SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well hello there, Mr. Craig. Mailbag. Mailbag. So let's do this today. Let's get into the 2027, end of 2026, 2027 game plan for the agency. Okay. Because it just seems like, you know, since we started, dude, it's like there's higher goals, less commission, higher payroll, and it's super hard to reach people. It's even gotten harder to reach people. Yeah. And there's and it's there's so much required of us in the agency.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Have you seen on the phone when you call, like what comes up on the iPhone? Like when somebody, it's like it's getting crazy.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Yeah. It's getting crazy. Dude, I know, I know I've told you this before, but like, remember when I first started the agency? Like, we weren't talking at that point, but dude, like I've talked to a few agents recently that have have started agencies. And so I've kind of relived the first year in thought. And man, it was brutal. I remember watching the sunrise from my desk out here. And get that's how early I'd get to work. And then watching the sunset at my desk and thinking like I still have more hours of work to do.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

The sunrise coming up over Brookhurst.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Yes. And dude, I don't know, you probably did the same thing, but it's just, I mean, when you when you buy a book, you're making so many outbound dials to like talk to clients, make sure that they don't leave because there's a new agent. You know, you bought this expensive book. So it's kind of scary. So you're you're trying to retain people, but then you're also trying to sell new policies to make the carrier happy and to fill in the gap of of the uh what you're losing out of the agency, right? Yeah. And dude, I remember we could not sell more than a handful of policies a month. Like that was it. I I there was no other way. So very similar on my side. Yeah. And I bought in in the October of 2016. We finished the year. I mean, just by the skin of our teeth. And then next year, we were just, you know, humming along until the last three months. And that's when my district manager reached out and said, Hey, dude, if you sell a hundred policies, you're gonna bonus. Now, I went from working in at a at a bar, selling I was making like a hundred thousand dollars a year in cash. Cash money in tips. Yeah. That that first year, I made like sixty thousand dollars in the agency. And then you had to pay taxes on that. Right. Well, that's after taxes. Well, and of course you paid taxes on the cash too. I'm like, why did I buy this thing? You know what I mean? Like, this is insane that I just bought this thing for hundreds of thousands of dollars, three quarters of a million bucks, and now I'm making less.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Yeah, you thought you were gonna be like that meme with the stacks up against your ear, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:18

That's an old meme, Ms. Craig. Well, I'm an old Mr. Craig. So yeah, dude. And then so he was saying, like, you could make, I think it was like an $80,000 bonus. I'm like, that's a lot more money than I'm on mini doll year. Now we're talking. Now we are talking. And so I didn't know what to do. So I started, I knew another agent that was buying leads and stuff like that. So I kind of followed his blueprint. Me and another agent in the office just started dialing and making it happen. Yeah. And it was kind of exciting, kind of fun, but I mean, a ton of work. And by the end of December, December 31st, we did not hit 100. We were shy, maybe like 15 policies or something like that. But I remember making a little over what I made for the entire year, which was That's good.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Yeah. You're like, holy crap. I know. So 12 months was this. Yes. And then in a one month, I got more. Right.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Yeah. So I spent a whole year retaining, which I didn't get more from that. And then I spent the very end of the year selling a bunch of policies, and then I I made more from that in three months. So you had an $80,000 bonus? No, it was less than $80,000, but it was more than the $60,000 I got from the agency. Right. Because I didn't quite make the the 100 policies.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

You want to know it's something crazy, which I don't know if I've ever told you this. When I bought my agency in 2008, right after the stock market crashed. Well, that's a long time ago, Mr. Craig. I know. I mean, it's basically like is that BC? Yeah. Well, it is b before coronavirus, that's for sure. I I bought it right after the stock market crashed, and the the amount of premium that I was losing each month when I walked in the door was about $80,000. I mean, it was premium, not not real money, but I mean it was real money. I mean, that is that is like a that was back when it was a twelve I think it might have been twelve percent renewal.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Again, thinking, what did I just do?

