The Ryan Hanley Show - RHS 184 - CJ Hutsenpiller on How to Be Awesome at Insurance

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comIn this episode of The Ryan Hanley Show, Ryan Hanley interviews CJ Hutsenpiller.CJ Hutsenpiller is a true insurance entrepreneur, running his family agency while also being co-owner of The Collective Agency Council and owner of Tacobot, a chatbot agency that specializes in lead generation and client experience chatbots for the insurance industry.I loved this conversation with CJ and I know you will too...Episode Highlights: CJ shares about a successful marketing strategy for their insurance agency, which involves displaying historical images of their town on the website. (8:28) CJ discusses the use of virtual employees and bots, such as chatbots and robotic process automation bots, to enhance their agency's efficiency. (16:57) CJ explains their straightforward hiring process, consisting of an interview followed by a group interview with the entire team. (22:45) CJ mentions that traditional agents struggle with paying their employees competitively and tend to treat them as mere numbers. (34:53) CJ shares his experience using Chat GPT to generate content for their insurance business, including an Edgar Allen Poe-inspired insurance poem. (48:44) CJ discusses the potential of AI-generated video content for automation purposes. (1:03:37) CJ explains the importance of appealing to various types of buyers in order for agencies to grow larger. (1:07:19) Key Quote:“One thing that we really focus in on is like, how can we make our processes and servicing personal lines more efficient. So our little motto for the agency is, ‘Where the convenience of online shopping meets the security of having a local insurance agent.’” - CJ HutsenpillerResources Mentioned: CJ Hutsenpiller Hutsenpiller Insurance The Collective Agency Council  Tacobot Reach out to Ryan Hanley Rogue Risk Finding Peak 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 conversation for you with CJ Hudson-Piller. He is young, scrappy, and hungry, according to his LinkedIn profile. But what I absolutely know is he is a baller when it comes to all things insurance, independent agencies, and particularly digital marketing and technology. And we just have kind of a very broad, very dynamic conversation about the industry, about tech, about what's happening in different spaces and different markets.

Just love this conversation. CJ's a tremendous follow on Twitter as well. A great guy, someone I'm a big fan of and have wanted to have on the show for a long time. And just sometimes people, you know, you just don't get to them. And I finally just said, I got to have CJ on. I want to talk to this dude. And we had a wonderful conversation.

You are going to love this. Happy to share it with you. Before we get there, guys, if you love this podcast, you will love the blog, findingpeak.com. Go to findingpeak.com. Every Friday, article comes out for free. It's about peak performance in life and business and relationships, how we put ourselves in a position to win psychologically, emotionally, physically. I love writing it, and if you enjoy this podcast, I think you're going to love reading it. So go to findingpeak.com, sign up, like I said, for free. Also, guys, big shout out to our sponsor Tivly

t-i-v-l-y dot com t-i-v-l-y dot com t-i-v-l-y dot com Tivly used to be commercialinsurance.net now they're Tivly as in positively and they are the foundation

of our consistent lead flow we are getting targeted consistent leads coming in we build specific campaigns for specific producers that dial in coming in. We build specific campaigns for specific producers that dial in on a niche. We build geographic campaigns. We have all these different types of leads flowing into our business so that we can constantly have opportunities for our team and constantly be growing. And Tivoli is an enormous part of that. Go to tivI-V-L-Y.com today. All right. With that, let's get on to CJ Hudson-Piller in this absolutely tremendous conversation.

I'm going to shaboos. What's up, brother? Dude, what's going on? How are you? I'm good, man. Good, good, good, good. Just, uh, what's up with you? Oh, not a lot. I think I'm about to go see some of your counterparts over at SIAA, right?

Yeah, what are you doing with those guys? So, apparently they're having some sort of conference or something here in Nashville. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I can think a lot of the master agencies are in Nashville this week. Yeah. Do some annual thing they do. Yeah, so I'm going to Jack Hurtvick is a friend of mine and he asked me to go to lunch today.

So I'm going, going down there, but yeah, he told me that conference was going on. I was like, that's weird. I hadn't heard anything about it, but you say that it's a, you know, just for like master agencies or whatever that makes complete sense. Yeah. I think it's just like, they're, I think twice a year they do a powwow where everybody gets together, just the master agencies and stuff. And they do it once in Boston.

And then once I think in Nashville is yeah okay so well yeah so that's going on apparently down there today yeah sorry my light went off there again no you're good you're good so dude I'm um I'm excited to have you on and just and just chat I mean obviously I see you all over and I love the stuff you're doing and stuff. I think it's, it's, I'm just interested in great Twitter file. Great. Thank you. I, uh, you know, Bradley flowers, uh, actually kind of got me back on Twitter. I, uh, it was one of those things that I use Twitter for sports, right?

I'm a hockey guy. Uh, I'm a big Nashville predators, uh, fan, um, even though they're terrible, but that's, that's a, that's an irrelevant conversation. But he was like, hey, man, you should start putting some of the stuff you're doing in your agency on Twitter. Okay, that's it. So it's been fun. I love the banter and the back and forth. And so it's been really good. Yeah, it's funny. You know twitter is is twitter is such an interesting monster um i i love twitter i've been on since like 2008 like like really early um you know whatever i just i've never really like tried to grow a following i've always just found it so interesting to like

watch what people will say and how they react. And I had a really interesting moment. You know, I'm not a huge fan of lefties in general, not to get political, but my, let's just say my viewpoints tend to not exactly line up with theirs. That being said. And you're in New York, right? So that goes. Yeah, I'm in New York. Yeah. So it's lonely. Although you'd be surprised. This is one of the states where they I think they is is one of the least understood. You have all these bananas, 24 year old dipshits down in the city who like bleed blue and have no clue how the world works. So they just vote for for these Democrats and the rest of us in upstate New York. Like most of my friends are either moderate Dems, you know, perfectly reasonable humans or are maybe slightly to the right. But the state comes off as this crazy lefty nuts because just because of the city, New York City wasn't there. We would probably be like an Ohio, right?

We'd kind of be purple. We'd be probably a purple, solid purple state. But it's funny. So needless to say i'm on twitter and there's this account i follow right and it's called the the handle is albany muskrat is this handle and and it's a person i have no idea who the person is and they just share like these old timey stories and photos of albany because albany was the first incorporated city in the united states uh 1664

so okay just very old rich history i mean it's been completely destroyed again by progressives but um um but needless to say there's it it was this beautiful place with tons of really interesting transportation technology because we had the river and we had the railroads and the erie canal and it's got a really dynamic history yeah um so she now I know it's a she I didn't know it was she at the time so yesterday uh she posts everyone's I knew I knew it was probably this woman this person leaned left because she every once in a while she does like the random like uh Trump derangement syndrome type stuff yeah right which is You know, but she posted something about gun violence and it was like, we got to take the guns. And I thought we were having like

a pretty standard conversation. I just said, yes, but we also need to address things like mental health and poverty and deprivation. Bro, this, this woman goes off the chain. Why you, what is this ad? She starts using all these words that like are like English major words, which again, word games are classic leftist play, but like, you know, talking about like how I'm ad hominem attacking her and how dare I, and then they look into my background, out they go oh he works at the murray group which is my ex-wife's agency that i haven't been at in nine years and they fucking call her they call the agency to see if i work there because they were going to drop their fucking insurance or something if i work there and i'm like i'm like on twitter going i don't

