RHS 131 - Billy Williams on How to Maximize Agency Growth in 2022

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Speaker 2 In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home.

Speaker 5 Hello everyone, welcome back to the show.

Speaker 6 Today we have a tremendous, tremendous, tremendous episode. That's triple tremendous because today's show is with the great and powerful Billy Williams.
Now,

Speaker 6 if you haven't listened to this show for an extended period of time, then you may not have heard previous interviews that I've done with Billy. But

Speaker 6 so we do just a little bit of background on our relationship and how we met, which is more of just a funny story than it is anything else.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 6 I want to go into this episode with you understanding the amount of

Speaker 6 respect and appreciation

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 6 just all the feels that I have for Billy and his work and his attitude towards business and his attitude towards life, his work ethic, his dedication, his consistency.

Speaker 6 You know, he is

Speaker 6 a person to aspire to. He is a,

Speaker 6 he just,

Speaker 6 every time I get done talking to Billy, I'm ready to like go

Speaker 6 take on the world. And I felt no different after this conversation.
And just

Speaker 6 these are the podcast episodes that I do this show for, right? I mean, they're all amazing and I love them all. And it's not a knock on anyone who's ever been on this show.
And I don't mean it to be.

Speaker 6 I just mean that like, you know, this is one, another one of the episodes that like, this is why I do it. I do it for these conversations.

Speaker 6 And I'm. Obviously, I'm honored to share it with you.
And I hope you appreciate it. You know, if you don't, obviously you probably wouldn't listen to the show.

Speaker 6 But I would have these conversations whether you guys were listening or not. So

Speaker 6 thank you for listening. Thank you for being part of it.
I appreciate you.

Speaker 6 But this is the great and powerful Billy Williams, and there's nothing that can stop him.

Speaker 6 Guys, I'm not even going to do sponsors today. All I ask is that if you love this, share it with someone who needs it.
That's it. I'm not even going to do sponsors.

Speaker 6 The sponsor of this show is you taking this episode and sending it to someone who needs to hear what we talk about, who needs to hear Billy's thought process and his methodology.

Speaker 6 That's what I want from you today.

Speaker 6 I love you all. Let's get to Billy Williams.

Speaker 5 What's up, Mr. Hanley?

Speaker 4 What's up?

Speaker 4 The legend.

Speaker 5 I was sitting on my meeting thinking you were logging into my meeting.

Speaker 4 I can never figure out how to get on your meetings.

Speaker 5 Really? It was a Zoom meeting.

Speaker 4 It wasn't in the calendar invite.

Speaker 5 I don't do calendar invites. I just send you the confirmation when you sign up.
And then you get the confirmation text, the confirmation emails, the confirmation. I just click the link.

Speaker 4 For some reason, it never works that easy for me. I'm probably just stubborn and weird, but it just never.

Speaker 5 Well, because you guys are all used to Google calendar invites and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 5 And I don't do that.

Speaker 5 When you have the confirmation, it'll automatically, I don't have my camera on when you have the confirmation it'll automatically send you the confirmation and then it'll say do you want to save it to or do you want to save it to your calendar yeah i don't manually go in and send calendar invites and all that stuff so yeah

Speaker 4 let me start well we're here now that's the good news there we go there we go we're here now

Speaker 5 so what's up man what's going on what i wanted to do you know it's 2022 we're starting out the year right so i want to get on i want to make my round on all rounds on all the podcasts and just kind of bring folks

Speaker 5 back to where they need to be. I won't say back, but get folks back on where they need to be.
And I want to always discuss it from the standpoint of what's stopping you.

Speaker 5 You know, Ryan, this is how I look at growing a business because, you know, I own many businesses, not just insurance, but many businesses.

Speaker 5 I mean, we own fitness centers, we own the Miss Latina Texas pageant, we own, you know, other stuff.

Speaker 5 You're either gonna

Speaker 5 you're either gonna feed the good part of your business or feed the bad part of your business you know it's kind of like a cancer when you eat right exercise right do whatever you're feeding the things that help to fight off cancer yep but when you eat crappy you eat out every day you eat fast food you eat processed food you're feeding the things that cause and speed up cancer.

Speaker 5 And our businesses are the same way.

Speaker 5 Business owners, agents,

Speaker 5 you need to sit down and really think about what are you feeding in your business?

Speaker 5 If you've got a staff person who won't do any damn thing you ask and you're compromising to make them happy, you're not putting processes in place because it'll piss them off.

Speaker 5 You won't do this because Susie will never buy into that. You're feeding into the cancer,

Speaker 5 but then you're sitting around complaining about the illness.

Speaker 4 so one thing that's really interesting about food in relation to this example that you just gave so um i've always been into fitness i will say that my weakness in the health game is not the working out i'm very good at setting routine i enjoy it i enjoy the feeling and i've done tons of different types of workouts you know just to mix things up but But I got a pretty good feel for that.

Speaker 4 The diet has always been my issue Um,

Speaker 4 because

Speaker 4 just like every other person who allows their, you know, self-indulgence to take over, I love donuts and beers and chips and big, huge hoagie sandwiches, and just like everyone else.

Speaker 4 So, what's what's for 2022? And I wanted to get through the holidays and I wanted to enjoy them. And I know everyone's like, oh, start today.
It doesn't matter.

Speaker 4 But I said, no, I don't, I don't buy into that. I wanted to enjoy myself, have some pops, have some pizza, and just not think about it.
But I signed up with

Speaker 4 a guy that I know who does training and coaching and stuff. And we started two weeks ago at the beginning of 2022.
And I had this plan for a month.

Speaker 4 So this wasn't just like a, oh, hey, I'm going to get fit. I told him, hey, as soon as January gets, we're going to get after it for three months and see what we can do.
So

Speaker 4 to your point about good stuff in, good stuff out.

Speaker 4 I'm tracking because the only way that I've ever found for myself to be able to

Speaker 4 hit my goals physically is to track everything I put in my body. I have an app, MyFitnessPal.
It's very common. A lot of people know about it.
And every piece of food goes in my body.

Speaker 4 I only drink black coffee and water when I'm getting fit. So black coffee and water.
And

Speaker 4 then I track every piece of food that goes in my body, all the calories.

Speaker 4 uh he sent me uh he's not following me around the gym but he sends me a workout plan and he sent me

Speaker 4 my calories that I have to hit. And every day I got to report to him whether I hit it or not.

Speaker 4 And,

Speaker 4 you know, he gave me some stipulations: gallon of water, which I got right here. And,

Speaker 4 you know, no processed foods and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 Well, what's interesting to your point, to get to the point of this story, is that I am eating on average 500 more calories a day right now than I was back when I was eating garbage. The difference is

Speaker 4 it's, you know, gluten-free oatmeal and eggs and chicken and, you know, and vegetables and, you know, non-processed whole foods.

Speaker 4 And literally, I told my wife, I was like, it feels like I'm eating all day long and I can already feel the inflammation in my body coming down. I can feel, you know, I'm trimming up and two weeks in.

Speaker 4 You really shouldn't be losing weight two weeks in too much.

Speaker 5 Well, you got to lose water weight. You got to lose water weight right at first.

