SPEAKER_05 0:00

Tell us about your journey into becoming an agent.

SPEAKER_00 0:03

I actually quit college to sell turkeys full time does definitely teach you the fundamentals of sales when it comes to marketing on what you're gonna do and how you make those decisions. We track very carefully what we're quoting from that marketing source and also what we're closing.

SPEAKER_05 0:17

The hardest part of the sale is getting them to agree to the quote.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

Do you think your tech background guy is there? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 0:23

We'll win, and then we're like, oh, we're winning, and then we forget why we're winning, so we stop doing that thing. When you get to that point, I want you to call.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Your cell phone? I'm just kidding. If you go to three or four more new lead sources at a time, you're gonna fail. One big question that a lot of people ask you.

SPEAKER_03 0:40

My response to that is out. I am great. I am eight. We are eight. We are insurance.

SPEAKER_05 1:08

There we go. Well, Seth, how are you doing, man? I'm doing great. How are you? Awesome. Well, uh, welcome to the insurance students. It's great to have you. Uh this is awesome. So I'm right here. Yeah. So um for folks who oh, I almost jumped ahead, didn't I, Jason? Yes, you did. Shame on you. Shame on me. I had the flu last week, so I'm rusty.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Seth, we ask everybody what was their first concert?

SPEAKER_00 1:39

My first concert went to my first concert was Depeche Mode that I got to see at Red Rocks.

SPEAKER_04 1:45

Oh Red Rocks.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

So that was awesome. And I heard that they may actually be shutting Red Rocks down from playing concerts in the future because the neighborhoods near there now are tired of the noise. Which is just that's a tragedy if that's true.

SPEAKER_05 1:59

It is, you know, and like I'm a big deadhead and love the Grateful Dead and the different iterations. They used to play at Red Rocks quite a bit, and now the newest iteration, Dead and Company, doesn't isn't play they're playing at Folsom Field. So really seems like that's the uh that's what's happening. Yeah, yeah. That's crazy. Everybody's just a little too sensitive now. Apparently. You wear your earplugs at the gym. Why don't you just put your earplugs in and not let the music bother you?

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 2:31

What year or uh how old were you at when you went to that concert?

SPEAKER_00 2:34

I I think I was a I was a senior in high school, junior in high school. Oh, nice. Uh I used to live I lived in Colorado Springs, so it was a short trip up there.

SPEAKER_05 2:47

Do you want to Okay, so when you lived in Colorado Springs, there was a news anchor, and his name is John Carroll. Either John Carroll or John Fox. Do either of those ring a bell?

SPEAKER_00 2:59

John Carroll rings a bell.

SPEAKER_05 3:01

That's my uncle.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_05 3:03

Yeah, yeah. He's one of the news anchors there. So there you go. Look at that. Full circle. Full circle. Big broadcast. Nice fun facts. I love it. Isn't it Fun Fact Wednesday? It is Fun Fact Wednesday. Yeah. Well, so we love to bring agents on. Um, and if if you've if you've listened to the podcast at all, then then you've noticed that it's it's typically of one company, which we're not gonna say any names about that company because we're not allowed to. But um, you know, you're from Safe Arm, which is awesome. We can say other companies.

unknown 3:38

Right.

SPEAKER_05 3:40

So um tet you know, tell us tell us about your journey into becoming an agent, what's contributed to your success, and and you're right up the street. You're in Gilbert.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

That's correct.

SPEAKER_05 3:49

Yeah, I'm down in Tucson.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Oh, okay. All right, perfect. Yeah, so uh you're having experiencing the wonderful weather that I am then too.

SPEAKER_05 3:58

Yes. Yeah, well, Jason's in California.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

Oh, he's in California. Yeah. So I guess I um I started in my uh down the the sales path when I was as young as 18, and I started working for my next door neighbor who sold Kirby vacuum cleaners.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

So oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

So that was when I was living in Colorado Springs. So I would work in uh northern New Mexico, Taos, Espanola, Albuquerque, that area, um, knocking doors, selling Kirby's. And I I did that through college. I actually quit college to sell Kirby's full time because I actually thought that was a good idea. So yeah. So I had all kinds of lessons to learn. So but uh, you know, it was it was a great experience for me because it does definitely teach you the fundamentals of sales. I mean, it doesn't get much more fundamental than knocking on doors and trying to get somebody to buy a $2,000 vacuum.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

So yeah, it was a crazy time. If my if my father's a Luther minister, had he known what those Kirby guys were dragging his son through in northern New Mexico, he never would have let me do that job.

SPEAKER_05 5:06

Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Frequent trips to the dog track.

SPEAKER_05 5:10

Yeah. Like the way and and like in that sale, like you're you they you they answer the door, they they don't want to talk to you, you hand them something, right? Like they first thing you do is hand them something. Yep, and then you you get yourself in the door, and then all of a sudden it's three hours. Yep, it's incremental.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Yeah, you you convince them first that all you're doing is trying to meet your quota for doing presentations. So all they have to do is let you in for 10 minutes, and then you'll get paid 10 bucks and you can go on your way. Well, once you're in, you're in. And then we've got all kinds of ways, you know, you start pulling dirt out of the carpet and they're shocked, and so then you know you're good to go for at least an hour.

SPEAKER_05 5:44

Yeah, remarkable. And and on the back end, uh not to go too far down the weeds on this, but on the back end, weren't there like code words when you're calling the manager on financing and stuff?

