--:-- Ryan Hanley: I want to give you a framework of the way I've learned to view the world, which has changed a little bit. I always thought, to some degree, greed drove the world. And I've come to the conclusion, and this is not my own thought, it's been expressed before, I just embraced it to follow it. It's envy that drives the world.
--:-- [Intro music fades in and out]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hello and welcome back to the show. Today we have a tremendous episode for you, a conversation with Donald Champagne. Donald is the president and CEO of Michigan Insurance Group. He's also the creator of Want Better, Be Better, a public speaking and thought leadership brand that Donald is creating. We've connected over time and our mindsets align quite closely.
--:-- What I was interested in talking to Donald about was not just insurance business, but why he decided to create the Want Better, Be Better brand. As an executive, an owner, a founder of an insurance agency, that's challenging work. It takes a lot of mindset, brain cycles, time, and energy. To create a separate brand where you're creating on social channels and helping people better understand business and leadership could be a distraction. But Donald's doing a great job with it. I love the message he's sharing. I think it's powerful, important, and he's helping people.
--:-- We dive into what it means to be an agency principal as well as have a thought leadership brand attached to that work. Many of you listening might think, "I'd never want to do that," and I completely understand. But there are just as many who think about it. They have something to say, they'd love to share a message. We dive into general leadership mindset stuff and how it applies to both our lives and the insurance industry.
--:-- This is a wonderful episode. You're going to love listening to Donald, and I highly recommend you connect with him on his social channels, which will be linked in the show notes wherever you're listening.
--:-- Before we go, I want to remind you of the first project coming out of Finding Peak LLC, the Insurance Growth Mastermind. As you know, last month Rogue Risk was shut down, so I became a free agent again. I don't want what I've learned over the last 18 years of my career to die with Rogue Risk. I want you guys to have that information. I want to give back to this incredible industry that has completely changed my life.
--:-- The insurance industry is filled with incredible people, but there are processes I figured out through conversations with literally thousands of successful, world-class individuals both inside and outside of the insurance industry. I derived a process I call the One Call Close Process. That process led to an average 85% close ratio for the reps at Rogue Risk. Most call centers struggle to close 30 to 40% of the leads that come in. We cracked that nut. We figured out the code, implemented it, and saw incredible growth at Rogue Risk in the last 17 months.
--:-- I do not want that knowledge to die with Rogue Risk. I'm going to teach you everything I know about growing an insurance agency. We're putting together coursework for the One Call Close Process. If you're interested, go to masterclass.insure. That's masterclass.insure. Links are also in the show notes. As we get closer to the launch, which will be the week of January 16th, you'll be notified on how to sign up.
--:-- Guys, you've only ever known me as part of other organizations, as a number two, three, or four man. You've never known me on my own 100%, certainly not in a thought leadership, education, consulting, coaching capacity. For the next period of my career, my goal is to help everybody who wants it grow their insurance agency. This is the first of many projects coming down the pipe. Go to masterclass.insure and sign up today.
--:-- All right, with that, let's get on to Donald. You're going to love this episode.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So what's up, man?
--:-- Donald Champagne: Well, just wrapping up some end-of-the-year stuff, talking with the team, meeting with other agency owners that I do some work with to help them formalize their strategic goals for the following year. Just busier than I want to be, and I'm not sure it's as productive as it should be. So I'm just trying to figure it all out. How about you?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Same, but different, obviously. Ever since Rogue was shut down, I've been in full figuring-out-what-the-next-steps-are mode. It's been an interesting process, not in a bad way. It's been very cleansing to a certain extent because I've had to think through things.
--:-- I've had five opportunities now, five companies that I've worked for. At least four of them I have a real substantial track record of fairly high performance, yet all four kind of came to a screeching halt without my decision. I've had to do a lot of soul searching on what that means, what role I played in those things. It would be foolish and childish to act as if I didn't play a role.
--:-- I've had to figure out what was my role, what do I really want. Real existential questions. I don't want that to sound negative. It's been incredibly positive, really fun to do that work. When we're going through our day to day, it's very difficult to slow down and think, "Am I actually doing what I want to do?" We may get little surges of clarity, but when you don't have a job and you have nothing but time, it gives you the ability to slow down and really think about that.
--:-- I said to myself, I'm not going to waste this time. I'm not going to say, "It's the holiday season, so I'll think about it in the new year." That's not the way I am. I committed myself to just keep pushing, figure out what the next steps are, how I can add value, and start to layer projects. I do eventually need to make money again. But also, what do I want to do? It's that Venn diagram where you have what you're good at, where you can add value, and what the market will actually pay for. The middle of that is your sweet spot. I've done all those exercises and feel pretty good about what 2024 could bring. So it's been an interesting time.
--:-- Donald Champagne: Can I ask, without going too far off where you wanted to talk today, what made you get rid of Rogue Risk?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I did not get rid of Rogue Risk. SIA decided to go in a different strategic direction. To be fair to them, not knowing the whole answer, I was never given the whole answer. I was just given the decision. I really like the people at SIA. I don't think I'm being unfair when I say I was disappointed in the decision. I think it's a shame because we really figured something out at Rogue. We had a very unique process that was creating results that, frankly, when the industry hears what we were doing, they'll be shocked at how fast we were growing.
--:-- But I also know business is business. Rogue was a portfolio company of SIA's. We were one of 14 companies they had purchased and rolled up into their ecosystem. SIA is one of multiple portfolio companies of the PE company that owned them. There are layered decisions and priorities.
