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Transcript

Intro/Outro: Welcome to the insurance leadership podcast. The podcast designed to bring new perspectives and principles from leaders in the life and health insurance industry. We trust you will enjoy today's episode.

[00:00:25] Ryan: Welcome to another episode of the insurance leadership podcast. I am Ryan Eaton, your host and excited to have an excellent leader in the insurance industry and in life on our show. Today, we will be hitting some of the principles that pertain to building a business from the ground up. And we will be learning these from someone that has been leading for over 30 years in our industry, while also leading in their community and home as well.

[00:00:46] It is great if we can win in the workplace, but if we are losing the battle of leading at home, it does not mean that much. Whether you're winning at both or losing at both, today, you will walk away with the blueprints to start reshaping the outcome you desire. When I first was told, I need to speak with our guests, the name sounded familiar and I could not quite put a face with the name.

[00:01:05] A day or two later, I'm on the phone at my desk and look over to see the name Greg Hatcher on a book on my shelf, and instantly clicked that the guest I was told that I needed to speak to was someone who I learned from when I first got into the industry. You see he wrote a book called the 55 steps to outrageous service.

[00:01:22] And it provided me with a lot of the principles that our team has used over the years. I talked with Greg a week or so after that realization and was able to get him on the show. And when you talk about someone who's being efficient with their time, Greg is that guy. I do not even have enough time to go through his full bio, but I want to give you a few recaps of some of the things that impressed me.

[00:01:41] First, he excelled in three sports while he was in college, even bringing home multiple championships. He was inducted into the sports hall of fame and was a member of five hall of fame teams for his college. After college, Greg went on to coach baseball at Notre Dame for a year. He left Notre Dame to work with blue cross blue shield of Arkansas, where he stayed for seven years before starting his own agency.

[00:02:02] He has grown his agency to be one of the largest privately owned insurance agencies in the state of Arkansas with over 50 employees and operations in multiple states. While running his agency, Greg has managed to write two books. One of which I can tell you sits on my office today. And a second one, which I just picked up reading and have already been blown away.

[00:02:21] He has just about every designation possible in the health insurance space. His agency is the number one producing agency in the state of Arkansas, I believe for 30 years running. And he is being inducted into the insurance hall of fame for the state of Arkansas. On the side, he owns a real estate company.

[00:02:37] He is dedicated coaching kids' sports and improving their lives to the confidence and life skills that sports can teach. He is married with five kids. He coached each of his children and has watched all of them play college sports. However, one of the biggest accomplishments to him has been getting wrestling started in Arkansas.

[00:02:54] He has been able to develop a facility in little rock and has been inducted into the Arkansas and the national wrestling hall of fame. And if I took a few minutes, I could read all the boards and charities and foundations, everything he is a part of, but we're going to pass on that today. But Greg, I can't tell you how much of an honor it is to have you here today.

[00:03:13] Thank you for being on the show. How's everything in Little

Rock?

[00:03:16] Greg: Pretty good. Pretty day today.

[00:03:18] Ryan: Well, good. Good. Well, look, Greg, let me get started with what took you from I'm coaching baseball at Notre Dame to going to work with blue cross blue shield?

[00:03:30] Greg: Well, you know, I loved playing so much that when I started coaching, I probably wasn't quite ready yet, I still wanted to play.

[00:03:42] And so while I was coaching at Notre Dame, I also coached like a team of college players with a few players that were maybe in the minor leagues and some summer baseball and things like that. And I had, I got a call from blue cross blue shield because they hired one of my friends and the guy that hired me from blue cross blue shield was a former professional football player.

[00:04:04] And everybody hired at blue cross under his reign was a former college athlete. And so I think that offer was really good. I could work with my friend from college and it was in hot Springs, Arkansas. And these kids, they didn't want to listen to a 23 year old. So I went and I started coaching youth sports.

[00:04:27] Not long after I got there, I didn't mean to, but the YMCAs asked me to coach a football team and I did, and this was before I ever had kids. And so one of the things I really learned was it was really fun to coach for free. And help kids and have no skin in the game. You know, I, I had no attachments with my kids or anything like that.

[00:04:49] And people really appreciated it. And it was really good for business because when you help someone's kids, they help you. And that very first team that I coached, you know, went undefeated. And the superstar that Teamworks for me today, I have about nine or 10 players that I've coached, that worked for the Hatcher agency because I've found that kids that I coach, I knew everything I needed to know about him to hire him, you know, after those sports years.

