The Ryan Hanley Show - RHS 071 - The First 7 Months of Rogue Risk

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comListen as Ryan breaks down the good, bad, and ugly of the first 7 months of Rogue Risk's existence. Specifically, we focus on some of the unforeseen obstacles that hindered growth and what he is doing and plans to do in order to course-correct and hit annual goals. Get more https://ryanhanley.comLearn 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 a different kind of episode. It's just going to be me today. It's a solo episode. No guests, no conversation outside of just me and you. And I want to share with you specifically some of the roadblocks to Rogue Risk's success. There are some aspects of the business that I'm incredibly proud and

happy about, and I feel like we're very much on the right path. There are other aspects that have been trying and difficult and frustrating, and I just didn't see coming. Mostly about myself, hesitancies that I've had, failings in myself as both a leader of an organization and as a salesperson and operationally. And I thought a lot about them and I've talked a lot about them during some of the interviews that we've done recently, which I hope you've enjoyed. I mean, we've had some absolutely ridiculous guests lately and it's been so much fun to share their insights and expertise with you and I'll drip in little things once in a while. But I wanted to just take a minute and walk you through where we're currently at, where Rogue is at and explain,

talk, discuss, maybe do a little couch session on what's keeping us from getting to where we want to be because we're off our targets if I'm being completely honest with you I'm off the targets that I had set myself for the year doesn't mean I can't still hit what my goals were we're not that far off but you know it's it's never good to to do a kind of breakdown of your business and see that you're off your goals. That's never good. So I'm constantly doing self-evaluation, probably too much. I tend to be overly hard on myself for some things and not hard enough about others, which I'm sure you can equate to as well. And I just want to say, kind of leading into this two things. One, I know every one of our businesses is completely unique, Rogue, your business, your situation, they're all incredibly unique. If I've learned anything in starting my agency, it's that every independent insurance agency really is its own unique snowflake.

A hundred percent. And I don't mean that in the negative sense. I mean that in like the, you know, we've all built this based on our personalities and our needs and our situation and where we're coming from and what our history is and what our goals are. And the beauty of our business is that there are quite literally 37,500 different ways to build an agency. And that's a good thing. It's a very good thing. But I do think that there are some common themes and I wanted to talk through them,

things that I've recognized as obstacles, how I've either overcome some of them or started to overcome some of them or how I'm still working through them. And hopefully the goal here is to show you that, one, if you're struggling with some of these things, you're not alone. I'd like to share with you some of the insights that I've gained from talking to some of the people that I'm blessed to have access to and how they've helped point me on the path to overcome these things, give you some ideas for different tools or thought processes or procedures or mental models that can get you to where you want to be if some of these things are struggles for you. I mean, I do not think that I'm alone

or unique or that somehow my situation creates scenarios that no one else has to deal with. I don't want you to think that these things are excuses. There's no excuses. This is reality. I find it to be interesting. Plus, I haven't done a solo episode in a long time and they're always fun. And I just wanted to give you an update. I did so much with the inside early on that, you know, the inside just kind of became too much. It's not that I didn't want to keep sharing with you guys. I try to be as transparent as I can about everything because I could give two shits what you think about me. From that standpoint, it doesn't impact my day, obviously. I love so many of you. So many of you listening to this are friends and people that I enjoy so much. So I'm sure there's a few

of you out there that I can't stand, but you're good people too for listening. So anyway, before we get there, I just want to give a quick shout out. I'm going to run through my entire sponsor list, mostly because I've never done that before. And two, I'm very proud of the people that sponsor this show. I think it's the best in class technology. Not the only options, but some of the best in class technology and vendors in the entire space. And I would put my vendor or my sponsor list up against just about any other shows. And, you know, first and

foremost, Tarmaka. Tarmaka has been just a tremendous part of this podcast and their support and, you know, just they've become an integral part of my agency in so many different ways. And I'm very invested in their success in terms of how I've built my business and where I see the industry going. And if you haven't listened to my industry with Raghav, the founder of Tarmaca, you need to go listen to that. Tarmaca is changing the game and they're making small commercial profitable. They're adding, you know, ridiculous new carriers every day. And I just foresee a world in the very near future where it's Tarmaca and everyone else. And they're moving into personal lines and they've got commercial auto now. And it just, it's really wild stuff. And I just think very highly of their company and how they're

