SPEAKER_00 0:00

What got you into the insurance game? Just like every other idiot that ever started their career in insurance, I went to I wish to be a financial advisor. And I realized pretty quickly that uh from being a financial advisor at 20 years old, you're just playing in life insurance hoping somebody says yes.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

If you were starting over and you were gonna talk to your younger self, what would you tell Don't do f ⁇ ever. There's something to be said about doing too much homework and getting caught in the weeds and like prep, oh I wanna, oh I just did. It's almost like the guy on the sales call that's like right before, well, I gotta look him up first, right? You know there's gonna be a problem.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

It's an interesting conversation. Farmers has always been a personalized insurance carrier, and I'm pretty terrified of that stuff, right? Like you know what your book is, you know your revenue. I rebuilt my entire revenue stream.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Entire? Weep weep no little stuff, the insurance. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Wildest thing that's ever happened to me in the insurance agency business. So I've restarted an agency three times. The first time I departed in an independent agency, I wrote a super large oil field contract or services account and had the client write me the commission check directly so that I could litigate my way out of a partnership. So very interesting conversation. And then the next year they rolled a rig and went bankrupt. So my name's Kirk Chester. I own Grit Insurance Group in Salt Lake City, Utah. I'm an insurance dude. Boom!

SPEAKER_04 1:36

Welcome, Kirk. Welcome, welcome. Dude, that is that is wild. Yeah, that's a big check.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Interesting time for sure. So how'd it work out? I'm free and clear of bad business partners. Nice. Um, it set some core values for me moving forward as an insurance agency owner, and we stick by those pretty hard. Probably by the name of our agency, you can gather what a couple of them might be. But yeah, so it uh it really helped us a lot. It set the basis for what grit is today and how we're growing in the practice that we have.

SPEAKER_04 2:12

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Love it.

SPEAKER_04 2:14

So let's let's go back to the beginning, man. What got you into the insurance game? I mean, I'm I'm sure you were young and playing with little insurance toys and decided to.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Just like every other idiot that never started their career in insurance. Um, I went to college to be a financial advisor. So I have a degree in uh business and a minor in economics. And I realized pretty quickly that uh from being a financial advisor at 20 years old, you're just slinging life insurance hoping somebody says yes. So left the industry, uh, hated it, and left. Uh, went back to the ski industry, which I was in before, was managing a ski shop. And a now good friend of mine cold called me uh to become a farmer's agent. So she talked me into coming in and sitting down, and then started part-time, sold policies, started from scratch, went through farmers university, uh, stayed in the farmers' world for seven years, eight years, learned a lot. Um, went through the great recession of 07-08 when the housing crashed in Utah and you know, that whole nightmare that happened. Farmers raised rates 40% over one year, so I sold the practice after we bled 25% of our clients. Uh, went independent with a partnership of five and then split to two, and then started grit insurance in 2017, and have been after it ever since. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 3:30

So that is a road. You've been through it. I have. What was that like moving from the captive to the indie world?

SPEAKER_00 3:38

You know, it's an interesting conversation. I, you know, farmers has always been a personalized insurance carrier, and I'm pretty terrified of that step, right? Like you know your book is, you know, your revenue. Um, I rebuilt my entire revenue stream in 16 months. Entire? Entire. Replaced my entire revenue at a farmers agency in 16 months. And how long were you at Farmers again? Seven years. Holy bananas. So, I mean, we were hustling, obviously. There, you know, but at the same time, the freedom that we had to be able to operate, pricing was competitive in the independent marketplace. We had a lot of good carriers in that plus space. I waited out my one-year non-solicit non-accept from farmers and then brought on like 30% of those clients back. But started chasing commercial at that point, understood the value of being an independent agent by choice. We get to choose what we want to sell and who we want to sell to. And it was freeing, probably is the easiest way to say it. I mean, there's obviously a lot more moving parts between carrier relationships and policy management and software now, and between that and all of the things that are happening the last couple of years. But uh yeah, 18, 16, 18 months, it was crazy. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 4:46

So, like so then you you're doing personal lines out of there. You you guys are obviously hustling at that point. Um then you start getting into commercial, which is a total different beast. Uh yeah, and you're dealing with policies, what, 700% uh in commission? Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Well, farmers, I mean, you could always go through Marsh Lake, right, and get three percent commission. Um, but when you went independent, obviously, yeah. Like you can't survive even if you're trying to serve it yours yourself. So uh I grew up in a contracting trades family. My dad's a plumbing heating contractor, so business small business owner by life. And so I understood that marketplace pretty well already, could speak their language. As we all know, even a small agent, small contractor is double to triple the premium of a household. And so oftentimes we'd pick up the contractor's business and then we would also pick up their personal lands insurance at the same time. So, you know, it just was a lot easier process, uh, fun to do. And generally got an opportunity to work with people I liked, you know. Yeah, speak the same language, they you know, they don't hold any punches, they know when p mistakes happen. If we own them, we own them and they we help them fix them, vice versa. So really like that part of the independence transition. So carrier relationships are an interesting one to learn. You know, that's uh something I don't think most agency producers or agency owners really when you step into that, how much how important that is in maintaining reputation and working with those folks. And even when you have a bad outcome with an agency or if you're still good to those reps, it's crazy. I've been at it 26 years now. How many of them come back around and they're at a different carrier that have a better opportunity? If you if you were forthcoming and good with them, you often can earn that appointment through just reputation and good relationships.

