--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. It's been about five weeks since I produced my last episode. That was the Matt and Amoli episode, which was tremendous. And if you haven't listened to that, I encourage you to go back and do so.
--:-- Today we have David Carruthers. Part of the reason why I have not been producing podcasts is that I have been grinding, getting Rogue Risk, my insurance agency, up off the ground. Things have been going okay. We're surviving. We're writing policies. I think we're doing so with an authority and a confidence that I probably wouldn't have if it wasn't for David Carruthers—having someone like David as a mentor to call on day in, day out, Facebook messaging him at 5:30 in the morning with different questions and ideas.
--:-- He's really helped me get to a place where we're writing accounts that are maybe not necessarily middle market yet, but certainly way bigger than things I was consistently writing even back in my Murray Group days. So I think he's helped me jump the line, and it is absolutely my great pleasure to bring him and some of his thoughts to you today.
--:-- With that, I just appreciate the hell out of you sticking with this podcast. I know there have been starts and stops because it flows along with my life. If you enjoy this show, all I ask is that you tell a friend, leave a rating and review, or subscribe if you haven't already. It helps more people hear the stories we tell here. I know you have a lot of choices in what you put in your earbuds, and I'm honored it would be my podcast. So with that, let's get on to David.
--:-- [Transition to interview]
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): All right, man. Thanks for coming on the show, dude. I appreciate you taking some time out. Now that you're killing commercial or teaching people how to kill commercial, I'm sure your days are a little more filled than they were before when you were just lounging around the pool down there.
--:-- Guest (David Carruthers): Yeah, back when I was four. It's crazy, man. It's been good. With all the stuff we've had going on, Killing Commercial has definitely taken off. It takes up a chunk of time, but the actual writing of business has not slowed down. Our April was better than last year, and that's just crazy to me. You don't feel it as much when you're not out calling on people in person and knocking on doors. It's essentially just coming into you virtually. It doesn't feel like you're writing as much as you are. Then I get to the end of the month and start running my numbers, and I'm like, holy cow, this has been a very quiet chunk of revenue. I'm not complaining about that at all.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Especially considering how great things are down there. I know COVID hasn't been as much of an issue for you guys as it has been up here in other parts of the country. The headlines make it seem like the world is on fire, but in many regards, it's still cruising on. I think a lot of people made the mistake of throwing the brakes on too hard when COVID hit. It's been interesting to see those who pushed through—they're way ahead now.
--:-- Guest (David Carruthers): It's interesting because you would think Florida would have been hit hard with shutdowns, and we have been to a certain degree, but it's all been related to tourism and hospitality. When you consider how many aging people we have down here who have retired, the amount of assisted living facilities—I would be concerned we'd be the epicenter. It just hasn't been the case. By and large, the majority of people have used their head. We've had some government intervention requiring shutdowns. I feel like an absolute sloth right now because Orange Theory hasn't been open for a month and a half, and it's opening next Friday, June 5th. The second I get in there, they'll probably have a defibrillator on standby for me.
--:-- Aside from that, it's been business as usual. Even the hospitality stuff—they've taken a hit, but a lot of people have supported those places with takeout or Uber Eats. It's not been as bad as what you guys have had in New York.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah. A huge takeaway for me from this experience, besides learning the ins and outs of starting an agency, has been the resiliency—and the counter to that, the lack of resiliency—that different individuals have. How do you talk people through the wide scope of perspectives? How do you navigate that and help people in both camps? Those who say, "Screw it, let's plow through, live free or die," and the other people who will only talk to you through three layers of plexiglass and a breathing tube. Up here, it's in your face every day, all day.
--:-- The one thing I've taken away from Killing Commercial is that the community has been tremendous. It's like, just keep going. Keep showing up. Keep going, regardless of how you feel. It's like working out—sometimes your best days are the days you did not want to get up and prospect. That pays tremendous dividends.
--:-- Guest (David Carruthers): My perspective on people reacting in different ways reminds me of when I got into the industry. I had just come out of retail and was working with a recruiter specific to insurance. I took a personality test, and the results came back. The lady called me and said, "Look, I'm just going to be honest with you. Your results didn't come back very good." I said, "How do you fail a personality test? Does that mean I have zero personality? Should I go jump off a bridge now?" She said, "No, it's just that these companies hire looking for people who fit in a certain box."
