Jeff Shi on Finding Your Rival and World Domination

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I'm super excited about today's episode because we have Jeff Shee on the show, and Jeff is one of the most interesting dudes that I know. Coming out of the captive world where he grew an incredibly successful Allstate agency, which, you know, kind of probably doesn't even do justice just explaining as an Allstate agency. He had a real operation, you know, upwards of 20 agents growing, just crushing the game in Allstate. And then recently, just in the last 12 months, I think it was about nine months ago, I can't remember what he said during the podcast. He moved over to the independent side and is now taking all those hardcore dynamic sales skills, marketing skills, process, and growing his independent agency, Quantum, at the same rate.

And it's kind of staggering when you hear how he's growing, what he's doing, we talk process, we talk dedication, perseverance, we talk about what, you know, how to refine your business, how to sculpt your agency to be exactly what you want it to be. And you've probably heard Jeff Shee's name around the game, but you get him in a way that you've never heard him before in this podcast. It is my honor to have Jeff on the show, and I'm just excited to share him with you. Before we get there, two things. First, if you're enjoying this show, stop what you're doing immediately, hit pause, or just keep listening, whichever you want to do.

But going to your Google machine and type in RyanHanley.com, there's going to be a little box that pops up. Stick your email in that box. That's how you get notified about new podcasts, when they come out, as well as other cool pieces of content that I find or I write or if I'm on someone else's show. Like last week, I shared my interview where I was on David Carruthers' podcast, which was a really dynamic and fun conversation. David is a gangster, and I just love talking to him, so that was a ton of fun.

But you don't get that kind of additional stuff if you're just subscribed on iTunes, which is cool, but love you to subscribe via email as well. Lastly, I want to just give a huge shout out to my people at Tarmika, T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. Go get a demo. Check it out. If you haven't listened to the episode that I did with Ragged, the founder, go back and listen to that episode.

Tarmika is really changing the game for me in small commercial. Rogue is a commercial-focused agency, and when I have something come in that I know is BOP-based, and instead of logging into seven different systems, I log into one system. I get the best quote for the coverage that I need. I combine that policy and get that client what they need fast, but get it done right, and Tarmika is making that possible. So I hope you'll check it out.

Get a demo. I think you'll be very happy with what you see. Ultimately, this is the future of where small commercial is going because it's making agencies like yours profitable in small commercial, and it's already making Rogue profitable. So I hope you'll check that out. All right, guys.

Now that we got that out of the way, let's get on to Jeff Shea. There's a saying that people preach, stronger together. Are we really stronger together? I'm going to say something that probably in the open market would be wildly unpopular, and even if certain people hear this, it will probably get me canceled. But I'm a firm believer in a hierarchical structure of life.

That does not mean that any group or person should ever be not given the opportunity to be as high up in that hierarchy as they choose to be. But I would be remiss if I did not think that there were high performers like yourself who were going to stand out, push forward, and lead the market. And there were people that could never, for their own reasons, do the things that you in particular have done or others like you, not just to call you out. And my reason for saying that is you and others are better together when you're surrounded by other people that make you better. We are not better together when we are surrounded by people who choose not to do the things that help everybody get better.

Does that make sense? And I think that one of the things that I have greatly appreciated about the last three to five years of this industry are that those individuals who are pushing hard, who are trying new things, who are willing to fail, who are willing to share, are better together. They are. They're sharing ideas. They're sharing technology.

They're sharing experiences. They're building connections. They're forming alliances, whether those just be intellectual or technology or actual things. You know what, Ryan? Let's go record.

Let's go on recording on this because this is gold. So if you want to do the intro, I'm going to take it somewhere. We're going right now. You hit it, man. You just hit it.

We're going right now. Okay, because I want to share with you, you know, what I have seen since I came over to this side. All right. So on that subject of, you know, one thing the captive world, what I always saw was the eight and a half years. And this is repeated, said to me over and over again.

You might not have all the tools you need to conquer the world. But tough places, tough people come from tough places. And the captive world of the state farm, of the farmers, of the all-state world, are what you identify as the tough places. When they're dealing between eight to 12% close rate. For example, I just did my own Zoom.

You know, we do internal Zoom meetings. And I bring on guests to my show. You know, one day you're going to be invited to that show. I just started. And I only have invited my second guest.

And he is an all-state agent out of Atlanta. And before that, he was a state farm agent out of Atlanta. His best month ever with 12-month annualized auto, if you annualize the auto 12-month. At state farm, it was $250,000. And when he came over to all-state, his close ratio went down by 4 to 5% out of 100 people they quote.

And his game got better. And his best month was almost 800,000 prints with 14 producers. And how does he do it when the close ratio go down lower, right? There's truly something about if you can actually survive that environment and make you stronger and better at what you do at your craft. And in a way, it's producing some of the toughest, brightest, sharpest agent in the ecosystem.

So my goal, you know, over at Quantum, you know, we want to bring our culture that we learn in the captive world over. But we also want to bring these rock stars from the captive world over and show them what this other side is like. Because sometimes they do get brainwashed into thinking, hey, you know what? The grass is not green on the other side. You know, I will beg the difference because I was an eight-and-a-half-year captive agent.

And I thought that, you know what, this is where I belong and I'm going to go get that blue Hall of Fame jacket. I had that same ambition. I had that same dream. So as these guys come over slowly, gradually from the captive world to the independent world, I think you can see a culture shift. And I think that culture shift is already happening.

