RHS 092- James Jenkins on Niche Business World Domination

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Speaker 13 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show.

Speaker 4 Today, we have a guest who I've gotten to know fairly well over the last, I'd say, six months or so. He's about a year ahead of me in his journey building risk-well insurance.

Speaker 4 Our guest is James Jenkins.

Speaker 4 Now, if you spend any time in IAOA or the Now Certs users group or the Better Agency users group, you are well aware of James because I like to bust his chops because James submits more

Speaker 4 user feature requests to service providers than anyone I've ever met in my life. But that's a good thing.

Speaker 4 I mean that with full sincerity because as I say to him, I will always be chasing him, but a solid number two on that list. I like to submit feature requests as well.

Speaker 4 But it's all in good fun.

Speaker 4 I really want to talk to James because one of the things that he's been able to do and how he's reached escape velocity in his agency, been able to add some staff and really start to deliver the product that he kind of, I think, had in his mind when he became an independent agent,

Speaker 4 is he really dialed into some niches. And while at the beginning, we talk a lot about

Speaker 4 the technology challenges that agencies have, as we work through that conversation, we get into what I believe is some incredibly valuable ideas, thoughts, concepts around how agencies are going to dial into niches moving into the future, the importance of that, and the hard decisions that we're going to have to make as agency owners and

Speaker 4 insurance producers and sales professionals in the coming years as things become

Speaker 4 more compartmentalized, it becomes easier for people to dip into our backyard. We really have to become experts and dig deep into our expertise.
So this is an incredible conversation.

Speaker 4 I think you're really going to enjoy it.

Speaker 4 We definitely go all over the map, but that's what you've come to expect from this show. So hopefully it's right on par with a lot of the other conversations we have.
Valuable, no doubt.

Speaker 4 Before we get to James, though, I want to give a big shout out to Agency VA.

Speaker 4 I can't give Agency VA enough accolades. And the reason is

Speaker 4 that I now have two agency VAs. I don't have two of them.
I have a guy

Speaker 4 by the name of Nat who lives in the Philippines, and he's doing a lot of my back-end

Speaker 4 data work. He's helping me clean up my systems.
He does my COIs. He will make billing changes in my systems.
And he's great. And I really like Nat.
He's coming along quick. He's learning.

Speaker 4 He asks questions when he needs it. And a big fan there.
And then I also now have someone who's doing outbound dialing for me and helping me reach out to more potential prospects.

Speaker 4 And we have a whole process that we work through there. And she's been with me for going on two or three weeks, depending on when this is published.

Speaker 4 And at least the first, I'd say, 10 days have been tremendous. And just how enthusiastic she is.
And I'm listening to the phone calls. And, you know, we have some things we got to work out.

Speaker 4 I'm trying to make my words work for her. You know, we have to do some massaging there.
And I think I tend to be a little wordy.

Speaker 4 And, you know, we're trying to get it down to where it's cleaner and simpler. And we can just kind of real punchy, deliver our value proposition and get meetings.

Speaker 4 And the whole time, you know, so all that is great. But what the reason, you know, I choose agency VA is not just Wes and Ben, who obviously I'm friends with and I love those guys.

Speaker 4 It's, you know, I also have Lally, who's the manager. So I can go to Lally and say, hey, I need this, or this is going on, or, you know,

Speaker 4 I'm struggling to get Nat to look at this. Can you help him?

Speaker 4 And she's tremendous. And just the whole team over there has been phenomenal.
So if you're looking for horsepower in your agency, Agency VA is the way to do it. Go to agencyva.com, agencyva.com.

Speaker 4 That's agencyva.com.

Speaker 2 Here we go.

Speaker 12 What's up, man?

Speaker 11 Hey, sexy. How you doing?

Speaker 12 Good. Since you're late for the podcast, you have to watch me finish this handwritten

Speaker 12 contractors form that I am looking at. Written.

Speaker 11 That's gross. Well,

Speaker 12 you know,

Speaker 12 only the best.

Speaker 11 What carrier are you doing that requires handwritten apps?

Speaker 12 Leatherstocking Cooperative Insurance Company.

Speaker 11 Never heard of them.

Speaker 12 Well, they only operate in upstate New York. They're actually a phenomenal company.
And in 99% of their classes that they write with, you can get a rate online. They just,

Speaker 12 for their contractors, they don't have

Speaker 12 online rating for contractors. So

Speaker 12 they're, yeah. So I basically

Speaker 12 use them,

Speaker 12 Liberty Mutual and Dryden Mutual, which is another

Speaker 12 upstate only

Speaker 12 insurance company, domestic to New York for like contractors who are just starting, you know, because first year contractors are never something anyone really wants. So these guys will all write them.

Speaker 12 And they do a good job, you know, for the handyman, carpenter, renovations guy, you know, they're they're perfectly fine they just um you know it takes an extra step but um

Speaker 12 so that's the deal but they're good companies they're really they're really good companies new york is weird we have uh if you take westchester like the northern border of westchester county and you go south and then out towards the island that almost should be a separate state And a lot of carriers operate as if it is a separate state.

Speaker 12 It's just so much different. You go from, you know, where I live could be Iowa and down there is like Hong Kong.
You know what I mean? Like when you think about the difference in densities of people.

Speaker 11 So I mean,

Speaker 11 I imagine if I were in New York, there's city and not city. Yeah.
I mean, the rest of New York is kind of homogeneous.

Speaker 11 But then you get within half an hour of the edge of the city and everything changes.

Speaker 12 Yeah, we also, New York in general, I can understand why a lot of the best companies in the, in the country do not come into New York, because not only is upstate, so upstate is homogeneous for a certain extent, but we also have some of the oldest cities in the entire country.

Speaker 12 So Albany was the first incorporated city in the country, 1664.

Speaker 11 So

Speaker 12 yeah, the average age of a downtown building in Albany is like 1840 something.

Speaker 12 So you go so yeah you have these suburbs that are like any other suburbs you know 1980s houses 1950s houses you know that you know during these waves of building um

Speaker 12 but then you have these cities that are kind of tightly packed uh in terms of the where the buildings are not a lot of people live there and they're old as so people don't want them it's it's a really weird it's a weird dynamic up here i mean i this this is not the easiest state to do business in but it's all good i mean there it's not by accident that i've avoided the Northeast.

Speaker 11 Because I mean, you guys have

Speaker 11 so many small regionals and mutuals that someone from Texas will never get access to. No.

Speaker 11 And those companies are almost always more competitive than the nationals.

Speaker 12 Yes. So like the, so the difference is, so like you're saying, you know, why would you be handwriting out an application for leather stocking cooperative insurance company? And the deal is

Speaker 12 incredible claims handling.

