--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hello and welcome back to the Ryan Hanley show. If this is your first time listening to the show, then welcome, welcome. We'd love to have you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: My friends, the insurance industry has been an enormous part of my life for the last decade and a half. Basically, I've learned everything that I am as a professional working through the insurance industry. The good, the bad, the ups, the downs, the successes, the failures—everything has been carved out of my work in the insurance industry. I truly do not believe that my, quote unquote, career began until I joined my father-in-law's independent insurance agency here in upstate New York, the Murray Group.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That's why in this podcast, I am going to carve out a series of episodes which will focus specifically on the insurance industry and matters related to the insurance industry, which is what today's episode is. Anyone who's listening or subscribed who's just not particularly interested in insurance industry related matters, I'm going to title the episodes capital I-N-S and the number of the episodes so that you know that's an insurance related episode. Everything that's not insurance will be RHS, so Ryan Hanley Show, or insurance, just makes sense. That gives you an idea of what type of episode it is.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: There is no doubt that I have a deep love and just enjoyment for the people of the insurance industry. Being part of their lives and helping them deliver their product, do their job in a more productive, fruitful, and meaningful way is something that I enjoy and I want to continue to do that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Today's episode, I recorded it via a live broadcast on YouTube. If you want to watch the live broadcast, go to youtube.com forward slash Ryan M as in Mary Hanley, Ryan M Hanley on YouTube. Find my YouTube channel. You can watch the show. But I recorded it live and the title is "Nine Things I Learned After Nine Months Away from the Insurance Industry."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Those nine months were spent as the Chief Executive Officer, the CEO of a fitness enterprise called Metabolic. After nine months, it was time for me to move on. I have finally settled into what I believe will be my future, which is Hanley Media—a consulting and strategy firm offering leadership and fractional CMO work, helping organizations really get to that next level from a strategic standpoint. In addition, I'm going to be doing a lot more speaking and workshops around leadership topics and marketing and sales topics in particular. If you're interested in those services, just ryan at ryanhanley.com. Happy to talk through what you need and see if my work can be useful to your team or your organization.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's time for me to control my own destiny and I'm very happy to be on this path. I feel energized. You've probably noticed that by the volume of content I've been putting out. I have so many ideas, beliefs, and processes that I think are going to help businesses navigate these next years that are coming. It very much feels like there's a downturn in our economy coming. There's a shift in the way people want to engage with their employer. Customers are buying differently and thinking through that process in a different way. There are a lot of very systemic and intrinsic changes happening to the way business gets done. To a certain extent, I'd like to believe that I've been able to tap into a few of those in the various organizations that I've been a part of and consulted with, and I want to share more of that with you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If any of that sounds interesting, I hope you'll subscribe to this show. I hope you'll subscribe to my YouTube channel. If you think that the work that I do could help your organization, reach out to ryan at ryanhanley.com and I'm happy to start talking through that with you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Without further ado, let's get on to today's episode. This is our first episode in our insurance series titled "Nine Things I Learned After Nine Months Away from the Insurance Industry."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Welcome to this live stream. I'm not going to go into too much detail about why I'm back in the insurance industry. I'll touch on that very briefly. Then I really want to get into these topics because there are things that I've been noodling on for quite a while. I was probably in the insurance industry for 15 years—from being an agent to working for Trusted Choice and Bold Penguin. So both as a boots on the ground agent and doing a lot of speaking and consulting, and then ultimately being a service provider to the industry for a couple different companies. I was in it every single day, just like you guys.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: When I stepped away and joined Metabolic for the nine months that I was there, it was very odd. I was still connected through my wife, through everyone in the 5 a.m. club, and all my friends and colleagues that I had made and still kept in contact with. But I wasn't doing insurance every day. It gave me a different perspective. I also was supremely and 100% focused on solving the problems of a growing fitness enterprise and taking a lot of what I had learned during my time in the insurance industry and seeing if it applied. That mix of experiences and situation led me to a list of topics that I think are relevant and potentially interesting for you guys. They're things that I'm going to be talking a lot more about in the future because there are places where I see tremendous opportunity for the insurance industry in general.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I put a list of nine topics out. If you saw the email that came out this morning, if you're on my email list, you saw the nine topics. I'm going to work through as many of them as I can. We may bounce around a little, but I have a whole series of notes that I took in preparation for this and things that I want to make sure I say. Some of them will go through a lot quicker than others. I'll just kind of blow through the list real quick so you can get an idea of what we're actually going to talk about. Then we'll start to get right into the first topic.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Last time I'll say this: if you have any questions, thoughts, things you want me to dive deeper on, leave them in the chat. I'll be watching that the whole time. There's a slight delay, so if I don't catch it right away, I will, and we'll go back and I'll make sure that I answer those questions or address any thoughts that you have.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The nine topics, nine things that I learned or observations that I made while being away for nine months are as follows.