Maximizing Agency Value with Max Olson of Legacy Advisors

You may have no plan of selling your agency this year, next year, or even three years or longer, but at some point, you will exit your agency either internally or externally. On today's Agent Leader podcast, I have a fantastic guest, Max Olson of Legacy Advisors, who's going to share some things to consider about your agency. Whether you look at selling today or way down in the future, it's a great interview. Huge takeaways. Enjoy. Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly. I am your host, and this is the podcast for agency leaders to grow, to develop, to escape from good results into their best version possible. And today I have an awesome guest. I'm excited to have this guest today because he'll bring a different perspective on this podcast that we haven't had before, which to me is super exciting. You know, obviously I do a number of solo podcasts. I podcast where I bring in agency leaders. In this case, I'm bringing in someone who is going to be talking about how you sell your agency for a lot of money. And we'll talk more than just that. He's smiling here, but Max Olson with Legacy Advisors, I got the chance to. We got introduced, Max, I think through a mutual acquaintance, and then we were at an event together, although we were speaking at the same time. So I didn't get to see you speak and you didn't hear me speak, which maybe that's okay. But we had some great conversation and we've had some, some meetings afterwards. And I know that Max is going to bring a ton of value to you, the agency leader. And let's face it, you may go, well, I'm not going to sell my agency. Sure. But at some point you're going to leave your agency. At some point internally, externally, you're going to leave your. You're going to, you're going to exit. And one of the things that we believe in is let's maximize what we do. Maximize the behaviors and strategies to help you exit where that's going to look like with the most options possible. And Max has got a great perspective. So with that, Max, I'll end my babble and say, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, I appreciate it. And yeah, I was wondering why there weren't tons of people at our speaking session. It's because they were yours. So, yeah, it's great to be on. Thanks a lot for having me.

Well, you know, it's pretty funny. I'm over talking to agency principals about, you know, certain. The strategies and behaviors to, to. To grow, growth and profit. Right. Obviously, Agency valuation and you over there talking about the perpetuation side. So maybe we should have done, you know, one after the other or whatever. But anywho, I want to. First of all, Max, just if you could share, share your experience, your background, everyone's got a story. I'd love to hear yours. How did you get to where you're doing today? What have you learned? All that good stuff. So give a, give a history of your story and a little bit about Legacy Advisors and what you all do. Yeah, absolutely.

So my background is from the insurance agency world. My dad owned an agency, two uncles own agencies. I owned an agency I started with acquisition of three really small insurance agencies back in 2012 and we had a team of three, grew it organically and we did 13 total acquisitions over the next eight years and grew it from three employees to 30 and sold that to a private equity group back in 2020. It was a pretty wild ride. A lot of growth in a short period of time. Really enjoyed it. And yeah, I started going through and helping agency owners get prepped for sale. And in 2022, myself and Mike Alberg, my partner, went through and then founded Legacy Advisors, went on our own with it. And it's, it's been a blast. I've gone through the experience of having agency that I've gone through and then built, having a team that I love and then you want to make sure that you go to the right spot and on it, we get to participate in what's one of the most influential moments in someone's life. It's their largest asset, something they care about a lot. And we help them make the right choice and ultimately get had a larger amount of money for their, for the agency as well. So it's, it's been a blast. We helped 11 agencies last year, four so far this year, three under contract that we're working with as well. So we've been able to touch a lot of, a lot of agencies, livelihoods and it's, it's been great.

Yeah, I know we'll get into more of this, but you know, per our discussions, I've asked you a number of questions. I was like, gosh, we, we should take this to a podcast because there's great value in what you're saying. And then I learned a lot, a ton as well. I think what's too max, as you said, this is that you've lived it, right? I mean you, you, you, you've been in that world. You understand that world. You know, one of the things that we've learned in some of our training is that, you know, there's a balance between empathy and authority. Right. You've got both. Right. That you understand what they're going through, but also you've now done it right and have the credibility authority to do it. So I'm excited to get, to get to chat with you more here and share this with our, with our listeners. And I want to start off with the positive thing and, and again, you can take this question wherever you want your paradigm. But I always like to talk about agency success and just thinking about, you know, the agencies and you mentioned some of the deals you've worked on and things you've done over the last year or so. I would love for you to maybe share some examples of success stories. What did an agency do? How did they prepare? What were they thinking about? I mean, I mean, gosh, this pretty broad. But I think success leaves clues and I think it'd be interesting to hear maybe some areas where clues have been left that you could share with the audience.

