Why do reclines call Dr. Jean the results queen? The name speaks for itself. Dr. Jean has been helping business owners achieve and exceed their goals for over 20 years. And now, she wants to help you get more results to your business and in your life. In fact, her mission is to leave you better than she found you. Join her as she dives deep into the world of business and entrepreneurship to provide you with actionable strategies and valuable insights and compelling stories that will propel you to greater success and ultimate results. Get ready to take notes because it's time for getting results with Dr. Jean the results queen. Hi everyone, it's Dr. Jean the results queen. Welcome. We're so excited to have you here today. Today I have Eric Therringer. He is our guest. I'm super excited to welcome Eric. So Eric, welcome. Thank you, Jean. How are you this morning? I'm so fabulous. Thank you. And as we always do, Eric, and I'm just jumping right in because that's how I am. Tell us about who you are and how you got to where you are today. So I am the owner and president of Eli Advisors. And we are a advisory service firm helping companies with HR payroll and benefits. My background really started in the benefits world back in the late 1980s. Had my own business for 15 years from the late 90s to 2012, sold that business to Gallagher, left there in 2017, started doing it all over again. And really the real reason is love being a part of working with privately held business owners in the smaller markets. So our specialty is really 20 to a couple hundred employees and helping them drive results in their business, starting with benefits typically because that's where the pain point is from a finance perspective. And then we find those companies really have a lot of needs for HR support and sometimes even payroll support. So we can help with all three of those things. It makes us a little unique in what we do in terms of being able to help them out. Yes, I've never actually met a company does all three things in one place. So let's start with benefits because benefits HR and payroll are really the bane of many business owners existence. And every business owner I know complains about their benefits too high. It's gone up by double digits. I don't get the courage I want. So tell us what are the normal complaints you get from business owners around benefits. It's funny. It's 30 years I'm doing this. I think they've almost stopped complaining it. From the most part, it's just like this thing that they just have to accept. And the reality is underlying medical inflation runs at about 7%. And if medical benefits is 90% of your benefits budget cost, we're dealing with a 6% increase right out of gate if we can't do anything to affect that. So that's really our focus is how do we play the game in today's world? How does that game evolve and change as we go stay one step ahead? And through that, you know, since we've restarted this business in 2017, we've been averaging about a 3.8% budget increase, which means we're running renewals on the medical side. Typically, averaging a little less than 5% when we'll sit and done. And for the most part, we're not doing that by cutting benefits. We're rethinking how we finance things. We're playing the game a little differently. And that game has shifted a lot since a long-term care kit. So that's interesting. So I think we've all just learned the first tip of the day, which is we have to budget an increase every year for our benefits that's somewhere between 4% and 7% perhaps. And maybe that's a fair bet. That's a fair place to start. Yep. And maybe as a business owner, we just need to, as we do our budgets in October, we need to just put in a 10% increase in our benefits every year. So this way, we don't bitch and moan about it. I hate to say it that way. But to complain about it, however, we can just deal with it. Is that a fair settlement? I think if you're winning in 10%, you're going to have a business problem. The reality is we've got to get below that. Our goal is really to try to drive under five, which is still kind of double CPI or inflation, but something that can become manageable to the owner and to the employees when we work it out at the end of the day, this is all about taking care of our people. So how do we do that best? Well, I love that. All right. So then we need to budget. Let's go with 7%. And if you get a bill that's over 10%, they really should be calling you is what I'm hearing. Is that truth? I think it's fair. You know, I would also say if you're not exploring some of the really things going on in the work, if you're not really seriously kicking the tires on self funding, regardless of your size, if you're not familiar with reference based pricing and what's being done in that world, we probably should at least have a conversation because that's where the markets are moving. And then we've fairly rapidly there since Obamacare has kicked in. So just to give you an idea, a basic stack for years and years and years, being under 200 employer market ran anywhere between 9 and 14% of it being self funded. In the 10 years since Obamacare kicked in in 2014, that number is now north of 40% of employers in that market being self funded. And so that's where things are moving. It's how you beat the game and beat the insurance company and beat the regulations. And that's why it's moving in that direction. All right. So you've given me two words that I have no idea as a business owner. So let's talk about self funding. I've never, I mean, not that I've never heard of self funding. I actually know one company