Episode 147: The 120 Second Rule with Bradley Flowers and Scott Howell

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or are well on your way to the success you desire, with the right people, processes, and promotions in place, you will be unstoppable. And now I'd like to introduce your host, Mike Stromso. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. And this one is going to be extra profitable because the guys that I got on the podcast this morning, many of you, I'm sure, are aware of who they are, but we're going to dig a little bit deeper, and as we're getting started this morning, we were just talking about the bull behind Bradley, the unstoppable Bradley Flowers, and the double unstoppable Scott Howell. Not to put one of you above the other. Welcome, gents.

What's up?

Thank you. Thank you for having us, Mike. We appreciate you having us on the show today. It means a lot.

Well, I appreciate you guys and all you do for the industry. And this is long overdue, this episode, because you guys have done so much and we've worked together and you've hosted, you had me on your podcast, and I want to reciprocate and then some. But let me get to this before I squirrel away from it. And SOS is sitting right over here. Shiny Object Syndrome. And in the words of one of our unstoppable members, who renamed it bsos, Bright Shiny Object Syndrome because she's got that deadly disease. Bradley, what's up? Asked if you're a Buffalo Bills fan.

And.

I'm definitely not.

What's going on with the bull?

So the buffalo behind me, the reason for the buffalo. And when Mike asked about it, I said, oh, you're gonna love this. And he said, well, let me start recording. So I heard this on another podcast. I don't know the name of the podcast. There's a company. It was actually an EOS podcast. And there's about, you know, there's 15 or so little fringe EOS podcasts. And I was just getting into eos. I was listening to it, and there was this business that their entire culture was centered around Buffaloes down to. They send a bottle of Buffalo Trace to their new clients. Buffalo Trace Bourbon. Obviously, they're in some kind of heavy B2B with higher revenue than insurance. We sent, you know, Buffalo Trace to every one of our new clients. We would go out of business very fast.

And the reason why. Glad you added the bourbon on.

Yeah. The reason why is.

When a storm rolls into the Plains. Instead of running away from the storm, buffalo run into the storm because they know that that gets them through the storm the fastest. So not only does that speak to, you know, dealing with problems head on, because, I mean, I think you would agree, I mean, there's no motivational speaker that's ever existed or business consultant that's ever existed that's going to tell you to not deal with your hardest, you know, worst problems head on at the beginning of the day. But in insurance, we literally deal with storms. So as soon as I heard that, I said, by God, I have to get a buffalo painting in my office. So that's, that's the reason for the buffalo. You're the second person that's asked for, asked about it.

So that, that's a great story. And that's, you know, I'm gonna ask you another question out of left field here in a second because speaking of storms. Yeah, the storms happen all the time, but you know, it's what we do with them that makes all the difference, right?

Yep.

Because a lot of people aren't buffaloes or they're not lions, if you will. You know, lions, not sheep.

Because the ones who don't, you know, make, make forward progress in this world, run away from it. So let's be lions, not sheep. There we go. Look at Scott. He's got her done underneath. I was wearing mine this morning but, you know, I switched to my UPB license more. I love that, man. So, you know, be a buffalo, run into the storm. Right, Bradley?

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So, and it, and it's definitely something that.

I've been guilty of. I think a lot of us have, of not dealing with our hardest problems first and fast. And you know, time.

Time makes every problem worse. And I definitely have been guilty of putting stuff that I should handle on the back burner. So that's why it's in my office and we talk about it in our team meetings, but that's why it's in my office, is to remind me to handle my problems head on.

I think that's, I'm not, I tell people all the time I'm horrible at 98% of things.

And this is Scott right now.

I know what he's about to say and I agree with what he's about to say.

That is, that is one of my superpowers.

Scott's going to deal with it. He's going to jump in there, we're going to get it out in the air right now.

Yeah, we're going to jump on it as fast as I can jump on it. So one of the things I tell people all the time, Mike, is do not give problems oxygen. You know, it's like I was burning brush fires this weekend at my property because we've cleared, cleared like 30, like probably 15 acres of land. So I've got these huge brush piles. One of the ways to get a brush pile going that most people don't understand is you can put a backpack blower on your back, light the brush fire, and then give that fire oxygen with that backpack blower, just like you were blowing leaves in your front yard. And when you have clients that are upset about a claim or employees that are upset about something, the faster you can get to that and not give it oxygen, the better off you are. And unfortunately, in the industry, a lot of times people kind of take the exact opposite approach. You know, they. I'm going to wait a couple days to call them back or I'm going to. We'll talk about this problem later. And all that happens is you're giving that problem oxygen. So that brush fire is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And I just feel like the best thing to do, no matter who you are listening to this podcast right now, you know as well as I do that when you finally do get up the courage, and a lot of times that's what it is, courage to sit down and talk about a problem, whether it's with a. With a client, whether it's with an employee, whether it's with your spouse, most of the time, 95% of the time after you have that discussion, you feel better about it. You feel like this relief, this. This thing that. That's now off your shoulders. And the other part of that is when you have big problems that you need to go head first like a what, Like a buffalo towards. Once you get that thing going or it's off your plate now you have more mental energy because in the back of your mind, you're not thinking about it all the time. So you. You're taking up mental space that maybe you don't even realize thinking about that problem where if you'd have just talked about it, hey, now it's off the table. Now I can use that mental space to think about something else. Does that make sense?

