RHS 169 - The Keynote That Explains It All

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In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello everyone and welcome back to the show.
Today we have an absolutely tremendous episode for you. It is a special episode.
It is the audio version of a recording of a recent keynote that I did at the One City World Tour, which is an event held by the insurance guys, my boys Bradley Flowers and Scott Howell, and also the entire team over at Glovebox. Andy Matheson, Ryan Matheson, all the crew over there.
absolutely tremendous event, tons of movers and shakers, tons of people with an open mind looking to do amazing things. A couple hundred people there.
And if you want to watch this episode, go over to Finding Peak. Go to findingpeak.com.
That's my peak performance kind of blog that I put together where I'm writing free articles every Friday. And then every Tuesday, I'm doing articles specifically, videos, articles, resources, specifically breaking down the things that I'm learning at Rogue Risk and sharing them with you every Tuesday.
So every Tuesday you get something like what we came out with, like sharing the video recording of this talk, but you can listen to the audio right here because you are a subscriber to this podcast, which means that I love you. If you do enjoy this episode, I hope you share it.
I hope you leave us a rating and review. That just helps us find more insurance professionals, more people interested in this content.
And I would love it if you took a second, if you're driving or doing something, I know you always can't, but you jump over to Finding Peak. And if you're interested in that content, subscribe.
Putting a lot of effort in there as we try to share what we're learning at Rogue Risk and how you kind of build a mindset, build a body, build habits and routines that allow you to operate in a peak performance state. And then actually share what we're doing from a tactical standpoint in the insurance industry to help you get where you want to be.
It's lots of fun. One thing I will say, guys, this episode is not safe for work.
This is me doing a keynote. And when I do keynotes, oftentimes I curse.
So if that makes you uncomfortable in any way, shape or form, please know that this is not a safe for work episode of the show,

although most of the episodes are not safe for work, so you probably know that by now.

Before we get there, though, big shout out to Tivly, T-I-V-L-Y, T-I-V-L-Y, used to be known as Commercial Insurance.net.

They are the largest provider of warm, qualified commercial insurance leads to independent

insurance agencies.

They basically take a phone call and they survey someone. And if that survey meets what you're interested in, they warm past that call to you live.
So, you know, hi, Mr. Agent.
I'm from Tivoli. I have a five-person manufacturer with $750,000 in revenue.
Is this something that you want? Yes, I would love it. And then they connect you with that business owner.
We love Tivoli. Tivoli has been a huge part of our growth strategy and we continue to become more and more embedded into Tivoli and partnering deeper with them.
I highly recommend if you're looking to create a foundational stream of qualified leads that consistently comes in every week, every month that you can count on, that are going to be good clients, Tivoli's the place to go. Highly recommend it.
We've been a client of theirs for, we're going on two years now, and I have no intentions of stopping. Love Tivoli.
Love that they decided to be a partner of this show and sponsor it, and love sharing companies like Tivoli with you. So with that, we're going to get on to my keynote titled How to Close 89% of Inbound Leads.
Sounds familiar. It's a topic I've been kind of unpacking slowly in different venues.
This is the keynote. And guys, if you like this keynote and you have an event and you want me to bring it to your event, just reach out to me, Ryan at roguers.com.
That's Ryan at roguers.com. All right, with that, let's get on to this episode.
Thank you. Guys, what's up? I'm Chris Langilly, according to Ryan Haley, or Linguini, as I was called in high school.
Great seeing you guys. Great event.
Thank you guys. I'm the chief cook and bottle washer at Advisor Evolve.
We build really cool websites for independent insurance agents. Yes, sir.
Thank you. Appreciate you guys.
We also handle digital marketing services as well. So SEO, pay-per-click, retargeting, landing page creation, basically full funnel digital advertising, similar to what the big guys do on a scale down level for independent agents.
Anybody's interested, I have a QR code over there. I don't want to talk too much about myself.
I'd rather talk about this guy who really needs no introduction. Funny story, Bradley asked me to bring him up on stage.
He messaged me last week. Can you bring Ryan up on stage? I was in the middle of replying back to emails, and I'm thinking, like, piggyback? Like, how am I going to lift this dude up on stage? I don't understand.
Do I drag him off stage, but no. Ryan's one of my good friends in the

industry. 2014, 2015, I was an agency owner.
I created a blog on my website. Blogging all the

time, create some good content, started getting a lot of traction, was really proud of myself.

And somebody said, oh yeah, check out Ryan Hanley. So I go to his website, Content Warfare.
And I'm like, son of a bitch. This dude had a podcast, blog articles.
He was five years ahead of me. And we became good friends.
And Ryan, in my opinion, is one of the true OGs in our space. Been on the independent side, been on the corporate side, back on the independent side, and I think everybody in the room at some point in their journey in this industry has either stolen ideas from him without giving credit or maybe rightfully giving him credit.
I know I've borrowed an idea or two from him. So without further ado, please welcome my close friend, Mr.
Ryan Hanley. Do you mind bringing that over there? All right, guys, it's a pleasure to be here.
I'm not going to stand up on stage. I'm going to come down there, but I just want to set some ground rules real quick.
This is meant to be a conversation. I hope that you guys have questions.
I hope that you'll raise your hand. I hope you'll shout out at me, especially if you disagree.
I'm going to share with you my experience, and I hope that you will question me where things don't make sense to you. That's how we have the best conversation.
I'm not going to use slides, so you just have to look at me for the rest of the time. In 2006, I was at a Christmas party at my then girlfriend, now ex-wife, and her father pulled me out of the Christmas party, tapped me on the shoulder and said, hey, will you come into my office? And he sat me down, and this is like one of those old school offices that is so uncomfortable that nothing actually gets done there, but all you rich have it in your house anyways, right? You like just need to waste the square footage, so you put this really uncomfortable office that looks nice in there.
So I'm sitting there, and we're in high leatherback chairs, and this is like out of a freaking mafia movie. And he kind of like makes me an offer that I can't refuse.
I think ultimately he didn't want his daughter to be married to a bum and he wanted to like keep his eyes on me so he essentially said hey I know you're not really doing anything with your life right now. I want you to come sell insurance for me and since at the time I thought marrying his daughter was a good idea I I said yes to that offer.
And that's essentially how my insurance career began. I was a boots on the ground, kind of ground and pound guy.
I was putting 50,000 miles on my car, driving strip mall to strip mall, you know, dropping off business cards, which is like why we would ever think that that would work. I have no idea, right? You walk in, you start at the end of the strip mall, and you look at the sign, and you go, my name's Ryan, I'm the best Chinese food insurance guy in Albany.
And then you walk out, and you walk into the next one, and you go, I'm the best Subway sub shop insurance guy in Albany. And you just do that over and over again.
And like now it seems silly, but at the time I'd like be in the parking lot of my car with like Metallica, like trying to get jacked up to go drop my business card off, which is just insane to think about today. But it took me a lot of work to cold call.
I hated it. Like I would have like a physical reaction to it.
And after all that that time all I really learned was not how to