in all the 24 years have been in business that did self funding. So self funding, say more, please. So self funding was that thing back when I started in the 80s. That was for the big guys. You know, they only did that. You paid an insurance company and you know, you paid them the administrative fee. And then they processed your claims and they sent you a bill literally every day and took the money out of your bank account for the claims they processed. Yeah. That's so funny as people think about it. In today's world, you can self fund, but pay a monthly premium. And I'll use that word loosely because it's not a premium. But it's a maximum liability number that looks like insurance. It's just not insurance. And then you begin to partake in the risk. You'd be able to cap your liabilities, but there's different ways in which that can get done. And what's really going on is healthier and healthier groups are moving into self funding, leaving the sicker and sicker groups in the insured pools, putting pressure on those renewals for the employer that sits in the insured market and doesn't continue to kick the tire to look at the self funding makes sense. Okay, so self funding shouldn't be scary for us business owners because I mean, you're saying self funding. I'm like, whoa, scary, scary, scary, scary. No, it's not. Exactly. And I have that conversation over and over again. And frequently, it's a multi-year conversation to get somebody comfortable because as business owners, we don't like risk necessarily. The first part we're willing to take as a business, it's about growth. It's about the fun stuff. It's not insurance risk. Right. So there are absolutely ways that you can self fund with very little risk. In fact, the interesting thing is Obamacare did one thing. It took everybody in the under 50 market all across the country and told the insurance companies they can't ask health questions anymore. So you can self fund, they can ask health questions in self funding. And if it goes south and terrible, you have a maximum liability. You went there because the maximum liability was actually less than your insurance risk to begin with. And if it goes really, really bad, you get a 40 or 50% roll, who cares? We all right back in the right insurance pools that we were on the floor. So there's no downside risk to this anymore. But getting comfortable with that concept and understanding it, I think, is key. And I think that's where we come in no longer as insurance benefits about, hey, here's a spreadsheet. Here's the numbers. There's a lot behind the scenes to actually play this game. And you don't get to, you know, that 320% result that we get to without playing the game and spending a lot of time on education. So all right. So how do how do I become? I mean, again, I'm like self funding. How do most of your clients get comfortable in going down this path? So as you typically, it takes the company on average, I'd say two years to get to the point that they say yes, unless they're forced there financially, two years owners are just risk-averse. They are. And with the way we do it is by having typically one or two mid-year meetings where we discuss simply what's going on in the market, what are you comfortable with exploring when the renewal comes up? Because to try to do this in the two-week window of, hey, I got my medical rates, they went up 10% Holy fret. There's no time to get comfortable. There's no time to put those pieces together. So it's about planning. It's about spending a couple hours during the year to think about benefits, which nobody wants to do. But as I always say, it's an awful lot of money that you spend on it and you complain about it. But you don't want to just invest a couple hours with me during the year to learn more about it. Because that's where we win. And that's how you win the game is just by getting educated. All right. So I guess I'm going to say this for the listeners. First of all, did you hear that benefits is a game? And for most of us as business owners, we do like games and we like to gamify and we try to win the game, right? So that's the first thing. And you're right. So many of us as business owners were like running away from benefits. We're like, ah, and it's only one thing that we deal with in October, right? But it sounds like you heard it here first. Self-funding is the way to go. Don't wait two years. You don't have to. And you have to think about this before the week before your benefits kicked in. It's almost like your taxes. I hate to say it that way. But you have to give it like four or five months, right? It does. That's what it sounds like. You do. You have to learn. A great story. We actually picked up a client last year, went through their anal with them a couple of months ago. And the business owner didn't even know he was self-funded. He was paying a rate every month that looked like insurance. He thought it was insurance. And he was flabbergasted that he actually he's like, well, then do I owe any more money? Because it didn't go well. We're like, no, but you've got a big renewal because your claims aren't good. But they're still better than putting you in the pool. Well, the panic claims, like how, I mean, what's the scariest part of self-funding? You said it's so you get a 40% renewal, but that's no big deal. You jump back into the pool on the other side. What's the what's the biggest risk? There really is none. If you're playing the game in the level of a funded market, the place business owners get a little uncomfortable is in the smaller end of that market, they ask health questionnaires. So