that transition gone for you?

Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. And I'd start just by saying we're thrilled with the partnership with Hub. You know, Horan's a 75 year old firm, family owned, second generation. We've been very proud of the work that we've done as a regional or kind of super regional consultant.

You know, ultimately we've done very good work. We've earned the right to compete at a high level. But as you know, the industry is highly competitive and with a lot of the consolidation it was, it was time for us to consider how we're going to remain competitive for the next 75 years. And we ultimately determined that the best move for us was to partner with a bigger firm with more resources and kind of more capabilities. The integration has been awesome. Hub is totally professional at doing this. They know exactly how to integrate a high quality firm and to keep the work high quality. They've got a great team of people that's been kind of on the ground with us, helping our team kind of eyeball to eyeball, get integrated, feel good about the move, learn about all the resources available, how to navigate all of us. You know, all of a sudden we went from having 130 people to having 17, 000 people and learning how to navigate that takes a little bit of help and support. So we couldn't be more excited. We, we were very thorough in our consideration and review and you know, the decision to, to partner with Hub was unanimous amongst our shareholders. So I think that's something that's, that's awesome. You know, very exciting.

Well, I've had a chance to, you know, watch you guys kind of from the outside and what you guys built. You and I met almost a decade ago at uba and at that time I knew Haran as this monster in Cincinnati. And then I had the chance to work with you guys in January and you guys have, you guys are an absolute powerhouse. But before we get to the business, I want to let people get to know Dominic for a little bit. So you grew up in Cincinnati. I know you were a baseball guy like me. This is why I'm going to enjoy this conversation. Talk a little bit about your upbringing, like playing baseball in Cincinnati. When did you realize, okay, you know, pretty good at this sport, I have an opportunity maybe to play baseball beyond high school.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I claim Cincinnati because that's what people in, you know, the U.S. know. But I grew up in a town called Hamilton, Ohio. And Hamilton's about 45 minutes north of Cincinnati. And the reason I think that's important is because I played baseball at the Hamilton west side Little League program, which is kind of a perennial powerhouse in Little League. So our team has been seen in Williamsport a number of times and it's one of those, you know, names that you see at that 12 year old level every three to five years, being highly competitive at a state and national level. So.

That was a fluke. I mean, I just happened to be born in a town that had a great Little league program. I was able to compete at a, at a pretty high level there. My 12 year old year, we lost in the state championship. I'll never forget. I was a catcher at the time. We had a pitcher who had a killer curveball. 12 and we called a curveball. That ended up being a walk off home run for South Point. And that ended my, that ended our run towards Williamsport at the state level. I ended up going to Hamilton Baden High School, which is also a perennial powerhouse in high school baseball. And I don't know what it is about, about Hamilton. I don't know if it's the water or just kind of the consistent coaching and the generations of families that have been consistently coaching and bringing up kids, but Baden was another, another program that, that always competes at a High level is always competing at a state level, always competing with the bigger guys. You know, we were a pretty small school, 700 students in total. That's boys and girls. So we had like 350 boys. And we would compete with the big, you know, private schools with 1200 and 1400 boys and, and always go toe to toe. So I think, I think baseball was just part of my youth. I think that.

Being in a small town and small school and having to compete at a high level really kind of taught me what it, what it required to be like an underdog and to bring your best to compete and win. And I ended up, as you know, at Furman University on a scholarship down there. So happens to be one of the smallest Division 1 programs in the country. We had 2600 students and we'd play Clemson and South Carolina and North Carolina State and Tennessee and some of these big programs and, you know, they had more fans show up at their stadiums than we had students enrolled. And all of those, I think, just prepared me.

To compete and to find a way to win, to be gritty. And when I look back, I think I, I graduated with degree in baseball and that helped me in business.

Yeah, I, you know, a couple things about what you said. I agree. I think in any sport, like high school sport, where there's a powerhouse, there's usually a good youth program behind it. You know, whether it's football, baseball, wrestling, you name it. I look at schools in Wisconsin, same thing. It all starts with the youth programs. And if there's consistency with the youth programs, they're going to turn out these athletes year after year at the high school level.

