Catching Up with Jason Cass - Part II

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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. Today we have kind of a crazy episode for you, in so much as it is the second part of a conversation that took place between me and Cass about a week ago. We recorded this episode, decided to break it up into two episodes, the first part of which was pushed out through Cass' podcast, so if you want to listen to the first half, go there. I highly recommend you do. Some of what we talk about here may be slightly out of context if you didn't listen to that episode, but if you didn't, I think you'll still enjoy this one, so it's the kind of continuation.

Really, I think I was pretty fired up. It was a Friday morning. There's so many things going on here at Rogue, and we're moving so fast, and it's such an exciting time that I think Cass just caught me on a weird day because I was talking fast, and I was talking loud, and we were talking some shit. So it's a really good conversation. Hopefully, you'll take something out of it.

I think at a minimum, you'll be entertained, and as always, when Cass and I get together, it's good times. That all being said, I want to give a big shout-out to our sponsor here at the show. That is Tarmika, T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. Don't call me Tarmika, Tarmika, T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. Making small commercial profitable by giving you multiple quotes on a risk.

It's like 12 questions you have to answer, and bam, you're getting quotes from Chubb, Harford, Liberty, Grange, Acuity. I mean, depending on who you're appointed with or whatever, you know, I'm with the Indium Network as well. So Indium is kind of a best-in-class network. I don't want to call them an aggregator because that's not really what they are, but network, we'll say. And so I get all the carriers that I have through Indium and all my directs quoted in one place through Tarmika.

It is allowing us to be the high-volume small business shop that I will describe to you in the episode you're about to hear. And that's only possible through T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com, Tarmika. And just a quick shout-out to Chris Langell and Advisor Revolved. Some of the things we're doing needed some web development, and he's the go-to guy. I mean, there just literally isn't another option.

I see these people post things in IOA and all that. Who should do my website? Chris Langell, Advisor Revolved. There's just no other option. There's just Chris Langell, Advisor Revolved.

Boom. Solution. Move on to the next decision. Don't belabor this one. Chris Langell, Advisor Revolved.com.

Go get your website. Move on to the next thing. Just don't make this more difficult than it needs to be. Chris Langell, Advisor Revolved. As always, I love you guys for listening to this show.

I love you for subscribing to this show. It means so much to me. I do this show because I just love sharing these conversations with you guys and hope it helps you move your business, your agency, make a new connection, put a new thought into your brain that could drive something fun, interesting, engaging in your agency, carrier, insure tech, whatever you do. I just love you for listening. All right.

Let's get on to the conversation. So I guess to kind of wrap up where we finished last time on your show is just there is a tremendous opportunity, not just in small business, but in basically every line of business. But agencies, agents, I don't care if today you're just, you know, look at what Todd Tams is doing up in Iowa, creating Mod Advisor and Direct Work Comp. And for agents who want to look into the marketplace, who want to invest a little time, energy, and capital, there is the ability to scale as far as you want to go. It's there.

And I do believe that window is closing. And the reason that I believe it's closing, and then I do want to get your, I've done a lot of talking so far, so I want to get your opinion. I like it so much, so much different perspective. Yeah, this window is going to close. And I don't mean close like, again, everyone goes apocalyptic.

Oh, are you telling us that we're going to go out of business? That's not what I'm saying. Not even close, right? Like no one is putting the Murray Group out of business. No one is putting, we referenced Matt Wood on your show.

No one's putting Matt Wood out of business, right? Like he's going to continue to grow. I'm saying for agents who want to rapidly scale into a certain niche or space or larger geographic region, it's there. That being said, there is coming a day when if you're not growing, you're going to be in trouble. Things are going to get harder, significantly harder.

Not impossible. You're not being put out of business. But they're going to become significantly harder. And if you haven't seen it already, then you're kind of, you're either operating in a very specific part of the country where it just hasn't gotten to you yet, or you're just not listening. Because carriers are moving from book of business size to growth rate when it comes to contingencies.

They are, they are, they only care about growth when it comes to new appointments. And new appointments are becoming harder and harder to get. I was very lucky because I have the platform that I have that I was able to, and the relationships, you know, decades worth of relationships. I was able to extend into certain places and set things up. And carriers were able, are willing to bet on me because I think they think like, this guy is so public, you know, he's not going to let this fail.

