RHS 018 - Zach Gould on Unlocking the Truth of Happiness and Success

Ryan Hanley: Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Ryan Hanley Show. I am so glad that you are here because today I get to share with you somebody who I have grown an incredible admiration for. I've watched his career from afar for a while and then just through the course of business and life got to know him. I found that even though there are things that we have different opinions on and we have different interests, in many ways our goals as people, as humans, as particular dads and spouses and business owners align very closely. I enjoy the depth of conversation that I can have with Zach Gould, one of the co-founders and owners of GNN Insurance.

Ryan Hanley: He became widely known over the last few years for some of the incredible work him and his partner Matt Namoli have done. And even though they recently sold GNN Insurance, they're still very much a part of that organization and running that business and leading that business. Continuing to produce high quality work for the individuals and organizations that GNN Insurance serves is a high priority to Zach, and it's just such a pleasure to have him on the show.

Ryan Hanley: Before we get to Zach though, I want to talk about something new that I'm doing. We'll call it a slight course correction on something I've done for a very long time, and that's my newsletter. I've always struggled with how to deliver the most value through my newsletter and I've done a bunch of different iterations of it. I'm finally launching something that I think is going to be very interesting. We'll see how it goes. If it works, we'll keep doing it. If not, we'll try something else.

Ryan Hanley: Starting Tuesday, October 26th, the day after this podcast is published, I am going to be doing a video newsletter moving forward. Once a week, I'll be dropping a unique video. It'll be an unlisted video on YouTube that just goes to subscribers of my newsletter. We will be diving into tactics, tips, tools, resources, ideas. I'll be answering questions from subscribers. It will be our personal conversation. The people who subscribe to that newsletter and me, it'll be our personal conversation, our way to go back and forth and really allow me to add the most value to the people who are interested in the things that I can do and have experience and expertise on.

Ryan Hanley: I'm excited to launch this. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. I think we'll learn a lot on just how to deliver the most value through video in this type of semi-private fashion. But the only way to get that video, the only way to get on that newsletter, is you have to subscribe. If you go to ryanhanley.com, you'll see a big box right on the top of the screen. Or if you go to ryanhanley.com forward slash subscribe, you can subscribe there as well.

Ryan Hanley: This is a really important project to me. It allows me to be more vulnerable. It allows me to kind of go behind the curtains even further with a lot of the stuff that I talk about, and it allows me to be very real because this isn't video that's searchable on YouTube or on the internet. You have to have the link, and you get the link through subscribing by email. I'm excited to kick this project off. I hope you'll pause this for a second, go subscribe, and then come back and listen to this episode. But if you don't, or you already are, or whatever, I'm glad you're here with us today.

Ryan Hanley: You are going to absolutely positively love this episode, I promise you, because I love this episode and I love you. There are so many places that I want to take this, but where I'd like to start is what I'm the most interested in. Even though I am interested in the fact that you guys sold G&N and all that, because I think it's interesting. I personally started this journey, probably started a couple of years ago, of digging more into who am I? Who do I want to be? How do I more productively interact with my kids, with my spouse, with people in the world? I've read a lot and I've watched a lot of videos and I listened to people. I found that you do very similar things, not always the same books, not always the same topics, but you spend a lot of time working on yourself and in particularly your mindset.

Ryan Hanley: I think for a lot of people, they either don't make time or they see that type of work as a waste of time. I'm just really interested in how someone who is successful and productive as you are, why you carve time out of your life to think about that stuff.

Zach Gould: Yeah, it's a great question. I love leading with that. One of my favorite quotes, and I have so many favorite quotes, I know you do too. One of the ones that's ringing true when you're talking about that is, "You need to join a tribe where your desired behavior is their normal behavior." I would have never started working on myself if the people that I admired didn't work on themselves. I look at the people that I truly admire, they spend the majority of their day serving others that they care about. That could be their employees, that could be their spouse, that could be their kids, that could be their dog, but just serving everyone. And then also working on themselves. They spend very little time actually worrying about the work that they are doing or putting out to the community because they're just so confident in themselves and their ability that they know when they have free time, they're just going to produce.

Zach Gould: I think I've gotten much better at my job when I've actually spent the entire day focusing more on serving people. So I'm kind of obsessed by it. I do know that also if I didn't like it, I wouldn't be good at it. You got to love it, right? You know that. I genuinely love the feeling of appreciation, the feeling of when I'm in a room, people appreciate that I'm actually there. I'm not just a fly on the wall soaking it up. So if I want people to appreciate me, what do I have to do? I have to provide value. I have to serve them in some capacity. So it fits my personality perfectly to work on myself to serve others.

Ryan Hanley: What's something you've read or engaged with lately that's really helped you bring that out?

Zach Gould: A lot. I'm trying, and it's not perfect, to read three books a month. That's my mental goal. I know some people read way more, and I know some people don't believe in reading. That's fine. For me, it brings a lot of clarity. I genuinely try to stay in one zone, though. That zone is something around leadership, something around management, and something around historical figures or current figures that are doing that. I don't always love what I'm reading. Something I would give away to other people is it's okay to put down a book and not finish it. It's not the end of the world. I've read a couple of books this year that I've been like, "Nah, not for me." And that's okay. But too many people read a book and they're like, "I don't want to finish this." You don't have to, put it away. It's almost like having a bad idea you didn't go forward with. I have hundreds and hundreds of those, and that's okay.

Zach Gould: So what am I reading right now? Right now I'm reading Malcolm Gladwell's latest book. I think it's called *Talking to Strangers*, something about that. I love it. I'm also reading the same book you're reading about Marcus Aurelius, *Meditations*, which I think is really neat. That book is not up my alley. That's outside my comfort zone of where I typically read. So I'm challenging myself to get through that and I'm liking it so far, but Malcolm Gladwell is more on my alley.

