RHS 070 - David Carothers on What He's Learned Training an Army of Middle-Market Producers

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Speaker 10 In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home.

Speaker 8 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show.

Speaker 8 Today we have David Carruthers on the show, and it's the second time we've had him on in 2020. And the reason for bringing David back on the show is one, I just enjoy talking to him, and two,

Speaker 8 he's been doing Killing Commercial. He opened up Killing Commercial, one of the premier middle-market producer and agency training programs that exist.

Speaker 8 He opened it up about six months ago, and I wanted to get an update. I mean, I'm a member.

Speaker 6 I love it.

Speaker 8 I love being part of the community. It pushes me.
David pushes me. The other people in the group do.
I've gotten to know Greg Hogan really well

Speaker 8 through Killing Commercial, who's another New York agent. And now Doug Benz is also a Killing Commercial agent.
And the three of us are prepared to dominate New York State.

Speaker 8 And I have every intention of doing that, as well as the surrounding states. So, coming for you,

Speaker 6 Crowley and Kinney.

Speaker 8 That being said,

Speaker 8 this episode starts a little slow from the tactical standpoint, and that we just kind of bullshit for about 10 minutes. And then we get into about 45 minutes of absolutely slaying.

Speaker 8 And for that reason, I think you're going to love this episode. I loved the conversation.

Speaker 8 And the good news is it's my podcast. So because I love the conversation, that makes it the balls.
All right, guys.

Speaker 8 Before we get there, though, quick shout out out to agency VA, agencyva.com. Go to agencyva.com for all your VA needs.
I use agency VA right now in Rogue Risk, and it is changing the game for me.

Speaker 8 I have been frustrated because I'm not good at detail stuff. I'm not good at, you know, the, you know, sliding the TPS reports across the desk stuff that is so important to our business.

Speaker 8 I'm not downgrading the importance of the work. I'm just awful at it.

Speaker 8 My My brain does not want to focus on that kind of work, making sure data is properly inputted into our agency management system, moving data from one system to another and the ones where we need duplicate input,

Speaker 8 handling, building prospecting lists, handling COI requests, service requests. This kind of stuff is just not, it's not my specialty.

Speaker 8 Like I go from being a highly productive employee to being an incredibly unproductive employee when I have to focus on this type of work.

Speaker 8 And Agency VA has been the perfect partner to come in behind my sales and marketing effort and

Speaker 8 the sales effort of my new producer and helping us spend more time on what we do best, which is sell business, grow the agency. And I just, I think Agency VA is absolutely best in class.

Speaker 8 Absolutely best in class. Go to agencyva.com, agencyva.com.
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Let them give you some ideas on how to solve your problems. They know all our agency management systems.
They know many of the tools that we use already.

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Speaker 8 All right, let's get on to David Carruthers.

Speaker 11 What's up, man?

Speaker 10 David Carruthers coming in hot, 17 minutes late.

Speaker 11 Dude, that's what I get for trying to fly down and get edged up real quick before I come on.

Speaker 10 The book should have been named. The book should have been named the extra 17 minutes.

Speaker 11 That is what it is.

Speaker 11 I'm pretty sure that you completely ghosted us on a meeting last week.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I I ghost all the time. This is complete hypocrisy that I'm saying absolutely anything to you.

Speaker 12 And I'm fully aware of that.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I know, man. It's been a crazy morning.
Good stuff. All good stuff.
Except for the fact we have no AC in our office, which is awesome in Tampa, Florida right now. Oh, wow.

Speaker 10 Well, that's not a problem here. We could throw some of our 47 degrees that we have down to you.

Speaker 11 You know what? They fooled. This happens every single year in Tampa.
Every year.

Speaker 11 You'll get that one little snap at the end of September, early October, where the temperature dips for like 10 degrees for a day or two. And then, like, the next week, it's right back up in the 90s.

Speaker 11 And that's what happened to us last week. It got it down into like the high 60s, low 70s in the evenings.
So we actually got to use our brand new pool heater last weekend.

Speaker 11 And it was cool because at night you'd see the the steam coming off the water.

Speaker 11 And now I feel like it's just absolutely horrendous right now. This is, i feel like i'm working in a chain gang or something on the side of the road

Speaker 10 um so you you you you had sent me that message that you were coming in hot so i i actually popped uh an afternoon brewski so i'm

Speaker 11 well when i said i was coming in hot i just meant i'm amped up i've been laying it down all morning on power producers with shop talk so i assumed that either that was the case or you were going to be hammered out of your gourd so i just figured i would go with number two go with it man you're good

Speaker 11 not yet so

Speaker 11 fridays for us are yard day so like i've started getting to the point where i'm so busy with everything that i just block all of friday off on my calendar yeah um because i need to make sure that i have everything put to bed going into the weekend for everything that i'm doing and so um it's not that i'm blocking it off to take off and not do anything i'm blocking it off so that nobody can schedule time on my calendar you know for me to be able to get some work done specifically to, you know, for Florida Risk.

Speaker 11 And so I'll usually knock off maybe a hair early because we fired our yard people and we're doing our grass ourselves, which from a business standpoint is an absolutely horrendous decision. Yeah.

Speaker 11 You know, but it's not

Speaker 11 because I did run the payback period on me buying a second lawn mower. So now my wife and I each push a mower at the same time and we can get the entire yard completely done in 27 minutes.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 11 And we like it. It's therapeutic.
And it's done. It's done on Friday afternoon.

Speaker 11 Then for the whole weekend, you don't have to do anything because if there's one thing that I do, it's unplug on the weekends.

Speaker 11 You won't, I mean, other than you and I catching, you know, having a conversation every now and again or something that I actually want to do, it's like I'm not coming into the office and forcing myself to do stuff on Saturday and Sunday.

Speaker 11 I'm past that.

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 10 I

Speaker 10 will do, so it all depends on what's happening with my kids. A lot of times my, the grandparents want the kids in the afternoon sometimes on like Saturday or Sunday.

Speaker 10 And if I get a block in the middle of the day, I'll usually split that between walking the dog and getting like solid outside time. And then I'll hit the work for an hour.

Speaker 10 But that's just like light dust up work. That's email stuff.

Speaker 10 you know, cleaning up the desk, making sure everything's ready for the week.

Speaker 10 I try to unplug because if I crank through a weekend and I've done it a thousand times, i get to monday and it does not feel like that fresh start let's go get them it feels like another like it just feels like another day and i and i don't like that feeling i don't like starting a week like that yeah so for me

Speaker 11 like doing video and stuff like that that i have fun doing that's not work yeah so i might do i might like knock something like that and the other thing is you know i've got a routine with the younger kid with ethan and caroline they love coming over to the office we save all of our stuff that needs to be shredded so that they can shred it.

Speaker 11 Ethan likes to vacuum. He likes to check and see how much fabuloso I have left under the sink, you know, and so he can mop.
Like that, the kid is crazy, but they have their deal.

Speaker 11 So I'll come over and let them check the mail and do their little stuff. Not every weekend, but typically we've gotten into this habit now where we just, we go out for breakfast every Saturday.

Speaker 10 Oh, that's cool.

Speaker 11 So all of us, like the whole family, we'll go out, we'll grab breakfast, then we'll do our Costco run or whatever, and then we'll swing by the office, check the mail, and then we're, we're out.

Speaker 11 But I mean,

Speaker 11 I'm, I'm happy being basic, man.

Speaker 11 I'm happy just weekends are family time, and there's plenty of time left to make money. I'm not going to sell out because what I won't be able to get back is this time with my kids.

Speaker 10 I wholly agree with that. Like, so I've been on

Speaker 10 daddy daycare since about 1230 yesterday because we had a big storm come through, about 75 mile an hour winds, and half our area still doesn't even have power today.

