RHS 061 - Aubie Knight on the Impact of COVID-19 on Independent Agents and What to Do Next

Ryan Hanley: In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. My name is Ryan Hanley. I am your host and today we have an absolutely tremendous guest, someone who I have known for quite a while now and have had fantastic conversations with over the years.

Ryan Hanley: I don't know how else to describe it. Aubie Knight is a thoughtful guy. He thinks about our business. He comes at it from a very pragmatic point of view and his position as president and CEO of the Independent Insurance Agents of North Carolina puts him in a unique spot to understand both the political dynamics of our industry as well as the boots on the ground, how to get things done.

Ryan Hanley: He's got some tremendous agents in his association in North Carolina, so he's always talking to some of the best and brightest in our space. The way he thinks about running his association is just different. Every chance I get to spend some time with Aubie is time that I consider well spent. I think you're going to love this interview.

Ryan Hanley: The reason I had Aubie on was because North Carolina did a survey, or a study I guess you could say, and it basically got feedback from their member agencies about the impact that COVID-19 had had on their businesses. There's some really interesting stuff in here, and that's what we talk about. We talk about how has COVID impacted independent insurance agencies based on this study that North Carolina did and what we can be doing as independent agency owners, producers, people in the space. What can we be doing moving forward to put our businesses in a position to succeed?

Ryan Hanley: I think you're going to love this episode. Before we get there, I want to give a big shout out to our sponsor for today. That is Advisor Evolved. advisor evolved.com. I get asked quite a bit, "Hey, I'm thinking about a new website or who should I use or what's the best website vendor out there." It's hands down Advisor Evolved. I don't just say that because they're a sponsor of the show. Chris has built probably six websites for me. He's my go-to. There's no one better.

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Ryan Hanley: Probably the biggest account of my career that I'm working on right now. It's a retail furniture store. Hartford and Chubb are looking at it, which is cool. And oh my God, the number of follow-up questions is killing me. Some of these questions, I just think to myself, I get it, I get it. I'm not trying to knock an industry that has done so well for so long and knows what it's doing. But who is the OP if I give them all the vehicles and all the drivers? The fact that a follow-up question is "We don't have a driver specifically attached to vehicle seven, who is the..." and I'm like, guys, you have all the MVR records for all the drivers. You have all the A-Plus records for all the vehicles. Does it really matter who is on vehicle seven of a 20-driver, 17-vehicle fleet? Is that really worth spending time on? Is that the question that we need to know?

Aubie Knight: Well, our system means that that's how I have to enter it in, Ryan. So I've got to have somebody attached.

Ryan Hanley: And you're like, it's a fleet. It's a freaking fleet. I may need the cargo van one day. I may need the sedan one day. I may need the bigger truck one day. He checks off all the boxes. They're all experienced drivers with three or more years of experience. All of them have to maintain at least 100/300 on their personal auto. They all have good MVRs for the most part, a couple little nicks and bumps but nothing major. This is a good solid fleet, a good solid driver list. Why are we spending time on who drives vehicle seven?

Ryan Hanley: It's one of those things where I look at this and I say to myself, there was a time when I am sure that based on how long things took in general, that everybody was okay going, "Oh yeah, I got to figure that out. I'm going to figure that out and make a call." I don't know how, in the next wave of agents who I think have dispositions of varying degrees similar to my own, this question continues to be something that is even tolerated. And forget just from the agent's perspective, but from the consumer's perspective. When the disruptor comes along that doesn't require that degree of information, it turns everything on its head.

Aubie Knight: I'm old enough to remember, Ryan. I got in the business in the mid-nineties. Well, I actually got in the business on the retail side in the early 90s, but then transitioned over to the association in the mid-90s. The old guys would come in and they used to hand deliver applications. You've probably heard those stories. The association office was located in a convenient part of Atlanta. The guys would drive down and go deliver applications to the various carriers, take those guys to lunch, then swing by the association office just to see what was up and chat.

