Live Recording of Bradley Flowers and Ryan Hanley Talking Insurance

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Hey guys, before we get started, I just wanted to hit you with a quick message. I know you've probably heard at this point about Rogue being acquired by SAA. It means we finally have the capital, resources, expertise, tools, the backing, the support to execute on the vision that Rogue was originally created for. This idea of a no-ceiling insurance career. So if you see yourself as a misfit, gangster, renegade who just is not happy with their current situation, but is ambitious, can work on their own, but loves a team that's going to help them drive forward.

If you want to be part of something special, if you want to grow your career, you don't have to be a producer. We're always looking for great account managers. We're looking for anyone who wants to be part of something special that's going to buy into what we're doing and wants to grow and just do the damn thing. If that sounds like you and you're listening to this show, go to join.rogrisk.com. That's join.rogrisk.com.

And apply today. We'll see what happens. All right, let's get on to the show. Today we have a tremendous episode for you. A live conversation between me and Bradley Flowers at the IBNO event in northern Iowa.

Ohio, not Iowa, northern Ohio. We were in Cleveland, and we were asked by this organization, Bradley and I, to do a keynote together. And we didn't just want to stand on stage and kind of talk at the audience. We wanted to kind of make them part of the experience, and we wanted to do something that was a little different. So what we did was we set the room up in a way where we sat in the very middle of the room at a round table facing each other like we would if we were kind of podcasting in a room by ourselves.

And then I interviewed Bradley. And then I interviewed Bradley like it was a podcast episode, except we were surrounded by probably 100, 150 people. It was a really cool experience. I think the audience, you know, was – we got tremendous feedback, so I could tell they were engaged. But you don't get a lot of questions from them during it.

And, you know, the audio isn't as crisp or as clean as it would be if we were doing it like over Zoom in a normal – or in a studio in a normal setup. So you'll have to bear with the audio quality. You can still hear what we say, and it comes out really great, but it's just not as crisp and clean. There's a little bit of background stuff. You'll hear some bumps and, you know, kind of the standard stuff that comes from a live show.

But in general, I think you're going to love this conversation. We talk a lot about culture, a lot about hiring, a lot about how do we get the most out of our people, as well as talk – break down some of the marketing tactics and stuff that are working right now. Just a great episode, as always. Bradley is an innovator. I enjoy speaking to him because I learn so much when I do.

And I think you're just going to really like this episode. Before we get there, I want to give a quick shout-out to the sponsors of the show, the people that make it possible. First and foremost, Podium. Podium changes the game when it comes to capturing leads on your website, how do you interact with them. Their live chat-to-text feature, which is the feature that we use the most at Rogue, allows us to capture inbound conversations via chat and a web or mobile app.

And then when we respond in the app, it actually responds as a text message to the person who sent it. So the response time is 95-plus percent. You know, if you're looking for a chat feature, if you're looking to capture more tools and give your prospects and customers a new avenue to communicate with you, then Podium is absolutely a tool that I would check out. That's P-O-D-I-U-M dot com. I also want to give a couple quick shout-outs to a few technology vendors that I think are doing incredible work and just had a chance to spend some time with them.

And that's Tarmika, T-A-R-M-I-K-A dot com. T-A-R-M-I-K-A. Guys, changing the game and commercial rating. A lot of competitors out there. Tarmika is the best.

T-A-R-M-I-K-A dot com. And Better Agency. Guys, I got a demo. You know, we obviously, we use HubSpot and we use NowCerts. So I'm not on Better Agency right now.

Doesn't mean I won't be in the future. But I had a chance to get a demo from Will and Nick a couple weeks ago. And I was just blown away by the progress they're making. So I wanted to give a big shout-out to them as well because they just, I think they're pushing the game from an independent agency management system, CRM space. The integrations they make, the decisions they're making, I think that tool has come a tremendously long way.

I had Nick on the show a few weeks ago. If you want to go back and listen to that. And I just love what they're doing. Love when we can, when we see a tool that's coming out of our space that isn't kind of owned by one of the big guys, you know, who you know is just looking for ways to kind of lock you in. And, you know, not necessarily innovating.

Better Agency is innovating. Love to see it. Love to see it coming out of people that I know to be good people and big fans of them. So go to betteragency.io. That's betteragency.io.

And with that, my friends, let's get on to Bradley Flowers. Ooh, I am so pumped for today. Guys, we are going to kick it off with two people who honestly have made an incredible impact on my own life. I'm honored that I get to introduce them today. They're two people who have pushed me into places that I didn't know I was capable of.

And I know that they will not leave this stage until they do the same thing for you. I am so pumped to welcome Bradley Flowers, the CEO of Portal Insurance, and Ryan Hanley, the CEO of Rogue Risk. Let's give them a warm welcome. In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. So we're going to do something a little different today.

There was no way I was going to be able to stand on that stage so far away from you guys. And Bradley and I kind of had the idea of turning this into a conversation and a podcast. So we're going to do it from right here in the mix of you guys, which allows you to – so some of you have to turn around. People are running away. Yeah, sorry, not sorry, but – so this is – we set this up, being that neither one of us had ever done a dual keynote before, and we said, well, hey, we're both podcasters, and we both like having conversations, and we're going to try to turn this into a podcast-style conversation about what's going on in the industry right now and give you guys kind of an inside look at how we do this.

