--:-- Ryan Hanley: In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we have a guest who I've gotten to know fairly well over the last, I'd say, six months or so. He's about a year ahead of me in his journey building RiskWell Insurance. Our guest is James Jenkins.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Now, if you spend any time in IAOA or the NowCerts users group or the Better Agency users group, you are well aware of James because I like to bust his chops. James submits more user feature requests to service providers than anyone I've ever met in my life. But that's a good thing. I mean that with full sincerity. As I say to him, I will always be chasing him, but a solid number two on that list. I like to submit feature requests as well. But it's all in good fun.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I really want to talk to James because one of the things that he's been able to do, and how he's reached escape velocity in his agency, been able to add some staff and really start to deliver the product that he kind of had in his mind when he became an independent agent, is he really dialed into some niches. While at the beginning we talk a lot about the technology challenges that agencies have, as we work through that conversation, we get into what I believe is some incredibly valuable ideas, thoughts, concepts around how agencies are going to dial into niches moving into the future, the importance of that, and the hard decisions that we're going to have to make as agency owners and insurance producers and sales professionals in the coming years as things become more compartmentalized.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It becomes easier for people to dip into our backyard. We really have to become experts and dig deep into our expertise. So this is an incredible conversation. I think you're really going to enjoy it. And we definitely go all over the map, but that's what you've come to expect from this show. So hopefully it's right on par with a lot of the other conversations we have. Valuable, no doubt.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Before we get to James, though, I want to give a big shout out to AgencyVA. I can't give AgencyVA enough accolades. The reason is that I now have two AgencyVAs. I have a guy by the name of Nat who lives in the Philippines, and he's doing a lot of my back-end data work. He's helping me clean up my systems. He does my COIs. He will make billing changes in my systems, and he's great. I really like Nat. He's coming along quick. He's learning. He asks questions when he needs it, and a big fan there.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I also now have someone who's doing outbound dialing for me and helping me reach out to more potential prospects. We have a whole process that we work through there. She's been with me for going on two or three weeks, depending on when this is published. The first 10 days have been tremendous, just how enthusiastic she is. I'm listening to the phone calls. We have some things we got to work out. I'm trying to make my words work for her. We have to do some massaging there. I think I tend to be a little wordy and we're trying to get it down to where it's cleaner and simpler, where we can just kind of punchy deliver our value proposition and get meetings.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All that is great, but the reason I choose Agency VA is not just Wes and Ben who obviously I'm friends with and I love those guys. I also have Lally who's the manager. I can go to Lally and say, "Hey, I need this," or "This is going on," or "I'm struggling to get Nat to look at this, can you help him?" She's tremendous. The whole team over there has been phenomenal. So if you're looking for horsepower in your agency, Agency VA is the way to do it. Go to agencyva.com. Agencyva.com. That's agencyva.com. Here we go.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What's up, man?
--:-- James Jenkins: Hey, sexy. How you doing?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Good. Since you're late for the podcast, you have to watch me finish this handwritten contractors form that I am writing.
--:-- James Jenkins: Yeah, that's gross.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, you know, only the best.
--:-- James Jenkins: What carrier is that requiring handwritten apps?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Leather Stocking Cooperative Insurance Company. Never heard of them.
--:-- James Jenkins: Well, they only operate in upstate New York. They're actually a phenomenal company. In 99% of their classes that they write with, you can get a rate online. They just don't have online rating for contractors. So I basically use them, Liberty Mutual, and Dryden Mutual, which is another upstate-only insurance company domestic to New York, for contractors who are just starting. First-year contractors are never something anyone really wants, so these guys will all write them. They do a good job for the handyman, carpenter, renovations guy. They're perfectly fine. It just takes an extra step. But they're good companies. They're really good companies.
--:-- James Jenkins: New York is weird. If you take Westchester, the northern border of Westchester County, and you go south and then out towards the Island, that almost should be a separate state. A lot of carriers operate as if it is a separate state. It's just so much different. You go from where I live, which could be Iowa, and down there is like Hong Kong. When you think about the difference in densities of people.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I imagine if I were in New York, there's city and not city.
--:-- James Jenkins: Yeah. The rest of New York is kind of homogeneous, but then you get within half an hour of the edge of the city and everything changes. New York in general, I can understand why a lot of the best companies in the country do not come into New York. Not only is upstate homogeneous to a certain extent, but we also have some of the oldest cities in the entire country. Albany was the first incorporated city in the country, 1664. The average age of a downtown building in Albany is like 1840 something. You have these suburbs that are like any other suburbs, 1980s houses, 1950s houses from these waves of building. But then you have these cities that are kind of tightly packed in terms of where the buildings are, not a lot of people live, and they're in their oldest stuff. So people don't want them. It's a really weird dynamic up here. This is not the easiest state to do business in, but it's all good.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's not by accident that I've avoided the Northeast. You guys have so many small regionals and mutuals that someone from Texas will never get access to. Those companies are almost always more competitive than the nationals.
--:-- James Jenkins: Yes. So the difference is, why would you be handwriting out an application for Leather Stocking Cooperative Insurance Company? The deal is incredible claims handling. I know my underwriter on a first-name basis. We talk on the phone. I know exactly who she is. If I say to her, "Look, I know you guys don't want X, but it never happens. It's one job a year," she'll go, "Okay." Or she'll talk me through it. Like you said, usually better priced and for certain risks, they're just really good. Dryden is the same way.
