RHS 046 - Jeff Shi on Finding Your Rival and World Domination

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Restrictions apply. Hello everyone and welcome back to the show.
I'm super excited about today's episode because we have Jeff Shee on the show. And Jeff is one of the most interesting dudes that I know.
Coming out of the captive world where he grew an incredibly successful Allstate agency which you know kind of probably doesn't even do justice just explaining as an Allstate agency. He had a real operation you know of 20 agents, growing, just crushing the game in Allstate.
And then recently, just in the last 12 months, I think it was about nine months ago, I can't remember what he said during the podcast, he moved over to the independent side and is now taking all those hardcore dynamic sales skills, marketing skills, process,

and growing his independent agency, Quantum, at the same rate. And it's kind of staggering when you hear how he's growing, what he's doing.
We talk process. We talk dedication, perseverance.
We talk about how to refine your business, how to sculpt your agency to be exactly what you want it to be. And you've probably heard Jeff Shee's name around the game, but you get him in a way that you've never heard him before in this podcast.
It is my honor to have Jeff on the show, and I'm just excited to share him with you. Before we get there, two things.
First, if you're enjoying this show, stop what you're doing immediately, hit pause, or just keep listening, whichever you want to do, but going to your Google machine and type in ryanhandley.com, there's going to be a little box that pops up. Stick your email in that box.
That's how you get notified about new podcasts, when they come out, as well as other cool pieces of content that I find or I write or if I'm on someone else's show. Like last week, I shared my interview where I was on David Carruthers' podcast, which was a really dynamic and fun conversation.
David is a gangster and I just love talking to him. So that was a ton of fun, but you don't get that kind of additional stuff if you're just subscribed on iTunes, which is cool, but love you to subscribe via email as well.
Lastly, I want to just give a huge shout out to my people at Tarmika, T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. Go get a demo, check it out.
If you haven't listened to the episode that I did with Ragath, the founder, go back and listen to that episode. Tarmica is really changing the game for me in small commercial.
Rogue is a commercial-focused agency, and when I have something come in that I know is BOP-based, and instead of logging into seven different systems, I log into one system, I get the best quote for the coverage that I need. I combine that policy and get that client what they need fast, but get it done right.
And Tarmica is making that possible. So I hope you'll check it out, get a demo.
I think you'll be very happy with what you see. Ultimately, this is the future of where small commercial is going because it's making agencies like yours profitable and small commercial that's already making Rogue profitable.
So hope you check that out. All right, guys, now that we got that out of the way, let's get on to Jeff Shea.
There's a saying that people preach, stronger together. Are we really stronger together? I'm going to say something that probably in the open market would be wildly unpopular.
And even if certain people hear this, it will probably get me canceled. But I'm a firm believer in a hierarchical structure of life.
That does not mean that any group or person should ever be not given the opportunity to be as high up in that hierarchy as they choose to be. But I would be remiss if I did not think that there were high performers like yourself who were going to stand out, push forward, and lead the market.
And there were people who were, that could never for for their own reasons do the things that

you in particular they have done or or others like you not just to call you out and my reason

for saying that is you and others are better together when you're surrounded by other people

that make you better you we are not better together when we are surrounded by people

who choose not to do the things that help everybody get better does that make sense

Let's go. make you better.
We are not better together when we are surrounded by people who choose not to do the things that help everybody get better. Does that make sense? And I think that one of the things that I have greatly appreciated about the last three to five years of this industry are that those individuals who are pushing hard, who are trying new things, who are willing to fail, who are willing to share, are better together.
They are. They're sharing ideas.
They're sharing technology. They're sharing experiences.
They're building connections. They're forming alliances, whether those just be intellectual or technology or actual things.
You know what, Ryan? Let's go record. Let's go on recording on this because this is gold.
So if you want to do the intro, I'm going to take you somewhere. We're going right now.
You hit it, man. You just hit it.
We're going right now. Okay.
Because I want to share with you what I have seen since I came over to this side. Please.
All right. So on that subject of, you know, one thing the captive world, what I always saw was the eight and a half years.
And this is repeated, said to me over and over again. You might not have all the tools you need to conquer the world, but places tough people come from tough places and the captive world of the state farm of the farmers of the outside world are what you identify as the tough places when they're dealing between eight to twelve percent close rate for example i just did my own zoom you know we do internal zoom meetings and i bring on guests to my show you know one day you're going to be invited to that show i just started and i only have invited my second guest and uh he is a all-state agent out of atlanta and before that he was a safe farm agent out of atlanta best month ever with 12-month annualized auto, if you annualize auto 12 months, at safe farm was $250,000.
And when he came over to Allstate, his close ratio went down by 4 to 5% out of 100 people they quote. And his game got better.
And his best month was almost 800,000 prints with 14 producers.

And how does he do it

when the close ratio goes down lower, right?

There's truly something about

if you can actually survive that environment

and make you stronger

and better at what you do at your craft.

And in a way, it's producing some of the toughest, brightest, sharpest agents in the

ecosystem.

And my goal over at Quantum, we want to bring our culture that we learn in the captive world over but we also want to bring these rock stars from the captive world over and show them what this other side is like because sometimes they do get brainwashed into thinking hey you know what the grass is not green on the other side you know i will that difference because i was an eight and a half year captive agent and i thought that you know what this is where i belong and i'm going to go get that blue hall of fame jackets i had that same ambition i had that same dream so as these guys come over slowly gradually from the captive world to the the independent world, I think you can see a culture shift.

