Episode 326: Know Your Numbers Or Pay The Price With Denise Nelson

Welcome back to the Scale Your Insurance Agency Podcast. The show built for independent agency owners who are done being the bottleneck in their own business. I'm Daniel Metcalf, and every week I'm joined by my co-host Mike Stromso, one of the most respected operators in the independent agency world. Between the two of us, we bring you the real levers that move a $3 to $20 million agency from successful but maxed out to systemized, scalable, and running without you holding it all together. Here's what we focus on. Mike brings the people side, leadership, team development, niche sales mastery, and a three-piece system that helps agencies build a business worth owning. I bring the machine side. AI, automation, and workflow design that frees your team from the operational drag, eating your margin, and your time. Together, we're building a framework that can grow an independent agency 4X to 9X without burning out your people or your checkbook. If you're an agency owner who's tired of growing by herring, who knows you have a capacity sitting on the table but can't figure out how to unlock it, this is the show for you and your weekly edge.

Hey everyone, it's Mike Stromso. Welcome back to the Scaling Your Insurance Agency podcast. On behalf of my podcast partner, Daniel Metcalf, who's not with us today, is on the road helping independent insurance agencies. I am proud and privileged to take the lead today and welcome our guest who is here for one main reason. You're working hard. You're working really hard. You're working nights, you're working weekends, you think about it seven days a week, and yes, I'm talking about your business. All for a reason. And we all have a why. But ultimately, at the end of the day, we also have a financial scoreboard for the results that we're providing because of our business. And that financial scoreboard is not always in play, and many, many independent insurance agency entrepreneurs that we work with are not paying close attention to their ultimate scoreboard for their business, their financial scoreboard for their business. And that's their profit and loss statement, their balance sheet, and more importantly, planning for the future. So we thought it would be a phenomenal idea today to bring in an expert in this space who has a very unique um piece of history about her that makes her the prime, prime candidate to work with independent insurance agents on this singular piece. Denise Nelson, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks, Mike. I'm so happy to be here.

I'm happy that you are here, and I'm happy that we have a growing relationship. So let's get into it. And just for everybody uh listening or watching this podcast, listening to or watching this podcast, Denise Nelson is the founder and the CEO of Accounting Plus and the Plus Group. They're out of Columbia, Missouri. She also founded, though, and here's the key Insurance Plus. So as an independent insurance agency owner, yes, CEO of an accounting firm, CPA, and an insurance agency owner. That combination gives the niece a rare perspective. I haven't met anybody else that has this exact perspective. She understands accounting, tax, and the advisory side of the business, but she also understands the real life challenges of running and growing an independent insurance agency business. For over 30 years, she's worked with business owners to help them understand their numbers, their profitability, and help them build stronger companies. The Plus Group helps independent insurance agency owners see and know whether their growth is actually producing stronger profit, better cash flow, and greater long-term agency value. And depending on what your end game is, she can make sure that you maximize that. When I met her and learned more about her, and after having got to know her this year, uh I'm excited. Shall we dig in, Denise?

Let's do it. Mike, thank you so much for having me on the show. Um, it's been a pleasure getting to know you and your business. And um, I'm super excited uh to talk to you and your listeners today about something every independent insurance agency owner should care about. Um, and that's whether the growth that they're working so hard to create is actually turning into uh money in their pockets, right? Or enterprise value. So important. Um, as you described in my intro, um I come at this from two angles. I've owned an accounting and advisory firm for more than 30 years. Also built an insurance agency that we've had for the last 10 years. Um, we're still serving clients today, a little crazy, yeah. Doing both. But uh so I understand the numbers, obviously. Um, but I also understand the real life challenges that these insurance agency owners are going through, right? The the producer issues, the carrier relationships, payroll pressures, service versus sales, uh, and just the challenges of growing an independent agency without losing control of the business. Uh, you know, a lot of agency owners out there are growing, but they don't always know whether that growth is creating financial health or just more complexity. Uh, that's why I'm excited to dig into this topic today with you.

