Episode 237: Leadership Lessons in Controlled Chaos with Oak McCulloch LTC U.S. Army (Retired) – Part 2

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit podcast. This podcast will give independent insurance agents all of the tools to grow your business and live life on your terms. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or 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 Stromsol.

Greetings everybody. Welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. And I am excited to have back by very popular demand. We got so many positive comments and people giving us feedback about what they experienced on part one of the podcast with the unstoppable retired Lieutenant Colonel Oakland McCullough. We also call him Oak at his ask. Oak, welcome back.

Yeah, well, thanks for having me back, Mike.

Yeah, you're welcome. And it was, it was just the first one which was Leadership Lessons in control Chaos is what the title was. And we had such great response. We wanted to bring you back. Thank you for making time out of your busy schedule. And let me just make sure that I properly do an introduction because last time I was so excited I blew right past it. So. Retired Lt. Col. Oakland McCullough is the author of the 2021 release Your Leadership legacy Becoming the leader you were meant to be. And folks, I just finished the book myself. It's available on Audible and in book form on Amazon, correct?

That's correct.

And lots of other places, so make sure you grab a copy and go through it. And this is all based on his 40 plus years of leadership in the US army and subsequent in civilian positions. Oak highlights principles that will benefit today's leadership and inspire leaders of tomorrow. He's out there in the world helping people in the civilian sector. You still do work in the military as well?

No, I just retired one October.

Fantastic. So he's a well known speaker who does give presentations on a variety of topics including leadership, success, history, college preparation and other topics. I've got three topics. We're going to dive in today for part two, which is going to be conducting effective meetings, super important in the insurance industry and any business period dealing with change. There's three things that are constant, correct?

That's right. Death, taxes and change.

Exactly. We're on the same page. You and I hit it off because we think a lot the same way. So we're going to talk a little bit about change and get Oaks wisdom on that and then how to communicate effectively communicate in from a leadership chair. But before we go there, we were having a really robust conversation before we went on. So I want to piggyback on that because there was some gold nuggets there. We were talking about leaders in today's world, how they react to things, the decisions they make when something happens and the fact that you need to remain calm. So you were sharing a bunch of wisdom on that. So let's get it on air as well.

Yeah. So I mean you, most people have very little influence on what happens to them. I mean that the, the world happens, life happens, and things happen to you that you, you can't foresee or that you have no influence over. The only influence you have is what after it happens, how the decisions you make to either make that better or to change the, the outcome of whatever happened, how so how you react to it and then remaining calm and, and in, in the situation that you're in. Because the people who are, that you're leading are going to take their cue from you. And if they see that you're panicked and all concerned, then they're going to be panicked. And there's nothing worse than trying to lead a bunch of people who are panicked in a bad situation.

Hence the chaos. It's even greater chaos.

And that, yeah, that's not controlled chaos. That's out of control chaos. And that's not good. Right.

That's why we titled it Control chaos. And that's what we want to do as leaders. And I couldn't agree with that more because I've learned that they're watching everything you do.

Yep.

And everything you don't do. And they're listening to everything you say.

And everything you don't say.

Say. That's right. It kind of goes back to the old adage about making decisions that, you know, there, there's three types of decisions. Every time you're in a decision making situation, there's three options. The first option and the best option is you make the right decision. The second option and the second best option is that you make the wrong decision. The third and worst decision always is that you don't make a decision because not making a decision is a decision and it's always the wrong decision. And it's the same thing lots of times when you don't say something that's, that's probably worse than if you had said something that maybe not have, might not have been exactly right. But by not saying anything now, they can interpret it any way they want.

100%. And I'm looking at my notes from part one and that's a Roosevelt. That's Part of a Roosevelt quote.

That is. That's a Teddy Roosevelt quote. Yep.

That you talked about. Fantastic. And speaking of quotes, we were also talking about somebody that you and I pay a lot of attention to, which is Lou Holtz.

Yeah.

And to piggyback on this particular subject, the quote from today was, life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it. And you found that to be accurate in the leadership chair?

