Struggles Presented by NCBI

Do you have the right people in your corner? The Importance of Strategic Advisors

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Welcome to Struggles: Navigating Challenges, Together, your go-to podcast for insightful discussions on the common challenges faced by entrepreneurs across all industries. Whether you're a seasoned business leader or just starting out, this podcast is designed to provide you with the real-world stories, expert insights, and practical solutions you need to overcome obstacles and achieve success in your entrepreneurial journey.

Each episode features candid conversations with industry experts, successful entrepreneurs, and insightful advisors who share their experiences and tips on topics such as leadership, scaling challenges, financial management, and more. We delve deep into the intricacies of business struggles, offering you the tools and knowledge to navigate the ever-changing landscape of entrepreneurship.

In this episode the discussion traverses the necessity of building strong, trustworthy relationships with stakeholders, including employees, contractors, and vendors, to mitigate risks. Emphasizing the importance of comprehensive business advocacy, the conversation highlights proactive involvement with advisors, strategic long-term planning, and the critical nature of structured, regular communication among advisory teams. 

The episode underscores the value of peer-to-peer advisory groups and collaboration with "friendly competitors" as well as the essential considerations for succession planning and guarding against common business risks like cybersecurity threats and employee liabilities. The significance of maintaining transparent communication, understanding client-specific needs, and planning exit strategies are recurrent themes, all aimed at equipping business owners with the insights needed to navigate their challenges effectively.00:00 Trust in banker as supportive business advocate.

Time Stamps:
05:54 Businesses underutilize brokerage and need industry-specific coverage expertise.

09:09 Specialize financially; communication clarifies complex acronyms.

11:28 Professionals as connectors; strategic, long-term advice.

16:50 Consider non-financial benefits in family business decisions.

19:56 Navigating unexpected asset ownership and future planning.

24:05 Protect unseen cyber risks; strengthen key relationships.

27:28 Quarterly business discussions focus beyond taxes.

28:21 Clients need budgets and projections; start now.

34:54 Accountant shortage persists; solutions remain insufficient.

36:53 Switch banks if yours isn't supportive enough.

42:30 Relationship banker plans, sells, collaborates, problem-solves.

43:31 Regular communication and understanding are essential.

Tune in to gain actionable insights and strategies from our experts, and remember—you're not alone in your struggles. Together, we can navigate the challenges of entrepreneurship.

