RHS 059 - Chad Spaide on How to Deploy Your Agency Data

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Speaker 5 In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home,

Speaker 6 Hello everyone and welcome back to the show.

Speaker 6 Today we have Chad Spade on the show. This is a show you're going to love, especially if you are nerdy about the insurance industry.
And I feel like I say that every episode.

Speaker 6 I feel like this is just like the nerd show. Like we just dive deep on all kinds of crazy shit that maybe most of you don't even care about.
I don't know.

Speaker 6 I love having these conversations, but I brought Chad on the show to talk about data.

Speaker 6 We ended up talking about all kinds of different things around agency operations and sales and setup and the future of the industry. And we talked about data and the role it plays.

Speaker 6 And ultimately, you know,

Speaker 6 we kind of broke down this debate of who owns the data, not in the, like, who actually cares who owns the data, but in, you know, how do we take the data that we do own or at least have access to and put it into play?

Speaker 6 How do we actually deploy it to grow our agency? And I think you're going to love it. This was just a tremendous conversation.
If you don't know Chad, he is the

Speaker 6 president and CEO of Bennisource Insurance Services in California. And he founded the Pure Potential Insurance Automation Facebook group, which is BALR.

Speaker 6 I highly recommend going on Facebook and joining the Pure Potential Insurance Automation Facebook group. It's free to join.
You know, it's a private group, so you got to request access.

Speaker 6 But as long as you're an agent or involved in the industry, Chad will let you in. And it's well worth the time.
There's so much good stuff in there. Highly, highly recommend.

Speaker 6 Before we get to Chad, big shout out to my people at Tarmica. Tarmica, T-A-R-M-I-K-A dot com.
T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. When I say these cats are changing the game, I know you think I'm playing.

Speaker 6 I know you listen to this and you're like, oh, you know, Hanley's always talking about Tarmica and da, and they're a sponsor, you know, whatever.

Speaker 6 I'm telling you, there is going to be a day when you're going to wake up and be like, oh no, I got on Tarmica late, which would be fine because you'll then pay for the tool and you'll catch up because you'll be doing all this cool stuff.

Speaker 6 But like, I'm telling you, it is the game changer. No one is doing the stuff that Tarmica is doing.
There are people that are pretending to do what Tarmica does.

Speaker 6 There are people who are positioning themselves in the same space as Tarmica, but there is nobody doing what Tarmica is doing. I'm telling you that right now.
I mean,

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Speaker 8 See the full scope of what they're doing.

Speaker 6 Even right now, it's baller as hell and changing the game for small commercial and making it better every day. But some of the new features that are coming out are just

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Know what it's about. Be ready to pull the trigger when you feel that it's time.
Go to t-ar-m-i-k-a.com. Get that demo today.

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Schedule for a Friday. Schedule for a day.
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Speaker 6 You won't be disappointed that you did. You'd be happy that you did.
You'd be happy that you got the demo. Go to t-ar-m-i-k-a.com.
Okay.

Speaker 6 Now on to Chad Spade.

Speaker 7 You got me?

Speaker 11 Hey, hey, what are you doing? Ah, just,

Speaker 7 you know, doing the thing here.

Speaker 11 Trying to keep the motor going.

Speaker 7 Mixing in some podcasts. That's about the deal.

Speaker 11 How's business going for you so far?

Speaker 7 Okay.

Speaker 7 You know,

Speaker 7 I'm not going to say that I'm dominating the world yet. I think we're

Speaker 7 on the path, but, you know, not just, you know, hacking my way through, trying to figure shit out, man.

Speaker 11 I will never forget that empty filing cabinet, Ryan. Yeah.

Speaker 7 You know,

Speaker 7 I found this, this process has been,

Speaker 7 I was talking to my wife about it because I took, we took a three-day vacation to K-May

Speaker 7 and

Speaker 7 just a buddy in the insurance industry was busting my chops. And he was like,

Speaker 7 he asked me a question. I said, whatever.
And I said, hey, I'm going to be out of town for a couple of days. because I'm going to K-Mae.

Speaker 7 And he's like, oh, shit, a six-month-old startup insurance agency.

Speaker 7 And I was like, you know, and, you know, part of it was I started the agency because I wanted to spend time with my family.

Speaker 7 Like the previous six years of my life before I started this agency, I was on the road three to four times a month.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 7 So like a big part of the agency was,

Speaker 7 I'm not going to just, I'm not going to be gone all the time.

Speaker 7 The other, the other side of me was, I am a startup six-month-old agency that isn't, it's not like I'm started with all this capital and I'm setting the world on fire.

Speaker 7 You know, I'm hacking my way through it. And did I really deserve it? It was like a weird, you know, and he didn't mean it to be a jerk.
He was just busting my chops, but

Speaker 7 it's like a weird sensation, you know, weird thought, I guess.

Speaker 11 Well, it is. I mean, it's one of the most rewarding ones when you're, when you're at a level, I hate to say this, but like, you know, where you feel you're making it.

Speaker 11 you know, or where you feel like you built a book, right? Wherever you should never kind of fully feel that way because you always need to to bring new in, but you understand what I'm talking about.

Speaker 11 You could, you could take off a little bit and things are going to be fine, right?

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 11 You know, I mean, I had to reinvent myself once. I,

Speaker 11 you know, it was, it was, geez, about two and a half, maybe almost three years ago.

Speaker 11 A little over that. I took off three months.
I only called the office twice and I was kind of nervous. And

Speaker 11 I came back and it grew.

Speaker 11 You know, so it's a beautiful rewarding business you know but it it sucks to start

Speaker 7 yeah

Speaker 7 yeah it really does because

Speaker 7 the other thing that i found tough is

Speaker 7 you know this is the first business that i've been a part of that i've started from the ground up i i haven't i've never done a startup before um i do own another business it's my speaking and kind of marketing business but that's always just been kind of as i've a place to run revenue through when i do a speaking gay or consulting or something it's not like i launched a business it's always been a side thing

Speaker 7 and

Speaker 7 you know there's so many things that i want to do know i can do and know i you know quote unquote should be doing

Speaker 7 and um

Speaker 7 you just can't do them when you're one person in a in a room and

Speaker 7 you know you don't have a mountain of cash to to to to pay people to help you. You just, you know, you're prioritizing.

Speaker 7 I'd say prioritizing has been, and I'm sure this is never not the issue, but just for me, prioritizing has been very difficult because I want to do this and I see I know how to do this, but you know, is this more important than this thing over here?

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 7 that part has been difficult.

Speaker 11 That is the nature of the business. I don't know that you'll, I mean, there's so many

Speaker 11 different channels that you'll have those feelings in.

Speaker 11 And, you know,

Speaker 11 it's such, it's one of those things because, I mean, this is a data-driven, complex business.

Speaker 11 And then you throw being an independent on top of it where, you know, now you got all these different carriers.

Speaker 11 Now you got, you know, you start bringing on people and then you can't see that you're in quicksand until you're in up to your years and then you need that, but is that the right decision?

Speaker 11 And then, you know, and I listened to one of your other podcasts the other day, and

Speaker 11 somebody was on there.

