Episode 19 : Special Guest Jesse Parenti

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. This podcast will give you all the tools to grow your business and live life on your terms. Millionaire agents and entrepreneurs think and act differently than others. This podcast will give you a simple, proven three step blueprint to grow your business. Over the past 31 years of research in your industry, Mike Stromso has created a unique philosophy called the three people process and promotion. This outside the box thinking and guidance provides agency entrepreneurs just like you the knowledge and tools you can quickly implement to explode your agency business. He has been there, done that, and he's still doing it. 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.

Greetings everybody. This is Mike Stromco coming to you live from the Living Agency Laboratory. And we want to welcome you to another episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. Today. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a very special treat for you. It took us a long time to get this man on the phone because he is just absolutely killing it right now. And we are so proud to know him, to be able to stand by his side. Today we have got for you the amazing, the unstoppable Mr. Jesse Parenti. Jesse, how are you doing this morning?

Doing fabulous. Thank you for having me on today.

Well, no, thank you and welcome to the podcast. I can't wait. I've been uber excited since we were able to book this a couple of months ago to get you on and to dive in further into some things that we've never really talked about before. And I'm excited to share this with other people because ultimately, at the end of the day, and I know your heart is in the same place that we are both so fortunate and we just want to give back more.

Absolutely, yeah.

Jesse, I'm going to let you just give a quick intro on yourself and what I'd like you to do is obviously you're Jesse Parenti, but tell us the name of your agency and where you're located geographically and any other tidbits you'd like to add and then we'll get started this morning.

Well, my name is Jesse Parenti. I am a partner for the Stratton Agency, FOIA and Associates. We are located, I manage the office in Northern California in the Roseville area by Sacramento. I've been part of the agency now for almost seven years and I've been in the insurance industry for almost 14 years now.

Fantastic. And what a ride it's been so far, eh?

Yes.

And what I think is great is the amount of acceleration and change that has happened in my life in the last five to six years. And it's really amazing how much a mind shift can change things. And more importantly, being dedicated to your craft every day will change your opportunities.

So dedicated to your craft, mindset change and some other things you just mentioned. I'm going to go off course here and that's what we do in these podcasts. A lot of so all of this change, all of this betterment, all this progress, all this amazing success that you've had, more so in the last five, six, seven years. What other things do you contribute to that? I mean, you said changing your mindset and some other shifts, but what else?

Well, I think one of the biggest things for me is daily habits. One of the things that I, I challenged myself with and I learned that I was causing my own problems, getting in my own way, and it really came down to some simple basic principles of One of the things I do now is I plan my entire week on Sunday. I already have things booked anywhere from three weeks out, but I always have gaps in the day and we always can get stuck in time or distracted. Everything in our life is a distraction. So now what I tend to do is I block time much more methodically, I'm much more aggressive on it. My staff will even tease me because they'll see me block anywhere from 5 to 15 minute increments. But I now very specifically start my day with reading my goals. Then I go into looking at my email, then I do my activities and then I stop no later than about 9:00', clock, 9:30 every morning and I start getting either into money making, activities, training, empowerment, anything. I can help either my staff make more money and improve their skill set or help my own pipeline, which ultimately is helping me bring revenue to the agency.

Wow, that's fantastic. So any other nuts and bolts? Because I get this question all the time. In working with some of the most successful agents in America, people want to know, tell us some nuts and bolts about how you run every single day. You shared a lot of that. Thank you. Your daily habits, from reading your goals to knocking out email. Speaking of email, do you look at email all day long or is that something that you strategically plan to do throughout the day?