And if I could be the example to bring everybody over, that's awesome. But if I could be the culture inspiration to bring more people over, that's even better. Because at the end of the day, there's a difference between motivation and inspiration. If someone see my agency Zoom, shout out to Toga Agency Zoom. If someone see my agency Zoom screenshot from my company, they're like, oh, you know, that guy did some high production number.

That might motivate him a little bit. But if they see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 20 people start doing it, that become a culture shift. And that started inspiring others. Daniel Sung, I had a great conversation chat with him today, right? Great agent, great park agency out of West Coast, towards California.

And I shared a cool story with him. And I'm going to share it with your listeners. So my third year as a captive office agent, where, you know, I was doing good numbers in my district and now doing good numbers in my territory. Territory, you know, a couple, maybe 100 agents in my area. But I wasn't doing the best number in my state out of 320 agents.

And then there was always this guy, Frank Siambro, 12-year, 13-year mega agent, all state agents circle. We call this group of guys mega agents when they have over 7,500 policies or $8 million in premiums. Shout out to Frank. And he was always number one leader for most auto, most properties. And he had more challenging environmental right property than I did in Northern Virginia.

When he's in Virginia Beach, he's at 1% to 2% tropical deductible to 5% to 10% going against independent agents, state farm agents. That's at $1,000 deductible, right? But he's always up there, right? And my first year, I couldn't catch him. My second year, I couldn't catch him.

The beginning of my third year, we decided to open the first week of the third year like this. I sent him a fax. On the fax, and I wrote, dear Frank, you know, we know you're the number one agent in Virginia every single year. And this year, our goal is to beat you and take over the number one spot. And then I handed the fax over to all my staff, all my salespeople in my office, and my servicepeople.

And I made all of them sign up. I explained to them what the fax was, what I was going to do with the fax. And I made them take ownership to the challenge. It's kind of like the Lakers and the Celtics rival made each other better. Detroit Pistons made the Chicago Bulls and made Jordan better.

The 49ers made the Seahawks better. Rivals create competition. Competition elevates our levels, right? So, I sent the fax over. I got no response.

No call, no email, no nothing. A couple months later, I saw him. And he didn't say anything to me. I went over there, and I shook his hand. I introduced myself.

I said, hi, my name's Jeff. I sent you a fax a couple months ago. He said, yeah, I remember. He said, how should production do him? He didn't say much to me.

He didn't have to say much to me. I was nobody. I didn't earn my spot in the table. But the fact that he remembered that fax means he wanted to win. And he definitely didn't want to give up his number one spot to some random guy like me.

He wanted to win. You know, it's kind of like Kobe, right? Kobe might be a 15-year veteran. But not think for one second he didn't want to take that last game-winning shot. Don't think for one second he said, oh, here's LeBron.

I'm a 15-year-old veteran. He's in his prime. I'm going to okay losing to him. He did not want to give up his spot. Now, something I saw in the captive world that was cool, that we shared numbers.

We shared our new business production numbers with each other. We shared how much hotel we were writing. We shared how much policy or item we were writing and how much premium we were writing. And we made each other better that way. I'll give you another example.

The second story, I have two great friends from the Allstate world. One gentleman named Kevin Hamill, who he was just such an advanced and forward thinker than everybody else at the time, my second year, third year in the business. And it really kind of took me under his wing until I caught up his number where it was like the Quadrant Tiger scene where the student kind of surpassed the teacher. But I still never really said it to him because I want him to not stop giving me the knowledge that he is full of. The guy is full of amazing knowledge.

And he made me better. But one thing he always did, he always took a screenshot of his number to force me to take a screenshot of my number to remind me that I was doing less than him. It's not his way of bullying me. It's his way of erasing my game. But I just don't see that from some of the Facebook group I have been in, of a thing that people talk about.

People talk about, oh, you know, where can I find a market for this RV? Where can I find a market for that boat? Where can I find a market for this guy with 20-some tickets? We focus on the thing, literally the 1% to 5% of things that have no direct outcome on our growth versus the 80% to 85% of things that affects all of our growth. So, another story, how my business partner, Justin, and I became close.

I heard of his name and his wife. They were great agents, you know, both own agencies in Illinois. And we met on a trip. We met on a award trip. And in that award trip in Hawaii, we were sitting at dinner.

And we're like, hey, bro, you know, glad to meet you in person. And then we're all Facebook chatting and everything. And then since then, we just kind of hit it off. We hit it off because we both run pretty incredible dynamic operation for our cap, the model agency size. You know, we had 20, 30 people.

But he had dynamic people in his organization. And he viewed things completely differently than I viewed. He viewed his lead systems all about machine. It's a CRM system. It's data leads.

It's a CPA. You know, I view my system as an inbound machine where click-to-calls, live transfers, and keep people on the phone as much as we can. We view our talent level differently. We view our, you know, he keep people in their rail where I kind of keep everybody scattered. And I learned a lot from him by keeping people single-focused, single-minded, and staying in their lane that they do do an amazing job because now you're consistently repeating the same thing over and over again.

But back to my story because I was doing sidetracked. We met each other. And then when he went down to Texas and started blowing up, putting up $250,000 premiums, six-month-old, keep in mind. So, really, they're putting up $370,000,000, and then $350,000,000 written premiums, and then $400,000,000 written premiums, he kept reminding me of his results, what he's doing in Texas. We talk once a day, once every two days, once every three days.

