Episode #62: What Should We Measure for Agent Success: Volume or Profit?

[00:00:00] Okay, so Elon's got a trillion dollar business and his profit margin is 1%, okay? So it's low from a percentage standpoint, but he makes a billion dollars a year. Now again, this isn't the exact formula, but I'm just using this as an example. People would look at 1% profit margin and be like, what are you, why are you in business? He's got a trillion dollar business.

[00:00:27] So therefore, a 1% profit margin is pretty good, meaning the larger you get, especially in residential real estate, because I have seen this, I've lived it, the larger you get, the lower your profit margin will go.

[00:00:41] The smaller you are, hey, if it's just Tim Garrity, realtor, I work out of the house, I do 5 million in volume a year, and I don't have many expenses besides some of the marketing that I do, the higher your profit margin will go because you're that much smaller, you're leaner, you're more nimble.

[00:01:07] Welcome to the podcast dedicated to real estate, insurance, and building your business. Join us as we take you along our own business building journeys with additional wisdom from our network of local and national experts. Welcome to Bricks and Risk. Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Bricks and Risk. I'm Timothy Garrity.

[00:01:36] And I'm Sean Mooney. What's up man? Hey, how are you? Ready to get into it? Let's get rolling. We just did a really good episode on insurance. Yep. Don't knee jerk your coverage, which was really good. Don't knee jerk it. And now we're going to get into a really good one for real estate. What are we talking about today? That sounds like, you ever watch that show where they, um, they're the moonshiners?

[00:02:05] I've seen it in like, in passing, but I've never actually like tuned into it. It's pretty good. It is? But they all have like names. I think my distilling name, like, uh, if I were to make moonshine, which might be appropriate, would be moonshine. Yeah. But it would be knee jerk Mooney or something like that. Why do they give each other names? Is it like a code? Like, like code for the illegal stuff they're doing? Yeah. I don't know. Like, uh, like, like Popeye was one guy. Like, I don't know.

[00:02:34] Like Popeye Thompson, you know? It's probably just like real old school, kind of like identifying people in a way without saying, Hey, that's Bill. Yeah. Gus actually met one of them on a, on a trip somewhere. Met one of the moonshiners? Yeah. From the show? Yeah. And I have a bottle of moonshine at my house that Gus got me from this moonshiner and he signed it because we used, when we lived on Crescent Street, I think we, every night we watch moonshiners. Wow. That's really dating back.

[00:03:04] A couple of years. All right. So what are we, uh, what are we talking about today? So today we're going to talk about real estate agents in the business and how do, how do they define success? Yep. You know, how do you at year end say, Oh, this is a, this is a banner year. This is a really good year for us, our team or whoever. And different agents, you know, define success. Yeah. In different ways. In different ways.

[00:03:30] So we're going to talk about different ways that real estate agents either set up their business or, or measure their business and kind of how they go about it. Yeah. That's awesome. So one thing I want to touch upon first, which I think will set this one up is that, you know, we're talking about residential real estate. That's the industry I'm in. I've been in it for 15 years, was in the mortgage industry for about eight before then is in the

[00:03:55] residential real estate industry, there, there are metrics, let's call it for success. How are you considered a successful realtor, real estate agent, even if you're not a realtor, what defines success by the industry standard? Yeah. Most of the success by the industry standards is based on volume. So if you're not in residential real estate, if you're insurance or in sales or business

[00:04:20] or financial planning, something else, volume means how, what were the prices of all the homes that you either sold or rented either to a buyer, seller, tenant, landlord, you add up the dollar amount of those transactions. So if you sold two homes at $500,000 each, that's a million in volume. Yep. And a lot of people talk about their volume when they're in residential real estate and say, hey, I did 20 million in volume last year. I did a hundred million in volume.

[00:04:50] I did 2.5 million in volume. So volume is probably the most common metric that I see in residential real estate. So like, let's talk about that. Let's talk about volume. So the amount of the transactions that you did versus your actual ROI. Yeah. There's a lot that plays in this. I think the best way I can set it up is that let's start simple. You're a solo agent.

