RHS 050 - Charles Specht on How to Get More Clients, More Quickly

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

Speaker 8 Today we have Charles Speck on the podcast, a former producer for Interwest Insurance Services and Arthur J. Gallagher.
For the last decade has been running the Permission Group, an insurance

Speaker 8 production consultancy where he's helping agents and agencies produce more business. And he does it through what he calls a broker of record mentality.
And we talk about what that means.

Speaker 8 We talk through his idea of micro-niching. We talk about the mental side of producing business.

Speaker 8 And really, why I wanted to have Charles on is he's a great guy and I think a great thinker in our business and certainly helping a lot of agents and agencies produce more revenue.

Speaker 8 But the things we discuss in this episode, I find are keystones to what success is going to look like moving forward.

Speaker 8 We're at a time, a transitional time in our industry's history in which I think for a long time we've been able to do C plus work and be profitable. And I think that time is gone.

Speaker 8 We have to be A players today. There's going to be

Speaker 8 the pace of business, the quality of business demanded by our clients, the aggressiveness of

Speaker 8 new agencies, agencies like Rogue Risk, like mine, we're aggressive as hell, and we're coming after people who are lethargic.

Speaker 8 And if you don't want to be the type of agency that is losing business to agencies like mine and others, then you got to get to work.

Speaker 8 And I think some of the ideas that we talk about in here will resonate with you. And they're ideas that you can grab hold of.

Speaker 8 And if they make sense, you can reach out to Charles and potentially work with him. But the ideas

Speaker 8 I think are really important. And I was just glad that I could share them with you.
And I just love talking with Charles. He's a great dude.
I've been on a couple panels with him.

Speaker 8 And we always have good back and forth. I think you're going to take a lot away from this episode.
And I'm very happy to share it with you.

Speaker 8 Before we get there, though, I want to give a big shout out to the insurance website vendor for the independent insurance agency, and that is Advisory Volved.

Speaker 8 Chris Langell and his team at Advisory Volved create the best insurance websites, hands down. There's no place else to go.
I mean,

Speaker 8 you got Carruthers using his stuff. Nick Ayers is using his stuff.
Jason Cass is using his stuff. And the list goes on and on and on and on and on.
All the best agencies are using Advisor Evolved.

Speaker 8 And the reason is it's not just a website. It's a tool to grow your agency.
I use the PowerPack. I use Quote Vids.
all the time. And these tools exclusively come with Advisor Evolved websites.

Speaker 8 And plus, you know, cost versus other providers, it's crazy. The amount of value you get.

Speaker 8 I get asked all the time, you know, hey, I'm looking for a new website. Where should I go? And I just tell, I tell everybody unequivocally, there's only one option, and it's Advisor Evolved.

Speaker 8 If you're looking for a website, if you're looking to take your brand and your game to the next level, if you're looking for ways to get in front of more clients, people who are searching online are just searching for you and present a better story to those people when they find you.

Speaker 8 Go to Advisoryvolved. That's advisoryvolved.com.
check them out, get a demo, talk to Chris, step your game up. Let's get on to Charles.

Speaker 10 Think about InsurTech and how it has completely like changed the insurance industry over the five, 10 years. Look, COVID is going to be disrupting the insurance agency.

Speaker 10 It's going to be changing the entire model. Agencies are going to be downsizing their real estate.
They're getting smaller in the office. People are going homes, right?

Speaker 10 The account manager can do what they do away from the office. People don't want their clients coming in right now, maybe to bring in a payment, pay online.

Speaker 10 insurance producers go home you know work from your home and we will pay you as you actually uh you know bring in revenue i'm seeing a lot of producers going to 1099 and not employee status anymore it's going to be amazing to see what's going to happen with the insurance industry and frankly you know unfortunately the covet wave is going to be hurting a lot of agents uh they're just not going to be like making it in the end of 2020 2021 we're going to see i think a big shift of a number of people just leaving the industry because they just can't make it they can't write the business they didn't actually look you you know you know it Email marketing, social media marketing.

Speaker 10 If agencies didn't have it at this point, they are struggling. They are, they're dying.
They're dying, absolutely dying. So, you know, it's one of the major things that needs to take place right now.

Speaker 10 Otherwise, insurance producers just are not going to survive.

Speaker 9 You know,

Speaker 9 it's been, this starting an agency thing has been

Speaker 9 the most challenging professional thing I've done in my entire life. I mean, that's probably like an adult, like a, like a duh, you know, kind of thing to say.

Speaker 9 But it's, you never, my wife actually said it to me this morning.

Speaker 9 She said, you, you underestimated how hard this was going to be, didn't you? And I said, and I thought about that for a second. And

Speaker 9 I definitely, I don't want to say that I underestimated how hard it was going to be because I knew it was going to be the hardest thing I had ever done professionally. I knew that.

Speaker 9 But I definitely, there are definitely pieces inside of the business that I drastically underestimated

Speaker 9 how hard they would be to

Speaker 9 wrap my head around.

Speaker 9 And I'd say the major ones are things like consistency, finding routine,

Speaker 9 sticking,

Speaker 9 having patience and

Speaker 9 sticking to certain, you know, you go off, you're like, oh, I'm going to buy leads today. And then a week later, you're like, ah, leads suck.
I'm not doing that anymore. And I'm going to do PPC.

Speaker 9 And then you're like, ah, PPC sucks. I'm not going to do that anymore.
And,

Speaker 9 you know, any of those strategies could work if you stick to them.

Speaker 9 And I've just found that almost like the emotional side of the business has been the most difficult part of it,

Speaker 9 especially being on your own all the time.

Speaker 10 Yeah. You know, and that's, I think, the challenge, right?

Speaker 10 If you're in an agency where there's other people, if you're just a producer and you're with other producers, you've got that camaraderie, right?

Speaker 10 You even have probably somebody holding you accountable, but you are your own accountability partner, right? You're the own, you, you're the one who kicking yourself in the pants.

Speaker 10 You're the one who's doing operations. You're trying to manage relationships with underwriters and get appointments.

Speaker 10 All of that, along with making cold calls, sending out social media, doing podcasts, right? You're probably putting in 100 hours a week just kind of doing business, right? Just doing business.

Speaker 10 And if you're seeing things over here and you're seeing things over there, it's very difficult not to get that squirrel syndrome. That's why like being

Speaker 10 micro-niched. It's just very important because it allows you to actually stay focused.

Speaker 9 So this is, this is one of the things that I really wanted to talk about today with you. And there's, I have a bunch of topics that I want to talk about.
Yeah.

Speaker 9 Um, and I'm not going to do like your whole background because one, go check out Charles's LinkedIn and you'll figure out. Two, you did the full background on Cass's podcast and it's awesome.

Speaker 9 So go listen to those shows. I want to get into your expertise.

Speaker 10 I want to do more potatoes. Whatever, man.
Just fire away. I'm ready.

Speaker 9 Yeah. So this idea of a micro niche.

