Think Like a Business Owner, Prepare Like an Athlete

What do successful agency owners and elite athletes have in common? More than you might think. Emma Tatum joins Shane, Mike, and Tonya to talk about creating momentum through stoic leadership. From agency growth to the danger of overreacting to setbacks, this conversation connects the mindset of high performers on the field to business owners building something meaningful. If you’ve ever struggled to recognize progress, trust your process, or create structure in the freedom of entrepreneurship, this episode is for you.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is IA Forward, your playbook for success as an independent insurance agent. Now, here to help you knock it out of the ballpark are your hosts, Shane Tatum, Mike Basil, and Tanya Leed. Welcome to IA Forward.

SPEAKER_04 0:15

We are so excited to have the fabulous Miss Emma Tatum as our special guest today. Surprise Shane. Emma's coming on with us. And Emma has never actually met Mike. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 0:33

Here we go.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Yeah, I met your sister a couple of times, but I've never met you.

SPEAKER_03 0:38

So I basically feel like I know you, but I we haven't met in person, but I know who you are.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

So that's scary. A little scary. What exactly have you heard? And who did you hear it from?

SPEAKER_03 0:51

I mean, I to me, I'm like, oh yeah, he's the New Yorker. I know who that is. They have like people in different places, and whenever Dad's like, yeah, I talked with Mike, I'm like, oh, I know who that is. He lives in New York. Got it.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Bill's mafia. Bill's mafia. That's all you have to remember, you know?

SPEAKER_03 1:12

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 1:13

No, I've heard all good things. All good things.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

I don't think Mike needs to come visit us.

SPEAKER_03 1:20

The last time you weren't when I was on the podcast and you weren't on the podcast, I was like, oh, I didn't get to meet Mike.

SPEAKER_04 1:31

Oh, Mike needs to come visit us in Pensacola. We have such a huge Bills mafia in this area. It's unreal. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

Uh well, let's see. Hold on. I'm in because right now it's 28 degrees here. So I gotta go sign to flight on my way.

SPEAKER_04 1:49

Yeah. It's a balmy 79 today.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

So okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:54

Bring it on. Bring it on. So uh Emma had an absolutely fantastic weekend. And we're gonna let her share a little bit about that tonight. And we're gonna talk about how that applies um in our in the baseball.

SPEAKER_03 2:13

Well, um we played Arizona State this weekend, and they were ranked 23 at the time, and we kind of came in and were like, all right, this is our opportunity to come and kill them. And so we won that series. We lost the first game, won the next two, which were really good for us, and um now we're ranked. And then I had a crazy Saturday evening, and I got engaged this weekend, which was actually crazy. I don't think I've realized that it's happened, and neither has dad.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

So uh what wait, wait. You what you got engaged?

SPEAKER_03 2:54

Don't stop this don't worry, is checkbook or kicked him up real quick. The first thing I asked was, oh my gosh, you know, like he he asked you, and that was like he did, and he did talk, he did ask me.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Yes, yes, he asked me, and yes, I said, Okay, it's I guess, you know, if you're gonna do it, no, it was he's a good, he's a good boy, and he's uh he's he's a good one. So Emma did good. Yep. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:26

What a great weekend, you know, from your professional perspective, from a personal perspective. I do not have a softball here. It's I do have a yellow baseball. So you know, I mean you keep getting it's yellow, so um where did you come up on a yellow baseball? Oh, it's from it's the um balls from the Savannah Bananas.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Yeah, it's gotta be a banana ball thing.

SPEAKER_04 3:52

Yeah, where um where we went and saw them two weeks ago. So that's yeah. It was amazing. It was uh it was more than uh Daniel could think about handling his because I'm so ADHD and it's designed for ADHD children. I really and truly believe that. And he was like, I can't keep up with the game because there's you know, so yeah, there's a lot of going. It was like over stimulation for him.

unknown 4:18

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

It's like Harlem Glow Trotters on steroids, like it's but they really play though.

SPEAKER_04 4:25

Really? I mean, like the like the bananas lost when we were when we were really played that they're super competitive.

SPEAKER_02 4:32

Yeah, I think it's super entertaining.

SPEAKER_04 4:35

Yeah, yeah, but it is it is overstimulation. Oh I because they don't stop while the game's going on. Like everything else is going on, like they don't stop music, they don't stop like anything. So it's yeah, you have to. It's fun. I'm like, sweetie, you can't, this is not an MLB game. Like you just have to, it's it's it's not wrong, it's different. So back to Emma. Back to Emma in this fantastic, fantastic weekend that that she had. And um, I our topic today is talking about celebrating the wins, right? And this is something that Shane doesn't enjoy doing, and that's okay. And we're gonna let him talk about why he doesn't really enjoy celebrating the wins and why his mindset doesn't do this. But for a lot of people, this this really is important.

SPEAKER_03 5:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Well, I mean this is gonna be awesome. If you're I mean, if you're always if you're always winning, then it's just normal, right? Nobody's getting that joke. Okay. Um so I I got you.