SPEAKER_00 5:54

You know, we didn't we didn't do as much of that because we operated rurally. We would still do the, hey, let me go out to the truck and talk to my manager, and then we would just sit there and shoot the breeze for a little while, and then I'd go back in and drop the price some more. But we had an incredible amount of flexibility on that. I one time watched my boss trade in a discount on a curtain for a pig. So yeah, it was truly the wild west. What? We got a pig and gave them $200 off the vacuum.

SPEAKER_05 6:22

That's amazing. Yeah, and but that is very similar to what we're doing, right? When you and I don't know, are you an internet lead buyer? Oh, yeah. So so you and I compete for the same leads, likely. We're buying the same leads. And so, you know, it's it's very similar because the person fills out the form, they get the call, and then they tell our producers, no, I don't want a quote. And so you have to get your foot in the door, right? It's the same same thing. Jason and I talk about it all the time. I think the the the hardest part of the sale is getting them to agree to the quote. Exactly. Right? And then as long as there's a good sales process, you have a whatever percent chance of closing them, but that's just the numbers.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

That's when you can start building a relationship and you're an actual human being, right?

SPEAKER_02 7:04

Right. Yeah, you got to meet them where they're at. That's what you were doing with the just just let me in the door. I'm not gonna sell you anything. It's not here to sell anything.

SPEAKER_05 7:13

I just need to meet my quota for a demo, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Yeah, so that's that's how I got my started sales. I ended up going back to college and uh finishing up, and then um I hopped through a couple of different positions. I was uh part of a startup company that was funded by Robert Kraft, the guy that owns the Patriots. Uh I was the sixth employee of a company that grew to over 200, almost got super rich on paper work. I think when I was 24, I was worth probably about three million bucks. And then, yeah, that was 1999. So the day before we were supposed to go public, the market crashed, and I watched all that evaporate. Very painful. Uh, it took a while to get over that, but it did open my eyes into uh technology and what was possible. Um, I ended up leaving there and going to work for a consulting company, um, which is where I got my background in computers and in technology. And uh I talked to a buddy of mine who was an agent with State Farm, and he made almost as much money as I did, but he just had vastly amounts more free time. I mean, he was he was leaving at 5, 5:30 every day. I was regularly working until nine o'clock at night. I had to travel five days a week. And so I said, This is this is crazy. I want to I want to trade this um quality for that kind of quality of life. And so I uh went through the interview process, got a position in Arizona, and we moved from the uh Chicago area out to Arizona. That was in uh 2003.

SPEAKER_05 8:40

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 8:42

So 2003, here we are 17 years later. Um, and it's just been a smooth ride, uh, very easy, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. Just pieces. No changes.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

No, nothing, nothing. Right, just smooth sailing from the day that I started, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 8:56

Well, yeah, so for 2003, no internet, basically, right? I mean, a very rudimentary form of the internet. Right. That was the internet operated like your quoting system at stage. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Right. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, a lot has changed the last 17 years, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_02 9:14

Yeah, yeah, take us through that journey.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

So, so I um I couldn't shake my tech background. And so within within um probably six months of starting my agency, you know, I was a trainee. And so we had to deliver all kinds of numbers and reports every single week. And this actually took kind of a lot of work because you'd have to list all the information one way, then list the same information in another way. And so I automated that process and made this uh spreadsheet quite a bit tighter. And uh everybody saw what I did and they asked me to make more and more improvements to it. And so over time, I actually created a spreadsheet that was used all over the state of Arizona, then it started to make its way around the country for other uh state farm agents all over the country, and we started getting so many requests for upgrades to it and tweaks and this sort of thing that I formed a company, turned it over to my wife and best friend to run. And that company was a company called Racing Snail, which makes productivity uh tools for uh the insurance industry and has expanded out from that recently when it was rebranded as MyVation about uh a year ago. And so that's yeah, so that's how that's how my insurance path took me through to technology.

SPEAKER_05 10:29

Were you at um it's a company I can't mention, but they had there's a conference called the Mega Conference. Were you at that two years ago in Orlando? I met you. Yeah, oh that's great. Yeah, I love that conference. It's awesome. They have a lot of, I mean huge agents, right? 30, I don't know what it's it's some ridiculous amount of premium in that room. But um, yeah, I was there representing my other company, Agency Vault. I don't know if you're maybe we were like three tables over.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Yeah, I remember talking to you.

SPEAKER_05 11:01

That's whole circle. Look at this. Yeah. Drop the mic. Well, don't. It's too expensive. But okay, so so let's let's let's talk about marketing because I think that's the one of the it's one of the four pillars of the agency. Um, and and one of it's the most important. It's the fuel, right? It's the gas that goes in the car. How do you define and then how often do you reallocate when it comes to marketing on what you're going to do and how you make those decisions?

