The Ryan Hanley Show - 217. 7 Challenges Independent Insurance Agents MUST Conquer in 2024

Episode Date: January 2, 2024

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.com7 Challenges Independent Insurance Agents MUST Conquer in 2024✅ Join the Insurance Growth Masterclass: https://masterclass.insure✅ For daily insights and ideas on peak performance: https://www.instagram.com/ryan_hanley/✅ Hire me to speak at your next event: https://ryanhanley.com/speakingJoin me as I unpack the seven pressing challenges facing independent insurance agents in our latest podcast discussion. As we navigate the hard market, securing carrier appointments, and the effects of industry consolidation, especially on smaller agencies, the road ahead is anything but smooth.I share personal insights on these hurdles and how the volatile political climate of an election year could further complicate our landscape. Plus, we can't ignore the seismic shifts brought on by remote workforces and artificial intelligence, or the insufficient support from technology partners amidst our growing reliance on InsurTech. These elements are all pivotal in our strategic approach to future-proofing our agencies.Listen in as I tackle the intricate balance of staying informed on societal and political fronts without allowing them to hijack our focus from professional responsibilities. I discuss the strategies for managing these distractions in the workplace and present the case for embracing remote work, highlighting the immense value of expanding our talent pool beyond geographical boundaries.Virtual assistants and the untapped potential of underrepresented demographics, such as single parents, could be the game-changers we need. Flexible working conditions might just be the key to unlocking new levels of productivity and commitment.To cap it off, we'll reflect on my journey from agency trenches to consultancy peaks, and how I'm leveraging that experience to guide others through the insurance growth masterclass. I touch on the importance of discerning trust within the industry, inspired by my conversation with the esteemed Billy Williams, and how to filter through the multitude of voices to find those that truly aid in business growth.Get ready to equip yourself with the knowledge and tactics that could very well be the linchpin for your agency's robust, sustainable growth.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we have one of my favorite types of episodes, a solo episode, where I'm going to break down the seven challenges that independent insurance agents and the industry in general, seven challenges that we must conquer in 2024. These are things that are absolutely going to impact our business. They're going to impact how we operate and how we navigate them and ultimately overcome these challenges and obstacles

are going to determine our success in 2024. And just to kind of not bury the lead here with this video, I do not think 2024 is going to be an easier year than 2023. And while I thought in general, 2022 was an easier year from 2021 and 2020. Obviously, coming out of COVID, that wasn't necessarily difficult. 2023 seemed to be a step back for me, just increased challenges in the market. The hard market didn't go away. And many of the agents that I'm friends with just having really detailed, nuanced conversations behind the scenes about how to properly position either their agency or other businesses that they own in the space,

different insure techs that they may be on advisory boards of or founders of, etc. So many challenges in 2023 that it would be nice if my feelings were 2024 was going to be just a straight easier year and things were going to loosen up and we could get back to business as usual. And my friends, I think the idea here is we need to realign what we see as business as usual. The days of just plugging along in the insurance industry seem to be coming to an end. And I've said this before, I've said this for almost a decade. You can't build your grandfather's agency today. You can't even build your mom or dad's agency today. You just can't. The way agencies are built, the way they operate, the things that we have to prioritize, how we structure these businesses are just intrinsically different

to how we did business even 10, 15 years ago. In my term in the insurance industry, 18 years, my first years were the traditional model was 100% the way you did business. And for the first two or three years, there was really no shaking that. And it wasn't until that 2008, 2009 timeframe when the internet started to kind of be seen as less as a fad and more as a reality, that the industry really started on a different trajectory. We lived through the 2016 insurtech revolution and held our ground. And now this kind of mashup of insurtech and independence has really become a symbiotic relationship, which is wonderful. And then obviously we had the COVID years and now we're a few years removed from that. And it's what does our baseline look like?