SPEAKER_04 5:54

You got it. I gotcha. It's like pleasant guild, maybe pleasant guild.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Yeah, I mean I don't know. Um, yeah, I I I again this kind of goes back to people that that knew me before the age of 22 would not not understand, right? Like there was a major shift with me um for a couple of reasons, and I'll I'll explain all that. Um but you know, I would say before my 22nd birthday, maybe maybe somewhere in that 22 to 23 year old range, you know, I was a college baseball player, you know, Emma knows this story. Um, I was very oh, I was over the top rah-rah. Like I was very um much an emotional player, and I was a very emotional kind of person in general in in terms of just passion, right? Like I would say like the emotion was from passion, passion being a competitor, uh trying to win at anything I did, you know, really just not enjoying losing at all. Um nobody likes to lose, but like I just hated it so much that it was just this borderline borderline um angriness, right, that came across as this emotional passion. And my senior year in college, um, I played at Oklahoma State for uh the legendary Gary Ward, and Gary Ward preached a method of uh competition that you weren't supposed to necessarily be able to tell whether his teams were winning or losing. And he had this saying like it doesn't matter if we're winning by ten or we're losing by ten, uh the dugout should look the same. Um you should be playing the same way. Aggressive effort, but uh this calmness that maybe some people today would almost call stoic. And it was this calmness that you're you're going to finish the game and win it. You're going to finish the game and come from behind if you're down. We are never out of a ball game. Um it's just this mindset that spoke to me, like as a this passionate rah-rah kind of player, and it took me to a different place, right? And I learned through that season how to embrace that and how much better it was for me personally. Like it just made me a better person, it made me a better ball player, made me a better competitor all the way around. And then, you know, not long after that, um coming home, get married um to my first wife, another joke, um, really, you know, Emma's Emma's mom. Um, and so she loves it when I say it. Yeah, she loves it. Julie loves it when I say that, by the way. Um, that's kind of a popular, you know, social media trend. And uh, you know, I had, of course, the the most important thing that happened to me, and that was a salvation experience, a commitment to a life with Christ and following Jesus. And so those two things happen within a 12 to 18 month period of my life, right? I play for Gary Ward, I I get I go down this path of like learning from an incredible teacher, an incredible coach about really what I would say how the game of baseball should be played. Um I think softball as well, even though softball, there's a lot of energy, there's a lot more energy in softball. And that's something that Emma, Emma's a passionate player when she's on the field and when she's at the plate, and when she scores a run. And really, most really good fast pitch Division I softball players have a lot of energy in them. And that game is a little bit different, but I love when you can take kind of the combination of those things, and just what I got out of Gary Ward's teaching was you're never out of a ball game. Like it doesn't matter if you're down 10 to nothing in the second inning, you can come back, you can win that game. And I think I saw that. Like, I saw us be down. I mean, we were losing to Nebraska like six to nothing in the second inning my senior year. We beat them 37 to 8.

SPEAKER_03 11:17

I've never heard that story.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

It was insane. It was insane. It's still a record today in the Oklahoma State uh record books. And it was just this incredible experience of learning how to never be out of a ball game, never be out of a competition that you know that you're still winning, right? Even even if you lose, you know, the this the thing is, you know, lose the game but win the series, lose the battle but win the war, um, you know, you're going to lose. It's just a matter of, okay, how are you going to how are you going to respond to that? And um some people call it stoicism in a way. Uh some people call it not getting excited about winning. That's not what it really is. It's really that you just have this intrinsic gut feeling that you're winning, you're going to win. And even if you lose something, you're going to win the next time. And that was something that was learned for me. It wasn't a natural, just God-given thing for me.

SPEAKER_02 12:31

This is a lot to process. I don't know about everybody else on this call, but for me, trying to envision you as a rah-rah guy is like, I'm having like I'm having a little trouble getting past that and onto the next thing. Isn't there some grainy 240p VHS of that somewhere?

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Well, you you just need to imagine, you've heard of Little Man Idis. You know, I I do have a uh I do have a a height um challenge, right? I'm not a tall guy. Um and there's a term for for competitors, base players like me, athletes like me, uh, at least within my generation, and we called it little man itis, right? I was small, um, and I felt like everybody needed to know that it didn't matter that I was gonna beat them, right? And so it became this arrogance, almost unhealthy arrogance at times, um, more than it was rah-rah. And that's kind of my, you know, my weakness, my my historical weakness of to kind of talk about so that I don't go back there, is you know, we try to get, you know, we try to learn from our mistakes from our past and things like that. And I I would call it little man itis. Like I I needed to show people that I was, you know, more than the physical presence that that would they were seeing. I get that.

SPEAKER_02 14:04

Like going back to last year on our uh travel baseball team, like our smallest guy was absolutely what you just described. Like the scrabbiest one. I remember when we were at, I think it was maybe eight you at the time. No, it must have been nine you, first year of kids pitching. He took, he got plunked, he stared down the pitcher all the way to first. I was like, Well, hey, buddy, let's not do that. We don't need a star drop in here.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 14:37

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 14:39

And I I can't say that I have ever experienced this, so I'm just going to stay quiet.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

But well, it it's um, you know, it's a it's a real thing. Like, I mean, yeah, yeah, it it really is. Like, um, you know, uh the the travel ball world has a very, very successful um coach. I I respect him. Um, I won't name names, but uh several other coaches have nicknamed him the Little General. Um and you know, he's vertically challenged like me. Um he's a really, really strong personality. Um he is a very, very successful softball, travel ball coach. He has sent many, many girls to the Power 4 Division I level and beyond. Um and his nickname is the little general. He probably doesn't know that. And I I you know sometimes I I feel bad for that, but it's a little man Idis scenario, right? And and I I relate to him. That's what's crazy. Like, you know, when he and I coached against each other, I've got in gotten into, you know, a few friendly debates, um a few arguments on, you know, on the field. And um, it's because that passion comes out and I have to I have to grab myself. I have to say, okay, whoa, this is not who you are anymore. This is not the appropriate way to compete, right? And so um, yeah, it's a it's a thing. And sometimes I I wonder, and I I've kind of moved down this path where I'm not sure I don't want to stamp that out in people, right? That have that passion. What I want to do is I want to help them learn how to control that. Um, because if controlled, it can be a huge strength for a competitor, uh, a business owner, an agency owner.

