--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. Today we have what ended up being one of my all-time favorite conversations I've ever had on this podcast, maybe conversations I've ever had on any of the podcasts that I've done. And that's actually saying something.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Today's guest is Scott Howell. He is the founder, president, CEO, whatever, of iProtect Insurance Services down in Alabama. Scott is a 10-year veteran of Nationwide, who, as many of you probably know, Nationwide just recently, as of July 1st, moved all their captive agents to independent, and Scott was one of those. He's now living that independent life. I guess that was the crux of bringing him on, that transition in his agency's history. I found it to be interesting. We didn't end up talking about that really at all. I mean, a little bit we did, and it's interesting. But we went so many places, so deep down into running an agency, the emotional aspect of it, the mental, the leadership aspect of it, dealing with people, dealing with clients. I think you're just going to love this episode.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Here's what I'm going to ask you. If you love this episode, please share it. Scott is a tremendous guy. Beyond just being an agency owner, he also runs one of the best podcasts in our industry with Bradley Flowers. They co-host the Insurance Guys podcast. So share this episode. If you're not subscribed, if you enjoy what I do, you will love what the Insurance Guys do as well. Make sure you jump over and subscribe to their podcast as well. Connect with Scott on LinkedIn because as an independent agency owner, I think this is going to take Scott to a whole other level.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think he's a really deep dude. I think he's goofy and crazy and says just the banana shit that people from Alabama say. But he's also incredibly deep. That's the fun side of him. And then he has this whole other deep side, which is the business owner. We really got into that side and I loved it. I just loved it. So I hope you love it too. I hope you will subscribe to this show, if you're not already. You can also subscribe by email. Just type in ryanhanley.com right on top. You see a little box, punch your email in there.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But before we get there, I want to give a quick shout out to our longtime sponsor, Tarmika. Tarmika makes this show happen. There are expenses that come along with running a podcast. I am always going to give this content to you for free as I have for forever. Every podcast I've ever done has been free to you, the listeners, and it will always be that way. I'm never going the subscription model. I say that and I mean it because I'm willing to work with sponsors and I'm willing to do the work of having a sponsor. But when it comes to Tarmika, it's not really work. I've talked about them a lot. You're probably sick of hearing about them and that's okay. I think they're a great tool. If you haven't got a demo yet, take the time to get a demo. I'm not saying you need to subscribe to Tarmika. Now might not be the right time for you. But know what they're about. Go get the demo. Go to T-A-R-M-I-K-A dot com, Tarmika dot com. Get the demo. Know what it's about. If you're into small commercial, I think there's something there. So check out Tarmika.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I appreciate you for listening to this show. I love you for listening to this show. Let's get on to Scott.
--:-- [Transition to interview]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You are a tough man to get on a Zoom call. Tell you what, I was on the wrong thing. I clicked the button on my calendar and it took me to a Google Hangout thing.
--:-- Scott Howell: Yeah, that's my fault. For some reason, because I use Google Calendar, and now they've added this feature that you can't turn off where when you send an invite, it automatically adds a Google meeting. You have to turn that off and turn Zoom on every time or it automatically sends the Google one and I just forgot to do that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh, man, don't worry about that. Don't worry about that.
--:-- Scott Howell: Yeah, I'm good, though. As long as you want to go today, I'm good. I'm pretty much free. I mean, I've got people calling and the usual bullshit, but that's fine. We'll deal with them later.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: No, it's good, man. Hey, I appreciate you coming on the show. I'm super excited to chat. I want to hear all about what's going on with your agency.
--:-- Scott Howell: Yeah, dude, it's exciting. It's exciting to—we were chatting the other day when we both—I think I was the one, I had something come up or whatever. One of us had to reschedule and we were chatting a little bit. Dude, I'm so excited to hear about your move to independent. The fun stuff, the stuff that's trouble. I want to learn more. I'm just interested in what you have going on.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, you know, like we talked about the other day, it's easy to talk about, but once you get into the thick of it, and you know this, you've been dealing with this now for a while too. It's just—I call it an up at dawn, pride swallowing siege. Have you ever been in a situation, and I know you have, Ryan, in your life where you're changing seasons of your life? Maybe we need to start the podcast and talk about this, or maybe this is the podcast and I don't even know it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, we're rolling, I mean.
--:-- Scott Howell: Okay, okay. Well, you and I both have been at times in our life where you can almost feel inside you that something big is about to change. Sometimes you know it. You kind of know it the day you graduate high school. You're like, something big's about to happen. Same thing in college, same thing with changes in occupation, changes in marital status, when your kids are born, all that stuff. You kind of feel something big's about to happen.
--:-- Scott Howell: I think as it relates to you and I specifically, and a lot of other people listening to this podcast right now—and by the way, I am a huge fan of your podcast. I listen to your podcast a lot more than you know I do.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, thank you. That's very nice.
--:-- Scott Howell: I enjoy your podcast so much because a lot of times, you're a little bit like Joe Rogan in that you're very, very talented. You're a five-tool player. You can write. You can blog. You're great on video. You ask great questions. You have people on your podcast sometimes that are kind of outside the mainstream. I'll be honest with you, those are the ones I enjoy the most. Sometimes you just get tired of listening to this insurance shit all the time. You've had people on there that were writers and other things. That's something I really enjoy with the Insurance Guys podcast, when we have someone that is kind of outside of insurance but has a very compelling story or a topic that I can deep dive into and get outside of just the norm. I love that stuff, and you do that a lot. I really enjoy that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, thank you. I will say that I love talking to insurance people. I love talking about insurance. I love getting into tactics. For me, my goal in podcasting is if in whatever time period I have—usually episodes are 40 minutes to an hour. If they're less than 40 minutes, then I'm doing something wrong usually. But if I can find one question that dials into exactly what that person actually wants to talk about, then that's my job. That's what I see my job as.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Sometimes I'll have someone on for a reason, but I can tell as soon as they get on the podcast, that's not what they actually want to talk about. Something happened in their day or something happened that week that just has them dialed in, that gets their hairs on their back standing up a little bit, and you can see it in the way they—or you hear it in their voice. That's really what I'm going for.
--:-- Scott Howell: Right.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I have people that will email me and be like, "Hey, can you send me some bullets? What we're going to talk about?" I will send them bullets. But I also put a little caveat on the end that's like, "And there's a decent chance I'm not going to ask you one of these questions. So just be prepared for that."
