--:-- Host: In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we have an absolutely tremendous episode for your conversation with Kat Turns, the Vice President of Revenue at AgencyZoom. But she does so much more than whatever you may think Vice President of Revenue does. And it has been absolutely wonderful getting to know Kat and working with her. And she puts up with me and the barrage of feature requests that I put into AgencyZoom as we really kind of bake our agency deeper and deeper into the AgencyZoom tool.
--:-- Host: I mean, it is a huge part of our agency. It's a huge part of how we operate. And we talk about just, we talk about the industry and the kind of choosing tools. And we talk a lot about a whole bunch of different stuff. And it's just an absolutely tremendous conversation. I mean, this is just, again, this is another one of those conversations that just, this is why I do the show is getting to talk to people like Kat and having a good time and just hopefully delivering a tremendous amount of value.
--:-- Host: I mean, we do talk about AgencyZoom a little bit at the end, specifically how I'm using it and why I enjoy the tool and just how I think you should go about thinking and how we think you should go about considering a tool such as AgencyZoom, whether you choose AgencyZoom or anyone else that's in the marketplace. That's who I use, but I just want to be pretty clear that I am not an owner in AgencyZoom or an investor or whatever. I'm not an advisor or even – I have no – they're not a sponsor. I just think the tool is tremendous. They've done in the last 24 months an incredible amount of feature improvements. And the flexibility and the scalability of it has made Zoom a big part of our agency.
--:-- Host: And Kat's just an awesome person who I tremendously enjoy and, like I said, put up with me. So I wanted to have this conversation with you because this is the kind of conversation that she and I have all the time as I pepper her with things that I want to add to AgencyZoom. And she's a good sport about it and is just so incredibly smart about our business and sales and growth and business in general. And I just think you're going to love this one. And if you don't know Kat Turns, happy to introduce you to her and make sure you connect with her, Facebook, LinkedIn. I don't think she has a Twitter.
--:-- Host: So, all right, guys, before we get to Kat, I want to give a quick shout out to another new sponsor. I mean, just a tremendous sponsor that I want to share with you, and that is Propeller Bonds. I've talked to you about Propeller Bonds. I've had Aaron Steffi, co-founder of Propeller Bonds, on the show before. You can go back and listen to that episode. I don't know what episode it was, but however you're listening to the show, if you want to listen to the full episode where we talk about Aaron's history and then really get into Propeller in general and what it's all about, I encourage you to do that. Just search whatever product you're listening to this on, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or wherever.
--:-- Host: But Propeller Bonds is changing the game. There's no reason for retail insurance agents to be surety experts. If you're not already a surety expert, you don't need to become a surety expert. But at least most of you, the vast majority of listening to this do not need to become surety experts. However, you should be offering surety to your customers, particularly your contracting customers, but really anyone of your customers who has surety needs. We don't want them having to search for someone who they don't already trust. They're working with you. They already trust you. Offer bonds.
--:-- Host: Now, you might not be offering bonds today because you don't want to put the stickers and stamps and go through all the rigmarole that the traditional bonding process made you go through, which I completely get. I have a drawer over here with stamp machines. I've never used them. I don't even know what to do with them if I did have to write a bond. But Propeller Bonds does away with all of that. You get this custom URL and you can just search for whatever bond you need in whatever state you need that bond in. They got thousands and thousands and thousands of bonds and you can fill out the form, get a quote, pay for the bond and have the bond certificate delivered by email in like 10 minutes. It's crazy. Even less than that, if the bond is, depending on what kind of bond it is, and they got all kinds of bonds.
--:-- Host: So Propeller Bonds is changing the game for us. It's part of our drip campaign. We don't necessarily lead with bonds yet, but we offer it as part of our, we make sure everyone's aware of it as part of our onboarding process. And then throughout our drip, once they become clients, we're letting them know, hey, if you need a bond, we're here for you. We can help you. And then we provide them with a link. So you're going to be hearing more about Propeller Bonds, especially now that they're a sponsor of the show, but not just because they're a sponsor. We use Propeller. I love Propeller. I think very big things for them are coming. And it's definitely a tool you want to know about.
--:-- Host: Again, I called Tarmica. I called Donna. And I'm calling Propeller right now. Okay. You can mark this here. You can actually mark it when I did the episode with him because I talked about it back then too. But I told you about Propeller. Get it on your radar. Get it into your product mix. You'll be happy you did. All right, let's get on to Kat Turns.
--:-- [Sound of recording starting]
--:-- Kat: What's up? Already being recorded? That's what happens.
--:-- Host: Oh my god, sorry.
--:-- Kat: I was like, typical life. You gotta step your game up.
--:-- Kat: Oh my god, if you saw my calendar today, even you would shed a tear. You're like the busiest person I know, and you would shed a tear for my calendar today.
--:-- Host: It's a good thing that you're getting one of the most important calls of your day out of the way early.
--:-- Kat: Yeah. And I just got my coffee. One of the team members came in at like 10, so I just got like fresh coffee at like 10:30.
--:-- Host: So fresh coffee or your first coffee?
--:-- Kat: Fresh coffee, not first coffee.
--:-- Host: Yeah, I was gonna say if you're getting your first coffee at 10 a.m., you're a better person than me. I'm usually starting my second pot at 10 o'clock in the morning.
--:-- Kat: I could have that much because I don't have enough time to go to the bathroom that frequently. I don't, I can't take in that much liquid in a day and expect to do my job. That said, this was coffee three of like, you know, a cup home, one on the walk here. I walk 30 minutes every morning now to work. I don't drive, I just walk. It's awesome. And yeah, it's like, I call you guys realistically, like if it's a really peaceful morning, I like keep my mind to myself. And then if it's kind of a hustle bustle morning, I'm like, I might as well just call somebody and start my day and ruin their life too. But I'm kind of in hand during my walk.
--:-- Host: Yeah, I like that. That's what my drive time is. Like if I know I got to go pick the kids up someplace, I got to drive somewhere to pick them up. Where I live, everywhere is 15 to 20 minutes away. So that's like the perfect time to just call. And I kind of get pissed when I cycle through like the two or three or four people that I would meet that I could possibly have something to say to, and none of them pick up. I'll be like, well, what am I supposed to do? I'm in the car and I'm not talking on the phone. What is wrong with people?
