Finding Peak w/ Ryan Hanley - Aubie Knight on the Impact of COVID-19 on Independent Agents and What to Do Next

Episode Date: September 2, 2020

Spartan philosophy, built in the black-ops lab of business: https://www.findingpeak.comFinding Peak podcast: https://linktr.ee/ryan_hanleyAubie Knight, president and CEO of the Independent Insurance Agents of North Carolina (IIANC) joins the podcast to breakdown a new study his organization recently published based survey results from independent agents and impact of COVID-19 on their business. Get more: https://ryanhanley.com/--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

Happy holidays. Want to give your host a gift? Consider subscribing, rating, and reviewing the show this holiday season. 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. My name is Ryan Hanley. I am your host, and today we have an absolutely tremendous guest, someone who I have. have known for quite a while now and had just over the years fantastic conversations. I don't know how else to describe it. Just Auburnite is so is a thoughtful guy. He thinks about our business. He comes at it from a very pragmatic point of view. And his position is president and CEO of the independent insurance agents of North Carolina puts him in a unique spot to understand both the political dynamics of our industry as well as the boots on the ground, how to get things

done. He's got some tremendous agents in his association in North Carolina, so he's always talking to some of the best and brightest in our space. And the way he thinks about running his association is just different. And every chance I get to spend some time with Aubie is time that I consider well spent. And I think you're going to love this interview. So the reason I had Aubie on was because North Carolina did a survey or a study, I guess, you could say, and it basically got feedback from their member agencies about the impact that COVID-19 had had on their businesses. And there's some really interesting stuff in here. And that's what we talk about.

We talk about how has COVID impacted independent insurance agencies based on this study that North Carolina did and what we can be doing as independent agency owners, producers, people in the space. What can we be doing moving forward to put our businesses in a position to succeed? you're going to love this episode. Before we get there, I want to give a big shout out to our sponsor for today. That is advisor evolved. Advisor evolved.com. I get asked quite a bit, you know, hey, I'm thinking about I need a new website or who should

I use or what's the best website vendor out there. And it's hands down. It's advisory evolved. And I don't just say that because they're a sponsor of the show. has been, Chris has built probably six websites for me. He's just, he's my go-to. There's no one better. The stuff that Chris Landgill and his team at Advisory Evolve is doing,

it's just your website is so much more than just a billboard on the internet. You get quote vids, you get conversion cards, you get the comparison tool where you can build out these comparison posts. You get all kinds of landing pages that are pre-built for you. I mean, there's just so much there. And his local traffic marketing add-on that you can use as well gets your name out in front of customers like you wouldn't imagine. So I highly recommend advisory involved. Actually, I don't just recommend it.

There is no other option than advisory evolved if you're looking for a website. There's just no other option. Just stop wasting brain cycles on this decision. Go to advisory evolved, sign up, get your badass website, and move on. That's it. All right, let's get to Aubie. Probably the biggest account of my career that I'm working on right now. It's a retail furniture store.

Hartford and Chubb are looking at it, which is cool. And, oh, my God, the number of follow-up questions is, like, killing me. And, like, some of these questions, you know, some of this is just why I just think. I mean, I get it. I get it. And I'm not trying to knock an industry that has done so well for so long and knows what it's doing. I'm not knocking that. But like, who is the op? If I give them all the vehicles and all the drivers, the fact that a follow-up question is we don't have a driver specifically attached to vehicle seven. Who is the, and I'm like, guys, you have all the MVR records for all the drivers. You have all the A-plus records for all the vehicles. Does it really matter who is on vehicle seven of a 20 driver 17 vehicle fleet? Do we, is that really worth spending time on? Like, is that the question that we need to know? Well, our system means that's how I have to enter it in, Ryan.

So I've got to have somebody attached. And you're like, it's a fleet. It's a freaking fleet. I know. I'm like, I may need the cargo van one day. I may need the sedan one day. I may need the bigger truck one day. I mean, it just.

yeah i mean look he checks off all the boxes they're all experienced drivers with three or more experience and all of them have to maintain at least 100 300 on their personal auto they all have good for the most part mvr's like a couple little nicks and bumps but nothing major like this is a good solid fleet it's a good solid driver list why are we spending time on who drives vehicle seven i just it's like one of those things where i'm like i i just look at this and i say to myself there was a time when I am sure that based on how long things took in general, that everybody was okay going, oh, yeah, I got to figure that out. I'm going to figure that out and make a call.