[00:05:19] Well, there's a psychological component as well. So there is. That'll be the part of the end. Yeah. So you're a solo agent in residential real estate, let's say. Yep. And you get started. You're probably going to have to invest some money in yourself. You're either going to have to invest in leads from like a Zillow.com or a Realtor.com. You're going to have to invest in a website. You're going to have to invest in some signage. Maybe you have some advertising. Maybe you're putting out a magazine through Reminder Media. What's up, Luke?

[00:05:48] Luke and Josh. This is all money that you have to put out, that you have to spend to run your real estate business. And in today's day and age in 2025, if you're a solo real estate agent, big office, small office, franchise independent, it doesn't matter. More people than not work out of their homes. So let's say you have a home office. You have a home office. You're probably not paying much, but you still have a marketing budget. Maybe you got to be a member of the MLS, the bright MLS in the Philadelphia area.

[00:06:19] You might want to be a realtor. So you get access to all the realtor paperwork, all the realtor benefits. You know, you're going to have to pay money. Hosting networking events. Yeah, you're going to have to pay money to be in real estate. So there's a marketing budget, whether you're a solo agent working from home or you're a massive team with 100 people doing 100 million a year in volume. So let's talk about gross versus net.

[00:06:44] What I would personally consider the gross would be the volume. Your volume is your gross. Okay, I did 20 million in volume. That's a measure of how successful I was as an agent. But what did you have to spend to get that volume? And if you're spending a good portion of your marketing budget on cold lead generation, like a Zillow or a realtor.com, it's probably going to be a little hefty, especially if you're doing that level of volume.

[00:07:14] So then what you would do is you take your volume, that gives you the commission that you made after your split, and then you're going to have to subtract all of your operating expenses out of it. And if you're that solo agent, they might be minimal. Let's say you're not paying for cold lead generation. You're just doing some of the basic things I said, and you did 5 million in volume. So again, you're going to subtract less at the end. So your net, it depends. It depends where you're going to be. So the gross is really in the volume.

[00:07:44] The net is what I would consider whatever the gross was the commission made minus expenses gives you your net. So speak to that a little bit, because you've been learning a lot about real estate on the show. And I think you could probably even apply this to insurance as well. Can I give you my insurance comparison? I'd love the insurance comparison. So as we're kind of putting this together and looking at the notes for the show and kind

[00:08:13] of like drawing information in. And we have notes, folks. Yeah, we do. We do. Got it. Insurance, there's a measurement of premium, right? So this brokerage is a $25 million premium brokerage. That's like, all right, so explain what would... Premium on the books. So it's kind of like real estate. Same thing.

[00:08:40] So it's like if you sell the two $500,000 houses, you have a million in volume. If you have 25 million book of business and insurance companies, that's the amount of premiums. The clients you have and the amounts of premiums that they have through you. So some agents, when they talk about their book of business, they use a figure of premium. So premium is also a metric in insurance. Yes. Okay. Would you say it's the metric? Depends who you're talking to. Okay.

[00:09:10] More people than not? I would say the more sophisticated insurance agency owners. You do not use premium. Okay. And here's why. Every carrier is different, right? So we write with standard markets. We write with ENS markets. We write some standard that is monoline.

[00:09:39] We have a variety of policies that we write. And all of them, for the vast majority, get paid a commission differently. Okay. So... I mean, some make more, some make less. So it's like apples, oranges, bananas. So if I write a policy with a standard carrier, let's say, that I have a direct contract with,

[00:10:05] I might get paid 13% commission on that policy. If I write a policy that is not a standard direct contract, so I have to go access like a wholesaler to place the business, I might make 9%. Oh, okay.

[00:10:33] So you can see that there's a sliding scale. Some of the deals that you do, you could make 50% more, let's call it, because that's basically what you just said. And some, you can make 50% less. Yeah. Interesting. And so the other measurement, so if you have a measurement for insurance offices or brokerages that is premium-based, that's one way to measure it. Yep. The other would be revenue-based. Okay.

[00:11:01] How much is your agency driving in terms of revenue? Right. What's your profit, let's call it? Yeah. Well, not profit. Oh, you would call it revenue. You're not including the office and all that stuff. What's the total combined commissions off of these premiums? It's almost like for us, it would be the same thing. What commission did we make? And then you work for a brokerage, so there's a split or some structure with the brokerage, then you have your expenses, so it's the same.

