Chris Langille on Exactly Where to Spend Your Marketing Dollars Going Forward

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In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello everyone, and welcome back to the show. This is a wild, fast episode. We talk about a lot of stuff. Very tactical.

Chris Langell is our guest today. The reason Chris is on the show for this specific episode, although he's been a guest in the past, is because he had this Twitter storm, we'll call it. He just was kind of, I don't want to call it a rant, because that diminishes what he was actually saying, which I think the questions and thoughts that he was sharing were very valid, very well thought out. So I don't want to diminish it in any way. But he kind of had this flurry of posts, and they were all about things that he would do differently, or things that he would do if he were starting an agency today.

Just some core ideas. And I thought that they were, I thought they were pretty heady topics. I thought they were pretty interesting stuff. So I immediately sent him a message. I said, "Yo bro, like, let's get on the podcast and just talk through these ideas, because I think they're really, I think it's really interesting stuff."

And obviously I have my thoughts as I'm building Rogue around some of the ideas. And that's what this is. So this is kind of impromptu. He had this Twitter storm on Friday. I sent him a message.

I said, "Dude, let's jump on on Monday. Let's talk about these ideas." And here we are, four days later, recording the episode. So I don't know when you'll actually listen to this, but it's four days after the Twitter storm. And I think there's some really good stuff.

I'd love your feedback on this episode. You know, you guys, I get like one-off messages from you guys, but if you ever want to just like hit me up with an idea or whatever, obviously any of the socials you can always hit me up or ryan@ryanhanley.com. I'd love your ideas and feedback because these episodes are meant to push the way we think about the industry. And Chris is certainly one of those guys who's dialed in and can give us a lot of really interesting insights. And I think you're going to love this episode.

Before we get there, I want to give a huge shout out to our sponsors, Tarmica. Tarmica is changing the way commercial insurance is done. It's making small commercial profitable. Tarmica is making small commercial profitable by allowing you to get multiple quotes from multiple carriers in one single place, one entry point. I've told the story when I had the founder Raggeth on the podcast a few episodes ago.

Just scroll back. You can listen to that. I talk about the, you know, I've had multiple examples now, but the one I talked about was I got a call and 23 minutes later, I had a bound Liberty Mutual policy paid for new client. You know, phone call 23 minutes later, I'm cashing a commission check, right? So that is how small commercial becomes profitable.

And Tarmica is leading the way. Just hands down the leader in the space in terms of what their tech is, in terms of the integration they have with the carriers, their ability to pull back accurate, bindable, high quality results that, you know, you don't have to guess when you do the bridge. That's the worst part, right? You get the number and you go to bridge and you find out the price is $2,000 more and you look like a, you know, you look like you don't know what you're doing to the client. And that's not what you're getting from Tarmica.

And that's why I'm a huge supporter of them. And it is such an honor that they are a sponsor of this show. So go to T-A-R-M-I-K-A, T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com to get your demo of Tarmica today. All right, let's get on to Chris. Chris Langell, let's go.

So dude, you have been super freaking hardcore on the Twitters lately. And I saw you ripping it up the other day. I don't even know what day it was. I think it was like a weekend. It was either Friday or Saturday.

And, um, and I, and I, you know, I kind of responded to each one. You put like six things out and I responded to each one. And, um, I just, I was like this, and I, I think I reached out to you immediately. And I was like, dude, we, we should do a podcast about this because I think that some of the topics that you were bringing up are super relevant to today. I also think you have a unique perspective in that, you know, you were an agent.

Now you run a technology company that serves agents, but at the same time, because of the nature of what you do, you're kind of inside and talking to you and seeing what's going on with so many agents across, you know, at so many different levels. Right. I mean, you have Carruthers, you know, doing, doing high end, middle market commercial stuff all the way down to like, you know, just a generalist local doing a lot of personal lines, small commercial stuff. So you, your, your agencies run the spectrum. So I just was like, let's jump on, do kind of, I don't want to say impromptu.

Cause I mean, we can rip it off on anything, but I just thought, I want to kind of walk through these things and maybe just start with like where, like you were obviously fired up. So what's going on? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think people that don't know me probably think I'm like a psychopath on Twitter.

But, and I was talking to somebody about this the other day. It's like, I'm just passionate man about this industry. And I have a lot of friends and people that are in this, in this industry who are, some are struggling, some are not. A lot of people lean on us for advice. It's not just how do we do this with our website?

It's Chris, what would you do if you were doing this X, Y, Z? So even though I'm a technology vendor, I still feel like some days that I work in an agency, just I'm making decisions for other people's agencies. Cause they just, they, they need that guidance, but yeah, I definitely, sometimes I get off on, on a, on a tantrum or a tirade, if you will, sometimes. But yeah. It's, to be honest with you, man, it's because I really do at the end of the day, want the best for agency owners.

And I want the best for the industry. And if I see something that in my mind doesn't make sense, I'm going to, I'm going to be vocal about it. I'm going to call it out because I don't want to see my brothers and sisters making mistakes that they could avoid. I mean, you know, one of the things, right. There's this thing like, you know, what they call it, shiny object syndrome.

Right. And, and one of the comments that I made on Twitter and some of this comes from internal conversations with clients. Some of it I see, I see other agencies kind of making these mistakes and it's like, you know, we had an agent that was like, we really want to have this. We want to have this like web widget that, that helps us get Google reviews. Right.

I'm not going to name any names. There's a million of them now. Right. But this particular one is expensive for, for what it does. It's three, $400 a month.

And the same client didn't want to sign up for our local traffic marketing program. Right. And I'm thinking in my head, you're willing to spend three or $400 a month on, on a web widget. Right. But you don't want to actually invest in traffic to come to the website.

So people actually use this web widget. Like the logic in a lot of people's minds is like ass backwards. And it, it gets on my nerves. Like I want to, I want to tell, I want to get these people and tell them like, guys, like, I love you, but dude, what are you, what are you doing? It's like Sebastian.

Yeah. What are you doing? And again, dude, it's cause I want the best. I'm not trying to be a like blowhard or jerk or aggressive or anything like that. And dude, I'm, I'm the first person to tell you, I don't have all the answers, but what I do know is that I was in this industry in the foxhole for 10 plus years, both as a, you know, agency producer, I was out taking out the trash, man.

Like I did everything. Like I did everything. I wore all the hats that you guys all wear. And it was one of the reasons why I started the company that I started because agencies just need that guidance and that help. And so I hope to anybody that's listening that has seen me like, you know, on Twitter, in these like fits of rage, I hope that like you're taking it as like tough love and not like, you know, this guy's being, you know, a South Jersey jerk, whatever.

Yeah. Well, so, you know, the, I could see, I, um, well, the good news is if they're listening to this show, then there's, it would be tough for you to offend anyone. Cause if you're still listening to this podcast for any, like after one or two episodes, I've, I've had to offend you or a guest would have to offend you already. It doesn't go. We usually about 10 minutes in, we just, the offensiveness starts.

