Pick Up The Phone Podcast
Episode 28··1h 13m

$35 Million in Insurance Premiums: The Systems That Built GreenLine Insurance | Dulce Morales

With Dulce Morales · Co-Founder, GreenLine Insurance

From $5M to $35M in Premiums: The Systems That Built GreenLine Insurance | Dulce Morales The unfiltered journey of Dulce Morales, from starting in the insurance industry at 18 with no…

About this episode

From $5M to $35M in Premiums: The Systems That Built GreenLine Insurance | Dulce Morales The unfiltered journey of Dulce Morales, from starting in the insurance industry at 18 with no experience, to co-founding GreenLine Insurance and building a massive $35 million annual premium operation — and the exact systems it takes to scale without burning out. 💡 KEY TAKEAWAYS: ✅ How Dulce started at 18 and opened her own agency by age 25 ✅ The "Multi-Million Dollar System" she built from Day 1 (even when she was small) ✅ Why the Visionary + Integrator model is the secret to her $35M success ✅ The brutal truth: Why hybrid roles (Sales + Service) are killing your team's productivity ✅ How she merged two agencies with her husband and survived the "ego battles" ✅ The exact CRM and software stack (Verta 4) used to manage 23+ employees ✅ Why policy count is a "fake KPI" and what numbers you should actually track ✅ How she maintains an 80-90% retention rate in a high-attrition industry ✅ The "Boring Business" strategy: Why she's investing in dry cleaners and nail salons next ✅ Balancing Motherhood & Business: How she hired a full-time nanny to stay sane ✅ Why "Consistency beats Motivation" every single day in entrepreneurship ✅ The Voice AI revolution: How emotional intelligence is changing the sales game

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📌 Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction: Meet Dulce Morales & GreenLine Insurance 01:23 - Starting in Insurance at 18 & Opening an Agency at 25 04:14 - Building Multi-Million Dollar Systems from Day One 11:22 - Merging Agencies: The Challenges of Working with Your Spouse 20:31 - Why Hybrid Roles Cause Burnout (Sales vs. Service) 26:37 - Essential Tools & CRM Systems for Scaling 33:19 - The Secret to Growing from $5M to $35M in Premiums 41:19 - Structuring a 23-Person Team for Maximum Efficiency 43:00 - KPIs That Actually Matter: Premium vs. Policy Count 45:19 - Outside Partnerships: How GreenLine Works with Independent Agents 47:50 - Growing the Partner Network to 13 Agencies 49:33 - Motherhood, Marriage & Business 50:19 - Hiring Help: Why Asking for Support Is a Power Move 57:00 - Making Sacrifices Early to Be Present Later 01:00:44 - The Secret to Success: Consistency Over Motivation 01:02:12 - Advice to Every Young Woman in Business 01:03:46 - The Next 10 Years: Investing in "Boring Businesses" 01:06:08 - Voice AI & Emotional Intelligence in Business 01:06:57 - How to Connect with Dulce Morales

🔗 CONNECT WITH DULCE MORALES: Instagram: @DulceK6583 GreenLine Insurance Instagram: @GreenLineGroup Website: greenlineinsgrouptx.com

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"Consistency Beats Motivation" — From $5M to $35M in Premiums — The Systems Behind GreenLine Insurance

Transcript

Auto-generated from the episode audio.

What you're doing right now though, is that you guys currently have 35 million dollars annually of insurance premiums. Yeah. I have a ton of help and I like to say that from the very beginning because as a woman, as a mother, as a wife, you start putting all these expectations on yourself. Oh, I should be doing this or I should be the one that does this. I should be the one picking up the kids from school.

You know, if not, they're gonna think I'm such a bad mom. And then you start learning all the systems and processes of actually running your operation and then you started your own at 25. How was it for you starting off? Did you have any business owners in your family at all? Be a true entrepreneur where I'm investing in boring businesses or other businesses that will, I'll be able to come in, you know, help with the systems

and processes, give my expertise and sit back and say, okay, this business is great. Let it keep going. Now move on to the next one. Hire some good key leaders to keep that going and then go to the next one and go to the next one. Welcome to another episode of Pick up the Phone podcast. I'm your host, Losuellanos. I'm the CEO of BankCom.io. I help real estate and home service companies integrate voice AI into their

organizations. Today's guest is Dulce Morales. Dulce has scaled a multi-million dollar insurance company. She's a founder and mother. I think the most impactful thing about what you're doing right now, Dulce, is that you guys currently have 35 million dollars annually of insurance premiums. Quite the feet. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. Very happy to be here and Paul Garcia is your husband. You guys are co-founders of Green Line Insurance. But I'm really

interested in hearing your side of how this entire thing came to be, right? You definitely, I'm sure, contributed a large portion of the growth of Green Line and where it's at right now. Especially, like, we were talking just right now previously just before we started filming. And you spoke a lot about systems and operations, which I'm gonna heard about. So I'm really excited to get into that and get into the nitty gritty of how to run

business. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, definitely. When Paul and I first met, we were both in the insurance industry. I have been in the insurance industry for 17 years now. I started when I was 18. I was picked up by a state farm agent. Honestly, I must have dropped my resume in over 30 different insurance offices. And I just wanted to work full-time during the day and then go to college at night. And so that state

farm agent took a chance on me because I was so young and I was bilingual. Yeah, over the other time. 18. 18. Fresh out of high school. Wow. I needed a way to pay for college and so I knew that I needed my full-time job at the beginning to make sure that I was able to go to school at night. And she was able to coach me and really mentor me and she was hard. She was

hard to work or because she had such high expectations for her team. And we were doing a good amount of production. We were selling over 100 policies a month, a month over a month between five team members. So I learned a lot at that agency and I did learn a lot from her. So when I was 19, I automatically knew that I wanted to be a business owner, that I wanted to own an insurance agency. Just

like she did, that I wanted her lifestyle. I wanted the freedom that she had. I wanted that sense of security because when I started an insurance, it was in 2008. So as you remember, the home crash, you know, recession that we were having in 2008. And she told us that insurance was a recession-proof career and that if we really stuck to it and if we really wanted to make a career out of it, we would be

very secured. So that's when I changed my major to business marketing and that was it. That was my plan. So then I got hired by a farmer's district manager in around 2010. And he's the one that told me if you want to be a business owner, if you want to be an insurance agent one day, this is the perfect job because you're going to be training agents. You're going to be training their staff. You're going to

learn how they do it from day one. So then I stayed as a district trainer for about five years with different district managers. But I learned a lot and then in that time period, I made my decision to open my own office in Clear Lake and that was in 2015. 2015? Yes. Okay. And so that's how I entered the business. You were 25 years old at the time? Mm-hmm. 25 years old. Yeah. And it was a

big jump for me because I had no idea that, you know, once you opened the office, that there was all these other problems that were going to come at you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You weren't fully ready for it, but I learned a lot. I was able to rely on a lot of mentors, a lot of people that really coached me through a lot of things. And from the very beginning, I wanted to create systems and processes

that would be in place in any multi-million dollar business. Right. No matter how small I was at the time, you know, because I knew that I wanted to scale eventually. Right. That was what it was going to take. So as soon as I opened, I hired my first employee because I wanted to be out marketing and I knew that somebody had to be picking up the phone. Right. So I had my first employee there. It was

hard. I was going into debt. Yeah. I was making sure that this was, I burned all the boats. Yeah. Basically, this had to work. Did you, growing up, did you know that you wanted to be a business owner? Or did this happen when you were, when you were a team, when you saw your first sales? So growing up, I knew I wanted to be a business owner when my parents lost their job. I want to say

