RHS 189 - Revolutionizing Your Insurance Business: Strategies, Technology, and the Power of Podcasting with Shawn Fitzgerald

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Speaker 6 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. We have a tremendous episode for you today, conversation with Sean Fitzgerald.

Speaker 6 He's part of the Scratch Agency podcast and has his own agency. And

Speaker 6 gotten to know Sean over the last year, spent some time IRL at Doug Benz's event in New York, which was awesome as well.

Speaker 6 You can go back and check out the Dung Benz episode if you want to hear more about that.

Speaker 6 Also was on the Scratch Agency podcast with Sean,

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 we had a tremendous conversation there. We've had more conversations, social media stuff.

Speaker 7 And I think that

Speaker 6 I love the way that Sean is approaching the business. He seems to have both a

Speaker 6 progressive in terms of technology and new ways of prospecting, prospecting but also uh a healthy and heavy respect for the way the business was done uh and you know strong work ethic but also dealing with all the stuff that scratch agencies deal with and i think that his perspective his humility his understanding is willing to share and and uh and be candid is just phenomenal and loved having sean on the show and happy to share him and his expertise with you guys uh before we get on to sean just want to let you know if you're digging the show if you love the show if you enjoy the podcast and you want a little more,

Speaker 6 you know, if you're looking for

Speaker 6 10x ideas to build freedom into your life, the freedom that we need to be successful, that doesn't mean freedom from an overlord, although it can, it mostly means freedom from ourselves.

Speaker 6 That is the battle that I, and I think most of us who are trying to get better struggle with every day. I think we, we,

Speaker 5 you know,

Speaker 6 mistakenly place,

Speaker 6 we miss, we misrepresent what is holding us back from getting where we want to be i think oftentimes we look at external sources and that is almost never the case sure there are always going to be external things that we don't like appreciate or create obstacles but it is the internal limitations the internal boundaries the the the fear the emotions the feelings that we allow to steer the ship that uh ultimately i think keep us from getting to where we want to be and that's what finding peak is all about it's finding finding peak performance in our lives.

Speaker 6 And I work on this every day. And I take the ideas that I find.

Speaker 6 Sometimes I just find a quote.

Speaker 6 Sometimes I find research or hear someone who I follow say something and it triggers an idea that I start to implement or something that I've been thinking on for a long time that I, or a story or something that I've learned from.

Speaker 6 And I take these ideas, I distill them down and I put them out every Friday. And if that's something that you want to be a part of, go to findingpeak.com.
It's free.

Speaker 6 You can just subscribe by email, findingpeak.com, F-I-N-D-I-N-G-P-E-A-K.com. Guys, also, I want to give a quick shout out to SIA.

Speaker 6 As you know, I was

Speaker 6 Rogrisk and myself were acquired. They didn't acquire my physical body.
That's illegal. But they did acquire Rogue Risk and my services back in April of 2022.
It's been a tremendous experience.

Speaker 6 And what I've learned, and I've learned so much about SIA over that time period that I just didn't know.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 if you want to maximize the value of your book of business in terms of cashflow, revenue into your business, they have the best contracts in the industry.

Speaker 6 And, you know, I know people that go there for market access, but I think the real prime time players, the PTPers that are choosing SIA are going because they...

Speaker 6 it immediately increases the revenue of their of the book of business you already have not to mention all the new business opportunities that you get from sia So there's so many benefits.

Speaker 6 I don't want to go into all of them, but I know that money talks.

Speaker 6 And guys, in a crazy, crazy economic world that we're in today, I think positioning yourself in a place with stability and longevity and max revenue contracts like SIA could be good for agency.

Speaker 6 I'm not. you know, shilling SIA by any means.
It's not for everybody, but there's 5,500 plus members in the United States who've chosen SIA and are are doing well.

Speaker 6 So I'd love to give them a shout out.

Speaker 6 No obligation to do so for sure, but it's been such a positive experience for me and I've learned so much that I just wanted to put that in front of you.

Speaker 6 So you can go to SIA.com if you're interested in that and you're an insurance professional. Finding Peak if you want more stuff on Peak performance.

Speaker 6 And as always, I just want to tell you, I love you for listening to the show. Let's get on to Sean Fitzgerald.

Speaker 7 I'm going to shabbo.

Speaker 5 Yo, yo, what's happening, man?

Speaker 7 What's up, dude?

Speaker 5 How you doing?

Speaker 7 What's the good word?

Speaker 5 You know, playing a lot of defense these days with

Speaker 5 the craziness we have going on. Yeah, I would say it's a Long Island thing, but it seems to be a nation thing.
So, you know, I'm dealing with it like everybody else.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I think

Speaker 7 there are definitely certain parts of the country that are getting hit harder than others, others, too. And it seems like anywhere that is any kind of

Speaker 7 coastal or water or really anything that isn't kind of very vanilla is getting hit the hardest. Um,

Speaker 7 at least that's that's that's kind of what I'm seeing. Um,

Speaker 7 it's tough. It's freaking, it's tough, man.
It's tough when it's tough when this stuff starts to happen. I mean, I know it's a natural cycle, but it's definitely tough.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it's scary too, because I mean, I have a nice base of property insurance on the south shore of Long Island.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, the south shore of Long Island, now, if you get within like two miles of the coast,

Speaker 5 I mean, there's like three carriers that'll that'll write you, and then you're going not admitted, you know. So I guess I have to be blessed.

Speaker 5 There's still a few admitted regional carriers left, but once I see them tighten it up, it starts to make me worry a little bit, you know.

Speaker 7 Now,

Speaker 7 do you

Speaker 7 is there any part of you that also sees that as an opportunity? Like sees it as an opportunity to step in and say, hey, look, there's only this many carriers left.

Speaker 7 A lot of people are going to freak out. Or if it's not their specialty, they'll

Speaker 7 run or they'll let it go because they don't know what to do. And you can kind of come in and being that you're there and you know how to do it, you can step up and put some business on the books.

Speaker 5 Totally. So I have three of the regional markets that write within two miles of the South Shore.
So we purchase a lot of homeowners leads.

Speaker 5 I know some people are against that but those people are idiots yeah yeah i mean we have a we have a really good close ratio i i think it's a good close ratio for the leads just doing the math we're around like 10

Speaker 5 so i mean if i pay 150 bucks for 10 leads and one policy pays me 300 plus in revenue i'm really happy with that because i'm going to get the residual on the back end you know Yeah, and that's not including getting the auto and the umbrella and maybe they have a business and referrals and things like that.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I

Speaker 7 honestly think that the whole like lead buying thing that that's legacy

Speaker 7 thinking. Um, those are people who

Speaker 7 aren't growing a book right now, aren't starting right now. Like, yeah, if you built your agency in the 80s,

Speaker 7 you know, maybe you look at it and you go, Oh, we don't need to buy leads. It's like that's not the way the world works today, it's just not.
Like, we, we,

Speaker 7 my philosophy has always been the point of

Speaker 7 if you think of it like an insurance agency, then sure, maybe, maybe in some purist, weird way, you know, purchasing leads isn't appropriate.

Speaker 7 But if you think of it as an insurance business, then you need to bring in accounts and put revenue on the books. It's a business.
And

Speaker 7 I think the ideology that some people operate with is crazy.

Speaker 7 And frankly, when I see someone or hear someone who has that type of ideology, I'm like, I now know how to beat you. Now I know how to beat you.

Speaker 7 Like you're, your steadfast ideology creates weak points that can be exposed. So.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think with the leads, you just, you have to come at it with like a calculated approach, right? Like

Speaker 5 I used to, at my old agency, they used to, they used to purchase leads and it wasn't bad. It worked, but we never really had like a process how to handle the leads.