work there anymore i'm literally sharing rogue wisdom Like this is the company that I own and work for. Right, right, right. So it's like, it just was this reminder to me of like, one, well, I don't want to go down this rabbit hole because this is, I'm interviewing you and I haven't let you talk at all. But two, it just was like this reminder to me of how, one, you just have to be careful on Twitter. Like you want to engage in that shit or get, you know, go beyond just like sharing some

lighthearted stuff. Man, it can escalate quickly, very quickly. You know, it's funny. The other day I got, uh, I made, I've made a post that was kind of similar to that. And I had people coming out of like Canada at me and I was like, bro, I wasn't even talking about you. Like, like what was going on? But yeah, that's a, that's a, that's a good, but you know, the, the old picture thing is an, isn't it to kind of spin this back to insurance yeah that's uh that's like one of our agency's number one web lead magnets is we have we have a gallery of old images of our town on our website um and and so essentially you know we push some basic traffic to it or whatever and uh it does really really well um

at converting because typically it's people that are from the area or whatever so they're really good prospects for us uh typically it converts really really well yeah i can see that that that's that's a really cool strategy you know when you're doing it's so funny because having done local with the murray group for eight years and just with all local, local, local, local, local, right now flipping to a national, um, you know, it's, there's a, there is a grass is always greener mentality, right? I meet a lot of people who, who market locally and they're always like, Oh, if only I could pull from a bigger pool, uh, if only I could pull from a bigger pool or I could do, you know, I could do some of these Tik TOK ads or Instagram or whatever, like, you know, all these like strategies. And I'm like, yes, when you're going national, I guess you can get bigger numbers doing

those things, but it is not easier. Like local is, I don't want to say easier because nothing is easy, but like you can be, you can do really cool things that people grab onto where nationally, it's like, it's, it's tough to get those campaigns because of how bifurcated. So it's like, so culturally different in areas like that, like, like ad copy, like it hits in, you know, my area is not going to hit the same in New York. It's just not, you know, the way we talk is different. The things that are important to us are different. And it's like, I personally, like, I love like the hyper-local stuff.

I think the uh level of things is like i think i it to me i'm glad i don't have to deal with that i focus on like my little region yeah and and that's it um but for that very purpose of like i don't i'm i'm not gonna sit here and pretend that i can make ad copy that's relevant to somebody in Washington state. Like it's just not how I'm wired. I, you know, there's part of me. So I never wanted to go national when I first launched rogue, like the first, the first vision for, for this agency was not to go national. It was to be a, I wanted to be, I basically wanted to take what David Carruthers teaches and what Mick Hunt teaches, smash them together, and then just be like a middle market kind of digital producer, but just for like the greater Albany Eastern area, right? There was no, you know,

I saw an opportunity for, there's really just big traditional brokers or old school people around here. There's no one really doing anything different. I thought I could move into that space. And then because of COVID, that's what forced me to go national. Right. But like, man, there are days when I wake up and I'm like, God, I'd love to just be like the local guy, you know, cause you're like worried about, you know, we, you know, you're worried about Washington state needs this document and this thing over here. And you just get into this multi-state and then here you need to have this notarized for, you know, you're just like, Oh my God, it like gets, it gets overwhelming. And so I think that, I guess my point in saying but like, I think for a lot of people listening. So to that extent, like, I don't necessarily, I'm not familiar with your origin story. So let's make this, turn this back into like a real interview.

And what's the origin story? I know a lot of people know you and are very familiar, but just for anyone who isn't. Yeah, just to give everybody context. So I own a family agency. My mom started it in 1992. You know, one of those things where she was she was pregnant with my sister. She said this is her story. I don't remember this. But she says that I begged her not to go to work one day and she literally went in and quit her job and started her own insurance agency out of her house. I do remember that part. The agency grew up until probably, well, in 2008 or 2006, I graduated high school. Right. So just to kind of age me a little bit there.

My mom made me and my sister, both of us, as soon as we turned 18, get our insurance licenses, uh, for no other reason than she wanted us to have them. She said, you know, something never happened to me. I want you to be able to not have any kind of income flow issues, you know, with the business or anything like that. Cool. Fine. So, so we did, um, 2008, uh, I decided I wanted to come on full time. Um, she did not want to hire me. Um, I was, I I was a little wild. And looking back, I wouldn't have hired me either. Yeah, but she didn't want to. And so she had a receptionist position come available and I applied for it. It was like, mom, I want to I want to work at the agency. And she's like, you want to be a receptionist? I was like, I don't care what I have to do. I just want my foot in the door. So I was a receptionist. I literally did everything that a receptionist would do. I just want my foot in the door. So I was a receptionist. I literally did everything that a

receptionist would do. And so I did non-pay calls. I followed up on claims. I did all the things that you would pay a VA to do now. I was the VA. And so I did that. And then she finally kind of got some trust in me, moved me to customer service. And then from there, she figured out that I was pretty good at selling insurance. And then my mom has always been really tech forward, always thought that way, like making processes more efficient. We went paperless in 2006, just like context of like where her head was. So tech has always been a thing, but we never had, you know, what I would consider a ton of money for tech. So it ended up with me

building a lot of our own stuff. And a lot of agents thought that was cool. So that's kind of kind of how I how I got a little bit of attention online, you know, from some people. Simply because I was building stuff that companies were charging thousands and thousands of dollars for, and I was doing them, you know, for a $20 monthly subscription to Zapier or whatever. So, so yeah, so that's kind of like my origin story, how I got there, how we are where we are today. And mostly personal, mixed personal commercial. I know you do a lot of private client. Yeah, I try to, I try to, that me personally, I play in that space. But the agency, we are 89% personal lines, 11% commercial, actually probably is more like 10%

commercial, 1% just ancillary, you know,'s but um but yeah mostly personal lines um and i think that's that's one of the places that our agency differentiates is um i know that there's a lot of people think you can't make money in personal lines because it's it's really service heavy and they're right it is service heavy um but one thing that like we really focus in on is like, how can we make our processes and servicing personal lines more efficient? So like our little motto for the agency is where the convenience of online shopping meets the security of having a local insurance agent. That's kind of the mix. And that's that's what we strive to create that for the experience purposes. Yeah, that I mean, that's right in line with what I talk about sometimes called human optimized, you know what I mean? It's right, it's putting

our putting our humans in the places where they can actually add value instead of using them for all these random tasks, like, like basically what you learned on right doing the thing and all that kind of stuff. Well, what, you know, what it really showed me then, like, I look back on it now is like, you know, I was a cheap employee, right? I'm a family member, right? You can get those inexpensively. But a typical agency is hiring somebody to do those tasks. And I'm just looking at these things going, this is so inefficient, right? Like the way that we're doing, we're data entering two, three, four times on stuff for, you know, we're doing all these things. these things. And, uh, for me, that, that was really where I started being like, this can be done better, you know? And so that's kind of how we got into that. Now, are you using VAs or RPAs or anything like that, or both? Yes. So, so a lot of people, a lot of people think that I would be, um. I am not a VA fan as far as when I say the VA, like out of the country VA type person. It's just something that like I can justify the math, right? The math makes sense to me. The people part for me is important. So we utilize virtual employees um but i don't have like vas um we do have all kinds of different

different bots um i have played with like the robotic process automation bots that rpas we do a lot of chatbot stuff um that's uh something for us but as far as the vas we do not have any vas we currently have 15 team members and they're all located in the state of Tennessee. Gotcha. So a virtual employee would still be in Tennessee, just maybe not necessarily coming into the office every day. Correct. Cause I had this, you know, I don't even want to call it an epiphany, but like in 2019, shockingly enough, we hired our first virtual employee, like late 2019. Great timing. That was not intentional. That wasn't, you know, us being like, Oh, COVID is about to happen. We should start looking into this virtual thing. But kind of my mindset shifted. You know, one of the things like right now, it's hard to find talent, right, for your insurance agency. And, you know, the traditional insurance model says that, you know, you hire somebody that'll drive your office every day or whatever. But the problem with that is you're not getting the best person.

