RHS 181 - Leaving Captivity for the Good Life with James Jenkins

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Speaker 7 In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home,

Speaker 2 Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we have an absolutely tremendous episode for you.
Conversation with James Jenkins, the man with the voice.

Speaker 2 Big fan of James. We actually had the opportunity to work together a couple weeks ago.
We

Speaker 2 were doing, we both were presenting to Assure Alliance, which is in South Carolina. Had a chance to talk to an audience of probably a couple hundred plus.

Speaker 2 It was a pretty incredible experience because my way is definitely different from James's. And as he mentions in the podcast, it was probably like some sort of trippy

Speaker 2 like experience to have me ranting and raving and walking back and forth and all the crazy contextual, you know, crap and cursing.

Speaker 2 And then he comes in and he kind of stands next to the podium and it's very like professorial you know presentation and um you know he's just

Speaker 2 you know he prepares and to the end degree And, you know, my way is more, while I have a plan, I kind of have a start and a finish. And then I have no idea how I'm going to get there.

Speaker 2 It was just very fun and interesting and dynamic. And then to have a chance to follow that up with this podcast conversation, pretty incredible.

Speaker 2 And really, James is here to talk about his new book, Leaving Captivity, which is awesome. I had a chance to read an early copy and give him notes, which we discuss as well.

Speaker 2 This book, whether you're, you know, a captive agent leaving, you know, actually leaving the captive environment and thinking about starting your own independent, or you're a producer in an agency and you're thinking about starting your own independent, or you actually are a principal or working in an agency and you're completely happy.

Speaker 2 This book has something for you. It really does.
It's dynamic and fun, and I think it's very uniquely James and well worth a read for any insurance wonks out there.

Speaker 2 Although, even if you're not in the insurance industry and for some reason you listen to this podcast, you will still get something out of it, I promise.

Speaker 2 Before we get to James, I want to give a quick shout out to Tivly, T-I-V-L-Y dot com, T-I-V-L-Y dot com, T-I-V-L-Y dot com, Tivly, as in positively, Tivly.com. Used to be commercialinsurance.net.

Speaker 2 Guys, we continue to integrate our business deeper and deeper and deeper

Speaker 2 with Tivly or intertwine, I guess is a better way to put it, because they've just become such a tremendous partner for us in so many of the different things that we do, everything from ramping up new producers to targeting certain markets to targeting certain classes.

Speaker 2 They are a core bedrock piece of our business. And I couldn't be happier for them just as a partner, whether they sponsor the show or not.

Speaker 2 But also honored when one of our partners decides that they wanna talk to you guys and get in front of you guys.

Speaker 2 And for the partners that I think add real value, I love sharing how we use these tools and how I think they could be valuable for you. So go to tivly.com.

Speaker 2 And if you want to give me a shout out, you say, hey, Hanley sent me. But there's no like function for that.

Speaker 7 They just, you know.

Speaker 2 They know when they see amazing agents reach out to them that they must be listeners. I can't even say it with a straight face.
They must be listeners to this show.

Speaker 2 That being said, guys, I love you for listening to this show. You know that.
I'm trying to put more and more work into Finding Peak as well.

Speaker 2 That's where I'm doing a lot of written content, nerding out on some topics, doing deep dives

Speaker 2 outside of insurance, right?

Speaker 2 All the stuff that we don't talk about a lot, our health, our mentality, leadership skills, business ideas, personal development, because all these things impact our business as well.

Speaker 2 And then I also do, you know, kind of nerdy deep dives in a lot of things that we learned. And I recently shared.

Speaker 2 If you go to Finding Peak today, you'll see the opening open-ended question is the first in a five-video series that I'm doing around our inbound digital sales process.

Speaker 2 And if you become a subscriber to that series,

Speaker 2 then you also can download the PDF, which basically I've given to every one of our salespeople. We talk through it with our entire team and it is really the outline for how we do business.
So

Speaker 2 when it comes to inbound digital sales and selling. So if you want that, go there.

Speaker 2 But as always, you don't have to. I love you for listening to this show regardless.
I think you're all all absolutely amazing, and I hope you crush the day.

Speaker 3 All right.

Speaker 2 With that, let's get on to James Jenkins. I'm going to shampoo.

Speaker 8 What's up, dude?

Speaker 7 I picked the wrong time to put sushi in my mouth. Crap.

Speaker 7 I should have known better because you're going to start recording and airing this crap the second that we get on.

Speaker 8 Yeah. What if we say something smart and the recorded button hasn't been hit yet?

Speaker 7 I mean, you make a valid point. I really can't argue with you.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 8 it's definitely happened in a 60-minute period where I've talked a lot and not said one smart thing. So I don't want to miss any of them.

Speaker 7 Well, you said it, not me, man. I'm not going to

Speaker 7 start by being smart with the host. Hey, let me, I got to grab some liquid something or else my throat's going to get dry.
One second. Go ahead.

Speaker 8 We got some bougie water there.

Speaker 8 You got the bougie water on water? Is that what I see?

Speaker 7 Yeah, it's Topo Chico. I'm completely bougie.

Speaker 7 It's the little things in life, man. I left because we had that bag for all this stuff because I thought we're going to record at Hilton Head.
Yeah. My good headphones.

Speaker 7 are sitting in the bag in my backpack at home. So I've got like 15 year old Apple Air whatevers.
And

Speaker 8 one of those good news is in the modern podcasting world, I don't know that anybody cares.

Speaker 7 Maybe you're right. I do care about things that most people don't care about.

Speaker 8 Yeah, that's that's uh

Speaker 7 as my wife says.

Speaker 8 Yeah, you know, hey, and that's fine. That's the way, that's the way it should be.
I mean, you, you, um,

Speaker 8 it's more than a hobby to you. You like it.
You're nerd out on it. And, and those little things matter.
And I think that's great.

Speaker 8 I think that, you know, the reason I make comments like that is it's important for people, I think, for people to understand that

Speaker 8 that isn't necessary, it's important to you because of you know, this is something you nerd out on and you love it, and it's a hobby, you know, like I said, it's more than a hobby for you.

Speaker 8 Like, you really enjoy it, and it's something you're passionate about, and that's great. And I audio quality and all that stuff, it's great.

Speaker 8 I mean, I don't produce the video, and but I'm sure many of you listening have seen James's background, but it's lit up the backlights and the neon, it's awesome.

Speaker 8 I could just give two flying fucks about any of that stuff, personally. I think it's amazing.
That doesn't mean I don't think it's amazing. I do.
I think it looks gangster as hell.

Speaker 8 I just personally could care less.

Speaker 7 Have you heard the story about bump the lamp with Roger Rabbit?

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 7 Dude,

Speaker 7 this is. You can tuck this away in your story vault.
I heard this at a conference a few years ago. And man, it's stuck with me ever since.

Speaker 7 Robert Zemekis, director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which at its day was absolutely revolutionary. Like it was amazing.
The matrix level revolutionary for cinema at the time.

Speaker 7 So the art people, frame by frame, they were like hand drawing every frame, 24 frames per second. So, I mean, literally thousands of frames throughout the movie.

Speaker 7 And there's this one scene in the movie when I forget the guy's name, the human, the old, older guy, he's trying to put Roger Rabbit in handcuffs.

Speaker 7 And there's this scene because there's a lamp in the middle of the table in this scene, and they're just like wrestling.

Speaker 7 And Roger Rabbit bumps the lamp in the script, but it created this back and forth swinging motion that was absolute nightmare for the artist to do to their level of satisfaction.