It's interesting you brought up the, the how close you were to Williamsport. I actually was more surprised by the story that a kid hit a walk off home run with on a curveball. Most kids at 12 don't know how to hit a curveball.

Yeah, well, I'll never forget South Point, Ohio, which is the southern tip. I mean, that's, that's coal mining country. These kids were monsters. And they could hit. Yeah, they could hit.

I remember at that level we played a tournament in lacrosse. Wisconsin is a big tournament every year in Wisconsin called the Stars Tomorrow. And they'd have teams from Minnesota and Illinois come in. And one year we made the final four. So 70 some teams were in the Final Four and we had to play Barrington, illinois. And they're 12 years old, supposedly. These kids are shaving, they have beards. We're like, what in the world? Like, what's going on here. There's no way 12 year olds are this size. I was curious, too, growing up in Cincinnati, being a baseball nerd. You and I graduated right around the same time. How big of a deal was it when Ken Griffey Jr. Was coming through? Because he went to Archbishop Mueller, didn't he?

Yeah, he. He went to Mueller. Of course. He's a beloved, you know, Cincinnatian dad being part of the Big Red machine. There's so many stories of Ken Griffey Jr. As a child, you know, hanging around the Cincinnati Reds ball club as a kid. Everybody knew that he was. He was pretty special.

You know, the Reds won the World Series in 1990. I was 8 years old, and so I remember it, but not very well. And after that, went into kind of a depression of not great baseball. So for most of my adult life, the Reds have just not been good.

And a lot of Cincinnatians rely on the Big Red Machine, which was, you know, the mid-70s, and that was before I was born. So I always tell my dad, dad, like, the Big Red Machine is your generation, not mine. My generation barely remembers good baseball. So when a guy like Ken Griffey Juniors, you know, kind of announced that he's coming back, what a big deal for the city. And everybody was aware that he was more or less taking a pay cut and making a decision to come home versus to go to the most, you know, competitive or lucrative team. And I think that was pretty special. And certainly remember when. When he started, of course, as everybody knows, he was kind of injury plagued. It never really turned into, you know, The Ken Griffey Jr. That we see in the highlight reels. But he did hit 500 home runs. The 500 home run and the 600th home run in a Reds uniform. And I remember those being really exciting times. So it's a great question, and, man, we were happy to have him, but I don't think it was exactly what everybody had hoped for.

Well. Well, good news is right now the Reds are fighting with my beloved brewers for first place. The. A very, we'll say a very weak NL Central. But to your point, though, you know, it's kind of a. Interesting correlation to the insurance industry, how a lot of Cincinnatians are still kind of living on the. The Big Red machine. I feel like the insurance industry also prides itself on the past. A little too much.

Yeah.

And not what we need to do as we move forward, but. Couple questions about playing at Furman. So you're playing D1 ball down in the south, and the Thing I noticed about D1 baseball, Dom, is in the south, it doesn't matter if you're at school 20, 600 kids or Clemson, like it's good baseball.

Yeah.

But when you got there, because your non conference games were against Clemson, South Carolina, you know, those programs like that, were there any takeaways you had? Like, did you recognize like, holy cow, there is a whole new level of talent here? Or did you realize like, you know, even though we're firming, they're Clemson, we've got the same kind of talent they do.

Yeah, I, gosh, when I look back, I, I think playing some of those programs was the first time I really had to look in the mirror and say, am I, am I good enough to play here in little league? You know, I was, I was good enough in high school. I was good enough.

I knew I deserved to be on that field. There were instances playing in some of these big programs, you go like, oh man, like that's what a real power hidden first baseman looks like. And that's how a real hitter hits. That's how a real pitcher pitches. The cool thing about baseball is, you know, in any given day, any given day, if your pitcher's on or your hitters are on or their pitchers off, anybody can win those games. And I think, I think what I really learned over, over the years, you know, as a freshman, you get into the batter's box against some of these guys and your knees are knocking and your, your head's, you know, in the wrong place and you're nervous and you're thinking about how many people are watching you and give a strike out. By the time you're a junior or senior, you go like, I've been here before and these guys are good, but they're still playing baseball, which is a game of failure. I mean, even their best hitters are going to get out six or seven out of 10 times. So I think by junior senior year ago, you know what, I can compete any given day with these guys and just was going to require discipline. It's going to require finding the right pitch. It's going to require throwing the right pitch.