Yeah, that's something that was a huge change for me. I do not look at email all day long anymore. I do not Let email control my time. I also realize that in the response, when you get an email and you immediately respond to someone, whether it's urgent or not, you set an expectation for your clients that becomes unrealistic if you actually grow your book of business and your agency. So what I do now is I strategically look on my email for no more than an hour in the morning and no more than an hour in the afternoon. I'm also in my agency management system, we run everything through activities. So my staff will put activities in my name that I either need to take action on or respond to them and get back to them, which helps them continue to move forward in their workflow. I do not slow them down on what they need. This morning I had my renewal meeting with my staff and I have a couple new staff members and I was explaining to them why we have these renewal meetings and more importantly why I do them 120 days out before the renewal. My staff usually will not be working a renewal until about 90 days before. And I said the reason I want to be in front of them at 120 days is you need work from me, you're going to need something from me. And I am way too busy to actually learn about that the 90 day mark and actually get back to you in 24 hours. So what I ask my staff is give me the respective understanding that we need to. I need 30 days to get my work done for you so that you can stay on top of your renewal process. And more importantly, we can get back in front of our clients with their either renewals or their proposals on a 30 to 45 days before. And we don't have any last minute work that's bad for us if we're last minute, it's bad for my insured, it's bad for my staff. So for me, I'm all about proactive behaviors, doing things that as far advanced as possible so I can keep my team doing their work and more importantly, helping them be as efficient as they need be. And then in return, I'm never stressed out about what needs to be done because now I'm controlling the time, I'm controlling what needs to be done and everyone's in a much happier place. My insureds are happy because nothing's last minute. My account managers are happy because nothing's last minute. My carriers are happy because nothing's last minute. And more importantly, I'm not absorbing stress from any of them because it is last minute. So that's a huge thing that we've changed and I've been doing it with my staff for a couple years, but it was really cool to get that aha from my new team members this morning because they said no one's ever talked to them about that. Purpose of why 120 days versus 90. I look at it at that point, they're now working at 90 days. If I got it at 90 days, I might not get back to them at 60 days. And now they're behind the gun and everyone's chasing the renewal. That's a lose lose.

Wow, that is phenomenal. Thank you for sharing such details. So ultimately, at the end of the day, it's proactive versus reactive.

Would you agree? 100%. I feel that I can't say everybody, but unfortunately, more than 90% of people in our industry do not work in a proactive state. They're always working in a reactionary state. And more importantly, it's this constant reactionary expectation that their clients have. So the clients are reactionary, we're reactionary, and everyone's in a stressful environment. When you're proactive, you now changed how the insured is used to doing business. You change how they think about working with you. They think about differently in how they do transactions with you. And more importantly, they start learning that, hey, just because the insurance might be the last minute on something they need, that's not how we work. And we want to be advised 30, 60 days before change happens, especially on a business relationship. We're partners. I'm not your insurance broker. We're a business partnership. I strategically help you, just like your CPA does, your attorney does. I'm a trusted advisor. And the only way that we can protect you is to do things ahead of time. Last minute doesn't work for anybody.

Fantastic. So ultimately, if anybody listening to this is in any type of leadership position, whether it be ultimately the owner, agency leader, or a department leader, what have you, the thought that people are silently waiting to be led, you would agree.

That that's true 100%. People want to do something better and a more effective way. One of the things that we really embrace with our organization is we always are trying to improve. I don't care if the head of our company created something. If an entry level employee can actually see a better way of doing it, we believe in improving it. And I don't care what it is, Our COO literally counts clicks on a mouse. If it takes five clicks and he can get it down to three, we just saved time and became more efficient. We're always trying to Improve what we're doing, open door process. And you've got to have open communication between leadership and your staff. Your staff may have the answers and you need to be willing to listen to it to improve.

Could not agree more. That is fantastic. Together everybody achieves more. Is the definition of team.

Yup.

What else in your daily nuts and bolts? Before we jump onto a couple of other questions for you. So you control your email, you control your time, you read your goals before you do anything else. And what else do you do in your life to keep your energy up? Because one thing that I know about you, you are a high power, high energy person.

Where does that come from?