Speaker 11 The great thing about like the Facebook groups that we have today, it's like, you know, for I think one of the biggest things the contribution IAOA has made to the independent channel is it helped us break down the silos.

Speaker 11 Because before, we would just talk maybe at lunch once in a while, or when you're on a company production trip, and then you probably never talk to them after that until the next company trip.

Speaker 11 So, a lot of value being slung around in between these groups. And I love it because,

Speaker 11 you know,

Speaker 11 finally, people are saying that you're not the only one in those shoes, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 11 I actually reps will come in and make you feel like, wow, you're, you're like the only one of my agents that aren't doing that.

Speaker 7 Right. I know.
Well, you know, it's, this is actually what's probably happened for you is you're the only one of my

Speaker 7 agents that actually wants to do that thing because that that's what I get so often.

Speaker 11 I'll explain an idea to them and they'll be like, they'll look at me like, I had one like a month ago come in and I lost her. She just tranced out on me.
She went like,

Speaker 11 I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, come back here. And it's like, it just, they're not ready on some stuff.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 I know I was talking to one of my, I was talking to one of my commercial lines carriers about

Speaker 7 it was the first

Speaker 7 policy that I'd written with this carrier. And

Speaker 7 I went,

Speaker 7 and I guess this just seemed crazy to me, but it was a bop and a small bop.

Speaker 7 And I took the guy's credit card information to do credit card EFT like every other carrier that I have does. And they're like, oh, yeah, we don't really do that.
And I'm like, what?

Speaker 7 You don't take credit card payments for your insurance pop. Like that's not something you do.
It's like, yeah, well, they can do checking account EFT. And I'm like, wow, this is like 2004.

Speaker 7 I couldn't believe it. And

Speaker 7 it's stuff like that. Then juggling that,

Speaker 7 that becomes a decision. Well, this carrier over here is $100 more, but he can pay by credit card.

Speaker 11 So who do I want to? Yeah, all of a sudden it doesn't matter. Yeah.

Speaker 7 It's like you're like, oh my gosh, it's just

Speaker 7 all the different things you got to manage. It's nuts.

Speaker 11 It's, you know, and then you throw people into the mix and it's like, uh-oh. Yeah.

Speaker 11 Wait till you have one retire on you, and don't tell you.

Speaker 11 They sit in front of you and they look like they're working hard. I'm like, where's it at?

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 7 I know. I um, I

Speaker 7 actually have two

Speaker 7 people right now that I'm

Speaker 7 in talks with about being potentially 1099 producers that have approached me. Um,

Speaker 7 and

Speaker 7 I'm, it makes me very, very nervous. The whole idea idea of it makes me a little nervous.

Speaker 7 Because I feel like I don't have the process worked out enough for myself, let alone then to go teach another human the processes that I want to be done. Because, you know what I mean? It just.

Speaker 11 It's really hard.

Speaker 11 It's one of those things where I think go with your feeling. Yeah.
Because it's probably right.

Speaker 11 And you're in it, especially in the early years, you're in this thing where you're like,

Speaker 11 I learned this in the military and

Speaker 11 it was like we always had a thing called hurry up and wait.

Speaker 11 And that's kind of like where you're going to be living at for a little while, where you know, and you see, and you get to it.

Speaker 11 Like, I had a guy, like, oh, he came in my office, he goes, like, one of my agencies, like, this is never going to change. And I'm like, I see it.

Speaker 11 I know it's there. I know it has to be dealt with, but I can't get to it right now.
Yeah.

Speaker 11 You know?

Speaker 7 Yeah. yeah.
You know, I'll get to it.

Speaker 11 Don't worry about that. But right now, you know, there's higher, you know, that's like the least of my problems right now.
It's major on your side, but not on mine.

Speaker 7 I know. I was.

Speaker 7 So, you know, I'm in this place. And this will lead us into kind of why, I mean, I wanted to have you on for a bunch of reasons because I've been

Speaker 7 in your ecosystem for a while and watching what you do. And I love it.
And I'm such a huge fan of

Speaker 7 just all the stuff that you put out and how much value you deliver and asking nothing for a return. And I have a ton of questions, but

Speaker 7 to what you just said specifically, I have a very clear vision of how I want to operate this agency. Very, very clear.
Like it is crystal clear. And

Speaker 7 I know

Speaker 7 the different types of business I want to go after.

Speaker 7 I know.

Speaker 7 the brand tone that I want to use. I know the process that I want to build

Speaker 7 and i find myself every day caught between like

Speaker 7 three things like i need to make revenue now to pay the bills that doesn't necessarily completely align with where i want to be long term uh and at the same time

Speaker 7 i have some tools which are the tools that I that actually help me grow the business. And I have other tools that only really drag me down.

Speaker 7 But changing from those tools to other tools, that's a whole

Speaker 11 drag.

Speaker 7 And you're just in this place where you're like, you feel like you have all these shells, and like, which ones do I move, and how do I make sure that the boat stays above the waterline while at the same time, like trying to go from like a rowboat to a power boat, you know what I mean?

Speaker 11 Like, yeah, it was very frustrating for me for a long time, even

Speaker 11 in really rapid growth mode, because

Speaker 11 that vision, that brand, that service that you want to deliver, you know, you can do it now. That's the good news.
You're coming in at like a really great time,

Speaker 11 in my opinion.

Speaker 11 But I had to set a good decade on not having the tools. And, you know, in essence, we kind of still don't have them.

Speaker 11 But you could take somebody who didn't even want to hook up a Bluetooth before, and if they're pissed off and

Speaker 11 they're persistent enough, they'll go learn this stuff and build what they need. Yeah.
Because, because now we actually have access to it. Before, we just have to say, this is what you use.

Speaker 11 We're the best. Pay us money and do your job.
Yeah. And it bugged me for a long time.
I mean, to the point where I almost lost my heart in it. And I was kind of treating it like the average age.

Speaker 11 It was just some annuity that bothered me.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 11 You know,

Speaker 11 it's exciting.

Speaker 7 It is. It is exciting.
And, you know, the, the,

Speaker 7 you know, and I don't know if you have this or not, but I definitely,

Speaker 7 I don't know if it's because I do have this vision of where I want to go or because for so long and just maybe the nature of who I am, I just, I'm always thinking out into the future.

Speaker 7 I really, I do struggle with today.

Speaker 7 Like I, I can see where I want to go and I can build the path, but like

Speaker 7 all that thought, like I waste a lot of brain cycles on that versus like the brain cycles that need to be spent on this moment.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 that's a hard thing that I've had to do too. I hate to be a book dispenser, but I had to take a good smack in the head with the power of now.
What can I do in this moment? Yeah.

Speaker 11 Because the rest of the stuff, I mean, you know, living in the past and fretting about the future, you know, just doesn't allow you to get anything done today. And that's what really needs to happen.

Speaker 7 I agree. I agree.
My

Speaker 7 funny.

Speaker 11 Brian Falchuck is a big,

Speaker 11 I know you interviewed him. He's, he, he's got it going on in presence.