So, um, so I think, I think you're in good company in that regard. I, I think it's what's needed. I, I think for a long time, um, I think for a long time, people just stayed quiet on this stuff in general. And it was like a secret sauce, right? Like you wouldn't say anything cause you were getting feedback that you knew you could then use to wedge out other people from different vendors or whatever.

And instead what you're doing is you're taking to the public forum and saying, guys, these are questions we have to ask ourselves. Like, where is your value structure when a $400 Google reviews widget is more important to you than a $300 in Google ads that are driving traffic to the actual site? Like what, and if, if you weigh those two things and the Google reviews widget is still more important, then okay, are you building to, to maximize the value of that tool? And, and, and see, that's kind of the level that I think, I think, I think what happens, uh, at a high level and I do, I want to really dig into some of these questions. I think they're great that you asked on Twitter.

Um, and, uh, you know, I think, I think a big part of the issue is we, we oftentimes stay super surface. It's I need a Google reviews widget because this agent over here that I really respect has a Google reviews widget and he's killing it. So I need to have one. I don't have no idea how I'm going to generate traffic to it or get my clients to it or how I'm going to use it. But he's paying $400 for his, and I'm as good agent to see it.

So I'm gonna pay $400 for mine. Right. And instead, like you say, I actually had this, this, what you're talking about now is from one of your most recent tweets. It's like you, you can get Google and again, not a knock on any of the vendors. I actually used a new vendor for the first time the other day.

I was reviewing, um, uh, Indium, uh, the market access company. They, they did a, you know, Hey, can you do a review thing for me? So I went through the process and they use a company called ask nicely, which is a, I think a Salesforce or an integrated company. Salesforce or an integrates with Salesforce or something. I know it's not cheap either, but the process was awesome.

It was very conversational. It took you through. It was easy. It worked. And I was like, Oh, this is really cool.

I wouldn't pay for that because I would rather just send someone an email with a link to my Google page and say, Hey man, can you write me a, can you write me a review? That's free with your email marketing software or whatever, or you'd probably even do that out of your agency management system. But like, um, or like what my wife does. She just puts as in her signature that goes automatically with every email. If you enjoyed the service that you received from our agency, can you leave us a Google review?

Click here. It helps us grow our business. They get three to five Google reviews every month just from that simple thing to do nothing else. So like, yeah, the point, I guess my point is, what are you actually trying to do? Like there's nothing wrong with buying a $400 widget.

If it fits into a strategic plan and you, and you, you know, you have a whole method behind it. But if you're just doing it, it doesn't, you know, you're wasting money. Yeah. Oh yeah. And I mean, it's not even necessarily about the tool.

It's about the 30,000 foot view. Like when you, and we'll just, we'll stay on this topic because we're on it. You know, Google reviews is, you know, obviously important, but in the grand scheme of your digital footprint, it's five, 10% of the total thing you should be doing. It's a very small sliver of what matters online. And a lot of people are there.

It's their only, it's their only digital marketing expense. It's like, no, listen, like. It's cool, but is it really more important than this, that, and this? And so it's just really about helping people prioritize. Like, dude, if you want to, if you want to go get this tool or that tool or this software or that, like, be my guest.

But just have a plan in place, like, and understand the grand scheme of where your marketing dollars should go. Because a lot of people in our industry are doing zero advertising, but yet they spend, you know, 25 grand a year on a bunch of fluff that really isn't, they barely even use. Because I know people that have signed up for, you know, the infusion softs of the world and this and that, and they don't, they barely even log in and they cancel it before they ever even used it. It's like, you know, the shiny object syndrome is definitely a real thing. And I think that's part of maybe what I'm trying to help people prevent with my tips, advice, consulting is like, listen, like there's a lot of noise.

There's a lot of, you know, people in our, in our space. Um, and there's just a lot of information that's, and it's all very fragmented. Like you can't copy another agent because what works for them, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work for you. And like, I think a lot of people, they just want to copy what other people are doing. Well, what is so-and-so using on their website?

And I'm like, why does that matter? We're going to, we're building it for you. Yeah. Why do you want to look at 40 different websites before we build yours? Like, are you going to, that's, that's a mistake.

Like we're building it for you. So I think a lot of people, they don't want to, um, put in the work. Maybe they, you know, they just don't know how or to where to get started and they just want to do what other people are doing because they think it's saving them time. And really at the end of the day, it's actually costing more time because yeah, you start off with someone else's thing and you realize six months in a dozen, we're going to rebuild it anyway, or you got to start from scratch anyway. So it's like, start with what you need, what works for you in the right order.

And you will grow faster than copying other people. You know? A hundred percent. All the people that I know who quote unquote today have like figured it out. They have 40 iterations behind them to get to the version that you see at some moment in time and go, Oh, look, they figured it out.

Well, you, you didn't see them, uh, you know, You know, a year and a half ago when they're flailing all over the place, spending money on different things that aren't working, but they just kept iterating and iterating and iterating and iterating, you know, and again, some of this man is, is digital Darwinism. You know what I mean? Some of it is that there is always going to be a hierarchy of individuals and people are going to end up at the bottom because they don't want to work. And, and, and, and that's, I think, I think, you know, there are times when I, when on this particular topic, I just want to tell people, just don't do anything. Just ask for referrals, have a simple postcard website and just ask your clients for referrals.

Here's what's going to happen. You're not going to grow fast. Your business isn't going to be sexy, but you can probably maintain and live a freaking great life. Go golfing, take your kids on trips, go, you don't do well. You can't take trips today.

You can't take trips today because, you know, the freaking emperors of our, whatever state you're in have decided that they're going to mandate you can't. But you know, the idea here is, um, I guess my idea is figure out who it's probably even a hundred thousand foot. Who the heck do you want to be? Like, do you want to be that guy up on stage? Do you want to be like Christian Moore who grinds it out all the time?

Like the dude is constantly working and pushing and, and that's not a knock on him. He's coming on the show. Like, I can't wait to talk to him. I can't wait to talk to him, but the dude works. Like he, he's gone out and found partners.

He's hired people. He's built systems and he's constantly, you know, he's on better agency with me. And I see him asking all these questions as he's tinkering with things. Like, is that who you want to be? Cause that dude is constantly working.

So if that's what you want to be, that's freaking amazing. But then you have to do what he's doing. If you want to be the guy up on, or the woman up on stage, the other side of it is maybe your business isn't, you know, in the sexy group, but you're just crushing life. You know what I mean? Your, your spouse has got a new car.

Your kids are going to a great school. You go on vacations, you play golf whenever you want. You know what I mean? Like you got the newest fresh gear and kicks on or whatever the new Jordans, you know what I mean? Like whatever your deal is.

So I think we got to figure that out first because I just, you know, you get down to this level and people are spending money and you're like, why'd you buy that? Well, I don't know. Yeah. And it's not even about the money part. You know, I, it's really just about making the right decisions in the right order based on you, based on your agency, not based on what someone else is doing.

