--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we have an absolutely tremendous episode, double tremendous, double absolutely tremendous episode for you with Eric Garcia, the founder of Garcia Financial Group and Garcia Insurance Services. Eric is just an awesome guy. And the way that he views his business, I immediately clicked with him.
--:-- Eric and I interacted a bunch on social over the years. And then finally at IOA 2020, I guess it was the one in San Diego, got to meet him in person. We talk a little bit about this during the show, but we've connected over this insurance podcasters Facebook thing that we're part of and just become friends. I just love the way he thinks about business.
--:-- I don't give it justice during the show. We talk about a whole bunch of different things and we should have given this particular part of what he's doing more airtime. But if you go to planwisely.com, P-L-A-N-W-I-S-E-L-Y, plan dash wisely.com, you'll see what Eric's up to. But if you go to agentendgame.com, one of the really cool things that Eric's doing, and it kind of is the upper crust of this entire conversation that we never actually get to, or at least don't give enough lip service to, is Eric is helping both his own clients as well as insurance agents better understand how to match their personal financials to their agency.
--:-- He's not necessarily an agency consultant, but it's more about matching your personal financials with what you're doing in your agency to hit your personal goals, like what you actually want out of life beyond just grinding on an insurance agency. It's really awesome. There is no one better in the game, no one better positioned to do this kind of work. And just the way that Eric views business, just a tremendous amount of admiration for him. And I just love this conversation, which means I got a pretty good feeling that you're going to love this conversation.
--:-- So with that, I just want to say thank you for listening. As always, I love you guys. I love you for listening to this show. It means so much to me. And if you got a friend or a buddy who's not listening to the show, text it to them and tell them to subscribe. That helps boost their numbers in my ego, I guess.
--:-- But before we get to Eric, I've got to give a big shout out to today's sponsors. That's Coterie, Coterie Insurance. Guys, Coterie is changing the game for small commercial. We're at Rogue. All we do is small commercial and Coterie is becoming a very big part of that. You know, we get hassled. And I hate to make a broad sweeping stroke, but a lot of the traditional carriers hassle you for all kinds of things.
--:-- I was talking to one of the traditionals the other day and I said, "Hey, can you just send us what the current payroll is that they're being charged for?" I knew we had submitted some endorsements and I wanted to make sure that what they had matched up against what we had submitted. And they couldn't do it. Couldn't do it. And told us we were crazy and gave us attitude for asking. "Well, don't you keep the records of the payroll in your system?" I'm like, "Yes, we do. I'm looking to make sure that what you have currently in your system matches what we have in our system." And they couldn't produce it and treated us like a bunch of a-holes for asking for that.
--:-- And you just don't get that from companies like Coterie. They're built to service their clients and the agents that they work with. It's just a different experience. We're writing micro business with them in under five minutes. I mean, just think about that. Micro business comes in, web developers, consultants, a lot of consultants we write with them. You're getting the GL, some property, and PL packaged together in one monthly payment in under five minutes. I mean, that's just incredible stuff. Good paper, good company. Love the people there and couldn't be happier to have Coterie as a sponsor because we use them almost every single day.
--:-- So go to CoterieInsurance.com, that's C-O-T-E-R-I-E, CoterieInsurance.com, become an agent, learn about them. The things they are doing are the future of our space that cannot be denied. They might not be the only ones doing it, but what they are doing is pushing the envelope further than just about anyone else in the game. Absolutely love it. Love to have them as part of Rogue and love to be their partner.
--:-- So with that, let's get on to Eric Garcia.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yo, what's up, man?
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): What's up? Trying to... Let me change my speakers and my fancy microphone. My voice comes over deep and buttery for you, family. Everything's better when it's deep and buttery.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yes. Yes.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): You know what sucked? I'll tell you what sucked. That freaking workout this morning.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah, man. I get that. That did not look fun. That did not look fun at all.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): For real. The key is you got it in now, that's it. I told my coach, I said, "You know what, for 30 minutes of the workout, within the warm-up as well, but for 30 minutes my heart rate was over 100. It was about 174 during the entire workout. I don't care what I did, I'm happy."
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Do you use like an Apple Watch or how do you track that?
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): I do Apple Watch. I have a baseline, so it's probably not super accurate. I've been wanting to get a heart monitor just for my own...
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah, I mean just for shits and giggles. I've been looking at the Whoop strap. Whoop, W-H-O-O-P. Joe Rogan popularized it for like two years in a row. He wore it for whatever that month is in the fall where they don't drink. Sober maybe it's Sober October. Maybe he's going to do it again. Him and like four of his goon comedian buddies wear a Whoop strap and they don't drink and they try to work out every day. And then they compete over who's got the best health stats from this Whoop strap thing.
--:-- I was checking it out and it looks pretty cool. It's pretty nondescript. My problem is I hate anything extra on my body. I have zero jewelry. I have nothing. I hate anything extra. So having something on my wrist all the time makes me feel claustrophobic, which is probably weird. I just feel restricted and hate it.
--:-- But man, I've been working out so hard lately that I'm like, geez, I would love to have a better feel. My wife and I were this close to buying one of those body mass scales that send the electric shocks through you so that you can see fat index, muscle index, all that kind of stuff. And my wife was like, "If we get one of these things, the two of us are going to lose our frigging minds that we cannot do this to ourselves." So we decided against it.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I changed mics. I was on the wrong mic. Does that sound different?
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): Yeah. You sound good.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Okay. Yeah. We don't have a scale in the house. My wife did collegiate gymnastics and she's like, "I don't want a scale in the house. I don't want any workout regimen." She's like, "I did that for too long. It's too much pressure to perform." So she doesn't like it. I'm different though. To me, it's like, man, I like stats. If I ran a mile this fast, then I got to run it that much faster next time.