And I think that culture shifts are already happening.

And if I could be the example to bring everybody over, that's awesome.

But if I could be the culture inspiration to bring more people over, that's even better.

Because at the end of the day, there's a difference between motivation and inspiration if someone see my agency zoom shout out to toga agency zoom if someone see my agency zoom screenshot from my company they're like oh you know that guy did some high production number. That might motivate him a little bit.

But if they see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 20 people start doing it,

that become a culture shift, and that start inspiring others.

Daniel Sung, I had a great conversation chat with him today, right?

Great agent, great park agency out of West Coast, towards California. And I shared a cool story with him, and I'm going to share it with your listeners.
So my third year as a captive office agent, where, you know, I was doing good numbers in my district, and now I was doing good numbers in my territory, territory, you know, a couple, maybe 100 agents in my area, but I wasn't doing the best number in my state out of 320 agents, and then there was always this guy, Frank Siambrum, 12-year, 13-year mega agent, all state agents circle, we call this group of guys mega agents, when they have over 7,500 policies or $8 million in premiums. Shout out to Frank.
And he was always number one leaderboard, most auto, most properties. And he had more challenging environment to ride property than I did in Northern Virginia while he's in Virginia Beach.

He's at one to 2% tropical deductible

to 5% to 10% going against independent agents,

state farm agents, that's at $1,000 deductible, right?

But he's always up there, right?

And my first year, I couldn't catch him.

My second year, I couldn't catch him.

The beginning of my third year,

we decided to open the first week of the third year like this.

I sent him a fax.

On the fax, and I wrote,

Dear Frank, you know,

we know you're the number one agent in Virginia every single year.

And this year, our goal is to beat you

and take over the number one spot.

And I handed the fax over to all my staff, all my salespeople in my office, and my service people, and I made all of them sign up. I explained to them what the facts was, what I was going to do with the facts, and I made them take ownership to the challenge.
It's kind of like the Lakers and the Celtics rival made each other better.

Detroit Pistons made the Chicago Bulls and made Jordan better.

The 49ers made the Seahawks better.

Rivals create competition.

Competition elevate our levels, right?

So I sent the facts over.

I got no response.

No call, no email, no nothing. A couple months later, I saw him, and he didn't say anything to me.
I went over there, and I shook his hand. I introduced myself.
I said, hi, my name's Shara. I sent you a fax a couple months ago.
He said, yeah, I remember. He said, how's your production doing? He didn't say much to me.
He didn't have to say much to me. I was nobody i didn't earn my spot in the table but the fact that he remembered that fact means he wanted to win and he definitely don't want to give up his number one spot to some random guy like me he want to win you know it's kind of like kobe right kobe might be a 15 year veteran but not think for one second he don't want to take that last game winning shot don't think for one second he's like oh here's lebron I'm a 15-year-old veteran, but not think for one second he don't want to take that last game winning shot.
Don't think for one second he's like, oh, here's LeBron. I'm a 15-year-old veteran.
He's in his prime. I'm okay losing to him.
He did not want to give up his spot. Now, something I saw in the captive world that was cool that we shared numbers.
We shared our new business production numbers with each other. We shared how much hotel we were writing.
We show how much policy or item we're writing and how much premium we're writing. And we made each other better that way.
I'll give you another example. The second story.
I have two great friends from the Allstate world. One gentleman named named Kevin Hamill, who he was just such a advanced and forward thinker than everybody else at the time, my second year, third year in the business.
And it really kind of took me out of his wing until I caught up his number where it was like the quadrant tiger scene where the student kind of surpassed the teacher. But I still never really said it to him because I want him to not stop giving me the knowledge

that he is full of.

The guy is full of amazing knowledge.

And he made me better.

But one thing he always did,

he always took screenshot of his number

to force me to take screenshot of my number

to remind me that I was doing less than him. It's not his way of bullying me.
It's his way of raising my game. I just don't see that from some of the Facebook group I have been in, of a thing that people talk about.
People talk about, oh, you know, where can I find a market for this RV? Where can i find a market for that boat where can i find a market for this guy with 20 some tickets right we focus on the thing literally the one percent to five percent thing that have no direct outcome on our growth versus the 80 to 85 percent thing that affects all of our growth.

So another story, how my business partner, Justin, and I became close.

I heard of his name and his wife.

They were great agents, both own agencies in Illinois.

And we met on a trip.

We met on an award trip. And in that award trip in Hawaii, we were sitting at dinner.
And we're like, hey, bro, you know, glad to meet you in the face, in person. And we're all Facebook chatting and everything.
And then since then, we just kind of hit it off. We hit it off because we both run pretty incredible dynamic operation for our model agency size.
We had 20, 30 people. But he had dynamic people in his organization, and he viewed things completely differently than I viewed.
He viewed his lead system as an outbound machine. It's a CRM system.
It's data leads. It's a CPA.
I view my system as an inbound machine where click-to-calls, live transfers, and keep people on the phone as much as we can. We view our talent level differently.
We view our, you know, he keep people in their rail where I kind of keep everybody scattered. and I learned a lot from him by keeping people single focused, single minded and staying in

their lane that they do do amazing job because now you're consistently repeating the same thing over and over again. But back to my story, because I was getting sidetracked.
We met each other. And then when he went down to Texas and started blowing up, putting up 250,000 premiums, six month old, keep in mind.

So really they're putting up about 370,000.

