Finding Peak w/ Ryan Hanley - David Carothers on What He's Learned Training an Army of Middle-Market Producers

Episode Date: October 12, 2020

Spartan philosophy, built in the black-ops lab of business: https://www.findingpeak.comFinding Peak podcast: https://linktr.ee/ryan_hanleyDavid Carothers, principle at Florida Risk Partners and founder of Killing Commercial Producer Training joins the podcast to discuss his first 7 months training some of the best independent agencies in the country to produce Middle Market Commercial Accounts.--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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show. Today we have David Carruthers on the show, and it's the second time we've had him on in 2020, and the reason for bringing David back on the show is, one, I just enjoy talking to him, and two, he's been doing Killing Commercial. He opened up Killing Commercial, one of the premier middle market producer and agency training programs that exist. He opened it up about six months ago and I wanted to get an update. I mean, I'm a member. I love it. I love being part of the community. It pushes me. David pushes me. The other people in the group do. I've gotten to know Greg Hogan really well through Killing Commercial, who's another New York agent, and now Doug Benz is also a killing commercial agent, and the three of us are prepared to dominate New York State,

and I have every intention of doing that as well as the surrounding state. So coming for you, Crowley and Kinney. That being said, this episode starts a little slow from the tactical standpoint and that we just kind of bullshit for about 10 minutes. And then we get into about 45 minutes of absolutely slaying. And for that reason, I think you're going to love this episode. I loved the conversation.

And the good news is my podcast. So because I love the conversation, that makes it the balls. All right, guys. Before we get there, though, quick shout out to agency VA. AgencyVA.com. Go to agency VA.com for all your VA needs. I use agency VA right now in Rogue Risk and it is changing the game for me. I have been frustrated because I'm not good at detail stuff. I'm not good at, you know, the, you know, sliding the TPS reports across the desk stuff that is so important to our business. I'm not downgrading the importance of the work. I'm just awful at it. My brain does not want to focus on that kind of work, making sure data

is properly inputted into our agency management system, moving data from one system to another and the ones where we need duplicate input, handling building prospecting lists, handling COI requests, service requests. This kind of stuff is just not, it's not my specialty. Like I go from being a highly productive employee to being an incredibly unproductive employee when I have to focus on this type of work. And agency VA has been the perfect partner to come in behind my sales and marketing effort and the sales effort of my new producer and helping us spend more time on what we do best, which is sell business, grow the agency.

And I just, I think agency VA is absolutely. Absolutely best in class. Absolutely best in class. Go to agency va.com. Agencyva.com. Don't be scared of VAs. Call. See what there's so many different offerings.

Don't have any preconceived notions. Go to agency VA.com today. Check it out. Talk about what you need. Let them give you some ideas on how to solve your problems. They know all our agency management systems. They know many of the tools that we use already, and they'll match you up with the VA

who's going to help you take your business to the next level. VAs provide horsepower, and there's no one better than agency VA. All right, let's get on to David Carruthers. What's up, man? David Carruthers, coming in hot, 17 minutes late. Dude, that's what I get for trying to slide down and get edged up real quick before I come on. The book should have been named the extra 17 minutes.

That is what it is. I'm pretty sure that you completely ghosted us on a meeting last week. Yeah, I ghost all the time. This is complete hypocrisy that I'm saying absolutely anything to you. And I'm fully aware of that. Yeah, no, man. It's been a crazy morning. Good stuff.

All good stuff, except for the fact we have no AC in our office, which is awesome in Tampa, Florida right now. Oh, wow. Well, that's not a problem here. We can throw some of our 47 degrees that we have down to you. you know what they fooled this happens every single year in Tampa every year you'll get that one little snap at the end of September early October where the temperature dips for like 10 degrees for a day or two and then like the next week it's right back up in the 90s and that's what

happened to us last week it got it down into like the high 60s low 70s in the evening so we actually got to use our brand new pool heater last weekend and it was It was cool because at night you'd see the steam coming off the water. And now I feel like it's just absolutely horrendous right now. This is, I feel like I'm working in a chain gang or something on the side of the road. So you, you would send me that message that you were coming in hot. So I actually popped an afternoon brusky. So I'm, well, when I said I was coming in hot, I just meant I'm amped up.

I've been laying it down all morning on power producers with shop talk. So I assumed that either that was the case or you were going to be hammered out of your gourd. So I just figured I would go with number two. Yeah, go with it, man. You're good. Not yet. So Friday's for us are yard day. So like I've started getting to the point with I'm so busy with everything that I just block all of Friday off on my calendar.

Yeah. Because I need to make sure that I have everything put to bed going into the weekend for everything that I'm doing. And so it's not that I'm blocking it off to take off and not do anything. I'm blocking it off so that nobody can schedule time on my calendar for me to be able to get some work done specifically for Florida risk. And so I'll usually knock off maybe a hair early because we fired our yard people and we're doing our grass ourselves, which from a business standpoint, is an absolutely horrendous decision. Yeah. But it's not because I did run the payback period on me buying. a second lawnmower so now my wife and I each push a mower at the same time and we can get the entire

yard completely done in 27 minutes wow and we like it it's therapeutic and it's done it's done on friday afternoon then for the whole weekend you don't have to do anything because if there's one thing that i do it's unplug on the weekends you won't i mean other than you and i'm catching you know having conversation every now and again or something that i actually want to do it's like i'm not coming into the office and forcing myself to do stuff on Saturday and Sunday. I'm past that. Yes. I will do, so it all depends on what's happening when my kids. A lot of times, the grandparents want the kids in the afternoon sometimes on like Saturday or Sunday. And if I get a block in the middle of the day, I'll usually split that between walking the dog and getting

like solid outside time. And then I'll hit hit the work for an hour. But that's just like light dust up work. That's email stuff, you know, cleaning up the desk, making sure everything's ready for the week. I try to unplug because if I crank through a weekend and I've done it a thousand times, I get to Monday and it does not feel like that fresh start. Let's go get them. It feels like another, like it just feels like another day and I don't like that feeling. I don't like starting a week like that. Yeah. So for me, like doing video and stuff like that, that's not one. Yeah. So I might do, I might like knock something like that. And the other thing is, you know, I've got a routine with the younger kid with Ethan and Caroline. They love coming over to the office. We save all of our stuff that needs to be shredded so that they can shred it. Ethan likes to vacuum. He likes to check and see how much fabuloso I have left under the sink, you know, and so he can mop. Like that the kid is crazy, but they have their deal. So I'll come over and let them check the mail and do their little stuff. Not every weekend. Typically, we've gotten into this habit now where we just, we go out for breakfast. every Saturday. Oh, that's cool. So all of us. Like the whole family will go out, we'll grab

breakfast, then we'll do our Costco run or whatever, and then we'll swing by the office, check the mail, and then we're out. But I mean, I'm happy being basic, man. I'll be honest. I'm happy just weekends or family time and there's plenty of time left to make money. I'm not going to sell out because what I won't be able to get back is this time with my kids. I wholly agree with that. So I've been on Daddy Daycare since about 1230 yesterday because we had a big storm come through about 75 mile an hour winds and half our area still doesn't even have power today. It was real localized. It wasn't a tornado, but it was horizontal, real localized hard winds. And like their school. Yeah, yeah. So their school, we occasionally get tornadoes up here.