Well, what happens too, is when you have a problem, let's say you get an email and there's an issue, there's some bad news that you have to deliver to a client right there. For me, there's about a 122nd window where, where my mind doesn't. I don't allow my mind to go to all the bad things that can happen. Oh, they're going to be mad and they're going to yell and they're going to cancel their business with me. I've learned myself when I have bad news to deliver to someone, I have about 120 seconds to get to it before my mind starts wondering and the anxiety sets in. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, well, I'll wait till tomorrow. So what I tell my team is if you have bad news delivered to a client, do it in the first 120 seconds, get it out of the way, and you're good after that because we've all had these problems where it just weighs on you and weighs on you and weighs on you, and then all of a sudden it becomes bigger than it is, and then you end up handling it and the person's like, okay, whatever, that's fine. I was expecting that. Right, right, right.

That's awesome. That is great information. Because our mindset's, our skillset. And what do we allow into our mind after the 120 seconds is going to start to change it?

Yeah, well, it's opportunity cost, too.

Yeah. And lots of open.

It's why I don't trade crypto. Like I buy crypto, but I have friends that they sit there and they look at the crypto screen all day long or whatever it is. It could be the stock market. And I'm like, I appreciate the validity of that, but I'm losing brain space. I'm losing opportunity cost of brain space by sitting here worrying about what the market's doing all day. I'll log in at the end of the day and look and see what my account did. I'm not going to sit here and watch it all day long.

Right.

Bradley. Bradley said it best just a second ago. The other thing that human beings do is if you don't run into that problem, your mind will start playing tricks on you and you start building up all this stuff in your mind, they're going to say this, they're going to do that, they're going to say, if you'd have just called them within 120 seconds, 130 seconds, you won't have to sit there and think about what they're going to say, because now you know what they're going to say.

But, you know, it's like personal and professional relationships. Right. I mean, what do you do personally if something blows up Personally, you go to the people closest to you right away and you deal with it.

Right? That's exactly right.

And it's the same transition because, you know, people do business with people in celebration of today, that they know love and trust.

Correct?

Right. And money follows trust. So, you know, to what Bradley said, you know, if you give them that decency and reach out to them right away, let them know what's going on, let them know that, hey, we are here for you, we're going to work through this with you right by your side. I don't have a solution right now, but I wanted to be upfront with you and let you know what's going on and we've got a plan and we're going to work right by your side with you because, I mean, I'm sure you guys hear this in everybody that you talk to, high achieving, high performing agencies out there. How often do we find out, and I found it over my 36 years that we talk to people and say, hey, I reached out to my agent, reached out to my agent. I never hear back from them. It's like crickets. It's like, how do people do business like that?

Well, and I think it's important too, from an insurance sales standpoint. I would dare to say that 90% of the problems that we deal with that make a client upset are things that are out of our control, probably either carrier related or something that a client did that was stupid, that we couldn't help. Right. And I think it's important when you deliver bad news. Portal has a pretty good retention rate. And one of the things that I attribute to that is when we have to deliver bad news to a client, we always reiterate that, hey, you would have had this problem regardless of the carrier that you're with. One of the big problems we have right now is all of our carriers, because we're coastal, are pretty strict on post bind inspections or midterm inspections and they're being super picky about things. And we reiterate like, hey, no matter the carrier we had you with, no matter the agency you were with, you were going to run into this problem. So it sort of subconsciously subliminally tells that client, like, hey, I'm not the person to blame here, don't get me. This isn't because you chose to do business with Portal, right? It's, it's, it's this, this would have happened regardless. And I think that's super important to note when you're delivering bad news to a client. Reiterate reiterate that it's not your, it's your problem. But you weren't, you're not the cause of that problem.

Absolutely. Hey Scott, by the way, next time you come out to the house, you can't do brush fires. Out of my house.

He almost burned all the woods down. You want to tell us?

Saturday night at dark I had the volunteer fire department down the street.

Mike would have started a brush fire this weekend in San Diego. He'd be in jail right now.

That's right. I wouldn't be here hosting this.

