Episode 308: Clarity Over Speed: The Key to Scaling Insurance Agencies

I have a law of 100 that I've just learned after 40 years in the industry with a license, if they have 800 clients and each one of those clients knows 100 other people, which is conservative in many ways, that means your opportunity, your leverage, opportunities, 80,000 opportunities. I mean what more do you want to start? To start?

Well, this is good, this is a good how we base this. Keep this conversation moving. So let's talk about what happens if you had the opportunity and you get to reach out to 80,000 more people to, you know, bring in another big shot in the arm growth to your agency. Do you, are you clear enough on what would happen to the agency if you did bring on another 800 in a year or like if you're at a double in size or even 8,000, what do you, are you clear on what that would do to the team? Hey, good morning Mike. One of wonderful, amazing, fully jam packed Onyx universe week last week. How are we doing today?

We're doing great. Yes, it was jam packed to say the least. Lots of wins, lots of some lessons. That's how we grow and scale, right?

Absolutely. So let's talk about today's core theme. So as an independent insurance agency, if they are looking to scale beyond their wildest dreams, clarity must come before speed. Now moving fast without clarity leads to wasted time, money and leadership capacity. And so the theme for this week, Mike is we want to talk about why when, when you work with Onix and we work on clarity over speed as one of the first lessons that we put into as we help them get to where they want to go or where they always had from their wildest dreams. So let's talk about why speed can be dangerous.

Yeah, I'll admit right off the get go I am a fire ready, AIM personality. I have been my entire business career. That's just who I am. And I fought that for years until I learned how important and the clarity was. And once I started listening to people who knew more than I did about a lot of things and they taught me that, that clarity, that crystal clear clarity of where you want to go is so vitally important. And you know the add on that I learned years ago, Daniel is knowing your destination is all you need to get there. And if you can't see your destination then how in the heck are you ever going to get there? So I learned about the clarity and speed is important. I mean don't get me wrong but having clarity is a higher priority. Clarity and a plan and everything that goes with it and I've learned it all the hard way. Excuse me. So please, Daniel and everybody else from my experience don't suffer like I did. Listen to what we want to share with you so you have the easier road, if you'll, if you will, down your path. So, yeah, clarity plan. Clarity is great. And I think we'll probably get into that a little bit more.

Yeah, well, let's, let's go there. Where did speed hurt you early in your agency journey?

Honestly, a little bit of chaos. I remember at some point we were marketers at heart, right. Speed. I mean, we implemented, we implemented, we implemented. Maybe a shiny object came along, we implement it, we implemented, we implemented, implemented. But after a while, somebody said to me when we were in massive growth mode, by the way, they said, we see all the marketing stuff that you got going on out there and it's like if we put it all up on a big wall like in a conference room, it would be psychedelic. I said, wow, okay, I need to figure something out. That's when we created a brand and invested in a full branding guide. But you know, the other thing that it leads to, Daniel, which is probably a little bit more dangerous, is, you know, the culture. Right. You know how important culture is, right, Daniel?

Sure, absolutely.

Yeah. So it leads to sometimes, in many cases a reactive culture, which is where the big danger is, because you want to move to and consistently have a proactive operational culture, if you will, where everybody knows the next one, two, three steps, everybody knows what the right strategy is towards those next steps and they know the right activities and everything and their role that they're going to play. So having all that plan, stepping back for just a little bit and making sure that you invest some real good work on your planned strategy so you all have clarity, the vision, if you will. Vitally vital. Important.

Right. You know, when you start coaching with some of the agency owners, when you see them wanting to speed up or they've already sped a little too fast, what, what does that indicate to you?

Well, that they, they don't. Might not have had any experience yet in creating a documented visionary type business plan. So they know where they want to go and. Right. You know, when I say that, I started thinking about some people that we work with that have done that and I was just talking with one this morning who is getting ready to take a major step forward. Yeah, everything happens for a reason. And this agency owner was necessarily planning for this to happen, but it did and it will push her past her 10 year vision goal just like that. If the Deal happens. So isn't it interesting when you plan for that to happen and not necessarily know how it's going to happen, but you have the right plan with the right intent, the right vision in mind, things just start happening and it's a wonderful, incredible place to be.

Right. And so if you see that in experience, like how do you try to direct them in, into that, you know, redirect them into. Slow down, you know, we need to make a plan before we execute a plan. Right. I know we want to go fast. How do you, how do you redirect.