It's literally the only natural disaster that we get. But their school was out yesterday. So luckily, my sister-in-law took them for the first half of the day, and then I had in the second half, so, you know, whatever. And then today, for Columbus Day, they have Friday and Monday off. So I've had them all day, and we've been doing some stuff and we went to ransom errands. And, you know, I'd say even as much as like six months ago when I first started Rogue, this would stress me out.

Like I would be sitting down here vibrating because I couldn't do the work. You know what I mean? Because I'm, hey, dad, I need water. Hey, dad. I need this. Hey, dad, I need that. And today, you know, and only through like talking to a ton of people, really thinking about stuff, I'm like, you know what?

I'm going to get as much as I can done today. Whatever I don't get done, look, life literally goes on. Like, nothing is going to happen that is going to drastically impact the course of my life because on a Friday in September, I, or whatever it is, I didn't put in eight hours of 100% focused work. Like, right. Well, you can't man. None of us can go that hard. And I mean, look, you're an animal with content production. I'm not far behind you with how, how much I actually can put out and get done because that's the thing. You know,

I think I hear it all the time. Like, how do you have time for this? How do you have time for that? This is from people who don't even understand what's really going on behind the scenes, you know? Yeah. It looks like it looks like I'm doing it. a lot and that's just only the stuff that they can see me doing. So it's, you know, but I get it. Like next weekend, we're gone. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we're leaving Friday morning. I am taking Friday off next week. And we're flying down to Key West. This is our quarterly decompression weekend. Every quarter, Annie and I have to get away so that we can have mental sanity. Part of it's because of Ethan and his special needs and neurological issues. Like, we would not do well if we had to be around

that without any kind of a break. So, you know, and you know what, the other thing is, I'm, I'm man enough to tell you. I don't need to pull a cast and jump on here and dance around lip-syncing a song. I love my wife and I like spending time with her. Yeah. And I think that it's extremely important for as hard as we run, you know, both of us. I mean, look, my wife's an alpha, dude, and I know you, you live with one too. So, you know, the fact of the matter is, we enjoy spending time with each other, but we need that time to decompress. And we like just getting away for a weekend and doing nothing except spending time with each other. Yeah, dude. So one of my, one, so I started using this planner called, uh, and, and, and, and shout out to Chris Parody.

So in all these things, I don't want to say like, this is some special thing. But I, I, I have a tremendous amount of respect for Parity. So, and I saw him carrying around this book called living, living your best year ever, right? And, I, I have, I have, I have. And I have, I have, I have. And I have, I have, I have. And I have, And I saw I'm carrying this thing around and that mastermind I was in the other day. And I was like, dude, what is that thing that you have? And he said, I started using this planner three years ago. And I just said to myself, like, I'm the kind of guy who chases a lot of rabbits. And I need something that pulls me back in.

And if there was a way to define my personality, that would probably literally be it. Like I love to. Do you have like an ultra thick version for you? Yeah. Yeah, there needs to be like a second by second checklist in here to keep me on task. So he said, I've used this, try it. And I've tried other planners. I got the Freedom Journal over there, which I didn't really like.

And I have the full focus planner, which I didn't really like. I've tried this before and it hasn't worked. But this one, I don't know what it was. Maybe I just was ready for it mentally because I felt myself being very scattered. but the first like 70 pages of this aren't just like check boxes and fill this in and how many of these did you do it's literally you figuring out what's most important to you and what I thought was really interesting after it took me about a week to go through it when I got to the end it it basically has you plan out like what are the three most important goals for this year and

and I promise this has a point if I can find it but when I got to the end of it my My three most important goals were start dating my wife again. That was literally number one when I ranked them all, right? Because to your point, like, I really enjoy my wife. Left to my own devices, I'm a workaholic. I will just workaholic. And in the moments where I get free from that, I'll focus on the kids. And I literally won't even think about her.

Like that's 100% something that I'll do. And I don't like that about myself. And then the other ones were in the next 12 months, I want to hit $300,000 in revenue, and I have a plan for that. And the last one was get down to 185 pounds. So I think... I could do that if I cut my body in half, maybe. So I'm at 191 right now.

And I have, when I was with Metabolic, the fitness company, I was pushing like 184, 183. And since I, since I, you know, got canned from that job, I have not been able to break 190. And I want to get back. If I were 185, 186, that's a really good fighting weight for me. 235. That's where I'll be. It'll be within a year. I got to get down to 235. I don't look emaciated at 235. When I ran the Marine Corps Marathon going on, wow,

it's been 15 years ago now. But I ran the Marine Corps marathon. I was at 228, and that was the lightest I had been since I graduated high school. But I was just gaunt. It wasn't good. In about a year, year and a half later, I started thinking, oh, look too bad, you know, in the mirror at this point, you know, I have triceps. That's great. You know, you can see some muscle definition. I was about 230 between, I would go between 235, 240. That's a really healthy weight for me because I'm not like overly skinny. I can have some muscle to me. But I'm, you know, not fat and sloppy either by a long shot. Yeah. You got those big shoulders. So you're always going to carry more because you have big, you're a big wide shoulders.

I have these. It's like my dad. My dad is, my dad is six, five. But his, like if you, if I were to stand next to my dad, he literally is twice as wide a human being as I am. Like I am, I'm very narrow. I'm more like my moms. My shoulders are very narrow.

I just can't carry a ton of muscle. Like I've tried before. And I, and it's the way the body works. So like for me, it's, you know, If I can be in the, if I can be, if there can be one and eight and another number, I'm very, very happy. So that, because my frame is like this. When you have those big ass shoulders, my dad, my dad has these big ass shoulders. When he's in shape, he's like 225.