You're getting the best person that happens to live close enough to drive your office for the salary that you pay them. And so for me, I was like, well, if I want to build the best team, I'm really limiting myself to like this, you know, 25 mile radius around my town. And so my mind kind of shifted, okay, we need to look at instead of hiring the most convenient person, hiring the best person. And so that's kind of where we started bringing in virtual people. And so what literally what I would do is I would on Facebook, like I connect with all kinds of insurance agents. I tell people that like if you're my friend on Facebook and you're an insurance agent

because I'm trying to hire you at some point. So so like, you know, I just watch them. And then, you know, when we find one that's, that's good, we'll try to pursue them. And that's kind of been our hiring strategy. And it's worked out really well. Yeah, we, we have not had a problem hiring. And a lot of people ask questions about that. And I just say, that's what I use. Like, that's what I use social media for. Like the reason, you know, The reason that I post shit on Instagram, all my social, for the most part, 98% of the social media that I do is recruiting or selling Rogue. 100%. It's like, why?

I think that people confuse. They'll see something, and it'll be like, you know, like you do the dad jokes, you know, the bad jokes or whatever, or whatever. It's all just, it's all meant to show personality, culture, authenticity to who you are so that when you do get into that interview, the person's not questioning, can I trust this person? Right. I mean, those are the first barriers in an interview really have to break down is, does this seem like someone that I could actually trust? And that goes both ways. And by being very vocal and very outspoken and social in terms of just our culture as a business, me personally as a leader, et cetera, I found that a lot of people come in and at least from that standpoint, they're already sold. They know that we're a certain type of business. you know, and I see

that in a lot of the stuff that you do. And a lot of the things that you share, you know, I can see similarities, like it might feel personal, but it's also showing a big part of who you are, who your agency is, and what you guys are all about. Absolutely. And then it also gives you the opportunity to pre interview your prospects, right? Because like, you can tell a lot about somebody by following them for 30 days on social media. Right. So like you can kind of figure out like and, you know, our agency, you know, most of our marketing is around digital. So like even the lack of social presence tells me whether or not they're going to be a good fit. Right. So so I can kind of kind of see that before I even make that plunge to go any further.

Like, OK, this person would be good or this person isn't somebody. Hey, I dodged a bullet on this one. I thought this person would be great. I get on there on Facebook. They're fighting with people, all these different things. I say, okay, maybe this isn't the right person that I would be looking for. And then you never had to waste your time interviewing them. Yes.

Or worst case, hiring them and finding out after. Which is interesting. I definitely have learned the hard way. One thing, and I don't know if you see this at all with some of the people you hire because you are so active on social. There are people, and I don't want this to come off. This might come off wrong. I don't mean it to be.

But there are people that will apply to work for Rogue because of my social media presence, right? Or whatever, right? So they see you, they see you're active. And I know I'm not the only one. There are other agency owners that I've talked to are active that say the same thing. So I'm not trying to, but like, that is really difficult because they've been following you. They know what you're into. They know what things you like, and it makes it very easy or easier for them to sculpt their answers to what they think you want to hear. And I have hired at least once, probably multiple times, more than multiple ones and gone. Like as soon as the person comes in and you see, like even, even, you know, and they're just, they can be so good at hiding their work ethic, right. They can say all the right things. And you're like, and then you, you know,

and then you get them in and you're like, son of a bitch, this person just knew the series of words to say to like sound right. Yeah. So, so in our agency, you know, we, I've had that problem. We, I tell people, we wrote the book on hiring people wrong. Right. So, so, so thankfully though you know, we've kind of learned from that. And I always tell people, I don't hire anyone at my agency and literally we don't, our process is pretty simple. We do, you know, we do an an interview me and them just to make sure that you know a like in that interview like i'm kind of just feeling them out i'm also

kind of feeling out like how are you compensated currently what's it going to take what what's important to you to even make you want to move because i don't want to waste anyone's time right like if somebody comes in is like hey i want to be a csr my current position is paying me 150,000 a year and i'm perfectly happy like yeah we yeah, we're going to stop there. Right. Like, like that's, that's not a thing. But then from there, once, once I do that, our agency is divided into two teams. We have service team and a sales team. And depending on where, like where I'm trying to put them, the remaining interviews are done group interviews with the entire team. And after, after they interview, you know, we'll talk amongst ourselves and say, okay, you know, what do you think? You know, that kind of

thing. If I have one person that says, no, they're done. And that, and it's as simple as that. And, and that's a cultural thing to make sure that, but it also helps prevent that somebody curating answers because they pick up on things that like, I didn't notice, like, I'm like, oh yeah, this person's great. And like, ah, hang on CJ, wait a minute. What about these three things that they said? I'm like, Oh, okay. I didn't hear it the same way you heard it. So. Yeah. Well, I do. I do something similar with that,

except I use a group of at least three people on the leadership team that are me. So I like, so we do our processes. I have a woman in my office. Her name is Sarah. She's tremendous at like the screening and she does kind of a first pass. Sure. Kind of weeds out the crazies.

Yeah. And then she takes the list of people who've kind of come through there. Say it's three individuals out of maybe a, you know, whatever. Maybe she pulls 40 resumes, prayers are down to three, um, sends those three over to me. And then I do the, I do the second layer crazy test, right? Do I think they're a cultural fit? You know, try to, try to find some posers,

try to find people who I think won't work from like, uh, you know, we just, we just have a certain, we have a certain way here that I, and I've seen enough, you know, we're at 22, 23 people, something like that now. So like, you know, I've seen the people that come in and do well and the people that don't, and there's definite cultural questions that you could, that, that I ask. And most of it is, and it's the same way with selling, right? Like I have this whole thing I say to my team, like ask them how you can help and then shut the fuck up and just let them talk. And like, they'll talk themselves either onto the top of the mountain or right down into a hole. Like if you just can be like the longer you can be quiet and let them talk the better, you know, but.