Speaker 5 I mean, now there's like a whole, hey, when the lead comes in, they're getting hit with an automated text. They're getting hit with an automated email.
We're calling them right away.

Speaker 5 We're following up two more times on a phone call if they don't, you know, respond the first time.

Speaker 5 And I mean, like, it's gotten to the point where I brought up within two miles of the South Shore before.

Speaker 5 Like, I'm only purchasing home insurance leads on Long Island within two miles of the South Shore

Speaker 5 because I know the captive carriers aren't operating in that space. So there's not going to be as much competition.

Speaker 5 And if I could keep my, and so I'm picking zip codes, you know?

Speaker 7 Yep.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 listen, if I'm going to have a 10% rate, I just talked about this with my producer the other day. I'm like, hey, we'll do four a day.
Then we bumped it to five. Then we bumped it to six.

Speaker 5 And I'm like, if we keep a 10% ratio, I'll just, we'll just keep bumping this thing up until we can't handle it anymore. You know? Yeah.
So that's kind of where I'm at with it.

Speaker 7 It's math. It's math.
That's the part. Like, that is the part that I've never understood about this business is all these like unspoken rules.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 7 Like, you don't do this and you don't do that. And agencies don't buy, don't do business that way.
And it's like, what are you talking about?

Speaker 7 Like, but I just have never, I've never understood the unspoken rules. I've just never, I mean, I know what they are.

Speaker 7 I don't mean like, I've just never understood how you could possibly do business that way.

Speaker 7 Now, now, look, most agents are so terrible at sales that it's just, you know, and this is why you hear, I started doing this thing in my keynotes where

Speaker 7 I will,

Speaker 7 I'll like

Speaker 7 pretend like I'm being nice and I'll say, like, who works on referrals? Who loves referrals? You raise your hand. Who's a referral agency?

Speaker 7 Like, if I, you know, and they'll, you know, people will be like, oh, I'm a referral agency. And they'll raise their hand.
I'll be like, you are all lazy and you're terrible at what you do.

Speaker 7 And they'll look at me like, what? And I'll be like, you want to know know why you like referrals? It's because they're easy. That's why you like them.
And

Speaker 7 that's great.

Speaker 7 And I'm not saying you shouldn't do them, but there are like 15 other ways to get business that would help you grow in addition to your referrals that you don't do because you're a referral-based agency.

Speaker 7 And that keeps you growing at one, 2% a year, maybe flat. And

Speaker 7 that's all you do.

Speaker 7 But if you added buying leads or a little bit of inbound or some networking or a referral partner or whatever you could grow five six seven percent you just don't want to do that work and

Speaker 5 i just think that we get our industry is so okay with just easy and whatever that it's just so there's just opportunity everywhere yeah i think yeah i think part of the problem is like in the beginning some people are are so hungry and they do all the extra things they should do to bring on new business.

Speaker 5 And then they grow their book to a certain size and then they kind of just coast and work on referrals only. I think that's where the, that's where the opportunity comes for us, you know?

Speaker 7 Yeah, 100%. Yeah.
I couldn't agree more. There's, um, I've told this story before, but uh, back in my murder group days, there was this traveler's rep who

Speaker 7 was the rep. I can't even remember his name, but uh, he would come around and he would stop in our office like two times a month.

Speaker 7 And then one day, and I can't remember his name, I just was like, dude, what are you doing here? Like, you're here all the time. Like, what?

Speaker 7 You know, he was a nice guy and he was funny. He was actually a cool dude.
And he wasn't like your normal, boring rep.

Speaker 7 But he would walk in just to like hang out. And I'd be like, what are you doing? And he'd be like, I have 47 agencies in my territory, and only five of them grew last year.

Speaker 7 Not grew with travelers, literally grew their agency versus the year before.

Speaker 7 he's like and he goes internally we have this like he had this name for it that he you know but we'll just say that they it basically was like they have a number everybody's number is different could be 175 000 in personal income it could be 250 it could be 500 doesn't matter the minute they hit that number submissions plummet business plummets their growth flat lines And he's like, we don't hear from them anymore.

Speaker 7 They don't care. They don't come to conferences.
They don't go to trainings.

Speaker 7 he's like nothing he goes it's like all this activity they hit their personal income number and whack they just shut everything down he's like and he's like and you just see it over and over and over again and there's part of me that's like that person maybe those people are smart and then there's part of me that's like

Speaker 7 maybe

Speaker 7 i just also couldn't live with myself

Speaker 5 yeah i mean the code the whole carrier rep thing is

Speaker 5 wild to me. That listen, there's good carrier reps out there.

Speaker 7 I love some of them.

Speaker 5 But the fact that they could just walk in unannounced,

Speaker 5 that stuff just drives me crazy. I actually got this from Mike Crowley.

Speaker 5 Mike didn't even tell me.

Speaker 5 Mike told Steven, and Steven told me it was a,

Speaker 5 I guess, you know, telephone game. But

Speaker 5 I once a month now set time, like three hours aside, once a month to talk to carrier reps. And that's it.

Speaker 5 If a carrier rep wants to Zoom, they reach out to me now now and they say, Hey, in 30 minutes, can we do a zoom?

Speaker 7 No, you know, why do you talk to them at all?

Speaker 5 That's a fantastic question. That's a good question.
I mean, I guess it's to keep the relationship with the carrier, you know, see if there's any changes going on.

Speaker 7 Do they even know the answer to those questions?

Speaker 5 I'd probably have to fact-check it.

Speaker 7 I'd say

Speaker 7 the reps are accurate in their info 60% of the time, maybe 40,

Speaker 7 5% of the time. It's a good point.

Speaker 7 only meet with them when there's a reason to meet now. And I've said it to them.
And I've just said, look, like,

Speaker 7 you know, like we're using,

Speaker 7 we're setting up a pretty, pretty,

Speaker 7 we're doing a lot of testing with carrier sales centers. That's right now in commercial lines.

Speaker 7 And I firmly believe in carrier sales centers.

Speaker 7 cannot be profitable writing bops under $5,000. It can't be profitable writing accounts under $5,000.
It just can't be in commercial lines. It's impossible.

Speaker 7 I shouldn't say impossible. Highly improbable that you will be profitable writing accounts under that size.

Speaker 7 So we're, so I'm testing. And what's interesting is they're as good or better salespeople than most of us.

Speaker 7 They're way more responsive. They know their products better.
They follow up more often.

Speaker 7 And last month with one of our carrier sales centers, we had a 47% hit ratio, which is pretty good.

Speaker 7 So I have been meeting with the rep,

Speaker 7 the manager of the carrier sales center department, and our underwriter quite a bit for carrier sales business

Speaker 7 like twice a month, three times a month, because we're working on a program together. Once we figure this out,

Speaker 7 I'm not going to talk to these people anymore because there's not a need. That's not a personal attack.
I actually like all of them. I think they're all great.
I don't have a beef with them.

Speaker 7 There's no reason for you to tell me, hey, we want more bakeries this month. Or, hey, let me give you our hit list.
Yeah. So you're telling me all the stuff you used to write,

Speaker 7 not the stuff that you're going to write in the future. How about this? You tell me now

Speaker 7 where the, where the lowest rates will be in August. So I can be ready to write that stuff in August.
Telling me that you used to have a low price on bakeries back in May doesn't help me.

Speaker 7 in June, July, and August.

Speaker 7 Because you don't control the pricing. You're a marketing rep.
And the underwriter, they can change the pricing

Speaker 7 in a dime. So it's like,

Speaker 7 I do not meet with them. I don't.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I'm not. I don't think you, here's what I like.
You don't have an obligation to meet with them. They make you feel like you do.