And because he's got these shoulders like this big. I mean, they're, you know, so I think, you know, whatever. Here's what, here's the key in my opinion. Do you have energy and do you have mental? focus and that's where you want to be. If you can have energy and mental focus from your health, and I used to say this all the time back at agency nation, your health is a competitive advantage in business. If you can dial in your health, you don't have to be an Adonis, you don't have to be Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you can, if you can put, if you can prioritize

energy and mental focus, I feel like everything else aligned itself well with your health and then you can do your job better. No, I'm the same way. And I mean, I've said it plenty of times when I've spoken in the past. I feel like I'm the best when mind, body, and spirit are all aligned. You know, whatever your religious beliefs are,

you know, meditate, whatever you do. But do something to give your spiritual existence, the same attention that you're giving your mind. So I'm paying attention to my spiritual life. I'm paying attention to my, my mental game and I'm reading, you know, nonfiction and reading trade publication type stuff to make me sharper. And I'm also in some sort of a workout regimen than I'm golden, man. I will always perform my best in those circumstances. Now, I had a little bit of an altercation

in Orange Theory yesterday. I got angry with them because my heart rate monitor wasn't working. And so I had just bought a brand new heart rate monitor. And I was in there for 12. minutes and it was whipping my tail. It's L week. And I was out of breath. I knew that my heart was racing. I was definitely in the orange zone for anybody who understands what Orange Theory is. It was gray. I was at 47% of my maximum heart rate. And I'm like, there's no way in the world. And so they gave me a new one. And it still didn't work. And I finally, I went out, I threw it on the counter. I'm like, I'll be back when you guys can figure out how to get a heart rate monitor that works. I'm too competitive to sit here and watch myself be gray.

everybody's going to think I'm not doing anything to work out. And meanwhile, I'm busting my can. And I'm not getting my points or anything else. The whole point of this workout is I have a heart rate monitor that works. Otherwise, I could go do this in my garage. Yeah. I agree with you. So that used to drive me nuts. Everyone's in a while. Because I used to do Orange Derry, too. Everyone's in a while. Like, it wouldn't be positioned right on my arm or, you know, I didn't reset it or whatever. And it ruins the whole experience. If to heart rate monitor isn't accurate. Yeah, because that's the basis of it. Yeah, 100%. You know, and that's how you push yourself. Like, that's how you, to keep yourself in that orange zone and not go too far to the red or whatever. Like, yeah, no, it ruins the whole thing.

So, all right. So, so let's, let's dial this back into some stuff that people actually want to listen to because I could just- I didn't even realize we were reporting. We could just bullshit the whole time about nonsensical things. But the reason that I wanted to get you back on. on the show was I want to talk about what are we seven months into killing commercial six months into killing commercial somewhere around there yeah seven months pretty cool yeah let's call it seven months or seven months into killing commercial I have to believe that you have learned a tremendous

amount some of which that learning is just validating things that you did already know and believe and some of it is maybe things that you I just want to like take what you've learned so far in killing and things you expected, things you didn't expect, places where maybe you thought people would make logical jumps and they didn't make logical jumps. Like what are you seeing? What are people saying to you? I mean, you are probably right now, you know, right in the very tippy top of all, you know, producer trainers, you know, producer training programs in the entire country. Like you have you've taken yourself from not being from not existing to being one of the top most talked about in six six seven months. Like what are you seeing? What has it been like?

You know, what are the things, man? Like let's what you know, whatever you want to start in there. It's crazy. And so, you know, I think that this has been a long time coming for me. This isn't, you know, I mean, and I agree with you wholeheartedly, you know, that this like came out of nowhere and all of a sudden it's gone from nothing to like hyper speed and that's a wild ride. But there's been a lot of stuff that's happened over the years to get me to the point that I'm at today. And I don't take any of that stuff for granted. But man, you know, I didn't really have any expectations going in because I didn't know, I just didn't know what to expect.

I was confident in my ability, right? My process has worked for me for almost 20 years now. And I know that the process works beyond a shadow of a doubt. The only time it doesn't, and I'd say this all the time, it's never the process, it's always the person. And where it doesn't work is if people aren't wholly dedicated, I think what really has been the biggest thing that's caught me by surprise is the number of agencies out there that believe in that.

themselves that I wouldn't expect to and the ones that don't believe in themselves that I would expect to. And what I mean by that is, you know, we have a lot of small agencies and single producers that have jumped into killing commercial. It's not a cheap date, but they believe in it. And it's humbling to me more than anything else. It keeps me grounded to realize that somebody's willing to make that investment in themselves because they have the self-belief, but they also believe that I have the ability to take them to a level that they wouldn't be able to get to on their own. And I would believe that if you talk to the people that are in there now, the ones that are having the absolute most success, they would say exactly that. I had a call

with a guy yesterday. And you know, you know how I am, man, I tell people all the time. My calendar is yours. I know how to block the time off. I need to run my agency and to do other things. If you need me to help you pre-plan for a meeting or strategize with something or whatever else, I make myself available and the people that have been the most successful are the ones you take that at face value and schedule the time with me. I have a guy that I have a call with probably once a week, maybe once every other week. But he told me yesterday, he's like, man, I can't even believe this. He said, the largest account that I'd ever been in, that I'd ever closed was $35,000 in premium. I have four active prospects that I'm working with right now that are all over

$100,000 bucks in premium. And he said, I never would have done it. I never would have done it. And I don't know. I think that the secret behind everything is the power of the community that we're building. Okay. So number one, nobody is in alone. It's one thing for me to have their back. It's another thing for 100 other people along with me to have their back. And that's what makes the community itself so special is there's nobody in there that has an ulterior motive or a different goal than what the rest of us have. We're all going after middle market business. We all want to close middle market business.

And because of how we designed everything, none of us are really competing against each other. So we have no problem sharing what's working, you know, helping brainstorm or do whatever else. but when people get in the program, it has been crazy to see. It's like somebody flips a switch and they go bulletproof. Like they're like, okay, fine. You want me to call on $200,000 accounts? I'll call it $200,000 accounts if that's what you tell me to do. And we give them the scripts.

We say, do this, do this, do this. They go in. And as long as they can get it through their head, as long as they mentally believe that they're able to do that and they should have that conversation, they're going out and doing it. I mean, there's literally, I don't know if it's because I'm a, cheerleader. I don't know if it's because I empower them and I tell them that they're good enough and I make sure that they understand and I help them prepare for it. But I really don't feel like

it's as much what I'm teaching them about the sales process. I know that it has something to do with it. I think it's what we're doing for people mentally and getting them to realize I am good enough to do this. There's no reason why I shouldn't go out to call on these accounts. In my opinion, it's 100% self-belief. Because, and you and I have talked about this, the biggest thing that I struggle with in life is that I undervalue myself constantly. I know this about myself.