Ryan Hanley: I'm with you, man. Then I look at Tarmika and I don't think people realize what Raghav has going on. I don't think people really understand what an API-driven comparative rater means for our industry. I just don't think people get it. I think they hear it and they're like, "Oh, we've heard some of those terms before." But the stuff that he's doing is game-changing stuff. Better Agency just announced a partnership and integration with Tarmika. I don't have any intrinsic knowledge into what this is going to be, but I can tell you what I'm pretty sure it's going to be.

Ryan Hanley: You have an account, a prospect comes into Better Agency through a form fill on your website, immediately sent to Tarmika and returned with a rate, a comparative rate for both personal and if it's a commercial account, commercial lines for the classes that it's capable of, right inside of Better Agency that you then can package up and mail to the person. We're talking about that whole process taking minutes. This is what's coming because when you drive something via API, and I know you know this, but I feel like so many people hear these terms and because we've heard it for so long in it not really being true. Someone would say, "I'm using API," but really it wasn't an API or it was a version one or a version two API. These new version three APIs are full application integration into another application. That's what we're talking about. You have one thing and all the utility of another thing is sucked into it as if it was there.

Ryan Hanley: That's game-changing stuff. It ties back into the whole thing that Seth is doing with Neon as well. Where you could actually go in and look at a client's screen and be real time looking to see if the payment's been made, is the policy enforced, is the bill going out. The only thing that I've got my fingers crossed for with Tarmika is it's all going to be by carrier adoption. The carriers that are in your agency have to allow Tarmika to do that in order for that to end up being the benefit for you.

Aubie Knight: Here's what's going to happen in my agency. The first carriers to get onto Tarmika, no one's getting the business. Rumor on the street is two questions for an auto quote. When people look at some of these new insuretechs and they go, "You only need like a name and address or a name, address, birthday," and they're like, "How can they rate them?" All the data that you're asking for, "Hey, what's your VIN number?" I just had a guy text me a picture of his VIN number from his car. This information is available online. You just have to have access to the databases.

Aubie Knight: It goes back to the idea of how they're building this thing out. I don't want this to be a commercial for them, but I'm all in. We took an equity piece. We're in the round, man. We're all in.

Ryan Hanley: I get it. To me, this is one of the few insurance technology solutions that feels feasible, that is actually getting real adoption. I've probably written somewhere between a half dozen and a dozen small commercial accounts through them now. I did a podcast the other day. I had a guy call me, 21 minutes later, booked with Liberty Mutual, done. He has the policy. 21 minutes from phone call to booked policy.

Ryan Hanley: I had a buddy, one of my best friends and neighbors. His daughter is getting ready to start her sophomore year at Georgia. She moved out of the dorm a couple of weeks ago and moved into her first time college apartment. He sent me a screenshot. He's an insurance consumer. He's an awesome guy, small business owner, a great client for any agency. But he's always bellyaching about the customer experience to me. "Oh, it sucks. My agent doesn't do anything to earn my business." He sent me a screenshot a couple weeks ago and he had purchased a renter's policy for his daughter through Lemonade.

Ryan Hanley: He said, "I don't know anything about this, but all insurance should be this easy. This is what I'm talking about. Have you ever heard of these guys?" That resulted in a conversation. But then I also had to razz him. I was like, "Why did you have to go get a separate renter's policy? You could have just had the college department listed as an additional residence and satisfy the landlord." So he ended up being mad that he had spent $89 when he could have just done that. It's funny stuff.

Aubie Knight: I don't know if you heard the episode that I do with Sheffy Ben Huda. I had her on and we were talking about Lemonade. The deeper I get into it, it's been so interesting, man. I know you, we've known each other for a while now. Going from agent to doing all the association stuff to then going to Bold Penguin, now back to owning an agency. To see that spectrum and to come back sitting here, there's part of me that was worried. A lot of people ask me, "Why the hell are you starting an agency? Everything you've done, everyone just assumed I would go to an insuretech or something." I have no beef with insuretechs at all, obviously.

