Deliberate Growth with Brad Rutt

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Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for listening and joining us for this episode. I have an incredible guest with me today, someone who is. He's smiling at me as I said that because he's incredible is a powerful world's word. So now he's got a lot of pressure on him. But I've got Brad Rut, who is a PNC producer with Hub International. And I'll let Brad in a minute or two kind of share his background and story and be able to talk with Brad about some of his experiences, good, bad, ugly, the whole deal, and how he's had some of these great successes. So have your pen and paper or pencil and paper or whatever you're writing with ready because I know Brad's going to share some great wisdom today that you can take with you and use. As always, the purpose of the Agent Leader podcast is to help you, the agency leader, whether you're a principal, whether you're a producer, whether you're a sales leader, if you have influence, you are a leader. To help you gain clarity, to help you build consistency and to help you make a commitment to become your best version possible. And I know Brad can see behind me and some of the people that watched on video can see me. I have our book which by the way, you can get entitled Best version Possible. So if you go to we'll put it in the show Notes as well. But if you go to sitkins.com bvp you can get a copy of that for yourself. I'd love for you to take a look at it and share it. We're always looking to grow this podcast and our message to help agencies like yours. And last note before we get into Brad is we have a great sponsor for this podcast, Rough Notes Company. They are publishers of the insurance industry's leading magazine and technical insurance content. RoughNotes magazine profile successful agencies plus keen insights from respected experts on a host of must know topics. And there's Rough Notes Advantage plus which provides the tools to help your agency grow, providing authoritative information on complex coverage issues. So go to roughnotes.com to learn more about them and their services. Great sponsor with us here in the Agent Leader podcast. So Brad, I hyped you up a little bit.

Are you, are you too much? No, thank you. I feel, I feel ready.

Let's do you ready for this. This pressure packed. I told Brad we're having a cup of coffee and then I hyped him up. So now I got to put the pressure on yeah, we've got Brad Rut again. He's. He's a PNC producer with Hub. And by the way, he told me right before we started recording, he's also an attorney. So I got to hear this. You've got 16 years in the insurance industry, right, Brad? Is that. You told me correct?

16 years, man. But, you know, you slip and fall in a restaurant, give me a call, you know, maybe I'm your guy. We'll see where I'm admitted to practice.

All right, so give me your background, your history, but now you got to include the attorney part. I think we got to hear this.