[00:11:30] You're at that stage. Yeah. Gotcha. That's like a sense. And so I think the more, because really at the end of the day, does it really matter for an insurance office that it's $20 million in premium? Right. Not really. You know, if I can make, if I can draw higher commissions on a smaller book of business,

[00:11:53] the more accurate, the more sophisticated way to size up an agency is the revenue. Well, revenue for you in real estate would be called GCI, so gross commission income. Yeah. There you go. So GCI, okay, you got your volume, you did your million in volume, your two $500,000 deals, and then your GCI would be the amount of commission that was made from that million of volume, just that dollar amount. Yeah. So the revenue that you're talking about would be like GCI for residential real.

[00:12:23] There you go. Very cool. Okay. All right. So let's go over a few things here. So first point I have is being big might not net you more money. All right. So let's talk about that. Someone gave me this example once, and this may not be completely accurate, but let me just use this as an example. Just wing it. Everyone knows who Elon Musk is. So let's say Elon Musk has a trillion dollar company. Okay.

[00:12:51] And then like people in business, you know, sometimes in business you want to make a 10% return, maybe an insurance or a 15% return in real estate or, you know, a 20% return in the restaurant business. Like you have your, um, your profit margin. Yeah. Okay. So people want to make 10, 15, 20% when they run a business. Okay. So Elon's got a trillion dollar business and his profit margin is 1%. Okay.

[00:13:19] So it's low from a percentage standpoint, but he makes a billion dollars a year. Now, again, this isn't the exact formula, but I'm just using this as an example. People would look at 1% profit margin and be like, what are you, why are you in business? He's got a trillion dollar business. So therefore a 1% profit margin is pretty good. Meaning the larger you get, especially in residential real estate, because I have seen this, I've lived it.

[00:13:48] The larger you get, the lower your profit margin will go. The smaller you are. Hey, if it's just Tim Garrity, realtor, I work out of the house. I do 5 million in volume a year and I don't have many expenses besides some of the marketing that I do. The higher your profit margin will go because you're that much smaller, you're leaner, you're more nimble. So that's why I want to make that example.

[00:14:17] Because again, like here's another great example. For every million or so that you do in volume, residential real estate, depending, your gross commission income could be somewhere around like, let's call it like 25K, 2025K, depending, because that's about 2%, 2.5%. Yep. And then what happens is once you get your gross commission income, then you're going to subtract, your brokerage is going to take some of that and then you got to subtract out all of your expenses.

[00:14:43] So if you did 10 million in volume, you're going to have somewhere around like 200, 250,000 gross commission income. If you're a solo agent doing 10 million in volume, you're making some serious money. Like you're crushing it. Yeah. And it's your business. You're working out of your house, you're controlling your destiny. But here's the example, Copper Hill, when I ran that company, our best year, we did almost 100 million in volume.

[00:15:10] The profit margin was so small that year because we were all over the place. We had tons of staff. We had marketing budgets. We had a dedicated marketing manager. We had like five people on our transaction team. We had a banging office downtown at 18th and JFK. Like none of that stuff was cheap. So it's impressive to hear that we did almost 100 million in a calendar year and we had almost

[00:15:37] 50 real estate agents pushing that. So like a little less than 2 million in volume per agent, which is pretty damn good by a lot of people's standards. But I will tell you that year, the profit margin was not great. It wasn't. And the reason I make this example, I want to set this up so that people get a sense of gross versus net. So how would you look at that or that example that I gave?

[00:16:06] Well, I think it's perception. Perception. Absolutely. Absolutely. Right. So if I were to look at it from an outsider, that's not familiar with the industry, I would say, you know, your eyes kind of stick out when you say a hundred million dollars. You're like, whoa.

[00:16:30] The automatic thought for me would be, wow, you guys are killing it. Killing it. Yeah. I mean, that's just. The Dave Edwards, right? Yeah. Yeah. What's up, villain? Villainous villain. So you would just think as a normal person, you'd be blown away. Like, wow, that's awesome. You guys are crushing it. Doing great things.

[00:17:00] Everything, you know, everything seems to be turning up roses for Copper Hill at a hundred million. Yeah. That's what I would, that's what my perception would be as an outsider. And look, I'm not crapping on volume. Like volume is a good gauge. Just like premium. Premium is a good gauge. Is a good gauge. Like if someone has that as their gauge, it's a gauge. It's meant to give you a sense.

