Finding Peak w/ Ryan Hanley - Andrew Darlington on Adding Love to Your Customer Experience

Episode Date: April 14, 2022

Spartan philosophy, built in the black-ops lab of business: https://www.findingpeak.comFinding Peak podcast: https://linktr.ee/ryan_hanleyIn this episode of The Ryan Hanley Show, Ryan Hanley interviews Andrew Darlington, the president of Veritas Risk Management and Insurance Services out of Johnson City, Tennessee. While Andrew might operate out of a small town, the way he approaches building and marketing his agency is anything but small town-minded.This is an episode of the show you don’t want to miss.Episode Highlights:Andrew shares his experience of being one of the first to use Salesforce for insurance. (07:12)Andrew talks about how they create their process by writing it down and using Salesforce to automate it. (12:10)Andrew discusses how long it took and how much he has spent building out Hubspot in their system, which he believes is a phenomenal system. (17:14) Andrew shares that one of the advantages of Salesforce is that it is completely customizable. (21:26)Andrew explains that one-way Salesforce can take it to the next level is by making its system unbreakable. (26:09)Andrew talks about the reporting systems that Salesforce and HubSpot have. (28:32)Andrew shares that for a small agency that can use Donna, it is a game-changer. (31:17)Andrew shares that HubSpot and Salesforce are an investment of time, and learning that, if got right, are invaluable. (35:14)Key Quotes:"I mean, the great point is that when you have your processes, you write them down on paper, and you go through them, and that's what we're trying to do right now is get our processes better." - Andrew Darlington"The nice thing about Salesforce, as we're building out this process, is that it's completely customizable." - Andrew Darlington"Your processes will change a little bit, I think it gets even better once you understand the full scope of the tools that you have in front of you." - Andrew DarlingtonResources Mentioned:Andrew Darlington LinkedInVeritas Risk Management and InsuranceReach out to Ryan Hanley--Recommended Tools for GrowthOpusClip: #1 AI video clipping and editing tool: https://link.ryanhanley.com/opusRiverside: HD Podcast & Video Software | Free Recording & Editing: https://link.ryanhanley.com/riversideWhisperFlow: Never waste time typing on your keyboard again: https://link.ryanhanley.com/whisperflowCaptionsApp: One app for all your social media video creation: https://link.ryanhanley.com/captionsappGoHighLevel: It's time to take your business workflow to the Next Level: https://link.ryanhanley.com/gohighlevelPerspective.co: The #1 funnel builder for lead generation: https://link.ryanhanley.com/perspective--Episodes You Might Enjoy:From $2 Million Loss to World-Class Entrepreneur: https://lnk.to/delkFrom One Man Shop to $200M in Revenue: https://lnk.to/tommymelloIs Psilocybin the Gateway to Self-Mastery? https://lnk.to/80upZ9This show is part of the Unplugged Studios Network — the infrastructure layer for serious creators. 👉 Learn more at https://unpluggedstudios.fm.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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It really helps the show grow. From all of us at believe, have a Merry Christmas, everyone, and a happy holiday. Food laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. Today, we have an absolutely tremendous, episode for you, a conversation with Andrew Darlington, the founder of Veritas Insurance out of Eastern Tennessee. I've gotten to know Andrew over the years because of shared interest in tech and CRM. And as we talk about in this conversation a lot, he's been on Salesforce for almost a

decade now. And I think I originally met Andrew through Paradiso and some of the things that, some of the events that Paradiso has. And just, we met. mastermind a little bit and just tremendous amount of respect for Andrew, what he does, how he markets, how he looks at the industry, the kind of very intentional focus that he has on building his agency, growing his agency, and as he talks about it, having a love for his customer, showing love for his clients what that means and how he's delivering it. So absolutely tremendous episode. You're going to love this episode of the show. Guys, before we get into the episode itself. I want to talk real quick. You know, I've mentioned a bunch of times. I will stop mentioning

it here coming into the future, but I know that I've been hit or miss with episodes of the show coming out. And a lot of that has to do with some big announcements that we have coming out, both around Rogue and this show. And, you know, my, my, that needed that time to get some things squared away, to get pointing in the right direction again on a lot of different stuff. And exciting things. Just can't wait to share it with you. Lots of learnings that I think you guys will find valuable. And I want to be much more intentional with the content of this show and delivering value to you guys and really around growing your business, around leadership, development, sales, and particularly getting back into my roots of marketing. Marketing is an enormous part of rogue of my life,

