The Ryan Hanley Show - RHS 044 - Dawnyel Smink on Communication, Workflows and Leadership

Episode Date: July 6, 2020

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comDescription: Dawnyel Smink runs a tremendously successful independent agency and one of the most well-respected agency networks in the entire country. In this episode of the podcast we breakdown her secrets to success. Get more: https://ryanhanley.com/Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we have an incredible guest, Donyell Smink, the president of Canyonland Insurance and the founder of WISE, Women in Insurance Sharing Empowerment. And I met Donyell for the very first time in person at this last year's innovation conference for IAOA. And I just see her as one of the most professional, hardworking, thoughtful leaders in our entire industry. And ever since I had a chance to spend a little bit of time with her and learn more about what she was doing at CLI, I've been looking forward to having her on the show. And if you she was doing at CLI, I've been looking forward to having her on the show. And if you don't know Donyell, I think you're going to be blown away by the way that she

approaches the business, how she built her business, and the insights and experience that she shares around building workflows to drive success and particularly how she thinks through that process. This is something you're absolutely going to learn a ton, but you're also going to be hopefully introduced if you haven't been already to someone you need to know in this industry. So it is my great pleasure to bring you Donyell Smink today. Before we get there, I want to give a big shout out to our sponsor, Advisor Evolved. I get a lot of questions about my website, about websites in general, just because for so long I've talked about content marketing and marketing. And I'll tell you, hands down, there is no other choice.

It's Advisor Evolved or Bust when it comes to websites. Chris Langell and his team, watching him build this company, build Advisor Evolved into just an absolute juggernaut in the insurance website game. And not just because he's got good marketing or he knows the right people. His websites work. They drive traffic and the new product that he just recently launched, his local marketing product where he's helping people do traffic generation in their local market like micro-targeting, geo-targeting, stuff like that. It's absolutely incredible. He's changing the game in terms of digital brand, digital storefront for agencies across the country and if you're thinking about a new website or you just need a website and you work in the insurance space,

there's just no other option than Chris Langell and Advisory Evolved. Go to advisoryevolved.com, check them out. You will not be disappointed. In fact, you'll be blown away. All right, with that, let's get on to Donyell. Well, I appreciate you coming on. I, uh, I have, I have a lot that I want to talk to you about and I just felt like, um, I just felt it was also be a good opportunity. This gives me an excuse to talk to people that I want to talk to. So I just appreciate you taking the time and coming on the show. Yeah. Thanks for having me.

And I can't wait to have you on CLI Connect, um, in August. We do that quarterly and it's really cool because it's not just our agencies, it's our way to outreach to other agencies. And so we cap it to the first, you know, 100 owners that come on, and then be my pleasure. I'm looking forward to it as well. So one of the things that I find, have found interesting about starting my own agency is I get asked a lot of questions, as if I know the answer to the questions, like, you know, even though I've been in the industry for 15 years, this is my first, you know, I've only been an agency owner for four months. So, you know, I don't, I haven't really figured things out yet though. I get, and for all of you listening, I love the questions. So don't stop sending the questions because I'm happy to help when I can,

but there's just things that I don't know about that people ask me about. One of those things that I asked about a ton and actually I was super, super happy because I think someone I referred to you guys actually became a member of CLI. But I get asked about network, market access, aggregator, relationships, all the different feel. And everyone that I've met in your organization loves, you know, there's just, it feels like there's so much respect between you and the different agencies and between each other. And, and I just, you know, I just felt like I wanted to bring, I wanted to talk to you about that. I want to talk to you about how these things work

and your experience and, and, and particularly, and then I'll actually have a question here, but I want to talk about in general, not just in the ecosystem that you operate in every day, but just in general, you know, agencies working together, it feels like agencies work together a lot more than they used to share a lot more. There's so much more willing to talk about, you know, here's this thing I did when, when I first started going to events 10, 12 years ago, you didn't talk about what you did at all. It didn't matter if that agency, you know, wrote only life insurance and was on the other side of the country. You didn't give them one piece of information. And now it's like, everyone is willing to barf

everything they do onto you. And I mean that in a positive way. And I'm just, you know, I'm just interested in your perspective on how we got to this place and, you know, you know, how we continue to nurture this. So thanks for asking that question, because I actually really love that question, because I thought about it too. I've been independent since 2004. I was really fortunate to join our group as an agency location first. And so I just happened to pick the group that really I felt like emphasized working together early. Before, like what you're talking about, like there's this feel of like, hey, it's not like it's my secret sauce. I'm not going to share it with you.