SPEAKER_00 11:31

A lot of what I did on the technology side was based upon what I was dealing with with in the agency. So, like to your question about marketing right there, one of the one of the issues that I dealt with early on in my agency was spending tons and tons of money on internet leads and then having like no idea whether or not they were actually fruitful. Uh and so we we spend we're constantly analyzing the the per uh the return that we're getting on our marketing because we track very carefully how much we're spending every single month on each marketing source. We we uh uh segment that out, and then we keep very close track of what we're quoting from that marketing marketing source and also what we're closing. So, and then we track the premium that we've closed by market source so that we can then evaluate where we're getting the most bang for our buck. So I remember in one example, we found, you know, and then I say that I do all this stuff, but then I'll admit that I didn't look at it for about six months. So when I sat down and looked at the last six months on a particular um marketing campaign, I discovered I had a zero return on one of my internet lead sources, whereas another one at that time I was actually in the black. And I mean being in the black on the on you know, up front on a on a marketing source of any sort, you should spend as much money as you possibly can on that.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

And so that was a uh a great example of how I'm constantly examining where I'm making my money and where I'm not, so that I can reallocate funds. So that's constant.

SPEAKER_05 13:02

I I think Seth, I I think Seth, that you that you have a a really that that that's an important point. Like six months, you may beat yourself up that you went that long, but at the same time, you know, I think everybody here knows that that the on the other end of the spectrum, a lot of agents that we talk to will spend will spend a little bit, and then a week goes by and they're like, Oh, I gotta pull the plug, nothing's happening. And it's like you can't make a good sound business decision, you know, for a few months at least. And six months is great data. You know, like I uh when I started buying, I've been doing this a long time, but but not with internet leads. And anytime I did, I did this the the one week, and then oh, this doesn't work, right? And with Jason really, really pushing me on internet leads, it was, you know, I'm a month in, I'm like, uh, nothing's happened. I spent 15 grand or 20 grand, and yeah, oh, and he's like, just just be patient. You got to keep working as long as you have that process in place, it isn't a leaky bucket. It's actually just takes a little time. And then all of a sudden, lo and behold, 75 days later or 60 days later, it was like wham, my cost per sale is all of a sudden at 150. Right. I went from 700 at the beginning to 150, and it's like, oh, okay, I'm making money now. Exactly. So you know, that's the thing that they people I think that agents are are too impatient and they want that instant gratification. Jason, I'm sorry I cut you off.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

No, no, that's I I I I love I love your point, um, Seth, because I I think that a lot of people don't uh analyze that data. And the bottom line is this is that it's it's a learning experience, too. Like a lot of it is a learning experience, and it does there are some upfront costs to that. But when you figure out the mechanics of it, you can uh quantify exactly how to how to make this thing work.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

And absolutely, you know, and there are things that work better for different agents based on the agent's personality and and the makeup of the staff in their office. You know, there's some agencies that do really well with uh in-person events uh where they set up the you know the tables and giveaways and that sort of thing. There are other agencies that don't feel comfortable in that environment. And so it's a matter of figuring out what works for you. But once you figure out what works for you, then you've got to make sure that you continue to dedicate resources to that. Because we'll often look backward and say, you know I had such a good summer, you know, two years ago. What is it that, you know, why is it that I'm struggling so much now? Well, almost 100% of the time it's be it's because you're not doing the same things that you had summers ago. You know, so you you it's it's very important that you actually keep track of what you're doing so that if you get off track, you know how you can get back on and get those same kind of numbers. Because it is a it is a relatively predictable business. If you do the same thing in the same way, over time you're gonna get a lot of the same results.

SPEAKER_05 15:55

Yep. And and we'll like we'll win. I keep doing it, Jason. I'm sorry. No, no, no, it's good. We'll we'll win, and then we're like, oh, we're winning, and then we forget why we're winning, so we stop doing that thing that we're winning, then it goes in the tank, and then it's like, well, what what was I doing, man? Nothing's changed, but it's like, well, you stopped doing the thing you were doing. Right, exactly. And you're so right. If you can look at what, okay, on in February of 2019, we crushed it, what were we doing? And you see, oh, we had Everquote, ding, we had uh, you know, this other lead vendor, we had this other lead vendor, whatever, and all of a sudden you're able to go back and say, oh, well, I need to do that. And then you could even go further, right? Get even nerdier and say, how long did it take from my spend when I started with Everquote to get to when I was getting results? Okay, I know I need to wait 60 days. I'm bad.

unknown 16:45

Right?

SPEAKER_05 16:45

I can calm down. But everybody's afraid of spending the money and then waiting to see the results.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

Right. Yeah, that's totally true. It takes a while, especially it can take a while to learn to how to work a particular new lead source as well. Yeah. Different nuances to that.

SPEAKER_02 17:01

Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

You have to be patient.

SPEAKER_02 17:03

And I think too, uh, going into the um, you know, having a process for it so that you can say, okay, this lead source is what's working, and not to don't do seven lead sources. Like there's no way you'll know what's going on. Yeah. And then and then how do you know which one's working or not? And I've actually told agents this if you go to three or more four more new lead sources at a time, you're gonna fail. A hundred percent of the time, you will fail because there's no way you can track the ROI on all those different things, especially some of the ones like uh like like events. Well, events are probably a lot easier, but like mailers and stuff. Don't do mailers and internet leads. Like that's crazy.

SPEAKER_05 17:46

Because you told me, you told me it was crazy, and I did it anyway. I am no longer doing mailers. It's just like why if I built my credit card bills 50 grand. You know, it's like, no, just stick to the one thing, get that working, then do go to another, add another thing. Yeah. Make it simple. Keep it simple, stupid. That's referred to me.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

It's not a complicated business.

SPEAKER_05 18:08

No, it's not. We overcomplicate, don't we?