We talk too much as insurance agents. We don't listen enough. And we always, you know, trying to make sure that our, you know, we have these four points we want to make. Well, those four points, that's great that you want to make those four points to the, to the customer, but they don't care about those four points you wasted your time. Yeah. That's, that's, that's like, well, we can talk about the digital sales process another time, but like, I feel, I have very strong, I have very strong feelings on how that should be done, which is mirrors what you just said, but like, and then, so once they get past that first interview, second interview, and then we do this group interview

where three leaders doesn't have to be even the one of the leaders of that team but three people from the leadership team will then do um internally they call it a spanish inquisition style interview where they'll just like pepper the shit out of this person with different questions and see like if they can handle it how they respond and then that from there we usually make a decision. So it's a three interview process for us most of the time. I got you. Do you, in that, when they're in that peppering thing, I think a spot that insurance agents kind of miss on,

you know, during that process, it's like you should have some stuff built into that to test how good they are with the computer. Make them send you some stuff, you know, digitally. Make sure that, you know, they're having to go on your website, upload a doc, you know, like some different things like that. But also like, you know, we used to not like, when we used to hire, and again, this was back when I was writing the book of how to hire incorrectly. You know, we didn't really ever talk to them about insurance. I can talk to them about them and how that, you know, how they do things. But like, I find a lot of value in being like,

all right, sale or service team, sales team, how they do things. But like, I find a lot of value in being like, all right, sale or service team sales team, write down the last like 10 questions you were asked and ask them and let's, let's see how they respond to that. And I feel like a lot of agents don't do that in interviews and that can shed a lot of light on their thought process. Yeah. You're a hundred percent right. I, I, one of the places where I definitely, and I'm with you, I've made this mistake. I've made that mistake. We've only recently started, which is crazy to even say,

recently started doing like getting, getting them to walk through like real examples of stuff with the sales team. And I, I tend to be better at hiring. I shouldn't even say better. Any value that I can add to the process and the sales process and the service side, I don't, I can't add value to that. But like, but that definitely uncovers some stuff.

You know, like we hire, you know, we've hired people eight years, 10 years, CSR. And then what you're saying is you're trusting and we know how poor most of our brothers and sisters are at training in this industry, right? Yet we're trusting based on nine years of experience, some other agents have trained them properly, right? And it's just not the case. Like it's just simply not the case. It's almost never the case. Yeah. That's the, that's probably the, that's the scarier part for me. Yes. Especially if you want to work at speed. I mean, that's, that is,

and I will say, I think this is the defining difference. If you are a plotting along agency, right? Just a lifestyle agency who's looking to put enough accounts on to, to stay, you know, to stay even for the year. And that's kind of how you're operating, which is probably most likely not many of the agents that will listen to this podcast, but it's okay for your people to kind of work that way, right? They can just kind of fumble through it and get it done and everything's fine. But like, as soon as you want to turn the volume up,

those people get exposed so badly and they're, and then they become such an anchor to the rest of the team that it's like blaring, it's, it's glaringly obvious, like almost immediately. Absolutely. Yeah. I've seen that. I've seen that multiple times. So yeah, I just, you know, agents have to think, have to think through that.

And I think, you know, it may, maybe I'm wrong here, but like, I feel like when I look at somebody's resume and like the first thing they're doing is like, they're touting their experience. Like I, not all experience is equal right like like you know if I'm you know we're an independent agency so like if you come to me and you're like hey I was with Allstate for 20 years like all right cool that you're with Allstate for 20 years but like that's not the same as being in an independent you know that it's it's different the the things that you're going to encounter different the way you have to think is different um you know it, you know, it's, it's different. The, the things that you're going to encounter different, the way you have to think is different. You know, it's, you know, the amount of information

you just have to know is, is different. So like, you know, knowing that like all that experience isn't created equal, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. I almost feel like there's like a sweet spot between like, I don't want them to have no experience, right? Like I want them to be licensed. I don't want to have to be answering like what has come, right? Like I don't want them to have no experience, right? Like I want them to be licensed. I don't want to have to be answering like what has come, right? Like I don't want to have to answer, teach them that. But I also feel like there's a spot where there's like too much experience of like, hey, I'm set in my ways and I'm not able to change. And you've got to kind of like teeter of like where, how does that person fit into that scale uh scale what do you yeah so we we have tried brand new unlicensed we are not we are not set up from a training perspective to do that that's right i

don't have time to train them like that that was an epic fail so um so i'd say our sweet spot is three to seven years of experience um i won't say captive or independent has impacted that too much that we do have quite a you know i'd say people who've come from captives have come over and been very successful um so i i have nothing we have that too i see it both ways i'm not saying yeah yeah yeah like uh proceed with caution and make sure that you got a good base. Well, I think there's a couple. So it all depends on what you're hiring them for too. Like I'd say our select process where it's all inbound,

they're just taking phone calls, solving problems, transactional flying through. I would say the people who came from captives have picked that process up much quicker where the uh we'll call it ambiguity and problem like creative problem solving of finding leads of going out and being a hunter tends to be something that the captives don't pick up as quickly also not that they can't but they don't just because of the way they're trained. So we take that into account. I'd say that if you've been at an independent age, a traditional independent agent for less than five years, you're probably terrible.

You're probably really, really bad because there's the training. They're awful. I think I agree with that. Yep. There's no pressure on them to be successful other than some old man occasionally stumbling over to their desk and telling them to work harder. And it's brutal. And like, so you're describing one of my employees right now. Did you talk to them before? Yeah. Well, it's just funny. Like we just see if you're now you make it having

to deal with that. I that's dude, it's just, you're, you're like, they come in and I'm like, and I've had a couple of these guys come in and you're just like, what were you doing at this agency? Like, what could you possibly have been doing? And like, I've seen commission results and all this. And it's just like these, they don't get trained. They get thrown out to the wolves. I don't know how they're paid for. It just, it boggles my mind.

So we're looking for three to seven years. If that's a sweet spot, younger in spirit doesn't necessarily three to seven years. That's a sweet spot. Younger in spirit doesn't necessarily have to be age. We've had all different ages come in, but you cannot have the I figured this out mentality. That's what I'm looking for. What I'm looking for are the people who have it figured out. If you have it figured out, I do not want to talk to you. I don't want anything to do with you.

Because nobody has it figured out. And the fact that you think you have't figured out is a bad flag because our whole culture is is is based around uh trial and error we're it's test experiment test experiment test experiment it's like you have to come in here knowing that things are going to be that things are going to change and you and you need to be able to adapt because we don't know my poor team my poor team has to do it right like we pivot quickly yeah well that's the thing is how do you know you know that's why when i see these people up on stage or i hear them in these these middle level carrier people coming in telling us about the i'm just like you have no idea you have no idea one you're doing cell insurance two you haven't done a hundred tests to figure out if what you're saying is true. McKinsey told you that. And McKinsey

doesn't have a shit, no shit, because none of those people have ever sold insurance policy. So I don't care. I can't hear that. I did this solo podcast a few months ago where I talked about, I love to surround myself with people who have a limp and, you know, you're basically like people who've had the crap beat out of them. Like if you have, yeah. And like, dude, if you can smell it on somebody when they haven't tried a hundred different things and tested a hundred different things and no 98 of them that don't work, you can smell it on them when they start talking about the business. And that's really what I am searching for in my part of the

