The Ryan Hanley Show - RHS 059 - Chad Spaide on How to Deploy Your Agency Data

Episode Date: August 26, 2020

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comChad Spaide, president and CEO of BenefitSource Insurance Services and the founder of Pure Potential Insurance Automation joins the podcast to once and for all answer the question of who actually owns insurance agency data, why it doesn't matter and what you should be doing with all the data you have. Get more: https://ryanhanley.com/Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we have Chad Spade on the show. This is a show you're going to love, especially if you are nerdy about the insurance industry. I feel like I say that every episode. I feel like this is just like the nerd show. We just dive deep on all kinds of crazy shit that maybe most of you don't even care about. I don't know.

I love having these conversations. But I brought Chad on the show to talk about data. We ended up talking about all kinds of different things around agency operations and sales and setup and the future of the industry. And we talked about data and the role it plays. And ultimately, you know, we kind of broke down this debate of who owns the data, not kind of broke down this debate of who owns the data, not in the like who actually cares who owns the data, but in, you know, how do we take the data that we do own or at least have access to and put it into play? How do we actually deploy it to grow our agency? And I think you're going to love it.

This was just a tremendous conversation. If you don't know Chad, he is the president and CEO of Benesource Insurance Services in California. And he founded the Pure Potential Insurance Automation Facebook group, which is baller. I highly recommend going on Facebook and joining the Pure Potential Insurance Automation Facebook group. It's free to join. It's a private group, so you've got to request access, but as long as you're an agent or involved in the industry, Chad will let you in, and it's well worth the time. There's so much good stuff in there.

Highly, highly recommend. Before we get to Chad, big shout-out to my people at Tarmica. Tarmica, T-A-R-M-I-K-A dotcom, T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. When I say these cats are changing the game, I know you think I'm playing. I know you listen to this and you're like, oh, you know, Hanley's always talking about Tarmica and their sponsor, you know, whatever. I'm telling you, there is going to be a day when you're going to wake up and be like, oh no, I got on Tarmica late, which would be fine because you'll then pay for the tool and you'll catch up because you'd be doing all this cool stuff. But like, I'm telling you,

it is the game changer. No one is doing the stuff that Tarmaka is doing. There are people that are pretending to do what Tarmaka does. There are people who are positioning themselves in the same space as Tarmaka, but there is nobody doing what Tarmaka is doing. I'm telling you that right now. I mean, I just can't wait till you all see it. See the full scope of what they're doing. Even right now, it's baller as hell and changing the game for small commercial and making it better every day. But some of the new features that are coming out are just awesome. So get the demo, know what it's about, be ready to pull the trigger when you feel that it's time. Go to T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. Get that demo today. I promise you, you will not be disappointed in the demo. You won't. Schedule for a Friday. Schedule for a day you don't have anything else going on,

but get the demo. You will not be sad that you did. You won't be disappointed that you did. You'll be happy that you did. You'll be happy that you got the demo. Go to T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. Okay. Now on to Chad Spade. You got me. Hey, what are you doing? Ah, just, you know, doing the thing here. Uh, keep the motor going, mixing in some podcasts. That's about the deal. Uh, how's business going for you so far? Okay. I, you know, I, um, I'm not going to say that I'm dominating the world yet. I think we're on the path, but not – just hacking my way through trying to figure shit out, man.

I will never forget that empty filing cabinet, Ryan. Yeah. You know, I found this process has been, I was talking to my wife about it because I took, we took a three day vacation to Cape May and just a buddy in the insurance industry was busting my chops. And he was like, he asked me a question. I said, whatever. And I said, Hey, I'm going to be, I'm going to be out of town for a couple of days because

I'm going to Cape May. And he's like, Oh shit, a six month old startup insurance agency. And I was like, you know, and you know, part of it was I started the agency because I wanted to spend time with my family. Like the previous six years of my life before I started this agency, I was on the road three to four times a month. So like a big part of the agency was I'm not going to just I'm not going to be gone all the time the other the other side of me was I am a startup six month old agency that isn't it's not like I'm started with all this capital and I'm setting the world on fire you know I'm hacking my way through it and did I really deserve it it was like a weird

you know and he didn't mean it to be a jerk. He was just busting my chops. But it's like a weird sensation, you know, weird thought, I guess. Well, it is. I mean, it's one of the most rewarding ones when you're at a level, I hate to say this, but like, you know, where you feel you're making it, you know, or where you feel like you've built a book right wherever you should never kind of fully feel that way because you always need to bring new in but you understand what I'm talking about you could you could take off a little bit things are going to be fine right yes you know I mean I had to reinvent myself once I uh you know it was it was uh geez about two and

a half maybe almost three years ago. A little over that. I took off three months. I only called the office twice. I was kind of nervous. I came back and it grew. It's a beautiful, rewarding business, but it sucks to start. Yeah. Yeah, it really does. Because

the only thing that I found tough is, you know, this is the first business that I've been a part of that I've started from the ground up. I haven't, I've never done a startup before. I do own another business. It's my speaking and kind of marketing business, but that's always just been kind of as I've a place to run revenue through when I do a speaking gay or consulting or something. It's not like I launched a business. It's always been a side thing. And, you know,

there's so many things that I want to do. No, I can do. And no, I, you know, quote unquote, shouldn't be doing and um you just can't do them when you're one person in a in a room and you know you don't have amount in the cash to to to pay people to help you you just you know you're prioritizing I'd say prioritizing has been and I'm sure this is never not the issue but just for me prioritizing, I'd say prioritizing has been, and I'm sure this is never not the issue, but just for me, prioritizing has been very difficult because I want to do this and I see,

