The Ryan Hanley Show - 232. Are You Really Independent? Seven Pillars to Self-Determination in the Insurance Industry

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comAs we steer through the evolving insurance landscape, I often reflect on the importance of independence for agencies.✅ Free step-by-step video series for generating inbound revenue for your insurance business from YouTube: https://go.ryanhanley.com/youtube✅ For daily insights and ideas on peak performance: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanhanley✅ Subscribe to the audio podcast here: https://ryanhanley.com/podcast** More about this episode **Independence is a topic that stirs both my strategic mind and my entrepreneurial spirit, and this episode is all about sharing those insights to light up your path to agency growth.From strategic sales tactics that underscore insurance as an entrepreneurial safety net, to crafting a communication style that resonates with clients, I peel back the layers of my experience to help you build a stronger, more resilient agency.Navigating the seven pillars essential for agency autonomy, this conversation ventures beyond the typical partnership mentality with carriers. Consider carriers as suppliers, a subtle but powerful shift in perspective that can clear the fog from your business decisions.The pillars—relationships, staff, geographic spread, regulatory compliance, product diversity, tech savviness, and networking prowess—form the backbone of our strategy talks. Regarding sustainable growth, striking that perfect chord between rewarding your team and safeguarding the agency's future is an art I delve into with genuine passion.In our final act, we embrace the transformative power of technology and networking. I'll walk you through how to pick the tools that won't hold your agency captive, alongside recounting the enduring value I've reaped from associations and masterminds. Wrapping things up, I extend an open invitation to connect and explore the Insurance Growth Masterclass—my life's work designed to elevate your agency to new heights.If you're as invested in this industry's success as I am, this episode is your beacon, illuminating the path to triumph in the dynamic world of insurance.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our current technology set in the independent insurance industry does not allow us to provide, I think, the level of service that our customers would expect in any other space. In a streamlined manner. That being said, you can hack it. You can, you know, there's manual process entry. You can, you know, there's all kinds of things you can do, but they're all hacks. So you're not going to find, you know, that's what I mean. I guess what I'm getting to is, it doesn't mean we can't provide it. And we should be efforting to provide it in my opinion. I you know, we're a service business, but all the solutions are hacks

in a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. What's up guys and welcome back to the show. Today we have another solo episode for you, deep dive into the idea of independence in the insurance industry and really something that I have talked about more and more. I've been kind of dipping my toes into these ideas as I test them, as I think through them. I've never really dedicated an entire piece of content to this idea that we're going to discuss today. I've been kind of teasing things out and mentioning things in interviews, not necessarily in any kind of calculated way other than just, you know, I like to think through things. And the only way that I can do that in a productive manner is through talking. So, you know, while some people are able to sit in silence and marinate on ideas, how I work, and I'd be interested if you work this way as well,

let me know in the comments below the video. Or if you're listening to the audio, you can always hit me up on social or just come over to the YouTube video and leave a comment. I'd love to know, like, are you one of those people who you have to talk to think through ideas? Or are you someone who can kind of sit in their own thoughts, maybe journal and get things out for me, journaling does work journaling helps, but it's more of like a brain dump. If I really want to think through a concept, if I kind of have to hear the words, I have to hear the words come out of my mouth. I have to, you know, like almost, it's almost like when I speak them, I listen to what they sound like. And I'm like, ah, I don't like, that's not how I want to frame that idea. Or that's not actually what I believe,

even though it's what I said. So this, what we're going to talk about today is the first of what will hopefully be many discussions around this topic. And I want everyone to take what I'm about to talk about not as an indictment of any particular aspect of our business or how we operate. These are ideas. These are things I want you to think about. This is how my brain works and how I approached both, you know, different aspects of when I was an executive in different companies. Also, just in all the various business dealings that I have, as well as when I was running my previous agency. You know, these are this is how I think about things. I really think in two layers.