prospect but I learned all the best places to take a dump in Albany when you're on the road because you know you're out there for eight hours sometimes nature calls you know so yeah anyone who's ever done it knows your buddies will call you they'll be like oh man that Duncan over on Main Street, that's a good one.

Always clean, you know.

So,

so, call you. They'll be like, oh man, that Duncan over on Main Street, that's a good one.
Always clean, you know. So at night, we would do personal lines cold calling.
So daytime was for commercial lines prospecting. At night, we did personal lines prospecting.
What that looked like was cold calls. And how my father-in-law, I think because he hated me and probably still does um he literally put a phone book this is like a movie put a phone book on my desk and was like there's your prospecting list i mean that it's bananas like really thinking about that today and me some of you are still doing it and god bless you but um i would just call people hey I know I know you weren't expecting my call, blah, blah, blah.
And I hated it. And frankly, I was really terrible at it.
And 18 months into that work, he called me into his office and basically fired me. And I did what any guy would do.
I got down on my knees like a little, and I, please, the love of God, don't fire me. Like, I got to go home to your daughter.
You know what I mean? And, and, you know, I don't know if you've ever been almost fired by an in-law, but it is, it's a humbling experience. Let's put it that way.
And I said, I'll do anything. I'll change.
I'll work harder. I'll hit my numbers.
I promise. And he thankfully said, okay.
But I knew something had to change. I knew something had to change.
This, you know, the way business had always been done, although is a perfectly fine way to do business, for me, it did not work. I just, whatever, we were just talking about it over there in the room with Scott and Justin.
And Jessica, we, some of us can cold call, some of us can. I couldn knew that okay so I had something to change so at that time the internet still really wasn't a thing like some of you are pretty young there there was a time like I'm unfortunately old enough now to say there was a time when the internet like wasn't really a big deal like people still believed like you couldn't do business on the internet hopefully none of us here believe that today or at least we're gonna change that by the end of my talk so so I just started researching like online and there were people like like Chris had said um there were people online who were writing articles and LinkedIn was kind of a thing a little bit and Twitter and I had this I had this moment and I don't want to call it brilliance but you know I have been accused of that where I just said holy shit like I'm two years into this and I barely understand this product I'm selling how the hell do the people that we sell insurance to know anything about this like I'm like licensed I think about this every day I talk about it every day and I can still barely explain underinsured motorist coverage, right? Like, how do the people who purchase our product actually know? So, what I started doing around 2008-2009 was I started writing blog articles answering common questions to our industry.
Now, today, that is a standard practice. In 2008, I was, like, literally ostracized by the industry for doing this.
Like, there would be people out in the crowd when I would do talks who would yell, not in my town, not here. They don't use the internet in Connecticut.
It's not the real thing. You know, and I would get heckled for this talk that I'm giving you, which by the way, this talk I've given over 350 times.
And the best part is I'm going to give you every secret I have. And I know none of you motherfuckers are going to do anything with this information.
So that's why I love doing this. So I start writing these articles.
Now, one little caveat was my father-in-law and my brother-in-law at the time would not allow me to do it on their website. So I did on my own, ryanhanley.com, podcast or whatever but at the time when it was started I branded myself the Albany insurance professional and I wrote these articles and for six months nothing happened At the nine month mark Right we start around six months.
We started a little bit of traction I can see like in Google Analytics a little bit and at nine months a woman me and it changed the course of my career. Her name was Virginia and she was from a town called Clifton Park.
Clifton Park is 25 minutes north of where our agency was in Gilgoland. I share that piece of information to you only so you know this wasn't someone who drove by our office all the time.
She didn't know us from any other business in the area. She never even came to our town.
She found me online. So the phone rang, Ryan, you know, someone's calling for you, okay? Hi, my name is Virginia.
You don't know me. I've been reading your blog for a few months, which means she's crazy.
And I want you to do my insurance. And I said, oh, you want a quote? She goes, no, no, no.
I don't want a quote. I'm going to send you what I have.
I want you to do my insurance. And I said, oh, you want a quote? She goes, no, no, no.

I don't want a quote.

I'm going to send you what I have.

I want you to take a look and then just send me what I need.

And I'll just, whatever you tell me to buy, I'll just buy it.

And that's exactly what I did.

Now, here's the weird part.

And some of you will remember this.