And then 350,000 written premium

and then 400,000 written premium.

He kept reminding me of his results,

what he's doing in Texas.

We talk once a day, once every two days,

once every three days.

And then we move to talking every day

because I want to understand what's driving that growth so i started sending him my results and of course i'm here to win so i want to make sure that all my people work for my organization know that we are losing right now and we're not here to lose just because some guy in te in Texas had higher auto premiums or higher home premiums. That's the excuse.
We're not going to write that excuse ship because the minute we write that excuse ship, we are already giving up. By the way, Virginia, 50th highest auto premium in the entire country.
So we want to chase them. And then it became a three-way competition where I grabbed Kevin Hamill and Kevin Hamill was like, oh, that's cute.
You guys are doing 400,000, 500,000 a month. At the time, Kevin was doing 700.
But he'd been consistent doing 700. So we started growing our organization and we started growing it by 100, thousand of new business production more per month.
So literally in 2018, January, my production was 350,000. February, my production was 450,000.
March it just go over a hundred thousand to 150,000 every single month. We were just pushing that machine and funding the machine.
And we didn't give a F about ROI. We didn't care about were we profiting.
We just wanted to win. We wanted to win now.
It was the Laker mentality. We want to win and we want to win now.
I guess that's just not Laker mentality, right? You can say the New York Yankees follow the same mentality. We want to win and we want to win now.
But since then, going through that growth matured us. I would say, if you look before 2018 and after 2018, that growth changed all three of us because we all

became better agency owners of our own craft. And there's a lot of little things, right? Like

the attention to details is the engine that drives everything because attention to details

is how we go from point A to point B when we're using the same people, same leads, same CRMs. So when I came over from the captive world to independent world, I realized there's a community here.
That community is even bigger. That community is even better.
There's people with less egos. And like, mean i'm just name dropping david uh man i'm getting his last name wrong david caruthers in florida help me out caruthers uh there you go he's an awesome dude i i ordered 30 of his books his commercial books and i'm gonna them to my team.
And just some of the things I see him post,

the guy gets it.

You know, he's all about helping people.

So it's nice to see success

and people still appreciate it.

And that's respect to me, you know.

And the dude with messages dropped it.

And my boy, Wesley know, and the dude with messages dropped it and my boy Wesley Anderson

is

as connected.

He just doesn't have any enemy.

He's like

baby Jesus.

And a lot of people, when they

come over from Captain World,

the thing they fear,

that they lose that sense of

community because they had that in the Captain World. Captive world does a great job marketing and then bonds you guys together between market support in the sales leaders to agent support in the Facebook groups.
And there's an amazing group here. But I do think we can channel it differently.
And the market support and then the community support right now, everything I have seen, it's a lot of, oh, how do I put this SR22 policy with which carrier? Or how do I write this harder thing that people have ever think? You know, when you have access to a Facebook group of 3,000, 5,000, 10,000, is that really the question you want to ask 10,000 smart professionals at the highest level of their game? What is that SR22 auto policy really going to pay us? And how many times is that really going to stay on our book? People are not channeling the right questions. If everyone starts channeling the right questions asking each other, you're going to see the game go up.
And then once in a while, I see people post great questions in Facebook group about how to properly set up CRM, how to properly set up a pay plan that you can't just give to 1%, but you can give to 5, 10, 20. You can scale, right? We should be talking about how do we train our supervisors? How do we rise the tide on our chess board, taking all of our pawns and giving to bishops, knights, queens, kings? Because we're the chess player.
Everybody running their agency, they're the chess player. How do we get more queens and kings in our castle? How do we find that on the board so they can bring an army of more ponds and bishops and knights, right? So if I get listeners, and I think you have a lot of listeners who are independent agents, start challenging each other.
So let's just say I am agent A and you are agent B, right? i'm gonna go find other agents who are similar like myself similar in premium size similar in multi-production similar in staff structures similar in new business models whether those new business models are uh google and yelp review or mortgage referrals or commercial mindset the models were CRM and buy internet leads all day.

Well, whatever that is, you know,

start channeling each other and find each other's rivals

because I would never be here if I didn't find my rivals.

I always go out there and look for people

who is doing better than me.

And I would challenge them and realize that they came here with the same 10 10 fingers I have and my 10 fingers is equal to their 10 fingers yeah I think a lot of people get caught up in um so the one one of the major differences from and having never been a captive agent so I know this for sure, but, and I'd be interested in your take, but I think this is not an excuse, but I do think this is something that I've seen people get caught up in is there are so many moving parts in an independent agency and a captive agency, right? it's all state you've learned the product the product is product is exactly what it is. And you can recall what's a good fit, what's a bad fit, how to do X, how to do Y, how to do Z like that, because it's one set of processes.
And yes, your conversion rate is lower because maybe because you do just have that one process. But the flip side is, you know, exactly how that process works.
And I think what, and I found, I say this because I found myself getting caught up in it at times and I've had to pull back, is there are so many moving parts to an independent agency that it is really easy to waste brain cycles on silly, silly things. And I'll give you a case in point today.
I had an account come in, moving company calls me. It's like, I don't know, 7,000 in premium.
Kid wants to buy the policy. I don't have a premium finance company.
I don't have a premium finance company. I haven't, you know, so now the second half of my day is finding a premium finance company.
Who's a a premium finance company. I haven't.
So, you know, so now the second half of my day