It's literally a daily struggle. I, you know, people will write me emails about this podcast and they'll say, you know, the content you've created over the last 10 years has changed the way I operate my business. We've done this. We've done this. We've implemented this. And in my mind, I still see my,

myself is like every podcast is like my first podcast like no one's listening no one cares and it is a really odd feeling and one of the things that you know you constantly make me uncomfortable uncomfortable about is that killing forces you to to believe in yourself and you literally have it in the intro to the to the podcast to the power producers podcast it's like the you need to believe in yourself the client believes in you he let you into the media. You know what I mean? Like you got this meeting. They obviously believe that you know what you're doing. Like now you just have to believe. And I think to me that that is like the most powerful piece is is this validation. I think that some that some people need. And I would put myself in this category that like you are worthy of doing this work. And I think I think that's the thing, man. I think that's the thing that so many people need and and killing is absolutely given it to him. I agree with you. Is this where we talk about Bruce Lee and the glass of water yet? We can. Yeah, we can talk about whenever you want.

It's not an official podcast until you do. No, but I mean, I agree with you. And I think if I were to put myself in a position of just watching over everything and sort of orchestrating it, I do know that all I have to do, I mean, me personally, all I really have to do is get somebody to believe in themselves to the point where they get that first win. whether it's the first booked appointment or the first BOR or whatever else, because once they get the first taste of the sweet nectar of success, I'm out. Listen, I've got a guy in killing. I called him.

Dude, where have you been? I haven't heard from you in months. He's like, oh, my gosh, man, this stuff worked so good. I went out and wrote eight hotels in the last two months just because of what I was doing. I don't have time to talk to you right now, actually. I'm like, I'm out to you. Obviously, you're happy with your investment. Yeah.

You're working for you. but that's really part of it. And the other part of it is where the real secret sauce is, and I'm, you know, this is something that I have envisioned five or six years ago, not necessarily exactly the iteration that's there today. But I do think that there is a huge piece of what we're doing where the social portion of it is what separates it from anything else out there. Anybody else out there can go put, look, anybody can do what we're doing too.

So I don't want that to come out the wrong way. But everybody has gone out and created digital training or in-person workshops or whatever else. The thing that we did that nobody else did was create an online social community for the people that are in the program so that they have a peer support group in real time all the time. And the adoption rate for that and the ability to interact is only going to get better when we release our mobile app next month. Once the mobile app comes out, you're not having to go into a mobile browser to access to platform. form anymore. We can do push notifications. You know, you can interact directly in the newsfeed or whatever. Everything will be at the fingertips of these people, you know, on their smart device, which is where the majority of them access this stuff anyhow. But I think that so many, I think a lot of people out there

underestimate the value of the social camaraderie that can happen if you build it the right way. And that's one of the reasons why we have geographic exclusivity. I want collaboration without competition. If we can have agencies that have what we teach and they're exclusive, number one, they're going to just run all over the competition in their area because they're going to be talking about things and doing things that nobody else in their area is doing. But number two, they're free to share everything that they're doing because they don't have to worry about somebody trying to poach their accounts inside the group. And that's like the New York crew. So it's me, Greg Hogan and Doug Benz. And we've been doing every other week,

We do a Zoom call, just the three of us, because New York is kind of, it's like California. We have our own bureau and, and, you know, things are a little different in how New York operates because New York can't just do things regular. We have to overregulate and our emperor has to dictate down to us, what we're able to do and what we're not able to do. Even library cards, right?

What? Even library cards. Dude, oh my God. So I told you, I just got the library card, right? I applied. So for those not listening, there is this like double secret sneaky trick that Dave has that he, that he teaches in killing about how to use library and different resources. And you got to pay the money to get the double secret thing.

But getting a freaking library card is part of the deal. So during COVID, all the libraries in the Albany area obviously closed. So it took me. I applied for a library card like in February, March, something. And I just got it two weeks ago. I got to library card. It's amazing. It's amazing.

It's nuts, man. It's nuts. Now, you may or may not have known this, but I've been backdooring into your library card for the entire time. Yeah, that's fine. I think I gave it to you. Yeah, yeah. You sent me the login.

So I just bookmarked it and I've been logging into the Florida library to get to the all the stuff. It works. I know it's there. There for sure. So here's another thing that I want to, that I want to, that I'm really interested in. So obviously in killing, and you've talked about this a ton, comp is a big lead. There's a ton of value you can provide. There are other lines that you talk about as well. And we've talked about them. And there's all kinds of things you can layer in with the workers comp. But and, and there's

plenty of podcasts that people can go listen to and power producers and all that to hear about that kind of stuff. What I'm interested in, you know, so you've, you've built this community. I don't, I'd wholly agree with everything you said as a user. Being able to connect with guys, Greg Hogan and I talk all the time. Now that Doug's part of the New York here, we talk all the time. I reach out to different people inside the community for questions all the time. And, and it's been great.

And the information is great and the process, simple and straightforward. And it can be implemented into any CRM. It can be implemented in any agency management system. You don't need some super scientific or high tech technology to put this into place. It's really phone calls and emails and occasionally some snail mail if you're really feeling froggy, but really it's phone calls and done in the right way and all that kind of stuff. Taking all that into account, so here we are. We're in October of 2020 and based on everything you've heard, all the feedback you've gotten,

like where do you see us going forward? Where do you see that, you know, the agencies who are interested in middle market or commercial or really just, you can even go farther than that because I've heard you mentioned a couple times personal lines on different shows. Like, where do you see opportunity? What should we be doing? How are we, how do we shore up our agencies? How do we position our agencies for success and in what's coming forward?

I have been pretty vocal about the fact that I think COVID is natural selection in its purest form. It's going to take agencies that have not invested in technology in the past and forced them to make a decision, right? It's not, hey, this is just going to be another expense line now? It's like, is my business going to survive at this point? And I think COVID has basically identified what I would classify. And this is for you, Ryan. I've not talked about this anywhere else before. But in two categories, you have your adapters and you have your adopters. And your adapters are the people that are reactive. They are forced to adapt and change and everything else. Whereas the adopters are the ones who are on the front end of the curve and they're early and they're out there pushing the envelope of technology and everything else. For the adopters going into COVID, it was nothing more than a flip of a button. They've already bought into a lot of these concepts. They've been, they have the foresight to see that video proposals, stuff like what Landjil does with advisor evolved and video proposals that we've been doing for years now are something that now people are scrambling to try and

figure out. I mean, how crazy is it to think that Amazon sold out of webcams when COVID hit? Because people didn't have them and needed to buy them. Who doesn't have a webcam? Right? I mean, so the adopters, I think are going to be perfect. fine and then you look at the adapters and these are the people that are reactive. And some of them, I mean, I heard one of the saddest stories that I think I could possibly hear as someone who has put the blood, sweat, and tears into building an agency. And that was a guy that basically just threw his hands up and said, you know what, I could sell for 2X.

