RHS 131 - Billy Williams on How to Maximize Agency Growth in 2022

Host (Ryan Hanley): In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home... Hello everyone, and welcome back to the show. Today we have a tremendous, tremendous, tremendous episode. That's triple tremendous because today's show is with the great and powerful Billy.

[Host takes a breath]

Host (Ryan Hanley): Now, if you haven't listened to this show for an extended period of time, then you may not have heard previous interviews that I've done with Billy. So we do just a little bit of background on our relationship and how we met, which is more of just a funny story than anything else. But I want to go into this episode with you understanding the amount of respect and appreciation and just all the feels that I have for Billy and his work and his attitude towards business and his attitude towards life, his work ethic, his dedication, his consistency. He is a person to aspire to.

Every time I get done talking to Billy, I'm ready to go take on the world. And I felt no different after this conversation. These are the podcast episodes that I do this show for. I mean, they're all amazing and I love them all. And no knock on anyone who's ever been on this show. I just mean that this is another one of the episodes where this is why I do it. I do it for these conversations. I'm honored to share it with you. I hope you appreciate it. If you don't, you probably wouldn't listen to the show. But I would have these conversations whether you guys were listening or not. So thank you for listening. Thank you for being part of it. I appreciate you.

But this is the great and powerful Billy Williams. And there's nothing that can stop him. Guys, I'm not even going to do sponsors today. All I ask is that if you love this, share it with someone who needs it. That's it. The sponsor of this show is you taking this episode and sending it to someone who needs to hear what we talk about, who needs to hear Billy's thought process and his methodology. That's what I want from you today. I love you all. Let's get to Billy Williams.

[Transition]

Guest (Billy Williams): What's up, Mr. Hanley?

Host (Ryan Hanley): What's up? The legend. I was sitting in my meeting thinking you were logging into my meeting. I can never figure out how to get on your meetings.

Guest (Billy Williams): Really? It was a Zoom meeting. It wasn't in the calendar invite?

Host (Ryan Hanley): I don't do calendar invites. I just send you the confirmation when you sign up. And then you get the confirmation text, the confirmation emails, the confirmation. Just click the link. For some reason, it never works that easy for me. I'm probably just stubborn and weird.

Guest (Billy Williams): Well, because you guys are all used to Google calendar invites and all that kind of stuff. I don't do that. When you have the confirmation, it'll automatically send you the confirmation. And then it'll say, do you want to save it to your calendar? I don't manually go in and send calendar invites and all that stuff.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah, well, we're here now. That's the good.

Guest (Billy Williams): There we go. We're here now. So what's up, man? What's going on?

Host (Ryan Hanley): What I wanted to do... It's 2022, starting out the year right. So I want to make my rounds on all the podcasts and just kind of bring folks back to where they need to be. I won't say back, but get folks back on where they need to be. And I want to always discuss it from the standpoint of what's stopping you.

Guest (Billy Williams): Ryan, this is how I look at growing a business. I own many businesses, not just insurance, but many businesses. I mean, we own fitness centers. We own the Miss Latina Texas pageant. We own other stuff. You're either going to feed the good part of your business or feed the bad part of your business. It's kind of like a cancer. When you eat right, exercise right, do whatever, you're feeding the things that help fight off cancer. But when you eat crappy, you eat out every day, you eat fast food, you eat processed food, you're feeding the things that cause and speed up cancer. And our businesses are the same way.

Business owners, agents, you need to sit down and really think about what are you feeding in your business? If you've got a staff person who won't do any damn thing you ask, and you're compromising to make them happy, you're not putting processes in place because it'll piss them off. You won't do this because Susie will never buy into that. You're feeding into the cancer, but then you're sitting around complaining about the illness.

Host (Ryan Hanley): One thing that's really interesting about food in relation to this example that you just gave. I've always been into fitness. I will say that my weakness in the health game is not the working out. I'm very good at setting routine. I enjoy it. I enjoy the feeling and I've done tons of different types of workouts just to mix things up. But I got a pretty good feel for that. The diet has always been my issue. Because just like every other person who allows their self-indulgence to take over, I love donuts and beers and chips and big, huge hoagie sandwiches, just like everyone else.

So for 2022, I wanted to get through the holidays and I wanted to enjoy them. I know everyone's like, "Oh, start today. It doesn't matter." But I said, "No, I don't buy into that." I wanted to enjoy myself, have some pops, have some pizza, and just not think about it. But I signed up with a guy that I know who does training and coaching. We started two weeks ago at the beginning of 2022. I had this planned for a month. So this wasn't just like, "Oh, hey, I'm going to get fit." I told him, "Hey, as soon as January gets here, we're going to get after it for three months and see what we can do."

To your point about good stuff in, good stuff out, I'm tracking. The only way that I've ever found for myself to be able to hit my goals physically is to track everything I put in my body. I have an app, MyFitnessPal. It's fairly common. A lot of people know about it. Every piece of food goes in my body. I only drink black coffee and water when I'm getting fit. So black coffee and water. And then I track every piece of food that goes in my body, all the calories.

He sent me a workout plan and he sent me my calories that I have to hit. Every day I report to him whether I hit it or not. He gave me some stipulations: gallon of water, which I got right here, no processed foods, all that kind of stuff. What's interesting to your point, to get to the point of this story, is that I am eating on average 500 more calories a day right now than I was back when I was eating garbage. The difference is it's gluten-free oatmeal and eggs and chicken and vegetables and non-processed whole foods. I told my wife, I was like, "It feels like I'm eating all day long." And I can already feel the inflammation in my body coming down. I can feel I'm trimming up.

