RHS 083 - Mitch Gibson on Why Insurance Doesn’t Need Another Podcast

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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 Mitch Gibson on the podcast. Mitch is a risk advisor for HRM Insurance Services and he's also a huge content creator.
One of his most recent projects is Inside Hancock County, a podcast about the county that Mitch operates in and lives in, his community. And I love it.
Right on the front of the website that he created for the podcast, a podcast about community, passion, and positivity. And I wanted to bring Mitch in to not just talk about the podcast, not just talk about insurance, but really about his mindset around content, content creation, content marketing.
It feels to me like in recent years, we as an industry have gotten away from content marketing, that we've kind of nothing against ads and buying leads and all that kind of stuff, that this is not a knock on them. But we've almost, I feel like, continued to gravitate

towards Facebook ads and YouTube ads, and we've forgotten that consistent, valuable,

rich, deep content drives traffic to your website, builds brand value, and ultimately

grows your business.

And I wanted to talk to Mitch about it because there are a tremendous number of people in

our industry who understand the value of content, and I believe Mitch to be one of those cats. So I think you're going to enjoy this.
We talk about a lot of tactics and strategies. It's a very casual conversation, and I think you're going to enjoy it.
But before we get there, I want to give a huge shout out to the premier, the platinum, the sponsor that makes the show possible, and that is Tarmica. Now, I've been on the Tarmica train since basically day one of this show, since they hit the scene, and there's a reason for that.
Tarmica makes small commercial insurance profitable, period. You write small commercial, most of us believe it's not profitable.
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Here's the really interesting part. The things that they are doing in terms of adding additional lines, commercial auto, workers comp, you know, I know they're working on things like cyber, on professional liability, the carriers that they have.
I mean, we're talking the biggest carriers in the game and not these flimsy, you know, kind of screen scraping, auto login connections that a lot of the other players in the market have. We're talking about real API connections.
You're getting bindable quotable rates back in your agency in real time. You can do it over the phone.
If you listen to some of the past episodes, you'll hear me talk about some of the use cases and case studies that I've had, you know, binding accounts in 21 minutes, you know, from phone call all the way to paid certificate out the door. Tarmica is the solution.
They make small commercial profitable and I just, I use them all the time. They're a huge part of my agency.
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All right. Let's get on to Mitch.
All right. What's up, man? Shit, man.
Actually, I'll just be honest with you. I'm glad we're recording today because I told Heath.
He recorded me with me today, this morning, and he told me to find out what day you're going to drop this so I can let him know so he doesn't drop it on the same day. I know.
He was getting mad at me because there was like two or three people that I had on the show that he had also interviewed. And like I dropped like whatever, just I don't know, just circumstance.
There was like two months where I dropped an interview like a week before he was going to before he had the same person., but you know, that's what ends up happening is you know, you just, you know, there's only, there's only so, there's so many podcasts now and there's only so many people that are even willing to get on podcasts that it, it, you know, they're just, you get a lot of the same stuff. So, you know, I think, I think what's interesting about it is you do end up getting, you know, everybody's show and the way everyone interviews and the conversations and stuff.
I think a lot of times they're different. Um, but you do get like this, you know, someone will come through and like, they'll hit every podcast.
Then you won't see them again for a year. And then, you know, they'll hit every podcast again.
And I don't know that that's a bad thing i just um you know especially because you know if you're on cast's podcast or here or uh if you're on the guy you know insurance guys or crothers or heaths or whatever you definitely get a different different feel i mean everyone's got a different feel for the show right and i think that's still i mean i'm i don't think because i even had cast like dude you just you need to get like join the club and the insurance like no i gotta the stuff that you guys do is so established and so good that i don't want to even i want to use as a platform that still helps me yeah like i don't want to try to get into having an insurance podcast but i mean yeah i could have a good show i mean not worried about that but i just don't want I don't want the the headache of same thing whose guest is this guy got put on and most of the time the stories will somewhat be the same yeah but it's all about the guests being able to you know to provide some value and stuff I don't know I I don't want to do that um and I think well Cass too he's he's having me guest host his show for three months starting in February. So, I mean, there's that opportunity, which I I'd rather do that than do my own thing.
Yeah. I think that's smart.
You know, I mean, obviously I, this podcasting and talking to the industry has become such a huge part of my life that at this point I would never give it up. But the truth is it's a frigging headache.
And, and, and I don't mean that like in the negative way, I just mean like you want to add value. Like I do this to help put ideas in front of, you know, the listeners and give them nuggets and some of the stuff works and some of the stuff doesn't work.
And that's the whole point. And, um, you know, but at the same time, in an effort to do that, you know, you have to be thoughtful and you have to, you know, there, there is a level of, um, responsibility.
I was actually, I don't know if you listen, you listen to Joe Rogan's podcast. I can love that guy.
Yeah. So I'm huge fan of Rogan for a lot of reasons.
And one of the things that he talked about recently, actually, I've been listening to it less because of the Spotify move because I listen to iTunes and now having to switch over to Spotify to listen to him has been kind of a pain in the butt. But either way, when he was making that move or announced it, he talking about like this whole idea of platforming and who do you have on?