of my belief structure in terms of business and how much time. energy and assets we should be allocating towards marketing. I feel like in our space in particular marketing is incredibly undervalued as much as we give it a lot of lip service. We don't actually put a lot of effort behind it. And I want to help you guys solve a lot of those problems. So if you're interested in learning more, I'm going to push you towards my website, ryanhandley.com. Right there, you're going to find a box. You can pop your email in. I'm going to be using the email list a lot more often to deliver resources to you guys. deliver episodes, tools, different things that I think you guys can just find value in. I want to get

back to providing more value on a consistent basis. And you've been, you know, so many of you have listened to this show for a long time. Many of you might be brand new as well. Either way, we're going to be pushing new episodes out. We're going to be pushing some exclusive content out. We're going to be delivering some resources, some value ads, stuff like that, that I think you will find valuable and interesting. And the only way to get those is going to be to get on the email list. So just head on over to Ryan Hanley.com. Go to Ryan Hanley.com and just pop your email in, hit subscribe.

You'll probably get like a confirm this email, notification email. You have to do that before I can send you. But guys, just that email list is going to be a place where we're going to deliver value. And I want you to be on that list if you're interested. Otherwise, keep listening to this show, share the show. as always I have a tremendous amount of appreciation and love for you and the fact that you listen and I hope that you continue to get value out of this effort because I love doing it and some of the conversations we have coming up over the next few weeks I think are going to be really start

to push you forward and give you a path to growing your agency through digital sales and marketing tactics which is really is really my expertise and I want to get back to that so all right I've said the same thing about seven times now. So at Ryan Hanley.com for the email list. I want to give a big shout out to our longest running and kind of premier partner sponsor, tarmica t-a-r-m-i-a-com t-a-r-m-i-a-tarmica tarmica has been changing the way that we quote bind and issue commercial particularly small commercial for almost two years two plus years now they're an enormous part of our agency enormous part of both our past present and future at rogue and just so

appreciative of tarmica their continued support and their continued success big shout out to rags so we have coming up in an episode in a couple weeks we're going to get an update on what they're doing so look for that guys i love you for listening to this show let's get on to andrew darlington so dude i'm i'm so happy to have you on the show um we're kind of so i didn't i didn't tell you this before we started but um the last like i'd say two months or so i've been very spotty with the podcast for a whole bunch of reasons many of which will come out in the next couple weeks um i've been teasing it for a while but you know we'll make an official announcement soon but um but i wanted to take this that app coming out of this break and i wanted to really start to focus on give give the show

a bit of a focus it it tends to be a little all over the place and i wanted to give it a bit of a focus on on production but specifically um we'll say digital production production in a way that we're like the how are we pretty you know we got crothers we got mick hunt we got some of these other guys that are just amazing at the kind of, I don't want to say the old school way, because there's a lot of new school shit in what they do, but like kind of the standardized I want to talk about producing business. How do we create business? Now, I will say, as a coastal American, it is my preconceived notion that where you're from, it's like, there's like 15 people there and how to hell do you grow an agency? But you have managed to

grow a very successful agency and do it in a, I mean, everybody I know, who, who knows you respects the hell out of you and the way you do business and you've been very successful. So, um, and obviously I just love our chats in general. So I wanted to bring you on and just learn more about your business and what you're doing and, and just wrap some insurance for a while. Well, all those things are nice, Ryan, but I know what really happened is you've been through the barrel. You've already scraped the bottom of it. Now you had to turn it over and you're taking the crap off the bottom that fell. That's not true. Now is the next one that fell. Oh my gosh, that's not true.

I mean, you're one of the pioneers of Salesforce using Salesforce for insurance. You know, I mean, all the things. We were one, I mean, and I don't know the exact number, but I mean, you and I talk, when Tech Canary first came out, that was kind of the first Salesforce thing. And I didn't know how early in the process we were, but they, put later on a graph of like the timeline of Salesforce of Tech Canary. I'm like, so it started like two months before we got in on it. I didn't mean, because they didn't say that when we first got in there. I was like, holy cow. So yeah, so we've been playing in

the Salesforce game. I was since 2013, I think 2012, 2012, 2013. It's been it's been a long time. I think probably almost 10 years and maybe a little bit longer not a little bit short, but we were we were right there at the very beginning. So I kind of jumped in. Hopefully no one on the team sees this because I told you so. But we jumped in at the very beginning trying to get moving with it. And it's been a challenge. It's been neat.