Ryan Hanley: What part of *Meditations* makes it outside your alley and Malcolm Gladwell inside?

Zach Gould: Great question. I don't really know or appreciate who Marcus Aurelius is other than *Gladiator*. I don't look towards him for any kind of influence. I don't really know what he believes in and who he is. So it's all brand new knowledge. Whereas Malcolm Gladwell is talking about specific events that I can recall my own theory of what I think about that event. With Marcus Aurelius, it's all brand new. I'm going to probably read Marcus Aurelius' book in about two months. It's going to take me that long to get through because I'm going to go a couple pages and my head's almost going to be like, "Whoa, I need to think about what I just read." Whereas Malcolm Gladwell's book, I'll probably finish in a couple of days. I'll just plow through it. And I'm okay with that.

Ryan Hanley: For those listening at home that don't know, Marcus Aurelius was an emperor of Rome. He's actually in the movie *Gladiator*. He is the emperor that dies at the very beginning. And his son, Commodus, is a scumbag who kills Maximus' family. That's the plot for the whole movie. But in real life, Commodus was an a-hole. Marcus Aurelius was this really interesting emperor. I came into his world through Ryan Holiday's trilogy: *The Obstacle is the Way*, *Ego is the Enemy*, and his most latest one, *Stillness is the Key*.

Ryan Hanley: I am a diehard Ryan Holiday fan. The way he views the world is very much the way I would hope someday I view the world. I know he's a self-proclaimed work in progress as well. I like that about him, very humble guy. He introduces stoic philosophy, which is a fairly obscure vein of 2,100-year-old philosophy, and Marcus is one of many thought leaders of that day. What's most interesting about him and his work to me is that I'm the opposite. Malcolm Gladwell is awesome. I love listening to Malcolm Gladwell. I like his podcast. I find his books to be maddening. Here's why I find this to be so interesting.

Ryan Hanley: Here's what I like about *Meditations*. This is 2,000 years old and it's still valuable. That to me says there's something in here. There's some key that unlocks people in a way that I don't know that I necessarily have yet. I've written in this book like it's a textbook. It's more blue pen now than it is actual typed word. I'm like, "What is the key to this that unlocks people?" Malcolm Gladwell may have that in his book, but to me, I'm like, "There's something in here that for 2,000 years, people have been copying this to the point where books would be falling apart and they'd be recopying them again. It's so valuable." I'm like, "What is that key? What am I missing?" Maybe that's just interesting why some people are turned on and other people aren't.

Zach Gould: I agree. I didn't really know much about stoicism until I actually read through that book. In the beginning, I really like the intro of *Meditations*. I know there are many different copies.

Ryan Hanley: Are you reading the Greg Hayes translation as well?

Zach Gould: Exactly. Yeah, that's the one. If anyone's listening at home, get the Greg Hayes translation. This is the best. It's got a good intro because for me, I was coming in blind. I forget who I was listening to on a podcast, and someone just blurted out, "Hey, buy this book. You'll thank me later." It was just a little cliff note. I literally, while I was listening to the podcast, just went on Amazon and bought it. It was like four bucks, super cheap. I blindly got that one. I really appreciated the intro because I did not know what I was getting into. I thought I was reading someone's journal. I didn't understand what was happening. So him taking 20, 30, or 40 pages and really detailing out, getting me into, "Okay, here's how he was born. Here's some of the why behind maybe he would have even written stuff down." I didn't understand the challenges of being an orphan and everything that was going through. It's a really interesting book.

Ryan Hanley: I don't mean that in any way to knock Malcolm Gladwell, because I think incredibly highly of him and his work. I actually love his podcast. Anytime he's interviewed by anyone who I respect, I immediately listen to it, and I've listened to it twice. The way he thinks about the world is tremendous. What's interesting, just thinking about philosophy in general and why you would even take this on, is that so much of who I am has changed. If you were to snapshot me now versus me at 18 or 20, I'd be like, "Philosophy? What the hell? Why would you even think about that?" Now it's like I wish I could go back and be in my 20s when I didn't have anything to do so I could read all this stupid crap that they used to assign us. I just cheated through all the tests and the decent books.

Zach Gould: But would you have been in a spot that you would have actually absorbed it? I know for me, I probably would have taken the same approach. I thought at 22, I already knew it all. Whereas now at 36, I'm finally starting to ask questions. So I don't know. I think you might have a different moment. For me, it was kids. I know for a fact when I started to say to myself, "You know what, I actually have no idea how to sleep train a child. What I don't want to do is just ask my mom or Kristen's mom every single time I have a question. I don't want to be that parent. I also don't want to post on Facebook, 'How do you put down a kid?' and have 17,000 replies."

Zach Gould: My personal theory, and I'm trying to morph this around, is I don't want to take advice from my broke friend on finance. I do want to find out maybe the colossal misstep by them I could learn from, but I don't want to take advice on what I'm going to do with my finances because right now I'm not broke and therefore I don't really need that. So if I put out in the Facebook community, "Hey, got a new son, Mason, what's your advice?" I'm going to get a variety of information from people I actually don't respect or do respect as parents, or people who maybe aren't parents. "Here's how I did my dog." It doesn't really help.

Zach Gould: That's when I started to get into books. I read this book, *12 Hours, 12 Weeks*, something like that. We did it with Mason and I was like, "Wow, that was really helpful." Since then, I've been on the whole journey of just what's helpful. So *Meditations* fits. Going back to our original comment, it will take me more time because I think it's bigger than me. To your point, you're writing through it. My way of reading books, I'm the page holder. What I typically do is I go slow through a meditation type book. Then I have one of two options. I either read the whole thing again, or I only go to the pages I've turned. So Simon Sinek's *The Infinite Game*, I'm on my third reading of it. I'm just interested in it. I constantly pick it up. It's always in my bag.

