--:-- Ryan Hanley: In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home... Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today's guest is someone that I met at Billy Williams' event that he had in Florida right before the Rona locked us all down. His name is Mick Hunt, and he is one of the premier producer trainers and agency operational consultants. Really, it's more of a consultancy since he has the entire team helping him drive agencies forward by getting in and essentially being management or leaders of the various departments in which agencies may need help. He outlines what he does at Premier Strategy Box. You can check it out at mystrategybox.com.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If you know Mick and you know his work, you know he is best in class. We really hit it off the first time that we met and we've become friends and we talk. Being that he's a Patriots fan, we also talk trash quite a bit. Go Bills, Bills Mafia, Super Bowl. It's just a pleasure to bring Mick to you guys. You're going to hear me say it during the episode, but I think Mick is one of the secrets in our industry. I think you're catching him before he blows up because what he's doing is absolutely tremendous. So I hope you enjoy this episode.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Before we get there though, I want to give a big shout out to one of the sponsors that makes this show possible and that is Better Agency. I want to be very honest with you guys. Even though these companies are sponsors, I'm never going to put a company in front of you that I think doesn't have your best interest in mind. There are all kinds of CRMs and automation tools. Some are specific to our industry, some are not. There are pros and cons to all of them. Here's what I'm going to tell you. Today, this moment, if you do 75% or more of your business in personalized insurance, you are crazy to not be on Better Agency. If you're doing 75% or more of your new business production in personal lines insurance, you are absolutely bananas to not be on Better Agency. Absolutely bananas.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It is the best, hands down, just buy the box, open the box, get to work platform for personal lines that exists. Now they're bringing commercial lines along. I'm helping them because I want the platform to work because I love Nick and I love Will and Preston and McBilly. I've gotten to know these guys. They're friends of mine. I want them to be successful and I'm helping them with commercial lines. Commercial lines is coming along, but personal lines is there. Some of the tools that they have, like the referral partner program and the other things they're doing, are absolutely hands down the best personal line CRM that exists in the industry right now. Once they get commercial lines to fully functional, which is coming in the next month, it's going to be absolutely insane. So go to betteragency.io. Go to betteragency.io today and make your agency better.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right, let's get on to Mick Hunt and just do this thing. What up, dude?
--:-- Mick Hunt: What's up, man? How are you living?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Trying to do the thing here. My kids' school lost power. We had a pretty bad storm last night with 70 mile per hour winds that just whipped through the whole area real quick. It literally lasted like 20 minutes, but it was brutal. The kids' school lost power and then the kids don't have school tomorrow because of Columbus State weekend. So I got a babysitter till one today, which is why I had to move up our call. After here, I gotta go pick them up and then it's a daddy day for the next day and a half.
--:-- Mick Hunt: That's good, man. It's good.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, it's good. Get on your soft side a little bit. Causes me a lot of stress.
--:-- Mick Hunt: It's okay, man. I love dad time at dad appropriate times.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I know what you mean. At the times when I'm supposed to be dadding, I love to dad. I love it. But in the times when I'm supposed to be working, I don't love to dad.
--:-- Mick Hunt: Right. Favorite thing. You get all the interruptions and it starts to annoy you and it's like, jeez.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, yeah. But I remember those days. It is all good. I am super pumped you're on the show, man. I know you don't do a lot of podcasts and I'm pretty excited for us to talk and to share you and what you're doing and your thought process with the audience. I feel like I'm catching you before you're the national guy. I feel like you're still a little bit of a secret. I'm just excited to let more people in on what you're doing, how you're doing it, what your methodology is, just the size and scale of your operation. It's so impressive and how fast you've grown. I don't normally do this, but I would love to hear it in your words. Premier Strategy Box, what that is, what you're doing. I'd love for you to just break it down a little bit for everybody.
--:-- Mick Hunt: Yeah. I honestly believe that there's six pillars that every agency, and really not just every agency, every business has to the core of who they are. For me, that's sales management, lead generation, automation, operations management, HR, and marketing. What Premier Strategy Box does is we bottle all of that, or pieces of that, depending on what our clients and agency partners want. We just do that for you.
--:-- Mick Hunt: I look at us as the implementers. Most agency owners are smart people. You can acknowledge this because you're in this world now. You know exactly what to do. It's finding the time to get all these things done. It's finding the resources to get all these things done. That's where we step in. When we talk about being your outsourced sales manager, we hold all your team meetings. We run all your reports. We do all your producer coaching, your producer training, your goal setting. We do all of that. When we talk about operations management, we build your workflows and procedures. We develop your account managers. We make sure you have the right workflows in place so that everyone's workload is balanced. With automation, all those procedures that we put in place, we automate them. We work inside of your CRM. We work inside of your management system and put in your renewal process and make it automated. We help you prospect through automation. All the things that an agency needs to do that they know they need to do, but don't have time to do effectively and efficiently, that's what we do.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: God, you're breaking down my dream scenario right there. I was an agency owner before. I knew that. You know my story and a lot of people know my story. I went from zero to three million of revenue in three years, not premium but revenue, and I did it by having simplified processes and procedures and everything in place. A lot of sales focused processes and procedures. That's just what it's about.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: When someone comes to you, obviously I'm in the tornado right now and I'm my own worst enemy because I probably talk to people too much. I chase too many shiny objects, all the things that you're not supposed to do, I do all of them. Half the time when you and I talk, it's me exercising my demons at you, just telling you all the stupid shit that I had done that week that I know I shouldn't be doing, but I'm doing anyways. I'm listening and every one of those things is a pain point for me right now. For many agencies, it's probably not all of them, maybe one of them they've had time to focus on and maybe a couple others they really struggle with. Where have you seen, when you first take on a new client or someone comes and they call you, what is one of the most common of the six that is obviously a pain spot? Where do you see kind of what's the one where you're like, most likely you're not doing this or you haven't done this? Does that make sense?