is finding a premium finance company. Who's a good premium finance company.
Once I get that premium finance company, how do I hook that premium finance company up to my, and these are the stupid, and I, and I, they're stupid. These are, this is, you know, these, those three hours, that's lost time.
And I think that, um, what, what we're not doing. And again, I, I hold myself accountable to this.
That's why I feel willing to say this is that what we're not doing is like, I need to either, I need to either find some way to have someone else do that or just simply not do it. Just tell that guy, I only operate direct bill because agency bill premium finance stuff is brain cycles and time that isn't helping me.
But hey, what if a $30,000 account comes in that you run through, you know, run through a excess lines carrier? Well, that's $3,000 in revenue. If you can sign the account and make it worth your time, should you write that? Should you not write it? Because you're, you know, now you're agency billing, you're dealing with premium finance.
It's just more, it's more to deal with. So I completely and utterly agree with your argument that we need to be asking bigger questions and better questions.
And that I do think,

I do think that there is a lot of posturing that presents as openness, but is really just ego stroking. And what happens in, and we stay on the surface, instead of really digging into what's driving success how how do we get there? And how do we do it in a way that's sustainable long term? I just think we get caught up in how do you write an SR22? But like you said, why are you even considering writing that business? Unless you have a process, unless you're going to write 1000 SR22s, writing one SR22 is not worth your time.
And that's the question I had to ask myself about this moving company. Do I want to make the $700 in revenue in, but spend probably what will be a day figuring out premium finance, getting it set up, running it through the system, you know, running the process, getting everything hooked up for 700 bucks? Do I want to do that? Or do I just tell the guy, Hey man, I can't help you.
Yep. So to add to that, you know, when we have a good amount of sales producers, it gives us a good amount of feedback on, um, what change should look like on a bigger scale because 1% change that could be be coincidence, could be anomaly, right? But when you see a change on a whole new level with a bunch of people, now you kind of understand things.
When we see a lot of the captive sales producer come over to the independent world, their call time go way down.

Not because they're not hardworking

no more, but because

they get stuck on working on quotes.

They get stuck wanting to win.

They say, oh, you know

what, I am now running with five

carries, ten carries behind me,

and now

this is a guy that I am going to win because now I have the power to win. And versus some of the best agents I have interviewed in the captive world, one of their sales producer can quote 10, 15, even 20 households per day out of eight to 10 hour shift.
When they come over here, they are now quoting five to six household per day because they get stuck on trying to be that guy called open book. Guy called open book have very aggressive underwriting.
They raised the rates on the second year, third year, fourth year, but their first year entry point is aggressive underwriting. It's tough to beat, right? So when they see these things, they get stuck on trying to win.
And by trying to win now, they sacrifice winning as a whole. And I see their production even go down.
And I have seen our own guys where people come over when they have more tools and their sales results have gone down. They can not get out their own way on trying to win everything.
Yeah. I dude, I, I, this, so these are, these are the problems that I'm living.
Cause I mean, you know, as well as everyone who's listening to this show, I'm a one man shop, right? So account comes in, I'm responsible for marketing sales. I got to go out and actually market the account and get quotes.
Once those quotes come back, I have to verify those quotes. I have to package them up.
I have to put the proposal out to the client. I have to sell the client.
Once the client is sold, I got to onboard the client. I got to process, issue the business.
I mean, when you really look at it, I can basically write an account a day. That's what I can write.
I can write an account a day right now. And that's not bad, but that's not going to get me to escape velocity.
And, you know, I think we have to be very selective with the tools that we're using. I think we need to press, you know, I think, you know, like, oh, so, you know, so you look at these, you look at the different pieces of technology that you have access to.
Right. And I think, I think we go a couple of different ways.
We get lost in it. You know, the number of times, the number, if you Google inside of like IO or not Google, if you do a search inside of IOA for, for like CRM or, or agency management system, you'll see 10,000 conversations about, it's the same question over and over again.
Let's just cut to the chase. They're all terrible, right? Every CRM has holes.
They do some good things. They do some bad things.
Like these are the questions we have to stop asking and just start doing the work and building processes and flows that allow us to be more productive on a day-to-day basis. Because what happens is I see people asking the same questions over and over and over again.
And it doesn't help you produce more business. It doesn't help you get past that point.
I mean, I do think there's some things that help, but we just get as, you know, it's like, I just sometimes, you know, if I'm being honest, sometimes I envy the captive side in that they just have one thing to sell. They can just be awesome at selling one thing and get really, really good at it.
Where on the independent side, you have, you know, with every new market you take on, you have a new set of underwriting guidelines, you have a new underwriter to deal with, you have new timetables to deal with, you have new technology to deal with, you have, you know, and everybody thinks that their product and their system is the easiest, but some make you use Internet Explorer. Some, you know, you have to use this thing over here.
And the, my point is- It's a trap. It's a time trap.
It's a time trap, 100%. I have, and I'll tell you, I have personally been, and this is something I'm working on right now.
I've slowed my production way down to try to figure out this problem in my agency because I can't bring another producer on right now in my agency. I couldn't do it.
I would have no ability. I would have no, they wouldn't help me scale because I got, I have one computer that I do 80% of my work on.
And then I have another computer that I have to use for certain systems that are terrible to use but they only work on something like internet explorer so it's like you're and these are small little problems can I tell you a funny funny story yeah so we saw that right we were running a team hard and we're like what the hell why let's just call her Jennifer right I'm

gonna give it a fictitious name why is Jennifer writing 50,000 with a captive carrier which if you analyze the auto she's probably writing 70,000 80,000 and she'd come over here and she's writing less with any lives although right on an analyze base she's barely hitting 50,000 so we have literally took our carriers out of our radar system at first we had like nine and then we go down to eight now we have to three or four and we just say you know what if we're not winning with these three or four we actually want you to move on and that has really allowed our people to learn the coding platform better, to be faster and more efficient, and Jennifer's production has gone up. And if we could give advice to those people who are making that transition, we're having all the power, I would recommend them to unlinguish some of that power and just hone in on that specific punch.
And then let it punch harder and faster. I think, so what you just described is something that I've actually started to consider.
And I haven't done it, but I was looking at my Raider the other day and the – How many do you have in there?