building it. So very happy to have Tarmaca as a sponsor. Advisory Evolved, Chris Langell and the team at Advisory Evolved, I've said this many, many times. There is no other website provider out there for insurance agents than Advisory Evolved. Everyone else is a step below. So there's Advisory Evolved and then there's everyone else. You can choose whoever you want. I'm just letting you know that there's advisory evolved and then

there's everyone else. And I've thought that for 10 years now, since the very first time that I met Chris and talked to him and worked with him on websites, he's the best of the best. And that's just the way that it is. The next company is Better Agency. Better Agency is the best personal lines, CRM, and communication automation tool that exists. Their commercial lines is coming along. I want to always be honest with you. If you're a heavy commercial lines agency, either tiptoe in with the understanding that commercial is not there yet, but coming fast, or just wait. But if they do for commercial lines, communication, CRM, automation, what they've done for personal lines, there will be no other option than Better Agency very soon. I mean, their commercial line, their personal lines is just the things they're

doing, no one else is doing. It's just, it's awesome. It really is. And, uh, and I, I have really enjoyed better agency and I use it every single day. And right before I turned this on, I was making notes for, um, a center of influence that I have and some different ways that I support them. And, um, you know, it's my first point of contact every day. I open up better agency. I get on my tasks and work through it. And I just think, I think very highly of the software. And I think highly of the people that are building it. The last sponsor that we have here on the show is Agency VA. And they're our newest. I took on a VA six weeks ago, one of the best decisions I've ever made. A VA is work like any other employee would be work, training them. I have two Loom

videos that I need to create today to help walk through a couple different processes, our certificate of insurance process and our workers' comp client onboarding process. I want the VA to handle some of the back office kind of tactical, adding contacts in and customers in and sending out invitations and stuff. That's stuff that I don't need to do and is really a waste of my time and distracts me from making sure that client is happy and building new relationships and supporting the referral partners who may have introduced me to that client. And Tom, my VA, is great and he's coming along, but he can only do what I train him and teach him to do. And yes, agency VA is tremendous at bringing in, at giving, at matching you up with someone who is familiar with your technology so the va that i

have is he was familiar with say now certs which is my agency management system and had used better agency before but some other things like zywave he hadn't and and i do loom videos and i have a whole training library that i'm building out i need to get better at building the training library out but um i've just i think the world of agency va i think the world of agency VA, I think the world of Wes and Ben, I know them to be amazing people who really, really care about what they're doing. I mean, they honestly care. I'm not saying other VA companies don't. That is 100% not what I'm saying. I'm just saying they do. And I have a personal relationship with Wes and Ben, and for them to be sponsors of this show is incredibly meaningful to me. So that all being said, let's get on to the meat and potatoes here. Hopefully, I still have some

of you. I know those were commercials, but hopefully also it's just interesting to hear who I like to do business with. I always do business with people first. It's always about people. So first, where is Rogue Risk? So we are at, we're just over seven months in. We officially launched the agency on March 9th of 2020. So that was the first time I actually had everything together and started prospecting business. It was March 9th of 2020, seven days before Emperor Cuomo shut the state down. Now, probably was a good move at that time,

but he has since to relinquish that control. And obviously, I'm not a big fan of that, since I think lockdowns are not the answer to our future success. That being said, I didn't sell my first policy until May. So I don't really know what that means. But I didn't sell my first account until May, so doors opened on March 9th, and for almost two months, I wallowed in despair. No one picked up the phone. No one responded to my emails. It was a very, very difficult time because there was a lot of self-loathing and excuse-making for me personally. I mean, if I'm being completely honest with you, I was excited to a level that I've never been in business, at least not since kind of the early days at Agency Nation when it was just full tilt leaning forward into all things and politics wasn't involved yet.