Making the right decisions at the right times, and ultimately being a little gritty. I know at Furman we kind of prided ourselves in playing small ball. You know, you get, again, you get up against some of these programs and we're not going to out home run them when we're not going to score 14 runs probably.

But we could execute bunts and hit and runs and double steals and stuff that isn't super traditional, that they're not doing every day, but it's kind of our backwards way of competing. And I think you learn how to find a way. And that's when I look back, kind of how we did it.

Good. Another good segue into what we're going to talk about with the insurance side is doing the small things right, doing the little things right. Right. I think in baseball today, it's all about the long ball, the home run. How many pitchers are throwing 9, 800 miles an hour? My big experience with the talent level was, you know, when I got to pro ball, you know, you watch a guy throwing 93, 94, it's really hard to tell the difference. Throwing somebody throwing 94, even between 89 and 94, you don't really see a big difference. Then you see the guy throwing 99, and you see that guy warming up in the bullpen. You hear. You literally hear the sound of the baseball coming out of his hand. That's when you're like, wow. Like, yeah, God gave that guy a thunderbolt for an arm. And that's. That's pretty impressive. But baseball is also a game of momentum, and this is what I love about it. Look what Oral Roberts just did.

Yeah.

Number four seed coming from the Summit League, and they just made a run to the College World Series.

Yeah.

That's what I love about baseball. I don't really think you can do that in many other sports.

Yeah.

So, last question about the Furman experience, because I used to have this weird quirk about me, man, where I knew every nickname of every college. But I will tell you, I have no clue what a paladin is. Can you explain to the audience Furman Paladins, what is a paladin?

Yeah.

Well, it's a great question, and it was asked a lot, and we got made fun of a lot. I looked it up in the dictionary one time, and it said a paragon of chivalry, which then I had to look up paragon. And.

Our depiction of a paladin was always a knight. So we had kind of a logo that. That showed a knight. I think it's ultimately just a symbol of chivalry.

You know, Furman was kind of like that. We were kind of educational school, and not surprised that we had a. A mascot that people didn't understand.

Well, let's. Let's. Let's dive into business. You have. You have gone on to have a very successful career in the health insurance industry. And the first question I would ask is, going back to your baseball career, like as an athlete, somebody who's got that mindset. How have you applied some of the, the lessons you've learned in sports to what you've done today? Building a pretty tremendous book of business in the health insurance industry?

Yeah, yeah, I've been, I've been in the business 19 years now and sometimes I have to remind myself what, what the beginning looked like because it wasn't as you probably remember yourself, like, it wasn't always pretty and it didn't come easy. I was fortunate when I, when I decided to take the job at Haran. I had an amazing mentor, Doug Miller. He kind of took me under his wing. So I would consider him almost like the head coach. Right. And.

He taught kind of the no shortcuts path. There are no shortcuts here. You have got to grind, you have got to put in the hours, you have got to make the calls. And he was all about accountability. So, you know, I was making 80 to 100 calls a week. I had to report who they were. I had to report whether I got a live voice, a voicemail, an email. I had to report hit rates. Am I, you know, what, am I getting more effective at getting people to pick up the phone?

And so I think in hindsight I kind of hated him for it because he's making me do all the stuff I don't want to do.

But I love them for it because had I not done that, the foundation wouldn't have been laid. And that foundation of, of doing the stuff you don't want to do is what ultimately leads to the, the closed deals over a 2, 3, 5, 10 year period. Yeah, I tell people the sales cycle is what, three years, kind of at minimum.

It's having that patience too, to understand that. And I, I tell, I tell a lot of, I tell producers, producers that a lot lately, which is when, you know, when you have that patience, you can actually go about your prospecting with more confidence. Where I think I see too many wanting those quick wins. So what's happening is instead of being patient and confident, they're almost desperate.