I had to physically mail her accord forms, which she signed, put a check in a paperclip, back in another envelope, and mail it back to me so that I could process it. So it tells you, you know, this is how business was done, even as short a time ago as 2008, 2009.
So here's the key. She was already sold.
Guys, this is the power of inbound and content marketing, of putting your message out of everything else, all the other bullshit I'm going to talk about today. The power is that people already trust you.
They've done their own research. They've taken the time, whether it's at 7 p.m., 9 p.m., noon, whenever.
They've decided you are the person before they ever talk to you. Most of them, like you guys, they think I'm short, right? Because I do the selfie all you say, oh, you're taller than I thought I was.
Right? So these are people who couldn't pick you out of a lineup, but they trust you because they've heard you talk on a video or a podcast or they've read something that you wrote or the way you interact and share in social media or through an email or however you're creating your content and putting it out in the world. And there is no really right or wrong answer.
It's whatever tactics work for you in your market. I want to be clear about that.
Although I'm happy to share any questions you have on my feelings on particular topics. But the idea here is if we do this work and we do it right.
Yeah, go ahead, man. Sit right there.
I had this really good bit and you guys weren't there, so you weren't part of it. So the whole point is to be already sold.
That's what we want. That's the whole goal.
When we create content, I think of every blog post, every video I do, every single one is a salesperson working for me 24 hours a day, seven days a week. How many agency owners are in the room? Agency owners.
How in awful are producers? They're just the worst. They're the worst.
They bitch about stuff. They constantly need days off.
They want their commissions split updated. Oh, I didn't get paid for this.
It's terrible, right? They're terrible. That's only half a joke.
Our content, our videos, our articles, whatever we create and put out online is a producer. Our website is a producer working for us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
That is how I want you to think about it. It is a revenue generating mechanism.
I do not create all the videos that I create because I like to waste my time sharing information about insurance online. I don't.
There are plenty of other things that I would rather spend my time doing. But I do it because people who have a need search online for things and I want them to find me and none of you.
Honestly. I mean I hope we're clear that while I'm gonna give you everything that have, I want to dominate all of you all the time.
And I hope that you are sitting there thinking the same thing. We are friendly competitors, right? James and I have talked about this before, right? That I operate in states that he operates in.
I create content, well, some of this stuff. I don't do a lot of the real estate investment stuff, but I would give him everything that

I do, every tactic, and I'll do the same for all of you.

But we are friendly competitors.

You have to want to grow and sell, and that's what this work is about.

This content work is about growing our business.

If you do not want to grow, do not do this.

It is a pain in the ass.

It is a lot of thought.

It is time.

There are other ways to maintain where your business is.

But what I'm going to share with you is how you grow your business.

Thank you. It is a lot of thought it is time right there are other ways to maintain where your business is But what I'm going to share with you is how you grow your business and to me today There is no better way to create a foundation of consistent revenue in your agency than creating content and Then there are some tactics you can use that actually will help you scale But the way I look at content and in the inbound leads that we get in particular so so much of the work I do is not about referrals it's not about outbound cold calling it is about generating inbound warm leads to the agency and I think of that as our baseline because if I'm doing my job right then I know every day I'm getting 10 15 20 leads in the door and that I I can then track what's our conversion ratio on there.
And then I know and can count on every day that coming in. Every single day.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. That's what we're trying to do here.
So I told you I was creating on ryanhanley.com and I was getting some calls Virginias, right? More people like Virginia are calling. And we had a sales meeting every Monday morning.
And every Monday morning, you would talk about the business you got and where it came from. And I kept saying, my website, my website.
How many of you agency principals out there would be super happy if one of your producers kept going, yeah, I got it from my website and not your not your agency's website we're a little ego driven I get that you know I've been known to have an ego once in a while I wouldn't love that yes yeah so it's so good James it was their fault that's true but and they were very nice about it they came to me and said hey we know you're doing this for your website would you do it for the agency's website and I said fine and actually there was kind of a weird disconnect in brand between why do I have this, like, RyanHanley.com brand, but I really work for another agency, so I was okay with it. And so we redid the whole website, and we, you know, nice, clean WordPress website, and it was nice, and built for conversion, and all that was great.
And then we got to the economics, and that's where everything fell apart. They wanted me to do all the work and take none of the leads.
And so staff went on strike. Staff went on strike.
And I do have one slide that I wish I had brought. It basically shows we launched a new website in April of 2011, and you see a little bump where we emailed our clients, and then just this flat line that goes across like this.
72 hits a week to our contact us page and our home page. Why those two pages? We only had seven pages on the website but only two of them were getting traffic.
Why our contact us page and our home page? I know you're not going to answer because I've done this 350 times. The reason for that was that those were people who already knew us.
They were just trying to figure out how to get a hold of us.

Now, what did we just talk about a few minutes ago?

Our website is a new business revenue generating tool that works for us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. How useful or optimized is that tool if only people who already know us and already pay us are the only ones coming to our site?

Right?

If we're not creating content, Google, the internet gods gods they're not going to send any new people okay so if you are not creating today and you went and looked at your traffic it would be this nice neat flat death line where only people who already know you're contacting you which means every dollar you spend on your website which if you have a website it should be through Chris he's the best every dollar you spend on your website, which if you have a website, it should be through Chris.

He's the best.

Every dollar you spend on that website is wasted.

Every dollar, 150 bucks a month, it's wasted if you're not creating, because only people who already know you are using it.

And the goal of the internet, of our online properties, of our website, of our blog, of our YouTube, of all of our social channels,