Speaker 9 It scares the shit out of me. And because I think, you know,

Speaker 9 what if you make the wrong decision? What if there's no revenue there? What if my carriers change their mind? You know,

Speaker 9 and I kind of got a little gun shy because I spent before, so I launched the agency on March 9th. And the two months leading up to that,

Speaker 9 I basically put

Speaker 9 tons of work in going after the fitness industry because I was coming off of my brief stay as a fitness CEO,

Speaker 9 which is almost weird to say now.

Speaker 9 And I was like, okay, this is perfect. I know insurance.
I know marketing. And I have a really good feel for fitness businesses.

Speaker 9 And I had Cincinnati as an appointee carrier really early who has a tremendous fitness program. I'm like, this, it's like

Speaker 9 the moon is in the sign of Aquarius, right? Like everything is lined up here for me to go after this niche. And then on one week into that, March 16th.

Speaker 9 uh emperor cuomo ix nays all fitness businesses and you know cincinnat throws up a moratorium, rightly so. And

Speaker 9 now I'm toast. You know what I mean? I can't write physics business.

Speaker 9 So, so my thought is, you know, how do you talk me out of being nervous, feeling like maybe there's not enough rat, like all those fears, how do you talk me out of that?

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 10 First of all, I think the main issue to realize when you're micro-niching is that it doesn't mean you can't write whatever comes your way. Okay, it's a it's mindset.

Speaker 10 Okay, we're gonna have to deal with that mindset issue because that's what you're struggling with right now. I don't know if I should do do this, right? That's just mindset.

Speaker 10 So it doesn't mean if something falls in your lap, someone refers something to you, you talk with somebody, you know, at a restaurant and they happen to have a business.

Speaker 10 It doesn't mean you can't write good business. But the whole idea of marketing and branding is focused on getting your prospect to see you as somebody that makes sense for them.
Right.

Speaker 10 And so the whole idea of micro-niching, what it does, Ryan, is it actually allows you to market more effectively. It allows you to brand yourself very effectively.

Speaker 10 And this is really the issue, issue is that it allows you to get more clients more quickly. Okay.
It allows you to get more clients more quickly. And that really is the thing.
Now,

Speaker 10 are there potential pitfalls to it? Absolutely.

Speaker 10 You know, somebody who did residential construction back in the housing market, you know, being micro-niched in even construction and residential construction got hit pretty hard, right?

Speaker 10 I'm doing fitness centers, restaurants right now, hospitality, getting hit pretty hard, right? So it is what it is.

Speaker 10 Even if you wrote a bunch of that stuff and you wrote a bunch of restaurants and you wrote a bunch of car dealerships, look, you got hit. Okay, it is what it is right now.

Speaker 10 But

Speaker 10 if I was a Chinese restaurant owner and somebody came into me and they said, you know, I write some swimming pool accounts and I've got some general contractors and I write a furniture store over here and I've got 30 personal lines clients.

Speaker 10 So I have a pretty good feel for insurance. And then another agent comes in, you come in and you're like, yeah, you know what? I actually write 37 restaurants.

Speaker 10 I understand Chinese restaurants because I have 16 of them. These are the four insurance carriers right now in our state that are actually very, very competitive for Chinese restaurants.

Speaker 10 And then I give them my timeline of services, which says Chinese restaurant insurance program. And everything is focused on that.

Speaker 10 And my loss control program is the Chinese restaurant loss control program. Look, it becomes very apparent which agent would be the better choice.

Speaker 10 And after all is said and done, that's really what we're trying to do from positioning.

Speaker 10 When somebody's out there prospecting, you're trying to get that insurer to see that Ryan is the better choice of which agent I should do business with.

Speaker 10 And because insurance buyers don't understand insurance, they don't know what's the difference between Ryan and me and the 7,000 other insurance agents in their community.

Speaker 10 They don't know how to choose a good agent or what's a bad agency.

Speaker 10 They don't know if you have a really good relationship with Cincinnati or if you're about to lose your appointment because you haven't written anything with them in the last year.

Speaker 10 They have no idea how insurance works. And so they are trying to figure out based upon having an overwhelming amount of ignorance in the insurance marketplace.

Speaker 10 They're trying to figure out who is the better choice.

Speaker 10 And if you're micro-niched, it's a lot easier to get broker record letters than if you just come across as just another insurance agent who's giving them a call saying, I can offer you quotes.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I actually can't wait to talk about BORs, but I want to pause that for a second because I want to talk more about this.

Speaker 10 So, okay.

Speaker 9 So, I'm, so let's say I

Speaker 9 buy into this micro-niche idea.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 I say niche. I'm sorry.
It just comes out of my face. Cass makes fun of me all the time for saying it.

Speaker 10 It doesn't rhyme with rich, man. You got to like, I know, I know.

Speaker 9 I have tried. This is like a tick.
This is like my wife. So my wife always gets mad at me because I say crick instead of creek.
And that's like the way that I was raised.

Speaker 10 I just. I say crick in the neck.
Yeah. Crick in the neck.
Okay.

Speaker 9 So I'm like, I got a crick.

Speaker 9 And she drives me. And she's like, you know, that's not the word.
The word is C-R-E-E-K. And you're saying C-R-I-C-K.
And I was like, I just can't change it. And the same thing with niche and niche.

Speaker 9 I just always say niche for some reason. It doesn't matter.
This is bad podcasting.

Speaker 9 So.

Speaker 10 By the way, are we recording yet? Yeah. Yeah.
Okay, Okay, cool. All right, cool.

Speaker 10 I'm glad we are.

Speaker 9 It would be bad if we just did all that and we weren't.

Speaker 10 That's right.

Speaker 10 So, okay.

Speaker 9 So

Speaker 9 let's say I start focusing on, I look at my portfolio of carriers I have today and I say, geez, I got two or three markets that just absolutely crush manufacturers.

Speaker 9 I can go into a manufacturer and know that

Speaker 9 I have a good... I got a real good shot of presenting them with something with a proposal if I focus in on manufacturers.

Speaker 9 Okay, so I'm going to be the manufacturing guy for upstate New York because I would really rather that downstate New York secede and become the 51st state.

Speaker 9 We can have a manufacturing agrarian society up here.

Speaker 9 So

Speaker 9 let's say I do that.

Speaker 9 In my head, I'm going to go, okay, that's awesome.

Speaker 9 But now nobody else is ever going to call me because I'm just the manufacturing guy.

Speaker 9 So the nice retail furniture store down the street here, they're never going to call me because I'm the manufacturing guy. And now they're just assuming that I don't know anything about,

Speaker 9 is there any, is that baseless?

Speaker 10 Why do you? Yeah, I would say, I mean, look, there might be a thread of truth to that. But again, does the retail shop know anything about your agency? Probably not.

Speaker 10 And, you know, you can have, I would say that

Speaker 10 it's probably important to have a little bit of a generalist feel when you go to the homepage of your website.

