CJ Hutsenpiller on How to Be Awesome at Insurance

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In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Particularly digital marketing and technology. And we just have kind of a very broad, very dynamic conversation about the industry, about tech, about what's happening in different spaces, in different markets. Just love this conversation. CJ's a tremendous follow on Twitter as well.

A great guy. Someone I'm a big fan of. And have wanted to have on the show for a long time. And just sometimes people, you know, you just don't get to them and finally just said, I got to have CJ on. I want to talk to this dude.

And we had a wonderful conversation. You are going to love this. Happy to share it with you. Before we get there, guys, if you love this podcast, you will love the blog. FindingPeak.com.

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Go to T-I-V-L-Y.com. Go to T-I-V-L-Y.com today. All right. With that, let's get on to CJ Hudson-Piller in this absolutely tremendous conversation. Dude, what's going on?

How are you? I'm good, man. Good. Good, good, good, good. What's up with you?

Not a lot. I think I'm about to go see some of your counterparts over at SIAA, right? Yeah. What are you doing? What are you doing with those guys?

So, apparently, they're having some sort of conference or something here in Nashville. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I think a lot of the master agencies are in Nashville this week. Yeah. It's a manual thing they do.

Yeah. So, I'm going to Jack Hurtvick is a friend of mine and he asked me to go to lunch today. So, I'm going down there. But, yeah, he told me that conference was going on. I was like, that's weird.

I hadn't heard anything about it. But, you say that it's just for master agencies or whatever that makes complete sense. Yeah. I think it's just like they're, I think twice a year they do a powwow where everybody gets together, just the master agencies and stuff. And they do it once in Boston and then once, I think, in Nashville.

That's where it is. Yeah. Okay. So, that's going on apparently down there today. Yeah.

Sorry, my light went off. There we go. No, you're good. You're good. So, dude, I'm excited to have you on and just chat.

I mean, obviously, I see you all over and I love the stuff you're doing and stuff. I think it's, I'm just interested and great Twitter follow. Great Twitter follow. Thank you. I, you know, Bradley Flowers actually kind of got me back on Twitter.

I, it's one of those things that I use Twitter for sports, right? I'm a hockey guy. I'm a big Nashville Predators fan, even though they're terrible. But that's, that's, that's an irrelevant conversation. Hey, but he was like, hey, man, you should start putting like some of the stuff you're doing in your agency on Twitter.

And I was like, okay, that's it. So, so it's been, it's been fun. I love the, the banter and the back and forth. And so it's, it's been really good. Yeah.

It's funny. You know, Twitter is, is Twitter is such an interesting monster. I, I love Twitter. I've been on since like 2008, like, like what really early, um, you know, whatever. I just, I've never really like tried to grow a following.

I've always just found it so interesting to like watch what people will say and how they react. And I had a really interesting moment. Um, you know, I'm not a huge fan of lefties, uh, general, not to get political, but my, let's just say my viewpoints tend to not exactly line up with theirs. That being, that being said. And you're in New York, right?

So that goes. Yeah, I'm in New York. Yeah. So it's lonely. Although you'd be surprised.

This is one of the States where they, I think they is, is one of the least understood. You have all these bananas, 24 year old dipshits down in the city who like bleed blue and have no clue how the world works. So they just vote for, for these Democrats and the rest of us in upstate New York. Like most of my friends are, are either moderate Dems, you know, perfectly reasonable humans or are maybe slightly to the right. But the state comes off as this crazy lefty nuts because just because of the city, New York city wasn't there, we would probably be like an Ohio, right?

We'd kind of be purple. We'd be probably be a purple, solid purple state. But it's funny. So, so needless to say, I'm on Twitter and there's this account I follow. Right.

And it's called the, the handle is Albany Muskrat is this handle. And, and it's a person. I have no idea who the person is. And they just share like these old timey stories and photos of, of Albany. Cause Albany was the first incorporated city in the United States, uh, 1664.

So very old rich history. I mean, it's been completely destroyed again by progressives, but, um, um, but needless to say there's, it, it was this beautiful place with tons of really interesting transportation technology because we had the river and we had the railroads and the Erie canal, and it's got a really dynamic history. Um, so she, now I know it's a, she, I didn't know it was she at the time. So yesterday, uh, she posts everyone's, I knew, I knew it was probably this woman, this person lean left because she, she, every once in a while, she does like the random, like a Trump derangement syndrome type stuff, which is fine. I, you know, but she posted something about, uh, gun violence and it was like, we got to take the guns.

And I thought we were having like a pretty standard conversation. I just said, yes, but we also need to address things like mental health and poverty and deprivation. Bro, this, this woman goes off the chain. Why you, what is this ad? She starts using all these words that like, are like English major words, which again, word games are classic leftist play, but like, you know, talking about like, um, how I'm ad hominem attacking her and how dare I.

And then they look into my background, find out, they go, oh, he works at the Murray group, which is my ex-wife's agency that I haven't been at in nine years. And they fucking call her, they call the agency to see if I work there. Cause they were going to drop their fucking insurance or something. If I work there. And I'm like, I'm like on Twitter going, I don't work there anymore.

I'm literally sharing rogue whistle. Like this is the company that I own and work for. So it's like, I just was this reminder to me of like one. Well, I don't want to go down this rabbit hole. Cause this is, I'm interviewing you and I haven't let you talk at all, but, um, two, it just was like this reminder to me of how one, you just have to be careful.

On Twitter, like you want to engage in that shit or get, you know, go beyond just like sharing some lighthearted stuff, man, it can escalate quickly, very quickly. You know, it's funny. The other day I got, uh, I made, I've made a post that was kind of similar to that. And I had people coming out of like Canada at me and I was like, bro, I wasn't even talking about you. Like, like, what are you, what is going on?

But yeah, that's a, that's a, that's a good, but you know, the, the old picture thing is that, isn't it kind of spin this back to insurance. Yeah. That's, uh, that's like one of our agency's number one web lead magnets is we have, we have a gallery of old images of our town on our website. Um, and, and so essentially, you know, we'll, we push some basic traffic to it or whatever. And, uh, it does really, really well, um, at converting because typically it's people that are from the area or whatever.

So they're really good prospects for us. Uh, typically it converts really, really well. Yeah, I can see that. That that's, that's a really cool strategy. You know, when you're doing, it's so funny because having done local with the murder group for eight years and just with all local, local, local, local, local right now flipping to a national, um, you know, it's, there's a, there is a grass is always greener mentality, right?

I need a lot of people who, who market locally and they're always like, Oh, if only I could pull from a bigger pole, uh, if only I could pull from a bigger pool or I could do, you know, I could do some of these Tik TOK ads or Instagram or whatever, like, you know, they all these like strategies and I'm like, yes, when you're going national, I guess you can get bigger numbers doing those things, but it is not easier. Like local is, I don't want to say easier because nothing is easy, but like you can be, you can do really cool things that people grab onto where nationally. It's like, it's, it's tough to get those campaigns because of how bifurcated. So it's like, so culturally different in areas like that, like, like ad copy. Like it hits in, you know, my area is not going to hit the same in New York.

It's just not, you know, the way we talk is different. The things that are important to us are different. And it's like, I personally, like, I love like the hyper-local stuff. I think the, the national, uh, level of things is like, I think I, to me, I'm glad I don't have to deal with that. I focus on like my little region and that's it.