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What you see every day are your people, okay? Your people are not just your employees. It's also your contractors, it's your vendors and so forth. So to me, you have to have a relationship, just like we're talking about earlier, about building relationships with individuals and knowing about your businesses. You really need to know what's going on with your employees and your contractors and so forth, because you take out some of their risk as well. Welcome to another episode of Struggles presented by ncbi, the podcast where we navigate challenges together. Turn it over to you guys to do your thing. Tell us a little bit about what a strategic advisor really is, what it means and how it can impact people sitting in this room and the people that they know. So take it away, guys. Appreciate it. One of the things we're charged with is talking about, you know, what, who do you have in your corner and who it is. And so basically, from the banking standpoint, I just say as I talk to my clients and what we, what we really work on and what is missing, a lot of times is the trust in the banker. A lot of times you're just looking for. A lot of people just tend to navigate to where there's a branch on every corner, especially prior to Covid, I'd say where the locations are the most convenient. And that's not always going to be the best case for you. What I kind of wanted to talk about and what I think my clients appreciate from the service that they get from Erie bank would be the fact that you should really should have an advocate, an advocate for your business. Your banker should have the ability to advocate for your business on behalf of you and really be that, that connector. So, and that would be a second thing that the banker can do. We've got relationships hopefully with multiple businesses with multiple different types that can connect, connect you to when you, when you need help, when you need service. So I thought they're obviously, obviously what everybody thinks of is the financial advisor, but really, if they don't have the right knowledge and the right education, they're not really going to be able to advise wisely on the, on your financial aspects of it. They need to have access to tools and resources. So as you, as you gain the knowledge, as you build up in this, you're going to have opportunities to gain that knowledge and to have that, to be able to provide to your clients. And you should be looking for that in, in from your, from your banker and from your advisors and the people in your corner. They need to be available when, when needed. It may not be instant. They might not be able to pick up the phone all the time. I can speak to that firsthand. But they should get back to you within 24 hours. If you don't have that type of relationship, if you don't, the first question, we always say, do you know your banker? When's the last time you talked to your banker? Your banker, unfortunately, with the big banks, your banker could change every six months or, and it may not even be their fault. So do you know your banker is, do you even have an advocate for you? Are they ethical? Do you feel, do they have your best interest in mind? And do you think that they're, they, you know, they're working on your behalf? And then lastly, are they, are they well rounded? Do they have the experience? Do you know kind of some other people that they've dealt with? That's the biggest thing. I mean, my biggest referral is someone that knows me, that knows the service I provide and we ask for introductions. We don't ask for loans. You don't know if anybody needs a loan. That's not necessary. You have all the peers. And the best referral is an opportunity for us to say hello and to get to meet the person, see if there's a synergy. So I'll leave it at that as a starting point. But that's what I had. Yeah, no, there's a lot of carryover between what you shared and what I would advise people from a business insurance advisor standpoint. This is a topic that I care a lot about. I work with a lot of other insurance agency owners across the state of Ohio. Being a fourth generation insurance agent, I meet a lot of, you know, other family run insurance agencies and I lean on my peers quite a bit in my industry just to, you know, help me learn, help them grow. So I definitely think that, you know, insureds and clients can be more educated on how to vet people in my industry because there's certainly, you know, not everybody is cut out for this line of work. And so I put together sort of the ABCs of an insurance broker and what to look for, at least from a commercial standpoint for a. I have accountability and accessibility. So accountability is important because someone is taking accountability for your insurance coverages and hopefully that's an insurance broker. But. But if they're not, that means that you are either passively taking that accountability or actively taking that accountability. If you're comfortable with that, saying, hey, I'm gonna take accountability, that if I'm not properly covered, it's on me Then that's fine. But what should happen is that your insurance agent understands your business and is saying, yes, I am going to take accountability to make sure that you are protected. The accessibility piece is the relationship, the communication. It should not take days for them to get back to you. If you like, need to meet with them, they should be saying, okay, when, when can I meet with you? Them get responding to emails, things like that. Very important to make sure that they understand your risk. For B, I have the brokerage aspect, really that's just the ability to go out and shop your insurance, make sure that you're paying, you know, bottom quartile of the market while also keeping you maybe in the top quartile in coverage so, so that you're not sacrificing coverage just to pay the least amount. That brokerage piece, you'd be surprised how many well established businesses are not taking full advantage of that piece of it. And then for C, there's coverage knowledge. You absolutely need to be working with somebody that understands your industry, understands the important coverages. You should be able to ask them, what are my top vulnerabilities and liabilities and how would you recommend I handle them either with insurance or, or outside of insurance. So that's the risk management aspect of it. And then lastly for CI, put claims experience, you need to know that they've handled large claims in the past, that