RHS 186 - James Webb on Relationships and Resilience

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Speaker 8 In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home.

Speaker 4 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. Today, we have a tremendous episode for you, a conversation with James Webb, the author of Redneck Resilience, a tremendous book.

Speaker 4 James has a storied career from being in the radiological industry to running hospitals to owning one of the largest Orange Theory franchises in the entire country.

Speaker 4 And what I loved about James's story is his resilience, is where he came from to where he got to, and all the trials and tribulations in between that he explains to us.

Speaker 4 Because, as we know working through this pain experiencing this pain and being able to not only push through it to not give into it but to thrive

Speaker 4 in moments that are challenging in moments that we don't see coming uh it's a story that i feel like we all need to hear i was inspired by the story it was tremendous to meet and talk to james and i think you're absolutely going to love this episode um before we get there i want to talk real quickly about finding peak guys more than 10 10,000 of you listen to this podcast every month, and we have just about 2,000 people subscribe to Finding Peak.

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As always, I absolutely love you. Let's get on to James Webb.

Speaker 4 I'm going to shab.

Speaker 9 I was very intrigued when your team reached out because

Speaker 9 particularly about some of the ideas around, you know,

Speaker 9 granting high performers equity and how you how you do some of that stuff.

Speaker 9 Because in the industry that this podcast is primarily focused on, the independent insurance industry, we have anywhere between 10 and 15,000 people listen to the show

Speaker 9 and all throughout the independent channels.

Speaker 9 You're thinking people in the carriers, like Travelers, Hartford, Liberty, all those, all the way down to brand new single person independent insurance agencies on the corner of, you know, everywhere America.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 a conversation that happens quite often and has been going on since I got in the industry 17 years ago

Speaker 9 has been compensating high performers. It is a, it is a, and I know we're not, we are, it's not, that's not relegated just to the independent insurance industry, but it is a major topic.

Speaker 9 Uh, a lot of really difficult conversations

Speaker 9 because, you know, kind of there's an old school methodology. Hey, you get a, you get a commission check from me.
That's, that's my, you know, that's, that's my value to you. And that's what you get.

Speaker 9 And you should be happy with that. And you have renewal commissions and those are essentially, you know, that's essentially equity, and et cetera.

Speaker 9 And there's, there's all these wild, but what's happened recently,

Speaker 9 and I want you to get into your story and stuff. I'm just kind of prefacing

Speaker 9 what, you know, everything, why I was so excited about this and why I'm so interested, is that there just, there is not, and they're, if you're to do research, there's best practices, but I don't, I don't think that those best practices are filed widespread.

Speaker 9 I think there is really no good, consistent, agreed upon solution in our industry um for how to compensate how to handle how to give

Speaker 9 longevity and in a sense of ownership if not real ownership to high performers who don't say have the same last name as the owner of the agency so um so that's why i was so excited but before we get there let's let's get into your let's get into your story man i mean i'm excited to chat with you and uh and and do all the things.

Speaker 8 I'll share one fact with you about your previous comment that's one of the highlights and one of the things I'm most proud of is I had 14 key employees in my life

Speaker 8 work for me. 13 wrote it out to the end.

Speaker 8 The one that didn't wrote it out wrote it out long enough that she got her buyouts. I bought her out.
Of the 13,

Speaker 8 seven became millionaires and four of those became multi-millionaires.

Speaker 8 And these are people that just took a paycheck with me when they started when they were young, most of them out of college and uh stuck with me the longest close to 20 years yeah that's amazing

Speaker 8 it's a good little strategy i have um

Speaker 8 yeah we could tell the james webb story it's kind of cute and kind of fun and kind of interesting yeah let's do it takes a few minutes so

Speaker 8 james webb country boy from south mississippi born to two teenage parents They were 17 years old and got a little too friendly in the front seat of a Ford, or as my 80-year-old mother reminded me the other day, it was the back seat,

Speaker 8 which I thought was funny.

Speaker 8 Grew up fairly poor. Dad was an electrical apprentice straight out of high school.
We lived in a little shack behind the electrical shop that the owner let us rent.

Speaker 8 I recognized real early in life that if I wanted anything extra besides peanut butter and jelly, I had to do it myself. So I started working at five.

Speaker 8 and building potholders and selling them at the local bazaar, church bazaars. That led to bicycles, which led to paper routes, which led to lawnmowers and rakes.

Speaker 8 And when I was 14, I bought my first car. And yes, in Mississippi, you could pull that off and not get in too much trouble.

Speaker 8 And then I got involved in the printing industry and worked full-time through high school. By the time I was a senior, senior pressman for the company, I thought that might be what I would do.

Speaker 8 And then I enrolled in the local junior college. on a music scholarship of all things because at some point I could sing

Speaker 8 before other things corrupted my voice. And

Speaker 8 walking through the school one day, I saw a sign that said, I want to be an x-ray tech called this number. And I thought, what the heck, I'll become an x-ray tech.

Speaker 8 And so did a two-year slave labor program. It was an x-ray tech.

Speaker 8 One of the local colleges gave you credits for x-ray tech hours. So I actually went back to college at night or in the daytime, worked at night.
and got my bachelor's degree.

Speaker 8 And the day after I got my bachelor's degree, they named me president of the X-ray tech school I'd graduated from 18 months earlier.

Speaker 8 So I'm 21 years old, got 15 students, six are my age, three I went to high school with.

Speaker 8 So quite, quite a management learning lesson. Did that for a few years, really enjoyed teaching, but wanted more.
So I flipped a coin, literally flipped a coin and said Dallas or Atlanta.

Speaker 8 As I say, packed up a pick'em-up truck and a bass boat and went to the Redbird Mall parking lot in Dallas, Texas, slept in the parking lot trying to figure out what the hell I'd just done.

Speaker 8 Got involved in the hospital up in Louisville, Texas. Three months after I was there, they promoted me to director of radiology.

Speaker 8 So I was the youngest director of radiology in the United States at 24 years of age, had about 50 employees. Went to night school.
This was way before the internet. Got my master's degree.

Speaker 8 Thought I was going to be a hospital administrator. Then this thing called MRI came out and changed my life.

Speaker 8 And I left the clinical side of medicine and went into the MRI business and was one of the first people in that industry.

Speaker 8 Learned a very valuable lesson, worked my butt off and built the second largest mobile company.

