RHS 056 - Jeff Roy Schooling the Game

Speaker 1 I know every operating system

Speaker 2 in my current role. I'm in a company.

Speaker 3 I've got five years of experience and have worked with several people from your company.

Speaker 4 I've been recognized for my passion. My team is everything.

Speaker 3 LinkedIn delivers candidates who rise above the rest with an up-to-date view into shared connections, skills, and interests you won't find anywhere else.

Speaker 3 See why 86% of small businesses who post a job on LinkedIn get a qualified candidate within a day. Post a job for free at linkedin.com/slash Pandora.
LinkedIn, your next great hire is here. here.

Speaker 2 Here for the Lowe's early Black Friday deals?

Speaker 4 You're right on time for some of our biggest savings. We're talking up to 50% off select major appliances, plus up to an extra 25% off when you bundle select major appliances.

Speaker 4 Holiday lights going up soon? Select ladders are up to 50% off right now. Get Black Friday prices without the Black Friday crowds.
Lowe's, we help. You save.
Valent through 1119.

Speaker 4 Selection varies by location. Select locations only.
While supplies last. See Lowe's.com for more details.

Speaker 6 At Capella University, learning online doesn't mean learning alone.

Speaker 6 You'll get support from people who care about your success, like your enrollment specialist who gets to know you and the goals you'd like to achieve.

Speaker 6 You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program. Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals.

Speaker 6 A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu.

Speaker 1 What up everybody and welcome back to the show. And I mean the show, the podcast.
You are here and you're getting something special today.

Speaker 1 Not special because of anything I did, special because I'm lazy. And what I mean by that is I recorded an episode that you've already heard if you listen to this show

Speaker 1 with Jack Wingate. And it was amazing.
And I got to the end of that episode and I hit stop record. And then as always, we kept chatting about a couple different things.

Speaker 1 And then I had daisy chained episodes. So meaning I had scheduled Jack Wingate and then right after Jack Wingate, I had scheduled Jeff Roy.
Yes, that Jeff Roy.

Speaker 1 Well, me and Jack are bullshitting

Speaker 1 and Jeff Roy pops into the Zoom and then we just started rapping. All of us, all three of us started rapping.
And I just hit the record button. And

Speaker 1 frankly, we didn't even really talk about a lot of the stuff that I wanted to talk about with Jeff because Jack was there in the most positive way. Like

Speaker 1 we were just rapping and going and talking about stuff that

Speaker 1 insurance people talk about. And it was one of those moments that I felt had to be captured.

Speaker 1 It's such a pleasure to share this moment with you because I feel like this is the way

Speaker 1 really forward-thinking, forward-leaning insurance agency owners think. Like, this is where their minds are.

Speaker 1 This is what the conversations are like over a glass of whiskey or a couple beers beers or whatever when we can actually get together. And

Speaker 1 it's just such a pleasure to share with you. I mean, quite literally, this is why I do this podcast, is being able to share moments like this with you.

Speaker 1 And I wish I could share more of them with you, but glad that I got this one to be able to

Speaker 1 give to you. And I hope that you learn something and I hope that you take something away.
And I hope you connect with Jack and connect with Jeff and I hope it helps you grow your business.

Speaker 1 Before we get there though, I want to give a real quick shout out to Advisor Evolved. Chris Langell and his team at Advisor Evolved do an incredible job.
I get questions all the time about,

Speaker 1 you know, Ryan, what's your, who built your website? Who built your website? And I tell them, there is no other website option in the insurance industry other than Advisor Evolved.

Speaker 1 There are other website providers, but if you're looking to actually grow your business, then you need Advisor Evolved.

Speaker 1 You need to be part of the community, you need the product, and you need all the tools that come with an Advisory Evolved website.

Speaker 1 Go to advisor evolved.com or just Google Advisor Evolved or Google Chris Langell.

Speaker 1 Most likely, you'll get a picture of him on the Jersey Shore

Speaker 1 doing his thing. But,

Speaker 1 you know, I mean,

Speaker 1 that's an inside joke. He's from Philly, actually, but uh, Chris is an incredible guy, he grew up in the independent insurance industry world.

Speaker 1 He transitioned that into a love for website design and has built the website product for independent insurance agents. Get an advisory volved website today if you don't have one.

Speaker 1 You are losing business if you do not have an advisory volved website because people aren't finding you. And I have an advisory volved website.
It was there was a no-brainer for me.

Speaker 1 He was my first call. And

Speaker 1 I just highly recommend Chris Langell and Advisory Evolved. And with that, I give you

Speaker 1 Jeff Roy, Jack Wingate, and myself just wrapping insurance.

Speaker 7 And then I was looking at Tech Canary and then Applied by Tech Canary. So Seth's working.
getting us integrated with applied.

Speaker 7 Hopefully that works because Applied's got 70% of the market up here and they've got the best rating.

Speaker 7 So we're 80 personal lines i can't live without their rater so i have to love them and meanwhile they're gouging the shit out of me on price but can't fix it right so i'm not a big applied fan but i'm i have to i have to love them and move on right so yeah it's kind of that's i was i didn't i knew that you were kind of in that beta group i didn't know that that you didn't have the full thing i mean

Speaker 8 is it is are you doing

Speaker 7 what you thought it would do well it will once i got the setup like nobody's really set up marketing cloud for insurance that i know so we we the good thing is we're doing a lot of really kick-ass marketing stuff we've already got all the marketing but it's in 10 different devices so we're taking 10 into one and we're gonna have the data once that's done and i think we're gonna be able to help a lot of the other agents because i thought most other agents were doing what we're doing and i'm finding out that we're doing a lot more stuff than the average joe so we're gonna help other agents and they're gonna help us they're gonna have some cool shit like hey this work in canada i'm gonna grab that bring it north of the border and as i always say canadianize it and uh vice versa they'll be Americanized and stuff, so it should work pretty decent.

Speaker 7 But yeah, so things are okay. Like I said, never content, never happy, but we're progressing.
And, you know, as you said, as an owner, you're never, there's no finish line.

Speaker 7 You know, as soon as you think you hit the finish line, that's when the truck hits you in the side of the head. So you can't stay complacent, you can't not do anything, and you can't cruise.

Speaker 7 And that's what I'm, you know, we're just grinding right now. I've never grinded, ever.

Speaker 7 I always keep saying I've never grinded so hard, but I'm grinding because there really isn't much else I can do anyway. You know, I can go sit by my pool and hang out, but I can't really travel.

Speaker 7 I can't go to the U.S., can't go anywhere. Like, you know, I'm going to a friend's cottage for the summer for a couple days.
That's my holiday.

Speaker 7 Like, we plan to go away a few places, but that's all kibosh. So the good thing is work on our business and make sure our people are safe and help out in our community.
And yeah, that's kind of our

Speaker 7 gig.

Speaker 8 My wife said, you know, it's,

Speaker 8 she knew I always worked hard. She said, but since because I'm working in the basement right now, dude.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 7 Pretty damn good basement. I like all the

Speaker 7 all the video stuff, man.

Speaker 8 You got the sweet road mic back there, Hamlet? Yeah, like

Speaker 7 you're like, you shoot, you shooting like X-rated movies down there.

Speaker 8 You get all the stuff.

Speaker 8 But, you know, she was like, I knew you worked hard, but

Speaker 8 having you be in here for what, three or four or five straight months, she's like, you don't stop.

Speaker 8 And it's like you said, though, I mean, if I was, if I still had to go out and just, all I did was sell policies, I'd shoot myself in the head. But there's always a different challenge every day.

Speaker 7 So I'm, you know, that's what keeps you on. That's what keeps it exciting because there's always, I like solving something that hasn't been solved or blazing a trail.

Speaker 7 And, you know, I like being uncomfortable because I always seem to be uncomfortable. That's the gig.
I'm kind of getting used to it. But that's good.