You know, meaning there's people that, um, they can afford to spend X amount of dollars a month on this, that, and a third. And because they're already established, they've put in the work and they have processes and people in place to, you know, where, where it doesn't matter if they lose 10 grand a month, you know, it's, and there's agencies out there that do, they do their taxes at the end of the year. And they're probably like, where, where does this money go? I mean, they lose more money than other agencies spend. It's just, it is what it is.

Some agencies have been at this for a very long time, but you know, my, my, my comments or my, my outlook is never to like demean or say, Hey, what you're doing is a hundred percent wrong. Like you do you, but I am definitely of, of the, um, personality where like, I'd rather help you prevent something bad from happening as to let you just like learn and take your lumps on your own. You know, like, I'm the type of person where I'm like my, my eight year old son, he's like, you know, he's like a bull in a China shop. He wants one of these, um, like hoverboard things. You lean forward.

It's like, it, it, you know, it brings you forward and backwards and you flip around. And I'm like, no, dude, like, no, like, I don't want you to break your arm. Like he's a really good athlete. He plays baseball. He's, you know, he's one of the better kids on his team.

And I'm like, I don't want you jeopardizing like baseball or this or that because you broke your arm being, being stupid. Um, and so, so to the same kind of point, it's like, I kind of maybe, you know, offer that advice to other business owners on maybe people appreciate it. Maybe they don't, but again, it's coming from a good place, man. So I think, I think we can, I think we can firmly establish that anyone who's listening to this agrees and believes that when you, uh, get aggressive on Twitter, which I personally fucking love, um, you know, that it's coming from a good place that you're trying to use your, your experience, your expertise, the conversations you're having, you're trying to, to get people to take action. So, okay.

So let's actually run through you, you, you posted six points and we can go off on tangents as necessary, but I'd like to run through these. Cause I think they're really interesting ideas. And, um, you know, you, you, you started it by saying, if I had to run an agency all over again, I would. And number one was never have a physical location. It's a waste of money period.

So I have my, I have, I actually have very conflicting thoughts, but I'm super interested in what, like just wide period, no conversation. Would you just not have a physical location? Yeah. So I think that for a lot of reasons. Um, so going back to when I ran my agency, we had, we had, you know, face-to-face meetings and stuff like that, but we, I very rarely met with clients in my office.

Um, so that's a big reason for it. And our office space was not cheap. I mean, it was an, it was a big spot. It was a nice place. I mean, it was six plus thousand dollars a month just for the square footage that we had, not including, you know, other bills and stuff that goes along with that.

Um, and I think that when you look at the current landscape of a lot of the agencies that are out there that, um, a majority of our, our users, and obviously not to say that every agency is like this, but a lot of our customers are personal lines focused. And that whole game now is virtual, virtual in my mind. Um, you can sell insurance without a, without a physical office and you could take the money that you're spending on that office space and put it into ads or advertising, which people are not doing enough of in our industry. You can put it into VAs. I talked about VAs too.

I'm sure we'll talk about that in a second. Um, just, you know, reallocate that money where it would make a bigger difference than having a place to go. And like, I've been working from home for, you know, five, six, seven years now. And sure. I have days where I'm like, I need to get the hell out of here.

Like I can't sit in this room one more day and look at these walls one more day. I need to have an office. I need to get out. And, but at the end of the day, it would be a complete waste of money for me. And we have a team of eight people now.

I mean, none of us, all of us work from home. We don't have a physical office and we run a very lean, mean, efficient, um, you know, company. So it's like, I just, and again, it's my opinion. I'm not saying it's right for everybody. Um, but I think for a large majority of agencies, again, especially if you are smaller and personal lines focused, think about working from home, think about, you know, communicating with your team through Zoom and we use Telegram.

We don't use Slack. We use this thing called Telegram, which has been a game changer. Um, you know, there's other ways to run it. Insurance is not this, you know, physical face to face game anymore for the most part. And even if you are commercially focused and you're, you're, yeah, there's going to be times where you need to physically go out to the place of business to win a, win a sale or whatever, or meet, you know, a couple of different decision makers.

So it's not the case for everybody, but I just look at what most people are probably spending, man, three to six grand a month, but they don't want to spend, you know, 500 bucks a month on Google ads or, or a website or this, or something that will get them greater exposure in their market. Yeah. So my, here's, here's my thought on it. Cause I think, I, I actually think there's a, a hybrid answer to this that I think works really well. And it's, uh, I think co-working spaces are the answer to this.

So I pay a hundred dollars a month for a co-working membership that gives me the ability to any very professional, very clean. It's, it's freaking beautiful. The place is actually awesome. It's better than any. You're talking about Troy innovation garage.

Troy innovation garage. Yeah. I see, I see your pictures and stuff. I'm like, that place looks pretty dope. It's dope.

I agree. I mean, you're making a really good point. It's better than any office that I could buy that I could buy like solo. And anytime I've ever brought anybody there, I had every one of my, um, appointment meetings with this. So this is pre COVID, right?

So I'm having my meetings with carriers about getting appointments. I brought every single one of them to that space. And I explained, cause you know, cause carriers get kind of weird, you know, they're, they want to make sure you're bought in. So they want the physical space thing. Cause I actually asked a buddy of mine who's a carrier guy about the physical space thing.

Cause everyone goes, carriers make you have a physical space that is not written into anybody's contract thing. That is not a real thing. That is a trigger that they use to try to make, find out if you're legit, right? So what, what a carrier doesn't want to take the time, effort, energy to make you part of their organization as a appointed agent, and then have you crap out in six months. Cause really you weren't really, uh, you weren't committed, right?

A physical location shows at least in some regard commitment. Now, so I brought them to that space and I said, look, like I'm running this agency. It's going to be primarily digital work from home, but I have this space that I've contracted that anytime I can go in this meeting room, I can go in this meeting room. It's super pro checkbox and move on. So now, cause I believe today that if you're starting an agency and one of the first things you do is go out and get a physical location, I think you're wasting, I'm with you.

You're wasting money. I am primarily a commercial lines agent. I have met face to face with one client so far. That's it. And just because he wanted to, it wasn't, he didn't even really need to.

He's just like, Hey man, why don't you come over? Like check out my, check out my place. That was it. So like, I, I, I wholly agree with this. And I think that coworking spaces give you some flexibility, maybe do a team mastermind if you're all in the same town or in the same region or whatever.

But, um, I'm with you. It just, there's no reason for it anymore. I'm sorry. Commercial real estate brokers. There's just, but there's no reason for this.

Yeah. I just, the reason I look at it, I think for most of the agencies, right, it's probably their biggest monthly cost. So it's like, does it really, and do people really walk into that place of business to do business with you? Do you even want that? I wouldn't want that.