I was a freshman in high school. How old are you when you're a freshman? Freshman, like 15. Yeah. Somewhere around there. Yeah. I knew I wanted to be a business owner because they had such a, what we thought was such a secure job. They were with the same company for more than 20 years. Right. And overnight, they lost their job. Wow. And it was detrimental to our family. It was, it was devastating. I mean, we, my

parents couldn't find a new job for six months. And so all the security that I thought I had was wiped out from under me completely overnight. Wow. And at that point, I had to, you know, go through a lot of growing up. I had to stop playing sports. I went and started working full-time in high school. And then that way I can carry my own weight and not put that on my parents. I just, I felt

like I needed to pull my own weight at that point. Yeah. So that's when I said, you know, I have to figure this out to where I have a sense of control and a sense of freedom. Right. And to me, that was always, that was the epitome of success. Right. If you had control over your own life and if you had freedom over your own life and financial freedom, then that's what I was looking for. And

nothing else quite grants you that, but being a business owner, I'd say. I would say so, because when I was looking at, you know, everyone, when you're graduating high school, you're thinking of what's going to be your major, why are you going to college, you know, all that stuff. Yeah. What I did is I researched the top paying professions right out of high, right out of college, I'm sorry. Yeah. The ones that I could see myself

doing was pharmacists because they were making right out of college, according to Google, it said that they were making 75 grand. Yeah. So I was like, wow, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. Yeah. You know, why not? So that was going to be my major. Yeah. But then when I saw my boss at the time, when I saw her lifestyle and her kids were in private school and her husband worked for Jacobs engineering, but we were

in the recession. So they were laying off a bunch of people. She told her husband, look, we're doing phenomenal, phenomenally with the agency. If this comes between you and another breadwinner, you need to resign and we'll be fine with the agency. And that was it. That was it. I changed my major to business marketing. And that was a plan. Yeah. Like I want to be the boss, boss woman right here. Yes. Exactly. All already mentioned, whenever

he had the idea, I had already had Levi. This was at the end of 2019. We went through a lot of back and forth because as a woman and as a business owner and I had my own office, I was of course thinking of the long term and I don't want to simply give up my business and then go work for his office. So then that's when the merger came into play. We had to iron out

all the contracts, partnership agreements. We completely rebranded to what Green Line is now. And I'm so happy that we did it, you know, hindsight 2020, you never know how it's going to go, but that was at the end of 2019 that we merged. And then 2020, when COVID hit, it was a blessing and disguise for us because the real estate market boomed and we were able to grow because we could lean on each other now. Now

we were a team. Right. So how was it at the beginning, whenever, you know, he had his own insurance agency and then you had your own insurance agency, did it ever feel like you guys were kind of competing against each other or like, how was that dynamic? No, no. So he mentioned and he was completely spot on. His office focused on a lot of home insurance business. My office focused on a lot of commercial. My niche

was commercial. I was in a lot of networking groups focused and targeting only commercial business. Of course, we would wrap it around with the personal line, so we were still doing good on that as well. And we had just a few mortgage brokers that were referred to us as well. But my main focus was commercial. So then we would help each other. We were never really directly competing against each other. If he had a commercial lead

that he don't want to, you know, handle, then he'll send it over to me. And then if I had, you know, questions or needed any feedback or needed some type of mentorship or just needed somebody to come help me assemble a piece of furniture, he was always willing to help, you know, when you start dating and they, they'll do any. Yeah. Yeah. So he would drive all the way to my office to help me assemble furniture

after he was done with his work, like five, six, he'll come and he'll help me and stuff like that. So that was, that was really interesting at the beginning, just when I was building my agency, we would never really compete with each other. That's amazing. Yeah. So there was a lot of synergies there from the beginning. Yeah, exactly. Right. Exactly. So everything flowed very naturally. And then that's why when I was really pregnant with Levi, I

was still going out, marketing all the time. I was going out networking. I was going to a lot of groups. You're what? Twenty, twenty nine at a time. Twenty eight. Twenty eight. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I was still going to a lot of places like it was a baby. And then that's when he said we need to merge. We need to be on the same team. And then that way we're not trying to keep these two

offices afloat. Yeah. Makes sense. Makes sense. And, and I really want to get into Green Line and, you know, all the success that you guys have had there. But I think what I'm always really curious about, you know, whenever I have guests here on the podcast is, is understanding like what, what truly made them, right? You know, you spoke a lot about hardship, right? From a very young age and, and your upbringing, I feel like that's

a common denominator that I'm seeing from a lot of successful people is that they normally have some sort of struggle that propels them to have a strong desire to, to want to succeed, right? To want to do something out of themselves. And I think you, you definitely pass through that, you know, I want to talk more about the early ages of starting your own, your own company, right? So you're, you're 18. You go work for someone.

It's your 19 now. You, I think you started, you started working with someone at 20 and then you started learning all the systems and processes of actually running your operation. And then you started your own at 25. How was it for you starting off? Did you, did you have any business owners in your family at all? No. No. No. So you were the first one. Right. So let's talk about that. How was that? It was tough.