Because he doesn't, because he's a public guy, right? He's not, can't just like crawl into a hole. So I think that's, I think it's valid. I understand why they take that risk. And I, you know, I want to, for the carriers who, who, who did make investment, who were willing to invest in a relationship with me, I want to, I want to make good on that.

That being said, if you are not growing, you are going, life is going to become very hard. Because if you take, you know, take your independent agency hat off and walk into a carrier for a second. If you're sitting there looking at the marketplace and you have, you know, you have Amazon connecting with Next and just driving, what, millions of premium a week. They say Next is the most, that's the one that scares the most carriers out there. Yeah.

Yeah. That's, that's, I told you that. That is the, that is the number one. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. There. That's where I heard it. That is the, and I, that came off way, that came off wrong. No, no, no, maybe it was, I don't think you told me.

That is, that is a hundred percent. And, and it wasn't the Amazon deal. It was buying AP Indigo, right? So now Next can drive everything through Next that they want. Anything they don't want normally, right?

If you're a, if you're a, just a direct carrier with one brand, if it doesn't fit your appetite, oh, bummer. You know what I mean? Now with AP Indigo, they can take that. Anything they don't want to cherry pick themselves. They can write through Hartford Travelers, Liberty, Nationwide.

What's AP Indigo? AP Indigo is a digital agency. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Yeah.

So it's, so they, in large part, AP Indigo is, is, is in part how I'm, what I'm modeling rogue after. Like affinity based, you know, brokerage. And, you know, that, that deal for them was enormous. So now they can go back to Amazon and say, hey, you can send us anyone. If it doesn't fit Next, we now have a mechanism to write everything else that comes through that you send to us.

And if I'm a partner like Amazon, I'm going, wow, that's pretty freaking sweet. Because if I go D to C with any of the large nationals, they're only going to be able to write me with them. Now, secretively, we all know they have their own agencies on the side, but, but it's like, now you have two brands. You can literally as Next go to, to, to these enormous partners. If I, you know, I'm sure they are, so I don't want to act like, like I'm saying something they don't know, but like, they're most likely like banging the door down on Stripe for business and PayPal for business.

And, and all these other large B2B platform plays to say, you can go with them direct, or you can go with us and make sure every single one of your customers is monetized because we can write, but there's not a customer you can send us that we can't write. And that to me is a very, that's a very powerful value proposition. Wow. That is dude. That is, uh, I see it now.

And I think, um, wow. I think a lot of your listeners do as well, because like, I, I've never really heard you structure it out. Now, lately you and I will both admit over the last six to eight months, we really don't get to talk much. And that's why this conversation is awesome. And I think, and I hope you guys realize as listeners that this is genuine.

Like we're just really, I didn't really understand the total affinity. And I'm really glad I, I kind of asked some of the questions in that. So, um, and then when you think about your wife and Murray, you know, I'm thinking, God, this is like night and day from her, you know what I mean? So I do not think about this. It's not think about everyone.

Think about Kilgo. Think about her. Think about GNN. Those are just affinity partnerships and mortgage brokers. That's all it is.

This isn't new to the industry. It's new. No, it's not. It's, it's, it's, it's that, that it came, that it's, that's what you're thinking is pretty interesting. Yeah.

It's new to small. It's new to small business for sure. Right. It's new to small business, but it's not new to insurance. It's just, no one has ever had the mechanisms or built the backend process to be able to do this for small business.

We have PL Raider. We have, you know, whatever other Raiders exist that, you know, so we can. Tarmica. Tarmica hasn't launched PL yet, but, um, you know, eventually, eventually they will. Right.

So in, so in personal lines, the ability to take a lead, uh, comparatively rate it quickly, uh, you know, find it, you know, the whole deal, that process has been built out for years. And we're very comfortable with that process. I mean, essentially my wife is doing this in personal lines. That's what her eating is built on. Makes sense.

