RHS 052 - Wessly Anderson with the Definitive Guide to Virtual Assistants

Ryan Hanley: Hey guys, before we get started, I just want to let you know I'm switching up the intro and outro music a little bit. You want to know why? Because I can.

[Intro music plays]

Ryan Hanley: In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we have someone who I absolutely just enjoy every time I get a chance to have a conversation, not just because he's incredibly smart or knows insurance. I mean, those things are kind of a given, but it's how deep he takes in life.

At any given time, he's willing to have a deeper conversation about not just the tactical nature of our business, but the emotional side of it, the psychological side of it. And as if you've been listening to this show for any period of time, you know that I love to go to those places. So Wesley Anderson is just an absolute monster in our space. Not just because he runs a great agency, but he is also developing Agency VA, the premier VA platform, virtual assistant platform in our industry. And with his partner, Ben, the two of them are just dominating the space and doing incredible things.

This podcast is created and distributed by Agency VA. And even though they're not a sponsor of the show, Wes is just a tremendous friend of mine and someone I respect a ton. I can't speak highly enough about what Agency VA does. And if you're thinking about virtual assistants, I just don't know where else you would go besides Agency VA. But this is not a commercial for them. Like I said, they're not a sponsor. You're going to hear enough about them. I wanted to talk to Wes about VAs because VAs are something that I'm considering for Rogue Risk, and it's always fun to have those conversations. But you're just going to enjoy this one. Wes is just a tremendous dude and super smart and thinks about this business in a way that most of us do not because of his technical background as a developer. And I think you're really going to love this one.

Before we get there, I want to give a big shout out to my people at Tarmica. Tarmica, changing the game, making small commercial profitable for independent agencies. It is a tool that I absolutely think that you need to know about. And you may be saying to yourself, "But Ryan, you always talk about Tarmica. What's so special about them?" Guys, they simply make small commercial profitable. That's what they do. They allow you to single point entry information that provides multiple quotes back for a risk, allowing you to compare some of the biggest and baddest carriers in the industry.

You don't have to go into multiple systems. You don't have to learn all the nuances between the various platforms. This one asked for this piece of information and this carrier doesn't ask for this piece of information and this carrier forces me to use this web browser and this carrier only works between hours of 10 and 3 on Tuesdays. And you can't remember all that stuff. The amount of time and efficiency lost by logging into multiple carrier systems, it's just silly, guys. That is the way of the past. Tarmica is the future.

Whether you get on the platform right now or not, I encourage you to know what it's doing, to have what they're doing in your mind space because I guarantee sometime in the next 24 to 36 months, you will have Tarmica in your office. It will be the default commercial lines rater in your office. And it's just a good time to get ahead of that if you can. So go to T-A-R-M-I-K-A dot com, Tarmica dot com. Get your demos today. Tell Chris Lane that Hanley sent you and maybe he'll hook you up. I don't know, maybe he'll just be nice to you. I don't have any special discounts. I just think it's a bomb platform and I think you're going to do well if you bring it into your agency and you use it and you build some systems around it. Maybe you build some automations that go along with that with Better Agency and you hook it up on your Advisory Wall website. I don't know, I'm getting crazy now. But go to T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com today.

All right, let's get on to Wes.

Ryan Hanley: Wow, the legend. What up, dog?

Wesley Anderson: Legend. There he is. Look at him. How you doing, man?

Ryan Hanley: I'm good, dude. I'm good. I mean, I'm trying to grow an agency by myself and figure stuff out and not chase rabbits and do all kinds of different stuff. But yeah, otherwise I'm good, dude. Life is good. What about you?

Wesley Anderson: I'm well. Bro, it's just as COVID does this. It seems like business is just a hair more aggressive following it. So it's been just exceptional. While the world right now is in retreat and hunker down and bunker down mode, we're in all out attack. We're just... and political agendas and how people feel aside, we're traveling everywhere. I'm going at it more aggressively than I probably ever have because the opportunity is greater than I've ever seen. So it's been phenomenal.

Ryan Hanley: Dude, and what's been funny for me, and there's so much stuff that I want to talk to you about, and I have no idea even... I think you would ask me for an agenda, and I just went like, "Ha, ha, ha."

Wesley Anderson: Yeah, I can send you something, but there's no way that's what we follow.

Ryan Hanley: What's been so interesting for me, and it's something that I've been dealing with even right before I jumped on this call, I was talking with a client portal vendor of sorts, I guess you could say. Because the agency technology struggle is real. There are so many gaps in it. And then there's so many places where things need to get done. I can only imagine, when I fantasize, when I'm sitting here by myself in my basement... not that kind of fantasy, you sick bastard.

Wesley Anderson: Sounds good.

Ryan Hanley: I mean, you're like, "Geez, I just love another set of hands. I'd love someone to do this thing. God, if I could just have someone doing these three things, I could have an extra hour to get out in front of clients or work with some of my renewing clients to help them expand their product portfolio or do risk reviews." And who do you hire? That's what I'm saying. Like, who do you hire?

I saw three different dudes that I thought would be good potential producers in the future, right? And I really, in the next six months, my goal is to hire both someone to start doing more sales and to have someone helping on the service side. That's my goal is in six months to have enough revenue where I can bring those people in. And you start talking to people about commercial insurance and insurance in general and sales in particular and their eyes cross and they don't want to think about it. So here's three guys that seem pretty hardworking, pretty dialed in, and getting them to listen was tough. So now I'm looking for people who are already inclined. That's a difficult situation because half of them have all this legacy baggage. It is just tough.

