465. He Bought a $14M Book. Here's How Joseph Puckett Is Taking It to $100M

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Watch the full episode on YouTube: HERE

What's in this episode:
What does it actually take to buy a $14 million book of business and grow it to $100 million? In this episode, Michael Weaver sits down with Joseph Puckett, an independent insurance agency owner who made the leap - purchasing an established book of business and immediately building the systems, sales culture, and team mindset required to scale it. Joseph breaks down what most agency buyers get wrong, why retention is the first number to fix, and how he is using real data and daily accountability to drive growth at every level of his organization.

From producer recruiting and onboarding to cross-selling existing clients and building a team that actually wants to win, this episode is a practical playbook for any agency owner thinking about acquisition, growth, or what it really takes to lead a team at scale. If you want to run a bigger operation and do it right, this conversation delivers the honest framework to get there.

[00:00] Joseph Puckett bought a $14M book - here is why
[01:30] What the acquisition process actually looked like
[03:00] First moves after signing - what Joseph fixed immediately
[05:00] Why retention has to come before growth
[07:00] Building a sales culture inside an acquired agency
[09:00] How Joseph recruits producers and what he looks for
[11:00] Onboarding producers to sell and not just service
[13:30] Cross-selling the existing book - the fastest revenue lever
[16:00] Daily accountability and how Joseph runs his team
[18:30] The data Joseph tracks to know if the agency is on track
[20:30] Mindset shifts required to lead at a bigger scale
[22:30] What the path to $100M actually looks like from here
[24:00] Advice for agency owners considering an acquisition

Connect with Joseph Puckett:
Website: josephdpuckett.com
Facebook: facebook.com/josephdpuckett
Instagram: @josephdpuckett
Email: email@josephdpuckett.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

When you see the kind of money that can be made with growing a book via acquisition or starting via acquisition, I don't know how scratch people make it, especially now with all the new tighter compensation. It's just tough.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

If you have ever been interested in acquiring a book of business and growing by millions of dollars a year, this episode is for you. Cordy and I sit down with Joseph Puckett, incredible agency owner, and we're going to be discussing over the last year and a half how he went from purchasing a book of business, $14 million book of business to be exact, and how a year later, 12 months, he grew that book of business by over 4 million. He goes from start to finish. He shares the exact numbers with you, exactly what you're expected to bring to the table, his marketing strategies, how he pays his team, and more. With that being said, let's start the show. Hey, welcome to the Insurance Buzz. We are your host, Michael and Courtney Weaver, and we have a very special guest with us today, the owner of Joseph Puckett Consulting and agency owner, Joseph Puckett himself. What's going on, my man?

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Hey, Michael, Courtney, excited to talk with you guys and your network and just share what I can today to help everybody maximize their opportunity.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Yeah, man, we're super excited. Uh, and and obviously this is the first time we've ever met and talked, but I know that you've been around the industry for an extremely uh long amount of time. You've helped out thousands of agency owners and producers along the way. Now you are an agency owner and you're absolutely crushing it. You have been over like the last year. So what I would really like to get into is really like the last year and a half or so of your journey, and specifically with you going from you're still full-time trainer and coach, but now you're also full-time running an agency uh yourself. And so I would be curious because I'm getting a lot of questions right now from peers across the industry that are like, hey Michael, I'm thinking about looking at different opportunities, and these opportunities involve potentially buying books of businesses, but I don't know anything about it. Do you have any tips for me? And I'm like, well, man, I don't know a lot about it either. But you just went through that process. So I would love to know what your experience was of going through buying a book of business. What do you have to bring to the table? What are the hurdles that you're gonna have to jump over? What what are like the expectations or or like and I'll just leave it at that?

