RHS 167 - How to Get Positive Outcomes in Sales
Tivly works with insurance agents, brokers and carriers looking to connect with specific types of businesses who are actively searching for insurance coverage.
In this episode, we dig into Mark and Kim's experience with commercial insurance leads to better understand how independent insurance agents can grow their business using inbound leads.
This is an episode you don't want to miss...
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Transcript
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Speaker 5 In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home.
Speaker 6 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2 Today we have a dynamic episode for you. We're going to talk about all about
Speaker 2 inbound leads, how we handle them, what they look like.
Speaker 2 And we are doing it with one of the best companies in the entire industry when it comes to delivering warm call transfers, when it comes to delivering commercial insurance leads to agencies that they can quote, bind, and issue, hopefully in one call.
Speaker 2 That's the app.
Speaker 2 That's the aspirational goal, that one call close that's what we track here at rogue i've talked about that in the past we are aspirationally tracking to a maximum number of one call closes and tivly helps us get there we're talking to mark mcclure and kim reed from tivly you guys are going to love this conversation amazing conversation um
Speaker 2 tivly is a big partner of ours and uh just just think uh that
Speaker 2 It's almost a necessity for
Speaker 2
creating that base layer of business that's going to help you grow. We talk all about inbound leads, inbound calls, all that kind of stuff.
Tremendous, tremendous episode.
Speaker 2
You are going to love what you're about to hear. Before we get there, I just want to just kind of remind you guys of a few things.
First and foremost, I love you for listening to this podcast.
Speaker 2
It's 2023. We're going to be getting after it.
We're going to be moving in February. So, this is going to be coming out in January.
Speaker 2 In February, we're going to be moving to a two-episode a week format. One of those episodes early in the week is going to be short format,
Speaker 2 five to seven minutes quick hitting on kind of ideas that are relevant to our industry,
Speaker 2 concepts, tactics, insights,
Speaker 2 resources, all that kind of stuff. Quick hitters, just bam, bam, bam.
Speaker 2 And then obviously we're going to continue to do the longer form interviews with thought leaders, movers, shakers in the industry and outside the industry.
Speaker 2
So make sure if you are not, that you are subscribed to this podcast. Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can get at it.
Love you for listening. Love you for being part of this community.
Speaker 2 If you want an even deeper dive, go to findingpeak.com. Finding peak is where I am sharing all my, what I do, what I learn, what I think about when it comes to peak performance.
Speaker 2 And, you know, peak performance is, yes, how we're doing our work, but it's also how we're creating opportunities for success. Not for sex, although sex is fun.
Speaker 2 Opportunities for success in
Speaker 2 our health, in our mentality, in our psychology, in our relationships, all the different things that we need to be thinking about to put ourselves in a position to capitalize on what comes down the pipe, on those opportunities created by the Muse.
Speaker 2 So,
Speaker 2 if you want some of that, if you want to get those emails,
Speaker 2 you're getting.
Speaker 2 articles, you're getting videos, and 90 plus percent of the content is free.
Speaker 2 So, if you just go to findingpeak.com, there is a paid version where we do some, we answer kind of paid subscriber questions, we do some deep dives into some of the highly tactical stuff that we're doing at Rogue, kind of breaking down the Rogue way, the lessons that we've learned.
Speaker 2 Guys, I've made just about every mistake that exists in building an insurance agency just in the short, like, you know, three years that I've been doing this.
Speaker 2 And we share what we've kind of learned, how we've navigated those obstacles, and where we're going and how we're positioning ourselves.
Speaker 2 And if you want those insights, obviously, I think it's like seven bucks a month, so it's not like you're breaking the bank, but you don't have to be a paid subscriber. So go to findingpeak.com.
Speaker 2 And also,
Speaker 2 you know, last thing I'll say, it's 2023.
Speaker 2 If you're trying to maximize your income, if you're trying to maximize the income that you get from your agency, if you're struggling with carrier appointments, if you're struggling with making commitments, but you want to grow, if you're looking for access to markets, if you're looking for tools, if you're just looking for a community of insurance agencies that are pushing forward, that are pooling resources to just overall generate more income for your agency, then I highly recommend you check out SIA.
Speaker 2 Guys, moving, you know, being acquired by SIA and becoming part of this network and becoming part of this ecosystem has been one of the best moves that I've ever made for my business.
Speaker 2 One of the best moves I've ever made in business in general. And,
Speaker 2 you know, whether you ultimately decide to join SIA or not is your decision, but I think it is worth taking another look.
Speaker 2 Don't, don't, you know, necessarily just believe stuff that you heard or read from 10 years ago or five years ago.
Speaker 2 This is a completely different organization in terms of how they are rapidly adapting to the modern independent insurance agency and the services and resources that they're providing.
Speaker 2
I highly recommend you take an extra look. And you can do that at siaa.com.
Go to sia.com.
Speaker 2 Guys, with that, let's get on to what is a fantastic episode of this show with Mark McClure and Kim Reed from Tivley. Here we go.
Speaker 6 Well, guys, I'm excited to get into it with you and excited to have you
Speaker 6 on the call and go through everything. I know just from a few, you know, of the teaser
Speaker 6
sponsorship reads that I've done and stuff so far. And everyone listening at home has kind of heard your name and heard a little bit about the rebrand.
And we're going to get into all that. But
Speaker 6 just from
Speaker 6 doing a couple kind of like intro
Speaker 6 sponsor reads and everyone knowing, you know, that these guys are sponsors. You'll hear it.
Speaker 6 But I've gotten a ton of behind the scenes direct messages and just people asking, you know, how are you using the tool? What has your results been? All that kind of stuff.
Speaker 6 So I am incredibly excited to do a deep dive today and share with everybody listening,
Speaker 6 you know, your kind of get more into the backstory, talk about the rebrand.
Speaker 6 And then what I really want to get into in kind of the second half of our conversation today is like the tactical success behind using, you know,
Speaker 6 we'll just call what you guys do a tool, a tool in the tool belt of agencies and agents to grow their business. So
Speaker 6 Before we get there, why don't we do the quick like
Speaker 6 origin story? And Kim, you've never been on the show before, so let's start with you
Speaker 6 and then we'll work our way, we'll work our way through.
Speaker 7
All right. Well, thanks for having both Mark and I.
We're excited to be here and excited to meet you and join today.
Speaker 7 I joined Tivly when it was commercialinsurance.net in September of 21, but Mark and I, in fact, Mark Chad, also the one of the partners in the business, we go way back about 17 years to a Legion startup.
Speaker 7 So we've got a lot of history together and other businesses in the Legion space.
Speaker 7 And I was excited to get the band back together and join with Mark and Chad again as this business really started to take off and help. I'm kind of the organizer,
Speaker 7 the foundation planner of the group
Speaker 7 to come in and help. grow the team, grow the processes, and make sure that we're scaling and enabling everything for success from the people, the partners, the systems we use.
Speaker 7 So that's, I'll let you chime in.
Speaker 6 Yeah, what I just heard there was
Speaker 6 Mark throws a bunch of crazy ass ideas on the wall, and then you pick them off and make them happen, kind of. Is that, is that an accurate depiction?