Yeah. And it was kind of a strange experience. I graduated college in 2004, so you can figure out how old I am. 39, almost 40 years old. I had a great time in college, you know, president of my fraternity, all this kind of stuff. You know, big football school. I really enjoyed it. I think my parents saw me and they're like, you know, this guy's way too frat guyed out. You know, what is going on with him? My mother is, you know, very quickly, he needs to learn the value of a dollar. And my father was like, he needs an advanced degree. And I'm a child of divorced parents. And unfortunately, there are those rare occasions where your parents actually line up on something that's like, the worst thing that can happen to you. So my parents lined up on this idea of, you know, we're going to encourage him very heavily to go to law school, but you're going to go to law school at night, you're going to get a job during the day, and then you're going to go to law school every night. So we're normal law schools. Three years I was in a night program that was four years. So I'd finished my. My work at our family's insurance agency. My mom's been in the business for, honestly, you know, 38 years. Ran a very successful agency focusing on real estate and then high value PNC here in the greater Los Angeles area, but certainly with some national exposure eventually that we. We were acquired by Hub. And I was part of the ownership group there. But long story short, I worked during the. At the agency, during the day, in law school, at night and at the agency. I mean, whatever the worst jobs were, I did, this was not the proverbial owner's son kind of mentality where I was going to get the corner office and, you know, nap all day was like, hey, we need 10,000 envelope stuff. You know, you. You look like you're free. Have at it, Hoss. And that's what I did. And so, you know, as you're stuffing envelopes, I'm like, I'm never going to be in insurance. I'm going to go be an attorney. And I got to law school, and very quickly, I was like, oh, my God, actually, I'd rather stuff envelopes. The attorney game wasn't for me. And as progressed in my. My legal career, you know, I saw my friends go off to internships at various law firms and, you know, after we graduated, saw what they were doing, and I just didn't have really. I wasn't interested in, you know, standing by a Xerox machine, watching people, you know, make copies for, you know, a hundred bucks an hour and sort of having billable time. The legal background has really served me well in insurance, right? You know, contracts, conceptually, advice policies, you know, here in California, employment practices, liability, and some of the spaces that I focus in D and O becomes hugely important. But long story short, through law school, knew I didn't want to be an attorney, but I gained this appreciation for insurance. And what I really liked about insurance the most was being able to meet new people and spend time with my friends. I mean, fundamentally, every person, or most, 99% of people are going to have some sort of insurance need, right? And when I'm kind of explaining to people what my value proposition is, you know, if you're sitting in a restaurant, look at that restaurant. The restaurant itself needs insurance. You know, PC, pnc, health insurance, work, comp. Epli, and all that stuff. But look at all the people in that restaurant. People. Most of the people drove there in la. Certainly, you know, we don't have public transportation or we have very little public transportation. Like, you know, those are all potential customers. You know, there's 1,000, $2,000 pop. And I. I sort of enjoyed that. You know, they had me doing some account service work, and so I spent some time on a desk managing a book. But very quickly they realized I was terrible at it. Like, my ADD was way too fire and, you know, just sitting in a computer screen wasn't for me. And they just said, you're not adding a ton of value as an account manager. You know, you're kind of like a C account manager. But, you know, for whatever reason, people tend to like you. And then I was, you know, swiftly kicked out the door into being a producer and, you know, tried to figure it out on my own. I was with. At an agency with a, you know, a principal and my mom who was naturally good at sales and had a really honed sort of sales and value proposition, but not one that I understood at the time. I didn't understand what made her successful. And I'm not sure that, you know, she did, but she was very successful. So no formal sales training. So I kind of slogged along for a long time and you know, I was, you know, making plenty of money, right, because you could make plenty of money being fairly mediocre in insurance. And I thought I was like, this is great and you know, you're in your 20s, early 30s and you know, making a lot of money. But I got to hub and you know, I was a small fish in a very large pond. You know, some of the numbers and some of the quality of the talent in this organization. It's humbling. And I'm a competitive person. I wanted to be up at the top with my peers, with my mentors and you know, I needed to figure out how to do that. So I was really lucky to get introduced to, I think at the time, Roger, when we were still doing things in person. And Roger came out and did a multi day sales acceleration for a very large group of producers. And it was, you know, the first time in my career where I saw things laid out very clearly for me on how to accomplish my goals. Right, Here are the steps, here are the concepts. And at the time I was like, okay, I'm going to write all these concepts down and I'm going to master them all very quickly. And this is my key to greatness. And what I did is I got 10% better at 15 different concepts. I didn't master a single thing. I still keep my sickens binder from that first day. Now three and a half years ago, it's on my desk. It lives. It's got a hallowed place. I could see it right now. And it lives here. And it lives here for a reason. To be a reminder. So, you know, over the course of the last three years, I've been fortunate to engage in more Sitkins classes. I got to meet Brent and got to continue along the way and like the one thing that's been the most important thing or the greatest realization that I've had and it's only took me three years, is like right now I'm really focusing on a couple of concepts and I want to give those 100% right? When those concepts become part of my routine, when I am consistent in these few concepts and it becomes rote, then maybe I can open myself up to more to More concepts or more principles?

There's a lot. There's a lot of layers in that, Brad. There's two things I want to.

I'm a layer cake.