they understand that process, they know how to speak an adjuster's language, and that in your darkest day they're going to be there and be somebody that you trust at that moment. Because it's not necessarily do you trust them. You know, when times are great and you haven't had a claim in 15 years, it's when you have that terrible worst day ever that you know, they're going to be in your office saying, how can I help? Take things off of your plate because you're going to have a lot of things spinning at once. That is just an absolutely critical piece that, you know, frankly, I don't get asked about enough in my, you know, presentation meetings. I wish people asked more about the claims experience because really that's why you hire an insurance advisor. But those are, you know, just some things that I put together. Obviously there's more that goes into it and we can get into that later. But as far as the ABCs of insurance brokerage, I think that pretty much covers it. And I'll take a different approach to the abc, but that's good. You know, I learned many years ago. And by the way, when Brian said 30 years in business. I started when I was five. So ABC to me was attorneys, bankers and CPAs. And what I realized quickly after that is risk management and insurance is an integral part of that as well. So basically, to kind of get right to the chase here is when you're talking to any one of us, you should talk to all of us. If you have a business transaction, if you have a change in, you know, divorce, marriage, death in the family, you want to do secession planning and so forth. So that's kind of overall that. Again, the whole idea here is you know who is in your corner. Well, you should have, at a minimum, certain professionals that know your story. I was telling Jim earlier, the fun part of the business is that I don't do audits. So you can tell me everything because I'm not going to run to the SEC or to the bank, for that matter. Right. With things that are happening within your business. But quite honestly, though, the communication has to be not always continuous. But when something happens within your business or in your personal situation, because all of us also deal on the personal side, obviously, you know, you have to let people know what's going on. Quick story about that is I remember I had a client, this had to be 15 years ago, and they came to the meeting after I prepared the tax return and they had a little baby with them. I said, oh, wow, whose baby is that? That's mine. Okay. So I had to redo the tax return, charge him a very minimal amount, and I got fired because I charged him extra. I'm like, well, if you would have told me you had a child, I guess this would have gone a lot better. So anyways, so again, being. Being open about those type of things. So basically one other thing too is like, we all kind of specialize in certain areas in all different financial arenas, right? And just hearing all the different businesses that you're associated with, you all have different concerns on the. On the banking relationship, on the insurance requirements, also on the legal, and also on the accounting and tax side. And so sometimes, depending on the business and how active you are in discussing those things with your advisors, you don't know everything. Neither do we. And so you have to have the conversation. Another thing I learned is when I had clients years ago and they would like to throw acronyms. You know, I mentioned before, Mike, Brian mentioned that, you know, I've been involved with healthcare, life sciences, a lot of engineers and very brilliant people, they love to use acronyms. And when you stop and say, what does that mean? It gets Someone's attention. That works both ways. Okay. You want to know about what's going on in the business and in personal situations and so forth. So ask questions. And again, it's not where you have to have this continuous communication, but the more we know, the better that we can advise you. And you know, I just met Bill recently, but I've known Jim for a long time. You know, it's really building the relationships and being having trust in telling one of these guys and you that you should talk to someone within this team and having that trust to say you're going to get, you know, really good information, you're going to get quality information. You're going to be asked questions about your personal situation, about your business, about your businesses, what your aspirations are to make the best decisions. Okay? Like I said, if we don't know that you had a child, then how are you going to have an insurance policy accurate? How are you going to prepare tax return and so forth? So first and foremost, it's not being afraid of communication. Obviously, in all of our businesses, there's a lot of confidentiality. We're very careful about that. Integrity is extremely important. And that's why again, being part of different networking groups, business development groups, if we talk about a situation with a client, you don't use names and those type of things. You have to have that trust also. And that's why, again, it's building the trust, knowing the client, their business, their personal situation, and having trust in your providers. And again, you may not need a cpa, and again, you may have full faith and trust in your cpa. Doesn't mean you can't ask me questions, number one. And number two, if there's something you may need, maybe on the legal side, on the insurance side, on the banking side, on the construction side, on the wellness, health wellness side, and so forth, then we want to be connectors. I think that's what a lot of times people forget they're allowed to ask their professionals, especially guys like us that do this every day, you're allowed to ask us, hey, do you know a person? Do you know someone that can do that? And for two or three minute conversation that go a long way, because all of a sudden you start asking, why are you asking about that? You know, there's something else I can help you with. And then you find out that maybe there's, you know, some succession planning, you know, maybe for Nicholas or something of that nature. And so it just helps us all connect. And the more you learn confidentially, the more we can also advise in different areas. Having said all that, you know, on the CPA side, believe it or not, tax laws really haven't changed all that much. And so, you know, our goal really is to strategically look at, you know, what's, what's your current situation is and going