And all I'm saying is we've been, we've been eating shit for 17 months on purpose to build the process mechanisms, systems, et cetera, so that we can do this in small commercial. And now we're starting to execute on that. And this has got to be exciting explaining this to your team, right? I mean, because everybody's got to be bought in because this is a different model. Um, and, and I say every agency is actually of, uh, its own fingerprint, right?

Cause we're all unique, but yeah, so you've got your team built in on this. A lead comes in for personal lines. Who's doing that? Is that your CSR? How do you put it in New York?

Now, a lot of times I'll just send it to Lauren. I don't want to write personal lines. Now we will write personal lines. If like, uh, agents sometimes will refer us business. Like they're, Hey, my client is moving here.

We, we handle them with white gloves. So we're going to take care of them. We'll put them with good markets. We will rock. Cause we do write a lot of personal lines for our small business clients.

But part of like, I want to average three policies, a minimum for every one of our small business customers. And that can include personal lines, right? So, so if I get a small business owner at a wrap, you know, we're asking, Hey, can we take, you know, let, let, let us, let us handle your small, your personal lines as well. That way you only have one relationship. You only have to worry about calling one place, you know, and that kind of stuff.

So, and you're driving up your revenue per client as well, right? Yeah. So we think about it, you know, account-based revenue. So, you know, how, how do we, how do we push that number up and, you know, that's something David really explained to me. I know that seems so simple, but David really laid that out one time when he was trying to explain to me about how agents try to build P and L's when really you should be trying to build a balance sheet and how you build that balance sheet is by creating revenue, but not with so many clients.

You know what I mean? And so looking at, as you said, account-based revenue rather than just looking at policy revenue, right? Or policies in force, you know, that those things don't really tell us much because you could have a thousand policies in force, but they're all $300 motorcycle policies paying your agency 30 bucks, right? And so that just doesn't make sense. And you know, one of the things I realized, Hanley, I want to get your thought on this is I witnessed two agencies, one had two and a half million in revenue and the other had two and a half million in revenue.

And one of them had 18 people working in it. And the other one had two agency owner producers and they had like a service. They had like three other people that would help them. And it was, and they both were 2.5 million in revenue, right? And the only difference between one and the other, and as we're saying, listeners, one's not better than the other, but was that one was a generalist and one was a specialist in a niche.

Doesn't mean both of them are, you and I have good friends that are generalists, but I'm just saying, I don't think we necessarily realize that until later life. And I think that like what David teaches and what Charles Speck teaches was always held at like the higher, bigger broker level, right? That's what's so special about what these guys are doing is they're bringing that education down to the more main street agents. That's now allowing us to look at our books of books differently and say, wow, it's poor about the revenue than it is about trying to put more policies on. What's up guys.

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Let's get back to the episode. Yeah. Well, I'm of two minds. One, I would put Mick Hunt in that category as well as another guy who is teaching this methodology and doing a tremendous job. I got to spend some time this week with Mick Hunt.

And I just think the world of what Premier Strategy Box is doing. I mean, all the processes. I mean, I called him like a month ago. I think I said this on the show, one of the episodes. I'm not sure when it'll come out.

But I said, like, I called him a month ago and I was like, I need your help. Like, I'm dying. I'm just not good at documenting processes. And he's like, boop, we got it. So now we're a client of Premier Strategy Box.

And he is meeting with my people every week for an hour, you know, or someone from his team is. And like, here's your cancellation process. Here's this process. So like, you couple. And my reason for saying that is you couple what Charles Speck and Crothers with Killing Commercial and Mick and his producer guys with process that was never readily available, right?

Like, we all kept our processes like hidden in a locked box. That's right. Now it's like freaking Jenkins will just take his latest process and post it on the open web. You know what I mean? Like, and I think that's amazing.

So, you know, yeah. So those kinds of things together, I think are allowing any agency of any size to compete at any level. Now, what I will say is there was a time when I was like, oh man, that five person agency, that must be amazing. You know what I mean? They have the same revenue.

I would say in this, maybe it will sound super fluffy, but you know, I really like working with smaller accounts. You know, like I talk to people and they've just never been given real education on the business. You know, middle market people, I know Dave would say a lot of middle market people aren't given real education too. But I'd say in general, they tend to be a more sophisticated buyer that, you know, when you're writing a $50,000 check or $100,000 check for one policy, you tend to question that a little more, right? But, you know, I'm working with a guy who's, does vegan mozzarella stick manufacturing.