--:-- Mick Hunt: It's two. Yeah, totally. It's two. It's sales management and then automation. You and I've talked about this offline before. We're in what I'm going to call the insurance renaissance or the insurance revolution. So many great things are changing in our industry with technology and data and automation. It overwhelms a lot of people and they don't know where to begin. They hear all this great talk about where the industry is going and how consumers are changing their buying process, but they don't know where to begin. That's just what we do. The automation piece is huge.
--:-- Mick Hunt: And then obviously sales management. Most of the agency owners who got into the business got into the business because they were great producers. No one taught them how to manage other people. No one taught them how to coach and develop other salespeople. You were just really good, so you started your own agency. That's what we also help with. We help develop, it doesn't matter if you're a new salesperson or an experienced salesperson. We help develop and get those right behaviors and mindsets in place.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. And I don't want you to give away any of your secrets.
--:-- Mick Hunt: Dude, ask me anything. Because I don't care, man. I love giving back. So I don't care. There's no secrets.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Good, good. For everyone listening at home, I met Mick at Billy Williams' event in February before the Rona forced us home. The Rona. Or maybe I should say the benevolent dictators of our society decided that we couldn't leave our homes any longer because we can't make decisions for ourselves because of the Rona. Maybe this isn't mutual, but I feel like we immediately hit it off in terms of just how we looked at the industry and all that kind of stuff.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I want to talk about one that I hear a lot from agents who are struggling with, that I don't necessarily have a great answer for them, but I do hear this question a lot. That's lead management and lead organization and lead development. It seems like people are often, I don't want to say by accident because so many people in our industry are hardworking, that's not what I mean, but they catch a vein. They catch a mortgage broker who's really good or they have a brother or sister or brother-in-law, sister-in-law who's an accountant and feeds them business. They catch this one referral source that lifts them up off the ground. Then they kind of start to plateau and they're like, I'm not really sure how to go beyond this. How do I get further? Because I hit this one vein that was great and got me kind of escape velocity, but now where do I go? A lot of the conversations we've had, you have a really good philosophy and thought process through just developing leads, working leads, bringing them through, getting them to your people. Talk to me, I'd love to talk through that process at a high level because it does feel like a pain point for a lot of agents.
--:-- Mick Hunt: Yeah, for sure. There's a few ways to go about it. Prior to your girl, the Rona coming out, I used to tell all of our clients, you need to go join associations. You need to be visible in associations, knowing that it's a slow play. That's the one thing that I make sure I talk to agents about. Lead generation is always going to be a slow play. If you need instant gratification, it's not going to work. Go get non-standard auto or non-standard commercial leads. You can do that all day. But if you really want to get quality, it's got to be a slow play, but targeted the right way. So join associations.
--:-- Mick Hunt: I actually was going to have this conversation with you tomorrow because we talk like every Friday or every other Friday. Start a virtual event. I have one of my clients, actually a few of my clients, started their own virtual event. They invited some of their clients and told their clients to invite other clients. Before you know it, you've got a 100, 150 person virtual event and only 30% are actually your clients. Now, all of a sudden, you have this bigger market to go capture and they know you and it's a great referral base. So that's one.
--:-- Mick Hunt: Two, my jam is commercial. My jam is worker comp X dates. There's different sources out there, whether you go through MyEdge, through Zywave, or Insurance X Dates. All those guys are great partners of mine. Setting up the right automated prospecting campaign is key. It's really key. I have clients that do it a couple of different ways. I have a couple of clients that don't want to start prospecting until after the renewals happen. Believe it or not, with the larger mid-market folks, they want to work you for nine months before they go. Some of my guys are focused on the large small to small mid market. They're going to start prospecting 90 to 120 days out. But whatever it is, you need to have an automated game plan that includes email content, which Ryan Hanley is the king of content. Thank you by the way, because you've helped some of my clients with content, so I appreciate you there. Content, phone calls, task reminders, all those follow-ups have to be a part of your lead generation campaign building.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Was that high level enough?
--:-- Mick Hunt: No, no, that's great.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: For people listening, one of the sponsors of the show, I use Better Agency. You can do this kind of thing in any CRM, whether it's Active Campaign, Infusionsoft, Agency Zoom. They all have it. I use Better Agency, that's just my tool of choice and I like supporting those guys. I think they're doing great stuff. One of the places that I've seen success, and I'm about two months into really working this process, you work with David Carruthers, and I work with you, and I get all these different ideas. When the thought process comes back to it, it's all the same stuff. You have to keep educating people. You have to stay in front of them. It might be four months before one of those different messages pops to them. Maybe injury management doesn't mean anything to them. Commercial auto, they're like, whatever. Then all of a sudden you talk about a preliminary experience mod and they're like, oh, my agent has never talked to me about preliminary experience mod. What the heck is this? And they pick up the phone and call, or they're receptive to your call when you call, or the email, they respond to the email. That has been the different types of touches all coordinated around the same type of message. That has definitely been one of the things that I've picked up in this iteration of my career that I have seen success with.
--:-- Mick Hunt: That's where we've had some success. This live event one, the virtual event, we were actually talking about this the other day. I ran a workers comp webinar. If you were to watch it, it's rough. I am, there are some topics that at the time that I did it, I still was pretty raw on and I was bullshitting pretty hard. But man, I have gotten four clients now out of a webinar that had 36 people on it.