And today I'm going to walk you through the seven challenges that I see in 2024 that we need to think about and properly position our business for. And I'm going to run through them real quick, and then we're going to go back and address each individual one. Before we get there, anything that I reference in this video is going to be in the show notes, whether you're listening to the audio podcast or you're watching on YouTube, wherever you're watching or listening, I highly encourage you to subscribe to the show so that you get more episodes. I'm going to be doing more and more of these solo episodes where I'm breaking out specific topics and breaking them down for you guys. And if you want the deep dive, if you want the behind the scenes, if you want to really take your business to the next level, depending on when you're listening to this,

go to masterclass.insure. That's masterclass.insure. And you can either join the waiting list for my insurance growth masterclass, which is going to be a mastermind deep dive into everything I know, everything my network knows, everything that I've learned over the last 18 years in this business. And if we've already launched, then you can join at that link as well. So that's masterclass.ensure. There'll be a link below and links to everything that we talk about today. So what are the seven challenges specifically? So the first one is going to be the hard market and really a 1A is that carrier appointments aren't going to get any easier to come by. I think we overvalue carrier appointments

and I'm going to dig into that a little bit, but 1 and 1A are really the hard market and ultimately our access to markets to shop and place our customers are just going to be more difficult in 2024 than they were even in 2023. I see a consolidation in appointments. Carriers are focused on looking at things like contingency payments, bonuses, and all that kind of stuff. They're just reducing that and really focusing their efforts, particularly on middle market to larger agencies or high growth agencies. I think particularly the, say, 2 million in revenue or below agency is going to continue to face an uphill battle, headwinds, whatever you want to say, in getting market access. And this is why I think you see a big move in our industry to MGA. So we're going to talk a little bit about that.

Number two is this is an election year. 2024 is an election year, which means things are about to get crazy. The world is going to become filled with distractions, filled with turmoil. We're seeing it in multiple wars in 2023. And while, you know, it's easy to say, wow, I don't think about that kind of stuff, or I don't watch the news, it's going to impact your life. And I believe that to not address it early is going to be, is naive. So we're going to come back to the elections. Three is a remote workforce and outsourcing. Four is AI. Five is limited help coming from technology partners. I'm going to describe that one because obviously I love InsurTech and I love technology and what it can do for us. Number six is who do we trust? And number seven is organic growth. So let's get

back into the hard market. One of the biggest things that I've been getting since I have decided to launch Finding Peak, my insurance consulting firm, is, you know, Ryan, how are we supposed to grow when we don't have market access? How are you able to get, you know, north of 60 different markets for your previous agency? What did that look like? How did you address them? Get this question a lot. I'm going to do a whole video on this particular topic.

So make sure you're subscribed to the podcast or YouTube. If you want to get that, that's going to be coming out in January. And we're going to be doing deep dives into that in the insurance growth masterclass. But when it comes to getting markets, the way I look at this, my viewpoint has changed on this many different times. You can go very broad and take every appointment you can possibly get, or you can focus in on a few appointments and become very, very good at them. One, I did have one extremely viral video on LinkedIn. I will try to find it and have it linked up in the show notes below from, I think it was 2023.

It may even been late 2022, but from, I think it was 2023. It may even been late 2022, but I'm pretty sure it was 2023 where I said, what if we all just, we should all just become, you know, Hartford captive agents. And the idea there was their backend, their portal was so robust, so easy to use, so easy to train my team on that, you know, despite the fact that only having one market is never necessarily a good idea and it's just not good risk management for your agency, focusing in on the carriers that make your job easy that, you know, and this is something we don't often think about is how much time it takes to train our people on a particular carrier system. So carriers will come to you and they talk to you about their appetite and the niche markets they want to go after and the products they have and

their pricing and et cetera. And all that is great. But when the rubber really meets the road, if their system is tough to deal with, tough to train your people on, it takes up too much time. Your people are going to avoid that market and you're going to spend an inordinate amount of time pushing them to go back to that market. And just the friction in the pace of business is going to struggle. So I think thinking about our carrier appointments from the standpoint of pick, you know, if you don't have the carriers you want today, it may make sense to join a network. That just may be the answer. I think there are a lot of incredible networks out there. SIA, my previous employer being one of them. I know a lot of people have mixed feelings on networks. Some people love

