--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. We have a tremendous episode for you today. It is actually a rebroadcast of a webinar that I did for David Carothers and the Killing Commercial community. That webinar took place a week or so ago and I was kind of on fire. I was a little hungover and just really loved the way the content came through. It was high energy. I think it was high value.
--:-- We talked specifically about the video strategy, the very tactical video strategy that I've used twice now, once at the Murray Group and now at Rogue Risk, in order to drive inbound, bottom-of-funnel leads into our agency. And then, and this is the important part, the second half of the presentation, or in this case, this podcast, is actually breaking down how you handle inbound leads separately from referrals.
--:-- There's obviously a lot of odd contextual references and craziness that comes with doing a podcast at 7 a.m. on the West Coast when you're an East Coaster and you're still jet lagged and, as I said, a little hungover. But I do think that you will enjoy this episode. If you're taking notes, I think you'll learn a lot, specifically if you're looking to implement video into your agency. This is tremendously valuable in terms of just tactically rich content. I hope that you enjoy it.
--:-- And as always, guys, I love you for listening to this show. If you enjoy the show, if you enjoy the content, the best way to support the show is just to share it. Share the show on socials or with friends or colleagues. More eyeballs, or more ears on the show, it just helps more people learn what we're doing. It helps more people get access to the great content, the great guests that we have. Obviously no guests today, but I think in general, just more people engaging with the show is a very positive thing. I appreciate you and I appreciate any effort you have in helping grow the audience of the show. Been doing this for a long time and always enjoy finding new listeners and helping new people, as well as all of you who've been listening forever, which I appreciate and love.
--:-- Before we get there, I want to give a quick shout out to the sponsor of this show, Podium, P-O-D-I-U-M.com. Podium is one of the best text message software on the market, specifically for insurance agencies. We use them for web chat. We use them for texting out Google reviews. We use them for texting out surveys and all that kind of stuff to our clients. The reason we do that is they have high deliverability, high response rate, and are easy to use, easy to track, easy to assign different text conversations to different team members. We've just become a big fan of Podium. Even though the website software that we use, HubSpot, has their own baked-in web chat feature, we choose to use Podium because it's just a better tool and we'll continue to use it. So for all those reasons, hope you support Podium.
--:-- I also want to give a big shout out to David Carothers, to the Killing Commercial community. Go to killingcommercial.com. There are ways to subscribe for free just to be around. The newsletter and stuff that you get, and then obviously if you're looking to take your commercial insurance game to a whole other level, there are all kinds of ways to get involved with the Killing Commercial community. There's a light membership and then there's a full membership and all that kind of stuff. Obviously Rogue Risk is a member of Killing Commercial and we get our new producers in the system because they just learn so much. So I highly recommend you engage with the Killing Commercial community.
--:-- Also want to give a big shout out to Rogue's parent company, SIA. Some tremendous things coming down the pipe from SIA. The SIA of today, the larger network, all the master agencies, it is not the same network that you think of when you think of five years ago, which was of incredible value in and of itself. But Matt Macielo and the leadership team, which I have now become a part of and able to engage with and learn from, the things that are coming down the pipe from this organization are game-changing. It's a big part of the reason why I was willing to sell Rogue Risk to SIA, and I feel proud and honored that I get to be part of that leadership team and help drive a very large organization, helping a lot of agencies into the future so that we all can be better.
--:-- I think it was IOA and Nick Ayers that coined the phrase "better together" in our industry, and I think that transcends just that organization. In general, we as a community, regardless of what network you're with, we're all better together. If you choose SIA or one of the master agencies, I don't think you're going to go wrong, guys. I'm just a big fan of what they're doing and excited to be part of continuing to build the future of that organization. You go to siaa.com or just Google SIA and you'll find a list of all the master agencies in your area and the benefits and all that kind of stuff. Just highly recommend that organization.
--:-- All right. So with all that, let's get to this episode, guys. I think you're going to laugh. I think you're going to learn. And I hope, as always, that you are entertained, educated, and inspired. All right. Let's do it.
--:-- David Carothers: All right. I don't know how we could have had any better segue into Ryan Hanley than Marcus Sheridan, who stole Ryan Hanley's idea and made a lot of money off of it. And I hate to take your line right before you go on, man, but I know it's coming because you heard us talking about Marcus. Every single time I hear us talk about Marcus, that's the same thing I hear. You were doing this. I think a lot of us kind of were to a certain degree, but you had taken it to another level with your video content and how you were going to answer a hundred questions in a hundred days. I think that at this point has become legendary. Now we have people who are just absolute savages like Chris Green, who, screw a hundred days, I'm going to do a hundred years worth of content and he's going to do it in two and a half days.
--:-- Anyhow, I don't need to introduce Ryan. Ryan's here to talk about video and get granular on how you can use video in your content creation. I think the one thing that a lot of us miss out on is just some of the basics, man. Some of the angles, some of the lighting things and all of that. It's not things that you need to run out and buy a bunch of expensive equipment for. It's just you don't even know what you should be doing. So with that being said, it's my great pleasure to introduce my good friend, founder of Rogue Risk, content creator extraordinaire, Mr. Ryan Hanley.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Dude, it's so good to be here. It's funny coming in hot here. I'm out on the West Coast, so if I sound a little scratchy it's because my allergies are off the chain, so I apologize for that. I have my late night FM DJ voice going.
--:-- Coming in and listening to you guys talk about Marcus Sheridan, talking about video strategy, "They Ask, You Answer." I always bust on Marcus. He's an all-time buddy of mine, so when I say he stole my concept, that's 100 percent tongue in cheek. But we were doing something at the same time and we were talking about it, and that's how we met each other. I'm not going to rehash the whole 100 days story because they can go back and listen to a podcast that I've done with you where I've broken that down. If you're listening to this, just go back and listen to episodes that I've done on the Power Producers podcast and get that story.