I don't know how in the next wave of agents who I think have dispositions of varying degrees similar to my own, how this question continues to be something that is even tolerated. Like just. Oh, and forget just from the agent's perspective, I'm from the consumer's perspective. Yeah, exactly. Right. I mean, from the consumer's perspective, when, you know, when the disruptor comes along that doesn't require that that degree of information, then I mean, it turns everything on its head. I mean, I'm old enough to remember, Ryan, yeah, I got in the business in the mid-90s. Well, I actually got in the business on the retail side in the early 90s, but then transitioned over to the association in the mid-90s. And, you know, the guys, the old guys would come in and, I mean, they used to hand-deliver applications, you know. I mean, you've probably heard those stories, right? I mean, the association office was located, you know, in a convenient part of Atlanta. And the guys, you know, those guys would drive down and go and deliver applications to the various carriers and take those guys to launch.

Then swing by the association office just to see what was up in chat. Yeah. You know, and you're like, I don't know. That's just a. I'm waiting, man. I, you know, and then I look at Tarmaca and I'm like, I don't think people realize what Raghav has going. on. Like I don't think people really understand what an API driven comparative Raider means for our industry. I just don't think people get it. I think they hear it and

they're like, oh, we've heard some of those terms before. And I think there's some of that. But like, I mean, the stuff that he's doing is game changing stuff. I mean, the ability, I mean, so I'm not giving away any trade secrets. Better agency just announced a partnership and integration with Tarmica. So, and I actually don't have any intrinsic knowledge into what this is going to be, but I can tell you what I'm pretty sure it's going to be. Is you have an account, a prospect comes into better agency through a form fill on your website, immediately sent to Tarmica and returned with a rate, a comparative rate,

for both personal and if it's a commercial account, commercial lines for the classes that that's capable of right inside a better agency that you then can package up and mail to the person. We're talking about that whole process taking minutes, minutes. This is what's coming because when you drive something via API, and I mean, I know you know this, but I feel like, I feel like so many people hear these terms and because we've heard it for so long in it not really being true.

Like someone would say, I'm using an API, but really it wasn't an API or it was a version one or a version one or a version 2 API, like these new version 3 APIs are full, full application integration into another application. That's what we're talking about is you have one thing and all the utility of another thing is sucked into it as if it, as if it was there. And that's game changing stuff. I mean, that's stuff that just, you know, when it talks, it ties back in.

to the whole thing that Seth is doing with neon as well, right? I mean, like where you could actually go in and look at, look at a client screen and be real time looking to see if the payment's been made. It's a policy enforced. Is the bill going out? Where's the, you know, I mean, that, that sort of thing. Yeah. The only, you know, the only thing that, you know,

I've got my fingers crossed forward with Tarmaca is, you know, it's all going to be by carry adoption. Right. I mean, the carriers that are in your agency have to have to allow Tarmaca to do that in order for that to end up being, you know, the benefit for you. Here's what's going to happen because I'll tell you what's going to happen in my agency is the first carriers to get onto Tarmica. No one's getting to business because if, I mean, rumor on the street is two questions for an

auto quote, right? So when you, when people look at some of these new. insure text and they go and you only need like a name and address or a name address birthday and they're like how can they how can they rate them all the data all the data that you're hey what's your VIN number I just had a guy text me his freaking VIN number a picture of his VIN number from his car right like this information is available online you just have to have access to the databases so you know when I so so again it goes back to the idea of how they're building this thing out. And, and again, I don't want this to be a commercial for them.

I just, I feel like, oh, dude, I'm all in. I mean, we, we, we, we, we, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're in the, we're in the, we're in the, we're in the, we're in the, we're in the, we're in the, I get it. I, I just, I, it just, I, it's, I just to me is like, I look at it. I'm like, this is one of the few insurance technology solutions that is, that it, that feels feasible that is actually getting real adoption. I mean, I've written, I've probably written, I've written, I've, I've probably written, somewhere between a half dozen and a dozen small commercial accounts through them now. I did a podcast the other day. I wrote, I had a guy call me 21 minutes later, booked with Liberty Mutual, done. He has the policy. 21 minutes from phone call to booked policy. Well, I had a buddy, one of my best friends and neighbors, his daughter is getting ready to start her sophomore year at Georgia.

So she moved out of the dorm a couple weeks ago and moved into her first time college apartment. And he sent me, I'd love to show you the screenshot. He sent me because, you know, he's an insurance consumer. And this guy, he's an awesome guy, small business owner. He's a great client, right, for any agency. But he's always belly aching about the customer experience to me. You know, oh, it sucks. My agent doesn't do anything to earn my business and, you know, da-da-da.

So he sent me a screenshot. a couple weeks ago, and he had purchased a renter's policy for his daughter through lemonade. Yeah. You know, and it's like, I don't know anything about this, but all insurance should be this easy, and, you know, this is what I'm talking about. Have you ever heard of these guys? You know, that sort of thing. So that resulted in a conversation.