[00:05:19] Ryan: Oh, that's fantastic.

[00:05:20] Greg: I've basically coached a team since I was 23 years old. I'm 59 now. So I've been coaching for 36 years.

[00:05:28] Ryan: You probably didn't realize it was going to be a recruiting tool for insurance at the time you were coaching, did you?

[00:05:34]Greg: You know, one thing that the books don't tell you, but I live in little rock on a hundred acres. And It didn't start off that way. It started off that I bought 50 acres and I turned it into a soccer field and then I turned it into a baseball field and then a basketball gym and then a wrestling gym and then a baseball facility and then an equestrian facility and then a tennis facility.

[00:06:02] So all of these sports facilities. Are on this hundred acres. And then later we moved here. So we started building the sports facilities first for kids that I coached, I could never get a field that I wanted. I never could get a gym. You know, they were hard to rent. So we, we just started building them slowly but surely.

[00:06:22] And every day I have 250 kids in my front yard playing sports and, you know, those are great relationships. Today, I don't have any kids playing. A lot of people thought, well, when his kids leave, there won't be any more, but we've actually donated all the facilities to a nonprofit, you know, and for kids that will be here long after I live so that this will continue.

[00:06:46] So my, my house is on a five acre track that is separate from the rest of the sports facilities.

[00:06:54] Ryan: You really thought that through, Greg, that's impressive. I think it's awesome. What you did there for the kids as well, and setting up for the non-profit very, very forward-thinking of you on that. So let me, let me ask you this.

[00:07:05] So you left blue cross. He decided to start your own agency. And now you've grown it to be one of the top producing agencies, I think the top producing agency in Arkansas, 30 years running. What is the best advice you could give someone who's looking to start their own agency?

[00:07:21] Greg: I've had over the years, I've had salesmen.

[00:07:25] Come see me and say, Hey, tell me how you'd do it. Tell me, tell me what to do to be the top in my field. It doesn't even matter if they're in insurance sales and the answer's always the same, but before I tell them, I tell them that for every hundred people that come and ask me that question, if there's one that can do it, I'll be shocked.

[00:07:52] But the, answer is clear. Okay. It's a very simple answer. And I'll tell you how I figure the answer out. When I went to work for blue cross blue shield, my training program was: here's a book, go read the book, go pass the insurance test. After I passed the insurance test, we had 30 representatives.

[00:08:13] They said, I want you to spend one day with each of the 30 reps. So I rode with them each day for the 30, 30 different days. And I watched people work and, you know, these were very good sales reps, but if you want it to be the best, the answer was real simple. You watch them come in, you know, the typical person when they come in, do they get there at eight?

[00:08:39] Probably not. They get there a little late. Then they talk about what they did for the weekend and what they did last night. And they waste the first 30 minutes and then they go to their desk and they do the, what I call busy work, which is stuff that doesn't matter. That's easy to do. We like to do the easy things first.

[00:08:59] I once told somebody, if you had to eat a bucket of frogs with the smallest frog first or the biggest. Well, the answer is eat the big frog first because once you've eaten him, the other ones will taste, will be easier to get down. But if you eat the little frog first, it tastes so bad. You could never eat the big one.

[00:09:17] So you get the big frogs off your desk. First, you do that, you do the most important things. But most people do that busy work and about 11 o'clock, they're talking to their buddy at the office about where they're going to go to lunch. And then you got an hour, hour and a half lunch with your associate.

[00:09:34] And by four o'clock, you know, they're working to get out of there. And most people work with their door wide open so that everybody that walks by can interrupt him. I watched a seminar the other day that said performance equals potential minus interference. So the performance equals potential minus interference.

[00:09:59] What that means is every time somebody interrupts your train of thought or they walk in your office, you know, you gotta restart that email. You gotta redo this or that. But to make a long story short, after my 30 days with blue cross, it was crystal clear to me that the only time you could make sales calls was between eight and five.

[00:10:21] And so if I wanted to be the best I could be, I would only make sales calls between eight and five. I would not do proposal work, but back then I had to prepare my own proposals. So I did that before eight or after five. If I wanted my buddy, I did that before eight or after five. If I wanted to work out, I did it before eight or after five.

[00:10:45] Eight to five was the only time I could see the customer. So that's all I did. Every lunch was with a customer. Every lunch was with a prospect, every breakfast, you know, if you know that I could get, I try to do with lunch and breakfast, you know, with the prospect or client. And to this day, I tell every salesman.