And then we move to talking every day because I want to understand what's driving that growth. So, I started sending him my results. And, of course, I'm here to win, so I want to make sure that all my people working for my organization know that we are losing right now. And we're not here to lose just because some guy in Texas has higher auto premiums or higher home premiums. That's the excuse.

We're not going to write that excuse ship because the minute we write that excuse ship, we are already giving up. By the way, Virginia, 50th highest auto premium in the entire country. So, we want to chase him. And then it became a three-week competition where I grabbed Kevin Hamill, and Kevin Hamill was like, oh, that's cute. You guys are doing $400,000, $500,000 a month.

At the time, Kevin was doing $700,000. But he had been consistently doing $700,000. So, we started growing our organization, and we started growing it by $100,000 of new business production more per month. So, literally, in 2018, January, my production was $350,000. February, my production was $450,000.

March, it just go over $100,000 to $150,000 every single month. We were just pushing that machine and funding the machine. And we didn't give a F about ROI. We didn't care about were we profiting. We just wanted to win.

We wanted to win now. It was the Laker mentality. We want to win, and we want to win now. I guess that's just not the Laker mentality, right? You can't say the New York Yankees followed the same mentality.

We want to win, and we want to win now. But since then, going through that growth matured us. I would say, if you look before 2018 and after 2018, that growth changed all three of us because we all became better agency owners of our own craft. And there's a lot of little things, right? Like the attention to details is the engine that drives everything because attention to details is how we go from point A to point B when we're using the same people, same leads, same CRMs.

So when I came over from the captive world to the independent world, I realized there's a community here. That community is even bigger. That community is even better. There's people with less egos. And, like, I mean, I'm just starting name dropping.

David, man, I'm going to get his last name wrong. David Carothers in Florida. Help me out. Carothers. There you go.

He's an awesome dude. I ordered 30 of his books, his commercial books, and I'm going to send them to my team. And just some of the things I see him post, the guy gets it. You know, he's all about helping people. So it's nice to see success and people still appreciate it.

And that's respect to me, you know. And the dude with messages dropped it on my boy Wesley Anderson. That's connected. He just doesn't have any enemies. He's like baby Jesus.

And a lot of people, when they come over from captive world, the thing they fear, that they lose that sense of community because they had that in the captive world. That's great job marketing and then bond you guys together between market support in the sales leaders to agent support in the Facebook groups. And there's an amazing group here. But I do think we can channel differently. And the market support and then the community support right now, everything I have seen is a lot of, oh, how do I put this SR-22 policy with which carrier?

Or how do I write this harder thing that people have ever think? You know, when you have access to a Facebook group of 3,000, 5,000, 10,000, is that really the question you want to ask 10,000 smart professionals at the highest level of their game? Right? What is that SR-22 auto policy really going to pay us? And how many times is that really going to stay on our book?

Right? People are not channeling the right questions. If everyone starts channeling the right questions asking each other, you're going to see the game go up. And then once in a while, I see people post great questions in Facebook group about how to properly set up CRM, how to properly set up a pay plan that you can't just give to 1%, but you can give to 5, 10, 20. You can scale, right?

We should be talking about how do we train our supervisors? How do we rise the tide on our chess board, taking all of our pawns and give them to bishops, knights, queens, kings? Because we're the chess player. Everybody running their agency, they're the chess player. How do we get more queens and kings in our castle?

How do we find that on the board so they can bring an army of more pawns and bishops and knights, right? So if I get listeners, and I think you have a lot of listeners who are independent agents, challenging each other, so let's just say I am agent A and you are agent B, right? I'm going to go find other agents who are similar like myself, similar in premium size, similar in monthly production, similar in staff structures, similar in new business models. And whether those new business models are Google and Yelp review or mortgage referrals or commercial mindset models or CRM and buy internet leads all day or whatever that is, you know, start channeling each other and find each other's rivals. Because I would never be here if I didn't find my rivals.

I always go out there looking for people who is doing better than me and I would challenge them and realize that they came here with the same 10 fingers I have. And my 10 fingers is equal to their 10 fingers. Yeah, I think a lot of people get caught up in, so the one, one of the major differences from, and in having never been a captive agent, so I don't know this for sure, but, and I'd be interested in your take, but I think this is not an excuse, but I do think this is something that I've seen people get caught up in is, there are so many moving parts in an independent agency and a captive agency, right? It's all state. You learn the product, the product is exactly what it is, and you can recall what's a good fit, what's a bad fit, how to do X, how to do Y, how to do Z like that, because it's one set of processes.

And yes, your conversion rate is lower because maybe, because you do just have that one process. But the flip side is, you know exactly how that process works. And I think what, and I, and I found, I say this because I found myself getting caught up in it at times, and I've had to pull back, is there are so many moving parts to an independent agency that it is really easy to waste brain cycles on silly, silly things. And I'll give you a case in point today. I had an account come in, moving company calls me.

It's like, I don't know, 7,000 in premium. Kid wants to buy the policy. I don't have a premium finance company. I don't have a premium finance company. I haven't, you know, so now the second half of my day is finding a premium finance company.

Who's a good premium finance company? Once I get that premium finance company, how do I hook that premium finance company up to my, and these are the stupid, and I, and I, they're stupid. These are, this is, you know, these, those three hours, that's lost time. And I think that, um, what, what we're not doing, and, and again, I, I hold myself accountable to this. That's why I feel willing to say this is that what we're not doing is like, I need to either, I need to either find some way to have someone else do that or just simply not do it.