--:-- Donald Champagne: Were you your own network, or were you an agency that got bought by a network?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The latter. In 2022, I sold to SIA. I had originally been looking for funding. Then in December of 2021, my now ex-wife decided she no longer wanted to be married to me. That created a distressed sales situation. I needed to figure out a solution that would allow me to continue living. I wasn't taking a salary out of Rogue Risk. I had two or three employees, but everything that came into the business that didn't go to their salaries went right back into the business to help grow. So things had to change.
--:-- I sold to SIA. It was a very good thing. I think they're good people with a good mission. I do not have one ounce of ill will towards them. However, we were kind of an odd part of their portfolio. They have their networks, which they do very well, and traditional retail agencies they had purchased. Then you had Rogue Risk, a startup doing things very differently, using very different tools from the rest of the ecosystem.
--:-- Donald Champagne: Based on our prior conversations, you guys did more cutting edge type technology stuff, which is where the industry is going to go. Why would they... anyway.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think the thought was a good one. When Matt and I first came...
--:-- Donald Champagne: What did they pay you to leave?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm all right for a little while. The decision aside, which obviously my preference would have been to keep growing it, I'll be fine. I have a severance. They made sure I'll be fine. My people are good. Most of them either I found jobs for or they found jobs pretty quickly. Everyone seems to be in a good place. So in general, I'm in a good spot.
--:-- Donald Champagne: I'm sorry. I didn't clearly understand all the turmoil you've gone through in this last couple of years. I know roads come through hard processes, but that doesn't necessarily make it easy. For what it's worth, I'm sorry you went through it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The odd thing about my career, and the further I go back in my life, I see this as a pattern. I have been forced through my own decisions, situationally, fortune, to restart many, many times. A pattern I very much want to break is this idea of growth, in some cases massive growth, followed by a sharp ending and then having to restart. You want the parachute fall, not the drop into the land. Just once I'd like it to be my decision.
--:-- In saying that, I've been kicked in the teeth quite a few times, and what I've learned is how to pick myself back up. A lot of the stuff I do on Instagram, the motivational leadership stuff I teach or share, is really a diary to myself. I'm speaking to myself. Honestly, if you've never gone through any type of significant adversity in your life, you really don't have a position of value to provide someone else. It's through our own adversity that we've learned the things we need to do to be successful. We have to have the struggle, and then we can share the struggle.
--:-- Donald Champagne: Keep talking, keep talking.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I just read this today. I'm reading *The Prince* by Machiavelli.
--:-- Donald Champagne: I read that a long time ago. That should be mandatory reading.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I wrote about this in the newsletter that will come out the week we're recording this. I started reading *The 48 Laws of Power* by Robert Greene. The very first law is, "Do not overshadow the expert or the master." That one hit me really hard. When I look at at least two instances in my career where my career ended very abruptly, in post-analysis, that's what it was.
--:-- When I got fired from TrustedChoice.com/Agency Nation, a year later when I finally made up with the CEO, he told me one of the primary reasons he fired me was he thought I was coming after his job. I was not. I did not want his job. His job was political and he was very good at it. But I'm loud. I talk fast. I have hardcore ADHD. I can manage multiple things at once. I love being engaged. I think I did not manage my brand associated to those brands properly in a way that showed deference to him and to leadership.
--:-- Donald Champagne: I see what you're saying.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If I were to do it again knowing what I know today, because I loved Agency Nation. Before Rogue Risk, Agency Nation was my favorite job I ever had. I woke up every day and my job was to help agents do their job better. Research things, talk to people, go to conferences, help agents do their job better. That was it. But I did it in a way where I was okay being provocative, pushing the envelope. I have no problem taking fodder.
--:-- I tell people this all the time. The board of the National Big I, the board members, I would get weekly calls from them admonishing me for something I had said. "How dare you say IAOA is a good Facebook group for people to join?" Stupid stuff like that. I challenged them on the same thing. "Why are you so against the IAOA? They're supporting the independent network channel."
--:-- The state Big I associations, for the most part, are wonderful organizations run by wonderful people trying their best to support agents. The National Big I under the former administration was not that. In many ways, they were actually doing things to subvert independent agents to keep control over them. It blew my mind and took a veil of ignorance off my eyes.
--:-- I'm talking to Nick Airs on the phone, getting to know this guy, learning about what they're doing. It's a free Facebook group. There's no charge. This was back in 2016. I just mentioned it on a podcast, that I thought it was a cool place for people to connect and grow. Five of the seven National Big I board members called me and yelled at me for doing that.
--:-- Donald Champagne: Did they explain it?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It was all fear and power. I'm a huge self-reflector. All these things are data points in my mind. This is why I dug into power, into *The 48 Laws of Power*, and why I'm reading *The Prince*. I want to read this quote because it goes off of what you said. You can tell my ADHD is off the charts today because I'm all over the place.
--:-- This is why I dug into these ideas of power and power games. I realized I don't play these games very well. I've always thought that if you're honest, authentic, and hardworking, everything will work out. I've realized that is absolutely not the case. That is a naive way to view the world. It is a very biblical way to approach the world, but it is not a way to get through the real world of life.
--:-- If we take the Bible as a framework for how to live your life, it does not account for the realities of the evil side of people's nature. Not necessarily evil in its purest sense, but the fact that people are selfish, self-oriented. They're going to do what's in their best nature regardless of how that impacts you.
--:-- I don't understand this because I've always been an open book. Somebody said to me the other day, "I think it's really amazing that you would have the strength to tell people that you go see a counselor every other week." I'm like, why would I even think twice about saying that? Whether I'm in a good mood or bad mood, if I'm having a problem or not, it's just a life expense. But what the person said is, "People will use that against you. If someone needs to get something, they'll say, 'There might be something wrong with him. He's a little crazy. You're not sure if you can trust him because he has to go see a counselor.'" Your authenticity, people use against you.