Right. I try at all times to build sustainability into my business. That's what we're going to be talking about today. Sustainability. How do you weather the storms? I had this quote that I shared, I think, on Instagram. And if you want to follow me there, I'm Ryan underscore Hanley. I talk much more about the leadership, psychology, philosophy, kind of emotional side of growth on Instagram, where LinkedIn is really where I share

business ideas. And I try not to cross pollinate the two so much. So if you're interested in that side, go over to Instagram, Ryan underscore Hanley. I'll have it linked up below. If you're interested in the business stuff, go to LinkedIn, just search Ryan Hanley. You'll find me there. Happy to connect, happy to answer any questions that you have. So when I was selling insurance, if I was talking to someone who maybe I could tell didn't necessarily understand the value of insurance, and I thought that it was appropriate. This is not scripted. This is not something scripted that I would say to every prospect that I would talk to situationally dependent, but it was a tool in my tool belt that I would bring out when I thought it was necessary. And essentially what I would say to them, this would be a lot of times for

startup businesses. If I was working with particularly an entrepreneur who thought that they were smarter than me or knew more about insurance than me or knew more about the value of insurance than me. And anyone who's written insurance ever is probably nodding their head going, yeah, I've talked to one of those people before. This is kind of how I would frame our product is I would say, look, you're starting this business or you're new in this business, et cetera. You're growing, you're in growth mode. That's amazing. That's where you should be. What I do is I help you build the foundation upon which you can grow. Usually that concept of insurance is the foundation upon which your business can grow.

That usually stops people in their tracks because they haven't heard it framed that way before. So I frame what we do as that. And maybe they'd either pause and give me space to expand or they would ask a question. And when I expand, I would essentially say, look, if you want to add a second location, you need you need insurance to do that you want to hire more employees, you need to have a solid insurance program to do that you need to buy your first commercial vehicle, You decide to add professional services

and need E&O, et cetera. Insurance provides the foundation, the foundation of support, the sustainability. You have that terrible day, that worst day of your business life happens. Insurance is there to make sure that you still have a business, right? You can extend, you can reach, you can take chances. You can take those entrepreneurial growth folks. What's up guys. Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show. And in exchange for that, I need your help.

If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes, 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 going to help you grow as a person and grow your business. But they all check out comments, ratings, reviews. They check out all this information before they come on. So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you I need your help share

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Okay. So that's how I would frame. Again, that was a scripted tool, not something I said to every prospect. I don't want you to think that. But in the moments where it felt appropriate or I felt felt like I was getting pushback, uh, or some, you know, that I would pull that out occasionally. And it seemingly worked really well. I think it's good to have little scripted tools, uh, that we keep in our tool belt and can pull out as needed. And a lot of that just comes to practice and, you know, training, which is what we do at finding peak. So if you're interested in more things of that nature, uh, go to masterclass.insure, or depending on when you watch this video,

go to findingpeak.com. Both of those links will take you to the same place. Learn about the insurance growth masterclass where, you know, you can join a community of people that are all about growth. That's what we're doing, growing insurance businesses. So how does this pertain to an independent insurance agency and their independence? So the beauty and the most amazing part of our industry, particularly the independent side of our industry, is that each agency is its own snowflake.

It's a choose your own adventure for the ownership group or the owner, depending if it's an individual or a group. You get to build whatever you want, which is amazing. And it tends to be very, very, I'm gonna use the word ego driven, but not necessarily in a bad way. Just like people who believe in themselves, people who believe in their mission, believe in what they want to do, believe in their own ability to make things happen and manifest. It's an individualistic ideal. It's an

American ideal. It's an American ideal. Independent insurance agencies are as American a business as it gets. And because of that, I think we automatically assume that we have autonomy. And I think as a byproduct, though, I'm not going to assume that people would verbalize it this way, a level of sustainability or foundational support below us. And I don't believe that's true unless we intentionally make it true. And that's what I want to spend the rest of this video talking about with you. So I have seven pillars for self-determination. And what I mean by that is I want to help independent agencies. And this is this idea. I want you to think through this, some of these actions. If you just watch this video and don't join the masterclass, you're going to have to work out on

your own. However, we can't grow if we don't have a rock solid foundation upon which to grow, right? That's the whole pitch that I made for the insurance thing. The exact same thing is true in our agencies, is that if we are not taking the necessary steps, building the necessary cultural ideas, and ultimately doing true risk management around our autonomy and independence, then we don't actually have the ability for self-determination. We can't actually choose the path and the extent that we grow. We are always going to be handcuffed. We're always going to be throttled. We're always going to be saddled with other organizations or entities' priorities if we don't address these seven pillars. Okay, so what are the seven pillars? Career relationships, our staff, our geography, regulation, products, technology, and our network.