Speaker 8 And sitting in my big office in Dallas, Texas at 30 years of age, 300 employees thinking I'm hot, you know what? And the phone rings and they go, Mr. Webb, we just sold the company.

Speaker 8 Therefore, since you have no equity, you are fired. And I learned a really valuable lesson about being my own boss and sort of starting my entrepreneur journey.

Speaker 8 And it took a little while to get there, but eventually in 1995, I started my first company internationally. Went to Trinidad, Tobago, start and traveled all over Latin America and the Caribbean.

Speaker 8 Got crazy stories we can talk about or not talk about. Probably the only guy you know that's been held at gunpoint by the Sandinistas.

Speaker 8 Probably the only guy you know that was kidnapped by the Guatemala rebels and released.

Speaker 8 So just a lot of fun stories. Sold that company in 2000.
I was living in Boca Raton, Florida. Moved back to

Speaker 8 Dallas, Texas to start another company with some buddies of mine.

Speaker 8 2003, I was dead broke, couldn't pay my house note.

Speaker 8 Started all over and

Speaker 8 made a couple of business decisions people said wouldn't work.

Speaker 8 And they did.

Speaker 8 And so the next month there was $9,000 there to distribute to my partners.

Speaker 8 And the next month, there was $10,000 to distribute to the partners and as we kept growing we got to a point around 2010 that if I wasn't partially pulling in $600 to $700 to $800,000 a month in distributions I kind of want to know why

Speaker 8 and we branched out into other areas outside of radiology so we're building medical imaging centers then and we went into surgery centers and then we went into toxicology labs

Speaker 8 exited the medical imaging company in 2017 2017,

Speaker 8 public knowledge for right at 100 million bucks, so nice payday.

Speaker 8 Exited all the surgery centers one at a time because we sold them to healthcare systems in the various markets.

Speaker 8 Exited toxicology, about that time got involved in Orange Theory Fitness,

Speaker 8 which I had no idea what that was, and just accidentally stumbled upon it in 2014.

Speaker 8 We ended up building 33 gyms across North Texas, became their largest franchisee.

Speaker 8 And we sold that in December of 2019, about two months before COVID hit,

Speaker 8 for almost as much as Imaging Center Company. So it was a nice couple of paydays.

Speaker 8 I still have four or five companies now I work with, and it's a little different now. You're not worried about whether Ryan punches a clock.
You're more worried about the bigger picture stuff.

Speaker 8 So that's sort of my business story. And can't stop being an entrepreneur.
Really love it, really love involving my employees in the business.

Speaker 8 And,

Speaker 8 you know, I have a crazier personal story, but that's a different conversation.

Speaker 9 So I'm interested in the,

Speaker 9 so obviously when you were a kid, you had a very entrepreneurial spirit. You described that, all the different jobs you had and,

Speaker 9 you know, selling at the, I think you said the church bazaar. And then, you know, you go and you become an x-ray tech, which is not an, I'm assuming, you know, not an entrepreneurial endeavor.

Speaker 9 And then, you know, you have this period of time,

Speaker 9 sounds like close to a decade between,

Speaker 9 you know, when you become an x-ray tech to where you're sitting at 30, company gets sold and you're fired.

Speaker 9 Talk to me a little bit about that time.

Speaker 9 Were you constantly chomping at the bit? Were you trying to be an intrapreneur? Were you finding other things that were entrepreneurial oriented

Speaker 9 outside of your nine to five while you were kind of like in the punch the clock phase?

Speaker 9 That, you know, I hear that a lot from people who seemingly have entrepreneurial traits. They, they all seem to go through this,

Speaker 9 we'll call it bureaucratic winter, right? Where they, where they, there's a period of time in their lives where they, where they aren't an entrepreneur. And what you see is.

Speaker 9 I think the people who truly are entrepreneurs, they tend to,

Speaker 9 there's cracks, right?

Speaker 9 They find little ways of getting involved or or they become big-time entrepreneurs or whatever were you finding that in your life and were you kind of always aware of that underlying sense that you wanted to get back and do your own thing or were you content for that period of time while you were um not an entrepreneur i i don't i don't know if content is the word but i definitely didn't have that entrepreneurial thought process i'm working eight to five punching the clock And again, this is pre-internet.

Speaker 8 So I'm going to night school at North Texas to get my master's degree because I thought i was going to be a hospital administrator i was trying to go up the corporate chain yeah and i thought i was going to be a hospital administrator and it wasn't until barry o'brien knocked on my door and said hey we're starting this mobile mri company you want to join this and i went heck no man i'm going to be a hospital administrator and make a 150 000 a year

Speaker 8 and uh he convinced me in a funny little side story doing 130 miles an hour in his dotson 240 zx in connecticut that to leave the hospital space and you know jump out here and work for him.

Speaker 8 So you really got it tuned to the business side of it. So I worked with hospitals and I worked, you know, we were building mobile routes.
So we get 10 hospitals together, run a mobile between them.

Speaker 8 Got to learn a lot about the sales side and all that. But no, I really didn't have that entrepreneurial spirit.
It was just climbing the corporate ladder. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 9 And then you get fired. Were you,

Speaker 9 was your next thought time to start my own business did you go through a period where you were feeling down you know what what did that look like you know i um so i own my own or uh or i founded rogue risk the national independent commercial insurance agency which is i'm the ceo of today

Speaker 9 uh i founded it in um march 9th of 2020 so seven days before the zombie apocalypse at upstate new york and um in two years was able to build it to the point where i was acquired in full.

Speaker 9 So I basically traded equity in my company for equity in the parent company owned by a PE company and became a executive director in that company as well. And,

Speaker 9 but to get to that point, that entrepreneurial point, I was fired from the previous three

Speaker 9 executive positions that I had had. I was a

Speaker 9 CMO, a CMO, and then a CEO of three consecutive companies and was fired from all three positions.

Speaker 9 And it was like, I kept, even though I felt like something was wrong, and I guess this is where I'm trying to get to you and just to get your experience on it.

Speaker 9 I felt like something was wrong, but I kept going back to that corporate job. I kept going, well, you know, this is 200,000 and, you know, this is $200,000 a year with a bonus.
That's not bad.

Speaker 9 You know, let me try this again. And then I would just keep.
butting heads. And it wasn't until I went off and became my own boss that I realized kind of, this is much more of who I am.