--:-- Scott Howell: You had a podcast one time, I guess it was about six months ago. Maybe it was a year ago. I don't remember the time frame, but the lady came on. You guys are talking and I love this so much. Somehow you two kind of—and this goes back to exactly what you're saying right now—you spun off and you started having this fairly deep conversation about the benefits and the negatives of nuclear power. Do you remember that?
--:-- Scott Howell: That might have been the podcast of yours I've enjoyed the most. Sitting there listening to you two go back and forth and discuss that, I was like, man, this is the content I'm after right here. I'm very pro-nuclear power.
--:-- Scott Howell: I do the same thing. I get guests on the show, and I'm a little bit different. I know what the topic is that Bradley has picked out for me to talk about, but every single time I do a podcast, one of the strengths that I have—and I tell people this all the time—I am horrible at 98% of things. Horrible. But one of the strengths I have is this ability to intently listen to what someone says. Every single podcast I get on, somebody will say something and I go, "Hold on. Stop, stop right there. I want to talk about that. I want to talk about that more." You're right. A lot of times it doesn't even have anything to do with insurance, or it'll be something we never even expected to talk about when we got on the show. I feel you on that, man.
--:-- Scott Howell: Getting back to what we're doing here—we can small talk all you want, but the deep dive into what we're doing—I started out with Nationwide back in 2010 as a scratch agent. I was expecting to sell more home and auto insurance. It's kind of like a good psychologist that will tell you that you really need to pay attention to your kids as they're growing up. A lot of times you can look back at when they were little or middle school, high school age, and kind of see the things they were interested in or their personality. It can help them with what they want to do when they become an adult.
--:-- Scott Howell: For me, when I look back on it, I'm like, man, I was selling the shit out of commercial insurance when I was with State Farm my first two years in the business. Nobody in Birmingham, Alabama was selling commercial insurance with State Farm. It was just home auto, home auto, home auto. So I was always kind of commercial oriented.
--:-- Scott Howell: About five years ago, Nationwide came out—the powers that be came out and they said, "Hey, we're going to give you guys this." This was the first shot across the bow right here. They said, "Hey, we're going to give you guys a letter of authority to sell commercial insurance through whoever you want to sell it through." For Nationwide agents, they were like, "Okay." Most Nationwide agents were not commercial oriented at that time. The tricky thing about that was nobody would give you a contract to sell commercial because companies like Travelers would say, "Oh yeah, we'll give you a contract, Scott, but you gotta get a personalized contract with us too. We're not just going to do commercial." So it was a double-edged sword there. But we did start brokering a lot of business through NGAs and stuff like that.
--:-- Scott Howell: I've been calling myself a hybrid independent for five years. When this thing all came down about two years ago and Nationwide publicly announced that they were going to send everybody independent, for me personally, it was very much like Br'er Rabbit getting thrown in the briar patch. I was like, "Okay." A lot of people had some consternation about that and they were very, "I don't know about this." But I was more of the mindset that I was already independent. It wasn't quite as shook as I think a lot of people were.
--:-- Scott Howell: But as I told you on the phone the other day, it's real easy to talk about stuff. But then there comes a time when you have to do it. For me, I just let it all go. I let everybody else worry about the contracts for a year and a half. But I set a deadline for March the 1st. On March the 1st, that was when we were going to put all of our effort into the transition to independent, because I knew it was probably going to take the better part of four, five, six months to get everything set up the way we wanted. I knew how much work was going to be there.
--:-- Scott Howell: Then I had something happen to me that I don't know if you'd call it a God thing. I don't know if it was just a stroke of lightning. I don't know if it's clean living. I don't know what to call it. But on March the 1st, which was the date that we started really getting into this pandemic stuff, I had an old friend of mine. I'd known him for about 10 years here in Huntsville. He was a Farmers principal agent when I started with Nationwide. His agency was on one side of the strip center and my agency was on the other. We were the anchor tenants in the strip center. He's Farmers, I'm Nationwide. We had known each other and become friends even though we were competitors in the exact same place.
--:-- Scott Howell: I've always said I don't care who sells insurance against me or how far away they are. I've always tried my best to keep a good relationship with agents around me as best I could. But he left Farmers when it went independent with a pretty big independent agency for about four or five years and did some other stuff. March 1st, he called me and he said, "Hey, I'm looking for a job. Some stuff's happened. Just life. Things with a boss he couldn't get along with." You don't know anything about that, do you?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I do. I know I do.
--:-- Scott Howell: That guy has been beyond instrumental because of what I didn't know about him until he got in here. Now remember, we're smack dab in the middle of changing everything we do. I told somebody the other day, "The only thing that hasn't changed in our agency is the phone number and the name on the door." That's the only thing that hasn't changed.
--:-- Scott Howell: I did not know that he was as technically and technology savvy as he was, to the point of being 10 steps beyond me in technology. Almost literally like a gift from God. He comes in. First of all, he's new, so he wants to make a great impression. Now, we've got $6 million of premium that we've got to move from the very antiquated Nationwide CRM system over to what we chose, which was Hawksoft, which so far has been a fantastic decision on our part.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hawksoft is silent. They are. They're really good.
--:-- Scott Howell: For us, it was a great decision because of the mix of business we have. I knew that my people were going to need a lot of handholding. Hawksoft is—I can't imagine there being a better company out there for handholding.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That's the rep on them. Their customer service is tremendous. Unbelievable.
