Latest / Elevate The Hustle / Curtis Barton Built a $2B Brokerage From Zero Clients. Most Owners Get This Wrong.

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Curtis Barton Built a $2B Brokerage From Zero Clients. Most Owners Get This Wrong. · Elevate The Hustle

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Do you really want to sell your legacy to insert ABC Company here and become employee number 5000?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Or would you rather start something different?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Elevate the hustle.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Elevate the Hustle, where we break down what it actually means to build teams, scale companies, and lead with intensity.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Dan Mayton.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm Dom Picharillo.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: And today we have our guest, Curtis Barton, who started Venture Pacific Insurance Brokerage and then eventually went on to found Alchemy Insurance Services and is one of the fastest, if not the fastest growing uh independently held insurance brokerage in the country today.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: So welcome, Curtis.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Curtis, welcome to you.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate it.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: Excited to have you on, excited to get going.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: First question we like to ask all of our guests what does the word hustle mean to you?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Hustle to me means show up every day and do the things that people aren't willing to do.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's you know, lifting the things that people don't want to lift.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that's, I mean, that could be metaphorical work, that could be anything, but you know, it's it's when you feel the pain, maybe now there's a former athlete.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: So when you feel the pain and you have to push through it, that's the hustle.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's where the hustle comes from.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's where the hustle drives from.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's internally driven, it's never externally driven, in my opinion.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's just you wanting to be the best you can be for everybody and you know, and pushing yourself to to the limits to meet that execution um with that's within your body, you know, and that that goes to sports too.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, sometimes talent eviscerates itself along the way as you climb the ladder in in sports, but you know, um, to me, it's it's it's really about accountability to yourself, it's about showing up every day, it's about doing the right things, and then it's about putting in the activity that gets you to where you need to be, whatever that means to you and your business and your business plan, you know, and that can come in a hundred different ways.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think there's a common theme with a lot of our guests that they played sports.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I think you were on the ski team at Colorado, right?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, yeah.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: I got suckered into being on the freestyle ski team at University of Colorado Boulder.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: My roommate was pre-Olympic, and he's like, You're a really good skier, and I want you to talk to the coach.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I ended up talking to the coach, and he's like, Yeah, we need you on the team.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought I was pre-Olympic myself, and that was very far from the case.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was uh probably number 99 out of 100 on that team, and um, I was good, but there's a big difference between a kid who grew up by the beach and a kid who grew up on a mountain.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're not Sean White, who's been able to pull it off, not many people can.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just put it that way.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: So, did you always know?
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: Did you always have this, you know, let's call it hustle back in the day when you were a kid, or did at some point kind of click for you?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: You're like, yeah, maybe I'm a little different than everybody else.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I knew that I was good at multi-like multiplying myself.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And what what I mean by that is is I had ADHD, but at the time I just didn't really understand quite what what it was.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: But I knew that I could move in five different directions at once and keep things together.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, wow, that's pretty interesting if you can do that.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think you can do pretty much anything.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: But um, no, I mean I hated to lose, and I think that's something that's super important, like when you talk about self-culture or culture in general, is the the right to compete and hating to lose, right?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's two different things to that is one is putting yourself in a position where you have the right to compete, and then it's finishing.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And man, I do not like when I don't finish the job, when I don't get it done, and it it leaves a sting, and I tend to ruminate a little bit on it and I I tend to over-critique myself, but that drives you further to recorrect the next time around and then find success at another level.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And when I look, I've done everything in insurance, literally, and I say this all the time from take out the trash to you know being a three and a half million dollar revenue producer to running my own agency to creating and and merging six agencies, seven technically with mine together to form alchemy and then drawing alchemy to where it is today.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And in a lot of that, it's like a lot of people in our business are just lifestyle guys.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they don't really build their business to build a business, they build a business to support a lifestyle that they want.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really doesn't create wealth per se, but it creates the opportunity for them to go golf three days a week or sit on their boat and go fishing.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and that's what's great about this business.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can do it correctly and you can balance both, then you can you can be extremely successful.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, you know, one will eat the other over time.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, we try to keep a hard edge, I like to say, and and that's where the you know, your ego is not your amigo line comes in, because that's my my famous tagline.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: I had a trainer that once told me that.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, dude, your amigo is your ego is gonna kill you in the gym, it's not your amigo.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, that's a great line.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna use that all the time.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, Go for it.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's true, you know.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, I still thought I was that 16-year-old kid trying to work out, you know, and keep up with the 20-year-olds, and that's not a good plan.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's a quick way for uh for you to get injured.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: You bet.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: You bet.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: I I love that line.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: So tell us, tell us, let's let's go back.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: Let's go back.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: You you you went to University of Arizona.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh when did you decide that you want to get into insurance?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: Was it right away after college, or did you just somewhere else?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so once I found out that I wasn't going to be on a podium anytime soon at ski.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: So you said you you you realize you realize that probably during college, right?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think my dad really for me when he said, Yeah, you got the nearly a 4.0 out of high school, which at the time you only went to 4.0, and he's like, You were a good student, and now you're firmly planted in the twos.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you need to get away from the smell.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: I clearly believe that you're not spending enough time in class, and that school's way too expensive for me.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Listen, you know, I'll find another school to go to.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I transferred down to University of Arizona, and you know, obviously that was a whole set different set of circumstances, which you know, as Bob can attest to.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's uh it's a lifestyle, um, and it's fun.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: That's a set separate podcast that we're not gonna talk about today.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Separate right, right.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know each other, but we went to very similar schools, let's put it that way, or reaper similar schools.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: And and um, but I was coming out, I I politely got asked to switch majors from the business school over to political science.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna become an attorney.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I was all in on becoming an attorney and figured I could work my way through that and maybe be a politician.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, I as I got out of college, my dad had been in the business and he owned his own agency and sold it off when I was in college.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And but he built it to about 10 and a half, 11 million dollars in top line revenue somewhere in that neighborhood.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And his partner wanted to buy it, didn't want him in the business anymore.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: My dad felt like it was a good time for him to step aside.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he was like 50 some odd years old, like 52, I think, 50, 52.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he was bored.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's like, I can't play golf.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to sit around.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: He was like not a huge drinker.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, I don't want to sit around and wait till five o'clock hits to ring the bell so I can go get a drink.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And like this is I want to get back into something.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, I'd like you to come along for the journey and and and help me start this agency.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I don't want nothing to do with that.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be an attorney.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, he goes, I'm gonna be honest with you, you're not you're not really that you don't really like reading that much.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: You you don't understand how much an attorney has to read.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, good point.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Good point.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I think about joining you for a couple years and see how that flushes through.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then that's the origin story, really.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: So we started that agency with nothing.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: We had no clients, zero.