--:-- Ryan Hanley: 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 you. Conversation with Ricky Hayter, the owner of A&R Insurance Group out in Oregon. Ricky's also highly involved in Killing Commercial, David Carothers' community, been a huge part of the Protege. And Ricky's just an all-around great agency owner, great guy, someone who I had the chance to be co-coaches with on the Protege season one, helped get Ryan Keating into the finals of the Protege. And it was just fun to catch up with Ricky.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: He's one of the people you know sometimes I talk to people so much out in the digital world and I realize they just haven't been on the show yet and I'm like man I can't believe you haven't been on. Come on, let's just wrap. And this is just a great all-around episode talking about business and insurance and the industry and owning an agency and sales and I just think you're absolutely going to love this episode.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Before we get there, I want to give a quick shout out to the sponsors that make this show possible. First, Propeller Bonds. Propeller Bonds is changing the way independent agencies deliver a surety bond experience, making it incredibly easy. They have over 6,000 bonds in every state across the country. We're writing five to 10 bonds a month just by sending out simple links to our customers and saying, hey, if you have any bonding needs, start here. And it's like, not to bring up Crothers again, but something Crothers talks about all the time, mailbox money. It's mailbox money. It just comes in and you're becoming the bonding resource for your customers. Obviously, if there's some more intense bonds, stuff like that, you may want to look at them, but man, notary bonds, janitorial bonds, municipal bonds, utility bonds, all the way up to $3 million performance bonds, you can get automatically in less than 10 minutes with certificates delivered right to your clients. It's an absolutely tremendous resource. Highly, highly recommend Propeller Bonds. We use them almost every day here at Rogue Risk and couldn't be a bigger fan of what Aaron and Taylor and the entire team over at Propeller Bonds is doing. Go to propellerbonds.com. Go to propellerbonds.com. Sign up, get appointed. You will not regret that decision.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Also want to give a big shout out to Coterie. Coterie is changing the way we do small commercial. Coterie is pushing the envelope in what is a digital experience for independent agents in delivering small business insurance. Coterie is another huge partner of Rogue Risk, another company that we do a lot of business with, really enjoy working with, and the customer experience is just so easy that they're going to start pushing some of these traditionals to change the way they do business because Coterie is just too easy. They got good paper and good people and good products and with the ease of business, it's just a no-brainer, especially for some of the smaller stuff, consultants that need to maybe package their GL and PL together. Coterie is a no-brainer solution. Guys, go to coterieinsurance.com. That's coterieinsurance.com. Go to coterieinsurance.com. Get appointed. Start writing more small commercial. You won't regret that decision either.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right, let's get on to Ricky Hayter. Yo, what's up?
--:-- Ricky Hayter: What's up, dude? It's another day in the neighborhood. You know what's going on?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, man. Looking forward to kind of a short week, you know?
--:-- Ricky Hayter: Yeah, I am and I'm not. I love Thanksgiving. It's the best. At the same time, I am at this moment, which I'm sure you can relate to, where I just feel like any moment that I'm not doing family time, which I'm trying to be very diligent about family time, I feel like I need to be doing work time.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh my god, well I have so much work to do. That's part of why I'm looking forward to the short week because no one at my office cares about my attention this week, so I can kind of maybe move some stuff forward.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: Yeah, oh dude, it's been... I'd say since probably about August to now and it's still going, this has been one of the most, maybe outside of planning the Elevate Conference that I did, I'd say this has been the most hectic period of my professional career. Just in terms of how many things are happening, how many balls are up in the air, how many decisions need to be made each day. The triage where you're just letting things fall to the ground because knowing that there's just no other way, you can't get to them. No one on your team can get to them. And you're just like, I don't know what to do. I'm just going to let this fall on the ground. It's been that way since August, really. It's been wild.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, I feel you. We're making the turn to start building niches and really getting after it and being intentional after the last year. To take the mindset from surviving and transitioning an acquired agency into that right now and keep everybody all positive is really hard. It's a really big thing to move.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: Yeah, that's the hard part. I'm just interested in your take on this too. Our team is growing, which is great. You bought or acquired an agency and took on everything that comes with that. It is wild how it is easy to operate under the assumption that everything's all good. And it is wild how much that can not be true and you just don't realize.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, well, yes. When you feel good, it's easy to do the good stuff. It's during the hard times to keep that up that is the hardest. Our job as the leaders of the organizations, we can't buy into that and have to keep people staying focused and positive. That in my mind is the hardest because right now, we've all been all hands on deck for the last year. We've all just been trying to take this agency that was all paper, super old school, convert it digital, keep everything, get our hands around it, rebuild the team, the whole thing. Now we want to go and grow and sell and implement everything that we like to do. But because our processes aren't totally dialed in and filled out, the only thing holding them back from going and doing that is that they don't feel they can deliver on the promise that we make as good agents to new business.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So I've got like six weeks to make them feel good that our agency is good enough. It's just we feel the inside chaos of the challenge of the transition, but we're still better than most. So keeping them positive to make a jump like that, and listen, we can still deliver on this promise. As soon as we hit X, we bring in the next person. We've already got that person waiting. It's coming. So sharing, I would say taking your vision and having the team stay positive with it, that's the biggest challenge I have right now.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: Yeah. Now, are you primarily in person? Are you primarily virtual? What is the setup?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: With what, staff or clients?
