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Perry Lunsford: Love And Awesomeness
11 Plays1 month ago
Perry Lunsford is a people person, committed to the health, wellness, and happiness of others. His career has been all about putting love and awesomeness into the world, building and supporting great teams along the way. Perry and Curtis delve into how to attract and retain top talent by setting realistic expectations, leading authentically, learning from failure, and being human. Of course, they also discuss compensation (including benefits such as health insurance) as they discuss how employers can get it right when it comes to their people.
About Perry:
Seven years ago, Perry Lunsford changed the way health insurance is sold in America. Today, he and his team at The Healthy Insurance Dude have a goal to FIX the way health insurance is sold in the United States.
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Transcript
Introduction to Perry Lunsford
00:00:06
Speaker
Hey everyone, welcome to Mustard Hub Voices Behind the Build, where we talk with people building, backing, and running better workplaces. I'm your host, Curtis Forbes.
00:00:17
Speaker
Today's guest is Perry Lunsford, the healthy insurance dude. Seven years ago, Perry changed the way health insurance is sold in America.
00:00:29
Speaker
Today, he and his team at the Healthy Insurance Dude have a goal to fix the way health insurance is sold in the United States.
00:00:40
Speaker
He has a lot of fantastic insights, so I'm thrilled to have him here. Welcome to Voices Behind the Build, Perry. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I'm excited. Yeah,
Perry's Car Collection Hobby
00:00:50
Speaker
you bet. So before we jump in, you are a car collector.
00:00:55
Speaker
I am. Yeah. i the bit the The problem is really my wife's fault. um She doesn't tell me no very often. so That is a problem.
00:01:06
Speaker
Yeah. We've got like 20 something cars. Oh, man. Okay. if If we had only five minutes together and I was driving by, h which one do you want to stop and show me?
00:01:20
Speaker
A mint condition, 68 GT500 Shelby Mustang. So like ah like the real Eleanor, not the all the body kit stuff. But like absolutely, I only drive it once a year.
00:01:35
Speaker
Like every nut and bolt looks like it did when it came off the showroom floor. It is absolutely stunning and perfect. um And I do. ah I can tell you if I was driving by and had those five minutes, those five minutes might turn into a couple of hours because I think we might have to go take that one for a spin. We would happily do so.
Journey to Health Insurance
00:01:57
Speaker
So you are passionate about something a lot of people loathe, right? To talk about health and life insurance. So yeah where did this interest come from? It came from an accident.
00:02:11
Speaker
um So I used to own, I've been a serial entrepreneur my whole life. The last business I owned, I owned four fitness centers. ah Yeah, we it started with one. I took one over for free that was going under. And it took me a couple of years to turn it around and then finally got it turned around, bought another one, built another one, built another one.
00:02:35
Speaker
And we were doing really good. It's a very difficult industry. I mean, yeah you spend a couple million dollars to open a gym and you're begging people for $30 a month, right?
00:02:46
Speaker
um And then, so but to make a long story short, we were doing well. We were enjoying it. We were growing. And then the Planet Fitness model came out and essentially moved in next door to every single gym we had.
00:03:00
Speaker
And we went from having a great time, making a really decent living ah to I hadn't been paid in a year and a half, two years. My wife hadn't been paid in a year. We were $350,000 in debt and had, you know, and just we were able to sell two of them and lost two of them.
00:03:20
Speaker
And um it was devastating. And then i you know, I'm, um let's see, at that time I'm 43 years old. i've never had I was in the Air Force for 10 years, but ive I've never had a real job.
00:03:36
Speaker
i thought I had a beautiful resume. Nobody else agreed. i put my rent i was like, I got to get a job. so And the only thing I could come up with that anyone would even think of hiring me in was sales. So I put my resume out there and nobody called.
00:03:49
Speaker
um And then my cousin was in life insurance up in Kansas. And I called him and he helped me find somebody. And found a mentor and then that was seven years ago.
00:04:02
Speaker
And I walked in and they were just, you know, cold calling people all day. And I was like, that's that's crazy. Like, it's crazy not 1975 anymore. Like there's better ways to do this.
00:04:17
Speaker
So essentially um I've always really loved and enjoyed marketing. And, ah you know, and that's how we built our gyms was on marketing. At the end of the day, I'm a marketer pretending to be a salesperson, not a salesperson pretending to be a marketer.
00:04:30
Speaker
And so, you know, when we were in the gym industry, we never had insurance. I'd never had insurance in my life until I came here and I kept trying to get it. And then I would see how much it is or I would figure out that it was junk or somebody was trying to, you know, give me the shenanigans.
00:04:44
Speaker
And I just I kind of fell in love with it because it's something that no one understands. Everybody needs. And I just started marketing like crazy and very quickly became, the far as I know, the top health insurance agent in the country.