--:-- Kat: I can tell when any one of you guys are doing it, whether it's like you or Bradley or Namoli, like any one of you guys doing that kind of nonsense to me that you're like taking your kids somewhere, you're going somewhere. Because for whatever reason, there's like this cohort of you guys that I've spent enough time with that I text with too often. But you guys all use voice to text. And then when I try to go back and look at what we were talking about, and this great idea you guys had, it's just gone. The little voice recording is just gone. So I look like I'm a psychopath talking to myself all day every day. And in reality, it's you guys sending me the little voice memos of like three minute brain bursts, like Jimmy Neutron type shit. And yeah, I lose it. I lose it a lot.
--:-- Host: What's funny is Namoli voice texted me the other day and the text machine had to cut it up. He probably talked for like two minutes. So instead of doing the hit the button and hold it, he was obviously doing whatever he was doing. And at the very end he goes, and it was perfect English, not a single word was out of place, except for the end where he says "this is voice to text." And as soon as he said that, every other word after that, like the last two sentences, was just complete garbage. I was like, I wonder if the phone was like waiting for him to say that and then just started screwing everything up.
--:-- Kat: I get the amount of things I get that end up out of order. The other thing too, and this is so embarrassing, but I was just on a call with another agency and told them this. I am the latest adopter in the product adoption curve that anyone could be in an elevated position leading an innovative company. But I could not be any more regressive of tech in my position. So the thing that is new and novel to me, but again, makes me disorganized and incapable, is the reply function.
--:-- Host: The in-thread reply?
--:-- Kat: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In-thread reply. It's super cool. Very functional again with like you Jimmy Neutron humans, but it is so difficult because I lose stuff or you guys go back and respond to stuff that I already had stopped talking about. I thought no conversation was not over. So yeah, it's one of these days I may become like an early adopter or like an innovator at an innovative company. But right now as this human, squarely in the early majority, I struggle. Like I talked to you guys and oh my God, you would believe I was like 75 years old and just completely inept at using my phone.
--:-- Host: Well, you can text pretty fast. You get back, you can text pretty fast.
--:-- Kat: Because I have my Mac. So I text you from my Mac while I'm sitting in meetings that I don't want to be in. So that's why I text you so fast.
--:-- Host: That makes sense. Cause the other day we were texting back and forth. I was working on something with Zoom. So I was texting you while I was working on it, and you were as fast as I could finish the text, I was getting replies. Cause you get the little bubble. And I was like, Jesus, she's fast.
--:-- Kat: But I also do know that there's like half a dozen to a dozen of us that just pepper you all day long with different things. And my words per minute is like in the upper 90s, I want to say. It's pretty good. I'm insanely fast on my computer. So much so now that I actually type faster than my computer will like the cursor. It'll be out ahead of the words. It's ahead of the words and it's like typing the words aren't showing up as fast as I'm typing them. And my E key right now is sticky. So I end up like E and then T and then another E because it's trying to type two E's from sticking. But I actually type faster even than the sticky.
--:-- Host: Supposedly the new Macs have solved that problem because I've had my Mac into the thing twice for sticky keys. And I love everything about Mac. It's far superior than any other machine ever. I said to someone the other day, they were complaining about why we can't use Macs in the insurance industry. And although they've started to fix that problem, someone was like, well, and I said, look, do you ever use your computer and something doesn't work? Like it just doesn't work. Well, when you use a Mac, that doesn't happen. It just works. Now, other than this little keyboard issue they have, where occasionally these keys get a little wacky, but you can fix them. Like the programs like Loom, every like five or six Loom videos on my Windows computer, it just freezes and it doesn't work. It has literally never happened once on my Mac. And I'm like, how do people on Windows operate? They just operate in this world where like, oh, it's just a bad computer day. The computer's not working. And I'm like, right before I had to go to Windows, there were never bad computer days. It just always operated the way it should.
--:-- Kat: Well, the embarrassingly wonderful part too, again in me being like a geriatric millennial, I got TSA Pre when I started traveling for conferences and stuff. But before that, of course being amongst the general borders of planes, I dropped my Mac onto every conveyor belt, shuffling through my bag and dropping it, dropping it onto the floor. I think I left it on top of my husband's car once. I was carrying it in my arm and we pull out of the garage and you see it go down in front of his car and the hood of his car looked worse than my Mac did sitting bounced against the front of my garage. Even with my technology ineptitude, how well I treat my poor computer, it has done great. Indestructible in so many levels. And the communicativeness, the actual integration and everything, how easy it is to use my phone and my Mac together. I'm a sucker for it.
--:-- Host: I grew up in a PC world. I used them. I was nerdy and built my own computer when I was in high school.
--:-- Kat: I could see you as a nerdy.
--:-- Host: Yeah. It makes sense. I think that's maybe when the curve ended. I think I got to like pinnacle nerdiness and I probably got bullied enough that I was like, you know, maybe we should lay off this nerdiness. And I just have not improved any technological knowledge since like the early 2000s.
--:-- Kat: The interesting part is like now being a nerd is cool. For so long, I played sports and was in honors classes. I would be on my baseball team and I would be the only one, or on my football team, nothing against football players, but I'd be the only one in my entire football team out of like what 30 guys or whatever that was in an honors class. Everyone else, they don't have to bust my chops about this or that. It's like, oh, I'm not as cool because I'm in the honors class. And now that is completely flipped. Now if you're smart, it's super cool to be smart. And it just wasn't the case when we were growing up.
--:-- Host: You were living it. You're smart. I think I was really preparing people to be accepting of being a nerd. Why would you pay money to go to college and then not want to do well? But obviously there were plenty of people that didn't feel like doing well. I thought I was going to law school, so I really needed to have everything lined up and do well. So it was fun, but I was a nerd there. I remember telling people on a Friday morning that I was going to class and they're like, didn't you go to the bar last night? I'm like, well, yeah, I'm a normal social human being. Why are you going to class? I'm like, because I'm a nerd.
