--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hey guys, before we get started, I just wanted to hit you with a quick message. I know you've probably heard at this point about Rogue being acquired by SAA. It means we finally have the capital, resources, expertise, tools, the backing, the support to execute on the vision that Rogue was originally created for, this idea of a no-ceiling insurance career.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So if you see yourself as a misfit gangster renegade who just is not happy with their current situation, but is ambitious, can work on their own, but loves a team that's going to help them drive forward. If you want to be part of something special, if you want to grow your career, you don't have to be a producer. We're always looking for great account managers. We're looking for anyone who wants to be part of something special that's going to buy into what we're doing and wants to grow and just do the damn thing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If that sounds like you and you're listening to this show, go to join.roguerisk.com. That's join.roguerisk.com and apply today. We'll see what happens. All right, let's get on to the show.
--:-- [Music: "In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home."]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hello everyone and welcome to the show. Today we have a tremendous episode for you. A live conversation between me and Bradley Flowers at the IBNO event in Northern Ohio. We were in Cleveland and we were asked by this organization, Bradley and I, to do a keynote together.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We didn't just want to stand on stage and talk at the audience. We wanted to make them part of the experience and do something different. So we set the room up with us sitting in the very middle at a round table facing each other like we would if we were podcasting in a room by ourselves. Then I interviewed Bradley like it was a podcast episode, except we were surrounded by probably 100 to 150 people.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It was a really cool experience. The audience gave us tremendous feedback, so I could tell they were engaged. But you don't get a lot of questions from them during it. The audio isn't as crisp or clean as it would be over Zoom or in a studio, so you'll have to bear with the audio quality. You can still hear what we say and it comes out really great, but there's a little bit of background stuff. You'll hear some bumps and the standard stuff that comes from a live show.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: In general, I think you're going to love this conversation. We talk a lot about culture, a lot about hiring, a lot about how do we get the most out of our people, as well as break down some of the marketing tactics that are working right now. Just a great episode as always. Bradley is an innovator. I enjoy speaking to him because I learn so much when I do. I think you're just going to really like this episode.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Before we get there, I want to give a quick shout out to the sponsors of the show, the people that make it possible. First and foremost, Podium. Podium changes the game when it comes to capturing leads on your website and how you interact with them. Their live chat to text feature, which is the feature that we use the most at Rogue, allows us to capture inbound conversations via chat in a web or mobile app. When we respond in the app, it actually responds as a text message to the person who sent it. The response time is 95 plus percent. If you're looking for a chat feature, if you're looking to capture more tools and give your prospects and customers a new avenue to communicate with you, then Podium is absolutely a tool that I would check out. That's P-O-D-I-U-M.com.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I also want to give a couple quick shout outs to a few technology vendors that I think are doing incredible work. I just had a chance to spend some time with them. That's Tarmika, T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. Guys, changing the game in commercial rating. A lot of competitors out there. Tarmica is the best. T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. And Better Agency. Guys, I got a demo. Obviously, we use HubSpot and NowCerts, so I'm not on Better Agency right now. It doesn't mean I won't be in the future, but I had a chance to get a demo from Will and Nick a couple weeks ago, and I was just blown away by the progress they're making.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I wanted to give a big shout out to them as well because I think they're pushing the game from an independent agency management system, CRM space. The integrations they make, the decisions they're making. I think that tool has come a tremendously long way. I had Nick on the show a few weeks ago, if you want to go back and listen to that. I just love what they're doing. Love when we see a tool that's coming out of our space that isn't owned by one of the big guys who is just looking for ways to lock you in and not necessarily innovating. Better Agency is innovating. Love to see it coming out of people that I know to be good people. Big fans of them. So go to betteragency.io. That's betteragency.io.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And with that, my friends, let's get on to Bradley Flowers.
--:-- [Audience applause]
--:-- Event Host: I am so pumped for today. Guys, we are going to kick it off with two people who honestly have made an incredible impact on my own life. I'm honored that I get to introduce them today. They're two people who have pushed me into places that I didn't know I was capable of, and I know that they will not leave this stage until they do the same thing for you. I am so pumped to welcome Bradley Flowers, the CEO of Portal Insurance, and Ryan Hanley, the CEO of Rogue Risk. Let's give them a warm welcome.
--:-- [Music: "In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home."]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So we're going to do something a little different today. There was no way I was going to be able to stand on that stage so far away from you guys. Bradley and I had the idea of turning this into a conversation in a podcast. So we're going to do it from right here in the mix of you guys. Some of you have to turn around.