Now, a couple things here. You can shout out. You can be part of this. If you want the mic, we'll stand up and walk over. But I feel like this is a little more intimate.

We can all agree. We're right on top of each other. And this way, when we say something stupid, when you throw stuff at us, you'll actually hit us because there's about 40 feet up there, and I don't know if any of you have a strong enough arm to hit us from back here. Unless you play for the Browns, you're not hitting us up there. Yeah, I mean, if you had Josh Allen's arm, then maybe.

Yes, go Bills. So, all right. All right, so to kick this thing off – We already got one boo. Everyone's going to boo. They're America's team, though.

I can't help it. So, Bradley, I – I like to do something. Some people, you know, may like it. Some people don't. But I tend to toss ideas out into the ether.

I use the podcast. I'll write articles, share posts, whatever. Most of the ideas, when I start them, they're not fully fleshed out. And it's something that bothers people because they feel like everything we post online should be, like, 100% what we believe, fully thought out concepts. So, the idea that I'm about to share with you, I want to be clear.

I have not thought this all the way through. And we haven't talked. We haven't talked about it. I did not share anything of what we're going to talk about with Bradley. So, he's coming fully off the cuff.

Which is great when you're sitting in the middle of this room. So, the idea that hit me, I was listening to a podcast with a guy from Shopify. He has this concept with the people who buy Shopify stores and run them of arming rebels. That's what internally they talk about. They're arming rebels.

Amazon is the big bad enemy. And these little Shopify stores that pop up are entrepreneurs and they're the rebels of retail, I guess. And I was thinking about that concept and trying to apply it to insurance. And I kind of came up with, where are the opportunities insurance in terms of this concept? And here's the idea.

I feel like, unlike any time in our past, being a rebel in our space today pays the most dividends. That we have, unfortunately, out of necessity, become an industry of conformists. We relish the fact that we are severely slow adopters of technology. That we're laggards in every capacity. And it's a safety mechanism.

We've all built our kingdoms. I know that if your agency looks and feels like mine and operates like mine and stays in their zone, that you're not going to mess with me and you're going to make your money and I'm going to make my money. And that's all great, except you and I, when we're in our early 30s, trying to grow up in this industry, we can't do it the way everyone who's established today did it. We just can't. So we have to find different ways.

So my question for you to start this off is, where's the low-hanging fruit of being a rebel? What's the first thing you can start to do, start to think about, to crack this code? Because, you know, when there were only a few thousand agencies in the country, it was easy to start in New York. You could have three on a corner because there was no technology, no digital, no way of getting to the town next door. Now you can, you're in how many states do you write business in?

I don't know. A lot, right? I'm in all 50 and we're based out of Albany, New York. I think we're in 30. Yeah.

So where's that low-hanging fruit of being a rebel? What is the first thing you can start to do? How do you start to stand out? How do you start to crack into this world? So first of all, anytime I podcast with Ryan, I put my controversial hat on.

And it's a lot harder to be controversial when you have 200 people sitting right beside you versus a podcast studio. I'm leaving after this, so it's okay with that. You know, I think, you know, my wife and I buy a little bit of commercial real estate and it's all, you know, it's about buying real estate at 75 cents on the dollar. I think looking for opportunities not only within your agency, but outside of your agency. So in other words, maybe we can, you know, we interviewed a lady recently, or I say recently, it was like two years ago, that was, everybody here know the term VA?

Virtual assistant. Virtual assistant. She was making $60,000 a year doing the exact same job that my VAs. For a lot less. You can't tell me I don't win that game in the long run, right?

So things like that, being a speedboat compared to the Titanic, being able to pivot, you know what I mean? I gave a keynote yesterday, the PIA of Memphis, or PIA of Arkansas in Memphis, and I gave the example of, you know, these three things are our niches. But I may walk in tomorrow and say, hey, now we're doing bakeries. Being able to pivot on a dime within your agency, I think using technology that makes you incredibly flexible allows you to do that. But I think also outside of your agencies, looking for opportunities, whether it's joint ventures, whether it's, hey, I'm going to form this strategic partnership with this mortgage brokerage or whatever.

You know, embedded insurance is like the next term that's going to be thrown around, much like data and integration has been thrown around the last few years. Embedded insurance, because that's one of the topics I want to talk about later. I think there's opportunities in that arena for agents. So I think just looking for ways to be, I know this is kind of a very vague answer, but I think just looking for ways like, hey, how can we reduce expense, reduce friction? I'm a big proponent.

Everybody thinks I'm this big tech guy. I'm like the least tech savvy person you've ever met in your entire life. I just surround myself with friends, many of whom you know, that are tech savvy. I'm like, hey, how do I do this thing? And then it always ends up like, hey, can I just pay you 500 bucks to build this for me?