SPEAKER_04 16:55

The thing about winning seasons, especially for a business owner, is I don't really believe there's a way that you can separate um personal wins from professional wins. They they fuel each other. And when you own a business, it it is personal. And and when you have momentum in one side or or the other, whether it's your personal or professional life, uh, that confidence carries over, right? And that momentum is real. And finding those places to celebrate matters. And I so many times I see business owners skip that step and they go straight to what's next. And I think that they don't really ever sit back, like they know if their daughter wins a ballgame, that's a win. Or they know if their spouse gets a um a promotion at work or if something incredible happens. Like, like they know that's a win, but but as a business owner, you are creating your business. If you don't know what your wins are, then you're never gonna have those moments that feel like a win and you're gonna stick with what's next.

SPEAKER_02 18:16

Yeah, I think you we've talked about this before, but it's also important to stay off the roller coaster. Um, it's really easy to get high with the highs, and I know it's a personality thing, but I've mentioned it before. For me, I get high with the high and low with the lows. And it is, it's really important to try to mitigate both sides of that. You know, you're going to have wins and you celebrate them a little bit, but then you come back down and you get back to work. But conversely, you're going to lose accounts, you're going to have losses, things are going to happen here and there that don't go your way, and you can't dwell on that. And you certainly can't make future mistakes based on a reaction to something that already happened that can't be changed anyway.

SPEAKER_04 19:07

So, Emma, y'all, you talked about that y'all being y'all beat a right team this weekend. It put you guys in the top 25. Um, from an outside perspective, that looks amazing, right? But the intentionality of the reps, the practice, the discipline, the conversations, the relationships that the players have built, the relationships that you've built as a team captain, those big moments are earned long before they arrive, right? And you guys play teams that have more talent than you. And this season, the pressure that y'all have felt, the pressure that y'all have put on these other teams, it it shows the preparation that y'all have have put in. And opportunity has shown up for you guys, and y'all have created this habit that have allowed you to take advantage of those opportunities.

SPEAKER_03 20:14

Yeah, for sure. I mean, even like it's funny, like thinking about when we were going into Arizona State, I we all knew it, like we knew like they were the ranked team, we weren't the ranked team. So like everyone knew, like, okay, so they're better than us. I mean, they're ranked, we're not ranked. Like, that's just like the known thing. But like all weekend, like we were not, we weren't expecting like to lose. Like it wasn't like we were surprised when we won. It wasn't like, yeah, we were we were really excited, but I just wasn't surprised. I was like, yeah, this is how it was supposed to go. Like we, and I think that's the difference is like we went into this weekend expecting to win, being like, we don't really care if they're ranked, like we have something different, and I really don't know really what it is. It's to me, it feels like magic right now. Like, I don't know what's going on, but like we have something different that they don't have, and I don't really care who we play right now. We're not really even thinking about them. Like it that is kind of the difference. And there's two years I was I've kind of been comparing like two years ago when we had this really awesome season at the beginning, like it's still just completely different than what like everything feels like right now. There's just something has clicked and it just makes sense and we're just rolling with it. Um, and we just as excited as we were, and like you can see the excitement and the passion of us all weekend. You can see it when I mean when we won that series, we all ran out to the field. Like, we don't usually do that when we win a series, but like we also in the back of our heads were like, uh, we were expecting to win. Like, we've been waiting to do this. All weekend because we knew it was going to happen.

SPEAKER_04 22:02

You know, teams that expect to win behave differently. And when I've worked with individuals, whether they are going in for uh job interviews or going in for ways to expand their agency, expand their business. When you know that you can own the moment, you act so totally differently and you have a different mindset. And sometimes I see agency owners that are in this very Oliver twist, please, sir, may I have some more, as opposed to knowing that you are enough. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 22:45

Yeah, I you know, um Emma and I have used the term, you know, intrinsic uh confidence. Um, you know, we're we're you know, obviously, you know, overconfident is is arrogance, right? And unless you could back it up. Yeah, well, most people don't you dare start on some Tom Brady nonsense. Yeah, most people most people, unless their name is Tom Brady, can't back it up. Correct, correct. Or Derek Jeter. I mean, you know. Or Derek Jeter. Um, you know, the the the this this intrinsic nature of where does your confidence come from, right? Uh does it come from being successful? You know, well, how does the person that hasn't had success yet or that is super confident, how does that person, where does that come from, right? Um, and you know, it's a it's a really interesting thing. And I I I haven't read the book yet, but I got a chance to hear a couple of weeks ago um Dr. Angela Duckworth, and uh, she wrote a book called Grit. And it's about, you know, some people have this grit about them, right? They just they have this intrinsic confidence about them. And uh, you know, it's it's a it's a really interesting thing. And, you know, it's like, can it be learned? I think it can be learned, right? I think it really can. Um, but I I I think that what kind of back to what Mike is saying, and I know you know there's different opinions on this out there. I think most people that get really, really, really high in terms of the rah-rah, what would be described as the rah-rah, right? I I mean, I mean, hey, get excited about winning. It is exciting. It's fun to win. Hey, it's a whole lot more fun to win than it is to lose. I mean, Emma's four years finishing her fourth year building, being a part of a senior class that has built a program, turned a program from the bottom end of the Big 12 to the top end of the Big 12. And um, it's a lot of hard work. It's the wins and the winning should be celebrated. And like the ranking this week, as we're recording this, the ranking this week is something that's been building. Like, okay, yeah, they got ranked, right? They didn't get ranked for beating a ranked team. They they got ranked because they did what they were supposed to do in beating that ranked team, but that's been building for several weeks. And, you know, you kind of go back to February, they're a northern cold weather team. They spend a couple of weeks in Florida. They have a couple of weeks. Yeah, Kansas is nuts, dude. Nuts, I promise you. I know Buffalo's terrible, but Kansas can be nuts, right?