--:-- [Audience laughter]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: People are running away. Sorry, not sorry. We set this up because neither one of us had ever done a dual keynote before. We said, hey, we're both podcasters and we both like having conversations. We're going to try to turn this into a podcast-style conversation about what's going on in the industry right now and give you guys an inside look at how we do this.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: A couple things here. You can shout out. You can be part of this. If you want the mic, we'll stand up and walk over. But I feel like this is a little more intimate. We can all agree. We're right on top of each other. This way, when we say something stupid, when you throw stuff at us, you'll actually hit us because there's about 40 feet up there, and I don't know that any of you have a strong enough arm to hit us from back here. Unless you play for the Browns, you're not hitting us up there.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: Yeah, I mean, if you had Josh Allen's arm, then maybe.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yes, go Bills.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right. All right. So to kick this thing off, everyone's going to boo. They're America's team, though. I can't help it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Bradley, I like to do something. Some people may like it, some people don't. But I tend to toss ideas out into the ether. I use the podcast. I'll write articles, share posts, whatever. Most of the ideas, when I start them, they're not fully fleshed out. It's something that bothers people because they feel like everything we post online should be 100% what we believe, fully thought out concepts. So the idea that I'm about to share with you, I want to be clear, I have not thought this all the way through. We haven't talked about it. I did not share anything of what we're going to talk about with Bradley. So he's coming fully off the cuff. Which is great when you're sitting in the middle of this room.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The idea that hit me, I was listening to a podcast with a guy from Shopify. He has this concept with the people who buy Shopify stores and run them of "arming rebels." That's what internally they talk about. They're arming rebels. Amazon is the big bad enemy and these little Shopify stores that pop up are entrepreneurs and they're the rebels of retail, I guess. I was thinking about that concept and trying to apply it to insurance and I kind of came up with where are the opportunities in insurance in terms of this concept.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Here's the idea. I feel like unlike any time in our past, being a rebel in our space today pays the most dividends. We have unfortunately out of necessity become an industry of conformance. We relish the fact that we are severely slow adopters of technology, that we're laggards in every capacity. It's a safety mechanism. We've all built our kingdoms. I know that if your agency looks and feels like mine and operates like mine and stays in their zone, that you're not going to mess with me and you're going to make your money and I'm going to make my money. That's all great, except you and I, when we're in our early 30s trying to grow up in this industry, we can't do it the way everyone who's established today did it. We just can't. So we have to find different ways.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: My question for you to start this off is, where's the low-hanging fruit of being a rebel? What's the first thing you can start to do, start to think about, to crack this code? When there were only a few thousand agencies in the country, it was easy to start a new one. You could have three on a corner because there was no technology, no digital, no way of getting to the town next door. Now you can. You're in how many states do you write business in?
--:-- Bradley Flowers: I don't know. A lot.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. Right.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: I'm in all 50 and we're based out of Albany and York. I think we're in 30.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. So where's that low hanging fruit in being a rebel? What is the first thing you can start to do? How do you start to stand out? How do you start to crack into this world?
--:-- Bradley Flowers: First of all, anytime I podcast with Ryan, I put my controversial hat on. It's a lot harder to be controversial when you have 200 people sitting right beside you versus a podcast studio. I'm leaving after this, so it's okay.
--:-- [Audience laughter]
--:-- Bradley Flowers: I think, you know, my wife and I buy a little bit of commercial real estate and it's about buying real estate at 75 cents on the dollar. I think looking for opportunities, not only within your agency, but outside of your agency. In other words, maybe we can't... We interviewed a lady recently, or I say recently, it was like two years ago. Does everybody here know the term VA? Virtual assistant. She was making $60,000 a year doing the exact same job that my VAs do for a lot less. You can't tell me I don't win that game in the long run.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: Things like that, being a speed boat compared to the Titanic, being able to pivot. I gave a keynote yesterday at the PIA of Arkansas in Memphis. I gave the example of these three things are our niches, but I may walk in tomorrow and say, hey, now we're doing bakeries. Being able to pivot on a dime within your agency. I think using technology that makes you incredibly flexible allows you to do that.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: But I think also outside of your agencies, looking for opportunities, whether it's joint ventures, whether it's forming a strategic partnership with a mortgage brokerage or whatever. Embedded insurance is like the next term that's going to be thrown around, much like data and integration has been thrown around the last few years. That's one of the topics I think there are opportunities in that arena for agents.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: So I think just looking for ways to... I know this is a very vague answer, but just looking for ways like, hey, how can we reduce expense, reduce friction? I'm a big proponent. Everybody thinks I'm this big tech guy. I'm the least tech savvy person you ever met in your entire life. I just surround myself with friends, many of whom you know that are tech savvy. I'm like, hey, how do I do this thing? And then it always ends up like, hey, can I just pay you $500 to build this for me?