Like I'm going to hoard it over here. And it's totally special. And the thing is, is that a lot of the things that we're doing there's commonalities in it and if we can find them we can help tweak each other for it so I've been doing that for you know 16 years with the other members that are a part of our group so I feel really fortunate that I had that prior but I've even seen it just through the council work that I've done through the years and I I would say, you know, carriers that are really reaching out to us and promoting the independent channel, I think they have a play in it too. So it's not just us as owners, but they're actually being more open about like, hey, here's best practices.

Here's things that we can do together, you know, as a carrier, but make it not just like carrier specific. So I think it's a combination of that. And I think it's a combination of that the captive channel is really starting to migrate over to the independent channel. You start to see that with, you know, American Family bought, you know, MSA, you know, recently. You see Nationwide, you know, taking Allied and Nationwide and putting it together, and then they just finished, I think it was yesterday, you know,

converting over their staffers over to independent. So there is that part of it, and there is this, I call it, is your ego in the way, is your ego out of the way. And I see a lot of egos getting out of the way. And I see that as they're coming in, there are pain points. And so I feel like a lot of times my job is to help agencies with pain points, because I will tell you, I have done so many things wrong as an agency owner. And I hope that I've learned from them, or at least I can say I would never do it this way. I did it this way. please don't ever do it that way. And I think that conversation is a lot more open with agency owners and they're recognizing

these pain points and they don't have to suffer some of that alone. But also there's a merge of technology. For so long, I remember in 2008, when I took over the group I introduced a web-based CRM that we basically I'm not going to tell you who we were using at that time as far as our benefit system but they had an open API and didn't realize it so we actually were pushing the data from our site that we had created in 2008 and pushed the data into

the management system that we were using. And no one was talking about an open API at that time. You know, that just, that was 12 years ago. That wasn't happening. And when I presented it to the group, they're like, I looked like I was like an alien from another planet. Like, you want me to do web-based? You're talking to us about APIs. You know, you're talking about workflows and things like that. And so it's really cool to see how far the technology has come to.

So I think it's a combination of the ego out of the way, the carriers actually really pushing towards the independent channel, and then the technology that we've been, you know, getting investments in from, you know, the tech insured, you know, side of it. Do you think that the customers have anything to do with it?

Do you think a change in the way customers operate by think I don't, you know, the way that they, you know, 15 years of being marketed to on speed, do you think any of that has impacted some of it too? Just, you know, 15 years of being marketed to on speed. Do you think any of that has impacted some of it too? Just, you know, it seems the way my father, I'm going to position it this way. So when I first got into the business 15 years ago, my father-in-law had been in for 36 years at that point or whatever it was, 32 years. And it runs a tremendous shop. The way he did business was literally the exact same way that every other agency did

business, right? It's just how hard you work, how gregarious you were, how willing you were to reinvest, you know, that kind of thing. It wasn't like, there weren't really that many triggers, you know, like levers that you could pull to differentiate, you know, some branding here, but basically it was the same stuff. And the consumers expected the same stuff. And today it feels like, you know, just in my time in the industry, but then thinking maybe even a little further back, today, the market segments are so much different. There's the people who still want belly to belly. There's the people who never, don't even want to know your name. And then there's this enormous spectrum in between. between and sometimes I think I ask myself like is is this um as part of the uh camaraderie

sharing this been we just don't really know what to do you know I mean it's like we've kind of hit this point where everyone is just a little a little less sure of exactly what the path looks like and maybe do you think that's led to it at all i don't know i think as a human species we are highly connected now and so that helps too with the sharing of it but so are our customers so they're highly connected too so they're looking for the answers in a different way than ever before but you can never take the relationship piece out of this i mean all of this that's happening right now shows us that we are people that long for belonging that we long for people to validate you know what we're doing or help us with something we're still that that

human race in there hasn't been taken away so you're right it's a mod podge of you know the old ways of whether we used to do it, very paper driven, face to face, like you said, belly to belly kind of thing. And some clients still, you know, enjoy that part of the process. And so you've got to be able to be basically fluid with them, you have to say, hey, how do you like to do business? And in that you have to be able to meet them where they want to meet. So if they want to meet face-to-face, what if you are just somebody that works out of your house

and they want to meet face-to-face? Where is it that you're going to do that? So you're going to have to figure out and solve that piece of the puzzle for them to meet them where they want to be. And then if you're somebody that is online, you're going to have to, you know, especially with through COVID, I'll give you an example. I got in there with my team and really helped them out with some clients because we were

getting for a while there, especially when the billings changed, we were getting probably about three to 400 phone calls extra a day. That is a large call volume for a team to just like overnight, like tons of billing questions and then, you know, making changes. And so we actually had to train some of our clients, because we weren't meeting them in person, and they were long term clients. I taught a 92 year old how to do DocuSign on their phone. And it was the first time they ever had a phone. So to walk them through it and get them trained is something totally different. But if you have somebody else on the other spectrum, they're going to expect it to be really easy.

