Erik Garcia on How to Determine Your End Game

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Today, we have an absolutely tremendous episode, double tremendous, double absolutely tremendous episode for you with Eric Garcia, the founder of Garcia Financial Group and Garcia Insurance Services. Eric is just an awesome guy, and the way that he views his business, I immediately clicked with him. Eric and I interacted a bunch on social over the years, and then finally at IOA 2020, I guess it was, the one in San Diego, got to meet him in person, and then we talked a little bit about this during the show, but we've connected over this insurance podcasters Facebook thing that we're a part of, and just become friends, and just, I just love the way he thinks about business, and I don't give it justice during the show. We talk about a whole bunch of different things, and we should have given this particular part of what he's doing more airtime, but if you go to plan, P-L-A-N-Wisely, plan-the-, not the word dash, wisely.com, you'll see what Eric's up to, but if you go to agentendgame.com, agentendgame.com, one of the really cool things that Eric's doing, and it kind of is the upper crust of this entire conversation that we never actually get to, or at least don't give enough lip service to, is Eric is helping both his own clients, as well as insurance agents, better understand how to match their personal financials to their agency, and he's not necessarily an agency consultant, but it's more about matching your personal financials with what you're doing in your agency to hit your personal goals, like what you actually want out of life beyond just like grinding on an insurance agency.

It's really awesome. There is no one better in the game, no one better positioned to do this kind of work, and just the way that Eric views business, just a tremendous amount of admiration for him, and I just love this conversation, which means I got a pretty good feeling that you're going to love this conversation. So with that, I just want to say thank you for listening. As always, I love you guys. I love you for listening to this show.

It means so much to me, and if you got a friend or a buddy who's not listening to this show, you know, text it to him and tell him to subscribe. That helps boost their numbers in my ego, I guess. But before we get to Eric, got to give a big shout out to today's sponsors. That's Coterie, Coterie Insurance. Guys, Coterie is changing the game for a small commercial.

We're at Rogue. All we do is small commercial, and Coterie is becoming a very big part of that. You know, we get hassled, you know, and I hate to make a broad sweeping stroke, but, you know, a lot of the traditional carriers hassle you for all kinds of things. I was talking to one of the traditionals the other day, and I said, hey, can you just send us, like, what the current payroll is that they're being charged for? Like, I knew we had submitted some endorsements, and I wanted to make sure that what they had matched up against what we had submitted, and they couldn't do it.

Couldn't do it. They told us we were crazy and gave us attitude for asking, well, don't you keep the records of the payroll in your system? I'm like, yes, we do. I'm looking to make sure that what you have currently in your system matches what we have in our system. And they couldn't produce it and treated us like a bunch of a-holes for asking for that.

And, you know, you just don't get that from companies like Codery. They just, they're built to service their clients and the agents that they work with. It's just a different experience. You know, we're writing, we're writing micro-business with them in, like, under five minutes. I mean, just think about that.

Micro-business comes in, web developers, consultants, a lot of consultants we write with them. Just, you're getting the GL, some property, and PL packaged together in one monthly payment in under five minutes. I mean, that's just incredible stuff. Good paper, good company. Love the people there.

And couldn't be happier to have Codery as a sponsor because we use them almost every single day. So, go to CoderyInsurance.com. That's C-O-T-E-R-I-E, C-O-T-E-R-I-E, CoderyInsurance.com. Become an agent. Learn about them.

And, you know, the things they are doing are the future of our space. They cannot be denied. You know, they might not be the only ones doing it, but what they are doing is pushing the envelope further than just about anyone else in the game. Absolutely love it. Love them to have them as part of Rogue and love to be their partner.

So, with that, let's get on to Eric Garcia. Yo, what's up, man? What's up? You know, trying to... Let me change my speakers and my...

Fancy microphone. So, my voice comes over deep and buttery for you, family. Everything's better when it's deep and buttery. Yes. Yes.

You know what sucked? I'll tell you what sucked. That freaking workout this morning. Yeah, man. I get that.

That did not look fun. That did not look fun at all. Brutal. The key is you got it in now. That's the key.

I did. You know, this is what I told my coach. I said, you know what? For 30 minutes of the workout, but then the warm... We had a warm-up as well, but for 30 minutes, my heart rate was over 170.

It was about 174 during the entire workout. I don't care what I did. I'm happy. Yes. Do you use, like, an Apple Watch or how do you track that?

I do. I do Apple Watch. So, I have a baseline, so it's probably not super accurate. I've been wanting to get a heart monitor just for my own... Yeah.

I don't know, just for shits and giggles. I've been looking at the Whoop strap. Whoop? Yeah. W-H-O-O-P.

Joe Rogan popularized it for, like, two years in a row. He wore it for whatever that month is in the fall where they don't drink. Sober. Maybe it's sober October. Maybe he's going to do it again.

Him and, like, four of his goon comedian buddies wear a Whoop strap, and they don't drink, and they, like, try to work out every day, and then they compete over, like, who's got the best health stats from this Whoop strap thing. And I was checking it out, and it looks pretty cool. I mean, it's pretty nondescript. My problem is I hate anything extra on my body. Like, I have zero jewelry.

I have nothing. I hate anything extra. So, like, having something on my wrist all the time, it, like, makes me feel claustrophobic, which is probably weird. I just feel, like, restricted and hate it. But, man, I've been working out so hard lately that I'm, like, jeez, I would love to have a better feel for, like, my wife and I were this close to buying one of those body mass scales that send, like, the electric shocks through you so that you can see, like, fat index, you know, muscle index, all that kind of stuff.

And my wife was, like, if we get one of these things, the two of us are going to lose our frigging minds. Like, we cannot do this to ourselves. So we decided against it. I changed mics. I was on the wrong mic.

Do I sound different? Yeah, you sound good. Okay. Yeah, we don't have a scale in the house. So my wife did collegiate gymnastics, and she's, like, I don't want to scale in the house.

I don't want any workout regimen. She's, like, I did that for too long. It's too much pressure to perform. So she doesn't, like, I'm different, though. Like, to me, it's, like, man, I like stats.

You know, if I ran a mile this fast, then I got to run it that much faster next time. Um, so I didn't wear watches for the same reason you didn't. But with the Apple Watch, I was like, you know what? I want to start tracking this stuff. I want to start tracking my workouts.

So I got the Apple Watch. You know what I like it for? For notifications to remind me of meetings. Yeah. And for a wake-up alarm in the morning.