Speaker 7 Like, you know, as I said, you're solving problems. You know, you mentioned about bottlenecks.
Like, I look back to critical paths, you know, operation management from business school.

Speaker 7 You're always trying to find the bottleneck of the critical path. And as you grow, that path moves around and you're always trying to fix a new problem.
Like it's like a video game.

Speaker 7 I put a thing on Twitter about Donkey Kong and you're going up different levels, right?

Speaker 7 And the donkeys throwing the barrels at you, and sometimes you get wonked, you get thrown down, but you get back up and you figure a way to beat the level, and then you're going, damn, I'm good.

Speaker 7 Get to the next level, it's like, holy shit, I don't know what I'm doing. And then you try to find the smartest person in the room, or somebody's already done it, and you say, hey, how did you do it?

Speaker 7 And then you rob and duplicate and make it your own, like American Idol. And it's like becoming an artist, right? You got to go on the road,

Speaker 7 play your songs, grind it. out.
That's kind of what we're doing, right? Like, that's called the best way I can give analogies to how to do it, right?

Speaker 8 So you know, Jeff, one of of the things that jack and i were talking about um during during when i was interviewing jack was uh that

Speaker 8 it feels like and this is a i don't want to say the because i don't think that's appropriate but this is a golden age or we're entering a potential golden age for independent agents and the impetus for this is not just technology which i think is the obvious answer but what you just said which is our willingness as agents to share so deeply and so openly what we're doing in our businesses with each other so that the people who are searching for solutions can find them and make them their own in their agency.

Speaker 7 Do you agree with that? Yeah, 100%. Like, you know, it's like we're a big Linux.
I'm throwing the code at now. We're all writing the code together.

Speaker 7 And, you know, I wrote the article for Hanley, right, for his last agent standing. Actually,

Speaker 7 do you want to do a screen share? Throw me a screen share up. Can you screen share it? I'll show you something cool.

Speaker 8 I think you just have to request it or something.

Speaker 7 You have to make me the presenter. So right-click and make me the host.
I know, Ryan, you're always in control, but we're going to flip it over. Today, the part of Ryan Hanley will pay by Jeff Roy.

Speaker 8 I'm okay with that.

Speaker 7 All right,

Speaker 8 I like this. I don't even have to do anything.

Speaker 7 This is like the best episode ever. Jack just interviews Jeff.

Speaker 8 I just sit here and listen. It's great.

Speaker 7 I'm going to show you this just quickly.

Speaker 7 I don't know if you can see it. Can you see that? Maybe I didn't write screw it.
Can you see that PDF or not?

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 7 The customer journey. Can you see all this?

Speaker 8 I I see Hanley downturn. Okay.
That's not making me feel super good.

Speaker 7 No, it's not what it does.

Speaker 8 These notes were those.

Speaker 7 It's the typo, no, no downturn.

Speaker 8 This is Hanley slash, and then there's a J-A-C-K-A-S-S. And I was like, what, what is going on here? Come on.

Speaker 7 No, no, it's all, it's all, it's all good, buddy. Let me just, I'm just trying to find my,

Speaker 7 why is PDF not coming up? Interesting.

Speaker 7 Just a second. One thing.
I guess my PDF is on the wrong screen.

Speaker 7 Didn't know how sensitive this was. Give me one second.

Speaker 7 I don't want to take too much of your time, but I just want to see if I can get this to pop up.

Speaker 8 Oh, damn it. Anytime I can sit in on a group of Jeff Roy and Ryan Hanley, I'm just going to sop it up.

Speaker 7 Ah, there we go. So I had the wrong thing open, but give me one second.

Speaker 8 I even show you my throat punch shirt. Boom.
Nice.

Speaker 7 Oh, Seth's just Seth sent me a motorhead shirt. It's pretty cool.

Speaker 7 We're bought a bunch of roadies going on the road. So I was wearing it for my last podcast that we're doing a Canadian podcast called the Digital Insurance Plaint.

Speaker 7 And Seth sent me a shirt and I wore it in the podcast, but I don't know. Nobody really asked me what it meant, so it's too bad.
But give me one second. I'll bring this up.
That is weird.

Speaker 7 I don't like how this screen shares.

Speaker 8 Yeah,

Speaker 8 you can pick your entire monitor, or you can pick very specific.

Speaker 7 Like it didn't come up because I had different versions of this, but let me try this again. Screen share.

Speaker 7 All right, there we go. Can you see that

Speaker 7 in one second? It's going to give you

Speaker 7 okay, you're going to see that now.

Speaker 8 Oh, here comes something. You see that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Now we can see it.

Speaker 7 We're building out

Speaker 7 my article on compared to ease that we're building customer journey maps where you go from awareness to consideration and all that stuff. We're building out journeys.

Speaker 7 So this is our 17-page document where we're focusing on parents and young children, and we're trying to move them through the funnel: awareness, interest, consideration, action, purchase.

Speaker 7 And then we've looked at three segments so we took Seth or not Seth but Jay Baer's five by five model and we just came up with three resource strain parents do the right thing parents and balls and the air parents and then we looked at the segments of you know why they're trying to stretch the dollar we kind of

Speaker 7 explain them then we break it down for awareness we start writing blogs and we have questions that we answer in each segment so we're going to create videos we're going to create blogs i've got another page about a 10 page document our team put together hey at this stage what does it look like well we have a video that pop up we might have you know some ads on facebook that that communicate parents so so we've kind of gone through the whole journey where we talk about you know the interest

Speaker 7 you know some parents we're going to talk about being frugal so we've went through the whole journey in terms of different pages and segments and basically figured out what to do in the entire journey and then at each spot they can jump into a funnel and that way basically we hopefully they go i want to jump in and get a rate from these guys these guys complete me so we're building this up we're building about probably about fifth 25 pieces of content content that'll be all interconnected and we're building a content journey to go after these personas to see if we can bring in a better class of business and then we've then after we do that we're gonna apply it to dinks which means double income no kids we're gonna apply the same process and some of the articles will work we just need to write it towards double income versus family so that's kind of where we're at right now we're gonna put this on marketing cloud and hopefully this drives traffic like we've never done a better quality of business we find we can bring quality business in but it's not always quality uh 900 leads,

Speaker 7 three or four hundred are shit. We don't want to write, but we're still bringing that business in, or I shouldn't say shit, but not super quality, right? Our markets don't really want that.

Speaker 7 So, and then we find we get 50% of our leads we actually get in touch with. So, some of the people are just playing around.
So, out of 900 leads, there's what, 450, 500 serious leads.

Speaker 7 And then we have to, once we really work those leads well, but we get a lot of stuff like the shaft.

Speaker 7 Like, I guess when you're panning for gold, a lot of stuff flies out of the thing when you're panning, looking for the gold.

Speaker 7 And that's kind of the process we got so we're just trying to refine that right now but I thought you'd find that kind of cool we got this I didn't go through we get a 17 page document that we're working through and working through a persona building all this content journey like videos blogs whatever we need to do and then we have a funnel that when they click on it it'll look like a family and it'll speak their language so hopefully when we get somebody into that funnel they're going wow these guys get me and we even have contests and uh one of the things we're doing i don't tell anybody but we're doing a night a coloring book uh for the night the excalibur night coloring book we're going to give out in our new business kits because kids will color it it'll tell a story in there and uh you know one of our staff said the vet gave me a book when i was nine and i still have it to this day because i love that coloring book and it meant a lot to me so never thought of a coloring book so we're going to build a coloring book out like how many insurance brokers would build a coloring book right so but we're going to do it because it's on brand and people will get it in their new business kit and it'll be kind of a experience they'll be also getting meanwhile the the the book will talk about we looked at that everything i learned i learned in kindergarten We could take those messages and put it into a book for kids and actually, you know, they're coloring plus their learning stuff at the same time.

Speaker 7 So that's kind of one of the projects we're working on. It's kind of deep, but hopefully at the end of the day, everybody's like, wow, these guys get me.