But then I also had to Raz, and I was like, well, why did you have to go you to a separate renter's policy? I mean, I get it. I mean, you can, but you could have also just had your, so then he ended up being mad that he had spent, you know, $89 when he could have just had the college department. listed, you know, as an additional residence and satisfied the landlord. So it's funny stuff. Yeah.

I don't know if you heard the, if you listen to the episode that I do with Sheffey Ben Huda, I had her on. And we were talking about lemonade. And I just, you know, I think the deeper I get into, it's been so interesting, man. I mean, I know you, we've known each other for a while now and going from agent to doing all the association stuff to then going to Bold Penguin, now back to owning an agent. Like to see that spectrum and to come back sitting here,

there's part of me that's like, there's part of me, I was worried. Like there's a lot of people that asked me, why the hell are you starting an agency? Like everything you've done, everyone just assumed I would go to an insure tech or something, which, and I have no beef with insured techs at all, obviously. but I just the more I get into it the more I believe in the human like I believe in the human I just think one the humans need better tools and I that's why I speak the the neons the better agencies the the Chris Landel advisory evolves the tarmacca it's why I talk about these companies all the time and there are others but like I feel like every step those companies make moving forward.

Actually, you know who said it to me the other day? Zach Mefford from Coverage Direct up in Iowa. He said, Hanley goes, oh, dude, awesome. Him and his partner, Ryan Salve, they run this tremendous agency up in Iowa. Tremendous, absolutely. They're rock stars. They're both like, I think they're mid to late 30s, maybe mid 30s. They just, they're awesome dudes.

Meon pilots. They, he goes, he said Hanley. He goes, it feels to me like for the first time. were not being bullshitted. Like the technology actually is as good as advertised. Like the things that are coming out are as good as advertised. Then it was cool hearing it from him because he's a discerning guy. He's not a smoke, you know, he's not just going to blow smoke, you know,

because I'm kind of a hype man. So I talk shit and people are like, oh, you know, this is, this is Ryan being crazy again. But with this dude, he doesn't say that kind of stuff unless he means it. And I believe him, you know, I think it's really exciting. I think we've all the stuff that went on in 2016, 2017, I feel like it's bearing fruit today. And it's exciting. I don't know if you see that from where you are. Well, I mean, and I'm so encouraged to hear even you make a real life story of saying, hey, you know, a guy called and 20 minutes later, he's got a policy, right?

We've gone through the whole process because that's evidence, right? I mean, that's proof that this type of technology is working so that the human of the human, the human, the human, and the relationship can start to deliver on an experience. That's far more like the lemonade experience than the, hey, by the way, of the 20 drivers, who should I assign to vehicle number seven? You know, Jesus Christ, are we really, you know, it's. I know, it's, it's, you know what, so what's funny for all you haters out there that are listening, that listen to the show religiously, that VIN number that I told you I got snapped

the picture of, that's the guy. So, because the guy's policy that I wrote in 21 minutes was like a $600 box. right so all the haters are like yeah of course you're writing six hundred dollar bobs in 20 minutes well I'm cross selling his auto in his renter MFers so I'm doing exactly what I told you I was gonna do and now it's a really nice account because he's left me a Google review I'm gonna write his personal stuff and I got his business policy so that's what that and I see I'm obviously I'm a little fired up it's Friday afternoon and I'm really this this podcast ends my professional

obligations for the day. So the next thing is a nice crispy crack of an afternoon Friday beer for Ryan. So my point in saying all this is I think, you know, I think that we are in, for the agents whose heads are in the right place. I mean, you got a bunch of them in your state, man, a bunch of people doing really fun stuff. And, you know, I think for those agents who are partnered with the right technology partners, man, it feels to me like that. independent agent renaissance that we talk so much about 2015, 2016, 2017, it feels like we're in the early stages of it today. Like it's really starting to happen. Yeah, it never happens as fast as you think it's going to or at the exact moment that you think it to, but it's happening.

And I think even maybe to segue into one of the things we want to talk about today is the acceleration that COVID has caused in terms of just adaptation, you know, adopting new technologies and trying to provide a different type of customer experience, not because you necessarily wanted to, but because now you've been forced to. So, I mean, I think that's, I think that's huge. Yeah, and that is really, you know, I mean, obviously you and I could shoot the shit about a lot of different things. But at I-A-N-C, you guys did this. I keep showing pictures like I do video.

I'm like showing, I'm showing all these stuff. on the screen that he doesn't need to see like I even produced the video so you can tell where my head is at today but um you guys did this COVID-19 impact survey on your members and I wanted to have you on because I feel like um well I was kind of hoping when we got to the day when we'd actually talk COVID might be going away it doesn't feel that way at least not where I am because the emperor of my state has decided did it not be so but um I'm super interested in the results because I think, I think some of the findings that you have in here speak to a lot of the stuff that we've talked about so far.