--:-- She said she had never seen somebody come through for an insurance producer's role who was literally equal in all four quadrants. I was within one or two points in each area. She said they're really looking for people to be drivers—you need to be heavily weighted over there. I said, "I would respectfully disagree. If you're equally weighted, it means you can relate to anyone at any time and be a chameleon, adapting to your environment." That has helped me in my career, and I think it'll help me be successful in this industry.
--:-- When I took the test, I answered honestly. I didn't try to game the system. Looking back 15-plus years later, I think that has helped me way more than it's hurt me. My book of business is a melting pot of personalities, ethnicities, and types of business. I have a very good relationship with each one because of the way I'm wired.
--:-- Regarding the community—people ask me how you're doing, Ryan. They say, "I know you're talking to him. I know you're working with him. Everybody's watching Hanley to see if he's going to succeed or fall on his face." I tell them two things. Number one, I've got his back. If he fails, that means I failed him, and that's just not going to happen. Number two, a lot of people are probably thinking, "This clown just opened an agency at the exact wrong time." I would agree if it was anybody other than Hanley. This is actually the perfect time for him to start his agency because he can't go out and get distracted by all the other crap. He's been forced to sit in isolation, really think through decisions, and make pragmatic decisions instead of decisions on the fly. He's been forced into his strength of creating and distributing content because that's one of the only things he can do right now. While everybody else is watching to see what happens, all they're watching is the dude building a rock-solid foundation for his empire. I believe that wholeheartedly.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah, also fuck all those people. The whole experience has been wild. It's been every bit the challenge from both a technical, tactical standpoint and an emotional standpoint. I think the emotional part is almost harder. You talk about technology—I've gotten a firsthand glimpse at what agency owners have been bitching about forever regarding how shitty most insurance technology is. It is poor. But it's not a handcuff. What I've learned is that if it's dealing with insurance, most likely it's not nice, easy, or dynamic. However, it is in no way a handcuff to doing business. Anyone who says, "The insurance is shitty, that's why I'm struggling," is lying. You're struggling because you're not doing what you need to do.
--:-- I've confirmed in my mind everything I've heard for so long. The roadblocks come down to: Do you do it? Do you show up? Like the 12-month solicitation calendar—do you create it, put people in it, make it your own, and work it? Or do you just keep watching the videos over and over and go, "Oh, that would be a cool thing to do"? It's like every other business. For me, whether it's the speaking business or the marketing business, it's: Do you show up and do the work, or do you not? There's nothing special about my game. I'm not even the best content creator. My superpower is that I am so dumb or rock-headed that I just keep showing up. That's 90% of the battle.
--:-- Guest (David Carruthers): That's the thing people don't realize. Our industry has not changed in a hundred years, and it's not going to change fundamentally in another hundred. Policies will probably change. New software products will come out. Perhaps personal lines and small commercial become even more commoditized and automated, competing with Google and Amazon. But at the end of the day, you still have to call on a certain number of people to get a certain number to meet with you and let you present. There's never going to be a magic wand that removes all of that.
--:-- I can give you the greatest platform in the world. I can teach you how I've been successful in middle market—how I research accounts, all the things we do. But at the end of the day, if all you do is watch the video, listen to the podcast, or read a blog post and don't take action, then all you've done is watch a video, listen to a podcast, or read a blog post. That's it. That frustrates me more than anything else about this industry. But it's also the thing I love most because I know that I take action, and anybody who does is ultimately going to be much more successful than the average person. We're an industry full of people who do what they need to do to get by. That's part of the problem. You can make a very comfortable living just doing what you need to do to get by. If you want to be an average player, come into the insurance industry. We have low barriers to entry and above-average income if all you want to do is show up.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): The good news is that's where the content game comes in. One of the things about Killing Commercial that's been reassuring to me is that when I first started talking to you, I knew—and for anyone listening, we haven't known each other that long, but we talk quite often. Whether that's because you feel obligated or not, I'll take it either way.