Speaker 7 Yes. No, he's great.
And for anyone listening to this show, you can go back and listen to the episode. I don't know how many it was ago, but just Brian Falchuk, he came on.

Speaker 7 He's got a new book out, but he's got a bunch of books.

Speaker 7 Awesome, awesome stuff. Awesome guy.
Great, great resource for the industry.

Speaker 11 What's great about, I think, his books is he's been,

Speaker 11 he's hit bottoms and he's recreated himself and,

Speaker 11 you know, personally and, you know, somewhat professionally anyway, some of the stuff. But I really like that guy.
He's, he's, you know, we need him.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I agree. I agree, man.
I think that.

Speaker 7 So my wife is like my grounding mechanism. Like, if it were up to me, I would just float away.
Like, it's just, that's just the way my brain works. Like, I would just float into the atmosphere.

Speaker 11 That's why you started an agency, Lot.

Speaker 11 yeah you know i'm serious

Speaker 11 it is it used to be my ex-wife that would do that like hey what do you and i'm like yeah but we could go out and do all this and i know i know and you know and and the other side of it too is um so so she this weekend um

Speaker 7 we're just kind of like she's like hey what do you got going on in the week and i was telling her and she said so how many uh

Speaker 7 how many cold calls you make last week because like that's like my trigger for being in the now right like if i'm doing the calls doing the outreach um

Speaker 7 that's a part of bringing the business in. I have some advertising stuff, bring some small business stuff in and some personal lines, but you know, for me, I'm

Speaker 7 trying to bring in some of these middle market accounts that can help me get ahead because I like working on them. And

Speaker 7 I said, well, last week I did zero. And she said, well, you had two days.
And I was like, yeah, but, you know, we weren't, because we left for vacation on Wednesday. And I said,

Speaker 7 yeah, but, you know, we have vacation. And she's like, so what,

Speaker 7 what were you doing that you didn't make your calls? And like, now I'm starting to get mad at her, you know, like

Speaker 7 she's just, it's like she has the most exposed nerve and she's just pressing it. Like, I know that you weren't present.

Speaker 7 I know that you were doing stuff that isn't going to make you money in the next three months. You're working on shit that's a year from now.
And,

Speaker 7 you know, that has been, it's, it's just funny. Sometimes you need, so you need to pull that in.

Speaker 11 She goes, you know, I think you need to take on a partner who's going to like, you need someone who's gonna stay today all the time and then you can do all the stuff from like tomorrow to forever but you need like a today person i think that's a good thing so i used to do this thing that my ex-wife and she's a wonderful woman one of the most amazing i i think might be the best large group agent that you know i got her into the business and stuff but I used to do this thing when I first started when people asked me what I do.

Speaker 11 We would go to like social gatherings and stuff. And when it came to personal lines, I would do this and we do this.
And she's like, you know, because I was like, big clothes elephant guy, right?

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 And uh, she's like, What are you doing? And I'm like, What? And oh, I used to piss her off because I felt like personal lines like demeaned me, right? Yeah,

Speaker 11 you know, so we all have our little things that we go through.

Speaker 7 Well, you know, it's funny that you say that because that is something that I am constantly fighting. Is

Speaker 7 you know, the

Speaker 7 business,

Speaker 7 the agency owner in me says, I need to be doing personal lines.

Speaker 7 And the reason I say that is because I've watched my wife's agency navigate a lot of ups and downs, both in the local market and in the national market, because they're, we'll call it, we'll say they're 75% personal lines.

Speaker 7 And they're able to weather every storm because they've had it. They've been able to weather them all because we don't get natural disasters up here in New York.
We just don't.

Speaker 7 Like we did, our rates are, you know, they go up and they go down, but they're they're steady. You know, we're not talking about these wide, huge swings that you see in other parts of the country.

Speaker 7 So I look at that and I say to myself, I'm staring at the blueprint. They have it.
They work a 50-mile radius. I can take exactly what they're doing and do it statewide.
And I can literally replicate.

Speaker 7 a well-run agency and then I can replicate it with small commercial because I can believe the same things can be done there. And then

Speaker 7 I also think there's opportunity in the middle market over the long term for me, over the long term. Again, I'm not saying I'll do all these things at one time.
I'm saying stack them.

Speaker 7 And I'm constantly flip-flopping between, do you start

Speaker 7 with the more like ego-driven whale hunting middle market side where it's like, oh, you know, cast now. Oh, I go whale hunting.
You know, he writes it all the time.

Speaker 7 And he's a whale hunter all of a sudden, which I think is great for him, but I also think he's a jacket. He's fun to make fun of him.

Speaker 7 But, you know, and then there's the other side of me that's like, well, geez, I also know

Speaker 7 and have people who are willing to help me set up these really well run,

Speaker 7 streamlined, personalized processes, which deliver good coverage, great price, great service. Like I can do that too, because I understand those systems and I'm constantly,

Speaker 7 I will say, like almost on like a day-to-day basis, I'm flip-flopping where I should spend my time.

Speaker 11 I flipped on that for a long time.

Speaker 11 You know, I have, we all have friends in the business. For me, like in the beginning, it was mostly older people.
And, you know, he,

Speaker 11 you know, a lot of times you don't forget the personal lines. You know, maybe right now, we haven't seen the effect of what this virus is going to do to like certain commercial agencies.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 11 When payrolls come in and they're less and they renew less, it's kind of what happened in the mortgage crisis, man. You see big firms go down.

Speaker 11 You know, and,

Speaker 11 you know, so I mean, I've had a million-dollar account. They sold.
My friend had a 2 million and a 5 million.

Speaker 11 One he had 10 years and one he had 15. He lost them both in one week.
One sold. The other one said, just time for a change.

Speaker 11 You know, my ex-wife's largest group health plan, the owner died, and the daughter came in and said, we're changing all the vendors just because.

Speaker 11 You know, and so.

Speaker 11 You know, in the meantime, you got all these little oils and you can close them fast and high volume. And I don't prefer one over the other but what i do prefer is direct bill policies

Speaker 11 um we used to have a lot of car dealerships and you're living your life around renewal dates and

Speaker 11 it's always five minutes to to five o'clock on friday and there's three guys with another 10 grand in their back pocket to throw at it and for me it got old because i had to reset why i got into this business which is what you said when we first started talking about hey it's supposed to create more time for my family but now I can never go on vacation this time of year because this account's got to renew.

Speaker 11 And we could never have celebrate the major holidays, Christmas and New Year's, because we had 31 dealerships renewing their comp on January 1st.

Speaker 11 You know, so that, I don't know, I just went back that route. And I'm all for me, my personality, where I'm at today, I'm all about direct bill, auto renew.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Yeah,

Speaker 7 you know what, man?

Speaker 11 I, um, doesn't mean I won't take an agency bill. That's good, but I have to really, really be convinced they're going to be a good client.

Speaker 7 So I have actually turned down two accounts that have come in. Neither one were very large.
One was like $7,000 in premium.

Speaker 7 The other was $5,000 in premium that would have been agency bill accounts that very likely it came in, could have sold them.