I wouldn't want someone to come into my office and say, Hey, can I pay my car insurance real quick? And they hand me a physical check. I'd be like, all right, man, you can go get a quote from the guy down the street. Like, I don't want that type of customer. Um, and so again, not right for everybody, but I just think in my mind, what if you could put 36, 48, $64,000 a year into promoting your business and drawing attention to yourself versus putting it into an office location that no one comes into anymore?

That was my point. That was why I said what I said. Yeah. Okay. So we're, we're in agreement on that one.

I think, I think, I think, you know, we've dialed it in and I, obviously I agree. Okay. Number two, uh, I would draw way more attention to myself, build the top of funnel awareness. Talk me through that idea. Cause I think that's going to be foreign to some people.

Yeah, man. So I look at everything through almost a sales funnel, right? The top of every sales funnel starts with the awareness phase. And this is a thing that maybe, again, you said people are foreign to, but when you, you know, when you sell anything, right, there's always going to be a funnel and, and the, the, the beginning part of that is like, you need to make people aware of what you do, who you are. You need to draw attention to yourself.

Um, there's a tax company around here called Liberty tax. I think it's like a national chain. Yep. And every year during tax season, they, they dress this dude up in a statue of Liberty costume. And the guy is waving people into the parking lot.

And I look at that and I'm like, man, that's kind of like corny, but at the end of the day, like I think about Liberty tax, like they did their job. Like they got me, they got into my head and so few agencies do any form of, of advertising. Like people are just purely working through referrals. I get it. It works.

It's a warm lead, whatever, but the volume just is not there for most people. And really what sets you apart from, from other people in your, especially with insurance is very competitive. I mean, if it wasn't this competitive, you wouldn't have to advertise, draw attention to yourself. But that was a thing that I was not really good at when I, and it was a lot of it had to do with, I was wearing a lot of different hats. I really, at the end of the day, like only had X amount of hours to put towards it.

And I got to be really good at it towards the end of my like tenure in, in the agency. Um, but I look at a lot of my other like friends that are in the space and I'm like, man, like, don't you think like way more people would do business with you if they just knew who the hell you were? Like, you're a great guy, dude. Like you're a cool dude. I would kick it with you.

I would play golf. I would drink beers with you. Like, and a lot of other people would too, but they just don't know who a lot of agents, they have no brand awareness. They have no, you know, they have no identity, not even in their local marketplace. And it's like, dude, if you could just dominate a 20 mile radius, you have all the business in the world.

You wouldn't have to go outside of that. You know, it's, I would just, I would have done that a lot differently. And like, I look at guys like, um, you know, Nick, we talk about Nick Ayers and stuff. Sometimes he's really good at doing this. He's really good at drawing attention to himself, whether it be good, bad, or weird.

He's just good at the attention game. And I think you put this in your book a while back. Like it's an attention game. It's a game of attention. And it's like, you just, the more competitive the industry, the more of that you should be doing.

Dude. And here's what I'm going to say it's all my, we work on referrals agents. And this is one of the things that I used to bang on when, uh, in my, so many, my keynotes back when you could do keynotes, which I miss as soon as conferences open back up, start contacting me again. I can't wait to come and speak at your conference. Um, is that you, I would set them up, set them up, set them up.

And then obviously there would always be that dude in the back. Who's like, no one can see me, but I'm like slumped down in my chair. Usually they'd have their arms crossed and they'd be staring at me. And, uh, actually the best one I ever have was this dude in Connecticut. I'm at Connecticut in Connecticut.

And this dude is just, he is fully lamped. It's probably like, it was a young agents event in Connecticut, great group. And, and this story actually ends up being very positive, but like this dude's probably in his mid fifties. So he's like probably there with one of his young producers at this event. But so he's got, but he's, he's like front table and he's just got that he's way slumped down arms crossed.

And he is just mean mugging me the whole time. Everything I'm saying, I can just tell. And then finally I say something, hand goes up, hand goes up. You know, this is all great, but it doesn't work for us because we've been around for 50 years and our leads come in through referrals. And I said, you know what?

That's a great, that's great. That's great. Let's talk about how, let's talk about that. Are you happy with the number of referrals? Well, you know, obviously we could always have more.

Okay. How do you think you get more referrals? Do you think you ask for them? Well, yeah, we could ask for them, but we have a referral program. Okay.

So do you think maybe it's just that when someone gets referred to you, they look at your digital presence and you look, they don't like what they see. Maybe they just, you know, how old is your website? And you know, dude, this is the shit that like people don't realize just because Chris tells me to buy something doesn't mean I'm going to buy it just because Chris told me to buy it. I'm going to go check it out and go, do I like this thing? So if you haven't done the work of building your brand and letting people know who you are, then when you get referred, you're going to lose referral traction.

Referrals aren't a one-to-one thing. You're not a hundred percent converting referrals. There's a certain number. And depending on how good your digital presence is, there's a certain number of referrals that just never call you because they don't like what they see or they don't see anything. And they don't, they're like, ah, no, I'm not going to call that person.

People are shallow, man. People are shallow like that. It's just how people buy. They buy on appearance. They buy on what, what they see here, you know?

Well, dude, it's not even being shallow. It's legit. Like if I, if I go and look at your, if someone tells me that you're the baller, super gangster website guy, and I go check out your website and it looks like it was built in 2005. Am I going to be impressed? Like, am I going to be like, yeah, no, his website shit.

But I bet the one he's going to build for me is great. No, they're not going to say that. They're going to go, no, this dude looks like a freaking schmuck. He can't even fix up his own website. How's he going to make me a gangster?

I know. It's funny, man. It's true. I, dude, I saw this, I was driving the other day and I saw like a, um, this SUV and I just kind of caught out of the corner of my eye. I'm like, what was that?

That thing was nice. And my buddy goes, oh, it's a Kia. And I'm like, ah, forget it. Like I could never, and I apologize to anybody listening to drives a Kia. Like if I had to, I would, but like, I just, I would never buy a Kia.

And it's, it's a brand thing. Like it was probably the Telluride every once in a while, a Telluride catches my eye. The Kia Telluride. It was fresh, man. It was fresh.

And nowadays, like when I was a kid, you had to buy like rims after market rims. You had, you have your car, send it out. So we were taught, we were talking about, um, we were talking about the Kia where we left off. Yes. So long story short here, I'm just going to come in this way.

Just so everybody knows that little weird break there was because I just sold the umbrella behind my house to someone and the percentage of being incredibly chatty. And we have no idea where we really left off. So we're just going to come back in at number three. Um, okay. So number three is I would spend a minimum 5,000 a month in ads on Google and Facebook.

I, that number is probably more than most people than feels comfortable to most people. So why 5,000? Yeah. I kind of equate that to like what the, you know, average physical office space is. And I guess maybe I could have reframed that and just said, you know, instead of having that physical office, I would work from home or work remotely.