And so I think looking for less tech that does more. Yes. Like people tend to get shiny object syndrome and, oh, yeah, we're adding this new tool, but it doesn't integrate with anything that we're using. Therefore, it's going to solve one problem but create another one. Yeah, I heard you talking about the less tech that does more concept, and I have also dealt with shiny object syndrome.

There's actually like a shiny object syndrome anonymous club now. There's a whole 12-step program. Are you the president? Yeah, yeah. Well, I am.

I might be the vice president. I'm not just a member. I'm also a client. And when I say that, I've said that on a couple of podcasts, and I got messages from the non-tech people that are like, hey, we should be out of filing cabinets, and everybody comes in the office and wet signatures, and I'm like, that's not what I'm saying. Like, you think I'm supporting you by saying that.

I'm not saying that. I'm just saying, like, we do need more tech, but we need it to be a less amount of tools. Maybe a higher utilization of the tech that we actually have versus what we do, which is have 17 things and only use 5% of them. Correct. Yeah, I couldn't agree with that more.

It's one of the reasons that we recently switched to HubSpot. Now, it's a big tool, and to be honest with you, there are days when I wake up and I regret the decision to do it. So you're dreaming about the color orange. Yeah, but when I see it working, right, and I'll give you an example of what I mean. And the reason I went there is it's one tool that we took by adding HubSpot, and you have some headaches, and there's a build out, and you've got to think through it, and I'm not saying that it's easy.

We took 10 tools and made them four. So now my team only has to log into four things, when six months ago they had to log into 10 different things to do the same function. And that, to me, as much as I had to deal with the bitching and the griping and the, oh, it's another new system, but now they're like, they can send emails, track emails, texts. It's all in one feed, attachment, everything that we want to do. I'm not going to get into exactly how we do it, but everything we want to do isn't one screen for them, except for two other things.

Guess which one? One of them is the agency management system, and we won't get into that unless we want to. We might. I didn't see one here, so. Oh, so we can, we can, I don't see one.

Is there an agency management system here, so we can tear it? No. Agency management systems are amazing, and I'm so glad that we have them, and they're doing such a great job from an innovation perspective. So, when I was thinking rebels, I was thinking, one of the things that came to my mind was our people. Yeah.

Like, the mindset of our people, right? Yeah. Because I hear all the time, Ryan, recruiting is so hard. It's hard to find good people. Well, it's hard to find good people if your strategy for finding people is cherry-picking them out of other agencies.

That's a hard way to find good people, because one, if they were actually good, they wouldn't leave where they were, unless, or you're going to have to pay them three times what they're worth, and that's not saying people aren't worth things. And they're going to tell you the better way to do things. They're going to tell you the better way to think. They're going to have technology issues, because they're going to have trained in a different system. So, one of the things that we started doing was targeting young moms, because there is nothing that old white guys hate more than a young mom at work, because she's got to take her kids to the doctor, and she's got to pick them up from school and do all this stuff.

And they don't want the kids to be on the Zoom call when they're talking as a team. And I'm like, I don't give a shit about any of those things. I love it. So, at any given time, I have four women who all have kids under five in my office, and any given time, all of their children will be on the Zoom call with us during the middle of the day. And they're like, whoa, they're not being productive, Ryan.

How can they be productive if there are kids running around? Because I will take 30 minutes of an amazing, high-quality employee's time, where she then has to go, and it's all women. And this isn't like a man-woman thing, just they all happen to be women, single dads or dads with kids I'm fine with, too. Or whatever, however they're gender-classified. So, you know, I'll take that 30 minutes of an awesome person's time, and the other 30 minutes I've got to go make peanut butter jelly sandwiches and change diapers and shit.

I'll take that really good person's 30 time, then an hour of someone who could give two flying Fs about working at my agency, and it's just another job, and it's a paycheck. And that strategy, I have two in Florida, one in Michigan, I have another one in Albany. Like, they are rock stars, and they felt completely tossed away by their old agencies, and their production level is, like, off the charts. And to me, when I start thinking about, like, rebel mentality, like this idea, and again, it's not fully big. Like, that's the type of stuff that we need to start thinking about is, like, why are we tossing 32-year-old moms with kids under five out into the woods because we don't want them on Zoom calls with their kids?

Yeah. That is a stupid thought process, in my opinion, and I'm, like, happy to leverage it. Well, it's kind of like when COVID first happened, I had agency owners reaching out to me and on some of these Facebook groups saying stuff like, how do you know your people are working? Like, what clock in, clock out system are they getting their job done? As long as they can get their job done, like, we have, it's kind of cliche now, but we have an unlimited time off policy at the office.

Yeah. Because people have stuff. Like, you've got to go to doctor's appointments, you've got to pick up your drive clean, like, you know what I mean? And, like, are they getting their job done? That's the only metric we should, and are they a good person?

That's the only metrics we should be going by. Yeah. I couldn't agree with you more. If you have the systems in place to track activity, so we salary every one of our employees. We don't go hourly for that reason.

Yeah. So, we salary everybody because what happens is. I'd rather just not keep up with the hours. Yeah, yeah. The hourly thing is terrible, too.