It's like a $12,000 account. He's literally never had anyone walk into his policy ever. Hey, what's your product? You don't have product spoilage, bro. What the, it's product spoilage.

Hey man, like you got, you got $50,000 worth of stuff on a truck that you're sending out to one of these warehouses and that truck breaks down, it all unfreezes and is gone. What happens? You just got to eat that 50 grand? Oh, no, I don't want that. That could happen.

Well, no shit, it could happen. We need to book, it's, it's a $70 endorsement, right? Like, but this is the kind of stuff that, you know, I think we get so caught up. And again, I, this is not a knock on middle market. I just think we either want to just treat these people like they're, let's get them in, get them out as fast as they can, or we want to spend, we want to spend time on the middle market stuff.

And what I'm saying is if I can, if we can build the processes to where my people aren't wasting time on transactional shit that eat, they can spend more time making that $12,000 client feel like a middle market client. And that's a win for me. I just helped the small business owner better protect his, his, you know, the guy, his business in this particular case. And that makes me feel good because I, I know, and this isn't a knock on anyone listening, but I know most agents wouldn't spend the time with that guy. They would take what he had.

They would give it to their account manager. The account manager would quote apples to apples. They would try to get a better price and they would go back to the guy and say, Hey, look, I can send you, save you $700. And he still wouldn't have product spoilage coverage. And.

And you made $1,500 in commission is what agents are thinking right now. And what they're wrong is, is that guy's going to stay on the books for 10 to 15 years. That's a 15 to $20,000 client. When Walmart makes projections that they have to live up to, which helps their stock go up and down, they're projecting out based on prior numbers. We can do that as business owners.

And I think when you say long-term of who you can be, I think people don't realize it's those type of people who are going to stay with you and build that base. That's going to help you project that. And it's all because you tried to give them that one coverage. And I love what you just said. Somebody else would have come along and tried to save him $700 and he still wouldn't have had the coverage.

Yeah. Oh shit. So well said, dude. So well said. It's in, in, in the good news is, you know, if you look into now, granted, I think I am on record as saying as in a general sense, our, the agency management ecosystem is, is a, is a travesty of what we're given, but you know, I'm working towards Salesforce and I believe you need to have a system of that flexibility and caliber to track these kinds of things.

Right? Like I want to be able to track, did you offer product? Did you offer this coverage? Right? Cause eventually I'm going to have 20 guys spread out, you know, like Matt Jagger, my producer, he lives in Chicago.

Yeah. The woman that I'm looking to hire, she lives in Florida. So there's literally going to be, I'm going to have four people in the States. Two of them are going to live in, in the Albany area. One will be in Illinois.

I mean, I don't know if I'm going to hire this woman or not. I think I might. One's in the Philippines. One's in the Philippines. Right.

So like, so like to me, I don't care where you live. You know, I had this, I was at, I was at a thing this week, um, for, for Indium, um, the network that I'm a part of that I absolutely love and watch out because things are happening. But, um, um, but I'm very proud to be part of it. We're having a conversation. We're talking about Facebook.

Someone said, so the, uh, Indium doesn't today have like a group that you, like a group function that you can go to and chat and talk about stuff and bitch about things. You know what I mean? Like we don't have that. And I said, well, let's do it on Facebook. And someone was like, well, you know, what if your network blocks Facebook?

And I'm like, who the fuck is blocking Facebook? Like, are we still doing that? They're like, whoa, I don't want my people on Facebook. I go, bro, they all have a freaking phone right next to their desk with Facebook on it. Like, what do you think they're doing?

Like, you know what I mean? And I, and I said it in a slightly nicer way, but I was flabbergasted. I go, are we really, we're really blocking websites in 2021? Like, are we still doing that? Like you said, even if they didn't have the phone, I still wouldn't block it.

But as you said, you can block whatever you want. They have a damn phone. So then what? They got to put their phone in a, in a lockbox. Like how about we just trust our people and judge them on performance, right?