The best people that we're fortunate enough to work with and where we encounter this? That's why they've invested and working with us, because they want to create that plan. So therefore, because they're invested and committed, if you will, they have given us the latitude to direct them and help them create the plan. And so that's why we created the entire system behind those plans to teach them. So it actually gets done and we have two different days where we invest the whole day together working on the plan to make sure that we talk about everything that might be in play for that plan so that there is that back to complete clarity for the vision of the future. And, you know, you have to be, in my mind, careful sometimes. And anybody out there, if you're talking with anybody about creating a rock solid business plan, you. You want to make sure that it's somebody who's actually done it in their own agency as well, preferably over a period of time. That's proven. And so we're fortunate to be able to say that's us and that's what we've done. So it worked in our agency. It's proven, it's tried, it's tested with a full leadership team who worked out a lot of the kinks.

Sure.

And the other cool thing is when we work with agency owners and it becomes custom for them.

Right. So what does the cost of going fast in the wrong direction look like at an agency?

Well, you know, we already talked about a couple of the items. I mean, the reactivity. I mean, how we respond to everything. We don't know. We don't have any planned way to respond. So it becomes reactive and not proactive.

But how does that negatively impact if they're being reactive?

Yeah, exactly. Well, what I was thinking about was confusion. Not only maybe in the mind of the leadership. Yes. But more importantly than that, the team members, they don't have any clarity on where the agency's going, where the business is going. They don't know what, a month from now, three months from now, six months from now, a year. Because remember this about the A players, right? Those eight players, not only do they want to be part of a special team, a special group of people, you know, like we talk about. Daniel Tens don't want to hang around with Ace.

Right, Right.

Yeah. They want to be able to see a pathway to their better future. And when you know you're going too fast in the wrong direction or don't have direction and everything else, then that can't happen. But what that also leads to, it leads to low morale and the energy within your culture and everything else because they don't know. It's like when I come to the, the fork in the road, do I go left or I go right? That kind of mentality.

What, even at like the thousand foot level? You know, we were talking the other day, Mike, like, think about it from a hiring perspective. You just start, you kind of talked about it from as far as like, you know, a players wanted to play with A players. But think about from hiring, if you went too fast. Right. Rather than having an actual business plan. Right. Because that's always powerful. Right. We talked about that before. You know, even if you're just quickly trying to hire somebody. So, you know, give an example, you know, from a hiring perspective, what it means if you go too fast, what does that look like? What does it cost them?

Oh, that could cost a lot of money. And I have a favorite friend of mine now, friend Joey Coleman, who talks about turnover costs in a business. And I had a sense we might be talking about this today. So I've got some numbers in front of me, but he talked about it in his, in his book Never Lose an Employee Again, Turnover Costs. And he did significant research. So the cost of turnover to employers in the US alone four years ago in 2021 exceeded $700 billion, more than double the cost in 2009. The cost of replacing an exiting worker at 1/2 to 2 times the employee's annual salary.

Yep.

And another group, the Weinhurst Group, projected the cost of hiring new employee at 100 to 300% of the salary. But what they couldn't put a number on, and this is, you know, we were just talking about this a second ago, the low morale that comes from the revolving door of coworkers makes losing employees and team members one of the most devastating events that could happen to your business. So not only in the front end, but on the back end. So how do you move to solve the war for marketplace talent is won at the interviewing table. So we've talked about that. So have that systematic way in plan to make sure that you're a good fit for them, right?

And that's where we look at, you know, the old adage, you know, on our side is higher, slow, fire fast. Right? Always be recruiting at the same time. And you're like, well, Daniel, you just said speed. You know, you need clarity over speed. Well, the reason why you're able to fire fast, if you will, is because you're very clear if they're going to make it on the team or not, if they're the right, you know, giving everybody their opportunity. You hire slow, but you'll find out really fast through that interviewing process if it did, you know, if that process really worked or not 100%.

And, you know, back to what we were talking about a couple minutes ago, those A players, the best available, they want to see a pathway in their mind to their future. And so that's why we teach and provide a one year goals and expectations sheet for them for their future as part of the agency team. So they have that clarity of mind and see, you know, where they're going to go and a clear understanding of what their role is for the agency to help the agency support the goals of the agency, to move both down the road.