forward and really long term thinking, you know, a lot of times we, you know, what's, what's the tax rates today? How can I save money today? We really want to look at long term. And again, that gets back to the communication. What are you doing today? What are your aspirations for tomorrow? And with that, are we ready for. Q and A then? Yeah, let's open it up. All right. So after they gave their little, little bits on their presentation, as we normally do in these circumstances at these lunch ins, we like to open it up to the crowd. We like this intimate ideal space here to actually ask those questions. So feel free. Anybody have a question to start off with for the guys about advisement? I do. And this question is for each one. Of you as it relates to the. Topic of succession planning. Through your own experiences or even through clients that you've helped. What have you seen and noticed and would want to impart some wise advice to the audience with that you wish. That someone wouldn't have to have had that experience? Well, first, I'd say it's never too early to consider. I mean, you need insurance policies, you need to have trust and so forth, which, you know, on the banking side can be very beneficial. And just maybe if you don't have any direct errors, what are you going to do with your business down the road? You know, the statistics show that there's fewer and fewer family businesses. I mean, fourth generation represent like what, like 0.9% of all businesses anymore. It's unbelievable. So really, even if you don't have direct family heirs, you know, how do you, how do you build your business up to a point where you do want to sell? And we also realize that that's your baby. You know, when you have a business, whether you're in the C suite or you own the business, you know, that's, that's, you know, where you're spending a third, you know, fourth or third of your life sometimes. And so we understand that it's not necessarily getting into to kids or grandkids or other family members, but it's also to employees, just the outside world. And how do you position your company? So I would say the main thing is never too early to start, even when you're considering acquisition. What is going to be the long term. I mentioned earlier, what's the long term plan? And that succession plan should be part of your due diligence in purchasing. Purchasing a company. I couldn't agree more. I think it's even, it could, it may not be more important, but it's equally as important if there is a direct heir to the business. With these family businesses, I've gone through several transitions and there can be, I mean I've, I've had it where there's good relationships between the family that's being handed down to and there's not good relationships, they speak on first name terms and it's just like another co worker but getting out in front of it, getting for. For me and I would say for your, for, for. For your banker. If you've got, you know, the, or through your investment advisor, whoever it may be, you've got to work through some of those details as well because it may not be every member of the family and yet you want everybody to be equally paid out from the fruits. A lot of the small businesses I deal with, it's the last thing they think about unless you bring it up because really you got into the business because it was something that you did well and, and maybe you've grown it from there and you just never think about getting out of it. And we're in the baby boom generation getting near the end of it and they got no exit plan. So it's really something that you need to talk about. It's something that needs to be talked about and you need to vet out and figure out what does this look like, what it's done? Am I going to sell? Is it going to the family? What. Just detailing what those plans are and having that conversation because that's the first step and getting all the advisors in place to make sure that you're, you're making the wisest, best, easiest decision. And then I mean on top of that succession planning, we think about, you know, a smooth transition. Well, what happens if something happens to you? Especially for the small business where it's only one person making sure that that's all set to take place. We oftentimes, you know, small business, you only trust yourself. You're the only person on the checking account. Well, if something happens to you that's locked up. So just from the simplicity of having a second person on that account just in case. So just, just little things like that. Yeah, this is an important topic for me being in a family business myself and you guys really, you know, hit all the major points about how it's important to start this process early. But I would just encourage people to think about the non financial benefits of owning your business because you're going to have advisors who are going to speak to you about the financial pros and cons of making one decision or one transition versus another. But really you're the only person as the business owner that can really understand what owning that business means to your family or for your personal situation. There could be non tangible benefits that get sort of pushed to the side when these big multiples are being thrown around. I think like for example, owning a, a brick and mortar business that has multiple generations in it can bring a family together around what it takes to build that business up. And if that's no longer around, what does the impact look like on your family as a whole? Because that's the real reason that you have this business in the first place, is to help your family. And maybe the best way to help your family is through some sort of acquisition or a sale. But I just think that there's a lot of financial incentives for advisors to tell you to go a certain way. But only you are going to be able to think about the intangibles, the real impact on your family. I just encourage people to think about those. And I think it's a moral good to have locally owned, know, smaller businesses than, than to, for our economy just to be run by a few large, large partners. So you know, maybe that's enough to, to you know, steer people in, into a, you know, a different direction. But ultimately you got to do what you have to do that's, that's best for you and your family situation. But I just like to mention that because a lot of times the other voices kind of drown that out. I feel I like that idea and. That concept of the unintended consequence of what might happen when you move