Speaker 7 And they get into our funnel and we write them and we maintain them as clients, right?

Speaker 8 So hey, Jeff, is that, and I'm sorry, Ryan. No,

Speaker 8 is that your normal, like, I identify a niche? So right there, you identified this niche of parents. Is that your normal workflow? Or is this like, hey, let's try this?

Speaker 8 Because, I mean, that's an in-depth funnel and

Speaker 8 strategy.

Speaker 7 We're trying this for the first time. I'm just sharing with you what we're doing.
Like, we've never done this. Like, we're running AdWords right now, driving people to landing pages.

Speaker 7 We're getting seven and $8 clicks.

Speaker 7 Actually, four like four or five dollar clicks. We're generating $10, $11 leads on pay-per-click.
And we're closing probably 10%, which is $100 acquisition costs, which is cool. That's working well.

Speaker 7 We're getting about 300 to 500 organic leads through our website a month. So that just comes in.
And we, again, you can't control what comes in through your website as much.

Speaker 7 You write content and you drive people, but good stuff comes in, bad stuff comes in. But the good thing is it continues to turn.
We just have to keep working on the SEO.

Speaker 7 But we've never actually said, hey, this niche we want to really go after. The one thing Excalibur hasn't done well is we're not niching anything.
And we don't have any affinity groups.

Speaker 7 And we're just good at personal lines.

Speaker 7 And we have a really good process and we have a good brand, but we don't really go after you know group plans and stuff like that we've never done well at that or been able to kick ass or affinity programs and that's something we'd like to bring on board in the next year if we can get this dialed in but if we can be the people that hey families excalibur gets us and go after that whole thing and people go wow Excalibur understands me.

Speaker 7 I'm going to click through. I want to know more because they're speaking my language.

Speaker 7 Because most right now our content is generic and it speaks to everybody. Like, you know, hey, we get defenders, blah, blah, blah.
But I'm speaking of the pain points of a family member.

Speaker 7 Like, hey, you got no sleep last night, you got an hour to do your insurance, it's five o'clock, you've got three hours' sleep, and is your insurance broker there? Can I book an appointment?

Speaker 7 We have all that stuff right there for people to consume to hopefully get them into the funnel, right?

Speaker 7 We actually speak what their pain points are and we address it with our services, and we, you know, we speak the language of parent. That's what we're trying to do.

Speaker 7 So, this is something that, again, this con we're just riffing with you guys. We haven't figured out if this is going to work.

Speaker 7 I wrote an article about agents writing random acts of content where they'll write a fucking kick-ass blog about whatever, whatever and then you know they get some SEO traffic but

Speaker 7 I have a picture that shows basically you know a fantasy island or a beautiful island a deserted island and then basically a shark's mouth where the shark mouth the content's crap and eats you the the bacon island or the isolated item you go there's one great content you're stuck there and then if you have multiple and a content experience you get a resort and you basically get people into the three buckets.

Speaker 7 So we're trying to figure out the resort concept where

Speaker 7 we parachute people into a good experience and hopefully they consume stuff and they answer their questions, they jump into our funnel and we connect with them. That's what we're trying to do.

Speaker 7 So that's what my article, in a nutshell, is what I wrote for

Speaker 7 Paradiso's magazine. And I talk about this.
Now we're actually, this is the first time we've actually applied it at this depth.

Speaker 7 And I have no idea if it's going to work, but I think it's going to work better than what we're doing now to bring people in.

Speaker 7 But I'll know a lot more in the next three to five months when we roll it out, we test it, we fail, it doesn't work, and I'm pissed off and we have to tweak things, but that's kind of the things I just share with you guys to see what you thought.

Speaker 8 Yeah, and I get, I think, so for us, I started doing this at the beginning of the year to a way, way lesser extent than what you're talking about.

Speaker 8 But, you know, for us, putting content out was always just sort of a freaking shotgun approach. Like, hey, I'm going to write about this today or whatever.

Speaker 8 And so, you know, I had Jared over here, you know, hammering out, you know, Instagram because he loves that. And so our messaging was all disjointed.

Speaker 8 And so, you know, it's kind of selfishly, I knew I needed to tweak some of our content pages like you know the workers comp page or whatever so i would pick like a theme of the week and we still do it to this day and it's helped us tremendously so this week it's workers comp so everything we post on social is all going to be built around this one thing which is basically like what taking what you did is is taking that up about 15 000 notches but i i think that's where a lot of people mess up is that there's no plan for their content it's just sort of rapid fire i'm going to throw this out there and see if it sticks instead of kind of like what Hanley was saying, like he doesn't promote his content as well as he should.

Speaker 8 It's the same thing. It's what's the strategy and the plan.
And once you, that's half the battle right there.

Speaker 7 Well, it's a flip because people look at, you know, our SEO guy can say, hey, here's the 10 topics people are talking about. I need to have an article about that.

Speaker 7 And you write an article and hope somebody shows up and you might have a call to action on the page. But what's the next step? They don't want to take your call to action.
You're done. They'll bail.

Speaker 7 So a lot of people consume one page. They're gone.
Right. And that's the bad content journey.
Where if you can build, you know, once they're here,

Speaker 7 here's eight other questions they may ask, and you actually have them linked into that page, and they can consume it. Then, you're creating that's a content journey.

Speaker 7 And I went to a thing called Uberflip last year in August, and I was the only insurance guy there out of like 900 people. And that's where I learned at Connex about, hey, here's how marketers do it.

Speaker 7 Here's what B2B, B2C look like. And I started speaking a different language, and just being around those people taught me, wow, we don't get it at all.

Speaker 7 You know, our page looks kind of cute, and uh our brand's good but we're just not our content's not nailing it so everybody's talking about blog blog blog well blog's good but you got to blog with purpose you got to create the journey so and that's where I think everybody's got hung up where they wrote a couple blogs nothing's happening they give up and it's like you know it's like doing a workout program.

Speaker 7 I'm going to go to

Speaker 7 P90X and do three days and want to look jacked or I'm going to do CrossFit.

Speaker 7 I want to go to CrossFit for three days and be in that and win a competition. It doesn't work that way.
And that's the problem problem right now.

Speaker 7 I think a lot of people just, they want the easy fix and they don't want to do the hard work and they don't want to learn. Like this is this hard stuff.
Like, I just, you know, it's not easy stuff.

Speaker 7 And I don't know if it's going to work awesome.

Speaker 7 There's a lot of, there's risk involved and we're spending a lot of money and time on it, but I feel it's the right path and I feel it's going to be better than what we have.

Speaker 7 And I think we're taking a step up from what we were doing before. So I'm confident that it's secure.
When Jay Bear says, here's what you need to do,

Speaker 7 we took his formula. It's a 230-page book.

Speaker 7 If you want me to send you the PDF, Jack, happy to send it to you ryan please do i've got it i can flip it over to you uh i think i got your email jack i'm not sure if if not uh i know i got you on facebook so uh flip me a messenger and i'll flip it over to you i can do a we transfer but it's good and again we had to we looked at it and then the problem is we tried executing it it was harder trying to come up with the questions in each category than we thought and then what does the content look like come up with questions do you just answer it with a blog no you got to have some video you have some variety so so that's kind of what we're going through and i don't know if it's going to work, but at least we're going to try.

Speaker 7 And as I always tell people, launch, learn, fail, fix, right?

Speaker 8 What's amazing to me about that, Jeff, is that I'm sure it's the same way in Canada, but I can sit around here and I can Google,

Speaker 8 you know, insurance agent, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. And if I find people's websites, if I can find them, they're crap.
I've been to your website. It was a good website to begin with.

Speaker 8 It wasn't just a pretty picture that a lot of people like to throw up there. I mean, it had content.
And Jeff just said, you know, it's not just about doing blogs.