--:-- Now I'm reading these books going, these are the decisions we have to make in our life. There's a trade-off to all these things. I have to start to decide if I'm going to play real power games, if I'm going to get involved in larger business deals that involve the accumulation of assets, buying companies. I have to be able to play power games. Just being honest, direct, authentic, and transparent opens you up to other people being able to tear you apart and have you lose those games.
--:-- There's that trade-off. Am I true to who I am and what I believe makes me a good person, and lose the power games? Or do I start to be more considerate of how I act, what I share, when I share it, how I share it, so I'm not giving people easy victories over me in games of power? That is something I'm just starting to wrap my head around.
--:-- Donald Champagne: It's interesting. I want to give you a framework of the way I've learned to view the world, which has changed a little bit. I always thought to some degree greed drove the world. I've come to the conclusion, and this is not my own thought, it's been expressed before, I've embraced it to follow it. It's envy that drives the world.
--:-- If you think about it from that standpoint, a lot of the things you've dealt with are based on an envious position. It's not because they're afraid you're going after something you want. It's that they're afraid you're going after something they have. When you start to look at the world that way, it changes a few things.
--:-- The one thing I would say is, if it were me, I would want to hold on to my authentic self as much as possible while using the necessary restraint in the proper places and situations. I don't want to have to be less of who I am. But I also know sometimes I don't have to be the biggest voice in the room. Just sit back. But I'm not a quiet person. I'm engaged. I want to be active. I want to talk. So sometimes being less of who I am, but I don't want to be someone I'm not completely. If the only way I have to win in the world is to not be true to myself, then I'd rather lose.
--:-- I know that's a hard position. I've been honest, direct, transparent, and I've lost in every scenario. But I don't know that monetarily maybe you've lost. I think you've won so many battles that you don't know because you held true to yourself. Your impact is so much bigger because you set standards that other people want to achieve. Even when failing, holding yourself up and becoming more self-aware. "I failed. Why did I fail? What could I have done better?" Instead of going, "You, you, you. It's a conspiracy. Everyone's out there." It's like, "This isn't exactly how I want my world to be, but how can I improve who I am through this process so that my next goal is different?"
--:-- The ripple effect of that impact on people's lives, because you don't know who you've changed because of one conversation or one reality you lived through. Someone said, "He went through all that. My life isn't so bad. I can figure this out because Ryan really went through some real stuff." There's so much of that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I appreciate you saying that. I want to be clear. I'm definitely not going to change who I am because I agree with you. Ultimately, all I really care about is helping the people that listen to this show. That's it. But I take the people who play these games for a living as my enemy. The people who play these games in inauthentic ways. If I don't know how they're playing, I can't play my version of the game in their world. If I am ignorant to the power games being played against me, then I can't position myself to not be impacted by them or to weather the storm.
--:-- To be clear to everyone, I'm not going to all of a sudden start lying to you. That's not what's going to happen. But I do think it is important for us to understand how the other side plays the game.
--:-- Donald Champagne: I agree with you. I think it is always some percentage of greed and envy. I do believe envy is oftentimes the primary driver. But this quote from Machiavelli in this book is phenomenal. It's eye-opening and amazing. In a beta-driven, woke world, a book like this gets painted in a negative light, and it shouldn't be. There's really good stuff in here.
--:-- One of the lines I pulled out goes to what you said maybe 10 minutes ago: "Those who rise from private citizens to be princes merely by fortune have little trouble in rising, but very much in maintaining their position." By fortune, he means you may be friends with someone in power or your family is in a position of power and you are gifted it. Think second generation agency principal. Very easy to become the principal. Father retires, mother retires, aunt retires. You get that position because of your birthright. However, how many of those situations, because they did not have to sweat, bleed, be bruised, bloody, and broken to make it to that position, how many of those agency principals then struggle to maintain the success that agency had? Ultimately, those agencies usually stagnate.
--:-- Donald Champagne: It's hard to really lose in our industry because of the nature of our revenue model, which is amazing. But they often stagnate. They often have a hard time with innovation. And that's not to say all of them. I know a ton of very good second generation principals. But it is that ease of accumulation that oftentimes leads to troubled times. It's like that idea: strong men create good times. Good times create soft men. Soft men create bad times. Bad times create strong men. He hammers on this in the book. I thought it was really, really interesting. He just hammers on it over and over again—this idea that if you didn't have to build the skill set to get to the position you have, you have to be what he calls "exceptional" to continue to grow or to maintain power. Because what will happen is people will smell your weakness and start to subvert you. That could be your employees stealing time. It could be an employee who worked for a parent for 20 years at a certain salary, who has some legacy knowledge, and now starts leveraging for more salary. I just find these things so intriguing, and he wrote this in the freaking 1600s, man.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, it's crazy when we go back. It's one of the reasons why I think history is so important. It should give us a foundational understanding of how we got to where we're at. I'm not a big fan of living in the past. I talk a lot about that when I shoot my videos—not focusing on the mistakes of the past. But you should at least recognize how they got there. If you go further back, you start to recognize the successful people that have written things that withstand the test of time because they are just as valuable today as they were when they were first written, even if it's 400 years ago. That tells you that there is an underlying idea that is so important to people in their daily existence that they're ignoring. It's there, it's available, but it's like, "Well, it's not easy for me to understand. It's easy for me to read, not easy for me to apply. So I'm going to focus on things that more align with my simple processes that I exist in on a day-to-day basis."