Yeah. So I think ultimately, at the end of the day, the biggest success for us is when we go through and then find somebody, they have a specific, specific goal, like they have a specific day two culture, what would happen after the sale, and specific financial goals that they want to go through and hit and all of them are achieved and then some. I think one of the most enjoyable experiences we went through and then had a lot of times we, we go through and then start conversations with people a year plus before they actually sell. And I remember there was one agent that had come to us back in like the end of 2022, thinking about potentially selling. We went through the whole process of evaluation with them, basically let them know there's a few items that like they could sell today or back then. But realistically if they made a few changes, it would be a dramatic difference in their sales price. They took the information, they used it always positive impacts for their agency even if they didn't go through and then sell. And realistically, when they did go through and then sell, they sold for millions more than what they could have when they first came to us. I know like there's a lot of scenarios where like people would go through and then push on trying to go through and then like sell your agency. Today we're not here to sell anyone on selling. Right. So we're here to go through and give information and if there's items that basically could help someone two years down the road now we better time like we, we just want Them to have success no matter when it is.

So, yeah, you know, I want to dive into a couple of those things because there's, there's some, there's some nuggets we can get into. Again. We've had some of these conversations before, but I think one of the things that you said that we can overlook is like actually having a plan.

Yep.

You know, and let's face it, I mean this, this happens. We see this too, where you know, agencies kind of like get backed into a corner. Like, you know, I've just been doing the thing and doing the thing and it's like, oh, now what? I gotta, I gotta do something with this versus saying again, whatever it is. We've talked about this. I mean, whether it's, hey, in five years I want to do this, in three years I want to do this. Or like I said, I don't really know yet, but I want to prepare just in case. Right. On these kind of things. And you know, to me, one of the things that, you know, we love to provide and this is certainly mutual, I think we have a mutual understanding here. Agreement is that giving agency owners and leaders and their teams options, like, let's give you as many good options as possible. So I think that was the key part. And the other thing too, I'm going to get in the numbers a little bit because, you know, these change in this world. But you know, we talk about to agency leaders all the time, like, are you leaving millions potentially of dollars on the table? Yeah. And you know, think about this. You go, well, I don't know, I don't know. But let's face it, this is an incredible, incredible business. There's these things called multiples, you know, like, wow. Like, you know, and, and in this business there's some pretty good ones. And just again, I know there's a lot of factors this. But just from a very basic numerical standpoint, it's pretty safe to say that typically every $100,000 in unrealized profit is a million dollars plus oftentimes for an agency in value. And again, there's discrepancies and all that. But I just said for overall, like you think about that, wow, this is important stuff. Right. I mean this, this is important stuff. And so I guess to go further on that because, you know, we talk so much and we work so much max on behaviors and strategies and getting processes in place so that. Right. We can streamline things. What have you seen agencies do? I mean, even a little more tangibly.

Sure.

Maybe in that case, you Gave that actually helped them kind of shift from we're doing pretty good to wow, we're really valued at a high level now. Yeah.

So I'll just go off of my own story because it's the one I know best. Right. So when I went through own an agency, I was about five years in, I knew that one day I'd consider going through and selling. Didn't know when that was. I wasn't trying to sell like immediately. I, but I didn't know what the, what the calculation of where my sales price would come from. I didn't know the things, the levers that would go through and move it up or down, especially the multiple and I didn't know the ways to go through and maximize stuff. So I'd gone through, talked to a business broker at the time, didn't really focus as much on insurance. Wouldn't have been the right choice long term. But they gave me a ton of information that allowed me to go through and improve my agency a lot. So at that point in time I had five offices. People basically spread out between all the different offices, which is difficult. You got extra utilities, you got extra rent, oftentimes you have extra people just because you need more people per location. In that scenario I hadn't gone through and diversified my book from a carrier perspective as much as I could have. And I didn't have the processes in place to go through and make it so my average revenue per employee was where it should end up being at. So over the next two years I consolidated offices, still kept all my people, chose great locations that were in between previous locations. I went through and then instituted the EOS system, hired consultants to go through and then help me improve on sections that I wouldn't have been able to improve on my own. And ultimately three years later our agency sold for two and a half times what it was worth two and a half years earlier. So if you look at like the return on investment on that, it was absurd and but like without knowing the levers, without knowing like the goal state, it's really hard to go through and make those changes.