It's been fun. But yeah, it's been interesting with Salesforce. What was the like initial, like what were you initially looking for that maybe you weren't finding someplace else that taking on a tool like that? kind of call your attention and was worth the effort. The thing that, I mean, and you know it, and I think hereby it is sales force is a massive, massive system. And it can literally do anything that you want it to do, including wash your dishes,

which is great for around here because we have to go outside of the outhouses to get this. That's where we still live. I mean, think, I mean, the clampets are from where we are from. I mean, that's what you got there. But it allowed you to be able to take anything you want. wanted to do and pull in anything that was there. I mean, this was before Zaps came out, and you could do all those things if you just had a little bit of programming language. And I wasn't an

IT person starting out. I love computers. I mean, that's somewhat of my passion. But it allows you to, it allowed us to create anything because before then, I mean, you had old AMS and vertiform and those types of things. And it was so clunky, you couldn't integrate. You couldn't do any automation and those types of things. And I had a vision a lot, I think like you have, being able to automate, but make your automation in a real, genuine way. Because we all have 24 hours in a day.

And you want to love on your clients. You want to take care of your clients. You want to make sure there's nothing that makes you feel worse than your client. You sit down and you get the audit back on your client. And their payroll is $842,000. And you've still had $200,000 in there. And you never checked with them. and you found out they got a huge contract and then they now owe $34,000 on a workers' comp audit.

And you look like an idiot. And I was like, you know what? If we could just send an automated email, hey, Bob, listen, we got your payroll $200,000. Anything changed this last quarter that we need to make a change on that. And just checking in where it's not the spam emails, but just relevant information that you're getting to your client on a timely basis that lets them know you care, which you do. do and make sure that they have the coverage they need. And we're protecting them the way we need to because that's our promise. Our promise is to protect you.

And that's what we want to do. And that's what the thing about Salesforce is, let you do anything that you want with the system to be able to take care of your clients better than anyone else. Now, so I think if you're listening, you may or may not know this. I've talked about it a couple times. We about two months ago started the training. transition off of agency Zoom over to HubSpot. We still use NowSerts for right now. But,

you know, we've been building out HubSpot. And one of the things that I find, I know, I know, if you talk to any of the gurus in this space, right, they'll tell you, build your process first and then build the technology around your process. And I think that is, in general, as a broad stroke, the right thing to do. That being said, I have. have found that in applying our process into that system and then seeing what the system is capable of, we've actually morphed a little. Like I guess what I'm saying is like the system has has dictated a little back into our process.

Like so like we apply our process. And then there is some like gray area where the system kind of dictates it too. So like I guess my question for you is as you've gotten into Salesforce and and seen capabilities and what's possible, that kind of stuff, has, has Salesforce helped engineer processes as much as the processes have engineered Salesforce? Have you seen that and found that as you've worked through it? Yeah, I mean, a great point. I mean, is when you have your processes, you write them down on paper and you're going through that's what we're trying to do right now is get our processes better. And thanks, Mick, for

working with us, plug for you. We're working on that process because that's what we've needed to do. We've gone through and praise Lord, we've always been busy. We've always written a lot of business and business has been coming in. And we're working on that process. And it was neat because we used a tool to graph everything with Mix Help. And as we start, as we're putting that into Salesforce to automate it, we're seeing, oh, you know what, what if we did this at this point in time?

And you can make it a lot, even more user-friendly than you thought, because you're like, you know what? I mean, going through this process, we're like, okay, so let's do this when it comes up. And then you're like, oh, you know what? Because we have Salesforce, I can actually pull in every bit of data now. And so instead of just having a quick question on there, and that's what we're a yes, no, to work through the process. Now it's going to show up their policy number, the limits, the vehicles, and it pulls up everything right there. So you really are able to make the process a lot smoother for your team as they go through it. And they're not having to click 84 places.

And so that's one of the really cool things that these let you do. And so you're able to actually broaden your process and make it easier as you go through that. So, yeah, I agree 100% with you. Your process is going to change a little bit. I think it gets even better once you understand the full scope of the tools that you have in front of you. because in the past, you're like, well, if I can get a name and a phone number and the account, then that's good. And then we can go into the account and look at stuff.