--:-- Mick Hunt: I'm telling you, if you have a niche, and when I say niche, you and I talk about this a lot, a niche can be a product line. Your niche can be workers comp. Your niche could be contractors. Your niche could be restaurants. Whatever it is, develop a webinar around your niche and do it continuously. You'll be surprised at how many people start attending and how the word starts to get out. We're seeing so much success with our clients, especially those that do benefits. Oh my God. It's crazy. We just set up, like I was telling you, a 150 person virtual event just around benefits. Again, only 25 of my clients were on the call. Guess how many they wrote out of the 150?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: How many?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh, benefits. That's the money.
--:-- Mick Hunt: Exactly. Exactly.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The other thing too, with these webinars and live events and stuff, they're so easy to build now with Zoom and Zoom Meetings or Zoom Webinar. They're almost idiot proof. It's like, put this in here, put a title in here, three sentence description, little image, hit publish, send link out. It's really that simple. I found that just emailing people straight, going, "Hey man, I'm doing a webinar. Here's the link. I'd love for you to show up and let anyone else know." You'll see your numbers grow. You don't need to have 500 people on the webinar.
--:-- Mick Hunt: Exactly. I think that's the other thing. I've talked to a couple agents about the webinar and they're always like, "I don't know how I'll get people on there." That's always the biggest concern. Not necessarily what they'll say, but how do I get people on the webinar? I think they're worried about putting a webinar on and having no one show.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, I'm going to let everyone in on a secret. I did a webinar for workers comp. 50 people registered, 36 people showed. I signed up four clients.
--:-- Mick Hunt: That's great.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm perfectly happy with that. All told, it was three and a half hours of work. Total three and a half hours of work to get four clients. I'll take that all day. Great ROI. I set up a cyber webinar. I didn't love the hook. I didn't really put enough work into it. Two people signed up. Guess what I did? Canceled it. Guess what happened in my life? Nothing. I just kept moving.
--:-- Mick Hunt: Nothing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Exactly. The worst thing that can happen is not enough people show up. What I did for those two people that did sign up was I sent them individual emails. I said, "Hey, a couple things have come up. We're not going to put the webinar on, but I'd love to do one-on-one with you if you're interested." One of them said no. One of them said yes. I wrote a little $2,000 cyber policy. I feel like so much of this, man, and you and I talk about this, it's so much of this is in our head.
--:-- Mick Hunt: Exactly. It's all up here.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: When you are talking to an agency owner and they come to you and they say, "Mick, here's what I got going on. I got a couple producers. I'm struggling with keeping it all together." What are some of the things that you'll talk to them about? How do we get our mind right? How do we start to align our mental so that we don't constantly feel overwhelmed and we can start to grab onto this stuff?
--:-- Mick Hunt: It starts with having a goal, having a plan, and having a vision. I always ask, "What are your goals? What are your plans? What are your visions? What have you been doing historically? And what went wrong?" Usually when I hear about what went wrong or what's not going right, we can figure out the solution. I've got one of my agents who's actually a great friend of mine doing really great with sales, but his passion is technology. He's been trying to lead sales as a technology person. Tech people don't communicate very well. They're black and white. I said, "Jeff, let me take over the sales management piece. I'll get your people the right way. I'll communicate effectively with them." He's having the best three months in a row that he's ever had in the history of his agency.
--:-- Mick Hunt: It's really just pinpointing, again, what are your goals? What have you been doing to try to accomplish those goals? But more importantly, what went wrong? Then let me step in and figure out how to solve what went wrong. You're right, a lot of it is in your head because we hear so many things and we try so many things that we give up after two weeks. "Oh, this doesn't work. Let me go try this. Oh, this doesn't work. I just heard about this from Ryan on his podcast. Let me go try that." You have to give something a try. You've got to build that plan. You've got to let some execution happen. Again, if you want instant gratification, this business isn't for you. This isn't an instant gratification business. It's just not.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. That's one of the things that I definitely have struggled with. One, I hadn't worked by myself in a long time. A really long time. I had been leading teams of at least 10 to 15 people for half a decade and all of a sudden I'm back to just me. There's no ability to offload anything. There's none of that. There's no process in place, no systems. I think what we do is we instead of taking the time to step back, and I've really started to do this. Chris Paradiso, who just was on the podcast recently, he turned me on to this journal called "Living Your Best Year Ever" from Darren Hardy. There's a million of these different journals. Whichever one you pick doesn't necessarily matter. I'm not trying to say this is the one for everybody because I actually have kind of a hybrid version of it that I've been using.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What has been working for me, after talking to Chris, what he really convinced me of is you have to have a plan and you have to track your activity versus that plan. Whether you have a 20 person team or it's just you, and I do think when you have a smaller team, it's even more important because there's less layers to pick up things that fall through the cracks. If I don't pick it up, it hits the floor. I think this idea of tracking your time, your activity, where you are spending, I've already found out, and people at home can't see this, I use this "Living Your Best Year Ever" journal to figure out, it helped me come up with a plan for what I wanted. That was my goal. I'm terrible at goal setting. I've even talked to you about that. I've never been a goal setter. I'm always just, "I'm going to try as hard as I possibly can and whatever happens, happens because goals are bullshit." That was always my mentality. I've since learned the error of that thought process, but that's always the way I've been. This helped me set the goal.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Then I use a hybrid bullet journal to literally track what I'm doing during the day. How many cold calls have I made? How many prospecting emails? How many postcards have I sent out?