SPEAKER_04 6:37

So interesting. Yeah, that's a that's a side that you don't see too much on the on the captive side, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

No, I mean in the captive side, I hate to say it, you're kind of just their uh biatch, if you will. Like you'll tell you what to do, and if they don't want to write that sex or segment of business anymore, they walk away from it and you lose that part of your portfolio and on you go. And you know, I remember rates went up 50% and was well, sell service. Well, at half, nobody cares about service at that point. Like there's I mean there's a differentiating factor at 50, you know, 10%, 15% maybe, but when you're half, right? Like, hey, I like you, but I don't like you for that. Right. So I mean I'm not seeing them at Thanksgiving and anything like that.

SPEAKER_03 7:16

Yeah, so it's cool to it. It's really neat that you came in. Well, you left that, and then you go into that insurance space and or to the independent space um with the knowledge too, right? So now you've gone through and you're free. Uh it's like the perfect storm to be able to really crush it. What what did you do? Like what was your plan of attack? Because I'm sure there's a lot of folks that that may have on their mind that they want to do.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

You know, it's an interesting thing that was said to me one time. Um, those who write business plans aren't often often the most successful. It's those that just have the grit to go through the pain, you know, like the figure it out is what I call it, right? You you just have to figure it out. And so you obviously you have a you want to have a plan in some level, but you know, the one-page marketing op and then just execute, execute, execute. Be unafraid to sit told no. Go have the hard conversations. Somebody once said be an asshole, right? Like it doesn't hurt to ask anyone for anything. You know, worst that they're gonna say is no, you know, and then realize they're not saying no to you as an individual, they're saying no to you and the role that you're working in. And so don't don't let it affect you as a person, but just move forward. And that was something that I, you know, the term fail forward, like learn from every mistake. You know, you you don't fail until you stop trying. So I think that's kind of where I'm at at this point in our career, is like we are still growing. Um when I opened the old grit insurance in 17, we were I split away from a partner with about 300,000 in revenue, and we grew 250% in 18 months. And we're right at that tipping point again. We worked the last two years working on process and scale so that we're ready for the next growth cycle, and we're right there. So but I mean learning from being in what I would call an operator, so producer, agency owner is one thing, and then learning how to coach and manage and develop people is a whole other skill set.

SPEAKER_03 9:10

And so yeah, like how it's where the leverage comes from, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Like I can't sell four million dollars in premium a year, but I can get five people to sell seven hundred and fifty thousand and do pretty good.

SPEAKER_03 9:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

That's where the next lever for us is how do we start leveraging people and giving them opportunities to be really successful. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 9:29

Is that what you're doing right now a year on on average?

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Like, no, we sell about a million and a half new business. We're sitting about seven million, just under seven million in premium. So push that one million dollar revenue mark. Uh nice. Working on some niche practices. We're bringing on two new people this month. So one's a producer, one's on the service side. So we've got to have the folks that love on the people we have and something to go out and build the relationships we don't.

SPEAKER_03 9:53

Yeah, I I love what you say about the business plan because sure, we don't want to just run out there and and be crazy, right? You gotta have something. But uh there's something to be said about doing too much homework and getting caught in the weeds and like prep. Oh, I want to, oh, I just get it it's like it's almost like the guy on the sales call that's that's like right before, well, I gotta look him up first, right? You know, there's gonna be a problem. Yeah, we just need to dive in and execute.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Ready, fire aim.

SPEAKER_03 10:21

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

You know, I mean sometimes you you mean the more you do it, the easier it is to land on your feet in a sense. But yeah, you've you can you can sit and analyze something for six years, or you can just get after it, figure it out. You're gonna fail a few times, you might piss a few people off. But you know, if you're genuine in the effort and you're not dishonest in the process that you go, people are typically understanding that process.

SPEAKER_03 10:41

So there there isn't that much to have to know, right? Like it's like, okay, I sell X and I and it costs this much, and that's how much I make, and then there you go, right? There's it's it put it together.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

It's interesting as I get more developed in my insurance career. People are like, well, what do you do? You know, what is property and casualty insurance? And it's like, well, I insure stuff and I help stop people from being sued. There you go. That's it. You know, if you break it down at that level, it gets fairly understandable. And you know, yeah, okay, that the name of the product is gonna vary for the stuff that we insure. Or there's always the caveat of workers' comp, you know, we're but we're still insuring that person's livelihood and the company's livelihood, you know, stuff, income. Um and whether you get sued, you know, I mean, that's a pretty straightforward, you know, from a glass claim to all the way up to multi-million dollar litigation, it's still the same concept. It's just the size and scale in what we name that coverage.

SPEAKER_04 11:39

We we've seen a lot of uh independent people jump recently because of, you know, just like you said, the the restrictions, the all the stuff going on in the market. Um what would you ad what's that? Where are they going? They're jumping into the independent world, going from captive to independent. Uh, but I think like you said, I mean, it's like one of those kind of scary things, especially when you have a solid income. Um, what uh what what would you advise that person to do?

