SPEAKER_02 0:00

You challenge the whole idea of call your friends and family. I think the idea that you're talking to a friendly audience too is also kind of flawed because you are, but it's not because you're good at selling insurance, it's because they know you.

SPEAKER_04 0:11

Imagine coming in as a new producer, and the first thing the boss says to you, get your 50 friends and family and start calling them.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

It's like, uh When you came in the agency, you started getting into some of the marketing side of it, right?

SPEAKER_02 0:23

We were doing a little bit of cold email when I joined, but I kind of revamped that process. Got my Outlook account banned a few times when I was learning the ropes, so that was fun.

SPEAKER_04 0:32

Your generation is, I think, very similar. You guys really push and you're interested. It's not this meh that you got with the other one.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

I think the the main quality that I've always found and admired in people my age is What are you most excited about? I'm excited to see if it does transpire. Is a cryptocurrency or high-powered computing product. Well, I mean, big mutual funds and ETFs are buying it up, so you know it's not going anywhere.

SPEAKER_04 0:58

It's on a discount right now. I'm not worried.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

We dial, we quote, we cut the fluff. No suits, no scripts, just real world stuff. From chaos to system. Growth, that's legit. Laugh a little, sell a lot, the insurance dudes, that's it.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Now, the wildest thing that ever happened in my agency was when we fell victim to a collective phishing attack, and it came through the most unlikely of all sources. One of our main managers at the agency is a woman named Tandela. She works with us from Argentina, and she is a delight, always on top of everything. I would say she is one of the most well put together people I have ever met in my life. And of course, it came in through her email. So the following 48 hours after that was just chaos, you know, figuring out where this went, how everything transpired. We did get very lucky, but I will say the moment of recognition that not only had it happened to us, but that it had happened through such an unlikely angle and someone who we did not anticipate this to happen to at all, it was wild. My name is Dean Bowen. I'm with Patriotic Insurance Group in Inlet, New York, and I'm an insurance dude. Boom! That was solid. Have you done radio before? I dabbled in college, believe it or not.

SPEAKER_03 2:22

I bet you anything, Craig. You didn't think that that was going to be the answer. I did not. I did not. There's not a lot going on up here right now.

unknown 2:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Craig just came in from uh a vacation driving eight hours and uh nine hours. Nine hours right into this podcast.

SPEAKER_04 2:44

12.5% more.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Technical difficulties, records, cameras, audio. They've heard it before. They've heard it before.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

The delights of the digital age.

SPEAKER_04 2:57

Oh, I got a new doc, so now nothing works. I'm so glad I got it.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

I love that you tested out the new doc.

SPEAKER_04 3:04

I did last week. No problem. No problem. I'm like, it's all set, ready to go.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:12

Showbiz.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

So what did you do in what uh uh radio stuff did you do in college?

SPEAKER_02 3:19

Um we had so I went to Wilkes University in Wilkesbury, Pennsylvania, and they had a pretty well developed uh student radio, and I just guested, you know, helped out with stuff. I think I did only one or two actual broadcasts, uh, basically playing music that I wanted to play, which is probably why I only did one or two broadcasts. But it was a great experience, you know. They they really they had a full service, like the whole shebang was there, so it was really good experience for people who wanted to do that.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

It was it was nice. Oh, that'd be fun. That's super cool. Yeah. Well, we'd love to know. I'd love to hear about your family operated business and how you got into it. And uh yeah, and then we'll we'll dive into some marketing stuff too, because I'm excited about that.

SPEAKER_02 4:04

Absolutely. Yeah, so um I worked for my father, he is our agency principal, he went independent about six years ago. Um, my oldest sister actually also works with us. She is going out on maternity leave in I believe one or two days. So congratulations to Justina. And just yeah. Oh yeah. And as far as how I became involved, uh I had a basically exclusively blue collar background prior to joining insurance. Uh I worked making beer, I worked power washing houses, I worked in an aluminum can factory. And after man. Oh yeah, yeah, the steel toes were running deep. Um, but after a couple years of that and honestly kind of seeing the long-term career trajectories that a lot of people that I liked and respected were being subjected to, frankly, I decided, you know what? Let me look into seeing what I can do as a more of a white-collar worker, something with a bit more longevity for my body and for my sanity, frankly. And, you know, I started talking to my father about it, just kind of spitballing ideas, and he said, you know, you could come and work for me. And initially I laughed and I didn't really put much credence into it. And then I thought about it a little more. And then a couple days later, I decided, you know what? I think this is worth a shot. I can go and take the P and C exam, went and talked to him, and he said, if you get the license, I'll hire you, which was a bit daunting. But while working in said aluminum can factory, I studied, took the test, got my license, and uh have been doing it for about a little over a year and a half now. So it's been a great it's been a great journey, you know, and uh it's nice for me because I get to use what I did before to make my job easier to do. You know, I know what people are concerned about in terms of like they're a contractor if they're working in a manufacturing plant. I understand what they're dealing with at least a little better than the average bear would, and I can speak to what they're actually concerned about. And I'm not gonna make suggestions to like a big thing that I do is safety around workers' compensation. So if I'm going into a manufacturing plant and giving them my opinion on something, I'm not gonna make some terrible idea that won't implement at all. I can at least go from a bit more of an informed basis. So it's been a great transition over for me. You know, I I definitely got a little restless. I do work from home, so going from a commute to a massive building every day to working from home was a little interesting, but it's been a great journey, and I'm really glad that I uh this may sound weird to say, but I'm glad that I took my father seriously when he offered that to me because it's been it's been a joy.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

That's awesome, dude. So your dad was at a couple uh captive agencies and then decided to go independent, right? What was that like?