one thing to another. And that's why it's important to have your advisors, having them work together, at least in unison, how that can work for the business. Yeah. One other thing to just emphasize is if you're not a business owner, that doesn't mean you're not thinking about succession planning. I do a lot of deals where you get what's called a profit interest. So the top three salespeople will have some type of ownership interest. And you have to think about how that will affect you going forward if you actually get ownership and what happens if that company does look to sell. So anyone who's ambitious that really wants to work, and I'm Gonna say, it's everyone here. Cause you're here today. You have to think, even if you're not a business owner today, what's it gonna look like if you do have a 1% or 10% ownership interest? What if you're presented with an incentive to stay on for five more years and get 1% of the company per year? That's a succession plan. Now you have an asset. Now you have to talk to us again to say, okay, well, now I have this asset, I have this thing I wasn't expecting, or I've been really working my butt off, and so I earn it. So now what do I do with that? Now how do my kids, you know, if what happens, you know, what happens to me at some point, and I've got this, you know, 5% interest in this company I've worked for for 25 years. Right. So again, you don't necessarily have to be a business owner. It's just if you work at a company and you have to have the aspirations that, yes, you want to actually have, not just management decisions, but leadership decisions up to the point of actually having ownership. Again, as I said earlier, it's never too early to start that process. Ask the questions, what does a profit interest mean? What does a restricted stock mean? Those are kind of fancy terms to say, yes, you have some benefits, you also have some liabilities, and you also don't want to pass off, you know, liabilities to, to your heirs either. Unintention, you know, unintentionally. So. So that, that's something else. Yes, absolutely. The family businesses is, you know, the, the backbone of, you know, of our economy. But again, it's also people that, that are aspiring to have the ownership. Making sure you've got a plan in place as well. Anybody else have a question off the. Top, curious from each of your perspectives in terms of the greatest risks you see in a small business owner's reality, and what would you suggest as some ways to. Well, I guess I'll take that one. As far as risks, I mean, it really depends on industry, but oftentimes your greatest liability is your employees. You're more likely to be sued by an employee than you are a customer in most cases. A lot of people don't know that, but it's extremely important to have employment practices, liability insurance on your policy. That's basic wrongful termination type of coverage to give people a general idea. Attorneys that we speak to in this space say that a traditional settlement is about two to three times salary for a wrongful termination. Suit. So if you think, okay, I've got employees making $75,000, you know, two to three times, that is going to be somewhere, you know, between 150 and$250,000. If you only have $50,000 of coverage on your policy, that's a pretty significant risk that you're taking on. So that's something that I, you know, talk to business owners frequently. I just did a talk about cyber insurance. Cybersecurity risk is a huge risk today, and it's a bigger risk tomorrow and a bigger risk the next day. So working with a cyber security partner to make sure that your business is protected and can withstand an attack is, is, is a huge concern. I guess those would be sort of the, the risks that I can mention right now. I could go on forever, obviously. But, but I would say probably those two are hot topics right now. I'm going to step in there because you led right in. I'm going to speak directly from the banking standpoint. The biggest business, biggest risk today is that cyber attack or fraud. We're just, it's, it's not a matter of if, it's when. So if, if your banker, if you've never heard the word positive pay on your, your checking account, then you need to, you need to talk to your banker about it. Positive pay is a proactive way to protect your account. Make sure that only what you're authorizing to go out of your account is going out of your account. It is, it's an insurance product basically that the bank offers, but it's pretty cost effective. And Bill could also tell you that they've got products that would help you out in that. But that, that's what I see the biggest risk. If you're not protecting yourself from the impending fraud that could happen, it can, it can be, it can handicap the business for sure, if not destroy it. So, yeah, I think there's, there's two areas here to really oversimplify it. You know what Bill and Jim are talking about kind of the, what you don't see, you know, what you don't see every day and you're, you're, you're kind of hedging your bet. If you don't take action to protect yourself in the cyber and IT area, you have the proper policies and so forth. You don't know what's going to happen. What you see every day are your, is, are your people, okay? Your people are not just your employees. It's also your contractors, it's your vendors and so forth. So to me, you have to have a relationship just like we're talking about earlier about building relationship with individuals and knowing about your businesses. You really need to know what's going on with your employees and your contractors and so forth because you take on some of their risk as well. So basically people are biggest asset and your biggest liability. And as all these get rich quick schemes, say move your liability to an asset, well, it's easier said than done, but you have to just consider that again. Yes, two times the cost, three times the cost. Same with turnover. We heard that a few months ago. The cost of turnover of employee, like in my business is at minimum $100,000. If you lose someone after a year, it's the training, it's the benefits, everything else, reintroduction of clients and so forth. So I would say pay attention to people. It really is, you know, and again, that can be, that's also your vendors, you know, it's obviously your customers. You're always concerned about your customers. But I'm very concerned about our vendors. You know, how is, how is how their business is going? What risks do they have? We have, we've had conversations