Stories of Success - Interview with Miles Merwin

Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host and I am honored and excited to be with a very special guest today. I've got Miles Merwin of Advisors Insurance Agency in Greenville, South Carolina, and want to be able to, to share some of Miles experience with this audience today. And I'll just give a little background. I'll let Miles introduce himself today and kind of share some things that he's learned in agency leadership along the way. But Miles has got a really great story, you know, both personally and within his agency. And I don't want to again step on your toes, Miles, to ruin your introduction. But as I shared prior to when we hit record here, you know, your start, you're, you're a true entrepreneur at heart. And you know, you left a job that was paying you real money with a small child and you opened your, your agency with a dream. And as you say on your bio here, you had zero clients, zero revenue, one laptop and one cell phone, some space upstairs and a spare bedroom to work from and a whole lot of hope. So that's right. Yeah, that's where you started in 2012. So without further ado, Myles, just tell us a little bit about yourself. Maybe take us from that point about your agency and just some of the things that you guys are doing at Advisors.

Yeah, thanks for the introduction, Brent, and it's really been a pleasure over the last almost a year now, just getting to know you better and your family. And I met your wife and just really have enjoyed getting to know you and learning from you as well. So, yeah, in 2012, I made the decision to break off and open my own business. And I remember one of the. And you've met him, Andrew Harmon. He had intended to kind of start with me from the very beginning. And I remember I was laying on the couch and I had my little girl, she was probably four or five months old, laying on my chest. And it was nine o' clock at night. Andrew called me and said, miles, you know, I just can't do this. And I don't know if you should do this. You know, you should really think about your family and your financial security. And I remember at that moment just laying there looking at my daughter. I thought, that's exactly what I'm doing and I've got to move forward. I can't continue where I'm at. I've got to make this happen. And, you know, it was almost. And I kind of knew this would happen. The older I got, the harder it was going to be to make that kind of decision. And the younger you are, the easier it is just to make a decision and move and go and put energy into it because you don't have the experience, what that feels like for things to go wrong. So you just go out and do it blindly. I probably know too much now to go do something like that, but yes, started there. And I knew from the beginning my whole goal was not to personally sell insurance the rest of my life, but to build a great team was kind of the point from the very beginning. And so I did that very quickly. I ended up hiring that same guy, Andrew, after about six months. He worked from my home and continued to build relationships with other people that were doing well in captive insurance offices here in town and pull them in and really work on. I didn't have this language then, but we were doing this. We were working on our why, why we did what we did and sharing those values and the passion with our prospects and people who wanted to write. And so even though I didn't have the language then, it was just natural. That's just what we did. And fortunately we were able to grow very quickly.

Yeah, well, I mean, you have grown very quickly, Miles, and I don't know if you want to share kind of where you're at, but. Yeah, I mean, the amount of time that you've, you know, you've kind of been able to put that together, I think a couple things stand out. If I could just piggyback on that. One of the things that you mentioned was, you know, as you said, sometimes maybe, you know, too much to where you wouldn't make the same decision today. But, you know, as you know, Miles, I'm a big John Maxwell fan. And one of the things that he talks about is the law of trade offs. And the, the more established, the further you get, the harder it is to make trade offs.

Yeah.

And you know, we kind of see that it's one thing to be like, you're right, you know, you're 22 and I'll go risk this. Well, you don't have anything anyway. Yeah, 22, typically. So. Okay. But obviously when you've got, you know, a wife and a child and, you know, whatever it may be, and as you grow and also just grow an experience, it's harder to, to make that decision. I think what I appreciate about you, Miles, you know, this is true, and I've said this with, you know, you know, people ask him, who are the people that we like to work with? Well, you know, we have agencies that range in all Sizes. And Miles, you've been, you know, introduced agencies that are 15, 20 million dollars in revenue that we work with, have been in business for 100 years. And here's Miles, who started his agency in 2012 and has continued to grow rapidly, but a different place. But I think what, regardless of the revenue size, that's just a number. It's that spirit in the mindset that, you know, I'm always looking to grow. I'm always looking to kind of take that next step because I'm not going to be satisfied. It's not that I'm not grateful. You're a grateful person, but instead, I'm not going to allow myself to be complacent because I owe it to myself, owe it to my family to be my best version to hear us talk about that all the time. So I just wanted to share that. I think the other thing too, Miles, that you mentioned, I just want to maybe dive a little deeper. You kind of said, you know, you open that agency with the mindset, I'm not here just to sell insurance. I'm not going to be an operator. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with selling insurance. I did it for 15 years. And we have people that are very successful in sales and they love it. But your mindset was more of a entrepreneur in the fact that you wanted to grow and run a business. And I think, Miles, if you could elaborate this, you know, being the agent leader podcast, when we, when we first had our initial conversations, one of your main things was, and I really want to give. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but tools and resources and equip and empower people on my team to do things that they wouldn't be able to do without this opportunity.