--:-- James Jenkins: That's why when people do the Mike Casales thing—he's down there in Texas, he's a Marsh guy, real good dude—he always talks about how 90% of his business comes from BORs. The BOR game here, you'd have to have like 750 appointments to be a... to be you know.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. When we go down on the coast, I don't like writing business south of Houston because it's a bunch of carriers that I don't have and don't want to have. Lighthouse, UPC, Mason, Sage, Conifer, all of these little tiny companies that only write coastal X-wind or only write monoline property and their appetite is this big.
--:-- James Jenkins: It's Texas, but kind of like you were saying with New York, Texas really is three states. There is coastal Texas, which is its own thing, totally different. Then North Texas, like the DFW area, draw a rectangle around that part of the state. And then the rest of Texas. DFW and North Texas is freaking hail central.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You go from starting like an hour west of Fort Worth, which is like two hours west of Dallas. There's this line where on the west side, no big deal, you have thunderstorms but you don't have crazy hail. Then magically a line drawn in the map and it's, "Oh well, you're gonna get a bunch of hail now." It's like literally flipping a switch. It's crazy.
--:-- James Jenkins: Beginning about a month from now, the third week of March is almost the official beginning of storm season. You could be going fine from the second or third week of March until the second or third week of June. You could have the clearest day ever, sun is shining, not a cloud in the sky. 30 minutes passes and boom, the world is ending. It is like a biblical thunderstorm just comes out of literally nowhere.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The only time I've ever been scared on an airplane was actually on the tarmac at DFW. It's the only time I've ever been nervous. We come down, just like you said, a couple of clouds, no big deal. We hit the ground. From the time it took us to touch down to taxiing over to our gate, this storm rolls in. I shit you not, we get maybe 20, 30 feet from the jet bridge. You could reach out and touch the thing. The whole plane lights up like a nuke went off. Whack. Everyone goes, we look out the window, another lightning strike hits 50 yards from the plane, hits the ground. Now people are like, "Whoa." The pilot comes on and it's happening like whack, whack, whack. The pilot comes on and goes, "Everyone be calm. If a lightning strike hits the plane, everyone's gonna be fine. But we can't have you out on the jet bridge because if the jet bridge gets hit and you're on it, you're toast." So we just sat there and watched this ridiculous thing. There was a moment where I was like, "Oh shit, that's a badass lightning strike and that's real close."
--:-- James Jenkins: I saw this meme yesterday. You guys are used to cold up there. It's literally going to be maybe zero degrees in DFW on Monday. It's definitely going to be in single digits and we're going to get probably seven or eight inches of snow overnight Sunday into Monday. The meme yesterday, I laughed a lot harder than I probably should have. The first box of the meme was like, "North Texans in storm season," and they're just like, "Whoopty freaking do, it's a bad storm, whatever, I don't care." But the second thing was like, "North Texans in winter," and they're like, "Ah!" It was like a normal random snowstorm and everyone's just like, "Oh my god, we're gonna die."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's so funny how people... unless it's the major car accident that I think made the national news, like 120 vehicle pile up on I-35 yesterday. Outside of people that don't know how to drive when it ices, you're not going to die in cold weather. But some of these storms, man, tornadoes and hailstones literally the size of a softball just come out of nowhere. You might actually die in a storm, but you're probably not going to die when it gets cold outside.
--:-- James Jenkins: No, I'm with you. Tornadoes scare the crap out of me. I'm glad I... if tornadoes are a regular occurrence in that area, I will never live there.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I don't want to say they're regular. It's not like a once a week thing. Oklahoma City to Wichita, Kansas is what they call Tornado Alley. Technically DFW is in Tornado Alley, but we're like the very southern edge of it. We'll get two, three, four tornadoes a year that come through the area. Most of them are little baby tornadoes, an F1, which is still a tornado, but a little tiny thing that hits the ground for 15 seconds and then leaves. There's a lot more wind activity here than in most other places in the country, that's for sure.
--:-- James Jenkins: Yeah, no thank you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Alright, we've talked about the weather for long enough.
--:-- James Jenkins: It's kind of a thing right now.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: No, I get it. It's been cold.
--:-- James Jenkins: It hasn't gotten above 20 in six weeks and there's been snow on the ground since like December. I'm kind of sick of it. I can use some vitamin D, but Emperor Cuomo will not allow us to leave without being microchipped. So I'm not going to do that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Alright, let's talk about something that people listening actually want to hear. You, by the way, I'm sorry, I just realized that you started recording a few minutes ago. I wouldn't have been talking that much about the weather if I'd have known we were already on the podcast.
--:-- James Jenkins: That's alright. Screw them. They're there, they got to listen. This is my show, I can talk about whatever I want and they got to listen to it. So there you go.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, whatever. Sorry, I interrupted you. Go for it.
--:-- James Jenkins: I love you guys though. Thanks for listening. You the best.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Alright. So you have kind of carved out your space in the industry really around one, being relatively new but hard charging. I think that's a good way to describe you, right? Two years in the biz approximately. And also one of the most epic feature suggestors of all technology that you use. That wouldn't be another feather in your cap and I do want to talk about that a little bit. And lastly, I'd say your focus on your dedication to certain niches of business and how that's really driven your agency forward, which I think is another important topic. But let's start with the most fun one, which is why do you pepper the shit out of every technology tool's Facebook posts with feature requests like you do? I mean, you have to have some sort of feature request record in some of these Facebook groups.