Speaker 10 It was real localized it wasn't a tornado but it was horizontal real localized hard winds and uh like their school

Speaker 10 or something yeah yeah so their school um we we occasionally get tornadoes up here it's literally the only natural disaster that we get um

Speaker 10 but uh it their school was out yesterday so luckily my sister-in-law took them for the first half of the day and then I had them the second half. So, you know, whatever.

Speaker 10 And then today for Columbus Day, they have Friday and Monday off. So I've had them all day and we've been doing some stuff and we went ransom errands.

Speaker 10 And, you know, I'd say even as much as like six months ago, when I first started Rogue, this would stress me out. Like I would be sitting down here vibrating because I couldn't do the work.

Speaker 10 You know what I mean? Cause I'm, hey, dad, I need water. Hey, dad, I need this.
Hey, dad, I need that.

Speaker 10 And today, you know, and only through like talking to a ton of people, really thinking about stuff, I'm like, you know what? I'm going to get as much as I can done today.

Speaker 10 Whatever I don't get done, look, life literally goes on.

Speaker 10 Like nothing is going to happen that is going to drastically impact the course of my life because on a Friday in September or October, whatever it is, I didn't put in eight hours of 100% focused work.

Speaker 11 Like

Speaker 11 you can't, man. None of us can go that hard.
And I mean, look, you're an animal with content production.

Speaker 11 I'm not far behind you with how much I actually can put out and get done because that's the thing. You know, I think I hear it all the time: like, how do you have time for this?

Speaker 11 How do you have time for that? This is from people who don't even understand what's really going on behind the scenes.

Speaker 11 You know, it looks like it looks like I'm doing a lot, and that's just only the stuff that they can see me doing. So it's, um, you know, but I get it.

Speaker 11 Like next weekend, we're gone Friday, Saturday, Sunday. We're leaving Friday morning.
I am taking Friday off next week, and we're flying down to Key West. This is our quarterly decompression weekend.

Speaker 11 Every quarter, Annie and I have to get away so that we can have mental sanity. Part of it's because of Ethan and his special needs and neurological issues.

Speaker 11 Like we would not do well if we had to be around that without any kind of a break. So, yeah, you know, and you know what?

Speaker 11 The other thing is, I'm man enough to tell you, I don't need to pull a cast and jump on here and dance around lip-sync in a song. I love my wife and I like spending time with her.
Yeah.

Speaker 11 And I think that it's extremely important for as hard as we run, you know, both of us. We're, I mean, look, my wife's an alpha dude, and I know you've, you live with one too.

Speaker 11 So, yeah, you know, the fact of the matter is,

Speaker 11 we enjoy spending time with each other, but we need that time to decompress. And we like just getting away for a weekend and doing nothing except spending time with each other.

Speaker 11 Yeah, dude.

Speaker 10 So, one of my

Speaker 10 one, so I started using this planner called, and shout out to Chris Paradis. So, and all these things, I don't want to say like this is some special thing, but

Speaker 10 I have a tremendous amount of respect for Paradiso. And I saw him carrying around this book called

Speaker 10 Living Your Best Year Ever, right? And I saw him carrying this thing around in that mastermind I was in the other day. And I was like, dude, what is that thing that you have? And he said,

Speaker 10 I started using this planner three years ago.

Speaker 10 And I just said to myself, like, I'm the kind of guy who chases a lot of rabbits and I need something that pulls me back in.

Speaker 10 And if there was a way to define my personality, that would probably literally be it.

Speaker 11 Like I love it.

Speaker 12 Do they have like an ultra thick version for you? Like

Speaker 10 there needs to be like a second by second checklist in here to keep me on task. So

Speaker 10 so what

Speaker 10 so he said, I've used this, try it. And I've tried other planners.
I got the freedom journal over there, which I didn't really like. And I have the full focus planner, which I didn't really like.

Speaker 10 I've tried this before and it hasn't worked.

Speaker 10 But this one,

Speaker 10 I don't know what it was. Maybe I just was ready for it mentally because I felt myself being very scattered.

Speaker 10 But the first like 70 pages of this aren't just like check boxes and fill this in and how many of these did you do? It's literally you figuring out what's most important to you.

Speaker 10 And what I thought was really interesting after, it took me about a week to go through it. When I got to the end, it basically has you plan out like, what are the three

Speaker 10 most important goals for this year? And I promise this as a point, if I can find it, but when I got to the end of it, my three most important goals were start dating my wife again.

Speaker 10 That was literally number one when I ranked them all, right? Because to your point, like I really enjoy my wife, left to my own devices, I'm a workaholic. I will just workaholic.

Speaker 10 And then in the moments where I, where I get free from that, I'll focus on the kids. And I literally won't even think about her.
Like that's 100% something that I'll do.

Speaker 10 And I don't like that about myself. And then the other ones were

Speaker 10 in the next 12 months, I want to hit $300,000 in revenue. And I have a plan for that.
And the last one was get down to 185 pounds.

Speaker 11 So I think I could do that if I cut my body in half, maybe.

Speaker 10 So I'm at 191 right now. And I have

Speaker 10 when I was with Metabolic, the fitness company, I was pushing like 184, 183.

Speaker 10 And since I, since I, you know, got canned from that job, I have not been able to break 190. And I want to get back.
If I were 185, 186, that's a really good fighting weight for me.

Speaker 11 235, that's where I'll be. It'll be within a year.
I got to get down to 235. I don't look emaciated at 235.
When I ran the Marine Corps Marathon going on, wow, that's been 15 years ago now.

Speaker 11 But I ran the Marine Corps Marathon. I was at 228, and that was the lightest I had been since I graduated high school.

Speaker 11 But I was just gaunt. It wasn't good.
And about a year, year and a half later,

Speaker 11 I started thinking, I don't look too bad, you know, in the mirror at this point. You know, I have triceps.
That's great. You know, you can see some muscle definition.

Speaker 11 I was about 230, between, I would go between 235, 240. That's a really healthy weight for me because I'm not like overly skinny.
I can have some muscle to me,

Speaker 11 but I'm, you know, not fat and sloppy either by a long shot.

Speaker 10 Yeah, you you got those big shoulders so you're you're always gonna carry more because you have big you're a big wide shoulders i have these that's like my dad my dad is my dad is six five but his like if you if i were to stand next to my dad he literally is twice as wide a human being as i am like i am i'm very narrow i have more like my mom's my shoulders are very narrow i just can't carry a ton of muscle like i've tried before and i and it's the way the body works so like for me it's, you know, if I can be in the, if I can be, if there can be one, an eight, and another number, I'm very, very happy.

Speaker 10 Um,

Speaker 10 so that because, because my frame is like this, when you have those big ass shoulders, my dad, my dad has these big ass shoulders.

Speaker 10 When he's in shape, he's like 225 and because he's got this, these shoulders are like this big.

Speaker 10 I mean, they're just, you know, so I think, you know, whatever, here's what, here's the, here's the key in my opinion.

Speaker 10 Do you have energy and do you have mental focus? And that's where you want to be.

Speaker 10 If you can have energy and mental focus from your health, and I used to say this all the time back at Agency Nation, your health is a competitive advantage in business.

Speaker 11 100%.

Speaker 10 If you can dial in your health, you don't have to be an Adonis. You don't have to be Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Speaker 10 If you can put, if you can prioritize. energy and mental focus, I feel like everything else aligns itself well with your health and

Speaker 10 then you can do your job better.

Speaker 11 No, I'm the same way.

Speaker 12 And I mean, I've said it plenty of times when I've spoken in the past. I feel like I'm the best when mind, body, and spirit are all aligned.
You know, whatever your religious beliefs are, you know,

Speaker 11 meditate, whatever you do, but do something to give your spiritual existence the same attention that you're giving your mind. So if I'm paying attention to my spiritual life, I'm paying attention to

Speaker 11 my mental game and I'm reading nonfiction and reading trade publication type stuff to make me sharper. And I'm also in some sort of a workout regimen, then I'm golden, man.