--:-- Scott Howell: Unbelievable. But having Justin to spearhead all that and be able to manipulate spreadsheets and all the different technologies we're using now where he's able to integrate all this kind of stuff and Zapier Connect, just all of it. My wife looked at me the other night. We were sitting on our back porch and she goes, "What in the hell would you have done if Justin Miller hadn't come along in March?" I said, "Hell, I don't know what I would have done." It would have gotten done, but it wouldn't be what it is now in terms of our integrations and what we're able to do and all the things that happened. It was literally just a blessing that he came along. I think we would have been okay. I would have probably worked an extra hundred hours more than I did and still probably couldn't have done it like somebody that's that technology savvy can do it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Good people flow to good people, man. I was talking to an insurtech the other day. They just wanted to—I try to take at least one of these calls a week. Just one half hour, someone wants to talk about something. I'm cool with it. I don't mean that like it's a burden. I do this on purpose. With the agency, I used to take more. I used to do three, but with the agency, I just can't take more than one. This insurtech company reached out to me and they said, "How do we make an impact with independent insurance agents?" I said, "So many technologists have been dicks to IAs and really the insurance industry for so long that a good start would just be a good person. This is such a small industry. If you're a dick, you get found out super quick."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I had an amazing conversation—which I will not talk about the details of—with Chefie from Coverager yesterday. We talked for an hour. We were supposed to only talk for 10 minutes and we ended up talking for an hour. We were discussing companies that had risen and fallen since 2016, since the insurtech revolution. I said you can pin every one of those companies. Look at the leader. Was the leader a good guy or a good woman? A good person who gave and was thoughtful and considerate and understood that the IA channel isn't broken, it just needs to be optimized? They don't start their pitch with, "Look at all the shit that you're doing wrong." They help people. They're part of the community. They engage.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Look at those companies. All of those companies are still here. Look at all the companies that are gone. They're the companies who treated people poorly, who acted like IAs didn't know what they were doing, who gave people a hard time, who played the Steve Jobs, Silicon Valley emperor thing, which just doesn't play in our industry. You have to be a good person. It's too small. When you are, it's amazing what happens. It's absolutely amazing.
--:-- Scott Howell: You can just see it. Look at all the people in our circle of influence. The reason they got there isn't because any of us are more intelligent than anyone else. There's certainly some smart people. There's just good people who give and share and care. I'm with you. You call it clean living. I find that hard to believe knowing you the little bit that I do, but you are a good guy. So that doesn't make sense to me.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I could not agree with you more. I could sit here and rattle off names. Not just the leader, although that's important too because that culture flows down from the top, but then you got people representing that leader. The Nick Barry's of Rocket Referrals. I could name a hundred of them that are representative of that company. You are so right about one other fact. It is a very small fraternity of people who have a platform like you and I have. Word gets out pretty quickly when somebody's not doing what they say they're going to do, or calls to chew your ass, or makes you sign some long-term contract.
--:-- Scott Howell: I'm going to go one step further than that, even if just their product's not very good. Because I'll call Ryan Hanley or Bradley Flowers or a hundred different people and they'll say, "Don't do it. Don't do it. I tried that and this is what happened," or "I've heard that this is what's going to happen." Usually it's true.
--:-- Scott Howell: You know what the flip side to that is, man? Let's say your product's not where you envision it to be, but it's right here right now. But you're a good person and you're transparent and you're honest. You say, "Look, this is where we want to be. We want to be way up here. And right now we're kind of 40% of the way there, but we're working to get there." That transparency and honesty, I know our community of agents, the broad will buy into that. They'll go, "Okay, I see the vision. I want to be part of it. I get that you're only 40% of the way there and that's okay."
--:-- Scott Howell: What absolutely drives me nuts is they're 40% of the way there but they sell you the 100% vision without telling you that they're only 40% of the way there. Then you get in and you look around and you're like, "What the fuck? What is this? This isn't what you sold." That's how people get in trouble.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I learned so many lessons about technologists in general. Someone asked me the other day, "Why Tarmika and not Semsee? Why did I choose Tarmika and not Semsee or Bold Penguin or any of these other commercial lines raters?" I said, "One, I don't know enough about Semsee. I know him to be a good guy and I think they have a good product, so it's nothing against them. Bold Penguin is more enterprise. I spent time there. I have some history there. I don't really see any other real players in the market right now."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The thing about Tarmika to me is not that off the shelf right now it's everything that Raghav and Geetha wanted to be. No, they're still building it. It works. Don't get me wrong. I use it every day. But it's not 100% of where they want it to be. They're building and releasing things all the time. I spent 10 minutes with Raghav. I spent 10 minutes with him the first time in person. I said, "Here's a guy I can trust off the shelf." He said, "Look, Ryan, we have four carriers that we don't have yet." At the time, they have Nationwide now, but they didn't then. He's like, "We don't have Hartford yet. We don't have Travelers." Both of those I know are signed contracts. If they're not, they're coming. I know they're heavily talking to him. Hartford may even already be done. He was talking about one more, Markel. He's like, "These are our next four. Once we get these, we widen up."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: He was so transparent. He always is on the podcast. He was on Cass's podcast. Has he been on your guys' yet?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That level of transparency and understanding of our channel said to me, "I'm going to ride the ups and downs of a new technology being built because I believe that this human and the other humans like Chris Lane and Geetha, his technology co-founder, I believe that they give a shit about us. They care about us." Rocket Referrals, exact same way. Chris Langell at Advisory Evolved, exact same way. Things break, things work, things don't work.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: AgencyBloc, which I just made the move to last week. I moved to AgencyBloc. When they made the Lightspeed Voice integration, that kind of set my bells off in my head that it's time to make the move. They had a little power out, a little glitch late at night and only a few agents caught it, but they did because they were working late. They immediately fixed it, put all the things out, apologized for the issue. The way they handled it—I'm not describing it well—William Shaw, the whole team, they care about us. They care. It's not being perfect. It's giving a shit. That's why I make decisions.
--:-- Scott Howell: Let me go one step deeper with that. You're 100% right. You can take that same methodology and culture and approach to what companies like Tarmika and some of these other companies that you and I both deal with on the technology side, and you can apply that same methodology and belief system or value structure to an insurance agency.
--:-- Scott Howell: I think that's one of my strong points. I ain't afraid to call somebody. Did it this morning. Had my girls call me at 8:45 this morning and start telling me about this policyholder that was so upset about this claim. He had just called. His wife was in a wreck Monday. Hadn't heard from anybody with claims as of now. I said, "Put me on a three-way call with him right now. I want to talk to him."
--:-- Scott Howell: In my agency, we have what's called the Code Red Button. The Code Red Button is when a customer, a client, a member—whatever you want to call them—calls the office. It doesn't matter who they talk to, but my people can hear in their voice that they are upset, that they are confused, that they start with, "I haven't heard from anybody since Tuesday," whatever it is. The Code Red Button is we get Scott involved immediately. Call Scott or text Scott, and we get on the phone together, our group or the person that's been talked to, and we discuss what's happened so far. Then I immediately call that person.
--:-- Scott Howell: I believe it's Grant Cardone that said this. He said, "Don't ever give problems oxygen." The faster you can get to them, the better off you are. I called this guy this morning at 8:30 and I said, "Let me explain. First thing I want to say to you is I want to profusely apologize that you filed a claim on Monday and here we are Friday and you haven't heard from anybody." We talked for like 30 minutes. I basically said, "We're not here to take money from you. We're not here because of premium dollars. The only reason that this insurance agency exists—" This is exactly what I told them. "Every single human being that picks up that phone and calls my agency has a problem. Unless they're picking the phone up to call us because they want to quote. And if they're doing that, they're probably doing that because they have a problem with somebody else."