[00:11:05] If you'll only see the customer between eight and five, And that's all you do, you'll be number one, not in your company, in the United States. You will go straight to the top because nobody does it. They don't even spend 15% of their day with a customer, they waste 85%, you know, on everything else. Now I did that for seven years at blue cross blue shield and it became habit.

[00:11:32] So when I started the Hatcher agency from scratch with a credit loan, I came to work at six in the morning. I did all my proposals before I saw my customers eight to five. I stayed till six. I went home till nine. I came back and worked nine to midnight the first year. I didn't buy a new pair of socks and buy a shirt.

[00:11:53] I didn't buy anything. I was on, I was living up this credit line and I had to make it work. And so I spent no money. All I did was sales eight to five. And by six months I had sold enough customers that I could not, you know, I never made a sales call again. Okay. They were referring customers to me. We were delivering outrageous service.

[00:12:17] My connections in the community from boards to coaching the kids was enough that I couldn't.. I was so busy. I went from one employee to seven employees in that first year and to this day, I don't make cold calls, but the center of influence or the spider web that you weave is big enough that it catches flies all day long, enough to keep me busy.

[00:12:44] And I started hiring extra employees when I had more work than I could do. Today, I don't go see prospects and customers all day long from eight to five, but I can say this: I do not look at emails hardly ever between eight and five. I do not have a computer on my desk. Return all my emails at night, or if I'm sitting in an office waiting for somebody, you know, or some kind of break like that.

[00:13:15] But I, you know, I have never in my lifetime, sat at a computer and typed an email between eight and five, because I was brainwashed. I brainwashed myself between eight and five. You don't do that busy work. All my emails are returned on my phone or on my iPad at night. And when you said it, when I sit at home at night and I can return all my emails, even if there's 150 of them, I can do them in an hour if there's no interference.

[00:13:46] Remember performance equals potential minus interference. So I'm so much more efficient doing that. You know, I returned all the calls pretty much in my car, in between appointments, you know, on the way home, on the way back and never listened to the radio in the car. I'm always on the phone.

[00:14:05] So it's those kinds of things. And you know, a lot of people are like, well, I don't want that life, but the way I look at it is, I don't ever have to prospect. I don't ever have to advertise, you know, and those are really nice things. They don't say here comes the dreaded insurance guy. If you just help people get what they want and you do it at a level that is beyond ordinary, they will tell everyone else.

[00:14:35] Then you'll be busy, but you have to not cut corners. You can always tell when you're dealing with somebody, whether you buy a pair of shoes or anything you're buying, whether the person is unbelievable. I noticed that every, every time. You know,I was telling my staff, we have a staff meeting once a week that I went and bought a pair of shoes in Las Vegas last week.

[00:14:58] And the kid was about 23, 24. It's just a pair of shoes. Okay. It was Salvatore Ferragamo. So they were pretty nice shoes, but you know, he was in his suit. He wasn't in great shape. You know, he was always, you know, he didn't make an unbelievable first impression cause he wasn't, you know, You, you want to look good?

[00:15:19] Get off the bus and make a good impression when you're in sales, but he made an okay presentation, but you know, he grew on me. He, you know, the shoes I want, he didn't have, he said, Hey, well, we'll ship them. We'll get them from another store. He gave me his business card. He told me to call him anytime.

[00:15:33] And then I left and I got a text from him a few minutes later saying that it was really nice to, for him to, you know, meet me and work with me. And then he emailed me the receipt and he said, you should get this in a couple of days. And I bought some other things while I was in Las Vegas. His box arrived first.

[00:15:51] He called me the day after it arrived to make sure it got there. I mean, he's just selling a pair of shoes. It's just simple stuff. How many people, when they sell a group, follow up with a Goodwill call afterwards to make sure they got their ID cards okay. And then they check with them every single month thereafter.

[00:16:08] I mean, business is not complicated. Just do what you're supposed to do at a level way beyond what people expect and they'll come running to you.

[00:16:17] Ryan: Man. I love that. Well, tell me this. You talk about business is not complicated, but obviously there were some ditches, there were probably some hurdles that you experienced taking your shot from the, from the you and your secretary.

[00:16:30] When you first got started to where it is today, what do you think are some of those hurdles? You know, obviously compliance, obviously HR, obviously there's different things like that, that come up and laws change. You have to learn some different things. What are the biggest hurdles you think there are in growing a business that people just don't talk about?