Speaker 11 I will always perform my best in those circumstances. Now, I had a little bit of an altercation at Orange Theory yesterday.
I got angry with them because my

Speaker 11 heart rate monitor wasn't working. And so I had just bought a brand new heart rate monitor and I was in there for 12 minutes and it was whipping my tail.
It's L week and I was out of breath.

Speaker 11 I knew that my heart was racing. I was definitely in the orange zone for anybody who understands what orange theory is.
And it was gray. I was at 47% of my maximum heart rate.

Speaker 11 And I'm like, there's no way in the world.

Speaker 11 And so they gave me a new one and it still didn't work. And I finally, I went up, I threw it on the counter.

Speaker 11 I'm like, I'll be back when you guys can figure out how to get a heart rate monitor that works. I'm too competitive to sit here and watch myself be gray.

Speaker 11 Everybody's going to think I'm not doing anything to work out. And meanwhile, I'm busting my can and I'm not getting my points or anything else.

Speaker 11 The whole point of this workout is I have a heart rate monitor that works. Otherwise, I could go do this in my garage.
Yeah,

Speaker 10 I agree with you. I, so that used to drive me nuts every once in a while.

Speaker 10 That's why, because I used to do orange theory too, every once in a while, like it wouldn't be positioned right on my arm, or you know, I didn't reset it or whatever. And

Speaker 10 it ruins the whole experience if the heart rate monitor isn't accurate Yeah, because that's the basis of it.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 10 100%.

Speaker 10 You know, and that's how you push yourself. Like, that's how you keep yourself in that orange zone and not go too far to the red or whatever.

Speaker 11 Like, yeah, no, it ruins the whole thing. So, all right.

Speaker 10 So, so let's dial this back into some stuff that people actually want to listen to. Cause I could just,

Speaker 12 I didn't even realize we were recording.

Speaker 10 We could just bullshit the whole time about nonsensical things. But the reason that I wanted to get you back on the show was I want to talk about

Speaker 10 what are we

Speaker 10 seven months into killing commercial, six months into killing commercial, somewhere around there.

Speaker 12 Yeah, seven months. Pretty cool.

Speaker 10 Yeah, let's call it seven months. We're seven months into killing commercial.

Speaker 10 I have to believe that you have learned a tremendous amount, some of which that learning is just validating things that you did already know and believe. And some of it is

Speaker 10 maybe things that you, I'm, I just want to like take what you've learned so far in killing and

Speaker 10 things you expected, things you didn't expect, places where maybe you thought people would make logical jumps and they didn't make logical jumps. Like, like, what are you seeing?

Speaker 10 What are people saying to you? I mean, you are probably right now, you know, right in the very tippy top of all.

Speaker 10 you know, producer trainers, you know, producer training programs in the entire country.

Speaker 10 Like you have, you have taken yourself from not being, from not existing to being one of the top most talked about in six, seven months. Like, what are you seeing? What has it been like?

Speaker 10 You know, what are the things, man?

Speaker 11 Like, let's, what, you know, where do you want to start in there? It's crazy. And so, you know, I think that

Speaker 11 this has been a long time coming for me.

Speaker 11 This isn't, you know, I mean, and I agree with you. wholeheartedly, you know, that this like came out of nowhere and all of a sudden it's gone from nothing to like hyper speed.
And that's a wild ride.

Speaker 11 But there's been a lot of stuff that's happened over the years to get me to the point that I'm at today. And I don't take any of that stuff for granted.

Speaker 11 But man, you know, I didn't really have any expectations going in because I didn't know what I just didn't know what to expect. I was confident in my ability, right?

Speaker 11 My process has worked with for me for almost 20 years now. And I know that the process works beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Speaker 11 The only time it doesn't, and I say this all the time, it's never the process, it's always the person.

Speaker 11 And where, you know, where it doesn't work is if people aren't wholly dedicated. I think what really

Speaker 11 has been the biggest thing that's caught me by surprise

Speaker 11 is

Speaker 11 the number of agencies out there that believe in themselves that I wouldn't expect to.

Speaker 11 And the ones that don't believe in themselves that I would expect to. And what I mean by that is, you know,

Speaker 11 we have a lot of small agencies and single producers that have jumped into killing commercial. It's not a cheap date,

Speaker 11 but they believe in it. And it's humbling to me more than anything else.

Speaker 11 It keeps me grounded to realize that somebody's willing to make that investment in themselves because they have the self-belief, but they also

Speaker 11 believe that I have the ability to take them to a level that they wouldn't be able to get to on their own.

Speaker 11 And I would believe that if you talk to the people that are in there now, the ones that are having the absolute most success, they would say exactly that. I had a call with a guy yesterday.

Speaker 11 And you know, you know how I am, man. I tell people all the time, my calendar is yours.
You know, I know how to block the time off. I need to run my agency and to do other things.

Speaker 11 If you need me to help you pre-plan for a meeting or strategize with something or whatever else, I make myself available.

Speaker 11 And the people that have been the most successful are the ones who take that at face value and schedule the time with me.

Speaker 11 I have a guy that I have a call with probably once a week, maybe once every other week. But he told me yesterday, he's like, man, I can't even believe this.

Speaker 11 He said, the largest account that I'd ever been in, that I'd ever closed was $35,000 in premium. I have four active prospects that I'm working with right now that are all over $100,000 in premium.

Speaker 11 And he said, I never would have done it. I never would have done it.
And I don't know.

Speaker 11 I think that the secret, the secret behind everything is the power of the community that we're building. Okay, so number one, nobody is in alone.
It's one thing for me to have their back.

Speaker 11 It's another thing for 100 other people along with me to have their back.

Speaker 11 And that's what makes the community itself so special is there's nobody in there that has an ulterior motive or a different goal than what the rest of us have.

Speaker 11 We're all going after middle market business. We all want to close middle market business.

Speaker 11 And because of how we designed everything none of us are really competing against each other so we have no problem sharing what's working you know helping brainstorm or do whatever else but when people get in the program it has been crazy to see

Speaker 11 it's like somebody flips a switch and they go bulletproof like they they're like okay fine you want me to call on 200 000 accounts i'll call on 200 000 accounts if that's what you tell me to do and we give them the scripts we say do this do this do this they go in and as long as they can get it through their head as long as they mentally believe that they're able to do that, then they should have that conversation,

Speaker 11 they're going out and doing it. I mean, there's, there's literally, I don't know if it's because I'm a cheerleader.

Speaker 11 I don't know if it's because I empower them and I tell them that they're good enough and I make sure that they understand and I help them prepare for it.

Speaker 11 But I really don't feel like it's as much what I'm teaching them about the sales process. I know that it has something to do with it.

Speaker 11 I think it's what we're doing for people mentally and getting them to realize I am good enough to do this.

Speaker 10 there's no reason why i shouldn't go out and call on these accounts it's in my opinion it's a hundred percent self-belief um because and you and i have talked about this i the biggest thing that i struggle with in life is that i undervalue myself constantly i know this about myself it's it's literally a daily struggle i you know people will write me emails about this podcast and they'll say, you've, you know,

Speaker 10 the content you've created over the last 10 years has changed the way I operate my business. We've done this.
We've done this. We've implemented this.

Speaker 10 And in my mind, I still see myself as like, like every podcast is like my first podcast. Like no one's listening.
No one cares. And it is a really odd feeling.

Speaker 10 And one of the things that, you know, you constantly make me uncomfortable, uncomfortable about is that killing forces you to to believe in yourself.