Right, let's talk about it. Like, I'll give you some examples from the technology side when it comes to going too fast, you know, many instances, everyone, you talked about the shiny objects, right? Nothing more shinier right now than artificial intelligence and automation and all the different awesome tools that are out there. And when I go and do my presentations on the practical uses of AI for return on investment, the area that I always mention is that yes, speed, efficiency and revenue impact are the three most prominent ways that you're gonna get a return on investment using these tools. But you have to look at it from all three aspects of it, right? Of the speed that we're going, you know, how does this make us faster? How does this make us more efficient? How does this make, how does this impact our revenue? But if you didn't have a plan in place already and how you do those three things, right, how do we, how do we impact revenue here? How do we, you know, what's our standing operating procedures to be efficient? What, what is going slow now that if we could speed it up, it would make, it would make all those two other items go even more at scale and how many times people have gone fast and purchased A piece of technology and thinking everybody's gonna use this thing, everybody's gonna make everybody's lives better. And that still sits in the box or people reject it or you know, maybe it doesn't. It makes you go really fast in the wrong direction. Right. That's one of my favorite analogies. Right. You can go really fast in the wrong direction, really fast as well. And so without having, without having the ability to slow down, identify what's the process, what's the roadblock? How do we say which of these tools gets us the, you know, gets us the greatest return on investment? By removing that, that were that roadblock. You know, having those conversations with a very frustrated. When we start talking about artificial intelligence, we start talking about, you know, new size technology, you know, frustrated. Those insurance agency owners are Mike. Because they're like, well we've done this before. Oh, I mean I've already, I've already looked at nine different ones. I'm, you know, I'm drowning features and starving for benefits and I know I need to do that AI thing. Those conversations we're trying to say, yes, you need to start to embrace AI and embrace automation. But if we don't have a clear plan, if we don't know where the roadblocks are, you're just throwing tools at the problem. So clarity is key and that's where we're going to go to next. I mean I'm sure you've heard even back, even when you first started with your own AMS systems and CRMs and wanting to add the next shiny technology, you encountered the same date if you went too fast. Do you have any real life examples of that from your agency?

100% the thing that comes to mind. And when we talk about the three key pieces of our tech stack, right. AMS, CRM and VoIP phone system. The one that definitely comes to mind because we were fortunate we didn't jump around on our AMS and CRMs. We had a solid CRM in place for many number of years. And the reason that it works so well, I'll drop names, it was ontraport way back when, but it was simple to use. Even I could get in there and do something with it. But the one that was painful I Remember was the VoIP phone system. Early adapters of everything for the most part.

Right.

And so that was where I learned the analogy. It's the size of your pipe, right? If you got a really small Internet pipe, the VoIP phone system may not work as well. You want a nice big pipe and so we contacted our technology partners at the time and they said, well, this is what's going to have to happen to have that pipe. I said, great, whatever you have to do out of the gate, man, it was painful for a couple of months. I mean, the calls, I'd be talking to Daniel and I'm only catching about half of what he says. And I said, this is driving us crazy and we're all having the same experience. Well, the pipe will fall in line and everything will get smoother over time. You just have to be patient. We're like, we don't have any patience. We can't communicate with our clients. You said this was going to make things easier. So anyway, I don't know, you know, what the answer was ultimately was other than exercising patience and following the updates that they recommended. And it did get better, you know, week after week we got a little bit better. And I remember like after about a month, month and a half maybe, it started getting really, really good. And all of a sudden we had the freedom, the freedom to communicate from anywhere via our phone system that we really were longing for. So it did work itself out. And nowadays that's just like second nature. It's like, get two pieces of bread, peanut butter and jelly. I mean it's, that's what you just put between bread.

Right, right.

Avoid void phone system.

Absolutely perfect example where, you know, it could even be with trusted pieces of technology. We got to let it cook, right? That's. We, that's a, the term that we use. You got to let it cook sometimes and it'll, it'll work out. So if you start jumping around from tool to tool, that also can be, you know, too fast. That could also be a decision.

But yeah, I don't know if you saw the conversation in our community about somebody, I mean, were just on with a super high performing agency that made a switch in their phone system and they're having bumps in the road because they identify, because they keep their, as we say, finger on the pulse. Right. That about 5% of the calls that are supposed to be there aren't there. The call recordings and the file documentation. Because they had a situation with the client and they were so excited, they said, oh, documents, all the files have dropped in there and it wasn't there.

It wasn't there.