[00:16:47] Greg: Well, I like to tell stories.

[00:16:49] So I'll tell a couple here. When I worked for blue cross blue shield, I'd won about three salesman of the year award in a row and I got a new manager. And my new manager came in and he said you know, I see you've won three salesmen a year awards, you know, but your manager, you know, is saying that, you know, they had a lot to do with that.

[00:17:11] You know, that they helped you a lot. He said, I'd like to just see what you can do on your own. Without so much help. And from that day forward, I never asked him another question as long as I lived. If there was a problem, I went and figured it out. I didn't come to my manager and ask, and he wasn't being mean when he was telling me that, he was just saying that I just want to see what you can do on your own.

[00:17:39] And so over time, because I was having to figure out all the problems and all the questions. It wasn't long before he was in my office saying, Hey, we got a problem over here how did you figure that out? It was helpful when I started the Hatcher agency, because there was no one to help. So whatever came up. And, you know, I like wrestling.

[00:18:01] I had to wrestle through it and figure it out. In wrestling, they say wrestle through it. When you're out on the wrestling mat and somebody grabs a hold of you and they got you in a headlock and you're laying on your back, there's no substitution. There's no time out. There's no, hey, my nose hurts. You know, you got to get out of it.

[00:18:19] Okay. And so I learned to wrestle through it and I was actually telling a member of my staff, we were having a problem yesterday. You can't quit, you know, you can't quit. Cause we just ran into a tough situation. You've got to keep negotiating you got to wrestle with it and negotiate, negotiate until we get it fixed right for the customer.

[00:18:41] And I think more than anything, my customers know that I'm going to go to the mat and I'm going to fight till we get it right. Okay. But I'm reasonable, you know, it has to be good, you know, on both sides. So I would say the number one thing that I had in those early years was, you know, I had good insurance knowledge from studying, getting all those designations.

[00:19:04] I kind of understand insurance. I don't just sell it. I understand from the underwriter's perspective, et cetera, I understand how the products actually work. And so you have to have an attitude of we're going to negotiate through that and get, you know, a win-win I think at the end of the day, it always gets down to time managing and desire and intelligence.

[00:19:27] Those are the three things. And you notice, I mentioned time management first. If you have two unbelievable salespeople and one of them is more knowledgeable, but the other one's better at time management, over time, the time management guy will win because at the end of the day, it all gets down to, we, God gave us all 24 hours.

[00:19:55] And it really gets down to, after you have to really competent people, who can get the most out of those 24 hours, you know?

[00:20:05] Ryan: Well, may I ask you this, on that then, I've noticed that your efficiency, your, your diligence, and you said earlier that business isn't complicated. I love it. Everyone's got the same 24 hours.

[00:20:15] So I want to ask you a question. That's kind of got two parts to it. The first part is what time do you get up and go to bed each day? And how do you manage all the balls that you have bouncing? Professionally and then also personally, because as we mentioned earlier, obviously you've coached all your kids.

[00:20:31] You're a pilot as well, we didn't even mention that in the, in the interview, but you have so many different things going on. Plus your charity work, your board. How do you find the time or what's the best things you've learned to be able to help with that time?

[00:20:43] Greg: So the first thing is I'm not some super freak that only needs four hours sleep, I'm the opposite.

[00:20:50] Okay. Sleep is my kryptonite, so I need seven to eight hours sleep. I do not get up early anymore. Those days are over. In fact, I'm working on a new goal of waking up whenever I wake up. That's my ultimate goal to me, success is when you get up without an alarm clock and when you can go to work and not be working for money. That's, that's real success.

[00:21:17] So I'm working on those two things, but you know, typically I'm going to go to bed at midnight and I'm going to get up at seven or seven 30. I'll tell you what I did today. I got up about 7:10, and I worked out, so I always pay myself first when I get up. As you get older, it's harder to work out at the end of the day.

[00:21:40] There's always something going on. You're tired. You're not at your best. So when I was younger, I could work out at night. I tend to do it first. So I got up this morning, I did a 30 minutes weight workout. We actually had a trainer at the house this morning training for me and my wife. We do that a couple of days a week, holds you accountable, but we did 30 minutes there and then I did some stretch and then I rode the bike for 30 minutes and then I did two sets of pushups.