Well, that's all right. I love it. First of all, I'm smiling. I didn't hear the attorney story before from you. So I'm thinking about, you know, frat guy who goes to attorney, who goes to insurance office. And now, of course, I want to hear more about your specialty, which is in the cannabis industry. And now you're kind of back to the different version of the frat boy, maybe, right? From a different perspective. I say tongue in cheek. But it's really an interesting walk that you had. And it is. Is refreshing too, to hear, Brad, the fact that you, you know, it was a family agency, but you didn't get the corner office stuff, right? There was stuff that you had to. Had to do in there. And I wrote this down. Cause you probably heard this in our trainings before, but if you have someone who's an account manager who either doesn't like it or doesn't do a very good job, it's like. And they make mistakes all the time. Like, what do you do? You probably fire them up, make them a producer, right? You're already there. Might as well be the producer. This is what I love to do. So you did mention stuff on here, and I want to ask you because you're part of our. Obviously being part of Hub and that great team there. And how many. As you mentioned, there's a lot of top talent there, right? Also, you're part of our elite 50 sales mastery program. And it reminded me a little bit of. I call it the small town syndrome that I have, at least personally, which, you know, I grew up in a small town and, you know, I was a pretty good athlete in quotes in a small town, right?

Like, I saw where this was going.

Look at this, look at this guy. Look, look at me. And then all of a sudden, you show up to a bigger school, bigger environment, and you go, oh, oh, oh, oh, I see. I see the light. Maybe I wasn't so good. So how have you. Here's a question on this and just find it interesting. As you moved into, you said, you know, small fish, big pond. As you moved into that environment and saw that, what was your mentality around it? Like, like, how did you approach that? What jumped out at you in that aspect?

So, you know, outwardly confident, put my suit and tie on, showed up at the sales meeting, but probably inwardly intimidated. And, you know, this is probably true. Producers at Hub and all over the. All over the insurance space, you don't actually know who's a big producer and who's not. There's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of big personalities. You're like, oh, my God, you're probably the biggest producer ever. And it turns out, no, no, that wasn't the case. But outwardly, I was like, wow, you know, I'm in, you know, the. I'm in the big leagues now. And then, you know, you start to figure it out. Hub is tremendous from a resource standpoint, but like we've talked about before, we have every resource, but there's still plenty of challenges. Same challenges that I think a lot of people have in the insurance space. I hate the word luck, but I was fortunate to get into a specialty. I was fortunate to sort of see the cannabis insurance space grow dramatically, pardon the pun, as much as we saw some of these companies grow dramatically into, you know, now having been in this space six plus, if not seven years to gain an expertise. And ironically enough, as Hub was looking at purchasing our agency, our cannabis specialty was something. Or my cannabis specialty, rather, was something that they were interested in. Hub had a practice in its infancy with a focus or at least a realization that there were real needs for companies in this space. Still, not a day goes by where somebody at Hub doesn't say, do all your clients pay you in cash? I was like, no, nobody pays me in cash. I get wires from banks like any other normal insurance person. And my clients come from, you know, big four big five accounting firms and, you know, hyper pedigreed and very, very intelligent buyers and intelligent people. But, you know, being part of an industry that is accelerating and there's a lot of activity, it lined up for, you know, where I was in my career at Hub and where I was in my insurance career. And we've been able to, you know, sort of been hand in hand as this industry continues to grow or this cannabis specialty continues to grow. Yeah.

And, you know, there was that, and even I kind of did it. There's that hardy hard, you know, cannabis, what are you doing? What's going on there? But it's extremely sophisticated in a lot of different ways. And you know the stuff. Well, again, I guess you can comment on that either way, but I'm curious, too. There's a lot of people that. Listen, I think this is where you could be really helpful, Brad, to the audience. And, you know, you kind of talked about how it worked out for you, you know, we all know the importance of specializing by owning a market, by really understanding the business inside and out. How have you approached that? And I guess I'm curious too. Where do you see the competitive advantages that you have in truly being a specialist in a space?

Yeah, I think the, you know, for us there's a lot of new products, insurance products being launched in the cannabis space. And I think if I weren't a specialist, spending 99% of my time doing this, you know, maybe you miss a new product or you don't know what is going on in your space. Being a specialist also has helped us, or at least helped me, create products where they haven't existed because I think the carriers take us seriously, you know, or take me seriously, rather, when I can say to them, look, I found a bottleneck, I need you to solve for this bottleneck. The person who solves for this bottleneck or the carrier that solves for this bottleneck, the program that solves for this bottleneck is the one who's going to get not only my business, but probably everybody's business in the cannabis insurance space. And I being able to have those conversations as someone who lives in this and being a top trading partner for at least the majority of the cannabis markets out there, the credibility that being a specialist has offered me is hyper important. And I mean, it sounds a little bit cliche, but I mean, if you get enough of one kind of business or you control a large enough segment of the market or enough market share, one of our key differentiators is at this point we can actually move the market. And I don't know, if I were writing restaurants, I could never say that I could never move nationwide in their rates. But given our market share in the cloud, we can literally say, hey, we're seeing rates and we're going to push rates in this direction. And we do so reasonably and circumspect about how I approach the carriers. We're not trying to burn anyone, but we're trying to tell good stories and push the rates to where we feel like they need to be. And it works the majority of the time. Not always. Sometimes they're like, dude, we're not giving. You're not getting insurance like that. You're not getting that coverage.