them. Some people don't. But I will tell you, having lived in that world for a while, if you are a good fit for a network, there are incredible places. And there's all different varieties. Insurance Soup has a tremendous program that they're building out if you're in that market, if that's kind of where you want to go. There's obviously SIA, as I stated before. And I actually have a couple podcast interviews coming up with people involved in the network space just to give you guys a broader understanding of what they are, how you make that determination as to whether to join one and how to maximize your participation in a network or aggregator. The other option is to look at MGAs and to build your book using MGAs. Now you take, you know, there's a little bit of workflow, but there are

some new MGAs that are out there that are making this flow very easy. A lot of them tend to be niched, so you may have to have a few of them. But a broad spectrum of quality MGAs and wholesalers is probably going to be your best answer until you can really dial in and focus on the carrier appointments that you want. So figuring out who you're going to work best with, making sure that they're a market that is easy to work with. And when I say easy, I literally mean getting the information into their system and getting information out. The harder that process is, if they don't do download, et cetera, you're going to struggle with your people to actually get in there. And you probably feel that today. So, you know, it may seem weird to say, I don't want to do business with you, carrier A, not because I don't think you're great people or great pricing, but quite literally, it just takes too much time to use your system. That is something. The only way to beat the hard market, in my opinion, is organic growth. There's going to be plenty of people talking about M&A and doing M&A, and M&A is very important.

But for most of you listening and watching this, organic growth is the key to this hard market. We have to beat it. We can't give in. We can't throw our hands up in the air. There are ways to beat the hard market through organic growth, and we're going to talk a little bit about that at the end. And ultimately, the insurance or the masterclass dot insure, my insurance growth masterclass program is going to be where I teach you guys exactly how to do that. All right, that's number one. Challenge number two, the elections. Let's put this just in a broad spectrum, social upheaval, social discourse, turmoil, international stuff. There's going to be tons

of election nonsense. And regardless of what team you're on or who you're voting for or where you like to position yourself, one, I do not believe that you should stick your head in the sand. If you're one of those people that are like, I don't have time to think about the elections, understand you're part of the problem. You're part of the problem that we face today. There are too many good people who are smart and thoughtful, who are not engaged in the conversation of what's happening in the political arena. And it's how we get to places like this, where we are ultimately presented with two options that no one is happy with, you know, and we tend to fighting each other for the lowest common denominator solution in our political system.

And that's a shame. And this is not about getting involved in politics. I just do not think that the answer to what's coming in 2024 with the election cycle is to stick your head in the sand. Now, we have to be very careful about the distractions that come with allowing your mind to open up to these types of things. We have all the society stuff that's going on, all the, you know, wokeism and social justice and all this kind of stuff. And how do we handle that in the workplace? And, and some of that seems to be coming out in the wash, but we just, we have, we have to make time to allow our brains to consider these topics that we have perspective and understanding, but not allow it to overwhelm us to the point where it takes over our lives. And we're not doing our work, which is focused on growing our business, taking care of our family, taking care

of our employees, our team, our teammates, et cetera. So very tough one, but we have to be aware elections are coming. It's going to cause turmoil in your life. It's going to take up brain cycles. So cordon off time, time block, maybe once a week for 20 minutes, you engage in the news just to know what's going on. Or you take 20 minutes on a Tuesday morning and 20 minutes on a Friday morning or a Saturday morning just to engage your brain in those topics so you're aware of what's happening. So if there are changes that you need to make, if there are things you need to do, you know, you don't want to get blindsided by a customer who has an opinion on something that