with, with some incredible business and sales coaches here that are actually in the room. And I learned a long time ago the really key to success is knowing what your customer's customer needs. Well, you can take that to your vendor's vendor, you can do that to your, you know, your employees and their families and so forth. So I kind of turn that from just a risk to saying, well, be positive about it. Find out about the people you're dealing with on an everyday basis and make that, make them more of an asset than a liability. One other thing that I'll mention really quick is just because I do a lot of work with manufacturing downtime and any manufacturer knows that downtime is the biggest risk for them. You know, going two months without production is a significant hit to revenue. You could lose a million dollar building in a fire. That, okay, we're going to get a construction crew out there and get up and running. It's the, how long is that going to take to rebuild and get back up to regular production? That loss in revenue is a bigger financial risk than actually the loss of the building itself. So having business continuity plans in place to know, okay, this machine breaks down, how long it's gonna take us to get a new one. This piece of equipment, it might take eight months to get a replacement. Having that stuff figured out ahead of time and maybe taking an eight month recovery and turning it into a five Month recovery can make a big difference. So that's the only other thing that I would mention as far as major risks that people might not think about. That's a great point. Anybody else with a question? Just following up on that. That's a proactive approach that you listed. Paul, since you're the accountant in the group, what percentage of your clients actually take proactive Forward thinking for 2025 with you and their advisors? And could you share what your advisory group looks like is as a business owner? Yeah. I mean, at the minimum we have to talk quarterly for tax estimates and so forth. And usually that conversation is about 2 minutes on taxes and 20 minutes on the business itself. And again, the opportunity to make introductions for different services that are provided and just kind of, you know, I always tell people, you're allowed to call people even if you have an advisor in a certain area is what I call sanity check, you know, so I'm more concerned about what's happening in the business. What's happening the family, because taxes, like I said before, I mean, honestly, there haven't been that many tax law changes in the last several years, dramatic changes. Now they're talking about potentially, you know, like a national sales tax, other things like that. I remember as a young and as a cpa, we heard about this national sales tax thing. Right. But at the end of the day, the, the tax part of it, the compliance is not as, I don't say it's as important, but it's really what, what the long term goals are. And if there's clients that don't have budgets or projections, I say, well, then you're either not a client or let's get, let's get started on that. You know, let's figure out where you know what your metrics are and start building something that you can also share with employees and your C suite and other people within the organization so they know where you're going as well. So I would say, you know, for me it's, you know, you have to have those quarterly discussions at the minimum. And that's usually, like I said, it's a little bit on the accounting and tax side, but more so it's on the business and family side. And what's happening, you know, are you looking to move geographically and that goes into M and A activity, you know. Well, you know, we were actually looking to sell in a couple years. Let's start that process right now. You know, you don't have to wait. It takes a while to kind of clear out liens that you Never knew were on the books for, you know, $155. Someone's going to find that out. Let's find that out now, those type of things. So it's never too late or it's never too early to start that process. About yours, you have an advisory team. How do you use them? Proactively, reactively. You mean, like internally? Oh, for my business. Oh. Oh, wow. I do everything myself. I don't need anyone else. No, no, I. So. Well, no, that's. It's actually a good question. I probably talked to my business attorney at least once a week now. I also went to high school with them, so there's other reasons for that, but it's just good to know what's happening, you know, just in, you know, the legal environment, you know, for different areas. On the insurance side, everything. I mean, I would say, you know, probably at least once a month, and a lot of that is just, again, you know, getting so they know what's going on in my business. So. Yeah, it's a good question, dude. I practice what I preach. Probably not as much as I should, quite honestly. And there's probably things that I'm missing in my business that, That I, you know, I should. I should react to. You know, I'm sure everyone's heard about this, you know, boi, Beneficial interest. That's a requirement for business to file by the end of the year. It's not really an accounting or CPA function. In fact, we're actually. We should not, for insurance purposes, do that because we can be acting as attorneys, but it's kind of our responsibility. In fact, I kind of say everyone here or in the financial arena to make sure our clients are aware of it in some manner or at least can respond to it. So again, if I wasn't talking to my attorney a couple times a month, I wouldn't really know what's going on in that area. Right. Just by a casual conversation. So I think it's. I probably should be more structured. So that's actually a good point. So I should practice what I preach. But it's important. You can't go a year without talking to, you know, to your. To your advisors. Just. I don't think it works. Sarah, I think you had a question. I was actually pretty similar to Dave's. I was going to say, if this. Table were larger up here, who else. Would be at the table? I think we've heard business attorney. Anybody else that would be missing, if you will. I don't know. Therapist. Yes. We. In. In our conversations we often, often talk about a four prong stool and it would be the three of us and an attorney. That's, that's our, that's the typical advocacy. I, I, I'll advocate for, for peer to peer advisory. I get a lot of knowledge from other, you know, family owned insurance agents around the state of Ohio. I