The Ryan Hanley Show - RHS 111 - Kat Ternes on the Secret to Insurance CRM Success

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comIn this episode of The Ryan Hanley Show, Ryan Hanley is joined by Katherine Ternes, Vice President of Revenue at AgencyZoom. Kat joins the podcast to share her unique and dynamic expertise on developing processes and implementing a CRM inside independent insurance agencies. Kat is one of the most interesting people in the insurance industry. Did you know she's a world-class trap shooter? This is an episode you don't want to miss...Episode Highlights: Kat mentions an embarrassingly wonderful part of her being a geriatric millennial. (12:57) Kat shares her interests in competitive sports. (17:59) Kat mentions one of the things she learned that people want to strive toward.(27:37) Kat shares what people can achieve from being resourceful. (32:41) Kat mentions why she’s very proud of her team. (34:48) Kat explains what AgencyZoom is all about. (38:52) Kat discusses why employee enablement is so important. (40:31) Kat explains how to manage your sales processes. (50:18) How does Kat manage to keep track of their goals? (1:03:13) Key Quotes: “There's a matching component to grit that is actually able to be taught and able to be nurtured when you're exhausted. And, that's resourcefulness. Gritty people learn how to build up their resources.” - Katherine Ternes “We've hit all of the goals that the business sets, but, my own personal goals, I either need to lean into the resourcefulness and just say like, it's okay to have a moment of rest. Or, I have to get gritty real quick here. And it's really fun to be at that crux.” - Katherine Ternes “The teams that go and investigate the stuff that gets put on the roadmap and they test it, and they beta use it...those are the ones that make a world of difference. Those are the ones that take technology from being 150 agencies and it's just one person's opinion, and it's some engineers building stuff. You guys are the ones that take it and really build it into what independent agents need.” - Katherine Ternes Resources Mentioned: Katherine Ternes LinkedIn Agency Zoom Reach out to Ryan Hanley 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 an absolutely tremendous episode for you. A conversation with Kat Turns, the Vice President of Revenue at AgencyZoom. But she does so much more than whatever you may think Vice President of Revenue does. And it has been absolutely wonderful getting to know Kat and working with her. And she puts up with me and barrage of feature requests that I put in agency zoom is, as we really kind of bake our agency deeper and deeper into the agency zoom tool. I mean,

it is a huge part of our agency. It's a huge part of how we operate. And we talk about just, we talk about, you know, the industry and the kind of choosing tools. And we talk a lot about a whole bunch of different stuff. And it's just an absolutely tremendous conversation. I mean, this is just, again, this is another one of those conversations that just this is why I do the show is getting to talk to people like Kat and having a good time, and just hopefully delivering a tremendous amount of value. I mean, we do talk about AgencyZoom a little bit at the end, specifically how I'm using it and why I enjoy the tool

and just how I think you should go about thinking and how we think you should go about considering a tool such as AgencyZoom, whether you choose AgencyZoom or anyone else that's in the marketplace. You know, that's who I use. But I just want to be pretty clear that I am I have not an owner in agency zoom, or an investor, whatever, I'm not an advisor. Or even I have no, we're not a sponsor, I just think the tool is tremendous. They've done, you know, in the last 24 months, incredible amount of feature improvements and the flexibility and the scalability of it has made Zoom a big part of our agency. And Kat's just an awesome person who I tremendously enjoy. And like I said, put up with me. So I wanted to have this conversation with you because this is the kind of conversation that I have all time, is I pepper her with things that I want to add to AgencyZoom. And she's a good sport about it and is just so incredibly smart about our

business and sales and growth and business in general. And I just think you're going to love this one. And if you don't know Kat Turns, happy to introduce you to her and make sure you connect with her Facebook, LinkedIn. I don't think she has a Twitter. So all right, guys, before we get to Kat, I want to give a quick shout out to another new sponsor. I mean, just a tremendous sponsor that I want to share with you, and that is Propeller Bonds. I've talked to you about Propeller Bonds. I've had Aaron Steffi, co-founder of Propeller Bonds on the show before. You cani, co-founder of Propeller Bonds, on the show before. You can go back and listen to that episode.

I don't know what episode it was, but however you're listening to the show, if you want to listen to the full episode where we talk about Aaron's history and then really get into Propeller in general and what it's all about, I encourage you to do that. Just search whatever product you're listening to this on, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or wherever. But propeller bonds is changing the game. There's no reason for retail insurance agents to be surety experts. If you're not already a surety expert, you don't need to become a surety expert. At least most of you, the vast majority of listening to

this do not need to become surety experts. However, you should be offering surety to your customers, particularly your contracting customers, but really anyone of your customers who has surety needs. We don't want them having to search for someone who they don't already trust. They're working with you. They already trust you. Offer bonds. Now, you might not be offering bonds today because you don't want to put the stickers and stamps and go through all the rigmarole that the traditional bonding process made you go through, which I completely get. I have a drawer over here with stamp machines. I've never used them. I don't even know what to do with them if I did have to write a bond. But propeller bonds does away with all of that. You get this custom URL and you can just search for whatever bond you need and what state

you need that bond in. They got thousands and thousands and thousands of bonds and you can fill out the form, get a quote, pay for the bond and have the bond certificate delivered by email in like 10 minutes. It's crazy. Even less than that if the bond is, you know, depending on what kind of bond it is and they got all kinds of bonds. So Prope propeller bonds is changing the game for us. It's part of our drip campaign. We don't necessarily lead with bonds yet, but we offer it as part of our,

you know, we make sure everyone's aware of it as part of our onboarding process. And then throughout our drip, once they become clients, we're letting them know, hey, if you need a bond, we're here for you, we can help you, and then we provide them with a link. So you're going to be hearing more about Propeller Bonds, especially now that they're a sponsor of the show, but not just because they're a sponsor. We use Propeller. I love Propeller. I think very big things for them are coming, and it's definitely a tool you want to know about. Again, I called Tarmaca, I called Donna, and I'm calling Propeller right now, okay? You can mark this here.

You can actually mark it when I did the episode with him because I talked about it back then too. But, you know, told you about Propeller. Get it on your radar. Get it into your product mix. You'll be happy you did. All right, let's get on to Cat Turns. What's up? Already being being recorded that's what happens oh my god sorry i was like typical life you gotta step your game up true oh my god if you saw my

calendar today even you would shed a tear you're like the busiest person i know and you would shed a tear for my calendar today i i get it wow it's a good thing that you're getting one of the most important calls of your day out of the way early. Yeah. And I just got my coffee. One of the team members came in at like 10. So I just got like fresh coffee at like 1030. So fresh coffee or your first coffee? Fresh coffee. Not Yeah, I was gonna say, if you're getting your first coffee fresh coffee not yeah i was gonna say if you're getting your first coffee at 10 a.m you're a better person than me i'm usually starting my second pot at 10 o'clock in the morning i can't have that much because i don't have enough time to go to the bathroom that frequently like i don't know i can't take in that much liquid in a day

and expect to do my job that said this was this was coffee three of like, you know, a cup of home, a one on the walk here, a walk 30 minutes every morning now to work. I don't drive. I just walk. It's awesome. And yeah, it's like, I call you guys realistically. Like if it's a really peaceful morning, I like keep my mind to myself. And then if it's, you know, kind of a hustle bustle morning, I'm like, I might as well just call somebody and start my day and ruin their life too. During my walk. Yeah. I like that though. That's what my drive time. Like if I know, um, if I know I got to go pick the kids up someplace, I got to drive somewhere to pick them up, you know, where I live, like everywhere is 15 to 20 minutes away. So it is, um, that's like the perfect time you just call.