Aubie Knight: But the more I get into it, the more I believe in the human. I believe in the human. I just think the humans need better tools. That's why I speak the Neons, the Better Agencies, the Chris Langell Advisor Evolveds, the Tarmikas. It's why I talk about these companies all the time. There are others, but I feel like every step those companies make moving forward...

Aubie Knight: Actually, you know who said it to me the other day? Zach Mefford from Coverage Direct up in Iowa. He said, "Hanley, it feels to me like for the first time, we're not being bullshitted. The technology actually is as good as advertised. The things that are coming out are as good as advertised." It was cool hearing it from him because he's a discerning guy. He's not just going to blow smoke. I'm kind of a hype man, so I talk shit and people are like, "This is Ryan being crazy again." But with this dude, he doesn't say that kind of stuff unless he means it. I believe him.

Aubie Knight: I think it's really exciting. I think all the stuff that went on in 2016, 2017, I feel like it's bearing fruit today. It's exciting. I don't know if you see that from where you are.

Ryan Hanley: I'm so encouraged to hear you make a real life story of saying, "Hey, a guy called and 20 minutes later, he's got a policy." We've gone through the whole process because that's evidence. That's proof that this type of technology is working so that the human and the relationship can start to deliver on an experience that's far more like the Lemonade experience than the, "Hey, by the way, of the 20 drivers, who should I assign to vehicle number seven?" You're like, "Jesus Christ, are we really?"

Ryan Hanley: For all you haters out there that are listening to that, listen to the show religiously, that VIN number that I told you I got snapped the picture of, that's the guy. The guy's policy that I wrote in 21 minutes was like a $600 BOP. All the haters are like, "Yeah, of course you're writing $600 BOPs in 20 minutes." Well, I'm cross-selling his auto and his renter, MFers. I'm doing exactly what I told you I was going to do. Now it's a really nice account because he's left me a Google review. I'm going to write his personal stuff and I got his business policy.

Ryan Hanley: I'm a little fired up. It's Friday afternoon and this podcast ends my professional obligations for the day. The next thing is a nice crispy crack of an afternoon Friday beer for me. My point in saying all this is I think that we are in for the agents whose heads are in the right place. You got a bunch of them in your state, man, a bunch of people doing really fun stuff. For those agents who are partnered with the right technology partners, it feels to me like that independent agent renaissance that we talk so much about in 2015, 2016, 2017, it feels like we're in the early stages of it today. It's really starting to happen.

Aubie Knight: It never happens as fast as you think it's going to or at the exact moment that you think it to, but it's happening. Even to segue into one of the things we want to talk about today is the acceleration that COVID has caused in terms of adaptation, adopting new technologies, and trying to provide a different type of customer experience. Not because you necessarily wanted to, but because now you've been forced to. I think that's huge.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah. Obviously you and I could shoot the shit about a lot of different things. But at IIANC, you guys did this survey. I keep showing pictures. I do video. I'm showing all the stuff on the screen that he doesn't need to see. I even produced the video. You can tell where my head is at today. But you guys did this COVID-19 impact survey on your members. I wanted to have you on because I was kind of hoping when we got to the day when we'd actually talk, COVID might be going away. It doesn't feel that way, at least not where I am because the emperor of my state has decided it not be so.

Ryan Hanley: I'm super interested in the results because I think some of the findings that you have in here speak to a lot of the stuff that we've talked about so far. My first question to you is, what was the first thing that jumped out at you about this survey? There's a couple different things that I want to dive into, but for you personally, knowing your agents, spending time being so connected with other executive directors around the country, what caught you? What grabbed you? What made you say, "Whoa, I didn't expect to see that," if there was anything?

