Chris Cline on Death by Overcomplicating Insurance

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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. We have an absolutely tremendous episode for you, a conversation with Chris Klein, the Executive Director of ACT, the Agents' Council for Technology, and all around, absolutely tremendous dude. One of my, just, not just my favorite people in the industry, but one of my favorite people in life. Chris and I have just wonderful conversations about all different kinds of topics all the time, most of which have nothing to do with insurance. But being that Chris's background and mine are so different, but we think very much alike, we always have these dynamic conversations about what's going on in our space and success and what it looks like and how we, not just the very kind of shallow tactical things, but the deep strategic thoughts, conversations, cultural issues inside of businesses, leadership, the dynamics of personal behavior, they're just always awesome conversations that I enjoy.

And this conversation, which I will say, admittedly, starts just a little bit slow as we kind of get into the meat and potatoes. But once we do, I think you're absolutely going to love it. We talk about why we are overcomplicating insurance and why now more than ever is a time to simplify, to dial in, to really attack advanced leadership tactics, why we have to be leaders both of ourselves and of our businesses. And whether you are an actual leader in your business or not, you are a leader of your own career, of your own life, of your family. And it's time to think about these things in a deeper way.

And we talk a lot about that. I think you're absolutely going to love this episode. I'd also encourage you to stick around because at the end, Chris has released his very first single. Chris is a musician, an artist, released his very first single. And you'll get to listen to that at the end of the show.

You can also find it on YouTube. You can find it on Spotify, Apple, iTunes, all the places where music is. But instead of the normal outro, you're going to hear Chris's new song, Let's Go For A Ride. So with that, let's get on to Chris. One quick thing before we get there.

Guys, I'm kind of relaunching a branded newsletter that I had for a while and set away. We're relaunching Finding Peak. Finding Peak was a concept around professional development, growth, personal development, how to be kind of whatever it looks like particularly to us, the best version of us that we can possibly be. And, you know, things that I struggle with, but I'm, you know, things that have been successful, things I struggle with, things that I learn. I want to share these topics with you because the way I operate is always trying to iterate that James Altucher kind of 1% better, kind of choose yourself mentality.

I'm always trying to find little tips, little hacks. I'm always developing different mentalities. I'm always trying to mature into what can help me be the most successful version of me and be the most successful version of me as a dad, as me as a partner, me as a leader, me as a salesperson, me as a insert, you know, baseball coach, all these things. And I want to continue to share that journey with you. Starting with Rogue, starting Rogue two years ago, two and a half years ago now, you know, I just didn't have the time for it.

But as we evolve as a business, I'm starting to have these moments where I can create a little more, share some of these experiences with you guys, and hopefully help both, you know, you listeners to this show, members of our industry, members of the SIA ecosystem and network of families. It's not obviously specific to SIA, but in general, I want to help the people in our world, in our space who think the way that we do, you know, you being the listeners and me, I want to help them and share some of these stories and stuff. And if you're interested in that, this is a long-winded way to say, if you're interested in any of that, if it sounds interesting, if you want to receive these newsletters as they come out, go to findingpeak.com. So that's findingpeak, F-I-N-D-I-N-G-P-E-A-K.com. Go to findingpeak.com.

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Let's get on to one of my absolute favorites, Chris Klein. Dude. Captain, man. MASH reruns. What?

MASH reruns. You going creeper on me? You going no video or what? Oh, I'm not on video. No, not intended.

Oh, there he is. What's up, dude? This is it. This is it? This is the deal?

This is the one. Miserable rainy weather out there. And I don't know. It's just that kind of year. At least it's not freezing out.

It is not freezing here. It's like 60. It is also rainy, but it's November 1st, and it's 60 degrees out. It's crazy. I'll take it.

Yeah, I was looking back. You know, I guess that's one of the weird things about, like, these memories that pop up in social media. Like, we've had some pretty cold days, like, by now in recent years. So it's all the running I'm trying to get done. Like, it's been good.

Yeah. I mean, so last night was obviously Halloween, and my kids are still young enough that they do Halloween. I don't know if your son does, but, yeah, like, last year, trick-or-treating, you know, we walk with the same families every year. And last year, trick-or-treating, we were, like, talking about how we only made it to this one corner of the neighborhood because it was so cold and windy, and everyone was so miserable that, like, we kind of looked around the bend at the house, and we're like, let's just head back. And, you know, and this year, we went farther down the neighborhood just because, you know, it was beautiful out, and, you know, so whatever.

So it's just, it is, it is interesting, and this probably seems trivial to start a podcast talking about this, but, like, it is interesting how much the weather impacts our life, you know? It does. Yeah, one of my favorite quotes is from Nuka Lelouch in the movie Bull Durham, and, you know, the woman at the very end is asking him, he's finally in the big leagues, and the woman is at, he's, like, being interviewed or whatever, and he's ripping off all these cliches and whatever, that Crash Davis had taught him, and at the end, he says one that Crash hadn't, he basically runs through all these cliches that Crash had taught him on the bus when they were in the minors. And then there's one that Crash may have taught him, you don't know, but he hadn't said it on the bus, which is, baseball's a great game. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes it rains.

Think about it. And, you know, is, again, it's a silly movie, and it's a silly quote at the end of a movie, but that quote is always stuck in my mind for a couple things, not because of the weather aspect, but because basically what it says is, if you love what you do, it's just another day. It's just, you know what I mean? You show up, you play baseball every day, that's what you do. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes it rains, but you play baseball every day, that's what you do.

And I think that, I don't know why, but that is always stuck in my head. Well, think about like that when, and I don't know, to go just dive deep into something somewhat esoteric, right? I mean, when you were a kid, like, playing Little League or whatever, like, the most heartbreaking thing in the world was a rainout. Yeah. Like, you would have played in the rain and the mud and everything else, and because you loved what you did, and you did it for the passion, so you weren't willing to endure all that.

So it kind of stinks that games get canceled for, you know, for rain right now, because it's not just perfectly manicured. And it's the same thing, like, in the bicycle world that I always did. Like, I mean, as a kid, who cares if it rains, right? We'll just get muddy. It's fun.

We'll just, but there's always, there's always, I guess, the other side of the coin, I guess, but wild. Well, I think that, you know, this year has been an interesting year for me as a human, and I've had to reflect and grow, and, you know, even with this podcast, I've been off, I've been on. You're actually going to be the first interview of really a relaunch of the podcast. I'm going to double into it a little bit more, put a little more work and effort into this venue. So I've gotten rogue to the point where it's now, I can now, I'm not implementing every strategy, so I can research, I can discuss, I can strategize, and then test different things in different departments in the business and help it grow without everything having to be me, which kind of crushes the researching and discussion part.

But my point in saying all that is, you know, when we, as I feel like, as we mature, you really have one of two options, right? So when you're young, it's all passion, it's all go, it's all, you know, whatever your thing is, you know, you can be pissed that your kid plays video games all the time, but they're passionate about it. They love it. It's what they're into, right? And surprisingly, there's some research coming out that I just read the other day by James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits, which is a book I'm sure a lot of people who listen to this wrote.

