The Ryan Hanley Show - RHS 081 - Rogue Risk 2021

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comThe New Year is always filled with possibilities and opportunities. In this episode of The Show we breakdown 2020 and share Rogue Risk's plans for world domination in 2021. 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 to the show. It is December 21st, 7.45am December 21st. And while most of the episodes that I release for this show are long tail episodes, meaning like the last episode that I did with Pep LeJar where we talked about branding and brand strategy and the importance of creating discerning emotions in your potential clients in order to attract them to your brand and why moving forward, our brand is becoming more and more valuable, if not as valuable as the service that we actually provide. And I know for some of you, that may seem like a foreign concept, but

if you go back and listen to that episode, you get a better feel. That episode is a long tail episode, meaning you listen to that episode of the show and it'll be just as relevant a year from now or two years from now as it was today, for the most part. Many of the tactics and strategies will apply. That's not what we're going to do today. Today, I want to kind of take this moment in time and talk a little bit about, you know, just recapping a little 2020, but moving into 2021, where I'm going with Rogue Risk. And, you know, I share these things with you guys because just from feedback, I know a lot of you have similar questions, concerns. I know we all as agency owners, as insurance professionals

struggle with a lot of the same concepts with a lot of the same, you know, just the same things that we all deal with every day. And I share where I'm at right now at this moment and what 2021 is going to look like for Rogue Risk, only to try to help give you context. And maybe if you can find some things in there that you can use in your own agency or just ways that maybe ideas that you hadn't thought about or whatever, maybe resources you hadn't considered. I think that's why I like to put these episodes out there, just to maybe let you know that you're not alone. And it also does help me frame my own thoughts too. So maybe it is self-serving to a certain extent. So I have a few things that I want to go through, but basically the point of this episode is to kind of share with you what I want Rogue

Risk 2021 to look like that is different from Rogue Risk 2020. Now, I've done a lot of, you probably realize that recently I haven't published as many episodes of this show. That has been tactical. I've been doing a lot of planning. I've been doing a lot of kind of brainstorming, workshopping, whiteboarding, whatever you want to call it to really refocus what I want this agency to be. And the COVID and everything has impacted people so much. And obviously starting my agency seven days before the zombie apocalypse,

you know, we officially launched March 9 of 2020. On March 16 of 2020, the state of New York was shut down with with many other places. So I know all of us are hidden, and I'm not unique in that way. But it definitely through my strategy of going after commercial lines, business, particularly focused on workers comp, it just flipped it's right on it right on its head. And, you know, I think I may have overreacted in many ways. And I actually have an episode of the show, if you go back a few where I talked about some of the things that, you know, I didn't, you know, some of the mistakes that I made, chasing technology, losing focus on what I wanted the core of Rogue to be. I think I moved into personal lines a little too quickly.

Not that personal lines isn't important to the company. It certainly is. But Rogue was built to be a commercial-focused agency. And when COVID hit, I stepped away from that because a lot of businesses were, you know, business in general, you know, especially small to medium-sized business was flipped on its head. No one had any idea what was going on and cold calling into businesses during COVID didn't, you know, the hardcore teeth of COVID didn't really seem like an appropriate maneuver or super, super good way to introduce myself to potential clients. So I positioned and transitioned, pivoted, whatever you want to call it, to personal lines. And that was good, except I don't, you know, I kind of, one of the things about Rogris that's interesting, and you've probably heard me say this before, but it's worth people they went to high school with and the people went to college with and the people they play golf with and they

get them to do their insurance with them. And it's a nice jump off point, right? It gives you a solid base, people you know, people that'll put up with some of the hiccups of being in, you know, a new scratch agency. And then you grow from there, right? Referrals and referral partners and whatever. Well, my wife and the Murray Group writes all of my friends and family. They write all my golf buddies. They write all my buddies from college. They write all my buddies from high school because up until a year ago, so 14 years of my insurance career, I would just refer everyone to the Murray Group. Even when I wasn't working there, I would just refer everyone to the Murray Group. Even when I wasn't working there, I'd just be like, call my wife. She's the best. And my wife is the best. So