Aubie Knight: There were two main things. One had to do with the work from home orders. The fact that 43% of our respondents to the survey basically responded that they stayed open, their offices stayed open with most or all of their employees reporting to the office every day. That on the surface was initially shocking to me. The other thing that I was sort of surprised by, but then also very encouraged by, was just the level of optimism. There hasn't been a tremendous shift in how agencies are thinking about the future. A very small percentage of agencies are significantly less optimistic about the future. Most are slightly less optimistic, about the same, or slightly more. Not very many agencies are thinking this is going to have long-term significant implications to their revenue and to their business. Those were the two big takeaways for me.

Ryan Hanley: Do you think that is because they feel their businesses are rock solid and they have a good plan? Do you think any part of that is just maybe having some blinders on and not really fully taking in what's coming? Where do you think that is from?

Aubie Knight: There's always that ripple effect in insurance agency revenues. We've got a certain degree of insulation from economic downturn and from recession. It normally takes a while for those things to impact premiums at the retail level and then impact agency revenue. By and large, member agencies are thinking this thing will be over before that ripple effect really hits my agency with any significance. We did have 8% of the respondents forecasting that their agencies are going to be down, their revenues are going to be down significantly this year. We did a little bit of a deeper dive into those agencies. That's largely being driven by agencies that are just kind of overexposed in a couple of industries that are being hit hard. If you're an agency or even if you have a producer or two within your agency that are focused on hospitality and restaurants, then obviously you're kind of taking it on the chin.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah, or if you were going to launch your startup agency in the fitness industry, that was also not a good play. One of the stats that immediately jumped out to me was about the question, "How did your agency workforce respond to the state and local stay at home orders?" The result was 75% of respondents with revenue over $5 million fully converted staff to remote, while only 11% of the small agencies, $200,000 or below, did. I don't know what I would have thought, but that was one of the largest discrepancies in terms of percentage difference. It just stood out to me. I was like, "Wow, that is a very substantial difference in terms of philosophy."

Aubie Knight: Completely. One of the things that I've kind of found out anecdotally just by talking with some of the smaller agencies is even though they were showing up at the office every day along with their employees, they were still closing the office to outsiders. They were not allowing marketing rep visits. They were not even seeing customers in the office. A lot of those were family-owned agencies. It was almost like their agency was their social distancing bubble. They all got up at home, had breakfast together, got in the car, drove to the office, and then worked from the office together. It was more or less the same group of people.

Ryan Hanley: That makes a lot of sense. That's actually what my wife's family agency did. The way their offices are spread out, they kind of are socially distanced to be with. They did let anyone who really had a real issue work from home. They did do that. Actually, there was only three, I think they have 12 people, and I think only about three of them stayed home full time. The rest basically came to the office and stayed away from each other and wore masks. They did the thing where they just put a sign that said, "Hey, call us, we'll come out. Don't come in. We're not doing that anymore." Now you can come in if you have a mask on, but during the early days, they just said stay out. I thought that was interesting. It is funny to think they all wake up together, they all get in the same car, they all drive to the same office.

Aubie Knight: I had lunch with Josh Lipstone yesterday. They're not that small of an agency and it's not like they are all under the same roof, but Josh was like, they went into the office and it's his dad and his sister and the one employee and they just kind of keep their space in the office.

Ryan Hanley: Killing Commercial member, by the way. Represent Killing Commercial. Josh Lipstone. I was talking to my brother-in-law. He owns a renter's insurance agency nationally. Based out of New York City, but he lives up here now. He started in New York, he's since moved up. He writes apartment complexes all over. Not the buildings themselves. He actually manages the renter's insurance programs inside the building to keep the loss ratio down for the agents and carriers that write the structure themselves, which is an interesting business.

Ryan Hanley: We were talking about this, and this just kind of speaks to the larger businesses going remote. He wants all his people in house. He's got about 20 employees. My wife and her family, they want their people to work from the office. They're like, "I just can't imagine a world where we're not operating in the same space. We feel less efficient." I was like, "Amazon does not feel that way. American Express does not feel that way. Those businesses are never coming back." Not for a long time. I shouldn't say never.