interview process is, are we being bullshitted? And if we're not, still doesn't mean they're a good fit, but it gets them to the next phase. But if I smell that you're bullshitting on what you've actually done and your actual experience and your like beliefs on the business take a hike yeah i don't want that absolutely it sounds like we line up on the uh hiring process yeah yeah yeah yeah it's funny too i don't know if you ever like you talked about like you know the traditional agents you know like how do i even how do i even pay how do they even afford to pay people what they pay i mean you know i know, I think it comes down to, I think a lot of them don't actually know, a lot of agency owners don't actually know what somebody costs them, right? Like they don't have the numbers with that. And then, you know, and they view their employees as numbers too. So it's kind of a,

and so when you said that, you know, you said something along the lines of, you know, you just had somebody yelling, they came to their desk, you know, once a week and told them to sell more. And that was kind of the advice, you know, I have a team member now that was in an agency like that. And she, she got no training. One of those situations, they hand you a phone book, say, call some people or whatever. And the way that she was trained to sell was drop the agency owner's name. That was, that was, that was how you were supposed to sell. And so, so like when she came here, you know, we, we, we actually did teach her how to sell that when she didn't anyway,

but it's just funny. Those agencies are out there. And it's kind of like what David Crother says. I know you dropped his name earlier. He has one of my favorite quotes. The insurance industry is full of C players. Yeah. Right. And I think that is like such a hopeful thing for us, because like for me, I'm like, all right, that's good news. That means that most of my competition is not doing the things that we're doing, which is going to give us an edge. What's up, guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show. And in exchange for that, I need your help.

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Dude, there are D and F players in any other industry. There are C players in this industry. So if you can even be a B in insurance, which is like a players in any other industry. They're C players in this industry. So if you can even be a B in insurance, which is like a C in any other industry, you're killing the game. And that's like the story of my career. Dude, when I started doing all the marketing stuff and all the Facebook marketing

and all the digital shit that I was doing back at the Murray Group, people be like, where do you get these ideas from? And I'm like, I literally look at like one industry over. I just look at what they were doing 10 years ago. And I do that in here. And then people are like, this is revolutionary. And I'm like, I'm literally just stealing from other places. This is not original thought. I'm just taking these ideas and using them. And you said there are agencies out there like that. Bro, That's the norm. There are 37,000 independent insurance agencies. The problem that, you know, you know, you see on Twitter,

you see on Facebook, Oh, you know, there's only the same guests on these podcasts, you know, whatever, which, which is true. It's because there's nobody doing cool shit. There's only a couple hundred people doing really cool shit. It's not like there's 10,000 people innovating this industry. There are probably three to 500 total agencies in our industry that are doing innovative forward-leaning stuff. And we basically know them all, right?

And it's why you see the same people at conferences, why you see the same speakers on podcasts. It's because, you know, I realized that you're a guy like me who's thinking forward. Even if you do a little different, we connect. And then you introduce me and then all of a sudden we just run out of people. Like, it's not like this is infinite. It wasn't intentional. It'd be like, Hey, we don't. Yeah, no, I, I, I totally, totally get, you know, it's funny. Like going back, I'm a, I'm a podcast junkie just just another fun fact

about me so my wife and i have a farm and uh we have almost uh we have right at 12 acres right um on this farm that we actually like finish cut mow so dude i mow grass a lot and so podcasts just constantly so i i and for years and years and years, and I'll tell you the, the first podcast and going back to you kind of referenced it a second ago. I remember the first podcast I ever remember listening to of yours. And I don't know what year this was, but you were like articulating a strategy that had helped you at, I guess the, you say the Murray group, is that what it was? Where you had just started blogging about questions that people asked you. Do you remember that? And then you had one that New York state or somebody had changed the law and like all of a sudden it became like the number one hit or whatever. What is New York state short-term disability? Yeah, there you go. And so, and then boom, now you're in, right. And there's just agencies that like, don't understand, especially now, like, you know, with chat GPT and all these things, like you don't

even have to be good at writing. Like, like there's ways for you to create content like that at scale without having to have a full-time, you know, marketing team on, in your agency. And I just feel like that's such an opportunity for people. But going back, I mean, I don't know how many years ago that was, but it feels like- Probably 2013, 2014. Yeah, I'm going to tell you something crazy. Not crazy.

It'll sound crazy to some people listening. Last night at 10 o'clock, I walked over to my desk. I poured myself two or three fingers of Japanese whiskey, which I know is blasphemous, but I kind of love it. It's the Chinese whiskey that's the problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stay away from the Chinese whiskey. But I then turned on ChatGPT and in 45 minutes created five new blog posts for roguerist.com while i drank my whiskey and by 11 o'clock i was in bed and had five new blog posts ready to go one of which was published today you know it's it's it's crazy too because people don't understand that like

i think people get for blogging specifically like if we're and you're obviously you've done this way longer than I have on the blogging stuff you know our agency we've tinkered with it for years but like it's never been like hey I'm gonna consistently do this until maybe a couple years ago that we started doing it but it's amazing where is if you're just answering the question right kind of like like what you said this was a question that somebody asked, here is our response in blog format, how you never know, like what's going to hit, right? So like you were like, you were talking, you know, you had one that hit, you know, for there. And like our agency has one that all of a sudden, one day, I started getting all these people calling the agency about tractor insurance. I was like, what? But turns out we became like the

number three hit on Google for how do I insure my tractor? Because we had a blog post about it. And it's just amazing how that doesn't take all that much time, especially with chat GPD. Or even before that, you have Jasper and there's all kinds of like AI assisted writing programs out there. How you can take that and just, it doesn't take you no time. And that's like a salesperson that's going to work for you forever. As long as you have your site. So I bought, because I steal, I think people think I'm lying. I steal everything. And honestly, people like, I'll be doing, dude, I'll be doing a keynote. And someone will like chuckle when I tell them that I steal everything. And, and honestly, people like I'll be doing, dude, I'll be doing a keynote

and someone will like chuckle when I tell them that I steal everything. I'm like, no, I guys, you're, you're missing the point. The point is not to be some original. I'm not Pablo Picasso. I'm not Walt Whitman. I want people to buy insurance from rogue risk. That's what I want. I don't need like like if a computer helps me create educational content that is well done and accurate and drives people to our site i'm willing to do that so i bought this thing um it was it was chat gbt4 prompt so i paid the 20 bucks for the chat gbt4 which chat gbt4 is bananas it's absolutely i have that one as well it is bananas yes absolutely bananas so there's all these like resources you can pay like 35 i think it paid 50 bucks for one 30 for because again i'm testing them and they're just prompts they're literally just prompts that

you can use in chat gbt so they're like they're like mad lib prompts so one will be, one is like, well, I'll give you an example. I just published an article today or yesterday that was, hold on, let me just look this up. I published an article yesterday. The entire article, every word, except for the formatting and the linking was written by ChatGBT.

It's 1,500 words. The title, ChatGBT wrote this title, Navigating the World of Insurance for Entrepreneurs, Five Unique Perspectives. It's a great article. I created the graphic using Jasper AI art. I put the title in and said, create the perfect image to go with this title. And Jasper AI created a piece of art that came out that I use as the, as the thing it's got this blog post pumped out. And it came off of a simple prompt that, that I learned from this thing, which is

insert. And their example was productivity for entrepreneurs. So I put topic insurance for entrepreneurs space. And then underneath the prompt that, that, and this is what this tool gives you for the above topic, right? Multiple perspectives from a group with different viewpoints for each perspective, right? In their own voice, using the phrases and peers and their peers would use, right? So you're giving chat GPT-4 this prompt and it can write the whole post. You're just watching. And I'm reading it going, that's good. Sometimes it can be a little dry, but you can actually ask it to use a casual voice or use a business casual voice or use a playful voice. And it will literally can inject like words, change the perspective.