They don't want to have paper to deal with. And no matter what, we're still dealing with a lot of paper, whether it's electronic paper that we send to them. There's still a lot of documents that are being processed in the insurance industry. We haven't really shortened those. And in fact, with the more legislation, we seem to be, here's a waiver for this, and here's a waiver for this. And, you know, by the way, here's your privacy notice, you know, all of those things keep getting compounded. And so it really is about how can we mold to be there for our clients when we need to. And that's, and sometimes some of the agencies that didn't do this prior to COVID,

I've seen that they've had a very difficult time, you know, adjusting. And then those that had already, you know, gone the route of being virtual, they've really thrived during this time period. And so I think it's a learning lesson to those who that are not fluid for their clients that they need to be. Yeah, I know I was, if COVID had to happen either way, I wish I had started my agency like a year earlier, because I have found as much as there's some, there's some obvious headaches that come with it from a business perspective and I think if you have employees it's definitely more difficult but the way that I set up my agency COVID had a zero impact on my business and the way that we operate you know there wasn't there is no other option than holosign you know what I mean there is you know it's little things like that or you know whatever docusign e-sign you use. And I've talked to other people and,

and, you know, that hasn't been the case. The idea, so there's two ideas in there that you pulled out. I've talked to some people about this idea. I brought, I wrote an article the other day and I talked a little bit about it. Shout out to David Carruthers because he said it's the first time I ever got this analogy correct. But the idea, Bruce Lee's idea of like be water, right? Like be whatever that client needs you to be. Okay. So I was talking to someone the other day and they brought up the idea. You either have to be, you either have to fully invest in that methodology, right? Go where they are, be fluid, have flexibility, have options, or you have to go all the way to the other side, which is you do it this way or no way, right? You either walk this path and you come down this path exactly the way

I've outlined it because that's where I can add value or you're just not for me, go someplace else. And you've, you have to, you make that delineation, but that where agencies are getting caught is that space in the middle where they say they do text, but they don't really like doing text and they're not really set up to do text. So the text process, instead of making it easier for the client becomes a nightmare because they didn't actually, you know, they didn't actually go there. So I guess with this person, with this person, and again, I've talked to many people, I'm forgetting exactly who it was. So apologize if they're listening to this and they're like,

that was me. And you're not right. You know, you know, their point was you either have to, like, you either have to, you know, just do not say you do the thing and don't even make it an option or invest in making sure that it actually adds value? Does that, is that, does that seem like a, like a clear idea or do you think there's, that's just theory? I think it fundamentally goes down to is you have to own your process of how you are going to work with clients and need to make sure that each step of that process is you know defined I everyone's looking for somebody to lead them down a path so whenever I'm talking to clients or agencies I always think about taking a flight with them and I always talk about where have you been before with your insurance where have you been before with your agency

where are you right now and where do you want to go you listen to that path of how that client you know wants to work with you whether they're insured or an agency and then what you do is you map out what that flight is going to look like with your processes in mind so you'll say you know our first step is we collect the information and we believe that you we want to compare what you had before so you may have some insurance baggage you may have duplicating coverages like you may have towing already with AAA so why would we include

that in there for you it doesn't make sense but I won't know that until I can actually like TSA your baggage through you know our systems look at it and through our process and then at the end of it you know basically we're checking them you know they're getting off of the plane and we want them to make sure that they are safe and they're going in a good direction so you're telling them my processes is that we do not offer you know basically we're paperless we believe in the in saving the environment and if you have problems walking through the docu sign we will walk that well we will walk you through that too and get you completed with it so but we're during that process as we are gathering the information as we're completing you know the what we

call an insurance review not a quote but an insurance review and we're finishing it off with them and that we are landing and you know putting together their paperwork we let them know through that process what it looks like so I think one of the disconnect agencies have is that they don't go through workflow process that's something that I really work really hard on and in fact I recently got back into personal life again with my sales team and I noticed there was gaps in that workflow process so we have a map and it coordinates with our CRM of every step

of the workflow process so that my team knows here's where we go here here's where we go here and this is how we leave the client through that process so you can't just assume the client knows exactly you know what's like path you're taking them on you cannot assume that your team knows what's like path you're taking on you as a leader have to define the workflow process so and what resonates for you so I see path you're taking on you as a leader have to define the workflow process so and what resonates for you so I see what you're saying but both sides have that in common and that is that there needs to be a workflow process that works for you and as long as you define it and communicate

it communication biggest thing with the client then they will feel comfortable working with you like the 92 year old doing docusign on his cell phone when they've never had a cell phone before she's comfortable with it because we walked her through that process so we didn't change our process yeah i um one of the things that i i think solves almost every technical process from, from workflows to the tools you use to the clients you go after is, is setting expectations, right? So what I just heard you outline was, was, you know, from,