Just tell that guy, I only operate direct bill because agency bill premium finance stuff is, is brain cycles and time that isn't helping me. But Hey, what if a $30,000 account comes in that, that you run through, you know, run through, uh, excess lines carrier. Well, that's $3,000 in revenue. If you can sign the account and make it worth your time, should you write that? Should you not write it because you're, you know, now you're agency billing it, you're dealing with premium finance.

It's just more, it's more to deal with. So I completely and utterly agree with your argument that we need to be asking bigger questions and better questions. Um, I do think, um, I do think that there is a lot of posturing that presents as openness, but is really just, uh, ego stroking and what happens in, and we stay on the surface instead of really digging into what's driving success. How do we get there, um, and, and how do we do it in a way that's sustainable longterm? Um, I just think we get caught up in how do you write an SR 22, but like you said, why are you even considering writing that business?

Unless you have a process, unless you're going to write a thousand SR 22s writing one SR 22 is not worth your time. And that's the question I had to ask myself about this moving company. Do I want to make the $700 in revenue in, but spend probably what will be a day figuring out premium finance, getting it set up, running it through the system, you know, running the process, getting everything hooked up for 700 bucks. Do I want to do that or do I just tell the guy, Hey man, I can't help you. Yep.

So to add to that, you know, when we have a good amount of sales producers, it give us good amount of feedback on, um, what change look like on a bigger scale, because 1% change that could be coincidence could be a napoli, right? Um, but when you see a change on a whole new level with bunch of people, now you kind of understand things, um, when, when we see a lot of the captive sales producer come over to the independent world, their call time go way down. Not because they're not hardworking no more, but because they get stuck on working on quotes, they get stuck wanting to win. They said, Oh, well, you know what? I am now running with five carriers, 10 carriers behind me.

And now this is a guy that I am going to win because now I have the power to win. And versus some of the best agents I have interviewed in the captive world, one of their sales producer can quote 10, 15, even 20 household per day out of eight to 10 hour shift. When they come over here, they are now quoting five to six household per day because they get stuck on trying to be that guy called open book. Guy called open book have very aggressive underwriting. They raised the rates on the second year, third year, fourth year, but their first year entry point is aggressive.

Underwriting is tough to be right. So when they see these things, they get stuck on trying to win. And by trying to win now, they sacrifice winning as a whole. And, and I see the production even go down. And I have seen our own guys where people come over when they have more tools and their sales results.

Has gone down. They can not get out of their own way. I'm trying to win everything. Yeah. I, I dude, I, I, this, so these are, these are the problems that I'm living.

Cause I mean, you know, as well as everyone who's listening to this show, I'm a one man shop, right? So account comes in, I'm responsible for marketing sales. I got to go out and actually market the account and get quotes. Once those quotes come back, I have to verify those quotes. I have to package them up.

I have to put the proposal out to the client. I have to sell the client. Once the client is sold, I got to onboard the client. I got to process issue the business. I mean, when you really look at it, I can basically write an account a day.

That's what I can write. I can write an account a day right now. And that's not bad, but that's not going to get me to escape velocity. And, you know, I think we have to be very selective with the tools that we're using. I think we need to press, you know, I think, you know, like, oh, so, you know, so you look at these, you look at the different pieces of technology that you have access to.

Right. And I think, I think we go a couple of different ways. We get lost in it. You know, the number of times, the number, if you Google inside of like IO or not Google, if you do a search inside of IOA for, for like CRM or, or agency management system, you'll see 10,000 conversations about, it's the same question over and over again. Let's just cut to the chase.

They're all terrible, right? Every CRM has holes. They do some good things. They do some bad things like we, these are the questions we have to stop asking and just start doing the work and building processes and flows that allow us to be more productive on a day-to-day basis. Because what happens is I see people asking the same questions over and over and over again, and it doesn't help you produce more business.

It doesn't help you get past that point. I mean, I do think there's some things that help, but we just get as, you know, it's like, I just, sometimes, you know, if I'm being honest, sometimes I envy the captive side in that they just have one thing to sell. They can just be awesome at selling one thing and get really, really good at it. Where on the independent side, you have, you know, with every new market you take on, you have a new set of underwriting guidelines, you have a new underwriter to deal with, you have new timetables to deal with, you have new technology to deal with, you have, you know, and everybody thinks that their product and their system is the easiest, but some make you use internet explorer. Some, you know, you have to use this thing over here.

And the, my point is- It's a trap. It's a time trap. It's a time trap. A hundred percent. I have, and I, and I'll tell you, I have personally been, and this is something I'm, I'm working on right now.

I've slowed my production way down to try to figure out this problem in my agency because I can't bring another producer on right now in my agency. I couldn't do it. I would have no ability, I would have no, they wouldn't help me scale. They, because I got, I have one computer that I do 80% of my work on. And then I have another computer that I have to use for certain systems that are terrible to use, but they only work on something like internet explorer.

So it's like you're, and these are small little problems. These are- Can I tell you a funny, funny story? Yeah. So we saw that, right? We were running a team hard and we're like, what the hell?

Why? Let's just call her Jennifer, right? I'm going to give her a fictitious name. Why is Jennifer writing 50,000 with a captive carrier, which if you analyze the auto, she's probably writing 70,000, 80,000. And she'd come over here and she's writing less with analyze auto, right?

On an analyze base, she's barely hitting 50,000. So we have literally took out carriers out of our radar system. At first we had like nine and then we go down to eight. Now we have to three or four. And we just say, you know what?