It's a little bit natural. I will also say I'm thankful to my wife, keeping me in balance, my diet. And it's also mindset. You need to come in with the mindset that you love your job and that you're going to kick its butt every day. And I really believe that if you have your goals clearly defined and I believe that you and I talk about this, you've got to have your bhags, your big, hairy, audacious goals. You also need to have small ones. I believe one of the big things that we've also implemented this year, and I did last year, but it's been much more effective this year, is the PX3 or skim books. My team loves them. The whole purpose about them is not only for them to improve on what they need for their business goals, but I also encourage their volunteering goals, their personal goals, whether they're married or in a relationship, whether they want to improve something on an individual basis, this is helping them be accountable as a team to each other. And it's been getting better and better every month. And I think it's awesome because it's something that I know to do, but to really have my team members embracing it and having them understand that all I want to do is create an environment that you become the best individual you can be. And hopefully I create an environment that you never want to leave. And that's what we try to do every day. And I believe that if I help my staff become the best they can be, whether organization, their personal life, and hopefully in their volunteering life where they're giving it back, whether it be time, money, energy, whatever they're passionate about, I want them giving back. We actually give our staff two paid days a year to give back and we help encourage it because we all know that paying it forward is the only thing that matters in this life.

That is fantastic. So they get two paid days per year to go out and give back through volunteering and whatnot. Yeah.

And we actually encourage them to take pictures, do video, and then we use it on a. I mean, I would say it's a marketing aspect, but that's not the purpose we do it. We actually just show that we pay it forward in our community and we want to be able to socially show it. So if they're social proof, video, pictures, anything, we use it on all of our medias. LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and then we also have a news page on our website that if you actually want to see what our team members are doing, here's it is. And I remember it's also part of our bonus structure. It really encouraged our team members to do this when they never thought about it before. And I really don't care what it is. If you're passionate and you want to be with dogs and cats and be at a shelter, I'm all about it. If you want to help the elderly, I'm all about it. If you want to help vets, I'm all about it. Whatever you're passionate about, I want to help you get behind and we'll financially support you. Wow, that is fantastic.

So through their passion, you're fueling a passion for giving back first. And to get anything in this world.

You got to give first, right? Absolutely. Got to give before you receive.

That's right. That's fantastic, man. I can keep this conversation going, but I've got two burning questions that I want to. I want everybody to hear the answers to. Thank you so much for giving today, Jesse.

Thank you so much. Like I said earlier, Mike, I feel blessed to finally be in a position to be able to help other people after hundreds of people helped me in my career. And it's just. I just feel blessed that I finally have this opportunity.

Well, you're doing it, man. So congratulations on doing the work and doing whatever it takes. And I saw you put something out recently, recently to somebody who joined the EPP family. And your comment was very candid and telling. And it says, get ready to work. And that's the bottom line. You got to do the work first before the rest comes. And we've Learned together the 10,000 hour rule, correct?

Yeah. Well, it's funny to add to that. It's interesting. Whether you're religious or not, God opens doors, but you have to walk through it and do the work. Just because you prayed about it or asked for it doesn't mean it's going to happen. Everything in life is hard and if you don't accept that, you'll learn it. And if you don't accept it and learn it, then you're going to have challenges in life. But I realized like anything you put in the work tenfold comes in return. And that's once again I look at it, if I continue to pay forward, I don't worry about anything else. Everything else will take care of itself because that's the right thing that needs to be done.

Absolutely. I'm looking at one of my favorite all time quotes from the amazing, unstoppable Les Brown. He said, if you do what is easy, your life will be hard. But if you're willing to do what's hard, your life will be easy. So we don't have any magic bullets, we don't have any magic pills or silver bullets or anything like that. You got to do the work. So congratulations on doing that.

Anybody listening to this may be asking themselves, why should I be listening to Jesse Parenti? Well, let me tell you why and.

I'm going to give you a shout out.

Short, concise, accurate, 100% factual reason. He is a real million dollar revenue sales producer.

If that's of interest to you. I'm going to ask Jesse a couple questions and I will just let him go. And he's so kind and transparent. We're grateful for that.

Without getting into too much detail about his success and niches, I thought that I would go right to the core of what has helped him develop that. And so Jeff, what would you say to an agent who might just be starting out, maybe as a producer in an agency or an agency principal trying to develop something special? And so what would you say to that agent who is just starting out, who wants to be a niche player?