With HubSpot and Salesforce, you don't have to do that. I mean, everything that pulls right in and it's there if you're willing to take the time to do it. Yeah, that was one of the reasons. So I evaluated systems for. So I this and I don't want anyone to take my, I mentioned before I was moving from. agency zoom as a knock on agency zoom. I think it's a great tool and um, cat and Mo and the whole team over there, big, big fans of them and very happy for them with the, the Verte4, uh, acquisition or whatever. Um, but I have a pretty, you know, I something I believe to be true.

I've always believed this about basically everything I've done is that I like to figure out what the rules of the game are and then let everyone else play by those rules and come up with my own. And what I mean by that is like, if every. If 7,000 agents or whatever it is are using agency Zoom, then there are 7,000 agencies and I know exactly how they're capable of playing. I know what they can do. I know what the limitations are. I know the things and they can only do as much as everyone else who's using that tool, right? You're as much as that's a great tool and you can do a lot with it. And I'm not saying you can't be successful without it. That's completely possible. Very possible. More than possible.

But I look at that and I say, okay, everybody's hampered by the limitations that come with Epic, the limitations that come with AMS360, great tools. But you have a box that you cannot break out of. You are only capable of doing what that box allows you to do. And when I was evaluating new systems, I was looking at Salesforce and then I was looking at HubSpot, a couple of others. Zoho is interesting to me. but I just said, I want to go someplace where the same rules that apply to all my competition

do not apply to me, that I can do what, for the most part, whatever I want, whatever experience I can dream up in my brain, I can make this thing do it. And I know the vast majority of the people in my space can't do these things or they have to do it the same way as everyone else, right? like, and that to me was a huge driver of why I started searching. And then once I started searching things like when you look at a contact record in HubSpot, everything is at your fingertips. Everything. There's no triple clicks down into subfolder categories to get to a thing.

Everything. Every deal, every policy, every company associated with that contact, all the records, every phone call, every email, every text message, every attached file, every bit of the activity is right here in the middle. So it's like when my people log in and look at a contact record, they're not searching for what happened. The entire story is right in front of them. And I was like,

this feature alone sets my ability to deliver a customer experience apart because they're not clicking through. There's no hold on. Let me find that. It's all right in front of them. And it's like little things like that that have changed, actually changed process for us because now they'll, So it's things that were possible that weren't possible before.

And yeah, and HubSpot's phenomenal. I mean, back in the day when Tech Caneer is making a change, I was looking. I mean, I know some of the folks that you've mentioned on here have spent countless hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars building out HubSpot. And it's a phenomenal system. And you can build out with it.

And I think, I mean, I think you actually put words to what I've always thought, when I saw MS and I saw applied and all the other ones, I saw what they could do and what they couldn't do. And then you'd hear some of the things going of people to say different things and wish we could do, wish we could do that. And I'm sitting there going, well, I can do that. Well, I can do that and I can do it. And so it's not for the faint of heart. No. And you know that as well as doing it.

It's time consuming. You either need to pay someone or do it yourself. But the ability to do that is off the charts. I mean, everybody has to lock down their system because if they open it up, then everybody's going to steal what they got. And that's kind of why those other ones have locked it up. But with HubSpot and with Salesforce, you have that ability to make it huge and bring everything in there into one place. And it does make things involved because if you say, well, I wanted to do this. well, you tweak a couple of things and it does.

Yeah. It's like you said, it makes it really, really cool to be able to make those changes in whatever your mind thinks up. And I'm sure you could come up with some crazy stuff. Whatever it comes up, you can make it do it. And in reality, it's not that difficult. I mean, have you been building years out yourself? You've been hired someone to do it.

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I love you for listening to this show and I hope you enjoy it listening as much as I do creating the show for you. All right. I'm out of here. Peace. Let's get back to the episode. I, yeah, I've been building it myself. I tend to be the kind of my way is like if I can figure out 70% of how to do it myself,

then I feel comfortable hiring someone for that last 30, 20, 10%, whatever it is that maybe is a little be on me because now I understand the general functionality. So like I'm in that phase where I'm just reading as much as I can and trying stuff because I want to know. And then when we get to the finely tuned or some of the more like 201 or 301 level stuff, I'll probably go get someone to make sure it's done right. But I want to understand the basics because otherwise I feel like that's how you kind of get jobbed with some of these things is like you go in. You don't know anything about the system and you start paying people tens of thousands of dollars to build it for you. And, you know, I think it's really easy for agencies to get taken advantage of when they do it

that way. Now, look, you, me, we're nerds on this stuff, right? Like, you, we've talked about it. Like, you like diving in and learning all the crazy stuff about Salesforce, just like I do. But I think that having someone in your agency that you can trust, have a working knowledge of what should be possible, I think that should be a baseline for this kind of system. Again, you're on Epic AMS 360. You don't need that, right? They've been the same systems for 20 years. Like, you don't need to have someone be an epic master or a MS master.