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Yeah, well, um, yeah, I started at Allstate in 2009 as a scratch agency owner. I was 24 years old with no money, no experience, no clue what I was doing. Guys, how do y'all think that worked out? It's not very good. It's tough. Yeah, not very good. I was 24, you know, and I just knew I was gonna kill it. Um, so a year and a half later, I met another agent, started working uh for him as a producer, and then an agency manager then ran his whole operation, um, growing from about 10 million premium to over 40 million in premium before he sold. And when you see the kind of money that can be made with growing a book via acquisition or starting via acquisition, I now I don't know how scratch people make it, especially now with all the new tighter compensation. It's just tough. It's just tough. Back in the day, there's there's or all this whole time, there's been lots of different comp plans, you know, for scratch agents to really maximize. There really isn't now. It's like, hey, this is how we pay agents based on new business. There can be some extra incentives. So buying a book is the to me is the only way to go. And the bigger you can buy, the better. You know, I've consulted agencies uh for the past 11, 12 years. I've worked with, like you said, thousands of agencies across the country. I've personally consulted hundreds of agency owners, worked with dozens who have bought books. I never had someone say, Man, I got too much renewal revenue. Right? Renewals are everything. And yes, they're being cut, right? All carriers, all companies are uh updating compensation plans, right? Some more drastically than others. And I know there's a lot of uncertainty out there. I was talking with an owner yesterday, Sunday, um, driving back from Tuscaloosa. I dropped my son off, my 15-year-old, at basketball camp. He's going to the University of Alabama basketball camp this week. Super excited. And I talked with this owner, and he's comparing two books: one $3 million book, one almost $7 million book. They both look almost identical in terms of retention, in terms of bundling, right? How bundled the book is and performance. They're both somewhat growing, right? But not really because the owners are kind of checked out. I was like, dude, there's no contest. You gotta go with the bigger book. But also, there is something to be said with starting small, though. Less debt, right? Less loan payment. So I totally understand why agents might go both ways. But buying a book at Allstate, I can kind of speak on that. I've helped a lot of agents do it, and I did it myself. You definitely have to have capital, right? So the way it works at Allstate now is to buy an agency, you have to have a minimum of $100,000 of liquid capital. Okay. If you're looking at buying a bigger book, it can be $150,000 or even $200. So for me, for example, I bought a $14 million book. I had to have $150,000 of access to liquid capital. Um, how am I uh doing that? Or how did I show that? Um, I'm thankful and blessed that I've saved and invested and have um some equity in my home and other investments that I have that I'm literally just borrowing against to fund um all of this and then paying it back as I get bonuses and commissions and renewals, right? So I'm coming up on my one year, it was July 1st last year, uh by just under $14 million. I'm gonna end May. It'll be pretty darn close, if not over $18 million. I should end this year at $20 or $21 million. Um, so growing very, very fast because I'm investing so much, but it takes money to make money. So Allstate or farmers or other carriers that allow buy sales, or if you wanted to buy an independent, and I can talk about financing and stuff like that too. They're gonna want to see that you have capital to invest in staffing and leads and marketing, but those are the metrics right now at all state is a hundred grand minimum, but the larger books need 150 or 200,000. Those aren't franchise fees, you're not paying any franchise fees or anything like that. It's just proving that you can, you know, invest in the business to grow and that you're not just doing what some agents have done over the years and it's made it hard on everybody. They buy a big book and do nothing but milk it. Yep, it's hurt everybody, right? So that's why it's getting tougher and tougher to get approved to buy agencies. You know, they want to make sure that you have a vested interest in getting there and writing a lot of business and actually growing and not just sitting on the renewals. So financing, you know, there's a lot of different lenders out there. I don't know if I can I talk about specific lenders and kind of what they do. Okay. Yeah. So I love Wind Trust. Wind Trust, W I N Trust. Um, they have done thousands of all-state deals over the years, but they also do others. They do farmers, they do independents, they do others. Wind Trust is the best when it comes to all-state deals. Teddy, oh my lord, my dog wants to say hi. Teddy, what are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 7:56

If you are not watching The Buzz, you should be because there is an adorable dog that's now on screen.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

He gets jealous. Okay. Oh, yeah. Well, let's say it's a wind trust, they've done thousands of deals from acquisitions to refinances to lines of credit. Y'all, capital is crucial. And, you know, I talk with agents every day in my consulting, and we look, we look at what their production is, we look at what their growth is, we look at what they're investing. And so many agents, their charts, because I have a business metrics dashboard that I build out for my consulting clients to like track everything, their charts are so flatslash maybe trending down on production and growth and stuff, and they wonder why they're not making any money or they're making the same money. Typically, their renewal uh revenue and their new business revenue total is about the same. It's like neck and neck, like you can barely see the difference throughout the course of the year comparing the last three or four years. Agents that invest and have the right systems and processes in place to write business and to grow and to do it the right way. You know, my agency, we bundle it 96%. 96% of our new business is bundled. My staff literally have to ask me permission to write anything monoline. And if they ever ask to write a monoline renders policy, they just quit. We don't write that junk. Like we only write good quality bundle business. That's this. So I'm tired of seeing agents just getting by and it's doing enough to hit the minimum. If a carrier says, here's your goal, you need to think, uh-uh, how much more of that am I gonna do? But y'all, it takes money to make money, and the cost of leads and marketing has skyrocketed. The quality gone way down. It's super competitive, right? Even the big carriers are buying up tons and tons of leads, so they're bidding up the cost. Your fellow agents are bidding up the cost. I'm in Texas and it's crazy. Yeah, I'm I'm buying like $200 and $250 live transfers for a phone call. It's over $200 right now with some vendors. Um, there's lots of ways to generate business, and we can talk about leads and marketing too, uh, and different vendors. But buying an agency, you're gonna want to work with a vendor or a bank like WinTrust. Now they can be kind of conservative, though. So there are a couple different options. Uh capital resources, and they'll do deals for farmers, they'll do deals for Allstate for independence and others. What I like about capital resources is they'll do up to 15 years. Uh, most other banks will only do 10, but if an agency says, you know what, I'm okay paying a little bit more interest rate and a little bit more interest over time unless I pay it off early, which you can absolutely do, um, stretching a payment from 10 years to 15 years can give a lot of breathing room.