SPEAKER_00 12:12

Ooh, uh make sure you have your relationships set up front. So that's the biggest thing that people I don't think quite understand is how hard carrier relationships are to acquire at times. Uh and play the long game. You know, it's one of those things to where you're jumping in the independent space, gosh, some of my carrier relationships took three or four years to nurture and to earn, right? And so, yeah, you gotta sell what you can, but at the same time, um pick a space that you know and understand that you can be relatable in is probably something that's really helpful for a lot of folks. Like I grew up into trade contractors, right? My mom and dad owned a plumbing heating business. I grew up with cattle ranching. So, what's a natural fit for me? I can have that conversation. I know what you know body language is when I know not to call a cattle rancher right now because they're in little calving season, right? Like we're not gonna bother them because they're working 24 hours a day trying to keep calves alive. That's their that's their livelihood. And so step into something you're familiar with and enjoy. You know, the I hate to say it, the products are secondary to the relationships in the long run. I mean, obviously you gotta write what you can to eat and pay bills, but at that point, like look for the long game and figure out where you're at and go narrow. You know, people that are generalists, and somebody said this to me personal lines pays bills, generalists makes a little bit of money, specialty it makes really good money. So find something that you're really, really good at. You can get good at how quickly you can quote manage you understand the clients, what their needs are, you can tell them some of the holes in their coverage without having to dig through it. That's where folks are ultimately successful. So go narrow. And we have the opportunity to go into really cool areas, right? Like you as a farmer's agent, I had to sell auto and home insurance because that's what they make money on. As an independent agent, I can go gosh, I want to work on underground excavation contractors in California or some random, you know, it I'm just making stuff up at this point, but you can get that narrow of a focus because those clients have a very specific need, and if you understand that need, you can network into it and make really great money and have great clients.

SPEAKER_03 14:25

The riches are in the niches.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Move it.

SPEAKER_04 14:29

Yeah, it's it's it's kind of a it's kind of a spray and pray model at the uh the old uh home and auto with the captive.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

You know, it's commoditized much more than when I started in 04. Right? There's a lot more of a commodity business in that world. Um price sensitivity is high, competition is huge. Right? Like every, you know, you look at State Farm and all of the captive carriers out there, how much money do they spend on advertising and brand recognition? You're never gonna beat that as an independent, even as a small, even as a medium-sized independent agency, you're not gonna beat a four or five billion dollar capitalization company in marketing. They're just not. And so that's where as an independent, you get to pick where which battlefield or playground you want to play on. Uh do you want to swim in a red ocean or blue ocean as I call it, right? Do you want to swim in the sharks, or do you want to go find somewhere where nobody else is swimming and learn back craft and be really great at it? It's like flying under the radar. Yeah, when we look at the commercial arena, we don't want to chase hundred thousand dollar revenue accounts. Why? Because the biggest brokerages in the world are all banging on the door, beating on that drum. The accounts that are 50,000 in revenue, nobody talks. They don't like the conversations are different. The retention is higher, the service is easier, and they don't want to deal with them. So yeah, there's niches in every spot. They just have to figure out what works best for you and who you relate to.

SPEAKER_03 15:51

It's like you wake up and you've been told you you ought to do it a certain way the whole time, and you know, you get to you get you get older and you realize, holy crap, I can actually do the thing I like.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Yeah, no shit, the gloves are off, so you can do anything you want. Right. Yeah. And the crazy part, this is the crazy part to me with insurance, like we get to deal with any industry in the world we want to deal with. You know, it's it's not like you know, I'm a plumbing contractor, I can only do certain things, you know. Right. I can work with plumbing contractors, I can work with manufacturers, I can work with tech companies, I can ensure places that sell weed, like whatever. I mean, it doesn't matter. You get to pick who you want to have as a client that's relatable to you.

SPEAKER_04 16:31

Yeah. And the pro the product list is I mean, and it's ridiculous, right? Like it could be retirement products, life insurance, like health, like it's just so big. And it's that's what I was telling somebody, because you know, out here in California has been a a little rough over the last few years, and I was like, you know, well it's been a little bit of a shit show, I'll be honest. Yeah. But like that's what I love about insurance is that you can really, you know, pick whole different industries to get into uh and still stay in insurance. And uh I mean, I I don't know many industries that are like that. If anyone either, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

I mean, we we had a pretty good sized property book for a long time where we're helping a lot of clients manage large landlord schedules and stuff. Uh I'll be honest, we walked we didn't walk away from it. A lot of it just walked away because pricing got to the point where they liquidated portfolio. And it's an interesting paradigm for us too, though, because we realized their entire profitability is based on capitalization rates. Well, insurance costs are part of cap rates, so they're always gonna beat the crap out of you on it. Right? Like that's that's part of their process is maintaining cost because their margins are what equates to uh value in the portfolio. That's how appraisals are done. And so we realize that we don't want to play that game. I don't want to go in there every year and try to you know manage a four percent renewal and they're crying about it, like, well, that reduces my value by fifty thousand or a hundred thousand dollars because of the insurance costs. We've got to fix it. Let's work with somebody who appreciates, like, look, I know I'm gonna pay a premium because I know when it goes wrong, you're gonna write a big check, right? And they value that advice and short service and relationships. And so we chose not to pursue a lot more of that. The clients that we have are great, and a lot of them have their stuff that's paid for, it's a cash-flowing thing, they're not held to the same standard as some of those other institutional level investors that we're dealing with. So yeah. Makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 18:37