Aubie Knight: No, Amazon's the opposite, Ryan. There was an article yesterday, two days ago in the Wall Street Journal, and then yesterday it hit the other media. They just purchased huge amounts of corporate retail space in Manhattan. They bought the big building from WeWork. It completely made me rethink what is the future of the office. It seems like Amazon's going the zag strategy.

Ryan Hanley: He's probably already got the vaccine because he's part of the Illuminati. He's been stamping them for months. They're all vaccinated. The Illuminati already have the vaccine, man.

Aubie Knight: What the future of work is, it's so hard. We have a 17,000 square foot office building at the association. A significant portion of that has been always dedicated to live in-house training and then office space for staff. Now I go into the office and either we've got way too much stuff or I can now, where I thought I was maxed out in terms of the number of employees I could grow by another 30%. Through office sharing and remote work and others, I've got enough floor space to last forever now. I really think this kind of hybrid model is really where a lot of people are going. I do think sharing the same space at times is very important.

Ryan Hanley: I think back to my Agency Nation days when we had a distributed workforce. We had people in Wisconsin, Milwaukee, people in Minneapolis. The rest of my team was kind of spread out through the Midwest and East coast. For the most part, we worked remote. But four or five times a year, we would all get together and spend three to four days. That time was very, very important. If we skipped one of those because something was going on, you could see it in our work product. I think it's important for us to share space. At the same time, I do think people are more comfortable in the in-between, getting work done from home. I also think it depends on your work from home culture. Did you get any feedback from the survey or from any of the respondents on the side, additional comments around just in general their experience building a remote culture? I think that's the heart. The technology is solvable. The culture is really tough.

Aubie Knight: 100%. That's something that I've spent personally a lot of time thinking about. I've talked to a lot of my colleagues as well as agency owners. How do you maintain culture? How do you maintain the spirit of collaboration and the spirit of purpose and mission and focus in a remote environment? It's something that I think is doable. You just have to be super intentional about it. Especially early on in the process, I was sending out weekly videos to my team. I was checking in, just really over communicating. It's funny, man, how quickly you fall back into a new routine. I hate the whole "new normal," but it's almost gotten to the point where we've been doing this for so long now it has kind of become the new normal. I'm not being as intentional about checking in with my team and saying, "Hey, how are you guys doing? How's your family doing?" Those types of things.

Aubie Knight: We've had one agency that contacted us with an address change. They went from having a physical address to a PO box. He just said, "My lease was coming up for renewal and we were working so well effectively. We're just remote now because we're not going to have an office."

Ryan Hanley: I think I heard you make that comment or maybe a tweet or something, and I'm attributing it to Ryan Hanley. It might've been from someone else that said, "I'll never have a bricks and mortar agency." I don't think I will. What I do do is I pay a monthly fee for a coworking space. I have a coworking space where they've got four conference spaces. There's offices that you can rent for the day. There's all this open space. If I need to have a meeting, all my carrier meetings when I was looking for appointments, I did down there because I'm in the basement of my house. But I have a 12 by 14 office space that has everything I could possibly need. Why would I need a physical space?

Ryan Hanley: Now, when I do get employees, if they are in the Albany area, I want to have a place I can go meet with them. We can whiteboard and chit chat and share space and time. That's what that is. But we don't need to be there every day, not for a thousand, two thousand, $5,000 a month. As you grow, that fixed cost and all the fixed costs that come along with that, when I can go to Lightspeed Voice, send them a $30 phone and they're basically plugged in, ready to rock and roll.

Ryan Hanley: I mean, it's, I think that world, I would just have to have a heavy shift in mindset to believe that I would need to rent a space. When coworking is available, if it's not available in your town, then I could see renting a small space to kind of get together if it was financially feasible. But coworking changes the game for me.