--:-- I didn't wear watches for the same reason you didn't, but with the Apple Watch I was like, "You know what? I want to start tracking this stuff. I want to start tracking my workouts." So I got the Apple Watch.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): You know what I like it for? For notifications to remind me of meetings. And for a wake up alarm in the morning. I don't have my phone going off, waking my wife up. Just simple, gentle, just a simple, gentle vibration.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): So you sleep with that?
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): I do on the mornings I need to wake up.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Does it bother you sleeping with a watch on?
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): I've gotten used to it.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah. No, I've got bony wrists. I wear it a little higher than most people.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): Yeah, me too. That's another thing. I got a bone. Look at that. I got the same bone that you do. Look at the size of that thing. Come on, man.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah, we might be brothers, dude.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): Awesome. Like we're both like six... I don't know, what are you? Six two, six three, six four on a good day. Bony wrists. We work out. I got better hair than you.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): That's true. Yeah, look at that facial hair you got.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): So I, up top, what you got up top, I look like down here. It's kind of reversed because I could never do that ever. I would look like a crazy person. They would think that I was bombing a building or something. If I were to try to grow that out, the way that this comes in, gray and red and spotchy, I look like a crazy person.
--:-- I got a buddy of mine at church and he's got a big old beard. And he was part of this thing called the Bearded Villains. I don't know if he still is. I think they just get together and they drink and they talk about their facial hair. But to be a part of it, you have to have at least an inch and a half of facial hair length. So I'm like, "Man, don't tell me I can't do something." So I grew my beard out just an inch and a half. And man, I tell you, dude, I looked... I probably wouldn't be able to fly.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is nothing against our bearded brethren because there are some dudes that look good in beards. The problem is there are a lot of dudes that think they look good in beards.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): That's my long beard. Here's the key. If you grow a long beard, you have to keep the edges.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yes.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): And you have to trim your mustache.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yep. Otherwise, that's no good.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): Jack Wingate, they look great in beards.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I know there's a whole bunch of dudes at my gym. I just want to take a freaking razor and just shave that right off their face. I'm like, "I'm going to do you a favor today. I'm just going to bring in a pair of portable buzzers. I'm just going to buzz faces." And if any of those guys are spotting you, you're like, "Oh my god, like what's in there? What's falling out?" Yeah, bro, you can't have... You shampooed it? What do you do with that thing, man? What kind of oils are you using, man?
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): Yeah, man. I was having a conversation with a client, older guy. He's got a full head of hair. My head's shaved. And he was giving me crap about it. And he starts to tell me all this story about how he'd wake up and he'd comb it and he'd have to spray it and blow dry. I'm like, "Dude, that is a waste of time. I've got better stuff to do with my time than groom myself."
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah, yeah. I mean, I shower and I shave. Okay, let's get that out the way. But like, I gotta go spend 30, 40 for a haircut twice a month.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): I mean, it's maybe that's the financial planner in me. Like, dude, I think...
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah, $40 for a haircut that's not going to make you look like a child, you're probably going to have to spend that. Inflation is a real thing. Non-transitory. Look at that. Mine's free.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): Haircut inflation is non-transitory. Let's just put it that way. $80 a month over 30 years invested at 12%. Dude, that's probably like a year or two of income.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah, but look at that. Look at that. You look good. That cut I got there. It's pretty good, man.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): It's pretty good. You know, hey, I get it. I don't have to do beard trimmers though. I buy a $40 beard trimmer from Costco that lasts me four years. Right here. I buy $20 worth of Gillette razors every few years. Good, dude. I'm happy.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): All right. Well, in the worst eight minutes of radio in the history of talk radio, what are we talking about today, man? You posted. So just so everyone knows why Eric and I are on the phone today, we're part of a chat. It's not even a group. It's just a chat.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): Oh, it is.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): It's just like an infinite chat of a lot of the podcasters in the industry. We started it so that we didn't step on each other's toes with guests. And it's basically just turned into now we just bitch about shit and talk about crazy things and whatever. But you posted, and I got to the point in the sentence where you said "someone needs to enter me for" and I just typed in "just email me." I didn't even read past when you said that. So what are we talking about? I'm excited. I kind of purposefully stayed naive because I wanted the excitement to be curious. I was going to ask you, what did I say? What was I on a rant about that day?
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): Oh, we're in trouble. So let me just say something about that group. It's kind of funny. All the members are podcasters in the industry with the exception of me. Because I podcast kind of outside of the industry. Most of my listeners are outside of the industry. So I kind of feel oftentimes like, "Man, how did I get into this group?" I love being in the group. I'm like, "Man, I snuck into this." I feel like...
--:-- You know, you buy a ticket to go to a stadium in New Orleans. I don't know about in Bills country, but at the Superdome, it's the terrace level, the very top of the dome. I remember as kids, you'd buy tickets at the terrace level and you'd wait about five, 10 minutes into the game. And then you'd kind of walk down and walk into a section that you had no right being in. That's kind of how I feel like I'm in this group.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): No. So here's what happened. We were at Brainshare, the mastermind, was last week or a couple of weeks ago, depending on when people listen to this. It was in September sometime. I forget the exact part of the conversation. But if you're listening and you don't know what it's like at Brainshare, it's not a conference. It's basically just a bunch of independent agency owners literally sharing their knowledge, their wisdom, their experience. It's a cool format. And whatever comes up that typically becomes the topic of conversation.
--:-- I have been on this trip, not just talking to insurance agents, but to my business owner clients and just people who work regular jobs and are saving for retirement. A big thing that I've been on, this kick that I've been on, is you have to stop looking at your retirement savings or your business as it's worth X. That's important. But you have to start looking at it in terms of what is it going to provide for you?