Guest (Billy Williams): Two weeks in, you really shouldn't be losing weight two weeks in too much. You're going to lose water weight right at first.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah. But I can just feel, even though my weight hasn't changed too much, I can feel my body just in two weeks starting to recalibrate away from all the heavy garbage foods sitting in my gut, in my hips, and redistributing into my muscles. It is absolutely wild how much more you can do, how much more you're capable of when you focus on putting good stuff in your body, in your business, in your mind, in your marriage, in your relationships. When you put good stuff in, you're capable of so much more than you realize when you're putting garbage in. When you're putting garbage in, you have a lower ceiling on what you're capable of.

Guest (Billy Williams): Okay. So what I'm looking for right now, I'm looking through my bodybuilding book. I'm sure we've talked about this before. I was a national level bodybuilder for a number of years.

Host (Ryan Hanley): I did not know that.

Guest (Billy Williams): This picture right here, I don't know how you can zoom in on it, but this is the Natural Nationals. I won the Natural Nationals two years in a row. This is me right here.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Oh, you were jacked.

Guest (Billy Williams): Oh, yeah. You'd love my gym that I'm in. I got beefcakes like that rolling around my gym all over the place.

Host (Ryan Hanley): You are a legit beefcake.

Guest (Billy Williams): Well, I won Natural Nationals two years in a row at a body weight of about 210, 220. The reason I'm bringing that up, though, is not to brag. That's just another season in my life. We all have different seasons. But the thing that made me really, really good as a bodybuilder was not what I gave up, it was what I reallocated. And I'm going to apply this to business.

Some people are really good at saying, "I won't eat donuts. I won't eat this. I won't eat that. I'll just drink water and eat bell pepper all day." Some people are really good at that. I'm not good at that. But what I'm good at is cutting out certain things and replacing them with other things. You can't tell me I can never have a donut, right? Because I love Krispy Kreme donuts. But what you can tell me is that I can only have a donut once a week. And instead of having a donut four times, I got to replace three of those days with this, but you can still have your donut once a week.

You can't tell me that I can't have Whataburger because I love Whataburger. But what you can tell me is that I can only have Whataburger on Saturdays. You can't tell me I can't eat at Waffle House because that is the finest scarf and establishment you can ever find. But what you can tell me is that I can only eat at Waffle House on Sundays.

So when I do my bodybuilding, because I still own a fitness center, I still own some other stuff, I still work out. When I'm doing my exercise, I look at it from the standpoint of not what I have to give up, but what am I reallocating? If we look at insurance and businesses and all the things, a lot of times it's: do you really want to give it up, or do you want to reallocate it?

Let's take staff, because that's always the number one issue in most businesses. They hire crappy staff who only want to do what they want to do when they want to do it the way they want to do it. So now I've got this whole new mantra about hiring staff where I go: we're going to hire in this order. Always. Number one, automation and technology. I'm going to automate first before I ever think about a person, before I ever think about anything else. I'm going to see what I can automate.

Second thing is I'm going to outsource. I'm going to outsource before I in-house hire. The reason why I outsource is because by outsourcing, those people are going to do whatever the hell I ask them to do. End of story. And more importantly, I probably don't have a process. They're going to put together a process for me. They're going to teach me how to do things. They're going to streamline that whole process that I now can hand off to my in-house person.

Host (Ryan Hanley): I'm going to give the listening audience a great example of this because obviously I'm a disciple of yours. I just did this with my accounting and commission reconciliation. Reconciling commissions... I would rather that in your full beefcake mode, Billy, you punched me square in the face as hard as you could than reconcile commissions. I remember you saying, "Dude, we got to figure something else. This sucks." Everything about the tediousness of it just makes my brain melt and I don't do it.

So I, on the recommendation of Chris Paradiso, just outsourced my accounting and commission reconciliation processes to a company called PFS Accounting. It doesn't matter if you're interested. I'm happy to introduce anyone who's whatever. But to your point, and this is just to piggyback your point, they came in and said, "Here's how we do it." They gave me a list of 10 things I had to do. I had to go through and do this and add them to this system and make sure this was happening, bang, bang, bang, bang. And now I don't have to worry about accounting and commission reconciliation. At the end of the month, I get my financial statements and I get my commission statements that I then send to my producers and say, "Hey, here's the numbers. I send you a check for this much. We're all happy." Everybody's happy. And I don't have to stop my brain to think about that thing that I wouldn't have otherwise done.

That's the kind of thing that before I spent time with you and the people who think like you do, I would have continued to just let that fester and not done it versus paying the $500 a month. What's that? One decent policy pays for that service. I mean, come on. It's crazy.

Guest (Billy Williams): Exactly. People's egos get in the way. The number one thing that stops any business from growing is emotion, right? Lack of emotional discipline. It's the number one reason. It's why Judy won't cross sell. It's why Bob won't make an outbound phone call. It's why Dave won't mention to a customer that he's got a policy weakness because of that lack of emotional discipline.

Discipline falls into three phases. You have irritation, frustration, and anger. You've heard me talk about this before. Irritation is something that bothers us. For you, reconciliation of your commission statements irritated the hell out of you.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Yes, it does.

Guest (Billy Williams): Irritation over time or intensity becomes frustration. Frustration has two legs: helplessness and hopelessness. When we get frustrated, we feel helpless to do anything about it. And we just give up hope that it will ever change. And then we're mad. Once we get mad or angry, now we have two more legs. Now we have a lack of discipline. Or we do something other than what we're supposed to do. So we'll go mow the damn lawn as opposed to doing the statements. We will do anything in our power to find a way to reallocate our time away from that. And what are we doing this whole time? We're letting the problem get worse and worse and worse.

I think of it like credit. One of the things my dad told me when I was young was, first of all, the only people who really concentrate on credit are people who don't make enough money. That was his first thing. Make enough money, you don't live on credit. But the second thing was, when you do have to have credit and you owe somebody, if you only got $10, pay them the $10. Because then at least you're working toward the outcome versus waiting until you have it all before you pay the bill. That's how people end up with bad credit. "Oh, I don't have enough to pay at all, so I won't pay any of it." Well, me as a creditor, you owe me $100. Give me $20. Give me $10. Give me something. Don't wait until you have all $100 before you pay me.