Speaker 4 So, yeah, but like, I can just feel, even though my weight hasn't changed too much, I can feel my body just in two weeks, just starting to recalibrate away from all the heavy garbage foods sitting in my gut and my, in my, in my hips, you know, and redistributing into my muscles and that kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 It is just absolutely wild how

Speaker 4 much more you can do, how much more you're capable of when you focus on putting good stuff in your body, in your business, in your mind, in your marriage, in your relationships, you know, everything.

Speaker 4 When you put good stuff in, you're capable of so much more than you realize when you're putting garbage in, right?

Speaker 4 When you're putting garbage in, you just, you have a higher, you have a lower ceiling on what you're capable of.

Speaker 5 Okay. So what I'm looking for right now, I'm looking through my bodybuilding book.
Yep. I'm sure you, I think we've talked about this before.
I was a national level bodybuilder before.

Speaker 4 I did not know that. You have not spoken to me.

Speaker 5 So, this picture right here, I don't know, I don't know

Speaker 5 how you can zoom in on it or whatever, but this is the natural nationals. And I won the natural nationals two years in a row.

Speaker 5 This is me right here.

Speaker 5 This, again, I don't know how deep you can get into this.

Speaker 4 You're jacked. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You love my gym that I'm in. I got beefcakes, beefcakes like that rolling around my gym all over the place.
You are a legit beefcake.

Speaker 5 Well, I won natural nationals two years in a row at a body weight of about 210, 220.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 the reason why I'm bringing that up, though, is not to brag. I mean, that's just another season in my life.
We all have different seasons.

Speaker 5 But the thing that made me really, really good as a bodybuilder was not what I gave up. It was what I reallocated.

Speaker 5 So, and I'm going to apply this to business. So, some people are really good at saying, I, I, I won't eat donuts.
I won't eat this. I won't eat that.

Speaker 5 I'll just, you know, drink water and I'll eat bell pepper all day. And I'll, you know, some people are really, really good at that, right?

Speaker 5 I'm not. I'm not good at that.
But what I'm good at is cutting out certain things and replacing them with other things. So you can't tell me I can never have a donut, right?

Speaker 5 Because I love Krispy Kremds.

Speaker 5 But what you can tell me is that I can only have a donut once a week.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 5 And that instead of having a donut four times, I got to replace three of those days with this,

Speaker 5 but you can still have your donut once a week. You can't tell me that I can't have waterburger because I love water burger.
Okay.

Speaker 5 But what you can tell me is that i can only have waterburger on saturdays

Speaker 5 you can't tell me i can't eat at waffle house because that is the finest scarfing establishment you can ever find

Speaker 5 right but what you can tell me is that i can only eat at waffle house on sundays

Speaker 5 So when I do my bodybuilding, because I still, you know, I still own a fitness center, I still own some other stuff, I still work out.

Speaker 5 When I'm doing my exercise, I look at from the standpoint, not what I have to give up, but what am I reallocating?

Speaker 5 And so if we look at insurance and we look at in businesses and businesses and all the things, everything, a lot of times it's,

Speaker 5 do you really want to give it up or do you want to reallocate it?

Speaker 5 So let's take staff because that's always the number one issue in most businesses is they hire crappy staff who only have, who only want to do what they want to do when they want to do it the way they want to do it.

Speaker 5 So now I've got this whole new mantra about hiring staff where I go, we're going to hire in this order always. Number one, automation and technology.

Speaker 5 I'm gonna automate first before I ever think about a person, before I ever think about anything else, I'm gonna see what I can automate.

Speaker 5 Second thing is, I'm gonna outsource. I'm gonna outsource before I in-house hire.

Speaker 5 And the reason why I outsource is because by outsourcing, those people are gonna do whatever the hell I ask them to do. End of story.
And more importantly, I probably don't have a process.

Speaker 4 they're going to put together a process for me they're going to teach me how to do things they're going to streamline that whole process for me that i now can hand off to my in-house person i'm going to give the listening audience a great example of this because obviously i'm a disciple of yours and i just did this with my accounting and commission reconciliation so reconciling commissions I would rather that in your full beefcake mode, Billy, you punched me square in the face as hard as you could than reconcile commissions.

Speaker 5 I just, that.

Speaker 5 I remember you saying, dude, we got to figure something else. This sucks.

Speaker 4 Everything about it, everything about the tediousness of it just makes my brain melt and I don't do it, right?

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 I, on the recommendation of Chris Paradiso,

Speaker 4 um just outsourced my accounting and commission reconciliation processes to a company called pfs accounting it doesn't matter if you're interested i'm happy to happy to uh introduce anyone who's whatever but um and and to your point, and this is just to piggyback your point, they come in, they said, here's how we do it.

Speaker 4 They gave me a list of 10 things I had to do. And I had to go through and do this and add them to this system and make sure, you know, this was happening and bang, bang, bang.

Speaker 4 And then now I don't have to worry about accounting and commission reconciliation.

Speaker 4 At the end of the month, I get my financial statements and I get my commission statements that I then send to my producers and say, hey, right here's the numbers. I send you a check for this much.

Speaker 4 We're all happy. Everybody's happy.
And I don't have to stop my brain to think about that thing that I wouldn't have otherwise done.

Speaker 4 And that's the kind of thing that, like, before I spent time with you and, and, and, you know, and the people who, who, who think like you do, I wouldn't have, I would have continued to just let that fester and not done it versus paying the 500 bucks a month.

Speaker 4 I mean, what's that? One decent policy pays for that service. I mean, come on.
it's crazy.

Speaker 5 Exactly. People's egos are that get in the way.
You know, the number one thing that stops any business from growing is emotion, right? Lack of emotional discipline. It's the number one reason.

Speaker 5 It's why Judy won't cross-sell. It's why Bob won't make an outbound phone call.
It's why Dave won't mention to a customer that he's got a policy weakness because of that lack of emotional discipline.

Speaker 5 Well, discipline falls into three phases. You have irritation, frustration, and anger.
Okay, you've heard me talk about this before. Irritation is something that bothers us.

Speaker 5 For you, reconciliation of your commission statements, but it irritated the hell out of me. Yes, it does.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 Irritation over time or intensity becomes frustration. Frustration has two legs, helplessness and hopelessness.

Speaker 5 So when we get frustrated, we feel helpless to do anything about it, and we just give up hope that it will ever change. And then we're mad.
And once we get mad or angry, now we have two more legs.

Speaker 5 Now we have a lack of discipline, right?

Speaker 5 Or we do something other than what we're supposed to do. So we'll go mow the damn lawn as opposed to doing the statements.

Speaker 5 We will do anything in our power to to find a way to reallocate our time away from that. Yep.

Speaker 5 And what are we doing this whole time? We're letting the problem get worse and worse and worse. I think of it like credit.

Speaker 5 One of the things my dad told me when I was young was: first of all, the only people who really concentrate on credit are people who don't make enough money.

Speaker 5 Okay, that was his first thing: make enough money, you don't live on credit.

Speaker 5 But his second thing was, when you do have to have credit and you owe somebody,

Speaker 5 if you only got 10 bucks, pay them the 10 bucks. Because then at least you're working toward the outcome versus waiting until you have it all before you pay the bill.

Speaker 5 And that's how people end up with bad credit. Oh, I don't have enough to pay it all, so I won't pay any of it.

Speaker 5 Well, me as a creditor, if you owe me 100 bucks, give me 20, give me 10, give me something. Don't wait until you have all 100 before you pay me.
You know what I mean? That's how you do it.