--:-- So you have $1 million, $2 million, $3 million. I don't care what the value of your asset is. What I care about is what's it going to cash flow for you? Some people are riskier, so $1 million could potentially yield them more money. Some people are more conservative, so they would need twice as much as you would because you're more risky. So we have to start looking at our assets and what they're going to provide for us.
--:-- That's a trip that I've been on. And then with insurance agency owners, the majority of our net worth is our agencies. It's this illiquid asset. But I get that it's a pretty stable business to own, good market value. There's a market. Any one of us could go sell our agencies right now. There'd probably be people standing at the door. We could probably auction off our businesses and bid the price up. I get that.
--:-- But the point is the majority of our money, our net worth, is tied up in one asset. And that's cool. That's not a problem. The problem becomes when we want to live the lifestyle of a business owner. When I say live the lifestyle of a business, that American dream, I want to travel. I don't want to be restricted or limited by my business. I want to take off when I want. I want to come and go as I please.
--:-- The problem is this: we think we own the business, but most of the time the business owns us. You probably talk to way more insurance people than I talk to. How many of them are like, "Oh, I'm an independent insurance agency owner. I own my own business." But yet, man, they're putting in a crazy amount of time. Now, look, there's a season for that. If you're new in the industry, I don't want to paint this picture that you can put in four hours, five hours a day and make money. You got to pay your dues. That's bottom line. You got to put your time in.
--:-- But we should be working towards this vision of, "Man, I don't want to show up every day. I don't want to have to talk. I don't want to take claim information. I don't want to do this stuff." So fast forward to why are we here today? Someone said something. And my comment was, we have to see all of our people in our agency.
--:-- For context, and you might say this in the intro, I own an independent insurance agency. The majority of my work is as a financial planner. So I kind of have a foot in the insurance world. So I get the grind of running a business. But we should see every single staff member, every single employee, including ourselves, as expendable, as replaceable. So think about that. Us as the owner of the agency, we should be expendable. That's the soapbox I was on. So we can talk about that.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I love this topic. I love this topic for a whole bunch of reasons. I make jokes about this all the time and people will give me a yuck yuck or whatever, but I think a lot of people think that I'm just goofing. And I'll say all the time, "I'm not good at insurance." Purposefully. Because if I'm good at insurance, my business is not growing.
--:-- If being good at insurance was my value, then there's no reason for me to take on all the stress, responsibility, and debt, both in time and in capital, that comes from owning an agency. And I think this is something that a lot of people don't think about. I see this in the agency owners that are struggling with this process, struggling to remove themselves from the business. They are tremendous insurance people. Tremendous insurance people. And not that they can't run a business, but in terms of the decisions they actually make via their time, where they spend their time, they choose to be insurance people.
--:-- For that reason, other aspects of their business struggle. Like automating their business, or adding an onboarding employee, or building out a process, or taking on a tool that might help them expand or scale or just do something more efficiently, which drops overall cost of the business. Because they're selling policies because they're good at insurance and they want to be good at insurance.
--:-- My thought process is if I wanted to be good at insurance, I would never, ever have started Rogue ever. I would have never started Rogue because no part of how Rogue is successful is me selling policies. Every policy I sell is a fail. I tell my team that every policy that I personally sell is a fail for our business.
--:-- I think a lot of people listen to me and they go, "Oh, Ryan, you're crazy. You have a bunch of crazy ideas." So I'm so glad that you're here and we're talking about this because people look at you as a responsible adult. They look at me as a madman. So having a responsible adult, a thoughtful adult on the show, sharing a similar viewpoint, it's like, hallelujah.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): You're growing up. You're growing up. I mean, you'll be there soon. You hang with the right people. That's why you would look crazy with a shaved head, man. Because you're so excitable. Your eyes get big. People would be afraid of that.
--:-- But here's the thing. We're kind of joking in the intro, but I think there's some takeaway there. Every single one of us is different. As a financial planner, the most important thing that I've had to learn is to advise people not based off of my values, but off of their values. I have to recognize that Ryan Hanley is wired differently than me. So I can't advise you based off of what's important to me.
--:-- And as agency owners, I'm going to tell you this. If there are new agency owners listening to this, or agency owners who have been around five or 10 years and they're really questioning how they're doing things, they're watching other agencies around the nation and like, "Man, look what Ryan's doing. I want to be like Ryan." I'm going to tell you right now, every single one of us is different in the way we operate our agencies. Be really, really careful who you emulate and who you want to be like. That's super important.
--:-- So for me to sit here and say, "We have to be the most expendable," I'm saying that recognizing that, no, look, as a business owner, and I think you captured some of those things, there are some very specific functions that you need to do. In my financial planning practice, I am the only staff member. I am 100% not expendable. If I don't show up for work, it's not getting done. There's some back office stuff that'll get done, but if I don't show up for work, there's a problem.
--:-- So I get this idea. When I say we have to be 100% expendable, what I'm talking about is the things that weigh us down, like the grind of the business. As business owners, if we're not working to some vision to where I have freedom of time, to where I can show up and spend face time with the clients that I like, I can spend time with a potential new vendor and see if that technology is going to work for my practice, I can go sit down and maybe just have an offhanded conversation with a staff member and pick one particular topic and train them on the spot. If I'm not building that margin into my life as a business owner, I would sit back and really question, "What are you building?"
--:-- Now, if your thing is, "Man, I love the grind. I love being in the call. I love taking 60 calls a day and talking to clients and that charges me up. And I don't mind working 14 hours a day." God bless you. Go for it. But don't forget about those other things. Eventually those calls might stop coming in. If someone is not playing the function or wearing the hat of visionary, that stuff is not expendable. So as a business owner, my value to my agency is visionary and strategist. I can't get rid of that right now.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): So you just used the term from EOS, the Entrepreneur's Operating System, that you're a visionary. For those that aren't aware, I've mentioned a couple of times, Parody's own Nomoli originally turned me on to this. There's a lot of other agencies that are taking it on. It's not right for everybody, but for the people it's right for, it works. And we use EOS in our agency.