You know, I just, I love what I want Rogue to be. I think it has a place in the market that is special and I have a clear vision of what I want it to be. And to launch it into this tsunami of COVID and just have nothing happen, I probably should have expected that. I didn't. And I wallowed for a while. You know, I kind of got out of shape. All the things, all the things that you hit. I mean, I'm not going to say I was depressed, but I certainly wasn't in a strong and energetic mental and physical place. And because of that, I made a lot of bad decisions. I chased a lot of technology. I got into, you know, I got shiny object syndrome. Oh, this thing can do that. And this thing can do that. And I tried this and I

spent money on this and, and I wasted a lot of time. And part of that is, and this is something that I've talked to some people about recently, is much as, so I would love to believe that the position I sit in, the network that I have, the connections I have, I'm fairly aware of most of the things that are going on in our space from a technological standpoint, from a tools perspective. I just talk to people all the time, and I'm just very aware of what's happening. And I thought, naively that that would be an advantage for me. And in some ways it absolutely is. I don't want to misconstrue that.

In some ways it absolutely is an advantage. But it also creates this, like I said, shiny object syndrome. I'm drawn to, oh my gosh, that tool can do this, and this tool over here can have me do this. And the truth is, none of the tools are perfect. No tool is perfect. No tool does everything. You know, the big box agency management systems are great unless you want to do anything that they don't want you to do. And then you're in trouble. The raters have really good qualities in some aspects, and then all of them have negative qualities in other aspects.

Some of the raters still force you to use PCs. For some reason, bridging on a Mac, it doesn't work. It's just like, oh. But my point in saying all that to you is I chased a lot of rabbits down a lot of holes early. And it wasn't until recently, I'd say maybe even August, that I really just pulled myself back together and said, okay, I'm hitching my ride to these

horses and this is what we're going into the future with. And trust me, Neon is the future of my agency. I'm going towards Neon. Seth and Sid and the entire team over there, I absolutely positively believe in what they're doing. And the moment that I can get on their platform, I will get on their platform. You know, they're early stage as well. And for a brand new company like me to make the move to Salesforce, to a new platform, there's, you know, you have Veruna involved, which, you know, I think the, you know, right now you still have to go through Veruna and there's some pros and cons to that. Not that I think Veruna is a bad platform, but I certainly don't think it's the best platform either. So there's some ways there, but that's where I'm headed. I'm headed in that direction as much as I possibly can. I think that these type of tools are the future of the flexibility

that we need because I plan to be in this for a while. I'm not building this agency up to hit a number and sell it. Yes, I want Rogue Risk to support my family, but I love this shit. I love it. I love being part of this industry. I love solving these problems. I love thinking about these things and learning about them

and talking about them and meeting the incredible people who come up with the ideas for all these different tools and systems and ways we do business. And I just, I love it. It's a big part of who I am. It's as much a hobby as it is my job. And while yes, we have to make money, you know, I'm going to make the decisions and support the people and be part of the ecosystems that I think have the best interest of our industry, of the amazing people that I love, many of which of you hopefully are listening. And ultimately allow us to do what we do best, which is support the communities that we live in, the markets that we serve, the niches that we serve. That's our role. And I want to be part of those things because I think it's important to do that. If we just sit back, if I just sit back and throw some support out once in a while, I

don't think that's enough. I think we have to be involved. And that's where I'm headed. So with that goal in mind, it has allowed me, you know, with that goal in mind that I want to be able to be completely flexible, completely open as much as possible, that I want to be able to serve my customers with the most talented individuals wherever they may live, whether it's the Philippines, Puerto Rico, or next door, I want to find the best people and put them in

positions to win. And I need the technology that allows me to do that. And that's why Neon, Salesforce, and the tools that will operate in that ecosystem are important to me. And it's why I'm building the way I am. It's why I went from QQ to NowSerts. QQ didn't allow me to do that. Also very limited on the commercial side. Perfectly fine platform if you're a personal lines agency. But as I got more into commercial and more complex commercial, I couldn't do that. Plus NowSerts being completely open, having all the Zapier connections, being very reasonably priced, being month to month. I mean, now certs is a great platform. I, I, anyone who knocks it, I think hasn't really given it its due. Um, you know, it's certainly not the most complex

or the most dynamic system, but it's pretty freaking good, especially for the price point and the fact that they don't lock you in and now certs is not a sponsor or pay me for anything. So I just want you to know, this is just my take on nowSerts, is NowSerts, the value that you get for what you pay and the fact that they don't want to lock you in. I just had a company, I just had my rating company try to say to me, yeah, we know you're not using our platform anymore, but if you want to use our Raider, you need to lock back into a three-year contract. I am not signing any frigging three-year contract. And I'll just, foom, done, have a nice day, move on. Because the signing of three-year contracts is the old world.