Yeah, well, I was used to, in athletics and in academics and just everything else in my life. I was used to being successful fast. I was, you know, if, if they said it's going to take three years to close the deal, I thought it was going to take you three years. It'll take me one year, you know, but there just wasn't a shortcut. And I think.

If there's any young producers out there, like, I mean, there were days I was in tears. There was days I wanted to quit. There were days I thought, this is the worst job ever. And there were days if my mentor didn't make me show up, I would have quit. I joke. I've only tried to quit, like, five or six times. Like, it's hard.

But once you. I think part of it was reframing success. Like, I initially thought, success means getting a, you know, an AOR or BOR letter. I. I started to rethink. Like, success means having somebody pick up a phone call. Success means that person recognizes my name when it shows up on their caller id. Success means that when one of my prospects has a question, they call me. They might not hire me yet, but I had to, like, really think about how to reframe success, because it wasn't all about closing deals. It was much smaller than that.

Little. Little. Well, I think that's important that you said that, though, because I don't know how you got in the industry. I know how I did it. I know how a lot of my peers did. You were sold the lifestyle, right? You were sold that if you just stick around long enough, you'll make great money, play golf three days a week. But what really. What no one really tells you is all the little things that go into that, including failure. And what you said is so important. You have to celebrate and enjoy the journey, the progress, celebrating the small wins. And going back to what you said about Furman. We were good at small ball. We were not. We couldn't out home run anybody. And I think what Doug made you do is do the small things, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's been instances. You know, you look at your career, and early on, I was grinding, and then I was having success because I was grinding. And I thought you mentioned the lifestyle. Oh, I made it. Now I get to hang out a little bit. Now I get to, you know, reap the reward. Well, you know what happens then? You lose all the momentum and all the foundation that you built, and then your next two years are terrible again. And so, you know, I. I wonder many times over 19 years, have I made it yet? And the answer is never. Like, you've never made it, because the moment you think you have, somebody else is trying to take your clients, Somebody else is studying harder, working harder, and you've just got to continue to sharpen the saw, otherwise, you'll lose all your momentum. So I. I think the good news is if. If you. If you do it right, the lifestyle is great and the opportunity is amazing. The bad part is if you stop or take your pedal, your foot off the pedal, it can fall apart fast. And so that's hard.

I hope everybody heard what you just said though. You've been at it 19 years, built a multi million dollar book of business, yet you still don't feel like you've arrived. I want everybody to hear that because I think one thing I see in our industry more often than not, and I'm guilty of it in my past, you have an amazing year, foot comes off the gas, next year, nothing. And it's hard to find those producers that year after year after year are pumping out high six figures or good six figures of new business because so many have that one good year and then they take the, the foot off the gas.

Yeah, yeah, I haven't solved it yet. It's, it's very hard to, to keep that momentum at a steady, at a steady pace year over year over year. Because you also have, you know, if you have a good year now, you've got more clients that need more work 100% and you kind of have to take your eye off of the prospecting work to make sure that you're delivering good consulting work.

So the reality is it's a journey and the journey never stops, you know?

Uh, well, I want to talk about something that I get a chuckle, I still get a chuckle out of since you've said this. So you and I met a decade ago in, in, at a UBA conference in Chicago. And I'll tell you, one of the things I was impressed with when I met you is I remember sitting at one of the tables and we were just kind of having a round table discussion. Guys like Nick Hendricks were there, some of the other UBA young guns and you made a comment just like you, you talked about your process of what it takes for you to get a prospect to the finish line and all the things you do in the relationship building process to get that prospect to the finish line. And I thought that was really impressive because again, kind of coming back to we all want the quick win, but we don't realize this is a long sales cycle. So what can I do in that cycle to make sure that when the prospect gets to the finish line, they are most ready to go. Yeah, and I think that was imp I for me when I heard that I'm like, I have to slow down, like I'm trying to win this big deal next week when it's probably not going to happen for another 12, 18 months.

Yeah, I remember that, that session that you're talking about. And.