--:-- Even though we don't have a large team, we've broken it down even further. We have enterprise level EOS system, and then we've actually broken it down into operations and sales as well. So we use essentially the same format and formula for those two departments so that we can track items in those departments that need to get done over time and have certain goals for them as well.
--:-- Every business needs to have both a visionary and an integrator. Many businesses starting out, if there's not a co-founder situation, the visionary is the integrator. The integrator is the one making things happen. The visionary is the one looking forward and creating direction. I think that as a general disposition, especially our 50 and up, maybe even a little older than that, our 60-year-old and older agency owners that are listening to the show, the general disposition of that generation who joined the independent insurance industry tends to be doers, integrators. They tend to be more task driven. They like the sales. They like that part. And that's great.
--:-- Unfortunately, one of the things that we're seeing is the next generation, this next wave of say 35 to 50 year old, tends to be more visionaries. So now you have an integrator mentality generation that is trying to, well not phasing out, but is about to fade, on the verge of being pushed by visionaries. And that disconnect is causing a lot of issues.
--:-- I think what would be really helpful, if more agency owners who are looking to get that time, they put in the 20 years, the 30 years, the 40 years, and now they're trying to extract that time that they've earned rightfully so, is you need to not find someone that necessarily replaces exactly what you do. But first, find someone that replaces all the other crap that drives you nuts. Find that person first. Because the visionary work has to get done whether you do it or you don't do it. If you like to sell, that's fine. No one's saying you can't sell. But now you got to go find a visionary. Or if you're the visionary, you got to find the integrator. One or the other, or you're just never going to have time.
--:-- Or, I mean, this is one of the beautiful things about this industry. You could probably just kind of cruise, put it on cruise control, maintain the relationships that you've had. You might not grow, you might lose business, but you could probably still live a pretty good lifestyle.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): Right. So I think step one, and this is kind of what we do in financial planning. Step one is, what are we working towards? And that's the problem as business owners. Like, "I own a business. Cool. So I'm going to do business." What does that look like? What are you growing towards? What are you building for? Are you building to sell it? Are you building it to work in it? My gosh, I don't know. Like, do you want to... When do you want to exit? What's your end game? We rarely define our end game as business people.
--:-- I have an end game. I have a very clear end game. I know what my end game is. It might end earlier than that. There are some contingencies in it. But we have to name our end game. And then as business owners, build our business accordingly.
--:-- Now I'll say this. You say EOS isn't for all people. I'll say that EOS isn't for all people in necessarily implementing it or executing it to the extent that EOS does, because there is some work involved. But the components of EOS, if you're not as a business, as an agency owner, dealing with your vision, "What is my vision? What's my end game? Where am I going?"
--:-- My end game for me personally, because as business people, when I do business planning with people, I always say before we plan where you want your business to go, if you were a client of mine, I'd say, "Okay, Ryan, you own Rogue Risk. Awesome. Let's talk about your business in a second. What are you trying to accomplish personally? What's your personal vision?"
--:-- "Dude, I want to sail the world by 50."
--:-- "Oh, that's cool, man. Okay. Let's talk about your business vision."
--:-- "Oh, here's my business vision."
--:-- I'm like, "Dude, your business vision is not going to get you to where you want to go personally."
--:-- So now we have to build our businesses to support that. That is the beautiful freedom that we have as business people. We get to build our business in a way that's going to support our lifestyle, not our employees. We're taking the risk. I mean, still treat your employees well. I believe wholeheartedly in giving my employees some kind of ownership benefits, flexibility at a time. It's not fair if I can just leave at two and I'm ruling with an iron fist that, "No, you got to stay until five." We try to give some owner-type benefits, share profit, things along those lines.
--:-- But it's about casting that vision. So that's one component. As business owners, we need to be very concerned about our people, about our staff. That's been a big conversation in our mastermind for a while. How do we build a good team? One of the things I love about EOS, and this changed one component in EOS. Now, we don't implement it to the extent that some people do, but it's had a huge influence over how I operate the business.
--:-- This was the result of three physical staff people leaving my office over the past four years. Two left amicably. One was a train wreck. This people component. What they say is, it's not about having the right people on the bus. I got the right employees working for me. It's having the right people in the right seats on the bus. And I realized, man, I had some really good people. But they were just in the wrong seat. The first person I tried to change their job, it was, "I don't want to do that. That really scares me." I said, "Well, I can't keep paying you when I'm paying you to do what you're doing."
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): That was early on in our VA days. We hired some VAs to do some of the back-end clerical type stuff. And I'm like, I can't pay you what I'm paying you to do this. But I can pay you that and more to do this. And it was uncomfortable for her. And she ended up leaving. She ended up actually moving away. So it was amicable. But having the right people in the right seats.
--:-- Okay. And here's something huge. My first business partner in the agency was my brother. Now he's a mechanical engineer by training, so already you're like, "Oh my gosh, engineer and insurance, that's a nightmare." Right? I grew up selling life insurance, that was kind of where I initially made my mark, and we dreaded having to sell insurance to engineers because they just asked too many damn questions. So insurance burnt him out. He couldn't do it.
--:-- I remember having dinner one night with an estate attorney that I did a lot of work with back in the day. I was just lamenting to him, sharing my heart, like, "I'm paying too much over here. I'm overpaying these tasks that aren't going to get done. The salary's too high and I can't afford to continue operating this agency like this." And he gave me the best advice I was ever given as a business owner. He used a really big word: bifurcate. Bifurcate, separate. For those of us who don't have master's degrees or aren't attorneys, separate our roles as employee and owner.