Let's talk about something that's that's less uh that that's a little more fun than insurance. Just for a minute. Utah Off-Highway Vehicle Advisory Council. So snowmobiles, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Uh the Off-Highway Vehicle Council, we actually take the fuel tax and administer grants for off-highway development from side-by-side start bikes. Oh, every all the yeah, we I'm the snowmobile representative, and I think I'm coming up on my last couple of months into that. But pretty fun and insightful on that side. Like, we get to see where like tax dollars go to put recreation back into the state. So and make advice. And in fact, I've got 25 grants I've got to review next week.

SPEAKER_03 19:19

Oh, wow. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Yeah. Admitted, like helping make advice for millions of dollars of tax dollars going back into funding nonprofits. Uh, you know, I mean, some of it's kind of boring, like somebody wants to expand a parking lot at a place where you park to go ride dirt bikes and snowmobiles. And right, but it's that's what facilitates that. So but yeah, snowmobiling is a much more exciting and fun. So do you have a snowmobile? I've got four.

SPEAKER_03 19:45

I live in Arizona, I don't I don't have one.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Well, yeah, I mean you don't have a sandmobile? I know. Well, I don't know why they don't make a sandmobile. You might be able to snowmobile a couple months a year, but it's not probably not worth it. Well, I do have a place in Colorado. That would maybe I should get one. Yeah, Colorado's pretty good for it. The snow's a little weird there.

SPEAKER_03 20:03

It's like a jet ski but on the snow, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:06

Uh yeah. Similar. Yeah. Uh the one thing I've always defined snowmobiling as is in in any other power sports is freedom. So, I mean, you put a blanket of six feet of snow across an entire national forest. You can ride anywhere your skill set lets you go. Where like dirt bikes and side by sides, and you've got to stay on the roads and trails. Right? With snowmobiling, when the snow melts, there's no tracks.

SPEAKER_03 20:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

And there's no impact in that sense. So, you know, go across the side of a mountain you'd never think you could get across. And go places I would never have imagined 15 years ago I could get with a machine. And we've climbed 10,000 foot peaks with snowmobiles and sat on the top where like it would take you six hours of hiking to get up there and you're up there in 40, 45 minutes. So that's wild.

SPEAKER_03 20:54

Yeah. You can't put you can't bring your skis because then you gotta leave it up there.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

So but if you bring your 14-year-old son who's down for you, you can bring skis.

SPEAKER_03 21:05

You're like, listen, do you want to ride the snowmobile? You want to drive the snowmobile? I have a I have a deal for you.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Yeah. We've I've he rides snowmobiles with me. So but yeah, if we ever wanted a backcountry ski, it would be one of us would shuttle while the other one rides, and then you switch off. Can you ride it like a jet ski? Uh not ex I mean, yes and no. Uh you're over the dirt. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 21:32

So that'd be kind of fun. I'm I I can guarantee somebody's done that. Here, hold my beer. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

That's fun, man. I would venture to guess more of that happens in like the Midwest Upper Peninsula, where it's trail riding from bar to bar than whether you're out on one of the lakes that's frozen over and yeah, drag grace and they call it ditch bang, where they're riding on the side of the road or the wind drifts are and that kind of. Of stuff, but we typically ride in uh what we call mountain riding. So you're pretty high elevation up in the mountains, national forest, six, eight, nine thousand feet on 25 degree side hill through the trees, kind of stuff. So technical, pretty skills higher skill set of riding. So fun stuff though.

SPEAKER_03 22:19

And you teach avalanche safety?

SPEAKER_00 22:22

I have in the past. So I used to serve with the Utah Snowmobile Association. I wrote the grant, the off-highway vehicle grant, actually, uh, that built the education program for them. And then so we had a trailer, we were teaching Moto 101 classes where like one backcountry preparedness. So when it goes wrong, because it's a machine, it's gonna break, you're gonna hit something, engine's gonna fail, like what happens, uh, avalanche safety and rescue, um, you know, and then how to manage terrain. So uh resigned from that board and now serve on the Utah Avalanche Center Board of Directors. So I'm not an education physician, but more of a guidance and fundraising. And so I don't know how much you know about the Avalanche world, but I don't. It's called the UAC here, so Utah Avalanche Center. Um, we manage uh I don't know how many thousands of acres. There's nine or ten zones in Utah between the ski resorts, backcountry skiing, snowmobiling, all the way from Idaho, Mont Idaho, Utah border, down in the Moab area. There's actually skiing train in Moab. So helping fund the forester or a partner with the Force Service. So the forecasters are technically Four Service employees. Um, and the Friends of the Avalanche Center, which is what I serve on, um, they fund a lot of the education program, the website, the forecasters. So the forecasters can go do their job. We provide a lot of the infrastructure and funding behind that. Um and yeah, education website. Uh, they're actually doing an AI project, which is pretty sick, but that's a whole other conversation from the end of the day. That's my uh pastime passion hobby that you get sucked into from time to time, and yeah, so ended up on a board that's pretty fun. A lot of really cool people, ex CEOs of large outdoor companies, serve on the board, attorneys, so folks that you wouldn't think would typically come together and have common ground. We do.

