Finding Peak w/ Ryan Hanley - Kat Ternes on the Secret to Insurance CRM Success

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

Spartan philosophy, built in the black-ops lab of business: https://www.findingpeak.comFinding Peak podcast: https://linktr.ee/ryan_hanleyIn this episode of The Ryan Hanley Show, Ryan Hanley is joined by Katherine Ternes, Vice President of Revenue at AgencyZoom. Kat joins the podcast to share her unique and dynamic expertise on developing processes and implementing a CRM inside independent insurance agencies. Kat is one of the most interesting people in the insurance industry. Did you know she's a world-class trap shooter? This is an episode you don't want to miss...Episode Highlights:Kat mentions an embarrassingly wonderful part of her being a geriatric millennial. (12:57)Kat shares her interests in competitive sports. (17:59)Kat mentions one of the things she learned that people want to strive toward.(27:37)Kat shares what people can achieve from being resourceful. (32:41)Kat mentions why she’s very proud of her team. (34:48)Kat explains what AgencyZoom is all about. (38:52)Kat discusses why employee enablement is so important. (40:31)Kat explains how to manage your sales processes. (50:18)How does Kat manage to keep track of their goals? (1:03:13)Key Quotes:“There's a matching component to grit that is actually able to be taught and able to be nurtured when you're exhausted. And, that's resourcefulness. Gritty people learn how to build up their resources.” - Katherine Ternes“We've hit all of the goals that the business sets, but, my own personal goals, I either need to lean into the resourcefulness and just say like, it's okay to have a moment of rest. Or, I have to get gritty real quick here. And it's really fun to be at that crux.” - Katherine Ternes“The teams that go and investigate the stuff that gets put on the roadmap and they test it, and they beta use it...those are the ones that make a world of difference. Those are the ones that take technology from being 150 agencies and it's just one person's opinion, and it's some engineers building stuff. You guys are the ones that take it and really build it into what independent agents need.” - Katherine TernesResources Mentioned:Katherine Ternes LinkedInAgency ZoomReach out to Ryan Hanley--Recommended Tools for GrowthOpusClip: #1 AI video clipping and editing tool: https://link.ryanhanley.com/opusRiverside: HD Podcast & Video Software | Free Recording & Editing: https://link.ryanhanley.com/riversideWhisperFlow: Never waste time typing on your keyboard again: https://link.ryanhanley.com/whisperflowCaptionsApp: One app for all your social media video creation: https://link.ryanhanley.com/captionsappGoHighLevel: It's time to take your business workflow to the Next Level: https://link.ryanhanley.com/gohighlevelPerspective.co: The #1 funnel builder for lead generation: https://link.ryanhanley.com/perspective--Episodes You Might Enjoy:From $2 Million Loss to World-Class Entrepreneur: https://lnk.to/delkFrom One Man Shop to $200M in Revenue: https://lnk.to/tommymelloIs Psilocybin the Gateway to Self-Mastery? https://lnk.to/80upZ9This show is part of the Unplugged Studios Network — the infrastructure layer for serious creators. 👉 Learn more at https://unpluggedstudios.fm.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hello, I'm here during the lunch rush with Janice, who owns her own food truck. Best cheese sticks and down. Janice traded up to Geico Commercial Auto Insurance for a food truck business. We're here where she needs us most. They sure are. We make it so easy for her to save, with customized coverage that grows with her business. Sorry, I'll just get so emotional talking about saving folks money. Not this onion I'm jabbing?

It's just so beautiful. Oh yeah, no, it's the onion. Get a commercial auto insurance quote today at Geico.com and see how much you could save. Get more with Geico. 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. Brood Laboratory in the basement of his home. Well, everyone, and welcome back to the show. Today, we have an absolutely tremendous episode for you. conversation with Kat turns, the vice president of revenue at agency Zoom, but she does so much more than whatever you may think vice president of revenue does. And it has been absolutely wonderful getting to know Kat and working with her. And she puts up with me and the barrage of feature requests that I put in to agency Zoom as we really kind of bake our agency deeper and

deeper into the agency zoom tool. I mean, it is a huge part of our agency. It's a huge part of how we operate. And we talk about just, we talk about, you know, the industry and the kind of choosing tools. And we talk a lot about a whole bunch of different stuff. And it's just an absolutely tremendous conversation. I mean, this is just, again, this is another one of those conversations that just, this is why I do the show is getting to talk to people like cat and having a good time and just hopefully delivering a tremendous amount of value. I mean, we do talk about agency Zoom a little bit at the end, specifically how I'm using it and why I enjoy the tool and just how I think you should go about thinking and how we think you should go about considering a tool

such as agency Zoom, whether you choose agency Zoom or anyone else that's in the marketplace. You know, that's who I use. But I just want to be pretty clear that I am not an owner in agency Zoom or an investor or whatever, I'm not an advisor or even, I know they're not a sponsor. I just think the tool is tremendous. They've done, you know, in the last 24 months, incredible amount of feature improvements and the flexibility and the scalability of it has made a big part of our agency. And Kat's just an awesome person who I tremendously enjoy.

And like I said, put up with me. So I wanted to have this conversation with you because this is the kind of conversation that she and I have all the time as I pepper her with things that I want to add to agency Zoom and she's a good sport about it and is just so incredibly smart about our business and sales

and growth and business in general and just think you're gonna love this one and if you don't know Cat Turns happy to introduce you to her and make sure you connect with her, Facebook, LinkedIn, I don't think she has a Twitter. So all right guys,

before we get to Cat, I want to give a quick shout out to another new sponsor. I mean, just a tremendous sponsor that I want to share with you, and that is Propeller Bonds. I've talked to you about Propeller Bonds. I've had Aaron Steffi, co-founder of Propeller Bonds, on the show before. You can go back and listen to that episode. I don't know what episode it was, but however you're listening to the show,

just, you know, if you want to listen to the full episode where we talk about Aaron's history and then really get into Propeller in general and what it's all about, I encourage you to do that, just search whatever product you're listening to this on, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or wherever. But propeller bonds is changing the game. There's no reason for retail insurance agents to be surety experts. Like if you're not already a surety expert, you don't need to become a surety expert. At least most of you, the vast majority of listening to this, do not need to become surety experts.

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Even less than that if the bond is, you know, depending on what kind of bond it is and they got all kinds of bonds. So propeller bonds is changing the game for us. It's part of our drip campaign. We don't necessarily lead with bonds yet, but we offer it as part of our, you know, we make sure everyone's aware of it as part of our onboarding process. And then throughout our drip, once they become clients, we're letting them know, hey, if you need a bond, we're here for you. We can help you.

And then we provide them with a link. So you're going to be hearing more about propeller bonds, especially now that they're a sponsor of the show, but not just because they're a sponsor. We use propeller. I love propeller. I think very big things for them are coming. And it's definitely a tool you want to know about. Again, I called Tarmica.

I called Donna, and I'm calling propeller right now. Okay? You can mark this here. You can actually mark it when I did the episode with him because I talked about it back then too. But, you know, told you about propeller. Get it on your radar. Get it into your product mix.

You'll be happy you did. All right. Let's get on to Cat Turns. What's up? Already being recorded? That's what happens. Oh my God. Sorry, I was like typical life.