And, like, you're thinking about how many, I only have so many brain cycles. So, like, I can't, I don't want to know if, like, Tammy worked 38 hours versus 40 hours. And if they worked a half an hour, they're going to tell you. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, I don't even want that in the culture.

So, the culture that I want is, if you need to take two hours a meal a day to go to your kid's recital, or you need to go pick up your dad from the doctor because he can't drive or whatever, I don't even want to know that you're doing. Listen to Slack, hey, I'm going to be out for two hours. I'll be back. And what happens is, I watch when they log into the systems, they come back in at 6, 8, whenever, to get it done. Because they know, ultimately, all that matters is getting activity done.

And what you get back is, maybe everyone, everyone steals time. Everyone in this room steals time all the time. So, to pretend like people don't steal time is crazy, or to act like you're going to manage them out of stealing time, or like, well, she or he that was on Facebook, who cares? Did they get their job done? Are you getting positive feedback from your customers?

Like, are they adding value? Are they helping with new ideas? Are they taking on tasks that maybe are overflow from another team member? Like, doing the things that a good team member does. If they want to steal a little time, or listen to Joe Rogan's podcast in the background, as everyone should be, at least every good American, then I think that's a super positive thing.

And it doesn't bother me. I feel like that's how we start to scoop up these employees that are just being dropped on the floor. Like, I feel like there's a lot of really good employees on the floor right now, and there's an enormous opportunity for all of us to scoop them up. I gave a talk yesterday on culture, and we are not perfect at culture. That's, like, the first thing out of my mouth.

And it's not something you accomplish. It's a living, breathing thing that you're constantly working on, and if you ignore it, it's going to go to crap. And the biggest point of the talk was, is, I'm a startup. Like, we're really small. We're two years old.

I've been in the business ten years, but the agency's two years old. Our, I can't pay people what some of these big agencies can pay them. Our competitive advantage is culture. Like, the people that I have working for me, like, I guarantee you most of them probably could get paid more somewhere else and probably shouldn't be working for me, to be honest with you, right? But it's the culture.

And one of the things we're doing, this is kind of funny, like, they told me to dress rock and roll for this. Like, this is how I dress every single day. I'm not joking. I am wearing a rock and roll t-shirt. That's it.

And that's, you know, when you walk in our agency, we look like a tech company, not an insurance agency. And we, now we do have a rule dress for your day if we're meeting with a big client or something like that. We're going to do khaki Fridays. Which is, I know that sounds dumb, it's 100% a recruiting move. Because these other people at these agencies who have to wear pantyhose are going to see that and be like, damn, I want to wear jeans every day.

People still wear pantyhose in Alabama. In Alabama they do, yeah. Jesus. But I want to bring up, you're the one that brought up Joe Rogan, not me. I just want to bring that up.

You're in New York. I haven't heard that word in like a decade. Yeah. We're first in football, last in everything else. Yeah.

I think, so to your point of, it's not about how much money people make, right? There's a fine line there, right? You have to be in the ball game. You can't be underpaying people. But I do think that, I think the tech industry in general has changed the mindset, specifically of maybe people under 45 around this particular topic.

A thousand percent. It's so much more about, do I feel appreciated, right? Now, I believe in a strong hierarchical structure. From the standpoint of, so people know what the heck they need to get done. And if something breaks, who do I go to to talk to?

I think the flat culture idea is good in theory. I think that it struggles in execution. That being said, that doesn't mean every system, every process, and every conversation needs to have a strict hierarchical structure. It just means from a reporting and accountability standpoint, you need to have that. And I think that's where a lot of people miss.

So, by having, from an accountability and reporting structure, a hierarchical, and by hierarchical, everyone realizes, like, there's a boss, and then there's a sub-boss, and then there's an army setup or whatever. But I think from an idea... Stormtroopers. Say it again now? Stormtroopers.

Yeah, no. Well, I'd like to think that they're more like, what was that, Rogue One movie with those clandestine people and different camo gear, like, blowing shit up. Or C3PO. Yeah. I'm sorry, I'm throwing you off on purpose.

But I think, my point is, I think that's very important from an accountability reporting, get stuff done standpoint. But then, as a leader, you have to, you can't keep that from an idea, from a culture, from a communication, from an appreciation standpoint. You can't be like, well, they're two levels below me, so I can give two shits about what they do. Or, I don't need to talk to her, because she's just an entry-level CSR, and, you know, I'm the agency owner, and she should just be glad she's getting a paycheck. I had an agency owner tell me one time, I threw this concept out about three years ago of, like, mixing flat culture with hierarchical accountability.

Someone was like, my employees should just be happy they're getting a paycheck. Now, I think he was being funny. He was trying to be funny, but there was enough seriousness in there that I was like, I was like, what agency are you? Because I'm going to drop a pin in your backyard for my recruiting page. I mean, that was the thought process.

Like, she's getting a paycheck. She should be happy that she's getting a paycheck, and therefore, just do everything that I say the way I say to do it. That's going to create a person that clocks out at 5 o'clock every single day. And I, if you are operating that way, understand that every one of those employees would leave tomorrow for a better situation. They just would.