That's what we do in our business. We wait until everything is perfect before we try to move forward. So I remember you and I having that day of conversation about commission statements. You were saying, "Well, Billy, what do you do for your commission statements? You got all these different agencies. What do you do?" And I said, "Dude, I got 12 people that that's all they do are commission statements." We don't go to our agency management system and pull reports and do all that through our AMS. We go directly to the carrier and get all of our commission statements directly from the carrier because the AMS systems may not have it all. They may not download. Some carriers don't upload. Some carriers don't talk to Evernet. So I'm not playing that game when it comes to my money. We're going directly to the source.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Right. And that's what this PFS Accounting does. That was one of the big ahas for me. They said the same thing. The truth is our agency management systems are like a good guess at how much business you have. At any time, no matter what system you have... I know every time we talk, you give me shit about how much brain cycles I spend on this kind of thing.

Guest (Billy Williams): It's all good, man. Go ahead.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Which I agree. This is your podcast, big dog. I'm a guest on your podcast. Instead of eating a donut, I think about which agency management system I'd like to move to.

Guest (Billy Williams): No, but the guy from PFS said, "If you rely on your agency management system, you want it to be accurate if you can. But just understand, no matter what system you have, no matter how fangled it is and what the new upgrade is, it is maybe a good guess at best." He said, "The statements are your bank statement and the statement you get from the carrier. That's the whole story. What did they actually send you? And what did they say they were supposed to send you? That's the whole deal."

It's the same thing, Ryan, when I'm acquiring, when I'm purchasing into an agency and I ask for certain things and they come back with P&L statements and accounting. I'm like, "Dude, they ain't telling me shit. You need to give me commission statements. They come directly from the carrier. That's how I know what I'm dealing with. Don't come to me with some prepared statement by your accountant. That means nothing to me."

Host (Ryan Hanley): It's a really interesting part of this. I know we just took a little detour.

Guest (Billy Williams): That's what we do, Ryan. It's okay. That's why your people love you because they never know where you're going to end up, man.

Host (Ryan Hanley): I've been thinking a lot about efficiency in our business. These are conversations that we've had. I try as best I can to track where are we losing time, where are we losing efficiency, where are we losing accuracy in our information, where are those holes in our current funnel. The goal always being you're going to plug as many as you can and new ones are going to form. I feel like in large part, that's the job of leadership. That's what we're meant to do. Your people are executing the processes that you put in place. And your job is to help make those processes more efficient, more effective.

Guest (Billy Williams): Hiring, training, and accountability. We only have three things that we're really responsible for as leaders: hiring, training, and accountability.

Host (Ryan Hanley): I would toss in there for the right people, enterprise level BD. The big deals, the bigger connections, some of those types of opportunities. I think a leader could have some allocation to that as well. But otherwise, I completely agree with you.

Guest (Billy Williams): Yeah, but then you're not elite. Now you're not leading, you're producing. That's the difference.

Host (Ryan Hanley): I don't mean... Let me give you an example. Where I would categorize this, and this might be a loose bucket, is finding a niche program that fits what you're going after in the negotiation around higher commission splits or better language in the policy or technology automation that allows your people to be more efficient. Finding that deal, figuring out that deal, I think tends to fall under... In order to put that deal together, you oftentimes need someone at the very top to make that deal happen. I'm not talking about getting your hands dirty.

Guest (Billy Williams): I don't consider that leadership. See, to me, leadership is what am I doing to actively lead my team? That is more operations and more business management, business acumen, really the vision of the business. So while those are an absolute part of that, just like with Inspire Nation, just like with Williams Family Investment Group, I sit down and I bring in the sponsors and I bring in the big deals and I network and I go out and I speak and I do all that. But to me, that doesn't fall under leadership. That falls under me being the director, the operator, the head of the business.

Host (Ryan Hanley): And you're saying you can have both hats. You're saying you can wear both hats. You have multiple hats.

Guest (Billy Williams): When I'm talking leadership, I'm talking about what am I specifically doing to guide my team?

Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah. And that's hiring, training, and accountability.

Guest (Billy Williams): Yeah. Now we're on the same page.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Okay. So getting back to what I was saying. I've been thinking through where are we losing the most time. One of those places that we're losing time is inefficient carriers. Carriers who refuse... I'm going to say refuse simply because they're just not doing the things that they need to do to make our lives efficient. We're selling your product and you make our lives hard.

So I have a lot of carriers. I have 38 markets. Some of that is wholesalers, MGAs, E&S, but we have 38 markets today that we can go to.

Guest (Billy Williams): I remember when you had two.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Yep. So I've got a lot. The reason that I have 38 is because I don't trust carriers as far as I can throw them. They're all liars. They all tell you, "I'll write this, I'll write that. Our pricing is great here." And then you go to submit business and it's, "Well, Billy, the moon is in the sign of Aquarius today, and that's going to run our loss ratio up, so we're not going to write that account for you."

Guest (Billy Williams): But Ryan, you do know that's our business, right? I mean, that's our business model. If you look at our marketing, a business's marketing tells you everything about that business you really need to know as a consumer. So what do we do? We promise people we're going to save them $750. We're going to do this. We're going to get you the lowest price. And then what happens? You call into the agent because all that is designed to just make you call. And then once we run the real numbers, then all of a sudden, no, it didn't really work out that way. "But you told me you could save me $750." "Oh, it's just an ad."

That's how carriers are. They do the exact same thing. They're going to promise you the moon. And then when you call in with that deal or that particular risk, that's when it's up to the person to tell you, "Oh, no, we really can't do that."

