RHS 129 - Bradley Flowers 2.0

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Speaker 6 In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home.

Speaker 7 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. I hope you're absolutely dominating this first month, 2022.
I know we are here at Rogue just feeling real good about 2022.

Speaker 7 I know you just never know what a new year is going to bring, bring and 2022 is already shaping up to be a kind of transitional game changer year where we really start to execute on our vision here at Rogue Risk and I hope you feel the same about your business or whatever life goals you have.

Speaker 7 Today's guest really doesn't need much of an introduction. It's Bradley Flowers from the Insurance Guys podcast.

Speaker 7 You know,

Speaker 7 the less good looking half of the Insurance Guys podcast, his partner in crime, Scott Howell.

Speaker 7 You know, Bradley's just a tremendous dude. We have gotten to know each other very well, chat quite often over the last few years.
I love the way he thinks about the business.

Speaker 7 I love the way he handles his business. It's not always exactly the same way I would do it, but

Speaker 7 Bradley's a thoughtful dude. He's an ambitious dude.
And I just... So pumped to kind of reconnect on the show, you know, on the show and share that conversation with you guys.

Speaker 7 I think you're going to love this episode, uh spend some time with it um guys you know one quick one quick ask i have for you i don't normally ask these kind of things but if you're not subscribed to the show i'd love for you to do that if you haven't left us a rating your route review love for you to do that as well um that just helps push the show out to more uh insurance pros so they can listen and uh join our community and and share in what we're doing um and if you have guests that you want on the show let me know you know i mean i i have always i keep a list of guests that i want to have and then some just pop up or some get introd to me, which is awesome.

Speaker 7 I mean, that's kind of how we do it. It's probably not as formal as you actually think.
Some people think I have some master plan. I don't really.

Speaker 7 But if you have someone you want to hear from or someone maybe I just don't know and you think they'd be great guests, send them over. Ryan at RyanHanley.com.

Speaker 7 Best way to get that in front of me. And

Speaker 7 I just appreciate you guys. Appreciate you guys for listening.
I probably don't say that enough, but I do.

Speaker 7 Before we get to Bradley, I want to give a quick shout out to a couple of our sponsors today, the people that make this show possible. First, Codery Insurance.

Speaker 7 Guys, we are writing a tremendous amount of business with Codery because they're just so easy.

Speaker 7 It's just so incredibly easy to get GL, BOP, professional liability, put that in front of your client.

Speaker 7 The amount of time that it takes, it's just... It's just crazy easy.
I don't know what else to say. It's good coverage.
Codery is a great company. I love what they're doing.

Speaker 7 They're going to be a big part of the mix for us moving forward. And I couldn't be happier with our relationship with Codery and excited that they're a sponsor of the show.

Speaker 7 So go to codery C-O-T-E-R-I-E insurance.com, coderyinsurance.com, or just Google Codery, C-O-T,

Speaker 7 E-R-I-E,

Speaker 7 and check them out.

Speaker 7 And if you want to sign up and start writing business with Codery, I think that's a good idea, especially if you're in the small business space, especially if you're primarily personal lines and you'd like to get into small business, but you're having trouble getting a commercial lines appointment from one of the traditional markets because of all the crazy things.

Speaker 7 I had someone,

Speaker 7 I actually had a carrier say to me that they didn't want to appoint us in a state because of the $250 licensing fee. It's like, oh my God, is it really, that's really a barrier to entry?

Speaker 7 Like, is that I'm not going to make you $250?

Speaker 7 So these are the kind of problems solved by coderies: They just don't even have that mindset at all, which is amazing. So C-O-T-E-R-I-E coderyinsurance.com.

Speaker 7 I want to give a quick shout out to my boy Chris Langell at Advisory Evolved.

Speaker 7 We, you know, Chris is not technically a sponsor of the show, but I always like to give him a shout out because I do get a lot of people who message me about our website and about websites in general and just digital presence.

Speaker 7 And Chris and his team have been my web designer for more than a decade. And I trust him implicitly.
I love the work he does. Websites are fast, they look great.

Speaker 7 SEO built if you're going to do that work.

Speaker 7 And then, you know, the whole local business marketing thing that he has, where they're doing the Facebook ads and the Google ads on top of that, and can really help you drive traffic and grow your business.

Speaker 7 So just want to give a quick shout out to Chris Langell and his team at Advisor Evolved. Advisor Evolved, go to advisor evolved.com today.

Speaker 7 All right, guys, let's get on to Bradley Flowers.

Speaker 6 All right, say something.

Speaker 8 Go, Bills. Check one, two.
Go, Bills.

Speaker 6 Check one.

Speaker 6 Got it. Okay.

Speaker 6 Sorry. So, my Wi-Fi at the office, God awful.
So I booked the studio just so we didn't have any issues. Oh, Roger.

Speaker 8 I'm getting a pretty decent echo, though.

Speaker 6 Shut the door. Can maybe turn this mic off? It's off.
Okay.

Speaker 6 Shut the door. Let's see.

Speaker 8 Is bad Wi-Fi at the office like a, is it like an Alabama thing? Or?

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Is it good now?

Speaker 8 Yeah, I can hear you. If you can hear me, you sound good.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 6 Yeah. We.

Speaker 6 I just got off the call with Mathis, Andy Matheson, and

Speaker 6 it was awful. So I came here.

Speaker 8 Dude, there's nothing worse than bad Wi-Fi, which legitimately.

Speaker 6 Oh, it will send me over the edge. It will send me over the edge, mostly because I'm impatient.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 Well, it's that. And it's like, I don't know.

Speaker 7 I just,

Speaker 8 why is it not working? You know, because I work from home most days. And most days, you know,

Speaker 8 I'd say, you know, we have spectrum or whatever. So the internet is fine.
I won't won't say that it's blazing fast, but on most days, it's probably fine.

Speaker 8 And then you'll just have these days where like nothing works, and everything's like button click, hourglass spinning, and you're just like, oh my God, I can't get anything.

Speaker 6 In Alabama, that means you got to go put more diesel in it. Yeah,

Speaker 6 yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 Crank, pull, pull the pull start, you know.

Speaker 8 Yeah, crank, yeah, get the crank out, start cranking something. So, what's going on, man?

Speaker 6 Man, just trying to just hired somebody new in the agency today, sent the offer accepted.

Speaker 6 Nice starting January the 3rd, planning our event with Glovebox and trying to uh manage my various projects that have gotten out of hand.

Speaker 8 Uh, what position did you hire?

Speaker 6 Uh,

Speaker 6 we call it an agent, but it's a producer.

Speaker 8 Gotcha.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I uh, we were go ahead. Sorry,

Speaker 6 We were just really top heavy. You know, we we have one producer that accounts for about 80% of the office's production.
And I need to balance that out some more.

Speaker 6 And kind of the answer was to hire somebody new.

Speaker 6 I'm hiring a guy who was actually my best friend for 14 years.

Speaker 6 And we're still friends. We just did hang out every day.
And he reached out to me.

Speaker 6 talk about working together and i sent him a uh a sales assessment and he like blew it through the water like best assessment i've ever seen. And I've assessed, you know, 200 people.

Speaker 6 And so we're going to give him a shot. He's got a couple of niches he knows about industries that he's been in.
One of them is the fitness industry. I'm sure you appreciate that.
And I don't know.

Speaker 6 We're going to see what happens. I'm having work with Mick.

Speaker 6 Mick looking at his personality test, Mick thinks he can turn him into a rock star. So.

Speaker 8 When you do a sales assessment, is that a special test or is it like a you give him a disc a disc test?

Speaker 6 So I have a vendor vendor that i use for it but it's a i do a disk and a sale they call it sales iq

Speaker 6 um higher sense is the name of the company but that's not the vendor i'm going through and the disk assessment is incredibly in-depth it's like 68 pages and then the sales iq it basically breaks down

Speaker 6 the sales process in 10 categories. So like prospecting, closing, assessing, that sort of thing.

Speaker 6 And it gives you the percentage of the amount of time they get the right answer on the sales questions and the percentage of the amount of time they get the second right answer.