I don't have my phone going off, waking my wife up. Um, just simple, gentle, you know, just a simple, gentle vibration. So you sleep with that? Nice. I do.

On the mornings, I need to wake up. Does it bother you sleeping with a watch on? I've gotten used to it. Yeah. No, I've got bony wrists.

Yeah. So I wear it a little higher than most people. Yeah, me too. That's another thing. I got a bone.

Look at that. I got the same bone that you do. Look at the size of that thing. Come on, man. Yeah.

We might be brothers, dude. Awesome. Like we're both like six, I don't know, what are you, six, two? Six, three, six, four on a good day. Bony wrists.

We work out. I got better hair than you. That's true. Yeah. Look at that facial hair you got.

You know, so I up top, what you got up top, I look like down here, it's kind of reversed because I could never do that ever. I would look like a crazy, they would think that I was bombing like a building or something. If I were to try to grow that out the way that this comes in. Gray and red and spotchy, I look like a crazy person. So I got a buddy of mine at church and he's got a big old beard and he's, I don't know if he still is, but he was part of like this, like, I was called the bearded villains, right?

It's, I don't know. I think they're just, they're just get together and they, they drink and they talk about their, their facial hair, but to, to be a part of it, you have to have at least an inch and a half of facial hair, facial hair length. So I'm like, man, don't tell me I can't do something. So I'm like, you know what? I'm going to grow, I'm going to grow my beard out.

And I grew it out just to an inch and a half. And man, I tell you, dude, I looked, I looked, I probably wouldn't be able to fly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I, I, I, this is nothing against our bearded brethren because there are some dudes that look good in beards. The problem is there are a lot of dudes that think they look good in beards. Is that my long beard? So here's the key is, is if you grow a long beard, you have to keep the edges. Yes.

Yep. And you have to trim your mustache. Yep. Otherwise. Yeah.

Otherwise that's, that's no good. He'll go Jack Wingate. He'll look great in beards. So I know there's a whole bunch of dudes at my gym. I just want to take a freaking razor and just shave that right off their face.

I'm like, I'm going to do you a favor today. I'm just going to bring in a pair of portable buzzers. I'm just going to buzz faces. And if any of those guys are spotting you, you're like, Oh my God, like what's in there. And like, what's, what's falling out and road you, you can't have you shampooed it.

You want what you do with that thing? Yeah. What kind of oils are you using, man? Yeah. Man, I look, I was having a conversation with a client, um, older guy.

He's got a full head of hair, you know, my head's shaved and he was giving me crap about it. And he starts to tell me all this story about, you know, he'd wake up and he'd, he'd comb it and he'd have to spray it and blow dry. And I'm like, dude, that is a waste of time. Yeah. I've got better stuff to do with my time than like groom myself.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I shower and I shave, let's get that out of the way. Yeah. But like, you know, I'm not going to go spend 30, $40 for a haircut twice a month.

Maybe that's, maybe that's the financial planner in me. Like, dude, I think, yeah, $40 a month, it's not going to make you look like a child. And you're probably going to have to spend that. Inflation is a real thing. Non-transitory.

Look at that, man. Mine's free. Haircut inflation is non-transitory. Let's just put it that way. $80 a month over 30 years invested at 12%. Dude, that's like, it's probably like a year or two of income.

Yeah. But look at that. Look at that. You look good. That cut I got there.

It's pretty good. Good, man. It's pretty good. You know, hey, hey, I get it. I don't have to, I don't have beard trimmers though.

I don't have to do beard trimmers. So I buy a $40 beard trimmer from Costco that lasts me four years. Right here. I buy $20 worth of Gillette razors every few years. Good, dude.

All right. I'm happy. Well, in the worst eight minutes of radio, in the history of talk radio, what are we talking about today, man? You posted. So just so everyone knows why Eric and I are on the phone today, we're part of a, it's just a chat, right?

It's not even a group. It's just a chat. It is. It's just like an infinite chat of, of like a lot of the podcasters in the industry. Mostly we started, I think, so that we didn't step on each other's toes with guests.

And it's basically just turned into like a, now it's just like a, we just bitch about shit and talk about crazy things and whatever. But you posted, Hey, and I got to the point of the sentence where you said someone needs to enter me for, and I just typed in, just email me. Like I didn't even read past when you said that. So what are we, what are we talking about? I'm excited.

I kind of purposefully, I purposefully stayed naive because I wanted the excitement to be curious. I was going to ask you, what, what did I say? What was I on a rant about that day? Oh, we're in trouble. So let me just say something about that group.

Yeah. Um, you know, it's kind of funny is all the members are podcasters in kind of in the industry with the exception of me. Right. Cause I, cause I podcast kind of outside of most, most of my listeners are outside of the industry. Um, so I kind of feel oftentimes as like, man, how did I get into this group?

I love being in the group. I'm like, man, like I snuck into, like, I feel like, you know, you buy a ticket or you go to a stadium, right. In New Orleans. I don't know about, you know, in, in Bill's country, but at the superdome, right. It's the, the, the terrace level, the very top of the dome.

I remember as kids, you know, you'd buy tickets at the terrace level and you'd wait about like five, 10 minutes into the game. And then you kind of walk down and you, you'd kind of walk into a section that you had no right being in. Yeah. That's kind of how I feel like I'm in this group. Um, no.

So here, here's what happened. We were, uh, brain share mastermind was last week or I don't know, a couple of weeks ago, depending on when people listen to this, it was in September sometime. I forget the exact, uh, part of the conversation, but if you, if, if you're listening and you don't know what it's like at brain share, it's not a conference. It's basically just a bunch of independent agency owners, literally sharing their knowledge, their wisdom, their experience. It's cool.

It's cool format. Yeah. And whatever comes up that typically becomes the, the, the topic of conversation. And I have been on this trip, not just talking to insurance agents, um, but to my business owner clients and just people who just work regular jobs and are saving for retirement. A big thing that I've been on this kick that I've been on is you have to stop looking at like your retirement savings or your business as it's worth X.

Okay. That's important, but you have to start looking at it in terms of what is it going to provide for you? So you have a million dollars, $2 million, $3 million. I don't care what the value of your asset is. What I care about is what's it going to cashflow for you.

Okay. Some people are riskier. So a million dollars could potentially yield them more money. Some people are more conservative, so they would need twice as much as you would, because you're more risky, right? So we have to start looking at our assets and what's it going to provide for us.

Okay. So that's a trip that I've been on. It's a little, little background. And then with insurance agency owners, we, we, the majority of our net worth is what? Our agencies.