He's done a book I'm sure a lot of people who listen to this book I'm sure a lot of people who listen to this book I'm sure a lot of people who listen to this book I'm sure a lot of people who listen to this book I'm sure a lot of people who listen to this book I'm sure a lot of people who listen to this book I'm sure a lot of people who listen to this book I'm sure a lot of people who listen to this book I'm sure a lot of people who listen to this book I'm sure a lot of people. And specifically things like problem solving math they can they can something else about like narratives and storytelling they can they can find inconsistencies or stuff in narratives because this is the they're they're basically playing out these worlds over and over and over again. I guess my long way of saying this is I think as we get older we become wusses things we we we we we we get to these places where we like every everything needs to be perfect right like everything needs to be the perfect situation the perfect setting if I'm not going to take that job unless every one of my peers and my mom and and every book I read and every news article says that this is this is right where I should be and you know that I wanted to make $50,000 a year but this is only 47 so no I'm not going to do it and you know and instead of I don't know sucking it up and just getting after it and I don't know I just I just come back to that a lot.

I've also tried to hire a lot of people this year which has been I mean you want to get a freaking master's degree and in psychology try to hire people who woof now you said a lot I mean got you just the whole nature of like I don't know it's so weird like people older than us well I guess I'm a got a decade on you right we might might say that there's a wussification of youth. youth but yet I find myself combating this a lot like as people age and the amount of responsibility that you you you objectively have but I think that you keep keep upon yourself like it naturally makes you more conservative and you know I zero interest in talking politics ever in my life if I can avoid it but like you see that in just the way politics works. And it's just fascinating to see but like this that conversation I'd love to read that book around like kids and and sort of with with with some like boundaries the video game thing is not as bad as it seems and you know you see it all the time these kids today they're on their phone they're on their phone they're on their phone they're on their phone and I think back like like when I was a kid like I was running around with like I never really had a Game Boy but like kids had Game Boys they had a Walkman like you know they had the TV.

You know I mean you had like every single thing in the world is now on on one device so I think it's not so much about being on the phone it's about what you know what is being done there like my son like really doesn't watch a lot of TV but he consumes like legit content like he loves dinosaurs and science and sort of like biology type stuff as he looks at what's next. And he's watching that stuff on TV on on his phone so he's on his phone but 20 years ago he just would have been caught up in a ball and on the sofa and yeah I don't know it's just a fact any or listening to music and those kind of things too. So I don't know it's just all about context and the journey over time. So this is an so so my kids are obviously playing video games and stuff and and I let them play more video games than you know their mom does or you know whatever and you know and I've done a lot of research on it. I don't just let them play because I'm lazy parent.

I let them play because I read about stuff and you know one of the things and again there's always a counter argument to this so someone who could be listening to like ah you know they rot your cortex and they're all going to be dummies and zombies you know whatever. But you know there is there is research that I found as well and this I don't I can't remember where I read this I'm like the thing about from James clear but around how because we've so sterilized our world like kids don't play outside. You know why kids don't play outside today not because of video games because of helicopter parents people don't play outside because they watch the news and some kid in some place in some town. That they've never heard of before that they would have never known happened before 25 years ago something happened to them and therefore they assume it's going to happen in their backyard and they don't let their kids run around the neighborhood. So how do kids you know what kids want to do explore get in trouble learn things they're in full sensory mode they're in full what is this like what happens here if I do this if I jump off this if I break this if I whack this tree with this stick what happens right I mean that's the world that we all romanticize.

Yet we don't allow our children to play in that world anymore so so all these kids are in you know in their seven eight nine ten they're in this full exploration mode all they want to do is bump into things and try things and run around and get hurt and play football and or whatever whatever you know whatever they want to do. But instead we're like no you will sit in the house and I will know where you are at all times and I'm going to put this device on your leg so I can track it on my phone and you need to tap that device every 30 minutes so that I know that you're okay in my head and then I will give you your 30 minutes of tech time and then after that 30 minutes of tech time then you need to you're going to go for two hours to baseball and here's what you're going to do. And then from you know and you're like holy shit these kids don't get to explore anymore like they don't get to do any of the stuff so so like when I watch my son play video games he's like that's like explore time. Like that's like you know I live in a freaking apartment building I I I'm I'm bitching about this yet I will not allow him to go play out in the ditch right there's a ditch next to my apartment building that's the only patch of grass it's where we play football and baseball and it crushes my soul as a parent that my kids play in a ditch but like I don't want him out there because there's a lot of wackos that live in this freaking apartment complex and I get nervous he's still just eight right.

But at the same time I'm like shit like he doesn't get to all he wants to do is go explore and I won't let him so what so I let him play video games it's it's exploration it's it's a chance for their mind to try new things and jump off of stuff and die in the game but you can't do that in real life so I'm not that I want him jumping off of things and dying. Like we don't let them explore as much so this is like their chance to explore this is how they try new things and test stuff and I don't know I don't I don't know that I'm fully bought into this concept yet but there's something to it. Yeah I don't know we could spend I mean people do spend hours they dedicate their lives to these you know to these studies and what's good and bad and you know how do you let kids be kids and you know where do you learn like how do you know that an oven's hot unless you burn your hand once in a while right. And you know your example just hitting trees with sticks and will it work or is it going to like recoil and you know you're going to get to go to school in the morning with a gash across your forehead which was kind of cool because you know little Chrissy liked it when you know you came to school with a cut on your head or whatever but I don't know man it's fascinating.

And then how do you keep that spirit as you get older you know and it's just we talk about it a lot you were saying that like just how do you how do you stay like in a world where you're continually focused on this whole continual learning thing as a catchphrase but it's worse than that it's it's a little bit of risk it's putting yourselves out there it's what's the new hot hot as in Paris Hilton hot but it's hot. But like like like how do you like Paris Hilton still who we're referencing is like the hot person of today. I feel like I don't know maybe it's just like like who who is right I don't know um uh Kaylee Cuoco or did I just date myself even before I have no idea Cindy Crawford there we go. Oh wow all right yeah um I don't know it's just fascinating to think about and just pushing yourself in in taking things that are I don't know not risky but that do get you outside your comfort zone a little bit. Yeah I've been thinking about that like a lot just to create a process and you know what are things that are sort of like you allow the raising of the kids and the career and you know all the things you have to deal with in your personal lives whether you consciously recognize it or not you allow it to suppress some of that.