I know how to do this, but you know, is this more important than this thing over here? And that part has been difficult. That is the nature of the business. I don't know that you'll, I mean, there's so many different channels that you'll have those feelings in. And, you know, it's such, it's one of those things because, I mean, this is a data-driven complex business. And then you throw being an independent on top of it, where, you know, now you got all these different carriers, now you got, you know, you start bringing on people, and then you can't see that you're in quicksand until you're in up to your ears, and then you need that, but is that the right decision, and then, you know, and I listened to one of your other podcasts the other day, and somebody was on there, the great thing about, like, the Facebook groups that we have today, it's you know for I think one of the biggest things

the contribution IAOA is made to the independent channel is is it helped us break down the silos because before we just talked maybe at lunch once in a while or when you're on a company production trip and then you probably never talk to them after that until the next company trip so a lot of value being slung around in between these groups and i love it because uh you know finally people are saying that you're not the only one in those shoes you know yeah i actually the reps will come in and make you feel like wow you're you're like the only one of my agents that aren't doing that right I know well you know it's this is actually what's probably happened for you is you're the only one of my my agents that actually wants to do that thing because that that's what I get so often oh yeah I'll explain an idea to them and they'll be like they'll look at me like

I had one like a month ago come in and I lost her. She just tranced out on me. She went like, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, come back here. And it's like, they, it just, they're not ready on some stuff. Yeah. I know I was talking to one of my, I was talking to one of my commercial lines carriers about, it was the first, first policy that I'd written with this carrier. And, uh, and, uh, I went, I, and, and I guess this just seemed crazy to me, but it was a bop

and a small bop. And I took the guy's credit card information to do credit card EFT, like every other carrier that I have does. And they're like, oh yeah, we don't, we don't really do that. And I'm like, what? You don't take credit card payments for your insurance pop? Like that, that's not something you do. It's like, yeah, well they can do checking account EFT. And I'm like, wow, this is like 2004. I couldn't believe it. And it's stuff like that. Then juggling that, that becomes a decision. Well, this carryover here is $100 more, but he can pay by credit card.

So who do I want to go with? All of a sudden, it doesn't matter. Yeah. It's like you were like, oh, my gosh. It's just all the different things you got to manage. It's nuts. And then you throw people into the mix, and it's like yeah wait till you have one retire on you and don't tell you they sit in front of you and they look like they're working hard and like where's it at yeah i know i um i i actually have two two people right now that i'm in in talks with about being potentially 1099

producers that have approached me um and i'm it makes me very very nervous the whole idea that makes me a little nervous um because i feel like i don't have the processes worked out enough for myself, let alone then to go teach another human the processes that I want to be done because you know what I mean? It just, it's really hard. It's one of those things where I, I think go with your feeling. Yeah. Cause it's probably right. You know, and, and you're in a, especially in the early years, you're in this thing where you're like, I learned this in the military. And it was like, we always had a thing called hurry up and wait.

And that's kind of like where you're going to be living at for a little while where you know and you see and you get to it. Like I had a guy like, oh, he came in my office. He was like, one of my agencies like this is never going to change and I'm like I see it I know it's there I know it has to be dealt with but I can't get to it right now yeah you know yeah you know I'll get to it don't worry about that but right now you know there's higher you know that's like the least of my problems right now it's major on your side but not on mine i know i was um so you know i'm in this place and then this will lead us into kind of why i mean i wanted to have you on for a bunch of reasons because i've been in your ecosystem for a while and watching what you do and i love it

and i'm such a huge fan of, of, of, of just all the stuff that you put out and how much value you deliver, um, and asking nothing for a return. And I have a ton of questions, but, um, you know, it, to what you just said specifically, I have a very clear vision of how I want to operate this agency. Very, very clear. Like it is crystal clear. And I know the different types of business I want to operate this agency. Very, very clear. Like it is crystal clear. And I know the different types of business I want to go after. I know the brand tone that I want to use. I know the process that I want to build. And I find myself every day caught between like three things. Like I need to make revenue now to pay the bills. That doesn't necessarily completely align with where I want to be long-term. And at the same

time, I have some tools, which are the tools that I I that actually helped me grow the business and I have other tools that only really drag me down but changing from those tools to other tools that's a whole that's a whole another drag and you're just in this place where you're like you feel like you have all these shells and like which ones do I move and how do I make sure that the boat stays above the waterline while at the same time like trying to go from like a rowboat to a powerboat you know what I mean like and yeah it was very frustrating for me for a long time even even in really rapid growth mode because that vision that brand that service that you want to deliver you you know, you can do it now.

That's the good news. You're coming in at like a really great time. In my opinion. But I had to set a good decade on not having the tools and, and, you know, in essence, we kind of still don't have them, but, but you could take somebody who didn't even want to hook up a Bluetooth before. And if they're pissed off and they're, and they're persistent enough, But you could take somebody who didn't even want to hook up a Bluetooth before. And if they're pissed off and they're persistent enough, they'll go learn this stuff and build what they need. Because now we actually have access to it.

Before, we just have to say, this is what you use. We're the best. Pay us money and do your job. And it bugged me for a long time I mean to the point where I almost lost my heart in it and I was kind of treating it like the average age it was just some annuity that bothered me yeah you know I am it's exciting now it is it is exciting and you know the the you know and I don't know if you have this or not, but I definitely, I don't know if it's because I do have this vision of where I want to go or because for so long and just maybe the nature of who I am, I just, I'm always thinking out into the future. I really, I do struggle with today. Like I, I can see where I want to go and I can build the path but like all that thought

like I waste a lot of brain cycles on that versus like the brain cycles I need to be spent on this moment and that's a hard thing that I've had to do I hate to be a book dispenser but I had to take a good smack in the head with the power of now what can i do in this moment yeah because the rest of the stuff i mean you know living in the past and fretting about the future you know just doesn't allow you to get anything done today and that's what really needs to happen i agree i agree my um it's funny it's funny brian falchuk is a big uh i i know you interviewed him he's he's got it going on in presence yes no he's great and uh for for anyone listening to this show you can go back and listen to the episode i don't know how many it was ago but uh just brian falchuk he came on he's got a new book out but he's got a bunch of