First off, I would say you have to love it. And I would say more importantly, hopefully you have a story behind it. A little bit behind. How I fell into my first specialty space was I always tell people I was born into food. My family's first generation Italians, from running grocery stores to restaurants to meat brokerages, I literally was in the food industry my entire life until I became a young adult, started working in industry and worked in the hospitality and restaurant industry for over 25 years. And it was a life change that I had happened where I was on vacation, my dad, and I was like, dad, I want to buy a restaurant. And he politely laughed at me and said, we will never work in that space again because you pretty much live there seven days a week. It's Just too hard. You don't want that life and we don't want to continue to be there. And my dad, previously, I want to say five, six years earlier, had changed from the meat brokerage industry into the insurance industry. And he was killing it. Part of his luck. I mean, it was the time of the late 90s where you couldn't even get homeowners insurance in California. And he was literally having people banged on his door because he had a great product. When the opportunity came to me almost 10 years later about getting insurance, I don't know what it was, but I was ready for a change. I really had to see my family. I hadn't been home in 10 years, on a weekend or a holiday, and I was ready for something that needed change. When I first got licensed, I was doing insurance. I was actually really successful because I was doing home and auto, mostly because I understood the mortgage industry at the time was that's where people were making money. And I had a great relationship with mortgage lenders and I was writing a lot of business. I was not happy. That is when my mind shift started to change, when I learned that you could not just do personal insurance, but that you could do commercial. And then from commercial insurance you actually could write restaurants. And then from there my whole mindset was, well, if you can write restaurants, what if I just specialize in restaurants? And I became a sponge and you know, Mike, I mean, literally from the point that I met you to where we are, I'm always absorbing, absorbing, absorbing, absorbing, absorbing and learning. And it becomes a situation of asking questions, not having fear, and realizing that if I'm on the right insurance and I want to do business with people, I want to do business with people that I really like, that like me, we have a commonality. So I'm totally comfortable in the space and the insurance product will come along with it. And after writing business in the space, luck happened. And I went from writing mom and pop style restaurants, a couple fine dining style restaurants, to I wrote my first pizza delivery operation. And when pizza delivery came about, I actually had a program director that took me under her wing and in the process of taught me how to write the industry, what was expected, what was needed, and then gave me direction on who to go after and how to go write it. I think two plus years after that happened, more luck happened and the wholesaler that I worked with wanted to get out of the space and asked me do we want to buy. And six months to a year later, through negotiations, me actually leaving my own family's agency I joined the current agency that I'm with now. We made our first acquisition and I went from being, I think I had about 30 pizza delivery operators to we pushed to God over five or six hundred within one week. And I became one of the smallest fish, but one of the big five in the pizza delivery space in the United States. And we've now grown that multiple times since. But really it all came from passion. It came from something I loved. It came from people I wanted to work with. And that's where I tell anyone, if you want to get insurance, you can work with your friends and family like we all learned and did. But from there, if you're going to do personal lines, specialize in personal lines and do high net worth personal lines. But if you're going to do commercial insurance, which is just, I mean in my opinion commercial is a lot sexier and funner than personal lines. But that's just myself. I know people like Bob Klee that crushes it and he's one of the best people in the United States that does personal line. So you got to have the passion, you got to have what turns you on. Because from that point on back to the 10,000 hours we were just talking about, now you got to work, now you got to learn, now you gotta put in the time. And I'm talking if you're putting in a 40 hour week every week on one topic, it's gonna take you three and a half years straight. So even if you don't do four years a week, it may take you four or five years. And that's what I will tell people. It took me a good five years to finally feel confident. And then from that point on the confidence is obviously surpassed and we've done what we've done. But it was one of those things of learning and tweaking.

It was also a change in how we sold you. And I've talked about this. We don't quote business. We come in with a consultative approach and in the process of we take broker record letters or agent record letters that basically allows us to get hired, we do the work, we get paid when we finish our work. I don't worry about getting paid. I want to do the right thing for the client. And by doing the right thing for the client means we don't get paid for 3, 4, 6, 12 months. It doesn't matter. It's the end result on what's the best thing for the insured. We earn trust and credibility from that. And that is where we have long term Success.