you've never even considered and don't know how to answer or how to relate to. And I don't think it's okay in 2024 to be like, well, I just don't do politics. That to me is a cop-out. That's, that's not, you know, if we're, if we're talking straight insurance terms, that's not proper risk management for your life or your business. So be aware it's coming, but don't allow it to take over its life. It's a, it's a, it's a tight rope. Uh, we can talk more about this. Um, you know, I'd love your thoughts for how you do that guys. If you're listening on the YouTube channel or you're listening, uh, via podcast, head over to the YouTube channel. Love for you to comment. YouTube is a great place to comment on these episodes. Would love your thoughts on how you're handling hard markets, elections, or any of these other

topics. Share them in the comments below. We can get a conversation going and really use this video and ultimately conversations we have on future videos as placeholders for important conversations in our industry. So, okay. So number one, hard market. Number two, elections. Number three, remote workforce. This one's been coming for a long time, but VAs, a big, big part of the conversation seemed to have had a huge push. And now we seem to be maturing into that conversation a little bit. There are a lot of people who still are hesitant to engage VAs. I completely understand that. I'm going to give you, let's take, let's take, when we think about remote, let's take virtual assistants out. Let's take virtual assistants

outside of the United States. Let's take them out of the conversation for just a second. We're going to put a pin in them. I want to come back to a remote workforce. I cannot tell you how many people, multiple dozens, 50 plus, 50 plus people over the last six months have sent me messages either on LinkedIn or Instagram asking about how we hired at my previous agency because we were able to get people from all over the country, high quality people. We have to start expanding our workforce outside of our local community. It is great to have people who live in your local community, especially if your local community is the primary source of business, right? We want people integrated in.

However, if you limit your recruiting to just individuals who live within a 20-mile or 50-mile radius of your agency location, you are so drastically reducing the talent pool that you can pull from. And there's no reason why, say, if you're in Tennessee, you can't have an account manager who lives in Florida who's licensed in Tennessee that just works remotely and can handle all kinds of incredible work. I think, you know, if people do still walk in, yeah, maybe you need to have a receptionist, but that doesn't mean if you have four account managers, all four of them have to be sitting in that building. You can outsource to another state or if you're, you know, again, if you're going to go all the way to a VA, another country, there's all kinds of different services that can help you with that. Agency, VA, et cetera,

all the competitors. If you Google them, you'll find them. You know, pick one that works for you that you like working with. But remote teams are going to allow you to maximize your ability to spend dollars and get human optimized results back. There's just not enough people in our space, in these local communities to pull high quality talent. If you can, God bless you. If you're in a major metropolitan area, can you probably find people? Yes. But for most agencies out there, especially my rural agencies, my Northern agencies, it is very, very difficult with how, and I say northern because a lot of the northeastern agencies tend to be grouped and there's many of them in small communities. There's a tighter concentration of agencies in the northeast.

So, you know, it tends to be hard to pull from talent or the talent just kind of bounces from agency to agency. And if you're looking to get fresh blood in, I highly recommend look for single moms. Look for moms with young children in particular. This is a market that many traditional agencies toss these women out or do not give them good work environments or really make their lives very difficult. They're incredible professionals, licensed, wonderful. And if you can deal with a little flexibility in your schedule, you can pick up absolute rock stars who will change the course of your industry. It happened at rogue risk 100%. And I cannot tell you enough how many women are sitting on the sidelines because they don't fit the traditional

model of an independent insurance industry that if you're on YouTube, leave a rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes, etc. 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 gonna 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 wanna bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help. Share the show, subscribe if you're not subscribed. And I'd 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. Find them and bring them in. Even though they may not live in your community, they can provide tremendous value to your agency and help your clients. So I think we have to deal with the remote workforce. And then obviously there's tons of stuff to talk about with VAs, but to maximize the human capital that we have in our agencies, we have to start thinking about our business as remote first. Okay. That's number three. Number four,