That is not the future of our business. That is not how we should be operated. And frankly, it's not a good sign of faith that they want to lock me into a three-year contract. That just completely rubs me the wrong way. So all that to say, I think NowSerts is incredible and it provides me with the flexibility that when I'm ready, when it's the right time, I can make that move to Neon and be part of that community. And that makes me very happy. And again, that's why I like Better Agency. Better Agency does the same exact thing, right? Like Better Agency will, you know, hopefully someday be the CRM marketing

automation communications tool that plugs into the top of my Salesforce installation and Neon and is that driving mechanism for how we communicate and interact with our customers. And I think Will and Nick and the entire team over there, I think they have that vision. They see it. And I think they're doing all the right things. And it's why I chose that platform. So, okay.

So I chased too many shiny objects. I've wasted a lot of time, um, in that space. And, um, and that's been part of the reason that I'm behind. So, so maybe you should be asking yourself, well, you say you're behind, where are you? So if, um, you know, with the understanding that I launched on March 9th, my goal, uh,th, was to put $500,000 in premium on the books, March 9th, 2020 to March 9th, 2021. So we are, today's October something, 15th, I think. So we're just under, what is that? November, December, January, February. We're about seven months in, pretty much just past seven months into Rogue Risk's life. And so I should be around $250,000 in premium.

I'm just over $200,000 in premium. I'm just over 200,000 in premium in that time. The good news is, I think I put myself in position to beat that goal. So I have the processes, procedures, and people in place now that I think to beat that 500,000 hour goal, but I'm behind it. And I don't like to see that. I don't like to miss goals. I like to be so far past goals, I don't even have to think about them because I hate goals in general, but I know how important they are. So that's where we're at.

So we're just over 200,000 in premium, seven months in. A lot of that is comp. It's been funny how the carriers I thought would be my biggest partners early have not played, that hasn not played out as much yet. But again, we're so early. The business is so spread.

I'm still in gobble whatever you can get mode, so it's not like I'm really dialed into certain markets and certain carriers. And all that is coming. I mean, all that is coming. It just hasn't been the case so far. And like I said, I've been a little scattered. So chasing shiny objects, I think simpler is better. I think understanding why you use a piece of software is way more important than using

it because it does something. And I think believing in the people behind the product should be one of the factors. I'm not going to say it's the largest factor, but I absolutely think that it should be one of the factors i'm not going to say it's the largest factor but i absolutely think that it should be one of the factors that you consider so when i think about advisory evolved as a website platform i know chris always has his customers in in his best interest he's always trying to think and build new features into those websites and new designs and new aspects of the websites so that his customers do more. He built out the local traffic marketing service which I think any agency who wants to do local digital

advertising and traffic generation would be crazy not to use Chris because he knows exactly what he's doing and his team does. I think that he's doing this because he has agents' best interests in mind. Tarmaka, Raghav, his dad is one of his clients. He's going to do what's right for the business. Nick, Will, Preston, McBilly, these are all independent agency guys. Wes owns an independent agency. Ben was a State Farm agent, but understands the business incredibly well and works with independent agents across the entire platform,

right? Like these types of people, these types of vendors, they get what we're trying to do. And truthfully, their reputation is at risk. A lot of times technologists who come in the industry and try to create solutions for us, if their solution doesn't work, they're not coming back to the industry. They're going back to Silicon Valley to do some regression analysis that they learned in B-School to find another industry to try to exploit. But people who were born and raised in this industry, who've grown up in this industry, whose reputation is built on the connections and network that they have in this industry,

that to me holds weight because I know that if they screw us, that they're out. They're in trouble. They can't come back. That people are going to remember that. And that pressure forces them to think about their client's best interest at all times. I don't know. Maybe that doesn't make sense. But that is something that I take into a lot of consideration in the tools that I use.