And like, I kind of get pissed when I cycle through like the two or three or four people that I would meet that I could possibly have something to say to you. And none of them pick up. I'll be like, well, what am I supposed to do that? I'm in the car and I'm not talking on the phone. What is wrong with people? I can tell when any one of you guys are doing it, whether it's like you or Bradley or Namoli, like any one of you guys doing that kind of nonsense to me that you're like taking your

kids somewhere, you're going somewhere. Because for whatever reason, there's like this cohort of you guys that I've spent enough time with that I text with too often. but you guys all use voice to text. And then when I try to go back and look at what we were talking about and this great idea you guys had, it's just gone. Like voice recording is just gone. So I look like I'm a psychopath talking to myself all day, every day. And in reality reality it's you guys sending me the little like voice memos of like three minute brain bursts like Jimmy Neutron type shit and yeah I lose it I lose it a lot yeah what's funny is um so Namoli voice texted me the

other day and like the the text machine had to like cut it up it was like it was probably talk for like two minutes so instead of doing like the hit the button and hold it, he was obviously, I don't know. He was doing whatever he was doing. And, and at the very end he goes, and it was perfect, perfect English. Not a single world was out of place except for the end where he says, this is voice to text. And as soon as he said that every other word after that, like the last two seconds was just complete garbage. And I was like, I wonder if the phone was like waiting for him to say that

and then just started screwing everything up. I don't know. I get the amount of things I get that end up out of order. The other thing too, and this is so embarrassing, but I was just on a call with another agency and told them this. I am the like latest adopter in the product adoption curve that anyone could be in an elevated position leading an innovative company but i could not be anymore like regressive of tech and like in my position so the thing that is new and novel to me but again makes me disorganized and incapable is the reply function i'm trying to the in thread reply yes yeah yeah reply it's super cool very functional again with like you jimmy neutron humans but it is so difficult because i lose stuff or you guys go back and respond to stuff that I already had stopped talking about I thought

no conversation was not over so yeah it's uh one of these days I may become like an early adopter or like an innovator at an innovative company but right now as this human like squarely in the early majority I struggle like I talked to you guys and oh my god i you would believe i was like 75 years old and just completely inept at using my phone i can't well you can text pretty fast you get back you can text pretty fast because i have my mac so i text you from my mac while i'm sitting in meetings that i don't want to be in so that's why i text you so fast that makes fat because the other day we were texting back and forth. I was working on, I was working on something with zoom. And, um,

so I was tech while I was working on it, I was texting you. And then you're like, as fast as I could finish the text, I was getting replies. Cause you know, you get the little bubble. And I was like, Jesus, she's a fast, like this is, but I also do know that there's like half dozen to a dozen of us that just pepper you all day long with different things. And, um, fast like this is but i also do know that there's like half dozen to a dozen of us that just pepper you all day long with different things and um words per minute is like in the upper 90s i want to say like it's pretty good insanely fast on my computer so much so now that i actually type

faster than my computer will like the cursor will be out ahead of the words yeah ahead of the words and it's like typing the words aren't showing up as fast as I'm typing them and my e key right now is sticky so I end up like e and then t and then another e because it's trying to type two e's from sticking, but I actually type faster even than the sticky. Supposedly the new Macs have solved that problem because I've had my Mac into the thing twice for sticky keys. And I love everything about Mac. It's far superior than any other machine ever. The user, like I said to someone the other day, they were, you know, I was complaining about why

we can't use Macs in the insurance industry, and over. And I, although they've starting to fix that problem, but someone was like, well, and I said, Look, do you ever like use your computer and something doesn't work? Like, it just doesn't work. Well, when you use Mac, that doesn't happen. It just works. Now, other than this little keyboard issue, they have where occasionally like it just doesn't work well when you use a mac that doesn't happen it just only works now other than this little keyboard issue they have where occasionally these keys get a little wacky but you can fix them like the programs like loom every like five or six loom videos on my windows computer it just freezes and it doesn't work that has literally never happened once on my mac and i'm like how do people windows? They just operate in this world

where like, oh, it's just a bad computer day. The computer's not working. And I'm like, before I had to go to Windows, there were never bad computer days. It just like always operated the way it should. Well, the embarrassingly wonderful part too, again, in me being like a geriatric millennial, I got Tsa pre when i started traveling for conferences and stuff but before that of course being amongst the general borders of planes i dropped my mac onto every conveyor belt like shuffling through my bag and dropping it dropping it onto the floor i think i left it on top of my husband's car once, like was carrying it in my arm and we like pull out of the garage and you see it like go like down in front of his car. And like the hood of his car looked worse than my Mac did sitting bounced against the front of my garage.

Like even my, again, technology ineptitude, like how well I treat my poor computer. It has done great. Indestructible in so many levels and the communicativeness and the actual integration and everything like how easy it is to use my phone and my mac together yeah I'm I'm a sucker for it like I grew up in a pc world I used them I like was nerdy and built my own computer when I was in high school like I could see you as a nerdy yeah yeah it was it makes sense um I think that's maybe when the curve ended I think I got to like pinnacle nerdiness and I probably got bullied enough that I was like you know maybe we should lay off this nerdiness and I just have not improved any technological knowledge

since like the early 2000s you know yeah the interesting part is like now being a nerd is cool like for so long like I so I played sports and was in honors classes and like I would be on my baseball team and I would be the only one or on my foot especially on my football team nothing against football players but I'd be the only one in my entire football team out of like what 30 guys or whatever that was in an honors class, everyone else. So they don't have to like bust my chops about this or that. And it's like, Oh, you know, like I'm not as cool because I'm in the honors class. And now that is like completely flipped now. Like if you're smart, it's like super cool to be smart. And it just wasn't the case when we were growing up, but you were smart it's like super cool to be smart and it just wasn't the case when

we were growing up but you were smart i think i was like really preparing like people to be accepting of being a nerd like why would you pay money to go to college and then like not want to do well but obviously there were plenty of people that didn't feel like doing well for like yeah i thought i was going to law school so i like really needed to have everything lined up and do well. Um, so it was fun, but was a nerd there. And like, I remember like telling people on like a Friday morning that I was going to class. And they're like, didn't you go to the bar last night? I'm like, well, yeah, I'm a normal social human being. Like, why are you going to class? I'm like, because I'm a a nerd now I'm a like advisor for a student organization at a university here that has nerdier kids than where I went but still like not dramatically