I'm not going to do it. I'm just going to quit servicing my accounts and let them run off and I'll make more money over five years. if I basically just let my agency die, then for me to have some sort of an acquisition event. And while fiscally, that might make a lot of sense, what in the world does that do to your pride in the fact that you've invested, in this case, 30 or 40 years into building an agency? And the legacy that you leave behind is there's the guy that quit when the go and got tough. Yeah, that's stupid. You know, I just, I can't even imagine thinking that way, but there are people that are facing those decisions every day.

what I really think is going to happen is you're going to what I hope happens. You know, my sincere desire is that there are agencies out there that maybe are behind. You know, they've gotten to a point. They're at a plateau. They're not going to be able to get any further. And they understand that there are resources out there. There are things that they can do to position their agency to go to the next level and that they're not too proud to ask for the help or they believe in them.

themselves enough to make that investment to have help come in. I was talking to somebody, it actually was on the panel that we did this week, where I said, I think that there's a problem where we get control and collaboration confused, right? Or something along those lines. As leaders in an organization, we should be willing to collaborate, whether that be with outside council or service providers or our internal team, but agency principles by and large over the course of, you know, all time are typically based on feedback that I've gotten perceived as people who want to have complete control of everything at all time. And I think that we're not going to be

able to do that again. I mean, we don't do that at my agency anyhow, but look, I wouldn't have Florida risk if I didn't have a control freak at the last place I worked. Nothing that I do is new. Nothing that I do is novel. The difference between David now and David five years ago is, I don't have somebody that I have to pass every idea through. I don't have somebody who's going to tell me that's a stupid waste of money to start a podcast or, you know, whatever. And I don't deal with that anymore. So one of the things that I would say, you know, for agency principles that are looking

to sort of push the envelope and progress into the future, number one, it's easy to say, millennials, can't live with them. It's horrible. You probably need to listen to the millennials. probably need to go ahead and stop that thought process and listen to what they have to say. And just shut up, ask a question and let them answer. Give them the attention that they need. One of the best exercises that we had in our agency was last summer when I had a college intern

from Florida State come in and work in my agency. She was fantastic, absolutely fantastic. And what I thought was going to happen was that she was going to come in, She was going to build out some ad campaigns. And I basically charged her with the responsibility of building out Florida wedding insurance, which she did and did an amazing job. But what happened was I actually got a lot out of that entire relationship of her being here as an intern because she communicated differently.

Like, oh, I've got to use Instagram now. Well, no, Instagram's outdated. You really should be using Snapchat or whatever else was the flavor of the month, TikTok or whatever it is now. and I can't even keep up with this stuff, but to listen to what she said and just watched how she went about things. And I think that we have to humble ourselves, you know, and just realize that if we're going to change, we have to allow people to help us with that change. And if you can sit back and say, you know what, my mousetrap was great, but it's not going to get me to the next

generation. I mean, if America thought about that at all, we'd still have outhouses, right? We didn't even have indoor plumbing or anything. But why does the agency world allow ourselves to lie behind? And, you know, we did a podcast yesterday. We recorded it with Adam Swinsky from Chicago. And one of the things we talked about on that podcast was how amazing. If you take all of the bull crap that we're dealing with right now, politically, racially, all of the other stuff that everybody in the media and all of that focuses on. And everybody can just step back and look. and see the ingenuity that the American business people, the small business people have had when it's time to fight or flight and the things they've done to adapt their businesses

and keep them floating as best they can, America's not such a bad place to be right now. And we need to channel that spirit, the same spirit that all these other industries are doing. We need to do that inside the agency channel. And if we do, we're going to perpetuate well beyond, you know, what we normally would in the future. I told the story, you know, unfortunately, when we're not doing Whole 30 and eating correctly, we fall victim to Uber Eats at least once a week. So I jumped on Uber Eats a couple weeks ago, and I look, and there's like these five or six restaurant concepts that are all at the same address.

I'm like, what happened is like there are a big circle of food trucks out there and they're just in a parking lot. And so blah, blah, blah, blah. So I start digging in and I like Google Earth it and it's all going to this place called Black Rock Grill, which is a small chain. I doubt that they're up there, but I know they're around here. And it's one of those places where they bring you this absolutely insane hot rock and you cook your steak flipping it yourself on this hot rock on the table in front of you. Well, guess what? COVID comes not such a popular concept. What I found out was that was their pivot.

There was a melt shop, a burger place, a chicken finger place. a wing place and all of them were branded differently. All of them looked like they could be a food truck or whatever else. But they invented this concept called a ghost kitchen and it was captive to Uber Eats, mobile meals, door dash, all of those. But essentially BlackRock turned their kitchen into like six different restaurant concepts. And the only way you could get that food was through one of the mobile delivery places. So now they're profitable because they've completely reinvented how they're running their business during that time, but they're also, and I'm going to tie this back into insurance, they solved a problem, right? That's what we really do. And I think so many times, like, number

one, they solved a problem for their revenue, but they also solved the problem for somebody who wanted something to eat and didn't want to have to cook and couldn't go to a restaurant and do it. Now they're having it delivered to their home. We make our lives way too complicated, and we especially make it complicated in the insurance world. Stop making it complicated. You know, find the problem and solve the problem. Insurance is paper, okay? Find the problem and solve that. And we are obviously intelligent enough to do that. We see it around us all the time. I mean, the number of cool stories of how businesses have adapted is insane to me. Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, there's a lot in there to unpack.

I, um, so there's the first, first thing I would comment on is I agree with you that COVID is a natural selection moment. I think that makes a lot of people uncomfortable because we've done everything that we can the last 20 years to make sure natural selection doesn't happen, right? You everything from the bailouts of the banks to, you know, the mortgage lending crisis And then, you know, and obviously I'm not talking about true charity work and helping people who are in need. That's a different story. But I'm talking about, you know, we've created a very cushy environment.

And when you say, why don't agencies change? So I got a firsthand look at this when I was with the association. And the reason they don't change is because we're so freaking successful doing bad work that the idea of needing to do good work doesn't even register. And in those moments, I don't know that it's, I would, I would challenge you on that. I wouldn't say that it's doing bad work. I would say it's doing insurance work. Okay. And then that's it.