No one likes that structure. And I think that while that was acceptable in, like, the 80s and 90s, in 2022, that is not acceptable anymore from an employee standpoint. Right? They're just not, they're not going to be happy in that environment. It just, and I see it.

I see it. And we put out a, we're recruiting heavy for Rogue. Because we're not broke anymore. And, and, and, we put out a job posting for a select producer position. Now, we recruit nationally.

Don't put any in Alabama. What? None in Alabama. I need someone with a Southern accent. What's up, guys?

Sorry to take you away from the episode. But as you know, we do not run ads on this show. And in exchange for that, I need your help. If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes, et cetera. This helps the show grow.

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All right, I'm out of here. Peace. Let's get back to the episode. So we got day one, hour four, 37 applications, right? We have like 100 plus applications now for people because the post wasn't, you're going to make 40, 30 and you're going to, you know, here's what we do.

And you're going to, it was like, come make shit happen. Like sell stuff, be awesome. Like, I don't care what you wear. I don't care if you got a big old bushy Santa beard. Like it doesn't matter to me.

Like if you're going to help our clients work our process and be cool and the Slack channels, you can be part of this team. And what we've kind of developed is like a misfit culture. And I don't know the replacements, the replacements, the movie, the replacements. So I actually thought about getting, because I was thinking about this the day about us. I thought about getting the replacements movie poster and putting him in the office, but I didn't know if everybody that works for me would like it, you know, so.

Also, he has a pretty strong arm. I think he actually threw those passes. Really? I mean, it looked like him. Does anyone, did Keanu throw those passes?

Yes or no? Was anybody in the movie? Show of hands. The replacements, you all know this movie. You have TNT.

So for those listening at home right now, this audience is not engaging at all. So one thing, I have a buddy, his name is Cam Marston, and he is, the name of his company is Generational Insights. And he works with big corporations and basically tells them how to hire and manage different generations. And one of the things he talks about is how pre-millennial, Gen X, and baby boomers, the attitude generally was, hey, we're working for this company to build this company. And then when you get into the millennial and Gen Zs, it's we're working for us to build us.

Combined with the average employee now stays at a job, I think, four years and eight months. The average millennial stays at a job three years, six months. The average Gen Z is like two years, eight months. I think if you approach managing people with those few things in mind, it kind of changes the way that you manage. You know what I mean?

It's like a different, if I understand that Sally's probably only going to be here for five years, it changes the way I manage her. You know what I mean? If I understand that she's working to build up her career. So kind of what we tell all of our new people and our current people is like, hey, my goal is not to keep you here for 30 years. If you stay for 30 years, that would be phenomenal.

But my goal is for when you leave Portal to say this is the best jumping off point I've ever had. I want you to use our connections, our business to build yourself up and then go do something great. And I really mean that. Yeah, yeah. I think that's tremendous because I heard of this.

Again, I listen to too many podcasts, but I was listening to the CEO of a company. He kind of said something similar. He's like, when he looks at his success metrics, it's not necessary. I mean, obviously, he's trying to make money and runs a business. But when he goes a step beyond that, what are his success metrics?

How many successful companies have been started by employees who learned about starting successful companies inside his agent? So he's like, it's like this alumni network. And he's like, because we don't set expectations on them, all the things you said, he's like, now some of them have become referral partners for us. Some of them have become vendors for us. And he's like, we have this whole alumni network of companies that have started out of our company.

And he's like, that is one of the things that I'm most proud of, which I think is amazing. One of the coolest things that ever happened to me, like things have been great at Portal. I mean, we started with no money, less than scratch, as Seth Sarimba would say. Two days after I launched the agency, my accountant called me and said, hey, you owe $5,000 to the IRS from last year, which is like 20% of the money. I started with, and like we built it up and like now we're profitable and cashflow and it's amazing.

There's been a lot of cool things that have happened. But probably the singular coolest thing was that kind of proved the model was the first employee that I fired, because she was not a culture fit, called me a year later to ask like for me to like consult with her on her startup. And I was like, okay, this is like, you know, and that's not to pat myself on the back is like she did it. But it like it kind of proves some of the things we were doing from employees to employees. We have issues like everybody else, you know, and the thing with like the culture thing, like you have to pair that with accountability.

It's not just like frou-frou, let people run all over you. You know, like people get confused about unlimited time off, but we pair unlimited time off with several accountability points. Are you getting your job done? You can't be not getting your job done and take off a week to go to, you know, Burning Man or whatever. Like, are you leaving other team members hanging, right?

If three other people are off that day, like unless you're like throwing up sick or have COVID or your kids sick, like no, you know what I mean? And you have to let us know a week in advance. So there's accountability measures in place with that. I think that this is the hardest time to lead that's maybe ever existed in business. And the reason for that is what you said, like you have to be an active, engaged leader, not you can't be the best producer in the agency and be a great leader.

You can't be the best marketer in the agency and a great leader. And this is something that I struggle with because all I want to do all day is generate needs and help my sales and sell. If in a perfect world, I'm left to go do that and I don't talk to anybody, I just create content and generate leads and do the things that I know that I love and I'm good at. But someone's got to run the business, so you have to be a leader, right? And you have to come back.