I remember walking down the hall at the Million Dollar Sales Producer boot camp this year, and you were out there on the phone. You were at a teaching break. You were teaching the event, but you were at a break and you were on the phone with a potential prospect. And I couldn't help but just stand there and listen in awe about how you handled that. And you were basically telling the guy, look, this is the way we do business. If you don't want to do business this way, good luck. That's not what you said, but that's what you meant by what you said. I asked you what happened on the call later on, and you said he came around and agreed to do it our way.

It's back to the mindset, right? Yeah.

The unfortunate factor is our consumer doesn't understand how our transactions really should work. They think it's more like a real estate transaction. So you have to change and educate them on really what you do differently and how you do it differently. To add to what your point was, is I was literally getting leveraged by another broker. They were not going to give me broker record letters. I told them, I'm stopping doing my work. And the long, the short was I told them, if you believe they're doing their best job, I'm going to let them do their best job. I'm going to come in 30 days after the fact and then show you that we're going to do things better. And he 100% agreed. So their renewal literally is coming through in the next week. We're touching base the first month of July, and I'll be proposing to him by probably September 1st and probably taking the entire count over.

Wow. Fantastic. Congratulations.

I wrote a lot of notes on what you just said, but ultimately, I believe the first one, and a really, really important one, is the day we stop learning, is the day we stop growing. And what I'm hearing from you as an ongoing message is you keep learning, and as you keep learning, things keep happening and good things. And you mentioned that maybe luck was involved.

No, no, no.

Luck is where preparation meets opportunity. Because through your continuing to get better.

You'Re preparing yourself to win.

So congratulations.

I agree. When I get good luck, we make our own opportunities. Things don't come to you because you got lucky. Opportunity presents itself because you've put in the work.

Right, Right. And I know you know that, but I want to be clear for our audience that.

You create the opportunity bigger than that. You prepare yourself for that opportunity every day, in every way, if you choose to do so. Way to go man. I got another question for you. We could probably go on for hours about these subjects and thank you for.

Sharing.

This person who might be a new producer or a newer agent in the industry and if you were coaching them and you've done such a phenomenal job, you've spoken at our boot camps, you co lead the million dollar sales producer boot camps and you do a phenomenal job. So if you are coaching this newer agent or producer to be the dominant authority in risk management and HR to get the bov, share with us a few tips and mindset thought processes surrounding that. And the reason I created that question is because what I know about you and what I've learned from you, thank you for teaching me continually. But share with anybody listening to this.

Some nuts and bolts on that and what they might want to be doing to begin to position themselves in that realm.