Absolutely. It absolutely is correct. Yeah.

Fantastic. So, speaking of the chair, I want to dive into the first topic that I want to pull the wisdom out of you on today. You've got so much that you teach on around the country. Helping leaders and leadership teams get better, consistently get better and improve what they do on behalf of businesses and others. But you talk about effective meetings, and we are big, big, big proponents of effective team meetings. I. I fortunately learned about team meetings probably almost 20 years. It was more than 20 years ago, now that I think about the year. And it was such a key component to the growth of our businesses. So tell us about effective team meetings and how leaders can maybe think differently if they're not doing them now or they are doing them now. Maybe things they can be doing better. Give us.

Yeah, so. So meetings are important. I don't care what profession you're in. I mean, we all to meetings and. And they're important because lots of times that's where decisions are made. And I'm sure that none of us in the audience here has ever been in a boring meeting, right? No, we all have. And as leaders, if we're honest, we've all led boring meetings. I mean, let's be honest with ourselves.

Y.

But they don't have to be that way. Yeah, you're the leader. They can be as effective or ineffective, as good or bad as you want them to be. And, and I always think, tell people it really is simple. And it's three things that if you do these three things, if you do nothing else, just these three things, you will run effective and efficient meetings that people actually don't mind coming to because you get things done. Number one is you must have an agenda. And that agenda doesn't go out. You don't hand it out to them when they walk in the door. If you do that, you're wasting their time. And your time. That agenda needs to go out 2, 3, 4, 5 days ahead of time. That way they have time to do research about what it is you want to talk about. There's a concept for you. Right. They come prepared to talk about what you want to actually talk about. And you'll see your meetings will become much more effective just on that alone. So hand out the agenda as early as possible so they have the opportunity to come prepared to talk about what you want to talk about. Number two is that you must have a time limit, and the shorter, the better. I can tell you right now, if I'm sitting in a meeting of yours and it goes past an hour, you have lost me. Okay? I may still be sitting there, but I'm not thinking about what you're thinking about anymore or what you're talking about. I'm thinking about the ball game. I'm thinking about going fishing. I'm thinking about a beer. I'm thinking about something, but it's not what you're talking about. The shorter the better. And third, which is very important, is you have to be brutal about sticking to what's on the agenda. I don't know how many times I've been running a meeting, and one of my best soldiers, one of my best people, would say, throw out a great idea, and I'd say, whoa, wait a minute. That's a great idea. And we can talk about it after the meeting. We can talk about in my office. We can talk about it next meeting. But right now, we are talking about what's on the agenda, period. So if you hand out the agenda ahead of time, you keep your meeting short, and you stick to the agenda, then I promise you, you will run effective and efficient meetings. If you don't do that, then this is my advice to you. When you run a meeting, put a box outside the door so everybody who's coming to your meetings can put all their sharp objects in there so they don't poke their eyes out during your boring meeting.

Got it. Great stuff. And. And I totally agree. And something that I wish I had done better in the early days, and I still need to sync this, is handing out the agenda far enough in advance.

Yeah, it's tough sometimes. I got it. Things come up at the last minute, whatever, but the majority of the agenda should go out far enough that they. They can do the research, because that's what the meeting's about, is give me some ideas.

Right.

You know, let's talk about this so we can make a good, informed decision. And if we don't have the time to do the research and how are we making a good decision? What generally happens then is that it gets pushed off to the next meeting and you just wasted everybody's time. Right.

It's not me. You Turn the M upside down as we.

Right. That's right.

Not about me. It's about we. That's fantastic stuff. And the time limit, the shorter the better. Our goal was always 30 minutes.

Yes.

For our weekly team meetings. Of course they went over sometimes, but you know, we, we did that intentionally because we knew sometimes we go to 45 minutes, but at least not that hour that you know, if you will dread it.

And then. Yeah. And then if you, if you schedule for an hour and you go over now, you're hour and 15 minutes and everybody's looking at their watch. Got other things to do.