I have seven carriers right now. Seven carriers for auto, eight for home.
Who's the time trap? What? Would you agree sometime that could be a time trap? Oh, 100%. And here's the hardest part.
Some of the carriers that consistently come up with the lower premiums are actually the worst to deal with in terms of actually issuing and binding. So what happens is I have to make this conscious decision.
Do I put it with travelers who's going to make, who's going to cost me an extra 30 minutes because their system is so difficult to deal with, but they have a good, they have a good product and good rates. So they have, they have good rates in New York.
They absolutely do. And they, and I like travelers product.
I have no beef with their product. Their system is very, very time intensive to deal with.
So do I go there or do I put it with someone like Safeco whose rates might be slightly higher in New York state, also a good product, but their system works like a snap. It's bing, bing, bing, quote issue done, move on to the next, move on to the next account.
And I, um, you know, I just, it, these are the hard decisions, you know, now I will say there are companies that are solving this problem. So, okay.
So, um, so I will say, I think there are companies that are solving this problem, dude.

So I, I actually just interviewed, um, uh, Ragath Tana from, um, Tarmaca, the founder

of Tarmaca.

Dude, I had the other day phone call to this commercial lines, phone call, quote, bind issue a bop in 21 minutes quote bind issue with liberty mutual 21 minutes got the guy on the guy called it was he was it's an art studio he was moving from one location to another wanted to quote his insurance i mean this wasn't a big policy but like the guy calls me, take the, pull up Tarmaca, punch the information into the system as I'm, as I'm, as I'm talking to him on the phone, doing some relationship building while I'm doing it, but rates come up, Liberty Mutual, 600 bucks. Perfect.
Hey man, how $600 sounds? Sounds great. Click credit card bound onto the next thing in 21 minutes.
Now that to me, the fact that that is essentially, and maybe I'm crazy, but like 21 minutes in personal lines for me, there's no one that can do that. Not even close.
And, you know, I've never used easy links.

PL rater, it's certainly not possible.

Not in New York state because the rates are always so different.

And I don't think that's necessarily a PL rating problem.

It just, you know, the rates are always different.

And, you know, these are the things where I start, I've started asking myself, do I

really need all these carriers?

What's more important that I can quote three people in a day or that I can

quote one person in a day.

If I have seven carriers, I can probably only quote one person a day.

It just, it's too much time. You go,

but if I have three or four carriers that I know really well,

I can probably quote three to four people a day by myself.

Or I just have to hire someone and have them do it for me. I mean, those are the options.
How are you going to grow? How are you going to scale? So right now, my goal is to scale and commercial is using commercial lines. Cause I can, I can quote, if I can get away from, I need to start being more selective with the classes of business that I target and the classes of business that I'm willing to write.
And if I do that using a combination of Tarmaca and Cincinnati, who is, you know, is, is very quick to turn around quotes of a certain style,

if it fits their appetite.

Everyone else I have works through Tarmica.

I can quote, bind, issue commercial lines policies

very fast and effectively.

And eventually, I'm going to get to a point

where I can start to work in a part-time VA to help me with some of the back office onboarding stuff that eats up my time. Then I can quote more.
And then that's my hope is that within this first year of business. So if you consider March 9th, my first day within this first year, I can have a full-time employee who's basically doing everything that is transactional in the business man a god launches business during covet march 9th yeah yeah we're doing all right though i'm i'm i am um i'm breathing on a hundred thousand in premium, isn't a ton but for you know basically March and April we're just essentially lost months you know and then trying watching the economy kind of come slowly come back together for May and June it's I'm not unhappy with that so we'll see it's you know things have to keep ramping

and the process has to get better do i think what i hear you saying is what independent agents lack that captives have based on their training is really solid consistent discipline workflows and processes and I would wholeheartedly agree with you on that. I wouldn't say all the captive agents are disciplined, but when you come from a tough environment and you can only, here's your square, you got to grow within your own square, it kind of holds them to a tunnel vision.
Did that make sense? Yeah. Like, you know, look at a thoroughbred racehorse.
They get these blinders put on them, right, because they're not looking at what other people do. They're focusing on their straight line.
And when you have a captive carrier, you're pretty much running that straight line versus an independent agent. They're like, oh, you know, I can do that except trucking trucking over there oh i can do that moving company oh you know somebody just posted they buying their 50 000 on non-standard auto on three homes or three autos or whatever you kind of like seeing what everybody is doing in every direction and this is a much much bigger world right like this is a huge world between the um between all the carriers and then you have the sub carrier ss carriers mga carriers and then just endless things and sometimes to sidetrack from our game plan it's hard like you know how many independent agents do you think

that's out there january 1st every year make a game plan and that game plan write down specifically how much prefer home prefer auto they will write with how much carriers I don't think I think I will tell you that the best the ones that the one the best do that but I would say the percentage is low. Right I mean if you think about like you know what what we're being paid on preferred auto and preferred home it's pretty good premiums is much better premium than some of the non-standard stuff.
And non-standard stuff falls at,

you know,

300, 400,

500% higher.