It was tough because, you know, with my immediate family, I couldn't go to them and ask for advice or ask for help or, you know, pick their brain on anything because they didn't have the expert expertise, you know, and they, they weren't seeing my vision because they couldn't see past their normal daily struggles, right? And so what I started learning ever since Mr. Frankie Flores, that was the district manager that hired me. And when I was

20, ever since he told me, this is where you need to be so that you can learn how to do what it is you want to do. I took that to heart and basically every DM that came after him that I worked for, every agent that I spoke with, every other business owner that I spoke with, I would try to pick up everything they said, like a sponge, like anything. If we were talking, I was trying

to pick their brain, I wanted to take notes. And if they offered me even a slight, you know, opportunity to, to sit down and really review something with me, like, can you review this contract with me? Things like that, I would take that help, you know, I was, I was learning to ask for help from the right people, from the right people that had already done it, right? So whenever I saw the opportunity that there was

this other insurance agent and she was a young lady, she had already had her book of business for about three years. She was a farmer's agent. She wanted out. She didn't enjoy it. She didn't like it. It wasn't what she thought it was going to be. And so she just told me I'm willing to sell my book. I just want to clear the debt that I have. I don't care to make anything on my book. I

just want you to clear the debt. Wow. So I took that opportunity and that was my way in. So now I was in, I was the one that mentored her to start her business whenever she came to the DM to sign the contract with farmers. I was the one that was training her, helping her open, showing her what she had to do. Like farmers had certain qualifications that you had to meet in order to keep your

contract. So then I was coaching her through all of that. So that's how I met her. And so that's why she was candid enough to tell me she wanted out and we made the deal. I went back to my DM at the time. I was like, I want to be an acquisition agent. Yeah. I'm buying her book of business and I'm going to open doors. Wow. And that's how it happened. That's incredible. So when I was

shopping for a storefront, because at the time they had this requirement that you had to be a storefront, you couldn't be like in an office building like this. You had to actually be a storefront. That was scary because I had never looked for a commercial space to lease. Yeah. And you're what? Like 24, 25? 25. Yeah. Yeah. And so I was trying to get help from anyone that I knew that already went through that. Can you

look at this lease with me? Can you please guide me through it? Three year lease. Yeah. And then they have like certain terms in the lease that it goes up in, rent every year. And so... Yes. And they've gone... Exactly. Triple net leases. And thank God, they were able to tell me like, you need to look for this. You need to make sure you're not responsible for the AC. You need to make sure this or that,

you know, things like that that you're not prepared for. Yeah. Because you don't know what you don't know. Exactly. Right. Right. I really want to dive really deep into what those few, you know, the first months of running your business, what that looked like, first, we're just going to take a quick commercial break for our sponsors. Okay. If you're a real estate investor in Houston, Texas, you need to listen up. Andrew Fought with Renovo is the

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your company. Case in Sullivan closed 72 deals last year, so you know that this guy is the real deal and an actual operator. You can reach out to Case in at 409-527-1115. We're back. You started now your first organization and so now you have all this experience, right? You've been training these people. What are they called acquisition agents? Well, no, there was just different contracts. So you could start and this, you know, I'm speaking only on

farmer's insurance because that's how I started. Yeah. But different captive companies or different companies, they'll have different contracts for agents. What does captive mean? captive means that you can only sell for that company. Okay. So you're locked into? So you're locked into that contract only and you cannot acquire other contracts with other carriers. Got it. Unless they specifically give approval. Got it. Okay, got it. Yeah. So they have different terms, so to speak, of working with

farmers. So the one that you acquired was what did that look like? Because I was buying a book, that's why it was called an acquisition contract. Okay, got it. They, of course, have other agents that maybe they started from scratch and they're called scratch agents. Got it. Where they just, from zero, zero policies started selling one by one. Yeah. So how much do you have to pay to be able to buy this book of business? I

can't speak for what it is now. But like I said, at the time that me and her did that handshake deal and like I said, it was just because she knew me and she was just very candid and she just wanted out. It really cost me less than five grand total for a good amount of, well, a small amount of policies. It was only about 300 or 400 policies at the time. So it was enough for

me to just get the contract at a low cost. And then enough for me to at least have this small book to build on to pay for that one part-time employee that needed to answer those phones. Yeah. That way I wasn't like grabbing out of my pocket for that, but it was amazing at the time. It was amazing and I learned a lot through it and I'm just happy that I had that opportunity. Yeah. So you

took it. It was what? Two, three hundred policies at the time. What did you grow it to by yourself and you? By myself, whenever we were getting ready to merge, I was at about 1,200 to 1,500 policies. So you quadrupled it? Yeah. Wow. I was trying to write anywhere between 50,000 to 70,000 in premium and new business monthly. Okay. So at the time whenever we merged, my book was about 1 million, a little bit over 1

million in premium. Got it. Whenever we merged. Wow. That's incredible. Yeah. What about his book of business? What was his looking like? You know, I can't remember fully, I can't remember if it was anywhere between 4 million of 5 million in premium, he's probably going to correct me when he hears this, but I think it was around there because when we merged, it had to be, mind you, when we left farmers, we had to leave a

lot of that business behind because since it's a captive company, you can't take that business with you when you go independent. Yeah. So we had to go independent first and then leave a lot of our business behind and then take what we had left and rebrand to what green line is. So when green line opened, we were a book of about 5 million total. Got it. Now that was total, we had already left the farmers book

behind. We were rebuilding, but they had a lot more outside carriers than I had, especially on the personal line side because they were in business a lot longer than I was, right? Right. So we had a good amount outside and then a lot of mine stayed behind with farmers and I was able to carry some over to the new, to green line. Yeah. So we were about 5 million when we, when we merged total. Yeah. And

I think, I think there's a really good opportunity just to like take a step back and see how far you guys have come, you know, because you guys took a company that had 5 million in insurance premiums and you guys took it to 35 million together, you know, this is a perfect example of the, the saying one plus one equals three. Yeah. Right. I mean, in this case, you know, one plus one equals 10, you know,

you guys 10 X to that at this point are, you know, approaching that soon. So I think it's incredible. You guys have built. So let's talk now about, about green line and how that came about the early years, walk me through the initial struggles of, you know, not now working together with your significant others, because I'm sure there's plenty of struggles and I'm, you know, maybe different opinions that are coming up, you know, we'll saw that

like so many. And just like Paul stated, he was always so good at like building those relationships with, with mortgage brokers or with, with, for all partners. And he was all about the cells, cell, cell cells and go, go, go. Right. And so that was, that was great. And that, that to me, you know, any business partnership, you want to have one person who's a big dreamer, a big visionary, big hustler. Yeah. And then you also

want to have another person who focuses on those systems and processes, make sure that they're a little bit more conservative, that they, they have more of that negativity in place to kind of keep it grounded. Right. And so I feel that that's where I came in because he was so just focused on that. And then when we merged the biggest trouble, I think for me or for us was that I had everything was a system for

everything. Like I made sure that I had a customer service rep who only did customer service. Then I had a commercial account manager who only did commercial account, managing and servicing and underwriting and all that for my commercial clients. Yeah. And then I was the one that was selling. So then as you can already tell, those job descriptions had to follow suit. Right. So when I came in and we're reorganizing with our staff, because I had

three staff members in my office and then he had three staff members in his office outside of the partners, right? When we merged, I had to close down Clear Lake office and I had to move everybody over to the Southwest side. So then I automatically lost two employees because they didn't want to make the drive. Right. So now I brought over one. Then he automatically lost one and that was for personal. She had personal reasons. She