Yeah, that's why, that's a great point because I mean we can, I'll be very, I'll be very self centered here for a second but we see this because it's real. It's like, well, you know, I don't know if you should invest in that because it's a cost and like, well, no, you missed the word. It really is an investment, like a huge investment and a great investment and I mean, you know, kind of the joke, but not a joke is like, hey, Max, if I, you know, gave you a dollar and it magically turned into five, how many of those dollars do you want? So give me as many. Right? I mean, it's like, yeah, okay, so. And again, you've got to back that up. But I think, you know, your story is a great example of that, like, of just the things that we need to do. And I think one thing you mentioned revenue per employee, and I don't want to get caught up in KPIs because every agency is different, but I do think that's a pretty, pretty important KPI or metric that a lot of agencies, quite frankly, don't really pay that much attention to. And they should. And now some do. And a lot of that comes back to issues of agency capacity. And I want to see if this, if you see this with some agencies you talk to or just from your experience, I oftentimes will hear agencies talk about, we just need more people. We need more people. We need more people. And that could be true, right? I'm not saying it's not true, but oftentimes what I find is that people are trying. The agencies are trying to throw people at the problem versus addressing the problem. Yeah, yeah. Do you agree with that? And where have you seen examples like that?

Yeah, I mean, we go through and we see financials for agencies all day long and we'll go through and then see shops that have a million dollars in revenue and they'll have nine and a half people there and then a million dollars in revenue and they'll have three. Right. The one with three is growing just as fast as the one with nine and a half. It's like there's, there's something that needs to change on one of those. And yeah, I think if you invest in the processes and streamline everything, and that doesn't have to be at the expense of customer service, you can have a better client experience if you're going through and then using the right processes. That, that is a huge, huge return. Because if you can go through and then take your payroll down from 50% of your revenue down to 40, like that's oftentimes hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars when it comes time to actually sell. So.

Yeah. And Max, I don't know if you've heard us say this before again, because we've had some conversations, but you know, one of like the two, two of a key principles like Sipkins 101, and this feeds into this is you know, we have profitable producers that are subsidizing or unprofitable producers. There's a lot of agencies that. Well, that's just kind of the way it is. Like, well, yeah, okay, let's talk about it. Is it. And secondly is we have profitable accounts that are subsidized in our unprofitable accounts. Yeah, that's just the way it is. And again, there's a lot of different ways. Again, every agency is different. You know, I always joke with agencies. You know, the best thing about being independent is you're independent. The biggest challenge of being independent is you're independent. Right. A lot of different ways you can shake it. A lot of differences there, but I think what you're saying talks to that very well. And it's, It's. I don't know if you'll find humor in this or not, but it's, you know, the tutu syndrome. I've had the two, two, two too many clients paying us too little money or too many people doing too little things results. Right. Or whatever it is. So I, I think that's a huge issue, and I want to dive in. You know, maybe some of the frustration challenges or even mistakes. I think we can learn a lot from success, Learn a lot from mistakes. What would be a mistake or a challenge? Maybe a better term that you see agencies run into again, whether they're looking to sell short term, long term, or just want to get some feedback of how do we improve. What are some of the stakes that you typically see?

So the one that I hear the most often from people we talk to is they went directly to a buyer or a buyer went directly to them. They only talked with one buyer, which was the one that basically went through, and then told them what their agency was worth. You don't want to go through and have the person that's potentially buying your agency telling you what it's worth.

You.

You want to have that from a third party or at least multiple different buyers at a minimum. And ultimately, like, we've. We've had people that have. That have gone through and then been in diligence for like over a year. That's insane. The whole process is normally four to five months if you do it right. Like, so if you, if you're in the point where it's like, you've got an offer and you haven't gone through and closed and it's a year later, like, it's. It's nuts. But we hear the story over and over and over again.

