Finding Peak w/ Ryan Hanley - Mick Hunt on Developing World-Class Producers

Episode Date: October 9, 2020

Spartan philosophy, built in the black-ops lab of business: https://www.findingpeak.comFinding Peak podcast: https://linktr.ee/ryan_hanleyProducer trainer and Agency Growth Consultant, Mick Hunt, founder of Premier Strategy Box, stops by the show for a deep diver on producer development.--Recommended Tools for GrowthOpusClip: #1 AI video clipping and editing tool: https://link.ryanhanley.com/opusRiverside: HD Podcast & Video Software | Free Recording & Editing: https://link.ryanhanley.com/riversideWhisperFlow: Never waste time typing on your keyboard again: https://link.ryanhanley.com/whisperflowCaptionsApp: One app for all your social media video creation: https://link.ryanhanley.com/captionsappGoHighLevel: It's time to take your business workflow to the Next Level: https://link.ryanhanley.com/gohighlevelPerspective.co: The #1 funnel builder for lead generation: https://link.ryanhanley.com/perspective--Episodes You Might Enjoy:From $2 Million Loss to World-Class Entrepreneur: https://lnk.to/delkFrom One Man Shop to $200M in Revenue: https://lnk.to/tommymelloIs Psilocybin the Gateway to Self-Mastery? https://lnk.to/80upZ9This show is part of the Unplugged Studios Network — the infrastructure layer for serious creators. 👉 Learn more at https://unpluggedstudios.fm.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Happy holidays. Want to give your host a gift? Consider subscribing, rating, and reviewing the show this holiday season. It really helps the show grow. From all of us at Believe, have a Merry Christmas, everyone, and a happy holiday. Food Laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. Today's guest is someone that I met at Billy Williams' event that he had in Florida,

right before the Rona locked us all down. His name is Mick Hunt, and he is one of the premier producer trainers and agency operational consultants. And really, it's more of a consultant C since he has the entire team helping them drive agencies forward by really getting in and essentially being management or leaders

of the various departments in which agencies may need help. And he outlines what he does at, premier strategy box. You can check it out at my strategybox.com. But if you know Mick and you know his work, you know he is best in class. And we really hit it off the first time that we met and we've become friends and we talk. And being that he's a Patriots fan, we also talk trash quite a bit. Go Bill's, Bill's Mafia, Super Bowl. And it's just a pleasure to bring Mick to you guys. You're going to hear me say it during the episode. But I think Mick is one of the secrets in our industry. I think you're catching him before he blows up because what he's doing is absolutely

tremendous. So I hope you enjoy this episode. Before we get there, though, I want to give a big shout out to one of the sponsors that makes this show possible and that is better agency. Now, I want to be, I like to be very honest with you guys. I like to, you know, even though these companies are sponsors, I'm never going to put someone put a company in front of you that I think doesn't have your best interest in mind and there are all kinds of CRMs and automation tools. Some are specific to our industry. Some are not. It's pros and cons to all of them. Here's what I'm going to tell you. Today, this moment, if you do 75% or more of your business is personal lines insurance, you are crazy to not be on better agency. If you're doing 75% or more of your new business production,

of your agency in general is personal lines insurance you are absolutely bananas to not be on better agency absolutely bananas it is the best hands down uh just buy the box open the box get to work platform for personal lines that exist now they're bringing commercial lines along i'm helping them because i want the platform to work because i love nick and i love will and preston and mcbilly i've gotten to know these guys they're friends of mine i want them to be successful and i'm helping them with commercial lines, but like commercial lines is coming along, but personal lines is there. And some of the tools that they have, like the referral partner program, some of the other things they're doing, absolutely hands down the best personal lines CRM that exists in the

industry right now. And once they get commercial lines to fully functional, which is coming like in the next month, it's going to be absolutely insane. So go to betteragency.io, betteragency.io. Go to betteragency.com.com.com. today and make your agency better. All right. Let's get on to Mick Hunt and just do this thing.

What's up, man? How are you living? Trying to do the thing here. My kids' school lost power. We had a pretty bad storm last night and like 70 mile per hour winds just whipped through the whole area real quick. It literally lasts like 20 minutes, but it was brutal. and the kids school lost power.

And then the kids don't have school tomorrow because of Columbus State weekend. So I got a babysitter till one today, which is why I had to move up our call. So after here, I got to go pick them up. And then it's, I had a daddy day caring for the next day. That's good, man. It's good.

Yeah, it's good. Get on your soft side a little bit. causes me a lot of stress. It's okay, man. Because I like, I love dad time at dad appropriate times. Right. I know what you mean. At the times when I'm supposed to be dadding, I love to dad.

I love it. But in the times when I'm supposed to be working, I don't love to dad. Right. Favorite thing. You get all the interruptions and it starts to annoy you and it's like, geez. Yeah. Yeah. But I remember those days.

It is all good. I am, I'm super pumped you on the show, man. I know you don't do a lot of podcasts. And I'm just, I'm, I'm, I'm pretty excited to, to, for us to talk and to for, to share you and what you're doing and your thought process with the audience because I think, I think that I feel like I'm catching you before every, before you're like the national. the national guy. I feel like you're still like a little bit of a secret and I'm just excited to kind of let more people in on what you're doing, how you're doing it, what your methodology is. Just the size and scale of your operation. It's just so impressive and how fast you've grown. So I don't normally do this, but I'm just super, I would love to hear it in your words. Like Premier Strategy Box, what that is, what you're doing? I'd love for you to just break it down a little bit for everybody. Yeah.

So, you know, I honestly believe that there's six pillars that every agency, and really not just every agency, every business has to the core of who they are, right? So that's, for me, that sales management, lead generation, automation, operations management, HR, and marketing. And what Premier Strategy Box does is we bottle all of that or pieces of that, depending on what our clients and agency partners want. And we just do that for you. Right. So I look at us as like, we're the implementers. Most agency owners are smart people, right? And you can say that you can acknowledge that's because you're in this world now. You know exactly what to do. It's finding the time to get all these things done. It's finding the

resources to get all these things done. So that's where we step in. So when we talk about being your outsourced sales manager, we hold all your team meetings, we're going to run all your reports, we're going to do all your producer coaching, your producer training, your goal setting. We do all of that. When we talk about operations management, we're going to build your workflows and procedures. We're going to develop your account managers. We're going to make sure you have the right workflows in place so that everyone's workload is balanced. And then with automation, all those procedures that we put in place, we're going to automate them.