SPEAKER_02 6:47

Um, I would say I wasn't a part of the agency during that, but I do, I mean, I was around him when that was happening. And really for him, it boiled down to autonomy. There was a lot of concern around being able to write the business he wanted to write, worked with the people he wanted to work with. Um, and for him, it was a long-term goal of building up a book of business that he can do something with. And his concern was that I may end up with a book that I can't do all that much with. And you know, I think also he was a bit of a victim of the times. As I understood it, it was not the best time to be a captive agent, and there were a lot of issues around that like seven, eight years ago, Mark. Um, so I would say for him also, he did well with that transition because he just basically went directly to the carriers, was able to have that conversation with them, but it wasn't I I do distinctly remember there being more friction than he anticipated, and it was a bit of a drawn-out process of you know, re because you're really rebuilding from relative scratch. You know, he knew how to sell insurance now, but he knew how how to sell insurance from a very structured plan of what to do of selling specific products to now going out into the open market. It it definitely was a transition for him, but it it mainly just took time, honestly, to my perception.

SPEAKER_04 8:01

Greg. I was just gonna point out, I wonder if Jason, have you found it restrictive or a little inside joke. Um I have here that uh that you were you're a published author. I am. So us authors can sit around and and chat chat a little authorship here. Um you're in Rough Notes to January 2025. Um systems, responsibilities, and ROI, my first 90 days. Talk a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_02 8:33

Yeah, so uh I was very lucky to work with RoughNotes on that, and they approached me and basically said, Look, we want to get a perspective of somebody who just started and kind of look at what were your first three months like, what went well, what didn't go well. And probably the main point that I made when I was writing that was basically saying that I was given time to develop. And I haven't personally experienced this, but I do know our industry has this reputation, especially with younger people coming in, that you kind of get put on the phones, you get put into the churn one way or another, whether it's selling, CSR work, whatever it is. And that may work for some, but it does not seem to be as consistent as it could be. So when I came in, my father took the approach of okay, let's have them learn the business front to back, let's have them learn the coverages, learn what these policies actually mean. So then when I do go to sell them, I'm not making a fool of myself. Because that was my main kind of contingency coming in was I didn't have an insurance background. I was a customer of it, I didn't like it, obviously, because I was young and paying for something I didn't understand. But there was like I had a lot to learn. And that was kind of my condition. One of my conditions for coming in was I need time to actually figure out what I'm doing here. Otherwise, I'm going to assume that I know what I'm doing and I'm gonna get you sued. And that was kind of another he explained to me then how errors and omissions worked. And uh so that was a nice tuition of like, okay, I'm not gonna ruin the family business. But and I think that that was so essential, and being able to kind of get that story out there, and it's because uh as I understand and as I'm told pretty frequently, this industry does have a problem recruiting people that are young and getting people in around my age interested in the industry. And I think that that was such a good experience for me because I was able to make it it it you may assume like insurance in many ways as a consumer is a black box. And my goal with that was to make at least the working side of it, the agency side of it, a little bit more transparent, a little bit more here's what you can expect, here's what's going to what you're going to learn, and here's what may work for you if you're going into an agency yourself.

SPEAKER_04 10:44

Yeah. You you also mentioned something that was interesting, which uh I think we're also in alignment in it with, and it maybe just be the whole be an author thing. Um but you you challenge the whole idea of call your friends and family.

unknown 10:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 10:58

I know we've talked about this extensively, Jason and I, because it's it's crazy that that's the the thing, but but I'd love to hear your perspective.

SPEAKER_02 11:06

Yes, I I completely agree because I like I think that I think that it's important that people know what you do and that if they run into a situation that you can help with, you assist them. And I have friends of mine all the time call me and say, hey, can you look at this? So I and it, you know, I'll get a deck page and say, Yeah, you're good to go, whatever. And I think that that is very important to do. But yeah, the old pick up the Rolodex, call grandma and try to sell her some insurance, it just it's not sustainable. And it adds such an awkward initial lift to people wanting to join the industry. Because when you're coming in with the idea of, okay, I'm gonna take this job, it's gonna be a hard training process, and I'm gonna accidentally make some of my family members hate me, that's kind of a tough hurdle. You know, like that's not something that somebody's gonna be willing to do. If they already think, oh, I'm gonna be a little bit of a salesman here, people may think of me differently because of that. If you're starting off immediately, oh, let me call everybody I know and try to sell them insurance. I mean, you may get you may sell some policies, you might do okay, you might have like a rich friend who runs a business and really take off running there. But I think that the the risk of a reputational damage and b just burning out people who are starting out, because the I like I think the idea that you're talking to a friendly audience too is also kind of flawed because you are, but it's not because you're good at selling insurance, it's because they know you. So you're not actually learning how to sell. Because let's face it, learning how to sell is getting told no over and over and over again, and eventually just figuring out what it's going to take to get to a yes. If getting to a yes relies on the person knowing you and that's how you're being trained, you're not learning anything. You're just bugging your friends and family, maybe writing a little bit of premium, but I just don't think it's worth it. And I was, uh I will say when I started out, I was actively discouraged from doing that. You know, if people like if people ask me for help, I will gladly help them. But in terms of selling, I've always tried to take like never ask for that. If they tell me to write it for them, I will, but I try to avoid selling directly to people I know because it just doesn't it doesn't feel great.

SPEAKER_04 13:10

Right. And I mean it's like imagine coming in as a new producer, and the first thing the boss says to you is, well, get your 50 friends and family and start calling them. It's like, uh Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 13:22

Yeah. And it just it it makes it makes the whole starting out process just a little bit greasier, and it doesn't need to be. You know, it just adds another layer that's yeah, it it just it doesn't it doesn't need to happen, and I don't think it really drives any kind of actual results.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Yeah, it's terrible. It's it's one of those things too that yeah, it dries up real quickly. Um it doesn't really leave a great taste in anyone's mouth. And dude, the worst clients I've had have been friends. Yeah, you know what I mean? Absolutely. They always think you can you know hook them up or something.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

You didn't ask for a discount and you have to explain how carrier pricing works, and it's like, no, no, I can't, I can't cut you a deal here. Yeah, it's terrible.