--:-- Scott Howell: I told Harley in my office before we called him, I said, "Harley, let me explain something to you. These people that call us all have problems. We've got four insurance agents in this office who are focused on selling insurance. Everybody else here, including Scott, especially Scott, is only here to solve problems. Whether that's can't figure out my billing account, need to make a payment, had a claim, looked on my schedule and one of my policies—every single phone call is a problem. How well my people are able to communicate to that person and help them solve that problem is going to be the long tail metric of how big this agency can get."
--:-- Scott Howell: What we do is when the problem's big enough—meaning Mr. Johnson's just called and chewed somebody's ass and said, "I am not happy. I am not happy"—the first thing they do, the first thing they're supposed to do, and they better do it or they're going to get their ass chewed worse than they've ever had their ass chewed, is pick up the phone, call Scott, and get him involved.
--:-- Scott Howell: Have you ever seen the movie Pulp Fiction where they kill the guy in the car and they're worried and they go to his buddy's house?
--:-- Scott Howell: He's like, "Dude, y'all can't stay here." And they call—I believe his name was Marcus—and he says, "Hey, y'all don't worry about it, I'm sending the wolf. I'm the wolf. I'm the guy that gets the call every time when it gets to that point." And you can hear it in people's voice. And so my job, once I get on the phone, is to do the same thing that Rogoff does to you with Tarmaca—to be open and honest and admit that somebody somewhere has made a mistake. And I do a lot of listening.
--:-- Scott Howell: First thing I tell people when I get on the phone with them most of the time is I say, "Tell me what happened." And then I just shut up, and I sit there and I listen for about five minutes while they tell me this problem. Then I repeat the problem back to them. So, Ryan, what I'm hearing you say right now is that you had an adjustment investor come out to your house and instead of getting on the roof he pulled his pants off and smeared butter all over his ass, poured chicken wings on his head, and ran around your house three times yelling "I'm not paying this claim." Is that what happened? And every time they go, "Thank god somebody understands what's going on. Yes, Scott, that's exactly what happened."
--:-- Scott Howell: So I think that same methodology you're talking about with these technology people—being open and honest and saying, "Hey Ryan, man, we really want you to be a part of this. Let me tell you where we are right now and where we want to be six months from now"—I think that just goes a long way. And then you got that gut thing in your gut, it's like, "Man, this dude's just a good dude. Yeah, just a good guy." I feel the same way with carriers.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You get such a good feeling from some. And this is one of the things that I feel like—this has been, starting this agency has been a very odd experience for me. And by odd, I don't mean negative, just odd. Because I knew this industry so well. I've been in it for 15 years in so many different capacities, looked at it from so many different angles, sat at so many different tables—from tables full of CSRs talking about certain issues to claims adjusters to principals to Fortune top 50 agency principals. I've been in all these things, heard all these different things. And then to attack it as a principal where you're making the decisions, your eyes are open to it—it's like all that stuff came through filters and now I'm getting the unfiltered version. It's a very odd sensation because you feel like you understand something and then you get the full hose, the throttle is completely open.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: One of the areas that I've found to be very interesting is in the carriers, and in particular the carrier relationships. You can have very intimate relationships with very large carriers. That's possible. You can also have very distant and disassociated relationships with carriers that you would otherwise think would be your best friend. That is a very interesting thing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I said this to my Hanover rep the other day because I was having some issues with their technology. They still make you quote in Internet Explorer. I said to both my underwriter and everybody I talked to there, every time I talked to them, I said, "You lose business from me because I have to log into Internet Explorer—not even Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer—to pull business with you." That's a piece of technology that was outdated in 2014. There are times when I'll be in the middle of the quote and the screen will just go blank. And the answer will be, "We'll call us and then we just reset it from our end and we'll get it back." And I'm like, "That's great." For big pieces of business that I know are the right fit for you, I'm going to work through that process. But those thousand dollar BOPs, you just don't get them. I can't wait till I can put them with you. You don't get them today because it takes me extra work.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Here's my point: they are receptive and open and are trying to help in different ways and understand that that's a limitation of theirs and that they're working on it. He even said, "Look, our update that's coming out at the beginning of next year is going to fix that problem. How do we get you some more business in the door?" So we started talking about co-op programs. What it made me feel was I've been heard. Here's a limitation that this particular carrier that I actually really like has, and I'm willing to work through that limitation because they acknowledge the problem and then they try to find some ways to say, "Hey, we get that frustrates you. Are there some things that we can do to help you through this time until we can get you to where you want to be?" That's so meaningful.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think sometimes it gets lost in the velocity in which we all do business, but it's a big freaking deal what carrier you put a piece of business with. It's a really big deal. I think once you've been in the game for a long time, you take that for granted. I know I did at the Murray Group. I just took it for granted where I put business. But being an agency owner—and I think everyone listening can agree, and obviously this is new to me, which is why I'm sharing it—where I put a piece of business means a lot. It means a lot to me. I'm considering it every time. It's not just, "Oh, they're the cheapest, let's go there." It's, "How do I interact with these guys? How do they interact with me?"
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So I think this idea of showing that you give a shit—it really is the currency of our entire ecosystem and probably of life. But certainly of this space. It just isn't transactional. It feels transactional, but I think that's the surface level. What really gets business done and where relationships really happen is below that. It's, "Do they care or not? Are they willing to work with me? Are they willing to help me and listen to me?" We can't gloss over that fact.
--:-- Scott Howell: There's so many things you could address that are subsets of what you just said. First and foremost, I always try to look at people that come to us as a prospect before they're a client. And I think about them as my mom or dad or my sister. And I think, are we representing carriers—and I'm talking about standard home and auto and commercial insurance—are we representing carriers that, when something happens—because again, we don't make our money when we take premium from people, we make our money when we solve those problems, i.e., your house just burned down, you just had a three-car accident—I always think, am I representing carriers that are the kind of people, the kind of company that I would want to put my mom and dad with or my sister with?