So I guess my first question to you is, like, what was, what was the first thing that jumped out at you about this survey? Like when you, you know, and there's a couple different things that I want to dive into, but like for you personally, knowing your agents, spending time, you know, being so connected with others, executive directors around the, around the country, like, what, what caught you? What grabbed you? What said, you're like, whoa, I didn't expect to see that. If there was anything. Yeah, well, you know, there were two, there were two main things. One had to do with the, with the work from home orders. And that the fact that 43% of our respondents to the survey basically responded that they stayed open, their offices stayed open with most or all of their employees reporting to the office every day.

That on the surface was initially shocking to me. And then the other thing that I was sort of surprised by, but then also very encouraged by, was just the level of optimism. And there hasn't been a tremendous shift in how agencies are thinking about the future. You know, not, they're very small percentage of agencies are significantly less optimistic, you know,

the future. Most are, you know, slightly less optimistic, about the same or slightly more. But not very many agencies are thinking this is going to have long-term and significant implications to, you know, to their revenue and to their business. So those were the two big takeaways for me. Do you think, do you think that that is because they feel their businesses rock solid, they have a good plan? Do you think any part of that is just maybe, maybe, having some blinders on and not really fully taking in what's coming or or you know what do you think that is from yeah you know there's always that ripple effect in insurance agency revenues I mean we've we've got a certain degree of insulation from economic downturn

and from recession and it normally takes a while for those things to to impact premiums at the retail level and then impacting agency revenues so I think I think I think by and large, member agencies are thinking this thing will be over before that ripple effect really hits my agency with any significance. Now, we did have, you know, 8% of the respondents are forecasting their agencies are going to be down, their revenues are going to be down significantly this year. So we looked at those that did a little bit of a deeper dive into those agencies, and that's largely being driven by agencies that are just kind of over-exposed in a couple of industries that that are being hit hard.

Yeah. If you're if you're an agency or even if you have a producer or two within your agency that are focused on hospitality and restaurants, then obviously you're kind of taking it on the chin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or if you were going to launch your startup agency in the fitness industry, that was also not a good play. So one of the stats that immediately jumped out to me was about,

the question was, how did your agency workforce respond to the state and local stay at home orders? And the result was 75% of respondents with revenue over 5 million fully converted staff to remote, while only 11% of the small agencies 200,000 or below. And I thought, you know, I don't know what I would have thought, but that was one of the largest discrepancies in terms of how big of a percentage difference it was. And I just, it just, that stood out to me. I was like, wow, that is a very substantial difference in terms of philosophy. Yeah, completely. And one of the things that I've kind of found out anecdotally, just by talking with some of the smaller agencies, is even though they were showing up at the office

every day, along with their employees, they were still closing the office to outsiders. Right. So they were not allowing, you know, marketing rep visits. They were not even seeing customers in the office. And a lot of those were family-owned agencies. Yeah. You know, so it was, it was almost like their agency was their, you know, was their social distancing bubble. Right.

They just, they all, they all, you know, got up at home, had breakfast together, got in the car, rode to the office and then worked from the office together. And it was just getting more or less the same, you know, the same group of people. Yeah. No, and that makes less sense. That's actually what my wife's family agency did was they kind of, the way their offices spread out, they kind of are socially distanced to be with. And they did let anyone who really had a real issue work from home.

And they did do that. But actually, there was only three. I think they have 12 people. And I think only about three of them stayed home full time. The rest, you know, basically came to the office and stayed away from each other and wore masks. And they did do the thing where they just put a sign that said, hey, call us, we'll come out. Don't come in. We're not doing that anymore. Now you can come in if you have a mask on, but, you know, during the early days, they just said stay out. And I thought that,

I thought that was interesting. It is funny to think they all wake up together. They all get in the same car. They all drive the same office. Yeah. Yeah. I had, I had lunch with Josh Lipstone yesterday. And, you know, they're not that small of an agency. And they don't, it's not like they're all under the same roof, but Josh was like, you know, they went into the office and it's his dad and his sister and the one employee and they just kind of keep their, keep their space in the office. Yeah. Killing Commercial member, by the way, represent killing commercial. Josh Lipsone. You know, I was talking to, I was talking to my, so my brother-in-law owns a renter's insurance agency nationally. Yeah, I remember that. New York City, right? But based out of New York.

Well, he lives up here now. He started in New York. He since moved up. But he writes apartment complexes all over. Not the building for those. He doesn't write the buildings themselves. He actually manages the renters insurance programs inside the building to keep the loss ratio down for the agents and carriers that write the structure themselves, which is an interesting. It's an interesting business.