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Number one: Everything is a commodity except for creative. We're going to talk about what exactly that means. If being away from the insurance industry taught me anything, it's the value of creative—not just the quantity or quality, but the mashup of the two and what industrial creative actually means and how that works in a business. I think almost no one is doing it in the insurance space right now. It's a tremendous opportunity.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Number two: We must solve the principal agent dilemma that we continue to deal with every day. This has been an issue for a very long time. I'm talking about the two sides of that: the agency owner producer dilemma and the agency carrier dilemma. We'll talk about those two aspects and how they're slightly different, but ultimately the same problem. It's a problem we have to solve.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Number three: We need to hire people, not the position. I think that's fairly self-explanatory, but we're going to dive into the details of what I mean there.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Number four: We rely way too heavily on our safety nets—renewal commissions, carriers, associations, these large enterprise, systemic pieces of our business, of our industry. I think particularly agencies are leaning way too hard on these safety nets and it's creating opportunity and gaps in our service ability and in our product delivery that just continue. I think it was a big part of the rise of the insurtech movement maybe three or four years ago. These gaps continue. I just don't see very many organizations that are closing them yet. We're still relying way too heavily on our safety net.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Number five: We need to allow producers to build a body of work. I'm going to dive into that one a little bit. I think there's a big, big opportunity in that idea.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Number six: We need to focus more on what our clients care about. Again, that one at face value makes a lot of sense, but I have some ideas for how that actually works.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Number seven: We're still not producing enough content in general. I've literally been saying this for more than a decade now. People still look at me like I'm crazy, yet every business that engages in full-time content production starts to excel and separate itself from the marketplace. I struggle with why we haven't grabbed onto this. I know the deep-seated reasons why we haven't, but it remains a tremendous opportunity and it has to be on every list.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Number eight: Insurance is incredibly insulated. I think that's a major problem. But ultimately, problems yield opportunities. In this case, those of us who start to expand our vision out past the insurance industry and bring ideas from other spaces back into the insurance industry, I think there's incredible opportunities there.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Number nine: My concern—and I brought this up a little bit before I had left in some of the conversations that I was having—is that we need to be careful not to chase efficiency at the expense of effectiveness. What I mean is, if we can over automate our business, we can over implement technology, we can go too far and lose the human touch that makes our business special. As I've watched, I haven't seen anyone pick up that message and I just want to reiterate that point. I still feel the same today. Automations are great. Technology is tremendous. It's an important part of every business. But there is a point where more technology doesn't yield more long-term return. We'll talk about that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Okay, so those are our nine. Let's see what we got here. Oh, we got a great crew. Yeah, go Bills. Love it. Five and one. Awesome. We got an awesome crew here. I'm just excited to have all of you here.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Let's dive into our very first topic. Everything is a commodity except creative.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think about the idea of commoditization quite a bit. Insurance—it's a word that's thrown around all the time. We're always talking about, are we a commodity? We're not a commodity. Why do people think we're a commodity? How do we not be a commodity? Well, if we are a commodity, how do we then differentiate ourselves? It's an enormous issue. It has a lot of moving parts, a lot of different vantage points, depending on where you are, how long you've been in the industry, what you're trying to achieve. This whole concept of commoditization comes up quite often.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That being said, that is not an idea isolated in the insurance industry. When I moved over to the fitness space, it's the exact same thing. A workout is a workout is a workout. So how do you get people excited about your workout versus someone else's workout when really a workout—yes, they have varying degrees of difficulty. Yes, they have varying degrees of performance that you can get out of them. But ultimately, if you work really hard and you match diet to exercise, you're going to be fit. So it really is just what fits your flavor.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If that's the case, then the only defining difference continues to be creative and how good you are at creating a feeling and experience, an emotional response, something that people want to share and be part of and build a community around. All of that comes from the creative. It comes from the images, the way you talk about it, the swag that you buy, how you introduce yourself, the way your office looks. This idea of building a community around your business. In businesses like a fitness studio, it might come slightly more naturally where people are collecting on a regular basis. But that doesn't mean that we can't do it in our space. It certainly doesn't mean that we can't be more creative with the way that we talk about our product and we talk about ourselves.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Some of the people that are actually on here live watching this right now do a tremendous job with this. But as a broad sweeping stroke, and I think particularly I'm speaking to any of the carrier professionals who are listening to this either live or in the future, our carrier branding, marketing, creative is just boring for the most part. It's at best kind of all American and at worst completely forgettable. If all we can really do is occasionally pull out that all American down home vibe, if that's really the best we can do from a creative standpoint, that means there is enormous opportunity for creative out there.