Kind of like what you talked about with the, uh, with the, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Like, uh, shared community space. Co-working space. Um, I would just reallocate that into ads. And one of the reasons why I say that is because, um, you can cover a lot more ground in places where people actually are online through, you know, we, we do a lot of Google search and Facebook display ads, retargeting ads.

We run ads to the customer's book of business. So we will help them. Local traffic marketing.com. Local traffic marketing.com. Yeah, man.

I appreciate it. And so I would basically do that to cover more ground. I mean, you can pinpoint certain zip codes where you're not physically located. People say this all the time. They're like, Chris, you know, we're, we're located in, um, you know, Philly, but we're licensed also in New York, Maryland, New Jersey, et cetera.

Like what's the best way. Can we rank our websites in those locations? And my reply normally is no, because Google is going to show a localized result based on the location of the person searching for insurance. So you have to reach those individuals with ads. Um, and there's no better way to do it through Google and Facebook.

You can literally type in zip codes. You can exclude certain areas. So if you're like, I don't want business from this side of town, you can exclude that. And just that's where the eyeballs are. So I said 5,000 really based on what I think is probably like the average cost of like people's office space.

Um, especially the people that are out in California where like just the, the cost of rent is like triple what it is out where I am. I mean, I know a lot of agents in California. Um, but, um, I just would be more active with ads. And one of the big reasons is like, we tell this to people all the time. And I kind of hit on this earlier.

Like a lot of people aren't advertising at all, but a lot of independent agencies, um, they, they don't know what they're doing. So if you, you know, with Google and Facebook ads, so if you do, or you hire someone like us who knows how to do it, you're, it's going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. Yeah. Um, you know, from an advertising and brand play perspective, like you're also taking traffic away from your competitors too. So it's not just always about getting leads yourself.

It's also about taking leads from competitor agencies, which there's no shortage of, I mean, in, in any location. I mean, literally just take a list of every one of the agencies within 30 miles of your, of your, of your agency, and then run an ad when someone types in their name for both an exact and a broad form match. And now you're, now you're literally ranking above all your competitors every single time. Yup. And that's a, that's a valid strategy that a lot of people do that, you know, that's not a, um, despite what some people believe that's not a, um, unethical marketing strategy.

I mean, when you look at go, go Google the iPhone, I mean, Android, Google is running ads against Apple. I mean, all, everyone does it, right? Everyone. I mean, if it's your best buddy and it's his agency or her agency, right. Maybe don't run an ad against their agency, but if you don't, there's nothing unethical about using running ads.

So, okay. So, so if you've ever done hard mail and you send a hard mailer to someone's house who isn't your client, is that unethical? Because there's some, you're sending mail to someone's home who isn't your client. Like it's to me, you know, these are some of the things that we tell ourselves because we either don't want to pay someone or we don't want to do the work. And that's, and you know, and I think that's kind of dangerous place to be.

Yeah. And that's what we want to push through. And to your point, I just want to jump on top of this. You said, you know, the bear, the bar is so low that doing something puts you, we're not talking about like linear growth. Like we're not talking about, you know, if you're at one doing nothing and then doing a little bit puts you at two doing a little bit puts you at like 10 or a hundred.

And, and that's how much further along you can go. I mean, you know, it's just, it's crazy what is possible. Um, we're just a little bit of work with a little bit of effort. And, and I've actually been dabbling a lot in hard mail lately, like, like physical works, postcards and stuff. It still works in certain verticals.

If you can, if you can follow a postcard up with a call, you have a really good chance of talking to them. It doesn't mean they're going to buy from you. It just means you've got a really good chance of talking to them. This is specifically in commercial. And I think there's a lot of opportunity in personal lines too.

If you're really ballsy and you want to do some like cold calling to people who aren't on the, do not call list with some hard mail followed by a call. I think you could write a lot of personal lines insurance too. I have zero interest in that, but I think it's worthwhile. It's funny while we're on this topic, cause we're, we're doing this in conjunction, um, with some, uh, some digital ads for a client and the way that we're building out the campaign real quick, just maybe like high level geek, um, kind of nerdy stuff here. But if you are going to do hard mail, drive them back, put, put a URL, put like a shortened URL on the postcard, drive them back to that page so that you can then target them with like your Facebook and Google pixel.

Then you have them, then you could start remarketing them everywhere they're at. Um, but you could also send them back to, uh, Facebook, like native Facebook videos where you can then retarget based on like percentage of video watched and stuff like that. Just get, get them back to your content and get them familiar with your brand. And that's really how you can warm up cold traffic from postcards, from ads. Like at the end of the day, dude, advertising is a game of retargeting.

It's a game of repetition. Most people are not going to do business with you the first time they see your ad, maybe not even a 10th time they see your ad. Um, so it's a game of just repetition, repetition, repetition. You have to just keep, uh, never stop advertising. Yeah.

I, it's a hundred percent of the truth. It's just not, it's not a monster that you can feed once and expect to get any kind of results out of. So, all right, let's, let's move on to, uh, let's, let's keep going. Uh, okay. So, um, this is technically number three as well, because I think you just screwed up the numbering, but, um, number three in the Twitter stream, number four in our hearts.

Um, I would delete my AMS agency management system. They are pointless in our industry. They store contact info and notes. Cool. So does this word doc.

Yeah, I'll catch some flack for this. Um, I, I, I stick by that and here's why I say that. Right. Um, and I think this is something that this is a problem that is on its way to being fixed. But right now, as we sit here right now, despite the functionality of a lot of these agency management systems, it's getting better the way that a large majority of agencies are using their AMS is no different than any other CRM.

It's no different than fricking MailChimp or active campaign. Any CRM that can store custom fields that can automate some stuff internally that has a sales pipeline, um, could technically be used as an agency management system for all intents and purposes. Like I, I understand that there's download data that flows through an AMS and I understand that that is, um, you know, a thing or maybe important for, for, can be based on your type of agency and how your process is set up. For me personally, when I ran the agency, our AMS, I like, yeah, cool. We had downloads.

Cool. I didn't do anything with that information. When I really needed accurate data, I would go to the carrier because a lot of this stuff would not be accurate in the AMS. Sometimes the downloads were not correct. Um, and so at the end of the day, I was really only using it for storage data, information storage.

And there's this thing, I get it. There's this thing now, right. With data and like the importance of data. And I agree with a lot of it. I think at the end of the day, the way that I view data might be different than some other people.

I view all of this stuff as temporary. Like, I don't care me personally. I don't care if I own the data. I'm renting everything right now until I retire. Like, I don't care if I own my AMS.

I don't care if I own my website. I don't care if I own my office space. I don't care if I own my automation tool. I'm renting all this stuff so that I can ultimately retire. Um, that's not to demean or say that none of it's important to own or whatever.

I get the power of it. But again, going back to the AMS thing, I'm, I just, I think that because most and a lot of agencies are used, not even using 10% of what they can do. It's like, dude, how important really is this? We've been taught to, we've been taught to think that you can't survive without one. But the reality is like, there's a lot of successful agencies that multimillion dollar agencies that were still using spreadsheets up until five years ago.