it made sense. But when I went to start Rogue, I drastically underestimated the impact of that. Every client I have, except for a few exceptions, is someone I didn't know before March 9th. And part of that makes me proud that, you know, I've done what we've been able to do, all things considered. But there's this other side of me that's like, that has been a challenge so um you know starting double call it double scratch um and then having covid hit pivoting into personal lines too early so i really didn't have anyone to write in personal lines i mean so much of personal lines either comes from cois which i hadn't had time to develop yet or people you know which would already with the murray group so i kind of made this pivot into personal lines that's where I'm trying to go with this story. I made this pivot into personal lines

only to find that there was like nothing there. It was like a barren sea. And while I've scratched and scraped and dug up and bought leads and different stuff like that as a way to get in front of people, personal lines has been a struggle. And ultimately, it's always been commercial lines that I've been most interested in. And where I see what I'm trying to build with Rogue, where I see the most value is in commercial lines. So that all being said, the first big, I don't want to say pivot, but realignment for rogue risk in 2021 is the complete refocusing and targeting on commercial lines. the tools and resources that I've built to support businesses and their workers' compensation insurance and deploy the program that I call Rogris 365, deploy that into the marketplace with a dynamic and aggressive campaign, we'll call it. Not just marketing campaign, just being incredibly strategic and focused on putting Rogris 365 in front of the people that we can help, which are high mod

businesses where I think the most opportunity lies for us. And training an army of producers to deliver Real Grist 365 to the marketplace and supporting them with the backend resources, the tools, and again, the market access that I've been able to develop to help businesses with high mods, get those mods down and be safer, healthier, more productive, efficient organizations, which allows us to differentiate ourselves in the market, be a successful business, and do what I feel is really important and powerful work for small businesses in what is one of the more trying times, certainly the most trying time for small business in my lifetime, you know, everything that's going on. And I think that that's, that is the goal. So what does that mean? That means saying no to stuff. I am incredibly poor at saying no to

things. I say yes to just about everything. I've always just said, my philosophy has always been say yes to as many things as you can always just said, my philosophy has always been, say yes to as many things as you can and let serendipity run its course. That has worked out well for me in some ways, but as the leader of a business, I don't know that that continues to be the best methodology. And so what does that mean? As a thought leader, as a speaker, as a content creator, I think you say yes to everything.

I think you say yes to every opportunity. Oh, you want me to do a 15-minute pick my brain call? Yes. Oh, you want me to do this event down in Florida for $1,000 less than my fee because you seem like a nice person? Well, we can figure something out. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Thought leader, content creator, connector, those roles, saying yes to everything creates a karmic advantage in the universe that you'll never be able to completely attach an ROI to, but I can tell you from firsthand experience presents itself in ways that you would have never thought possible,

very positive ways. And sure, do you find yourself doing things that you don't ultimately want to do sometimes? Yes. But do you also find yourself in situations and in rooms that maybe you would have never found yourself in otherwise? Absolutely. And I'm very proud that that's been my methodology. It's served me incredibly well. And many of you listening to this are connections and more than connections, your friends, even though we probably don't see each other very often, you know, connections online and people who I've shared time with and thoughts with because I say yes to everything. As the leader of Rogue Risk and now an insurance agency and an insurance agency with incredibly large ambitions for the next three to five years, I don't know that that methodology remains the best course of action. I just think that my willingness to go wide has prevented me from going deep. And early on in any business's life, deep is the quickest way to success. I think you have to be deep and wide long term, but it's incredibly difficult to do both unless you are highly leveraged or capitalized.

I am neither. So I have to pick deep or wide. And truthfully, you've got to get to escape velocity. You have to get to that point, I think, as a scratch agency. And again, some of you listening have done this, but this is just my self-reflection. You have to get to that point where you aren't scrambling every day for the next buck to pay the bills because it doesn't allow you to execute on your plan the way that you should. So we're efforting towards that. And I would say all things considered, I'm happy with where we are. I think that there's been, I've written more

accounts in the last seven months of a size that I never even considered at the Murray Group after working there for eight years. So my overall confidence, my ability to present and deliver and sell into larger accounts, my ability to connect with people who are willing to refer larger accounts is exponentially greater today than it was back when I worked for the Murray Group. And that's an advantage, but have to get to escape velocity. Because the truth is, in the grand scheme of things, I'm not a David Carruthers. I'm not a cold-blooded killer producer. I'm just not. I have the self-awareness to know that of all the skills that I do have that wake up in the morning and salivate at the opportunity to cold call someone and do a cold drop or get some wet ink on another piece of paper, that's not what wakes me up in the morning. I do, you know, obviously nothing happens until there's a sale and you have to be able to put business on the books or you don't have a