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: I went and found the space, I helped him do all that.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I got a lot of on-the-ground practical experience through that, starting up that, and then having to support him while he got business going because he's the only one that knew it, right?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I didn't know how to sell or do any of it, and so I just supported him however I could.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: If that meant I took out the trash, that meant I took out the trash.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: That meant I had to move a desk or a computer, I moved a desk or a computer.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't ask.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then I started to recruit my friends into the business and start to get them to work alongside of me to try to create more of a kind of a fun environment.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And as we started to do that, then insurance became more fun, it became competitive.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: We started to compete with each other, and the rest is history, as I like to say.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, what were those early days like?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: Just you and your dad?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: Are you did you guys get along?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Were there any you know, squabbles between the two of you?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: Was you know the holidays awkward?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like no, I mean, one, I mean, one time I resigned on him, I think, along the way.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, that's that's pretty good when you've been in business with someone for 15 plus years, you know.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I um he's a great dude, he was a great mentor.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Very, I mean, if it wasn't his personality, there's no way in hell I could have done it.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh he's just a great dad, a great mentor.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: I still talk to him today.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: He's mesmerized by what we've done and what we've put together.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I find myself saying a lot of the things that he said when he was my age, which is this is about the age I am, is when he started the agency with me.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm saying these things to younger kids, like, get a niche, stay focused, you know, have activity, you know, stay on the ball, like come in with determination, come in with an effort, you know, all these simple things that we all at our age kind of take it for granted that we understand that.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like the younger kids don't quite get it yet.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're like, hey, how do we make this easier?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: How do we get the barrier of entry to close down and make their validation process easier for them?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: How do we bring them into our system and give them all the skill and tools that they have and help them grow their books of business and help them be successful?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so that to me is like a huge, a hugely rewarding part of the business.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: I love watching kids validate, I love watching them cover the business, men and women.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we're trying to get a lot of a lot of uh females to come into the business because I think it's really underserved in our space.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're we're male, pale, and still, right?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what they call us.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so we're trying to flip that upside down all the way around from the way we dress to the way we operate to what how we run the company as we are the owner operator's model.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we believe that culture means something.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that, you know, we were never just going to run the same playbook that everyone else had run, you know.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've seen just too many companies that have been built off the same exact playbook that was run at the company that the founder came out of.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And and God bless them, I mean, that's what they know, right?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, so why not run it?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: It works.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but financially engineering it, engineering your way to result in today's market is never gonna work.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: You have to actually figure out the key to the success, which is organic growth right now.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, how do you get there?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you have a culture of sales, a culture of accountability, a culture of cross sell, and a culture of organic growth because organic growth fuels everything.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And in the back of the day, it didn't, you know, it was go buy, go stack, go fast, go mean, deploy capital, you know, low interest, low multiples, all that stuff disappeared.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's all gone.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's like, how many producers can we steal from somebody else?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's the new big thing.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and so really, I think our industry does a really terrible job of framing itself correctly to the rest of the world, you know, and I think that we're gonna try to change the way that's looked at.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think that we eat each other alive, you know, um, in competition, you know, and I think that, you know, we just gotta we've gotta figure out as a as a as an industry how to support each other because we all depend on each other's success to some degree, you know.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like you don't want to root for someone else's failure in front of you because that creates more opportunities that you're gonna lose if someone does fail in front of you.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so you really want everyone to be successful and you want this industry to be looked at differently.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's kind of our mission here is really is to create the biggest, baddest, coolest company that we could possibly create.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, create opportunity, make multiple people millionaires, get get stock into as many people's hands as possible, get them to own the piece of that pie, and then drive a result towards them, you know, and that's kind of what we've set out to do.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: Curtis, you you alluded to this earlier.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: You said, I love to win, right?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: And and I think, you know, successful entrepreneurs, that's that's probably one of the biggest things, right?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: They they want to win and they're willing to take the risk to take put it all on the line.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: At what point did you realize, hey, you know, I'm building this agency with my dad, and this is just not enough, and I want more?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we were about, I mean, we had so many different demarcations points.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, um, in my career, I like that.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we built that business together at about four million in top line revenue.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I just looked at him and I said, You're never around.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're traveling with mom, and that's fantastic.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that for you.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're still married today, and you know, I know you're tired and you don't want to do this as much anymore.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just buy the business from you.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't want to create my own liability going forward because it wasn't like he was giving me more stock, you know.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then after I took over the company, then I started reinvesting my own commissions back into the company.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said, I built a three and a half million dollar book, mainly on ReadyMix Concrete.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: And as I built that book, I would start to reinvest the company into systems, into processes, procedures, into understanding who are my production force, what does it look like, and how do I serve my client in a full 360 fashion.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: So then I grew that business from 4 million to about 11 and a half million in top line revenue.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then I got to that point where I was like, okay, I'm still carrying the note for my dad.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm putting all these investments out there.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, you know, hiring producers is kind of like throwing a dart at a dartboard.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to refine that process, right?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: You just never know.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, I got to that point and I said, man, I need some help and I I need to figure out how to get to scale because as I was watching, all of my competition was drifting away and getting bought slowly in Orange County.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, wow, all the big dogs are getting picked up.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: What am I missing?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, outside of a check.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because and the check will come at some point.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't really care about that.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't lead the business depending upon what check I get.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a big mistake that most leaders um make, especially in the insurance industry.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: They talk about themselves and their own out more than they talk about the actual, hey, how am I going to service my shareholders?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: How am I going to drive value to my shareholders?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: How am I going to make them millionaires?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because if I can do that, then that's going to make me a millionaire.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like that, you got to think about it differently from that perspective.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Invest into their success first and have it come back towards you.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: And really, even taking it further is really, how are we making our clients, you know, view of us and and feeling about us better than it ever has been and stronger than it ever has been?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: So they don't ever want to leave us.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then making our employees really feel good about their jobs, meaningful, like they're gaining something when they come to work.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're not just losing time and productivity along the way.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can do those two things, then you're obviously going to be profitable.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's really what it comes down to.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: What made you decide to, you know, go combine?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was six or seven agencies and take on a private equity partner and scale that way, as opposed to saying you're seeing these other guys get gobbled up.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure they're all getting millions of dollars uh to sell their companies.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: You easily could have said, I'm just gonna take my money off the table and maybe go do something else.