--:-- What I want to talk about today is how I did it again and what you can do from what I'm doing today. When I talk about the 100 days, 100 videos story, some of the feedback that I'll get is, "Well, Ryan, that was 2009, 2010, and the Internet was different. No one was doing it and there was no competition, so obviously you came to the top." The funny thing about that is I literally just did it again in 2020, the same exact strategy, nothing different, even less sophisticated. And we have the most robust commercial lines video content channel in the entire world. We have it on YouTube. We've built out our own video library at wiki.rogue.com that's on our own property. We use video every day in everything we do, not just to do video or to get some attention. We do it to write business.
--:-- This strategy that I'm about to walk you through is basically how we stayed afloat during the pandemic. I launched my agency Rogue Risk into the face of COVID seven days before COVID started. I was all dialed up to be a middle market producer. I was using the Killing Commercial process. I was going through all the strategies, all the resources, all the email campaigns, all the outreach campaigns that David talks about in Killing Commercial. That was my whole thing. David can testify to this. I was ready. I had the folders. I was ready to go. This is what I was doing: I was going to be this digital middle market producer. Seven days in, COVID hits and the entire world shuts down. I'm basically in tears. I've put $40,000 of my own money into Rogue Risk and I'm dead on arrival. I have no way to reach out to the people that I was going to target.
--:-- So I did what any good dummy does. I just went back to what I know and I started creating video. I created video for small business because they were the only things that were still open. The business owners still had to show up, they had to make money for themselves. So what we're going to talk about is exactly what I did to get Rogue to over 300 inbound organic leads a month. We don't pay a dollar in PPC. We do a little tiny bit of retargeting today, but that's mostly for brand value. We do over 300 organic leads. People calling us, texting us, filling out our web chat, or filling out a web form. We do over 300 inbound leads every single month. This month, we're going to crack $750,000 in premium. We are a very legit agency today. We've done it kind of slow burn with the exact strategy that I'm going to describe to you.
--:-- So that's the preface. How do we do that? We started with the second largest search engine in the world that also doubles with its big brother Google as an excellent source of organic search. I wanted to answer, kind of "They Ask, You Answer," and do it with video in a way that I could duplicate over and over and over again so that when someone has a problem, they find us.
--:-- There's going to be two parts of this talk. First, how do we actually create the video? What does that look like? Where do we put it? Very tactically. The second part of this talk is going to be: What do we do when they actually call us or contact us? Because that's the piece that I think we're missing as an industry.
--:-- I want to be clear. This strategy works whether you're targeting small business, personal lines, or middle market. I don't want you to think, "Well, Ryan, I don't do small business, so this doesn't work," or "We really only do middle market, manufacturing, light manufacturing." This strategy works, and I'll give you examples regardless of what you're going after, what size the account is. Your numbers will vary based on your geographic region, who you're targeting, all that. But every human uses the internet to find solutions to their problems. Keep that concept in your head. Your target market, whether it's small business, middle market, a specific industry, a specific geographic region, all of them use the internet to solve their problems. That's what we're trying to be. When we create video, we are trying to be solution providers. That is the whole crux of what we're doing.
--:-- Basically how we break it down: I use a couple of tools. I'll give you their names. You don't have to use these tools. You can use free things. I use a paid tool called Ahrefs, A H R E F S. I see Chris Langell's name on this. Land Gilly is the one that introduced me to this tool. It's like $99 a month. What I do is I go in there and start doing some searches around the keywords of what I want to target. Let's say I want to target, I'm currently building out this food truck campaign. I go in there, and you can do this on Google too and I'll explain it, but I type in "food trucks" and then I'll type in "food truck insurance," "how to start a food truck." It gives me all these variations on searches that people are doing on the internet. You can search by what they're searching in YouTube, what they're searching in Google and Bing and DuckDuckGo. Actually, I don't think they can do DuckDuckGo.
--:-- You come up with a list of topics. I get to maybe 20, 30 topics and I start to think, okay, there's some similarities here. I try to break it down, this is just the way I work, into 10 videos. What are 10 videos based on potential traffic, which is a number that it gives you, so potential searches, and similarities, things that I think I can package into one video. I come up with 10 videos. Once I have those topics, I turn them into headlines for videos. Let's say, "What is food truck insurance?" "How much does food truck insurance cost?" "What is the best food truck insurance?" State specific, "How to get food truck insurance in New York," "Commercial auto insurance for food trucks." I'm just kind of making these up now. I come up with a list of 10 that I can hit. Then I'm going to batch record them.
--:-- When we record videos, the recording part is where most people get stuck. The recording part is the easiest part of producing video. When I do this live on stage, the most common questions are around how to record the video. "Do I need a Sony a7 III?" or "What kind of camera do I need?" "How do I set up a studio in my office?" You don't need a studio in your office. You don't need a camera with a thousand dollar lens on it. Those things are nice, don't get me wrong, and they make the video look nice. Your consumers don't care. They absolutely, positively, without a doubt, do not give a crap about what equipment you use.
--:-- Here's what they care about: They care that you are clear, that they can see you, and they care that they can hear you. After those two things, nothing else matters. You want to have a decent backdrop. The backdrop I have behind me is terrible. I wouldn't use this one. I'd use something clean. You want to focus yourself. I'm at the Trop, which is not a nice hotel, mostly because all the techies at InsureTech Connect bought up all the hotel rooms in the nice hotel. So I'm in this crappy hotel. But you want something clean. That's really the only thing you want clean. The reason you want something clean as a backdrop is because that focuses their attention on you. If you have a messy, busy background, their attention starts to go to what's in your backdrop. You want them focused on you.
--:-- David's thing is super cool with the neon and all that. I think it's dope for podcasts and for the content he creates for the Killing Commercial community. But if he was creating content for Florida Risk Partners, I would tell him to go with something simpler. You want all their attention focused on you. You want everything to kind of frame in on you.