business. I mean, that's, I'm not diminishing that fact, but there are people who wake up every day and they are salespeople. And I, that's not me per se. And I think that I'm fine with that realization. I think that with the self-awareness to know that I'm never going to be a cold-blooded killer, like some of you who are listening to this from a pure sales perspective, it gives me the ability to focus on the things that I am good at and then go out and recruit and find the cold-blooded killers who will come in and work this process that I know works and let me do the things that I'm good at, which are branding, relationship building, strategy, process, systems. Those are the things that really excite me. I mean, you know, even going back to like my Agency Nation days, the reason that Agency Nation worked for me, the reason that I used to wake up

at 5 a.m. in the morning and create content for Agency Nation was because I loved putting you guys into positions to win. That's really, you know, I don't know if it's a positive or a negative in my life. It certainly isn't helping me monetarily at this exact moment. But, you know, I get so much more joy and satisfaction in life, helping others be successful than I do in my own success, if that makes sense. That's a really tough thing to wrap my head around. It's taken me a long time because, you know, I'm like anybody else. Like I look at other people in our space and I get jealous of what they have and envious of the positions they find themselves in. And, you know, that's not to say that I'm not happy for people or that I'm upset with where I am,

but I think to myself, like, geez, if only I had solely focused on this thing for this amount of time, man, I could be in a much better position. You know, I'd be, you know, I, I, I don't peel my wife off any cash right now. It's difficult to be a 39 year old guy. Um, nothing, nothing, you know, I don't, I don't mean to be offensive towards women, but, um, you know, dudes just tend to have egos and, and I can't help that I have my own and to not be able to peel off cash for my wife on a monthly basis and is difficult. You know, that's a difficult thing emotionally. So you think about that and, you know, I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I mean, it's not always going to be that way. But, you know, day to day, that doesn't feel good.

So I often will say to myself, like, why am I not in this position? Or look at this person, geez, if only my parents had handed me that opportunity that they have, you know, God, look at what would I be able to do with that? But those, you know, and, but those aren't that's not one that's not my reality to I personal, personal achievement. My personal achievement has never been my primary motivating factor. And it's probably why I'm not an incredible salesperson, like cold-blooded killer type salesperson. I love watching my clients be successful. I love, you know, when I can hand somebody a connection or a new product or a process that helps them be successful. And that realization is really what is going to drive my actions in 2021. So this is a long winded way of saying, I need to sell as much as I can until I don't have to sell anymore.

And I can put other people in a position to sell Rogris 365. Not because I think sales is below me, but because sales takes energy away from me. And there is plenty of people who get energy from sales, and I want to put them in a position to be successful because what gives me energy is building the systems, processes, products, messaging around in place that helps them be 5x more efficient or productive or just in general feel more satisfaction in their own job give them a little more responsibility whatever those are the things that that add energy to me as a human and uh as a byproduct of that you know i mean obviously coming out of agency nation you you know, we were on a, on a, a wonderful trajectory, I think, because while that, while that thought process tends to have lagging results when the results come, I think they tend to be, they tend to have a logarithmic impact on the business versus the traditional, you know, um, more self-oriented growth, uh, structure, which is, it tends to have more linear growth. So, you know, okay.

So this is a long winded way of saying that Rogue Risk in 2021 is going to be about building out my team with a dogged, dogged focus on Rogris 365, the branding around that program, the channels in which we drive business into that program, the type of accounts that we target, and it's going to be saying no to business that doesn't fit those targets. Because one of the things that I'm struggling with today is, or early on, I wrote everything that came in. Well, geez, I'm not an expert in all these different lines of business. I'm not an expert in some of these issues. Having to take an hour out of my day to figure out different, why this is happening on this account,

or how does this work, or what happens over here, that takes me away from the selling piece. And, you know, and it comes back to, it's not focused. If it were all similar products, similar veins, then I would be able to more quickly pick up the nuances of the product, of the coverages, of how everything works and push forward. But right now, every fire is a brand new fire that I don't know how to put out and I have to learn. And that's not what I want the agency to be because it doesn't allow me to deliver on the value proposition, right?