Yeah that creativeness that and I think everybody has it um and it's just you know some things I've been like even personally trying to to you know to do lately it's like I know I'm sure just with you probably for like three years I'm gonna write a book right. And I was like all the notes are here but like why the heck haven't I sat down and like started to write the thing um I've been trying to figure out how to play music and actually I wrote a song and released the damn thing like it's just like and that was scarier than anything I've done done professionally and like maybe four people I've listened to and I don't even care right but it was just it was the process um and I don't know I find that like when I was in school I mean I think you know this but like I was a fine art major in college and you know it was that that quintessential art kid the goofy hair and the funky clothes and just trying to figure things out but it was something that was deeply rewarding uh and sort of advancing about what was going on with people in that world is that like they really exposed their passions and the things that they were dealing with internally and how does that all come together and creative process like you know the creative process like you know kind of hit me recently I was thinking about you know here like comedians or tortured souls or something like that which is perhaps overly dramatic but there's something to like allowing that to come out in a I don't know somewhat of a controlled way just to not let it fester and you don't end up at the end with with simple regret yeah yeah I think I think um so a lot of my thinking on this particular topic has come out of uh I read uh I'm in the middle of reading a book called anti-fragile by uh Nicholas Nassim Taleb and if anyone wants to expand their mental horizons uh take on this particular book it's 400 pages it's thick there are words in it according to Grammarly I have uh my vocabulary is wider than 98% of the people that use Grammarly and I have probably looked up 50 words it's just wild um how smart and deep and twisting this is but the concept concept concept is really interesting so he calls it the the the triad um people systems communities take any entity that you could wrap your head around and particularly I think about this not so much from um a country basis or or a community basis but I think about it I've been running what he's saying through the frame of my com my company rogue and what we're trying to do and then my own personal life and basically you can be um fragile um you can be robust or you can be anti-fragile and uh the definition of anti-fragile in a sense broad stroking here is um you benefit from downside with infinite benefit from upside so basically no matter what happens you can't be hurt and again some of this is frame of reference how you how you position your mental but some of it is also very much how you position your life and the things that you do and how you position yourself so that when and this is also the guy that wrote the book Black Swan um I just read another book by him called called oh it's gonna kill me this is gonna kill me hold on oh skinning man you can tell it's early skin in the game is another book that he wrote um all about how you know basically the long and short of that game is never do business with someone who was unwilling to put skin in the game um and how you know basically and and he you know uses things like politicians who you know for the most part politicians are the worst version of our society i mean no a plus players are becoming politicians i mean all these people who we debate as like being awesome and no matter what side you're on i mean think about think about the choices that we're presented with like no matter what side you're on we're basically dealing with c plus and and you know he talks about how so much of political systems of you know the banking system of these different things is these you know fragile uh non-skin-in-the-game systems which basically means people are able to re-benefit without having to take any without having to take any of the downside so you look at something like the insurance industry and while i'd say we probably are more in the robust category there are if you can position your career say work in the insurance industry and develop uh world-class sales skills you're creating what is this what can be considered to a certain extent an anti-fragile career because we're technically a very inflation-proof um inflation-proof industry we are um kind of ubiquitous throughout every other ancillary industry that exists in in the country much of our product many of our products are mandated um and if you can sell that product you'd be hard-pressed to find a black swan event outside of say like the apocalypse that you can't have a job that you can't sustain and get by you know he's not always talking about um you know world domination that's not necessarily what being anti-fragile is about it's about surviving and you know his whole pitch i shouldn't say his whole pitch but a big part of his pitch and this is kind of where i position my mind and maybe you can tell where where why my brain is where it is this morning is that um too too often what we think about and how we position our lives is to maximize current moment without consideration for what the downside could be in certain situations we just assume certain things can't happen right this company my company can't go out of business my department can't be let go um my spouse will never cheat on me my you know i can never get sick we don't we don't consider these things that are coming down the pipe and therefore we've created all these fragilities in our lives um because we just assume that what we're spoon fed is like the appropriate life to live is the best life when in truth what you're really doing is placating entire industries set up to maximize benefit from you without any negative impact of you happening to them and um it's very very heady it's taken i still obviously don't have my brain fully wrapped around it but um it's really made me start to think about how i position myself in the world the skills that i want to accumulate the books that i read and how i want to set up my business and ultimately my career so that um you know i am i can sustain personally and as an organization and i don't know i just it's it's i i start to think like how often are we myself included thinking about comp concepts this deep and should we do it more often do do we just allow life to flow over us and not consider all the decisions we're making day to day yeah gosh i don't know there's a lot i mean obviously there's ridiculous amounts inside all of that but like as you were explaining that book and i was scribbling at that like there's so much in that that goes into like deep deep down in the just the evolutionary science of the brain and the way the brain works and it comes all the way down to some of the fight or flight things and how the brain normalizes things and sort of keeps us focused i mean there's reasons why quotes like the most common cause of failure is sacrificing what you want most for now exist you know under cheesy cliches and there's psychological deep evolutionary reasons i mean you believe structures i suppose could be challenged in that but like like why do we like overeat on candy on these types of things because there's just sustainability and availability and there's just something about survival that that seems to take over and all of that and that just i think that just shows up everywhere in every aspect of life whether somebody's actually thinking about it that consciously or not right and when you read the books it's easy easier i guess to kind of wrap your head around that and see that whatever book you read has examples in it but when you carry that all the way out into the business world or these deep complex systems i mean they're all based on whether they're intended to be or not they're all functioning on a standard set of principles around yeah just the evolutionary way the brain works yeah and that's one of the one of the things that i that i took from this particular book um which i which i cannot recommend enough although you will hate me while you're reading it because it's i mean i i read for 25 minutes before i jumped on the podcast and i got through like 10 pages maybe not not even i mean it's it's heavy it's heavy but but one of the things that he talks about a lot especially at the beginning he's making a couple points is about how um complex systems tend to be more fragile and that we over you know we need to really fight our our urge which seemingly is natural although maybe isn't to to make things more complex than they need to be right so this is one of the early takeaways i took from the book and that anti-fragile systems tend to be the simplest version of whatever that system can be and still be successful because the more parts you have the more people you have the more everything that you have the more opportunities you have for um some event whether uh normal or black swan black swan being event you can't see coming that has devastating effects on a system um the more you you can't see these things coming they become blind spots they become obstacles so you know one of the things that i've that i am working on we're not nearly there nothing is there with rogue um but you know it's how do we simplify process how do we simplify systems how do we get you know you don't need some 30 point sales script you don't need to have these complex follow-up sequences of 17 different you don't need that stuff all that stuff does is lend you to some changing in the you know the uh um the texting you know the the notifications around texting and now you're 15 of your 17 points you just can't send out anymore well now you're screwed you know what i mean and all this stuff and it's like get to the simplest version of what allows you to be successful and what you and and develop the skills in those simple systems that allow you to be the most successful and ultimately you're you're creating a process that allows you to navigate and move through these events versus them wrecking something and having devastating effects on you and simple is hard simple