Ryan Hanley: I learned about a year and a half ago, I picked up this book from a guy I subscribed to his newsletter. I think he's very smart. I think he thinks about the world in a very anti-momentic way. He intrigues me. So he wrote a book, and it was slightly off of what I was interested in, but I was like, "I bet there's some interesting stuff in this book," even though the topic wasn't exactly what I was interested in. I got 30 pages into that thing and I was like, "I hate this. I hate it." No part of it was anything that I was interested in. I found it to be so off. I ended up finishing the book out of like, "Please give me something." I wanted to support them. I bought the hardcover version for $30. I got to the end of it and I was like, "Oh, this was..." I'm sure it's helped people, but it just wasn't for me. I was like, "I'm never doing that again." Even if it's somebody else, the $30 was a donation. People put effort into writing books. I like to support them, especially people I like. But I will never plow through another book if after the first 30 pages I say it's terrible.

Ryan Hanley: The ones I do, I am with you. I'm halfway through Jordan Peterson's book for a second time, which is like 800 pages. That to me is like a textbook. It's folded, it's bent, the bindings are all torn apart. I have notes everywhere. I try to go back and I do book notes. Sometimes I'll publish them, sometimes I don't. Just going back through and typing out my notes really helps me capture some of the ideas. To your point, I think you learned that from somebody probably outside yourself because you weren't a student growing up. I wasn't a student growing up either.

Ryan Hanley: Where I kind of learned a little bit this year, I'll call out somebody you know and love as well. Her name is Dani Kimball. One of the things that I admired about her is we attended a conference together, StoryBrand. When I've attended conferences in the past, I know the seat I sit in. It's all the way back there. I sit all the way back there because I'm almost like, "I don't even really want to be here anyways." I'm very thankful for her because she basically grabbed my hand and was like, "Hey, second row. That's where we're going to go." I was like, "Wow." Not only that, she put out all of these journals of notes that she was ready to take. I'm like, "How are you assuming this is going to be that good? I read the book. I know this. Why are you going?" But then I started taking out notebooks too. I was like, "Okay, I'm not going to be some slouch next to her not taking notes." It was the most valuable conference I've ever attended in my entire life.

Zach Gould: I wonder, is it that valuable because I was in that mental state going into it saying to myself, "This has got to be super valuable?" I did the exact same thing when Seth Godin came to speak. I did the Dani Campbell method. I literally sat in the second row and brought out tons of notes. I saw the person on my left, like, "Huh, he only had a cell phone out." He put his cell phone down and took out notes and started taking notes as well. So it's almost like that theory is passing on.

Zach Gould: I bring up that story because I don't know who started who. I can't remember the moment. But I know it probably happened to me for books. I was not a page learner. I was not into books, and now I am. And you are too, and you weren't before. I would love to try to figure out how we started doing that.

Ryan Hanley: I don't know. If I had to take a guess, I've listened to probably 95 percent of James Altucher's 500-plus episodes of his podcast. I remember the day that he launched it. I listened to the very first episode. I've listened to probably 95% of that podcast. I basically feel like the last seven years of my life, I've had him between my ears. He explains in detail sometimes how much he just destroys books from the standpoint of their pristineness because he writes in them and takes notes in them and does all that stuff. It may be him. I think it's possible that I just said, "Geez, here's a guy who I don't always agree with. I've listened to 95% of his podcast and I disagree with him quite often on some of his takes. But I admire deeply the way that he's able to look at the second, third, and fourth level of something and ask questions at that level."

Ryan Hanley: As an interviewer, I use him as a contextual framework. I'm sure it just sunk in. If this guy is operating at this level and one of the things he does is put more effort into the books that he reads, I can probably do that too. Wouldn't I be an a-hole for not doing that? I think that's part of it. Here's the other thing I think, I'm interested in your take on that. At some point, you make the decision: you either want more of yourself, or you're okay exactly the way you are. I think you can choose to want more at any given time. I think at some point in the last few years, I decided I wanted more of myself, and books had to be a part of that. This is 2,000 years old. There has to be something in here, even if it takes me 10 reads to figure it out, even if it takes me looking at something and then listening to this and then hearing Ryan Holiday and then hearing someone else and going, "Oh, now I get it." I want more of myself. I want to be able to be a better version of myself, whether it's for my kids or for my spouse, or just so I don't wake up every day feeling like an a-hole.

Zach Gould: You're right on. I think what you're hitting at is that you're not expecting progress. You're kind of just enjoying the process along the way. You're enjoying reading. You're enjoying writing. It's pouring out of you, but you're not necessarily doing that just for progress. You actually enjoy it. Going back to how we first started this podcast, I think that's one of the secrets. I enjoy an uphill climb. I do. I don't really get to the top of the mountain and want to take the most pictures. I think it's really important to celebrate success, but I'm not necessarily only going uphill just to take the pictures. I'm actually going uphill because I just kind of like it.

Zach Gould: I personally enjoy getting up early in the morning and reading. I used to get up very early in the morning and do work. One of the reasons I stopped was because I realized I'm not trying to be better than anybody else. So why am I working so damn early? What's the point? If I answer that email at four or three in the morning, nobody else is saying, "Wow, I'm so happy Zach's doing that." All they're saying behind their ears is, "He's a psycho." Whereas now I can just get up and read. I feel like I've accomplished more than anybody would expect of me for the day. So I'm really enjoying the process, and I can tell you are too.

Ryan Hanley: Do you journal at all?

Zach Gould: I used to. For three years, I did it almost every day. It still sits up in my bedroom.