--:-- Mick Hunt: Are you using thanks.io for postcards? I have a few clients who are, yes.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Bro, I love it.
--:-- Mick Hunt: You set these automated things up and then you just do a tag in your system and it zaps over and the postcard just goes out. It's done. That's a game changer.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: How many thank you notes have I sent? And then how many tasks? I have a task list over here which I then rewrite each day. As I close things out, I'm basically tracking my activity. What I've found, and this has been super interesting, and I apologize that I'm bogarting this with this topic, but this has just been super interesting to me, is what it's shown me is my propensity is to do tasks. Left to my own devices, I'll skew towards getting tasks done that have to get done. Things that need to get done in the business versus prospecting. I'll fight the urge to prospect and go tasks. It's been this light bulb over my head. "Ryan, you have to fight this because you'll just task, task, task, task, task all day and not prospect." I have no problem prospecting just because I tend to be less salesman, more, I'm so used to being organizational leader. That was my focus and sales was done by people on my team. I've trained myself out of being a consistent salesperson. This completely opened my eyes to this.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Bringing it all the way back, by working with someone like you and the agencies that work with you and some of the ones that I've talked to about some of the content stuff, this is exactly what you guys do. You kind of skew people back into this frame and help them better understand, "Here, we're going to manage these tasks for you so you can do the things that actually make your agency money."
--:-- Mick Hunt: Exactly. To your point, a lot of agencies are set up the exact same way that you are mentally. They put folks in a bottle and say, "Okay, you're going to be an agent. You're going to do sales and service." Well, 80% of your staff are always going to do service first. They're always going to be like Ryan and want to do the task. Yet you have these goals for them on sales and service is always going to win. They're always going to complain, "Oh, well, I didn't have time to make 50 calls today because Sally called in about her endorsement and I had to call five underwriters to get that done." Because that's what they would rather do.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Right.
--:-- Mick Hunt: We help you in your agency determine who are your service people and who are your sales people. We let your salespeople sell and your service people service. You grow much better that way. Just by doing something that simple. I know you're not there yet, but you're getting there. You have a couple of people on deck that are going to come be that prospect or that sales piece because at least you've identified that's not you. You will market all day. You will organize all day. But I can't get Ryan to make 35 phone calls because it's not you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. It is such a struggle for me, man. I hate that it is. I'd love to be that big alpha who makes a hundred phone calls a day. I'd love to be that guy. But if it's not you, why make you be that?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It grinds. I hate it. There is a part of me that wishes I was that person who woke up in the morning and was like, "I can't wait to just hammer out my phone calls." There are people out there and they're very successful producers. They love this. They love it. I envy them. I honestly do. If you are listening to this and you wake up in the morning and you just can't wait to go prospect, I envy the hell out of you. I just do. It is just such a struggle for me to do that. Even if I talk, whatever we've talked about, it drives me freaking crazy that it's like a personality hiccup that I hate about myself.
--:-- Mick Hunt: When we teach prospecting and we coach prospecting, we coach and make it a game because a lot of us are competitive. We make it a game to get past the gatekeeper. We have little tips and tricks that we use, some opening one-liners that break the ice a little bit. But yeah, in the prospecting world, you just have to know, "All right, I've got 50 calls. I got to get through today." It's not Ryan, but it's okay.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You know what?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: One of the things — and I have been making calls, and I have been starting to get some traction, and it's making me feel more comfortable. I'm not going to say that I'm waking up every day dying to make my calls, but tracking my activity has helped pull me back in. I'll be like, "Oh shit, I've done six tasks today and I haven't hit my calls yet. I got to do my calls." So that's been helping.
--:-- But one of the ideas that is probably going to sound super obvious to you, but to me has been very eye-opening, and it's helped me reshape my focus on this, is this concept of detaching yourself from the outcome. I don't remember exactly who said it, and I'm going to butcher the quote, so I'm not even going to try to hit it exactly. But the concept was — I was listening to a podcast with a sales guy. It was Josh Braun from — I don't know if anyone's seen him on LinkedIn, he's Sales Guide, Sales DNA, something like that. He always quotes Chris Voss, if that resonates with anyone.
--:-- He wrote this thing on LinkedIn and he's like, "The number one thing keeping people from consistently doing prospecting phone calls and outreach is that they're attached to the outcome. They think that their ego makes them believe that they have anything to do with the outcome." He's like, "You have nothing to do with the outcome. All you can do is present yourself in a way that can resonate with the client, or the client can potentially connect to. And they're either going to say yes or no. And you don't know if they just had an argument with their spouse or whatever."
--:-- That concept — I had never really thought of it that way. I had always thought the outcome was the whole thing. I falsely thought, "God, what if they say no? Oh my god, what am I, a loser? What if I see them on the golf course and they just said no to me on a prospecting call?" I really started thinking about that, and it has helped me pick up the phone more. I'm just like, "I don't give a shit. Who cares? No."
--:-- Mick Hunt: Ironically, right before we started this today, I was just finishing up a coaching call with a brand new producer. Brand new, just graduated college, first insurance job, first sales job. I use this analogy, and I think you'll get it because you like baseball too, right?