You know, I, I had had a few good years. UBA had asked me to maybe present kind of my process or methodology and I had kind of studied my book to figure out what was the common thread, like, what was I doing for these clients. Because at the time clients, and I had big clients and I had, you know, some publicly traded clients and some private clients. Like, like when you looked at the, at the mix, there wasn't like a super obvious common theme. And you might remember the, the presentation was what I considered the seven hour sale. And what I learned when I looked at all those deals is that some way, somehow the common thread was that I had spent like seven hours of time with every one of those prospects. And if you think about what that looks like, especially in a world many years ago where cold calling was one of the primary sources, you know, if you get somebody to pick up a phone that's like 15 minutes at a time. So getting seven hours worth of their, of their mind space requires lots of phone calls or lots of meetings. You know, oftentimes a prospect will give you an hour. Well, that's one hour meeting, you got six to go. And so the trick for me became how do I earn the time in front of these prospects to earn their trust, to prove to them that I know what I'm talking about. And ultimately to be given an opportunity and my, my kind of walk away, there was, there's no shortcut. Now all I'm trying to do is figure out how to get seven hours of time.

And if you got to do it through cold calls, that's going to take years. If you get the opportunity to play golf with a guy or a gal, you know, that might knock out four or five hours, but they're not going to give you four or five hours of golf time. As a cold stranger, you've got to earn that. So that was maybe what you're recalling. Yes, I think that element has not changed. And I think you got to figure out how to get the time. You got to earn that, earn that right.

Which is a, an amazing segue because that was 2014, 2020 hits. We have COVID Pandemic and the way we do business has changed. And building that relationship with a prospect isn't as easy as it used to be. Getting those seven hours isn't as easy as it used to be, especially in person. And this is the part that makes me chuckle. I remember at that same time I had started my social media journey of really getting on LinkedIn, trying to build some brand recognition. And at that time, when I, in a recent conversation, you had said, andy, you know, I gotta be honest, when I first started seeing you do this, I thought you were a douchebag.

And. But then you, you said, I saw what you were doing and why you were doing it. And I want you to talk about again. You've had a lot of success, man. When did you finally come to the realization, like, all right, I've gotta leverage a platform like LinkedIn, like social media, to build some kind of name recognition with my prospects?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, as you and I have talked, I, I was literally watching you do it. Like, I was watching you do it. We had been friends, of course, personally, of course connected on LinkedIn. You had made some decisions to change a little bit the trajectory of your career with building a business from scratch. And I was learning what you were doing by watching your content. And.

I probably knew for a couple of years I should be doing it. You know, I've got kids, I watch what they do on, you know, Tick Tock or Instagram or whatever they use. And you watch how people build brands using social media platforms. I was never super comfortable with it. It's, I've always kind of like to fly under the radar. Never knew if I had anything worth, you know, hearing for people out in the, in the atmosphere.

But if you apply the seven hour thing, gosh, I probably watched 70 hours of your stuff, like, without choice. It hits my, it hits my feed when I open LinkedIn. I'm hearing your interviews, I'm seeing what you're doing, and you're, you're knocking out some of that time and trust building and you're not even having to.

Meet that person or schedule a call. So I think watching you and having enough conversations with you kind of inspired me to start taking some leaps. As you mentioned working with our firm in January, I think that was a, a great kickoff to get all of our producers together and challenge us to kind of put ourselves out there. And the results have been really great. Clearly, people are engaging with the content. Clearly people are reading or listening. And, you know, I get stopped at networking events or social outings and people say, hey, I really like what you're doing out there. Like, keep, keep it up. You've got great stuff. So I, I think, I think ultimately, you know, the short answer is watching you inspired me as I started to, to play along in the social media game. It was clearly working and it's knocking out some of that time across multiple prospects in kind of One post.

Well, and I want to thank you for taking action, because I think a lot of people, it's easy to observe, it's easy to digest, it's hard to put that stuff into action. And one thing you've done, you know, one thing we preach with social media and just your prospects in general, is building a community. Your job is to build a community, stop looking at it as a list to sell to, and start looking at it as a community to give to. And one of the things you've done to really take that community aspect and run with it is this concept of this executive rucksack group you've built in Cincinnati, which I think is so, so cool. So talk about where did the idea spring and how does it look today? Probably even since we've talked in February or March about it.