And, you know, that just is what it is. Okay. So we spent a lot of time on that. I think the lesson there is pick some horses, ride them, but do spend a little bit of time thinking about how they serve what you want to be. And I think you'll get there. You know, I heard someone say the other day, what I thought was the stupidest comment, something, something, something, a better agency is the new cool kids club tool. And one, I thought that was a ridiculously juvenile comment. Two, I don't even know what a cool kids club is because we're running agencies. And if we don't run them well, they don't exist

anymore. And then we can't pay our bills. So it's not like this is, you know, you know, it's not like we're, we're passing cigarettes around the high school parking lot. You know what I mean? And third, that mentality is a very scarcity based mentality. You know, there mentality. There's no clubs. You use the tools that are going to get you to where you need to be. If your business fails, no one is coming to help you put your business back together. It failed. It's over. So choose the tools that are going to get you to where you need to be. If TAM, if Applied TAM is the best tool for your agency to win, then use Applied TAM. Good for you. There's no right or wrong answer. I think there are answers that set you up for the future in certain ways if

that's what you're trying to build to, especially what I'm trying to do. But that doesn't mean that my agency is what your agency needs to be. You could, it just, it just doesn't. So I think that's very important. These are really tough decisions. I think the key is focus, trying to not get distracted as best you can, but also it's balancing awareness with distraction. Are you aware of what's out in the market without being distracted by what's out in the market? I think that's maybe the core idea. But I've banged on this for a while, so

I'm going to move on. Some of these I'm going to blow through quick. I have really struggled. I'm going to kind of jump out of order from how I wrote them down. I've really struggled being a one-man show. I work way better in teams. I've said this maybe many times in the podcast. If you listen regularly, if you don't, then this is just an aspect of my personality that I hadn't really even considered was I am terrible on my own. I need to work in teams. I need people that I can pass stuff off to because as much as I firmly believe myself to be a world-class performer in certain aspects of running a business and just business skills in general, there's certain aspects that I would absolutely put myself up against anybody in the world.

There are other aspects in which I'm like a newborn baby. I can't even get out of my own way. And it's this cognitive load where you tell me that I need to go put a marketing campaign together to attack a certain marketplace. You know how when you do something silly on your computer, like when one of your carrier partners says they want to have a video conference and what they really want to have is a WebEx and your computer starts screaming at you, no, no, not WebEx. That's technology from 2005. Please don't make us fire up WebEx. And the fan in your computer is going like this and it's so loud you can't even hear. And the people on the other end of the Webex are like, what's going on? Is there a turbojet in your office?

And you're like, no, you forced me to use Webex, a 2005 technology, which forces my computer fan to spin so fast that you think there's a jet engine in my office. Yeah, so that's the way my brain works when I have to think about things like operations, service requests, going into carrier websites and doing policy changes. Any of this like tactic, I have a tactical is the wrong way to describe it. I don't know. There are people who love this stuff. I have a list of things to do. I'm going to do this list. I'm going to check them off. I'm going to move them over here and I'm going to feel completely satisfied. And I think those people

are amazing. I think that's absolutely 100% amazing. That's not a knock. That is not the way my brain works. My brain server megabit capacity goes through the roof and I just get bogged down and it slows me down and I hate it. Where if I'm selling somebody, if I'm networking, relationship building, a lot of leadership, oversight stuff, organizational leadership type activities, game, you know, the bigger idea stuff, the relationship building, sales marketing, that stuff, I could think about that stuff for 24 hours in a row and feel completely refreshed and ready to go. Like I do not slow down. I can just go, go, go, go, go and feel zero loss of energy. So I hadn't, I didn't really know that about myself. I've learned that over

these last seven months as I've tried to do some of these things. And I'm staring at my bullet journal here and my to-do list of tasks that I have to get done that I haven't gotten done. Although I did check a couple of them off this morning. And so adding the VA from Agency VA in particular and being able to say, here's some stuff that I really don't want to ever have to think about again. I just want it to get done. And being able to pass that off, man, it's like slumping off a weight.