Yeah.

Can you elaborate on that a little bit? Just kind of your mindset around growing people and developing people.

Yeah, I think one. You know, many people have read this book, but it's probably five or six years ago I read the book E. Myth. And one thing that I just. It's one of those light bulb moments. We talk about this in your guys class in Florida, those light bulb moments. And I had one listening how, you know, the goal of. And Brent, tell me the guy's name that ran the franchises for McDonald's.

Oh, what was it?

Ray Kroc. You know, Ray Kroc said, I don't, you know, I don't sell hamburgers and french fries. I sell opportunities and I sell success. And he went around and sold franchises. Right. He didn't Actually, his product was not hamburgers and fries, even though that's the widget that McDonald's sold. His product was the McDonald's franchise. And so it made me rethink, like, what. What actually is my product, my personal product. I happen to be in the insurance industry, but for me, what is my product? And I was like, you know, my product is not insurance policies. My product is the people that I'm spending the most time with and actually building relationships with, which are the sales team and account managers that work here. And so from that point forward, I just always thought of it as, it doesn't make sense for me to build shallow relationships with each client that we serve. It made more sense for me to spend my time developing deep relationships with the team that we're building here. And I look at the sales guys almost as little franchises inside of the business, and to see them succeed and, you know, their significant other, wife, spouse, being able to stay at home, if that's their goal with the kids, and, you know, and to, you know, achieve financial incomes that they probably never would have achieved in any other industry and watch them thrive. And the kind of the three principles I look at, like, they're able to work towards having time, work towards building relationships, and work towards financial security for themselves and for their clients. And so those three things, all of them are able to control that. Now it's just, are they going to work hard or smart and learning how to do that?

I love that. I mean, and again, that was your, you know, from the very beginning. You're talking about that opportunity. And, you know, it just. It gets me thinking, too, Miles, on a couple different things. And I've shared this. I mean, this isn't from me. This isn't my thing or a Sitkins thing, but been out for a while, you know, say, what's the number one job of a leader? You know, and people are, well, is it to grow the agency and revenue and profitability and retention? Like, yeah, those are all great outcomes of successful leadership, certainly. I mean, we always joke, as you probably heard us say before, Miles, revenue doesn't solve all problems, most of them. So we're not anti. You know, we're not anti revenue. You got to increase revenue. But the idea is that, you know, the number one job of an agency leader is to develop and grow the people. You know, and it's like the Zig Ziglar quote is that, you know, you don't build a business, you build the people, and the people build the business. That's really been you know, kind of your mindset, which is really fascinating just to kind of watch that progress in what you're doing. And, you know, again, not only are you providing great opportunity for your team members, but you're providing a great experience for your clients, because guess what, your people that you're developing are the ones that are hands on to those clients that you serve. So I appreciate you sharing that. It's a very powerful story. What would you say, Miles? And again, this is one of those times where I know you're not a braggadocious kind of guy, but you like to stay humble. But when you think about some of your greatest leadership victories that you've had, and this could be individually for you, or certainly as an agency team, since you launched, I guess it's been about seven years ago, right? What's been some of your greatest leadership victories that you've been part of?