Speaker 12 I know my underwriter, first name basis,

Speaker 12 you know, talk on the phone. I know exactly who she is.
If I say to her, look, I know you guys don't want X, but he, it never happens. It's one job a year.

Speaker 11 She'll go, oh, okay, you know, or not.

Speaker 12 But I mean, you know, I mean, she'll talk me through it. And like you said, usually better priced.
And for certain risks, they're just really good. And Dryden's the same way.

Speaker 12 And that's why when people do the,

Speaker 12 like the like uh uh Moika Salas, who's who's down there in Texas, right? He does the I don't know, he's been on Cass's podcast.

Speaker 12 I don't know if you're familiar with him, he's a marsh guy, real good dude. Um, he always talks about BORs, like 90% of his business comes from BORs,

Speaker 12 and it's like the BOR game here.

Speaker 12 I mean, you'd have to have like 750 appointments to be like a

Speaker 12 to be,

Speaker 12 you know, to be.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I mean, it's it's like when we go down down the coast, I don't like writing business south of Houston because it's a bunch of carriers that I don't have and don't want to have.

Speaker 11 You know, with Lighthouse and UPC and Mason and Saged Sure and Conifer and like all of these little tiny companies that only write coastal X-Wind or only write, you know, monoline property and their, their appetite is this big.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 It's like,

Speaker 11 yeah, it's Texas, but i mean kind of like you were saying with new york texas really is three states we are coastal texas which is its own thing totally different and then north texas like the dfw area and like draw a rectangle around that part of the state and then the rest of texas because dfw and north texas is freaking hail central, man.

Speaker 11 Like you go from starting like an hour west of Fort Worth, which is like two hours west of dallas there's like this line where

Speaker 11 on the west side no big deal you have thunderstorms but you don't have like crazy hail and then just magically a line drawn in the map and it's oh well you're going to get a bunch of hail now it's it's like literally flipping a switch it's crazy because

Speaker 11 beginning about a month from now You know, third week of March is almost the official beginning of storm season. We can be going fine.
And you have

Speaker 11 from third week, second or third week of March until the second or third week of June, and you could have the clearest day ever.

Speaker 11 I mean, sun is shining, not a cloud in the sky, 30 minutes passes and boom, the world is ending. It is like

Speaker 11 biblical thunderstorm just comes out of literally nowhere.

Speaker 12 The only time I've ever been scared on an airplane was actually on the tarmac at DFW.

Speaker 12 It's the only time I've ever ever been nervous i we come down just like you said we're we're we're coming down out of the sky no big deal it's like a couple clouds no big deal we we hit the ground and from the time it took us to get from the time we touched down to taxiing over to our gate this storm rolls in and i shit you not it was like a we get like maybe

Speaker 12 I don't know, 20, 30 feet.

Speaker 12 We can, we're, you could reach out and touch the freaking arm thing, whatever that is thing that comes out, the

Speaker 12 gateway thing.

Speaker 12 And the whole plane lights up like a nuke went off. I mean, whack.

Speaker 11 So everyone goes,

Speaker 12 and we look out the window and another lightning strike hits

Speaker 12 50 yards from the plane, hits the ground. And now people are like, whoa.
And the pilot comes on and they're happening.

Speaker 11 Like it's like, whack, whack, whack.

Speaker 12 And the pilot comes on and goes, everyone be calm. If a lightning strike hits the plane, everyone's going to be fine, but we can't have you out on the jet.

Speaker 12 The jet bridge was the term I was looking for before. The jet bridge, because if you, if the jet bridge gets hit and you're on it, you're toast.
So we just sat there and watched this ridiculous thing.

Speaker 12 But there was like a moment where I was like, oh shit, like that, that's a badass lightning strike.

Speaker 11 And that's real close. No, man, I saw this meme yesterday because it's, you guys are used to cold up there.
Texas, like we're, it's literally going to be maybe zero degrees in DFW on Monday.

Speaker 11 It's definitely going to be in single digits. And we're going to get probably seven or eight inches of snow overnight, Sunday into Monday.
But the meme yesterday, it was,

Speaker 11 I laughed a lot harder than I probably should have.

Speaker 11 The, the first box on the meme was like, North Texans in storm season. And they're just like,

Speaker 11 like, whoopty freaking do. It's a bad storm.
Whatever. I don't care.
But then the second thing was like, North Texans in winter. And they're like, ah,

Speaker 11 it was like a normal random snowstorm. And everyone is just like, oh my God, we're going to die.
Yeah. It's so funny how people,

Speaker 11 I mean, obviously,

Speaker 11 unless it's, you know, the major car accident that probably, I think it made the national news, it was like 120 vehicle pile up on I-35 yesterday.

Speaker 11 Outside of people that don't know how to drive when it ices,

Speaker 11 I mean, you're not going to die in cold weather. But some of these some storms, man, are just like tornadoes and hailstones, literally the size of a softball, just come out of nowhere.

Speaker 11 It's like, yeah, you might actually die in a storm, but you're probably not going to die when it gets cold outside. No.

Speaker 12 No, I'm with you. Tornadoes scare the crap out of me.
So I don't, I'm glad. I definitely.

Speaker 12 If tornadoes are a regular occurrence in that area, I will never live there.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 I mean, I don't want to say they're regular. It's not like a once-a-week week thing.
And Oklahoma City, like that, like there to Wichita, Kansas, there's what they call Tornado Alley.

Speaker 11 Technically, DFW is in Tornado Alley, but we're like the very southern edge of it.

Speaker 11 But I mean, we'll get, you know, two, three, four tornadoes a year that come through the area.

Speaker 11 Most of them are little, little baby tornadoes, you know, an F1 or, you know, which is, I mean, it's still a tornado, but, you know, a little tiny thing that hits the ground for 15 seconds and then leaves but i mean yeah it's there's a lot more uh wind activity here than in most other places in the country that's for sure yeah yeah no thank you so all right we've we've talked about the weather for long enough um sorry let's it's kind of a thing right now yeah no

Speaker 12 it's been cold i mean

Speaker 12 i yeah you say the cold it it hasn't gotten above 20 in six weeks and there's been snow on the ground since like December or so. And I'm kind of sick of, I'm kind of sick of it.

Speaker 12 I could use some vitamin D, but

Speaker 12 Emperor Cuomo will not allow us to leave without without being microchipped. So I'm not going to do that.

Speaker 11 All right.

Speaker 12 So let's talk about something that people listening actually want to hear, which is.

Speaker 11 you know you by the way i'm sorry i just realized that you started recording a few minutes ago i wouldn't have been talking that much about the weather if i'd have known hey we're already on the podcast well that's all right screw them they're they're they got to listen They can, this is my show.

Speaker 12 I can, I can talk about whatever I want, and they got to listen to it.

Speaker 11 So, there you go, you know, whatever. Uh, go ahead, I interrupted you.
Go for it.