--:-- Kat: Now I'm an advisor for a student organization at a university here that has nerdier kids than where I went, but still not dramatically different. They yell at each other that they're not going to class. They'll go pull each other's hungover butts out of their dorm room beds and take each other and bully each other to go to class. I used to get bullied for going. Like, why don't you just come home? We're gonna get breakfast. We're on the Waffle House. It's like, no, I'm going to class. Now you get bullied if you need to sleep in and you're ill and you're skipping class. It's like, yo, skipping class isn't cool anymore. I just missed it. I should have been apparently part of like the, I think it's Gen Z is like the college kids now. Who knows? I should have been with them. Maybe I could be better at tech. I don't know. Their life is too cushy. I'm glad I did. I like the fact that it wasn't as everything is so cushy now. It's just so cushy. It's easy and feels like, I shouldn't say easy because nothing's easy, but life is just easy today.
--:-- Host: I look at the lives. I coach all these little kids in little league. Great kids. I love them all to death. I think of them as my own children. They live this cushy little nerfy life. And I look at that and I know every adult ever has said this about children, but maybe it's just true. Every generation is a little softer than the one before. And maybe that's the way that it should be. But these kids will complain about something. And I'm like, look, you little Nerf babies. I don't want to hear about your batting gloves are wet. Oh my God, coach, I can't hit, my batting gloves are wet. I'm like, what are batting gloves? When I was a kid, we used the same bat. We all had one bat. We used the same glove. We all shared the same four helmets. What are you talking about? Now everyone has their book bag with their own helmet with their own. I just call them a little Nerf whenever they bitch. I like, you little Nerf babies. I don't even want to hear it.
--:-- Kat: And they pushy.
--:-- Host: Yeah. You just squishy little nerfy life with your wet batting glove problems.
--:-- Kat: But I really appreciate that. I have been in competitive sports all the way up through college, super competitive. And they were all, I think because my parents were so demanding of me, they were all like single performance. So I figure skated, I was a competitive trap shooter. My performance was almost solely based on how I performed that day. If I didn't win, there wasn't another kid on the team to blame. My parents just reamed me for being terrible and not practicing and not doing what I was supposed to do. Now seeing the difference of that single participation versus team participation and then thinking about how kids go through mental toughness or how much equipment do they have, all that, I'm just like, yeah, you guys are kind of, you got a little squishy. But to be fair, I am solidly a millennial. I will wear that as either my badge of honor or my scarlet letter, whatever spectrum somebody's on. I'm a millennial. I do appreciate somebody said this the other day, they're like, millennials just expect to get a trophy and a pat on the back and a participation award for everything. And as the person now who hands out awards, I'm like, yeah, but you guys also gave us those awards.
--:-- Host: Well, yeah, this is all boomers' fault. We have that. It's all the boomers who bitch. It's their fault. Why did you make me a participation trophy? I never would have known any different.
--:-- Host: I was saying this on a podcast, and then we'll get to insurance. I was saying this on a podcast the other day, actually not an insurance podcast. I was interviewed for my buddy's podcast here locally. And we were talking about Lily, which is such a big part of my life. It's just on my brain right now. But I try not to necessarily go as far as my coaches went, because my coaches would throw me into a fence for missing a ground ball. I don't know that that was right. I mean, I look back on it fondly, and at the time it seemed perfectly natural. But I guess that's not what people want today.
--:-- Host: I said to my son and his buddy who were in the car with me, or actually no, it was my other son. My two sons were in the car, five and seven. We were talking and something came up. They asked me about something. I can't remember the details, but I basically turned around and looked at him before I pulled away. I was like, you guys don't understand how much of a competitive advantage you will have that me and your mother are trying to instill competition and a slightly alpha approach to the world because the world is filled with betas today. Everyone's a freaking beta. I mean, just look at the conversation. I'm not even talking about politics. Just every topic, it is people who were bullied once in their life so now they're going to complain and make excuses and yell at you. I couldn't be a libertarian if I didn't believe that they had the right to be bitchy betas. I think that's perfectly fine.
--:-- Host: But I said to them, more than ever before in history, embracing competition, understanding how to push yourself, how to push through some of these things, even at a young age, it is going to give you a shining light versus all these other kids that have just been given everything. I really do believe that. I'm never going to change the world, but if I can help my kids stand out by not giving them a nerfy life, I mean, based on the house we live in, it's a pretty nerfy life. But in general, trying to, right? I do believe that we have to embrace the fact that you're going to grow up with a bunch of betas who want this padded room environment.
--:-- Host: We see it here in insurance. There's a bunch of people that are like, so-and-so won't integrate with me and I'm going to whine about it. Or like, I'm a captive agent and now I'm independent and it's so hard. It's like, you knew this going into it. So it's that heads down, I'm going to grind through it and get it done. Or heads up, I'm going to pout and cry and complain about it. For me, everybody's facing the same garbage. And there's definitely people that have nerfier lives than others, have a squishier opportunity. But all things considered, there's still a lot of work to be put in and you don't go into many scenarios and get caught off guard. Whatever you sign up for, if you go into sales, you know you're going to have a quota. If you go into service, you know you're going to have people yelling at you every day. You know these things. So what you sign up for, and whether you are squishy and whiny in this beta personality, or whether you are this alpha personality and it fuels your fire, gets the job done, you're working harder for it. That's still a differentiator. Now it's going to be that much bigger of a differentiator when it's not a 50/50 split. It's going to be often that people are whining and complaining.
--:-- Kat: And I will call out too, as I've developed professionally and gone further along in my career, I think I get a little more grace too. Like if I text you and I'm like, Hanley, we're not talking today. I'm taking the day off. You're like, Kat, you know you're not a whiny squishy person. So if you're telling me you need the day off and you're sick, okay, yeah, chill. I believe you. So you get a better amount of appreciation from people when you're putting forth your best effort constantly.
--:-- Host: Completely. My middle sister, it's middle child syndrome. God, you bump her in the car and she used to cry about it. Total beta personality.