SPEAKER_03 24:17

It's pretty cool. Yeah. So just uh in case I've ever it it's coming towards me, what do you do?

SPEAKER_00 24:23

If you just coming towards you, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:25

If you see it and you're like, oh shit, I have 10 seconds. Is that it? That's it? Or is there a trick?

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Uh can you roll or made enough bad decisions, you just pray that and it doesn't kill you. I mean they talk about swimming out of it, but you know, the preparation is the key there. You know, it's risk management at its best, right? Like make sure you have what they call a beacon, so a transceiver that transmits your location, a shovel, a probe, and a partner that knows how to get you out. So the sad part is anyone that's caught in an avalanche, 25% die from blunt force trauma. So, you know, you're on a mountain, you go down the mountain, you slam you into a tree, you go over a rock face, you know, cliff face, something like that. So that's what I say. Prey is probably the easiest way to say it to start. But um the best thing is to not put yourself in that position in the first place. Right. That Craig, don't put yourself in that position.

SPEAKER_03 25:15

Well, you know, um, this year it would have been very difficult too.

SPEAKER_00 25:21

Sadly, uh, we lost an 11-year-old kid just outside a bright ski resort from an avalanche, got buried. Like what they call side country um horrible situation.

SPEAKER_03 25:32

That's awful.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

Super sad. Um, and then you know, the the hardest part is like you get us in a low, low tide snow year like this year that was horrible for everybody to ride. We suddenly get a big storm and everybody gets super excited and goes out and does stupid things, and a bunch of people got killed, right? Wow. So gnarly fatalities are part of the world. I mean, you have to make good decisions all the time. Last year they lost a uh professional guide with 35 years of experience in the law such. Like he was where he wasn't should have been, and but he'd been out there for 30 plus years, and so you'd think that they would have the best training you could think of, and it still happens.

SPEAKER_03 26:11

So yeah, maybe confident, like too confident, or that's a that's terrible.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Confident or you get uh lax in your skill set or lax in your decision making, you know, you're not conservative enough. That's that's oftentimes what happens. Is it's I always uh equate it to like an airplane crash, right? Like the you know, a plane doesn't crash from one mistake after you typically have a cascading effect of decisions moving forward.

SPEAKER_04 26:36

We when we all started talking, we were talking about how the internet was shoddy yesterday, and we talked about when it was related to Claude. Yep. And um yeah, we and I knew that we had to get into some AI conversation. I noticed on your website too that you're using uh it looks like high-level. Um, so I'm sure you got a ton of automation on the back end of that. I would love to talk to you about AI automation and how you're using it all in your agency.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

So we embraced HubSpot about two and a half years ago as a CRM. Um I was the what I would call the bleeding edge of that sword, if you will. Well, um, I had been on multiple other uh insurance CRMs, and I always felt like they were, you know, it was like, well, we're gonna sell you the product that you should use, and we'll tell you how the workflow should look and the things that you should do. And it's like, well, one, I'm not really good at taking instructions from anybody, poorly employable in that aspect. Yeah. Yeah, I became a business owner because I wanted to be told what to do. Um, and two, I said, we want a grown-up CRM. I want to be able to do the things that we can do, and I don't think I understood what a CRM truly is at that point. So, you know, people define it as client relationship management, but like what is it, what does that really mean? We track all of our emails, phone calls, text messages, Google Meets, everything's logged automatically at this point. So when you talk about retention of data, uh all the phone calls are transcribed, all of the meetings are transcribed automatically. They land in there, they land on the client page. Like if there's an ENO issue in my agency, we know exactly what happened and where it went. There's no transgression. We've had, I say this with pause, but we've had clients make accusations to my agents. I called the client on the phone and played their voice back to them over the microphone and said, Is that what you said? Well, that's not what I meant. Yeah. Like what you said is what you said. And so from an AI standpoint, I think it's interesting when we talk about AI. Um, when we first started down that path, I asked my team, like, how do you feel about AI? Right. And the the default answer is, I'm scared of it, I don't want to use it, you know, it's bad, there's bad things that can happen from it. And I said, Well, what is AI, artificial intelligence? Like, what is it to you? Well, you know, it's like Alexa or something of that where it talks to me, right? Like machine tool, machine learning technology. I said, Okay, well, do you like spell checker? Yeah, right. That's AI. You know, do you like your voice calls transcribed? Yeah, that's AI. It's so that paradigm shift with my team about like what does that look like? Um, do you want to have calls or service requests routed and flagged directly and go to the right person, right? Yeah, well, that's AI. Machine tool technology, machine training technology where you train that machine to filter emails. It says mortgage requests, it goes to a specific individual, you don't have to look at it. Um, can I filter out the noise from their systems? And so that was kind of the initial conversation AI. And then, gosh, we got into Gemini, Chat GBT, Claude, Perplexity. You know, you name the four or five of them out there. I probably tried most of them. Shiny object syndrome is real.