--:-- Mick Hunt: In baseball, your best hitter has what batting average? .300. So that means 70% of the time, they're not going to first base, bro. So think of it in that context, man. You're not going to close 100%. You're not going to contact 100%. You're not going to get a yes 100% of the time. Why do you let that outcome bother you so much?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: See, sometimes people say shit and it makes me so mad because it makes so much sense. Because — I'll tell you, this is going to be a very brief contextual aside, but thankfully it's my show so I can do this. I was a pretty good hitter coming out of high school. I got to college and my college coach was one of those coaches where every at-bat was your job. If you looked bad on a strikeout, all of a sudden you'd be on the bench and someone would be in your position. He was just one of those guys who thought the best way to do it was to keep this constant sack of pressure on top of your shoulders. If you had two bad groundouts or got sawed off because you couldn't get around an inside pitch, he'd be like, "Oh, nope, you can't hit this guy, you're out."
--:-- I did not thrive in that environment at all. He ended up leaving my junior year, and my senior year we had a different coach come in. I ended up having my best year of my career in college. But it was wild coming out of high school where it was my job. If I had two bad games in a row, it didn't matter. That third game I was going back out. I had the confidence I could just whack it. In college, it wasn't like that, and I struggled.
--:-- After college, I played in this semi-pro league down in Washington DC. It was a wood bat league, and I just could care less. I was never going to be a pro. I wasn't getting drafted. As many years as I played in that league, whenever it was over, it was over. This was the end for me. And I just detached myself. I did not care if I struck out because it did not matter to me. I wasn't getting drafted. I'll tell you, man, those were three of the best years of baseball I ever played in my life. I had a full job working in an office, I'd show up with bloodstains soaking through my khaki pants, and I played the best because I just didn't care.
--:-- Until you just said that, I had never connected those years of my sports career with selling before. I'd never connected those two ideas.
--:-- Mick Hunt: See, you don't have to hit a home run every time.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: There you go.
--:-- Mick Hunt: I won't even send you a bill for this one. [Laughs] But no, seriously, once you put it in context, man, every call is not going to be a home run. Every call doesn't lead. So why do you need to think that? Right?
--:-- Mick Hunt: I teach our guys, you just want to get better with each call. You want to make sure you're going through the process, through the stages on each call. And the results are going to happen how they're supposed to happen. I believe in good juju, right? Not Juju Smith-Schuster, but good juju. So I believe if you do the right things, results are going to happen.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Good receiver though, too.
--:-- Mick Hunt: Yeah. I can't talk football right now because number one, I lost this weekend in our fantasy league to my son. I don't know how that happened. And then you guys are like two games off on me in the conference now.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: See, this is what it's been like for the rest of us for the last 20 years. So just so everyone knows, and you can judge him, Mick is a Patriots fan.
--:-- Mick Hunt: Judge me. Lifelong Patriot fan.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: For the last 20 years, you've lived in this la-la land of "Oh, how come you guys can't compete with us?" Because you've had the best quarterback in the history of the NFL for 20 years. This is what the rest of us have lived with. This is what it's like.
--:-- Mick Hunt: It's okay. We'll be back. Don't worry. We'll be back.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The crazy part is, man, I'm watching you guys the other night, and your quarterback situation is in trouble. I'm not a fan of Cam Newton because I don't think that he studies enough to play and win long-term in a Belichick offense. That's my personal opinion. I think you need someone — I think his arm is fine. His legs are amazing. He's obviously a tremendous athlete. But I don't know. I see some cracks in that armor.
--:-- Mick Hunt: He'll probably do fine. Belichick is a freaking genius. You watch these guys and the way they execute, especially the guys that have been around, and you're like, "Wow, they're still performing at a high level." It's preparation. He has a plan and they execute the plan. It's the same thing in sales processes or operational processes. It's having the plan, execute the plan. Don't get outside of who you're not.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We just lost everyone who isn't a football fan. We talked about baseball, so there's like 10 people left listening to this episode. Ryan, bring them back.
--:-- Mick Hunt: It's okay.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So here's a very tactical question I want to talk to you about. Let's say someone listening is an agency owner like myself who — I did not start an agency because I was a tremendous producer. I started an agency because I see myself more as an organizational leader. I have a process that I want to deliver to clients. I think this business can be done in a — I have a vision for how I would like to deliver an agency experience to clients. That's what I'm trying to build.
--:-- So let's say I want to go out and start bringing in producers. I brought in a producer. She's personal lines. She lives in Staten Island and she takes a lot of our personal lines leads that we get in and she's working them. She's been with me for two weeks and she's doing great. We're working out some kinks, but in terms of hitting the ground running, she's doing tremendous. Any of her struggles are more process. They're more me needing to work on process versus her being willing to pick up the phone and call. She's tremendous. I'm very happy.
--:-- That being said, I would love to duplicate her in commercial lines. So I'm going to hit you with scenarios that I've had in my head, and you help me massage out what your advice would be. Taking into account that I do not have the budget to pay someone a salary. I don't have that. If that's the case, do I try to go get someone? I could pay someone a small salary, more like a stipend than a salary. I just couldn't bring someone in at $45,000 a year and then wait for them to get good. It would have to be more of a stipend and commission, try to get them selling quickly.
--:-- One, do you think that's even something I should consider, or is it a distraction? And two, depending on your answer, what would you do if you were in my position, or if you're in an agency like mine who maybe doesn't have the cash to bring in that producer, but knows that if they did, they could probably get that person going? What do you think?
--:-- Mick Hunt: All right, I'll take it in two stages. First stage, we talked about this three months ago. Set a goal so you can hire someone. You need to have that goal so that you can. Because here's what's going to happen in the commercial world. Can you find a 1099 commission-only person out there? Probably. Are they going to be worth it? Probably not. That's the God's honest truth. Unless you're finding an agent who wants the opportunity to build their own and they just need that structure or the resources to go do that from a carrier appetite or from a carrier standpoint, maybe you can find that person.