Speaker 10 But that doesn't mean you can't have specific pages on your website that are manufacturing. And then you buy manufacturinginsurance.com.

Speaker 10 And every time you're now prospecting to your manufacturing companies, you don't tell them to go to Rogue Risk, you tell them to go to manufacturinginsurance.com, which points right down to that page on your website, which has all of that information so that they can see you are an expert there.

Speaker 10 And then in the same way, you can have another micro niche. You can have two or three as a business owner, probably would make sense.
Or you can have restaurantinsurance.com and it goes there, right?

Speaker 10 So that way, like when a business is coming to your organization, they're not seeing just maybe that one thing.

Speaker 10 Now, I also, in the city where I live here in Fresno, there is an insurance agency that has grown very significantly.

Speaker 10 They are called Landscape Contractors Insurance Services. L-C-I-S is what they're known for.
That's the name of their insurance agency, Landscape Contractors Insurance Agency. They're big.

Speaker 10 They have lots of locations all around. They write thousands of landscape contractors.
Okay.

Speaker 10 They write some other stuff too, but they are known for writing landscape contractors to the point in which they had insurance carriers come to them and say, hey, we would like to start a program with you.

Speaker 10 And so they have their own program now for landscape contractors. So they went all in initially and they got a lot of business right away.
That's one way of doing it. Now that's also very rare.

Speaker 10 I don't know too many insurance agencies that are doing it like that. If I started my own insurance agency, I would probably do it the first way that I talked about having a little bit of a generalist

Speaker 10 front door. And then I have lots of bedrooms.
right, where that's where the micro niche is housed. I think that that just makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 10 And also, depending upon what rogue Risk is going to be in the future, you might bring on another producer,

Speaker 10 who might then also be a part of that micro niche, or maybe they've got a book of business that they want to bring over and they've got some clients or some expertise in boat dealers, right?

Speaker 10 And so then you're going to have a boat dealer's

Speaker 10 micro niche. That's the beautiful part of it.
So you can create these sub-sectors of your insurance agency. And that's how the business is actually built.

Speaker 10 But I mean, also the nice thing about it, you know, Ryan, from your perspective, coming into an insurance agency or rather starting an insurance agency, trying to get your markets, bit of a nightmare, okay, bit of a hassle, no doubt, right?

Speaker 10 Now, when you look at Cincinnati or whenever any other insurance carriers that you're writing business with, they also have their own micro-niche appetite list.

Speaker 10 They don't write everything under the sun, they only write a small amount of business. So, it just makes sense for them to do that.
And so, they tell you what their market is.

Speaker 10 Now, when any business goes to their website, they just see their organization. But from the sales perspective, you're micro-niched.

Speaker 10 Now, if I can say even one other thing, when you mentioned that example of the retail shop, okay, what if they don't see you as like a generalist? They don't see you.

Speaker 10 Does the average insurance buyer know anything about Marsh and McLennan?

Speaker 10 Does the average insurance buyer know anything about Willis? Anything about Aon? Ever heard of Gallagher in their life? Have they ever heard of Brown and Brown?

Speaker 10 Look, these are the big boys that are out there, right? These are the alphabet houses, and they know nothing about them. So after all is said and done, most of it is up here.
It is absolutely mental.

Speaker 10 We just have to sort of get over that shift because we have been taught something for so long. We have been force-fed a generalist mentality for so long.

Speaker 10 And, you know, insurance agents and agencies built their books of business being a generalist agency. So it's not that it didn't work.
It absolutely did work.

Speaker 10 It's just that it's probably not going to work going forward.

Speaker 9 Yeah. I actually, you know, I'm.
I'm incredibly bought in on this idea, obviously.

Speaker 9 I just, I love playing devil's advocate because I want to hear your,

Speaker 9 I want, because that's, that was awesome. Um, so I do have a couple questions.
So, I, well, one is a comment.

Speaker 9 My first comment is: I think the reason we went so generalist early is that our niche was actually a locale, right? So, but pre-internet days, your niche was your locale. That's what it was.

Speaker 9 So, so that was, it wasn't that you just did landscapers, it was that I did Latham, New York. That's, that was my niche.
I think that was the reason. So, um, Ken, so let's say, um,

Speaker 9 so, so let's take like a line of business. Like,

Speaker 9 you know, workers' comp is obviously a really big one. A lot of people are talking about now.

Speaker 9 Cyber is another one, which I think a lot of people are starting to consider, or, you know, I shouldn't say a lot because out of the 36,000 agencies, like 10 might be considering cyber. But,

Speaker 9 you know, so,

Speaker 9 you know, can you have, can this idea translate to a line of business and not necessarily an industry? Or do you think that's a different thing?

Speaker 10 It's very similar. In fact, I would almost say that they are kind of the same.
Now, if I was to start an agency, which I don't want to start an agency, I mean, I have an agency.

Speaker 10 I'm actually the CEO of my own insurance agency. I just don't have any appointments, right? So I do something different.

Speaker 10 But if I was to actually sell insurance again, I would 100% brand myself not in a micro-niche necessarily, but as a workers' compensation agency that goes after debit mod type of business, very high rate.

Speaker 10 So I would go after stuff that's got 150, 170, 225x mod.

Speaker 10 I would then focus on that I know that it would be crazy successful and it's gonna allow me to write a lot of other business the challenge however though is that do you have the markets where you can feed it that's the problem right and so it's easier when you're a when you're a startup agency or a smaller agency with fewer markets to go into the industry if you will but if you have access to the markets then you can do exactly what i just said so it does make things easier now you can also however brand yourself as the workers compensation expert in maybe a few different micro niches Okay, so you don't have to necessarily do one industry, and you're only going to write that.

Speaker 10 You can write workers' compensation. That's going to be your brand.
That's going to be your marketing, but you might do it for maybe eight different micro niches.

Speaker 10 So then, when you're bringing in all your prospects, maybe then you accumulate, you know, 1,500 prospects in these eight micro niches.

Speaker 10 These are going to be the prospects you're going after with the focus that I'm going to be initially going in on workers' compensation with high-debit mod because I know I'll be able to help them in the long run.

Speaker 10 You're going to get a lot more business that way. I actually know of a couple agencies that do that.
Their entire model is workers' compensation.

Speaker 10 They go in, they broker it over, they do what they do, they show some expertise. And once they do that, you know, their

Speaker 10 agreement with the insured is that once we show that the other agent hasn't done a good job, you'll broker over the rest of the policies to us. That's their entire strategy.
Very successful.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I definitely,

Speaker 9 so the comp model is the way that

Speaker 9 I've gone.

Speaker 9 And I've been fairly lucky in that, you know, I've been able to, you know, um, since he's not a huge comp writer, they don't really do anything monoline, but uh, I have Hanover, great monoline, uh, sneaky, great monoline comp writer, Chubb, sneaky, very good monoline comp writer.