It's nice, but there's just not that much manipulation with when you take that step outside of those ecosystems, you really need someone who can, who, who knows the basics because otherwise, you know, you're not really sure what's even possible. It's almost like you're limiting yourself. And, you know, that's a big ask. Like you said, it's not for the faint of heart. You can screw things up. You can, there's a lot of things you can do.

But I do think that if it's a commitment, if this isn't just something you're chasing a shiny object because you heard Carruthers talk about it. Right. Carrothers can talk about HubSpot and you're like, by the time he gets done, you're like credit card is out of your pockets. It's like, where do I swipe, right? Like, you know, if you're in this because you believe it's what's best for agency and you are willing to go down this adventure, then I think the juice ends up being worth

to squeeze. Well, and one of the nice things, and I haven't spent much time with HubSpot, but the nice thing about Salesforce is we're building out this process is it's completely customizable. So we have a process. And there's already a couple things that. I'm putting in my, the kind of notes. It's like, okay, so I need to go into here, and I can go back into it at any point

and make a tweak inside of it, and it's not difficult to do. And that's one of the cool things. I'm not reinventing the wheel each time. I can add incremental steps onto the system that will pull things in. Yeah, we just lost you. The HUBSpot as well is that you can do those incremental things and make it work and you're good. Yeah, you know, I'll give you a little example. So we have an internal customer life cycle that we've developed. It's not wholly unique, a couple small

tweaks, but it's something that we could have never implemented in really any other system. So basically, we have, you start as a subscriber. That means that we know who you are, but you have shown zero interest. Lead is someone who has shown interest. Suspect is someone who has shown interest and fits are high level qualifications of a market we're interested in and have a market for. Prospect means they're actively searching for a quote. So we're working with them. Customer is customer is customer. Evangelist is essentially a VIP.

There's a few triggers. It's not just like VIP status. You know, you send us referrals or whatever. There's something there. And then lost is lost. And at any given time, you can bounce out of there and go all the way back to subscriber if you're not a good fit. Okay. So that's our customer lifecycle.

And we, every contact in our system needs to have a customer life cycle. Well, what we're able to do is both one, create that customer life cycle. So create those things, make that a field that we can track. I can then automate where they, based on where they are in a pipeline, what stage of that life cycle they are. and then anytime someone can manually change them. And then I can use campaigns to attach to those life cycles based on industry, based on where they are,

based on if they've worked the process or if they've never worked the process. And ultimately, what I can do is then build reports. And this is the part that I find the most interesting about these tools like Salesforce and HubSpot is I then have a very specific report that tracks where all those people are in that funnel at any given time. so I know where are they entering, where are they falling out, who's gone all the way through, where, you know, what's happening. And, and this is the insights that you get out of it is we were having an issue with lead to suspect. Now, and the reason for that is we get a very

broad spectrum of leads. So broad spectrum in terms of industry from a wide range of geographic areas. So knowing if we had a market. So suspect means we have a market that will fit that client or that prospect, all of a sudden I saw, I saw the lead to suspect. The leads were just stacking up and they weren't becoming suspects. And I went to my team and I was like, what's happening? And they're like, it's taking us forever to figure out if we actually have a market for this particular thing because, you know, a liquor store in Tennessee, great, liquor store

in California, maybe not so great, right? Completely different market. It might be E&S or whatever. I'm just making that up. But so that then had us meet. I had to go back into the woodshed, figure out what the hell was happening, build a new tool.

And now we have a form that we call our new business questionnaire. And any time a lead comes in, we then call out with one of our unlicensed people. And they walk through this new business questionnaire. And then that's what validates lead to suspect. So now the producer is getting more information, and a validated suspect when they get it. So the producers not messing around with unqualified leads.