--:-- Bradley Flowers: So I think looking for less tech that does more. People tend to get shiny object syndrome. "Oh yeah, we're adding this new tool, but it doesn't integrate with anything that we're using, therefore it's going to solve one problem but create another one."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I heard you talking about the less tech that does more concept. I have also dealt with shiny object syndrome. There's actually like a Shiny Object Syndrome Anonymous club now. It's a whole 12-step program.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: Are you the president?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I might be the vice president. I'm not just a member. When I say that, I've said that on a couple podcasts and I got messages from the non-tech people that were like, "Hey, we should be out of filing cabinets and everybody comes in the office and wet signatures." I'm like, that's not what I'm saying. You think I'm supporting you by saying that? I'm not saying that. I'm just saying we do need more tech, but we need it to be a less amount of tools, maybe a higher utilization of the tech that we actually have versus what we do, which is have 17 things and only use 5% of them.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: Correct. Yeah. I couldn't agree with that more.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's one of the reasons that we recently switched to HubSpot. Now, it's a big tool. To be honest with you, there are days when I wake up and I regret the decision to do it.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: So you're dreaming about the color orange.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. But when I see it working... I'll give you an example of what I mean. The reason I went there is it's one tool. We took by adding HubSpot, and you have some headaches and there's a build out and you got to think through it. I'm not saying that it's easy. We took 10 tools and made them four. So now my team only has to log into four things when six months ago they had to log into 10 different things to do the same function.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: To me, as much as I had to deal with the bitching and the griping and the "oh, it's another new system," now they can send emails, track emails, texts. It's all in one feed, attachment, everything that we want to do. I'm not going to get into exactly how we do it, but everything we want to do is in one screen for them, except for two other things. Guess which one?
--:-- Bradley Flowers: One of them is the agency management system.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And we won't get into that unless we want to.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: We might. I didn't see one here, so.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh, so we can. Is there an agency management system here so we can tear into it?
--:-- [Audience laughter]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: No. Agency management systems are amazing, and I'm so glad that we have them. They're doing such a great job from an innovation perspective.
--:-- [Audience laughter]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So when I was thinking rebels, one of the things that came to my mind was our people. The mindset of our people. Because I hear all the time, "Ryan, recruiting is so hard. It's hard to find good people." Well, it's hard to find good people if your strategy for finding people is cherry picking them out of other agencies. That's a hard way to find good people because if they were actually good, they wouldn't leave where they were unless you're going to pay them three times what they're worth. And that's not saying people aren't worth things, but they're going to tell you the better way to do things. They're going to have technology issues because they trained in a different system.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So one of the things that we started doing was targeting young moms. Because there is nothing that old white guys hate more than a young mom at work because she's got to take her kids to the doctor and she's got to pick them up from school and do all this stuff. They don't want the kids to be on the Zoom call when they're talking as a team. And I'm like, I don't give a shit about any of those things. I love it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: At any given time, I have four women who all have kids under five in my office. At any given time, all of their children will be on the Zoom call with us during the middle of the day. And they're like, "Well, they're not being productive, Ryan. How can they be productive if their kids are running around?" Because I will take 30 minutes of amazing, high quality employee time where she then has to go... And it's all women. This is like a man, woman thing. They all happen to be women. Single dads or dads with kids, I'm fine with too. Or however they gender classify.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'll take that 30 minutes of an awesome person's time. And the other 30 minutes, I've got to go make peanut butter jelly sandwiches and change diapers. I'll take that really good person's 30 time over an hour of someone who could give two flying Fs about working at my agency and it's just another job and a paycheck.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That strategy, I have two in Florida, one in Michigan, another one in Albany. They are rock stars. They felt completely tossed away by their old agencies, and their production level is off the charts. To me, when I start thinking about rebel mentality, this idea, and again it's not fully baked, that's the type of stuff that we need to start thinking about. Why are we tossing 32-year-old moms with kids under five out into the woods because we don't want them on Zoom calls with their kids? That is a stupid thought process, in my opinion. I'm happy to leverage it.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: It's kind of like when COVID first happened, I had agency owners reaching out to me on some of these Facebook groups saying stuff like, "How do you know your people are working? What clock in, clock out system are they using?" As long as they can get their job done. We have, it's kind of cliche now, but we have an unlimited time off policy at the office. Because people have stuff. You got to go to doctor's appointments. You got to pick up your drag claim. I'm like, are they getting their job done? That's the only metric we should use. And are they a good person? That's the only metrics we should be going by.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I couldn't agree with you more. If you have the systems in place to track activity, we salary every one of our employees. We don't go hourly for that reason.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: Yeah.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So we salary everybody because what happens is... I'd rather just not keep up with the hours.