--:-- Host: I think you're completely right. I listen to Andy Frisella a lot. I don't know if you know who he is. He's got a podcast called "The MFCEO" or something. It used to be the MFCEO, now it's something else. Basically, he owns First Form, I think it's a fitness pharmaceutical company, and he's got all kinds of fitness gear. It doesn't matter. It's a supplement and fitness company. He's got this podcast and it's one of the top five podcasts in the world. His perspective is very much a much more old school take. One of the things he talks about all the time that I think is important and very relevant to, as we'll transition here into something related to business and insurance, is that the difference in his perspective between the betas and the alphas, and I just don't know a nicer way to describe the type of person than beta, is that the beta individuals have a hardship and they're like, woe is me, excuse, I don't have this, I don't have that, this is why I can't get it done. And what they don't realize is the alpha people have the exact same hardship. They just go, oh, I'm going to figure out how to do this. I'm going to call this person for help. I'm going to invest in this thing. I'm going to take a longer view on it. I'm going to put in the work and an extra hour here. And they just find ways to navigate around it.
--:-- Host: What's been interesting is I think at different times, and this is very honest hopefully, at different times we can waiver in both camps. It's not like all the time you are this driven, competitive, focused, on-point human. I think that's another misunderstanding that a lot of people have. It is constantly just that one, just get 1% better. That mentality is like, let me get 1% better today or some positive percentage better today than I was yesterday. And those little tiny increments really add up over time versus this other mentality, which is I never want to put in the work, but I want to be at that same level. That's when I think being in some of these groups on Facebook and some of that stuff can almost be a negative. If you're looking at someone posting and going, geez, I'm never going to be where they are, or they're only there because their dad or their parents or their mom had this agency or got them this job or whatever, or they got this investment from this company. And instead of looking at the fact that there was probably a million other challenges to get to that point and that's why they keep pushing.
--:-- Kat: I wish I could remember the book because when I was working with my mental coach and going through all of really advanced stuff in trap shooting, which is such a game of perfection. It's awesome, by the way, that you're a trap shooter. I love trap shooting as a kid. I never did it competitively, but it was one of my favorite things in the world.
--:-- Host: Yeah, my sister's still exceptionally good at it. She doesn't maintain a full-time job because that's almost her full-time job.
--:-- Kat: I'm crazy, crazy good at it. Yeah, I don't have the capacity to be here doing agency Zoom stuff, texting you guys all day and shooting. But super fun. One of the things I was learning back then that I think people, to your point, they either see, "I need to be that person," and can't get there because they don't understand the work that gets put in, or it's so distant and aloof from them that they check out.
--:-- Something that I had to teach myself in that mental fortitude was that the alpha A players, they do have grit. And we talk about grit all the time. But there's a matching component to grit that is actually able to be taught and able to be nurtured when you're exhausted. And that's resourcefulness. Gritty people learn how to build up their resources. Instead of using a Facebook group as an obstacle—"I'll never be that person"—you use it as a resource.
--:-- On your days when your grit just isn't there, when you're almost at wit's end, you lean off grit a little and you go into resourcefulness. They're each other's yin and yang to better perform. You can't be just gritty. We don't expect anyone to get shot at all day every day and be mentally fine. We just saw Simone Biles, an exceptional competitor, say, "I can't do this anymore." You can't take it all the way to the world and do it endlessly.
--:-- Resourcefulness is how you think about operating. It's the fact that you come back out and you're there for your team. You lean into other skills and other value that you can present in that given time. When I started learning about that and thinking about resourcefulness—which can be learned and planned—it made being gritty a lot easier. I'm naturally an aggressive, gritty person, but it made it easier on me. I wasn't anxious. I wasn't hostile. I would go home really gritty and my husband would get super peeved. I'd be very gritty during dinner. He'd be like, "Could you chill?" So that yin and yang between grit and resourcefulness, and having a good balance of both, was really helpful.
--:-- Host: I like that a lot. I think that's why you see a lot of partnerships work in our space and in startups and technology. When you're having that day—and we all have them, multiple times a day, certainly multiple times a week—where you feel like you're never going to get to the place you want to get to. You're grinding, putting in the hours, doing the work, but your brain is telling you whatever it is. Call it the lizard brain, call it whatever you want.
--:-- To be able to pick up the phone, have a book, go for a walk—an outlet, whatever that tool is. I don't know that I would have called it resourcefulness, although I really like that. I wrote that down. I always think of them as tools. What are my tools to get myself back to where I want to be? That was one of the things I took away from *Atomic Habits* by James Clear. And there's another good book by Cal Newport called *Deep Work*. They should be in a set. Both talk about willpower.
--:-- Benjamin Hardy wrote something about willpower not being enough. Those three books all tell a similar story: willpower is great and can get you through a lot of situations, but it's a declining balance. You don't have infinite willpower. You start every day based on how much you sleep, what state you're in when you go to sleep, the quality of your sleep, how hydrated you are. You wake up with a certain amount of willpower. Throughout the day, it diminishes.
--:-- The people who persevere have built into their day tools, tricks—whatever you want to call it—ways to recharge that willpower or at least stabilize it for a period of time. So you're only using it on things you need willpower for. That was the core of James Clear's book: habits allow you to do important tasks without losing willpower. So when you do have an issue, you have your willpower, you're good to go.
--:-- Kat: So the knockoff version of that book just traded willpower for resourcefulness. I must have read some psychologist's rebranding of it 15 years ago. These guys are all authors, so they probably stole it from wherever you read it from. But that's what they were talking about. Resourcefulness. If you can build resources, you can build mentors. You can build habits. You can build comfortable behaviors into your schedule.
--:-- If you know you're lacking willpower or grit around 1:30, don't schedule your biggest, most important meeting at 1:30. That's when you should go to the gym. That's when you should get outside. That's when you call and bother each other and say stupid stuff for 30 minutes.
--:-- Host: Yeah, I think I read the knockoff version. Your ears must have been ringing today. Or maybe they weren't because they probably ring all day. It was 11 a.m. when we jumped on this call Eastern Standard Time, and I had already had two text discussions and three phone calls related to AgencyZoom. All of which your name came up in.