Speaker 10 And you literally have it in the intro to the to the podcast, to the power producers podcast. It's like,

Speaker 10 you, you need to believe in yourself. The, the client believes in you.
He let you into the meeting. You know what I mean? Like you got this meeting.

Speaker 10 They obviously believe that you know what you're doing. Like now you just have to believe.
And I think to me, that, that is like the most powerful piece is, is this

Speaker 10 validation, I think, that some that some people need. And I would put myself in this category that like, you are worthy of doing this work.
And

Speaker 10 I think that's the thing, man.

Speaker 12 i think that's the thing that so many people need and uh and killing's absolutely giving it to them i i agree with you is this where we talk about bruce lee and the glass of water yet we can yeah we can talk about whatever you want it's not an official podcast until you do

Speaker 12 no but i mean i i agree with you and i think that you know if i were to like put myself in a position of of of just watching over everything and sort of orchestrating it I do know that all I have to do, I mean, me personally, all I really have to do is get somebody to believe in themselves to the point where they get that first win, whether it's the first booked appointment or the first BOR or whatever else, because once they get the first taste of the sweet nectar of success, I'm out.

Speaker 11 Listen, I've got a guy in killing. I call him.
Dude, where have you been? I haven't heard from you in months. He's like, oh my gosh, man, this stuff works so good.

Speaker 11 I went out and wrote eight hotels in the last two months just because of what I was doing. I don't have time to talk to you right now, actually.
I'm like, I'm out. See ya.

Speaker 11 Obviously, you're happy with your investment.

Speaker 11 You know, it's working for you, but that's really, that's really part of it. And the other part of it is where the real secret sauce is, and I'm, you know,

Speaker 11 this is something that I have envisioned five or six years ago, not necessarily exactly the iteration that's there today, but I do think that there is a huge piece of what we're doing where the social portion of it is what separates it from anything else out there.

Speaker 11 Anybody else out there can go put, look, anybody can do what we're doing too.

Speaker 11 So I don't want that to come out the wrong way, but everybody has gone out and created digital training or in-person workshops or whatever else.

Speaker 11 The thing that we did that nobody else did was create an online social community for the people that are in the program so that they have a peer support group in real time all the time.

Speaker 11 And the adoption rate for that and the ability to

Speaker 11 interact is only going to get better when we release our mobile app next month. You know, once the mobile app comes out, you're not having to go into a mobile browser to access the platform anymore.

Speaker 11 We can do push notifications. You know, you can interact directly in the news feed or whatever.

Speaker 11 Everything will be at the fingertips of these people, you know, on their smart device, which is where the majority of them access this stuff anyhow.

Speaker 11 But I think that so many, I think a lot of people out there underestimate the value of the social camaraderie that can happen if you build it the right way.

Speaker 11 And that's one of the reasons why we have geographic exclusivity. I want collaboration without competition.

Speaker 11 If we can have agencies that have what we teach and they're exclusive, number one, they're going to just run all over the competition in their area because they're going to be talking about things and doing things that nobody else in their area is doing.

Speaker 11 But number two, they're free to share everything that they're doing because they don't have to worry about somebody trying to poach their accounts inside the group.

Speaker 10 And that's like the New York crew. So it's me, Greg Hogan, and Doug Benz.
And

Speaker 10 we've been doing every other week, we do a Zoom call, just the three of us, because New York is kind of is like California. We have our own bureau and

Speaker 10 things are a little different in how New York operates

Speaker 10 because New York can't just do things regular. We have to over-regulate and our emperor has to dictate down to us what we're able to do and what we're not able to do.

Speaker 11 Even library cards, right? What? Even library cards. Dude, oh my God.

Speaker 10 So I told you I just got the library card, right? I applied. So, so for those not listening, there is this like double secret sneaky trick that Dave has that he that

Speaker 10 he teaches in killing about

Speaker 10 how to use library and different resources. And you got to pay the money to get the double secret thing.
But

Speaker 10 getting a freaking library card is part of the deal. So during COVID, All the libraries in the Albany area obviously closed.

Speaker 10 So it took me, i applied for a library card like in february march march something

Speaker 10 and i just got it two weeks ago i got the library card it's amazing it's amazing

Speaker 11 it's nuts

Speaker 10 now what you i don't you may or may not have known this but i've been backdooring into your library card for the entire time yeah it's fine i think i gave it to you yeah yeah you sent me the login so i i just bookmarked it and i've been logging into the florida library to get to the all the stuff so it works i know it's there for sure.

Speaker 10 So here's another thing that I wanna

Speaker 10 that I wanna, that I'm really interested in. So

Speaker 10 obviously in killing, and you've talked about this a ton, comp is a big lead. There's a ton of value you can provide.
There are other lines that you talk about as well, and we've talked about them.

Speaker 10 And there's all kinds of things you can layer in with the workers' comp.

Speaker 10 And there's plenty of podcasts that people can go listen to and power producers and all that to hear about that kind of stuff.

Speaker 10 What What I'm interested in, you know, so you've, you've, you've built this community. I don't, I wholly agree with everything you said as a user.

Speaker 10 Being able to connect with guys, Greg Hogan and I talk all the time. Now that Doug's part of the New York Cure, we talk all the time.

Speaker 10 I reach out to different people inside the community for questions all the time. And it's been great.
And the information is great and the process simple and straightforward.

Speaker 10 And it can be implemented into any CRM. It can be implemented in any agency management system.
You don't need some super scientific or high-tech technology to put this into place.

Speaker 10 It's really phone calls and emails and occasionally some snail mail if you're really feeling froggy. But really, it's phone calls and

Speaker 10 done in the right way and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 10 Taking all that into account, so here we are, we're in October of 2020. And, you know, based on everything you've heard, all the feedback you've gotten, like, where do you see see us going forward?

Speaker 10 Where do you see that, you know, the

Speaker 10 agencies who are interested in middle market or commercial, or really just, you can even go deep farther than that? Because I've heard you mention a couple of times personal lines on different shows.

Speaker 10 Like, where do you see opportunity? What should we be doing? How are we? How do we shore up our agencies? How do we position our agencies for success

Speaker 10 in what's coming forward?

Speaker 11 I have been pretty vocal about the fact that I think COVID is natural selection in its purest form. It's going to take agencies that have not invested in technology in the past and

Speaker 11 force them to make a decision, right?

Speaker 11 It's not, hey, this is just going to be another expense line now. It's like, is my business going to survive at this point?

Speaker 11 And I think COVID has basically identified what I would classify, and this is for you, Ryan.

Speaker 11 I've not talked about this anywhere else before, but in two categories, you have your adapters and you have your adopters and your adopters are the people that are reactive they are forced to adapt and change and everything else whereas the adopters are the ones who are on the front end of the curve and they're early and they're out there pushing the envelope of technology and everything else for the adopters going into covet it was nothing more than a flip of a button they've already bought into a lot of these concepts they've been uh they have the foresight to see that video proposals, stuff like what Land Gill does with Advisor Evolved and video proposals that we've been doing for years now are something that now people are scrambling to try and figure out.

Speaker 11 I mean, how crazy

Speaker 11 is it to think that Amazon sold out of webcams when COVID hit because people didn't have them and needed to buy them? Who doesn't have a webcam?

Speaker 11 Right? I mean, so. the adopters I think are going to be perfectly fine.
And then you look at the adapters and these are the people that are reactive.

Speaker 11 And some of them, I mean, I heard one of the saddest stories that I think I could possibly hear as someone who has put the blood, sweat, and tears into building an agency.

Speaker 11 And that was a guy that basically just threw his hands up and said, you know what, I could sell for 2X.

Speaker 11 I'm not going to do it. I'm just going to quit servicing my accounts and let them run off.