Speaker 6
Yeah. I mean, Mark, I don't know.
What do you think?
Speaker 5 Entrepreneurs for sure.
Speaker 6 Yeah.
Speaker 6 You know, it only goes so long throwing things at the wall.
Speaker 6 Yes. And, you know, it's funny.
Speaker 6 You know, one of the things that I've learned just in with Rogue is that every integrator, which Kim very much sounds like you are, needs a visionary and every visionary needs an integrator. And that
Speaker 6 it is incredibly rare that you can be both. I don't know that you, you know, maybe.
Speaker 6
uh a Steve Jobs, maybe an Elon Musk, maybe someone, and I always forget her name, but the woman that created Spanks. Shit, I can't believe I'm forgetting her name.
Yeah.
Speaker 6 But if you, you know, you know, if anyone follows her story, like, you know, there are some very specific rare people who can kind of be both, but for the most part, you need that kind of yang to your yin, or you just don't get things done.
Speaker 6
Um, so that's awesome. And I'm super excited that you're here because we can actually get some real deep answers this time versus last time.
And Mark, no, I'm kidding. Right.
Speaker 6 So, Mark, just for everyone who missed your previous episode, which I think was back in either August or September, can you just give us the 20,000 feet?
Speaker 6 We don't have to spend a lot of time on backstory, just a little bit. And And then I want to get into the company more.
Speaker 5 I'll start where, you know, where we got started with a company by the name of Traffic Strategies based in Tampa.
Speaker 5 My partner today, Chad Jakeways, and I started back in 2000 and Kim joined us, I believe, in about 2003, and we became leaders in lead generation and built a great lifestyle company that
Speaker 5 was generating about 75,000 prospects a month and had the opportunity to sell that business to Rocketon. So all of us joined Rocketon.
Speaker 5 And I had never worked for anybody, but that was my first job other than picking up range balls, you know, as a, as a kid. So as an as an entrepreneur, you know, for eight years, that was a
Speaker 5
great experience and learned a lot. And thankfully we had Kim there to organize our business and ideas and thoughts.
And
Speaker 5 after I finished my earn out,
Speaker 5 Chad took my role and then Kim took his role. And then when he finished that position, she ended up taking both of our roles.
Speaker 5 But long story short, we have today a group of digital marketers, some of the best digital marketers in the world that have worked on a ton of retail brands from Walmart to,
Speaker 5 you know, all of the brands that Kim worked with
Speaker 5 Retail Me Not, as well as financial services brands like American Express and Chase. And
Speaker 5 I think that's what makes us unique in the business that we are in today is that We have some of the best digital marketers in the world, but we also have 10 years experience running a commercial insurance agency.
Speaker 5 So after after I finished my earn out, I left Rocketon, relocated to Oklahoma, started a company by the name of commercialinsurance.net, and we built that up to a nice agency with right around 20,000 small business customers, a little under 20,000 small business customers, and had about 50 salespeople, service people, but we learned how hard it is to work leads and work prospects that start online and convert them into insurance policies.
Speaker 5
And that all leads are not equal. equal, even free leads are really expensive if you don't have a market.
And
Speaker 5 so, you know, the combination of the digital marketing
Speaker 5 expertise that we gained at Traffic Strategies in Rocketon, along with all of the commercial insurance experience, just puts us at a unique position in the business.
Speaker 5 Typically, you know, the companies that we go up against are really great digital marketers, but they don't know anything about commercial insurance.
Speaker 5 It makes it really hard to excel in this space, or vice versa. And, you know, since then, we,
Speaker 5 I think it's really special that we've been able to recruit many of the team members we've worked with over the years.
Speaker 5 If you look around, it's a great selling point when we go to interview candidates that they always compliment us on the fact that, wow, we have a number of team members.
Speaker 5 I haven't, I can't name them all that we've all worked together in different businesses and we still want to work together after 10 years. And so
Speaker 5 after we sold the commercial insurance agency, we pivoted into a lead exchange. Commercialinsurance.net became a lead exchange.
Speaker 5 And we started with about 5,000 small businesses a month that we were talking to and are up to about 80,000 small businesses that come through our exchange on a monthly basis today.
Speaker 5 And so we are having a lot of fun and we are, you know, we're growing. We just finished a record year, just under 900,000 small businesses
Speaker 5 came through our exchange seeking insurance in 2022.
Speaker 5 We finished the year, a record year with $41 million in revenue and are maintaining EBITDA discipline in an environment where
Speaker 5 it's really a challenging environment for 2022.
Speaker 5 We
Speaker 5 still
Speaker 5 experienced excellent growth and were able to do that out of cash flow, which was awesome because we brought in Aqualine Capital as our lead investor a little over a year ago.
Speaker 5 And we have not had to deploy any of that cash, which sets us up for an awesome 2023
Speaker 5 and allowed us, you know, maintaining EBITDA discipline, I think it's also a a unique competitive advantage we have in this environment that we were able to grow specifically at just out of cash flow over, you know, I guess since 2015, we've been profitable.
Speaker 5 Last year we finished at just 70%
Speaker 5 or we grew a little over 70%, added 203
Speaker 5 or finished the year with 203 team members, added a CFO, built out the contact center, account managers, and continued building out the engineering team.
Speaker 5 So we're really really excited about the investments that we're making. And we have been very cautious on how we deploy cash and are really protective of our culture that we bring people in that
Speaker 5
we feel that we can be successful with, but also have a lot of fun, which is one of our core principles is to have fun and laugh. And I think you can do that in a growth.
company.
Speaker 5 We have transitioned from a lifestyle company. I know you mentioned just in your last podcast, the difference between a lifestyle company and growth company.
Speaker 5 We
Speaker 5 are stuck somewhere in between because we do still have a lot of fun, but I think you can have fun in a growth company and grow at the same time.
Speaker 5 Sometimes you have to work a little harder than you do in a lifestyle company, but that's
Speaker 5 our intent in bringing in Aqualine as a partner was to bring in somebody that could, you know, put some muscle behind us to start taking some risk that you know maybe we weren't going to take in a lifestyle family business.
Speaker 6 So, yeah, that's that's awesome there's there's a lot to unpack there and i and i really appreciate that you know i think um just kind of touching on uh one of the last things you said about the difference between a life a lifestyle and a growth company that episode um has garnered a pretty substantial amount of feedback from a lot of people um i think it's it's funny uh
Speaker 6 what people hear you know when that when you you say something and between what you meant and maybe what you felt you said or the actual words you said and then what people actually hear are oftentimes very different.
Speaker 6 And, you know, some people took,
Speaker 6 some people took that podcast offensively. They said,
Speaker 6 there's no problem with being a lifestyle agent or just because I don't grow at 20%, you know, am I not a growth agent?
Speaker 6 And, you know,
Speaker 6 I tried to explain to the people that were reasonable
Speaker 6 that
Speaker 6 my point was more,
Speaker 6 and I think you've touched on it, like,
Speaker 6 if there's nothing wrong being a lifestyle business, there's absolutely nothing wrong.
Speaker 6 It's just the key is to make decisions that fit into the framework of what you want that to be, right? You want to have free time.