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, and I I see that all over not just in uh in the on the marketing side of it, but also on the uh compensation for team members is another place that I see agents really overcomplicating things by making uh comp and a lot of the frankly, a lot of your large captive carriers do something similar where they have uh bonuses or scorecards, et cetera, that are so complicated people don't really understand them. And uh you end up having people just kind of doing whatever they're gonna do in no regard to what the compensation plan is in place. And so that's another thing that we've spent a lot of time on simplifying so that producers have clear visibility into how they make money if they know how they're going to make money, um they know exactly what they need to do to make that money. And it's simple as that sounds, um, very often that's not the case. I I know of agents that have such complex plans that their staff have no clue how to make any money. So they just do whatever they're gonna do. See how it comes out in the laundry.

SPEAKER_02 19:11

Yep. And how did you do that specifically with your comp plan?

SPEAKER_00 19:15

So it this is one, and I get asked this all the time. Like, what is the magic formula for compensation? I mean, I've probably been asked that a thousand times. So I strongly believe that there isn't one. There are some rules that you need to put in place that you'll reliably get better results from your from your people if you do them. But in terms of should you pay a percentage of commission versus a flat dollar, should you pay lump sum bonuses? There's no right answer to that. You know, there just it it it can be what you what your preference is. Some of it, a lot of it'll have to do with your team. Like I at one point in my career, a very small staff, and I had an alpha female. Um, she just ran that office with an iron test. She was so competitive that she would crush everyone around her in her pursuit of sales. Well, okay, I love it if they're selling more because it's more for the agency, but I don't want person A selling the policy that person B would have sold. Okay, that doesn't help need. So in that case, I set up a compensation plan that was based entirely on group performance. So I gave her some additional thresholds because she was the top dog in the office and running it, and all that hyper-competitive activity went off went away overnight. Very simple. Thresholds with this number of policies, you get this amount, it goes up, you get more. So, in in that environment, that was exactly the right plan. So, um what I tell people usually when they're trying to figure out what they should be doing in terms of compensation, number one is what we already talked about, is keep it simple. It should it should be like a resume, it should fit on one page. If it's longer than that, it's it's far too long. Um second thing is that you've got to understand that people are not reducible to a financial equation. So if you think that you're gonna develop just the right compensation plan to take your agency into the future because you figured out how to motivate them through money, you're delusional. It just doesn't work.

SPEAKER_05 21:15

Yes. So if they're motivated by money, then they're us.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Exactly. Yeah, right. And even and even agents as motivated by money as we are, we'll all reach that point at which, hey, you know what, I'm gonna spend more time with my family. That's exactly the root of why money is not a reliable motivator, because there are so many other elements that come into play that will dictate how important it is to them. And everybody's got a different level of financial security of what they consider to be enough. And because believe it or not, people do think that there is enough money for them at some point, and at that point they will start making different decisions that maybe result in them uh doing other things than working on making money. And so uh So, you know, that being said, you're better off to come up with uh compensation plans that are very straightforward and they can visibly see how they're going to get paid and then make it more lucrative as production goes up. There's a variety of ways that you can do that.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

I have a question. Have you noticed that with the uh younger generation? I know everybody says has so much bad stuff to say about millennials and stuff. But have you noticed that maybe the monetary um compensation is a little less motivating to them? And maybe some more of those time off, flexibility, like those can be a bigger motivating factor. Have you seen a difference?

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Yeah, you know, it's funny with millennials because I've seen it both both ways. Oftentimes they'll they'll tell you that they're um they're not motivated by money, but then it is amazing, you know, what happens when you put a financial incentive out there for them. Um I I can tell you that one of the ways that millennials are much different than the previous generations is that they they value life experiences more than the generation before them. They are more willing to give up money for experiences. Um one of my millennial cousins, I'm the oldest of 51 cousins, and one of them, uh one of the younger ones, Solidanist.

SPEAKER_05 23:19

51? 51?

SPEAKER_00 23:21

Yeah. 51.

SPEAKER_05 23:23

So I have to have a party at Area 51.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

Right, yeah. One of my one of my youngest cousin is a uh just finished high school. So yeah.

SPEAKER_05 23:35

So we can just save a day over five years from high school.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Oh, right. Um, but uh it's interesting watching you know my cousins make different decisions that I would have made when I was their age. I mean, one of my cousins found a job where she's able to work remotely and then spends a lot of her time traveling to different parts of the country and even the world, so that she can experience those places while working. So she's you know made a very calculated decision to have a particular kind of job, to have that freedom. So that's that's one of the ways that I've seen that uh millennial millennials are uh motivated differently. Um, another one, and this one gets kind of touchy feel, um, and it's that they tend to be more motivated by uh what we call purpose, which is an intrinsic motivator that people want to believe that they're a part of something larger than themselves. So it's not all just about me. I personally think that this has a lot to do with their exposure to social media growing up. You know, there's this concept of being woke and socially aware, et cetera. They're much more socially aware at a young age than people are at mature. Um, so that they come into the working world wanting to have a feeling of purpose that what they're doing matters. Um, and the insurance industry is a place where we really shouldn't have a problem providing that at all, uh given what we do in this industry. Um, but it's it's interesting because we seem to have have trouble making that pitch to millennials because most millennials won't even consider the insurance industry. I think it's like 4% or something have even considered going into the insurance industry. Um, when asked why they're not interested in it, the top response is that they have no interest in being associated with selling insurance. And it's like we're some kind of dirty business here. I mean, it's not like we're selling babies on the internet here. You know what I mean? We're we're helping people in a very in not just, I mean, that sounds so trite to just say helping, but you think about what insurance does is that we provide protection to people from absolute ruin after some of the worst experiences that they can have in their lives.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 25:45