And I just didn't realize that about myself. I just absolutely did not realize. I mean, I think it makes sense kind of in hindsight, but that delegating the work that doesn't allow you to perform at your best, like make a list. I literally did this. Make a list of the things that don't remove energy from you, but energize you. What are those things? For some people, it's cold calling. For some people, it? What are those things? For some people, it's cold calling. For some people, it's going out and networking. For some people, it's, you know, doing the

accounting books. For other people, it's, you know, doing tasks and whatever, whatever your thing is, whatever brings energy into your body, especially if you're the leader in the organization, write those things down and figure out a way to do those things 80% of the time. And everything that keeps you from doing those things 80% of the time, give to someone else, give to someone else. And, and I'm telling you, it is ridiculous, ridiculous how it starts to change. And I'm not there completely yet. I'm not at 80% of the time doing that stuff, but working with agency VA, working with the team there, uh, doing these loom videos, starting to get the, you know, um, my new team member trained up, man, it has just been, it just all of a sudden down the tunnel, I saw this little tiny light start to shine through.

It just wasn't pure darkness anymore. And, um, I feel energized for it. And it's really a big part of how I started to come out of what was a terrible down cycle in my life there when I first started the business. It's weird to say I started a business and I went into depression. But I was, it was tough because I wasn't performing the way that I wanted to. And it feels once again like the vision of Rogue.

The train's back on the tracks. It's creeping, but it's back on the tracks. So watch the fuck out. All right, so accounting, I would put in this book. I hate accounting. I appreciate accounting. I know why accounting is important. I don't want to think about accounting. I appreciate accounting. I know why accounting is important. I don't want to think about accounting.

I want someone to tell me how much money we have in certain buckets, and I want to spend that money, and I want someone else to deal with it. That's what I want, right? And actually, Agency VA is helping me with that too. We're not there yet either, but I want to get a budget set. I want to know here's how much you have. If you want to do gifting or if you want to do postcards, you have this much amount. Boom, go do it.

I don't want to have to figure that out. I just don't. My brain, despite being a math major, stopping and slowing down to figure out how much money you have to spend, I hate that. I know that makes me a bad business owner. But that's one of those things that I just don't like doing. So I figured that out about myself. Although I'm probably going to guess that one.

Another obstacle is I get pulled into a lot of conversations that are non-revenue generating. This has been an interesting one for me because I actually, Zach Gould flipped my opinion on this. Zach Gould from GNN. So I had talked about at some point somewhere that getting pulled into, I get a lot of direct messages about a lot of people who say, hey, can I just get 15 minutes of your time? Can I ask you a couple questions? And guys, I absolutely love that stuff. Please don't stop doing it, please. Because if you have questions, I want to help you. It is a big part of who I am as a person. I love helping you guys. Selfishly, it brings me joy if I can stick something in your brain that helps you do your

job better and make you happier at your work. It just, it's part of what energizes me. So please don't stop. But I was not being good about budgeting my time with those conversations. So I was scheduling them at times during the middle of the day when I should be prospecting or networking or, you know, doing rogue work. And, um, and you know, I started to get down on myself and then I stopped taking them all together. And, and then that didn't feel good because if I'm not helping people, it's almost like I'm not breathing. Uh, if that makes sense to you. So, um, and then Zach Gould said to me, like you, this is part of who you are. You connect people to other people. You connect people to things and ideas.

If you're not a connector, then you're not being true to yourself or some version of that. I'm paraphrasing a little bit of what he said. And man, I don't know if I just needed permission or I just – the way he framed it. Life is all about framing. The way that he framed it just clicked over. And I said, I don't have to stop these because it is like oxygen, like helping people, especially our peers, colleagues. It is like oxygen to me. But we have to be, I have to be smarter about how we do it. And I think this is a big problem for everybody, right? We schedule conversations and we schedule meetings about things that may be important, but at times that impact other aspects of our life.