Speaker 8 You know, it's got to be deeper than that. I mean,

Speaker 8 you're the 1%

Speaker 8 of people, and gosh, I hope I'm getting there at some point in time, that understand that it's not just about doing the minimal work.

Speaker 8 You've taken what no one else is doing and said, shit, this doesn't work. It's not good enough.

Speaker 7 I got to do better. I mean, that's it.

Speaker 8 He said, Jack, he said, you know, he got 900. leads in one month.
And people are going to hear that and go, you know, how the hell did he do that?

Speaker 8 What's it, you know, what's what's it you know what are you doing what's your secret and then you you know you hear it's an 18 page breakout document outlining a customer journey with personas and questions and second and third tier content with multimedia follow-ups hard follow-ups I mean that's how you get to that level and I think in general we talked a little bit about this one during our thing too like so many people are looking for that quick fix and the answer every time with every person who you talk to who's successful in in any regard the answer is always i went deeper than everybody else for longer than everybody else and that and eventually i got there that that is always the answer and i mean that's jeff you've been diving into this stuff for a decade i mean we've been talking about content for 10 years so it's not like this is you know and it and that shouldn't turn anyone off you know i don't want people to hear that and go well geez you know i'm screwed because i you know i don't in 10 years

Speaker 7 but you can get really far fast but then that next level i think is what takes a lot of work but but get really far fast like do the work put put some work in and time and start to think about it and yeah there's some hacks like you know again you have to grind it out there's no such thing as an overnight success and you know malcolm god lost 10 000 hours you look at all those things but there are some hacks to get through it and again the hacks are your agent friends that have tried things and learning, jumping on their learning curve.

Speaker 7 And I think, was it Reader Rabbit or Task Rabbit? Sorry, Reader Rabbit.

Speaker 7 I think that was a video game or a book, but Task Rabbit, the one they talked about the power of the human cloud, where, you know, a lot of people would go on board, they would have a task, people would hire them.

Speaker 7 And what happened is all the people on the board started sharing skills. So I might have had one skill and I shared it and I could do 10 different things.

Speaker 7 So they're sharing and monetizing everybody else. So Jeff Roy was good at mowing lawns.
Before you know it, he's a handyman and he can do 10 more things. And his revenue went up 10 times.
Why?

Speaker 7 Because he shared and he was part of a bigger collective. And that's where the agents that will be successful are going to be part of a bigger collective.
They're going to share.

Speaker 7 And that's, you've seen pockets. You know, you get CAS's agency intelligence.
You got IAOA. There's a bunch of different groups out there that work together.
Now, some of them got really big.

Speaker 7 So some of that sharing is hard because it's so big, right? You need almost a smaller group. People set up a mastermind group, right?

Speaker 7 The power of the mastermind, whatever it is you do but the more times you're out there running into people belly to belly face to face and again in the covid world zoom to zoom or go-to meeting to go to meeting the more chance you have of stumbling upon man I never thought of it that way or that idea worked for them why isn't it working for me or you know better yet that person wow they don't I can't believe they're doing it if they can do it I can do it right like there's a lot of that stuff right like but you know a lot of times people look like they make it look really easy but it's kind of like the duck that looks calm in the surface and the legs are going crazy below there's a lot more below the iceberg or the water than most people see and that's where it's just about grinding it out right and it's not being scared to fail i know everybody wants to not fail i think the only reason we're starting to get a little bit better is we're not scared to fail and we're still trying stuff we're not sitting around waiting for you know things to fly into our hands and you know just we're not waiting for things to come to us we're trying to make things happen and we're trying to do things and a lot of you know i bet you i've had way more failures than most people in the last year That's why we've learned, right?

Speaker 7 Like, I'm just failing fast, failure, right? Fail forward, whatever you want to say. Just in fact, I feel like I'm giving one of my talks, but it's the same thing, right?

Speaker 7 Like, it's what you do, it's got to be part of your DNA.

Speaker 7 And as soon as that's part of your culture and your DNA, the chances are you can accelerate and get through things a little bit quicker, and then you're going to hit walls.

Speaker 7 Like, I keep in a wall right now, we have to scale, train better. Our training isn't good enough, and I'm trying to figure out how I can put everything online, videos, you know, basically.

Speaker 7 And I heard about Quantum, Jeff Shea or whatever, he's killing it. You know, he's my new superhero.
And I met him during COVID. He's part of our mastermind group.

Speaker 7 I reached out to him, and him and I had chatted during COVID. He was going to get me some masks for my area.
He got a line on it.

Speaker 7 We did, we got to know each other just over COVID, and I'm looking forward to circling back. But I look at what he's done for training.

Speaker 7 And we have to, as the agents acknowledge, if you listen to Cass talked to his assistant, I forget what her name was, off Quantum. She did a great webinar about how they're

Speaker 8 tearing.

Speaker 7 Yeah, Kayla Angert, she she killed it, in my opinion. I was at water in my plants in this hot heat, listening to her on my with my boss headset on

Speaker 7 for about, and I couldn't stop it because I'm like, wow, this is a person that solved one of the things I'm not good enough. I'm going to reach out to Caitlin and, you know, I think it's

Speaker 7 education out of assurance, written down the email somewhere. That's on my list to do.

Speaker 7 I haven't had time this week, but before Friday's up, I'm going to reach out to her and Jeff and say, I want to learn how you guys do it.

Speaker 7 I want to open up the hood because you guys are doing it way better than me. I'm the first one to say, hey, we're not good enough.
Show me something better.

Speaker 7 And likewise, if somebody needs help, I'm the first one to say, here's what we're doing. You know, here's what's worked.
I openly share with people. I've always done that, right?

Speaker 7 And it's always the law of sharing reciprocity for agents. Whatever you give comes back in spades.

Speaker 7 I think that's something that if more people could learn that, and I wish the past generation shared a little bit more because there wasn't as much sharing.

Speaker 7 My dad's generation, you know, he was scared. He was by himself.
He's a business guy and he didn't have anybody to share with. And that's a very lonely existence and difficult.

Speaker 7 I look at all of us on the phone here.

Speaker 7 Jack, Ryan, we've got a pretty good network of friends. And if you can't figure it out, you don't know something, you can pick up the phone.
And there's 30 people you can call to help you.

Speaker 7 And every one of them will help you.

Speaker 7 You know what it is too humble.

Speaker 7 Nobody ever asks. Everybody's too humble to ask.

Speaker 8 It's ego.

Speaker 8 And what I love about...

Speaker 8 the network of people that

Speaker 8 that I feel I feel blessed to be part of. You two are in that, but there's hundreds, if not more, of thousands, maybe.

Speaker 8 I feel like one of the defining characteristics,

Speaker 8 and I hate to talk generationally, but at least of this segment, this particular group of agents and agency owners that are pushing up through,

Speaker 8 is that there is so much less ego.

Speaker 8 It's not when you go to events, it's not, you know, everyone's walking, well, I did this much premium this year.

Speaker 8 And oh, you know, I made the gold club of Safeco or, you know, I I mean, I mean, that's the kind of thing.

Speaker 7 My dad's bigger than your dad.

Speaker 8 Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'd be like, oh, you know, my agency's been around for 100 years and mine's been around for 107 years.

Speaker 8 And it's like no one cares anymore. You know what I mean? Like you walk around and you're talking about every aspect of your business and people are open about it.

Speaker 8 And they're like, you saying, you know, we were struggling to train. 10 years ago, you saying that, people would be looking at you going, oh, look at Jeff's agency's screwed.
Look at the weakness.

Speaker 8 You know, he can't train. You you know what I mean? That's, that would be the mentality.

Speaker 8 But today, I feel like so much of that has been brushed aside where people are now like, what's going to happen is they're going to hear that and they're going to go, oh my God, I got this great training platform.

Speaker 7 I'll share this with you.