Speaker 9 I got employers. I got a couple more, you know, I've been blessed in just maybe just because of the podcast and some other stuff.

Speaker 9 I've been able to get early on some direct appointments that have really helped push me forward because I haven't had to, you know, and I have a great relationship with a market access company in Indium, but I haven't had to lean on them as much because I've had some of these good early direct appointments.

Speaker 9 And I think, you know, today you can differentiate yourself like whatever you want. I do think that there's a tremendous opportunity in comp.
I just think there is.

Speaker 9 I don't think the window will be open forever.

Speaker 9 And I think the people who can establish themselves in the next three, you know, say one to three years will set themselves apart because i do think um there are enough people talking about it today that it will start to spread but um yeah i mean you're

Speaker 10 i saved a guy forty thousand dollars on a hundred thousand dollar comp account 40 grand the beauty is that the comp is is very often where the premiums at yeah right so that's their big pain and also you know i mean it's also probably the easier policy in which to to to write right i mean the the core is not that much i mean it's pretty simple and straightforward it's the xmon stuff where most agents don't understand that.

Speaker 9 It's not like a 17-page commercial auto app.

Speaker 10 Exactly, right? You don't have to get all this detail, you know, VIN numbers, all that kind of stuff. But I mean, here's also a nice thing about it.

Speaker 10 If you were like focused on a few different industries where you didn't have to have

Speaker 10 only one agent, for example, like contractors, they usually want one agent because they have to request multiple certificates of insurance.

Speaker 10 But there's plenty of industries out there where it's not really that service intensive. And so there's no problem with having a different agent who only does the comp.

Speaker 10 So you don't even have to have a whole lot of other PNC carriers to actually have that expertise in the comp and be very successful.

Speaker 9 Yeah. So this is, this is, takes me, I want to circle back to the, to the mental side eventually, but

Speaker 9 I want to talk about BORs.

Speaker 9 My issue that I've run into with BORs, being from the northeast, and I don't know how familiar you are with this part of the country, but

Speaker 9 we have almost 100 domestics in the state of New York, little tiny mutuals. And then Vermont has a hundred, has 50 domestics.

Speaker 9 And then you talk about micro regionals and super regionals and then nationals. And then, and it's like,

Speaker 9 you know, you, the idea,

Speaker 9 there's just such a small chance that you're going to walk in and actually be able to BOR that account from the standpoint of you already have the appointment, right?

Speaker 9 Like, yeah, you can go in, get the, you know, I shouldn't say, yeah, you you can go in, like, it's that easy, but like, yes, you could go in and say all the right things and get the BOR and want to provide them with that service.

Speaker 9 But then you come back out and it's like, you know, I don't have a community mutual appointment. And Community Mutual has decided that

Speaker 9 they're going to write this account and they're half the price. Like, this is what I had.
I am the comp only.

Speaker 9 I only do the comp for this account

Speaker 9 in Vermont, right?

Speaker 9 And i got tremendous proposals from two of my carriers tremendous i mean any other day i am writing this business and saving this guy money and it got you know great you know both two great companies i was very very happy yeah yeah

Speaker 9 half his his current carrier is half the price of those proposals because it's this tiny mutual that just decided they want this account and they're just going to write it for nothing.

Speaker 9 And there's no way I'm getting an appointment with that company for that one account because I'm never going to write another account with them. You know, so it's like that idea.

Speaker 9 How do you overcome that idea? Because I know like I talked to, and I'm going on. I just want to finish this thought.
I talked to some agents in Texas who think the exact same way on this BOR.

Speaker 9 Micah Salis, Micah Salas, great example. Texas has like five carriers.
Like basically everyone has one of five carriers.

Speaker 9 So it's more about who your agent is and the carrier doesn't mean anything because you're just like, oh, I'll just BOR and I'll do this.

Speaker 9 In New York, it could be one of 700 carriers.

Speaker 9 How do you manage that? I've struggled with that a little bit. And I would love for you to talk me through that.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 10 I would say from a property and casualty standpoint, I hate broker of record letters. Hate it because it's such a hassle.
This is why being an employee benefits producer is a beautiful thing.

Speaker 10 They'll just take your appointment, no big deal. And everybody accepts it.
I mean, really, when it comes down to it, all it is is

Speaker 10 an accounting function on the PNC carrier, and they're just playing hardball, right? Now, with all that politics, you know, aside, right? Yep, broker record letters are sometimes hard.

Speaker 10 Sometimes they're actually pretty easy, but I would say, not even sometimes, probably more than half the times, they're really hard. But here's the thing: I'm not against quoting.

Speaker 10 I'm against foolish quoting. I'm against just blind quoting.

Speaker 10 That, unfortunately, is the mentality that just happens so very often out there that you're so excited that somebody wants to meet with you and allow you to quote that you don't do the normal due diligence that you have to do.

Speaker 10 And so, again, it comes down to the mentality. I actually look at it as a broker record letter mentality rather than the broker record letter itself.
Gotcha.

Speaker 10 Because here's what has to happen.

Speaker 10 At some point in the process, whether you're trying to get the BOR from that one carrier or you're going to quote it with someone else to try and compete against that mutual, they're going to have to make a decision at some point in the process to terminate the relationship with that incumbent agent in order to do business with you.

Speaker 10 If you can't get your competition fired, you will never get a new client, period. And so the broker of record letter is a mentality, not necessarily just a piece of paper.

Speaker 10 If you can get it signed, awesome, because

Speaker 10 the statistics for the industry is very good. You control the account, you're going to write it.
You might place it with a different carrier, but you're likely going to write it.

Speaker 10 But it's the broker of record letter, the mentality of it. It all goes back to the mentality of it.
You have to do everything you can to get that incumbent fired.

Speaker 10 You have to get the insured to allow you to access the carriers you want, right? You have to get them to tell you what you have to accomplish in order to get the business.

Speaker 10 You have to make sure that the incumbent agent's not going to get a last look. If you can do those basic things, you're much more likely to win.
You have put yourself in a stronger position.

Speaker 10 But to add even like one thing with regards to that example of the mutual you just talked about, right?

Speaker 10 So going back to the micro-nich, okay, when I'm working with agents, I'm trying to figure out what's a good micro-niche.

Speaker 10 If you're going after a class of business, that there's another carrier out there that you don't have access to, that's just flat-out less expensive than everybody else. Pick a different micro-niche.

Speaker 10 Yeah. That one's not a good fit.
That's just not a good fit.

Speaker 10 Now, it doesn't mean it won't change in the future, but as of right now, you're not going to be able to write business if everybody, you know, if the other carrier is 50% less than you every time you're going out to market.

Speaker 10 It's just not a very strong play. So, there's a lot that goes into trying to figure out what's the right micro-niche.

Speaker 10 And if you don't have access to the carriers you need to have access to, then not only is that not a good micro niche to go after, but it's the same thing when you're meeting with a prospect.