the goal is to grow our business. It's to attract people and have them call us that's yeah that's what ryanhanley looks like ryanhanley.com looks like now it's the uh it's the um the podcast page you can go to uh rogrist.com whoever did that and you can see that thing now um so so we have this death line right this is flat line going across well finally management staff came together we had a little negotiation and i said hey since i'm gonna be doing all the work just give me my standard commission split on the leads that come in i'll write them just like i did if i were going out and getting referrals or whatever they agree so you know my brain my brain sometimes like uh uh uh works in odd ways i had this this image flash in my head.
How many people know the movie Pulp Fiction? What's the one lesson that you take from Pulp Fiction? Do not snort heroin. Right? There's a lot of cool things you can shove up your nose.
Heroin should not be one of them. That's what I take from that movie.
Well, if you guys remember, there's a scene where Uma Thurman who unfortunately didn't learn that lesson she snorts heroin, she's dying on the ground right here and John Travolta's character takes this adrenaline needle and he jabs it in her heart and she comes bursting back to life. That's what I wanted to do with our website.
That's how my brain is fucked up. I am not shitting you when I say that is the image that came to my head.
I needed this thing that had this flat death line to come bursting back to life. So what I did was in the month of December 2011, every customer, client, prospect, every human that I bumped into, I said, if you could have one question answered about insurance, what would it be? Just one.
No question is too too big too large enough just just tell me what it was and I got a hundred and thirty seven questions some of them were a little nutsy like how do you ensure a spaceship or whatever I threw those ones out I pared it down to a list of a hundred that seemingly were like in our sweet spot and starting on January 2nd of 2012 I started answering those questions every day via video in two minutes or less and I did it with a 5 megapixel non HD camera at a time when uploading a two-minute video to YouTube took about five hours like literally you had to be like I'm using the computer for the afternoon don't touch it you know because if because if my wife comes, if she came over and fucked with the computer, you can mess the whole download up. Like, you know, today it's like, bloop, uploaded.
You know, it just, that's not the way the internet worked back then. So every day, two minutes or less, you know, and basically I would hold, I would stand in my office and I hold my phone up.
They're still all online. You know, I just, hey, my name is Ryan Hanley.
I work with the Murray Group Insurance Services. Today we're going to answer the question, what is underinsured motorist coverage? And I'd barf out the answer.
That was it, right? That was it. And what's amazing, and again, I should have brought this slide.
I was a little hungover this morning, so I didn't kind of.

And I also knew half the people were going to leave because I'm not really the draw I used to be.

So you thought that one was funny, huh?

So what you see is starting on January 2nd of 2012, the Google Analytics shoots up like this. It literally goes to the moon.
Why? Because what is Google's purpose? What are all these things, all the LinkedIn, Google, Bing, if you're a weirdo and you use that, right? Like I still sometimes see Yahoo search come through. Am I going to say, I don't want people that use Yahoo search as my clients that is a weird thing so um so so so all the purpose of all of these right is they need you to stay in their ecosystem so they can serve you ads so what I was doing was literally feeding Google exactly what they needed I was giving them answers to commonly asked insurance questions which kept people coming back to Google so what what did they do? They just rewarded me with more and more traffic, right? They just rewarded me with more and more traffic.
And during that time period of a hundred days, the accounts that came in, we made $100,000 in revenue at the Murray Group Insurance Services. It was like $97,000 and whatever, right? From those 100 videos, during a 100-day period, the leads that were associated with those videos when they came in, we made $100,000 in 2012.
That's found revenue, two minutes or less. It technically took me 22 minutes to post a video, two minutes to record, upload.
I was making a joke about the five hours to upload a video. But it did take like 20 20 20 ish minutes and then once it was uploaded I put a title simple description with a link and our phone number and bam it would go up it wasn't sophisticated it's not how I would necessarily do it today I would go probably richer and deeper with the content you know but at the time that's what I did so it took me about 22 minutes a day and we made for 100 days and we had a hundred thousand dollars in revenue

That is that is why I do what I do the beauty of it

After eight years at the Murray group

And this just continued right the the month that I was fired at the Murray group

We generated 96 inbound leads on a hundred in total spending. These videos, they're working 24 hours a day.
This just kept growing. We just kept getting more and more and more leads.
I could take a month off. It didn't matter.
It's there. They're working for me.
That's the beauty of creating content. I get fired the Murray Group, and I go and work for trustedchoice.com.

And I launched the Agency Nation platform, which was a lot of fun.

Some of you, I know you from that time period.

We met during that time period, which was one of the most fun times of my life.

And I got to meet all of you.

I lived eight years in a bubble, in that grinding world,

Thank you. I lived eight years in a bubble, in that grinding world, and I got to understand at my core what it means to be a traditional agent, the power, why the insurance industry is not broken, all the things that we talk about.
I got to learn that. I'm blessed to have learned that.
And then I got the opposite experience. I got to come out and talk to all of you and learn your problems are a little different.
Some of them are the same. Some things you do differently.
And I got this really deep breath and understanding of what our industry is and how amazing it is that we get to literally choose our own destiny. There are not very many professions that you can have where you can build anything that you want.
That's what's the beauty and the challenge of our space is that you can literally turn this business into Anything that you want it to be you can go after you know I got I won't produce her in my in my in my agency She she wants her niche when she's ready. She hasn't graduated to have a niche yet That's a different topic for a different time when she does she wants it to be adult toy stores One I think I think that's amazing because sex is awesome and two um what's really interesting about it is when you dig into the niche it's actually a really interesting niche there's 3,700 of them nationally most of them are absolutely crapped on by their agents because no one you know us uptight conservative types don't really want anyone to know that we're ensuring a adult toy store because god forbid we get freaky in the sack, right? So there's no real, so no one owns it, there's no programs available, and there's like four carriers that write it.
So when you actually break it down as a niche, it's a pretty wonderful niche, right? So she could literally build her business on adult toy stores, and I think it's amazing that she can do that.

It's not the business I want to write personally, you know, whatever.

But I think it's amazing that she has that ability and we all have that.

So I learned that lesson at trustedchoice.com and Agency Nation and then ultimately was fired from that business as well.

I am difficult to work with and don't do well as an employee.

So if any of you are thinking about hiring me, just be careful.

You will get exactly what you think you're going to get.

And then I went and worked for Bold Penguin for a time,

which taught me the mentality of the people that hate us.