Yep, yep. And stick to the agenda. You know, I've got a guy over here called SOS is his name. He's a squirrel. And that, that was a visual reminder my team used to throw at me. Get back on track. Get back on track. Because they knew I would squirrel. Because I'm an idea guy.

Yeah.

So. And back to the accountability. Right, that's right. That might be an idea that people can use here. You know, have somebody on your team that you can make the accountability meister, if you will, to keep you on track.

That's right.

Jump off track because of an idea. Say Mike or Oak or whoever. Get back on track because of the fact we need to stay on time.

That's right. Because remember a meeting, meetings are important and they're necessary, but every minute they're in a meeting, it's a, a minute they're not doing something else.

Right.

So keep it as short as possible, get things done, but you got to keep it as short as possible.

So off cuff question for you. In today's forever changing, fast paced, crazy business world, sometimes how often should teams be meeting?

So I think that depends on, on your profession and, and how, how, how often you're having to make important decisions. You know, I, I think there are probably some, some professions out there where you got to have a meeting every day or two, some maybe once a week. So I think it all depends on you, the, the.

Cycle of your decision making that you have to do in your profession and in your company.

Yeah, yeah, great stuff. And I know there's people in our industry who, some segments of the business, they have daily huddles.

Yeah. Well, I think a huddle and a meeting are two different things. A huddle just to kind of get everybody on the same sheet of music for the day. I, I have, I think that's a great idea. And we used to, I used to do it all the time. I just call my guys together, really Real fast, right at the beginning of the day and say, okay, Here are the 2, 3, 4 things we got to get done today. Right? And now everybody kind of understands what, how the day is going to run. And a meeting is more to make decisions and put, maybe even to put out some information so that down the road we can make a decision. So I think there's a difference between a huddle and a meeting. And I think a huddle every day, a real quick huddle is not a bad idea. A meeting. I think you got to, like I said, you got to decide based on your company, your organization, what makes sense for you. And if, and if it's a daily meeting, then it. Then it's a daily meeting. But if it's a daily meeting, then you absolutely have to keep it as short as possible.

Right, Right. I agree with that. Huddles, I think by design, at least in our world, are 5, 10 minutes. Just quick takes.

I agree.

You know, what's working, what's not working. Boom, let's go.

Yep, I agree.

Or something else. Fantastic. Let's. Let's dive in. And we just talked about it in the team meeting segment, but change. And we were also talking about one of our loved mentors in life, Mr. John Wooden. And one of my favorite Wooden quotes is, failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be. So how do leaders deal with change? What have you observed, and what's your best tips for people to maybe think differently than they are right now?

So I, I mean, change is, Is a. Is the constant, right? If you're not changing, then you're going to fail. I promise. You know, any organization, if. If it's a business and you're not changing, then you're going to quickly fall behind your competitors and you're going to become obsolete. If you're leading any organization, you got to change to stay competitive with other people. So I think you can't be afraid of change. Now, I'm not a proponent of change for change sakes. I think we've all had that boss who comes in on day one and starts changing things and doesn't even have any idea what the organization's about. Those people are changing things for themselves, not for the organization. That's for their ego. And that never ends well. If you don't even know what the organization's about and you start making changes on day one, you might change the one thing that makes that organization successful. You don't know. So I always tell people, you know, don't be afraid to change and change Things. In fact, somebody may put you in charge of an organization specifically to change it because it's not doing what it's supposed to do, or it's doing something illegal or immoral or whatever reason they want that organization to change, and that's why they put you in charge of it. So don't be afraid to change things. Just don't change things right away. The one thing I always changed immediately every time I took over an organization. The night before I was going to take over, my wife and I would go into the office I was going to have and we'd hang all my I love me stuff all over the walls. And if the desk was facing this way today, it's going to face another way tomorrow morning. I wanted people to know that there was a new leader in town. But then I would get out and I'd walk around and see what. Ask questions, see what we did, see where we are. Because, you know, one of the huge things that a leader has to do is come up with a vision and a plan of where you want that organization to be. Well, if you don't know where you are today, how are you going to figure out where you want to be five years, ten years from now? So don't change things right away. The other piece that I always really put emphasis on with change is remember that change is difficult because humans are creatures of habit. And if you don't believe that, remember how you tied your shoes this morning? I guarantee you, you put your shoes on this morning the same way you did yesterday, and you'll do it the same way tomorrow. We are creatures of habit, and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. That allows us to free up our minds to do important things. But remember, we are creatures of habit. So if you want to change things, number one, you have to convince people that it's in their best interest, not just the organization's best interest, but in their best interest. And you got to focus everybody on that change. So you've got to not only convince them that it's right, but then you got to show them and.