So we'll work inside of your CRM. We'll work inside of your management system and put in your renewal process and make it automated. We'll help you prospect through automation. So all the things that an agency needs to do that they know they need to do but don't have time to do it

and do it effectively and efficiently, that's what we do. God, like you're breaking down my dream scenario right there. But I was an agency owner before, So like I knew like and you know my story and a lot of people know my story right. I went from zero to three million of revenue in three years, not premium but revenue.

And I did it by having to simplify processes, procedures and everything in place. A lot of sales focused processes and procedures and that's just what it's about. Yeah. What do you when someone, so obviously I'm in the tornado right now and I'm my own worst enemy because I probably talk to people too much. I've chased too many shiny objects, all the things that, all the things that you're not supposed to do, I do all of them. And half the time when you and I talk, it's me like exercising my demons at you, just like telling you all the stupid shit that I had done that week that I know I shouldn't

be doing, but I'm doing it anyways. And, you know, so I, I'm listening and like every one of those things is a pain point for me right now, but I'm sure for many agencies, it's probably not all of them, maybe one of them they've had time to focus on and maybe a couple others, you know, they really struggle with. Where have you seen? Like when you first take on a new client or someone comes and they call you, what is one of the most common of the six that is obviously a pain spot? Like where do you see kind of what's the one where you're like, yeah, most likely you're not doing this or you haven't done this? Like does that make sense? It's two. Yeah, totally. It's two. It's sales management and then automation, right? Because you and I've talked about this offline before. We're in this, what I'm going to call the insurance renaissance or the insurance revolution, right? And so many great things are changing in our industry with technology and data and automation. It overwhelms a lot of people and they don't know where to begin. So they hear all this great talk about where the industry is going and how consumers are changing their buying process, but they don't know where to begin. And that's why.

just what we do. So the automation piece is huge. And then obviously sales management. Most of, most of the agency owners who got into the business got into the business because they were great producers, right? No one taught them how to manage other people. No one taught them how to coach and develop other salespeople. You were just really good. So you started your own agency. That's what we also help with. Like we help develop. It doesn't matter if you're a new salesperson or an experienced salesperson. We help develop and get those right behaviors and mindsets in place. Yeah. And I don't want you to give away any of your secrets that you're... Dude, ask me anything because, you know, I don't care, man.

I love giving back, so I don't care. There's no secrets. Good, good. So for everyone listening at home, I met Mick at Billy Williams' is event in February before the Rona forced us home. The Rona. Yeah. Or maybe I should say the benevolent dictators of our society decided that we couldn't leave our homes any longer because we can't make decisions for ourselves because of the Rona. And, you know, maybe this isn't mutual, but I feel like we immediately hit it off in terms of just how we looked at the industry and all that kind of stuff. When you think about,

so I actually want to take, I want to talk about one that I hear a lot from agents are struggling with that I don't necessarily have a great answer for them, but I do hear, I hear this question a lot or I heal people talking about it and feel like they're struggling about. And that's lead management and lead organization and lead development. You know, it seems like people are often, it's almost, I don't want to say by accident because so many people in our industry are hardworking. That's not what I actually mean. But they catch a vein.

They catch a mortgage broker who's really good or they have a brother or sister or brother-in-law, sister-in-law who's an accountant and feeds them business. they catch this one referral source that lifts them up off the ground and then they kind of start to plateau and they're like I'm not really sure how to go beyond this. How do I get further? Because I hit this one vein. That was great. That got me kind of escape velocity. But now where do I go? So I feel like, you know, a lot of the conversations we've had, you have a really good philosophy thought process through through just developing leads, working leads, bringing them through, getting them to your people. Like talk me, I'd love to talk through that process.

at a high level because it does feel like a really, it feels like a pain point for a lot of agents. Yeah, for sure. And there's a few ways to go about it, right? So prior to your girl, the Rona coming out, I used to tell all of our clients, you need to go join associations. You need to be visible in associations, knowing that it's a slow play. And that's the one thing that I make sure I talk to agents about. Lead generation is always going to be a slow play. If you need instant gratification, it's not going to work. Go get non-standard auto or non-standard commercial leads. You can do that all day.

But if you really want to get quality, it's got to be a slow play, but targeted the right way. So join associations. And I actually was going to have this conversation with you tomorrow because, you know, we talk like every Friday or every other Friday. Start a virtual event. I have one of my clients, or actually a few of my clients, started their own virtual event. They invited some of their clients and told their clients to invite other clients, right? So before you know it, you've got a 100, 150 person virtual event and only 30% are actually your clients. Now all of a

sudden you have this bigger market to go capture and they know you and it's a great referral base. So that's one. Two, you know my jam is commercial. You know my jam is worker comp ex-states, right? So there's different sources out there, whether you go through My Edge, through ZyWave or insurance that states. All those guys are great partners of mine. Setting up the right automated prospecting campaign is key. It's really key. So, you know, I have clients to do it a couple of different ways. I have a couple of clients that they don't want to start prospecting until after that renewal's happened. So believe it or not, with the larger mid-market folks, right, they want to work you for nine months before they go, right? Some of my guys are,

on the smaller to small, I'm sorry, the large small to small mid market, they're going to start prospecting 90 to 120 days out. But whatever it is, you need to have an automated game plan that includes email content, which Ryan Hanley is the king of content. And thank you, by the way, because you've helped some of my clients with content, so I appreciate you there. So content, phone calls, task reminders, all those follow-ups have to be a part of your lead generation campaign building. Was that high level enough? No, no, that's great.

And for people, you know, if you're listening, you know, one of the sponsors of the show, I use better agency. And, you know, you can do this in any, you can do this kind of thing in any, really any CRM, whether it's correct. Active campaign and Fusion Soft, agency Zoom, they all have it.