Um, but for that very purpose of like, I don't, I'm, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I can make ad copy. That's relevant to somebody in Washington state. Like, it's just not how I'm wired. I, you know, there's part of me. So I never wanted to go national when I first launched rogue.

Like the first, the first vision for, for this agency was not to go national. It was to be a, I wanted to be, I basically wanted to take what David Carruthers teaches and what Mick Hunt teaches, smash them together, and then just be like a middle market kind of digital producer. But just for like the greater Albany Eastern area, right? There was no, you know, there, there, I saw an opportunity for, for, there's really just big traditional brokers or old school people around here. There's, there's no one really doing anything different.

I thought I could move into that space. And then because of COVID, that's what forced me to go national. Right. But like, man, there are days when I wake up and I'm like, God, I'd love to just be like the local guy, you know? Cause you're like worried about, you know, we at, you know, you're worried about Washington state needs this document and this thing over here.

And you just get into this multi-state and then here you need to have this notarized for, you know, you're just like, oh my God, it like gets, it gets overwhelming. And so I think that, I guess my point in saying all this is that I get a lot of messages from people, I think pining for larger numbers that look sexy when you go to a bigger audience. And I would just be careful of that because not for you, you, you seemingly, I haven't locked in, but like, I think for a lot of people listening. So, so to that extent, like, I don't necessarily, I'm not familiar with your origin story. So let's make this, turn this back into like a real interview.

And I, you know, what's, what's the origin story? I know a lot of people know you and are very familiar, but you know, just for anyone who isn't. Yeah. I, I, I, just to give everybody context. So I own a family agency.

Um, my mom started it in 1992. Um, you know, one of those things where she was, she was pregnant with my sister. Um, she said, this is her story. I don't remember this, but she says that I begged her not to go to work one day. And she literally went in and quit her job and started her own insurance agency out of her house.

I do remember that part. Um, the agency grew, um, up until probably, um, well, in 2008 or 2006, I graduated high school. Right. So just to kind of age me a little bit there, um, my mom made me and my sister, both of us, as soon as we turned 18, get our insurance licenses, uh, for no other reason than she wanted us to have them. She said, you know, something never happens to me.

I want you to be able to not have any kind of income flow issues, you know, with the business or anything like that. Cool. Fine. So, so we did, um, 2008, uh, I decided I wanted to come on full time. Um, she did not want to hire me.

Um, I was, I was young, uh, I was a little wild and looking back, I wouldn't have hired me either. Um, but she, she didn't want to. And so she had a receptionist position, uh, come available and I applied for it and was like, mom, I want to, I want to work at the agency. And she's like, you want to be a receptionist. I was like, I don't care what I have to do.

I just want my foot in the door. Um, so I was the receptionist. I literally did everything that a receptionist would do. Uh, and to that, I did non-pay calls. I followed up on claims.

I did all the things that, that you would have, you would pay a VA to do now. I was the VA. Um, and so, so I did that. And then, um, she finally kind of got some trust in me, moved me to customer service. Um, and then from there, she figured out, um, that I was pretty good at selling insurance.

Um, and then, um, my mom has always been really tech forward. Um, always thought that way, like making processes more efficient. Um, we went paperless in 2006, just right context of like where her head it was. Um, so, so, um, tech has always been a thing, but we never had, you know, what I would consider a ton of money for tech. So it ended up with me building a lot of our own stuff.

Um, and a lot of agents, uh, thought that was cool. So that's kind of, kind of how I, how I got a little bit of attention online, uh, you know, from some people, um, simply because I was building stuff that companies were charging thousands and thousands of dollars for, and I was doing them, you know, for a $20 monthly subscription to Zapier or whatever. So, um, so yeah, so that's kind of like my origin story, how, how I got there, how, how we are where we are today. And, um, mostly personal mix, personal commercial. Yeah.

I know you do a lot of private client. Yeah. I try to, I try to, that me personally, I play in that space. Um, but the agency, we are, uh, 89% personal lines, 11% commercial. Actually probably it's more like 10% commercial, 1% just ancillary, you know, random whatevers, but, um, but yeah, mostly personal lines.

Um, and I think that's, that's one of the places that our agency differentiates is, um, I know that there's a lot of people that think you can't make money in personal lines because it's, it's really service heavy. And they're right. It is service heavy. Um, but one thing that like, we really focus in on is like, how can we, um, make our processes and servicing personal lines more efficient. So like our, our little motto, uh, for the agency is where the convenience of online shopping meets the security of having a local insurance agent.

That's kind of the, the mix. And that's, that's what we strive to, to create that for the experience purposes. Yeah, that, I mean, that's right in line with what I talk about sometimes called human optimized. You know what I mean? It's putting our, putting our humans in the places where they can actually add value instead of using them for all these random tasks.

Like, like basically what you learned on, right. Doing the, doing all those things and all that kind of stuff. Well, what, what, you know, what it really showed me then, like, I look back on it now is like, you know, I was a chief employee, right. I'm a family member, right. You can get those inexpensively.

Um, but a typical agency is hiring somebody to do those tasks. And I'm just looking at these things going, this is so inefficient, right? Like, like the way that we're doing, we're data entering two, three, four times on stuff for, you know, we're, we're doing all these things. And, uh, for me, that, that was really where I started being like, this can be done better. Yeah.

You know? And so that's kind of how we put that into that. Now, are you using VAs or RPAs or anything like that or both? Yeah. So, so a lot of people, a lot of people think that I would be, um, I am not a VA fan as far as when I say the VA, um, like out of, out of the country VA type person.

I'm a, I, it's just something that like, I, I, I can justify the math, right. I, the math makes sense to me. Um, the, the people part for me is important. Um, so we utilize virtual employees, um, but I don't have like VAs. Um, we do have all kinds of different, different bots.

Um, I have played with like the robotic process automation bots that are PAs. We do a lot of chat bot stuff. Um, that's, uh, something for us. But as far as the VAs, we, we do not have any VAs. We currently have 15 team members and they're all located in the state of Tennessee.

Gotcha. So a virtual employee would still be in Tennessee, just maybe not necessarily coming into the office every day. Correct. Cause I had this, you know, I don't even want to call it an epiphany, but like in 2019, shockingly enough, we hired our first virtual employee, like late 2019. Great timing.

That was not intentional. That wasn't, you know, us being like, Oh, COVID is about to happen. We should start looking into this virtual thing, but kind of my mindset shifted. You know, one of the things like right now, it's hard to find talent, right. For your insurance agency.

And, you know, the traditional insurance model says that, you know, you hire somebody that'll drive your office every day or whatever. But the, the problem with that is you're not getting the best person. You're getting the best person that happens to live close enough to drive your office for the salary that you pay them. Yeah. And so for me, I was like, well, if I want to build the best team, I'm really limiting myself to like this, you know, 25 mile radius around my town.

And so my mind kind of shifted. Okay. We need to look at, um, instead of hiring the most convenient person, hiring the best person. And so that's kind of where we started bringing in virtual people. And so what, literally what I would do is I would on Facebook, like I connect with all kinds of insurance agents.

Um, I tell people that like, if you're my friend on Facebook and you're an insurance agent, cause I'm trying to hire you at some point. So, so like, I, you know, I just watch, watch them. And then, you know, when we find one that's, that's good, um, we'll try to pursue them. And that's kind of been our, our hiring strategy and it's worked out really well. Yeah.