There may be other pillars. These are the seven that I think are the most crucial and that I want to address. I'm going to address them in a relatively succinct manner or as succinct as I can possibly be. Being that you're watching this show, I'm assuming you at least have some idea that I like to talk. And then these will ultimately be expanded upon inside our masterclass, but I want to make you aware of them here on the show because I think this is a crucial idea that I don't hear a lot of people talking about. So,

okay, first let's get to our first pillar and that is carriers. I believe that today, and this is no one's fault, I don't even think it's a bad thing. I think we need to realign our cultural perspective, the independent agency carrier relationship. Okay. What I mean by that is we often refer to each other as partners. I don't believe that we're partners, or I don't believe that that framing is healthy anymore. That does not mean I do not think that we shouldn't have a good relationship with our carriers. It doesn't mean that I don't think carriers should support and help agencies as much as they should. I think that that relationship is

one of the most vital, if not the most vital relationship that we have in our entire business as independent agency owners. However, carriers are not our partners. They are our suppliers. We have a contract with them to distribute their product. How we get in trouble with this when we think about carriers as partners is we assume that what they say today is going to always be true. And that is simply not the case. It is not their fault that it is not the case. Storms happen, appetites change, new leadership comes in, new market dynamics, all kinds of different things happen that change how a carrier supports you, what they're able to pay you, what their appetite is, what products are available to you, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. None of those things. I don't believe carriers act nefariously towards independent agents. I just believe they have their own set of priorities

to run their business. And that we as independent agents need to detach ourselves from the emotional connection to carriers and think of them as suppliers. Feed them the business that they want to write that's profitable to them, that's profitable to us, that helps us have a good standing revenue generating relationship. Nothing more than that. Because when we get emotionally attached to carriers, we start to become upset if certain things don't happen. People leave and we feel disconnected from them. You may have a really great relationship with an executive or an underwriter or a team inside a carrier. And that's amazing. But those people are real people who can ultimately leave, go to other businesses, other carriers, they can retire.

All kinds of things can happen. Your contract is with the carrier, not with those specific people inside the business. So we need to remove our partner mentality and replace it with, this is an important supplier to us. I have a good buddy who runs a retail furniture store. He has incredibly important relationships that are vital to the success of his business with suppliers. And sometimes over time, he has to change suppliers because that supplier is no longer a good fit for him. To build sustainability and ultimately self-determination,

we have to extract our emotional connection to carriers. And I think carriers should do the same with agencies. And we should hold each other accountable to the contract that we signed, and we should make good on that contract. And in that way, if a carrier needs to reposition their agency plant, their distribution arm, for some reason, that's what they have to do. And if an agency needs to throttle down how much new business they're writing and throttle up with someone else, that's what they have to do because the agency is responsible to their own profitability and

the carrier is responsible to their profitability. And we need to remove this, like you owe me something idea. That's it. Carriers don't owe agencies, anything agencies don't know carriers, anything outside of the contract that we signed with each other. We can be great. We can have a great relationship and make tons of money together without that emotional connection that I think sometimes drives bad decisions. It drives agencies to get boxed into corners, specifically when carriers that they over index on drop commissions all of a sudden.

Now you're taking a real hit. So your partner just decided randomly to pay you less. I think if we want to build sustainability into our business, the sustainability that's going to allow us to grow despite market conditions, despite what's going on, right? That's going to allow us to be kind of that Bruce Lee style agency, like water, adapting to whatever scenarios are putting in front of us and being successful regardless.

I think we have to remove the partner moniker from our carrier agency relationships and think of them as what they really are. Suppliers, carriers certainly think of agencies as their distribution arm. And we have a tremendous, wonderful, profitable relationship in that context. Okay, that is my idea concept there. Something to think through.