--:-- What that means is we make money two ways as business owners. One, by doing work, earning a wage the same way any staff member would. The other way is by ownership. We should compensate ourselves in terms of our wages similarly to what we would pay someone to do the job. If I'm selling, then I should pay myself a commission, no different than I pay a commission salesperson. If I'm doing service work, I should pay myself like I do service work. If I'm doing some kind of combination, I should pay myself accordingly. If all I do is go out and network and market and bring business in and someone else closes it, well, what would you pay someone to do that? We should pay ourselves that right there. That's what the business can afford to pay someone to play that function in the business.
--:-- As business owners, we make money two different ways. One is through capital appreciation. The business is worth a million today, and because of my efforts and my staff's efforts in 10 years, it's going to be worth 15 million. That'd be phenomenal growth, but you get the idea. I'm going to sell it one day. I might not be making a lot of money right now, but I'm going to make money through capital appreciation. I buy Apple today and I'm going to sell it in 15 years. It's the same idea. We need to see our businesses as no different than any other investment that we make. It's a little closer, a little more personal because we obviously work in it and we own it. It's our blood and our sweat.
--:-- The other way we make money as a business owner is, you know what, I don't want to wait 10 years to realize the gain in my business. So along the way, I'm going to pay myself a dividend or some distribution. You go buy Exxon, not because you think Exxon is going to be worth $150. You buy Exxon because they pay a 5% a year dividend. You're buying it for that ongoing cashflow. Same thing with our businesses. We need to start seeing our businesses as any other investment we would make in any other type of market investment or real estate investment.
--:-- When we start looking at it that way, and we start evaluating our roles that we play in the business, we start to say, "Huh, man, I'm overpaying myself to do that. I could probably hire someone to do that at a much better rate." So now we start to see our roles as expendable. Now we can start paying people, delegating, outsourcing some of the crap that we're doing that we shouldn't be doing, and focus on doing what we should be doing as business owners: growing the value of the company so we can make money through increasing the profit so that we can make more in dividend payments or distributions, however you're formed as a company, or through capital appreciation.
--:-- For me, it's a combination of both. I am one of the least paid employees in the insurance business. Hourly, I'm probably paid more hourly for the work that I do, but I pay myself a relatively modest wage in the insurance business. My incentive is through growth and through distribution. That's my end game right there. The ultimate end game is to sell it to my business partner, to build it in a way where Egeo can, through the distribution, through the profit that we're making, it's going to be really easy for him to buy it from me. That's my end game.
--:-- Seeing those roles very different—employee versus owner—and understanding that my job as employee is expendable. I got to be the visionary, or connect with a group of people who are going to help me be a visionary. Hire a mentor, hire a business coach, someone who can help you in that area that you're weaker in. But your job, the wages that you earn for doing the job of an insurance person, should be 100% expendable.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): [Interjection from host] What's up guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show. In exchange for that, I need your help. If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating and review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes. This helps the show grow. It helps me bring more guests in. We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in—men and women who've done incredible things sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales—the things that are going to help you grow as a person and grow your business. But they all check out comments, ratings, reviews. They check out all this information before they come on. So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help. Share the show, subscribe if you're not subscribed, and I'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments. Or if you're on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating and review of this show. I love you for listening to this show and I hope you enjoy listening as much as I do creating the show for you. All right, I'm out of here. Peace.
--:-- [Discussion resumes]
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): Yeah. The hard part about that is ego. This is the big thing. Because I think logically, if someone were to work through what you just said and start to think about what functions do I provide, what do I do, how do I do it, my time, other responsibilities... the only reason you couldn't logic that and get to the end and not do that is ego. It's "my name's on the box" and "this is my..." You know, "I'm going to look at this big account I brought in. You guys don't understand. My connections. The only reason they called..."
--:-- I had a kid call me the other day—I say kid, he's probably 30-something, probably older than you. He called me on a Friday because I do these kinds of calls on Fridays where I just chat with people. He said, "Ryan, the agency owner literally thinks..." He was doing a bunch of social stuff. That was the problem. Doing a bunch of social stuff, getting no credit for it, which is very common. Less common today than maybe three or four years ago, but still common. He was like, "I'm doing all this work. I'm creating this brand. I'm going to these networking events. I'm all over the place. I'm throwing the business card everywhere. I'm doing all the things." And he had been before COVID too. He said, "The agency owner thinks every lead that comes in is because of him, because they know him or they've seen him. I get zero credit for the fact that I'm very active."