Speaker 7 So they reach out to Roberts and Mack as they're like, hey, man, can we not bump the lamp? Like, it's a little thing. Most people aren't even going to care.

Speaker 7 It's such a pain. Can we please just not bump the lamp and move on about it? And Zemekis writes back to the artist team.
He says simply, bump the lamp. Yeah.
And the story is most people won't care.

Speaker 7 Most people won't notice. Yep.
But the ones that do that 2%.

Speaker 7 That will be freaking cool to them and they will remember it forever because the ones that care really care.

Speaker 7 And so like that whole notion of yeah bump the lamp do the extra two percent is now now the next time you think of roger abbot you're gonna be like hey what scene was that lamp in yeah i actually know the scene it was in eddie valiant's office

Speaker 8 you're a fan okay yeah i love who frame roger that movie's amazing amazing it is so weird in the most beautiful way yeah and like so So for people who haven't seen Who Frame Roger Abbott, which would mean that you were a weirdo and you probably shouldn't be listening to this show if that's the case.

Speaker 8 But like, this is the first, there was another movie called Cool World that tried to do this first and it wasn't very good.

Speaker 8 And Who Frame Roger Abbott came out really close and was actually, I think, second. I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 8 I'm pretty sure that Who Frame Roger Abbott was second in the integration of cartoons and or animation and live action. So you have this guy, this character, Eddie Valion, who's played by Bob Haskins.

Speaker 8 I had to look the Bob Haskins part up. I remembered Eddie Valion.

Speaker 7 I was about to say, bravos.

Speaker 8 Yeah, no, I had to look up the Bob Haskins part. I knew Eddie Valion, but

Speaker 8 so Eddie Valion's the main character, and he's a human. He's, you know, and then and then there's this tune world on the other side of this tunnel, which is all cartoons.

Speaker 8 And it's all like the wacky old school Looney Tunes and Disney characters, like a hodgepodge of, and like, when I remember watching that as a kid, I'm like, what, like tune like cartoon genre is this because it had you know bugs bunny but it also had betty boop and i was like this is just wild and um it's you know it there's this whole thing that plays out which is really funny but um but it's uh

Speaker 8 it is it was a it was a very interesting movie at the time. And I just, I loved it.
I thought it was so funny.

Speaker 8 And just a cool, what a cool concept to think that there's this world through a tunnel that's like cartoon characters.

Speaker 8 And it was also, you know, it had, it had good, it had comedy before woke made all movies terrible. So like, this is like from what, the 80s, right?

Speaker 7 1988. Yeah.

Speaker 7 I looked it up.

Speaker 8 So, you know, this is when people could still be funny and interesting. And like, you know, there's sexism both ways and there's guys getting kicked in the groin.

Speaker 8 And, you know, there's, there's just all these,

Speaker 8 you know,

Speaker 8 you know, sex references and like Jessica Rabbit is like this ridiculous character, you know, caricature of like this volumptuous woman in this ridiculous dress with red hair.

Speaker 8 And she's married to Roger Rabbit, who is like this bananas, like looks like a cartoon. And it's just the whole thing is wild.
But to your point, there's a lot of stuff in there that if you're a nerd,

Speaker 8 you'll never forget that movie. Yep.

Speaker 7 Bump the lamp, baby.

Speaker 8 All the normies out there are like, what are you two morons talking about?

Speaker 7 Well, they've already stopped listening. They moved

Speaker 7 or they just didn't click. Is it like Jenkins and Hanley? Nah, pass.

Speaker 8 Yeah. So I was talking to my, I was talking to my counselor.
She doesn't like when I call her a therapist the other day.

Speaker 8 I was talking to her. And I think I've shared with everybody on the show that like about this year,

Speaker 8 since my divorce,

Speaker 8 I've kind of realized or been diagnosed is probably a better way to put it with having ADHD, which.

Speaker 8 whatever most people zero people are surprised at this yeah that probably doesn't surprise a lot of people and and not that i was surprised but I certainly fought it for a long time because I kind of

Speaker 8 didn't understand what it meant, what it was, doesn't matter.

Speaker 8 Um, and so I was telling my counselor as like I've gotten more in tune with how to what it has allowed me to do is communicate with people better.

Speaker 8 Because now, when I'm talking to someone who I know doesn't have ADHD, I try very hard to be more focused, more linear in my thought patterns, um, talk a little slower,

Speaker 8 And I refer to these people as normies,

Speaker 7 which is not normal at all. Yeah.

Speaker 8 And I, I, she's like, well, that sounds a little derogatory. And I was like, well,

Speaker 8 I said, I don't mean it to be, but then I said, maybe I kind of do at the same time. I don't know.
Like, so many people have given me shit for so long about how.

Speaker 8 scattered I am or how fast I talk or whatever.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 I'm like, this is kind of like my little subtle jab to say like, hey, I feel like I've kind of harnessed this superpower. And,

Speaker 8 you know, you normies can't keep up. That's, that's your fault, you know, I don't know.

Speaker 7 Well, you and I are very close in age. And when we were growing up, they didn't really have these diagnoses that came around like a decade later.

Speaker 7 I've never been officially diagnosed ADHD, but if you asked my wife or anybody on my team, I guarantee you all of them be like, oh, yeah, he definitely has ADHD. I had Adderall for a number of years.

Speaker 7 I got off of it because it made me a really unpleasant person to be around.

Speaker 7 Yeah. But

Speaker 8 I was using pot for a while to manage my brain.

Speaker 8 But I recently stopped about a month ago.

Speaker 8 Even though Cass and I talked a lot about it on the episode that I did with him.

Speaker 7 That was an interesting episode, by the way.

Speaker 8 Yeah, that was fun. That was a fun one.

Speaker 7 Y'all got into it. It was an, yeah.

Speaker 7 Just knowing both of you individually was like, oh man, where's my popcorn? Let's go. Yeah.

Speaker 8 That's how we talked. I mean, that, that's like a, I, it was funny, Cass, after we stopped, Cass goes, dude, I freaking forgot that we were recording that for a while.
He's like, I completely forgot.

Speaker 8 And I was like, yeah, me too. I was, we were just talking.

Speaker 8 But like,

Speaker 8 I think, you know, what, so, so, so that was recorded, like maybe, say, a month or so before it aired. And now we're like a month or so after it aired.

Speaker 8 So about a month ago, I quit because what I found is similar to like the Adderall thing that while, yes, it helps me pull in all these different things that are happening in my brain at one time and I can be much more focused.

Speaker 8 One, it has to be a very specific,

Speaker 8 very specific levels of THC and CBD. If like high THC content, like super, like these 30, 30 percenters or whatever, that shit, I can't handle that.
That does not work for me at all. I feel terrible.

Speaker 8 And then, but if I get the right mix, and it's like such a pain in the ass because if it's not the right mix, then I just, I don't feel very good.

Speaker 8 And what it absolutely does is it destroys my creativity, destroys my creativity.

Speaker 7 When I,

Speaker 8 when I am consistently using pot,

Speaker 8 uh, I just am not as creative. I'm not as sharp.
I don't like it. Um, I do find.
I'm more manic though when I'm off of it. So like I have more, more times when like

Speaker 8 I'm a little more manic, which I have to get better at controlling. But like the, the, the, um, and by manic, I mean, I let my emotions get out over my skis.
So you guys know what that means.

Speaker 8 Like, um, like, I'll give you an example yesterday. So yesterday, one of my team members who's been with us for two years, um, she has her annual review because we do our reviews in April.
And, um,

Speaker 8 and she

Speaker 8 shares that she got another job offer and she's considering it. She's a highly valued member of the team.
I want to keep her.