artificial intelligence. Guys, this isn't hype. Artificial intelligence is not hype. And we're going to do a lot on artificial intelligence this year. Not like foo-foo-y, you know, everything's going to end. I want to teach you guys and, you know, I have some friends in the industry who are going to help me do this. And we're going to be sharing. Some of them are just thought leaders. Some of them own agencies. Some of them have actual tools that we can use. We're going to be talking a lot about how we can leverage artificial intelligence, because this is a, this is a game changer. This isn't, this is an internet level 2000, you know, 1999 to 2004 level shift in how we work. And if, if you are head in the sand on artificial intelligence,

you're going to get mowed down. And I don't mean to be not this year, right now, I'm not saying this year, if you don't engage in artificial intelligence, it's all over. I'm not, I'm not not being so pessimistic or apocalyptic. I'm saying this is a, this is a keystone shift, a monumental point in, in our, in our culture, in our world, not just in our industry. And if you're one of the agencies that are starting to think about how these tools, even if they're just saving some time for your marketing team or saving some time for your agents by using this tool or that tool, extra minutes out by leveraging the scalability of artificial intelligence and the automation that comes with it, then you're going to start to see small benefits, right? Incremental changes. I'm not saying you scoop out and your Salesforce put in a chat bot and everything changes for

the better. No, we're not there yet. We're not even close to there. But I can tell you, there's a lot of people working on solutions that are producer enablement tools that when they're ready, when they're fully ready for the market are going to be game changers. It's not going to be this year necessarily. They're not mature enough. But over the next three, five, certainly 10 years, the way we think about artificial intelligence will be the way we think about Wi-Fi and the Internet today. It's just part of how we operate.

And I highly encourage you to start to adopt this this year. Make finding one or two AI tools and implementing them and really starting to capture value out of them a priority. And I promise it's going to open your mind to what's out there. Again, lots of education needs to happen. Lots of learning, lots of conversations, lots of exposure to different tools that are there, different technologies. But we cannot stick our head in the sand with AI. This is not a fad. This isn't something that's just going to come in and go. This is something that we're not even going to realize is there one day.

That's the scary part. And I don't want to go too deep on this topic right now, but there will come a day in our lives when AI is so ubiquitous, so integrated into everything we use that we're not even going to realize it's there. And if that's when you wake up to AI, you could be in trouble, right? You're going to have competitors that have created such a gap between you and them that it'll be hard to catch up. And that's what I worry about. So again, and the cool, here's the cool thing about AI right now, it's very democratized. You do not have to be a huge mega business, you know, mega agency top 100 to adopt, implement, and reap value from AI. So now's the time to engage. Again, big topic, especially if you're an agency owner, you have

10,000 things on your brain. But guys, if we can find small places to start to try these tools out, and I'm going to have tons of information over the next year coming out as we really dive in this and Finding Peak really catches its legs as the premier insurance consulting firm around organic growth in our industry. That's what I'm positioning Finding Peak as. So guys, lots to come on AI. Just do not stick your head in the sand. All right. So we've gone through four major challenges, the hard market, elections and distractions associated with such, remote workforce and really thinking remote first, artificial intelligence. Number five, I listed as a limited in-industry tech help. And what I mean by that is not to knock the InsurTech founders and CEOs and entrepreneurs out there. I love you guys. I've invested in

a dozen or so different tools and track them and keep up with those founders and want to help. I believe in those tools and what they can do for our industry. So I'm a huge believer in InsurTech. I don't see any tool coming that just changes the game, right? There's no like help coming from some tool that you implement it and press a button. And all of a sudden AI and remote workforce and VPNs and download and all this stuff just gets fixed. Like that's not happening. So if you're waiting for the perfect tech solution, you're never going to find it.

That's more of my point. We can't, there is not an easy button tech solution. There's not this, you know, one tool or one, you know, piece of technology that's going to come in and change everything. We have to be smart about our tech solutions and we have to really take them seriously. And positioning our agency with tech, both in industry and out of industry, is so important. And there's tremendous conferences. I did a whole, I did a keynote at Jason Cass's Inditech event back in August on this topic. I'm going to be speaking at Inditech again.