had to leave. Sure. So now we had three employees combined plus the three partners and I'm over here rolling out a new employee handbook, rolling out job descriptions, reorganizing them and they've never done that before. And his employees, his, I quote unquote, now they're ours, right? But the employees that were under the Garcia entrance agency, they were upset because who is she? Right. And why are we following what she says now? Right. So now you have

to try to get everybody on the same page, everybody to see the same vision. And of course the partners have to learn how to work with each other as well, how to keep our personal opinions within us only so that way the employees don't feel that energy. Right. And that way the employees feel that we're a team united front and so they can't pick between us. Right. Yeah. So that took, I want to say a whole

year to iron all of that iron all of it out. None of those original three employees are with us anymore. Wow. Yeah. We had to rebuild a completely new team. I'm glad to say that now we're at 23 employees outside of us three partners. And so the systems worked is just that implementing them and getting them to adopt them and getting them to believe in your vision is the tough part. Yeah. I think, I think it's

very true when they say, you know, you can't teach a dog, an old dog new tricks. And I think for, you know, the vast majority of people, it's, it can be very difficult, very people that are not focused on, on growth, you know, and so I could definitely see that. Um, I want to talk about how now, like what, what kind of resources did you guys go to? And I think, um, you know, I don't know

if we talked about this before, but like traction, you know, what kind of tools, systems, resources, when we talk about systems and processes, right? You and I know we're talking about for people at home that are watching this, you know, it doesn't mean anything. Right. So implementing systems and processes, what did that actually look like? You spoke about the employee handbook, the roles and responsibilities, but what else did you implement to be able to make green

line, what it is today? So I had a lot of cheat sheets, which probably, um, put me, you know, ahead of the curve because in working in those district offices, the DMs, essentially their coaches, their business coaches, to their agents and I had two of them that implemented different coaching systems within their business. So one of them is Emith by Michael Gerber. Okay. And the second one was a 10 X rule by Grant Cardone, so I

have a ton of cheat sheets for those two coaching systems because when I was working with those DMs, they, of course, you had to like learn this so that you can help them teach the agents this. Yeah. So one of the big things, and I think for any small business, doesn't matter what your industry is, one of the big things that kind of turned the light bulb in my head on was, I remember this one district

manager, boss of mine, um, he told me, you need to create a list of all the things that it takes to run or to, to, yeah, to run the agency, like all the jobs that have to be done, customer service, sales, underwriting, you know, all the stuff, right, then you, whatever you don't like doing, because at, at first, you're the one that has to do all of them, yeah, right, HR accounting, you have to do everything

as a business owner. Every hat, yeah. Every hat. Yeah. Well, I want you to start picking out the stuff you don't want to do. Mm. And start just putting it in a, in a list. And then out of that list, start making a smaller list. And now you got job descriptions, right now, you know, if you don't want to call, yeah, put it on this other list with stuff you don't want to do, right. And you

know, so forth and so forth. And now you got job descriptions. And then anything that you start training your new employee on, write it down, make videos of it, make little screenshots of it, but keep it all in one place. Now you got an agency guide. Now you got the, the guide that you can give over to whoever the manager of so forth and so forth is and how they're going to do it for the next

person. Yeah. Right. I love how, I love how, like just you simplified it just to very simple terms. Very basic. Very basic. And you can do all this with word. Yeah. Like you don't have to invest in all these different software's yet. Yeah. Because especially not at the beginning of it, you know, you're building. Yeah, you bootstrapped. Yes. Right. Yes. Now of course, as you get more sophisticated as you start making more money, our CRM system

now is very sophisticated. We use a vertical systems and they have a ton of CRM systems, agent, agency sales room systems, raiders like Paul was talking about in the last podcast. Right now we, we utilize all of those. Right. But at the beginning, just in any industry, those are some of the simplest things that you start doing to start organizing. So you said first you do a list of things, right? And then from that, you pick

out the things that you don't like, right? You don't want to do. Right. And then you simplify. What is it that you said after you do that second list, you put others, I guess components of what that person is doing or that the actual tasks, I guess you would say. Right. Okay. So if it just says customer service, okay, move it to that list, but then what entails customer service? What are you doing? Is it billing

calls? Is it checking mail? Yeah. Is it confirming that they got their deck page, signing applications? Yeah. All those things. And so then it starts building job descriptions. And now at the beginning, any agency, any agency that I would see, one employee was doing everything. Right. They were expected to learn how to sell, how to underwrite, how to service, how to, you know, cold call, all of it. And they were responsible for all of it. Right.

Well, they would get overwhelmed and then burn out and then they never wanted to do insurance again. Absolutely. So when I started rolling this out to employees that we were hiring, you could see it in their face, even if they came from another agency over to our agency and I would tell them, this is all you have to do. I don't want you to over commit to other things and then burn yourself out. Yeah. So if

you manage your time, make sure you're doing these things. Right. Now, if you do want to do the extra, do the extra, I'm not going to stop you. You're going to get paid commission bonuses if you do the extra, but I need you to do your job description. Right. And as long as you give me these tasks done, you'll have a seat here. Yeah. I'm not going to fire you because you didn't produce X amount of

money because I just hired you to service or I just hired you to be an auditor or I just hired you to be an underwriter. Right. You know, things like that. It's beautiful. Yeah. Once you started growing, we started seeing more needs of more positions to simplify it even further. But I think at the very beginning, you stay big, you stay big. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think what's also truly important is having, forget where I

read this, but you want to have a conveyor belt, right? Think about like McDonald's, the assembly line, right? McDonald's is the best example that every book says, right? One guy is heating up the buns, one guy is just grilling up the meat. Exactly. And another guy is just putting on catch up and mail. That's it. Exactly. And so by having all these compartmentalized tasks, every person can become an expert in their own little niche that brings

more happiness, uh, more satisfaction in their, uh, in their job. Yeah. I mean, they feel accomplished, right? They're going to, they're going to feel like at the end of the day, like, well, I, I got it all done. Exactly. Right. I did my job and, uh, I get to go home now satisfied. Exactly. And you know, not everyone is going to be good at everything. So if you, whenever I do phone interviews, I'll ask every single

person that I call to interview. And usually the experience that I'm looking for depends on what I'm hired or what we are hiring for. I'm sorry. What green line is hiring for? Then I'm asking those questions in the phone interview. So, but the same question I always ask is if you've worked already in an insurance agency, you've noticed that a lot of employees are hybrid and you're doing both, you're doing customer service and you're doing sales.