We, we have not had a problem hiring. Um, and a lot of people ask questions about that. And I just say, that's what I use. Like, that's what I use social media for. Like the reason, you know, the reason that I post shit on Instagram, all my social for the most part, 98% of the social media that I do is recruiting or selling rogue.

It's like, why, you know, I, I think that, I think that people confuse, they'll see something and it'll be like, you know, like you do the dad jokes, you know, the bad dad jokes or whatever, or whatever. It's all just, it's all meant to show personality, culture, um, authenticity to who you are so that when you do get into that interview, the person's not questioning, can I trust this person? Right. I mean, those are the first barriers in an interview really have to break down is, does this seem like someone that I could actually trust? And that goes both ways.

And by being very vocal and very out, you know, outspoken and social in terms of just our our culture, our culture as a business, me personally, as a leader, et cetera, I found that a lot of people come in and at least from that standpoint, they're already sold. Like they know that we're a certain type of business, you know, and, um, yeah, I see that in a lot of the stuff that you do. And a lot of the things that you share, you know, I can see similarities, like it might feel personal, but it's also showing a big part of who you are, who your agency is and what you guys are all about. Absolutely. And then it also gives you the opportunity to pre-interview your prospects, right?

Because like, you can tell a lot about somebody by following them for 30 days on social media, right? So like you, you can, you can kind of figure out like, and you know, our agency, you know, most of our marketing is around digital. So like, even the lack of social presence tells me whether or not they're going to be a good fit, right? So, so I can kind of, kind of see that before I even make that plunge to go any further of like, okay, this person would be good. Or this person, you know, isn't somebody, you know, Hey, I dodged a bullet on this one.

I thought this person would be great. I get on there, you know, on Facebook, they're fighting with people, you know, all these different things. I'm going to say, okay, maybe this isn't the right person that I would be, you know, looking for. And then you never had to waste your time interviewing them. Yes.

Yeah. Worst case, hiring them and finding out after. So, which, which is interesting. You know, I definitely have learned the hard way. Um, you know, one thing, and I don't know if you see this at all with some of the people you hire because you are, uh, so active on social, I, there are people, and I don't want this to come off.

This might come off wrong. I don't mean it to be, but there are people that will apply to work for rogue because of my social media presence. Yeah. Right. And it's like, or whatever.

Right. So they see you, they see you're active. And I know I'm not the only one. There are other agency owners that I've talked to are active that say the same thing. So I'm not trying to, but like, that is really difficult because they've been following you.

They know what you're into. They know what things you like, and it makes it very easy or easier for them to sculpt their answers to what they think you want to hear. And I have hired at least once, probably multiple times, more than multiple once and gone. Like as soon as the person comes in and you see, like even, even, you know, and they're just, they can be so good at hiding their work ethic. Right.

They can say all the right things. And you're like, and then you, you know, and then you get them in and you're like, son of a bitch. This person just knew the series of words to say, to like sound right. Yeah. So, so in our agency, you know, we, I've had that problem.

Um, we, I tell people, we wrote the book on hiring people wrong. Right. So, so, so thankfully though, um, you know, we've kind of learned from that. And I always tell people, I don't hire anyone at my agency. And literally we don't, our process is, is pretty simple.

We do, you know, we do an interview, me and them just to make sure that, you know, a, like in that interview, like I'm kind of just feeling them out. I'm also kind of feeling out, like, how are you compensated currently? What's it going to take? What, what's important to you to even make you want to move? Cause I don't want to waste anyone's time.

Right. Like if somebody comes in and is like, Hey, I want to be a CSR and my current position's paying me 150,000 a year. And I'm perfectly happy. Like, yeah, we're going to stop there. Right.

Like, like that's, that's not a thing. But then from there, once, once I do that, our agency is divided into two teams. We have service team and a sales team. And depending on where, like where I'm trying to put them, um, the remaining interviews are done group interviews with the entire team. And after, after they interview, you know, we'll talk amongst ourselves and say, okay, you know, what do you think?

You know, that kind of thing. If I have one person that says no, they're done. And that, and it's as simple as that. And, and that's a cultural thing to make sure that, but it also helps prevent that somebody curating answers because they pick up on things that like, I didn't notice. Like, I'm like, oh yeah, this person's great.

And they're like, ah, hang on CJ. Wait a minute. What about these three things that they say? I'm like, oh, okay. I didn't hear it the same way you heard it.

So. Yeah. I do. Um, I do something similar with that, except, uh, I use a group of at least three of people on the leadership team that aren't me. So I like, so we do our processes.

Um, I have a woman in my office. Uh, her name is Sarah. She's tremendous at like the screening. And she does kind of a first pass kind of weeds out the crazies. Yeah.

And then she takes the list of people who've kind of come through there. Say it's three individuals out of a, maybe a, you know, whatever, maybe she pulls 40 resumes, prayers down to three, um, sends those three over to me. And then I do the, I do the second layer crazy test. Right. Do I think there are cultural fit, you know, try to, try to find some posers, try to find people who I think won't work from like, uh, you know, we just, we just have a certain, we have a certain way here that I, and I've seen enough, you know, we're at 22, 23 people, something like that now.

So like, you know, I've seen the people that come in and do well and the people that don't, and there's definite cultural questions that you could, that, that I ask. And most of it is, and it's the same way with selling, right? Like I have this whole thing I say to my team, like, ask them how you can help and then fuck up and just let them talk. And like, they'll talk themselves either onto the top of the mountain or right down into a hole. Like if you just can be like the longer you can be quiet and let them talk, the better, you know, but, uh, we talk too much as insurance agents.

We don't listen enough. And we always, you know, trying to make sure that our, you know, we have these four points we want to make. Well, those four points, that's great that you want to make those four points to the, to the customer, but they don't care about those four points. You wasted your time. Yeah, that's, that's, that's like, well, we can talk about the digital sales process another time, but like, I feel I have very strong, I have very strong feelings on how that should be done, which is mirrors what you just said, but like, and then, so once they get past that first interview, second interview, and then we do this group interview where three leaders doesn't have to be even the one of the leaders of that team, but three people from the leadership team will then do, um, internally, they call it a Spanish inquisition style interview where they'll just like pepper the shit out of this person with different questions and see like, if they can handle it, how they respond.

And then that from there, we usually make a decision. So it's a three interview process for us most of the time. I got you. Do you think in that, when they're in that peppering thing, I think of a spot that insurance agents kind of miss on, um, you know, during that process, it's like, you should have some stuff built into that to test how good they are with the computer, make them send you some stuff, you know, digitally, um, make sure that, you know, they're having to go on your website, upload a doc, you know, like some different things like that. But also like, you know, we used to not like, when we used to hire, and again, this was back when I was writing the book of how to hire incorrectly.

Um, you know, we didn't really ever talk to them about insurance. Like we talked to them about them and how that, you know, how they do things. But like, I find a lot of value in being like, all right, sale or service team, sales team, write down the last like 10 questions you were asked and ask them and let's, let's see how they respond to that. And I feel like a lot of agents don't do that in interviews and that can shed a lot of light on their thought process. Yeah, you're a hundred percent right.