Wesley Anderson: This whole piece of it is very, very tough. Some of the greatest factors that are causing deficiencies in hiring is how many people are graduating college and saying, "Where's the next insurance agency I can go just blow up and make work?" I'll tell you zero. There are zero that are putting in their plan of action or for their future a life inside insurance. And I feel like we've done a lot of that as an industry to ourselves. It's not a desirable place to be for up and comers. They just don't want to do it.

So then you're left with, do I hire someone in my local city that has experience, by which I'm more than likely going to get an enemy if I poach them from this agency? Now you have an enemy. Or do I hire someone with some extreme amount of baggage and I overlook it and train and hope that they figure this out? Well, the answer is they won't. It's fairly bleak. And I think that we're not trending to where that's going to change anytime soon. In fact, I think it'll get more aggressive such that it's going to be harder to find good talent.

Ryan Hanley: I see that. I do think that there's hope for bringing people into the space. I see some of the younger agency owners and high performing producers, I think they're starting to step out into social media a little more, talk about their life a little more, maybe just show their life in Instagram pictures and stuff, not in a braggadocious way. Just people picture... if you're constantly posting pictures from the lake, you're doing something right. Someone is eventually going to look at your career and go, "Man, I wonder what that guy does for a living that he seems to be balling out on the lake all the time."

I'm hoping that eventually that starts to change, that people see the lifestyle that a well-done insurance career can provide to you. And then we can start to pull in fresh talent. But I agree, the sexiness has not been there. Now I do think we can change that. Some of the tools that are out there, the way people are talking about it, how hard people are starting to push. I see things like what David Carruthers is doing with Killing Commercial. Just the title of his platform, Killing Commercial, it sounds sexier. Like, "Yeah, I want to go crush some business. I want to sell some stuff." It breeds into that adrenaline rush, that macho-ness that good men and women salespeople and hard chargers want. You want a little bit of that.

So I think there's a lot of hope, but there are definitely days when it feels like I'm still triple entering that $125 renters policy into four different systems just so I can capture it. And I want to punch myself in the face.

Wesley Anderson: Well, I think you've used the word hope multiple times. And God, we could do a whole podcast. I can't remember who it was. It was Maya Angelou says hope and fear cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Invite one to stay. So I think in the insurance world and in the world in general, you get the fear mongers. Well, they don't have that hope. And fear is so contagious. We're seeing our country right now in this state of fear and decisions are being made on fear.

Now, when you switch and you have the hope that you suggested, hope is more powerful than fear, I would argue. And you have to have that hope in the industry, in the world, in everything that you're doing. Because once fear creeps in, you can't have the ball sitting there. There's not a balance of a little fear and a little hope. You have one or the other. It is a binary type feeling. You gotta have that hope or you can let fear rule you.

And there is hope inside insurance. You're spot on. But that hope is layered with hard work and it's layered with grit. And it's layered with a hope for a better day, which I have seen more in the past three years than I saw in the first 10 years of being in insurance. The pace is going quicker. I think that one of the positives, look at silver lining, have some hope. One of the positives of COVID is it's forced many business owners to think of the customer experience and where they're putting their energy. A lot of them had crazy amounts of energy inside the sexy office and "let's meet for a two hour review." And the clients are showing us, the world is showing us that we can still perform and be in a basement. We can still perform and provide an exceptional experience and not be inside that office. Because technology exists. The world's small. We got so much we can offer.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah, I completely agree with that. I also think that the business models are rapidly changing. I think there are legacy agencies that 10 years ago, if the world was the same, would probably be stagnating. And instead, I think you have the next generation being given a little more leeway to push into some spaces and to try some stuff because of COVID. The elder generation is looking at it going, "Well, I can't really say no to this piece of technology anymore because we can't sit in front of our clients. What are we going to do? We have to do something. We have to try something."

With some of the pieces of technology that I've talked about that I use here, like Tarmica and Better Agency and a few other things, I am getting calls. I've literally had to push my calls. We're doing this on a Tuesday, but that was just to accommodate your very busy schedule because you are such an important person to both me and to our community. But for everyone else, I had to push them all to Fridays because I simply can't get regular work done because people are asking questions and it's awesome.

I had an agency owner call me a couple of days ago, ask a couple of questions about Better Agency. And normally it would just be like, "Oh, is this going to help me?" But no, his questions were sophisticated. It was, "Can it do this? And I'm really trying to layer this in. And I tried this here and it didn't really work. And I want to make sure that I can do this." And the actual tool aside, just the idea that I feel like we're asking more sophisticated questions, we're thinking deeper about our businesses. And it's almost as if in some regards, it's reinvigorated the baby boomer generation to start to really engage in their business again. And that is a wonderful thing for us. Empowering those who come behind them, that's what this industry needs.

Wesley Anderson: Well, here's some cool stuff for you. Little things that we're seeing. For those that don't know, I co-founded a company called Agency VA. And at Agency VA, we're now at a couple hundred virtual assistants, which allows us to see under the curtain of best practices. So we're seeing those agencies that are just killing it and excelling. And an interesting trend that is incredibly powerful that is often overlooked is everyone takes their quiver of arrows and each weapon that they have. There was such a push for automation, which there should be. Better Agency, there's so many tools out there for automation. But a lot of people forgot about the phone.