[00:17:23] Well, it's, it's an, it's an easier way to calculate how things are going. Right. Right. So like if I'm an agency, it's hard for me to say, I want $25,000 of revenue each month. Right. Right. Because how do you formulate it? It's hard to do that. Right.

[00:17:49] For me, it's easier as a, as an owner to, to kind of map it out and put our, our monthly goal. Yes. At a premium dollar amount. Right. Right. Because again, the expenses can get messed with. Yeah. But at least that metric of the premium, just like the metric of the volume, it gives you a base. It gives you a starting point. It's an easier number to land on. And it's a big number. So it's, it's nice to talk about. Well, yeah. Nice to say you're doing that much. Yeah. Premium. Yeah.

[00:18:19] But I mean, we get commission schedules, you know, so here we are in January, every carrier changes when the calendar, you know, changes over and we see it. And you know, some of our products with the, with the vast majority of carriers that we write with, we typically write package business. Okay. Meaning auto home, auto home umbrella, you know, it's, we're not the type of agency that

[00:18:47] writes auto only or, or home only. Right. You know, there's plenty of agents that do that. You bundle. Right. We, we typically do it just because it's in 90% of the cases, it's the best for the client. Yep. Um, so it's a, it's a little different, um, when we do it in that way. Hey everyone. This is Tim, your favorite bricks and risk co-host, but don't tell Sean, I hope you're

[00:19:17] enjoying this episode and I'll get right back to it in a moment. Our audience grows through word of mouth. So if you would please take a moment of your time and give us a review on the platform you're on, that would be fantastic. Please also help spread the BNR word by sharing your favorite episode with a friend. We greatly appreciate your time and trust. Now back to the show. All right.

[00:19:45] So here's like another, another, uh, point, another question. It's like, so why do our industries care about volume and premium? Like when you say industries, what you, what do you mean? You'd give that a little bit. Residential real estate, the residential real estate industry is, is led by big brokerages, independent brokerages, sometimes a brokerage of one, sometimes a brokerage of 5,000, 10,000.

[00:20:11] Um, so residential real estate and insurance, again, they, they taught volume is, is a gauge. So in residential real estate, I'll relate it to that cause this is more about real estate this episode. Volume is a great gauge that they want you to always grow on. And you mean like peers? Yeah. It's a measure of success. Okay. If I'm solo, I'm doing 10 million a year. That's, that's pretty damn good. Yeah.

[00:20:40] I'm solo and doing 20 million a year. You're, you're fricking killing it. Like you are like, like Ryan Petrucci, like with his listings. What's up, Ry? Like doing like 20 million by himself with like some support staff is insane. Like Ryan Stawas, he says busiest year was over 20. I'm like, dude, that's insane. I never did anything that high. You know, I started the brokers a little bit earlier on in my career, but still I never got to that point. Yeah. So that's impressive. Yeah. So it's like, why do the industries care about volume?

[00:21:08] Because their goal is to help you grow. And when you grow, guess, guess what? It's bragging rights. Oh, you're making more money. The more you grow, the more you can talk about it. The more you can talk about it, the more the industry can talk to you about ways to grow even more. So it's, volume is a good metric. And then let's talk about it in insurance, like the premium side I have right here, like selling your book. So in real estate, it's hard to sell a, it's hard to sell it.

[00:21:38] You can't really sell a team and you can't really sell a smaller broker. It's, it's hard unless the brand was just so it had all this brand. And if someone just wanted that brand, then they would pay for the brand. But it's hard to sell those things in residential real estate because it's hard to quantify what it's worth. Like what if all the agents left tomorrow? They all left tomorrow. It's worth nothing. But if someone wants that brand, like it happens all the time, you know, M&A, mergers and acquisitions in real estate.

[00:22:07] The reason this happens is they want that brand. You know, Compass just bought Christie's International Real Estate, which is a luxury brand. They bought that because they want to increase their stature in the luxury market in the US, even around the world. So that's, they wanted that brand. That, it was a longstanding brand. People know it. All right. Now we're a bigger luxury brokerage. So that's one example. Yeah.

[00:22:33] Gallagher just bought, uh, Assured Partners, which is like $13 billion. So Gallagher is a broker. It's a large, large, international. Gallagher. Yeah, I think they are. Okay. And, uh, Assured Partners, I don't think they're international. Um, but, uh, you know, Gallagher is probably a top 10 and Assured's probably a top 20, try to guess. Um, but like a Goliath buying like a mega broker.