It's this illiquid asset that, um, I get, I get that. It's a pretty stable business to own good, um, market value. There's a market. Any one of us could go sell our agencies right now. There'd probably be like people standing at the door.

We could probably auction off our businesses and, and bid the price up. I get that. But the point is the majority of our money, our net worth is tied up in one asset and that's cool. That's not a problem. Um, the problem becomes when we want to live the lifestyle of a business owner.

Now, when I say live the lifestyle of business owner, I'm talking about like that, that American dream. I want to travel when I don't want to be restricted or limited by my business. Right. I want to take off when I want. I want to come and go as I please.

The problem is this. We think we own the business, but most of the time the business owns us. You probably talked to way more insurance people than I talked to. How many of them like, Oh, I'm a independent insurance agency owner. I own my own business.

But yet, man, they're putting in crazy amount of time. Now, look, there's a season for that. I mean, let me just say that if you're new in the industry, I don't want to paint this picture that, you know, you can put in four hours, five hours a day and make money. You got to pay your dues. That's bottom line.

You got to put your time in, but we should be working towards this vision of, man, like I don't want to show up every day. I don't want to, I don't want to have to talk. I don't want to take claim information. I don't want to do this stuff. So fast forward to why are we here today?

Someone said something. And my comment was, we have to see all of our people in our agency. So for context, and you might say this in the intro, I own an independent insurance agency. The majority of my work does as a, as a financial planner. So I kind of, I kind of have a foot in the insurance world.

So I get the grind of running a business, but we should see every single staff or every single employee, including ourselves as expendable, as replaceable. Right. So think about that us as the owner of the agency, we should be expendable. So that's, that's the, that's the, um, that's the soapbox I was on. So we can talk about that.

I, so I love this topic. I love this topic for a whole bunch of reasons. I, um, I make, I make jokes about this all the time and people, you know, some, some will give me a, you know, a yuck, yuck or whatever, but I think a lot of people think that I'm just goofing. And, and I'll say all the time, like, I'm not good at insurance. Purposefully.

Cause if I'm good at insurance, my business is not growing, right? Like my, when I, if I wanted, if being good at insurance was my value, then there's no reason for me to take on all the stress responsibility and debt, you know, both in time and in capital that comes from owning an agency. And I think this is something that a lot of people don't think about. And I, and I see this in the agency owners that are, that are struggling this process, struggling to remove themselves from the, from the business is they are tremendous insurance people, tremendous insurance people, and not that they can't run a business, but in terms of the decisions they actually make via their time, where they spend their time, they choose to be insurance people. And for that reason, other aspects of their business struggle, like automating their business or adding a, uh, uh, onboarding an employee or building out a process or taking on a tool that might help them expand or scale, or just do something more efficiently, which drops overall cost of the business because they're selling policies because they're good at insurance and they want to be good at insurance.

And my thought process is if I wanted to be good at insurance, I would never, ever have started rogue ever. I would have never started rogue because no part of my, of how rogue is successful is me selling policies. Every policy I sell is a fail. I tell my team that every policy that I personally sell is a fail for our business. And, and I think a lot of people listen to me and they go, ah, Ryan, you're crazy.

You have a bunch of crazy ideas, you know, whatever. So I'm so glad that you're here and we're talking about this because people look at you as like a responsible adult. They look at me as a madman. So like, I have a responsible adult, like a, a thoughtful adult on the show, sharing a similar viewpoint. Oh man.

So it's like, hallelujah. Hallelujah. You're growing up. You're growing up. I mean, you'll be there soon.

You know, you hang with the right people. That's why you would look crazy with a shaved head, man. Cause you're, you're so excitable, right? Your eyes get big. You see people would be, people would be afraid of that.

But here's the thing. We're, we're kind of joking in the intro, but here's the, I think, I think there's some takeaway there is that every single one of us is different. So as a financial planner, the most important thing that I've had to learn is to advise people not based off of my values, but off of their values. I have to recognize that, you know, Ryan Hanley is wired differently than me. All right.

So I can't advise you based off of what's important to me. And as agency owners, I'm going to tell you this, if there's new agency owners listening to this or, or agency owners who have been around five or 10 years and they're really questioning how they're doing things, they're watching other agencies around the nation and like, man, like, look what Ryan's doing. I want to be like Ryan or, or I'm going to tell you right now, every single one of us is different the way we operate our agencies and be really, really careful who you emulate and who you want to be like. All right. That's super important.

So for me to sit here and say, we have to be the most expendable. I'm saying that recognizing that, no, look, as a business owner, and I think Ryan, you, you captured some of those things. There are some very specific functions that you need to do. And my financial planning practice, I am the only staff member. I am 100% not expendable.

If I don't show up for work, it's not getting done. I mean, there's some back office stuff that'll get done, but if I don't show up for work, there's a problem. So I get this idea. When I say we have to be a hundred percent expendable, what I'm talking about is the things that weigh us down, like the grind of the business. As business owners, if we're not working to some vision, to where I have freedom of time, to where I can show up and spend face time with the clients that I like, I can spend time, you know, with, with a potential new vendor and see if it's, if that technology is going to work for my practice, I can go sit down and maybe just have like an offhanded conversation with, with a staff member and maybe pick one particular topic and train them on the spot.

Um, if I'm not building that margin into my life as a business owner, I want to sit back and really question what, what are you building now? If your thing is, man, I love the grind, man. I love being in the call. I love, I love, I mean, I love just, you know, taking 60 calls a day and talking to clients and that charges me up and I don't mind working 14 hours a day. God bless you.

Go for it. Okay. Um, but don't forget about those other things that eventually those calls might stop coming in. If, if someone is not playing the function or wearing the hat of visionary, um, that, that, that, that, that stuff is not expendable. So as a business owner, my value to my agency is visionary and it's strategist.

That's, I can't, I can't get rid of that right now. Yeah. And so this is, so you just use the term from, um, from EOS, the entrepreneurs operating system that you're a visionary. And in that, so for those that aren't aware, I've mentioned a couple of times, uh, Paradiso and Namoli originally turned me on to this. There's a lot of other agencies that are taking it on.

Um, and, and it's not right for everybody, but for the people it's right for, it works. And we use, uh, EOS in our agency. Um, and I actually have broke, even though we don't have a large team, we've broken it down even further. We use, we have, uh, enterprise level EOS, uh, system, and then we've actually broken it down into operations and sales as well. So we use essentially the same format and formula for those two departments as well, so that we can track items in those departments that need to get done over time and have certain goals for them, uh, as well.