That's not purpose. I have no idea what is. And so, you know, so you have this, these uh the marketing teams for these large insurance companies spend a lot of time running commercials that show that kind of impact, but for whatever reason, that same message isn't making it to candidates uh when we're uh trying to recruit candidates into the uh insurance industry. So, this is something that people should be very aware of is that there's that strong desire for purpose. We can provide that. And we just talked about the other thing that they like so much of this this ability to have uh experiences. Well, what better industry than the insurance industry where you can control so much of your time?

SPEAKER_02 26:24

Yeah. I I think one of the problems is that uh the the insurance business as a whole is treated as such a commodity that we're trying to save people money on.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 26:34

And it's like Yeah, and that's well, and agents are or potential candidates to become uh part of this workforce, they are consumers first, right? Everybody has to have it. So since 16 they've they've been a consumer and they've been served the message by the biggest spenders of marketing, and we know their names without saying them. One is a reptile and one is a lady with an apron, and and they spend billions, right? I think that State Farm may be number three on spend, but I mean those other two are probably quadruple the spend of State Farm.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

And very much like you say, with a message of reducing your costs. Right.

SPEAKER_05 27:16

All about cost.

unknown 27:17

Right.

SPEAKER_05 27:18

Now one of them has now flipped their message a little bit. I don't know if you saw that, saying that they've they're your advisor for years and years and years. It's kind of interesting. Right. They're changing their message now that they've bought market share, but um, we'll see what that does to pricing. You know, they they they've been running at not the best combined ratio for a long time. Hope you know, that's it's possible that maybe the uh the bargain rates aren't going to be there forever.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

Forever. Right. Well, yeah, and it's a shame that that it's been reduced to that because when you think about how just how important it is. And you know, I explained to my staff that one of one of the things about learning the insurance industry is that there is literally no mistake that you can make that can't have catastrophic, catastrophic consequences for somebody. So never pretend that you know something. If you don't know the answer, then tell the client that you'll call them back because there it's it's so critical that we get their coverage exactly right. And the idea that something that's so important can be reduced to price, or that people just get on the internet and do it themselves, you know, that as we require our people to have insurance licenses, and yet we let the general public simply go on a computer and choose what kind of coverage they want. That's that's never made any sense to me on how those two things are true at the same time.

SPEAKER_05 28:33

Right. If you could stack the coverages, like state minimum coverages next to the average cost of a hospital night stay. It's like, look, I mean, my kids were in a head-on, my son was overnight at the hospital, it was 50 grand.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_05 28:50

Right? And I mean, if they had state minimum, that's 15. Right there, 35,000. Where's the 35,000 come from? Right. Right? From your paycheck. That's insane. They don't know that, right? And so yeah, it's it's nuts. And that's that was almost three years ago, still nothing, still in litigation. Oh wow. Right? That's just a millionaire. Because it's it's it's less expensive for them to pay attorneys than it is to cop up the extra 35,000.

unknown 29:18

Right.

SPEAKER_05 29:19

Unless they lose, which they're gonna lose.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

Yeah, it's it's it's a shame. I mean, this it what we do in our profession is extremely important to people to get them through situations like that that can weigh on their mind and and just crush their spirits for, like you're saying, for years. And so, you know, that's that's something that we I believe need to do a better job in the industry of conveying to to new recruits that that's the value that we bring. We're not just saving people money. That's not what it's about. It's about actually protecting them.

SPEAKER_02 29:49

Nice. What other I mean, so that's one big question that a lot of people ask you. Um, what uh what else are you hearing from agents that um you you seem to repeat yourself about that that uh that's a that's a big message that you'd want to say?

SPEAKER_00 30:06

You know, I I think uh a lot of it comes um back to this idea on how do you get people, how do you motivate people? I mean, that's the that's the the uh the most common question that I'm asked. And my response to that is extremely unsatisfying because you can't motivate anybody. Uh motivation is it's really just a fancy word for wanting something. I mean, it comes from within them. You can't make them want something. So, what you can do is you can try to figure out ways that you can trigger their own innate uh motivations. And so money is one of the ways that you can do that because most people want to have some kind of financial security. But there's a whole host of other ways that you can get people to want to do more. Um, just to give you a couple of examples, people like to be trusted. You know, that's an intrinsic motivator that you want to be trusted. Frankly, we call this accountability. And accountability is often a use that we bludgeon people, you know, hold them accountable. That's what we always say, hold them accountable. I don't look at it that way. Accountability, true accountability, is when a person says, Hey, I do what I said I'm gonna do, I'm reliable. So when you're working with your staff and you're talking about motivating them, if you set it, you could set targets for them, that's perfectly appropriate. But you need to understand what you're doing when you set a target. You're saying, I expect you to hit this. If you work collaboratively with them and say, What do you think you can hit? What do you want to hit? What's your goal? And they make a commitment to that goal. Now they're saying, This is what I'm gonna do. Okay, that's accountability. They now want to do that because they want to live up to what they said they're gonna do. So you're not motivating them at that point, they're motivating themselves. They already have that motivation that they want to do what they said they're gonna do. So I stress that you need to work on these intrinsic motivators and make sure that those are possible in your office, um, that it's possible for you to capitalize on them. Uh, team-based uh activities and compensation plans are another great way that you can get um drive the quote unquote motivation of your team. That's because people want to not just belong to a group, but they want to matter to the group. If people depend on them, they don't want to let the team down. I mean, like even me, I'm a terrible golfer. If you put me on a uh on one of these golf things where you play the best ball, I'm out there trying my hardest because I want at least one of my strokes to count. You know, normally I don't care at all if I lose. But when there's other people involved, people will pick up their game. And so those are some various ways that you can get people to want to do more that are far more effective than simply dangling money or trying to come up with these sophisticated compensation plans. They don't necessarily cost you anything either. So I mean, these are free free methods that you can use to get better production out of people. So that's that's a lot of what we spend our time on, is working with these intrinsic motivators.