SPEAKER_04 14:11

Well then they're texting you.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

And then they're texting, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:14

Can you take this car off?

SPEAKER_02 14:16

Yeah, I think you don't want to I I feel like having your initial book of business be all people you know, even if you write all of them and you can solve a problem for all of them, then yeah, now you're just kind of uh everyone's gonna be in touch with you all the time. You're not gonna have too many low-touch clients, you're just gonna get overwhelmed with service work.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

Yeah, it's terrible. It is the worst. And you know what? There's probably a lot of agents that are listening like, I love talking. Well, that's great, but I hate it. It's terrible.

SPEAKER_02 14:48

Yeah, like I I I find that I like the the help me out conversation, you know, looking at a deck page, telling them what to do. Like that part is great, but yeah, selling. Like once I'm asking you for your ACH details and I grew up with you, it's like, ah, like I don't like that. This isn't fun anymore, you know. I'm not, it doesn't feel as you like as though you're helping.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Right, right. Yeah. I I I don't mind shooting them in the right direction, but I definitely don't want to be the Google of like, you know, they're constantly texting and calling about the policy. It's like, yeah. Not fun. Right. Um so you and when you came in the agency, you started getting into some some of the marketing side of it, right?

SPEAKER_02 15:30

Yes, yeah. So I we were doing a little bit of cold email when I joined, but I kind of revamped that process, added a lot more capacity to it. Um, got my Outlook account banned a few times when I was uh learning the ropes, so that was fun. But uh thankfully we've got my sender reputation back where it needs to be. That was a process. Um, but yeah, I mean, I like we weren't we were mainly relying on word of mouth and referrals, which was doing great for us, but we did want to expand kind of into the middle market of commercial, getting getting into some of these larger accounts. So my focus initially was what was working on uh higher tier real estate because we already kind of had an established presence in there, and manufacturing was the other one I went after because I had just left that environment. I knew people that were around that were involved in that, and I had a pretty good idea of what they were dealing with in a practical sense. Um, so from that I managed to put together a pretty large emailing list just going pure cold, and then I used that to inform uh basically as a pre-qualification process for then later cold calling, uh LinkedIn outreach, stuff like that. And automating all of that stuff took a while, but I would say it was very much worth it because now you can just kind of let it spin as long as you're putting good leads into it.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

Awesome. Let's let's go deeper in that. So like that was a question that I should have asked you, which was what kind of insurance do you guys sell? But primarily commercial, right? You lead with commercial.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

Yeah, I I write only commercial. We write a ton of personal lines, but that is a that is a separate team. They are delightful, but they they handle that. I write just commercial.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Do you guys lead with commercial or do you lead like how does that work?

SPEAKER_02 17:12

I would say placement-wise, we lead with personal, just because we do we do a lot of referral business. We're very well established, especially in Orange County, New York, and kind of the surrounding area. So I would say that's usually how we enter into accounts on the personal side more often than on commercial, but over the last two years or so, we've kind of started to push more into commercial as well. The goal is both. You know, we're not we didn't really want to when we were initially figuring this out and I was talking to my dad about it. I said that I didn't really want to say, oh, we're a commercial agency now. Because I felt that that would have been maybe a boost for my part of building the commercial side, but I think it would have been way more of a detriment to the personal side of things. So we've tried to keep it kind of balanced between the two, but we I would say we're still working on kind of cranking up the commercial side of things.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Cool. And so um where did you start with that? And then how did you develop the process that you have and and what is that process?

SPEAKER_02 18:14

Um, so as far as how I started, I started with the prospecting. So I figured I would not get, and my dad is a huge uh data guy. He's a he very much relies on good, clean data analytics, whatever we need to get in. So I started from that perspective of okay, okay, I'm not going to be calling phone numbers that don't exist. I'm not going to be emailing people that aren't there. So one of the first things I figured out, which this was a manual process for quite some time, was just address verification of okay, are they actually there? Does this place actually exist? I noticed because in my in my area, I live in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, there's a lot of commercial real estate around me, a lot of warehouses, a lot of manufacturing areas, but they turn over owners pretty quickly. Nowadays it's a lot of Amazon, but the even like the smaller ones, they turn over very quickly. So I'd find myself emailing somebody who worked there five years ago, and I decided, okay, if that needs to not happen. So I managed to knock that down. And then it became a matter of building the copy. And this is where I will give a shout to my good friend and mentor, David Carruthers. He taught me how to how to market. I I think a lot of these are going to be his ideas in one way or another. I will freely admit that he is brilliant. Um, but he then taught me how to, okay, you're not writing copy of please, please buy insurance from me. You're writing copy of you want to figure out what people's problems are and what they're dealing with. And say in an email in a non-pushy, non-salesy fashion, I can maybe help with that. And here's how. So I built the cold email campaign around it, it believe the initial build out was nine emails over the course of 27 days. I later cut it to seven in 21. Cadence might have been a little quick, I will admit that. I did, I did turn it down later. But each one was designed to be a differentiated pain point. So if I went for manufacturers, I would maybe have one about PPE, one about toolbox talks, one about a safety committee, so on and so forth. And based on which of the emails they opened, that would then inform the conversation I would have with them when I called them. So my threshold was if they opened, I believe it was three emails, I would call them immediately. Two if I looked at it and I liked it, and then any more than that and I would. But I used what they interacted with from those emails to at least get an idea of, okay, if they read two about the experience mod, they're paying too much. If they read one about toolbox talks, okay, they're having struggle implementing. So that I obviously took a lot of iteration because I was trying to read people's minds. But over time I was able to craft it to where by the time I called the person, I at least knew that they were there, that they worked there currently, and I had an idea of things that I could bring up and do the to name another sales guru, the Josh Braun method of elucidating questions. You know, get into whatever that topic is and try to figure out if they're having trouble with it. Now, I will say initially I was very timid in terms of calling people because I thought that this would work way better than it did, and I still got yelled at. But I did find that it would at least, if I could get past that initial 10, 15 seconds of, oh God, someone's calling me trying to sell insurance, I could pretty easily say, like, I know who you are. I'm not calling for whoever handles insurance at X Company, like I at least have a name. And then I was able to have some pretty good conversations with people and in some circumstances land accounts that I had no business even talking to, because I at least gave them my view is I gave them kind of the personalization idea without having it be an email that has eight different things on it congratulating them on their recent. LinkedIn accomplishments or so on. And like I said, the main benefit of this was that it was iterative. So I was able to take things that would work from one, apply it to a different industry, take what worked from that, apply it to a different industry. Doing that too many times is how I ended up getting my Outlook account locked, but that that's a story for another time. But that process, I would say, worked really well for me, and it scaled really well to where I was able to not necessarily just be cold calling, but have a list of, okay, they're interested to some degree, or they at least haven't unsubscribed yet, and I have an idea of what they're dealing with. And that certainly helped with me learning how to sell on the phone because I wasn't going in blind. And I mean, in my opinion, the reflex, like the kind of sales reflex, be able to handle things as they come, that that takes a lot of time, you know, and I feel I feel that this helped is helping me develop it, but I'm still not there yet. So having as much information going in as possible really does help with the process.