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Yeah. I'm like, wait, that's eight thousand dollars less than it was, you know, a year ago. That's awesome. Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Yeah. Yeah, it's bananas, right? Banana sandwich. So I I remember making that money and then thinking, well, if I I gotta put this back in to make more money. You know? Because I th I thought I figured it out. I was like, okay, we got this. We did this at the end of the, at the end of the year. I think, I think we've we're figured figuring this thing out. So I hired three salespeople. Around February or March, we started, they started rolling in. And these were some good people. There was a there was one person from AAA. I think there was one person that he was really like, he had the sales chops, but he never did insurance. And then another person. And we just started buying leads and dialing, and they were really excited at first because I was heavily promoted. Listen, guys, dude, we did this thing at the end of the year and we're crushing it. And I'm gonna buy leads for you guys. It's not like other agencies, you know, like where they're I'm not gonna ask you for a hundred deck pages and all this stuff right off the rip. I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you guys leads. And so they were excited because, especially the one dude, because he's like, okay, well, if you're willing to invest in me, you know, I'll I'll hustle for you.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

So they were doing great the first month. It was exciting. The second month, it started flattening out a little bit because it was there was a lot of work. I mean, we were expecting, we were doing like 400 dials a day, right around 400 dials a day. And they were selling, but that second month, dude, they they started feeling the fatigue. And I started hearing chatter of like, well, this is this kind of sucks.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

This isn't what I signed up for. Yeah. Right when you were like, wow, this is what I signed up.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Like, you were actually happy. I was happy until the third month when the one dude that was from AAA started talking about how much better triple A was than doing this. No. Because they had the inbound calls, blah, blah, blah. Anyways, they all quit. Yeah, he infected everybody else. Yes. He infected everybody else. As has happened a couple times. And I've learned my lesson, but it has happened a couple times. But that was when I realized, like, yeah, we like I kind of figured it out, but there's a difference between doing it and having like a repeatable process. You know what I mean? Like, like I wanted to, like, like I figured it out for me, but if I can't get other agents to do it, then it's like it's pointless. Because I there's only eight hours I have in a day. Well, at the time, a lot more than that. But yeah, it was, it was, it was crazy. So I remember there was a conference that year.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

It's almost just that that it's almost like you have to imagine like, if I get hit by the bus, are they gonna be able to keep doing this?

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Right, right. I don't want to have to sit over somebody's shoulder. Because then it's like, it's like it, if that's the only way it can get done, it's not a real business. I I have a real job, but I, you know. Right. So, so there was a uh convention that year in Vegas, and I remember sitting out at the pool, we're all in the pool, and we were talking about the end of the year. And I was like, Yeah, dude, I bonus, I'm so excited. I was super worried about that. And it was it's cool because it's the most money I ever made. Because up to that point, 100,000 a year was the most that I made. And I said, It's just so funny that I made more money at the last three months than I did for the whole year. And I said, You know what's funny? What if, like, if I didn't service the book at all and we just did sales, I said, I think I would have made a lot more money. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:50

What'd they say?

SPEAKER_00 9:52

And they're like, yeah, that they kind of laughed. And I said, I wouldn't do that because that's ridiculous. And, you know, that's not the right thing to do for your current clients and stuff. But it made me think like, what's the swing on retention? And by the way, the people that call in every single day that are a pain in the butt is probably a small percentage of the book, like 2%. And those are the people you don't want, anyways, right? So it's like, we might lose those people, which good, because they're taking up like 90% of our time and resource. 80-20 rule on that one. Yeah, 100%. Look at all these numbers. 80-20. 80-20, 100%. No, not 100%, it's 80-20. So yeah, dude, that was that was interesting. And it really like I that stuck with me. And that's right around the time that that I remember talking to you. You had your sales program, and I'm trying to figure out this whole sales thing, you know? Yeah. And, you know, we were talking about tools to use, dialers, and all that stuff. And that's when we were talking about starting podcasts together. Or we were both doing podcasts, and then we was like, well, what if we combined them? But like that one question was the thing that you and I were talking about. Like the sales component is kind of everything if you want to make some real money in this game. You know? And that I remember that conversation led to what we've done now, which is 119, 165,467.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