Ryan Hanley: What got you into journaling and what got you out of journaling?

Zach Gould: What got me into journaling is I was really working on something internal. I was a little bit overly negative on my progress. When I started journaling, Matt and I were $300,000 in debt in GNN. It was really a turning point where I just said to myself, "I'm working my tail off. Everybody's telling me you're doing a good job, but my bank account is saying you need to find a job." I was struggling with that mentality. Rather than take it out on people, what I decided to do is just write. I followed a very simple, my own mix-mash, where it was your basic: how you're feeling, one thing you're grateful for, what's going to make today a win, general thoughts. Then actually on my very last thing, I wrote something about KG every single day that made me happy from the last 24 hours. That was my own personal way of doing it.

Zach Gould: I did it for three years and I loved it, and it's still up there. I reference it from time to time. But again, just like reading a book you don't want to do anymore, I'm okay stopping journaling. I personally said to myself, "It's becoming a chore. I'm actually not enjoying doing it anymore." Oddly enough, the reason I was doing it in the first place, I had fixed. So now I was just journaling and being like, "Everything's great. It's awesome. Things are good." I was like, "I don't really need this." What about yourself?

Ryan Hanley: I don't. Do you think that journaling helped you wrap your head around things? Do you think it played a role in the turnaround, in making the decisions that were necessary to not have to journal anymore?

Zach Gould: Tell me the moment you fell in love with your wife. You can't answer that. That's Simon Sinek's quote, right? He's like, "You can't answer that exact moment."

Ryan Hanley: Probably the first time she tried to break up with me, but I actually probably know the answer to that question. No, but it's difficult. You made a really massive turn from liking her to loving her to wanting to spend the rest of your life with her. You can probably pinpoint relatively the moment, but there's a lot of moments that led up to that moment, of course.

Zach Gould: I don't know the moment that was the turnaround. I just know that if I didn't journal, I probably wouldn't even be in as good of a spot as I am now. I don't know the best book I've read this year. But I know that all 34 of them have mattered so far.

Ryan Hanley: I think that's a really good way to look at it. One of the things that I've taken away from a lot of the books that I've read spanning different eras—whether it's Carl Jung, which is really heady stuff, really contemporary stuff like Jordan Peterson, some of the transcendentalists like Thoreau, and I really like Emerson, although you have to dig into them a little bit—it sounds like a 10th grade English class, but it's really interesting stuff. Then you take it all the way back to some of the things that I've read from some of these early philosophers. They all come back to this idea of being in the moment, right? This moment right now, where we are right here.

Ryan Hanley: I can be terrible about that. I find it to be a major failing of mine. I will dwell on the past, but even worse, I create false scenarios of what's going to happen in the future. I allow things that haven't actually happened to dictate my current mood and my actions. I think that's our natural state, and then you work to get out of that. When I think about what you just said, I have a feeling that journaling acted as a tool for a period of time that you needed to stay centered to get through this tough time. Whether it was journaling or something else—I see on Instagram you like to shoot hoops, right? Moments where you took a half hour to go shoot hoops could have been your journaling. It just happened to be that thing at that time, or a combination of it was just bringing you back to the present so you can solve problems. I feel like that thing, whether it's journaling or something else, journaling just isn't what I particularly need. I have other mechanisms, I think. I find it to be interesting, but I have never really taken it on. I think that's the key: being able to put yourself back into the moment that you actually are in.

Zach Gould: For me, going back to one of my goals, my phone was causing me stress. I wanted to find a way not to look at my phone first thing when I get up. I know for a fact that if I get up and check my phone, I will do things differently in the morning than I normally would. So I go back to my original stuff that I was saying to you about who do I admire? Who do I want to become?

Zach Gould: Now I don't have that one specific person. I couldn't look and say like Arnold Schwarzenegger or something. Although I do love Arnie though. I love him. You're pretty cool. But I'd be filling up this shirt a lot more than I could. But I do think to myself, okay, the person I want to become is the person who really balances being a dad with achieving what they really want to do. And there's a lot more to it. I want to be a great husband. But these kinds of things fall in line, and business just so happens to be down the road. So if that's how I want to become, when I check my phone in the morning, I'm already telling myself that what you, Ryan, are doing and what my clients are saying to me and my referral partners are saying to me is actually more important than anything I'm going to do for myself. So that's how journaling started, that whole mentality. Now it's become reading and it's become writing. And then it's just become straight into that. So I still carry the traits on. To your point, I just do something different. I still accomplish the goal, not every day, but almost every day, of not checking my phone for the first hour in the morning and the last hour at night.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah, that's good. The last hour at night thing, I have mastered that. I don't check my phone at night. I've been pretty good. The morning, sometimes I will. I usually get about a half hour into my reading and I need just a break from the words and I'll look at Twitter or something and then I'll come back. I try to avoid email though. That's the big one. If I can stay away from email, if I can just check Twitter real quick or LinkedIn, just see if anyone commented or posted something interesting. But if you get into your inbox too early, it can mess your whole day up.

Zach Gould: Your email inbox is somebody else's to-do list for you. It's like, I'm just doing that. I really believe that. I think if you go towards Twitter, that's okay. There's a social interaction in a mission you're trying to accomplish with your Twitter and with your back and forth and you documenting your journey. I like that balance.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah. So I think people can buy that they need to read something or engage in something deeper than their own thoughts. Although spending time with your own thoughts is very important. Whether it's reading articles or books or listening to podcasts, I think it's important to go long form. I think what's powerful about Joe Rogan is he does three hours. I think what's powerful about a book is it takes eight to ten hours to read a book. I think articles can be great, but I don't know that it's ever enough more than a reminder or as a feeder for something deeper. I think real change comes from deeper. But long story short—I hate when I say that—where I really want to ask you is, okay, so you're doing this work. You're reading, you're taking in Malcolm Gladwell, you're taking in Marcus Aurelius. It's really easy then when you go, okay, so you're in your house, you're reading that hour before, you're taking all this stuff in, you come out glowing with philosophical genius, and then you walk into the office and you revert back to baser Zach. How do you make sure that you apply the things that you take in through the 34 books that you've read this year? How do you make sure you take those things you've taken in and actually apply them? Do you have a mechanism for that? Do you have someone that holds you accountable? How do you hold yourself accountable to actually implementing those changes?