One of the trends that we're seeing with some of the most successful agencies... I can think of five on the top of my tongue that are producing hundreds of thousands of premium per month in new commission in insurance sales. And all they're doing is the new arrow is nothing more than an old arrow. They're picking up the phone and they're actually using EverQuote, QuoteWizard, all these quote vendors that everyone, when you say anything on an internet forum about these, it's so funny to me how everyone just blasts them and says how garbage it is. Well, it's garbage to them because they didn't work it. They thought that on the first or the second call, they were going to close the business. Well, it's usually the eighth to the 12th call that something happens.

So what these agencies are doing, what we're seeing is they're loading up even the $5 old leads and they're having virtual assistants hit that and they're live transferring that to the agents after X amount of data is collected. And we have one agency, they have 11 virtual assistants. Each virtual assistant averages 27 live transfers per day. So they have flowing through their agency over 300 live transfers per day, of which their producers close at a large clip. That's an old tactic, an old technique.

And it's so funny when you explain something simple like that, instead of "Oh, how do we do it?" we hear, "Well, the attrition is going to be so high, or that's going to have crazy high loss ratio." Well, no. That's a thought of someone that doesn't want to put the muscle and work into it. Some of the larger agencies are doing that very, very, very well.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah. Look, you said you can have fear or hope and that there are fear mongers. There are absolutely fear mongers in our industry. And I would actually add a third bucket that maybe is part of fear, it's just a general negative outlook. I would say instead of fear and hope, I might categorize it more as abundance and scarcity. We have people who think from a scarcity mindset and they operate every day with, "I never want to hear no. So I'm just going to wait for referrals to come in or for someone who has a need to call me. And then I'm only going to work with the people who are super easy to work with and fit my little bucket. And then anything that doesn't provide a high frequency of those type of opportunities, I'm going to blast as being bad business, low retention business, non-profitable business, non-standard business." And because that gives me the validation that I need to say my model is the best, which I can then bitch when the economy changes that I'm not doing well. And that is one way to live your life. And unfortunately, in some of the groups that we're in, you see a lot of that. You can pick that person out immediately.

And then you have this whole other mentality, which is, "I am going to try everything. I'm going to test everything. I'm going to track and I'm going to do different things so that I can figure out what the actual answer is. And then I'm going to share that maybe or whatever." And that is coming at it from an abundance mindset. To me, I think that ratio is actually changing. Ten years ago, I would have said we were a pretty scarcity mindset dominated industry. And I think slowly but surely that equation is starting to shift.

[Ryan gestures with his hands]

I feel like slowly but surely those percentages are changing and kind of flip flopping. Whether one is more than the other still, who knows. But I do believe we have many more people in our industry today who are operating from an abundance mindset. And it's clear in a lot of the conversations I'm seeing.

Wesley Anderson: Well, abundance connects. Abundance grows. Scarcity causes wedges. I learned 20 years ago from a mentor of mine, he said, "Watch closely human behavior. If you see individuals that cause wedge between two like-minded people, run. That's as scary as cancer. Get it out of your life." Now the inverse of that, if you see people that are constantly connecting, gravitate towards them and make them your crew. Make sure everyone around you, those that you talk with, that you socialize with, make sure they have that abundance mindset and they're constantly connecting.

And Ryan, you and me have experienced this, I think, in our life and been blessed a great deal of this. When you connect to individuals free of gains for yourself at a hundred percent, that's the best investment you could do. That always comes back. And even if it doesn't, you get to feel good knowing that those you love are doing well. Now the scarcity mindset of, "Hey, I don't actually want you to speak to him because that's going to hurt my value proposition and who I am," that just hurts everything. "I can show you this part of my agency, but not this, because if I show you this part, you're going to get on the airwaves and it's going to get exploited." That is so much scarcity.

Nothing that anybody is doing is so silver bullet that it shouldn't be shared. I think a lot of the thought leaders, just as much as being a thought leader, they're connectors. The book *The Go-Giver* is one of the greatest and most impactful books I ever read. And all he discusses is connecting. Connecting individuals, connecting process. We had a conversation that wasn't insurance related about a friend of mine that's doing a gym and he's setting it up. And my brain instantly thought of you. And I couldn't let the meeting end without connecting you to that. I don't know what'll happen there, but I know if I'm always throwing you connections, your life's going to get better. And in turn, our ecosystem and who we are as a collective group is going to get better. Connectors will thrive. Scarcity mindset, it is exposed. It follows greed. It follows fear. It follows negativity. And it's dying. And it should.

Ryan Hanley: It is definitely dying because there is a hubris in believing that somehow anything you know is unique to you and that you can build walls around it and keep it in. There is a comical hubris to that mentality because one, there are no original ideas. Really. Anything that could even be considered an original idea is so incredibly rare. And the other side of it is one of the beauties of both being a human and in particularly the industry that we're in is that I, and I used to fight this idea, but I firmly believe that every agency is a unique snowflake. Every agency is a unique snowflake.

I used to fight that idea hard, especially early on in my Agency Nation days. I hated when agency owners would say, "Oh, well, you don't understand, but we operate this way and we do that." And today, five years later, I can tell you I believe, and it's the beauty of our industry, that every agency is the digitization of the soul of that agency. It's taking it and its networks and its systems and processes and relationships, and it's all kind of mashed together. But it depends on who you are. So because we're all different, Wes, you could give me the secret, the thing that made you the absolute success of all successes, and I could not even make it work for a day. Or I could take it and implement it and it could look 180 degrees from its implementation in your agency. And because of that, it makes no sense to keep it inside.