--:-- James Jenkins: Hey man, to my friends at Better Agency and NowCerts, I make no apologies whatsoever. Here's the thing, man. I am your best client and the biggest thorn in your side. When you do something cool, I think that's really cool. I'm going to talk about it a lot. I'm going to post about it. I'm going to share about it. I'm a great brand ambassador. But if there's something that doesn't work, or for me it doesn't work—there's a thousand different varieties of agencies, obviously—when something doesn't work for my team, and really I'm the filter for my team, I have three young ladies that work in my office full-time. They're what most offices would call a CSR. We call them relationship managers. When they complain about something more than twice, I pay close attention. When they are saying, "Hey, this isn't working," or "Something broke," or "Why doesn't it do blank? Why can't it do blank?" I feel like it's my responsibility as the business owner to be their voice to our vendor partners.
--:-- James Jenkins: Feature requests? Yeah, man. You have not because you ask not. It's in the Bible for crying out loud. I don't mind being the guy who's waving the flag. There's been a couple of things with Better Agency. Generally speaking, BA is a great platform. I'm really impressed with a lot of what they do over there. I know there's a lot of good options—Agency Zoom, InsuredMind, et cetera. I chose Better Agency because I believe in the guys that are running it. I think they've got a lot of power. The credentials behind the people making stuff happen. Their CTO was employee number six at Infusionsoft. Will Shaw is a former NFL player, so he's got some hustle and some grit, just a smart dude. Then Preston Schmidley and Nick Ayers jumped on last year. I don't know what their deal was, but they bought into the company in some big equity position. Anybody listening to this podcast knows who Preston Schmidly and Nick Ayers are. That's the main reason why I did the BA thing and really why I'm still doing it. There have been times last year when my team was like, "Can we fire them? I want to go somewhere else. I don't like Better Agency." Just real talk. But I see where they're going. I see the vision. The things that stink about the platform don't stink for very long. They stink for a few months maybe. Then, twice a month, they roll out a major update. I think every platform should be like that. Having the communication that they do—we get emails twice a month with very specific updates of, "Hey guys, here's what we changed. Here's how you need to be aware of it. Here's how you do stuff with the new thing." It's like teaching us how to play with the toys they give us.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Let's talk about the flip side of that. NowCerts hour-long happy hours where they don't get into what's actually changing until 35 minutes in and they're doing it at 7 PM Eastern time. They're like, "Big announcement in the happy hour." I'm super interested because I like NowCerts, I'm becoming a power user of NowCerts. I think it's a good tool. I'm like, "How about you just tell me what you're doing? Where's the announcement? I shouldn't have to listen to you guys ramble on about your weekends for 30 minutes to figure out what the update is."
--:-- James Jenkins: Yeah. Real talk, man. Jonathan and Richard and Caden and Vlad and Peter and the team, they deserve to get a little slap across the face just a little bit.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The fact that they even have the happy hours to begin with, the fact that that's even a thing, I think is really cool.
--:-- James Jenkins: I think it is cool. Most other vendors don't have anything like that. They don't engage with their customers on a ground floor level with any kind of regularity. But yeah, holy crap, man.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I bring this topic up first only because I'm probably never going to ascend to your level of feature requestness, but I ride your coattails. I'm a solid number two or number three of feature requests. I'll never be at your level, but I'm right there. So I see this thing all for the last two weeks, "Big announcement at the happy hour, big announcement at the happy hour." I'm like, "Okay, whatever." 35 minutes in, I'm just like, "Guys, how about this? How about we do the happy hours, which are really cool, and you do like a one-page PDF that says what the heck the update is in case I don't have an hour to spend in the video?"
--:-- James Jenkins: Yeah, doing 10 seconds forward, 10 seconds forward. When do they get the update?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: No, I mean the 7 PM thing is awful. It is truly just terrible timing because anybody with a family... that's exactly my wife and my kids. They're with her parents, my in-laws for this week, just giving me some time. I get like once a quarter, I get a week where they go hang out with the in-laws and I get to work 80 hours if I want to, just knock out my project list. It's glorious. I love it. It just so happens that this is one of those weeks. Most of the time, if my family's in town, I'm not going to be on a freaking webinar for work stuff at Thursday at seven. Do you want me to commit suicide in my marriage? My wife would be like, "What are you doing, honey?" "I'm watching a happy hour where guys are talking about their week." She's like, "You're doing what? Why are you watching a nerdy happy hour Facebook Live for one of the tools in my insurance agency? I'm gonna knife you when you fall asleep, just so you know."
--:-- James Jenkins: It's bad enough. I know you and I are the same with this, man. I nerd out and get excited about dumb stuff that the general public would be like, "Really? Seriously? You care about stupid things?" I'm a risk manager by trade, I dig this stuff. We'll talk about stuff at the house and I'm like, "Babe, you'll never guess what happened," insert insurance or risk management story here, and she's just struggling to stay focused in the conversation. She already has to deal with that kind of stuff in general. If I told her I'm on a happy hour at Thursday at seven, I'm not putting the kids to bed tonight so I can watch a bunch of guys jibber jabber about their software platform. To your point, she would probably threaten to smother me in my sleep.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The worst part is, and hopefully if they listen to this or this gets back to them, I was super interested in the announcement. I wanted to know what it was. To be honest with you, I don't even have the full announcement yet because I was told in the comment section, "Go to minute 32." As soon as I saw that, I'm like, "I'm just going to wait until someone tells me what it is or the platform changes."
--:-- James Jenkins: Do you want the crib notes version?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I would love the crib notes.