Zach Gould: It's ever-changing. Asking for feedback is difficult, and getting feedback when you're the boss is even harder because people are really challenged to give it to you. The getting and giving feedback takes time. But one thing I have done recently that has given me joy is I do about two to three emails per week now to the entire team. I BCC them all. I'm not looking for replies. That's not the point of it. I'm just giving them some insight into what I'm thinking about, and I always tie it back into our purpose, what we're actually trying to do at G&N. I've had multiple people from my team in the last couple of weeks come up to me and just say, "Hey, thanks for always sending those emails. It just helps a little bit." And that matters to me because I feel like I'm bringing all this content and I'm serving my community by talking about it. I think too often we go on social media and write these long-form posts, but then the people around us, we're actually not helping. So I'm trying to make sure that I'm actually helping my community and the people that are really striving towards my cause five times, ten times more than I'm actually trying to help the other people on social media. That has been a really cool purpose for me: going back to why does G&N exist? What are we trying to do? What are we trying to accomplish? We exist for our referral partners, and we're trying to make sure that our clients don't have a cookie-cutter policy when they're purchasing a home. It's very simple. And we need to be reminded all the time. So that's your direct answer to your question.

Ryan Hanley: I love that. I think that it is very easy to look at this bigger game and lose sight of the one that you're actually playing. I think it's very easy to do. I know I fall prey to that. I have in my own work conversations that we've had privately. Probably every time I talk to you, I say, "Zach, should I just stay in the insurance industry or should I work outside the insurance industry? What do you think?" I'd probably ask you that question like 40 times, but I don't give you any long advice probably every single time.

Zach Gould: Well, you have to keep coming back to who's your community, who are your people, who do you actually want to serve, and then actually serving them. So I love that idea. I love that internal newsletter. I think that's a wonderful thing. I think everyone...

Ryan Hanley: A guest I had previously on the show, her name is Tamsen Webster. She's from Boston. She is a gangster. She is the best. I have been blessed with two of my favorite guests I've ever interviewed. For anyone who doesn't know, I've had two prior podcasts that were interview shows. One was Content Warfare—I interviewed 360 people. And one was the NC Nation—I interviewed probably 75 insurance professionals. So I've interviewed a lot of people. Nancy Duarte and Tamsen Webster, who I've just interviewed recently in the last few months, are two absolute gangsters. They're the best. If you are not following their work and connected to them, just watch what they do. You don't have to engage with them, just watch what they do. It's so good. They're so smart. Tamsen Webster—I have notes on one of her speeches in my phone just because I thought to myself, this is someone I should just understand. The Red Thread is something I believe in. I've read it. I bought the course. It's awesome. So my next keynote, which I'm working on rolling out in 2020 called "Action is the Answer," is all Red Thread. I am using all her workbooks. I'm going through every video. I'm working back and forth. She's so smart. It's crazy. And now I can't even remember what I was saying.

[Pauses]

Oh, so what Tamsen Webster says, which I think is brilliant, is that as leaders, you cannot inspire your people. It doesn't exist. It's not a thing you can do. What you can do, however, as a leader, is create the conditions for inspiration. I think something like putting together an email that throws a thought out into the world—half your people don't even read it, a quarter of your people don't connect to it, but those quarter who do connect to it, you just created a condition for their inspiration. Now there's an environment in which what you said is something we're into at G&N. And if you're into it, then here's an escalator up. I love that, man. I think that's tremendous.

Zach Gould: It's going to be something we're going to do. We're launching a newsletter. Believe it or not, we consider ourselves relatively good marketers and we haven't had a newsletter in like seven years. I would say it's just because we didn't know what we wanted to say. We actually—and I'd rather take a pause. We've grown 30% year over year for a long time, and we do not have a newsletter. It's okay. Life goes on. You don't necessarily need to have one. There are a lot of ways to do business. But what Matt and I are thinking about is we're going to start having a newsletter. And it's just like "From the desk of Matt, from the desk of Zach." Here's what we're working on internally, and here's what we're thinking about. No more "Thank you for referring all of our clients. Hey, remember, it's umbrella policy season." It's always umbrella policy season. This is so stupid. "It's life insurance month." No, it's not. Every month is life insurance month. I'm so sick of those. So back to her theory, and Seth Godin's theory, is: do you matter? And I really believe that we matter. And I'm going to start talking about why, what we're doing on a daily basis to matter to you. And we're going to put that out there, not to other insurance agents, not to our Facebook fans. We're going to put that out there to our clients and say, "Here's what we're doing every day to matter to you. And if we do matter to you, tell a friend. If not, please just pay your bill. It's okay. Life moves on." I can't wait to launch that newsletter. I'm so excited. Because to your point, I'm not going to have to make this uber graphical. I'm just going to write.

Ryan Hanley: I love that. So an idea—I am the type of person that throws a million things up on the wall. I always have a million things going on, and I kind of hate that about myself. The fact that you've waited until you had something to say to have a newsletter, which I'm sure wasn't the only reason, but it's part of the issue. I think that's very admirable and enviable from my standpoint, because I always rush in before a tremendous amount of planning goes in. I'm just like, "Newsletter, let's do it." "What are you going to say?" "I don't know."