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like, was that ever in your calculus or what was your like thought process?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, I mean, I talked to a number of players that are our competitors today, and and you know, some of them that are have been recent, recently talked about, you know, and some of these deals that are happening.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, to me, it was like there's only four of us, I think, that run these agencies that really have ever actually sold insurance.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so I always thought there was just a huge miss at that intersection that it's a bunch of bankers and financial engineers that are really controlling the top of it of an insurance brokerage.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't understand how ABC works, you know, from from the very beginning, like how hard it is to drive production, to stand at the top and tell people that you've got these ridiculous production, you know, goals for them, and you want them to hit these things for all these reasons, it kind of loses its punch.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, it's like I can stand up there and say it because I've done it.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: I can pull out my old commission statements and show them to them and be like, look, here it is.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: You want to see it?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like I've been you, I've sat in your chair, I know exactly how you feel, and I can teach you and coach you through that.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was really a combination of meeting people that I didn't connect with, that I didn't feel were gonna provide anything more to me than a check.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm a little different.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like, look, as my wife's grandmother used to always say, Money's not everything, but it's right up there with oxygen.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't driven by a check for myself.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if I was, I would have, you know, I could have sold to insert anybody because everybody wanted my agency.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was really middle market focused, highly concentrated in the niches, had personalized little small person lines practice that was built out, and a small benefits practice that was built out, and a small um financial services practice that was built out.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so from the outside looking in, we had great size clients, great retention, great niches, great production, uh, growing agency, had great cager growth that we could put on at SIM.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I wanted to really, if I was gonna do something and I was gonna sacrifice my legacy agency, I wanted to move the industry in a different direction.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: I hated how the industry was perceived and how my own friends perceived what I did as a job.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And now they all, a lot of them worked for me who came out of the financial industry, who always looked at me like I was like the farmer's agent on the corner.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: And hey, those farmers' agents are all great.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of them do extremely well.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing wrong with that, but that's just their perception of what I was doing, and it was completely different.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's more about hey, how do I bring that out into the open so people can understand what we do and how many different ways you can go inside that ecosystem, right?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just retail insurance, brokerage sales.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: You can do high finance, you could be a CFO, you could get a debt facility management, you could deal with P private equity, you can do MA, you could do there's so many different areas you can go to and do a sophisticated organization.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, what I want to do is provide more opportunity for my people.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: That was going to give them a leg up in the future.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just said, you know what, screw it.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna build it.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I had friends that had agencies that were facing the same issues, and so I just talked to them and openly and just was really honest about it and said, Do you really want to sell your legacy to insert ABC company here and become employee number 5,000?
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Or would you rather start something different?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was lucky enough to give them a buy-in.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: So what that sales pitch, right?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you you had to obviously get buy-in from those six other agencies and say, Hey, we're the founding companies.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: Was there anybody that said no, or did everybody say yes, we had two that dropped out, um, and we had nine originally, two dropped off, and and I think it was fear, you know.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then look, it's a control-based environment, right?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like most people in insurance, it's like it's about control, it's control over my clients, control, control, control.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: What you got to realize is you got to disembark your your your thought process about control because control is an illusion.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's you never have control.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: So, but yeah, we had two that fell off.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: One of them in particular, he he was a great guy, right?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: A great business, but he had a son-in-law in the business, and he was really nervous that private equity is gonna come in and hammer his son-in-law, you know.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I kept telling that's not the way it works, you know.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: So there is a kind of fear that big the big private equity evil monsters are gonna dig down into your business and tell you how to actually move every piece of the puzzle.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: And they don't do that.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what they do.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: They don't really run businesses, they back businesses and they back, they back leaders, and they back founders, and they back systems.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: They don't really want to get in and tell you how to run every aspect of your business on the daily.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's if they're doing that, then they pick the wrong person to back candidly.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: What's what's what's been the most challenging part now, right?
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: You obviously have acquired you know, dozens of agencies, they come in part of the umbrella.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: Is is the sales, you know, I don't want to call it a sales pitch, but is the pitch different now?
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: Is it you know, you're you're it has to change, yeah.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: So how had how has it changed and what's the reluctance from from the agency owner?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we've done, I think we're coming across on our hundredth uh transaction here shortly.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we're up there, we've done that's in that's since 2020.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we're not look, I always tell people we only do as much acquisition as we can as we can drive through our organic growth.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: So if you give me high organic growth, eight to ten percent, we can continue to buy businesses.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: But if you can't give me eight to ten percent organic growth, then we have to slow this down.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just the way it is because we don't want to get over-levered.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: We've got clean debt, we've got clean pick, we have no picks on our any any of our um debt.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: We've got common common shares across the board between our investors.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's no preferred status in our in our equity.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so, from my perspective, like that's the sell.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, look, we're all on one share, you share what I share, you got the same quality, each same share that I share, right?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of the companies out there that don't have that.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then on top of it, they put picks into their debt, which makes it even more complicated because it just scrapes value from the people you're buying and their debt and their and their stock that they're getting.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so, really, the sell is the hardest part in our business is really getting the entrepreneur to step back from their process and realize that they had some shortcomings and there's a reason why they joined you, right?
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: In their head, they had a thing of there.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's not for most, it's not a check.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that becomes a secondary moral hazard is the check.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if I if you live in Ohio and I give you a$20 million check, what motivates you the next day?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where you've got to be really good at picking your teammates and your winners, right?
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: From your losers.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: And what I say by that, I don't mean personality wise.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean like you want to get the guys that want to continue to drive.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: You want the the guys that are Tiger Woods who are at the peak of their golf game, who decide that they're going to change their swing.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's what you want.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: You want people that constantly want to improve.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you get to that point, that's where the Organization starts to sell is when you get the people that are actually wanting to consistently improve themselves.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because that is a moral hazard.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think about you're dropping millions of dollars in people's hands in areas where it's not a high.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's like living in Southern California where you give someone 10 million bucks and it's like gone the next day after the government gets all over there.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And like you can't even buy like a sandwich at Jersey Mike's, you know?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: A$30 sandwich at Jersey Mike's and$8 gas.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, look.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I live I live part-time in Utah.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's really my main residence.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I live part-time in California.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it's, you know, um, I like both, equally different.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: But here in in I'm in Southern California right now and I leave for Utah tomorrow.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it's challenging, man.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it's challenging to start in the business here.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyways, I think you got to look for the right people to join your table.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's got to be an invitation in.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you're you're gonna buy into us as much as we're gonna buy you, you know.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the moral hazard that I always run when I'm I'm judging these people is are you gonna have the gas in the tank?