If we're not winning with these three or four, we actually want you to move on. And that has really allowed our people to learn the coding platform better, to be faster and more efficient. And Jennifer's production has gone up and, you know, if we could give advice to those people who are making that transition, where we're having all the power, I will recommend them to unlinguish some of that power and just hone in on that specific punch and then let it punch harder and faster. I, I think so it's fun. So, so what you just described is something that I've actually started to consider and I haven't done it, but I was looking at my radar the other day and in the, the, the, how many do you have in there?

I have seven carriers right now, seven carriers for auto, eight for home. And who's the time trap? What? Would you agree sometime that could be a time trap? Oh, a hundred percent.

And, and here's the hardest part. Some of the carriers that consistently come up with the lower premiums are actually the worst to deal with in terms of actually issuing and binding. So what happens is I have to make this conscious decision. Do I put it with travelers? Who's going to make, who's going to cost me an extra 30 minutes because their system is so difficult to deal with, but they have a good, they have a good product and good rates.

So they have, they have good rates in New York. They absolutely do. And they, and I like travelers product. I have no beef with their product. Their system is very, very time intensive to deal with.

So do I go there or do I put it with someone like safe go whose rates might be slightly higher in New York state? Also a good product, but their system works like a snap. It's bing, bing, bing quote issue done. Move on to the next, move on to the next account. And I, um, you know, I just, it, these are the hard decisions, you know, now I will say there are companies that are solving this problem.

So, okay. So, um, so I will say, I think there are companies that are solving this problem, dude. So I, I actually just interviewed, um, uh, ragged Tana from, um, Tarmica, the founder of Tarmica. Dude, I had the other day phone call to this commercial lines phone call quote bind issue a bop in 21 minutes. Quote bind issue with Liberty Mutual 21 minutes.

Got the guy on guy called it. He was, it's an art studio. He was moving from one location to another, wanted to quote his insurance. I mean, this wasn't a big policy, but like the, the guy calls me, take the, pull up Tarmica, punch the information into the system. As I'm, as I'm, as I'm, uh, talking to him on the phone, doing some relationship building while I'm doing it, but, but, but rates come up Liberty Mutual 600 bucks.

Perfect. Hey man, how $600 sounds, sounds great. Click credit card bound onto the next thing in 21 minutes front. Now that to me, the fact that that is essentially, and maybe I'm crazy, but like I 21 minutes in person lines for me, there's no one that can do that. Not even close.

And you know, I've never used easy links. It's PL rater. It's certainly not possible. Not in New York state because the rates are always so different. And I don't think that's necessarily a PL rating problem.

It just, you know, the rates are always different. And, um, you know, these are the things where I start, I've started asking myself, do I really need all these carriers? What's more important that I can quote three people in a day or that I can quote one person in a day? If I have seven carriers, I can probably only quote one person a day. It just, it's too much time.

You go, but if I have three or four carriers that I know really well, I can probably quote three to four people a day by myself. Or I just have to hire someone and have them do it for me. I mean, those are the options. How are you going to grow? How are you going to scale?

So right now, right now, my goal is to scale and commercial is using commercial lines. Cause I can, I can quote, if I can get away from, I need to start being more selective with the classes of business that I target and the classes of business that I'm willing to write. And if I do that using a combination of Tarmaca and Cincinnati, who is, you know, is, is very quick to turn around quotes of a certain style, you know, if it fits their appetite, everyone else I have works through Tarmaca, I can quote, bind issue commercial lines policies very fast and effectively. And eventually I I'm going to get to a point where I can start to work in a part-time VA to help me with some of the back office onboarding stuff that eats up my time. Then I can quote more.

And then that's my hope is that within this first year of business. So if you consider March 9th, my first day within this first year, I can have a full-time employee who's basically doing everything that is transactional in the business. Man, a guy launches business during COVID March 9th. Yeah. Yeah.

We're doing all right though. I'm, I'm, I'm, I am, um, I'm breathing on a hundred thousand in premium, um, which isn't a ton, but for, you know, basically March and April, we're just essentially lost months, you know, and then trying watching the economy kind of come slowly come back together for May and June. It's, I'm not unhappy with that. Um, so we'll, we'll, we'll see. It's, uh, you know, things have to keep ramping and, and the process has to get better.

Do I think what I hear you saying is what independent agents lack that captives have based on their training is really solid, consistent, disciplined workflows and processes. And I would wholeheartedly agree with you on that. And it's, I wouldn't say all the captive agents are disciplined, but when you come from tough environment and you can only, here's your square, you got to grow within your own square. It kind of hold them to a tunnel vision. Did that make sense?

Like, you know, look at a thoroughbred racehorse, they get these blinders put on them, right? Because they're not looking at what other people do. They're focusing on their straight line. And when you have a captive carrier, you're pretty much running that straight line versus the independent agent. They're like, Oh, you know, I can do that except tracking or trucking over there.

Oh, I can do that moving company. Oh, you know, somebody just posted, they buy their 50,000 on non-standard. Auto on three homes or three autos or whatever. You kind of like seeing what everybody is doing in every direction. And this is a much, much bigger world, right?

Like this is a huge world between the, um, between all the carriers. And then you have the sub carrier, SS carriers, MGA carriers, and then just endless things. And sometimes to sidetrack from our game plan. It's hard. Like, you know, how many independent agents do you think that's out there?

January 1st, every year, make a game plan. And that game plan, write down specifically how much prefer home, prefer auto they will write with how much carriers. I don't think, I think I will tell you that the best, the ones that the best do that, but I would say the percentage is low. Right. I mean, if you think about like, you know, what, what we're being paid on prefer auto and prefer home.