SPEAKER_03 29:53

That's the other part about VW.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

Yeah. So back to the HubSpot conversation. I'll talk about the other piece in a minute. Like we we define service workflow and sales process workflow. So high level of automation. We have 30 days or 30 plus days of follow-up on both sales sides, including tasks to call, text messaging, emailing. We can be annoying at the at the right way. And we'll retool the conversations here in the next six months so that they are more to the tone of our core values instead of you know somebody else selling what we need to say. And then we started digging the um like just the true AI platforms that we think of today, right? The ones that we're seeing that are being touted as opportunities. So I think we use Outmarket. I don't know if you've heard of Outmarket, so the um policy software that the compares policies. I can have it read a 300-page document and give me a fairly concise information dump where I couldn't before. Uh, we can compare quote to issued, where we can find difference in deductibles, endorsements that were taken off very quickly. Uh, we can analyze contracts to compare to their coverages and show them the gaps in coverage before they let's say if contractor wants to bid a job. So we had a contractor in our agency wants to bid a federal project, and so he sends us the contract document. Uh he thought he just had to, you know, get a bond, and well, it turns out he had to have a bond, builder's risks, an access liability policy, and an ERISA policy or an employment theft policy because he was working on a federal property. So he was unaware of all the extra insurance he'd have to purchase for that project. Well, they could build it into their bid if they're aware of it. So, you know, what kind of advisory service does that look like from a standpoint of could you do that six months or a year ago with a small contractor? Absolutely freaking not. You don't have time. Large contractors? Maybe. But how many of us know how to read a legal document that's 85 pages long? Eloquently, probably, is they and concisely right. Without sleeping. Right. And then compare it to their six insurance policies that are 300 pages long each. Right.

SPEAKER_03 32:05

So I mean, lawyers are gonna be out of a job because they were the only ones that could do that. Well, well, everybody could do that.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

I want to say lawyer, and they're still not very good at it. I mean, honestly, like the she's not gonna listen to this, so you're safe. She's I mean, she's great at her her crap in this in the small, very narrow segment that she works in, right? But to go in and read a legal document that is completely an insurance contract is not her expertise. And when you start looking at endorsements and nuances between endorsements and where coverage is taken away and given back, and how do you define that unless you're an expert and you spent thousands of hours on that particular legal practice document? As a generalist, you're never going to be capable. There's not a human, there may be one or two that are um capable of that, but it's rare and they charge stupid money. So from that aspect, um, you know, a cool one, I don't know. We talk about co-pilot versus Gemini, they're similar, you know, Microsoft versus Google.

SPEAKER_03 33:06

Copilot.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

Uh yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 33:09

I mean, and I mean, even Gemini is just not. I mean, it's fast. If you need something really fast, it's great. You don't have to wait.

SPEAKER_00 33:16

Well, each one does something a little different. It's interesting. Right. So, like Gemini, you know, I here's a great one. I my CSR asked me, Hey, didn't you send me this credit card information for a client to pay their bill? Oh. Hey Gemini, can you search my 38,000 emails and tell me if I did? Yeah. No, you told them you'd log in in the AMS where it's secure on this date and this time. 14 seconds later, it's in this log note, go find it, right? Like instead of me trying to filter through the if shit show that's everyone's email program at this point, because we receive 120 emails a day. Like we talk about that process, you know, and you look at like perplexity for content research, you know, and then Chat GPT for general marketing information and advice. And I mean, I was in GPT a lot, and then you start looking at the capabilities of things like what Claude can do, right? Like, um, I have a counterpart in an industry, a very interesting industry. He does I-9 compliance of software as a service. So, like you go into large corporations with tens of thousands of employees and help them manage their i-9 compliance. And he showed me what he did with his stuff, where integration of web crawling software programs and SEO to optimization, you know. So I ended up hooking up, oh gosh, Google Search Console, Bing, Microsoft Analytics, um, SEM, I can tell you the whole list, but it's Microsoft Clarity, Google Analytics, Google Cloud, Google Search Console, Bing, uh, Microsoft Campaigns, Google AdWords, Search Console, Firecrawl, Data for SEO, and SEMRush, all in one software. It's all integrated into an AI platform. And so I can instruct it to like, hey, look at our website compared to the website that's in the same industry for a market segment that we want to work for. Tell us where we're good, where they're good. How do we beat them? And it will literally walk through that and give you instructions. On my particular website today, we have menu bars, right? Like you have, you know, home insurance, and it drops down and has a sub menu, and then it may go to you know, landlord or whatever. So a third menu. Well, it wasn't, it wasn't going the right way. And I have a full-time contract with a developer, and I'm like, hey, how do I fix this? And he says, change your menu structure. And I'm like, I'm stuck. Like, no, I want it that way. So I plugged the code. I asked AI, like, what's this doing? Well, can you send me the CSS code from the menu structure? Yes. Well, here's the issue. I'll just reprogram the whole thing, you paste it back in.

SPEAKER_03 35:50

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 35:50

So, like, I'm trying to pay a developer X thousands of dollars a month, and this AI software identified it in 30 minutes and fixed it. But I'm just an insurance broker. They're not going to be as snarky as they used to be. No. In fact, I kind of rubbed that in his nose today.

SPEAKER_03 36:06

Yeah. They're like the comic book store guy in The Simpsons, you know, and and it's just nope, not anymore, buddy.