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: Once I slap a check into you, are you prepared?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, we were like, kind of be you.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna migrate you immediately, but you will migrate, you know.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: But we didn't set it like a deadly, like a deadline, like, hey, in the first 90 days, it's gonna happen.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Quickly, we realized we wanted all our data together.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like when there's like day one, we're like, data has to be in one spot and we've got to get it going.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we just said we're gonna migrate you, you're gonna take on our name.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's the way it's gonna be.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: We and then day, you know, day one, we're gonna take control of your bank accounts because we don't want you looking at your bank accounts anymore and driving your business the way you used to drive.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: We want you to think differently about the business.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: You got to adopt our tools.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's a compact.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna pay you.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: I got 20 million reasons why you should listen to me, and I'm giving them to you.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: So now you got to listen to me on how I'm gonna drive, you know, shareholder value and growth and believe in what I'm saying.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: If not, then you should go to the next firm down the street that's trying to buy you too.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because every time we're in these situations, it's a competitive environment, and there's, you know, 10 people out there looking actively, and there's always someone acting a fool, someone that's out there doing something that's totally not in line with what the market's doing because they've got their own pressures, and that's what we all face.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, look, we all know the multiples are way too high for where interest rates are at, but they've never settled.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so why, right?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, soft market now is coming in.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now people are thinking everyone should be at 10% organic growth.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I've been in this business for a long time, and let me tell you something the public's never did 10% organic growth.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: So if you couldn't have seen that and then realized that it was gonna there was gonna be a pullback on that, you know, that's then you haven't been around the business long enough to figure that out.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like we I watched them, you know, they're usually three and four percent tops, max, two and three, really.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden they buoy up to like eight, nine, 10%.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you're going, okay, well, that's really rate driven, right?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a is it a cycle of your of your sales philosophy?
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a cycle of your acquisition strategy, or is it a cycle of rate?
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's a combination of all three.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: But really, it's about who you're inviting to the table and what you're doing with your culture.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: And as you get bigger, how do you maintain that?
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you institutionalize the right things as opposed to the wrong things?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we talk a lot about that internally.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to feel gross corporate kind of Ivory Towers mentality, as you can tell.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: We want to make sure, though, that we run the business effectively and we take a mature approach to the business, but we also we want to only really institutionalize the things that we think make sense to institutionalize and then give you some entrepreneurial freedom in other areas to keep you inspired to write business and can continue to move the business forward.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the trick.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: When you figure it out, yeah, I think people are still trying to figure it out.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're still trying to figure it out every day.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's the hardest thing in the world.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you're buying sub you're buying agencies that have that very little reinvestment into their own companies because they are lifestyle businesses.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so, guys, every dollar they spend on something, it gets taken out of their pocket.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so you really have to kind of bring all their stuff and say, hey, we need to make some sophisticated choices here, and and that could be challenging for an entrepreneur who believes that they've built the best agency in the world and and we're buying you for a lot of money and is proving out that you built a nice agency, right?
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: And now you got to take them and you got to move a few things.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, what do you think has been the biggest driver of your growth?
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's a lot of companies that have been around a lot longer than yours that aren't as big, or companies that started around the same time that aren't nearly as big.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you guys have done an incredible job growing.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm just curious, like, what's what do you think has been and maybe one thing?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think I think for us, we always we're we're production-based people, so we've always put a heavy focus on producing, right?
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Organic growth.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: Organic growth was over 10% our entire existence up until recently when rates started to slip a little bit.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're still sitting between eight and 10%.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we kind of fluctuate up and down in there.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that that's you know what been one of our huge drivers of our business is that we we've really are a sales culture and we're bringing in the right salespeople to lead these organizations further.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we're looking for people that are kind of stuck at like three million that want to get to six, right?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then we ask ourselves, can we get them to six?
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then what do they do differently?
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: What is their right to compete?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Where can we have opportunities drive towards them?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: And how can we bring whatever they have across the entire framework of alchemy and make everybody within alchemy successful?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: And if we can do that through an acquisition, then we can make some money.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then we secondarily look is like how many people can we maybe buy books of business and plug them into that agency to make that agency even more successful and bolster that agency up with some younger talent.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're always looking at perpetuation plans.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're always looking at how we're hiring agencies and bringing them into certain agencies to give them a little kind of steroid shot in the arm, you know.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: You'd be surprised how much just adding like one body to an agency that's a younger producer that can actually inspire everyone else to start moving in the right direction, too.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, but the biggest thing, like from a sales perspective, honestly, is like when I talk to other entrepreneurs, is I am the I've done I've lived their life, I know their problems, not only from a production-based mindset, but from just running the agency.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I can I can digest and I can I can literally tell them what I think their problems are with their business by looking at their their sim that they've provided, and they're always stunned because I've been in their seat.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: How how have you grown or changed, you know, basically going from this entrepreneur mindset to now becoming you know a CEO of a huge large organization?
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: Is there things that you had to change that you thought, you know, oh yeah.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: What are some of those things?
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's a great question, by the way.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, you're you're a leader of uh, I mean, we're what are we 16th in the nation now, I think, with insurance journal, um, and 33 at BI.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're leading a$2 billion company plus in valuation.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you've got to mature yourself up to that level, which means that I've got to be a constant absorber of information, right?
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't designed to be a CEO of an organization that is a$2 billion organization, but I've grown into it and had a master class MBA over the last six years of sitting and listening to my private equity investors who've been very great, GCP capital partners out of New York, fantastic partners.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: And Solomer Capital was our was the original LP on our deal.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: And they were great and they were very entrepreneurial and they basically, I just listened, I absorbed.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: I did what my dad always told me is you know, you have two ears and one mouth, and I tend to talk a lot, but listen twice as much as you speak, right?
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: So sit in the room, absorb what they're saying, write down what they're saying, figure out if you don't know what it is, and go in and look it up, research it, figure out how it's applicable to your business and how it's gonna be applicable to you moving forward.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: And and then just being smart enough to have a vision for the future, too, to like look at the space and go, gee, does it make sense to have?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna use Greg Williams' framework because I think it's a great saying that he had is like from a house of brands to a branded house, like, does it make sense to have a house of brands that are spread kind of like loose across the nation?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: It made sense at one point to do that, but right now, what it really the impactful part, which you saw with USI's valuation, is having one brand, having one data integrity spot, having one collaboration, having one unit.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: We call it Alchemy One, we call it the collective.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: We have a bunch of names for it.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but everybody comes on our platform.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: We've got 75% of our people on our platform in one instance of Epic as we sit today.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: The rest of stuff spins off of like three different systems that we use to collaborate and cleanse their data and bring it into a position into what we call our producer portal, which is where we run in our sales room, where we run all of our own CRM stuff for.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so, what companies really become more today, I think, in smart brokerage, Gen X is like the perfect, perfect age band for where we're at today because we understand technology enough to embrace it, but we also know what the human connection is, right?