I, I, one of the places where I definitely, and I'm, so I'm with you, I've made this mistake. I've made that mistake. We've only recently started, which is crazy to even say, uh, recently started doing like getting, getting them to walk through like real examples of stuff. Um, with the sales team, I, I tend to be better at hiring. Wow.

I shouldn't even say better. Any value that I can add to the process in the sales process and the service side. I don't, I can't add value to that, but like, but that, that definitely uncovers some stuff, you know, like you, we are, you know, we've hired people eight years, 10 years, CSR. And then what you're saying is you're trusting and we know how poor most of our brothers and sisters are at training in this industry. Right.

Yet we're trusting based on nine years of experience, some other agents have trained them properly. Right. And it's right. It's just not the case. Like it's just simply not the case.

It's almost never the case. Yeah. That's the, that's probably, that's the scarier part for me. Yes. Especially if you want to work at speed.

I mean, that's, that is, and I will say, I think this is defining difference if you are a plotting along agency, right? Just a lifestyle agency who's looking to put enough accounts on to, to stay, you know, to stay even for the year. And that's kind of how you're operating, which is probably most, like not many of the agents that will listen to this podcast, but, um, it's okay for your people to kind of work that way. Right. They can just kind of fumble through it and get it done and everything's fine.

But like, as soon as you want to turn the volume up, those people get exposed so badly and they're, and then they become such an anchor to the rest of the team that it's like blaring. It's, it's glaringly obvious, like almost immediately. Absolutely. Yeah. I I've seen that.

I've seen that multiple times. So yeah, I just, you know, agents have to think, have to think through that. And I think, you know, it may, maybe I'm wrong here, but like, I feel like when I look at somebody's resume and like the first thing they're doing is like, they're touting their experience. Like I, not all experience is equal, right? Like, like, you know, if I'm in, you know, we're an independent agency.

So like, if you come to me and you're like, Hey, I was with all state for 20 years. Like, all right, cool that you were with all state for 20 years. But like, that's not the same and being in an independent, you know, that it's, it's different. The, the things that you're going to encounter different, the way you have to think is different. You know, it's, you know, the amount of information you just have to know is different.

So like, you know, knowing that like all that experience isn't pretty equal, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. I almost feel like there's like a sweet spot between like, I don't want them to have no experience, right? Like I want them to be licensed. I don't want to have to be answering like what has come, right? Like, I don't want to have to answer, teach them that.

But I also feel like there's a spot where there's like too much experience of like, Hey, I'm set in my ways and I'm not able to change. And you've got to kind of like teeter of like, where, how does that person fit into that scale? What are you? Yeah. So we, we have tried brand new, unlicensed.

We are not, we are not set up from a training perspective to do that. I don't have time to train them like that. That was an epic fail. So, um, so I'd say our sweet spot is three to seven years of experience. Um, I won't say captive or independent has impacted that too much that we do have quite a, you know, I'd say people who've come from captives have come over and been very successful.

Um, so I, I have nothing. We have that too. I see, I see it both ways. I'm not saying it can't happen. It's like a perceived with caution and make sure that you got a good base.

Well, I think, I think there's a couple, so it all depends on what you're hiring them for too. Like I'd say our select process where it's all inbound, they're just taking phone calls, solving problems, transactional flying through. I would say the people who came from captives have picked that process up much quicker where the, uh, we'll call it ambiguity and problem, like creative problem solving of finding leads, going out and being a hunter tends to be something that the captives don't pick up as quickly. Also, not that they can't, but they don't just because of the way they're trained. So we take that into account.

I'd say that if you've been at an independent age, a traditional independent agent for less than five years, you're probably terrible. You're probably really, really bad because there's the training. They're awful. I think I agree with that. Yep.

There's no pressure on them to be successful other than some old man occasionally stumbling over to their desk and telling them to work harder. And it's brutal. And like, so you're describing one of my employees right now. Did you talk to them before? Yeah.

Well, just, it's just funny. Like we just see if you're, you know, you make it having to deal with that. I that's dude. It's just, you're, you're like, they come in and I'm like, and I've had a couple of these guys come in and you're just like, what were you doing at this agency? Like, what could you possibly have been doing?

And like, I've seen commission results and all this. And it's just like, these, they don't get trained. They get thrown out to the wolves. They're, I don't know how they're paid for. It just, it boggles my mind.

So we're looking for three to seven years. If that's a sweet spot, um, younger in spirit, doesn't necessarily have to be age. We've had all different ages come in, but you cannot have the, I figured this out mentality. That's what I'm looking for. What I'm looking for are the people who have it figured out.

If you haven't figured out, I do not want to talk to you. I don't want anything to do with you now because nobody has it figured out. And the fact that you think you haven't figured out is a good flag because our whole culture culture is, is, is based around, uh, trial and error. We're, we're, it's test, experiment, test, experiment, test, experiment. It's like, you have to come in here knowing that things are going to be, that things are going to change.

And you, you need to be able to adapt because we don't know. My poor team, my poor team has to do with, right? We pivot quickly. Yeah. Well, that's the thing is how do you know, you know, that's why, when I see these people up on stage or I hear them in these, these middle level carrier people coming in, telling us about the, I'm just like, you have no idea.

You have no idea. One, you're doing sell insurance. Two, you haven't done a hundred tests to figure out if what you're saying is true. McKinsey told you that. And McKinsey doesn't have a shit, no shit because none of those people have ever sold insurance policy.

So like, I don't want to, I don't care. I don't, I can't hear that. Like if you haven't, you know, I did this, I did this solo podcast a few months ago where I talked about, you know, I love to surround myself with people who have a limp and, you know, you're basically like people who've had the crap beat out of them. Like if you haven't, yeah. And like, dude, if you can smell it on somebody when they haven't tried a hundred different things and tested a hundred different things and no 98 of them that don't work, you can smell it on them when they start talking about the business.

And, and that's really what I am searching for in my part of the interview process is, are we being bullshitted? That I don't, I, you know, and if you, if we're not, so it doesn't mean they're a good fit, but it gets them to the next phase. But if I smell that you're bullshitting on what you've actually done and your actual experience and your like beliefs on the business, take a hike. Yeah, absolutely. It sounds like we, we line up on the hiring process.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's funny too. I don't know if like you ever, like you talked about like, you know, the traditional agents, you know, like, how do I even, how do I even pay? How do they even afford to pay people what they pay?

I mean, you know, I think it comes down to, I think a lot of them don't actually know. A lot of agency owners don't actually know what somebody costs them, right? Like, like they, they don't have the numbers with that. And then, you know, and they view, they view their employees as numbers too. So it's, it's kind of a, and it's, you, when you said that, you know, you said something along the lines of, you know, you just had somebody yelling at, they came to their desk, you know, once a week and told them to sell more.

And that was kind of the advice, you know, I have a team member now that was in an agency like that. And she, she got no training. One of those situations, they hand you a phone book, say call some people or whatever. And the way that she was trained to sell was drop the agency owner's name. That was, that was, that was how you were supposed to sell.

And so, so like when she came here, you know, we, we, we actually did teach her how to sell that when she didn't anyway, but it's just funny. Those agencies are out there and it's kind of like what David Crother says. I know you dropped his name earlier. He has one of my favorite quotes. Um, the insurance industry is full of C players.

Yeah. Right. And I think that is like such a hopeful thing for, for us, because like, for me, I'm like, all right, that's good news. That means that most of my competition is not doing the things that we're doing, which is going to give us an edge. What's up guys.

Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show in an 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, et cetera, this helps the show grow.

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Peace. Let's get back to the episode. Dude, they're D and F players in any other industry. They're C players in this industry. So if you can even be a B in insurance, which is like a C in any other industry, you're killing the game.

That's like the story of my career, dude. I, when I started doing all the marketing stuff and all the Facebook marketing and all the digital shit that I was doing back at the Murray group, people be like, where do you get these ideas from? And I'm like, I literally look at what, like one industry over. I just look at what they're, what they were doing 10 years ago. And I do that in here.

And then people are like, this is revolutionary. And I'm like, I'm literally just stealing from other places. Like, this is not original thought. Like, I'm just taking these ideas and using them because, and you said there are agencies out there like that, bro. That's the norm.

There are 37,000 independent insurance agencies. The problem that, you know, you know, you see on Twitter, you see on Facebook, oh, you know, there's only the same guests on these podcasts, you know, whatever, which, which is true, it's because there's nobody doing cool shit. There's only a couple hundred people doing really cool shit. It's not like there's 10,000 people innovating this industry. There are probably three to 500 total agencies in our industry that are doing innovative forward leaning stuff.

And we basically know them all. Right. And it's why you see the same people at conferences, why you see the same speakers on podcasts. It's because, you know, I realized that you're a guy like me who's thinking forward, even if you do a little different, we connect and then you introduce me. And then all of a sudden we just run out of people.

Like this, it's not like this is infinite. It wasn't, it wasn't intentional. It'd be like, Hey, we don't, yeah, no, I, I, I totally, totally get, you know, it's funny, like going back, I'm a, I'm a podcast junkie. Just, just another fun fact about me. So my wife and I have a farm and, uh, we have almost, uh, we have right at 12 acres, right.

Um, on this farm that we actually like finished cut mow. So dude, I mow grass a lot. And so podcasts just constantly. So I, I, and for years and years and years, and I'll tell you that the first podcast and going back to, you kind of referenced it a second ago, I remember the first podcast I ever remember listening to of yours. And I don't know what year this was, but you were like articulating a strategy that had helped you at, I guess you say the Murray group, is that what it was?

Um, where you had just started blogging about questions that people asked you. Do you remember, do you remember that? Like you were, you were bought and then you had one that New York state or somebody had changed the law. And like, all of a sudden it became like the number one, the number one hit or whatever. What is New York state short-term disability?

Yeah, there you go. And so, so, and then boom, now you're in right. And there's just agencies that like, don't understand, especially now, like, you know, with chat GBT and all these, like, you don't even have to be good at writing. Like, like there's ways for you to create content like that at scale without having to have a full-time, you know, marketing team on, in your agency. And I just feel like that's such an opportunity for people, but going back, I mean, I don't know how many years ago that was, but it's, it feels like forever.

13, 2014, I'm going to tell you something crazy, not crazy. It'll sound crazy to some of the people listening last night at 10 o'clock, I walked over to my desk, I poured myself, uh, two or three fingers of Japanese whiskey, um, which I know is blasphemous, but I kind of love it. Um, and the Chinese whiskey, that's a problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stay with the Chinese whiskey.

Um, but I, I then turned on chat GBT and in 45 minutes created five new blog posts for roguerist.com while I drank my whiskey. And by 11 o'clock I was in bed and had five new blog posts ready to go. One of which was published today. You know, it's, it's, it's crazy too, because people don't understand that. Like, I think people get from blogging specifically, like if we're specific, and you're obviously you've done this way longer than I have on the blog and stuff, you know, our agency, we've tinkered with it for years, but like, it's never been like, Hey, I'm going to consistently do this until maybe a couple of years ago that we started doing it.

But it's amazing where is if you're just answering the question, right? Kind of like, like what you said, this was a question that somebody asked, here is our response in blog format, how you never know like what's going to hit, right? So like you were like, you were talking, you know, you had one that, that hit, you know, for there. And like our agency has one that all of a sudden, one day I started getting all these people calling the agency about tractor insurance. I was like, what, like, is there, but turns out we became like the number three hit on Google for how do I ensure my tractor?

Yeah. Like, because we had a blog post about it and it's just amazing how that doesn't take all that much time, especially with chat GBD and, or even, even before that, you know, you have Jasper and there's all kinds of like AI assisted writing programs out there. Um, how you can take that and just, it does takes you no time. And that's like a salesperson that's going to work for you forever. As long as you have your site.

So I bought, um, because I steal, I think people think I'm lying. I steal everything. Um, and, and honestly, people like, I'll be doing, dude, I'll be doing a keynote and someone will like chuckle when I tell them that I steal everything. I'm like, no, I guys, you're, you're missing the point. The point is not to be some original.

I'm not Pablo Picasso. I'm not Walt Whitman. I want people to buy insurance from rogue risk. That's what I want. I don't need, like, if a computer helps me create educational content that is well done and accurate and drives people to our site, I'm willing to do that.

So I bought this thing. Um, it was, it was chat GBT for prompt. So I paid the 20 bucks for the chat GBT for, which chat GBT for is bananas. It's absolutely bananas. I have that one as well.

It is bananas. Yes, absolutely bananas. So there's all these like resources. You can pay like 35. I think it paid 50 bucks for one 30 for, cause again, I'm testing them.

And they're just prompts. They're literally just prompts that you can use in chat GBT. So they're like, they're like mad lib prompts. So one will be, one is like, um, well, I'll give you an example. I just published an article today, uh, or yesterday that was, hold on.

Let me just look this up. I published an article yesterday, the entire article, every word, except for the formatting and the linking was written by chat GBT. It's 1500 words. The title chat GBT wrote this title, navigating the world of insurance for entrepreneurs, five unique perspectives. Great article.

I created the graphic using Jasper AI art. So I type, I put the title in and said, create the perfect image to go with this title. And Jasper AI created a piece of art that came out that I use as the, as the thing. It's got this blog post pumped out and it came off of a simple prompt that, that I learned from this thing, which is insert. And their example was productivity for entrepreneurs.

So I put topic insurance for entrepreneurs space. And then underneath the prompt that, that, and this is what this tool gives you for the above topic, right? Multiple prospect perspectives from a group with different viewpoints for each perspective, write in their own voice, using the phrases and peers, uh, and their peers would use, right? So you're giving chat GBT for this prompt and it can write the whole post. Just, you're just watching and you just went and I'm reading it going.

That's good. That's good. You know, sometimes it can be a little, um, it can be a little dry and, but you can actually ask it to use a casual voice or use a business casual voice or playful voice. And it will literally can inject like words, change the perspective. Yeah.

It's crazy. I'm going to tell you a really crazy trick, uh, with, with chat GPT. And you know, the, one of the like negatives, like the, the downfalls that people would say is that sometimes, or Google would say that sometimes AI content doesn't rank as well as human written content. Like there's like that argument out there about like, you know, and that's going to be as chat GPT becomes even more and more popular, it's going to become a thing. Um, I, so I decided to test that and I was like, I would take the content and run it through, you know, an AI checker.

And of course it comes back, Hey, this is, you know, 80% AI written or a hundred percent AI written or whatever. But at the same time I had it on the Google doc, like the, the thing. And so I was like, down at the bottom, I use grammar, right. To like correct my punctuation and stuff. Cause I'm from Tennessee, dude.