So you need to have every business needs to have both a visionary and an integrator. Many businesses starting out, if there's not a co-founder situation, the visionary is the integrator, right? So the integrator is the one making things happen. The visionary is the one looking forward and, and, and creating direction. And I think that, uh, as a general disposition, especially, uh, our, we'll say, uh, 50 and up, probably even maybe a little older than that.

Maybe our, our 60 year old and older agency owners that are listening to the show, the general disposition of that generation who joined the independent insurance industry tends to be doers integrators. They tend to be more task driven. They like the sales. They like that part. And that's great.

And unfortunately what we're, I shouldn't say unfortunately, but one of the things that we're seeing is the next generation, this next wave of say 35 to 50 year old. And again, take that with, take that with a bit of a, uh, you know, either way tends to be more visionaries, right? So now you have an integrator mentality generation that's trying that's, that's well not phasing out, but is about to fade, you know, on the verge kind of being pushed by visionaries and, and, and that disconnect is causing a lot of issues. And I think what, what would be a really, if, if more agency owners who are looking to get that time, you know, they put in the 20 years, the 30 years, the 40 years, and now they're trying to really extract that time that they, that they've earned rightfully. So is you need to not find someone that necessarily replaces exactly what you do, but first find someone that replaces all the other crap that drives you nuts.

Find that person first. Cause the visionary work has to get done, whether you do it or you don't do it. If you like to sell, that's fine. No one's saying you can't sell, but now you've got to go find a visionary, right? Or if you're the visionary, you've got to find the integrator, one or the other, or you're just never going to have time.

I mean, or, or, I mean, this is one of the beautiful things about this industry. You could probably just kind of cruise, put it on cruise control, maintain the relationships that you've had. You might not grow, you might lose business, but you could probably still live a pretty good lifestyle. Right. So I think step one, and this is kind of what we do in financial planning.

Step one is like, what are we working towards? And that's the problem as business owners. Like I'm, I own a business. Cool. So I'm going to do business.

What does that look like? What are you, what are you growing towards? What are you, what are you building for? Are you building to sell it? You know, are you building it to, to work in it?

Well, my gosh, I don't, I don't know. Like, do you want to, when do you want to exit? What's your end game? Right. No one, we, we rarely define our end game as business people.

Like, I don't know. I'm like, I have an end game. I have a very clear end game. Yeah. Like I know what my end game is now.

It might end earlier than that. You know, there's some contingencies in it, but we have to, we have to name our end game. And then as business owners build our business accordingly. Now I'll say this, you say EOS isn't for all people. I'll say that EOS isn't for all people in necessarily implementing it or executing it to the extent that EOS does.

Cause there is some work involved, but the components of EOS, if you're not as a business, as an agency owner, you know, looking, you know, dealing with your vision. What is my vision? What's my end game? Where am I going? My end game for me personally, cause as business people, when I do business planning with people, there's, I always say before we plan, where you want your business to go.

All right. So like if, if you were a client of mine, I said, okay, Ryan, you own Rogue Risk. Awesome. Let's talk about your business in a second. What are you trying to accomplish personally?

What's your personal vision? Dude, I want to, I want to sail the world by 50. Oh, that's cool, man. Okay. Let's talk about your business vision.

Oh, here's my business vision. I'm like, dude, your business vision is not going to get you to where you want to go personally. So now we have to, we have to build our businesses to support what, and that's the, that is the, that is the beautiful freedom that we have as business people. We get to build our business to a way that's going to support our lifestyle, not our employees. We're taking the risk.

I mean, still treat your employees well. I believe in, I believe wholeheartedly in kind of giving my employees some, some kind of ownership benefits, right? Flexibility at a time. It's not fair if I can just leave at two and, and, and, you know, and I'm ruling with an iron fist that, no, you got to say until five, right? We try to give some, some owner type benefits, share profit, uh, things, things along those lines, but it's that casting that vision.

So that's one component, right? As business owners, we need to be very concerned about our people, about our staff. That's been a big conversation. I know in, in, in our mastermind for a while, like, how do we, how do we build a good team? And one of the things I love about EOS, and this, this changed this, this one component in EOS.

Now we don't implement it to the extent that, that some people do, but it's had a huge influence over, over how I operate the business. They said in the book, this was the result of three physical staff people leaving my office over the past four years. Uh, two left amicably. One was a train wreck and this people component. And what they say is it's not about having the right people on the bus, right?

I got the right employees working for me. It's having the right people in the right seats on the bus. And I realized, man, I had some really good people, man, but they were just in the wrong seat. And the first person I tried to change their job, um, it was, I don't want to do that. That really scares me.

I said, well, I can't keep paying you what I'm paying you to do what you're doing. Right. We had, that was early on in our VA days. We hired some VAs to do some of the, the backend clerical type stuff. And I'm like, I can't pay you what I'm paying you to do this, but I can pay you that and more to do this.

And it was uncomfortable for her. And she ended up leaving. She ended up actually moving away. So it was amicable. Um, but having the right people in the right seats.

Okay. And here, here's something huge. My first business partner in the agency was my brother. Now he's a, he's a mechanical engineer by training. So already you're like, oh my gosh, engineer and insurance.

That's, that's a, that's a nightmare. Right. I grew up selling life insurance. That was kind of where I, I initially kind of made, made my mark and we dreaded having to sell insurance to engineers. Cause I just asked too many damn questions.

Right. So insurance burnt him out. It was like, he couldn't do it. He couldn't do it. And I remember having dinner one night with, um, he's an estate attorney that I do a lot of, I did a lot of work with back in the day.

And I was just lamenting to him. I was like sharing my heart to him about like, oh, this is, I'm paying. I mean, I'm paying too much over here. And like, I'm overpaying. These tasks aren't going to get done.

The salary's too high and I can't afford to continue operating this agency like this. And, um, and he's like, dude, it's the best advice I was ever given as a business owner because you need to, he used a really big word, bifurcate, bifurcate, separate for those of us who don't have master's degrees or not attorneys separate our roles as employee and owner. Now what that means is we make money two ways as business owners, one by doing work, you know, earning a wage the same way any staff member would. And the other way is by ownership. We should compensate ourselves in terms of our wages, similarly to what we would pay someone to do the job, right?

If I'm selling, then I should pay myself a commission. No different than I pay a commission salesperson. If I'm doing service work, I should pay myself like I do service work. If I'm doing some, some kind of combination, I should pay myself accordingly. If all I do is go out and network and market and bring business in and someone else closes it, well, what would you pay someone to do that?