--:-- James Jenkins: Here's the thing. There is a platform called High Level. I know High Level. It's a CRM. A lot of really big companies white label High Level and put something out that's flavored for their vertical. NowCerts bought a license of High Level and they're building out a whole bunch of crap to complement what NowCerts is doing because there's some features that are glaringly absent in NowCerts. They don't really have a sales pipeline at all. It's kind of weird for me because I see NowCerts kind of inching closer to a CRM type of features, and then you got CRMs like Better Agency and Agency Zoom that have certain features that kind of look like an AMS.
--:-- James Jenkins: I don't know what your take is on this, but I don't believe in the one killer app platform. I don't want one thing to try to be everything. Microsoft has—I'm on the Microsoft ecosystem. We use Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint extensively. Travis Gensler, thank you for that. Shout out to Travis and his group. They've been amazing for Microsoft. He's like the Oracle evangelist for Microsoft. But Dynamics with Microsoft is a perfect example. Just awful for my needs. I got into it and I'm just like, "This is crap." It's their version of a CRM and it's terrible in my opinion. It's just bad. That's kind of what you get when one platform tries to be everything. The whole concept of one killer app to do whatever the insurance agent needs, I don't believe in that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, I have a very clear take on this. I think that's a bad idea. I think this is a bad idea by NowCerts. I think there's too many other places that they could drastically improve their product. I'm on NowCerts not because I don't think it's a good product. I really like NowCerts. I said this to somebody, maybe it was Paradiso. He was asking me because Paradiso is on Hawksoft. Right now, Hawksoft actually integrates with every tool that I use right now that I want to use. But I'm like, "Eh, Hawksoft doesn't have a writable API. They're very slow to make improvements." I think some of that is cultural. I also know Hawksoft is a good product that a lot of really great agencies run on. Not a knock on Hawksoft. No one's perfect.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But I look at NowCerts and I say to myself, "This platform could take over the AMS space. It could." But things like, they just seem to have a very casual attitude towards things like growth and improvements to the product. Server downtime? Server downtime. The fact that like 11 o'clock every day, we just get a, "Hey guys, just so you know, WW8 is down today. It'll be up as soon as we can." I'm like...
--:-- James Jenkins: In their defense, they have like 24 servers. But the problem is you and I are both on their test server. So we get features before everybody else does because WW8 is their test server. That's where they drop out the new things and beta them for a week or two. But WW8 is also the one that goes down more than any other server because it's the test server.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Here's my point. I think NowCerts is awesome. I really don't have a beef in general. Their UI is a little tough. There's some different things that are a little wonky. I really wish... but then I look at it and I'm like, "Okay, don't add some third party white label licensed CRM tool. Just be really awesome at AMSing and connecting to other tools like InsuredMind, Agency Zoom, Better Agency, HubSpot. Pick the top 15 CRMs and be ridiculously easy and fully integrated with those tools. You will become the default AMS for the middle and smaller agency." This is a no brainer win. I don't understand why these platforms don't get it. QQ doesn't get this from Vertafore. Well, that kind of makes sense, but all these small guys, I don't... granted, I'm not trying to call NowCerts or Hawksoft small, but versus Applied or Vertafore, they are. I don't understand the thought process. I think this is larger than just talking about NowCerts. I look at NowCerts and I'm like, "Oh my God, they could be the default tool for everyone from the middle market down to startup." They have that potential. It's that good of a tool. To waste dev time and brain cycles on a CRM when you could just plug into BA, InsuredMind, or Agency Zoom, whichever you choose, and have it work seamlessly? I don't understand that decision. It doesn't make any sense to me.
--:-- James Jenkins: Well, why don't you tell them that, and I will tell them that, and then if enough people tell them that, they may realize that this is not a long-term solution. I'm in a weird spot because I've got Better Agency going out and getting Ivan's integration, which they've been working on behind the scenes for like six months, I heard from Will. And then my AMS is trying to act like a CRM. So my CRM is trying to act like an AMS. My AMS is trying to act like a CRM. Eventually, you're going to have to make a decision where you have a product that doesn't do everything that you want on either side. That's ultimately what these tools are forcing us to do, which is what bothers me so much.
--:-- James Jenkins: This may segue into other things we talk about on this recording episode. Sorry, as I sit here at my desk, I keep forgetting that people are listening to this on their phones or they're driving in their car right now. So let's stay focused, James, stay on message. It's the whole thing of being a generalist versus a specialist. Of being the do-everything, the State Farms and Farmers of the world, versus the carrier like your small regional mutual, the Leather Stocking, the Leather Stocking Community something or other. Shout out to Dryden Mutual too. I love you both.
--:-- James Jenkins: The upstate mutuals and regionals, those carriers have no interest in being everything to everybody. They want to do a very small number of things at an extremely high level of performance. If you're not in their target market, they don't care a thing about you. You're not discussed in their meetings. They don't care what you want because they are not interested in that. They're staying really focused on their message. I think that as we move into 2021 and beyond, the more that the direct channel becomes commoditized for small commercial now with insurtechs like Pi and Next and etc., small commercial five years from now is going to be exactly like personal lines is now. Highly commoditized. Very low barrier to entry. The typical run-of-the-mill insured isn't even going to talk to an agent. I'm talking about the lowest common denominator person, not the people that you and I want to work with.