You can be wildly successful selling insurance policies, period, whether it be life, group benefits, or whatever else. The defining moment and where things change right now is going above and beyond that. That's what the expectation is. Yeah, I guess I would classify simply selling insurance policies as doing a bad job as an insurance agency. I would agree with that. But here's what I've noticed. I saw a very specific conversation in one of the online forums where a guy had had an account that he had for 15 years. And over the course of the time that he had that account, it grew to $150,000 in premium.

Nothing to sneeze at by any stretch. I would happily welcome that account into my agency any day of the week. He lost it. And he posted because, he was upset that he lost it. And not only did he lose it, but he lost it and the client paid $5,000 more to go. I saw this. Yep, I know what you're talking about. The other agency. Okay. So what immediately happens is we have all of the empathetic commiserators that come out, oh, clients aren't loyal, clients suck. They'll milk you dry for 15 years and then they're going to you, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's what I want insurance agents across the country to understand right now. Insurance is a common denominator. You sell insurance, so does your

competition. The variable is what you do above and beyond that. And that's what's going to retain accounts. That's what's going to help you close business. And that's ultimately what's going to build a significant asset for you. But if you don't recognize the fact that everybody has the same product that you have and that price can fluctuate a little bit, but buyers aren't looking at that. Buyers are looking at everything else you can do, right? That's the difference. And that's where you need to start looking at your operation and saying, okay, you know what? Let me just take a step back and look in the mirror and say, I lost an account.

What happened? Same thing goes with agent of record letters, right? I love it when somebody gets pissed off because somebody tenders an agent or record letter against them, like the client screwed them over or the other. agent was lazy or whatever else. Here's a newsflash people. Agent and record letters are never priced deals. Never. You did something wrong. That's it. End of story. You have to look at what you're providing or what you're not providing and get your game to the right level. And then that stuff never happens. But it blows my mind because I think that so many times we surround ourselves and I'm going to

go back to killing commercial. That's why this would never play in our community, right? We don't surround ourselves with victims and commiserators. We understand that in order to take things to the next level, you've got to reinvent yourself. Not once a year, not once every five years. Sometimes every day you have to come in and change what you did from the day before. And I tell my team all the time, my only goal is to be better today than I was yesterday, but not as good as I'm going to be tomorrow. And if I can do that every single day, I'm going to win no matter what. Yeah. I'll be honest with you, when I see people say the term AORs or BORs are lazy, I immediately judge them as a, as a professional.

I immediately do because anyone who says that AORs are easy, they're not easy. It is not easy to convince someone to break a relationship with someone who is doing something well. So it's, you know when it is easy? When the incumbent is doing such a poor job and you can express yourself in a simple, straightforward way and actually have a plan to deliver, or services to them, then it can be easy to get an AOR.

But if you're doing a good job, it is incredibly difficult to get an AOR. So when I see, and this happens all the time in the forums, someone will bitch about an AOR that they received. And then just like you said, everyone piles on, oh, that's the easy way to do business. And I'm like, so what you're saying is as a business person, as a legitimate business person, this is the way my mind works. When I see that, I go, as a legitimate. legitimate business person, you're saying that it is more efficient from a business perspective

to quote that business out to 10 different carriers to try to break a price than to deliver your value proposition to them, build a relationship. And if that means take an AOR, take an AOR. I think I just look at those people. I immediately judge them. I just do. Like there was a time when maybe I'd be like, oh, I don't want to be judgy. F that. I judge them. I immediately look at them and I go, if I were in that person's community, I would take their business because you can do that now. I just had a buddy of mine and from Kentucky reach out to me because he was prospecting an account and the account was with insurion, right? So this is the former insuredech darling who has kind of fallen off the map for a bunch of different reasons.

but they're still an operating business. And this contractor was with insurion. And he reached out to me, he said, oh, you know, it's weird to me that, you know, I just feel weird that a local business is doing business with this online. And I said, bro, if you're the one who he had called from the internet, you'd be the online guy.

This is why, and any, you know, and he, you know, he does an amazing, he does an amazing job. He mostly was just thought it was interesting there within Shurion. But like this concept of, you know, you, anybody can drop into your community at any time. And if their value proposition is better than yours, they have every right to be the agent of record on that account. You know what I mean?

I can drop into yours. Carruthers, you could drop into someone's, you know, you do business in Naples with an account. What, you're not supposed to be there because you're not local? It doesn't matter. That's not the world we live in anymore. The best value provider can reach out into any community and connect with any client.

And if that client values the services and the relationship that they build, they're going to move their business. And there is nothing wrong with that, AOR or otherwise. Yeah, no, I agree with you wholeheartedly. And, you know, again, it goes back to you are who you surround yourself with. I mean, how many times do you have to hear that? You can hear Bradley Flowers talk about he, he'll be quiet because he knows everybody in the room smarter than him.

We hear all of these cliches. But at the end of the day, all that stuff's true, man. Yeah. All of it's true. Yeah. Dude, I did a LinkedIn post today. You were obviously in it. You commented on it. But I was sitting here this morning. It's like 5.30 in the morning. And I was just thinking back about the week. And I was like, holy shit. Like I just, you know, and you can say whatever you want about, you know, maybe I should be doing more prospect. I don't care because, because, you know, the people, I'm looking at the list right now. Just the people that I had a chance to spend time with this week and surround myself, their ideas. infect my brain. They infect my brain. I will never allow you to be better at content than me. You know what that forces me to do? Work really hard at doing content because I know how good you are. Like literally, I think about you when I'm doing content. I have to keep getting better. My thumbnails have to get better. My posts have to get better. My videos have to get better. I have to do them more often, more efficiently, more effectively. And that pushes me. What's up,

homie? Yeah, and I agree, man. I mean, that's where you can snack, homie. of, you know, iron sharpens iron. Yeah. I always want to have people in my life that are better and more successful than me. And the other thing, too, is, you know, I think that if I'm given anybody just sort of perspective, it's a conscious, it's a conscious battle to remain grounded, right? Like, I think that when you, I think that when you have a podcast and then all of a sudden you start getting those, I'm the opposite of you, okay?