Speaker 7 I would guarantee there is nothing in your contract with that carrier that says you have to meet with that marketing rep.

Speaker 5 I agree. I guess it's

Speaker 5 maybe it's just the way I've been conditioned, but I feel like if I don't meet with them, I could lose the appointment. It's just in my head.
I don't know why.

Speaker 7 But I feel like, you know, you only lose appointments when you stop writing business with them. Yeah.

Speaker 7 Because that person, because remember, and I feel like I'm, I don't mean to be like preaching here, but I just have very, very strong feelings on this. That person's entire motivation is more premium.

Speaker 7 Right. That's their whole motivation.
For them to get their bonus, they need you to write more business.

Speaker 7 They believe wasting your time talking about the things you're going to write gets them more business.

Speaker 7 And what I tell them is the more time you spend with me, the less business you're going to get because I'm not doing the things I need to do to put business on the books.

Speaker 7 You're taking time away from my day. So that's a half hour, an hour,

Speaker 7 once a month that I lose that could be prospecting. It could be closing.
It could be account rounding.

Speaker 7 you're costing me that time because so if you want me to write more business stay away from me unless you have a really good deal.

Speaker 7 You want to up my commission percentage to incentivize me to write more with you, call me. I'm interested in that.

Speaker 7 You have a special niche program that no one else has that will allow me to crush my market with your carrier. Call me.
Everything else, no, thanks. I'm good.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Well, hey, maybe you got to have a good relationship with them first in order to get those insights.
You know, I think you're.

Speaker 7 Look, I'm just, this is my opinion.

Speaker 7 I hear you. The good news is

Speaker 7 the good news is, America, you can have, we can have differing opinions and everything's good, but

Speaker 7 I think you will find,

Speaker 7 being that you are a forward-thinking dude, that those meetings are fucking easy. Yeah.

Speaker 5 No, I hear you.

Speaker 5 The customer service center thing is an interesting conversation. I, you know, I would just say probably like a year ago, I just started looking into it.

Speaker 5 And again, maybe this comes back to just conditioning being in the agency for so long and doing things a certain way. Like my first reaction without even like thinking about it was,

Speaker 5 I don't want to push anyone off to the service side. They're not going to handle them right.
I'm going to lose business. You know, they're just going to deal with them directly.

Speaker 5 But I've been using, so there's a national carrier we use, I'll just do travelers for personal lines.

Speaker 5 And I've been using their dedicated customer service line that doesn't put the person into a phone tree or anything.

Speaker 5 People love it. I've had no complaints.
Someone wants to do a vehicle change here, call this number. Someone needs, you know, a copy of their policy or whatever.
Here, use this number.

Speaker 5 And it works great. I've had no complaints.
And if they do cross-sell them on the phone, I still get paid on it. Yep.

Speaker 7 So Travelers is one of the carrier sales centers that we use in commercial.

Speaker 7 Very happy with them. Yeah.
And

Speaker 7 in all these things, I think to myself,

Speaker 7 am I making this decision as an insurance business or as an insurance agency? Insurance agencies want to control everything. Everything's local.
Everything's high touch.

Speaker 7 Everything is the perception of what adds value. Very egocentric.
Insurance agency owners are very highly egocentric.

Speaker 7 It is all about them, their last name, what they want, the way they want to do business. Highly, highly egocentric.
Not wrong. Just what it is.
Not wrong. Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 7 Everyone who just took offense to that, please don't. I'm not saying you're wrong.
I'm just saying that's what it is. That's how you make decisions.
Then there are insurance business owners.

Speaker 7 And it doesn't mean carrier sales centers work for you. I'm not saying that someone who chooses or not chooses a carrier sales center.

Speaker 7 I'm just saying they don't think about it through the filter of

Speaker 7 how do I want to do business. They think about it through what helps my business grow, what helps my CSRs maximize their time with my clients that actually bring in, you know, if

Speaker 7 I have a $700 bop and a $70,000 account on my books, which one of those should my CSR be spending time on?

Speaker 5 The larger.

Speaker 7 The agency owner says, well, we need to make sure we're spending time with everybody because, and they'll go, oh, no, no, we spend our time, but then they don't, right? That's the other thing.

Speaker 7 They'll tell you that they prioritize, but they don't.

Speaker 7 Because when that $700 bop comes, your CSR is answering their questions, taking up time, asking about their kids, and spending a half hour hour on an account that makes you $70 a year, right?

Speaker 7 Where if you use a carrier sales center, just as an example, and this is what we've been testing with good results so far, that $700 bot calls in, we talk to them, and we say, hey, we have a small business specialist that can work with you.

Speaker 7 And I'm going to transfer you over to them right now and they're going to get you all squared up. And then we transfer them over.
and they get closed and then we never have to talk to them ever again.

Speaker 7 And they're happy because we're sending them to a carrier that I know has the right product for them that will take care of them, that will make sure their business is properly protected, which is our job, right?

Speaker 7 And I don't have to waste my people's time on an account that brings in $70.

Speaker 7 So that's the idea.

Speaker 5 You probably know this better than I do. I haven't done enough research on it, but how many carriers actually have this option for the service center? Is it more than I'd think?

Speaker 7 So there's a lot that have the service center. The service center has become fairly ubiquitous.
The sales center is still limited um the sales center is still limited we are testing

Speaker 7 three right now one is a super regional to our nationals um that have a sales center like i said service center is different um

Speaker 7 service centers are to me anything under 5 000 a premium should be in a service center just that's my number and we're making that move right now you you you just i've done the math a thousand times to me it always ends up somewhere around around five grand.

Speaker 7 Maybe it's a little more, maybe it's a little less. Some people say 10,000, some people 25.

Speaker 7 To me, 5,000 feels reasonable. If your commercial account is 5,000 or less, you should be in that carrier's service center because one, they're going to be able to do the things better.

Speaker 7 They know the internal process. They know the car change forms.
That person calls you. You have to take their information.

Speaker 7 You have to log into the portal, which is terrible because all the carrier portals are terrible except for Hartford's. Travers isn't bad either.

Speaker 7 Then you got to figure out where to go, make the change, input it, then get a receipt back that it was done. Then you got to send out any, it's like, how is that in any way a value add?

Speaker 7 The person just wanted to make a car change and think about all that work and time and all the possible data entry errors.

Speaker 7 You could have your absolute best CSR and they are thinking about the fact that their kid is graduating from middle school today.

Speaker 7 and just misses a number and then that's messed up and then the car does it auto id doesn't come in right and it's just it's there's so many problems that person could just call the carrier direct, make the car change, have their thing emailed to them five minutes later, and they're, they're happy as shit.

Speaker 7 So, so I think that that's service centers are a no-brainer. Now, not every service center is the same, but, but I'd say, like, take Travelers, for instance.

Speaker 7 Travelers' service center retains business at a 93% clip. What is the best practices agency average? It's like somewhere between 89 and 90%.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 93% retention rate, commercial line, small business, traveler service center.

Speaker 7 That's pretty good.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I'm happy with that number.

Speaker 7 Right. Hanover's is north of 93%.
It fluctuates between 93 and 94.

Speaker 5 Would they do certificates of insurance too?

Speaker 7 They'll do everything. You never have to talk to the person again, ever, ever, forever, and anything.
You never have to speak to them again.

Speaker 5 Yeah. I guess I wonder how that would work, right? Because it's usually, I

Speaker 5 the contractor's idea with like it's just an email request, you know.

Speaker 7 So I don't know. Mail the service center.