Because the only thing that can happen is you don't evolve. When you share with me and you see what I do with it, you can course correct a little. And then I'm going to share it with somebody and they're going to do something a little different. And I get to see that too because I shared it with them and I get to course correct a little more. All that's happening by sharing ideas is that if you're just a completely selfish person, all you're really getting is more trials, more iterations of your methodology that allows you to continue to optimize your game plan.

I always like to look at things and say, "Does it make sense from a selfish perspective?" To see the other side of why someone might do that, even from the selfish other side of the coin, it doesn't make sense not to share it. It just doesn't make sense.

Wesley Anderson: Well, you look at the fruits of scarcity. The fruits of scarcity are negativity. They're not growth. They're isolation. Isolation is distance from those that you love. It's distance from everything. Talking about the opposite of that with going back to abundance, everyone in technology, I think, that's my wheelhouse. That's my love. That's where I always revert back to. That's all I know.

Technology has the tendency to be a features arms race. So it's feature after feature after feature. And when you stack up two technologies, you take all these different features. Well, people fail to realize that deep within each feature is execution of how they set it up. How's the UI experience? You can say that you do Google reviews, but the way that you do Google reviews versus another piece of technology can be completely different.

The secret sauce doesn't lie in strategies. The secret sauce does not lie in features. I would dare say that the secret sauce of success sits in with your mindset of abundance. It's not a piece of technology. It's not a strategy. It's an execution of a strategy. But every time there is that abundance, success follows. Success is right behind. Every time there is scarcity, negativity and failure is just behind the curtain.

You could have a scarcity mindset, I think, before social media and technology kind of put everything on blast. You could operate in your little town and have that and not communicate with others. And it worked. But it doesn't work in today's landscape. You have to give. You have to get out there. And in turn, you're going to feel good. Those around you are going to feel good. And we're going to see success.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah, I'm with you, man. I'm with you. And I think... is this the second time you've been on the show or the first time?

Wesley Anderson: This is time number one. I haven't been on your show.

Ryan Hanley: Is it really? Yeah, dude. God, that is a travesty. You know, we're probably 25 minutes into abundance versus scarcity, and everyone's probably like, "Oh my God, just tell me about VAs and let's move on." But the reason that even came to my mind was because of one of the very first conversations that we ever had. God, I don't even... I think it was right after I was fired from the gym or I was thinking about the agency and I was telling you about what happened with the gym. And we had this... I think I called you for like a 10 minute conversation and it ended being like 90 minutes long. It was a long conversation and we were going in all these different places and we had never met each other in person. And it was really the first time I think we'd ever like talk, talked on the phone before.

And it was just like one of those moments where I was like, "Okay." You get done with the conversation and you hang up the phone and I think I texted you after and I was just like, "Holy shit, man, I needed that." And it was just like, "All right, I'm pretty much going to do anything that that guy needs like forever. Like whatever he needs, if I can connect him with anybody." It was just one of those things. And I think if you had played it close to the vest or if I had played it close to the vest, there would have never been that connection made.

Ryan Hanley: Never. It would have never happened. But because you were open to sharing some thoughts and different things and some experiences you had, that made me more willing to share some of my stuff. At the end, I think we both had a really good feel for who each other were. I haven't used a VA yet. I haven't gotten to that point yet in my business. I will absolutely use Agency VA because of you. But more importantly, I've probably told every person I bump into asking about VAs, "Agency VA." And it's not like I feel I have any obligation to you, none. And you have no expectation of me. It's simply because you were so willing to open up in a time when I really needed that. Those months after I first got let go from the gym were a very dark period for me. Even though I was building the agency, it was emotional. It was just a very meaningful time. What you did, whether you know it or not, you created a fan of who you were, not just of your business, but of who you are. And that's always been meaningful.

Wesley Anderson: Well, it's funny that you share that because the willingness to be open to your peers, to everyone, you more often than not hear the bad stories about this. I've had my fair share of letting my peers into my home, sharing beautiful ideas, having them take those ideas, monetize them, creating competitors in different areas of my life. But what's so powerful about that is it doesn't hurt, because I would have shared it with them should they have asked. The fact that they didn't ask, and they sleep under my roof and they stay here and I invite them and I give them everything I have, and then they just go and sneakily take things, it doesn't hurt. Because if they would have said, "Show me how to do this," I would have. I can't tell you how powerful that is and how liberating it is to not be confined by ideas that can't be shared, even when the worst happens and your competitors are created by your very words, by your very charity. Honestly, in many of the scenarios, it's not happened to me once. They have stayed at my house, they've slept under my roof, I've shared with them what I would share with anyone. And if they said, "Hey, this is what I'm going to do," at the starting of it, I actually don't think I would change much. I don't think I would hold back much. That gas-all-the-way-to-the-ground mentality of "This is who I am, this is what I offer, all of my weakness and the very minimal strength that exists, here you go," and then let people decide what they want to do with that, that's okay with me. I'm okay being open. I've taken my lumps. I'm constantly getting injuries and bruises from that mentality. But I can't share with you how many doors it's opened. I can't share with you how many people I can call at 2 AM when I have a flat tire, or the list of people I can call when I say something stupid to someone big and they come and have my back. It's very great because they know I would do the exact same thing for them. It's not a question to them. Who are you going to call at 2 AM when you got the flat tire? Who are you going to call to come help when you don't have your spare? That's how I try to do things. Maybe I can't help you in my business right now, but I want to help you in life because I align with you. We are going to have a future. It may not be in this business venture, but we will have a future. I have to treat that with everyone I interact with. You can't hide from the universe, bro. You just can't hide from the universe. You can gimmick and scheme and plot and undercut people and make all the excuses in the world that sound reasonable at face value, but you cannot hide from the universe. This might polarize people too much, but I believe that in large part, scarcity in what we're talking about here is because too often our culture in general is skewed to secular. I think a lot of the turmoil you see today is because of secularism, because we lost touch with the idea that someone is always listening and watching. We can be and say whatever we think makes us look good on TikTok or Twitter or Facebook or in some group, or we feel good about dominating someone for some moment and some time. But at the end of the day, the universe is watching. Insert "universe" for whatever that thing is that you may have prayed to at some time in your life. You have to come back to that thing. It's still there. You can pretend like it's not, but it's still there. You see it over and over again. Shitty people always get taken down. Maybe it takes a long time, longer than we would like, but they always do, in one way, shape, or form. You can share any thoughts you have on that, but then I want to talk about some tactical stuff too. I want to talk about some business stuff, not just this fluffy stuff. I could talk about this stuff all day, but I'm interested in some business stuff too.

