SPEAKER_04 0:00

Don't do yeah, baby. Don't no.

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Yeah, baby!

SPEAKER_04 0:04

Ah it says most employees will qualify for up to five thousand of tax exempt assistance for daycare.

SPEAKER_03 0:09

That's true. Hey Craig. Let's get into some coffee talk. Hey, I love it. I love doing some coffee tork. Well, you know, talk about what? Dogs, daughters, whatever. It's coffee twerk. Coffee t.

SPEAKER_04 0:25

Hey, it's a coffee tuck.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

It's a coffee talk.

SPEAKER_04 0:29

I do that to you a lot, huh? Where we're just talking about something and I just hit record.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Yes. I didn't even get to look pretty. I know. Thank God we only have two subscribers. I know.

SPEAKER_04 0:40

So if you are listening.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

Your mom and my mom.

SPEAKER_04 0:43

Yeah. Try to beat out our moms and subscribe to the YouTube channel.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Don't try to beat my mom.

SPEAKER_04 0:50

Oh, that's true. Don't beat mine either. Mine's getting old. You got something for me. Yeah. Well, I think dovetailing off of Did you say dovetailing? Dovetailing. Isn't that a thing?

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Okay. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:03

Remember a while back we were gonna incorporate a like a saying? Like two birds in hand is better than two in the bush. Wait, one in it. Right. One in hand better than two. One in the hand. That probably comes from hunting.

unknown 1:17

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

So I don't want it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:21

Yeah. Huh?

SPEAKER_02 1:22

I don't want to.

SPEAKER_04 1:23

What is what's happening here? You don't want to dovetail? We are gonna dovetail. Dovetailing off of the hiring. We were talking about hiring. Do you remember that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

So just the definition of dovetailing is to fit or cause to fit together easily and conveniently. Look at you. This is perfect. It is. We're using it appropriately.

SPEAKER_04 1:47

Well, that's what we do. Use it appropriately. And hopefully the agents listening can use this appropriately.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

This is the best coffee talk of all time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:00

And I think I'd like to tease the next coffee talk should be about the day turning out differently than you'd expected. And we've talked about that before. But let's stick to hiring. Let's stick to hiring. Okay, Mr. Jason. Nice shirt. Agencies ignite. They ignite. Ignite your agencies. Coming January. Is it January? Coming January.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

Yeah, spoiler alert.

SPEAKER_04 2:23

In Huntington Beach, California California.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

In Newport Beach. Newport Beach. Yeah. So a little teaser.

SPEAKER_04 2:30

Uh-huh. Should I drive the van out?

SPEAKER_02 2:33

Heck yeah. It is for work, obviously. Two-day event the uh elite meeting with Josh and Lannon. We talked about it, and it's probably better to do it after the holidays, right? Otherwise, you and I are gonna be pulling out our hair. But yes, so January it looks like. Oh, cool. I wasn't even aware. Tentatively. I know. Tentatively. Which means I just wanted to make that declaration. Because even if we're a month late, we still now we've said it.

SPEAKER_04 3:03

Well, Haley, if you're listening to this, start planning.

SPEAKER_02 3:07

Dovetail, my friend.

SPEAKER_04 3:08

Dovetail. Let's dovetail into that hiring. So I got this email as we get lots of them, and I thought it was interesting. It talked about seven different things that you can do to increase and help with hiring, right? And then retaining those employees.

SPEAKER_02 3:24

Do you have a sound effect that we can go into this with? Don't do yeah, baby. Don't? No.

SPEAKER_04 3:30

Yeah, baby. Ah, well, how about bowling?

SPEAKER_02 3:38

I like that.

SPEAKER_04 3:39

Bolin. You like that one? Yeah. Well, the first thing, and I think it's really important, and we do it. I know that we have this kind of thing at our office. Offer the right kind of fringe benefits. Fringe benefits. And that could be anything. It doesn't necessarily need to be having health insurance, which I do have. I don't know if you do or not, but I don't, but we're going to do it. I was pretty surprised at how inexpensive it was. And then what's interesting is there only about half of them actually are doing it. So you never know if they're going to do it. But I like it, I think, as a pull marketing strategy. And no, it's great.

SPEAKER_02 4:16

It's the right thing to do.

SPEAKER_04 4:17

It's the right thing to do. And it's a deduction and all that stuff. So that's nice. But I mean like the French stuff. What kind of stuff do you have going on at your office? Well, just like you, we not only offer w water.

SPEAKER_02 4:31

Yeah. We have water. But snacks and all that stuff. We talked about the energy drinks and um just yeah, making it kind of like your words was uh making it like a what did you say? A cake party? No, like a dorm room?

SPEAKER_04 4:48

Like a oh, like Silicon Valley place. So I don't know that you need ping pong tables and people doing massages, but I think that having something that's differentiates from that corporate environment, because this is not the corporate environment. This is a tough grind, especially for the model that we're running, where it's the telemarketers to the leads to coming in and a lot of quoting. And really, at the end of the day, in order to make it, especially on the captive side, is a lot of quoting, right? That's it. You got to get tons of quotes in.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

I think you nailed it on the head too. It's not that corporate environment, and that is the benefit, right? So the more of those things that make it more fun, more like a dorm room, I guess. Yeah. Your place is like a dorm room. It is, but that's a huge benefit because it's yeah, dude, it's fun to be there. I like being there, right? You and I both have the wheels of fortune and spin that stuff.