Interesting. Yeah. My Brain took me, like, selling my home and like, having someone show up and be like, I don't know, what do you think you know? Yeah, that's.

I mean, that's what it is. And then imagine keeping your home staged for over a year and like, ever every month, you've got to do a deep clean.

Right.

And then reassess everything. I mean, it's, it's exhausting. And the agencies that have gone through them told me those stories. I mean, they're just fed up with the entire thing by the end.

Yeah. Is that. I mean, I don't know if this is a relevant question or not. Maybe it is. But is that, is that one of the frustrations or maybe a hindrance of holding agencies back from having those conversations? They just feel like it's going to be like, suck up a year of their life or.

I don't know if it's. I don't know if it's that. I think a lot of it is. There's not nearly as much education in the space as there should be. Like, if you think about, like, how to go through and then improve client, how to improve employee productivity, you can probably go through and see 100 different things online about that. If you're talking about, like, how to sell your agency properly for the most money, you don't see that that often because it's almost like this, this taboo, like you're raising the white flag and then it's like, I'm, I'm out. Right. But it's one of the most important parts in any agency's. Like an agency, agency owner's career is how well they go through and then do that. It oftentimes can be years worth of, worth of profits for, especially on the front end. So it's like you should, you should go through and then do it. Right.

Yeah. It's interesting because you, I think we, you mentioned that on another conversation we had about raising the white flag, and it got into, like, the psychology behind that, like, and again, why, why, why is that more of a normal conversation or a thought process or planning. And this may not be relevant. I had none of this prepared, but it hit me. It's like when you're, when you're planning or paring for an estate or. Right. You think about, like, your legacy, you know, with your kids and choice of words.

I liked it.

You like that? You see how I did that legacy plug. That's solid. It's like a legacy. But I mean, it's, it's, you know, talking about a will and different things. I know these are separate subjects, but part of it is it's not always fun and to some degree even to think about, I suppose when it gets into. But man, is it important. And if you don't do it, what happens? Like yeah, you know, a phrase that I say to agencies all the time and maybe you can address this from your world. I'd love to hear this. I said, you know, you, you really have two choices in life and this is true in anything. This is true in agencies. You either prepare or you repair. And, and, and that's, you know, I mean you look at lots of stuff and I've been on both sides by the way. You know, I find myself, I, I tell people what take long, what, what takes longer repairing, like it's a mess. So do you see again, maybe that's relevant to you or not? But you see sometimes with agencies where they're, they're having to repair stuff or play catch up versus doing some of the preparation work in advance.

Yeah, I mean what we see often is somebody comes through that basically is like, hey, I waited until the last minute, like maybe a health issue or something along that nature. I want to sell and then I want to exit like the next day. Realistically, if they plan just a little bit, if they give themselves a little bit of a window, like call it like three years.

Yeah.

Oftentimes they could go through and then sell, get like a huge bite out of the apple, have three more years of an earn out, get an additional bite of the apple and from financially they're in a really, a really, really great spot, but they just kind of push off the conversation. And I think a lot of it as well is people have heard stories of somebody going to a certain buyer and just not being good fit or a certain model. And that's how it would be. And like life would suck. There's lots of different models that are out there and, and these buyers, they all have different profiles. So like if there's, if you want to go through and then say I just want to sell insurance, I want somebody else to just manage these people. I want them to manage the, the it, I want to manage the accounting. I just want to sell insurance. Like there's options that exist there now if you're like, hey, we got a great thing, I just want to de risk a little bit. Like I know I've got this huge value in my agency. I want to keep managing my people and I want to maintain a very similar culture. There's options there too. It Just depends on what you're looking for. But. But people going through and thinking there's only one path oftentimes prevents them from having the conversation in the first place.