health questionnaires go out to each employee. And that is something business owners really, a lot of times aren't comfortable doing. They don't feel like they should be asking. And it's really whether you can get comfortable saying, hey, this isn't our best interest. We want to kick the tires on this. The information doesn't go to the owner. The information doesn't even go to us as the advisor on the plan. It goes directly to the person underwriting the risk. And it's really about exploring, trying to find the best coverage we can to take care of your people at the best price for you as a business, which also, by the way, needs the best price for the employee because they've got a chunk coming out of their paycheck every year or every week or every ever the week. So they got some skin in this game as well. I think that business owners have the biggest challenge when they ask their employees personal questions because they think they're going to get sued. That's that's I to me must be the that's what I think as a business owner is that do you find that when you have when you do self-funding and people have to do these health questionnaires? I agree. You don't want to know the nitty-gritty details because if you then have to terminate the person, you don't want that to come up. And I agree. And the reality is the law actually says that you can have access to personal health information of your employees if it is for the purpose of plan administration, risk management, or underwriting. So all things that we need do, but I agree with you and I rarely will share direct information with an employer about somebody. But I probably will share something if we got something on and say, hey, we have somebody who last year had premature twins who are still not healthy or expected to run a half a million in claims next year. It's just something we've got to deal with 99 times out of 100 that the people sit around table go, oh, that suit. They pretty know. I mean, again, I'm dealing with privately held smaller businesses and even at 100 employees, you'd be amazed at what the owners know, at what leadership knows. They know what's going on. Let's not kid ourselves. But with that said, is the risk there? It absolutely is. I certainly don't ever recommend putting detailed reports in writing that say, hey, Fred's got cancer and soon's got this. We don't go there. We want to know about it. We want to think about it. We want to talk about all their ways to manage the costs around it. But no, we don't want to get into that a little detail. We don't need to get into that a little detail. Well, also, it doesn't sound like if you when you fill out the health care questionnaires, it goes to a third party. So you don't have it. And as you said, I think the biggest risk is that now I need to terminate you. And then you're going to sue me because you're going to go to the plaintiff's lawyer and say, they asked me all these health care questions. And they sued me and they they terminated me because of my health situation. How do you and I and I this is I know you're not a lawyer, but is there any way that you that you can mitigate that risk when you're self funding? Or is it just something you have to do? You do have to live with the reality is you as the employer are never going to get the data. In these smaller markets, the people who are processing the claims won't provide you the level of data you want. They won't find me the level of data I want to do the analysis. So I can't even get it to you. They put a lot of walls and barriers up places they don't really need to, but they're afraid. And so they will mitigate some of that risk for you. But absolutely, as I would say, if you're doing health questionnaires, for some reason, you still want to stay in a paper form and do it. That's your workforce. That's fine. I just never recommend they come back to you as the business owner. There are ways we can upload them securely to us. Give them self address, the envelope that comes to us. Do not look at that paperwork, because it's just not worth the risk. No, and also it sounds to me if I was going to do stuff and sharing and I have to have my people do health questionnaire, I would put an explanation about the fact that this goes to a third party vendor. I will never see this, right? And I'm sure that either you can provide or they're loyal to provide that. All right. So we've learned all about self funding. We also have learned the fact that we have to put at least 7% in every year for our benefits to really good issues. We got to talk about more than just a renewal. Okay. Well, what else? I mean, we got to talk more than just renewal time. Absolutely. We've got a conversation. Go ahead, Eric. Talk. Let's, let's, let's go down the path. What do you mean when you say we got to talk more than just every new old time? When do we? Yes, we're talking. We've got to sit down once or twice during the year to talk about what's going on in the market. What are the new products that are out there? What are the things you need to be thinking about that might not be right today, but might be right in a couple of years. And it takes time to understand the moving parts and how they're playing out and what you want to do. So as with any piece of business planning, you just don't make decisions like that. But the reality is the market puts you in a spot where you have to make decisions like that because we get our rules, you know, two months in advance with a couple of weeks to make a decision. So we can't play the game that way. We've got to change it and turn it around. So planning