Speaker 9 So i'm interested in how that worked for you and you know there were obviously dips dips in between now the third time i was fired the dip wasn't it wasn't exaggerated the first time it was like oh my god i'm a loser you know i'm never going to have another good job again i worked so hard to get you know and then i got another job and then i got fired for the next one you're like oh i'm sure i can find another job and then the last time i was fired i was like it i'm just gonna i'm just gonna start my own company like i did it like didn't even really phase me as much it's interesting how that works yeah yeah mine was a little bit different mine had a little personal impact on it.

Speaker 8 I had a young daughter,

Speaker 8 had been separated from my wife. We literally got back together the day before I got fired.
So it was, it was really hectic. And I had bills to pay, and I had to have a paycheck.

Speaker 8 And since I was a little bit known in the industry, I was fired one day, had a job the next day. Yeah.
But in Atlanta, so I had to move to Atlanta.

Speaker 8 Atlanta, the city is wonderful, but the lifestyle I had there was not very good.

Speaker 8 So, you know, that's 1991, 92, I would call those are the tough years.

Speaker 8 I literally got a chance to move to Florida to take over this company.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 it's in my book, I'll tell you. But anyway, that's the only time I ever told a boss to F off.

Speaker 8 He tried to keep me hired because he said, he said, I'll fire your boss if you'll stay.

Speaker 8 And I said, no, I'm going to go down to Florida and fix this company.

Speaker 8 And so I went through a divorce, had to worry about my daughter, had to have a job, had to have a paycheck, moving to Florida, sleeping in hotels, sleeping in rental places, finally got my first apartment about six months later.

Speaker 8 And so it was a very tumultuous time for me, but it was about a paycheck at that point. I really just had to worry about the paycheck.

Speaker 9 Do you think, and

Speaker 9 in fairness to my own story as well, very similar.

Speaker 9 I also had two.

Speaker 9 I had two young boys at the time as I was bouncing through and felt like it wasn't it wasn't until that third time that i was fired i just felt like i was fighting the universe you know what i mean like it wasn't even that i really wanted to all the pressure and to go back to zero i just you know i was also sick of it not working um do you think do you believe that

Speaker 9 those hardships are necessary like those those moments where you are you're on a couch or you're in a motel or you know i i uh you know unfortunately was recently divorced from my wife i'm living in in a hotel for three months and you're miserable and you feel like, you know, I'm not being, you're not a good father, you know, all these things.

Speaker 9 You're having all these emotions. Do you feel like those times are necessary to navigate to success in business?

Speaker 9 Or do you, you know, because I think there's a lot of people in the insurance industry, a lot of individuals who I know struggle with the fact that, especially second generation leaders who were born into families.

Speaker 9 that had agencies that were successful.

Speaker 9 They lived with success, whether it was their father, uncle, aunt mother whoever they lived in success and were brought up in success and then went to college and walk out of college and walk right into a successful business that is you know at least steady if not growing and you know and i think you know a lot of these people come to me and or i or i you know they they ask me questions about different things and i can tell

Speaker 9 they never really got punched in the mouth before you know they never really they never really had that moment where they had to pick themselves up off the ground and they're struggling with direction do you think you have to feel that like like you almost need to have those types of experiences or or you know where do you fall on that because the story is so similar you hear so many of these everyone's is different but the same they had these moments that were just terrible you know and they had no idea what they were how to get through and they did you know do you think it that's a mandatory part of kind of reaching elite the like the elite levels of success that you that you have

Speaker 8 i i don't know if it's a mandatory part but i will tell you this i look back on it and I'm glad. I'm glad I had those lessons.
I'm glad that I had that chance.

Speaker 8 Yes, I would have loved to have been more second to third generational wealth. That might have been cool.

Speaker 8 I don't know what kind of person I would have turned out to be. I've met so many nice people that are second, third generational wealth.

Speaker 8 And I've also met some real, you know, peckerheads that are second, third generational wealth.

Speaker 8 What I have found is that most of the guys that go through what you and I went through tend to be the nicer people on the planet, tend to give give back more.

Speaker 8 And that's a big thing for me: giving back more. So,

Speaker 8 did I like the hard lessons? Heck, no.

Speaker 8 Am I kind of glad now that I'm 63 years old, looking back on it, you know, and I'm sitting in the couch in Rockwall,

Speaker 8 Georgia, crying on the couch because I'm getting a divorce and I worried about my daughter? Yeah, I think about that. And it helped shape me and helped me make me.

Speaker 8 And I think more than anything, it gave me that resilience and that determination to just drive forward harder but um yeah i mean it's a missed it's a mixed answer but i'm glad i had them why do you think it is that some people

Speaker 9 have these moments these these hard moments and

Speaker 9 maybe not perfectly certainly not perfectly but they bear down they push through them they get better they continue to to to to find their ambition.

Speaker 9 They continue to find, I don't want to say motivation because we know that's bullshit, right? They continue to

Speaker 9 maintain a discipline of some sort that keeps them moving forward in a positive direction while others just wallow. They just kind of sit in it.
They never get out of it. It becomes quicksand to them.

Speaker 9 And then they wake up six months, a year, five years later, and haven't taken a single step forward.

Speaker 9 Is it family? Is it built in? Is it who you surround yourself with?

Speaker 9 Why is it that some people push forward through dark times and others kind of sit in it?

Speaker 8 So I'm a huge, huge, huge fan of relationships. I think relationships will define your life.

Speaker 8 And for me, it was developing relationships during these hard times, mentors, people that help me see, help me guide.

Speaker 8 One of the reasons I love being a mentor now and spend a lot of time doing that is helping people get out of that. thing.

Speaker 8 I also think there's part of it's just a personality nature. There's just some people aren't meant to be an entrepreneur.

Speaker 8 That might sound terrible and I apologize if it does, but there's just people out there that need their career. They need the nine to five job.
Nothing wrong with that. I'm happy for them.

Speaker 8 I'm happy they're making their $75,000 year salary and paying for their house note.

Speaker 8 But that was never for me. Mine was about,

Speaker 8 I'll tell you another quick side story.

Speaker 8 It's Second Avenue Baptist Church. I'm 17 years old, graduating from high school.
And they go around the room. And if I hadn't personally heard this on a cassette recording, I wouldn't believe it.

Speaker 8 But they come to me and they go, James, what are you going to do after high school? And in a very tiny voice, I said, I'm going to change the destiny of a family. And I said that at 17 years of age.

Speaker 8 And again, if my mom didn't have the cassette tape, I wouldn't believe it. But she does.
That's me. So I think for me, it was always about,

Speaker 8 I want more, not just for me, I want more for my children, for my family, for my aunts, for my uncles.