Ryan Hanley: What specific tactical stuff can I share with you? Keep in mind, it's been a couple years of watching agencies. I'm getting a very good understanding of best practices. What is working and what is not working? Is there something specific with lead generation, with retention, something specific as it pertains to insurance? I can extrapolate a process that I'm seeing be very, very effective for that.

Wesley Anderson: Here's what I want to do. This is going to be a little different than normal shows because normally I just meander through a conversation with someone I really enjoy, which we've done for 34-ish minutes so far. That was tremendous. That's why I love you. But I want to run some scenarios, some scenarios that are impacting me day to day. I want to use those as micro case studies. Maybe you could say, "Okay, that thing you're struggling with, here's where I see some agents using VAs or using whatever you think is the right answer to help that process." Because to this goal, always to this goal: my goal is to flip the service-heavy nature of independent insurance agencies in the United States. What I mean by that is if you walk into an independent insurance agency today, you see something like a producer and seven service people, three producers and 15 service people. What I believe is possible with tools like Agency VA, automation, and a heavier partnership and integration with carriers like some of the stuff Neon is doing—I spent some time with Seth the other day on the podcast and we've spent some time talking afterwards, and some of the stuff they're doing is a rock star. I want to give a shout out to them before I don't want to break your thought.

Wesley Anderson: They spent four days here in Utah. I had the pleasure of Seth, Sydney, and Clint for four days alone in Utah right before the pandemic hit its peak. I would echo your words. They're doing great things for the industry. They're incredible people. I gave Seth a board, a 15-foot board and a marker, and said, "I want to be stumped. I want you to go through and tell me the inception, where Neon is, where it's going, and don't stop unless I need you to stop." It was 20 minutes and that board was filled. It was some of the greatest stuff. At the end of the day, these are very good people doing very great things for our industry. I'll be honest with you, I need to bridge a gap to Neon because I just don't have the service work to utilize the platform yet. When you have 27 clients or whatever, I just don't have the volume of service work yet. But the concept of real-time, non-downloaded integration into a carrier system from a claims, billing, and policy standpoint—just those three aspects of a carrier system, real-time, like you're basically operating on the same system—that idea is so groundbreaking in terms of the velocity at which you can handle customer interactions and the level of service you can provide. I think it will be the standard someday that is going to blow minds for a while. People will not understand it, but when they do, it will quickly become the standard. That's the last thing I'll say about that. I'm very bullish on where they're going.

Ryan Hanley: Okay, so I want to flip that. I want to have 13 producers and three service people. That's my mentality. I think it's possible that you don't need to have this reverse ratio of sales to service. I want to flip it. I sell an account. I'm a sales and marketing guy, a relationship guy. When it comes to standardized stuff, I get really bogged down. I take two steps forward and then one and a half steps back every time I sell a policy because I'm good at that part. Then everything happens after the policy: getting it into Better Agency, getting it into QQ, sending out the emails to confirm different things, going back into the systems and confirming this piece of data and that piece of data, did we get paid, sending out thank you cards, setting up the tasks to do these different things, making sure they're onboarded into my Wave Connect that we have through Zywave. I hate that stuff with a passion. I dislike my job doing that stuff. This is probably a softball question, but talk me through what are people doing? How are they handling this part? Because I'm assuming most agents are more like me. They don't like plugging 30 freaking tasks into their system after they sign an account.