Yeah, complexity. Complexity. Well, comes to my mind when I hear you say that word, you can't scale complexity, right? You can only scale simplicity. So uh as somebody who has lived both sides of the desk and is living both sides of the desk, Denise, what are some of the biggest financial mistakes that you consistently see independent insurance agency owners making that limit their growth and more importantly, their net profitability?

That's a great question to kick things off. Um, I can tell you firsthand that there are many mistakes an agency owner can make, and I've probably made most of them. Um, and here are uh a list of my favorites. Right? You've been there too. Uh first and foremost, uh owners make the mistake of managing by revenue instead of profit, right? They're just looking at that top line on that profit and loss report. Um, and most agency owners know their top line revenue, they can rattle it off the top of their heads, but they're not actually sure whether the next dollar of revenue is producing the profit that it needs to be producing. So they're managing by the top number, not the bottom number. Uh, number two, uh, they're not separating growth from healthy growth. Um, who doesn't want to grow? What business owner went into business to stay the same? But um, and new business is great, but it wreck if it requires too much producer comp, too much service, too much owner involvement, or too much overhead, um, it may increase stress rather than value. So healthy growth looks different than just plain growth. Um, number three, agency owners don't often understand their true cost structure. Um, they underestimate what it costs to service an account or to support producers, uh, to manage renewals or handle the back office complexity. So they're not really paying attention, right, at that, at that level. Um, number four, one of my favorites, they treat bookkeeping as compliance and not management intelligence. These agency owners probably all get financials each month or some, you know, periodically. Um, and if those books are only getting done to do a tax return at the end of the year and the owner's not using them as a tool to make good management decisions, then they're not using them right. Um so bookkeeping is not just about compliance, right? It's about making smart decisions based on those numbers. And the last one, I'd say uh agency owners often wait too darn long to build financial discipline. Um, you know, valuable agency build valuable agencies build clean financials, strong margins. They're looking at dashboards of some kind, um, and they're subjecting themselves to accountability early on.

Yeah, for sure. All great stuff, all very, very important. But, you know, to summarize what you just said, and and that's a great perspective in the fact that we need to use the financial prowess that we have or don't have for its greatest benefit. And having been an independent insurance agency owner for more than 35 years, I never thought about it like that. So that's a great take. And that's why I think you have this unique position that I've not seen before. So thank you for bringing that to the table. So, you know, and in working with independent insurance agency owners uh across the country, hundreds of them, many tell me I get monthly financial statements, as you said, but they really don't understand what the numbers are telling them. What are some financial metrics that every agency owner, maybe just three to five, should review every month if they want to build a more profitable and valuable agency? And maybe we'll start saying more often the words net profitable agency and more value. What should we be looking for?

Ooh, three to five, that's hard. I love 10. But uh, so this is where I get to geek out a little. And I have terms like metrics and KPIs. Business owners' eyes glaze over when you start to use those words, right? But all they are, they're just numbers that matter, right? They're percentages or they're trends that we measure. So it's not that, it's not that uh mysterious. Um, so those few percentages and trends tell you whether growth is actually healthy and profitable. Um, so although I have 10, I'll give you my favorite down favorite one. Um, you got to be watching EBITDA. You got to be watching that bottom margin and you need to be watching the trend on it, right? So EBITA is uh earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. If you want to dumb it down a little, it's just the bottom number on your income statement, right? And I'll give you a few tips here. So um, if that bottom line net income is under 10% of revenue, you probably ought to be concerned. There's something to look at there. If you're 10 to 15%, bottom line versus net income, need to start watching, right? Something could be happening. 15 to 20% is actually healthy. Anything over 20% is strong in this world of insurance agencies. So net income, bottom line, divide that number by your gross income, and these are the percentages that you're looking at. 20% and up is golden.