--:-- James Jenkins: The gap between the generalist and the specialist, I think, is going to get just massive within the next couple of years. The people that are trying to be the everything to everybody, the ones that are offering seven different product lines and have 14,000 links on their website, those people are going to be in a really hard place before too long.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What's up, guys?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Sorry to take you away from the episode. But as you know, we do not run ads on this show. And in exchange for that, I need your help. If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes. This helps the show grow. It helps me bring more guests in. We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in, men and women who've done incredible things, sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales, the things that are gonna help you grow as a person and grow your business, but they all check out comments, ratings, reviews. They check out all this information before they come on. So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help. Share the show. Subscribe if you're not subscribed. And I'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments. Or if you're on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating review of this show. I love you for listening to this show. And I hope you enjoy listening as much as I do creating the show for you. All right. I'm out of here. Peace. Let's get back to the episode.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, I agree with you. I think you have to pick a thing. If you're going to be a generalist, then you need to be the generalist of the 10-mile radius from where you live. If you're going to be industry specific, that's what you got to be. If you're going to be product specific, I'm trying really hard to be product specific. And even that I'm finding is a little broad for where I'm at in my development. So I'm making some changes there.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think this works in tech. It certainly works in insurance agencies. What bothers me is I want to be able to pick the tools that are right for what I'm trying to do. I like a very simple CRM. The way I work, the way I manage my team—I have a team now, I can say that it's official. I've hired people. It's not just me. And these aren't alter personalities, they're real other humans. I like very, very simple. Give me simple and works. That's all I want. I don't need 10,000 triggers for my agency management system. I need to be able to connect into that. I hate duplicate entry.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So now all of a sudden what I find is every tool I start to use—and this is going to come back to our insurance example, because I do want to ask you about your work in certain niches—I get a shitty version. I pick a tool and then it evolves into a shittier version of itself because it wants to be this big, broad, huge thing. And I'm just like, God, I picked you originally because you did the thing that I needed really well. And every time you do an update, it becomes a bigger monster. Some people like that complexity and overarchingness. Look at people who live in the Applied Network. If you're an Applied Network, you go there because it is the best agency management system that exists. I have to give it to them, Applied Epic is the best. It's just expensive as shit. And you got to debit yourself and build it out exactly as you want it and spend a hundred grand on it. But it's a big thing for the Josh Gurleys and Brad Rosenkeels of the world. There's a reason why of the top 100 agencies in the country, like 90 of them are on Applied Epic. So there are people that like that ecosystem thing, 100%.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But I just think for people who are starting to work for agencies that are starting to work target markets, I really think that our technology providers are doing us a disservice by not just being a plus at the thing that they do best. So then I can cherry pick the tools and say, I want this and I want to plug it into this. And then I want this to plug into this. And holy crap, this really works. Now I can deliver my workers' compensation program in Rogue Risk 365, and plug in the self-managed certificate program from something like Certificial, which is a tool that needs to be on your radar, by the way. Certificial is a game changer for anybody that works with contractors or produces a lot of certs. Absolute game changer.
--:-- James Jenkins: Oh yeah, dude. Dope. This is a game changer. I'm telling you, it's so baller. I'm gonna have him on the podcast as soon as I can. His name's Peter. He did 18 years as a CTO at Applied, and not like the dopey part of Applied, not the dopey part of ACCORD, but he was really one of the people that was pushing them forward. It's a really cool tool.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But I'm just saying, I want to be able to say, okay, Certificial, Zywave client portal, this tool, that tool. And if you guys were all just awesome at what you did, I could plug you all together. And now I have the perfect agency tech platform. But instead they all go, "Hey, I do certs and I think we're going to get download, and I'm really thinking about building out a chatbot feature." And you're like, mother—
--:-- James Jenkins: The whole idea of staying in your lane. I think it really just comes down to people getting delusions of grandeur and allowing tribalism and the whole "my club, your club" thing. Like, "Oh, our club is the best. We can do it better than that other vendor over there." Well, why don't you have an open API and allow other companies to just integrate directly? "Well, because we're better than them." It's like, okay, well, I disagree fundamentally with your premise, but I digress.
--:-- James Jenkins: It creates a situation where guys like you and me are spinning our wheels. You take a great platform like an Outserts or a Better Agency. Would I prefer that they not do the downloads and do something else with their dev time? Yeah, I definitely would. There are a lot of features that I'm basically arms outreached begging for at this point. But the same goes for a lot of platforms. I think we just need to keep banging the drum. The reality is when they climb up on their hilltop and wave their flag, they're not going to back down from that, because then it seems like a defeat or a failure. And no business owner wants to do that.
--:-- James Jenkins: I think the important thing is having those behind-the-scenes conversations where you can influence the decision makers before they decide to climb a hill and wave a flag.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, I think the decision comes down to—and I promise this is the last thing I'm going to say about this before we talk about the questions I have about your agency and what you're doing—you're basically managing. I think all these companies come to a decision point. That decision point is: maximize enterprise value, or build a customer base that is ravenously in love with us. I don't think you can do both. The companies that can do both are the unicorns. Not in valuation, I just mean in general. You have to either maximize features and things that someone else would want to buy to make the most money, or you could stay tight and amazing and awesome and have people who would literally tattoo your brand on their arm. That's a very hard decision.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: When you're talking about the dollars in terms of valuation dollars that a lot of these companies are getting—Better Agency is most likely worth a lot, and a lot of the tools we talked about are worth a lot. I can't imagine they're not already fielding calls for at least eight-digit offers. I don't know if they're a nine-digit company yet, but I'm sure they're getting eight-digit offers. That's a really tough decision to make. If you're looking at them from an enterprise value standpoint and they have download, you're going, "Whoo, there's something there."