[00:23:01] So I'm going to go, I'm going to go glass half empty, Mooney on this one. Yeah, let's go. All right. So the more volume you do, the more things people can sell you. There's lots of different things they can sell you in residential real estate. They can sell you CRM systems. They can sell you leads. Uh, they can sell you books, eBooks, training, coaching. Um, they can sell you marketing products.

[00:23:27] They can sell you, you need a VA, a virtual assistant to grow. They can, there's lots of things that they can sell you. Tech coaching, all this stuff. So I feel like using the volume as a gauge is an opportunity for the industry to measure your success. And once the success is measured, then they can offer you opportunities to grow further through various other partners, let's say. Because even at real, I work at real broker, the Tim Garty team.

[00:23:57] We're associated with them. Bill, if you could give us like 1995 scrolling, Tim works at real broker. That would be super helpful. Um, for all the listeners at real, they're like, here are all of our partners. We have this partner for CRM. We have this partner for swag. You know, we have this partner for tech. Like there's, there's all different partners. They have again, super valuable. Like maybe I'm like, you know what?

[00:24:26] I'm sick of doing that on my own. I want this. I want this new tech. I want to spend more time with my daughter. Let's say, or I want this new tech so I can stop, uh, doing all this work myself. And it can, it can save me 50% of my time. So tech saves time. It does. VA saves time. Marketing saves time. This gives you, you're buying your time back when you invest in your business. You've done this. But one of the reasons the industry likes looking at that is one, they want to put you up either

[00:24:55] on a stage or on a podcast or on a zoom. And they want to say, look at, look at this guy, look at this girl, look what they've done. Don't you want to do that? And then, oh, by the way, we're doing a breakout session at the end. We want to talk about the program that we have. And if you do this program for six months and we'll, we'll cut your expense, you know, we'll cut your expenses by 50% and everything's going to work out. I went to a show in Vegas one time. It was an insurance. Really? Yeah. It was an insurance conference. I don't think I've ever heard this. Yeah. Did you gamble?

[00:25:25] Oh yeah. What were you playing? Uh, craps. Okay. You crap out or did you actually win some cash? Me and, uh, Teresa and Tom Werdish. Oh nice. So you linked up with some of your people in other markets and you all went together? Yeah. Oh, that's cool. And it was, uh, so we went out there and it was exactly that. It was like, you sit in a room, there's some educational stuff and then there's a breakout room and it's like, come try my product.

[00:25:51] And in the end I'm like, I felt like it was like two days of infomercials. Yeah. Yeah. Like buy this, do this, do that. And at the time you're like, this sounds awesome. I gotta do this. Yeah. And some of it is that. Some of it. Yeah. And some of it is also, I mean, look, I have never really done the convention circuit stuff. I've just never done it. I just went to drink and gamble. Yeah. And I was like, oh. Honestly, I think if I were to go, that's probably would be some of my priorities as well. Like I want to go have a good time. I want to have fun.

[00:26:21] I want to eat well. Yeah. Um, and we've even talked about maybe going out to something together at some point. We'll do something. Just to go out, you know, shake some hands, talk about the show. Yeah. Um, live broadcast. Yeah. But again, like even real does, does rise, which I'm interested in. I might check that out at some point. You're going to go, you're going to go for the culture. You're going to go for the camaraderie. You're going to go for relationship building. You want to shake some quality hands. You want to meet some good people. You want to learn a thing or two. Hey, you spent a little money on the plane, on some food, some gambling, some booze.

[00:26:51] Hey, you had a good time. And if you decide to spend money on the things they're offering, well, you're probably going to do it because you've went out there and you've witnessed it and you believe in it. Yeah. So it can be a good thing. Or the people are, you know, speakers. Exactly. Yeah. Um, all right. So let's talk about the ROI. Let's, let's just call it profit. Yeah. Why do you think profit should be, let's call it the correct, like measuring stick? Why do you think at the end of the day, go back to that Copper Hill example.