And,

yeah,

we get drawn

into this

easy hanging fruit

that,

those are the mousetrap.

Those are the cheese

in the mousetrap

that's rotten cheese.

Yeah.

So,

you know,

I would challenge you,

one, it's fine, who is the Ryan Hanley rival you know and then push each other up someone that will push your buttons because you know after I met you know my partner Justin and after I met Kevin you know six years ago they had pushed my buttons you know they don't have to do much to push my buttons kind of like you know when you years ago, they have pushed my buttons.

You know, they don't have to do much to push my buttons. Kind of like, you know, when you talk trash to Jordan or Kobe, you know, it's on, right? Like all three of us were super competitive and we went on this time period between 14 to 18 months.
We elevated each other's game to where we are today. Yeah.
I,

I, I,

I think,

I think I like what you're saying.

I think it's very important.

I think that you have to be selective with who you,

who you choose.

I think those people will naturally present themselves,

you know,

coming out of the sports world,

you know,

it's really easy.

You know,

I was always an athlete.

I have found it more challenging in this space because

Thank you. sports world, you know, it's really easy.
You know, I was always an athlete. I have found it more challenging in this space because, because you have to be, the patience is more a part of the game, you know, in sports, you know, someone pushes a button, you just, you know, you forget, you forget pain, you forget being tired and you just go to work.
Right. And in, in the business world, what, what I find to be very different personally is that is oftentimes that pure aggression that you get in sports for puts you down paths that, you know, I tend to chase.
What I have found is a huge weakness in my game so far has been, I chase everything. You know what I mean? I can see a marketing angle to every market and what that does, especially when it's just me, you know what I mean? Cause this, I can't wait till it's not just me, but, but you know, it's just me.
So every, every time I chase something that's lost time and time is the most valuable thing that someone like I have. I would say not just me and solo shop, but really any shop that it hasn't hit that true escape velocity that's still grinding.
It's not your bank account. It's your time.
I mean, every hour, I mean, you know, I have to be, I've had to become very, very structured with every hour, with every minute that I have, because that wasted time, that wasted time costs, costs more than, than, you know, a lead that I didn't write costs way more. And, um, that's a tough lesson to learn.
That's a really tough lesson to learn. Um, I'm learning it the hard way, I think right now,

but I think that's a good thing. You know, you didn't come out of this,

because here's the thing, you're learning it, you just said you're learning it, right?

Learning it is gonna give you experience. And once you get that experience under your belt,

you're like, Oh, that was expensive. And then you're not gonna do it again.
Yeah. You know know I I said the other day and I think this is the way that I'm going you know I um because I have this show I I get a lot of outreach for people who want to work with Rogue right and it's an amazing thing don't get me wrong I I feel very blessed that that is the.
The unfortunate part about that for me is that one, I can't feed everyone who wants to work with me. And two, like I said, it creates distractions.
And case in point, I wrote this, I wrote a workers comp policy with a carrier through a wholesaler that I just shouldn't have written the policy. I should have just told the person, I don't have anything for you.
Because now – It's like another trap. It's another trap.
Now when that insured needs something, they come to me. I then have to figure out what they need and explain that to the wholesaler.
The wholesaler has to explain it to the carrier. And then the carrier has to deliver on whatever that thing is.
And twice already, I've had the carrier, you know, somewhere in that phone tree, something happened that wasn't supposed to happen or, you know, and then I'm trying figure out this problem. And now something that if they were written with Hanover or Cincinnati or guard, or one of my

direct carriers that I'm starting to get a good feel for, if, you know, now I'm like, well, I

don't know how these people work. I don't even have a direct relationship with them.
So now I'm

talking, now I'm calling the MGA going, what's going on here? Why are they putting this? Are

you going to fix this? That's an hour and a half of my life. And that's an hour and a half that I'm not prospecting.
I'm not quoting someone I can actually write. I'm not coming up with a proposal for someone who I want to sell.
And I'm using my own experience as a microcosm, not that you should feel bad for me, but that I think this is one of the major issues that most independent agents have is they try to write everything. And what I am rapidly working towards is I don't want to write everything anymore.
I, I, I don't, to be honest with you, I want to be, I want to say no to more than I actually write because I think that's the only way to really be, to really scale quickly is to just be like, I can't help you. Sorry.
Have a nice day. I can't hold you on your carriers.
Next, look at your Raiders and see who you want to take out. And that will raise your performance.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's, you know, there's, there's, I would say there's two carriers in my Raider right now who have tremendous products. There's no doubt.
The products are great. Pricing is absolutely horrible.
Just having, having to look at the number that's pulled back every time offends me and distracts me from what should be happening. And it's like, I feel bad because, and I hate that, you know, some people are probably like, why do you feel bad?

That's stupid.

But like, you know, it's just not even, you know, cause the person, you know, the marketing

reps nice and the, you know, the carriers got, you know, you're like, Hey, I would love

to put some business with you, but I don't even, why do I feel that way?

Like, that's stupid.

Like, why do I, you know what I mean?