I use better agency for it. That's just my tool of choice. And I like supporting those guys. And I think they're doing great stuff. But I think, you know, one of the places that I've seen success and I'm starting to, you know, this is about two months into really working this process. You know, I, I, you know, you work with David Carruthers and I work with you and, and I get all these different ideas. And really, when I, you know, the thought process comes back to, it's all the same stuff. You have to keep

educating people. You have to stay in front of them. It might be four months before one, of those different messages pops to them, right? Like maybe injury management doesn't mean anything to them. Commercial auto. They're like, ah, you know, whatever. And then all of a sudden you talk about preliminary experience mom, they're like, oh, my agent has never talked to me about preliminary experience mod. Like, what the heck is this? And they pick up the phone and call. Or they're just receptive to your call when you call or the email. They respond to the email or whatever. That team has been the different types of touches all coordinated around the same type of message. That has definitely been one of the things that I've picked up in this iteration

of my career that I have seen success with. That's where we've had some success. And this live event one that you, our virtual event, we were actually talking about this the other day, how I ran a workers' comp webinar. And if you were to watch it, it's rough. I mean, I am, there are some topics that at the time that I did it, I still was pretty raw on and I was, I was bullshitting pretty hard. But, man, I've gotten four, four clients now out of a webinar that had 36 people on it. Dude, I'm telling you, if you have a niche, and when I say niche and you and I talk about

this a lot. A niche can be a product client. So your niche can be workers comp, right? Yeah. Your niche could be contractors. Your niche could be restaurants. Whatever it is. Develop a webinar around your niche and do it continuously. You'll be surprised at how many people start attending and how the work starts to get out. We're seeing so much success with our clients, especially those that do benefits. Oh my God. Like it's crazy. We just set up, like I was telling you, 150 person virtual event just around benefits. And again, only 25 of my client's clients were on the call.

And guess how many they wrote out of the 150? Yeah. How many? 22. Ooh. Oh, benefits. That's. Exactly.

Yeah, that's the money. Exactly. Exactly. The other thing, too, with these webinars and live events and stuff, they're so easy to build now with Zoom and Zoom meetings or Zoom webinar. like they're almost idiot proof like it's like right this in here put this put a title in here three sentence description little image hit publish send link out like it's that it's really that simple and um and i found that just emailing just straight emailing people going hey man i'm doing a

webinar here's the link like i'd love for you to show up and and let anyone else know and you'll see um you you'll just you'll see your numbers grow and you you're you don't need to have 500 people on the webinar. Exactly. You know, I think that's the other thing. And I've talked to a couple agents who about the webinar and they're, you know, they're always like, I don't know how I'll get people on there. That's always the biggest concern, not necessarily what they'll say, but how do I get people

on the webinar? I think they're worried about putting a webinar on having no one's show. Well, I'm going to let everyone in on a secret. I did a webinar for workers comp, 50 people registered, 36 people showed. I signed up four clients. That's great. I'm perfectly happy with that. Exactly.

Exactly. All told, it was three and a half hours of work. That's total three and a half hours of work to get four clients. I'll take that all day. Great R-O-R-A. I set up a cyber webinar and I didn't love the hook. I didn't really put enough work into it. Two people signed up.

Guess what I did? Canceled it. Right. Guess what happened in my life? Nothing. Nothing. It's like, so it's the worst thing that can happen is not enough people show up. And what you do and what I did for those two people that did sign up was I sent them

individual emails. I said, hey, a couple of things have come up. We're not going to put the webinar on. But I'd love to do one on one on with you. If you're interested, one of them said no. One of them said yes. I wrote a little, you know, $2,000 cyberpals. So it's, you know, I feel like so much of this man. And you and I talk about this. It's like so much of this is in our head. Like so it's like it's all up here. How when you, when you are talking to, you, you are talking to, say an agency owner and they come to you and they say, Mick, you know, here's what I got going on. I got a couple of producers. I'm struggling with keeping it all together. What are some of the things that you'll talk to them about or what are some of the things? How do we get our mind right?

How do we start to align our mental so that we don't constantly feel overwhelmed and we can start to grab onto this stuff? So it starts with number one having a goal, having a plan and a vision. So I always ask, so what are your goals? What do you plan? What are your vision? what have you been doing historically and what went wrong? And usually when I hear about what went wrong or what's not going right, we can figure out the solution. Because again, I've got one of my agents who's actually a great friend of mine doing really great with sales, but his passion is technology. So he's been trying to lead cells as a technology person. You know, tech people don't communicate very well, right?

Like they're black and white. So I said, you know, look, his name's Jeff, Jeff. Let me take over the sales management piece. I'll get your people the right way. I'll communicate effectively with them. And he's having the best three months in a row that he's ever had, the history of his agency. Right.

So it's really just pinpointing, again, where are your goals? What have you been doing to try to accomplish those goals? But more importantly, what went wrong? And then let me step in and figure out how to solve what went wrong. Yeah. Because you're right. A lot of it is in your head because we hear so many things and we try so many things that we give up after two weeks.

Oh, this doesn't work. Let me go try this. Oh, this doesn't work. I just heard about this from Ryan on his podcast. Let me go try that. You have to give something a try, right? You've got to build that plan. You've got to let some execution happen.

And again, if you want instant gratification, this business isn't for you. Like, this isn't an instant gratification business. It's just not. Yeah. You know, that's one of the things that I definitely have struggled with is one, I hadn't worked by myself in a long time, like a really long time. Like I had been leading teams of at least 10 to 15 people for half a decade.

And all of a sudden, I'm back to just me. There's no, there's no ability to offload anything. There's, there's none of that. And there's no process in place, no systems. And I think what we do is we, we, instead of taking the time to step back and I've really started to do this. So Chris Paradiso, who just was on the podcast recently, he turned on to this, like, I guess you call it like one of these journal things. It's called Living Your Best Year Ever. It's from Darren Hardy. And, you know, there's a million of these different journals.