--:-- Ricky Hayter: Yeah, with your staff.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, we're in person. We're all in person. I'm not afraid of being virtual. I like the idea of that, but because it's so fresh and young and kind of raw, it's really kind of hard to define all of that when everyone's in different places. I was just gone for two weeks in Florida. Missed you at IAOA, by the way.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: Yeah, I missed being there.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And the reason that was possible is because my team is super strong and has my back to the point where they know what I would do at this point or say, or want to do enough that even if they kind of mess something up, big deal, their intentions are right. They do well enough. Because we're here all day together, they just know me now and I know them. Maybe others do it very well, but the only way I know to really create that kind of atmosphere so I can leave or someone else can leave and we know how they would handle their clients is being in person together all day. And I have to have a place to go. I'm not disciplined enough to work at home, man.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: Yeah. I don't know how you do it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, there's a reason that there's a bottle of WhistlePig over my right shoulder and I drove 45 minutes to the dispensary the other day. But you have your own room that you go to, like an office dedicated in your house, right?
--:-- Ricky Hayter: Yep. Yep. So I don't have that. If I had that, maybe it would be different. I have to set my computer up in the living room or no, that doesn't work. Nope. Yeah, I can't do it that way. So this room, I don't technically, when we bought the house they called this a fourth bedroom, but the closet is also where the water system is. I'm not sure who's putting a coat in there or whatever.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You don't even need a rack. You can hang your shirts on the pipes.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: Yeah. Yeah. It worked out perfectly because it's in the basement. It's in this section that my wife would never want to use this for anything. We would never put someone down here if they came to visit us. So I've been able to turn this into a really nice space for me. If I'm being completely candid, the view that you get through the viewfinder, which no one else can see since I don't publish the video, looks a lot more buttoned up than all this stuff you can't see off camera. But my point is, this has worked great. I also lose my mind sitting at home all the time. There are days when I just cannot focus. I'm just like, man, I would love to just be in an office, interacting with other people, doing office stuff. Because there are days when you need that. Mentally, it's difficult to kind of lock in. Something's going on and you just can't get dialed in. Like right now, there's guys working in my basement right over there and I can hear them. They came down the stairs and just walked by. I just have to kind of see that and go about the day. There's no escape.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: So I guess I asked you that question because my team is a hundred percent virtual. I got two guys in California, a guy in Michigan, another woman in Florida. I got the agency VA in the Philippines. Sarah lives locally, but we never see each other because we don't have an office. So it's very interesting. The dynamics are very interesting. Building culture, getting to know people, how do you do it? It's a very interesting dynamic.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. I really like it. I just don't know how to bring the same energy and the same sort of thing that makes me a good leader with my team being remote. I almost feel like for me to do it, the team member would have to start in the office for a few months and then go remote. Now we know each other. Now we know how to talk to each other. I know that's just a me thing and I need to get past that at some point. Other people like yourself do it very, very well. I just haven't been able to get my mind there yet.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: Yeah, I completely get where you're coming from. I would be lying if I said in a perfect world everybody that I hired didn't all just show up at the same office. I would love that. I have found a couple things though. I found it's very difficult to acquire the talent that I need locally. I live in Albany, New York. If you're awesome at insurance, you're working for Gallagher or you're working for a P firm that just bought another one. They're all big. They pay tons of money. I had this one woman who was great. She got an offer for $20,000 more than what I could pay her. What am I supposed to do? We're remote. We got this kind of more flexible culture. We use gifts on Slack and it's cool. But I don't have an ESOP with a 401k with a healthcare plan with an FSA. At the end of the day, they're probably paying $150,000 for this woman. I'm not saying she's not worth that. I just can't even compete. So I have to find people who are willing to make the value transfer of, hey, this company may not be able to pay me top dollar, but in exchange I get flexibility, some freedom. Culturally, I think we're very... I don't know what the right word is to describe it. We're very real. I don't know. Authentic.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think you guys are pretty authentic. What I know about what you guys got going on over there, I'm pretty transparent. I think the biggest thing I've noticed with my team, whether you're in person or remote, is creating safety for them. A safe place. They need to be able to know that they can come to me with a problem or that something isn't working right in the office, whatever it is, and come and talk to me. And it's going to be met with me listening, understanding, and helping solve the problem. Not this doubt. "Well, this is what's proven. Read the script or get out of here." There's a lot of older, old school agents like that. Treating my team with mutual respect. If I want to get a new piece of technology or build a new niche, I need to get their input first because it impacts them day in and day out much more than myself.