enjoy sharing my experience with, with those agents. Yes, Finding friendly competitors I think is an important part of business. It makes business more enjoyable. I can, you know, talk to people who understand the position that I'm in. It's not as lonely necessarily because there's certain things that I'm not going to talk to our employees about. There's certain things that my wife doesn't want to hear me complain about. So, you know, it gives us an opportunity to, you know, dig into the details and ultimately make each other's businesses better. So I think if anybody would be considering, you know, building those relationships or starting some sort of a peer advisory group, I highly encourage it. I've gotten a lot of value from that. Yeah, I would say, yeah, as I mentioned earlier, you know, it's ABC is what I learned. You know, and then plus our risk. I think that's, that's really important to keep in mind at all times. And then each of us have different areas where we may say you need this as well. It may be on the valuation side, appraisal side, you know, maybe a health insurance insurance side also or different areas or HR in general, you know, where you want to make sure there's a professional in the HR are, you know, to, to, you know, to assist Bill and what he's doing on, you know, putting policies together and so forth. So yeah, I would say there's certainly subsets, you know, that we have to, you know, be cognizant of. But generally speaking, again, that's why we're, again, Jim mentioned advocate for the business. Right. Advocate for the, for the client. That also goes into being able to, who suggest, okay, here's that small subset of a professional area that you should also address. And it starts with people that kind of like on the 30,000 foot level that we kind of see everything in the business or in the family atmosphere and what else do they need? In particular, I'm just going to add on to the peer to peer. My experience has been that and I deal with a lot of manufacturers that are definitely in the same industry, same, not, not necessarily from the manufacturing standpoint, but the end product standpoint. And I find that they're working together way more than I would have ever thought. I, I don't, I don't see that many hard and fast. You know, they're a big competitor and I'm not, you know, it's not the Ohio State versus that team up north. So they're really working together. They help each other, they talk to each other. They really, they're dealing with the same issues, the same problems. They serve as a, a sounding board for each other. So I, I've seen that's a, that's a very strong, very refreshing. So agreed. John, did you have a question? Yeah. So family business, like when I took over the business, I changed my accounts, I changed my CPAs, but didn't ever change insurance. Still the same insurance company. So when you go and you. I guess the question is how easy. It for people to switch. You know, you get legacy. Well, I've had this guy for 30 years, but he's going to retire. Whether it's banking, insurance or accounting, how easy is it for people to switch? They're pretty like locked in sometimes. Well, I'll start because in, in my business right now, we've had a shortage of accountants for probably 10 years now, if not longer. And unfortunately, you know, the trade organizations nationally and locally and so forth have not really addressed the issue. So I would say that because of that we see a lot of people that are retiring and leaving their practices, not even selling the practices. So we've gotten pretty good at. How do I put it on the transition in asking for maybe information, you know, from one, two, three, four and five years ago rather than just two years ago. So really, as long as you're asking the right questions, the transition is pretty simple. There's a different software and so forth, but it really is just making sure that you're getting the full picture, that you're not being blindsided, that there's, you know, a trust, you know, putting out a million dollars a year that you know, that you're not aware of those type of things. So that. Just asking questions. So on my side, we're seeing a lot, quite honestly, a lot of transitions. And you just make it as efficient as possible. It's like you have to wait a year. I mean, right now I'm picking up new clients every day and we need to talk now because your next tax payment is January 15th, and if you're underpaid, don't yell at me. So let's talk now. So from my side, it's a pretty. Easy transition actually, from banking standpoint, switching is not easy and it can be super Easy. It's all in the planning. But the, I would say the biggest issue is getting it wrong because you don't want to do it over and over again. Yes, you got to wait for all the check, you know, all your checks to clear, everything to go through. Get all those automatic transfers that you set up all switched over to the new bank. So you really want to get it right. And that's where I would say having that, that other contact that kind of referred you over that you already have a feel for. This is the right place for me. I would say the bigger mistake would be not switching if you're not in the right place because they're not supporting you, they're not helping your business, they're not advocating for you, they're not connecting you, they're not providing the type of service that you should be getting from it. So I would say that's a bigger threat. So the transition, a lot of banks can make it super easy and really help you through the process. Put together some letters to help all those automatic transfers. You can get all that done. What you don't want to have to do is do it over and over. So try and get it right the first time. Make sure that the bank in this case aligns with what your end result is and what what you're doing is for our circumstances, a community bank, the right for you, and I would say for 95% of the businesses in the area, we certainly can be. So I think that's what I got to say about that. Yeah, in my industry it's really two relationships. There's the relationship with the brokerage and then there's the relationship with the insurance carrier. If you're going to maintain, if you, let's say you like your insurance carrier, no issues there, you want to keep that the same coverage is the same, pricing the same. To change a brokerage is extremely easy. It really takes one signature on one form and you can change from working with ABC Insurance Agency to XYZ Insurance Agency. It's