SPEAKER_04 25:56

Kansas has wind. Unlike any place I have ever been. Like when I have seen them play, it takes me probably 30 minutes to get the knots out of my hair after sitting in their stands.

SPEAKER_03 26:14

It was 34.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:15

So it wasn't, I mean, it wasn't 28, but it was chilly.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

It was chilly.

SPEAKER_03 26:19

That's chill wind is different.

SPEAKER_04 26:21

But for they have winds that I didn't know existed.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Yeah. For perspective, in January, when the southern teams are on the field getting to work out, they're indoors and they've got snow on the ground, and they've got 30 mile-an-hour winds, and they can't get outside. And so, you know, there are games and matchups that they play that are critical in February. You know, they had a matchup against Florida, a matchup against Michigan. Um, Michigan's a cold weather team, right? That that was a really tight game. Um I say today, yeah, I should have won that one. I say today that you put them up against some of those games in February, they don't lose those games, right? And so this has been a momentum-building thing for them. And I think it's very similar to to running your agency. The people that get so high that they don't have a foundation to come back to. Like, if you can be rah-rah, and when you when you lose, you go halfway down instead of all the way down, be rah-rah, right? Like, hey, you've got a gift. If you can go up here and come here, then you've got a gift that's different than most. Be rah-rah, be excited, celebrate everything, yada, you know, all those things, right? The problem is, is most people go really high and they go really low. And the really low is hard to come out of. And so I'm one of those people, right? When I go back to my athlete days, which is hard to understand today, when you know me today, I was so, so high that when things didn't work out, I plummeted, right? It was just, you know, I couldn't get out of this funk. I couldn't get out of this, like, come on, you know, if I went in a slump, I was in a slump. Like, it was ugly. So I had to find a way. And the the way for me was a more balanced, you know, expectation of winning, you know, we don't fall on the losing. You know, we we we expect to win. We're gonna do some things mentally, build our our our strength mentally and our mindset because you know, hey, when you become natural at winning, when when winning becomes your expectation, you don't get overly excited about winning, right? You expect to win. And so I think there's a lot of psychology in here that I am not qualified to talk about, other than just my own personal experience of what I went through.

SPEAKER_02 29:21

So to me, there's two different types of people. On the lows, there's two different types of people the people that just sulk and the people that change everything. Which one of those buckets did you fall in?

SPEAKER_01 29:36

Um, change everything. A hundred percent. Like change my swing, change my stance. Uh, I had to fight against that as a dad and a quote coach with Emma to not change stuff all the time. Um, and you know, I had to make sure, and sometimes I didn't do that well. Uh, I had to kind of guard guard against myself, guard her against me, because my nature when I was a player was if I went 0 for three or 0 for 4, like I'd come back the next day with a new stance. Like, oh, well, it's gotta be my swing, you know. It can't it it couldn't be that the pitcher was just good. That that's not possible, right? That's not possible. It had to be me, it had to be my swing. I gotta go, I gotta go back and work on that. And so that was kind of my nature as a player, um, that I had to wrestle with as I got, you know, obviously become a parent, and ultimately, as my girls decided to play sports, and I had to be careful about that.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

So you came back, Julio Franco. Yeah, absolutely. People are gonna have to video yeah, that's a video one. People are gonna have to go look that one up. Yeah, no, no. When you're talking about business, that's where you have to trust the process that has gotten you to where you currently are. You can't go change everything, right? You have to say, okay, I did not win there. Let's put that one behind us and let's go to the next one, whatever it is, the next deal, the next quote, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_04 31:16

That does not mean you need another carrier.

SPEAKER_01 31:18

That's right. The classic carrier, that's exactly where I was going. And and and you know, Tanya, Tanya can can get into here and add to this what I'm about to say. The classic independent agency situation is they is that an agent loses an account or gets beat on an account, and it's by a carrier insurance company they do not have access to. And even though it was only one account, they decide they need that that market. You know, they decide I need to go pick that carrier up. Why I need them, I gotta have them, and it totally disrupts their business model, right? And they don't need to do that. Now, if you get beat 20 times in a row by XYZ company, let's talk about it. Let's think about it, let's figure out if we're missing a tool in the tool belt. But losing once, striking out once, having an 0 for three game, right? That doesn't mean go change everything that you're doing.

SPEAKER_04 32:27

Joey the win before you taste the next one, right? So we as human beings have a tendency to so focus on the negative. Um, you know, looking at it from a psychological perspective, there are so many studies that you can have 10 people tell you that your process is great, that you did a great job for them. They are they appreciate you as their agent. Customers love you. You can have 10 people tell you that, and you have one customer that doesn't love their experience for whatever reason, whether it was a personality class, whether you've lost to another carrier, you're only going to focus on the one you lost. We never stop, especially if you're a high performer, and if you own a business, then you are probably a high performer, right? We struggle to pause to ever experience that gratitude that our customers had for us, or or we don't we don't stop and think, okay, I've had all of these wins. And there is an importance of marking those moments in life, whether it's for yourself, whether it is for your teammates. If your team never feels done, or if they never feel as though they're accomplishing anything, that creates burnout for them and ultimately is going to create burnout for you.