from communicating and workflow plus ideas is just every step is you're setting expectations for those clients. So they know what the next step is going to be. They never feel like they're just stepping off the tarmac to continue this air airline, you know, into the abyss. Like they, there's going to be something there when they take that next step. And, um, that, you know, that's, that's why, you know, when I get, I hear pushback about, uh, um, all different things, you know, you, you know, that's, that's why, you know, when I get, I hear pushback about, uh, um, all different things, you know, you, you, you know, whether it's, uh, uh, prospecting middle market accounts or going after, you know, you know, online leads or whatever your, whatever the issue or the process is when the client comes in, if you're properly setting expectations, you're going to get them there more often than not.

It's, I feel like so often, and, and, and, you know, and I make these mistakes too cause I am the worst about documenting things. This is like a known issue for Ryan that I've done so many of these interviews with leaders like yourself who would say very similar things that I, I know how I know this is a failing of mine, but like if they, if the clients know where they're going, they'll accept, they'll accept so much from you. Hey, this is how we operate. It takes us 24 hours. It takes us two hours. It takes us five minutes. But if they know what the expectation was,

they're willing to accept it. It's just, I think so often we're in such a hurry that we never actually tell them what's coming next. So then they're left, they get off the phone and the client's like, well, I hope I get something soon, maybe, right? And then that's when they call someone else and that's when the trouble starts. And I'm not saying that's an easy thing to do, but that seems to be my breakdown of hearing so many people who've hit levels of success that you have.

That's what it kind of feels like, the derivative idea. Does that seem reasonable? Yeah. So what needs to happen is that we talk about in cells assuming the cell, like I try and like, even in my cell scripts with my team, I put together what are assumptive sentences, right? For the the self but it needs to correlate with an assumptive process so we do what's called a wrap-up we tell the client here's what we talked about in here going here's what our next steps are going to be so even if they have it I love this for commercials to commercial it works for first lines too but in commercials I'll talk to them especially

like first meeting where I'm talking to them about hey they have no safety practices someplace there's a lot of work we need to do here and we've gone through this conversation I just assume that we are coding them we have spent time together we have figured out what the pain points are for their company and we know and I know the next steps I want to take them so what I do is I lay that out and lay it out for them I tell them you know based on the conversation that we have, you know, you need to put these things in place. Here are the next steps of how I'm going to take you on that journey. And so this is what I'll need from you and expectations. Is there anything that you feel like you need from me that I'm not

mentioning on the next step? So I'm assuming the next steps with them and I'm doing a wrap up for them. So then there's a clear expectation over here, and there's a clear expectation over here. So for personal lines, in our proposal for our risk management that we do for our clients on personal lines, we also have part of it that says, this is what you can expect from us, and this is what we expect from you. And we let them know from the get-go like if you have a change in your life you need to let us know you're super not you know mind readers that's not going to happen and so that expectation and that communication starts from the get-go with them so then if they call back and they say oh yeah i you know i have this that you know i i

you know added a vehicle and it was like a month ago. Right. And you're like, remember, I promised to do this for you and protect you, but I can't do it if you don't fulfill the other side. So that expectation and that communication, not just now at the beginning of the sale, but the expectation of the communication going forward. And so that's a promise between the two of you. I think that's a promise that's not being communicated, that the insureds don't even know they need to do that, you know, with their personal or their commercial line type of business. Yeah, I actually, I wrote a very small account today, but the guy calls me and he's like, so the very first thing he says to me gets on the phone, he says, you know, I'm trying to find someone who can help me. What are you going to do different? I was like, you know, it's an interesting first line before he even said what his name was or asked me what mine was. And I, you know, I said, well, why would you ask that question? And he said, I've talked to three people. I'm seven days into this process, and I haven't received a communication back. I reached, you know, so the idea there was, you know, he, or he was three days in the process.

So for, in his mind, three days was too long to have not received a proposal or, or a quote for, for his, you know, for his risk. And it was small, it was like a thousand dollar bop or whatever. It wasn't a big deal, but, um, but in his mind, three, so, so he had never, there was no one who had spoken to him, had taken the time to stop and say, here, here's how, what we have to do to get you to where you need to be. And, you know, we're going to have to go check a couple of companies now. Thank God I have Tarmaca shout out to T-A-R-M-I-K-A dot com. We got that done over the phone. But, you know, for all your small business needs. But the, you know, the idea there that I took away from that phone call was, you know, all

he wasn't like in this major rush. Like it wasn't like three days was like his head was on fire. He just got to three days and went, geez it wasn't like three days was like his head was on fire. He just got to three days and went, geez, it seems like someone should have communicated with me by now. And I said, you know, cause I'm, you know, I'm fire hose learning right now, right? Like for, even though I've done this before for eight years, you know, I've had a five year break in between selling. So I'm back on full fire. Every phone call I get, every conversation is a learning experience, big time. And I took away from that call.