Wesley Anderson: I use the example of restaurants. I share the story often with agencies as I interact with them. I think it's really powerful. The business model of a restaurant: you don't walk in and see the owner of the restaurant bussing tables. You don't walk in and see the owner mowing the lawn out front. You don't walk in and see the owner cooking the food. But in insurance, you do walk into an agency and see the owner servicing policies. You see the owner selling policies. You see the owner deciding what technology needs to be implemented, when and where and how, doing all the different tasks inside the agency. Just like restaurants, insurance agencies only have a certain amount of time in the day and a certain amount of bandwidth. Every time—and I love mowing my lawn, it's therapeutic to me—every time a restaurant owner mows the lawn, his valuation of himself is the same that he could pay to someone to substitute and mow the lawn for him. If someone mows the lawn for that restaurant owner, he can do the things that generate him income. Having a clean lawn is great, it's powerful. But having someone mow your lawn while you do more profit-generating tasks is even more powerful. Every time you do each thing that you said—and I think this causes some hatred towards VAs because it's bold and blunt truth—every time you're doing each of those things, your valuation of yourself is whatever it would take someone else to step in and do it. VAs can do a lot inside an agency. I think it's Cass that talks about automation and manual automation. We're going to be stuck with manual automation until the likes of Neon and all these other technologies start getting more momentum and steam. Manual automation should always be done by a VA. The thing that has to be thought is that's replacing my time of doing that. So now I need to expand my brain and do things that are going to generate a higher level of income. As it pertains to putting things into various systems because our technologies don't connect well, that is just a VA's job. A VA should be doing that. When you talk with people about VAs, they get kind of lost, just like with technology and a features arms race. I always try to make it simple for them. Have a VA do the things that are going to generate you income out the shoots. Quoting to me is the number one thing that agents hold on to, but it's linear, especially on the personal lines side. With technologies like Tarmika, it's getting more simple, more efficient. So VAs can take the quoting, and that is going to generate you much higher income opportunities if someone else is quoting. I have one individual that quotes inside my agency. He has a team, but there's one VA that I connect with. As it pertains to Safeco, he only sells the highest of packages because it is the best for our client and it pays us the most as an agency. When I spread it out in the days that I had eight agents all quoting for themselves, one was selling the lowest package, one was selling the middle. There was no standardization. When I moved that task to a VA, that's a 5% swing on renewal income. The efficiencies I gained from that one person quoting is incredible. We now have an individual that can get three questions asked, have an MVR run, a finalized quote ready for a video proposal in 17 minutes. That doesn't happen overnight. That happens when someone is fundamentally quoting every day all day and they get good at it. The problem with trying to create that same process outside of a VA is eventually that individual who was doing that is going to tell you, "Ryan, I'm sick of quoting. I want to do other things," as they should. The VA, on the other hand, is going to be excited, grateful, and happy to quote for the next however many years you'll have them.

Ryan Hanley: For everyone listening, Jack Wingate was just on last Monday. Look in the past episodes. Jack Wingate first turned me on to this idea of having a VA. Jack has PL Rater, all Choice Insurance, just a couple episodes ago. We were talking about raters. I was like, "I got PL Rater and there's not really any better options out there." He was like, "Yeah, we have PL Rater, but we don't really use it." I was like, "Bro, you write tons of personal lines. How the hell do you have PL Rater and you don't really use it?" He's like, "Yeah, I have a VA who I send all the info to. We have a form. We fill out the form. Form goes to the VA. The VA goes into each native system with the defaults that we've predefined and comes back with a spreadsheet side by side." Now think about the actual deliverable. The deliverable is better than what you give most clients because now he's able to give a deliverable that's a spreadsheet that literally says, "Travelers, X amount. Safeco, X amount. Erie, Z amount." Now you can say to them, "Look at what the market is showing. Here's what we recommend. Here's what the prices are. Even though this company is more expensive than this company, here's why I think you should have it." The transparency, the value, there's so much there. When he first said that, I was like, "Man, it's got to be expensive." He's like, "Dude, VA. They learn the system." Because again, a VA is a human being. I feel like we talk about VAs like they are lesser individuals. These are smart, hardworking, energetic human beings who just happen to, in some cases, live in a different country. This is what they do for a living. They learn a system and they crush the system. A lot of these are Jack's words, not my words. I was blown away by that process. He's like, "Our close ratio has gone up because we're getting real rates, bindable rates, because they're not pulling them out of the rater." These are like what would be post-bridged rates in a rater. This is coming right out of the system.

Wesley Anderson: Jack is one of my favorite clients. I love working with Jack. He's very powerful. He's got the second best beard I'd say in the country. Beautiful beard. He's on a pontoon boat. He's a man's man. I love me some Jack Wingate. I think when agencies hear this kind of stuff, they get overwhelmed. But the reality is, just like me and you are sitting on a Zoom call and it's being recorded conceptually, that's the same way I would bring a VA about coding each system. You do one Zoom video showing them the intricacies you want inside Liberty Mutual, whatever system you're at. You hit record. You put that as "This is how Liberty Mutual is to be quoted." They will refer back to that one training you did every time they get into Liberty Mutual until it is engraved inside their brain. Your efficiencies are so great. You used a free piece of technology, which is Zoom. You recorded it. You take that MP4 file. This isn't hard. Don't let people get too scared about this kind of stuff. You throw that into a YouTube link. There's a system and process. I call those "freedom recipes." Every freedom recipe you have, if you build out your whole agency with VAs and you have all these freedom recipes, you now have a scalable business. Should you choose not to use VAs, you're so powerful in utilizing these freedom recipes for whatever other endeavor you pursue after. They're so powerful. Everyone that sets an expectation of how something has to be done, you cannot expect what you don't inspect. Even if you're inspecting something with a VA specifically, like we'll go back to our quoter. I just created an Excel spreadsheet. It went inside of Slack. July of 2019 was when my quoter started. We're now a year in. He just took the name of the family, how many pieces of business he was quoting—two autos, two homes—and the time it took him to do it. All I cared about was just progress. I was inspecting because my expectation to my VA was we are telling people 30 minutes, which means you have to be about half of that, because then we have to take your data and get it to them in a timely manner. So I need 15 minutes out of you, 17 minutes right in there, and we can make this work. His first one was 97 minutes. I didn't care, as long as the next day was 96 and the next day was 95. Because we had that very simple inspection of the expectation we created, when I talked to the VA, the starting was probably overwhelming to the VA. You've got to cut your time dramatically, but I don't care how long it takes you as long as you are just progressing. I don't know if he's progressing unless I'm inspecting what's happening and he's reporting to me. Those reports, I'm not going to look at anything. Every time you have a report or some form of inspection that you're creating and you're doing that, that's terribly inefficient. They bring to you those reports. Now I'm to the point where I tell my VAs, "Create a report such that we can inspect these efficiencies." They set them up. I say, "Okay, that works good. Let's tweak this, this, and this. Move. Implement. Execute."