Speaker 8 You'll be bombarded with people helping you find solutions for

Speaker 8 how to distribute what you want them to know. Like that, that's, I feel like that has flipped.
It's one of the things that makes me the most happy about where we are as an industry is that

Speaker 8 just in my time in the industry, which has not been that long, 13 years, 14 years,

Speaker 8 I feel like from then to now, the difference in terms of the ego that people have for their business, the openness, the willingness to share, that has gone 180 degrees.

Speaker 8 It's almost like who can share the most? and in a in a positive way. And I just love that about where we're at because it allows someone like me who

Speaker 8 I've failed a million more times than I've ever been successful, but it's only because, and every time that happens, I get to call one of you guys and go, hey, man, what am I screwing up here?

Speaker 8 This thing isn't working. And

Speaker 8 then everyone else is willing to take that call and share how they fixed the problem. Well, the funny thing, and I'm sure, Jeff, you're the same way.

Speaker 8 Well, I don't know because you do it at such a high level, but like Jason Kilgo, he, like, we've become, I guess, somewhat good friends.

Speaker 8 And he called me up the other day and said, hey, do you have some time to show me your video set up? Someone wanted to know my video set up. I was like, okay, come on now.

Speaker 8 But, you know, so he calls me because he wants some help and I'm more than willing to give it.

Speaker 8 And then what inevitably happens is I start talking to him about what he's doing in his business and I pick up something.

Speaker 8 So it's, you know, it's, it's, we've reached that point where it's, if someone will just ask, you're not infringing upon someone's time.

Speaker 8 I can guarantee you most of the people that I know, you know, Jeff included, you

Speaker 7 more than willing to help because they know one it's betters all of us but also you're gonna pick something up too yeah you know it's it's it's a great world we live in you know i know that uh you know my 31 years i just celebrated 31 years a broker got my license at 18 and uh you know when i first started there wasn't a lot of stuff like my dad had a george nordhouse uh binder on his wall uh IMS service, I think it was called at that point.

Speaker 7 And it's funny because I hooked up with him five years ago, and I told him I saw that book was the first thing I saw in marketing for insurance and we didn't have any marketing we didn't even have a computer I put the first computer in our office back in like 89 and uh you know but back then there wasn't I didn't have this group of people there was no internet like the internet really changed the game because you could find people all over the world once people learned how to do it you and people are never closer to find people and you could hook up with people but I didn't have that opportunity it wasn't probably until 2010 my last 10 years is when I really hooked up with people and that's when the good stuff started to happen, right?

Speaker 7 And I was in a, I would say, a vacuum or a cloud, and I didn't have the great, like, I just look at it, wow, if I had all these people now when I was younger, man, what the difference that would be.

Speaker 7 And I don't dwell on that, but I'm like, you know what, I want to make sure that I'm, you know, I try and help people as much as I can because I didn't have that access.

Speaker 7 So I want to make sure that I can help and give back in any way I can for the people that matter, right? Because I just, there wasn't much around.

Speaker 7 And, you know, I don't want other people to be in a vacuum and, you know, not see the light.

Speaker 7 And we want to try and help agency owners get to another level right it's all about getting up in levels and you know it's not the numbers that defines you it's what you do to define the numbers you know basically what what grind you're doing you know the culture everything you've built that's what it's all about and it's about enjoying the work and it's not about the destination it's about the journey along the way right and uh if you have good people and you surround yourself with good people at work and your friends i always say you become the six people we hang out with the most choose wisely it's really important that you surround yourself with good people because this business will beat you up if you're surrounded by bad people.

Speaker 7 And none of us have, it's hard enough to do this business if you're doing everything well, but surrounding yourself with bad people can be very difficult.

Speaker 8 So, yeah,

Speaker 8 cool.

Speaker 7 It was a fun session. This kind of happened in nowhere, right?

Speaker 8 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 8 I didn't mean to take up all the interviews. I'm sure you.
Oh, that's cool. I love that.
That was great. That was great.

Speaker 7 I thought it was great. I'm just like, I didn't know what Jason, I had no idea what

Speaker 7 Ryan and us were going to talk about. We're more getting caught up, so I had no idea.

Speaker 8 Any chance i can get to have you on the show it is a win for me i uh you know i always have a very small agenda and my what i was really what i really was interested in is the podcast and your idea your i i was interested i mean this i love the content journey stuff but

Speaker 8 this whole idea and and the fact that you've started a podcast and that you're you're reaching out into the market and that you're taking that time to do that um i'm interested in that mindset because i've seen I'm starting to see, like I have a local podcast that I do, but I've been podcasting since 2013.

Speaker 1 I,

Speaker 8 you know, I'm, it comes kind of naturally to me seeing you and I think Lipstone is starting a podcast and I've seen some other people starting local or niche podcasts and I'm just interested in the mentality.

Speaker 7 Like what's the, what's the, um, what's the motivation behind it?

Speaker 8 What's getting you excited about it to go and do that work? Because it's work. You know, it's work like anything else.

Speaker 7 Yeah, well, and again, I've had different opportunities, but doing it myself and putting the time in and focusing, I just don't have the time to block off. So I needed a team.

Speaker 7 And Adam Mitchell, a good broker friend of mine, Mitchell Wales Insurance.

Speaker 7 He's won the Ontario Broker of the Year, Young Gun, super good guy, good friend of mine from probably the last five or six years in the industry.

Speaker 7 Him and I chatted about, let's do a podcast, let's do a podcast. And then we both got too busy, squirrels, things happened.
You know, cutting out of time to do a podcast is not easy.

Speaker 7 So our friend Tom Reed, who used to run the digital brokers out for Aviva, the guy brought people, Adam and I knew each other, but he brought Steve Earle in, who's a broker from Eastern Canada that started up a he has a traditional brokerage and started a broker called Cheap Up from scratch.

Speaker 7 And we were all friends and we would sit there and riff and we would get together twice a year and talk geek out on insurance and talk about it probably 24-7.

Speaker 7 And, you know, we all had very strong opinions. So we thought, let's put a podcast together.
So it was going to be the digital insurance beer.

Speaker 7 And then we said, you know, pint sounds a little more sophisticated.

Speaker 7 And, you know, in the time it takes to drink a beer, we're going to try and share knowledge and experience with people from three digital brokers that have kind of differing journeys, but all have a different perspective of what it's like to change your brokerage.

Speaker 7 And yeah, we've done, I think we've done eight or nine episodes now. We've got a website.
Now we're not live, so we're going to announce it.

Speaker 7 I'm not sure when this will air, Ryan, but I might have to tell you to put this in the archive for a bit till we at least launch the digital insurance pint. But yeah, that's what we're going to do.

Speaker 7 And we're just tackling like paperless, going paperless to the consumer is a huge issue right now in Canada because our companies are saying, hey, we want to cut the paper off.

Speaker 7 And they're doing it during COVID when most of us aren't super equipped to do it or we're equipped, but it's going to take some time. So that's an example of an issue we talked about on the podcast.

Speaker 7 And all four of us have strong opinions. We're trying to have a bit of fun with it.
So, you know, I don't think we're trying to change the world with it. We're not trying to go worldwide.

Speaker 7 And, you know, we're not trying to be like the insurance guys, insurance dudes, or like Ryan Hanley, but we just think that there's an opportunity to talk about stuff.

Speaker 7 You know, there's a thing in Canada called Hockey Night in Canada where they have the hot stove lounge where three or four people in the industry talk about what's going on and share insights.

Speaker 7 That's kind of what it is, and we will invite some people on. So, you might be getting a call next year, guys.

Speaker 7 We're just trying to get through season one, and yeah,

Speaker 7 it's fun.

Speaker 7 You know, as you said, it's not easy. You got to make sure you're, I didn't say easy, but you got we got to prepare your script and your topics.