You got to step your game up. True. Oh, my God. If you saw my calendar today, even you would shed a tear. You're like the busiest person I know. And you would shed a tear for my calendar today. I get it. Wow.

It's a good thing that you're getting one of the most important calls of your day out of the way early. Yeah. Yeah. And I just got my coffee. one of the team members came in at like 10. So I just got like fresh coffee at like 10.30. Fresh coffee or your first coffee? Fresh coffee, not.

I was going to say, if you're getting your first coffee at 10 a.m., you're a better person than me. I'm usually starting my second pot at 10 o'clock in the morning. I could have that much because I don't have enough time to go to the bathroom that frequently. Like, I can't take in that much liquid in a day and expect to do my job. that said this was coffee three of like you know a cup of home a one on the walk here a walk 30 minutes every morning now to work I don't drive I just walk it's awesome and yeah it's like I call you guys realistically like if it's a really peaceful morning I like keep my mind to myself and then if it's you know kind of a hustle bustle morning I'm like I might as just call somebody and start my day and ruin their life too but I'm like I can't have a good hand. during my walk. Yeah, I like that. That's what my drive time. Like if I know, um, if I know I got to go pick the kids up someplace or I got to drive somewhere to pick them up,

you know, where I live like everywhere is 15 to 20 minutes away. So it is, um, that's like the perfect time. You just call. And like I kind of get pissed when I cycle through like the two or three or four people that I would meet that I could possibly have something to say to and none of them pick up. I'll be like, well, what am I supposed to do that? I'm in the car and I'm not talking on the phone. What is wrong with people? I can tell when any one of you guys are doing it, whether it's like you or Bradley or Namoli, like any one of you guys doing that kind of nonsense to me that you're like taking your kids somewhere, you're going somewhere. Because for whatever reason, there's like this cohort of you guys that I've spent enough time with that I text with too often. But you guys all use

voice to text. And then when I try to go back and look at what we were talking about and this great idea you guys had, it's just gone. Like voice recording is just gone. So I look like I'm a psychopath talking to myself all day, every day. And in reality, it's you guys sending me the little like voice memos of like three minute brain burst like Jimmy Neuchon type shit. And yeah, I lose it. I lose it a lot. Yeah. What's funny is, um, so Namoli, voice text me the other day and like the text machine had to like cut it up it was like he probably talked for like two minutes so instead of doing like the hit the button and hold it he was obviously i don't know you he did he was do whatever he was doing and and at the very end he goes and it was

perfect perfect english not a single world was out of place except for the end where he says this is voice to text and as soon as he said that every other word after that like the last two it was just complete garbage and i was like i wonder if the phone was like waiting for him just say that and then just started screwing everything up. I don't know. I get the amount of things I get that end up out of order. The other thing too, and this is so embarrassing,

but I was just on a call with another agency and told them this. I am the latest adopter and the product adoption curve that anyone could be in an elevated position leading an innovative company. But I could not be any more like progressive of tech and like in my position. So the thing that is new and novel. to me, but again, makes me disorganized and incapable. Is the reply function? I'm trying to-

The in-thread reply? Yes, yes. In-thread reply. It's super cool, very functional again with like you Jimmy Neutron humans, but it is so difficult because I lose stuff or you guys go back and respond to stuff that I already had stopped talking about. I thought no conversation was not over. So yeah, it's one of these days I may become like an early adopter or like an innovator at an innovative company.

But right now as this human like squarely in the early majority, I struggle. Like I talk to you guys and oh my God, you would believe I was like 75 years old and just completely inept at using my phone. I can't. Well, you can text pretty fast. You can back. You can text pretty fast. Because I have my math. So I text you.

from my Mac while I'm sitting in meetings that I don't want to be in. So that's why I text you so fast. That makes fat. Because the other day, we were texting back and forth. I was working on something with Zoom. And so while I was working on it, I was texting you. And then as fast as I could finish the text, I was getting replies because you know you get the little bubble. And I was like, Jesus, she's a fast.

Like this is, but I also do know that there's like half dozen to a dozen of us that just pepper you all day long with different things. and um my words per minute is like in the upper 90s I want to say like it's pretty good stayingly fast on my computer so much so now that I actually type faster than my computer will like the cursor will be out ahead of the words yeah yeah ahead of the words and it's like typing the words aren't showing up as fast as I'm typing them and my e key right now now is sticky. So I end up like E and then T and then another E because it's trying to type two E's from sticking, but I actually type faster even than the sticky thing. Supposedly the new Macs have solved that problem because I've had my Mac into the thing

twice for sticky keys. And I love everything about Mac. It's far superior than any other machine ever. The user, like I said that someone the other day, they were, you know, I was complaining about why we can't use Macs in the insurance industry. And although they've starting to fix that problem. But someone was like, well, and I said, look, do you ever like use your computer and something doesn't work? Like it just doesn't work. Well, when you use a Mac, that doesn't happen.

It just doesn't work. Now, other than this little keyboard issue they have where occasionally these keys get a little wacky, but you can fix them. Like the programs, like loom, every like five or six loom videos on my Windows computer, it just freezes and it doesn't work. that has literally never happened once on my Mac. And I'm like, how do people Windows operate? They just operate in this world where like, oh, it's just a bad computer day.

The computer's not working. And I'm like, before I had to go to Windows, there were never bad computer days. It just like always operated the way it should. Well, the embarrassingly wonderful part, too, again, in me being like a geriatric millennial, I got TSA pre when I started traveling for conferences and stuff. but before that of course being amongst the general borders of planes i could drop my mac onto every conveyor belt like shuffling through my bag and dropping it dropping it onto the floor i think i left it on top of my husband's car once like was carrying it in my arm and we like pull out of the

garage and you see it like go shoof like down in front of his car and like the hood of his car looked worse than my Mac did sitting bounced against the front of my garage. Like even my, again, technology and aptitude, like how well I treat my poor computer, it has done great. Yeah. Indestructible in so many levels. And the communicativeness and the actual integration and everything, like how easy it is to use my phone and my Mac together.

Yeah. I'm a sucker for it. Like I grew up in a PC world. I used them. I like was nerdy and built my own computer when I was in high school. I could see you as a nerdy. Yeah, yeah. It makes sense.

I think that's maybe when the curve ended. I think I got to like pinnacle nerdiness and I probably got bullied enough that I was like, you know, maybe we should lay off this nerdiness. And I just have not improved any technological knowledge since like the early 2000s, you know? Yeah. The interesting part is like now being a nerd is cool. like for so long like I so I played sports and was in honors classes and like I would be on my baseball team and I would be the only one or on my foot especially on my football team nothing against football

players but I'd be the only one in my entire football team out of like what 30 guys or whatever that was in an honors class everyone else so they don't have to like busts my chops about this or that and it's like oh you know like I'm not as cool because I'm in the honors class and now that is like completely flipped now like if you're smart it's like super cool to be smart and it just wasn't the case we're growing up but you were losing you're smart i think i was like really preparing like people to be accepting of being a nerd like why would you pay money to go to college and then like not want to do well but obviously there were plenty of people that didn't feel like doing well like yeah i thought i was going to law school so i like really needed to have everything lined up and do well

So it was fun, but was a nerd there. And I remember telling people on like a Friday morning that I was going to class. And they're like, didn't you go to the bar last night? I'm like, well, yeah, I'm a normal social human being. Like, why are you going to class? I'm like, because I'm a nerd. Now I'm a like advisor for a student organization at a university here that has nerdier kids than where I went, but still like not dramatically different.

