E176: The Time And Money Equation

Welcome to the Agency Freedom Podcast. We help you find your freedom in every aspect of your business. Captivity comes in many forms, from stale, ineffective sales and marketing tactics, to outdated technology and workflows to teams who are performing far less than their true capabilities. On this show, you'll hear compelling conversations with your peers in the insurance industry, as well as from top shelf professionals in related fields who are leading the charge towards what's coming next.

This is the Agency Freedom Podcast. Let's go. Hey folks, welcome back to the Agency Freedom Podcast. We help you find and achieve success in every aspect of your business.

I missed you last week. Sorry, guys. I did not get an episode recorded this November, this Q4, really this entire year. But the velocity at which things are happening at risk well is as much as I have ever seen in my career, as we'll talk about in this episode here a little bit later.

The episode you're listening to is our final episode of 2024. We are taking the month of December off to regroup and recalibrate on the content calendar. Full transparency, the last several episodes have been delivered simply by me sitting in my chair and thinking, what have we not talked about? What are the things that are floating around in my head that I think are important that I think my audience may want to here.

So that is really how things have come about since we started with this solo thing back in October. The whole reason for doing the solo thing was simply I got tired of having to manage guests and whatnot. I don't have anybody else helping with the podcast on the front end. We have an editing and a production team, but that's really it on the help.

Everything else is up to me to find guests, to coordinate with them, to come up with good questions, to research them and whatnot. Anyways, I'm wasting your time. This is not giving value to you. I regard to getting stuff.

All that to say, there's a lot that goes into this podcast that is not and never has been revenue generating. And as we move forward into 2025, I have to be really intentional with what I put out in the podcast. Because if it's not useful, if it's not additive to your operation, if it's not helping you in some way, then there's no reason for me to have this podcast. We've come to the point with Riskwell, with my personal network, with what's going on in our business that I don't need the podcast to be some kind of ego fluff or to be a lead generator or to be a revenue thing.

We're not selling anything on this podcast. We never have. We don't have any affiliate revenue. We don't have any projects.

We don't have any coaching programs. The only reason this podcast exists is because I want to give back to my friends and colleagues and those coming behind me in the industry because I realized how many missing pieces there were when I was coming up, when I was doing all of the get started stuff and grinding with 80 hour sales weeks and whatnot. So we're taking a break in the month of December 2024, and we're going to come back fresh and revitalized and hopefully better than ever in January of 2025.

What am I working on between now and then? My keyword for 2025, and I've used this once before in the last five years, but it seems really appropriate now. My overarching word of focus for 2025 is actually focus. focusing on what matters most, what drives positive impact for my family, for my mental health, my own well-being, for my channel partners, for my clients, for my friends and colleagues in the industry.

What are the actions that I need to be taking on an hour by hour, on a day by day, week by week, month by month? What do I need to be saying and doing to drive maximum positive impact? When all this stuff went down November 6th of last year, with the panic attack and subsequent recognition that I was dealing with chronic anxiety and depression, a lot of things became less important overnight. One of the things that I'm going to be working on with the content calendar in December, and as I think about what does my audience need to hear what is not being said out there because there a lot of noise in the podcast space There a lot of noise in the content creator space And I have to figure out what am I adding?

What am I doing that is valuable? So a lot of you have never sent an email. A lot of you have never messaged me. A lot of you have never engaged actively with me, but you listen every month because I see the numbers and I know thousands of you are listening every month.

I see that there is activity on the feeds, whether it's Apple or Spotify or whatever. Here's what I need from you. And this will directly impact the future of the podcast. What do you want to hear about?

What are the subjects? What are the questions? What are the things that you want to hear about? Do you want guests back on here from time to time?

Do you want people to simply come on and talk shop about current events and have more of a, just an engagement, a conversation kind of episode. The stuff with Travis and Jason Kelsey, the New Heights podcast is terribly entertaining. I really enjoy listening to that one. You know, Joe Rogan is a solo host and there's, there's traditional interview stuff there, but there's a lot of just banter.

A lot of it's not interview style. It's not Larry King. It's Joe Rogan, been talking to somebody who he thinks is interesting and they're just talking chop. What do you want to hear from me in this podcast?