Second one. Awesome. You know, my experience has been that generally speaking, a monthly review of these documents and these numbers is important. Would you agree?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. And don't even just watch the bottom line. You got to start watching too. You know what? What do you think the number one expenses in an insurance agency? You should know this. You did it. It's people, right? It's the people that you pay. Um, so probably the other couple numbers I would I would uh be measuring, the other metrics I'd be measuring are producer compensation as a percentage of revenue and your service and admin staffing as a percentage of revenue. And those two combined better be 60% or under, or you're probably overspending a bit for your revenue. Um, producer comp maybe 30, 35%, uh admin, a little less than that, maybe 25%, 20 to 25%. So, you know, with uh if you were in a manufacturing business, you'd be watching cost of goods sold, right? That's your number one number there. But in this world, the service world of insurance, uh, you're watching your people, you're watching your people costs. So those are probably, you know, there's some other numbers we could talk about organic growth, retention rates, revenue per employee. Those all come into play, but those would be my top three, I'd say, for agency that's wanting to get an understanding of how healthy they are at this moment.

Yeah, yeah. So I've never thought about breaking that down. That's a great perspective. So we can truly understand. We have sales, we have versus sales versus service. So we truly understand where our dollars are going towards each initiative. Um and that's awesome. That's awesome. So I hear many frustrations from agency owners that they don't truly understand their bookkeeping data or they're not truly confident that their CPA understands the independent insurance agency business. That's why you are unique because you do, because you are an independent insurance agency owner. But more importantly than that, how can an agency owner determine whether they truly have the right accounting and tax advisory team on their side?

Good question. I mean, business owners want to know what they're paying for. Don't they and they want to be paying for the right service by the right person. So I'll start by saying that the right accountant should do more than just prepare tax returns and financial statements, right? That's the that's the minimum that they should be doing for you. Um they should also be helping you owner understand the story behind the numbers. I mean, that's that's what those are about. Of course, you need those documents, those tax returns and financials uh produced to stay in compliance. But if you don't understand the numbers, your accountant doesn't help you understand the numbers, um, you're probably not getting what you are paying for. So for those out there with accountants, I have three questions they could ask their accountant, and then three red flags that they may not be getting the help they truly need. All right. So the first question that you would ask your accountant, can you help me understand whether my agency's growth is actually improving bottom line profit, right? Cash flow or business value, right? Am I growing just for the sake of growing? And in fact, I'm eroding my bottom line, right? That could be the wrong direction. But ask your accountant, can you help me understand that? Or is this revenue just making me bigger? Number two, ask your accountant, what do you think the top three to five numbers are I should be looking for given what you know about my business? Presumably your accountant knows your business well. Um, you know, what do they think that you should be watching and what do those numbers tell you about the health of your agency? And number three, you know, ask the question, hey, Mr. Accountant or Miss Accountant, where do you see margin leakage or cash flow risk or any financial blind spots that I'm not looking at? As an accountant, I can tell you I've looked at thousands and thousands of businesses worth of financials. So I can spot an anomaly, I can spot a trend. I'll tell you though, business owners aren't asking us these questions on a daily basis. Uh, more should, right? I mean, we can proactively provide this stuff, but uh, business owners should ask this. And then there's a few red flags that um I would say if you're seeing this out of your accountant, maybe you need to push a little harder with them. So if you only hear from them once a year at tax time, if you're paying them to do year-round work and you're only hearing from them once a year at tax time, you're probably not getting the financial guidance that you need to run and grow an agency. Number two, if your accountant has no clue about the financial drivers of an independent insurance agency, even just the bare minimum, things like producer comp, contingency income, you know, there's some there's some important things that need to be understood there. Um, they may be doing good accounting work, but they're not giving you the insight you need. Um, and then finally, if your financial statements are technically correct, but they don't help you make better decisions, that's a problem. Um, the numbers should help you see where to focus, what to question, and what to do next. So, bottom line, a good accounting team should not just tell you what happened last year. They should help you make better decisions this year.