Speaker 10 If you don't get to access the carriers you want to access, you're not going to write that account. That's the broken recorder mentality.
Yeah.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I like that. It's, it's, um,

Speaker 9 it's funny. You know, I've learned so many, you know, I've, I've, I, the other day I had this thing, I, I did exactly what you just described and you shouldn't do.
Guy calls me randomly,

Speaker 9 you know, found me online or whatever, was having problems with his agent.

Speaker 9 His agent wasn't responsive. He was getting frustrated, calls me up, restaurant owner,

Speaker 9 decent-sized restaurant. You know, he was about an hour and a half away, but I knew right, I knew the town he was in.
It was a nice town. And I

Speaker 9 started, you know, I started walking through the process with him. And he's got all the answers to the questions.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Speaker 9 Which should have been a trigger for me in the moment, right?

Speaker 10 But I'm just like, hey, I got a call. Let's do some business, right?

Speaker 9 So

Speaker 9 I get done. I'm looking at it and I'm going, okay, this is, I got a shot at this.
I got a shot at this account. This looks pretty good.

Speaker 9 Dude's paying like between all his accounts, he's paying like 26,000 premium. Like, okay, this is a decent sized account.
Guys, giving me the information I need. I feel pretty good.

Speaker 9 I said, hey, man, can you just send me your policies so I can verify? what you've said and you know it's also kind of like a good

Speaker 9 you know show of good faith Hey, man, I'm busy. I have something.
I can't get those to you. I go, okay, well, hey, just send them to me tomorrow.
Ah, no problem. Okay.
Three days go by.

Speaker 9 I don't get them.

Speaker 9 Like, fuck. So I,

Speaker 9 so then, you know, a week goes by. I get the quotes back.

Speaker 9 Come back and I'm at like 16,000. I'm like, this is freaking home run.
I'm going to do a great job for this guy. He's going to be super happy.
I'm happy with the coverages.

Speaker 9 Based on what he had told me, I'd actually improved some of them. Like, this is great.

Speaker 9 Present him with a quote. He goes, 16,000.
This is outrageous. And I'm like, outrageous in a good way, right?

Speaker 10 Like,

Speaker 9 no, why would you even send me this? He goes, I'm paying, I got a quote for $6,000. And I'm like, $6,000? What are you? That's impossible.
I said, I said, dude, I didn't say dude.

Speaker 9 I can't remember his name now. I said, you know, I said, I said, man,

Speaker 9 you do $1.6 million in revenue. Do you think it sounds reasonable that you do $1.6 million in revenue and you're paying $6,000 a year for insurance?

Speaker 9 Does that seem like an, like the right number? And he's like, well, how come I have this quote? And I go, because the guy took your revenue and put in 400,000 instead of 1.6. That's what he did.

Speaker 9 It's like, that's not, it's like a trigger. It's a game.
I said, you're just going to get audit at the end of the year. And he goes, yeah, no, I'm good.
Click. And I was like, son of a bitch.

Speaker 9 I was like, this is what I deserve. Because I didn't force the guy to send me his policies.
I didn't ask him, are you quoting, getting quotes from other people?

Speaker 9 Like I didn't, I just gathered the information I needed and went to work and wasted like five hours of my life. And

Speaker 10 that's the key right there, right? You wasted five hours of your life and you hurt your relationship with your underwriter. Yeah.
That's what you did. You also wasted your underwriters of life.

Speaker 9 I know, because, and because, because when she sent me it, she's like, wow, she's like, I looked at this online. Like, this looks like a nice spot.
Like, this is a good account. Like, we'd like this.

Speaker 9 And I said, you know, it was everybody was happy. And I, you know what I mean? So I agree with you.

Speaker 9 It, it made me look like kind of an amateur in front of my underwriter, which I guess to a certain extent I am. And

Speaker 9 I wasted time and everything you're saying about this idea of,

Speaker 10 you know,

Speaker 9 I guess what I learned is

Speaker 9 if they're not willing to step towards me.

Speaker 9 I should not be willing to step all the way to them. Like if there's a gap between us, I can't be the one, the only one closing that gap.

Speaker 10 and when you are it it seems like a huge red flag that you're wasting your time or practice quoting or whatever blind quoting and that's hard to do right because meeting with that prospect that's your money it's so hard to walk away from that even though there's that little voice in your head saying you know what something's just not right here right something's just not right but i want you to just say like and this is what i tell my clients say look Remember those five hours because that's five hours of your life that you will never get back with your wife, with your family, working on your business.

Speaker 10 And you just got ghosted by this guy who's unwilling to even be ethical from the standpoint, knowing that he probably has something wrong on his quote. He's just not willing to actually fess up.

Speaker 10 Right. And so, what I tell, and this just kind of goes into it, why the broker of record

Speaker 10 letter mentality works is because if we spend five hours here and five hours there and five hours there, like how much of your actual entire career is going to be wasted working on all of these accounts, quoting, where you never had a shot to actually write this business look if you spend the next i mean i don't know how old you are let me just say you spend the next 25 years in the insurance business okay before you retire

Speaker 10 how many months if not years of your life might you potentially waste i'm talking your lifespan of your lifespan that you are wasting doing that right Think about that.

Speaker 10 How much time in the past now have you wasted of your life doing this? What would be maybe a better way in which to do it? Just saying to that guy, hey, you know what?

Speaker 10 I really appreciate, you know, the opportunity to talk with you here, but, you know, I'm sorry, I'm much more of a professional that if you're willing to meet and give me the information, I'm going to get you the price that you need, but I can't, you know, do something that's not apples to apples here, right?

Speaker 10 And so if he says no, great. You know, you don't necessarily have to,

Speaker 10 you know, stop the relationship, but you also have to put yourself on the brakes here because you don't want to ruin your relationship with your underwriters because that's going to also ruin your appointments in the future going forward.

Speaker 10 So instead, just keep prospecting, finding the people who aren't happy right now with their current agent, because I'm telling you, there's a bunch that aren't happy.

Speaker 10 He might have actually used the 1.4 million. Maybe he just has a big exclusion for whatever he's doing.
I've seen that as well. I mean, you know.

Speaker 10 There's a lot of insurance out there not happy with their agent.

Speaker 10 And if you just prospected to find those and go after the BOR on that first appointment, you're probably going to end up writing a lot more business in the long run because you're going to get the control of it and you're saving all that time that was wasted.

Speaker 9 And you can actually focus that time on prospecting and then meeting with the ones who actually want to do business with you again so why market reniching works yeah you had a linkedin post a day or two ago i can't remember when it was um i liked it but it was uh something to the effect of like selling insurance is a relationship game prospecting is a numbers game or something like that yeah and you know that kind of takes me back to the mental side of it which is

Speaker 9 you know i i talk to a lot of agents um just you know my disposition and having done this podcast for so long i'm blessed in that regard and i'm sure you do too but you know you so you probably know what i'm talking about but you you

Speaker 9 there are there's people all over the map right now all over the map there are people who are having the best year they've ever had and there are people who are worried that they might not be like you said in the business a year from now that that spectrum that full spectrum is is out there and and that's not always the case in our industry right like if you just put in a decent amount of work the the interesting thing about this industry is like a c plus pays your bills bills, right?