Yeah. But which one did you enjoy the most? Right. And I just let them answer. Right. Some of them will say, Oh, I love talking to people. I love the service or I love talking to people. That's why I love the cells because I love going networking. I love going to do this and that. So that's how I know in which team they're going to fall in because we have a new business team and then we

have the service team. Right. It depends on how they answer where we're going to push them to. Good. And it doesn't mean that they're always going to stay there. Maybe they can grow or maybe they see that they're not as happy as they thought they would be there and then maybe we'll reorganize, but at least at the beginning, this is where I want you to focus. Right. Yeah. Because this is what they explicitly said that they

like. Yes. And because cells people typically, typically, and you know, I know there's exceptions to rules, but typically if you're really good at selling, you're not good at organizing or you're not good at the follow-ups on servicing or when the policy cancels things like that. Right. You're just good at selling. Right. And that's all I want you to focus on. Absolutely. If you're a good underwriter and you're organized to the tee and you dot your eyes

and you know, you make sure everything is spelled right, you're going to stay as an underwriter. Right. That's a perfect position for you and I don't need you to sell. Don't stress yourself out because some people get so stressed out about selling. Right. Right. Don't stress yourself out. That's not a job description for you. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I couldn't agree more. Man, that's, you know, you're bringing me back to kind of like the roots

when I just started business. You know, the Emith was a book that I read fully, you know, traction, I think they brought a lot of, so I'm an engineer by trade. I studied electrical engineering and so, you know, like from a very young age, I got programmed in my mind through engineering school to like always everything needs to have a foundation. Right. And so, like whenever I was like already seeing the vision of what I wanted

a company to be, I would always, I needed to see the ground up instead of starting from the top down. Right. And so I think, you know, all of this is just bringing me back, you know, flashbacks. Like when I first started, I think it's a, it's a beautiful journey to, to be on. But I think what's really, what I really want to touch on is how you guys actually took it from 5 million to 35

million in how many years? Oh, we've only been active now, five, six years? Five, six years. Wow. 2020 was the first real year. Massive growth. Massive growth. So what did it take to be able to get it there? Well, one was completely trusting each other. Yeah. Right. We were talking about this earlier when, when a couple, especially a husband and a wife worked together, you, you get them, you get caught up with arguments. You get caught

up with sometimes petty arguments. Yeah. Who's right? Who's wrong? No, my way. No. Why your way? Right. You know, but then you have to step back and say, Hey, we're on the same team. Right. We both want to be successful. Yeah. Our kids are depending on this. The end, we're on the same team. Right. Let's, let's figure out a solution and let's figure it out quickly, right? We had the first three months to kind of start

and the first three months were probably the hardest in 2020, but then COVID happened. And the beautiful thing that COVID, I don't know if I can remember COVID caused this or the other way around, but the real estate market flourished at that time. Yeah. And we doubled down on our relationships. We both, you know, we both had a, a roll of decks or, you know, contact lists of the referral partners that we both had worked with

and we're calling them and we're like, Hey, just want to let you know, we're still working. Everyone's still in the office. Nobody's working from home. You know, if you need help fast, we're here for you. Bubble block. Yeah. The floodgates opened really the floodgates open. I mean, he, he explained it to you. We had to stay up till two three in the morning, sometimes trying to release quotes back out timely and, you know, meeting our promises

and making sure we were there for our referral partners. Right. But that, that first year of 2020, we grew our business three X, three times. Three times? Yeah. In one year. In one year. Holy cow. That was the biggest growth both of us had seen, right? Yeah. And even from our colleagues or friends or other insurance agents that we knew, we were just both very astonished of what we were able to accomplish that one year. Yeah.

That's bananas. So then, yeah, then the arguments started coming to a stop because we saw what worked. Yeah. Like, Hey, yeah, this was hard, but look at what, look at what it caused. Look at what worked. Now we need to play up our strengths. Right. Now we know what's working. Now we know who to hire. Yeah. To be able to fill those needs. Right. We need like two more new business part, new business agents. So that

way they can fulfill these quotes and that way we're not staying up till three in the morning anymore. Right. Yeah. And so forth and so forth. Right. And I think it's really important, you know, whenever you have like just, you know, this rapid success and just, they always say that, you know, whenever you have success, it's when opportunity meets preparation. And I think this is a really great example of that because I don't really think it's

very normal, the kind of growth that you guys had in that year, it's not common. But I think it goes to show the amount of preparation that needed to happen for you guys to be ready for that opportunity. Right. Had you guys not been prepared in a good headspace, both in your marriage and your relationship to your team and in that united front that you spoke about, that would not have been able to happen. Yeah. I

don't think so. But sometimes it comes to people and they're not ready for it. And so what happens, the opportunity just passes them by. Correct. Right. And so you guys were able to capitalize on that by being prepared. Right. And that, and even going back to when Paul even said the idea of, Hey, we should merge, you know, and, and at that point, I got into my own ego. Yeah. And of course his father, Pablo got

into probably his own ego like, well, I don't want to share my business with her and vice versa, I didn't want to share my business with them. You know, like this is what I wanted to do on my own. But you guys were fighting for a hundred percent of the grave versus what we were able to do together. Right. And so then when COVID hit and I remember Paul calling me and he said, Hey, have you

heard about this? They're talking about shutting down like government's going to make everybody stay home and I'm like, what? They can't do that. Like there's no way. Yeah. Sure enough. For hours, we everyone was hearing that, Hey, stay home orders, blah, blah, blah, and we really were able to rely on each other. We were on the same team. We were able to lean on each other and we were able to divide and conquer. If I had

something to do, like go out to network, he's at the office and he's having to handle a lot of the, you know, the questions from our team and the complaints or whatever it is that he has to handle at the office and vice versa. If he's out networking, then I'm doing that at the office and we both help each other out a lot. Yeah. And so who knows if that success would have been possible without us

being a united team front like you just mentioned. Yeah. Absolutely. No, I don't really see it, you know, I don't, I don't think you guys would have had that success. I do not been united and prepared for that, you know, so like I said, I think you guys as super power is figuring out that way to be cohesive and to be able to work together effectively. Yeah. I think that's probably the most difficult thing when it

comes to partnerships, any kind of partnerships, right? Right. It's, it's finding that way to like fully let go by trusting in that other person and saying, Hey, you know what? I'm going to trust you with my life. Yeah. You know, I'm, you're trusting me with mine and we're going to kick ass when we grow. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, like you said, you want to trust, but I don't, I won't say blindly trust either. Like trust

the verify, trust and verify, cover your butt, like put some contracts in place. Yeah. Make sure you're both in agreement on certain things, you know, right, right? Yes. Yes. Yes. At the end of the day, you're on the same team. You want the business to flourish. Yeah. Sometimes you got to humble yourself and say, you know what? That's not the way I would do it. But let's see if it works. Right. Right. And then if it