What. What the change is going to look like and what their part of that change is. Because if you're going to change something in the organization, it's not you, the leader, who's going to change it, let's be honest. It's the people who are you are leading who are going to make the change happen. So you got to make sure they understand their part in that change, because they're the ones that are going to have to execute it and then you got to follow up on it because if you don't follow up on it, I promise you, they're going to go right back to doing things the way they've always done it. Because we are creatures of habit 100%.

And you're absolutely right, based on my observations as well. People don't like change. They're not necessarily into it. They will, out of respect, change and maybe for the good of the organization. But they're watching everything you do and everything you don't do and listen to everything you say and everything you don't say. And they'll be observing. They'll say, oh, ok, will forget about it in a couple of weeks and we'll just go right back to where we were.

Right. That's right. That's why you got to follow up. You have to. And you got to hold people accountable. So when, when you come up to the up with that new standard, whatever it is, the new way we're going to do things, then you got to make the standard very clear and, and make sure everybody understands what they have to do to meet that standard. And then you got to hold them accountable to it because if you don't, again, they're going to go right back to doing things the way they've always done it.

Yeah, clarity.

And that is a horrible answer. If you ever ask anybody why, why do we do it that way and they tell you it's the way we've always done it, you probably got a problem.

Likely. Very likely. So anyway, and I'm listening to Oak and a lot of the things that he's saying right now are in his book, your leadership legacy, becoming the leader you are meant to be. So if you want the full version of everything he's talking about right now, make sure you grab a copy of the audiobook or the book itself, both on Amazon and Audible, so you can continue your learning adventure. Great stuff. So, yeah, and I completely understand in our industry we have, you know, 80% of the 70 to 80% of the industry is the service industry, which is taking care of existing customers and the service people, because that's who they are. I mean, we need them and they're awesome, but they're the ones that are more resistant to change than anybody else.

Right.

Yeah.

Well. Well, you know, here's the problem is that you've been successful and this is especially true of successful companies. It you've been successful doing things a certain way. So you, your natural.

Thought is, why would I change what I'm doing well. The problem is that leaders need to be looking further out and say, okay, we're successful now because of these things that we're doing. But I see something coming down the road that's going to make that not be successful. And that's what you got to convince people is that, yeah, you've been successful up to this point, but in the future that's not going to be as effective or efficient as what's coming down the road. What we need to do to, to meet the thing that's coming down the road. And, and that's sometimes tough, but, but that's what leaders get paid to do. If you, if you, if the leader isn't doing that, then they're reacting to change instead of dictating change. And that never ends well for you, 100%.

And, you know, leaders are also exposed to certain information in certain circles because they are in the leadership chair.

That's right.

So they get privileged information about what might be happening in the future. And so part, part of what we do is we get to forecast, you know, the future of our organization.

That's right. That's a huge part of your job as a leader is to, to do that. And if you're not doing that, if you're so tied up in the day to day operations, you know, which goes back to the delegating which we talked about last time, basically, then, then you're missing out on that piece. And, and I promise you, it's not going to end well. Right, right.

And that's not what we want for everybody here. We want it to end well. We want you to not only hit your goals, exceed your goals and move your organization forward and cause it to continue to thrive. Oak thanks you for, thanks for your contributions to that. So you keep setting me up to pivot to the next topic, talking about change. But, you know, part of what we get to do is communicate the change and the goals and everything we talked about in the team meetings. And so let's dive in specifically on how to communicate from the leadership chair. What's your greatest wisdom and thoughts on how to effectively communicate to our teams and anybody else that we encounter in our daily leadership journey?