Zach Gould: No, you need a balance though, because that does work. I just know eventually I'd punt it. Eventually I would not do the work all the time. But you're somebody who, when you start something, you're going to finish it.

Ryan Hanley: Well, it's funny you say that, Zach. That's not always true. That's not 100% true. Particularly with the newsletter. I've had an email list through Mailchimp for seven years. There are people who could be listening to this podcast that have been subscribed to that newsletter list for seven years. I've had probably a dozen iterations of the format of the content, the day that it arrives, and I'm about to launch my 13th version of that content. Because to your point, to the thing you said, is: do you matter? And how do you deliver your best content? I think planning and patience is amazing, and I wish that I had more of that. When I do sit down and take my time, I do my best work for sure. But the other side of that, and the thing that I think a lot of people can't be afraid of—not that you were, just in general—is that it's okay to make changes. It's okay to start something and instead of stopping it, just do it slightly different. I think that's okay too. Basically, I'm switching my newsletter up to being a video newsletter because I think I do my best work in front of the camera. I don't know anybody else that does that. What I'm doing is unlisted YouTube videos just to my newsletter list. Once a week, it'll be super raw. It'll just be like this, boom: "Here's what I'm thinking. Here's five things I saw to do this. Here's a great resource. Zach Gould said something amazing. Here's a quote from him. Boom. Done. Out. Have a nice week." Because I just think it's engaging. I want to engage people. I want it to be more conversational. That's the thing that gets lost a lot of times in newsletters in particular. It's like, "Let me barf on you, and if you don't understand the value of that, screw you, but you better still subscribe." I really want to get to conversation. Conversation is the future. I think it's what's smart about Gary V going to text message because it's so easy to respond via text. When blogs lost their commenting feature, when that went away—not that you can't have one, you can, but it's completely passé for people to comment on blogs themselves—I think a huge portion of the thought leadership that happened inside of certain web properties was lost when comments went away. Trolls are obviously a problem, but there used to be incredible conversations around topics on these obscure websites because you had an interest in a thing, and that's lost today. I think bringing that back, in this case you speaking directly to the people that are most important to you and providing them with a way to hit reply and talk to you, that to me is the future. Because if people haven't paid attention, social media is going away. From a standpoint of it being a useful tool outside of just broadcasting at you, you have to be ready for a world where social media does not help you grow your business. It's just another advertising platform. That day is coming. I think things like newsletters, text conversations, text subscription services—however we want to figure that out—I think that's the best way to do it.

Zach Gould: To your point, there's the quote out there: "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes." I think Naval said that. I look at it like that is perfect. I'm not trying to play a social media game. I'm not trying to win a stupid prize. What I'm trying to do is matter to my clients. I feel like the majority of G&N's clients are Matt and my demographic. They're around 35. They're in a house. That's kind of how we got them. They could be 55, they could be 25, but they're in that range. We can speak to them about what we're trying to do to matter to them on a daily basis or what we're working on. I'm excited for it because we're going to be a little vulnerable. Our mission is to have a better process for our realtors, loan officers, and closing attorneys. We're not saying we're the best. We're trying to have a better process. If we're trying to have a better process, what are you working on? We're going to start talking about that.

[Pauses]

There's also some great books out there. One of the better ones I read this year was *The Power of Moments*. It talked about how you don't necessarily remember the entire experience. The experience doesn't have to be great the whole way. It just has to be remarkable in very small moments throughout the experience. Then you kind of toss it away. They relate it to going to Disney. Going to Disney World with your kids is probably a nightmare. We're going to do it pretty soon. It is probably one of the more stressful times to get down there with the entire family. But you have these incredible high moments. I've never heard someone not recommend going to Disney. But that does not mean it was remarkable the entire way. It's just a powerful moment. We want to create powerful moments during the process for our realtors, loan officers, closing attorneys, so that the insurance policy isn't cookie-cutter for their clients. It's time to start talking about what we're working on and what we're doing and invite them to a conversation to tell us what we could be better at.

Ryan Hanley: See, there's so many levels. I think this is going to be tremendous for you guys. You used the word vulnerability. I think that's a big part of it. Because you're going to be willing to show vulnerability in the process, people are going to be more apt to excuse the moments that they don't appreciate. What you're saying is, "Look, we're working on this." So if something doesn't work, they're going to go, "Oh, I'm going to tell Zach this part isn't working and help him make it better," instead of, "Oh, look at these guys. They're changing everything. This is terrible. I'm going someplace else." By telling them, "Hey, we're going to make some course corrections, small in some places, big in others, to help you," they're going to feel like they're coming along for the journey instead of being pushed along for the journey. I think those are two very different things.

Zach Gould: You're totally right. There are some companies that can do that via social media, and there are some companies that can't. I think we're kind of done trying to be a social media company. It's great. We have 6,000 or 10,000 or whatever amount of followers we have across all platforms. That's super duper. That's wonderful. But they don't interact with us very often other than just hitting the like button and saying congratulations on whatever. I don't want the like button. I don't care about the like button. What I really care about is if something's bothering you, I hope we have a platform that you can talk to us about it other than writing an angry email when it actually happens. I don't know, it's just grabbing me that this could be an interesting way. We've thought about a lot of different ways, but what is the easiest way to communicate? It seems like email or text. It's just very, very simple.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah. I appreciate and love what Gary's doing. I'm not going to give out my cell phone though. But I appreciate and love what he's doing. Like you said earlier, he put out a post this week or a couple of days ago where he made the firm announcement, which I was waiting for. He made the firm announcement that in 10 years, he thinks social media is going to be kaput. Not necessarily gone, but it's going to be like a pay-for-service or something of that nature. That's why he's really doing this cell phone beta test, which I think is so incredibly intelligent. I think he's smart.