Speaker 7 And I just, you know, I and again,

Speaker 7 I talk with my wife about all this stuff because she's so involved in her agency. I mean, she basically runs her family agency now.
And,

Speaker 7 you know, they do a lot of agency bill stuff.

Speaker 7 And I said to her, like, if I had agency bill, I now have a whole nother thought process that I have to walk through every month that doesn't, isn't just like, oh, maybe I don't know exactly where I'm at.

Speaker 7 revenue versus expense. I literally have a fiduciary responsibility and to both the client's money and it's a whole nother thing.
And

Speaker 7 why am I doing that? Like, why am I walking into now? Granted, $100,000 great account comes walking in the table. They're going to pay, they need to pay agency bill for some reason.

Speaker 7 Maybe I consider that. Maybe I do.

Speaker 11 But

Speaker 7 little, I'm going to make $600 on this agency bill account.

Speaker 7 That just seems like a bad decision.

Speaker 11 It just doesn't seem like a good decision to me. Well, and you'll really be loving that one every year it renews.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 7 I just,

Speaker 11 I, I,

Speaker 11 we do them, but you know, I don't like them, but, you know, sometimes out here for risk reasons to keep the account to them.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 And, you know, what I've started, you know, I, I, I, so an episode that hasn't actually come out as of us having this conversation, but but will by the time this episode comes out is with um John Mason of Shenango Brokers.

Speaker 7 So he used to own five locations in New York,

Speaker 7 was offered the opportunity to buy a small wholesale operation named Shenango Brokers, and eventually left retail completely to grow this wholesale operation. And now he's in 24 states.

Speaker 7 And we were talking, and I, you know, I said to him, you know, I think a lot of people use wholesale brokers, but maybe they don't necessarily understand

Speaker 7 other than just access. Why would you use a wholesale broker? Why would you consider that? And

Speaker 7 he said, Look, he goes, He goes, I think one of the things that is that is incredibly underrated about using wholesale brokers is

Speaker 7 not just

Speaker 7 that you don't maybe have a

Speaker 7 quota that you have to hit with a certain carrier if you're putting the business there. That's probably number one.

Speaker 7 But number two is

Speaker 7 if you take, say, something like direct bill commercial auto with a with a commercial auto carrier and you peel that out of, you know, whoever, you know, your direct appointments where you care about the loss ratio and you put that with a wholesale broker, now the losses on that account

Speaker 7 go to the wholesaler. They don't go to you.

Speaker 7 And maybe you have the more profitable parts of the account in your direct bill carrier and you just peel off the unprofitable pieces to wholesale and you can still do direct bill.

Speaker 7 And I was like, that's a really interesting way and a really there'll be a great way of starting to think about your business, right?

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 There's a lot of different ways. I looked into that when we were thinking about, I had an agent, longtime agent move to Texas.

Speaker 11 And I'm like, oh, shit, I don't want a small book there and it destroyed my California loss ratio. Yeah.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 But then you look at the maintenance of it. It's like, okay, then I got to go here and beg them to do this.

Speaker 11 And, you know, that's where those type of places, I mean, if they got their efficiency down, there there would be a lot of reasons to use them.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Well, that's why I love.
Um, so I'm a member of uh Indium, the market access provider and network or whatever.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 uh, what I love about them is

Speaker 7 just because

Speaker 7 just because of the nature of all the different work that I've done and the podcasts and being in the marketing industry for so long, I do get opportunities from a lot of different states than New York.

Speaker 7 And what's what's cool about Indium is through them,

Speaker 7 I can write

Speaker 7 in any state.

Speaker 7 You know what I mean? And not, it's, so it does come through on their paper. And I explain that to the insured.

Speaker 7 Hey, you know, I work through a partner company, so it's not going to say Rogue Risk on it. It's going to say Indium on the, on the, all the letterhead and everything.
But, um,

Speaker 7 but it's a really interesting relationship where now you can serve. Maybe you have, you're referred to somebody.

Speaker 7 And I do try to refer out to other agents where it makes sense too um but it's it's interesting how some of these relationships work um and then you might have somebody that moves to a state and you need that you need a carrier to uh

Speaker 11 uh a carrier that you can't write with there and you have access to it there to to keep the relationship yes yeah

Speaker 11 since we're you know we're having a hard time getting asi in texas even though we already have progressive it's like well you know.

Speaker 11 And of course, they're competitive there. Yeah.

Speaker 7 So, all right, man, I want to swing. We've been, we've been bullshitting for 25 minutes now, and not that we couldn't do that for another 25 easy, but you posted something.

Speaker 7 And this is what was the impetus to reaching out. Not that I necessarily need a reason because there's so many stuff, so much stuff that we could talk about that you do.
But

Speaker 7 you posted in your Facebook group, Pure Potential Insurance Automation, which is awesome. And

Speaker 7 it's one of my favorites. I just, I don't do like, I only probably do 5% of the stuff that you talk about, but I just love seeing it.

Speaker 7 I love thinking about the, you know, just seeing the way that you think about this stuff. And

Speaker 7 you posted this article from Insurance Journal called The Value of Agency Data and Who Owns It.

Speaker 7 And I read the article. So I read your comment on the article.

Speaker 7 And then I came back and read the article and then went back and read your comment again and i immediately reached out to you after that and just said hey i this is a topic that data is everywhere everyone's talking about data i think half the people well probably 90 of the people talking about data don't even really know what they're talking about i think they're just using the term and as someone who i think

Speaker 7 has a really good perspective on it, seems to have spent a lot of time thinking about it and has a clear position,

Speaker 7 I just wanted to dive into this topic,

Speaker 7 to spend some time as best we can,

Speaker 7 helping

Speaker 7 the people that are listening, regardless of what space they're in, vendor,

Speaker 7 carrier, agency, whatever,

Speaker 7 just kind of wrap their head around this. Because

Speaker 7 one of my dearest friends, Seth Zaremba, is on this mission for agents to own their data. And I think at face value to most people, they're like, yeah,

Speaker 7 but I don't know that they even know what that means. And then other people are like, ah, it doesn't matter.
You know what I mean? Another guy that I just had on the podcast, Chris Langell, is like,

Speaker 7 own your data, don't own your data. Why does it really matter? And I can see both those perspectives.
And I think it's confusing for a lot of people. So

Speaker 7 that's kind of my intro to this conversation.

Speaker 11 Okay.

Speaker 7 Wherever you want, I probably should have

Speaker 11 So, in reference to the article that kicked off that

Speaker 11 post, is this is, you know,

Speaker 11 I don't want to say like behavioral data or anything like that, but just basically our clients' data, I struggle with it daily.

Speaker 11 And it could be from the carriers, it could be, and of course, out of our management system.

Speaker 11 You know, of the management systems that I've had experience with, you know, proper reporting, it's been really,

Speaker 11 you know, it's just been very flawed.

Speaker 11 The reason for it is, I think the way they store it, some are using multiple databases, and they're not even using the same naming conventions across those databases.

Speaker 11 And, you know, when you get a report that says, you know, how many policies you have per household or whatever it is,

Speaker 11 it's

Speaker 11 more than likely nowhere near being accurate.