Speaker 11 And I'll make more money over five years if I basically just let my agency die than for me to have some sort of an acquisition event.

Speaker 11 And while fiscally that might make a lot of sense, what in the world does that do to your pride and the fact that you've invested, in this case, 30 or 40 years into building an agency and the legacy that you leave behind is there's the guy that quit when the going got tough.

Speaker 10 Yeah, that's stupid.

Speaker 11 You know, I just, I can't even imagine thinking that way, but there are people that are facing those decisions every day.

Speaker 11 What I really think is going to happen is you're going to, what I hope happens, you know, my sincere desire is that there are agencies out there that maybe are behind.

Speaker 11 You know, they've gotten to a point, they're at a plateau, they're not going to be able to get any further. And they understand that there are resources out there.

Speaker 11 There are things that they can do to position their agency to go to the next level and that they're not too proud to ask for the help or they believe in themselves enough to make that investment to have help come in.

Speaker 11 I was talking to somebody, it actually was on the panel that we did this week where I said, I think that there's a problem where we get control and collaboration confused right or something along those lines as leaders in an organization you know we should be willing to collaborate whether that be with outside counsel or service providers or our internal team but agency principals by and large over the course of you know all time are typically based on feedback that I've gotten perceived as people who want to have complete control of everything at all time.

Speaker 11 And I think that we're not going to be able to do that, man.

Speaker 11 I mean, we don't do that at my agency anyhow, but look, I wouldn't have Florida risk if I didn't have a control freak at the last place I worked.

Speaker 11 Nothing that I do is new. Nothing that I do is novel.
The difference between David now and David five years ago is I don't have somebody that I have to pass every idea through.

Speaker 11 I don't have somebody who's going to tell me that's a stupid waste of money to start a podcast or, you know, whatever. And I don't deal with that anymore.

Speaker 11 So one of the things that I would say, you know, for agency principals that are looking to sort of push the envelope and progress into the future, number one,

Speaker 11 it's easy to say millennials can't live with them. It's horrible.
You probably need to listen to the millennials.

Speaker 11 Probably need to go ahead and stop that thought process and listen to what they have to say. And just shut up.
Ask a question and let them answer. Give them the attention that they need.

Speaker 11 One of the best exercises that we had in our agency was last summer when I had a college intern from Florida State come in and work in my agency. She was fantastic, absolutely fantastic.

Speaker 11 And what I thought was going to happen was that she was going to come in, she was going to build out some ad campaigns.

Speaker 11 And I basically charged her with the responsibility of building out Florida wedding insurance, which she did and did an amazing job.

Speaker 11 But what happened was I actually got a lot out out of that entire relationship of her being here as an intern because

Speaker 11 she communicated differently. Like, oh, I've got to use Instagram now.
Well, no, Instagram's outdated.

Speaker 11 You really should be using Snapchat or whatever else was the flavor of the month and TikTok or whatever it is now. I mean, I can't even keep up with this stuff.

Speaker 11 But to listen to what she said and just watched how she went about things.

Speaker 11 And I think that we have to humble ourselves, you know, and just realize that if we're going to change, we have to allow people to help us with that change.

Speaker 11 And if you can sit back and say, you know what, my mousetrap was great, but it's not going to get me to the next generation. I mean, if America thought about that at all,

Speaker 11 we'd still have outhouses, right? We wouldn't even have indoor plumbing or anything.

Speaker 11 But why does the agency world allow ourselves to lag behind? And, you know, we did a podcast yesterday. We recorded it

Speaker 11 with Adam Sawinski from Chicago.

Speaker 11 And one of the things we talked about on that podcast was how amazing if you take all of the bull crap that we're dealing with right now, politically, racially, all of the other stuff that everybody in the media and all of that focuses on, and everybody can just step back and look and see the ingenuity that the American business people, the small business people have had when it's time to fight or flight and the things they've done to adapt their businesses and keep them floating as best they can.

Speaker 11 America's not such a bad place to be right now.

Speaker 11 And we need to channel that spirit, the same spirit that all these other industries are doing. We need to do that inside the agency channel.
And if we do, we're going to perpetuate well beyond

Speaker 11 what we normally would in the future. I told this story.

Speaker 11 Unfortunately, when we're not doing whole 30 and eating correctly, we fall victim to Uber Eats at least once a week.

Speaker 11 So I jumped on Uber Eats a couple of weeks ago and I look, and there's like these five or six restaurant concepts that are all at the same address. I'm like, what happened?

Speaker 11 It's like there are a big circle of food trucks out there and they're just in a parking lot. And so blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 11 So I start digging in and I like Google Earth it and it's all going to this place

Speaker 11 called Black Rock Grill, which is a small chain. I doubt that they're up there, but I know they're around here.

Speaker 11 And it's one of those places where they bring you this absolutely insane hot rock and you cook your steak, flipping it yourself on this hot rock on on the table in front of you. Well, guess what?

Speaker 11 COVID comes, not such a popular concept.

Speaker 11 What I found out was that was their pivot.

Speaker 11 There was a melt shop, a burger place, a chicken finger place, a wing place, and all of them were branded differently.

Speaker 11 All of them looked like they could be a food truck or whatever else, but they invented this concept called a ghost kitchen. And it was captive to Uber Eats, mobile meals, DoorDash, all of those.

Speaker 11 But essentially, BlackRock turned their kitchen into like six different restaurant concepts. And the only way you could get that food was through one of the mobile delivery places.

Speaker 11 So now they're profitable because they've completely reinvented how they're running their business during that time.

Speaker 11 But they're also, and I'm going to tie this back into insurance, they solved a problem,

Speaker 11 right? That's what we really do.

Speaker 11 And I think so many times, like, number one, they solved a problem for their revenue, but they also solved the problem for somebody who wanted something to eat and didn't want to have to cook and couldn't go to a restaurant and do it.

Speaker 11 Now they're having it delivered to their home. We make our lives way too complicated, and we especially make it complicated in the insurance world.

Speaker 11 Stop making it complicated. You know, find the problem and solve the problem.
Insurance is paper, okay? Find the problem and solve that. And we are obviously intelligent enough to do that.

Speaker 11 We see it around us all the time. I mean, the number of cool stories of how businesses have adapted is insane to me.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I agree with you. I mean,

Speaker 10 there's a lot in there to unpack. I, I, um,

Speaker 10 so there's the first, first thing I would comment on is I agree with you that COVID is a natural selection moment.

Speaker 10 I think that makes a lot of people uncomfortable because we've done everything that we can the last 20 years to

Speaker 10 make sure natural selection doesn't happen, right?

Speaker 10 You everything from the bailouts of the banks to, you know, the mortgage lending crisis and then, you know, and obviously I'm not talking about true charity work and helping people who are in need.

Speaker 10 That's a different story. But I'm talking about, you know,

Speaker 10 we've created a very cushy environment. And when you say, why don't agencies change? So I got a firsthand look at this when I was with the association.
And

Speaker 10 the reason they don't change is because we're so freaking successful doing bad work that the idea of needing to do good work doesn't even register.

Speaker 11 And in those moments, I don't, I don't know that it's, I, I would, I would challenge you on that. And I wouldn't say that it's doing bad work.
I would say it's doing insurance work. Okay.

Speaker 11 And then that's it. You can be wildly successful selling insurance policies, period, whether it be life, group benefits, or whatever else.

Speaker 11 The defining moment and where things change right now is going above and beyond that. That's what the expectation is.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I guess I would classify simply selling insurance policies as doing a bad job as an insurance agency.

Speaker 11 I would agree. I would agree with that.
But here's what I've noticed.

Speaker 11 I saw a very specific conversation in one of the online forums where a guy had had an account that he had for 15 years.

Speaker 11 And over the course of the time that he had that account, it grew to $150,000 in premium.