--:-- James Jenkins: Yeah, man. We can talk about the difference between driving EBITDA and going after shareholder value and starting to think like a larger company versus keeping the mission front and center. We could say the very same thing about every agency and every agency owner listening. Are you pushing for a multiple? Are you trying to sell in five years? Or are you on mission? Do you wake up in the morning excited about advancing the cause?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, I think that takes me into where I see valuations going and why I think you're on a great path. So you've chosen habitational, right? That's one of them. Contractors. What are the other niches that you've lined up?
--:-- James Jenkins: We made—and honestly, I'm trying to figure out what to do with personal lines right now. Flip a coin on if I sell my personal lines book and just go all in on commercial and real estate investors. I always stumbled into the real estate investor world about four years ago because I had one client who had nine rentals. At that point, I was still an agent with a captive company. I was able to write that account. It was like, "Oh, crap, that's good money. That was pretty easy. I want to do more of this." Over the next two years, when we were at the captive agency, we did that extensively. That's part of the reason why I left that company—they're not very good at serving real estate investors.
--:-- James Jenkins: That's how we got to where we are now. It morphed into not just single family, but the people doing flips and renovations, and the people doing small commercial, and apartment buildings, and condo associations—which I don't like nearly as much as apartments because of boards and the certificate requests for refinances on condo unit owners. It just makes me want to put a gun in my mouth.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Certificial, bro. Certificial is going to change your life. I promise you. We'll talk about that later because I've seen it a couple of times. I don't know anything about it.
--:-- James Jenkins: To answer your question, roofers and general contractors in particular. The contractor world is just massive. There are literally hundreds of trades. I'm not really interested in the small trade contractor, the drywall guy or whatever. I want the GC. I want the hard stuff—the concrete, the masonry, the roofing, the general. The stuff that has a lot of premium and it's hard to place. I find the harder something is to work in, the less competition there is. And the easier it is to point out when posers try to come in and act like they know what they're doing. If a generalist tries to play in my space, I'm going to bury them in knowledge of forms and exclusions, endorsements, and all that CIC and CRM stuff. Those designation programs, the stuff that most agents don't even know about or care about. That's the difference between an okay program and a great program in that world.
--:-- James Jenkins: The other two really are the tech space and then healthcare medical. Doctors' offices, healthcare technology companies, durable medical equipment manufacturers. If it's healthcare medical or if it's in technology IT—the geek squad kind of contractor who comes to your house and fixes your computer. Those folks own vehicles. They have a lot of employees. They need E&O. Those are just great accounts because you can rack up a lot of premium pretty quickly if you know how to cross-sell.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, I have purposefully not involved myself in the healthcare space. I just don't know that much about it. Even though the carrier plant I have, much to their chagrin, they would love it if I did. Every time I talk to my reps, they're like, "Oh, you're going to start soliciting healthcare stuff?" And I'm like, "I don't know." I do really like technology. I like media. Anyone with big cyber exposure—which most companies today actually have big cyber exposure. I really like that because I feel like I took a nice size account away from an agent the other day solely on cyber. I took the whole package on cyber. They put basically first-party-only data breach cyber coverage on this account. And I'm like, "Do you understand what you have to do?" "No, we have cyber." I'm like, "Okay, let's talk about that." By the time I was explaining, "Have you ever got an email that looked like it was from your mom, but really it was from somebody in a different country?" And they're like, "Yes." I'm like, "Yeah, that's not covered on this policy." "Well, how do we fix that?" "You ever hear of a BOR?" So it's like—
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think this is coming back to your point. If this is 100% true in commercial, and I think a lot of commercial agents get this idea, I think personal lines agents who are thinking about commercial do not. And I've seen that a lot. There is tremendous opportunity in saying, "I write real estate investors." Because just like you said, then you start to get the branches. "Oh, this carrier also writes HOAs. This carrier also writes condo associations." Okay, I can get into there. And now you're playing in a really interesting space.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I have a question for you around carriers. I know we already said the Northeast has way too many carriers and you guys have less. But I recently just purposefully dropped two personal lines appointments. In general, I've been thinking about the carriers that I use. I said to myself, I know there's a philosophy of have as many carriers as you can get and write as much business as you can write. And then the other philosophy is have carriers that you know and have deep relationship with and work inside of their appetite and be experts in the carrier as well. Where do you fall on that and why?
--:-- James Jenkins: I love this topic. I think this is the kind of meat and potato agency owner conversation why people listen to podcasts like this. This stuff just lights me up. I love this topic. It only took us 47 minutes to get there, bro. This is why I do the podcast. If you and I were face to face in Tampa in November, we'd be sipping something talking about this right here.
--:-- James Jenkins: I'm the second one. I'm like that for a variety of reasons, because it plays right into my general business philosophy of do a small number of things and do them incredibly well. The captive agent doesn't understand market management. Had no idea. When I first got in, I didn't understand it two years ago. I had no idea. I said some really stupid things early on that now looking back, I'm just like, that is not a good idea. I was greedy for appointments at the beginning. Then I realized about six months in, "Oh, crap, every appointment I take expects to get fed." When you're a small agency, you don't have enough submissions to go around.