Rebranding to 'Healthy Insurance Dude'
00:05:02
Speaker
So you mentioned mentioned seven years ago, health insurance dude launched in 2018, right? ah Yes, sir. 2018. why you're in first twenty eighteen June 4th. Okay. So we're we're coming up but and up on the day.
00:05:15
Speaker
so so here Why did you pick the name? Where did that come from? The truth is i was embarrassed. i had spent, you know I don't know, eight, 10 years trying to convince people that when you think of but Perry Lunsford, you need to think, or when you think of fit health and fitness, you need to think of Perry Lunsford.
00:05:35
Speaker
And then i was so humiliated with losing that. I'm like trying to crowbar in, oh it's the same thing. um yeah it was my ego. It was like, well, you know, and so I started with. um Yeah, so it was it was embarrassment, actually, is what got me this embarrassing name.
00:05:59
Speaker
And so, you know, you had mentioned that you started, work you you learned a little bit of the business from a mentor. What kind of inspired you to to go into it by yourself, going to business
Innovative Insurance Approach
00:06:12
Speaker
for yourself?
00:06:12
Speaker
Well, I mean, you know, at the beginning you said that you know, originally I wanted to change the way health insurance was sold. And, and that was going, trying to get people to stop bothering people all the time. And, and, and let me teach a way where people will reach out to you instead of you just harassing people.
00:06:30
Speaker
Right. And, and we accomplished that, but you know, for the most part, most of the time in the insurance business, everyone is alone. You might have somebody teach you the basics, which is what I had. I had somebody teach me the basics, right? This is a deductible. This is how the ACA works. This is how, you know, and so so I so i so basically spent two weeks in a class learning everything there was to know at the time about health insurance, everything that they had to share.
00:07:01
Speaker
um And then where the real knowledge came from was you know, I figured out how to have conversations with dozens and dozens of people a day. And so it doesn't take long when you're actually helping people come at you, you, and, and you speak to as many people as I did.
00:07:17
Speaker
And then you end up having a network of other people that can help clients that you can't. And so through all that, we accidentally became really high end experts at it.
00:07:30
Speaker
Um, And, but so in, in the insurance business, for the most part, you're going at it alone. Yeah. Which is one of the things we're trying to change now. um You know, our goal here is, is to be the USAA of health insurance.
00:07:46
Speaker
Because like right now, Curtis, if you need car insurance, you know exactly who to call, right? If you need homeowners insurance, you I call one of these four or five people. um But if you need health insurance,
00:07:58
Speaker
No idea. You have no idea. And so, you know i think we probably got eight, probably 9 million in marketing so far over the last seven years, at least. um And so our name is is pretty out there.
00:08:12
Speaker
Yeah. But our goal is to be that, right? And so it's not just Perry. You know, right now we have a team of, you know, 12 people. um But our goal is to just, is to be the USAA of health insurance.
Challenges with Client Insurance Issues
00:08:26
Speaker
So as a business owner, now you're helping small you're helping other small business owners and independent contractors. Tell me more about the kind of clients that you work with.
00:08:41
Speaker
What are things they all have in common?
00:08:45
Speaker
Well, we work with a lot of people. my My favorite clients are entrepreneurs, right? Small business owners, 1099 contractors. But that's just projecting on them because that's what I am. Those are the people that like me. ah you know people who Most people, the only thing they know about insurance is what they was what their HR department told them they needed to know.
00:09:04
Speaker
that That's right. you know You understand insurance better than everybody else out there because you understand HR. But anyone who doesn't have an HR department doesn't understand anything.
00:09:15
Speaker
And so um our clients are pretty much anyone who feels like they're getting the shaft on their health insurance. you find that that's mostly individual or do you find that it's small business owners with teams of people who can't afford to carry group plans?
00:09:34
Speaker
The answer is both. So even if you have a group plan, you're probably overpaying for it. So we helped, we were on the phone right before you came, before we jumped on this podcast and and we helped a ah ah team of 40 people save it was $60,000 a year.
00:09:58
Speaker
Whoa. Right? We moved them from one Blue Cross plan to another Blue Cross plan. We saved them $60,000 a year. So that was a team of 40 people. Now our bread and butter is the individual, right? Like that's, we help more, we help that more frequently. Right.
00:10:16
Speaker
But those small business owners, whether from one person to 50, those are the people that are really getting the shaft in America. And everyone you talk to has an agenda, which is like our team, they're salaried employees.