different and like they yell at each other that they're not going to class like they'll go like pull each other's like hungover butts out of their dorm room beds and like take each other and bully each other to go to class like I used to get bullied for like going and like why don't you just get home we're gonna get breakfast we're going to Waffle House it's like no I'm going to class now you like get bullied if you like need to sleep in and you're ill and you're skipping class it's like yo skipping class isn't cool anymore I just missed it like I should have been apparently part of like the i think it's gen z is like the college kids now who knows i should have been with them

maybe i could be better at tech i don't know their life is too cushy i'm glad i'm glad i grew up when i did i i like the fact that it wasn't as everything is so cushy now it's just so cushy like it's easy and feels like I shouldn't say easy because nothing's easy, but like life is just easy today. Like I look at, I just look at the lives. Like I coach all these little kids in little league and a great chance. And I love them all to death. I think of them as my own children. They live this cushy little nerfy life. And I, like, I, at that. And I know every adult ever has said this about children. But maybe it's just true, right? Like every generation is like a little softer

than the one before it. Maybe that's the way that it should be. But like, I just these kids will complain about something. And I'm look, I'm like, look, you little nerf babies. Like, I don't want to hear about your your batting, your batting gloves are wet. Like, Oh, my God, I can't coach, I can't hit my batting gloves are wet. I'm like, what are you what are batting gloves are wet. Like, oh my God, I can't, coach, I can't hit my batting gloves are wet. I'm like, what are batting gloves? When I was a kid, we used the same bat. We all had one bat. We use the same glove.

Like we all shared the same four helmets. Like, what are you talking about? Now everyone has their book bag with their own helmet, with their own. I'm just like, i call them i call them little nerf whenever they bitch i'm like you little nerf babies i'm like don't even i don't want to hear it and they're squishy yeah you're just squishy little nerfy life with your batting your wet batting glove problems but i really appreciate that because i have been in like

competitive sports like all the way up through college like super super competitive and they were all I think because my parents were so demanding of me they were all like single performance so like I figure skated I was a competitive trap shooter like my performance was almost solely based on like how I performed that way if I didn't win there wasn't another kid on the team to blame like my parents just like reamed me for being terrible and not practicing and not doing what I was supposed to do um now seeing the difference of that like single participation versus team participation and then like thinking about how kids like go through like mental toughness or like how much equipment do they

have all that I'm just like yeah you guys are kind of you got a little squishy but to be fair I'm I am solidly a millennial I will like wear that as I either badge of honor or my like scarlet letter whatever spectrum somebody's on I'm a millennial um I do appreciate somebody said this the other day they're like millennials just like expect to get a trophy and a pat on the back and a participation award for everything. And, you know, as the person now who hands out awards, I'm like, yeah, but like, you guys also gave us those awards. Well, yeah, this is all boomers fault. We have to just all the boomers who bitch it's their fault like why did you make me a participation trophy yeah like don't get the trophy and i never

would have known any different yeah 100 i was saying this on a pot and then we'll get to insurance stuff i was saying this on a podcast the other day actually not insurance podcast i was interviewed for like my buddy's got a podcast here locally. I was on. And, um, we were, again, we were talking about little league is such a big part of my life. That's just like on my brain right now. But, um, but I do think, I don't know. I try to be, I try to not necessarily go as far as my coaches went. Cause like my coaches like throw me into a fence and that was just like for missing a ground ball, you know what I mean? And, and, you know, obviously that, I don't know that that was right. I mean, I look you know what I mean and and you know obviously that I don't know that that was right I mean I look back on it fondly and at the time it seemed perfectly

natural but you know I guess that's not what people want today um but I said to I said to my son and his buddy who were in the car with me actually no it was it was my other son my two sons were in the car so five and seven we're talking and something came up and they asked me about something. I can't remember the details, but I basically, like, we were at a gas station and I just turned around. that you I'm in that I me and your mother are trying to instill like competition and like a slightly like alpha approach to the world because the world is filled with betas today everyone's a freaking beta I mean just look at the conversation on I'm not even talking about politics just every topic it is people who I was bullied once in my life. So now I'm going to complain and make excuses and yell at you and like, whatever, you know, I couldn't be a libertarian if I didn't believe that they had the right to be bitchy betas. I think that's perfectly fine.

But I said to them, like more than ever before in history, embracing competition, understanding how to push yourself, how to, how to push through some of these things, even at a young age, it is going to give you like, you are going to be this shining light versus all these other kids that have just been given everything. And, um, I really do believe that, that like, you know, I'm never going to change the world, but if I can help my kids stand out by not giving them a nerfy life i mean based on the house we live with a pretty fucking nerfy life but like in general trying to right like i do i do believe that like we have to embrace

the fact that you're going to grow up with a bunch of you know who bunch of betas who want this padded room environment we see it here in insurance there's a bunch of you know who bunch of betas who want this padded room environment we see it here in insurance there's a bunch of people that are like so and so won't integrate with me and i'm gonna whine about it or like i'm the captive agent now i'm independent it's so hard it's like you knew this going into it so it's that like heads down, like I'm going to grind through it and like get it done or like heads up. I'm going to like, you know, how and cry and like complain about it. Like for me, like, yeah, everybody's facing like the same garbage and there's definitely

people that have nerfier lives than others, you know, have like a squishier opportunity, but all things considered, like there's still a lot of work to be put in and you don't go into many scenarios and get caught off guard like whatever you sign up for like if you go into sales you know you're gonna have a quota like if you go into service you know you're gonna have people yelling at you every day like you know these things so like what you sign up for and then whether you are like squishy and whiny and this beta personality and you're like or whether you are like this alpha personality and you're like fuels my fire gets the job done like i'm working harder for it like that's still

like it's differentiated now it's going to be that much bigger of a differentiator when the like it's not a 50 50 split you know it's going to be more often than that that people are whining and complaining and I will call out too as I've like developed professionally and gone further along in my career I think I get a little more grace too like if I text you and I'm like Hanley we're not talking today like I'm taking the day off you're like Kat you know you're not a whiny squishy person so if you're telling me you need the day off and you're sick like okay yeah chill I believe you you know so you get a better amount of like appreciation from people when you're like all like putting forth your best effort constantly completely my middle sister it's middle child syndrome I think

like god you like bump her in the car and she used to cry about it, like total beta personality, you know? No, I think I think you're completely right. And I think that I think so I listened to Andy for Stella a lot. I don't know if you know who he is. He's got a podcast called the it's MF reality or a I don't know, did something something it used to be the MF CEO. Now it's MF reality or a, I don't know, something, something. It used to be the MF CEO. Now it's something else, but basically he, he, I don't know. I don't know how to describe him. He's he owns, he owns first form. I think it's fitness, the pharmaceutical company and it's got all kinds of fitness gear.