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm not just talking about big budget. You don't need an enormous budget to do good creative work that draws people into your brand. I know some of the mutuals and stuff are trying this. I think we can go even further. Why not give our businesses a personality? Why not really allow people to sink their teeth into what we mean or into what we stand for? To me, it is unbelievable that in almost 2020 we still have this—we're still tossing vanilla boxes out into the world and wondering why people don't care. That hasn't changed. I know it's only been nine months. It's not like I've been gone for that long. But I think we need to be bolder and more poignant in our communication, more clear.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: When I say take a stance, I don't mean take a political stance. I mean stand for something, a value structure. Share that value structure. You can share it in funny, interesting, dynamic ways. Then test those messages. Test them, test them, test them, test them. See what works. This stuff is not hard to do today. It's not as expensive as it used to be if you're going to bring in an outside agency to do that work for you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I look at the space in general. I know it's just insurance. It's not beautiful, sweaty people lifting heavy weights. Guys in suits with briefcases isn't exactly the most interesting visual. That's not what it has to be. That's not exactly what I mean by creative. It just means there's so much that can be done. The bar for creativity in the insurance industry is so low right now that there's just tremendous opportunity. It still exists. I think we need to stop worrying about our product because the products are good for the most part. We've kind of figured that part out. Now it's who can draw more people into those products. I don't just mean digital. There's a lot more to it than just digital. Creativity in general—we can dial in on that and really push forward.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Okay. Number two. Number two is something that's been a problem in our industry—not a problem, it's been a point of friction for a very long time. We must solve the principal agent dilemma.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm going to read a couple quotes or definitions for you just so we're all on the same page. This is the dilemma that exists in circumstances where agents—and don't think of agents as just insurance agents, although the word actually is the same in this standpoint—are motivated to act in their own best interest, which is contrary to those of their principals.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: There are two principal agent dynamics that we deal with most often in our space. That is producers and agency owners, and agencies—in particular, independent agencies—and the carriers that they represent.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: In the first instance, I want to talk about the producer agency owner dilemma. I think that this one should be easier to fix. There has been a general stance among insurance professionals, particularly those of a more old school nature—again, that's not a negative depiction—the stance tends to be more traditional that producers should be lucky that they have a job, that they're in a profession which allows them to provide for their family. They need to just kind of take what they get and be happy and work hard and show up and be quiet. That is one way to play the game.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What we're starting to see is more people at the producer level are not willing to accept that offer. What happens is producers get very fidgety might be the right word. They start seeking out—I'm going to be an expert in this and I'm going to try this—and they go after digital and they become very scattered because they feel like they're being shoved into the path that the agency owner took, even if that isn't the same path that they want to take. I feel like that's where a lot of the friction is created.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Another part of it is handshake deals. I was just talking to a good friend the other day about this. A lesson I have learned the hard way multiple times now is that if it's not written in paper, if it's not in black and white ink how your relationship proceeds, then you do not have an agreement. Handshake deals do not exist. "Someday you'll take this over," or "Someday you'll be able to buy this agency," or "Don't worry, I'm always going to take care of you." Those type of statements—I think from agency owners, they feel like they're doing the right thing. "Hey, I'm letting them know I'm always going to be here." That is not enough. I think those days need to be gone.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: This conversation needs to realign to a clear, very discernible, very understandable set path that producers in particular can walk in order to get to a certain place in the agency, written out very early in their career. As soon as that agency owner determines that this producer could potentially be a long-term participant in this agency, there needs to be a clear path. If that path is you will never own this agency, then that needs to be spelled out too.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What happens is you get into an agency and you start to feel like, "Geez, I'm grinding and 50%, 70% of the business that I create is being taken from me." As an agency owner, you're going, "Well, you should be happy with that. Look at all these services I provide." That doesn't matter. There's a huge disconnect there. When we understand what that path is, then we can make a clear decision and commit to it. That would help solve a lot of the friction between agency owners and principals. We simply get rid of handshake deals. We create clear, concise contracts that outline the path for producers getting to whatever level is possible for them to get to. If their performance never allows them to achieve that level, well, then that's on them and that's perfectly fine.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: There's so much of "I'll take care of you. Don't worry. You always have a place here." I will tell you from firsthand experience, nobody who is talented and driven wants to hear that. We just don't. Those things are meaningless. There needs to be a clear path. Getting rid of these handshake deals is a big part of it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The next part of the principal agent dilemma is carriers and agencies. This one is much harder to solve from my perspective. Much, much, much harder to solve.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I want to read another definition from Wikipedia. It's where I found the best one. The problem of the principal agent dilemma: "The problem arises where the two parties have different interests and asymmetrical information, the agent having more information, such that the principal cannot directly ensure that the agent is always acting in the principal's best interest. Particularly when activities that are useful to the principal are costly to the agent and where elements of what the agent does are costly for the principal to observe."