00:10:33
Speaker
So they don't care what you get. They just want to make sure that you get what
Entrepreneurial Challenges
00:10:37
Speaker
you need. Yeah. In whatever direction that is. the Are there any... ah Common issues or or specific problems you see for the small businesses when it comes to offering insurances for their teams or even like, you know, I'm thinking about, you know, sort of as an as an aggregate, right? All these small businesses and I know how challenging that, you know, I i had owned some some small businesses and I understand
00:11:05
Speaker
the challenges from trying to even secure, ah secure it for for myself, let alone for my team. Right. I'm just kind of curious if you see specific things that, uh, are some of the biggest problems that they have. Is it the cost? Is it the, uh, adverse selection, which probably could use an explanation here for, for a lot of folks? Is it the hefty minimums? I mean, what do you see?
00:11:27
Speaker
i I think the biggest problem is the agent that helps them. Um, Yeah, I mean, you know human nature is that we are always protecting our ego, right?
00:11:38
Speaker
And then we all have that tribe mentality. And so what I have is right and what what you, everyone else is wrong. So instead of taking the time and effort to understand every aspect of everything, people take what they've been taught, yeah decided it's right,
00:12:03
Speaker
and and refuse to learn more. Does that make sense? And so essentially you're goingnna end up getting the product, ah not that is necessarily right for you and not even that's necessarily right for the agent, but you're gonna get the product that the agent has ah bothered to learn about.
00:12:23
Speaker
Right, right. that's um That's the biggest problem. And i I feel like that by itself is like, if we take away anything from this conversation, um i mean, ego can get in the way of- It's the worst thing in the world.
00:12:40
Speaker
In fact, you know easing into some some more people topics, um I mean- Tell me, what are some things that you see um as issues for for these entrepreneurs, specifically when it comes to, you know, kind of what we at Mustard Hub commonly refer to as is people problems? I'm curious through the lens of like what you do,
00:13:04
Speaker
um do you what are some things that you see these entrepreneurs dealing with, you know, in this in the world of of people? like um So we're out, we're leaving health insurance and we're just having a conversation about being an entrepreneur and problems with people.
Importance of Employee Benefits
00:13:22
Speaker
Yeah. And I think to some degree, I think that there can be some connectivity, right? When it comes to some of their benefits and how they're taken care of and things like that, right? But you talk to so many different people from so many different places that do so many different types of things, right? What connects them all is that they are,
00:13:43
Speaker
entrepreneurs. They're either in business or they're leading teams. The only friends I have are our entrepreneurs for the most part. um Like even if you work with my company, we we try my goal isn't that you're going to work with me forever. My goal is that I'm going to teach you how to be an entrepreneur and then hopefully you leave me.
00:14:01
Speaker
And then hopefully you leave me And I get to be an investor in your company and we get to stay together. Right. um But, you know, as someone that has so many conversations with entrepreneurs um and someone that has made so many mistakes, I'm a giant failure in life, Curtis. Huge. um um I'm wrong all the time.
00:14:22
Speaker
That's also what usually makes the most successful people. So we'll just take that with grain of salt. I'm good with it. um I think where people, where most entrepreneur or where most business owners fail is in their hiring process.
00:14:37
Speaker
o they They do not match personality types with the job. They try to hire people that they like. ah They don't train them well enough. And then then they don't empower them to take control of their job.
00:14:55
Speaker
And a lot of, ah in my experience, um those same entrepreneurs, you know, they, they got where they were because they're, because they, they have no problem working 14 hours a day, six and a half days a week.
00:15:06
Speaker
Right. And then when they don't see that happening from their staff that they hired, they start doing it themselves. And then instead of calling BS, the second you see BS, they allow it to build.
00:15:21
Speaker
And then you end up with you end up with these giant teams of inept people um that were either A, should have never been hired in the first place, or B, if they were the right person for the job, were never given the training or or allowed the freedom to become great at what they do.
00:15:41
Speaker
And and like if I'm looking out and and I think of all the conversations I have with entrepreneurs, both my friends and my clients, and just having conversations, that's the That's the biggest problem entrepreneurs have.
00:15:55
Speaker
And then they can't figure out why why they can never step back and stop working so many hours.
High Turnover Rates Impact
00:16:01
Speaker
yeah And it's because they never allowed that situation to unfold.
00:16:08
Speaker
Do you feel, i just, I do want to tie this back to, you know, circling back to to insurance and and whatnot, but offering, let's say we find things those people that that do that do execute well, um how offering kinds of benefits, traditional or not traditional perks or whatever,
00:16:36
Speaker
you know how it allows them to actually keep these great fit types of folks on board. I mean, do you it does is that something you hear a lot and see a lot is that this plays a huge significant role?
00:16:49
Speaker
It does. It does. like So, so I just, I have, we have our marketing meeting cause I own a marketing agency, uh, every, every Wednesday. And so if I, if I sit back in this room and I'm the dumbest person in the room by light years, right? I mean, I have, um, I have a PhD, two people with master's degrees, every, every people from AS one, two, there, my marketing team is from six different countries.
00:17:18
Speaker
Um, I'm the only one who only speaks English just about. Except for the British girl. And that's a different kind of English. And so my theory is I take I take a long time to hire them and then I overpay them.