We should pay ourselves that right there. Okay. That's what the business can afford to pay someone to play it to, to, to play that function in the business that as business owners, we make money two different ways. One is through capital appreciation, right? The business is worth a million today.

And because of my efforts and my staff's efforts in 10 years, it's going to be worth 15 million. Okay. That that'd be phenomenal growth, but you get the idea and I'm going to sell it one day. And I might not be making a lot of money right now, but I'm going to make money through capital appreciation. I buy Apple today and I'm going to sell it in 15 years.

It's the same idea. We need to see our businesses as no other, just like any other investment that we make. And it's a little closer, a little bit more personal because we obviously work in it and we own it and it's our blood and our sweat. The other way we make money as a business owner is, you know what? I don't want to wait 10 years to realize the gain in my business.

So along the way, I'm going to pay myself a dividend or some distribution, right? You go buy Exxon because not because you think Exxon is going to be worth a hundred, $150 you buy Exxon because they pay a 5% a year dividend, right? I'm buying it for that ongoing cashflow. Same thing with our businesses. We need to start seeing our businesses as any other investment we would make in any other type of market-driven investment or real estate investment.

And when we start looking at it that way and we start evaluating our roles that we play in the business, we start to say, huh, man, I'm overpaying myself to do that. I could probably hire someone to do that at a much better rate. So now we start to see our roles as expendable. So now we can start paying people, delegating, outsourcing some of the crap that we're doing that we shouldn't be doing and focus on doing what we should be doing as business owners, growing the value of the company so we can make money as business owners through increasing the profit so that we can make more, you know, in dividend payments or distributions, however you're formed, you know, as a company or through capital appreciation. For me, it's a combination of both.

I am working towards, I pay, I am the, I am the, uh, one of the least paid employees in the insurance business. Um, hourly it's probably paid more hourly for the work that I do, but I pay myself a very, a relatively modest wage in the insurance business. My incentive is through growth and through distribution. That's how I am. That's, that's my end game right there.

And, and multiple end game is to, is to sell it to my business partner, to build it in a way to where you geo can, can through, through the distribution, through the profit that we're making, it's going to be really easy for him to, to buy it from me. But that's kind of, that's, that's my end game, seeing those roles, very different employee versus owner, understanding those roles and understanding that my job as employee is expendable. I got to be the visionary or, or connect with a group of people who are going to help me be a visionary, you know, hire a mentor, um, hire a business coach, someone who can help you in that area that you're weaker in. Um, but your job, the, the, the wages that you earn, right. For doing the job of an insurance person should be 100% expendable.

What's up guys. Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show in an exchange for that. I need your help. If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment. If you're on YouTube, leave a rating review.

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All right. I'm out of here. Peace. Let's get back to the episode. Yeah.

The hard part about that is ego, right? This is, this is the, this is the big thing. Because I think logically, if someone were to work through what you just said and start to think about, okay, what functions do I provide? What do I do? Okay.

How do I do it? My time, other things, other responsibilities that I have. The only reason that you couldn't logic that the only, the only, the only reason that you would follow that path and get to the end and not do that is ego. It's my name's on the box. And this is my, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to look at this big account I brought in and you guys don't understand and my connections.

And the only reason they called this, I couldn't, I had a kid call me the other day. I get a lot of, uh, uh, a lot of, I say kid, he's probably 30 something, but it's probably older than you. Yeah. He called me the other day on a Friday. Um, cause I do these kinds of calls on Fridays where just like chat with people.

Um, um, and he said, Ryan, the agency owner literally thinks, you know, he's, he's doing a bunch of social stuff. That was the problem doing a bunch of social stuff. I'm getting no credit for it, which is very, very common, less, less common today than maybe say three or four years ago, but still common. And, uh, it was just like, he's like, I'm doing all this work. I'm creating this brand.

I'm going to these networking events. I'm all over the place. I'm throwing the business card everywhere. I'm doing all the things. And, um, as much as you can with COVID and, um, and he, and he had been before COVID too.

And he said, the business owner thinks every, the agency owner thinks every lead that comes in is because of him, because they know him or they've seen, he's like, I get zero credit for the fact that I'm very active. And, um, you know, you come, you think about that and you're like, you know, I, when, if, if someone I, at this point, I could basically, if there were like a one to 10 ego scale, I could target the ego of that agency owner with maybe like two or three questions tops to someone that works for them. Not that if I were to talk to anybody in their office, like two or three questions, but bam, that's a nine, nine ego. Yeah. Okay.

But let me, let me, let me turn it around. Okay. I don't, I don't know the situation, but let me turn it around. My staff can say, man, we're successful because of the work that we're doing. I mean, Eric doesn't even sit in one of our offices.

I mean, I'm in a separate office. I'm upstairs or downstairs. I don't, the phone doesn't even ring to me. Right. So like, they can say like, we're only successful because we're doing the work.

Yep. So I would say partially, you know, maybe that, that agency owner is thinking, Hey, I'm paying that dude to network, to go bring business in. I've created a platform that allows him to be successful. Yes. Maybe where the agency owner is going wrong is maybe the agency owner is not communicating that.

Maybe, maybe there's an issue with transparency or maybe there's an issue, maybe it is the ego, um, and, and having that, that conversation with the producer, maybe the producer, maybe the producer has an ego himself and needs to go start his own agency. Which is, which is very true. And I think, you know, to get, but getting back to this idea of being expendable, I think that when we, when what matters is, is our place in the agency and our pursuit of the value to the agency matters more than what the agency does to provide to the lifestyle that we've told our financial planner, we want it. That's where I see this go wrong. The most is that, is that, yes, I would love to golf two times a week and be, you know, and be home every day at a certain time, pick up my kids.

And I want to take my wife and my family to Disney three times a year. And I want to do all these things, but none of them happen because I'm so busy. I'm so busy. I'm so busy. And like, I have a growing startup agency, which, you know, whatever, take that for what it's worth.

Pick my fucking kids up from the bus every day. That's why I started the agency. I started the agency and work out of my home. Not because I don't want an office. It's certainly not because I can't afford an office.

It's because I walk 50 feet down the driveway and the kids get off the bus at four o'clock and I get to do that every day. And like, and I think, but the, but the issue is I have no problem. Like I said earlier with Sarah or Leslie or Matt or whoever selling a policy or talking to one of my customers because I don't want anyone to ever know that I exist. Like, yes, I'm the face, but I'm hoping someday what people watch those YouTube videos and they don't even put, you know what I mean? Like, I don't ever want anyone to think they're getting Ryan.