And I'm not saying the people at Bold Penguin hate us,

but their method was we're humans, you know,

they're in that ecosystem where the humans are the problem, right? Humans are the problem. And

that was interesting. It wasn't a great fit.
I was basically fired from there too. And

essentially what happened was I had a family member get sick, terminally ill, unfortunately,

and I couldn't travel. And Bold Penguin was a three- a job three three week a month travel job and when I told them I couldn't travel anymore because my family member essentially they said you have to travel or you can't work here right and I don't want to cut them in a bad mold it just it didn't work so I became a CEO of a fitness franchise because Albany is not a bastion of insurance opportunities and the Murray Group would not have me back.
So I did that for nine months and learned some more lessons, whatever. Mostly I got fired from there too.
And that happened at this motherfucker. So I started there.
I worked out at this gym for like five years. And I loved the workout and I knew the owner.
And when he heard that I was looking for another opportunity, he said, hey, I'm a gym guy. You're a business guy, which, you know, the joke was on him.
I don't really know shit about business. So he said you're a business guy, you know, why don't you come be the CEO and I'll do the gym stuff And I said that sounds great and in nine months

I doubled the membership from about you know me and the team doubled the membership from 2100 members to 4,000 members and

at 8 36 a.m. on a Monday I'm in Lululemon because the best part about being the CEO of a fitness franchise you literally wear like workout gear all day like part of your job is you have to work out which for me was cool and I'm sitting there you know chilling or whatever and he walks in and I can see him walk into the office except he's in a suit with his attorney and I was like something's wrong so yeah and then wrong was they fired me so as I'm walking as I'm walking out from from there to my truck I decided that it was time to take all these amazing conversations with all the people that I knew in this industry, all the experiences I had, and put them into something that could actually be mine.
And that was where Rogue Risk came from. Rogue Risk, the very first thing that I wrote down, and I promise this has a point, is the very first thing I wrote down when I was thinking about Rogue Risk was this this concept that you may or may not have heard me talk about which is human optimized when I say human optimized what I mean is humans are the most important part of our business but we often allocate them improperly okay if you have humans producing certificates of insurance, you're wasting time and money.

So when I see someone in my agency, I track what they do.

Not because I want to be a drill sergeant, because I want to find efficiencies and places

where we can add value and remove the humans from the places that they do not add value.

Our customers do not think a billing change, they don't see that as a value add for us.

We are not, when they call us with a billing change, we're not adding value to their life. That's the barrier for entry.
So when a human does a billing change in your agency, all I see is the freaking expense meter spinning. I mean, I just, you know, like this, because they're spending time on a task that the customer doesn't give a shit.
Who does it? They just need to give you a new credit card.

That's all they need to do.

They don't care if it's a system, if it's an app.

They don't care if they text mess.

They just need it done.

Their old credit card expired.

They need to put a new credit card in.

So when I think human optimized, what I want to do is build an agency where the humans are injected in the moments where they add the most value, which is in every moment that builds trust because our entire business is trust. What's up guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show and in exchange for that, I need your help.
If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes, et cetera. This helps the show grow.
It helps me bring more guests in. We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in, men and women who've done incredible things, sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales, the things that are going to help you grow as a person and grow your business.
But they all check out comments, ratings, reviews. They check out all this information before they come on.
So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help. Share the show.
Subscribe if you're not subscribed. And I'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments.
Or if you're on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating review of this show. I love you for listening to this show.
And I hope you enjoy it. Listening as much as I do, creating the show for you.
All right, I'm out of here. Peace.
Let's get back to the episode. Everything that I've learned about going online, I think the common misconception that people have most of my work is that I'm trying to remove the humans or I'm trying to bypass trust.
And everything that I have learned marketing our business online is that trust it's the whole business it's the whole business you create the content to build the trust that's why you do it that's what that's the whole purpose if you're willing to watch me talk about insurance on YouTube one one, that's like I said, I still think all these people are weirdos. Two, you, whether you know it or not, are slowly starting to believe what I believe.
You're starting to think the way that I think. And even though I am a terrible insurance agent, there are hundreds of thousands of people online that think I know what I'm talking about.
And that's amazing to me. They trust me.
Now, you can't mess with that trust. You actually have to deliver on what you say you're going to do, which obviously I do that as often as we possibly can.
But my point is, they are building trust with you. And that's the whole game.
And that's what human optimized is about, is that I don't want to waste my people's time doing things that don't build trust, because the entire game is trust. So the way that I thought about this in my head is, let's say you have a 20-minute block of time with someone.
Someone calls, and you're going to spend 20 minutes on the. That's just for purposes of this thought experiment, let's just say that's what's happening.
The traditional way of doing business is that your, we call them CSAs, customer success associates, whatever, CSRs. Traditionally, they're going to spend about five minutes on the phone with that person and then rush them off the phone because they know it's going to take 15 minutes for them to actually do the task that that person asked them to do.
And my goal with Rogue Risk was to flip that on its head. I wanted them to be able to spend 15 minutes on the phone with that person, building trust, talking to them, cross-selling, asking for referrals, digging into coverage issues, the things that we're really good at that we all talk about wanting to do all day, and then making it so they

only had to spend five minutes doing the processing.

And my belief was, if I could do that in a digital manner, I could hit the holy grail,

which is massive inbound new business growth accompanied with standard independent insurance

agency level retention so when you go digital what you're gonna find is that

it is very difficult to break the mid 40s for retention okay most of the

digital businesses that are that are primarily digital these big-box shops

they can't break 40% retention there's something all somewhere in the

Thank you. Most of the digital businesses that are primarily digital, these big box shops, they can't break 40% retention.

They're all somewhere in the 40s.

Geico has been in the 40s for 20 years.

That's why they have to spend so much on advertising.

They can't break the 40s for retention.

So when we look at all this new business production that they have, they're just feeding us.

One of our largest sources of business is Next Insurance.

People go there up front.

They see the ads.

The ads are amazing. They see how easy it is to buy insurance.