00:17:32
Speaker
I give them I pay for all of their insurance and I just give them and then empower them to be able to not only do their job. but Like, why would I hire them if they weren't better than me in the first place?
00:17:44
Speaker
Why would you hire somebody who's not better than you? unless you're taking a young person and growing them into something. But you know for for the marketing agency, you know I'm good, but if I'm better than you, why why would I hire you? So I need these people. Them staying is more important to me than it is to them.
00:18:02
Speaker
right So we're going to give them whatever the heck they want. And you know some of them want some of them want the money up front. Some of them want a 401k. And I go, hey, listen, that's a lot of work on my side. I'm happy to do that for you.
00:18:16
Speaker
Or I can just give you the extra money and you can do that on your own. Right. And here's your, and here's your health insurance. And you know, it's what we do here. So I'm going to make sure you have the very best so that if you do have, you do get pregnant, you're only 1200 bucks out of pocket or something crazy like that.
00:18:33
Speaker
Ferry, you said, um I really want to, i I'm trying to remember what it is now because I thought it was brilliant and probably needs to be put on a meme somewhere. Keeping them is more important to me than it is them.
Effective Leadership Qualities
00:18:50
Speaker
i don't know if that was, I don't know if that was you freestyling, but it was me freestyling, but yeah, it is. It is so like, to me, that nails so much of today's like sort of workforce you problems, right? Because you see turnover is at a historical high, the way people leave organizations, right? The new generation of workers wants to feel more connected or or tied to things when they feel that they're not adding value, you know, when it comes to their own personal mission, right?
00:19:27
Speaker
that you know that they that they jump ship. And small businesses, SMBs, they're disproportionately affected by this this this turnover epidemic. you know We'll call it that. It has been since the the great resignation years ago.
00:19:42
Speaker
um And what you said just like perfectly encapsulates, I think, what it means to be the small business owner. I've never really heard it articulated like that. So first of all- I've never articulated it like that.
00:19:57
Speaker
but Let me ask you this. So it's also easy to have blind spots with your staff as a small business owner, right? You wear many hats and and sometimes you can miss something important while you're changing all those hats out, right?
00:20:12
Speaker
do you Do you see any of these as you work with clients or potential clients such as like not giving workers the things they really need to be satisfied, not taking the steps to build the culture or incorrectly using tech or tools to make their teams lives that make them harder instead of easier? Do you see these things? Do you offer that kind of feedback and insight to your clients?
00:20:37
Speaker
I mean, i would happily do so. But when I get on the phone with someone about health insurance, I work really hard to solve the problem that that they want help on.
00:20:48
Speaker
Yeah. And I'll tell you, not very many people call me about health insurance and say, hey, I got this problem. Right. Right. They keep leaving. ah And so I, you know, I'm at the end of the day, I'm a salesman.
00:21:03
Speaker
Yeah. And um one of the things I learned a long time ago is that unless I'm having a podcast, most of the time the client doesn't care about me at all.
00:21:15
Speaker
and And I'm perfectly content with that. Now that said, again, the only people that ah the only friends I have in life are entrepreneurs, siblings or coworkers.
00:21:27
Speaker
Right. Those are the only people I work with. And so at those those entrepreneur tables that I cherish sitting at that, those are the conversations that we have all day. So like us here, we do not there.
00:21:39
Speaker
We don't have turnover. Right. so We, you and I spoke a while back and and essentially six months ago, I dismantled my company.
00:21:51
Speaker
and put it back together because I didn't like, I didn't like the direction that it was going. I didn't have enough control over the agents. I didn't have enough control over the client experience. And, and, you know, listen, we have 1100 five-star reviews on Google. I think we're pushing a thousand five-star regroup reviews on, on Facebook.
00:22:11
Speaker
The client is still getting their experience, but as, as you know, I don't, if I don't have total control over that, if I don't have every single phone call recorded, how am I going to make the the client's life better?
00:22:26
Speaker
And then the fact is I can't even make the, the, the, my coworkers life better because if I'm not able to listen in on every single call and go, ah, you want your life to be better. You want to make more money. You want to be happier. You want to buy your wife that new house here, here, and here is where you messed up here, here, and here is where you did great.
00:22:45
Speaker
Let's, let's merge those two things. Um, but even the, even what, when I re dismantled and rebuilt my company, half the people in here have been with me since we started, since I started growing five and a half years ago.
00:23:00
Speaker
Yeah. And those are people that are, that have really bought into what you stand for. You're wise, so to speak. Yeah. as I don't like using, I don't like, I don't like, I'm not a fan of, like I can't stand the word employee.
00:23:13
Speaker
um ah Legally, it's a fine word, but I call it their coworkers. I can't stand when people say somebody works for me. Like how belittling. Hi, this is Curtis. He works for me.