Speaker 5 That's what we do in our business. We wait until everything is perfect before we try to move.
forward. So I remember you and I having that damn conversation about commission statements.

Speaker 5 And And you were saying, well, Billy, what do you do for your commission statements? You got all these different agencies. What do you do? And I said, dude, I got 12 people.

Speaker 5 Remember, I told you this, I said, I got 12 people that that's all they do are commission statements.

Speaker 5 And we don't go to, we don't go to our agency management system and pull reports and do all that shit through our AMS.

Speaker 5 We go directly to the carrier and we get all of our commission statements directly from the carrier. Because the AMS systems may not have it all.

Speaker 5 They may not download, they may some some carriers don't upload, some carriers don't talk to Ivan, some so I'm not playing that game when it comes to my money, we're going directly to the source, right?

Speaker 4 Yep, and that's what this PFS accounting does. That was one of the big,

Speaker 4 you know, you had said it, and then they did the same thing. And I just, you know, that was one of the big ahas for me was, you know, they're like,

Speaker 4 you're like, do you need to, I mean, the truth is, our agency management systems are like a good guess at how much business you have.

Speaker 4 I mean, at any time, no matter what system you have, and this is, I know,

Speaker 4 I know every time we talk, you give me shit about how much brain cycles I spend on this, this kind of thing.

Speaker 5 All good, man.

Speaker 4 Go ahead. I agree.
It's like a.

Speaker 5 This is your podcast, big dog.

Speaker 4 I'm setting your podcast. Instead of eating a donut, I think about which agency management system I'd like to move to, you know? So, uh, um, no, but you know, and this is what the guy from PFS said.

Speaker 4 He's like, he's like, you know,

Speaker 4 if you rely on your agency management system, you know, you want it to be accurate if you can, but just understand it's no matter what system you have, no matter how fangled it is and what the new upgrade, it is a, it is a maybe a good guess at best.

Speaker 4 He's like, the statements are, you know, your bank statement and the statement you get from the carrier. That's the whole story.

Speaker 4 What did they actually send you? And what did they say they were supposed to send you? And that's the whole deal.

Speaker 5 It's the same thing, Ryan, when I'm acquiring, when I'm purchasing into an agency and I ask for certain things and they come back with like PL statements and accounting this, I'm like, dude, that ain't telling me shit.

Speaker 5 You need to give me commission statements. They come directly from the carrier.
That's how I know what I'm dealing with.

Speaker 5 Don't come to me with some prepared statement by your accountant. That means nothing to me.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 You know, it's a really interesting part of this.

Speaker 5 And then i i want to get back into what you're saying i know we just took a little um detail that's what we do ryan it's okay that's why you're that's why your people love you because they they never know where you're going to end up man

Speaker 4 so you know i i've been thinking a lot about um

Speaker 4 uh

Speaker 4 you know efficiency is a big thing in our business right and i and i and these are conversations that that we've had and um i try to as best i can track

Speaker 4 where are we losing time where are we losing efficiency where are we losing accuracy in our information? Where are those holes in our current funnel? And,

Speaker 4 you know, with the goal always being, you know, you're going to plug as many as you can and new ones are going to form.

Speaker 4 And that I feel like in large part, that's the job of leadership is that's what we're meant to do, right? Your people are executing the processes that you put in place.

Speaker 4 And your job is to help make those processes more efficient, more effective. So you're going to be able to do that.

Speaker 5 Hiring, training, and accountability. Right.
We only have three things that we're really responsible for as leaders: hiring, training, and accountability. Yep.

Speaker 4 I would toss in there for the right people enterprise-level BD, right? The big deals, the bigger, the bigger connection, some of those types of opportunities.

Speaker 4 I think a leader could have some allocation to that as well. But otherwise, I completely agree with you.

Speaker 5 Yeah, but then you're not a leader. Now you're not leading, you're producing.

Speaker 4 That's the I don't mean, I don't mean. So, like, uh, let me give you an example.
Um,

Speaker 4 uh,

Speaker 4 what where I would, what I would categorize, and this might be a loose bucket but where i would categorize this is um

Speaker 4 uh finding finding a niche program that fits what you're going after in the negotiation around higher commission splits or better language in the policy or uh uh um technology automation that allows your people to be more efficient like

Speaker 4 finding that deal figuring out that deal i think tends to fall under the though in order to put that deal together, you oftentimes need someone at the very top to kind of make that deal happen.

Speaker 4 I'm not talking about getting your hands in the business.

Speaker 5 See, I don't consider that leadership. See, to me, leadership is what am I doing to actively lead my team?

Speaker 5 That is more operations and more business management, business acumen, really the vision of the business. So

Speaker 5 while those are an absolute part of that, just like with Inspire Nation, just like with Williams Family Investment Group.

Speaker 5 I mean, I sit down and I bring in the sponsors and I bring in the big deals and I network and I go out and I speak and I do all that. But to me, that doesn't fall under leadership.

Speaker 5 That falls under me being the director, the operator, the head of the business.

Speaker 4 And you're saying you have both hats. You're saying you can wear both.
You have multiple hats.

Speaker 5 When I'm talking leadership, I'm talking about what am I specifically doing to guide my team. Yeah.

Speaker 4 And that's hiring training and accountability yeah no now we're on the same page okay so getting back to what i was saying was so i've been thinking through

Speaker 4 where are we losing the most time and and one of those places that we're losing time is inefficient carriers carriers who who refuse

Speaker 4 And I'm going to say refuse simply because they're just not doing the things that they need to do to make our lives efficient.

Speaker 4 We're selling your product and you make our lives hard right like so so i have a lot of carriers i have 38 markets some of that is wholesalers mgas ens but we have 38 markets today that we can go remember when you had two yep yep so i've got a lot and

Speaker 4 the reason that i have 38 is because i don't trust carriers as far as i can throw them they're all liars right they all tell you i'll write this i'll write that our pricing is great here and then you go to submit business and it's well,

Speaker 4 well, well, Billy, the moon is in the sign of the Aquarius today. And, you know, that's going to run our loss ratio up.
So we're not going to write that account for you.

Speaker 5 So, but, but, Ryan, you do know that's our business, right? I mean, that's our business model. I mean, if you look at our marketing, our marketing,

Speaker 5 a business as marketing tells you everything about that business you really need to know as a consumer. So, what do we do? We promise people we're going to save them $750.

Speaker 5 We're going to do this. We're going to get you the lowest price.
We're going to do that. And then what happens? You call into the the agent because all that is designed to just make you call.

Speaker 5 And then you call in. And then once we've run the real numbers, then all of a sudden, no, it didn't really work out that way.
But you told me you could save me 750 bucks. Oh, it's just an ad.

Speaker 5 That's how carriers are. They do the exact same thing.
They're going to promise you the moon. And then when you call in with that deal or call in with that particular risk.

Speaker 5 That's when it's up to the person to tell you, oh, no, we really can't do that.

Speaker 4 But what's interesting to me, because of the breadth of carriers that we've had the opportunity to interact with, and the fact that we write in all 50 states now, and we have accounts, we have accounts in almost every single state.