Yeah, you know, it's kind of a fluke.

And I think to try to, you know, hone in on all the different elements and why that started. So. So first, just what is rucking? I always tell people it's. It's really easy. We're just going for a walk and we're. We're carrying either a ruck sack or a backpack or a weighted vest. And.

You know, that really spawned out of a trip with my brothers and my dad. When my dad turned 70 years old a handful of years ago, we asked him what he wanted to do, and he said he wanted to backpack on the Appalachian Trail. That was new to us. We never grew up doing that. We didn't grow up camping or hiking, but we. We decided to do it. So we did 55 miles in Shenandoah national park in Virginia. That was our first foray into backpacking and carrying, you know, 35 or 40 pounds on your back. And there's something kind of religious about it, about being out in nature, not having all the tech, not having all the distractions, and having hours of conversation with my brothers and my dad, who, you know, you can't get closer than that. And even in those hours, you. You learn things about each other that you. You didn't know. We did a couple of trips like that. I think, you know, my dad passed away in November, which was a big loss, fairly unexpected. He was a healthy guy. We were talking about our next hike.

And.

I wanted to keep doing it. And part of it might be grief, I don't know. But I had a friend who was gonna. Going to hike the Grand Canyon. He. It was going to be a first trip for his family. I said, well, let's just start hiking with backpacks on around town. We'll go hit up parks and do some exercise. You'll get prepared. I can grieve a little bit. I posted it out on LinkedIn, kind of per your recommendation. Just said, hey, here's me and Paul. We're out here talking business, talking shop, watching the sunrise at Sharon woods. And people were just enamored. I didn't anticipate it. They wanted to know when the next one was. So I started a group and started every other Tuesday picking a park in the region. And we've had as many as probably 16 or 17 people show up. They're executives across multiple industries. We tend to walk, you know, two to four miles. We're carrying weight. I always make a big pot of coffee and afterwards we hang out, drink coffee, talk shop, learn about each other's businesses, get some exercise in. And I just. It's weird. I mean, we've done. We've been doing it, gosh, about four or five months, and people can't wait for the next one. We've never done the same trail twice. At some point we'll have to repeat, but it's been, it's been a while. I can't believe it's even a thing. But.

Well, what's so cool about it is, you know, you're building that community, you're hosting the party for the community, but you're doing it around a common interest.

Yeah.

And I think that's important because we talk about, you know, psychographics of prospects, how they think, what they stand for, what do they believe. That's where the gold is. And that's. This is a classic case of that, where it's not like you're doing it around business, you're doing it around a hobby everybody in that group loves. And that's, that's where some of the best bonds, the tightest bonds are built.

Well, it has, it has been interesting if you think about our business, which ultimately is healthcare and how do we get people healthier. I've had clients and prospects say it's kind of neat. Like you're doing the business thing and you're doing the health thing and you're, you know, doing the walking meeting thing and kind of walking the walk. So I think it also just lends some credibility that we take health seriously, take, you know, mental health seriously. Getting outside, watching the sunrise before work is pretty special and doing it with peers is, is really special. So, you know, it might be a soft tie back, but I, I think that everybody can benefit from getting outside and, you know, bathing in the sun and the woods and, and gosh, if we all did it, I think we.

I think there's nothing better than the morning sun too. You know, I have a, I have a ritual. I walk right outside our house and we got a good view of the east and you see that sun coming up. There's just something refreshing when you start the day with sunshine.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I love that.

I agree.

Well, as we wrap this up, Dom, this has been phenomenal. I want you to think about, okay, so one, you're building this community with the rucksack and you've got prospects who are regularly attending these. When you look at what you've done, just. I know, I know you're still at the beginning of this journey. Call it the brand building journey.

What advice would you give another producer out there who's had a lot of success like you, where it's easy to take the foot off the gas.