SPEAKER_02 10:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Um, and there's others, there's Wind Trust, there's PPC Loan, right? PPC Loan has done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of deals. My advice, talk to all of them. Say, hey, here's my tax returns, here's the business metrics reports, here's everything that's going on, here's my you know, um, net worth, right? I literally just sent one personal financial statement to everybody. Then they want you to put it on their own letterhead. I'm like, dude, it's the same thing. Okay, fine, I'll retype it out again. But I got with three or four banks and I got um three offers. One told me no. One told me no, Joseph Pugget, no. But that I mean, it's just it is what it is. It's how it is. So going to reach out to two or three different banks, going through the underwriting process when you're really serious about doing it, look at your options. And of course, you could always reach out to me, shoot me an email or something, and I'll be happy to help, you know, give you some advice. But buying a book is the quickest way to grow. Um, that's my plan. You know, I'm growing organically. I'll grow from 14 to 20 by the end of this year from last July. My goal is to put myself in position to be approved for an acquisition. And I have a goal of growing to $100 million over the next 10 years. Organically, I can grow to 40 or 50. To get to 100, I'm gonna need to make some acquisitions. So that's a huge part of my overall growth strategy, and it just completely changes the game. Going back to I've never had an agent say, gosh darn it, my renewal revenue is too high.

SPEAKER_02 12:12

All right. You just covered a lot, and we and we do want to dig into this. So I would agree with you. Scratch opportunities, we were scratch agents just like you, very young, 26. It was tough. Um, but there were incentives out there, we made money, did well. Now I don't know of any really great scratch opportunities. Farmers has a pretty good one at like 340% commission um for like the first year or two years, I think, for a scratch agent. But I would agree with you. Like, scratch opportunities just aren't great, which is why I'm glad we're talking about this today. The one question I do have about the, and I don't want to get into like super details with purchasing because you just covered a lot, but just out of curiosity, so besides having the liquid in the bank, is that liquid after the down payment that you have to make that they expect?

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Um, the carrier, at least at Allstate, they don't even know what you're buying an agency for. They don't they shouldn't ask either, but they will. The market sales leaders typically ask because they just want to get a feel for what agencies are going for and stuff like that. But you don't have to tell them anything. The purchase agreement is between you and the seller and/or buyer, right? All you have to give to the carrier is a letter from the seller saying, I'm selling my agency to this person. That's it. That's you, that's the letter of intent, right? You work out a buy-sell agreement or an asset purchase agreement, APA with the buyer and seller. So all state, for example, just needs to see that you have access to that capital, whether it's a line of credit or money in the bank, um, that that has to be liquid. So I literally have um stocks and investments. I took a $150,000 loan against it, put it in a checking account, sent them a screenshot, then I paid the line of credit off, and then I moved it back when I needed it. For sure, right? But I don't prove I got money, right? I could write a check if I had to. Banks, they're gonna want to see that you got what the carrier's gonna require plus the down payment. Owner financing is becoming very popular. Banks are getting more and more conservative in what they'll lend. Owners are still wanting to sell for a premium. And if the book is growing and it's got good retention and good bundling, low loss ratios, so it's bonus eligible. Y'all, they can still get a lot, right? People say, you know, my book value's been cut. Not if you're growing. Yes, if with comp changes over the past several years, you sat on your hands, you didn't invest, you didn't grow. Yeah, your renewals are down, your book values have decreased. Um, but good agencies that are growing, they still go for a premium. Guess what? A bank will not lend all that amount. So owner financing, seller financing. I did a note with my uh seller. That is very common. Um, unless you want to put a lot down, or if you're getting a steal, you know, you can do a fixer up or you know, flip this agency, right? You could do that. You could go and buy a struggling book that hasn't been doing well for years and turn it around and get it for a lot lower. For me, though, I want quality, right? I wanted to focus on a quality book, but yeah, you got to have capital or at least access to it. And I tell people, you know, to be careful about going into debt. But there is such a good thing as good debt if you know what you're doing, right? And leveraging debt. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:30