--:-- Guest (David Carruthers): It's funny, man. If I don't hear from you for like a day, I feel like, "All right, I got to talk Hanley off a ledge. Something's going on. I haven't heard from him yet. He hasn't asked me any questions today. He hasn't been active on social media. Let's go get his head cleared out and get him back focused."
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Well, the good news is lately I've been responding, "Hey, the problem is I got stuff coming in. I'm trying to put some premium on the books." It's been interesting. One of the things about Killing Commercial that was reassuring to me when I first got there was that I didn't really know what to expect. I assumed it would be hardcore sales tactics—get in, wedge in, question-answering sequences. But so much of it is about doing business the right way. It's so much more.
--:-- I just finished the 12-month solicitation calendar this morning. I finished the last email for the sequence. I already have people going through it. In it, you say something like 80% of agents focus on 20% of what matters, which is price. In your case, with Florida Risk Partners, you focus on the 80% of what matters that actually determines the 20% of price. I'm butchering the way you say it, but the idea is that so much of what we do in this industry is just, "Let me call your price. Let me call your price." If anything has been reassuring to me, it's that Killing Commercial matches up with my philosophy of doing what's right by people. I felt like I had found my tribe. I could never be someone who just quotes on price and tries to jack around with coverage to screw someone's rate up. That's just not in me. So it's been reassuring to surround myself with a group of people who feel the same way and are doing it at scale.
--:-- Guest (David Carruthers): The average insurance agent is an insurance agent. That's what they do. They're insurance salespeople. Their compensation is derived from the sale of a product. There's a large subset of agents out there who are very successful selling a product. That's the name of the game. The issue is we will always beat those people. Always. There's never a time they're going to come in with a product-focused approach and win. If they do, it's because we've done a horrible job of qualifying who we're talking to as a buyer, because they never would have fit our philosophy to begin with.
--:-- To clean up what you were talking about: if you look at the total cost of risk calculation, there are five sub-parts. Insurance premium is one of them. It's 20% of the formula. What agents do is focus on price and beating that down. The issue is there's a floor. You can only negotiate price so low. If you're not focusing on any of the other stuff or cleaning up the other things associated with total cost of risk, you're doing your client or prospect a disservice.
--:-- You were on the live call we did last week where I went off on a tirade about indirect costs. Indirect costs are a huge part of a client's total cost of risk. Agents don't talk about that. When you look at where their claims are, especially inside a guaranteed cost program, the client doesn't feel it. If you're paying guaranteed cost for workers' compensation and have $500,000 in claims, you don't feel it. The carrier pays those claims. You'll feel it when your mod comes out in a year or two through increased premiums. But even then, it's a small subset of what was actually paid out.
--:-- But the indirect costs associated with those claims are hard dollars leaving a company's financial statements. Agents don't talk about that. They don't understand it. They can't quantify it. The average business owner has never heard somebody talk to them like that before. As long as you can be articulate in presenting that message and give concrete examples of things that contribute to indirect costs of claims, you'll blow their mind. In that scenario, if a client has $500,000 in claims, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, indirect costs are anywhere between two and 20 times. Those indirect costs aren't eaten by the insurance carrier. They come directly from their financial statements. When you tell a business that had $500,000 in claims they had a million dollars in direct costs, it's a tough pill to swallow. They don't believe it until you start pointing out all the different things, and eventually they connect the dots.
--:-- That's where agents miss the boat more than anything else. They focus on a product. They don't focus on solving problems. If anybody's ever heard me speak, I say the same thing over and over again. That's the other thing that's frustrating about this industry. I can stand on a mountaintop and yell it, and I know 95% of people will keep doing things the way they always do. I call them lemmings because that's what they are—jumping off the side of the cliff.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I've been preaching content marketing for 12 years in the insurance industry. It changed my life as an agent. It took me from dropping off business cards in strip malls—I was not a value provider. Creating content, educating people on coverage, on how people should be served—all the things I did when I was in the Murray group—it changed my life. I now have people calling me who had already developed an appreciation for a different way of doing business. I've told that story for 10 years on stages, and still, nobody is doing it. I get pushback: "I don't have time. I don't have this." I can see how it's easy to make that excuse. Now that I'm doing every single function in an agency, I can see how it's easy. But I get up at 5 AM so I can do it. People don't want to do that.