00:23:24
Speaker
No, he doesn't. yeah He works for a mortgage. He works for his wife. He works for his family. He works for a his husband. He works for ah for a car payment. He don't work for you. Right, right.
00:23:36
Speaker
He works with me. Yeah, I love that. I love that. So when you see when you see a business that is absolutely nailing it when it comes to their workforce, what are what do you think sets them apart from those who are fumbling you know things with their their employees or contractors, those that they work with? What are these leaders doing that make it all work?
00:24:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's exactly what it is. it's The person at the top is the person at the bottom.
00:24:08
Speaker
Right? So that's another one. like We got, we got to quote that.
00:24:14
Speaker
um Have you ever been to a ah Walmart and you walk in, everything's clean. It doesn't happen very often. Everything's clean. Everybody's kind. Everybody's amazing. Right? Any company you walk into and, and you're like, what the heck is going on here?
00:24:29
Speaker
Why is this in a, what, what makes this, um, an outlier? And then you meet the guy at the top and that is who he is.
00:24:42
Speaker
Right. So you take that same guy that's, yeah you know, might be at the beginning stages of his ladder. And put him at a different Walmart. And you're going to get a totally different experience out of that guy.
00:24:56
Speaker
The guy at the top is the guy at the bottom. The guy at the bottom is the guy at the top.
Tracking Business Success
00:25:00
Speaker
you know, if the guy at the top is walking in every morning and starting his morning by walking through and shaking every single, like you know, if you have 500 employees, that's difficult to do.
00:25:09
Speaker
But if the guy at the top is walking in and shaking every single person in their company's hands and that's how they start every single day, then that's how the people at this at the beginning of their ladder are going to start start the process with the client.
00:25:26
Speaker
You know, yeah yeah among these these resilient, high-performing businesses, right, that that that you've encountered, the ones that you admire, the ones that you you know see that kind of exhibit this, besides that leader, which, by the way, again, quoting, going to quote you on that last one, but what shared cultural or sort of behavioral traits do you think stands out, you know, organization-wise?
00:25:56
Speaker
ah Well, ah I'll try to answer that with with an issue that that that we were working through this morning. um And that is, you know, people are human and humans are dumb, including myself, and humans make mistakes.
00:26:16
Speaker
And, you know, people have, they go up and then they come down and it's emotional, it's ego, it's it's it's all kinds of things, especially all in any business.
00:26:28
Speaker
And like we talked about a minute ago, like replacing someone, there's nothing more expensive than replacing someone. So even if them staying was is more important to me than it is them, if for no other reason,
00:26:44
Speaker
than cost. You know, listen, if you, if you have a bad, if you, you hired the wrong person and you have a liar and a narcissist and a thief, okay, well, right. But those are, those are obvious.
00:26:56
Speaker
Yeah. Notwithstanding those things, notwithstanding those things, you know, I have, I have a, I have a person that isn't performing to the level that I'd like to see them perform at.
00:27:09
Speaker
yeah and And one of my managers was like, so we need do I go you know beat him with a stick? And I'm like, I know you're joking. yeah um And I get that that's just a ah way we say things. But just so we're on the same page,
00:27:27
Speaker
you can you can say, you know if we don't achieve this, then this is what's going to happen. But if I don't tell you how what you're doing wrong to achieve this, then...
00:27:39
Speaker
This is 100% going to happen. I can't go to someone and go, you're not doing a good enough job. Do better. What does that mean? Yeah. How is it defined exactly? Like, you know, I can go to and go, you're not doing a good enough job.
00:27:52
Speaker
I care about you. You were doing a good enough job here. We've listened to all those calls. We've listened to all these calls. And here's the things that you were doing wrong then. And if we can make that better and here here's the things you're doing wrong now, if we can make that better, now we're now we're way up here.
00:28:09
Speaker
But if you don't, if you're not bringing the resolution to the table, well, you're just kind of a jerk, right? Like you're you're not. suppose so. What good is you're not correcting someone if you're telling them what they're doing wrong and not giving them the correction.
00:28:28
Speaker
Right, the tools to improve. Exactly. Because most people, at least most people that I work with, they're not going to do a bad job on purpose. Right. It doesn't mean people don't get lazy and yeah start cutting out early and showing up a little late. And you go hey, bro, let's nip this off right now.
00:28:47
Speaker
We don't play that game here. You know that. Okay, you're right, P. I appreciate it. But it's it's it's about... Most of the time, yeah yeah you know, the honey and vinegar.
00:29:01
Speaker
It's like, here's some honey. Here's some vinegar. And here's how we turn the vinegar back into honey. Let's go. yeah You know, you... You've talked about, maybe in a little bit of a roundabout way, but talking about things like trust and alignment, you know that that buy-in across across the workforce.