SPEAKER_00 36:13

No, and well, and so he challenged me to use it to create HTML code to like create like mini software profiles, right? And so we work in the surety space. So bonding, commercial bonding for public funding, right? And um the question was is like, how can someone tell if they're actually moving in the right direction to be more profitable and grow their capacity in that arena? I had GPT create a questionnaire, you know, 30 questions, rank them, you know, you get points based on where you're at, judging by the three arenas in that space. Put it in a cloud, it created a software program that I programmed into my website that you can take a test and it gives you a score and recommendations and a PDF printout, right? Like if I were to pay a developer, I'm $30,000, $40,000 deep into that thing, and it was like 45 minutes.

SPEAKER_03 37:06

Yeah. So when did you get the bug? Like right when 3.5 came out? Uh Claude, probably the last six months. GPT AI.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

AI, yeah. When ChatGPT first came out. I've been thinking with it, messing around with it for a long time, asking questions, uh, rudimentary stuff now, but like and and the conversation has always been AI is gonna be as bad as it's ever gonna be right now. It will only get better exponentially every day. And if you're not gonna look at it and you think it's dumb, God bless you. I hope you keep doing it.

SPEAKER_03 37:42

I mean, half of America is hasn't even opened it, right? There I be I think a lot of people are gonna have a really rude awakening when they're so far behind.

SPEAKER_00 37:51

I mean, and I don't want to plug our website, but if you go to Grid Insurance and go to bond scorecard, take the test. It's like I could never even imagine something designing that fast and fun. Like it's 30 questions, it's easy to do. The work process for the for the because we're we're dealing with contractors, right? Like they want fast results. And they can click through it, they don't even have to hit next, they click the answer, it goes to the next question, but it gives them the opportunity to go back. Something I wouldn't have thought of, right? And the UI, I plugged in um we call a chief marketing officer, so we plugged in our brand guide, all of our color schemes, our logos and fonts. It put it all into our brand scheme immediately. We didn't have to tell it to do anything and have to reprogram it. We had a couple of revisions because I wanted what, you know, on the bottom there was some call to actions that we wanted in place, but that was more of a technical like what does the end result need to look like? We wanted to give the PDF printout to the consumer so they can print it out and take it with them. Um the idea is we want to create an opportunity to create relationships with other service industries that service that that specific group, right? So CPAs, uh bankers, etc. Well, some of the answers, the recommendations from that scorecard are you need to establish a relationship with a banker, you have poor cash management, or you know, you don't have great financial controls in place, you need to engage in a CFO or a fractional CFO arrangement, or you don't have a surety relationship. You need to sit down with a surety advisor and learn how to build a bonding program that works for the growth of your company. They can print it out and take it with them. AI built that, not I didn't pay a programmer, I was out twelve hundred bucks for the Team's version, right? I was actually out twenty bucks because I paid for Pro monthly when I built it. But yeah, when we're talking about AI, like I mean it's it's astounding to me the tools that are available to us. Um to do like I had the cool part with the AI piece that we built is I can scan Microsoft, Google, and Bing at the same time and come up with the results of how we're performing across all three platforms simultaneously. Where are we going to perform on an SEO search? Um with one of the web crawlers, I had it crawl my actual website and find every error that we have on the website that's not SEO and AI optimized. Where do we have missed tags on headers? Are the meta tags wrong? All that stuff is done, and it just gave me a checklist. And frankly, I'm gonna give it to my 15-year-old because it gives him written instructions. Do this on this page at this spot, right? I can take a 15-year-old and pay him 20 bucks an hour or 15 bucks an hour because he's my son, I'll pay him a little extra, and have him fix my website better than I could pay a developer.

SPEAKER_03 40:41

That's wild. I thought you were gonna say he's your son, you're gonna pay him a little less.

SPEAKER_00 40:45

Nah, I'm just kidding. He's got he keeps breaking parts on snowmobiles, so he's got to pay me back somehow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:53

Dude, that that scorecard is awesome. I just I just did it. I need to go there. Sorry for Jason test. I put test on there.

SPEAKER_00 41:01

No, it's cool.

SPEAKER_04 41:01

I mean, like, it's super cool. You you know it's one of my favorite things about the the way the UI is about it, like it it's it acts as like uh, you know, like a like a super pro um scorecard. But what's really cool that most um surveys don't do is when you press the letter, you don't have to hit next.

SPEAKER_00 41:23

It's just how just boost the next one, but you can hit back and go change your answer. Oh, it's so good.

SPEAKER_04 41:28

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 41:29

Well, that's a great site. So for us being lazy like we are, like I don't have to click twice, I just click once. Yeah. Yeah, so cool.

SPEAKER_03 41:37

And then at the end of this finish stuff, you gotta finish, you know? Yeah, it's like idea. Oh, another thing. Oh, there's like the idea pipeline is just so full.