Zach Gould: I completely agree with him. You can already see it happening. I've been doing a lot of tests lately on the big four—LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. For me, my YouTube channel is a big part of my business as a speaker and a consultant. I need people to see me. The written word is great, but I need them to see who I am, hear my cadence, how I talk about things, so that they can feel comfortable hiring me for their business or for their event. That's important to me. So I want people to go to my YouTube channel. I don't necessarily want to—even though I do native video and I know native video is best practice—I wanted to see, for me, it's tougher to track what's going on. It's tougher. And then it's gone. It hits, it's gone. I don't love native video inside of social. I don't love that because to me, it's more about a long tail. I want you to be able to consume not just that particular video, but be able to see the story arc and the narrative of all the content that I'm creating. Maybe that's selfish. Maybe it's not. I don't know. But if you try to push people off of social media onto any other platform—your website, another social media platform, your YouTube channel—you do not get the reach. You are throttled incredibly hard. I'm going to give you just a quick idea of this. I posted a video pretty short natively to LinkedIn. It was like a minute and 30 seconds. It was like "How to Be Uncomfortable." I'm looking at this book. It has the answer. It doesn't matter. It was some short leadership thing that I picked up from some book I was reading. I was like, "Oh, this is cool. I'm just going to talk about this for a second." Bam. Posted it natively on every platform. Then I put it on YouTube and I shared the same thing a few days later with YouTube. I didn't care so much about the click-throughs because I knew it wouldn't get as many views. What I cared about was how many people did each one of those platforms actually show that post to. It was insane. If a thousand people saw the LinkedIn native video, the one that I just uploaded the video directly to LinkedIn, 200 people saw the YouTube one. So if you think that's not already happening today—and I'm not talking to you specifically—

Zach Gould: No, no, I'm beating your drum. Yes, it is absolutely happening.

Ryan Hanley: Social media as a tool to drive anything outside of brand recognition—I will give it that it still has incredible power for brand recognition. But if you're actually trying to drive people to properties, it's gone today. It doesn't exist today.

Zach Gould: You know our story. We hired someone to follow us around from 2016 for two years every day. We did a vlog, Gary V style, like he said to do, and we did it. That was one of the many reasons that propelled us forward. But why do I bring that up? One of our first strategies in 2016, way back, was to post it on YouTube and share it on Facebook. Even then, Facebook gave us the finger. It was like, "Uh-uh, that's not happening." They knew that a long time ago. But when we posted it natively on Facebook, the viewers were in the tens of thousands. That was great. Not a humble brag. It's just true. When we did it from YouTube to Facebook, it was like 200. We were able to judge that those were real views based on engagements and based on interactions and outbound, so it was legit. But I go all the way back around to what Gary V is saying. This isn't my original thought. I've heard you talk about it too. It's just that these services are free. So in general, unless you're sponsoring ads, they're free. So therefore, when they put handcuffs on you, they're making money. I'm okay with companies making money, whether they're Facebook or whether they're John Smith Insurance Agency. Now, when you have a newsletter, like you said, or when you have texts or when you have emails, the best thing about emails is they don't cost a buck to send. That's awesome. They talk about this all the time. One of the stupidest things, one of the things I should have done, is made email cost money. Can you imagine if every single time you sent an email, like a newsletter cost you a cent? Maybe you'd write more.

Ryan Hanley: Actually, this is Seth Godin's own original thought. He says that you should treat email like every email costs a buck.

Zach Gould: I believe that. And I know you of all people, you treat every social media post as if it costs a buck. You put time, energy, effort, and you go through it and how it's written in the copy and the image. It's very selected. You're very organized in how you do it. But too often, I see people throw out a shitty newsletter after they spent so much time on social. Social media people are not buying your stuff. As you just said, it's incredibly difficult to funnel them through. But people you're emailing, they have the easiest way to funnel through. Take your time.

Ryan Hanley: It's also a direct feedback loop. If you send me something crappy, maybe I give you another shot. You send me two crappy emails in a row, unsubscribe, it's over. A big part of the video email I just mentioned is that I had been sending an email every time I published a piece of content on my website, and I was seeing 15 unsubscribes every time I did that. I was getting people, and here's the interesting part, they're like, "Ryan, I get your stuff through LinkedIn. I get your stuff through this format over here." And that's not what I wanted because I know that in the very near future, the only two things that are going to be worth your while are text and email. Those are going to be the two most valuable things that you can have for your business. Do I have permission to text you, or do I have permission to email you? If I don't have those two things, I have nothing.

Zach Gould: I very firmly agree. It was interesting. I've had a dated website for a little while now. When I say dated, I mean we updated like a year ago. To me, that's dated. I want to get the message right. It's been on my to-do list so long. It just hasn't mattered because I realized that I look at the numbers that go. I'm impressed by the number of people that do go, but I track where they go and the pages they actually go to are the ones that don't need updates. So I'm like, "I'll get to that later." To your point, things just stop mattering. I started to realize that we track weekly behaviors and we track a lot of weekly metrics about what drives our business. People were referring more or less because we were doing a lot on social. It was just nice to see. But when we have direct communication, that's when the magic happens.