SPEAKER_04 5:47

Yeah, I like that. So snacks, I have tons of snacks. I give my sales manager, I said you can do two to five hundred bucks a month on, and then it'll end up usually on the higher end of that, right? 700. But just getting tons of stuff, you know. So they have all of this great health food like hot pockets and Jimmy Dean breakfast stuff. And but they're actually, I looked in the fridge today, there was a bunch of grapes, so she got some grapes and some cherries, so some actually some healthy stuff. Of course, the monsters, which I manhandle those monsters, and uh, so I like that. I think that that's good. We actually put up a dartboard, we have a dartboard now, so that's kind of fun. I think you have to have them sign a liability waiver.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

You actually have a steam room, a workout room.

SPEAKER_04 6:38

Mm-hmm. Yep, I do. They conned me into that. This office is weirdly set up, but I bought the building, so I thought, okay, let's roll with it instead of gutting it. And and it's not like a traditional office, I would say. When you and neither is yours, I guess, but the because there isn't a lot of walk-in traffic. In fact, I don't think that anybody has ever just walked in off the street, unless it was somebody that wanted to sleep in the lobby, because it isn't a unique area of town, but it's pretty cool because they're all the producers, and anybody that came to Ignite knows all the producers are in one area, right? Of course, they're properly socially distanced in that one area, and then there's the workout room, so it wasn't that expensive to buy. There's a treadmill, there's a little stairmaster, and like a Nautilus machine with all the different weights. So some of them work out at lunch, some of them come in. One of my best producers comes in early, and then there's the steam room. The steam room came with the building. I wouldn't have had that, I wouldn't have even thought of doing that, but it is pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_02 7:39

So Kinzo, and I remember you said that you like to bring milk in there.

SPEAKER_04 7:44

And no, Kinzo does. Kinzo likes to drink chocolate milk in the steam room. I don't know about that. I think I drink water.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

That's such a wide combination.

SPEAKER_04 7:54

Yeah. Well, he doesn't bring it in, he drinks it before.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

Yeah, that's it. So that's cool. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:59

So you can also, and this was an interesting point that that followed that up. Like, understand how those friendship benefits can fit into your tax strategy. So I think taxes are a big buzzword, and we're coming up towards the depending on when you're listening to this, could be towards the end of the year, maybe not. Let's not date it. You're yawning, yeah. But you want to mitigate your tax risk. So look at those things that are gonna help with that and help right you know, you want to stack it. You want to stack it. Right. We got so how about achievement awards? Do you got any trophies or yeah?

SPEAKER_02 8:36

You know what? You know, we haven't done that in a while, and we probably should. We used to have a a wrestling belt and uh a trophy, like a sales monster trophy.

SPEAKER_04 8:44

We need to bring them back big time, yeah. Yeah, that's fun. I know you have the bells, and we have them too. A little uh ring the bell. I think you have one. Why don't you demo it? Demo that bell. Yeah, yep.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

I'm sure you've had that before.

SPEAKER_04 9:00

Yeah, there's different things that you can look into, but there's dependent care assistance where this thing that I'm reading, and I'm obviously not a tax advisor, but it says most employees will qualify for up to 5,000 of tax exempt assistance for daycare. This drops to $2,500 for each married couple, violates separately. See page 10 of IRS Publication 15B for details on what it takes to qualify for this. So that's something that you can look into. I have not looked into it, but I am going to because I think that's pretty cool too. That can be a thing that keeps people at home. And obviously, you'd prefer to keep people in the office doing quotes if you can, right? Another thing, health savings account, right? You can offer that. That doesn't really cost you anything, but it's a benefit, it's a benefit for the staff. So yeah, and I think that this goes along the lines of that, which is reduce boredom, right? Reduce boredom. So, what are some things you can do? And it kind of we've sort of touched on some of these things, but reduce boredom. Like turn off the podcast from this conversation.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

Sure, sure. I know you're getting bored because we're not goofing around as much. Yeah, no, no, no. But no, that's true. And what I do like about this conversation in general is it goes back to my wife.

SPEAKER_04 10:14

Oh, it always does.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

Oh, it does, yeah. And the bottom line is you're thinking about them. So, like all these things might not be a big deal to you as the agency owner, but it shows that you're thinking about them. Yeah. And I think that that's huge because I know at home, if I put a little thought into the house and the wife, it comes back tenfold. Right. At least tenfold two.

SPEAKER_04 10:42

So at least I won't travel. And not to go down the on a tangent on that, but this is a really interesting thing, is to be thinking about it's true, right? People want to have this notion that they're being thought of, right? That that you're taking care of them, that you're thinking about their best interests. And I try to remember to send little texts to my wife here and there. You know, we're busy, we're always doing lots of stuff, but not just like, hey, what do you want me to get for dinner or something that is inevitably going to happen throughout the day, but just like I said this the other day, yesterday, because we've been a little sick, not the vibe, but something. I don't know, a little cold. And I said, Hey, I was thinking about you. Hope you're doing okay. You seem stressed, love you. I said that, and I just said, You seem stressed, because she did seem stressed, but I knew to think about her. I knew not to like, at least for my wife, if she's stressed out, you don't try to problem solve, you just leave. Like you don't help. Like she doesn't want to.