00:29:19
Speaker
How do you measure things? Literally, like how do you measure things like trust and like that buy-in, that culture, cetera? Are you seeing your clients leveraging any helpful technology for this? Do you? I'm kind of curious. How do you benchmark things and then how do you measure it?
00:29:38
Speaker
So I would say we measure everything we can think of.
00:29:45
Speaker
um Everything from close rating to, you know, right now the the new company we're sitting, I was, i did the math before I walked in here. We're sitting at 93 and a half percent retention rate.
00:29:59
Speaker
Wow. That is pretty dang good. Right now, again, we've only been open, you know, almost six months. but a 93.5% retention rate. and we're taught we're I'm even including people that we signed up and they never started or changed their mind, but a 93.5% retention rate.
00:30:15
Speaker
and then And then we and we we look at you know close rates. We're looking at time it takes per close per person.
Marketing Campaign Challenges
00:30:24
Speaker
We're looking at how long each client stays on the books and then how long each client stays on the books for each agent.
00:30:32
Speaker
And then how long each client stays on the books for ah after they they go through our customer service program. And so I think the answer, Curtis, is, I mean, I have a guy, i have a, basically, and he came in as something else, but he's a genius.
00:30:50
Speaker
um And he is basically nothing but a statistician. And that's all he does is anything I can come up with, he starts running numbers or building charts for, and then keeps track of every question I've ever asked him.
00:31:02
Speaker
Well, hiring geniuses helps. I can definitely can definitely attest to that. I suspect, though, a lot of small businesses, you know, they gather metrics, but maybe they track things that don't always line up with what actually drives performance and supports their business. So I'm kind of curious, like, do you, what kind of things do you, do you, do you care about? What kind of data do you have? Or do you see them tracking the,
00:31:30
Speaker
Doesn't that's that seems or feels meaningless. It doesn't always, ah you know, impact performance. I'm going I would say that my initial thought on that is that I assume everything is wrong all the time. And I take everything.
00:31:45
Speaker
ah Each to anything you can look at, you can't take it and and make movement on any one stat. Right. that's And so you you have to take these things and fold them like a deck of cards.
00:31:59
Speaker
So like, you know, our cost per lead over the last three weeks has um just plummeted. It's been ah it's been fantastic.
00:32:11
Speaker
But that's not necessarily a good thing because... you know, what is the what's what's the what's the agent experience through that process? What's the client experience through that process?
00:32:24
Speaker
Is it, is our you know, are sales going up with that or are sales staying the same? But if they're staying the same, is is that because last week was a holiday week.
00:32:37
Speaker
This week is the week that everybody's on vacation. So we still can't make any moves. So we take all these things and we put them in ah on a board and we sit back and watch and we see if we can make things, if we can do something that makes it tick in one direction or another.
00:32:56
Speaker
and then we, then we decide whether after, after several weeks, you know, it's annoying, but it's probably good for me because I'm, I used to have a really bad problem with moving the goalposts all the time.
00:33:08
Speaker
Right. Okay. Especially in the gyms because it was so frustrating and the that whole world was used to was changing so rapidly. And so I would move the goalposts on my employees and it was frustrating for the employees, frustrating for the clients, ah you know, it's frustrating for my coworkers. Lesson for entrepreneurs right there. That's a great lesson for entrepreneurs, you know, too, because the more frequently you do those kinds of things, the more difficult it becomes.
00:33:32
Speaker
you know, actually execute, you know, what you're, what you're trying to do. At some point you lose buy-in from your, from, from your coworkers. At some point you're going to lose buy-in from the, from the client.
00:33:44
Speaker
I personally, you know, I don't know anything about anything, but in terms of your cost per lead going down, you have some pretty cool new ads up there on Facebook that
Learning from Business Mistakes
00:33:55
Speaker
I've seen recently. So there is it's it's got to be something tied to that because, man, when I scroll in past those, I felt compelled to watch them.
00:34:04
Speaker
Thank you, Curtis. Thank you. know I agree. I think that has something to do with it, too. You're good. But, you know, what the old saying like 98, 90% of marketing money is wasted. The problem is you don't know where, which is the 10%.
00:34:20
Speaker
It's, which is, is, is very real. um So tell me, like, can you recall ah moment, you know, good or bad where, where people dynamics, um you know, or a big hire maybe kind of tip the outcome for, for one of your clients growth or turnaround or even your own business?
00:34:42
Speaker
Any sort of inflection point? I'm kind of curious what that might have looked like. i I haven't really had a, um you know, I've had a lot of moments in all of my careers where I was like dancing and my eyes are full of water and I'm like, this, this is the turning point.
00:35:05
Speaker
This is it. um And then fast forward five days and it turns out that it was an an outlier or an anomaly.
00:35:16
Speaker
i cannot say that there's ever been any one thing or any one person. um the only the only The biggest things that have changed things in my businesses and my life is just from me screwing up something really bad.