SPEAKER_00 41:46

Yeah, we have so that is a new build for us. We're 27 pages, we have 28 more to go. So, but I sat down, and this is the interesting part when you talk about the difference in AI. Like, I sat down with Chat GBT and built the mapping of the website. Claude's not as good as that in some ways, you know, building the like the education center and contractor bonding school, like in the like developing the questions, but from a technical programming standpoint, and then I think it does a it does a significant better job on SEO optimization. So this, I mean, this is a you're talking a two or three-month lift here where I have a 15-year-old, I'm going to have it go through and redo in our entire website. All 155 pages of it, right? Awesome. So interestingly enough, it's on it's in native in HubSpot. So like if I'm working with a client, I can actually go into my website and fix something without waiting for a developer and making a request and being build $200 an hour, it's click, click, fix, move on. And if I don't know how to do it, I literally take I want to fix this on this page, it gives like plug it into an AI platform like Claude, and it says, Oh, yeah, let me scan that for you, let me figure it out. Hey, I can't see this part of the code. Can you copy and paste it? We'll fix it for you. And it reprograms the code and I paste it in. I'm a dumb insurance broker, I don't know anything about insurance about programming code and HTML file development and CSS. I mean, I know what the letters say when on the screen, but you know, when there's 295 lines of code for a menu bar, I don't know what that means. Right. And frankly, I don't need to know it though. Exactly. So if and this is I love it in the sense where I think it's the next competitive advantage that most insurance brokers won't jump into. Oh, 100%. So we jumped into the surety space specifically because it's the blue ocean. Like the number one trending SEO guy out there is next insurance. So how do you you know how do you swim in a blue ocean? Find the software and technology to do it.

SPEAKER_03 43:58

Yep, and swim faster.

unknown 44:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:00

Some circles around everyone. Well, I know that um Jason has to run, he's got to pick his kids up and uh write baseball. Is it baseball? Baseball. Baseball. Got the baseball games on Wednesday. So so we I just want to end with if if you were starting over and you were going to talk to your younger self, Kirk, who would what would you tell young Kirk? Young Kirk all filled with piss and vinegar and ready to go.

SPEAKER_00 44:27

What are you gonna tell him as he jumps into the insurance? Huh? Don't do personal lines ever. I honestly like what I said before, go narrow and go deep. Yeah, and the competition, you know, and you look at the marketplace, like how many in the independent and captive agencies are all chasing the same squirrel, so to speak.

SPEAKER_04 44:50

There's like five within a mile. No.

SPEAKER_00 44:53

Five? Try 55.

SPEAKER_04 44:54

500 feet of me. Yeah. There's like five.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

Well, and that doesn't include Python or Progressive Online or you know, any of the others that are marketing with their billion-dollar marketing budget. You know, find the blue ocean. Like go into a market segment that no one else is playing and learn your craft. Go narrow and earn that client space. Geographics now is not a barrier. People do not care where you sit, they care how competent you are. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:22

And you don't even need employees to be in the same, like it's crazy, right? Employees could be called.

SPEAKER_00 45:28

Well, I had an employee in Arizona. Uh, employees in Arizona, Idaho, Utah, England, and India.

SPEAKER_03 45:34

England?

SPEAKER_00 45:36

Nice. Masters in engineering.

SPEAKER_03 45:38

I have an English office manager.

SPEAKER_00 45:41

I don't care where they sit. We have a lot of common. Yeah. We don't care where they sit. We care that they're competent and are willing to put the work in.

unknown 45:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:48

Yeah. Like that's and for me, that's the coolest thing in the world. Is I, you know, we have another person starting in Idaho. I've never met her face to face. We've had, I don't know, 14, 15 different Google chat meetings. Um, given her a feeling of, hey, this is a place where I could call home. And she's working from home, she's got little kids, she can make adjustments. So cool. The work environment is different. Yeah. Yeah. Go narrow, go deep, and don't do personal lines. Only do personal lines as an accommodation for your clients that you're working with on the target segment. And build what I will, I think what they call as a client avatar. Who is your ideal perfect client? Identify them early and often and work your ass off to earn that client. 100%.

SPEAKER_03 46:27

There you go. Dude. You did it. You went the distance. Mic drop.

SPEAKER_00 46:32

Mic drop. IT drop. Whatever we want to drop. Yeah. So uh plug your site real quick for everybody. Yeah. Uh it's pretty straightforward. It's gritinsurance.com. So there you go.

SPEAKER_03 46:42

Is contractor risk partners yours too?

SPEAKER_00 46:45

Contractor risk partners is mine. Garage risk partners is mine. Blue collar brokers is mine. Um grit bonds is mine. I think I own 50 websites. But grit insurance group or gritinsurance.com is our primary website. Um, yeah. Anybody has questions, love to connect or obviously wanting to help. It is truly is a not a competitive environment, in my opinion. Like there's so much to be done and had and win. Those that should be winning should be helping each other.

SPEAKER_04 47:16

A hundred percent. So dude, Kirk, we love the way you think what you're doing is super cool. It's super cool when we get to talk to insurance agents that are really going hard on the AI stuff because I mean it's the ultimate leverage right now. Like you said, it's like that is the competition.

SPEAKER_00 47:35

That rabbit hole hard, and I love it. Oh man. I mean, what it can do for us and any agency, I think you're right.

SPEAKER_03 47:43

Please I haven't left the studio in two years. I've just been in there. I found some scissors and cut the hair off my face. Well, thanks so much, man. It was awesome to meet you, and we'll catch up again. Thanks, guys. Thanks. Thanks, Greg. You bet. Bye.