Speaker 4 So we're licensed in all 50. We have accounts in 43 states and growing, right? They come in from all over the country.
And so we've been able, we've had a kind of unique,

Speaker 4 you know, and I know there's other agencies that do this, but we are fairly unique in that

Speaker 4 situation. And

Speaker 4 what I've realized is there are carriers who do come very close to living up to their promises and there are carriers who do not.

Speaker 4 And,

Speaker 4 you know, we're starting to cycle into a phase of our business and 2022 will be a year for this where I'm probably going to drop appointments or I certainly will not fight any appointments if someone comes and gives me shit because I didn't hit this number or that number and submit X number of accounts.

Speaker 4 Because to me,

Speaker 4 I,

Speaker 4 and I know this is common, you know, you don't need a million carriers to do well in this business. I completely believe that and understand that.

Speaker 5 But you need your niches, but you need your niches.

Speaker 4 You need your niches. And until you've tried them all, it's kind of like dating, right?

Speaker 4 Like you see this a lot from people who like married their high school sweetheart and it wasn't, you know, the perfect match and that they always thought it was going to be right.

Speaker 4 Like they never tried some different flavors of ice cream to see which flavor was their favorite flavor. They've only ever had, you know, one flavor.

Speaker 4 And that might be a crude example, but you know, kind of like a captive carrier.

Speaker 5 That's how I look at it when you're with a captive carrier. You got one flavor.
You got vanilla. You better like vanilla.

Speaker 5 They can throw some sprinkles on it, throw a little bit of M ⁇ Ms, crunch up some of this, but at the end of the day, it's vanilla ice cream.

Speaker 4 Right. So now, so what I think is interesting is that

Speaker 4 now we can actually come back and be like, well, I actually know what you will and won't write. Like I know, not just what you'll tell me.
I know for sure what you're.

Speaker 4 And what I do know is this other company that you compete against head to head, they will write it.

Speaker 4 and they're easy to work with and they download and their commission statements are accurate and their communication is good and you know i know that every agency doesn't have the opportunity to get all the appointments that we got but i do think that it is healthy and i and it would be

Speaker 4 It would be very interesting to me if this started to become a trend where agents started to actually stop thinking that they were given a gift by getting an appointment.

Speaker 4 I do not think that an appointment is a gift, nor nor do I treat it like that, right? I don't beg for appointments from carriers.

Speaker 4 I sell your product.

Speaker 5 Now, granted,

Speaker 4 today, is any production that Rogers do anything but a drop in the bucket for a lot of these guys? Yes, but

Speaker 4 I'm still selling your product. So it is your, you're getting the gift.
I've said I'm willing to put your thing in front of my people, not the other way around.

Speaker 4 And I wish, I wish that more agents looked at their carrier appointments from a position of power, not from this position of weakness where, oh my God, I hope that my Traveler's rep will finally give me an appointment.

Speaker 4 If your Traveler's rep won't give you an appointment, F him or her, go find someone else that'll write the business who wants it, cares, and appreciates it. Now, not knocking on Travis.

Speaker 4 Travis is fine. You know, I got no beef with Travis, whoever.
It just, that to me, it's it's the same mentality that you started talking about, right? It's this scarcity, don't fight the problem.

Speaker 5 God, if we only had this carrier everything would be fine and that is almost never the case in my opinion it's well ron you know why the reason why you're able to do that is because you're not a slave to your staff first and foremost yeah okay

Speaker 5 and you've got the processes in place that allow you to be able to try those different things so i look at it from from money okay you know for me money is nothing more than a scorecard.

Speaker 5 Like I'm not the kind that because I have a lot of money, I'm going to go get the $50 million dollar house and the this and the that first of all i don't want to clean it or take care of it or maintain it so i'm not going to go get it now doesn't mean i can't afford it it just means i have no interest in it but what money allows me to do money gives me flexibility Money gives me time.

Speaker 5 I play golf all the damn time.

Speaker 5 Money gives me ability to take my family out on vacation, go to the nicest restaurants, stay at the nicest hotels, be able to come visit, you know, with you guys if I want to come visit for a week or something.

Speaker 5 It gives me flexibility but the way i was able to make money was because i i put the processes in place to make money so let's take this back to an agent the reason why they feel like they are not in a position of power is because they have no control in their own home what i mean by their own home is in their own agency So because they don't control the operations of their agency, they don't control Judy, they don't control Bob, they don't control the process, They don't control any of the activities that happen.

Speaker 5 How do they have power? They don't have power. So because they don't have power, they become a slave to the people who possess the power.

Speaker 5 You see what I'm saying? You can't rise up

Speaker 5 when you have no tools to rise up with.

Speaker 5 You know, you can't overthrow the man when you have no ability to even.

Speaker 5 uprise or do any kind of lifting. It's the same thing.
It always

Speaker 5 balls back to the exact same problem, Ron, that you've heard me talk about for years: lack of effective processes and spot checking.

Speaker 4 Yep.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 5 If you don't have processes and you're not spot checking, then you have no control. You have no power.
You have no whatever. And I don't want to be ambiguous about when I say processes.

Speaker 5 The reason why you're able to go out and get different carriers is because you're able to show those carriers projections and workflows. And here's where we get our leads.

Speaker 5 It all starts with leads because if you don't have leads, you don't have shit anyway, right?

Speaker 5 So you are able to go in and go, we have this many leads that we're getting every single month from these sources. So I'm going to find Mr.
Mrs. Carrier, what you're looking for.

Speaker 5 And then I have the processes, the team, the virtual assistants, the in-house people to work that process all the way through. I have all of that.

Speaker 5 So Mr. Mrs.
Carrier, I don't need you to babysit me. I just need you to give me access.

Speaker 5 And if you don't want to give me access, I'll go find someone who will give me access because I'm not a slave to you because I'm not a slave to my processes. Yeah.

Speaker 4 The, no, I, this, and this has been, so I'd say the second half of 2021.

Speaker 4 This was one of the biggest changes for me.

Speaker 4 Almost, I think in my professional career this has been one of the biggest changes what i really worked on in the second half of 2021 was getting excited and feeling a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment in the

Speaker 4 uh deployment of a new process right so before in my career i hated process because i do for better for worse, believe in serendipity and the muse and

Speaker 4 this sense that, you know, when you're driving towards a target target and you're open to new ideas and you you live a yes a yes driven life then opportunities come to you that you don't see coming i i believe in that however as much as i believe that that's true that is not how you run a business so so uh so well it is it's just within a realm right

Speaker 4 and what's interesting and what's interesting to your point when you match that concept with like what you talk about with process and this you know uh and everything you just said when you mash those two things together what's really interesting is all all of a sudden funny enough more opportunities start to come to you yes so in the second half of 2021 i made it my mission to to train myself to find satisfaction and fulfillment in the deployment of new processes into our business and that is how we started to figure all this crap out where now i can say

Speaker 4 And what I got to do is get it out of here. And that's a different story.

Speaker 4 But what I can say today is if you send me an account, I got a pretty good feel for who's going to tell you they're right it, but it will waste your time and who's actually going to write it.

Speaker 4 And that is, that is making our business snappy and punchy. And when a carrier rep calls me, I just call him and go, look, I got nine declines from you on shit that you told me you'd write.

Speaker 4 That's why you're not getting business. You want to know why you didn't get business in December? It's not because I didn't want to put business with you.