Speaker 6 So it kind of can show you, you know, if somebody doesn't get it on both, and it shows you where they compare to other salespeople.

Speaker 6 And the test gets smarter as it goes because it's comparing you to the last person that took it. And

Speaker 6 so it kind of shows you where they really struggle at. And kind of what I always look for is somebody who's a natural closer and I can fill the other gaps in.

Speaker 6 Most of the people that we don't don't hire due to the assessment is because

Speaker 6 they don't have the closing piece, but they have the other pieces. And to me, that person struggles indefinitely.
I don't think you can teach closing.

Speaker 6 I think you can give them some tools that help. But so I always look for somebody that's kind of got that fire that they can close and then we can fill everything else up.

Speaker 8 What do you mean by closing? Like, what does that, what does a closer have? Like, what is what does that mean?

Speaker 6 So, we've the people that we have hired that have struggled sales wise

Speaker 6 just struggle to almost get people over the finish line you know what i mean so like my old office was a square it was a square and i was i was in there with everybody right and so i heard all these conversations and

Speaker 6 i would just hear them on the phone with deals and i'd be like oh if you'd have like if you just said this they would have bought or like you know that was a buying signal you ignored it and things like that.

Speaker 6 And, you know, there's just things that you pick up, I think, being in it every single day that someone who is not in it or doesn't have those skills can do, just down to like asking for the business, you know.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I've had a hard time. It's more me than it is them.
I have a hard time teaching that, you know?

Speaker 6 So I look for somebody that already has it and already knows like, okay, that was a buying signal. Let's move forward.

Speaker 8 Yeah. For me, the big one is call reluctance.

Speaker 8 If you're willing to pick up a phone, I feel like everything else falls into place. So like I've, so I do a disc attack.
I do a disc tab. We use MIC too.

Speaker 8 So everyone that's listening, we're talking about MIC hunt, Premiere Strategy Box, the G-O-A-T of

Speaker 8 RevOps.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 so we do a disk. So our process is

Speaker 8 Sarah, my operations manager, she reaches out to everyone first.

Speaker 8 Really, what she's looking for like is this person an idiot or not like will they get along with us are they a good fit do we you know so she kind of does the first pass after the first pass that way if you get somebody in there that's bad you're like hey you're the one

Speaker 8 i also know that she um

Speaker 6 she is much more she's probably a much stronger filter than i would be you know what i mean like i just i yeah i'm like oh this person's nice you're probably like me in that you can see the good in everybody like somebody could show up not sober and not clothed but you're like you saw this little sparkle in their eye you're like i could turn that into something yeah

Speaker 6 yeah but they were funny um

Speaker 8 no yeah she's got a good she's got a she has a healthy mix of being able to

Speaker 8 you know kind of give people a shot but at the same time kind of pick out the bullshit so so she's a really good first pass then after that we give them a disc test and then uh we don't do a sales assessment though i do kind of like that.

Speaker 8 So we do a disk test. Then I send that disc test to Mick.
Mick gives us thumbs up, thumbs down for the next conversation. And then if

Speaker 8 that conversation is with me, only for

Speaker 8 producers or insurance advisors, for our client success or account management staff, then

Speaker 8 my head of account management interviews them. I don't even get involved.

Speaker 8 But for the salespeople,

Speaker 8 you know, then I come in and I literally just pound them on the phone, on their phone work. How much, what do you do?

Speaker 8 You know, and it's a whole bunch of questions around all I'm trying to get at is, are you going to pick up the phone? Because

Speaker 8 I am convinced more than ever. Every day I become more convinced that this is a phone business.
And I think at different times in my career, I would have fought that.

Speaker 8 I would have said, ah, you know, you can automate this and automate that.

Speaker 6 And I, and I'm sure, and I'm, I'm positive.

Speaker 8 There's definitely ways to do it but yeah there are places but if you want to be really successful you pick up the phone and it doesn't mean it has to be a uh hour-long phone call i think that's the

Speaker 8 i think that's the major thing that i'm figuring out is a three minute you can do tons of automation digital stuff comms and a three minute phone call is all it might be all you need but those three minutes are really important right and um

Speaker 8 if you're willing to do that i feel like the rest

Speaker 8 that is a for me a bellwether for you doing, being able to do all the rest. Ask for the close, get info, follow up, all the things.

Speaker 8 Because if you're scared to pick up the phone and talk to somebody, you will never do any of the rest because you can't close on text message, not unless you know the person.

Speaker 6 In my opinion. Well, a good, you know, a good salesperson too can.
We have found that as well. You know, some of the biggest accounts that we've closed.

Speaker 6 you know, our two niches right now are habitational and trucking, which obviously have the potential to have some pretty big premium on them.

Speaker 6 Some of the biggest accounts we've closed have been super short phone calls.

Speaker 6 And a good producer can cut through all that BS and get straight to the point and the pain point of knowing what that person's dealing with where somebody else is out here in la la land.

Speaker 6 But we've done that. We have a similar process.

Speaker 6 We send people to our website where that, which is crap right now, but we're in the process of changing to a new one. And they fill a form out.
They get an email that's our email interview.

Speaker 6 And there's three questions.

Speaker 6 Two of them don't mean anything. The third one is: do you prefer higher salary, lower commission, lower commission, higher salary? And I'm looking for

Speaker 6 low salary, high commission because I want somebody that wants to go get it, you know. And so they reply to that email.

Speaker 6 Um, that weeds out a lot of people, and then they go to a phone interview with me, and it's very much like this conversation: it's just, tell me about yourself.

Speaker 6 Like, we're just having a chat, I'm being, you know, good old nice Bradley. And then, um,

Speaker 6 after that, we do the that's when we do the disc and the sales IQ.

Speaker 6 And then third step is in-person interview with me, still very laid back. And then the last interview is a team interview.
So kind of what you do at the beginning, I'm doing it at the end.

Speaker 6 We do a team interview with everybody.

Speaker 6 And if it's not a unanimous yes, we don't hire them.

Speaker 6 Doesn't matter how much I like them because I want it to be the team's decision because we've had those people that worked with us that didn't quite fit in.

Speaker 6 And this person had a problem with this person philosophically, you know yeah and it's going to be hey y'all were the one that hired this person not me yeah you know so that's kind of our process and we found it to be pretty pretty i mean it's it's definitely time consuming but what it does too is it weeds out the people who just want a quick job yeah

Speaker 6 you know

Speaker 8 It also gives you a quality.

Speaker 6 Have we gotten somebody that was really good that we skipped the process? Absolutely. We've had some people are like, hey, this guy's going to get picked up.
We need to rush through the process.

Speaker 6 But for the the most part, we stick to it.

Speaker 8 Yeah, that team thing also gives you a good excuse not to hire liberals. You know what I mean? You can, your team's just going to be like,

Speaker 6 we don't philosophically agree with this person.

Speaker 6 We have had someone that gave an answer in the, not whether Republican or Democrat, whatever. I'm as pretty down the middle as you can get to be a 33-year-old white man in Alabama.

Speaker 5 But you,

Speaker 6 we have had some people that gave answers that were extreme politically on both sides. I don't want either one of those people.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah. You may have to edit that out, but you know, no, I'm,

Speaker 8 dude, I'm with you.

Speaker 6 I, I think, uh,

Speaker 6 I don't care what you believe. I support the fact that you can believe what you can believe, but don't bring the BS into my office, you know.

Speaker 8 Yeah. I also, you know, my, my, when I'm,

Speaker 8 I'm with you. I'm with you there.
This is one of the ones that i struggle with is like

Speaker 8 because i because i don't i honestly don't care what your political affiliation is or or your affiliation with anything right i mean jesus i'd hire a patron i don't either um if they yeah you know but have alabama fans that work yeah but you gotta you know i guess my my

Speaker 8 you're trying to find people who don't take

Speaker 8 themselves and their viewpoints too seriously. You want, you know, that's kind of one of the things that I really like about our current team, you know, and we're up to eight people, including me now.

Speaker 8 We hired two account managers on Monday, or they started

Speaker 8 on Monday.