We don't, we don't, English is not our thing. Right. Um, and so it had like 25 suggestions on, on the article that it wrote. So I went through and changed all the things that it asked, asked me to change, ran it back through the AI, AI, AI detector. And it came back a hundred percent human generate.

Yeah. I didn't, I didn't do it. All I did was do the corrections that Grammarly wanted me to make. It didn't change the article. The article was still, um, but it's just stuff like that.

But the, that's wild. There's no, so anyway, fun. That's a fun little tip, but the, uh, the, the ability for us to generate content at scale has never been easier. Um, and so like agents just have to do it, man. And even it doesn't have to be like blog posts.

I mean, it could be a Facebook post. It'd be a LinkedIn. You can write long form content on LinkedIn. LinkedIn loves that stuff. You know, um, dude, I did, I did the other day.

I asked using these prompts, first of all, again, because I'm not original or creative. I use, I just steal. Right. So I'm working through all these prompts. And one of them was write a poem about insurance.

Oh, so I post this. I've done something similar to that one before. I post this poem on, on a thing. I got to find it. Uh, so I did now I got yelled at by, um, not yelled at, but like my team was like, why are you telling people?

Cause I wrote in the comments that the poem was from, was from, uh, chat to me. Let me read you this fucking poem. This poem is unbelievable. And we didn't know we were going to get literature like on this, on this call today. I'm really excited.

But here's the thing. 4,000 impressions, eight comments, three reposts and 29 likes on a, on a, it took me 30 seconds. I literally put write a poem about insurance. It wrote this poem. I copied the poem.

I put it in LinkedIn and, and hit publish 4,000 impressions. I mean, you're literally just, this is like sex to the LinkedIn algorithm. I mean, that's what it is. Like, it's going to be there forever because LinkedIn lets it, lets it run for a long time. Yes.

So, okay. So guys, this poem, well, I would love if you attribute this poem to me, but it was not written by me. In the realm of uncertainty, yeah, see, that's my team was like, no one will know the difference. I was like, unless someone asked me to write poetry on the spot and they realized, I don't know what the heck I'm doing. While you're on stage somewhere.

Hey, we need you to write a haiku right now about this event. What's a haiku? No. So, okay. In the realm of uncertainty and chance, we seek protection, a safety dance, a guardian in the shadows cast, insurance stands steadfast, holding fast, a night of policy, a shield of care, defending us from loss and despair.

It binds our lives with a solemn vow in the face of risk. We need not bow from home to hearth, from life to health, a keeper of our precious wealth. Insurance weaves a safety net, a guardian to guard against life's threat through storm and fire, though tempest rage, the written word on a parchment page, a policy of hope, a binding deal to mend our hearts, to help us heal in sickness. And in times of strife, a guardian angel in our life, insurance leads a helping hand to lift us up, to help us stand. The premium paid, a price so small, for peace of mind, a priceless call.

For in this world of chaos and creed, insurance stands by a friend indeed. So let us raise our voice in praise to celebrate the shield that stays, a tribute to the force that men's insurance, our protector, our lifelong friend. It crushed that. That was so fucking good. Oh my God.

Like that, it, sometimes it'll spit out stuff that's wild. But you know, the poetry thing is, is interesting. You can do, like, I've done this a couple of those, so I don't even know if you know this, but one of the, you know, one of the businesses that I'm also involved with, something called the insurance content project. Basically, we make scaled up content for insurance agents to put out. Just, it's mostly memes, right?

Like, like, just, you know, whatever. But that's, that's irrelevant. But one of the posts in there, we were playing around with ChatGBT, and I was like, it was like Edgar Allan Poe's birthday or something. And I was like, I wonder what an insurance poem written by Edgar Allan Poe would sound like. So like, literally, we went in, ChatGBT, write a, write a poem about insurance, but do it from the perspective of Edgar Allan Poe, and to the cadence of his poem, The Raven.

The same kind of, once upon a midnight, you know, like, it did, it did the whole thing. And so, it's, it's so wild, you know, what the capabilities are. And I don't know, I don't know if you have OpenAI's API, but once you have their API access, if you ever ask for it, then you can do some really cool stuff. So like, what I have right now in my team, my team uses Slack. Do you guys use anything like that?

Yeah, we use Slack, yeah. Yeah, yeah, so, so we have a Slack channel that we literally just call it blog posts, right? And anytime my team get to ask a question, this is stealing from your idea that you were talking about, anytime my team gets asked a question, they go in and they plug it into this channel, and they just ask the question, you know, is my red car more expensive to insure than my pink car? Whatever the question, and it's right, it writes a blog post for them, a meeting, and we're using ChatGBT's API. So literally, it posts in Slack, that triggers it, goes out, generates.

It sends it back. And man, the amount of content in my marketing person is just like, I don't even know what to do with all this. Like, we have more than we'd ever, ever need. And so it's worked really well. And that way, I'm not having to be like, oh, what do we post about today?

It's storytelling. What question did somebody ask me yesterday? And there you go. Dude, it's crazy. I asked, I asked it the other day, what are 10 unconventional ways an insurance agency can grow your YouTube channel, right?

And some of them were kind of like, whatever. But then a couple of them were like, find this type of channel. And it was like something I hadn't thought of. And there was like two or three ideas that were like completely off the wall. Not off the wall, but like things that I hadn't thought about that I now was like, oh, shit.

Like, we could do that. Like, we could start, you know, I mean, we, our YouTube channel is probably our number one traffic source. I mean, we do, we did 165,000 views last, last 365 days. So like, starting to do cross promotions, we're really getting into shorts. Like, give me seven, I said, give me, I love using odd numbers.

Give me 17 unconventional. And I like unconventional because it gets it thinking outside of like stuff that it's just pulling from other places. Right. And like, but this is when you start to learn how the prompts work and how the language like stuff works. It is, it is really wild.

And then I was watching, I've been testing, I know it's probably going to end up getting banned maybe or whatever, just, but I've been testing TikTok, you know, just to, you know, I'm, I just get interested. What? I've seen you on there. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So I'm just testing different stuff and I certainly don't have it figured out or whatever, but I'm just testing different things. And I was like, give me 17 different, 17, 17 unconventional, you know, TikTok video ideas for an insurance agency. And then all of a sudden you get bing, bing, do this, go here, do, you know, do this thing. So it's like, if you, I mean, this is the kind of things that like, even if you don't want it to actually create for you as a, as a inspirational prompt or as a storming that whole, yeah, or like an outline generator, um, it can, it can, I mean, dude, if you wanted to get super gnarly, I mean, you could have it creating fake reviews for you.

You could have it doing all kinds of crazy shit. Did you, did you see, did you see my post about using it with Google reviews? I don't know if you saw that on Twitter. No, no, I didn't. No.

So, so, so somebody, somebody posted a Google review. One thing I'm terrible about, our agency does a pretty good job of getting Google reviews. You know, we'll get four or five a week, you know, whatever. It's fine. Um, I was, I'm terrible at replying to them.

Right. And I always, I want to reply, but I forget. And then, then it gets to a point where I've got like 25 of them in the hopper and I'm like, I don't want to reply to them. Like, you know, whatever. And so what we did was we set up a zap to where when we get a new Google review, it takes that Google review, sends it as a prompt to chat GBT.