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we we look at people and say, look, there's a human element to this business that's gonna exist.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's not AI that's gonna take your job, it's the person that commands the AI that's gonna come in and take your job because AI is a force multiplier in our business, right?
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at it, it's a force multiplier in sales, a full sport more full force multiplier in service, um, across the board.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so I always tell people, it's like, be a student.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's how I've been able to do it is really to get in to learn to learn, to listen, pick up sophisticated um information that you typically wouldn't see when you're running your own agency.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: Think about things differently, you know, when you're talking about debt facility management and currence limits, you know, how you're looking at stock valuations, how you're determining fair market valuation.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: These things are all pretty heavy concepts that you learn quickly as you kind of go through the system.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: So not many people can make the transition, and a lot of people do get gobbled up along the way um over time.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: I've just been one of those guys that has always been a student of the game and I constantly am studying, learning, evolving, pivoting, challenging myself.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's the if you want to call it the athlete's mindset, whatever, it's you're never good enough.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um maybe that's bad that I think of it that way.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I'm always thinking about how do I improve me and how do I improve we, you know?
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I always encourage my people, like, yeah, our company's name's Alchemy, but I need you to think about Alchemy.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: What are we doing for our group?
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: What are we doing for our team?
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: What are we doing for our teammates?
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because every person that sits in that room that holds shares of stock and alchemy with you depend on you to do your part, you know, and that's where the athlete's mentality comes in because you've always played with the team and everyone's got a responsibility, right?
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you play third base, you know what you're supposed to do.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_02: So, so talking about the athlete mentality, right?
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_02: I think, you know, we'll use football as an example.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: The goal is to win the Super Bowl, right?
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: And then they say that that athlete wins the Super Bowl, he wakes up the next day and he's like, Holy shit, what do I do now?
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_02: I gotta go, I gotta go win the next Super Bowl, right?
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I get I guess the question is, what is that Super Bowl for you, Curtis?
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, what's next after that?
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: Like, at what point are you like, you know what?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: I I I I think I think I achieved what I want to achieve.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: Or is that a you know, is the answer, I don't know.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: The answer is never take over the world.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the the answer is I think is as long as you're healthy, as long as you got the energy, as long as you got the will of the people and the investors behind you, and you have the love and passion for the game, you're gonna play the game and you're gonna play it hard.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's when those things start to drop off, is when you start to drop off.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you've got to realize, like, and I remember times like I was a pitcher in baseball where your arm's just worn out and the coach comes to the mound, he's like, You got it in you, and you have to say no sometimes.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and a lot of our people in our industry don't say no, they just get more people around them to tell them how great they are so that they can remove themselves even further back from the system, right?
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, I like to be in the system talking to the people, like to be around the people that are getting us to where we need to be.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to say hi to everybody.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: And like we just had a huge event in in Huntington Beach, and you know, it's probably like, I don't know, five, six hundred people there.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like I want to talk to every one of them, you know.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: We got 1,500 people nationwide.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk to every single one of them, but you can't, it's hard.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: So you have people that are proxies that are built like you that you've not identical, but you've you've hired to put into positions to help you run all these different regions, right?
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you gotta you gotta trust your people.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta hire right, you gotta hire smart, and you got to trust your people, give them room to run the system the way that they need to run the system within the framework that you give them.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're able to do that, like a coach is able to put you in position and say, maybe you're not a first baseman, maybe you are a third baseman, maybe you're a catcher.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: But to be willing and open for that, like that coaching, I think is a huge part of it.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and motivation for me is is really like, you know, I kind of find myself to be nowhere near like Michael Jordan, but you know, you've ever seen that thing about Michael Jordan where he started making stories up about people he's playing just to piss himself off.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I do that.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: I take it personally.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: I took it personally.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I make up stories about stuff and I'm like, oh yeah, no, I got this.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: Don't worry, now I'm mad.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like I I find a way to hype myself up, I guess, to get to get in the game and get moving when I need to.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: Is is that mindset, is that something you developed over time, or you think it was always there and you just continue to sharpen that that tool to to to get more out of it.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's it was always there.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was just more about did I believe in myself to be able to propel it to where it needed to go to, right?
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: That was the question.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of it is is your self-determination.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: And someone once told me that your in a your inner dialogue, and this sounds like some California stuff, create your external results.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: But it's true.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's like if you walk into the office and say, I suck at my job, well, guess what?
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: You're probably gonna suck at your job.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: But if you walk in the office and say, I'm the best at what I do, and I'm gonna go dominate today, and I'm gonna take every effort of every hour and every minute to dominate, and then I'm gonna go have a hell of a time tonight with my family and my friends.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we want.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want you to live to work.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: We want you to work to live, you know?
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we want to create opportunities for you.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's really what we're about.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: We're about the growth mindset of the entire industry.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we want to grow it a different way.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: As you can see, like, I don't believe in the mahogany, blah, blah, blah, and the green carpet, and like, let's go hang dead animals on our wall and all that.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: Not it's all fine.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have a problem with any of that, but I can see by the way your backs of your rims are done the same way.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it's just not the way things are done, it's not what's warm to people anymore, you know, in certain areas, sure.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I think it's like you got to think, you got to take the model because the model's kind of broken and you got to kind of shake it around and you got to flip it and you got to come up with new ways to do it.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the power positions that we've been in, and and I could go on for hours, but is is that we were always migrated.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were bringing our agencies' data into our system so we can just turn and focus straight on our business innovation and our AI technology, and that's where we're hyped.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's where we're gonna win the game, and that's where we're flipping a model around, is we're changing things that people don't want to change or are hesitant to change.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, look, we got two choices.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: You can either lean back and get run over by it, or you can lean in and absorb it, right?
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, knowing that there will be that sticky middle that will still be human-powered.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: How do you optimize the rest workflow-wise using AI?
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we saw with with InsureTech, too, guys.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we everyone's like, InsureTech's gonna flip everybody upside down.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, it actually became an optimizer for us, right?
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: Force multiplier made us move faster.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if it's good or bad that you move faster, but it definitely helps you move faster.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: What is the AI that you guys are working on?