But we were talking about this is just kind of speaks to the larger business. businesses going remote, but we're talking about he wants all his people in house. He's got about 20 employees. And my wife and her and her family, they want their people to work from the office. And they're like, you know, I just can't imagine a world where we're not operating in the same space. Like we feel less efficient. And I was like, yeah, Amazon does not feel that way. Like, if we're going to express does not feel that way. Like those businesses are never coming back. Not for a long. I shouldn't say never, but no, Amazon's the opposite. Ryan, there was actually an article yesterday. It was two days ago in the Wall Street Journal and then yesterday it kind of hit

the other other media. They just purchased huge amounts of corporate retail space. Like in Manhattan, they bought the big building from WeWork and it completely made me rethink, you know, what is the future of the office? And it seems like Amazon's going to the Zag strategy. I mean, everybody else. He's probably already got the vaccine because he's part of the Illuminati. So he's already got the vaccine. He's been stamping them for months. They're all, They're all vaccinated. That's the thing. The Illuminati already have the vaccine, man. What the future work is, it's so hard.

I mean, we've, we've have a 17,000 square foot office booth in the association, and, you know, a significant portion of that has been always dedicated to live in-house training and then in an office space for staff. And now, you know, I go into the office and either we've got, out way too much stuff or I can now where where I thought I was maxed out in terms of the number of employees I could house I could I could grow by another 30% and through office sharing and remote work and others I've got I've got enough floor space to last forever now you know I really I think what you just described this kind of hybrid model is is really where a lot of people

are going because I do think sharing the same space at times is very important but you know I think back to like my agency nation days when we had a distributed workforce. Like we had people in Wisconsin, we, or Milwaukee, people in Minneapolis. And then the rest of my team was kind of spread out through the Midwest and East Coast. And for the most part, we worked remote. And but then four or five times a year, we would all get together and spend three to four days. And that time was very, very important. If we skipped one of those because something was going on, you can see it in our work product. So I think it's important for us to share space

at the same time. I do think people are more comfortable in the in between getting work done from home. And I also think it depends on your work from home culture. Did you get any feedback from the survey or from any of the respondents on the side or whatever in addition, in additional comments around just in general, their experience building a remote culture?

Because I think that's the heart, That is, the technology is solvable. The culture is really tough. Yeah, no, 100%. I mean, that's something that I've spent personally a lot of time thinking about. And I've talked to a lot of my colleagues as well as agency owners. And that is how do you maintain culture? How do you maintain the spirit of collaboration and the spirit of purpose and mission and focus, you know, in a remote environment?

And it's something that I think is doable. You just have to be super intentional about it. Yeah. I mean, so, I mean, I was, especially early on in the, early on in the process, I mean, I was sending out, you know, weekly videos to my, to my team, you know, I was checking in, you know, just, just really over communicating. But it's funny, man, how quickly you fall back into a new routine. I mean, now, I mean, and I hate, I freaking hate the whole new normal.

But it's almost gotten to the point where we've been doing this for so long now. It has kind of become the new normal. And I'm not being as intentional about checking in with my team and saying, hey, how are you guys doing? How's your family doing? You know, those types of things. I know we've had one agency that contacted us and with an address change. And so now they went from having a fiscal address to a PO box. And he just said absolutely, hey, my lease was coming up for renewal.

And we were working so well effectively. We're just remote now because we're not going to have an office. I think I heard you make that comment or maybe a tweet or I saw something and I'm attributing to Ryan Hanley. It might have been from someone else that said I'll never have a I'll never have a Britsamorder agency. Yeah, I don't think I will. You know what I do do is I do pay a monthly fee for a co-working space. So I have a co-working space where they got four offices that I can, or four office, four conference spaces. There's offices that you can rent for the day.

there's all this open space. So if I need to have it, like all my carrier meetings when we were meeting that I did when I was looking for appointments, I did down there because I was in the basement of my house. But I have a, this is probably a 12 by 14 office space that has everything I could possibly need. Why would I need a physical space? Now, when I do get employees, if they are in the Albany area, you know, I want to have a place I can go meet with them. We can whiteboard and, you know, chit chat and chat and shit. share space and time. And that's what that is. But we don't need to be there every day, not for a thousand, two thousand, five thousand dollars a month. I mean, as you grow,

that that fixed cost and then all the fixed cost that comes along with that, when I can go to light speed voice, send them a $30 phone and they're basically plugged in ready to rock and roll, right? I mean, um, it's, it's, I think that world, it'll, it, I would just have to be, I would have to be a, I would have a heavy shift in mindset to believe that I would need to rent a space. I, you know, with a co-win, when co-working is available, if it, if it's not available in your town, then I could see renting a small space to kind of get together if it wasn't, you know, if it was financially feasible, but, um, coworking changes the game for me.