Because at this point in almost 200 episodes, I'm trying to figure out where we go from here. And you can read between the lines and figure out, James is trying to figure out if he needs to keep doing this or if it's run its natural course and needs to be simply put on the shelf and time and energy devoted to other things. because unlike a lot of these other podcast hosts, I'm not selling anything. I'm not making a dollar from this podcast.

I never have. If anything, I'm selling a book. I get like $3 if you buy my book on Amazon and about $2.50 if you buy my audio book on Audible, leaving captivity.

That's not going to make anyone a lot of money. Let's be real. So at this point, I'm going to be spending the month of December figuring out what do we need to talk about. One of the questions, the topics that I'm really interested in is maximizing oneself in a healthy fashion, finding the right equilibrium between effort and well-being.

Because there is a very interesting paradigm that comes, a paradigm shift that comes when you recognize that pushing as hard as you can all the time is really unhealthy and unsustainable and may very well be not even a good thing for you to be doing at all. You have to recognize your limits. You have to be prioritizing your own well-being and your family. And then whatever else comes after that comes after that.

Well, I should say whatever your spiritual, religious, existential belief system is that fuels your mission as a person. I always forget to start there because it's such an assumption for me. It's how I make every decision. It's how I contemplate every question.

So forgive me for not putting it out there first. Whatever your belief system is, fueled by some sort of religious foundation, if you are an agnostic or an atheist, whatever your worldview is, that is your worldview because it's your worldview and you're informed by other you know, thinkers or intellectuals or stoics or whatever, you know, starting with your own mission and vision and your own values as an individual, not as a company, not the company's brand, but your brand, you know, figuring out what that is and then finding the equilibrium, the best place for you to be between striving for excellence and striving for greatness, but doing it in such a way that is sustainable and mindful about your own wellbeing and mental health and having self-care.

Because there is this very interesting tipping point that happens sometime in a person's career, generally between years five and eight in their career from what I've heard and what I see people doing in the conversations that I've had. There's a very interesting trade-off that happens early in your career. It's one way. And once you have some success and maybe a lot of success, it generally goes the other way if you're a balanced, thoughtful, discerning individual.

And what I'm talking about here is the time-money equation because you're always giving up one in favor of the other to some degree. And if you're not doing that if you in perfect equilibrium then you a better human than I ever be because that almost impossible to maintain for any length of time At certain points in your career at certain points in your life you are prioritizing money and you willing to give up time and freedom to get more money And at a certain point in your career, you have enough success business-wise, you have determined, I need to make some shifts here.

Maybe not like overtly, explicitly stated, even to yourself internally, much less out loud verbally or expressing it publicly on social media or blog posts or emails or whatever. But you get to a certain point and you realize I have some money. I have not enough money maybe, but I have not no money. And you start asking yourself, what am I willing to give up in order to get more money, in order to get more power, in order to get more prestige.

And at a certain point, there is, as Malcolm Gladwell would say, a tipping point where you decide intrinsically or even extrinsically, you decide officially, out loud, that you are no longer willing to trade time and freedom for more money. And that is something that I should have thought more about earlier in life, because we're getting to a point with Riskwell that the most important thing I can do is make the next smart hire. The most important thing I can do is make the next smart merger and acquisition conversation.

We have nine people here. We're going to be finishing 2024 ahead of our goal, which I thought was aggressive given where we started this year with my life in complete chaos mode, figuring out anxiety meds for the first time of my life and dealing with unknowns all over the place. For us to achieve and exceed our targets, which I thought were pretty aggressive, that is a really cool place to be. What I'm realizing is the most effective way that I can spend my time is in figuring out who the next opportunity is, whether that's a channel partner, whether that's a marketing source, whether that's a hire or an M&A opportunity, if I'm going out there doing the majority of the boots on the ground prospecting, then our growth slows down.

But if my prospecting is centered on force multipliers, to use a military term, that's when I get to have kind of a hacking of the equation situation, when I get to have more time and more freedom, but still get more money because I'm setting up my team for success. I'm having conversations with channel partners and referral sources and putting deals together and doing rev share agreements with adjacent professionals and whatnot that allow our team to operate more efficiently, that allow our team to have more leads, more good, warm prospects, more people in the pipeline that came very easily.

I've never been a fan of cold calling. You guys know that. I've talked about it several times. The idea of a cold contact doesn't make sense to me.