books uh awesome awesome stuff awesome guy great great resource for the industry uh what's great about i think his books is he's been he he's hit bottoms and he's recreated himself and and uh you know personally and you know somewhat professionally anyway some of the stuff but i really like that guy he's he's you know we need him yeah i agree i agree man i think that uh yeah so my wife is like my grounding mechanism like if it were up to me i would just float away like it's just that's just the way my brain works like i would just flow into the atmosphere that's why you started an agency load yeah you know i'm serious it is it used to be my ex-wife that would do that like hey what do you and I'm like yeah but we could go out and do all this and I know I know and you know and the other side of it too is um so she this weekend um we're just kind of like she's like yeah what do you got going on in the week

and I was telling her and she said so how many uh how many cold calls you make last week because like that's like my trigger for being in the now, right? Like if I'm doing the calls, doing the outreach, um, that's a part of bringing the business in. I have some, some advertising stuff, bring some small business stuff in and some personal lines. But you know, for me, I'm, I'm trying to bring in some of these middle market accounts that can help me get ahead because I like working on them. And, I said well last week I did zero and she said well you had two days and I was like yeah but you know we weren't because we left for vacation on Wednesday and I said uh yeah but you know we have vacation and she's like so what uh what were you doing that you didn't make your calls and like now I'm starting to get mad at her, you know, like she's just, it's like she has

the most exposed nerve and she's just pressing it. Like, I know that you weren't present. I know that you were doing stuff that isn't going to make you money in the next three months. You're working on shit that's a year from now. And, um, you know, that is, it's, it's just funny. Sometimes you need, so you need to pull that in she goes you know I think you need to take on a partner who's gonna like you need someone who's gonna stay today all the time and then you can do all this stuff from like tomorrow to forever but you need like a today person and I think that's a good thing so I used to do this thing that my ex-wife and she's a wonderful woman one of the most amazing i i think might be the best large group

agent that you know i got her into the business and stuff but i used to do this thing when i first started when people asked me what i do we go to like social gatherings and stuff and and when it came to personal lines i would do this and we do this and she's like you know because i was like big clothes elephant guy right yeah and uh she's like what are you doing and I'm like what and oh I used to piss her off because I felt like personal lines like demeans me right yeah you know so we all have our little things that we go through well you know it's funny that you say that because that is something that I am constantly fighting is, you know, the, the business, the, the, the, the agency owner in me says, I need to be doing personal lines.

And the reason I say that is because I've watched my wife's agency navigate a lot of ups and downs, both in the local market and in the national market, because they're, we'll call it, we'll say they're 75% personal lines and they're able to, to weather every storm because they've had it. They've been able to weather them all. Cause we don't get natural disasters up here in New York. We just don't like we did. Our rates are, you know, they go up and they go down, but they're steady. You know, we're not talking about these wide, huge swings that you've seen other parts of the country. So I look at that and I say to myself, I'm staring at the blueprint. They have it. They work a 50 mile radius. I can take exactly what they're doing and do it statewide. And I can literally replicate a well-run agency. And then

I can replicate it with small commercial because I can believe the same things can be done there. And then I also think there's opportunity in the middle market over the long term for me over the long term. Again, I'm not saying I'll do all these things at one time. I'm saying stack them. And I'm constantly flip flopping between do you start with the more like ego driven whale hunting middle market side where it's like, ah, you know, cast now, oh, I go whale hunting. You know, he writes it all the time. And he's a whale hunter all of a sudden, which I think is great for him. But I also think he's fun to make fun of him. But, you know, and then there's the other side of me that's like, well, geez, I also know and have people who are willing to help

me set up these really well runrun streamlined personal lines processes which deliver good coverage great price great service like i can do that too because i understand those systems and i'm constantly i will say like almost on like a day-to-day basis i'm flip-flopping where i should spend my time i've flipped on that for a long time and And, you know, I have, we all have friends in the business. For me, like in the beginning, it was mostly older people. And, you know, he, you know, a lot of times you don't forget the personal lines, you know, maybe right now we haven't seen the effect of what this virus is going to do to like certain commercial agencies. Yeah. When payrolls come in and they're less and they renew less, it's kind of what happened in the mortgage crisis, man. You see big firms go down, you know, and you know, so I mean, I've had a million dollar account. They sold. My friend had a two million and a five million. One he had 10 years and when he had 15 he lost them both in one week

one sold everyone said just time for a change you know my ex-wife's largest group health plan the owner died and the daughter came in and said we're changing all the vendors just because you know and so you know that in the meantime you got all these little oil wells and you can close them fast and high volume. And I don't prefer one over the other. But what I do prefer is direct bill policies. We used to have a lot of car dealerships and you're living your life around renewal dates. And it's always five minutes to five o'clock on Friday. And there's three guys with another 10 grand in

their back pocket to throw at it. And for me, it got old because I had to reset why I got into this business, which is what you said when we first started talking about, hey, it's supposed to create more time for my family. But now I can never go on vacation this time of year because this account's got to renew. And we could never have celebrate the major holidays christmas and new years because we had 31 dealerships renewing their comp on january 1st you know so that i don't know i just went back that route and i'm all for me my personality where i'm at today i'm all about direct bill auto renew. Yeah.

Yeah. You know what, man? I, um, doesn't mean I won't take an agency bill. That's good. But I have to really be convinced they're going to be a good client. So I have actually turned down two accounts that have come in. Neither one were very large. One was like a 7,000 in premium. The other was 5,000 in premium.