SPEAKER_04 23:05

Number one, how did you get the list? And then when you started sending out, let's say, X number, was it a thousand? I guess the number doesn't matter, but of the sends, how many what percent opened, that kind of yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

So I was working off of agency Zoom, so that only gave me open rates. Um, my average open rate on the cold email campaign was about 13 to 14 percent. Oh wow. And then the more targeted ones actually more often than not went down, which is a curiosity I'm still working through. Um, but yeah, so that was about the average open rate, and I was sending, I tried to keep it to no more than 500 in the wheel at any time because I tried a thousand and got yelled at by Microsoft. Um so that was uh uh it was usually about 500 in the wheel at any given time. And then at the end, I would get a task to review. So as I pulled them out, I would add that amount in. So I tried to have a kind of pre-built list that I could sort some way or another, pull 500 from, put them in as a CSV, and then let those run. Um obviously, so depending on the vertical, it wasn't always that plentiful. But my view was if I was shooting for 500 and I got three, that's still pretty good.

SPEAKER_04 24:23

Yeah. Well, and you got, I mean, shoot, if if it's 13% open off 500, you know, there you go, you have 70 leads or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 24:32

And and then so you call 70. How many of the 70 end up letting you quote on?

SPEAKER_02 24:38

I would say probably about 10 to 15% by the end of it there. Um, yeah, like it would it would usually be I would call with the intention of setting a meeting, which is a concept that honestly I've struggled with a little bit in terms of actual efficacy, because I think people are resistant to that wording, could just be my experience. But that was that was my goal. And more often than not, it would be, yeah, sure, you can come in, you can you know, come in, review what we have, we can talk it over. Another aspect of this that I neglected to mention there was I also did physical drop-ins, and those were converting way better for me than the phone was. Um, because I would go in with a nice, nice branded folder. I usually had a bag of coffee, which people loved, to my father's chagrin, because coffee is not cheap, but that did well for me. And those usually, I mean, if they took if they took it and gave it to the person, they would usually respond to the email and at least say, not interested, or yeah, we can meet whenever. Or there'd be times where I'd walk in and they'd be sitting at their desk and we'd have a 10-15 minute conversation about insurance, and then from there it usually went and I usually would at least get to being able to quote them. And another issue that I ran into also with we're like the agencies based in New York. I live in Pennsylvania and I I focus on Pennsylvania for marketing. I ran into quite a few where they were large accounts, their policies made me lie awake in bed at night in fear, and I couldn't write them because I didn't have the markets. So that that got a little tough sometimes where you know you bring in a big fish and the line snaps right before the boat. But, you know, you take those as they come, and I always viewed it as I'm glad that I was at least able to talk to these people, and you know, then I would put them into you know longer term, send an email a month campaign just to keep them interested. But it it I would say numerically it went pretty well, just where it usually where the wheels would usually fall off for me is binding the policy. It would getting kind of bridging that gap between being able to beat what they have in place or solve a problem better and actually getting them to the finish line.

SPEAKER_04 26:49

Have you got have you gotten better at that?

SPEAKER_02 26:52

Oh yeah. Over time, absolutely. I found for the first six months, I think I was just talking myself out of deals because I would whether through nerves or through just not being properly equipped on preparation side. But over time it has gotten easier and it has gotten more reliable to be able to, you know, you've you fail in the same way twice and you don't do it again, you know. And I think that getting those failures under my belt, obviously they stung, and it was very this is my first even close to a sales job, other than a bartender, but that doesn't really count. So like I wasn't used to that abject, like, I'm not gonna work with you. And it was hard to not take it as rejection, but over time I learned to take it as, you know, it's not personal, it's not because it's not because I did something terrible, you know, they just made a business decision and it wasn't me. So, but I do think that that was important for me to go through because you did you gotta fail. You know, you gotta have things go wrong, you gotta get banned by Microsoft and almost get your IP blacklisted, you gotta have people tell you no. You gotta be very forcefully turned away when you're just standing there with a nice folder and a bag of coffee. You know what happens. Um, and I I do think that the the physical drop-ins part was very good for me learning-wise, because I was in these places physically, and I think it gave me a lot of credence. You know, I'd showed up, I show up in jeans and steel toes, and that got me into a couple doors. I don't know if they thought I worked there, but I'll take it. You know, it's it certainly can't hurt.

SPEAKER_04 28:19

Yeah. Well, and it's like sales is something that develops over time, right? So learning, I think when you're f especially right at the beginning, you're talking way too much, yeah? And and you do definitely talk yourself out of those deals, and then you probably learned, or somebody said, after you asked for it, shut up, and then you know, you watch the magic unfold from that point.