And it is difficult to look at someone and say, I know you want Friday off, but you haven't hit your activity targets in two weeks. So I can't give you that day off. Like, that's a hard thing to do. Or what can I do to help you hit those goals? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then it always comes back to, I didn't hold her accountable for two weeks. She didn't even realize she wasn't hitting her targets, right? This is the first time she's ever heard about it. And then I'm looking at it and going, shit, well, I'm going to give you the day off, but now we need to have meetings all the time. I think it is a very, very difficult time to be a leader for these reasons.

And I think the pushback that we get or that, you know, I tend to get when I talk about these topics is more like people aren't just going to do what you say they're going to do because you want them to do it. And it's hard. I said on the podcast a couple weeks ago, and Scott actually brought it back up this week, it's harder now than when I started. And everybody thinks like scratch and like, there definitely were some things that were hard when we were scratched that are not hard now. But there are some things that were easy when we started that are hard now.

And that's what I was talking about. We recently lost our first employee that quit, first person that ever quit. And what exactly happened is I, you know, like I said, we're not perfect. I did not have some difficult conversations along the way. Like, hey, man, don't do this again, that sort of thing.

I did not have those difficult conversations along the way. And then we had to have a really difficult conversation. And he didn't know how to take it. Bounced. Versus if I would have been being a manager instead of a buddy, it would have been like, okay, my bad.

You know what I mean? I do. I made the same exact mistake with our first producer we ever hired. I look at him and what he could have done in our today culture, today's system, which is also not perfect by any stretch. But I think he could have been successful.

And I just, I kept going, well, you're going to make your calls, right? Or, you know, whatever. And I just, I left him on an island. And eventually, it's almost a similar scenario just because I didn't want to do my job. I think one of the worst and best things that can happen to you is you hire that producer that's like a self-motivator that just writes insurance.

And, like, you don't need to manage them because then you think you can treat other people that way. You know what happened to us? One of the first people we hired was from another agency, came over for the culture, and is just a freaking rock star. Former social worker, by the way. If anybody ever can hire a social worker, like, I have to help this person with their insurance.

Like, it's, it's like obsessive. So then I started trying to treat other producers that way. And it just doesn't work for some people. And I want to pivot to talk about cultural lines. We need to go to the second question, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just realized a half hour on the first question. I don't even know how much time we have. But, so the reason I wanted to spend time on that particular topic was just I do think that there is a huge opportunity and talent in the market. And that, while VAs are amazing, and I'm not knocking VAs in any way, I would take, I would take a well-outfitted, cultural-fit, hard-working, U.S.-based licensed American over a team of VAs any day of the week.

Well, and, like, so when we first started using VAs, a buddy of mine who was kind of being a little bit critical of it, and I said, man, they're not taking a job from my U.S. people. They're taking all the crap my U.S. people don't want to do, and therefore they are less stressed. Yes. I guess, let me, just to put a pin in that point, I feel like we're running to VAs because it's another shiny object. It's a thing.

And I just caution people, VAs don't solve people problems. VAs help you take your people to a whole other level that they couldn't do on their own by removing day-to-day nonsensical tasks that don't have value. Like our VAs do our quoting for personal lives. Our VAs produce every COI. Like we tell every commercial client, we're 95% commercial, we can turn around a COI that doesn't have any language issues in 20 minutes or less.

That's a guarantee that we make, right? That's a selling point for us. It doesn't get us every deal, but it's a nice validation thing. And we do that because we have a team of VAs that pumps those out, right? Those are the kind of things that I think VAs do really well.

My point is don't, you can't backfill bad culture or bad people with VAs. I think that's going to fix your people problem. It's not. You're going to lose them too. You're going to lose them too.

Because they're going to think that you're trying to replace them. If you're not a good manager to U.S. people, you're never going to talk. You're going to basically expect the VA to work, and you're never going to talk to them. It's like Wesley Anderson said, who's a friend of both of ours. It's like, could you imagine if you put an employee in a cubicle and you never talk to them again?

Yeah. Like, that's kind of how, and then they end up leaving. We do like a weekly call with all of our VAs. It's a one-on-one, and then we don't talk about work. It's like, what's going on in your life?

We add them to our team meeting. I mean, our VAs are just human beings. Yeah, right. We live in the Philippines or live in wherever the heck they live, and we treat them like team members like anyone else. The cost of living is a little lower where they are based on the U.S. dollar, and you don't have to pay them as much.

But otherwise, you treat them the exact same way because they have all the same issues that any of your regular team members have. I don't know if their tax rate is high. So, all right, I want to get into something tactile for everyone and use this last period. John, how much time we got? Ten.

You got ten. We had ten minutes? Okay, so let's use the last ten minutes and be a little more tactical. We're going to do 20. You guys have been so amazingly engaged in this presentation so far that I can just, the energy is flowing through me, and I'm just, it's awesome.

So, you know, so if you have particular topics, please yell them out. It's early. I know that you won't. But I want to get into some tactical stuff, some fun stuff, right? We're all here.