That's a great point. Remind you of something I was. Was speaking on earlier this week? And it's true. I mean, I always. Things that I teach and talk about are oftentimes things that I'm also struggling with. Right. Or working through. I think it's being a coach, consultant, trainer. Right. You're like, okay, that's a good question. How would I react to that? But it' was getting to. Is that if you ask most agency leaders, hey, what's frustrating you? Or what do you not? Like, they can give you a lot of answers. Like, I don't like this. I don't. I mean, it's common. Like, I'm frustrated with this. If you say, but what do you really want?

Yeah.

They will often hesitate way more on that question. Like, what do you mean? I'm like, no, like, what do you really want?

Sure.

Feel like I'm doing a scene from the Notebook. If you ever watch that movie. What do you want? So my daughter's. My daughters love that movie. If you're a Notebook fan, you'll laugh. If you don't think I'm crazy, I'll.

Be proud of you.

Yeah, but what do you want? And it's like, what do you mean? Like. No, like, what are you trying to build or leave or do or accomplish? And I don't know. I haven't really thought about it.

Yeah. I mean, most people don't go through and then start with the end in mind. They don't go through and then say, where do I want to eventually get to? Because it's a lot easier to get there if you're actually thinking how you're going to do it. If you're just kind of like, going around aimlessly, it's going to be really unlikely that you. You find where you want to be eventually.

Yeah. My, my very silly analogy on that, Max. I said, it's like if you step outside your office or your house or whatever, and someone pulls up in a car and they go, hey, hop in. Let's go. And you're like, where are we going? Like, I don't know, but just, let's go. You know, it's like, of course you're not going to do that. But it kind of happens arbitrarily every day. It's like we just kind of live. We're just kind of going wherever it goes versus Saying, hey, listen, I have an end in mind. I think that's, that's super, super critical. All right. I don't want to put you on the spot, but I, but I'm going to anyway because you're a sharp guy, I know you can handle this. So I think it's putting you on the spot. But if an agency leader was thinking, hey Max, you've lived it, you've walked it, you're very focused on what you do now and helping agencies maximize this, this important thing, this most important asset they have, what's the number one thing? What's one thing that I should be most focused on concerned about? I don't know what it is. What's the one thing that I don't know that I probably should know or should be.

To narrow down to one is, is fun. So thanks for, thanks for that.

You're welcome. You're welcome.

If they are basically like a few months out from selling and if there is one thing that they would go through and then do that would have the greatest impact, it would be get the EBITDA right. So basically, if you think of like when an agency goes through and then sells, they will have their sales price, generally speaking is going to be EBITDA times a multiple and that's their sales price. And everyone goes through and then they'll, they'll shout from the rooftops that they got a 10x EBITDA multiple when they heard their buddy down the street got a nine and a half. But a lot of people don't focus at all on that first number. And there is so much sway that can happen in that number and you can go through and then like we've seen agencies that went from like a 9 to a 40 plus percent EBITDA multiple. Others don't change as much. It depends on what, what variables can, can exist. But focus on that number. Get it right. Because every single dollar you're finding that's an expense that wouldn't exist on a go forward or every additional revenue that you go through, dollar revenue that you find that, that any buyer would get, but you aren't going through and then getting like those are $10 or like 8 to $12 when it comes to the sales price. So you can go through and then spend a few hours and literally walk away with hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars more in sales price if you focus on getting that EBITDA number. Right?

Yeah, that's great. I appreciate you sharing that. And yeah, I mean, I think it is again overlooked, at least you Know, from being intentional about it. And yeah, we see it too. I mean, shifts. And again, you know, we're not, you know, we're not in that world or model. What we try to do is help agencies maximize everything they can for whatever they want to do. Right. You know, and agency valuation is a big part of that. But I mean, just from a very basic level, you know, for us, Max, and we look at organic growth rate percentage and operating profit percentage, and we actually look at the two numbers put together, and again, that's not ebitda, but I mean, it starts to look at factors of that.

Yeah.

And you go, oh, I haven't thought about that way before. Right. Or it's been intentional with what that. What that results in. I want to make sure you get a plug in here, because obviously we've talked about. We'll put stuff in the show. In the show notes. But if an agency leader, Max, says, hey, listen, I don't. I mean, anywhere from, like, I don't have. We want to remain independent and private forever. Right. But at some point I'm gonna have to do something internally or I'm thinking maybe three or five years, there's something there. Or maybe it's, hey, the next couple years, I really want to do something with this. How do they connect with you? What would be. What would be a initial step, I guess with legacy?