SPEAKER_01 28:42

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 28:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

So with these kind of deals, what what did you find um to close them uh what was the what was the process that works the best?

SPEAKER_02 28:55

I found more often than not it was just clarity. You know, just giving them not necessarily because I ended up swinging too well in the other direction and giving them too much information. And I found that it's good to give them knowledge of what their policy actually does. And I found that to be useful at the binding point because when you're asking them to pay, you're not just saying, oh, the premium is 3% lower than your current renewal, isn't that great? You're saying you're paying for this, but here's what you're getting. And I found honestly, just using carrier-provided kind of breakdown premium sheets was helpful in some instances, where if you're dealing with somebody who more often than not, it'll be like either an HR head or somebody in the finance side. HR head, I would talk to them about, okay, here's what we can do to help you out with your workers' comp. Here's what we can do to help you get some safety in place to A, make your job easier and B, make this premium lower over time. If you're talking to someone in the finance part, they want to know what they're paying for. So I found when asking them to, so to speak, pay the bill, running through what that bill actually is, where the charges come from, and while I'm at it, have the risk management conversation of look, your building proper like your property premium can be a little bit lower if you finished up on finish on putting sprinklers into the whole building. Stuff like that. And I found that making that making the payment process more of a conversation and less of a here's an invoice, please pay me now, that kind of helped to bridge the gap and make me better at closing with people.

unknown 30:29

What?

SPEAKER_04 30:30

I wanted to do the I almost did the sign fell. What's the deal? So so there's our generation, Jason and my generation, all the X, and then then there's then there's your generation, Jed Z, and then there's this other one in the middle that we don't really talk about too much. So how how is it that that your generation is I think very similar, right? You guys, you guys really push and you're interested, and you and it's not this meh that you got with the other one. I had talking about the baby boomers.

SPEAKER_02 31:05

Yeah, I mean, I I think that the main quality that I've always found and admired in people my age is perseverance. And the whether it's from spite or from genuine motivation is to be told, depending on the person. But you know, I do I do I do feel very encouraged by seeing honestly how pissed off people my age are and how they're able to channel that into things that meaningfully improve their own lives. Because I think you can get lost in kind of oh, you know, nobody takes us seriously, everybody treats me like a kid. I mean, it happens to me all the time and it drives me absolutely insane. But at the end of the day, what are you gonna do? Yell, yell at that nice old woman who called you son, or accept that that's out of your control and move on with your life, you know? And I I do think that there's there's a lot of untapped energy in people my age, and there's a lot of feelings of, I would say, futility. And I'm think I'm seeing that ebb as time goes on. And honestly, I think that's just growing up to some extent. You know, you you get you start to have to pay bills, and it's like, wow, I gotta turn this towards something, and it's usually a job. But it is certainly getting better, and it is certainly encouraging. And I do think that a lot of a lot of people my age are capable of a lot more than they give themselves credit for. And there's a lot of you know, couching and apologizing for wanting what you want. And I think that some of that is valid, but over time it's starting to wear away, and I think that's a positive thing.

SPEAKER_04 32:39

Yeah, it's it's interesting. I think the millennials have come around, I think, but for a long time they were, you know, it was it was challenging. Yeah. And um we even brought somebody on that was named the Millennial Whisperer, and we learned some valuable things about the millennials from that. Um but it it is interesting because the Gen Z, you guys are are very I don't know, my kids are both Gen Z, and I I see like the drive that they have, and I don't know what happened in the middle there, but uh again, I think they've come around. I'm not trying to alienate anybody. Um it just it's just interesting.

SPEAKER_02 33:14

Yeah, I do think it's a it's a there uh I full transparency. I don't know if I mentioned this when I initially was feature with you guys. I did I went to school for political science. So if I start going into the theory a little too much, feel free to stop me. But I I do think that there is a the the old adodge of like hard times creating hard men and then and then hard men creating soft times and that kind of cycle of things. I do think that that does play out to some extent. I think people use it as a crutch for explaining social phenomena for sure, but it is true. You know, there's a lot of people are shaped by the circumstances they're raised in, and when those circumstances change drastically as they become an adult, as it did with millennials and as it did with my with people my age. I mean, for me, my middle two years of college were during COVID. So I was at home, you know. Yeah, so like I think that it depends, it changed like what that event is, does certainly change the trajectory of that generation on some kind of macro scale. And I think for people my age, it being COVID, the main feeling was helplessness, you know, you can't do anything, you can't you can't go to school, you can't get a job. And I think that that's where a lot of the kind of indignance came from was you like that ended, the world reopened, and a lot of people were left feeling stuck. And I think that that being motivated by seeing how quickly things ground to a halt and how much the world is, how much more fluid the world is than we think it is, I think that that was essential. And for millennials, I won't necessarily speculate, but I do think that for them it was a similar event of you know, something that pushed them to a to a direction they're eventually going to acclimate, but whatever that event is is going to be felt way longer than it does for others.

SPEAKER_04 35:06

Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah, they it well, they came through what half half the time they had no internet, then the second half they had internet. I don't know if that's something, who knows? But yeah, certainly the old internet, the old internet, and I did see that political science at Will because minored in communications, baby. I'm a colonel. So can we dive into one other thing that I find of of real interest? Um new new producer development. Talk to talk about your how you do that in your agency, um your opinion on the whole sink or swim notion, and and uh just dive into that a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 35:50