I thought that was the amount of whiskey sours that you made at when you had your bar.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

That is exactly what it felt like when I was working at the bar. Yeah. But that, but that, but that conversation led to this number. And that's, dude, that's how many dials we've done in between our agencies and all the other agencies that we've that we've worked with. Isn't that crazy?

SPEAKER_01 11:50

It is crazy.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

That is a lot of dials.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

Yeah, when I every time, well, and it changes, it doesn't go lower, it goes up. But I mean, every time I every time I see it, I'm like, what the hell? That is crazy.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

That is crazy. I know you and I did a a presentation recently, and that we were kind of going through this this stuff, and that's how we actually got those numbers, which are accurate numbers. And then we were thinking about it, we're like, how much is that of dialing? And I remember you saying, like, we we figured it out was 10,833 months of somebody sitting in a seat dialing, stacked, stacked end to end for 903 years of a human on the phone.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

That is so what year would that bring us back to if they started dialing back in that year? I don't even know. It's a long time ago.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

It's crazy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

100.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Yeah, and we've worked with is it like over 600 agencies, I think? Yeah. Doing that. Yeah. So since that conversation that we had, we've also done, is it close to 900 podcast episodes? Yep. We got best in company. You, your, your agency and my agency have done tens of millions in sales just from that, like the the what we learned from that one conversation.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

Yeah, it's wild. Like, had we not talked, I may be still chasing my tail.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

And all those things that we that I just mentioned, it was like a testing ground, and it ended up becoming research for the book. We wrote a book, which is isn't that wild that we wrote a book. Dude, it took us two years to write the book before AI, and uh right around when we released it is when I think it was Chat GPT started to actually like, hey, this is this is a tool that you can use. It's pretty good. What's that? Pretty good. What's ChatGPT? Yeah. I'm just kidding. Dude, I'm I'm familiar. Yeah. Which, by the way, it was shocking at the agent convention when only a few hands went up when you asked.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

You say five, I say three, but I mean, in a room of a hundred, it's still pretty dang low. Like I looked at him and said, wait, how many of you have ever, ever gone to the website, chat, you know, to open AI, chat GBT, and just asked a question? Same hands went up. Yep. I mean 3% of the room. And I mean these were these were not, you know, people that were 103 years old. Yeah. I mean, they weren't in their 20s either. Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

That's for sure. But yeah. So that that book that we wrote was called Million Dollar Agency. Dude, I can't believe we it became a bestseller for a short period of time. But pretty cool. Pretty cool for a book that you and I wrote. By the way, I Amazon. Amazon dropped out of high school. But you did go to college. I did. I went back to college. But that's pretty crazy for somebody that dropped out of high school and then I mean you were you were smarter than me. I just, you know, like Yeah, you worked for financial services before your agency and all this stuff.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

My parents if I didn't do it.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Well. So that was million-dollar agency. So what we did in that is we separate what worked from why it worked, right? Like that was the big distinction we we needed to do. Not just like the winning play, like at the end of that first year. I I figured out the winning play, but I didn't know the winning playbook. Right. You know? And so like all those reps that you and I put in, that's what we put into the book. It became the playbook of what we learned.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

It's so you're saying it's kind of like before you could score one touchdown. But then you were able to score lots of touchdowns across lots of games. Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Yeah. So if you want to take that book, and this is what I think you and I both believe is that like if you take that whole book of what it's about and what it can do, it's it comes to this fundamental belief that we believe that great agencies don't find great salespeople, but they actually build them. Remember, remember you and I like trying to figure out how to find the best salespeople and what a pain in the butt that was? Mm-hmm. Because there's like what, like if you want to find the unicorn best salesperson, like it's like one out of a few hundred hires. A few thousand. Maybe. Yeah. And then you get them, and they're pretty dissatisfied at some point, right? They know that they can make hundreds of thousands of dollars somewhere else.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