Speaker 7 and uh but uh the one thing nobody on our phone or our group is shy of is having an opinion yeah and uh we have experience and we've all been there so it's good and everybody's sharing back to what we talked about earlier it's a sharing economy it's sharing ideas and insights and you know we're doing it you know for the better of the industry and get some viewpoints out there because i don't think some of the companies and vendors listen to brokers and agents enough you know things are done to us not with us and we need to change that narrative and one of my things the last number of years is i i want to change the narrative i want to be at the table i want to make sure the broker viewpoint is there and i talk about the three legs of the stool there's only been really two legs and you know how stable a two-legged stool is not very stable that broker agent being the third stool with the company and vendors makes all the difference and you want to put a fourth leg on it you can get into accord czo the standards that's the perfect you know the perfect uh four uh four legs of the stool that gives you that stability and in the past i got to say people have making decisions without other parties in mind and they're putting themselves first.

Speaker 7 And, you know, it's got to be a win-win-win-win for everybody.

Speaker 7 So that's, I'm hopeful that we can get more dialogue, make people understand things, and we can continue to build better stuff and better experiences for consumers, right?

Speaker 8 You know, that particular topic,

Speaker 8 you know, I look at tools like Tarmica, which I'm obviously an enormous fan of. And

Speaker 8 actually, today, my interview with Ragath from the founder, you know, co-founder of Parmica just went live. And

Speaker 8 I see that as a tool

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 8 can help

Speaker 8 force the broker opinion to the table. And the reason I say that is,

Speaker 8 you know, the, the,

Speaker 8 you know, just in my four months that I've been doing this, right, on my own, I get a small business account in

Speaker 8 $2,000 in premium. I got to go to Liberty and I I got to go to Hartford.

Speaker 8 And then I got to log in Hanover system, which forces me to go onto a whole different computer to do that because it only works on Internet Explorer.

Speaker 8 And then I got to go and then I got to come back over to this computer to go to this company. And then eventually I just get bored of that and I just pick one of them and I go.

Speaker 8 And they know that that's the way it is. And then you take a tool like Tarmica, which

Speaker 8 completely democratizes that process, right? One single entry point for multiple quotes. So now it becomes now I'm, I don't, it's not just whose system do I go to first.

Speaker 8 It's I'm staring at your rates side by side with six other companies. And now my job as the broker is to decide which one of you is the best for my client.
And things start to matter beyond just

Speaker 8 is my system the first one that you go to? Or is it my system

Speaker 8 the most UI friendly or whatever like like it no longer does do these kind of almost like

Speaker 8 you know I don't even know what the right way to say it is like anecdotal items they don't matter anymore right now it's I'm staring at the prices you're $250 higher that doesn't even mean that I won't sell your policy but I actually get now to determine what's going to be best for my client because I don't have to spend all this time trying to figure out who's where and what it's all it's all standing in front of me and I look at that and that to me says as more

Speaker 8 as more

Speaker 8 agents and brokers start to adopt these tools it's going to put pressure on the carriers to build deeper relationships with the agents so that they're picked out of the list versus before where it was like oh we sent you you know on this one trip so now you choose us all the time and because of that now you're kind of uh you know we're kind of your you know a master to a certain extent because you want to go on that golf trip again

Speaker 8 and you know i'm just hoping I see that as a step in the right direction. Does that make sense? Does that logic follow or do you?

Speaker 7 Yeah, no, exactly. It makes sense.
You know,

Speaker 7 once the companies, the rules of the game,

Speaker 7 things are increasing right now, the bar is being risen. So you need to have an open API.
You need to connect things like Tarmica. If you're not, you're out of the game.
Right.

Speaker 7 And the companies that don't will be left behind. Now, it used to be who's got a better portal?

Speaker 7 That was client, that was company-centric.

Speaker 7 That was to their advantage because your agent had to to learn a bunch of portals but the best portal won and the one that got the job done you went to and got it done but is that best for the consumer no it's best for the agent and the company with the best portal now with tarmaco with an open api you can shop all the markets you can give your consumer the right advice you can make it quickly it can have it can uh it can happen you can make it go right so all positive things to do right so and and that's just and i don't mean to overstress tarmac i know people are probably sick of hearing it on this i just i'm very excited about there are other tools that do similar things, but it's these types of technology that are democratizing this process that I think help

Speaker 8 equal the playing field for all partners, the carrier, the customer, and the agent.

Speaker 8 Well, and

Speaker 8 because I sat on a couple of the task forces with carriers,

Speaker 8 they shoot themselves in the foot a lot of times because they'll spend half a billion dollars on their portal, on their rating systems, you know, to stay in their little box where they could spend a fraction of the money, open their API to someone like a tarmica, you know, and it not matter what your portal does.

Speaker 8 You know what I mean? It's like, wait a second, but they're afraid that if they get out there and exposed, then, you know, the advisor is just going to pick a price.

Speaker 8 Nah, that's that's the way it used to be, maybe, but moving forward, that's the that's the sandbox they got to plug in.

Speaker 8 And I think that that's the way it used to be because you didn't have time to go to all seven portals.

Speaker 8 You just simply did not have time to individually log information into all, you know, if you've only had seven care.

Speaker 8 So you would just go, I'm pretty sure Liberty is the lowest and their portal is the easiest. So I'm just going to do that one.
And maybe I'll do Hartford 2 just to kind of keep them honest.

Speaker 8 And I'll just tell the other carriers that they didn't get a shot at this one for whatever reason. I mean,

Speaker 8 that's not the best for the agency. It's certainly not best for the customer.
And it's really not,

Speaker 8 it's ultimately not even the best for the carrier because the carrier starts having risks that they don't even want shoved down their throat because it's just the most convenient system to use.

Speaker 7 Yeah, the game's leveling up. Just like I talked about agencies going through cycle, the game's through in cycle.
Everything gets improved. The margins get cut.
Things get more efficient.

Speaker 7 We call it the plumbing of the industry where you're just connecting data back and forth. There's no reason why companies should be competing on the plumbing.

Speaker 7 We should make it open and easy to go through. The companies can compete on the data and the stuff behind the scenes.

Speaker 7 That's where the fun happens, how they brand, you know, the features they put into their product, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 7 And again, you can spend time talking about features and do more risk management if you're not spending, your team's not spending time going into seven portals, which nobody's going to go into seven portals.

Speaker 7 We know that on a small account.

Speaker 7 And again, the other accounts are being sent out by fax or I would say, more by email and PDF, Excel, spreadsheet, Word, or if you have a Tarmica that's being marketed that way, right?

Speaker 7 In Canada, we have PolicyWorks, a few other ways to market accounts, but they still go out and the person is still a fairly automated process. And as we get more and more of the keystrokes out of it,

Speaker 7 if you cut the keystrokes, you can improve the time and the hands-on with the client and giving advice and doing that kind of stuff and building that customer experience, right?

Speaker 7 And improving the agent experience. Like, everybody talks about the customer experience.
The agent is a customer too.

Speaker 7 And I just just don't think enough focus has been given to that to make it good for us. You know, it's like, I just got to make it better than the other company, like a percent.

Speaker 7 But after I'm a percent better, I'm not going to go any further. There's not a lot of companies that really drilled into it and really look at, hey, I want to wow my broker at every touch point.

Speaker 7 There may be in the U.S., but you know,

Speaker 7 I asked agents, how many companies did anything for you during COVID? You did stuff for your clients. We get a lot of memos.
I had a few companies actually reach out and phone us,

Speaker 7 which was great. They phoned out and make sure we're okay.

Speaker 7 i had two or three companies that actually reached out with a phone call which was great but how many companies largely reached out jack did you have a lot of companies reach out

Speaker 8 just

Speaker 8 eerie did a great job of reaching out and actually saying hey you know they actually gave us a thousand bucks and that's not a huge thing but it's not that's it's not garbage and said look company did something and give you money wow in canada that would be uh i mean they did like

Speaker 8 Go because you know, they market share, give us advertising dollars, splits, and they said, look, if you go spend a thousand bucks, we don't even care how you show it back to us just make sure you put Erie on whatever is that you did we'll reimburse you the full thousand so I was like dude that's awesome so yeah I mean they were the big but they're the biggest

Speaker 7 proponent of the of that type of stuff in our agency at least yeah that's good that's good well it's one of those things that just it's all about touch points and companies haven't really thought about the touch points for agents it hasn't been updated in a lot of years some companies have i'm not going to be paying everybody the same brush but i think the companies need a complete overhaul.