Speaker 8 I've done a couple of things personally for her that it really, it like hurt my feelings. And I know you're not supposed to do that.

Speaker 8 I know you're not supposed to get attached or whatever, but I was like, holy shit, like I've like done some things

Speaker 8 off the books for her to help her in different situations because that's what we do.

Speaker 7 And it's a human game we're playing.

Speaker 8 Yes. And it was like, it was like getting punched in the gut.
You know, I felt like getting punched in the gut

Speaker 8 that I'm like, you know, and I just started going down this rabbit hole in my brain of like, I'm too nice to these motherfuckers. Like I'm way too nice to them.

Speaker 8 Like we have this culture and it's family and we get along and everyone and we take care of each other and I take care of my people.

Speaker 8 If you work here, even if I don't really like you, I'm going to take care of you because you work here. You're part of, you're in the circle, right? That's the way it is.

Speaker 8 It's like a family, even if it's not. And, and, and I know that.

Speaker 8 every book would tell you detach from the outcome and and this is this is business and it's the way it is and i do think that that's a better way to think about it um in general or i don't want to say better that is a way to think think about it that allows you to defend against these types of feelings.

Speaker 8 But I felt myself starting to get out over my skis, like, cause I was hurt. You know what I mean?

Speaker 8 I felt like, oh my God, like, I, I, I am, I would like to believe that I am absolutely a servant leader.

Speaker 8 And I tell people that, like, my job is to be in service of my team members so that they can be the best versions of themselves. That's really what my job is.

Speaker 8 And,

Speaker 8 and

Speaker 8 it just really was a gut punch. And I, I felt myself going.
And then my next meeting, I was like,

Speaker 8 and I was, it was just, I was off the hook. I couldn't slow down.
I couldn't, I couldn't rein it in. I was just full on

Speaker 8 because I had let my emotions kind of get ahead of me. And that's when I say manic, that's what I mean.
I just, I did.

Speaker 7 You turned into a bulldozer and whatever was in front of you was going to get plowed.

Speaker 8 Yes. And, and thankfully, the woman that I was meeting with was capable of accepting it and understands.
And it was fine.

Speaker 8 And actually, actually it was productive but it was just i got done with the meeting and i literally went for a 25 minute walk around my neighborhood to kind of like bring myself back in because i had i had i had allowed myself now here's the weird part

Speaker 8 when i'm when i when i'm consistently using pot that doesn't happen as much right i'm i that doesn't happen but the problem is the reason it doesn't happen is because i'm dulled and with that dulling yes i don't get out over my skis skis emotionally, but I also can't be creative and connective.

Speaker 8 And I don't feel razor sharp, which I really like. I really like that

Speaker 8 it is both a blessing and a curse, but I really like that for whatever reason, God has given me this edge. And anything that dulls it, I really don't like.
So I quit about a month ago.

Speaker 7 Good for you, man.

Speaker 8 That was a very long-winded way of saying I quit smoking pot a month ago.

Speaker 7 Well, and I think it's important because it speaks to individual decision-making that aligns with what you're about.

Speaker 7 You know, as we'll talk about later in the episode, like it also, I mean, chapter one, vision, mission, and values that frames the conversation and serves as a good basis for decision making.

Speaker 7 And you decided that, you know, regularly smoking a pot is not in alignment with your values and what you're shooting for yeah in your daily performance and your ability to remain sharp so we have different ways of saying exactly the same thing um but it was just

Speaker 7 that behavior was out of alignment with who you want to be and yeah and what what expressions of your values you want to manifest yeah i think that you know

Speaker 8 i think

Speaker 8 One of the hard things that I think we all struggle with, and

Speaker 8 you talk about this a little bit about in your book. and I want to talk a little bit about the editing process and all that kind of stuff, too.

Speaker 7 But I'm an open book, yes, yeah, nice.

Speaker 8 Um, you know, the

Speaker 8 I think that

Speaker 8 so I listen to Andy Frisella a lot. From uh, he used to do uh the MFCEO project now, his podcast called Real AF.

Speaker 8 Um, you know, he he gets he gets knocked on sometimes because he is very pro-America, very pro-freedom, and he curses a lot.

Speaker 7 But, and one, he's the 75 hard guy, right?

Speaker 8 Yes. First, he owns first form and supplement superstores, and he's based out of St.
Louis. And,

Speaker 8 and when I first started listening to him, I was like, eh, you know, he just, the curses were a lot.

Speaker 8 And even though I like to curse, it's like, take however much, if you listen to this show, however much I curse, it's like 3X how much I curse, right? So like, it's.

Speaker 7 a lot.

Speaker 8 But and I was like, yeah, I didn't really get it. And the more I listened to him, the more I realized the more I started to like him.
Right. And I was like, yeah, he cursed a lot.
Okay.

Speaker 8 And I don't personally have a problem with it. It just, at first, I wasn't sure if it was a shtick or not.
I don't like shticky curses.

Speaker 7 It's kind of distracting to me.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 8 I will say it used to be. I also think that he's matured a little bit over the last few years.
And it doesn't seem as it used to be kind of shock jockey.

Speaker 8 And now it just feels more, it's a little, I don't know, it feels more integrated into the show or whatever. It's fine.

Speaker 8 But what I, what I've taken from him and listening to him so much and like, I've never done 75 Hard. I've, I want to, but to be honest with you, I, I love, I like,

Speaker 8 I like drinking too much, um, which I do.

Speaker 7 It's probably terrible, but I do.

Speaker 8 Um,

Speaker 8 and, and I don't, I don't care. I want to, on a Saturday, I want to be able to pour myself a nice glass of whiskey or bourbon or whatever.
And I want to relax with my, you know, out on my porch.

Speaker 8 And I, that's, that's what I want to do.

Speaker 7 I just, I like the whole point of 75 hard is mental toughness and grit and resilience. Yes.
You're in the gym regularly. You're a fit guy.
You're, you're physically strong.

Speaker 7 You're mentally strong and in a lot of ways. I don't know if you need 75 hard.
Well, people out there that consider themselves undisciplined, yeah, there's definitely a lot of gain from that.

Speaker 7 But for folks like you and I, I don't know if there's that much water in that well, you know?

Speaker 8 Well, yes and no.

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 8 Yes, in that versus someone who's 50 pounds overweight, isn't hitting their sales goals, can't seem to get out of their way, is very unhappy with how they wake up every morning, their station in life.

Speaker 8 Yes, I have a tremendous amount of more discipline. And so do you than that person.

Speaker 8 But

Speaker 8 I also, my goals are

Speaker 8 The goals that I have,

Speaker 8 the more I get focused on where i want to take my career the number of people that i want to impact the real impact i want to have on this industry um

Speaker 8 you know the the the the the bigger things like right now we're just getting rogue going right we're just getting it producing revenue we're getting us producing premium we're doing some of the like blocking and tackling foundational

Speaker 8 but like just having a productive agency i mean we'll be doing probably a million in premium a month by the end of the year that that's nothing i want to do 10 million in premium a month and i want to place 100 to 200 new agencies with either Rogue Risk, Rogue Risk

Speaker 8 agencies, or SIA member agencies.

Speaker 8 I want to place, you know, somewhere between 100 and 200 new producers every year. Like, I want to be a mechanism of growth.
And I have all these plans to do that and whatever.

Speaker 8 And like, those things don't take even slightly above average discipline. Like, there's part of me that's like, all right.