Speaker 8 The amount of people I'm able to help now is crazy. Yeah.
And the amount of family that we're able to help now is just

Speaker 8 something I always dreamed of.

Speaker 9 So I am not going to be able to reference

Speaker 9 who the person is. For some reason, I want to say it's Simon Sinek, but it doesn't matter because I have no idea, to be honest with you.

Speaker 9 But I was listening to a podcast interview about

Speaker 9 successful individuals. This person was breaking down X number of successful individuals they had talked to or whatever.

Speaker 9 And one of the topics that they brought up that I had never really considered before, that I thought was incredibly insightful.

Speaker 9 a defining characteristic or a through line characteristic of the individuals that this person had talked to was this concept of thinking generationally. They don't, they think, they're not building.

Speaker 9 No matter how successful they are, no matter how much personal income they take in, their day-to-day thought is not about their own success.

Speaker 9 It's about the success of their bloodline, their children, their children's children,

Speaker 9 what you just said, changing the destiny of a family. My father used to say to me all the time, once you have children, your only goal is to make your kids better than you.

Speaker 8 That's it.

Speaker 9 So you get to be, you get to be as selfish as you want to be till the day you have kids. And then you don't get to be selfish.

Speaker 9 And everything everything from that point on is about making your kids a better version of you. And, you know, that kind of mentality to me, that makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 9 There's, there's a lot of nonsense in success literature, but that idea of thinking generationally, one, it gives you a longer timeline.

Speaker 9 Two, it allow, it forces you to prioritize activities and decisions that have a greater impact than just the next, you know, couple thousand bucks you're going to put in your pocket. And uh

Speaker 9 I think there's something to that. I mean, obviously you just said it.
And

Speaker 9 I hadn't had that thought until you just said it. And it kind of triggered that.
But, you know, do you, does that make sense to you?

Speaker 9 Have you seen that in other people that you surround yourself and the mentors you had?

Speaker 8 Yeah, I mean, I think that is one of the most critical factors in my life and in the life of a lot of people I know. I use this fun example.
I have a friend who's successful.

Speaker 8 Got a vasectomy at 18 because he never wanted children. He's got 18 exotic cars in his driveway.
He's got his plane in his hanger, and he might have enough money in the bank to pay his grocery bills.

Speaker 8 So he has zero interest in worrying about all that. And I am just the complete opposite of that.
I mean, I have a company out of Baltimore that I hire that does family governance.

Speaker 8 I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on my estate, making sure that it's estate tax-free, making sure that my children are protected, making sure my grandchildren are protected.

Speaker 8 If I drew it out on a board, it would blow you away. Just how many, you know, the 678 trusts are involved and all sorts of crazy stuff.

Speaker 8 But it was always, always, always my single driving factor. Did I want to drive a Lamborghini Euro someday? Yes, I did.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 Did I want to live in Mexico someday? Yes, I did. But, you know, my wealth manager now, he knows that I'll make the money.
His job is to protect. Period in the story.
He protects it for my kids.

Speaker 8 I don't touch anything out there i make my own money now for what i want to do what i want to buy where i want to live and you know we're continuing to do projects we've got a couple of more we got one potential grand slam we'll see if it happens uh and then you then you sort of get to a stage in your life also when you're 63 which is not that old but old enough and then you start beginning to think a little bit more about yourself okay wait a minute I've got 15 years on this planet, 20 years on this planet.

Speaker 8 You know, you got to balance that with the fact that I got got a new granddaughter coming in three weeks i got to be back in texas but i want to do the around the world trip one day and you know so it's it it it gets balanced but wealth allows you to do that and when you think about your family it allows you to do that and so so yes to answer your question 100

Speaker 8 believe that majority of successful people think long term long term yeah

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

Speaker 9 So

Speaker 9 pivoting to

Speaker 9 your book and some of the ideas.

Speaker 9 And particularly, I want to spend some time thinking about what I've kind of prefaced our conversation on, which is one of the things that we as an industry, talking about insurance, struggle struggle with the most, which is cultivating our high performers, keeping them happy, keeping them invested, keeping them growing.

Speaker 9 I don't know how familiar you are with the property casualty insurance industry, but

Speaker 9 there's a lot of issues around employees will hit a number and then they'll just stop growing, right? Whatever their number is, everyone's got a different number.

Speaker 9 It could be 100,000, it could be two, it could be five, it could be a million a year. They hit a number and they just stop and there's just no more growth.

Speaker 9 They just manage the book and that's what you're going to get. And not that having an employee who consistently brings in a million dollars is a bad thing.

Speaker 9 That's not a bad thing, but you can't grow a business that way because they just sit on it. And so there's all these different compensation models, all these different philosophies.

Speaker 9 And as I said, it's a mess. You know what I mean?

Speaker 9 There's not a tried and true methodology that has circulated our space that people kind of sit back on and go, yeah, we take care of our people by using the whatever system. You know what I mean?

Speaker 9 They just, it just doesn't exist. So,

Speaker 9 and not that you have to speak to the insurance industry if you're unfamiliar, but just in general, would love to know because of the success that you've had,

Speaker 9 how do you start to cultivate that? What is it? Where does it begin? You know,

Speaker 9 does it begin at hiring? Does it begin in culture building? You know, where does this begin? And then, and, and how do you, how do you start to think about this when you're building a company?

Speaker 8 Yeah, so when we started preferred imaging in 2000, we had three employees and it was really, you know, starting from the bound up. And initially you focus on growth and culture.

Speaker 8 You know, we were, we were a little bit of a party company. We had some fun.

Speaker 8 Probably did things you probably shouldn't do nowadays with the current environment.

Speaker 8 We had a lot of fun and through happy hours and played poker tournaments and, you know, kept people busy and motivated that away.

Speaker 8 But as we got bigger, you know, the financial situation becomes involved in it. Yeah.
We did the commission structures and we did the bonus programs.

Speaker 8 In the case of my sales reps, in one day, I took them from salary to commission only, period.

Speaker 8 And I said, okay, here's your base.

Speaker 8 You got three months to live off of this base. After that, you go $23 a scan, get as many as you can.

Speaker 8 And I saw guys go from $60,000 a year to six figures a year, just working because it was commission only.

Speaker 8 So I really liked that. And I just reinitiated that into another company just literally the last few weeks, bringing them back from salary, commission, to just commission only.