Speaker 12 I love you guys, though. Thanks for listening.
You're the best.

Speaker 11 Um, all right, so uh,

Speaker 12 you have kind of carved out your space in the industry really around um, one being relatively new but hard charging. I think that's a good way to describe you, right?

Speaker 12 Two years in the biz, approximately.

Speaker 11 Um,

Speaker 12 and

Speaker 12 um,

Speaker 12 also

Speaker 12 one of the most epic feature suggestors of all technology that you use. That wouldn't be another feather in your cap.

Speaker 12 And I do want to talk about that a little bit.

Speaker 12 And lastly, I'd say your focus on

Speaker 12 your dedication to certain niches of business and how that's really driven your agency forward, which I think is another important topic.

Speaker 12 But let's start with the most fun one, which is why do you pepper the shit out of every technology tools Facebook post with feature requests like you do?

Speaker 12 I mean, you have to have some sort of feature request record in some of these Facebook groups.

Speaker 11 Hey, man, you know, and to my friends at Better Agency and now certs,

Speaker 11 I make no apologies whatsoever.

Speaker 11 Here's the thing, man. I am your best client and the biggest thorn in your side because when you do something cool, man, I think that's really cool.
And I'm going to talk about it a lot.

Speaker 11 I'm going to post about it. I'm going to share about it.

Speaker 11 I'm a great brand ambassador. But if there's something that doesn't work,

Speaker 11 or for me, it doesn't work, because I mean, there's a thousand different varieties of agencies, obviously.

Speaker 11 But when something doesn't work for my team, and really it's, I'm the filter for my team. I have three young ladies that work in my office full-time, and they're what most offices would call a CSR.

Speaker 11 We call them relationship managers.

Speaker 11 When they complain about something more than twice, I pay close attention. And when they are saying, hey, this isn't working or something broke or why doesn't it do blank? Why can't it do blank?

Speaker 11 I feel like it's my responsibility as the business owner to be their voice to our vendor partners. So, I mean, feature request,

Speaker 11 yeah, man. I mean, you have not because you ask not, right? It's in the Bible for crying out loud.

Speaker 11 I don't mind being the guy who's waving the flag, you know. There's been a couple of things with Better Agency where generally speaking, BA is a great platform.

Speaker 11 I'm really impressed with a lot of what they do over there. I know there's a lot of good options, you know, Agency Zoom and Insured Mine and et cetera, et cetera.
There's a lot of options.

Speaker 11 I chose Better Agency. One, because I believe in the guys that are running it.
I think they've got a lot of power.

Speaker 11 The credentials behind the people making stuff happen. I mean, their CTO was employee number six at Infusionsoft.
I mean, Will Shaw is

Speaker 11 former NFL player. So you know he's got some hustle and some grit.
And just

Speaker 11 a smart dude. And then Preston Schmidley and Nick Ayers jump on last year.

Speaker 11 I don't know what their deal was, but they bought into the company in some big equity position. And we all know those guys.

Speaker 11 I mean, anybody listening to this podcast knows who Preston Schmidley and Nick Ayers are.

Speaker 11 That's the main reason why I did the BA thing and really why I'm still doing it, because there have been times last year when my team was like, can we fire them? I want to go somewhere else.

Speaker 11 I don't like better agency. Just real talk.

Speaker 11 But I see where they're going. I see the vision.
And the things that stink about the platform don't stink for very long.

Speaker 11 They stink for a few months maybe. And then, I mean, what is it, twice a month, they roll out a major update.
I think every platform should be like that.

Speaker 11 You know, having the communication that they do of, we get emails twice a month with very specific updates of, hey guys, here's what we changed. Here's how you need to be aware of it.

Speaker 11 Here's how you do stuff with the new thing. It's like teaching us how to play with the toys they give us.

Speaker 12 Let's talk about the flip side of that.

Speaker 11 The flip side.

Speaker 12 Now certs hour-long happy hours where they don't get into what's actually changing until 35 minutes in, and they're doing it at 7 p.m. Eastern time.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 I'm like, guys, they're like big announcement in the happy hour. And I'm super interested because I like now sorts.
I'm becoming a power user of now certs. I think it's a good tool.

Speaker 12 I'm like, how about you just tell me what you're doing? Where's the announcement?

Speaker 12 I shouldn't have to listen to you guys ramble on about your weekends for 30 minutes to figure out what the update is yeah no i mean real real talk man

Speaker 11 uh jonathan and richard and kaden and vlad and peter and the the team they deserve to get a little slap across the face just a little bit yeah because i mean the happy real talk the fact that they even have the happy hours to begin with the fact that that's even a thing i think is really cool i think it is cool that most other vendors don't have anything like that.

Speaker 11 They don't engage with their customers on a ground floor level and with any kind of regularity. But yeah, I mean, holy crap, man.

Speaker 12 That was, so I was, I was causing, so I, I bring up this topic first only because I'm probably one of the, I'm probably, I'm never going to ascend to your level of feature requestness, but I, I ride your coattails.

Speaker 12 I'm like a, I'm like a solid number two or number three of feature requests. I'll never be at your level, but I'm, I'm right there.

Speaker 12 So I, um, so I, you know, I, I'm in, I see this thing, you know, all for the last two weeks, big announcement at the happy hour, big announcement at the happy hour. I'm like, okay, you know, whatever.

Speaker 12 And 35 minutes in, I'm finally, I'm just like, guys, how about this? How about we do the happy hours, which are really cool?

Speaker 12 And you do like a one-page PDF that says what the, what the heck the update is in case I don't have an hour to spend in the video. Like doing 10 seconds forward.

Speaker 12 When do they get the update? 10 seconds forward.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 No, No, I mean, the 7 p.m. thing is awful.
It is truly just terrible timing because anybody with a family, like

Speaker 11 my wife and my kids are in, you know, with her, her parents, my in-laws for this week,

Speaker 11 just giving me some. I get like once a quarter, I get a week where they go hang out with the in-laws and I get to work 80 hours if I want to and just knock out my project list.
And it's glorious.

Speaker 11 I love it.

Speaker 11 Those weeks are great it just so happens that this is one of those weeks most of the time if my family's in town i'm not gonna be on a freaking webinar for work stuff at thursday and seven do you want me to like commit suicide in my marriage like my wife would be like what are you doing

Speaker 11 honey i'm watching uh i'm on a happy hour where guys are talking about their weekend she's like you're doing what yeah

Speaker 11 Why are you doing that?

Speaker 12 Happy hour Facebook live for one of the tools in my insurance agency. I'm going to knife you when you fall asleep, just so you know.

Speaker 11 It's bad enough.

Speaker 11 I mean, I know you and I are the same with this one, man.