--:-- David Carothers: That's exactly what I told them right before you came on. If you ever look at any content that I film that I want people to pay attention to, I'm in front of a plain gray screen, period. I don't want any distractions in the background. So 100% on point. You just validated exactly what I told them about 20 minutes ago.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, I basically live to validate you, David. So that's kind of my purpose around here. So yeah, you want something clean. If you watch my videos on YouTube for Rogue Risk, you'll see I use the same gray backdrop for almost every video. I've done a couple different backdrops, but I'd say 80 plus percent of my videos are this plain gray backdrop. That's it. Nothing sexy about it. It's just a plain gray backdrop. You don't need to go buy on Amazon a backdrop of paper. I did that only because I'm a maniac and I'm a little more advanced at this, but I'm telling you, you don't need it. Find something that is relatively clean and simple, stand in front of it.
--:-- So that's backdrop. For lighting, I'm going to teach you guys how to be a lighting guru right now. Everyone talks about, "Do I need a ring light? Do I need a lighting setup?" You don't need any of that. Here's what you need: You need to stand in front of the sun. There's this big yellow ball that exists in the sky. Even when the clouds are out, it still creates an awful lot of light. All I'm doing right now is standing in front of the window in my hotel and look how good I look. Now I'm a handsome dude, so I can't help you if you're not as handsome as I am. That was a joke too.
--:-- The thing here is look at the lighting. The backdrop is darker, so even though this is a crappy hotel room backdrop, I'm lit. It is obvious that I am the center of whatever this is and your eyes are immediately drawn to me because the light is hitting me here. [Moves to demonstrate poor lighting] This is a terrible lighting job because you can't see me. This is awful. So basically, find the sun and stand in front of it. That's the light.
--:-- If you want to get a light, that's cool. If I'm using this curtain, I could turn on this light over here. If I were doing a video and I frame this a little better, you can kind of get the idea. There's a light in front of me here. I have this simple backdrop. Now the setup. This light is awful and the backdrop is a curtain, but this is the idea for lighting.
--:-- Now here's the very last piece. The very last piece is audio. I'm on the road at a hotel room. I'm using my Mac, so my audio isn't exactly on point. I'm sure Jenkins' audio sounded amazing with his deep voice and he's got some high-end crazy microphone, which is super. But all you need is to not have an echo. That's all. Just don't have an echo. If you have an echo, do not produce the video. I see so many of you guys, the lighting looks great, you look great, the backdrop is perfect, you say awesome, important, valuable things, and then it sounds like this [makes echoing sound]. It immediately turns me off. I'm not the only one. I've watched this in actual YouTube traffic results. When you have an echo in your video, and there are studies that you can go Google, it sounds awful and people leave. No one wants to hear you sit in an echoey room. The whole time they're trying to figure out what you're saying because it's distracting.
--:-- Have crisp, clean audio. All you need for crisp, clean audio is a room that doesn't have an echo. I'm talking into this curtain. This curtain is actually behind the screen on purpose to a certain extent because what it's doing is knocking down my audio and making it so this room isn't echoey. It may be a little bit, but it's not too bad. They used wallpaper for some reason here, so that kind of knocks down the echo as well, which I didn't know we were still doing wallpaper, but I guess we are. This wallpaper is probably the wallpaper when Frank Sinatra stayed in this room. That could be the case.
--:-- So just don't have an echo. Have a clean, crisp background. Have a lighting light in front of you. Don't have an echo. That's all you need. And you can get all of it right here on your iPhone. Please, please, please do not go out and buy an expensive camera until you've done 20, 30, 50 videos on this thing right here. The new cinematic mode that they have on these phones, if you have an iPhone 13, it's called cinematic mode. I haven't taken my Sony out in months and months and months. I use this for all my videos in cinematic mode, my iPhone. I don't use Sony anymore. I have a $3,000 camera with a $1,500 lens that I bought years ago. It's amazing and I can take dope video with it. I haven't taken it out in probably six months because the cinematic mode on my camera does just as good a job.
--:-- What's crazy about it is when I first started doing videos with cinematic mode, some people were sending me messages like, "Yo bro, you get a new lens? Those videos look dope." And I'm like, "Yes, I did. It was the new Every2 Verizon upgrade on my iPhone 13." I don't take out the $5,000 in video camera equipment that I have in my bag. I just use my iPhone now with a $100 tripod. So you don't need it.
--:-- Have lighting in front of you. Have good crisp clean audio, which really just means being in a room that's not echoey. Have a decent backdrop. Now you're ready to produce video. The talking part should be easy for you. You're an insurance professional. You do this for a living. If you say, "I don't like being on video," what I hear is, "I don't like selling and I'm a wuss." That's what I hear. Your excuse for not being on camera is... you're an adult, suck it up, get it done. That's really my opinion. I used to be like, "Oh, I get it guys, being on camera is tough." Nope. You're a wuss. I would use stronger language if this wasn't a recorded thing. Do the video. No one likes being on camera. I don't love being on camera. I can say something right now that could get me in trouble, and I probably will. I don't like being on camera, but I do it because it drives business into my agency. That's why I do it. I don't do video because I love taking time out of my life to talk about insurance concepts into a phone. I do it because it helps us put more prospects into our funnel, which helps my people write more business, which helps everyone in my organization make more money, including me. That's why I do it. So I don't care that you don't like being on video. Just do it.
--:-- So we've understood how to create a decent setup. We're going to use our phones. If we don't already have a super nice camera, we're going to use our phones to do the first 20 or 30 videos before we even consider something nicer. What you're going to find is that this is perfectly fine. You don't need anything nicer. You're going to have a nice, simple, clean setup that you can do that is repeatable.