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Does that not define almost to a T any disagreement that an agency and a carrier has? The agent has more information at a boots on the ground level than a carrier does. But the carrier controls pricing, controls product. The agent has to maneuver and manipulate at their level to make sure that their business is taken care of, which is not always in the best interest of the carrier who is thinking product and pricing at a much more macro level.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The carrier has more data at a macro level, but the producer—or if the producer is also the agency owner or there are multiple—they have much more data at a micro level. Oftentimes this data does not necessarily work together. Sometimes it does. Sometimes you find a great relationship, great product, and everyone's pointing the same direction. That is not always the case. Often when there's friction, it's because of this conflict of interest where the agent or the agency is operating on micro data in a smaller ecosystem and is trying to operate a profitable business and take care of their staff and other clients, and a carrier operating at a macro level over a much broader spread geographically and line of business wise. It is very easy to see why those two entities start to diverge in terms of working in each other's interest.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I don't know that I necessarily have a clear answer for this. I think that one answer from an agency level is to be more discerning in the carrier appointments that you have. I don't think anyone needs 30 carrier appointments unless you're some super regional or national agency, then obviously that's different. That's also assuming that you're coming from a diverse spectrum of clients and not just working in a niche scenario. But if you're a standard, regional independent agency, you don't need 30 carriers. You need a solid MGA and five to seven carriers. I think that will help you better align with the carriers that you do business with—not having these odd carriers that you just occasionally throw business at. They're distracting at best and a pain in the ass at worst.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think being very clear with—I think what Seth Zaremba and Neon are doing are one way to fix this principal agent dilemma. We'll see what Sid and Seth and that whole team is able to do. I have faith that if anyone can do it, it's them. I'm obviously a strong supporter and will continue to be. But they have to do the work just like anybody else. I would encourage anyone that's interested in them to reach out and learn more about their organization.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: This problem from the carrier standpoint, that's the harder nut to crack. One, in general, carriers are much more bureaucratic. You have people who this is a job, they show up. Taking chances is not in their best interest in terms of job security. Inside of particularly mutual companies, in some cases—say Cincinnati or Westfield or a Central or an Acuity—you start to see players in those organizations because they're of a particular size that have weight that are also willing to take a chance. You see some really good things coming out of them. Those are just four examples. That's not all of them.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But in general, this is a major, major issue that we have to keep thinking about. When a carrier comes to you with an issue, understand that their interest is different than yours. We just have to keep working on that. Like I said, I don't know that I have a clear answer, but I do think that it continues to be a problem and something that we have to continue to work on as an industry.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right. Let's keep moving on. A couple of these will be a little quicker.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If I've learned anything in business at all over the last six years as it pertains to hiring, it's hire people, not positions. I still read a lot of articles about the talent gap and issues with hiring. Guys, we don't need more insurance people in insurance. Insurance people are going to find insurance and find their place. What we need are talented, enthusiastic troublemakers who are willing to come in and question the way things are done so that we can adjust and move forward as the world, as society, as the ecosystems that we operate in change.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Dani Kimball was a dance instructor. Now she's one of the most dynamic agency marketers in the entire industry. You wouldn't say the dance instructor would be a great fit as a chief marketing officer for an agency. But it works really well because she's coming at it from a completely different vantage point. Obviously, she's talented and enthusiastic and all that. These are the type of people that we need to find, not more insurance people. Insurance people are great. Don't get me wrong. We have plenty of those. We need more good ones for sure. But I think where the opportunity lies is finding people who do not have any persuasion towards insurance, but are just interested in being part of something and have that enthusiasm and maybe just a little bit of a troublemaker in them because that's where the magic happens.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hire people, not positions. You don't need a producer. You need someone who's really interested in getting to know people and solving problems and is motivated. Then you can teach them to sell and you can teach them insurance. The issue with this particular idea for hiring is it puts more responsibility on leaders and managers to be mentors. I get that many leaders and managers don't want to be mentors. That's where the problem comes from. You find someone who's enthusiastic and engaging and talented and a little bit of a troublemaker. Then no one wants to mentor that person. So they become a nuisance and then they get jaded and pushed around or pushed out completely. That's not what we want to see.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We want to see individuals be brought in and assimilated and let them bump into things and help solve problems. Obviously, always done in a respectful way. But hire people, not positions. The industry will always have enough insurance people and that's great. But we need more troublemakers. You find that by hiring people, not positions.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Okay. Moving on. Take a quick look. No one. Yeah. Danny Kimball shout out. Always good to shout out Danny. She's killing it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Okay. Number four: We rely too heavily on our safety net. This one is geared towards agencies, agents, producers, that kind of thing. We rely too heavily on carriers. We rely too heavily on associations. We rely too heavily on our renewals. We ask for permission way, way, way too much. Go solve problems, right?