And not that I'm worried about platforming someone who's a, you know, who's like, you know, something terrible. But at the same time, there is this idea of like, you want to make sure that the people that are coming on the show have the best intentions of the audience in mind or are sharing ideas that are honest and, you know, not necessarily right or wrong, but just, you know, they're trying to be helpful.
And that can be difficult too. Do you edit all your video and stuff? No, I don't edit anything.
Okay. I record, like I record record i hit record when i start talking and i hit end record when we stop talking and then i send that and an intro over to cass's uh theresa and resa takes care of it but i don't edit uh i was wondering i i feel like i've and i don't know if there's other agent insurance podcasts out there, but that's one thing that Heath – I'm actually going to try to work on getting some stuff done for Heath because he likes the way I use the video on YouTube my episodes.
I turn it more into video, and he's like, well, how long did you take you to do that? I said, well, I do that for another reason because I've got a local TV station that shows the show every Saturday and Sunday. so like I have to do it in actual like video setup form so that they can use it and show it, which in return is nice for me because the video is already done, cut and edited.
It doesn't take too long for me, but I don't know because he was getting into YouTube. He was like, yeah, I had to take a video down.
So I didn't think it was doing very good. It only had like 10 views.
I said, dude, that's fine. Just make that your hub of all your videos.
Like you're not going to, just cause you post a video to, to YouTube and then share it on LinkedIn and Facebook that you're going to get a thousand views. It's not going to happen.
I mean, especially if it's just, especially if it's just talking about a general liability policy. I mean, you're not going to get many people to look at that at all.
It's more like, it's more, more a way for you to talk to that contractor and say, Hey, you'll look at this or watch this video to become a little bit more knowledgeable about it.

So I feel like that's what Hanley does that makes it successful for him.

It may just take one person to see it, but the message is retrieved from that guy the right way, and he's going to want to either learn more about it or give him a call talking about insurance.

Yeah, the key to insurance YouTube, not thought leader insurance, YouTube, but insurance YouTube is not view count. No, it's just not because you're just not going to get people.
You're not going to get people daisy chaining your videos. So like when you see the, these, these, um, I don't know if you're into video editing, but I used to watch a lot of Peter McKinnon.

So I think Peter McKinnon is really cool. I think he used to be a little cooler, but also he's kind of mainstream now in that space.
So it's tough for him to be as cool as he was. But he seems like a pretty good dude.
he racks up all those views because you watch you watch seven 10 minute videos in a row because

it's video editing. So you just watch them.
No one is watching, hey, I'm going to watch this video on workers' comp. Then I'm going to daisy chain that into general liability.
Now I'm going to watch a video on commercial auto. That is not what happens.
People are basically going, I have a commercial auto problem. How do I get better commercial auto? Okay, here's a video, 45 seconds in they go, this guy seems like he knows what he's doing, click, contact form, call, whatever.
That's how it's happening. So really what you're trying to do is just establish yourself as an expert and as quick as, and actually some of my videos, I talk for too long.
I need to shorten them, but like moving forward, I'm not going to go re-edit them, but like you're just trying to establish yourself as an expert and give enough advice in the first 30 to 45 seconds that the person believes you can solve their problem. And that's it.
That's, that's, that's insurance. YouTube thought leader insurance.
YouTube is different, but that is insurance. YouTube in a nutshell.
Agreed. No, I just, I was recently asked, cause I didn't know if you'd like, I turn, if, if I don't have a guest that I'm meeting within the studio here, um, that I will, cause I turned into video.
So I was telling Heath how I use, if I've got a video call on zoom, how I turn that into an actual episode via video as well, and how quickly it can be edited. You don't need to pay hundreds of dollars to have somebody go video edit it.
And I'm actually going to have a call with him tomorrow. And I'm going to show him how I edit my videos and how quickly it takes me an hour.
And if that, and I want to be able to share that and help him out. And at the end of the day, help other people out, because I'm a big, I'd rather watch the episode than listen to it.
Yeah, I have been bad about, with my Capital Region Business Podcast, which I'm going to be rolling out consistent episodes starting in January. That's been really cool.
I think that having the local podcast business show is like an absolute no brainer. I have struggled with the video because even an hour at this point of editing is too much is like a lot.
Um, you know, just, I've just found my time is getting pinched really hard and I would love to do it. Um, yeah, I just, I've been bad about that.
I've let that go. I've just been doing the podcast episodes.
Um, but I, I should get back into it. I think, I think it's, I think it's an awesome thing.
And the long tail is a huge win. The long tail is an enormous win.
It just, um, I have definitely been bad about pushing out the local podcast video. Yeah, and I think like with Bradley, and I don't know if he's got all of his slots filled on that secret project, content project thing that he busted out, but he used one of my episodes as a guinea pig to launch that thing.
And I mean, that's great and all, but for me, like I can learn enough about video editing to where I don't I mean yeah getting 50 pieces 60 pieces of content back in episodes great because no one no one has the time to cut that many pieces especially if you use an adobe premiere by the time it renders and takes off hell you got three days worth of shit that you just waited to render off yeah so for him, I mean, I just, I wouldn't pay

$500 to have my videos cut and edited, but I've also learned how to do it. And also had three

years of school, college that taught me how to do that kind of stuff. But I don't know.
It's,

I enjoy the video aspect. It makes my stuff a lot better.
And I actually do mine ass backwards.

I'll record the video and I use the audio. I use the, I'll edit my video from front to back or

front to end. And then I'll take it once it's off, then I take it and throw in audacity because it's already cut and edited.
Right. So I'm only editing it really listically one time.
So then I'm putting an audio form and there's my audio for Apple, Spotify, Google play, whatever it is. So I kind of do a little bit backwards, but my main thing is I got to get the video done first before I'm to turn it into audio.
Yeah. And it just seems to work out really well.
Yeah. I, um, I think down the road, I'm, I, I would love to do more, more video.
I don't do, I just don't like zoom video very much. I find it to be so terrible.
And I know that that's not the point. I just, I think in studio stuff,

you can make your guests look good.

