Hey now, it's time for another edition of the Inside BS Show. My name is Dave Lorenzo, and today we're going to talk about how you can be different in an industry where everybody is chasing the same clients. I have with me today Jonathan Mayotte, and he's a commercial insurance specialist at Thornton Powell.

He's going to help us with how he gets out there and grows his book of business in the hyper-competitive world of insurance, particularly commercial insurance. So if you want to learn how you can grow your business, which is easier than growing a book of business in insurance, you need to stick with us for this episode of the Inside BS Show. Jonathan, thanks for joining us today.

I really appreciate you being here. Thank you for having me. All right, so let's talk a little bit about you and how you got involved in commercial insurance in the first place.

When you were a little kid, were you in the living room playing on the floor with different types of policies and trying to decide which was going to be a good fit for which friend? How did you decide to get into commercial insurance? I'm trying to imagine that in my head right now. It's kind of amusing. No, that was not at all how that happened.

This is my second career. My first career was in the radio business. It's kind of nice to be interviewed for once versus being the one interviewing somebody else.

I feel like I'm kind of reversing roles here. So that's kind of fun. But I started out in radio when I was in high school.

I had job shadowed and then interned at a radio station, worked my way up to being a disc jockey and program director, did pretty much everything except actually sell something. And I reached a point where I just, I didn't want to do it anymore for a number of reasons and I needed, I wanted to do something else and I figured that I'd probably end up doing something sales related. I just didn't know exactly what.

So I was living in Champaign, Illinois at the time and I just picked up and moved to West Palm Beach, Florida because that's where my mom happened to be living at the time. And I was, I went down there without a job, without anything. Just blindly went down there and ended up with an opportunity to work in a car dealership in their internet department, gain a little sales experience, and then also get my insurance license.

Somebody had actually, it was a family friend, came by the house and said, Hey, I'm setting up an Allstate agency in a car dealership. And that was what led to the sales job at the car dealership. He said, go get your insurance license.

I think you'd rather, that'll be a better career for you longterm. And he ended up being right. And then I also had the opportunity to come back to Chicago and I was, I left Florida, I think it was April of 2013.

I started my job with Thornton Powell, which is where I'm at right now. And as they say, the rest is history. Okay.

So what is it that you, what do you, what do you enjoy the most about what you do and what's the most challenging part about what you do? I would say the part that I enjoy the most is being able to help people. This is really, I didn't realize it until I got into the business and experienced some things myself, but this is really a job that require a career that requires problem solving. My job is to solve people's problems, whether it's that they, maybe they're paying too much for their insurance.

That's the obvious one. Or perhaps they had an issue with their current agent and they need somebody who can just sit down and explain things to them or help them through some things, guide them. The other instance, which, you know, it's not the fun part of the job, but it's the important part of the job is when somebody has a claim and being able to help them through that process.

That's when they're, they are at their most vulnerable and they are having their biggest problem possibly is say their building blew or burned down or was blown over in a tornado or something catastrophic happened. That's when they really need you. And that's, that I would say would be the why of why I do it, especially on my client side.

And I totally forgot the second part of the question. The second part is what's the most challenging? What is the, what is the biggest challenge that you face? I think the biggest challenge is that, and you probably find this in a lot of industries, but especially insurance because insurance agencies and producers are a dime a dozen, is just trying to set yourself apart and trying to make yourself stand out a little bit more than maybe the other person. And I think the easiest way to do that personally is just be yourself.

What I learned, what I've learned to this point, and I wish I would have known this when I started was you are not going to be the insurance agent for everybody. You are not going to be a good fit for everybody. Not everybody is going to be a good fit for you.

So figure out who's going to be a good fit for you. Figure out who you are going to be a good fit for and then try to work with those people and it makes life so much easier. Yeah.

So talk, oops. Talk a little bit about what you do when you find yourself in, you're in an environment where everybody's already got insurance, let's say, and you want to win over an account from somebody else. Let's set aside price.

Let's just say that everything's equal from a price standpoint. What's your process to go in and really be different from the other person or the other company, the other insurance provider? How do you go into a business owner or a CFO and say, listen, I know you're going to be looking at price. We're going to be as competitive as the next people, but here's what makes us different.

What do you do that convinces them that they should go with you versus the other provider? I think the key is to ask the right questions and uncover problems that they may not even know that they have. That's usually the best start. Try to find out as many facts about the business as possible.