doesn't work, let's correct it fast. Right. And then it all works out. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, you guys are working with a lot of referral partners right now, you know, you guys, I think that's been one of your guys's most important growth. I'm really glad that I went to your guys's office and I saw you guys have your own section dedicated only for your referral partners. So they're, you know, just to like kind of paint a picture,

you walk into their office, it's a long hallway, Paul's office is here, this is office over there. But if you keep going, it's almost like an L shape. And on the other side of the office, they have their own small team and that team's dedicated only to referral partners. Where did this idea come from? To be able to segment it off, to really dive in and hone in on the service that you guys provide to your

referral partners. Where did that idea come from? So it was probably probably the Paul side of the agency at first because like I mentioned, they were already really good at working with some mortgage brokers. They already kind of had their own playbook of how they got the ones that they already had. And so he had, whenever it was just the Garcia insurance agency, it was him and one other producer that they divided up their lead sources,

like the mortgage brokers, they divided them up and then they were assigned a person, right? Yeah. So it was two of them and that's all they handled all day long. And then everyone else in their office would handle the service. And in my office at the Morales insurance agency, it was very similar where I had a customer service only then I would do all the new business and then I had the commercial account rep. So when

we merged, we kept the same idea where we're going to have new business sales and that's all they're going to do. That's all they're going to focus on is cater to these mortgage brokers to the referral partners. Look at that email, don't do anything else. Make sure you're applying to the quotes and make sure you're applying to their request for evidence of insurance and voices, all that stuff to get the closing done. Once the closing was

done, then it goes to the service team. And then that's where I started dividing up all the job roles because it's not enough to just say, you're a customer service. They have to know exactly which part of customer service they're going to handle, right? So we have the front desk, we have customer service, one who handles a lot of the easier stuff, then we have a more experienced customer service who she handles a lot of the

rewrites and more customer complaints and things like that. Then we have a service team lead and then we have renewal reps and then we have underwriters. Now we have an auditor. So all of that is just breaking it into even more parts because now we're writing such large volume that we need more eyes on everything. So how many policies does it take to be able to get to 35 million of insurance premiums? I don't even know.

It's a lot. I don't know because I stopped keeping count of policies. We will keep count of the monthly policies that we write that are just home because that's how we can market ourselves to our referral partners, to our mortgage brokers. So for example, last month, a little bit of a slower month because it was January numbers. So we closed 230 home policies. It's a slow month. It was a little bit of a slower month. Very

slow too. Only 230. Only 200. But that only captures home. That doesn't capture like all the auto and the commercial that we write. And so total for the month, it was about 468,000 in premium, but I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly how many policies because I'm only keeping track of the big volume of the premium numbers. And I'm sure some drop off and so you have some churn rate, I mean, you got to be

able to. And insurance, you got a ton of attrition. We do pretty well just because we have that big of a service team because we're not scared to invest in our service. So we hover anywhere between 80 to 90 percent of retention, which is typically pretty good for an insurance agency. And I want to just keep improving those numbers, right? But yes, to your point, that's why we don't really keep count of policy versus the premium

numbers. Because that number changes on a monthly basis. Too often. Really? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, even the new business that we just wrote, I'm calculating and that's why the auditor is so important because I wanted to capture how much of that new business do I lose within 60 days? Yeah. Do we lose within 60 days? And usually we do lose anywhere between 10 to 15 percent of that. Wow. So I want to know exactly which

ones canceled. Why did they cancel? What can we do better? Yeah. And that's where the auditor comes into place. Yeah. So then like tracking how many current policies you have is not really at KPI. That really means anything. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Because some of your policies, even, you know, some of them may be super small and premium. Like we do bonds and we do renters and those could be $300 to $500 a year. Yeah. So

that's not really going to help or hurt. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Right. Yeah. Let's focus on the numbers that actually matter to the business. Right. So that's why we do focus on those home policy counts, but that's only to market to our referral brokers. Got it. Makes sense. Makes sense. And that's awesome. You guys also have some outside partners that you have you work with. So I guess insurance agents come in and they work with you and

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to help out insurance agents that maybe you want to work with Greenline? Yeah. Yeah. So that was something that I started implementing back in the Morales insurance agency because with working with so many insurance agents when I used to work at the district offices, I started building so many relationships and I arrived on relationships just like I was mentioning earlier in our conversation. Any opportunity to learn from you or talk business and things like that, I

would soak it all in. Same thing with other insurance agents. I don't ever see them as enemies or like, oh, you're my competitor, I don't want to talk to you. Right. No, let's talk. Let's see how maybe you're better at something that we aren't. And for example, we don't do any health insurance at all. That is the one line of business that we don't do. We don't do health insurance. Really? So I refer all that out

to my good friend with US health advisors. She's an expert at it and she, I refer everybody to her because I just, I don't have the bandwidth for it right now, you know. So because we started and Paul also, he has so many friends or colleagues and family that are also insurance agency owners, we have a big network of them. And at the Morales insurance agency, I remember being approached by a friend of mine who said,

hey, I'm leaving insurance. I don't want to do this anymore. You know, I already got a full-time job as an accountant, but I have a lot of referrals that still call me can, if I refer them to you, can we do a split of commission? And I said, yeah, that works and so I drew up a contract, made her sign it. We know what to expect from each other and how it's going to work. So when

we merged, we took it a step further and we said, hey, we could actually house it. If you need access to certain carriers, 1099, this is a contract agreement. This is a split, but you service all your clients. It's your book of business. We won't steal it from you or anything like that. We have an agreement of the exit plan as well on that agreement so that way we both know the expectation and it's been working

wonderfully. Wow. That's amazing. How many partners do you guys have now? Right now we're at 13. 13? Nice. Nice. Do you have any specific goal on where you want to grow that to? No, no. Honestly, it's only because we don't want to hire without experience, or not hire, but we don't want to go into a partnership if you don't have any experience and the only reason is because we don't have a trainer yet. We don't have

a full-time training manager that will sit there and hold your hand and show you everything. In order to do that, you'll have to be a W2 employee for us because that's the only way we'll be able to train you full-time. Right. So, for that agreement, you already have to know what you're doing, you already have to have your own systems and processes in place, and then that way we're working as a partner now. Yeah. We're not

hand-holding you through stuff. Right. So, we don't have a goal just yet. Maybe if we hire a full-time trainer, which is one of the goals for this year, is to hire that person, then we'll actually put a goal out there. Yeah. Makes sense. But, you know, I think it goes back to the way that you operate business, right? And I think that you're not going to do anything without having that right system, that right process in

place, to make sure you set people up for success and not failure. Right. Right. And we don't like to over-promise. Right. We're not going to over-promise you, the world, and say, "Oh, you know, you're going to make so much money with us and we're just going to be able to ride this wave," and then you'll be disappointed. Yeah. And then that just rolls, you know, bad reviews and bad reputation, and so we don't want to do