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: I think the other way is true too. People need to be able to bring their good ideas to you and that you're willing to listen.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That's what I'm saying. I literally just said this and I don't mean this to come off in a braggy way. We just had a sales meeting before this call and we just onboarded our third new producer in three weeks this morning.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: Look at you getting after it out there.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm just hiring cats. All I do is I just facilitate awesomeness. That's what we do. We facilitate awesomeness. Bro, just wait till I launch what's coming from Rogue. You guys don't even realize you've been sleeping on Rogue for a long time. You think I'm just a podcaster, you sons of bitches. I love it. All that being said, I said to him, his name is Mike, good dude coming from USI, very traditional, very buttoned up culture, very bureaucratic. I kind of knew the answer to this because I talked to him multiple times where we hired him, but I just was like, bro, what do you want to do? And he's like, man, I really like automotive stuff. So fuck it. Let's do it. I said, give him my guy Will. Will's going to help you build out a vertical. I kind of knew that was one of his niches that he was coming from. But now this guy has the ability to own this project of building. He'll write other stuff too, but to start to work towards building out this vertical. Whether he actually chooses that vertical or not is another thing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think that for too long it's been, what does Ricky want? Whatever Ricky wants, if Ricky doesn't want it, it don't happen in the agency. And if you didn't come up with the idea, that idea don't exist. I think there's a tremendous number of incredibly talented people in our industry who just want to feel like they're building something. I don't necessarily think it's just about ownership. I don't think it's just about big, huge bonuses and salary. Although all that stuff is great. I think people just want to feel like if I'm going to put 30 years into this company, I didn't just do car changes for 30 years and then it was like, have a nice day.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: I think that's part of the key to it. Not only being that transparent and having that safe place for your team to come to you with ideas, problems, issues, whatever the case may be, but also affording them the same freedom that you have. Hey, what do you like to do the best? What is your favorite thing to sell? Class of business, what you do in your job. How can I, as the leader of this, help you focus most of your time on that? Because that leads to them being happier. That leads to them being more productive. That leads to them succeeding better. Why should I go and say, hey, you need to build a cyber niche and you need to be in charge of our restaurant niche? We're doing our planning for 2022 and how we want to sell. When I was gone in Florida, I was gone for two weeks. That's a long time to be gone. I haven't been gone that long in years.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: I tasked each of them while I was gone. Their homework due to me when I got back was their business plan for 2022. Here's how much you get in commission. Here's how much your base is. I want to know what you want to sell and how much you want to make next year. I know you don't have the same experience and skill as me to go and make a whole marketing plan and how we're going to plug everything in together. I'll take it and run with that part. But I want you to tell me how much do you want to make next year? And how do you want to do it? So they all came and picked what they want to sell. And we're just going to focus and stay in that lane. Now I don't have to manage them into sales needs or production needs or revenue. They just gave it to me. It's their plan.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I love that idea. I love that. That's part of how I've built Rogue. To me, the great travesty of... I think there's so many things that we've done right as an industry for a long time. I'm not going to bang the drum that everything the old guard has done is wrong. That's not my position in any regard. One thing I do think that has been missing is that sense of buy-in from the team. The ownership usually has buy-in, but then the team is kind of just like, ah, this is what he tells me to do. There's not that sense that they can grab something and make it their own. Not everybody wants that. That's not saying that every single person wants that from their career. But I think for a long time, we've been so top-down heavy and have really missed... I'm not a flat culture guy either. Don't make that mistake. But there's a really good mix. When I look at organizations that I envy, there's a mix between a hierarchical structure where someone is making decisions and getting shit done, and there's accountability for that, mixed with the openness of the more kind of neo-flat culture type organization. There's communication up and down the chain. There's input. There's buy-in. At the same time, you're still giving people responsibility. When I hear what you just did for your employees, it sounds like that. It sounds like you gave them accountability and responsibility, but at the same time, they got to give feedback on what they actually wanted. That seems like a winning strategy.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: Well, yeah, because I want to manage the least amount possible.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Me too.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: Managing people can be an absolute nightmare. But we can't grow the way I know that you want to grow and I want to grow without people, and quite frankly, a lot of them. So when I interview people currently, I don't necessarily care about skill set or much of their resume. I'm looking for good people who want the freedom, who can self-manage, self-motivated type people that are reliable. Hey, what are your hours? Well, we get in around 8:30 and we try to be gone by five. What does that mean? Well, sometimes it's 8:45. Sometimes it's 8:15. Sometimes it's nine. Depends on traffic and when I can get my kids out of the house. They're nine and four. That doesn't always just happen right away. We try to leave at five, but this is insurance. You could have someone call at 4:50 and have their kitchen on fire in their restaurant and we got to help with the claim. Or maybe you've got this big prospect that can't talk to you until six o'clock. It all evens out. This is insurance. To just say, oh, I'm done, it's five o'clock, but I have this to do, that's not very reasonable. That's not being a good agent.