Like I'm not saying that's the way to go. I'm just saying that we shouldn't think that it's all about the AMS, that it's all about this or that it's, it's not. So here's, I'm going to tell you now that I'm on, um, and this is, I guess this is a plug for, for better agency, but it's, it can be true of any system. Um, if you think about it this way, since, since I've been on better agency and I've seen what its functionality is, I have stopped logging into my agency management system. I've literally just stopped.

I have no reason to go in. It captures every piece of data I could possibly need from a contact information standpoint. It captures the basic information like F E I N number. So, you know, that kind of stuff that I can need for, uh, for personal information. It then captures the policies, the policy number, the policy term, the premium and a commission split.

If you have a split with a producer or whatever. So now, so take that and it has the ability to do notes, tasks, and attachments. It also has a service pipeline and renewal pipeline. Okay. So the only functionality that I cannot duplicate in better agency today is, uh, a cord forms have to get a cord from some someplace.

Cause if you're doing commercial insurance, you still have to use a cord forms. Um, I actually prefer a cord forms over inputting information into most systems. It's why I'm also a fan of Tarmica because putting commercial lines, marketing, you know, as in the insurance version of it, quoting is miserable. So just, just doing a cords and emailing an underwriter records is actually my preferred method, but okay, that's a different story. So, okay.

So I need a cords. I need to be able to do accounting somehow and more the reconciliation of accounting, not just the actual accounting. Cause that's really where our industry becomes tough. And the third piece is the downloads. If you believe that that functionality is necessary.

So I'm going to throw downloads out because I don't think the future of our industry is downloads. I think that that window is coming past. We, we missed that boat. I feel like 10 years ago, if the industry could have got its shit together and figured out downloads, like Ron Berg has been pushing for 15 years. Right.

Right. I mean, if they just listened to Ron Berg 10 years ago, then we would be downloads would probably be a different thing, but no one has, and it's still a mess. And some of the information comes in and some of it doesn't. And some people download immediately and some people take a week and some people take a month and it's like, it's a disaster. Okay.

Plus you don't actually need them because here's my opinion. Downloads were necessary because broadband internet sucked and was slow. Today we have 5g, we have 4g, we have high speed broadband. We have, if you can get one of those Verizon T1 cables that build into your house, they literally the internet can't run fast enough to get to your house. You know what I mean?

So like you don't need, you don't need the information to be quick. You don't need it in your system. You can be just as quick with a simple button click into the carrier system. And then the carrier system is the system of record and which is what it's going to be anyways. Right.

If, if you are, you know, the, the downloads and the making the changes in your system, and then going and making the changes in the carrier system is opening up for, you know, and errors and clerical shit. And then you need to hire someone to check the person who was doing the changes and it's just this mess. So, okay. So let's pretend like you don't actually need downloads. You just need to know their policy number, how much they're paying, you know, what the, what the confirm, you know, what the premium amount is.

Once it's issued, you want to put in the S you know, what, what you're quoted. And then you want to make sure you check. You definitely want to make sure you check to make sure the quoted premium comes in. So if you have that, you're freaking good because then you can just log into the system and punch in and make the change there. Okay.

So what's the last piece or, or have your VA do it? Or yeah. Or have, yeah, I'm not a person in your agency. Yeah. VA can handle this.

Okay. So, so, okay. So I threw that in there because I know that's another bullet point that we're going to, yeah, we'll be there in a second. So the, um, so the, uh, well, there's actually a really good one in between now and then. So, okay.

So the last piece really, so cords, you can get a lot of different places. I have mixed opinions. I still think, unfortunately, there is not a tremendous and affordable place to get a cord forms. That isn't, I think the best place to get a cord forms right now is probably now starts for 65 bucks a month. It's probably the best place to get a cord forms today because a lot of these accord form automation tools are really expensive.

Um, they don't pump out the accord forms in the standard accord format, which messes with carriers because they're not used to looking at the data in this different format, even though it's technically the same fields. So, okay. So, but that's still pretty easily solved. Accounting is the hard one. If a tool like better agency or something else can figure out the accounting piece, meaning the reconciliations with the commission forms that come in, um, uh, with, with the commission statements that come in on a monthly basis and, and reconcile that.

If you can figure that piece out, which it's so funny. I said this the other day on a podcast and Cass called me and he's like, you know, and I guess if you want to be a professional agency, you have to do your commission reconciliation, blah, blah, blah. And the only best place to do it is in your uh, management system. He's not wrong. And then I had another agent call me literally 10 minutes later and go, yo, Hanley, you got to see this shit I'm doing right now.

Like, dude, I'm doing the whole thing. Um, you don't need an agency management system. He's like, it's, he's like, it's a little clunky right now. We're figuring it out, but I'm telling you, this is like, this is like, this is like a $2 VA project. Like this is easy stuff.

So, you know, my point in saying that to all you is it's saying that is we have to be able to move fast and communicate. If, if the shift in our business is, and then I promise I'll be quiet is, uh, is from data managers, which I think has been a big outside of the insurance piece, right? Like making sure someone's program is set up with a lot, which a lot of agents don't even do to begin with, but let's say that is your primary focus. Your next focus has really been data management. That's really the next thing that agents did.

I don't know that that's the case anymore. I think the next thing that agents do is communicate. You have to be able to communicate. You have to be able to communicate everything that's going on and get to your people and move them through processes and help them understand and work them through life changes. And you can't do that if you're not communicating data management is gone.

It doesn't matter. It's, it's easy. It's commodity stuff. So I'm with you on this one. It's just, there's no perfect solution or easy solution yet.

Cause there's a few pieces that are tough, but man, some of these systems are close, bro. Some of them are real close. And that, that's another reason. Like, and again, I, that I said that I made that comment because that's what I would do. I'm not saying that that would be right for any other agencies, but just based on the current state, but also like what's to come.

I just, you know, I, I, I don't know that there's really any difference between that and a, like better agency, for example. I mean, there's a lot of stuff you could do with fricking active campaign. I mean, there's a lot of tools out there, better agencies. Awesome. I mean, they're, they're development speed is insane.

So, I mean, it would not surprise me whatsoever. You know, if one day we heard that that's what they were doing. Yes. And, um, I just, well, I put enough fricking, uh, product improvement requests in like on a daily basis to, and it's already great. You know what I mean?

But I'm just like, oh, I would love it if I could do this thing. I'd love it. And the crazy part is like a week later, you'll see a rollout and like one of those things will be on the list. And I'm sure I'm not the only one putting them in, but it's just, it is pretty interesting to see how they're doing a good job of slotting changes in and it's not easy, man. You definitely feel like you're, I will see two things about them.