Speaker 4 It's because in November, you declined nine pieces of business that you told me you had an appetite for. Here's the declines.
Here's the business.

Speaker 4 Show, put a couple of those on the books and I'll start sending you more business. Like, and what's interesting is when you push back on carriers like that, they want to write the business.

Speaker 4 They're just not used to it. They're used to when they show up, you go, oh, I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry. I'll write more business with you.
It's my fault. You're amazing.

Speaker 4 Please don't, please don't, you know, cut me from your appointment. And I'm like, if you want to freaking cut me, that's fine.
There's a, there's a hundred other carriers I'll write business with.

Speaker 4 I don't care. I literally don't care.
Now, there are carriers I really like because I think they do a good job for our clients. I mean, it's not that I don't have favorites, for sure, I do.

Speaker 4 And there are certainly appointments I would not want to lose, but

Speaker 4 I just, I refuse to be a slave to carriers any longer. And to your point, the only way to break out of that is to have processes that show you real, that give you real actionable feedback.

Speaker 4 that you can then either build new processes on or make decisions on as a business.

Speaker 4 And from August to today, and into the future, obviously not going to stop, but from August to today, that was one of the biggest things I worked on. Game changer for my business.

Speaker 4 Absolute positive game changer.

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Speaker 5 You You know, and we throw the word processes, processes, processes. And a lot of agents are like, well, what do you mean? You know, what's a process? I want to make this real simple.

Speaker 5 A process is nothing more than the steps it takes to get something done. That's all a process is.
The steps it takes to get something done. Okay.

Speaker 5 So that means if I get a lead in today, What are the steps that it's going to take for me to follow up with that lead?

Speaker 5 You know, while we're talking about leads, one of the biggest issues with leads is that people don't follow up enough. They don't follow up enough times.

Speaker 5 And so I'm going to make this real simple for agents, right?

Speaker 5 If you trust Las Vegas, which I do, I don't care what anybody says, Las Vegas, if they put odds on something, I'm going to go with whatever the hell their odds say, because there's a lot of smart people, technology, tools, everything working together.

Speaker 5 So if we were in Vegas and you you got a lead and you call that lead three times in a week, and then I got that same lead and I call that lead 10 times in a week, emailed them five times in a week, sent them four text messages in a week, which odd or which, who do you think Vegas would put their money on to get the deal?

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's not going to be the three times.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 5 So Vegas would put their money on me because there's more activity that's going, because I have a better process, right? I have better steps to get to the final outcome that I want.

Speaker 5 It's the same thing here. So agents don't follow up enough on their leads.
First and foremost, agents don't get enough leads. Agents do this get a lead and hope thing.

Speaker 5 Man, I sure hope that lead closes. I sure hope that lead works out.
And they'll babysit that damn lead like it's like it's a brick of gold.

Speaker 5 Meanwhile, all these other leads you could be getting you're not doing it because you're babysitting this one damn lead yep right

Speaker 4 um i wasn't sure i think you've said this before i know i've heard it from a few other people and maybe it's a sandler thing i'm not sure where this original the original but the idea all successful people say the same yeah so all seriously you know that the more you're around more more and more

Speaker 5 wealthy successful people they all say the same they just use different words for it disconnect from the outcome outcome.

Speaker 4 Yes. Disconnect from the outcome, right?

Speaker 5 Focus on the outcome, focus on the process.

Speaker 4 So we and our agency, right? So I got three producers now, plus myself, plus one of my account, plus all my account managers can and are able to sell, right?

Speaker 4 So there's not a single, there's one human in my, who runs basically all our operational shit. And I wouldn't be doing this nonsense, but she's on attorney leave and God bless you at a healthy child.

Speaker 4 Right. So first rogue baby, which is awesome.
Very happy for her. So, but we have, that gives us seven people.
So one person who cancel, every other person can sell, right?

Speaker 4 Every single one of them uses the same process. Every single week, I say the same thing to them.
If they're a clown, punt them, because you know what?

Speaker 4 We got 20 more leads coming in right behind that person. So you qualify.
And I'm not talking about purposefully disqualifying, which I know a lot of agents do, right? A lead comes in.

Speaker 4 and they try to find every little tiny reason why that isn't a good lead for them.

Speaker 5 Almost like a carrier.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 4 They almost act like a carrier yeah i'm talking about some legitimate reasons hey i'm i have a business idea and i'm trying we no i'm sorry when you have the business month or two out you're ready to go you give us a call but six months getting a lamborghini how much would it cost do you think yeah hey i'm thinking about buying the dallas cowboys what's the insurance like come on man you know what i mean like so

Speaker 4 um

Speaker 4 So, so, so, but this concept, and it's the scarcity, right? Going back to the scarcity mindset is they babysit that lead because they haven't done the work to get us consistent flow.

Speaker 4 So it's like, oh my God, what if I don't get another lead for a week? I got to make this happen.

Speaker 4 And in my mind is, I am going to solve, I'm going to communicate with you in an effective manner, right? I'm going to, I'm going to solve, I'm going to find out what your problem is and solve it.

Speaker 4 And I'm going to give you the price that it takes to solve that problem. If you accept it, amazing.
If you don't, take a hike. There's 10 more of you right behind.

Speaker 4 And obviously, I don't mean that to be cavalier. We're doing our best to solve every problem.
And we have a, like you said, a whole process.

Speaker 4 We literally, I could, I could close my eyes and verbatim go through the step that every single one of our people takes for every account. I will say it is a very difficult concept to break people of.

Speaker 4 And I have to break them of this when they join Rogue of punting an account, right? That, Ryan, what if I don't care? I've done the work.

Speaker 4 There are, we have 250 to three, three, we did 377 leads in November.

Speaker 4 We are cresting on a consistent basis and will be over 300 leads a month. You do not need to worry about a clown.

Speaker 4 If that person is clowning on us or, you know, and that's just a term we use, you know, for a whole series of things that mean they're not going to do business with us, let them go.

Speaker 4 Work with people who want to work with us because you don't have to have that scarcity mindset. Man, and once you break someone of that scarcity mindset, you like their shoulders roll back.

Speaker 4 They get a smile on their face. They start asking more questions.
It's amazing.

Speaker 4 But we just, so many of us every day are operating from the space of this lead, is the last lead I'm ever going to get ever. And oh my God, you know, and then we don't even call them.

Speaker 5 So, well, well, Ryan, a lot of that, you know, let's take it into real world. Okay.

Speaker 5 If I'm, if I've never learned how to grow food and I'm dependent on someone giving me food, and all of a sudden I feel like this person's not going to give me food, then it's different, right?

Speaker 5 I'm like, oh my God, I got to make sure this food lasts. It's like,

Speaker 5 I'll use an example of, I have friends who they literally save every penny they make, right?

Speaker 5 Now, they don't make any money.

Speaker 5 You know what I mean? But they're not broke because they save every penny they they make. Now, I save, but I make a hell of a lot of money.

Speaker 5 So the difference is while they're saving for a vacation, I can go on vacation like this tomorrow if that's what I wanted to do.