That would have been agency bill accounts that very likely it came in, could have sold them. Um, and I just, you know, I, I, and again, I, I talked, I talked with my wife about all this stuff. Um, cause she's so involved in her agency. I mean, she, she basically runs, uh, her family agency now. And, um, you know, they do a lot of agency bill stuff. And I said to her, if I had agency bill, I now have a whole nother thought process that I have to walk through every month

that isn't just like, oh, maybe I don't know exactly where I'm at, revenue versus expense. I literally have a fiduciary responsibility and to the, both the client's money and it's a whole nother thing. And, uh, why am I doing that? Like, why am I walking into now? Granted, a hundred thousand dollar great account comes walking in the table. They're going to pay, they need to pay agency bill for some reason maybe i consider that maybe i do but little i'm going to make six hundred dollars on this agency bill account that just seems like a

bad decision it just doesn't seem like a good decision to me well and you'll really be loving that one every year it renews oh yeah i just um i them, but you know, I, I don't like them, but you know, sometimes out here for risk reasons to keep the account with them. Yeah. And you know what I've started, you know, I, I, so an episode that hasn't actually come out as of us having this conversation, but, but will, by the time this episode comes out, is with John Mason of Shenango Brokers. So he used to own five locations in New York, was offered the opportunity to buy a small wholesale operation named Shenango Brokers, and eventually left retail completely to grow this wholesale operation. And now he's in 24 states.

And we were talking and I, you know, I said to him, you know, I think a lot of people use wholesale brokers, but maybe they don't necessarily understand other than just access. Why would you use a wholesale broker? Why would you consider that? And he said, he said, look, he goes, he goes, I think one of the things that is things that is incredibly underrated about using wholesale brokers is not just that you don't maybe have a quota that you have to hit with a certain carrier if you're putting the business there. That's probably number one. But number two is if you take, say something like direct bill commercial auto with a commercial auto carrier, and you peel that out of your direct appointments where you care about the loss ratio, and you put that with a wholesale broker, now the losses on that account go to the wholesaler. They don't go to you. And maybe you have the more profitable parts of the account in your direct bill carrier and you just peel off

the unprofitable pieces to wholesale and you can still do direct bill. And I was like, that's a really interesting way and really sophisticated way of starting to think about your business, right? Yeah. There's a lot of different ways i looked into that when we were thinking about i had an agent long time agent moved to texas and i'm like oh i don't want a small book there and it destroy my california loss ratio yeah yeah but then you look at the maintenance of it it's like okay then i gotta go here and beg them to do this and you know that's where those type of places I mean if they got their efficiency down there would be a lot of reasons to use them yeah well that's why I love so I'm a member of Indium the market access provider and

network or whatever and what I love about them is just because of the nature of all the different works that I've done and the podcasts and being in the marketing industry for so long, I do get opportunities from a lot of different states than New York. And what's cool about Indium is through them, I can write in any I can write any, in any state. I, you know what I mean? And not, it's, so it does come through on their paper. And I explained that to the insured, Hey, you know, I worked through a partner company, so it's not going to say a rogue risk on it. It's going to say Indium on the, on the, all the letterhead and everything. But, but it's a really interesting relationship where now you can serve, maybe you have, you're referred to somebody. And I do try to refer out to other agents where it makes sense to, but it's, it's interesting how some of these relationships work.

And you might have somebody that moves to a state and you need that. You need a carrier to a carrier that you can't write with there and you have access to it there to to keep the relationship yes yeah that's where you know we're having a hard time getting asi in texas even though we already have progressive it's like well you know and of course they're competitive there yeah so all So, all right, man, I want to swing. We've been, we've been bullshitting for 25 minutes now. Not that we couldn't do that for another 25 easy, but you posted something. And this is what was the impetus to reaching out.

Not that I necessarily need a reason because there's so many stuff, so much stuff that we could talk about that you do. But you posted in your Facebook group, Facebook group, um, pure potential insurance automation, which is awesome. And, uh, I'm, I, it's one of my favorites. I just, I don't do like, I only probably do 5% of the stuff that you talk about, but I just love seeing it. I love thinking about the, you know, just seeing the way that you think about this stuff. And, um, uh, you posted this article from insurance journal called the value of agency data and who owns it. And I read the article. So I read your comment on the article and then I came back and read the article and then went back and read your comment again. And I immediately reached out to you after

that and just said, Hey, I, this is a topic that data is everywhere. Everyone's talking about data. I think half the people, probably 90% of the people talking about data don't even really know what they're talking about. I think they're just using the term. And as someone who I think has a really good perspective on it, seems to have spent a lot of time thinking about it, and has a clear position. I just wanted to dive into this topic to spend some time as best we can, helping, helping, you know, the people that are listening, regardless of what space they're in vendor, you know, carrier, agency, whatever, just kind of wrap their head around this.

Because one of my dearest friends, Seth Zaremba, is on this mission for agents to own their data. And I think at face value to most people, they're like, yeah, but I don't know that they even know what that means. And then other people are like, ah, it doesn't matter. You know what I mean? Another guy that I had just had on the podcast, Chris Langell, is like, own your data, don't know that they even know what that means. And, and then other people are like, ah, it doesn't matter. You know what I mean? Another guy that I had just had on the podcast, Chris Langell's like, own your data, don't own your data. Why does it really matter?

And I can see both those perspectives. And I think it's confusing for a lot of people. So that's kind of my intro to, to this conversation. Okay. Wherever you want. If I was a good podcast host, that would have ended with a question. So in reference to the article that kicked off that, that post is, this is, you know, I don't want to say like behavioral data or anything like that, but just basically our clients data, I struggle with it daily. And it could be from the carriers.

It could be, and of course, out of our management system, you know, of the management systems that I've had experience with, you know, proper reporting, it's been really, you know, it's just been very flawed. The reason for it is, is I think the way they store it, some are using multiple databases and they're not even using the same naming conventions across those databases. And, you know, when you get a report that says, you know, how many policies you have per household or, or whatever it is, it's, it's more than likely nowhere near being accurate. Yeah.