So what I'm saying is, I think we all should be the connectors that we want to be, but we have to be smart about when we schedule these things. So I've really started to push a lot of them to Fridays. And then strategically at the end of the day, sometimes I have to drive to pick up my kids from different things. And if I know I have like a 20 or 30 minute drive, I'll schedule a call during those times. So I've tried to be much more kids from different things. And if I know I have like a 20, 30 minute drive, I'll schedule a call during those times. So I've tried to be much more strategic about those calls. But I was really terrible about them. I think part of it was I was feeling so down

about the business very early on that I was scheduling a lot of these calls to make myself feel better. Because like I said, it is so important to me. But we have to be smart about these things. I think connecting, growing our network, building relationships inside the industry and whatnot are really important to success. I really do. I just think we have to be smart about it. And I was not smart about it early on. Much more smart about it now or trying to be. Still never perfect. The last one that I really wanted to talk about,

and this is one that really surprised me. This was probably the most surprising, maybe the second most surprising, outside of my complete lack of technology discipline, which I had early on. Although I would love to make an excuse and just talk that up to being a drunken asshole in the springtime during the early COVID days. Is prospecting hesitancy?

I have continued to struggle with cold calling. I just really have. I've just really continued to struggle with cold calling. And Mick Hunt and David Carruthers continue to pound me over the head with needing to do it. And I love them both dearly for it. And I've been picking up the phone more often, but still not enough. Still not enough. And I ask stupid questions like, well, what if this person does this? And those are all just excuse and delay tactics. From what I really need to do is to pick up the phone and make calls. And if I screw up a call, who cares? Detach yourself from the outcome. Detach yourself from the outcome. Like I literally write that some days. I've started doing cold calling affirmations, if you can believe this. I literally will write before

I start cold calling, you are a cold calling gangster. You have value. What you're going to ask this person. And I just kind of make it up, but I literally just like affirm myself before I, if that's even, that's probably not a term, but I just do these affirmations and I'll say like, and I'll write, I'll write over and over and over again, detach yourself from the outcome, detach yourself from the outcome, detach yourself from the outcome. The outcome doesn't matter. The activity matters. The outcome doesn't matter. The activity matters over and over and over. You are a cold calling gangster. You have mass value. They should be, you know, I wrote the other day, this was like last week or something. I started doing this last Monday. I wrote, oh shoot, what did I write? Oh, if they don't want to listen to you, then they're the idiot I'm

writing. And I'm writing all these things and I don't even know how to do affirmations because I've never done it before but I'm assuming you just talk positively about yourself. And to get myself in a position where I can make calls and it helps a little but basically just picking up the phone and calling and actually doing dialing the numbers is what helps the most.

I just can't believe that after 15 years I'm still hesitant to make phone calls. Like it just, I just assumed, I'm still hesitant to make phone calls. Like it just, I, I, I just assumed, I don't know why, like I've sold six figure advertising packages to carriers when I was at agency nation, I've been in meetings, you know, seven figure deal meetings at bold penguin and other places like, like, you know, I sold, I sold a,-life workers' comp account the other day. And I don't want to say it wasn't easy, but it wasn't like it was difficult. Like, you just did your job.

You know, talk to the person, talk to them about what Rogus 365 is all about, and da-da-da-da. And the fact that I still hesitate to pick up the phone drives me bananas. And the days that I don't do it, I get to the end of the day and I feel like less of a human being. I just do.

I feel like a loser on the days that I don't make my calls. I feel like I let the resistance win. I let it win. And it drives me nuts. And I would have never, I thought I was going to be, when I came in, I thought I was going to be completely past this, like mentally rolling into rogue risk, you know, a year ago or whatever. I, I said to myself, um, you know, I just, I just never even considered that I'd have prospecting hesitancy again. I thought I was completely past it. And, uh, and I'm breaking myself of it. I am going to be, my goal,

and this was one of the things I wrote down in my journal. Big shout out to Chris Paradiso, who got me on the, it's called Living Your Best Year Ever from Darren Hardy. It's really good. I'm matching that program slash diary notebook thing with kind of a, we'll call it a bullet style tracking journal that

I'm using for prospecting and for task management. And I'm kind of combining these two ideas to get myself done and get myself back in order and have a process and a flow so things get done and I don't miss things. But, oh shit, now I don't know where I was going with that. But, um, you know, the idea was, um, I want to be the absolute best cold caller in this area. I want to be the best cold caller. I want to be able to cold call anybody and get through because then I want to train someone else how to be the best cold caller.