If one of those agents had simply said, hey, it's going to take us four days, he would have never called me. He would have never called me. That's all they had to say was, just so you know, it usually takes us for this kind of risk four days to get back to you on that fourth day, you'll receive a proposal for us. Is that okay? Yes. Okay, great. We'll talk to you in four days. But you know, he just had no expectation set, no, no process. It wasn't explained to him. And, um, you know, I'm a hundred dollars richer. So, you know, what gate, you know, woe me. Um, I don't know where I was going with that but it's just simple to ask for a

due date like that's the biggest thing like so i'm putting this together to you i want to make sure i am you know meeting the expectations or beating the expectations you have so when do you need this by and if they say you know you know whenever i think my renewal is coming up in a month then just give yourself a buffer time. I've seen so many agents are like, Oh, I'm going to get it to you by the end of the day. Okay. You're setting yourself up for failure possibly, because you haven't really looked at what you have else in the day. So if you tell them, Hey, it's going to take about four days and you get it to them at the end of the day, they're like, Oh my gosh, that was super fast. And there's, and they're really appreciative of it. So you just got to ask them, like, what is the expectation of it?

And sometimes it's like, for example, workers comp. They're like, I would like that right now. And like, well, if you have, you know, an effective day in our current policy, you know, let's talk about, you know, short-term penalties. And let's not do this right now. And this may be an issue for you. And they may not even realize that, you know, I have a client that actually canceled with us, went with another agency, got that penalty, but that agency never even discussed it with them that that was a possibility. So sometimes the expectations of what they can do, they don't understand actually how the policies

work or how that can impact them or that they're going to, when they cancel a policy, there's an audit that goes along with it. Well, guess what? That's extra work for them too. So those conversations are not having, you know, they're not having it with their clients at all. And you can win them just off being, you know, somebody that communicates. Yeah. I, I think, you know, one of the, one of the pillars of when I was starting Rogue, one of the things that I had in my mind when I was trying to figure out what I wanted, at least at the beginning, the culture of the agency to be. Now, again, it's just me, so culture's a little easier. But, you know, as we grow, one of these things setting yourself so far apart from so many of our peers, unfortunately, because it, you know, I can't tell you, and you've probably had the same thing. How many people you explain a coverage to them, like something that you, that,

you know, you, you might look, you may say it's fairly straightforward and seems like every agent says, and they go, wow, I've never, no one has ever explained that to me before. And you're like, what? Like, wait, wait, wait, but you didn't know that that was a thing on your policy? Like, how, let's talk about this. And those little extra moments, the little, the little tangential stories on, on a claim scenario or on a, on a risk management technique that can help them prevent a claim for a certain, for a certain risk on a policy. Those are setting, for my opinion, the foundation for them never to leave, right? That's the foundation of the walls of your city. They're just never going to want to leave if there's just building brick here, brick there, just a little piece of advice, little piece of setting a proper expectation, just giving them a little bit of tangential

information that can help them. And I always use the, if I feel like I'm talking too much, which, which is obvious that I do. I'm like, there's a great piece of cocktail party information for you just drop that little underinsured story on. That's so funny. You know, and those kind of things are what keep people you know, those are, that's what keeps them coming back. And I just wish I, I have the only thing that I have been slightly disappointed about coming back into the agency life and selling policies again, is that I feel like nothing has changed from five years ago in terms of the way we communicate and interact with clients, at least predominantly broad sweeping stroke, obviously more and more. So many of our peers that come on shows like this and stuff that that's changing, but it's changing very slowly.

Maybe, maybe a more positive word is methodically um you know because i just you talk to clients every day and it just doesn't seem like they're being treated you know there doesn't seem like this guy this guy talked to today he wasn't given the time of day because his his account was a thousand bucks and all three of those agents knew it they all knew it was a thousand dollar premium now i knew it as soon as he told me what he did. And the difference was one, I'm broke and new. So I was willing to spend the time with him, but two, I didn't care. I would have done it either way. And I think I just, I guess I've always wished that more agents took that time. I guess I don't have a question as much as I, that's one thing that has stuck out to me is that it feels, it feels exactly the same as when I left in terms of what the client expectation is.