Speaker 6 You know, you want to, you know, your time is maybe more important than top line growth. You, you want to be able to work on the projects you want to be able, you want to work on.
Speaker 6
And, you know, these, these different things take on the types of clients. You know, you can be super picky.
You can be super nichey. like these kind of things are
Speaker 6
nothing wrong with them. They're just a set of filters that if you're lifestyle, you need to think of.
And in every business, there are those things, right? You, you may say, hey, we're doing great.
Speaker 6
We're growing 5% per year. And I get to golf every Tuesday afternoon and Friday afternoon.
And I'm freaking happy as hell. And it's like, that's great.
That is, there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 6 But what you wouldn't want to do is take on 10 new team members in a month if you're a lifestyle business. Cause now you're not going golfing.
Speaker 6 You're training and talking and building culture and setting people up and doing all those kinds of things.
Speaker 6 So it was interesting to think through, you know, it was more about how the heuristics that you put into your business to match
Speaker 6 what your goals are.
Speaker 6 And my point in saying all that is, how did you know,
Speaker 6 what was the impetus? Or what were the conversations that you were having around? It's time to do this.
Speaker 6 know and you and you you you mentioned hey we brought in alkaline so that we could take some risks that maybe we weren't willing to take or you know but there had to be a moment where you said
Speaker 6 hey we're this today we're pretty darn good at this
Speaker 6 but we kind of want to go see maybe how big we can be or we kind of want to see we kind of want to attack this market and we're willing to to push harder because
Speaker 6 I can only imagine that you're probably not working less now that you've thrown gasoline on the fire.
Speaker 6 So, you know, talk me through a little bit bit that decision, because I think a lot of both agency owners that are listening, insurtechs that are listening, you know, even some of maybe the smaller and sure tech-oriented carriers that are listening, they're all having this same conversation all the time.
Speaker 6 So, I'm interested what your guys' thought process was.
Speaker 5 You know, we had the opportunity to sell the entire operation in 2020, and we, you know, we had just pivoted into a lead exchange a few years prior to that. And we made the decision that
Speaker 5 if we take the aqualine investment, that
Speaker 5 the end result could be a lot bigger than we were going to be able to get in 2020, which that also meant that we were going to have to work a little bit harder and start bringing in
Speaker 5 greater talent that we just didn't have today. For example, bringing in Kim Reed, we didn't even have a CFO and didn't have any engineers on staff.
Speaker 5 And, you know, as a lifestyle company, maybe we wouldn't have taken those risks. And that's okay
Speaker 5 because
Speaker 5 we have a lot of fun on both sides it's just different you know it's it is as an entrepreneur when you know when things are going well it's it's it's fun to work hard and i don't know when you get back in a corner i sometimes i enjoy that as well in a probably a sick kind of way also but um you know
Speaker 5 where we are today um
Speaker 5 as it relates to
Speaker 5 making the decision of transitioning from a lifestyle company to growth company. You know,
Speaker 5 when you take an investment like the kind of investment we took,
Speaker 5 you know, it's our responsibility to make sure that we return profits for our shareholders and distributions. And
Speaker 5 today we have about 3% market share of all small businesses that are seeking insurance online, which means there's a huge number of companies that we're not touching. And, you know,
Speaker 5 for us to be able to reach the other 27% of the customers,
Speaker 5 the small businesses that are
Speaker 5 in the marketplace, it means that we have to operate more like a growth company and bring, you know, start to bring in really strong team members in areas that maybe Chad and I were weak and
Speaker 5 other
Speaker 5 in those areas.
Speaker 6
You know, it's funny. I made a very similar move in my own business.
Obviously, I was acquired by SIA and there was, you know, the thought process was very similar was.
Speaker 6
I had this goal of where I wanted to be, but when I mapped it out, it was like a 10-year goal. It was like 10 years to get to where I wanted to be.
And I am am anything if not impatient.
Speaker 6 So I said, geez, if I partner, be acquired by, you know, the deal with SIA,
Speaker 6 I can get to that same place in about three years. So,
Speaker 6 you know, it was at that point, it was kind of like, I don't want to say a no-brainer, but for where I was, what I wanted to do, there was no other path.
Speaker 6 And then you get into it and you start to realize, you know, with a little bit of backstop, a little bit of resources, capital, whatever, if you're smart about it, and I love how you, you, and I want to talk a little bit about how you really pressed cash flow, you pressed, you know, smart management of your EBITDA, you know, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 6 We're still, we're still burning some capital, but we're getting, we're rapidly getting to the point where, you know, we want to be sustainable inside of 12 months, which hits our runway goal, you know, pretty early.
Speaker 6 But it's like you have finding the right people and knowing where to say, okay, because I think the mistake I see is is that
Speaker 6
some people get that cash and it's like, we got to go spend it. You know what I mean? Like, who's, let's just, let's hire some people, let's buy some shit, let's go, you know, do some stuff.
And,
Speaker 6 you know, it's almost been what's been funny. And obviously, this is the first time.
Speaker 5 Other people's money.
Speaker 6 Yeah, other people's money. Yeah.
Speaker 6
It's not really. Yeah, I know.
I know. That's the thing.
Speaker 6 it may seem like it but really it's not and the interesting part for me has been um and i didn't do this on purpose was was
Speaker 6 when I got the money from SIA and we started deploying it, I've almost been
Speaker 6 more thoughtful in how I spent, even though there's way more of it.
Speaker 2 Yeah.
Speaker 6 I've been more thoughtful in the way that I spend it. The pressure that I put on contractors and vendors and stuff has been since I got.
Speaker 6
you know, their money than if it were just mine. When it was mine, I was like, let's try this.
Let's do this.
Speaker 6 Oh, hey, we lost 250 bucks here we lost a thousand bucks here trying this you know whatever now i'm like yeah
Speaker 6 do we know if that's going to work where where are we at with that what's you know show me and i i don't know why that is or way that is but it seems um
Speaker 6 it seems like a decent you know i don't i stumbled into it it seems like um
Speaker 6 a path that a lot of uh a path that a lot of people don't take and and ultimately seems like you can run into a lot of a lot of issues if you don't think about it that way yeah absolutely yeah there's a whole new level of responsibility when you're spending other people's money yeah it's like a stewardship mentality
Speaker 6 i think and i don't want to and again i don't want to act like i this was like some grand vision of mine it just maybe it's fear i you know just have kind of stumbled into it and then doing some hindsight so okay so
Speaker 5 it's funny that you touch on fear i i i i think as an entrepreneur fear for me is a place that i go to harness
Speaker 5 just strength and the you know the as an as an entrepreneur it just really pushes me to get to wherever I, you know, wherever I'm trying to go at a much faster rate.
Speaker 5 You know, so many people talk about fear and how it's paralyzing. And, you know, I kind of hit on that earlier.
Speaker 5 Like, you know, I've been an entrepreneur for 20 years, and except for the 18 months during the earn out at Rocketon and there were years that I was backed in a corner too. And,
Speaker 5 you know, having that fear just, I don't know, just for me, it pushed, pushed me to new levels that maybe I couldn't get to
Speaker 5
if I was comfortable. And so I agree.
that's good. That's okay.