If rogue risk is a human-optimized agency, then the goal of optimizing your humans is to deliver more value. And if I'm constantly trying to put out fires because I don't know how to do things because I'm doing too many different things inside the agency, that agency, then you're not able to deliver on that promise. And it kills me that we're not at the product delivery level that I would like us to be at. So what are we actually doing? So we're focused in on Rogris 365. A big part of that is defining goals. Brent Kelly has written a couple of wonderful articles recently. One was called The Seven Ps of Agency Success, and the other had to do with, hold on, I can pull it up here. The other had to do with bridging the performance gap. Both are on LinkedIn. If you go to Brent

Kelly's LinkedIn and look at his articles or just maybe scroll through his recent posts, you'll see it looks like one was posted in November 29th and the other was published on December 20th of this year. Both are wonderful. I've printed them both out and have read through them and taken notes.

But in there, Brent outlines, especially the bridging the performance gap because that's what's happening, I think, at Rogue. I have a very clear vision of how I want to deliver this product and we're not delivering it. Certainly not as well or as consistently as I would like and how do we get there? So the first thing that Brent wrote in the Bridging the Performance Gap was have meaningful and achievable goals. So I, and he said, don't be a wanderer, basically. I'm paraphrasing Brent.

And if you don't know Brent, one, have you been living under a rock? And two, Brent works with Roger Sikins at Sikins and is just an incredible thought leader when it comes to agency success, leadership success. And I highly recommend that you follow him on LinkedIn if you are not and just get in his ecosystem. So I am a wanderer. I've always struggled with goals because I was like, we're going to do as much as we possibly can. Like, what is the point of a goal if all we're going to do is work as hard as we can and what happens happens, right? But I know that that is the wrong way to think because

it gives you easy excuses. It gives you outs. It gives you, you know, you can pull the ripcord and say, ah, today I just don't feel like working, you know, whatever. I'm a little tired. But when you have a goal that you have to hit that is important to your business and that you're holding yourself accountable to that goal, then you do the things necessary to reach that goal, even if they're uncomfortable or even if you're tired or even if it's not something that you want to do in that moment, you push through. I am a wanderer. And what I've realized, again, trying to be incredibly self-aware, is that because of my predisposition to creating content and that kind of stuff, instead of doing some things that are uncomfortable for me but important, I would write a blog post or do a video. Now, granted, I do not take this as that I don't believe in video marketing

or content creation because I do. We're averaging right now three to four inbound leads off of YouTube a day. Take that in for a second. We've been in business since March 9th, and we're just dominating YouTube already because you guys aren't, truthfully. You know, take that as a slap across the face. I've been telling you guys to do YouTube videos

for 12 years, 15 years, however long I've been doing this and most of you have not done that. So in nine months or 10 months, whatever it's been, I've probably outpaced all of you. And you should be ashamed of that if creating content and educating people is important to you, because this isn't rocket science. I am not a rocket scientist. I basically cheated my way through

college because I had smart friends and nothing that I do is something that you can't do. So there we go. That's my hardcore moment for you, at least for the minute. So putting some goals in place. So what are those goals going to be? I'm taking this time, these next two weeks between now the Christmas holiday is coming up and then New Year's, cleaning up a lot of stuff in the business and ultimately doing some more planning. But Gordon Coyle, who runs a great agency, he and I have been talking and working through, we work in kind of similar, we go after similar accounts, different markets.

And we've been talking a little bit. We actually took Benjamin Dennehy's telephone prospecting course together. And I don't know if you've heard of Benjamin. He's awesome sales guy, the UK's most hated sales trainer. He was on Cass's podcast. He's awesome. Kind of pissed me off that Cass got to interview him before I did. But we took that class together and I saw him in there. It was just, you know, we're both, we both show up. It's like a Monday afternoon and there he is too. So we've been talking about that class and stuff and I let him know what my goal was. And he, I could tell by his reaction that I, that he was not impressed with my goal and and i