So I never have to cold call again. Um, but, oh my gosh, I could probably train somebody to be an amazing cold caller. Picking up the phone, I'd rather punch myself in the face as hard as I can. It's absolutely insane. I can't believe that here I am, 40 years old. I have 15 years in the insurance industry. I've been a CMO twice. I own my own business. I've done 350 keynote presentations the last 10 years. I've been the CEO of a company. And I can't even pick up a freaking phone

and tell somebody that they need to do their workers' comp with me. Oh my gosh. If you feel me on that, know that you're not alone. But the only thing that you can do, and I know this, like logically, I know this. The only thing you can do is pick up that phone and call. Just pick up the phone and call. Let them call you an a-hole. Let them say no. Let them, you know, blow you off. What is the big deal? Call the next number. Ryan, I'm talking to myself now. Now I'm doing my affirmations before I have to make my calls. But all right, guys. So these are some of the early roadblocks that have kept me from getting to where I want to go. Like I said, based on my current pipeline,

and I do have a personalized producer now who I'm feeding a lot of leads. shout out to Frank Menez and his team at Quotely for helping us drive opportunities into Rogue. She's doing a wonderful job so far. She's been on, I think she's been with us for three weeks now. She's already got an account on the books. She's got a bunch more in a pipeline. So that's a really nice, I want to get her up to a nice consistent flow of inbound, get a process behind her that allows her to close business and be successful, which will just provide a really solid base for the agency as I go out and go after commercial, and then we can start to duplicate that process, get some more people in here, and continue to grow and provide the human optimized insurance experience that I believe is uniquely possible from independent insurance agencies.

And that's where we're going. So guys, I hope that this was somewhat valuable to you. I hope that you at least found it interesting. I don't know if you did or didn't. I'd love your feedback on this episode. And the last thing that I'd say is if you enjoy or didn't. I'd love your feedback on this episode. And the last thing that I'd say is, if you enjoy the podcast, share it with friends. Just tell somebody about it. Tell someone. Get them to subscribe on iTunes or wherever, Spotify. We're on all the stations or whatever.

We're on iHeartRadio if you listen there. Or like I said, we're on Spotify, Google. Just tell somebody about it. Only because I want the message to spread. If you think it's valuable, that's it. You know, I do have sponsors and that's nice. But you know, they mostly just pay the bills. I'm not making like a lot of money. That's never been the goal is to make money from the podcast. It's about sharing ideas. And I just appreciate you guys so much. I just really do. And I want, if this is valuable, if this kind of episode is valuable, I can do more of this. I can talk about, we can dive into the things that were very specific things that we're doing. I'm happy to talk about my content strategy, happy to talk about our sales strategy,

our prospecting, where we get our leads from, where we get our opportunities from. I can talk about all that stuff. So just hit me up, DM me. LinkedIn's a great spot. Hit me up on LinkedIn, send me a message, connect with me if we're not connected. Let me know what your thoughts are. You can always email me, ryan at ryanhanley.com. I try to respond to as many of those emails as I can, you know, when time permits. But either way, guys, I wish you absolutely positively nothing but the best for you and for your lives and for your family's lives. And I want you to be happy and I want you to be healthy. And I just want this business to be fun because it should be fun. It takes a lot of work. It's really hard. And if we can find ways to make it fun, make it interesting,

and have a good time, and not take ourselves too seriously while still making good money and help people, there's no better place to be. So with that, I'm going to get out of here. I appreciate you so much. Have a great day. Go crush it. Peace. Yeah, me Yeah, me

Yeah, me Yeah, me Yeah, me Yeah, me Yeah, we, we're gonna make it Yeah, we, we're gonna make it Yeah, we, we're gonna make it Charlie, that's really good! You go fuck yourself with your fat fucking ass

Yeah, we, we're gonna make it That fucking ass. Do you want to have a few drinks and smoke a joint, Bubbles? Yes. Thank you. My brother Charlie, making his money money money money Making his money money money money Making his money money money money Making his My brother Charlie, making his money money money money Making his My brother Charlie, making his money money money money

Making his My brother Charlie, making his money money money money Make it his duty, make it his duty Oh, oh, oh Make it his life, make it his job, baby Make it his duty Oh, oh, oh Make it his life, make it his job, baby Do you want a few drinks and smoke a joint, Bubbles? Yeah. Close twice as many deals by this time next week. Sound impossible? It's not.

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