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: Or they ask how long is lunch. I guess in the handbook you get an hour, but you don't want an hour every day. Some days you're going to just want to eat and power through a whole bunch and get out of there. Other days you might have an errand to run and you're gone for an hour and a half. It's only a problem if we all wonder, hey, where the hell has Ryan been all day? We're all adults. The people that can buy into that and can manage, not everybody can handle that kind of freedom. I have one girl here who came from State Farm. When she first started, she's like, hey man, I'm talking to Heidi all the time and I hope you're not upset about that. I said, I don't care. You guys sit next to each other all day. You should get along. Apparently her old State Farm agent was like, you're talking too much, get on the phone. She said, it might mean we have to take a little longer to get things done. I told her, listen, we're task-based here. You have work to do. Here's what you need to do every day and every week. If you're sitting there talking with Heidi for two hours and you end up being here until 6:30, that's not my problem. I got my work done. I'm going home. Get it done. And now she thrives in that. It's awesome.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So what I heard you just describe is what I would call a performance-based culture. I was doing a speaking gig at the Big I of Arkansas, which was actually in Nashville, but it was Arkansas. It was a makeup from 2020. Arkansas has a good crew, a lot of good people there. I got this really interesting question from a woman who teaches at one of the universities in the risk management program. She was asking about leadership style. Traditionally it's been a very siloed structure and all this bureaucracy. I said to her, you're going to find different leadership structures from everybody and different philosophies. It depends a lot on how big an ego does the person at the top of the pyramid have. It depends on how much liberal college they went to. Maybe they believe that unicorns fart rainbows and we all should get along. And some in between there is every structure that exists.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I said, what we implement at Rogue is what I call performance-based, which is really just what you just described. We have shit that has to get done. I don't care, nor do I need to know, if your kid is sick and puking at school. You need to go get your kid. You should not have to go, oh shit, I need to ask my boss if I can leave and get my kid. You need to stop what you're doing. Send out a quick note that says, hey everybody, my kid's puking at school, I got to go get them. Mark yourself as away and go get your kid because that's what's important to your life. Now, does that mean you may need to plow through a shorter lunch, pick up some stuff at night or in the morning and get it done? Yes. Because if we get to the end of the month and you've only done half your work, that's a problem. But what I would like to believe is, as adults, we should, over the aggregate, be able to get our work done. That flexibility, if you can give your people the respect of, you don't have to ask my permission to go get lunch. You don't have to ask my permission to take your kid to the doctors. These are things in life that keep our people from doing their job well. When they're here, I want them thinking about this. That's what I want them thinking about. Not, oh no, what am I gonna do? I have this doctor's appointment. I had to take a day off on Monday because Shirley's school and now I got this doctor's appointment. I can't ask for that time off. No thank you. It evens out.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: Yes, it evens out. The other thing I'll say to that is I make them take time off. They ask, how much PTO do I get? I say, well, I guess your first year you get 10 days on the handbook, but I don't know. You need to go to the dentist. You don't need to take a half day off. Just go and come back. I don't even need to know. Just let us know. The only thing is, just don't leave us hanging. Hey, I'm going to be gone for a couple hours. If this person calls and they just need to make a quick payment, is someone free to do that today? Yeah, I'll take care of that if they call while you're gone. No problem. Don't leave us hanging with some disaster that all of a sudden we got to go clean up.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: The thing that really made me realize that this is working, that I have the right people, was when I was gone in Florida. I went to Tampa for Innovation. It ended on Saturday. Saturday night my family flew into Orlando and I stayed with a friend. In the morning he took me up to meet them Sunday morning in Orlando to then go to Disney and Universal Studios for a week. That Sunday I was in our hotel responding to a week of emails, forwarding stuff to my team. On Monday I got one response. I probably sent 50 or 60 emails. I got one response. Someone on my team copied the rest of the team. Hey, we are on top of it. We got it. Go enjoy Disneyland. I didn't hear from them for the rest of the week. Everything was just done. It was awesome.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Dude, that type of flow is the way it should be. Because what it says is, if you can be out for a week, then any member of your team can be out for a week and you guys can roll. And that's the example that I want to set.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: Yeah. There's a book, I don't know if you've read it, that you would really like. The Netflix No Rules Rules about culture. They have unlimited time off and all these things that people argue back and forth about. The only way you can truly achieve a healthy, unlimited time off, this freedom culture, is you have to start it from the beginning and you have to do it with the right kind of people who can handle that.