And like they yell at each other that they're not going to class. They'll go, like, pull each other's, like, hungover butts out of their dorm room bed and, like, take each other and, like, take each other and, like, I used to get bullied for, like, going and, like, why don't you just get home? We're going to get breakfast. We're on a Waffle House. It's like, no, I'm going to class. Now you, like, get bullied if you, like, need to sleep in and you're ill and you're skipping class. It's like, yo, skipping class isn't cool anymore. I just missed it. Like, I should have been apparently part of, like, the, I think it's Gen Z. is like the college kids now. Who knows? I should have been with them. Maybe I can be better at tech. I don't know. Their life is too cushy.

I'm glad. I'm glad I grew up when I did. I like the fact that it wasn't as, everything is so cushy now. It's just so cushy. Like it's easy and feels like, I shouldn't say easy because nothing's easy, but like life is just easy today.

Like I look at, I just look at the lives. Like I coach all these little kids in Little League. And they're great kids. And I love them all to death. I think of them as my own children. They live this cushy little nerfy life. And I like I look at that. And I know every adult ever has said this about children,

but maybe it's just true, right? Like every generation is like a little softer than the one before. Maybe that's the way that it should be. But like I just, these kids will complain about something. And I'm like, look, look, you little Nerf babies. Like I don't want to hear about your batting, your batting gloves are wet. Like, oh my God, I can't, coach, I can't hit my batting. gloves are wet. I'm like, what are you, what are batting gloves? When I was a kid, we used

do the same bat. We all had one bat. We used the same glove. Like, we all you shared the same four helmets. Like, what are you talking about? And now everyone has their book bag with their own helmet, with their own, I'm just like, I call them, I call them a little nerve whenever they bitch, I'm like, you little Nerf babies. I'm like, don't even, I don't want to hear it. And they, squishy. Yeah. You just squishy little nerfy life with your batting your wet batting glove problems. I really appreciate that because I have been in like competitive sports like all the way up through college, like super, super competitive. And they were all, I think because my parents were so demanding of me, they were all like single performance. So like I figure skated. I was a competitive

trap shooter. Like my performance was almost solely based on like how I performed. That way, if I didn't win, there wasn't another kid on the team. Yeah. Like my parents just like reamed me for being terrible and not practicing and not doing what I was supposed to do. Now seeing the difference of that, like single participation versus team participation and then like thinking about how kids like go through like mental toughness or like how much equipment do they have all that.

I'm just like, yeah, you guys are kind of, you got a little squishy. but to be fair, I am solidly a millennial. I will like wear that as I either badge of honor or my like scarlet letter, whatever spectrum somebody's on. I'm a millennial. I do appreciate somebody said this the other day. They're like, millennial just like expect to get a trophy and a pat on the back and a participation award for everything.

And, you know, as the person now who hands out awards, I'm like, yeah, but like you guys also gave us those awards. Well, yeah, this is all boomers fault. We have to just, all the boomers who bitch, it's their fault. Why did you make me a participation trophy? Yeah. Like, don't get a trophy. I never would have known any different. Yeah, 100%. I was saying this on a pie and then we'll get to insurance stuff. I was saying this on a podcast the other day. Actually, not an insurance podcast. I was interviewed for like, my buddy's got a podcast here locally that was on. And we were, again, we were talking about Lil League is such a big part of my life. That's just, like on my brain right now. But, but I do think, I don't know, I try to be, I try to not necessarily

go as far as my coaches went, because like my coaches like throw me into a fence. And that was just like from missing a ground ball. You know what I mean? And, and, you know, obviously that I don't know that that was right. I mean, I look back on it fondly. And at the time, it seemed perfectly natural. But, you know, I guess that's not what people want today. But I said to, I said to, my son and his buddy who were in the car with me. Actually, no, it was it. It was my other son. My two sons were in the car.

So five and seven, we're talking and something came up. And they asked me about something. I can't remember the details. But I basically, like, we were at a gas station and I just turned around. I looked at him before I pulled away. And I was like, you guys don't understand how much of a competitive advantage you will have that you, that you, I'm in, that me and your mother are trying to instill like competition and like a slightly like alpha approach to the world

because the world is filled with betas today. Everyone's a frigging beta. I mean, just look at the conversation. I'm not even talking about politics. Just every topic, it is people who I was bullied once in my life. So now I'm going to complain and make excuses and yell at you. And like, whatever. You know, I couldn't be a libertarian if I didn't believe that they had the right to be bitchy betas.

I think that's perfectly fine. But I said to them, like, more than ever before in history, embracing competition, understanding how to push yourself, how to how to push through some of these things, even at a young age, it is going to give you, like you are going to be this shining light versus all these other kids that have just been given everything. And I really do believe that, that like, you know, I'm never going to change the world. but if I can help my kid stand out by not giving him a nerfy life. I mean, based on the house, we live with a pretty fucking nerfy life.

But like in general, trying to, right? Like, I do believe that. Like, we have to embrace the fact that you're going to grow up with a bunch of, you know, a bunch of betas who want this padded room environment. We see it here in insurance. There's a bunch of people that are like, someone so won't integrate with me and I'm going to whine about it. Or like, I have to tell.

to be a fusion, now I'm independent, and it's so hard. It's like you knew this going into it. So it's that like heads down, like I'm going to grind through it and like get it done or like heads up. I'm going to like, you know, how and cry and like complain about it. Like for me, like, yeah, everybody's facing like the same garbage. And there's definitely people that have nerfier lives and others, you know, have like a squishier opportunity. But all things considered like, especially there's still a lot of work to be put in and you don't go into many scenarios and get caught off guard like whatever you sign up for like if you go into sales you know you're going to have a quota like if you go into service you know you're going to have people yelling at you every day like you know these things so like what you sign up for and then whether you are like squishy and whiny in this beta personality and you're like or whether you are like this alpha personality or whether you are like this alpha personality. and you're like fuels my fire gets the job done like I'm working harder for it like that's still like it's a differentiator now it's going to be that much bigger of a differentiator when the like it's not a

50-50 split you know it's going to be more often than that that people are whining and complaining and I will call out too as I've like developed professionally and gone further along in my career I think I get a little more grace too like if I text you and I'm like Hanley we're not talking today like I'm taking the day off. You're like, cat, you know, you're not a whiny, squishy person. So if you're telling me you need the day off and you're sick,

like, okay, yeah, chill, I believe you, you know? So you get a better amount of, like, appreciation from people when you're, like, all, like putting forth your best effort constantly.