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: The hourly thing is terrible too. You're thinking about how many... I only have so many brain cycles. I don't want to know if Tammy worked 38 hours versus 48 hours. And if they worked a half an hour, they're going to tell you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, yeah. I'm like I don't even want that in the culture. The culture that I want is if you need to take two hours in the middle of the day to go to your kid's recital or you need to go pick up your dad from the doctor because he can't drive, I don't even want to know that you're doing it. Punch into Slack. "Hey, I'm going to be out for two hours. I'll be back." What happens is I watch when they log into the systems, they come back in at 6, 8, whenever to get it done. Because they know ultimately all that matters is getting activity done.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What you get back is maybe everyone steals time. Everyone in this room steals time all the time. To pretend like people don't steal time is crazy, or to act like you're going to manage them out of stealing time. "Well, she or he was on Facebook." Who cares? Did they get their job done? Are you getting positive feedback from your customers? Are they adding value? Are they helping with new ideas? Are they taking on tasks that are overflow from another team member? Doing the things that a good team member does.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If they want to steal a little time or listen to Joe Rogan's podcast in the background, as everyone should be, at least every good American, then I think that's a super positive thing. It doesn't bother me. I feel like that's how we start to scoop up these employees that are just being dropped on the floor. I feel like there's a lot of really good employees on the floor right now, and there's an enormous opportunity for all of us to scoop them up.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: I gave a talk yesterday on culture. We are not perfect at culture. That's like the first thing out of my mouth. It's not something you accomplish. It's a living, breathing thing that you're constantly working on, and if you ignore it, it's going to go to crap. The biggest point of the talk was I'm a startup. We're really small. We're two years old. I've been in the business 10 years but the agency's two years old. I can't pay people what some of these big agencies can pay them. Our competitive advantage is culture. The people that I have working for me, I guarantee you most of them probably could get paid more somewhere else and probably shouldn't be working for me, to be honest with you. But it's the culture.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: One of the things we're doing, this is kind of funny. They told me to dress rock and roll for this. This is how I dress every single day. I'm not joking. I am wearing a rock and roll T-shirt. That's it. When you walk in our agency, we look like a tech company, not an insurance agency. Now we do have a rule: dress for your day. If we're meeting with a big client or something like that, we're going to do khaki Fridays. I know that sounds dumb. It's 100% a recruiting move because these other people at these agencies who have to wear pantyhose are going to see that and be like, "Damn, I want to wear jeans every day."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: People still wear pantyhose in Alabama.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: In Alabama they do, yeah.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Jesus.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: But I want to bring up, you're the one that brought up Joe Rogan, not me. I just want to bring that up.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You're in New York. I haven't heard that word in like a decade.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: Yeah. We're first in football, last in everything else.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think, so to your point of it's not about how much money people make. There's a fine line there. You have to be in the ballgame. You can't be underpaying people. But I do think the tech industry in general has changed the mindset specifically of maybe people under 45 around this particular topic.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: A thousand percent.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's so much more about, "Do I feel appreciated?" Now, I believe in a strong hierarchical structure from the standpoint of so people know what they need to get done. If something breaks, who do I go to talk to? I think the flat culture idea is good in theory. I think it struggles in execution. That being said, that doesn't mean every system, every process, and every conversation needs to have a strict hierarchical structure. It just means from a reporting and accountability standpoint, you need to have that. I think that's where a lot of people miss.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: By having from an accountability and reporting structure a hierarchical structure, everyone realizes there's a boss and then there's a sub boss and then there's a sub boss and then there's an army setup or whatever. But I think from an idea...
--:-- Bradley Flowers: Stormtroopers.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, I look to think more like Rogue One movie with those clandestine people and different camo gear blowing stuff up.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: Or C3PO.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm sorry, I'm throwing you off on purpose. But I think my point is, I think that's very important from an accountability reporting, get stuff done standpoint. But then as a leader, you can't keep that from an idea, from a culture, from a communication, from an appreciation standpoint. You can't be like, "Well, they're two levels below me, so I can give two shits about what they do. I don't need to talk to her because she's just an entry level CSR and I'm the agency owner and she should just be glad she's getting a paycheck."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I had an agency owner tell me one time, I threw this concept out about three years ago of mixing flat culture with hierarchical accountability. Someone was like, "My employees should just be happy they're getting a paycheck." Now, I think he was being funny. He was trying to be funny, but there was enough seriousness in there that I was like, "What agency are you?" Because I'm going to drop a pin in your backyard for my recruiting page.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That was the thought process. "She's getting a paycheck. She should be happy that she's getting a paycheck and therefore just do everything that I say the way I say to do it." That's going to create a person that clocks out at five o'clock every single day. If you are operating that way, understand that every one of those employees would leave tomorrow for a better situation. They just would. No one likes that structure. While that was acceptable in the 80s and 90s, in 2022, that is not acceptable anymore from an employee standpoint. They're not going to be happy in that environment.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We put out a job posting for a select producer position. We recruit nationally. Don't put any in Alabama.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: What? None in Alabama?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh, I need someone with a Southern accent.