And I totally agree with you. I think that the biggest thing is I've always kept in my mind, and I think this has really helped me with my clients and why my clients have stayed with me, even though I'm functionally out of the process of talking to them as much as I used to. And that is that my goal wasn't to close someone a day. My goal was to help and protect what mattered to them, not what I thought mattered to them, every single day. If I could touch and help one company, one person, every single day, then it's going to come back to you it's absolutely going to come back to you and so you're saying that thousand dollar client guess what you helped him and he saw it and he appreciated it he probably knows some people that have higher premiums that will send it back to you you know and it'll come back and i think

we look so much on premium we look at so much on the closes and, you know, that we do. And I'm not saying that's not important. I'm saying if you look at it, like my goal when I went independent in 2004 was I was going to every day help and complete helping them, which means a cell, you know, one person a day. Like if I did that every single day then that's you know and the average premium for those type of clients if it was personal lines is $2,500. Well you're doing 10,000 a week in premium you know for just a scratch agent that equates to about a half a million if you just did that. I did commercial too so that helped a lot but it really helped me say I you know my commercial clients was a ton more premium. I was only helping one person, but you got bigger bang for your buck on those ones,

but it didn't matter to me because all I wanted to do was I just wanted to help and complete helping somebody and make them better today than they were yesterday, and it helped me from a mindset side of it because if I couldn't help that person, I would actually tell them, like, you know what, I think you're better where you're at right now. I'd like to revisit in six months. And you're communicating that plan with them for a win back. We don't communicate win back. Think about all the lost leads we have of the people that did not go our way. Like, it did not work out today.

It doesn't mean in six months to a year it's not going to work out. But we never communicated that our plan is to, I'd like to be your agency of choice. So we're losing all of those leads that we worked really hard to get into the door because we don't communicate the next step in the win back very effectively. And we don't market to them that, hey, I want to be your agency of choice. And we don't do that in that process. So I really think in the workflow that you do, there needs to be that communication for yourself of the script of what you're going to say within that process so that your team knows

or you know how we're communicating to the client. Yeah, I love that idea. And we don't process that out at all. I love that idea that you just brought up of, of, of letting, letting them know that you want to be their agency of choice, right? That's a, that's an idea that's very common in like middle market commercial sales. Like, uh, uh, Michael, Micah Salas, who's been on the show, talks about on LinkedIn all the time. Carruthers talks about a lot of people who are in middle market talk about this idea of, I'm not trying to sell you insurance. I want to be your agent. And then together, we're going to build the package that

works for you, whether, you know, and that idea. That has not, for the most part, translated down to anything below middle market commercial for the most part. And I love when I hear personalized agencies or small commercial agencies, or just agencies who happen to run into one of those kinds of using that language, because, you know, this, and you actually said this before, like the guy that I, the example I brought up today, you know, I would have to be crazy to not believe that there's some serendipity in the world that that guy that I wrote for $1,000 to get him taken care of, isn't going to then maybe possibly bring over his personal lines, maybe refer me to his sister, or his buddy who owns a business down

the street, because he don't know, you know, I helped him, he doesn't care if his premiums are $30,000, or $130,000. He's just like, Oh, I got this guy that helped me with my business. Right. So, you know, that idea, um, of not just selling, which you gotta be able to sell, there's no doubt, but like, but of, of actually, um, you know, of actually taking the time to, to, to care just a little bit and not that people don't care. I think we just get caught up in, I need to make my numbers if I'm a producer or I got to keep the lights on. And, uh, and I feel that, right. I feel that I completely feel everyone. Um, but, but taking that a little extra time, just like you described, I want, I would like to be your agency of record. I would like to be your agency of choice. Um, you know, showing that they're just not another

account that you actually want to work with them, you desire to work with them. It's man that they seem like little semantic things, but they're so important. Well, it's so important to your mental well being, I will tell you, honestly, when I get in places of that fear, the fear of, like you said, paying the bills, the payroll, and having those things over me or meeting the benchmarks of the carriers, the expectations of the carriers, I have this really, like, healthy habit for myself. And that is I will go back into, like, my early day clients, the clients that have almost been with me almost two decades. I will go into their file in our CRM. I will call them up and I will just tell them, you know, I was thinking about you today

and I just want to say how thankful I am that you stuck with me through the years and that I've been honored to protect your family. And you just open up a conversation and then the really interesting thing is is that as you're having that conversation and if you listen to them closely you'll hear other opportunities to work with them and help them more right then you'll also have the opportunities to just plainly ask them and just say i would really love to work with more clients

like you like who do you know that would enjoy the type of relationship that we've had for almost, you know, two decades? You should totally cash in on those relationships, but in a heartfelt and human way. And I'm telling you, the fears that I had prior to the, you know, the conversation of calling that client, those are subsided by the feeling of help, that I helped them through it, you know, and talking to them, that I've seen them through. When you're talking about that length of time, I mean, we've gone through, you know, they started having kids. Now their kids are driving, you know, like all the little scary things. They might have been single, then they got got married and you help them through those things. And we talk about our lives.