Yeah, well, you know, I think communication is huge as a leader. It is what leaders do. If you can't, if you can't communicate, you can't be a leader. And as I go around and talk, especially to young men and women, you know, of this generation, I get a lot of them that come up to me and just say, you know, Colonel McCullough, I just can't get up in front of people and talk like you do. And I said, well, one of two things then. Number one, if you really can't, then you can't be a leader because leaders have to be able to communicate what you want people to do. That is what leaders do. I said, and number two, you can.

Communication is a skill, just like riding a bike. None of us got on a bike and never fell off. I still have scars today from where I fell off a bike when I was a kid. We all fell off the bike, but we got back on it. We learned how to ride. You're going to fall off the bike in communication. You're going to make mistakes, you're going to do things that you really may be even embarrassed that you did. But if you keep at it and you keep improving, you're going to get to that point where you can communicate well. And when I talk about communication, I talk about communication all across the board. I talk about written communication in memos, letters, email, text, handwritten notes, which I'm a huge proponent of. Handwritten notes. Never underestimate the power of a handwritten note. I talk about verbal and non verbal communication because again, like you said, they're listening and watching everything you do. And so you have to have that down to where you can do that. And then listening, of course, is the last piece of that communication piece that, that most leaders are probably the worst at. That's probably the thing they do worse is listen. Because most humans, leaders included, and me, I, I've been guilty of this. You listen just enough to figure out what you want to say in return. You're not really listening to what they're saying to understand what they're saying. You're trying to figure out what you're going to say in return. And that's horrible. The only way to become a good listener is to make a conscious decision to, to listen. And that's hard sometimes. It really is. But I've been working at it much more and my wife is a big proponent of that and has helped me along that road quite a bit. So I think those are some things that you have to do. I think one of the problems with communication is.

We don't really give good feedback. We don't tell them exactly what we want. You know, when we talk we have to be concise, succinct and easily understood. Because that old adage, if it can be misunderstood, it will be, is absolutely correct. And one of the, one of the things I two things I tell leaders to help them along that lines to make sure that it's concise, succinct and easily understood. Number one.

Napoleon. And I'm sure most people in your audience know who Napoleon was. Probably one of the greatest military leaders that ever lived. He had this concept that every time he was on the battlefield directing a battle he would be up on his big white stallion and right next to him would be a low ranking corporal.

Low ranking enlisted soldier in, in the French army. And before, when he was going to give out orders to his generals, before he'd issue it to the generals, he'd issue it to this corporal and when he was done he'd say okay young man, tell me what it is I told you to do in your own words. If the corporal could do it, then it was a good idea, it was well communicated, send it out. If the corporal couldn't, then he realized it could be misunderstood and he started over. And I tell leaders all the time, you have to have a Napoleon's corporal. You have to have somebody that you trust that you can, that isn't going to be a yes person who isn't afraid to hurt your feelings to bounce ideas off of because if you don't you're going to be misunderstood. I've always been lucky in my career I've had some great people that worked for me that I trusted, that I used as that. And of course in my main life I've had my wife and believe me, she's not afraid to hurt my feelings. So she would always tell me you can't do that, that doesn't make any sense. And when I thought about it, she was absolutely right, it didn't so have that Napoleon's corporal. The second thing is, and, and this came from a good friend of mine, Dr. Roger Hughes, who was the head football coach at Princeton and then at Stetson University. Now he's the president of Doan University in Nebraska. And he told me I used to help him with the football team at Stetson, I help him pick his captains. He came up with a method that we used to help help him do that. And then when we were done with that he, after the first time we did that, he said now I got to pick my communication captain. And I said what? And he said I picked three people on the team that their, their main job besides playing football, obviously their leadership job is when I put something out if they don't understand it or if they hear other people saying they don't understand it in the locker room they have free reign to come into my office and say, hey, coach, nobody understands what you're asking for. And he said in the first time one of those young men did that to him. He kind of took offense to it. And then he thought to himself, well, that's exactly what I'm asking him to do. He said. And when they'd come in. And then he clarified things. He said, communication in his organization went through the roof because he wasn't putting out information that people didn't understand anymore.