Correct. Well, I had to had the entire volunteer fire department from Brinley Mountain, Alabama in my, on my property at 6:30 Saturday night in full firefighter outfit because somebody across the mountain, or as we say here in Alabama across the holler had seen what was an optical illusion that looked like I was burning the woods down. 300 acres of woods, which I was not. But they had to come out to check that out. Anyway, I didn't hate to get off on a tangent there but can I.

Tell everybody my Max, my father's maxim about volunteer firefighters, please. So there's one distinct difference between a volunteer firefighter and I don't mean any offense to anybody who's listening to this. Your volunteer firefighter and a person that does it for a living. Person who does it for a living is getting a paycheck. People are volunteer firefighters predominantly because it's their hobby. And in 2001 ish, my parents house was struck by, still lived there as a kid. My parents house got struck by lightning. It did not catch on fire but the fire alarm went off and it was literally saying fire, fire, fire, get out. So we got out of the house and I recall my mom talking to my dad on speakerphone and he said whatever you do, do not let the volunteer firemen into our house. Meanwhile they're all standing around us and my dad was a member of that volunteer fire department. They are going to go into detail.

What they will do.

You gave a nice little bit what happens.

You know, people, people don't understand this but you let any fire department really, let's say you just have a kitchen fire, but it's, you know, it's pretty, pretty good little fire. Well, once you let the volunteer fire department knock out all the windows in your house and pour about 875,000 gallons of water into your house, the least of your problems is a fire. The bigger issue now is, and we, you know, same with, with, with you know, paid firemen as well because people don't realize when they get there and they hook up to that fire hydrant with Those, those big 12 gauge or whatever those hoses are, and they start pumping that water into your house, you got big problems.

But you get a level of. You get a level of gung ho.

Yes.

Volunteer fire.

And in fact, they are praying for a house fire.

That same volunteer fire department, the chief got in trouble because they had an exorbitant amount of calls one year and turns out he was the one setting the stuff on fire just so they could. Just so they could go in and put it out.

You know, he's in jail for arson right now.

I think he did get put in jail, but he's definitely not still in jail, I don't think.

But yeah, sorry, Mike, we're getting off on tangent.

No, no, hey, my, my question is, think about how many did you have in the house, Scott?

In my house?

No, no. How many volunteer firefighters were there Saturday night?

At least six, probably seven.

Okay, so is that a new marketing plan? Did you get all the prospect information?

There you go. There you go.

No, I did not. It was pitch black outside and I was worried they were about to call the police department on me for, you know, something that I didn't even know I wasn't supposed to be doing so.

Well, I don't, I don't know if they talk about this stuff across the holler. I picked that up. Yeah, there's things called flashlight. So, you know, always have a flashlight in hand so you can get their prospect information just quickly. Because all you want to do is help them. Right?

Right.

You want to teach them about. You want to educate them about insurance so they can be better volunteer firefighters.

I will say, Mike, you bring up a great point. As we're walking away from my brush fire back up to their trucks, which, by the way, they parked in my mother in law and father in law's driveway, which caused another issue. I look over to my left, my electrician was one of the volunteer fire department firemen that was there. And I looked at him and I go, you're my electrician. And he was like, yep, that's exactly who I am.

Awesome.

Yeah, it was. It was comical to say the least.

Well, congratulations. I'm glad nothing else burned. And you got accomplished what you set out to accomplish, as it should be. And you fought through the storm. So, you know, speaking of head walking into the storm and taking on things head on and keeping our mindset in the right place, what are you guys studying right now? Just to Do a quick add on.

That's a great question. So for me right now, I just started Saturday during my brush fire incident, because when I'm working outside, that's what I love to do, if you want to call it a hobby. Some people play golf. I work on my property doing different things. But I've started a book, and you may have been the one that gave me this. I'm not sure. But I went to Audible University, as we like to call it.

Mm.

And I downloaded the book the Road Less Stupid. And I don't know if you've read that or not. Somebody in the insurance industry, and I can't remember who it was. Might have been Chris Paradiso. Might have been. I don't remember who gave it to me, but somebody sent me a message to read this book. But it is a fantastic read, and I started that Saturday. In some books, Mike, because you're a. You go to Audible University as well. You know how some books you start and you're like, oh, this is going to be good. Really good. This is one of those books. This is one of those books where he's just spitting fire. Like, every fourth paragraph, I'm like, man, I should be writing that down right now.

Exactly.

One thing he said. It talks about.

Basically, that everyone in the world has decisions to make. You can control those decisions. Your success and your failure are going to be based on the good or bad decisions you make throughout your life. But the one thing you cannot control are the consequences of those decisions. Those are out of your purview of control. But he says, and I'm only on, like, chapter three right now. He said, it is fantastic to ask or to find out great answers or to have an answer. That's fantastic for a different. Whatever problem you're having. What's genius, though, is asking the right questions.

Amen. And that goes back to a book by the great John Maxwell. Good leaders ask great questions.