Speaker 8 If we're going to really play this game and see how good we can be,

Speaker 8 we kind of have to go even a step further. And that was a big part of the pot thing:

Speaker 8 I mean, dude, there's nothing better than after a long, stressful day at nine o'clock, rolling yourself a doobie and sitting out on the porch and hanging out. I mean, it's fucking great.

Speaker 8 But then when you wake up the next morning and you feel like you can't hit your diary or your journal very well, or you don't really, you're not really motivated to read, or you're struggling to get a blog post out out or, or, or even be creative in the way you handle an email or a conversation or a Slack message because you're a little foggy.

Speaker 8 That's unacceptable. You know, I mean, to me, I mean, that's, that's, that's the point is that that shit is fine if you want to be a producer.

Speaker 8 I just want to be a producer, make a couple hundred thousand bucks, go to local events, pound my chest, bang my wife or my husband, whatever, or my spouse, whatever my other person is.

Speaker 8 And like, That's fine. That's what you want to do.
And there's nothing wrong with that lifestyle.

Speaker 8 But, you know, I think for me, certainly, I think also from you and the different things that conversations we have,

Speaker 8 I think that you have to hold yourself to an even higher standard.

Speaker 8 And that is what I've taken from this Andy Frasilla guy is that there is, there's being a slob, there's adding some discipline to your life, and you can get 80% of the way there to where you want to be with just even, even the smallest amounts of discipline, right?

Speaker 8 Just the small, pick a thing or two. Maybe just reading in the morning and going for a walk or you, you know, journaling every morning and brain dumping and taking a cold shower.

Speaker 8 Pick two things and do those two things and your life will change dramatically.

Speaker 8 But if you want to go to another level, if you want to play a game that most read about in books, you have to hold yourself to a higher standard.

Speaker 8 And that is where I will say, right now, my discipline falls apart.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 No, that makes sense. No, there.
There was something in me that shifted.

Speaker 7 And I forget exactly when it happened.

Speaker 7 I wasn't wasn't paying that close of attention to the internal dialogue but during the process of writing the book when i it was somewhere between sending it out to the six of you um

Speaker 7 and like getting to the end where it's like okay this this is ready like it's going to get published this is what people are going to see somewhere in there i forget who it was that i sent it to but they they said This is, you know what it was?

Speaker 7 I just remembered. Sorry, I'm thinking out loud here.
It was the guy that I recorded the audio book with. He's a client.
Yep. Owns a music and recording studio in Frisco.

Speaker 7 And he's outside the industry. He doesn't know anything about any of this stuff.
He's totally not even remotely close to the target audience. But we were recording at his studio and we get done.

Speaker 7 We're after two or three chapters in. He's like,

Speaker 7 I read a lot of books. This is really good.
I was like, man, thank you. Like,

Speaker 7 you don't really know me. You certainly don't know the industry that I come from.
So, the fact that he, I mean, chapter two is all about headspace and discipline and like grits and whatnot.

Speaker 7 And chapter three is talking about time and, you know,

Speaker 7 extracting the most value from your minutes and hours. And it was like, this has nothing to do with insurance at all.
It has absolutely zero to do with insurance. Yeah.

Speaker 7 It's about being a good business owner, good entrepreneur, you know, an effective

Speaker 7 person in an enterprise situation, but it, you know what, you're right. Mr.

Speaker 7 So-and-so, who's outside the industry, this, you don't have to be an agency owner or a producer or aspire to be one of those two to get something out of it. It was like,

Speaker 7 it dawned on me at that point. It's like, why can't people think of me at some, some point in the future? Obviously, I'm nowhere near there yet, but people refer to.

Speaker 7 you know, Patrick Lensione all the time. It's like, he's written some really effective books.

Speaker 7 I'm never going to be a Simon Sinek or Ryan Holiday or whatever, but who's to say I can't be someone who has that kind of impact like those guys have had on me, like Angela Duckworth and other people that write books that have real impact.

Speaker 7 It's like, those people have changed how I do business. A lot of them, like John Maxwell, for instance, as just a one-off, have changed how I do life.
Like they've changed the decisions that I make.

Speaker 7 Andy Prisella, a good example. That's impact that goes way beyond money, that goes way beyond business success.

Speaker 7 And I know it's ridiculous because it's something that only people with money say, but the money is not that important.

Speaker 7 At a certain point, you're struggling to make money because you don't have that much and you got to make your mortgage and your car payment and whatnot.

Speaker 7 But after a little bit of success, you're like, wait a second, the money's just a way of keeping score. It's not really important at all.

Speaker 8 Yeah, that's something that Frasala says all the time. You know, and so I have two thoughts on this particular vein of conversation.

Speaker 8 And one is, and I don't think you're being this way, so don't, please don't take it that way.

Speaker 8 But some of the like, don't think about the money, money doesn't matter, like that vein of conversation sometimes, depending on the person, I find it very patronizing.

Speaker 8 Cause I'm like, motherfucker, you make half a million dollars a year.

Speaker 7 like and you're telling me money doesn't matter like fuck you you know like that yeah like i just said it's people with money tend to say that, yes.

Speaker 8 So, but so I think there's, I think, you know, and this is one again, one of the things that I like about Frasa.

Speaker 8 And so, I don't want to take credit for his thought, but he'll say all the time, like, step number one is make enough money to survive.

Speaker 8 So, before you think about personal excellence and, you know, all this crazy shit, you got to go get a job that makes you enough money that you're not living on your parents' couch, that you, you know, you have your own car, like get your basic life shit squared away.

Speaker 8 Okay.

Speaker 8 Do that for six months. Live that life, pay your bills, make sure your phone stays on.

Speaker 8 And then, and okay, now, now you have that, you've kind of set whatever you need to do in place and have routines and habits, a job so that your basics are there.

Speaker 8 Now you start to make the small incremental changes that allow you to work towards that next level. Cause I agree with you.
Like,

Speaker 8 you know, you, it is. you know you do hit a certain amount of personal income where you stop thinking about money all the time.

Speaker 7 But

Speaker 8 I do think that, you know, to some people who hear that, they're like, Jesus, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm on zero every Friday before the paycheck comes.

Speaker 8 Like you're telling me to take cold showers and go for runs and, you know, read books. And I'm like, I'm like stressed to the max because I can barely get out of my own way.

Speaker 8 And on Fridays, I'm staring at a zero bank account and hitting refresh on the chase screen until the money hits, you know, like like it's a really, it's a really difficult thing for people.

Speaker 8 And I think that,

Speaker 8 you know, what happens is we get set in these routines, we surround ourselves with people that make us feel comfortable.

Speaker 8 And, you know, to some of the stuff in your book and what you're trying to do with the whole larger concept of leaving captivity is that, you know, in particular, I think

Speaker 8 we could put an entire genre of people, captive agents that are seemingly not the very few that make it past escape velocity, agents inside of agencies that have no real future, right?

Speaker 8 They're just always just going to be an agent and they're unhappy with that.

Speaker 8 And when I say just an agent, I do want to put the caveat on it. Some people love being an agent and that is completely fine.
I think in all these scenarios, it is important to remember that what

Speaker 8 the people James is writing his book to that I talk about are the people who are in these situations and are unhappy with that station, not the people. Yes.

Speaker 8 And that doesn't mean wanting more is right, right? It comes with a lot of trade-offs that you have to make in your life, but, but if you do, that's, that's kind of the thought process.

Speaker 8 So, um, kind of going all the way back. So you sent me the rough draft or some version, one of the iterations of a rough draft of this, and I made it through the first chapter and sent it back to you.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 you made it further than chapter one this time, I hope.