--:-- I don't want this to just be hammering on other agents, because there are many very good agents. But what I've learned very quickly is that if you scattershot the industries you work in, if you don't pick a couple and go after them, you can't be successful. It's too hard to learn funeral homes versus cabinet makers versus retail versus LROs versus home and auto. It's impossible to be a value provider with that many different classes.
--:-- The other part I'm really interested to talk to you about is going deep with your underwriters. We had a conversation in that same Zoom about that. How often do you call your underwriters? I literally email my Cincinnati and Hanover underwriters just about every day. If I'm not on the phone with them every week, something's wrong. I'm emailing them questions about accounts, programs, whatever needs to be asked. It feels like we gloss over these things. We never take the time to go deep. I don't know how you can do business without these conversations.
--:-- Guest (David Carruthers): No, listen, man. There's an art to being really good in this industry. I'm a firm believer that I have to have a bunch of handlers. I'm all over the place. My life is far from perfect—professionally, personally, it's a train wreck. On the weekends, our house is a free-for-all. My professional life would be the same way if I didn't have people helping me stay on track. I have to schedule everything. My calendar—I live by it. If it doesn't make it to my calendar, there's a 100% chance I'm going to miss the meeting. Last week, I was walking out the door to a meeting I had booked, and apparently I had verbally agreed to meet with another guy at the same time. He's pulling into the office as I'm walking out. I'm like, "Crap, here we go again."
--:-- Content marketing is the same way. You and I haven't had this conversation because your content game is strong. But anybody else who comes into Killing Commercial, that's one of the first things I explain. You've got to make time for it. You have to practice what I'm telling you. Don't go to my website right now and look, because my blog game is weak on Florida Risk. We've been really busy. But that changed two months ago. When everything with COVID hit, I stepped back and said, "Here's what we're going to do. We're going to focus on everything we need from a content standpoint now, because I want to be running on the street." We looked at our 12 months. We said if we were going to have X number of blog posts, we need to get all of this done over the next month. That turned into two months. Here we are, two and a half months in, and we're continuing to do it.
--:-- The way I did it was I challenged my producers to find areas where they needed to learn, where they thought they were weak or wanted to specialize. The deal was simple: every single day during the work week by close of business, they are required to submit a blog post to me in a Word document. I've been accruing these for the last couple of months. Slowly but surely, I'm getting them into Grammarly, tightening them up, getting them ready to go out. We have so much content in our arsenal that we're going to be pushing out on an every-other-day basis going forward. It's only going to help.
--:-- I think agents don't realize we're at a digital age. If I were to give them any advice, the content piece is one. The other piece is making sure they're tight on their LinkedIn profile and it's completely built out. Anybody planning on meeting you in this day and age is going to do two things: they'll Google you and go to LinkedIn to see what they can learn, who you have in common as connections. If you don't think prospects are doing research on social media, you're kidding yourself. If you've got a garbage profile with a gray headshot icon, no work history, and no accolades, you're dead in the water. They're not even going to waste their time.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Everyone keeps talking about how video proposals and Zoom calls are the future of selling insurance. Maybe three years ago. I haven't sold a single policy via Zoom or video proposal. The reason is that if you go to roguerisk.com, you cannot hit a page on my site that doesn't have a video. I don't publish a page without a video attached. The reason I do that is because if you've seen me on video, you don't need to do a Zoom call. I'm not saying I'm anti-Zoom, but Zoom is a whole other layer of trying to get someone to connect—15 minutes of "Oh, my internet's bad" and choppy audio. Instead, I email a PDF, they pull it up on their screen, and we talk through it on the phone.