And, you know, active, inactive clients or policies and stuff like that, it's really difficult. And to me it seems so simple. If you have the database underneath it, why can't you snap and use it? And then you're oftentimes restricted on developing your own reports and that can be hard because does your management system have those variables that you can create a report on pull you know years ago I was with another management system and you know we would spend more time figuring out

on their home, no auto or whatever list like that, what policies does this person have, so we can call them up and try to round them out, we would spend more time reviewing the account to see that the report was wrong. So what happened that killed our prospecting time. So to me, at the agency level, whether, you know, whether there's interest in owning your data or not owning it, for me, the purpose of this post was to specifically address how we can use it. And that's the biggest part of it for me is like, how do I know what I need to know to run my agency and to help my agents, but more importantly, provide the experience to the client that they're expecting. And what would,

so a lot of the stuff I build and use is like, what would I want if I were them? And then what would happen if we did that? Because it's really hard to do business with us. And it's primarily coming down to our tools. Nobody's fault, just how we got here and technology's evolving so fast that a lot of this is available to us, whether we make it or somebody else makes it or some vendor makes it, it doesn't matter. But I think we collectively as an agency force used to just accept a policy per household number, what's your average policy per household, as fact. When a carrier rep would come in and they would say, you know, you might be running a fever on your loss ratio because of this. Okay. Based on what? Tell me what. And more than likely, it's their three-year snapshot or they're not even sure. They're just bringing it off somebody else around a company-wide report for your state.

So it gets me into going into, okay, how can we use this? You know, why don't we have a report to know the spread on an agent to see if they're making it or not? Why don't we have reports for the, or at least the ability to do 80 20 right that Brent Kelly talks about I love that and we actually did that and implemented it in and it was brutal to get something automated that so like that because to be honest with you I'm gonna forget if I pull excel reports and upload them into something every month it'll it'll. So I needed a way to make sure it was happening. And it was visible within our servicing automation for them to always know where that client sat at. So when I read the post on that, and I looked at that,

and it just hit me hard, who owns it? Yeah, well, you know, I, I don't know that for sure. But seems to me, we don't own it because we can't get access to use it how we want it. If you look at it in that context, I'm not determining value or anything like that. So that's kind of what led up with it. We should be able to create a report to know where everything is in our agency and to use the data for how it can help us actually grow. We should be able to know about a client, frequency over time of claims, how much time was spent on servicing,

how many times did we rewrite them, did they lapse, did they, you know, all this stuff to determine it, and that kind of led into the 80-20 thing where, okay, well, if we have these people in the lower percentage, what's their policies per account? What's their revenue or commission per premium and revenue per account? When I went into it, and since I'm personalized heavy, I wanted to know, okay, in those 80%, that make up, you know,

X percent, and it's kind of true, I'm a little heavier than 20, but, but, uh, it's definitely rings true that the 80 to 20 principles running, it might be, you know, off, you know, there might be a margin of error. That's different, or not error, but a difference for every agency, but we have that. So, okay. So when it's primarily personal lines based, I look at it and like, huh, what can I do? You know, well, if I knew the claims history, if I knew the service request, like how much time is it taking? Because maybe it's a DP three or a secondary home for somebody that lives in Canada and it'll never cancel. Well, to me, there's a little bit value. So you start getting

into opinions there. So I like to look at it as if there's no service and it's highly retentive and no chance, well, that's still a good account to keep in my opinion. But, and you never know what may change. They may retire and move here and so forth. So I'll leave it on that part and on the policies per household. Why don't we know the inactives? Why't we why can't we have an api that just says these are inactive when we start and giving the agent an option is this finally somebody we got rid of you know is this a celebration or is this something that we messed up on or or they just got lost in our relationship so data i think is going to be very, very crucial on how successful we can be. And especially on, you know, outside of our own agencies data for new prospects.

You know, the new popular thing coming out is, you know, your two question personal lines quote. That technology already exists. And there's some agencies that have it. And then there's some new companies that are MGAs that already have that, and they're finding new ways to rate. And it's ultra fast. As independents, we need to be able to compete with that because we are supposed to be advisors, in my opinion, but we can't be light years behind it expecting people to wait around for us. So I think we need this data so we can work on the technology to reclaim our time so we actually create the space to be the advisors that we all signed up for. So that's kind of a quick summary of that article.

That article goes deep in many ways for me because I do spend a lot of time on it. Yeah, so if you're looking for the article, it will be if you go to ryanhanley.com forward slash chad-speed or just look for Chad on the site. I you'll, you'll, I'll have the article linked up in the show notes that you can see exactly what we're talking about. I'll also have the post linked up to that, that kind of started the whole thing. So, you know, to that, to that

point, to your point about the speed, because to me, I, so I believe in Seth's mission wholeheartedly, mostly because I believe that I don't know that I actually care who own-owns the data, own-owns the data. I do care from the standpoint of usability of the data. And I agree. One of the, you know, we talked a little bit earlier, you know, one of the things that I have struggled with, as a, is that I, I think in the same terms that you're thinking about is how I think about things. And for me to even do that

at my small level, at the very, you know, small level that I'm at so far early on, I can barely operate. Like I am literally still having to take data out of one system and hand punch into another system. And now I'm talking to Wes Anderson about a VA because it's not worth my time to do that. So now I got to hire a human to do this because the two, and, and, and to me, that's the part of the ownership of the data that is kind of inexcusable is, is in, in that if you, if you, if you can't deploy the information, if you can't deploy what you're learning to better serve your business your people your clients yourself your your operations if you're if you're not if you can't actually deploy the data then taking out the pure ownership idea you don't own it i

mean that's really what it is if you can't deploy it, you don't own it. You know, taking away the pure ownership perspective from a contractual standpoint, because I think the truth is really in between Seth and Chris in terms of like, how much should we care that on paper you could, you know, you own it. I don't know. I don't know what that means really. I just, I agree with you. And I think that your thought process is where we specifically as agency owners and agency personnel need to be thinking is, can you deploy it? Yes or no? Can you learn real time? Because if you have to wait for your, someone in your office to concatenate and pivot table, you know, three different spreadsheets to give you some basic high level