SPEAKER_02 34:09

Well, that's 100%. It comes down to what you were just saying exactly. It's a quality of life issue. How are you going to go about your day? Are you going to focus on are you going to dwell on those negatives? Which I know that's everyone wants to do that intrinsically. That's kind of how we're wired. But you have to try to get out of that. Like you always hear people say, Oh, if I wasn't unlucky, I'd have no luck at all. Well, that's completely untrue. It's just you've focused on those few things that didn't go right.

SPEAKER_01 34:41

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 34:42

But if you're healthy and you have a family and everybody in your family is healthy, well, you're just you've just chosen not to focus on the fact that I that you are very rich in a different way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:55

It's like when you get your flat tire, you can either choose to change your tire and or call the the service that is on your insurance and it'll come out and change your tire for you.

SPEAKER_03 35:09

Or you can call your dad.

SPEAKER_04 35:11

Call your dad. I can't do that any longer because that's what I did for the first several, you know, for the first several decades of my life was called Dad. Um sadly, I think. Or you can choose to let all the air out of the other four tires. Why would you do that? Like if you let one bad moment ruin the day, that's exactly what you've done, is you've chosen not to change the tire. And sometimes I think we forget that all we have to do is change the tire. Like it's really not that big a deal.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Yeah. And, you know, Emma Emma can speak to this too, but we we tend to focus on the mistake instead of the success. And, you know, there's two things in here is, you know, we could, you know, it's it's and I'll I'll say this because it's easy. You know, Emma could go three for four with two doubles, a single, and three RBIs, and make one, and make, you know, seven plays in the field, and then there was that one ball, that one error, that one bobble that maybe it wasn't an error, but she could have. And and what do we focus on, right? It's easy to go and in her as a younger player, she would immediately go to that one defensive ball, right? That one defensive play. I did the same thing as a player, right? The reason that I know what that feels like is because that's what I did, right? And as as agency owners, we do that as well, right? We do not always look at the positives. The positives always outweigh the negatives, they they just really do. And probably to a really significant degree, but we just get overwhelmed with that one bad thing that happened, that one negative, that one lost account. Um the real the real example for me was over the last couple of years as we've gone through the hard market inflationary cycle that we went through, was you know, the reality of having an agent call and and be frustrated about losing an account, but ignore the fact that they wrote 10 new accounts that replace that one account that they lost, right? And they just get overwhelmed with the loss of that one, and they just don't even see the winning that's going over here, going on over here on the side.

SPEAKER_04 37:49

So is ring season for Emma. It was it was fun on uh our call this morning because she would kind of like do this with her left hand. Like, you know, I don't even think she realized she was doing it. That was Galen.

SPEAKER_03 38:04

You know, I was the whole time. Like, I was like, I don't know if she knows. I have no idea if dad said anything. Like I was like, I mean, I'm I'll tell her eventually, but I have no idea what she knows.

SPEAKER_04 38:16

But I'm like, okay, because I know what kind of jewelry she normally wears, and I'm like, I don't know. And then I'm like trying to figure out a pay well, is her is her screen flint? Because I know that happens sometimes. And so I was probably like after about 30 seconds of her hand flipping back and forth, I'm like, okay, tell me what's going on there. But um anyway, getting to ring season as a full-time college student, division one, powerful athlete, this took effort, right? It it does not, you know, getting engaged in that process that means that in the last several years, you made your personal life a priority. I see so many agents that are new agency owners prioritize professional over personal, and challenges start to happen. So I would love from your perspective to share what did it look like to build that successful relationship in doing what you were trying to do.

SPEAKER_03 39:33

Um, I mean, we are we were long, we are long distance, not we're long distance. So I think the biggest thing was I just was like, I'm gonna go play softball and we'll see what happens. Like I I never I had friends who let not just guys, but like things that didn't need to take over, take over. And it like I had witnessed that really hurt them. And I was like, yeah, that's I'm never gonna let that like I vividly was like, that's never gonna be me. I'm not gonna do that. And I left, I moved, and I was like, I'm gonna go play softball, and this is what's gonna happen, and I'm gonna pour everything into this program. And if he wants to understand that like softball is a bigger priority than him, then that's great. If he doesn't understand that, he's not gonna understand it. But like I think he kind of got that pretty quickly when like our first summer of dating, I was like never there because I was playing travel ball all the time. Um, but I don't know. I mean, me and Dad have kind of been talking about it. Like, I don't want to say this and make it sound like softball is my identity. It is not my identity whatsoever, but it is a big part of my life. And it's also like right now, I mean, it's only four years of my college career. I only have about two months left of it. So it's like I'm gonna give everything that I have to this because I kind of have the rest of my life to give whatever it is into that. Um, and so yeah, I mean, I was able to just have fun this whole time. And me and Dad have talked a lot about just being present. Like I, even though I mean, yeah, it's so exciting. I'm engaged, I know that next step of my life, but like I'm still like right here. Like I'm present and I'm still, I still have two months left to playing softball. Like I am dialed in on softball, and that is what we're focused on right now because it is personal to me. Like it is my prof it is my professional career, whatever you want to call it, but like it is also a personal thing in my life because it's like my my favorite thing to do. Like it is my passion, it's what I've done forever. Um, so I mean, yeah, I think they're both personal. Um, and but I mean the biggest thing was he understood that like softball was bigger, it was more of a priority than him, and he was okay with that. Um, and I think that was probably the biggest thing. I think dad could probably attest and agree to that. Um I never really told him that, but I think he kind of just figured it out and was like, okay, so softball is that's her thing. That's what she's focused on. And don't focus on me whenever that time comes. And I still 100% gave attention to him and whatever that needed to be. Um, but softball and my teammates were that was the biggest thing for me. So how did he support you? Um, I mean, one, he showed up to games when he could. He when we were playing in Texas, he was always there. He would always made an effort to come up here. I think, I think the biggest thing was like he knew that I couldn't go visit him. Like he knew that my time wasn't my own. I don't, I don't have a weekend where even in the fall, like I can't just go home on a Thursday um and go visit him. And he understood that from the get-go. Um, and I think that was one of the biggest reasons. And he was, he was always like, I'll make the sacrifice to come, um, to come visit. And um, he also just he didn't really, he did care about softball, but it wasn't like he cared so much about like, oh, my performance, what I'm doing, that's how I view Emma. Um, that was separate for him. Like, I was just Emma and I played softball, but it wasn't like Emma the softball player. And so I think that was a another big way he supported me with probably a reason he doesn't even realize he did, but he's always like separated me being a softball player versus just me being Emma.