And I love to talk about that. So many people say, like, you should never say it out loud.
Speaker 6 Like, I, I, it, it's what drives me.
Speaker 6 I basically wake up. And I don't want to go back to that place.
Speaker 5 That's why, yeah, that's why we're so conservative with how we spend our money.
Speaker 6 But I'm glad you said that because
Speaker 6 I basically wake up scared to death every day and operate from that place. Cause like, I don't ever want to go back to.
Speaker 6 the way things used to be. Like, you know, I don't want to go back to,
Speaker 6 you know, grinding out someone else's nine to five you know working someone else's vision like i don't ever want to be put back into that corner
Speaker 6 and um and the only way to continue to get opportunities the only way to continue to get people to invest in you and future ideas and current ideas partnerships is if you're successful you know i think one of the things that i'm hoping comes out of the recession that's coming, which I think we all can kind of say if it's not here, it's coming or how low it goes, we'll see, is that
Speaker 6 these ridiculous concepts of like,
Speaker 6 you know, at the end of the day, all that matters is results. You either produce results or you don't.
Speaker 6 Like you can sound great on social media, you can dress well, you can say all the right things, whatever, you can read the right books, you can take the right online course, whatever your things are, you can go to the right conferences.
Speaker 6 If you're not getting results, it doesn't matter. You know what I mean? And I tell this to our sales team a lot.
Speaker 6 You know, we have some people, you know, we, we have some people on our team who are talented, but I can also tell sometimes they want to be part of that like LinkedIn celebrity thing a little bit, you know?
Speaker 6 And I'm just like, guys,
Speaker 6 the people who are LinkedIn celebrities are one of two things. They're either incredibly successful and produce massive results and their LinkedIn celebrity is a result of that.
Speaker 6 or they're completely full of shit and
Speaker 6 you know which one you are. So, you know, like,
Speaker 6
um, you don't, you, you, you have to produce results. So for me, it's this fear that I have this vision, I have this mission, and I'm not going to get there.
And that's what drives me.
Speaker 6 And I think that's to your point is like, that fear is like, it's like a hate fire that just
Speaker 6 absolutely, you know, hate for going back to the way it used to.
Speaker 2 I don't want to go back.
Speaker 6
Yeah, absolutely. So.
All right. So let's moving on from that.
Speaker 6 So Tivly. So, so
Speaker 6 talk to me about Tivly. Talk to me about the brand, you know, your commercialinsurance.net.
Speaker 6 I, you know, it's funny when you first, when I first heard, you know, when you first told me or got the email or whatever it was, I can't remember who I was talking to.
Speaker 6 Maybe it was Samantha on your team, who's awesome, by the way.
Speaker 6
You know, she, I think she sent the email or I was on a call with her. And I kind of like kind of like hit me and I was like, Tivly, okay.
It didn't immediately make sense
Speaker 6
to me, but once she explained, it definitely did. But I was like, commercialinsurance.net was so on the nose, right? Like it was like, what do you guys do? Commercial leads.
Why?
Speaker 6
Commercialinsurance.net. Oh, okay, great.
You know, and again, it's a long name, tough to write, a lot of syllables,
Speaker 6
but like, talk to me a little bit about the brand, the name. I mean, I like how concise Tibbly is and all that.
So just talk to me about the thought process behind that.
Speaker 5 I'm going to let Kim talk to you about the, because she spent a ton of work, work, a ton of time and work with Catchword, the agency that helped us with the rebrand.
Speaker 5 I'll just start with, you know, commercialinsurance.net was a domain name that I purchased in the early 2000s when I recognized that nobody was using any forms of digital media to drive commercial insurance leads.
Speaker 5
It ranked really well from a search SEO standpoint back in those days, but it was really long. It was a.NET.
And what I didn't know along the way as an entrepreneur is that a lot of
Speaker 5 talent didn't want to go to work for a domain name that sounded like it came out of the 90s and was.NET.
Speaker 5 We're lucky that Kim knew us and knew our capabilities and where she could add value to our company. She took a bet on us.
Speaker 5 But, you know, part of it was just that the fact that it was a good brand for its time, but it was time to sunset that brand and it was important to our investors and keeping them happy is important to me.
Speaker 5 And
Speaker 5 so with that, I'll let Kim.
Speaker 5 talk about the rebrand and how it all came about.
Speaker 2 Yeah.
Speaker 7 Yeah. I mean, I think going back to the point on growth, this business has grown a lot probably started more lifestyle definitely evolved into a growth company in 21 22.
Speaker 7 um and as we evolved and the team got bigger and you get further and further from when mark purchased the domain in 2000 um it just started to feel a little bit dated for who we are and what we represent.
Speaker 7 We want to represent new ideas and making improvement and great digital experiences and efficiency.
Speaker 7 And it felt like we had a domain name and not a brand name so when i first joined we were trying to do it all ourselves which was saturday morning text message threads of what about this name what about this name what about this name um after a couple months of doing that on our own we decided let's get some some professional viewpoints on this we talked to about five different agencies a mix of ones that specialized in everything branding pr
Speaker 7 all of that. And we ultimately decided to go with one that really specialized in naming because that was our goal.
Speaker 7 We want to get a brand that we're really excited about, proud of, that's broader than insurance, that gives us flexibility in the future, that is short, snappy, modern, and has meaning.
Speaker 7 So partnered with Catchword, and they have
Speaker 7 a really structured process that starts with a ton of research into what we do, who we are, interviews with a lot of our employees to really identify what do we stand for.
Speaker 7 Their terminology would be our brand pillars. So it's similar to values, but just not taking the words of values, but more how do you live and operate? And from there,
Speaker 7 that gives kind of the who we are so that we can find names that make a connection to a component of that. So one of our brand pillars was yaysayers.
Speaker 7 Something that came through in all of the interviews was this ability and desire to find a way to say
Speaker 7 to partners, to internal employees. But if somebody needs something, if there's a way that we can do it better, smarter, create something that we haven't tried before, how do we start with yes
Speaker 7 and figure it out?
Speaker 7 And I think that's how this business got to what it is today, how Mark evolved it from the agency it was to what it is today was looking at the needs of partners, looking at the needs of small businesses and trying to make it better,
Speaker 7 trying to add more solutions solutions that they need and just create positive outcomes. So we looked at, I think, 400 names overall, kind of kept, it's a funnel, kept narrowing it down.
Speaker 7 And Tibby was one that really resonated with us because of the connection to positively.
Speaker 7 And that concept of positive resonated so well with the yes, yaysayer side of our kind of culture and the goal we have of making experiences better better for agents better for the businesses um
Speaker 7 and so we we ran with that it also was a short short name easy to type go after typing commercialinsurance.net for a long time five letters really exciting
Speaker 7 There is nothing wrong with domain modifiers. There's amazing businesses that have modifiers in their domain name, but we didn't, that was a goal of ours was to have the domain match the brand name.
Speaker 7 So that kind of limited some of the options as well for us. And then from there, we
Speaker 7
just kind of created meaning all around it. So the logo has meaning.