Yeah. And I think also, um, even just going to the hybrid model, all of a sudden, everybody, even if you believe that you still need physical space, like, you know, that your square footage per employee has just shifted downward tremendously. Yeah. I agree. You know, the other thing,

too, is I think this is going to really press leadership. Like, like, I don't mean, I guess what I mean by that is, it's going to press all of us to be better leaders of our people.

And, and I talk to my wife about this all the time because she is, she does not like leading her team remotely. She likes to see them and talk. to them and I don't think she's wrong for that. At the same time, what if a rock star walks in the door and says three days a week, I want to work from home? And you know they're 125% production employee. They're just hardworking. They're smart. They get it. They're engaged. But three days a week, they want to be home. What you're going to say, no, that's a tough,

that's a tough thing. You know, you got to be able to adapt as a leader to that and somehow manage that person alongside, you know, your other employee who's best. there for 20 years who loves coming in the office every day and then your your other employee who wants to be home every day and and how do you productively manage all three of those personalities um without one feeling like they're getting more or less or you know whatever that that's a i think it puts a lot of pressure on leadership yeah absolutely and just from the standpoint of just being an employer and being competitive in the marketplace i mean to your to your point you know to a lot of people, you know, compensation is always going to be important, but there are other factors that are

important in terms of attracting talent and flexibility with work schedule, particularly now, I mean, the degree of flexibility that people are having to allow and really encourage right now with schools, in a lot of places, schools being shut down, and your employee is, not only are they working remote, but they're working remote, and they've got two elementary school age kids at home that they're, you know, they're tag teaming with a spouse to try to make sure they're doing their schoolwork and, you know, it's, it's a challenge and it does provide an opportunity for leadership and to displace some, you know, some flexibility and, you know, allow your employees to really do what's best, what's best for them and the belief that ultimately that's going to be

what's best for you, you know, what's best for your organization, right? They're going to pay that forward. One question on our survey was, um, will you be considering expanding, you know, your telework policy? And only 26% of the respondents said no. So the other 74% were, yes, we've already made that decision, we're definitely going to, or we're still, that's still under consideration. That was about divided, that was about divided in half. Yeah.

I think you'd have to be crazy not to let them work from a, well, I shouldn't say that because I am, I've decided I'm not giving agencies a hard time for being snowflakes anymore. not snowflakes in the liberal sense snowflakes in the we are all actually unique sense and um and uh you know i mean it i i i i've said this before on the show but i i think it just bears repeating because i honestly believe it today i that was been one of my biggest mind shifts and i think it bared out and a lot of what i saw from this as well is that um i in you know you and i may even had this conversation in previous lives, but like, I could never really understand why we couldn't find at least semi-templated solutions for agencies. Why is it that you could have a thing

that you know works and 75% of the agents just can't figure it out? And that used to really drive me nuts. You know, I'd be like, and it's because they're so different and rightly different. Well, one of the most beautiful things about the independent agency system is there's so many different paths to be successful, right? There's so many different ways that you can be successful. And then what you just described is the flip side of that same coin, right? There's no there's no standardized solution because there are so many different paths forward. And so it's, you know, you kind of have to play both sides of that. But it can be frustrating.

And it's it's incredible to look at agencies that are doing well and are successful and their business model can be completely different. than another that's equally as successful. Yeah. And then, you know, I think, yeah, yeah, it's, dude, I just, this, this, I can go on. I can, I can, my mentality has changed, uh, so, so much. I would like to say matured maybe is a better way to put it so much just in these since March 9, just in the process of building this agency. Um, so many things that I thought I understood from the outside.

that now, even in a small sample size, right? I mean, I've only been doing this for a little over six months, but even in that small sample size, how my eyes have just been open to, here is really what's going on. And why? Not just that all agencies are different, but the reason they're different is because they serve a niche market

and a rural community and a highly regulated state that also has natural disasters, that also has a ton of mutuals. Okay, how do you figure that out? Okay, you know what I mean? Like, it's just that, and Dave built the agency that fits that market. It's kind of like, like Darwin would be super pumped about independent agent. Darwin would be all, his next book, if you were still alive, would be the evolution of the independent agency.