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: Is that the broker uh tech that you've built, or is there are there other things?
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's an old company that I sold.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, really right now what we're doing is we're doing a couple different things.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: One is is we're trying to drive we're trying to drive production while you sleep.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we're we've been very successful in driving certain lines of business all the way from using API hookins and and automatic quote pickups in the middle of the night and actually dropping it in, quoting it, running it through the system, and then actually quote issue bind, and then dropping it back down into the AM's desk.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: We also got workflow management tools where you can pick up based on the subject line.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: We can actually go in and grab an email and we can actually put it on our SOPs and run a process for the account manager if it if it fits one of our workflows, about 75 to 80 percent all the way through, and then let them pick up the last mile.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, what does that do?
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: It frees up more time for them to become what advocates of us, right?
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: Get out, sell towards our clients, talk to our clients, have more meaningful conversations.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you if you think about from like a medical field industry, when you go see a doctor, right?
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: They sit in the room for like 30 minutes.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: By the time a doctor gets in there, he's got like five minutes with you, and he's like, Yeah, that's good.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're good.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta go.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta get another, I gotta get another client in.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta get another patient in.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't have the time to do anything.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so we figure, like, hey, if we can optimize uh the workflows and the systems and get the sledge work off the account manager's desk, then they'll have more time to cater towards our clients and become stealth enforcers for us, right?
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, have you ever talked about workers comp with Brandon?
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're a producer, you know.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: I see that we don't have it.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why we don't have it, but hey, would would you be open to that opportunity?
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where things get real interesting, and that's where you get the high organic growth.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if people forget, like you don't have organic growth in this type of business, it's private equity back that wants to do the inorganic side.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: You you hit a wall on inorganic on the inorganic acquisition side because you can't just buy, buy, buy, buy, buy.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: That costs money, right?
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so, and then you get like kind of the howden effect, which you know, kind of throws another hook into you, which is like now you got groups that are just very, very interested in lifting producers.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and you know, there was you used to only have to deal with one.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now you've got five or six that are actively in that environment, and so that's creating another evolution in our business of like, okay, how do we now guard our producers?
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: How do we make sure that they're taken care of?
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: How do we make sure that they feel comfortable in their environment too?
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it I think it's it's interesting.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: So iron sharpens iron in a lot of these scenarios, and you just got to be able to be adapt and move.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we're at that really unique size where we're we're large enough and we de-risk the front side of this total deal.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when we jumped off the ledge in 2020, I mean, it was a crazy time to jump out.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we were 79, I think 7.9 million in EBITDA at the time, and we fell back to like 5 million, like almost immediately.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're up like 160 plus in EBITDA six years later.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so, like, I mean, look, at that time we looked at it, we went, crap, what do we do?
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: What do we do?
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: We rolled up our sleeves, we built a team, I got on the horn, started calling everybody I knew, hustling, you know, the name of your deal, just to hustle, man.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: You just got to be there, you just got to be in front of them.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's guys that we just had at our event who we just closed that I've chased for six years, you know.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you think about that, like not a lot of people have that tenacity in them.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I encourage you to keep not to beat yourself up, but keep those connections going because not everyone's in the same spot to buy at that time or to buy into what you're selling.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's like, have the patience to stay by, have the patience to stay in touch, have the patience to remember.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: And over time, if your message is correct, there will be a point where you're gonna get hit by them and say, I'm ready.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, Okay, let's do this, right?
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: And we just had two of this.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_02: What's the most important lesson you learned in the last six, seven years that if you knew it back in 2020, boy oh boy, boy, would that make you dangerous?
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's an interesting that's a great question.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, 2020 was such a weird time.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like we started in 2019, so we didn't know that 2020 was coming, so we kind of got hit with it in the middle of it.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, I think one of the most important lessons is never take anything for granted.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: Understand the people who got you to where you need to be.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: Love and appreciate your people because they're the only ones that are cheering for you sometimes, you know, because the people from the outside are and you know, and at the end of the day, it's like, you know, do right by your people, and my by and far, your people should do right by you.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you treat people with respect, they usually will treat you with respect back.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, again, I like to answer in five layered answers, but you know, get rid of people that are toxic.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: They're just gonna drag your teams down, you're gonna drag your teammates down, and then that'll that'll decrease your hustle factor, right?
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_02: Where where are you at in the next five years?
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: Where's Current Barn?
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still doing this as far as I see it.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think we'll be, you know, I think we'll be closing in on that kind of 300, 400 million EBITDA mark, which is a really interesting spot to be in because you're kind of running out of private equity road.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we've got a number of guys and and and women that lead these organizations that are at that size right now are having really hard conversations and rooms about what their next step looks like.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think that's what you saw with USI.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they'd gone into the publics, out of the publics, you know, and at some point the pressure points with Hub going public, I think put pressure back on them to think about okay, now what?
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: Where do I go?
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: Where do we fit?
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, the guys that were running that organization didn't want to go back public.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I had conversations with them.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're kind of like, Well, who's going to buy you?
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then it pops out over the weekend that Ann's the target.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay, fine.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'd heard Ann was going to buy somebody completely different, which would have shook the whole world, but that didn't happen.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it must have been smoke put out there to kind of take it off of that.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: But um I think the landscape of the brokerage community is gonna just gonna change completely over the next year and a half to two years because a lot of people are out that size.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: And what we're trying to do is run the company with discipline and rigor and get it in a position to where we can actually delever to go public if we have to.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I would, as long as I'm sitting in this chair, I'd rather take the company public than sell it to one of those guys.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not it's not against the mahogany and the I and the I'm gonna be able to do that.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, then I have to put some some stuff on my walls.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: But like the the, you know, to me, it's not an an indication of how they run their businesses or anything, it's just an offer of me.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: And why wouldn't I?
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: I would have just sold my agency to them 100 years ago and been done with it, right?
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, so with all the blood, sweat, and tears that I've laid down and the commitments that I've made to people that I hold dearly responsible, um, I want to finish it off for them.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_00: And finishing it off to me is, you know, probably keeping alchemy alive as a brand and well.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: I know the publics are a tough place to operate in.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my real goal would be to get in a long-winded way towards like that Amwins model where you're kind of like you operate almost like a public company, but you're private still, and your people are getting continual liquidity drips out.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, let's face it, two agencies have completely screwed up the entire ecosystem because they haven't been able to provide liquidity events for their people.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's trickled down and now compounded itself into other ones.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: But when you talk about stock and valuation of stock and fair market value and all the stuff in a privately held company, people lean on those two examples and say, Well, look what happened over here, you know.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but it was a different type of drivers that they were being held accountable for.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like private equity say, grow fast, don't integrate, don't worry about your organic growth, just add, right?