Correct.

I've taken that another step. Good leaders ask great, pointed questions and they shut up.

Right?

And it's six to one nowadays. I don't know if you guys heard that recently. It's six to one. This pie hole is the one. Two ears, two eyes, that's four. One mind, that's five. And the six. As added on by Sailor Hirsch. You guys know Sailor Hirsch, by the way.

Do not.

Oh, my gosh. I need to introduce you to her. She was on the podcast a few episodes ago. Dynamic Dynamic out of Oklahoma. She's a branding person. She said she was on podcast. She goes Mike, what about the sixth one? I said, what are you talking about?

Sayla?

She goes the heart.

There you go.

So heart, mind, two eyes, two ears and one mouth. We need to use it in that proportion. That is great stuff. I have not heard about that book and I'm going to drop the one that's severely impacted me in a positive way in a second. Bradley, what are you doing to keep your mindset in the right place, brother?

There's a couple things. I am preparing to start the journey of my CIC designation.

I am doing that, and this is a little bit of an inside joke, but I'm doing that to.

Better help my clients and better help my team help my clients not to add letters after my name on LinkedIn.

And so I'm getting ready to embark on that journey while at the same time having a brand new baby. So I'm also studying the back of my eyelids at any moment that I can. And then lastly, from a marketing social media standpoint, I am obsessively studying Instagram reels. There's a play there right now for people putting out educational Instagram reels. And so I would say those three things. And along with studying my agency, man, like, we just recently hired a fractional CFO to help us kind of get our crap in order from a back end accounting, financial standpoint. Not that it was out of order, but I would dare to say that compared to a lot of independent agencies, we're doing okay. But you know.

When I first started in this industry, I was young. I was hired at Alpha Insurance. I was the youngest agent in the company. And the way that I overcompensated for my age was being the most prepared person you would ever meet. So I learned everything about every prospect, everything about every policy I could sell them. They never met with someone that was not more prepared to sell them that product or talk to them about that product. And I wore a suit and tie to overcompensate for my age, even though I don't do anymore. And it's kind of the same thing now.

So, like he changed the suit for a beard.

I think there's going to be a play here in the next few years for agencies to acquire, especially for someone like myself who's ready to grow. I think that we live in a digital zoom world and it's a lot easier to run an agency remotely than it used to be. And I think that there's going to be a play here. So what we have to do is we have to just like young Bradley Flowers Young portal. We have to get our financial house in order, in order to be able to get ready to do that. So I've hired a CFO who's not only helping me with like book stuff, but more like best practices on how to do things and accounting and all that, all that kind of stuff. So that's really the big one, honestly. So just getting that together. That way we're, we're the most prepared when that opportunity presents itself.

By the way, one of the latest props, if you will. You guys keep dropping these. This is a gold nugget for those of you who are on the visual of the podcast. Those were some gold nuggets from both these gentlemen that just, they keep dropping them and dropping them. That's part of the reason that we just had Aaron Stocks on the podcast last episode. Because of the fact that, yes, in working with agencies all over America, I mean, some very high achieving agencies don't completely have their financial house in order. And if you are going to scale and you are going to grow, numbers don't lie, my friends. Anybody listening to this or watching this, these two gentlemen know that. But numbers don't lie and we've got to have it in order. In addition to that, you never know when that opportunity is going to surface. It could happen in the next 33 minutes. And if it surfaces and you're not ready, you know, remember our buddy Ben Franklin, right? If you're failing to prepare, you're preparing to fail. You gotta be prepared all the flipping time.

Well, and some people, you know, it's funny, like, like some people, if they knew, if they looked at what I was doing on the back end, they would think, oh, he's getting ready to sell his agency. Because I'm doing things that you have to do before you tell your agency. I couldn't be further from that. Like, in order to get to where I need to get, I have to, I have to make sure my stuff is in order before we start expanding in that capacity. But it's interesting, man. There's all kind of like, I've learned stuff that I guarantee you 99% of agents that both you and I know aren't doing. It's like everybody gets in this business. It's why people sign agreements with cluster groups that put them in a hard spot that are crap. It's because you get in and everybody's like, sell business, sell business, sell business, sell business. I don't care what it looks like, sell business, sell business. Meanwhile, you're taking a huge commission cut and all this kind of stuff, you don't think about the back end when really what we should do is we should say, hey, what decisions can I make today that 30 years from now I will thank myself when I go to sell my business? Let's start there. I'm not a huge Dave Ramsey fan, but one thing I like about Dave Ramsey is when people call and ask for advice. He says, what advice are you going to wish? What strategy are you going to Wish you did five years from now, 10 years from now? Let's ask her. Let's ask 20 year olds, 20 year from now, Sally rather than Sally right now. You know, so it's starting at the end and going backwards.