You could end up having a conversation with somebody and realizing that there really are no problems. There's nothing else. Sometimes there are times where I could sit down with somebody and say, you know what, I'm not going to bring anything additional to the table right now, but there are a lot of times where you could sit there and bring something up and they'll sit there and think.

They'll just come to the conclusion on their own and kind of realize, well, how come my current agent never brought this up or how come no other agent that I've spoken to has mentioned this particular gap in coverage or this particular exposure that I may have that I didn't even realize I had. I think that just trying to ask those right questions and letting people come to the conclusion on their own that I'm the person that they need to be working with is kind of the way that I try to approach it. Let's talk about your process.

You're going to go to work tomorrow and how do you set yourself up for success? Because there are a lot of people out there who may be starting from square one, right? Actually, this is a better way to ask this. So Jonathan, you've got a network already. You've got a bunch of people who know you.

You're out there. You're active in the community. What did you do when you didn't have that? So let's go back to when you moved from Palm Beach back to Chicago.

Sure you still had people who knew you there because you were there before, but what did you do when you had to start from the beginning? Because there's somebody out there right now that's going to be listening to this or that's going to be watching this and they really need some good advice because they got a phone and they're looking at it and it ain't ringing. So what do they do, Jonathan? What's the best advice you can give them? I would say, first of all, it's overwhelming right in the beginning because you're sitting there and you have nothing and you're trying to get something and you're like, where do I start? At least that was my mindset. I had all these different tools at my disposal.

I had my own contacts. I had contacts that had been provided through the agency and you just sit there and you look at all these names and numbers and think, who do I start with? The key is just start, I think. Just start wherever you're comfortable, whether it's the people that you know, whether it's just try to build up relationships and build up that network.

It's taken a long time for me to build up the network that I have. That was not an overnight thing. I wish it would have been overnight, but I would say over the last couple of years is when I've really started to see the fruits of the labor pay off.

It's interesting that everything started to come to fruition right about the time that the world kind of got flipped upside down, but at least I can look back on it and say that while everything else was falling apart in the world, that was going very well. I would say just really the key thing is to just get started. Try to connect with as many people as you can.

Don't be afraid to make mistakes. It's trial and error. I still don't have it figured out, and I never will have it all figured out.

There's no way, but just don't be afraid to take some risks. Try to meet as many people as you can. Try to figure out who's going to be valuable to you, who's going to be a valuable connection.

Once you figure out who those valuable connections are and those networking groups or whatever your recipe is for success, because it's different for everybody. There's no right answer to it. Once you kind of hit your stride, keep going at it.

Just ride that. There's no need to sit there and try to reinvent the wheel. Once you find your recipe for success, just keep following it over and over again.

All right. Talk to me about how you've leveraged your membership in, let's say, the chamber to close more deals, to get more business. You didn't walk into the chamber and they made you chairman overnight, right? You've probably been a member for a long time.

Help the person who's saying to themself, okay, so Jonathan says I just got to start, so here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to connect with the people I know. I'm going to tell them about the value I provide, and I'm going to ask them to connect me to people who need commercial insurance.

I also want to be part of a local group, so Jonathan's a member of the chamber. What did you do to maximize the value of not only the money you invest in a chamber membership, but the volunteer time that you're putting in, right? Because you don't get to be chairman of the chamber without putting in a lot of time volunteering to do all kinds of jobs, some of them pretty crappy. Talk about that process.

How did you maximize your involvement in the chamber, and what's been the result for you? What I did was, the way that chambers of commerce work in Chicago, because this was kind of new to me when I moved to the city, is each neighborhood has its own chamber of commerce versus I feel like once you get outside the city, it would be each town or each village has their own chamber of commerce. Maybe the county has a chamber of commerce. That was kind of interesting in and of itself.

I happen to live in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, so that to me was kind of the natural fit. I just kind of blindly showed up to an event and figured, well, this seems great, didn't do any other ... I would advise doing some homework and research before doing this. I kind of did it a little bit backwards, but I stumbled into what ended up being probably ... We're probably one of the best chambers in the city, and I don't say that just because I'm a member or the chairman of the board either.

I'm saying that based on the size of our chamber, our activities in the city, and things like that. Once I joined and became a member, what I did was I just started showing up to as many events as I possibly could. Because I was new in the business, hey, the schedule has got to be pretty open for the most part.

It's not like I have a laundry list of clients at that point that I need to go see. I should be going out and seeing as many people as possible. That kind of opened up the door to be able to attend as many events and try to have valuable conversations with people who were longtime chamber members, and kind of ingrain myself a little bit more in that community.