--:-- I would say it's a distraction if you're not going to invest in paying someone. Why do I say it's a distraction? You're going to get out what you put in. If you want someone commission-only, do you really have expectations for them? Probably not. You have goals for them, but do you have an expectation? If you invest money into an employee, you have an expectation. Not only do you have goals, but you have an expectation. That's what I would say. Wait until you can take the leap of faith and say, "Okay, I'm going to bring someone in," because commercial is a slower game than home and auto. You can write those today. Commercial takes a little bit of time.
--:-- You get that person that's commission-only and it takes them 90 days to write their first real account. They can write some small BOPs here and there, but their first real account might take 90 to 120 days just because that's the lay of the land. What are they going to be doing to Ryan for those 90 to 120 days? Bugging the shit out of you. And probably looking for another job.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yep. No, that makes a lot of sense. So okay, so let's — I knew we had talked about it, but I like talking through these scenarios because I know there's a lot of people who have these questions. I like to present it as me because it's easier to talk through it. That is the plan that I'm on. I'm always feeling froggy.
--:-- Mick Hunt: I would say unless it's a producer that is somewhere where they're limited in growth and they're never going to have ownership or equity in their book, it's going to be hard to find someone commission-only on commercial. But now, if you can work that to where, "Hey, come to Rogue Risk, you can get equity in the book of business that you're building. I can give you a monthly stipend to get you going for the first couple of months. Here you go." That angle could definitely work.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: One thing that I have wanted to do — I was actually talking to David Crothers a little bit about this because he has a very employee-friendly, focused setup in his agency. He's building the agency, which I really like this mentality. He gives everybody an opportunity to have a deeper interest in this business. I think that's the right way to go, especially with the talented individuals that we're seeing come up in this next generation. I know because I feel this way too. You want to feel like you have some sort of ownership in the thing if you're going to invest yourself in it.
--:-- I think this mentality that millennials and Zs and whatever letter you want to put on them don't give a shit — I think it's false. I think they want more than anything to believe in something. Look at all the craziness that's going on in the world on both sides in every way, shape, and form. People just want something to believe in. The problem is for so long, we've just been told, "Pat you on the head, wait your turn, earn your — you gotta pay your dues." I do think you have to work for things, that's not what I'm saying. But people want to be invested in the things that they invest their time in. There are so many options today.
--:-- One of the things that I've been mapping out in my crazy time — time which I should be like watching Friends or something — I'm mapping out these things in a freaking Excel spreadsheet. Why the hell did I say Friends? Jesus. I don't even know if I watched it.
--:-- Mick Hunt: Because you were watching it last night. It was cool. You texted me last night, "Hey, Mick, are you watching Friends?" And I was like, "Dude, that's the wrong Mick. That's the other Mick."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think it makes a lot of sense to allow producers to have a portion of what they produce have some ownership in that. Just in what they produce, it doesn't have to be the whole agency, but to feel like they're building something. I don't know exactly how that works, if it's real equity or not equity, or just some sort of phantom piece that pays them on the profitability of their books so they're thinking about it from the same perspective and aligning interest with the agency.
--:-- Some of these things are things that maybe an agency my size shouldn't be thinking about. But at the same time, I think they're important ideas for all of us to be considering all the time. Because if you're not recruiting as an agency owner, what are you doing?
--:-- Mick Hunt: No, I agree. That methodology was what I did in my agency as well. At the end of the day, you don't want to burn and churn producers. So why not reward your really good producers with that piece? Because now you're promoting longevity. You're promoting, "Hey, this is something you can work and strive towards." Why would you not want someone whose goal is to be a partner at your agency? Why would you not want that? I'm all about promoting equity, giving equity, because you hit it on the head. Our industry is changing. The people coming to our industry are changing as we get younger. We have to compete with other industries that are going to do these type of things.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What do you think about VAs? Where do VAs fit? Where do you see them playing a role? This is a huge topic. Where do you see VAs playing into this system?
--:-- Mick Hunt: When I had my agency, we had VAs. Anything that was not customer-facing, I'd rather let other folks handle it. I wanted the people in my agency that were customer-facing to focus on building the relationships. Let your VAs handle — this is going to sound terrible, but I think you understand what I'm saying — handle that grunt work, man. Handle those endorsements. Handle those simple quotes that can be done. Handle the ACORD building. Handle all the ACORDS. To me, you're going to be better when you can have a streamlined process of, "All right, here's customer-facing roles and tasks. Here's non-customer-facing roles and tasks." What you're going to realize is those non-customer-facing roles and tasks are easily done by VAs because they're going to do it well. They're going to do it quick. They're going to do it right.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I agree with you. The way I think about VAs, having some experience now with Agency VA — I have a part-time VA who works four hours a day for me. Again, Agency VA is the company I use. There are others out there, but I just love Wes and Ben to death, and I think their people do a tremendous job. The way I've thought about it is — my VA, his name is Tom, and the manager, I guess, is her name is Lally. I have had nothing but a positive experience with them. They're responsive. They're solving problems and really helping me. They've been a huge help. The amount of training that I would have had to do if I had hired someone off the street versus bringing in individuals who have some experience in the space and understanding it is night and day.
--:-- The way I think about it is horsepower. You buy the vehicle and it comes with 350 horsepower. I don't know cars, I'm not even gonna try to pretend like I do. But you come with 350 horsepower, and then you go get a catalytic converter and you plug that shit in there, and all of a sudden it's got 400 horsepower. That's what this is. They're customized employees who perform certain tasks for you on a repeated basis that give your agency horsepower. I think they can be done well. I think it can be a pain in the ass. But a lot of that comes back to what you started this conversation with. Can you set up the process and procedures in your agency to do it?