mean that in the most positive sense i mean gordon's a great guy so so we so he basically said that should not be your goal um your goal should be this and it was about five times bigger than what i had set so i will let you guys know what my goal is once I set it. But I just wanted to share with you that moving into January 1st of 2021, I will have a clear goal. I will absolutely have a goal for this agency, for both my personal production and for the agency's production and what those goals will be. And obviously, the next point that Brent shares in his article, which is the next logical step is, I will have a process, a clear and consistent process

that gets us to what that needs to be. Because I know what it is. When I've worked the process, the process has worked. That is the crazy part. I mean, that is, oh, why are we so nuts? Like I know, you know, Carruthers taught me this process for the most part, you know what I mean? And in Killing Commercial, I haven't done a formal video testimonial for Carruthers yet. I will. I've kind of been holding off because I saw Cass had done one and Bradley had done one and some of the other men and women in the group have done video testimonials

and then the protege came out. And I've kind of been holding, keeping my powder dry because I wanted to have some really needy examples to talk you through and I have a few of those now. So I know the process. When I use the process. When I use the process, the process works. I've just never written it out and then put clear markers next to each segment of the process to say, do this 20 times a day, do this five times a day,

do this, you know, and then just done it and then just execute it on every day. I mean, that's the priority. You know, I chase stupid things or, you know, you're feeling a little tired, so you just drop into what's easy, like creating a YouTube video instead of doing the work that you need to do, which is oftentimes cold email, cold calls.

I do some postcards. And then, you know, and then the other is, you know, COIs, LinkedInIs, LinkedIn requests, working COIs and that kind of stuff. I'm happy to, in the future, maybe around the end of the first quarter, when I can set some metrics to the activities that I'm doing, I'll share exactly what the process is. I'm happy to do that. But I'm still in the process of outlining it. It's all up in my brain. And that's always been, I think, the issue for me. And one of the big takeaways, I hope, from this episode that you get is it doesn't exist if it's just in your brain.

And that's something that I've actually talked to Brent about before and I've heard him say it's not a process if it's up in your brain. It has to be down on paper. It has to be on a Google Doc. It has to be on something that you could hand to someone else and say, here, you come in, you do these things, and you can get results. And for so long, everything that I've done, I've never slowed down. I'm always moving so fast that I don't slow down to document the process, like documenting my YouTube content

campaign strategy, documenting my blog post strategy, documenting, you know, how all these different, you know, brand strategy, documenting my service strategy doc, you know, I never slow down long enough to do those things. And when I look at some of the most successful agencies and the agencies that I envy that they've done that work, They've slowed down to do that. And I don't, and I'm going to fix that because that is a huge gap. And if Rogue is going to become the agency that I believe it can be, we're going to need documented process because the next hires to this agency, it's highly unlikely that they're going to be 20, they're going to be in the Albany area. I mean, there's a certain part of me that would

love to have some teammates here locally just for a little, you know, human interaction once in a while. And I do love office culture. But they're most likely not going to be the case. You know, if I'm going to hire the best in the business that believe in the rogue methodology and believe in what we're trying to do, they don't necessarily have to live here. It's not a necessity. And I think that – so I have to have that documented. Okay. And then the last, the last piece that Brent had was, was accountability and, and, and holding yourself

accountable to these things, tracking. And, um, you know, I have a couple of people who I talk to on a consistent basis, um, that are, we'll call them accountability coaches to a certain extent. But the truth is as much as an accountability coach is amazing, like you have to actually track what you're doing and be consistent with it. And I'd say that at a macro level, there are certain things that I'm very consistent with, but on a micro level, I'm not. And I'll time block something and then just plow through the time block

or make an excuse why I'm not making my cold calls during my blocked cold calling hour because there's some fire that I have to put out that ultimately could be done after the cold calling hour is over. So it's things like that that really kind of bug me about myself and bug me about what I've done in 2020. Just a general lack of consistency, a lack of a clear goal, a lack of accountability. And I chased a lot of different products.