called a broker of record letter. You sign that over, you're basically telling your insurance company, hey, instead of this agency, I want to work with this agency. Very simple process. There's like a 10 day waiting period and then that agency becomes your new agent. As if you're going to switch your insurance company. That's a more involved process. It's a shopping process. So you know, a brokerage is going to go out to multiple different carriers. Talk to those underwriters, try to, you know, convince them to give Best in class pricing. That's where you're going to need to divulge more information. It's going to be a weeks, maybe months long process. Hopefully you know, you have a good agent that's going to, you know, limit the amount of back and forth communication that you have to have. But ultimately it's you know, a process that every business should go through, you know, every, at least every three years or so just to make sure that again they're getting, you know, they're best in class coverages, you know and you know, I like to say bottom quartile or bottom third pricing to make sure that they're still competitive in the market. But it that heavily depends on your industry. If you're in the habitational industry, for example, right now it's a very difficult time to shop. If you're a contractor, it's a very good time to shop. So it's and that go, it's ebbs and flows, you know, every year. So it's a more complicated answer for that piece. But brokerage side, very easy. Yeah, Jerry may have time for one. More but Jerry, go ahead. It's not a real quick one. Like how crucial is it, you said. Talk about protecting yourself from the internal clients, but how crucial is it to have that like employee handbook to protect yourself from that? I would refer that to an HR expert. I think it's important. But sometimes I think you don't want to paint yourself into a corner on some of that stuff too. I'm not advocating to not have one. I would just say that if you have one, you're going to need to stick to it because it's going to be the first thing that gets brought up. If you have a lawsuit, they're going to say okay, well you said this is the procedure. You didn't follow the procedure. Now you're, you're putting yourself in a, in a tough, tough position. So you know, I would say yes, you need to have standards and processes in place to protect yourself. The best way to do that is to have you know, a consistent all bought in approach with an expert in that field, anybody else. So to close it out with the. Theme of having your profession in our. Corner, what are some things that you. Wish your clients went to you? Well, yeah, I mean having structured and scheduled meetings is most important because as I mentioned, you know, it could be 5 minutes on taxes and then 25 minutes on the actual business. So I would say if, if we're not reaching out, then the clients have to reach out to us. As well. So I would say just that communication and what's happening in the business, again, it's like what we don't know can hurt us the worst. Right. And again, like an employee handbook. Again, being an advocate for the client, clients tell me a lot. And if there is an employee issue and I say there's no employee handbook, you know, again, to Bill's point that being good and bad, we have to be prepared. The main thing is being prepared. Again, as I said a couple times now, it's never too soon to act in some manner. And so whether you're telling us about, you know, employment issue and so forth, or the need for the legal advice, whatever else, I'm not going to give that. But then we can refer to the right person to make sure they're not going to get burned by that. So, yeah, the legal aspect is always extremely important. And sometimes, again, just like with insurance and risk management, don't wait till it's too late. Quite honestly, there's things that you may not realize in your business that may have an effect on the banking relationship, on the insurability and on the taxation. So again, just talk to us about those things, whether it's a structured, monthly, quarterly, semiannual discussion or more often as there's changes in the business or your family situations. So rather than just answering, ditto, because it's about the same, the big thing is we want that. I, as a relationship banker, want that ability to have to plan for next year. I'm going through several meetings right now, pre planning for next year, equipment needs, you know, what's your forecast showing, what are your potential challenges? Let's talk through those and figure them out. Because I am your, as a commercial lender or a commercial banker, my job is interesting because first of all, I have to sell you that I'm the right person for you and that we're the right bank for you. Right. But then when you have a lending need or a credit need, I have to sell you to our underwriting team and to our credit analysis to make sure that it's a right fit for us as well and that we want to invest in your business. So I have to, I am needing to know a great deal and a lot of times I'm going to want to know who your CPA is and I'm going to work with your CPA and we're going to talk about things together. And that's, that's a lot of what I do. So I think the big thing is having that communication now every business is not the same. I'm not meeting quarterly with every business. That doesn't make sense for everybody. It can be semiannual, it could be annual. But I'm also going to be on the other side of the phone when you, when you need to talk and have, and have that communication and, and, and just want to have a sounding board. So that's the biggest piece is communicating and understanding and knowing what's going on with the business so that I can be there when, when you need it. And say, from the banking standpoint, this is what don't forget your, you know, think about the debt service cover or what your collateral coverage or this is going to be a potential covenant violation, something like that. Those are the conversations that we want to have them get out in front of and just make sure that we're thinking about it from all aspects. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Struggles presented by ncbi, where we navigate challenges together. Don't forget to subscribe, listen and share this podcast with others who might benefit. We'd love to hear about the struggles you're facing or have overcome, and we'd be thrilled to have you as a guest on a future episode. Let's continue this journey together.