is the other third thing you've definitely got to do. So it seems to me that planning, and if I just think about this way, it's sort of like at the end of the first quarter, end of the second quarter, end of the third quarter would put me in the right place for benefits to deal with with renewal. Does that sound like a plan? Correct. We will usually, if somebody's renewing January 1st, which a lot of plans do in today's world, we will typically sit down end of February, early March to have a kind of debrief to open enrollment. What went well? Where are we at? How are people reacting? And what's going on? We'll sit down again over the summer to lay out the timeline for how are we going to get to a decision. What's the calendar timeline look like and what's going on in the market? What are you interested? What are you expecting from us? What do we need from you? And then we do that meeting early October, early November to sit down and say, hey, where are we at and what's going on? If you're a larger business, we can do that sometimes as early as Labor Day, which gives us a lot more freedom, but that doesn't start till you have 100 covered employees in the system. So it's the larger end of the small market, so to speak. So see again, I think this is the third tip that we've taken away is most of us and our business owners, we just are, we're working our business and benefits are oof icky. So now we need to put it into our calendar, end of first quarter, end of second quarter. So you're ready to go in terms of renewal. So we've talked about that. Wow. Yeah. Okay. So already good tips around benefits, which people are like, yeah, I'm absolutely naming this like benefits. It's not boring. I love it, but I don't move on that way. I think it's your business. I mean, for gosh sake, you sold it and then you decide to get back into it. So you must love it. That is true. That is exactly what are you to sell? All right. Is there any? So now we talked about benefits. Let's talk it. We've got HR to deal with, right? And we've got payroll to deal with, which sounds better for us to deal with his business owners, because I sort of like the trifecta of things that we hate benefits HR and pay. Yeah. So I think HR kind of makes sense because I can really kind of share how do we get there? So from a benefit side of things, you know, we get deep in the weeds, working, writing, communication materials, managing technology for our customers in that sense. We run a toll-free help desk for employees that call us for claim advocacy and support. You know, in business owners, and this happened way back in my old business, said, gosh, we don't have, not different. We don't plan to think of a good as a don't want to think about benefits. We also, no, we have to think about HR, but don't have time to think about HR. Can you help us with that? They kind of seem fairly synergistic and they are in many ways. So that's how we got into the HR businesses with a couple of our clients saying, can you help? And we just did. Like, you know, more than we do? I was like, okay, great. That's not necessarily saying much, but that's literally how it started way back when. And 20 years later, we're back doing it. The interesting thing about the market is the market in the HR space has largely gone into what I call the DIY space, that do it yourself. You know, it's technology. We can just put it out there. You can have access to this wonderful stuff and that wonderful stuff. And most insurance brokers give that tool away. Many of us have used a product that's now called minerals. And it just keeps evolving and getting acquired. For me, it started as thinking HR. And it's been acquired since it keeps moving along. It's a huge, wonderful online database with smart handbooks that tell you when laws change and impact the things you need to think about in your handbook and forms and policies. And it's everything you ever want to need at your fingertips. And I will tell you, not an employer ever goes in and uses it. You don't have time. I have a client that's got four people in HR, two full-time, two part-time. The two part-timers are specialists, so maybe we don't count them. But being the VP of HR and the HR generalist, neither of them have updated their handbook in six years. And it could be done in about three hours if they sat down and did it on the line, and then an hour, a quarter, an hour, every six months to look at it and keep it up to date. But then we'll do it. And that's the story of HR. And most small businesses is, what do we do? How do we get there? Who do we want to be? And that's kind of where we come in, is you've got the PEO world out there, which is still largely DIY. You've got the DIY world that's out there, or you're not doing anything and saying, "I'd like to do a little more than I did." But a little more can be any number of things. We fall out towards HR where, you know, we don't get involved in recruiting. As I say, that's always specialty. But for the day you decide on a candidate, writing off for letters, writing employment agreements, you know, onboarding through the process, getting involved in progressive discipline, coaching managers on how to take somebody through progressive discipline if they got it through. We'll get as deep in the way that you want to go. We have fines to keep it simple and say, "We just need your help. We want to get a handbook up to the other to say, "I want to hire. I want to terminate. I want you to do everything in between all the paperwork that protects us through that process and buttons that piece up." So that's kind of where we found