It's crazy. I'm going to tell you a really crazy trick with chat GPT. And you know, the, one of the like negatives, like the downfalls that people would say is that sometimes, or Google would say that sometimes AI content doesn't rank as well as human written content. Like there's like that argument out there about like, you know, and that's going to be as chat GPT becomes even more and more popular, it's going to become a thing. Um, I, so I decided to test that. And I was like, I would take the content and run it through, you know, an AI checker.

And of course it comes back, Hey, this is, you know, 80% AI written or a hundred percent AI written or whatever percent ai written or whatever but at the same time i had it on the google doc like the the thing and so i was like down at the bottom i use grammar right to like correct my punctuation and stuff because i'm from tennessee dude we don't we don't english is not our thing right um and so it had like 25 suggestions on on the article that it wrote so i went through and changed all the things that it asked asked me to change ran it back through the ai ai detector and it came back 100 human generated yeah i didn't i didn't do it all i did was do the corrections that grammarly wanted me

to make it didn't change the article the article was still yeah just cleans it up um but it's just stuff like that but the that's wild there's no so anyway fun that's a fun little tip but the uh the the ability for us to generate content at scale has never been easier um and so like agents just have to do it man and even it doesn't have to be like blog posts i mean it could be a facebook post it'd be a linkedin well you can write long form content on linkedin linked LinkedIn loves that stuff. Dude, I did. I did the other day. I asked using these prompts, first of all, again, because I'm not original or creative, I just steal. So I'm working through all these prompts.

And one of them was write a poem about insurance. So I post this poem. I've done something similar to that one before. I post this poem on a a thing i gotta find it uh so i did now i got yelled at by um not yelled at but like my team was like why are you telling people because i wrote in the comments that the poem was from was from uh chad gbt let me read you this fucking poem this poem is unbelievable and we didn't know we were going to get literature like on this on this call today i'm really excited but here's the thing 4 000 impressions eight comments three reposts and 29 likes on a on a it took me 30 seconds i literally put write a poem about insurance it wrote this poem i copied the poem i put it in linkedin and and hit publish 4 000 impressions i mean I mean, you're literally just, this is like sex

to the LinkedIn algorithm. I mean, that's what it is. Like, sorry. And it's going to be there forever because LinkedIn lets it, lets it run for a long time. Yes. So, okay. So guys, this poem, well, I would love if you attribute this poem to me, but it was not written by me in the realm of uncertainty. Yeah. See, that's my team was like, no one will know the difference. I was like, unless someone asked me to write poetry on the spot and they realize I don't know what I'm doing. While you're on stage somewhere, hey, we need you to write a haiku right now about this event. What's a haiku? No.

So, okay. In the realm of uncertainty and chance, we seek protection, a safety dance, a guardian in the shadows cast, insurance stands steadfast, holding fast. A knight of policy, a shield of care, defending us from loss and despair, it binds our lives with a solemn vow, in the face of risk, we need not bow. From home to hearth, from life to health, a keeper of our precious wealth, insurance weaves a safety net net a guardian to guard against life's threat through storm and fire though tempest rage the written word on a parchment page a policy of hope a binding deal to mend our hearts to help us heal in sickness and in times of strife a guardian angel in our life insurance leads a helping hand to lift us up to help us stand the premium paid a price so small for peace of mind

a priceless call for in this world of chaos and creed insurance stands by a friend indeed so let us raise our voice in praise to celebrate the shield that stays a tribute to the force that mends insurance our protector our lifelong friend crushed that. That was so fucking good. That was good. Like that, sometimes it'll spit out stuff that's wild. But you know, the poetry thing is interesting. You can do, like, I've done this a couple of times. So I don't even know if you know this,

but one of the businesses that I'm also involved with, something called the Insurance Content Project. Basically, we make scaled up content for insurance agents to put out. Just it's mostly memes, right? Like just, you know, whatever. But that's relevant. But one of the posts in there, we were playing around with ChatGBT and I was like, it was like Edgar Allan Poe's birthday or something. And I was like, I wonder what an insurance poem written by Edgar Allen Poe would sound like. So like literally we went in, chat GBT, write a poem about insurance, but do it from the perspective of Edgar Allen Poe and to the cadence of his poem, The Raven.

The same kind of once upon a midnight, you know, like it did the whole thing. And so it's so wild, you know, what the capabilities are. And I don't know if you have OpenAI's API, but once you have their API access, if you ever ask for it, then you can do some really cool stuff. So like what I have right now in my team, my team uses Slack.

Do you guys use anything like that? Yeah, we use Slack, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So we have a Slack channel that we literally just call it blog posts, right? And anytime my team get to ask a question, this is stealing from your idea that you were talking about. Anytime my team gets asked a question, they go in and they plug it into this channel and they just ask the question, you know, is my red car more expensive to insure than my pink car? Whatever the question. And it writes a blog post for them immediately. And we're using ChatGPT's API. So literally, it posts in Slack. That triggers it, goes out, generates, sends it back.

And man, the amount of content in my marketing person is just like, I don't even know what to do with all this. Like we have more than we'd ever, ever need. And so it's worked really well. And that way, I'm not having to be like, oh, what do we post about today? It's storytelling. What question did somebody ask me yesterday? And there you go. Dude, it's worked really well and that way i'm not having to be like oh what do we post about today it's storytelling what question did somebody ask me yesterday and there you go dude it's crazy i asked um i asked it the other day what are 10 unconventional ways an insurance agency can grow your youtube channel right and some of them were kind of like whatever but then a couple of them were like find uh this type of channel and and it was like something i hadn't thought of and there was like two or three ideas that were like completely

off the wall not not off the wall but like things that i hadn't thought about that i now was like oh shit like we could do that like we could start you know i mean we our youtube channel is probably our number one traffic source i mean we do we do, we did 165,000 views last, last 365 days. So like starting to do cross promotions, we're really getting into shorts. Like give me seven. I said, give me, I love using odd numbers. Give me 17 unconventional. And I like unconventional because it gets it thinking outside of like stuff that it's just pulling from other places. Right. And like, but this is when you start to learn how the prompts work and how the language like stuff works.

It is, it is really wild. And then I was watching, I've been testing, I know it's probably going to end up getting banned maybe or whatever, just, but I've been testing TikTok, you know, just to, you know, I'm, I just get interested. What? I've seen you on there. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So I'm just testing different stuff and I certainly don't have it figured out or whatever, but I'm just testing different things. And I was like, give me 17 different, 17, unconventional, you know, TikTok video ideas for an insurance agency. And then all of a sudden you get bing, bing, do this, go here, do, you know, do this thing. So it's like, if you, I mean, this is the kind of things that like, even if you don't want it to actually create for you as a, as an inspirational prompt or as an idea. Brainstorming that whole thought process. Yeah, absolutely.