--:-- Donald Champagne: Yeah, I agree with that. I think the easier path is always to stay shallow. I don't mean shallow like physically viewing something. I mean mentally and emotionally skipping off the surface of life. It's so easy to just think, "What's the next thing I have to do today? Oh, I got a case of the Mondays. Oh, it's Hump Day. Thank God it's Friday." My team and I used to talk about how, if someone in their interview—because towards the end I stopped interviewing people, because I'm terrible at it. Ultimately, all I ended up doing was selling my business. I was like, "I'll come in and be part of a conversation, but I can't be one-on-one because all I'll do is start selling my baby to them and why they need to come work." I know that about myself, so I remove myself. But one of the questions they would ask sometimes is, "Have you ever said 'Thank God it's Friday'?" If the person answered yes, that would be a negative mark. Jokingly, once in a while, is it a big deal? No. But it's the concept. If you've got "I got a case of the Mondays," followed by your whatever Tuesday, followed by your Hump Day Wednesday, you are literally not engaged in the work. You're just trying to get through. This idea, in my opinion, is systemic to the mentality of individuals where we're not reflecting.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I agree with you. We don't want to live in the past. I think the defining difference for me is being critical versus being self-reflective. I never want to be critical of my past. The past happened. But if we can be self-reflective—if we can say, "Okay, I did this thing. It was stupid. Shouldn't have said that, shouldn't have done this. But what can I learn from it?" A good example: I had a meeting with the HR team at SI. It had to do with an employee I was frustrated with. I knew it was going to be slightly contentious because I wanted something to happen and it wasn't happening fast enough. Then at 7:00 AM, I had a call from a client that was a pretty big issue. Then at 9:00 AM, I got a call about another issue. So now I had big issue, followed by big issue, followed by this call. I rolled into that call on fire, and the call went horribly because I'm just fired up. The next day, I called both the people that were on the call. I said, "Look, sorry, that was my fault." You look back on it and you think, "Okay, they were pissed that I wasn't being respectful." The idea was: when you feel yourself getting out of your skis, take a deep breath. Approach each conversation as a new, fresh start. We can be self-reflective. Or I can be like, "You stupid son of a bitch, why would you do that? Now they think you're this, and now you've got to deal with this." One is just skipping off the surface, and the other is diving in and going, "Okay, how can I actually make myself better the next time we do this?" This goes for meetings, or in an insurance business, a sales call. If you get ten no's in a row, on your eleventh call, are you already lined up for a no? Or are you resetting before every call and saying, "Hey man, this might be the one"? These are little tricks we can learn if we're self-reflective, versus just getting mad at ourselves or making excuses for our previous actions.
--:-- Donald Champagne: It's interesting. We spend a lot of time when we explain where we're at in life, and we give the stories. Obviously, we get to set the narrative of how we tell those stories. You can generally tell the people that have really grown from their experiences by how they frame those stories. If they take ownership of the imperfections of their decision-making—especially when we're younger, we didn't have the experience, the knowledge, the intellect to make strong decisions, which lead us into maybe some bad paths of life—but if we reflect back on them, they allow us to say, "This is where I learned from those mistakes, these experiences." That is a true growth-minded individual, which allows that person to continue to expand who they are and who they can impact. They continuously live their lives in the manner in which they want to, and then recognize when they misstep, how they can reflect on it and then repair it. But there are so many that tell the story like, "The world is out to get me. This happened, this happened, this happened. I can't catch a break." It's the same mindset as "Thank God it's Friday" and "Terrible Mondays." You don't get to say every Monday is a bad day and every Friday is a good day. It doesn't work that way. You have to own the moment you're in. As we get older, it's a little bit easier because you start to think, "How many more Mondays do I have left? I'm going to celebrate every one because I don't know how many I'm going to be around for. And how many Mondays am I going to have with the people I'm around? I don't know how many of that either." So we start to reflect on those kinds of things and we react better. I probably was the "I can't believe it's Monday" person or "Thank God it's Friday" person 20 years ago. I don't necessarily remember. I know that I've grown as an individual since then and hopefully have approached life better than I did back then. But you can definitely understand that if someone isn't going to reflect and grow, they're probably not an asset to have around you. That's a sad reality because that means there are people you might like, but they're going to hold you back because they're stuck in the patterns of behaviors they've made in the past and they can't seem to break them.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, I agree. So talk to me a little bit about when you decided to step out and start sharing your concepts. I love some of the stuff you're doing around "Want Better, Be Better." Thank you. Starting to share these psychological ideas, these concepts, these frameworks, the mindsets—you're doing awesome stuff on Facebook and TikTok. Before we get into some of the actual concepts I want to talk through and get your perspective on, I'm interested in what was the impetus to actually start sharing outside of just "how to sell an insurance policy"? When you really got into that side of it, what was the impetus? Was it conversations with yourself?