Then they started doing some backtracking. It's like, well, and, and of course the providers like throw their hands in there and say, we don't know.

Right?

What do you mean you don't know?

Yep, yep. Let's let's, let's focus on the clarity piece of, of speed, right? So when we talk about clarity with our agency partners, what do we mean? What do you mean by that?

So again, in my mind, when I hear clarity, it's just, I wake up in the morning. In my mind, it's organized. My mind is organized to see the destination that we're pursuing. I can see the destination. I know what the plan is. That's why I still, to this day, did it again this morning. It's sitting right over there. It's in a book that I study every morning. I have my plan. I pull it out, I read it, I look at my steps in the plan. If I have some extra time, I'll look at the entire plan, including down the road, 10 years. I have another piece sitting right over here. I verbally read my impossible goal. It comes out of my mouth. I'm standing up here all by myself. You know, nobody else is up here. My wife's probably still asleep, but I'm reading out loud where I want to go. It just, it cements it in my mind because, you know, I was thinking about this as you're saying something three, four minutes ago. Daniel, you know, the other important clarity is not only in your mindset because clarity of mindset is critical, especially as an owner, leader, right, or partner. So clarity of mindset is absolutely critical. But communication of that clarity with your team, also vitally important. So your goals, the destination that you're in pursuit of, the cadence that you're operating within, and that every role in the organization is operating within. And synchronicity, everybody rowing in the same direction as we say, all of that is vitally, vitally important. But you know, what's the big benefit result of that also is you just have a culture that is goal oriented, that is results driven. Everybody knows where they're going. And probably here's the thing that, you know, I find myself talking to an agent this morning on a. They ran into a bit of a difficult situation and wanted an emergency session. We got on the phone and they just wanted to have clarity on what the next steps were. Okay? So that is super, super important. And when you could tie it all together. And that's where the work that you and your team, Daniel, are doing are so vitally important that automation, that support mechanism is not going to replace us. It's here to support, support us and the things that we aspire to do. When you got that working in the background consistently, then it frees us up to have Those deep, significant, meaningful conversations with everybody, including our teammates, our clients, our communities and everything else, right?

And from my standpoint, you know, what, what clarity means for me because obviously I'm more on the number side, right? And it's always been know your numbers. That's what you've, you know, you've, you preached to us for how many years, right? And it's like, know your numbers. Know your numbers. And having that ability now with some of these tools to be able to create your own dashboards, you're not relying on someone else's tool to provide you the dashboard necessary, you can, you can start to build your own dashboard. Obviously, we can help you provide the guidance and kind of what the best practices looks like. But you can have your own dashboard so you can start to get clear. Because I love always to say math doesn't lie, right? And so you've got the math, you can see what it looks like. You've got your, you're clear on your vision, you're clear on where you want to go. Your team can repeat it back to you. That's one of my favorite things. When, you know, when you're sitting in the meeting, someone repeats back to you the vision of where, where we're going. But then you have those, you have that dashboard, you have those numbers, you have the ability to check not only on what happened in the past, but where we're going in the future based on what you can, can see, right? And that seeing is through that math and being able to, I mean, first time in human history, we're going to be able to move on a dime with artificial intelligence. When the numbers tell us where we need to start to focus, go ahead.

And it's already happening, right? And you know, back to Will Rogers, we've talked about that before, right? Will Rogers, in his quote, if you just sit there, you're going to get run over, right? Or maybe you said if you just sit there, you get left behind. Either way, it's gonna happen. So I think the most important thing is clear strategy with the right strategic action with the right people, right?

Yeah. Some of the, you know, some of the first numbers that we like to look at to get clear, right? What's the first one that comes to your mind? Because I have mine. What's the first one comes to your mind?

Oh, boy. Probably revenue per employee. That tells me a whole lot. And my next question after that is, all right, so based on the. And we use the numbers don't lie sheet, which I think is the exact same Things that you're talking about. What'd you say about math?

Math, Math doesn't lie.

Math doesn't lie. Numbers don't lie. Thanks to my grandson Nate, so many years ago when he showed up with the shirt. But you know, after I say, all right, this is your revenue number. This is the number of employees. And you know, we work it out, you know, VAs and other things to a true full time employee equivalent, figure out their revenue per employee. With that being said, my next question is how clean is your data? Right. So then I wait and I watch them very closely.

Okay.