I think we just have to be very careful with over-indexing on any one carrier. I know there's more money to be made in profitability. I get it. All you traditionalists that are gonna bang on me for you don't understand. If you just put max amount of business with a carrier, I'm not discounting that there's potentially

more money to be made by piling tons of business into one carrier. I'm the guy that did the viral video on LinkedIn that said maybe we should all just be Hartford captives, right? Like I understand that concept. I'm just saying that when we look out over the long term with sustainability in mind, I think that over-indexing on any one particular carrier or carrier set or set of carriers that all writes the same thing can ultimately create hazards or potential blind spots in our business. There we go. Okay. I don't want to beat it up more than it needs to be. That's a big one. I want to spend some time there. Would love your thoughts on this,

especially you're watching on YouTube, listening, come over to the YouTube video, leave your comments. I'm sure you guys have comments I guarantee you guys have comments would love to hear what they are these are important topics interesting topics and let me know okay let's get on number two I'm gonna make some of these I'm gonna go through some of these kind of quick your staff incentives drive action constantly be looking at your incentives how you're incentivizing them, and make sure that while I always believe in giving your team members, your staff members upside and action

and the ability to make their financial goals come true, we never want to over-index on a team member so much that their decision to leave or, you know, I hate to be morbid, they could pass away. There's a million things that could happen. They could have a life situation which forces them to move to another state or whatever. We just never want to over-index on any staff members. We want to compensate them fairly. We want to treat them well, build a great culture, incentivize the actions that are important to you. But always through the lens of if Tommy were to leave or Tammy were to leave, how would that impact our business? We would hate to see Tammy go. She's amazing. She's a great employee. We love her. But if her son decides to move to another state and she wants to be close to him and his wife and her grandkids and she goes and does that, well, are we set up to maybe we can she can go and she can work remote? That would be a great way to make sure your staff is, you know, you can sustain with your staff. knowledge transferring and never allowing one person to be such a subject matter expert that

their rapid departure would negatively impact our business, right? Something to always have our mind around. This is another pillar of self-determination, making sure that the agency survives, the agency has sustainability so that everyone can grow. Okay. Because you're not just, and I know people get a little emotional again. I think a lot of these things have to do with emotion. They get a little emotional around, well, this person's been with me 20 years and I want to be loyal to them. I am not talking about being disloyal or treating anyone poorly, but if you over-index on one employee so much that their departure negative impacts the business, you're not actually being

loyal to the other members of the business who stick around because there's less money to go around and less security in the agency. So just something to consider. Okay, geography. I do think that we should try as much as we can to expand our geography considering the digital environment that we work in this. And I think particularly again, very specific on what you're doing, how you operate, et cetera. I think being in two or three States is a good idea. The reason I think being in two or three States is a good idea is because carriers base their appetite by state. And if you can be in multiple geographies, again, as you expand, things become more complex,

things get more expensive. I get that. Again, we're talking about best case scenarios, best practices for sustainability in your agency. I'm not necessarily saying this is the easiest path, okay? And these are all just levers, right? We have to make business decisions across the board. And some of these things you could say, hey, I think that's a great idea, but I can't get to expanding our

geography for 12 months, 24 months. Okay. That's all great. I just, I want to put these things in front of you so that you can think about them. Right. I think being in multiple geographies is important because carriers base their appetites on geography, right. State by state for the most part. And like, I'll give you a good example of this. You know, when I was at my previous agency, my Hartford rep came in and was like, Hey, I know you guys write a lot of contractors. We crush landscapers, but you're not writing a lot of landscapers with us. And the issue was when I first took on that appointment, we were just in the Northeast and primarily still writing mostly in New York at that point, we were just in the Northeast and primarily still writing mostly in

New York at that point. We hadn't gone national. So my understanding of their appetite was just that they didn't write landscapers in New York, which they didn't because New York for contractors is terrible. Any New York agent knows that or any agent that has tried to write a contract or New York knows how terrible contractors in New York are. but they had an awesome appetite and program in some other states. And it was like, oh, so, so I have this great market for this particular class of business, but because of the state I'm in, I'm not getting access to it, which is limiting my growth, et cetera. And maybe that's not the best example, but I think that, um, I think having multiple geographies, if possible, again, if possible. And I know a lot of agencies in New