And whichever one you pick doesn't necessarily matter. That's not, I'm not trying to say this is the one for everybody. because I actually have kind of a hybrid version of it that I've been using. But what has been working for me and what after talking to Chris, what he really convinced me of is you have to have a plan and you have to track your activity versus that plan. And whether you have a 20 person team or it's just you, and I do think when you have a smaller team,

it's even more important because there's less layers to pick up things that fall through the cracks, right? If I don't pick it up, it hits the floor. So I think this idea of tracking, of tracking your time, your activity, where are you spending, I've already found out. And people at home can't see this. So what I do is I use this living your best year ever journal to kind of figure out, it helped me figure out, or at least come up with a plan for what I wanted. That was my goal. I'm terrible at goal setting. I've even talked to you about that. Like, I've never been a goal setter. I'm always just,

I'm going to try as hard as I possibly can and whatever happens happens because goals are bullshit. That was always my mentality. I'm since learning the error to that thought process, but that's kind of always the way I've been. So this helped me set the goal. And then I use a hybrid like bullet journal to literally track what I'm doing during the day.

How many cold calls have it made? How many prospecting emails? How many postcards have I sent out? Because are you using thanks.io for postcards? I have a few clients. I have, yes. Bro, I love it.

You set these automated things up and then you just do a tag in your system and it zaps over and the postcard just goes out. It's done. That's a game changer. How many thank you notes have I sent? And then how many tasks and I have a task list over here, which I then rewrite each day. So as I close things out, so basically I'm tracking my activity. And what I found is, and this has been super interesting. And I apologize that I'm bogarting this with this topic.

But this has just been super interesting to me is what it's shown me is my propensity is to do tasks. I, if left my own devices, I'll do, I'll skew towards getting tasks done that have to get done. I mean, these are things that need to get done in the business versus prospecting. I'll fight the urge to prospect and go tasks. And like I'm in what that it's like been this light bulb over my head. Ryan, you have to fight this because you'll just task, task, task, task, task all day and not prospect. When I have no problem prospecting just because I tend to be less salesmen more. I'm so used to being organizational leader.

And that was my focus. And sales was done. by people on my team that I've like trained myself out of being a consistent salesperson. And this like completely opened my eyes. And bringing it all the way back by, you know, working with someone like you and, and the, you know, agencies that are, that work with you and some of the ones that I've talked to about some of the content stuff. Like, um, this is exactly what you guys do is you kind of, you're kind of skewing people

back into this frame and helping them better understand. Here, we're going to manage these tasks for you so you can do the things that actually make your agency money. Exactly. And to your point, a lot of agencies are set up the exact same way that you are mentally, right? So, you know, they put folks in a bottle and say, okay, you're going to be an agent, you're going to do sales and service. Well, 80% of your staff are always going to do service first. They're always going to be like Ryan and want to do the task. But yet you have these goals for them on sales and service is always going to win. they're always going to complain, oh, well, I didn't have time to make 50 calls today because, you know, Sally called in about her endorsement and I had to call five underwriters to get that done because that's what they would rather do. Yeah.

Right. So we help you in your agency determine who are your service people and who are your salespeople. And we let your salespeople sell and your service people service and you grow much better that way, right? Just by doing something that simple. And I know you're not there yet, but you're getting there, right? You have a couple of people on deck that are going to come be that. aspect or that sales feast because at least you've identified that's not you you will market all day you will organize all day but i can't get ryan to make 35 phone calls because it's not you yeah i

it is such a struggle for me man i i hate that it is like i'd love to be that big alpha i make 100 phone calls a day i'd love to be that guy but if it's not you why make you be that yeah it grind and i hate there is a part of me that's like I wish, I do wish that I was that person who like woke up in the morning and was like, I can't wait to just hammer out my phone calls. And there are people out there. They're very successful producers. Right. Right. Right. They love this. They love it. And I, I envy them. I honestly do. If you are listening to this and you wake up in the morning and you just can't wait to go prospect, I envy the hell out of you. Like I just do. Like I, it is just such a struggle for me to do that.

and even if I talk, I, whatever, we've talked about it. It drives me freaking crazy. It's like a personality hiccup that I hate about myself. Well, so when we teach it, when we teach prospecting, when we coach prospecting, we coach and make it a game because a lot of us are competitive. So we make it a game to get past the gatekeeper. You know, we have little tips and tricks that we use, some opening one liners that,

you know, break the ice a little bit. But yeah, I mean, you have to, in the prospecting world, you just have to know, all right, I've got 50 calls. I got to get through today, right? And it's not Ryan, but it's okay. Yeah. You know what? One of the things, and I, so I have been making calls,

and I have been starting to get some traction, and it's making me feel, I'm getting more comfortable. I'm not going to say that I'm waking up every day, dying to make my calls, but tracking my activity has helped pull me back in because I'll be like, oh shit, I've done six tasks today, and I haven't hit my calls yet. I got to do my calls. So that's been helping. But one of the ideas that is probably going to sound super obvious to you,

but to me has been very eye-opening and I've really, it's just helped me reshape my focus on this, has been this concept of detaching yourself from the outcome. And I don't remember exactly who said it. And I'm not, I'm going to butcher the quote. So I'm not even going to try to hit it exactly. But the concept was,

I was listening to a podcast and there's a sales guy. It was Josh Braun. I don't know if anyone's seen him on LinkedIn. He's sales guide, sales DNA, something like that. I think that's his name, Josh Braun. He always quotes Chris Voss, if that resonates with anyone. But he wrote this thing on LinkedIn and he's like, the number one thing keeping people from consistently doing prospecting phone calls outreach

is that they're attached to the outcome. They think that they have, they, they, their ego, makes them believe that they have anything to do with the outcome. He's like, you have nothing to do with the outcome. All you can do is present yourself in a way that that can resonate with the client or the client can potentially connect to. And they're either going to say yes or no. And like, you don't know if they just had an argument with their spouse or whatever.