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Like no one has the answers. No one has this thing completely figured out. The way that your dad or your uncle or your mom or your aunt built the agency that you worked for 30 years ago, you cannot build that agency that way today. You can't.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Before I took the job at Metabolic, I spent six months researching how to start my own agency and ultimately decided that I would rather have a donkey kick me in the nuts than do that because it is not an easy process. The idea of just throwing up your shingle and going out and starting to sell policies like that does not happen today. It doesn't work. Carriers are not going to support you at those levels. It's going to be very, very difficult. There are people who have done it, God bless them, but they are more the exceptions to the rule.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: My point is this: we have to start solving the problems that exist in our industry without waiting for carriers to push down information to us, or waiting for our associations to push down information. Start figuring out the problems for yourselves. What an association puts down is their best guess at what could help you. It doesn't mean it's actually what's best for your agency. It doesn't mean you shouldn't consider what they share with you, or what a carrier shares with you, or someone like me who likes to spread ideas in the industry. You should give it a look. But waiting is not the answer because things are moving. The world, the business in general, is moving so fast these days.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We have to figure out the solutions that work for us. It's why there isn't an all-in-one utility knife solution for anything—for agency management, agency marketing, client engagement, sales. It's because every situation is different. Every agency is set up different. Every agency has its own personality, its own dynamics. We have to pick from the buffet of options that work for us and create our own solution. I implore you to not wait, to not rely on some larger entity to figure out a solution and pass it down for you, or to give you permission to do something. Just go out and do it and figure it out. There's tremendous opportunity in that. There are a lot of agencies that are doing it and we know about them. I want to know about more. I think there are more agencies out there capable of figuring things out themselves. I want to start to hear those stories.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If you guys know anybody who's doing tremendous stuff, I'd love to hear about it. Leave it in the comments, leave it in the chat, shout them out. That's what this is all about.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right, we are on number five. Technically past halfway, and we're about a half hour into the show. So I guess I'm doing all right from a time management standpoint. How's everyone doing out there? I appreciate all the comments. Let's see who we got. I've already mentioned Tim, Tim Heil. We got Brett's here. Jeff from Forge3. Narcisco from Effective Coverage is here. Bellman, awesome. Alex Depazzo. I see Be Atomic. I'm assuming that's Sid because I don't know that Seth knows how to use the internet. So, awesome. I appreciate everyone for being here.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right, number five. Let's keep going. Let's keep pushing. Number five: Allow producers to build a body of work. This is an idea that I've thought a lot about for a long time. I'm going to be completely honest in delivering this to you. I don't have it worked out 100% in my head, but it's an idea that I want to start to share with you. Over the coming months or years or however long it takes, I'm going to continue to flesh this out because I think it's very important.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: This is an EQ issue, an emotional intelligence issue. This is a tough one because ego plays such an enormous role in running a business, in every business. It's particularly true when you're the one that founded the business and grew the business and your name is on the door. I don't mean you're egotistical, I just mean it is tough to share when you have been the guy, the woman for X number of years. It's a difficult thing to do.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Similar to what I talked about before with the principal agent problem between producers and agency owners, this idea of allowing producers to build a body of work. What I mean by that is, I think for a very long time, we've said, "You have to operate under the umbrella of our brand. Producer, you're going to be faceless producer number one of the XYZ agency." I'll give you a great example of someone who I think is doing this well: All Choice Insurance, Jack Wingate, picking up somebody like Jared Bellman and allowing him to be very much himself in conjunction with the All Choice Insurance brand. [Holds up branded merchandise] That's a great example of Jack allowing Jared to build his own body of work, allowing him to be his own man, his own person out in the world and be part of the brand. Partners in the brand. Partners doesn't necessarily mean ownership. It means allowing that producer to really fly the flags that make them who they are, spread their wings, and have a personal brand which could match or even in some cases overshadow the agency brand in the ecosystem that individual producer operates in.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm going to back up on that a little bit. I think the days of unquestioned employee loyalty are over. I think that's a good thing. It is good for everyone that employees don't get a job, feel so thankful that you, the benevolent business owner, was willing to provide them with employment, that they are unquestionably loyal for the remainder of their career until they retire or they're put in the ground. That is no longer the case. Individuals, particularly those say 45 and under, are very willing to move to another opportunity if their current opportunity doesn't work for them. That is ultimately a good thing because it allows the chips to continually shuffle and optimize, allows the employment ecosystem to optimize.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Who I see being the bellwether winners in this game are those that allow their staff—I use producers a lot because they're often client facing, but entire staff—to build their body of work. If someone is very invested, let's take a CSR for example, someone in the service department. Let's say they love your agency, but their passion is the Humane Society. They just love animals and they want to make sure animals are taken care of. Allow that. It's okay if that individual is better known for being a member of the Humane Society than a member of your agency. That's a perfectly fine thing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But then when it comes to a producer who maybe gets super involved with a chamber or with an association or with some other organization, we want to rein them back in because we're worried they're going to give away client information or trade secrets or be recruited away from our agency. Or we just don't want anyone to think that that's the person that runs this business when really it's me. That to me is a major, major malfunction in today's business environment.