Host (Ryan Hanley): What's interesting to me, because of the breadth of carriers that we've had the opportunity to interact with and the fact that we write in all 50 states now and we have accounts in almost every single state... We're licensed in all 50. We have accounts in 43 states and growing. They come in from all over the country. We've had a kind of unique situation. I know there's other agencies that do this, but we are fairly unique in that situation. What I've realized is there are carriers who do come very close to living up to their promises and there are carriers who do not.

We're starting to cycle into a phase of our business in 2022. This will be a year where I'm probably going to drop appointments. Or I certainly will not fight any appointments if someone comes and gives me shit because I didn't hit this number or that number and submit X number of accounts. I know this is common. You don't need a million carriers to do well in this business. I completely believe that and understand that.

Guest (Billy Williams): But you need your niches.

Host (Ryan Hanley): You need your niches. And until you've tried them all, it's kind of like dating. You see this a lot from people who married their high school sweetheart and it wasn't the perfect match. They always thought it was going to be right because they never tried some different flavors of ice cream to see which flavor was their favorite. They've only ever had one flavor.

Guest (Billy Williams): That might be a crude example, but no, kind of like a captive carrier. That's how I look at it. When you're with a captive carrier, you got one flavor. You got vanilla. You better like vanilla.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah, they can throw some sprinkles on it, throw a little bit of M&Ms, crunch up some this, but at the end of the day, it's vanilla ice cream.

Guest (Billy Williams): Right.

Host (Ryan Hanley): So now what I think is interesting is that we can actually come back and be like, "Well, I actually know what you will and won't write. I know not just what you'll tell me. I know for sure what you are. And what I do know is this other company that you compete against head to head, they will write it and they're easy to work with and they download and their commission statements are accurate and their communication is good."

I know that every agency doesn't have the opportunity to get all the appointments that we got. But I do think that it is healthy. And it would be very interesting to me if this started to become a trend where agents actually started to stop thinking that they were given a gift by getting an appointment. I do not think that an appointment is a gift, nor do I treat it like that. I don't beg for appointments from carriers. I sell your product. Now granted, today any production we do is anything but a drop in the bucket for a lot of these guys. Yes. But I'm still selling your product. So you're getting the gift. I'm willing to put your thing in front of my people, not the other way around.

I wish that more agents looked at their carrier appointments from a position of power, not from this position of weakness where, "Oh my God, I hope that my Travelers rep will finally give me an appointment." If your Travelers rep won't give you an appointment, screw him or her. Go find someone else who wants it, cares, and appreciates it. I'm not knocking on Travelers. Travelers is fine. I got no problem with them. Whoever it is, to me, it's the same mentality that you started talking about. It's this scarcity. "God, if we only had this carrier, everything would be fine." And that is almost never the case, in my opinion.

Guest (Billy Williams): Well, Ryan, you know why? The reason why you're able to do that is because you're not a slave to your staff, first and foremost. And you've got the processes in place that allow you to be able to try those different things.

I look at it from money. For me, money is nothing more than a scorecard. I'm not the kind that because I have a lot of money, I'm going to go get the $50 million house and the this and the that. First of all, I don't want to clean it or take care of it or maintain it, so I'm not going to go get it. It doesn't mean I can't afford it. It just means I have no interest in it. But what money allows me to do, money gives me flexibility. Money gives me time. I play golf all the damn time. Money gives me the ability to take my family out on vacation, go to the nicest restaurants, stay at the nicest hotels, be able to come visit with you guys if I want to come visit for a week or something. It gives me flexibility.

But the way I was able to make money was because I put the processes in place to make money. So let's take this back to an agent. The reason why they feel like they are not in a position of power is because they have no control in their own home. What I mean by their own home is in their own agency. Because they don't control the operations of their agency, they don't control Judy, they don't control Bob, they don't control the process, they don't control any of the activities that happen. How do they have power? They don't have power. So because they don't have power, they become a slave to the people who possess the power. You see what I'm saying?

Guest (Billy Williams): You can't rise up when you have no tools to rise up with.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah.

Guest (Billy Williams): You can't overthrow the man when you have no ability to even uprise or do any kind of lifting. It's the same thing. It always falls back to the exact same problem, Ryan, that you've heard me talk about for years: lack of effective processes and spot checking.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Yep.

Guest (Billy Williams): Okay. If you don't have processes and you're not spot checking, then you have no control. You have no power. You have no whatever. And I don't want to be ambiguous about when I say processes. The reason why you're able to go out and get different carriers is because you're able to show those carriers projections and workflows. And here's where we get our leads. It all starts with leads. Because if you don't have leads, you don't have anything anyway.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Right.

Guest (Billy Williams): So you are able to go in and say, we have this many leads that we're getting every single month from these sources. So I'm going to find, Mr. or Mrs. Carrier, what you're looking for. And then I have the processes, the team, the virtual assistants, the in-house people to work that process all the way through. I have all of that. So, Mr. or Mrs. Carrier, I don't need you to babysit me. I just need you to give me access. And if you don't want to give me access, I'll go find someone who will give me access, because I'm not a slave to you, because I'm not a slave to my processes.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah. The—no, I—this has been—so I'd say the second half of 2021, this was one of the biggest changes for me, almost I think in my professional career. This has been one of the biggest changes. What I really worked on in the second half of 2021 was getting excited and feeling a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment in the deployment of a new process. Before my career, I hated process because I do, for better or worse, believe in serendipity and the muse and this sense that when you're driving towards a target and you're open to new ideas and you live a yes-driven life, then opportunities come to you that you don't see coming. I believe in that. However, as much as I believe that's true, that's not how you run a business.

Guest (Billy Williams): Well, it is. It's just within a realm.