I think for the most part, the technology piece is it's just terrible. The technology in our industry is really, really difficult. Nothing does everything that you want it to do. Nothing does even 50% of what you want it to do. Then it that's bothersome. I still struggle with it every day as much as, you know, the tools that I use right now. I like, you know, just for what I want to do, not, you know, and then you're mashing things in and you're patching and then you spend half your time patching things versus just being able to do what you want to do for your agency. And it takes a lot of willpower to not focus on fixing technology problems that don't help me sell today. So I know many of you are probably listening to that and agreeing or just,

you probably get that sense from me. But because I want to fix the strategy first, I don't do the work. And that's a problem. So we'll see. I hope some of this was useful to you. I wanted to share this with you because to me, 2021 is an enormous opportunity. COVID is still going to be around. Yes, COVID is still going to be around for sure. COVID is going to be here. COVID is probably going to be, you know, trust me, our leadership is going to milk COVID for everything they can get. They're never going to let the, you know, the liberties that they've taken away. They're never going to let those go. And, you know, Trump, Biden, it doesn't really matter. You know, I have my views on, you know, where I would have liked to have seen us go. But,

you know, I think that part of it, the politics part of it, I'm just glad that it's not in our face every day. I'm glad that, you know, the mainstream media, both mainstream media on both sides is just doesn't really have anything to report about. So we just, they're not as obnoxious as they were. You know, that part, I'm very happy about, you know, the economy, who the heck knows? I mean, it, it makes me a little nervous that the economy has not reset yet, or at least a little bit in terms of the stock market, because right now, small business and Main Street is so disconnected from what's happening in the market that that feels very odd. I'm not an economist, so I don't understand all the dynamics there. But just

from a purely visual standpoint to see what's going on. And, you know, I drove through this kind of industrial office park the other day that is normally filled with businesses. And there were like 17 for rent signs or something like that. It was astounding. I was driving, it was a cut through from, I went and got a cup of coffee on my way to my wife's office. And I just cut through this like side street that is like an, and I just was, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe how many signs there were for rent. And I'm sure some of it is people going remote, but you know, when business is booming, people aren't putting their buildings up for rent. You know what I mean? You know, people aren't vacating their office space. So I guess I just, that makes me feel a little nervous.

But, you know, but I think in general, 2021 presents an enormous opportunity for the people who are willing to focus and do the work. And I won't say that, you know, as much as I'm not unhappy with my performance in 2020, I feel like I underperformed and that will not be the case in 2021. And how we get there is focusing on product, focusing on process, bringing people in who are hungry, who believe in what we're trying to do, who want to have a long-term future in a brand, in a methodology that I think is both highly lucrative while also being

tremendously valuable to our clients beyond just the traditional product offerings and jargon that gets thrown at people. And I think if those things fall into place, at least for rogue risk, it will be a tremendously successful year. I think for you, wherever you find yourself, I think focus is the key. I think the internet comes, it's only going to get noisier. And it's why I wanted to have Pep Lejeune last week. And if you haven't listened to that episode, I highly recommend you go back and do so.

It is going to become more and more difficult to stand out unless you are really, really good and concise and consistent in what you do and who you do it for. And we could go so deep on that. Go back to the, scroll all the way back to the early episodes when I had Anne Hanley on and Marcus Sheridan on and Tamsen Webster on of this feed. Scroll back into those early episodes and listen to them again, even if you did. They're from basically September, October of 2019. Go back and listen to those episodes. They outline what it means to stand

out in your messaging and your tone. And that is going to become so incredibly important. Even if you're referral-based, why should someone refer you? Even if you just work with COIs, why should that COI choose you over every other agency that's going to be calling on them? Because everybody knows homeowner COIs is the most profitable personal lines business that you can get on a consistent basis. You can buy leads. That's great. That's really tough business.

You can go out and do snail great. That's really tough business. You can go out and do snail mail. That's really tough business. Referrals are great, but they can be inconsistent unless you have a clear strategy. So the COI game is only going to become more competitive. You're going to have to find new partners. You're going to have to work harder to get those partners. And if you don't have a clear brand, strategy, and messaging, it's going to be incredibly difficult to stand out. Additionally, I do think that technology is going to continue to space people out. I can tell you today that there was no impact by COVID on our business. There was never a day when I was like,

oh man, COVID is keeping us from operating. That never happened. That never happened. That never happened. We had zero downtime. If your agency is still stuck in a world where something like COVID or something like work from home or remote work is keeping you from being optimal, you need to make that change or you are getting outpaced by your competition. I do think those type of tools, I think tools like