is really really hard um it's also incredibly uninteresting um you know when you talk about simple concepts how do we people are like i'm not willing to pay for simple simple is too easy well you know you look at you look at a lot of speakers you look at a lot of they all have these five points here in the triangle of this in the you know work through this thing and all these touch points and it's like i feel like the the more we can focus on simple systems the more we can get i don't want to say get back to basics because it doesn't simple doesn't necessarily mean basic um uh i feel like that's the path to success and what is increasingly becoming an over complicated world with with so many voices that it becomes hard to manage and i feel like we open ourselves up to a lot of vulnerabilities it's interesting yeah so i'm guessing the book will eventually get there at least there'll be some commentary on that and i think about this a lot too like we we generic i mean the proverbial way yeah but also like probably the literal we too yeah and i think like even just inside the space where you and i play like this industry you know what's the future of the industry look like and how does tech adoption look all that kind of stuff which i'm probably boring when the grand scheme of things but we overthink it we just have this natural tendency to make things really complex we just become devoid of fundamentals and volume and conviction become a proxy for accuracy uh in this in this dynamic and so like it seems counterintuitive but i find myself having that conversation more and more like i mean not to get too insurancey here but like that was really the genesis of that article i wrote an ia magazine like slow down yeah like slow down to speed up and it's just we're making stuff too complex i mean was it billy williams has that concept like there's only however any way you want to build it there's only like 21 or whatever number it is there's only so many processes yep in an independent agency right and to your point like just make them as simple as efficient as possible and i'm a firm believer the average customer doesn't want the number of interactions that like we're trying we're trying to create um and so we really are making this complex and that's in our industry and that's in in our lives and i don't know what that tendency is because it's counter to what i think we just talked about which is the brain's natural tendency to want to sort of set aside the trivial stuff that doesn't allow you to either fight or flight like there's a reason why like we all see things differently right because our brains are processing what's in front of us differently based on the experiences we've we've had um but you know you and i could be in the same room and see very different things but the core fundamental things i think we would see it's just how do you let that stuff that sits in the margins the complex stuff the subconscious level stuff minimize the interpretation i think it's laziness i think the reason we like over complicated things is we're lazy and the reason i'm and what i mean by that is does it permit like um it's it's procrastination or decision making it's an excuse mechanism it's like i am you know what i didn't buy her 10 point strategy or i i you know i i did this i bought this course but but then but it never put into place right or you know i i did all these things and it didn't yield this result and it's like how about you know the rogue risk lead generation strategy is the same freaking strategy that i've been using since 2009 like nothing has changed i use a simple keyword research tool to find keywords that then i create videos about that i then turn into blog posts that i then share on social media i have done that simple process over and over and over and over again for more than a decade and it drives my business forward today it's been the catalyst for every bit of success that i've had in the insurance industry as a practitioner and you know i've looked at linkedin strategies and i've looked at uh uh uh lead buying strategies and i've looked at follow-up strategies and i've looked at all this fancy crazy stuff you know start a local podcast which is not a bad idea you know but for me it's simple it's repeatable it's not sexy i mean i hired this young girl to come do um uh marketing for us and she's marketing major at a local college and whatever and i explained to her our process and i could tell she like looked at me and she didn't say it and she's she's nice and she's working hard and she's gonna be good but i could tell when she first looked at me that's it you know that was like her look was like that's that's what you do that's that's it that's the whole thing and i was like that's how we get 300 leads a month right there you just you that you just that's the whole secret i just rinse and repeat i am okay with simple basic repeatable processes that yield results i don't need the new good granted and i've tried them all i've made all the mistakes this is this is this is a learned thing this is not like intrinsic to me you know what i mean like i didn't wake up with this knowledge this is 40 year old scarred beaten stepped on you know sued fired hated you know shamed all you know that version of me um now battle tested and and whatever can stand here and say i that as soon as something feels complex to me i basically just write it off i didn't just write it off as soon as as soon as i start here if i'm at a conference or i'm reading an article or i'm listening to a podcast and something starts to feel complex i'm like nah i'm good don't need that that's way too difficult the number of that will because because the only am i you know so the only things that work long term are repeatable and simple in my mind that i found repeatable and simple if it's not repeatable and simple then it's it has no chance of success and then the third phase is obviously does that repeatable and simple process yield results but like if it's not repeatable and simple there's no way to get consistent long-term results because you'll give up or or or something will change or and i didn't understand this term at the time you're essentially building fragility into the process because there's so many steps or there's so much complication and and that's you know this is a major move that we've that i've made in my own in in my career and in my leadership specifically over the last year and it's it's yielding results it allows us to to measure and be successful but it's it's not sexy no one wants to hear about that no one wants to hear that one simple process done repeatedly and and into monotony has been the secret to our success no one gives a shit because none of them have done it i've told them tell them for 13 years they don't care so i can tell you empirically no one gives a shit well it's not the shiny new toy right and it's no and it and to your point it is not sexy and romantic um and it takes a relentless commitment to execution too right because even with all that you just said and what you empirically know about your process and how even and i'm certain you can look back and say you know the way you're doing it the way you're executing and the tools you use like those might have evolved but the recipe is the same and you're just committed to it and and um but that's not that's not cool for some people right and we want to and and also people are being sold stuff all day long yep right but the cake mix that you're using every day that you like and you enjoy isn't good anymore it's out of date you know and there's and that level of i don't know i feel horrible for agents everywhere and it's another conversation we have it's like it's again it's in the spirit of all that like just because somebody wants to sell you something or that they have identified a friction point doesn't mean it's worth yep solving for it or spending the time effort and energy and i was i was maybe getting a little bit again to insurance here but i was really looking at like the market share data and universe study and you know and then you start to think about like the amount of amount of tech adoption and a simple one right it's not one of the hot buzzings but things right now in our industry is commercial lines comparative rating you know you and i both have personal friends that own yes fantastic firms that are doing that but adoption is still very very low at the agency count level yeah um by some accounts as low as like seven or eight percent maybe as high as 25 right but i haven't i can't wait for you to finish because i have an entire thought process on this i'm like chomping at the bit not to interrupt you please keep going i had to say that my add is firing off the hook right now because it's so early in the morning but like i just had to say that keep going keep going no with that but like but i'd come back and say now how much of the market is controlled by the firms that have adopted it but but why are we not and now i got derailed on my whole thought process on why we're not adopting it or not but like it's it it's it's the way i think the way our industry is set up it's it's not a requisite to success yeah for 70 of the agencies in the middle of bell curve uh yet perhaps for example so um then i got completely lost on my thought there sorry and i don't know it'll come back i mean that's all me i um i come back or i'll conclude that it was a worthless thought but like there was something where i was going down this path and it was like like like but why isn't the adoption there it's not it might be a reluctance to change um it's not a reluctance to change so i have i'm going to tell you here's my thought on this so i can get this out of my face and stop interrupting you like a jack um they're not necessary they're not necessary it doesn't mean they don't add value if you can build the right process around them they certainly do but again i think you don't need that so i dude i did a video the other day just on a on a whim was walking it was a couple weeks ago i just got done with calls with two different carriers who had told me that their ux was this and i basically told them your your you your user experience is a dumpster fire it's absolutely terrible they're like well why aren't you