Speaker 5 Because I don't have that scarcity mentality of I'm so busy holding on to every penny that I forgot that I need to create more money.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Where for me, and again, this is my mentality. You've known me for a while.
I'm all about money. If I'm not making revenue, if a process doesn't make money

Speaker 4 okay yeah you froze for a second yeah you're back okay you're back

Speaker 5 i lost you at if a process doesn't make money okay if a process doesn't make money why is it in the agency if a tool doesn't make money why is it in the agency if a person doesn't make money why is it in the agency and making money doesn't mean new money sometimes it means holding on to the money that i have So my retention specialists are money makers for the agency because they help us grow our wealth.

Speaker 5 Our VAs are money makers for the agency. Our account managers, our CSRs, everybody makes money.
But see, that's different.

Speaker 5 The reason why these people are holding on to these leads is because they haven't figured out how to get leads. That's where the difference is, Ryan.
You figured out referral partners.

Speaker 5 You figured out buying certain things. You figured out how to communicate, how to go to carriers, how to go to companies, how to go to whatever, and have a lead flow.

Speaker 5 So the real issue in most agencies, when they're not growing and understand i'm going to tie this all together the reason why they have the reason why they have terrible staff the reason why they have terrible technology the reason why they have terrible processes the reason why they have terrible cash flow is because they have terrible leads okay

Speaker 5 so they're not getting wealthy they're not making money because they don't know how to make money. So it always starts with the lead flow.

Speaker 5 The reason why you can be cocky and arrogant and confident and you know pun them when they need to be punted and move them when they need because you know i got 300 damn leads i'm not dependent on you but imagine if you only had five leads yep now you have that scarcity mentality so

Speaker 5 one of the things you know you know who cody askins is yep from the life insurance side right cody's one of my guys we're doing some joint things together. He's coming to the fix my insurance agency.

Speaker 5 I'm doing his thing in February 18th that he's doing in st louis but one of the things that cody has really opened my eyes to

Speaker 5 is just how much premium life insurance agents generate i'm talking 12 15 20 million dollars in premium a month a month yeah can you i mean you can't even get a damn agent to write twenty thousand dollars in premium a month on a pnc side these guys are talking twenty million dollars a month

Speaker 4 for for one of the most commoditized products that exists in the market

Speaker 5 but you know what they do

Speaker 5 constant lead flow constant constant they may spend fifty thousand dollars a month on internet leads age leads telemarketing leads warm transfer leads you know medicare supplement leads i mean and they're going to spend 10 hours

Speaker 5 15 hours a week either calling them or hiring somebody to call them. And their whole goal is to get 30 appointments a week.
That's, that's their goal, get 30 appointments a week.

Speaker 5 It's a totally different mentality. They're coming from a wealth creation mentality instead of a hold on to his whatever I can mentality.

Speaker 4 There is a false sense of nobility in the prospecting that PNC agents do that holds them back. from what you just described.

Speaker 4 There's this, I didn't hunt it, or I only work off of, I mean, I, I, it literally boils my blood when people say, I only work off referrals. Like, does that make what does that make you?

Speaker 4 That puts you that means you're doing less than you could be doing.

Speaker 5 90% of my business is referrals, but you only write five

Speaker 5 policies a month.

Speaker 4 And you know why? Because it's easy. That's why they work off referrals, not because they're badasses.

Speaker 4 You work off referrals because when someone refers you a piece of business, it's a freaking layup. That's why you do it.
It's not because you're some super badass agent.

Speaker 4 That and no, you work off referrals only, or primarily because you're a coward you're scared to go out and pound doors and do videos and buy leads and spend money and and put your agency at a tiny little bit of risk of you know call commercial insurance.net and get some warm call transfers you know hire somebody to generate some google leads or whatever like like go try stuff you know again and and all this changes do it though all this changes if you don't actually want to grow which is a dirty little secret in our business where everyone talks about growth you know they give it lip service but they don't really want to grow they're actually completely happy where they are they just like to talk about growth because then they can sit in the fun rooms and have the fun conversations and pound chess and drink beers but they don't actually want to grow They just want to be around the people who are doing the exciting stuff so they can feel that energy, even though they don't actually, they're actually super comfortable right where they are and don't really want to grow.

Speaker 4 And that's, that to me is the difference that I see in a lot of people that I couldn't recognize maybe earlier in my career that now I can tell in a snap, are you really trying to grow?

Speaker 4 Are you just talking about it?

Speaker 5 Because you know what I call them, Ryan, and you and I have talked about this before. I call them those damn conference heroes.

Speaker 4 You know what I mean?

Speaker 5 Yeah. I mean, that's.

Speaker 5 I'm not trying to be arrogant, but people like hit me up on Facebook.

Speaker 5 And then six months later, I'll look at the Facebook and see it and I'll hit them back and they go, dude, I said this six months ago. I'm like, cause, dude, I'm not living on Facebook.

Speaker 4 I'm out making money.

Speaker 5 You know what I'm saying? I'm out making money. I'm out doing this.
I was talking to somebody the other day and we were, you came up, Jason Cass, Bradley Flowers,

Speaker 5 somebody else came up. And I was like, I want you to watch this.

Speaker 5 Two years ago, three years ago, when Bradley first started, you know, his agency, Bradley was all over social media he was killing it right

Speaker 5 then he started making money then he started running his agency now he ain't doing all that every single day same thing with you same thing with jason you know you guys were on social media i mean twice a day and you were posting and you were doing all the that all the gurus told you that you were supposed to do but now you're making money Now I don't see Ryan Hanley on LinkedIn twice a day.

Speaker 5 I don't see you on Facebook twice a day.

Speaker 5 I don't see you on whatever because now you're making money and so i was telling her i was like you got to be really careful about these conference heroes and all these supposed gurus and all that because if 90 of your time is spent talking to your peers you're not making any damn money yeah yep okay you're not making any money because if 90 of your time is not spent talking to your target audience not spent talking to your customers, not spent talking to your prospects, if 90% of your time is in a damn Facebook group, a Facebook chat somewhere, and you're going back and forth about how great you are and how you do this and how you manage that, that's all bullshit.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 4 I this is going to sound bad, but it

Speaker 4 there's like, I don't know, there's like two sides to everybody, right? And in general, I try to be like a thoughtful, nice person who cares about people, but the honest to goodness is, is.

Speaker 4 I just want to step on throats all the time. Like that's, I'm fighting the arrogant, I want to murder you mentality all the time.
Like I just,

Speaker 4 that's what I actually think when I see people is how do I eat their lunch, take what they have and make it mine, expand my kingdom.

Speaker 4 It's very hard for me not to be that way. I have to try to be nice, but I, you know, whatever.
So

Speaker 4 what's interesting to me is I love

Speaker 4 every time I see how much bigger some of these Facebook groups have gotten. Because I'm like, that's more of my peers who are wasting in time all day.
You know what I'm doing?

Speaker 4 I created three videos today and got them out on YouTube. You know what? I know what that'll do.
Pay me dividends for the next decade. There you go.
You know what I did?

Speaker 4 I put together a lead magnet that I'm going to pump out to my leads that didn't buy from us. I'm going to get them to come back in and start.
Sold it, not sold. That's what I did.

Speaker 4 You know what you did? You answered seven different questions on IAOA today.

Speaker 4 during the middle of the day when you should have been making calls. That's what you did.
So like you go. And nothing against IAO.