It's a tremendous event. I highly encourage you to consider attending Inditech. There are tons of conferences around technology. It can become overwhelming. And I promise you, listeners of this show, to be a purveyor of solid tech solutions, both solutions, and I will be very candid and upfront with the solutions that I've invested in and believe in and the ones

that are on just because I'm interested and want to learn more. And I hope that transparency will give you the ability to trust recommendations, ideas, and the people that I put in front of you. But there is no easy button coming. We have to be smart about our tech solutions and we have to keep our eyes open and our ears open because piecing together the right tech solution, committing to it, and working through what inevitably will be certain aspects of that tech solution that just aren't perfect for your workflow and is a big part of making 2024 a success. One of the major regrets that I have with Rogue Risk was how often we switch technology solutions. And again, I think with an early agency, with a young agency, it makes a little more sense that you would flail a little between tech solutions as you try to find

one that fits best. But we changed a little too often. I tried to chase a few too many rabbits. And while we were still very successful, that would be one of the major things that I would change about launching Rogue Risk is I just kept chasing the rabbit because I had these ideas of things that I wanted to happen and found that there isn't a perfect tool.

And at face value, that makes complete sense. But, and many of you are going, yeah, Ryan, you know, that's kind of your personality. Maybe you believe that's my personality. I think it is my personality. I think that my personality is always to push, always to try, always to try to find better things. And I want you to know that in doing so, this was a failing of mine. This is something that I'm working on as a human, but also as a leader, as a business professional, and will work on with my clients at Finding Peak is picking technology solutions, committing to them, and then finding ways to work and optimize and create that human optimized agency inside the tools you already have.

Because changing is a major problem. When you do change, we want to change with a purpose, know why we're changing, and understand the benefits we're trying to get out of that change. So I'm not saying just stick with where you are. I'm saying just we have to be purposeful in the technology that we choose. And when we do commit to a piece of tech, we commit to it. Because that rapid changing in systems just destroys company culture, it destroys productivity. And it's just, it wastes so many brain cycles. So just, we want to be careful through that and we'll talk. All right. That's number five. Number six, who to trust. Depending on when you're listening to this, I am having this conversation with Billy Williams, one of my great friends in the industry and a mentor, someone I have

the most respect for in the insurance industry. He wrote an entire post on LinkedIn, which I'll have referenced below in the comments and show notes about, you know, we have to be basically his thing is there are a lot of people who have not seen any success in our industry and are kind of punting working through being an agent and are now trying to teach people how to do things that they may have learned. And I guess his thought was really like, we have to be careful of hucksters. We have to be careful of people who do not necessarily understand what they're talking about, but want to share and sell you something that may or may not work for you. And look, my response, and I agree with Billy on a lot of what he said, but my response to him,

and the reason that I'm sharing this on the show is because Billy and I are going to be having a full conversation on this topic, which I cannot wait for. So if you're listening to this out in the future of this release, then go back and find the Billy episode. If not, it's coming. But my point was, yes, we have to be careful of hucksters, of charlatans, of people who would willingly sell us something that has limited to no value. We have to be very careful of that. At the same time, we do not want to stifle young voices. There was a time 15 years ago when I'd only been in the business two, two and a half years. And I was starting to share things that I was learning in digital marketing. And that allowed me to, I think, be one of the major voices in this industry

around digital, around content, around what was possible on social, around building brand. In particular, this idea, this broader idea of inbound marketing, what it could do for an agency to adopt a philosophy of inbound marketing. And since then, there have been a tremendous number of agencies that have built off of my concepts, that have shared their own voices. And what I worry is that if we stifle young voices or young in industry voices, et cetera, that we risk losing insights that are new, that are nuanced, that are novel. We risk losing those ideas, risk losing those voices if we stifle them. And Billy came back and we're having a tremendous conversation on LinkedIn. Tons of people have chimed in. I encourage you