Speaker 8 And you give them that little cushion of six of three months. Here's your cushion.
And I sort of back into it. You're doing 60,000.
You're doing 500 scans. You get $30 a scan.

Speaker 8 You make the same amount of money. You do another scan, you make an extra $30.
Another scan, you make an extra $30.

Speaker 8 So that was that model. But then I started looking at really the bigger picture model.
And that's the one. And I'll describe it through an LLC model.

Speaker 8 It can be done through an LP and it can be done through an ink too. So what I did is I took my LLC

Speaker 8 and the beautiful thing about an LLC is you can write anything you want in the operating agreement. I can tell you you got to wear a hat that says como on it every day at work or you don't have a job.

Speaker 8 I can put that in a company agreement. So I went into the company agreement and I went, okay, class A shareholders.
That's me. And again, class A, B, C doesn't mean anything.

Speaker 8 It could be class red, green, blue, whatever. Class A is me.
I have all the voting power.

Speaker 8 No one else can vote but me.

Speaker 8 I control the company. I went to Ryan.
I went, Ryan, you're one of my key people.

Speaker 8 I'd like you to have 2% ownership in the company. You will get profits and losses just like me.

Speaker 8 There'll be no difference. All that you don't need to do is vote.
And two, there's a five-year vesting period. So stick around.

Speaker 8 And as we make money, you'll make money. And at the end of that five-year period, you can come to me and you can say you want to become a class c shareholder

Speaker 8 which gives you two more years of vesting

Speaker 8 so now you've got seven years profits losses

Speaker 8 and then after that seventh year if you leave under good terms i have to buy you out under agreed upon multiple and in my deal i put a three times x made it a 36 month payment if i wanted to so i could just pay out distributions for 36 more months

Speaker 8 and and what was really amazing about it was it got to such a good point with four or five of my employees that they only drew a thirty thousand dollar salary to cover their health insurance benefits the rest of it

Speaker 8 i remember my president one of my companies made seven hundred thousand dollars a year in distributions but she had a thirty thousand dollar salary

Speaker 8 and so she was highly motivated now if you think about this in a bigger sense

Speaker 8 It's really just a profit sharing plan, but they get to say they have equity. So they get past that seventh year.

Speaker 8 It's not really equity, but it really is, but it really isn't. So I found for people to be able to say I own part of this company was highly, highly motivating for them.

Speaker 8 For me to control it, for me to make sure everything happened the way I wanted to happen was important to me.

Speaker 8 But when they hit that seven-year mark, they owned it.

Speaker 8 And as I mentioned, 14

Speaker 8 were owners in the different companies. 13 wrote it out to the exits.

Speaker 8 And the one that left left under good terms. I paid her a three multiple.

Speaker 8 And I think I just wrote her a check because it wasn't a big one.

Speaker 8 And still friends with her today.

Speaker 8 And so that was my model was ABC shares, get to a certain point, you're vested. There's things I might have done different.
You know, if you want to be selfish, I might have done different.

Speaker 8 I might have said, okay, if we exit, you only get a four multiple, even if I exit at a seven.

Speaker 8 But I chose not to do that. I let them exit however I exited.

Speaker 8 So there's different little things you can do inside the model. Yeah.

Speaker 8 But that was my model right there. And it was highly successful.
I'm about to do it again with an employee.

Speaker 8 I'm in a new company in the pet industry. I've gotten out of healthcare.
Never want to go back into healthcare.

Speaker 8 And so, you know, we're in the pet space. We're in the female weight loss space.

Speaker 8 We're in the the charter space. And so I'm starting to bring those people in under the same model.

Speaker 8 And so I know for seven years, they're going to stick around because they want that exit.

Speaker 8 And they want those distributions. And distributions are a hell of a lot more than commissions.
Let me tell you. Yeah.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I would agree with that. I know one of the things that when I founded my agency, I wrote down

Speaker 9 this term, term, you know, I was kind of mapping out what I wanted to do. And I wrote down this term,

Speaker 9 a no ceiling insurance career.

Speaker 9 Because at multiple times in my career, I've been told I have no shot at equity or profit share or really any kind of ownership structure because my last name was different than the last name on the building.

Speaker 9 And, you know, that to me, you know, I'm 42 today.

Speaker 9 You know, when I was in my 30s, those were, those were unacceptable.

Speaker 9 That was, you know, that was, I was too too young and too ambitious to accept the fact that there was never going to be anything more than where i was

Speaker 9 so i wrote down this idea no ceiling insurance career and essentially what i wanted to do and we are doing is building out a plan which allows people to kind of trial by fire work their way through a set of escalating positions to the point where when they've proven themselves, which will be around the five-year mark,

Speaker 9 they

Speaker 9 vest into a profit sharing plan on their book of business and stuff like that. So it's,

Speaker 9 it'll be interesting. We're still young, so we haven't seen all the probably all the pitfalls that come with these different things as we go.

Speaker 9 But I will say that, you know, the producers that we get here, the salespeople that we get here

Speaker 9 tend to come in. and fire pretty hard because they they see that you know that that that there's a future for them you know and some of them don't have the ability.

Speaker 9 We've had people come in, they don't have the ability, or culturally, they're not good fit.

Speaker 9 But the idea that I could come in, work my ass off, make money, and ultimately have this future where I'm sharing in the upside of what I create.

Speaker 9 it's incredibly motivating. I couldn't agree with you more.
I like your structure a lot and you have me thinking because we don't, we aren't yet using different share types.

Speaker 9 We're using more like phantom equity structure. But

Speaker 8 I like the term equity. I really, really think that's a motivating factor over profit sharing.
I just do. Yeah.

Speaker 8 And it's the same thing from a dollar perspective. Yeah.
But when I tell people they have ownership, I hand them a stock certificate. You know, they know all the rules.

Speaker 8 They sign the operating agreement. I mean, it's a it's a little ceremony almost.
I mean, a huge, huge deal.

Speaker 9 I agree with you.

Speaker 9 For some reason,

Speaker 9 profit sharing doesn't feel real. You're kind of like, they're going to hose me somehow.
You know what I mean? They're going to do so. They'll spend a bunch of money before the end of the year.

Speaker 9 You know, I mean, there's all these like negative thoughts start to creep into your head.

Speaker 9 But just like you said, even though, even if it's distributed exactly the same way, you know, feeling like you know, having ownership in something, it's a sense of pride and it feels very important.