It represents the two sides of the marketplace and us is the connector. The colors have meaning.
We're Navy and magenta.
Speaker 7 So we're kind of that classic insurance corporate Navy with like a pop of color that represents the fun and new and bright things we're trying to bring to the industry. Yeah.
Speaker 7 And launched it in November.
Speaker 6 It's awesome.
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Speaker 6 It's awesome. I
Speaker 6 love all that. And I think, you know, one, far,
Speaker 6 I think in the InsurTech startup world, this definitely the work that you did is probably feels a little more
Speaker 6 familiar.
Speaker 6 But to a lot of agencies listening, especially anyone that's legacy or even some of the legacy carriers, it feels like, you know, that work that you did, which at some point I'm sure was absolutely grinding, mind numbing, and you wanted to like kill yourself because picking a name for a business is terrible.
Speaker 6 You know, it like for you to say all that.
Speaker 6 and walk us through that like walk us through that thought process and how this idea of positive outcomes is is a pillar of your business you know being a yes company, finding opportunity, finding ways to be successful, like that, that seeps down in not just to your employees or to your partners, but to your customers.
Speaker 6 It seeps into every filter.
Speaker 6 You know, we talk, you know, I try to talk to my own leadership team about filters, you know, talk and think and filters because you're the decisions, I can't make every decision for you.
Speaker 6 And your individual people can't make every decision for you, the manager, right? There's going to be all these individual decisions made at every level.
Speaker 6 And if we are developing at the high level as leaders in our business through our brand, our culture, and these types of exercises that you did in the rebrand, it gives your people a set of filters to make decisions through that you can feel more confident that they're going to
Speaker 6 do something that it may not even be exactly what Kim Reed would do, but it is the right thing to do in that moment based on these set of filters that you've given them.
Speaker 6
And I feel like that's how you get to a scale. That's how you scale success is, is, and it goes all the way back to the work that you just described.
And so few people are willing to do it.
Speaker 6
So I give you guys a lot of credit for that because I'm sure there was a moment where you're like, just pick a name. I can't take it anymore.
Like,
Speaker 7 are you sure we need to do this?
Speaker 5 As a performance-based marketer, you know, I'm not cut from
Speaker 5 the PR cloth. And, and, and so I had to really challenge myself to, to let Kim and the experts and even Chad get in there and help make some really,
Speaker 5 hard decisions.
Speaker 2 Yeah.
Speaker 6 At what point did Mark go, let's just pick best commercial leads on the internet for insurance.com and go with that? There it is.
Speaker 6
Oh, yeah, exactly. It would have to be at least 50 letters long.
The URL is available.
Speaker 7 He wanted a funny name so that he would laugh every time we had to say our name. So
Speaker 7 there was all kind of considerations taken.
Speaker 5 I started with butter. It was butter was, was, was, was the name that I had originally picked.
Speaker 5 I'm glad we didn't land on it but we had uh identified butter.com and uh you know smooth like butter and i'm so glad they talked me into saving a ton of money on the domain name and landing on a yeah the name tivli and you know with the story that you know kim just put behind it like it's it's meaningful and it's in a it's we live in such a a negative industry as it relates sometimes to small business owners because there's no's around every corner.
Speaker 5 No, you don't have enough experience. No, how am I going to get any experience if nobody wants you to my business?
Speaker 5 Or no, you're not big enough or you haven't been there long, you know, you haven't been doing this long enough. And, you know, we've tried to amass a number of
Speaker 5 different types of insurance agencies, brokers and carriers that can that can write insurance for a wide variety of businesses so that we can say, yes, yeah, we can help you.
Speaker 5 And, you know, as an entrepreneur, that's something that, you know, I hate telling people no, especially when they're a startup and they have a dream and they're willing to skit all to make it work.
Speaker 5 Like there's nothing more that drives me than, you know, just listening to stories of
Speaker 5 entrepreneurs that are willing to put it on the line and,
Speaker 5 you know, and do whatever it takes to make it happen. So,
Speaker 5 yeah, that's the
Speaker 6 butter.
Speaker 5 Butter didn't make the cut.
Speaker 6 Although I do like smooth like butter. I mean, I do like that.
Speaker 6 So what does a positive outcome look like? How do you determine a positive outcome? So if you're always working to positive outcomes, right? Like what, how do you start to track that?
Speaker 6 How do you measure it? What does it mean? Because that could could be, it can mean a lot of things to a lot of different constituencies and stakeholders, right?
Speaker 6
Positive outcomes could be positive outcomes for your investors, positive outcomes for owners, shareholders. It could be positive outcomes for employees.
Like,
Speaker 6 do you prioritize whose positive outcomes are most important?
Speaker 6 And how do you manage all, you know, and again, maybe some of this is selfishly just one business owner to another. Like, how do you guys,
Speaker 6 how do you guys manage positive outcomes for all the stakeholders associated with the business when
Speaker 6 sometimes they can conflict with each other?
Speaker 5 Kim, do you want to take that or you want me to take it?
Speaker 7 I mean, I think I'll start super high level, and then I'm sure, Mark, you've got a lot to add too, but I think what we like about the positive, positive outcomes is it's flexible.
Speaker 7 It doesn't mean any one thing to one group.
Speaker 7 And so we look across several stakeholders.
Speaker 7 I came from,
Speaker 7 I spent about nine years at Retail Me Not. And we always said, you know, who mattered more? Is it the re, who do you serve first? The retailers or the shoppers?
Speaker 7 And the reality is you just always had, you had to create good experiences for both. And there were times that we were building products that focused on one or the other.
Speaker 7
but we were only a successful business if we did good for both sides. And I think we look at both both sides.
First, the customers, the small businesses, small, medium businesses that need insurance.
Speaker 7 That's all about customer experience. How do we create great customer experiences?
Speaker 7 How do we understand what scenarios create not good customer experiences, identify those, and create a game plan to just continuously be optimizing and addressing those friction points?
Speaker 7 Then we, through the, and a lot of a lot of this team, there is significant insurance background, especially from mark for example running an agency but a lot of this team has a lot of digital performance marketing experience from rocket 10 days from from several different companies so how do we take that experience to create great customer journeys through digital through combining human and technology and then not just create great experiences on our own website but power and enable great experiences on our partner site.
Speaker 7 So what we can do to create a great customer experience on tibbli.com, we can power on other partner sites as well. That's part of our triage services using the form.
Speaker 7 So we can create great experiences and then leverage the learnings, leverage the tool sets, the technology, the people, and then enable that for our partners as well.
Speaker 7 And in that way, we start kind of serving both sides of the marketplace.
Speaker 7 And then for the partners, looking at what their success metrics are and just continuing to evolve our services, our offerings, our platform to align with their goals too. Mark, you want to chime in?
Speaker 5 I had written down something very similar and that is experience. So, from
Speaker 5 our representatives, you know, sometimes I say our biggest customers are actually our team members and making sure that we're creating an environment and putting them in a position where they can help people.
Speaker 5 Because when they have to say no all day long, that's a really negative experience for our team members.