--:-- Donald Champagne: Well, there's definitely a lot of conversation with yourself. Occasionally a couple of arguments, which isn't good, but that's a whole different conversation. Becoming a business owner obviously has its own set of challenges. Early on, I recognized that most business owners—if they're bakers, they're good at baking; if they're plumbers, they're good at plumbing—but they're not good at running businesses. I got into commercial insurance and I was helping them, but because I happened to be able to put on a shirt and tie, they assumed that I was smarter than them. They would ask me questions about business, not about their trade, but the business. I would start to answer some of those questions, and that became more and more frequent. So I actually started another business, which is consulting and helping small businesses. My goal was truly just to help. But to some degree, it was a distraction from my core business. If I wasn't going to get compensated for it, I probably couldn't continue to do it because eventually you have to pay your bills. So I built this other opportunity as a revenue stream, but really it was based on the idea of wanting to help other people. I have a coaching mentality. I was fortunate enough to be able to coach and support my children through youth sports and through high school years. That created another passion for sharing information. Then being in leadership roles in the industry gave me opportunities to start sharing information with other agencies as they're trying to build their agencies. It all started leading to a point of, "I have a voice that I'd like to share." Some of it is just a reflective process of the mistakes that I've made throughout my life that I'd love to be able to improve upon. Sometimes we need to vocalize them, and that helps us recognize them so we can then improve them. It gave me an outlet to do that. On a rather selfish side of it, I wanted to improve my ability to be in front of other people. I think I do okay, but I'm not a polished speaker and I don't necessarily think I'll ever be a true polished speaker because I don't tend to prepare. So I might seem more authentic because I struggle with the concept. I won't be as polished and professional as some other speakers, and that's okay. But I wanted more time doing this on a regular basis, so I got more comfortable in front of the camera, more comfortable just having these generic or general conversations that are not specific to one issue someone is dealing with in their business, but just from a philosophical standpoint. These are conversations I've been having with people on a regular basis for many, many years. I've just never sent it out to the masses. I said, "I need to improve my video. I want our team to improve on video because we use that more and more. So I'm going to put myself in a position of discomfort and I'm going to do a video every single day without scripting, without prompting, without any idea what I'm going to say. I'm going to open up my camera and say, 'This is what I'm thinking right now, and this is what I want to share.' Hopefully it's in a manner that will benefit some people and it will allow me to have a greater impact while perfecting my skill set of sharing that information." It was twofold. One, I wanted to improve myself. Two, I wanted to share something. There was not a lot of reasoning or rationale or a structure of what I wanted to create. I just one day said, "I'm going to do it." And I've done it every single day since September 18th. Most of the stuff, some of the people who know me well have heard for years, so it's probably fairly redundant. I have a couple of catchphrases I use on a regular basis. Like, "A meeting without food should be an email." I believe we should break bread together on a regular basis. I think it creates a better connection. So I share those kinds of concepts as well. The other thing is I really feel like we're in an industry that allows us to find great success, and giving back is imperative to the long-term success of the industry. This allows me to increase my ability to give back, not maybe in a technical side of the industry, because I think there are a lot of people that have so much better technical ability and industry knowledge than I have. But I have a dual background that maybe will lend favorably to someone who's trying to grow a business as well as build an agency. Maybe I'm not going to be able to go through the machinations of perfecting their sales process specifically to the industry they're in, but I can give them some general understanding of how to prepare for the ups and downs of the business process by having the proper mindset and even the tools and skill sets necessary to weather the struggles that we go through just being business owners, not even relevant to our industry. That was a mouthful of why, but that's a lot of the why.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What has been maybe your most revelatory takeaway from the experiment so far?
--:-- Donald Champagne: The thing that I found through this process that has had the most profound impact on me—and I did talk about it in one of my posts—is that your words matter so much. It's one of the reasons why I said to you earlier, the impact you've had, you don't really recognize how much it is. You probably never know. It's not like everyone's going to give you the feedback saying, "Wow, this really helped me." But there are people that do reach out to you and say, "This helped me." Sometimes it's just, "I needed to hear this. I've been struggling with my workout and I got out." That's a nice thing because I want people to be healthier, live better lives. The benefit of being healthier is far outside just the ability to lift something heavier or run quicker. There's so much more to it. But the deeper, more meaningful, more private conversations that come from some of the things I've put out there have told me that one, this is important to continue to do. It doesn't have to be my voice. It could be anyone's voice. It just has to be more of a positive voice and an accountability voice that should be continuing to spread that we're not stuck in whatever we're dealing with. That has been eye-opening to me, which also has told me that I have to be more cautious with my words outside of that intentional conversation I'm trying to have in the mornings during my workouts. Because if your positive words have that kind of impact, your negative words have just as great of an impact, or greater, in a way that you might not know. You can devastate someone's psyche or crush someone's dreams inadvertently because you're being casual with your words or not being cautious with your words. That alone has taught me that I just have to be a little bit more intentional when I speak. I think there are times when a direct discussion is necessary. "You're screwing up because of this." When we lose a client in our office, I tell our staff, "We didn't lose a client. We got fired. Now, why did we get fired? Was it something we did? Was it something that we couldn't have changed? It doesn't matter. But we want to have an actual contextual conversation about it and be honest." But there are times when if someone's in a fragile state—and I'm not a big safe space person—but I don't want to kick someone when they're down. Maybe that's not the time to say, "You got fired today." Maybe I need to pull back and say, "Let's have this conversation tomorrow when you reset." But I'm still going to have an honest conversation because we did get fired. If you set a goal for yourself—if my goal is to do 10 pushups a day and I did five—I'm not going to celebrate the five I did. I'm going to say, "I failed at hitting my goal" because I want to be honest with myself. I want people to start being honest with themselves because we can do hard things. But we've got this idea that if we challenge ourselves and we fail, it's okay. Well, it is because we're not going to live and die by that moment, but man, you can do so much more if you push yourself more. I think that's something I want to continue to push out there. Be my voice, and I hear you do it. You're talking about it a lot—hold yourself accountable, get up, that kind of stuff. That's important.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, no, I think there's a lot of really interesting things in there. I would agree that space creates space for negative feedback because it reduces emotion. When something happens, think about your kids. Your kids do something and you jump on them. Then they start crying, and now it's a mess. Your point you tried to get across is not going to land. You say something very small, then you come back to them and say, "Hey, we can't let that happen." Now they're not crying. Now they're listening to you. Now you have their attention. They may still not like what you're telling them, but now you're able to have a conversation and it's not emotionally charged. That is a lesson I've had to learn. My mom always gives me a hard time because she says I'm not empathetic. The other day she called me and goes, "Why do you think you're not empathetic?" I'm like, "Good morning, hi, how are you?" I don't know that I'm not empathetic. I just try very hard to not let emotions and feelings dictate my life because I see them as data points, not as who I am. If you've ever read *The Untethered Soul*, I very much believe in the philosophy that we are the spirit, the soul, whatever you want to call it. Our mind and our body are just mechanisms to allow us to interact with this spatial environment that we're in. Feelings and emotions are data points—important data points. Before anyone jumps on me and says your feelings are who you are, I do not believe your feelings are who you are. I believe they're very important data points that we have to take in. For whatever reason, because of that, I have a hard time relating to people who are overly dictated by their emotions. I've had to, in my work, distance myself from those people with layers of management. That's kind of how I've done that.