Speaker 8 We don't have an office, though. So I was talking about this because someone said to me, like, how the hell do you have all these people? And I said, I don't have an office.
I don't pay rent.

Speaker 6 It's called www.ryanhanleypodcast.com. Yeah.
Yeah. I have people all over the place.
I have

Speaker 8 a podcast that subsidizes my agency partially. I have, I don't have an office.
I don't have to pay for, think about, think about your total bill for your office.

Speaker 8 I don't pay any of that. Zero, nothing.

Speaker 8 So, you know, yes, I pay for people, you know, if yes, I have this little setup. It's about, it's probably about 1500 bucks that everyone gets when they start dual monitors, computer.

Speaker 8 camera headset you know they get this little so it's 1500 bucks but that's one time bam that goes out we track that that goes out to everybody we have that like all set up on amazon

Speaker 8 but then that's it i mean a couple couple 15 bucks here 20 bucks here for like different different services that we use but i mean the the cost not having an office as much as i do miss not having an office sometimes i do um

Speaker 8 It has allowed me to add, like legitimately, I was doing the math. It has allowed me to add two people that I couldn't have if I had an office.
I'd have two less people if I had an office.

Speaker 6 You're in New York because I'm in Alabama. So it's, it's a little, you know, it's a little different, right? You're, you would be paying a lot more for the office that I have than I am.

Speaker 8 Before anything, I'd probably be paying

Speaker 8 $17

Speaker 8 to $3,000 a month in rent for a decent office space. $17,000 would be like...

Speaker 8 little shady everyone go be be out the door by five you know 3000 would be you know nice office park in one of the suburbs um

Speaker 8 and then all the other costs that come with it: electric,

Speaker 8 Wi-Fi, internet, you know,

Speaker 8 all the utilities, everything that you'd have to pay as part of your rent, in addition to, you know, just all the stuff to

Speaker 8 put in there. Not having that basically gets me two extra people.
And

Speaker 6 yeah, a big thing we have is like just freaking like snacks and office supplies, like printer ink and crap like that. You know,

Speaker 6 that has been a big, you know,

Speaker 6 like that's like number three on my P ⁇ L of like the most expensive thing is just like, like, I think I order something from Amazon every single day that we need the office.

Speaker 6 You know, I went to the grocery store this morning and spent 70 bucks on snacks and drinks and stuff for the office.

Speaker 8 What are you printing?

Speaker 6 We don't print a lot. I just use that as an example.

Speaker 6 Every now and then

Speaker 6 we don't print much. in fact i will purposely sometimes not buy printer ink when the printer's low to encourage my people not to print yeah um

Speaker 6 every now and then we have something we have to print but usually it's um because we're pretty heavily agency bill sometimes we have to print stuff and mail it to clients yeah

Speaker 8 i um

Speaker 8 we could

Speaker 8 completely operate without paper completely. The only time we have to is uh so I so we just finished getting licensed licensed in uh the continental United States.

Speaker 8 So we're within by the end of this week, we will have we'll be licensed in 48 states.

Speaker 6 It's awesome.

Speaker 8 It is. I mean, I want to give a shout out to ILSA, which I never know.

Speaker 6 Insurance is freaking awesome.

Speaker 8 Yeah, insurance licensing service. I don't know what the ILSA stands for, but it's ILSA.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 if it wasn't for them, this wouldn't, this wouldn't have happened. This is like my thank you speech at the Emmys.
Like, if it wasn't for Ilsa, this would not have happened.

Speaker 8 They just literally, I get an email. They're like, sign this, and I got to print something out and sign it.
And I scan it and send it back to them. And then sign this.

Speaker 8 And that's the only thing legitimately that I've had to print in months and months are all these forms that go along with getting licensed in all these states.

Speaker 8 So it's been that part.

Speaker 6 They're killer, man. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Are they owned by Easy Links?

Speaker 8 No, they're, they did just get bought. No, Resource Pro, I think, just bought them.

Speaker 6 Their logo is eerily similar to EasyLinks logo. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 I've noticed that. Yeah.

Speaker 6 We've started using them. Actually, I heard you mention them on the podcast because that's something that, you know, so, you know, Tim Ferriss talks about leaving your business for a month abruptly.

Speaker 6 And then everything that breaks, it shows you what you need to fix. And then also you knowing that you're leaving leads to you you creating processes around that that you otherwise wouldn't have.

Speaker 6 And I went out on this two-month paternity leave, even though Joe Rogan thinks paternity leave is for WIMPs.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I had to think about a lot of that stuff.

Speaker 8 It could be an off-site paternity leave and you could be a WIMP. I mean, both of those things could be true at the same time.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 So, so when I got back from the leave, I took my entire team to lunch and one of my guys was like, so what did you think about Joe Rogan saying that paternity leave was for wimps?

Speaker 6 And I was like, when did he say that? It's like, while you were out.

Speaker 6 I was like, I mean, the fact that I can walk away and this bad boy still run and make me money while I'm not here is not that wimpy. But

Speaker 6 anyway, that was one of the things is I was like, crap, what happens if like somebody's license comes up and they need to handle it?

Speaker 6 So I reached out to Ilsa and it was a little clunky in the beginning, but we kind of got things going and it's it's good.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I've kind of found that with them is that like the,

Speaker 8 you know, and I don't necessarily think it's their fault.

Speaker 8 I think just this pro the process of licensing and getting all the documents like it takes there's a little bit of like ramp up to kind of like here's all my stuff okay they sort through it what do you have what don't we have you know but like one of the things that they helped school me to was like uh filing with the secretary of states of the different states is like when you get licensed a lot of people just get licensed and they're like oh i'm good right hey i'm licensed well yeah kind of but if but in most states not every state but in most states if you don't also file with the

Speaker 8 Secretary of State's office that you are operating in the state, you can get fines, you can have tax levies, there's all kinds of different stuff.

Speaker 6 So, you know, I've,

Speaker 8 I mean, this is, I've mentioned this before, and I think you have too, but I'm just an enormous proponent of as a leader of having the self-awareness to understand what you're good at and what you're not good at, and then outsource everything else, which is a tough thing to do because you're spending money, right?

Speaker 8 I mean, to outsource stuff costs money, there's no doubt.

Speaker 8 But in the back end, if I were spending the time to have to figure out how to get licensed in every one of these states and then setting up mechanisms somehow in my agency to monitor when something is due and what needs to be, oh my God.

Speaker 8 Now, do I pay a fee for that?

Speaker 8 Yes, but it is freaking nice to be able to email.

Speaker 6 25 bucks.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I mean, you know, when you're doing that many states, there's a fee. They're there, you know, they're getting, yeah, right, they're getting paid for what they're doing, there's no doubt.

Speaker 8 But, um, but that being said,

Speaker 8 I now have a person, Amanda, that when I have a problem, I just email Amanda and I go, Hey, Amanda, this is happening. What's up? And she's like, Oh, we got that.

Speaker 8 Don't worry, or hey, we just need to sign something.

Speaker 8 I have zero brain cycles associated with licensing, other than every other year, I need to do my

Speaker 8 CE so that I can re-up my New York license. Like outside of that, I don't have to do anything else.
And that to me.

Speaker 6 Well, it's like too, you know, you and I have a mutual friend who I'm not going to say, say their name that had a producer that did their CE, but did not renew the license and wrote business for like a year and a half and didn't say anything.

Speaker 6 before anybody noticed and had to like self-report and it turned into this whole cluster.

Speaker 6 You know, that's like whatever I can pay to keep that from happening short of putting myself out of business, like i will do that yeah dude i completely agree and um you know it's just these are the kind of things that

Speaker 8 i feel like

Speaker 8 you know it's just it's you really

Speaker 8 you really don't want to be figuring out how to do this stuff and i get it not not probably not many people listening to this are in multiple states or or are in as many states as maybe i or you are but um

Speaker 8 you know so it may not be that big a deal but you know if you're just in one state and you know, whatever, it's probably a lot easier just to manage it in-house, and that all makes sense. But I,

Speaker 8 I, I, I can't help but believe that the days of

Speaker 6 the

Speaker 8 community-based single-state independent agency are waning. And what I mean by that is that's not a knock on the independent agency system at all.
I just don't know that we can be successful

Speaker 8 being a local generalist moving into the future.