Host (Ryan Hanley): And what's interesting—and what's interesting to your point—when you match that concept with what you talk about with process and everything you just said, when you mash those two things together, all of a sudden, funny enough, more opportunities start to come to you. So in the second half of 2021, I made it my mission to train myself to find satisfaction and fulfillment in the deployment of new processes into our business. And that is how we started to figure all this out where now I can say—and what I got to do is get it out of here, that's a different story—but what I can say today is if you send me an account, I've got a pretty good feel for who's going to tell you they'll write it but will waste your time, and who's actually going to write it. And that is making our business snappy and punchy. When a carrier rep calls me, I just call them and go, "Look, I got nine declines from you on stuff that you told me you'd write. That's why you're not getting business. You want to know why you didn't get business in December? It's not because I didn't want to put business with you. It's because in November you declined nine pieces of business that you told me you had an appetite for. Here's the declines. Here's the business. Put a couple of those on the books and I'll start sending you more business." When you push back on carriers like that, they want to write the business. They're just not used to it. They're used to when they show up, you go, "Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'll write more business with you. It's my fault. You're amazing. Please don't cut me from your appointment." And I'm like, if you want to cut me, that's fine. There are a hundred other carriers I write business with. I don't care. I literally don't care. Now, there are carriers I really like because I think they do a good job for our clients. I'm not saying I don't have favorites—I do. And there are certainly appointments I would not want to lose. But I refuse to be a slave to carriers any longer. And to your point, the only way to break out of that is to have processes that give you real, actionable feedback that you can then either build new processes on or make decisions on as a business. From August to today and into the future, that was one of the biggest things I worked on. Game changer for my business. Absolute positive game changer.

[Host interjects with a brief ad break for the show, asking listeners to subscribe, share, and leave reviews.]

Host (Ryan Hanley): You know, we throw the word "processes, processes, processes" around, and a lot of agents are like, "Well, what do you mean? What's a process?" I want to make this real simple. A process is nothing more than the steps it takes to get something done. That's all a process is—the steps it takes to get something done. So if I get a lead in today, what are the steps it's going to take for me to follow up with that lead? While we're talking about leads, one of the biggest issues with leads is that people don't follow up enough. They don't follow up enough times. So I'm going to make this real simple for agents. If you trust Las Vegas—which I do, I don't care what anybody says—if they put odds on something, I'm going to go with whatever their odds say because there's a lot of smart people, technology, tools, everything working together. So if we were in Vegas and you got a lead and you call that lead three times in a week, and I got that same lead and I call that lead 10 times in a week, emailed them five times in a week, sent them four text messages in a week, which odds—who do you think Vegas would put their money on to get the deal?

Guest (Billy Williams): It's not going to be the three times.

Host (Ryan Hanley): So Vegas would put their money on me because there's more activity going on because I have a better process. I have better steps to get to the final outcome that I want. It's the same thing here. Agents don't follow up enough on their leads. First and foremost, agents don't get enough leads. Agents do this: get a lead and hope. "I sure hope that lead closes. I sure hope that lead works out." And they'll babysit that lead like it's a brick of gold. Meanwhile, all these other leads you could be getting, you're not doing it because you're babysitting this one lead.

Guest (Billy Williams): Yep.

Host (Ryan Hanley): I think you've said this before. I know I've heard it from a few other people, and maybe it's a Sandler thing—I'm not sure where the original comes from—but the idea that successful people say the same stuff.

Guest (Billy Williams): Seriously. The more you're around wealthy, successful people, they all say the same stuff. They just use different words for it.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Disconnect from the outcome. Don't focus on the outcome, focus on the process. So in our agency, I've got three producers now, plus myself, plus one of my account managers—all my account managers can and are able to sell. There's not a single—there's one human in my agency who runs basically all our operational stuff, and I wouldn't be doing this nonsense, but she's on maternity leave. God bless her, she had a healthy child. First rogue baby, which is awesome. Very happy for her. So we have seven people. One person who can't sell—every other person can sell. Every single one of them uses the same process. Every single week, I say the same thing to them: "If they're a clown, punt them, because we've got 20 more leads coming in right behind that person." So you qualify—and I'm not talking about purposefully disqualifying, which I know a lot of agents do. A lead comes in and they try to find every little tiny reason why that isn't a good lead for them.

Guest (Billy Williams): They almost act like a carrier.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Yes. They almost act like a carrier. I'm talking about legitimate reasons. "Hey, I have a business idea and I'm trying—" No, I'm sorry. When you have the business, a month or two out, you're ready to go, give us a call. But six months out—"I'm thinking about getting a Lamborghini. How much would it cost?" "Hey, I'm thinking about buying the Dallas Cowboys. What's the insurance?" Come on, man. This concept—and it's the scarcity, going back to the scarcity mindset—they babysit that lead because they haven't done the work to get a consistent flow. So it's like, "Oh my God, what if I don't get another lead for a week? I've got to make this happen." In my mind, I'm going to communicate with you in an effective manner. I'm going to find out what your problem is and solve it. And I'm going to give you the price that it takes to solve that problem. If you accept it, amazing. If you don't, take a hike. There's 10 more of you right behind. Obviously, I don't mean that to be cavalier. We're doing our best to solve every problem. And we have a whole process. Literally, I can close my eyes and verbatim go through the steps that every single one of our people takes for every account. It is a very difficult concept to break people of—punting an account. "Ryan, what if I don't care?" I've done the work. We have—we did 377 leads in November. We are cresting on a consistent basis and will be over 300 leads a month. You do not need to worry about a clown. If that person is clowning on us—and that's just a term we use for a whole series of things that mean they're not going to do business with us—let them go. Work with people who want to work with us, because you don't have to have that scarcity mindset. Once you break someone of that scarcity mindset, their shoulders roll back. They get a smile on their face. They start asking more questions. It's amazing. But so many of us every day are operating from the space of "This lead is the last lead I'm ever going to get." And then we don't even call.