Thank you. They're just feeding us.
One of our largest sources of business is Next Insurance. People go there up front.
They see the ads. The ads are amazing.
They see how easy it is to buy insurance. They buy insurance.
Then they have a question, can't get a hold of anybody, hate it, leave, and find us online. We'll talk a little bit more about how to get business.
Getting business in the door is the easy part. Keeping the business is the the hard part and that was what I wanted to be different about Rogue was we were going to both generate massive amounts of business but by optimizing our humans right by creating this human optimized business this business where our humans even though you were brought in digitally you would still feel connected to our agency right the reason you guys all probably 85 to 95% retention rates is because people believe in you or they believe in your people.
They know that if something really shitty happens, there's a human they can call and that's why they stay. When we generate business online, right, there's a little bit of a disconnect there.
You've watched my video, sure, you trust me, you're willing to get a quote, but if we never take that next step and actually get connected somehow, I'm not going to stay, I'm going to leave at the next best opportunity. So by optimizing our humans, by giving them the tools, the resources, the time, the experience to spend that moment, and it could just be one moment.
You don't constantly have to be on the phone. I think that's a very big misconception.
You have to constantly be touching people. I don't think you need.
You just be one moment you don't constantly have to be on the phone I think that's a very big misconception you have to constantly be touching people I don't think you need you just need one moment think about whoever it is that you love in your life whoever that that person is where that person is that you love you didn't need 30 moments to love that you had one moment and you can do and then hopefully there was a bunch of good ones sometimes that's not always the case I learned that 17 years later but my point in saying that is you just need one good moment with them and they will stick but if your people don't have the time or the ability to have that moment, then they're not going to stick around.

Okay, so we got that whole concept. All right, so being that I'm not very clever or smart, I literally just re-racked the same game plan with Rogue Risk that I did with the Murray Group.
I started Rogue Risk March 9th of 2020. The zombie apocalypse hit upstate New York seven days later.
and our wonderful governor Mario Cuomo shut the state down and I'm glad we feel the same about him when I say wonderful I actually mean the opposite of that but I think I think that's being facetious so I actually launched I actually I my initial target market was a killing it was to be a killing commercial guy so I was gonna take this human optimized model and I was gonna use David's wonderful program killing commercial which is which if you're not a part of it and you can still get in it is one of the best sales training programs and agency building

programs that exists uh not just giving a shout out to david because i like him it is amazing um um but but during covet it was really hard to get people on the phone so i just did what i did at the murray group and i just started creating videos in my basement and we now have 450 videos and we did 135,000 views last year on our YouTube channel two years in So it's never too late to start this shit works no matter where you are no matter what niche you have right? I don't care if you're dealing with high net worth personal lines dynamite manufacturers manufacturers, or adult toy store owners. Humans go on the internet to figure out answers to their problems.
And if you create the content and answer the questions, then they're going to find you. All right.
So, Bradley, what time are we done, man? Nope, we got 15? Can I have 20? That's 1.30? Perfect. So, here's what's what's gonna happen None of you are gonna actually do this, but let's say you do again for the thought experiment Let's say you do start creating content and answering the commonly asked questions of the people that you want to do business with Your phone is gonna start to ring Here's the mistake.
I do not want you to make. You cannot treat inbound leads like referrals.
This is a big, big mistake that a lot of us make. And I made this mistake for a long time.
So I don't want you to think that somehow I knew this was the case. This is 17 years of dealing with digital marketing and inbound leads.
And also when I was at trustedchoice.com, one of the things that they did was when a phone call went through that system We would record the phone call when so I listened to a lot of you answer inbound leads and you are terrible at it It was just we would like play them while we were getting drunk after work Hilarious some of the shit that we say to people when they call because we treat them like they're referrals they're not inbound leads they may trust you a little bit right they watched your videos read your content they may trust you a little bit but the trust is it's the beginnings of trust it's the it's the early bits of trust right it's not a referral right I tell you to go over and see my man over here about insurance you're you make when you're kind of already you're there already, right? You're like, eh, you know, I trust Ryan I'm going to call Heath, you're kind of already there. You can be casual you can filter him, whatever.
If he just watched a video of Heath online and he calls, he's still trying to figure out if you're actually the person that he saw online We cannot treat them the same way that we treat referrals can't do it Okay, so that I think the title of this was like how I closed 89% of inbound leads or whatever so That number so you know and I'm gonna give a shout out to the better agency guys They didn't own the tool when I first started using it, but we use neoteric agent for video proposals I think video proposals are the super secret master power of selling in the digital age I can love video proposals okay I'm explain exactly how I do that but when I say that we closed 89% of the leads that came in what I'm telling you is that 89% of the time when I sent what is now better proposals than neoteric proposals when I would send one of those from customers nine out of every ten would close nine out of every ten so let's talk about how we get there okay sorry um I know you're not supposed to look at your watch but I do a lot of things that you're not supposed to do too, so I hope you guys will just abide that. Technically, my speaking style is like an F-, but I don't care.
And you guys seem to be sticking around, so we're going to keep going, except for her. And so that timing on that couldn't have been better.
Holy shit. Okay, so here's so here's how you do it The key the key to closing inbound leads is setting expectations Properly setting expectations throughout the process Okay, that is probably not the super sexy answer that you were looking for but I am telling you we don't do it as an industry I have listened to thousands of a lot that's an exaggeration at least hundreds of phone

calls when I was with trusted choice of people taking inbound leads and what we

don't do is set expectations because when you set an expectation and you hit

it what gets built trust we're manufacturing trust that's what we're

doing so if I go to teller and I say hey man I'm gonna see you at one o'clock

Thank you. Trust.
We're manufacturing trust. That's what we're doing.
So if I go to Taylor and I say, hey, man, I'm going to see you at 1 o'clock. We're going to go get a beer.
We're going to be there. And I show up at 1.30.
Fucking Hanley. God, I can't trust this guy.
He tells me he's going to be someplace and show up. What the hell? And then, like, I bring my girlfriend with me.
And you're like, God, I didn't expect her to be there. And I small talk you know I mean it's like fucking what so so so but let's say I go dude let's go get a beer at 1 o'clock and I show up and I already got a beer waiting for you you sit down there's a beer and I'm sitting there and you're like oh oh next time he tells me I'm gonna I actually going to ask for something more expensive next time.
I know he's buying. You know, you've built that trust.
So you set expectations and then you hit those expectations and they can be little tiny expectations. But as long as you do that throughout the buying process, you are building trust so that when you send them the video proposal, they can just buy from you because they're so caught up in how much they love you and trust you and know that if you're actually gonna take the time to put a video proposal together and pitch them insurance that who else would do that why would I choose anybody else I'd be an idiot the psychology is that I've built all this trust with you.
I can't not pick you now.