Speaker 9 Like a C plus effort pays the bills in this industry, which is crazy. So, you know, today it feels like a C plus effort isn't going to pay your bills for very long.

Speaker 9 So you have a lot of people who are wondering where they get new business from. And

Speaker 9 I would consider myself one of those people because I thought I knew where that business was going to come from.

Speaker 9 And it just doesn't seem to be working. And

Speaker 9 that's okay.

Speaker 9 And what I've started doing is cold calling.

Speaker 10 And when I think of the numbers given.

Speaker 10 So that's fun, right? Yeah.

Speaker 9 Yeah, no, it's quite literally the worst thing ever.

Speaker 9 But at the same time, just because I don't like it doesn't mean that I shouldn't do it. Because,

Speaker 9 you know, we kind of have to take control of this side of it. So, you know, when you're working with one of your clients and say you're working with someone like me who maybe just

Speaker 9 at base function

Speaker 9 doesn't, you know, I'm doing air quotes that people at home can't see me, you know, doesn't like, doesn't like

Speaker 9 cold calling, even though once you get that first person to kind of talk to you, you start to feel a little better about it.

Speaker 9 And I'm already just, I'm like one week into really making a concerted effort and I'm already feeling better about it. But

Speaker 9 how do you start to break down that mentality? Like, just,

Speaker 9 it's almost as if,

Speaker 9 and I'll wrap this question up. Like, it's almost as if if I think we feel sometimes, and I don't get this from the best agents, this is maybe the agents that are struggling.

Speaker 9 And I put myself in that category.

Speaker 9 It's almost as if we feel like we're above the numbers game, right? Like we're like, nah, I don't need the numbers game. That's what agents, you know, that's not what we do.

Speaker 9 You know, when I, when you talk to the best agents in the game and all they do is just prospect. That's what they do all day long.

Speaker 9 They hear a shit ton of no's, they get some yeses, and everyone talks about those yeses. And no one talks about the no's.
And all people hear is the yeses.

Speaker 9 And they're like, geez, you know that this guy over here you know all he does is write accounts and and they forget that he probably contacted 50 people who didn't want anything to do with him how do you how do you get people past that yeah

Speaker 10 again going back to the mentality rubbed right i mean look sales is hard sales is really hard and it's mostly mental doesn't matter if you're selling copiers or insurance or work hop whatever it is it's going to be mental

Speaker 10 I was actually just talking with a large agency a couple of days ago.

Speaker 10 I think they're one of the top 50 in the United States. So a large agency, right? And they're doing 60 million, whatever it is a year annual revenue.
And same problem.

Speaker 10 It doesn't matter how big the agency is or how small, everybody's having a problem right now, right? So just trying to figure out how to actually market in this place.

Speaker 10 And I said, look, you know, you have agents that are, you know, they've got $14

Speaker 10 on the books right now. And then you've got some agents who have $1.4 million books of business, right? All throughout the gamut.

Speaker 10 I said, and those agents who have been successful, what they've done is they've played to their strengths.

Speaker 10 No agent who's ever been successful says, you know what, I'm going to prospect in my weakest way possible and you're not going to build a book of business that way everybody goes towards their strengths so if cold calling is not your strength i never have a producer cold call at least not the first part you're going to have to pick up a telephone but it doesn't mean that's going to be the first way you reach out to your prospect it might be the third way email might be first social media might be number two and then the actual telephone call So it doesn't have to be the first thing.

Speaker 10 You have to play to your strength. And the problem though is that most agents right now feel like they're fish out of water and they don't even remember what their strength is right now.

Speaker 10 I feel bad for those producers who like their strength was going out and shaking hands face to face. Those are the ones who are struggling right now.
That's why you have to take it to social media.

Speaker 10 It's the next best thing. You just have to be very, very active on social media and not spammy.
But it is the mentality, 100% the mentality of it.

Speaker 10 But again, if it's not your strength, if cold calling is not your strength, Ryan or whatever agent might be listening to this, if that's not your strength right now, make it your number three.

Speaker 10 Figure out what is your number one, right? That's what you have to go with. I try to take this to a baseball mentality, if you will.
You know, if you've got somebody, you know, who, you know,

Speaker 10 if you need a home run as a team, if you've got a win and you need a home run, you're not going to send somebody up there to bunt.

Speaker 10 Okay.

Speaker 10 The problem with most insurance agents right now is they're they're trying to figure out like something else to do and they're just walking up there with bunts because they don't really know how to do this.

Speaker 10 They don't have the power. They don't have the strength.
They don't have the ability to be able to hit a home run right now.

Speaker 10 And so they're walking around doing bunts and they're wondering why they're not actually winning anything. It's because they're not actually playing to their strengths.

Speaker 10 It does take us to kind of step back and look at things different. We have to right now look at it with COVID glasses.
Absolutely. It's changing the business.

Speaker 10 But every single one of your competitors is in the same problem.

Speaker 10 And let me just tell you, I speak to literally hundreds of agents every single week, hundreds of agents every single week from all over the place.

Speaker 10 And some, I would say probably half, and they're paying me money. Half of them right now aren't doing anything.
Okay. They're just not doing anything.
And it is absolute mentality.

Speaker 10 So it does require the accountability. You need to get somebody who's going to hold your feet to the fire, making sure you're actually doing the work, but you have to do smart work.

Speaker 10 And that's, I think, the issue is that squirrel syndrome. You can't be like going off on different areas because you're not going to get the consistency.

Speaker 10 You have to actually be doing the work that matters, playing to your strength.

Speaker 10 And I think that having that three or four prong approach, you can do email marketing, social media, you know, cold call and something else, very, very important because your prospect will reach out to you when they're they're ready in the format they're ready.

Speaker 10 Cold calling might not be their thing.

Speaker 9 When you say email, so are you talking about cold emails, right? Outreach emails. What is that? Like, what is your philosophy on that?

Speaker 9 Are you, you know, buying lists and running large-scale campaigns? You're doing one-offs? You're doing like, how do you, you know, what is your philosophy on

Speaker 9 cold email?

Speaker 10 Yeah. Again, every aspect of my entire coaching philosophy goes back to micro-niche.
The micro-niche is the foundation. Everything is built on top of that.
Social media is one floor.

Speaker 10 Email marketing is another floor. But everything has to be built on the micro-niche.
And so the emails that you're sending out are going to be micro-niched.

Speaker 10 If you're sending out emails to Chinese restaurants, the email itself and the services you're going to offer to that are going to be geared towards Chinese restaurants.

Speaker 10 And even the email headline might say, top three things Chinese restaurants can do to get more customer foot traffic in COVID-19. That's going to get opened by that particular micro-niche.