Guest (Billy Williams): Let's take it into the real world. If I've never learned how to grow food and I'm dependent on someone giving me food, and all of a sudden I feel like this person's not going to give me food, then it's different. I'm like, "Oh my God, I've got to make sure this food lasts." I'll use an example: I have friends who literally save every penny they make. Now, they don't make any money, but they're not broke because they save every penny they make. I save, but I make a hell of a lot of money. So the difference is, while they're saving for a vacation, I can go on vacation like this tomorrow. That's what I wanted to do, because I don't have that scarcity mentality of holding on to every penny and forgetting that I need to create more money.

Host (Ryan Hanley): For me, and again, this is my mentality—you've known me for a while—I'm all about money. If I'm not making revenue, if a process doesn't make money, why?

Guest (Billy Williams): Yeah.

Host (Ryan Hanley): You froze for a second.

Guest (Billy Williams): You're back. I lost you at "if a process doesn't make money."

Host (Ryan Hanley): If a process doesn't make money, why is it in the agency? If a tool doesn't make money, why is it in the agency? If a person doesn't make money, why is it in the agency? And making money doesn't mean new money. Sometimes it means holding onto the money that I have. So my retention specialists are moneymakers for the agency because they help us grow our wealth. Our VAs are moneymakers for the agency. Our account managers, our CSRs—everybody makes money.

Guest (Billy Williams): But see, that's different. The reason why these people are holding on to these leads is because they haven't figured out how to get leads. That's where the difference is, Ryan. You figured out referral partners. You figured out buying certain things. You figured out how to communicate, how to go to carriers, how to go to companies, how to have a lead flow. So the real issue in most agencies when they're not growing—and I'm going to tie this all together—the reason why they have terrible staff, the reason why they have terrible technology, the reason why they have terrible processes, the reason why they have terrible cash flow, is because they have terrible leads. They're not getting wealthy. They're not making money because they don't know how to make money. So it always starts with the lead flow. The reason why you can be cocky and arrogant and confident and punt them when they need to be punted and move them when they need to be moved is because you know you've got 300 leads. You're not dependent on them. But imagine if you only had five leads.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Yep.

Guest (Billy Williams): Now you have that scarcity mentality. One of the things—you know who Cody Askins is from the life insurance side? Cody's one of my guys. We're doing some joint things together. He's coming to the Fix My Insurance Agency event I'm doing in St. Louis on February 18th. One of the things that Cody has really opened my eyes to is just how much premium life insurance agents generate. I'm talking 12, 15, $20 million in premium a month. A month.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah.

Guest (Billy Williams): You can't even get a P&C agent to write $20,000 in premium a month. These guys are talking $20 million a month for one of the most commoditized products that exists in the market. But you know what they do? Constant lead flow. Constant. They may spend $50,000 a month on internet leads, age leads, telemarketing leads, warm transfer leads, Medicare supplement leads. And they're going to spend 10 hours, 15 hours a week either calling them or hiring somebody to call them. Their whole goal is to get 30 appointments a week. That's our goal: get 30 appointments a week. It's a totally different mentality. They're coming from a wealth creation mentality instead of a "hold on to whatever I can" mentality.

Host (Ryan Hanley): There is a false sense of nobility in the prospecting that P&C agents do that holds them back from what you just described. There's this—"I didn't hunt it" or "I only work off of"—I mean, it literally boils my blood when people say "I only work off referrals." What does that make you? That means you're doing less than you could be doing. 90% of my business is referrals, but you only write five policies a month. And you know why? Because it's easy. That's why they work off referrals. Not because they're badasses. You work off referrals because when someone refers you a piece of business, it's a layup. That's why you do it. It's not because you're some super badass agent. You work off referrals only or primarily because you're a coward. You're scared to go out and pound doors and do videos and buy leads and spend money and put your agency at a tiny little bit of risk. Call CommercialInsurance.net and get some warm call transfers. Hire somebody to generate some Google leads. Go try stuff. But all this changes if you don't actually want to grow, which is a dirty little secret in our business. Everyone talks about growth—they give it lip service—but they don't really want to grow. They're actually completely happy where they are. They just like to talk about growth so they can sit in the fun rooms and have the fun conversations and pound chests and drink beers. But they don't actually want to grow. They just want to be around the people who are doing the exciting stuff so they can feel that energy, even though they're actually super comfortable right where they are. That to me is the difference that I see in a lot of people that I couldn't recognize earlier in my career, but now I can tell in a snap: Are you really trying to grow, or are you just talking about it?

Guest (Billy Williams): You know what I call them, Ryan? You and I have talked about this. I call them those damn conference heroes.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah.

Guest (Billy Williams): I'm not trying to be arrogant, but people hit me up on Facebook, and then six months later I'll look at the Facebook and see it, and I'll hit them back and go, "Dude, I said this six months ago." Because I'm not living on Facebook. I'm not making money. I'm out making money. I was talking to somebody the other day, and you came up, Jason Cass, Bradley Flowers, somebody else came up. And I was like, "I want you to watch this." Two years ago, three years ago, when Bradley first started his agency, Bradley was all over social media. He was killing it. Then he started making money. Then he started running his agency. Now he ain't doing all that stuff every single day. Same thing with you. Same thing with Jason. You guys were on social media twice a day, posting, doing all the stuff that all the gurus told you you were supposed to do. But now you're making money. Now I don't see Ryan Hanley on LinkedIn twice a day. I don't see you on Facebook twice a day. I don't see you on whatever, because now you're making money. So I was telling them, you've got to be really careful about these conference heroes and all these supposed gurus. Because if 90% of your time is spent talking to your peers, you're not making any money. If 90% of your time is not spent talking to your target audience, not spent talking to your customers, not spent talking to your prospects—if 90% of your time is in a Facebook group, a Facebook chat somewhere, going back and forth about how great you are and how you do this and how you manage that—that's all bullshit.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah. This is going to sound bad, but there's two sides to everybody. In general, I try to be a thoughtful, nice person who cares about people. But the honest truth is, I just want to step on throats all the time. That's what I'm fighting—the arrogant, "I want to murder you" mentality. That's what I actually think when I see people: "How do I eat their lunch, take what they have and make it mine, expand my kingdom?" It's very hard for me not to be that way. I have to try to be nice. So what's interesting to me is I love every time I see how much bigger some of these Facebook groups have gotten, because I like that more of my peers are wasting time in there. You know what I'm doing? I created three videos today and got them out on YouTube. You know what that's going to do? Pay me dividends for the next decade.