Speaker 8 Can a local generalist sustain? You know, we have to put all the caveats in there. Can a local generalist sustain? Yes, they can.
Are they going to the business?

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 8 But could you spin up a local generalist agency? Because this is my bellwether because we have a major talent.

Speaker 8 transition that's happening right we have an entire generation really the first broad spectrum generation of insurance agents in this country are phasing out, right?

Speaker 8 Like, this is a new thing for our industry. Like, other industries have had multiple iterations.

Speaker 8 We really, you know, I know there's third and fourth generations.

Speaker 6 And those same people want to shit on you for saying what you just said, but they're the ones selling to hub.

Speaker 6 They're the ones selling to the big boy. They're not selling to the other small independent down the street.

Speaker 6 You can't have your cake and eat it too. I know.

Speaker 8 You know, you know, that's one of my big beefs is I was talking to this. I was talking to somebody at a

Speaker 8 event. I did, I had like four weeks in a row where I was on the road for different events that I was doing this fall.
And I was talking to somebody, and I can't remember who it was or where I was.

Speaker 8 So I apologize for this being so ambiguous. But in one sentence, they were questioning a comment that I made on stage similar to what I'm saying.

Speaker 8 And the next sentence, they brought up the fact that they were selling to like a big roll-up.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 I was like, hmm, let's, let's, let's, let's just dissect this for a second. So, you're, you're giving me crap.

Speaker 8 He wasn't really giving me crap, but he was

Speaker 8 strongly questioning the merits of my argument related to this comment that you couldn't spin up a local generalist community agency and all this kind of stuff.

Speaker 6 And, you know,

Speaker 6 the fact when you're speaking, you have to pick a hard line on something, right?

Speaker 8 Yeah. Also, I could give two flying shits about what anyone thinks who's on the floor because fuck them, you know? So I have the microphone.

Speaker 6 I get to see what I want.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 So I. I got the bag, right? Yes.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 Yeah. So also, you know, look, this, that's my perspective.
So that's what it is. That being said, I'm fine with him questioning.

Speaker 8 And I was interested in his take and I was interested in why he thought you could do that, despite the fact that all evidence and all statistics would point otherwise. But then.

Speaker 8 To take such a hard line on that old school tact and then to tell me that you're selling to a big roll-up is like

Speaker 8 that, just feels kind of smarmy to me because it's basically what you're saying is

Speaker 8 it can only be done the way I did it, even though I don't think that's possible.

Speaker 8 But when you do, screw all you guys, I'm cashing out for the biggest nut I can get and rolling up into all the organizations that are going to end up taking all your lunch when they backdoor and advertise into your little community and create all the mechanisms as to why you can't build a local community today.

Speaker 8 So, you know, to me, it's just.

Speaker 6 It's like the people that post on Facebook that Facebook is ruining the world.

Speaker 6 It's what it is, you know? It's like social media is going to be the death of America. By God, I'm not deleting my account.

Speaker 6 That's how I reach my people.

Speaker 6 What are you talking about?

Speaker 8 I feel like in general, and you know, I talked to some of my friends about this stuff, but like, I feel like in general, we are just living through like a big idiot test right now.

Speaker 8 Like, i feel like i feel like god and the angels or whoever is up there doing whatever is like you know what they're probably scared to come down let's play a little game let's let's create all these nonsensical counterintuitive arguments let's uh let's just throw all this nonsense out there and see what these morons believe believe and

Speaker 6 yeah

Speaker 6 Well, and, you know, back to the main street generalist, you know, I don't think there's anything wrong with

Speaker 6 being a Main Street generalist.

Speaker 6 I don't think that, you know, I did a talk two weeks ago to NAFA, which is like, for those of you listening, PNC that may not be familiar, is like the big eye of life, life insurance, essentially.

Speaker 6 Yeah, yeah. State Association of Life Insurance.
And the talk was on embedded insurance. Or the kind of the center of my talk was on this embedded insurance trend that's coming, which I think.

Speaker 6 is partly one of the biggest threats to the main street generalist and also one of the biggest opportunities for the Main Street generalist.

Speaker 6 And I was kind of giving this talk and a lot of the people in the room, and I'm saying this because I asked and nobody raised their hand, had never even heard of the term embedded insurance. And

Speaker 6 what I told them is, I said, I'm not saying that independent agents are going away. And I'm saying this towards the Main Street generalist,

Speaker 6 your target client base is going to get smaller and smaller and smaller. is what I'm saying.
You're not going to be able to grow like you grew. Now, are there exceptions? Yes.

Speaker 6 Are there people that are going going to DM me after?

Speaker 6 We do it. Awesome.
Like a lot of those people are my friends, but I think people need to be looking outside of that. And I tell people every single day, I've said it twice today.

Speaker 6 Portal has no interest in being the Main Street agency. That's not what we're trying to do.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 8 If you have a problem with this, definitely DM Bradley. Don't DM me because I could give too much DM.

Speaker 6 I'm not going to talk about your opinion.

Speaker 6 I will give you the politically correct.

Speaker 8 It's not that I don't care. I just, just, look, here's what I'll tell you.

Speaker 8 I don't see embedded insurance as an opportunity for mainstream generalist agency because I don't think they're going to invest. It's too big of a game.
It takes too much time and capital.

Speaker 8 I think what I, I do, I agree with your first statement that embedded insurance is the largest, is the biggest.

Speaker 8 It's the first concept that I've seen where I've said this could actually disrupt a large portion of the independent insurance insurance industry and here's why i believe that

Speaker 8 because embedded insurance as a concept and i'm broad stroking but just to give anyone who's who is also unfamiliar with the topic what we're talking about embedded insurance is the idea that either inside a platform or inside a product insurance happens natively okay inside a product would be tesla sells you a car and a little schmoogie box that you click when you're checking out is do you want tesla insurance to go with this for $107 a month?

Speaker 8 Boom. That's embedded insurance.

Speaker 8 It's part of the checkout process, just like adding in a larger screen or the ability to play asteroids on your game console or whatever. I haven't bought a Tesla yet.

Speaker 6 And it's not just Tesla. Toyota is doing this, right? Toyota, whatever.

Speaker 8 I wouldn't be surprised if someday purchasing a new home, this doesn't happen, or it happens with a lot of products today, drones, right?

Speaker 8 There are all these different things where embedded insurance is starting to leak in.

Speaker 8 It's huge in other parts of the world it is coming and it's coming like a freight train to the united states now we have natural governors to that based on the the the 50 state regulation system that we have the state-based regulation system some of the lobbyists and special interest groups obviously are not going to let that happen um you know so there's a there's a bunch of things that we have that will slow it but it's coming it's absolutely coming so that's that's embedded in a product embedded in a platform would be like i use square for business to run my restaurant and square every time i log in says hey want a better business quote click this button and we'll rate compare you against five companies and right inside a platform that you use every single day they're pushing insurance okay so why do i think that this is the first real disruptive uh case in our in our industry is that It doesn't allow business insurance to get to the local level.

Speaker 8 That's what scares the shit out of me about it. It's why I've done a lot of the things that I've done and why, you know, we're broad spectrum, national, we, and we suffer a lot of pain.

Speaker 8 And I've talked about it. We pay a hefty price in the early days of our agency for going the route we did.

Speaker 8 But I saw very early, or at least I believe, whether this happens or not, I believe there will be a day where

Speaker 8 a lot of personal insurance, a lot of small business insurance, it just will never get down to our level. Someone will sign up for their LLC and they'll already have purchased business insurance.

Speaker 8 And I know like the major, whatever that one is, LegalZoom has it, right?

Speaker 8 These things are going to progress. They're going to become more natural, more native, right?

Speaker 6 And people are going to get more comfortable doing it though.

Speaker 8 People are going to get more comfortable doing it. And as they sign up for these services and it's a button click to add insurance, they're going to do it.
And more and more people are going to do it.