They know about my life. And we talk about those things. That will also retain the client. And they're surprised that you call and just saying, you know, I was just thinking of you today and I was feeling really thankful. And I just think you should know that. That goes a long way. We did that during COVID for our commercial clients. We just decided, you know, each account manager, we called out the clients first that we felt were most hit by this.

And we plainly said, we're calling you to check on you. And we want to let you know we're here for you. We're working from home. But if there's anything you need, let me know. And so we help them through PPP loans we help them with telecommuting policies those are not insurance based products but in the end they're super thankful and they'll work with us on it they didn't cancel their policies they ended up you know hey

let's look at payroll make some adjustments they also refer to people because they would talk about hey this is what my agency did for me they reached out and they said are you okay what can we do to help yeah and so that is like the best marketing that you could possibly do is is be super duper duper thankful yeah that call is great unless they go jesus, Mink, I thought I canceled that policy years ago. I'm just kidding. I totally bet out the account first. of your time, but there is another organization that you are part of and help and help founder or the founder of. And it's the women in insurance group. And I can't remember exactly the name, but I know, is it wise? Yes, it is. Yeah. And I just wanted, so I, you know, I just wanted to

talk a little bit about that. I'm, you know, I guess diversity is a big topic today. But in general, I just like, I just think it's important to have different voices. And I'm just interested in how, what you're doing with that group, how it's helping women grow in the industry or recruit them, or I just interested in learning more and sharing it with the audience. Yeah, thanks for asking. I'm passionate about the insurance industry as a whole, but I'm also, when I started in the industry, I was one of the few females that, why it started a number of years ago, because I wanted to find a group of women that we could work together, but also, like you said, help bring in the younger generation into the industry. But also, a lot of the team members of offices are female.

They just may not be agency owners. And so even though we make a greater percentage of the actual workforce within the industry, we're not taking the next steps to help, you know, our careers. And so that's on us, right? That's not on any male. And I also want to do it because I love the men that I work with. They've helped me. They've picked me up.

They've like, here, I'm dragging you over here and you're going to be doing this. And they promoted me. So I didn't want like, this is like the men haters club. Like I wanted nothing to do that. But I think there, it comes down to communication again. I think the whole thing we're talking about is communication. And that is, is that sometimes men and women

do not communicate appropriately. So how do we bridge that gap with one another like it's awkward sometimes you know for men to reach out and say hey I want to help you and have it not be perceived a different way than it should be so how do we have that conversation how do we have you know women feel like they can be assertive without being you know excuse my language bitchy you know like how do you have those conversations and how do you help one another? And sometimes, honestly, women don't play nice with one another.

We don't. We're getting better. We definitely are. There's a lot more women leaders that are standing up and saying, you know what, we're not going to be catty. We're going to be there for one another. And it doesn't mean that only one of us gets to succeed. We can all succeed together if we work together.

So we've done a lot of seeking events over the last couple of years with carriers and then different special groups i've been able to we put together some retreats actually at my cabin over the last couple years which is a lot of fun nice um we do workshops with them and then we do follow-ups we're working on a project right now called Dynamic Divas, and that is getting women into the coaching realm to help other women in the industry on their next steps and be able to take them through a full coaching side of it from, you know, the self component to it to, you know, the personal component. And that is taking care of yourself and then having that communication between men and women. We've been thinking about, we were going to do it this fall, but everything's kind of weird. But having a session where it's men and women in the room and talking about how we can communicate better as a group.

So then if you have a team member that comes with you to the retreat that we were going to do, then you guys can go through some exercises of how you can help and support and promote each other without ever feeling awkward about it and having real genuine communication with each other so both parties can go in the direction that they want to go. And so it is. It's really bridging that gap. So I felt like there was a huge need in that that we needed to you know bring men and women together help women with some of the things that we just

we don't push ourselves on and then also help women you know lift each other up as well so we've been doing a lot of that type of work and then other groups have spun from it too so I've been super happy to see you know other groups I'm super it doesn. So I've been super happy to see, you know, other groups. I'm super, it doesn't mean that, you know, ours is the only group out there or anything like that. The more things that are out there are super helpful. I know that men have been very thankful for some of the things we've done to help them with their team members and so that they can, you know, push them along in their career. So I've been very proud to be, you know, leading that, that charge over the last four years. Yeah, I think that's tremendous. I think it's tremendous.

And I think I've been happy to see over the last three to five years, an improvement in the demographics that you see on stage and in different general assembly conferences as well, both carrier association, different groups, you've seen more diversification in the speakers. And, you know, and diversification means so many different things. It means rural agencies, urban agencies, big agencies, small agencies, female led agencies, minority led agencies, agencies from the South, agencies from the North. You know, I think, you know, it's so easy to get in this routine where it's the same half dozen, dozen people, dozen voices. And it has been a pleasant, very pleasant. It's been pleasant to see, in general, just the keynotes and the people up on the marquees.