--:-- Scott Howell: We had a carrier that's one of the biggest—probably top five or six carriers in the United States—that as of right now we've decided that we are not going to represent. We had an opportunity to get a contract with them, but we felt as a group of my team members and business partners, we just thought, "I've heard a lot of not so good things about this carrier." We just really don't feel confident putting people with them when they come to us.
--:-- Scott Howell: As another subset of that, I have an acquaintance of mine. He's one of the largest agents in the country. Back in the late 1980s, he was probably a three or four million dollar agency back then. But unlike all of his contemporaries that had come in with him here in North Alabama, he figured out that in order for him to reach the level that he wanted to reach, he was going to have to make all these trips that Nationwide Insurance provided. Everybody else really didn't care about that. They're like, "Well, if we make it great, if we don't, great." His thought process was, "If I can make all these big trips that Nationwide has, that gives me one week to build relationships with the people at Nationwide who are running Nationwide. The board members, the CEO, the CFO, all those people. I can spend time with them, go on small trips within the trip with them, get to know them, get cell phone numbers."
--:-- Scott Howell: Over the course of about the last 25 or 30 years, he built those types of relationships and parlayed that into getting just about whatever he wants. The more I'm around bigger agencies and see guys that have that mindset, the more I realize how important it is to have those personal relationships with these people that are running these companies. Then when things happen or you have a problem or you need something or you want to start a program, now you've got somebody's cell phone number that you can pick up and call and say, "Steve, man, what's happening? I haven't seen you since we were down in Costa Rica last year. What's been going on? Hey listen, I've got something that I want to run by you and see what you think about it." That's just invaluable.
--:-- Scott Howell: And then the third leg of that is—I can't even begin to tell people, especially if you're in commercial insurance, how important those relationships are with your underwriters. If you've got a premier underwriter or you're writing enough business where you've got a single underwriter, not a pool, but a single underwriter—man, if you're in good graces with them and they like you and you like them, that can just be like pouring gasoline on a fire.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm going to go back to Hanover. It's another reason why I like them. I have my commercial underwriter. Her name is Cindy. She's tremendous. I had an agent from South Carolina call me up and say, "Hey Ryan, I have this client. They have people in seven states. One of those states is an admin-only work from home person, but she lives in Hyde Park, New York. The carrier that I wrote this account with will write comp in every state that they're in except for New York. So I need a split policy with just New York. Can you help me?"
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So I reach out. First of all, the systems auto-decline because it's a split account. So I had to reach out to the underwriters. I reach out to five or six. "No, we won't do that." "No, we won't do that." "No, we won't do that." Finally I get to Hanover and I email my Hanover rep. I said, "Hey Cindy, I have an agent I'm doing a favor for." We're talking about like $275 in premium here. There's no money to be made by anybody. But this is what we do for each other as independent agents—we help each other. I said, "Look, I know you don't do this. I know you don't really want to do it, but I'm helping another agent. It would mean a lot to me. It's a woman in her home doing admin work in Hyde Park. There's no risk here." Boom. She says, "You know what, Ryan, we'll do it. Write it up. Put it in. All good."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That's the stupidest little thing, but you know what that does? That gets them every opportunity that I can get them moving forward. Because I now know that she'll listen to me and not go, "Nope, that doesn't fit my little box, no thank you, rejected." She's going to go, "Hey, this is a stupid little thing that I can do for one of my agents." She's coming from that abundance mindset. By giving me this little bit of help, this stupid little thing where I'm doing a favor for someone else, that enamors me to her to say, "I'm going to get you more business. I'm going to find you more business. I'm going to make sure that you guys are getting chances at accounts because I appreciate that you were willing to help me help that guy down in South Carolina." Those are those little things.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: There's another carrier that I took on that I was so excited to get. So excited. I was like, "Man, this is going to be great." I had Cincy, Hanover, and Chubb, and I needed one more—I was missing a segment in the New York market because New York is wacky. In other states you may not understand, but New York is a wacky state. The way certain carriers just don't write certain things—it's really odd. It's because New York is an over-regulated liberal haven. So I took this carrier on. I'm so excited. I haven't been able to write a single thing with them. I've quoted probably 30 accounts easily, maybe more. And you get this generic templated declination. You try to respond. And it's this ridiculous phone tree to get to your underwriter—which underwriter do I have this time? They have no idea who I am.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm sitting here going, "I'm just going to stop quoting with these guys." I get these declines and then you have no ability to explain or say, "Hey, you know..." I was quoting a commercial auto the other day. The guy's got this little crane on the back. It's a tiny little crane, just to help him move because he's a plumber and he's got a couple of materials to get in the back of the truck. That's all it is. He's not towing anybody. I have a picture of it. This crane is like an out-of-the-box crane, not some big custom thing. So I quote the account and I get a declination like an hour later. I email back and they're like, "Yeah, we don't write cranes." I said, "Well, can you look at the picture that I attached? Because when you look at the picture, this isn't really like a crane-crane. This is more just like an arm that helps the guy get some of his heavier tools onto the back of his truck." "Nope, decline." And I'm just like, "Fuck you. Thanks for nothing." This is a perfectly fine account. The guy hasn't had an auto claim in 10 years. And you can't even open your eyes a little bit to see that this account is worth writing. The lack of humanity in it just made me go, "I don't care anymore. I'm ready to give up on you. This isn't the type of relationship that I'm looking for, and you're certainly not helping me because I haven't been able to write anything with them."
--:-- Scott Howell: As an independent agent, you're always going to put business with carriers that make it easy to do business with them. You're always going to put business with carriers whose underwriter answers the phone and seems to want to help regardless of what the situation is. And you can also kind of tell where that carrier is in the cycle of insurance based on how much of that "nope, not doing it, nope, can't do it, nope" versus "yeah, let me see what I can do." There's probably a couple of things going on there when you see stuff like that happen.
--:-- Scott Howell: When we go to write a piece of business and we put it with three different companies that we think might be a good fit, it's usually the same underwriters that we work with that are aggressive, that are wanting to get business in the door. We had an underwriter with a major carrier. We had been appointed with them in February or March and we'd quoted something like 25 mid-market accounts with this underwriter. We had a great relationship with the marketing manager that represented this very large carrier. We quoted 25 mid-market accounts—pretty damn big accounts. All 25 came back no for some reason.
--:-- Scott Howell: One of the funny things that we do here is when we get an underwriter assigned to us on commercial, we'll go Facebook stalk them and see who they are. As soon as we got this underwriter, my big commercial producer sends me this text message with a picture of this person. And below the picture it said, "Oh shit, we're in trouble." Because you could just tell from the Facebook profile picture of this person that they were not about writing any business. You just see it.