You know, the first thing that comes to mind, Brent, is I've noticed, I think, you know, I have an associate's degree degree from a technical college here in town. And growing up, I very quickly kind of realized that there's different depend. I just kind of saw that depending on who you surround yourself with, really kind of points you in the direction that you're going to go. And I think I realized that in my late teens, early 20s. And so I really focused on trying to find the right people to surround myself. And as soon as I got into a comfortable spot, but I wanted to get the next level. I kind of always knew I've got to find someone bigger, better, wiser to surround myself with. And I mentioned Greenville Tech, because I went back and had to prepare and speak to the students as someone who's graduated and opened a business. And that was kind of what I spoke about, was I asked everybody to raise their hand. Who in here knows someone who makes $30,000 a year? And everyone raises their hand. Who in here knows someone who makes $50,000 a year? Some people raise their hand. Who in here knows someone who makes over $100,000 a year? And really no one raised their hand. Then I asked the same question. Who in here hopes that after their degree that they can make $50,000 a year? And some people were who in here thinks that they can make $100,000 a year or more? And a couple people would answer their raise their hand and said, how do you expect to make over $100,000 a year if you don't know anybody who makes that and how they think and how they network? It's Unlikely that you're going to achieve that if you don't know anyone or surround yourself with people who have done it. And so with that kind of said, I feel like one of the greatest leadership victories I've had recently was kind of another realization of shift, that I needed better mentors. I was kind of stuck mentally and with the business in a spot that I'd gotten as far as I really knew. And it's my local mentors that I could drag information out of them. And so I had to kind of reach back and step back and say, where do I need to go to get more fuel, to learn more, to take the next step? And, you know, and the answer was for me, joining the Sitkins Group. And this isn't an advertisement for you. I mean, I hoped clapping right now and saying, no, thank you, but it really helped me because my local, you know, the local people in the area that own insurance agencies, they. They are insurance salespeople that happen to own their own business. They're not leaders of insurance agencies for the most part. They're not stepping back and hiring and empowering people to move their business forward. They're controlling the agency, and maybe that's what they want to do. That's their goal, and that makes them happy, which is fine. That's why you should be able to open your own business to do that. But I needed to be challenged. I needed to talk to people who were able to go past that. And so joining the Sickens group helped me meet you, helped me meet Roger, and helped me meet, you know, 20 other people in a room that were past where I had been and start asking questions and figuring things out. And I'm no competitor to them. So that was probably, you know, one of my greatest. It wasn't leading my office, but it was pushing myself to learn more so that I can lead my office.

Yeah, boy, there's so much good stuff there. And outside of the plug for Sitkins, by the way, which we didn't talk about. I'll pay you later. No, but I. There are so many good lessons there, and I think, you know, I think the way you ended is one. I just to piggyback on that I'll start with, is that, you know, the hardest person to lead and most important person to lead is yourself. And I think that's, you know, something you're sharing other leaders listening to that. It's easy to say, you know, you need to go do that or go do that. But to look at myself and be honest and go, am I Leading myself. And, you know, these are questions. And Miles, obviously I ask myself all the time, like, am I doing the things that I should be doing? And, you know, the whole quote of, you know, if you're the smartest person in the room, it's time to find a new room is exactly what, you know, you were talking about. And let's face it, that's a hard thing to do because there is some satisfaction of. You know what I mean? Miles, we've talked about this. Like, life's pretty good, right? Like, you're doing okay, you know, and it's not like you have to do some of these things, but it's one of those. But there's that. It's. I think, you know, I'm throwing out all these quotes, but they're coming to mind because they're so powerful. I mean, Jim Rohn just loved all of his teachings, and he talks about, you know, human beings, only species that don't really, in many cases, go to their full potential. And it says, an oak tree. How tall does an oak tree grow? Well, as tall as it can. Like, it just grows. But humans are like, yeah, that's good. I'm good enough. And even though there's so much more capacity to give back to the world and to learn and experience and to share, and it's not just financial. I mean, there's so many things there. So I. I appreciate you sharing that. And the last thing I'll ment, Miles, on this, I don't want to go too long, but it cracks me up. This reminds me of you. Probably when you come to our next event, and I wasn't in this room, by the way. This is a story Roger Sitkins was sharing with me. But it's so powerful, what you just said. Said. We had a guy came into our room, and we actually had. We were doing a strategic planning, and there was three different tables, and we had them broken up by agency revenue, just so they had some commonalities, right. And similar things to talk about. So we had our. I don't remember the exact number. It was like 1 to 3 million revenue here, 3 to 5 million here, and 5 million up over here. And they had a gentleman who was about. I can't remember about a $2 million revenue agency. And he was sitting at the 3 to 5 million or whatever it was. And they came to him and said, hey, you know, you need to be at this table. And he said, listen, I already know how to be a $2 million agency. I'm trying to learn to be a $5 million agency. So it's just that. I think it's just that. That mindset process of how do I put myself in positions to learn from other people? And one last thing I'll add on this, and this is so true. And this is true agency leaders, but I see that too. I think it's important for the audience to hear is that it's amazing that sometimes our level of awareness, we don't know. It's like my kids, we live in central Illinois, and they think that corn and beans are cool. Maybe they are to some people. Right. But then they go somewhere and go, oh, I didn't even. I didn't. I didn't realize there was like beaches.