Yeah, absolutely true. And that prompts me to think about our own story. Our own story uh from our own agency growth, you know, over 35 plus years, where we got to uh invest in a different um bookkeeping and accounting firm to handle our books and our tax returns because of the fact that their finger was not on the post. And it was a fairly sizable investment uh to bring everything up to date. But you know what we learned from that is, and this is exactly what you were just saying concerning the red flags and the three questions, will which will help you determine if you are in the right place right now, yes or no, uh, and whether you're properly managing your books to maximize the output of your cash and your revenue that you're generating on on a net basis. But you need to think about your CPA, your tax professionals, and your bookkeeping professionals as your partners. Absolutely and those partners should be working closely together with you throughout the year. Uh, one of the things is once we got much larger in the multi-million dollar revenue range, uh, we need to we need to have better tax strategy. Uh just because we got tired of writing large checks uh after the tax return was done. So uh I learned that hey, there's people out there who are very smart and if with enough planning can help you with the right tax strategy. So that's exactly what Denise is pointing to here, if I'm not mistaken. Uh, and having that right partner on your team with the right knowledge and experience, and that's again where she is uniquely qualified not only as a tax and bookkeeping professional, but an independent insurance agency owner simultaneously. So that's which is fantastic. So she can help with that. So thank you, Denise. This is awesome that we get to unpack all of this and give this opportunity for people because I mean, if you're getting ready to scale your independent insurance agency or you're already in the process, I mean these are going to become real conversations. And so we want to make sure we bring this to you early. Speaking of bringing it to everybody, Denise, if somebody has heard something that's already perking their interest and they want to, you know, maybe connect with you and make sure they're asking the right questions and making sure they don't have any red flags in their own books. How can they connect with you? Do you want to give them your website?

Yeah, I'd be happy to. So um our website is www. Do we say that anymore? W.accounting plus inc, I and C. So accountingplusinc.com. So that's uh that's the easiest way.

Accountingplusinc.com.

You got it. You got it. And there's a contact me form there, and uh they can just drop their uh you know, name, email, phone number in and mention that they're uh insurance, an insurance agency, and they saw us on this podcast, and that'll help us, you know, serve them well. Answer all the questions they have, all the burning questions they have.

Yeah, for sure. So accounting plus Inc. And they're out of Columbia, Missouri. So if that comp pops up, check that out. And make sure you put in the contact form that uh you saw or heard Denise on the Scaling Your Insurance Agency podcast, and that'll move you to the top of the stack, and uh she'll understand more about she and her team, I should say, will understand better your uh situation. So let's get back to it and helping some agency owners. So, Denise, many agency owners focus heavily, like you said in the beginning, on revenue growth, on the top line revenue. But you said that that doesn't necessarily translate into stronger profit or cash flow or enterprise value. What's the difference between a growing agency and a financially healthy independent insurance agency?