[00:22:08]Regular and then triangle type pushups, 50 each. And then I took a shower. I was returning emails while I was riding that bike for 30 minutes. It was a stationary bike and I was on some phone calls. So I don't waste those minutes. I normally read the newspaper while I'm riding the bike.

[00:22:27] And you know, I'm always telling young people, man, you got to know what's going on, you know, during the day. And so I don't sit there with a coffee and read the newspaper. I read it everyday while I ride the bike, workout seven days a week. Okay. Because if you don't have your health, you don't have anything.

[00:22:43] And that's part of, you know, you're going to be better at time management, if you're healthy and you're fit and all those kinds of things. So then we jump on this call with you and I'm booked the rest of the day seeing people. And, you know, just an example, cause it always gets, it gets tight today, I have a client that wants me to go to a fundraiser for a political situation.

[00:23:08] And then I had another client or prospect actually call and wanted to do lunch and they were both at the same time. So I'll go to the political thing for 15 minutes, drop by, say, hi, leave my check. And then I'll go to lunch at 1215. Instead of saying I couldn't do lunch cause I had the other, I just, you know, kind of squeeze in both, you have to make those fork in the road decisions, you know, every day.

[00:23:31] But you know, I think people waste way too much time. You know, today we've got zoom, we've got texts. We've got email, we've got phone. You know, you can get a lot done on the phone. I never, I never do an in-person meeting when a phone will do, and I don't do, as you know, I use whichever is appropriate and I'm very respectful of people's time.

[00:23:56] I don't feel like I'm rushing anybody when I'm with them, but, you know maximize that time. If you're starting your own insurance agency and it's growing and you get more than you can do, then you leverage that time by hiring another person. And when you hire another person that just bought you 40 more hours, if you can manage them and get them to work their 40 hours and to help you.

[00:24:18] So the advantage of owning your own agency is I started leveraging that time and have other people do things for me. So I really don't do much of anything anymore, except meet with people double-check things. And then lead. I watched the Nick Saban seminar recently that said, get the right people on the bus, get the right people off the bus, get them in the right seats.

[00:24:41] And if you're not coaching them, you're letting it happen. In other words, I do have to coach every day, I'm a coach on the sports field. I'm better at that than I am at business. My record's better on the sports field, but, you know, because kids just do what I tell them to do. It's real easy. Hey. Run this play. Run these spreads.

[00:25:02] Yes, sir. I may, I have another, but the office is not that way. You know, you've got adults, they're much harder to coach. They're much harder to get to do what you want them to do. So you got to incentivize, and you got to get them to buy in. And there's all kinds of egos and personalities and feelings and all those things, which you know, is a real art that you just learn over the years.

[00:25:27] So I had a super salesman come see me one time. And I like to tell this story. And he said I'd like to pick your brain on how you're selling so much. And I said, well, tell me about your time management was my first question. And he said, well, I I've got that mastered. And he had his notebook and all that said, I've got that mastered, you know I don't need any help there.

[00:25:49] And I said, well, I learned that there's different levels. So when we brought in this wrestling coach from Oklahoma state, pat Smith, he won four NCAA titles. I was a college wrestler. I know a lot about wrestling, but when I brought him in and he started showing moves that look just like the ones I did, but he had a little tiny twist to each one, just another little level that would take it to the Olympic level.

[00:26:16] He goes, Greg, this is a different level. That's when I started using that terminology, it was no, no, another level. So my son was doing this move. He goes, we're not doing this move. I go, why aren't we doing this move? He goes, well, because that'll work against a high school kid, but it won't work against a college kid and it won't work against an Olympian.

[00:26:34] We're only going to teach stuff that works at the highest level. So I don't have to reteach it again. Okay. So when this guy comes in and says, I don't need any time management help. I said, well, let me see what level you're at. And he said, what do you mean what level I'm at? I said, well, for example, what do you do when you use the bathroom?

[00:26:56] And he kind of paused. And I'm like, well, when you go to the restroom, what do you do? And he goes, well, I go to the restroom. I said, you're not at a high level. And I said, cause when I go.. Back then this was, this was a long time ago.. Back then, this was before I had emails on my phone. It was really kind of before emails, I used to take a stack of papers that were printed out and I would review them when I was in the room.

[00:27:21] I didn't waste a minute. Today, I've never gone to the restroom ever without my phone. Because I'm not wasting that two minutes. So you, you start getting into habits to do things. You know, I love the airplane when I'm flying commercial flight, private flight. It doesn't matter where it is.