Yeah.

Like. Yeah. Pretty cool, right? But you see sometimes insurance producers or leaders, and they've kind of had this fixed mindset, and all of a sudden they go somewhere and, you know, we've had producers, Miles, who walk into a room and you. And this isn't about just the size of Book of Business, but all of a sudden they're sitting next to someone who's got a million dollar revenue. Book of Business, not premium revenue. And sometimes we've got people that come in that are two or three, which seems crazy. It doesn't mean they have to get there or that they even want to get there. But the idea, they go, wow, like, it's actually possible I could do this.

Yeah.

And that to me, is sometimes the first step that is. That is missed. Does that, does that make sense to you, Miles?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. So it's just. It's just an awareness. You know, Myles, obviously, life isn't all roses. Even though things are going really well and you're doing good stuff. What would you say in today's world and what you're dealing with? And you could probably say, you know, here's the list because we talk about in our coaching call with all the challenges that are there. But if you had to say, overall, what's been one of your greatest leadership challenges that you've. That you've faced or facing?

Yeah, I was thinking about this while you're talking as well. And this is just personally for me, one of my challenges is I do spend a lot of time with the people here in my office, and not only are they, you know, coworkers, but they're friends. And, you know, so some of that is one challenge is I don't get enough time to do deep thinking, to really think creatively and think long enough to, you know, move the agency forward and be Strategic about how I'm talking to people, you know, what the process is to go through in order to achieve a goal. I can't just throw out a bunch of new processes and say, here, here you go, go, go do it. You know, you guys gave a great visual. That was first culture. Then it starts to create, buy in, then you start changing processes. And so one of my challenges is I have all these things that run through my head all the time and all these, you know, goals that I want to achieve is just vomiting all those goals and all these things I want to do constantly in the office with slash friends. Because I'm excited, right? And those are the people I see all day long. And we're, you know, we're, we're succeeding together. But I'm vomiting all this stuff that's half thought all over them. And they're coming back saying, well, what about this, what about that? And so they just get confused. And sometimes, you know, one of my sales guys might have a little miniature meltdown and come into my office and they're like, you know, we start chatting and he's concerned or has anxiety or worried about things. I'm like, what are you so worried about? And, you know, you start to listen and you realize some of the things they're worried about were my ideas that I'm saying, and it's giving them anxiety. And it wasn't even finished being planned, but I just started vomiting these things out. So one of them, I mean, as a leadership learning, just learning to finish thinking out a thought, write it down, and not vomit it all over your staff before it's ready to be actually presented.

I am nodding my head, Miles, in agreement with you. And obviously we've got some different personalities, but some similarities too. And, you know, as an entrepreneur, idea person, and that's certainly what you are. And by the way, if you're listening, if you're a leader, you're very much like that. There's a good likelihood of that. You know, I've instituted this is. You may have heard this when it comes to, like, if you get an email or something and you get angry and you want to send something back, a reply, it's like the 24 hour rule. Yeah, I've started to establish that when it comes to ideas too, because I hear you. It's like you watch something, you hear something, or you're at lunch and you're thinking, you're like, oh, that's good, we should really do that. Right? That's good. And then you come back like, you said you're like, you won't believe this guy. This is great, you know, and you explain it and it's not well thought out yet. It's not matured. There's no real process or action you could actually do behind it. It's just an idea. And as you kind of indicated, Miles, it kind of creates more chaos, right, certainly than clarity of what we're trying to do. And so I found myself. And maybe this is something, you know, as we talk through is that, you know, even 24 hours, like, if it's still a really good idea in 24 hours, it's worth to continue to think about and if it's a good IDEA after that 24 hours, you know, and I've done some, some more thinking around it. Well, maybe then at that point it's willing to share at least a talk or discuss. So, you know, it's just one of those things. I hear you. As idea people, it's a hard thing. You got to keep your like idea book because you don't want to lose it, you know, most cases. But you also don't want to, you know, techno puke, as we say in the insurance world, on people with all the stuff that you're. That's in your head.