--:-- Just so people get a feel for the communications that happen around different features and how to set things up—I've had five conversations today before 11 a.m. Eastern. Now all the curmudgeons are going to say, "This is why your agency's not bigger, because you're talking about a tool all day instead of selling policies." But it's funny how literally five conversations—technically one was a text conversation that carried over into a phone call with a gap between them, so I'm counting it—before 11 a.m. before this phone call.
--:-- When Kat's talking about all these text comments, this is real. This really happens. It's one of those things I have to plan for in my resourcefulness. I'm just getting bombarded suddenly. Everybody's talking before 11 a.m. Around 2 p.m., they start to get nosy and it's about time to bombard Kat with text.
--:-- I have to admit, I'm super proud of our team. The last two months, we have had over 200 agencies sign up every month. We migrated our pricing plan, which has been an adventure since October of last year, making sure we could remain affordable for people who truly need our software all the way to remaining revenue positive when we have some of the largest agencies in the country onboarding. We finally made that migration this month.
--:-- We were going to need 208 to 213 agencies to cross the 7,000 agency mark. I have to admit, I'm a little stressed. I'm leaning into my resourcefulness instead of my grit right now because we're going to come up a little bit short. Two months of 200 back to back.
--:-- Kat: What's the date you need to have this number by?
--:-- Host: I need to have it by the end of the month. We're sitting at—I need to sign in and look—but it's the 29th. So we've got two more days.
--:-- Kat: How many do you need?
--:-- Host: I'll tell you how short I'm going to come up on being legendary at this. Until last month, we had never had 210 plus two months in a row. I was teasing people on Facebook, saying how proud I was of the team that we could do it again. And if we did it again, we break 7,000 agencies. We are sitting right now—we've hit our revenue goals—but we're sitting at 6,979. So I'm 21 agencies short with two business days left in the month. We normally sign up about 10 agencies a day.
--:-- Kat: So you need 21.
--:-- Host: I'm going to do a push on social when we get done with this. We'll see if we can juice this number up over 20 to get to 7,000. We'll do a quick update on a future podcast because that's cool.
--:-- But it's a good example where you can't always just be gritty. We've lived into being gritty the last few months, being absolutely exceptional on how many new agencies are coming on board. I threw it out there—I posted on social at the end of last month and said, "Hey, we've done really great. Super proud of my team. They're awesome." Now we're getting really close to doing it again. We've hit all the goals the business sets, but my own personal goal—I either need to lean into resourcefulness and say it's okay to have a moment of rest, or I have to get gritty real quick here. It's really fun to be at that crux with such a close number.
--:-- Kat: My next call after this call at 12 PM is with an agency that wants to talk about AgencyZoom. Just so you guys know, they are neither a sponsor nor am I paid for this, but I do take calls about people joining Zoom.
--:-- 7,000 is a lot of agencies. You guys have been around for a long time. I would say, particularly for the independent space, the last 24 months or so have been rapid feature improvement. You've been adding tons of features. For the agencies listening who haven't heard of Zoom, or maybe you've heard the name but aren't 100% sure—are you guys an agency management system? Are you a CRM? Where do you fall? What really is AgencyZoom, and why would an independent think about where it would fit into their agency?
--:-- [Host interjects with a sponsorship message]
--:-- Host: Yeah, that's a fair call out. Over the last 24 months, it's become super feature rich. I joined at the end of 2019 to work on the independent channel, so that's about our time clock. Things have really ramped up and changed, and it's changed our vision.
--:-- When I first came here, we were very much a little sales tracking, lightweight CRM. I think we'd integrated with QQ the month before I got here. We were sitting on top of some agency management systems, but we still weren't a full-blown CRM. We weren't doing what I think of as our core competency.
--:-- I'm definitely not an AMS. I have absolutely no interest in going there. I have some really awesome partners there. We integrate with almost all of them.
--:-- Kat: You have partners. Let's not call them awesome.
--:-- Host: That's my words, not Kat's words. But there are—you AMS's need to pull yourselves together. If an AMS could put together a 24-month sprint like we did, there'd be some awesome ones out there. I just need them to pull together a 24-month sprint. They're all owned by venture capital. That's never going to happen.
--:-- We're owned by agents and run by agencies. We have an agency advisory council that makes almost every decision. That was something we put into place last summer. That was a very smart decision.
--:-- Host: I try to make as many of them in as small amount of time as possible.
--:-- We are—and I keep telling everybody this, because CRM is such an annoying concept, and your AMS is doing half the job it should be doing as your CRM—we're an employee enablement software. I want to talk about that more and more on stage. I have some conferences I get to go to where I want to tell people about it.
--:-- A CRM lets you run a report quickly and easily, but I still have to run a renewal report, then hand a spreadsheet to my CSR to call on my renewals or my rewrites by a producer. An employee enablement software like AgencyZoom looks at every line of business, every type—whether they're a VIP or the person down the road—and delivers a curated experience that the agency owner can set. It delivers out what your expectations are to your employees.
--:-- If you expect service work to be handled quickly because it's a one-to-one relationship between your employees and your insured, that should move quick. If it's claims work, where suddenly you have carriers and adjusters that could be holding you back but there's still accountability to be had, that's a different conversation. Different expectations you should set and be able to monitor and address.
--:-- It's the same thing with sales. We started in the sales space. I'm a sales leader through and through. I'm in charge of a lot of our operations here, but I still fall back on my sales behaviors more often than not. Sales is the same way. If everybody's operating off of post-it notes and notes on their desk, that's impossible to track. You don't know how much is slipping through the cracks.
--:-- If every person in your office says, "I put it on a post-it note because then I remember and I'll follow up with that person and give them a better experience," it's because as an agency owner, we don't know how to use a CRM. There are no CRMs out there that let you actually curate the experience.
--:-- Employee enablement is delivering the right tee-ups to everybody in your agency, no matter what the customer or prospect is going through compared to campaigns. CRMs are like, "Build your report, give it to them on a list, or throw it into a campaign." It's one size fits all. A Facebook lead that's commercial and in a rush is a lot different than a Facebook lead that's personal and best friends with one of your current clients. Nobody treats it that way. There is nobody in the game treating it that way.