Completely. Like, my middle sister, it's middle child syndrome, I think, like, God, you like bump her in the car and she used to cry about it. Like, total beta personality, you know? No,

I think, I think you're completely right. And I think that, so I listen to Andy Fressella a lot. I don't know if you know who he is. He's got a podcast called the, it's MF reality or, I don't know. Something, something. It used to be the MF CEO. Now it's something else. But basically he, I don't know, I don't know how to describe him. He owns, he owns first form, I think it's fitness, the pharmaceutical company and it's got all kinds of fitness gear. it doesn't matter. It's a, it's a, it's a supplement and fitness company. And he's got this podcast. And it's like one of the top five podcasts in the world. But, um, but his, his perspective is very much, um, maybe a much more old school take, right? And one of the things he talks about all the time,

that I think is important. I think very relevant to, to, to as we'll transition here into something related to business and insurance is that, um, um, The difference in his perspective between, say, the betas and the alphas. And I just don't know a nicer way to describe the type of person than beta is the beta individuals have a hardship. And they're like, woes me, excuse, I don't have this. I don't have this. This is why I can't get it done. And what they don't realize is the alpha people have the exact same hardship.

They just go, oh, I'm going to figure out how to do this. I'm going to call this person for help and I'm going to invest in this thing and I'm going to take a longer view on it and I'm going to put in the work and an extra hour here and they just find ways to navigate around it. And that has been, and what's been interesting is I think, I think at different times, and this is very, I think this is very honest, hopefully, is at different times we do, we can waver in both camps. It's not like all the time you are this driven, competitive, focused, on point human. And I think that's another misunderstanding that a lot of people have is like it's, it is constantly just that like one, just get one percent better.

That mentality is like, let me get one percent better today or or some positive percentage better today than I was yesterday. And those little tiny increments really add up over time versus this other mentality, which is I never want to put in the work, but I want to be at that same level. And, you know, that's when I think like being in some of these groups on Facebook. and some of that stuff can can almost be a negative if you're looking at someone posting and going, geez, I'm never going to be where they are or they're only there because their dad or their parents or their mom had this agency or got them this job or whatever or they got this investment from

this company. And instead of looking at the fact that there's probably there were, there was a million other challenges to get to that point. And that's why they keep pushing. I wish I could remember the book because when I was working with my mental coach and going through all like really advanced stuff in trap shooting, which is like such a game of. It's awesome by the way that you're a trap. I love trap shooting a kid. I never did it competitively, but it was like one of my favorite things in the world.

Yeah. My sister's still exceptionally good at it, like doesn't maintain a full time job because that's almost her full time job. Really? Crazy, crazy good at it. Yeah. I don't have the capacity to like, you know, be here doing agency, Zoom stuff, texting you guys all day and, you know, shooting a guy, but super fun. One of the things I was learning back then

that I think people, to your point, like, they either see, like, I need to be that person and can't get there because they don't understand the work that gets put in or it's like so distant and so aloof from them that they like check out. And something that I had to teach myself in that like mental fortitude was the A, you know, alpha A players, whatever the case may be, they do have grit and we talk about grit all the time or you know people that are like a players like you and I talk and really talk about grit and yeah you like stay great you like stay in and all that but there's a matching component to grit that is actually able to be taught and able to be nurtured when you're exhausted and that's resourcefulness and like you build up like gritty people learn how to build up

their resources like you said people or using a Facebook group rather than like an obstacle and like I'll never be this person as a resource. Like then on your days that you're like, my grit, it's just not there. Like I am almost at wit's end. You lean off grit a little and you go into resourcefulness. And they're kind of each other's like ying and yang to better perform. Because like you said, you can't be just gritty. Like we don't expect anyone to like just get, you know, shot at all day, every day

and expect them to like be mentally fine. You know, we just saw like Simone Biles like, exceptional competitor say like, I can't do this anymore. Like you can't take all the way to the world and do it endlessly. But like resourcefulness is how you like think about operating. Like it's the fact that you like come back out and you're there for your team. You know, you lean into like other skills and other value that you can present still in that given time. And when I like started learning about that and thinking about resourcefulness, which is something that can be learned and can be planned. It made being gritty a lot easier. Like I am naturally like a kind of an aggressive

gritty person. But it made it easier on me too that I wasn't then like an anxious person. I wasn't hostile. I would go home really gritty and my husband would get like super peeved. I'd be like being very gritty during dinner. I'd be like to do this. And he's like, could you, could you chill? Could you chill? So like that was a really helpful like ying and yang was the difference between like grit and resourcefulness and how you do need a good balance. Yeah, I like that a lot. I think that's why you see a lot of partnerships work in our space and even in the startups and technology. Like when you're when you're having that day and we all have them, we probably have them multiple times a day and certainly multiple times a week where you just, you're like, geez, it just feels like I'm never going to get to this place that I want to get to. And as much as you're grinding and you're putting in the hours and you know you're doing the work, there's just moments where your brain is just telling you, whatever it is, call it the lizard.

brain if you're whatever call it whatever you want is just you know and to be able to pick up the phone or to have a book or to have a go for a walk an outlet whatever that tool is and i and i think you know i don't know that i would have called it resourcefulness although i really like that i'm i wrote that down um you know it i always think of them as like tools like what are my tools to get myself back to where i want to be because that was um one of the things that i took away from the book atomic habits by James Clear around the idea. And there's another good book. It's up there by Cal Newport called Deep Work.

And they are almost like should be in like a set. But both talking about willpower. And I think Benjamin Hardy wrote in a good, I think it was him, the power of willpower or willpower isn't enough. Something like that, listeners will know. And those three books, they all, tell a similar story, which is basically willpower is great and can get you through a lot of situations, but it's a declining balance. You don't have infinite willpower. You basically start

every day, kind of by how much you sleep and what state you in when you go to sleep and the quality of your sleep and all that kind of stuff, how hydrated you are. You wake up with a certain amount of willpower. And then throughout the day, your willpower diminishes. And the people who are able to persevere what they've built into their day, tools, tricks, whatever you want to call it, ways to recharge that willpower or at least stabilize that willpower for a period of time so that you're only using it on things that you need willpower for. And that was really the whole core, the crux of James Clear's book was, was habits allow you to do important tasks without losing willpower, right?

So that when you do have an issue, you have your willpower, you're good to go. So. I must have a knockoff version of this book that just traded willpower for resourcefulness. I must have read some like psychologists, the rebranding of it, you know, 15 years ago. Well, these guys probably,

these guys are all authors, so they probably stole it forever you read it from. You know, like it's one way or another, but that was what they were talking about resourcefulness. If you can build resources, you can build mentors, you can build like you said habits you can build like comfortable behaviors into your schedule that like you know if you're lacking on willpower or grit around 1 30 like don't schedule your biggest most

important meeting at 1 30 like that's when you should go to the gym that's when you should like get outside and get past here if that's your thing or you know like we were talking about that's when you call and bother each other and like say stupid shit for 30 minutes so yeah um yeah i think i read the knockoff version you know so you're you're you're ears must have been ringing today, or maybe they, maybe they weren't because they probably ring all day. But I have, so it's a, well, it was 11 a.m. when we jumped on this call, Eastern Standard Time. And I had already had two text discussions and three phone calls related to agency Zoom. And I think all of which your name came up in. So that just to just, just so

people get a feel for the, the communications that happen around like different features and how to set different things up and all the things that are going on with Zoom. I've had that five conversations today before 11 a.m. Eastern and now I tell you, all the all the commodges are going, right, this is why your agency's not bigger because you're talking about a tool all day, not selling policies. But like that it's just funny how literally that five conversations, technically one of the conversations was a text conversation that then carried over into a phone call, but there

was a gap between those two, so I'm going to count it. Before 11 a.m. before this phone call. So just so you people know, when Kat's talking about all these text conference, this is real. This like really happens. I wish it didn't. It's one of those things that I have to plan for in my resourcefulness that I just bombarded suddenly.