All you can do is ask, right?

All you can do is ask. I mean, most of the time, if we're trying to move the market or if we're trying to price something, we've got a pretty gosh darn good reason. Reason for it, about why we think Something deserves. And having those conversations has been. Has been awesome. So, you know, directly answer your question. The fluency in the material is everything, right? And it's not just about the insurance. It's about what is actually going on in the global cannabis space or the macro cannabis space or the US Cannabis space and being able to have conversations. And, you know, I said this to a client I was presenting right before you, and I jumped on today and I said, look, you know, part of my job is insurance, but probably a larger part of my job is problem solving. So if you have problems that you can't solve, come to me. And it's not because I'm not smart, I'm not. It's because somebody else has had that problem and told me how they solved it. Because I like people and I like talking to people. So what, you know, and I said this to a client. Whatever I can do to help. You know, you can't get a mortgage because it says you're in the cannabis space. And you know, Chase won't lend to you. Give me a call. Let me. I'll connect you with whoever at the end of the CFO down the road used to do something. Can't get a bank account. You get kicked off of mailchimp, you get kicked off of, you know, name this platform because of your affiliation in the cannabis space, give me a call and I'll go through my network and let's see if we can all solve problems together because we all face countless problems.

Okay? So I'm just sitting here listening to you say that, and I just have to smile. I mean, this, it's just so cool because just as you said that, like, what you basically said without saying is that my approach isn't to sell people insurance. My goal is just to listen to them with an open, open ear and solve their problems.

I mean, I think you got it. And, you know, at least for what I'm doing right now, you know, 10% of my time is focused selling insurance to clients. 90% of my time is actually spent selling my clients to insurance carriers.

Oh, oh, write that down, people. That's good. I mean, listen, I mean, it's the truth now, part of this, and you share what you want to share, but I have a pretty good idea of what you accomplished just in one year. And if you want to share where you're at, I think it provides perspective because people, as you said before, oh, I'm out there killing it. Would you like to share what you wrote in new revenue last year, Brad?

Yeah, I Had a, you know, a seven figure new revenue year last year and, you know, great sales, great teamwork, great innovation. A lot of that was stuff that had never been done before. Had a couple of things where like a competitor will take a second look and I think the upper echelon of competitors, you know, I could do a separate podcast about that, but the upper echelon of our competitors has looked at the work and said, I didn't even know you could do that. Never seen that before. That's awesome. Right? And I mean, you hope that your competitor, you know, that's what I would do if I saw something. But yeah, the innovation has been really, really important about what we're trying to accomplish for our clients.

Yeah. You know, I mean, and for some people, like what, seven figures in a year? I mean, let's face it, I mean, there's a lot of people that would be an incredible career. And yes, you're with a great agency. Yes, you're in la, right. Bigger market, all that stuff. But it's just amazing what when people get committed to something and they, and they go deeper. Like what you said earlier, I love that even to go back to the. One of the first things you said it was about your goal was just find a few areas and go deep, get focused on those versus I got to know everything for everybody, all the time, for anyone. And I think obviously the numbers certainly are proven that that's a good path for you and certainly for.

Well, I would. Even most of my clients aren't in la. I happen to live in LA because I live in la, but that's actually not where I'm, you know, finding business. You know, I could be anywhere at this point. I just happened to be in la. As long as I'm close enough to an airport, I think it works out. But yeah, I'm in a good market. But I think really what it's about is, you know, the team around me, the mentors within our organization. You know, I'm a medium fish in a big pond at this point and still have a lot of room to grow, to hone my craft and to be able to best serve my clients.