Like if they're, if their pricing is so far off that I that I haven't even been able to sniff a policy with them yet,

what am I doing still quoting them? You know what I mean? Like you've had four months. I haven't put one policy with you.
What am I doing? Why are you even there? It's not worth it. It's a distraction.
plus the only way you get any you get any real power in the industry is to have volume with, with, with at least one carrier. Otherwise you have no say they don't care.
You know what I mean? Like what carrier goes, Oh, Hey, you have 25,000 premium with us. What do you, how can we help you? They don't give two fucking shits.
They could care less what you have going on co-op dollars ha ha ha you know what i mean like they don't give too fine shits. They could care less what you have going on.
Co-op dollars? Ha, ha, ha. You know what I mean? Like, they don't care.
And it just, you know, it's just interesting. I mean, these are these lessons that I'm learning, you know, kind of doing this, that it's just over and over every day.
You know, every day I'm learning and then I chase some excess lines nonsense I you know I said to my wife today I go why am I even quoting excess lines like in what world like the amount of effort excess lines policy is for the five hundred dollars in premium and commission I'm gonna get like not that I couldn't use 500 bucks, don't get me wrong, but like, I'm not getting, like if you, an hourly for me, it's probably going to cost, I'm probably making 50 bucks an hour on that policy. Is that really what we're doing here? You're going to scale on $50 an hour? Work? That's not what's happening.
No, it's just another trap. It's another trap pulling us away from real production.
Yeah. So, you know, we've been, we've been talking for a while and, um, you know, you kind of brought up this idea of the trap, you know, what is your, you know, I've kind of shared some of my experiences and stuff.
Like if there's someone listening to an independent agents, listening to this or, or, or whoever captive who's thinking about, or maybe it's one of the new nationwide agents who just went independent is listening to this and you know and and you could give them some advice shout out to all the nationwide agents 1558 of them yeah freedom congrats on your freedom yes yeah yeah yeah and if anyone has any questions or needs to connect with anyone and you are one of those agents call me call jeff we'll straighten you out but um actually call jeff first because he can take all those phone calls i'm busy um and then uh what what what advice would you give them to avoid that trap like what's your best piece of advice to avoiding that trap so that they can free themselves up and be successful? Best piece of the life.

They had to understand their own business model.

Like they have to understand what made them successful in Nationwide

and don't change from it.

So there's certain things that made them successful, right?

Certain, let's just say commercial line made them successful. Let's just say, you know, we have a big commercial book, 20% of our book, and as a nationwide agent, and that delivers furnitures.
Now we get all these other options, all these other choices. Let's go write people who deliver computers, let's go people

who deliver pizza, let's go

write people who deliver

missiles.

Let's not.

Let's go back and figure out how

we can deliver more

furnitures. Let's

figure out the state auto, the net gen,

the safe for the traveler of the world

and let's take that capacity of underwriting that we didn't have before to add to that and go back and deliver more furniture. It's cornered the market harder.
Right. And before they can go after everybody, there's a level of success of not wasting too much time per household and go on the the next one, go on to the next one.
I always say when you open up that pipeline, open it at two, at three, and cap it at four. Always play with the four options and then truly understand the carriers that you're selling.
Because for 20 years, when you sell one product,

you know the product you're delivering.

You know the trust you're delivering.

You get to back that trust, right?

You get to say convincingly,

if I sell this policy today,

it's a policy I will also sell to my mom.

When you get in the total loss,

I know you'll be all right.

You know why?

Because I put my mom in the same policy and I know she'll be all right. At the end of the day, everybody in the independent world, independent carrier world, try to put up our mission statement, our culture statement, and then say we back a trust of our piece of paper that we're selling, the air that we're promising people.

There's still very few companies deliver. And then, you know, I put up a survey in a Facebook group.
And the survey was, hey, you know, if your mom was in total loss, who would you wish her carrier to be? and you know what out of all the responses

with 40 plus carats who would you wish her carrier to be? And you know what?

Out of all the responses

with 40 plus carriers out there,

10 plus countrywide carriers out there,

maybe another eight to 10

super regional carriers out there,

consistently 80% of the answer

was surrounded by four carriers.

At the end of the day,

if I could give them that advice,

is make sure everything you sell

Thank you. that was surrounded by four carriers.
At the end of the day, if I could give them that advice, is make sure everything you sell, you understand the trust you're selling and that makes you a better salesman because you believe in the product. Yeah.
I'm going to have to just say that is the lesson that I've learned over the first four months of my time is that I think I made the classic mistake of expanding too fast and too many markets. I feel like every dollar of marketing spent, every inbound, every opportunity that comes from that marketing, I feel like I want to try to figure out some MacGyver way of writing it because so that I don't waste that, you know, that lead.

And it's not helping me.

You know what I mean?

I have – dude, that advice is the best advice. That is exactly the right advice because it is so much – just while we've been on the thing, this stupid account i referenced this workers comp account she's emailing me right now and it's like and i'm just like i don't even want it i just want to say go back to your old carrier go back i don't even want you anymore like i don't want to work with you like i should have never written the policy in the first place you know like and and and I got a challenge for you so on the subject on this account figure out what you want to make right and figure out what you want to make a year in your first year in total money taking out in commission and then reverse that so if you want to make 10,000 I'm throwing a random number out there if you want me 10 000 how much premium does that have to be and if that's how much premium it has to be let's just say 100 000 then you divide by 45 working hours a week times four weeks 21 working days is the average law per month Then you just take that premium and you say, you know what?

I'm going to divide that.