Speaker 10 And so yes, cold emails can definitely work if they are micro-niched. You're not going to send, you know, something that makes no sense and is no relevance to them.
That's just a big waste of time.

Speaker 10 And then you're just going to get, you know, sent in a spam folder. So it has to be focused.
Yes, cold email can be really, really helpful.

Speaker 10 And people tend to respond to email and social media a whole lot quicker than they respond to cold calls. But just the script itself doesn't change.

Speaker 10 Whatever you're saying on a cold call is what you would say in the email, is what you would say in the social media in the message. It's what's your carrot.

Speaker 10 So if you were like, even think about it, I'll put you on the spot, Ryan. Okay.

Speaker 10 If I'm a prospect and I'm looking at rogue risk and I'm looking at you and we're talking on a phone, doing a Zoom, or maybe even just come in and you stand outside and you're in front of my

Speaker 10 shop door. Yep.
And then I say, Ryan, why should I do business with you instead of my current agent?

Speaker 10 What would you say?

Speaker 8 Jesus, man.

Speaker 9 This is why I'm not selling any insurance.

Speaker 10 Fuck.

Speaker 10 That would be the wrong thing to say initially. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 9 No, I would probably, I would probably dial right in on the comp and I would let them know, hey, I've been in the business for 15 years and my specialty during that time has been workers' compensation, specifically looking inside of your program to find places where we can help improve your culture of safety, help improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of your workforce, get your people back to work when they're injured, and ultimately use all of those things to help you save money on your comp.

Speaker 9 I'd probably say something like that.

Speaker 10 Okay, now good. Thanks for playing with me on this.
Now, I ask that question to every single insurance agent I speak to, even when they're calling me on the phone.

Speaker 10 And I ask that question because it tells me right where they're at. Now, you said some good things there, and I'm in the insurance business,

Speaker 10 but I already forgot three-quarters of what you just told me. Yeah.
Okay. Because, but the thing that I can remember is that you said save money on workers' compensation.
Yeah.

Speaker 10 Those are the two things I remembered. That has to be your carrot.
That's your focus. I want you to think about it this way.
Maybe

Speaker 10 this could be your approach. This is your tagline.
15 minutes can save you 15% or more on workers' compensation insurance.

Speaker 10 Why should I do business with you? If you give me 15 minutes, I could probably save you 15% or more on your workers' compensation insurance. Kind of sounds like Geico, right?

Speaker 10 See, here's the whole thing. Geicos whole slogan, 15 minutes can save you 15% or more on car insurance.
Their entire slogan is micro-niched.

Speaker 10 It's focused on buyers who are concerned about if they might be able to save $100 or $200

Speaker 10 on their car insurance. I'm not a Geico.

Speaker 10 I would never do business with Geico. It doesn't resonate with me, but they know their micro-niche.
Their whole slogan is to try and get people to pick up their telephone and call them. Imagine that.

Speaker 10 They are a multiple billion or multiple million dollar agency, or carrier rather, and their whole philosophy is getting people to reach out to them.

Speaker 10 Whereas an independent agent, we're trying to just figure out how to reach out to people and get them excited. Look, they're so much more difficult, but they made it easy because of their slogan.

Speaker 10 It tells people what is the carrot. When you're talking to people about workers' compensation, you have to remember you're talking to people that don't understand insurance.

Speaker 10 They don't understand how work comp works. They don't understand how it's quoted.
They have no clue whatsoever how their X mod is calculated. Most insurance agents don't even know that.

Speaker 10 But what they can understand is the money, right? So that's why I say prospecting is about the numbers. When you're meeting with someone, when you're talking to them, that's the relationship game.

Speaker 10 But when you're trying to actually get them to want to talk with you, to meet with you, to do a Zoom, it's show them the numbers.

Speaker 10 In 15 minutes, I can begin qualifying you for my workers' compensation program that could potentially lower your X mod by 17%.

Speaker 10 It's going to save you about $100,000 over the course of the next four years. Let's meet.
It's going to take 15 minutes. Tuesday and I work for you, right?

Speaker 10 The whole strip changes because it goes back to what can you do for me? That's what they want to know.

Speaker 9 So I recently changed the tagline on my website. And have started using this

Speaker 9 for about two weeks now.

Speaker 9 When I see someone in person who asks me what I do and i say uh i've started saying you know business insurance is confusing time consuming and costly we solve these problems and costlies last on purpose because obviously well i like the alliteration of the c to help people remember too you know um

Speaker 9 and it's not perfect but i was trying to dial in on something that captures what those major concerns are is i don't know what the hell it is i feel like i spend way too much time on it and i feel like i spend way too much money on it and that's what i'm trying to get across to people with that tagline is, and maybe I should just say that, although that wouldn't fit on a home page of my website.

Speaker 9 But and then just kind of simply saying, like, these are the problems that we solve. And it really is.

Speaker 9 I mean, that's what we're trying to do: we're trying, you know, we at Rogue, I overeducate people.

Speaker 9 I create so much ridiculous amount of content on purpose to try to make it not as confusing as it was. You're never going to understand it.

Speaker 9 And I don't expect them to, but I'm trying to make it not as confusing. Not as time consuming, trying to make this an e-agency in in whatever, you know, terminal, in whatever idea that is.

Speaker 9 And I don't think any of us have it figured out all the way, but I'm working towards that. You know, and then the last piece is costly.
Right. And, and that's a big part of the game for people.

Speaker 9 And I do hate when agents step onto

Speaker 9 their platform and go, oh, you know, I don't like price shoppers or we don't talk about price. And I'm like, then you're an asshole.
Because you know what matters to freaking customers?

Speaker 9 How much they're paying. It matters to me.
You know what I mean? It matters to me when I'm hiring a landscaper. It matters to me when I'm hiring someone to come fix my plumbing.

Speaker 9 You know, it matters to me when I'm going to get new tires. So, you know what I mean? Like, price always matters.
It doesn't mean it's the most important thing, but it certainly matters. And,

Speaker 9 you know, I don't know that that.

Speaker 10 That's one thing they can understand, right? That one prospect, you know, you were 26,000. He was six grand on his other quote.
That's all he understood. Yeah.
He didn't know anything else.

Speaker 10 That's all he understood. Yeah.

Speaker 9 And that price difference was too big for him.

Speaker 9 Like in his mind, and get it, right? I mean, this is a guy who doesn't know insurance. Like you said, you know, he doesn't understand.

Speaker 9 He's looking at 6,000 and 16,000 and going, I would have to be an idiot to take 16,000. Like, I would have to be an idiot.
This guy's a professional insurance agent, just like this other guy.

Speaker 9 You know, even though he's doing covered, that's what he's saying.

Speaker 10 I must be covered.

Speaker 9 Yeah. I must be good.
He's handing me this thing. He must just have a special market.
And, you know, now, if those were closer, I think I could have overcome it.

Speaker 9 But with it being so different, you know, I mean, it's, it's a big deal. And

Speaker 9 I think.