Speaker 11 I nerd out and get excited about dumb stuff. The things that the general public will be like, really? Seriously, like you care about stupid things.
Yeah.

Speaker 11 I'm like, yeah, I mean, I'm a risk manager by trade. Like I dig this stuff and we'll talk about stuff at the house.
And I'm like, babe, you'll never guess what happened.

Speaker 11 Insert insurance or risk management store here. And she's just like struggling to stay focused in the conversation.
So she already has to deal with that kind of stuff in general.

Speaker 11 But if I told her I'm on a happy hour at Thursday at seven, I'm not putting the kids to bed tonight. So I can watch a bunch of guys jibber jabber about their software platform.

Speaker 11 To your point, she would probably threaten to smother me in my sleep.

Speaker 12 And the worst part is.

Speaker 12 And I'm only, and hopefully if they listen to this or this gets back to them, I watch, this is out of love. I was super interested in the announcement.
Like, I wanted to know what it was.

Speaker 12 And to be honest with you, I don't even have the full announcement yet because I was told in the comment section, go to minute 32.

Speaker 12 And I'm just like, as soon as I saw that, I'm like, I'm just going to wait until someone tells me what it is or the platform changes.

Speaker 11 You want the cribs version of the clip? I would love the crib.

Speaker 11 Yeah, yeah. Here's the thing.
There is a platform called High Level.

Speaker 11 Yep. I know of High Level.
It's a CRM. Yep.
A lot of really big companies white label high level and put something out that's flavored for their vertical.

Speaker 11 Now certs bought a license of high level and they're building out a whole bunch of crap to complement what now certs is doing because there's some features that are glaringly absent.

Speaker 11 in now certs like they don't really have a sales pipeline at all uh it's they're

Speaker 11 it's kind of weird for me because I see now certs kind of inching closer to a CRM type of features. And then you got CRMs like Better Agency and even Agency Zoom.

Speaker 11 I think they have certain features that kind of look like an AMS. And I don't know what your take is on this, but I don't believe in the one killer app platform.

Speaker 11 I don't want one thing to try to be everything.

Speaker 11 You know,

Speaker 11 Microsoft has i mean i'm on the microsoft ecosystem we use teams we use onedrive we use sharepoint extensively travis gensler thank you for that uh shout out to travis and his group they've been amazing for microsoft he's like the oracle yeah evangelist for microsoft um

Speaker 11 but dynamics with microsoft is a perfect example

Speaker 11 just awful for my needs like i got into it i'm just like this is crap this is it's their version of a crm and it's terrible in my opinion it's it's just bad so it's that's kind of what you get when one platform tries to be everything the the whole concept of one killer app to do whatever the insurance agent needs i don't believe in that yeah i have a very clear take on this and it is i think that's a bad idea i think this is a bad idea by now certs i think that there's too many other places that they could drastically improve their product so i I'm on now certs, not because I don't think it's a good product.

Speaker 12 I really like now certs. and i said this to i was talking to um

Speaker 12 i was talking to somebody maybe it was paradiso and he was asking me because paradiso is on hawksoft and right now hawksoft actually integrates with every tool that i use right now that i want to use but i'm like eh hawksoft doesn't have a writable api they're very slow to make improvements i think some of that is cultural um

Speaker 12 I also know Hawksoft is a good product that a lot of really great agencies run on a nano knock on Hawksoft. You know, no one's perfect, but I look at now certs and i say to myself

Speaker 12 this platform

Speaker 12 could take over the ams space yeah it could but things like like the it they just seem to have a very casual attitude towards things like growth and things like you know improvements to the product and stuff like that but server downtime server down well the fact that like 11 o'clock every day we just get a hey guys just so you know ww eight is down today uh you know it'll be up as soon as we can i'm like no, here's, here's the problem.

Speaker 11 In their defense, they have like 24 servers, but the problem is you and I are both on their test server. Yeah.
So we get features before everybody else does because WW8 is their test server.

Speaker 11 That's where they drop out the new things and beta them for a week or two. But WW8 is.
also the one that goes down more than any other server because it's the test server. Yeah.

Speaker 12 But here's my point. I think now certs is awesome.
I really, I, I don't really have a beef in general.

Speaker 12 Like their UI is a little tough and, you know, there's some different things that are a little wonky.

Speaker 12 I really wish, you know, but but then I look at it and I'm like, okay, don't add some third-party white label licensed CRM tool.

Speaker 12 Just be really awesome at AMSing and connecting to other tools like InsuredMind, Agency Zoom, Better Agency, HubSpot.

Speaker 12 You know, pick the top 15 CRMs and be ridiculously easy and fully integrated with those tools and you will become the default ams for the middle and smaller agency like it this is a no-brainer win i don't understand why these platforms don't get it qq doesn't get this from vertifor well that kind of makes sense but all these small guys i don't because because granted i'm not trying to call now search or hawks off small but versus applied or vertifor you know they are

Speaker 12 I don't understand the thought process. And I think this goes,

Speaker 12 this is larger than, I'm not trying to just not talk about nowstrates, but like, I just look at nowstrates and I'm like, oh my God, they could be the default tool from everyone in the middle market down to startup.

Speaker 12 They have that potential. It's that good of a tool.

Speaker 12 And to waste, for me, to waste dev time and brain cycles on a CRM when you could just plug into BA Insured Insured Miner Agency Zoom, whichever you choose, and have it work seamlessly.

Speaker 12 I don't understand that decision. It doesn't make any sense to me.

Speaker 11 Well, why don't you tell them that and I will tell them that.

Speaker 11 And then if enough people tell them that, they may realize that this is not a long-term solution because, you know, when I'm in a weird spot because I've got better agency going out and getting Ivan's integration, which they've been working on that behind the scenes for like six months, I heard from Will.

Speaker 11 And then my AMS is trying to act like a CRM. So my CRM is trying to act like an AMS.
My AMS is trying to act.

Speaker 12 Eventually, you're going to have to make a decision where you have a product that

Speaker 12 doesn't do everything that you want on either side. That's ultimately what these tools are forcing us to do, which is what bothers me so much.

Speaker 11 And I think, and this may segue into other things we talk about.

Speaker 11 uh on this recording uh episode sorry um as i sit here at my desk i keep on forgetting forgetting that people are listening to this on their phones or they're driving in their car right now.

Speaker 11 So let's stay focused, James. Stay on message.

Speaker 11 It's the whole thing of being a generalist versus a specialist, of being the do everything, the state farms and farmers of the world versus the carrier like your small regional mutual, the leather stocking, the leather stocking community, something or other.

Speaker 12 Shout out to Dryden Mutual too. I love you both.

Speaker 11 Shout out to Dryden. Yeah.