--:-- I sold a home and auto policy belly-to-belly yesterday. It was amazing to shake someone's hand again and talk across their kitchen table. The guy lived in my neighborhood. You can COVID shame me all you want, but I had a conversation in person with another human, answered his questions, and it was amazing. I love to sell insurance that way. If you do the things—have a well-done LinkedIn profile, video, content, images on your website—you can remove some of these extra layers that just add more things for people to think about. If I'm pitching someone on an insurance program, I don't want them also thinking about the Zoom connection, what they look like on camera, or whether their backdrop has a book that says something they don't want me to know.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): And these are all the things that are going through people's head. I just want them to be focused on the work. I haven't pushed that stuff at all. Maybe I'm wrong for that, but that's where I've been.
--:-- Guest (David Carruthers): No, I mean, we haven't really done much with Zoom outside of webinars. The stuff we've done live has been more educational stuff.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Educational stuff is different, for sure.
--:-- Guest (David Carruthers): But I'm a big believer in video proposals in terms of the recorded ones, like the ones we have on Advisory. What I found is that you're non-intrusive at that point. It's really no different than sending them an email with the PDF, but you actually remove that layer of having to have the phone call for you to explain it, because you're doing a voiceover and walking them through it. They can watch it on their time.
--:-- It's crazy because I think we're so forced—again, it goes back to selling a product and not solving a problem. One of the biggest issues I see with newer producers when they come in from other industries is they're walking in and boom, boom, boom. They're constantly diagnosing all the issues for this person before they've ever talked to them. They know, "Oh, we need to get you this coverage or that coverage," instead of taking it from a different perspective and asking the open-ended question. "Hey, I noticed through the review that you didn't send over a Director's and Officer's policy. Is that something that just got left out, or have you not contemplated that in the past?" Then let them tell you why it wasn't there. Don't just assume it's not. Maybe they have been educated and chose not to buy it. You end up doing yourself a disservice.
--:-- I'm a huge fan of people doing a ton of research before they go in, but then not allowing that research to cloud how they approach the meeting. You can't go in assuming everything you've read online or researched is 100% accurate. Use it to formulate your questions. Use it to qualify the answers you get back, then redirect to validate whether what you found was right or wasn't right, and move on from it.
--:-- With quote vids, for me, it was a mental block. I'm used to doing exactly what you said. I want to go in, put on a suit and tie, shake somebody's hand, look them in the eye, thank them for the business. I had a hard time doing that with quote vids because you're not doing that. You're not going in and doing the things we've been brought up doing. Once I got it mentally through my head that you have to meet people with information where they want to receive it, not where you think they should receive it, then it was done. I just made up my mind. We're doing quote vids going forward.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I have never, in the entire existence that we have had a personal lines division, done a single quote presentation or anything that wasn't video. In the entire time I've had my personal lines division, we never meet these people in person. They never come to my office. We don't go to their place. They are 100% of the time done in video quotes. We get massive feedback from people who love it. They love the fact that they get an email with the link. We push the same message out to text with the link. They click on it, use their email to log in, and it's done. They love that. It's an ease of doing business. That's why it's not been hard for us to pivot with COVID, because we already had it. Quote vids was the future three years ago. It's not the future anymore. It's now. If you're not doing it, you're already too late.
--:-- Guest (David Carruthers): I've had so many people ask me, "Should I use this vendor or Advisory Evolved?" I'm like, "Advisory Evolved." Then they're like, "Wow." I'm like, "Quote vids, Advisory Evolved. Just don't make this decision hard for yourself. Put this one on the rack and move forward. That technology is going to help you."
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): It's been so interesting for me coming back into this. I've been so busy, I haven't been able to do a lot of podcasts, so I haven't talked about it as much. Things I've learned about myself—I definitely love when I'm selling personal lines. For some reason, I love sitting across the kitchen table from someone. I don't know why that is. Maybe it's because 90% of the policies I sold when I was with the Murray Group were across someone's kitchen table. I used to stack seven, eight, 15, 30 appointments. I would drive to homes throughout the capital region and just sell home and autos at people's houses.
--:-- Guest (David Carruthers): Did you have a background in Kirby vacuum cleaners prior?
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Oh, dude, I could tell you where to take a dump in the capital region. I knew all the cleanest bathrooms. It was the best. My buddies would text me like, "Hey, I'm out in Burnt Hills. I'm hung up. Where's the best place?" I'm like, "Oh, go down Route 50. There's this Duncan. Not the first Duncan, the second Duncan. That's the clean one."