[00:27:21] We did all that volume. Why do you think profit should have been our measurement? Because it's money in your pocket. Yeah. Right. So, you know, if you got to a hundred million and Copper Hill, and I'm just throwing numbers out there, but you know, Copper Hill, you know, at the end of the year, you know, clears $30,000. Right.

[00:27:46] Um, versus 50 million and Copper Hill clears 75,000. Right. I mean, what is your more successful year? Right. And to me, it's, it's kind of simple. Mm-hmm. Um, cause I'm a simple guy. Same here. Um, you know, it's like you made more money this year.

[00:28:16] You made more money. So this is the more success. You know, if you line up your last five years, I'm not going to put my production and my premium as the be all end all judge. For me, it's column B as how much revenue did we make? Here's, here's a really good example. I'll go back to the Ryan Petrucci episode. What's up, Ry? Um, you already said, what's up, Ry? What's up again, bro? Uh, so back to his episode.

[00:28:43] One thing that's always impressed me about him and his business, he, you know, he's been with Remax for a while, like over 20 years, you know, it's, you know, one of his family members, you know, owns that, that franchise, let's say that office. And he works with people he knows and he's always been comfortable there, always has what he needs and freedom to do what he wants. Yep. Um, one thing I've always respected about his business is that he never decided to like, you know, grow it by people.

[00:29:09] His volume has grown over time, over a few decades, just because he gets, he's hired coaches. And this goes back, we made this example on an episode ago and we were talking about, you know, instead of being that team member on that team, what if you took that $10,000 and you invested in a really good coach to invest in yourself and improving you and what you want to do and where you want to go and why? Like, so what always impressed me about Ryan's business is that, you know, he's always, he's

[00:29:38] always made like really good money running his business that way. Just having like one or two people assist him. And I even, we went out for beers not that long ago and I was like, why have you never hired a buyer's agent? Like you're only doing listings now, but you get buyer opportunities. You have people in your network that want to buy, you know, people come to you and they don't want to buy your listing. They want to buy something else. You can go work with them. Why don't you have a buyer agent? And his answer was real simply. He's like, I don't want to manage people. I'm not interested in that.

[00:30:08] I know what I like to do day in, day out. I got my schedule. I got my routine. I know what I'm good at. I know what I like. I know I wouldn't like managing people. And I, I, okay. So I love that because it's, he, it's the rarest. And see in our industries, it's, it's always more, more, more, more, more. It is. Yep.

[00:30:36] I felt, Hey, I was in that, that cycle with Copper Hill for years. And why, why Ryan's story is so great and why that resonates with me is because he is, is so dialed in, but you like, you don't think that number one, someone's approached him and says, Oh, I can give you a better deal.

[00:31:01] I mean, I'm sure that happens frequently gets recruited all the time. Number two, someone could come to him and say, well, just build a team and you'll make more money. I'll show you how to do it. Right. And he's like, no, like, I think it's refreshing because it's like, rarely do you see people in

[00:31:23] our industries that really put blinders on and just say, if I do this on, on my own, I can accomplish this. And so he got to $10 million a year and he's like, I think I can do more. Right. What do I need to do to get to that next level? Right. And he just did it himself. And he didn't, you know, didn't need this and didn't need that and didn't need a team, didn't need a new broker.

[00:31:52] It's just, he looked inward and said, you know what? I know what I'm capable of doing. And if I put this plan together and execute, then I will get there. Yeah. And so it's, it's a little different, his story in a way that he doesn't follow the trends. It's like the tortoise in the hare. I've made this example. I'm the tortoise type. I just am slow and steady, slow and steady wins the race. Some people have called me steady Eddie.

[00:32:20] That's just, when we were crushing it at Copper Hill, it was not me. I'll be honest with you. And I look back on that now, it was like almost a year ago. And I'm like, why, why was I doing all that? Why were we doing all that? Like, what were we trying to do? I think to your point, the industry forces you in. It does. It kind of funnels you down into this grouping. Oh, you're a top agent. You're a top team. You're a top brokerage.

[00:32:49] How do we get you to the top? And, and here's, here's the reality getting to the top. Do you know what you get? You get a piece of acrylic and maybe five minutes of fame that say congratulations. And it's over. And then you're like, okay, now what? Yeah. Do I go two years in a row? Do I have to outdo myself? Well, that's it. You're, you're, you're, it's a continuous chase. It never ends. It's never going to end. And that's why the Garrett Maroon episode.