writing more business and i said because look how freaking hard it is to use your system and you got this little technical hang up and you won't open up states unless we have a piece of business that we're going to write there and why would my team stop what they're doing and then send you our license even though i've told you 400 times that we're licensed in all 50 states and then have you open up the state and then go back into quote they've already moved on they're not going to do that like so it's all these little ux things so i'm having this like frustrating day i go for a walk and i'd say and i i did this i did this video uh the title of it was maybe we should all just be hartford captives well this thing went a little viral um both for good reasons and for reasons that some people found negative i didn't find them negative because you know screw those people um but my point was the hartford is easy to use they're easy to work with it's intuitive i can train someone on on quote bind issue with the hartford in less than five minutes five minutes i can take one of my new producers and go here's how you quote bind issue with the hartford in less than five minutes it all makes sense it all works if you have a license and understand basic insurance terminology you can quote bind issue most accounts with the hartford in their system it's amazing then on the back end they have all servicing functionality and and essentially my point was if i weren't a dummy which i am i would go back in time i'd get rid of all my other appointments and i'd be a hartford captive until the day i found that i wasn't making money because i was a hartford captain because i and i wouldn't need an agency management system which means i wouldn't need download which means i wouldn't need insert 17 other freaking stupid tools that i have to have because of all you know multiple carriers and all the billing crap and all this nonsense that takes place in an agency i would just be a harper hartford captain and that's what it would be okay that was my that's what i said and i said the reason you know and this is this is kind of how i ended it was the reason that i feel that companies like and i'm not going to say their names because i don't want to get in any more trouble than i already have um you know don't understand what i'm saying is because they're talking to where the puck is today they're calling their agent with two million dollars in premium with them and indiana who's 67 years old who's a good guy who's been writing with him for a while and goes what do you think about our ux and he goes hey tammy what do you think about you know insert carrier and she goes ah they're fine and he goes you guys are fine and they go great checkbox we're doing awesome and my point was i don't know many carriers i would put pie in this i would put pie in here i think chubb is doing some good things they're not at harford's level yet but they're on the right path um i'd put harford obviously there and a few others um travelers isn't isn't isn't bad i think nationwide um nationwide tends to be a two steps forward three steps back kind of carrier but like um you know there are other carriers who i feel like are pushing to where the puck is going and and and you know my point saying all this is like simplifying bringing bringing all this stuff in thinking about only what is necessary to run your business allows you to put to do more of the things that actually generate business what's up guys sorry to take you away from the episode but as you know we do not run ads on this show and in exchange for that i need your help if you're loving this episode if you enjoy this podcast whether you're watching on youtube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform i would love for you to subscribe share comment if you're on youtube leave a rating review if you're on spotify or apple itunes etc this helps the show grow it helps me bring more guests in we have a tremendous lineup of people coming in uh men and women who've done incredible things sharing their stories around peak performance leadership growth sales the things that are going to help you uh grow as a person and grow your business but they all check out comments ratings reviews they check out all this information before they come on so as i reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you i need your help share the show subscribe if you're not subscribed and i'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because i read all the comments or if you're on apple or spotify leave a rating review of this show i love you for listening to this show and i hope you enjoy it listening as much as i do creating the show for you all right i'm out of here peace let's get back to the episode and and that is like the big lesson one of the big lessons of rogue for me is there is no greater detriment to our success than than the the excuse making and procrastination that comes from chasing shiny objects and if we can just get that cancer out of our day-to-day mental thought process things like should i use a comparative radar and commercial yes or no well do you not know where the business goes now i pretty much know where the business goes you don't need a comparative radar and commercial you don't if you work in the eastern half of new york state and write mostly main street bops and consultants and maybe a couple lros you know exactly where the business goes the moment it hits your desk you don't need a commercial comparative radar you don't need one they're they're unnecessary you do need a commercial comparative radar if you write in vermont massachusetts connecticut and new york and write 10 different industries there's no way for you to know what the appetite is in all those states and what the pricing is going to be there you need a commercial comparative radar so i think that these are some of the things that we don't think about we think well you know my big eye tech person told me i need a commercial comparative rater because that's what all the best agencies are doing so now i got to go spend 500 a month it doesn't mean you don't but it also doesn't mean that you do and nothing against the big eye just that's where you get information from it's neither here nor there really i mean i guess because it's it's exactly the concepts i've been thinking about a lot and i guess you know i mean it's overly cliche to say it but i anytime i stand on stage i try to qualify i've never had to buy one meal for my family from a commission check by running an independent insurance agent right so it's purely just observations and having had literally hundreds if not thousands of these you know conversations over the years but it's people process technology exactly what you said and i've i've tried to say this all the time like it's so easy to get um influenced by really loud voices um in the promise of of something and there are very different what are the you have a slide that i use now it just says 40 000 equals 40 000 used to say 35 000 equals 35 000 but however many independent agencies there are there's that many different sort of opinions as to how one could be run right and what a highly digitized agency trying to write minimum premium bops in 48 states needs is exactly like you said is very different than an agency that's got one or two locations that wants to serve main street in five counties um it's just a very different set of tools that are needed and all both of those organizations are being sold just generically sold the same set of tools and every contractor doesn't need the same set of tools i mean every console i mean nobody needs the same set of tools right and so this whole like what's the best tech stack it's to me it's a fallacy there is literally no such thing unless it follows exactly what your agency's business strategy is you've got a relentless focus on processes first making sure you got the right people in the right rules doing the right things and then use technology to bring that stuff to life yeah i if you know i kind uh um i have really i've realigned the way that i think about new technology one one i'm blessed that i get to speak to a lot of technologists and i the podcast also affords me a lot of opportunity to talk to people who've had experience that i trust and all that kind of stuff so so versus maybe the standard main street agent who doesn't get to have some of the conversations i do i understand that i am blessed and so much as i have some i get some additional insight that being said if you're not explaining to me who the product is not for and you should never even consider it and that and going even maybe a level deeper and saying if this is what your goals are we can't help you or maybe shouldn't help you if you're not almost anti selling me your product i kind of tune you out at this point because you know walking through the itc showroom um which was an incredible event absolutely incredible event and it is nothing against itc i it was one of the best conferences i've probably ever been to or certainly been to in years um uh in the insurance industry i really really enjoyed it uh but everyone is telling you why their product is free well you know you plug this in attach this here but but but and i just the deeper i get into rogue the more and and you know and and as we try to go from you know we're a year ago today i had three people it was me and two other people a year ago today we're at 19 so like we're we're we are making all the mistakes really fast and and and for the and what i'm trying to do is and what i'm realizing is the longer it takes to train somebody that can that can blow up your business right if it takes three months six months to get somebody rocking and rolling that's a killer right so okay so products that are easy to train on it's why i hate salesforce i hate salesforce in our industry hate it we'll never use it unless i'm absolutely forced to by someone who's paying me a lot of money i will not use salesforce um because it's hard to train on it's incredibly difficult to train someone on salesforce and i've done it it's really really difficult i found that hubspot for for a marketing professional hubspot very easy to train on try to train someone how to sell on hubspot or service on hubspot