Like if you're getting Ryan, something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong. That is not, that's, you know, but that's, again, I have zero ego. I want to live. So there's, so there's a couple of things here.

There's a couple of things here. First, let me say this one of the, when I was, when I was working in insurance, this was back in what, 2001 to 2008 before I went independent on the financial side. And this was probably before 2004. I used to love telling clients, you know, bring them on. We, I'd sell their home and their auto, maybe their life insurance.

I'd be like, Hey, look, I am available to you whenever you need me. Okay. If you have a question, you can always get ahold of me, but I hire very competent people to be able to answer about 80% of what you're going to need. So I want you to know my staff is as good as me, if not better in certain functions. So they're probably going to be your best bet to talk to before you talk to me.

Um, and so they're talking about like, you know, hire people want to be invisible, um, but be available. Um, so, oh man, what are you talking about? I like that visible. I like that, that thought process invisible, but available. So here's the thing, man, this is going to sound kind of weird and I have to explain it, but perception is reality.

Okay. No, we have to be genuine, authentic people. We can't create these false realities for people. Okay. Um, but if our clients perceive us as available, even if it's vicariously through our staff, if it's through, uh, timely communications, you know, if they're automated, make me, uh, make sure that their time, make sure that they're appropriate.

There's nothing, there's nothing that a record relationship worse than untimely automation. Um, I'm, I'm very slow to adopt automation for that very reason, because I hate when I get something and I'm like, dude, that was bad timing. Like after, after Ida, after hurricane Ida, when I have, um, these wholesalers on the financial side, like literally on Monday or Tuesday after sending me an email saying, Hey, you know, we'd like to come by and visit you. I'm like, dude, that was so automated. That was so impersonal.

And do you, do you watch the news? Do you know where I'm at? No, you don't. Because your automation with, I get it. I get it because we probably had some of those that went out as well, but, um, we need to make our clients feel feeling is very important that we're always available for them.

And sometimes a lot of people are afraid to give access because they think that people are going to abuse that access. But when people have access and you have good boundaries, people rarely, uh, abuse those access, abuse that access. Like, like my clients, my financial planning clients, I tell them I am your financial Google. Okay. Right.

You can go Google the stuff and learn. I'm, I'm good with that. Right. Whatever. But you're asking Google to answer a question.

That's so specific to you. So specific to your lifestyle. That's just going to confuse you. You can ask me the same question and I know what's in your retirement account. I know what your vision is.

I know what your goals are. And I can give you an answer immediately. Um, a lot of my clients take me up on it, but it's not as often as you would think. So we have to be able to make our clients feel like we're there for them, feel that we're working for them. And we are, but just a lot of the stuff we do is invisible.

It's behind the scenes, um, as, as, as business owners, we have to be seen. Um, I had a friend who was a, uh, a pastor and he had a younger pastor that he was trying to, to, to teach and train up. And this guy would always show up late or just right on time for things and leave, leave right at the end. And my friend, the senior pastor, what he told him is like, you need to be the same thing with networking events. Think about this in networking events.

You know, if you show up right when they start and you leave right when they end, you miss out. And he calls it the ministry of presence, being present, being seen goes a very long way in what people think of you, what people perceive about you. Again, you got to back that up with reality. You got to be, you know, genuine and authentic about who you are. Um, the, the worst is, and I think people are, especially in this day and age can see through, um, you know, uh, people's, you know, disingenuineness.

Yeah. The hacks in the whatever, but the ministry of presence being present, right? You go to these conferences, you go to brain share. When does all, or you go to a networking event in your town. When does all the magic happen?

It happens before or after not in the middle, because in the middle, what people are sitting around eating or, or doing whatever. It's being present and that people feel that they're known. They feel that you've, you've listened to them and they feel that you're more available than, than maybe you really are. So I have two, two examples of this that I want to share. One is, um, one is, uh, that I, a conversation I just had with my kids.

So I just had a conversation. My son asked me the other day, dad, how come we're always the first one instead of little league games? Now I am a coach on the little league team, but I, if, if we're, if we need to be there at nine, I usually get there at eight 50. I hate showing up to the field and even having one other kid already throwing, I just hate it. I hate it as a player, as a player.

If I wasn't the first one out there, you know, playing flip or pepper or whatever, I hated it. I just hated it. And I've kind of told, I told my son, I said, you know, it's easy to show up on time. Everybody shows up on time, but we remember the people that show up early. I said, and frankly, who knows if one extra throw is the throw that you figure out the slot that gives you the mechanics that stick with you for the rest of your life.

Who knows if one more, which swing out of the 10 million swings that you'll take in your lifetime, which one of those swings is when you lock in your bow swing, you know, I call home runs bows. So you lock in your bow swing. How do you know? So if you're not there early taking those cuts, which one is going to be the one? Is it, is it the thousandth swing?

Is it the 5,000th swing that we don't know? So let's just get there early and put the work in. Plus you get to screw around more, which is fun. Well, that goes back, that goes back to this concept. Now, just to time mark this, you got, there's two things you're going to tell me.

That was one. So we're going to come back to number 22nd. It goes back to, I don't know if you read the book by Malcolm Gladwell. I think it was called Outliers. And the idea was people who are really successful in their craft.

They're not necessarily more talented. They just have a lot more time doing it. Yep. Right. And they talking about baseball and I think he used baseball and hockey and maybe even European soccer is there's more people in professional sports born.

What, like September, October, November, because of the cutoff date. So you had these bigger, stronger kids, you know, who were competing against smaller kids because of these, these arbitrary cutoff dates. And, um, you know, you think they're bigger and stronger, but they were just, you know, they spent more time and they were, they were, they had more competition. So it's fascinating. Yeah.

But showing up early, putting more work in, it goes a really long way. Yeah, absolutely. So that's a big part of it. You're seen. So to this same, to the same concept of, um, is I have been accused, um, multiple times of being part of like, uh, insurance celebrity mafia.

And those terms have actually been used like both verbally and written towards me, you know, insurance mafia, insurance, celebrity, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Celebrity and mafia, which is it? Who the fuck knows? You know, I mean, this is the stupid shit that people say. And, you know, as like, you know, things happen and only certain groups of people know about them, right?

That's kind of the context. And isn't that unfair? And my response has always been, look, motherfucker, I've been out here on the podcast for almost 12 years now. I've been interviewing. This is like, I've done thousands of interviews, not just not this iteration of the podcast.