Aubie Knight: Yeah. And I think also, even just going to the hybrid model, all of a sudden, everybody, even if you believe that you still need physical space, your square footage per employee has just shifted downward tremendously.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah, I agree. The other thing too is I think this is going to really press leadership. I guess what I mean by that is it's going to press all of us to be better leaders of our people. I talked to my wife about this all the time because she does not like leading her team remotely. She likes to see them and talk to them. And I don't think she's wrong for that. At the same time, what if a rockstar walks in the door and says three days a week, I want to work from home? And they're a 125% productive employee. They're hardworking, smart, they get it, they're engaged, but three days a week they want to be home. What are you going to say? No? That's a tough thing. You have to be able to adapt as a leader to that and somehow manage that person alongside your other employee who's been there for 20 years and loves coming in the office every day, and your other employee who wants to be home every day. How do you productively manage all three of those personalities without one feeling like they're getting more or less? I think it puts a lot of pressure on leadership.

Aubie Knight: Yeah, absolutely. And just from the standpoint of being an employer and being competitive in the marketplace, to your point, compensation is always going to be important, but there are other factors that are important in terms of attracting talent and flexibility with work schedule, particularly now. The degree of flexibility that people are having to allow and really encourage right now with schools in a lot of places being shut down, your employee is not only working remote, but they've got two elementary school age kids at home that they're tag teaming with the spouse to try to make sure they're doing their schoolwork. It's a challenge. And it does provide an opportunity for leadership to display some flexibility and allow your employees to do what's best for them, with the belief that ultimately that's going to be what's best for your organization. They're going to pay that forward.

Ryan Hanley: One question on our survey was, "Will you be considering expanding your telework policy?" And only 26% of the respondents said no. The other 74% were yes, we've already made that decision, we're definitely going to, or we're still under consideration. That was about divided in half.

Aubie Knight: Yeah.

Ryan Hanley: I think you'd have to be crazy not to let them work from home. Well, I shouldn't say that because I've decided I'm not giving agencies a hard time for being snowflakes anymore. Not snowflakes in the liberal sense, snowflakes in the we are all actually unique sense. I've said this before on the show, but I think it bears repeating because I honestly believe it today. That has been one of my biggest mind shifts. And I think it bore out in a lot of what I saw from this as well. You and I may have even had this conversation in previous lives, but I could never really understand why we couldn't find at least semi-templated solutions for agencies. Why is it that you could have a thing that you know works and 75% of the agents just can't figure it out? And that used to really drive me nuts. And it's because they're so different, and rightly different.

Aubie Knight: Well, one of the most beautiful things about the independent agency system is there's so many different paths to be successful. There's so many different ways that you can be successful. And what you just described is the flip side of that same coin. There's no standardized solution because there are so many different paths forward. So you kind of have to play both sides of that. But it can be frustrating. And it's incredible to look at agencies that are doing well and are successful, and their business model can be completely different than another that's equally as successful.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah. My mentality has changed so much. I would like to say matured, maybe that's a better way to put it. Just since March 9th, just in the process of building this agency. So many things that I thought I understood from the outside that now, even in a small sample size—I've only been doing this for a little over six months—but even in that small sample size, my eyes have been opened to what's really going on and why. Not just that all agencies are different, but the reason they're different is because they serve a niche market in a rural community and a highly regulated state that also has natural disasters and also has a ton of mutuals. How do you figure that out? They've built the agency that fits that market. It's like Darwin would be super pumped about the independent agent. Darwin's next book, if he were still alive, would be "The Evolution of the Independent Agency." Because that's what it is. You stick an entrepreneur into a place and all of a sudden they build this thing adapting to all the unique aspects of geography, the legal environment, the physical environment, the nature of the businesses and the commerce in the area. It is truly wild.

Aubie Knight: Yeah, I've never thought of the Darwin and the evolution analogy, but now it's like, why does this one agency have that one little toe that sticks out a little further with a claw on the end? Because he needed that to climb this type of tree in the environment that he was living in.