--:-- That's why we have such terrible adoption of CRMs. Your producers don't want to be on it. Your CSRs don't want to be on it because they're fighting against the grain of how this technology is built. That's how we're different. You set your rules of engagement and your automation around what your expectations are. That experience gets curated for that insured or prospect. Your team doesn't have ambiguity on what they're supposed to be doing. That's fundamentally so different than what's out there.
--:-- Kat: I agree with everything you've said. I hate the term "employee enablement." I hate everything about it. It means nothing. It's something I'm trying to get people to key into. We can rename it now. I haven't spoken on stage in a while. You need to catch your name.
--:-- The definition and subtext of "employee enablement" makes sense to me. But if you were on stage and said, "We are an employee enablement..." I'd be like, "Where's the fucking bar?" That's probably an offline comment, so I'll leave it in, but I probably should have shared that with you offline.
--:-- That being said, all the other stuff you said I completely agree with. There are a couple things about AgencyZoom that I like. I want everyone to be super clear: I'm just a user. I'm not even on the stupid advisory committee, even though I said I would be. I'm not even on it.
--:-- Host: We're voting again in August. You got nominated. You might get voted on.
--:-- Kat: I just like the word "might" because it aggravates me.
--:-- Host: I don't get to pick. It's not the people who text Kat at two o'clock every afternoon. That should count. Volume of text should count.
--:-- Kat: All that being said, I actually prefer my current position. I get to give you all the stuff that I want and I don't actually have to do any of the work of being on the committee. So that's actually the best case. Don't vote me on.
--:-- What attracted me to the tool is a couple things. I like that NowCerts is terrible. It could be amazing, but it's terrible. If the guys and ladies from NowCerts are listening, understand that you have all the potential in the world and you're blowing it.
--:-- My entire team only works in AgencyZoom. We only go into NowCerts when we have to. That's one of the core functionalities that makes it so powerful. My client success people—account managers, CSRs, whatever—they are working hand in hand in the same system, working off the same activity feed, same notes, same files. Although one of my feature requests I recently put in was a foldered file management system, which I know is coming.
--:-- They don't have to log out and log in or use a different tab. It's all right there in front of them in what I call a card system or visual workflow. We can visually workflow all our processes. We have a sales pipeline that we spent a lot of time building out with different triggers.
--:-- Just to give people an idea of what we've built: our sales pipeline is probably a little longer than I would like today, but it works really well for our team. New lead comes in, notifications go to the appropriate team members, touch points go out to the clients—text message, email: "Hey, we got in touch." Then we have gathering info. Once we've gathered—and I know checklists are coming too, I can't wait for that feature.
--:-- Host: When checklists launches, it might be there.
--:-- Kat: No, it's awesome. I love it. I don't know when this goes live, but by the time people are listening, it's not a complaint. Look how quickly all this stuff happens. I love it.
--:-- Today we're using a regular checklist. My producer has a checklist where he'll be able to click check boxes to make sure he has all the appropriate stuff. Once he has all the proof stuff, he moves it over to "Ready to Quote." That notifies my quoting person. She comes in and he has to check all the boxes because that's what the account manager said he needs to have. He can't move it to "Ready to Quote" until he checks all the boxes. Boom.
--:-- Ready to Quote. Quoting person comes in, moves it to "Quoting." We use a series of tags. I talked to Andrew Ryan a little bit about this today. We have some more thoughts for you on this particular topic. I know that's one of our text feeds. Today we're using tags to notate: "Send to underwriting," "Waiting for feedback," whatever. Then we move it over to "Proposal Ready."
--:-- When it goes "Proposal Ready," my producer gets a notification because I want him reaching out to people and contacting people. He shouldn't even be worried about the quote. He comes back in, looks at the proposal, presents it, moves it to "Presented." When he sells it, he moves it to "Ready to Issue." CSR comes back in again, getting notified, moves it, issues the business in the carrier system, puts it to "Sold."
--:-- The best part is those people don't have to keep coming back and checking when it's moved into that column. They get a notification: "You got a new piece of business that's ready to issue." At the end of the day, we try to close out our "Ready to Issue." Quoting won't always be closed out, but we like to get everything out of "Ready to Quote" and "Ready to Issue" every day. They just get notified when something happens.
--:-- At any given time, I can come in, snapshot what's happening in our sales process. All that is pushed down to reporting that allows me to say, "Okay, what's happening?" That's just the sales process, not even thinking about the service center. When I look at it, I know exactly what's happening. That lead came in. I can see Matt's already got it. He's gathering info. It is so easy to manage.
--:-- Regardless of what agency management system I switch to, I'm basing that decision off their integration with you guys. Then I'll just peer pressure you into developing a deeper relationship with whoever I choose.
--:-- Host: Right. More two o'clock texts.
--:-- I think it's a good call out that you're saying it's easy to visualize. The part that's really important is the visualization is only worth so much if the team wasn't using it. But it's really easy for your team to use. It's drag and drop. You're visualizing it. They're able to look at it the same way you do. They just drag and drop it into the next stage. The customer is getting that curated experience.
--:-- When we hear "campaigns" being bucketed, a curated experience means the customer is getting a curated experience. You don't have to be concerned that sitting in "Ready to Quote" means the customer hasn't got a text saying, "Hey, we are prepping your work. Is there anything we forgot? Do you have any questions that have popped up?" You don't have to wonder if the person sent that text. It goes from that.
--:-- You can stay laser focused on managing your business, working on the business. Your team can stay laser focused on working in the business. That ambiguity or lack of ability to know because people are frustrated and can't use the technology, and it's not picturesque—the UI or UX isn't there—it's an entirely different ballgame.
--:-- We have over 65,000 users on there. Everyone from a CSR doing little tiny things up to a commercial lines mid-account manager type person. They all have to use it.