Marketing and sales is sexy. Culture is fun, but kind of annoying when you've done it for 35 minutes. So, yeah, I'm sure everyone's going to give us like a 3.5 on the star rating for this one. Do it. So let's get into the fun stuff.

Sales and marketing. Make sure if you do that, you do it on Ryan's show, don't I? Yeah, that's participating. You get one thing to do right now, sales and marketing. One thing, right?

Like you just, here's my, if I get to give one tactic, one tool, one strategy, one sales or marketing thing that's growing your business right now, what's that thing? I'm heavily, heavily, heavily focused on cross-selling right now. We have a massive opportunity in our agency. If I could do, and we probably, we actually suck at cross-selling, to be completely honest with you. Everybody sucks at cross-selling.

We really suck at it. Because when you're a startup, you're like, we'll write whatever. You don't want to move the auto. That's fine. You know, you don't want to leave your workers' comp where, but that's fine.

We could legitimately triple our book of business if we got really good at cross-selling. So if I could have one thing right now, it would be that. So you are just having someone mine your database for a single policy. Are you tracking when the business comes in? Like, okay, we're writing the comp, and we're notating that they have GL and auto, but we're not writing that today.

We're just writing the comp. So you know to go back. We don't do that now, but yeah, back in the day, yeah. Yeah. And we have automations set up that reach out to them, that sort of thing, certain dates.

So automations would be 30 days after signing that comp. They get an email that says, hey, Johnny, I know we wrote your comp. We're so happy to have you. This is now probably a great time, now that we're past your need, to bring over the other stuff. Can we reach out, or are you just cold calling out or calling out?

Some of everything. Some of everything. Email, text, phone call. I've got two new producers in my agency. We're having them reach out, and that's kind of their little, while they build up their referral base, they're working our cross sales, and then they're splitting that commission with the producer that originally wrote the account.

That way nobody gets, like, busy about it. Yep. And it's been pretty good for us. To get hyper-tactical, we've been doing something similar, and we've been using, like, vidyard videos to do it. So, is everyone familiar with Loom, or vidyard, or, like, video, you can put an email in, or a video in an email.

Are you familiar with that? Thank you, Kat. So, basically, what we do is we take, when we see we have a need, and we do a lot of comp as a lead, and one of our comp is 57% of our book right now. So, we lead with comp, and then do almost the exact same thing, and we circle back around. We have a team member who's dedicated to that, and that's her job.

She does that thing. Okay. So, we've been using, when we send an email through vidyard, basically what we do is break down video. So, we do, like, she'll be waving, you know, and she's got a smile on her face, so when the person opens the video, literally, they're getting, like, this image, this kind of moving image in their email of this person waving, and they click on it 80-plus percent of the time. It doesn't mean they watch the whole thing, but we can see how much they watch.

And what's interesting, and this is, I have low numbers, so this is less than 100 emails for this, but just to give you an idea, if someone watches more than 50% of the video, they most likely bring all their other stuff over. So, the video is basically, hey, you know, this is so-and-so from Rogue Risk. We're so happy to have you as a customer. You wrote your comp. You know, it looks like that process went well.

Obviously, she's going to check the notes and make sure the process didn't go well, and this person doesn't actually hate us, even though they're doing business with us, which we all have those clients, right? So, then, you know, we do a full spectrum. That way, you only have to make one call. But we have this whole script that she reads and sends it out. And we've seen that if someone opens the email and watches more than 50%, they're bringing the whole thing over like this.

There's not even a... We don't even have to have a phone call half the time. And this is where I think things like automation and process really start to save time. Normally, we'd have to have a call and give you your policy numbers and talk through it. Well, what it's going to be different about you.

We don't have to do any of that. We just, in about less than two minutes, we try to keep those videos less than two minutes. We've explained the whole situation. And Sid just said we've got 10 more minutes. So, we now don't have to have that second call.

And that person is often just emailing back. Because in the video, we're saying, here's all you need to do. Just send us copies of your current policies. We'll send you back what you need to sign. You know, most of the time, we do a BOR first.

And then we look to rewrite on renewals, kind of how we do it. And there's no extra call. And that time, one, now she doesn't have to be on the phone, which no one loves being on the phone. To, she's getting two, three of these sometimes a day. Not every day, but, you know.

And she can just do her job and work through them and get them back to people. And that, she's happier. The client's happy. They don't have to pick up the phone. They're on the job or whatever they're doing.

I mean, we assume our clients want to talk to us on the phone. I think that's a pretty heavy assumption. And it just, that's one little feature, one little tool that I think pays enormous dividends. Because it makes it so personal, even though it's a digital world. One thing that I'm a huge proponent of, Does anybody here onboard their clients?

Onboard clients. Onboard clients. So, we onboard every single client through Agency Zoom the exact same way. Every single client goes through the exact same onboarding process. It's done through automated emails and texts.

And in my opinion, at the end result of that, because we kind of know who our target client is, right? We're not writing everybody under the sun anymore. And so, we're getting the same type of folks. We're onboarding every single one of them the exact same way. The texts and emails are written.