SPEAKER_01 43:48

So I I think I would add just from another perspective, parenting perspective, looking to kind of fill in a few gaps there, like you know, both um Her fiance Boston and Emma. You know, they didn't start they started dating at the very end of high school, and they made a they made an intentional choice that, okay, I'm gonna go my college experience, you're gonna go your college experience, and um they're gonna be 12 hours apart, and we're going to do do those things. And um, you know, I think I think young young people today, that's that's a lot. Like, that's a big deal. Like a lot of a lot of individuals um, you know, in the college realm um can't do that. Like they they they can't go down that path. They're either like, you know, getting into things that I see as parents, you know, they're other other situations with other parents that they've dealt with, like, you know, you get possessiveness, you get um control, you get all these things that go into the dating scene and um the uh the relationship scene. And I know Emma uh is a big believer in intentional dating, right? Like dating to just date is not really something that she was into. She kind of got um some of the people that she listens to uh from you know, from a Christian perspective talk. There's a big movement, been a big movement for a while now around intentional dating. Um and just this this reality around that, I think was also front and center within their relationship is hey, there's a there's a long-term path here. Otherwise, what are we doing? Right? Like what? What's this about? Like we and so, you know, kudos to uh both of them for their ability to do that. And for Boston, um he probably doesn't know his his name's getting thrown around on a podcast this morning, an insurance podcast this morning. So um, you know, he's got his own passions, right? And his own pursuits. And um, I think they've very maturely managed that. And I was a college athlete. Uh my wife Julie was not. And so there's a lot of parallels here where I was very passionate about baseball, very much like Emma was passionate about softball. And Julie was very similar in the way that she handled what we did and in our relationship in college, and we dated through three years of college. Um, and so there's a lot of parallels here uh between my view as a parent and my view when I was um actually the one that was getting engaged. You know, I got engaged my senior year, spring in season. Um it didn't change my passion for the game. And I promise you, if there would have been a Major League Baseball team called me in June after I graduated and said, hey, we want you to come play Pro Bowl, I would have gone. And Julie would have said, go, get after it. And you know, the reality of it is is that when you're young, um, you're in a season of life where you've got to do those things or you'll never do them. Like if you don't do those things now, when you're at that stage of life, you can't, this whole idea of I'll do those later never happens. Later never happens most of the time. Especially things like college experience. Um, I hold had an older daughter, uh, the oldest daughter went to Spain for a year and taught and and and just had an incredible experience. And you know, she wouldn't, she's not gonna do that when she's married and has a family, right? It's just not in our nature, it's not where our responsibility falls. And so um we were very encouraging that they they have their experiences, right? That they they go do their things, um, and they've handled it very well, and uh they continue to handle it very well.

SPEAKER_02 48:32

So what was interesting to me in listening to Emma talk was it just brought me to this to this spot hearing the passion about the softball itself, how committed you were to that. There's a commercial up here in in the New York area. It's actually in all of New York, and it talks about high school sports and how people who play high school sports are far more likely to be the CEOs and presidents and have high positions within companies because of the structure and the dedication to what they're doing. So I think that was super impressive to me. And I would say for anyone that's listening to this, who maybe has kids who are getting into that high school area, really push them to get involved and stay in sports. Because, like for me personally, a regret I have is I, you know, I coach baseball now, but I stopped playing my junior year because I had other interests, and I always regret that. I don't really know why I did. I mean, I know why I did that and it was stupid, but I should have stuck with it and seen what you know what I could have done, but I didn't because I wanted to pursue other things that were nonsense, right?