Start with the end in mind. Go ahead, Scott.

That goes back to what I said earlier. You know, you're making decisions today.

You know, you may not know what the consequences are going to be five or ten years down the road and you may not be able to control those. But we've, your level of success will, will be deeply.

Dictated by the level of decisions that you're making today. And successful people typically make great decisions. Those people that you see that maybe aren't quite as successful, maybe somewhere in the past they made some decisions that here we are 10 years later, we had it to do over again, maybe we would have done something different. So you have to be very thoughtful before you make, make especially make big decisions like, you know, I'm starting an independent agency and the different, you know, you know, Mike, the different avenues that you can go down. And I think that's one area in your coaching that you really, when you get some of these younger agents that maybe are just now getting started in the business, I feel like a lot of them can really lean on you to help them make great decisions year one, year two, year three, that will benefit them 10 years down the road.

Absolutely.

Just to know where you stand. So, like one example I give is I hired the CFO in December and it was Kerry Wallace, by the way.

She's my fractional cfo. And I was very.

Disappointed in what our percentage profit was that we brought home compared to the gross revenue. I thought it was low. And I get on a call with her and I mentioned what our margin was and she said, Bradley, you're a three year agency. That's phenomenal. She's like, I've got an agency right now that is doing.

99% of things very well. They're five years in, they're not even profitable yet. She's like, a good agency's At X percentage, I think we were 4% lower than. So, um, so it just. Just having that person to lean on makes all the difference in the world of, like, oh, okay, I'm good, because it took. It completely flipped my attitude. Right.

That's. That is great information. Thank you for sharing that as an encouragement for everybody. I mean, gold nugget after gold nugget after gold nugget, they're dropping. But to piggyback on something that Bradley said, I'm going to drop two things and I'm going to let you go, Scott, because I know you're itching here, but absolutely there are contracts out there, cluster agreements. I mean, we've got a coaching member that I got to, you know, help with one. And it was like, they'll never get out from the under. They'll never get out from under it. So ultimately, what I want to encourage people to do is make sure that you reach out to somebody who might be closer to the end and get that advice before you sign on the dotted line. If you're listening or watching this, please, please, please. The other experience that I've been privileged to have in my journey so far is having studied under a couple of real billionaires and grown up with one of their businesses. What I learned is the cfo. And we as entrepreneurial people out there in the world, we should only be doing the things that only we can do, and then surround ourselves with other people like Bradley's, alluding to the fractional cfo, and. And let them run with the things that only they can do, their expertise, and that's the essence of a team. But what I remember from the CFO that I was dealing with in this now $1.3 billion company that was a client as well, I identified in their financial statement. I said, hey, who are these people? These people? These people. I haven't seen them before. They said, oh, my credit facilities. I just turned about $150 million all of the time to grow the business. And I thought, aha. That's what I learned from the first billionaire that I studied under. Live back 15, 18 years ago. He said the same thing. OPM, OPM, OPM. But if you don't get your financial house in order, those OPM people are saying, hey, take a walk down the road to Scott Hound's property and you can watch the brush fires burning and come back when you get your financial house in order.

You down with opm, Scott?

I'm down with opm.

Yeah.

Well, I was just going to add that for 2022. My goal is to get a lot better at what we call in this industry best practices. I think that's an area where a lot of insurance agents fall short, and I'm one of them. And that includes things like, you know, cost per employee, cost per policy, you know, making sure we know day to day what our retention ratio is per producer for the agency. Life hack for you guys. Take what your W2 said this year. If you're s corporation, you may have distributions as well. Add all that together. Whatever your, whatever your income is, divide that by 2080. So let's say.

What you'll get from that number, Whatever, whatever you made last year personally, not your agency, but personally divide that by the number 2080.

Just for those who don't know, Scott, what is that?

That's the 40 hour work week. You know, take that out over a year. That's 2080. That's going to give you guys the number, your hourly cost. So for me, that's about $120 an hour. What does that do for you guys? It lets you know the next time you're working on something that isn't equal to $120 an hour. For Scott, that you probably don't need to be working on that. That needs to be delegated because my. My cost per hour is about $120 an hour. Now, each one of you, very simple calculation, can figure out what that number is.

Let's say you make six.

Huh?

I'm kidding.

So if you made $50,000, if your W2 or what you're reporting to the Internal revenue service is $50,000 this year for 2021 divided by 2080.

Then you're at about $24 an hour. So anything less than that, you probably don't. You need to be delegating that.

And that's what Scott's trying to say. Because if you can then take. Let's say there's a task, and you can then take that task. If you make $24 an hour, you can take that task and delegate it for 12.