Ryan Hanley: I want to be respectful of your time. We never even talked about your business, which is probably a good thing for you since there are like seven other podcasts that you've done that talk about it. That's fine. This is just more interesting stuff to me than what's going on there. I'm happy for you, obviously. But this is more interesting. I think that social to me is the baseline. You can't be terrible at it. Someone can't go to your page and see 72 followers and the last time you posted was 2016. You have to have consistent, on-brand posts. Consistency is relative. There's no right or wrong answer, but consistent on-brand stuff that adds some value. I do think that there's a level of social validation. If you're a decent-sized business, people have some internal metric. "Hey, they're this size business. They should have approximately this many followers." As long as you're close, they're like, "Checkbox. Okay. These guys are doing the work. They're there." But it doesn't drive your business. I will say that if you're willing to pay and you're willing to make advertising part of your business, that's a little different story. It's also a different model from what you guys are doing. It greatly depends on who you're going after and if you're trying to crack a new market. But I couldn't agree with you more.

[Pauses]

The last thing, and then I want to let you go. This might seem kind of random, but I'm just really interested in your take on in-person events, breathing the same air. There's always this "conferences are dying, conferences are not as important." Where do you stand on paying money to share space with somebody just to be in that same ecosystem, whether it's someone you never actually meet but is up on stage, or just milling around with like-minded people? Big events, small events. Where do you stand on that particular topic?

Ryan Hanley: Great question. If my tribe's there, I'm there. If the people I want to be around are there, I'm there. Now, if there are 10,000 college kids and me, I don't think I should be there. I need to be around other dads and other moms who are trying to do the same things I'm trying to do. If they're in the crowd, I belong there. And then I don't care how much money it costs. I don't care.

For instance, I recently bought a $500 ticket to go watch Seth Godin speak. I've read his books. He was in Boston to make a good idea. From there I saw Tamsin and I watched her speech and I was like, "This person's amazing." I didn't really know about this person. Then I realized, oh my God, she was on your podcast like two weeks earlier. It just started connecting.

I'm going all the way around, but last week I was out and I met up with JJ from StoryBrand. He came to Boston, hit me up, and said he was in town. I saw him and the guy who was there with him was one of Seth Godin's best friends, oddly enough. I started jiving with him and he is the one who turned me on to this new Malcolm Gladwell book. I would not have done any of that without purchasing a $500 ticket to go watch Seth Godin regurgitate something I'd already probably heard before, but hadn't heard it in that manner.

Secondarily, shout out Danny Kimball. I was in the second row and I had notes. All of this matters. I probably will pay for a conference a quarter, I would say. And I'm okay with all of them being terrible. As long as I'm going for a person that I really respect who is on stage, I don't necessarily care about the overall experience. I just really want to get close.

So if any of the authors I read in books this year come to speak in Boston, that's a great opportunity. I don't necessarily really care about insurance conferences. I apologize for saying that out loud, but I'm going to go to IAOA out of just sheer respect for what Nick and Dave built. I'm going to be in the room. I'm going to be chatting with tons of other insurance professionals. I respect all of them. I think they're amazing. Some incredible things going out there, but I'm more there for the community and to support the people running the organization.

I don't think I'm going to be at some other conferences because I don't necessarily really want to network with other insurance agents. That doesn't provide me tremendous value. What provides me tremendous value is going and watching people like Seth Godin, Tamsin, and all these other people speak, and then taking those insights and bringing them back to the insurance community. That provides me tremendous value.

Long-winded answer, but I hope that directly answered it.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah, dude. I'll tell you one thing. I did this video when things first fell apart. I made one called "The Nine Things I Learned Being Out of the Industry."

Zach Gould: I love that.

Ryan Hanley: One of the very first thoughts that hit me when I came back into this space from being away was: we're so insular. We're so insulated with these ideas. We start breathing our own air. We start thinking that just because we know, there's nothing new.

I absolutely love a good insurance conference because I love to hear what people are doing. But I agree with you. I think the future of the insurance industry is people like yourself who have done the work, who can speak the language, who understand how to talk insurance ease, starting to permeate new ideas, new thoughts, new concepts into the industry. I think that's just the future.

Last thing before I let you go. The Daily Dad. Do you know about the Daily Dad?

Zach Gould: No.

Ryan Hanley: It's a newsletter. It comes every day. It's just for dads. I'm sure they let women subscribe to it too, but the content is for dads. It's pretty good. If you just want dad content, little things like, "Hey, when your kid does this crazy thing, maybe you want to think about reacting this way instead of this way." Daily Dad. It's awesome. I get it every day. I read like half of them, but they're pretty good.

Zach Gould: I'll subscribe.

Ryan Hanley: I think that's kind of what I'm trying to put in my head. Most of the podcasts I listen to, most of what I'm trying to consume, is about being a better dad, being a better husband, being a better leader, being a better manager. The more I consume, it's like your input controls your output. I just feel like I can't fail because all I'm trying to do is be better to serve the people around me. What could I possibly do wrong?

Whereas go back six, seven years, all I was doing was consuming content on how to be a better networker, how to be a better salesperson, how to do objection resolution. Fantastic. I got in some awesome disagreements with my wife that I won. Wonderful. I was able to read those books and turn her mind into a pretzel and get her to do something she didn't want to do. Lovely. Good job, Zach.

Now I'm way more concerned on other things. Your input does control your output. I think it's true.

Zach Gould: My man, I'm just happy to be able to have these conversations with you. I enjoy our relationship immensely. I think the way that you go about business is something to be admired and something to be studied. I'm just glad that you would give us your time and come on here and be part of the show.

Ryan Hanley: I appreciate the offer anytime. I love what you're doing. I think you are constantly trying to better yourself. You are obsessed. You put that hashtag, that work, when you're walking the dog. People don't understand that really is work. You're not joking. You are serving your family. You're doing things over and over and over. Keep doing what you're doing. We all appreciate it. I love the show. I love your newsletters. It's good to have you back in action. You're the man, bro. Take it easy.

Zach Gould: Take it easy. Thank you.

[End of interview. Advertisement begins.]

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