It doesn't matter. It's a, it's a, it's a supplement and fitness company. And he's got this podcast and it's like one of the top five podcasts in the world. But, but his, his perspective is very much maybe a much more old school take. Right. And one of the things he talks about all the time that I think is important, I think very relevant to, to, as we'll transition here into something related to business and insurance, is that the difference in his perspective between, say, the betas and

the alphas, and I just don't know a nicer way to describe the type of person than beta, is the beta individuals have a hardship, and they're like, woe is me, excuse. I don't have this. I don't have this. This is why I can't get it done. And what they don't realize is the alpha people have the exact same hardship. They just go, oh, I'm going to figure out how to do this. I'm going to call this person for help and I'm going to invest in this thing and I'm going to take a longer view on it and I'm going to put in the work and an extra hour here and and they just find ways to navigate around it and that has been um and what's been interesting is I think I think at different times and this is very I think this is very honest hopefully is at different times we do we can waver in both camps it's not like

all the time you are this driven, competitive, focused on point human. And I think that's another misunderstanding that a lot of people have is like, it's, it is, it is constantly just that like one, just get 1% better. That mentality is like, give me, let me get 1% better today or, or some positive percentage better today than I was yesterday. And, and those little tiny increments really add up over time versus this other mentality, which is I never want to put in the work, but I want to be at that same level. And, you know, that's when I think like being in some of these groups on Facebook and some of that stuff can, can almost be a negative. If you're looking

at someone posting and going, geez, I'm never going to be where they are, or they're only there because their dad or their parents or their mom had this agency or got them this job or whatever, or they got this investment from this company. And instead of looking at the fact that there's probably, there was a million other challenges to get to that point. And that's why they keep pushing. I wish I could remember the book because when I was working with my mental coach and going through all like really advanced stuff in trap shooting which is like such a game of it's awesome

by the way that you're a trap shot I love trap shooting a kid I never did it competitively but it was like one of my favorite things in the world uh yeah my sister's still exceptionally good at it like doesn't maintain a full-time job because that's almost her full-time job. Like really crazy, crazy good at it. Yeah. I don't have the capacity to like, you know, be here doing agency, zoom stuff, texting you guys all day and, you know, but super fun. One of the things I was learning back then that I think people to your point, like they either see,

like I need to be that person and can't get there because they don't understand the work that gets put in or they it's like so distant and so aloof from them that they like check out and something that I had to teach myself in that like mental fortitude was the a you know alpha a players whatever the case may be they do have grit and we talk about grit all the time or you know people that are like a players like you and I talk and we like talk about grit yeah you like stay great you like stay in and all that but there's a matching component to grit that is actually able to be taught and able to be nurtured when you're exhausted and that's resourcefulness and like you build up like gritty people learn how to build up their resources like

you said people or using a Facebook group rather than like a obstacle and like I'll never be this person as a resource like then on your days that you're like my grit it's just not there like I am almost at wit's end you lean off grit a little and you go into resourcefulness and they're kind of each other's like yin and yang to better perform because like you said you can't be just gritty like we don't expect anyone to like just get you know shot at all day every day and expect them to like be mentally fine you know we just saw like Simone Biles like exceptional competitor say like I can't do this anymore like you can't take all the way to the

world and do it endlessly but like resourcefulness is how you like think about operating like it's the fact that you like come back out and you're there for your team you know you lean into like other skills and other value that you can present still in that given time and when I like started learning about that and thinking about resourcefulness which is something that can be learned and can be planned it made being gritty a lot easier like I am naturally like a kind of an aggressive gritty person but it made it easier on me too that I wasn't then like an anxious person I wasn't hostile I would go home really gritty and my husband would get like super peeved I'd be like being very gritty during dinner I'd be like just gritty and my husband would get like super peeved. I'd be like being very gritty during dinner. I'd be like, just do this.

And he's like, could you, could you chill? Could you chill? So like that was a really helpful, like yin and yang was the difference between like grit and resourcefulness and how you do need a good balance of both. Yeah. I like that a lot. I think, I think that's why you see a lot of partnerships work in our space and even in the startups and technology. When you're having that day, and we all have them, we probably have them multiple times a day and certainly multiple times a week, where you're like, geez, it just feels

like I'm never going to get to this place that I want to get to. And as much as you're grinding and you're putting in the hours and you know you're doing the work, there's just moments where your brain is just telling you whatever it is, call it the lizard brain, if you're grinding and you're putting in the hours and you know you're doing the work, there's just moments where your brain is just telling you whatever it is. Call it the lizard brain if you're whatever. Call it whatever you want. It's just, you know, and to be able to pick up the phone or to have a book or to go for a walk, an outlet, whatever that tool is. And I think, you know, I don't know that I would have called it resourcefulness, although I really like that. I wrote that down.

You know, I always think of them as like tools. Like what are my tools to get myself back to where I want to be? Because that was one of the things that I took away from the book, Atomic Habits, by James Clear, around the idea. And there's another good book. It's up there by Cal Newport called Deep Work. And they almost like should be in like a set but both talking about willpower and uh i think benjamin hardy wrote in a good uh i think it was him the power of willpower or willpower isn't enough something something like that uh listeners will know um and those three books they all tell a similar story, which is basically willpower is great and can get you through a lot of situations, but it's a declining balance.

Like you don't have infinite willpower. You basically start every day kind of by how much you sleep and what state you in when you go to sleep and the quality of your sleep and all that kind of stuff, how hydrated you are. You wake up with a certain amount of willpower and then throughout the day, your willpower diminishes. And the people who are able to persevere, what they've built into their day, tools, tricks, whatever you want to call it, ways to recharge that willpower, or at least stabilize that willpower for a period of time so that you're only using it on things that you need willpower for. And that was really the whole core, the crux

of James Clear's book was, was habits allow you to do important tasks without losing willpower, right? So that when you do have an issue, you, you have your willpower, you're good to go. So the knockoff version of this book that just traded willpower for resourcefulness. I just I must have read some like psychologists, like rebranding of it, you know, 15 years ago, guys, probably, these guys are all authors. So they probably stole it from wherever you read it from, you know, like, one way or another, but that was what they're talking about resourcefulness if you can build resources you can build mentors you can build like you said habits you can build like comfortable behaviors into your schedule that like you know if you're lacking on willpower or grit around 1 30 like don't schedule your biggest most important meeting at 1 30 like that's when

you should go to the gym that's when you should like get outside and get fresh air if that's your thing or you know like we were talking about that's when you should go to the gym. That's when you should like get outside and get more air if that's your thing. Or, you know, like we were talking about, that's when you call and bother each other and like say stupid shit for 30 minutes. So yeah. Yeah. I think I read the knockoff version, you know? So your ears must've been ringing today or maybe they, maybe they weren't cause they probably ring all day, but I have, so it's, well, it was 11 a.m. when we jumped on this call, Eastern Standard Time. And I had already had two text discussions and three phone calls related to agency Zoom.

And I think all of which your name came up in. So just so people get a feel for the communications that happen around like different features and how to set different things up and all the things that are going on with zoom. I've had that five conversations today before 11 a.m. Eastern. And now I tell you all the, all the curmudgeon's are going, and this is why your agency's not bigger.