I think on Zoom, it's really difficult

to make your guests look good.

And I don't know, I just go back and forth.

I hate, I hate, to me, it's a turnoff

watching people on Zoom, it just is.

And I think I use that.

I know everyone is not that way.

And I shouldn't take my own,

if I was listening to my own advice, it would be don't put your own perceptions on on content. But I think part of it is I'm waiting for the day when people can come back into a place and meet me somewhere to do the video and I'll start doing it again.
And right now, it's just so much easier to get people on the podcast, especially, you know, and for any of the ladies listening to this, I don't mean this to be personal, but women just don't, you know, they, they, they are a little more picky with how they look on the video. So, you know, I don't, it just takes more work where if it's just, Hey, come on, we use the video so we can see each other when we're having our conversation, but I don't publish the video.
I get way more people because, because a lot of local business people have never been on a podcast before. So when you say, Hey, come on my podcast, they're like, what, what are we going to talk about? God, can we have a call like to prep, you know? And I'm in my mind, I'm like, we're just going to have a conversation, but to them, it's like a big deal.
Like this is a permanent thing out in the interwebs that people are going to listen to. And what if they sound stupid? So I try to remove some of the, um, I try to remove some of the scary by just saying it's audio only.
If you say something really dumb, we can always edit it out, but it's just casual. And we only use the video to, so that you and I can see each other and, and react to each other.
And, uh and uh that that has been much easier to get people to come on right no I would have to agree um the thing that makes mine unique at least being local is I can't I mean it's not like you guys like I'm not I'm gonna get on a plane and come to Ryan Hanley's you know studio to do a recording so I mean it has made a lot easier but for me I finally do have a studio thanks thanks to Remax Realty Group for giving me the chance to have a studio here. But like for them, it's, it's, it's, it's great because their backdrops and all my episodes in return, I've got that business owner that's sitting here locally who I'm talking to him.
So it's more of that, like, you know, two ferns in a bush type of atmosphere recording the episode wise, which makes it a lot better on my end. But you're right.
It's the, the COVID's kind of screwed everybody in, in, in so many different ways. I mean, but the reaction of how everybody's going to react to, it's been phenomenal.
I believe it. I believe it.
I mean, I, I dude, I'm such a believer in the, in the process and in the, in, in the concept of having a local show and being that local talk show host. you know, I was talking to someone the other day and like, I don't know, the town that you're in, do you have a business review? Do you have a business review franchise? We do not, no.
Other than the chamber, I mean, but I've recently joined the chamber as my podcast. I mean, we're part of the chambers with the agency as well, but I did that because that's a great avenue for me to add into my, when I go to a networking event over there or a luncheon, you know, which I haven't gone to too many of them recently, but it's a way for me to say, Hey, let me get on your podcast or I want you to get on my podcast and talk about your, your excavating company.
Okay, great. Like, please sign me up.
It's not going to cost you anything.

You love talking about yourself anyway.

So bring it on board

and then let me get a chance to talk to you

about insurance down the road.

I mean, I'm not going to talk about insurance on the show,

which makes the show better

and such a great way for me to use it as a way

to ask for that referral

or to ask for that chance

to take a look at their deck pages,

whatever it is. That's just such an easy, easy, I'm setting up my own warm referral per se.
And then at the end, yeah, at the end of the show, after recording these, like, oh, well, this can't be your full-time job. What do you, you know, what do you do for a living? Well, insurance.
Well, that leads into the conversation without me even saying anything about it, which is great. Yeah.
They like the road runner. When you say that they, they, you just see a cloud of smoke and they're out the door.
A hundred percent. A hundred percent.
No, it's not like that. It's not like that.
Um, I have, cause that's my, I'm interested. So I'm interested in your, after you do the podcast with them and, and you broach, you know, you broach is, Hey, what do you do? Uh, you know, I'm insurance.
I, you know, whatever. What is your follow-up process with them for the, do you just soft solicit and leave it be? Do you say, Hey man, like would love to take a, do you, do you come right at them? Are you super upfront about it? Like hot, or is it case by case? Like, how do you handle that? I was gonna say it's more case by case.
Depends on the type of person, the personality that they have. So I think that's my biggest plus is being able to determine someone's personality, what the personality profile kind of looks like.
It just, I see somebody start talking to him for five or 10 minutes and I can kind of get the best way to communicate with them. So for obviously when I have somebody on the show, I'm gonna send them a follow-up email with just like everybody else.
Here's the show link. Here's some, you know, um, graphics that you can use to put on that you've been on the show, et cetera.
Um, so I'll either do it one or two ways. They'll bring it up to me immediately after the show.

If their personality is the one that's the communication like, and wants to, wants to learn about me at this point in time. And then they'll bring it up and say, Hey, what do you do full time? I'm an insurance business.