Speaker 8 And now all of a sudden you're like, hey, I'm the local agency. And they're like, yeah, I already got coverage here and I got coverage here.
And you're like, you just started your business.

Speaker 8 You should have come to me. And they're like, yeah, but it was a button click with LegalZoom and it was 100 bucks.
And I figured I'd just get it done. And now,

Speaker 8 you know, now you got to wedge them out and talk to them. And

Speaker 8 that to me is amazing.

Speaker 6 And guess what? Convenience beats price. Yeah.
98% of the time. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah. You know, and I, and there's people listening to this.

Speaker 6 You know, I'm hearing Scott Howell in my head right now saying, well, what about retention?

Speaker 6 yep and that's true like one of the things a lot of these dtcs have not figured out yet is the retention piece that's where the agent comes in relationship but the problem is is is if the deal never makes it to you then that disrupts that entire process where you can no longer sell the way that you've always sold yep you know

Speaker 6 customer at the end like insurance is not the thing like there's not very many people wake up in the morning and say man i'm really glad i have good coverage

Speaker 6 it's the thing that gets you to the thing i've always said that you you know, we do one of our niches on personal lines are new homebuyers.

Speaker 6 And one of the things that I think separates us from some of the people around here is we recognize that the insurance is not the crescendo moment of the home buying process.

Speaker 6 It's the thing that gets you to the thing. And one thing that I love about the embedded insurance movement is it's the physical iteration of that.

Speaker 6 right it's the physical presence of this is just insurance to get you there yep um

Speaker 6 but like i mean to be honest with you like i do think there is an opportunity Yeah, I think there is an opportunity for people to, as long as they open up their minds to it and get comfortable with it, because like, just to be completely honest with you, like I'm working on an embedded insurance play right now.

Speaker 6 I've been working on it a year. It's about to come to fruition.
If we're able to pull it off, it will be the single biggest thing I've ever done in insurance.

Speaker 6 If my broke ass can figure it out and do it.

Speaker 6 And I know I probably have some built-in advantages with the podcast thing. Like, I get that.

Speaker 6 But like, if I can do it with the very, very, very small amount of money that I started my agency with, I think anybody can figure it out.

Speaker 7 What's up, guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show. And in exchange for that, I need your help.

Speaker 7 If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe.

Speaker 7 share, comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes, et cetera. This helps the show grow.
It helps me bring more guests in.

Speaker 7 We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in, men and women who've done incredible things sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales.

Speaker 7 The things that are going to help you grow as a person and grow your business. But they all check out comments, ratings, reviews.
They check out all this information before they come on.

Speaker 7 So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help. Share the show, subscribe if you're not subscribed.

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All right, I'm out of here. Peace.
Let's get back to the episode.

Speaker 8 No, it has nothing to do with that. That's you're completely off.

Speaker 8 Yes, through the fact that you're a hustler, you're smart, you're a business developer, you're a networker that's how you got that done so when i think about that anybody can do that yeah but

Speaker 6 look

Speaker 8 there's a reason that you keep getting asked back to the same conferences to speak on relatively the same topics over and over and over and over again and it's because of there are a few core concepts that most business owners in general not just independent insurance agents do not get, which is find out what you're good at and get out of the way for everything else.

Speaker 8 so what happens is we have agency owners who are also chief service officer and chief revenue officer and chief insurance officer and chief marketing officer and chief sales officer and nothing ever nothing big ever gets done and they're constantly i'm doing air quotes even though everyone can't see me i'm at least on my podcast they're always busy i

Speaker 8 yeah hate being busy because and there's two reasons for that one it means i'm working on that i didn't choose to work on in most cases obviously, sometimes you pick a project that makes you busy, but in most cases, being busy means you're doing shit other people need done, not stuff you want to get done.

Speaker 8 And two, it limits your ability for serendipity, right? That random phone call, that opportunity, that conference that, hey, you know, I got this.

Speaker 8 ticket to this thing and there's going to be people there that you should network with and you're like oh i'm too busy i can't go so you don't go and and so much of that in my opinion comes down to like, like, I've had people question the fact that I have an operations manager, right?

Speaker 8 And she was my very first hire. Now, I hired her to be an AM, immediately realized that she was not

Speaker 8 her skills, even though she could have been a great account manager. She was just

Speaker 8 different skill set, right? She was a D all the way across, just driver, get shit done, task oriented, like hard charger, smart.

Speaker 6 Like, so.

Speaker 8 I just said,

Speaker 8 I'm making you an account manager. And I've had people for for the last year go, you're too small.
You're too new. That's shit you should be doing.
You're wasting money, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 6 And I'm like, it's really a vulnerability of themselves. That's their insecurities talking because they don't have that person.

Speaker 8 And they're going, I didn't hire my first person until I had a million dollars in premium.

Speaker 6 And I'm like, well, then you're an asshole. I don't, what am I supposed to tell you? Like, I don't know, you know what I mean? It also took you eight years, Gerald.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 My timeline, I am. I am, I, you know what I mean? Like, I am not going to be happy if I hit my first million in revenue a decade into the business.

Speaker 8 That's, that is going to, yeah, that will be a complete and utter fail for me if that's the case. So, like,

Speaker 8 I, I just, I look at,

Speaker 8 I look at these things and I'm like, yes, do I have to sacrifice? Like, I don't take a salary out of the business. Now, granted, I'm, I am blessed similar to you.
And then I have this podcast.

Speaker 8 I have some sponsorships. I'm able to pay some bills with that.

Speaker 6 you know, have a little walking around cash. We also have wives that are awesome too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 8 It helps that my wife is a, is a baller blocker, you know, so. Um, but I just, dude, I just think like we gotta, as leaders, we have to start getting out of our own way.
Have some self-awareness.

Speaker 8 And if you need help with it, sit down with someone and say, like, what am I good at? And what am I not good at? And then hire those things.

Speaker 6 Sit down with your team. There's no better people to answer than the people that work for you.
Now you're kind of coming back full circle to the delegation thing. Yep.

Speaker 6 So the hardest, when you said that earlier, but we moved on. I get a chance to say it.
I'm a big delegator. I always say automate, outsource, delegate, one of those three.

Speaker 6 The hardest thing I think to delegate are the things that you're not good at, but you like doing.

Speaker 6 That's to me, that's when you can really scale your agency. And like, people ask me all the time, like, how do you do everything you're doing? Like, I've literally outsourced and delegated everything.

Speaker 6 Yeah. You know, like, even down to when we pick up a new carrier.
and they want to do the agency owner, like Zoom call to talk about the product.

Speaker 6 I get either Kenneth, my main account manager, manager, or a VA just to do that call and send me the high points. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Hopefully, they turn the camera off.

Speaker 6 And they're not acting like me, but like, I do, I like, like, I'm literally every single thing in my day, I'm like, okay, how can I take this and outsource it so I don't have to do it?

Speaker 6 Yeah, you know, and that,

Speaker 6 and I'm not, and I'm not perfect, I'm not bragging, no, no, no,

Speaker 8 no, dude, what that allows you to do is find,

Speaker 8 work,

Speaker 8 nurture for a year, the largest insurance deal of your career, which probably won't be the largest forever, right? I mean, this will be a stepping stone to the next one, to the next one.

Speaker 8 So by getting all that crap off your plate, that's important, but you shouldn't be doing, right? Like, like

Speaker 8 you shouldn't be doing that stuff. By getting that off your plate, you're able to go bring in a deal that changes the nature of your agency.
It changes the whole level that you're playing at. And

Speaker 8 if you were in the weeds hawking home in autos because

Speaker 8 you're the best salesperson in your agency and you got to thump your chest every day, like I think that's perfectly fine, but that's little fiefdom stuff. If you want to have a kingdom,

Speaker 8 if you want to grow your empire. You have to work on bigger deals.
You have to work on bigger fish. You can't, and that doesn't just mean middle market.
It could, right?

Speaker 8 It could mean one big deal, like from an insurance perspective, or it could mean a big referral partner, or it could mean nurturing, like, uh, like girly's got a great story about nurturing central.