Guest (Billy Williams): There you go.

Host (Ryan Hanley): You know what I did? I put together a lead magnet that I'm going to pump out to my leads that didn't buy from us. I'm going to get them to come back in and start nurturing. Quoted not sold. That's what I did. You know what you did? You answered seven different questions on IAOA today during the middle of the day when you should have been making calls. That's what you did. Nothing against IAOA—I think it's great that there's this community and they do a wonderful job. But my point is, I look at that and I'm like, "Good. You go answer those questions." Someone was like, "Hey, I haven't seen you around. You've been quiet." I'm like, "Quiet? I've been working my ass off." I've been killing it. What are you talking about, quiet? I've got 300 videos on YouTube. Just because I'm not in these Facebook groups talking about the stuff I'm doing—if you want to know, watch what I do. I'm hiring people. I'm putting processes together. I'm building training materials. I'm finding new programs and niches. I'm building out automations for my agency. I'm trying to optimize my VA. I'm building enterprise relationships. That's what I'm doing all day. That's why I'm not answering the question, "What's the best agency management system?" My one outlet now has become this show. This hour that I'll spend with someone like you—this is where I get to have that conversation, but I get to do it on my terms with someone I want to talk to, who I know is going to challenge the way I think and that I'm going to learn from. This is incredibly productive. So I look at that and I'm like, "Keep answering those questions." Because I write in all 50 states. That means your customers aren't being served and you're not writing new leads. So trust me, I'm coming. I just think it's funny how you, me, and so many others literally lay the game plan out for people. Here it is. Even if they didn't just take your free stuff, which is more than enough, even if they bought the membership, became a full member, got access to all this stuff—even the free stuff—you have laid out everything you could possibly want to know. They just have to figure out the details. People just don't do it. They show up with their Starbucks coffee—it's got 700 calories in it—and they drink their Starbucks and they feel like shit and they get sleepy in the afternoon and they bang away on IAOA all day and they go, "Billy, how do I fix my agency? I can't figure it out."

Guest (Billy Williams): And what's so crazy is, even when we meet one-on-one and we do all that—I'll have my team set up their technology, set up their email templates, their text messaging, their appointment calendars, their business cards, their whatever—and then we'll come back two weeks later and go, "Did you send out the 20 LinkedIn messages you were supposed to send out?" "No, man, I got so busy." Okay, so tell me what you're busy doing, because I'm looking at your production. You ain't producing shit. You got five policies in a month. You ain't producing shit. You're not even doing a retention process. You're not calling your former customers. You're not doing your quoted not sold. You're not doing this. You're not doing that. So tell me what you're busy doing, because I'm not seeing it.

Host (Ryan Hanley): But you see, "I got 99 notifications on Facebook because I answered so many questions on IAOA."

Guest (Billy Williams): People confuse popularity with profitability.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Yes.

Guest (Billy Williams): This is one of the things I've watched you mature. When we first met, it was when you were doing Elevate. You had a thousand people at Elevate, and you were standing on stage, absolutely amazing, charismatic. You were out there. And you were like, "Billy Williams? Jason told you about me?" And you were like, "Billy Williams? Who the hell is Billy Williams? I've never heard of Billy Williams." But I owned 130 agencies at that time. You were like, "I've never heard of him. Who is he?" I told you, Ryan, being on stage does not appeal to me. What appeals to me is making money. Now I'll do Elevate, and that's fine. You can help spread my brand and spread my seed and all this kind of stuff. But I'm all about the money, and I don't need to be known to make money.

Host (Ryan Hanley): That was one of my biggest crow-eating moments. For those who didn't listen to the episode—I think that's probably on the old Agency Nation feed—Cass referred me, probably five or six years ago, 2018. This was before the 2018 conference, maybe three or four months before. Cass had referred me to Billy. Billy LinkedIn messaged me, and I was like, "Who is this guy?" No, you LinkedIn messaged me before Cass said anything to me. Then like a month later, I just kind of ignored it because I didn't know who you were. Cass messaged me and goes, "Dude, what are you doing? Billy said he reached out to you and you're not getting back to him." I'm like, "Billy? Billy who?" Then I went into my LinkedIn messages, saw it, and responded: "Oh, hey, man. Cass told me we should connect." Five minutes in—this is not a recorded conversation, just us connecting for the first time—I had blown him off for probably a month or two. Cass said, "You've got to—what are you doing? Don't be an idiot." So I called, and five minutes in I was like, "So I want you to come to Elevate, and you're going to be the keynote for day number two in the morning." Obviously, we've been friends ever since. It was a crow-eating moment. It opened my eyes to exactly the point you're trying to make, and it's been something I've been trying to detach from. Honestly, I get this a lot: people call me an insurance celebrity, an influencer. I hate that title. It is not the way I think about what I do. The truth is, I do this show for me. It's very selfish. I get an hour with you to pick your brain, to have you push back on stupid stuff I say, and then push back on you and have these intelligent, engaging, fun, dynamic conversations where I honestly have no idea where they're going to go. It's like an adventure for an hour. I do that for me. I share them because people seem to like them. If no one ever asked me to speak again, if I never did another podcast interview, I'd be fine. It was never about that. You do have to be careful because there are people who that is their motivation. It has never been for me. It's why I don't do fancy graphics. It's why I don't have a Substack that you can pay for or add-on schmuggies. I think it's great that people do that, and I think a lot of that stuff is tons of value. But for me, this is a wholly selfish endeavor in which I get to have a dynamic conversation with someone I respect.