And then every single hour, every single day,

this is the premium that need to come into the house.

I am never going to go under that.

If I am going under that, then I need to readjust.

Because this continues to, while you're going down the slope right people

once they go down the slope they can't there's no break they're just going down the downhill slope

so this allows you to measure your speed and make sure that your direction your trajectory is launching you because it doesn't matter about how fast you're going down. If you're going down and not hit the target,

then you have to climb back the hill,

which is going to take a lot of time,

and then you have to relaunch yourself down the hill

to hit your trajectory.

So make sure you understand what your time is worth.

No matter what you do every single day,

the time has to be worth it yeah i so so my goal for this month like i said i i took a step back from from hardcore producing from outreach for the sole purpose of what i realized was I didn't have this, this process, this, this idea. I didn't have that time calculation in place.
I didn't, I hadn't done that work. I was so concerned.
You're too busy shopping for moving, moving policies. Yeah.
Well, you know, at the beginning I was just like, I got to figure out how to write shit. You know what I mean? Just that simple thing.
Just how do you issue a policy? How do you do that? That's hours of time trying to figure out how to do that the first time. And what I've realized is there are probably five carriers that I need to have.
If I have those five carriers, maybe four of which are commercial and then another cross cut of four of those five are more, uh, uh, uh, personal lines focused. If I have those carriers, that's all I need.
And that, and that, and, and a big part of me, and I just haven't had the balls to do this for whatever reason, a big part of me just wants to say, if I don't, if one of those five carriers can't help this particular individual, I need to just move on from that individual. You know, start by taking the other ones out of the Raiders.
Yeah. Just pull them, just pull them out of the Raider.
Yep. Cause yep because uh because it just doesn't it's not you know without a service person I need them to have a good customer care center if they don't have a good customer care center they're not really of use to me I need them to be able to turn around to be good solid you know consistent rates all that kind of stuff.
And it just, um, so, you know, I think that's the solution, man, is, uh, is, is hone in on what you're best at, what you can do, know your products better than any, as, as, as well as you can know them and, and then push forward. And I'm going to make it my goal between now and the next time that I have you on, which I'm assuming will be in a couple months, is to do exactly that.
Because this is what I've been working on all week. We're talking on, I guess it's Tuesday, but even last week before the 4th of July holiday, I was working on this too, is it has just become so blatantly.
I'm sitting here staring in my email next to this, you know, next to the zoom box that we're talking in that, you know, I got a random flood quote, you know, with no home and auto. The guy just wants a flood.
That's it. Why am I working on that? I mean, that's freaking nuts that I am quoting a guy just on his flood.
That's it. Right? Right.
I challenge you to find your arrival. I challenge you to find someone that's similar business model and that's going to make you better like the seahawks made the 49ers better yeah all right so if you're listening to this and you you you want to be rivals with me you want to you want to have someone come after you because i'm looking for someone to chase because i can't chase can't chase this guy he.
He's too, he's in a different class right now, at least for, at least for the foreseeable future. I'm sure someday I'll be knocking on his door.
Son of a bitch. But, uh, yeah, man, that's the deal.
Well, Hey, I want to be respectful of your time. I appreciate you jumping on.
Um, and, uh, and dude, it just just it's always awesome to chat. I love where we go with our conversations.
And for those of you listening at home, every once in a while, I just randomly call Jeff or Jeff randomly calls me and this is exactly meandering kind of conversations that we have. But I think they're fun.
I'm glad we could share them. And where can people get at you learn more about quantum what you're doing? Because I know you had one of your people.
It was awesome conversation. I hope I don't get her name wrong.
Caitlin Eggers. Yes.
She was on Cass's podcast. If you haven't listened to that episode, go listen to it.
It's great. I think the things you're doing in quantum are tremendous.
I think that independence have, you know, I think we have so much to learn from captives. I mean, just as captives are starting to learn from us, you know, different models.
I know a lot of people see us as rivals, but we're all doing the same stuff. And I think what's important is that we just keep sharing.
So I appreciate it. You know, you know, one thing I love about that podcast was some people might not click on the podcast because her title is as director of education.
But once they hear that podcast, they realize, oh, she was in the trenches. She sold herself.
She went door to door. She led a sales team.
She trained salespeople. And, you know, that's one thing that we're trying to raise as a culture in an organization that I don't care what you do.
If you're helping people get licensed, if you help people on board, if you're a brand ambassador, we want people from the sales world. Yeah, I know.
To be honest with you, you know, this is the last thing I'll say. I was actually, today I was brainstorming an idea for a local group.
I want to get, I got a couple of buddies who are salesmen as well. And I want, I want to start to put together just a local networking group of salespeople, people who sell for a living, because I think so often we just don't spend enough time together.
Yeah. I know in certain industries, like real estate and stuff, real estate agents will get together, but I just think moving into the future, if there is any, if there is any job skill that is going to, that is going to continue to be highly marketable, it's the ability to sell.
You have to be able to sell no matter what you do. You have to be able to sell.
You're a doctor. You got to sell.
You're a lawyer. You have to sell.
You're in manufacturing. You have to be able to sell.
You're a not-for-profit. You have to be able to sell.
And this is an incredibly important part of, of success.

And I just think that too often we focus on marketing and we forget about

sales and it just,

we can't forget about it.

Yep.

Yeah,

I agree.

Yeah.

All right,

brother.

Hey,

I appreciate you.

Thank you for coming on the show and I'll catch you the next time. Thank you.
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