SPEAKER_02 11:40

You don't jump in the lion cage.

SPEAKER_04 11:42

Right. It's like it took me 20 years, but I know right now, yes, because of stressed equals lion, run away. So I just went to work. I said bye, went to work, and then I sent her that, and then she said, Love you too. Just too much going on. Thanks for saying that, and even sent an emoji with little hearts around it. So that worked pretty well, and it's the same thing. Everybody wants to be thought of, right? You want to put them in a good spot because they want to know that you care, and you know, without being too cheesy about it, I think it is, you're right, it's super important. And all of these little things, yeah, it pays it forward, right?

SPEAKER_02 12:19

As an agency owner, like you're you're trying to take care of your new clients and you're trying to take care of your old clients. So if you're taking care of your peeps that are taking care of your peeps, yeah, then it trickles down. Yeah. So let's go through the rest of these benefits and an awesome conversation. I love it.

SPEAKER_04 12:37

We got uh provide career paths, right? So it's not just you're a producer, this is what you're gonna do, but I think paint that picture. We do it when we hold, especially when we talk about meetings, right? In the peak performance challenge. The folks that start with teledudes, we have this whole thing and where you give the speeches, you paint the vision, and there has to be a vision, like there has to be something at the end of this tunnel, not just you're gonna be doing 50 quotes a you know, or 10 quotes a day, 50 quotes a week forever. So if you can paint some path, some of them love it and will always want to do that. Others may want to advance, so you have to find out.

SPEAKER_02 13:16

I think just creating that is like the thing to look forward to. It almost gives you the energy and the will to really push yourself. Uh the team as a whole to push each other and have each other. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, you need something like that. Otherwise, yeah, it's a monotonous every day, and then you're thinking, dude, what I gotta get out of here.

SPEAKER_04 13:38

Right. Here's the last thing, and it's so obvious, right? It's common sense, but when common sense becomes common practice, okay, the magic really happens. So hold poor performance accountable and reward the top performers. Now, boom, huge, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:52

And it's not just pain towards pleasure, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:56

Right? You have to, but also setting up those goals and then sticking to them, it's tough, right? It's tough to stay consistent and be on people and make sure they're doing the things. But if somebody is all of a sudden not doing well and not doing the things they need to do, you gotta call them on it, which is tough, right? Not everybody wants to, but if you don't, it's just gonna keep slipping and slipping and slipping. Truth. Love it.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

Yeah, and that's a coffee talk. That's a coffee talk. Yeah. What do you want each listener to do right now?

SPEAKER_04 14:28

I want them to whip out their glass mirror.

unknown 14:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 14:33

Uh-huh. It's this digital computer that 20 years ago you had no idea would exist and be something that you stare at eight hours a day. Take that out. Look at it, and right where it says subscribe, click the subscribe button. And if you really want to help, because it helps us get the word out and get in front of more people, leave a little review.

SPEAKER_02 14:59

It takes five minutes.

SPEAKER_04 15:01

Don't, then just unsubscribe and don't listen again. And that's That's a coffee talk.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

That's a coffee talk. Hey Jason. Yes, Mr. Craig. That was another awesome episode, wasn't it? Mm-hmm. Well, if people want to get a little bit more action and learn how to do uh write 100,000 in premium of even the worst internet leads, where could they go? They can go to live.teledudes.com. Ooh, that sounds exciting. Are we gonna be there?

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Yes. It's a weekly call that we're doing right now that will, it's live and it will show you the process. The entire process is super awesome.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

I love it. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Let's do it. Sign up right now, live.teledudes.com.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Live.teledudes.com. That's live.teledudes.com.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Hey Craig, there's a new community that we are starting that I cannot wait to tell everybody about. It is our live texting community where you and I are going to answer people's questions and give them free content.

unknown 16:13

Right?

SPEAKER_00 16:14

Are you kidding me? We get to talk to them? Yeah, which is awesome. But they have to opt in. They have to text us at 520-214-2219. That's 520-214-2219. Nice. Greg, are you gonna respond to these texts? I'm gonna respond to them for sure. Live. I'm into it too. It's gonna be awesome. And it's a it's gonna be our new texting community where we're gonna get back to everybody that we can and drop some crazy content. Free content and free um the calculator that you just came up with. Mmm. That's right. The calling calculator. Sales material. I mean everything for insurance agents. This is it. It's the best texting community out there for insurance agents. Well, what the heck is that number again? I can't remember it. It's 520-214-2219. That's 520-214-2219. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

I'm gonna text it right now.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

520-214-2219!

SPEAKER_01 17:22

All right. I'll see you later, Mr. Jason.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

Bye, Mr. Greg. Wait, can we even listen to this on the radio anymore?

SPEAKER_03 17:31

I love it. I love it. Nice.