Ryan Hanley: Exactly. So one of the questions that I had for you too, and the stat is in the report—at the end we're going to tell everyone where to get this report and how to get it. I think this is awesome that you did this, and I was excited that you were willing to come on and talk about it. You're welcome to share it, Ryan. If you want to put it on your website directly, you're welcome to do that. So we will tell them how to check it out on yours, but also if you go to the show notes at ryanhanley.com/forward slash aubie-knight, or just go to ryanhanley.com, you'll find it. I'll have the PDF linked up in the show notes as well. One of the stats that I thought could have a lot of interesting education opportunities was, "If your agency transitioned to remote work or increased the number of employees working from home during the COVID-19 crisis, how would you describe the level of efficiency that those employees were able to achieve?" Only 6% said they were more efficient working from home. 65% said they were able to operate at the same level, which is awesome. But I think the goal of work from home is a higher efficiency level. My question for you is, have you thought about, or what have you heard, about what are some things that agents could do to take this opportunity and actually create a more efficient agency operation?

Aubie Knight: Yeah, so you're really drilling down now to the heart of why we did the survey. What we want to identify is what problems COVID is presenting to our members. Where do they see they're having specific problems and challenges? Because that's how we have really redefined and repositioned ourselves as an association. Our whole purpose is to help our members solve their problems. So part of this was, let's see what specific problems our member agencies are having as relates to COVID. And that's certainly one. I'll also throw in the fact that I thought the probably most honest people in the survey are the 10% that said, "I don't really know how effectively or efficiently I'm operating. I don't even know how to measure whether they're being more effective or less effective." I thought those guys are the ones that are probably the most honest.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah, exactly. I think those are the more honest folks.

Aubie Knight: One thing, we had some open-ended questions, and we tried to summarize those in about seven or eight different categories. That's the last page of the report. Nearly all of the open-ended comments and questions kind of fell into, "How do I increase and improve my remote work capabilities? I need to increase my investment in technology. We really need to make steps to improve the customer experience." One thing that we've not drilled down and can answer definitively, but it appears that the agencies that are significantly more optimistic and have actually seen revenue growth during COVID are those agencies that have a strong online presence. People are shopping, people are sitting at home, and those agencies with a strong online presence are getting opportunities for new business during this time. So there's all sorts of opportunities for us to continue helping educate members and allowing them to evolve so that they can better serve the customer and be more efficient in times like this. We've had some webinars already on transitioning to a remote workplace, and I do think that we need to continue along that path of helping agencies understand how to measure efficiency and then understand what the right tools and technologies are so that you can stay as efficient in a remote environment. Personally, we've made investments in things like making sure everybody had dual monitors at home. When I'm talking to my staff and they said, "I'm not quite as efficient as I would be if I were in the office because I've only got a single monitor," we went out and bought these Lenovo really portable, really cool monitors.

Ryan Hanley: I've got one in my laptop bag now. Even when I'm working remote, I just pull out this little thin monitor and plug it into a USB port and you get dual monitor time. Just little things like that can make a big difference.

Aubie Knight: Yeah, I agree, man. I think that COVID has opened people's eyes in a very sharp way to a lot of the prognostication of the last decade or so. It was like, "Yeah, we're fine. We're fine. We're fine. Oh no, what is going on?" The good news is, there's plenty of solutions out there. I think the solutions are relatively cost effective. I think they're becoming easier to use. We've mentioned some of my favorites, but there's so many more. There's plenty of good solutions. I talked to one of my insiders at Vertafore the other day, and even he said, "I know on the forums we're getting hammered for being sold or whatever again, but I got to be honest with you, it frees us up to do a lot of the things that we couldn't do under PE." My general sense from that comment is it feels to me like everybody sees what's necessary now. These ecosystems don't work. You have to be connected. You have to be easy to use. And we are really slingshotting forward, which makes things like being more efficient in remote work possible. I was talking to my wife and I was showing her Better Agency because I think very highly of that particular program. I said, "It has really changed the game for me." I've never used a CRM that also is essentially everything up to downloads and ACORDs, an agency management system. To have everything in one place and to have it be visually easy and streamlined, and the fact that I can plug into it from any computer anywhere, doesn't matter. Web internet access, browser, doesn't matter if you're on a Mac or a PC. There it is, use it. Your person could be anywhere. They can use it on their phone. That type of technology changes the game for agencies.