--:-- Scott Howell: So June 1st, Tuesday afternoon at 4 o'clock, this marketing manager for this carrier calls me and says, "Hey, can you jump on a call tomorrow with your guys and your agency? I need to talk to you for a minute." I said, "Oh shit, what did we do now?" He says, "No, no, no, you're not in trouble. I need to talk to you." So we all jump on a call at 10 o'clock the next morning. He goes, "Hey guys, I just want to let you know, your mid-market underwriter that you had, that you hadn't placed any business with but you put well over a half million dollars in premium that you quoted, she's retiring July 1st. And this is who she's going to be replaced with."
--:-- Scott Howell: Today's July 17th as we sit here and talk, and I think we probably put well over $200,000 with them. Same accounts, same types of accounts. Same company, same everything, different underwriter. Young, aggressive. This goes to your point. This is why you have to have a relationship with your underwriters, especially in commercial. If you're not nurturing that relationship, you never realize what's going on. You knew what was going on there. She's looking at her book of business going, "For me to get my max retirement bonus, I need to have a loss ratio that is in this range, and I'm not taking on any accounts that could hose me up in these last six months." That's perfectly fine for her to do that. But if you're not on top of that, you don't know.
--:-- Scott Howell: I completely agree with you that this is a huge part of the game. Obviously, some of the seasoned commercial agents who've been around for a while know this. But for anybody who's coming up, I'm kind of relearning this, I guess you could say to a certain extent. It's become so obvious in me quoting every piece of business myself. There are carriers I go to who I know are going to listen. Even if the answer is no, it's going to be a thoughtful listen. They're going to say, "Hey, there's a couple of things I'm uncomfortable with. Here they are so that I understand better for the next time." But the companies that just flat-out no, or I get some automated email in tiny little font that says, "Sorry, we're declining," and then to get to that underwriter I have to go through a 17-trigger phone tree—no, thank you.
--:-- Scott Howell: We have a saying here in our agency. Every time we sell a policy—and I'm speaking of commercial now because personal lines is just so bastardized now. I can remember 10 years ago, Kristin Clavon—I'll never forget her—was our premier personal lines underwriter with Nationwide. My god, that woman probably gave me 100 exceptions while she was a personal lines underwriter. But now I don't know of any carrier that we represent that we have a dedicated underwriter. It's always "hit six to go to the underwriting team" and then it's just potluck what you get. But we have a saying on the commercial side: every time you sell a commercial policy, you've got two sales to make. You got to sell the client, and then you got to sell the underwriter. Not always, especially not on the real small stuff, but especially the bigger you get—anything that's got hair on it—you definitely got two sales to make.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So let me ask you. You've been at this since around March, I think. How's everything going on your side of the house? Where are you guys at right now with what you're doing?
--:-- Scott Howell: I'm doing okay. I am happy with my performance in some regards. I would give myself—I don't know if I'd give myself any A's. I think I have some solid B-pluses on some aspects of the business.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What's your biggest weakness as an agent?
--:-- Scott Howell: Terrible. I have an immense fear of cold calling. I have to like Metallica, Rage Against the Machine up to cold call. And I hate that about myself because in person, I would have no fear. Over the phone, there's something about not being able to see the person, not knowing exactly who I'm going to talk to. I just—it's this weird thing about me. I become a whole different person. It's so weird. And I have to cold call. My agency is set up for commercial. It's not set up for personal. I can write it, I have some good carriers on personal, but my strength—that's why I went out and got Cincinnati, why I went out and got Chubb, why I went out and got Hanover. I have Liberty, and I have Travelers and Hartford through Indium. So I have everybody that I can need. I even have a couple of mutuals here in the Northeast. This is a little different from where you are. In the Northeast, there's mutuals and domestics everywhere. Tons of them.
--:-- Scott Howell: I lost an account the other day—not lost, but I wrote the comp, but the package and the auto—every other carrier that I quoted in Vermont was twice the price of this domestic mutual. Because that's what they can do. They see an account and they're like, "We're willing to take 3% margin on this account so that we can keep it." It was like a $50,000 account premium. I was coming in at $70,000 or $80,000 with everybody else. That's just what they can do. So there's some nuance there with the mutuals.
--:-- Scott Howell: My point in saying that is I have the carriers, I have the markets, I have the education, I have the background, I know what to say. But over the phone, I turn into a completely different person. I need to overcome it. So I'm working hard at that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That's really hard too, Ryan, because one of the big things that I've found about cold calling that I personally believe is true is when you cold call someone, people are like dogs. They can smell fear and they can smell indecision or someone not being confident, even on the telephone. And so when you are that way, it's probably harder for you to gain altitude until you kind of get into that phone call, if they will stay on the phone with you. I'm sure knowing you, the longer you talk and you're very knowledgeable, you know what you're doing, they probably pick up on that. But not having that confidence...
--:-- Scott Howell: You're 100% right. If I can get through the first two minutes, I'm having some success. This sounds like a stupid problem, right? I can create videos, I can create podcasts, I can get blog posts in my sleep. But the first two minutes of a cold call are like fear. I can stand up in front of a stage in front of 2,000 people and not even break a sweat. I just feel confident and comfortable. But two minutes on the phone not knowing who I'm talking to, not knowing that person's name, whoever the gatekeeper is—that keeps me from picking up the phone as much as I should.
--:-- Scott Howell: I'm working on that. David Carothers is helping me. Mick Hunt is helping me—who's tremendous, I'm going to get him on a podcast eventually. And CAS is helping me a little bit with some stuff. He's starting to do some of this, so we're sharing notes a little bit. We talk like once a week. But cold calling right now in New York has to be done. You can't go to businesses, you just can't. So you have to cold call. I'm using Zywave to do some cold drip marketing. I love Zywave.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I love Zywave. I would love to implement it in our agency, and it's not out of the realm of possibility. I've dabbled with them for a couple of years now. We've talked about doing it. I can see some opportunities even in our niche, which is property investors, habitational. They don't really have a big need for workers comp, but I can still see some things within Zywave that could be very beneficial. We can talk about that offline if you want.