It's pretty good premiums. It's much better premium than some of the non-standard stuff. Non-standard stuff fall off at, you know, 300, 400, 500% higher. And yet we get drawn into these easy hanging fruit that those are the mousetrap. Those are the cheese in the mousetrap.

That's rotten cheese. Yeah. So, you know, I would challenge you. One is fine. Who is the Ryan Henley rival, you know, and then push each other up.

Someone that will push your buttons. Because, you know, after I met, you know, my partner, Justin, and after I met Kevin, you know, six years ago, they have pushed my buttons. You know, they don't have to do much to push my buttons. Kind of like, you know, when you talk trash to Jordan or Kobe, you know, it's on, right? Like, all three of us were super competitive.

And we went on this time period between 14 to 18 months. We elevated each other's game to where we are today. Yeah. I like what you're saying. I think it's very important.

I think that you have to be selective with who you choose. I think those people will naturally present themselves, you know, coming out of the sports world. You know, it's really easy. You know, I was always an athlete. I have found it more challenging in this space because.

Because you have to be the patience is more a part of the game, you know, in sports, you know, someone pushes a button. You just, you know, you forget, you forget pain, you forget being tired and you just go to work. Right. And in the business world, what I find to be very different personally is that is oftentimes that pure aggression that you get in sports for puts you down paths that, you know, I tend to chase. What I have found is a huge weakness in my game so far has been I chase everything.

You know what I mean? I can see a marketing angle to every market. And what that does, especially when it's just me, you know what I mean? Because this, I can't wait till it's not just me. But, you know, it's just me.

So every time I chase something, that's lost time. And time is the most valuable thing that someone like I have. And I would say not just me and solo shop, but really any shop that it hasn't hit that true escape velocity that's still grinding. It's not your bank account. It's your time.

I mean, every hour. I mean, you know, I have to be, I've had to become very, very structured with every hour, with every minute that I have, because that wasted time, that wasted time costs, costs more than, than, you know, a lead that I didn't write costs way more. And, um, that's a tough lesson to learn. That's a really tough lesson to learn. Um, I'm learning it the hard way, I think right now, but I think that's a good thing.

You know, you didn't come out of this because here's the thing. You're learning it. You just said, you're learning it, right? Learning it is going to give you experience. And once you get that experience under your belt, you're like, oh, that was expensive.

And then you're not going to do it again. Yeah. You know, I, I said the other day, and I think this is the way that I'm going, you know, I, um, because I have this show, I, I get a lot of outreach for people who want to work with rogue, right? And that's an amazing thing. Don't get me wrong.

I, I, I feel very blessed that that is the case. The unfortunate part about that for me is that one, I can't feed everyone who wants to work with me. And two, like I said, it creates distractions and, um, case in point, I wrote this, I wrote a worker's comp policy with a carrier through a wholesaler that I just shouldn't have written the policy. I should have just told the person, I don't have anything for you because now it's like another trap. It's another trap.

Now I'm now when that, when that, when that insured needs something, they come to me. I then have to figure out what they need and explain that to the wholesaler. The wholesaler has to explain it to the carrier. And then the carrier has to deliver on whatever that thing is. And twice already I've had the carry, you know, somewhere in that phone tree, something happened that wasn't supposed to happen or, you know, and, and then I'm trying to figure out this problem.

And now something that if they were written with Hanover or Cincinnati or guard, or one of my direct carriers that I'm starting to get a good feel for, if, you know, now I'm like, well, I don't know how these people work. I don't even have a direct relationship with them. So now I'm talking, now I'm calling the MGA going, what's going on here? Why are they putting this? Are you going to fix this?

That's an hour and a half of my life. And that's, that's an hour and a half that I'm not prospecting. I'm not quoting someone I can actually write. I'm not coming up with a proposal for someone who I want to sell. And, and I'm using my own experience as a microcosm, not that you should feel bad for me, but that I think this is one of the major issues that most independent agents have is they try to write everything.

And what I am rapidly working towards is I don't want to write everything anymore. I, I, I don't, to be honest with you, I want to be, I want to say no to more than I actually write, because I think that's the only way to really be, to really scale quickly is to just be like, I can't help you. Sorry. Have a nice day. I can't help you.

Hold me on your carriers next. Look at your raters and see who you want to take out. And that will raise your performance. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it's, it's, you know, there's, there's, I would say there's two carriers in my radar right now who have tremendous products. There's no doubt. Their products are great. Pricing is absolutely horrible. Just having, having to look at the number that's pulled back every time offends me and distracts me from what should be happening.

And it's like, I feel bad because, and I hate that, you know, some people are probably like, why do you feel bad? That's stupid. But like, you know, it's just not even, you know, cause the person, you know, the marketing reps nice and the, you know, the carriers got, you know, you're like, Hey, I would love to put some business with you, but I don't even, why do I feel that way? Like, that's stupid. Like, why do I, you know what I mean?

Like if they're, if their pricing is so far off that I, I haven't even been able to sniff a policy with them yet. What am I doing? Still quoting them. You know what I mean? Like you've had four months.

I haven't put one policy with you. What am I doing? Why are you even there? It's not worth it. It's a distraction.

Plus the only way you get any, you get any real power in the industry is to have volume with, with, with at least one carrier. Otherwise you have no say. They don't care. You know what I mean? Like what carrier goes, Oh, Hey, you have 25,000 premium with us.