Every single time you've set an expectation,

you've hit it,

I now just assume that whatever you send to me is the absolute best insurance policy for me.

Now again, you can't abuse that with great power

comes great responsibility or whatever,

but you know, it just, that is how we do it.

So okay, so what does that look like?

First, when an inbound lead calls, there is one question that I want you to ask them Hi How can I help and shut up? That's what that's all I want you to say Right there's like some Chris Voss shit in here like open-ended questions, right? Just let them talk. Let them, they'll tell you everything.
Hey man, you know, I went, I went to Next. It was super easy.
I love the coverage. I love the price, but I can't get anybody on the phone.
They're telling you exactly what you need to do. They're literally going to give you the game plan, right? This is like sales 101, but instead what we do is, oh, you want a workers' comp policy? What's your address?

What's your phone number?

What's the best phone number?

We get right into information gathering.

You can't do that with an inbound lead.

Because what it says is, you don't give a fuck about me.

You just want my business.

We think we're being super helpful.

We're not doing it with bad intentions.

We think we're being helpful.

We think that we're, I want to get through this.

I want to get this person's info. I want to get this account.
I want to take my wife out to Sizzler. You got to make that paper.
But what happens is now you're starting to deplete that trust. Think of it like a video game, right? You get to max trust, you win the video game, right? You're starting to deplete that because you went right into business.
into business nope how can I help shut up and they will literally just barf their problems on you and if they don't they probably aren't a good lead for you that's what I found if they are super like I don't want to give you info they're starting to play in games that's a really good filter to say hey I'm probably not I'm probably not the best person and then send them to your competitor that is what I have found I don't know that that's to be an absolute truth but I have found that if someone does not immediately start barfing what is wrong on you when you ask them how can I help they're probably they're probably not ready to buy or they're not a good lead that's that's the initial filter that I use so once I get all that information information, now I get to my expectation setting. You said that being able to call someone is really important.
Okay, great. I'm going to give you a dedicated account manager.
Do you want me to bring her on her phone? They always say no. No.
Okay. But her name is Melissa, and you can call her whenever you need.
Or, hey, I have this carrier, Hartford. And I just make all this shit up, by the way.
I have this carrier, Hartford, and I think they're going to fit what you're doing really well. If I can get you into the Hartford program, I'm going to be super excited.
Have you heard of the Hartford? Maybe I've heard of them. Okay, great.
I am going to send you an email as soon as we're done talking. I'm going to send you an email just about the Hartford.
And then you'll know. Then you'll know.
This is a carrier I think you should be with. I don't give a fuck if they read it.
But I'm going to send them that email because now they know when I say I'm going to do something, I do it. I literally have it on a template in my Gmail.
And I always use the Hartford. And I don't even give a shit if it's a dynamite manufacturer.
I send them that just so that they know that when I say I'm gonna do something I'm gonna do it right okay, so we do some expectation setting and And then once we get to the point where I think they're legitimate, right? They seem like they're willing to do business with us. This is how we set up and this is the key This is how we set up the video proposal right we're building trust building trust building trust little expectation setting hitting we're delivering on things that we say we're gonna deliver on okay I say to them here's what happens next these are kids a key phrase here's what happens next I want them to know exactly what's gonna happen because I'm about to blow their minds and how I do that is I say now that I have all the information I need I'm gonna go out and do my job I think the Hartford is gonna be right to carry but then it might be it may be somebody else but here's what's gonna happen once I know where your insurance can go you're gonna get a video proposal from it from it.
It's going to have three parts. The top part is going to be in the body of the email and that's going to have just general high level stuff.
There is going to be a video. I would really like it if you watched that video because what it's going to do is explain that policy to you exactly why I chose that company, why I chose that coverage.
I'm going to break it all down it all down for you and then and then I'm gonna attach the company proposal never do for small business if you're doing middle market proposals are great for small business never use your own proposal always use the company's proposal and here's why we all we all think company proposals are complete garbage right they look ugly look ugly. They're usually, information's in weird spots, right? It's like a faux pas.
Like you're kind of frowned upon in our space if you use company proposals. Aaron knows.
He makes fun of me for it all the time. I use the company proposal because what I say is, Taylor, I'm going to attach the proposal from the company to to the email and the reason I do that is because I want you to have all the information that I have before we talk again I said III use a used car so I hate you know buying cars because I don't know what the deal I always feel like they have more information from me they're always hiding shit right I hate that so what I do in my business is I going to give you everything I have so that the next time we get on the phone together, we can have a productive conversation.
That person feels like I just gave them the inside baseball. They don't know that company proposals are shit and people give them out all the time, whatever.
They think they just got the behind the curtain look. They feel like I just threw curtain open, and now they're seeing everything.
I'm not hiding anything from them. I mean, quite literally, the company proposal is what we, right? That's how we know how much they're paying.
We print it out of their stupid system. And by giving it to them, what we're saying is, I don't hide anything.
And we have a massive amount of trust for people that we believe that don't hide shit from them, hide stuff from us, right? I may not agree with you, but if I know that you're completely authentic and transparent with me, I'm going to at least trust you, right? We could have completely different opinions, but if I know that when you talk to me, you tell me exactly what you think, the way you think it, I'm going to trust you. And that's all we want.
So by giving them this simple three-part video proposal, which does everything that we would do in person, I, one, do not have to try to schedule an appointment with them, which is the worst. No ghosting.
Two, I am giving them everything they need to know to make that decision. Three, I have pulled the curtain on the insurance buying process and shown them absolutely every piece of information that I have from that customer and what happens is I never have to schedule a follow up almost never about 60% of the time they'll watch the video they'll watch it between three and five times.
They'll forward it to somebody sometimes. Most of the time they watch it 7 to 11 p.m.
Right? Majority of the time they're being watched 7 to 11 p.m. And then I'll get a simple email response that says, this looks good, let's do it.
Never have to speak to them again. And I hate talking to people.
So it's amazing for me. I'm also not a good salesman, so that was another opportunity for me to work it up.
So what I have done is everything that we do over the course of two, three, four meetings, you've got to get back on the phone, answer more questions. I don't want to do any of that shit.
I want to give them every piece of information