Speaker 11 I mean, the upstate uh mutuals and and regionals like those carriers have no interest in being everything to everybody they want to do a very small number of things at an extremely high level of performance and if you're not in their target market they don't care a thing about you yeah you're not you're not discussed in their meetings they don't care what you want because they're not interested in that.

Speaker 11 They're staying really focused on their message.

Speaker 11 And I think that as we move into 2021 and beyond, the more that the direct channel becomes commoditized for small commercial now with insure techs like, you know, Pi and Next and et cetera, like.

Speaker 11 Small commercial five years from now is going to be exactly like personal lines is now, where it's highly commoditized. It's, you know, very low barrier to entry.

Speaker 11 The typical run of the mill insured isn't even going to talk to an agent. And I'm talking like the lowest common denominator person,

Speaker 11 not the people that you and I want to work with. Yeah.

Speaker 11 But

Speaker 11 the gap between the generalist and the specialist, I think is going to get just massive within the next couple of years, where the people that are trying to be the everything to everybody, you know, the ones that are offering seven different product lines and they've got, you know, 14,000 links on their website.

Speaker 11 Those people, I think, are going to be in a really hard place before too long.

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Speaker 12 Yeah, I agree with you. I think you have to pick a thing, right? If you're going to be a generalist, then you need to be the generalist of the 10 mile radius from where you live, right?

Speaker 12 if you're going to be um you know if you're going to be industry specific you you you know that's what you got to be if you're going to be product specific right like i'm trying really hard to be product specific and even that i'm finding is is to is a little broad for where i'm at in my development so so i'm making some changes there and i think you know this this you know this this works in tech it certainly works in insurance agencies you know this you know what bothers me is

Speaker 12 this is what bothers me in general about the and i kind of knew about i i heard about the, the high-level thing. I just didn't know the details, but

Speaker 12 the, what bothers me is I want to be able to pick the tools that are right for my, for what I'm trying to do, right? I like a very simple CRM.

Speaker 12 I personally, the way I work, the way I manage my, my, I have a, I have a, I have a team now, everyone, I can say that it's official.

Speaker 11 I've hired people.

Speaker 12 It's not just me. And these aren't alter personalities.
They're real other humans.

Speaker 12 you know i like very very simple give me simple and works that's all i want i don't need 10 000 triggers for my agency management system i need to be able to connect into that i can hate duplicate entry so you know so and now all of a sudden what i find is every tool i start to use and i and this is going to come back to our insurance example because i do want to ask you about i want to finish the podcast talking about um your work in certain niches is that i get a shitty version

Speaker 12 I pick a tool and then it evolves into a shittier version of itself because it wants to be this big, broad, huge thing.

Speaker 12 And I'm just like, God, I picked you originally because you did the thing that I needed really well. And every time you do an update, it becomes a bigger monster.
And again, some people like that.

Speaker 12 The complexity and overarchingness. I mean, look at people

Speaker 12 who live in the applied network, right?

Speaker 12 If you're an applied network, you go there, one, because because it is the best agency management system that exists i i have to give applied epic is the best it's just expensive as

Speaker 11 um then you got to debit yourself and build out exactly as you want it and spend a hundred grand on it but yeah it's a big thing for the josh gurleys and brad rosenkiels of the world like there's a reason why yep of the top hundred agencies in the country like 90 of them are on applied epic yeah so for sure yeah for sure i guess so that's so there are people that like that ecosystem thing 100 But I just think for

Speaker 12 people who are starting to work for agencies that are starting to work target markets, I really think that our technology providers are doing us a disservice by not just being A ⁇ es at the thing that they do best.

Speaker 12 So then I can cherry pick the tools and say, I want this and I want to plug it into this and then I want.

Speaker 12 this to plug into this and holy crap this really works now i can deliver my workers compensation program and rogris 365 and and plug in the the the uh self-managed certificate program from something like certificial which is a tool that needs to be on your radar by the way certificial um oh yeah dude dope this is a game changer for anybody that works with contractors that produce a lot of certs game changer that's absolute game changer i'm telling you it is it's it's so baller i'm gonna have him on the podcast um as soon as i can his name's peter he did 18 years as a cto at applied and not like the dopey part of not applied accord not the dopey part of accord but like he he was really one of the people that were pushing them forward and um it's just that's a really cool tool but like i'm just saying like i want to be able to say okay cert official um

Speaker 12 uh xy wave client portal um you know this tool this tool and if you guys were just all awesome at what you did i could plug you all together and now i have the perfect agency tech platform but instead they all go hey you know i do certs and i think we're gonna get download and i'm really thinking about building out a chat bot feature and you're like mother

Speaker 11 well i mean the whole the whole idea of stay in your lane and

Speaker 11 i think it really just comes down to people get get delusions of grandeur and they allow tribalism

Speaker 11 and the whole like my club your club thing. Like, oh, our club's the best.
We can do it better than that other vendor over there.

Speaker 11 Well, why don't you have an open API and allow other companies to just integrate directly? Well, because we're better than them.

Speaker 11 It's like, okay, well, I disagree fundamentally with your premise, but I digress. Oh, well,

Speaker 11 it creates a situation where guys like you and me are spinning our wheels because you take a great platform like an Alcerts or a better agency.

Speaker 11 and would I prefer that they not do the downloads and do something else with their dev time? Yeah, I definitely would.

Speaker 11 There are a lot of features that I'm basically like arms outreached, begging for at this point. Yeah,

Speaker 11 definitely. But the same goes for a lot of platforms.

Speaker 11 I think we just need to keep banging the drum.

Speaker 11 The reality is when they, you know, climb up on their hilltop and wave their flag, they're not going to back down from that because then it seems like a defeat or a failure.

Speaker 11 And no business owner wants to do that.

Speaker 11 I think the important thing is having those behind the scenes conversations where you can influence the decision makers before they decide to climb a hill and wave a flag.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I think the decision comes down to, and this is, I promise, is the last thing I'm going to say about this, and we're going to talk about, we're going to talk about the questions I have about your agency and what you're doing,

Speaker 12 is

Speaker 12 you're basically managing, I think you're basically all these companies come to a decision point.

Speaker 12 And that decision point is maximize enterprise value or build a customer base that is ravenously in love with us. Because I don't think you can do both of those.

Speaker 12 I think the companies that can do both of those things are the unicorns. Those are the unicorn companies.
I don't mean in valuation, I just mean in general. Like you, you have to either.

Speaker 12 maximize features and things that someone else would want to buy to make the most money, or you could stay tight and amazing and awesome and have people who would literally tattoo your brand on their arm.

Speaker 12 And I think that's a very hard decision. And

Speaker 12 when you're talking about the dollars in terms of valuation dollars that a lot of these companies are getting and that better agency is most likely worth than a lot of the tools that we talked about are worth, right?

Speaker 11 I mean,

Speaker 12 I can't imagine they're not already fielding calls for at least eight, if, you know, eight digit offers.