And it just says, write a response in a business casual voice, uh, responding to a positive review of my insurance agency that said this. And then we literally just have it put, and it'll generate a very good response. And anybody at Hudson for insurance, just go look, you can see them out there. And it, it waits 10 minutes and responds back to the person. And it's amazing how like authentic, it like pulls stuff from what they said and will include it.

Very, very cool. But like, yeah, there's, you can get it really granular with it. Like there's a lot of different things. And on, so I was watching TikTok the other day and I saw this guy pop up, um, who's talking about agent GPT, which now there's all these like, that one's, that one is super wild. I'm familiar with that one too.

So I am starting to play around with agent GPT, which, I mean, this is when you think about like, you, like Skynet starts to enter your mind because now like, you're like literally telling this thing to go out into other systems, do tasks, run multivariant tasks off of different responses, different, you know, whatever. And like layering these functions and, you know, these agents that they on top of each other. And you're like, Holy shit. I mean, you could get to, you could rapidly see, like, I could see a day where you, you know, using these tools say that what the average CSR and personal lines can handle what? Two and a half, 3 million in premium a piece.

Is that fair ish? Right. Could you get that to 5 million? Could you get it to 10 million, one CSR for 10 million in premium? I mean, this is, this is, you know, this is what I see these things getting to when a request comes in and it can just hit a series of AIs, AI agents that pass it through all these filters and come back with this very human experience.

And really you just have a CSR sitting there for anything that falls out of those processes, anything that's so outside the box that it can't be automated or requires, you know, creativity or problem solving in a level that the AI and otherwise in the CSR, CSR is almost more of a babysitter than necessarily taking those frontline calls or whatever, because these systems are so freaking good. They're, it's crazy. I mean, it's taking that, taking that a step further. I, I've been tinkering with this. So one, one of the, like the downfalls to like chat GPT at the current moment is that like, it's hard to give it information at scale, right?

Like, like, like to, to give it, let's say a document, for instance, like it's really, the way you have to piece it up is, is really, really weird, but they're, they're working on to where like, you can feed it a document. Well, I've been playing with, with that on, so I do chat bots too. So with that, with our chat bots, where let's say I've got a progressive homeowners policy, I can upload that into chat GPT piece by piece. We've been tinkering with it. But once you have the whole doc, you'd be able to upload the whole thing.

And you can literally ask it coverage questions against the policy. Yeah. And that's when it starts getting, and, and so far, what I've seen is it's scary accurate because it not only answers the question. Yeah, it's covered. No, it's not covered, whatever.

But it also explains where in the policy, why it is or isn't covered. Um, and that to me is like, once you get to there, I mean, you can do the same thing with like underwriting guidelines, you know, it would internally within your agency, like, hey, we'll progressive ride on a mobile home in the state of Tennessee. No, here's the, you know, like you can start building out almost like a, a query library, you know, for, for your team. Dude. So, you know, obviously we both think in terms of content and stuff.

So, you know, those stupid green screen videos that, that like Gary Vaynerchuk and stuff does. Yeah. I've been actually, we're game planning. I want to do the green screen videos and put them up as reels and stuff on the different platforms, but with policy forms behind me. And I was literally thinking last night, because one of the things that I've been doing is taking our old blog posts, copy and pasting them into chat GPT.

And then asking, hey, can you run an SEO analysis and make, you know, make the, give me the top seven suggestions for ways to improve the SEO of this blog post. Right. And it will literally go, your headline doesn't match your meta description and dah, dah, dah. And it's a little short and you don't have any, and it will literally do all that. It's, it's fucking nuts.

So then I was like, why couldn't we start breaking down? So, so I, I have paced, I haven't done full policies, but I've taken portions, like sections of policies and copy and pasted them in and asked the questions. And you're right. Like, I'll tell you right now, chat GPT is better at reading policy forms than 99% of the people who are listening to this podcast. And that's only going to get better.

And that's the part that's scary. Like, this is like, this is like version four, you know? So yeah, it's, it's so cool, but it's one of those things that like, it's not a, you know, I, I've seen it already in the groups. I don't know if you, if you've seen this really, oh, they're trying to replace us agents. I feel like everything, every time something new comes out, like everybody goes there with it, you know, the internet can buy insurance.

They're trying to replace it. I don't, I don't go there. I see that it replaces bad agents, people that aren't, you know, that, you know, there are, are situations that do that, but you know, this technology is in its infancy. Like now's the time to lean into it and be on the cutting edge of it instead of trying to catch up later. See, that's the beauty of our industry is that there's so many lethargic people who are making just enough money that they're never going to actually do any of the shit that we're talking about here.

So like, I, you know, people will, people probably say the same thing to you, right? Like when I share that 10 PM, I came to my desk at 10 PM on a, whatever it was Tuesday last night, poured myself a glass. And what I did was just create blog posts out of chat GPT. People are like, ah, that's crazy. I'm like, I don't have time.

I'll be like, I don't have time. And like, you have time and these tools make it so much easier. So instead of one blog post a week, I want to get to where I'm putting, going back to putting two, three, four, five. Why not put five blog posts out a week? Why not have chat GPT, take one of those blog posts and turn it into six tweets and 17 LinkedIn updates, and then use agent.gpt to take those updates, chop them up and post them, you know, post them out on your different LinkedIn, your different channels.

And like, this is, you know, I think about it. People like you, hopefully like us and, and, and probably some of the others that we know and could name it. I've no longer try. I've stopped trying to convince people and it's just, but there's just this gap that is just widening and widening and widening. And you're getting so far out ahead of people.

And like, it's, it's sometimes it's hard to relate. You know, I used to feel like I could relate a decade ago. But now like when I'm up on stage or something, people are like, oh, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to write about. I'm like, you are talking to the wrong guy. There are, you know what I mean?

Like at this point in my career, I'm past explaining how to do that. Like there are other people that'll pay that you can pay 99 bucks a month or whatever. They'll tell you how to do that. I'm past that point in my career. If you don't know that this is the shit you should be doing, like you, I don't know what, I can't help you.

Yeah. They, they, it just comes down to, to some people just don't have the drive, you know, they're, you know, and I talk with my team all the time. You know, we have this phrase, um, are you busy or are you inefficient? Right. And that's kind of what, what I always ask them.

And, you know, cause the answer is always, I'm too busy, right? No matter what it is, I'm too busy. And then I'm looking and I'm like, yeah, but every time I post something on Twitter, you, you are tweeting back at me in these long, long rants. Like how long does that take? Like, you know, how much of your time are you sucking there doing something that's unproductive?

Right. And so like figuring out like, all right, these tools are made to help us be more efficient. We can generate content. I mean, you go back 10 years ago, how long did it have taken you to write five fully 1500 word blog posts? It'd take hours, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, now you can do it in minutes and, and that, that to me is just such an opportunity. Um, because it, and people listening to this, I think would agree that like your competitors aren't going to do it. There's not, they're not too busy. And I'm throwing air quotes for people listening.

Yeah. Yeah. They're too busy. So I think that, you know, if anyone takes anything away from, from this conversation, which we need to have another one, cause I feel like we just scratched the surface of all the things that we're doing. Um, there's just so much opportunity to get ahead and you don't have to do all the things pick up thing, right?