What do you, how can we help you? They don't give two fucking shits. They could care less what you have going on. Co-op dollars. Ha ha ha.

You know what I mean? Like they don't care. And, um, it, it just, you know, it's just, it's just interesting. I mean, these are these lessons that I'm learning, you know, kind of doing this, that, that it's just over and over every day, you know, every day I'm learning. And then I chase some excess lines nonsense.

I, you know, I said to my wife today, I go, why am I even quoting excess lines? Like in what world, like the amount of excess lines policy is for the $500. And premium and commission I'm going to get, like, not that I couldn't use 500 bucks. Don't get me wrong. But like that, I'm not getting like, if you, if my, an hourly for me, it's probably going to cost, I'm probably making 50 bucks an hour on that policy.

Is that really what we're doing here? You're going to scale on $50 an hour work? That's not, that's not, that's not happening. No, it's just another trap. It's another trap pulling us away from real production.

Yeah. So, you know, we've been, we've been talking for a while and, um, you know, you kind of brought up this idea of the trap, you know, what is your, you know, I've kind of shared some of my experience and stuff. Like if there's someone listening to an independent agents, listening to this or, or, or whoever captive who's thinking about, or maybe it's one of the new nationwide agents who just went independent is listening to this and, you know, and, and, and you could give them some advice. Shout out to all the nationwide agents, 50, 50, a of them. Yeah.

Freedom. Congrats on your freedom. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if anyone has any questions or needs to connect with anyone and you are one of those agents, call me, call Jeff, we'll straighten you out, but, um, actually call Jeff first because he can take all those phone calls.

I'm busy. Um, and then, uh, what, what, what advice would you give them to avoid that trap? Like what's your best piece of advice to avoiding that trap so that they can free themselves up and be successful? Best piece of advice. They had to understand their own business model.

Like they have to understand what made them successful in nationwide and don't change from it. So there's certain things that made them successful, right? Certain, let's just say commercial line made them successful. Let's just say it is delivery furnitures. Let's just say, you know, we have a big commercial book, 20% of our book and as a nationwide agent and that delivery furnitures.

Now we get all these other options, all these other choices. Let's go write people who deliver computers. Let's go people who deliver pizza. Let's go write people who deliver missiles. Let's not, let's go back and figure out how we can deliver more furnitures, right?

Let's figure out the state auto, the net gen, the safe, or the traveler of the world. And let's take that capacity of underwriting that we didn't have before to add to that and go back and deliver more furnitures, corner the market harder, right? And before they can go after everybody, there's a level of success of not wasting too much time per household and go on to the next one, go on to the next one. I always say when you open up that pipeline, open it at two, at three, and cap it at four. Always play with the four options and then truly understand the carriers that you're selling.

Because for 20 years, when you sell on one product, you know the product you're delivering. You know the trust you're delivering. You get to back that trust, right? You get to say convincingly, if I sell this policy today, it's a policy I will also sell to my mom. When you get in the total loss, I know you'll be all right.

You know why? Because I put my mom in the same policy and I know she'll be all right. At the end of the day, everybody in the independent world, independent carrier world, try to put up our mission statement, our culture statement, and then say we back a trust of our piece of paper that we're selling, the air that we're promising people. There's still very few companies deliver. And then, you know, I put up a survey in a Facebook group.

And the survey was, hey, you know, if your mom was in total loss, who would you wish her carrier to be? And you know what? Out of all the responses, with 40 plus carriers out there, 10 plus, you know, countrywide carriers out there, maybe another eight to 10 super regional carriers out there, consistently 80% of the answer was surrounded by four carriers. At the end of the day, you know, if I could give them that advice, is make sure everything you sell, you understand the trust you're selling, and that makes you a better salesman. Because you believe in the product.

Yeah, I'm going to have to just say, that is the lesson that I've learned over the first four months of my time, is that I think I made the classic mistake of expanding too fast in too many markets. I feel like every dollar of marketing spent, every inbound, every opportunity that comes from that marketing, I feel like I want to try to figure out some MacGyver way of writing it because so that I don't waste that, that, you know, that, that, that lead. And it's not helping me. You know what I mean? I have, dude, that advice is the best advice.

That is exactly the right advice because it is so much, it, just while we've been on the thing, this stupid account that I referenced, this worker's comp account, she's emailing me right now. And it's like, and I'm just like, I don't even want it. I just want to say, go back to your old carrier. Go back. I don't even want you anymore.

Like, I don't want to work with you. Like, I should have never written the policy in the first place. You know, like, and, and, and, I got a challenge for you. So on the subject, on this account, figure out what you want to make, right? Figure out what you want to make a year in your first year in total money taken out in commission and then reverse that.

So if you want to make 10,000, I'm just throwing a random number out there. If you want to make 10,000, how much premium does that have to be? And if that's how much premium it has to be, let's just say a hundred thousand. Then you divide by 45 working hours a week, times four weeks, 21 working days is the average law per month. Then you just take that premium and you say, you know what, I'm going to divide that.

And then every single hour, every single day, this is the premium that need to come into the house. I am never going to go under that. If I am going under that, then I need to readjust because this continues to, while you're going down the slope, right? People, once they go down the slope, they can't, there's no break. They're just going down the downhill slope.

So this allows you to measure your speed and make sure that your direction, your trajectory is launching you because it doesn't matter about how fast you're going down. If you're going down and not hit the target, then you have to climb back the hill, which is going to take a lot of time. And then you had to relaunch yourself down the hill to hit your trajectory. So make sure you understand what your time is worth. No matter what you do every single day, the time has to be worth it.