It makes sense to do that. You know, the biggest scam that was ever taught to people in this world, whether it be from school or from the status quo or the way we've always done things, is identify your weaknesses and try to improve them. Yep, that is incorrect. What you should try to do is you should identify your weaknesses, recognize them, be self aware enough to know what you are weak at, and then hire, outsource, or delegate around those weaknesses. Then you identify your strengths and Figure out what can I do to double down on these strengths. Now, where you get into tricky water is when there is something that you like to do, but you are actually not strong enough or strong enough at that task to do it. Recognizing that, to me, that's when you go from just a real boss to a leader and a company owner to a CEO, where you can say, hey, I like doing this task, but I'm not really good at it, so I'm going to outsource it.

Yeah, yeah. And you and I will say, as far as weaknesses go, you'll hear people like Gary Vaynerchuk talk about this. Like, you need to know enough about it to be dangerous. You know, just be. Just because Bradley outsourced his, you know, fractional cfo, he still needs to know enough about. You don't need to be like, well, I don't understand a P and L, right, guys, there's 5,000 books, YouTube videos. There's not a whole lot of excuse making you can have anymore. You know, we got, what, 15 or 20, like, remarkable podcasts, like this UPP podcast where people can listen. That's one of the things that pisses me off the most about insurance agents, is when they stick their fingers in their ears. Kind of Bradley says, stick their fingers in their ears and they go, I don't know.

There's just too much information out there for you not to know. Go figure it out. Don't just sit there with your. Sit on your hands and be like, I don't know how to do that. Well, hell, there's probably 25 podcasts out there right now. You go listen to. And I mean, Carrie Wallace comes on our podcast about a month ago, and she just shucks the corn down on agency valuations. And. But then you go talk to an A. I don't understand agency valuations. Well, hell, go listen to the podcast. Take notes.

Yeah, I've got a little button below my desk, but it's not working right now. I need to get a new one. It's called a BS button. That's. We have all these visuals. You've seen two fingers come up and all this kind of stuff. That's hitting the BS button.

Correct. There's too much information out there, Mike.

Oh, yeah. I mean, and the other thing is just from. From a business standpoint, period, whether it be the insurance agency business or otherwise, today's modern consumer, they are smarter than they've ever been.

Absolutely.

And they're gonna call BS on you if you don't have your act together. Or the OPM people or, or, or on how you scale your business.

You know, you know who hit the first, the first time it hit, really hit before it got to us was car dealerships where people were getting on the Internet and they were spending five, 10 hours researching what they ought to be paying for this car, where.

That'S one of them. And then they would go to the dealership and these dealerships kept acting like they were going to play the shell game and people were like, I know what ought to be paying for this car. I'll pay 41,000 for it or I'm leaving.

Yep.

And now, now it's kind of come into the insurance world as well where people are more educated, they have more places to go to research and who's the best carrier and customer, especially in harder markets.

In a market like I'm in, I would put me against anybody else in the country as far as our because like the insurance is so difficult to get here. People learn and know way more about it than I think they do in other areas. I would agree that aren't as hard of a market to, to buy and sell insurance in.

And just be clear because of, you know, I'm older than you guys and maybe a little bit more experience in some areas at the ultimately there is more money out there in the United States of America than there's ever been in the history of the world. And a lot of the people that have a lot of this money, they understand the value of an agent, yes. A consultant to stand by their side through the thick and thin and Bradley's market in the, you know, fire laden Western United States, they know the value and they're going to pay extra money to have that person know love and trust to stand by their side through this. They understand that. But ultimately you got to put it on the table and help them understand. Bigger than that, you got to prove to them that you are of value. As we begin to move to wrap on this guys, I mean this is great stuff. I want to add two things and then I want to hear you guys for just a couple of minutes talk about the future of the insurance guys podcast. And again, just a couple of minutes, I'll give you a couple minutes each what your vision is for the future. Make sure that you drop the information so people can find you and don't be one of the people with the fingers in the ears. Like Bradley says, make sure you get out there and study the clues that have been left. Success leaves clues.

Correct.

And my great encouragement for you Guys, the book that I'm digesting right now, I cannot put this thing down. It's Shoe Dog by Phil Knight.

Talk about lessons, talk about fighting through stuff. I mean, unbelievable. I mean, I'm almost to the end of it. I'm like, I'm ready. So he just got done knocking down the federal government in that battle. So, I mean, great, great study that will encourage anybody. So, you know, because of my audio learning love, and I've shifted my life, so I'm getting a good 45 minutes a day into my head to make sure that I'm properly positioned to be able to better help people, you know, so this may or may not be attractive to some people out there, but Sam Walton, I'm going to go start studying that one. I mean.