Speaker 7 And it's funny, I had a presentation done for Chubb, and I was going to present to Jeffrey Graham and some of his team. And I can't wait.
COVID, unfortunately, stopped that.

Speaker 7 But as soon as things clean up, I'm excited to present to Chubb because I have some really good insights.

Speaker 7 If I was a company, here's the things I'd be doing with agents and brokers to take things to the next level. And I just don't find the companies really ask or care.
And they send a survey out.

Speaker 7 They want to get a high-net promoter score, but

Speaker 7 they don't talk about doing anything different. And it's going to be interesting how companies evolve over the next five to ten years.

Speaker 7 You know, there's going to be more consolidation, just like brokers. There's a huge consolidation in brokers.
There's a whole thing about scale.

Speaker 7 And, you know, there's going to be still scratch agencies, but there's a certain scale that if you have scale, you have the markets, you have the resources to do things, it makes things a lot easier.

Speaker 7 And you can get a lot more flow and grow a lot quicker. And you can still do well as a startup agent, don't get me wrong, but you have to have your niche.
You have to be super focused. And, you know,

Speaker 7 there's just a huge evolution going through. I don't know where it's going to end.
I don't know what it looks like. You know, we talk about who's going to win, directs, agents.

Speaker 7 That's an age-old debate that goes back and forth like a tennis ball.

Speaker 7 You know, I feel the agents in the best spot of anybody to win because we don't, you know, just like Uber doesn't own any taxis, we don't own any policies.

Speaker 7 And we have a chance to innovate and do well. So why not us? Why not now? But the connectivity is the biggest issue we feel, and the issue right now is connectivity and moving data.

Speaker 7 That is the biggest thing plaguing agents from getting to the next level. And if we don't solve that quickly,

Speaker 7 you know, we can't start using AI and machine learning to really dial things in. That's what scares me.
That's why we have to things like NEON with Seth have to get pushed through.

Speaker 7 We need more solutions like that. Agents created solutions created by agents for agents.

Speaker 7 I'm really bullish on stuff like that, right? So the whole collaboration thing.

Speaker 8 Yeah, and we talked about this just a minute ago with Ryan.

Speaker 8 It's not just the systems either. I think when Ryan, you interviewed Seth, you said, Seth is right there.

Speaker 8 And you said, what can agents do to help you and the cause who might not be on neon or might not ever be on neon or might be 10 years before they're on neon?

Speaker 8 And I don't even know that Seth gave you an answer, but here's the answer. You know,

Speaker 8 agents, you have to start doing stuff differently. I'm not saying you got to put tons of money in your agency, but like we were talking about, stop selling like Geico on price.

Speaker 8 You know, try to, and if and if your price is your value, that's fine, but find the places where you can bring value. I mean, look at what Jeff's doing.

Speaker 8 I mean, he's he's putting marketing strategies, time.

Speaker 8 Dude, that's crazy. That is a value add right there, what he's doing, and because he's willing to take the time to do it.
You know, so don't, don't just rest on your laurels.

Speaker 8 If you want to help the industry out and have it be around, get off your ass, do a little work, call Jeff, call Seth, call anybody, and let's do it.

Speaker 8 Or don't be upset when no one gives a shit about your opinion. Yes.
And that's really what, that's really where I've gotten with some of the, some of the Facebook groups. You know, I love them.

Speaker 8 I love them because it gives you a tone of what people are thinking about. And there are some good questions asked, but there are also a lot of really stupid questions, a lot of stupid comments.

Speaker 8 And by stupid, I mean actually stupid.

Speaker 8 Like if you're not putting in the work to grow your book of business, if you're just hawking on price and you're asking the same questions about where do I get leads from

Speaker 8 figure it out. Google insurance leads.
You'll see a thousand different companies that'll sell them to you. Try them all.
The ones that work, keep the ones that don't, get rid of them.

Speaker 8 Join one of these, join Nick Ayer's made you look thing. Try YouTube videos.
You know, join Frank Jimenez's thing. Try Facebook videos.
You know, hire Austin Moorhead to build automations for you.

Speaker 8 I mean, like, I just don't understand this mentality where people just show up, don't really work that hard and go, how come no one's giving me the answer?

Speaker 8 And it's like, because you don't deserve the answer. Jeff Roy deserves every answer that he gets.
Every answer he gets because he works his friggin' ass off.

Speaker 8 And every person who comes to him and every carrier that asks him for his advice, he earned it because he works hard. And I don't even deserve.

Speaker 8 the conversations that he has. And I think, and what I mean, you know what I mean? I'm not just being overly humble.

Speaker 8 I mean, this dude has put in 31 years of hard work to figure out how to get 900 leads in a month and to not be happy with that, right? Like, I can do more. And it's that mentality that is separating.

Speaker 8 I do see,

Speaker 8 and it probably always been this way, but a clear separation between these agency owners and agents that act so helpless. Like,

Speaker 8 Help is so available today if you are willing to reach out and and do a little bit of the work.

Speaker 7 It's so available.

Speaker 8 It's more available than it's ever been. But I just feel like, I mean, and again, I said this to you before.

Speaker 8 It's just, you know, I say this to my kids when they play with other kids, form a hierarchy and operate in that ecosystem. Understand where your place is.

Speaker 8 If you're unhappy with your place, push your way up the hierarchy.

Speaker 7 That's the way the world works. There's another time in human history for people to figure things out, get the help, whatever.

Speaker 7 But you have to invest in yourself and you have to keep you can't be static right you have to keep reinvesting and that's education that's learning that's failure it's launching it's all that kind of stuff right and these people that complain all the time you know I like people if you generally have a problem that's great but it's nice when you're hey I got a problem

Speaker 7 I see somebody complaining I want to make sure they have a solution because if you don't have a solution at least an idea of how you would fix it you're bitching at that point when people start complaining about stuff that nothing worse than learned helplessness where people go oh i can't believe this carrier did that well what are two things you can do and nine times out of ten they're like well i can do this and this well great why don't you do them you know most a lot of people have the answer but they just need that coaching or they get into a state where you know there's a lot of things going on and they get paralysis by analysis they're not sure what to do and they just don't want to take action and that's exactly when you have to take action is when you don't want to and you're backed into a corner you know and that they said the industry can beat you up and it's it you have to make sure that you you're gonna have your days where you go home and and your doubt days.

Speaker 7 Everybody in any business has their doubt days. They're like, What am I doing in this business?

Speaker 7 But then you go, you know what? Tomorrow's gonna be a good day, dust it off, let's go in positive. You know, my family's still healthy, I'm still healthy, you know,

Speaker 7 I can figure things out. It's not the end of the world, right? So, that's that's what keeps you going.
So, yeah, yeah, so anyway, that was my that's the long, the long answer to the podcast, but

Speaker 7 well, no,

Speaker 7 and again, we're just we're doing it, we're kind of excited to get it going, and you know, whether I'm sure our my friends in the U.S. can access it, we'll put it out there.

Speaker 7 I think whatever the topics we're talking about, huge value, both sides of the border. Just like, it's funny, I just feel like Canada, U.S., there really isn't much difference.

Speaker 7 The company names are different. Some of your coverage terms are the same, but worded a little bit different.
But at the end of the day, it's still the same, right?

Speaker 7 Same industry, same challenges. Like connectivity is a huge problem in the U.S.
Yeah, the U.S. isn't any further ahead than Canada on really anything.
We're all kind of on the same levels.

Speaker 7 I used to think the U.S. was so far ahead.
Oh my god, I hope we catch up to them. And then when I started hanging out down there, I'm like, wow, it's the same, we have all the same problems.