Yeah, I mean, and I'm glad you mentioned that because it's one of those things where it doesn't mean your clients are there. But I just, people are going to listen. I'm just telling you, Brad, they're going to go, well, yeah, but he's out in la. It's like that's not really the reason why he's having success. Yes. He happens to be there. So I'm glad that you shared that.

I know. And, you know, it's even worse because I'm really tough on myself. I look at the opportunities I didn't get because that's a number that I track for revenue. And I, you know, and I think, I don't know, Brand, if you were there. But I told the story to Roger about, like, the meeting where I don't know what went wrong, but I did everything that you're not supposed to do in Sitkins, I did in one single meeting. And it was like, I wish you could see a recording of this. It's my favorite story. I don't know what happened. I went in, I felt decently prepared, and I went into this office, you know, tall office in the Midwest, and walked into this thing, and I was ready for this. I was ready. You know, I had my approach dialed in, and the client asked me a question. It was such a good question that she asked me. And it was one of my hot button issues. She asked me this client or this question, and I ranted for 45 minutes. I just did. No breaks, no questions, no nothing. I took a sip of water because my mouth got dry. And for 45 minutes I ranted. And it was just, yeah, shocked. We didn't pick that one up. I don't know why, but those are the ones that stick with me. And I remember after that meeting calling Roger, being like, ID trading, please help me, and just saying like, hey, that's a great example of what I'm never going to do again. I'll be in an extensive lesson on what was probably like 4 or 500,000 revenue account, but things I'm never going to do again.

Yeah, well, lessons there, Brad. I mean, number one, is it just, again, to me, it's refreshing. And you don't see it because you're in the middle of it and this is who you are. But like, for many people, if you had that amount of success, they'd be like, I'm pretty good. I'm good. And you're here tracking the revenue you didn't write, and you're continually going, what else can I do? What else should I done? Why didn't I do that? And now, see, I get the opportunity to work with a number of producers, and I'll just be very transparent here. The most successful producers say less than some of the less successful producers. Right. And they apply more to the trainings or at least focus and go deeper wherever the ones that struggle. Yeah, I know that I'm fine. And so it's just the bottom line is, are you coachable?

Right.

And are you willing to learn and listen? You are extremely coachable. This is fun conversation, but I could go longer. But I want to be respectful of your time. And you've shared some successes that we've had in your niche, and anything else you want to share, feel free to do that. You've also just shared one of your fav. Failures, which is actually one of my favorites. I think you shared that one of our Sales Mastery programs.

Yeah, I might have. I mean, it was just. It was so epic. It was such an epic fail. And, you know, it just. It keeps me humble, and it keeps me wanting to learn, and it keeps me kind of, you know, not just, you know, I don't come back to Sitkins once. I'm doing sales acceleration right now while I do Sales Mastery, and then I think I'm in a third class all at the same time. And the reason, you know, somebody asked me, and I think Roger asked yesterday is like, why are you. Why are you doing this again? And it's like, I still have so much to learn and not even to learn. I have so much to practice. Right. Practice. And I remember one time where committing to Sales Mastery, I was, you know, thinking to myself, oh, I don't have the time for this. You know, I can't really do this. I can't really squeeze it in. And that was like my aha Moment when I was like, I don't have enough time for training. That's when you really need sales training because you're not prioritizing things correctly. Okay. And that was my. And then it was like, yeah, I'm going to wake up because y' all start your sales meetings for me at 5am not cool, bro. Not a morning dog.

But that was just one time, sort of.

Those are long days.

Yeah. You had your coffee? Well, I mean, I had my coffee. You said, you know, it is. And Roger says all the time.

And I agree.

It's like, really? Because people say, well, I'm awfully busy. It's like, you're too busy to get better. And now, again, if you believe that, you know, in essence, it's just about our stuff. But we believe in our stuff. But regardless, if you're at that point where it's kind of like. And Rogers alluded to this in some of our programs as well. It's like you. You play someone who's got. You're having a match of golf or whatever, and someone's like, all of a sudden, really good. It's like, well, I've been taking lessons, like, what you've been practicing. That's not fair.