Guest (Billy Williams): You know what trips me up, Ryan, about this?

Guest (Billy Williams): I can't tell you how many gurus right now—or members of my program—meet with me once a month or twice a month. We talk, we do all this stuff, and then they go out and suddenly they're selling something. They're like, "Oh, we're teaching agents how to do this." Well, damn, I just showed you how to do that. I had my assistant work with you for an hour to set this up, and now you're going to go out and package it and sell it like you did it. And that's fine. That's fine.

In fact, I was talking to an agent yesterday who's shutting down their shop. They said, "I want to do what you do." Seriously. I was like, "So let me get this straight. You're shutting down your agency, and your response to me is, 'Billy, I want to do what you do'?" I have to be careful about custody because I was like, "MF, I own a piece of 170-something agencies. I've got a $1.6 billion profile. And that's just insurance—that's not even counting all the other stuff I own. I'm a bestselling author. I've got all kinds of stuff. I rub elbows with the biggest of the biggest. You're a failed insurance agent, and you want to do what I do? Get the hell out of here."

The celebrity life, this guru life that people see—it's very unfortunate. It's a very unfortunate thing. When you produce insurance content to build an agency, you don't get a lot of response from that. No one puts you on a pedestal. And when you put out a piece saying, "Here are three ways to blah, blah, blah," people are like, "Oh, that's great." No one is even reading the article. That's the thing people don't understand—they're commenting because they feel like they should. They're not even reading the article. You get this false sense of what you're doing. I've seen so many people fall into this trap.

One of the best anti-examples of this—and I want to be respectful of your time—is Woody Brown. I don't know if you know Woody Brown.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah, I do. I know Woody.

Guest (Billy Williams): So Woody in 2018 came to Elevate. He's got a great story. Awesome dude. Amazing story. I just love Woody as a person. Tremendous guy. He was kind of on the path to being on some shows and doing some stuff, and then he literally shut it down. I said, "Why'd you do that?" I actually had him on the podcast a long time ago about it. He said, "Ryan, I'm a partner in an agency. I have a family. I love where I live in Georgia. Why do I want to be flying all over, away from my family, building this other thing when I have a thing that pays me tons of money? If I put more work into it, it'll pay me even more money. Why would I do that? It doesn't make any sense."

I've always had an enormous amount of respect for him for that. Not a lot of the accolades he was starting to get—because he's such a dynamic, cool, interesting guy—he could have gone and lived that life, and he chose not to. To be honest with you, I think about him still to this day. Hopefully if Woody listens to this, give him a huge shout-out. I think about him to this day sometimes when I feel myself being drawn a little bit to something that isn't productive. I'll just say, "You don't need that."

There are three people in my life that matter: my two kids and my wife. I love my parents. I love all my extended family. But the truth is, I will go to war for those three people and nobody else. That's how I live. That's what's most important to me. The sacrifices I've made are for those three people. Everything else is bullshit.

Host (Ryan Hanley): Yep. So at the end of the day—because I've got to go play some golf—here's what I want agents to take away. Number one, if your staff sucks, if your agency sucks, if you feel like your processes suck, if you feel like everything is just down, the main reason—if you go back to the source—is because of your leads. You either have crappy lead flow or you have not enough lead flow. Therefore, Judy knows she can hold you prisoner because the two leads you gave her, she can hold those over your head. So guys, it always starts with your leads. Then from your leads to your processes. Processes are nothing more than the steps you take to get stuff done. Then you talk about your staff—we'll have a whole separate one about that one.

Staff holding people prisoner—that's why we don't start with staff. Let me just reiterate this from the beginning. When we hire, we hire in this order always: automation and technology first. What can I automate? Because I can automate an email, a video, YouTube, Google, Facebook ads. I can automate those things. Next, what can I outsource? That's why I'm using virtual assistants, Fiverr, Upwork—all those—because they're just going to get stuff done. There's no emotion. There's no attitude. They're just going to get it done. "I need a video produced, and I need it done in three days." No problem. Here's the finished product. End of story.

Then after I outsource, I look at in-house. I'm going to take what that outsource team taught me and hand that off to an in-house person. I'm going to hire, train, and spot-check. Guys, running an agency is not that damn hard. We make it hard. We get caught up in the admin. That's what happens. We get caught up in the admin and we think that's insurance. Insurance is not admin. Insurance is issuing a damn policy.

Billy, you are the man. I appreciate you so much. Thank you. Very last thing: the next Fix My Insurance Agency—when is it? Where can people learn more?

Guest (Billy Williams): Yep. It's going to be January 31st, 2022. So I don't know when you're seeing this, but January 31st and February 1st. It's virtual because Omicron is still a real deal. It's a real deal. So it's virtual. Just go to InspireNation.org. It's all over there. We've got some amazing speakers. We've got Cody Askins. We've got David Carruthers speaking on commercials. We've got Lightspeed Boys, Marblebox Virtual Assistants. We've got Hawksoft as our primary agency management system.

Here's the deal. When you come to Fix My Insurance Agency, if you're looking for 20 different vendors in 50 different ways, that's not me. I'm going to take Hawksoft, Glovebox, Marblebox, Lightspeed, and we're going to show you their process. You can figure out how to do it your way with your tools and your stuff, but I don't want to confuse anybody. You don't need 50 different ways. I'm going to show you one damn way of doing it, and then you modify it for you.

Host (Ryan Hanley): True that. So January 31st to February 1st, 2022. Just go to InspireNation.org for the details. Go check it out. You will not be disappointed. All right, Billy, we're out of here. Thanks, man. Appreciate you.

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