Speaker 5 If we are forcing our
Speaker 5 customers, advertisers, whether they're agents, brokers, or carriers, to accept risks where they don't have a market or they have identified that they don't want to take the lead, that creates a negative agent experience for those who are, you know, paying our bills.
Speaker 5 And so, you know, that's also important.
Speaker 5 But probably the most important of the three would be if we focus on the insured experience and making sure we help that small business owner find somebody who can offer them a reputable company to ensure their business.
Speaker 5 Hopefully that's A-rated for a reasonable price. It doesn't have to be the best price or the cheapest price, but it needs to be fast.
Speaker 5 And, you know, that's what we pride ourselves on is taking them through the journey as fast as possible so that it's just a good experience for all three stakeholders.
Speaker 5 And if we can do that, then as investors
Speaker 5 in the company,
Speaker 5 the money will follow.
Speaker 2 Yeah.
Speaker 6
Yeah. I think that's good.
I think that, Kim, you had said, you know, constantly constantly addressing friction points. This to me seems like one of the key aspects of a growth-oriented business.
Speaker 6 And whether that's an agency, a carrier, an insured tech, you know, whatever the business is in our particular industry,
Speaker 6 it does seem like
Speaker 6 someone who is in more of a
Speaker 6
stasis or a lifestyle state, they've kind of hit that point where their personal income is great. Again, not knocking.
One of the characteristics is they stop addressing friction points.
Speaker 6 They start saying things like, this is the way we do it. Our clients may appreciate the way we do it, which is fine, but we're not doing it a different way, even if it's easier.
Speaker 6 This is how we operate. And one of the things I've heard on this show from interviewing and talking to individuals like yourselves, you know, hundreds of times now,
Speaker 6 it's, it's, you know, just an internal culture or a personality characteristic or whatever that just
Speaker 6 you can't abide
Speaker 6
a friction point. Like you may have to deal with it for a period of time, but it like bugs you.
There's like something inside you that says, we can do that better. I might not be sure yet how.
Speaker 6
I might not have the technology. We may have to build something, find a partner, whatever, but man, it bugs me that that happens here every time.
And we have to fix that.
Speaker 6
We need to remove that friction. That, that feels like a.
fairly ubiquitous characteristic of growth-oriented cultures and people in general is that they just, it just bugs them.
Speaker 6
Having friction in their business just bother, unless it's purposeful, which sometimes you want to have purposeful friction, but that is often not the case. It just bothers them.
And
Speaker 6 that's a really good point. So
Speaker 6 one of the things I want to take these last 20 minutes or so that we have together and start to look at and just talk through
Speaker 6 is,
Speaker 6 and these are the questions I get
Speaker 6 is, you know, I don't want to get into not things like lead quality or whatever, but like, how are, how are you finding the partners that work with you are the most successful?
Speaker 6 What are some of the characteristics? You know, like I, I always say to people when they call me about, um, about you guys, like, I say, look, you know, you're going to write business.
Speaker 6 Like, if you, if you work with these guys, you're going to write business.
Speaker 6 One of the very first things that I think everyone that you, and again, this is me talking to whoever's calling me is you have to be able to answer the phone.
Speaker 6 Like a lot of what I've found is that a lot of agencies, a lot of agents, a lot of producers, especially today, and especially if they're part of Gen C, the worst generation,
Speaker 6
that they just don't want to be on the phone. Like they don't want to be on the phone.
Like they just, this phone is like, they're like allergic to it.
Speaker 6
I shouldn't say the worst generation, the worst generation at phone skills. The worst generation at phone skills, just to be clear.
They're, I'm sure they're perfectly fine people.
Speaker 6 And that to me is like, if you can't answer the phone and do your job over the phone,
Speaker 6 you know, that seems like a pretty, and a lot of agencies, the phone will just ring into infinity, or it rings to like the principal's cell phone who is on the golf course three days a week, or they turn their phones off from noon to two for lunch.
Speaker 6 And I know you can like set up these triggers and stuff, but it's like, like, you got to have a good phone game, right? I mean, that kind of feels like step one.
Speaker 6 And, and tell me if I'm wrong, uh, but then what are some of the other characteristics that you're seeing of successful partners that if I'm sitting here and I'm going, geez, you know, I've been considering these guys for a while, like what are some of the other successful things that you see partners doing when they work with you to write more business?
Speaker 7 Mark, you want to start with that one? With this.
Speaker 5 Yeah, well, I'll start with from an advertiser perspective. So your agencies, brokers, or carriers who are purchasing risks,
Speaker 5 the best thing that they can do to be successful is making sure they provide us with an appetite and spend the time to build an appetite for the risks that they want to write.
Speaker 5 One characteristic that's unique for Tivly is that
Speaker 5 we not only will ask for filters that include state, class,
Speaker 5 line of business,
Speaker 5 but we also start to drill down in specific questions that are important to that advertiser, the agent, broker, or carrier,
Speaker 5 kick out questions that may be important to them. For example, if it's a landscaper, there's
Speaker 5 some buyers who don't want to, who don't want to work with landscapers who carry ladders that are over six feet wide because they're probably doing more than landscaping.
Speaker 5 There is a segment of, so that's a filter that we allow advertisers to buy. So, you know, taking the time to build your filters
Speaker 5 within the campaigns and, you know, not just providing us with a list of states and classes that you want to write.
Speaker 5 You know, maybe if you're a generalist and you're successful with that, that's one way to do it.
Speaker 5 But, you know, I would say the best way to to build a profitable book is to you know give us filters that are going to protect your loss ratios is it years in business is it revenue is it are they kick out filters by class i don't know it's it depends on whatever the specialty is for the for the advertiser and then as it relates to our publishers the groups where we um that we work with to purchase leads um you know we we it's not a secret that we generate a lot of our traffic through declinations that come out of insurance carriers.
Speaker 5 So these old school carriers that have in the past
Speaker 5 been able to say yes to those who they can write a market for, but they say no to the balance, which is usually a pretty large number,
Speaker 5 providing them with a solution that allows their agents to say, I don't have a market for you today, but I have somebody that can help.
Speaker 5 whether they're giving out our phone number or they're doing a cold transfer or a warm transfer, they're at least offering that small business owner
Speaker 5 an opportunity to
Speaker 5 find what they're looking for. And that generally leads to building a relationship that allows us to be on the front line.
Speaker 5 So there are many insurance carriers, brokers that we actually answer the phone on behalf of the company and we do all the triage work up front. What does that do for the company?
Speaker 5 Well, we answer the phone in four seconds. So
Speaker 5 some of those companies have
Speaker 5 over
Speaker 5
10 minute hold time. So they're missing tons and tons of business.
It's in a back to the experience standpoint. Nobody likes to be hold on hold for 10 minutes and then put through an IVR system.
Speaker 5 And so that's a, that's a, you know,
Speaker 5 that is a
Speaker 5 solution that makes our
Speaker 5 our publisher insurance companies successful is is off is offering them the ability to
Speaker 5 answer calls in volume as well as, you know, you'd be amazed at how many insurance companies, brokers, even agents will purchase web leads and they don't call them for one day, two days, three days.
Speaker 5
So they crazy. Sometimes groups will put us on the front lines to do that work for them.