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Where I see opportunity—and you can probably tell that I'm working this out in my head as I talk through with you—I think allowing your people to be themselves in the ecosystems that they live in, be the rock stars with your agency brand being secondary to them in the ecosystem that they love, whether it's little league softball or the Humane Society or some chamber of commerce or national association, let them be those rock stars in that ecosystem. Let your brand be secondary because that gives them some ownership in their own life. They don't feel like they're constantly under your thumb, whether you are a dictator or not.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I also think that type of relationship and giving them that freedom, why would they ever leave? Most people aren't going to have the security to do that. And if they did leave, what's the big deal? That would mean that they weren't really bought in to begin with.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That's the idea, this idea of a body of work. I'm really interested in what people think about it. Landon makes a great point here in the chat. He said, "I think it's time that we put the term 'producer' in the ground." I agree with you to a certain extent. I would be super interested in what your alternative is. It's a really embedded piece of vernacular in our industry. I would never refer to myself as a producer to someone who isn't in the insurance industry if I was one, because that doesn't make any sense to them. But inside our industry, referring to someone as a producer, it does qualify and it is very clearly understood your role. So I don't necessarily have a problem with it when you're speaking inside the industry. I wouldn't use it on outward facing materials that went to clients or organizations or prospects. To me, it means nothing. When you make movies, it doesn't mean anything. I don't particularly have a problem with it, but sales agent, that's fine. Producer actually sounds cooler than sales agent to me, but that's just me. That's a problem I don't really care to solve. I'll let you guys figure that one out.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right. Let's keep moving on. Spent some time on that one. Definitely will spend more time on it. Interested in your guys' thoughts, feedback. Let me know. Hit the comments. You can hit me up later. Emails: Ryan at ryanhanley.com if you ever want to email me.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We'll keep rolling on here. Number six: Focus more on what our clients care about. I'm going to give you a case study from Metabolic. When I first got there, our revenue per client was X amount. I don't want to give any proprietary information away about the business, but let's say it's X amount. That was what our revenue per client was. What we started to do while I was there through a couple different programs was spending a lot of time listening, watching, and actually surveying our clients and getting their feedback about both our main product, which is obviously memberships, but also the apparel that we created, the macronutrient coaching program that we did, the different products that we had branded, as well as our supplement line.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We spent a lot of time watching, listening, and actually surveying them. What I mean by watching and listening was I would actually sit sometimes in the morning in the foyer where clients would come in, members would come in. They'd register for class or sign themselves in or look at the different stuff that we had spread out. I would actually just watch them and listen to the way they interacted with our trainers and with the merchandise that we had. When you actually slow down and listen, you get a feel for what people actually want. You get a feel for where there may be gaps in what you're providing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think Net Promoter Score is a great way to track this on an automated basis, but you're just not going to get everything you need out of Net Promoter Score. My advice for the insurance industry, taking this back, is going out to our clients and actually sitting down with them and talking to them. Not just "Here's your policies, have a nice day," but scheduling a time with them. Whether you're buying them lunch or coffee or dinner, make it worth their while to give you feedback. Spend time with them and ask them. Provide them with a forum that allows them to be very open and honest and real. If you can do it in a way where they feel very comfortable, what you get out of that is tremendous.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Over the period of the nine months that I was there, we were able to increase the revenue per member from X to X plus seven. So $7, we increased the revenue per client $7 per client over that time period. That was a substantial, significant increase in revenue per client. What it also shows is that they weren't just buying a membership. And importantly, we didn't increase the cost of membership. So this was people buying additional services, buying merchandise. That to me shows we were providing them with supporting products, supporting materials, supporting programs that only enhanced their experience working with that business.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: From a straightforward insurance perspective, this could be making sure we're adding umbrellas, cross-selling life insurance, things like that. People have talked about that for a long time. But maybe there are other programs that people would be interested in, or other ideas, or things that people just don't simply understand. If we can spend time with those clients and learn more about where there's gaps in their knowledge, their understanding, or gaps that they actually see in the service that you're providing, we can solve those problems. Instead of just shoving things at them and hoping it's what they want, we can actually create the things or provide the things that they're asking for. That to me is a ubiquitous idea. It's universal. It's in every industry. In particular, it's something that I think we can continue to focus on in our space.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right, let's keep rolling. Hopefully you guys are enjoying this. This is a lot of fun for me. I like these kinds of brain dump things. It helps me think through my ideas on different topics. Nine is a lot. I'm starting to get tired, but we have about 15 minutes left. We got three more topics to go. Let's keep crushing. I appreciate you guys for being here. We have over 30 people watching live. That's pretty sick. Really appreciate you guys.