SPEAKER_02 33:00

I love that. Um we've heard that a lot too, um with a with a few uh people that work with millennials per se. But I think that we are it's so crazy that we've kind of gotten out of this culture of uh you know, businesses tell their employees what to do, you know, and and now it's like we're looking deeper into that, and people do want other things than just the monetary. I think a lot of agents are kind of stuck in the past where it's like, hey, I pay them, they gotta show up and do this work.

unknown 33:36

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

Yeah, but they don't have to show up and work for you. So you know, so you you you want to have more there. And the critical thing is I went through an evolution in my own agency, which is telling them what to do, like getting them to do what I want them to do. And so that's that's what I think that the way that the industry operates typically today is how do I get them to do what I want them to do? And I've worked on changing that paradigm too, how do I get them to want to do what I want them to do? And so that's a very different thing. And so there's there's various methods that you can uh that you can use, but a big part of it, I can tell you one of the simplest parts about it that that uh most agencies and insurance companies themselves do a poor job of is communicating information. So when you're talking about millennials, millennials are used to instant feedback. I mean, they put something on social media and they're getting responses to that in seconds. And yet, I talk to salespeople all the time who have absolutely no idea what they're gonna get paid until it shows up in their bank account. So, how do you expect people to make decisions that you know to do more when they have no idea what they've actually even done? And this is this is once again, it's pretty simple, um, but it's it's very rarely done. I mean, you people have no idea what they've sold or what they need to sell in order to hit the next level of this, out, or the other. So that ability to provide information, especially to millennials that are used to getting this constant feed of information is just critical.

SPEAKER_02 35:10

It is. So you you're so you're highly process oriented. You seem very mechanical. Like, do you think your tech background kind of got you there? Because I um everything that you're talking about is ways to create predictability, like predictability with your staff, predictability with your leads.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

Yes, absolutely. Um I'm not sure that it really comes so much for the, I think the technology part probably plays a role in that. But actually, when I started selling Kirby's, it was very much about we knew that if we knocked on 30 doors, it we would have roughly 10 conversations. The 10 conversations would lead to three presentations, and then three presentations would lead to one sale. And so pretty much every industry has some sequence like that one of events. Yep. Your key performance indicators up front that will predict how much you're gonna sell. And so when we would return from a trip and I would say, Oh, I had a terrible week, I didn't sell anything, they wouldn't ask how many did you sell? You know, they would ask how many doors did you? You know, they'd get right to the root of the problem. And so there's there's far too much placed on emphasis placed on lagging indicators of how much do they sell? You need to sell this and you sell that. Imagine if you're a coach uh for a football team and you just tell the team that they need to win more games. I mean, that's essentially what we're doing when we tell our team members that they need to sell a lot. So, you know, I just what I liked about that experience at Kirby was seeing that hey, it's these activities that lead to the sales. I cannot control the sales, I cannot just sell more. I can, however, knock more doors, which will lead to more conversations, more presentations, and ultimately more sales. So that's that's kind of been the I mean the foundation for a lot of what I've done uh is based on that concept.

SPEAKER_05 36:57

And it's it's so remarkable because everybody continues to look for the answer when the answer is right in front of them, you know, in the same like our key KPI is how many quotes did you do? Right? They I didn't close anything this week. Or last week was terrible and I was so busy. How many times were you on the phone doing a quote? Yeah, I don't know. You don't know, well, then that's why you didn't sell anything. Exactly. I mean, if you don't because we know what our closing percentage is, or or we even like you and I, everybody, uh you know, every agent has access to all this data, right? The market, the territory, the country of what the closing percentage is. You know, when people say, Oh, our rates are no good because I'm in Georgia, or our rates are no good because I'm in Oregon or whatever, it's like, well, your market has a closing percentage, right? It's if it's if it's no good, then it's eight percent. So work backwards. Work backwards. You will close eight percent, no matter what. And so if you're good, you'll close 12% because you're gonna close within the first standard deviation up from the average, right? I mean, it's just common sense.

SPEAKER_00 38:10

You're right. And so what uh what happens a lot of times is that people don't they don't track those leading indicator activities. So you know that the closing ratio is is 8%, and you can back your numbers up to see how many activities you need to do to generate those sales, but then you don't keep track of how many activities you're you're actually doing. So you know it's like running a race where you can't see the people next to you. Should you run faster? I mean, if so, how much faster? You know, you need to know where you are.