Speaker 8 I did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 8 I will, if I'm being candid, I blew through some parts just because I kind of got the gist of it, but I read, I read a lot of it.

Speaker 8 I thought you did a really good job. I was very happy with

Speaker 8 versus what I read the first time. I was very happy with what I read the second time because I think it was much closer to your best work.
And you'll never get all the way there.

Speaker 8 I'll never get all the way there. But

Speaker 7 it drives me insane.

Speaker 8 Yeah. Yeah.
You can't, you can't even expect that. But I, so, so talk me through a little bit.
Um,

Speaker 8 you know, I, you send this out or whatever. And you said you're one of the only people like that came, you know, most people send back like, hey, good job or whatever.

Speaker 7 And I was like, this is almost unreadable to me um yeah you know well it was it was really interesting to me the different approaches to feedback because

Speaker 7 you were

Speaker 7 on brand for how you are you were an absolute savage and basically said if we weren't friends i wouldn't have made it past the first page this is

Speaker 7 you know very

Speaker 7 heady, wordy, self-important drivel is basically what it was.

Speaker 8 I wasn't quite quite that harsh, but it was.

Speaker 7 Here's the thing: I'm always going to be way harsher on myself than literally anyone else on the planet. You could have said, this is absolute shit.

Speaker 7 And I would have been like, okay, well, there, I see that perspective. Yeah.

Speaker 7 But I mean, like, Carruthers wrote back, I think it was two sentences. He was like,

Speaker 7 yeah, it's good. And I forget what the,

Speaker 7 but his, he's so high level because he's into 48,000 different things.

Speaker 7 And I was grateful to have any feedback from all of y'all. And Siara was, I mean,

Speaker 7 basically early stage kind of feedback of, hey, I appreciate you talking about X because I don't really know about that yet. And that was basically where she came at it from.

Speaker 7 And then Don and Roe, Polzinski, just... chopped the chapter five to pieces, the financial chapter.
And

Speaker 7 chapter six is about social stuff and like relationships and i was a little pessimist uh at the first draft and don and row were like do you really feel this way about your peers in the industry about how most people are not impressive most people in the industry are kind of meh i was like if i'm being honest yeah most people in the industry are average at best, mediocre performers who don't try nearly as hard as they're capable of trying because they have other things that they care more about.

Speaker 7 And it's not that they're bad people. I'm not saying that at all.
I'm just saying they're not

Speaker 7 like

Speaker 7 moonshot performers. And in Phoenix, one of the lines that I'm giving in my keynote, and I think this is coming out after, we're probably what, a month out from this airing?

Speaker 7 Ish.

Speaker 8 Yeah. Okay.
It'll be around, it'll be probably around Phoenix or just after.

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Speaker 7 One of the lines that I have in that keynote is

Speaker 7 average is subjective. For instance, most of you in this room are average.

Speaker 7 And I'm not saying that as an, this is basically direct word for word, what I'm saying from stage. I don't say that as an insult.

Speaker 7 I say that as a statistical reality of this set of people in this room right now, most of you are in the statistical middle of the bell curve of the people in this room right now.

Speaker 7 And it's like, if you want to be more than the statistical average of whatever the population is,

Speaker 7 you got to do things to move beyond average. You have to act and behave and think in ways that open the door to north of average.
And

Speaker 7 most people never get there for whatever reason.

Speaker 7 And Don and Rowe were like, I think you need to take that really big negativity out and find a different way to say that because you're insulting most of your peers. And I'm like, valid.
Okay.

Speaker 7 Let me find a different way of saying that. Because I definitely don't intend to insult my peers.
If anything, it's more

Speaker 7 remind them of what they're capable of

Speaker 8 and invite the ones that want it to come on yeah i think the important caveat there is want it in insurance right yeah because like there's a guy there's a couple of agents that i know that like

Speaker 8 they love

Speaker 8 you know like

Speaker 8 cooking and smoking meat and if you go on you know they just they love it and it's what they do and they take these beautiful pictures and it's amazing and they're they're great insurance agents but they're not as great insurance agents as they are at making these delicious meat candy and it's what they they love it and they serve it to their family and everyone comes over, and it's this big thing.

Speaker 7 And that's what they love to do, where they love playing golf, right?

Speaker 8 Maybe they'll never be. So, it's like, I think what we always have to remind ourselves of is like,

Speaker 8 if you're going to, you know, and this is one of the things that people say, you know, like the buying courses and people never use them.

Speaker 8 And I think the problem is people buy courses because they, they, they, they haven't yet figured out that insurance isn't what they want to be the thing they're the best at yeah it is which is completely fine yeah it is frankly i you know i don't want to be the best insurance salesperson i don't want to be the best insurance

Speaker 8 well i i do i would like to be the best insurance marketer i don't think i will be but um i do think that there there are certain there are all kinds of different things that we can pick and and the key is to to to be disciplined in the actions that make you the best at the thing that you actually want to be the best that you can be at.

Speaker 8 And that doesn't have to be insurance, or it could be some subset of the insurance industry, or it could be you just want to dominate the world, eat people's lunch, step on throats, and stand on top of the mountain, giving the flex sign and a big F you.

Speaker 8 And it all just depends on

Speaker 7 what your goals are.

Speaker 8 But none of that happens without discipline. and without focus.

Speaker 7 I agree. And the main reason why I'm never going to try to be that guy is there's always a bigger dog.

Speaker 7 No matter what success you reach, unless you're one out of 8 billion and you happen to win the genetic lottery and you have buckets of hustle and you're at the right place at the right time and you're Elon Musk,

Speaker 7 everybody, there's only one best, but every best is subjective because what metrics are we using? What filters are we using to determine best?

Speaker 7 The idea of

Speaker 7 best, I think, is ridiculous.

Speaker 7 And like Simon Sinek said in his book, The Infinite Game, which was one of my absolute favorite reads in the last several years, great read.

Speaker 7 It's like, better is better than best, because best is totally subjective. Better is objective.
Better is a lot more measurable than best.

Speaker 7 Because you can take what you used to be, you can take what you are, and you can have an objective measurement that says, I'm better.

Speaker 7 Best is totally subjective and worthless in my mind.

Speaker 8 Well, the other thing too is, and there's some studies around this that like the whole concept of best doesn't actually give us purpose. Yeah.

Speaker 8 We find the most purpose and ultimately purpose is derivative happiness when we are, when we believe we are at our best, right?

Speaker 8 So that, so best is really a goal meant to be, and, and probably, and I like the way that you positioned it, that, you know, with the, with the better.

Speaker 8 It's really about, are you the best you can be?

Speaker 8 And that, and that really, you know, when I talk about world domination, all this kind of stuff, yeah, I'm being kind of facetious and I think it's fun and I like, it like annoys people, which also makes me happy.

Speaker 8 But

Speaker 7 you like that gladiator shtick that aligns with your personality. Yeah.
It aligns with the brand that you've crafted. You're, you're a rebel.
You're irreverent. You don't care what people think.

Speaker 7 And what you just said aligns perfectly with this persona that you've spent the last almost 20 years crafting.

Speaker 8 But it's also, I will say, in the last year, because, you know, one of the things that getting divorced has allowed me to do is spend a lot more time being self-reflective and,

Speaker 8 you know, introspective and all that kind of stuff is that I've really tried to focus on when I make that joke about world domination, what I'm talking about really is I want to see what I'm capable of.