--:-- Scott Howell: Zywave is the second largest investment in my agency that I've made, and I do not regret it in any regard. MyWave Connect is an incredible tool. ModMaster is great if you have people who have experienced mod issues. It's a tremendous tool. But if you're not in the workers comp space, you don't need ModMaster. Broker Briefcase, PNC Broker Briefcase, and MyWave Connect—just those two tools. If they have employees, those are game changers. Absolute game changers. The content on the front end from an education perspective, and then the resources, tools, and content on the backend with MyWave Connect—just those two tools together. It really is. You're putting walls up around your clients and you're providing them with services that no one else is providing them because most Zywave users don't even take advantage of MyWave Connect.
--:-- Scott Howell: I have 22 clients, 12 of which are commercial clients. Those 12 clients, I have them all on MyWave Connect. I've already started to get people going, "Oh shit, what is this, man? What is this total cost of risk tool? Can you walk me through it?" Ding, ding, ding, ding. Once I walk them through these tools, they're never going to leave. You've never gotten this from anybody else. They're having someone talk to them about things that no insurance professional ever talked to them about before.
--:-- Scott Howell: I'm using Better Agency. I haven't actually implemented this yet, but I'll have an onboarding thing. So when someone becomes a new commercial client, I can onboard them into MyWave Connect, let them know what it is, send them some videos, some walkthroughs and stuff. These are the kind of tools. When I talk about—I'm actually writing an article for the Big I of Illinois right now on the human optimized agency—this idea of optimizing your humans, this is what it's about. These are the tools that are getting us there. Do they all talk together perfectly? No. We'll get there someday. It doesn't matter. But thinking a little deeper about your clients and providing them with some of this stuff—it is a game changer.
--:-- Scott Howell: I obviously am a talker and I'm a nerd. You put those two things together and I have heard from 12 out of 12 clients: "No one has ever talked to me about insurance like this before." 12 out of 12. That's $500 BOPs all the way up to $40,000 package policies, which would be the span of clients that I've written so far. 12 out of 12.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That's because you're not selling insurance. You're literally getting with those people, building a relationship, and showing them through communicating with them how you can help their business be better. Instead of just calling and saying, "Hey, I'm Scott Howell and we'd love to quote your insurance."
--:-- Scott Howell: I was talking to somebody else who's in sales that isn't in insurance about my cold calling issue. I said, "The issue is all I want to do is add value. That's my goal. I care about the person."
--:-- Scott Howell: I probably care too much. My wife says this all the time. She's like, "Part of your issue with sales is that you care too much." And I don't mean that as a humble brag. It is a crutch because it doesn't allow me to be aggressive enough at times to actually get the person to make the move that is going to help them. I'm almost too value-added service. I think there's a happy medium, and I swing way too far one way. We all have to be self-aware of our pros and cons.
--:-- I think there are a lot of agencies who are value providers, but they're caught in the sell, sell, sell mentality. Their problem is they just need to swing the other way. It's not that they can't be value providers. They've just been conditioned over so many years to just sell at all costs, do whatever you gotta do. For them, they have to swing back the other way a little bit. It's that middle ground where I think the success lies.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Which industry do you sell that kind of mirrors your personality the most?
--:-- Scott Howell: My disposition tends to be contractors. It's just because I curse and I don't give a shit. It's very hard to offend me. So when you call one of these contractors and they're telling you how insurance works, some people get mad about that. I just laugh because I'm like, "All right, bro. I've been doing this for 15 years. You've been digging holes for 15 years. I wouldn't tell you how to dig a hole." I can say that to a contractor because I don't give a shit if they come right back at me. It doesn't matter to me. I'm not good with uppity people. Even though I'm in a white collar job, I'm not super good with white collar people. I wasn't raised that way.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: From your perspective of the cold calling issues you had, it sounds to me like it's just that fear of the unknown from the time you dial the number and the phone's ringing. I can see you once they answer and y'all exchange pleasantries, you settle down and you're fine. It's more that something in your mind psychologically is like, "You're not in control at that moment. You don't know what's going to happen. You don't know who's going to pick up the phone on the other end." But it doesn't sound to me like you have problems once you really get into the conversation because you are so knowledgeable. You probably know more than 90 percent of people out there about what you're doing.
--:-- Scott Howell: Dude, it's the classic. I am letting a tiny little fear dictate an action. James Clear, I don't know if you know him, he wrote *Atomic Habits*. It's a tremendous book. He's also an awesome tweeter. His tweets are little nuggets that just get your brain right. They're not inspirational bullshit. It's just a way to think. He basically said, "Take today and do things that will help you 10 years from now, not 10 minutes from now."
--:-- I saw that I didn't do any cold calling today because Fridays are service days for the most part. I took a screen capture of it and set a task for myself to have that pop up on Monday. The reason was because I am currently allowing a 10-second fear to keep me from doing an activity that will pay enormous dividends 10 years from now. I feel guilt and disgust with myself for allowing that to happen. Sometimes talking about it like this is my therapy. So next time we talk, you're gonna be like, "Hanley, you mother-effer, did you make your phone calls?" And if I say no, I give you permission to either virtually or physically bitch slap me, depending on what venue we're currently in.
--:-- Scott Howell: I'll say a couple things about it. Number one, you are not the Lone Ranger. If you asked most insurance agents, meaning agency staff and associate agents, if you took a poll, I guarantee you 90% of the people you polled would say they absolutely hate cold calling. It's like phones are barbed wire. That is not an unusual problem to have because people in general don't like rejection. It goes back to control and not knowing how the conversation is going to go.
--:-- What I always tell myself when I cold call somebody is, "What's the worst thing that could happen?" Is he going to come over here and whip my ass? No, that is not going to happen. The absolute worst possible outcome would be him or her getting on the phone and being like, "Hey Scott, we're good. We love our insurance agent. We've been with them for a long time, and we're just not interested." That's pretty much the worst thing that's going to happen. Maybe they hang up on you. Big freaking deal.
--:-- I had a saying a long time ago when I was cold calling every day, all day long. I would say, "Some will, some won't. God bless who's next." I don't care if you're the best insurance agent in the world. There will be people that you call and maybe you caught them on a bad day, or maybe they just don't have time. Salespeople call you and I all the time. A lot of times I don't have time to talk to them and I may come off as being rude, but it's just like, "Hey man, I don't have time to talk right now. I got 16 different things going on." It's psychology. You just have to tell yourself, "What's the worst thing that could possibly happen?" and then be okay with that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I like your saying there. A quote from *Bull Durham* came to my mind: "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains." That's one of my favorite quotes of all time because it is so true.