Good question. Good question. So I'd say a growing agency is increasing revenue, right? Grow when we talk about growing, we grow the top line. Um whereas a financially healthy agency would be turning that growth into profit, cash flow, enterprise value, as you said. Um, and I think I'll tack another one on here, owner freedom, right? If you're growing that thing right, everything doesn't flow through you. You don't have to do all the things, right? So um we start to pair uh financial, you know, a financially healthy agency, we start to pair good financial numbers with uh, you know, healthy owner involvement. So I'd say some of the traits of each. Uh a growing agency, a growing agency is gonna have more revenue, probably gonna have more producers, uh, more clients, more customers, uh, more staff, and by the nature of it, more complexity, right? We really have to work hard to not let the complexity grow. We're just simply growing. Um, a financially healthy agency, though, that's growing, has strong margins, predictable cash flow, uh, high retention, a disciplined compensation structure, right? That starts to get a little sideways sometimes, um, a scalable service team, and importantly, the owner is less of a bottleneck in a financially uh healthy organization. I've got a uh a short list of uh warning signs that growth is creating a problem for your agency. Um, these will resonate with some people. So revenues up, but cash still feels tight. That's a hard one, right? You're like, how on earth do I still not have any money in the bank? It shows that I made money. It may show I made money on the bottom line, but sometimes that cash doesn't uh translate. Another warning sign that growth is creating a problem is that your profit margin is declining, right? Growth is up or revenue is up, but uh, as I mentioned earlier, the bottom line's not up. A pretty common warning sign. Payroll's growing faster than revenue as a percentage, right? You measure say you measured your baseline. You were at 55% overall payroll versus income. But as you grow, that number's growing with you, you're stacking too fast, right? And isn't that a balancing act as an agency owner to try to handle the growth with the team you have before you add the next uh person on? Um, and I'll say last that um well, this is a good one too. The agency is depending on contingency income or the bonuses, the extra money to make the year work. That's a warning sign that you're not growing in quite the right way. So instead of asking only did revenue grow this year, ask is the profit margin improving? Is cash flow more predictable today than it was six months ago or 12 months ago? Are we retaining the right clients? Um, are we growing from inside the agency? Are we scaling payroll appropriate to income? Um, and is the agency less dependent on the owner? I think you have to throw that in there. And I know your team um probably talks a lot about that with agency owners out there, um, about the owner building a strong team around him or her to scale their business um in a good way so that they're not working themselves to death or or literally becoming the bottleneck to growth. Um, it can happen. So the goal is not just to build a bigger agency, is it? The goal is to build a better agency, uh, one that's more profitable, has more cash, easier to run and more valuable over time. And by the way, I think we all know this, but I'm gonna say it out loud. If you're looking to scale your agency so that you can sell it, if you're the bottleneck, your value just went down. You cannot be the guy that does it all, or your multiple just changed. You're not getting the multiple you think you are. But if you instead have an agency that has scaled, that's running smoothly, and you can take off and go to Europe for four weeks and the thing doesn't fall apart, now you're on the right track. So enterprise value has a lot to do with you and not all to do with the numbers.

Yeah, there is so much to unpack in that those gold nuggets that you just dropped. Thank you so much for that, Denise. Um, all true, uh, based on what I've learned so far as well. And working with the independent insurance agency, high performing, very pro net profitable independent insurance agencies, by the way. So founder dependency is big. And if you are thinking about your end game anytime in the next 10 years, these are all things that you need to be thinking about. Uh, another great friend of the financial realm in our industry, my friend Carrie Wallace, talks about that. And she says, if you give yourself five years before that date, she will help you maximize that final number. Fantastic. Okay. However, that founder dependency is big, and the people who uh you know ultimately may purchase your agency, they know. They know how predictable your income is, and they want to make sure that that income is predictable without you. For sure. So, you know, predictability is huge. Denise, before we move on, uh I got a couple more questions for you, real quick. A well I call it a well-positioned agency. Okay, what should the payroll percentage be on the expenses line on the PL? We've got gross revenue, right, expenses, and the net profit just to begin with. And that's where you come in and unpack everything else to get to better numbers and get a better picture and understanding. But with that being said, in a well-positioned, healthy agency, what should that payroll percentage be? The total payroll percentage?

Total payroll between 50 and 60, right? The lower the better, but reasonable, a reasonable range is 50 to 60. You start getting over 60%. Um unless it's uh strategic, right? It's a it's a it's a short period, then you know revenue is going to grow, then you're golden.

Does that include owner payroll?

That does not include owner payroll.

It does not include owner payroll. Okay, fair enough. I was actually expecting less than 50, but uh now that you know I heard you say that, I can envision that in today's world, I mean, the investment cost of a highly qualified, licensed, experienced for say account manager, I mean, they they earn good money and they deserve it, by the way. So I get it. I get it. I just wanted to put that on the table.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, that that's uh again, the lower you can get that, the more money goes in your pocket. But you're probably doing more. If you're down below 50% on your total payroll as a percentage of revenue, I suspect you're working pretty hard as that agency owner. You're probably doing a lot of it, you're bootstrapping still and doing a lot of this yourself. That'd be my that'd be my take on that.