And then the question – and I always will say, if it's a business guy and guy has a, has his own, owns his own business. I'm going to say that I focus primarily on commercial insurance.
I, I write both, but I go after the commercial. Yeah.
Okay. So that's that, that I go after that commercial and so if if he says he i'm just gonna say for example what insurance agency are you with that's always a good question to ask for me is who you currently insured with so he'll be able to tell me something well i can i can either do one or two things while i'm sitting here and talking to him is let him know you know maybe what we do differently as an agency So I'll talk to him about what makes us different.
We are completely different than anybody else in the way that we service accounts. We have a ton of contractors.
So me talking to the excavating guy, big thing I'm going to talk to him about is bonds. Do they have a bonding program? Because they're usually, sometimes the company that they're insured with, it's going to be their commercial auto, general liability, inland marine, umbrella, et cetera, but they might have a tough time with bonding.
So if they have a bad relationship with bonding, that gives me a great opportunity because Cincinnati insurance company will take care of it all. And Cincinnati insurance companies are our biggest carrier that we write our contractors with.
So, you know, just case by case trying to determine who that, who the guest is. And then if it's one of those where we finished the show and, you know, they, I'm not going to set them, bring it up to them right away.
Not, not first time. I won't bring it up to them while they're sitting here.
Cause I know I'm one going to follow up with them via email to, I can always find something to give them a call and say, Hey, I got a quick question before I edit this video. How would you like your user tag to be, whatever it may be.
So I'm going to have to contact with him again. So if I had that conversation with him again about here's the show here's where you can find it here's where you can you know stream it here's where you can share it tag us this blah blah blah and then underneath the last part of the email i'll make sure to put also would like to know if you have any opportunity to sit down and go through just to take a look at your insurance policy whether it's hey i'm new this has been my biggest has been my biggest successful thing.
I wouldn't say I've been in the insurance business for a couple of years now. Appreciate you coming on the show.
Hopefully it helps bring you some business. One thing I will ask, if you don't mind, to help me become a better learner and more insurance knowledgeable, can I take a look at your insurance policy to make sure that I can understand the coverages that you have to make your policy and mine better moving down the road.
So it's a way for me to get in there and see the policy. Okay.
Cause we all know if we see a policy, we can always try it. We can always find something that's going to help us win that battle or at least have a conversation.
Whether that's fine, you know, making sure their classification of business is identified correctly or their payroll is assigned to whatever class code correctly. We can do that all day long, but it's that having that conversation, the opportunity to sit down and go through it with them.
I said this the other day on Cass's podcast. Out of the 28 episodes, 30 I've recorded, I've gotten a chance to quote 80% of them and I've wrote 75% of them, whether that's a business or their personal home and auto insurance.
That's awesome. Usually out of those, out of those 75% I've wrote, every single one of them has asked me about insurance first.
So I'm not saying that's going to be for everybody. It's worked out.
It's worked out well. It's been a great tactic for me.
You know, will the cat get out of the bag eventually that Mitch Gibson's only reason Mitch Gibson's having you on your show is so he can write your insurance? I don't care. I really don't care because what I've tried to do is establish that.
Do they care? Why would they even care? If they're getting exposure and they got this great piece of content they can share with their customers, why would they even care? that's exactly right. And that's, that's the thing that I've been,

it's been great doing is,

is just keeping quiet because I'm not trying to write business. I mean,

I am, but I'm, that's not what I'm trying to do with the show.

I want to learn more about the community because I want to be that face.

I want to be that when they think of Hancock County or Greenfield,

the new Palestine,

I think of Mitch Gibson and what Mitch Gibson's personal brands about not, Oh, I think of Mitch Gibson and think of insurance. I want them to think about me the way that I think about myself and brand myself as a person, as a professional so that they come to me and they know what they're going to get before they even call me.
So that's, that's the biggest thing is just, you know, building that authority of myself through the show. And if I've done the, done, done my job on interviewing them and building that relationship, them asking for a chance to look at them and asking to quote their insurance, or they may run into a bad experience or their take their, their CSR is taking forever to get them their certificates of certificates of insurance well if the certificate of insurance taking two days to get back to you i can tell you right now we'll get that we'll have that back to you in two hours yeah because that's where we succeed that's where we're so good at what we do and then i'm gonna get the chance and they're gonna get what they want and we're both happy at the end of the day yeah yeah that's that That's, that's wild.
So that's, I mean, that's content marketing one-on-one. Um, I actually, this morning, my kids, uh, went to school early.
So at like seven 30, I did a, an episode for the show. Um, that's just, that's just me.
It'll be the episode that comes out before this one. And, um, you know, I was talking a little bit about some of the stuff that has worked this year and what we're going to change and how I want to set Rogue up for 2021 and one of the things that I said in there because some of these free form ones you know I you don't necessarily know exactly where they're going when you start I mean I had some bullets that I wanted to talk about, but basically it hit me that like, what's working for me is, is the same kind of standard content marketing tactics that have worked for a decade that like the very first time I was ever hired to speak at the San Francisco national big eye event in 2011 or 12, whatever the heck it was like, like those same things that I was talking about on the stage, all those years ago are setting where what sets rogue apart and, and in New York today.
And it's insane to me. It's absolutely insane that there are still, there are still the vast, vast majority, 95 plus percent of agencies have literally no content strategy.
And most of them think that it's nonsense. And to me, I just keep shaking my head and I'm like, the amount of inbound submissions that I've gotten, the amount of general attention, website traffic, YouTube views, you know, not all of that is directly correlated to bound business today, but we've been in existence for nine months.
If you were to take that and put it against the launch strategy of any other scratch agency, you know, that isn't coming off of like a VC raise, is no one can even compare. And the only reason that that happens is because of content marketing and creating content, telling your story, drawing people in, sharing what you're all about, your expertise, your knowledge.
And it just is baffling to me that it's still something that we even debate as an industry. It just absolutely baffles me.
I mean, there's no question that it works. So I just can't understand why people still don't do it.
Well, I think, I think it's the, I really do think it just comes down to the, I don't know if they're scared, they're just chicken shits to try. Cause I mean, you can, I think you guys talked about this not too long ago on that, on Cass's drink, drink or something on a Friday.
You guys had a big old producers producers show live on facebook whenever that was yeah and someone someone had talked about just no i haven't had you know i i i'm terrible on the camera or i'm terrible at doing this i mean like i told steve over the mayor over at insurance town i said steve the best thing to do is just record everything that you're doing i mean that's the only way you're going to get better at what added at all and just like you're rolling this podcast right now and recording it's just being genuine and being authentic i mean if you sneeze a cough whatever it is i mean just be authentic with what you're doing because that's what people want people don't want that that robot. People don't want that at all.
So don't think it's got to be cut and dry perfection before you post it anywhere. I mean, obviously, if someone wants to talk shit, then they can talk shit, but you're doing something that they're not.
And you'll get – the chances are you're probably going to get better at it over time. So don't be scared about it.
Just try it. And I think a lot of people are scared to talk about maybe the profession that they're in for a quick period of time.
Like I know for me, I would love to start and I'm going to, I already have, make some videos like you do on specific insurance topics and just bombard your, you know, using that as a marketing, content marketing tool. I'm not trying to necessarily get tons of views on it.
And, and, and who, But if I'd contact or get in contact with one person because of it, you know, it's done its purpose. It's done its job.
So scared to talk about what they're doing. Scared to talk about general liability policies.
They're afraid they're going to say something that's not correct. Or I hate to say it, but one company's general liability policy is different from the other.
So they're really probably not going to know exactly if you messed up or something, but at least you're practicing, at least you're putting stuff out there to become more knowledgeable and help your content marketing. Yeah, I want to address the buttoned up perfect thing because I think what people don't necessarily understand about that is you either have to be super produced, like, like, like top level, you know, we're talking top 20 podcasts, you know, whatever it is like NPR, you know, whatever that is that, that, that, uh, all those podcast networks that have the super well-produced, you know, wide range audio, you know, closed circuit, you know, wall, you know, you're in it, you're in a studio setting with the sound dampening.
You either have to be that, or you have to be real. Anything in the middle is awful.
It's awful. The quasi produced stuff, you know what I mean? So you have a narrow band microphone, but you're trying to produce it like it's this super professional thing.
That sounds awful. It sounds like you're trying really hard and you're not good.
You're trying to make up for the fact that you don't have good content. So you either have to be, and this is, this is, you know, you, there is a bar where the audio quality, or maybe you're coughing or saying all the time, that becomes a little annoying.
If you listen to it, you'll be able to tell as soon as you're above that bar, you are fine. It's go.
What, what I think the worst thing you can do is, is it's probably not do anything. If you have something to say, that's probably the worst.