very very difficult that's why hubspot failed for us as a potential you know we're trying to make this transition away from traditional agency management systems didn't work big fail now certs super easy product that a lot of startup agencies use and i got nothing against the now certs guy it is incredibly difficult to train someone how to use now certs that's the failing better agency better agency has some has some one of the reasons i really like better agency and and you know and i've gone back and forth on it but will and nick and team a lot of friends they're very very easy to train people on better agency and you might say hey they're a lightweight crm agency management system whatever that's true not not taking away from not saying that they're perfect very easy to train on very easy to train on so it's like these are some of the things that i feel like when we start thinking about our business beyond just what's the new process or tool that i can plug into the side of this thing that um when we start going down deeper and saying okay i'm gonna put this in place and i'm gonna get say a three percent incremental benefit but what is that what is the downside that i get from the now it now it takes me six months to onboard someone versus the two months or one month that it took before i use this system or process right like though you know we're not weighing all those things we're not we're not thinking about the the the places where this isn't for us tell me why this product doesn't work for me like how am i going to fail using this product which is a question that i ask every vendor now and and and have for a while i actually picked that up from um ah geez i can't remember who i picked that up from but i picked that up back in my big eye days um they used to always ask why would this not work like i get all the reasons it would work you vendor person selling me tell me why this wouldn't work for me and then you get some really interesting answers and sometimes that's what sells you i mean a lot of times when you buy something that's what sells you but what it does is it cancels a lot of people out because they can't tell you why it wouldn't work for you and that's scary well it's interesting you see that i i admittedly had not contemplated as like a line item the difficulty in training and how much like ineffectiveness that can sort of create across an organization or and if you've got a set of processes that are built around people doing certain things in certain time in certain timelines like it can disrupt a lot you know a lot of things and so being able to think through that and it just continues to support and then just bolting stuff on like the analogy of you know chevy chase you know christmas vacation where he just jammed everything in and nothing worked like it comes back to this most simple explanation of the scientific method like you can't you got to test variables singularly or you'll never really know what made a difference and so being very intentional about how you deploy anything new um or remove anything yep gotta be the amount of intentionality of that is critical otherwise you'll never really know what did or didn't cause the benefit or the you know or the detriment yeah i'm gonna give you another you guys another example so we just recently moved to nexure uh x convention x dimensionals agency management's nexure a lot of people in the retail space haven't heard of nexure that's because they've been very successful in the large agency and um like network space but they're moving into retail and i'll be honest with you it's a pretty incredible system when compared against other agency management systems i wouldn't put it against other industries technology but but but as an insurance piece of technology it's a really powerful great system one of the things they do not have is a can ban or pipeline style view of their sales process okay now that's a fairly standard feature in most sales systems and actually mick you know it's funny i was texting with mick because he's doing some different stuff and working for a couple clients and you know he was checking out nexure and he's like i love this i love this but i can't handle not having campaign and i said bro i so i called him real quick and i said i'm gonna tell you a quick story so when we did the demo for nexure and i had my entire team at the time i think we were like 14 people six of them are sales people um six seven whatever it was we did the demo so we go through the demo service teams raving this is gonna be amazing blah blah blah like you know they also hated our other setup which was basically agency zoom hub spot now search which i'm surprised i didn't get like uh i didn't wake up with one of them standing over me with like a knife to my throat one day but um but they're like this is gonna be amazing whatever and i said well i said to the sales team i go jeez you know i don't i don't love the sales and they go what are you talking about this is gonna be great and i go i go it doesn't bother you that there's no like pipeline view they go why would we care that there's a pipeline view it doesn't mean anything all the information we need every communication we need every communication with service our ability to to push to push to record forms and push those out and send them direct like everything we need to be successful is in there why do we need a pipeline view dude i'm telling you like if if this was a jet.com commercial my head would have exploded and blue smoke would have came out like i was like what are you talking about this is a pipeline didn't mean anything to them it meant nothing so when i called mick i go bro i'm gonna tell you something take this for what it's worth you and me we're like new tech you know work the process you know this visual you know that's who we are so we're putting all this emphasis on this pipeline view i'm telling you six out of six of my producers could care less didn't bother them at all and we're like everything else everything we need to be successful is here that's a you thing and i was like oh my god i mean i that's why we that's why we completely moved off we don't have any kind of pipeline view we're not using pipe drive or we're not even using what you'd consider a classic crm because none of them need it to be successful it's interesting right i mean because it just shows you the like every role in that in in any business has a slightly different perspective on stuff and i think that's why again i mean i'm going to say this out loud and you tell me if i'm nuts but i think this sort of mid funnel tech is what is actually the most successful right now it's making give me an example of mid funnel tech just for the audience oh like what like what peter mcdonald's doing with wonder right yeah you know these kind of things like a human being enters meaningful data one time and it populates the stuff they need to actually transact business like they're not and i remember this going back to my days leading an underwriting team you know and you get an underwriter and it's frustrated like how come when a csr calls me they demand an answer in like five minutes but when i need a piece of information on an account it takes five days and i think to your point not to overly simplify this but like it's inboxed out box inboxed out box and so anything that makes that easier in the amount of transactions it's getting an app it's getting a car it's is simple and so like i think that that kind of stuff it's not sexy it's romantic it's sort of just in the sort of in the bowels of a business but that's where the efficiencies are ultimately gained and people don't feel like they're turning their wheels all day long you know i don't know but maybe he's not maybe that's not the perfect example but that you know top of the funnel stuff is you know really romantic right we're going to fill up full leads and you know everybody's going to do all this really cool stuff we're going to talk about marketing and branding but like if it just gets log jammed and people don't have any effective tools to do anything with it or they're entering the same crap over and over again it seems like it gets really frustrating and that that's that's where it seems like the opportunities are are starting to move the needle yeah i i would say you know again to this point that's why i look at like a relativity six what relativity six was doing which most agencies will never even know that they're using relatively six product you know what i mean they're they're the relativity six if you guys go back and listen to that the episode with alan probably somewhere in the last 10 episodes or so um i interviewed him but like they basically have an algorithm that when you type a business name or a business location into their search bar it goes out to the internet scrapes hundreds of websites and does all this different stuff and pulls back a very accurate depiction of what the nics code is for that particular business right not just based on what's in a database somewhere but what they're actually putting out on the internet and all this kind of stuff and and uh it's actually really really interesting and and even he would say it's not a hundred percent but combined with maybe a traditional database if you compare the two you know whatever but like i look at that and i say like that is the future of us doing business better you know third-party tools that are outside of and again my opinion changes a lot so you guys are going to hate me for this but like if you make me input data twice i'm probably not using you anymore and if you make me input data twice i'm probably redacting you from my tech stack because i know this isn't new and it's not sexy and that's why these type of opinions don't go viral but like duplicate entry is the killer of process like i just found out that one of my one of my producers and she's an absolute rock star has been using his cox to put a lot of business with and i was like you know i immediately like made this face and i felt bad because she's she's killing it she's doing great but like truthfully we write so many policies in a week now that i'm not like you know whatever able to like stay on and everything the tech and i said why are you using his cox because i only