I would say that was kind of the starting point for me in growing my network to where it is now. Because through the chamber, I remember meeting somebody who got me involved in BNI, and that led to meeting some other people who got me involved in provisors and some various other groups. Along with that, of course, has come business.

I would say that it makes it fairly easy for me to be able to call upon just a chamber member that I might not know and say, hey, I'm the chairman of the board for the Chamber of Commerce. I just wanted to reach out and say, hi, how are you doing? Thank you for your membership. Is there anything regarding the chamber that I might be able to discuss with you, maybe help you get more out of your membership, things like that? Oh, by the way, I happen to be an insurance advisor, and I work with businesses on their insurance.

Would you be willing to sit down and have a conversation? That's opened up a lot of doors right there, because they know I'm not coming in to ... I'm not somebody who's knocking on the door trying to sell insurance to them. I'm trying to help them out. We also have a common thread that we're both members of the chamber, and I happen to be in a position where I can help them potentially get more clients through the chamber.

That's been a really, I would say, a really big ... I would say, if I were to build out a tree, I always say that if there was a way that I could build a networking tree, sort of like you would a family tree, that would be the roots. There would be the Lincoln Park Chamber of Commerce. That's where it all started.

Whether it's the Chamber of Commerce, or maybe a Rotary Club, or something like that, there are so many different organizations that you can get involved in, and kind of have the same effect. I love what you just said, and I love the way you're using your membership and your ambassadorship, if you will, in the chamber to open doors for you. Hey, listen, you don't have to be the chairman in order to do this.

You just got to be a member. Everybody gets the list of new people, and the list of new people comes out. How many of the members do you think are calling somebody and going, hey, my name is Dave Lorenzo, and I want to welcome you to the Lincoln Park Chamber of Commerce? They're going to go, jeez, thank you so much.

Dave, who are you, and what do you do? Well, I've been a member of the chamber for, oh, about 20 minutes, but I can already see the value, and I'm really glad that I joined. I can introduce you to my friend, Jonathan Mayotte. He's a great guy.

He's the chairman of the board of the chamber, and between him and I, we can figure out who you need to meet and connect you with those people. What would you think of that? Oh, Dave, I would love it. Tell me, what do you do? Oh, you know, I happen to do, boom, all of a sudden you're off to the races.

So often, professionals think that a sales call is, hi, I'm a lawyer. You got anybody we can sue today? And that's not what it's all about, right? You call and you offer help, and the chamber is a great way to do it. A charitable organization is a great way to do it.

Any community association is a great way to do it. And if nobody asks what you do for a living, you may never get the opportunity to tell them, at least on that call. But when you sit down with them for coffee, you can be damn sure it's going to come up, especially if you show up and you're wearing business attire, right? They're going to be like, what do you do for work? I mean, that is, I think that is probably the best advice you could give somebody who's new.

Join an organization, any organization, and as new people come in, leverage the new people coming in, introduce yourself, and welcome them aboard. I think that's terrific. All right, Jonathan, I want to ask you a question.

I want you to take a minute and think about it. And that question is, if you had to do it over, what are the one or two things you wouldn't do? What are the things that you did where you were like, eh, it didn't go so well? And what are the things you wouldn't advise somebody who's brand new to do? I'm going to have you answer that question in just one sec. I need to remind folks that are listening, folks that are watching, that we're brought to you by Sandrowski Corporate Advisors.

You see, for over 35 years, Sandrowski has provided outstanding accounting services to people all over the United States. Now, their focus is on tax planning, consulting, family office advisory, business valuation, litigation support, forensic accounting. They work with privately held companies and families of wealth, and they help them keep more of what they make.

One of the things I love to talk about with Sandrowski is the qualified small business stock exemption. This means that if you have your business structured in a certain way and your business does less than $50 million in annual revenue, when you go to sell that business, you can shelter some of the capital gains tax. You can avoid some of the capital gains tax.

And Harry Sandrowski himself was telling me that he was able to save somebody over $10 million in taxes, $10 million in taxes on the sale of a business that was just under 50 million in annual revenue. So if you have a business and you do less than $50 million in annual revenue and you're going to sell that business at some point, you got to give Sandrowski a call. Here's the number, 866-717-1607, 866-717-1607.

Sandrowski Corporate Advisors, they're a CPA firm with a different perspective. We're also brought to you by my Revenue Roadmap Guide. So I've created a guide for professionals to use for business development purposes.