--:-- Donald Champagne: Oh, yeah.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That being said, I think our society has unfortunately perpetuated a lot of that. "Oh, you don't feel like working your hardest today? That's okay. Everything's going to be okay." It's like, no. Look, I've watched shitty things happen in almost every regard that are possible in my life. I'm blessed that I still have both my parents and my sister. But my ex-wife—I was very close with her family, and she and I are still very good friends. I watched her go through losing her mom, her brother, who I worked with for eight years. I've dealt with these things. I've dealt with work stuff. I've dealt with life. Life is hard. The universe doesn't care about us. It will mash us up, mow us down, and move on. You do not matter to the universe. It doesn't mean you don't matter. It just means that your emotions have no impact. So why allow them to dictate your decision making? If you don't feel like doing something, no duh. I go to the gym every day. I'm going to go as soon as we're done recording. I don't feel like going today. Before we turned on this recording, I had to run to the mailbox real quick for something. I went outside and I was like, "It's beautiful out, man. Maybe I'll just go for a walk." That's taking the easy way. Going for a walk is taking the easy way because today is a boxing day. I'm going to be sweating my ass off, my shoulders are going to hurt, my abs are going to hurt. I don't really feel like doing it. I'm going to go. If anything, I will work harder because I don't want to. I've had to train myself to do that. What I try to teach people with posting this stuff online is not "Look at how amazing I am." The number of people that comment on how shitty my boxing is—it's my favorite thing. These guys will tear me apart. They'll be like, "No, no, no, your head's out over your front knee." I'm 42 years old. I'm never getting punched in the face in a boxing ring. I'm literally just doing this for fitness and to show people—it's really just to show people, "Hey look, I'm not just talking crap. I show up every day." That's the purpose. I heart every negative comment. I always heart it.
--:-- Donald Champagne: Yeah, so do I. I always say thank you. I'm like, "Bro, thanks so much. I'm learning. What should I do better?" Nine out of ten times, after the negative comment, they'll come back with a positive comment. I've seen that a lot. Especially with workout videos, they'll be like, "You suck at this and you're terrible. I can't believe you would post this. You're a horrible person. You probably kicked your dog this morning." Then you're like, "Dude, thank you. I'm just getting into it. I'm learning. What could I do better?" Then they'll come back and be like, "Oh my god, dude, I'm so glad you're working hard. Just sit back on your punches a little more." It's so funny.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The things I've gotten through that process that kills me is like, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." I kind of want to say, "Really? You haven't heard anything dumber than that?" Because I've heard some dumb things in my life. Did you listen to the Republican debate last night? You've heard stupider things said. There's gotta be something worse than what I said. But I don't want to feed into it. Nor do I care. Because if I'm evoking any sort of emotion in anything that I'm sharing, be it positive or negative, it means I impacted you. If it impacted you to share in a negative way, it's a reflective process that you're going through something in your life. I have to be the brunt. The first couple times it kind of stung, and then I was like, "I'm good with this. I'm all right." You can say something. I've said some stupid things. Maybe it sounds stupid or I've made some dumb analogies. I'm not perfect, nor do I pretend like I've figured it out. But I can tell you, zero times have I attacked someone on social media.
--:-- Donald Champagne: I have. I've attacked dumb Democrats on Twitter before. I'm also not perfect.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It helps nothing. It is horrible. I wish that I didn't do it, but at the same time, sometimes I just can't help myself. It doesn't matter. My point, and I'm completely on the same page with you, is that it doesn't matter if you feel like doing something or not. Take cold calling. Cold calling is, to this day, still very important in our industry. Some people believe in it. Some people don't. It's not my bread and butter, but I strongly believe in it, especially when done with intention. That being said, even the best cold callers that I know, when you get a little bourbon or a beer in them, will tell you they don't love doing it. There's nothing to love. Yet, what they do is show up anyways. They show up anyways and they do it. They don't want to do it. No one wants to call and be told no. No one wants to call a random person. No one wants to do the research. No one wants to stick to the script and work through the script and get the negative feedback. No one wants to do any of that stuff. But they want to grow their business. They want to pay their bills. They want to take care of their family. They want to make sure their kids get cool Christmas presents or they get to go on a vacation with their spouse. For those reasons, they show up and they do it anyways. If you listen to your feelings, your feelings are telling you, "Nah, you don't feel like doing it today. The moon is in the sign of Aquarius, and the hit ratio on cold calls is lower then. Maybe just go have a cup of coffee and bitch about the weather." That's what your feelings want you to do. That's just a data point. You go, "Okay, feelings. Thanks for that data point. But you don't matter because my bank account having enough money in it for me to take my wife to Miami for a getaway is way more important to me. I need to sell two more accounts this month to do that. In order to make two more accounts, I got to make 200 more cold calls. So I'm going to make my cold calls and take my spouse to Miami." That's the decision making. It kills me how much we prioritize our feelings in our current culture.