--:-- James Jenkins: Where we're at right now, I have six direct commercial appointments. I don't mind saying it openly. If you want to come at me, let's go. If you think you're going to be aware of my account, come on, bro, let's do this. It's Chubb, Hartford, Nationwide, Liberty, State Auto, and one other I can't even think of. I have six carriers, and Mercury has monoline commercial auto. Then BHHC I just picked up, but that's mostly for outside of Texas because their property market in Texas is crap. But their auto product, especially fleet auto with BHHC, is really, really strong.
--:-- James Jenkins: The whole philosophy of I want to do a very small number of things with this carrier that absolutely loves it. Like Chubb, for instance, their cyber program is phenomenal. Great form, good insuring agreement. The exclusions and endorsements are really favorable. I like the language on their documents. It's really easy to navigate and it's really well priced. There are three or four things that Chubb does extremely well. Almost a year ago, they got into food and beverage and they were sending a bunch of emails about, "Hey, give us your restaurant submissions." I'm like, "Bro, you're never going to get a restaurant submission from me. That's not what you guys are. Stop trying to be that."
--:-- James Jenkins: I see Hartford and Chubb as clones of each other. Travelers is like in the middle. Liberty, State Auto, and Nationwide are blue collar companies. They want to write the manufacturing, the contractors, the lessors risk. They want to write that blue collar, get it done, middle of the economy sort of stuff. They don't have good cyber options. They're just not that kind of carrier. Then Travelers and Hanover and some others are kind of in the middle between blue collar and white collar. Then you got Chubb, Hartford, and CNA, which are super white collar. They've got excellent cyber and E&O, their management liability, their EPL—their coverage options are really, really strong. But in certain areas, you're not going to take a contractor to Hartford. That's just not a good fit. But Hartford loves writing consultants like management and business consultants. You don't even need to submit to anybody else. If someone calls you up and they're a work from home white collar consulting company, straight to Hartford. You don't even need to submit anywhere else because Hartford's going to be gangbusters.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Did that answer your question?
--:-- James Jenkins: No, 100% it did. It's the exact same way that I feel. I have no problem talking about the carriers. If someone's gonna—it's just interesting that you brought that up because that is still like a thing. I remember when I first got in the business 15 years ago, my father-in-law—and it's not a knock on him, this was the prevailing idea—was like, "You don't tell anybody who you have appointments with because they'll come after you." I think that has really changed. I'm glad that it's changed because it allows us, just like with our technology providers, to have more combined voices to a carrier about a thing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Like Hanover. I love Hanover. If anyone from Hanover is listening, you have to know that when I get to place a piece of business with you, I really enjoy it. I've never had a bad claims experience. I had a customer have an $8,000 homeowner's claim a month ago. Five-star claims review. They said, "No, handled perfectly, perfectly." So I love Hanover. Their technology is grossly inadequate considering the quality of the company. Probably the worst in my entire shop. I handwrite accounts to Leather Stocking. So just understand that. You're getting beat by the company with handwritten FS.
--:-- James Jenkins: Yes. And it is that bad.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That being said, it's a tough position because their product is tremendous. Their pricing is tremendous. Their claims are tremendous. Their people are tremendous. So this is the thing you fight. I'm with you on Chubb. I adore Chubb. They're my number one carrier. I absolutely think that Chubb's small business unit—what they've done to improve it, their quoting, their handling of customer accounts—their billing needs work. But outside of that feature, I think they are tremendous.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I also have Guard, Cincinnati, Liberty, and then some Select. So I basically have five main carriers that I work with. I have some workers comp only like AmTrust, Pie, and Employers. And then I have a couple of mutuals that I write with for some stuff here in the Northeast. None of those guys are taking on an 1840s four-unit in downtown Albany. That's a Leather Stocking Dryden account.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: My point in saying all this to you is I made that same mistake early. I was like, gobble, gobble. "Oh, you'll give me an appointment? Give it to me, give it to me, give it to me. Oh, you want 30,000? A hundred thousand? Who cares?" Say yes to everything. The deeper I get into this business, the more I say to myself, I'd almost rather give a piece of business to somebody else. If an account comes in and it doesn't fit my markets, I'd almost rather hand that to someone else and say, "Here, you take this and do a good job for them," versus going out and finding some carrier where this is going to be the only piece of business I have.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Perfect example. Yesterday, I don't know how well you know Joe Campert in Austin with Redwood.
--:-- James Jenkins: I know him. We've talked online, but he hasn't been on the show yet. The kid is doing something special, him and his dad. I think of him as my little brother in insurance because we just hit it off. He's got a great story.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Perfect example with him. He is a trucking insurance god. I mean, him and Cameron Petch over in Washington State—Cameron and Joe and his shop are like the only two people in trucking that I think of, except for maybe Francis Nunez in Texas. I got a trucking inbound request. Somebody hit my office and was like, "Hey, I've got a couple of trucks. I do OTR. We haul just general freight." I'm like, "Bro, I'm not even going to touch this." I said, "I'm going to connect you with my friend and colleague, Joe. He's in Austin. Him and his shop will take great care of you. I'm not qualified to do this account." He's like, "That's awesome. Thank you for telling me." I'm like, "Dude, it's so much better." Is there a lot of premium there? It's probably a $35,000 to $40,000 premium account. Probably $5,000 in revenue, plus or minus. I have no business taking that account. So I handed it straight over to Joe and texted Joe, "Hey, this dude, here's his information. I told him you'd be calling him." Just washed my hands of the whole thing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But the flip side of that, Joe sent me a large condo association in Missouri in January. It's probably $150,000 in premium. Joe's like, "I have no business trying to write this. I probably could write it, but it would take me way longer and you're better at this than I am." Perfect example of that flow of experts sending over to a different expert. Someone who's got enough self-awareness to realize, "I probably shouldn't try to do this."