Speaker 8 I will, Rogue will never be as big as Marsh or some mega agency or whatever.

Speaker 8 And it doesn't have to be.

Speaker 8 That's the purpose.

Speaker 8 That's not the purpose of being, I don't care if we're ever in the top 100, but I,

Speaker 8 I'm, my, I guess my goal is, and, and, and I'll, I'll feel, I want to be able to say,

Speaker 8 I,

Speaker 8 I figured out what, what my best was. I figured it out.
I, I experienced it. My best, the best that I could do.
I, I got to that point. That was,

Speaker 8 you know, no matter where that ranks me and whatever, I could literally care less because, and I'll never, you know, there's certain clubs I'll never be asked to join because of the way that I am.

Speaker 8 I just you know i won't be asked to join certain clubs um you know i've been i've been specifically kicked out of certain clubs in the insurance industry so you know there's there's places i will never get to or be part of or whatever and that's perfectly fine but i i think and i and i i guess this is a hope that i have for our peers is that we we find we someday we we can say at the end of our careers whenever that is man you know what

Speaker 8 i i i figured out what my best was i i got there i i had moments I was there for a period of time where, man, I just was locked in. Things were cooking.
We were doing great.

Speaker 8 Made some awesome decisions, met some great people, did things I never thought were possible. And

Speaker 8 that feels really good. I think the people who get to the end of their career and they feel a little bitter or unhappy or confused about what to do next, so much of that is,

Speaker 8 I think in their heart of hearts, they know they didn't try as hard as they possibly could.

Speaker 8 And that, that there's something off in our soul there i think our i think our soul knows that knows that i think i think that um there's a disconnect between the honesty of i know i didn't give 100 but here i am um

Speaker 8 you know i gotta live with the fact that i left something on the table and i that that's a sad moment i feel like and trying to make sure that that doesn't happen and again to to the point that I honestly don't care if I ever win an award.

Speaker 8 I don't care if I'm ever on a list. None of that means anything.

Speaker 8 it's just you know i want to be able to say i was the best version of myself at this thing that i really care about

Speaker 7 yeah

Speaker 8 man you're swinging hard i love it yeah so okay so i send you this uh loom video review of the first chapter of your book

Speaker 8 and i'm i i just pulled up the uh google doc that i sent you where i made comments i highlighted the entire first paragraph and i wrote need a better hook Your open line, your open line needs to grab the reader.

Speaker 8 Honestly, I would have stopped after the first two sentences. I wasn't reading this for, if I was reading this for real.

Speaker 8 You know,

Speaker 8 one of the things that I like about you in general is that I knew you could take that feedback.

Speaker 7 Yeah. So absolutely.

Speaker 8 You know, I think that that's.

Speaker 7 I have incredibly thick skin. I've developed it over the years of being the butt of many jokes when you have a really strong personality.

Speaker 7 And this is something that Nick Harris and I have talked about in years past, because I honestly, I struggled with being able to receive harsh critique and take it in stride.

Speaker 7 And Nick said, and I know this is something that you align with because I've seen you, I've listened to many episodes of your podcast. Nick said,

Speaker 7 if you're not pissing off 25 or 30% of your audience,

Speaker 7 you're probably not saying anything of substance anyway. Yes.
And just learning, becoming totally okay with people being upset. Yeah.
That's that's something that took a long time.

Speaker 7 And I'm not all the way there because I still care what people think way more than I'd like to admit, obviously. And I put this book out there into the wild.

Speaker 7 And, you know, by the time this episode drops, you'll be able to go to Amazon and buy it. It's like, oh, man.
I hope they like it. They, as in the general public, which is a terrifying proposition.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Sorry, curry eye. Yeah.
I think let me give credit where credit is due for starters because you offered up a suggestion for the first line of the book.

Speaker 7 And after a lot of reflection, I'm like, I like that first line. I think that makes sense.
And so I ran with it. So if you're reading the book and you think, man,

Speaker 7 this book didn't exist when I needed it most. So I wrote it.
It's like, okay, well, I got to give credit where credit's due, Mr. Hanley.
That one's from you, buddy.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I well, thank you. I um,

Speaker 8 I mean, it's dude, just, I mean, all the thoughts are yours. It's uh, the, the other thing I thought was really interesting and I, and I was glad when I reread it, was

Speaker 8 you were telling us a lot of things that you weren't going to say. Like, that was also one of the first things that I noticed.
You're like, I'm not going to talk about sales.

Speaker 8 I'm not going to, I'm like, and one of my, I just read one of my comments, it's like, if you're not going to talk about it, don't talk about it.

Speaker 8 Don't tell me you're going to talk about it because I don't give a fuck because you're telling me that you're not going to talk about it.

Speaker 7 It reminded me of Josh Bron. And he's like, I hate it when people say I'll be brief because when you say I'll be brief, you're not being brief.

Speaker 8 Yes, you've just, you've just broken exactly what you told me you weren't going to do.

Speaker 7 You just wasted three seconds. Yeah.

Speaker 8 So, but dude,

Speaker 8 I think that what came out the other end was awesome. This is classic, classic first draft, you know, or early draft stuff.

Speaker 8 You always have more words in the first draft than you do in the final version.

Speaker 8 That's the whole game is you, you fill it up with all the words and then you use friends and editors and whatever to carve out the words and and come back with something that's that's that's crisper and cleaner you want to know what's funny that's not what happened at all what do you mean i added 20 000 words to what was the first draft but i guess what i mean let me rephrase that

Speaker 8 it is not filled with stuff that doesn't matter there's virtually no filler it's punchier that i guess let me so i'll put that another way i what i mean is you fill it with words everything's words sentences are long they're you're using ands and all this stuff and then when you start to crisp it up you go hey i could say i can instead of saying this in 12 words i can say it in eight words instead of saying this in 20 words i can say it in seven words and like everything gets punchy and snappy and it was the the final version is way snappier and um

Speaker 8 you know i like i like that a lot so let's you know we we have uh uh uh to be to be fair to the audience we have you know a little bit of 10 minutes left ish what is your favorite chapter like when you when you when you look at this and you think back about it and you think about, you know,

Speaker 8 this whole project and you think about the book itself and, you know, what is, and it doesn't mean it'll be your audience's favorite chapter, but what's your favorite chapter?

Speaker 8 What's a chapter that like, when you read it, you're like, shit, I, I nailed that. Like, I nailed that chapter.
Like, that was awesome.

Speaker 7 The,

Speaker 7 and I, I very intentionally set up the structure of the book so that it finishes really strong.

Speaker 7 One of the things that annoys me the most

Speaker 7 about the way that some authors do it is you can tell when you get near the end of the book, they just kind of ran out of steam. And

Speaker 7 in the last two or three chapters of a lot of books, there's recap and there's like summarizing and restating thoughts from earlier in the book. I didn't want to write that book.

Speaker 7 There's 13 total chapters.

Speaker 7 I'm most proud of 12 and 13. And I think chapter two, which is talking about grit and resilience and overcoming adversity and like hardening your mind against all the suck that we all deal with.

Speaker 7 Because chapter two wasn't in the book originally. And before I sent out the first draft, I made a decision to be super vulnerable and talk about.

Speaker 7 one of the hardest conversations I've ever had in my career, where at that point, one of the biggest prospects I had ever ever had a chance at, and in reality, I never really actually had a chance at it.

Speaker 7 I was swinging way above my weight class. And

Speaker 7 they told me, you're not good enough.

Speaker 7 You don't have what we need. No amount of hustle from you is going to meet the needs that we have.
You just don't have what it takes. You need to better yourself.