Speaker 4 I I mean, I think it's great that there's this community and they do a wonderful job. But my point is like,

Speaker 4 I look at that and I'm like, good. You go answer those questions.
You answer them. Cause someone was like, hey, I haven't seen you around.
You've been quiet. I'm like, quiet.

Speaker 5 Motherfucker, I've been, I've been working my ass off. Right, dude.
I've been killing it. We can do my quiet.

Speaker 4 I got 300 videos on YouTube just because I'm not on. in these Facebook groups, like talking about the shit that I'm doing.
If you want to know, watch what I do. Like, just watch what I do.

Speaker 4 I'm hiring people. I'm putting process together.
I'm building training materials. I'm finding new programs and niches.
I'm building out automations for my, for my agency. I'm trying to optimize my VA.

Speaker 4 I'm building enterprise relationships. Like, that's what I'm doing all day.
That's why I'm not answering the question, what's the best agency management system?

Speaker 4 And I will say, my one dirty, my, my little, I shouldn't say dirty, just my, my outlet now has become this show.

Speaker 4 I, this hour that I'll spend with someone like you, this is where I get to have that conversation where, but I get to do it on my terms with someone I want to, that I want to talk to, who I know is going to challenge the way I think that I'm going to learn from.

Speaker 4 Now it's a very productive usage of my midday non-rogue time, right? This is incredibly productive. This is max production non-rogue for me.
So I look at that and I'm like,

Speaker 4 keep answering those questions because you know what? I write in all 50 states. So that means your customers aren't being served and you're not writing new leads.
So trust me, I'm coming.

Speaker 4 You know what I mean? Like that's, that's just, you know, I want.

Speaker 4 And I just think it's funny that it's funny to me how, you know, Billy, you, me, there's, there's, there's so many, you know, there's so many others that literally lay the game plan out for people.

Speaker 4 Like, here it is. I mean, think about it.
Even if they didn't just take your free shit, which is more than enough, right? Even if they bought the one, the the

Speaker 4 membership, right? Became a full member, got access to all the stuff, even the free stuff.

Speaker 4 You have laid out everything you could possibly really want to know. And then, you know, they just have to figure out the details is probably the deal.
And people just don't fucking do it.

Speaker 4 They just show up, their Starbucks coffee. It's got 700 calories in it.
And they drink their Starbucks and they feel like shit. And they get sleepy in the afternoon and they bang away on IOA all day.

Speaker 4 And then they go, Billy, how do you fix my agency?

Speaker 4 Billy, I can't figure it out. And I'm like,

Speaker 5 and what's so crazy is Ryan, even when we, you know, you know, we meet one-on-one and we do all that.

Speaker 5 And I'll have my team set up their technology, set up their email templates, their text messaging, their, their, their,

Speaker 5 their, um,

Speaker 5 appointment calendars, their business cards, their whatever. And then we'll come back two weeks later and go, did you send out the 20 LinkedIn messages that you were supposed to send out?

Speaker 5 No, man, I got so busy. Okay, so tell me what you're busy doing because I'm looking at your production.
You ain't producing shit.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 5 I mean, you got five policies in a month. So you ain't producing shit.
You ain't, you know, you're not even doing a retention process. You're not calling your former customers.

Speaker 5 You're not doing your quoted not sold. You're not doing this.
You're not doing that. So tell me what you're busy doing.

Speaker 5 Because

Speaker 5 I'm not seeing it.

Speaker 4 Yeah, but Billy, did you see I got 99 notifications on Facebook because I answered so many questions on IAOA? You know what I mean? Like, no, you don't understand.

Speaker 5 People confuse popularity with profitability.

Speaker 5 You know what I'm saying? And this is one of the things I've watched you mature. You know, when you first, when we first met, it was when you were doing Elevate, right?

Speaker 5 And you had a thousand people at Elevate and you were standing on stage and you were absolutely amazing and you were charismatic. And, you know,

Speaker 5 you were just out there. And you were like, Billy Williams, Jason told you about me.
And you were like, Billy Williams, who the hell is Billy Williams?

Speaker 5 I never heard of Billy Williams, but I owned 130 agencies at that time.

Speaker 5 Right. And you were like, I never heard of him.
Who is he?

Speaker 5 You know, it was like, oh, well, and I told you. I was like, Ryan, being on stage does not appeal to me.
What appeals to me is making money. Now I'll do elevate.
And that's fine.

Speaker 5 You can help spread my brand and spread my seed and all this kind of shit. But dude, I'm all about the money.
And I don't need to be known to make money.

Speaker 4 That was one of my, the biggest crow eating moments, you know, and not that I had like had an opinion.

Speaker 4 I just, so for those who didn't listen to the episode, because I think that's probably on the old, when I was able to elevate that conversation or with Agency Nation, it's probably not on this feed.

Speaker 4 But for those who don't know this, so

Speaker 4 Cass referred me, this is probably five or six, five years ago, 2018. This is before the 2018 conference, maybe three or four months before the 2018 conference,

Speaker 4 Cass had referred me to Billy.

Speaker 4 And Billy LinkedIn to me, LinkedIn messaged me. And I was like,

Speaker 4 who is, I don't know this guy or no, no, you LinkedIn messaged me before Cass said anything to me.

Speaker 4 And then like a month late, and I just kind of ignored it because I didn't know who you were or whatever, you know what I mean? So Cass messaged me, he goes, dude, what are you doing?

Speaker 4 I'm trying to like, Billy said he reached out to you and you're not getting back to him. And I'm like, Billy, Billy, who? And then I went into my LinkedIn message.

Speaker 4 I saw it and I responded and I was like, oh, hey, man, Cass told me we should connect. And then five minutes, just so everyone knows, this is, this is not a recorded conversation that we had.

Speaker 4 This is just, you know, we're connecting for the very first time. I had blown him off for probably a month or two.
Cass said, you got to, you know, what are you doing? Don't be an idiot.

Speaker 4 So then I, I called, you know, we had a call. Five minutes in, I was like, so.

Speaker 4 I want you to come to elevate and you're going to be the keynote for day number two in the morning.

Speaker 4 And, you know, and then obviously, you know, we've been friends ever since, but it was like, it was just funny.

Speaker 4 I mean, you, it was, it was very, it was a crowy, it was, it opened my eyes to like exactly the point you're trying to make and really has been something I've been trying to detach from.

Speaker 4 And, you know, honestly, I get this a lot. I get people call me an insurance celebrity, you know, whatever influencer.
I, I hate that title. It is not the way that I think about what I do.

Speaker 4 The truth is,

Speaker 4 I do this show

Speaker 4 for me.

Speaker 4 It's very, very,

Speaker 4 very selfish, right?

Speaker 4 I get an hour with you to pick your brain, to have you push back on stupid shit that I say, and then push back on you and have these intelligent, engaging, fun, dynamic conversations where I honestly have no idea where they're going to go.

Speaker 4 And it's like an adventure for an hour. I do that for me.
I share them because people seem to like them.

Speaker 4 If no one ever asked me to speak again, if I never did another podcast interview, I'd be fine. I'd be completely fine.

Speaker 4 It was never been about that.

Speaker 4 You know, I think that you do have to be careful because

Speaker 4 there are people who, that is their motivation. It has never been for me.
It's why I don't do fancy graphics. It's why I don't have

Speaker 4 a sub stack that you can pay for or

Speaker 4 add-on schmoogies or whatever, because,

Speaker 4 you know, I think it's great that people do that. And I think a lot of this stuff has tons of value.
I just, for me,

Speaker 4 this is a wholly selfish endeavor in which I get to have a dynamic conversation with someone that I respect.