Or like an outline generator. It can, it can, I mean, dude, if you wanted to get super gnarly, I mean, you could have it creating fake reviews for you. You could have it doing all kinds of crazy shit. Did you, did you see, did you see my post about using it with Google reviews? I don't know if you saw that on Twitter. No, no, I didn't know. So, so, so somebody, somebody posted a Google review. One thing I'm terrible about our agency does a pretty good job of getting Google reviews, you know, we'll get four or five a week, you know, whatever. It's fine. Um, I was, I'm terrible at replying to them. Right. And I always, I want to reply, but I forget. And

then, then it gets to the point where I've got like 25 of them in Harvard. I'm like, I don't want to reply to all of these. Like, you know, whatever. And so what we did was we set up a zap to where when we get a new Google review, it takes that Google review, sends it as a prompt to chat GBT. And it just says, write a response in a business casual voice, responding to a positive review of my insurance agency that said this. And then we literally just have it put, and it'll generate a very good response. And anybody at Hudson Poor Insurance, just go look. You can see them out there.

And it waits 10 minutes and responds back to the person. And it's amazing how authentic. It pulls stuff from what they said and will include it very very cool but like yeah there's you can get it really granular with it like there's a lot of different things and on so i was watching tiktok the other day and i saw this guy pop up um who's talking about agent gpt which now there's all these like that one's that one is super wild i'm familiar with that one too so i am starting to play around with agent gpt which i mean this is when you think about like you like skynet starts to enter your mind because now like you're like literally telling this thing to go out into other systems do tasks run multi-variant tasks off of different responses

different you know whatever and like layering these functions and, you know, these agents that they on top of each other. And you're like, Holy shit. I mean, you could get to, you could rapidly see, like I could see a day where you, you know, using these tools say that, what the average CSR and personal lines can handle what two and a half, 3 million in premium a piece. Is that fair ish? Right. Could you get that to 5 million? Could you get it to 10 million, one CSR for 10 million in premium? I mean, this is, this is, you know, this is what I see these things getting to when a request comes in, and it can just hit a series of AIs, AI agents that pass it through all these filters and come back with this very human experience. And really, you just have a CSR sitting there for anything that falls out of those processes,

anything that's so outside the box that it can't be automated or requires creativity or problem solving in a level that the AI... And otherwise, the CSR is almost more of a babysitter than necessarily taking those frontline calls or whatever, because these systems are so freaking good. They're it's crazy. I mean, it's taking that taking that a step further. I've been tinkering with this. So one of the like the downfalls to like chat GPT at the current moment is that like it's hard to give it information at scale. Right. Like to give it let's say a document, for instance, like it's really the way you have to piece it up is really, really weird, but they're working on to where like

you can feed it a document. Well, I've been playing with that on, so I do chatbots too. So with that, with our chatbots, where let's say I've got a progressive homeowner's policy. I can upload that into Chad GBT piece by piece. We've been tinkering with it, but once you have the whole doc, you'd be able to upload the whole thing. And you can literally ask it coverage questions against the policy. Yeah.

And that's when it starts getting, and so far what I've seen is it's scary accurate because it not only answers the question, yeah, it's covered, no, it's not covered, whatever, but it also explains where in the policy, why it is or isn't covered. And that to me is like, once you get to there, I mean, you can do the same thing with like underwriting guidelines, you know, internally within your agency. Like, hey, we'll progressive write a mobile home in the state of Tennessee. No, here's the, you know, like you can start building out almost like a query library, you know, for your team. Dude, so, you know, obviously we both think in terms of content and stuff. So, you know, those stupid green screen videos that like Gary Vaynerchuk and stuff does.

Yeah. I've been actually, we're game planning. I want to do the green screen videos and put them up as reels and stuff on the different platforms, but with policy forms behind me. And I was literally thinking last night, because one of the things that I've been doing is taking our old blog posts, copy and pasting them into ChatGPT and then asking, hey, can you run an SEO analysis and give me the top seven suggestions for ways to improve the SEO of this blog post. Right. And it will literally go, your headline doesn't match

your meta description and dah, dah, dah, dah. And it's a little short and you don't have any, and it will literally do all that. It's, it's fucking nuts. Right. So then I was like, why couldn't we start breaking down? So, so I, I have paced, I haven't done full policies, but I've taken portions, like sections of policies and copying pasted them in and asked the questions. And you're right. Like I'll tell you right now, chat GPT is better at reading policy forms than 99% of the people who are listening to this podcast. And that's only going to get better. And that's the part that's scary.

Like this is like, this is like version four you know um so yeah that's it's so cool but it's one of those things that like it's not a you know i've seen it already in the groups i don't know if you've seen this really oh they're trying to replace us agents i feel like everything every time something new comes out like everybody goes there with it. You know, the internet people buying insurance, they're trying to replace it. I don't go there. I see that it replaces bad agents, people that aren't, you know, there are situations that do that. But, you know, this technology is in its infancy. Like now is the time to lean into it and be on the cutting edge of it instead of trying to catch up later. See, that's the beauty of our industry is that there's so many lethargic people who are making

just enough money that they're never going to actually do any of the shit that we're talking about here. So like, I, you know, people, people probably say the same thing to you, right? Like, when I share that 10pm, I came to my desk at 10pm on a whatever it was Tuesday last night, pour myself a glass. And what I did was just create blog posts out of chat GPT people like, ah, that's crazy. I'm like, I don't have time. I'll be like, I don't have time. And like, you have time. And in these tools make it so much easier. So instead of one blog post a week, I want to get to where I'm putting going back to putting 2345. Why not put five blog posts out a week? Why not have ChatGPT take one of those blog posts

and turn it into six tweets and 17 LinkedIn updates and then use agent.gpt to take those updates, chop them up and post them, you know, post them out on your different LinkedIn, your different channels. And like, this is, you know, I think about it, people like you, hopefully like us and probably some

of the others that we know and could name it. I've no longer try, I've stopped trying to convince people. And it's just, but there's just this gap that is just widening and widening and widening. And you're getting so far out ahead of people. And like, it's, it's sometimes it's hard to relate. You know, I used to feel like I could relate a decade ago. But now, like when I'm up on stage or something, people are like, oh, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to write about. I'm like, you are talking to the wrong guy. There are, you know what I mean?

Like, at this point in my career, I'm past explaining how to do that. Like, there are other people that'll pay that you can pay 99 bucks a month or whatever. They'll tell you how to do that. I'm past that point in my career. people that'll pay you can pay 99 bucks a month or whatever they'll tell you how to do that i'm past that point in my career if you don't know that this is the shit you should be doing right like you i don't know what i can't help you yeah they uh they it just comes down to some people just don't have the drive you know uh they're you know i talk with my team all the time you know we have this phrase um are you busy or are you inefficient? Right? And that's kind

of what I always ask them. And you know, because the answer is always I'm too busy, right? No matter what it is, I'm too busy. And then I'm looking and I'm like, yeah, but every time I post something on Twitter, you you are tweeting back at me these long, long rants, like, how long is that? Like, you know, how much of your time are you sucking there doing something that's unproductive, right? And so like figuring out like, all right, these tools are that to me is just such an opportunity. Um, because in people listening to this, I think would agree that like your competitors aren't going to do it. There's not too busy and I'm throwing air quotes for people listening. Yeah. Yeah. They're too busy. So I think that, you know, if anyone takes anything away from, from this conversation, which we need to have another one, cause I feel like we just scratched the surface of all the

things that we're doing. Um, there's just so much opportunity to get ahead, and you don't have to do all the things. Pick a thing, right? If you're into commercial, pick LinkedIn. If you're into personal, figure out Instagram Reels, right? And just create and do all the different things and try a bunch of stuff. But there are tools out there, like these GPT, these AI tools. There's one I found the other day that I was looking at that could create, you know, off of, you know, about 10 minutes worth of work. You could get 500 different ad, ad variations, ad creatives that are all AI generated based on your industry and your market.