Speaker 11 Nothing to sneeze at by any stretch. I would happily welcome that account into my agency any day of the week.
He lost it. And he posted because he was upset that he lost it.

Speaker 11 And not only did he lose it, but he lost it. And

Speaker 11 the client paid $5,000 more

Speaker 11 to go

Speaker 11 to the other agency. Okay.

Speaker 11 So what immediately happens is we have all of the empathetic commiserators that come out. Oh, clients aren't loyal.
Clients suck.

Speaker 11 They'll milk you drive for 15 years and then they're going to leave you, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's what I want insurance agents agents across the country to understand right now.

Speaker 11 Insurance is a common denominator. You sell insurance, so does your competition.
The variable is what you do above and beyond that. And that's what's going to retain accounts.

Speaker 11 That's what's going to help you close business. And that's ultimately what's going to build a significant asset for you.

Speaker 11 But if you don't recognize the fact that everybody has the same product that you have, and that price can fluctuate a little bit, but buyers aren't looking at that.

Speaker 11 Buyers are looking at everything else you can do, right?

Speaker 11 That's the difference. And that's where you need to start looking at your operation and saying, okay, you know what? Let me just take a step back and look in the mirror and say, I lost an account.

Speaker 11 What happened? Same thing goes with agent of record letters, right?

Speaker 11 I love it when somebody gets pissed off because somebody tenders an agent or record letter against them, like the client screwed them over or the other agent was lazy or whatever else.

Speaker 11 Here's a news splash, people: agent of record letters are never price deals. Never.
You did something wrong. That's it.
End of story.

Speaker 11 You have to look at what you're providing or what you're not providing and get your game to the right level. And then that stuff never happens.

Speaker 11 But it blows my mind because I think that so many times we surround ourselves, and I'm going to go back to killing commercial. That's why this would never play in our community, right?

Speaker 11 We don't surround ourselves with victims and commiserators. We understand that in order to take things to the next level, you got to reinvent yourself.

Speaker 11 Not, not, not once a year, not once every five years. Sometimes every day, you have to come in and change what you did from the day before.

Speaker 11 And I tell my team all the time, my only goal is to be better today than I was yesterday, but not as good as I'm going to be tomorrow.

Speaker 11 And if I can do that every single day, I'm going to win no matter what.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 10 I'll be honest with you, when I see people say the term

Speaker 10 AORs or BORs are lazy, I immediately judge them

Speaker 10 as a professional. I immediately do.
Because anyone who says that AORs are easy, they're not easy. It is not easy to convince someone to break a relationship with someone who is doing something well.

Speaker 10 So it's, you know, when it is easy, when the person is, when that, when the incumbent is doing such a poor job and you can express yourself in a simple, straightforward way and actually have a plan to deliver services to them, then it can be easy to get an AOR.

Speaker 10 But if you're doing a good job, it is incredibly difficult to get an AOR.

Speaker 10 So when I see, and this happens all the time in the forums, someone will bitch about an AOR that they received and then just like you said, everyone piles on, oh, that's the lazy way to do business.

Speaker 10 And I'm like, so what you're saying is, as a business person, as a legitimate business person, this is the way my mind works when I see that.

Speaker 10 I go, as a legitimate business person, you're saying that it is more efficient from a business perspective to quote that business out to 10 different carriers to try to break a price than to deliver your value proposition to them, build a relationship.

Speaker 10 And if that means taking an AOR, take an AOR. I think I just look at those people, I immediately judge them.
I just do. Like, there was a time when maybe I'd be like, oh, I don't want to be judgy.

Speaker 10 F that. I judge them.
I immediately look at them and I go, if I were in that person's community, I would take their business because

Speaker 10 you can do that now. I just had a buddy of mine

Speaker 10 from

Speaker 10 Kentucky reach out to me because he was prospecting

Speaker 10 an account

Speaker 10 and the account was with Insurion, right? So this is the former

Speaker 10 InsurTech darling who has kind of fallen off the map for a bunch of different reasons, but they're still in operating business. And this contractor was with Insurion.

Speaker 10 And he reached out to me, you know, he reached out to me. He said, ah, you know, it's weird to me that, you know, I just feel weird that a local business is doing business with this online.

Speaker 10 And I said, said bro if you're the one who he had called from the internet you'd be the online guy this is why and any you know and he we you know he's he's does an amazing he does an amazing job he mostly was just thought it was interesting they were with insurion but like this concept of um you know you you

Speaker 10 anybody can drop into your community at any time and if their value proposition is better than yours they have every right to be the agent of record on that account every you know what i I mean?

Speaker 10 I can drop into yours. Carruthers, you could drop into someone's, you know, you do business in Naples with an account.
What, you're not supposed to be there because you're not local?

Speaker 11 It doesn't matter.

Speaker 10 This is, that's not the world we live in anymore. The best value provider can reach out into any community and connect with any client.

Speaker 10 And if that client values the services and the relationship that they build, they're going to move their business. And there is nothing wrong with that, AOR or otherwise.

Speaker 11 Yeah, no, I agree with you wholeheartedly. And I, you know, again, it goes back

Speaker 11 to you are who you surround yourself with. I mean, how many times do you have to hear that?

Speaker 11 I mean, you can hear Bradley Flowers talk about he, he'll be quiet because he knows everybody in the room is smarter than him.

Speaker 11 We hear all of these cliches, but at the end of the day, all that stuff's true, man. Yeah.

Speaker 11 All of it's true.

Speaker 10 Yeah. Dude, I did a, I did a LinkedIn post today.
You were obviously in it. You commented on it, but I was sitting here this morning.

Speaker 10 It's like 5.30 in the morning and I was just thinking back about the week and I was like, holy shit.

Speaker 10 Like, I just, you know, and you could say whatever you want about, you know, maybe I should be doing more prospect. I don't care because, because,

Speaker 10 you know, the people, I'm looking at the list right now, just the people that I had a chance to spend time with this week and surround myself, their ideas infect my brain. They infect my brain.

Speaker 10 I will never allow you to be better at content than me. You know what that forces me to do? Work really hard at doing content because I know how good you are.

Speaker 10 Like literally, I think about you when I'm doing content. Like, I have to keep getting better.
My thumbnails have to get better. My posts have to get better.
My videos have to get better.

Speaker 10 I have to do them more often, more efficiently, more effectively. And, and, and that pushes me.
What's up, homie?

Speaker 11 Yeah, and I agree, man. I mean, that's where you snack, homie.
Concept of, you know, iron sharpens iron. Yeah.

Speaker 11 I always want to have people in my life that are better and more successful than me. And the other thing, too, is, you know, I think that if I'm giving anybody just sort of perspective,

Speaker 11 it's a conscious, it's a conscious battle to remain grounded, right? Like, I think that when you, I think that when you get have a podcast and then all of a sudden you start getting those,

Speaker 11 I'm the opposite of you, okay? I don't have a problem with undervaluing myself at all, in my opinion. You know,

Speaker 11 I feel like I'm also a little bit older than you. I've had my rear end kicked a few more times than you have.
So maybe by the time you get to my age, you'll have a little bit different perspective.

Speaker 11 But, you know, I think that so many times, people who get that first taste of success, or you're getting that, you know, I'll call it fan mail for lack of a better term, but people saying, Hey, I just want to reach out to you and let you know, you know, this really made a difference in my life.

Speaker 11 You changed, you changed the way I think. I got a deal done that allowed me to, you know, put money away that I never would have had before, or whatever else.
And, you know,

Speaker 11 I'm programmed to where I understand at this point, that's great that I had that kind of influence. I can't let that go to my head.

Speaker 11 I can't let me feel like, let myself feel like I'm more important or better than anybody because I did that. And so, you know, for anybody who reaches out to me, I've made it a point.