Speaker 11 Yeah. And,

Speaker 11 you know, active, inactive clients or policies and stuff like that, it's really difficult. And to me, it seems so simple if

Speaker 11 you have the database underneath it, why can't you snap and use it? And then you're oftentimes restricted on developing your own reports. And that can be hard because

Speaker 11 does your management system have those variables that you can create a report on pull?

Speaker 11 You know, years ago, I was with another management system and, you know, we would spend more time figuring out on their home no auto or whatever list like that, what policies does this person have so we can call them up and try to round them out.

Speaker 11 We would spend more time reviewing the account to see that the report was wrong. So what happened? That killed our prospecting time.
So to me, at the agency level,

Speaker 11 whether there's interest in owning your data or not owning it.

Speaker 11 For me, the purpose of this post was to specifically address how we can use it.

Speaker 11 And that's the biggest part of it for me is like, how do I know what I need to know to run my agency and to help my agents, but more importantly,

Speaker 11 provide the experience to the client that they're expecting? And what would so a lot of the stuff I build and use is like, what would I want if I were them? And then what would happen if we did that?

Speaker 11 Because it's really hard to do business with us. And it's primarily coming down to our tools.
Nobody's fault, just how we got here.

Speaker 11 And technology is evolving so fast that a lot of this is available to us, whether we make it or somebody else makes it or some vendor makes it, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 11 But I think we collectively as an agency force used to just accept a policy per household number, what's your average policy per household, as fact.

Speaker 11 When a carrier rep would come in and and they would say

Speaker 11 you know you might be running a fever on your loss ratio because of this okay

Speaker 11 based on what tell me what

Speaker 11 and more than likely it's their three-year snapshot or they're not even sure they're just bringing off somebody else around a company-wide report for your state so it gets me into going in into

Speaker 11 okay how can we use this you know why don't we have a report to know the spread on an agent to see if they're making it or not? Why don't we have

Speaker 11 reports for

Speaker 11 the, or at least the ability to do 80-20, right? That Brent Kelly talks about. I love that.

Speaker 11 And we actually did that and implemented it in, and it was brutal to get something automated that to like that because to be honest with you, I'm going to forget if I pull Excel reports and upload them into something every month,

Speaker 11 it'll break. So I needed a way to make sure it was happening and it was visible within our servicing automation for them to always know where that client sat at.

Speaker 11 So when I read the post on that and I looked at that and it just hit me hard. Who owns it? Yeah, well,

Speaker 11 you know, I don't know that for sure, but seems to me we don't own it because we can't get access to use it how we want it.

Speaker 11 If you look at it in that context, I'm not determining value or anything like that. So that's kind of what led up with it.

Speaker 11 We should be able to create a report to know where everything is in our agency

Speaker 11 and to use the data for how it can help us actually grow.

Speaker 11 We should be able to know about a client, frequency over time of claims, how much time was spent on servicing, how many times did we rewrite them, did they lapse, did they, you know, all this stuff to determine it.

Speaker 11 And that kind of led into the 80-20 thing where, okay, well, if we have these people in the lower percentage, what's their policies per account?

Speaker 11 What's their revenue or commission per premium and revenue per account?

Speaker 11 But I went into it, and on since I'm personalized heavy, I wanted to know, okay, in those 80% that make up, you know, X percent, and it's kind of true, I'm a little heavier than 20, but

Speaker 11 it's definitely rings true that the 80-20 principles run. And it might be, you know, off, you know, there might be a margin of error that's differ, or not error, but a difference for every agency.

Speaker 7 But we have that.

Speaker 11 So, okay, so when it's primarily personal lines based, I look at it and like, huh, what can I do?

Speaker 11 You know, well, if I knew the claims history, if I knew the service request, like, how much time is it taking?

Speaker 11 Because maybe it's a DP3 or a secondary home for somebody that lives in Canada and it'll never cancel. Well, to me, there's a little bit of value.
So you start getting into opinions there.

Speaker 11 So I like to look at it as if there's no service and it's highly retentative and no chance.

Speaker 11 Well, that's still a good account to keep in my opinion but and you never know what may change they may retire and move here and so forth so

Speaker 11 uh i'll leave it on that part and on the on the policies part also why don't we know the inactives why don't we why can't we have an api that just says these are inactive and we start and giving the agent an option is this finally somebody we got rid of You know, is this a celebration or is this something that we messed up on or they just got lost in our relationship?

Speaker 11 So data, I think, is going to be very, very crucial

Speaker 11 on how successful we can be. And especially on, you know, outside of our own agencies data for new prospects, you know, the new popular thing coming out is

Speaker 11 your two-question personal lines quote. That technology already exists.
And there's some agencies that have it. And then there's

Speaker 11 some new companies that are MGAs that already have that. And they're finding new ways to rate.
And it's ultra-fast as independents.

Speaker 11 We need to be able to compete with that because we are supposed to be advisors, in my opinion, and we need to be able to do it at the speed of light.

Speaker 11 And maybe not as fast as these new insur techs coming up, but we can't be light years behind it, expecting people to wait around for us.

Speaker 11 So I think we need this data so we can work on the technology to reclaim our time so we actually create the space to be the advisors that we all said, that we all signed up for. So

Speaker 11 quick summary of that article. That article goes deep in many ways for me because I do spend a lot of time on it.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I

Speaker 7 so if you're looking for the article, it will be if you go to ryanhanley.com forward slash chad dash spade or just look for chad in on the site.

Speaker 7 I'll have the article linked up in the show notes so that you can see exactly what we're talking about. I'll also have the post linked up to that kind of started the whole thing.

Speaker 7 So, you know, to that point,

Speaker 7 to your point about the speed, because to me,

Speaker 7 so I believe in Seth's mission wholeheartedly, mostly because I believe that I don't know that I actually

Speaker 7 care who own owns the data, own owns the data. I do care from the standpoint of usability of the data.
And I agree.

Speaker 7 One of the, you know, we talked a little bit earlier, you know, one of the things that I have struggled with

Speaker 7 is that I

Speaker 7 think in the same terms that you're thinking about is how I think about things. And for me to even do that at my small level, at the very, you know, small level that I'm at so far early on,

Speaker 7 I can barely operate.

Speaker 7 I am literally still having to take data out of one system and hand punch into another system. And now I'm talking to Wes Anderson about a VA because

Speaker 7 it's not worth my time to do that. So now I got to hire a human to do this because the two.

Speaker 7 And to me, That's the part of the ownership of the data that is kind of inexcusable is in that if you if you if you can't deploy the information, if you can't deploy what you're learning to better serve your business, your people, your clients, yourself, your operations,

Speaker 7 if you can't actually deploy the data, then taking out the pure ownership idea, you don't own it. I mean, that's really what it is.

Speaker 7 If you can't deploy it, you don't own it you know taking away the pure ownership perspective from a contractual standpoint because

Speaker 7 I think the truth is really in between Seth and Chris in terms of like, how much should we care that on paper, you could, you know, you own it.