They just look different, and that's a good thing. You know what I mean? I don't know that I love differentness for different sake, but I love differentness for the improvement of everybody. And it's just been great to see. And I'm happy that there are people like you out there putting these groups together because, you know, I just think it's good. It just helps us all get better at what we're doing. And I think it's very, very important.

So I wanted to make sure we talked about that before I let you go. Well, I really appreciate that because I will tell you honestly, when I started this, I was I was like okay this can go two ways it can go this is going to be awesome and we're going to help men and women or this can go the other way where they're going to be like oh she's that girl that doesn't like to you know hang out with dudes like it was like I have more guy friends than I have girlfriends I grew up with brothers and I relate to men probably more than women a lot of times. So that was like a fear of mine that went through. And I have been pleasantly surprised. There was some of that that I think sometimes when you do spotlight a certain

group, whether it be, you know, race or gender, that sometimes if you have that, you know, passion to help, you know, whatever segment you're thinking of, don't let the other side impact you, because you're going to get some comments of it, but know your intentions, know your heart, and, you know, go for it, and if you can make an impact, you know, in other people's lives and careers, then that's the only thing that really matters, so that would be my advice to anybody that starts a group like that, or, you know, wants to be a part of a group that they're like, well,

I want to feel like I belong, but I don't want to feel like I'm being put in a box over here because I am, you know, because it's this race or this gender, you know, belongingness is important and feeling like you have a safe place to talk about concepts and be able to work it out so you can do it in a productive way is super important. I completely agree. I completely and wholeheartedly agree. And, you know, when I used to put the Elevate conferences on, you know, our, the speaker lineup was so important. It was so important to me. I spent all 12 months leading up to the day that we actually put that conference on just

thinking about the narrative of the speakers and the voices and how do we make sure that every cross section that could be heard from is heard from so that no one sits in the audience going, you know, no one talked about my situation or no one touched on anything that I'm actually dealing with. And, um, I do, I do think that's very, it's very, very important. And, um, I think, you know, I think the unfortunate part is some people see that as, well, if they're going to, if we're, if, if they get a voice, well, then that's diminishing my voice instead of saying, well, no, we're all shit. We're all just frigging louder now. You know what I mean? Like, and that's, it's tough. I don't do well with scarcity mindset people.

I really struggle to communicate with them. That's a deficiency of mine. But I think it seems like more and more those in our community who do think from, from a position of abundance are rising up to spots where they're able to bring people along and then put them up on their own shoulders. And that seems to have escalated in the last three to five years, and it's been awesome to watch. So I want to be respectful of your time. We're already over. It's been absolutely tremendous talking to you. I'm just glad we got to spend this time together. And where can people both learn a little bit more about you and CLI and also wise and you know, so

where can they connect with those groups and just get to know you and the things that you're doing more? Yeah, definitely. And our website for our group is CLiselect.com. Pretty easy. And then for Y, it's just w-i-i-s-e women.com. And then we both have Facebook pages for both as well. And then also, you know, we're on the other social media platforms too. But or you can ds at cliselect.com and that's my email. And I'm just happy to help people. If you're thinking about joining a group and you're looking for options, I think one of the things is I have a lot of people come to me because I'm not going to sell you on how wonderful we are,

even though we're awesome. I'm going to tell you here's what you need to think about. It's still the journey. So when we're taking that journey with our client, I do the journey with our agencies that we talk to. And guess what? Sometimes the journey with our client, I do the journey with our agencies that we talk to. And guess what? Sometimes the journey means like I'm going to have you do a connecting flight over here with somebody else. And maybe that might fit you better.

And I do that for agencies. And it's really interesting because sometimes I do a connecting flight with them with another group or another direction just to help them because it's their journey, not my journey. And then they'll be like, I'm going to take a return flight and come back to you. So sometimes that happens. It happens with clients too. So you just got to keep that in mind too. So it's respect other people's journey, take them on it with your process, with your workflow,

but always be respectful and helpful to others. I also am going to give you mad props for pulling the aviation theme throughout the entire show at multiple levels that that is skillful work so I just I appreciate that I'm your total stewardess right all in one well uh thank you so much I wish you nothing but the best I appreciate your time and uh just thanks for for sharing it with us today. Yeah, thanks so much, Ryan. សូវាប់ពីបានប់ពីបានប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់បានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបា Thank you. We'll see time next week. Sound impossible? It's not. With the OneCall Close system, you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals in one call.

This is the exact method we used to close 1,200 clients in under three years during the pandemic. No fluff, no endless follow-ups, just results fast. Based in behavioral psychology and battle-tested, the OneCall Close system eliminates excuses and gets the prospect saying yes Thanks for watching.