Speaker 7 And if you want to win accounts like ours. And I'll remember that conversation with that senior VP of something

Speaker 7 for the rest of my career because it's what catapulted me into,

Speaker 7 you know, the mindset now of I'm never going to get beat on knowledge.

Speaker 7 You might beat me because you have a better market or you have more experience or you have some value add service, some loss control or whatever. I know more about this craft than you do.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 that's never going to be something I lose at again.

Speaker 7 And I'm not saying that letters after your name means you're better or more successful than anybody, but when you apply that knowledge in the field, you're way more effective at the practice of risk management and insurance, which, at the end of the day, that's a big part of it.

Speaker 7 You can be a smooth-talking sales and marketing monster and close more business than you'd ever dreamed of.

Speaker 7 But at the end of the day, if you're not a wonk about the nuts and bolts, I hope somebody's coming behind you to clean that up because you're gonna, you're gonna leave a wrecking ball of trash behind you.

Speaker 7 So, I know that's a lengthy answer. Sorry.

Speaker 7 Chapter 12 is basically dealing with people, process, and production challenges. It's like, okay, cool.
We've got all these great things.

Speaker 7 Now,

Speaker 7 what are we going to do about it?

Speaker 7 When you're putting this into practice, where are you going to find the roadblocks?

Speaker 7 And there's a total of nine little points inside there, three for people, three for production, and three for process. It's like, if this falls apart, how is it likely to fall apart

Speaker 7 what is it lacking what is it missing it's like okay great you made it to chapter 12 good job way to go um you're trying to implement this stuff what are you going to face when you try to implement what is that going to look like more than likely if it falls apart it's probably going to fall in one of these three areas okay well what do you do about it to overcome the suck that you encounter when you try to better yourself yeah

Speaker 8 yeah i uh I liked chapter 12 was I thought was very tactical and there was a lot of really good takeaways, a lot of shit to to underline.

Speaker 8 I did like too, the thing I liked about too was,

Speaker 8 and I actually have never done this in front of an insurance audience. I actually did it for the University of Albany MBA program asked me to come speak to them.

Speaker 7 And I was like,

Speaker 8 I had no idea what they wanted. And

Speaker 8 so I was trying to think of stuff that was just on my mind. And what came to me, and I want to try to work this into some insurance audiences in the future, possibly.
We'll see,

Speaker 8 was the idea that like we don't talk a lot about the emotional side of being a leader, a manager, an entrepreneur, a business owner.

Speaker 8 If you're a producer, you're kind of a mini business owner to a certain extent. You know what I mean? That all the stuff that comes out of that.

Speaker 8 We don't talk about the emotional side very often. And yeah, we say things like, you know, I, you know, be disciplined, be tough or whatever, but like

Speaker 8 we don't talk about the fact that at 9 p.m.,

Speaker 8 when your body starts to de-stress, you start seeking out drugs, alcohol, you start seeking out vices, you start seeking, you know, you stay up, you put shitty television on, you stay up too late, you start doing things that you shouldn't be doing, you start finding fixes because it's stressful, you know, all day is stressful.

Speaker 8 You're making decisions, you're making people are looking to you, you know, your team members, something happens and three heads turn and look at you like, what's the answer, boss?

Speaker 8 And you, you know, you're like, I don't fucking know. You know what I mean? I don't know what the answer is.

Speaker 8 And that, that tension and that, and that, and even when things are going well, you have a sense of tension because you still are the one steering the ship. And,

Speaker 8 you know, we don't talk about that stuff a lot. And I thought in chapter two, you did a really good job of calling that out.
And, you know, you use the term toxic headspace.

Speaker 8 I was, I was scrolling through here trying to find it. It's on page 14.
And

Speaker 8 I think that it's, it's, this is the kind of thing that I hope as an industry, we start to have more conversations around.

Speaker 8 You know, we mask, we mask a lot of the emotional side of our business, the emotional side of leadership and running an agency with nerdy insurance shit. You know, we nerd out on stuff.

Speaker 8 And I think that's, that, it's important. That stuff is important.
Don't get me wrong, but it's also a mask for

Speaker 8 what we're dealing with all the time. And, you know,

Speaker 8 people give, people give agencies, you know, people give agency owners shit because they go golfing on Fridays and stuff. And it's like, look,

Speaker 8 I was that guy when I was younger and didn't understand giving, you know, 55, 65 year old agency owners shit for going golfing on Fridays. I understand now.
You got to get away from it.

Speaker 8 A lot of it isn't just, it isn't just that you want to experience life or take a break.

Speaker 8 It's that, man, if you, if you have your nose in this shit every day, all day, and you never detach, you will go crazy. You will make bad decisions.
You will not.

Speaker 8 put yourself in a position to win because this is really stressful work.

Speaker 8 Like not only are you running a business, not only do you have a sales team, not only do you have all these carriers and vendors, but like the decisions that you make for your customers could make or break their lives.

Speaker 8 And there's a responsibility there that I think we kind of laugh at and, you know, maybe, maybe dismiss slightly, but we all feel it.

Speaker 8 If you really care about what you do in this business, you feel the pressure of the decisions you make every day for your customers. And

Speaker 7 I, you know, I would just add into that. And I, you may have been getting there.
So forgive me if I step over that. Oh, Oh, you're good.

Speaker 7 Because you've said it before in the pod, so I know we're kind of in alignment on this. It's not the customers as much as it's the team.

Speaker 7 And it's, I have, we recently let two people go because their department doesn't exist anymore. So we only have seven on the team now.
And it's like

Speaker 7 we have seven families that are impacted by the decisions that I make. The strategy, the tactics, the choices that I install directly impact seven families and seven people's careers and livelihoods.

Speaker 7 I could, if I handle myself in a toxic and an unhealthy way, I could permanently scar or damage seven people, seven humans that trust me with their professional aspirations and well-being. Yeah.

Speaker 7 That's the part that I never stop thinking about. Every decision I make, it's like, is this the right move for our team? Not our company, but our team.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 Because at the end of the day, if Riskwell burned and, you know, went up and smoked tomorrow, will I miss it? Yes. Is it basically my third child? Yes.

Speaker 7 But really, what Riskwell is, is nothing more than the humans that are here that create shared experience that together work to make impact on our stakeholders, which includes you and this audience.

Speaker 7 Yeah. And I mean, we're super existential.
And I know a lot of people are like, man,

Speaker 7 I've got some thinking to do.

Speaker 7 But I appreciate the,

Speaker 7 yeah, the, the,

Speaker 7 the receipt of chapter two, I feel like is

Speaker 7 really important.

Speaker 7 I mean, I talk about stuff for my therapist in there. Yeah.

Speaker 7 Like the emotion wheel, like thinking of emotions as a trailing indicator rather than something early in the process like observations create thoughts, which creates emotion.

Speaker 7 And I'm like, oh, so emotion is like much later on in the flowchart. It's like, wow, I have definitely been thinking about this all wrong.

Speaker 7 And the like the way that emotions enter into the whole cycle of your headspace. And I'd never done that before.
I was like, wait a second.

Speaker 7 A lot of people probably haven't ever been in with a professional. therapist, a professional counselor before.
I don't recognize them highly enough.

Speaker 8 I don't mean to, man. The best thing I ever did for my life was

Speaker 8 when my ex-wife first kicked me out of the house, I called a woman, a woman who's a therapist. She's a counselor.
I've been seeing her probably like

Speaker 8 every couple months for a few years, but just check-ins, right? Once a quarter check-in.