--:-- That's the last piece of the setup: a place that is repeatable. You want a place where you can just put a tripod up, have a backdrop, and go. The reason for that is if you have to pull all this garbage out and set it up every time, you're not going to do it. You're simply not going to do it. It's going to be like, "Oh, I got 10 other things to do. I got to make some calls. I got to pretend like I'm working. I'm going to follow up on email instead of doing video." You're going to make a bunch of excuses, which I understand, but it's not going to happen. Have a nice repeatable place that is simple to set up so that in five minutes you can be ready to produce video.
--:-- When you produce that video, produce eight to 10 videos at a time. You can go even more if you're feeling froggy. I've just found that after eight to 10 videos, you kind of run out of steam. You don't want the last few videos for you to be kind of... maybe your voice starts to get scratchy, you don't have as much energy, you're not really putting yourself out there, you're kind of just getting through it. No one wants to do business with someone who's just getting through it. Batch the videos because doing one at a time is terrible. It's the number one mistake that I made when I was doing the 100 days thing. I did one every day instead of doing 10 in a day and then just scheduling them out. Batch 10.
--:-- So we have our 10 titles. We're going to talk to them. I'm going to talk just briefly how we talk through content. We have our 10 titles. We know how to create video, very simple. We know we're going to create a place in our office or in our home that is repeatable, consistent. There's also some brand value there. If it looks the same, if every video looks the same, they know it's you. They know that if they see you on YouTube or they see you on Google and then they see another video from you, they know to watch that. Then you're building trust. You're building brand appreciation. You're going to batch your videos. You're going to do eight to 10 at a time to make sure you get that many done. Then you can schedule them out over weeks or months. The last thing we're going to do is talk about how we templatize our videos.
--:-- David Carothers: Hey Ryan, real quick before you get into that. I did have somebody come in on Q&A and ask about your process for getting the video from your phone to where you can edit it. Do you have any tricks for doing that? They thought it would be easier to overlay and edit doing with their iPhone last week and ran into some headaches. I can tell you my answer was I just simply email the iCloud link to myself so I can download it and edit in Premiere. So I'm all ears if you have something easier as well.
--:-- [The recording cuts to a separate segment]
--:-- Host (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 review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes. This helps the show grow. It helps me bring more guests in. We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in, men and women who've done incredible things, sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales, the things that are going to help you grow as a person and grow your business. But they all check out comments, ratings, reviews. They check out all this information before they come on. So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help. Share the show, subscribe if you're not subscribed, and I'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments. Or if you're on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating review of this show. I love you for listening to this show and I hope you enjoy listening as much as I do creating the show for you. All right, I'm out of here. Peace.
--:-- [The episode resumes]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So let's get back to the episode. You broke up there for a second, David. I'm sorry. Can you just hit me with that question again?
--:-- David Carothers: Yeah. So I had a question from somebody wanting to know when you're doing your video with your iPhone, how do you get that to where you can edit?
--:-- David Carothers: Because I know that for myself. Oh, I just used the airdrop.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, for myself, I just sent me. That's why I like the Apple ecosystem.
--:-- David Carothers: Okay. So you're airdropping because you're going Apple to Apple.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm creating the iCloud link and just sending an email to myself so I can download it into Premiere from there. But that was the question. So you aren't editing your videos on your phone and then shipping them out. You're going to do everything in Premiere and you're just using airdrop to do it. Got it. Yeah. Okay. I got the question now. And I apologize guys that when David talks, my internet connection is a little poor. So again, I'm at the Tropicana, which I apologize for, for like a million reasons.
--:-- So yes, what I'm doing is recording it on my iPhone and then airdropping it to my Mac. And then I use Premiere Pro to edit them. And that's going to be part of the templated thing. And we'll talk about the reason I template every video is almost exactly the same. Again, if you go to the Rogue Risk YouTube channel, you'll see every video sounds and looks exactly the same, right? I am not trying to be Steven Spielberg. I'm trying to be a successful agency owner. So I don't need it to be super high def with drone shots and panning shots. All that stuff does is distract people. No one cares about your agency or what it looks like or what a drone looks like when it flies over it. No one cares. They want answers to their questions. That's what they want. It's that simple.
--:-- You are just a tool to them. They have a problem: "How do I get workers compensation in Florida?" And they want a solution. And if they have to watch panning drone shots and all this kind of crap and music, all they're going to do is go to the next video. That's all they're going to do. So what I do very simply is I use my phone, I airdrop it to my Mac, and I use Premiere Pro to edit the videos in a template that I've used for almost every single video.
--:-- Now, I do not recommend Premiere Pro just so we're all on the same page. Premiere Pro is a heavy tool. It takes a lot of practice. I've been doing video for 10 years. That's why I use Premiere Pro, just because it was the thing. There just weren't that many options a decade ago. So I don't want you to go out and run out and get Premiere Pro. There will be a heavy learning curve. There are way easier tools. I don't know what they are these days because I just haven't used them. I think like ScreenFlow, there's just lots of easy editing tools. If you templatize your videos the way I'm about to describe them... Yeah, there's one called Filmora, and another one that I hear people using, I think, is native to Apple, and that's GarageBand.
--:-- David Carothers: You hear me? We lose you? Yeah, yeah.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So I'd say, yeah, if that's the tool, that's the tool. I haven't researched beginner editing tools. I would go with a beginner editing tool. You don't need anything fancy, okay?
--:-- So when I do a video and I templatize it, the way I do it is very simple. And it's actually a strategy. I'm going to forget the guy's name. Story Grid. If you Google Story Grid, S-T-O-R-Y-G-R-I-D dot com, there's a very simple formula for telling a story. And I use that exact same formula: beginning hook, middle build, ending payoff. Okay. That's the formula for the video.
--:-- Beginning hook: "Today, we're going to talk about... let me start that again. Today, we're going to answer the question, what is food truck insurance? Let's go." Boom. That's it. That's the beginning hook. Because someone who is wondering what is food truck insurance now knows that what I'm going to do is answer the question, what is food truck insurance?