Sam Walton showed up in Hamilton, Alabama. Yeah. Yeah. So listen to this story, Mike. When I was about 8, 9, 10 years old, I guess I was about 10 or 11, I lived in a town called Hamilton, Alabama, the mobile home capital of the world. We have more mobile homes manufactured in Marion County, Alabama. Hamilton, Alabama. Well, it got announced that we were getting a Walmart, and they build the Walmart. You know, back then that was a big deal to get a Walmart in your little small town in Alabama. And so they have the grand opening that day, and there's thousands of people there, and everybody's at the grand opening. This guy pulls up to the grand opening of Walmart in Hamilton, Alabama, and about a 1976 Chevrolet truck. And he gets out and it's this old man, and he's walking around and he's looking at everything, and somebody comes up to him and says, you know, can we, can we help you, sir? Just thought he was some farmer from around Hamilton. Get guess, guess who it was Sam Walton. Sam Walton, Wow. Yep.

So did you actually meet him?

I don't remember if I did or not.

Okay.

I remember it was big. It was big doings in Hamilton, Alabama, to get a Walmart.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And building any company, whether it be a. A smaller business, and your goal is not to become, you know, prolific and huge like that. I mean, what I learned from Phil of Nike through my study is he didn't necessarily intentionally.

Think it was going to become as big as it did almost as quickly as it did, but it did, and it's going to happen. So we've got to position ourselves for that. And I want to make sure I drop some information for everybody out there. There's a site, and I'm sure you guys are familiar with this Reagan Consulting. So just Google Reagan Consulting best practices study. It's online for you. It's, you know, they do an annual study of the best agencies out there in America. There's normally about 200 of them and we're privileged that we've had a couple of them in our platinum coaching circles. And you can self evaluate to an extent, you can identify the numbers and the characteristics of your agency business that you need to have in place so that you can be the best of the best, which is always our goal. Right guys? Speaking of the best of the best, I'm going to jump to the question that I had for you as we begin to wrap today.

Couple of minutes each of you and I'll go to Bradley first the bull and what's your future vision for the insurance guys podcast? How can people find you guys and what is the greatest lesson you've learned so far in putting out this amazing podcast?

I'll need a couple hours to think of that. So as far as future, like Scott and I, like, we don't have this like big grandiose business plan and we're going to create this podcast and then it's going to become a funnel for whatever and then we're going to sell for 32 times EBITDA. Like that's never been kind of like. And he and I may give different answers on this. My thing with the podcast is like we're just going to keep out putting out quality content. If the listenership went to zero tomorrow, we would still do it because what it does is it allows Scott and I to be connected to individuals like yourself. And that's how we started is we would pick guests that we wanted to get connected with, right? So Scott and I getting on a call with Chris Paradiso and saying, hey, we want to pick your brain like you. And all three of us know Chris is going to say yes to that. But most of the Chris Paradiso's of the world, like, who are these two numb nuts from Hamilton, Alabama and Saraland? I'm not going to talk to them. But hey, we have a podcast. It's a little bit of a different conversation. So I say that to say we're just going to keep putting out content. We're going to try to help agents. People have no idea how much thought we put into the guests to make sure they are. And that's what the article in Roughnecks Today talks about is, you know, we put a lot of thought into our guest is are they right for the audience and making sure there's no BS delivered.

But you know, back in the 80s, 90s, early 2000s, people would write books to open doors. A lot of authors will tell. And you've written a book, very good book, by the way. I recommend it to a lot of people. A lot of people tell you books aren't profitable, but what books do is they open doors. This podcast is the book for us. It's the door opener. So I'm an insurance agent first. Scott's an insurance agent first. We use the podcast to help our insurance agencies. So that's kind of, that's kind of that. As far as what I've learned.

I think it's that everybody is an expert in some arena and you just have to figure out what that is. You know, initially when we started, agents would reach out to me and they would ask me a question to help them with something. And it gave me a lot of anxiety in the beginning because I'm like, I have a really small agency I don't deserve. And so then what I figured out through trial and error is if I only talk about things that I know I'm the expert in, that's what people are going to ask. And I'm never going to give someone advice that I otherwise wouldn't feel comfortable giving, you know what I mean? Because there's a lot of yahoos out there, Mike, that are giving advice on areas they're not an expert in, but they're just silver tongued enough to make you think you're an expert and you're not. I mean, there's people giving advice about insurance agencies who have never run an insurance agency. And while yes, there's still some validity to that, like I'd rather talk to the person that did it, you know, So I think just learning to, learning what you're an expert in, learning to trust yourself. Trust myself. That's kind of, I would say is the biggest lesson.

More gold nuggets. I mean they just keep coming and keep coming and coming.

Mike's holding that thing so close to the camera, I'm about to see my reflection in it.

Well, so here's what I want you to see the reflection and I'm going to go to you. I mean, this is what you're after right here. Your acre of diamonds, baby. This is your agency and you just got to keep polishing that puppy and polishing it, Scott.