--:-- [Audio interruption: Ryan Hanley addresses listeners directly]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What's up guys? 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 you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating and review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: This helps the show grow. It helps me bring more guests in. We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in, men and women who've done incredible things, sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales, the things that are gonna help you grow as a person and grow your business. But they all check out comments, ratings, reviews. They check out all this information before they come on. So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: 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 and review of this show. I love you for listening to this show and I hope you enjoy listening as much as I do creating the show for you. All right, I'm out of here. Peace.
--:-- [Return to live episode]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Let's get back to the episode. So we got day one, hour four, 37 applications. We have like 100 plus applications now for people because the post wasn't, "You're going to make 40, 30 and you're going to..." It was like, "Come make shit happen. Sell stuff. Be awesome. I don't care what you wear. I don't care if you got a big old bushy Santa beard. It doesn't matter to me. If you're going to help our clients, work our process, and be cool in the Slack channels, you can be part of this team."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What we've developed is a misfit culture. It's like The Replacements.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: What?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The Replacements. The movie, The Replacements. I actually thought about getting the Replacements movie poster and putting it in my office, but I didn't know if everybody that works for me would like it.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: Also, he has a pretty strong arm. I think he actually threw those passes.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Really? I mean, it looked like him. Did Keanu throw those passes, yes or no? Was anybody in the movie? Show of hands. The Replacements, you all know this movie. You have TNT.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So for those listening at home right now, this audience is not engaging at all.
--:-- [Audience laughter]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So one thing, I have a buddy. His name is Cam Marston. The name of his company is Generational Insights. He works with big corporations and basically tells them how to hire and manage different generations. One of the things he talks about is how pre-millennial Gen X and baby boomers, the attitude generally was, "Hey, we're working for this company to build this company." And then when you get into the millennial and Gen Zs, it's "We're working for us to build us."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Combined with the average employee now stays at a job, I think, four years and eight months. The average millennial stays at a job three years, six months. The average Gen Z is like two years, eight months. I think if you approach managing people with those few things in mind, it kind of changes the way that you manage. It's a different approach.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: If I understand that Sally's probably only going to be here for five years, it changes the way I manage her. If I understand that she's working to build up her career, kind of what we tell all of our new people and our current people is like, "Hey, my goal is not to keep you here for 30 years. If you stay for 30 years, that would be phenomenal. But my goal is for when you leave Portal to say this is the best jumping off point I've ever had." I want you to use our connections, our business to build yourself up and then go do something great. I really mean that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. I think that's tremendous. I heard this, again I listen to too many podcasts, but I was listening to the CEO of a company. He kind of said something similar. He's like, when he looks at his success metrics, it's not necessary... I mean, obviously he's trying to make money and run a business. But when he goes a step beyond that, what are his success metrics?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: How many successful companies have been started by employees who learned about starting successful companies inside his agency? So he's like, it's this alumni network. And because we don't set expectations on them, all the things you said, now some of them have become referral partners for us. Some of them have become vendors for us. And he's like, we have this whole alumni network of companies that have started out of our company. And that is one of the things that I'm most proud of, which I think is amazing.
--:-- One of the coolest things that ever happened to me—things have been great at Portal. We started with no money, less than scratch, as Seth Sarimba would say. Two days after I launched the agency, my accountant called me and said, "Hey, you owe $5,000 to the IRS from last year," which is like 20% of the money I started with. We built it up, and now we're profitable and cash flow positive. It's amazing. There have been a lot of cool things that have happened.
--:-- But probably the singular coolest thing that proved the model was the first employee that I fired because she was not a culture fit. She called me a year later to ask me to consult with her on her startup she was launching. I was like, "Okay, this is..." And that's not to pat myself on the back—she did it—but it proves some of the things we were doing with employees. And we have issues, like everybody else.
--:-- The thing with culture, you have to pair that with accountability. It's not just frou-frou, let people run all over you. People get confused about unlimited time off, but we pair unlimited time off with several accountability points: Are you getting your job done? You can't be not getting your job done and take off a week to go to Burning Man. Are you leaving other team members hanging? If three other people are off that day, unless you're throwing up sick or have COVID or your kid is sick, no. You have to let us know in advance. So there are accountability measures in place.