It's like then you have to build the system around them.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Yes. Well, it's it, dude, your entire livelihood depends on them. Right. And then you're probably making exceptions for them, not for your other team, and then your other team is unhappy the way you're just treating them to compare.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

I had I had one guy that I and I won't say his name, but he would show up and like there his mirror of his car would be smashed. And you're like, what happened? He goes, Well, my my girlfriend got mad at me and she took a baseball bat to. I mean, it it's like that kind of stuff all the time. The ultimate drama.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

So crazy, dude. Yeah. And the things that we put up with with that unicorn, because we we know that to find that person is almost impossible. And without them, we're we we're kind of helpless, right? Yeah. That is not a good feeling to have. Yes. No, it's not. Yes, I agree. So, you know what? Let's do this. Let's have okay, let's we'll do this podcast episode and then we'll do two more after this. Or maybe one more. We'll see how much we can fit in. Yeah. But I would love to kind of get into the three things that good agencies miss that stop them from becoming great agencies. Because we work with both, right? We work with good agencies, we've worked with great agencies. Like, what are the outliers? What is the there's a good top five percent, 10% maybe, but probably more like five of the agencies that just dominate that we that we work with, right? Like, I'm talking crazy numbers, way crazier than even ours. But like, what are the things that the good agencies like they're good, but they just miss a few different things from becoming the great ones. And so I think there's like a missing piece behind almost every great producer. I think you know what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_02 19:26

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

And then, you know, now in this day with AI and everything else, what seemed to be really hard has actually gotten easier now.

unknown 19:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

You know, we've had that so many conversations lately, and now what we're doing with the old and the new, it seems really difficult. And we're actually like the the output of what we're doing is incredible. And it seems very difficult, but it actually got easier than what we were doing before with less output.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

You know, well, I mean, dude, we used to think that, like you said, we've worked with good and we've worked with great. I mean, I've been bad, and I've been good, and I've been great, and you know, every little piece in between as an agency.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. You know? Yeah, and then and then there's uh there's another thing that I want to get into, and you're gonna know what I'm talking about on this. It's the number that's that's right in front of us. Remember that number that when we figured it out, we're like, oh my gosh. Like you and I overlooked it, and almost every agency owner overlooks it. Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

Like yeah, I I mean, now it's part of our whole thing. It's it's like, I mean, I can't even understand running an agency without that. Yeah. And even when we were talking about it in Vegas, I thought to myself, uh man, I mean, by now everybody knows this stuff. And how many people came up to our little table and said, I can't believe you would have, you know, like they were they were going nuts. And I'm like, wow. Yeah. Wow. We are still helping people.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

I love it. And that that last one, we saved for last. Yeah, we do. Because what that number actually means, it really changes the economics of like everything, right? Makes it all possible. And what's crazy is like the tools that have actually made the process easier. You built some really cool stuff with AI.

SPEAKER_02 21:39

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Sure did. And we're using it to just get insight on the agency and and dial in the agency, no pun intended. But I think that we should give away those tools. Not sell 'em, yeah, but give them away.

unknown 21:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Gonna have to make a couple loom videos there, Mr. Jason. Yeah, we gotta do that. But yeah. I wanna give them away. They're fun.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

They're good stuff. Maybe, maybe the next the next three, I think it'll take at least two. But we we could get to into each one.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

Yeah, what is it? Yeah, we're like, we could let them well, they're gonna leave if we if we keep going. So we could do that, do three more episodes, do one for each of the three things. Yeah. And then it concentrates it.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