--:-- James Jenkins: Yeah, I think that's one thing that your listeners would really serve themselves well: figuring out where do I draw the line. At what point do I say, "I'm not going to try to do that"? Then you just establish this network of subject matter experts for various verticals within the insurance world. Stay in your lane and kick some serious tail in your lane. I couldn't agree with you more.
--:-- James Jenkins: This trucking thing—a good one for Ohio is Seth Zaremba, Jay Muller at Camargo Insurance is another good resource for different people. If you're on the East Coast, it's tough to find people that focus on trucking on the East Coast. I give out probably a dozen trucking leads a week at this point because I just get them in and I send them to—I didn't know Joe did trucking. I send a lot to Cam. I send them all over the place because I just can't, I don't want to go down that path. It's so much, the trucking path.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I completely agree with you. I think early on, what the vast majority of people do, myself included, is whatever you can get. I think you have to do that to survive. If you have a natural niche and connections, do it. But to a certain extent, survive. Once you're past survival mode—and I think this is where I've seen some other agencies really struggling. I was actually talking to my Liberty rep who I've known for almost since my first week in the business, 15 years ago at the Murray Group. He said he appointed three agents in January and February of last year that didn't make it through COVID. He said a big part of it was just like you said. At a certain point, you have to recognize, "I'm out of survival mode. Maybe I'm not thriving, but I'm out of survival mode. I now need to pivot from everything I can get to what's going to get me to the next level."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: For me, I'm trying to focus on contractors, comp, and technology businesses. I'm interested in them. I can speak the language. I like helping them. I have the markets to help them. That's where I'm going. So if you send me some hab, I'll write some if it falls into Cincinnati or whatever. But if I had a really big hab come in, I would have no idea what to do with it. I'd waste three months trying to figure that out. Or some of these other healthcare things. If I had a medical transport company call me, sorry, can't do it. I have no idea where to put medical transport. I just don't.
--:-- James Jenkins: I think this is one of the most important topics for companies as they evolve.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: [Noticing a delivery] And look at you getting your coffee delivered. You slacked that to her, didn't you? Bring me a coffee or a cappuccino. Is it a cappuccino or a coffee?
--:-- James Jenkins: That's Brecklin. She's my right hand. Literally, as we're doing this, I see it come up on here. She goes, "Hot cocoa?"
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh, you son of a gun. Oh, look at you. Right there.
--:-- James Jenkins: If I could share my screen with you, all you see is a smiley face. I didn't even say yes. I just said, "Teamwork makes a dream work."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So just to wrap up, man, I appreciate your time and thoughts. We went a lot of places here that I didn't expect. But I think that's a good thing. This idea, to your point, this is one of the most important topics. It's almost like at some point, you got to grow up. Maybe if growing up for you is, "I am going to dominate everything inside of 10 miles," I think that's kind of a tougher road to play today. I don't know that that's the right path, even though it may feel like the right path. I think if you're starting up as fast as you can, get to a thing. Whatever that thing is.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So dude, where can people get at you? Where's the best? Facebook, LinkedIn, the gram, TikTok? What's the best place for people to connect with you if they just want to?
--:-- James Jenkins: I'm kind of old school. It's probably Facebook. I've never gotten on TikTok or Twitter. LinkedIn is nothing but spam. It's kind of Instagram for family stuff and Facebook for work stuff. LinkedIn is my number one source of new business at Rogue Risk.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: No kidding? Shit, not you, dude. We need to talk about LinkedIn because it's basically a non-existent platform for me.
--:-- James Jenkins: Yeah, my wife says the same thing. It's completely opposite for me. It is the most valuable social platform. Outside of blasting the technology platforms that I pay to help me service my customers on Facebook, LinkedIn is the most valuable platform to me. It just doesn't even come close.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Bro, I think we've got a great opportunity for a second episode in a few months.
--:-- James Jenkins: Yeah, for sure. We'll run it to be more focused on our topic. We'll be more focused. I can't always promise Friday afternoon recordings could go anywhere, so that's kind of what happened today. But I'll say absolutely. Gives us a reason to come back in a couple months.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I appreciate your time. I appreciate you. RiskWell.com if you want to check out James's agency.
--:-- James Jenkins: Let me just say this so we can save people from messaging me going, "Hey, I really like that idea." Here's the thing. If I'm going to ask for one thing, go to YouTube and subscribe to my channel. I'm putting a lot of effort into putting good content on there. It's for insurance agents and also for other business owners. But don't ask if you can borrow or adapt or adopt something you see from me. I give it freely. Take it, make it your own. Don't message me and say, "Hey, can I use this?"
--:-- James Jenkins: Because that happens all the time. I just want to be like, dude, of course you can go do your thing. But yeah, RiskWell.com, YouTube channel. If you're going to connect with me, I'd love for you to connect there. Shameless plug. And while you're there, if you haven't already subscribed to Hanley's Rogue Risk channel, he's got some good stuff there too.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hell yeah. Unless you're going to do what someone did the other day and downvote every one of my videos.
--:-- James Jenkins: She's not actually on camera, she can come in. I don't produce the video.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh, you don't? Okay.
--:-- James Jenkins: Well, she just threw a snowball on my desk, so maybe I should put her on video.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That's a good way to end it. Hey man, appreciate you. Be good.
--:-- James Jenkins: Thanks, bro. Take care.
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