--:-- I think this is the hardest time to lead that's maybe ever existed in business. The reason is what you said: you have to be an active, engaged leader. You can't be the best producer in the agency and be a great leader. You can't be the best marketer in the agency and a great leader. This is something I struggle with because all I want to do all day is generate leads and help my sales and sell. In a perfect world, I am left to go do that, and I don't talk to anybody. I just create content and generate leads and do the things that I love and am good at. But someone's got to run the business, so you have to be a leader. You have to come back.
--:-- It is difficult to look at someone and say, "I know you want Friday off, but you haven't hit your activity targets in two weeks, so I can't give you that day off." That's a hard thing to do. Or, "What can I do to help you hit those goals?" And then it always comes back to: I didn't hold her accountable for two weeks. She didn't even realize she wasn't hitting her targets. This is the first time she's ever heard about it. And then I'm looking at it and going, "Shit, well, I'm going to give you the day off. But now we need to have meetings all the time."
--:-- I think it is a very, very difficult time to be a leader for these reasons. The pushback that we get when I talk about these topics is that people aren't just going to do what you say because you want them to do it. It's hard. I said on the podcast a couple weeks ago, and Scott actually brought it back up this week, it's harder now than when I started. Everybody thinks, "Scratch, there definitely were some things that were hard when we were scratching that are not hard now." But there are some things that were easy when we started that are hard now, and that's what I was talking about.
--:-- We recently lost our first employee that quit. What happened is, like I said, we're not perfect. I did not have some difficult conversations along the way—"Hey man, don't do this again," that sort of thing. I did not have those difficult conversations. And then we had to have a really difficult conversation. He didn't know how to take it. Bounced. Versus if I would have been being a manager instead of a buddy, it would have been like, "Okay, my bad."
--:-- Bradley Flowers: I made the same exact mistake with our first producer we ever hired. I look at him and what he could have done in our today culture, today system—which is also not perfect by any stretch—but I think he could have been successful. I just kept going, "Well, you're gonna make your calls, right?" or whatever. I just left him on an island. Eventually, it's almost a similar scenario, just because I didn't want to do my job.
--:-- I think one of the worst and best things that can happen to you is you hire that producer that's a self-motivator that just writes insurance and you don't need to manage them. Because then you think you can treat other people that way. It happened to us. One of the first people we hired was from another agency, came over for the culture, and is just a freaking rock star. Former social worker, by the way—if anybody can ever hire a social worker, I have to help this person with their interest. It's obsessive. So then I started trying to treat other producers that way, and it just doesn't work for some people.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I want to pivot. We need to go to the second question. I just realized a half hour on the first question. I don't even know how much time we have. The reason I wanted to spend time on that particular topic was I do think there is a huge opportunity and talent in the market. While VAs are amazing and I'm not knocking VAs in any way, I would take a well-outfitted, cultural fit, hard-working, U.S.-based, licensed American over a team of VAs any day of the week.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: When we first started using VAs, a buddy of mine was being a little bit critical of it. I said, "Man, they're not taking a job from my U.S. people. They're taking all the crap my U.S. people don't want to do, and therefore they are less stressed."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: To put a pin in that point, I feel like we're running to VAs because it's another shiny object. It's a thing. I just caution people: VAs don't solve people problems. VAs help you take your people to a whole other level that they couldn't do on their own by removing day-to-day nonsensical tasks that don't have value. Our VAs do our quoting for personal odds. Our VAs produce every COI. We tell every commercial client—we're 95% commercial—we can turn around a COI that doesn't have any language issues in 20 minutes or less. That's a guarantee we make. That's a selling point for us. It doesn't get us every deal, but it's a nice validation thing. We do that because we have a team of VAs that pumps those out.
--:-- My point is you can't backfill bad culture or bad people with VAs. If you think that's going to fix your people problem, it's not. You're going to lose them too, because they're going to think you're trying to replace them. If you're not a good manager to U.S. people, you're never going to talk to them. You're going to basically expect the VA to work, and you're never going to talk to them. It's like Wesley Anderson said—he's a friend of both of ours—"Could you imagine if you put an employee in a cubicle and you never talked to them?" That's kind of how it is, and then they end up leaving.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: We do a weekly call with all of our VAs, like a one-on-one, and we don't talk about work. It's like, "What's going on in your life?" We add them to our team meeting. Our VAs are just human beings. They live in the Philippines or wherever they live, and we treat them like team members like anyone else. The cost of living is a little lower where they are based on the U.S. dollar, and you don't have to pay them as much. But otherwise, you treat them the exact same way because they have all the same issues that any of your regular team members have.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I want to get into something tactical for everyone. John, how much time we got?