And we're able to kind of triage stuff. So it's like those are the kind of things that like that system allowed us to not only build the process, but see where the errors were, see where the roadblocks were, and then build new solutions and implement them on our own terms. And, you know, that's the kind of stuff that I think long term starts to set an agency apart. from from others and you can't do that with a lot of the systems and I mean for I mean I really think I mean looking back for 90 90% of the agencies out there your agency is there as a better agency those types of things those are phenomenal and they do a a killer job I mean just I mean it's amazing what

those things will do but if you want to hit kind of the next level on a lot of that stuff have to make it so it can't be broken. We've broken Salesforce a lot. I'll get you that. I mean, one day it's working. The next day, it's like, what's going on? And, oh, the trigger that you made, made everything else air out. And so you've got issues there. So, and I get it. But if you, I really think, like you said, the process that you have with triaging those leads and suspects and that through, you're not going to get that anywhere else than what you build. And so, I mean, I think you're exactly right. Hit the nail on head.

Salesforce allows you to do those same things as well. But it's not for the faint of heart. I mean, my Salesforce bill is not cheap. And I know your HubSpot bill is not cheap. When you layer everything on there. It's essentially an employee for us. I think about, I think about it. Carruthers has talked about this.

Chris Green has talked about this. Everybody I know, Mick, that's on HubSpot. I know Salesforce is the same way. You have to look at it like you're hiring. an employee when you take on that. You know, I think about what like you said, Nick and Will are doing and that whole team over at better agency. I know from the recording of this, they, I've just seen the pictures online, but it looks like their conference. They had better conference went off. phenomenally. I'm very happy for them. Like that tool is absolutely perfect for 90 plus percent of the

industry. Absolutely perfect. There is there's no reason to think you need more or to chase any shiny objects. I just, that being said, if, if you have the desire, the, the, the, the, the, that whatever that is where like, when you do something stupid, you don't beat yourself up about it, you just, like, fix it and move on, whatever that characteristic is, like, if you have that and you want to go to the next level, I think there is something very powerful in this ability to, to, have a much bigger box, a much bigger sandbox to play in. And I want to go back to what you said, the reporting that HubSpot offers and the sales force offers, if there is a field in the system, you can report on it. Yeah.

And you can pull anything in. I mean, so when we're putting things in, we can see where all our errors are coming from now. So we've got some, we've got a dashboard that's just errors. Every Monday it pops up and we can see any air. If someone put in a new account. account and didn't put a referral source in there, it airs it. We have that on report. If they forgot to put in the commission amount, that erred out if they did, uh, did new business instead of rewrite, it eres out. So we can keep up with all those things that come through to protect

to make sure what we've got going on is, is right. And we're not losing data because that's the other thing that you get into. Unless you have good solid data, it's worth, us because it's it's junk in, junk out or diamonds in, diamonds out. And if you're keeping those good days. So, yeah, I mean, it's, when folks in the office, like, hey, can we do report on this? The answer is, yeah, we can do report on that is what do you want. And it is cool what you can do and what you can break out. And then the automation that you can do with that.

I mean, you can segment everyone however you want to and then send whatever you need to to to those people based on anything. I mean, the last time, I mean, if you haven't talked to someone in three months, it automatically sends them a text, say, hey, I just want to check in with you. So, yeah, it's, you and I are nerds, and we enjoy those types of things,

but it lets you think outside the box. Yeah. I want to be respectful of your time and we start a little late so hopefully I can hold you over for like five more minutes. I wanted to ask you, like so obviously being someone who who has a feel who's used a lot of new technology, thinks about this, who likes computers and likes computers being part of our business. What is there one, is there anything?

And if so, what? Like coming down the pipe or that's happening now, anything new that's happening from a technological or digital space that like gets you a little excited that you're like, man, I can't wait for this to hit or I'm watching this project or I'm watching this company. And I think it could be a real game changer. Is there anything like that for you? You went mute on me again. And you're familiar with that as well.

I think that's a game changer. I mean, say that one more time. You unmute on me there. Sorry. It's okay. Donna. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the game changer right there.