--:-- 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. 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 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 have done incredible things, sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales—the things that are going to 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. 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. 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: Well, this is my point. This philosophy of flat organizations and strictly hierarchical organizations, in my opinion, are facilitation mechanisms for lazy leadership. When I hear someone say we have a flat org, what I hear is you, as a leader, don't want to take responsibility for making a decision and having to stick to it. You want to outsource all the responsibility to your people and distribute that responsibility and accountability out over them instead of taking it on yourself. And when I hear highly hierarchical, strict structures, what I think is you do not want to allow anyone else to have an idea so that you can take everything yourself and be in control. That's a control mechanism. So this hybrid model you're describing, and all the versions around it, takes active management and leadership. You have to be a better version of a leader in this method because you have to hire well and think about these things when you hire. If you have someone who needs a 15-minute break in the morning, an hour in the middle of the day, another 15 in the afternoon, and they won't work past five and won't step in the building before 8:30, and they need this and that—that's probably not a good fit for us. That's not someone who's going to work. We have to be willing to walk through the process with them and say, "Hey, look, you might not work in that type of environment." If that's the type of person you are, and vice versa. If someone isn't working, you have to be willing to document records, do performance reviews, and get them out of the building if they're not working.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: But your culture is also your safeguard to that. Right now, I have the base with this team. I am human, and someone could give me all the right answers and be super attractive, but they're just not honest with themselves that they can't handle that kind of freedom and culture. I don't have to be the one to grab the handbook and start managing them out. They're going to know, because the whole team knows. The whole team knows this person just doesn't fit.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I agree with that. I just think that with this model, you have to be intentional, you have to be active, you have to be very cognizant of what's going on and be willing to have hard conversations with people. A lot of times, leaders just don't want to have hard conversations. They don't want to sit someone down and say, "You are not hitting your goals. What is going on?" And then listen. Sometimes you get the truth, sometimes you get bullshit. You have to be able to weed that out. And when you hit a point where it's not working, you have to be willing to tell that person you're going in a different direction. That is an incredibly hard and difficult thing. I don't mean fire fast—that's not what I'm saying, and that's not the culture we want to have here. But if someone's not a fit, you've got to get them out. I think that's the part a lot of people don't want to deal with. They want to say we're a performance-based culture, but then when someone doesn't perform, they don't take the actions necessary that come along with underperformance.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: I had a producer here about two months ago. You know how long he lasted? Four days. I didn't even get a chance to know if he could or couldn't produce, but it was known to everybody. He didn't fit in. He was never going to fit in with that kind of freedom and culture. When I look at how he slipped through me, he was a producer ready to work, and I got lazy going through my process. It was all on me. I didn't vet him enough to see if he could handle the responsibility. I guess in my mind, producers just naturally do that because they have to go out and produce. So it's kind of like, you're free to do that. And I was wrong. But it's all on me. The thing I protect more than anything in this building is that culture. You're not going to—I don't care if you're the best producer. If you're going to screw up my culture and you're a toxic person, you just can't be here.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I agree with that. I've had to have this talk already. I had to remind a producer that my client service people are way more important to me than my producers. You don't mess with my client success people. They're the ones that pay the bills, not you. You bring in new business—that's a skill, don't get me wrong—but the people our clients love, the ones they stay for, the ones that help them through their problems, are not you. It's our client success people. So don't mess with them. What stresses me out is if I have to hire a CSR, a good account manager. Hiring producers doesn't stress me out at all. I can teach anyone who's willing to put in the work how to sell insurance. I don't care if you're outgoing enough and you like people enough, I can teach you how to sell insurance. You could just ask, "Can I quote your insurance?" enough times, and eventually someone's going to give you a chance. For the high-level commercial stuff, you get there once you know sales is your thing. Then you can start honing your craft from the experts. But in the beginning, if you want to sell insurance and make some money, great. Just do these activities, talk like this, let me listen to how you talk and dial it in a little bit, and you'll sell enough insurance to at least know if it's for you or not.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: Do you let anyone else from your team talk to someone before you hire them, or is it just you?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh, no way. Before it's always—I do the first interview, then one or two from my team does the second, and then I listen to what they say and we go from there.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: I do the reverse. My operations manager, her name is Sarah, she's been with me for almost a year now. She talks to everybody first. You've got to make it through her. She is a strong defender of our culture. So I know if the person gets past her culturally, they will be a good fit. Then I come in after. I talk to them second because there are people she'll talk to that guard your time pretty well.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That's what it is. I want to talk to the people that I know are serious. If they get through her, then I know they're serious and that she's serious about them. She won't pass anybody to me if she has question marks. The way I've had success is I do the interviewing first, although I think I might try what you're doing on my next round. I like this. I haven't heard of it this way before. Then what I would do is have one or two of them go to lunch with the candidate, get them out of the office and in a setting that's more relaxed and free, really talk to them and hang out instead of being on guard in an interview setting.