Let's talk about something really important right now to you and your office. Right now, expectations are all-time high, bonuses are harder to hit, commissions are getting cut, your team is underperforming. Sure, maybe they've been trained in the past, you might be even invested in training right now, but they're not doing it. Not only is that costing you money in the future, that's costing you money right now. But not only money, stress, anxiety, panic, all the things that do more damage to you than need to be done. And it can be fixed. That's the best thing. You don't have a process or framework right now. That's what we do at Weaver Sales Academy. We've worked with over 17,000 insurance professionals just like you across the country. It is our eighth birthday. We have a summer sizzle cell that I'm excited to share with you. Instead of $4,200, it's only $29.97. That is over a $1,200 savings. The average agency that works with us sees a 40% lift by day 90 of working with us and auto fire and life insurance. Not only that, if you're hiring and we're able to get brand new hires up and selling in less than five days for you, make sure you click the link below, book a call with my team, and let's make sure that you crush not only your summer goals, but also Q3 and Q4 so that you don't have to worry about panicking during the holiday season, working more hours. I want you to be able to spend time with your family and friends, and most importantly, I want you to make sure that you're making the money that you deserve to make. Click the link below. Other than that, let's get back to the show.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

So I want to get into when you're going into this book of business. So you you acquire this book of business, it's a $14 million book. What's your plan to go okay? Because we've talked a lot about acquisition, but there's a whole group of people that are listening to this podcast right now that that's not even an option. So let's talk about organic growth. What's your plan when you go into that? Say, okay, I'm gonna grow six million. What are we investing in?

SPEAKER_01 17:18

So the easiest money you're ever gonna make, I don't know who I'm stealing this from, but the easiest money you're ever gonna make is money you're already making. Going deep and wide into the existing book. If you're buying, now if you're starting scratch, then it's friends, family, personal network, connections, getting out, shaking hands, kissing babies, you know, going back to lead cost, it's just crazy right now. Um, how how expensive leads are and the quality being down. Y'all, we do have to get back to the basics. We can no longer just swipe our credit card, buy five thousand dollars of internet leads, and write a hundred items off of that. Those days are gone. Those days are gone, right? I'm spending about $300 an item that we write on marketing. So if my agency writes uh now that's on paid leads, so my agency writes around $400 to $500 items a month. It's like $500 to $600,000 in premium a month because I'm in Texas's larger state. I have a goal of hitting a million in premium at some point in the next 12 months. So within the first two years, I want to be doing about a million dollars a month as we continue to scale. But I'm spending around $300 per item that we write on paid leads. Thankfully, we do about 40% of our business from referrals, from customers, from requotes. Requotes are amazing. Old leads are gold leads. So if you're buying an agency or if you have one now and you can do some data mining, compliantly working those leads, right? You can't call somebody if they're not if they're on the do not call list unless you have express permission. Be careful with texting, especially if you're at all state. Like they do not mess around if you if you break texting TCPA stuff. But requotes, Winbacks. I love Wim Backs. They're our favorite type of lead because Wimbacks trusted us enough in the past to do business with us. Why did they leave? Price. Guess what every carrier's doing? Raising rates, tightening guidelines, increasing deductibles, non-renewing customers because, like, oh God, we got to get less exposure in this state or this area. So the grass ain't always greener on the other side for long. So I love Wim Backs, requotes, cross-sells, customer referrals, and just personal networking. All of that organic cost nothing. Zero dollars. But it's gonna be really hard to grow millions of dollars in premium doing all that organic stuff. So that's why I open up my checkbook. Um, I'm getting so many miles and so much cash back. It's amazing. We took a trip, yeah. We went to New York City, all of us, my family from Alabama, I got three kids and a beautiful wife or high school sweethearts. This is our 20th year of marriage, but we started dating 26 years ago. I used my Amex points and stuff for that whole trip to be free. Like, so yeah, man, I'm spending money, but we do have to get back to more organic. So, how did I do that? In December, I looked at my credit card statements thinking, uh oh, all right, I'm gonna get a free trip to New York City in in February, but I can't continue to invest this much each month as I'm growing, right? I need to really be careful with that. I changed my staff's comp plan in December. My staff were making a certain percentage on new business based on tiers. It's the tier system. And y'all, if you want my comp plan, send me an email and I'll just send it to you, or I can put in a link or something that you guys can share. But I had a simple comp plan. If you do this amount of items, you make this amount percent on all of this premium. Boom. There's now two tiers. Certain amount of total items from all sources, you get two percent less. So I basically cut the commission rate by two percent. If it's a paid lead, why you gotta help me pay for the leads. If it's a free lead, yeah, yep. Free leads like requotes, win backs, cross sales, and by the way, a paid lead once it becomes 45 days old, I now count that as free. I want people hungry and digging through stuff that are six weeks old, six months old, a year old, right? Whatever their commission scale was, I added three percent. So it's a five percent spread. So if you want to do nothing but answer $200 live transfers, $300 direct mail calls, get fed $80 data leads. Yes, I am buying those. I only buy high uh cost, high intense search data leads. You want to work that? Cool. This is what you'll make. But if you'll help me, if you'll generate some cross sales, referrals, win backs, requiles, I'll pay you 5% more on that business. And it's helped tremendously.