I mean, there's going to be more later on. But the ability for an agency like me and you to be able to take and for those of you you've had the folks from Donna on on here. Go back and listen to that podcast that Ryan did. I mean, the stuff that they do is amazing. And just for a small agency

to be able to use that is a game changer. And I mean, I'll say, I mean, I know HubSpot has their own AI built in. Sports has their own AI built in. And those, that's the thing is to be able to have the power of a massive AI system

inside of a small agency where you can take your phone calls, run them through AI, take all of your emails and text and run it through AI to be able to understand it. Are these people leaving? Are they coming? That I think is the game change because you're able to compete with anybody at that point in time because you're getting that data being able to come in. I think that's, I'm excited about being able to have that and just, I mean, can you imagine, Ryan, they're taking the voice inflection in a phone call and telling you how it works.

I mean, if you pull in some of the stuff inside Salesforce, it shows you during the phone call, their voice inflection, and it can highlight if they're happy or mad during the phone call, and you can see that. I mean, that's next level stuff. And that way, I mean, you can even drill it down to if they like one CSR. better than the other and shift them to the CSR they like better. I mean, talk about, and what I always come back to is loving on your clients. We want to do what our clients want and we want to take care of them. They trust us, Luke. And if we can do things like that that are going to help out our client and make them

feel more comfortable with us and make them and have a better experience, that's what we want. Yeah. And I think that's what's blowing the way right now is, or the donnas of the world and truly how we can have that AI experience. I agree with you. I think the thing for me is, and I guess this is what I hope people take away from this, is we have to, I think whatever system we use, whether it's an epic AMS360, it's an agency Zoom better agency, or you're going even further to a Salesforce HubSpot or whatever.

To me, it's not just having the system, which is cool. it's or really just for the reports it's are we as a company as an agency looking at the data and the way that it's coming in and actually thinking about how we can use that to make improvements in our experience and what we do that to me is shocking people will say Ryan why do you need this why do you need that it's like because I would not have figured out that I needed a new business questionnaire between my lead and suspect life cycles, if I wasn't going back into the data and looking and going, why is that number so big and that number is so small? Well, you know, this is happening. Okay, let's figure out how to solve that problem. Like, if the system can't

get you the data, that's problem number one. If you, but if you're not actually taking what you get and spending some time with it, and that's what's so cool about Donna is it helps you automate that process of finding the insight so you can make the tweaks. That's where the magic happens, in my opinion. That's why the investment in these systems is worthwhile. And you can get a lot of this from a better agency, agency, Zoom. So again, I have, it's, I think the takeaway should not be what system you should be in from this, but rather can you, can you use what you get out of your system to actually make changes and improvements in your process to, as you say, Andrew, love on your customer. I absolutely love that. Well, and that's what you, that, I mean, you can't,

do, but I've done a lot, and that's not ever get it done. And that's what I'm guilty of. Oh, we can get this, we can get this, but never truly get it done. If you're in that cycle, use one of the ones that's pre-built that's nice and get it done. Yeah. Using half of something is better than all of nothing. Yes. And so use that and use it and do it to love your clients better. and if you'll do that, you're going to be successful. Do know going in. HubSpot, Salesforce, it's an investment of time. It's an investment of learning.

And you're going to pull out your hair and your team's going to be irritated with you. But if you can get it done right, like you said, Ron, that data that you've got is invaluable. And you've been able to turn that data into gold. And that's what allows you to do. It's not for the faint of heart. And it's not for the folks that aren't going to put money down for it and put time to make it work. If you want that and you're willing to make it work, you can have anything that your heart's desires when it comes to those two systems. But if you want something that's a

plug and playing, ready to go, those other ones are off the charts. Amazing. Yeah, agreed. Dude, I want to be respectful of your time. I appreciate you so much. Thanks for coming on the show. You were not a barrel flipped over, scraping the bottom, having it fall out. We could have talked for another hour, but we did too much bullshit. And when we should have been podcasting that's the beginning of our block of time, but that's that's fine. That's, that's you and me time, which I love to. So thank you. I appreciate you. If someone just wants to check out your agency, you're on LinkedIn, where, where can they get at you? Where can they just check out what you're doing? VeritasRM.com, VeritasR.M.com, VeritasR.M.com, LinkedIn, and I think it's LinkedIn,

A.Darlington. And, yeah, if you put Andrew Darlington on there, it's pretty easy to find me. I am a first generation American. So there's not a lot. of Darlington's that I'm related to in the United States and there's not a lot of Andrew Darlington's around here so pretty easy to find. All right buddy hey appreciate you as always be good we're out here peace. Yeah. Close twice as many deals by this time next week sound impossible it's not with the one call closed system you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals in one call this is the exact method we use to close 1200 clients under three years during the pandemic

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