But now you're, you're putting more time and effort into building name recognition. What would you give? What advice would you give that person who's had success but going, is it worth doing something like social media? Is it worth putting the time and effort into building name recognition? What advice would you give?

Yeah, I think it's a great question. Some days I feel like I'm qualified to give advice, some days I don't.

But I think, welcome to the club.

Yeah, right. I think one of the things that has been really good for, for me and part of this just comes with experience, like, you know, you and I had the conversation, like, what do you, what do you stand for? Like what, what is your position, what's your angle? And it's taken me time to, to realize, like, I've got pretty strong opinions on how to manage a health plan, on how to manage a benefit plan plan, on how to.

Carve costs out of, you know, a self funded health plan.

And the more that I get convicted around my own personal beliefs, the more that I.

Attach or, or relate to prospects who are kind of in that same mindset. And I think early on, as you're trying to build a career and just earn an income, there's a trap of trying to be all things to all people. Oh, you need that? Well, I can do that. Oh, you like that way? I'll do it that way. And all of a sudden you're rudderless, you don't have an opinion you stand for, and people aren't clear as to why they would hire you. And so the short answer is, figure out what you believe in and stand by it, be crystal clear, and then communicate it out to your prospects in the community. And you'll be surprised. You become a magnet for the people that believe what you believe, which accelerates, you know, accelerates the sales cycle, sets expectations, makes the work more efficient. Like, what I'm learning now is I've got a book of clients who, for the most part, are trying to execute the same exact strategy repeated. And then you can put it on kind of a. I don't want to call it a conveyor belt, but it's like everybody's trying to do the same thing in kind of the same order, which makes that work a little bit more efficient and more effective.

Yeah.

I don't know if I answered your question.

No, it makes. It's all. No, it makes all the sense in the world. It's. You have built a system that's kind of. Now, rinse and repeat.

Yeah.

Because instead of trying to become known for all things, you want to become known for very few things. In your case, even one thing, and getting very clear about who your ideal prospect is. This is what I tell everybody. Demographics, which is the size, location, number of employees. That's like putting all these suspects in a criminal case up against the wall. And when you start talking about what you believe in, what you stand for, the right people start taking a step forward. Now, the problem with that perceived problem is some people will be detracted by what you're saying. But the best. The best part of that is those are people who would have never hired you anyways. So you're saving yourself time. Go find the people who believe what you believe for and stand what you stand for, and selling becomes a heck of a lot easier.

Yeah. You know, early on, I remember. I love Doug Miller for a million reasons, but if there was a prospect who wanted to beat combative, like, I just remember him going, I'm gonna find a way to convince that guy or that person that. That our way is right. And I used to think, like, I'm never talking to that person again. Like, I don't want to convince them we don't see the world the same.

And, you know, sometimes he would win. He. He would prove that he could turn that person's mind. I. My mindset was, I'm gonna go find somebody else that has a. A better alignment with me. And I don't know that one's right or wrong, but I know I spent a lot less hours fighting the prospects who don't think what I think.

Well, And I could also tell you even though that that theory may win out, trying to fight and convince somebody you, your, your way is better, they often turn into pain in the ass clients.

Yeah.

And so good lesson to be learned there. Well, man, I want to thank you for being on today. If you're listening in, go, go follow Dominic on LinkedIn. See what he's putting out there. As far as content goes, it is Fran Keeney. F R A N C H I N I so go look up Dominic Frankini. And Dom, I just want to thank you man. I'm sure there's a lot of advisors listening in who are going to take, who are going to take what you said and run with it. My advice for everybody listening in is do what he's he, this is a man who's had a ton of success. He could take the foot off the gas and be just fine for the rest of his career. But what you said, Dom, I want nobody to forget you've never arrived. There is no finish line. Show up, be consistent every day. Do the small things, the small ball. Play the small ball and build that community around your prospects like you've done with the Rucksack group. So keep up the great work, man.

I appreciate it, Andy. Appreciate the partnership and the friendship. Yeah. And keep inspiring.

Awesome, man. Likewise everybody else, take care.

Bye bye.

Sam.