I don't have a problem with undervaluing myself at all, in my opinion. You know, I feel like I'm also a little bit older than you. I've had my rear end kicked a few more times than you have. So maybe by the time you get to my age, you'll, you'll have a little bit different perspective. But, you know, I think that so many times people who get that, that first taste of success or you're getting that, you know, I'll call it fan mail for lack of a better term,

but people saying, hey, I just want to reach out to you and let you know, you know, this really made a difference in my life. You changed, you changed the way I think. I got a deal done that allowed me to, you know, put money away that I never would have had before or whatever else. And, you know, I'm programmed to where I understand at this point, that's great that I had that kind of influence. I can't let that go to my head. I can't let me feel like, let myself feel like I'm more important or better than anybody because I did that. And so, you know, for anybody who reaches out to me, I've made it a point. I stop and I let them know. Look, you know, you read my book, great. I really appreciate you taking the time to leave a review or I really appreciate you reaching out and

telling me what happened. I said, because as somebody who creates content, whether that be video, blog post, you know, book, whatever, that's really the best reward for me. And I know that sounds sort of, you know, frou-frou or whatever else, but I could make plenty of money. I could not do any of that, and I'd be just fine running my agency. That's not where the motivation is for me with killing commercial. That's not where the motivation is to put the content out. I feel like we have an opportunity right now to completely change the way our industry does business, and I know, I know that I'm on the forefront of that. I am very, very aware of that. I tell my wife, every day. I am literally walking on a razor blade. One move and I'm done. You know, if I say the wrong

thing, if I crack the wrong joke, that's a lot of pressure that I didn't have at this time last year. But I don't mind it because I know that I'll make the right decision. I'm morally grounded. I have a good head on my shoulders. I'm going to do what's right by people. And so far in life, that's never failed me. It's intention. It's intention. This is the thing, man. I have said, So I've been creating content in our space for more than a decade now. And there are people that like me. There are people that don't. There are people that vehemently disagree with everything that I talk about,

everything I say. And it all comes back to me. And all that is all good. That does not bother me. What it ultimately comes down to, in my opinion, I think almost with everything in life. but specifically with this topic of creating content and trying to help an industry, is it always comes back to intention.

It always comes back to your intention. There is no one who has ever spent any amount of time with you. The same thing goes with Cass. The same thing goes with other people that we know. Cass says more stupid shit than anybody I've ever met in my life. And I love him dearly, right? and I will support him and have and everything he's done up and down because all Cass cares about, he takes care of his family.

Don't get me wrong. He's got sponsors. He's got a business. He's a businessman. But at the end of the day, all he really cares about, everything he does, every sponsor he reads, every lip sync video he does. You know how he's doing it? Because he wants people to be happy and be healthy and be successful and feel valued and feel important.

I mean, that's what he's trying to do. The same exact thing is true with you. So, you know, and you don't need any advice from me. But my personal opinion on this particular topic is if there's anything that maybe I potentially could give you advice on, it's the idea of you are not walking on a razor blade. You have leeway. I think it's good that you think that way, but I also ultimately know that there's no one that would ever question your intention. And I think that is why you've gone from seven months to today being as widely used name as you are is because people, it's so obvious that your intention is pure to help people grow. And I think that's a very important thing. I agree. Well, I mean, listen, I'll be honest with you. The other thing is

what is the space that you operate from, right? So I don't really talk about it a lot, but I did not have a good exit from the last agency that I was at. I wake up every single day with one intention and as to prove that I was right. That's it. That's literally, that's how I wake up every single day. And when I left the last agency that I was at to start Florida risk, my comment was, I will do everything in my power to become a household name in commercial insurance across the country. That was my motivation. For five years, almost, every day I wake up, what do I need to do to help other people. What do I do to validate the things that I know will take agencies to the next level? So when I got Florida risk started and we hit our first million in revenue, great. When we hit our

second million, great. When I hit my third million, great. At the end of the day, that wasn't enough. What can I do to help another agency and another agency and another agency because I want all of these people to be successful because I know that what's in my head that I was not allowed to execute on and that I was made to feel stupid for thinking and not valued, that's where I operate from. So, yes, I will always do right by people. I will never make decisions that make people question my intent. And I'm going to tell you something else, as far as Cass goes, all the people who listen to these shows, they hear what we talk about.

They hear our personalities when we do this. But what I'm going to say about Jason and other people in this space is you never know what they're doing behind the scenes. Cass doesn't brag about all of the things he does. Cass does a lot of good stuff for a lot of people that nobody will ever know about. I know about it because we're good personal friends. You know about it because you're good personal friends. But the depth that he's willing to go to serve other people, to donate money, to donate time, whatever he needs to do.

And I follow suit with that. I was brought up where I don't have in a home where you don't go do nice things for people so that you can brag. Does it make you feel good about yourself? Yes. but you don't need to go tell the rest of the world about it. If your heart is in the right place and your intentions are in the right place and you execute that to perfection, you'll have a bunch of raving fans that will always have your back

and they will always tell your story for you and you never have to go out and beat your own chest. I firmly believe as much as I believe in anything, call it whatever you want, karma serendipity, you know, whatever good vibes, it doesn't matter, whatever you want to call it. I believe that you get everything that you put out into the world. And you, it, the world, the universe knows if your shit is shallow and fake and you're doing it

for the wrong reasons and it's selfish and self-oriented and ego driven, it doesn't matter if you have, you know, what your car is. It doesn't matter. You're going to pay that price. So this, and I think, and this is what I like. love about podcasts and it's what I love about, you know, this is what I'm going to say. Bradley and Scott, you, me, the insurance guys, there's, there's a dozen podcasts. There's a dozen of us or more and they're growing every day. Chris Klein's got a great podcast. What do we all do?

Go on each other's frigging podcasts. You know what we could be doing, beating the shit out of each other, talking crap, trying to steal each other's. Nobody does that. I mean, I Maybe they do, but I don't know of any of the podcasts in our space, the people who've been around for a while who work hard. I don't know anybody who's out there trying to jab one other person down and poke this and take these people out. And that to me, and those people who come in, they immediately are kicked out. They're immediately pushed to the side of the herd.

And those are the ones that get eaten by the velociraptor in the Jurassic Park movie. And there's a reason for it because the herd knows. And when you take care of each other and you support each other, what's happened to all of our podcasts? They've all just continued to creep up and grow and our audiences and grow and they all mix and we take conversations and we string them between different shows and different episodes and different versions. And you'll see someone at an event or someone will send you an email and they'll be like, I heard Carruthers talking about this on his shop talk and then he was talking about this on Cassus thing and then you mentioned it over here and then the two of you were talking over

this on this webinar. And that's how the how the story gets pieced together for our industry. And I think it's such a testament to where we're going on as an industry and as a collective of people who've bought into this idea that we continue to push forward in this way. It's it to me, it's a miracle. It's not where we were 10 years ago. 10 years ago, I can't the shit that has been, I mean, I've been blackballed from this industry twice. I've had to call politically powerful agents in our industry and literally bend the need to get back in. And to be honest with you today, at 40, that's disgusting to me. At 33 or whatever I was at the time, I had no other way to get back into the fold of anything.