York that will write New York and they'll write like North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida. They'll have clients, be they business clients or personal clients, et cetera, that maybe expand operations or move, have a secondary home in those states. And then they start to build up through a referral base in those states as well. And now what you have is, okay, if something ever happened in my home state or, and number four, as I said, was regulation, a regulation changes. Now I have these other states to lean on. And this is one of the reasons why I wrote at Rogue Risk. I didn't know we were in a hard market until like August of 2023. I didn't, I didn't know. And I'm not saying that to be a jerk. I mean, I'd seen some of the articles and whatever, but it just didn't sink into my brain because being national, being very broad

in the industry classes that we wrote, we just didn't feel it, right? We were able to move and maneuver and write new business where new business was being written, not dependent on a particular geography. So while I get it, especially if you've been around forever, it can seem scary, daunting, there's extra costs, there's, you know, the potential for E&O exposure, if you know, if you're not doing things right in that state. But I do think that if you can, and if it's important to you, a geographic expansion and even a small scale can help create sustainability for your business in case something changes. Okay. Number four, I just mentioned it, regulation.

Guys, I do think leaning on the political departments of your state associations, the lobbying, the lobbying arms of your state associations is very important. You know, get rid of the ideas of like, big I PIA, which one's better than the others, choose one or choose both, right? Why not? I think that I understand why both exist. I'm not saying you know, I've worked for the big guy. I've done speaking engagements for the PIA. They're all good people. They're all trying to do the best they can pick an organization who has some form of political influence, some sort of lobbying arm, some sort of insight into what's going on from a regulatory environment and make sure you're staying on that. That is not one of the places that I think we can stick our hand in the sand.

I completely get like getting deluged with new sales concepts or whatever. A lot of the stuff that I talk about, I can understand if you're like, you know what, Ryan, you might be the most brilliant marketing professional in the history of the insurance industry, but it's just too much for me. I'm not going to focus on it. Okay. That was, I'm joking by the way. That was facetious. Hopefully you got that. Although it's probably true. But, but so I'm not interested. I'm not unsubscribe. Okay. I can understand that. It is easy to get deluged with certain aspects of our business. One place that I do not think we can stick our head in the sand is the regulatory environment.

And understanding what's coming, understanding how those changes can potentially impact coverages, impact carriers, impact the appetites of carriers, impact our ability to finance business, wholesale relationships, et cetera. I think we need to stay on top of the regulatory environment. And the best way to do that is through the political arm, the lobbying arm of your state association or however they decide to distribute that information. There are some other good newsletters that can get you that information. One, I'm going to forget the name of it now, so I'm not even going to say it. But there are some other kind of general newsletters, et cetera, that you can stay on top of this stuff. But at the end of the day, it's going to be state-specific. And joining the associations associated with your state, important.

Stay on top of the regulation. It's going to help you with sustainability, right? It helps you get out in front of things. And if you're smart, if you can get out ahead of these things, know what's coming, you can position yourself as a subject matter expert on these ideas through content and through outbound or newsletters to your clients, et cetera, to help get out ahead of it and either retain business and or use it as something to prospect. Cool. Okay. Number five, products. While, you know, I don't think anyone advocates to only write one product. There are some very specialized insurance agencies out there. And I completely understand why they do that. I think

we should have an expansive portfolio of products. Depending on where you fit in the market. If you're a middle market agency, middle market producer, you know, you may have a little more specialization, but if you're small business, personal lines, write everything, right? If you, if you're like uncomfortable with the DNO policy, call the underwriter and they will help you better understand it. Go get your CIC, read your manuals, take a CE course seriously instead of just clicking through it while you're flipping through your Instagram reels. Having a wide variety of products not only helps from a rounding out perspective, account running perspective, and retention perspective, but it gives you the ability to say like, like,

like with cyber, right? If you over indexed on cyber in 2020 and 2021, and then all of a sudden we had these massive frigging rate increases. And now like everyone is either canceling their cyber policies or just rapidly changing, et cetera, tearing down coverage because they can't afford it. Like that's a major hit to your business. Think about, you know, so that's just one example, right? You can see this in D&O, right? D&O, I'm going to forget the exact year, but it's in the last three or four years, had this massive spike and massive appetite hit where, like, literally carriers who wrote a broad range of D&O

just literally were like, nope, we're not writing that coverage anymore if if you've over indexed or over specialized in one particular line of coverage that can be an issue okay again we're thinking sustainability it doesn't mean it will happen and being a product expert can can rapidly uh jump start your agency particularly at the beginning but I do believe that for most agencies who are watching this, who are maybe smaller middle market to small business to micro and personal lines, learn and write as broad a set of products as you possibly can and don't forget about surety. And if you don't love surety and don't understand it, zip bonds and propeller bonds. Those are your two resources. Between those two, right? You have those two guys in your