Yeah. Thousands of interviews. And my point in saying that is not, I'm not even that good of an interviewer. Frankly, technically, I'm probably a terrible interviewer, but, but I just keep showing up. And the other people that I share intimate details of the opportunities that are presented to me and vice versa are not because any of us are more intelligent or cooler, or, you know, are fans of the right or wrong football team.

It's because simply we all see that each other has shown up for long enough that we can trust that all of us are going to keep showing up and not screw each other. That is, that core concept is something that is lost on so many people. I just, it is, I have to remind myself how, how few people actually understand this concept that if Eric is showing up every day, every day showing up, not asking for shit, not, not telling us how cool he is just doing his thing, sharing some knowledge, helping people, you know, sending a freaking heart emoji to some picture of you and your family. You know what I mean? Like, like over the course of a decade, you go, you know what?

I can trust that guy. He's not going to hose me. You know, he's a good guy. He's shown up. He's been around, sent me a nice message, responded.

When I've sent him a nice message, had me on his show. I've had him on my show, you know, answered this question. When I, when I didn't understand something, when he didn't have to like a decade of that. And all of a sudden you're like, you know what? Pound for pound.

I'm not going to ask anybody else for this thing or bring anyone else in this deal because I already know I can trust Eric. So why would I risk someone who hasn't shown up for the last decade? Hasn't done those things. Why would I trust that person over you? And that is why in my mind, you know, I, you know, I, I tweet certain things mostly just to remind myself, I'm not trying to be a motivational speaker.

I do it. These are like my, it's like my diary and I'll just type like show up. That is not me telling the world that they need to show up. That's telling me show up, just show up, just be present, help somebody find someone who's saying something or having a bad day and connect them with someone. Make an email introduction.

Like that shit over time, but it has to be over time adds up. And that is why these little groups of people form, not just a group that I'm part of any of the groups that people have a problem with form because the amount of time put in has led to a level of trust that you just can't get without putting in the time. Yeah. I'm going to start reading your tweets very differently now. These are Ryan's insecurities.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. This is not Ryan trying to motivate me. These are his insecurities. A hundred percent.

That truthfully, that's what it is. So there's a couple of things there that you said that I think are, that are huge. Um, relationships are things that you have to build over time. Okay. You, there's no, you can't, you can't boost a post to build a relationship.

Yep. Right. Like it's not an ad. You can't go buy a, a Facebook ad to, to create a relationship. Relations happen over time.

They happen. Typically the strongest relationships happen because of some shared experience. So we have to, and here, here's, you know, here's a little piece of gold right here is look to create shared experience with people. And I will say the reason why you're the insurance diva, right? The insurance celebrity, right?

Is because you have put yourself in positions of creating or being part of experiences with people, different people at different times. And when you have those shared experiences, those relationships develop, uh, they're, they're deeper. They're typically stronger. I was listening to a podcast this morning. This is a, um, he's a financial planner.

I think out of Seattle and he's talking about building masterminds. And what he does is, and this is, this is funny because this is what, um, Cass is talking about doing with AI. He talks about like getting a group of people together and they go do, we're going to meet Nashville and do a Spartan race. And what we're going to do is we're going to have someone come talk to us in the morning about something. And then while we're doing the Spartan race, we're going to be talking about it.

And then next day we're going to have someone come talk about us, talk to us about X. And while we're, you know, at the bar or hanging out at the pool, we're going to be talking about that throughout the day as, as like-minded individuals in terms of what we need to do to grow. But, um, but yeah, man, it's, it's, it's when you show up and you're in places and you have shared experience, I'll tell you a really, a really two, two really, um, two really quick examples here. So, um, and I kind of live around the edges of the insurance world, right? I don't go to all these events.

I have other, you know, on the investment side, I have other conferences and groups that I'm a part of. So, um, I have to be, I have to be real, real judicious. I'm like you, like, I like being present for my wife and being present for my kids. I want to be around. Um, but I remember it was, uh, in San Diego last year, IOA, you and I had never met in person.

I felt like we never met in person. We, we, we had shared some kind of interaction on Facebook. I don't even think we're a part of any group. And, and I was talking to Travis one morning and he's telling me the story about Freddie. Right.

Yeah. Uh, long story short, crazy story. Um, I, I told Travis to pretend like he never told me that story and for a couple of days and maybe even for a couple of weeks until I think till Travis, you know, broke, broke silence on it. Uh, we had this really kind of funny kind of shared experience of, I didn't even experience it, but like I was, I was brought into the experience because of a conversation that I had with someone else who had the experience with you. And I look back, I'm like, you know what?

That's when I really got to know Ryan Hanley and Ryan Hanley got to know me. Okay. Um, another funny experience. I actually, it might've happened on the same trip. Um, someone who'd become a really close friend of mine, David Carruthers.

Um, I didn't know who he was, man. Like, you know, this was what a year and a half ago. That was David coming out party. Yeah. It was, but even still like people like we're talking about, you know, this guy and I didn't know who he was, but I, I, I went on that, that cruise and I was like, I really didn't want to do that.

But I had the ticket and I felt obligated to go. And, um, some other people I was friends with were doing something else, but I felt like I got to go. So I went on this, this cruise and had a really good conversation with someone else who's become a dear friend, just a, just a shared experience. Right. Yep.

We didn't even talk about insurance. We talked about family. And, um, you know, one of the things I do is I have, uh, uh, I brand, um, some cigars. So I always have, you know, cigars with Garcia financial group on it. I had some cigars for that night.

So we come off the cruise, I'm sitting there with a couple of guys. We're smoking cigars and along comes David Carruthers. And he, he kind of looked lost. Right. I'm like, Hey man, like, Hey, you want to, you want to join us?

Smoke a cigar. Hey, I'm Eric. He's David. And we sat there and we talked and we had this shared experience about going to a third world country. You need to ask him about this, about, about these, uh, uh, these shower heads.

My experience was in Cuba. His, I think was in Nicaragua, the shower heads that were really, really crazy. I got, I'll send you a picture later. Yeah. So we smoked a cigar with this shared experience and I don't know who I'm sitting with.

And, and I mean, uh, if David was talking, if he was listening to this, he'd be like, Oh man, I'm not, and he's, you know, humble in that regard. But, um, here the shared experience, developing this relationship with someone who's been a, uh, a mentor and a friend and an advisor to me in some regard. Um, so look to create shared experience. If there is a client, if you want someone to become a client, I know it's cool for me about financial planning, but a financial advisor, I have a really long sales cycle. If you want to call it that, like from the time I meet someone to the time they become a client, sometimes can be a year, two years, three years, four years.