SPEAKER_01 49:52

Yeah, right, yeah, and I you know I think we've lost touch of, I mean, here we are talking to a Big 12 softball player, and I know, right, that's a big deal. And we lose perspective though of sports in general or activities in general, uh competition, um, you know, because whether it's dance or or choir, um, you know, or uh an individual sport, um, you know, golf, um, track and field, whatever, things that are not just team oriented, like there's just so much that you learn as a young athlete that you get to implement for the rest of your life. And whatever that is, and I I think we've lost perspective in society, and I that's just my personal opinion on that. Um, that the goal is to play at you know an elite power four, used to be power five institution on scholarship and be an all-American, right? And it's like, what are we doing? Like, um, I know that my wife shared a uh you've you guys have probably seen it, the statistics about the chance your chances of playing at a certain level, at a certain size uh school of certain sports, and it lays out there. And I think I think Division I softball, it's like two percent or less than two percent of the athletes. Um I'm looking at yeah, you're looking at okay, uh, get a chance to play at that level. Um different sports are different percentages, but none of them are over about five percent, honestly. Like most of them are are under five percent, some of them are one percent. Um playing at the high school level is important, like it's an important thing, whatever your thing is, like whatever your kids do, whatever they're into, banned, like continuing that through high school to me, I think is really important. Now, whether they play in college or not is not the point. You know, I have one daughter who didn't and one daughter who did, and both are very successful human beings. Like they're very my my oldest is extremely successful as an educator, um, as a you know, teacher. She's very good at her job. She and a lot of that started at a young age, shaping her playing competitive sports as well. And um, you know, uh we we kid her a lot about she's gonna be a boy mom, and she's the girliest girl you've ever met. And so um, she's definitely gonna be a boy mom, and and we mess with her about that. And I'm telling you, she's gonna be a tough mom. Like, she's gonna be like, hey, you know, get up and quit your pouting. Like, I just know what type of mom she's gonna be. And she's not, she didn't play it in the Big 12, right? Like, that's not the point. We get lost on what the point is.

unknown 53:14

Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_04 53:18

Right? Those those daily habits, discipline, compounds, and and when you figure out that the little things really are the big things, that's what we forget. When I talk with people and they and they they tell me about these goals they have for themselves, or or or personally, when I'm working toward goals, and I'm like, okay, that's that's fantastic. Well, if I don't make a plan, then those goals are dreams, right? It's something I would love to do. It's kind of like I I I have a goal that I'm gonna run a 5K. You know, Emma's talking about running a half marathon. I want to run a 5K, but it's been on my goals for like seven years now to run a 5K. Well, obviously, this isn't a real goal for me. It's a dream, I want to do it, but if it was a real goal, I would make a plan. Yeah. And I don't do the daily habit thing I need to do every day because Shane's never told me to go stick it in Gemini and that uh it's gonna make me a plan to do it.

SPEAKER_01 54:23

It'll tell you what to do. It'll tell you.

SPEAKER_04 54:27

Yes, it will. Um but but if you don't make a plan with those goals, creating those daily habits, weekly habits, those big things that you want are not gonna happen, right? And you have to take the time and give yourself a little bit of occasional hype, a little bit, that you're hitting those little things. Because if you don't notice, then you're not gonna have the momentum to hit those big things. Unless you're Shane Tatum.

SPEAKER_01 55:06

Yeah. You you still gotta have the goals, you gotta have the plan. And and I'll, you know, like Emma, she can I'll I want her to speak to this. Like I think, like, okay, playing at the SC in the SEC or the Big 12, Big Ten, like it's really, really hard. Like, it's physically hard, it's mentally hard and challenging. You know what's not hard? The plan. Because you don't own your time. The plan is put in front of you. This is what you're going to do. Tell me, tell us what is that? Do you agree with that or disagree with that, Emma?

SPEAKER_03 55:45

Well, I agree with that. I mean, like, I yeah, I don't make the plan. I don't make the structure. Like when we're on the road, I don't decide when we go work out, I don't decide what food we get. Like, it's kind of just out there, but the thing is, is it's like, okay, we're just gonna go do this. Like, it doesn't really take a lot of like thinking to just go do it because it's kind of just sometimes it does feel a little robotic because it's like this is just all that we do. But I mean, when we have a home series, it's like, all right, we we start at we play at five o'clock. We're probably gonna get to the field at like 11, which sounds crazy. But I saw a podcast the other day and it was uh Kevin Durant talking to Aaron Judge about the different times they got to the court in the field. And Aaron was like, yeah, for like a 7 p.m. game, we get to the field at 8 a.m. And uh Kevin Durant was like, What? I came up an hour before. Like just the difference in like the sports, but like, which is why I think I'm biased about softball or baseball, is like the preparation it takes. Um, but it's not my own time. I mean, like I've I haven't been on my own time for the past four years, and that's kind of the sacrifice it takes, but I don't know, I wouldn't want it any other way. I think it just kind of is what it is. And the hardest part is just executing the plan because the plan's right in front of you. So the hardest part is like, you're you're given this plan by all these people, and the people who make up the plan don't get to do any of the execution. They're just like, all right, now it's your turn to like see if the plan actually works. We're like reading a hitting chart, and it's like, all right, we're gonna we're taken until we get a strike, or we're only hitting this pitch, and we're being told all these things, and then it's like, all right, well, pressure is up to us to see if we can actually do it.

SPEAKER_04 57:44

So, what will the transition be like for you to go from this buried structured, this is your plan every single day, to creating that plan to do the things that you want to accomplish. Because I see that as being probably the most difficult part of starting an agency is you've had somebody telling you what to do in some way, form, or fashion as an employee, right? As a producer, you've got somebody telling you what management system to use, what time you have to be at work, all of these things that you don't even realize that you're being told to do working for somebody else, right? And now all of a sudden you own a business and you've got to do 940s and 941s, and there's all of these things that you don't really even think about. You just know that you are really great at blue screening and your own business. So, what are you thinking about now as you transition from where you are to creating your own play?