Like everybody's talking before 11 a.m. Around 2 p.m., they've started to get nosy. It's about time to bombard Cat with text. Also, I have to admit, because like, I don't know who's listening. You have a ton of people that listen. I'm like super, super proud of our team. The last two months, we have had over 200 agencies sign up every month. And we migrated our pricing plan, which has been like an adventure since October of last year, making sure that like we could remain affordable for like people that truly need our software all the way to like we could

remain revenue positive when I have, you know, some of the largest agents. in the country, you know, onboarding and stuff like that. We finally made that migration this month. And we were going to need 200 and I want to say like 8 to 13, 2008, 213 agencies to cross the 7,000 agency mark. And I have to admit, I'm a little stressed. I'm leaning into my resourcefulness instead of my grit right now because we're going to come up a little bit short. like 200 back to like two months of 200 back to back. Wait, what's the date? What's the date you need to have this number by?

I need to have it by the end of the month. And we're sitting at, I need to sign in and like look, but we're sitting at agency. It's the 29. So we got like two more days. How many do you need? How many do you need? I'm going to look. I'll tell you how short I'm going to come up on being like legendary at this.

Because until last month, we had never had 210 plus two months in a row. and I said, I was teasing people on Facebook when I said how proud I was of the team that we could do it again. And if we did it again, we break 7,000 agencies. We are sitting right now and we've hit our revenue goals, but we're sitting right now at 6,9709. So I'm 21 agencies short with two business days left in the month and we normally sign up about 10 agencies a day. Like that's, you know, we extrapolate 200 agencies a month. So you need 21. So I'm going to I'm going to do a push on.

social when we get done with this. And we'll see what kind of juice that we'll see if we can juice this number up over 20 to get to the 7,000. And then we'll have to do, we'll do a quick, I'll get it the number from you. And we'll do a quick update on a future podcast because that's cool. So, all right. So, um, but it's a good example where you can't always just be gritty. You know, like we have lived into these recent, like we've lived into like being gritty the last few months, like being just absolutely like exceptional, you know, on how many new agents. are coming on board. And like I threw it out there, you know, like I posted on social at the end of last month and said like, hey, we've done like really great.

Super part of my team. Like they're awesome. And now we're getting really close to like, it'd be nice to do it again. We've hit all of the goals that like the business sets. But my own personal goal, I kind of either need to lean into resourcefulness and just say like it's okay to like have a moment of rest or I have to get gritty real quick here. And it's really fun to like be at that crux with such a like close. my next call after this call at 12 p.m. is with an agency that wants to talk about agency Zoom. Just so you guys know, they are neither a sponsor nor am I paid for this, but I do take calls

about people joining agency Zoom. So that all being said, maybe just for anyone who's listening who doesn't, 7,000 needs a lot of agencies. You guys have been around for a long time. but I would say particularly for the independence base, the last 24 months or so have been rapid feature. I don't want to say improvement, but that's probably fair. You're just adding tons of features. And so maybe just for the agencies that are listening,

who haven't heard of Zoom or just maybe you've heard the name, but not really 100% sure. Are you guys an agency management system? Are you with CR? Where do you fall? You know, really what is a. agency Zoom and why should, knowing that most of our audience is independence, why would an independent think about, like, where would it fit into the agency?

What's up, guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show. In exchange for that, I need your help. If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes, et cetera. This helps the show grow. It helps me bring more guests in. We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in, men and women who've done incredible things, sharing their stories

around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales. The things that are going to help you grow as a person and grow your business, but they all check out. comments, ratings, reviews, they check out all this information before they come on. So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help. Share the show. Subscribe if you're not subscribed. And I love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments

or if you're on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating, review of this show. I love you for listening to this show. And I hope you enjoy it listening as much as I do, creating the show for you. All right, I'm out of here. Peace. Let's get back to the episode. Yeah. So I like, I mean, that's a fair call out, like one over the last 24 months, it's become super feature rich.

I joined at the end of 2019 to like work on the independent channel. So that's about our time clock, you know, that we're approaching here that things have really like ramped up and changed. And it's changed our vision. You know, when I first came here, we were very much like a little sales tracking like a lightweight little CRM. We, I think we'd integrated it with QQ like the month before I got here. so we were like sitting on top of some agency management systems, but we still weren't like a full-blown CRM. We weren't doing what I think of as like our core competency

and that we need to keep doing. And I think it's a conversation that you and I can have, Ryan, that a lot of agency owners need to start hearing is, I'm definitely not an AMS. I have like absolutely no interest in going there. I have some really awesome partners there. You know, we integrate almost with all of them. You have partners.

Let's not call them awesome. We have, yeah. There are no, that's my words, not cat's words. But you AMSs need to pull yourself together. I mean, if an AMS could put together a 24-month sprint like we did, there'd be some awesome ones out there. I just need them to pull together a 24- They're all owned by venture capitals.

That's never going to happen. Well, we're owned by agents and, you know, run by agencies. We have an agency advisory council that makes almost every decision. So that's pretty fun. And that was something you put into place last summer. That was a very smart decision, by the way. Thank you. I try to make as many of them as small amount of time as possible. We are, and I keep telling everybody this, because like CRM is such an annoying, like, concept in your AMS that we

doing like half the job it should, should be your CRM. So we're an employee enablement software and I want to talk about that like more and more and more on stage. I, you know, have some conferences I get to go to that I like want to tell people about a CRM, let's, you run a report quickly and easily, but I still have to run a renewal report and then I have to hand a spreadsheet or a list to my CSR to call on my renewals or call my rewrites by a producer. If you look at an employee enablement software, like agency Zoom is looking at by every line of business, by every type, whether they're a VIP, whether they're the person down the road, is looking at a curated experience that the agency owner can set.

and it's delivering out what your expectations are to your employees. So if you expect service work to be handled quickly because it's a one-to-one relationship, you know, between your employees and your team and you're insured, good. Like that should move quick. If it's claims work where then suddenly you have your carriers and your adjusters and everything that could be holding you back, but there's still accountability to be had there, that's a different conversation. That's different expectations that you share.

should set and should be able to monitor, you know, and address. And it's the same thing with sales. You know, we started in the sales space. I'm a sales leader like through and through. I'm in charge of a lot of our operations here, but like I still like fall back on my sales behaviors more often than not. Like sales is the same way. Like if everybody's operating off of posted notes and, you know, notes on their desk, that's impossible to track. But you don't know how much is slipping through the cracks. And if every person you ask in your office says, I just put it on a posted note because then I remember and I'll follow up with that person and like I can give that person a better experience.