Cause you're talking about a tool all day, not selling policies. But, but like that it's just funny how literally that five conversations technically one of the conversations was a text conversation that then carried over into a phone call but there was a gap between those two so i'm gonna count it um and before 11 a.m before this phone call so um just just so you people know when Kat's talking about all these text comments, this is real. This like really happens. I wish it didn't. It's one of those things that I have to plan for in my resourcefulness that I'm just getting bombarded suddenly. Like everybody's talking before 11 AM around 2 PM. They've started to get nosy and it's

about time to bombard Kat with text. Also, I have to admit, because like, you know, I don't know who's listening. You have a ton of people that listen. I'm like super, super proud of our team. The last two months, we have had over 200 agencies sign up every month. And we migrated our pricing plan, which has been like an adventure since October of last year, making sure that like we could remain affordable for like people that truly need our software all the way to like, we could remain revenue positive when I have, you know, some of the largest agencies in the country, you know, onboarding and stuff like that. We finally made that migration this month and we were going to need 200 and i want to say like 8 to 13 208 213 agencies to cross the 7 000 agency mark and i have to admit i'm a little stressed i'm leaning into

my resourcefulness instead of my grit right now because we're going to come up a little bit short like 200 back to like two months of 200 back to back. What's the date? What's the date you need to have this number by? I need to have it by the end of the month. And we're sitting at I need to sign in and like, look, but we're sitting at agency. It's the 29th. So we got like two more days. We've hit on. How many do you need? How many do you need? I'm going to look. I'll tell you how short I'm going to come up on being like legendary at this. Because until last month, we had never had 210 plus two months in a row.

And I said, I was teasing people on Facebook when I said how proud I was of the team that we could do it again. And if we did it again, we'd break 7,000 agencies. We are sitting right now and we've hit our revenue goals, but we're sitting right now at 6,979. So I'm 21 agency short with two business days left in the month. And we normally sign up about 10 agencies a day. Like that's, you know, we extrapolate 200 agencies a month. So you need 21. So I'm going to, I'm going to do a push on social when we get done with this and we'll see what kind of juice that we'll see if we

can juice this number up over 20 or to get to the 7,000 and then we'll have to do we'll do a quick I'll get it the number from you and we'll do a quick update on a future podcast because that's cool so all right so um but it's a good example where you can't always just be gritty you know like yeah we have lived into these recent like we've lived into like being gritty the last few months like being just absolutely like exceptional you know on how many new agencies are coming on board and like I threw it out there you know like I posted on social at the end of last month and said like hey we've done like really great super proud of my team like they're awesome and now we're getting really close to like it'd be nice to do it again

we've hit all of the goals that like the business sets but my own personal goal i kind of either need to lean into resourcefulness and just say like it's okay to like have a moment of rest or i have to get gritty real quick here and it's really fun to like be at that crux with such a like close well my next call after this call at 12 p.m is with an agency that wants to talk about agency zoom just so you guys know they are neither a sponsor nor am i paid for this but i do take calls about people joining agency zoom um so uh yeah so that'd be all being said maybe just for anyone who's listening who doesn't 7000 needs a lot of agencies. You guys have been around for a long time.

But I would say, particularly for the independent space, the last 24 months or so have been rapid feature. I don't want to say improvement, but that's probably fair. You're just adding tons of features. And maybe just for the agencies that are listening, who haven't heard of Zoom or just maybe have heard the name, but not really a hundred percent sure. Are you guys an agency management system? Are you a CRM? Where do you fall? You know, really what is agency Zoom and why should, knowing that most of our audience is independents, why would an independent think about like, where would it fit into the agency?

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Yeah. So I like, I mean, that's a fair call out of like one over the last 24 months, it's become super feature rich. I joined at the end of 2019 to like work on the independent channel. So that's about our time clock, you know, that we're approaching here that things have really like ramped up and changed and it's changed our vision. You know, when I first came here, we were very much like a little sales tracking, like a lightweight little CRM. We, I think we'd integrated it with QQ like the month before I got here. So we were like sitting on top of some agency management systems, but we still weren't like a full blown CRM. We weren't doing what I think of as like our core competency and that we need to keep doing. And I think it's a conversation that you and I can have Ryan that a lot of agency owners need to start hearing is

I'm definitely not an AMS. I have like absolutely no interest in going there. I have some really awesome partners there. You know, we integrate almost with all of them. You have partners. Let's not call them awesome. Uh, we have, yeah, there are no, that's my words not cat's words but there are you ams's need to pull yourself together uh yeah i mean if an ams could put together a 24 month sprint like we did there'd be some awesome ones out there i just need them to pull together 20 they're all they're all owned by venture capital so that's never gonna happen um well we're we're owned by agents and you know run by agencies we have an agency advisory council that makes almost every decision so that's pretty fun and that was something we put into place last

summer um that was a very smart decision by the way thank you i try to make as many of them in as small amount of time as possible um we are and i keep telling everybody this because like crm is such an annoying like concept in your AMS if you're doing like half the job it should should be your CRM so we're an employee enablement software and I want to talk about that like more and more and more on stage I you know have some conferences I get to go to that I like want to tell people about a CRM lets you run a report quickly and easily but I still have to run a renewal report. And then I have to hand a spreadsheet or a list to my CSR to call my renewals or call my rewrites

by a producer. If you look at an employee enablement software, like agency Zoom is looking at by every line of business, by every type, whether they're a VIP, whether they're the person down the road, is looking at a curated experience that the agency owner can set. And it's delivering out what your expectations are to your employees. So if you expect service work to be handled quickly because it's a one-to-one relationship, you know, between your employees and your team and you're insured, good, like that should move quick. If it's a one-to-one relationship, you know, between your employees and your team and you're insured, good. Like that should move quick. If it's claims work, where then suddenly you have your carriers and your adjusters and everything that could be holding you back,

but there's still accountability to be had there. That's a different conversation. That's different expectations that you should set and should be able to monitor, you know, and address. And it's the same thing with sales. You know, we started in the sales space. I'm a sales leader, like through and through I'm in charge of a lot of our operations here, but like, I still like fall back on my sales behaviors more often than not. Like sales is the same way. Like if everybody's operating off of posted notes and, you know, notes on their desk, that's impossible to track. You don't know how much is slipping through the cracks.

And if every person you ask in your office says, well, I just put it on a Post-it note because then I remember and I'll follow up with that person and I can give that person a better experience. It's because as an agency owner, we don't know how to use a CRM. And there are no CRMs out there that let you actually curate the experience. It's the idea of like employee enablement is delivering the right tee ups to everybody in your agency, no matter of what the customer, you know, prospect is going through compared to campaigns, you know, CRMs are like, build your report, give it to them on a list or throw it into a campaign. And it's really one size fits all. I'm sorry, but a Facebook lead that's commercial and in a rush is a lot different than a Facebook lead that's personalized and is, you know, best friends with one of your current clients already.