Shocking, right?

And it's like, yeah, I have been so, again, kudos to you for that. Because again, I mean, to me, Brad, one of the biggest things we see with success is at least to complacency, and that's certainly not happening with you. And I don't see at any point that ever slowing down. Like, you're not going to be done.

No. And I also, like, I just, again, I look at, you know, in our organization and, you know, you know, we're on teams or whatever at Hub, and you can see, like, our most successful people are online. They're working. Like, you know, they are not just sitting around doing nothing. Like, you know, no, you gotta drive. Right. And, you know, you owe it to your hpt. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to your family. Hard work is really important. And you're right. The complacency. Complacency is extremely dangerous.

I've written articles and speeches. I believe it's the most toxic word in insurance, complacency.

And it's easy, too.

Well, yeah. And as you said at the beginning, like, you don't have to do a lot. Still make decent money.

You don't have to do a lot.

All right, so I have two more questions. Is that all right?

Okay. Yep. You're good, man. I have plenty of time.

One question is deep or, I think, really impactful. The other one has nothing that we've done to prepare for. But I've been looking at this over your shoulder, and I have to know the story behind it.

It.

So we'll get to the meaningful question first. And I asked this to every guest I have on. So let's say that you're having a conversation with the young Brad Rut, right. Someone who's just getting their feet wet, just getting started, maybe decide at this point they don't want the attorney thing. They wanted the insurance thing. So 16 years ago, something like that.

Right.

And this young Brad Rut is looking up at today's Brad Rut and says, hey, future me, if you could give me one piece of advice as I start moving forward, what would you tell me?

Yeah, I think the number one thing is be deliberate. And as a corollary to that, be patient. When I was sort of kicked out of the account manager role into production, I just was running around at a million miles an hour trying to take any meeting I could take driving across the city, wasting my time, probably wasting, you know, the staff's time, wasting my carriers times. And you know, I had this fire. I thought that's what you were supposed to be. I'm like, I'm not lazy. Look at me. I'll drive this far, I'll drive this far on some really like dicey accounts or accounts that were unwinnable or you know, accounts that, you know, you get it once, you lose it the next year. You know, win by price, lose by price, right. And if I had like a better kind of like infrastructure or if I had a better sales plan, I really would have spent my time kind of developing my network. Right. And realizing that I'm not going to make a million dollars in day one. And I'm sure there's stories in insurance about the guy who, you know, starts insurance and you know, hits the ball out of the park guy, girl. But yeah, I wish I had just been a little bit slower about it. Kind of nurture things, you know, have lunches, have breakfast, spending quality time with people, having them get to know me before I started the big pitch for insurance. And I will say that, you know, my most, the most of the successes I had early on in my career came from people who'd known me for a long time. I should have taken the time to like have people get to know me. Centers of influence, that's where my efforts should have been. The other thing I would say is I wished and I had this opportunity through another producer at our family agency who's also now joined Hub and Revolver, remains one of my mentors and is probably, you know, one of Hubs most successful producers. But being on somebody's team and seeing how somebody else does it and being patient and you know, be willing to put that work in because he invested his time in me and showed me the kind of the ropes of how he sold. Our approaches aren't the same. They're really not. But you know, having that time to see Sal, how somebody else did it, getting exposure to bigger accounts that I. Because he was a different place in his career that is, you know, so helpful. So did the, you know, Younger Brad Spend 40% of your time, 30% of your time, you know, kind of being deliberate in nurturing your relationships that will at one point flower. And I mean, you also say this, you know, I'm almost 40 years old, but I look like I'm 12 and I still can't buy a lotto ticket. You know, people want to see, you know, some maturity and sometimes that takes A while to develop, but the, you know, the time getting to mentor under someone, that has resulted in the success that I'm having today. And so if you can have that patience and if you can be deliberate, and I. And I wish I did, because I'd probably be further ahead than I am today.