--:-- I do a very simple, less than seven second logo bumper with free music that I created. I bought the logo bumper, it just takes my logo and moves. And I bought it for $7 on Fiverr. That logo bumper is just for a tiny bit of brand value. And then when we come back, it's: "Hi, my name is Ryan Hanley, founder and president of Rogue Risk, where we do insurance differently, specifically by giving you knowledge and information to make the right insurance decision. So food truck insurance..."
--:-- And I give them, as quick as I can, 60 seconds, 90 seconds. The truth is, talk until you're done adding value. That's really the filter that I use. Talk until you're done adding value. But you want it to be as crisp and clean and punchy as you can.
--:-- I know some of you are going to want to write scripts, and I appreciate that you're insecure about your ability to talk about the product. But you're a professional. Talk like a human about the product. That's what they want. It looks not awesome when people can tell that you're reading off a script. It just does. I can tell when you're reading off a script. You can tell when you're reading off a script. The people who are watching the video can tell you're reading off a script.
--:-- And if you're going to be the gangster, killing commercial producer who writes all the business and knows what you're talking about, but then you need a script? I don't understand why I would choose you. Because what you're saying is, "I'm not confident enough in my own knowledge of the stuff that I'm saying on this video that I got to put it in a script." No.
--:-- And if you're saying, "Well, Ryan, I have funny jokes in there." You're not funny. You're an insurance agent. Get rid of it. Just talk about the coverage. If you have to stop for a second and collect your thoughts, that's fine. If you use "um" and "ah," that's fine. If you don't say exactly what you meant, as long as you're talking in high-level generalities, you're fine. There's no concern. Stop scripting your videos. It is not authentic. It's not human. It sounds terrible. It looks terrible. And I just, please don't.
--:-- Now I say all that, and my good buddy Gordon Coyle, who is one of the best at creating video to produce high-value accounts. Specifically, he goes after D&O and cyber for larger organizations. And he is one of the case studies for you can do this and bring in accounts that make you $10,000, $20,000, $50,000 in revenue. Gordon's the best. I did a podcast with him. So go back into my podcast history and listen to the one I did with Gordon. If you want to learn exactly how he does it. So he scripts his videos. I bust his chops about it all the time. Gordon could have 50 to a hundred more videos online if you didn't have to script them. I personally think just talk.
--:-- "What is food truck insurance?" I'm just using this as an example. Just talk about it. Because you're a professional and you know this. And if the person was sitting across the table from you, you would be banging these answers out and absolutely crushing it. You decided to create a video on this topic. You must know about it. So stop scripting your videos because part of this is they want their question answered. Part of this, they want to trust that you're the solution provider. That is what video is about.
--:-- What video is about at its core, the reason that video works so well, is that people get to build trust with you on their own time. So I go to work all day. I'm doing my thing with my food truck and I'm looking to buy my first or I'm looking to hire my first employee. I'm not going to research that in the middle of the day. I'm doing my food truck thing. I'm driving around and I'm making burgers or whatever. And what I do is I come home at 9 p.m. after a long day and I put the kids to bed and I go, "Shoot, I'm hiring Johnny over here. I think I need workers comp." And then I type "how to get workers comp for food truck." And then a video pops up. And I just want an answer to it. And I want to believe that the person who is delivering that information in that video, that I can trust them.
--:-- And if they're talking like this because they're reading a script and they're trying to be funny, but they're not because they're insurance agents, and they're talking for too long because they're insecure about their answer, then I'm not going to trust that person. And I'm not going to pick them. And I'm going to go to Ryan's video where I talk this fast because this is the way I talk. And they're punchy and they're quick. And I answer the question as simply and concisely as I possibly can. And because I'm being me, maybe there's some "ums" and "ahs." There's been thunder and lightning in the background of my videos. There's been kids stomping on the floor in my videos. I've had a kid come in my basement while I was doing a video and I left it in.
--:-- In the video, if you can find it, I'm not going to tell you which one. In the video, I just go, "Hey, this is what happens when you run an insurance agency work from home." Boom. I kept going with my answer. So that's real life. And maybe you're not comfortable with being quite so authentic. I get that. Maybe you don't want your kid coming in the room. But the idea here is, guys, what people are doing when they watch your videos is they're building trust with you on their own time. So if you aren't you, then you're not building trust. Because we as humans have authenticity filters. We can tell when someone isn't being them, or someone's being too pro, or someone's being too buttoned up.
--:-- So if you're going for Wall Street stockbrokers or something, maybe you do need to wear a jacket and be super stuffy. I don't know. I don't know any Wall Street stockbrokers. But I can't imagine too many industries today in 2022 where the work from home environment and all the crazy stuff that goes on in the workplace now, and how casual everything is, that being super buttoned up, talking like a robot because you're reading a script in a very non-you way, is going to be the best way to attract people. So that's my personal opinion on that.
--:-- All right. So I finish every video. So I've started with my hook: "Hey, today we're going to answer the question, what is food truck insurance?" Simple bumper. I introduce myself very briefly, exactly the same way every time. And then I get to the crux, to the meat and potatoes, to the middle build. Now we get to the ending payoff. The ending payoff in the Story Grid is supposed to be for the person watching the video. The ending payoff for us is our call to action.
--:-- So the ending payoff at the end of every single video, again, you can watch them. I'm talking here. I've delivered all my value. And I say: "If this is the type of relationship that you would like with your insurance professional, then we would love to do business with you. The best way to get ahold of us is to give us a call 518-960-6600. You can text or call. We're in all 50 states, so wherever you are, we'll come to you. You can email us at
[email protected]. You can visit us online at rogerisk.com, or I'm sure there's a button somewhere around this video that I'll let you contact us. Whichever way you choose, we look forward to doing business with you." Bam. Ending payoff. Call to action.