SPEAKER_05 38:36

Or they get backwards and they're like, oh, I need to make 600 dials, forget it, I'm done. Like it's not doable. It's like noable, figure out how to make 600 dials. Right. Do you need to hire somebody outsource some telemarketers? Do you need to get get more people in the in the office? What do you need to do? But if the number dictates you need to make 600 dials because you know what your contact percentage, you know, you know all these things, make 600 dials.

SPEAKER_00 38:59

That's exactly right. Either either that'll revise your goals or leave. That's what you know it's gonna take. So but you gotta face that. If anything else you're just wishing.

SPEAKER_02 39:08

Right. And I yeah, and I think that that's I mean, you hear I think that's the big issue here is you had a ton of agents that are stressed out because of these goals. I can't sell. I can't sell. It's like, okay, then you're hoping. Like the what all this stuff does is create um predictability. And the predictability is really the the freeing of the agent where you don't have to stress, you don't have to worry, yeah, your sales are gonna fluctuate based on those KPIs, and you make tweaks here and there, and that's what you should be doing and focused on. But like um when I got in this, that would that my first year was a nightmare. It was a nightmare because I just didn't get it. Like I was like, I can't sell anything, like I I can't figure it out. And I was so so stressed out, and I uh spent a lot of time and eventually a lot of money um trying to figure that out. How do I create that dependability? And everybody's like, I uh you know, I'm not gonna spend money on leads and uh all this other stuff that I'm doing. And it's like I'm trying to create, like, you're trying to be stress-free, and I am. We're both in the the trying to get the same goal accomplished. My way is that it's going to pay off for the rest of my career in the sense where I like the predictability is what sets you free, I feel. Oh, yeah. And gives you leverage.

SPEAKER_05 40:35

You get business leverage with your time, right? It should be able to be a machine that you don't need to be there. Right. If you don't need to be. I mean, if you want to be there and you want to do reviews or whatever, great, that's awesome. Do them. But you should be able to step away. Otherwise, business operator, right? And and operators get tired. You're gonna burn out.

SPEAKER_00 40:57

That's exactly right. Yeah. You replicate your skills among your team members. And then that's that's leverage. I mean, you can look at it as that you're maybe you're no longer doing it, but instead you've got five, ten, fifteen others who are doing it instead of just you doing it, you know, which provides more value.

SPEAKER_05 41:14

Yeah. Remember back Bobby Stocks, Jason? When we interviewed Bobby Stocks, he's like, look, I'm not the smartest guy in the room. I've hired, especially for the things I don't like to do. Like, I don't like to do HR. I better get somebody that's really good at HR and pay them well so they stay, because then I don't need to deal with it, right? And and market if you don't want to do marketing, fine. Get somebody that's really smart at marketing and they're gonna pay for themselves. Yeah. And you know, you trying to do it yourself is like owning a Lamborghini and trying to be the mechanic. Right. You cannot do it. You're not going to save yourself money by doing the oil change, right?

SPEAKER_04 41:51

You'll never be able to drive the car. Right. You're gonna destroy it. So so let's let's get real here.

SPEAKER_02 41:58

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 41:59

Yeah, totally agree.

SPEAKER_02 42:00

Seth, what what are some things that you're excited about uh within the industry, in within your own agency, maybe with the the tech side of it?

SPEAKER_00 42:09

Um so I I'm I'm I'm getting more and more excited as companies are getting better and better at providing data down to the agency level. And so um, you know, because oftentimes the the carriers, large captive companies, et cetera, they have boatloads and boatloads of information which make decisions, but it's often not passed down to the producer level. I mean, in our analysis, you know, at least 88%, if not more, of policies sold are by the subproducers, not by whoever's running the agency. And so, as more and more companies are getting data down to that level that can be manipulated by agencies to make good decisions, I think that that's that's a huge deal. Because, like, for instance, on the closing ratio that we talked about earlier, um, I think most companies have a pretty good idea of what their closing ratio is for auto insurance, maybe they do for fire, but when it starts getting to life insurance and health insurance, like I know in my particular network, nobody has any idea what their closing ratio on life insurance is. And so that because they don't have the tools in place to be able to track the quote versus the policy that was actually issued. And so running those numbers back, if you don't have that closing ratio, how do you do everything that we just talked about? And so, as companies are getting better and better at getting this data pushed down and having more real-time information uh integrated all the way down, that just uh lends itself to all kinds of incredible opportunities. Uh, so that's probably one of the things that gets me the most exciting.

SPEAKER_02 43:41

That's awesome. Um, what would you what would your number one piece of advice that you would give another agent out there that um might be struggling, or maybe the best piece of information another agent gave you?

SPEAKER_00 43:55

Yeah, that's that one's easy for me. I because I still think about it quite a bit. Um, and well, he he basically was the same guy that that uh was responsible for me getting into insurance, and he told me, he said, you're gonna get to the point, I guarantee this, where you're gonna want to quit. Where it's too much, you're gonna get negative, you're gonna feel like, you know what, I'm not cut out for this, and I'm gonna go do something else. When you get to that point, I want you to call me. And I did, I got to that point. I wanted to quit. I'd already started looking for other jobs and started applying, and I called him up and he talked me down and said, Hey, I was there too. Why do you think I told you this? You know, it's a matter of holding on, assuming that you are doing because this can happen to people who aren't necessarily failing. It's just that starting a new business is difficult, and it wears you down after a while. You're not as good at it, you don't quite know what you're doing, and you're running through money, your spouse starts getting upset because you're gone all the time. And at some point, you're gonna get to a place where it just seems easier to go do something else, and that's such a critical point. And so that's what I would tell them. When you get to that point, call them.