Yeah. They could go on our website. It's legacy advisors.com. that info would come, come to me if they fill it out. And yeah, I mean, upfront, again, we're not here to sell anybody on selling, like, it's their choice, whatever the right time would be. We just want to make sure that they have all the information. So that way, when they're making their choices, it's the best choice possible for them and their family. So, like, our. Our first step is always we get to know them. We go over, like, what a process is in general, because they should know that whether they're doing it in a. In a month or five years, and then if it makes sen. Like to at least get an idea of what an expected sales price would be, like a snapshot in time, we'll do that with them. Even if it's like two or three years before they'll go through and actually sell. Want to go through and build relationships. And oftentimes we can give them advice that's really valuable and worth, again, hundreds of thousands of dollars when they go through and then sell. And some of them basically decide to go through and then move forward then, because it makes sense for them. And some of them, some of them don't. They might reach out to us in a year or two.

So, yeah, that's great. I love a simplified approach. Again, I've enjoyed our conversations for many reasons, but I just your approach of, you know, a true consultant or how can I help you, move you forward and maybe do something with us. Maybe you don't, but I'm going to educate you and empower you as much as I can that you have options, can make the best decisions that are important for you and the people you care about and love the most. And I think that that, that says a lot and I've appreciated that in our conversation. I'll say this too, and I'm going to do a shameless plug, but an important plug. That's something that we do at the Sidkins Group. In fact, I've mentioned this on some recent podcasts. We started doing this the summer of 2024. I shared it with you, Max, on a call recently. Yeah, we want to do the same thing. And so, you know, for agencies that go, hey, listen, maybe we want to sell or whatever, we want to improve our agency valuation, we want to get better, we want to go kick butt in the marketplace, whatever it is. Right. Your reason to be out there. We are providing a assessment for an agencies that qualifies. So you book a quick call, we'll ask you some super simple questions. If it makes sense, you'll talk to one of our coaches and we will do a detailed assessment, a best version possible assessment for your agency and deliver you a plan. And at that point you can do with the plan what you want. In some cases, we would love to work with you. It's a great fit. In some cases, maybe it won't be make most sense for you, but. But just like Max said, give you options, allow you to be empowered to make an important decision for the number one asset that you have. Which is your agency. Right. Is your agency. So. All right, Max, I have one final question. Has nothing to do necessarily, I can be, I guess, with insurance or selling. It has to do about you giving advice to a younger version of you.

Sure.

All right. So I know if you're prepared for this, but I'll try to slow down and let you think about it. So imagine that the younger version of Max, maybe you're just getting started on your professional career. So you're just kind of baby, baby Max in the professional world. That person comes up to you today, what you know, today, and says, hey, listen, I'm looking for the best piece of advice you can give me. Older version of me. What advice would you give them?

So if it was me, personal, personally, I would go through and then give the advice of slow down a little bit and enjoy the ride. So on my end, I basically sprinted for about 10 years straight, which worked out really, really well. But I could have taken a few breaks, which would have been very nice, and I don't think it would have impacted Seth too much, realistically. So just. Which. Which worked out really, really well, but I could have taken a few. Few breaks, which would have been very nice, and I don't think it would have impacted Seth too much, realistically. So just. And kind of while you're going through. Through the whole thing, it's like, you focus on that end in mind, but, like, it's a pretty awesome journey along the way. So just take a step back and then just appreciate it while you're in it.

Yeah, that's fantastic. And there's absolutely no wrong answers to that. And I think everybody's got their own perspective, and I love that. In fact, I was just having that conversation with my wife, and I'm gonna go ahead, I'm gonna add one more, and I'm gonna respect your time here, but I want to go deeper in your question because I'm curious of your response on this, but I. I was thinking, you know, like, everybody, especially with kids and stuff, as you go through life, you're like, wow, how did we already get here?

Yeah.