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: I like it this way because one, I don't want to talk to all these people. Two, I have a propensity to sell rogue to everyone. It's my baby, so I want everyone to know how amazing it is, and I can't help it. I immediately start selling how awesome we are. Then you'd point out its flaws and get all pissed off. But then you can go and talk about it. Sarah goes first, she weeds out all the people who aren't serious or aren't a good fit or have wacky... Oh my god, I'm sure everyone has crazy stories. I had this guy interview for a producer spot once, and he called me while he was in the drive-thru line at McDonald's for his first phone interview. He goes, "Hey, hold on, man." I pick up the phone, he picks up, and he goes, "Hey, uh, I'm sixth in line." Okay. I didn't really know what that meant. It just didn't register. I said, "Okay." So we started talking. Two or three minutes in—McDonald's must've been working this day—he doesn't even mute the phone. He doesn't even tell me to stop talking. I just hear him go, "Hey, uh, I'll have a number one with fries, uh, big size, uh, Diet Coke." I said, "Oh, what are you at? Wendy's?" Because I'm thinking "biggie size" and that's what they call it. He goes, "No, no, no, McDonald's." I said, "Oh, great." Then he goes, "Hey, can I have a six-piece nugget with that too?" He didn't make it to the time he went to pay. I just said, "Well, hey man, it sounds like you're busy. I'm going to go." He goes, "No, no, I'm good." I go, "No, I think you're busy. All right. Have a good day. Bye-bye." You blew it, bro.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Here's what I think. One thing—I don't eat fast food, so I'm a little biased against that. I don't particularly care for it. I have my own viewpoints on fast food. That's a judgment, and I'm not going to follow up with you offline on that because I feel like we may share those. I think it's poison. It's toxic. If you're eating McDonald's, you're essentially saying, "I'm willing to put sludge in my body and expect to perform at a high level." It's just not happening. But everyone knows I'm judgy. That's beside the point. That's my personal view. I'm not going to put that on him. I can't yell at liberals for this if I'm then going to do it to other people.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: You're so woke, Ryan.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So whatever. It's not a judgment. Here's how you handle that situation: "Hey Ryan, I'm really sorry, man, but I only get 45 minutes for lunch and I didn't want to do this at the office, so I'm actually in line to get lunch. When I get to pay, I'm just going to put you on mute real quick. Is that cool?" I would have said, "No problem." Then when it was his turn to order, he could have said, "Hey man, can I just put you on hold for two seconds?" And I'd say, "No problem." Or he could have said, "Hey Ryan, I'm just grabbing my lunch. Can I call you back in 10 minutes?" And I'd say, "No problem." The fact that he thought it was completely okay to go through this line ordering, talking over the top of me while I was in the middle of a sentence, and he just goes, "Hey, I'll have my Big Mac..." He basically told you that you aren't important to him, or the job, or whatever. Your time doesn't matter.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: In my post-mortem of what happened—because all my instincts were like, yeah, this guy's not going to fit—I started thinking about all these things. I dissect what happened. If he was willing to do that with my time, and I would be the one literally signing his checks, then what the hell would he do with our clients' time? Absolutely. I'm glad you ended that early. As hard as it is to find people these days, you still don't take somebody just because you're in a hurry. The drive-thru thing is a fairly egregious, obvious one. It's just a good story now. But guarding that culture and making sure you have the right person is so critical to the success of anything. I'm not good at customer service because I don't like doing it. I can get people hyped and super stoked that they want to be in my agency and on our team. They give a five-star review and say, "I had an excellent experience working with you." But when it comes time to do anything else mid-cycle—change a car, do this—it's a nightmare. I personally hate doing that work. I can pick up the phone and call strangers all day to get them to let me quote their insurance or talk about their risk program. I love doing that where other people cringe at it. So I look for super skilled customer service people because I know I have to fill that gap from myself. That way, when I get people stoked to come and be insured by me and my team, I know I have the best behind me doing the work I don't like to do. I don't mean it's not important—it's critically important. Our CSRs are the most important people. I just know I'm not the person to do it for you, or I'm not the person you want doing it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think one of the things we're circling around a lot is self-awareness. From leading our own career all the way up to being the owner of a business, that self-awareness component is one of the biggest things. At different times in my own career, it has not been there. I think it's something you kind of mature into. Being able to sit back and say—I'll give you another example—accounting. I hate accounting. I hate it. You would rather me print your certificate or do your customer service than the accounting of my place. Commission reconciliation is now a thing. The idea of stopping, slowing down, and reconciling commissions—I would rather just overpay producers and not get paid. I would rather just do that. Not even do chargebacks. I just pay them what feels like the right amount and hope they don't get mad at me.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: "How much do I owe you this month?" It's more like a drug dealer setup than it is... Now I have to fix that, and I'm going to outsource it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What I've learned about myself is I am a lean-forward guy. If anything makes me feel like I need to lean back, slow down, or apply the brakes—like accounting, commission reconciliation, document management, trying to figure out certs—I'm just like, this is critically important to the success of the agency, and I'm not discounting that. But the idea of me doing it, I would much rather just run headfirst into a brick wall.