Because if their data is not clean, that number may or may not be accurate. How often you look at your P and L and your balance sheet, etc. Etc. Etc. So, but the, the revenue per employee tells us a lot about a lot of things. And the fact that, you know, what kind of freedom and latitude do we have to be able to invest in the agency for future and greater growth and scale? So, so we have to be positioned to be able to do so. That's just one of the beginning points that, where our work begins, if you will.

Yeah. Revenue employment is very, very important number for us to be able to see not only what does the past tell us, but tell us where the future needs to go to. That is a very powerful.

Yeah.

Obviously we talk about retention numbers all the time. Number of employee policies per. Per client. Right?

Yep.

Those are always numbers that we look at. One of the, the great leading indicators for me is in the account review take rate. Because in order for us to be able to scale, just bringing on new or organic growth referrals. Yes. That is obviously a number that we want to look at too is how many referrals are we bringing in. But the take rate on our account reviews proactively so that we, those are our opportunities to help round out our accounts. Right. To get the information that's necessary in order to determine, hey, did they add, you know, has something changed in their life or something property changed, what's going on? What are, what are some of those financial risks? Our job, right. In this industry is to help our clients with their, not with their, with their financial risks. If we don't have all the information and if we haven't rounded out to make sure that all their financial risks are covered or at least they checked off the box to say, hey, I appreciate that but I'm gonna self, I'm gonna, I'm gonna self manage that risk. Right. That's, that's still our jobs to make sure that they understand that, that that's out there. So that's why I was like, well, counterview, take, take rate. I'm like, right, if they say, yes, I want to meet with you and meet with you. We're gonna go through everything together. And I've, we've gone through all your risks, and you clearly understand those risks and how we're going to protect them or not. Right? You protect them on your own. That's a very important number that I think gets overlooked in a federal insurance agencies.

And then one of my favorite numbers is the number of clients. So, you know, if they've got 800 clients, I have a law of 100 that I've just learned after, you know, 40 years in the industry with a license. If they have 800 clients and those, each one of those clients knows 100 other people, which is conservative in many ways, that means your opportunity, your leverage, opportunities, 80,000 opportunities. I mean, what more do you want?

Right?

To start. To start.

Right. Well, this is good. This is a good. How we base this. Keep this conversation moving. So let's talk about what happens if you add opportunity and you get to reach out to 80,000 more people to, you know, bring in another big shot in the arm growth to your agency. Do you, are you clear enough on what would happen to the agency if you did bring on another 800 in a year? Or like, if you're at a double in size or even 8,000, what do you. Are you clear on what that would do to the team?

Well, I'm clear in my mind.

Right. Agency owners.

Yeah.

Thank you.

For the agency owners out there and leadership teams, maybe yes, maybe no. But, you know, there was one word that was coming to my mind as you were, you know, sharing that, Dana. Systems. It's systems. I mean, do you have the foundational system to support that kind of scale? Because you can't scale complexity. Right. You can only scale simplicity. So do you have the system number one? Number two, is it simple enough to build upon for that kind of exponential growth in scale? Many people might think they do, but we say, go ahead and pop the hood. Let me see what you got. And we look at the engine. Some wires are worn out. And you know where I'm going with that. But anyway, so it's super, super important. And I do this when I do keynote talks. And I really got clear on this last year. I mean, if you were going to build your dream house, Daniel. Okay, gonna build your dream house. Would you build your dream house on a shaky foundation?

Obviously not, no.

Yeah, we would hope not. Right. So why would one consider building the biggest financial asset of their entire career more than likely on a shaky foundation?

Because they want to go fast.

Because they want to go fast. But what's going to happen to that foundation? I mean, yeah, all my compassion and sensitivity to all of our friends in the coastal areas, but, I mean, may wash into the sea, right?

Right. Yeah. Up here in the Midwest, where we don't have oceans. Same with the rivers. Yeah. Beautiful views, right?

Yep.

Yeah. So let's talk about one area that we've had a lot of conversations this past week, which is the team not ready myth. I think this is a big. This is a big topic going on, especially right now. And so why is my team isn't ready? Not. Not a clarity issue, or, excuse me, is a clarity issue not a people issue.