SPEAKER_02 21:49

I like that, I like that a lot. And it's the thing I like about it is then the producer gets they they choose the path and they though they have clarity in okay, sure, I'm I don't really want to prosper. I just want to be a closer. I just want to be somebody that answers the phone. Great. So at least I know the rules to play by, which I r I love that approach. And you're making them basically take like a vested interest in it. Like, hey, like, if I'm buying this for you, you're just going to take a little bit of a hit, so it helps. Um that's good. Do you have anything to say before I dig in? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

I love that because I talk about this a lot from a creative side of having constraints. Like more happens when you put a constraint on something, whether it's time or resource or something. So what you just did is you said, okay, my constraint is it has to be organic. I'm going to put that little parameter around it, just like I'm getting a parameter from my carrier of like, I'm going to pay you this and this. And that incentivizes somebody to start looking in a different direction. Like you're passing down your cost through them to where then they're like, oh, I understand that this costs more. So if I want to kind of like scoop up these other things and make more on my side, then I'm going to go for it. But I'm I'm my question here is is this across the board? How is your team, like your service team and your sales team, are they all incentivized to go for this? Or is this just specifically your sales team? Are you saying service team, um, I'm going having you go for the cross sales, the pivots, the referrals, all of that? What does that look like? What's your team dynamic there?

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Yes. Um, I'm not a huge fan of people that are really better at service selling. I'm just not a huge fan of CSRs or service team members, or sometimes agencies now call them inside sales team members, and that's fine. I want service team members who are patient, who will be on that 35-minute phone call with Mrs. Jones, who's upset about her $9 rate increase. Now it's not that low now, but you know what I'm talking about. That level of patience, that level of wanting to solve problems and nurture customers. Y'all, closer's like, damn, can I get off the phone? I'm ready to go sell something, right? So I want nurturers, patient, really knowledgeable, we'll dig deep. But guess what? They have sales goals too. However, my service people don't quote and write anything that's new business. Now, will they do like spending off a kid on their own policy or if someone's move into our state? That's like a glorified endorsement to me. It's not new business. But my service team knows that they have a goal, a minimum of 10 items a month. If they're not generating at least 10 cross-sold items a month, that they're not even having a quota right. I just want them to introduce their awesome partner, Joanna. Oh, Joanna, she's the best at homes now. I'm gonna get Joanna, hold on a second, let me get Joanna ready. She's gonna take a look at your home insurance. Boom, pass it. Right? Pass it to Joanna or Brad or Alec or Casey or Mike or whatever. I just want them to sell the opportunity, right? And then let a closer who will be way better at overcoming objections, have way more time for follow-up if they don't close it in one call. About 60% of our deals close in one call. The other 40% close on average within about 14 days, some two days later, some six months later, right? But I track all of that. I track all of our time to close. So my service people, I pay them a scale. I pay them a bonus based on the item type. So I pay a certain amount for cars, a little bit more for homes, and then a little less for other things like motorcycles or umbrellas or whatever. And it's a scale. And again, I can send that to uh the more they generate, the more they make. And my CSRs like Susan, she'll generate 30 to 40 items a month. And then I've got my office manager, slash service manager, he'll do 20, 25 a month. And then I have another that does right at 10 every month, right? So I only have three CSRs right now, but they're doing like 60, 60-ish items a month, and I'm paying them on average around $50 an item, like once it's all averaged out. I'd rather pay them now. Man, I hope they didn't just hear that I pay about $300 an item to a paid lead vendor. I'd rather pay them $50, $60 per unit per item, not per policy, but per car per each individual key on that key ring. I'd rather pay them $50 or 60 bucks and a lead vendor $300. And they love that they don't have to sell. No, no, no. They are serving our customers. This is a line, I'm sure I stole it from somebody. Service is sales, sales is service, right? And in fact, if you Google that, there's like a corny commercial vijelery store like saying it's service is sales, sales is service. But I asked my team, what is your job? Right? How would you define your role in the lives of your customers? And typical CSRs or customer service representatives or inside sales, they'll say, I like to educate my customers. I like to help our customers. I tell them they can call me or text me anytime. I'm always here for them. Okay, I'm like, oh, that's awesome, right? But we can't just educate our customers on what they have. We have to devise them on what they need. And you love claims, right? I hate claims, but like you love claims, you love helping people navigate that through those challenges. You love rolling up your sleeves and getting to work, finding ways that we can save our customers money on policy reviews and stuff like that. All that's awesome. But our job is not just to give service with a smile. AI is gonna soon replace well over half of service work, like very soon. Very soon. Like a customer will just be able to call us and say, hey, I'm in the line at the DMV and I need my ID card. And then the AI will be like, oh yeah, absolutely. We can we can do that, and then they'll just do it. Y'all, that is coming. If if if our service team are just really great payment processors and really good order takers, um, AI is gonna soon replace that. And guys, that means our comp's gonna change too. Why do you think the carriers are starting to cut comp and commissions because they're trying to get more efficient because there's a price battle right now, there's a race to the top. I mean, dude, progressive just passed state farm, right? State farm on auto, they'll never pass them property. Come on now. State farm will have property forever, but progressive is now just slightly above uh state farm. So, what are what are carriers doing? They're changing the way agents get you know commissions on renewals and stuff like that, right? So, to me, it's all just about putting all these pieces of the puzzle together and saying, all right, company, you're telling me, you're telling me that there's less value in this work, that there's way more value in this work over here. Guess what, puckett agency team? Same. Your job is not just to give service with a smile or to educate your customers. Our job, if I were to put it in one sentence, is to put ourselves in position to help our customers when they need us. Absolutely to be there for them when they call, to help them when they when they need us, we gotta sell them first. So everybody in my agency knows that they're in a sales role, but my CSRs don't quote and sell. They just pass the opportunity to a closer and I pay them for those closed items.