And that shit, that you getting cut out, you getting blackballed nonsense, that's gone. Those people who did that, they can't do that anymore. And it's because as an industry, we've come together and said, we're more important than these segmented fenced off groups. Doesn't mean those groups aren't important. They just don't, they can't control us the way that they did. I agree. Yeah.

Yeah. I agree. I mean, it's a good time, man. And it's funny because there's almost like a brotherhood. And I don't mean that in a sexist way. I just, you know, even a brotherhood sisterhood thing. Women can be part of the brotherhood too. It's a.

Yeah. Well, I mean, we just had Teresa and Denise from the Power Women of Insurance podcast on power producers. Carrie Wallace just beat your ass in the Illinois Convention thing. Thank you, sir. May I have another very handily, I might add. But, you know, and I think that's the next piece, right? So let's just call it what it is. We do have a brotherhood, but what do we need to do to push the envelope further? How can we get more prominent women out there? And I know this is something that Cass is passionate about as well, but how can we get more women to the forefront? How can we support them? And that's one of the reasons when I reached out to Teresa, I said, look, I agree with everything you guys are doing.

I'm glad you have their own women of IAOA group going on. I'm glad you have your podcast. I want to be a part of whatever I can do to help you get out to more people. That was my intent in talking to them. That's it. And, you know, I think that we need more of that. But I mean, to the brotherhood aspect of it, it's crazy. I got up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water. And I just happened to check my phone because we all do that when we get up in the middle of the night when you, you know, have clients, you never know what's going to happen. And I had a message from Scott Howl. And he's like, hey, man, I'm working on this account. And I need you to give me your thoughts on this and send me whatever information you can about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. At 2.30 in the morning, I went back to bed, fired up my

laptop. And the first thing I did was get everything over to Scott because I wanted him to have it, first thing in the morning. Actually, let me tell you how that text went. I need an hour of your time. I'll give you $500. And I wrote back to him like, A, you're not going to give me any money at all. I'm happy to help you and B, you don't need an hour of my time. Here's, here's everything that you need. And I stopped what I was doing, which was sleeping, and gave him his stuff. But, you know, that's the whole thing. In this community, if you do it right, you're going to make those friends that you can call it 3 o'clock in the morning and they're going to answer the phone. And they're going to do whatever they can to jump

on the bandwagon to help you with whatever the problem is that you're dealing with. And I don't know of too many other outside of being in sports, which I grew up in sports, I know you did do. Outside of being on a team of people and the bond that you have when you travel playing baseball and all of the other stuff that I did, I don't know that you can get that in any other industry. No. I, you know, I've been in other industries. You know, when I was in the fitness industry, there is a camaraderie among fitness professionals for sure, but there is also such a heavy competition between them at the same time that it doesn't feel, it didn't feel the same. You know, I don't want to knock fitness because I love fitness, but there is this like, you know,

there is almost a close to zero some aspect to them. And in what I love about insurance is that the people who really think about our business right. And trust me, there's plenty of bad actors. And I know exactly who many of them are. And I can, at this point, I can, I can see their dark aura as soon as they walk into the room. But, but, but, but they are becoming more and more the exception to the rule. And there's this understanding that there is so much business to go around. You can have 100 agencies in the same town and everybody has them, everyone can have a Maserati, if that's what they really want. That by working together, we can get there. So, you know, dude, we've been, we've been talking for over an hour. I want to be respectful of your time. We

literally could go for another hour on all this. You know, here's what I want to say to you. it is that, you know, we've literally only known each other for less than a year, a year, maybe, maybe, maybe a year. And you have become such an important part of my life and my business and such a good friend. And I just want to say thank you for that. These types of relationships for me are very important. And I lean on them as obviously our Facebook messenger is probably, you're probably aware of that. but I appreciate it and I just wanted you to know that and share it in a public forum to say I do anyone who is unsure of your character, David is everything that he comes off to be and more

and I just appreciate you and I'm so glad that you are part, that you do have a voice in our space today because the industry is better for it. I appreciate that man and you know I love nothing more than being able to help people. And when you decided you were going to launch and weren't really sure of how that was going to go or what direction it was, you know, we had, again, here comes Cass, right? I get the message. Hey, I'm going to have Ryan Hanley reach out to you. I need you to take his call. Like, no, number one, let me just be very clear. I don't have people, you know, I would have taken your call regardless. So we'll let Cass feel important like he orchestrated this whole thing. But he did. He reached out to me. He said, look, I know you don't

know Hanley, you need to take his call. I need you to help him. Whatever you can do to help him, I need you to help him. And you know what? That's all I need it. Yeah. That's all I need it. Not that I wouldn't help you if you would have reached out to me on your own. But, you know, Cass and I have a good relationship. And honestly, you know, a lot of what has happened for me in terms of just exposure, you know, per se, is number one, IAOA and the fact that they gave me a platform to tell my story and talk about some of the things that we do that we do that are unique. I'll never be able to repay them just for the fact that they've given me that platform. And so my intent is always to do everything I can to pay back into that group tenfold of what it's been able to give me. And the second one is

Cass, man. I mean, the first time he had me on his podcast when we talked about hunting whales, you know, it was like, holy cow, this is a defining moment in my career. And to sit back and think, oh, wow, it's a defining moment in your career when you're talking with Cass about writing commercial insurance on a podcast. It absolutely was because of his platform, his voice, and his audience. And it gave people an opportunity to hear that there is a different way to do things. There is a different way. And I understand that, you know, enough people enjoyed that there's an opportunity there. So we launched our podcast. And then everything just started blossoming from there. But I tell you that because I'm so appreciative of everything that anybody and everybody in this

industry has done for me. And so, you know, just having me on here and us going back and forth, that makes my day, man. I sit here and talk to you all day and not even care about anything else that's going on. Kyle's called me four times. I don't know what kind of dump or fire he's got, but it can wait, you know, and, you know, that, that sums up everything. I just think that we need to continue to push forward. We need to continue to intentionally include, okay? I think that so many times we unintentionally exclude and that's viewed as sexism or racism or whatever else when maybe it's not necessarily the thought process but we won't be able to change that until we intentionally include and if you can do that and you do it with your heart and your mind in the right

place the next time we talk the industry will be way better than it was today. Amen brother. Hey, I appreciate you. Be good. Go solve Kyle's problem. All right. Later. Later, buddy. 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 1,200 clients under three years

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