Speaker 5 And you know what trips me up, Ryan, about this? I can't tell you how many gurus right now.

Speaker 5 or members are our members of my program. They meet with me once a month or twice a month.
We talk, we do all this

Speaker 5 and then they go out and suddenly they're selling something right they're they're oh we're teaching agents how to do this well well damn i just showed you how to do that yeah i had my assistant work with you for an hour to set this up and now you're going to go out and package it and sell it like you did it you know what and that's fine that's fine in fact i was talking to an agent yesterday who's shutting down their shop right and they're like i want to do what you do.

Speaker 5 That was that. Seriously, I was like, so let me get this straight.
You're shutting down your agency, and your response to me is, Billy, I want to do what you do.

Speaker 5 Man, you know, I have to be careful about custom because I was like, MF,

Speaker 5 I own a hundred and a piece of 170-something agency. I got a $1.6 billion profile.
I go, I own, and that's just an insurance. That's not even counting all the other stuff I own.

Speaker 5 I'm a best-selling author. I got all kinds of shit.
I rub elbows with the biggest of the biggest.

Speaker 5 You're a failed insurance agent and you want to do what I do.

Speaker 4 Get the hell out of here. The celebrity life, man.
You know, this, this, this guru life that people see,

Speaker 4 It is, it's very unfortunate. It's a very unfortunate thing because

Speaker 4 you're get, it's tough. Like you, when you, when you produce insurance content to build an agency, you don't get a lot of response from that, right? You don't.
No one puts you on a pedestal.

Speaker 4 And when you put out a piece saying,

Speaker 4 oh, here's three ways to blah, blah, blah, like, oh, that's great.

Speaker 4 No one is even reading the article. I mean, that's the thing that people don't understand is they're commenting because they feel like they should.
They're not even reading the article.

Speaker 4 And what happens is, you know, you get, you just get this false sense of of what you're doing and i've seen so many people fall into this trap and i just you know one of the best anti-examples of this and then i want to be respectful of your time is um woody brown i don't know if you know woody brown yeah i do i know so woody uh in 2018 uh came to elevate and he's got a great story awesome dude amazing story i just love woody as a person tremendous guy and uh and he was kind of on the path to being on some shows and he was doing some stuff.

Speaker 4 And then he literally shut it down. And I said, why'd you do that? And I actually had him on the podcast a long time ago about it.
And he said, Brian,

Speaker 4 I'm a partner in an agency. I have a family.
I love where I live in Georgia.

Speaker 4 Why do I want to be flying all over away from my family, building this other thing when I have a thing that pays me tons of money that.

Speaker 4 if I put more work into will pay me even more money that why would I do that? It doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 4 And he is, and I've always had him, an enormous amount of respect for him for that, because not a lot of the accolades that he was starting to get, because he's such a dynamic, cool, interesting guy.

Speaker 4 He could have gone and lived that life and he chose not to. And to be honest with you, I think about him still to this day.
And hopefully, if Woody listens to this or whatever,

Speaker 4 you know, give him a huge shout out.

Speaker 4 I think about him to this day sometimes when I feel myself maybe just being drawn a little bit to something that isn't productive. And I'll just say, you don't need that.

Speaker 4 There's three people in my life that matter. There's my two kids and my wife.

Speaker 4 I love my parents. I love all my extended family.
But the truth is, I would go to war for those three people and nobody else. And that's how I live.
And that's what's most important to me.

Speaker 4 And the sacrifices that I've made are for those three people.

Speaker 4 And everything else is bullshit.

Speaker 5 Yep.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 5 at the end of the day, because

Speaker 5 I gotta

Speaker 5 go play some golf. Yep.

Speaker 5 So here's what I want agents to take away. Number one,

Speaker 5 if your staff sucks, if your agency sucks, if you feel like your processes suck, you feel like everything is just down, the main reason is if you go back to the source, it's because of your leads.

Speaker 5 Yep. Right.
You either have crappy lead flow or you have not enough lead flow.

Speaker 5 So therefore, Judy knows she can hold you prisoner because the two leads that you gave her, she can hold those over your head. Okay.

Speaker 5 So guys, it always starts with your leads and then from your leads to your processes. Processes are nothing more than the steps you take to get shit done.
Right.

Speaker 5 And then you talk about your staff because we'll have a whole separate one about that one. Yeah.
Staff, staff holding people prisoner. That's why we don't start with staff.

Speaker 5 Let me just reiterate this from the beginning. When we hire, we hire in this order, always.

Speaker 5 automation and technology. What can I automate first?

Speaker 5 Because I can automate an email, I can automate a video, I can automate YouTube, I can automate Google, I can automate Facebook ads, I can automate those things, right? What can I automate?

Speaker 5 Next, what can I outsource?

Speaker 5 That's why I'm using virtual assistants, fiber, upworks, all those, because they're just going to get shit done. There's no emotion, there's no attitude, there's nothing.

Speaker 5 They're just going to get it done. I need a video produced and I got, I need it done in three days.
No problem. Here's the finished product.
End of story. Yep.

Speaker 5 Then after I outsource, then I look at in-house because I'm going to take what that outsource team taught me and hand that off to an in-house person.

Speaker 5 I'm going to hire, train, and I'm going to spot check. Yep.
Guys, running an agency is not that damn hard. We make it hard.
We get caught up in the admin.

Speaker 5 Right. That's what happens.
We get caught up in the admin and we think that's insurance. Insurance is not admin, insurance is issuing a damn policy.
That's what insurance is, yeah,

Speaker 4 Billy. You are the man.
I appreciate you so much. Thank you.
Uh, very last thing: the next uh, fix my insurance agency, when is it and where can people learn more?

Speaker 5 Yep, it's going to be January 31st. This is 2022, so I don't know when you're seeing this, but January 31st, February 1st, and it's virtual because Omnicron is still a real deal.

Speaker 5 Okay, it's a real deal, So it's virtual.

Speaker 5 Just go out to inspirenation.org. It's all over there.
We got some amazing speakers. We got Cody Askins.
We've got

Speaker 5 David Carruthers is going to be speaking on commercials.

Speaker 5 Yeah. We've got

Speaker 5 Lightspeed Voice. Marble Box virtual assistants are going to be there.
We got Hawksoft as our primary agency management system. And here's the deal.
Thank you for bringing that up. Here's the deal.

Speaker 5 When you come to the Fix My Insurance Agency, guys, if you're coming to look for 20 different vendors and 50 different ways that's not me i'm going to take hawksoft and i'm going to take glove box and i'm going to take v uh marble box and i'm going to take you know uh different light speed and we're going to show you their process Now, you can figure out how to do it your way with your tools and your stuff, but I don't want to confuse anybody.

Speaker 5 You don't need 50 different ways. I'm going to show you one damn way of doing it, and then you modify modify it for you.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 True that.

Speaker 5 So, January 30th, I mean, January 31st through February 1st, 2022, just go to inspirenation.org for the details.

Speaker 4 Go check it out. You will not be disappointed.
All right, Billy, we're out of here.

Speaker 5 Thanks, man. Appreciate you.

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