I have and allow them to digest it on their time, at their pace, when they're ready, share

it with whoever they want, and then just tell me when they're ready to buy from me. And

yes?

On the video proposal, are you talking over the background?

Yes, I use Loom. I use Loom.

Yes. Yes, very good question the

question was about the video for the video proposal so I use loom and it does a little circle and then I'll pull the company proposal that I'm also gonna attach I'll pull it up on the screen I'll just talk through it and I always tell them whatever carrier I'm so freaking excited that I was able to get you into this program every time you know man I am so glad that I got you into the Hartford this is this is awesome their pricing is amazing I love this I this doesn't happen every day but man when I can put somebody with Hartford I feel good about it and you guys you can see right here you need for your certificate you told me you need a million dollars in liability you can see million. That's great.
And, uh, and I never explain all the packages in a bop or all the

other coverages, right? It's just, I show them the liability. I show them the property, any like

add ons, you know, if there's like a site, like a little cyber schmoogie or something, you pop in

there for a little extra commish, you, you, you put that in there. I'll explain those big things.

And then I go, and then there's just like a whole bunch of coverages at the bottom that you can look

through. I'm not going to explain them all.
You probably won't use them, but I'll tell you, if

you do have a really bad day, these are things you don't normally think about. If you have any questions, let me know.
And it doesn't matter if you want to change them anyways because you can't. And that's how I explain it.
Most of the time the proposals are done, unless there's like multiple policies, I'm done within five minutes. And I try, it's kind of the number that I shoot for.
I try to keep the video to five minutes or less the video proposal so when you think about scaling your business when you think about scaling your business you're creating this content you're putting it out you're putting it out into the world and it's working for you all day long right people are filling out forms they're calling you texting emailing whatever your call to action is they're coming in all day boom boom boom boom a lot of them come in at night a lot of people watch videos and fill out our forms at night. When I go to sleep, a lot of times we wake up, five, six leads have come in that night.
So then those come in at night and they're coming in all the time. And if we're then, this is my opinion, if we're then selling the traditional way by trying to get them on the phone or God forbid to video, I can stand loom meetings i hate that oh my god so so so you're trying to schedule this you know who wants to pull time out of their day you know whatever we gather the info as quickly as we can and we pop out a video proposal and move on to the next one so yes sorry no you're good um as far as when you're gathering the info yeah you have like a template or something that you send them like, hey, we're going to need this, this, this? So depending on, so the question was, do I have a template of information gathering that I send them? So for standard stuff, like Main Street stuff, we do.
If it's something a little more complicated, then we just get on the phone. So I still think this is a phone business.
I do think you're going to need one phone call. So what we track as a metric, aspirational metric, is one call closes, right? That doesn't mean one call closed bound issued on that call.
It means it only took one phone call to close that business, okay? The minute you have to go to a second phone call, your conversion rate drops because now they're busy. They're, you know, when are they going to make time? make time, all this kind of stuff.
So I've tried to set it up, again, going to the human optimized thing, where we're gathering as much as we can on the front. For certain classes of business, we will send them a survey, but I'll tell you, people don't really like those that much.
We do get a lot of pushback on the, I'm calling you to help me. Why are you making me fill out all this shit? So we kind of backed off that a little bit so it's we're doing all this digital capture then we're trying to do one call to gather the info we need and if we properly set expectations and next steps during that call then the video proposal closes them and we never have to speak to him again for sales obviously for service and stuff we will but okay yes that were used to have the little bottom doesn't say like free blah blah blah I pay for it yeah so the cool thing about and I'm not trying to sell better agents or whatever but the cool thing about neoteric agent or better proposals now is that it embeds it.
It doesn't take them to the loom page. It embeds it right in the thing.
So, and I found that people don't really care either. You know, they're so blown away.
Half the time I'll get, let's do it. This sounds great.
And I've never seen anything like this before. So people really, again, and if you, if you set front of what they're going to get, and then they get it, they're like, I don't need to talk to them.
He just explained exactly why. Okay, I got two minutes.
Any more questions? Yes. Do all of your agents do it or do you just do the video? The ones that actually sell do it.
The ones that don't tell me they can do it a different way for a while and then I fire them yep yes how did I turn 15 minutes of processing to five so we use a combination of self-service automation tools and low-cost virtual assistants and then we have basically a scaled process considering our licensed Americans being our most expensive client portal through

next year being the least expensive. We kind of try to scale that as much as possible.
I will say I'm still not to that ratio yet, if I'm being completely candid. That is still aspirational at this point, but we're using kind of that scaled service model with the licensed American being the last resort, that has seemingly got us a lot closer.

I'm not great with VA's I'm still working on getting better with them just personally I don't I'm getting better with that so but I do think a combination of that and escalating depending on what the actual service needed is how you get there yeah any other questions no questions? No? Good? Okay. Go Bills.
I

love all of you. Thank you.

Thank you.

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