SPEAKER_05 45:03

So before we wrap, I'd I'd like I'd like you to just walk somebody through it. Was Racing Snail, and now it's remind me it's called my My Vation. My Vation. I like Racing Snail.

SPEAKER_00 45:17

What's that? You liked Racing Snail? You know, I like this name, it's great. Oh, it was when the name changed, it was it was controversial inside the company, I can tell you that. Because everybody likes that name Racing Snail.

SPEAKER_05 45:29

Nice. Well, so walk us through because I think that that that you created this as a result of or to solve the problem of not having enough visibility into the data.

SPEAKER_00 45:39

Exactly. Yeah, that's correct.

SPEAKER_05 45:41

And how does it help the agent? Does it help all agents, all captives, all independents?

SPEAKER_00 45:45

Can it so yeah, it um there we have two products now, and so one of them is uh is rate is Racing Snail, that's our core product. Um that one's very much a productivity management tool that enables agents to uh see who's selling what, for how much, where they're making money, where they're not. Um you can also do daily activity plans. When when I was talking about those elements that are associated with higher production, the the biggest um contributor to higher production are daily activity plans, believe it or not. Because it's a matter of making sure that you're doing build this business, building activities every single day that you need to. Um that particular application right now is um works really well for captive agencies and is being reconstructed uh for release later this year for the independent side of the business. Um but it works very, very well right now for captive agencies. We have like 33,000 users or something like that on that.

SPEAKER_01 46:43

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 46:44

Yeah, the other product is uh called Leaderboard Legends, and that's a gamification application that enables you to run competitions based on any metric that can be tracked. And so that one is completely agnostic. In fact, we're dealing with companies that aren't even in the insurance or financial services world. That tool is really cool because you can have competitions uh between team members in your agency, you could have your agency compete with another agency, you could have individuals inside your agency compete with individuals from another agency, it flashes on the screen with updates and and uh it provides a lot of fun while keeping people focused on those activities that are going to drive the business. So that one is ready to go for any type of insurance or financial services business.

SPEAKER_05 47:32

But how have how what kind of response have you seen with the people that are that are using it and how excited they get about the opportunity to have this gamification?

SPEAKER_00 47:40

Oh, it's it's crazy. I mean, it's it's been very rewarding. Um, we have two very, very large uh pilot companies that we're working with right now. Um, the first company had dictated that, or they had determined that if they could get a 5% lift in activities from using the product, they would consider that a home run. So right now we're tracking at about a 22% lift in activities over a course of almost a year. And so we're talking about a 400% greater uh lift than they were defining as a home run. And so yeah, so that's been pretty typical. The thing with gamification and running competitions, et cetera, is that you have to be a little more sophisticated than simply running a competition all the time because they'll lose their uh effectiveness over time. And so we've built a bunch of uh capabilities into the product where like you can create teams and and we have the ability to give out prizes during the course of the competition based upon uh completing certain activities, that sort of thing. All those things add up to uh create sustained lift over time. So that one, that one I got written up in Forbes, on Forbes.com for that product. And so it's been extremely gratifying.

SPEAKER_02 48:54

You know, a lot of fun. So we gotta we gotta get a link to that too. That's what I was gonna show.

SPEAKER_05 49:01

Yeah. Give us give us verbally, give us the link.

SPEAKER_00 49:04

Sure, it's www.myvation.com.

SPEAKER_05 49:09

How do we spell myvation?

SPEAKER_00 49:11

It's M as in Mouse, I, V is in Victor, A, T as in Tom, I, O, N as in Nancy.

SPEAKER_05 49:17

MyVation.com. And then your cell phone? I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_04 49:22

I was about to give it, you could have got it. No, no, no, no, no, no, don't do that. Oh, we're getting a lot of phone calls.

SPEAKER_05 49:27

Um edited. Yeah, no editing. No editing. We're bleeding editing. So um, well, well, great, man. Seth, so good to have you on. We really appreciate you coming on. We will put the link to um to my Vation so people can check that out. I'm sure there's demos and some stuff you can play around on the website. I've all uh I I'll admit that I've been on kind of looking at it right now as we were talking. But uh thank you, man.

SPEAKER_00 49:56

Well, thank you for having me. I've I really enjoyed this. I like the video format. I I have to admit, I like this quite a bit.

SPEAKER_02 50:03

We did it. We pulled it off. Yeah. We like it.

unknown 50:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:06

We like to be able to see people. Like it's like we're hanging out, you know? Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh, I really appreciate the opportunity. That's awesome. And I think honestly, I like all the stuff that you've given is very it's it's the the the difference between people that are successful and then people that aren't are stressed out and don't know what to do. And it's really that uh predictability factor and that um you know being numbers-oriented and and really setting up great systems.

SPEAKER_00 50:36

I totally agree. It boils down to something pretty simple.

SPEAKER_02 50:41

It is simple, but I guess it's hard to get us some some of us to do it, you know?

unknown 50:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:48

Awesome stuff. Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_00 50:50

All right, thank you guys. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 50:52

Have a good one. Me too.

SPEAKER_00 50:54

Thank you.