information once a month, then you're not actually, you're not actually being able to make decisions on that data because who the hell knows what it looks like after all that work has been done and how accurate it is to begin with. Well, it is. I mean, most reports, if you ask the criteria, you know, you just get deers in the headlight. What makes this up? And I don't know. Nobody's ever asked that before. You know, it's like, oh boy, you know, how do I know, you know, how do I know what I know or don't know about it? Well, then you got to spend the time to be certain on it, right? And especially if you're going to

make decisions or have conversations about that, it's awful embarrassing to have the wrong situation yeah so you know there's two parts of that that there's one there's what we do with it to facilitate the growth and create improve and grow our current relationships but there's also the operational side of it where it's boiled down to commission statements and you know not a whole lot beyond that um but when you get into it we have a need now and i think i think maybe for some of us and i think collectively that the agent forces it we're moving into awareness that we're doing things really, really long and inefficient. We don't know exactly what to do with it. There's some stuff that has to evolve and be created for us, but it's important to pay attention to it because we can't sit here operating with a lot of the, you know, the, how would I say it, strategies that we're operating

with today, if we're going to be able to compete. And, you know, one of those things is quoting and binding, right? You talk about Bob's a lot with Tarmaca. I love that program. It's going to be really exciting to see what Roger does with that going into the future, but on personal lines as well. The most expensive thing, and it's not on your P&L, is data collection, quoting, and binding. Well, if you spend some time surfing out on the web, you're going to find agencies and new carriers where, I mean, with something as simple as an email and a cell phone, they already have everything, you're making models, dates of birth, DL numbers, all of that. So I mean, there might be some, you know, some specific criteria that we have to ask, like discounts, or, you know, in California work address, but, but for the most part, we should not be asking for that

anymore. And I really think the rating, the rating companies can get it, but they haven't come around to it yet because we still like, you know, handwriting stuff down or having them fill out a quote form on our website and going back and using our finger again. How ridiculous is that in today's time? You know, it's the same way as going back from e-signature, right? Who would want to go without that? You want to fax somebody

or mail it out in the in the mail and wait for it to come back and quoting's there today the whole process is i think is completely wrong for for what you can pull in now we'll see and if an agent can do that everybody else can and why are we still asking for any of this stuff we should be in data validation and then talk about the risk. And what did that do? It created the space to have a more meaningful conversation about the other stuff that we usually leave on the table. And that's one of the things that bothered me once I got in the business,

we were talking about that a little bit before prospecting momentum, right? Find your target and go pull it in. Well, that's great, but what's the emotional roller coaster? Yeah, the guy wants to quote, shit, I got to quote it. Yeah, the guy wants to bind it, shit, I got to bind it. And then you get a snag to where you have to call an underwriter in there and your whole day goes crazy, right? But what happens to that momentum that you were supposed to create? It really destroys it. And if you find somebody that once their book gets going, where's prospecting all that, man,

they better build the relationships to get referrals because it's going to be really limited. And usually it's after an exhausting day of fighting all our software systems or underwriters that we finally come around to having the time to do that. But now we're in the wrong state so if you're not really skilled at shifting that state your prospecting once again takes the back seat yeah you know it's funny i actually believe to a certain extent i have two thoughts one the technology for not for the data collection issue that you're talking about, that problem is solved.

That's a solved problem. The reason it's not widespread is I think that the people that have it don't want it to be widespread. Why would you give that up? It's such a competitive advantage. If I have to ask 30 questions for a quote and you only have to ask two, you're winning. You're winning the game. I you're winning. You're winning the

game. I'm not winning. You're winning. So why would you do, why would you make it easy for me to figure out how you're making that happen at all? You just wouldn't. Now, I do think that there are companies like Tarmaco, like a few others that are solving this problem and making it accessible to more agencies, which is a tremendous thing. But it's absolutely, I mean, so I was talking to one of my, we'll say large national carriers about, we're just doing, you know, I hadn't talked to the rep in four months or whatever. And he called me, he said, how things are going.

I said, look, man, things are going good. I said, you probably saw that i haven't really i haven't really placed much stuff with you and the issue is that it takes me 35 minutes to quote a home and auto with you and i can quote a home and auto with plymouth rock in about four minutes i mean their home process is name, address, homeowner's quote. Then you just put in their birth, the person's birthday to validate and it is done. That's it. Policy's over. I mean, you know the price, you pick the coverage, you know, they give you a good, better, best. And the one in the middle is really good coverage. The only reason you'd want the best is if they were, if they had special circumstances. So I'm, I'm three questions homeowners quote,

if you're in Pennsylvania and you have hippo or you have openly, or you have, you know, if you trust Swift in your state, you know, you, you have now, now you have three or four carriers that with just a tiny bit of information, you can pull back a ton of homeowners business. And, you know, the fact that we have carriers that are still requiring you to enter, is there circuit breakers in the house?