It's called the Revenue Roadmap. You can get a copy of it for free, and here's how you do that. Go to revenueroadmapguide.com. That's a website, revenueroadmapguide.com. Enter your contact info.

You can download it for free and you can customize it for your professional service practice. Now it's the same guide I use with my clients. I customize it for them.

I'm giving it to you for free because I want to thank you for listening and thank you for watching the show. Go to revenueroadmapguide.com, enter your contact info, download your free business development plan today. We're speaking with Jonathan Mayop.

He is a commercial insurance specialist at the firm of Thornton Powell. You can reach him at 217-649-4714, 217-649-4714. All right, Jonathan.

So when you're a little baby insurance agent and you were starting out, what were some of the mistakes you made that you were like, I would not do that over? If I had to do it over, that's not what I would do. And there's a guy out there or a gal out there right now, they're going to make that mistake, so I want you to stop them from doing it. What should they stop? I think the big thing, and I wish I knew the answer to avoiding this, is reeking of desperation.

I feel like whenever anybody starts in the business, I remember that was one of the first things that I was told. Don't sound desperate, okay? But the problem is, is that you kind of are desperate. Exactly, exactly.

So the trick is, how do you mask that? And the only way you can mask that is to ultimately start to get some clients and get some money coming in. So I guess the answer to that is have a rich uncle somewhere, I guess, and have that trust fund set up. Well, you know, you celebrate the little wins.

So like for me, you make 30 phone calls and you get three people on the phone. All right. What went right? I got three people on the phone, right? And then you make 15 more phone calls and you actually have a really good productive conversation.

So you celebrate the productive conversation. Then you know what? By the end of the week, you close one deal, that's going to get you through the weekend, right? That'll keep you off the roof over the weekend, and then you go back in the office on Monday and you do it all over again. You just got to celebrate the little deals.

That's the real thing to not sounding desperate. The other thing that I always love to do, and you know, when I was, so I started my business after a career in the corporate world and the same year, and it was 2008 when I started this business, I started my business. My wife and I had a baby and it was the great recession.

So when I felt miserable about work, I would just go spend time with the baby and I felt better about being a dad, right? When the baby was crying at four o'clock in the morning, I would go down to my office because my office was in my house and look at my lists of people to call and prioritize my calls for the next day because the baby was crying at four o'clock in the morning. So you know, you, you're a holistic person, so you got to celebrate success in whatever aspect of life where you're having it at the moment. There are going to be weeks when you just freaking crush it and your business is doing great.

And that's the week where, you know, your kid is going to have a sword fight with a two by four with a neighbor in the backyard and knock three of his teeth out, right? Then there are going to be other weeks where your kid gets, you know, he makes the honor roll or he hits a home run in baseball and you're going to take everybody out for ice cream and you're not going to sell a lick that week, but you're going to feel good anyway. You just got to celebrate the wins wherever they are. And that's how the desperation, you know, it just, it'll, it just brushes right away because if I leave the office and I don't close a deal, I'm a good dad, right? Or if I make a mistake with my kid, but I closed three deals, well, at least I'm good at this.

And then some days everything's going to work and those are the days that you're really, you're really happy about, but you're a hundred percent right, man. That stink of desperation. So I told the story in the last book I wrote about going to a 2009, going to a chamber event and a guy came running up to me, like I'm not even joking, running up to me.

And he's like, I can give you three ways to open up a word document without ever clicking on word. Would you like to take a computer training class with me? I had literally just walked into the room and I'm like, hi, I really don't know who you are, but hold that thought while I get a cup of coffee. Like, I didn't want to be like, just get the hell away from me because you're the most desperate person in the room.

And then I heard him as I was walking away, go up to somebody else and say the exact same thing. We've all been to those events where that happens. And yeah, that, I like what you said though, about the just kind of going with it because I mean, and that's, I think the toughest part in the beginning is just trying to celebrate those small wins.

My father-in-law has an expression that I like, he always says, ride the wave. And that's true, whether it's business or life, you're going to have your ups and downs, just ride the wave. Yeah.

So let me ask you, Jonathan, when you're talking to people, do you ever just call them up and go, hey, listen, you know, hey, it's Jonathan Mayotte. I'm with Thornton Powell. And I'm just calling to check when your policy expiration date is.

Like I'm not, you know, I'm not here to sell anything. I just want to know when you're, because I don't want to talk to you today. If your policy doesn't expire until, you know, in December, I'll call you in October.

Does that, does that work or do people? I mean, it's not, you can do it, but I think there's better ways to go about like trying to call somebody and set the appointment. I think the approach, usually if you, there's ways to find expiration dates. So my thought is try to find the expiration date before you call them.