00:35:37
Speaker
and going, let's not do that again.
Future Business Leadership Attributes
00:35:40
Speaker
yeah well they there's never I've never been you know so smart that I invented the iPhone and everything changed. um Yeah, well, they yeah they they they say good decisions come from experience and experience comes from bad decisions, right?
00:35:54
Speaker
That's something that i I like to reflect on a lot. I've got that down, Curtis. yeah
00:36:01
Speaker
So, you know, just just a ah little... little bit of time to kind of reflect on some more future focused thinking.
00:36:12
Speaker
Tell me about tomorrow's business leaders. What do they need to understand about people? What's the most important thing, you know, to them, i think, or or maybe what should be that many of today's leaders still overlook that undervalue?
00:36:27
Speaker
Well, the first thing ill I'll say is I think there are very, very, very few leaders. um You know, there's a lot of people who hold leader positions. Yeah. lot of bosses, not a lot of leaders.
00:36:38
Speaker
I have met so few people. And I was in the Air Force for 10 years, right? I have met very, very few people that i respected as a leader.
00:36:53
Speaker
Like i I just have. you know Because if you're going to be a leader, it's like being a preacher. you don't you don't You don't get to be a preacher and go to the bar every night.
00:37:05
Speaker
Right? yeah we dont That doesn't mean it didn't happen. You don't get to be a preacher and cheat on your wife. Right? you don't You don't get to be a preacher and still do all the things you shouldn't do.
00:37:21
Speaker
And, and what, where people fail as leaders is, you know, I will say everything you've asked me and I've given you an example of what you should do in this whole thing.
00:37:32
Speaker
There was a person that popped into my head that called themselves a leader that didn't do that. And that I learned from because I felt that they should have done that. No.
00:37:44
Speaker
Right. You don't get to be a leader and show up at 10 and leave at three. That's not a leader. That's a boss. right You don't get to be a leader and not be, if you're in insurance sales, you don't get to be a leader and not be able to go, give me the phone, watch this.
00:38:02
Speaker
And then watch me, watch me customer service the heck out of this person. I'm going to make them happy. I'm going to get them the product they need. And they're going to write me a five-star review.
00:38:13
Speaker
Sit down and watch. And so I just, I've, I've met so few leaders that I think your answer is, man, you need to be a leader.
00:38:25
Speaker
You know, everybody reads books. I I'll talk to somebody and I'll say, you know, you should probably, you know, based off of this conversation, you might think about reading, you know, this book and they're like, Oh, I love that book. It was so good.
00:38:40
Speaker
And I just look at them and go, well, you didn't implement anything that that book told you I mean, if you just read the first chapter, yeah you implemented nothing. yeah Why are you asking me these problems when you already read the book? Because all I'm going to do is quote this book to you.
00:38:57
Speaker
yeah people like but People, and I shouldn't, but people say, Perry, you need to write a book. And I go, why don't I just write a list of books you should read instead of me plagiarizing everyone else.
00:39:08
Speaker
yeah Like 10X just a Jim Rome plagiarization with cuss words. and like but um Talking about these leaders then that you admire, right? okay let's Let's focus on on on them. Okay. what do you Give me ah a myth or a misunderstanding about actual people dynamics that even experienced leaders fall for.
00:39:38
Speaker
You know...
00:39:40
Speaker
I I've been thinking this for a long time and I, and, and then, and I've said it for a long time, but then I saw this reel with Alex for Mosey the other day. And now I feel like I got to give him credit for it.
00:39:53
Speaker
ah You know, the Eskimos have a hundred words for snow. Okay. I think there should be a hundred words for give a shit.
00:40:06
Speaker
you that one too The leader gives a shit at blizzard levels, right?
00:40:16
Speaker
Yeah. But most people are not capable of that. and and And a leader gets frustrated because he wants everyone else to care at his level, but he and he they don't.
00:40:27
Speaker
and And they're just not capable of having that type of extreme ownership. It's just not who they are. like The good Lord programmed people with certain DNA, and it doesn't mean you can't overcome it, but...
00:40:41
Speaker
You know, my son was born and he came out a monster and ah he's 17 years old and he's still a monster, but we've we've spent our whole life, you know, molding it into pointing in the right direction.
00:40:53
Speaker
And my daughter came out Elmo and, and you know, she's, i mean, if we had her tested, she'd probably be close to mental level, but she's still Elmo and she's never going to be that monster. she needs her She needs to be an attorney for her brother because he's going to need the attorney for his businesses.
00:41:11
Speaker
But, and if I go to you and say, Curtis, you don't care. Well, you're going to get offended because I care at blizzard level. You care at light sleet level, but you don't see the difference between light sleet and blizzard. All you hear is me saying that you don't care. And that's not true because you do.