And that concept, I just had never really, I had always thought the outcome was the whole thing. Like, you know, I just false. was like, you know, God, what if they say no? Oh my God. What am I a loser? What if I see them on the golf course? And they just said no to me on a prospecting call. You know, what the hell? And and I really started thinking about that. And that has helped me pick up the phone more. And I'm just like, I don't give a shit. Who cares? No. And so ironically, right before we started this today, I was just finishing up a coaching call with a brand new producer, brand new, just graduated

college, first insurance job, first sales job. And I used to, and I used to do that. And I used to this analogy and I think you'll get it because you like baseball too right in baseball your best hitter has what batting average 300 so that means 70% of the time they're not going to first base bro yeah so think of it in that in that context man like you're not going to close 100% you're not going to contact 100% you're not going to get a yes 100 of the time why why do you let that outcome bother you so much. It's, you know, see, sometimes people say shit and it makes me so mad because it makes so much sense.

Like that, because, because, so I'll tell you, this is going to be a very brief contextual aside, but thankfully it's my show so I can do this. I was a pretty good hitter coming out of high school. I got to college and my college coach was one of those coaches where like every at bat was your job. If you look bad on a strikeout, all of a sudden, you'd be on the bench and someone would be in your position. You know what I mean? He's just one of those guys that like he just, he thought that the best way to do it was to keep this constant sack of pressure on on top of your shoulders. And like, if you had two bad groundouts, you know, or got sought off because

you couldn't get around on an inside pitch, he'd be like, oh, nope, you can't hit this guy. You're out. You know, this. And I did not thrive in that environment at all. I, if anything, you know, he, he, ended up leaving my junior year and my senior year we had a different coach come in I end up having my best my best year of my career in college but um it was just wild like coming out of high school where it was my job like if I had two bad games in a row it didn't matter that third game I was going back out I had the confidence I could just whack and then you make you know I always you know how it goes and in college it wasn't like that and I struggled well after college I played in this like semi-pro league down in Washington, D.C.

And it was a wood bat league, and I just could care less. Like, I was never going to be a pro. I wasn't getting drafted. Like this, you know, as many years as I played in that league, whenever it was over, it was over. This was the end for me. You know what I mean? Right.

And I just, like almost like cold calling. Like I detached myself. I did not care if I struck out. I didn't because it did not matter to me. I wasn't getting drafted. So, and I'll tell you, man, those were three of the best years of baseball I ever played in my life. You know, I had a full-time job working in an office. I'd show up with bloodstains soaking through my khaki pants.

And I played the best because I just didn't care. And until you just said that, I had never connected those years of my sports career with selling before. I'd never connected those two ideas. See? You don't have to hit a home run every time. It's like I'm on the couch right here. There you go. There you go.

I won't even send you a bill for this one. I won't even send you a bill. But no, I mean, seriously, once you put it in the context, man, every call is not going to be a home run. Every call doesn't lead. So why do you need to think that? Yeah. I teach our guys, you just want to get better with each call, right? You want to make sure you're going through the process, through the stages on each call.

And the results are going to happen how they're supposed to happen. I believe in good juju, right? Not juju-smithsuster, but good juju-joo, right? So I believe if you do the right things, results are going to happen. Yeah, good receiver, though, too. Yeah, I can't talk football right now because, you know, number one, I lost this weekend in our fantasy league to my son. I don't know how that happened.

And then you guys are like two games off on me in the conference now. Well, see, this is what it's been like for the rest of us for the last 20 years. So just so everyone knows. And you can judge him, Mick is a Patriots fan. Judge me. Lifelong Patriot fan, though. And for the last 20 years, you've lived in this la-la land of, oh, how come you guys can't compete with us?

Because you've had the best quarterback in the history of NFL ever, like for 20 years you had them. This is what the rest of us have lived with. This is what it's like. It's okay. It's okay. We'll be back. Don't worry.

We'll be back. The crazy part is, man, I'm watching you guys the other night. And it's, yeah, your quarterback situation is in trouble, and I'm not a fan of Cam Newton because I don't think that he studies enough to play, to win long term in a Belichick offense. That's my personal opinion. I think you need someone, I think his arm is fine. His legs are amazing.

He's obviously a tremendous athlete. But I don't know. I see some cracks in that armor, though he'll probably do fine. Belichick is a freaking genius. He just is. Like you watch these guys and the way they execute, especially the guys that have been around. Yep.

And you're like, wow. Like they're still, they're still performing an incredibly high level. It's preparation. He has a plan and they execute the plan. And it's the same thing in sales processes or operational processes. It's having the plan execute the plan. Yeah.

Don't get outside of who you're not. Yeah. We just lost everyone who isn't a football fan. And we talked about baseball. So there's like 10 people left listening to this episode. Bring them back, Ryan. Bring them back. Yeah.

So it's okay. So here's actually a very tactical question that I want to talk to you. So let's say someone listening is an agency owner like myself who sales. I did not start an agency because I was just a tremendous producer. I, you know, that's, you know, I started an agency because I see myself more as an organizational leader. and I have a process that I want to deliver to clients. And I think this business can be done in a way. I have a vision for how I would like to deliver an agency experience of clients.

That's what I'm trying to build. Okay. So let's say I want to go out and start bringing in producers. You know, I, so I brought in a producer. I have a producer. She's personal lines. She works. She lives in Staten Island, and she takes a lot of our personal lines leads that we get in,

and she's working them. And she's been with us for, she's been with me for two weeks, and she's doing great. I mean, we're working out some kinks. But in terms of hitting the ground running, she's doing tremendous, which is awesome. You know, any of her struggles are more process. They're more my, I need to work on process versus her being willing to pick up the phone and call and do all that kind of stuff. She's tremendous.

So I'm very, very happy. That being said, I would love to duplicate her in commercial lines. So here is the, here is, I'm going to hit you with scenarios that I've had in my head. And then you kind of help me massage out just what your advice would be. And hopefully this is valuable to everyone listening. So I've thought about one, so take into account that I do not have the budget to pay someone a salary. I don't have that.