SPEAKER_02 29:12

I love it, man. I love it. And I would and I love the old school approach you're taking there because you do need nurturers on the phone, but they have to have the skill sets to actually drum up business, give to those individuals that actually like to have those conversations. So I love that. I want to dive back into some of the marketing dollars though, just real fast for those that are like, holy sh, Joseph, like dang, dude. Like you went from 14 million, you just said you're gonna finish uh your one your total 12 month at like roughly a growth of over a 4 million, a little bit more, which means you wrote more than that, means you probably wrote around 6 million based off of the numbers you gave me. So and you're spending, I and I just did the quick math on this. So you were spending $100,000 to $150,000 a month in marketing. I don't know if you did that every single month or not. So somewhere between a million and 1.8 million in lead spend to grow those numbers. I'd be curious, um, out of the percentage of growth that you've had of the 4 million growth, 6 million plus written, what percentage is coming from that lead spend and what percentage is coming from organic? Do you know that off the top of your head?

SPEAKER_01 30:15

Oh, yeah. Yeah, about 40% of our business is from free sources, through recoils, winbacks, cross-sales, about 60, some months 65% is more of the paid leads. I've averaged right at 100, right at 100 a month. Last October, I did 120 and we had our best month yet. We exceeded 500 something items for the first time, like 650,000 a premium or something for the first time. That was the worst PL month I had. But with my carrier, I know how to play the game, right? I'm gonna get auto renewals in six months, and because I'm an elite agency, I'll get enhanced commission on those autos. But even if I wasn't an elite agency, and who knows, they're probably gonna cut that next year. Please don't, if you're watching this corporate, but anyways, there's still six-month auto renewals from my state. Some of y'all might be in states where you're write annual policies, but getting paid again on those cars in six months, then again on those cars and all the other annual policies by month 12. I'm breaking even slash slightly profitable, not including bonus at Allstate, everything. Bonus is everything. So I get 4%. Like I'm I can tell y'all right now, within 20 grand, what my direct deposit is gonna be in my checking account on February 17th, 2027. I can tell you that right now. I can write it on a napkin or a sticky note and say it, and then you can bail, hey JP, what was your direct deposit on February 17th? It would be within a couple percent. I know exactly what I'm gonna get back. So for me, it's not a risk. For me, it's not a gamble because I know I'm gonna get paid back. Yeah, but but it's because I have good people, I have amazing processes, I have a very strong sales process, just as y'all do, right? As you coach and train um agencies on your sales process. I have really good lead vendors that I ride. If I have two or three bad days with a vendor, they're hearing from me. Now, I'm not in a mean way, I'm not mean, y'all, um, but they ain't gonna give me crap. It's like when you go to a house party and they give you the good wine. You know what I'm talking about? The good wine. Then like an hour later, it's like Walmart boxed wine. You know what I'm talking about? Crappy but free, baby.

SPEAKER_02 32:18

Crappy but free.