Speaker 7 So that's good. We can, we can insert ourselves, solve them together.
Doesn't matter where you live, it's how you think, how you act, who you know, what you do.

Speaker 7 And a lot of people just aren't doing a lot of new things, right? You know, yeah, what's that saying? There's no such thing as old news,

Speaker 7 just old things happening to new people, right?

Speaker 8 So, yeah, well, dude, I uh, I didn't expect this to be a group show. I'm incredibly happy that it was a group show.

Speaker 8 I appreciate both of you so much. Jack, I appreciate you again for now.
You're going to be in two podcasts, which is amazing.

Speaker 1 Jack, you're the man.

Speaker 7 You're the man, Jack.

Speaker 8 I appreciate you coming on and Jeff and just sharing, man. I think, you know that

Speaker 8 I think the world of you, I think, you know, it's why in 2018 you let off Elevate. you know just blowing people away um just just i mean i still have people that will reference your

Speaker 8 presentation at that conference. Like there are still people that will come up to me or, you know, hey, do you remember,

Speaker 8 you know, Jeff, what he said?

Speaker 8 And just it, you know, your impact on this industry has been,

Speaker 8 I think in probably the most, probably the most humble way, so widespread, there's no way that I think you even realize,

Speaker 8 you know, how often your name is fluttered in conversations about things you've said or done and how many people aspire to be at the place that you are.

Speaker 8 So I appreciate you sharing your time and everything that you do.

Speaker 7 You're very humble, man. And I said, I'm just Jeff Roy from a small town in Canada trying to help out.
And, you know what, that 2018, I look back to Cleveland.

Speaker 7 I kind of felt like that was a pinnacle of the new movement. The vibe in there, it was awesome.
Like that, the elevate.

Speaker 7 first two three years of it was great it was just a move like it just kind of captured the moment and now we're kind of in a different state i'm not sure what that state is i'm trying to put a name on you and i were chatting about that like where where are we at now like it just kind of felt like all the new gadgets have been flushed out all the shiny stuff everybody came out everybody shared and done it and now we're into more complicated stuff that's maybe less sexy but like you know i'm doing client journeys and all the content that's not super sexy when it's all done and working maybe that's a conversation but you know it's just so much more work to do something to talk about and i just you know i feel like there's so much more we need to do at excalibur to do something that's worthy of talking to people about.

Speaker 7 Like, you know, I did a bunch of stuff, and I'll be honest, I didn't think it was anything different than what everybody else did when I had to go on the stage for Nicholas Ayers and Dave Jackson in 2017 in Florida to 450 people I didn't know from a hole in the ground, except from a chat group.

Speaker 7 And that was, like I said, that was scary because I had to go out there and I'm wearing a hockey jersey.

Speaker 7 Either it's, either I've completely, this is completely garbage and I'm going to get booed off the stage or it's going to resonate and it's luckily resonated.

Speaker 7 And, you know, I'm just happy to be part of the conversation.

Speaker 7 I'm happy to have some respect in in the us and have some great friends and uh you know i'm just very fortunate you and i are fortunate to meet some of the greatest people in the world in the insurance business so i just want to thank you ryan for everything you've done and give me all the opportunities and jack you know i think last time i saw you was at a north carolina yeah yeah I was down North Carolina with Aubi Knight, who I think is one of the real heroes and leaders in the industry.

Speaker 7 I'm a huge Abby Knight fan.

Speaker 8 Yeah, me too.

Speaker 7 Great. We have Colin Simpson in Canada that leads the IBO.
He's very solid.

Speaker 7 I think him and Aubi need to get to know each other really well because they're both two guys doing some great things that put the agent and broker first.

Speaker 7 And that's good because we need more people putting us first. And I always say this to everybody, play for the name on the front of the jersey, not the name in the back.

Speaker 7 So if we can block a little bit of time to help everybody and the rising tide floats all boats to do that, we need more agents to share and contribute and help out.

Speaker 7 And if we do that, we'll make this the best channel. And if we don't, we continue to not share or try and one up and beat people.

Speaker 7 You know, eventually we're going to collectively collectively get beat by somebody smarter bigger and better access to data so i used to be worried about banks and insurance now i'm worried about amazon and the big uber big people that come in they actually get the proposition right like lemonade their their ipo went pretty well doubled in price uh i'm not sure if i don't understand i'm not sure if it's valid but are they going to be the amazon of insurance we'll wait and see right you know should we be investing some of our money into it right now i'm starting to think i should have now but uh you know it's hard to say right but uh anyway great conversation computer bots certainly are the uh those the the day trading bots are investing their money in it yeah

Speaker 8 before we go i want to say i just want to i just want to jump on your shoulders on obby because

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 8 what i love about obby and and i think we have to stand

Speaker 8 behind guys like obi who are willing to take flack what what i what stands out the most to me about obby as a association leader or leader in in general in this industry is that he's willing to stand up for agents and take the flack so that we can do our jobs, so that agents can do their jobs.

Speaker 8 And I think there's a lot of people in Auby's position or positions like Aubi's who who maybe, I mean, I'm not saying they're bad people, but they don't, they're not as willing to do that.

Speaker 8 And Auby is one of the few people that are. And it's, and I think, you know, Marit Peters is another one down in Texas.

Speaker 8 Jeff Smith. Jeff Smith in Ohio.

Speaker 8 Matt Banaszewski in Wisconsin. Like, these are the individuals

Speaker 8 who really, they take a lot of heat in pressing agent issues. And I think, you know, we need to support them as much as we can.

Speaker 7 You talk about the insurance guys at the tip of the spear, right? Yeah. The insurance guy is always the tip of the spear, right?

Speaker 8 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 7 Hey, awesome, guys. Say thanks very much.
I really appreciate it.

Speaker 8 Thank you. I appreciate it, guys.
I appreciate your time. Be good.
Be safe. And I'll catch you on the flip.

Speaker 7 Better, fellas. All right, hit on record.
Hit on recordable.

Speaker 7 look at

Speaker 7 to

Speaker 7 look at

Speaker 7 a little bit to.

Speaker 1 Close twice as many deals by this time next week. Sound impossible? It's not.
With the one-call close system, you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals in one call.

Speaker 1 This is the exact method we use to close 1,200 clients under three years during the pandemic. No fluff, no end-less follow-ups, just results fast.

Speaker 1 Based in behavioral psychology and battle-tested, the one-call close system eliminates excuses and gets gets the prospect saying yes more than you ever thought possible if you're ready to stop losing opportunities and start winning visit mastertheclose

Speaker 1 close calm do it today

Speaker 6 is it time to reimagine your future the right business skills may make a difference in your career at Capella University we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world we'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals, like business management, strategic planning, and effective communication.

Speaker 6 And you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University.
Learn more at capella.edu.

Speaker 2 Dashing through the store, Dave's looking for a gift. One you can't ignore, but not the socks he picks.

Speaker 3 I know, I'm putting them back.

Speaker 2 Hey, Dave, here's a tip. Put scratchers on your list.

Speaker 5 Oh, scratchers, good idea.

Speaker 2 It's an easy shopping trip. We're glad we could assist.
Thanks, random singing people. So be like Dave this holiday and give the gift of play.
Scratchers from the California lottery.

Speaker 2 A little play can make your day.

Speaker 3 Please play responsibly. Must be 18 years or older to purchase play or claim.

Speaker 5 AI is changing by the minute, and cybercrime is changing with it. In the future, the businesses that thrive will be the ones prepared for both.

Speaker 5 MasterCard Cybersecurity and Fraud Prevention for Enterprise uses an advanced AI-powered network to assess over 32 million cybersecurity risk events every day, protecting your business in the moment and securing your tomorrow.

Speaker 5 Because a new era of growth demands a new standard of security. Get ready for what's next at mastercard.com/slash cybersecurity.