--:-- If you deliver value in your video and you don't tell them what to do, they're not going to call you. These people are dummies. We're all dummies on the internet. We need to be told exactly what to do. So at the end of every video, you can even move it up to the front of the video. You can put your phone number on the video and text if you want. I don't do that because it takes time. And I'm all about just banging videos out and getting them out into the world. But at the end of every single video, I give that same close because I want people to call me.
--:-- So every video is exactly the same. Beginning hook: "Today, we're going to talk about what is food truck insurance." Middle build: I briefly introduce myself and answer the question. And then the ending payoff is tell them what to do if they like me and they need this thing that I just talked about in the video. Every single video, exactly the same. It's how I'm able to bang out eight to ten videos in a clip because they're all exactly the same.
--:-- Then when I go to produce them using my editing software, I already have the logo bumper set up. I put the same logo bumper that I do at the beginning at the end, just like a getaway screen. And I have my beginning hook and I have my middle build and my ending payoff. And I just pop one in, put the thing in, put the middle build in, put the back end, export the video. I don't even listen to the video. I literally just watch where the sound meter is. And I just clip, clip, put the logo bumper in there, clip the front, clip the back, put it in. I don't even watch the video. I don't even listen to the video. Honestly, I don't rewatch them. I just look at where the sound is because I know when I'm talking. And I just clip them, export them, pop the next one in, clip them, export them, pop the next one in. It's just a factory.
--:-- Again, I'm not trying to be Steven Spielberg. I'm trying to get videos out the door. That's why we have 350-some-odd videos on our YouTube channel. We just bang them out. We're just manufacturing content that answers questions for the consumers that we want to work with. That's it. Do not overthink this. Do not try to be Spielberg or whoever your favorite director is. Just don't overthink it. Just get it done.
--:-- Okay. So that is my process in a nutshell. It's not sexy. It's simple. It's straightforward. I don't think about it in a way where this is creative work. This is not my creative work. Podcasts, I do some, I try to write when I can, not as much lately. That's my creative expression. This is not creative expression. We are manufacturing content to get people to find us online and to do business with us.
--:-- Okay. So before I get to how do we actually talk to these people when they call, which is the most important part of all this, I want to briefly explain where I put these videos and why I put them in the places that I do, because it's the last piece of the video strategy.
--:-- So I start every video on YouTube. Every video goes on YouTube. Nice title, nice description. I put a link to our get a quote page, quote.rogerisk.com, in the first four lines of the description box on YouTube. And the reason for that is so they can see it when they're watching the video. If you go below that, then it gets pushed down and they have to hit "read more" before they can click the link. If that doesn't make sense, I can go back to it or just put it in the chat. But basically, when you're writing the description, if you're not in the first four lines of writing the description, and if you put the link below that, then they don't see it when they watch the video. They have to click the "read more" button, expand the description to see the link. I want the link right there. So if they're watching that video and they're like, "Oh my God, this guy is brilliant. I can't wait to buy insurance from him," I want to make it easy for them to click that link and come over to the get a quote page.
--:-- I use a tool called VidIQ. It's like $20 a month or whatever, and it helps me with the keywords. Because keywords on YouTube still matter. They matter from a search perspective, but they also matter from a related video standpoint. We could get deeper into that, I don't want to today. We could do a whole thing on YouTube SEO. But I use a tool called VidIQ to get my keywords. I put an end screen on it. And I put other related videos that kind of pop up. If you watch a YouTube video, they kind of pop up up here. People can click on those and go. And when you have a thousand subscribers and 4,000 hours watched, which takes a lot of work, you can then put a link in. So I can now put a link in that little gray bar that comes out. I can put a link in there to get a quote, which people are using too. So that's kind of upped our quote amount. But that's all tactical stuff.
--:-- I start on YouTube. Then I use Vidyard to host our videos. For a long time, I did not. It is not a requirement. Please. It's an expensive tool. I sold my business, I got a little more cash in the business. I'm not saying use Vidyard. It's an awesome tool if you have the money and are trying to go really gangster, but wait on that until you get 50, 75 videos and you're committed to a video strategy. If you're not committed to a video strategy yet, do not pay for that tool. Okay. We're obviously committed to a video strategy.
--:-- So what I would recommend is then take that YouTube video and embed it in a blog post. We use Rev.com. So I get the video transcribed. I put the video embedded on our website. I take the transcription, I copy and paste it into the blog post, I kind of make it look nicer. Now I have a video and I have a blog post. Next thing I do. So basically, video goes out, share the video. The next thing I do is I create the blog post about a week later. Blog post then gets shared. And then a week or two after that, I natively upload the video, meaning I upload the video to say LinkedIn or whatever. Hopefully at this point you'll understand what native upload means. And then I share that video natively in social media.
--:-- So I basically got three weeks of shared content over one video. There's all kinds of other chop and share strategies that I know David uses. He does a whole bunch of, he does a really good job with it with the Killing Commercial stuff. I'm not going to get too deep into that. But that's our basic strategy. One video, three shares out into the world. Once on YouTube, once on our website, once natively in social media. And that's how we get the content out there. So that's that.
--:-- Okay. So let's say you're doing all that and you're absolutely crushing it. You're just dominating. You're awesome, dynamic, and people start... what's going to happen is, surprisingly, people are going to start contacting you. And here's how you're going to mess up: you're going to treat them like referrals.
--:-- Guys, I don't know how to describe this to you. The people who contact you randomly or organically online are not referrals. I know we all love referrals. I know we're all awesome at referrals. I get it. Everybody loves referrals. And we love referrals because we're all super lazy. Referrals are easy. We get referred to somebody. They already like us. They already trust us. Our golfing buddy told their best friend they need to do business with us. Referrals are awesome.