to go to the show notes of this episode and visit that link and share your ideas on that post. Because I think it's just a balance, right? We have to balance and be mindful of who are we listening to? Who do we trust? And really, you know, I did a whole thing on Instagram about this. I put a lot of content on Instagram. So if we're not connected there, I encourage you to do that. It tends to be more specifically focused on personal growth and growth as a leader. So like leadership and business and life, etc. that's kind of where Instagram stuff is. It's not specific to the insurance industry, but I wrote, I put this whole piece together on Instagram around incentives dictate action. So when you're trying to figure out who to trust, who to follow, who, who to bring into your headspace and allow to impact how you think and how you approach your business, look at their incentives, right? How are they incentivized? If their incentives do not align with your incentives, or if you can't understand what their incentives are to be doing the thing they're doing, then you may want to think deeper about what they're saying, where they're coming from, the advice they're giving.

And I have to be completely candid with this. Billy's post made me really think about myself. I have a very specific situation, which I have discussed on the show and do not feel the need to do again in terms of I had an agency. I'm not with that agency anymore. And now I'm a consultant. And yes, I am selling coursework and a mastermind in the masterclass, the insurance growth masterclass. I'd like to believe after 18 years, being an agent for eight, founding an agency and running an agency and growing an agency for almost four, being part of Agency Nation, TrustToChoice.com and Bold Penguin, et cetera, and all the speaking and all the consulting

that I've done over that time that I do have something to sell and I can be trustworthy. But I also understand that people may question, you know, if you, and I've had multiple people reach out to me and say, hey, why not just start another agency, right? If you actually had, if you actually, and I'm doing air quotes for those watching on YouTube, for those listening at home, those can see me do it on YouTube. If you were so successful, why not just start another agency? And if I'm being candid, the answer is I just got kind of burnt out running a retail agency every day. Not the insurance stuff, not the growth stuff, not the marketing stuff. I got burnout on downloads not working and the agency management

system not talking to this system. And this carrier's got a problem with this. And these guys, you know, I can't get ahold of this underwriter and this, you know, just all the nonsense. So much of our business is nonsense. It's just absolute nonsense that isn't running and growing the agency. So what makes being an agency principal so difficult is that how do you, you know, managing that time, et cetera. And I just, I've kind of burned out on that for a little while. I'm not saying I would never run a retail agency again, but I think I want to see if what I know, what I've learned over these 18 years, over all the conversations, if I can teach others how to apply it to their businesses and see similar growth, right? I've shown that I can do it in an agency that I'm

working every day. I now want to see if I can teach these concepts to others, to you guys, and get you similar growth, help you build that foundation that, you know, frankly, I didn't even realize it was a hard market until I started reading all the articles. We were just cranking. So I would love to teach others. I want to teach others. That's my, you know, obviously I want to get paid for that, but, uh, I, it made me question myself. And I think that's a good thing. And, um, I'm excited to share that with you, but who we trust is going to be a big one. You put the wrong people in between your ears and you can take actions that ultimately can be detrimental to your business. And that's, uh, something we just have to be careful about, especially with more and more people wanting to sell products, courses, etc.

I don't want mine to get lost in the noise. I want it to add value. And that's probably where my own desire comes from. You know, we're not without our own insecurities. I want it to be the most valuable course you've ever taken. I want you to feel confident that you have someone in myself and the team that I'm building at Finding Peak that can help you get to where you want to be. But I also know that I'm surrounded by tons of others who look and may sound similar, but don't actually know what they're doing and just want to take your money and give

you, you know, limited value. And how do you separate yourself? That's something that I have to overcome in 2024 as I try to help you guys. So last but not least, organic growth. Our businesses may be improving in certain, you know, I know, I know a lot of agencies that are having, you know, have banner years in 2023 that didn't grow organically because premiums went up and et cetera. That is to me, you're playing Russian roulette. If you're not constantly focused on organic growth, I feel like you're playing Russian roulette with your business, right? A carrier could come in and wipe out contingencies. We've seen carriers dropping commission rates. We've seen carriers go out of business. We've seen entire niches