Speaker 5 That's it. Okay.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Their relationship

Speaker 7 with the service center. Yeah.
That's what it is. And they answer the phone as you.
They work as you. They have a whole bank of people.
They work later hours, 8 p.m.

Speaker 7 How many certificates are you issuing at eight, nine o'clock p.m.

Speaker 7 None. Right.
So it's like, to me,

Speaker 7 that kind of stuff.

Speaker 7 Now, granted, you get into more sophisticated accounts this is not the place for them this is where we do our this is where we shine expertise experience coverage consultation caring this is where we shine on accounts that have some meat to them that have some moving parts maybe you got to do you got to go take pictures of the place or there's a lot of different things that you can do um but these carrier sales centers and so there's less that have the sales centers are less.

Speaker 7 There's not as many carriers that have the sales centers. But to me, this is the future of small business for independent insurance agents.

Speaker 7 We become lead, lead creators and we pass them on to our partners. And the decision on where they go is very, very important, right?

Speaker 7 So you're still, there's still an aspect of consultation to it, right? I have to choose between, say, Hanover or Travelers or whoever else.

Speaker 7 But,

Speaker 7 you know, the truth is, I just, at a certain point, you can't just continue to lose money on these small business accounts.

Speaker 7 As a business owner, as an agency owner, you can do whatever the hell you want. But as a business owner, your job is to create profits.

Speaker 7 You can pay your people and yourself and take care of your family. And

Speaker 7 I just, I don't know how the math works. Otherwise, that's the problem.
If the math worked, I wouldn't even be having this conversation. But the math doesn't work in my opinion.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, I love this conversation because I think it's just being open-minded, right? Like we're not saying service center for everything.

Speaker 5 We're just saying for certain accounts in a certain size, in a certain niche, service center is great.

Speaker 7 100%.

Speaker 7 You brought up contractors. Contractors are very tough.
I actually think that contractors probably more often than not need to stay in-house.

Speaker 7 Now, maybe you can put some certificate automation in or a self-service portal or something like that. I know

Speaker 7 I haven't tested it yet, but like GloveBox has some stuff. And there's, so there's a lot of options, right? Or, um,

Speaker 7 you know, there's uh, ah, shoot, what was that? There's a bunch of tools that do this, but like, maybe that's the option. But like, for bop, you know,

Speaker 7 bakery, John's bakery on main street calls and needs needs uh bop comp commercial auto policy and umbrella total package 5500 bucks

Speaker 5 service center all day service center

Speaker 7 because that's where he will be better served also i mean that's where he would be better served you you i agree your your people take lunch breaks they take smoke breaks they take piss breaks they they they make mistakes because they're not perfect and they're one person and they have hundreds of clients that they're servicing right and they don't have they don't know the exact nuances of every of all the policies of all the carriers they serve.

Speaker 7 So, so there is an aspect to this where, in the right scenario, you're actually serving the customer better by getting them directly to the point or the, or to the, to the, to the manufacturer in this case, which is the carrier.

Speaker 7 It's just not, I completely agree with you. It's, it's definitely 100% not for every customer, not even close.

Speaker 5 Yeah, no,

Speaker 5 I totally agree.

Speaker 7 Yeah. So what else are you, what else are you excited about, man? Like, what do you, I know you guys, you guys have your own podcast.
You're doing awesome. I love to watch it.

Speaker 7 I love seeing the little clips you guys put out. It was just such a pleasure to be on the show.
I love chatting with you guys.

Speaker 7 What other stuff like, you know, young agency owner crushing, doing fun stuff? Like, what other shit are you playing with? What are you excited about? Like, I'm interested in that.

Speaker 5 Thank you, man. Well, I can't not be on a podcast with you and not talk about AI.
So

Speaker 5 I am very excited about AI right now,

Speaker 5 mainly as just a tool to help me be a little bit more efficient.

Speaker 5 For instance, you and I talked offline the other day about, you know, just using it to assist with making blogs for my website.

Speaker 5 I mean, I went, I'm a terrible writer and I went from it taking me about three hours to do a blog to about 30 minutes.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And now, and I'm going to say this on air, I have no excuse to not blog consistently once a week. I mean, the way AI is set up now, I mean, it can create my title.

Speaker 5 It can help create the body of the, you know, the word, the wording. I can throw it in Grammarly.
I can then go in and make my little touch-up so it's a little more personalized. And then it's done.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 5 You know?

Speaker 7 All right. I'm going to give you right now.
I'm going to get you to two blog posts a day in less than 30 minutes right now. Oh, no.
All right. We're going to, this is the secret sauce.

Speaker 7 You guys are getting this exclusively. Ryan Hanley show special.

Speaker 7 if you want the walkthrough for this, this is a hardcore plug, so deal with it. It's my show.

Speaker 6 I can do whatever I want.

Speaker 7 Go to findypete.com and subscribe, and you'll get uh, I'm going to do a walkthrough for this for next week that uh that people get so you can see how I do this because this this shit is blowing my mind.

Speaker 7 Our traffic is going through the roof. We produce two blog posts a day, 30 minutes or less, 30 minutes or less.
Okay, so here's how we do it. So there is a tool called buyword.ai,

Speaker 7 B-Y-W-R-I-D dot AI. Okay,

Speaker 7 it costs money, money. So all you cheap fucks are going to have to open up your wallet.
So just deal with that.

Speaker 7 But if you, you know, you want to produce two blog posts a day for 30 minutes, in 30 minutes or less, you're going to have to pay something. Okay.

Speaker 7 You also have to buy the chat GPT for

Speaker 7 a paid premium subscription, which is $20 a month. So

Speaker 7 you can afford this stuff. Okay.
If you can't, you should not be selling insurance for a living because it means you stink at selling insurance.

Speaker 7 So if you can't afford these things, then you stink at selling insurance, you should find another career.

Speaker 7 Otherwise, open up your freaking wallet, pay for these tools, and I promise you, this you will start to rip really good blog posts out. Okay, so what I do is, um,

Speaker 7 I use Chat GPT-4,

Speaker 7 uh, not 3.5, because I've just found it not to be as good. Chat GPT4

Speaker 7 to create blog post titles. So, I would do something like pretend

Speaker 7 or act as the owner of a bakery

Speaker 7 and give me 10 uncommon blog post titles about different insurance coverages I may not understand.

Speaker 7 That would be the prompt I would put in, something like that. And it'll give you 10 really interesting, you know,

Speaker 7 workers' comp, blah, blah, blah, commercial auto, blah, blah, blah. Okay, you get 10.
I take those 10 blog post titles and I copy and paste them into by word, B-Y-W-R-D.ai,

Speaker 7 and I copy them in

Speaker 7 and I hit

Speaker 7 start generating.

Speaker 7 Okay, while it's doing that, okay, let's pretend I can pause that. We're going to take a step back.
If you have WordPress or HubSpot, you can use Zapier to connect byword.ai directly to your blog.

Speaker 7 So we use HubSpot for our blog. I don't recommend it.
It's expensive. It's awesome, but it's expensive.
WordPress is more than enough. So please don't go, oh my God, Hanley uses HubSpot.

Speaker 7 I have to change the HubSpot. Don't do that.

Speaker 5 Just use.

Speaker 5 Let me just say, real quick, too. So I use Advisor Evolved.
It from Byword, it plugs it all 10 right into the website. Yes, exactly.

Speaker 7 Perfect. Perfect.
Yeah. 100%.
Couldn't agree with you more. Advisor Evolves the best.
Chris Langel is the goat. You just do that.
So,

Speaker 7 chat GPT-4, 10 blog posts into ByWord.