The second worst is to try to be something you're not.

You're not a $5 million podcast studio network operation.

You're not that.

There's very few people that are that.

So don't even try to be.

Just have a good, I mean, this mic that I'm talking on right now, I have people all the time that email me like oh your mic sounds so good I bought this mic for $64.99 on Amazon it was an Amazon basics purchase and I bought it in 2013 so what's keeping us from not having a podcast your audio quality I'm in a room that has no sound dampening. It does have a carpet.
Uh, I do have some stuff on the walls, but it's basically just an office and I'm using a $65 mic that I bought before my child was born. So I just, you know, these are some of the things that I struggle with because, you know, and I know the real reason, the real reasons are the things you said.

People are scared.

They know they can't be consistent about it.

They don't want to be judged by what they say. They're worried that no one will be interested, so they don't do it.
but you know, I, I just keep coming back to, I feel sad, but now that I actually own an agency,

I'm actually happy that so many people are scared to create content because I feel like I'm just going to blow right past them. And you too, right? Like you're just going to blow right past them because the, because what I can do now is create a video and target it to a town that anybody who's listening to this lives in.
And I can be in your customer's YouTube feed, Facebook feed, Instagram feed. I can be anywhere that they're watching TV.
If I'm really feeling froggy, you can now advertise on Hulu and Apple TV and all these other things, right? For all the pre-roll stuff, you can just drop stuff in and there's nothing you can do about it. I can act as if I operate in your town and there is nothing you can do.
And then when they go to check me out, I have tons of blog posts and tons of videos and I'm explaining this and I'm and they can dig in. And by the time they actually fill out that form, they don't care where I am.
They already feel like they know me and they're, they're 95% sold. And you, you can't do anything about that because you have no presence.
And, and that it's sad, but now that I own it now, like I said, now that I own an agency, I'm actually kind of happy that everyone doesn't do it because there's just, it just creates this tremendous runway. I mean, you're so far out ahead of all your competition.
How do they even compare? Agreed. And I got, I got talking to another agent about this the other day and he called me and he's like, well, how much time does it take you to do what you're doing? How much I said, first off, and I mentioned this on our cast is podcast and I'm pretty pissed off.
He bleeped my F word out. Um, because it really I use it as an ad.
I mean, it's one of my favorite words because I just, when I talk, it's with such passion and it just flows, comes out. And I said, you're not going to get it done nine to five.
And if you, if that's what you're looking for is nine to five job, then don't reach out to somebody asking for advice on what to do better at. I mean, okay.
One people think I don't have enough money to start my own little show, or I don't have enough money to start a video, but I want to have a good sound. Okay.
Well, if you've got an iPhone 10 or higher, you've got a 4k shooting camera, video camera, you can go buy a clip on mic from Amazon for five bucks. And it sounds pretty decent for your guest or whatever.
You've've got Zoom, which is free, one-on-one. You can go get a mic on Amazon like this for anywhere from 40 to 75 to 150 bucks, whatever you want to get.
You can start a podcast for $100. Easy.
Under 100 bucks. It's just whether or not you're determined enough or you're passionate enough to do that consistently is there.
How much time is the wrong question to begin with? If your first question is how much time does it take you to do that, you're not going to do it. Go do something else.
Like right there, that is if this were an if-then chart, that's the then that says go make cold calls.