And nobody treats it that way. Like there's nobody in the game treating it that way. And that's why we have such terrible adoption of CRMs. It's because your producers don't want to be on it. You should, you know, your CSRs don't want to be on it because they're fighting against the grain of how this technology is built. And that's how we're different. You know, you guys set rules, which is what we hear about like automation.

You know, you set your rules of engagement and your automation around what are your expectations. That experience gets curated for that insured or prospect. And then your team doesn't have ambiguity on what they're supposed to be doing. And that's just fundamentally so different, you know, than what's out there. So I agree with everything you said. I hate the term employee enablement. Just I hate it.

Everything about it. Because it means it means nothing. It's like something that i'm trying to get people to like key into we can rename it now you know i have i haven't spoke on stage in a while you need to catch your name the the the definition this is an da da da da and then subtext employee name it makes sense to me but like if you were on stage and said we are an employee enable until i'd be like oh where's the fucking bar like you know like i just you know it just looking for the bar yes i don't uh but that's just that's that's probably an offline comment so i'll uh i'm gonna leave it in but i probably should have shared that with you offline that being said all the other stuff you said i completely agree with i mean i think it's it's there's a couple things

about agency zoom that i like and and i want everyone to be clear i want to be super clear on this i you guys are not i'm just a user i'm just a user i'm not even on the stupid advisory committee even i at even though i said i would be on it i'm not even on it so um we're voting again in august you got nominated you might get voted on just like to use the word might just aggravates me um i don't get to pick it's not the people who text cat at two o'clock every afternoon you know that's a yeah it should be it should be volume of text should count that all being said um i don't actually i actually prefer my current position which is i get to give you all the stuff that i want and i don't actually have to do any of the work of being on the committee so that's actually the best case

actually don't vote me on um so uh what what i what attracted me what attracts me to the tool is a couple things i like one today today because I think NowSearch is terrible and it could be amazing, but it's terrible. So if the guys from NowSearch and ladies from NowSearch are listening, understand that you have all the potential in the world and you're blowing it. So, you know, I think that, that being said,

my entire team only works in agency Zoom. We only go into now certs when we have to. And I think that's one of the core functionalities that makes it so powerful is that my, we call them client success, but you know, account managers, CSRs, whatever, they are working hand in hand in the same system, working off the same activity feed, you know, account managers, CSRs, whatever, they are working hand in hand in the same system, working off the same activity feed, you know, working off the same notes, same files, although one of my feature requests I recently put in was a slightly a folded file management system, which I know is coming. And, you know, some of these things, because now, they don't have to

log out and log in or use a different tab. It's all right there in front of them in, you know, what I what I think is this we'll call it card system or visual kind of workflow. We can visually workflow all our processes. So we have sales pipeline, which we spend a lot of time building out and then different triggers. And just to give people an idea of what we've built, our sales pipeline is actually probably a little longer than I would like today, but it actually works really well for our team. So new lead comes in, notifications to the appropriate team members, and then touch points go out to the clients, text message, email, hey, we got it, we're in touch, okay, whatever. Then we have gathering info. That probably makes sense. Then once we've gathered, and I know checklists are coming to, and I can't wait for that feature as well.

I did say when I invited you, I was going to talk about all the features I wanted when checklists come launches, it might be there. No, it's awesome. I love it. I don't know when this goes live, but by the time people are listening, it's not a complaint. Look how quickly all this crap happens. I love it. I don't know when this goes live, but by the time people are listening. Yeah. It's not a complaint. Look how quickly all this crap happens. I love it. So, so, so, but today we're using just a regular checklist. So my, my producer has a checklist that soon he will have to, and it'll be men and women, however they self-identify will be,

you know, they'll be able to click check boxes to make sure they have all the appropriate stuff. Once they have all the appropriate stuff, they move it over to ready to quote. Now that notifies my quoting person. She comes in and she, now he has to check, I'm using he and she because that's what they are today. So don't woke me. They have to check all the boxes because that's what the account manager said. This is what you need to have. And they can't move it to ready to quote until they check all the boxes. Boom, ready to quote. Quote manager comes in or quote person comes in,

moves it to quoting. Now we use a series of tags. And I talked to Andrew Ryan a little bit about this today. And we have some more thoughts for you on this particular topic. I know that's one of our text feeds, but, um, but today we're using tags to notate, Hey, send to underwriting, waiting for feedback, whatever. And then we move it over to a proposal ready when it goes to proposal ready. Now my producer gets a notification because I want him reaching out to people and contacting people. He shouldn't even be worried about the quote. So now he comes back in and proposal ready, looks at the proposal, presents the proposal, moves it to presented. And then when he sells it, he moves it to ready to issue. CSR comes back in again, getting notified, moves it, issues the business in the carrier system, puts it to sold. Now, the best part about that is one, those people

don't have to keep coming back and checking when it's moved over into that column. They get a notification to say, you got a new piece of business that's ready to issue. Great. Part of the work process is at the end of the day, we try to close out our ready to issue. Quoting won't always be closed out, but we like to get everything out of ready to quote and everything out of ready to issue every day. And then they can just be doing their work and they just get notified when something happens. And at any given time, I can come in, snapshot what's happening in our sales process. And then all that is pushed down to reporting that allows me to say, okay, you know, what's happening. So that to me, that just the sales process, not even thinking

about the service center, but just thinking about that process that I just outlined and how, and it, and how clean it is and how easy it is for us to manage to like, when I look at it, I'm like, boom, I know what, Oh, that lead came in. I can see Matt's already got it. He's gathering info. Like it is so easy to manage to. That's why, you know, regardless of what agency management system I switch to, you know, I'm basing that decision off their integration with you guys. Then obviously I'll just peer pressure you into developing a deeper relationship with whoever I choose. Right, right. More to it, Cloppex.

It's a good call out too that you're saying like it's easy to visualize. And the part that's really important there is like the visualization is only worth so much if the team wasn't using it. But it's really easy for your team to use. It is drag and drop. Like you are visualizing it. They're able to look at it the same way you do. And they just drag and drop it into the next stage.

And the customer's getting that curated experience. Like when we hear campaigns, again, being bucketed or a curated experience, the customer is getting that curated experience. Like when we hear campaigns, again, being bucketed or a curated experience, the customer is getting a curated experience. You don't have to be concerned that like sitting and ready to quote means that the customer hasn't got a text saying like, hey, we are prepping your work.