Speaker 8 So,

Speaker 9 what, you know, so, so, so, redneck resilience, what, what made you write this book? What was the impetus of it?

Speaker 4 What, what what like why

Speaker 9 why did you decide to write this why did you of all the things that it seemingly you still have an incredible amount going on and didn't need to take on another project what what was the reason for putting it together

Speaker 8 you know i'll i'll backtrack a little bit share a little bit of my personal story

Speaker 8 crazy crazy life um

Speaker 8 Again, I mentioned I'm the only guy you know that's probably been held at gunpoint. Yeah.

Speaker 8 By the Sandinista soldiers.

Speaker 8 when i was young i bit off my tongue fell off a swing set bit my tongue completely off had to have it sewed back on three different times with no no deadening medicine no pain medicine i learned a lot about that that led me to disregard blood on my pillow when i was 17 only to find out i had some brain tumors oh wow had to go get those out um

Speaker 8 you know lost all lost my hearing this other year because of it uh

Speaker 8 you know had a tough year in 1990 going through divorce and child and losing jobs and all those sort of things

Speaker 8 side story to the side story uh

Speaker 8 country baptist southern boy marries big city jewish girl from chicago marsha in 1993 or 1995.

Speaker 8 Very supportive spouse. Another thing I talk to people a lot about is having that support system around you, that you need that dramatically, that support system.

Speaker 8 And I had it with her. She knew I had to work 17 hours a day.
She knew that I had to do things. Now we set up certain things.
We had date night. Date night was religion.

Speaker 8 We had dad coach kids sports. I coached 17 seasons of some kind of sports.
So I'd have that relationship with my kids. Grew, grew, grew, grew, grew.

Speaker 8 The sad part of the story is, and we were really doing well in life, making a lot of money,

Speaker 8 building our big, you know, 12,000 foot dream home. And Marsha was unexpectedly without any symptoms diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer.
Yeah. Taught us completely by surprise.

Speaker 8 I took off from the company, took care of her.

Speaker 8 May 20th of 2012, the day she was dismissed from MD Anderson, I was diagnosed with stage three renal cancer and

Speaker 8 made a decision to forego radiation and chemo. And I said, just gut me, cut me open, gut me, take the tumor, take the kidney, take the viral.

Speaker 8 I walked out of the hospital 19 hours and she lasted six more days. So I'm raising two little boys.

Speaker 8 And when I was ready to get back into the real world of dating, I went on match.com and which was kind of fun. And I lied and said I was an x-ray tech,

Speaker 8 which was cute.

Speaker 8 you know, sort of went that route and met Kathy. She was my first first date in 20 years and the last first date for the rest of my life.

Speaker 8 So we got together. We dated three years.
She helped me raise my boys. We got married now eight years ago

Speaker 8 and have this wonderful, wonderful life we get to live.

Speaker 8 And all of that's really due to this resilience, just coming back, getting knocked down. And I use the term resilience.
It's not just getting knocked down and getting back up.

Speaker 8 Why the hell do you want to get punched in the face again? It's getting knocked down, getting back up, and finding another path. Yeah.

Speaker 8 You know, I think that's one of the keys to resilience.

Speaker 8 I don't know if I answered your question, but that was sort of a personal part of my story.

Speaker 9 Yeah, no, I mean, it makes a lot of sense. And I think that, you know, you, you,

Speaker 9 there is an art to

Speaker 9 knowing when to keep doing the same thing, you know,

Speaker 9 and not getting results. I think some people.

Speaker 9 Some people

Speaker 9 take a concept like resilience or perseverance or dedication and they just continue to get up and try to do the same thing and get the same results and then wonder why they're not moving forward.

Speaker 9 And I think that the insight that resilience isn't just getting back up, it's giving back up and having the self-awareness, the situational awareness to be able to

Speaker 9 make a decision if the reason you got knocked down isn't because you're just not on the right path, maybe. And there's a lot to that.

Speaker 9 What do you think? You know, obviously

Speaker 9 your personal life has played a major role in the success of your of your uh professional life um what

Speaker 9 what was it about being raised or was there anything about being raised uh in the south being raised southern baptist was was there was there anything in your upbringing um in particular that you think helped you develop resilience or was this an innate quality in you that you've cultivated over the years Yeah, I think when you watch two 17-year-old parents that have three children by the time they're 24,

Speaker 8 and you watch them go through what they went through. I learned so much from my parents.
My mom went back to nursing school when I was in high school, became a nurse practitioner.

Speaker 8 We were in college at the same time. That's funny.
She would get up every morning as a child and make biscuits. And we lived near a farm.
So we lived off of milk straight from the cow.

Speaker 8 We lived off of eggs straight from the chicken.

Speaker 8 We lived off of squirrels and fish and things like that. But my mom would get up every morning at five o'clock and cook us breakfast for school and get my daddy ready to go to work.

Speaker 8 One of my biggest resilient lessons was my dad decided to start his own company when I was in high school.

Speaker 8 And two things came out of that. One, I said, dad, I want to go to work for you after high school.
And he said, no, I want you to go to school so you don't have to work for a living.

Speaker 8 And I didn't really know what that meant until about 2006. I was stuck in an ice storm and I saw a lineman on a power pole in the middle of the ice storm.
And I went, that's what my daddy meant.

Speaker 8 Get an education where you're not climbing the pole. There's nothing wrong with climbing the pole, but he was telling me to get this education.
The other thing that happened to him was

Speaker 8 his accountant was stealing his money, and the IRS came in and shut him down.

Speaker 8 I was probably 17.

Speaker 8 And I watched my dad go back to work, pay back every penny to the IRS, pay back every penny to every vendor he ever had money to, and rebuild his career in the sales side of the electrical world.

Speaker 8 So a lot of resilience there from him and learning that from him that, okay, he got his ass whipped. And he got back up and he went back to work.

Speaker 8 Same thing I did in Florida when I couldn't pay my house note. I kissed my wife on the cheek and said, I got to go back to work.
I'll see you in four to five years and went back to work.

Speaker 8 And so I think that was really relevant. Southern Baptist, not so relevant.
I mean, it was interesting. We went to church, you know, four or five days a week.

Speaker 8 I'm a little burned out on the church thing right now, personally.

Speaker 8 And then when you marry a Jewish girl, you learn a lot about the Jewish faith. So it's kind of in the middle.

Speaker 8 I did agree to raise my boys Jewish. So Southern Baptist kid from Mississippi raised two Jewish boys.