Aha. Clarity.

Yeah. So. So you got. You gotta. Communication is huge. I mean, that's how organizations run, and leaders have to be able to communicate well. So just understand that it. There are things you can put into place that will help you put out good information.

I've got so many notes on. I'm just trying to intentionally. That was one of my notes. Be an intentional listener. Yes, I was trying to intentionally listen to everything you were saying. And the better I listened, the more I got out of it. Thank you very much. But not only being an intentional listener. I don't know. It's Kelly, right? Your wife.

Yeah, Kelly.

My wife is Cindy. And so from time to time, I don't know if Kelly does this, but Cindy will put her hands on my shoulders and look at me and say, mike, just listen to me for a minute.

She doesn't put her hands on my shoulder, but she does say, stop.

There we go.

Listen.

She has her method. So does my bride. So anyway. But she knows that way because she wants me to intentionally listen, because this is important, what I'm saying, but. So I want to piggyback on a couple of things real quick, based on what you've said, you know, change comes. Communication is part of change. It is effectively communicating as a leader. And one of the things that I wrote down when you were talking about change and then into communication. There's a book out there by Patrick Lencioni. I don't know if you've heard of it. Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

I've seen it. I have not read it.

Yeah, it's a great study. I've gone through it myself six times.

Yeah, I'll have to pick that one up.

Yeah. So it's the leader of a very large business company. It's a fable, but it's very real. And this new leader comes in, and the only thing she did for a period of time was observe.

She didn't go in and start changing. She just observed to, you know, really understand the types of things that needed to be updated or changed before she actually took action. And I thought that was a great lesson as well. You know, you can do or you can't do. It's a choice, right?

That's right.

As far as change and communication and everything else, the other thing I want to dig into a little bit with you. A great friend of mine said email is for information.

But the phone is for communication.

Yes.

And you were talking about the oral aspect, you know, the written aspect and the oral aspect. Talk a little bit about body language. Do you have any thoughts on body language especially?

Oh, absolutely. So I'm a firm believer that if you really want somebody, if you want somebody to do something and it's important, you need to go face to face and tell them what it is you want one, because then they know it's important. Not even a phone call, face to face, if possible. Because then you get to see their body language, you get to look in their eyes and you can tell whether or not they understand what you actually want them to do or not. Whereas you don't get that over the phone and you certainly don't get that over the email. I, I'm, I, you know, email is, is a necessary thing. I got it. That's how we put out a lot of information very quickly to a lot of people generally. But, but that is not how you delegate things to be done or empower people to do things. In my opinion, if at all possible, that's done in person. So then you can look at their body language to see if they really understand what it is that you want them to do. And you know, I, I, I'm, I, I, There's a guy here in Daytona that runs a business and there's about 250 people. And he was telling me how, how bad the communication in his organization was. And he said one of the reasons is because they didn't, nobody knew each other. Said they may know names because that's who they send their email to or their text to. But if that person walked up to them at their desk, they wouldn't even know who that person was. So he said every Friday, implemented a no in the building. No email, no text, no phone call. If you wanted to talk to Mike, you went, got out of your seat, you went to Mike's office, and you talked to Mike face to face. He said two things happened, he said communication got much better. He said, and number two, the team got better because people actually started to get to know each other and they would talk a little bit and find out things about themselves. About each other that they didn't know otherwise and that he actually saw the team become a better team, a much close knit team than it was which just helps in communication as well.

Fantastic. And all of this is so vitally important. Effective team meetings. And you know, one of the greatest things that I learned years ago was the definition of team. Right.

Together everybody achieves more.

Yep.

Right. Effective team meetings. We dug into that fantastic stuff. We talked about change. John Wooden said failure is not fatal. Failure to change might be and how important change is. But you know if you're not changing you will fail, you said. And we, we got to change to stay competitive depending on the industry we're at in and everything else. Fantastic stuff. And lastly, how to communicate and there's so much more to it than we begin to know and.