Is there anything we forgot? Or do you have any questions that have popped up? Like you don't have to wonder if the person sent that text. It goes from that. And you can stay laser focused on managing your business you know working on the business your team can stay laser focused on working in the business you know and that ambiguity or the lack of ability to know because people are

frustrated and can't use the technology and it's not picturesque you know the ui or the ux isn't there it's just an entirely different ball game you know we have over 65 000 users on there everyone from like you said a csr who's doing little tiny things up to you know a commercial lines mid you know mid-account manager type person yeah um and they all have to use it you know i think my i actually just checked because somebody said sent me a text late last week and said, Kat, I just put my dad on there. And I didn't think much of that, you know? And he's like, well, I wondered if you know how old your users are. And I'm like, I mean, I'm sure I have like a ballpark, but like, I don't know. And he's like, I want to nominate my dad for being the oldest agency Zoom user. And I'm like, there's no way I'm thinking this guy's like in his forties and his dad might be in his like

late sixties, early seventies. His dad's 92 and he's like in his early sixts so it is the right breakdown this guy looks great he stayed in great shape his whole life so I didn't know how old he was but his dad is 92 so I think he might be our oldest agency zoom user but I literally have a kid that we're mentoring that is a senior in high school and going to college and he's like in agency zoom learning data and reporting and helping his mom all the way up to an agency owner who's in his 60s and his dad who is 92 he's an account manager you know he's got his friends that he's had his accounts for years and years and years now and like he likes just having a little mobile app and like just plunking around checking on things it's really fun to actually

have stuff like this if done correctly. The hard part is, like I said, putting it in the mindset of a CRM or trying to become an AMS, suddenly it's not done correctly anymore. It's got to be focused on employees and your insured. I will say for people who are listening, who this, a tool like this is something they're considering or whatever. I think a lot of people, and myself included, So I've been all over the board with CRMs and I have said on the podcast

before that, you know, I kind of fell prey early to, to knowing too much, right. I, this is what I've done. I've been in marketing for 15 years. So sales and marketing and just knowing the tools was part of my job for a long time. And, you know, I think people go to like, when they think CRM or whatever they think, they think Infusionsoft or HubSpot or, you know, there's just these tools that require like tremendous amount of build out. And like, I'm actively trying to find, get onto Salesforce for our agency management system. Now, I think Veruna is the worst. And I think they've gonna, you know, hopefully they'll reap what they've sown. And that being said, there's a company called Nova

Dea, which looks interesting. We'll see. You have to be determined. But, you know, I just am trying to get on there. And I keep coming back to like, I don't actually need all that. Like, really what I need is a simple policy repository with downloads. Simple. That works. Right? Because all the rest of it is in Zoom. And I've actually talked to you many times, probably frustratingly so to you. How do I not have an agency management system?

Can I just make this work 100% in agency Zoom? And there's a few features that make that not possible. Just some like address, mailing address, physical address stuff that, that whatever, it's fine. You guys aren't trying to be an agency management system, so it doesn't matter, but like it's close. And it's like that, that is that, that's the answer in my opinion, because really the policy data with our integrations with the carriers and how quickly carriers are starting to directly integrate into systems and all that kind of stuff, like we're five years away from like Ivan's being probably not as important today, unless they do some major changes, which, you know, if you listen to

read, it sounds like he's doing some interesting stuff. So maybe he does open that platform up and modernize it. But it just, to me, the simplicity is what, is what brought me to it is now I can use my marketing brain and do a lot of fun stuff that I want to do and, and be that true customer experience that I'm looking to deliver. But I don't have to have a freaking PhD in marketing automation in order to deliver it. And Salesforce even, and I feel like tons of people don't realize it. Salesforce is pricey, but it's not cost prohibitive. When you look at just buying licenses, you're like, Oh, that's going to be $60 per person. I have a three person agency. Cool. This will cost me $180 a month. But I mean, I'm in Columbus, Ohio, which is no no new york city it's no la but it's not cheap

you know it's not the same as nothing to shit on cleveland but like it's not as affordable as cleveland which is where i grew up a junior salesforce admin like a dude that's a couple years out of college like two or three years out of college and is a salesforce admin like can help you build your salesforce account the way you want their annual salary in Columbus, Ohio is $95,000. How many agencies are ready to employ somebody even 10 hours a week to get that set up? Are you ready to take on a fourth of that cost to get your Salesforce set up? And to your point, Ryan, 15 years of marketing and sales experience, you would know pretty well how you want your sales first set up.

To somebody who's never had a CRM, you're going to build it upside down. You're going to have to build it upside up the next time. And then you're still going to make mistakes because you just don't have the breadth of knowledge. Like you said, a PhD in any one of these systems to have the architecture be correct, to have your team operate in it successfully. And it still doesn't do the right stuff. It still doesn't, it still gives them a list of things to do. And they still have to manually send out a text and an email and they're

still not happy with it. And then they still don't use it. This is the frustrating part for me is that it's like, this is what I don't get aboutC management systems in general. And I know that this is the epic bitch, but I just don't get this part. Like they're doing all these things and none of like, all I need is a simple policy management system. And I really like community cloud. I really like community cloud. Right. So like, I like the community cloud feature and I like the ability to easily, how easily when you see a well-done Salesforce installation, when you see how easily you can move information, pull information, move between accounts,

move between policies, roll up data to really get a true vision of it. I'm like, wow, that is, it's just so easy. Today, it's like, I get into NowSource and I'm like, oh my God, I've been in here 20 times today and I still don't know where anything is. And for this account, it didn't download properly because for some reason for Chubb workers comp policies, now certs decided to beam that to the fucking moon instead of putting it into the policy. Right. So now I have all these policies with no premium. Okay. So, um, but you know, maybe I'm doing it wrong. Uh, who knows? So? So it, I just look at them like there's such, there's just a few, like I would love to

just create a policy, not an agency management system, a policy admin system with a simple, like community cloud-ass backend that I can plug agency, you know, agency zoom into. And I'd be like, that's a whole solution. There it is. Then I can have one freaking person who logs into that and goes, okay, premiums commissions. Here's your policy information. Oh, you want to download your policy form? Well, since cat won't

build a client portal into agency zoom, I guess we have to back end it into this system. So like, you know, that to me, that's all you need. All this crap that they're bolting on and just the price of the agency management keeps going up and up and up. And I'm like, you're not as good as CRMs. So if sales and marketing is the key, you keep bolting crappy marketing. Like I saw an advertisement come out

for one of the agency management systems. And it was like, we have marketing automation now. And I'm telling you their screenshot in 2021, I think someone when it was like, we have marketing automation now. And I'm telling you their screenshot in 2021. I think someone when it was, was goofing because it was like an unsplash photo from like a computer from like 1997. And they're like, look, marketing automation. Like we have six templates. And I'm like, whoever, whoever did that marketing piece needs to be like flogged. Like, you know how, like if you, if you,

like if you're in Taiwan and you commit like a petty crime, they like hit you with this stick that really hurts. Like that person should get that for putting that out on the internet. I so appreciate that. Cause there's this like happy medium balance to even in our world. And like you said, like what's agency zoom. Like it's hard to define it. Cause we're talking to everyone from like you to like our agency owner who like ambitiously wants to take

on a crm and i have to explain why like that's really not an exciting adventure and they should just like reposition themselves to think about their customer experience and their employees so like yeah the the marketing of like where we sit in the market and our user base. Like, I don't know how many people that are listening, like play attention to product adoption curve. But if you guys have worked within sure texts and ever like beat your head against the wall, cause you feel like they're not listening or they're not ready for you. There's like five or six mindsets. There's your innovators,

your early adopters, your early majority, your late majority. And then there's your laggards. The laggards are the people that like still don't have a void you know like yeah maybe don't even have a cell phone um but when you plot 7 000 people or 7 000 agencies and like 64 000 people on this adoption curve you suddenly end up with people that really get it innovators that want to do cool stuff like you do and then you end up also with the late majority who are like I need CRM and you're like why and they're like because I was told I do yeah I was at this association meeting one time and those kids kept using these three

letters and I googled it and you're the ones that came up yeah when people like text me or like send us messages on Facebook and they're like, I need an MCR. And I'm like, I'm not sure what you're looking for here. And they're like, you know, like somewhere to track my sales. And I'm like, you mean a CRM? Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, what AMS do you use? And they're like, we have file cabinets.