--:-- I actually just checked because somebody sent me a text late last week and said, "Kat, I just put my dad on there." I didn't think much of that. I was like, "Oh, that's awesome. Good to have your dad on." Second generation agency and all that. I don't think I realized the current agency owner is the age that he is. He said, "I wondered if you know how old your users are." I said, "I'm sure I have a ballpark, but I don't know." He said, "I want to nominate my dad for being the oldest AgencyZoom user." I'm thinking this guy's in his 40s and his dad might be in his late 60s, early 70s. His dad's 92 and he's in his early 60s. This guy looks great. He stayed in great shape his whole life. So I didn't know how old he was, but his dad is 92. I think he might be our oldest AgencyZoom user.
--:-- I literally have a kid we're mentoring who is a senior in high school going to college. He's in AgencyZoom learning data and reporting and helping his mom. All the way up to an agency owner in his 60s and his dad who is 92, an account manager who has his friends and accounts he's had for years and years. He likes having a little mobile app and plunking around checking on things.
--:-- It's really fun to have stuff like this if done correctly. The hard part is putting it in the mindset of a CRM or trying to become an AMS. Suddenly it's not done correctly anymore. It's got to be focused on the insured.
--:-- Kat: For people listening who are considering a tool like this, I think a lot of people—myself included—have been all over the board with CRMs. I've said on the podcast before that I kind of fell prey early to knowing too much. I've been in marketing for 15 years. Sales and marketing and knowing the tools was part of my job for a long time.
--:-- When people think CRM, they think Infusionsoft or HubSpot or tools that require a tremendous amount of build out. I'm actively trying to get onto Salesforce for our agency management system. I think Veruna is the worst. Hopefully they'll reap what they've sown. There's a company called Novadea that looks interesting. We'll see. You have to be determined.
--:-- But I keep coming back to: I don't actually need all that. Really what I need is a simple policy repository with downloads. Simple. That works. Because all the rest of it is in Zoom. I've talked to you many times, probably frustratingly so. How do I not have an agency management system? Can I just make this work 100% in AgencyZoom?
--:-- Host: And there's a few features that make that not possible. Just some like address, mailing address, physical address stuff that whatever. It's fine. You guys aren't trying to be an agency management system, so it doesn't matter. But it's close. And that's the answer, in my opinion, because really the policy data with our integrations with the carriers and how quickly carriers are starting to directly integrate into systems — we're five years away from IVANS being probably not as important today, unless they do some major changes. If you listen to Reed, it sounds like he's doing some interesting stuff, so maybe he does open that platform up and modernize it.
--:-- But the simplicity is what brought me to it. Now I can use my marketing brain and do a lot of fun stuff that I want to do and be that true customer experience that I'm looking to deliver. But I don't have to have a PhD in marketing automation to deliver it. Salesforce even — I feel like tons of people don't realize it. Salesforce is pricey, but it's not cost prohibitive when you look at just buying licenses. You think, "Oh, that's $60 per person. I have a three-person agency. Cool, this will cost me $180 a month."
--:-- But I'm in Columbus, Ohio, which is no New York City, no LA, but it's not cheap. A junior Salesforce admin — a guy a couple years out of college who can help you build your Salesforce account the way you want — their annual salary in Columbus is $95,000. How many agencies are ready to employ somebody even 10 hours a week to get that set up? Are you ready to take on a fourth of that cost to get your Salesforce set up?
--:-- And to your point, Ryan, 15 years of marketing and sales experience, you would know pretty well how you wanted your Salesforce set up. To somebody who's never had a CRM, you're going to build it upside down. You're going to have to rebuild it the next time. And you're still going to make mistakes because you just don't have the breadth of knowledge. You need a PhD in any one of these systems to have the architecture be correct, to have your team operate in it successfully. And it still doesn't do the right stuff. It still gives them a list of things to do, and they still have to manually send out a text and an email, and they're still not happy with it. And then they still don't use it.
--:-- This is the frustrating part for me. This is what I don't get about agency management systems in general. I know this is the epic bitch, but I just don't get this part. They're doing all these things, and all I need is a simple policy management system. I really like Community Cloud. I like the Community Cloud feature and the ability to easily — when you see a well-done Salesforce installation, when you see how easily you can move information, pull information, move between accounts, move between policies, roll up data to really get a true vision of it — I'm like, "Wow, that is just so easy."
--:-- Today, I get into NowCerts and I'm like, "Oh my God, I've been in here 20 times today and I still don't know where anything is." For this account, it didn't download properly because for some reason for Chubb workers comp policies, NowCerts decided to beam that to the moon instead of putting it into the policy. So now I have all these policies with no premium. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, who knows.
--:-- I just look at it and think there's such a few things I would love to just create — not an agency management system, a policy admin system with a simple Community Cloud-style backend that I could plug AgencyZoom into. That would be a whole solution. There it is. Then I can have one person who logs into that and goes, "Okay, premiums, commissions, here's your policy information. Oh, you want to download your policy form? Well, since Kat won't build a client portal into AgencyZoom, I guess we have to back-end it into this system."
--:-- That to me is all you need. All this crap that they're bolting on, and the price of the agency management keeps going up and up and up. You're not as good as CRMs. So if sales and marketing is the key, you keep bolting crappy marketing. I saw an advertisement come out from one of the agency management systems, and it was like, "We have marketing automation now." Their screenshot in 2021 — someone was goofing because it was an Unsplash photo from a computer from 1997. They're like, "Look, marketing automation, we have six templates." Whoever did that marketing piece needs to be flogged. You know how if you commit a petty crime in Taiwan, they hit you with this stick that really hurts? That person should get that for putting that out on the internet.
--:-- Kat: I so appreciate that. There's this happy medium balance too, even in our world. What is AgencyZoom? It's hard to define it because we're talking to everyone from you to our agency owner who ambitiously wants to take on a CRM. I have to explain why that's really not an exciting adventure and they should just reposition themselves to think about their customer experience and their employees.
--:-- The marketing of where we sit in the market and our user base — I don't know how many people listening pay attention to product adoption curve. If you've worked with insurtechs and ever beat your head against the wall because you feel like they're not listening or they're not ready for you, there's five or six mindsets: your innovators, your early adopters, your early majority, your late majority, and your laggards. The laggards are the people that still don't have a voicemail, maybe don't even have a cell phone.