--:-- You think about that and you're like, at this point, I could basically, if there were a one-to-ten ego scale, I could target the ego of that agency owner with maybe two or three questions tops to someone that works for them. Not even that. If I were to talk to anybody in their office, two or three questions, bam, that's a nine, nine ego.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah, but let me turn it around. I don't know the situation, but let me turn it around. My staff can say, "Man, we're successful because of the work that we're doing. Eric doesn't even sit in one of our offices. I'm in a separate office. I'm upstairs. They're downstairs. The phone doesn't even ring to me." So they can say, "We're only successful because we're doing the work." So I would say partially, maybe that agency owner is thinking, "Hey, I'm paying that dude to network, to go bring business in. I've created a platform that allows him to be successful." Maybe where the agency owner is going wrong is maybe the agency owner is not communicating that. Maybe there's an issue with transparency or maybe there's an issue. Maybe it is the ego and having that conversation with the producer. Maybe the producer has an ego himself and he needs to go start his own agency.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): Which is very true. Getting back to this idea of being expendable, I think that when our place in the agency and our perceived value to the agency matters more than what the agency does to provide to the lifestyle that we've told our financial planner we wanted, that's where I see this go wrong the most. Yes, I would love to golf two times a week and be home every day at a certain time, pick up my kids, take my wife and my family to Disney three times a year, and do all these things. But none of them happen because I'm so busy. I'm so busy. I have a growing startup agency.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Pick my kids up from the bus every day. That's why I started the agency. I started the agency and work out of my home, not because I don't want an office. It's certainly not because I can't afford an office. It's because I walk 50 feet down the driveway and the kids get off the bus at four o'clock and I get to do that every day. The issue is I have no problem, like I said earlier, with Sarah or Leslie or Matt or whoever selling a policy or talking to one of my customers because I don't want anyone to ever know that I exist. Yes, I'm the face, but I'm hoping someday, when people watch those YouTube videos, they don't even put... I mean, I don't ever want anyone to think they're getting Ryan. If you're getting Ryan, something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong. That's again, I have zero ego. I want to live.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): So there's a couple of things here. First, let me say this. When I was working in insurance, back in 2001 to 2008, before I went independent on the financial side, probably before 2004, I used to love telling clients, I would bring them on, sell their home and their auto, maybe their life insurance. I'd be like, "Hey, look, I am available to you whenever you need me. If you have a question, you can always get ahold of me, but I hire very competent people to be able to answer about 80% of what you're going to need. So I want you to know my staff is as good as me, if not better in certain functions. So they're probably going to be your best bet to talk to before you talk to me." So talking about hiring people, wanting to be invisible but available. I like that thought process: invisible but available.
--:-- Here's the thing, man. This is going to sound kind of weird and I have to explain it, but perception is reality. Now, we have to be genuine, authentic people. We can't create false realities for people. But if our clients perceive us as available, even if it's vicariously through our staff, if it's through timely communications, if they're automated, make sure they're appropriate. There's nothing that ruins a relationship worse than untimely automation. I'm very slow to adopt automation for that very reason. I hate when I get something and I'm like, "Dude, that was bad timing." After Hurricane Ida, I had wholesalers on the financial side literally on Monday or Tuesday after sending me an email saying, "Hey, we'd like to come by and visit you." I'm like, "Dude, that was so automated. That was so impersonal. Do you watch the news? Do you know where I'm at? No, you don't, because your automation." I get it because we probably had some of those that went out as well.
--:-- We need to make our clients feel—feeling is very important—that we're always available for them. Sometimes a lot of people are afraid to give access because they think people are going to abuse that access. But when people have access and you have good boundaries, people rarely abuse that access. My financial planning clients, I tell them, "I am your financial Google." You can go Google the stuff and learn, I'm good with that. But you're asking Google to answer a question that's so specific to you, so specific to your lifestyle, that it's just going to confuse you. You can ask me the same question. I know what's in your retirement account. I know what your vision is. I know what your goals are. And I can give you an answer immediately. A lot of my clients take me up on it, but it's not as often as you would think.
--:-- We have to be able to make our clients feel like we're there for them, feel that we're working for them. And we are, but a lot of the stuff we do is invisible. It's behind the scenes. As business owners, we have to be seen. I had a friend who was a pastor, and he had a younger pastor that he was trying to teach and train up. This guy would always show up late or just right on time for things and leave right at the end. My friend, the senior pastor, told him, "You need to be the same thing with networking events." Think about networking events. If you show up right when they start and you leave right when they end, you miss out. He calls it the ministry of presence. Being present, being seen goes a very long way in what people think of you, what people perceive about you. You got to back that up with reality. You got to be genuine and authentic about who you are. The worst is, and I think people can see through people's disingenuousness, the hacks and whatever. But the ministry of presence—it's being present. You go to these conferences, you go to Brainshare, or you go to a networking event in your town. When does all the magic happen? It happens before or after, not in the middle, because in the middle people are sitting around eating or doing whatever. It's being present and that people feel that they're known. They feel that you've listened to them and they feel that you're more available than maybe you really are.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): So I have two examples of this that I want to share. One is a conversation I just had with my kids. My son asked me the other day, "Dad, how come we're always the first ones to the Little League games?" Now, I am a coach on the Little League team, but if we need to be there at 9, I usually get there at 8:50. I hate showing up to the field and even having one other kid already throwing. I just hate it. As a player, if I wasn't the first one out there playing flip or pepper or whatever, I hated it. I told my son, "It's easy to show up on time. Everybody shows up on time, but we remember the people that show up early. Who knows if one extra throw is the throw that you figure out the slot that gives you the mechanics that stick with you for the rest of your life? Who knows which swing out of the 10 million swings that you'll take in your lifetime is when you lock in your bow swing? I call home runs 'bows.' So you lock in your bows. How do you know? If you're not there early taking those cuts, which one is going to be the one? Is it the thousandth swing? Is it the five thousandth swing? We don't know. So let's just get there early and put the work in. Plus, you get to screw around, which is fun."
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): That goes back to this concept. There's two things you're going to tell me—that was one, so we're going to come back to number two. It goes back to the book by Malcolm Gladwell, *Outliers*. The idea was people who are really successful in their craft are not necessarily more talented. They just have a lot more time doing it. He talked about baseball, hockey, and maybe even European soccer. There are more people in professional sports born in September, October, November because of the cutoff date. You had these bigger, stronger kids competing against smaller kids because of these arbitrary cutoff dates. You think they're bigger and stronger, but they just spent more time and they had more competition. It's fascinating.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah, absolutely. So that's a big part of it. To this same concept, I have been accused multiple times of being part of the "insurance celebrity mafia." Those terms have actually been used both verbally and written towards me: "insurance mafia," "insurance celebrity," "celebrity and mafia." Which is it? Who the fuck knows? This is the stupid shit that people say. Things happen and only certain groups of people know about that, right? That's kind of the context. "Isn't that unfair?" and blah blah blah.