the small business owner just doesn't invest any time in it. You can't afford to hire somebody. You're hiring an HR person really doesn't make any sense until you get about 75 to 100 employees. If you're a 50 employees and you expect to be at 100 next year, hire your HR person now. But outside of that, it's just not worth spending money and to get a good one, you got to spend $100,000 on salary plus the benefits on top of it. So you're 150 grand in. And that just is not money that anybody's going to spend. So there's a lot of other ways to do it. Look at it. And that's kind of where we have fit in with a league partner with you to customize it and build it out. And help you figure out how do you take it to the next step. So here's what I'm going to say to get again, a great tip, Eric. So in EOS, for example, at every quarter, we have a quarterly meeting where you sit out and you figure out what your rocks are, what are you going to do for your action steps, what issues do you have, you can sort of clear out. So it seems to me that in your quarterly meeting for EOS, you should add in HR benefits, right. So like, what are we doing to, are we even just like, as to do, did in your 90 IO, we use 90 IO, like a to do, did you talk to the benefits person, check, right, put like quarter two, quarter three, quarter four, and then HR, which it sounds like if you're doing it, it's so interesting because I come from HR, like I'm a recovering HR person. And that's funny because I didn't take HR. I'm a line person to decide to go into HR because all of them were administrators and had no idea how to do the business. But yes, I'm a recovering HR person. But so many of us and as business owners, just DIY it. But if we have someone who can do it for us, then absolutely put it into your quarterly meeting, talk about HR, it just should be something you talk about, because benefits in HR sound like they're much more important to our businesses than we ever give them credit for. And we run away from it and don't want to talk about it. Is that truth, Eric? Great. It's, it doesn't necessarily have to take a lot of time. But if you're a business owner who does really care about your people, I hate to say that there's some out there that really don't, they're causing a wheel and they're expendable and they treat them as such that there's no reason to spend money on HR in that case, except for the diet your eyes for compliance and risk management side, there you should be going very carefully. But if somebody really cares about it, it doesn't take a lot of time and effort to put the pieces together and to make them feel welcome. And in today's world where we're all struggling to find good quality talent and keep it, it's a great way to be able to address that problem and let them know you care and really take care of them. I agree with that 100%. And it just really just to me hits home the idea that if you're not running your business in a 90 day world and being agile around it and really looking at this stuff on a quarterly basis, you're not running a really great company. That's how I feel about it. Okay, so we've talked about benefits. We've talked about HR. Should we talk about the third dreaded trifecta in terms of payroll? Yeah, and in today's world, they all come together because of the technology that's behind it. It's a technology that's pushing these pieces together. In the payroll world, I tend to find payrolls being done by somebody in finance, in a smaller company, many times it's at the controller who's still doing the payroll. It's not a ton of work, it's not a ton of time. But hey, if they could free up three to four hours a month to outsource the running of the payroll, not the technology. I mean, we're still using ADP and Paychecks and Paylocity and all the other technologies that technology, they're really not the person who does payroll. Payroll can be very, very straightforward and simple. If you're 20 people already here in New Jersey, that's not a hard thing to do. But if here's like some of my larger customers, we have were 20 people when they started. You know, I have one that's now 150 employees in 38 states. That gets to be a challenging management side of it from a tax side opening the tax jurisdictions and getting them right and keeping track of the notices and moving all the parts around. And then the other piece of payroll is, you know, that's also a company who runs 70 monthly payroll. You go, oh, 24 payrolls a year. Now they'll probably run closer to 50 this year with bonus programs and all the other things that they do. So there's depends on the complexity. If you're simple, you don't need to outsource payroll. We just need to get your system running right. Again, of course, we understand the technology and the pieces. I think that's really what makes us fairly unique in the market spaces. Somebody who can think across and understands those three pieces, how they're coming together, how they play together. And at the end of the day, it's not about us selling you. This is how we do it. It's about us saying, how do you need us to do it? And what does that look like? And who are the vendors that make the most sense? Because at the end of the day, we're technology agnostic. We are vendor agnostic. It's not about our way. It's about your way, which kind of leads us, you know, why is our tagline? What it is, it's, you know, listen, advise, and support. And the support comes last and the service comes last. We just got to figure you out first. Because you're all unique. And I think that's what makes what I do so much fun is it's all pretty