Ryan Hanley: I think about this all the time in my agency. With each client that I add, I take two steps forward and a step and a half back. It feels like I signed a client the other day, it was like $2,500 in revenue. For a young agency, I'd be like, "Oh, this is great." Except then I got to put it into this system and set up this thing and make sure this is here and do all these tasks. By the time I got done, I was like, "Oh my God, that was awful." The other side of it is the delivery of the services that needs to be done, the touch points you want to deliver. If I'm thinking about something and now all of a sudden I have to turn my brain from thinking about prospecting to thinking about this thing over here, this system I have to put in place or these tasks I have to add, it takes my brain time. There's brain lag to get to that thought. Once I get dialed in on that thought, I need to come back to prospecting. You do that two or three times and by noon you're freaking exhausted because you haven't been able to focus on what's driving your business or what you're best at. To me, this is a no-brainer.

Wesley Anderson: What you're saying, very simply put, going back to the restaurant analogy, is you just mowed your lawn. You're dirty from the after effects and the collateral damage of mowing your lawn. Then you went and prepared the food and you're getting dirt all over that damn food and it's getting gross. That's going to happen when you're cross-doing so many different parts of your business. But people forget to own their agency. Write your own story. What do you love doing? Do that. Write your story on what you love doing. If you love mowing the lawn, by all means, keep mowing the damn lawn. Stay there. If that's what you love, I still mow my lawn at my house because I love it. I love to mow my lawn. It's my head time. I'm weird. I love a nice lawn and I love to do it. I've tried to hire it out. I can't. Within the agency, remember what you're doing. Validate what you're doing. It's a business. Put a cost on what you're doing. What is your value of who you are and the time you spend in that? The argument is, "Well, I'm too small. I don't have the systems and processes. I can't get a VA." I would argue, no, this is the exact time you need one. This is the time to bet on yourself, bet on you, bet that you can do higher generating profit tasks and things for your agency by allowing this to be taken by someone else. Zoom, I'm going to hit it again. Zoom recording, getting the MP4 file, that is a freedom recipe. In the tech world, they say SOP, system or process, whatever. It works so effectively. It's free. You were going to do it anyways. If you're still mowing your lawn, record yourself mowing your lawn and say, "You know what, VA, this is how I do it. I do crisscrosses, man. I'm a crisscross mower. This is how it's done. Look at my drone showing me how to mow the lawn. Now you crisscross when you mow because you've seen how to do it." This podcast that you're listening to right now, this was put together, packaged, and distributed by an Agency VA. A high percentage of those vendors out there and now insurance carriers are white labeling Agency VA. A high percentage of people we've talked about and names we've dropped on this episode, they're utilizing VAs in one way or another. If they're doing it and having success, why can't you? That's what I've always said. The biggest of agencies or those that just start, they can use a VA. It's being used everywhere right now.

Ryan Hanley: Let's finish with this idea. How do we remove the scary?

Ryan Hanley: Because if I'm being completely transparent—and I like to be transparent on the show—I'm scared. I want a VA. I'm actually logging off seven minutes before two so that I can have six minutes with you to talk about VAs, because I know you're a busy guy. And if your scheduler or Facebook guy doesn't build time for you, then you don't have it, which I get. Hey brother, I get it. I'm with you.

Wesley Anderson: So I can address that right there. It's the thing on the planet that I do. When you hit me in Facebook Messenger and someone else comes in and answers that, but I need to let the record show and set it straight. It's because when you put yourself out there with this abundance, it's not rare that in any given day you have 70 questions asked.

Ryan Hanley: Oh, I know you are. But I want to set it like it is.

Wesley Anderson: I hate that, but it's a necessity. And I have two now. I have two virtual assistants full time that sit in my communications, whether it's email, Facebook Messenger, text. I've got my text controlled. They bring to me after the day ends, "These are the things you have to do." Because time management became such a problem. I'll spend three hours talking to someone about mowing a lawn, and that's not making money for my two agencies or Agency VA. So I had to practice what I preached there.

Ryan Hanley: You're standing on the mountain, brother. We're all just climbing the hill. So here's the last thing that I want you to answer. I firmly believe that I can move exponentially faster if I have a VA in Rogue Risk. I believe that wholeheartedly. We've talked about it before. I am scared to death about adding a VA for a bunch of different reasons. One, I feel too small. Two, I know my processes aren't worked out all the way, and I don't have a clear written set of plans. Three, I don't know how to manage a VA because I've never done it before. I've managed people before, but I've never managed a VA. These aren't like real fears, but they are things that make me hesitant. So how do we remove for those listening at home who are seeing themselves? Everyone's talking about VAs, and everyone makes jokes like all the cool kids have VAs. But that's not a hundred percent true, because I know some really nerdy insurance agents that aren't cool at all that crush VAs, which kind of makes them cool, so maybe they are actually cool. The idea here is how do we remove some of that scary for them so that they maybe can engage a little bit or take that next step to start to do this if it's something they think they should?