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right. Let's see here. Number seven: We're still not producing enough content. We're still not producing enough content. If you are growth focused, you have to produce more content.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I had a conversation this morning with a fairly old school agent who was like, "Hanley, you're crazy. Don't come back to the industry and start preaching all this BS about marketing and leads and advertising. None of that works. A million dollar account is never going to buy from you online." I'm not going to say that's impossible, but it's probably unlikely. I would agree with that. If your goal is million dollar accounts, then digital content in its purest form is probably not a space that you need to spend the majority of your time. But you do need to have a nice digital footprint to make that happen.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: When I say create more content, I'm not just talking about blog posts or social media posts. I'm talking about taking in all the spaces that someone could find your business and spending time in that space. I'll give you a little example. I was doing an audit of the Murray Group's Google My Business page. I noticed that the photos hadn't been updated in a long time, actually since the day that I left. So I went in and I found a bunch of photos and started adding those photos, making sure the cover image was updated, that the Google My Business page information matched what the Murray Group is currently doing in their hours, added some map data and all kinds of stuff. That was probably last week sometime. Already just a week later, I'm going in and seeing that the photos are being looked at and clicked through as people find the business and search to see who the people are. You can get all that from the Google My Business analytics.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That's just one small microcosm. Are you consistently updating the photos in your Google My Business account? You most likely are not. Maybe the people who are live on this video are, because most of you I know are more active than others. But if you're not, that's one place that you need content. Anybody—a CEO of any company, a purchasing agent, a procurement agent, whoever's handling the insurance, a chief risk officer—if you're dealing with businesses that big, these individuals are going to check you out. They're also going to take into account who else in the space is using you, what type of reputation you have. You've probably quoted them before. They're going to take all that into account. But they're also going to make sure that your website looks legit. They're going to give it that smell test. They're going to take a quick look at your Facebook page, maybe.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: In general, this activity in the content space is so easy today. It's so easy and we're just not doing it. For the carriers out there, I'm going to go back all the way to number one with the creative piece. You guys should be crushing it. Carriers should be absolutely crushing this game. There is no reason that every carrier out there doesn't have someone who is just crushing content. This is not a major investment. This is a relatively small investment. You can be starting to connect your brand with customers.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Most of the independent agency carriers don't write direct. That's why they don't make that investment, because there is this assumption that all of the marketing and sales responsibility still exists on the agent. I think that's a very myopic way of viewing the relationship and your future in general. If I were part of a carrier, or if I were advising a carrier, my recommendation would be: let's get out in front of our agency force and put our brand into consumers' hands. Then when they sit down with one of our agents, they know our brand. Maybe they're even asking for our brand. When one of our agents pushes our paper across the desk in a proposal and our logo is recommended, that insurance consumer is not questioning for a heartbeat that agent's recommendation.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We're just not creating enough content. I'm going to bang this drum probably until forever, until I'm either in the ground or retired, because it just doesn't seem like we're taking to it. In the fitness game, my friends, you have to produce content like a maniac. You are competing against these fitfluencers who are producing 15 posts a day that are beautiful and scripted and perfectly positioned. You have to produce an insane amount of content in the fitness industry. Then I come to insurance and it's like, if anyone was doing one tenth of what we were doing at Metabolic, they would be dominating the game. Dominating.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The work that I did when I was with the Murray Group all those years ago, we still sit on the top of Google searches. We still come up. We're still getting thousands of hits a month on our Google My Business page for different things that I did there, all the reviews we got and the review program we put up. It's there for the taking. You can believe that it doesn't work or you can question it, but it absolutely works every time for every business. This is not something that you question. If you don't believe in it, that's fine. If you don't want to do it, also completely fine. But don't tell me that it doesn't work. It does. Very, very, very few of us are creating enough content to actually make a difference. So create more content.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right, I got eight minutes for two. I think we can do this. Insurance is very insulated. What I mean by that is, if you don't currently operate in the insurance space, if you don't sell insurance, if you haven't worked for a carrier, our industry just doesn't even listen to that person. Every once in a while you'll get a Marcus Sheridan or someone who will come in and hit a bunch of gigs and work through the industry, and that's great. But we're not reaching out into other spaces enough and drawing in the ideas and the things that they're already doing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Today I have 15 more tools in my tool belt that I can implement into an insurance agency or into an insurance carrier because I spent that time in the fitness industry. I learned all these things that you had to do to be successful in the fitness industry that no one's doing in the insurance space. I can now flip that, draw it into insurance, and take that brand or that agency and push them light years ahead. You don't have to work in another space to do that. There are thought leaders in every industry sharing insights, tips, best practices from these other spaces, and we can draw them in.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think some of that happens with real estate and mortgages because we work so closely with those people. Zach and Matt from GNN have done a lot of good work pulling in some tactics from other industries. That's great. But in general, we have to not be so insulated. Just because someone hasn't sold an insurance policy doesn't mean that their expertise and their guidance can't help us do our jobs better. We just have to get past that idea. When I was sitting in a brainstorming meeting at Metabolic, we were literally talking about things that we had seen in any space—YouTube videos, social media posts—and we were like, "Can we do this here? And how do we push it?"