Get nothing wrong with cold calls, but podcasting video is not for you if your very first question is how much time did this take you. That's the then side of the thing that says go do drops or go to the networking event because this channel is not for you.
That's a bad first question. it's just a it's a bad way to start because you're already thinking

of all the reasons why you can't make this happen. Cause you're the next thing.
Cause you're going to go, it takes me an hour and a half and you go, well, at my agency, we do this or this or this. So I don't have an hour and a half.
Sorry, Mitch, I can't do it. Yeah.
Or, or, or you, you know, you may follow that person on social media, Facebook or Instagram is my favorite thing. And this has happened multiple times.
Like, oh, I just don't have time. And then you look at, you go through Facebook or Instagram the next day and they were out at Kilroy's downtown Indianapolis hammered drunk till like three o'clock in the morning.
didn't you just tell me that you didn't have time but you can go out and just tie one on every

you know a saturday night that's fine you'd be that person because you know there's there's

plenty of room for us to to grow and take more I will, you know, so that's, it's okay with me. Sunday morning.
I mean, this is, so I love my pops and I love a good glass of whiskey or whatever, but the last thing that I want to be is hung over on a Sunday morning, because on Sunday I'm all the stupid graphics that I put out on social media. I drink a cup of coffee and I make those graphics on Sunday morning.
And then I schedule all of them for the week. And then I hang out with my family.
So like shared, have you shared where you, what to your, or to your listeners who, what you use? I use Canva. Okay.
I was gonna say, because that that's, those are so easy. I mean, things like that in Adobe spark, you can create 20 pieces in an hour.
Easy. If you hour easy if as long as you know what messages you're trying to put out yeah so i have i i started following a guy by the name of jack butcher and he has a course that was on sale that i bought for like 49 one-time fee that's called visual something visual something where he basically gives you a, you know, it was worth the 50 bucks.
It took me an hour to go through it. And basically what he did was show a framework and methodology for consistently creating visuals that both tell a story, have an impact and push your brand forward.
And went through that course, picked up the information. So consider that like my CE and, um, and then I use the $12 a month paid version of Canva so that I get all the features and the scheduling tool.
So I produce the images and then I write from Canva. I schedule them throughout the week and that's it.
That's, that's my Sunday mornings, a cup of coffee and, uh, and Canva. And then I'm done.
And now it's like, Oh, look at all the graphics he's doing. I get people talking about the graphics all the time.
And, and, and I, I love the graphics cause they get a lot of attention, but it literally takes me an hour in the morning over a cup of coffee on Sunday. Cause I'm not hung over.

The great as long as you sit on the front end and just like sit down and go through like out for, I use Adobe spark, similar thing.

You got Adobe spark and pre-put your brand colors,

your logos in there. So it's automatically going to pull that.

When you pull it up, you want to start a new,

you don't want to put an Instagram post out whether portrait or square and

fill it out, fill it done. And you're done.
I mean, it's really super,

super simple. So the piece of, I don't have time is a bunch of BS.
So I hate that answer. I don't have enough time for this.
Well, I don't care. I mean, all of us, you have kids, wife, agency, owner, podcast, other podcasts.
I mean, you've got stuff to do working out. I mean, I've got two kids, a wife, house, goats, coach baseball, podcast.

I mean, you've got stuff to do working out. I mean, I've got two kids, a wife, house, goats, coach baseball podcast.
I mean, so the whole time I don't have time to is a, is a easy way out of saying you don't want to do something or, but, but at the end of the day, don't come back and ask me for help. Yeah, exactly.
Here's, and this is my thought on content because I, and I am definitely a little bitter on this topic because I've just been talking about this for so long. I mean, it just is insane to me.
It just, the fact that people still don't do, and it doesn't even, you know, there's just so much to it. Like, and I guess I kind of geeked towards that versus there's other people who are really good at accounting.
There's some people who are awesome at their agency management system. I'm fucking terrible at an agency management system.
Now certs is easy to use. I can still barely use it.
There's nothing wrong with it. Just the idea of investing my time into figuring the nuts and bolts of how to use that, I don't go there.
So we all have to pick our things. But what's crazy to me are the people who believe that it's important and come up with the excuses.
To me, I don't think knowing the insides and outsides of my business is more important. That's why I don't do it.
I know the parts that are important for documentation, but you know, whatever. So it's just, you know, having templated emails for cold email, you know, that's, that's, that's something you can do.
That's content marketing, right? Do you have a cold email structure or do you have a, do you do a newsletter or do you do social media graphics or do you have PDF flyers that you can email to people? Or do you have flyers that you can mail to people? I mean, there are content marketing and content in general is not just doing videos and blog posts, which I think is what it really gets lumped into. There's so much more to it.
I mean, I spent, you know, an hour this morning sending cold emails to people with high experience mods. And I literally have a templated email.
Well, you know, an hour this morning sending cold emails to people with high experience mods.

And I literally have a templated email. You know, I put in the guy's email address.

I throw up a templated email that pulls in the same freaking subject line. It pulls in the first

sentence. Then I do a loom video where I'm like, Hey man, this is a cold email.
We've never spoken

on the phone before. The reason I'm calling you is because your experience mod is 73% higher

I don't have a plan, then I would love to sit down with you and walk through what you could be doing to get that experience mod down, you know, and then I put a, then right below it is another templated line. Boom.