So our IProtect 2022 sales meeting that we had in December, the the title of that sales meeting was Think bigger. And I think for myself, Bradley and I have never had this conversation, Mike. So this is some real inside baseball for your listeners today.

I think that Bradley and I, based on where we came from and where we are today, we've got to think bigger. I think we're meant for more in this industry than just a podcast. I think that there's some tremendous opportunities out there for us in different areas. I don't really know exactly what that's going to be, so I can't sit here. But one of the things I will challenge each and every one of the people that are listening to this show today is think bigger. That was the mantra of our sales meeting this year, was.

I think sometimes we fall into that because people don't like to change, so they just keep doing the same thing. Same thing. But I think my agency needs to think bigger about what we're capable of doing and where we're. Where we can go with this agency. And I think this podcast, our podcast, needs to think bigger. I think we have a tremendous opportunity. We've proven ourselves in the industry. We do it every day. We're doing the same thing all your listeners are doing as far as running an agency. And I think we have a tremendous opportunity to do something bigger than just the podcast, and I think that's kind of the direction we're going to be heading.

Yeah. And we don't know what that is. Yeah, we don't. But, yeah, there definitely is something. There definitely is something in the future for us in the industry beyond the podcast. But for right now, we're going to keep doing the podcast and just see what happens, you know?

Yeah, but to an extent, you just did, because, I mean, we're kind of up against the clock here. But, I mean, where did the One World Tour start in your mind, and how long did it take to make it reality?

Scott gave me the idea, I told him it was dumb, and then it ended up not being basically. You want to tell the story, Scott?

Yeah. Yeah. I don't remember. I just know that it was a very humbling experience to get that many great agencies in one room and that many great speakers, and it was just, you know, I think it was just something that, again, you've got to think bigger, and you can't just limit yourself. You know, the next thing is, how do I get 5,000 people.

To Denver, Colorado, Nashville, Tennessee, or Dallas, Texas, which is our three choices for the one city world tour?

I don't.

I don't.

I don't want 150 people there. I want 5,000 agents there.

Yeah. That's.

That's what I'm talking about. Always thinking bigger in terms of what this thing can become. And I think we've proven with the One City World Tour, if you were there, you would know that it was a fantastic event. But now how do we get to that next level? How do we fill up Bridgestone Arena? How do we fill up? You know, I would love to fill up an entire football stadium if we could.

I would love to talk about it. And let me give you some feedback. And I'm going to give you direct feedback. You may or may not want to hear this, but, you know, once you make that decision, start out as fast as you can and make sure you let all of us know. Because, you know, frankly, I'm not paying attention to social media all day long. I'm like, Bradley, I don't pay attention to my investment accounts all day long. I mean, I do what I have to do. I've got a specific agenda to be able to grow. So, yeah, let everybody know as fast as possible. Let me know so we can get it out to our networks, et cetera, et cetera.

So we're definitely going to keep doing it. I don't necessarily want to be in the event space, but if I can do other things, if we can do other things and have the event be ancillary to that, you know.

It.

Did add a lot of value to both Scott and I's lives.

I have. I told Scott, I was like, we need to make sure the budget next year has room for us to hire an event planner. So if anybody's out there that's an event planner that's interested in organizing an insurance event next year, hit me up.

I would love to chat with you guys because I can help. So. And I want to help you guys at every opportunity. So let me know.

Event planning. We just started another business.

There it is. There we go.

So, guys, Bradley Flowers get portable insurance. Scott Howell. I protect insurance. You guys rock. These are the insurance guys of the podcast world. Check out the insurance guys podcast. Phenomenal, phenomenal content. And I will suggest that we are positioned for this podcast 2.0 because there's so much that we didn't get to today. They just kept dropping gold nugget after gold nugget after gold nugget. And here's the bottom line for everybody out there as we wrap today. The power of love and giving comes back tenfold, 100%. So if you can't figure out where to start today, just go find a way to give to somebody else and everything else will take care of itself. You guys continue to give. Thank you for giving. Thank you for being on the podcast today, guys. You guys rock.

I love you more, Mike.

Thanks, Mike.

No, I love you more, brother. All right, everybody. Hey, if you enjoyed the podcast today, make sure you go to unstoppableprofitpodcast.com subscribe so you don't miss one valuable episode. It's also out there on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, stitcher, and our YouTube channel. Just go to Unstoppable Profit Producer. Click on videos and you can see all the episodes and the live visual. All right, everybody, have a phenomenal one of a kind day. Get out there, make a difference, Be unstoppable. Leave no regrets. And remember this. You got this because we believe in you. We'll see you next time, everybody. Thank you for listening. If you would like to listen to more episodes or share this podcast with someone you care about, please visit www.unstoppableprofitpodcast.com. now go out and make a difference. Be unstoppable and leave no regrets.