So, yeah, if you maintain that as a habit, you know, I think what I've found is people eventually stop losing. They start losing trust in you that you're going to do what you say you're going to do.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, there's another idea again. And yeah, you're right, Miles. One of the things that from agency teams, we hear this all the time when it comes to accountability. I think this is so true. I hear this from agency leaders all the time, is that they do have a lot of ideas. It's the execution that's the hard part, obviously. And so you're right. There's this syndrome we call this too shall pass for many agency, the teams that, you know, oh, here goes Miles again. I'm not speaking for you, Miles, but I mean, just an example, right? Oh, another idea. Don't worry. This too shall pass. He'll forget about it.

I think you sent me an email not too long ago. It's like, hey, Miles, what are you getting done? You know, it was a long email and I just, my only reply was hashtag implement or hashtag execution, something like that.

Yes, it was great. And I was so appreciative of that. It was like, yeah, execute, I'm going to focus. And you know, it goes back so many Good. There's so many good publications and articles and stuff about that now. But, I mean, I really believe this idea of doing deep, good work is more important than all this other stuff in many cases. And so. But, you know, part of that, I think, is that when you have to take a thought and really dive deeper and then let it mature and figure out what's good about it and what's not good about it, and then, you know, be able to take it to. How would I actually implement that? What would that look like? Who would be the people that would be involved? And you put all those together. That's the hard part. And so, you know, and that's where most people. I'll forget it, you know, I don't want to do that. Or you realize, you know what I mean? I've had many. I don't know about you, Miles, but I've had stuff where like at 3 o' clock in the afternoon a Friday, I'm like, this is it. I found it. Eureka. I can't believe I finally discovered this. And Saturday morning I wake up and go, that was stupid. Thank God. Thank God. I didn't send that to anybody.

Yeah, exactly.

Anyway. Hey, I want to ask for the sake of time, I know you got a busy schedule here. What I like to ask, and maybe there's, I guess, two questions in one. First of all, you know, I believe that, you know, change is always happening. We know this in the insurance world. You know, we talk about change all the time. But from your perspective, from a leadership perspective, what's a change that, that, you know, you didn't really want to make because it was going to be hard to do that, and you're now glad that you did.

You know, we kind of talked about this earlier. A couple years ago, I had to make the decision to stop selling insurance. And I still, you know, still occasionally. A lady called in yesterday and she said, oh, somebody referred me to you, and I'm opening up a small business and building a little, you know, buying a building. And I just got excited talking to her. I love small business owners and people going to open new businesses. It's just they're so excited. I just want to talk to them, but they're tiny accounts. It's just fun to talk to them. And so I found myself spending two and a half hours on the day talking, quoting, writing a $1,500 business owner policy for a clinical psychologist that's opening up her own practice and just bought a building worth my time. You know, probably not, but was it fun and I enjoyed talking to her. Yes, I did. But it was those things that distract me from the real things that I need to get done. And so, I mean, one of the difficult things I had to do was tell myself that I need to stop selling insurance because any promises I make, I'm not going to keep. I don't have time to service their accounts. Right. I don't have time to do renewal processes with them. It's just not what I do. But I continue to do that occasionally because it's what I knew. So learning how to lead a business, learning how to run a business, it's all brand new. It's not a job that I thought I would ever be doing. Now am I glad I did it? Absolutely. It's a different kind of work and I'm having to learn how to do the work, how to do deep thinking, how to. I think a great example I just heard earlier, maybe a couple weeks ago was they're talking about deep thinking and saying that, you know, if you are not on social media for a while, people will miss you. You know, they'll notice that you're not there. But during that time that you're not on social media, if you're writing a book, if you never publish the book, people would never know that you never published the book, but the book would never get published. And people would miss, you know, they'd miss out on that. They'd appreciate the fact that you actually finished the book and they got to read it. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. Yeah.

Who cares if somebody misses you within a few days? But if it, you know, if you can take a few months and actually get some masterpiece done and then put it out, people are like, wow, that's incredible. How'd you do that? Well, I, you know, got off the phone and stopped checking emails all day long and actually got something done. I know you missed me and I missed you too. But you know, now there's a finished product. What do you think about that?