that either. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. I think, you know, shifting gears here a little bit, I think you're, you know, at the very beginning and before we start filming you, you know, you spoke very candidly about your passion about being a mother, right? And being a woman in a leader role juggling business, relationships, you know, your marriage, and also your kids, right? I'm not even going to pretend that I know what that is, right? So

what is that like for you? You know, I'm sure maybe a lot of, you know, women that are mothers that also have their own businesses are listening to this, you know, and look up to you. So what is that like for you on a day-to-day basis, on a monthly basis, yearly basis? What does that look like for you? I will say that I have a lot of help. Yeah. I have a ton of help. And I

like to say that from the very beginning, because as a woman, as a mother, as a wife, you start putting all these expectations on yourself, "Oh, I should be doing this," or "I should be the one that does this." "I should be the one picking up the kids from school." You know, if not, they're going to think, "I'm such a bad mom." I adopted the theory very quickly, because when I first opened the agency, I became

pregnant with Lila, not even two years in. And so then it made me realize, "Hey, if you still want to take care of your business and be a good mom, you're going to have to hire a full-time nanny." Because if not, I would be at my wit's end on both ends, right? And so I tried to hire a full-time nanny that would come to the agency. I learned this from a good friend of mine, who she

did this when her daughter was young. And she's also, in her own right, a really good agency owner, very big volume. So she would have a full-time nanny that would come to her office, and her daughter would be at the office with her all the time, so I thought I could do that, too. It wasn't working out for me, just because, you know, when my daughter was crying, I would want to go take care of her.

And when she needed something, I wasn't letting the full-time nanny do her job, because they were right there with me. So then that full-time nanny, she was good, but she ended up quitting on me because it was a far drive for her. And at the same time, my mother became ill. She has a heart condition, and so because she was a full-time waitress, she couldn't keep up with waitressing full-time and then with her heart condition. So

I told her, "Hey, I am coming up to a crossroad where I need a new full-time nanny. I don't want them in the office anymore, but I also don't trust anybody. So I'll make you a deal. Let me know how much you want to make, and let's draw up a salary plan, and if you could be my full-time nanny, that would be great." So she took the opportunity, and she told me yes, which, thank God she

did, because she has been my full-time nanny ever since. Really? Yes. What was that? Lila was born in 2017, so that was probably at the end of 2017 because it was when she was six months. Six months? Yeah. Got it. Yeah. It was at the end of 2017 that I hired on my mom as my full-time nanny. Man. Fast forward to now. Yeah. I believe in community. I believe in a lot of community to help with

the kids. And when I say community, of course, my in-laws help a lot, their great-grandparents, my mom's a great-grandmother. Yeah. He's a great dad. He's very active with the kids. And then on top of that, you know, I have a lot of help at home. I hire people to clean the house, and then I recently hired somebody to cook meals for us in the evenings at least three times a week. So I believe in just if

you could wrap yourself around, if you can, as a businesswoman, if you can accept that help, then I think you would get a lot more done during the day and then still feel refreshed to come home and to spend time with your kids without feeling like, "Oh, God, I still need to make dinner. Oh, God, I still need to do a little laundry. Oh, God, I still need to do this." Right. You know, so I started

learning that just like I hire at the office, why am I not hiring for help at home? Right. Yeah. It makes sense. I think, and this is something that you mentioned earlier, you know, I feel like a lot of women do struggle with this, this is something that you mentioned, that this is not for me. So because I don't understand this, I'm taking the conversation previously from Dulcet. A lot of women struggle with, you mentioned that

a lot of women struggle with letting go, right? Because they feel like, "Oh, I should be cooking for my kids. I should be taking care of them," right? So what did that process look like for you doing that? Well, I mean, if you could probably already tell, my business just, that was the dream, right, from when I was younger, I just made up my mind very young that I wanted to own a business. Yeah. And the

agency was going to be that avenue to be the first step to entrepreneurship. So when I became pregnant, my mind just started racing, like, "How am I going to do this? How am I going to be a good mom and still carry my business because I don't want to let it go," and both to me, both were important. And maybe this is not the case for everybody. Maybe some people, once they have their baby in their

arms, they say, "Well, I just want to stay home with my baby all the time." And yes, that ping hit me, but then I also, I had such a struggle of, "I'm not letting go of my business. My business is also my baby." And it matters, everything that I worked for for the past, at the time, for the past 10, 12 years, I can't just let all that go. Of course not. Yeah. And you hear this

time and time again, mothers will sacrifice their careers for their children. Yeah. They'll stay home for 15 years with their children and then have to go back into the workforce after 15 years. That hurts you as a businesswoman. Yeah. It does. I don't know how much we try to sugarcoat it or talk around it, but if you're out of the working force for 15 years, it's tough to get back in it. Yeah. It's tough for people

to hire you again. Yeah. So I was not letting go of my business. And so it was very clear from the very beginning, and while I was pregnant, I was talking to my other friends that I knew that had already had children that were running their businesses. And I was just like, "How did you do it? How did you do it? How did you do it?" And like I said, the one that made sense to me

was, "I were the full-time nanny. Yeah." Still do what you're doing. Yeah. Why do you have to give it up? Yeah. You know? Yeah. And I feel like a lot of women do feel that need to have to sacrifice, right? I feel like maybe a lot of women feel like, "Oh, you know, I should be staying at home with my kids." Right. And I think that it's refreshing to see you come in and be able to

showcase what you've been able to accomplish while being a full-time mother, while having two rockstar kids. I mean, your kids are like just amazing kids. Yeah. I look up to the way that you parent. You know? I told this to Paul also. Like, you know, I plan on having children in the future and, you know, like growing, being able to raise them and be able to do what you guys have done. I think it's truly... Thank

you. I think, you know, a lot of people will see this, you know, and they forget that you are a mother, right? Yeah. And your daughter just got back from gymnastics. She got first place. Yes. And her division. I was so happy. So proud of her. Yeah. I mean, she works her butt off, being a competitive gymnast, and for her to get first place, even she was amazed because she was like in all of herself. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And your boy Levi? Yes. Levi, he's a rockstar tune, what? Oh, gosh. Yes. He's in baseball and in soccer. Yeah. And he is a rockstar at both. Yeah. And he knows it. He... You ask him, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" He says. Yeah. Yeah. He loves it. I love that they're so active. Yeah. That they're responsible, that they're disciplined, and they're learning all of this through competitive sports. And I

really, really enjoy that. And, you know, to your point of whenever you make that decision, when you're pregnant, you're pretty much already making that decision of what am I going to do? Am I going to stay home? Am I not? And, you know, so when I first had Lila and this, the same thing happened with Levi because I did the same exact thing. Like I said, my business was so new. So I had her and thank