Speaker 7 I don't know. I don't know what that means really.

Speaker 7 I just, I agree with you. And I think that your thought process is where we specifically as agency owners and agency personnel need to be thinking is.
Can you deploy it yes or no?

Speaker 7 Can you learn real time?

Speaker 7 Because if you have to wait for someone in your office to concatenate and pivot table, you know, three different spreadsheets to give you some basic high-level information once a month, then you're not actually,

Speaker 7 you're not actually being able to make decisions on that data because

Speaker 7 who the hell knows what it looks like after all that work has been done and how accurate it is to begin with.

Speaker 11 Well, it is. I mean, most reports, if you ask the criteria, you know, you just get deers in the headlight.
What makes this up? And I don't know. Nobody's ever asked that before.

Speaker 11 You know, it's like, oh boy, you know, how do I know?

Speaker 11 You know, how do I know what I know or don't know about it? Well, then you got to spend the time to be certain on it, right?

Speaker 11 And especially if you're going to make decisions or have conversations about that, it's awful embarrassing to have the wrong situation. Yeah.
So, you know, there's two parts of that.

Speaker 11 There's one, there's what we do with it to facilitate the growth and

Speaker 11 create, improve, improve, and grow our current relationships. But there's also the operational side of it where it's boiled down to commission statements and, you know, not a whole lot beyond that.

Speaker 11 But when you get into it, we have a need now.

Speaker 11 And I think maybe for some of us, and I think collectively that the agent forces it, we're moving into awareness that we're doing things really, really long and inefficient, we don't know exactly what to do with it.

Speaker 11 There's some stuff that has to evolve and be created for us, but it's important to pay attention to it because we can't sit here operating with a lot of the, you know, the, how would I say it, strategies that we're operating with today if we're going to be able to compete.

Speaker 11 And, you know, one of those things is quoting and binding, right? You talk about BOPS a lot with Tarmica. I love that program.

Speaker 11 It's going to be really exciting to see what Rajev does with that going into the future.

Speaker 11 But on personal lines as well,

Speaker 11 the most expensive thing, and it's not on your PL, is data collection, quoting, and binding. Well, if you spend some time surfing out on the web, you're going to find agencies and new carriers.

Speaker 11 where I mean with something as simple as an email and a cell phone, they already have everything.

Speaker 11 You're making models, dates of birth, dl numbers all of that so i mean there might be some script you know some specific criteria that we have to ask like discounts or you know in california work address but but for the most part we should not be asking for that anymore and i really think the rating the rating companies can get it but they haven't come around to it yet because we still like you know handwriting stuff down or having them fill out a quote form on our website then going back and using our finger again how ridiculous is that in today's time?

Speaker 11 You know, it's the same way as going back from e-signature, right? Who would want to go without that? You want to fax somebody or mail it out

Speaker 11 in the mail and wait for it to come back? And quoting's there today. The whole process is, I think, is completely wrong for what you can pull in now.

Speaker 7 We'll see. And if an agent

Speaker 11 can do that, everybody else can. And why are we still asking for any of this stuff? We should be in data validation and then talk about the risk.
And what did that do?

Speaker 11 It created the space to have a more meaningful conversation about the other stuff that we usually leave on the table. And that's one of the things that bothered me once I got in the business.

Speaker 11 We were talking about that a little bit before.

Speaker 11 Prospecting momentum, right? Find your target and go pull it in. Well, that's great, but what's the emotional roller coaster? Yeah, the guy wants a quote.
Shit, I got to quote it.

Speaker 11 Yeah, the guy wants to bind it. Shit, I got to bind it.
And then you get a snag to where you have to call an underwriter in there and your whole day goes crazy, right?

Speaker 11 But what happens to that momentum that you were supposed to create?

Speaker 11 It really destroys it. And if you find somebody that wants their book gets going,

Speaker 11 where's prospecting all that? Man, they better build the relationships to get referrals because it's going to be really limited.

Speaker 11 And usually it's after an exhausting day of fighting all our software systems or underwriters. that we finally come around to having the time to do that, but now we're in the wrong state.

Speaker 11 So if you're not really skilled at shifting that state, your prospecting once again takes the back seat. Yeah.

Speaker 7 You know, it's funny. I actually believe

Speaker 7 to a certain extent, I have two thoughts. One,

Speaker 7 the technology

Speaker 11 for

Speaker 7 not for the data collection issue that you're talking about, that problem is solved. That's a solved problem.

Speaker 7 The reason it's not widespread is I think that the people that have it don't want it to be widespread. Why would you give that up? It's such a competitive advantage.

Speaker 7 If I have to ask 30 questions for a quote and you only have to ask two, you're winning.

Speaker 7 You're winning the game. I'm not winning.
You're winning. So why would you do, why would you make it easy for me to figure out how you're making that happen at all? You just wouldn't.

Speaker 7 Now, I do think that there are companies like Tarmico, like a few others that are solving this problem and making it accessible

Speaker 7 to more agencies, which is a tremendous thing. But it's absolutely, absolutely, I mean, so I was talking to one of my,

Speaker 7 we'll say large national carriers

Speaker 11 about,

Speaker 7 we're just doing, you know, I hadn't talked to the rep in four months or whatever, and he called me, he said, how things are going. I said, I said, look, man, things are going good.

Speaker 7 I said, you probably saw that I haven't really,

Speaker 7 I haven't really placed much stuff with you. And the issue is that

Speaker 7 it takes me 35 minutes to quote a home and auto with you. And I can quote a home and auto with Plymouth Rock in about four minutes.
I mean, their home process is name, address,

Speaker 7 homeowner's quote. Then you just put in their birth, the person's birthday to validate, and it is done.
That's it. Policy is over.
I mean, you know the price, you pick the coverage.

Speaker 7 You know, they give you good, better, best. And

Speaker 7 the one in the middle is

Speaker 7 really good coverage. The only reason you'd want the best is if they were, if, if they had special circumstances.
So I'm, I'm three questions. Homeowners quote.

Speaker 7 If you're in Pennsylvania and you have Hippo or you have Openly or you have, you know, if you trust Swift in your state, you know, you, you have, now you have three or four carriers that with just a tiny bit of information, you can pull back a ton of homeowners business.

Speaker 7 And,

Speaker 7 you know, the fact that we have carriers that are still requiring you to enter, is there circuit breakers in the house is freaking bananas to me. Like, you know that.

Speaker 11 Just use the answer.

Speaker 7 You know the, that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 7 There's like 17 databases online that have that information. If you cross-reference two, you know the answer.
You know, you just pick the best one. Like, it.

Speaker 11 Well, and we got that backwards a little bit. You know, a lot of times you might go and collect all that.
And, you know, depending on the...

Speaker 11 the client in question, you know, it might take them time to get some of that stuff to you, where the carrier already has it.

Speaker 11 It's like, you're making me collect it to put it in so you can tell me something's wrong let's just go with yours and i'll validate it with the client

Speaker 11 yeah

Speaker 11 so that you know it's a it's one of those processes where it is such a there's so much work and there and there's

Speaker 11 it's so much pushed back on us that's

Speaker 11 that's stealing all the time from doing what we're really meant to do. And I think what we signed up to do.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I agree. And the point that you made about all this data collection takes away from being able to be.