[00:27:43] It is the most effective time I have in my life. When you're in an airplane, nobody can call you, text you, email you. That is when I come up with all my great ideas and I pull out my to-do list and my goal list, and I start working through all of those things, you know? So. You know, I've found the busier you get.

[00:28:07] I've always said about every three months, I had to change my strategy on work. So I used to do it this way when I was 26. And then at 26 and three months, I had to add another level and another level and another level to be able to get it all done. And then when I think I'm busy, I just think of the president of the United States.

[00:28:27] And I'm like, how in the world could you do that job? Well, you couldn't, you just have, you would just be directing people that handle things for you. And so when I get frustrated and say, this is too much, I find another way to get it done, or I leverage it another way or I hire another person, you know, to help.

[00:28:47] Ryan: Mm, I like that. Look, I got, I got two questions left for you, Greg, in our time today. And one of them, you mentioned it earlier. And one of the things you said you were kind of talking about time management, but you also talking about, you said business isn't complicated and last week, while you're on the phone, you said something that it triggered something in my mind on something I'd read.

[00:29:06] You said when you were doing your practices with kids from an efficiency standpoint, with time and also just capitalizing on the time that you had, you said drill, drill, drill, repeat. Explain to everyone your perspective on fundamentals in business and kind of what takes priority there and what are some of the basic fundamentals that people are missing all the time?

[00:29:27] Greg: So Zig Ziglar said, if you help enough other people get what they want, you'll have all you ever wanted. That's the single most important business principle. He also said stop selling and start helping. Okay. We have signs all over our office. Bronze signs. They're bronze for a reason. They're to get the point across nets two of those signs.

[00:29:48] There's one on the front door as you walk in our office. And it's also in the book. It says the Hatcher agency was started September 1st, 1990 with a simple mission. And that's to provide the most outrageous service, not only in this industry, but in any industry. And the key to this is to brainwash yourself on the way to work, to do what's easy and convenient for the customer, instead of what's easy and convenient for yourself.

[00:30:13] And every time my employees don't do what's easy and convenient for the customer instead of what's easy and convenient for themselves, I send them out there to read that and read it until they can read it back to me because what we all do is we're all selfish by nature. We wake up every morning, we go right back to we want what's best for us.

[00:30:34] Okay. We want what's easiest for us, we care about us. And so I have to, from the time I get up thinking that way, convert myself back to, Hey, if you'll just get that guy what he wants, you'll get taken care of. So today this 12:15 luncheon is with a guy who's called me and he wants to pay me a consulting fee to advise him on his insurance.

[00:31:01]He's got his insurance with somebody else and he can't leave him, you know? Some relationships, you just can't leave. And so he wants to pay me and I'm not going to charge. He's demanding an invoice. Okay. Now maybe that's what he wants. I'm probably going to negotiate with him that he can buy a team to the Arkansas sports hall of fame golf tournament, or he can help wrestling, but I'm not charging him.

[00:31:28]Because my mission is that it doesn't cost them anything to work with us. We're supposed to save him money, not cost him money. I'm not charging fees. I'm just going to help them. And I'm going to tell them if you can tell everybody else they can buy from us, but I'm just here to help. So the fundamental deal is quit going into the appointment trying to get what you want. Just go in the appointment and get what they want. You do that one thing and you focused on it, they'll feel it. They'll see it. They'll tell everybody about it. You'll have customers coming out your ears because everybody else is focused on trying to get what they want.

[00:32:04] So that would be one fundamental. In sports, there's different kinds of coaches. You know, I would compete best in an environment where you assigned every coach a team. And they said you have three practices to get ready for the game. And that's all you get. Okay. I might even be better if they only gave us one.

[00:32:27] Okay. Because when I start coaching a youth team and they assigned me my team, the first thing I do is I get out of the car. I called the team together and I go right into, if it's football tackling. I don't even take time to introduce myself to all the parents and stuff like that. It's just like, all right, guys, let's go.

[00:32:49] And I've got an hour and a half, but I'm going to get all that in. Most people are going to spend 20 minutes talking to them, telling them your life history, you know, blah, blah, blah. And they've wasted half the practice. If I only got one practive, I'm getting all 90 minutes in. And that is exactly how I would start my youth practices and the parents would think I was a psycho.