portfolio. You can write any bonds you want. You'll be very happy. And don't forget about surety. Okay. Number six, technology. All right. I don't want this video to go too long, so I'm going to make this very concise. After trying every tool that possibly exists, chasing every shiny object, the biggest and most legitimate criticism of my tenure as an agency owner would be technology. Now, I do believe that, you know, I rounded into it eventually, we got there eventually. But man, I made a lot of mistakes here. So this is all coming from my own personal beats. I wanted to build something that, you know, I wanted to build the vision of what I had for the customer experience into technology.

And I don't believe that's possible. Our current technology set in the independent insurance industry does not allow us to provide, I think, the level of service that our customers would expect in any other space in a streamlined manner. That being said, you can hack it. You can, you know, there's manual process entry. You can, you know, there's all kinds of things you can do, but they're all hacks. So you're not going to find, you know, that's what I mean. I guess what I'm getting to is it doesn't mean we can't provide it and we should be efforting to provide it, in my opinion. I, you you know we're a service business but all the solutions are hacks so do not allow the idea as i did to creep into your mind that you're going to find one product to rule them all now i am i am a little enamored and interested in what margot giles is building i do think it very interesting. I find some of the things that are going unnoticed in the broader sense that like NowSerts is doing and their

partnership with InsuranceGate, et cetera. So I do think there are some companies that are doing that. You obviously have the VertiFort and Applied ecosystems that hopefully will continue to optimize. But none of them today are complete solutions. So get that out of your head. Get the idea of a complete single solution out of your head. It does not exist. It's not HubSpot. It's not any other non-insurance tool either that does not exist. Okay. So how do we get there? I think that early on, pick the simplest, cheapest tools you possibly can. A simple CRM, a simple AMS. If you pick the right CRM, you're going to have email marketing, texting, et cetera, call tracking included. Make sure those two systems talk to each other. Make sure that you can do your accounting somehow, whether that's through, say,

QuickBooks integration or if the system has it built in. But simple, easy, clean. This is my filter for technology and when it comes to sustainability. It's simple, easy, clean, easy to train on technology is also easily replaced if somehow it blows up. So what we're really fighting against here are rapid price expansions, insurance technology providers holding you hostage, right? They get you in, they make it incredibly hard to leave, and then they continue to jack the rate up.

That happens. That happens in every industry. So that's not just our industry. So we need to be fair. There's also inflationary costs, et cetera, that it takes. So some of it is legitimate. It's always going to happen. But if we have simple, clean, easy to use, and this is the keystone here, easy to train on technology, then if something happens, if that tool blows up, if it falls apart,

if it gets bought by somebody that you don't want to do business with or can't do business with for whatever reason, if the price rapidly expands, if all of a sudden it gets buggy, whatever, right? If it's simple, easy, and clean, you can get your data out and get it into another system very fast, okay? And if it's easy to train on, people will have no problem moving to another system. If it's incredibly difficult and nuanced to train your team on a piece of technology, understand that you are becoming a slave to that piece of technology

because their knowledge, right, becomes dependent to that system because there's so many click here, click here, here, this, this tab that's hidden here, and you gotta put in this keyword, et cetera. And so they're wasting so many brain cycles on how to use the technology that they're not spending on using the technology, if that

makes sense. So I advocate for, I do think insurance technology is the way to go. So someone who has built their tool specifically for insurance. I know there are exceptions that have built awesome systems out of systems that were not originally meant for insurance. I know that that happens. It's most likely not you. If you haven't done it already, it's most likely not you, nor do I think it should be. I think that you pick a piece of insurance technology over index on easy to train your team.