--:-- When people call you organically online, they are not referrals. They don't know you. They don't like you. They may have a small modicum of trust because they watched a video of you. They certainly are hoping you have the answer to whatever question they have. But they're not a referral. So what I mean by that is we cannot treat them the same way that we treat referrals when they call us.
--:-- What you're going to want to do is you're going to want to immediately jump into info gathering. You're going to immediately want to jump into sell mode. But it can't work that way. These people don't trust you enough for you to jump immediately into sales mode. You can't just start going... you know, like with a referral, you guys are all assuming that they're just going to do business with you. And I know you're all going, "No, oh, that's not what we do, Ryan. We do it differently. We're amazing. Our process is different." No, you all just assume the person is going to do business with you. You jump into info gathering mode and then you go right into insurance person. Can't do that with an inbound organic opportunity because that person doesn't trust you yet. They trust you enough to contact you. That's step one. They do not trust you yet.
--:-- When I was at TrustedChoice.com, we started doing a thing before I left where we started recording all the phone calls that come in. When we referred somebody in, we would record that phone call. And I get to listen to insurance agents around the country answer the phone to inbound organic leads. And as an industry, we're terrible. We're just awful at it because we immediately go into filtering them down to, "Are they this perfect account?" None of them are going to be perfect. If you take on this strategy and you go video, most of them are not going to be perfect. They're going to have problems.
--:-- So what I mean by that is, people who are having an awesome time with their insurance and their insurance agent don't go onto YouTube and search for how to solve the problem that I have with my insurance. They don't do that. They just call their insurance agent, which is probably you guys, since you're all here and most likely awesome at this.
--:-- So here's the deal. You need to treat them like what they are. They have a problem. Their problem is: "I just hired my first employee." Their problem is: "I just bought my first commercial vehicle." "I'm starting a new business." "My agent won't get back to me." The number of people who contact us because independent insurance agents are terrible at responding quickly to COI requests will blow your mind. It's just amazing. I did a whole series of videos on fast COI delivery because it's such a huge reason why people reach out to us.
--:-- People reach out to us because they've had a really terrible experience with direct writers, like Next. Next is one of our biggest referral sources. I actually love Next because if it wasn't for Next, we wouldn't do as much business as we do. So basically, people go to Next, have a terrible experience, and then come to us. Let's see, why else do they call us? They had a really bad claim. Their premiums went up. A big one is: "I can't get ahold of my agent." We get a lot of "I can't get ahold of my agent."
--:-- So they're coming to you with a problem. They're always coming to you with a problem. They didn't go to YouTube because everything was awesome. And this is my point. When you get a referral, most likely everything is awesome. And someone is just coming to you because you're a better option or you're part of the country club or whatever. You go line dancing with them on Tuesday nights. It's easy. There's not a problem. And if you're going to take on a video strategy, people with problems are going to call you. So you've got to change your mindset.
--:-- So basically, when someone calls me, here's how I answer the phone: "Hey, this is Ryan from Rogue Risk." Or "This is David from wherever." "Hey, Dave, what's going on?" And then I just let them talk. Or "How can I help? What's happening?" Just a simple, casual, open-ended question. And then I just let them talk. And here's what they'll do: they'll explain everything to me. And with friendly inflection in your voice when you do it. My standard is, believe it or not, I actually answer the phone every now and again by accident. And my standard is: "Hey, good to hear from you. What's going on in your world?" That's it. Now they're going to tell you everything you need to know. And you're lighthearted. You're friendly. You're immediately building trust. You're not robotic at all.
--:-- David Carothers: Yeah. David, I love that. I actually love that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'll tell you the one I use the most is: "How can I help?" "Hey, this is Ryan from Rogue Risk. How can I help?" That's it. And they will literally tell you everything. Now, granted, sometimes the stuff they tell you, you're like, "I don't really want to deal with this person." And that's perfectly fine. But most of the time, it's a very specific problem.
--:-- "Hey, Ryan, I just hired my first employee. I'm a landscaper. I don't know. I'm pretty sure I need workers comp." That's a really common one. "Pretty sure we need workers comp." And I'll be like, "Okay, well, hey, what state are you in? You know what, man? You do need workers comp. Here's the good news: we're gonna get you squared."
--:-- That is my killer line: "We're gonna get you squared." That's what I say to them as soon after they've talked and I've decided mentally this is a problem we can actually solve. I don't want to chase rabbits. But if this is a problem I can actually solve, I just say to them: "Hey, Dave, I can get you squared. Don't worry. We got you. Whether it's me or one of my team members, we got you. Don't worry about it. We got you."
--:-- Okay. Cool. I have just... that person now goes... I've heard them take these big... any of you do hot yoga? You do that cleansing exhale? I've heard them do that cleansing exhale on the phone because they went to YouTube because they were scared and frustrated. They had a problem. And some random guy in upstate New York just said, "I got you. You're good. Don't worry. Whatever you were worried about, you don't have to worry about it anymore. I got you."
--:-- That's it. I listened to them and then I told them that they were good. And they're fine. So now they're not going to call anybody else. They're good. Nobody wants to shop insurance, guys. Nobody. If you're looking for an accountant, you don't call seven accountants. You just want to call one accountant and have that be the one. So it's the same thing with us. Once you tell them that you got them, they're yours.
--:-- Now, you're not done yet though. You're not done. Now you need to properly set expectations for what's going to happen during the process, because you are still a random voice on the phone. "Dave, I got you squared. Okay, David, you don't have to worry about it, man. I got you squared. Cool. Okay, so here's what happens next. I got to get some info from you. All right. The info that I need is so that I can go out to the market and shop your insurance with the carriers that I have. I have a good idea of the carriers that I'm going to use, but there's some things that I need. And if I don't have it, I can't get you pricing. Okay."