Speaker 11 I stop and I let them know, look, you know, you read my book. Great.
I really appreciate you taking the time to leave a review, or I really appreciate you reaching out and telling me what happened.

Speaker 11 I said, because as somebody who creates content, whether that be video, blog post, you know, book, whatever, that's really the best reward for me.

Speaker 11 And I know that sounds sort of, you know, frou-frou or whatever else, but I could make plenty of money. I could not do any of that and I'd be just fine running my agency.

Speaker 11 That's not where the motivation is for me with killing commercial. That's not where the motivation is to put the content out.

Speaker 11 I feel like we have an opportunity right now to completely change the way our industry does business. And I know, I know that I'm on the forefront of that.
I am very, very aware of that.

Speaker 11 I tell my wife every day, I am literally walking on a razor blade. One move and I'm done.

Speaker 11 You know, if I say the wrong thing, if I crack the wrong joke, that's a lot of pressure that I didn't have at this time last year. But I don't mind it because I know that I'll make the right decision.

Speaker 11 I'm morally grounded. I have a good head on my shoulders.
I'm going to do what's right by people.

Speaker 10 And so far in life, that's never failed me it's intention it's intention this is the this is the thing man i have said so so i've been creating content in our space for more than a decade now and uh there are people that like me there are people that don't there are people that that vehemently disagree with everything that i talk about everything i say and i you know it all comes back to me um

Speaker 10 and And oh, and all that is all good. That does not bother me.

Speaker 10 What it ultimately comes down to, in my opinion, with, I think almost with everything in life, but

Speaker 10 specifically with this topic of creating content and trying to help an industry is it always comes back to intention.

Speaker 10 It always comes back to your intention. There is no one who has ever spent any amount of time with you.
The same thing goes with Cass. The same thing goes with other people that we know.

Speaker 10 Cass says more stupid shit than anybody I've ever met in my life. And I love him dearly, right?

Speaker 10 And I will support him and have in everything he's done up and down because all Cass cares about, he takes care of his family. Don't get me wrong.
He's got sponsorship. He's got a business.

Speaker 10 He's a businessman. But at the end of the day, all he really cares about, everything he does, every sponsor he reads, every

Speaker 10 lip sync video he does. You know why he's doing it? Because he wants people to be happy and be healthy and

Speaker 10 be successful and feel valued and feel important. I mean, that's what he's trying to do.
The same exact thing is true with you.

Speaker 11 So, you know,

Speaker 10 and you don't need any advice from me, but my personal opinion on this particular topic is if there's anything that maybe I potentially could give you advice on, it's the idea of you are not walking on a razor blade.

Speaker 10 You have leeway. I think it's good that you think that way, but I also ultimately know that there's no one that would ever question your intention.

Speaker 10 And I think that is why you've gone from seven months to today being as widely used name as you are is because people, it's so obvious that your intention is pure to help people grow.

Speaker 10 And I think that's a very important thing.

Speaker 11 I agree. Well, I mean, you know, listen, I'll be honest with you.
The other thing is

Speaker 11 what is the space that you operate from, right? So I don't really talk about it a lot, but I did not have a good exit from the last agency that I was at.

Speaker 11 I wake up every single day with one intention and that is to prove that I was right. That's it.
That's literally that's how I wake up every single day.

Speaker 11 And when I left the last agency that I was at to start Florida Risk, my comment was, I will do everything in my power to become a household name in commercial insurance across the country.

Speaker 11 That was my motivation for five years almost. Every day I wake up.

Speaker 11 what do i need to do to help other people what do i do to validate the things that i know will take agencies to the next level so when i got florida risk started and we hit our first million in revenue, great.

Speaker 11 When we hit our second million, great. When I hit my third million, great.
At the end of the day, that wasn't enough. What can I do to help another agency and another agency and another agency?

Speaker 11 Because I want all of these people to be successful because I know that what's in my head that I was not allowed to execute on and that I was made to feel stupid for thinking and not valued.

Speaker 11 That's where I operate from. So, yes, I will always do right by people.
I will never make decisions that make people question my intent. And I'm going to tell you something else.
As far as Cass goes,

Speaker 11 all of the people who listen to these shows, they hear what we talk about. They hear our personalities when we do this.

Speaker 11 But what I'm going to say about Jason and other people in this space is you never know what they're doing behind the scenes. Cass doesn't brag about all of the things he does.

Speaker 11 Cass does a lot of good stuff for a lot of people that nobody will ever know about. I know about it because we're good personal friends.
You know about it because you're good personal friends.

Speaker 11 But the depth that he's willing to go to serve other people, to donate money, to donate time, whatever he needs to do. And I follow suit with that.

Speaker 11 I was brought up where I don't have in a home where you don't go do nice things for people so that you can brag. Does it make you feel good about yourself? Yes.

Speaker 11 But you don't need to go tell the rest of the world about it.

Speaker 11 If your heart is in the right place and your intentions are in the right place and you execute that to perfection, you'll have a bunch of raving fans that will always have your your back and they will always tell your story for you.

Speaker 11 And you never have to go out and beat your own chest.

Speaker 10 I firmly believe, as much as I believe in anything, um,

Speaker 10 call it whatever you want, karma, serendipity, you know, whatever, whatever good vibes, it doesn't matter, whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 10 I believe that you get everything that you put out into the world, and

Speaker 10 you, it, it, the world, the universe knows if your shit is shallow and fake, and you're doing it for the wrong reasons, and it's selfish and self-oriented and ego-driven, doesn't matter if you have, you know, what your car is, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 10 You're going to pay that price.

Speaker 11 So,

Speaker 10 this, and I, and I think, and this is what I love about podcasts, and it's what I love about,

Speaker 10 you know,

Speaker 10 this is what I'm going to say:

Speaker 10 Bradley and Scott, you, me,

Speaker 10 the insurance guys.

Speaker 10 There's a dozen podcasts. There's a dozen of us or more, and they're growing every day.
Chris Klein's got a great podcast.

Speaker 11 What do we all do?

Speaker 10 Go on each other's friggin' podcasts. You know what we could be doing? Beating the shit out of each other,

Speaker 10 talking crap, trying to steal each other's. Nobody does that.
I mean, maybe they do, but I don't know of any of the podcasts in our space, the people who've been around for a while, who work hard.

Speaker 10 I don't know anybody who's out there trying to jab one other person down and poke this and take these people out. And that to me,

Speaker 10 and those people who come in, they immediately

Speaker 10 are kicked out. They're immediately pushed to the side of the herd.
And those are the ones that get eaten by the Velociraptor in the Jurassic Park movie.

Speaker 10 And there's a reason for it because the herd knows. And

Speaker 10 when you take care of each other and you support each other, what's happened to all of our podcasts? They've all just continued to creep up and grow and our audiences have grow and they all mix.

Speaker 10 And we take conversations and we string them between different shows and different episodes and different versions.

Speaker 10 And you'll see someone at an event, or someone will send you an email, and they'll be like, I heard Carruthers talking about this on his shop talk. And then he was talking about this on CASAS thing.

Speaker 10 And then you mentioned it over here. And then the two of you were talking over this on this webinar.
And that's how the story gets pieced together for our industry.

Speaker 10 And I think it's such a testament to where we're going

Speaker 10 as an industry and as a collective of people who've bought into this idea that we continue to push forward in this way.

Speaker 10 To me, it's a miracle. It's not where we were 10 years ago.
10 years ago, I can, the shit that has been, I mean, I've been blackballed from this industry twice.

Speaker 10 I've had to call politically powerful agents in our industry and literally bend the knee to get back in. And to be honest with you, today, at 40, that's disgusting to me.

Speaker 10 At 33 or whatever I was at the time, I had no other way to get back into the fold of anything. And that shit, that you getting cut out, you getting blackballed nonsense, that's gone.