Speaker 7 It immediately writes these articles, puts the article, which you can say like the tone and how long you want to be a kit, et cetera, puts them directly into WordPress.

Speaker 7 Then you go into WordPress and you have to use Grammarly. This is another paid tool.
guys this is going to cost you grammarly is 120 a year so it's at 12 bucks plus the 20 so that's 32

Speaker 7 plus 10 articles through buy word is going to cost you maybe if you buy the hundred dollar a month subscription uh you know so you're looking at 150 bucks a month let's say that for 20 blog posts a month 150 bucks a month for 20 blog posts a month we'll do one a day

Speaker 7 So that pushes, guys, it pushes the blog posts, the written blog posts directly in your WordPress as drafts, formatted.

Speaker 7 Then you use Grammarly and you go through and you just like Grammarly clean it up. And then maybe you add in a couple of internal links and some of your own language at the end and you hit publish.

Speaker 7 And you can have in probably what, two hours worth of work, you could have all 20 scheduled for the entire month and never have to think about it. A new blog post every day.

Speaker 7 Tailored, specific, unique URLs, unique, the whole deal.

Speaker 7 And you are now a blog post creating machine that's going to ramp up and you can do them tailored specific to your geography, different counties.

Speaker 7 I mean, all this stuff, you could have all this going all the time and it will drastically improve your inbound marketing. And it's inexpensive and fast.

Speaker 5 Yeah. And then you could even take it a step further and use Midjourney or Jasper and create AI generated art to throw in the blog post.

Speaker 6 What's up, guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show. And in exchange for that, I need your help.

Speaker 6 If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share.

Speaker 6 comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes, et cetera. This helps the show grow.
It helps me bring more guests in.

Speaker 6 We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in, men and women who've done incredible things sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales, the things that are going to help you grow as a person and grow your business.

Speaker 6 But they all check out comments, ratings, reviews. They check out all this information before they come on.

Speaker 6 So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help. Share the show, subscribe if you're not subscribed.

Speaker 6 And I'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments. Or if you're on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating review of this show.
I love you for listening to this show.

Speaker 6 And I hope you enjoy it listening as much as I do creating the show for you. All right, I'm out of here.
Peace. Let's get back to the episode.

Speaker 7 So here's the cool. So here's the cool part.
In

Speaker 7 Byword, they actually create an image that goes along. The only problem is it doesn't push the image into WordPress.
So what you just do is go back into ByWord.

Speaker 7 and download the custom AI generated image that goes with that particular title and then just use that. And now you have had to create nothing

Speaker 7 unique except you have unique content that is served to people. I had a guy the other day, an insurance guy, go, holy shit, who is creating your content for you? It is fucking brilliant.

Speaker 7 And you're just pumping it out. And I'm like, yeah, bro, we got smart people here.

Speaker 5 It's so funny you say that. That's how I knew I was a terrible writer because I did like, I don't know, eight or nine blog posts myself and no one ever said anything.

Speaker 5 And then I started doing the AI stuff and I got like two comments like, man, these articles are great.

Speaker 7 Great. Yeah.

Speaker 7 And I, and I fact-checked them. I've looked at them.
You know,

Speaker 7 I haven't found any, I haven't found any issues. I mean, every once in a while, you might find a little something that's off here or there, but it's really benign.
They do talk in generality.

Speaker 7 So it's not like it's giving specific shit that could actually like.

Speaker 7 And just for the record, there's actually never been an E ⁇ O case associated with a piece of marketing content

Speaker 7 in the written form, as long as you're not making a guarantee. So as long as you're not making a guarantee, such as, I guarantee you will save money.
I guarantee you will this.

Speaker 7 I guarantee this will happen. You can't make guarantees.

Speaker 7 If you stay out of guarantees and you talk in generalities, then you are, you're going to be fine because you're giving suggestions and education.

Speaker 7 You're not saying, if you do this, this outcome will happen. That's where you can potentially get yourself in trouble.
But that, you know, that's how you do that.

Speaker 5 The process, it's it's a little, it takes a little getting used to in the beginning. That's exactly how I'm doing my blogs now.
When you told me offline, I was like, Ryan's saying, I got to try it.

Speaker 5 So, I threw it in the first couple of times. It took me a while, but now it's just clock.
I almost feel like you can train a VA to do it.

Speaker 7 You could absolutely could VA do it. That's what we, I don't do it.

Speaker 5 You think I don't do it at all?

Speaker 7 All right.

Speaker 5 Well, I'm still doing it myself. I got to pass it along, I guess.
But,

Speaker 5 but yeah, I mean, I'm using it. So, that's just like scratching the surface, right? So yes, I've been using it just to even sending emails more efficiently where somebody might ask like,

Speaker 5 or let's say I have a renewal coming up in two months for a commercial client. And I just want to in writing, give them something that is kind of like a state of the market in my own words, right?

Speaker 5 I can go and chat GPT and just write simply. hey, you know,

Speaker 5 create me a business email for a client, you know, an insurance client of mine that owns a nursery that's having a large increase on their renewal. And it'll give me a beautiful response.

Speaker 5 And I'll go in and personalize it and throw it in Grammarly and touch it up. And it takes me five minutes compared to me sitting there trying to type out a whole email.

Speaker 5 It's going to take me a half hour. I'm going to think about it 20 times before I send it.
So, just like little things like that. I used it to do a, I used it to do a Facebook ad recently.
Okay.

Speaker 5 And this,

Speaker 5 I mean, the ad, the ad it generated blew my mind. So I'm going to just share it with you because I just pulled it up here.
I just think it's, I think it's so good. I'm running it now.

Speaker 5 I only got two leads from it. So maybe it's not that great, but I love the wording of it.
So it's, and this is for homeowners coastally on Long Island.

Speaker 5 So it says, attention, Long Island homeowners, stop the insurance rate nightmare. Are you a proud Long Island homeowner experiencing insurance policy cancellations or draw dropping rate increases?

Speaker 5 Don't panic. We have an exclusive solution tailored just for you.
Introducing LAF Advisors, your trusted partner, and protecting your cherished Adobe.

Speaker 5 We aim to provide feast of mind and comprehensive coverage to your high-value homeowners like yourself. Why choose LAF?

Speaker 5 And then it's got like a couple of emoji check marks on why you should choose LAF. You know, claim your free policy review now, act fast, contact us today with the link.

Speaker 5 Protect your home confidently and join the satisfied homeowners who trust LAF for their insurance need. Your home, our priority.

Speaker 7 That is great.

Speaker 5 I could have never came up with that myself. Yeah.
You know, so using it for little things like that, creating the body of a Facebook ad,

Speaker 5 how, you know, what's the best way to respond to someone when they fill out the form for a Facebook ad? I mean, you could just go on and on with it.

Speaker 5 So it's something I'm definitely, you know, trying to use to make my life more efficient. You know?

Speaker 7 Yeah. The other thing you can do too is you could take that ad and say, hey, give me

Speaker 7 five similar but different versions that attack this problem in a, in an uncommon way or something.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 it'll give you A-B test versions that you can try. And it,

Speaker 7 again, yeah, it's, it's not going to displace the human, the consultation, the coverage, what you need to do, our job, but it can make you so much more efficient.

Speaker 5 And, you know,

Speaker 7 right now, I mean, this is, this is what I've, again, I've been saying in my keynotes and stuff is like, right now we're in a window where if you take the time to embrace this stuff, grab it and use it in your business, you can start to extend your lead on people, right?

Speaker 7 This is, it's not going to change the way you do business today. I think that's coming.
I think there are major changes coming. I think there's major efficiencies.