It's because as an agency owner, we don't know how to use a CRM. And there are no CRMs out there that let you actually curate the experience. It's the idea of like employee enablement is delivering the right T-ups to everybody in your agency no matter of what the customer, you know, prospect is going through compared to campaigns. you know, CRMs are like, build your report, give it to them on a list or throw it into a campaign and it's really one size fits all. I'm sorry, but a Facebook lead that's commercial and in a rush is a lot different than a Facebook lead that's personal lines and is, you know, best friends with one of your current clients already. And nobody treats it that way. Like there is nobody in the game treating it that way.

And that's why we have such terrible adoption of CRMs. It's because your producers don't want to be on it. You know, your CSRs don't want to be on it because they're fighting against the grain of how this technology is built. And that's how we're different. You know, you guys set rules, which is what we hear about like automation. You know, you set your rules of engagement and your automation around what are your expectations. That experience gets curated for that insured or prospect. And then your team doesn't have ambiguity on what they're supposed to be doing.

And it's just fundamentally so different, you know, than what's out there. So I agree with everything you said. I hate the term employee enablement. Just I hate it, everything about it. Because it means nothing. It's like something that I'm trying to get people to like key into. We can rename it now. You know, I haven't spoke on stage in a while.

You need to catch your name. The definition, this is an da-da-da-da-da. And then subtext employee name that makes sense to me. But like if you were on stage and said, we aren't employee enable them until I'd be like, oh, where's the fucking bar? Like, you know, like, I just, you know, it just. Hey, I would all be looking for the bar, yes. I don't know.

But that's just, that's, that's probably an offline comment. So I'll, I'm going to leave it in, but I probably should have shared that with you offline. That being said, all the other stuff you said, I completely agree. I mean, I think it's, it's, there's a couple of things about agency zoom that I like. And I want everyone to be clear. I want to be super clear on this. I, you guys are not, I'm just a user. I'm just a user.

I'm not even on the stupid advisory committee. even though I said I would be on it. I'm not even on it. We're voting again in August. We got nominated. You might get voted on. I could use the word might just aggravates me. I don't get to pick.

It's not the people who text cat at 2 o'clock every afternoon, you know? That's a, again. It should be. It should be. Volume of text should count. That all being said. I don't actually, I actually prefer my current position, which is I get to give you all the stuff that I want

and I don't actually have to do any of the work of being on the committee. So that's actually the best case. Actually, don't vote me on. So what attracted me to the tools, a couple of things. I like one today because I think NowSertz is terrible. And it could be amazing, but it's terrible. So if the guys from NowSerts and ladies from NowSerts are listening,

understand that you have all the potential in the world and you're blowing it. So, you know, I think that that being said, my entire team only works in agency Zoom. We only go into now certs when we have to. And I think that's one of the core functionalities that makes it so powerful is that my, we call them client success, but, you know, ham managers, CSRs, whatever. They are working hand in hand in the same system. working off the same activity feed, you know, working off the same notes, same files,

although one of my feature requests I recently put in was a slightly a foldered file management system, which I know is coming. And, you know, some of these things because now they don't have to log out and log in or use a different tab. It's all right there in front of them in, what I think is this, we'll call it card system or visual. kind of workflow, we can visually workflow all our processes. So we have sales pipeline, which we spend a lot of time building out and then different triggers. And just to give people an idea of what we've built, our sales pipeline is actually probably a little longer than I would like today, but it actually works really well for our team. So new lead comes in,

you know, notifications to the appropriate team members. And then touch points go out to the clients, text message, email, hey, we got it. We got it. We in touch, okay, whatever. Then we have gathering info, that probably makes sense. Then once we've gathered, and I know checklists are coming to, and I can't wait for that feature as well, I did say when I invited you, I was going to talk about all the features I wanted. I know, I know. When checklists come launches, it might be there.

No, it's awesome. I love it. I don't know when this goes live, but by the time people are listening. Yeah. It's not a complaint. Look how quickly all this crap happens. I love it. So, but today we're using just a regular checklist.

So my producer has a checklist that soon he will have to, and it'll be men and women, however they self-identify, will be, you know, they'll be able to click check boxes to make sure they have all the appropriate stuff. Once they've all the appropriate stuff, they move it over to ready to quote. Now that notifies my quoting person. She comes in and she, now he has to check. I'm using he and she because that's what they are today. So don't woke me.

They have to check all the boxes because that's what the account manager said. This is what you need to have. And they can't move it to ready to quote until they check all the boxes. Boom, ready to quote. Coal manager comes in or a co-person comes in, moves it to quoting. Now we use a series of tags. And I talked to Andrew Ryan a little bit about this today. We have some more thoughts for you on this particular topic.

I know. That's one of our text feeds. But today we're using tags to notate, hey, send to underwriting, waiting for feedback, whatever. and then we move it over to proposal ready. When it goes proposal ready, now my producer gets a notification because I want him reaching out to people and contacting people.

He shouldn't even be worried about the quote. So now he comes back in and proposal ready, looks at the proposal, presents the proposal, moves it to presented, and then when he sells it, he moves at the ready to issue. CSR comes back in, again, getting notified, moves it, it, issues the business in the carrier system, puts it to sold. Now, the best part about that is, one, those people don't have to keep coming back and checking.

When it's moved over into that column, they get a notification to say, you got a new piece of business that's ready to issue. Great. Part of the work process is at the end of the day, we try to close out our ready to issue. Quoting won't always be closed out, but we like to get everything out of ready to quote and everything out of ready to issue every day. And then they can just be doing their work and they just get notified when something happens.

And at any given time, I can come in snapshot what's happening in our sales process. And then all that is pushed down to reporting that allows me to say, okay, you know, what's happening. So that to me, just the sales process, not even thinking about the service center, but just thinking about that process that I just outlined and how clean it is and how easy it is for us to manage to. Like when I look at it, I'm like, boom, I know what, oh, that lead came in. I can see Matt's already got it. He's gathering info. Like, it is so easy to manage to. That's why, you know, regardless of what agency management system I switch to, you know, I'm basing that decision off their integration with you guys. Then obviously, I'll just peer

pressure you into developing a deeper relationship with wherever I choose. Right, right. More two, classics. I think it's a good call out too that you're saying, like it's easy to visualize. And the part that's really important there is like it, the visualizations only worth so much if the team wasn't using it, but it's really easy for your team to use. It is drag and drop. Like you are visualizing it. They're able to look at it the same way you do.

And they just drag and drop it into the next stage. And the customers getting that curated experience, like when we hear campaigns, again, being bucketed or a curated experience, the customer is getting a curated experience. You don't have to be concerned that like sitting in ready to quote means that the customer hasn't got a text saying like, hey, we are prepping your work. Is there anything we forgot or do you have any questions that have popped up?