Yeah. So I think there's I have a two-pronged answer here, and it's whether you're bringing people in with a sales background or you're bringing people in without a sales background. I'll start with sales background because that wasn't me, but I do feel I can speak to it to some extent. I think the focus for both really is education, is knowing what the policies actually do. And I think that there's an assumption made that the property and casualty exam teaches you what policies do. And I don't think that is the case. Not to disrespect the exam, but I mean it's good. It makes sure you know what you're doing. But in terms of being able to actually read a policy, know what it does, know how it functions, that needs to be taught. And that requires people with experience. And I think that's kind of the other area that's often missed is mentoring in the traditional sense. I think that there's a lot of, oh, pat on the shoulder, here's your sales copy, kid, go get them. But the part that's missed there is let me teach you how I messed up writing a BOP 10 years ago and what went wrong there. Because like I was saying before, with people making mistakes, not all of those mistakes need to be your own. They can be someone else's mistakes. And if they're explained well and that story is told to them, they can understand, okay, I'm not going to do that. As far as the development side for someone with no sales background, as I said, I came in having never sold a thing in my life, other than maybe the neighbor wanted their house power washed as well, but that was always pretty easy. Um for me, it was a two-pronged approach as well, where I was taught the insurance, you know, and that I would give credit to my father and to David Trothers for that. Between the two of them, they poured as much as they could into my brain of here's how these policies work, here's what they do, here's what they're used for, so on and so forth. As far as learning how to sell, that was done with me second. And I think that's an important part of it. Where I didn't need to know how to sell everything. I didn't need to know how to go and sell, like, oh, the old sell me this pen. Some industries can work that way because you're selling a commodity, you're selling a thing or an experience or whatever. Insurance is not a commodity. Insurance is not an experience. It is something that you need for things to function the way that they will. So learning the insurance part and then learning how to sell insurance as a problem solver, as a safety net for people, not as a commodity, because when you sell it as a commodity, it's going to boil down the premium, right? But if you're selling it as a problem solver for specific things and you're taught from the ground up that way, as I was, you really can't approach it any other way. And there are times where, to criticize that approach, there are times where something is as simple as it seems, there's not a risk analysis to be done, and you just got to write the person a bop. I came into situations sometimes where I way overthought it, went directly over someone's head, and they went to another agent who made it simple for them. So I do think it's important to temper those things and to be able to under, and this comes with experience, obviously, and to be able to understand when you need to have that in-depth, here's how everything works conversation, and when you just need to make it easy for them, solve the problems that they're presenting to you, and move on because they're going to as well. And I think that that like that view of how it was going to work, and the I mean, uh selfishly, I was thrilled that I was isolated from hitting the phones immediately. You know, I think that that was important to me, and I think that that helped honestly convince me that it was a good idea because it made it an easier on-ramp. But by the time I was selling, I felt that I knew way more than I had to, and that confidence, I think, kind of buoyed me until I gained actual confidence in my ability to sell. And I think that that was very important for me.

SPEAKER_01 39:49

Yeah, and I think that that's probably uh the the path. I I would say older agents probably don't see that as the path because that wasn't the path before, but I definitely think that is the path now, and I think that selling is definitely changed in like if you if you do that hard selling stuff like uh of the old day, I mean it comes off terrible now. You know, instead of the instead of the you know, the more the doctor approach, like solving a problem type thing. I think that becomes way more empathetic and real these days.

SPEAKER_02 40:26

Well, that's it, and that's the thing, you know, we try to approach it from we're not selling you something, we're a lawyer, we're an accountant, we're an advisor. Like we're we're part of that team of people that you trust to gauge your assets, make sure you don't get sued for them, and protect them. We try to kind of fold in with that, and we found it to work pretty nicely because you know, if you can if it I don't want to say if you can train your customers, I don't like that verbiage, but if you can get people used to that idea that I'm not going to act like a slimy salesman if you don't treat me like one, it gets you very far. And it does go, it does help a lot with building trust. And honestly, for me as someone who's younger, I've had people say, like I've I've told people that I'm an insurance salesman, they laugh and say you don't look like one. And I know what that means. You know, I don't look very authoritative, it is what it is. But when you approach it from a, I want to be an advisor to you, I was almost able to kind of flip it because they assume, okay, young kid doing an old man's game, quote unquote, probably knows what he's talking about. And I I've I found that to be a helpful framing with people to at least gain some credibility and to build some trust because at the end of the day, people are sold to 24-7 by everybody at all times. The more you can break from that pattern of the constant advertisement we're subjected to by literally everything, the better, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 41:48

Yeah, agreed. I think that that that was a compliment that you don't look like an insurance. Hey, I'll take it.

SPEAKER_02 41:57

It's that, or I get told I look like my father because we're allegedly identical outside of the mustache.

SPEAKER_04 42:03

Speaking of your father. Yes. What what is it like working with the old man?

SPEAKER_02 42:07

Honestly, great. You know, I I I had of all of my concerns about joining this industry, my father was not one of them. And I am extremely, extremely lucky that that is the case. And I do realize that it is not always the norm, but you know, he's a good dude. He's a good leader. Um, really, the only gauge that I felt I needed to do was talking to the team members before I joined of to get their perspective, because to them he's their boss, to me, he was still just my dad at that point. And they all said the same thing. You know, they all like him, they all trust him, they all know that he's going to do the right thing. So for me, that transition was pretty easy. And and, you know, we haven't really run into any problems. I think that uh like communication-wise, one thing that we do that I think is important is we use teams for work and text each other for everything else. And I think that even that, I mean it's arbitrary, right? But even that arbitrary line, I think helps. Because you do need to have some degree of separation of working and not working, because otherwise you're just gonna constantly be working. And I will say he's a bit more of a constantly working guy, and I'm a bit more of a I work on my schedule guy. So there's been times where we've butted heads on that, but overall, I mean, it's it's been a good, it's been a good experience, and honestly, it's been great to honestly just to see what he does. Because prior to joining, I had no idea how any of this worked. Like I I saw the commercials and that was about it. And being able to learn the intricacies of something that he was so passionate about and to have that then passed on to me was an awesome experience. And it would really it was nice that to have that experience of being taught something that your father's passionate about so directly, and to then have it immediately start to pay you, that was that definitely was very nice.

SPEAKER_04 43:59

That's cool. I'd love to hear about the headbutting.