Speaker 7 This shit's going to start being baked into tools more and more. And it'll be, it'll be seamless.
It'll be behind the scenes. You won't even know it's there.

Speaker 7 You just have these functionality that's added. But right now, it's still just difficult enough that most people won't do it.

Speaker 7 And I feel like that gives us the ability to really extend and really grow and really push out

Speaker 7 if you're willing to take advantage of it.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I totally agree. I feel like we're on the forefront of something that's really going to shake up the industry, kind of like you said.

Speaker 5 And I'd rather, listen, is there government regulation that can crack down on it?

Speaker 5 Maybe, but I'm not even thinking that far now. I'm just, hey, let me learn as much as I can about this.

Speaker 5 This way, if it doesn't crack down, and Rogue Risk and LAF are the only two companies pumping out two blogs a day. I'm cool with that.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I mean, that's the view of our industry is that you and I just told everybody exactly what to do. And no one who's listening to this will do it.
They'll go,

Speaker 7 I don't have the time. Okay.

Speaker 7 Fine. Yeah.
That's the best part. The best part about our industry is I have been giving I and Kat and other people for decade plus.
giving them the pro.

Speaker 7 And it's just recently, you know, guys like you, a couple other guys just started doing this, like the new, you know, this new wave of guys and women.

Speaker 7 But it's like for so so long, we're just like, do this. We promise.
It may not change everything, but it will give you more business for nothing. And people are just like, no, nope, nope.

Speaker 7 I'm going to go driving from strip mall to strip mall, handing out business cards because with some grinders business. Yeah.
Okay. All right.
You win.

Speaker 5 Yeah, man. I mean, there's just, there's so many ways to slice the pie now.

Speaker 7 I mean, yeah, it's the best.

Speaker 5 That's the best all the time.

Speaker 7 You know, dude, is it choose your own adventure business?

Speaker 7 How many businesses do you get to literally pick exactly what you want to be who you want to serve where you want to serve them and and and get to build a business around that i mean that's the thing i hate personal lines hate it with a passion that's why we don't do it

Speaker 7 hate it but i can have an agency i can have an insurance business that just doesn't do personal lines we just don't do it and it's beautiful sometime maybe i could add it or or find a partner or whatever but like It's that kind of stuff to me that is just so exciting because you, you could, you could only do coastal, you know, southern coastal property within two miles of the Long Island shore.

Speaker 7 Bro, you could be a multi-millionaire just doing that. That one thing that you know how to do, that you have the markets for, and you know how to talk to people about it, and you get a brand for it.

Speaker 7 And it's like, that's fucking amazing. That's it's amazing to get that.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 And, and,

Speaker 8 um,

Speaker 7 I think you just have to figure out what you want to be. I, I, I

Speaker 7 struggle with riches in the niches because I don't, I feel like people get too hung up on that. I don't think it's not true.
I absolutely think it's true.

Speaker 7 I just think there's a lot of other ways to be highly successful as well.

Speaker 7 I think we get, well, if you don't have a niche, then you're screwed.

Speaker 7 We're a master generalist. That's, that's what Rogue is.
Our niche is small business.

Speaker 7 But we're not good at personal lines, right?

Speaker 7 We're not, we don't do health insurance. We don't do life insurance.
We don't do any of that stuff we could add it so it's like i think

Speaker 7 you just have to figure out what you want to be and then figure out the business model that allows you to be that thing and the beauty of our industry is you can absolutely positively do that and there's just not that many industries that allow you to to do that that's i think why this is such a great space to be Yeah, and figuring out what you want to be isn't as easy as it sounds.

Speaker 7 That's true.

Speaker 5 You know, like, I feel like I just figured it out like three years ago and it's probably going to change every quarter for the next 20 years, you know.

Speaker 7 And I think, I think that's fine now. I think that's completely fine.
I think, you know.

Speaker 5 But it's something you should think about.

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 7 You know, I had a call.

Speaker 7 I had a call with a woman today who's relatively new to the business and we were talking about some things. And she actually was asking me about Tivoli.
And I didn't.

Speaker 7 think that where she was in her her process, it was the best fit for her right now. But

Speaker 7 that she couldn't use it to generate these, I just wasn't the best fit. But, you know, she was saying she's going after this niche and this is struggling.

Speaker 7 And I just was like, the best advice I can give you is just pick one thing.

Speaker 7 And it could be a geography. It could be a type of person.
It could be an industry class.

Speaker 7 It could be some crosscut of all those things or other variables, but pick a thing and just become the person at that thing.

Speaker 7 And,

Speaker 7 you know,

Speaker 7 that

Speaker 7 you know because she was struggling with how to get traction and and i just said you know don't don't grab on to

Speaker 7 uh

Speaker 7 you know the way you think business should be done just go figure out how those clients want to be served and go serve them and if you enjoy serving that client in that way then just keep doing it and you'll be fine because that's what's going to keep the fire burning yeah because because dude i think a lot of people especially early um

Speaker 7 and and i've made this mistake too so i don't want to it's not i'm not you know whatever uh they they they're like oh but i want to be this thing or i want to serve this and then they realize what it takes or how those people want to be serving and they don't love it right and then they feel like they're doing something wrong it's like you're not doing something wrong that just was a mismatch for how how they want to be served and how you want to do business and it's like just keep iterating until you find a type of client that you enjoy serving and then the job becomes super easy.

Speaker 5 It does, and in our industry, listen, I've made the mistake too.

Speaker 5 I've gone after things I didn't like, and you know, when you get to those hard times where you're like, oh shit, you know, I'm not feeling it today or whatever.

Speaker 5 If you're not in a niche or a specific field that you love,

Speaker 5 it's easy to just skip out on that day, you know. But if you love it, it's going to, like I said before, it's going to keep that fire burning.

Speaker 5 So I thought that's good advice you gave to that lady for sure.

Speaker 7 Yeah, wow. We'll see.
Maybe it was terrible.

Speaker 7 I hope it was good advice. I want her to be successful.

Speaker 7 But I just think it's, I think that's an issue a lot of people get is they do market analysis. And they're like, well, there's an opportunity here.

Speaker 7 And it's like, do you even want to serve that type of customer? Like, do you want to do that, you know, whatever that person needs?

Speaker 7 Do you want to, that industry is going to require a massive amount of certificates? Is that something that you want to do right now?

Speaker 7 You know, I don't, and, and no right or wrong, just these are the questions I think we have to ask ourselves.

Speaker 7 And it comes back to thinking like an agency owner or a business owner.

Speaker 7 I think business owners think through without ideological slant, they think through what's best for me, my business, profitability, growth, my targets I want to get to. And

Speaker 7 they don't buy in or over-index on shit that they read on Facebook groups or whatever. I think that, you know.

Speaker 7 it doesn't mean you can't get great information from there but they don't just like do it because other people are doing it and i feel too often as agency owners, we're like, well, well, Sean is, Sean is crushing commercial coastal property.

Speaker 7 And that sounds like a really profitable business. So I'm going to go do that.
Yet they've never been to the ocean before, have no idea what a wind hail deductible is, you know what I mean?

Speaker 7 Or have the markets and they're like, you know, I can't figure out how to make this work. And it's like, because it's not what you should be doing.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I mean, yeah, it's interesting. You know, as a scratch agent, like one of the first things I did was I kind of had to build my niche based around the carrier access I had.
Yes. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 You know what I mean? So sometimes you don't always have the option, but once you get to a certain point, you can pick and do what you'd like.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 And a lot of it too is, and I recently just wrote an article on finding peak about this, but like, if you have so much of it is just discipline, right? It's just

Speaker 7 just keep showing up, keep doing the thing.