Donna for Agents, the Aries analytics tool that is starting to come out. You've seen probably Paradiso talk about it a little bit. I've spent some time with those guys. I first met them at a mastermind that Paradiso put on, Paradiso and Tom Larson, and have gotten to know them a little more. And though, you know, we, we haven't yet, I haven't yet implemented it into, into rogue that we will happen in 2021. I will tell you, and I've spent significant time with them because I do think that this tool, like what they're doing from a third party data integration standpoint into your agency and their centimeter score tool that they have. I mean, these are the kind of things that are going to take,

even if you have tremendous retention, even if you're looking at like a, you're looking at a 90 to 91% retention, these are the tools that are going to get you up into that 92, 93, 94% retention range. I mean, take the numbers out exactly, but we're talking about the ability to add points of retention to your business, which is just as good as sales. It's actually better than sales because this is low cost stuff. This is someone had a bad interaction and you as the business owner didn't really know, and you would never know if you're on, if you're on, you know, Tam or one of these tools that doesn't give you any insight into your business, something like Donna comes in and says, just so you know, this guy over here that's got

six policies with you, his last four emails, the tone and the words that he's using, man, he's not happy. He's highly likely not to renew his policies. Now you as an agency owner, as a leader, or as a producer can dip in and give that guy a call and say, hey man, what's going on? It seems like there's some friction here. What's happening? How can we solve this problem?

That kind of tool is going to separate businesses. They're going to separate agencies from others. And I look at tools like Donna. I look at tools like Tarmica. I mean, obviously, Neon is coming along every single day. I look at the usage of VAs and agency VA. I mean, while I've been sitting here, I've slacked a couple. No, I'm talking to you guys. There's a part of my brain that's slack. I'm slacking with my VA because he asked me a question about a COI. So I'm able to produce this podcast for you because I have a VA who's already logged in, who's already operating, who's already producing results for my clients. And when I was

doing COIs myself, it took me time. I had five other things going on. I might not get to it till the afternoon the next day. He's getting them out within an hour. And, you know, these are the type of tools and methodology and process that is not traditional, but is absolutely going to start separating agencies. And I think in 2021, the keys here are set big goals, set process and procedure that gets you there focus in on the things that are gonna that are that are gonna help you hit those goals and say no to everything else and find the tools this is number four this isn't number one you know find the tools that backfill into allowing you to do that work and that's how 2021 becomes the best year ever that's what i'm doing here. I know that

it won't be perfect, but man, if I'm sitting here next year and I have a full-time agency administrative and operations person and say three producers killing the game spread throughout the Northeast or wherever, that's where we want to be. And I think it's very likely. And I just believe that it's possible and I believe in the process. And I think that being clear and concise and consistent will get it done. All right, guys. I've probably beat this up a little too much. Um, you know, hopefully you'll connect with the tools that I talked about, connect with Brent Kelly. Um, I, you know, finishing out the

year, I want to give just a couple of shout outs to some people. Uh, if, if I don't mention your name, please don't take it personally because I'm just kind of coming off the cuff here. But just huge shout out to Jason Cass. I know most of you know that he's one of my best buddies in the industry. We've been friends for a very long time. But his support of me and taking my phone calls when I have crazy ideas and telling me whether I, you know, most of the time telling me that idea is nuts and I should just, you know, not do it. Even though I don't listen to him half the time, you know, I wouldn't be here without him. David Carruthers has been a mentor for me. Like I would have, I mean, I didn't even know David a year ago. I met him for the first time

in January at, in San Diego at IAOA Innovation. And I talk to him almost every single day. Certainly we Slack or not Slack, Facebook Messenger every day. And he's just been a tremendous mentor to me and Killing Commercial has been a wonderful community, but I want to thank him. I want to thank Chris Paradiso, who has been a friend for a very long time and has been instrumental in helping me make Rogue a success at all. And his support, he supports the industry in so many ways. But I just feel blessed to be able to call him on the phone when I have questions and have him pick up the phone and answer them because he runs an agency that we all could be envious of in terms of just the quality work that he does

and his commitment and consistency. I want to give a shout out to Matt Namoli, who's been a tremendous help for me. Matt is the antithesis, I think, of me in so much as he is the kind of person who really thinks about a decision and weighs the decision. And I am the type of person who just leaps at things. And to be able to text Matt or whatever and just say, man, I'm thinking about doing this and have him say, maybe you should sleep on it, has allowed me to realign my thinking on different topics. And again, his support for Rogue and just, again, the willingness to pick up the phone when I call, even though half the time we don't even end up talking about insurance stuff.