Speaker 8 So

Speaker 8 interesting learning experience. Kathy embraced it.
I'm extremely, extremely close to Marsha's family still.

Speaker 8 Her dad is my best friend. So, and then he calls Kathy his daughter-in-law.
So we've got this really crazy blended family that's kind of cool with grandbabies popping up everywhere.

Speaker 8 So my parents were probably the biggest influence in my life in terms of driving me and teaching me and showing me.

Speaker 9 Seems like despite all that hardship, you were able to keep, you know, love to a certain extent in your heart.

Speaker 9 I mean, it sounds like the relationships you've had, the depth, the depth that you've had with your employees, particularly your key employees and the

Speaker 9 throughout your companies has been a big part of your success. Does that seem right?

Speaker 8 Yeah, I said it earlier and I'll say it again. Relationships will define your life, period, in the store.
They will define your business. They will define the direction you go.

Speaker 8 They will define your success. And I always make a joke about the fact I probably fired 498 people.
And 496 still send me Christmas cards because I have a relationship with them.

Speaker 8 I set expectations they didn't meet them they either weren't the right fit need to go somewhere else was compassionate in my terminations to not so compassionate the rest of them i was and uh again about relationships i'm a big believer in that yeah

Speaker 9 i mean

Speaker 9 at the end of you know not to get too cliche but you know i think this is something you definitely don't realize when you're young and it takes time and as your life gets more busy and you realize what real real relationships are, and you go through real hardships with people, you start to understand what relationships mean to you.

Speaker 9 But

Speaker 9 do you have any,

Speaker 9 I don't want to make it trite, but any advice for people who maybe struggle to,

Speaker 9 one of the things that I talk about with,

Speaker 9 so I, I, normally on Fridays, we didn't, it wasn't this week, every other Friday, I have this little man meeting that I go to, and it's a bunch of guys around my age, late 30s to mid 40s.

Speaker 9 And we just sit and we have coffee or eggs at the diner or whatever and chat. And, you know, one of the things that comes up every once in a while is just the

Speaker 9 hecticness and urgency of 2023, you know, kind of modern society makes kind of cultivating relationships difficult.

Speaker 9 And, you know, we always. is it, you know, we kind of come back to sometimes like, is it just,

Speaker 9 is it just a lack of prioritization?

Speaker 9 Is it that the world really is incredibly busy right now is it that secularism has kind of taken over and we'd rather buy something than spend time with people like you know do you have any advice guidance for people who maybe are sitting here going geez i i i believe james that that 100 but man i struggle i struggle to maintain build or grow relationships with people

Speaker 8 Yeah, it gets harder and harder the older you get. It's really hard at 2023, 2022, and maybe harder in 2024.

Speaker 8 I think one of the most positive things and negative things that came out of COVID is what you and I are doing right now, Zoom.

Speaker 8 You know, positively, we can communicate. Negatively, we're not in the same room.
Yep.

Speaker 8 You know, I'm not meeting you afterwards for a happy hour drink.

Speaker 8 I'm not going to lunch with you. And I miss that a lot.
Yeah. I miss that a lot.
And I think that

Speaker 8 That's a huge component.

Speaker 8 And I wonder about the next generations, how they'll overcome that, how they'll develop these relationships will it always be on a computer yeah i don't know i like you already but you're on a computer yeah

Speaker 9 it's you know um

Speaker 9 so one of the things um so we're big into baseball my family i i played baseball in college i played baseball a little while after college um i have two sons nine and seven and uh they both play baseball and travel baseball and uh and you know but just what we do um

Speaker 9 and one of the things that i find very interesting, just watching young kids today, because I tend to enjoy kids. I'm not one of those guys who finds them annoying.

Speaker 9 I, you know, that they're, they're, I don't know, they're funny and fun. And I, I enjoy them.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 yeah.

Speaker 9 And I talk to my kids a lot about it.

Speaker 9 I'm just, I tell them all the time, like, this experience that you're having where you're, you're struggling, you're winning, you're losing, you're, you're having personal successes, personal failures, team successes, team failures.

Speaker 9 You're watching your, your friends where

Speaker 9 you're bleeding and sweating and you're having all this, you know, these experiences together and traveling together. I was like,

Speaker 9 you don't know it today, but you will look back on these times and all these kids that sit at home and they play video games and they never come out of their house and their parents have to watch every move they make.

Speaker 9 they're just, you are going to be so far ahead of them in life because you're learning how to have friends and how to interact with kids. And And one of the kids is kind of a jerk.

Speaker 9 And how do you, how do you deal with them?

Speaker 9 And, you know, I mean, all these kind of things that just these interpersonal and interrelational skills associated with a common goal, you know, winning baseball games,

Speaker 9 it's just so valuable. And so many kids,

Speaker 9 you can just tell. They spend 90% of their day indoors in front of a computer, in front of a TV, in front of video games, and they really struggle.
They don't look in you in the eye. You talk to them.

Speaker 9 They don't talk back. And I worry about, I worry for those kids.
It's not really my concern necessarily. They're not my children, but

Speaker 9 I do think there is going to be a major divide in our society in these generations where you have the kids that were given experiences like what I hope I'm doing for my children.

Speaker 9 And then you're going to have this other group.

Speaker 9 that just absolutely does not know how to relate to each other outside of a text message or a video game chat screen or you know i don't even know what i'm talking about i don't play video games so you know what i mean like you know so that that does,

Speaker 9 I just see it as such a competitive advantage if you can put your kids in that space. I don't know.

Speaker 8 I agree 100% with you on that one. And really trying to focus my grandkids on sports a little bit.
They're not athletes, but, you know, they're participating.

Speaker 8 And, you know, my one grandson spends half the day on the computer. doing a programming.
He's learned how to programming at 11 years of age. Wow.

Speaker 8 But he's also going to the basketball game that night practicing with his friends. And he's also going to the swimming thing.
And so we're trying to really push in that direction.

Speaker 8 And then we have the other grandson who is pretty content to play his saxophone and do his video games and never leave the house. So we're really trying to get him more involved in friends.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 I have a buddy of mine. This is, he's, he's known out there.

Speaker 8 During COVID, His son was stuck in the house for so long, was playing video games and he broke his video controller and he hung himself in his plaza. He He was seven years old.
Oh my God.

Speaker 8 It completely wrecked his family's life. And they've started nonprofits now to kind of remind people that get them off the freaking video games, get them out there into the real world.