It's freaking bananas to me. Like, you know, that just, you know, the, that's what I'm saying. There's like 17 databases online that have that information. If you cross reference to, you You know the answer. That's what I'm saying. There's like 17 databases online that have that information. If you cross-reference two, you know the answer. You just pick the best one. Well, and we got that backwards a little bit. A lot of times you might go and collect all that. Depending on the client in question, it might take them time to get some of that stuff to you where the carrier already has it. It's like, you're making me collect it to put it in. So

you can tell me something's wrong. Let's just go with yours and I'll validate it with the client. Yeah. So that, you know, it's, it's one of those processes where it is such a, there's so much work in there and there's it's so much pushed back on us that's that's stealing all the time from doing what we were really meant to do and I think what we signed up to do yeah I agree and the point that you made about all this data collection takes away from being able to be so so you know it was what 20 years ago or so that we really started to have frontline underwriter taken away as part of the independent insurance agent's job right we were always kind of part of our job description in our you know even you know whether

implied or explicit was that we were frontline underwriters for the carriers that we were directly appointed with and over time that has been kind of seeded back to the carrier to where now we just send them information and they send us a quote back well by by removing data collection we are given that that ability back which is better for the carriers we get to actually talk to the person and learn about them is this person a kook yeah their house may line up perfectly from a data perspective but they might be completely batshit crazy and can only figure that out by talking to them if we're just going oh okay no dog great uh does your do your stairs have a handrail oh yeah okay good check okay that one's good uh when was last time that your roof was completely redone

you know what everyone says five years ago okay great five years ago so it's like we're not actually talking to the person because if you do then spend that time now your conversation's an hour long and no one's given us an hour you're never you're not getting an hour on personal lines anymore on the phone with somebody yeah and and that's stopping you from going into the conversation and figuring out what their values and beliefs are and what's important to them. Yeah. And I'm not saying this because I want to get out of work. I'm just saying it's unnecessary need. We need to validate, not, you know, chase down and, and do all of that stuff. I certainly don't want to take away anything. That's our, our responsibility, but the, you know, I mean,

I know I can get the data right now. I just haven't, haven't got to it right now. We don't need those big, uh, you know, a handful or under a handful of data providers to get at it anymore. It's so abundant out there. Um, and it's cheap it's cheap and uh you know we can get it now it's pretty much available for anybody so you know it's just a matter of of getting the time to actually bring it in but you're going to need an api you're going to do one-offs but but you get my point we should not we really shouldn't be doing that anymore it's it we need to actually make sure it's correct and get into the conversation to figure out how we can actually be the advisor role that we were meant to be.

If we don't create that space and we stay buried underneath our work, it's going to really just start taking away from the profit margin. And the second level to freeing up time is properly setting expectations for the relationship as well, which drastically improves retention. You know, so much of, of retaining business. And this, I know from my old, obviously I haven't, I haven't renewed a single policy yet, six months, six months in, but from eight years in the business prior, so much of that was taught to me by my father-in-law who the last 10 minutes of every conversation was setting expectations for the next conversation. Or if you are ultimately binding that policy, setting expectations for what the relationship would look like moving forward. And by doing that, our clients at the, when I was

with the merger, there were no surprises or, or, you know, rarely surprised the one-offs were the surprises. It wasn't like people were rant, things were randomly happening and they're, you know, what the heck is going on? They always knew what the next steps were. And that's why the Murray group has a amazing retention rate. And I, and I look at today, you know, a lot of times when I, when I listen to someone talk about struggling with their retention rate so often, when you dive into it, it's because they're, they either feel like they don't have the time or they're not able to make the time in their business to, um, to, to properly set those expectations. So the customer knows what's coming, what's coming next yeah those

are tough ones because i you know the first thing that pops into my mind i'm not saying it's going to be everybody's case sometimes it's you know geographical or it's the markets there but if you're matching coverage and beating price you're i really think it's not going to be a whole lot longer before you're feeling some pain. They need to know why they're buying you and they want to buy you. Yeah. One of the scariest things a client ever said to me, it was like,

that's what I have you for. And I'm like, Whoa, I thought you were cheap. You know what I mean? It's like, if we let our own opinions and judgments go into it, aren't we managing the risk by default to the worst?

Yeah. You know, we have to give them that opportunity and i don't think it's really about price unless it's ridiculous i mean if it's tripled and you know double or triple it doesn't make any sense help them out help them out where they need to be but usually you know if i were to send out a text message to a hundred prospects and I've done this before, and I say, what's most important to you about your insurance, you know, depending on their situation, but if we're talking normal, stable people, prices usually last mentioned at all. They want to know they have the right coverage. They want to know they can get service callbacks, you know, do I have what I need? So when, when you get blinded by the, you know, do I have what I need? So when you get blinded by the, you know, when they don't know what they're buying is when they default the price, which is what we do with stuff outside of insurance all the time. It's the natural thing to do. But when we know what,

why we're buying it and what the value of it is, what the differences are, then most of the time we end up paying a lot more than what we expected yeah so let's say um you're able to and and this is kind of where i want to finish just being respectful of your time i want to coast this in because we've gone a lot of other places other than data but it's all good it's all good um uh a lot of times i bring someone on for a specific reason and we end up talking about it. Let's say you are able to, quote unquote, own your data. I know you do a tremendous amount of work inside of Infusionsoft. Your Infusionsoft probably looks like a cartoon metropolis with all the buildings and networks and throughways.

And you're able to actually take ownership of it. What is possible? What do you see as a deliverable result? Where do you see agencies being able to go when they can actually pull this stuff out? You probably being one of the few agencies that has gotten close to this idea or as close as possible, where do you see agencies being able to go? They've probably heard so far and gone, this sounds great. I can buy into everything these two yahoos have said, but what the hell's in it for me and what are you able to do because you've spent time thinking about this yeah you're i mean it's really limitless if you go from any sort of memo

or to ongoing the relationship and getting out of the cross-sell business i i feel cheap when i saw that because it makes me feel like i'm getting a quick hit. But if you can begin to look at the household or small business at overall risk, right, there's a lot of stuff that you can do in there. But if we add direct access through full APIs to the carriers and our management system, if necessary, you can start to trigger stuff. Some stuff you can never fully automate in my opinion i don't want to send a cancellation notification to some guy who just passed away or got divorced or moved out of the state and you know legitimately we lost them you know the same way with you know if you're sending an automation to somebody saying you

reviewed it and it looks great to just go ahead and renew, well, you don't want to send them something saying you're going to reshop it when you just added a 16 year old. Right. So there's some stuff, you know, you could tag them when that event happens, if your automation systems on the tag system, but you can really start getting into their lives with meaningful, direct specific to them communications and so far the ones that we can do are having incredible results and uh