SPEAKER_01 32:20

Yep. Lead vendors will start giving you junk. I don't let them. I don't let them. There's a lot of power in the purse. So when I send a lead vendor an email saying, hey guys, here's our quote data, I track everything. Every single prospect that we do, I know their insurance score, how many accidents they have, how long they've been with their current carrier, what their current limits are. We have a quote log and we track everything. It takes about four minutes for a team member to fill out every prospect. And if a team member won't give me four minutes for me to pay $300 an item that they write from a paid source, they just won't get leads. Right? So I track everything. When we're doing well, hey lead vendor, we're doing well. Here's where we're winning. Give me more of these. Or if we're not doing well, I send them my entire quote log minus customer names, um, you know, to PII. I say, hey, these are the zip codes, these are the types of leads, etc. And I say, we need to figure this out, or I can't afford your leads. Watch all of a sudden the quality go up. Right. So I manage my lead vendors almost every week, right? Just like we're managing our staff's expectations, right? We can't just keep swapping our credit card and hope and pray that we hit our goals, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 33:29

Oh, yeah. I love I love this, man. So um, this has all been great information. I want to just I want to go into one other thing because I'm just really curious. So I love big, audacious goals. I love people that are trying to take things to the next level. I love people that are trying to literally break barriers and go through ceilings and create new floors. Um, there's only a few agency owners I'm aware of in the in the entire captive space that have books of businesses of 100 million plus. And so I would be really curious, number one, why is that your why is that your 10-year goal? And you don't have to go into every detail around it, but just high level, how are you gonna do it?

SPEAKER_01 34:08

So 20%, that's a number that I constantly have in my head. If I can grow 20% a year, y'all compound interest is a beautiful thing. And I will say this, don't put well, you can do whatever you want. I would not recommend an agent put all of their eggs in a basket, because man, that basket can change. A carrier can say, you know what, we're done with homes in this state for a while and non-renew them. Ask Florida agents how that felt, right? A carrier can get hit by some hurricanes or tornadoes, and they can do what they did to us in 2011, 12, and 13 when it was like next to impossible to write business in Alabama, which is where I live. My agency's in Texas. I'm fortunate that I'm able to do that. I've got a whole remote team in eight different states, but it was tough. They said squeaky clean in five years, zero instance, not even a glass claim. Our close rate plummeted. So for a couple years, it was very hard to write business. All right. So I'm all in right now because I know what I'm doing, and I know within 12 months I'm making money and I'm building my renewal. So years two, three, four, five, I'm making a lot of money building the book to maximize bonus, right? But 20%. If I can grow 20% right now, I'm at 18 million. I'll be I'll be right. I wish the report would have come out. I should be right at 18 million. 18 is 1.2. So next year will be year two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. If I just grow 20% a year, dude, I'm at 92 million. I can grow 2% a month.

SPEAKER_02 35:44

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

I've just focused on that. Can I grow 2% a month? So I think 100 is too small. I think I'll be at 100 quicker if I'm able to make acquisitions. If they won't let me, because man, that can change. That sometimes they don't like existing agents buying books, but then they realize wait, we had all these inexperienced people buying and they didn't know what they were doing, and then they sold two years later. They then say, Hey, how about we let an agent that's freaking crushing it buy it? So it goes up and down. It goes up and down, dude. I can grow up to 100 just by growing 2% a month over the next nine years.

SPEAKER_02 36:19

That's a good breakdown, man.

SPEAKER_01 36:20

That's a really, really great breakdown.

SPEAKER_00 36:22

I like the 2% month over month, too.

SPEAKER_01 36:24

And dude, rate increases. I love rate increases. Bring on those rate increases, right?

SPEAKER_02 36:31

Let's go. Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

Compound interest, right? So just like we should invest in the stock market. Well, I'm not giving you all financial advice, just like we should invest outside of the agency, right? Because that rug can get pulled at any time. I see investing in the agency as a really great return. I'm growing. There's a thing called termination payment. If anybody out there is ever interested in buying an all-state agency, it's called TPP, termination payment provision. I'm cool sharing all these numbers. I do. I share all these numbers with lots of people all the time. I'm investing about 50 grand a month right now. Investing. All right. I'm getting all of that back almost with a six-month auto renewals. And then by 12th month, I'm more than good. Then a 4% bonus on the whole book. Do that math. But if something ever didn't work out and I was like, you know what? I'm done. And I couldn't find a buyer, the carrier buys me out at a termination payment. They pay it out over two years, and it's $10.99, so it's not ideal for taxes, but it works. My TPP is going up $120,000 a month. So I'm basically investing $50, growing $120. Now, but could they change that? There's people watching the saying, JP, they could change that. Not likely. Not likely the percentage that they pay. What it is, is the more new business you write, the more renewals you have, it's basically looking at your last year's earnings times one and a half. What was your last year's revenue times one and a half? And it just it's just snowballing like crazy. So that's how I'm comfortable investing that kind of money because I'm getting it back in value. Garrett, that's a guaranteed resale value to all state. If I ever want it out, I could say, hey, I'm out, and they got they gotta pay me that check.