[00:33:09] Okay. But our teams won big time, because we just got more out of practice than everybody else. It's back to the same old, eight to five. I only got eight to five for sales calls. So I'm not wasting any minutes of it. I'll talk to you after practices.

[00:33:26] Ryan: I like that. Well, Greg, let me ask you this in closing one last question would be what has been the biggest leadership principle that you've lived by, you've learned, has impacted you personally, professionally?

[00:33:40] What is it that just sticks out in your mind?

[00:33:42] Greg: I think it's, I mean, it's really just all back to the.. I was telling my wife the other day, I had one benefit that these young people don't have. I grew up for the first five or six years of my career without the cell phone. So I had to listen to those Zig Ziglar tapes in the car instead of the radio driving all around Arkansas.

[00:34:08] And he used to call it your.. What did he call it? Like your.. It was like your car education. He had a funny word for it, but basically get your master's degree in the car,listening to these tapes, and some fundamental thing is still help your employees get what they want, help your players get what they want, help your customers get what they want, help your wife get what she wants and you get all you ever want.

[00:34:36] Just reverse it. Instead of focusing on you, focus on others. And you'll get everything you want. The richest people in the world sell a small little product that doesn't cost much that the whole world needs. Whether it's Walmart or Amazon, they don't seem to sell things that are really, really expensive.

[00:35:02] They sell things that the whole world needs and you know, I'm certainly not anybody's league there, but for insurance, I just try to help people get what they want.

[00:35:12] Ryan: Greg. That is phenomenal, man. I can't tell you how much I learned personally today from hearing you, but just how good, such good advice this was. Just the nuggets of wisdom and the time management side, man. You are at a different level there and you have, you've worked your way up to it. And I love what you said about the re- evaluating every few months and kind of looking at it because seasons change, lives change, family dynamics can change based on what, what level your kids are at.

[00:35:38] And you've excelled at that by far, man. So thank you. Oh, go ahead.

[00:35:42] Greg: I do wanna say one thing that kind of ties into that. I had a coach that I really learned something from. Cause I coached with a lot of people and you know, people say, how did you get your kids to be, why are they all college athletes?

[00:35:56] What was the key? And I learned this from this coach, his name's Scott lugs, and he said, don't teach him to win. You know the great coach at UCLA, John Wood never mention the word when he said, just teach him to get 1% better every day. So when we go in and we're working on basketball arrests or whatever, the goal is never to win, it's can we get better today?

[00:36:24] My daughter has her license plate on her car, says G B E D. Get better every day. My son's license plate says A B A G K, which means always be a good kid. So for her, I wanted her every day when she got in the car, as I dropped her off at college, I got her that when we went to college, because she was walking on.

[00:36:50] Cause she, she originally went to college to ride horses and then she changed her mind and missed the basketball. So she had to start behind a little bit in the basketball, but I want her to look at that every day that the goal was not to be the starter. The goal was not to score 30 points. The goal is to get better every day, as it turned out as a freshman, she walked on.

[00:37:08] They told her she'd never play. And she played more than any freshmen, had a great year. She's going to be a sophomore this year. For my son, it was the opposite. He was a, he came out of school a superstar, you know, for him, I wanted him to be reminded that there's going to be a zillion things pulling him that could mess up his career.

[00:37:28] Drugs, alcohol, women, bad decisions, et cetera. So I think about always be a good kid every single day. And so he's the quarterback for Arkansas state university right now, has three years left, you know, he's the starting quarterback. So, you know, when you're coaching your staff or your kids, you're looking for the things that fit the situation.

[00:37:51] Ryan: That's phenomenal, Greg, man, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you being on here today. For those listening, this is one of those ones that you'll want to go back and listen to a second time. There's so much good information here that we can use and not just in our professional lives, but also in our personal lives.

[00:38:07] I would highly recommend everyone listen to this one twice. Put it on slow. I think you have the audio versions on different podcasts where you can turn it to one or 1.5. This is definitely a one, or maybe even a 0.75 podcasts. Listen to it, take notes, write it down. It will help you. But for everyone, thank you for joining us today.

[00:38:26] That wraps up another episode of the insurance leadership podcast. And remember that a good plan today is better than a great plan months from now. Thank you very much

[00:38:39] Intro/Outro: Thanks for listening to today's episode of the insurance leadership podcast. Make sure you subscribe on your favorite podcast app. So you'll be notified of future episodes or stream online at insuranceleadershippodcast.com. .