Well, let's face it, the real truth, it all starts with leadership. It starts and ends with leadership. So if the team is not ready. We were talking about communication. We've talked about communication a couple times so far during this podcast, and I learned from Mark Sparks. I think I've told you about that before, but it definitely bears repeating, who wrote a book, a phenomenal book, they can't eat you. And he's built. I lost track of the number of companies that he's built and turned for big, big money. And now he's kind of working in the medical industry. But the book that he wrote, they can't eat you. Chapter 27, first page. Yes, I remember why. Because I've studied it so much, it says the key to your growth and scale is over communication with your team. So what the team needs to understand is that they are ready. And how do you do that? You communicate with them why we're ready, how we're ready. And you have. It's really, you know, in the words of Earl Nightingale, it's. It's a sales situation.

Right.

You've got to sell them on the fact that, yes, we are ready. Yes, we can do that. So. And ultimately, you got to make sure that you lead your team into that culture of ownership. Right. And when you build that culture of ownership, meaning they're owning their role and their place in this situation. It's vitally important. And now, as much as I'm verbalizing this, I must add, that's why it's also vitally, vitally, vitally important that you have your attract, recruit, interview, and hiring system always in place. Because if that deal comes down the road, and I was talking to another agent this Morning. They, they have a potential acquisition that's moving very quickly, that's going to add. It's a million dollar revenue agents agency that might be coming on board. Well, so they've got to be make sure their foundation is right. But what if they need to add a couple of team members? What if some of the team members at that existing agency aren't the right fit for their culture and all of that stuff? So it's really back to. Let me think of a national business. We'll go Chick Fil A. Right. When, when you are hired at Chick Fil A, how many different cultures and systems do they have, Daniel?

I don't know.

I'm going to suggest they have one.

Okay.

They have one way, shall we say? It's the Chick Fil A way, whether you're a fan of it or not. But you know, it's a business strategy and mentality. Right. And that's why it's important. And that's what we teach. You know, your agency, it's the SIA way and it may not be the same everywhere, but this is our way of doing things. How are we going to bring them in? Yes, we're going to show them the way in our way. And the structure will support everything that we want to build upon. So it's absolutely wonderful.

Right. But if you think of, from a term of an agency that's already successful, as you've already stated, right. And they've done it this way with speed before, clarity, what would we say to them for them to understand that they're on a pathway going fast that could be dangerous.

You know, what it really comes back to is I was having a conversation with an agency leader and owner just this past weekend. And this, I'll just say they're north of 10 million revenue. Okay. And we got into, you know, deeper conversation about what it looks like at certain levels of progress and very candidly said, hey, where you're at at 2 million is not what you're going to look like at 3 million and 4 million. And when you get to 5 and 6 million, you're not going to look the same way you did at 3 million. It's a different, different operating environment. And really, Daniel, you know, as I think about this more, as I, as I talk through this, it's the model. It's back to the operating model. You know, that model has to be simple enough. And that's what we created in our agency. I remember the leadership meeting. We had our organizational chart. We knew what was already filled in in the organizational chart, we knew the areas where there was no maybe personal or automation yet. And think about it like that, everybody. If you have an org chart and there's a box on the org chart that's not full yet, does it need to be a human being or can automation fill that gap? Just a shot out of left field for y'.

All.

But anyway, when we started, you know, designing the books of business within our agency, whether it was, you know, we call them season books of business or, you know, new business within the first three years, personal and commercial and everything else, all we needed to do when we brought on, like an acquisition, just draw another box, assign a team, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. That's how we were going to scale. And we did. It was awesome.

That's when you knew you went from operator to owner. Yes. Because you're really owning the processes, you're owning the numbers, you were owning the communication, you're owning the leadership. Right. Not operating inside of it until you make that. Until you're clear on what that looks like. Right. So just going fast all the time. That is really when you, you start to understand the jump from 3 million to 10 million, 10 million to 20 is when you can confidently look at it and say, wow, I don't have the systems and operations to put together. I have to start to be the owner and own those. And that is what is going to get us to that $10 million. And that is the power of what we've been helping a lot of these agency owners with recently 100%, is that clarity side of it, where they feel that they've been owning it. Until we start digging into the numbers. And so we start digging into the, to the processes until we start looking to like, okay, show us your hiring process. Show us this process. Show us where the, where the workflows are broken or where there's a bottleneck. And they can't do that because they've been sitting in the box not being able to read the label. Right. When they can't see it, that's when we know that our agency operating system system is going to be that scaling factor. Yeah, right.