SPEAKER_03 58:52

I mean, honestly, I think it goes back to what we all were just talking about with like high school sports. Like, because I played sports my entire life, I know that when I'm on time, I'm late. Like I know that I am gonna show up 30 minutes before something because it's just it's just who I am. It's literally ingrained in me. Um, I think that is where like the discipline comes in. Um, I've learned that I like living on a structure. And because I when we have our off days and we don't have a plan, like I don't know what to do. I'm like, okay, like I have to motivate myself. I have to be like, okay, I'm gonna do this at this time. And I have to think about that the day before because no one is telling me you have to do anything. Um, but if I want to have a productive day and get stuff done, then like I have to initially do that. So I think it's just, I mean, it's the discipline. It's like the structure of what I've been doing my entire life. And now I don't have anyone telling me to do it, but I still have to do it. Um, and that, I mean, looking back, that started like before high school, since I played sports before that. But like I'm thinking about when I started like having my own accountability to do things, like that started in high school when it was like, well, you have to show up on time, you have to make sure you get everything done, you have to eat right, like just all these little things that now are kind of taken care for me in college. I think as hard of a transition that it might be will still be good and easier because I've learned how beneficial it is to live on a structure and to have discipline.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:40

I love what you just said, Emma, that you make the decision the night before. That to me is so incredibly relevant as a business owner. Yeah. Uh it if you wake up on the day and you don't have that plan for the next day, you're gonna play defense all day long. Um, I was driving home from the dance studio last night about 10 o'clock, and I was exhausted. And everything in me wanted to send a note to my trainer and say, hey, look, I'm not gonna make it anymore. Like, I'm not gonna be there at six o'clock and I'm not gonna like gonna have I'm tired. And and I was like, but what is that telling myself? Like, you know, I had this little internal dialogue thing going on, and I'm like, you know, it's not about motivation, it's about just like I'm gonna do it anyway. To quote the to quote the the the great Tom Brady, do it anyway, right? Um had to had to had to do it there, but but yes, I mean that's one of the the gifts that you have is that concept of I'm gonna make the decision tonight or do it anyway. And I I really think that that's key.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:54

So I'll do the shameless plug, because usually you do it time and so I'll do it this time. So if you're someone out there who knows they can do the work, but maybe you're a little bit worried about the structure, getting the structure right to make sure you're successful, that is something we can absolutely help you with here at Integra. So if that was a spot where you felt you were a little deficient in, you know, get with us and we can certainly help you with the plan.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:25

Or if you know exactly what you're doing, that's the that's the great thing about our structure is if you've got your plan ready, we're gonna let you do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:36

Yeah, I think that's the biggest and hardest thing for um creating agency ownership, whether you are experienced uh producer, insurance experience, or whether you are just a sales professional that um is new to insurance, is just you want to own own your own business. I mean, I do believe that the the individuals that come to us, they're passionate about wanting that. They want the freedom, they want the flexibility of the time that it can give them. Uh they don't want to miss ball games, they don't want to miss uh dance recitals, um, they don't want to be told that they can't take that day, take that afternoon to do those things. You know what happens though is in order to get that freedom, there has to be a ton of discipline poured into it, right? Because you have to now create your own structure. And um, it's very the reason one of the reasons I and I'm so glad Emma went that way, but one of the reasons I wanted her to kind of share her experiences with structure is because we talk a lot about the difference between the exclusive agent channel and the independent agent channel. And, you know, the exclusive agent channel is kind of like that college athlete that has their world somewhat dictated for them. Their structure is provided to them. Uh, the independent agency world, uh, tons of freedom. Create your own brand. I am obviously a biased advocate for the independent agency system. I believe it's the best business in the world. Um, I've said that over and over again, and it's my hill to die on. And at the same time, what you have to know and understand is that you have to be willing to put in that discipline to create that structure for yourself, just like Emma's talking about post-college, right? What will that look like? Here's the really awesome part. It may feel scary, but you already know what to do. Like Emma already knows what to do. Um, she's been trained what to do, and she's going to enter uh post-college life, and she's going to have that discipline to do that. And, you know, there's going to be times where she fails, it doesn't work, she doesn't bring the discipline to the table, and she's going to hate it. Like, and it's going to drive her crazy, and she's going to make a really quick adjustment to get right back into the discipline uh environment so that she can move forward. Because once you have that structure in your life, you just don't like it when it's unstructured.

unknown 1:05:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:29

I literally have thought so many times, like with Tanya, you saying you didn't want to go work out. Like, obviously, I can't choose. Like, I can't just not show up to weight. That would be crazy. But like if I like when I go work out or do something on my own, like when we have an off day, I I have grown to love actually still going to the field and just like going by myself. And there have been days where I'm like, I could just go home. And I think the difference is it's like, Or I could go work, go, go hit some teas, go get better, and then I can go home. Like I'm still gonna get to go home and relax and do nothing. But like I think the difference is like I I love like that competitiveness in my own head of like oh, like I'm gonna do it anyways because I know how I'm gonna feel after and I feel so much better.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:23

Okay, I just want to point out that Emma just quoted Tom Brady to you. I'm gonna leave us today. I'm gonna leave us today with this quote from Roger Federer. Confidence comes from preparation, period.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:46

Attitude to choice. Make a great one.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:48

Bye, y'all. At the Integra Partner Network, we understand that carrier access is the key to your agency's success. That's why Integra offers direct access to top-rated personal and commercial carriers, ensuring your agency thrives in today's challenging market. And with our comprehensive resources, profit sharing, and bonus opportunities, technology and peer support, all where you retain 100% of your book with no penalties to exit. Integra is ready to empower you and your agency to find sustained growth. Find your way to Integra. Visit IntegraPartner Network.com today. That's IntegraPartner Network.com.