I'm not even typing. We've removed all, this is idiot proof.

The next line is if you want to learn more about this program, I call it rogue risk 365 click here to learn more. Sincerely,

Ryan Hanley. Have a great day.
Boom. It's that easy.

So all I'm doing is literally popping someone's email address in and creating a

45 second loom video that is custom to them and hitting an email. Like that's content marketing though.
And it took, and as much as that's only like four lines of text, what those lines actually are, I spent some time thinking about it. What do I think is going to draw somebody in? What do I want my hook to be? Right.
If you have a high experience mind, you're sick of paying more than you should. And you wish you had a way to get out of it and you don't.
Right. And that's so that's what the hook is.
Now, you whatever your thing is, if it's auto or D&O or contractors or bonds, you come up with your, but that's content marketing. Your flyers are

content marketing. And it just drives me nuts that we're not putting thought into these things because, and this is, you know, with, with the remaining time that we have, I want to, uh, I want to hit you with this question because this is one of the core things that I talked about on the episode that I recorded this morning, but we'll release right before this one.
I believe that the next five years, we've been talking about it for a while. I don't think it's necessarily had as much of an impact as maybe say five years ago, we thought it would today.
So in 2015, we were talking about the idea of brand, right? Probably brand still isn't as much of a separator in 2020 as we would have thought it's going to be. But I'm doubling into the idea that five years from today, your brand will be the reason that someone buys from you.
That will be how you connect, how you tell that story. Your ability to build that brand, that is going to be the defining thing more than anything else.
And I feel like we need to invest time and thought into this. I think it's only, I think it's, the pace of brand importance is only picking up and COVID has taken and just blasted that forward.
Well, and I think it's funny you say that and funny that we record the same day that I was putting together a list of guests for when I am going to guest host Cass's show. And there's a guy who's not in the insurance business and he talks, his name, his name's Todd Saylor and he owns a company or his personal brand is wired differently.
You know, we're all wired differently. There's not a person that mimics Ryan Hanley is not a perfect person that mimics Mitch Gibson by his DNA, makeup, everything.
Okay. So we're all different.
And, you know, he's, he's talking about brand and all of this and all that. And one thing that resonated to me, and I think this might not sound new to you, but there's two types of, there's two types of brands.
When you're thinking about brand yourself, it's one, the, the, the brand that you decide what the principles and your perseverance are behind it and your passions behind that specific brand. Or you have the brand that the others and other people decide for you.
So you talk about the importance of the next five years of your brand and developing that brand and being consistent with it, you can say all day long, I want to start this clothing brand or I want to start the Mitch Gibson brand or the Ryan Hanley brand. But what is that? I mean, do you spend time thinking about the building blocks of the person that you are? Okay.
I think it kind of gets mixed up too a lot of people maybe more agency owners than producers like me is they think they've got to brand that agency so much you do have to brand the agency but you've got just as much brand yourself as a producer and as a person or that brand of who you work for is not going to work either and that that's for me when I reached out to Bradley Flowers back in January of this year. And after me going through a whole bunch of life crap, I mean, I'm at the age of 25 and I'm 25.
And I feel like I live a 50 year old lifestyle and I've been through hell and back already, which I'm thankful for because it's helped me learn a lot. And I think I went through that for me to pick up my phone and DM Bradley Flowers and start having conversations.
And which Kim gave me the book to success of here's what I think you should do. And guess what, guys, it worked.
It's working. I'm not done yet.
It's working. But then on the back end, learn about, help me think about my personal brand and my personal self.
I teach baseball to kids one way. I write insurance one way.
Mitch Gibson lives a different lifestyle. Those all three are three separate brands.
Okay. And my personal brand myself was below those other brands.
So kind of had to regroup that and throw Mitch Gibson on top because if Mitch Gibson isn't happy and Mitch Gibson isn't putting himself and giving his core values the best chance to succeed, none of the other ones are going to work.

So I developed my – I quote unquote just put my first and last initial MG and it's kind of like a kind of crown logo.

And the four concepts of that is be passionate, have passion, enthusiasm, attitude, and effort. I can control those four things day in and day out.
So if I can control those things day in and day out, they take no skill. Everything else will come along with it.
If I'm showing up not passionate about insurance, I'm probably not going to have a successful day in the insurance business. If I show up and I'm not have a good attitude, it's going to piss everybody else off in the office.
If I don't show up and have good energy, that energy, having negative energy is going to be contagious to others. So what is it? Passion, enthusiasm, attitude, and effort.
And if I'm not putting in good quality effort, no one else is going to put in good quality effort. or no one else is going to want to be around Mitch Gibson because he's not carrying those four core values of who he is as himself.