For them, that's not where we make our money, but that's how we make our partners successful.
Speaker 5 And that's what puts us on the front lines of some, you know, what we're told are some of the best leads in the business.
Speaker 5 I'd love to get your thoughts on
Speaker 5 the value of our leads and how and how we
Speaker 5 probably should have talked about this prior to this interview, but just how do we stack up against the against the competition? And what can we do to continue to improve our business?
Speaker 6 Yeah, well, I'd say,
Speaker 6 in full transparency to everyone listening,
Speaker 6 we pay thousands to Tivoli every month because we get good business out of it. I mean, I think the proof is in,
Speaker 6 I read something the other day.
Speaker 6 Don't listen to what someone says, listen to what's in their portfolio, right? Like,
Speaker 6 you know, we
Speaker 6 pay money to Tivoli every month for leads. And
Speaker 6
we have, I think, two very targeted niche campaigns. And then we have one like mass buying campaign that we run.
And we do that because
Speaker 6 it feeds our producers.
Speaker 6 I talked before on the episode that just you and I were on, Mark, back in the, back in the fall around how one of the ways that we use Tivly as well is to feed new producers leads to kind of test their metal, right?
Speaker 6 Get them going right off the bat.
Speaker 6 Here's some, here's some, here are some qualified ready-to-go opportunities you know if you these up then we know where we need to train you not like we kick you out the door but now you know we get to hear them on the phone in real time addressing someone who has presented a need who is actively on a call we have the backup data how do they ask the questions how do they frame our business how do they you know solve problems like what are they doing and And then from there, we feed a couple of specific niches that we have
Speaker 6 because to me, it's just constant activity, right? Like the game,
Speaker 6 you know,
Speaker 6 the unfortunate part about buying leads in general, we'll just say as a, as a general, as a general sense, buying, you know, I like that you call them buying risks,
Speaker 6 you know, because I think you, you know, I would classify what we get from you as more than leads, right? Leads are kind of like, this might work.
Speaker 6
What we get from you guys are, it's yours to up, kind of. It's more, if that makes sense.
So, um,
Speaker 2 you know,
Speaker 6 what I felt, you know, if we're talking about lifetime value of a customer,
Speaker 6 then first year ROI to me
Speaker 6 is, is not as important.
Speaker 6 The reason that I, and then the other thing too, is when we're buying a lead, let's say, let's say I pay you guys, I'm just going to just pick up a number.
Speaker 6 I'm not going to hold, you know, I don't want everyone to say, like, this is what they all cost, you know, whatever. Let's just say buying a lead from you costs 100 bucks.
Speaker 6
Let's just say that for purposes of conversation, let's just say, bam, I buy a lead from you, 100 bucks. It's a live, you know, call.
Hey, we have, we write those landscapers.
Speaker 6
Hey, we have a five person landscaper with 1.5 million in revenue on the phone. They need GL and workers comp.
Can you help them? Yes. Boom.
Okay. We just paid 100 bucks for that.
Speaker 6
Now I have a producer talking to that person. Okay.
So that's the cost.
Speaker 6 And what a lot of agency principals in particular, not carriers, some of the larger entities will CPS this, but what a lot of people who struggle with the value proposition think is, that's $100 out of my pocket.
Speaker 6 And now I'm talking to this person. Okay.
Speaker 6 Well,
Speaker 6 what they fail to think about when comparing those types of opportunities versus all others is the time
Speaker 6 and material expense that goes into generating other types of opportunities. So let's say I go to
Speaker 6 a networking event, right?
Speaker 6 And I'm there for for an hour and it's 20 bucks to get in. And I buy a beer at the bar and it's an hour of my time.
Speaker 6 That math is most likely more than $100, right?
Speaker 6 If I'm, if I meet someone there and then I want to do business with them, because now we're going to connect on LinkedIn and we're going to do the back and forth on scheduling.
Speaker 6 our first call or meeting. Then we're going to do the get to know you meeting and gather the info.
Speaker 6 And it's like, when you stack all that up, now we're talking hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in terms of time and spent getting that opportunity in the door.
Speaker 6 You know, they might have not bought that opportunity, but they're not thinking pound for pound.
Speaker 6 Wow, I just got all of that for 100 bucks in the snap of my fingers today with the person on the phone ready to go.
Speaker 6 So we close
Speaker 6 on the opportunities that we don't mess up and we mess them up. We have some training, training stuff that we're working on.
Speaker 6 But when we, when we, when we're really cooking, um, my personal close ratio was just north of 60%, and we're currently close to 50% at rogue risk.
Speaker 6 So, I want to get us back up over 60, and I think we can be as high as 75 if we need to dial in some markets.
Speaker 6 You know, one of the things that I was saying, and I'm, I'm not, I don't mean to be selling you guys, I just, this is what we do all day is the way that I think is like,
Speaker 6
I mean, I think about this for all campaigns. So, I think of Tivly.
So do everyone at home realize I think of Tivly like a campaign.
Speaker 6 There are, I have many different streams of leads coming into Rogue Risk. I think of them all as campaigns or projects, and each one is set up a little different.
Speaker 6 So for us to be successful with Tivly, what we found is dialing in the appetite and the dials to a particular carrier. So
Speaker 6 like we're uh going to be launching a transportation one with you guys soon.
Speaker 6 We do construction and contracting just in California right now because we have three carriers in California and two producers that do contracting and construction in California, which is very hard to do.
Speaker 6
And so we don't have as much competition. And in the competition we do have, we have experts taking the phone calls and we have all the markets that we need to be successful.
Those do very, very well.
Speaker 6 I think where people get hung up. And again, the transportation one will be geared towards Cover Whale.
Speaker 6 So we're going to be gearing that call campaign towards what Cover Whale needs to be successful so that the leads that come in, the ones we answer the phone for, fit their appetite.
Speaker 6 So that when my transportation producer takes that call, there's no, there's less of a chance of it not fitting that appetite because we're setting Tivoli up for that.
Speaker 6 So then our mass campaign is kind of the same way.
Speaker 6 Like we continue to tweak and dial and add an industry, maneuve, remove an industry to set up for like, you know, our big three, which are Travelers, Hartford, and nationwide, right? So like
Speaker 6 Great American a little bit too, just give Great American shout out.
Speaker 6 So, you know, we're, we're setting up for those guys so that those leads that come in, when we, when the leads we get, the questions we ask, we know they fit the markets and we're going right to market with what we hope.
Speaker 6 And our biggest, we call them STMs, shit that matters. Our, our number one STM in sales is one called closes.
Speaker 6 As our one call close number goes up, our
Speaker 6 cost of acquisition, our return on investment goes up. That's, there's a very clear,
Speaker 6
my brain's not working. Very clear relationship.
Sorry. Wow.
Good.
Speaker 6 I've done that. I promise I've talked on that radio before.
Speaker 6 A very clear relationship between one call closes and return on investment.
Speaker 6 So that's a very long way of saying if we match campaigns to carriers that we want to write business with, we put producers with expertise on those inbound calls, and then we tweak the dials, appetite, size, whatever, geography to match what that particular producer's expertise is and the carrier they want to write more business with, you will be highly successful, 60 to, I think, north of 75% close ratio on these leads.