--:-- Event Host: Ten. You got ten.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We had ten minutes? Okay. Let's use the last ten minutes and be a little more tactical.
--:-- Event Host: We're going to do 20.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You guys have been so amazingly engaged in this presentation so far that the energy is flowing through me. It's awesome. If you have particular topics, please yell them out. It's early. But I want to get into some tactical stuff, some fun stuff. We're all here. Marketing and sales is sexy. Culture is fun, but kind of annoying when you've done it for 35 minutes. So let's get into the fun stuff. Sales and marketing.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: Make sure if you do that, you do it on RyanShow.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That's fine. If you get one thing to do right now, sales and marketing—one thing. One tactic, one tool, one strategy, one sales or marketing thing that's growing your business right now. What's that thing?
--:-- Bradley Flowers: I'm heavily, heavily, heavily focused on cross-selling right now. We have a massive opportunity in our agency. If I could do—and we probably actually suck at cross-selling, to be completely honest with you. Everybody sucks at cross-selling. We really suck at it. Because when you're a startup, you're like, "We'll write whatever." You don't want to move the auto, that's fine. You don't want to leave your workers' comp, that's fine. We could legitimately triple our book of business if we got really good at cross-selling. So if I could have one thing right now, it would be that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So you are just having someone mine your database for a single policy. Are you tracking when the business comes in? Like, "Okay, we're writing the comp, and we're notating that they have GL and auto, but we're not writing that today. We're just writing the comp," so you know to go back.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: We don't do that now, but back in the day, yeah. We have automation set up. Reach out to them, that sort of thing. Certain dates. So automations would be 30 days after signing that comp. They get an email that says, "Hey, Johnny, I know we wrote your comp. We're so happy to have you. This is probably a great time, now that we're past your need, to bring over the other stuff. Can we reach out?"
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Are you just cold calling out or calling out?
--:-- Bradley Flowers: Some of everything. Email, text, phone call. I've got two new producers in my agency. We're having them reach out. That's kind of their little thing while they build up their referral base—they're working our cross-sales. And then they're splitting that commission with the producer that originally wrote the account. That way nobody gets busy about it. It's been pretty good for us.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: To get hyper-tactical, we've been doing something similar, and we've been using Vidyard videos to do it. Is everyone familiar with Loom or Vidyard or video in an email? [Audience responds] Thank you, Cat. Basically, what we do is, when we see we have a need—and we do a lot of comp as a need one—our comp is 57% of our book right now. So we lead with comp and then do almost the exact same thing and circle back around. We have a team member who's dedicated to that. That's her job.
--:-- We've been using Vidyard. When we send an email, we break down the video. She'll be waving with a smile on her face, so when the person opens the video, they get this moving image of this person waving. They click on it 80-plus percent of the time. It doesn't mean they watch the whole thing, but we can see how much they watch. With low numbers—less than 100 emails—but just to give you an idea, if someone watches more than 50% of the video, they most likely bring all their other stuff over.
--:-- The video is basically, "Hey, this is so-and-so from Rogue Risk. We're so happy to have you as a customer. You wrote your comp. It looks like that process went well." Obviously, she's going to check the notes and make sure the process didn't go well and this person doesn't actually hate us, even though they're doing business with us—which we all have those clients. Then we do a full spectrum. That way, you only have to make one call. We have this whole script that she reads and sends out. We've seen that if someone opens the email and watches more than 50%, they're bringing the whole thing over. We don't even have to have a phone call half the time.
--:-- This is where automation and process really start to save time. Normally, we'd have to have a call and give you your policy numbers and talk through it. We don't have to do any of that. In less than two minutes—we try to keep those videos less than two minutes—we've explained the whole situation. And Sid just said we've got ten more minutes. So we now don't have to have that second call. That person is often just emailing back. In the video, we're saying, "Here's all you need to do. Just send us copies of your current policies. We'll send you back what you need to sign." Most of the time, we do a BOR first, and then we look to rewrite on renewals. There's no extra call.
--:-- Now she doesn't have to be on the phone, which no one loves. She's getting two or three of these sometimes a day. Not every day, but she can just do her job and work through them. She's happier, the client's happy, they don't have to pick up the phone. We assume our clients want to talk to us on the phone. I think that's a pretty heavy assumption. That's one little feature, one little tool that pays enormous dividends because it makes it so personal, even though it's a digital world.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: One thing that I'm a huge proponent of—does anybody here onboard their clients? [Audience responds] We onboard every single client through Agency Zoom the exact same way. Every single client goes through the exact same onboarding process. It's done through automated emails and texts. At the end result of that, because we know who our target client is—we're not writing everybody under the sun anymore—we're getting the same type of folks. We're onboarding every single one of them the exact same way.