Speaker 7 If you know making 10, and this is like common basic advice, like there's no rocket science here, but like, if you know 20 cold calls of property owners every day will yield you two opportunities to quote in one sale, that works.

Speaker 7 It doesn't mean it's how you're going to scale your business, but it's going to get you off the ground. It's going to get some revenue on the books.
It's going to get you some opportunities.

Speaker 7 And for a while, you got to eat shit that way. You know, like that was my method until COVID hit.
If COVID didn't hit, and

Speaker 7 that's what I would have been a middle market cold calling, dropping, aiding me, that was digitizing, basically killing commercial was my plan.

Speaker 7 And when COVID hit and all those businesses shut down, I had to pivot hard to what I eventually became, what Rogue has eventually become.

Speaker 7 But, you know, I think you just, you just keep showing up and trying, and eventually you figure out what works, or you don't.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think I love what you, I love what you did with Find a Peak, where you're talking about like the fitness and mental side of the business. Because I mean, we talked about this on the

Speaker 5 other podcast previously, but

Speaker 5 I feel like the mental side of this business is not talked about enough. Yeah.
I mean,

Speaker 5 the cold calling takes a mental toll on you.

Speaker 5 Working out takes a mental toll. Doing the blogs takes a mental toll.
We could sit here and make it sound easy, you know, doing AI.

Speaker 5 We still got to get up, plug in the info and consistently do it day after day after day, even if we feel like crap one day, or even if we got some, you know, we get punched in the face by life another day.

Speaker 7 Yep.

Speaker 5 You still got to show up, like you said. So yeah, the mental aspect of it is, is something I got to do a better job of talking about more too, because as a scratch agent,

Speaker 5 it could be lonely sometimes when you don't have a team.

Speaker 7 Yeah, it's very lonely.

Speaker 7 Not sometimes. It's lonely all the time.
It's why I think the podcast that you guys are doing is awesome and the work that you're doing with the podcast. So, you know, that's kind of.

Speaker 7 where I'd love to finish our conversation is like, how has that been going for you guys? What have been some of the benefits that have come out of it?

Speaker 7 Like, I think it's incredible that you're doing it. And I just love to hear more about it.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 5 I mean, one of the main reasons we started it was because Stephen and I were going through like a similar phase in our career, and we were talking about how it is lonely and it is a mental game and things like that.

Speaker 5 And we're like, man, we should just

Speaker 5 talk all the time anyway. We should just record it because it's usually good information that could probably help other Scratch agents.

Speaker 5 And we'll have guests on, and we can learn from the guests, and maybe other people can learn from the guests.

Speaker 5 And you know, the community, it's the insurance industry is just filled with so many great people. So,

Speaker 5 where it's benefited us, I mean, we make no money off the podcast, but everyone we interview,

Speaker 5 if you guys watch the podcast on YouTube, literally every video, I'm just looking down at a notepad, taking notes, like 90% of the time.

Speaker 5 I'm paying attention, but

Speaker 5 I feel like that's the biggest thing that I got from it that I wasn't expecting to be the biggest thing was

Speaker 5 if you told me there was a hundred other

Speaker 5 insurance podcasts around building a scratch agency, but I knew what I knew now about having the podcast, I still would have done it anyway.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Just because I've learned so much from it. And I feel like that information is invaluable.

Speaker 5 The relationships I've built from the podcast that Stephen and I have built from the podcast, I feel like are invaluable. So

Speaker 5 I know we both know how hard those times are, the three of us know how hard those times are of being a scratch agent.

Speaker 5 So I feel like if that can help literally one or two people, that that also makes me happy, you know?

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I'm just going to continue to keep doing what we're doing, you know, and

Speaker 5 look at episode 50 and see what happens from there.

Speaker 7 Yeah. I mean, dude, there's tons of discipline in that, too.

Speaker 7 Like just continuing, you know, there's days where like you just don't, you know, sometimes I, I look at my calendar and I'll have a podcast scheduled and it'll even be with someone who I can't wait to talk to, but I'll just be like, fuck, you know, you just, you just don't have it.

Speaker 7 You know what I mean? Like, it's just, you know, how much energy you want to give or you, you know, or, and sometimes, you know, the people that i know are like really dynamic people.

Speaker 7 I'm actually, you know, you're like, I, you know, I want to step my game up and be able to match energy.

Speaker 7 And I'm just like, man, I, I don't want to do it because, and you, but you have to, you know what I mean? You have to, you have to, you know, that person's taking their time. It's on the calendar.

Speaker 7 You, you, you, if you don't record them, they don't go out. So like, you know, I, I, it is, it is big time discipline to, to continue to pump out more episodes and keep having conversations.

Speaker 5 I totally shouldn't say this out loud, but there's been times where Steven and I are like, man, I hope this person cancels.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 5 Like just because you're mentally shot, you know, from just running an agency during the day. So again, here we go.
It's, it's all a mental game. Yeah.
You know, yeah.

Speaker 7 Dude, and that's, that's what finding peak was for me. Like, that is basically like a diary.
That's not, you know, I mean, I'm writing and I'm writing for people and hopefully it helps.

Speaker 7 And it seemingly is helping. I've gotten a tremendous amount of feedback on it.
But like,

Speaker 7 but like, that's just reminders to myself. Like when I'm feeling a certain kind of way, like that, like the one I referenced before, the last article I did on discipline, like

Speaker 7 that came out of,

Speaker 7 I just wasn't, I had a week, like literally a week where I wasn't motivated. I just couldn't, seemingly couldn't get the engine started.
And I didn't know what it was. And then

Speaker 7 I do read a lot. And I was reading Discipline is Destiny by Ryan Holiday.
And then I was listening to, I listened to a lot of stuff from like Jordan Peterson. I have all these guys that I follow.

Speaker 7 And actually, I think it was Andy Fersella, who was like, he was, he's, he's got a great podcast, a real AF podcast. And he, he said something like,

Speaker 7 you think I want to, he swears lies. Like, you think I want to fucking rucksack for blah, blah, blah, da, at eight, you know, 5 a.m.
in the morning. He's like, no,

Speaker 7 I don't want to do that. He's like, I do it because I told myself I was going to do it.
So I do it. He's like, if I didn't tell myself I wasn't going to do it, I wouldn't do it.

Speaker 7 But I told myself I'm going to get up for 30, you know, whatever it was, some period of time. So I do it.
He goes, that's discipline.

Speaker 7 He goes, your motivation, right and then i then i started googling and like joe rogan has said similar things and and i just was like oh my god this is the thing like motivation is complete and utter

Speaker 7 motivation is a is an emotion it's an emotion emotions aren't real they don't control us

Speaker 7 right fades away discipline is a practice you just you're either disciplined or you're not it's a it's a it's binary you either you either

Speaker 7 show up and do the thing regardless of how you feel about it or you don't. And I was like, this isn't going to be easy.
I'm going to mess up, but I want to be a disciplined person.

Speaker 7 That's, I want to be able to look in the mirror and be like, you're disciplined. That's what it was all about.

Speaker 5 Do you know like the feeling that I get when I tell myself, tomorrow, I'm going to wake up at four o'clock. I'm going to work out at 4.30.

Speaker 5 And I'm just going to do it even if it sucks. And I wake up and the first thought in my head is, you're an idiot.
Go back to sleep. This sucks.

Speaker 7 I feel like crap.

Speaker 5 But then you work out anyway and you get a sweat and you're done with the workout and you check that box that you did it.

Speaker 5 I mean, to me, that just cures depression

Speaker 7 right off the bat.

Speaker 7 I was listening to Andrew Tate the other day and he said something because I like Andrew Tate.