Speaker 10 Well, you hit, I think the important part of like what you just hit, even like what you're talking about on your webpage, like there's three main main objections you're going to hear from your prospect.

Speaker 10 And it's the three things they want, right? They want to save money. They want to save time and they want peace of mind.
They want to know that they went with the right agent, the right carer.

Speaker 10 Those three things, right?

Speaker 10 But like when you're talking to somebody about, you know, we do a great job of putting together a loss control program.

Speaker 10 We're going to come in and actually put together this great safety program for you and all your employees.

Speaker 10 And we're going to be, you know, going to your job site and helping you out with your visits and so forth.

Speaker 10 To the typical business owner, they're thinking, man, how much of my time is that going to take? Yeah.

Speaker 10 I don't even want that. Right.
We start telling them the things that we can do, and they don't even want that kind of stuff yet. They don't even know they need it necessarily.

Speaker 10 So we have to speak to them like four-year-olds. I have to speak to them like four-year-olds who just don't understand insurance.
Are you hungry? Would you like a Dorito?

Speaker 10 Probably not the best thing for you, but I'm going to give give you a Dorito because that's what's going to be on me, right? So you're talking to them on their level.

Speaker 9 It's funny. So I have as a tool, MyWave Connect for my business clients.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 it's an awesome, MyWave Connect to Zywave is an awesome tool. It's awesome.
And it really is a value add.

Speaker 9 And once you explain it to people and explain it, especially if someone has an HR manager or if there's an operations or office manager who handles any kind of employee-related employee-related issues, if they actually spend five minutes in MyWave Connect, they're going to love it.

Speaker 9 I guarantee it.

Speaker 9 They could give two flying craps at the time of sale whether or not MyWave Connect is concluded.

Speaker 9 So I have a process who ultimately did business with me, but I wasted easily. And he was a buddy of mine.

Speaker 9 We'll say less than a buddy, but more than an acquaintance in whatever that zone is. And ended up doing his insurance, and he's got like 10 employees or whatever.

Speaker 9 And I got to the end and it was a situation where I was able to then say, hey, man, like,

Speaker 9 how did I do? Like, what did you think? And he said, look, he goes, this and this, perfect, great. Happy to do business with you.
He goes, you spend 15 minutes on that employee thing.

Speaker 10 I could care less.

Speaker 9 He goes, I'm going to give it to Shirley.

Speaker 10 He'll love it, but I could care less.

Speaker 9 And, you know, it was just such a wake-up call to me to what you're saying is like,

Speaker 9 that's something that I'm not even even going to talk to them about that is a a schmoogie that they get afterwards that that creates a nice fence around them right it creates a nice fence and it's a and it is i i really do believe it's a really nice tool and i do think it's a value add that could retain a client but nobody is buying insurance from me because i have that nobody right never gonna have to even bring it up is pointless yep 100 i believe that with all my heart absolutely i think that most insurance agents are very often their own worst enemy when it comes to prospecting because they're trying to sell the prospect some services, some products, and the prospect is just not interested in those things.

Speaker 10 Yeah. Right.
It's just not interested in those things. So you have to find out where the pain is at, where's the struggle.

Speaker 10 And that's why, like, going back to, again, the micro-niche is you have an idea on what is the problem for that industry. Okay.

Speaker 10 Chinese restaurant, contractor, you know, plumbing contractor, furniture store owner, accountant, right? Right. You have a pretty good feel for what their problem is.

Speaker 10 Now, workers' compensation, you know, right off the bat, got a high X mod. I know where your pain's at.
I already know where your pain, your struggle is at.

Speaker 10 You have no idea why this thing keeps going up. Maybe your agent can't even tell you about why it's going up.
It's just going up. Nobody's actually even explained it to you.
Right.

Speaker 10 And frankly, if you kind of figure out even the basics of it, you can explain how an X mod is calculated in three minutes or less, and they will be able to see a significant amount of expertise from you.

Speaker 10 Where, frankly, I think they probably be willing to sign your broker record letter if you can actually follow through on their biggest pain. So speak to the pain.
That's where you got to go.

Speaker 9 Yeah. Dude, this has been awesome.
I want to be respectful of your time. And we just blew through 54 minutes and

Speaker 9 it felt like 10.

Speaker 9 So I just want to thank you. I appreciate you coming on.

Speaker 9 Where can people learn more about you, about what you do? Where can they connect with you? Hit them with the whole deal.

Speaker 10 Right. Well, hey, LinkedIn is where I spend my time doing business.
All my other social media platforms, I do it for fun and family and stuff like that. But LinkedIn is 100% business.

Speaker 10 Connect with me there. That's where I try to put out a lot of my free content.
But go to one of my URLs. Go to www.brokerofrecordletter.com.
Brokerofrecord Letter.com.

Speaker 10 I right now, like I'm kind of getting away from a lot of even my one-on-one coaching. I'm just doing a lot of this stuff.

Speaker 10 I'm just putting all of my material right there in the actual like program, the mastermind. It's just right there.

Speaker 10 And that's where I'm spending all my time, you know, coaching individual agents right there. Brokerofrecordletter.com, probably probably easiest way.
But hey, send me an email. Let's talk.

Speaker 9 Dude, I appreciate you. I appreciate you coming on the show.
I love the way you think about the business. And

Speaker 9 I just want more people to be in your ecosystem because

Speaker 9 I think you're putting out the ideas that

Speaker 9 align with where we need to be as agents moving into the future.

Speaker 9 I was talking, this is the last thing I'll say.

Speaker 9 I was talking to a marketing rep right before this call. I got off a call with one of my marketing reps as a check-in call.
And we were talking about just everything that's changing and going on. And

Speaker 9 I said to him, you know, I feel like right now, the days of you being able to have an extraneous employee or a low-performing employee or a piece of technology that you're paying for, but not using, like the margins are coming down.

Speaker 9 And it's time to batten down the hatches and get back to work. If you were coasting and you're taking

Speaker 9 Tuesdays and Fridays for golf, you're going to have to cut Tuesdays out, you know, one of those days.

Speaker 9 I mean, like, it's time to get back to work because the margins are coming down and we need to be laser-focused on what we're doing.

Speaker 9 And this idea of going after bigger accounts, of micro-niching, of focusing on hitting activity numbers that lead to the goals, all this kind of stuff that I've seen you put through your LinkedIn feed.

Speaker 9 I think you're right dialed in on it. And I just hope everyone who's listening who's not connected to you finishes up this show and goes on to LinkedIn and does because they'll be happy they did.

Speaker 10 Man, Ryan, hey, I just thank you for allowing me to be here today.

Speaker 10 And frankly, you know, I probably am going to echo what a lot of insurance agents out there are going to say, but just thanks for being an advocate for the insurance agent.

Speaker 10 Such a blessing to have people like yourself out there trying to really actually bring something positive and it's helpful.

Speaker 6 So thanks for that. Thanks.

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