Speaker 12 I don't know if they're a nine digit company yet, but I'm sure they're getting eight digit offers. And,

Speaker 12 you know, that's a really tough decision to make. And if now you have something, you know, just I'm not,

Speaker 12 I have my own feelings about the download thing as well, but I think if you're looking at them from an enterprise value standpoint and they have download, you're going, whoo,

Speaker 11 whoo.

Speaker 12 I mean, deaf, you know, there's something there.

Speaker 11 Yeah, man.

Speaker 11 I mean, we could talk about the difference between, you know, driving EBITDA and going after shareholder value and starting to think like a larger company versus keeping the mission you know front and center we could say the very same thing about every agency yeah and every agency owner listening and are you pushing for a multiple are you trying to sell in five years or are you on mission like do you wake up in the morning excited about advancing the cause

Speaker 12 yeah i think and no so this takes me into you know, where I see valuations going and why I think you're on a great path.

Speaker 11 So you've chosen so you have you have uh habitational right that's one of them contractors what what are the other niches that you that you've lined up the we made and i'm honestly i'm trying to figure out what to do with personal lines right now i mean flip a coin on if i sell my personal lines book and just go all in on on commercial and real estate investors.

Speaker 11 I stumbled into the real estate investor world about four years ago because I had one client who had nine rentals. And at that point, I was still an agent with a captive company.

Speaker 11 And I was able to write that account and was like, oh, crap, that's good money. That was pretty easy.
I want to do more of this.

Speaker 11 And so over the next two years, when we were at the captive agency, we did that extensively.

Speaker 11 And that's part of the reason why I left that company is they're not very good at serving real estate investors.

Speaker 11 And that's.

Speaker 11 the kind of how we got to where we are now, where it morphed into, well, it's not just single family.

Speaker 11 it's it's the people doing flips and renovations and oh the people doing you know small commercial and oh apartment buildings and condo associations which i don't like nearly as much as apartments because boards and gosh the the certificate request for refinances on condo unit owners is just like put a gun in my mouth certificate

Speaker 11 certificate i'm gonna change your life for you i promise you and i are going to talk later about that because i've seen it a couple of times i don't know anything about it to answer your question um roofers and general contractors in particular, I mean, the contractor world is just mess.

Speaker 11 So there's literally hundreds of trades. I'm not really interested in the small trade contractor, the drywall guy or whatever.
I want the GC. I want the hard stuff, you know, the concrete, the

Speaker 11 masonry, the roofing, the general, the stuff that has a lot of premium and it's hard to place.

Speaker 11 I find the harder something is to work in, the less competition there is and the easier it is to point it out when posers try to come in and act like they know what they're doing.

Speaker 11 If a generalist tries to play in my space, I'm going to bury them in knowledge of forms and exclusions, endorsements, and just all that CIC and CRM stuff, you know, and those designation programs, the stuff that most agents don't even know about or care about.

Speaker 11 That's the difference between an okay program and a great program in that world.

Speaker 11 The other two really are the tech space and then healthcare medical, doctors' offices, healthcare technology companies, durable medical equipment manufacturers.

Speaker 11 If it's healthcare medical or if it's in technology IT, you know, the geek squad kind of contractor who comes to your house and fixes your computer.

Speaker 11 Those kind of folks own vehicles. They have a lot of employees.
They need ENO.

Speaker 11 Like, those are just great accounts because you can rack up a lot of premium pretty quickly if you know how to cross-sell.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I have never,

Speaker 12 I have purposefully not involved myself in the, in the healthcare space. I just don't know that much about it, even though

Speaker 12 the carrier plant I have, much to their chagrin, they would love it if I did. I get, every time I talk to my reps, they're like, oh, you're going to, you're going to start soliciting healthcare stuff.

Speaker 12 And I'm like,

Speaker 12 I don't know. I do really like, I like technology.
I like media.

Speaker 12 You know, anyone with big cyber exposure, I mean, which most companies today actually have big cyber exposure, but, you know, anyone who, I really like that because I feel like, you know,

Speaker 12 I took a nice size account away from an agent the other day because

Speaker 12 solely on cyber. I took the whole package on cyber.
They, they, they put basically first party only, you know, data breach cyber coverage on this account. And I'm like,

Speaker 12 do you understand what you have? They're like, no, we have cyber. I'm like, okay, let's talk about that.

Speaker 12 And, you know, by the time we got to, to, to, I was explaining, have you ever got an email that looked like it was from your mom, but really it was from somebody in a different country?

Speaker 11 And they're like, yes.

Speaker 12 I'm like, yeah, that's not covered on this policy. They're like,

Speaker 12 well, how do we fix that? You ever hear of a BOR?

Speaker 12 So it's like, you know, that I think I like,

Speaker 12 and this is coming back to your point, where I think you. we have to start making decisions.

Speaker 12 If this is 100% true in commercial, and I think a lot of commercial agents, I shouldn't say a lot, I think more commercial agents in general get this idea.

Speaker 12 I think personalized agents who are thinking about commercial do not. And I've seen that a lot.
And that to me, there is tremendous opportunity in saying, I write real estate investors.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 12 Because what, because just like you said, man, then you start to get the branches. Well, oh, this carrier also writes HOAs.
This carrier also writes condo associates. Okay, I can get into there.

Speaker 12 And now

Speaker 12 you're playing in a really interesting space. I have a question for you around carriers.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 12 Now, I know we already said, you know, the Northeast has way too many carriers and you guys have less.

Speaker 11 But

Speaker 12 I recently just purposefully dropped two personal lines appointments. And in general, I've been thinking about the carriers that I use.
And I said to myself,

Speaker 12 I know there's a philosophy of have as many carriers as you can get and write as much business as you can write.

Speaker 12 And then the other philosophy is have carriers that you know and have deep relationship with and work inside of their appetite and be experts in the carrier as well. Where do you fall on that and why?

Speaker 11 You know, I love this topic because I think this is the kind of meat and potato

Speaker 11 agency owner conversation why people listen to podcasts like this. This stuff just lights me up.
I love this topic.

Speaker 12 It only took us 47 minutes to get there.

Speaker 11 Bro, I mean, this is why I'm into podcasts. If you and I were face to face in Tampa in November, we'd be sipping something, talking about this right here.
100%.

Speaker 11 I'm the second one. And

Speaker 11 I'm like that for a variety of reasons because it plays right into my general business philosophy of do a small number of things and do them incredibly well.

Speaker 11 The captive agent. doesn't understand market management.
I had no idea. When I first got in, I didn't understand it.
Two years ago, I had no idea.

Speaker 11 And I said some really stupid things early on that now looking back, I'm just like, that is not a good idea.

Speaker 11 And I mean, I was greedy for appointments at the beginning. And then I realized about six months in, I'm like, oh, crap, every appointment I take expects to get fed.