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: And they did it, and it was amazingly successful.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: And they got to scale quick, and then they had to pause at like 250 in EBITDA, and they had to reset their companies, right?
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: They had to reintegrate their companies, they had to start thinking about their companies differently.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then some of them pass their window too far, and you just get to a point where you can't d-lever to go public.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: And now what?
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now what's your exit?
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and so that's the question that you ask.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, honestly, is it is a great one because I think it keeps changing.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: For a while, you could do this for 17, 18 years before you had to think about do I need to go public or do I not need to go public.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: But now it's getting to a point where those windows are closing faster, I think.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we want to do is is have a a number of events.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: We've had one and continue to have some events and continue to provide liquidity to our partners so they understand that they've got it's not an illiquid asset, it's it's actually a liquid asset that will yield, you know, and and we're realistic about it.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: We're not trying to pop our stock to say your stock's worth$30 a unit and to BS them so that they feel comfortable and then get out their calculator and be like, oh, I'm worth$120 million.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's so great.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: This has been fantastic.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's all a good puff piece, but if you can't deliver on that, you're setting yourself up for failure.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, I like to set up expectations that we actually deliver on and deliverables that we can mediate.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_02: Well, let's get into my favorite part of the show where we get to learn some personal information about Curtis.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_02: Rapid fire.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: Rapid fire.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: I'll start us off.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_02: What is your favorite sports team?
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_02: And what's your favorite sport to play?
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: Favorite sport to play is obviously skiing.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to call it sport.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I used to be baseball was my favorite sport overall.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: I used to love playing baseball.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, favorite sports team, Lakers by far.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, unfortunately, we haven't been that great as of late, but uh uh stick with the Lakers on that one.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_02: You had a few wins.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_02: You'll be right.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't count the bubble.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't count the I don't count the bubble championship as a championship.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know about that one.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's like being a Pats fan and saying, oh, we've been down for a few years or down for a few years.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well I mean, like, look, I grew up in the magic era.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how can you not just be a diehard Lakers fan when you got magic and the team playing, and you know, you grew up with that, and it's a lot of success around it.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, but you know, I my university, the University of Arizona basketball team is like near and dear to my heart, obviously.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh love that I love to watch them play probably way too much.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: I get too animated uh for my own good.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's a patience thing because we do a sponsorship at the court there, so I'll have to be at games, and I can't like I can't react or overreact.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_02: So I kind of like have to you can't like start cursing another team and no, I can't be like, I nerfed.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you actually watch the replays during the like the tournament, you'll see my wife and I actually jumping up and down and like screaming and yelling, and that's about as far as we can go with it.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: But back in the day, there'd be a lot of cussing and other things that would go along with it, too.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_01: But that that's what you bring Troy along for.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's right, that's right, that's right.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what's one thing you do now that your younger self wouldn't understand?
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: This no, um honestly, it's it's the amount of travel, you know.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's a part of this job going to New York, uh talking to a room full of people that went to Harvard and Yale and Columbia and all these big schools.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, here I am at the Harvard of the West, Arizona degree, popping in there and having conversations with them.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you there they're all sitting on one side of the table and I'm on the other.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, okay, you guys are real smart, but I know insurance.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, it's it's uh it's that's an interesting thing.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I never expected to be in a room full of you know HBS uh grads peering at me.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: But do you wear a suit to those meetings?
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um occasionally depends.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you do?
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_02: At least he owns a suit.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_02: I don't I don't own a suit.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_00: I rarely do.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: I only only one.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: They have an event every year where I make a presentation to the investors for the private equity group, and so it's to their investors, and they have it at one of those old-fashioned like New York clubs where you have to wear a suit and tie and you can't carry your phone in and you gotta carry a backpack and all that, can't wear a hat, can't do any of that.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, in those scenarios, yes, I can wear I can wear a suit, but mostly on like who's one of any hair, man.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: Come on.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: I say I wear a hat mainly for if I had the flow like you do, man.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'd just be out there combing it all day long and letting it go, but you know, I don't have I don't have that, unfortunately.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, those days have been long gone for me.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_02: You're working too hard.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, who's one person better alive that you would love to have dinner with?
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: Steve Jobs.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's a good one.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think he fundamentally screwed us, and I would like to find out why.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_01: In what way?
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_00: Technology is awesome, but it also has taken our freedom to some degree, and they had to have known that along the way, that that's the way it was gonna go, right?
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'd love to peel back the onion on that and figure out like outside of convenience, what they were thinking, like how that how they thought that their their tools would be uptick and utilized, right?
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like now everyone thinks you got to text them within two seconds of them texting you, or else you're being, as my daughter would like to say, left on red or whatever, you know.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's crazy.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it'd be interesting to get their mindset around, like, okay, what did you see when you were developing that?
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: How did you think it would shift?
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: And did you think it would be additive or negative?
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I always said, like, for years, I said, I think the world will look back on how Apple created their tools and how they integrated through Microsoft and everything else to have emails and supercomputers in your hands, how that fundamentally shifted the way we think about business.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_00: To some, it created freedom, like you guys, probably to be able to do what you do and have this freedom that's great.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, to be away from the office and still work from your phone from from some guys like me when you don't get a lot of breaks.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's hard because it's constantly hitting you, right?
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's constantly reminding you of what you've got to do constantly, you know.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's a dangerous thing.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: I got a wife that home to do that for me, so she can remind me what I need to do.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_00: But I just think he'd be the guy is so brilliant.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think he would have been an interesting guy just to sit in the room with and understand like what his thoughts are, you know.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: We I spoke to someone recently and he had sold his company for tens of millions of dollars, and he said the wire head, and he's like looking at his account, he like looked up at his wife, he's all excited.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, It's like, what do I do now?
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, uh, take out the trash.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, life doesn't change.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: All I can tell you is like money's interesting because you know it's not going to fundamentally change your happiness or your sadness or your chores or your responsibilities or relationships.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: Give you a little bit more freedom to move around a little bit easier, but really, like, people shouldn't chase money, they should chase their dreams.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if you do it correctly, the money should follow to some degree as long as you're consistent.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I always tell young people, man, they ask me, like, how do you what would you give to me?