Like, you don't have to wonder if the person sent that text. It goes from that. And you can stay laser focused on managing your business, you know, working on the business. Your team can stay laser focused on working in the business, you know. And that ambiguity or the lack of ability to know because people are frustrated and can't use the technology and it's not picturesque, you know, the UI or the UX isn't there is just an entirely different. ballgame. You know, we have over 65,000 users on there. Everyone from, like you said, a CSR who's doing little tiny things up to, you know, a commercial lines mid, you know, mid-account manager type person. Yeah. And they all have to use it, you know? I think my, I actually just checked because somebody said,

sent me a text late last week and said, Kat, I just put my dad on there. And I didn't think much of that, you know? And I was like, oh, that's awesome. Like, good to have your dad on. It's a second generation agency and all of that. And I don't think I realized even that the current agency owner is the age that he is. And he's like, well, I wondered if you know how old your users are. And I'm like, I mean, I'm sure I have like a ballpark, but like I don't know. And he's like, I want to nominate my dad for being the oldest agency Zoom user. And I'm like, there's no way. I'm thinking this guy's like in his 40s and his dad might be in his like late 60s, early 70s. His dad is 92 and he's like in his early 60s. Wow. It is the right breakdown.

this guy looks great. He stayed in great shape his whole life, so I didn't know how old he was. But his dad is 92. So I think he might be our oldest agency Zoom user. But I literally have a kid that we're mentoring that is a senior in high school and going to college. And he's like in agency zoom, learning data and reporting and helping his mom all the way up to an agency owner who's in his 60s and his dad, who is 92. He's an account manager. You know, he's got his friends that he's had accounts for years and years and years now. And like he likes just having a little mobile app and like just plunking around, checking all the things.

It's really fun to actually have stuff like this if done correctly. The hard part is like I said, putting it in the mindset of a CRM or trying to become an AMS, suddenly it's not done correctly anymore. It's got to be focused on employees and you're insured. I will say for people who are listening who this, a tool like this is something they're considering or whatever, I think a lot of people, and myself included, so I've been all over the board with CRMs.

And I have said on the podcast before that, you know, I kind of fell prey early to knowing too much, right? This is what I've done. I've been in marketing for 15 years. So sales and marketing and just knowing the tools was part of my job for a long time. And, you know, I think people go to like, when they think CRM or whatever, they think, they think infusion soft or hub spot or, you know, just these tools that require like, tremendous amount of buildout. And like I'm, I'm actively trying to find, uh, get on to Salesforce for our agency management system. Now, I think Veruna is the worst. And, uh, I think they've going to, you know,

hopefully they'll reap what they've sown. And, um, that being said, uh, there's a company called Novodea with looks interesting. We'll see. Um, you have to be determined. But, um, you know, I, I just am trying to get on there. And, and, and I, I keep coming back to like, I don't actually need all that. Like really what I need is a simple policy repository with downloads, simple, that works, right? Because all the rest of it is in Zoom. And I've actually talked to you many times, probably would be frustratingly so to you. How do I not have an agency management system?

Can I just make this work 100% in agency Zoom? And there's a few features that make that not possible. Just some like address, mailing address, physical address. stuff that whatever. It's fine. You guys aren't trying to be an agency management system, so it doesn't matter. But like, it's close. And it's like that, that is that that that's the answer in my opinion because really the policy data with our integrations with the carriers and how quickly carriers are starting to directly integrate into systems and all that kind of stuff. Like we're five years away from like Ivan's being probably not as important today,

unless they do some major changes, which, you know, if you listen to read, it sounds like he's doing some interesting stuff. So maybe he does open that platform up and modernize it. But it just, to me, the simplicity is what is what brought me to it is. Now I can use my marketing brain and do a lot of fun stuff that I want to do and be that true customer experience that I'm looking to deliver. But I don't have to have a freaking PhD in marketing automation in order to deliver it. And Salesforce even.

and I feel like tons of people don't realize that sales force is pricey, but it's not cost prohibitive when you look at just buying licenses. You're like, that's going to be $60 per person. I have a three-person agency. Cool, this will cost me $180 a month. But I mean, I'm in Columbus, Ohio, which is no New York City, it's no L.A. But it's not cheap. You know, it's not the same as nothing to shit on Cleveland.

But like, it's not as affordable as Cleveland, which is where I grew up. A junior sales force admin, like a dude that's a couple years out of college, like two or years out of college and is a sales course admin like can help you build your sales force account the way you want their annual salary in Columbus, Ohio is $95,000. Yeah. How many agencies are ready to employ somebody even 10 hours a week to get that set up? Like are you ready to take on a fourth of that cost to get your sales force set up and your to your point, Ryan, 15 years of marketing and sales experience, you would know pretty well how you wanted your salesperson set up. To somebody who's never had a CRM, you're going to build it upside down.

You're going to have to build it right side up the next time. And then you're still going to make mistakes because you just don't have the breadth of knowledge. Like you said, a PhD in any one of these systems to have the architecture be correct, to have your team operate in it successfully. And it still doesn't do the right stuff. It still gives them a list of things to do. And they still have to manually send out a text in an email. And they're still not happy with it and then they still don't use it.

This is the frustrating part for me is that it's like this is what I don't get about agency management systems in general. And I know that this is the epic bitch, but I just don't get this part. Like they're doing all these things. And none of like all I need is a simple policy management system. And I really like community cloud. I really like community cloud. Right. So like I like the community cloud feature.

And I like the ability to easily, how easily when you see. a well done Salesforce installation. When you see how easily you can move information, pull information, you know, move between accounts, move between policies, roll up data to really get a true vision of it. Like, I'm like, wow, that is, it's just so easy. Like today, it's like, I get into NowSerts and I'm like, oh my God, I've been in here 20 times today and I still don't know where anything is. And for this account, it didn't download properly because for some reason for Chubb,

workers' comp policies, now search the same. decided to beam that to the fucking moon instead of putting it into the policy. Right. So now I have all these policies with no premium. Okay. So, but you know, maybe I'm doing it wrong. Who knows? So it, it, I just look at him like there's such, there's just a few, like I would love

to just create a policy, not an agency management system, a policy admin system with a simple, like community cloud ass back end that I could plug agency, you know, agency zoom into. And I'd be like, that's a whole solution. There it is. then I can have one freaking person who logs into that and goes, okay, premiums, commissions, here's your policy information. Oh, you want to download your policy form? Well, since Kat won't build a client portal into agency Zoom, I guess we have to back end it into this system. So like, you know, that to me, that's all you need. All this crap that they're bolting on and just

the price of the agency management keeps going up and up and up. I'm like, you're not as good as CRMs. So if sales and marketing is the key, you keep bolting crappy marketing. Like I saw an advertisement come out for one of the agency management systems. And it was like, we have marketing automation now. And I'm telling you, their screenshot in 2021, I think someone when it was was goofing because it was like an unsplash photo from like a computer from like 1997. And they're like, look, marketing automation. Like we have six templates. And I'm like, Like, whoever did that marketing piece needs to be like flogged. Like you know how like if you like if you like if you're in Taiwan and you commit like a petty crime,

they like hit you with this stick that really hurts. Like that person should get that for putting that out on the internet. I so appreciate that because there's just like happy medium balance to even in our world. And like you said, like what's agency zoom? Like it's hard to define it because we're talking to everyone from like you to like our agency owner who like ambitiously wants to take on a C.R. And I have to explain why, like, that's really not an exciting adventure and they should just, like, reposition themselves to think about their customer experience and their employees. So, like, yeah,