Pick, if you're into commercial, pick LinkedIn, if you're into personal, figure out Instagram reels, right. And just create and do all the different things and try a bunch of stuff. But there are tools out there like these GPT, these, these AI tools. Um, there's one I found the other day that I was looking at that could create, you know, off of, you know, about 10 minutes worth of work. You could get 500 different ad, ad variations, ad creatives that are all AI generated based on your industry and your market.

And, you know, you can put your client list in there and it looks at the clients and comes up with what they like. And there's ones for video. There's ones for putting captions on video. I mean, there's, there, all these tools are out there and they're like five bucks a month. I mean, for, for $25 a month in, in tool spend, you could have, you could have an entire, like, like professional suite of tools to make anything that you could potentially want to make.

And it's right at your fingertips. Have you, have you played, I know we've probably got to go here, but have you played with the video content generating, like the AI where it's generating video as well? I have not. I've looked at a bunch of them. It's wild.

It's wild. It's not there yet. And that's what I was, I'm like, it's, it's close. It's not quite there yet, but like I've tinkered with this to where you have somebody post a blog post, right? Like I was talking about earlier, they, they posted a question in our, in our channel and not only generated the blog post, but it takes the script of what it said, turns it into an AI video with an AI avatar reading the video, right?

Reading the script. And then you can literally send it out wherever you want it to all automated. And while the AI is not there yet, like you can, there's, there's something with their teeth. I don't know what their teeth look weird, but. Uh, once they, once they get that nailed down, man, like that becomes really crazy because you can even create, turn yourself into the avatar.

Yeah. I was looking at an app that I haven't, I haven't dug into it yet just because I can tell it's a rabbit hole and I just haven't been able to go there. But, um, but, but basically what you do is you record a video once, um, and then they have you read this script and then they get your voice and then all you do. So then, you know, so you have a video and it might be like, Hey, CJ, Ryan Hanley here meant so happy that you joined rogue risk. We, we may not have talked to probably talk to one of my team members, but as a CEO, I just want to let you know that it, you know, I'm committed to making sure about, you know, you do this whole on spiel 45 seconds, whatever it is.

And then for the next person was like, even, even through like a Zapier link, you know, it could be Steve. And now I'm saying Steve and I'm saying your business name. So you can pick like multiple merge tags where it's taking a name. You can, I think up to three different variables. I've seen that it's called a be human.

I think I'm sure there's one of them. I'm sure there's multiple. Yeah. There's another one too. And I'm like looking at it going, Oh my God, you could literally at scale, send a personalized video out to every person and no one would fricking know the difference.

The AI video stuff, I feel like is not quite there yet, but it's so close that like, give it just a little bit more time and it's going to be there. So if I, you know, again, I love what I'm doing. I'm not trying to act like I wasn't, but if I were starting today and could get like, let's say I could start with like, probably don't need more than like a hundred grand. Cause you doing this AI shit, you need some development costs. I would love to piece together a one person, AI based agency that just go as far as you can possibly go just using AI tools.

Like that's it. Like just one person, AI tools, you could use carrier sales centers to place the business. You know, you could, you could put it in, you could have everything feel auto returned, auto responded. I mean, you could basically make it feel like you had a 10, 15 person agency or bigger. If, you know, with all, I honestly believe with all the, if you pieced all these AI tools together and knew how to do it, I mean, you couldn't do it out of one of our current agency management systems because the industry is purposely holding us back in an effort to reap max benefit from us.

Cause they're all, you know. What? No, they can never do that. What do you mean? They're such thoughtful technologists.

Um, but like that to me is such an intriguing thing. Like chat GPT for hooked into an agent GPT with a video and audio and, uh, and an auto poster. And then, you know, you would have just a simple routing system through, through agent GPT to get the leads to either say the traveler sales center or the Hanover sales center, wherever you thought it was appropriate. And then you just freaking put them in the top, you know, using auto generated ads and API or AI driven Google ad campaigns and Facebook ad campaigns that just plow people into a form that route them, that strategically send them right to these carrier sales centers. And you literally would not have to hire a single person and you're paying, I mean, you know, if you can figure out carrier sales center business on a commercial line side, that's the Holy Grail because they take almost nothing for what you get back.

But so basically what he's saying is that there's anybody listening out there that's got a hundred grand that wants to give it to me and Ryan. We were going to, yes, I honestly believe that, that, that, that will be the look and feel of the agent of the future. And I know all the pure stuff, they're like, no, it's about the relationship. Yes. Except there is an enormous part of the population that doesn't want that relationship.

That's, that's where people miss is they think everyone wants to buy, like they like to buy. Right. And like the, the, the trick is to understand that like there's different types of buyers and you have to be able to approach your agency to appeal to all those different types of buying styles. And the more of them that you can hit effectively, the better, the bigger you're going to grow. You know, and I, and I want to be respectful of your time, but just to give you an example of this, I, so I go see a counselor every other week.

Right. I want to see my counselor in person, my financial advisor. If I never saw that human ever, and he's a good guy. I like him. He does a good job for me.

I've actually, he does a pretty good job. I never want to see him in person. Why do I ever need to see him in person? So like, there's a scenario where one service provider, I really want to spend, you know, I wouldn't want to do a zoom call with my counselor. It just wouldn't be the same to me.

I like breathing the same air as that person. Right. So like, I think what we forget, um, because we want our, we want to be our ego as independent agents, because this is the largest ego driven. And I mean, ego run to your point, Hey, just drop my name. That's our sales strategy, right?

Like, like this is the biggest ego driven industry that exists. Um, you know, I think what we forget is that, is that I may love a local in-person experience for one service and then just my buying behavior, my personality, whatever for another service. I don't want that. And we just assume that if you're local or locally oriented, you want to do local business with every single service provider that you have. And it's like, that's just not the way humans operate.

And I think, I think it's even different between lines, right? Like home and auto, I might not ever want to talk to somebody, but if I want to talk about life insurance, I'm starting to get my family. Like I want to sit, you know, and it can, it can change, you know, per line of business. So you're absolutely right. Dude.

And here's the other thing too, for all those going, you need to see people in person and commercial. We are, we just wrote a $650,000 commercial lines account that came in online that we never saw in person. You want to know how we just had the carrier send their, send their inspection and a loss adjuster out first to do the, to do the in-person review. So it's still got seen. We didn't have to see them.

We've never met the person in person. We probably will never meet this person in person yet. That's a fairly large account that I think everyone listening would be like, quote unquote, impressed by. Right. So it's like, they would love, they would love to write that.

Yeah, absolutely. The days of you having to breathe the same air as the people you do business with are over. It doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't. It just means that if you are operating under the assumption that your clients or that your type of clients don't want that or only want the in-person, I think you're missing the mark. 100%.

Yeah, dude, this has been awesome. Have to come back. Cause I feel like we scratched the surface. We didn't even get into all the other things that you do. We just, but this is great.

That's cool, man. Absolutely. Had fun. Awesome. And appreciate you.

Where can people just connect more with you? Obviously great Twitter follow. I highly recommend all the Twitter users follow CJ. Where else though? So, so Twitter and Facebook are my platforms.

Gotcha. I'm the only CJ Hudson who are on Facebook until the Russian spot spy bot to get me. So if you, if you just search, if you just search me, you'll find me. Awesome. Dude, such a pleasure.

I wish you nothing but the best and I hope we get to connect again soon. All right, bro. See you later. Have a great day. Bye, bud.

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