That's how I teach. That's how I teach my players.
That's how I, that's how I want the people who are buying insurance for me to understand what type of person I am. I'm that passionate energetic person who's going to go out of his way to help you out because he cares.
He's adding value to yourself. And then from there, Mitch Gibson's here.
Who, who, what does he do? He's a coach. He has his podcast.
He's an insurance producer and he loves his family. That's what people in 11 months in and people now, when they see my MG logo or they see the inside Hancock County podcast logo or the HRM insurance logo or the Indiana nitro baseball team coaching logo, they know who Mitch Gibson is and they can associate myself with that brand.
But it all starts with your personal brand. You don't have to come up with some logo or stuff like that.
Just know what your personal brand is. That's going to help you be more successful in the field of work or a lot of work that you're in.
And. And I think that we've all kind of, you do it really, really well.
You're really sharp at it, but others might not know where to start or where to see. And I think it starts, it's got to start with yourself and correct me if I'm wrong.
No, I think you're right. I think the most, yes, well, let me pump the brakes or just back up the brakes, back up a sec.
I think what happens is you can't hide behind your brand, right? So I think what you said about being intentional is absolutely 100% correct. I think most people are not intentional about their brand at all.
I think when they are, they're trying to be intentional about their business brand. And I think where the biggest issue comes in is if their business brand does not connect with what reality is.
So if you're saying that service is what's most important to you, but you're getting COIs back in two days, you're lying. That's worse.
You shouldn't have said anything. It would be better that you didn't do anything than try to create a brand that's misaligned with where you are.
Now it's okay to have an to be aspirational. It's okay to say, here's where we're trying to go with our brand.
We're not there yet, but we're working there. So if something doesn't work, let us know.
Cause we, this is where we're going. We're not there yet.
And if that's part of your branding and part of your messaging is here's where we want to be. And we're efforting to that thing.
But I think I see a lot of, I see a lot of people make the mistake of, I would love to be this. So I'm going to make my brand try to be this, but that's not who I actually am.
And, you know, I was, I was talking to Cass a little bit about podcasting and I'm going to apologize to you. We'll have to do another episode because uh because i got to run

to a client call in a second but you're good um i was talking to uh to cast and we were talking

about about uh the ryan hanley show and you know his team helps me a lot to put this show out

and we were talking about like you know he his show was very kind of buttoned up right he's got

his three questions at the beginning he's two questions at the end you know it's it's very

templatized he doesn't curse it's not i mean he does a great job, obviously, but it's different. You know, my show is very tangential.
It's very conversational. I most of the time have literally no idea.
I just hit, I mean, talk about, I had no idea where we were going. I had no idea we were even recording until like 20 minutes ago.
We, you, we, you know, you, you, you called me

out on the thing and I was like, I would love to talk to you. Let's do it.
You know, Hey,

I don't mean call them out in a negative way. Like you said, Hey man, when are you going to end me on the show? And I said, you know, screw you.
Let's do it Monday. So, um, and this is, this is great.
And now I want to do a second episode because I have so many more things to talk to you about, but, um, yeah, I think the issue is the issue is, um, we're not, you have, it has to match up. It has to be to who you are or, you know, or, or it does not fit.
You're not going to be able to hide behind a brand that, that doesn't match who you actually are. And, and that's the most important thing that I think a lot of people lose is it doesn't mean, hey, I'm real.
I can be whatever I want. No, you don't get to be an asshole.
But it's certainly, if you're not an outgoing person, and you're trying to have an outgoing brand, that's a weird thing. If you're not super energetic and passionate, and people are going to see that.
And the opposite is true. And, you know, so I don't know.
It's funny you said the last thing and I'll let you, obviously you got to go. But speaking of say service and then you come back with two days with a certificate of insurance, it's obviously a complete lie.
I saw an ad and I'm not even going to say who the insurance company was, but I'm sure we can all probably figure this out. But they mimic the Jimmy John's freaky fast delivery.
And they literally mimicked it 360 degrees it's kind of funny because i'm actually making one i'm going to post it and i'm going to actually make it kind of a funny little thing but it was just like on top of a delivery car jimmy john's logo on the left hand side jimmy john's name and then the bottom it says freaky fast delivery and it was big in that well they changed it and put freaky fast quotes post it was an ad sponsored ad i mean big company big big company and the comments were blown up with people saying it took two days to get my quote back i got this back in 18 hours freaky fast is not that it was like such a bad ad if you're not going to pull through i mean especially for as big as a company that you guys are to put that out there as a carrier and not get shit back. When I think of freaky fast delivery or a freaky fast quote, and you call me for a quote like a little small contract, or I could write those things left and right all day long of of like a thousand dollar premium.
I get in there and quote bound and issue those things in no time. But if you were to call me at five o'clock and me not get it to you until five o'clock the next day, and I told you I'd have, I mean, get out of here.
I mean, come on now. That's, that's just ridiculous, but they got people to click.
I mean, it got people to click on it, but they weren't getting the quotes and the results. Well, what happens is, and is, uh, that's probably, that's probably a disconnect between the ad, the third party ad company that they're using and how the company actually works.
So someone in an ad room, you know, said, Oh, that, that, that worked really well. We could turn that into quotes.
Uh, that's a great idea. Let's do that.
And because the carrier probably doesn't spend any time thinking about their advertising campaigns, they're outsourcing it to some overpriced third party. They push the ad campaign through and it's obviously a disconnect versus what really happened.
So, you know, again, that is, that's a, that's a really good example of how you have to be intentional and authentic to what your brand is and it's okay. And then promote that thing.
And, and, and we're going to do an episode too.

I got to run. I hate that, that this, that, that we've run out of time, but that's okay.
It gives

us a reason to do a second episode. Dude, I appreciate you.
Thank you for coming on the show.

I'll have all your contact stuff. Where's the best place for people to hit you?

Instagram, a hundred percent. That's, that's my bread and butter.
I love Instagram. Personal page.

What's the handle? Give them the handle. Mitch underscore Gibson 24.
Mitch underscore Gibson 24.

And then I've got a business page where more of my, I guess, content marketing is pushed out as

Mitch R. Gibson.
And then you can find my podcast Inside Hancock County Podcast with Mitch Gibson.

Awesome. Thanks, brother.
So appreciate you, man. Have a great day.
Peace. Peace.
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Take it easy, baby.

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Oh, oh, oh.

Take it easy, baby.

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Yes. Thank you.
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