Speaker 11 And when you're a small agency, you don't have enough submissions to go around.

Speaker 11 And like where we're at right now, I I have six direct commercial appointments. And I don't mind saying it openly because I mean, if you want to come at me, let's go.

Speaker 11 If you think you're going to be aware of my account, come on, bro. Let's do this.
It's Chubb, Hartford, Nationwide, Liberty, State Auto. And

Speaker 11 crap, I can't even think of the other one. They're last place.

Speaker 11 Anyways, those,

Speaker 11 I have six carriers. And Mercury has monoline commercial auto.
And then BHHC, I just picked up, but that's mostly for outside of Texas because their property market in Texas is crap.

Speaker 11 But their auto product, especially fleet auto with BHHC is really, really strong.

Speaker 11 But the whole philosophy of I want to do a very small number of things with this carrier that absolutely loves it. Like Chubb, for instance, their cyber program.
is phenomenal.

Speaker 11 It's great form, good insuring agreement. The exclusions and endorsements are really favorable.
I like the language on their documents, and it's really easy to navigate and it's really well priced.

Speaker 11 I mean, there's like three or four things that Chubb does extremely well.

Speaker 11 You know, almost a year ago, they got into food and beverage and they were sending a bunch of emails about, hey, give us your restaurant submissions.

Speaker 11 And I'm like, bro, you're never going to get a restaurant submission from me. That's not what you guys are.
Stop trying to be that. It's

Speaker 11 them and Hartford, I see them as clones of each other. Travelers is like in the middle.
You got Liberty and State Auto and nationwide are blue collar companies.

Speaker 11 They want to write the manufacturing, the contractors, the lessors risk only. They want to write that blue-collar, get it done, middle of the economy sort of stuff.
They don't have good cyber options.

Speaker 11 They don't have good E ⁇ O options. They're just not that kind of carrier.
And then Travelers and Hanover and some others others that are kind of in the middle between blue collar and white collar.

Speaker 11 And then you got Chubb and Hartford and CNA, which are like super white collar, where they've got excellent cyber and ENO and, you know, their management liability, their EPL, like their, their coverage options are really, really strong.

Speaker 11 But in certain areas, like you're not going to take a contractor to Hartford. That's just not a good fit.

Speaker 11 But Hartford loves writing consultants, like management and business consultants you don't even need to submit to anybody else if someone calls you up and they're a work from home white collar consulting company straight to hartford you don't even need to submit anywhere else because hartford's going to be gangbusters so did that answer your question no 100 it did i mean it's the exact same way that i feel i uh i yeah i have no i never have any problem talking about the carriers um because like you said if someone's gonna i mean this is just interesting that you brought that up because that is still like a thing.

Speaker 12 Like I remember when I first got in the business 15 years ago, my, my father-in-law, and it's not a knock on him, this was the prevailing idea was like, you don't tell anybody who you have appointments with because, you know, they'll come after you.

Speaker 12 And I think that is, that has really changed. And I'm glad that it's changed because it's.

Speaker 12 I think what it does is it allows us, just like with our technology providers, to put more combined voices to a carrier about a thing like Hanover. I love Hanover.

Speaker 12 If anyone from Hanover is listening, you have to know that when I get to place a piece of business with you, I really enjoy it. I've never had a bad claims experience.
I've never had a customer.

Speaker 12 I had a customer have an $8,000 homeowner's claim a month ago, five-star claims review. They said, no, handled perfectly.
Perfectly. So I love Hanover.

Speaker 12 Their technology is grossly inadequate, considering the quality of the company. Probably the worst in my entire shop.
And I handwrite accounts to leather stocking. So just understand that.

Speaker 12 You You know, just to put it in the middle of the morning

Speaker 11 by the company with handwritten apps.

Speaker 12 Yes. And it's, it is that bad.
That being said, it's a tough position because their product is tremendous, their pricing is tremendous, their claims are tremendous, and their people are tremendous.

Speaker 12 So, so this is kind of the thing you fight. I'm with you on Chubb.
I adore Chubb. They're my number one carrier.

Speaker 12 I absolutely think that Chubb's small business unit, what they've done to improve it, their quoting, their handling of customer accounts, their billing needs work.

Speaker 12 But outside of that feature, I think they are tremendous.

Speaker 12 You know, I also have Guard, Cincinnati, Liberty, and then some Select. So I basically have five main carriers that I work.
And then I have some

Speaker 12 like workers comp only, like Am Trust Pie and Employers. And

Speaker 12 And then I have a couple of mutuals that I write with for

Speaker 12 some stuff here in the Northeast. Like none of those guys are taking on an 1840s four unit in downtown Albany.

Speaker 11 That, you know what I mean?

Speaker 12 That's that's a leather stocking dried-in account. So

Speaker 12 my point in saying all this to you is I made that same mistake early, right?

Speaker 12 I was like, gobble, gobble, you know, oh, you'll, you'll give me an appointment, give it to me, give it to me, give it to me. Oh, you want 30,000, 100,000? Who cares? You know what I mean?

Speaker 12 Like, say yes to everything.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 The deeper I get into this business, the more I say to myself, I'd almost rather give a piece of business to somebody else that I, you know what I mean?

Speaker 12 Like if an account comes in and it doesn't fit my markets, I'd almost rather hand that to someone else and say, here, you take this and do a good job for them versus I'm going to go out and find some carrier that this is going to be the only piece of business I have.

Speaker 11 Bro, perfect example yesterday. I don't know how well you know Joe Campert in Austin with Redwood.

Speaker 12 I know him and we've talked online, but he hasn't been on the show yet.

Speaker 11 I mean, the kid is doing something special, him and his dad. I think of him as my little brother in insurance because we just, we hit it off.
And he's got a great story. Perfect example with him.

Speaker 11 He is a trucking insurance god. I mean, him and Cameron Petch over in Washington State, I think is where Cameron's located.

Speaker 11 Cameron and Joe and his shop are like the only two people in trucking that I think of, except for maybe Francis Nunez in Texas.

Speaker 11 But you know what I mean.

Speaker 11 I got a trucking inbound request. Somebody hit my office and was like, hey, I've got a couple of trucks.
I do OTR. We haul just general freight.
And I'm like, bro, I'm not even going to touch this.

Speaker 11 I said, I'm going to connect you with my friend and colleague, Joe. He's in Austin.
Him and his shop will take great care of you. I'm not qualified to do this account.
And he's like, that's awesome.

Speaker 11 Thank you for telling me. I'm just like, dude.
It's so much better.

Speaker 11 Is there a lot of premium there? It's probably a $35,000, $40,000 premium account, probably, you know, five grand in revenue, plus or minus. I have no business taking that account.