Yeah, I, so, so my goal for this month, like I said, I, I took a step back from, from hardcore producing from outreach for the sole purpose of what I realized was I didn't have this, this process, this, this idea. I didn't have that time calculation in place. I didn't, I hadn't done that work. I was so concerned. Well, you are, you are too busy shopping for moving, moving policies.

Yeah. Well, you know, at the beginning I was just like, I got to figure out how to write shit. You know what I mean? Just, just that simple thing. Just how do you, how do you issue a policy?

How do you, how do you do that? That's a, you know, that's hours of time trying to figure out how to do that the first time. And, um, and what I've realized is there are probably, there's probably five carriers that I need to have. If I have those five carriers, maybe four of which are commercial and then another cross cut of four of those five or more, uh, uh, uh, personal lines focused. If I have those carriers, that's all I need.

And that, and that, and a big part of me, and I just haven't had the balls to do this for whatever reason, a big part of me just wants to say, if I don't, if one of those five carriers can't help this particular individual, I need to just move on from that individual. You know, start by taking the other ones out of the Raiders. Yeah. Just pull them, just pull them out of the Raider. Yep.

Cause, uh, because it just doesn't, it's not, you know, without a service person, I need them to have a good customer care center. If they don't have a good customer care center, they're not really of use to me. I need them to be able to turn around to be good, solid, you know, consistent rates, all that kind of stuff. And it just, um, so, you know, I think that's the solution, man, is, uh, is, is hone in on what you're best at, what you can do, know your products better than any, as, as, as well as you can know them and, and then push forward. And I'm going to make it my goal between now and the next time that I have you on, which I'm assuming will be in a couple months is to do exactly that.

Because this is, this is what I've been working on all week. We're, we're talking on, I guess it's Tuesday, but even last week before the 4th of July holiday, I was working on this too, is it has just become so blatantly, I'm sitting here staring in my email next to this, you know, next to the zoom box that we're talking in that, you know, I got a random flood quote, you know, with no home and auto. The guy just wants a flood. That's it. Why am I working on that?

I mean, that's freaking nuts that I am quoting a guy just on his flood. That's it. Right. Right. I challenge you to find your arrival.

I challenge you to find someone that's similar business model and that's going to make you better. Like the Seahawks made the 49ers better. Yeah. All right. So if you're listening to this and you, you, you want to be rivals with me and you want to, you want to have someone come after you.

Cause I'm looking for someone to chase. Cause I can't chase, can't chase this guy. He's he's too, he's in a different class right now, at least for, at least for the foreseeable future. I'm sure someday I'll be knocking on his door. Son of a bitch.

But, uh, yeah, man, that's the deal. Well, Hey, I want to be respectful of your time. I appreciate you jumping on, um, and, uh, and dude, it just, it's always awesome to chat. I love where we go with our conversations. And, um, for those of you listening at home, every once in a while, I just randomly call Jeff or Jeff randomly calls me.

And this is exactly meandering kind of conversations that we have, but, uh, I think they're fun. I'm glad we could share them. And, uh, where can people get at you learn more about quantum, what you're doing? Cause, um, I know you had, um, one of your people, it was awesome conversation. I hope I don't get her name wrong.

Caitlin Eggers, Edgar. Yes. She was on Cass's podcast. If you haven't listened to that episode, go listen to it. It's great.

I think the things you're doing in quantum are tremendous. I think that independence have, you know, I think we have so much to learn from captives. I mean, just as captives are starting to learn from us, um, you know, different models. I know a lot of people see us as rivals, but we're all doing the same stuff. And I think what's important is that we just keep sharing.

So I appreciate it. You know, you know, one thing I love about that podcast was some people might not click on the podcast because her title is as director of education. But once they hear that pocket, they realize, Oh, she was in the trenches. She sold herself. She went door to door.

She led a sales team. She trained salespeople. And you know, that's one thing that we try to raise as a culture in an organization that I don't care what you do. If you, if you're helping people get licensed, if you help people on board, if you're a brand ambassador, we want people from the sales world. Yeah, I know.

I, to be honest with you, you know, this is the last thing I'll say. I was actually today. I was, um, today I was, uh, brainstorming an idea for a local group. I want to get, um, I got a couple of buddies who are salesmen as well. And I want, I want to start to put together just a local networking group of salespeople, people who sell for a living, because I think so often we just don't spend enough time together.

Yeah. I know in certain industries like real estate and stuff, real estate agents will get together, but I, I just think moving into the future, if there is any, if there is any job skill that is going to, that is going to continue to be highly marketable, it's the ability to sell. You have to be able to sell no matter what you do. You have to be able to sell. You're a doctor.

You got to sell. You're a lawyer. You have to sell. You're in manufacturing. You have to be able to sell.

You're a not-for-profit. You have to be able to sell. This is an incredibly important part of, of success. And I just think that too often we focus on marketing and we forget about sales and it just, we can't forget about it. Yep.

Yeah. I agree. Yeah. All right, brother. Hey, I appreciate you.

Thank you for coming on the show and I'll catch you the next time. We'll see you the next time. We'll see you the next time. We'll see you then. We'll see you then.

We'll see you then. We'll see you then. We'll see you then. We'll see you then. We'll see you then.

We'll see you then. We'll see you then. We'll see you then. We'll see you then. Thank you.

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