Aubie Knight: The agencies that were leaning forward in tech now see things the way that you do, Ryan, in terms of integration and the ease of using technology. But the other impact of COVID is those agencies that I never thought would evolve or change, that were still happy to see customers and give them a cup of coffee and have a 15 minute chat with them so they could drop off a payment, those agencies are changing. They're adopting the policies and they're adopting DocuSign instead of having the customer come in and leave forms. The evolution is taking place across the continuum of technology. Everybody has shifted to be more technology savvy regardless of where you were. Everybody took a step in the tech savvy direction.

Ryan Hanley: I had someone who I would throw in the category that you just described call me the other day. They were just asking me a question about something, and he said to me, "You know, I've been fighting this for years. It really hasn't been as hard as I thought it would be. I always imagined this transition being more difficult than it has actually been. The first couple months were a little rough, but we've made the changes and added a couple things. It really hasn't been that bad." And I was like, in the most positive way, "Yes, exactly. That is what we've been trying to tell you. It's what everyone's been trying to tell you for all this time." I wasn't trying to spike the football on him. I just meant, yes, it is true. You are 100% right. If you're coming off a TAM or one of those old systems, you're going to feel a little bit of pain, but ultimately I think the tools have evolved to the point where changing an agency management system 15 years ago is not as hard today. It's not nice, but it's not as hard. You get through it faster. The other side is easier. You can pick up the tools. They're more visually appealing. And it's not as difficult as people think it actually is. I think it's important that guys like you, leaders like you, are saying the right things. They're putting the right options in front of people, letting people choose from a palette of options so they can still be independent. They're not having solutions shoved down their throat, but saying, "Here are three solutions that can help you. Figure out which one makes the best sense. But if you choose one of these, you're going to be just fine." I feel as positive about the business as I have ever felt in my career today, despite COVID. Maybe because of COVID, because we've come through this so strongly. Half our industry didn't get wiped out and people aren't bitching and complaining all over. They're really pushing hard and learning and adapting. Darwin, man. That's what it is.

Aubie Knight: I was going to throw up the Darwin if you didn't. Independent agents are resilient. A lot of agencies do not drive change. They're not looking to drive innovation, but they have proven themselves capable of adapting when they need to, and in some cases when they're forced to. This is a situation where many have been forced to change and to evolve. I've talked to a number of agencies that sound exactly like the conversation you had, and they always say, "I'm really not sure why we didn't do this years ago."

Ryan Hanley: Well, I hate to be a smart ass about it, but you didn't have to. You were not required to do it, so you didn't. And now that your customers or carriers or just the business environment in general is requiring you to do it, you did it. You grew the six toe that goes out sideways and has the special claw on it because you had to.

Aubie Knight: Yeah, exactly.

Ryan Hanley: Well, hey man, I obviously think the world of you and your work.

Aubie Knight: Likewise, buddy. I appreciate it. I'm glad that you guys do things like this survey because it gets people having conversations. It shows them that there's light at the end of the tunnel, that these things are possible, that their peers are making it happen, that there's hope for them in the places where maybe they feel lost or that they have blind spots. I'm just glad you're willing to share your time with me and everyone that's listening. Thanks so much, dude.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah, anytime, buddy. I certainly don't want to prolong the conversation since I'm the last thing standing between you and a weekend. I hope you have a great weekend. Thank you for having me on, Ryan. I appreciate it very much.

Aubie Knight: You're good, buddy. Thank you.

[End of interview. Advertisement follows.]

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