One, I, you know, just from being at trustedchoice.com, I know product development is not easy too. I think a big part of it is making sure your users feel heard and that part, they're definitely getting right. There's no doubt that you definitely feel heard as a user of their tool. Okay. So let's keep moving.

Um, I would wait a minute. Oh, hold on. I wouldn't. So this is four slash five. I wouldn't share revenue with anyone.

You want to sell a product that you have to sell by law, no recurring commission. So I think specifically you're talking about purse lines insurance in this point, but, um, walk, walk us through no sharing revenue. Yeah. So, um, when you look at the landscape of insurance, how we make money, obviously you make money on recurring commissions. I think a lot of agency owners would agree that producers that they've hired through the years, people that they've hired through the years have not earned that recurrent, that recurring revenue.

Um, it's very easy for us to sell something upfront. Right. Um, it's not easy to help really maintain that relationship and retain that business. Right. And I think a lot of, and I know that this is true because I talked to a ton of agency owners who have this struggle and they're like, man, like this guy, you know, we hired him a year ago and we had to let him go.

Like he was great in the beginning and then he got comfortable and you know, he's not really doing anything for the money. And, you know, as a, as a business owner myself, like I've struggled with that at times too, through the years, certain relationships that I've had with people that were on our team. Um, some of them are not around anymore, but it's like, you know, if you look at it, right, you buy law, you have to have, you have to have car insurance in a lot of States. If you're selling something that's mandated by law and you're not doing anything to, to retain it, why should I pay you recurring revenue? You know?

Um, so I think a lot of agency owners may, that's a bull, again, it's a bold statement, you know, and I'm not saying that everybody should change how they're paying their people. Um, I just said, that's what I would do. I would have some young up and coming, you know, personalities, maybe that didn't know anything about insurance. Somebody that I just knew were good with people. They were good communicators, good talkers, good salespeople and motivating.

Like when you go to sell, you go to sell cars, you think car salesmen get paid recurring commission. Do people that sell iPhones get paid recurring commission? I mean, could those salespeople have an impact on whether or not the customer comes back to that dealership or comes back to that store for their next purchase? 100% they could, but they don't get paid recurring commission. A lot of salespeople don't get paid recurring commission.

So I'm not saying I wouldn't pay my people. Well, I would, I think I would, I would go about it differently. I would go about it differently. I would maybe, maybe incentivize them in other ways. Hey, you know, here's a larger upfront number for you, right?

There's no recurring revenue. Um, here's a larger, and if you hit, you know, 25 of these per month or 20 of these per month, you know, I'll scale your, your, your next upfront payments. Like that's how we got paid at AIG. When I cut my teeth in this industry, you never got paid recurring commission. It was a sliding scale bonus payout.

And you know, it wasn't hard to, to make six, seven, eight, $10,000 a month based on their volume of calls that were coming in and their, their sliding scale payment system that you're still making good money. And each month starts over. You're, you're hungry. You're motivated to hit that goal that next month. And it just keeps, it keeps everybody honest in the agency.

It doesn't allow you to get comfortable because every month now, the next month you have to do it all over again. You know what I mean? Yeah. It keeps you hungry. It keeps you motivated.

And I think that's a big challenge with our current payout structure that a lot of agencies use. That's, I also think, here's what I'm gonna say. I think two things. I think one, I agree with you on personal lines, especially if the agency is generating the opportunities. If the agency is generating the opportunities, there's no reason that the producer or the salesperson should get recurring revenue.

There's no reason for that. If you are, if you're going out and buying leads or you're doing paid ads or you're, you're doing that, no reason to, um, I think something like middle market commercial sales. I think that, I think you do because, but part of the job description is keeping the business, right? So I think that's a little different model. Here's what I ultimately think it comes down to.

If you're going to have employees, you have to be a leader. And so much of that is on the leader to say, John, you haven't hit your numbers for three months in a row. I'm sorry. We have to let you go. Right.

And then Sally sees John get booted because he didn't. She's like, oh, shit. Chris is legit. Okay. I got to step my game up.

And now that's draconian. But the idea is we struggle to actually, you know, what happens is you're a year later, you're still going, geez, man, John, I can't understand why you never hit your numbers, man. And it's like, okay, are you providing with the opportunities, the technology and the time to be successful? If those things are all true and he's still not producing, get him out. Yeah, exactly.

And I think this, you make a good point earlier about the hybrid workspace thing. And maybe the same could go for this. It's like, if you're going to go out and hunt your own food, dude, you can eat all of it. You can eat all of it. But if, if you are, if, if opportunities are coming, just flying through the door and you're not doing anything to generate them, we have to have a conversation about that, you know, because then it's, I'm just giving you money, you know, for very little in return.

And I think that that's a problem in a lot of agencies and it doesn't have to be, I think you just have to be a little bit creative about how you're going to structure that. And I know, I know it's not easy to find talented people. They don't, they don't grow on trees. But I think if you just spend a little bit of time training people, you can, you can turn people into the, the, the salespeople that you want them to be, and they will like their job and perform well for you if you're fair and you know, you let, you give them their creative space, you know? Yeah.

Not everyone wants the stress of managing a $200,000 book of business that comes with recurring revenue. Not everyone wants that stress. Some people are like, you know what, you send me the opportunities. I'll sit here and I'll close them and I'll make $75,000 a year all, all day and be completely happy. And you're just, you're making money.

They're selling policies, they're hitting their numbers. Your, your book of business is growing. Yeah. You're maybe just covering your nut on the, on the advertising or like the cost of acquisition expense, but that's fine because you're making full a hundred percent on the backend. And if you're doing the right things with all the op, all the automation systems and all the touch points and all the opportunity to retain business on the backend that's possible, then you can, you can push your, you can push your retention rate way up.

So, all right. I want to hit this last one. Cause now I'm running up against a timetable because I got to go pick up the kids. So last one, I would never outsource to a VA for customer service. This is just me.

The relationship needs to be between me and the client and no one else. I'll pay someone internally to be a rockstar. Yeah. So VA is, um, I, I, I don't disagree. They're very important to any type of business.

I use them. Um, a lot of agencies are starting to use them, but I I've, I've seen and heard some of our clients run into issues with having them do, um, client facing stuff. And I don't mean physically face to face. I mean, through email and through phone and stuff like that, that's been a, um, somewhat of a nightmare. So I think when they're using the right role, doing the right thing, they're extremely, uh, an extremely important part of any, of any business.

Um, I just personally would not use them for customer service type thing. Cause I think at the end of the day, and we've, we've all of us have beat this to death, right? Me, you, everybody out there who's, who's in the space, you know, really at the end of the day, what differentiates you from your competitors is the relationship. And I think that a lot, a lot of agency owners, again, because of time, maybe just energy, um, they, they tend to outsource some of the stuff that at the end of the day, they're the best ones in the agency at sales and relationship. Why are you having John over here do it when he's, you know, he's an introvert and doesn't want to talk to anybody.