And, you know, you can put your client list in there and it looks at the clients and comes up with what they like. And there's ones for video. There's ones for video. There's ones for putting captions on video. I mean, all these tools are out there and they're like five bucks a month. I mean, for $25 a month in tool spend, you could have an entire like professional suite of tools to make anything that you could potentially want to make. And it's right at your fingertips. Have you played? I know we've probably got to go here,

but have you played with the video content generating like the AI where it's generating video as well? I have not. I've looked at a bunch of them. It's wild. It's wild. It's not there yet. And that's what I always, I'm like, it's, it's close. It's not quite there yet, but like I've tinkered with this to where you have somebody post a blog post, right? Like I was talking about earlier, they posted a question in our channel. It not only generated the blog post, but it takes the script of what it said, turns it into an AI video with an AI avatar reading the video, right?

Reading the script, and then you can literally send it out wherever you want it to, all automated. And while the AI is not there yet, like you you can there's something with their teeth i don't know what their teeth look weird but uh once they once they get that nailed down man like that becomes really crazy because you can even create turn yourself into the avatar yeah i was looking at an app that i haven't i haven't dug into it yet just because i can tell it's a rabbit hole and i just haven't let it go there go there. But basically what you do is you record a video once and then they have you read this script and then they get your voice and then all you do, so then you have a video and it might be like, hey CJ, Ryan Hanley here. Man, so happy that you joined Rogris. We may not have talked,

you probably talked to one of my team members, but as a CEO, I just want to let you know that I'm committed to making sure, you know, you do this whole on spiel, 45 seconds, whatever it is. And then for the next person was like, even through like a Zapier link, you know, it could be Steve.

And now I'm saying Steve and I'm saying your business name. So you can pick like multiple merge tags where it's taking a name. I think up to three different variables. I've seen that. It's called the Be Human, I think. I'm sure there's multiple. Yeah, there's another one too.

And I'm like looking at it going, oh my God, you could literally at scale send a personalized video out to every person and no one would freaking know the difference it's wild the ai video stuff i feel like is not quite there yet but it's so close that like give it just a little bit more time and it's gonna be there so if i you know again i love what i'm doing i'm not trying to act like I wasn't, but if I were starting today and could get like, let's say I could start with like, probably don't need more than like a hundred grand because you doing this AI shit, you need some development costs. I would love to piece

together a one person AI based agency that just go as far as you can possibly go just using AI tools. Like that's it. Like just one person, AI tools, you could use carrier sales centers to place the business. You know, you could, you could put it in, you could have everything feel auto returned, auto responded. I mean, you could basically make it feel like you had a 10, 15 person agency or bigger. If you know, with all, I honestly believe with all the, if you pieced all these ai tools together and knew how to do it i mean you couldn't do it out of one of our current agency management systems because the industry is purposely holding us back in an effort to reap max benefit from us because they're all you know what no they could never do that what do you mean they're such thoughtful technologists um but like that to me is such an intriguing thing like

chat gpt4 hooked into an agent gpt with a video and audio and uh and an auto poster and then you know you would have just a simple routing system through through agent gpt to get the leads to either say the traveler sales center or the hanover sales center wherever you thought it was appropriate and then you just freaking put them in the top you you know, using auto-generated ads and API or AI driven Google ad campaigns and Facebook ad campaigns that just plow people into a form that route them, that strategically send them right to these carrier sales centers. And you literally would not have to hire a single person and you're paying. I mean, you know, if you can figure out carrier sales center business on a commercial line

side, that's the Holy grail because they take almost nothing for what you get back. So basically what he's saying is if there's anybody listening out there, that's got a hundred grand that wants to give it to me and Ryan, we were going to, yes. I honestly believe that, that, that, that will be the look and feel of the agent of the future. And I know all the peers out there like, oh, it's about the relationship.

Yes. Except there is an enormous part of the population that doesn't want that relationship. That's that's where people miss is they think everyone wants to buy like they like to buy. And the trick is to understand that there's different types of buyers and you have to be able to approach your agency to appeal to all those different types of buying styles. And the more of them that you can hit effectively, the bigger you're going to grow. And I want to be respectful of your time, but just to give you an example of this. So I go see a counselor every other week. I want to see my counselor in person, my financial advisor. If I never saw that human ever, and he's a good guy. I like him. He does a good job for me. I've actually, he does a pretty good job. I never want to see him in person. Why

do I ever need to see him in person? So like there's a scenario where one service provider, I really want to, you know, I wouldn't want to do a zoom call with my counselor. It just wouldn't be the same to me. I like breathing the same air as that person, right? But my financial advisor, I can do a phone call or a zoom call or whatever. I never need or a text. I don't need to see that person in person ever. So like, I think what we forget, um, because we want our, we want to be our ego as independent agents, because this is the largest ego driven.

I mean, ego run to your point, hey, just drop my name. That's our sales strategy, right? Like, this is the biggest ego driven industry that exists. You know, I think what we forget is that, is that I may love a local in person experience for one service, and then just my buying behavior, my personality, whatever for another service, I don't want that. And we just assume that if you're local or locally oriented, you want to do local business with every single service provider that you have. And it's like, that's just not the way humans operate. And I think, I think it's even different between lines, right?

Like home and auto, I might not ever want to talk to somebody, but if I want to talk about life insurance, I'm starting to get my family. Like I want to sit, you know, and it can and it can it can change you know per line of business so you're absolutely right dude we and here's the other thing too for all those going you need to see people in person and commercial we are we just wrote a 650 000 commercial lines account that came in online that we never saw in person you want want to know how? We just had the carrier send their inspection and a loss adjuster out first to do the in-person review. So it still got seen. We didn't have to see them.

We've never met the person in person. We probably will never meet this person in person. Yet that's a fairly large account that I think everyone listening would be like, quote unquote, impressed by, right? So it's like- They would love to write that. Yeah, absolutely.

The days of you having to breathe the same air as the people you do business with are over. It doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't. It just means that if you are operating under the assumption that your clients or that your type of clients don't want that or only want the in-person, I think you're missing the mark. 100%. Yeah.

Dude, this has been awesome. Have to come back because I feel like we scratched the surface. We didn't even get into all the other things that you do. We just, but this is great. That's cool, man. Absolutely. Had fun. Awesome. And appreciate you. Where can people just connect more with you? Obviously, great Twitter follow. I highly recommend all the Twitter users follow CJ. Where else though? So Twitter and Facebook are my platforms. Gotcha. I'm the only CJ Hudson who are on Facebook until the Russian spy bot to get me. So if you just search me, you'll find me. Awesome. Dude, such a pleasure. I wish you nothing but the best and I hope we can connect again soon. All right, bro. See you later. Have

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