Speaker 8 And he had called him for all these years. And then he went on Carler's podcast.
And then he had more calls.

Speaker 8 And then he was able to bring into his agency a carrier that was incredibly important to them. You know, so it's like, it's stuff like that that we have.

Speaker 8 we those things don't happen if you are also doing all the little in your agency

Speaker 6 Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Well, or a good example is, so we went to Hartford three weeks ago. That's right.
And I did a podcast in the Medicare space. My buddy Justin has a podcast over there.

Speaker 6 And he was, we were just talking about, we were talking about putting yourself in positions to succeed

Speaker 6 while also not having an agenda when you do that. Because I think people sometimes miss those two pieces.

Speaker 6 Like, yeah, they'll put their self at the right table, but then when they get there, they'll be so salesy and right-hookied that it turns everybody off.

Speaker 6 You know, an example I gave is: you know, I went to Hartford with no agenda whatsoever to meet anyone.

Speaker 6 And now I happen to know that this program director is going to be there, this person's going to be there, this person's going to be there, this person's going to be there. And

Speaker 6 what it does is it allows you to do things like that that then set you up for future success because you put yourself in that position. If nothing else, just that, you know.

Speaker 6 So, yeah.

Speaker 8 Yeah. I think

Speaker 8 I just, you know, my concern for

Speaker 8 our independent agency brothers and sisters is that if I think more than ever, and I'm sure this has been said for 40 years, and all the gray hairs are going to go, ah, they were talking about that in 1982 when we got the fax machine.

Speaker 8 But, like, I think more than ever, the internet has created a situation where we have to think bigger. We have to.

Speaker 8 Maybe that means going from 50 miles to the entire, from your agency to the entire state. Or maybe it means

Speaker 8 moving into small commercial from purse lines only or vice versa or or bring, you know, purchasing a small book to get another carrier that you need and just thinking bigger or extending to a producer or to a specialist in an area.

Speaker 8 Like, I think we really have to start thinking bigger than just show up and write write insurance every day. Because

Speaker 8 from Albany, New York, I can drop a pin in your town and market to your people, and they will not know the difference between you and me.

Speaker 6 And then talk about that.

Speaker 8 Right. And then there's 50, and there's 50 of me, right? There's

Speaker 8 other independents like me doing the same thing. There's all the nationals, all the carriers, right?

Speaker 8 Liberty, who's supposed to be a friend of the independents, has decided to launch 200 local local locations and compete directly with us. Like, you know what I mean? Like,

Speaker 8 and I don't, I don't necessarily care about that. I'm just saying this is happening and it's not going to stop and where nobody could break into your backyard even 10 years ago, right?

Speaker 8 So, so think 2011, even though the internet existed and YouTube and Google had some ads and Facebook, you know, whatever. No one could break into your backyard even a decade ago.

Speaker 6 Nobody could.

Speaker 8 No one could get into your town. If you had your signs up and had been there for any amount of time, nobody could break in.
You had that town on lockdown. Today, that is just simply not the case.

Speaker 8 It just isn't.

Speaker 6 Oh, it can be taken from you before you even realize it's at risk. Yeah.
And, you know, there were two things that I learned.

Speaker 6 So, my last two years when I was captive was me testing things to set up to open portal. I've never really talked about this.
There's two things that I learned that last two years.

Speaker 6 And what's coincidentally, both things contradict something that I think the majority of independent agents believe.

Speaker 6 The first one is

Speaker 6 you have to be in the neighborhood. You have to be the hometown agent.
Everybody has to know you, that sort of thing, right? So I hit a stride with Facebook ads my last two years.

Speaker 6 This was pre Zuckerberg testifying to Congress and them shutting the platform down, essentially, from an advertising standpoint.

Speaker 6 And I was running ads in Huntsville, which is where Scott is, six hours north. It was before I knew Scott.
And I was writing business like my hair was on fire, to use a Scott term.

Speaker 6 And you know how many people asked where are you located or

Speaker 6 had a problem with the fact that I was six hours south of them? Literally zero.

Speaker 6 Okay, so that's myth number one busted. Oh, wow.

Speaker 6 With this tool, I can advertise anywhere.

Speaker 6 And the people don't like, wait, if I, all I have to do is solve their problem, they don't care that I'm not down the street from their house okay that's number one number two was

Speaker 6 i was with a company called alpha which is a captive alabama's version of farm bureau gotcha i didn't brand alpha i i branded myself i branded sarah land insurance which is where i was located

Speaker 6 nobody knew they were with alpha

Speaker 6 like they never asked what carrier am i with or or or oh so what company do you it was like oh i'm buying from bradley i'm buying from sarah land insurance So, I branded myself, not the carrier.

Speaker 6 And to me, that was two big lessons I learned that kind of play into this. That, like, people don't care.
Like, all they want you to do is solve their problem, you know.

Speaker 8 Dude, yesterday, we wrote, yesterday we wrote an account in Oregon, an account in New Jersey, and an account in Maryland.

Speaker 8 Guess how, guess how big of a deal it was that we're low, that our headquarters is in Troy, New York.

Speaker 6 They didn't care. They don't even ask.
They don't care. They literally.
And they don't care what carrier you put them with. Don't care.
Like, they don't care.

Speaker 8 Don't care. And, and that's not to say that it doesn't matter.

Speaker 6 I want to. Trust that you're asking.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 8 It's not that that is not to say that the carrier doesn't matter because the carrier does matter. Quality coverage matters.
The paper matters. I get all you super nerds and CPCUs.

Speaker 8 You want to nitpick every comma.

Speaker 8 And, you know.

Speaker 8 But to the customer, you know what they got? They got a phone call immediately after they filled out a form.

Speaker 8 They got their problems solved within a few minutes, and they got the insurance covers they need to do whatever the hell they called us for in the first place.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 that's the game. In my opinion, granted, when you're prospecting, middle market, you're doing the killing commercial thing, that's a little different, right?

Speaker 8 You are targeting customers you want to work with, that you think you have a solution for, who can help. Much different thing.

Speaker 8 We call this business rogue select, 25,000 at premium or less. These people do not care.
They have an insurance problem. It is our job to solve that problem.
It is not our job to be their best friend.

Speaker 8 I'm not sending them a basket of cupcakes or whatever. We're going to be professional.
We're going to do the right thing by them. We're going to service them well when they need it.

Speaker 8 And we're going to solve their problem.

Speaker 8 That is

Speaker 8 in a timely manner. And dude, that's the thing.

Speaker 8 I had a guy fill out a form on our website at uh at oh it was like it was in the afternoon one day and we just missed it we just didn't get to it right away and the next day i saw that we hadn't reached out to him so i called him at like 10 30.

Speaker 8 so this is 3 p.m 10 30. i'm like

Speaker 8 i'm so sorry it took us so long to get back to you he goes you he goes are you kidding me he had kind of a country accent i can't do one you know he's like are you kidding me like i've reached out to like four other agencies You're the only person I've heard back from.

Speaker 8 Like, that to me is the big opportunity. Everyone listening to this call, to this podcast, is not going to call their leads back in a timely manner.
You're just not, guys.

Speaker 8 If you did, Bradley and I wouldn't have businesses. Right.
So, like,

Speaker 8 the fact that our industry as a whole thinks weeks are an acceptable time period to get back to people, to me, just simply getting back to them in a few minutes just changes the whole conversation.

Speaker 8 They are blown away they are if i we get back to somebody within an hour they are like oh my god

Speaker 6 who are you what is this magic that you're doing that you got back to me so soon you know i'm like it's crazy so you just detailed exactly why i stay in the insurance industry so everybody that i have that's in another industry i have a friend that's in in a the marketing marketing industry and he has a printing company.

Speaker 6 He does like big print jobs and concert posters, things like that. And really cool guy.
He comes to my office last week. He did a print thing for us.

Speaker 6 And he was like, so he's like, so tell me what you're working on. And I kind of told him a couple of my projects.
You know, he's like, huh.

Speaker 6 So, so you're really serious about this insurance thing, aren't you? It's like, why not like go into another industry?