it's really fascinating to see it actually living and breathing and stuff because we're not sending them any newsletter or pumpkin recipe or stay safe on the 4th of July the only thing they're getting from from our office is just a happy birthday the rest is specific to managing their risk when that happens some of it's manually triggered some of it happens through automation and their reaction but um it really starts letting them feel like you're there for them and it's you're not going to send them junk. And for me, it can never be a miscommunication because then they're going to go tone deaf on everything. So I'm having a hard time answering your question because as the risk changes or things happen within the policies you can actually direct it to happen

but you can also know before it happens so you're aware of it and making it visible and i think that's where it is is a lot of times we can let them experience the insurance we can facilitate them managing their risk as their lifestyle or life events happen in an automated way to where the agents still produce their, the advisor still advising. It's just, they have, have the support just like two, two question quotes freeze up our time, right? Well, if you're going to really manage, you know, middle-class up household, personal risk,

you're going to need that same efficiency in there to start tying this all in together to support the agent. So where, you know, they can free themselves up to build and maintain the relationships is really where it'll go. I know I'm not getting too specific on that because it's really difficult to answer. And one specific question, but you can actually tie things to the account that's specific to them, whether it's claims, renewals, rounding out through education, stuff like that. Yeah. I think, you know, the way, you know, the way I envision, I envision, yes, it's tough.

I can see it. I can see what you're saying. It is a very difficult thing to describe. You know, I, I, this is a terrible term, but it's taking like a, it, it, it really is. I don't even want to say like this word, but it's like taking a true holistic approach to managing an account that, that I think traditionally we'd be seen as too small to do that. Right. When we think about holistic risk management, we're thinking about these big middle market accounts that are 250 to 500,000 in premium. And, and I believe you and agree

that these, that these solid package accounts in, in the, in the, you know, that the middle class person is buying, or I don't want to say middle class, it's just these package accounts that people have, that you can do similar risk management to them. You can help them better understand and you can retain them and you can get them to draw in more customers and be magnets in and of themselves to your agency. But it can't just be write the policy, forget that they exist until they create a problem, try to solve the problem, act like that's service, and then forget about them again until there's another problem. Right. And I think that's where it's going. I mean, part of the reason why people default to price is that they're not working with somebody

that's actually taking the time to get to know them to see what they need. But also we don't really have an efficient way of letting them experience what it'll do for them before they need it in a way to actually go back and re-experience that if they're ever in question, all while collaborating with a real insurance advisor. Yeah, and it's why, well, I've been preaching content marketing for 12 years in the insurance industry.

Um, I think it now more than ever, you know, I look at, I look at when you look inside operations, I think that are think that are really running well. It's a content operation. You have to be thinking in terms of how are you explaining things to people? I don't mean content like, you know, doing fancy videos and all this stuff. Not that video is not important. I just mean even just simple email, simple communications, templated messaging that you can, you know, just slightly personalize when needed, you know, these, these types of communications thinking through, Hey, in this moment, when they're doing this, we need to be thinking about how we say

this thing to them. That's content, even if it's not fancy, you know, the kind of fancy content. I think a lot of people think about. It's an incredibly important part about delivering our product because we don't, they're not Jordans, you know, we're not selling sneakers. We're not selling, you know, some product we can take an Insta banger of. We're selling a promise. And if you can't describe it or talk about it, then i think it gets lost on people yeah it does and and i you know i mean the good news is is that all that is available to us and i mean it's going to come one way or another maybe in some form and i think you know

we're definitely in for a disruption we'll we'll see a lot of uh the ones that are going to challenge us fall away we'll see some of the ones we have maybe not be so dominant but uh when you said three years no doubt i mean no longer than five years we're going to be operating totally different and we're going to have to to to maintain pro uh you know the profitability because uh what was that grant davis said i love that guy but he's like nobody needs a quote yeah and he's right because you know you need the need to know what your risk is and and now with the technologies there it's very easily done to actually bring it to life and let them experience it and re-experience it when they forgot so when it comes time to renewal they understand why

dude you know this has been an awesome conversation i could do this for like three more hours i don't even know i usually know by this point what i'm going to title the podcast because you'll have said something the guests will have said something i don't even know what i'm going to title this yet because we've gone so many different places but I've absolutely I'm so glad we're able to connect and spend some time and um you gave me some some great advice when I was first forming Rogue and we you spent some time with me and I really appreciated that and uh I'm just I'm a huge fan of what you're doing, man. And, uh, and I love the Facebook group. And I think that, um, I think that the way you're thinking about the business is the future of the business. And I just post an article on LinkedIn called the human optimized agency. And I, and I believe

there's a lot of different forms of that. There's no like right way, But this this concept of of being human while actually optimizing your agency for the future. We all have to be thinking through this filter. And and I think you're one of the guys right on the leading edge. So I just appreciate you and I appreciate your perspective. Great. I appreciate that. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. And for everyone listening at home, I'll have um is it cool if i shout out the facebook group anyone can join that that's open right sure yeah so i'll have links to pure potential uh pure pure potential insurance i'm gonna butcher it it's a long one don't worry about it pure potential insurance automation it's tremendous even if you're not like an automation

a geek or you don't have to be. Just to know that this stuff is happening, to see it come through, to see the conversations, it's tremendous. And I'll have that linked up and everything. But hey, man, I appreciate you. Be good. Thanks, Ryan. I'll be good.

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, me Yeah, me Yeah, me Yeah, me Yeah, me Yeah, me Yeah, me Yeah, me Yeah, me Yeah, me

Yeah, me Yeah, me Yeah, me Yeah, me and your fat fucking ass. It's my brother Charlie. Taking his body from the ground. Taking his body from the ground. Taking his body from the ground. Taking his body from the ground. Taking his body from the ground. Do you want to have a few drinks and smoke a joint, Bubbles?

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