SPEAKER_02 38:24

I love that, man. Yeah, this is been this has been great. This has been great. Um just this whole process of walking us through this, your transparency, this has been really refreshing, man. So um if somebody wanted to watch you on your jour journey, if they wanted to connect with you maybe on social media, maybe they wanted to, maybe they they need some help from a one-on-one consulting standpoint, because I know you do a lot of that with agency owners. What's the best way for them to get a hold of you, Joseph?

SPEAKER_01 38:50

Yeah, so I love to connect on Facebook and uh Instagram, LinkedIn, I don't really hang out on, but my handle is Joseph DPucket everywhere. So Facebook.com, Joseph D. Puckett, and same for Insta. Uh my website, josephdpuckett.com, my email, simply email at josephdpuckett.com. So y'all can reach out to me. Yeah, I'd be happy to help any agency that wants to grow, whether that's growing their existing agency, thinking, you know what, when he talked about those graphs of premium written and growth and commissions being flat to slightly down, I'm tired of that. I'm tired of not growing, right? I can help, or if you're looking at buying an agency, I can help. I do um group training and I do individual consulting, and that's where I get the most value, um, or not value, when I get the most like personal reward. When I help an agent, like there's an agent in um Ohio, he might end up watching this, no names. Seven or eight years ago, he was at three million. He was about to give up. He was about to say, you know what, I'm done. And I said, no, let's figure this out, right? So we turn turned that three million dollar book into about five over the next two years. He got approved to buy an agency because he he was mad that they wouldn't let him buy. I'm like, dude, you ain't growing. Like, why are you mad? Like, would you hire somebody who couldn't grow, right? Who couldn't write more than than what you would need to grow? So he he bought a book. He's gonna pass over 20 25 million this year in premium. And six or seven years ago, it was around 2020, it was around pandemic time, he was wanting to just get out, and now he's going from 3 million to 25 million and making insane money because he's done it the right way with good people, good processes, and all that kind of stuff. That is what I love. But I'll also say this there's sometimes I coach somebody and I know that they can't make it, and we'll have that serious conversation. I'd rather have that serious conversation with them and say, hey, listen, let's talk about an exit. Let's try to figure out how to position you to where you can um exit gracefully. But man, sometimes people just aren't in it, they're done, they're their heads out of the game, and they won't invest and grow. I can also help agents through that process to, you know, I just want to do what's best for people and help people. And I'm honest, I do not pull punches. I will look at a book. The other day I did an eight-hour consult with an agent. Um, she's up in Maryland, and just bought her book a year ago, has no clue what she's doing. And I thank God that she reached out to me. She's doing okay, but her book is losing premium, not tremendously. Her retention's sinking, she's not right in business, she's only hit her variable comp bonus one time out of the last 10 months or whatever. There was a couple times I had to catch myself like thinking, damn, this is bad. Right? I was like, no, no, no, no. It's not. You know why? Because we're gonna change the next year. Like, she's in it, she's in it. So like I didn't feel like telling her, hey, you you don't need you can't do this. I just wish that I had had the eight hours with her a year ago.

SPEAKER_02 41:58

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 42:00

We just changed the trajectory of her life. But hit me up, Joseph D. Puckett, uh email at Joseph D. Puckett, Facebook, Instagram, whatever, be happy to connect with you and just follow my journey. I post all kinds of stuff to my Facebook, man. Sometimes people be like, why do you share that? Right? I share, I share how much we're right, but also how much it costs, right? Right. I had an owner, he's like, your staff might see that. I was like, they better see it. I want my staff to know how much I'm spending and how much I'm investing in them, right? So I post all kinds of stuff to my Facebook and Instagram, follow me there.

SPEAKER_02 42:33

I love it, man. This has been fantastic. Uh, Joseph, again, thank you for your transparency. Honestly, this has been this is amazing.

SPEAKER_00 42:41

Yeah, I have two pages of notes. This was fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 42:43

For all of those of you who tuned in today, I I can guarantee your pens were smoking because I also have a full paper of notes. So um, if you guys enjoyed today's episode, please let us know whether you take one thing or whether you take multiple things away from this today. Please go out and do something with it because action is your best friend. You just can't keep sitting and doing the same thing and expecting different results, man. So um, as always, time and attention are by far your most important assets. We appreciate you spending time with us today on the buzz. Go out, make it great. Joseph, thank you again, my man.