Um, and like you said, like, man, he's been around for 10 years and all of a sudden they have a need and they ask me, they don't ask their, they don't ask their guy. They ask me why, because I've been around, I've been present. They see that, um, I've been adding value and they become a client. Um, so if there's someone you're trying to pursue, if there's someone you want to become a client, look for those opportunities to create shared experiences with them. I don't talk about insurance.

Yeah. This is also true in recruiting and recruiting the right people is, you know, it's not always easy. Sometimes when you're hiring, you're, you're, you know, you're hiring people that you haven't met before. Right. But, um, one of the, one of the, I call it success practices of my life has been, I keep a spreadsheet that's private only to me, um, of people that I would love to work with someday in some regard.

And when I meet someone and I'm like, I can see, and, and, and, and not everyone that I love, like love as a human would talk to every day goes on the sheet because it's not people that I think are awesome people that I just love spending time with and think are great at business. It's people that I think would work with my style. The thing that I'm trying to do, you know, like if I were in a project, do I think this person would be a good fit? And so much of that comes from sharing experiences with them and getting a feel for who they really are as a person. And then I'm like, wow, that person would fit in this role in some company that doesn't exist today really well.

And I keep this list. And then when, um, you know, before my demise at trusted choice.com, um, I had, I was executing that list actually pretty fast and, and, uh, it didn't materialize for a whole bunch of reasons, but, um, but you know, that list didn't go away. I keep that list. And there are people even in rogue that I've reached out to and said, Hey, like, I'm not ready for you yet. Like I can't, but man, would you consider this when we're ready for you?

Because I think you'd fit here. Amazing. And I'd love to work with you. And, and so much of that just comes, like you said, that sharing experience, removing ego, finding yourself to be expendable. Like the day that I get to hire a real CEO for this business will be the best day.

My life, you know what I mean? Like, I'm just not a real CEO. So dude, you've told us you're not good at insurance. You told us that your tweets are like, you're kind of your self-speak. Yeah.

Motivate you. You're not a, you're not a good CEO. Yeah. You're not a good interviewer. Yeah.

Then what the hell are you good at, right? I can teach hitting to youth and I can teach the shit out of someone. I can teach someone how to hit a baseball. I'm very good at youth baseball coaching. Okay.

There you go. Okay. I'm good. That's something to work with. Yeah.

I'm a good beer drinker. I'm an excellent at drinking beer. I'm fun at a tailgate in a football game. Yeah. But real quick, what's your favorite beer?

Are you an IPA guy? Are you in that IPA trade? I do. I do like IPAs, but I'm not like an IPA snob. I really don't like like porters or any of that kind of stuff.

I don't get into that. You know, I like good drinking beers. It could be a lager. I could drink a freaking Bud Light. I mean, like it all depends on the mood.

You give me the venue and I'll give you a beer. Like if I'm at a bills game, just, just give me a, give me gallons of Bud Light and let's, let's go do our thing. Man, like I'm going to tell you right now, some free advice to people. Don't buy beer from the stadiums. Lord have mercy.

You will go broke. Absolutely. 100% broke. Like $9 for a Bud Light. Come on, people.

That's terrible financial decision. Man, they just taste good though. There's something about that draft beer at the stadium. Well, the worst place is Yankee Stadium. The new Yankee Stadium.

They wrecked. I don't care. You know, this is completely off topic and we're probably losing subscribers by the minute. But the, the new Yankee Stadium, while technically beautiful, I hate it. I hate it.

The old Yankee Stadium. And I get, even if you're not a Yankees fan, I feel the same way about Wrigley. I feel the same way about Fenway, even though I don't like the Sox. The old Yankee Stadium and Camden is kind of getting this way too. I really like Camden Yards, but you, you, you would walk into the old Yankee Stadium.

And I used to say to my wife, cause we went to a shit ton of baseball games together when we were younger. Like, uh, you can smell Babe Ruth's piss like in the hallways. And, and there was something like, like you loved it. It was dark. It was dingy.

You're jammed in there. You're, you're trying to get to your seats in this tunnel that like has crappy lighting. You're banging into people. People are screaming down these hallways and they would echo. And then you would take a turn and come out of this, this, this hole into like, it was like built to, to, to put you into a state of awe.

You would walk out of this dingy dark tunnel to all of a sudden it's like, oh my God, Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio and Roger Maris and Babe. They hit home runs right there. Like on that plate, that spot of dirt, that's where they hit the home runs. Like, oh my God, look at this place. And then they can wrecked it and build that monstrosity.

So this goes back to this idea of experience, man. Like that experience, you had an experience and it's memorable. And that's what we need to be doing as business people, as, as, as leaders of our business, look to create experiences with your staff. You want to build loyalty. You want to build a tenure with, with your staff, give them experience.

You know, people talk about like, how do we compensate our people? Should we pay them more? Should we pay them less? You know what? Create experiences for them.

Yeah. That compensate them that way. Um, obviously still pay them fairly, but that's what we should be doing, man. I love that idea of, of, of creating, uh, experience being so like being present business owners, understanding our roles, right. As, as employee versus business owner and how we make money, uh, create experience.

And we've covered a lot of ground baseball, you know, did cover a lot of ground. These are my favorite shows. My favorite shows are the ones where I have no idea where we're going. Those are my favorite shows. Like I, I, I had completely forgotten what you wanted to talk about.

I just knew that we were scheduled and I was like, you know what? I'm not even going to look. Cause I thought about going and looking and I was like, nah, I'm just going to see where it goes. And these are my favorite kind of shows, man. I just, I appreciate you, um, being in that group together has been awesome.

Cause I've gotten to know you so much better and a huge fan of what you do in the way you view the world, man. So I just appreciate you and I appreciate your time. Yeah, man. I love this. Hey, a couple, a couple of quick things here.

Uh, check me out plan dash wisely.com. That is my website plan dash wisely.com for independent insurance people listening, go check out agent and game.com agent and game.com agent and game. We're going to, you'll have already heard this. Cause I'm going to hit this in the intro to agent and game.com. You do the socials.

You do the socials. Uh, yeah. Um, I'm on, you can find me on Facebook, LinkedIn. You'll all the links are on my, my, well, we'll have them in the show notes. I forget.

I forget what my, uh, my handles, all my handles are and super excited. Can't say it yet. Working on a new podcast concept. So we, uh, it's going to be killer. It'll be killer.

Oh yeah. Love it, dude. Appreciate you. I'm in. Close twice as many deals by this time next week.

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