Speaker 10 Those people who did that, they can't do that anymore. And it's because as an industry, we've come together and said, we're more important than these segmented, fenced off groups.

Speaker 10 Doesn't mean those groups aren't important. They just don't, they can't control us the way that they did.

Speaker 11 I agree.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 11 I agree. I mean, it's a good time, man.
And it's funny because there's almost like a brotherhood. And I don't mean that in a sexist way.
I just, you know, even a brotherhood, sisterhood thing.

Speaker 10 Women can be part of the brotherhood, too. It's a.

Speaker 11 Yeah. Well, I mean, we, we just had Teresa and Denise from the Power Women of Insurance podcast on Power Producers.

Speaker 10 Carrie Wallace just beat your ass in the Illinois convention thing.

Speaker 11 Thank you, sir. May I have another.

Speaker 11 Very, very handily, I might add. But, you know,

Speaker 11 and I think that's the next piece, right? So let's just call it what it is. We do have a brotherhood, but what do we need to do to push the envelope further?

Speaker 11 How can we get more prominent women out there? And I know this is something that Cass is passionate about as well, but how can we get more women to the forefront? How can we support them?

Speaker 11 And that's one of the reasons when I reached out to Teresa, I said, look, I agree with everything you guys are doing. I'm glad you have the own women of IAOA group going on.

Speaker 11 I'm glad you have your podcast. I want to be a part of whatever I can do to help you get out to more people.
That was my intent in talking to them. That's it.

Speaker 11 And, you know, I think that we need more of that. But I mean, to the brotherhood aspect of it, it's crazy.

Speaker 11 I got up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water and I just happened to check my phone because we all do that when we get up in the middle of the night.

Speaker 11 When you, you know, have clients, you never know what's going to happen.

Speaker 11 And I had a message from Scott Howell. And he's like, hey, man, I'm working on this account.

Speaker 11 I need you to give me your thoughts on this and send me whatever information you can about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 11 At 2:30 in the morning, I went back to bed, fired up my laptop, and the first thing I did was get everything over to scott because i wanted him to have it first thing in the morning i didn't actually let me tell you how that text went i need an hour of your time i'll give you 500

Speaker 11 and i wrote back to him like a you're not going to give me any money at all i'm happy to help you and b you don't need an hour of my time here's here's everything that you need and i stopped what i was doing which was sleeping and gave him his stuff but you know that that's the whole thing in this community if you do it right

Speaker 11 you're going to make those friends that you can call at three o'clock in the morning and they're going to answer the phone and they're going to do whatever they can to jump on the bandwagon to help you with whatever the problem is that you're dealing with.

Speaker 11 And I don't know of too many other outside of being in sports, which I grew up in sports. I know you did too.

Speaker 11 Outside of being on a team of people and the bond that you have when you travel playing baseball and all of the other stuff that I did, I don't know that you could get that in any other industry.

Speaker 10 No.

Speaker 10 I, you know, I've been in other industries.

Speaker 10 You know, when I was in the fitness industry, there is a camaraderie among fitness professionals professionals for sure, but there is also such a heavy competition between them at the same time that it doesn't feel, it didn't feel the same.

Speaker 10 You know, I don't want to knock fitness because I love fitness, but there is this like, you know, there is almost a close to zero sum aspect to them.

Speaker 10 And what I love about insurance is that the people who really think about our business right, and trust me, there's plenty of bad actors, and I know exactly who many of them are.

Speaker 10 And I can, at this point, I can see their dark aura as soon as they walk into the room.

Speaker 10 But they are becoming more and more the exception to the rule. And there's this understanding that there is so much business to go around.

Speaker 10 You can have 100 agencies in the same town and everybody has them. Everyone can have a Maserati if

Speaker 10 that's what they really want.

Speaker 10 By working together, we can get there. So, you know, dude, we've been talking for over an hour.
I want to be respectful of your time. We literally could go for another hour on all this.

Speaker 10 You know, here's what I want to say to you.

Speaker 10 It is that, you know, we've literally only known each other for less than a year, a year, maybe, maybe, maybe a year.

Speaker 10 And you have become such an important part of my life and my business and such a good friend. And I just want to say thank you for that.

Speaker 10 These types of relationships for me are very important and

Speaker 10 I lean on them as obviously our Facebook Messenger is probably, you're probably aware of that,

Speaker 10 But I appreciate it. And I just wanted you to know that and share it in a public forum to say,

Speaker 10 I do

Speaker 10 anyone who is unsure of your character, David is everything that he comes off to be and more. And I just appreciate you.

Speaker 10 And I'm so glad that you are part, that you do have a voice in our space today because the industry is better for it.

Speaker 11 I appreciate that, man. And, you know,

Speaker 11 I

Speaker 11 love nothing more than being able to help people.

Speaker 11 And when you decided you were going to launch and weren't really sure of how that was going to go or what direction it was, you know, we had, again, here comes Cass, right? I get the message.

Speaker 11 Hey, I'm going to have Ryan Hanley reach out to you. I need you to take his call.
Like, no, number one, let me just be very clear. I don't have people.

Speaker 11 I would have taken your call regardless. So we'll let Cass feel important like he orchestrated this whole thing, but he did.
He reached out to me. He said, look,

Speaker 11 I know you don't know Hanley.

Speaker 11 you need to take his call i need you to help him whatever you can do to help him i need you to help him and you know what that's all i needed yeah that's all i needed not that i wouldn't help you if you would have reached out to me on your own but you know cass and i have a good relationship and honestly you know a lot of what has happened for me in terms of just exposure to you know per se is number one iaoa and the fact that they gave me a platform to tell my story and talk about some of the things we do that that we do that are unique.

Speaker 11 I'll never be able to repay them just for the fact that they've given me that platform.

Speaker 11 And so my intent is always to do everything I can to pay back into that group tenfold of what it's been able to give me. And the second one is Cass, man.

Speaker 11 I mean, the first time he had me on his podcast when we talked about hunting whales.

Speaker 11 you know it was like holy cow this is a defining moment in my career and to sit back and think oh wow it's a defining moment in your career when you're talking with cass about writing commercial insurance on a podcast it absolutely was because of his platform, his voice, and his audience.

Speaker 11 And it gave people an opportunity to hear that there is a different way to do things. There is a different way.
And I understand that,

Speaker 11 you know, enough people enjoyed that, that there's an opportunity there. So we launched our podcast and then everything just started blossoming from there.

Speaker 11 But I tell you that because I'm so appreciative of everything that anybody and everybody in this industry has done for me.

Speaker 11 And so, you know, just having me on here and us going back and forth, that makes my day, man. I'd sit here and talk to you all day and not even care about anything else that's going on.

Speaker 11 Kyle's called me four times. I don't know what kind of dumpster fire he's got, but it can wait, you know, and you know, that

Speaker 11 sums up everything. I just think that we need to continue to push forward.
We need to continue to intentionally include. Okay.

Speaker 11 I think that so many times we unintentionally exclude, and that's viewed as sexism or racism or whatever else when maybe it's it's not necessarily the thought process, but we won't be able to change that until we intentionally include.

Speaker 11 And if you can do that and you do it with your heart and your mind in the right place, the next time we talk, the industry will be way better than it was today.

Speaker 10 Amen, brother. Hey, I appreciate you.
Be good. Go solve Kyle's problems.

Speaker 11 All right, man. Later.

Speaker 11 You go fuck yourself in your fat fucking ass.

Speaker 11 Make it my brother challenge.

Speaker 11 Take it in

Speaker 11 for

Speaker 11 a funny farming.

Speaker 11 Make it his my

Speaker 11 bow.

Speaker 11 Make it in my

Speaker 11 mind.

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