Oh absolutely.

All of these things are a work in progress. Right.

Well and, and, and that's, that's exactly right. And you're never as good at. If you ever think that you're the best communicator and you can't get any better, then you're, you're sadly mistaken because we can all get better every day. And you know, I, I promise you that if you're leading an organization that communication in your organization is not even close to as good as you think it is. I promise. So if you think you, you're your organization communicates really well, then it probably, you're probably wrong and you need to continue to work on it. Right.

What I just looked at was a book and I'm sure you've heard of. I know you've heard of John Maxwell because you reference him in your book.

Yeah.

And I got a book right over.

Here, quite a few of his books. Yeah.

Yeah. So one of the books, based on something you just said, a fairly new book is 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication.

Oh, I, I haven't seen that one yet so.

And I know he's down last check. He's down in Florida like you are. So maybe an opportunity to connect.

Yeah, I would love to do that.

So anyway. But yeah, it's a, it's a great study on communication and, and I 100 agree with you. The day we stop learning is the day we stop growing. The day we stop learning is the day we stop earning and so much more. So oak, thank you. This has been absolutely phenomenal. Thank you for carving time out of your extremely busy schedule to fit in part two. And I know that we're going to get the same kind of response, if not monumentally More response from people that either listen to or watch the podcast. And thank you for helping business leaders everywhere.

Well, you know it. I thank you for having me on the show. And you know, like I tell everybody, if, if we helped one person today, it was worth our time.

I told you what that means, right?

Yeah.

Peace. Yeah, I second or I agree 100%. So great, great stuff. Thank you. And again, if you haven't picked up the book, your leadership legacy becoming the leader you're meant to be by retired Lt. Col. Oakland McCullough. It's on Amazon, it's on audible. Pick it up, check it out. Keep learning from it. It's definitely worth a rinse and repeat in my book, which I will. Meaning I will be going back through it again because I always get something the second or third time through that I missed the first time. So thank you for that. Thank you for putting it out there. And he's got another. I'll lend the accountability arm, if I may. Before we got started, we were talking about a second book that Oakland will have coming out sometime in the future. So. Game on, sir.

Yeah, I'm looking to write one on success and then I'm also looking at possibly a. A book of all the quotes that I've collected over the years.

Yeah. So anyway, two new books coming from Oakland MOA in the near future. So pay attention for that. And I can't wait. If I can help you in any way, let me know. I've got seven down so far and I've got two more in my funnel. So anyway, exciting. Great stuff.

Yeah.

Thank you again.

You're very welcome, Mike. Thanks for having me on the show.

You're welcome. Hey, and if this is your first time on the podcast, welcome. My name is Mike Stromsel. I'm widely recognized as a leading author, speaker and coach for the independent insurance agency industry. You can learn more about what we do@unstoppableprofitproducer.com everything we do is designed to help independent insurance agents across North America grow their business, create wealth and have more freedom to live life on their own terms. All designed based on our 35 plus years of experience in growing independent insurance agency. We share with you everything, all of our money making strategies, leadership, thoughts and I'm, I'm privileged to learn more today from Oak and on the first episode. Thank you Oak. And we share it all with you so you too can grow, create wealth and have more freedom. And if you got good value out of this podcast, please, please share it with somebody else. That you know and that you care about. Spread the word. Just send them the link unstoppableprofitpodcast.com but make sure you and they go to the top and click subscribe so you don't miss one valuable episode. And we want to spread the wealth and the knowledge that we're sharing here and and we're out there on all the podcast channels, Spotify, Stitcher, our YouTube channel, the Amazon channels and more. Just search unstoppable profit podcast.com we are grateful and thankful that you're here again. Retired Lieutenant Colonel Mr. Oakland McCullough. Thank you for joining us.

Thanks.

All right, everybody get out there. Make a difference. Be unstoppable. Leave no regrets and remember, you can do this. We believe in you. We will see you on the next episode. Take care everybody.

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