--:-- Donald Champagne: 90% of the shit I do during the day I don't want to do, but I do it anyway. Don't make long-term decisions on temporary emotions. We have to think these things through. I love what Mike Tyson said about it. I'm paraphrasing, but he said something like, "You have to do things you don't want to do, and you do them like you love them." Something like that.
--:-- Donald Champagne: And I think that's because your feelings are temporary. I do not want to get up. I set a goal for myself this year. I don't know, I think I shared this with you before, but my goal was to finish the year with 36,500 push-ups. I didn't start in the beginning of the year, so I had to start to push those numbers up a little bit because that only is 100 a day. It's not a hard number. When you've never done a push-up, it's hard, but after a while it gets easier. I didn't take into consideration that there's going to be days that I didn't feel like doing it, there's going to be days that I didn't have time, or I was sick, injured, whatever. So now I'm at the point where I have less than a month left and I still have a decent amount of push-ups. So in order to hit these, I have to do like 300 a day. But I'm so determined to do it. I hate push-ups. There's nothing about push-ups I like. I do it and it's hard, but I don't get up and go, "I don't feel like doing them today," and then stop. I say, "I don't want to do them today, but I'm going to go do my pushups." It's just a mentality, and I'm not perfected by any stretch of the imagination. I can talk myself out of doing the right thing on a regular basis. Like, I should probably go for the run. No, I'll just walk today. Or I should probably go for a walk. I'll just bike. It's a little bit easier. It's rainy. I'll stay inside. I can talk myself out of it like anyone else. But there's also those moments when it's like, it's raining and I'm going to throw on my raincoat and I'm still going to go do my run. Or it's snowing and I'm going to take the bike out and maybe I'll slip, but I'm going to ride anyway because it was part of my training plan. I'm going to do it. I can't dictate the decisions I make based on how I felt that morning. Because if I did that every single day, I probably still wouldn't be in bed today because I didn't want to get up. I'd be better just sitting around binge watching Sopranos or something. I don't know.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Dude, all you need to do is win one more battle than you lose in life, right? That's it.
--:-- Donald Champagne: That's it. So like a hundred percent, I focus on discipline and I talk about discipline and I work on discipline. I did 75 Hard to try to teach myself discipline because I am not a disciplined person. I am not a disciplined person at all. My natural state is to be scattered and lazy. That is my natural state. But I also want to be successful and I want to have a life that I'm proud of and I want to show my kid and all the reasons. So I focus on discipline. I talk about this. People are like, "I'm not as disciplined." I had someone say, "Well, you know, I love that, but I'm not as disciplined as you." And I was like, if you only knew how undisciplined a person I actually am and how hard I have to work every day, and the notebooks and the to-do lists and the to-don't lists and the quotes I have everywhere and the fact that I read every day. This isn't—I do this stuff because left to my own devices, I am going to do degenerate, nonsensical, lazy shit all day and would be a slob.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, discipline is not who you are. It's what you do. It's an action. It's not a defining quality. It's something that you do. Your defining qualities are who you are as a person when you're engaging with other people. But it's like, "Well, you're so disciplined, you have it easy." No, it's not easy. It's incredibly hard.
--:-- Donald Champagne: Yeah, that's challenging, but I'm gonna do it anyway. If this were a video game, my character would start with zero discipline. It would be zero. It would be like—you ever see that movie, what was it, Jumanji? There's this really awesome scene where Kevin Hart's character is like, "My weaknesses are cake, strength, and speed." It's funny like that. My discipline would be on that list for me too, probably. Right now, yeah. It's just funny. But I do think that we have to wake up every day, whether we're an agency owner or we work for a carrier or an underwriter or a producer or CSR, account manager, HR, it doesn't matter what we do. It doesn't matter what we do for all the people who don't work in insurance who are listening to this. We get to choose each and every day who we're going to be. I look at my life and I say, "I just got to win one more battle than I lose." That's it. At the end of the day, I just got to win one more battle than I lose. So during the day, maybe I give into some hunger pains and I have an afternoon snack that normally for my diet, my eating program that I'd like to have, I don't want to do. And that makes me a little more lethargic than I want to be in the afternoon. Then I got to deal with that. So now I got to step up my game at my workout. That happens sometimes. But if I still make it to the workout and I still do the interview with you and I also got a couple good emails out and I did some work on this new project that I'm working on, but I had to push through it with a little bit of lethargy. Okay, I lost the food battle because I don't like to eat in the afternoon because it does make me lethargic. But I still pushed through and got these other things done. So when you net out all the decisions, okay, I had more wins than losses. Victory for the day.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Right. And I think this is something where we get hung up on and we give ourselves too hard of a time. We think that to be disciplined or to be successful, every single decision throughout our day has to be the right or perfect decision. That is not reality. That's not reality for uber productive, insane people like Elon Musk, and it is not the reality for any other person in your life that you see that you may think is successful. They are battling the same minute to minute mental decisions that everyone is. They are battling those same things. This actually came to me by a good friend and a mentor of mine. I look at him as just—I look at the way he lives his life and I'm like, "Dude, fuck you," you know what I mean? And he looks at me and he goes, "Dude, do you know how much I struggle with—" and how he had to have a whole intervention about his Coca-Cola habit where he was drinking like nine Cokes a day. I would have never pictured in a million years that this fit, successful person was drinking nine regular Coca-Colas a day. It's like, oh, this is a regular guy just like me, dealing with the same nonsensical decisions minute to minute that the rest of us are. I think once we get that frame of reference, then we don't put so much pressure on ourselves. Right, right. And we can start to take these things on and actually move forward in our life.