You know, I, I think there's something super, super important that I want to share here as well. At this point, I remember sitting in leadership team meetings. I was one of four. I was only one leader and there was four of us. Right. And I was sitting in a leadership team meeting. I'm thinking to myself, you know what? I'm only one of four votes. I, I could be out voted on anything, any initiative that we're going to implement, and I've got to be okay with that. But, you know, once I figured out that this was the key, I mean, I owned all my wife and I owned all the shares still.

That's not the point. No.

I was only one voice of four. And so I had to be okay with allowing them to make decisions and even letting them make a decision where I knew that there was going to be some lessons or failures involved as well. But, you know, if I don't let them experience those, I'm holding back. Great leaders is the bottom line. So our goal is to build up other great leaders around us to have, in the words of the $1.4 billion revenue client of mine for 24 years, the balance within a team. That is such a critical piece of scaling. Balance within a team.

Very wise. That. Thanks for that. That should have hit home to a lot of people right there, I hope. All right, Mike. So our promise to our, our listeners and our viewers was that we'd keep this between 40 and 45 minutes, because we know that's about how much time that they have in order to talk about any, listen to any, and engage with any type of topic that we want to talk about. So we only have a couple minutes left. So with that, let's, let's get to the practical answers more in a. And some takeaways more in a rapid fire just so that we can leave them with the value that we promised them.

Sounds good.

So where should overwhelmed owners slow down first?

Look, I know that lots of owners and leaders, they go to conferences, they talk to people, they get on online sessions, the whole nine yards. And there's the next shiny object. It's going to solve all the problems. You must be disciplined and not just implement shiny object. And implement shiny object. Implement shiny object number one. The first thought process also that I hear and see a lot. I'm just going to hire another teammate. I'm going to hire another va. Is that really going to be the right move? My great recommendation. That's why it's important that you have a strategic thinking partner that you're in alignment with to help you think through these next best moves. And when I say that, I'm not talking about AI, talking about a team that is walking beside you. Like the Onyx team as an example, we have the four quadrants of Elsa walking right beside you.

Let's leave them with a reflection point. What question should every owner ask themselves this quarter?

Am I simplifying my business model or am I making it more complex?

Well, let's leave them with that. So if today's conversation hit home, here's what I'd like to say. You don't need to move faster, you need to see more clearer. So if you want to keep thinking at this high level, we've got two ways that you can continue the conversation with us. No pressure, but if you want the big picture framework, how agencies actually break through their ceilings and move towards $10 million in business, we host Mike and I a free $10 million agency masterclass where you'll unpack behind the scenes thinking, clarity, systems and leadership. And if you already are at a place that you want to look at your agency specifically, we offer private one on one Onyx scaling sessions where you just get an opportunity to talk to us about your agency situation and get some experience and expertise from the two of us on how you could start on your journey to become more clear before going any faster. So either way, goal is the same. We help you stop guessing and start leading with confidence. We'll put the links to both of those opportunities in the show notes, but if you have any questions, feel free to reach us out on the socials. But in the meantime, Mike, before we let him go, any final thoughts?

Yeah, I do have a couple final thoughts, but I want to add on and piggyback something you just said. Daniel, thank you for sharing that. And we're passionate, we are passionate about helping independent insurance agents reach their destination and we have the plan to be able to do that. But let me just say we're going to be completely honest with you as well. You're going to get 100% direct honest Onyx, 100% direct feedback about, you know, what Onyx looks like and whether it's a good fit for your agency. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not, and that's fine. But we just want to help you get clearer on the things you need to be doing. My big takeaway today, in addition, hopefully got lots of good nuggets. Is real scale starts when the model is simple and the simple model begins producing results. And one of my latest launchers, you walk up to your teammate and say, daniel, how you doing?

I'm really busy.

Daniel, I'm glad to hear you're busy. Tell me about your results.

I think we're up.

You think? Right. Anyway, so that's my encouragement. Build that culture that get your team closer to ready.

I love it. I love it. Well, thanks, everyone. Thanks, Mike. It's great to see you. We'll see you next week. We'll have plenty to talk about after another busy week. We have we have planned here. But thanks, everybody, for listening in, and we look forward to seeing you down the road.

Daniel, let me add one more thing.

Sure.

Results week, results driven week number one. Number two, I've so enjoyed our conversations. We're talking all the time talking about the great things that are happening within the independent channels. So thank you for those combos. And let's keep building on those great conversations that we're having so we can share it with everybody here.

Sounds good. All right. Thanks, Mike. Have a good rest of.