Wesley Anderson: Okay, so there's a couple things. I wrote down your three things. Number one, you said you're too small. You're not alone. There was a time where I was talking to 15 insurance agents or agency owners every day, and I was hearing the same thing. So to help validate your concerns about being too small, I spent a lot of time trying to figure that out. I have two answers. Number one, we created a product called VA on Demand, which allows you to get your feet wet and pay an a la carte price for a VA. A quote is X. Lead generation is X. So you can just test it, try it, not break the bank. Number two, we're tinkering and playing with an idea and beta testing a program that's $500 a month for a VA, but you don't get some of our systems and processes that we have. I actually think we're doing that because the next step you said is processes. Using freaking Zoom recording how you want things done, putting it on YouTube, and creating your own little freedom recipe is what I'm doing. You can just do that. That's why I'm able to take the price of a VA and skyrocket it, because my VAs are learning and have a basic understanding of systems and processes. By the time they get to you, they can fundamentally dribble a basketball. They can't dunk, but they can fundamentally dribble. We're spending a lot of bandwidth and resources on that, but I believe you can do that on your own. So for the too small, going back, use VA on Demand. Try a couple quotes. Try having some live transfers come to you. Try various things of where VA is working. You're not going all in with the VA when you don't know what you're doing. The managing of VAs, that is something that you would pay for. That is what these VA outfits are offering. We're getting to the point where a lot of our managers are turning into licensed insurance people because you can then communicate to them. They can go on the backend and train for the system and process you want. As you extrapolate the costs associated with having a VA and paying for a service, that's a big one right there on the management of the VAs. But with VA on Demand, where you take the a la carte approach, you have a manager there, but your VA isn't working just for you. Your VA is working for maybe a team of agents. That is a way to get in the game and to kind of get your feet wet.

Ryan Hanley: Cool. And agencyva.com, right? That's where they go.

Wesley Anderson: Yeah.

Ryan Hanley: People should not be blowing up your Facebook Messenger. Go in there. What happens? You get the stars. It's going to be like a battlefield triage. You're going to get in and say, "I want you to know, sir, that Wes only talks to people if they're on his calendar, so please use his calendar." That's because if my calendar doesn't tell me to use the restroom, I pee my pants. I live and die by every minute of that calendar. My VAs are like, "Wes, you have baseball practice for kid number two at this time. You have a flight that you got to catch at this time." For a while, they were waking up in states and not knowing where I was, and I'm calling my VA like, "Where am I?" As I've had to expand on different roles, I hate that part. I try to make it as personal. The VAs that do that, I try to make ones that are as close to me. They do a great job. They really do. It is low hanging fruit to give you a hard time, so I'm not above that.

Wesley Anderson: Well, I'm not above receiving a hard time, brother. I appreciate you so much. Everyone that's listening, agencyva.com. This is something that I'm going to be starting to dip my feet into because I want to go fast. I already know the things that are holding me up. If you're interested, reach out and have the conversation. Like everything else I say on this show, know what it is. Whether you use it or not is up to you, but know what it is. Don't make decisions in points of ignorance. I think a lot of people are making decisions about VAs from positions of ignorance. I don't mean that in a negative context. They just haven't invested into learning about it. Agencyva.com is a good place to start. I appreciate you, man. I'm going to end it with: find me on Facebook and message me. If you have questions, I do respond. I do answer. I work through that VA, but you, Wesley J. Anderson, don't ever feel like a question is too small or too stupid. That's how everything starts.

Wesley Anderson: Yeah, you know, it was a what you view as a small stupid question. It's not. So ask. I will help. I'll try to be a resource any way I can.

Ryan Hanley: Good. Thanks, dude.

Wesley Anderson: Yep.

Ryan Hanley: All right, party people. That was a good show. It just was a good show. Every time I talk to Wes, I always just feel better. He's just one of those people that makes me feel better when I talk to him. Quick outro for you. We are expanding our advertising. The amount of advertisers willing to take on—you probably noticed that we recently took on Better Agency as an advertiser. We've always had Advisor Evolved and Tarmica. We have room for at least three more sponsors in this show. We're going to be adding some mid-roll reads and we'll be rotating reads more at the beginning of the show, maybe adding some reads at the end of the show. You may be listening to this as a non-advertiser going, "Ah, geez, that's the last thing I need is more advertising." Well, my friends, putting this podcast on costs money. I love you. You will never actually have to pay, but what you'll have to do instead is listen to me talk about some companies that I filter very heavily. Some I use, some I don't. In case every sponsor I have right now, I actually use. That won't always be the case, but I filter world-class companies, the companies that care about independent agents, that care about our channel. I filter those companies. I bring them to you, and in turn, they pay me so that I can pay to put this show on. That's how this game works. If you're out there, if you're listening to this, or you know a company that is interested in sponsoring, we have open slots. We have three open slots. As companies come in, as I feel that they're a good fit, we will add them to the showcase. But you got to reach out. Just hit me at [email protected]. [email protected]. That's my email. If you just want to send me a nice note, you can do that too. But if you're looking to sponsor, that's where you hit me up. We'll talk about what the show is. We'll talk about what sponsoring looks like, and you'll have the opportunity to access this platform. But here's what I'm going to tell you. You have to believe in the independent channel. No posers, no hacks, no one who's just looking to sell some shit to independent agents and then jump out and make some money. That's not the kind of companies that I allow to advertise on this platform. So if you're gonna come, come hard, my friends. All right, I'm out of here. You go fuck yourself with your fat fucking ass. Thank you. Do you want to have a few drinks and smoke a joint, Bubbles? Yes. Yes. Thank you. Do you want to have a few drinks and smoke a joint, Bubbles? Yes.

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