SPEAKER_00 0:00

You look great, Mr. Craig. I'm gonna put on these $1 specials. Oh, okay. Got something in the mailbag.

SPEAKER_01 0:06

No god, no light, no fine, no cat, thank you, what do you think of that?

SPEAKER_00 0:19

I think that it is an awfully strange sounding term. All right, here's the thing, Craig. I can usually tell when an insurance agency is about to start missing its numbers before the numbers actually fall. What? How can you do that? Are you dosedamos? It's not leads, it's not producers, and it's usually not the market. There's one thing that starts disappearing first, and when it does, everything else slows down, starts to come apart. Sounds like a great time to roll the title. Yeah. And I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you what it is, but I guarantee you that most agency owners that might be listening either aren't doing it or aren't doing it enough. If if it's what I think it is, then I'm pretty sure I didn't do it enough at one point. I know I didn't do it enough. And it's funny because every time you and I have talked to an agency owner, this always comes up. And it's like that they never think that this is the like thing, the glue, the the mechanism that holds it all together.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Yeah. And I know what it is. It's taking the team out and playing croquet. Croquet? I can't do that here because there's not much grass.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

And then that's a mailbag. Yeah. Yeah, man. It's incredible the lack of consistency that happens.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

You're driving me crazy. I think I'm right.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Yeah. And we've talked about this a lot in the past too. The the whole it's like a roller coaster, right? Like things will be going good, then they're going terrible. And it's like you can never predict anything. You're running around and you're constantly kind of inspecting things.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

I mean, it can happen like that even when you have everything all dialed in.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Yes. So so what is it that we're talking about, Mr. Craig? Well, should I say it?

SPEAKER_01 2:03

I think you should. Okay, I guess croquet. It's not that. It's not croquet. Is it watching family feud together? I think that that's a great team building exercise.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Oh, I'm on the right track then. It's meetings, isn't it? That is true, Mr. Craig. Uh-huh. Yeah. It's, and it's so funny. It's like the last thing you think that's that important. And it's the first thing that you think when the daily life of the agency owner, or just being in the agency, all the crazy stuff that's going on. I know crazy stuff is going on, and you're in my world right now. So it's easy to, you know, say, you know what? I'm not going to make the meeting today.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Yeah. Well, and I mean, this is something we've talked about forever. I think six, seven years we've talked about this and and pounded it.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Did you just say six, seven? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Six, seven. Like the height are we?

SPEAKER_00 2:54

We're way past that, huh? Is it? Seven, eight. Yeah. I don't know. Sorry. Stupid.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Six, seven. Hey! What are you supposed to do? I don't even know what it means. I don't understand. I don't think anyone does. That's the so you're just supposed to get all excited. I guess. Okay. Well, if you're listening and you hear six, seven. Okay. So, yeah, it it, I mean, we've been doing that, we've been talking about it a long time. And no matter how long we've talked about, we wrote about it in the book. We wrote it, we we've done multiple podcasts about it. But it's because no matter how many times we talk about it and how many times we bring it up, without a doubt, running into an agent, talking to them and asking them, you know, what do you do in your agency? What are the kind of things that that really make things work? And if they're struggling or they're crushing it or whatever, it's one of those things they don't want to talk about, right? Or they don't want to admit that they haven't been doing. Right. Or they lie about it. Right. Oh, yeah, we're doing it. Oh, yeah, yeah, most couple times a week. When you start getting a couple or a few in there, then you know that it's the BS meter goes off.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Yeah. It dude, it's like you can tell the success of an agency owner based on how the willingness to be uncomfortable. Like the whole just humans in general. It's oh, you're you're are you cracking open a monster down there? That's cool. There we go. Sponsored by Monster. I think that I'm gonna get just a giant ice chest so I can reach my hand in there and it makes that. And then you can sit and you can have like turn your seat into a toilet too, and then you never even have to leave. Never. Never leave. All right. Gosh, that sidetracked me.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Maybe we should have a meeting about it. We should. That's not the kind of meeting that you want to have. And I think that that's why everybody loses their minds when they think about a meeting, right? Because in the in the non-insurance world, or a lot of times even in this world, meetings, dude, they're terrible. Right. Right. It's like, okay, we don't want it to be boring. We don't want it to be long, because long doesn't mean more effective, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Right. But where I was going where I was going with that was the uncomfortability, right? Like how how much are you willing to be in uncomfortable situations? So the reason why I think meetings are uncomfortable, excuse me, is you got to hold each other accountable. Part of the meeting is not like if you're just going into a meeting and you're going to just talk and you ramble on and you talk about puppy dogs and ice cream for 20, 30 minutes, it's a waste of time. Excuse me. You got to have a point. And like the point of the meeting is simple. Did you like, did we hit our targets yesterday? What are our targets today? And if we didn't hit them yesterday, what were the roadblocks and how do we remove the friction? So I it's it's super simple. It's like, let's get into that. And most of the time when we're talking about that, it's uncomfortable because Sally didn't hit her numbers and you don't necessarily you're like, oh yeah, you, you know, she didn't hit her numbers and her talk time was low. And, you know, I really didn't want to bring it up because she was kind of in a bad like you're you almost like want to avoid that conversation. You know what I mean? Because it's like a little uncomfortable. But the problem is the more we avoid the conversation, the harder it is to have the conversation. And it's like we need to do that. Like, that's the whole point. Like, if we can keep that going every single day, people know exactly what their targets are, what why they missed their targets yesterday, or where they succeeded. And then what are we gonna do today to to achieve them? Or what's the problem? Like, dude, you could like I I was telling you with the meeting with uh somebody in my agency, it was like I needed to talk to them. Yeah. You know what I mean? I knew something was up. Yeah. Just from the meeting. If I didn't have that meeting, I wouldn't know. Yeah. You know what I mean? So it's like it's it is the most important thing that you can do or have a team member do it or whatever. But like every single day, get on meetings, get clear about what we're doing, where we're going, what our numbers are, you know, roadblocks, how we can achieve them, and and just make sure that the that the machine's running. You you can't avoid that. And if you do avoid that, what happens? Well, it's the second law of thermodynamics.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Which is entropy. That's right. It starts under entropy means in case you don't know this, Mr. Jason. I'd love to things are gonna, if you leave it alone, it's just gonna decay. And that's simple, simplified, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:23