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: I couldn't agree more. That's why hiring people around your weaknesses makes you better. I want them to give me their plan and the type of business they write. My commercial person had a hard time with this. She said, "Well, I'm good at contractors." I said, "I know you are. But what kind of contractors do we want to go after?" "Well, I can do anything." "I know you can. But what kind do we want to target that is our specialty?" "Well, I don't want to get pigeonholed as a one-trick pony." "No one says that you are. But listen, who are your favorite clients that can give you 50 to 100 grand in premium a month?" "Oh, well, there are general contractors who do this and this and this." "Yes, thank you. That's what I'm looking for. That's what we're going to target. Anything else that comes in, if you have time and it's easy and the risk works, yeah, take it. Because you aren't a one-trick pony. But if it gets in the way of doing your favorite thing, we're just not going to do it. We'll pass it on. It's okay. That's going to make you happier and make you more money." It finally started to click, but it's hard to get people to think that way.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's a scarcity versus abundance mindset, and ego. The "I don't want to be a one-trick pony" thing is more scarcity mindset. It's like, "Okay, I'm worried that if I only focus on general contractors, I won't hit my numbers. Because this electrician came in, and man, that 20 grand in premium—I know it's not exactly what Ricky wants, but geez, that would be good. Why would I toss that away?" It's a lack of belief in the process. If I just really do the general contractor thing, eventually I'll have so many general contractors coming in, I'll know them so well, I'll be able to dominate them and write them, and there'll be no problem. It takes a lot of support from leadership, some training, and a general cultural sense of "we're going to get there." To get someone to transition from "I just need to take everything I can get so I don't go broke" to "if I focus on this thing, endless opportunities are going to present themselves and everything will be fine"—that's a very tough thing. I'm not going to say I'm great at it either.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: It is hard. I remember when I first became independent, I wanted as many carriers as I could get. I would bend over backwards to find a home for anyone because I'm independent. No one should be able to slip out of my agency because I can have a home for everything. That was not the right way to do it. If I have to bend over backwards to find a place for somebody, they're going to be harder to handle later. They're not the kind of client I want to work with. It's a poor experience for them and for me. Once I finally started saying no—if you don't fit in on personal lines, if you don't fit in Travelers, Safeco, or Progressive, sorry, I don't have a home for you. All these side one-off little carriers, non-standard this, regional that—no, no, no. Here are the three that pay the best, that give me the biggest bonuses, that are the easiest to use, the best with claims, the easiest on the customer. We're just going to go deep on them and move right on. It's made my life so much better. Fewer carriers can be valuable. I'm not saying that for everybody—everybody runs different places. But for me, I'm kind of stubborn and I like what I like. I think you're a lot the same. I'm free as an independent agent to work with the customers I want, the carriers I want, and the type of risks I want. So why am I wasting my time with others just because I'm independent and have the ability to? That doesn't mean I should.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: My mentality is exactly the opposite. That's the brilliance of the independent agency. My stubbornness is the opportunity I want to take advantage of. Not because I think what you're doing is wrong, but because there's going to be a roofing contractor that you don't place because it's not one of the things you write. That's fine. I'll write them all day. My stubbornness is I'm going to find a way—technologically, process-driven, and market-driven—that allows me to write 90-plus percent of the opportunities that come through our pipeline. No customer left behind. I like what you're doing with that. It's hard as shit, don't get me wrong. All my carrier reps hate me because I have all this distributed premium. They look at my total numbers and how much they got, and they're like, "Well, how about I didn't get more?" And I'm like, "It's because I also have this guy and this guy and this guy, and you weren't the best on that one. They were." So they all hate me, but I also don't care because I think they're all liars.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: When I take on a new appointment, they're not looking after you anyway. That's a whole different topic.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I've said it before on the show. I try to treat all of my carrier partners with a tremendous amount of respect. Absolutely. But I think that just like I'm a liar, so are they. They're going to say, "Hey, can you give us a hundred thousand?" And I'm going to say yes. They're going to tell me they can write all this shit they can't write. I'm probably not sending them a hundred thousand because I've got 20 other carriers to feed. So I'm upfront with them: "Look, I'm going to lie to you about how much I'm going to send you. You're going to lie to me about your appetite and pricing. Somewhere in the middle over the next two years, we're going to figure out where the truth is." The reason I've liked this path, although it happened by accident, is the carriers that deserve the business get the business. Hartford is incredibly easy for a traditional carrier—their digital quote-to-bind process, the breadth of markets, the ease of their system, the ability to add coverages and package up PL and employee practices onto an account. They're winning the lion's share of my commercial lines business right now because they're the easiest to deal with. They have good pricing and write a broad spectrum of appetites. I like Chubb. They're just not as easy to deal with. It's so funny. I like Chubb, I like the idea of their marketplace. Their rep—I use Tarmika right now—makes this big point to me all the time: "Well, you know, we have 10,000 classes and Tarmika only has a few, so make sure you're including the marketplace." I'm like, "Okay." So every once in a while, I'll go try the marketplace on this one. Guess what they don't write?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Everything that I'm submitting. There's always some, and it's like, man, you tell me you got thousands of all of these, but I can't find something that really fits well in there.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: Dude. And I had this with Amtrust. So I got Amtrust because I had a nice size Amtrust BOR. You know, all the workers comp stuff that we do—we still, since day one, workers comp has been a focus. It still is today. We still write a ton of workers comp. And I was like, it makes sense to get a direct with Amtrust. So I wrote this BOR, I got the direct. They're telling me, "We do this, we do this." Awesome. And then the first nine accounts I sent them, they declined. And I'm like, guys, nine for nine declines. I'm not an idiot. I know these—well, this one doesn't have two years of experience, this one doesn't have this, and we can't get the premium to where we want to be here. And I'm just like, come on. I'm trying. You have to say yes once in a while.