get obliterated because of changes in laws or because of the pandemic, et cetera. And if we're not constantly and unendingly and just neurotically focused on organic growth, then we're putting our business in jeopardy. So organic growth and just being an absolute monster on organic growth, it should be number one goal in 2024 for me, you know, from my perspective. It doesn't mean you can't focus on M&A. It doesn't mean you can't focus on retention. It doesn't mean you can't focus on, you know, doing all the other things that can help improve growth,

renegotiating contracts with carriers. If you can get that done, good luck. But if you're growing, if you're putting new business on the books and have a systematized process for putting consistent numbers on the board, for maximizing the output of your production team, and your production team doesn't just mean your frontline producers, then you don't have to worry about all that other nonsense. The other stuff just comes out in the wash. Carriers come to you. They want to offer you benefits and bonuses because you're growing, right? You don't have to worry about losing one niche or another because you're growing. You don't have to worry about this new technology or some employee going crazy for a day because you have systems and processes in place that create foundational, consistent, organic growth in your agency. You set that up in 2024 and the other six things become,

you know, fun things you think about on the weekends, right? Organic growth in 2024. Don't rest on your contingencies. Don't rest on premiums increasing. You know, don't rest on referrals. Referrals are just one source of organic growth. We have to find ways to build consistent foundational inbound traffic to our business and processes that allow us to grow and grow and grow and put numbers on the books. That's the game. M&A is great. If you can buy agencies, there's opportunities in the market. Looks like rates might be coming down. I've heard some rumors around that. I'm not a Fed chairman or anything, nor do I know one or pretend to be one. But from the economic people that I read, it looks like we may get a few drops in rates, which if you have

loans on your business and that's holding you up, if you took a small business loan out, maybe there's some relief there. Uh, there may be some relief in the M and a market in terms of, uh, liquidity, uh, possibly coming back, but who the hell knows if for my money, even if I am interested in either selling or buying this year for, you know, M and a stuff, um, I'm laser focused on organic growth. Grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. And what's funny is if you do that, everything else seems to become easy. I don't know if you agree with that. Well, that's been my, that has been my experience throughout my career is that if you can figure out organic growth,

everything else, everything else becomes easier, probably a better way to put it. So guys, so that's the seven hard market elections slash distractions, building a remote first workforce, understanding AI, coming to the realization that there's no easy button insure tech tool that's going to make, you know, change the game for you, that you're going to have to figure out how to work with the tools you have and leverage them. There's a lot of great tools in the industry. That's not a knock. Just, we don't want to, you know, I hope you're not thinking there's some like universal solution coming. We have to be very careful with who we trust, where we spend our mind, where we

allow our brain cycles to spend time. And ultimately, guys, organic growth. Organic growth is the reason that I founded Finding Peak. It's why I called the Mastermind the Insurance Growth Masterclass is that to me, organic growth is the linchpin to not just survival, but thriving in the independent insurance space. You can be great at M&A, that's awesome, but organic growth leads to M&A opportunities. So organic growth, organic growth, organic growth. My friends, I love you for watching this show. I know we're at about 40 minutes,

which is probably long for a solo episode, but I hope you found value in this. If you have comments, questions, et cetera, leave them in the comments on YouTube, or you can share this on social comment there. You can always reach out to me if you're have questions about what's coming with the insurance growth masterclass. If you're looking for a speaker this year, I'm kind of re-engaging in the speaking tour. I have a couple of really interesting keynotes, breakouts, workshops, et cetera, that are packaged up and ready to roll

for 2024. Dates are starting to fill up already, which is very exciting. I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of you in person again. It's been a couple of years of light speaking and really, I want to take this message out to the world. So there's that. And if you need consulting help, reach out Ryan at FindingPeak.com. That's Ryan at FindingPeak.com. Reach out. Let's talk. I love you guys for listening to this show. Let's absolutely crush 2024.

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