Speaker 7 So, so, you know, it was what, 20 years ago or so that we really started to have frontline underwriter taken away as part of the independent insurance agent's job, right?

Speaker 7 We were always kind of part of our job description in our, you know, even, you know, whether implied or explicit was that we were frontline underwriters for the carriers that we were directly appointed with.

Speaker 7 And over time, that has been kind of seeded back to the carrier to where now we we just send them information and they send us a quote back. Well,

Speaker 7 by removing data collection, we are given that ability back, which is better for the carriers. We get to actually talk to the person.

Speaker 7 and learn about them. Is this person a kook? Yeah, their house may line up perfectly from a data perspective, but they might be completely bat shit crazy.

Speaker 7 And we can only figure that out by talking to them. If we're just going, oh, okay, no dog, great.

Speaker 7 Do your stairs have a handrail? Oh, yeah, okay, good. Check.
Okay, that one's good. When was the last time that your roof was completely redone? You know what everyone says? Five years ago.

Speaker 7 Okay, great. Five years ago.
So it's like we're not actually talking to the person. Because if you do then spend that time, now your conversation's an hour long and no one's given us an hour.

Speaker 7 You're never, you're not getting an hour on personal lines anymore on the phone with somebody. Yeah.

Speaker 11 And that's stopping you from going into the conversation and figuring out what their values and beliefs are and what's important to them. Yeah.

Speaker 11 And I'm not saying this because I want to get out of work. I'm just saying it's an unnecessary need.
We need to validate, not

Speaker 11 chase down and

Speaker 11 do all of that stuff. I certainly don't want to take away anything that's our

Speaker 11 responsibility.

Speaker 11 But the, you know, I mean, I know I can get the data right now. I just

Speaker 11 haven't got to it right now. We don't need those big,

Speaker 11 you know, a handful or under a handful of data providers to get at it anymore it's so abundant out there um and it's cheap and uh

Speaker 11 you know we can get it now it's pretty much available for anybody so you know it's just a matter of of

Speaker 11 getting the time to actually bring it in but you're going to need an api you're going to do one-offs but but you get my point we should not we really shouldn't be doing that anymore it's it we need to actually make sure it's correct and get into the conversation to figure out how we can actually

Speaker 11 be the advisor role that we were meant to be. If we don't create that space and we stay buried underneath our work, it's going to really just start taking away from the profit margin.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 7 the next level to freeing up time is properly setting expectations for the relationship as well, which drastically improves retention.

Speaker 7 You know, so much of retaining business, and this I know from my old, obviously I haven't renewed a single policy yet, six months, six months in, but from eight years in the business prior, so much of that

Speaker 7 was taught to me by my father-in-law, who the last 10 minutes of every conversation was setting expectations for the next conversation, or if you are ultimately binding that policy, setting expectations for what the relationship would look like moving forward.

Speaker 7 And by doing that, Our clients at the, when I was with the Merry Group, there were no surprises or, you know, rarely surprises.

Speaker 7 one-offs were the surprises it wasn't like people were rant things were randomly happening and they're you know what the heck is going on they always knew what the next steps were and that's why the murray group has a amazing retention rate and i and i look at

Speaker 7 today

Speaker 7 you know a lot of times when i when i listen to someone talk about struggling with their retention rate so often when you dive into it it's because they're they either feel like they don't have the time or they're not able to make the time in their business to um to to properly set those expectations so the customer knows what's coming what's coming next

Speaker 11 yeah

Speaker 11 those are tough ones because i you know the first thing that pops into my mind i'm not saying it's going to be everybody's case sometimes it's you know geographical or it's the markets there but if you're matching coverage and beating price you're i i really think it's not going to be a whole lot longer before you're feeling some pain.

Speaker 11 They need to know why they're buying you and they want to buy you. Yeah.

Speaker 11 One of the scariest things a client ever said to me was like, that's what I have you for. And I'm like, whoa, I thought you were cheap.

Speaker 11 You know what I mean? It's like, if we let our own opinions and judgments go into it, aren't we managing the risk by default to the worst?

Speaker 11 Yeah. You know, we have to give them that opportunity.
And I don't think it's really about price unless it's ridiculous.

Speaker 11 I mean, if it's tripled and, you know, double or triple, it doesn't make any sense. Help them out, help them out where they they need to be.
But

Speaker 11 usually, you know, if I were to send out a text message to 100 prospects, and I've done this before, and I say, what's most important to you about your insurance? You know,

Speaker 11 depending on their situation, but if we're talking normal, stable people,

Speaker 11 prices usually last mentioned at all. They want to know they have the right coverage.
They want to know they can get service, callbacks.

Speaker 11 do I have what I need?

Speaker 11 So when you get blinded by the, you know, when they don't know what they're buying is when they default the price, which is what we do with stuff outside of insurance all the time.

Speaker 11 It's the natural thing to do. But when we know why we're buying it, what the value of it is, what the differences are, then most of the time we end up paying a lot more than what we expected.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 So let's say

Speaker 7 you're able to, and this is kind of where I want to finish, just being respectful of your time. I want to coast this in because we've gone a lot of other places other than data, but it's all good.

Speaker 7 It's all good.

Speaker 7 A lot of times I bring someone on for a specific reason and we end up talking.

Speaker 7 So, okay, let's say,

Speaker 7 let's say you are able to quote unquote own your data, right?

Speaker 7 And I know you do a tremendous amount of work inside of Infusionsoft, and you know, your Infusionsoft probably looks like you know, a cartoon metropolis with all the buildings and networks and and throughways, and you're able to actually take ownership of it.

Speaker 7 Like, what is possible?

Speaker 7 What do you see as a, as a deliverable result? Like, where do you see agencies being able to go when they can actually pull this stuff out?

Speaker 7 You know, you probably being one of the few agencies that has gotten close to this idea or as close as possible.

Speaker 4 You know,

Speaker 7 what do you, where do you see agencies being able to go? They've probably heard so far and gone, this sounds great.

Speaker 7 i can buy into everything these two yahoos have said but what the hell's in it for me and what are you able to do because you've spent time thinking about this

Speaker 11 yeah you're i mean it's really limitless if you go from any sort of memo or to ongoing the relationship and getting out of the cross-sell business i i I feel cheap when I saw that because it makes me feel like I'm getting a quick hit.

Speaker 11 But if you can begin to look at the household or small business of

Speaker 11 overall risk, right, there's a lot of stuff that you can do in there. But if we add direct access through full APIs to the carriers and our management system,

Speaker 11 if necessary,

Speaker 11 you can start to trigger stuff. Some stuff you can never fully automate, in my opinion.
I don't want to send a cancellation.

Speaker 11 notification to some guy who just passed away or got divorced or moved out of the state and you know legitimately we lost them

Speaker 11 The same way with if you're sending an automation to somebody saying you reviewed it and it looks great to just go ahead and renew, well,

Speaker 11 you don't want to send them something saying you're going to reshop it when you just added a 16-year-old, right?