So if that's the case, do I you know you talked about bringing in 22 year old producer and having them come in do I try to go get someone I mean I could pay them I could pay someone a small salary it'd be more like a stipend than a salary but I you know I do I just couldn't bring someone in at 45,000 dollars a year and then wait for them to get good it would have to be more of a stipend and commission and try to work or get them selling quickly. So one, do you think there's, do you think that's even something I should consider or is it a distraction? And two, um, depending on your answer to that, what would you do if you were in my position or, or if you're in an agency like mine who maybe doesn't have the cash to bring in

that producer, but knows that if they did, they could probably get that person going. What, what do you think? All right. So I'll take it in two stages. First stage, we talked about this. what, three months ago, right? Set a goal so you can hire someone. Like you need to have that goal so that you can't. Because here's what's going to happen in the commercial world. Can you find a 1099 commission-only person out there? Probably.

Are they going to be worth it? Probably not. That's just the God's honest truth. Unless you're finding an agent who wants the opportunity to build their own and they just need that structure or the resources to go do that from a carrier appetite or from a carrier standpoint, maybe you can find that person. I would say it's a distraction if you're not going to invest in paying someone. And why do I say it's a distraction?

You're going to get out what you put in. Right. If you want someone commission only, do you really have expectations for them? probably not you have goals for them but do you have an expectation yeah right if you invest money into an employee you have an expectation not only do you have goals but you have an expectation and that's what i would say is wait until you know or that you can take the leap of faith and say okay i'm going to bring someone in because commercial is a slower game home and auto yeah you can write those today right commercial it takes

a little bit of time. So you get that person that's commissioned only and it takes them 90 days to write their first real account. Yeah, they can write some small bops here and there, but their first real account, it might take 90 to 120 days just because that's the lay of the land. What are they going to be doing to Ryan for those 90 to 120 days? Bgging the shit out of you. Yeah. Right. And probably looking for another job. Yeah. Yep. No, that makes a lot of sense. So, So, okay. I didn't tell you what you wanted to hear, did I?

No, no, no, that's fine. No, I was just presenting you the ceremony. I knew we had talked about it, but I like talking through these scenarios because I know there's a lot of people who have these questions, right? I mean, it's not, you know, I like to present it as me because it's just easier

to talk through it, but I think, you know, that is the plan that I'm on. I just, you know, I'm always feeling froggy. I just, you know. No, I would say unless it's a producer, that is somewhere where they're limited in growth and they're never going to have ownership or equity in their book, it's going to be hard to find someone commissioned only on commercial. But now, if you can work that to where, you know, hey, come to rogue risk,

you can get equity in the book of business that you're building. I can give you a monthly stipend to get you going for the first couple of months. Here you go. That angle could definitely work. Yeah. You know, one thing that I have wanted to do, and I actually was talking about, talking to David Crothers a little bit about this, because he, he has a really, he is a really employee, friendly focused setup in his agency. He, he's building the agency, which I really like this mentality. He has, he gives everybody an opportunity to be, have a deeper interest in this business. it's probably a good way to put it. And I think that's the right way to go.

I think especially with the talented individuals that we're seeing kind of come up in this next generation. And I know because I'm kind of feel this way too. Like you want to feel like you have some sort of ownership in the thing if you're going to invest yourself in it. I think this mentality that millennials and Zs and whoever whatever letter you want to put on them don't give a shit, I think it's false.

I think they want more than anything to believe in something. Look at all the craziness that's going out in the world. On both sides and every way, shape, and form, people just want something to believe in. The problem is for so long, we've just been told, you know, pat you on the head, hey, wait your turn or earn your, you know, you got to pay your dues, which I do think you have to work for things.

That's not what I'm saying. But I also think there, you know, people want to be invested in the things that they invest their time in. There's so many options today. So one of the things that I've been mapping out in my crazy time, which is time which I should be like watching friends or something. Friends, I'm watching Friends, Parks and Rec or some other show or sports,

I'm mapping out these things in a freaking Excel spreadsheet. Why the hell did I say friends? Jesus. I don't even know if I was watching it. It was cool. You texted me last night, Hey, Mick, are you watching Friends? And I was like, do that.

That's the wrong. Mick. That's the other Mick. So I was, you know, I definitely, you know, I think, you know, I think it makes a lot of sense to allow producers to have a portion, a portion of what they produce, have some ownership in that. Just in what they produce, doesn't have to be the whole agency, but to feel like they're building something that they, and I don't know exactly how that works. and if it's real equity or not equity or just some sort of phantom piece that pays them on the profitability of their books. So they're thinking about it from the same perspective and aligning interests with the agency. And some of these things are things that maybe an agency my size shouldn't be thinking about.

But at the same time, I think they're important ideas for all of us to be considering all the time. Because if you're not recruiting, if you're not recruiting as an agency owner, what are you doing? No, I agree. And that methodology was what I did in my agency as well too, right? Because at the end of the day, you don't want to burn and churn producers, right? So why not reward your really good producers with that piece? Because now you're promoting longevity. You're promoting, hey, this is something you can work and strive towards.

And at the end of the day, why would you not want someone whose goal is to be a partner at your agency? Why would you not want that? right so i'm all about promoting equity giving equity because again that you hit it on the head our industry's changing the people coming to our industry are changing as we get younger like we have to compete with other industries that are going to do these type things yeah um what do you think about vAs where do vAs fit what where do you see them playing a role um you know just in general all this is a huge topic. Where do you see VAs playing into this system? Yep. So when I had my agency, we had VAs. Anything that was not customer facing, I'd rather let other folks handle it.

I wanted the people in my agency that were customer facing focus on building the relationships and let your VAs handle. This is going to sound terrible, but I think you understand I'm saying, handle that grunt work, man. Handle those endorsements. Handle those endorsements. handle those simple quotes that can be done. Handle the accord building. Handle all the accords. To me, you're going to be better when you can have a streamlined process of, all right, here's customer facing roles and tasks.

Here's non-customer facing roles and task. And what you're going to realize are those non-facing, those non-customer facing roles and tasks are easily done by VAs because they're going to do it well. They're going to do it quick and they're going to do it right. Yeah. Yeah. My thoughts and my thoughts only.

No, I agree with you. You know, I think about it, the way I think about VAs having some experience now with agency VA. I have a part-time VA who works four hours a day for me. And again, agency VA is the company I use. There are others out there. But one, I just love Wes and Ben to death. And two, I think they're people do a tremendous job.