Speaker 8 And,

Speaker 8 you know, when it first happened, when everything first went down back in December of 2021, I

Speaker 8 called her and went in. And I've been going every other week to see her since then.
And it's the best thing I've I've ever done for my life. Like, I have, I'm, I feel like I'm more open.

Speaker 8 I'm more aware of my own mental state. I'm more, I'm able to reflect on things I said and did in a more positive way and, and then affect change.
And I've been better at discipline and habits.

Speaker 8 And, and it's just because, you know, another really solid tool for this is morning pages. I don't know if anyone does morning pages, but morning pages are like morning pages.

Speaker 8 I don't do them consistently enough. I wish I did them more consistently, but when I am consistently on morning pages, I feel like I am as grounded as

Speaker 8 I can be when I'm consistently doing morning pages. But long story short, it is absolutely incredible.

Speaker 8 For all of you listening at home, the book is Leaving Captivity, Your Blueprint for Building and Scaling a Successful Insurance Agency by James Jenkins, CPCU CICCRM, whatever the fuck that means.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 8 it just means he's smart, I guess. And

Speaker 8 guys, you can get the book. I'm assuming Amazon.
What by the time this goes out, I'm sure it'll be there, but like all the places or where should they go to get it?

Speaker 7 Yeah. Yeah.
If you want the, if you want a personalized copy, I'm happy to sign it and put a little, if you know me and you're like, hey, I want a signed copy. Go to my website.

Speaker 7 It's available for purchase directly at jamesjenkins.com. By the time you listen to this, if you want to do it through Amazon, that's totally fine.
It's whatever your cup of tea is. Awesome.

Speaker 7 Because for whatever reason, God decided to give me a voice that's somewhat easy to listen to. I've heard a few times.

Speaker 7 A lot of people said, I'm not buying the paper version, but I'll definitely, you know, you can have it as a bedtime story.

Speaker 7 Well, I have an audio book that I recorded the entirety on there, just like a lot of us have done in the industry.

Speaker 7 There's a lot of additional content, kind of like David Goggins, where he's like. pausing and reflecting on his own book and adding additional commentary in real time.

Speaker 7 I'm guilty. I did quite a bit of that with the audio book, book, but that will be available on Audible and wherever else you want your audio books.

Speaker 7 That's really it, man.

Speaker 7 Anybody who's ever written a book knows there's not much money in this. So

Speaker 7 I'm not going to get rich at all, no matter how many copies it sells. But I will say,

Speaker 7 every chapter is a keynote. And I'm in the middle of building out 13 keynotes and basically hand people a menu and say, what do you want your audience to hear about? Here you go.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 8 I basically just make shit up when I get there. I hope they don't want me to use slides because if they use slides, then I have to stick to them.

Speaker 8 But most of the time, I'm just like, I just show up and start talking. That's that's my way.
That's my way.

Speaker 7 The good people in Omaha are going to get to hear you and I back to back again, just like they did in South Carolina. It's like, I don't know if there's two speakers that have

Speaker 7 different styles more than me and Hanley.

Speaker 7 We're both masters of our craft in different ways, but from a speaking style could not be more different it was hilarious yeah i'm stomping around the room screaming into the thing cursing at people cracking jokes and you're up at the lectern walking them through very steady very well thought out half the time i don't even know the next word that's going to come out of my mouth hole but um dude you're also an experienced professional and that was literally one of my very first times ever being a paid speaker in a room so i practiced the crap out of that thing i'm a little embarrassed to admit how much time went into that.

Speaker 8 No, that's what you're supposed to do. I, you know, I have,

Speaker 8 look, we all have to find our thing. We all have to do it.
We all have to go through it. Like I, I mean, and I, and I don't mean this in any negative way.

Speaker 8 I had a canned presentation that I did this pretty much the same way with the same moments. I knew what jokes were going to hit.
I knew what time they were.

Speaker 8 I didn't have to look at a watch or a, I knew right, bam, bam, bam. And I could be within a few minutes.
And for five or six years, that's exactly the way that I did it. And I, and I loved loved it.

Speaker 8 And that was great. I would say that now,

Speaker 8 um, for better or for worse, I've reached a point where for me to deliver max value to the audience, I need to be able to come more off the cuff. Um, and, and I like to read the audience.

Speaker 8 The hard part about that is like

Speaker 8 sometimes you miss, right? So, so there's always a bit of a tightrope walk when you are less polished in terms of your presentation, because you could miss, right?

Speaker 8 The audience could be off, the audience could be, you know, and,

Speaker 8 you know, we could do a whole episode on how to warm up an audience.

Speaker 8 And depending on where you go, how you start and what you do, like, like, if you're the first speaker after lunch, curse at them as quickly as you possibly can, or make a sex joke, one or the other.

Speaker 8 And the reason is they're all sleepy, fat, and full of food. And, and none of them are like really listening to you.
And if you can hit him with a good sex joke or a curse word,

Speaker 8 you'll watch, well, you'll see his heads literally snap up. Like, did he really just say that? And I'm, and I will literally say, now I got you, sons of bitches.
Now let's go. Right.

Speaker 8 Like, but you know, it takes, dude, I've done, that was like,

Speaker 8 that was like, I don't want to call it a keynote presentation or whatever. I've done this easily.
I lost count at 347 presentations. So like, I'm pushing 400 presentations at this point in my career.

Speaker 8 So

Speaker 8 it's a completely different thing. And it doesn't mean right or wrong.
And yours was probably better. I just,

Speaker 8 for me,

Speaker 8 for me to add value and for me to have fun with it and to be different, right?

Speaker 7 I mean,

Speaker 8 that's, that's the way I go about it. But you pick up all these little things.
You'll pick up different things as you go. More times you do it.

Speaker 8 It's like, it's like anything else, but you'll, you'll start to. twist the joke a little differently than how you practiced it.
You'll start to,

Speaker 8 you know, give a little more inflection to a certain word or topic. Or, you know, sometimes, you know, I had this one slide that was in for a while

Speaker 8 that like I realized I needed a break. And so I put this big ass bear face.
And anyone who's watched some of my presentations, you'll get about halfway through and there's this badass bear face.

Speaker 8 And I will literally just turn to the screen and I'll just look at it and everyone will be looking at it. No one will be saying shit because they don't know.

Speaker 7 what they're like waiting for a story.

Speaker 8 And I'll just look at it and go, there's no story to this slide. That's just a badass bear face.

Speaker 8 And everyone will kind of chuckle and I'll go, and I make this joke, how I paid like $3 for it or whatever. And all I'm doing in that moment, like it seems like it is, I'm taking a break.

Speaker 8 I realized that I needed a break in the presentation.

Speaker 8 So I have this whole little shtick that I do that takes about two and a half to three minutes if I execute it properly that just allows me to like.

Speaker 8 come down for a second and gather myself before I ramp back up again.

Speaker 8 That was just from doing it a whole bunch and figuring it out. You can't can't practice that, like, that's you know, just getting out there and being in front of the audience.

Speaker 8 Um, that's how you figure that out. So, you'll get there, dude.
I mean, your

Speaker 8 meticulous nature will allow you to pick up on those things.

Speaker 8 And as long as you listen to the audience, um, while you're doing your presentation, um, you'll pick up on those things, you'll make adjustments. And

Speaker 8 a year from now, you'll, you'll, you'll be even snappier,

Speaker 7 dude. Coaching on the fly with your podcast guest.

Speaker 8 Yeah, all right, dude, you're the man. I love you guys for listening.
We're out of here. Peace.

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