So I mean should we just say bottleneck work? You already brought that up.

Right, right.

Yeah, and and you and I, I'm sure, have probably heard this uh because we end up end up sometimes on similar pathways that we travel, which is where we met. But the story of the orchestra conductor versus the first violinist, right? So every agency owner should be thinking about being the orchestra conductor, not playing a musical instrument like the first violinist, but just conducting the orchestra, meaning your entire team to make beautiful music. So great, great stuff. So Denise, if you're sitting down with an independent insurance agency owner or owners who wanted to double their value within their agency over the next five years, and we just talked about that. What financial disciplines and habits would you insist that they must implement immediately or very soon?

Double their agency value in five years. I love it. That's aggressive. Um that's yeah.

Well, if they're gonna be scaling, yeah, that that becomes more possible and realistic. So now's the time to know this information.

I think it's great. I love that. I love that uh that ambition there. I think that's good. So I can think of a few things here. Um I would recommend that the owner start thinking like a value builder, right? Not just the top line focus. Build the value of your overall agency. Um, you have to think beyond revenue production, right? So um second, this is an easy one. Start looking at your financials. Look at them every month. Don't just glance at the PL when it appears in your inbox or your account and hands it to you, but compare the results to targets. Have some targets, right? Um, if you're doubling, um you're you're chasing a number. So, you know, be looking at the be looking at those uh numbers on a regular basis. Um I would recommend that they build a metrics dashboard. It could be an Excel, it can be, there's lots of platforms for this, and it doesn't have to be complex, but um be measuring those numbers that matter, those metrics that matter. Um some of those AP are KPIs we discussed earlier, and like I say, I could give you a nine or 10, but we talked about three or five. But look at those metrics, they make sense. And the thing I love about looking at a dashboard is at a glance you see these trends, and trends matter. If you're looking at a profit and loss report or a balance sheet out of the context of what happened last quarter or last year, it's a little hard to discern if you're making the right progress. But you put that baby on a chart, right? Your prof, you know, chart your revenue or chart your profits, you can see it. And um, so there's what that's what a dashboard can do for you. Um, I kind of said it earlier, but if you're not setting goals, if you're not setting financial goals, um, including, you know, profit, cash flow, margins, and some of that sort of stuff, um, it's gonna be hard to achieve goals. And, you know, there are great tools inside of accounting software these days. You can use a projection or a budget to try to try to track those things. Um and then, you know, compensation is so darn hard to get compensation right, the compensation structure right. But if you can figure out a way to tie compensation to profitable growth, not just growth for the sake of growth, but profitable growth, you know, reward that new business, the retention, right, long-term account value, reward that in the right way so that you're encouraging the right behaviors. I think uh that's gonna put you in a better position to double this rate agency in five short years.

Awesome.

I want to I want to tell you what a few things maybe. Three things to stop doing. This happens all the time, not just in the insurance world, but stop managing your business by the bank account balance. I know you all do it. I mean, right, we have the apps on our phone. Now we can go to the bank and say, Oh, I got money, I'm doing good. Um, that's not the same thing as financial clarity. Understanding how much money in your bank is important, but you can't manage your business that way. And stop accepting messy financials from yourself or your spouse or your bookkeeper or your accountant. If the data isn't clean, the decisions won't be clear. It's just all there is to it. You have to have good financial reports. And then finally, stop trying to do it all yourself. I mean, I bootstrap, I've bootstrapped two businesses, three businesses. I understand what it means to do it all. Um, and that's great. You gotta you gotta be scrappy to start with. But um, you know, if you're serious about growth, you know when to delegate, right? Delegate, delegate. That's that's somebody's phrase, isn't it? The bookkeeping, the payroll, the tax compliance, the routine reporting, all of that can be delegated so easily. Just don't just don't abdicate the uh the comprehension of your financials. Don't give that to someone else. Don't go, well, I have a bookkeeper. He or she understands the numbers, I don't need to know them. Wrong. You need to understand your numbers. You need to make decisions based on those numbers. Educate yourself on it, get an accountant who will help you understand those and how to use them. So there's my uh there's my stop doing three things.