[00:33:20] Fantastic. One of my favorites. Was the same. What am I doing? Like, why, why, why do I have these goals on my whiteboard? Why are they there? Because the industry was telling him, these are how you measure your business. These are the metrics you need to follow. This is how you measure it. It's like a plug and play. And you measure this and that, and then there's an equal sign and then it's success is written after it. So, all right.

[00:33:49] So we talked about, you know, profit being the correct measuring stick that we both. It's not correct. It's not correct. It's not. It's not the same for everyone. Yeah. I mean, lots of ways you can skin a cat. Right. Right. Like Joe Smith wants to go out and write monoline homeowners because we did, we talked to an agent the other day. We wrote a new account.

[00:34:17] We have to contact the agent and tell him, Hey, you know, that he's got new coverage. Right. Right. And somewhere in the conversation. You lost. I won. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, he was like, Oh, we only do homeowners. And I'm like, awesome. That's what you want to do. That's. And it works for you. Exactly. Great. Yeah. And so it's just like Ryan Petrucci. Yeah. The industry is telling you one thing. Hey, this is how you, this is how we measure success.

[00:34:43] It doesn't mean that's how you measure your own success. Yeah. So here are a couple of points. So, so you had mentioned before your net. So like your profit, that's what you bring home to use for you and or your family. So do you want a massive organization, which is, don't get me wrong. It's fun.

[00:35:04] Like if you like managing people and you like growth, I had a freaking blast building Copperhill from absolutely nothing to a decent size company. So what you bring home might not be as important to you if that's your goal. So that's one thing. Then there's quality versus quantity. I'll go back to the Elon example. Hey, it's quantity. Like if it's a trillion dollars, you got a 1% profit margin to you as the owner. You're making a billion dollars.

[00:35:32] Like you don't need, like if someone's got a billion dollars in their life, they're going to live for five, 10 lifetimes and still have plenty for everyone. And the last one is if you focus on kind of your goal, let's say your profit or your success is like spending more time with your family or like having downtime or hobbies or traveling or whatever, reading more books. It could be anything.

[00:35:55] It allows you to invest, relax and live because if you bring money home, you can put that into your own 401k. Yeah, you can put that into your own stock account, into your own Bitcoin maximalist account. Go buy a rental property yourself. I'm hoping it drops down to 90 so I can get a good squeeze in there before it goes back up. So that's again, that's one reason why.

[00:36:23] Well, I think too is that it gives you, if you're making those decisions for yourself, right? If you're making the choices to do this or to do it this way rather than this way, there's a freedom in that. There is, yeah. You're not beholden to the industry and what the industry tells you to do. And I think that that's what the light bulb for Garrett was.

[00:36:51] It was like, it was like that aha moment where he's like looking at the whiteboard and saying like... He was like, would I be more proud of the person who did X amount in volume or would I be more proud of the person who got to spend more time with his family? Like that's the example he made. And for him, that works. And he changed his whiteboard. Yeah. And you know what happened? He grew. So, I don't know.

[00:37:18] There's always, like I said, there's always lots of different ways to do it. Yeah. There's no right way. It's just find what works for you. Exactly. Yep. All right, man. Want to close this out? Yep. Hit us on the email, people. Bricksandrisk at gmail.com. Find us on the streams, Apple, Spotify, videos. Leave a review. Social media, Instagram. Instagram. We're on YouTube, in case you didn't know.

[00:37:46] You can leave us comments, subscribe, hit the bells. That's right. As the kids say. And the subscribes are going up. Our views are going up on YouTube. YouTube seems to be a really good catch-all for us. Yeah. I told someone we were a podcast guy. I was telling you that insurance guy, Joey Gingola, that we were at like over 60,000 views. And he's like, whoa. Yeah. That's pretty good. That's been awesome. And we thank everyone for your support.

[00:38:15] So that's all we have for this one, folks. Thank you for tuning in again to another episode of Bricks and Risk. See you soon. Thank you for joining us on another episode of Bricks and Risk. Our goal is that you walk away with one or two valuable nuggets. And we greatly appreciate you sharing your time with us today. You can find all B&R episodes on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and anywhere else you get your podcast content.

[00:38:44] Until next time, keep learning and keep growing. Keep going. 31. 32. 33.