--:-- My response has always been, "Look, motherfucker, I've been out here on the podcast for almost 12 years now. I've done thousands of interviews, not just this iteration of the podcast. Thousands of interviews." My point in saying that is not—I'm not even that good of an interviewer. Technically, I'm probably a terrible interviewer. But I just keep showing up. The other people that I share intimate details of the opportunities that are presented to me and vice versa are not because any of us are more intelligent or cooler or fans of the right or wrong football team. It's because we all see that each other has shown up for long enough that we can trust that all of us are going to keep showing up and not screw each other.
--:-- That core concept is lost on so many people. I have to remind myself how few people actually understand this concept. If Eric is showing up every day, every day showing up, not asking for shit, not telling us how cool he is, just doing his thing, sharing some knowledge, helping people, sending a heart emoji to some picture of you and your family... Over the course of a decade, you go, "You know what? I can trust that guy. He's not going to hose me. He's a good guy. He's shown up. He's been around. Sent me a nice message. Responded when I've sent him a nice message. Had me on his show. I've had him on my show. Answered this question when I didn't understand something when he didn't have to." A decade of that. All of a sudden you're like, "Pound for pound, I'm not going to ask anybody else for this thing or bring anyone else in this deal because I already know I can trust Eric. Why would I risk someone who hasn't shown up for the last decade, hasn't done those things? Why would I trust that person over you?"
--:-- That is why, in my mind, I tweet certain things mostly just to remind myself. I'm not trying to be a motivational speaker. I do it. These are like my diary. I'll just type "show up." That is not me telling the world that they need to show up. That's telling me: show up. Just show up. Just be present. Help somebody. Find someone who's saying something or having a bad day and connect them with someone. Make an email introduction. That shit over time—but it has to be over time—adds up. That is why these little groups of people form. Not just a group that I'm part of, any of the groups that people have a problem with form because the amount of time put in has led to a level of trust that you just can't get without putting in the time.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): I'm going to start reading your tweets very differently now. These are Ryan's insecurities.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yes, exactly. Ryan trying to motivate me. These are his insecurities, 100%. That's what it is.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): So there's a couple things there that you said that are huge. Relationships are things that you have to build over time. You can't boost a post to build a relationship. It's not an ad. You can't go buy a Facebook ad to create a relationship. Relationships happen over time. They typically happen—the strongest relationships happen because of some shared experience. Here's a little piece of gold: look to create shared experience with people.
--:-- The reason why you're the insurance diva, the insurance celebrity, is because you have put yourself in positions of creating or being part of experiences with people, different people at different times. When you have those shared experiences, those relationships develop. They're deeper, they're typically stronger.
--:-- I was listening to a podcast this morning. He's a financial planner out of Seattle. He's talking about building masterminds. What he does—and this is funny because this is what Cass is talking about doing with AI—he talks about getting a group of people together and going to Nashville to do a Spartan race. Someone comes talk to us in the morning about something. While we're doing the Spartan race, we're talking about it. Next day, someone comes to talk to us about X. While we're at the bar or hanging out at the pool, we're talking about that throughout the day as like-minded individuals in terms of what we need to do to grow.
--:-- When you show up and you're in places and you have shared experience... I'll tell you two really quick examples. I kind of live around the edges of the insurance world. I don't go to all these events. On the investment side, I have other conferences and groups that I'm a part of. I have to be real judicious. Like you, I like being present for my wife and being present for my kids. I want to be around.
--:-- I remember in San Diego last year at IOA, you and I had never met in person. I felt like we had never met in person. We had shared some kind of interaction on Facebook. I don't even think we were part of any group. I was talking to Travis one morning and he's telling me the story about Freddie. Long story short, crazy story. I told Travis to pretend like he never told me that story for a couple days, maybe even a couple weeks, until Travis broke silence on it. We had this really funny kind of shared experience. I didn't even experience it, but I was brought into the experience because of a conversation that I had with someone else who had the experience with you. I look back and I'm like, "That's when I really got to know Ryan Hanley and Ryan Hanley got to know me."
--:-- Another funny experience—it might have happened on the same trip. Someone who'd become a really close friend of mine, David Carruthers. I didn't know who he was. This was a year and a half ago. That was David's coming out party. Even still, people were talking about this guy and I didn't know who he was. I went on that cruise. I really didn't want to do it, but I had the ticket and I felt obligated to go. Some other people I was friends with were doing something else, but I felt like I got to go. So I went on this cruise and had a really good conversation with someone else who's become a dear friend. Just a shared experience. We didn't even talk about insurance. We talked about family.
--:-- One of the things I do is I brand some cigars. I always have cigars with "Garcia Financial Group" on it. I had some cigars for that night. We come off the cruise. I'm sitting there with a couple of guys. We're smoking cigars. Along comes David Carruthers. He kind of looked lost. I'm like, "Hey man, you want to join us? Smoke a cigar?" "Yeah, I'm Eric." "He's David." We sat there and we talked and we had this shared experience about going to a third world country. You need to ask him about these shower heads. My experience was in Cuba. His was in Nicaragua. These shower heads that were really, really crazy. I'll send you a picture later. So we smoked a cigar, we had this shared experience, and I don't know who I'm sitting with. If David was listening, he'd be like, "Oh man," and he's humble in that regard. But here, the shared experience, developing this relationship with someone who's been a mentor and a friend and an advisor to me in some regard.