Boy, lots of unpack there mouth. Such good stuff. I mean it's a whole idea. You know, I'm certainly not a clinical psychologist or know that much about the brain as I said, other than things I've read. But you know, I think it's a great point whether it's, you know, doing a social media and getting some feedback or, you know, whether it's maybe, and this is necessarily a bad thing, but having that conversation with that lady you mentioned, there's these little dopamine hits that we get because it feels good. Yeah. And you know, and it does. I mean, temporarily, it's like, that's cool, that was fun. But then, you know, you always look at it and we say, time is our only diminishing asset. And you just have to take a step back and you know, before, you know, it's good or bad, just to go, wait a second, was that the best use of my time? Right. I mean, could there be something deeper I could be doing? Because it hit me that last part, Miles, I'm thinking, you know, looking back, going, well, you know, you know, Brent, you know, I know you, you could have written this really great book that would have helped us. But boy, those pithy social media posts you had, you know, wow, that really, that little 10 seconds of my life, that was amazing. Right? I mean, so it's just kind of looking at life a little bit differently. And I think other thing that I want to share with the audience here from a leadership perspective is kind of identifying your strengths and kind of figuring those out as you go through it. But I know we talked to agency leaders and you said, you know, you made the decision that you weren't really, you weren't going to sell, at least not be your primary thing. And you know, we have some agency leaders who work with that. Go, you know, I love to sell. That's what brings me energy and joy and they're really good at it and they're rainmakers. And I say, then go sell now. You may need to find somebody to help operate the agency. Obviously you're going to have chaos and find the right people to do that. You just have to find the path that's, that's right for you, you know, and how you want to do that. So every agency is a little bit different. But all those things that you said, I just saw a follow up email this week that I received. This is another John Maxwell credit. But he always talked about, you know, the three things that he's looking at with the three Rs when he's looking at his time and his energies, you know, what am I required to do? There are certain things right now that as of today I'm required to do. I've got to get it done. The second question is, what gives me the greatest return? Right? Return on time, return on investment, and lastly, what gives me the greatest reward? And I, I believe that's part of what you said, Miles, at the end is that, you know, the business should be fun. Like sometimes we miss that. Like it's, you know, we want to Be profitable. We want to be productive. We want to make sure we're doing things that put our team in the right position, obviously. But it's okay. You know, that's part of like giving yourself some. Some joy there. That. Oh, I had that call with that lady. Well, maybe it wasn't the best use of your time, you know, if you really look at it. But if you did that once a week, would that be something that would give you joy and go, you know, I love that. Is there crime in it? No. I mean, you know, now if you do that all day long, you may have a problem over a period of time. So I love that I'm a sucker.

For a good little restaurant that I can. That I can write because I love restaurant owners. They're just wild and crazy. Right. And then I love. We write them because I can actually go use their product and go eat there. And, you know, it's great. So.

Right. You gotta excuse me, I gotta go eat. I gotta visit a client. Right. Love that. And. Well, one of the things that Roger sits can so, so well when it comes to this is more of a client development. We look at, you know, finding the right clients, but just kind of like that. It goes, you know, you have a few pets, you just don't want to have a zoo. And, you know, that's true. It's like, this is a good pet. I like this pet. I'm going to keep this pet. But if I have too many of those, I may go, I may lose my mind. So it's just that whole idea, even that when it comes to time and energy. Very last thing, Miles, I'll open the mic to you. And again, I appreciate your time and coming on to do this with me, certainly. But if you had to tell something to other agencies, again, we've got a pretty good audience here. Continues to grow agency leaders. What would be one piece of advice or lesson that you'd say, this is something I really want you to listen to in your experience and your wisdom, Miles, that you've accumulated, continue to accumulate throughout the years.