And you start thinking, like, in 10 years, am I going to be just, like, grinding at this and be like, okay, now I'm here. Now what? Like, what happened? Right. And. And so my question or my thought, I don't know if it's a question, but a thought is how do you balance ambition and gratitude in the sense of ambition is. I know there's more in me. When we talk about best version possible, I never want to look back and go, yeah, I just settled. I just kind of got through it. And it's okay. A lot of people do that. But to be truly grateful and present in that process. Any thoughts? Again, I don't know if it's really a question. I just want to maybe get your perspective on that.

Yeah, I mean, as I got a little bit more mature and then more into the swing of things, usually I'd go through and then set goals for myself, which, once I achieved them, then it's something where it's like, you can take a step back and don't just reset another Goal that's, you know, 20% higher. The, the, the following, like, take a step back. Like actually you did it. Like, that's great. And because oftentimes, especially if you're in like, like a complete growth mindset, you just always make, make your goals higher and higher and higher and higher, which, there's nothing wrong with that, but you should, you should appreciate it along the way. You should, you should take a step back and like, hey, you, you, you, you did a great job and you can still do better. But, but say you did a good, good job first.

Yeah, it's, I mean, if you're saying that, like there's a challenge there, because I don't, I. We talk to agency, you know, leaders, certainly producers too. Like, is it about money or is it about winning? They'll generally always say winning. Like it's about winning. The money will come. And that's great. But I just want to go out and win and achieve. And I think that's how most entrepreneurial, growth minded people are, is like, if you're not growing, you feel very like trapped or like you're frustrated. So I think there's always that growth. And if you've done something, like, I think I'm with you, like, it's like, I know I've done this and now I can grow and accomplish more and I always want to be able to have that mindset. But in the middle of all of those things, right? Am I, am I? And how do I take time to go, I enjoy this. Yeah, I appreciate this. I'm grateful for this. I'm grateful to people around me. I'm grateful. And you know, I think again, this is not planned, but it hit me. I had a podcast conversation the other day. I think one of the things that helps. I'm learning, I'm learning. I haven't learned, I'm learning is you think about the impact that you've made, not necessarily on yourself, but in relationships with people. Right. You think, you know what, like, I was really able to impact and help someone. Like, that's like, oh, I can appreciate and be grateful. Not that I'm grateful for where I'm at either, but just like I think it takes that, that self centered thing is like, hey, how can I go out and impact and help even more people? Yeah. And here's how I wrap this up. This was an intention and intentional, but I'll do it anyway because guess what? The more people I can impact and help and serve, greater legacy. Greater legacy. There you go, Max. I'll be able to leave. So any final comments thoughts to the audience before we depart here?

No, I think you wrapped it up perfect. I really appreciate you going through and having me having me on. It's always a pleasure chatting with you and hopefully we'll connect again.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. And again, I love the perspective that you provide to this and I've enjoyed our conversations. I know we'll continue to have more. So if you're an agency leader and again, like I said earlier, you want to have just open discussion about some of these things. You know, I don't know where I'd start. I don't know if I want to do this. I don't know if.

No, I think you wrapped it up perfect. I really appreciate you going through and having me having me on. It's always a pleasure chatting with you and hopefully we'll connect again.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. And again, I love the perspective that you provide to this and I've enjoyed our conversations. I know we'll continue to have more. So if you're an agency leader and again like I said earlier, you want to have just open discussion about some of these things. You know, I don't know where I'd start. I don't know if I want to do this. I don't know if you know, whatever you know, reach out to Max. If you can't, if you can't tell already. He'll have a conversation with you and educate you to be to make the best decisions, give you the best options. So also with that, if you have any questions with us, the Sitkins group, go to sipkins.com bookacall the simplest way to get started to get your agency assessment. So let's go to sitkins.com book a call with that. I wish you all the best in your success. Thanks for listening. The Agent Leader Podcast is brought to you by the fine folks of the Rough Notes Company. They are publishers of the insurance industry's leading magazine and technical insurance content. Whatever you know, reach out to Max. If you can't, if you can't tell already, they'll have a conversation. RoughNotes magazine profile successful agencies plus keen insights from respected experts on a host of must know topics. Rough Notes Advantage plus provides the tools to help your agency grow, providing authoritative information on complex coverage issues. Visit them and learn more@roughnotes.com.