darn unique. The people are unique, the businesses are unique. And that's the thing that kind of gets me out of bed every morning and makes it fun to build. So then, okay, so now let's talk about payroll, because I think one of the biggest things that business owners have around payroll is that it's wrong. That's one of the reasons why they keep doing it in house is they want to make sure that it's right and it's wrong. And you said three to four hours, like just thinking about what you could do for three to four hours. Do you meet a lot of people who don't want to give up payroll, because they're afraid it's going to be done wrong, and it's going to cause them a lot of headaches? I think most people are fairly comfortable with, you know, there's a reason why I think the big most market uses ADP is just they get comfortable with it. They get comfortable with the main. There are better solutions at lower money out there. You just got to get comfortable with the risk side for sure. And everybody likes to tell the horse probably says the local payroll company who was kind of with your tax money, you left with a tax liability. Does it happen? Yes, it happens, but again, you can't necessarily live in fear. You need to understand the risk, manage the risk, and then make the good decisions to put the pieces in place to do this thing as efficiently and effectively as cost effectively as you can. So getting comfortable with moving it to out, it's certainly is an issue. They can't be somebody like us who does it fairly regularly. It certainly puts a little comfort to that. And we don't lead with payroll out sourcing. So at the end of the day, people that we end up being payroll with usually come from one of two camps. Either they've been a customer for hours a long time and their payroll person leaves. They've been a customer for a while. And again, it's that lean financial decision maker who's been involved with us on benefits who says, God, I want to get this thing off my test, I'm ready to talk to you. Where it's a new customer comes to us who's small, who's saying, we expect we're going to go from five people to 100 people in the next four years, or we're going to go from 20 people to 40 people. And it's going to move and go fast. And we need somebody who knows how to do that because we don't. It's not something that's a lead thing. It's not a three line for the most part. payroll should run itself pretty straightforward easily in most companies. There are the exceptions and the exceptions of the places where we end up thriving and doing bulk of our work. So it sounds like you, you know, we started a marketing sprout, which is our digital marketing with AI and content development because our clients asked. So, you know, when your clients ask you to do something, start doing it because it becomes part of the triple crown that Eric has talked about. Don't be scared about it. So it's really does sound to me like we need to do planning and be much more confident about this as opposed to you know, I don't I'm holding my nose. I don't want to look at it. Yeah. I think I think that's exactly it. You know, it's funny. You talked to me about kind of a quote that kind of resonates for me. Interesting. Wait, wait, don't do the quote. Yeah, because we're not there. I know it does. Like, don't go there because I won't know. I don't know how to end this this show. I am very routine and my blittersters will be like, Oh, we're done. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, quite yet. Just hold on to that. See, just like I do with my customers, I can keep them on their toes by bringing things up that they don't necessarily want to hear yet. Well, singing well done to Shay from you. All right. We are so let me ask you this. I get is there anything in terms of payroll or or I'm going to go backwards payroll, HR benefits because you really benefit HR and payroll in terms of listening today because I can't believe we're almost done with the conversation. You're already ready for the quote, but I want to make sure that our listeners have action steps because this is about getting results with Dr. Jean. Action steps that they can do as soon as they stop listening to you. So what are some things that they should be doing right after listening to this podcast? If you're the business leader, get your HR payroll and benefits person. That might be internal. It might be external. It might be some combination thereof, including your benefits broker. Get them to the table and get them started talking about how these things are coming together. What does it look like and what's their plan for your company for the future? Because if they don't have one they should and start leading them in that direction from a administration, how do we do it? And what's the technology supporting that? And from a cost and strategy and cost control and employee satisfaction perspective. So every step of this touches your people in some way, your people drive your business. So we have to think about how do we use technology? How do we create great process? How do we save money doing it? But while we're doing all those things for your business, how do we make sure that people feel like they're loved and taken care of on the back end? Because the end of the day, we can't do one without the other one. So which brings me up a question because I have my question would be it's like, well, what if I've already reached out to somebody, but I've really listened to you and I like you. Can I have two people getting me quotes at the same time, or I have to just go with one and then stop? You can