Speaker 11 So I handed it straight over to Joe. I texted Joe is like, hey, this dude, here's his information.
I told him you'd be calling him. It's just washed my hands of the whole thing.

Speaker 11 But the flip side of that, Joe sent me a large condo association in Missouri in January. It's probably $150,000 in premium.
Joe's like, I have no business trying to write this.

Speaker 11 I probably could write it, but it would take me way longer and you're better at this than I am. I'm just perfect example.

Speaker 11 Like that flow of experts sending over here to a different expert someone who's got enough self-awareness to realize i probably shouldn't try to do this yeah and i think that's one thing that your your listeners our listeners for this episode would really serve themselves well is figuring out where do i draw the line at what point do i say i'm not going to try to do that And then you just establish this network of subject matter experts for various verticals within the insurance world and stay in your lane and kick some serious tail in your lane.

Speaker 12 I couldn't agree with you more.

Speaker 12 This trucking thing, I actually, so a good one for Ohio is Seth Zaremba. Jay Mueller and Camargo Insurance is another good resource for different people.

Speaker 12 If you're on the East Coast, it's tough to find people that focus on trucking on the East Coast, but

Speaker 12 it.

Speaker 12 I give out probably a dozen trucking leads a week at this point because I just get them in and I send them to, I didn't know Joe did trucking. I send a lot to Cam.

Speaker 12 I send some, I send them all over the place

Speaker 12 because I just can't, I, I don't want to go down that path. It's so much and the trucking path, but I completely agree with you.

Speaker 12 I think early on, what the vast majority of people do, myself included, is whatever you can get. I think you have to do that, right? You got to survive.
You have to survive.

Speaker 12 I think if you have a natural niche and connections, do it, but to a certain extent, survive.

Speaker 12 Once you're past survival mode, and I think this is where I've seen some some other agencies really struggle.

Speaker 12 And I was actually talking to my Liberty rep who I've known for like almost since like my first week in the business 15 years ago at the Murray Group.

Speaker 12 And he said he had three, he appointed three agents in January and February of last year that didn't make it through COVID. And he said a big part of it was just like you.

Speaker 12 at a certain point, like you have to know, you have to recognize I'm out of survival mode. Maybe I'm not thriving, but I'm out of survival mode.

Speaker 12 I now need to pivot from everything I can get to what's going to get me to the next level. And like for me, I'm trying to focus on contractors, comp and technology businesses.

Speaker 12 I'm interested in them. I can speak the language and I like helping them.
I have the markets to help them. That's where I'm going.

Speaker 12 So if you send me, like I'll write some hab if it falls into Cincinnati or whatever, but there's really big stuff. If I had a really big hab come in, I would have no idea what to do with it.

Speaker 12 I'd waste, i'd waste three months trying to figure that out you know or or some of these other healthcare if if i had if a non you know i had a a medical transport company call me sorry can't do it i i just i have no idea where to put medical transport i just don't so i think this is one of the most and i want to be respectful of your time and and i actually have to go too um but

Speaker 12 I think that this topic is

Speaker 12 one of the most important topics for companies as they evolve. And look at you getting your coffee delivered.
You slacked that to her, didn't you? Bring me a coffee or a cappuccino.

Speaker 11 Is it a cappuccino or a coffee? Breckland, she's my right hand. Literally, as we're doing this, I see it come up on here.
She goes, hot cocoa?

Speaker 12 Oh, you son of a gun.

Speaker 11 Oh, look at you. Right there.
Yeah.

Speaker 11 If I could share my screen with you, all you see is a smiley face. I didn't even say yes.
I just said.

Speaker 11 Teamwork.

Speaker 12 Teamwork makes the dream work. So just to wrap up, man, one, I appreciate your time and thoughts.
And we went a lot of places here that I didn't expect, but I think that's a good thing.

Speaker 12 This idea, to your point, this is one of the most important topics. It's almost like you got, at some point, you got to grow up.

Speaker 12 And maybe, maybe, if growing up for you is, I am going to dominate everything inside of 10 miles.

Speaker 12 right i think that's a i think that's kind of a tougher road to play today i don't know that that's the right path even though it may feel like the right path i think i think if you're starting up

Speaker 12 as fast as you can get to a thing whatever that thing is so dude um where can people get at you where's the best facebook linkedin the gram you tick tocking what you know what's the best place for people to connect with you if they just want to I'm kind of old school.

Speaker 11 It's probably Facebook.

Speaker 11 I've never gotten on TikTok or Twitter. LinkedIn is nothing but spam.

Speaker 11 It's kind of Instagram for family stuff and Facebook for work stuff.

Speaker 12 LinkedIn is my number one, is my number four source of new business at Rogue Risk.

Speaker 11 No kidding.

Speaker 12 Shit, you're not.

Speaker 11 Dude, we need to talk about LinkedIn because I, I mean, it's basically a non-existent platform for me.

Speaker 12 Yeah. My wife says the same thing.
It's a completely opposite for me. It is the most valuable social platform.

Speaker 12 Outside of blasting the technology platforms that I pay to help me service my customers on Facebook.

Speaker 12 uh linkedin is the most valuable platform to me it just doesn't even come close beryl i think we've got a great opportunity for a a second episode.

Speaker 11 Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 11 We need to be more focused on our topic. Yeah, we'll be more focused.

Speaker 12 I can't always promise Friday afternoon recordings could go anywhere. So that's kind of what happened today.
But

Speaker 12 I'll say absolutely gives us a reason to come back in a couple of months. I appreciate your time.
I appreciate you. Riskwell.com.
If you want to check out James' agency.

Speaker 11 Let me just say, so we can save people from messaging me going, hey, I really like that idea.

Speaker 11 I was like, okay, here's the the thing and if i'm going to ask for one thing go to youtube and subscribe to my channel i'm putting a lot of effort into putting good content on there it's one it's for insurance agents and also for other business owners

Speaker 11 but don't ask if you can borrow or adapt or adopt something you see from me i give it freely take it make it your own Don't message me and say, hey, can I use this? Because that happens all the time.

Speaker 11 I just want to be like, dude, of course you can. Go do your thing.

Speaker 11 Yeah, Risk Wells YouTube channel. If you're going to connect with me, I'd love for you to connect there.
Shameless plug.

Speaker 11 And while you're there, if you haven't already subscribed to Hanley's Rogue Risk channel, he's got some good stuff there, too. Hell yeah.

Speaker 12 Unless you're going to do what someone did the other day and downvote every one of my videos.

Speaker 12 She's not actually on camera. She can come in.
I don't produce the video.

Speaker 11 Oh, you don't?

Speaker 11 Well, she just threw a snowball on my desk. So maybe I should put her on video.
That's a good way to end it. Hey, man, appreciate you.
Be good. Thanks, bro.
Take care.

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