And and so the this is the idea. We're coming up to the end of 2026. Let's finish the year with a bang. Let's hit those bonuses, but let's let's set up our agencies for success in 2027. And let's give them all the tools that we're using, all of them, so that they can dominate as well. And we can do this together. Yeah. We love we love helping other agents and then but also hearing, like, you know, if if we did help in any way, like hearing the success stories, but like we have a school group, and that's SKOL.com. I think it's backslash Agent Elite? The elite? No, I think it's just Agent Elite. Will you Google that for me? Yeah, it's just Agent Elite. It is okay yeah, SKOOL.com backslash agent elite. We're gonna be in there. So we're gonna start giving this stuff away in the next few episodes, and we want you to start using the tools, but also we're we want you to use the tools and then come into the group and start helping each other use the tools and like, oh my gosh, I did this with it, or I was able to do this. Right. Because, dude, we're gonna grow, we're gonna dominate together. You know, rising tides lift all the boats, every single one of them, all the boats. But yeah, dude, I think this will be fun. I think 2027 is gonna be amazing. But here's the thing you gotta be all in. Yeah. That's just all in.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

I think that's like as we get into the three things, like, and we get into the four things that are part of the three things. A lot of things there. There's a lot of things. Thing one, thing two, thing three, and then miniature thing one, two, and three. But those those things, like I one of the reasons that the wheels were always wobbly on the on the cart over here for me was I'd focus on only one and didn't realize that there was this importance of marrying them all together. So it's like, well, that doesn't work. It's like, well, no, it doesn't if you don't also do that and this and this.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

But when you do all of them, yeah, it's like a it's like a band, right? Like if one of the members are offbeat, it ruins the whole song.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

That's what I was gonna say. I was gonna say a symphony. But I yeah. I love it. You know, if the one guy brings his clarinet and it's not in tune, then it's it has a weird, you know, squeak.

SPEAKER_00 25:21

You know what's so funny? Like I I was just talking to somebody about this, is that when we figure this out in these things, and when a lot of the agents that we work with that when we start working with them all have all the same story, which is I hit this rock bottom, I don't think there's any way out. I gotta do something to make it work, or I'm like toast, right? It's like the last resort, the last thing, or I'm dead. And then you you put everything into it because of that. Right. And then it's like boom, it it takes that, right? Because it's like that whole good to great story. You read that book, Good to Great? Yeah. No, the whole problem with good is that you can be complacent with good. You don't need to fix good. So it's good enough. It's good enough. And that's such a crap attitude. But if you're at the bottom of your the barrel and you're like, I'm literally like this is gonna, my business could be done. Like I could be, you know, I could lose it for my family and all that stuff. That creates a different environment. That creates a different kind of motivation.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Yeah. The feet to the fire.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Yeah. And that's where I was definitely there, dude. Like I I was I was having panic attacks because I was like, dude, I don't own a home, but I own an agency that's, you know, costs as much as a home and I'm making less money. I don't understand why why I did this.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

Well I owned a home and I owned an agency that costs as much as a home. And way more, actually. Yeah, way more than a home. More than mine.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

Ugh You did go big. All right. Big well, let's not bore everybody.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

I think that this will be fun to talk about because it's like, you know, we'll go and into all the different things that we uh so if they've never subscribed and they want to make sure they don't miss it, what should they do?

SPEAKER_00 27:37

I mean, dude, subscribe. But go to school. Join the group so we can interact and you can get the book and get all these tools that we're talking about. It's gonna be fun. It's gonna be fun. And I guarantee you this there is no way that if you don't implement one of these tools that we're about to give you, that it doesn't make your life extremely easier.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

Yeah. Even if you like hard things because you don't want to do the stuff to really blow up, but that's fine. If you just make your life easier.

SPEAKER_00 28:10

Or you yeah, keep doing hard. That's fine.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

All right. That's a mailbag, Mr.

SPEAKER_00 28:17

Craig.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

Yep. I almost said that's what she's.