--:-- But breaking some of those habits—I agree with your point. If this guy doesn't have a computer or email, he wants me to come and sit at his house.
--:-- Guest (David Carruthers): Exactly.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I think it plays both ways. My whole point is you've got to meet people where they want to be at. That is the key. I've got a guy I was quoting right before we jumped on this call who works for Facebook. He lives down on Long Island. One, I can't go there. That's a four-hour drive for me. Two, he doesn't want me to spend all that time on the phone with him. He's a busy dude. He's got a family. He's going to get a quote vid. Finish it up, package it up, quote vid it, boom, send it to him. He's going to be happy as hell. The key is being like Bruce Lee—be like water. Fill the cup that's in front of you. That's how you get it done.
--:-- All right, I have a couple other questions I want to ask you real quick. What has it been like? You have this process. You've trained producers to do this process. What made you say, "I want to start teaching people my process for attack"? Was it that you had gotten a number of questions? Because this is a lot of work for you. This is a big undertaking. It's a paid program to be part of a group, but you probably could have made more if you had taken that same time and just doubled into selling insurance. What got you to start teaching this program?
--:-- Guest (David Carruthers): It's interesting, man. It's really two reasons. The first is because of how I hire people and get people from outside the industry, specifically in production. I had to get my process documented on video so that when people come in, I can just have them run through the process instead of me repeating it over and over. The way we're working right now, I've got six to eight producers that are going to land in the next 12 to 18 months. I was trying to figure out a way to get everything into an e-learning, basically Killing Commercial the way it's set up right now.
--:-- The other thing is, when I was at Innovation in San Diego back in January, I had so many people who had come to listen to me speak come up and ask, "Hey, can you consult with my agency? Do you work with producers?" My biggest issue has always been, I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be the guy putting out the new course with the new video deal. We've got mutual friends who have done this and been very successful. Everything with me, almost everything is mental. I've got to mentally accept things before I can push forward and do them. I basically got to the point where I said, "I've got to do this anyway because it's best for my agency, so I might as well do it. I'm not going to be competing with people all over the country because I have no interest in that. I have plenty of business where I'm at in my wheelhouse. I'll make it available to other agents across the country because I think they'll benefit from it."
--:-- That's really what it was. The monetization piece is nice. I probably could do way more and make a lot more money even doing that, just because of the level of personal involvement I have with everybody when they need it. But it really was to monetize my training program at a rate that was painful but not punitive. That's what I tell everybody. It's got to be painful enough that only serious agencies are in. You've seen behind the curtain, so you get it. The real angle of Killing Commercial has nothing to do with training people how to sell. That's a component of it, but it's building the foundation. The real glue for Killing is the social community. We're in the process of getting user engagement and having agents from all over the country who have geographic territories exclusive to them when they get into the program, being able to collaborate. When I have calls with people who want to get into the program, I tell them this is all about collaboration without competition. That's something special that's difficult to build, but it's special and powerful.
--:-- My end game and what I really see from it is taking the power of the community we're building. Yes, I need these people to understand how to sell middle market because they have to be effective at that and bring premium on the books. I need them to understand the process and do it the way we teach it because I know how much that affects retention. I need them to write profitable business. The real experiment is going to be how powerful that community becomes over two years. Two to three years down the road, we've got a really rock-solid group of people. We can use that power. We can leverage vendor pricing. We can leverage program business with carriers. We can leverage commissions. We could go to carriers and see if we could put together a master contract with sub agencies for everybody who doesn't have direct appointments right now and get better commission and profit sharing.
--:-- My end game has always been, let's go launch a captive. Let's take an aggregated amount of premium from the community with critical mass. Everybody who wants to participate can come in, and we can create a partnership and launch a captive for all the business we're writing. I think that's a huge deal, and we'll build significant wealth for everybody involved if it's done right. But at the surface, yeah, let's go learn how to sell middle market insurance.