--:-- Look to create shared experience. If there is a client, if you want someone to become a client—I know it's cool for me about financial planning, about a financial advisor. I have a really long sales cycle. From the time I meet someone to the time they become a client, sometimes can be a year, two years, three years, four years. Like you said, man, he's been around for 10 years and all of a sudden they have a need and they ask me. They don't ask their guy. They ask me. Why? Because I've been around. I've been present. They see that. I've been adding value and they become a client. If there's someone you're trying to pursue, if there's someone you want to become a client, look for those opportunities to create shared experiences with them. And don't talk about insurance.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): This is also true in recruiting and recruiting the right people. It's not always easy. Sometimes when you're hiring, you're hiring people that you haven't met before. One of the success practices of my life has been: I keep a spreadsheet that's private only to me of people that I would love to work with someday in some regard. When I meet someone and I'm like, "I can see..." Not everyone that I love as a human and talk to every day goes on the sheet. It's not people that I think are awesome people that I just love spending time with and think are great at business. It's people that I think would work with my style, the thing that I'm trying to do. If I were in a project, do I think this person would be a good fit? So much of that comes from sharing experiences with them and getting a feel for who they really are as a person. Then I'm like, "Wow, that person would fit in this role in some company that doesn't exist today really well." I keep this list.
--:-- Before my demise at TrustedChoice.com, I was executing that list pretty fast and it didn't materialize for a whole bunch of reasons. But that list didn't go away. I keep that list. There are people even in Rogue that I've reached out to and said, "Hey, I'm not ready for you yet. I can't. But would you consider this when we're ready for you? Because I think you'd fit here. Amazing. And I'd love to work with you." So much of that just comes from sharing experience, removing ego, finding yourself to be expendable. The day that I get to hire a real CEO for this business will be the best day of my life. You know what I mean?
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Like I'm just not a real CEO. So dude, you've told us you're not good at insurance. You told us that your tweets are like, you're kind of your self-speak motivate you. You're not a, you're not a good CEO. You're not a good interviewer. Then what the hell are you good at?
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): Right. I can teach hitting to youth. And I can teach the shit out of someone. I can teach someone how to hit a baseball. I'm very good at youth baseball coaching.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Okay, there you go.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): Okay, I'm good. You got something to work with.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): I'm a good beer drinker. I'm excellent at drinking beer. I'm fun at a tailgate at a football game.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah. What real quick, what's your favorite beer? Are you an IPA guy? Are you in that IPA trait?
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): I do like IPAs, but I'm not like an IPA snob. I really don't like porters or any of that kind of stuff. I don't get into that. I like good drinking beers. It could be a lager. I could drink a freaking Bud Light. It all depends on the mood. You give me the venue and I'll give you a beer. If I'm at a Bills game, just give me gallons of Bud Light and let's go do our thing, man. I'm gonna tell you right now, some free advice to people: don't buy beer from the stadiums. Lord have mercy, you will go broke. Absolutely 100% broke. Like nine dollars for a Bud Light? Come on, people. That's a terrible financial decision.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): They just taste good though. There's something about that draft beer at the stadium.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): Well, the worst place is Yankee Stadium. The new Yankee Stadium, they wrecked it. I don't care. This is completely off topic and we're probably losing subscribers by the minute, but the new Yankee Stadium, while technically beautiful, I hate it. I hate it. The old Yankee Stadium—and I get, even if you're not a Yankees fan, I feel the same way about Wrigley. I feel the same way about Fenway, even though I don't like the Sox. The old Yankee Stadium—and Camden is kind of getting this way too, I really like Camden Yards—but you would walk into the old Yankee Stadium and I used to say to my wife, because we went to a shit ton of baseball games together when we were younger, you could smell Babe Ruth's piss in the hallways. There was something about it. You loved it. It was dark, dingy. You're jammed in there, trying to get to your seats in this tunnel that has crappy lighting. You're banging into people. People are screaming down these hallways and they would echo. And then you would take a turn and come out of this hole into—it was built to put you into a state of awe. You would walk out of this dingy, dark tunnel to all of a sudden it's like, "Oh my God, Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio and Roger Maris and Babe. They hit home runs right there. On that plate, that spot of dirt, that's where they hit the home runs. Oh my God, look at this place." And then they wrecked it and built that monstrosity.
--:-- So this goes back to this idea of experience. Man, that experience—you had an experience and it's memorable. And that's what we need to be doing as business people, as leaders of our business. Look to create experiences with your staff. You want to build loyalty. You want to build tenure with your staff. Give them experience. People talk about how do we compensate our people? Should we pay them more? Should we pay them less? You know what? Create experiences for them. Compensate them that way. Obviously still pay them fairly, but that's what we should be doing, man.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I love that idea of creating experience. So being present, business owner, understanding our roles, right? As employee versus business owner and how we make money, create experience. And we've covered a lot of ground. Baseball.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): We did cover a lot of ground.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): These are my favorite shows. My favorite shows are the ones where I have no idea where we're going. Those are my favorite shows. I had completely forgotten what you wanted to talk about. I just knew that we were scheduled and I was like, you know what? I'm not even going to look. I thought about going and looking and I was like, nah, I'm just going to see where it goes. And these are my favorite kind of shows, man. I just appreciate you being in that group together. It's been awesome because I've gotten to know you so much better. I'm a huge fan of what you do and the way you view the world, man. So I just appreciate you and I appreciate your time.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): Yeah, man. I love this. Hey, a couple quick things here. Check me out: Plan dash wisely.com. That is my website, Plan dash wisely.com, for independent insurance. People listening, go check out AgentEndGame.com. AgentEndGame.com. AgentEndGame. We're going to—you'll have already heard this because I'm going to hit this in the intro to AgentEndGame.com.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): You do the socials. You do the socials.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): Yeah, I'm on—you can find me on Facebook, LinkedIn. All the links are on my—
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah, we'll have them in the show notes. I forget what my handles are. All my handles are.
--:-- Guest (Eric Garcia): And super excited—can't say it yet—working on a new podcast concept. So yeah, it's gonna be killer.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Oh yeah. Love it, dude. Appreciate you.
--:-- [Closing advertisement]
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