--:-- Ryan Hanley: There was no barrier. And I think too often we're playing follow the leader in our space, just looking at what other insurance people are doing and listening to other insurance people. Not that that's bad—that just needs to be one part of what we do. If we could take even 10, 15, 20 percent of our attention and just let it leak out into some other spaces, pull in the tidbits that we think could work in ours, I think there's opportunity there. I think there's a tremendous amount of opportunity there. I'm going to try to do more of that moving forward—pulling in ideas and best practices from other spaces that I think could help insurance professionals move forward, carriers, agents, et cetera.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right, five minutes left. You guys have been tremendous. We have pushed almost to 40 live viewers at a given time, and we're still rocking plus 30. I just thank you so much for being here. This is a lot of fun for me. I hope you guys are getting a lot out of it. The replay is going to be on YouTube, so you can come back and watch it over again. I'll probably push it out as a podcast in a couple of days too, so you can listen to it if you listen to the podcast.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If you're not subscribed to this channel, please do. I have tons more video content coming out. I have a lot of stuff planned. I'm working on it, and we're going to be pumping out—I'm going to be pumping out. I don't know why I always want to say "weir," it makes it sound bigger. Right now it's just me sitting on my kitchen table. I'm going to be pumping out a lot more video content. I did a survey of my email subscribers, and almost unanimously they want to see more video content. People like video. There are people who don't like videos, who can't watch it at work, et cetera—I get that. I'm going to keep writing articles, but there was an overwhelming push for more video, so we're going to do that. It'll be fun.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Okay, last one. Number nine. Our last thing that I learned in the last nine months away from the insurance industry is that we do not want to chase efficiency over effectiveness. I think InsurTech has brought about—rightly so—and net, it's a positive that we need to be focused more on automation and technology and streamlining processes. Net, this is a victory. InsurTech has been a victory for our industry as a whole, for independent agents, for independent carriers, for everyone. The InsurTech movement has been a net positive.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What I caution—what I caution all of you at home—is to sacrifice the human connection that makes independent agencies and carriers special at the altar of automation and efficiency. Automation and efficiency are short-term wins. Yes, they move people through process faster. Yes, they allow us to track conversions more easily. But they don't create the long-term connections and bonds that are necessary for longevity.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Taking a quote from Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk, we need to do things that don't scale, or continue to do things that don't scale. I used to sell a lot of personal lines policies, packages, at people's kitchen tables. I would literally drive at night to people's homes. Now, no one at the Murder Group does that anymore. A lot of that is because people don't want you in their home as much, so it's not necessarily the best example. But the idea is creating those touch points where you didn't have to do that, but you did. And it shows me, the consumer, the client, that you care. And now I start to care about you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We don't want to lose that mentality in automation. If we do, we're sacrificing the longevity of our businesses and of our industry in exchange for quicker turnaround. Technology is important. Automation is important. Being efficient is important. Too much leakage and you can't run a profitable business. Roger that, I get it. I just think this is where art meets science, and it takes thoughtful, intentional leadership up and down an organization to execute this.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If you can do it—that to me is where I was headed with Metabolic before that got derailed. Whatever the next iteration of my career is, I want to continue to speak and create and help agents. I have other ambitions as well. I'm going to be doing some consulting work at some point, maybe some fractional CMO work, helping agencies, helping carriers define their strategy, put many of these things into practice. That's where I hope to go. A big part of that work is helping organizations marry the art with the science of growing their business—knowing how to automate, how to create efficiencies while still maintaining and building brand, trust, respect, and relationship. If you can do that with a little bit of empathy, I think that's how everyone wins.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So guys, those are my nine things that I learned throughout the last nine months away from the insurance industry. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments right now. I think this has been a lot of fun for me. I just spoke nonstop for an hour, so my voice is starting to hurt. But I hope you guys got some value out of this. I'm going to go through the comments later. Maybe I'll do a recap video and just talk through some of those, see what everyone was saying. Your being here definitely provided me with a lot of energy to push through this. So I appreciate you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'll say one more time, thank you for being here. Many of you I know very well who are here live. I see you commenting. I just want to say thank you for being willing to accept me back into the industry, and whatever shape that takes, so easily after being gone for nine months. That's meant a lot to me. I promise that I will continue to add value as much as I possibly can to our space and to your businesses. If you ever have a question for me, you can hit me up at
[email protected]. I spend a lot of time on Twitter—that's @ryanhanley_com, or just search "ryanhanley" on Twitter. That tends to be where I spend a lot of my time. Otherwise, please subscribe. Please like, share, tell your friends about the show, because I want more people to know what you know. I appreciate you. I love you. Thank you. I'm out of here.
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