--:-- The texts and emails are written very personally. Unless you're super keen on automation, you have no idea that it's automated. We actually have the producer help write the text. I want you to write this as if you were writing it to a friend. We include the LOLs and those sort of things. It's super personal. When you onboard people the same way, not only can you get them to do things along the way—like Google reviews, download our app, "Hey, what about your auto?"—but you get similar results. When you onboard people the same way, you can point out problems. We know this person's going to have this because they deviated from what most people said.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I never thought about that.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: It's built out 365 days out. We're not sending them a text every day, but like Mike Strom says, 500 days out or something like that. It allows us to get consistent feedback from our clients. If people don't work the process as you have it laid out—if they don't go through it, click on the things, or respond—you know immediately. Because you have to be pretty tech savvy to do business with us. Our door is locked. If somebody comes in our office, we think we're getting robbed. So that's the main thing we can point out. Two days in, and I'm like, "Oh, this isn't gonna work out." We'll literally say to people, "Hey, look, to be honest with you, I don't know that we're a great fit. Here's another agency that's old and boring. You probably need to go to that."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If they won't download the glove box or any of the different things that you use.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: Correct. That's really interesting because now you can almost post-select them out and say, "Hey, you should probably go to the State Farm agent down the street because they would love to lose money." I happen to be married to her.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So what happens—my wife is a State Farm agent. What we're doing with that onboarding, and it's majority text, we're subliminally telling people, "If you need something, you can text me." Other agents come into my office—this is not me bragging, this is true—and they're like, "Why aren't your phones ringing?" Because it's all right there coming into the text. We have a VA that owns that inbox. She watches the texts that come in and she pings people, "Hey, you handle this. Hey, you handle this." It's reduced our call volume. We get on average 25 inbound calls a day, which is extremely low for the size agency we have. The majority of those are people calling people back from sales situations. It's not customers calling in. They're texting us. They're going on the app. We've significantly made ourselves way more nimble than if I have to pay Sally $20 an hour to sit there and answer the phone.
--:-- We have two minutes left here. I think the most important takeaway from what you just said is, I think some people would hear that and go, "Bradley, but you're not talking to them. Where's the relationship? Where's the connection?" What I hear you saying is, based on the customers that you're targeting and the process that you're putting them through, they feel that they have the same connection to you as someone who comes in and sits down and sweats in the same room. That connection for them, via text or email, is exactly the same as if you were sharing time for those customers that you're targeting that you want in your agency.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: Yeah. Everybody texts. We're not in a world where the majority of people don't text anymore. I have a photo of my 65-year-old mother-in-law downloading TikTok. I was like, "I've got to take a picture of this." People are using it. Older people. We had an 85-year-old guy who called us a couple weeks ago because his glove box he was having issues. He's like, "Oh, I love it. I use it." You're going to find people that don't want to do that, but that's how the majority of people nowadays want to come in. How many people get pissed off when they get a phone call? [Audience laughs] I see a bunch of liars. The people are leaving their hands down. Everybody's annoyed when they get a phone call.
--:-- We have a significant amount of customers that will leave us and come back. We always ask, "Why did you come back?" And it's almost always, "I can just text you guys and you'll take care of it." The other thing that happens—and I'm sorry, I'll shut up—but the other thing that happens when somebody calls you and says, "Hey, I want to get an ID card," they expect you to stay on the phone until you send them that ID card. But if they text it, it's almost like a different thing. It's just like, "Hey, he'll just handle it." It's like, "I have this on record. It's here. It's on the blockchain." I'm kidding. It's here. They'll get to it. It also allows us to prioritize tasks. If 10 texts come in with 10 different things we need to do, we can prioritize those in order of importance.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Dude, selfishly, I wanted to interview you because I always learn every time I talk to you. The stuff that you do is amazing. I think you're one of the people that think about this industry in the exact right way for where we're going. It doesn't mean everyone's going to do stuff the same way, but I love how you push the boundaries. I always learn when I talk to you. I just appreciate the time, man. This has been awesome.
--:-- Bradley Flowers: Likewise. This was fun. Yeah, thank you guys. Go Bills.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh, I want to say one more thing. I hadn't seen Sid speak in like three years. Your dramatic pause game has drastically improved. There were some serious...
--:-- Event Host: What he doesn't know is I forgot what I was going to say during those moments.
--:-- [End of episode. Promotional message plays:]
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