00:41:32
Speaker
Right. and you know, I think one of the hardest things for a true leader is getting to a place where you go, okay, I understand that I'm never going to be able to get this light sleet guy to blizzard level.
00:41:44
Speaker
But if I can get him from light sleet to fluffy snow, we have a we have a solid w here. Yeah. that's a And that's where I think most – that was one of the leadership traits that took me the longest to discover – is I would just go, you don't care, go.
00:42:05
Speaker
You don't care, go. You don't care, go. and now i And now I know, A, I didn't do a good enough job of hiring that person. I didn't do a good enough job of setting expectations with that person.
00:42:17
Speaker
I probably shouldn't have brought them in at all. Or i need to accept them for who they are and then use this, because somewhere in them might be a blizzard of something else.
00:42:28
Speaker
something else. That's actually really great ah great advice. but About 15, 20 years ago, i remember when i was when I was hiring for a particular position and I was looking at and certain employees to to elevate to that level of of responsibility.
00:42:44
Speaker
um I had asked this person about a particular scenario and about how you or what could have been done to to improve the outcome. you know It wasn't wasn't a bad outcome, but it wasn't it wasn't great.
00:42:58
Speaker
Sure. And his response was, i don't think that there's a difference between good and great. It's either done or not done. And um yeah we don't have to wax on that. But to your point, the point about about giving a shit, right, about being able to see the difference between good and great, and some people may not – um have those shades of gray. And it doesn't make them bad. it might make them not a fit for certain things.
00:43:32
Speaker
But as a leader, being able to understand that humans have those different shades, you know which is kind of like what you're referring referring to, right? As a leader understanding, I think that there are shades.
00:43:45
Speaker
Some people have more more than others, but accepting the fact that it's a spectrum. um is ah is a pretty powerful piece of advice. Okay, I do have one more question. Yes, sir.
00:43:58
Speaker
We're on an airplane. We're getting our bags. We're about to walk down the jetway and exit the plane. and You're sitting next to a stranger the whole time and he leaves you with one question and wants to know, how do I get my people in culture right from day one? What's the single piece of advice you give him before he bolts down the jetway and you never see him again?
00:44:17
Speaker
He's asking me that?
Creating Positive Company Culture
00:44:19
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. How do I get my culture right from day one? From day one. um At the gyms, we we had a slogan.
00:44:31
Speaker
We put it on the t-shirts. We put it on the walls. ah we would We would put our hands in and do the chant. ah And everything that we did revolved around these two things.
00:44:47
Speaker
Love and awesomeness.
00:44:52
Speaker
So if you're trying to build a team, every move you make, if you think, all right, does that fit into both of these categories?
00:45:03
Speaker
Does the product fit into both of these categories? Does your attitude fit into both of these categories? Yeah. Does the decorations in the office fit into both of these categories? Do you exemplify love and awesomeness? Are you, are you the person?
00:45:19
Speaker
and And this is the problem is no one can, very few people are self-aware enough to answer this.
00:45:26
Speaker
So maybe you need to ask your sister because she'll tell you the truth. Are you love and awesomeness? Because like we started, right? The person at the top is the person at the bottom. Yeah.
00:45:38
Speaker
So if I have one thing, like, how do you make it? How do you make the culture right? How do you get everything right? The guy at the top has to be love and awesomeness. And he has to set that example for every single member of that team at every single place on the ladder.
00:45:53
Speaker
yeah And if that happens, it's been my experience. Like people are followers. That's what we are. Even leaders are followers, right? There's nothing a leader loves more than running into a leader that's better than him. You're like, whoa, look at this.
00:46:08
Speaker
And so if if you are that, they will be that too. So it's if I walk into a place and I see shit culture. yeah Yeah. Turn right around. um that seems who Guess who it came from. Yeah.
00:46:24
Speaker
That's great. we got We got to label this episode love and awesomeness. I would love Perry, awesome this has been great. i i am going to steal much of this from you and turn it into memes that I'm going to get hundreds of thousands and millions of impressions on.
00:46:45
Speaker
ah No, in all seriousness, um appreciate the candor. this this has been This has been great, really eye-opening. And i thought I think a lot of really great lessons in here for people. So thank you. I really, really appreciate you joining me today. it was awesome chatting with you.
00:47:00
Speaker
Thank you, Curtis. It was ah an honor to be part of this. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. um you know here Thanks for hanging out, even when we messed up and letting us fix things for you.
00:47:11
Speaker
Hey, totally. So I want to thank everybody for tuning in. These insights from Perry, super valuable. Encourage you to share this episode with a friend, colleague.
00:47:22
Speaker
Of course, I also encourage you to vi ah visit mustardhub.com to see how we help businesses become destinations for workplace happiness and turn culture into a competitive edge. Until next time, looking forward to it.