Speaker 6 I was like, dude, I was like, the white space in this industry, by white space, I mean the gap is so large. that you can be a crappy businessman and be uber successful.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Like just doing the bare minimum a lot of times is better than what everybody else does, you know? Yeah.

Speaker 8 And, and, you know, and, and I, I give everyone listening, I hope you realize that when I refer to you specifically, I'm sure it's not actually you because you're taking the time to listen.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 8 It just, it is, and I think, you know, use what we're saying as, um,

Speaker 8 as keys that you can work off of to say, look, like, You're listening to this show, which means that you are in some capacity, probably light years ahead of most of the people that you would have to work against, including, you know, other captives, other independents, certainly carrier people, certainly digital brokers who are some of the worst at this.

Speaker 8 And, you know,

Speaker 8 take this as opportunity.

Speaker 6 Dude,

Speaker 6 I went through the intake process with a digital broker recently. And I'm not going to say who it is because I'm friendly with one of the founders.

Speaker 6 And they just effed it up. Like it was just awful.
And they positioned themselves. And granted, I'm in a coastal area, which is what I was testing to see, like, okay, did they, you know what I mean?

Speaker 6 And it just proves the point that you and I have talked about, like a lot of these insurtechs, like all they're good at is the easy stuff.

Speaker 6 It's the more the stuff on the outskirts where the real problems are, they don't do well. And so I go through this whole buying process and it was through a like a chat thing.

Speaker 6 And the guy's like, and it was a guy. It wasn't a robot.
He was like, ready for me to buy. And I'm like, okay, does this include wind? Oh, hang on, let me see.
And it was three days.

Speaker 6 And he emails me back. He's like, oh, yeah, sorry.
There's no wind on this.

Speaker 6 I'm like,

Speaker 6 what's supposed to be so great about this?

Speaker 6 And then they're acquired for like $50 million.

Speaker 8 Yeah. It,

Speaker 8 you know, it is,

Speaker 8 you know,

Speaker 8 I don't know how to say this, but being in the where Rogue is going, where we're going.

Speaker 8 I've had the opportunity to have quite a few conversations with digital brokers, people who have invested in digital brokers, just that whole space.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 what I've found, and this is why our mantra is no customer left behind, is that

Speaker 8 they have figured out the technology piece. They just have no clue about insurance in most cases.
Or, you know, they have, they know insurance and they can't figure out the tech.

Speaker 8 And there is an incredible amount, I'll use your term, white space, for the agencies, for the carriers, for anyone who can bridge that gap, who can be both things, who can be both a great insurance agent and a great technologist.

Speaker 8 That is incredibly rare in our space.

Speaker 8 And that is, that is like the note, the new frontier are these hybrid professionals or organizations who are both good agents and stewards of an agency as well as technologists because

Speaker 8 dude the easy stuff is so easy like you know i was looking at this company uh layer the other day because i consider them a competitor of sorts and dude just they got a couple carriers you can rate quote bind with which is great but nothing special if it doesn't fit those

Speaker 8 uh what happens to it nothing and you're like oh

Speaker 8 that's not really spectacular to me that's kind of freaking boring to me actually and nothing against them i'm sure they'll improve. But I just was like, this is a company I just saw.

Speaker 8 And I only use them because they just had a, they just raised 10 million bucks. Right.
So I'm like, wow, there is someone out there willing to give a company $10 million

Speaker 8 just because they can rate quote bind Main Street bot business online. That's the, that is the bar, my friends, for insurance and technology mashing together.

Speaker 8 It just, to me, that means that we have just started to scratch the surface on what's possible.

Speaker 6 And what cracks me up, I bet you, I bet you, especially in commercial, this is the case. When you go to bind it, you have to have a one day in the future effective date.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 That's because it's not API. It's because they have somebody on the other end that actually is physically binding it.
It's just an agency with a slick front end is all it is. Yeah.

Speaker 8 Yeah. It's, you know, and look, I'm not saying you can't make a boat tone, a boatload of money that way.
Yeah. Or that that's a bad business model.

Speaker 6 Get after it.

Speaker 8 I think all I'm trying to convey, and I, you know, and I know you are too, is that

Speaker 8 there is so much opportunity. I just no longer believe that opportunity exists in owning the local market.

Speaker 8 I'm not saying that can't be one of your value propositions, but if that's what you're hanging your hat on,

Speaker 8 moving forward and you're not coming up with a statewide vertical or a big time referral partnership with a multi-year contract or whatever, I feel like you are,

Speaker 8 you're creating a major vulnerability in your agency.

Speaker 6 Well, and it's like all these direct-to-consumer insure techs, you know, they all to some degree subscribe to the mantra of we save you money because we don't have to pay agents 15%.

Speaker 6 When in reality, so there was, there's an insure tech some of us know of that's direct to consumer, no agents, that sort of thing.

Speaker 6 Somehow they're speaking at insurance agent conferences, but that's beside the point.

Speaker 6 I pressed one of the founders. It's like, no, why, like, like, I pressed, like, why not agents? Like, why not do that too?

Speaker 6 And then I eventually got the real answer, which is, oh, we don't have the infrastructure to handle all the appointments.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Which is the real reason a lot of them try the direct-to-consumer thing first

Speaker 6 before going with agents. And then you see them do the kind of in the middle, which is, hey, we're going to, you know, we're going to use Agent Arrow and some of these MGAs.

Speaker 6 And that's how you get access. We're going to let them handle the burden of handling the agent appointments.
And then eventually, I'll eliminate they all come back. And okay, now we're doing direct.

Speaker 6 Sorry about all the, sorry about the fact that we were an abusive spouse three years ago and we were nasty to you, but we want you back now. Like that's.
that's the that's the play right there.

Speaker 6 You know, Ken Insurance is pounding Florida right now. And like, I'm friends with the founder on LinkedIn and Gary Vaynerchuk is one of the biggest investors in Ken.

Speaker 6 And I'm sitting here in his DMs, like, like, you are royally effing up right now by not working with agents because your customer acquisition cost is high.

Speaker 6 By the way, Ken was not the one I was talking to, but your customer acquisition cost is high and you're pissing off every single agent where.

Speaker 6 because you want property in Florida, you could solve a huge problem for every single agent in the state of Florida. Yeah.

Speaker 8 Yeah. You know how you solve the appointment process? An Excel spreadsheet to start.
That's all you need. Hey, right.
Send me your, send me your, your, your, a copy of your license.

Speaker 8 And then just once a day, notify the state of the new agencies that you're appointed. Like this, I get it.
I get that it seems overwhelming. I just,

Speaker 8 you know, again, you got to remember that

Speaker 8 when you're given a boatload of money. These guys have major, major pressure on them.

Speaker 8 And you have someone, and I'm not saying that he does, but you have people like Gary Vaynerchuk who are investing in your company.

Speaker 8 They're going to ask questions like, have you tried the least expensive option or the seemingly least expensive option first?

Speaker 8 No, we went right to agents. Man, you're not really taking care of our money because you could have figured it out by going direct and you didn't.
So that's, this is what, this is why it happens.

Speaker 8 It doesn't, it's not some nefarious, you know, again, this is, I think this same thing about, about lefties, right? Like they're trying to do their best. They're just misinformed.

Speaker 8 So they, you know, these people think face value, if we just go direct.

Speaker 6 Give me a second to figure out what you were saying, lefties. Yeah, that's going to be left-handed batters.
What are you talking about?

Speaker 8 That's going to be the cheapest, right? If I just go direct, that's the cheapest. And then you go, oh, that's not the cheapest.

Speaker 8 We'll go through MGAs. That's the cheapest.
And you try that.

Speaker 6 And you're like, oh.

Speaker 8 we're still not getting any volume. Well, I guess now we'll do major appointment.

Speaker 8 We'll go go to marsh man if we just get marsh we're good and they get marsh and they go ah well they already have 400 other appointments so we're not getting we're only getting limited flow from them and mostly it's bad it's the bad that they don't want to send it right well now we got to go to independence and then all of a sudden they start to get the flow but if they don't go through that waterfall

Speaker 8 you know they're not they have to report to a board and tell them why they've made these decisions and a lot of times it's just if they don't cycle through all those decisions then they somehow are not being a good steward of that business.