--:-- Here's the first thing I tell everybody: I will always be an agent first. I will always own my agency because you don't have credibility if you're not. If I hadn't sold a single policy in 10 or 15 years and I'm out coaching agents on how to sell in the middle market today, what credibility do I have? I'm out actually doing what I'm telling them to do.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah, I know. And it keeps you from picking up the phone when I call you. That pisses me off.
--:-- Guest (David Carruthers): Every once in a while, man.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Hey, you've got that 5:30 Facebook message on lockdown, though. You shouldn't need to call me during the day.
--:-- Guest (David Carruthers): That's right. I get all my questions out early when I'm hunched over my computer at 5 a.m.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Well, man, I'm sure we will do this again. I just wanted to get you back on the show and expose you to the audience a little bit and what you have going on. At this point, I feel like my recommendation of something has probably lost weight considering I'm just a little podunk startup agency owner now and not this big marketing guy. But I have found the work you do and the philosophy behind Killing Commercial to be exactly what I've needed to be successful. Though I haven't landed what you would consider a middle market account yet—it's only been eight weeks during COVID—I will say my confidence, even going after some of the larger small commercial accounts, like some of these $20,000 to $40,000 premium business accounts, my confidence is way up. I feel like I'm coming from a position of power. The last time I sold, I told you this, a $1,500 to $2,000 account, I'd be shaken. "I hope this guy buys." It has really catapulted me forward.
--:-- I just had a conversation with Greg Hogan, who's part of the group, who's a cold-blooded killer. He's two and a half hours south of me. We're talking all things shop, giving him all my secrets. We're two and a half hours from each other in the same state, so technically we could be competitors. But because we're in the group, we trust each other. We know what's going on. It's all good. We're helping each other grow. I do think Killing is a special community. I'm very honored to be a part of it. I think you're doing really good work, man. I appreciate the fact that it's extra, and I think it's good stuff.
--:-- Guest (David Carruthers): I'm excited, man. We're in the process of wrapping up the development of the mobile app. Once the mobile app comes out, user engagement will go through the roof. It's not lost on me right now that we're web-based, and that can be a little cumbersome for people who are on the fly. Once we're wrapped up, that's the one missing component. I'm pumped to have that come out in the next month or two. It'll be exciting.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): The social aspect of the community is very cool. I'm probably in there two or three times a week, but a lot of times I'm connecting with dudes from the thing on Facebook Messenger. That part of it is really dynamic.
--:-- All right, man. I'll let you go. I know it's Friday. I just wanted to get you out in front of my audience and expose people to the idea that you can be new, you can be in the business for a long time—this idea that you can go out and target middle market businesses and be a true value provider to them is within all of our reach. I hadn't sold a policy for almost six years, and I'm walking around feeling very confident with a solid idea for the value I can provide. I know I'm going to make mistakes as I get into it, but I would not be as confident in my business today if I wasn't part of this community. I just wanted to say thank you for that.
--:-- Guest (David Carruthers): Awesome, man. We're happy to have you in there. I can tell you firsthand, you're in a group with a bunch of alphas, whether they're male or female. They're alphas. They're not necessarily obnoxiously alpha, but I can assure you they're type A and drivers. To that point, the fact that we've become fast friends has pushed my content game to the next level. I do owe you a thank you for that. Whether you realize it or not, with all the stuff I tell you—"Just keep pushing, keep pushing, keep pushing"—part of that is selfishly me saying, "I need Hanley to keep doing this, because when I see him do it, it's going to force me to do that next video or get out of bed early and do that next blog post." I want to be on that level of content distribution, and I'm capable of doing it. It's just like people who need a personal trainer sometimes. I know what I need to do to go to the gym. I want the accountability, whether it's formal or informal. Thank you for that. It's definitely helped me a lot over the last little bit, just getting some processes dialed in.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley]: Don't think I'm just going to cede that to you either. Just be aware of that.
--:-- Guest (David Carruthers): All right, bro.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Hey, I appreciate you, everyone. KillingCommercial.com. Check it out. Connect with David on LinkedIn. You'll find him. Real deal Holyfield. Absolutely been a pleasure, man. Be good.
--:-- Guest (David Carruthers): Absolutely, man. Have a great weekend. Thank you. I'm out.
--:-- [Outro music begins]
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