Right. And I couldn't agree with you more. Uh one one of my big, big lessons from my entrepreneurial career has been you should only be doing the things that only you can do.

That's right. Boy, that's hard. It's easy to say it.

Of course it it's easier said than done, but you know, uh, that's an encouragement, and that's why I wrote, you know, my most recent book, The Power of Three, which you know, everybody should choose the three things that they do well, that they love to do, they're passionate about, that when they get done at the end of the day, they feel fantastic because they were doing that the majority of their day. But to what you just said, you know, around you, you have groups of professionals who are doing the things that only they can do, right? That they're really good at. There are their superpowers per se. And that's you know, I learned from the billionaire who started with nothing, right? Who built his company, one of our clients in the insurance agency business. And one of his key points when I asked him, Hey, how'd you do it? He said, It's the balance within a team. And that's the exact thing that I'm I'm feeling right now and thinking about as I listen to you say that the balance within a team. You're part of that balancing act or teeter-totter syndrome for the financial side of it. So thank you for being you. Thank you for what you're doing. Denise, any last thoughts or comments for any independent insurance agency owners that are out there that might be listening or watching that we haven't talked about yet?

Let me just repeat, I think, the core message here. Yeah, growth is not the same as financial health. Um, an agency can be growing revenue, they could be adding producers, writing new business, and still be quietly weakening profit, cash flow, and enterprise value. So there's my there's my uh message of the day, right?

Growth is not the same as financial health. It's financial health. Just because you're growing doesn't mean you're truly financially healthy.

That's right.

Are you? So that's why Denise Nelson is here. Um, she has the answers to that and more. And I'm super grateful and thankful uh that we met and that we've got to know each other. And again, that's why she is on the Scaling Your Insurance Agency podcast uh to help independent insurance agencies most importantly, become aware. Aware that your financial health is not just growth, it's a lot, lot more. And she's got the answers, she can explain it to you again. She dropped her website. In addition to that, and the show notes, there's some additional information. Uh, if you want to find out more, uh, please connect with uh Denise and her team. They can explain it all to you so much better than I can even begin to. So, Denise Nelson, thanks for joining us on the podcast.

Thank you so much. My love being here.

Yeah. It was a pleasure to learn about the rare perspective that Denise brings to the table. She's not only an accounting and tax professional, she's an independent insurance agency owner as well. So she's living it, breathing it, and understands it like nobody else in her realm. So thank you so much for joining us on the Scale Your Insurance Agency podcast. We're grateful that you're here. If you have any other further thoughts, comments, or questions, also check the show notes. Uh, there's a way to connect with us if you'd like to discuss not only growing your agencies, but to make sure it's growing with good financial health. Uh, we're happy to connect with you as well. So again, check the show notes, and we will see you on the next episode.

Bye now. That's a wrap on this week's episode of Scale Your Insurance Agency. Quick reminder: everything we talk about on this show is built to do one thing: turn your time into profit. More revenue, more margin, more freedom without adding headcount to make it happen. If something landed for you today, please share it with another agency owner who needs to hear it. This community only grows when good operators help each other level up. Please subscribe, download, and share our podcast and all your other favorite podcast engines. And if you're ready to stop figuring this out alone, Mike and I are both in the field working with agencies right now. Please reach out. Find us on LinkedIn or on our websites, and we'll tell you exactly where your biggest opportunity is to scale. Until next week, build the system, protect your time, and scale the right way. See you next week.