SPEAKER_02 44:02

I mean, main mainly it was just, you know, he'd text me at like 8 30 asking me a policy question. And I'd be like, dad. Sorry, I'm off, boss. Yeah, I'd be like, come on, man. Like, you know, like we can we can talk about this in the morning. And the and that that's really it. Yeah. Like that's a thing. Like he's he's very much, and I mean, uh it's a it's a testament to his diligence. He's very much one who is always on. And I do respect that about him. I'm glad that my agency principal is like that. But there have been times where you know a client will text him at 9.30 at night and he'll text me about it, and I'll be like, man, you can send this in the morning. But again, if that's my biggest complaint based on some of the some of the horror stories I've heard and had passed down through the grapevine to me, I will certainly take it.

SPEAKER_01 44:51

That's awesome. That's good. Yeah. Um so let's talk a little bit of tactically, like uh reaching out to these companies, like what content is working to get engagement from them, and what um what systems and processes do you have to help automate all of this?

SPEAKER_02 45:14

Yeah. Um, so as far as content, I go essentially purely educational, is my main angle, is just trying to, based on who I'm targeting, I go main mainly off of industry, kind of broad a bit more broadly. Um, but based on the industry, I try to figure out pain points and do some informational content around that. So for example, I recently built one out for restaurants. So I wrote talking about litter liability law, your answer systems, uh spoilage, like that kind of that area of things. All of the email copy will basically just be what's your what's your spoilance coverage? How often do you get your answers cleaned? Do you know that? If you don't, I can help answer that question. And that basic formatting has done pretty well for me. As far as automated processes, the main one that I've used is on the prospecting end and on the getting the names and numbers end. I use Apollo. Um it's worked pretty well for me. I will say it's Apollo is a full front-to-back sender, and I use it for the prospecting part, and then I put it into agency zoom so it's integrated with our AMS and everything. But that I have running automatically, where I have, I think, five lists now that every Tuesday morning it goes in, updates the criteria, runs the list, puts it in, and then I will go in, pull the CSV, and throw it in. It it took a couple times of having to manually review an Excel sheet because I did get into situations where there'd be combined fields and things not working well. But over time I've managed to get it to the point where I'm just taking a CSV, moving it over, putting it in, and it can run. That's awesome. Apollo is a beast. It is. It's a very intimidating software. It's good. Like, I mean, it works great, but I've I've tried I've I've actually started now messing around a little more with sending emails through Apollo.

SPEAKER_03 47:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:13

It's going well. Um, I mean it's it's and I got I've gotten very used to agency Zoom, which I don't know if either one of you have ever used Agency Zoom. Yeah, I use it. Good good product, but we have the captive one, so it's okay. Less good. Yeah. I mean it it gets the job done, but there's there's a lot of hard stops and it doesn't really adapt all that well. So a lot of my process has now kind of become informed by how agency zoom functions and how it sorts things. Like for example, for the physical drop-ins, when I'm doing the sort, I have zones set up for kind of, I would say like a 70 mile radius for my apartment. So when I'm sorting them and going through that, which I'm working on automating this and it's not there yet, but I hopefully I will get it. I'll assign it to that zone. So then if I'm saying, okay, Tuesday I'm going to zone three, sort by zone three, boom, there they are. So it's great for stuff like that, but it is I'm as I'm starting to use Apollo more, there is some functionality there, mainly around like actual click-through rates at lead attribution that has been very nice that I'm looking forward to messing around with more. But hey, agency zoom is an old workhorse. You know, it gets the job done. I I can't complain.

SPEAKER_04 48:28

So you're you have the independent version. Does it have the uh totally in the weeds here? But did you have an API key and you could use the you could use an API for that, right? Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:40

Yeah, so we have it, we have it linked to Hawksoft. We use Hawksoft for our CMS, and it it's right back and forth. That was set up before I even joined, which I'll definitely give give my dad credit for that. He figured that one out with a a good team of folks.

SPEAKER_04 48:53

Um but yeah, so we can keep those leads from uh Apollo straight in. Save yourself a step.

SPEAKER_02 49:00

That part I have been working on. Um honestly, I the I tried it once and it didn't work, and I've just gotten the CSV moving fast enough that I just do that, but I do need to look into automating it because yeah, every time I do it, I'm like, I'm just moving a folder here. Yeah. But yeah, I remember I remember I did I'm I don't know if it was through Zapier or just a native thing, but I tried moving it over automatically and it just chewed up the CSV. And I was like, okay, never again. Let me just let me just do this manual. But yeah, I do need to look into that as well.

SPEAKER_01 49:30

Craig's gotten deep. Deep into the weeds. Into the weeds. Someone's gotta do it. Someone's gotta do it. Are you using it any AI stuff?

SPEAKER_02 49:43

Um, yeah, I use quad quite a bit. Um mainly as a boy. Yeah, I I'm a huge fan of Quad. I've been using it for about six months now. Um I mainly just use it honestly for collating information for my own reference. So, for example, I as part of a kind of let's get our data together exercise, I put together a listing of here's the information we need to quote any commercial line of business. So I just listed it all out, put it all into a document. I have a Claude project that that is in there, along with some carrier appetite guides, and I use that as basically a okay, I'm quoting this, I have this information, what am I missing? Stuff like that. I've found it manages very well. Um, I think that it has a long way to go in terms of raw content creation, as do all LLMs. But I think that using it as a suppository of information and as a, you know, you put it there, it's you know you it's an easier way to reference the files that you're working with. And in an industry like insurance, where you can get lost in very wide-scale paperwork and just trying to learn these things, it's been very helpful. Um, we also use quite a few tools that are AI native that I've that we've found a lot of success with that work really well. Um, there are a lot of them, and they all solve every problem under the sun. So kind of sifting through them is always a fun exercise. But that is one area that I would say being my father's different perspectives works really well. Because generally, by the time he gets his hands on a tech solution, I get my hands on a tech solution, and we both like it, it's going to be pretty solid for us because we approach it completely differently, like we will look for different things in it. So we found that to be very consistent in terms of evaluating these things, of utilizing our completely different perspectives to get a as close to a holistic view as we can.