Like don't ever outsource the thing that you're best at to somebody else. Who's not as, as good as you at it. And that maybe was probably the lesson more so than don't use VAs. Like I, I don't have anything against VAs. I mean, like I said, they're, they're very important to a lot of different businesses.

I just think that you have to make sure that you're using them in the right spots and not delegating stuff that really, at the end of the day, you are the best one to do, you know, you're the best one to do it. So like, be careful with that. Like, and you know, I think some agencies would admit to you that they do that more, more than they would like, you know, they delegate stuff. I mean, they're trying to leave it, you know, three o'clock on a Friday. I get it.

I try to do the same thing when I can, especially in the summertime when I have two crazy kids bouncing off the walls, but it's like, you know, if there's a, if there's a, um, you know, an aggregator in Florida that has 200 agencies, like, I'm not going to have someone else take that call. I'm going to be the one on the call. So I think, I think maybe the lesson behind that was more so not necessarily to not use a VA, but it's to not delegate your core competency. That makes sense. Yeah.

You know, my, so I have a couple of feelings. I think, I think that whoever handles those interactions needs to be, um, bought in. And I also think the other side of it too, is, and this is where I see the major discrepancy in particularly with service and VAs is a lack of expectation setting. So the client thinks they're getting, you know, Tammy Sue who's sitting in your office with you and they don't realize they're getting a woman who's sitting in the Philippines. That doesn't mean the woman in the Philippines isn't as good or isn't, is less capable.

I will say that, you know, with VAs, you have to be very tactical and straightforward and deliberate and how you build out what they're meant to do. They're on the other side of the world. Like you're not getting a chance to sit with them. Now you can do a lot of onboarding and over time they do, they can become, and I have seen situations and talked to people who have high, high functioning VA. So, so I, you know, again, I think I'm not, there's no knock here in any regard, but the idea, um, here is there's no expectation setting.

If you think you're getting Tammy Sue who lives in the same town as you, and you're getting someone who lives on the other side of the world and maybe doesn't understand the industry or under, doesn't understand the local vernacular or doesn't understand the references. And you're not expecting that. That is, I think one of the major shocks. If it, if you sit down with them and at the front, you go, look, I use Filipino VAs for most of my service work. So when you email, understand that it might not be as warm, but it'll be faster.

It'll be 24 seven. And I promise whatever you need will get done. And if you ever have a problem, I'm available. You set that up front. And now that person can make a decision.

They may say, Hey, Ryan, I don't do business with people who do VAs. And that, but you, but what you don't get is sell somebody one thing and they get another, because there's going to be another person like me who'd go, Oh, that's cool. All right, man, whatever. All right. We're, you know, that's a great point, man.

I mean, like if I'm, if I'm, you know, I personally would not care if I was like, yo, Ryan, I need an ID card. And it was a VA that replied back with it. I don't really care because that that's kind of like a lower level type of ask. But there are people out there that care. Yeah, there are.

And I, my whole point is just don't outsource the thing that differentiates you from other people. I think you're a hundred percent right. I love that point. I just, I guess a bugaboo for me is missed expectations. And as someone who I use a lot of customer care centers, where I feel the customer care centers up to a certain level, Hanover, Cincinnati, I use those examples all the time, right?

If I, with one of my clients, I tell my clients upfront, when you send me, you send me an email, the carrier person is the one that's going to fulfill that and send it to you. You send it to me, I'm going to look at it and I'm going to get it to them and they're going to take care of it. So you, when you get that back, I want you to know why you're getting it from them. So then people have no, they're like, all right, whatever, man, as long as I get it, you know, and if they did have a problem, we could talk through it. And I, so I just think that missed expectation setting is a huge, is a piece of this, right?

Is a big piece is they're just, you never want your customers to think one thing, have something else happen. It just, that's what causes a lot of problems. Yeah. That was an issue for us, man. When I ran the agency, it was like, and, and back in, and back in those days, it might be showing my age here, the call centers were a new thing.

There was not that many carriers doing it. And the marketing reps were really pushing it. They're like, Chris, you know, you're like a two man operation. You really should, um, you really should think about this. I'm like, I'm not, there's no way that I'm paying money.

I'm losing commission dollars to lose touches on these clients who are like paying my bills. Like could be drove all service through the agency. And because of that we had a very high retention. I mean, we very rarely lost a piece of business. And if we did, we had a lot of people that would come back because they went to another agency that they did not handle the client the same way with the same sense of urgency.

I mean, you know how it is, man, when you sell insurance, especially on a personal line side, you know, if somebody buys a car on a Saturday and they call you and you're not there, people think it's like the end of the world. Like I need an ID card. And I'm like, no, you really don't dude. You can still use your current ID card. People don't know that, but it's like, uh, it was serve customer service is a big thing for us.

And it was one of the reasons why we got the amount of new business that we got. And, um, yeah, I just, I don't know. I hate seeing people delegate the stuff that they're really good at. That's all it was about, man. Jeff Lerner: And I think it's a great one to end on because you're not good at marketing, right?

Delegate that shit, delegate it to local traffic, marketing, local traffic, marketing.com. Guys, you've heard me talk about Chris, obviously sponsor the show every, every couple episodes. I do a big plug for him. He's built every website that I've had in the insurance industry, even the ones that he completely effed up because I'm always his beta guinea pig on all his shit, which I love. Um, but dude, you want to see his work, go to rogrisk.com.

Check out, that's the gangster shit he put together for me. And, um, and, and I, I say that I say this in jest, but I do, dude, I think you do a tremendous job. It has been, I always say this when you come on the show, it has been such a pleasure to see you evolve from the conversations we had when you were an agent to today and watch how big advisory evolved this guy. And, and, you know, just it's, it's, it's amazing, man. And, uh, I appreciate your insight.

I thought that this tweet storm or whatever was awesome. You brought up some really great questions. I'm just glad we had a chance to talk about it. Likewise, man. Thanks for letting me, um, you know, maybe clear the air a little bit.

Hopefully people that follow me or that might end up following me, um, as a result of this episode, you know, they, now that they've heard my voice and maybe know my personality a little bit, understand that, you know, I really do what, want what's best, man. I want to see people win. And if I can help you in any way, avoid a mistake, or if you have a question for me, please tweet me and ask me, man, I'll give you my, my honest opinion. It's, uh, Langilly does L-A-N-G-I-L-L-E-D-O-E-S. And, um, so Chris is from Jersey and is a dick, but he tries very hard not to.

That's probably the best thing that I can tell. I'm from, I'm actually from Louisiana and I'm a, I'm a nice guy at that. I live in the suburbs of Philly. I don't know why you always say Jersey, but yeah, it's just funny. And I know it bugs you just a little bit.

So that's why I do it. All right, bro. I love you, man. Thank you for coming on the show. I'll catch you on the flip.

All right, bro. Thank you. Thank you. Do you want to have a few drinks and smoke a joint bubbles? Do you want to have a few drinks?

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