Make sense? Absolutely. For me it all started from what is your value proposition? So what you need to actually understand when you are basically being interviewed by a prospect, what is it that you are bringing to the table that is going to want them to hire you and fire their current broker? So for us it was strategically putting together a proposal that really is a one pager and it is as simple as okay. I am an insurance broker and one of the things I take pride on is my annual education. I spend at least 40 to 50 hours a year fine tuning my craft to become the best I can as a risk manager in the space that I work in with you. When I leverage that and explain that the average insurance broker does that one time and they are only doing C based on the requirements, they're doing the minimum they can do and they're not the expert that you're hiring them to be. So there I start creating what's called the wedge and I want to actually create the mindset of the person I'm talking to of I'm not ever going to talk bad about who their current broker or agent is. What I will do is by clearly identifying areas that I have concerns about, allow them to come up with their own resolution that their current situation needs to change. Whether they choose to hire me or go back to their current broker and address certain things, that's up to them. What I really am big about is having people create their own doubts without me talking bad about it. So with our value proposition we really were big. And this started off as a third party situation. We internally now have a human resources and OSHA safety company. It did not start off that way. It Started off with me having a relationship with the Golden Gate Restaurant Association. I wanted to do something different and do trainings. They referred me to a company called HR Ideas and introduced me to the principal of that company and said, hey, this insurance broker wants to do this. This person does our ocean safety trainings for the city of San Francisco. You guys might have a good relationship. That relationship of us strategically helping each other solve each other's problems. For seven years, we worked together as basically referral partners, nothing more. I made money only on when I closed business, vice versa. Same with her. We did not give each other fees. We just purely had trust. And it came from that. That was when my beginning mind shift changed on, wow, you need to have something more to bring than just insurance. Then from there, with Stratton, we have technology. So we leverage multiple decks of technology, technological platforms that we can give to our clients or provide at a discounted rate for solutions they need. For our driver platform, we built a proprietary software that does driver management. We use another platform through Applied epic, which is our agency management system that does certificate tracking. So we present that to our larger franchisors saying, hey, you've got 400 franchisees. How do you provide your certificate tracking? Most people say, we have an Excel. We literally show them an easier way of doing it. And then more importantly from there, when the certificates come in from the actual franchisees, it actually scrubs it, verifying that it's in compliance. If it not, it automatically responds back to them saying, these are your things you need to fix. And in return, you need to have it resolved in 30 days or our insurance broker will help you with this. So that's something totally new to me. But I've been now using it probably about a year, year and a half because it's a new tool we have. I'm always about adding new tools to your tool belt to help separate yourself. And that's where it comes back to again, your value proposition. Your value proposition might be literally, you just meet the insurance broker. That's okay. It's where it all starts. What you have to do is find out where the space you want to work, and then from there, strategically start working with partners that you can start adding. Most people will be outsourced, Most people won't be coming out of pocket of your pocket. Or maybe you may be paying a safety person to come out and pay them 500 bucks, but now this person realizes that you're serious about what you're doing and will refer business back to you. It's A give and take in everything we have in the space. But what you have to figure out is what is going to make you different in the eyes of the people sitting across from you. And that is something that has to be individually determined. For me, on a restaurant space, I knew that restaurant safety was important. Human resources was important, insurance was important, technology was important. And lastly, being bilingual, more than 60% of people back of the house is 100% Hispanic or Asian. You gotta be able to translate safety into the back of the house. So for us, we had all these cool tools, but then our insured are saying we have a safety meeting and 50% of our people don't understand what's being said. We had to fix that. So listening to the industry, you and I talked about market research. The best place to find out how you can do something different is talk to five prospects or five of your best clients and say, what are the problems and what are the things that I could solve for you if I could? And if you can get that information from your insured prospects and you become the solution, that is what's going to separate you moving forward. And that's how you will continue to increase your value proposition and add to that list of services that you do.

Problem solved is an opportunity for sale. You provide solutions.

Correct. Fantastic.

Just to reiterate, part of the theme of today's podcast is Jesse said he invested. And that's a mindset shift for our listeners. He didn't spend, he didn't put, he invested seven years in building relationships, learning on the fly, etc. Etc. To be able to now create, manage, own, whatever he's got going on to deliver as the solution. So that's a key. Again, back to the 10,000 hour rule. That's a part of this mindset, right, Jeff?

Absolutely. I mean, another thing to reinforce, we're discussing right now, one of my largest prospects that I now for the first time have the opportunity. And now I've had three meetings and literally we have another meeting, hopefully next week. Is one of the largest franchisors in the pizza space for the West Coast. And it took me eight years of consistently being in front of them until the timing became right for me to finally be able to step forward. So you've got to realize big fish do not happen overnight, but stay the course. And that's when you're getting your singles, your doubles and your triples on a more consistent basis. So that when you pull your home runs, they're really the whale that can make your year. But you're not banking on them. It's always just there in the back end.

Yeah. Yeah, I've got one of those going on right now myself. And once I win, because I definitely plan to win, we'll do another podcast on that. Jesse. I mean, you keep dropping gold nuggets second after second here, and I just wanted to remind people of a couple things that I've got multiple pages of notes myself. You also said, don't be afraid to walk. And you also said, know that you're always going to be in the position where you need to let them know how they're going to fire their current agent or broker. So, you know, back to the preparation. That's part of the preparation, correct?