Speaker 8 And, you know, so if you think about it,

Speaker 6 yeah. Yeah.
On the surface, it appears that agents are the least attractive option, right?

Speaker 6 When in reality, you know, theoretically speaking, the way an insurance company makes money is writing the correct clients. That way they can maximize profitability and that premium, right?

Speaker 6 You're not going to get that with the direct and consumer. I don't care how good your targeting is.
And this is coming from a marketing person. You're still going to have business that gets bound.

Speaker 6 That's not your target client. Whereas, if you work with good independent agents, they are going to put you with the correct carrier for your risk.

Speaker 6 They're not going to try to fit something into a box that doesn't belong there, generally speaking.

Speaker 8 Yeah, part of my pitch to the VCs that I've been talking to is that by using humans, we will probably write 20%

Speaker 8 less

Speaker 8 than we would if we just had a direct button. But I can take, but I'm, but what I believe on the back end is I'll get 40% back in retention.
Cause none of these guys can crack 40% retention.

Speaker 8 That's the little secret, the little dirty little secret, all these companies, all these companies that are getting tens of millions of dollars, IPOing,

Speaker 8 except for Goosehead, they can't crack 40 to 45% retention. They can't crack it.
None of them. They can't figure it out.
As fast as they get them in, they go out the back.

Speaker 8 So it's all about acquisition, blow your numbers up as big as you can, sell to a PE, ipo whatever you got to do to to recapitalize at a bigger number but they're not making money and they can't crack 40 retention the reason is is because they don't respect the humans all of us

Speaker 8 so what i've been what my part of my pitch is and and look i haven't got vc funded yet because no one believes me that this is true but i will eventually find the the right partner for us and it's it's i'm going to give up 20 in acquisition because i have because i want a human to spend two minutes on the phone with somebody at a minimum to figure out if they're the real deal or if it's nonsense.

Speaker 8 You know, if it's 20 minutes, that's fine. I don't mean only two minutes, I just mean at least kind of.

Speaker 8 But I believe that by doing that and having humans involved in the process throughout, we'll get that back and be able to push standard independent agency retention rates to 84% or higher.

Speaker 8 And if I, as a digital brokerage, can produce 84% retention,

Speaker 8 we're going to slay. Like, we'll be Scrooge mcducking into my bat of gold coins or maybe bitcoins right um

Speaker 8 and and and because retention is the whole game we all know that and you know i just think that's what put that that's what has always put us as the mechanism for selling insurance you just you know it is very difficult to sell people who have never lived our life on why that's important

Speaker 6 so one more story and i'll let you go yeah

Speaker 6 So about a week ago, my wife wakes me up at 4 a.m.

Speaker 6 And she's like, Bradley, your phone just buzzed 23 times.

Speaker 6 What's wrong? Somebody's been in a car accident. I said, no, I said, I texted Ryan Hanley at 8 p.m.
about crypto. That's probably him responding.

Speaker 6 And sure enough, it was every single, which I appreciated. It was every single crypto Ryan thought I should buy one after the other.

Speaker 6 Anyway, I thought you would appreciate that.

Speaker 8 Well, I wouldn't buy them all, but you know, you kind of, based on your risk tolerance, there's a portfolio in there for you. Yeah.

Speaker 6 VRA.

Speaker 6 That's my little, my little crypto secret.

Speaker 8 VRA.

Speaker 6 V-R-A. Verocity.

Speaker 8 It's, it's, you'll be into it. Pay-per-view, pay-per-view technology, patented pay-per-view technology.
It's going to revolutionize the video game.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 So we're doing some

Speaker 6 insurance guys, NFTs really soon. Just to have a fun little project.
Nice. It come with

Speaker 6 each one comes with a prize, some really, really juicy prizes. And just to just have fun, you know?

Speaker 8 I'll be honest with you.

Speaker 8 If I were doing a conference right now,

Speaker 8 NFTs would be an enormous part of that conference. Speaker pictures.

Speaker 8 Yeah, like just, there's all kinds of venue pictures, different, different

Speaker 8 NFTs that could get you into special rooms, special one-on-ones with speakers. Like, I think there is so much.

Speaker 6 What we're doing. Yeah.
When will this? Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. We've got a delay here.
That's why I keep interrupting you. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 What, when's this going to drop?

Speaker 8 I have no idea.

Speaker 6 Okay. So this may have dropped.
It may already be over with. But so what we're going to do.
is we're going to have a very, very small amount of nfts.

Speaker 6 They're going to be a higher price point.

Speaker 6 So we've already sold all our tickets for our event, but we've got, I think it's the event in Colorado with uh Glove Box guys, correct, yep, correct, that you won't come to.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I'm I'm efforting to be there.

Speaker 6 I have not, I may just

Speaker 8 show up. This is going to be a game time decision for me, but yes, I'm trying to be great.

Speaker 6 Hey, we found out today we're going to have access to the Jumbotron.

Speaker 6 Wow,

Speaker 6 so our speakers are going to be up on the Jumbotron. Are we going to get to throw passes in the field?

Speaker 6 Yes, yes, you get a tour of the field.

Speaker 6 yeah you need to come you need to come set mile high stadium anyway so we've got six nfts um each nft comes with a prize uh so prizes like insurance guys in interview um one-on-one coaching with david carrothers for a year wow my marketing team does their content for i think six months and then one or two more prizes like that they also get lifetime access to the conference so whoever owns that nft at the time of the conference because we're going to do this every year

Speaker 6 gets to come.

Speaker 6 See, that idea, I love

Speaker 8 that lifetime pass. Like if you're a conference organizer, that NFT lifetime pass idea is awesome.
Because then it has market value. You could sell it.

Speaker 8 Like someone could have that and sell it to me off market. And now I just show up.
You don't care. Whoever has the NFT gets in.

Speaker 6 I love that. And they can also sell it prior to like, it's like, let's say they don't use the coaching with Carruthers.
They could sell that piece of it as well.

Speaker 6 And the,

Speaker 6 and we're going to do a dinner the first night. So everybody that buys the NFT gets a dinner with me, Scott, Glovebox,

Speaker 6 Mick, and David, and Daniel Song. When are you? Cool little intimate dinner.

Speaker 8 Yeah, that's awesome. When are you?

Speaker 8 When are you dropping this NFT thing?

Speaker 6 Probably Monday.

Speaker 9 So this will not be out by Monday.

Speaker 8 Although I could just drop it tomorrow.

Speaker 6 But it still may be available. It may flop.

Speaker 6 I mean, it may flop, but I told, so like, no i told andy we're on a call earlier i was like i just want to do this to say we're the first ones in the insurance space to do it like that's even if it flops and nobody buys it but the thing is is so our ticket price is really low our ticket price is 199.

Speaker 6 most of these conferences are in the 700 range yeah um so that's what the nft costs it's going to be 750.

Speaker 6 that's assuming ethereum doesn't skyrocket

Speaker 8 Well, it'll be $7.50 and $38 or something like that.

Speaker 6 Yeah, something stupid like that but i gotta run man i gotta call yeah yeah yeah yeah oh i didn't even realize what time it was um

Speaker 8 dude appreciate the hell out of you love what you're doing thank you so much it had been too long i'm glad you i'm glad you sent me that message you just uh for those this everyone thinks that there's like some strategic plan on uh on guests and stuff and i'm always just like nope bradley just texted me and said hey it's been too long let's talk and i was like done really

Speaker 6 wednesday let's go let's do it cool well hey well it's funny because like things the things we're working on change so much from week to week that when you and I go a year and a half without doing one of these, it's like there's so much more to talk about.

Speaker 6 Yeah. You know, and I like your show because I can keep it real, you know.

Speaker 8 Yeah. I also forget, like, we talk so much offline that

Speaker 8 I don't know. It feels like it, if you had said we did a podcast a month ago, I would have been like, oh, yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 6 Because that's right. I remember that.

Speaker 6 Because you're probably like, really listening to your show. Be good.

Speaker 8 Appreciate you.

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