Like if Sally's not getting her work done, maybe we need to have a tough talk with Sally. Hey Sally, I can give a shit if you spent 10 hours on Facebook, if you got all your work done, but you're not. So take a hike. And, you know, and I just, I don't understand that. But again, I'm a different kind of guy.

I completely get that. I think differently about it. I just, I just, you know, it's just funny to me, but, um, I don't know how we got to that point, but, but, uh, you were talking about being an Indian and there was some guy you had met, you said you don't care where they live and then, yeah, I don't care where they live. So, so it's kind of like, how can I, how can I worry about things like blocking Facebook if I don't care where they live? So, so to me, you know, as I build out this team and, and as I start to, you know, if I may have people across the entire country, right, all I care about is that you buy into our methodology and that you want to work hard, right?

That you're willing to say, I want to help small, I believe, you know, look, I'm a registered Republican. I'm a liberal, you know, probably more of a libertarian people. Anyone who listens to this show long enough knows where my political views are. I, I think small business is the bedrock of our country and we have to at least let them on a level playing field. And what we do today, when we focus primarily on, and this is not a knock, but when we give a plus platinum double fucking service to middle market and treat small business owners like a bunch of jackasses who aren't willing to pay what we're essentially saying, and then they'll bitch about the government giving tax breaks to Amazon.

I think you're a fucking hypocrite. And it's like, you know what I mean? Like that to me, you know, and I'm not saying that anyone who focuses on the middle market doesn't do that. I'm saying in jet, cause I think that if they're those same humans who focus on middle market and knowing specifically, I don't want anyone in killing commercial takes the wrong way. I think if those individuals were interested in small business, they would deliver the same level of quality.

I'm saying as an industry, we look at big accounts and we're like, let's do everything we can. And for a smaller account, we're like F them, get them in, get them out. They're unprofitable. And that breaks me. Like I grew up in a small town.

I, you know, small business is important to me. Like I, I look at my communities, I look at our main streets and I'm like, our, I think that we as a society give lip service to small business and then do everything we can to, you know, fillet the, the large businesses in our company or in our country. And I'm not against big business. I just think if we can give, let them all operate on the same field and, and, and what's going to, you're going to have winners and losers and all the cases and it's all good. But I just feel very passionate about the fact that there is a tremendous opportunity in our industry to serve small business.

You need to have the systems in process in place, things like Salesforce, you know, these are big investments, but they're important. And, um, I think we can actually track better coverage. We can track retention better. I mean, my biggest concern is next figures out retention. Next figures out retention.

We're all screwed. So, so that's, what's so awesome, dude. You got to go back loyal, you know, and you're, this is our loyal listeners, but your listeners have got to go back and listen to our prior podcasts. And the reason is Hanley is I want you to wrap this up, but dude, it, it just, it's a, it's a, uh, uh, the, where you've come from, how you've progressed, your mind is thinking in advanced levels and in different scales. Good for you, man.

This is your show. But, uh, if you, if you like this listeners, please go back to, uh, listen to mine, uh, which was part one, cause it was just more of getting to know Hanley more. So I, I apologize, man. I must be kind of fired up. I got eight hours of sleep last night, so I'm kind of jacked up this morning, but, um, yeah, so we'll, let's do this again.

Let's do another two-parter except flip it. So maybe like in a month, we'll do another two-parter, we'll flip it and I'll do 5% talking and you can do 95%. Well, we, we did that earlier and what we got to do is actually talk about 2021 second half. You know, we can talk about any of this stuff that you started with, but, uh, but I guess maybe it did. I mean, Hey, you look into the way that I'm thinking, you know, what I think is coming.

I mean, it's totally obvious. So I got to jump to another thing, but, but I will say just in closing this out and I'll have said this in the intro to the episode as well, go back, listen to the first episode. I think this will all make sense. Um, it's, you know, agency, intelligence, podcast network. You probably all subscribe to it anyways, but make sure you go listen to the first part.

Um, dude, I, I didn't expect this to go where it went, but, uh, as always, I appreciate it, man. That's what it is. You get genuine. Hey, brain share. Let's do it.

Let's go. All right. Later. Close twice as many deals by this time next week. Sound impossible.

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