It's just things are going to go to a state of disorder. Yep. And they do. Everybody wants to set it and forget it. But dude, it doesn't work that way. Yeah. W what you need to set it and forget it is set the meeting and forget the excuses. Just do it. Ooh, look at you. Yeah. And I'm telling you, like, even just like there needs to be that, like, for the engine of the business, the sales team, like the the the ones that are carrying the ball, like it just needs to happen daily, right? And it has to. No matter what, it has to happen. 15 minutes is fine. It's the best 15 minutes that you'll spend because you'll continue. It's it's kind of like a flywheel, you know? Like once you get the thing spinning, it's easy to keep it going. It's hard to start it if you haven't done it in a while.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

Yeah, you gotta get it up to momentum speed, right? Momentum. It is, it's this giant. Like I always imagine it as it's a giant wheel that's made out of concrete. And you start to try to push it, and it's like, well, move. Come on, guys, let's all get, you know, and you all get up there and you start pushing it, and it starts just wiggling. Yeah, it's like that big ball at the beginning of Indiana Jones, the first one. Not it, not the other ones, right? I mean, we got to talk the original, but you know, he's running out of that cave, that ball comes down. The only reason it's rolling fast is because it's going downhill, and we're not going downhill around here.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Yeah, man. It's so important that like I just went on a three-week vacation in the uh Eastern Sierras. Beautiful. It's my favorite. We had Starlink, and I just made sure to check in and and I was on a couple meetings, and I was like, you know what? 30 minutes a week in meetings, that's it. Just I came to a couple of the meetings that were already happening daily, and it just it really keeps things going.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

Yeah, you know what I mean? Instead of completely checking out. I I don't mind the completely checking out, but like we have a pretty solid process. Like if you are gonna completely check out, or I mean, you and I both go on, we're away a lot. So, like, how do you continue this? So here's here's a little uh a little value nugget. Can I drop a nug? Do it. All right. So no all of our teams have Zoom meetings every single day, right? And we use something called fathom.video that goes into the meeting and is a note taker. So it records the meeting, records the notes it with AI. And then what you can do is you can set up a an AI agent to review the notes, tell you exactly how people feel, where things might be going wrong, some tips, whatever, right? So then that AI agent reviews the notes, and then you get a little synopsis of how your team feels.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