They're very personal. Unless you're super keen on automation and things like that, you have no idea that it's automated. We actually have the producer help write the text. So, I want you to write this as if you were writing it to like a friend. We include the LOLs and those sort of things.

It's super personal. And when you onboard people the same way, not only can you get them to do things along the way, like Google reviews and download our app and, hey, what about your auto and that sort of thing, but you get similar results. You know what I'm saying? When you onboard people the same way, you kind of get people to collectively, like, you can point out, pick out problems like, we know this person's going to have this because they deviated from what most people say. You know what I mean?

That's really interesting. I never thought about that. And it's built out. We're 365 days out. Yeah.

Now, we're not sending them a text every day, but, and I think, like Mike Strom says, like 500 days out or something like that, but it allows us to get consistent, like, feedback from our clients. What happens you see if people don't work the process as you have it laid out, if they don't go through it, click on their things, or respond to their places? We know immediately this, because, like, you have to be pretty text-savvy to do business with us. Yeah. Like, our door's locked.

If somebody comes to our office, we think we're getting robbed. Yeah. Like, you know, and so, like, that's the main thing we can point out. It's, like, two days in, and they're like, I'm like, oh, this isn't going to work out. Yeah.

And we'll literally say to people, hey, look, I'm going to be honest with you, like, I don't know that we're a great fit. Here's another agency that's old and boring. You probably need to go to those. Like, if they won't download the glove box or any of the other different things that you use. Correct.

Yeah. Because that's really interesting, because now you can almost post-select them out and start to say, hey, you know, you should probably go to the State Farm agent down the street, because they would love to lose money from you. So, what happens, my wife is a State Farm agent. So, what happens, what we're doing with that onboarding, and it's majority text, we're subliminally telling people, if you need something, you can text me. And other agents will come into my office, and this is not me bragging, this is true.

Other agents will come into my office, and they'll be like, why aren't your phones ringing? Yeah. Because it's all right there. They're coming in to get a text. We have a VA that, she owns that inbox, she watches the texts that come in, and she pings people, hey, you handle this, hey, you handle this, hey, you handle this.

And it's reduced our call volume. Like, we get, on average, 25 inbound calls a day, which is extremely low, I think, for the size agency we have. And the majority of those are people calling people back from, like, sales situations. You know what I mean? Like, it's not customers calling in, they're texting us, they're going on the app, that sort of thing.

We've significantly, by doing that, made ourselves way more nimble than if I have to pay Sally $20 an hour to sit there and answer the phone. So we have two minutes left here. I just want to... Karaoke? I thought about it.

Yeah. I think the most important takeaway from what you just said is, I think some people would hear that and go, Bradley, but you're not talking to them. Where's the relationship? Where's the connection? And what I hear you saying is, based on the customers that you're targeting and the process that you're putting them through, they feel that they have the same connection to you as someone who comes in and sits down and sweats in the same room.

That connection for them, via text or email or whoever, is exactly the same. The connection is exactly the same as if you were sharing time for those customers that you're targeting that you want in your agency. Yeah. Everybody texts. We're not in a world where the majority of people don't text anymore.

I have a photo of my 65-year-old mother-in-law downloading TikTok. I was like, I've got to take a picture of this. Like, people are using older people. We had an, I think, 85-year-old guy who called us a couple weeks ago because it's a glove box. He was having issues.

He's like, oh, I love it. I use it. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, you're going to find people that don't want to do that. But that's how the majority of people nowadays want to communicate.

How many people get pissed off when they get a phone call? I see a bunch of liars, the people that are leaving their hands down because, like, everybody's annoyed when they get a phone call, right? So I can just text, like, we have a significant amount of customers that will leave us and come back, and we always ask, why did you come back? And it's almost always, I can just text you guys and you'll take care of it. The other thing that happens is when, and I'm sorry, I'll shut up.

The other thing that happens when somebody calls you and says, hey, I want to get an ID card or whatever, they expect you to stay on the phone until you send them that ID card. But if they text it, it's almost like a different, like, it's just like, hey, I'm just, he'll just handle it. You know what I mean? It's like, I have this on record. It's here.

It's on the blockchain. I'm kidding. It's here, right? They'll get to it. You know what I mean?

And so it also allows us to prioritize tasks because if 10 texts come in with 10 different things we need to do, we can kind of prioritize those in order of importance. Dude, I, selfishly, I wanted to interview you because I always learn every time I talk to you, the stuff that you do is, I think, amazing. I think you're one of the people that think about this industry in the exact right way for where we're going. It doesn't mean everyone's going to do stuff the same way. But I love how you push the boundaries.

I always learn when I talk to you and I just appreciate the time, man. This has been awesome. Likewise. This was fun. Yeah.

Thank you, guys. Thank you, guys. Go, Bills. Oh, I want to say one more thing. So I hadn't seen Sid speak in, like, probably three years.

Your dramatic pause game has drastically improved. There were some serious dramatic pause. I wonder who she learned from. What he doesn't know is I forgot what I was going to say during those moments, so. Close twice as many deals by this time next week.

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