That's really powerful stuff. I mean, a lot of great stuff. It's interesting, too, just because you put. It's almost two ends, but I know exactly what you mean. Be deliberate, yet be patient. That's. That's a challenge, right? But it makes so much sense in what you have. And I know in my life, too, Brad, I mean, like, mentors have meant the world to me. And I'm also jealous of you, though, because you're about 40. I'm 44, and I was told when I started that if I got some gray hairs, I'd be more successful, and I've achieved many, many, many gray hairs. But you do look. You do look like you're 23 years old. And I'm a bit jealous, honestly. It's a good thing. So congratulations on whatever it is you're doing. It's working.

I appreciate it. I appreciate it. The beautiful California weather.

That's got to be it. That's got to be. All right, my silly question is, hey, I'm looking at this dinosaur over your left shoulder. I think it's your left shoulder. What's the story of the dinosaur? Or is there one?

Story of the dinosaur is a gift, actually, probably from one of my best friends, best center of influence. He just said, now that we're in this Zoom world, he just, you know, this kind of reminds me of you. And I don't know if it's a thing like he's saying, I don't pick up enough checks because the T. Rex arms, you know, he can't reach for the check. I don't know if there was a subliminal message there, but, yeah, you know, hungry and fun.

That's cool. Well, I mean, you know, it's funny just by doing that, like, because there isn't a Zoom World. Like, it just sparks conversation, just like anything else. Obviously, one of our common friends here in the program, Jeff Jones, has he put stuff on his Zoom calls. He always has different stuff. He moves around and intentionally just makes you go, what is that? Or, what are you doing there for some fun? But, hey, listen, I love that.

And you know what that is? That's real. That's deliberate. Look at that. Like, that is someone who's prepared for the meeting. Like that is. I'm actually in the process and I'm changing this stuff out soon and I put a piece. I actually like to take pictures. Not all over. My house is decorated with the pictures that I've taken and blown up and poster size, if not wall size. I got some real big ones. But I want to take a picture. I want to put a picture up there. Something that, you know, one of my own experiences and something that maybe I connect with someone over, you know, in this, like, strange. But again, it's deliberate, right? It's not. Oh, I just threw a bunch of stuff. Yeah, it's, it's.

I mean, it's.

Yeah, I've got some others.

It's with purpose, with intention. Like there's a plan behind it and you're spot on. Like, I mean, yes, Jeff's having fun and you're having fun with doing that, but there's, there's a reason behind it. Right? I mean, and whatever that is, it's. Except it's with purpose. I love that.

Yeah. And I don't think it's like a nefarious reason in any way, shape or form. If that allows someone to ask a question of me that perhaps they weren't comfortable asking, or if that allows me to connect better and faster with someone because we have like, you know, a similar interest. I mean, heck, I think you do that every day of the week. I'm trying to accelerate relationships. There's nothing wrong with that.

Give yourself every opportunity. And for me, it's funny, I honestly didn't notice at first. And then I'm sitting there looking at it and I've got a nine year old son, he loves dinosaurs.

They're pretty cool, right?

And so, I mean, it's just for me, I'm like, oh, man, I actually think, like, I wonder where he got that. Like, my son would think that would be cool if he had that in his room. Of course we had like 75 dinosaurs around our house in different buckets.

But have 76 though. You could always have 76. That's true.

That's true. So, so. Well, hey, Brett, thank you so much. This was awesome. I mean, I mean this. I would love to go deeper and maybe I'll have you on again and talk about some other things that you're doing. I know we'll see each other again, but just thank you. Thank you for your time and I mean, Brett, anytime.

The pleasure is mine. Thanks for your time and thanks for, you know, to you and Roger for the investment that you guys have made. In me in terms of time, because it's not just the couple hours we spend in class. Like, I have access to you. I have access to Roger when I need to run some ideas or I'm trying to get next level. So thank you both.

Hey, well, you're welcome. So, well, hey, all the listeners. I've got a bunch of notes for Brad said that hit me in different ways. That certainly hopefully hit you in different ways. And just again, something I've said so many times in this podcast, success leaves clues. You just got to follow the trail. So, Brad, you left some breadcrumbs today for people to pick up on, and we appreciate that. All right, guys, thank you so much.

For listening a lot.

All the best of your success.