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's consistency.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: If I could give a gift to any kid, it would be consistency.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I tell my kids every day that a 1921-year-old, and I say, Look, life's 10 what happens to you, 90 how you're gonna react to it.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like everybody has a plan, like Mike Tyson says, until you get punched in the face, and then you go, Well crap, and I and I tell my son who's 21, I go, Listen, bud, life's gonna punch you in the face.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: I can guarantee you that it's how you're gonna lift up when it happens.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: How are you gonna react when shit doesn't go your way?
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: Pardon my French, you can bleep that, but when it doesn't go your way, we don't we don't bleep that you better react when you get smacked, because that's what's the true making of the person is do you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, reset, figure out what you did wrong, and then move forward, or do you sit and wallow and whine and cry, you know?
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and there's a little bit of both that kind of has to go along with something like that, I think.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, it's about how you respond.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_02: I agree, and I think I think as a society, and just you know, I think we're getting a little softer, but oh you you you need to go through those experiences in order to need to lose, you need to lose, yeah.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_02: I and I think that's like I you know, I wish people understood that.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I want to win more than anybody, but everything I've learned is from the losses, it's not from the wins.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, absolutely, and I tell people like we just had our big event.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: I got up on stage in front of like 300 people, and I said, Look, I want you to fail because that means you're trying.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't fail, you're not trying, you're just sitting there being content, and sitting there being content, the ball will be moved around the court and you're gonna stop getting shots.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, try, you know, we're we're big on on trying.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like, get out there and and make effort, man.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: Just just give it a shot.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there is no magic, there is no magic wand of this business.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_00: There really isn't.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_00: There is nothing, as you guys know, you've talked to millions of people.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: All sorts and sizes and frames have different levels of success for different reasons, and none of it can really correlate back to one thing, probably is consistency, consistency in the way people approach their mindset, consistency in the way people approach their business, and then grabbing for opportunity when opportunity presents itself because opportunity will show itself to yourself.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_00: My question is, are you gonna be there to pick it up?
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna be there to recognize when opportunity is in front of you?
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_00: And are you gonna have the gumption?
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I was about to say something else.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_02: The ball you could tell or not.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_02: Are you gonna are you gonna have the balls to go quit your job and do whatever else you need to do to get it done?
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_02: Are you gonna throw it on the line?
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna throw it on the line?
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna throw your family legacy on the line and take a flyer and say, I want to move past being a lifestyle business and I want to move into something way different.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: I want to move into something that provides my people scale and opportunity, myself scale and opportunity, and my family generational wealth.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: How do you do that?
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is how you do it.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_00: You get in with a company like Alchemy and you ride the way up and you do your part, you know?
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: And bam, there it is.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_02: Let's go.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_02: You heard it, you heard it here all.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh let's go.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_02: We appreciate you having coming onto the show and dropping so much wisdom.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, if an agency or somebody wants, where can they find you?
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_02: Where can they find Alchemy?
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_02: How how can they get in touch?
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, really easy.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: Just my email, it's it's it's on the website.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: They can go look up my bio.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_00: My email at cbarton at alchemyins.com.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_00: CBarton at alchemyins.com.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: Just hit me on the quick note and say, hey, I'm interested in talking to you.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_00: And and if that's the case, we'll we'll sort it through.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a whole BD team here who does a lot of the MA.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: I lead the MA, so I'm on every call, no matter what.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's kind of my other secret sauce, I think, that a lot of the other CEOs have gotten away from is being on those calls because they're time consuming.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: But to me, that's the single biggest and most important thing you can do in your business is vet who's coming in, you know, and and vet who's gonna be inside your system because it's like you don't want to bring the terrible girlfriend to your turkey Thanksgiving dinner with your family and have it just be a complete disaster and have your dad look across the table and be like, Are you serious with this right now?
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: Are you are you are you kidding me?
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like did that happen to you or is this uh we're not gonna talk about my uh I've been buried for way too long, so don't worry about me.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: I I uh I figured it out.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I you know you gotta miss a couple frogs blind the way, as they say, right?
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how you say it, but yeah, you make mistakes along the way.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: But um, no, it's it's a single, it's a single most important betting factor for us is just to understand, like, hey, who are you?
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: What makes you tick?
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like you guys are doing here, what makes you go?
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what are you about when you wake up in the morning?
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if I flop a$10 million check in your lap, are you still gonna be motivated?
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I ask that question, you know.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_02: If they say no, you say thanks for coming.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm like, well, you know, I kind of want to dabble in this business over here and maybe do this with my kid over here, I'm like, yeah, you're probably not a good fit for us then.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we really want all in people.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that sounds weird, but it's it is what it is.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's like today's market has never demanded more of an insurance brokerage that's private equity backed, or just backed in general by any type of financial sponsor, and or the people that are that are sitting out there that are independent, that don't have skill, have not reached scale, are not reinvesting into their businesses, or they're gonna run into a problem in the future shortly.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_00: And they're gonna get out-resourced, outskilled.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a matter of if it's a matter of when, it will happen.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_00: And there's things that people are working on in the larger brokerages that they've got the money to play with that will blow your mind across the board.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've seen our stuff and I've seen some of my friends' stuff that run other bigger companies than us, and you're not gonna be able to compete.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so the question is when do you make that decision for yourself?
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when is the right time for you as a person, as an individual, as an agency owner?
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: You build your business to sell.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_00: When do you execute on that?
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_00: I will tell you that multiples cannot hang where they're hanging on the on the on the tuck end multiples.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_00: I've hit that a thousand times.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: They just can't.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's everybody says it.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_00: Pat Gallagher said it, came out and said it.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, everybody's saying it.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's an issue.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_00: So the question is is like, if you hang on, where's it gonna be?
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_00: Is it gonna be down?
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: Is it gonna be up?
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody knows.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you just got to make the right decision for you at the right time.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if that means stay independent, that means stay independent.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_00: I support that.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: I love the entrepreneurial spirit of people that start their own businesses and find success.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I will applaud that every time.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_00: But there will be a time where you get to a resource thing where you're like, I need more resource for my people.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: I want my people to grow like I'm growing.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you don't want to be the guy that has all the fancy things and nobody else in your agency does.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because let me tell you, that's not a good recipe for success.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're watching this at home or if you're listening to this in your car, this is your sign.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_02: Sell your agency, get in touch with Curtis.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's your sign.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: Destiny is knocking, and all I'm saying is just answer the door.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that hard.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_02: We appreciate you having you on the show.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_02: We hope you guys enjoyed it.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_02: I know I learned a lot.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much, Curtis.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_02: And uh that's fantastic, guys.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_02: Following your journey.