God delivery went well and everything. So I was blessed enough to where I could continue working. I started working after the first weekend. Like I took the first weekend off because she was born on like Fourth of July weekend. Yeah. So I took that weekend off and then Monday started sitting at my home office and I was working. Yeah. And thank God that my mom, since she was, you know, a great mom that she is, a

great grandma that she is, she would come over to my house and she would do the cooking, the cleaning, helping me with Lila when she was a newborn and things like that. I was back in the office within two weeks. Wow. I didn't take off anytime and I did the same thing with Levi, just kind of pressed repeat and did the same thing. I do sometimes have that guilt just like any other woman would where you

have that guilt of I miss that early years of development. I miss some stuff, you know, and sometimes I look back at it and I wish that I could have maybe sat a little bit more, but the business was growing. Yeah. And at the time, I mean, like I said, we merged at the end of 2019, Levi was born at the beginning of 2019. Yeah. So there was no time. Yeah. I want to even say pause,

let me sit. Yeah. There was no time. We were growing at such a high scale, but now I'm grateful that I made the sacrifice at the beginning. Yeah. Because now they remember me being at all the events, being at all the field trips, being at all the trips to compete, you wouldn't have been able to do that. Correct. Had you chosen your to stay at home at that time, right? Now by sacrificing at that early stage

of life for them, you were able to build a business that now funds a lifestyle where you can be present for them. Correct. Correct. And that was the goal the entire time. Of course. Spend time with them. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. To be available and to have the resources for them to, you know what, if he does want to pursue becoming a professional soccer player, it takes money, it takes time, it takes additional private trainings and

all that stuff. And so now we have the resources to do that, and I thank God for that. Yeah. That's incredible. That's incredible. Well, you guys have had just a massive success, massive growth. What do you think is the secret to your success? The secret to my success, to be honest, and I've said this time and time again, is consistency. There's an internal motivation, but motivation isn't every day, right? Yes, the dream, the desire to be

a business owner was always there. But then sometimes, and that's why a lot of coaches and a lot of trainers hate the word motivated. I'm not motivated every day to get up and get at it, but the consistency is there. I have my calendar completely planned out ahead of time. I mean, you and I scheduled this what a month ago, so if it's on the calendar, it's going to happen. Right. I'm going to confirm the appointment.

Every day I wake up at the same time, which is anywhere between 5.30 to 6.30 in the morning. I get dressed early in the morning, or if I have a gym session early in the morning, I get dressed right after, and then my day flows as normal. Every day, Monday through Saturday, I'm usually on, and by what I mean on is I'm always doing something for the business or for my family, but it's a consistency thing

because you're not always going to feel like it, but you always got to show up because nobody else is going to say, "Hey, Dulce, remember you wanted to do this? Remember you wanted that lifestyle? Remember you wanted that freedom? Nobody's going to keep you motivated every day. You've got to do it. You've got to get up and go." That's incredible. What would you say for any young woman or young mother that is in, let's say, 20-year-old

Dulce? What would you say to 20-year-old Dulce right now listening to this podcast? Just keep believing in yourself. Stay consistent. Like I just said, the good things that you're doing to believe in yourself, to make sure that those negative thoughts and those negative people don't damp your dream is the key because at the time, you know, 20-year-old Dulce, she wasn't making a whole lot of money. You didn't have a whole lot of savings. She was just

figuring things out as she went and kept learning, kept soaking up all that good advice, but you've got to keep at it. You've got to keep at it and don't ever let anybody take it away from you because so many people will come in and say, "Oh, what do you want to do? You want to be an insurance agent? Oh, I heard that's not really successful or, "Oh, I know a guy," and that didn't work out

for him. And now he sells furniture or whatever it is, but that's not me. You don't know me, and I'm going to get up and I'm going to make it happen and nobody's going to take that away, so I believe that at 20 years old, and I still believe it now every day. Yeah. That's amazing. I think that's great advice for anyone, that's any woman that's listening to this right now, for sure. Where do you see

yourself in the next 10 years? So what I want to do in the next 10 years is now be a true entrepreneur where I'm investing in boring businesses or other businesses that I'll be able to come in, help with the systems and processes, give my expertise, and sit back and say, "Okay, this business is great. Let it keep going." Now move on to the next one, hire some good leaders to keep that going, and then go

to the next one and go to the next one. So that's where I see myself in the next 10 years. I really want to do that shift from only being known as an insurance agent to now being known as an entrepreneur and being able to talk about business over various industries. And that's where it is. Yeah. That's where the next goal is. That's awesome. More boring businesses do you want to invest in? So because we're an

insurance, we're looking at other avenues that go higher in the scale of insurance as well. So that's one where, as a consumer, you don't really know the levels of the onion that it is of the policy that you're buying. So going that way or even going to other industries of, you know, if you invest in a nail salon, for example, or if you invest in, I don't know, a dry cleaner, any boring business that is always

going to stand the test of time and that is semi-recession-proof is what I'm interested in and being able to come and talk about what it is that's going on. Maybe be a silent investor even and just let it keep growing. It's amazing. Yeah. Well, I'm excited to see the next level of business that you venture into and I'm excited to see your growth. Thank you. I will need your services as we keep going. I mean, we

already use VANCOM for our virtual assistant that helps with the accounting team, and so that is just going to keep growing. We added one more member to the accounting team in Greenline to help with the accounts receivable, so we're solidifying that accounting team. Very nice. And thank you. Absolutely. I'm really excited as well. Absolutely. Happy to have you guys as clients and what I'm really excited about is this voice AI. I think you heard it a

little bit earlier, you know? Yes. What did you think about it? How did it sound? I think it's amazing. I think like we were just talking about all the software and systems that you can implement in your business to figure out what it is that you don't want to do. Right. Right. So many people hate that marketing aspect of the cold calling or door knocking or setting up appointments. Sure. I think that's a great solution for

a lot of industries. Absolutely. I'm excited for that growth and like I wrote over there, it's not artificial intelligence. It's emotional intelligence. Right. Exactly. Exactly. That's what I'm busy working on right now, so I'm excited to bring that to the marketplace. But Dulce, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you for having me. Absolutely. You're carving out the time. I know you're a busy, busy person. How can people find out more about you

if they want to maybe talk to you about, you know, having their, having help with a dedicated insurance agency. If they're a mortgage broker, a referral partner, maybe some outside partners. Maybe women that are, you know, business owners and they want to connect with you. Please, I love connecting with fellow business women because I love just talking about our experiences, talking about their business and learning through them as well. So my Instagram handle is DulceK, sorry,

6583, so DulceK 6583. You can also, of course, follow us on Green Line Group on Instagram or look at our website Green Line INS Group TX.com. Yeah. Awesome. So reach out to Dulce. So be able to connect with you. Yes, definitely. Thank you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.