Easy to train your team because the less brain cycles they have to think about on how to use the tool, they're thinking more about using the tool, which is like putting the information in whatever, whatever needs to get done. It also allows you to easily move to another piece of technology. If something happens to it, that's a sustainability part. Okay. Last but not least, network. What I mean by that is not joining an aggregator or a network. Um, I have no problem with aggregators and networks. I know some people do. I don't, I think they're fine. I think if they work for you, fit your business model and culturally

align with you. Awesome. Uh, I think that's great. Um, there are plenty, you know, I was obviously part of the SIA network for two years and met tons of great master agency owners and team members and think that that could be a great solution for a lot of people. There's all kinds of different networks and aggregators out there of all different shapes and sizes. So just because one might not be a good fit doesn't mean another wouldn't be, right? I know the guys down at Insurance Super are doing great things. Mike McCormick is going to be on the show pretty soon. There's Keystone, and I know Donyell Smink and CLI just merged with them. So, there's all sorts of great people, all different shapes and sizes, all different flavors of network.

That's my opinion. If it works for you, great. If it doesn't, that's fine too. I do think it's becoming harder and harder to not be part of a network, especially at the beginning. And if you talk to somebody and it's not a great fit, there might be another one out there that is. You cannot operate your agency in a vacuum and be successful. You cannot operate your agency in a vacuum and be successful. Join your state association, join a Facebook group, find an agency owner to mentor you or a mastermind group, right? Like that's what we're trying to do at Finding Peak is bring like-minded, growth-oriented insurance, you know, professionals and agency owners together who can ask similar questions, who can share mindsets, who can, you know, share best practices along with all the things that I want to kind of teach you guys and help

you guys and guide you guys through, right? Like that's what that is. But there are other mastermind groups. Ours will be a good fit for the people. It's a good fit for, there are plenty of them out there, right? I, Nick is one of my best friends in the world. He has Patty. We're not Patty. Patty isn't us. Patty might be a great fit for you. If Patty is a great fit for you, that's amazing.

I'm so happy for you. Or Killing Commercial with David Carruthers, right? Or what Cass does. There are all kinds of masterminds. Find one. Get on a text chain with a bunch of other agency owners. Like I said, join your state association. If the carriers are having an event, go to those carrier events, mix and mingle with the carrier

professionals, you know, and then and mix and mingle with the other agents who show up and get to know what's going on. What are their challenges? What are they seeing? What worked for them? What did this tool do? Did they try this? Have you ever said this to a prospect before? These are all the amazing conversations that come from building a robust network in this industry. And the networking part of this industry is why I love it. I probably wouldn't still be here if it wasn't for the network of people that I've gotten to know that I just absolutely adore, that I love rooting for, that I love helping, that I literally will just text sometimes and be like, like, who can I connect you with? Like, how can I help you? Like, I just, there's just so many amazing people in this space.

And, and that's, that's why I've stuck around for 18 years. And why, you know, in this moment of transition, I decided to double back into the insurance industry with Finding Peak as an insurance coaching program because I love you guys. This is a great space. But I've seen too often, I would say less today because the internet does make it easier, but I've seen too often agency owners who put their head down and they want to grind, but they do it in a vacuum. And they do it without feedback, without conversations, without mentorship, without masterminds or coaching or whatever. And what happens is they make all the mistakes. They slam into every obstacle. They hit every pothole, right? And then they get bitter and they get frustrated and they're not making the money they want to make. And that's not the way it needs to be. There are so many avenues to help you, guide you on a path, especially

at the beginning of your journey that can get you to escape velocity so much faster with so much more momentum and can put you in a place where you can really go back and choose your own destiny, that true self-determination that makes our industry so amazing. So guys, those are the seven pillars, carrier relationships, staff, geography, regulation, products, technology, and building our network. I hope you found value in this video. If you did and you're watching on YouTube, please smash that like button. If you're listening to the audio podcast i love you for listening to this show i love you for for being part of finding peak and and a part of of my audience i hope you guys appreciate the work that i put in here because i do it for you um and uh and i just love doing it any questions comments you have you can always email me at ryan findingpeak.com. And I'm going to pitch once again, go to masterclass.insure,

go to masterclass.insure or findingpeak.com. Either one will take you there and learn more about the insurance growth masterclass. My life's work put into coursework, webinars, community, resources, et cetera, to help you guys grow your agency. I love you. I'm out of here. Peace. I'm going to shaboos. Thank you. Thank you. close twice as many deals by this time next week sound impossible it's not with the one call close system you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals in one call. This is the exact method we use to close 1200 clients under three years during the pandemic. No fluff, no endless follow-ups, just results fast. Based in behavioral psychology and battle

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