Speaker 8 You know, and it's, I struggle with it with my own grandchildren a lot. Yeah.

Speaker 9 I do too. I mean, there's part of me.

Speaker 9 There's part of me.

Speaker 9 One, I completely understand. that the hectic nature of life and in small doses, these, this is how these kids relax to a certain extent, you know, and how they, you know, whatever.

Speaker 9 But uncontrolled, unfettered access to

Speaker 9 YouTube or to, you know, to video games,

Speaker 9 it's not healthy. It's just absolutely, positively not healthy.
And it's a struggle. You know, I struggle with it a lot.

Speaker 9 Like they, you know, you, you have that thing inside you as a parent where you want your kids to be happy and it's something that makes them happy.

Speaker 9 But at the same time, you know, and I think my my ex-wife and I have done a good job at this is like

Speaker 9 you get so much time and that's it. Then it's done.
You know what I mean? It can't, you know, this is, this is play. This is not real life.

Speaker 9 And I tell that to him all the time, guys, this is not real life. Like being, being good at football on the video game is meaningless.
Now, it's fun. If, you know, it's cool.
We all have hobbies.

Speaker 9 You know, we all have things we like to do, but like, it's meaningless to your life. It's just a fun thing that you do as an escape for a little while, which we all need to have those things.

Speaker 9 That's okay. But like,

Speaker 9 it's not real. Like, that is not really what's going on.
And the YouTube stuff, I'm like, you're watching something. That's a, that's a fantasy.
That's like watching a dragon movie.

Speaker 9 Like it doesn't exist. Like you're not watching real life.
And that is such a hard concept for these young kids to wrap their head around. They don't realize that they're watching.

Speaker 9 something that just, it's completely make-believe. They, they, they get lost and maybe there's some real to that.
And that's very scary.

Speaker 8 It's very scary, particularly with some of the things that are happening out there in the world.

Speaker 8 You know, I remember back when I was a child and, you know, my parents said, okay, you watch Popeye and Three Stooges for two hours. After that, get your butt out in the yard.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 And then we literally had the Second Avenue Raiders, our little club,

Speaker 8 and we would meet and play baseball and softball and run up and down the streets and skateboard.

Speaker 8 you know, build our own little go-karts. And we just don't do that now.
And I don't know how much of that falls on us as parents, how much of that falls on us as society, as the norm.

Speaker 8 But I push my children to limit their kids' time on the devices.

Speaker 9 You know, it's it, I completely agree with you. You know, I talk to my mom about this all the time because, you know, just try to compare.

Speaker 9 My mom was young too, not as young as yours, but she was 20 when she had me. And,

Speaker 9 you know, so we talk a lot. And, you know, at eight years old, she was handing me milk money and sending me out into town to go get milk and eggs or whatever we needed from the store.

Speaker 9 And I'm crossing streets and walking through neighborhoods and at eight. And I'd come back with bags of groceries and she'd be making dinner and whatever.

Speaker 9 Now, you know, my older son is nine and we're at the batting cages the other day. And I send him out to get.
more money.

Speaker 9 I left my wallet in the car and he's like, hey, dad, can I get a Gatorade or whatever? So I send him out to the car to get my wallet.

Speaker 9 And like, I'm like having nervous energy that he's, you know, that he's going to, and I, I, I trust that he's smart. I trust that he's capable.
I trust that he's very cognizant of what's going on.

Speaker 9 But like, I'm having some anxiety. And I know that that same situation with my mom, you know, 30 years ago, she wouldn't even thought twice.
She's just like, hey, I need milk. There's my milk getter.

Speaker 9 Here's, you know, here's five, here's $3. Go get us milk and eggs or whatever, you know?

Speaker 9 And it's just, I don't know, is it, is it that we just know every bad thing that happens in the world every day through the news and media? Is it that the world is actually more unsafe?

Speaker 9 Is it, I don't, I don't know what it is

Speaker 9 exactly, but it's definitely there. It is absolutely definitely there.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I don't think there's any question that the world is more unsafe, period. End of story.
I think access to news and social media has enhanced that problem further.

Speaker 8 You brought up, you know, go go get milk my parents had a horn yeah and by eight o'clock at night they would toot the horn and we knew we had to come home but i might have been gone for 11 or 12 hours yeah yeah yeah

Speaker 8 so i i it's a hard question to answer and it's even a harder question to solve yeah i agree with you i'm not sure what to do i'm doing the best i can with my kids uh i'm going to make sure they're protected I'm going to make sure that they limit their time on social media.

Speaker 8 But,

Speaker 8 you know, so far, they're doing doing great. All my kids are doing great.
I'm very happy, very proud of them. Yeah.

Speaker 9 James, I want to be respectful of your time, respectful of our audience's time. It's been absolutely tremendous speaking with you.

Speaker 9 The book is Redneck Resilience, A Country Boy's Journey to Prosperity. We'll have it all linked up in the show notes for everyone that's listening.
If anybody wants to

Speaker 9 connect with you in any way, other than just coming to your website, which I'll have linked up and everything. It's jamesharrellweb.com slash book.

Speaker 9 If you want to go to the book, but you'll see the links are on there and everything.

Speaker 9 Is there anywhere else they can connect? Do you do anything in any other venue where they can follow along with anything that you're doing?

Speaker 8 I don't really. I mean, Facebook is big.

Speaker 8 LinkedIn is probably my biggest. Gotcha.
We'll have all that.

Speaker 8 Just look at Google James Harold. We have LinkedIn.
We try to post daily messages and we're trying to motivate people. Yeah, awesome.

Speaker 9 Well, it's tremendous. I love your viewpoint.
I love your experience.

Speaker 9 I completely think the way that you've used the word resilience and the fact that you did use it makes so much sense.

Speaker 9 And in the way that I think a lot of people need today, because it does, you know, just, it does feel like people are getting, and maybe this is the way the world has always been, but I know a lot of people right now that feel like they're getting knocked down or getting held back or quite often or more often than they're used to, whether it's COVID or it's something else, the economy.

Speaker 9 And I think it's positive, reassuring messages that also come with a, with a bit of a

Speaker 9 bit of a kick in the butt are what people need. And I appreciate you and I appreciate your time.

Speaker 8 Thank you for your time, Ryan. It's a pleasure, buddy.

Speaker 9 Yeah, thank you. Have a good one.
Thank you.

Speaker 8 Bye.

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