SPEAKER_01 51:43

So what going forward, what are you most excited about this year with the agency?

SPEAKER_02 51:53

This year I would say we did recently get acquired. So now we are a part of Stable Rock Solutions. So I am very excited to see how that progresses. We are currently figuring out the legal and logistics ends of things, but I am excited to see how that develops. Um, but in general, the I'm very excited for the level of access and the people and the structure that that is going to afford us because we are at an interesting point as an agency where I there's a term that I've heard used for it, but it's kind of a revenue threshold where a lot of people get stuck. We're just past that threshold. So now we're at a okay, we have good momentum, we're moving forward, but I'm very excited to see what we can do with more access, more tools, more people, kind of building on the good foundation that we have. And honestly, now that in my view, AI is getting closer to being customer-facing in a consistent and actually usable manner. I'm excited to see what people much smarter than me build with these models because I think that a lot of it is not necessarily using outdated models, but using things that are already outdated and they came out a month ago. With how quickly the baseline tech is developing, I'm very excited to see what people do with it. Another area that I will mention that I've heard some murmurings of, but I am excited, I'm excited to see if it does transpire. Um, you mentioned Daniel and the weeds before, is a admitted lines cryptocurrency or high-powered computing product. Um this is a long shot, but I do think that I've I've written quite a bit of both of those in the XS and surplus markets, and it's been great. But I do think that as you know the old data center and as Bitcoin mining and as all of that continues to develop, I do think that eventually the admitted market is going to want a piece. And whether I'm involved in writing that business or not, I am very excited to see if that does happen, what that will look like. Because I've I'm not much of a cryptocurrency believer in the economical sense, but I am fascinated in every time it's try they regulate it, and every time that the more traditional institutions start to touch it, it always leads to some very interesting situations. So I'm curious to see how that'll happen.

SPEAKER_04 54:17

Well, I mean, big big mutual funds and ETFs are are buying it up, so you know it's not going anywhere. Oh, yeah. Even though it's in the tank right now, good time to buy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:27

Oh, I I have I have quite a few customers who are hurting. It's it's yeah.

SPEAKER_04 54:32

It it only hurts when you look at it. You just you just ignore it until it goes back up again.

SPEAKER_02 54:36

As as one of them so eloquently said, it's on a discount right now. I'm not worried.

SPEAKER_04 54:41

And I was like, all right, you know, there's a the there's no one the it doesn't have the wash rule or the no wash rule. Uh you could just sell it, buy it back, and take the loss.

SPEAKER_02 54:50

So also true, which is kind of the main the main motivating factor for a lot of these folks. But hey, by hook or by crude.

SPEAKER_04 54:58

It's interesting because since the blockchain is it's um, I think it's immutable, right? Is the word like once the data's there, so you can do contracts, which I mean that's what insurance is, yep, and then it it gets locked into the blockchain. I don't know what any of that really means. I'm just I'll be honest, I don't either right now.

SPEAKER_02 55:17

Yeah. I mean, I I understand it a little bit enough to explain it to an underwriter, but uh it's yeah, I think that there's a lot of potential there. And I think that honestly, I mean, to not to hop on a soapbox here, but I think that a lot of blockchain crypto, a lot of that has been subject to we'll call it gamification, a whole lot of nonsense, uh, to put it more succinctly. And I think that that's great, and that's gonna happen in any developing market, it's just inherent. But I think that as the institutions start to take it a little more seriously and actually understand what's on their hands beyond, you know, the meme coins and the rud pulls and all of that nonsense, I do think that there's a lot of good to be found in cryptocurrencies and in the blockchain. It just needs to, you gotta kind of weed out the, we'll say, developing market jitters of, you know, people that are acting in ill faith and doing all sorts of things that are not illegal, but they're just legal because they haven't written the law yet. And as the law gets more developed, I think that it will certainly be able to benefit a lot of things. I've never thought about the idea of you know insurance contracts on a blockchain, but it could work. You know, I think that there's a there's a lot of potential, and I think that some of that potential has been stymied by some of the nonsense I've mentioned, but I don't think it'll stop the momentum entirely.

SPEAKER_04 56:38

You definitely could put um title, title, uh, you know, title companies, they run the title search and charge astronomical. Oh, yeah. Throw that throw those contracts on there for a hundred bucks or something. I don't know. Yeah. Anyway, well, so uh what's the one thing that you would tell somebody coming into the insurance business right now? They know nothing, they're working at the bar, they just quit. Both of you came from bars.

SPEAKER_02 57:10

I would say don't be intimidated. Um, it is a there's a lot to learn. There is a lot that you need to understand in order to do this job, but it is not that hard. It is not insurmountable. And at the end of the day, it I think that insurance is a very unique opportunity for young people to learn an industry that is not going away. I mentioned the youthful indignance before. I think that a lot of that is fueled by watching things evaporate and watching your job go away and watching a lot of junior level positions that are meant to be kind of buildups to higher things completely evaporate. In the sense of insurance, yes, that is happening a little bit, but there will always be need for juniors. There will always be need for people going out and selling. And I think that insurance is a very, you learn it once, you develop throughout your career, you can utilize things that you did before, but I think that it is a good, stable entry point to the workforce that a lot of people overlook because they think it's like sketchy salesman stuff. It only is like that if you do it. If you want to go in and give your own twist and use your past experience and do things that interest you, it is there, you just need to try. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 58:31

There you go. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me. Yeah, dude, it's awesome. Super cool that you and your family are are able to uh have a family agency. I think that's awesome. Uh so yeah, I'd love to check in with you in the next couple years and see where you guys are headed because I I think that uh you guys have some uh you know, especially with the deal that you guys have, uh I would have to see how it grows. Absolutely. I would love to come back on. Thank you both very much for having me. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 59:03

Thanks for being on.