have two people getting you quotes. I don't recommend it, especially don't recommend it if you have more than 50 employees, especially don't recommend it if you're under 50 employees and looking at self-funded because underwriters are all about managing risk. And if you've got two different people talking to the market, telling an underwriter two different things they get scared. And that doesn't do you any good financially is to scare an underwriter. That's the last thing you want to do. And so I don't recommend it. I would say figure out who you want to be your lead advisor. Figure out who your gut says you need to trust. Have the conversations you need to have. So if that's with us, pick up the phone, call us, bring us out, let's sit down. Let's kick the tires for 30 minutes. If you want to turn it into an hour at that point, great. If there's a follow-up meeting, great. Do those things. Do them we talked about. Do them now. Do them early. The bulk of plans over in New January 1. Don't wait till October. We talked about the quarterlies. Pull your folks together. Wear an April 1. Do that first quarterly meeting. There's plenty of time. You could task your folks with. Go find me two or three that you want me to interview as the owner of the business at the end of the day to make that gut decision on. Pull those people together. Get there. Make that decision on who's going to lead you through the process six months in advance. Because it takes six months to really do the job and do it well. You can always bring a broker in who's willing to quote your business at the last minute. But let's think about this. If I'm coming in as your broker as an insurance guy last minute on a renewal, the only way I win is to show you how to save money and the only way I win is by making you leave your current carrier as well as your current broker. At that point, you're not going to. At that point, I'm going to necessarily give you the best advice. The best advice might be, stay where you are. Maybe we tweak some things and do it a little differently. That's what I would say. You're better off having one person letting them trust that they have your back. I know it's a difficult thing to earn in this business, but at the end of the day, if your gut's not sitting with the person you're with, find somebody else. If your gut says, "I really trust this person," you trust them. Just have more conversations with them. Get them to the table more. It sounds like if you're shopping right now, pick somebody. If you don't like them in a year from now, pick somebody else, right? You don't have to wait. It's the fallacy of our position. You don't have to wait a year. You can fire a broker anytime you want. Think about it today and hear this and go, "I'm gonna fire my guy tomorrow." Okay. You just write a letter. I fire a friend named Eric. You have to have a solution of where you're going to go. It's like, how do you do? You have to have the replacement. That would be smart in the whole thing, but bottom line is, you don't have to do it at a policy anniversary. You can do it at any time. It just takes effect for the first pretty long. Just know that, listen to what I'm saying. As a business owner, pick somebody. You don't like them. Six months from now, then pick somebody else and do that. No. Eric, you've given us so much great stuff. All right. Now, I know you're dying. Tell us, what is your favorite quote and why? So, what I want to say is a quote from Andy Warhol of all crazy people that are out there, and what he basically says, he says, "They always think time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself." The point of that really being, hey, as business owners, we get running, and we don't like change because change means work, change means risk, change means thinking. If you're just complaining, you're just complaining, but if you really want to address the problem because it's really a business problem, get serious about it, get talking about it now, playing for it and get out there and make the change because it's not good change on it. I love that. This is really one of my favorite parts of the conversation is because I'd love to hear what people, what their fair quote is and why. All right. With that said, Eric, you've given us so much information, how can people find you? How can we have a conversation with you? What's the best way to get in touch with you? So, you can learn more about us, our website, Eli-advisors.com. That's E-L-I-advisors.com. Our contact information is there. Just reach out, give us a call. Probably the easiest way to do it and keep it simple. So, by all means, just give you the basics about what we do and then let's have a conversation. That's what this is really all about. We got to get comfortable with each other. We've got to say, hey, we're a fit for each other. We think alike. We're moving in the right direction and then we can say, hey, let's put this thing together. I love that. Eric, thank you so much for being a guest on our show and as we always say to people, if you want results, listen to the Results Queen. I'm the Dr. Jean the Results Queen. Go out and get results. Thank you for listening to Getting Results with Dr. Jean the Results Queen. If you like the show, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We appreciate it and it really helps your fellow business owners to find the show. Go to Getting Results with Dr. Jean.com for more information on how you can achieve better business results with caveman brain business growth system and the entrepreneurial operating system. Here's to you Getting Results.