Speaker 7 And he said, depression isn't real. Now,

Speaker 7 I'm not going to debate whether depression is real or not. But his point is.

Speaker 7 It's an emotion. It's an emotional reaction to feelings that you're having.
And while you can be depressed, and I've been been fucking depressed before at different times in my life,

Speaker 7 you can be depressed and still be disciplined.

Speaker 7 You can be miserable and hate your life and hate what's going on and hate the people around you and hate your station and hate everything that exists and still get up and go for a walk, jump in an ice bath.

Speaker 7 do some fucking push-ups. You can still be disciplined and be depressed.
Those are, those two things are mutually exclusive things.

Speaker 7 And, you know, I actually put out a little clip on Instagram today that was kind of in this vein.

Speaker 7 When I first, and we'll close with this, because I want to be respectful of everyone's time and I'll get your feedback. But

Speaker 7 when I was, when Rogue, when I first launched Rogue and COVID happened seven days later, I was in a, I was depressed, right?

Speaker 7 I was, I put all this money in, all this time in, and I just felt like the universe kicked me right in the nutsack. And I didn't know what to do.
And I didn't know how to pull myself out. And

Speaker 7 a friend of mine

Speaker 7 said to me, you know, I just was in, I was like, dude, I just, everything fucking hurts. I'm miserable.
And he goes, experience it.

Speaker 7 Like, what do you mean? He goes, experience it. Feel getting miserable.
Feel miserable. Be miserable because you are miserable, but do the things you need to do anyway.

Speaker 7 He's like, he goes, you can still send cold emails and work on on your business and put marketing materials together and ask people for their insurance and quote insurance and be miserable at the same time.

Speaker 7 He's like, those two things are mutually exclusive. You know that if you don't do these things over here,

Speaker 7 you're going to not, your business isn't going to exist. Okay.

Speaker 7 You are also completely fucking depressed and miserable. Those two things are happening at the same time.
Experience the misery. still do the things.

Speaker 7 And what happened was

Speaker 7 I just listened to them. I didn't know what else to do.
You know what I mean? Like drinking and being an asshole wasn't working. So I just kept doing the things.
And they weren't perfect.

Speaker 7 I didn't do them as much as I could if I felt amazing, but I just kept doing the things. And then all of a sudden, you wake up one day and you're like, I don't feel miserable anymore.

Speaker 5 I feel pretty good because it chips away. I feel like when you check that box, it chips away at whatever depression you have.
Last thing I'll leave with is:

Speaker 5 I forgot where I read this from. It might have been Patrick Bat David.
Said something about like

Speaker 5 a lot of bad things come from having too much time on your hands.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 5 You know, and when you're depressed, what happens? You, you stay in, maybe you stop working as much as you should, and you begin to have too much time on your hands.

Speaker 5 So maybe you pick up that beer because it's a Saturday and you want to barbecue like every other insurance agent.

Speaker 5 Or, you know, and before you know it, now you feel like shit on Sunday. So you want to stay in because you had a bunch of drinks on Saturday.
And now you have way too much time on your hands.

Speaker 7 Yep.

Speaker 5 You know, so I feel like

Speaker 5 by staying disciplined and having a list of things to do every day,

Speaker 5 that's what's kept me really happy, to be honest.

Speaker 7 I think you're wholly right. I think it goes for everything in your life.
If you got a partner or spouse, whatever, girlfriend, boyfriend, non-binary human, if we believe that that exists.

Speaker 7 No comment. No comment.

Speaker 7 I don't. I'm just so you know.
But, uh, but whoever that person, that special person is in your life, even if they consider themselves a cat, um, it goes for all these relationships, right?

Speaker 7 Uh, we we wonder why, you know, I think back to my marriage

Speaker 7 and all the relationships that I've had, and I think to myself, like, geez, you know, at a certain point, I just kind of stopped being disciplined about the things that you're supposed to do.

Speaker 7 I think it goes for your relationship with your kids, it goes for a relationship with your friends, with your mentors, with anybody, right?

Speaker 7 We stop being disciplined in connecting with them because, oh, you know, I don't feel like having this conversation with your mom. And then you don't talk to your mom for a month.

Speaker 7 And then your mom's bitching at you or mad at you or you feel bad. And then you feel like you let this person down.
You're like, because you just didn't pick up the phone.

Speaker 7 You weren't disciplined enough to say, hey, once a week,

Speaker 7 or, you know, in my case, my mom calls me like every day, but, you know,

Speaker 7 but like once a week, I'm going to make sure. I connect with this person who's really important to me.
Doesn't mean you feel like it.

Speaker 7 You may not even have anything to say, but you connect with them because that's what you want to do. And that relationship is important to you.

Speaker 7 And it's, so it's like this idea of discipline from Marcus Aurelius to Jesus to

Speaker 7 Abraham. It doesn't matter what your, it doesn't matter what religion it is, matter what you philosophy you follow, Buddha.

Speaker 7 It all of it, in my opinion, comes back to discipline. All of it.
Everything is a derivative of discipline. Everything you want in your life is a derivative of discipline.
That's my feeling.

Speaker 5 I couldn't agree with you more. And we have process and procedures in place for our business, right? And I tell you, I have these lists that I do, but guess what?

Speaker 5 I could do a better job at having lists for things I should do in my personal life. Process and procedures for my personal life.

Speaker 7 So I'm working on that. That, that's, that's, I'm working on that too.
I, I think, I think

Speaker 7 discipline and a tiny dash of grace and everything's going to be fine. Give yourself that tiny bit of grace when you aren't disciplined.
get back on track.

Speaker 7 I think sometimes we're a little too hard on ourselves, but this concept that I'm working through in my head of be as disciplined as you can possibly be in every aspect of your life doesn't mean not have fun.

Speaker 7 Fun can be a discipline, right? I like to golf. I like to have beers once in a while.
I like to go to, you know, take, I'm seeing this woman. I like to take her out to dinner.

Speaker 7 That can be discipline, right? Making sure you make time for those things that are fun. It doesn't mean don't have fun.
It just means be disciplined in it. And then when you fall off the horse,

Speaker 7 just give yourself a little bit of grace to say, you know what? Fuck it. I had a bad day.
Tomorrow I'm back at it. And

Speaker 7 I feel like that's the key, man. I don't know.

Speaker 7 But hey, dude, so glad we connected. We have to do this again.

Speaker 7 Totally. Tell everybody where they can get at you and your podcast because I love the podcast.
And they definitely need, if you like this nonsense, you're going to love the shit that they're doing. So

Speaker 7 tell everybody where they can get at you.

Speaker 5 All right. So for the podcast, you could check us out, the Scratch Agency podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple.

Speaker 5 To follow me personally, I like Instagram, Sean P. Fitz.
That's S-H-A-W-N-P-Fitz F-I-T-Z

Speaker 5 or Sean Fitzgerald on LinkedIn. And Ryan, before we go, just wanted to say thank you for letting, you know, thank you for having me on the podcast.
First of all, I appreciate it.

Speaker 5 And I think what you do in our industry is, I condemn you for it because I know it's not easy to have a podcast, A, and B,

Speaker 5 I feel like the way you do your podcast, you're very open and honest, and you tell it how it is. And not a lot of people do that within our industry.
So I commend you for that, man.

Speaker 7 Thank you so much, dude. Hey, it's been such a pleasure getting to know you over the last year, and I'm looking forward to more.

Speaker 7 And even the time we got to spend in person at uh Benz's thing is awesome. And uh, look forward to more of that, man.
I wish you nothing but success.

Speaker 7 I'm so happy for you, and uh, anything I can ever do, bud. Be good,

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