So, you know what the answer is. Right. And you can call them and you can say, hi, I'm Jonathan Mayotte with Thornton Powell.

I've, I'm a commercial insurance specialist. And I noticed that your workers comp policy is coming up for renewal in 90 days or so. I also happen to notice that your mod rate is a little bit higher.

Are you aware of that? If they go, no, I'm not aware of that. Okay, great. Do you realize that that is affecting the cost of your insurance by that mod rate being high? No, I had no idea.

Would it make sense for us to have a conversation and discuss this a little bit further and see if maybe we can save you some money on your workers comp insurance? Yes. Yeah, that's great. And where do you, so that's, that information is available, the policy expiration dates, you can get it.

It's publicly available. They have to register it somewhere. For certain policies, because in most states, workers comp is the law.

There has to be a record of the workers comp policy on file with the state. So you can go through the state website or NCCI happens to be like the, the overall body for workers comp. In most states, you can go through their portal and it'll give you a list of a lot of different expiration dates.

There's various ways you can find out with workers comp, because that is typically if it's somebody's cyber liability policy or something like that, then no, that's probably not going to be accessible. But there are ways where you can find it out. And if you do, if you happen to find the expiration date for one policy, that's enough.

That's all you need. Yeah. That's a reason for calling.

What do you, what do you do, what do you do in these days related to like education? Because, you know, you mentioned cyber and it's constantly changing, right? Because as the, you know, as the lunatics come up with new ways to steal stuff online, you guys have to come up with new types of policies that will ensure people when the, when the latest lunatic thing happens, right? So do you guys do like any educational business development stuff where you'll do seminars for people so that they know what to watch out for? Because when I talk to particularly CFOs in technology driven businesses, that's the one thing that scares the hell out of them is that they're going to have a breach. And, you know, I mean, can you imagine as a, you know, we're all in sales in some way, can you imagine having to call your clients and go, I'm really sorry, but your information was exposed? Like that's the worst possible conversation that you can have. So do you guys educate people on what, you know, what's out there and what that, what type of coverage they need to help them out in case something like this happens? Yeah, that's part of the conversation that we'll have, whether it's with clients or prospects, or really when we get the opportunity to talk with anybody about insurance.

I've done a few presentations for various groups on just insurance topics in general, cyber liability is a huge one. There's obviously other topics that come up too, but cyber liability is a big one. Uh, so trying to keep tabs on what's going on.

And like you said, that's, that's a constantly changing area and it's, we try our best to stay on top of all of the topics and be aware of what's potentially out there that could affect our clients. Our carriers tend to do a really good job of providing information that kind of keeps us up to date so we can pass that along to our clients. There are a lot of actually, there's a lot of good resources that come along with cyber liability policies too, that clients can take advantage of that will kind of help them on the front end, prevent those claims.

So they're not paying more on the back end after they have a massive claim. So that is a big part of it. Just making sure that people are aware of what's out there and letting them kind of come to their own conclusion.

You know what? Yeah, that's kind of scary. I need that. I need that coverage.

So how much of your day is spent talking to current clients and trying to help them with additional needs and how much of your day is spent looking for new clients? I would say probably about half and half. We have a good service team in our office that handles a lot of the service calls. So if somebody needs an auto ID card or something like that, we have somebody that can help with that.

If somebody has a billing question, they need to pay their premium. There's somebody that can handle that for them. Where I'll try to help out or where I usually jump in is if there's something that goes beyond that.

If there's a question about coverage that's maybe a little bit more detailed than what's my building limit or what's my deductible. If it's something beyond that, then that's usually where I'll jump in and have a conversation. If there's a big claim, I will jump in and take care of as much as possible and try to stay in constant contact, kind of act as a liaison where needed with the adjuster and the client.

So that's more of where I come in on the service side of it. And then obviously the rest of the time is just trying to develop new business, whether that's networking or trying to reach out to people and set up appointments. So who's the ideal person for us to introduce you to? So if we're out there and we're in the Chicagoland area and we're talking to people, who's the gold star client, the number one type of client for you? A business owner with a complex business who has property? I mean, who's the best client for you? If you wanted to get really general, that would be perfect.

But if we wanted to kind of narrow it down, I would say there's probably three industries that I've been focusing on more recently. We have a special niche carrier that only works with restaurants, breweries, and bars. So basically anybody who's serving up food or liquor, that's all they'll insure.