--:-- And it's not just them. I don't want to put them on blast. I do like writing with Amtrust and I've had a good experience with them on other accounts, so it's not a knock on them. We are starting to grow more with them. But in a general sense, this is why I lie to every marketing rep and just tell them whatever. What's your number? You want a million in first year premium? Yup. Sure. We can do that. No problem. We'll do it by June. Because I also know that you're going to tell me you have 10,000 class codes and you write about 20. And that's the game. We can either be honest with each other—I'll tell you I can probably get you 50, and you tell me you really only want like 30 class codes—or we can both lie to each other. Either way, let's just do business and figure out what happens.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But look how much—we can tie this right back into the whole conversation of team and culture. I could lie to my team and tell them we're going to do all of this, or that it's going to be this kind of experience when you want to work here as far as new hire prospects. But at the end of the day, I got to do what I say I'm going to do. That's it. And that just goes so far. They buy in because I tell them what we do, and I also tell them what we can't do and why. If marketing reps would just tell us more of what they can't do—why do this dance for two years and figure each other out?
--:-- Ricky Hayter: I agree with that completely. That's really my point. I'm being a little facetious—I do tell them whatever they want to hear. At the same time, I make it clear that I can't actually do some of these numbers. I don't want to act like I'm being disingenuous. But I do tell them right up front, and I'm 100% honest about this: I know you're lying to me, or I know you don't know what the appetite actually is. I can tell you this experience I had with Amtrust, I had the same experience with Pie. And we write a lot with Pie. I like Pie. I think they're a good company and I'm a fan of what they're trying to do. They're taking on class codes that other carriers have completely cut out of the market and giving them standard options in states where normally these people would have to go to a state fund. I think that's a great thing. But they also underwrite in a more classic sense than you would think an insurtech would.
--:-- I literally had to call my rep and go, "You need to say yes to something. I don't care what it is. Pick one of these 15 declines and just say yes to one of them so I can go sell it. Or charge double. Give me a number. A decline is freaking crazy."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I was listening to—was it you and Ciara talking about how you got this carrier and you were the new rep so they kept turning it down just because you were the new guy? Or was that you?
--:-- Ricky Hayter: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. How that right there—you appointed me, that should be enough for you to trust the work that I am submitting to you for an underwriter to review. But they bust my balls because I'm new, make it harder, more hoops for me to jump through. Why did you appoint me in the first place? What a waste of time for all of us. It makes no sense.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It makes sense, dude. This has been—we could talk for another three hours. This is absolutely tremendous. I appreciate you. I appreciate this conversation. We legitimately had no game plan. It was just go and roll, and this has been awesome.
--:-- Dude, I just talked with James Jenkins on Friday, and I feel like we went typical rabbit hole all over the place. I can't—that's what I expected for you and I today, just because I know you and that's what we do. But this was on focus for an hour. Can you believe it? I must be doing something right. I'm feeling good today or something.
--:-- Ricky Hayter: Yeah, that Monday morning juice. I got a little lifting in this morning.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right, man. Hey, I appreciate you so much. Thank you. Love you, bro. Out later.
--:-- [Closing advertisement]
--:-- Narrator: Close twice as many deals by this time next week. Sound impossible? It's not with the One Call Close System. You'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals in one call. This is the exact method we used to close 1,200 clients in under three years during the pandemic. No fluff, no endless follow-ups, just results. Fast. Based in behavioral psychology and battle-tested, the One Call Close System eliminates excuses and gets the prospect saying yes more than you ever thought possible. If you're ready to stop losing opportunities and start winning, visit masteroftheclose.com. That's masteroftheclose.com. Do it today.