We talk about other things. It's nice to have someone in the industry who's willing to help you pump the brakes on crazy ideas. And then there's so many others. I just want to maybe end with my wife, who I probably do not give enough praise to. She has to put up with me. Like I said earlier, right now I'm in a startup business, so I'm not making any income for the family, which is a hard thing. she is gainfully employed and has been very willing to take on some of that burden in exchange for her belief in what I think this agency could be someday and in a not too distant future.

And, you know, probably a partner that I don't deserve, but certainly the perfect person to keep me out of trouble considering all the craziness that goes on between my ears and keeping me aligned. And 2020 was an emotional roller coaster for everyone. Certainly not me, but certainly me included. And she has been an absolute bedrock for me and grounding force. Otherwise, I probably would have flown off the handle a long time ago. And Rogue would not be possible without her and her support. And I know it's not easy on her. And I know that there are definitely days when she wakes up and wishes that I wasn't,

you know, at 430 in the morning in the basement, and then back in the basement, once the kids go to bed, you know, work working on the agent, my office in the basement, that's why. Nothing, nothing weird, just working on the business. Well, I guess that is weird. But, you know, that's not easy for her. And my mind is always on the business. And, you know, so sometimes I'm not always as present as I should be. And I know that's not easy either. And I just, she deserves so much. Whatever ends up happening with Rogue indirectly, she will be an enormous part of that for so many reasons. And, you know, I don't, I don't praise her publicly as much as I should, although I do try to give her some shout outs on the gram every once in a while. You know, I'm blessed to

have such a smart and beautiful wife and someone who's willing to put up with my nonsense. So I wanted to give her a shout out as well. And again, everyone else who's taken phone calls, who talks, who's been willing to, you know, who have worked with over this last year, please, I want you to know that, you know, even if I didn't mention you, there's so much appreciation and love. And, you know, I wish you guys a Merry Christmas. I wish you happy holidays, happy Hanukkah, whatever, whatever you're celebrating. I wish you nothing but the best. I wish peace, happiness, all that kind of stuff. Hope that you're able to connect with your family. You know, I don't know that I philosophically believe in the fact that we are legally not allowed to group in more than 10 at least in the state of new york because i find that to be fascist but uh i think if you

whatever's safe for you and and you i hope you're able to connect with your family because uh as much as virtual is nice um nothing beats breathing the same air as people that you love and care about and sharing a laugh in person. There's just something special about that. And the fact that we are growing comfortable or more comfortable with being separated makes me very nervous because I hate it as much as I believe that it's an inevitable part of our future. So, uh, that being said, uh, as always, if there's anything I can do for you, if there's anything that I can help you with, I'm always here. I want to say that, uh, I just, thank you so much for listening to the show. This was way longer than I expected it to be. Um,

but I love you guys for listening to this show. And I know that I can be inconsistent with its production. That's going to change in 2021. Um, big, big announcement coming in 2021, but we're going to get more consistent, a little more professional,

a little more polished in 2021 with the show. Um, format will still be the same. Me talking shit and cursing and having people on and talking to people and stuff. But ultimately, hopefully, a little more consistent, polished, pro,

that announcement will come. So I'm super happy. But I just thank you guys. Just thank you. Thank you for everything. I wish you nothing but the best. I'm out of here. Peace. thank you for everything I wish you nothing but the best I'm out of here peace Yeah, me

Yeah, me Yeah, me Yeah, me Yeah, me You go fuck yourself and your fat fucking ass. I'm sorry. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Do you want to have a few drinks and smoke a joint bubbles? Yes. Yes. Yes. Take it Yeah, me Yeah, me Take it Yeah, me Take it Take it, it's my brother Charlie Take it, it's my buddy Thank you. Make it his body, make it his soul Make it his body, make it his soul Make it his body, make it his soul

Make it his body, make it his soul Make it his life, make it his soul Make it his body, make it his soul Make it his body, make it his soul Make it his body, make it his soul Make it his body, make it his soul Do you want to have a few drinks and smoke a joint bubbles? Yes Close twice as many deals by this time next week.

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