--:-- It's funny talking to you about this right now. I feel silly because this is a silly problem. You have more experience and you're more intelligent than to allow this silly fear to stop you from growing an agency that is vitally important to the success of my family and to my own mental state. I started this agency to become my own man because I was sick of being someone else's man. I'm letting that issue control me. I'm doing all this crazy shit—I can spend an hour telling you about all the crazy shit I've done to get business that isn't the most direct way, which is pick up the phone and ask somebody if they need help. It's just nuts. Telling you that I feel silly, but I just got to do the work.
--:-- Scott Howell: I'll tell you one way I got over it. I used to have to make 150 phone calls a day. I was in this building called Target Marketing for a publishing company. When I started, you had to stay in Target Marketing until the guy that ran it, a former Navy veteran who is still a friend of mine, would tell the powers that be that you were ready to come out and get your big boy job. Before then, you'd go down to this metal butler building, probably almost 100 yards long, with rows and rows of cubicles. People on headsets calling all day. They'd keep up with success ratio, buying ratio, stuff like that.
--:-- I had some buddies that started with me. We were good friends and we were all crazy as hell. About three of us got together and came up with this thing where we would bet each other on who could call a major corporation like Texaco or Amazon and get the CEO on the phone. We'd start with the gatekeeper and we'd all pile up and watch each other do this. Sometimes some gatekeeper for Johnson & Johnson's medical supply division would give us the cell phone number of the freaking CEO. Then you'd call him on his cell phone and you really didn't even know what to say to the guy. The whole object of the game was to just get this dude's cell phone and call him and be like, "Hey bro, what's up?" Every time you get one of these guys on their cell phone, they'd be like, "How in the hell did you get my cell phone number?" We would just die laughing because we're in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, talking to the CEO of Texaco Corporation. It was freaking priceless. Stuff like that gets you over the hump of calling the dude that runs an auto supply store.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I love this stuff. So here's what I'm going to tell you. I could talk to you for another hour. We're going to do this again. I got to go pick up my kids. I understand. But I've enjoyed this so much. I said at the beginning, I don't know where I'm going, and I had no idea we'd get to where we got, but I'm glad we did. I appreciate you. I appreciate the way you approach business.
--:-- I want to share just a quick 30-second story before we get off the phone. It was the end of March, early April. I got a phone number from Alabama with two big red X's on it because us northerners don't like to pick up phone calls from southerners. You never know what you crazy a-holes are going to say. But I did it. Unbeknownst to all my northern training, I hear this yahoo on the phone and he says, "How you doing?" I said, "I'm doing okay." He said, "Look man, whatever you need. If you need me to fly up to Albany and make cold calls for you, I will. If you need me to get Bradley or a whole army of guys, I'll do that. If you need me to max out my credit cards and send you cash in the mail, I'll do that. Whatever you need, you call me and we'll get it done because you can't fail and you're not going to fail. You have people who will help you not fail."
--:-- I don't know that you'll ever know how much that phone call meant to me at that moment. I was in the middle of a dark time. I just started an agency. At that time, both COVID and social unrest and all this craziness was going on. It felt like the phone was never going to ring and I was going to be a failure. I was scared out of my mind. That brief call, it couldn't have lasted 10 minutes. That was a bright shining light in a time when I needed it. You just never know how much that phone call meant to me. I wanted to share publicly how much I appreciated it. I will never forget it. I will forever be indebted to you from the standpoint of how much caring and thought that meant to me at the time.
--:-- Scott Howell: I'm not going to get emotional, or at least I'm going to try not to. I'll say this. I was driving down the road that day and I was thinking about you. I was thinking about how hard it was when I started my journey in the insurance business in general. Like you, I've started over a couple of times. I got to thinking about it and I thought, "Ryan has provided so much value and given so much of himself to this industry and the people in this industry." I just didn't think there was any way that we—and when I say we, I mean all these guys that are doing podcasting and the quote-unquote thought leaders and anti-thought leaders in the industry—that we could let you fail. I felt like if for some reason you failed, then we were all going to fail. It was selfish, I guess, in one way, because I thought, "He's one of us. We cannot let him fail."
--:-- That still stands today. Whatever you need from me, whatever it doesn't matter what it is, pick up the phone and call me because I love you and you mean a lot to me, a lot more than you know. On behalf of all the independent insurance agents out there over the years where you've done videos and you've put out content and you've done all the stuff that you've done for them, free of charge, we can't let you fail in this. So whatever we have to do is what we're going to do.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I do this only because I love this industry. I love the people. I probably said this before and I don't mean to over-dramatize it, but the place that I sit in my life today—thankfully I made a very good decision in who I married, I have a tremendous partner—besides that decision, being part of this industry is the second best decision I ever made in my life. It has taken me from living out in the middle of nowhere, barely scraping by with two parents who did the best they could but we never had anything more than the basics, to living a life where I can provide my children the life that we provide them today. That is because of the insurance industry and because of the people in the insurance industry. Not just the business, but the people—good and bad, right and wrong, fights and friends, and everything we've done together as a space. I feel indebted to this industry and to the people of this industry.
--:-- To get that note from you, man, it was super meaningful. I purposefully held off sharing that because I wanted to have you on the show when I did. You talked before about clean living. I certainly don't live clean. But that was a moment when I needed a phone call like that, and it came. I just appreciate it.
--:-- Scott Howell: Well, you're welcome. I told Bradley when you left the industry, whenever it was, I said, "He'll be back." I said, "Ryan is passionate about the insurance industry and it comes through on his videos, on his blogs, on the things he writes. He loves the insurance industry." You're probably a lot like me. I don't necessarily love selling insurance every day and dealing with claims and dumbasses that call me for stuff where I'm like, "You just burned your house down with freaking bottle rockets? Are you freaking kidding me?" But I do love the industry and I love the people.
--:-- I never felt like you were going to be able to stay away from it. I openly said that. I saw that passion in the videos and the things you did. I thought, "Man, wherever his place is in the industry, whatever little part or big part he plays, he'll be back because he loves it and he loves the people here." I think you've made a wise decision doing what you've done. If I had to bet a hundred thousand dollars in poker chips, I would bet them on you to be successful. You're going to be.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, thank you, man.
--:-- Scott Howell: All right. With that, brother, a little sappy ending there. Love you. Thank you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I love you. Thank you. Thank you.
--:-- [Closing advertisement]
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