So they know that industry very well. They do very well when it comes to coverage and premiums. So I always feel very confident walking and talking to people knowing that we have that at our disposal.

I would say professional services, whether it's attorneys, CPAs, financial advisors. I mean, those are ones where the basic policies pretty much anybody can do. But we have the ability to kind of have those conversations about the cyber liability, the employment practices liability.

How's your malpractice policy set up? Oh, that's great that you're getting it through the association. Do you realize that X, Y, and Z are excluded? And that's why you're getting such a great premium or things like that. And then beyond that, we've always been really good with trade contractors.

I think that's just kind of been our bread and butter as an agency. It'd be the plumbers, the electricians. Our agency is set up in the southwest suburbs of Chicago.

So I think that the blue collar businesses have really, that was kind of the foundation of our agency when it was formed 40 years ago. Okay, great. And who are the toughest folks to write policies for? What industries? I mean, you can do it, but it's a lot harder.

Trucking has always been kind of difficult. I've heard other insurance agents, I agree with this 100%. If you're doing trucking, you're doing trucking and that's your thing.

We have written truckers before, but it seems like we're just, it can be kind of difficult. We tend to do well with, I would say, local trucking or regional trucking. Long haul trucking, it's not that we can't do it, but like you said, that's not really our bread and butter.

It's not where I'm going to sit there and say, hey, I want a list of all these truckers and I'm going to spend the next two weeks calling all of them. That might be a waste of time for them and myself is included. So that's not really one that I try to jump at so much.

Okay. All right, Jonathan, I want you to think of three things that people should take away from our time together. Three things you want them to remember.

I'm going to give you a minute to do that. While you're doing that, I'm going to remind folks that we're brought to you by Sandrowski Corporate Advisors. You heard me talk before about how Sandrowski can help reduce your tax exposure.

I also want to remind you that Sandrowski is great at forensic accounting and they're great at testifying in court. So if there's something that's going on in a business and you may have some sort of an issue in your business, let's just do a buy sell situation. You need to do a business valuation.

You want to make sure that you're paying the right amount for the business that you're buying or you have a dispute. Two partners get into a dispute about the value of a business and that dispute ends up spilling into the court system. Have your lawyer reach out to Sandrowski and here's the reason why.

They're not only great at doing an investigation, digging deep into the business, they're not only great at doing a valuation of the business, but they're also great at explaining what they found in a way that somebody who wasn't an accounting major can understand. So if you have to explain it to an arbitrator, if you have to explain it to the court, let's say you have to explain it to a judge or you got to make a case to a jury or you're on a board of directors and you got to make a case to the rest of the board and you need someone to break down the financials in a way that's easy to understand, Sandrowski is the firm for you. The people who head up their valuation department, those folks are also college professors so they're really good at taking complex subjects, breaking them down into bite-sized morsels so that people can understand them.

If you want this service to be a part of your repertoire, if you want to add this to your professional practice, give Sandrowski a call today. Reach out to them at 866-717-1607, 866-717-1607. Also don't forget, time's running out for you to get your copy of the Revenue Roadmap Guide.

It's my business development plan and it's free. You can get the same plan I use with my clients that I customize for them. You can take it and customize it for yourself.

Go to revenueroadmapguide.com, enter your contact info, download it there. It's my gift to you for watching and for listening to the show. We're talking with Jonathan Mayotte.

He is a commercial insurance specialist at Thornton Powell. You can reach him at 217-649-4714, 217-649-4714. Okay, Jonathan, what are the three things you want us to take away from our time together today? I would say building a network takes time and effort.

So you need to put time in, you need to put effort in, and you need to have some patience when doing that. And if you can do those three things, at some point there's going to be a payoff for you and you will reap the rewards. Second, celebrate the wins.

Celebrate the wins and that way you will not sit there and hopefully you don't have desperation breath. And then also don't be afraid to fail. We all, we're not all perfect, we're human.

So we are going to make mistakes. Don't be afraid to make those mistakes. Make sure you learn from them and don't repeat them, but don't be afraid to fail.

It happens. That's part of life. Great advice.

I love it. Jonathan Mayotte, thank you so much for joining us here today on the show. Folks, if you want to reach out to Jonathan, give him a call at 217-649-4714, 217-649-4714.

Jonathan, it was a pleasure having you on. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you for having me.

All righty, folks, that'll do it for another episode of the Inside BS Show. We'll see you right back here again tomorrow. Until then, I'm Dave Lorenzo and here's hoping you make a great living and live a great life.