--:-- Are VAs part of what you're doing? Are you bringing VAs into some of these agencies, helping introduce them if they're not using them already?
--:-- Mick Hunt: Yes. Several of our agency partners, we've introduced VAs to, especially on the commercial processing side, on the commercial quoting side. When we come in on the operation side of the piece and do operations management, we look at your current procedures, processes, and workflows, if you have them — a lot of folks don't. We will recommend, "Okay, so let's talk about your new business process. Here's what prospecting is. Here's how the quote gets handled. Here's what the first renewal looks like. Where can a VA step in and handle a lot of this work?" You don't have the bandwidth to go hire three people, but you could hire three VAs and be much more efficient to the point that you just stated so eloquently — add horsepower to your agency. I love that.
--:-- We do that on the new business process. We do that with the renewal process. We have several agencies who love to re-quote every renewal or shop every renewal. That's great. Let a VA handle that. I'm not going to change who you are. If you're like, "Hey, my retention is 98% and this is why," that's awesome. We're going to let you do that, but why not have a VA there that can go in and do that more effectively and let your — I'm going to say human — let your office person be the salesman. Even in the renewal process, even your service person that's servicing now can keep that relationship going with your existing customer. So, love VAs.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm going to adjust course again, but as you talk, different ideas come, and I'm just interested in your perspective on these things. Let's assume there are three types of business that you could focus on: personal lines, small commercial, and that middle market, larger small commercial. Wherever that line is, who cares? But there's three types: small commercial, middle market commercial, and personal lines. Where should we focus our time? I know that is a very "it depends" question, so take it wherever you want.
--:-- I'm constantly of two minds on this particular topic. I'm super interested in where you are because middle market commercial with the tools and technology that have started to be presented to agents today has become much more accessible to a wider range of agencies than was previously thought five or ten years ago. Today, I could be a middle market agency as a one-person show.
--:-- Mick Hunt: Wholeheartedly. Yeah.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think that wasn't necessarily a widely held belief even three or four years ago. So take that where you want. You have those three lines of business. Where would you start to go? Where do you see opportunity coming?
--:-- Mick Hunt: When I had my agency, we focused on what I would consider large small or that small mid-market. I think that space has been a dominating area for the last 10, 15 years. I talk revenue versus premium because you can't spend premium. I can go spend revenue all day. Our average account was $18,000 of revenue. In my agency — I don't know if you remember this or not — we were all virtual and digital. This was before Rona. I set my agency up. Not a soul came into a physical location. My producers were remote. We did everything email and web video. This was back when you only had WebEx or Join.me as the only players. Everything that we did was virtual and digital. $3 million of revenue in three years, average $18,000 of revenue. Our largest account was $225,000 of revenue.
--:-- To me, that's where I would focus because you're going to get the greater ROI. A lot of sales coaches or sales mentors will tell you, "Don't worry about price." That's bullshit. Price is always going to be important. But when you're focused on personal lines and small commercial, all you have is price for the most part. Your salesmanship, the game of salesmanship, isn't as important in small commercial and personal lines. Relationship building is important, but the game within the game — I can do that great in the large small or mid-market. So that's where we focus. That's where my agency partners that are with us now, that's where we're changing our focus to.
--:-- We talk about let's double and triple your revenue, let's double, triple your goals. Everyone thinks, "Oh, that means I have to work two or three times harder." No. You just have to have your prospect's revenue double or triple. You don't have to change what you are. You just go after the larger accounts.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Do you think — it feels to me like there's a hardening in the market coming. A lot of trade publications have talked about this. I'm not saying that is a bad thing or a good thing, but it's definitely going to be a change. The days of whoever has the most markets wins because you just find the lowest price are probably going to be less — not never gone, but less.
--:-- Do you think it makes sense for agencies, considering how automated you can make personal lines today — you can really make a consistent personal lines automated flow of business. You can consistently drive reasonably cost opportunities into a producer if you have a good flow, if you have good technology. You can really keep a consistent flow of personal lines going. Do you think that's a waste of time to build that out? Do you think it's going to be lower revenue?
--:-- In New York State, there's only like three carriers that even write commercial auto. If you had commercial auto on your books, two of the major carriers literally just non-renewed all of their clients. The prices are going through the roof. So whatever you have on the books is great, but trying to write new commercial auto today is brutal because you just can't find it.
--:-- My point in saying that to you is with this middle market, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. One of your best carriers can chop a line of business, and now you're scrambling. Personal lines seems like, if you do it right, it just kind of slowly ticks up and grows and grows. When you have these weird market moves, personal lines seems to always kind of be there. So do you think that's a smart play, or do one then do the other? What do you think?
--:-- Mick Hunt: If you're going to do personal lines that way, what I would do is set it up to where with your carrier partners, your prospects can bind themselves.
--:-- Mick Hunt: And by that, I mean, make sure your website's intuitive. You can ask the right questions. Get with Billy Williams and have him build you one of his chat bots so you can get all the questions answered, build the API to go through, have it go direct to the carrier so that a person can bind themselves. That's how I would do personal lines right.
--:-- I had a cyber liability product where literally you answered seven questions on my website, press quote, press bind, it was done. I didn't touch a single person. I had over $80,000 of revenue of cyber for people I never talked to, never touched. It was its own standalone product. So if you can do personal lines like that, if you can have the right carriers that you can build some good tools on your website that people can buy themselves, do it, because that's good, easy, strong revenue.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But you don't think that it makes sense to have any type of staff attached to personal lines or spending a lot of time thinking and investing in personal lines today?