Because that's what it is. You stick a entrepreneur into a place and all of a sudden they build this thing adapting to all the unique aspects of geography of the, of the, of the, of the, of the leader. environment, the physical environment, the nature of the of the businesses in the in the commerce in the area. It is it is truly wild. I love I've never thought of the the Darwin and the evolution analysis. The evolution analogy but now it's like yeah, why does this one agency have that one little toe that sticks out a little further with the with a claw in the end right? Because he needed that to climb this type of tree in the environment that he was living in or whatever. Exactly. So one of the

the questions that I had for you too. And the, the stat is in the, and we're going to, I want, at the end, we're going to tell everyone where to get this report and, you know, how they get it and everything, because I think this is awesome that you did this. And I was excited that you're willing to come on and talk about it. And you're welcome to share it, right. If you, if you've got a, if you want to put it on your website and share it directly, you're welcome to do that. You don't have to direct, you don't have to direct them. Okay, cool. So, so we will tell them how to check it out on years, but also if you go to the show notes, which will be ryannelly.com forward slash auby dash night or just go to the Ryanhanly.com.

You'll find it. I'll have the PDF linked up in the show notes as well. But so one of the stats that I thought bared, there could be a lot of interesting education opportunities out of was if your agency transitioned to a remote work or increase the number of employees working from home during the COVID 19 crisis, how would you describe the level of efficiency that those employees were able to achieve? And only 6% said they were more efficient working home, 6%. So 65% said they were able to operate at the same, which is awesome. That's awesome. But I think the goal of work from home is a higher efficiency

level. And I guess my question for you is, have you thought about or what have you heard? like what are some things that agents could do to take this opportunity and actually create a more efficient agency operation? Yeah, so you're really drilling down now to the heart of why did we do the survey? I mean, because what we want to identify is what what problems, what problems is COVID presenting to our members, right? Where do they see they're having specific problems and challenges? Because, you know, that's how we have really redefined. and really repositioned ourselves as an association. What's our value proposition and what our whole purpose is is to help our members solve

their problems? So whatever our members are having, wherever they're having problems, we want to be able to come up and offer solutions. So part of this was, okay, let's see what specific problems I remember agencies are having as relates to COVID. And that's certainly one. And I also will throw in the fact that I thought they're really, probably the most honest people in the survey are the 10% that I don't really know how effectively might have how

officially my employees are working right I'm not I don't even know how I'm I supposed to measure whether they're being more effective or less effective I don't even know I thought I thought I ought to go back and give the people that that 10% ought to receive a higher a weighted score in the other areas because I think those guys are the ones that are probably just guessing I don't really Yeah, exactly. I think those are the more honest folks. One thing, we had some open-ended questions, and we tried to summarize those open-ended questions in about seven or eight different categories, and that's the last page of the report. And so nearly all of the open-ended comments and questions kind of fell into how do I increase

and improve my remote work capabilities. I need to increase, you know, by investment in technology. We really need to make steps to improve the customer experience. One thing is that we've not drilled down and can answer definitively, but it appears that the agencies that are significantly more optimistic and have actually seen revenue growth during COVID are those agencies that have a strong online presence. So people are shopping, people are sitting at home,

and you have those agencies that have a strong online present or getting opportunities for new business during this time. Yeah. So, you know, there's all sorts of opportunities for us to just continue in helping educate members and allowing them to evolve so that they can better serve the customer and be more efficient in times like this. So we've had some webinars already on training. transitioning to a remote workplace and I do think that we need to

Continue along that path of helping agencies one understand how to measure efficiency and then two understand what the what the right tools and technologies are so that you can stay as efficient in a remote environment I mean you know like personally we we we've made investments just in in things like making sure everybody had dual monitors at home You know, I mean that was something like when when I'm talking to my staff and they said yeah. Well, I'm not quite as efficient as I would be of our our if I were in the office because I've only got a single monitor. So, you know, we went out and bought out these, you know, these Lenovo really portable, really, really cool monitors. Yeah, I've got one of my laptop bag now. So even when I'm, even when I'm working remote,

I just pull out this little thin monitor and plug it into USB port and you get dual monitor, Tom. So just little things like that can make a big difference. Yeah. I agree, man. I think, I think that, I think, I think, COVID has opened people's eyes to, in a very sharp way, a lot of the prognostication of the last decade or so. I think it was like, yeah, you know, we're fine, we're fine, we're fine.

Oh, no, what is going on? Like, how do we, and the good news is there's plenty of solutions out there. And I think the solutions are relatively cost effective. I think there's be. becoming easier to use. I think, you know, we've mentioned some of my favorites, but there's so many more. It's kind of, you know, there's plenty of good solutions. You know, I think, you know, I talked to, I talked to one of my insiders at Vertifor the other day. And even he said, you know, you know, this, this, you know, he goes, I know, I'm sure on the forums, we're getting hammered for being sold or whatever again. And he said, but I got to be honest with you, it frees us up to do a lot of the things that we couldn't do under PE. And, you know, he said, you know, I think, in my general

sense of making that comment is it feels to me like everybody, everybody sees what's necessary now that these ecosystems don't work. You have to be connected. You have to be easy to use. And we are, we are really slingshotting forward, which makes things like being more efficient in remote work possible. I mean, I look at what, you know, I was talking to my wife and I was showing her better agency because I think very highly of this particular program. And I just said, it has really changed the game from me. Like I've never used a CRM that also is essentially everything up to downloads and accords,

an agency management system. And to have everything in one place and to have it be visually easy and streamlined. I was like, and the fact that I can plug into it from any computer anywhere. Doesn't matter. Boom, boom, boom. You know, web, web, internet access, you know, website browser. It doesn't matter if you're on a Mac, a PC. It's just boom, there it is.