And what I, the way I've kind of thought about it is my, via his name is Tom and his the manager I guess is her name is Lally I have had nothing but a positive experience with them they're responsive they're thinking they're they're solving problems and and really helping me I mean they've been a huge huge help I mean the amount of training that I would have had to do you know if I had hired someone off someone off the street versus versus bringing in individuals who have some experience in the space and understand it. Exactly. It's night and day. And the way I think about it is horsepower, right? Like I, you, you buy the, you buy the vehicle and it comes, you know, 350 horsepower.

I don't know, cars. I'm not even going to try to pretend like I do. You know, but you, you comes to 350 horsepower and then you go get a catalytic converter and you plug that shit in there and all of a sudden it's got 400 horsepower. And like, that's what this is. It's a, they're, they're customized employees. who perform certain tasks for you on a repeated basis that give your agency horsepower. And I think they can be done well. I think it can be a pain in the ass.

But a lot of that comes back to how you started this conversation. It's you, can you set up the process and procedures in your agency to do it? So are you guys helping, are VA is part of what you're doing? Are you bringing VAs into part of, into some of these agencies helping introduce them if they're not using them already? Yes, so several of our agency partners, we've introduced VAs too, especially on the commercial processing side, on the commercial quoting side. So when we come in on the operation side of the piece and do operations management, we look

at your current procedures processed as workflows, if you have them. A lot of folks don't. But we will recommend, okay, so let's talk about your new business process. So here's what prospecting is. Here's how the quote gets handled. here's what the first renewal looks like. Where can a VA step in and handle a lot of this work, right? You don't have the bandwidth to go hire three people,

but you could hire three VAs and be much more efficient to the point that you just say to so eloquently, add horsepower to your agency. I love that, right? So we do that on the new business process. We do that with the renewal process, right? We have several agencies who love to re-quote every renewal, shop every renewal. That's great. Let a VA handle that. I'm not going to change who you are.

If you're like, hey, my retention is 98% and this is why, that's awesome. We're going to let you do that, but why not have a VA there that can go in and do that more effectively and let your, I'm going to say human, let your office person be the salesman, right? Even the renewal process, even your service person that service now can keep that relationship going with your Zixman customer. So love VAs. Yeah, I mean, so I'm going to, I'm going to adjust course again, but as you talk, different ideas come and I'm just interested in your perspective on these things. Let's assume there are just for the point, for this part of the conversation, there are three types of business that you could focus on. Personal lines, small commercial and like that middle market, larger small commercial.

So, but, you know, wherever that line is, who cares? But there's three types, right? There's small commercial, middle market commercial, and there's personal lines. Where should we focus our time? And I know that is a very, it depends question. So take it wherever you want. But, you know, I'm constantly of two minds on this particular topic. I'm just super interested in where you are because middle market commercial with the tools

and technology that have started to be presented to agents today has become much more accessible to a wider range of agencies than maybe was previously thought five or 10 years ago. Today, I could be a middle market agency as a one person show. Oh, wholeheartedly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I think that wasn't necessarily a widely held belief even maybe three or four years ago. So take that where you want.

You have those three lines of business. Yep. Where would you start to go? Where do you see opportunity coming, you know, and all that? So when I had my agency, we focused on what I would consider large, small, or that small mid-market. Right. I think that space has been a dominating area for the last 10, 15 years. So, and I talk revenue versus premium because you can't spend premium, right?

Like, I can go spend revenue all day. So our average account was 18,000 of revenue. And my agency, I don't know if you remember this or not, but we were all. virtual and digital. So this was before Rona. Like I set my agency up. Not a soul came into a physical location. My producers were remote. We did everything, email, and web video. And this was back when you only had WebEx as the only player or join me. Join that me. That was it, right? Everything, everything that we did was virtual and digital. And again, three million of revenue in three years. average 18,000 of revenue, our largest account was 225,000 of revenue, right? To me,

that's where I would focus because you're going to get the greater ROI. And I'm not the, a lot of sales coaches or sales mentors will tell you, don't worry about price. That's bullshit, right? Price is always going to be important. But when you're focused on personal lines and small commercial, all you have is price for the most part, right? Your salesmanship the game of salesmanship isn't as important in small commercial and personal lines. Relationship building is important, but the game within the game, I can do that great in the large, small, or mid-market. So that's where we focus.

That's where my agency partners that are with us now, that's where we're changing our focus to. So, you know, we talk about less double and triple your revenue, let's double triple your goals. And everyone thinks, oh, that means I have to work to a little. three times harder. No. You just have to have your prospect's revenue double or triple. You don't have to change what you are. You just go after the larger accounts. Do you think, so it feels to me like there's a hardening in the market coming. And a lot of trade publications and talked about this. And I'm not saying that is a bad thing, good thing, whatever. It's definitely going to be a change. There's the days of whoever has the most markets wins because you just find the lowest price

are probably going to be less. Not ever gone, but less. So do you think, you know, do you think it makes sense for agencies considering how automated you can make personal lines today? You can really make a consistent personal lines automated flow of business. You can really consistently drive in, reasonable cost opportunities into a producer. If you have a good flow, if you have a good technology, you can really kind of keep a consistent flow of person lines going.

Do you think that's a waste of time to build that out? Do you think that it's going to be lower revenue? But like in New York State, there's only like three carriers that even write commercial auto in New York State. So if you had commercial auto on your books, two of the major carriers, literally just non-renewed, all of their clients. And the prices are going through the roof. So whatever you have on the books is great. But trying to write new commercial auto today is brutal because you just, you can't find it. So I guess my point in saying that to you is with this middle market,

it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Right. We, you know, there is, you know, it can, one of your best carrier can chop a line of business and now you're, you're scrambling where personal lines seems like, you know, you. kind of just it just kind of if you do it right it just kind of slowly ticks up and grows and grows and grows and grows and grows and when you have these weird market moves personal lines seems to always kind of be there so do you think that's a smart play or do one then do the other what what do you think so if you're going to do personal lines that way what i would do is set it up to where with your carrier partners that your prospects can bind themselves right and by that i mean

make sure your website's intuitive. You can ask the right questions. Get with Billy Williams and have him build you one of his chatbots. So you can get all the questions answered, build the API to go through, have it go direct to the carrier so that a person can bind themselves. That's how I would do personalize. Right. So I had a cyber liability product where literally you answered seven questions on my website.