Speaker 6 That's my personal take.
Speaker 5 It's great to hear. I bet your underwriters love you.
Speaker 6 They don't, but we're.
Speaker 5 Oh, well, the fact that you're dialing in and your hit ratio is so high,
Speaker 5 that makes their job a lot easier for sure. You need to to add some for a raise
Speaker 6 the hard part you know this this is a completely off topic but our underwriters we have a love hate have a love hate relationship with us mostly because they don't know how to handle us right they're so used to like
Speaker 6 they're so used to having relationships with traditional local agents because we're we're not big enough to be thought of as like a new front or a sage or a renegade or one of these like mega digital agents so we're they we're like in that in-between phase of they kind of want to put us in a local agent box but at the same time we operate like one of those big ones so like these underwriters are getting hit seven nine 15 times a day and they just
Speaker 6 i went through it for years and eventually it'll it'll it'll start snowball yeah well they all say the same thing as soon as you hit a million we start paying attention to you yeah so okay
Speaker 6 we're on our way um so yeah so that that's kind of been our our our process and again just i don't want it to be you know just just tip like that what I just explained to everybody, that's how we set up every campaign for every, that's how we set up stuff for SEO.
Speaker 6 That's how we set up stuff for, you know, paid ads. That's how we set up stuff for referral partners.
Speaker 2 We do it all.
Speaker 6 We, we match producer, market to lead source, and then we create a campaign around it. And it's kind of how we think about it.
Speaker 5 Wow, interesting.
Speaker 6
Yeah. So I don't know.
I think
Speaker 6 it's like,
Speaker 6
it's almost like thinking about it like niching a generalist agency. We're very much a generalist agency.
Like
Speaker 6 the way I explain our business, and again, I don't mean to talk about Rogue so much, but the way we explain, I explain my business is we're, we're, if you ever watch Gold Rush, I don't know if you guys have ever seen Gold Rush.
Speaker 6 For some reason, that show just speaks to me. I have absolutely no idea why.
Speaker 6 But it hit me one day that what we're trying to do at Rogue is be essentially the gold shaker deck, right?
Speaker 6 I don't know if you've, you know, you see, basically they take these big, huge hoops of pay dirt, which is shit and good stuff stuff mixed in, the gold being the good stuff, and they throw it all on the top of this shaker deck.
Speaker 6 And you guys can't see the hand gestures that I'm doing at home right now. They're amazing.
Speaker 6 But like the, you know, that gets blasted with these big jets and then it gets blasted with smaller jets and then it shakes out the big rocks through big holes and then it falls down and then those holes get a little smaller and a little smaller and a little smaller until the gold comes out the ass into this thing.
Speaker 6 That is what ultimately we're trying to build with Rogue in the various versions of our business, both a do-it-yourself, a select team and a premier team, is that
Speaker 6 we, I just want to find every avenue I can for opportunities, throw them in the top of this shaker system, and then have the gold come out the bottom wherever it needs, wherever it's most appropriate based on the customer experience and the needs of that particular customer.
Speaker 6 So,
Speaker 6
you know, that's, and you guys are a big part of that. So yeah, it's great to hear.
Yeah.
Speaker 5 My, when we were running our agency, and even today, my, mine was deadliest catch. So same, same concept.
Speaker 5 You might go fishing and catch nothing and, you know, it's going to be a really cold winter. But, you know, when you, when you do, you put it through, you know, the same, same process.
Speaker 6 So yeah, it's, it's interesting.
Speaker 6 So we're kind of at our number.
Speaker 6 I would love to leave you guys with, like, if I'm listening at home and wherever I'm listening, most people probably don't listen to this at home, but if I'm listening and, you know, I'm, I'm, you know, a lot of people 2023, they're trying to hit it hard.
Speaker 6 I think we're all finally out of the COVID mentality.
Speaker 6 I think we're all kind of whatever it's going to look like, firing on all cylinders for the new versions of our business, these quasi-remote, whatever, wherever we're going.
Speaker 6 You know, I see for
Speaker 6 the agencies that are ready to go, you guys are a big, can be a big part of their success. And I think
Speaker 6 both as growth.
Speaker 6
or and or a foundational layer of consistent sales, right? Which I think a lot of people don't think about. I think they only think, hey, I want to grow.
I'm going to go buy some leads.
Speaker 6 Well, yes, that can be the case. But I tend to think of you guys almost more as a consistent base, right? Like I can count on this many leads coming from Tivoli every week.
Speaker 6
And if we hit this close ratio, I know there's just a base layer of business we're going to do every month. Bam, here it is.
You know, it's between X number and Y number of premium.
Speaker 6
And, you know, we buy more, that number will go up. We, you know, as long as we keep buying it, we know we're going to be right in there.
And that's really, really important to success. And
Speaker 6 so, so if I'm thinking about it, like, like, you know, who, who is the perfect, let's, let's go maybe just think agent, agency. Um, you know, what would be just a great case?
Speaker 6 You're sitting there, and if you look like this or you're thinking this, whack, give us a call today. And, you know, we're going to, we're going to get you there.
Speaker 5 Kimberly Kay, I'll let you bring us home.
Speaker 7 I just think it's anybody. We've got, as Mark said, we're getting 80,000 small, medium business partners, leads, risks every single month coming and looking for somebody who can write a policy.
Speaker 7 And if you write commercial insurance policies or connected to that,
Speaker 7
you fit. You can come in and customize it.
to your point, create the campaigns, create the filters, create the bid price that makes sense for your specific goals.
Speaker 7 You can set daily limits, you can set hourly limits, you can day part.
Speaker 7 So you're looking for commercial insurance, businesses, partners, leads, we're a great fit. You can just go to tibbly.com.
Speaker 7 You can go down to the footer, commercial insurance leads, and we'll follow up right away and help get you set up.
Speaker 6
Awesome. I will also say, I'll just toss this out there.
Anybody who's listening that has questions and wants to ask me before, hit me up. I'll be completely honest.
Speaker 6 I'll give you the good stuff, the bad stuff, the stuff that were the mistakes that we made, how we've optimized over time.
Speaker 6 You know, we've been using guys for, I mean, it's going to, I think, the spring is when we started, or maybe even a little before then.
Speaker 6
So we've been buying leads from you guys for a while. So, you know, we're coming up on almost a year and we've learned so much.
So, happy to answer any questions everyone has.
Speaker 6
You can DM me on LinkedIn or wherever your famous favorite DM place is and happy to answer those questions too. But Tivly.com, T-I-V-L-Y.com, T-I-V-L-Y.com.
Go to Tivly.
Speaker 6 And is it okay if people want to connect with either of you on LinkedIn? Is that cool? Can they go and connect?
Speaker 6 Awesome.
Speaker 6
Awesome. Well, hey, thanks, brother.
Thank you guys.
Speaker 6
Yeah, looking forward to Crushing 2023 and being a partner with you guys. And I wish you the best.
Yes, sir. Good day.
Same to you.
Speaker 7 Let's do it.
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