I'm like, ah, maybe not right yet. I like my favorite and I, and I want to be, I want to be respectful of your time. And we're at the number. My favorite is when people tell me that their CRM is a whiteboard in their office. They're like, I just like the visual nature of a whiteboard. And I'm like, Oh, I mean, yes, I get it. If you're working on like 10 accounts, which if you're a middle market person and you have 10 accounts and your goal is to write seven of those accounts for the year

and they're going to pay your bills, then again, some of what we're saying doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Okay, that part I could be like, okay, one congratulations, great for knowing what you're doing. That's awesome. No judgment.

But if you're trying to run kind of a standard, slightly more digital-ish agency or trying to get into the digital world and you don't have some function on your computer that allows you to move clients through a visual pipeline I don't know how you can be a fit you are out you have to be dropping accounts on the floor you just have to I just people too that are saying like oh yeah I like want to sell new policies and all this and this like just as a sales leader again it's just one of those things that like the hair stands up like on my arm I'm just like like chills like run

up my back I'm just like god the amount of people that don't have a goal for their and then don't have a goal for their individual people but they're oh, we put it on a whiteboard or we share a Google sheet. It's like, what for? Yeah. Like what? Okay. Like why are you managing to it? Yeah.

Like, okay. So like what, like if you have 10 up there and it's last day of the month, like, am I ahead? Am I behind? How do you know that? Like, how do I know if I'm ahead or behind even? Like, not only do you as the agency owner

have a gut feeling, but like, do I have a I'm ahead or behind even like not only do you as the agency owner have a gut feeling but like do I have a gut feeling does it matter you know like that's the thing that I think becomes hard every time somebody loses the idea of like digitizing and tracking some of this is if you don't even set your goals if you don't communicate your goals out and then you don't hold people accountable to them because they can do whatever the hell they want, it's not gonna go as well as you think it is, you know, and like, we'll start with the like, oh, we're just gonna track first. It's like, but what are you tracking? Like, what's the purpose of tracking it if there's no celebration for tracking it and achieving it? Or if there's no like, Hey guys, we got to do better next month. If we don't hit it, like what for, you know?

And you did just mention the greatest feature in the history of insurance technology, which is the confetti. Every time you sell a policy. Well, I'm sorry. I said that again. The greatest feature in the history of insurance technology, the confetti that comes down every time you hit the sold button, it's just the greatest just the greatest feature ever. It is the amount of like, whether it was a complete mistake or like a joke,

the psychology behind every time you hit the sold button, the screen bursts with confetti is just, I'm like, I freaking love it. I got mad the other day because like we had something in ready to issue that hadn't been moved to sold for like two days and it didn't have to be, but it just hadn't been moved. Yep. And I was like, I literally on my team call was like, screw you guys.

I'm moving it to sold. So I get to see the confetti. Like that's happening. Boom. Yeah. When you know what I mean? It's like a joke. It literally started as a joke. Cause we used to have this little animation that popped up and it like, it was just like a little happy face or something stupid and we're like god that's so cheesy and we're like what's even more obnoxious and more corny and it was like this confetti like popping through the screen and like floating down the amount of animation work and engineering work that it ended up taking for us to like you know reap what we sowed that we wanted this like new cheesy obnoxious

thing and then how attached you guys are to it now like load speed on a computer impacts this dumb confetti so we have to have like almost a different version of confetti for every device that you guys are on it really has bit us in the butt but now people love it and i mean it's got to be a million x roi i mean why it's too fun there's no other crm that does it so why would you why would you ever leave every time you hit the sold button you get this burst of confetti you feel like a million dollars it's the best but it's fine i mean the funny part was we were doing like poppers in our office like you know those little ones you like like she said we were like doing that as a joke like when we were like

developing that and stuff and we're like being cheesy and obnoxious about it. And then, you know, like you said, lo and behold, like everybody like loves it. And we're like, all right, well, I guess jokes on us. Like it actually worked out. Like how fun. Well, I am not going to title this

anything that has to do with employee enablement, but I will say that this has been an absolute pleasure. I appreciate your time. I want to say thank you publicly. I know you deal with a lot of people like me, so I'm going to thank you for me. And because I know all of them appreciate as well, at least the crew of people that I run with that text you all the time.

And, and I do think that you guys are doing really good work. It's been a huge resource for my agency. And, you know, and I do think that you guys are doing really good work. It's been a huge resource for my agency. And, um, you know, like I said, of, of all the tools that I would or wouldn't move from, um, you know, you guys are really one of the core pieces and, uh, uh, just look forward to what you have going on and, uh, the continued improvement. And hopefully I hope that we can report on a future podcast that you hit your 7,000. Now, two days isn't a lot of time, but I hope you get there. We can do it.

We have many times had pretty easily 10 signups a day. And we got most of Thursday left, most of Friday. We got a little bit on Saturday. So if somebody is really ambitious and likes to work on Saturday, they become my favorite people anyway. So thanks for having me. One, thanks for being part of the cool, like close-knit group of us that like do text

and offer ideas. You know, like I said, we really do value like what every single one of our agencies share. Like we have a roadmap feature, like built in that you guys can request stuff. But, and I love all of our teams. Although I'm being shadow banned from the roadmap because my suggestions are

not getting in there. That's definitely true. The teams that then go investigate, which you guys are one of them. And it's like very needed. The teams that go and go investigate the stuff that gets put on the roadmap and they test it and they beta use it. Like those are the ones that like make a world of difference. Those are the ones that take technology from being, you know,

150 agencies and it's just one person's opinion and it's some engineers building stuff. Like you guys are the ones that like take it and really build it into what independent agents need. So, you know, I wouldn't be here, agency Zoom wouldn't be where it's at without you guys. And that's why I love getting bombarded with texts

at two o'clock in the afternoon, you know, two minus an hour and 53 minutes until I just get lit up for 30 minutes. All right. Well, the group text will go out. Hey, it's time to start texting Kat. I, you know, Oh, Hey, look at this. Look at this agency zoom. I got the party poppers right on my phone right here. My boy just sold two, two policies. I got the party poppers going on my phone. Boom. Love it. All right. Thanks, Kat.

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