--:-- Mick Hunt: You just can't get there quick enough. You can't get to escape. The ROI for green new business personal lines is low. It's very, very low. Now, I'm not saying get rid of your existing personal lines, and for some of the folks on the calls that are large on personal lines, I'm not saying that at all. But I think everyone understands the challenge of getting green new business in personal lines. The ROI on that is very, very low. Again, that's what I see with the clients that I have.
--:-- I think it's fair. Here's my favorite part about our business: there's literally no right or wrong answer. Everybody has their own niche in their own way. And what works for you, works for you, especially depending on where you're at. You can be in North Carolina where personal lines sucks, but in Pennsylvania where personal lines is doing okay.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, it just totally depends. The thing for me up here, and I look at my wife's business all the time too and how well they do in personal lines. Personal lines in upstate New York versus downstate is a whole other thing. I mean, frankly, I wish they would just cut it off and make it the 51st state. Just take basically Westchester south and make them — there's nothing wrong with those people, it's just literally a different place. That's everything about it.
--:-- Just think geographically: you have flood issues down there that we don't have up here. You have storm issues, hurricane issues that you don't have up here. You have density and population issues that you don't have up here, coastal issues. So it's not just that those people are crazy. It just is a different place. New York's not that way.
--:-- But in upstate, man, personal lines — you get a package, you get someone in a home, auto, umbrella package with a solid carrier, a MetLife, a New York Central, a Safeco, a Traveler, someone like that. You have five to seven years with that person. They're not going to leave. The ability for another agent to rewrite an account from you that you have a home, auto, umbrella package with somebody — it's near impossible. The rates don't change that much. The coverages don't change. To get them in that package, you've had to have given them good coverage to begin with.
--:-- So I go back and forth on that because when I can get personal lines in, we actually can do it pretty easily. I have the carriers. I need to work on the systems a little bit. But you're right, it's singles. It's bunt singles. It's, "Hey, I just made $300 today." That's nothing, but it's not getting me a producer.
--:-- Mick Hunt: You can build the right automation inside your CRM. And like I said, if you can direct some things to your site and you can have like an auto issue on your website or even just going straight to the carrier, that can work. Yeah. I just wouldn't put a ton of staff resources for new business personal lines.
--:-- And I want people to understand: these are my thoughts and my thoughts only. And I'm saying new business personal lines. I'm not saying it can't — do not send Mick Hunt hate DMs on LinkedIn because he doesn't like personal lines. Don't do it. I'm just saying the ROI is smaller. If you're going to do it, use a funny GIF attached to the hate DM. Just make that happen.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: There you go. Dude, I appreciate your thoughts. I appreciate you coming on here. I have enjoyed our relationship over the last — well, it's almost been a year now. It has been tremendous. I think that what you're doing at Premier Strategy Box, though not a secret to everybody, probably isn't widely enough known. For the people who are the right fit for what you're doing, I really think it's a tremendous, tremendous service and people can't go wrong. So thanks, man. Let everyone know where they can connect with you, get into your ecosystem.
--:-- Mick Hunt: Yeah, really quick. MyStrategyBox.com, that's the website. On LinkedIn, Mick Hunt. I don't know all my LinkedIn deals. There's only one Mick Hunt out there. It's me. So LinkedIn, Twitter, you'll find me pretty active out there. But this isn't about me. I want to give Ryan a shout out.
--:-- Just seeing where you've come — I've known of you for several years, obviously, being in the insurance industry, but then getting to know you, getting to meet you face to face, and then the relationship that we've built, and just seeing how far you've come — I'm really proud of you. I text you once a week, "I'm proud of you," and you're like, "For what?" I'm like, "Just because you're continuing the grind, man." It's hard. It's hard to do it, especially in this world of haters where people want people to not succeed. I'm the total opposite. I want you to be the best version of you every day. So I'm proud of you literally every day.
--:-- And if you're not on Ryan's content, if you're not seeing his content, you are behind, because I promise you, really soon, he's going to come for your clients because his content is amazing. I promise you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Wow. Well, thank you. That means a lot to me. It really does. The thing you said about the haters is so funny. I think that oftentimes we are our biggest hater. We personally — and not to get too deep at the very end of a podcast — but those little messages and stuff, that shit means the world to people. It means a lot to me.
--:-- I think all of us in general should take a lesson from what Mick just said, myself included. I said in my bullet journal, "Thank you notes" is one of my things. It doesn't have to be "thank you for doing business." Just "thank you for whatever." Just thank you notes. I want to write thank you notes and make that part of my process. Because I think that gratitude and support of other people — it's really important stuff in this freaking crazy ass world that we're currently living in. More gratitude, more caring is what we need. So I appreciate it, man.
--:-- Mick Hunt: You know, I may say "for what," but really, they're nice messages to get and I do appreciate it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So everybody, MyStrategyBox.com, check it out. Just connect with Mick on LinkedIn at a minimum and just see what he's doing. You're going to thank yourself for doing it.
--:-- Mick Hunt: I appreciate that, buddy.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, all right. You had to slip that in. Go Bills.
--:-- Mick Hunt: Go fuck yourself with your fat fucking ass. Thank you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Do you want to have a few drinks and smoke a joint, Bubbles?
--:-- Mick Hunt: Yes. Yes. Yes.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Do you want to have a few drinks and smoke a joint, Bubbles?
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