Press quote, press bind. It was done. I didn't touch a single person. I had over 80,000 of revenue of cyber for people I never talked to, never touched. It was its own standalone product. So if you can do personal lines like that, if you can have the right carriers that you can build some good tools on your website, that people can buy themselves do it because that's good, easy, strong revenue. But you don't think that it makes sense to have any type of, it doesn't make sense to have staff attached to personal lines or spending a lot of time thinking,

and investing in personal lines today. You just can't get there quick enough. You can't get to escape velocity. The ROI, the ROI for green new business person lines is low. It's very, very low. Now, I'm not saying get rid of your existing personal lines, but for some of the folks on the calls that are large on personal lines. I'm not saying that at all.

But I think everyone understands the challenge of getting green new business and personal lines. The ROI, that's very, very low. Yeah. Yeah. Just again, what I see with the clients that I have, I think it's fair. There's no, the best, here's my favorite part about our business.

There is literally no right or wrong answer. Everybody has their own niche in their own way and what works for you, works for you, especially depending on where you're at, right? Like you can be in North Carolina where personal lines sucks, but in Pennsylvania where personal lines is doing okay. Yeah. It just totally depends. Yeah, I mean, the thing for me up here,

and I look at my wife's business all the time too and how well they do in personal lines, person lines in upstate New York. Downstate is a whole other thing. I mean, frankly, I wish they would just cut it off and make it the 51st state. But,

you know, just take like basically Westchester, South and just fom, you know, and make them, there's nothing wrong with those people. It's just,

it's literally a different place. That's just everything about it as. And just think of geographically. Like you have flood issues down there that we don't have up here. You have storm issues, hurricane issues that you don't have up here. You have density and population issues that you don't have up here, coastal issues.

So it's not just that those people are crazy. It's that, you know, they also is like it just is like a different place. New York's and not to keep that way. For sure. But in upstate, man, you personal lines, you get a package. You get someone in a home auto umbrella package with a solid carrier, a MetLife, a New York Central, a safeco, a traveler, someone like that. You have five to seven years with that person.

They're not going to leave. Like the ability for another agent to rewrite an account from you that you have a home auto umbrella package with somebody, they're just, it's, it's near impossible. Like it's just the rates don't change that much. The coverages don't change to get them in that package. You've had to have given them good coverage to begin. So I go back and forth on that because, you know, when I when I can get personal lines in, we actually can do it pretty easily.

I have the carriers. You know, I need to work on the systems a little bit. But you're right, it's singles. It's bunt singles. You know what I mean? It's, hey, I just made $300 today. You know what I mean? Like, not that I'm not on nothing, that's nothing, but.

No, but if you can build the right automation inside your CRM. And like I said, if you can direct some things to your site and you can have like an auto issue on your website or even just going straight to the carrier, like that can work. Yeah. I just wouldn't put a ton of staff resources for new business personal lines. And I want people to understand these are my thoughts and my thoughts only. And I'm saying new business personal lines.

I'm not saying, can't be done. Not send Mick hate DMs on LinkedIn because he doesn't like personal lines. Don't do it. I'm just saying it's the ROI is smaller. If you're going to do it, use a funny gif attached to the hate DM. Just make that happen. There you go.

Dude, I appreciate your thoughts. I appreciate you coming on here. I have enjoyed our relationship over the last, well, it's almost been a year now, has been tremendous. And I just think, you know, like I said, I think that what you're doing at Premier Strategy Box, though not a secret to everybody probably isn't widely enough known.

And I think for the people who are the right fit for what you're doing, I just, I really, I really think it's a tremendous, tremendous service and people can't go wrong. I mean, so I just, I just thanks, man. I mean, I just want to say thank you. And where, let everyone know where they can connect with you, you know, just get into your ecosystem. Yeah, really quick. So my strategy box.com. That's the website. On LinkedIn, Mick Hunt, I don't know all my LinkedIn deals. There's just, there's only one Mick Hunt out there as me, right? So LinkedIn, Twitter,

you'll find me pretty active out there. But, you know, this isn't about me. I want to give Ryan a shout out too because just seeing where you've come. Like, I've known of you for several years, obviously, being in the insurance industry, but then getting to know you, getting to meet you face to face, and then the relationship that we've built. And just seeing how far you've come. I'm really proud of you.

I text you, what, once a week, I'm proud of you. And you're like, for what? I'm like, too, just because you're continuing the grind, man. Like, it's hard. It's hard to do it, especially in this world of haters, where, you're, you're, you're It's like people want people to not succeed. It's like I'm the total opposite. Like I want you to be the best version of you like every day.

So I'm proud of you literally every day. And if you're not on Ryan's content, if you're not seeing his content, you are behind because I promise you really soon, he's going to come for your clients because his content's amazing. I promise you. Wow. Well, thank you.

That means a lot to me. It really does. I think, you know, the thing you said about the haters is so funny. I think that oftentimes we are our biggest hater, we personally, and not to get too deep at the very end of a podcast. But, you know, those little messages and stuff, that shit means the world to people, man.

It means a lot to me. And I think all of us in general should take a lesson from what Mick just said, myself included. I said on, I told everyone in my bullet journal, thank you notes is one of my things. And it doesn't have to be thank you for doing business. Just thank you for whatever. Just thank you notes.

I want to write thank you notes and make that part of my process because I think that gratitude and support of other people, it's really important stuff that in this freaking crazy-ass world that we're currently living in, more gratitude, more caring is what we need. So I appreciate it, man. You know, I may say for what, but really, you know, they're nice messages to get and I do appreciate it.

So everybody, my strategybox.com, check it out. Just connect with Mick on LinkedIn at a minimum and just see what he's doing. You're going to thank yourself for doing it. I appreciate that, buddy. Yeah. All right. You had to slip that in. Go bills.

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