--:-- Donald Champagne: It's funny. So we've been talking about all kinds of different stuff, but I do want to know about "Want Better, Be Better." This is a brand that you created that you're building upon. What is this? Because I've seen you kind of start putting it in the background of a lot of your videos that you're talking to.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So it was funny because I've said it for years. I've just always said, you know, I have stupid things I say on a regular basis, like "play stupid games, win stupid prizes," that kind of stuff. But "Want Better, Be Better" was just something—it's just easy, it rolls off my tongue really. So I've always said it. Like, we're struggling with something. "Oh, you don't want better, be better. You got to do this. You got to do that." And so when I decided I was going to do videos, it just came out. I didn't even plan to say it at the end of the first video. I thought, "I'm just going to keep saying that with no frame of reference to it." I did like four or five videos. I'm like, "Huh, I wonder what am I going to do with these videos?" So then I looked and I was like, "Well, I can get Want Better, Be Better on Facebook," which I thought for sure it would be gone. And then I was like, "Want Better, Be Better," I found it on Instagram and then YouTube and then TikTok. It's never been branded or used. It may be because it's stupid and nobody likes it, but it works for me, so I'm like, all right with it. And then I literally trademarked it. Yeah, I went through this whole process. I have shirts now. I'm continuously pushing it out there because it's a positive message. Even if you think that it should be "Want Better, Do Better" or "Act Better" or whatever, it's not just easy for me. "Want Better, Be Better" flows off my tongue. I'm going to continue with this and I'm going to continue to brand it because it's a simple reminder. As I'm trying to make a decision, is this a decision that's going to—I want better in my life. Is this a decision that's going to make me be better at whatever it is I'm trying to be better at? If I want to be a better spouse, I need to be a better husband. It's that kind of mentality. We can put it in just about any activity we have on a daily basis that we're trying to improve. If I want to have better children, I need to be a better parent. We have to throw it back at ourselves because we are the only person that we can control. Everyone else just reacts off our energy and our actions.
--:-- Donald Champagne: You know what I like about it versus "Do Better"? To me, "Want Better, Be Better" speaks to taking ownership. Yes. "Want Better, Do Better" feels like outside forces have an influence. I personally like "Want Better, Be Better" more than "Want Better, Do Better" because I could say, "Well, I couldn't do better today because whatever this thing happened to me. I was busy at work and I was stressed and I had to make a bunch of decisions. I couldn't do better." It's like, nah, you can still be a better husband, better spouse, better parent, better coach, mentor, whatever the thing is. You can still be a better version of that regardless if you take ownership for it. I love it, man. It immediately clicked for me. I think it's wonderful. I hope you keep pushing that brand. I love that there's somebody else in the insurance industry kind of speaking positive, engaging, thoughtful, deep messages back into our community. I do think that for a very long time—and it's changing, our industry is changing for the better, I love it—but for a very long time, and you know because you've been around for so long too, just like me, I mean this is my 18th year in the industry. When I first started, no one talked to each other. No one communicated with each other. No one shared anything. Now we have this more open communal feel to our industry. I think it's wonderful. There's a lot of fresh voices, new voices of all different ages, not necessarily age based, but just fresh new voices coming in, sharing positive messages as a whole. I think as much as we can support each other and continue to drive forward, our industry will continue to be a wonderful place to work and engage and for people to grow. I think it's tremendous. So I know you just named all the places, but where should people connect with you if they want to learn, they want to connect, they want to get to know you better? Where would you send them? We'll have everything linked up in the show notes. Obviously, you can always go direct, but we'll have everything linked up in the show notes, whether you're listening on YouTube or whatever podcast player you're listening to. I will have everything linked up, but where are the spots?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So I think that if you just want to see content, the best place to go is Want Better, Be Better on TikTok. Just all one word, obviously, just Want Better, Be Better. If you're looking to contact me, Michigan Insurance Group is the website. My personal information is on there. Donald Champagne on Facebook. You can find me at DonaldChampagne.com. You can find some blogs that I've written. There's a way to connect with me. I do trainings with small businesses. I do trainings with insurance agencies. There are talks that I get involved with that are outside of our industry that are really just how to be a better person. So I'm trying to continuously find ways to push that content out. But those are the main places that you can find me. I'm going to continue to try and grow that because it's a new thought process for me of how do I use this brand to have the greatest impact. I don't have it figured out. The framework is going to definitely evolve over time, and hopefully the content will continue to improve. The videos, they're maybe a little bit wonky and the sound might not be great, but that wasn't the point. I wasn't trying to have this perfect message. What I was trying to have is a real conversation with myself that I felt I could share with others.
--:-- Donald Champagne: Well, I love it. I think it's a wonderful thing. I'm glad we had a chance to talk, even though I think I spent the first 20 minutes talking. I wanted to hear from you as well. So it's worked out. I look forward to next time you can come on the show. I just appreciate everything you're doing, bud.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Absolutely. Thank you for having me here. I know we'll talk again. Don't forget to get that book I told you, The Comfort Crisis.
--:-- Donald Champagne: Yes, no, I definitely will. It's a good one. You're going to love it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Thank you. Thank you.
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