You do that every single day, and you're going to those are you're gonna be able to see the leading indicators. We've talked about this before, leading versus lagging indicators. What's a lagging indicator? We're not we didn't hit our numbers for the for the month, right? That's a lagging, because that's afterwards. But the leading ones, yeah. And the it's the people that run the process. So we want to know how they feel. And and sometimes people don't aren't a hundred percent transparent with how they feel. So sometimes sometimes what's that? Sometimes. Sometimes they just act a little differently, you know? So that's where the AI could come in and help and help you spot some stuff. And you know, you you can have a conversation with Sam. If Sam's not feeling great, I'm like, seems like you're a little down, buddy. Yeah, get Sam back up and running.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Yeah, I think that like because as unemotional as we may try to be, like there's always gonna be some emotional element, right? And what it does is take all the emotion out of it. And it can read it, right? It can find it. It's all about patterns. I mean, it's all about patterns. And you want to take you want me to kick it up a notch, Mr. Jason? Oh. You know, I love to make it complex. Just kick it. Okay. So you take each one of those transcripts, put the whole thing into a cell on a Google Sheet, and then have your Claude or your Chat GPT, whatever you're using, have it read, you know, as if you do that, when you do them every day as you should, then you have a transcript. Every day, boom, boom, boom, down the cell column. Yes. And now it's now it's gonna read it because it can read how fast, right? It read our book in in two seconds, right? So like it can read that and create its own pattern off of it. Like, seems like Jimmy has started to not be as active in the meeting. Right. What's going on there? Seems like, you know, when you're talking about Joe and his results, he gets all excited, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? Like it's gonna find things that were not that that you don't, and it's gonna do it over time. It doesn't think in visuals like we do, but it could take all of that, turn it into visuals, which is remarkable.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Yep. 100%.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Set yourself up a little skill.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Yeah. I do that. I drop it into I I I do like a I know I use Claude for most stuff, but I'll I'll have like a Chad GPT project. It's gotten better, dude.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Has it? Yeah, I know those coming out.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Another new one. I know, it's not yeah. Anyways, so if you keep dropping it in that project, it it will do the same thing over time. It'll show you, you can, you know, see the where it's like, let me know where the patterns, you know. Sure. Where people are going headed. But yeah, man, meetings. Meetings is so important. And we we like I tell my office manager all the time, like, like this is it seems so unimportant, but it's the wisest 15 minutes of your day because you can uncover stuff. You can have people bring stuff to the meeting, and they know that like, like, let's say they have a question one day and they're like, I can just bring it to the meeting tomorrow. You know what I mean? It's like that one time that's like you're constantly checking in and it saves all the one off, hey, do you have a minute kind of stuff too? Yep. Yep. Because Craig, do you have a minute? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Yeah, let's sit down and let's do a bit of. I mean, any time that you or I call each other, it's like you see it, you're like, well, here goes an hour, right? Like what happens every time. And so, you know, take that amongst the amongst all the employees. Sure, it's not gonna be an hour, could be 1520. And all of a sudden you do that with eight people every day. That's what happened to your day. Yeah. Knock it out, compress it into 15 minutes. And the other thing is just that constant check-in. You don't get surprises, right? Because you can read the room, you see what's going on. Why is why's Janie all pouty today? Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

And on the positive, I don't know who it was, but but one of them was pouty. And on the positive end of that, it grows, right? Like those are the next, like you could see all the bad stuff, but also there's a lot of good stuff. Like some of the people that are rising to the top, well, they like the recognition. They want to be a part of those meetings because they're doing good and they'll be recognized for the good stuff that they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

So it really separates it, right? Like Janie's falling off, but then Sam's like doing well and he's like super stoked because he knows that you're gonna be like, dude, Sam's crushing it in the next meeting. Like he wants that recognition.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

And talk about why he's crushing it. Now Janie picks something up from Sam talking about it, and all of a sudden Janie's doing better, right? Yeah. And it's it again, nothing's an immediate fix. It's kind of like buying leads. So you buy the leads, you call them, they don't answer the first day. You don't sell them the first day. I mean, statistically, it's all it's very, very, very, very low that that's gonna happen. That you make contact and sell on the first day. Not gonna happen, right? But once you understand that and you keep working that thing, same thing. Meeting today, tomorrow, the next day, the day after, the day after, the day after, the week after, the month after. Keep going, things change. 100%.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

It's like working out. It's like working out. If you do it consistently, things things happen. When you don't do it consistently, things don't really happen. You know, you get sore a lot and you never lose weight or gain muscle. It's just you're just sore. Now you really don't want to go to the gym.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Like me. And that's and that's a male bag. And that was Janie from Tuscaloosa. Thank you. Drop that in the bag. All right. Don't forget to subscribe.