the marketing of, like, where we sit in the market and our user base, like, I don't know how many people that are listening, like, play attention to product adoption curve. But if you guys have worked within ShareTex and ever, like, beat your head against the wall because you feel like they're not listening or they're not ready for you, there's like five or six mindsets. There's your innovators, your early adopters, your early majority, your late majority, and then there's your laggards. The laggards are the people that still don't have a boy, you know, like maybe don't even have a cell phone. But when you plot 7,000 people or 7,000 agencies and like 64,000 people on this adoption curve, you suddenly end up with people that really get it, innovators that want

to do cool stuff like you do. And then you end up also with the late majority who are like, I need CRM. And you're like, why? And they're like, because I was told I do. Yeah, I was at this association meeting one time and those kids kept using these three letters

and I googled it and you're the ones that came up. Yeah, when people like text me or like send us messages on Facebook and they're like, I need an MCR. I'm like, I'm not sure what you're looking for here. And they're like, you know,

like somewhere to track my sales. And I'm like, you mean a CRM. Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, what AMS do you use? And we're like, we have file cabinets. I'm like, uh, maybe not right yet. Yeah, I like my favorite and I, and I want to be, I want to be respectful of your time. We're at the number.

My favorite is when people tell me that their CRM is a whiteboard in their office. They're like, I just like the visual nature of a whiteboard. And I'm like, oh, I mean, yes, I get it. If you're working on like 10 accounts, which if you're a middle market person and you have 10 accounts, and your goal is to write seven of those accounts for the year and they're going to pay your bills then again some of what we're saying doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Okay, that part I could be like, okay, you know, one congratulations, great for knowing what you're doing.

That's awesome. No, no judgment. But if like you're trying to run kind of a standard, slightly more digital-ish agency or trying to get into a digital world and you don't have some function on your computer that allows you to move clients to a visual pipeline, I don't know how you can be a fit. You have to be dropping accounts on the floor. You just have to.

I just people too that are saying like, oh yeah, I want to sell new policies and all this. And this like just as a sales leader, again, it's just one of those things that like the hair stands up like on my arm. I'm just like, oh, like chills, like run up my back.

I'm just like, God, the amount of people that don't have a goal for their agency and then don't have a goal for their individual people, but they're like, oh, we put it on a whiteboard or we share a Google sheet. It's like, what for? Yeah. Like what, okay, like, why are you managing to it?

Yeah, like, okay. So like, if you have 10 up there and it's last day of the month, like, am I ahead, am I behind? How do you know that? Like, how do I know if I'm ahead or behind even? Like, not only do you as the agency owner have a gut feeling, but like, do I have a gut feeling? Does it matter? You know, like, that's the thing that I think becomes hard every time somebody loses

is the idea of like digitizing and tracking some of this is if you don't even set your goals, if you don't communicate your goals out and then you don't hold people accountable to them because they can do whatever the hell they want, it's not going to go as well as you think it is. You know? And like people start with the like, oh, we're just going to track first. It's like, but what are you tracking? Like what's the purpose of tracking it if there's no celebration for tracking it and achieving it or if there's no like, hey guys, we do I do better next month?

we don't hit it like what for you know yeah and you did just mention the greatest feature in the history of insurance technology which is the confetti every time you sell policy what i'm sorry say that again the greatest feature in the history of insurance technology the confetti that comes down every time you hit the sold button it's just the great it's the greatest feature ever it is the amount of like psych whether it was a complete mistake or like a joke the psychology behind every time you hit the sold button, the screen bursts with confetti is just, I'm like, I freaking love it. I got mad the other day because, like, we had something and ready to issue that hadn't been moved to sold for like two days. And it didn't have to be, but it just hadn't

been moved. Yep. And I was like, I literally on my team call was like, screw you guys, I'm moving it to sold so I get to see the confetti. Like that's happening. Boom. Yeah, win. You know what I mean? It's like, it was a joke. It literally started as a joke because we used to have this little animation that popped up and it like it was just like a little happy face or something stupid and we're like god that's so cheesy and we're like what's even more obnoxious and more corny and it was like this confetti like popping through the screen and like floating down the amount of animation work and engineering work that it ended up taking for us to like you know reap what we sowed that we wanted this like new cheesy obnoxious thing and then how attached you guys are

to it now like load speed on a computer. or impacts this dumb confetti. So we have to have like almost a different version of confetti for every device that you guys are on. It really has bit us in the butt. But now people love it. And I mean, it's got to be a million X ROI.

I mean, why. There's no other CRM that does it. So why would you, why would you ever leave? Every time you hit the sole button, you get this burst of confetti, you feel like a million dollars.

It's the best. But it's fun. I mean, the thing was we were doing like paupers in our office. Like, you know those little ones who you like pulled this in like she said. we were like doing that as a joke like when we were like developing that and stuff and we're like being cheesy and obnoxious about it and then you know like he said low and a whole like everybody like loves it and we're like all right well I guess jokes on us like it actually worked out like how well um I am not going to title this anything that has to do with employee enablement but I will uh say that this has been absolute pleasure I appreciate your time um I want to say thank you publicly I know you deal with a lot of of people like me. So I'm going to thank you for me and because I know all of them appreciate

as well, at least the crew of people that I run with that text you all the time. And I do think that you guys are doing really good work. It's been a huge resource for my agency. And, you know, like I said, of all the tools that I would or wouldn't move from, you know, you guys are really one of the core pieces. And just look forward to what you have going on and the continued improvement. Hopefully, I hope that we can report on a future podcast that you hate your 7,000. Now, two days isn't a lot of time, but I hope you get there. We can do it. We have many a times had pretty easily 10 sign up today.

We got most of Thursday left, most of Friday. We got a little bit on Saturday. So if somebody is really ambitious and likes to work on Saturday, they become my favorite people anyway. So thanks for having me. One, like, thanks for being part of the cool, like, close-knit group of us that, like, do text and offer ideas, you know, Like I said, we really do value, like, what every single one of our agencies share. Like, we have a roadmap feature, like, built in that you guys can request stuff. But, and I, I love all of our teams.

Although I'm being shadow banned from the roadmap because my suggestions are not getting in there. Yeah, that's definitely true. The teams that then go investigate, which you guys are one of them, and it's, like, very needed, the teams that go investigate the stuff that gets put on the roadmap and they test it and they beta use it. Like those are the ones that like make a world of difference. Those are the ones that take technology from being, you know, 150 agencies and it's just one person's opinion and it's some engineer building stuff. Like you guys are the ones that like take it and really build it into what independent agents need. So, you know, I wouldn't be here.

Agency Zoom wouldn't be where it's out without you guys. That's why I love getting bombarded a text at two in the afternoon, you know, two minus an hour and 53 minutes until I just get lit up for 30 minutes for you guys. All right. Group text will go out. Hey, it's time to start texting Kat. I, you know, oh, hey, look at this. Look at this. Agency Zoom. I got the party poppers right on my phone right here. My boy just sold two, two policies. I got the party poppers going on my phone. Boom. Love it.

All right. Thanks, Kat. Hey, thanks. Close twice as many deals by this time next week. Sound impossible, it's not. With the one call closed system, you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals. in one call. This is the exact method we use to close 1,200 clients under three years during the pandemic. No fluff, no endless follow-ups, just results fast.

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