have to put in four pieces of information and i can quote and she inserted like seven things and i was like you know it's not the best policy form and i don't you know it's not really you know we you know there's like a whole bunch of reasons i don't love that you're using them um nothing against the company you know they do have some good products too but like i was like why aren't you using like chubb or the hartford for these classes of business that she was writing with with this guy and she's like well yeah i don't know and i just was like this was first easiest path of least resistance and that's just whack there was like a neuron built into her brain easy path easy path first path she tried bam you know and now and it's like these types of things are what get us into trouble we take this first easiest path we you know or or whatever or or we want someone to use a carrier but they're really hard to use or they make us duplicate entry or their download sucks or their billing is and and these little touch points it's just becoming at least in my world all the paper is the same you can't sell me on how great your paper is it's all the same today so like now it becomes ux ux ux ux in my opinion that is that is going to be the killer for these carriers is ux and um it's got easier but that's inbox out box yeah like you know i mean she wasn't thinking about stuff the way you were which is you know you know risk am i maximizing commissions on every one of these accounts you know we you know those kind of things right but it was four pieces versus seven pieces versus 17 pieces versus 47 pieces right um and she sold an account yep um and so you know there probably is some some dialogue around like buying a tool because your staff finds it the easiest they don't care about the funnel you might care about the funnel right so how do you sort of blend those i i think as a leader we got to get past ourselves chris i think that today um i did another video about this on linkedin whatever the other day i think now now we are entering a period of time where your leadership abilities can separate you and really drive you we're going to see success in business based on leadership today where i think for for the last 10 years or so basically from 2008 to today everything was growing everything was easy tech was everywhere budgets were big and shitty bureaucratic middle manager you know like whatever leaders could sit in these organizations and see success even though they weren't actually leading and i think today i think with with how fast the world is moving money is starting to dry up especially in our industry markets are getting hard right the the the we got 5g on our phone so everything is faster everything is quicker everything's more mobile like today more than ever before i feel like real thoughtful leadership is going to define the winners and the losers where before it was just how much could you fundraise or if you had a good idea or whatever you know or whatever you could just kind of scrape by doing what you know thought you know being a fast follower to best practices and i just don't know that that's the case today i think active engaged thoughtful empathetic caring leaders who are who are reading who are communicating who are talking who are engaged who are asking their people asking their customers what they want and getting beyond themselves getting beyond the the ego of themselves that's who's going to separate themselves i mean that's what i'm trying to work towards and some of those things are not easy for me but um but like i just honestly believe that we're going to the winners and losers are going to be separated by true leadership moving forward um and people are willing to take risks and i don't think that i don't think you can just coast by anymore i just think we're hitting an economic cycle where you know for the first time in a lot of people's career right i started i started in this industry at the the last year of the last hard market 16 years ago 17 years ago depending on how the timing works and so i've really never experienced a hard market i've read about it i've talked to a million people who lived through them and i kind of am aware of what's coming i don't think a lot of young leaders and a lot of even people in their in their 40s and early 50s really understand what's coming and even if it's short i don't know i think it's gonna be really interesting i think there's gonna be a lot of fortunes and a lot of failures over the next 12 to 24 months yeah i think i should love to kind of hit sort of this like put something on the calendar out there and whatever like 2024 and yeah kind of revisit that and you know you're right i mean i think that's the thing the cycles are i don't know it's hard to say they're really different when you're talking about 20 years but you just talk about on the carrier side all the time as you're talking about underwriters and producers who've never had to sell like a dynamic where not only our price is going up coverage is getting harder to find in terms of conditions are becoming a little bit more aggressive right and you know and it was cyber's going through that really hard and there are other markets all over you know or other you know product lines all over the place so we'll certainly go through that and you know leadership starts to i i don't disagree with you i guess a long way of saying i completely agree with you and i think that you know whenever things get funky like leadership wins yeah um being able to set a clear vision um remain steadfast to it be a clear and active champion around what you're trying to get accomplished um and truly give your teams what they need to be successful through that is and i mean sounds really simple right i mean anybody can stand on stage and talk about it but it's hard it's hard in the moment yeah i think that i think the bruce lee quote of um i'm gonna butcher the quote so i'm paraphrasing but basically i'm not scared of the guy who's practiced 10 000 punches i'm scared of the guy who's practiced one punch 10 000 times i think if i can give any you know my my what i'm telling myself okay i'm not gonna give anyone advice this is what i'm repeating to myself over and over again is be the company that practices one punch 10 000 times not the company that practiced 10 000 punches i think that's who we were early in our career in in rogues history i think that's what i've been in previous iterations of my career trying to be that thing and and that's a i think that's a more immature view i think the more mature view of success is is the person you know not guy person uh uh who who who practices one punch 10 000 times i think i think that's that's where we're headed and i think in a hard market competitive environment where there's less money um more scrutiny i think i think that's the path to success well you know just to pull that thing at a very tactical and elementary level like what does that actually mean when you say that out loud that's niches that's being very very clear about who you are and who who you aren't and remaining steadfast to that and not changing shiny objects right yep and so making that decision would go out circling back around through a number of different things like it's really important to be clear about what you want your business to be what you want to be as a person what you and and you can't it's that it's i don't know if you don't know where you're going any road will get you there like if you don't have a path set and say i want to be x then every exit's cool yeah i completely agree uh i know we're five minutes over i have just a couple questions i want to pepper you with because we didn't talk about any of the things that i had you on to originally talk about although that's often the case with our conversations um what was the name what's the name of the song and where can we find it it is let's go for a ride okay on all of the popular streaming services um okay and uh you know so the story on that and like super super short it was never really intended to be released like that um but i wrote the song that i had written the music and written's probably even more proactive but like i had just come up with this melody right and i'm like oh i want to figure out how to way to frame it and every time i kept playing i kept hearing words and they've kind of been inspired over the last few years of things going on you know in in my life and then um it just like you hear musicians say it just came to them like it literally took 10 minutes to write the lyrics so then i practiced it i performed it and i recorded it just my cell phone leaning up against a stack of books i'm like well how do i get this to where i can listen to it and my buddy actually produces music and publishes he's like ah here's the service you can go and next thing you know it's on all these streaming services so it's kind of wild so um is it cool if i download it and play it at the end of the episode so people can hear it i don't have a problem with that at all right i'm not trying to get rich off of it it was just it was just it's just going all the way back to the way beginning right it's just how do i like like how do you like not justify yourself and try new things and put yourself out there i can stand on stage in front of you know 500 people in an industry event and talk about the craft we talk about that um but going to a a bar for open mic in front of 20 people um and then releasing and doing this putting this song on itunes are scarier than any other it's amazing i'm so happy for you dude i i love it i love it so guys um just i have a couple more questions for chris then we're gonna let him go because i'm sure he's very busy and uh and i'm sure i'm supposed to be doing something other than this but um the the so uh the song is called let's go for a ride by chris klein obviously you know who we're talking about but i'm gonna play it at the end so keep listening uh keep listening at the end instead of the normal outro i'm gonna find the song download it and play it then so you can hear it but then go download it and buy it and listen to it on spotify so that chris makes like 100th of a penny um but we want to support him in that journey no no but go listen to it i think uh