Speaker 11 So there's some stuff, you know, you could tag them when that event happens if your automation system's on the tag system, but you can really start getting into their lives with meaningful, direct, specific to them communications.

Speaker 11 and so far the ones that we can do are having incredible results and uh

Speaker 11 it it's really fascinating to see it actually living and breathing and stuff because we're not sending them any newsletter or pumpkin recipe or stay safe on the fourth of july the only thing they're getting from from our office is just a happy birthday the rest is specific to managing their risk when that happens.

Speaker 11 Some of it's manually triggered. Some of it happens through automation and their reaction, but

Speaker 11 it really starts letting them feel like you're there for them and you're not gonna send them junk. And

Speaker 11 it can, for me, it can never be a miscommunication because then they're gonna go tone deaf on everything.

Speaker 11 So

Speaker 11 I'm having a hard time answering your question because

Speaker 11 as the risk changes or things happen within the policies, you can actually direct it to happen.

Speaker 11 But you can also know before it happens. So you're aware of it and making it visible.
And I think that's where it is, is a lot of times we can let them experience the insurance.

Speaker 11 We can facilitate them managing their risk as their lifestyle or life events happen in an automated way to where the agent still produces it,

Speaker 11 the advisor is still advising. it's just they have have the support just like two two question quotes uh freeze up our time right

Speaker 11 Well, if you're going to really manage middle-class household personal risk, you're going to need that same efficiency in there to start tying this all in together to support the agent.

Speaker 11 So, where you know they can free themselves up to build and maintain the relationships, is really where it'll go.

Speaker 11 I know I'm not getting too specific on that because it's really difficult to answer in one specific question, but you can actually tie things to the account that's specific to them, whether it's claims,

Speaker 11 renewals uh

Speaker 11 rounding out through education stuff like that yeah

Speaker 7 i think you know the way

Speaker 7 you know the way i vision i envision

Speaker 7 yes i it's it's tough i can see it i can see what you're saying it is a very difficult thing to describe you know i i this is a terrible term but it's taking like um

Speaker 7 it it really is i don't even want to say like this word but it's like taking a true holistic approach to managing an account that

Speaker 7 I think traditionally we'd be seen as too small to do that, right?

Speaker 7 When we think about holistic risk management, we're thinking about these big middle market accounts that are 250 to 500,000 in premium.

Speaker 7 And I believe you and agree that

Speaker 7 these solid package accounts in

Speaker 7 the, you know, that the middle class person is buying, or I i don't want to say middle class just these package accounts that people have that you can do similar risk management to them you can help them better understand and you can retain them and you can get them to draw in more customers and be magnets in and of themselves to your agency but it can't just be write the policy forget that they exist until they create a problem try to solve the problem act like that's service and then forget about them again until there's another problem right and i think that's where it's going i mean part of the reason why people

Speaker 11 default to price is that they're not working with somebody that's actually taking the time to get to know them to see what they need.

Speaker 11 But also, we don't really have an efficient way of letting them experience what it'll do for them before they need it in a way to actually go back and re-experience that if they're ever in question, all while collaborating with a real insurance advisor.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 7 And it's why,

Speaker 7 well, I've been preaching content marketing for 12 years in the insurance industry.

Speaker 7 I think it now more than ever, you know, I look at, I look at when you look inside operations, I think that

Speaker 7 are really running well.

Speaker 7 It's a content operation. You have to be thinking in terms of how are you explaining things to people.
I don't mean content like, you know, doing fancy videos and all this stuff.

Speaker 7 Not that video is not important. I just mean even just simple emails, simple communications, templated messaging that you can, you know, just slightly personalize when needed.

Speaker 7 You know, these, these types of communications, thinking through, hey,

Speaker 7 in this moment when they're doing this, we need to be thinking about how we say this thing to them. That's content, even if it's not fancy, you know.

Speaker 7 the kind of fancy content I think a lot of people think about, that's it's an incredibly important part about about delivering our product because we don't, they're not Jordans, you know, we're not selling sneakers, we're not selling, you know,

Speaker 7 some product we can take an Insta banger of. We're we're selling a promise.
And if you can't describe it or talk about it, then I think it gets lost on people.

Speaker 11 Yeah,

Speaker 11 it does. And I, you know, I mean, the good news is, is that

Speaker 11 All that is available to us. And I mean, it's going to come one way or another, maybe in some form.
And I think, you know, we're definitely in for disruption.

Speaker 11 We'll, we'll see a lot of the ones that are going to challenge us fall away. We'll see some of the ones we have maybe not be so dominant.
But

Speaker 11 when you said three years, no doubt. I mean, no longer than five years, we're going to be operating totally different.

Speaker 11 And we're going to have to

Speaker 11 maintain

Speaker 11 the profitability. Because what was that Grant Davis said? I love that guy, but he's like, nobody needs a quote.

Speaker 11 And he's right because, you know, you need the, you need to know what your risk is. And

Speaker 11 now with the technologies there, it's very easily done to actually bring it to life

Speaker 11 and let them experience it and re-experience it when they forgot. So when it comes time to renewal, they understand why.

Speaker 11 Dude.

Speaker 7 This has been an awesome conversation. I could do this for like three more hours.
I don't even know.

Speaker 7 I usually know by this point what I'm going to title the podcast because you'll have said something, the guests will have said something.

Speaker 7 I don't even know what I'm going to title this yet because we've gone so many different places, but I've absolutely

Speaker 7 connect and spend some time. And you gave me some great advice when I was first forming Rogue, and you spent some time with me, and I really appreciated that.

Speaker 7 And I'm just a huge fan of what you're doing, man. And I love the Facebook group.
And I think that

Speaker 7 I think that the way you're thinking about the business is the future of the business. And I just posted an article on LinkedIn called the human optimized agency.

Speaker 7 And I believe there's a lot of different forms of that. There's no like right way.
But this

Speaker 7 concept of

Speaker 7 being human while actually optimizing your agency for the future, we all have to be thinking through this filter. And

Speaker 7 I think you're one of the guys right on the leading edge. So I just appreciate you and I appreciate your perspective.

Speaker 11 Great. I appreciate that.
Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 7 Yeah. And for everyone listening at home, I'll have,

Speaker 7 is it cool if I shout out the Facebook group? Anyone can join that? That's open, right?

Speaker 11 Sure.

Speaker 7 Yeah. So I'll have links to pure potential, pure, pure potential insurance.
I'm going to butcher it.

Speaker 11 That's a long one. Don't worry about it.

Speaker 7 Pure potential insurance automation. It's tremendous.

Speaker 7 Even if you're not like an automation geek or you don't have to be just to know that this stuff is happening, to see it come through, to see the conversations, it's tremendous. And

Speaker 7 I'll have that linked up and everything. But hey, man, I appreciate you.
Be good.

Speaker 11 That's right.

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

Speaker 11 Breaking

Speaker 11 Wanted to shoot drinks and smoke the joint buttons?

Speaker 11 Wanted a few drinks and smoke the joint bubbles?

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