That's deep. You know, I'm gonna have a deep thinking time to come up with a great answer, but I'll, you know, on the spot, I'll try. I think for me is. And what I would. And again, it depends on the size and where somebody's at in their business. Where I'm at now, you know, if I was talking to somebody who is two, three, four years behind me, is to focus on what your why is. And I'm listening to the Simon Sinek book right now. So this kind of influences my thought process. But you know, oftentimes, you know, we focus on the how or the what or the where we're going to do something, how we're going to do it, what we're going to do. And in my office I feel like we talk about, you know, well, we don't have a process for that process for this. And it drives me crazy. I mean, yeah, you got to write all these processes, but really understanding the why you are in this business, why people want to work for you, why clients want to deal with you and not somebody else, just spending time to understand that, develop it and embed it in everything that you do. It is amazing what that can do for your company. Because if you have problems finding prospects, it's because they don't know why they should do business with you. If you have trouble recruiting people, it's because they don't know why they should come work with you. If you have troubles with coming to work, it's because you don't know why you should go to work. Answering that question. It seems simple and it's actually a lot of work to sit down and write that out and hire a copywriter to get your words out on paper. But that investment into knowing that and putting it everywhere, it just, it has massive impacts on your business. It's not how much you're networking, it's when you go networking, you're able to actually tell people why they should do business with you. You should understand your why before you go out networking. It's not, you know, don't do it the opposite direction. You've got to sit down and think through all this stuff. It will make a long lasting impact. It's like writing a blog. You can write a blog one time, it's out there for the next. You know, it's out there for decades for people to read. You just got to do it one time. But you have to sit down and write it. And to understand your own why, you got to sit down and write it. And it needs to be updated every year. It's going to change. So just taking time to just go through that process, I mean that, that'll change your, change your life, change your business to really think through that.

That's awesome. I don't have a whole lot to add to that because I wanted to leave that with your words, Miles. And I mean, I think that is very profound and I know a lot of people have heard that before. You know, find your why and from Simon Sinek and all the. All that. But I think most of us realize it's a good idea. But as you're experiencing Miles and going through the hard part is actually really understanding what that is. I mean, taking the time and energy and effort and by the way, as a listener here, you know, go to Miles's website, which, Miles, what, what would be some ways that people can reach out to you? What would be the best contact information for you?

Yeah, you can go to our website, www.advisorsinsuranceagency.com. of course, we have Facebook pages, LinkedIn pages, Instagram pages. My email address, my calendly link is on our website with my bio. Probably just going to my website, going to the about page and finding my contact info. Best way to reach out to me.

Yeah, I'll tell you, if you go out there and just look at his website, you'll see how much time they spent into the why behind that. And, you know, I think one of the things that we've talked about and I've mentioned on this podcast about, you know, Miles, you just talk about the pro experience and we joke about my, my little tips on LinkedIn, right? Go back my chart board, we'll talk about that. A different time. But, but you know, even at Sidkins, we talk about, you know, what does that really mean? Like professional fitness for an agency, professional fit? What does it mean? And we've really, you know, we've worked hard on this for a long time and it seems simple, but I said really, it's about three things. I truly believe it's about clarity. And to me, clarity is the. Clarity is the where do you really want to go? And by the way, your agency isn't like every other agency. You know, just because someone else is doing something doesn't mean it's right for you in your, in your agency. I think that happens a lot. And then I think the second part of clarity is why is that important to you? So where do you want to go? Why is it important? And then of course, consistency goes back to execute. And Miles talked about that today, that we just got to be consistent in the things that we've agreed that's important to our agency. And last is making a commitment. You know, we're going to commit to myself, commit to my team, commit to my community, commit to my clients, that this is important. You know, I'm going to make a commitment to every one of you and commitment to myself to be that best version. I think those three kind of go hand in hand together. And when you do that, like you said, and one last reference that I do think it's important to mention. I love listening to podcasts. I love doing these podcasts, but love listening. Andy Stanley has a great podcast out. I can't think of the actual title. It's a leadership podcast. Go search Andy Stanley. But he talked to the leader of the Ritz Carlton who came up with the idea of ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen. And it's a great podcast episode. There's. It came out pretty recently when this podcast comes out. But he talks about vision and he talked about Miles, to your point that everything they do at the Ritz Carlton, everything is aligned with the vision. And he said what it's helped us do is to make. Sometimes these decisions we think are so hard, become easy because you go, no. Does it align with exactly who we are? We said we're going to be no, but we're not going to do. Also empowers your people to do things that go, hey, we know what we stand for. This is what we're going to do. So I think you shared an abundance of wisdom today, Miles. I appreciate you having friend and as a client. And again, if you need to reach out to Miles, please do so. He's a very hospitable guy and loves to help and give back. And I just want to thank you again, Miles, for being on today.

Absolutely. Thanks for the opportunity.

All right, take care. Until next time. Hey, all the best to your success. And make sure if you enjoy this podcast, leave a rating review. I would much appreciate it. Thanks so much.