Well, I think with everything some people will say, I'm a little aggressive. The reason I am the way I am is because I am confident. And that came from years and years of preparation, which also came from years and years of lesson. My biggest thing is just because it took me plus 10 years to get to where I am, I think someone could get there in a third of the time if they are hyper focused. But also realizing that you have ups and downs and this and that, but it's a consistent push and you have to be willing to walk. That is, I think one of the biggest aha's for most people is just because you drove three hours for a meeting doesn't mean you actually need to do the meeting. I actually really enjoy showing up to a meeting, calling someone out right away because they did not follow the directions I gave them to have a successful meeting for both of us, and in return, literally walk out and watch them either go, whoa, and they will go get everything I need, or they will proceed to have me get leverage either as a current broker or be treated like a used car salesman, like they treat everyone. You got to realize this is a business relationship. I want to work with people that want to work with me, and more importantly, I want to work with them. You are going to treat me like crap. I don't care how much money there is. We are walking. One of the biggest learning lessons my agency had. We literally fired our largest property client of the entire agency last year because everything we did for him was a negotiation, like a real estate deal. And he was literally beating us up on our commission. And after we showed him, we did, I think, roughly 2,400 hours of work on his account. He's a very large property owner. He owns a little over a billion dollars of property. He didn't care. And so for us, it was a matter of like, I'm not going to make this, much less on the dollar and in return, feel free to shop us. Go. They now have left and every one of that corporation has actually called us back saying the current agency can't do the work that you guys can do and how do we reverse this? So we literally taken a stance of the only way we will take this contract back is that we get paid 100% of our commission. There will be no more negotiations. Otherwise, stay where you are. And what's amazing for us is that because we, we had the courage and the fortitude to stick to what we believe in other areas where we were crushing it with growth, that should have hit us pretty hard for quarter four into 2018 this year. We still ended up the year with a strong profit, even though that happened because we crushed it in other departments in our agency. And it showed us once again that we need to work with people that want to work with us and people that don't. It doesn't matter how much money is there. We need to walk.

Yes. That's fantastic. Jesse, thank you so much. I want to just add a couple of other nuggets that I wrote down that Jesse just dropped. And thank you for the ongoing slew of the absolute gold nuggets. I hope you were taking notes and if you weren't taking notes at the end of this podcast, get something to write with, get something to write on and go back and listen to it again and write your notes because they're just absolute gold that will help you become the next million dollar revenue agency and or sales producer. So the overriding theme is you want to have a successful meeting for both of us. That's what you said. And you're not having a problem driving three hours and getting into the meeting. If they're not ready and they want to work with you, you walk. That is.

Wow.

I wish I had known that myself over 30 years ago. I would have definitely been triple or quadruple the size that we are now if I had learned that. But they're all lessons, right? To coin something. And our friend Jeb Blunt from Sales Gravy, an absolute world class sales trainer. We learned from him last November. How bad do you want it? And that's the question.

Every month I study Jeff monthly.

Me too. Me too.

That's the key. If you want to have more, you have to become more. And you attract exactly what you are and who you've become and the reason all of these things are happening for Jesse is because of what he's become through his own continued growth. Jesse could not be more proud of you, could not be more thankful to call you friend and colleague. Thank you for sharing today. We need to wrap this up to keep on time. But if you were to drop one more gold nugget, can you think of anything as a last share for everybody listening today?

Wrap your arms around your time more than you ever have. You need to manage it. You need to keep it clear because we don't have a 36 hour day. You need to sleep eight hours a day. You need to spend time with your family, your children, everyone. And you need to have life and work balance. What I recommend is that you manage your time and be very strict on it. And if you do, you will find daily, if not weekly chunks of time slowly opening up for you that you can do what you need to do, which is spend time with your family, paying it forward, volunteering, helping others and everything else will follow. So just remember your time is the one thing you can manage, you can control and also lose if you do not control it.

Absolute, absolute gold. Mr. Jesse Parente, thank you so much for joining us today on the Unstoppable Profit podcast. Friends, go to unstoppableprofitpodcast.com if you want to listen to any of the prior episodes or future episodes. Make sure you subscribe. We are out there all over the Internet as well. Jesse, again, thank you. This is Mike Stromco live from the Leaving Agency Laboratory. I will see you on the next podcast. Have an amazing one of a kind day everybody and go out there and don't be afraid. Keep growing, keep learning, Provide the solution and we will talk to you soon. Thanks Jesse.

Thank you. Have a great day everyone. Thank you for listening.

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