Use it. Your person could be anywhere. They can use it on their phone. And, you know, that type of technology, it changes the game for agencies. It changes the game. The agencies that were leaning forward in tech now, I think, see things the way that you do, Ryan, in terms of like integration and the ease of using technology. But the other, you know, I guess impact of COVID is those agencies that I never thought would evolve or change,

you know, that we're still happy to see customers and give them a cup of coffee and have a 15-minute chat with them so they could drop off a payment. Those agencies are changing and, you know, they're adopting, you know, the EPA policies and they're dropped, they're adopting DocuSign instead of having the, you know, the, you know, the customer's are coming in and leave forms and things. So the evolution is taking place across the continuum of the technology. Everybody has shifted to be more technology savvy, regardless of where you were, everybody took a step in the tech savvy direction. And you know what's great about it, I had someone who I would throw in the category that you just described called me the other day and they were just asking me a question about something. And he said to me, he was, you know,

I've been fighting this for years. Really has to hasn't been as hard as I thought it would be. He's like, I always imagine this transition being more difficult than it is actually been. He goes, yeah, the first couple months, we're a little rough, but we've made the changes and added a couple things. And he goes, it really hasn't been that bad. And I was like, in the most positive way, I was like, yes, that is what we've been trying to tell you. It's what everyone has been trying to tell you for all this time. And I, it wasn't like a football spike. I said it in a very nice way. I was like, that's great. That's great. And I wasn't trying to spike the football on him.

I just meant like, yes, it is true. Like you are 100% right. You know, if you're coming off a, if you're coming off a Tam or one of these old, yeah, you're going to feel a little bit of pain. But ultimately, I think the tools have evolved to the point where like, changing an agency management system 15 years ago, it's not as hard today. It's not nice, but it's not as hard. You get through it faster.

The other side is easier. You can pick up the tools. They're more visually appealing to things. And it's not as difficult as people think that it actually is. And I think it's important, you know, guys like you are leaders like you. I don't want to just say guys, you know, I think a lot of the people are saying the right things. They're putting the right options in front of people, letting people choose from a pallet of options so they can still be independent. They're not having solutions shoved down their throat.

But they're saying here, here's three, here's three solutions that can help you figure out, which one makes the best. But if you choose one of these, you're going to be just fine. And I think, I think it's great. I think, I feel, I don't know, I feel as positive about the business as I have ever felt in my career today, despite COVID, almost maybe because of COVID, because we've come through this so strongly. And because, you know, half our industry to get wiped out and people aren't, you know, bitching and complaining all over, they're really pushing hard and learning and adapting and uh freaking darwin man it's what it is i was if you didn't throw the darwin i was independent agents are resilient and man they they may not um a lot of agencies do not drive change right

but they a lot of agencies don't drive change they're not looking to drive innovation but they have proven themselves capable of adapting when they need to yeah and and in some cases when they're forced to, right? And so this is a situation where many have been forced to change and, you know, to evolve. And I've talked to a number of agencies that sound exactly like the conversation you had and they always went, like, I don't really not sure why we didn't do this years ago. Well, I mean, I hate to be a smart ass about it.

Well, you didn't have to, right? I mean, you were, you were not required to do it. So you didn't. And now that your, now that your customers or carriers or just the business environment in general is requiring you to. do it. Well, you did it, you know. You grew, you grew the six toe that goes out sideways and has the special claw on it because you had to. Yeah, exactly. Well, hey man, I, uh, I obviously think the world of you and your work and, um, yeah, likewise, buddy. I appreciate it. And I, I'm,

I'm glad that you, that you guys do things like this survey because it, it just, it gets people having conversations. It shows them. It, I think it just, it helps show them that there's light at the end of the tunnel, that these things are possible, that their peers are making it happen, that there's hope for them in the places where maybe they feel lost or that they have blind spots. And I'm just glad you're willing to share your time with me and everyone that's listening. So thanks so much, dude. Yeah, anytime, buddy. And I certainly don't want to prolong the conversation since I'm the last thing staying in between you and a weekend. So, yeah, I hope you have a great weekend. Thank you for having me all right. I appreciate it very much.

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