--:-- When you plot 7,000 agencies or 64,000 people on this adoption curve, you suddenly end up with people that really get it — innovators that want to do cool stuff like you do. And then you end up also with the late majority who are like, "I need CRM." And you're like, "Why?" And they're like, "I was told I do." Yeah, I was at this association meeting one time and those kids kept using these three letters, and I Googled it and you're the ones that came up.
--:-- When people text me or send us messages on Facebook and they're like, "I need an MCR," I'm like, "I'm not sure what you're looking for here." And they're like, "You know, somewhere to trap my sales." And I'm like, "You mean a CRM?" "Yeah, yeah." And I'm like, "What AMS do you use?" And they're like, "We have file cabinets." I'm like, "Ah, maybe not right yet."
--:-- Host: My favorite — and I want to be respectful of your time, we're at the number — my favorite is when people tell me that their CRM is a whiteboard in their office. They're like, "I just like the visual nature of a whiteboard." And I'm like, "Oh, I mean, yes, I get it." If you're working on 10 accounts — if you're a middle market person and you have 10 accounts and your goal is to write seven of those accounts for the year and they're going to pay your bills — then some of what we're saying doesn't make a whole lot of sense. That part I could be like, "Okay, congratulations. Great for knowing what you're doing. That's awesome. No judgment."
--:-- But if you're trying to run a standard, slightly more digital-ish agency or trying to get into the digital world, and you don't have some function on your computer that allows you to move clients to a visual pipeline, I don't know how you can be a fit. You have to be dropping accounts on the floor. You just have to.
--:-- Kat: There are people too that are saying, "Oh yeah, I want to sell new policies and all this." As a sales leader, it's just one of those things where the hair stands up on my arm, chills run up my back. I'm like, "God, the amount of people that don't have a goal for their agency and don't have a goal for their individual people." They're like, "Oh, we put it on a whiteboard or we share a Google Sheet." It's like, "What for? Why are you managing to it? If you have 10 up there and it's the last day of the month, am I ahead? Am I behind? How do you know that?"
--:-- Not only do you as the agency owner have a gut feeling, but do I have a gut feeling? Does it matter? That's the thing that becomes hard. Every time somebody loses the idea of digitizing and tracking some of this, if you don't set your goals, if you don't communicate your goals out, and then you don't hold people accountable to them because they can do whatever they want, it's not going to go as well as you think it is.
--:-- People start with, "Oh, we're just going to track first." But what are you tracking? What's the purpose of tracking it if there's no celebration for achieving it, or if there's no "Hey guys, we gotta do better next month" if we don't hit it? What for?
--:-- Host: And you just mentioned the greatest feature in the history of insurance technology — the confetti every time you sell a policy. I'm sorry, I said it again. The greatest feature in the history of insurance technology: the confetti that comes down every time you hit the sold button. It's the greatest feature ever. The psychology behind it — whether it was a complete mistake or a joke — every time you hit the sold button, the screen bursts with confetti. I freaking love it.
--:-- I got mad the other day because we had something in "Ready to Issue" that hadn't been moved to "Sold" for like two days. It didn't have to be, but it just hadn't been moved. I literally on my team call was like, "Screw you guys, I'm moving it to sold so I get to see the confetti." Boom, get your win.
--:-- Kat: It literally started as a joke. We used to have this little animation that popped up, just a little happy face or something stupid. We're like, "God, that's so cheesy." And we're like, "What's even more obnoxious and more corny?" And it was this confetti popping through the screen and floating down. The amount of animation work and engineering work it ended up taking for us to reap what we sowed — we wanted this new cheesy, obnoxious thing. And then how attached you guys are to it now. Load speed on a computer impacts this dumb confetti, so we have to have almost a different version of confetti for every device you're on. It really has bit us in the butt.
--:-- But now people love it. It's gotta be a million X ROI. There's no other CRM that does it. So why would you ever leave? Every time you hit the sold button, you get this burst of confetti, you feel like a million dollars. It's the best.
--:-- Host: You're doing like poppers in our office — those little ones you pull. We were doing that as a joke when we were developing that stuff, being cheesy and obnoxious about it. And then lo and behold, everybody loves it. We're like, "All right, well, jokes on us. It actually worked out."
--:-- Kat: Well, I am not going to title this anything that has to do with employee enablement, but I will say that this has been an absolute pleasure. I appreciate your time. I want to say thank you publicly. I know you deal with a lot of people like me, so I'm going to thank you for me and for the crew of people that I run with that text you all the time. I do think that you guys are doing really good work. It's been a huge resource for my agency. Of all the tools that I would or wouldn't move from, you guys are really one of the core pieces. I just look forward to what you have going on and the continued improvement. Hopefully we can report on a future podcast that you hit your 7,000. Two days isn't a lot of time, but I hope you get there.
--:-- Kat: We can do it. We have many times had pretty easily 10 signups a day. We got most of Thursday left, most of Friday, a little bit on Saturday. If somebody is really ambitious and likes to work on Saturday, they become my favorite people anyway. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being part of the cool, close-knit group of us that text and offer ideas. We really do value what every single one of our agencies share. We have a roadmap feature built in that you guys can request on. I love all of our teams — although I'm being shadow banned from the roadmap because my suggestions are not getting in there. That's definitely true.
--:-- The teams that go investigate the stuff that gets put on the roadmap, test it, and beta use it — you guys are one of them. It's very needed. Those are the ones that make a world of difference. Those are the ones that take technology from being 150 agencies and just one person's opinion and some engineers building stuff. You guys are the ones that take it and really build it into what independent agents need. I wouldn't be here, AgencyZoom wouldn't be where it's at without you guys. That's why I love getting bombarded with texts at two in the afternoon — two minus an hour and 53 minutes until I just get lit up for 30 minutes.
--:-- Host: All right. Well, the group text will go out. "Hey, it's time to start texting Kat." Oh, hey, look at this. Look at this AgencyZoom. I got the party poppers right on my phone right here. A boy just sold two policies. I got the party poppers going on my phone. Boom. Thanks, Kat.
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