that'll be great and for all the people that would even read be remote that even actually do listen to it all the way through i know i can't say we'll just leave it at that it's a it's just a pure full-blown like pour your heart into something i'm a horrible horrible horrible singer it's bad i find that hard to believe um but also so is janice joplin and we love her so um there we go um uh the book i i you've mentioned the book before i know it's gonna happen eventually i know it's not a book yet give what is the working title for the book and what is the working subtitle if you had to give us one right now just to tease us so we know what's coming give us just give us that so you this may be familiar to you because we talked about it um over uh mountain dews and chicken wings um in kentucky yeah um but it uh it's um the inertia of legacy yeah and um and just in full transparency i actually formed an llc by the same title yep just to let some of this creativity kind of flow through something like that um and at right wrong or indifference i was advised to kind of just put all this stuff over there and um so even though the song is through me behind all the scenes it's still an inertia of legacy thing so just the concept is and i know i thought you and i would talk more about this we probably could crank another hour out but like you know i'm a science junkie a space junkie and um there's something about legacy that in our industry can have a negative connotation but i think in the real world it's a powerful tool and inertia right you know it's just about an object at rest stays at rest unless that one or in motion stays in motion unless acted upon so it's all about really managing your legacy so there's some sort of self-help kind of connectivity to science and mathematical stuff that's going to come together well i remember when we talked about the concept that i i just thought it was great and i and i do i dude i think you're on the button i mean one of the uh first lessons that i actually learned from uh chip basioko um uh friend turned frenemy turned friend again uh chip and i are on very good terms now and busting balls via text again um was how as much as we want to push forward we need to respect the past and respect the people that got us here and i think that um is very difficult and i and you and i have talked about this right when we when you and i are sitting in the audience and someone is talking on stage who is disrespecting the people who got us here it's okay to question the things that they're continuing to do or decisions they made or or to present other options but to disrespect the people in our industry that got us here who provided the environment that allowed insurance professionals to live the lives that we live feel like you're setting yourself up for failure because the people that came before us um while we may disagree with their methods in this moment in terms of applying all of those methods to this moment they're the ones that set the stage for us to be able to do the things that we do today and um there's no denying that i i love that but how do you turn that legacy how do you what are those small little like what did we blow up some asteroid with a rocket how do you how do you skip a rocket off that asteroid and get it get it on back onto course or something that's went to central like and i keep putting these notes together and kind of framing together an outline for them just exactly like you're supposed to do my son's a senior so we're learning how to weave as we do research for papers together but yeah right i mean like i think we we launched a rocket ship seven million miles away or something like that it took like six months to get there and we flew something the size of a refrigerator into something smaller than a football field yeah and not 21 i mean like that's that's total inertia right um but it's also it's just as simple as um just getting up 15 minutes earlier to write or to get another mile on the treadmill like those little things are are very meaningful in all of our lives and you know your point about like standing on stage taking shots and disrespecting like one of the things that this industry i think is past a little bit but people coming into industry and trying to convince us to change by telling us we suck yeah it does not work no because we don't like tell it like you're fat you should lose weight well that's not a way of motivating yeah right that seemingly does not work yeah you know i i um i don't know when it was 2017 2018 at some point my mind and and even and even maybe it was 2016 back when that when the insurtech revolution was really hitting us i i started saying like insurance is not broken like this isn't broke yet there are course corrections or pivots there's maybe some things that we could you know sail off into the sunset but in general this is not broken like when your house burns down you get a check back you know what i mean like you know i used to say that to my customers who would you know bash when i when i hear someone bashing or like cocktail parties when i hear someone bashing insurance insurance you know you walk into these conversations every once in a while and i'll just be like you know what i i hear you and i get it and i get that insurance can be frustrating but like when your house burns down uh the town isn't rallying to like barn raise your house back up like that's not happening like no one gives a shit they're just gonna drive by it and point and go geez i wish they would get rid of that ugly thing the only the only entity that is coming to your to your to save you is an insurance company and for that reason we're not broke um so i think it's it's very important so i i know we probably got a wrap there's i'm we're gonna have to schedule something again because i didn't even get to i came in on another topic i shouldn't have read before i came in that's the problem that's all right reading right before i came into the podcast so i had all this stuff on my brain but i i love this concept of um not over complicating insurance of really taking a step back of of getting away from shiny objects getting away from you know 20 step brand new tactical programs they're i think less is more get really really good at doing one or two processes and just hammer just just dump money into those things that you've that punch that you've taken ten thousand times and you're the best at i think now is the time more than ever to do that um i think niche is one way to go about it i think just i think you could go it doesn't have to be a niche it could also be a process it could also be uh a way of delivering something you know figure out what that thing is and be really good at it and i think simplification i think the answer for the next for the foreseeable future and certainly what we're working on at rogue is simplification how do we simplify what we do and get really good at those simple process it it's it's so much harder than just buying more shit and trying to plug it in and thinking it's all gonna work i don't know well i mean think about it this way right and you know i mean just the simplification be very clear whatever it is like no like call a play just be convicted to a play and it's football season and i know you're a diehard bills fan oh by the way the cowboys are on a role too so um maybe you get a shot to recover from mr norwood's kick um 30 years ago or whatever it was but when they get into the huddle they just don't go we'll just go whatever route makes you happy right like they run a play and i guarantee all 11 players don't go to the line of scrimmage being that i might have picked a different play right but you know what we rate we call to play yeah the coach the quarterback somebody said this is the situation this is what we're going to do and it's my job to go run and just go run the play um if it doesn't work you learn from it but you just can't go out there and have everybody doing whatever they want and or back to the every road thing like you just got to have some conviction and i think that's a personal thing that's a business thing whatever it is chris uh it's always amazing getting a chance to talk to you i appreciate that you allow me these meandering conversations although i love where we went i think i think we i think we had a really good chat uh i appreciate the hell out of you man and um uh you know people want to get at you linkedin where where would be the best place for people to connect learn more about the work you're doing at act uh what's the what's the best website for them to check out uh what where where are all the places they should go yeah i mean i'm on linkedin pretty actively um and um no pun intended but capital act we've been trying to do more on social media you know i mean one of the things i noticed about act uh predecessor ron and jenny had done some great stuff but it's the proverbial the tree falls in the forest and nobody's there to hear it doesn't make a noise yep so we're trying to do more on social try to productize our content um a lot of rooms to go a lot you know a lot of ways to go but linkedin and twitter probably the best um professionally of course itunes spotify and youtube right i love it i love it so guys the next thing you're going to hear is let's go for a ride by chris klein go get it on spotify bro i love you be good take it easy take it easy buddy thanks brian bye close twice as many deals by this time next week sound impossible it's not with the one call close system you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals in one call this is the exact method we use to close 1200 clients in under three years during the pandemic no fluff no endless follow-ups just results fast based in behavioral psychology and battle tested the one call close system eliminates excuses and gets the prospect saying yes more than you ever thought possible if you're ready to stop losing opportunities and start winning visit master the close.com that's master the close.com do it today when your company earns unlimited two percent cash back on all purchases with capital one that's serious business so steven at sandcloud got a serious business card the spark cash plus card from capital one we 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