The idea of a lukewarm contact or a kind of warm contact that you haven't spoken with before, but they have encountered your content, encountered your brand. You have intentionally put yourself in circles where your target prospect is likely to be so that there's a little bit of warming up before they come across you in a conversation. Because the best thing you can have with a lukewarm conversation is someone to go, oh yeah, I've seen your stuff. What's going on?

That tells you you're doing something right. Now I'm rambling here a little bit. Sorry, There's no way around it. The point moving forward is I'm going to put a lot of emphasis into helping my audience win your equation, your time, money, freedom equation.

If you're still listening to this podcast in 2025, it's because you recognize that there's value in winning that equation, the time, money, freedom equation. And there's going to be a lot that comes in 2025 from me content wise. If it's going to be agent facing, it's going to have to be something like that. Because otherwise, I don't know if I'm interested in doing it anymore.

Because I'm to a point now where I just really enjoy the time and the freedom. And the money is almost getting to the point that we've systematized it to a certain extent that I need to focus more on the big stuff the force multipliers The mistake I made last year was thinking that I could take my eye off the ball publish a book launch a professional speaking career and my agency would take care of itself. That was stupid. That was incredibly foolish and naive and arrogant and egotistical and all the negative things I could think of because that's not how this works.

What you're hearing from me now is not anything remotely close to that. It is recognizing that my agency very much needs me. Your agency needs you too. But you probably don't need to be doing the front end prospecting for the individual clients.

You need to be building a team to handle the front end individual client prospecting. And you, agency principal listening to this right now, what are you doing to create a force multiplier? What are you doing to generate channel partner relationships, to have new networking opportunities, to have new marketing material, have video content that lives on your YouTube channel and your website and on social media that warms up everybody in your circle so that when you do have a conversation with them, you're able to leverage the time, freedom, money equation to get the maximum benefit on the money side of things with the lowest possible amount of time given up and freedom given up.

Is this going to require great delegating? Yeah, it is. Is this going to require smart use of technology? Yeah, it is.

Because if you're doing everything manually, at this point, I'm sorry, but you're not paying attention. And if you're doing everything manually, you're probably not listening to this podcast either. Let's be real. So that is it.

If you want to be on this journey, I need to hear from you. I want to hear what you want to hear talked about, what the topics are, the subjects. I need to hear back from my audience so I can better align what I'm putting out with what you want to pick up. And I'll be real with you.

If there's not a lot of feedback, then I don't know how much longer this podcast is going to exist. Because you've heard me talk about the McKinney podcast. It's our hyperlocal expression. It is here in the RiskWell office.

We've been hosting it since May of this year. We have close to 30 episodes that have been done now. And if I get to choose between one or the other, I choose the McKinney podcast right now. Because the value, the benefit derived from that, it's just a lot more impact.

So if this podcast continues if my regular recording continues Then it's going to be because there's a lot more engagement and interaction with my audience because if if there's not I don't I don't know what happens after a few months in 2025. We may reach a point where the podcast simply has Come to a natural conclusion of the narrative of the things we need to talk about because I promise you I will never be just another voice You don't need that. This industry doesn't need that.

And my ego doesn't need that either. Don't need it. It's a waste of time and freedom. And it makes no money.

So the time, money, freedom equation says, what are you doing, James? There you go. That is all I've got, folks. I'd love to hear from you between now and the end of the year.

As you're listening to this, please reach out to me at podcast at jamesjenkins.com or hit me up on social. Let me know what your thoughts are about what you want to hear. or if you're simply saying, hey man, James, it sounds like you're good.

Why don't you shut this thing down and go spend your time and your efforts elsewhere? That's really it. I love you guys. I really do.

It's been a tremendous privilege this year sharing my journey with you and being very transparent and open and honest with the challenges that I've had with mental health, with navigating conversations on anxiety and depression and well-being and discovering what that looks like for myself at the age of 40 as the leader of a team and husband to a great wife and the dad to two kids. And that's really all I've got. We'll see you in 2025, folks. Make it a great day.

Thanks so much. We'll catch you next time. Take care. Thanks as always for listening to the Agency Freedom Podcast.

Please subscribe to the show and leave us a review if you like what you hear. Those subs and reviews are actually super important for our reach to new listeners. Get your copy of my book, Leaving Captivity, on Amazon or Audible for the audiobook version. We'd love to hear from you, so please send your thoughts, questions, ideas, and general feedback to us at podcast at jamesjenkins.

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Make it a great day, boys and girls. Until next time, let's go.