--:-- "When are you looking to get this insurance?" If you don't ask this question, you will hate inbound marketing. You have to ask: "When do I need this insurance?" Because if they say, "Well, I'm thinking about hiring them like in April," I'm going to say: "Hey, David, thanks for the call, bud. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to put a little note in my system and I'm going to call you like in March. Because right now, nothing I tell you means anything because April is a long time from now. So I appreciate the call. We absolutely have you squared. I'm going to reach out in March. And if you're still hiring Johnny, we're good. Okay."
--:-- The reason for that is when you use video, a lot of times you're getting top-of-funnel shoppers. Top-of-funnel shoppers means they're just kind of figuring things out. That doesn't mean they're bad leads. A lot of people will toss them on the ground: "Oh, that's a bad lead. The internet's the worst." No, they're at the beginning of their journey. These are legitimate people, legitimate business people who have a problem. The problem for you is that person is not ready today. So just say, "Hey, you're good, man. We'll talk March." Okay. Awesome.
--:-- And this is why having a drip campaign or an AgencyZoom or a Better Agency or whatever you use is so important. A reminder tool. Because then you just go, "Hey, you're good, man. We'll talk March."
--:-- If they say, "Hey, Ryan, you know what, I really want to get them hired by October. We're recording this in September." Okay, great. No problem. We can get that done. Okay. And then I say to them, I've gathered the information. I'm kind of skipping some. So key is: let them talk, tell them you got them, ask them when they need the business. And then the last piece is finishing the expectations.
--:-- So what I'll say to them is: "Okay, David, I've got everything I need here. Here's the deal, man. I'm going to go out and shop this to my carriers. If I come back with a reasonable time, you know, when you need this by, right? Oh, I need it tomorrow. Okay, great. If I come back with rates and everything and a proposal by tomorrow when you said you needed it, are we good to do business? Like, are we going to do business together?" Don't take this verbatim, but this is basically the concept. "Are we good?"
--:-- "Yeah, Ryan. Hey, man, I just want to get this done."
--:-- "AWesome. Awesome. Here's what happens next. I'm going to go out and do my thing. I'm going to come up with my best recommendation for what I think your workers comp should be. You're then going to receive an email from me. That email is going to have three parts. It's going to have a basic intro. I'm just going to tell you what's happening. It's going to have a video in it where I break down exactly why I chose the company that I chose and the rates and everything. And then I'm going to have the carrier proposal. What I actually get from the carrier is going to be attached to the email. I'm going to send that over to you. I'm going to be able to see when you watch that video. And the reason for that is I want you to have all the info I have. David, I hate when people just drop stuff on me like a used car salesman. I'm just going to send you everything I have. So when we get back on the phone, you know everything I know, we can have a productive conversation. How's that sound?"
--:-- "That sounds amazing."
--:-- "All right, dude, have a great day. Peace."
--:-- Now I go do my thing. I put my video proposal together. I send out my email. Guess what they don't want?
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): They don't want a phone call. They don't want a phone call. I just gave them everything I had. I've just been completely transparent. I just hit on the expectations that I sent and I did it exactly the way that I said I was going to do it.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): You know what we get? 89% of the time, a closed sale with no follow-up phone call. The no follow-up phone call isn't 80% of the time, but 89% of the time when you use a video proposal on an inbound lead, it closes 89% of the time. That's exactly how we do it. That is our process to a T. And they just respond, "Hey, this looks great, man. Let's do it." Okay. When you send them the doc, you sign and got a new customer.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Last topic on this, last concept on this particular topic. Do not try to round out the whole account. Do not try to round out the whole account. That is going to blow your freaking mind. Some of you, there's your—remember that, what was that, Jet.com? Like blue smoke is coming out of your head. Do not try to round out the whole account. They didn't call you to round out the whole account. They called you because they have a problem. Problems: workers comp, commercial auto. Sorry, my allergies are starting to kill me after an hour of talking. They called you because they need a comp, they needed fast certificates, whatever their problem is. Solve the problem. Solve the problem.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Once they're your client, go back in and round out the account. Get—you know, if it's comp, get the BOP, get the auto, you know, upsell, cross-sell, do your insurance agent thing. But in the moment, in this transaction, solve the problem. If you start trying to round out accounts, it's going to take too long. They're going to start to think, "I called this guy for comp and he's freaking trying to sell me all this stuff. I'm just going someplace else." That's what they're going to do. Because if you've ever called somebody when you had a problem and all of a sudden they try to sell you a whole bunch of other stuff, it feels kind of weird and smarmy. And no one wants to do business with someone who's smarmy, right?
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I get it. You only do full package accounts because you're a professional agency and you've been around for 100 years. I'm just telling you, with inbound, it won't work. If you do that with inbound, it won't work. It doesn't matter how big the account is. Solve the problem. Go back and round out the account. That's it. That's the deal, man.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I timed that water break perfectly. All right, everybody, Hanley is wrapped up. I've been answering questions in the Q&A as we have been going. Just want to make sure nobody has any questions.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): The one thing I want to go back and talk about really quick, only because I know there are people on here who probably don't know what the native player is in the social platforms. It's literally when you upload your video directly to LinkedIn or directly to Facebook, as opposed to uploading it to YouTube or Vimeo and sharing the link. There are all kinds of schools of thought on this process. I just watched Michael Jans put some long-form piece of content out in the last couple of weeks that says all of the rubbish that you hear people talking about for reach on LinkedIn is exactly that. None of it matters. If you write the right content, it's going to get to people.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I'm going to push back and say that's 100% not true. I can tell you because I have tested this stuff—whether it be text-only posts, posts with an image, posts with a video, using auto schedulers, sharing links, all of that. And I can tell you, if you want your stuff to have the most reach possible for the video portion, you got to get it in the native player. The way I do it is I will upload it initially to the native player. And then for the two weeks in the trail, we will share it with a brief snippet of the video and a link back to the full video on the YouTube channel. But you got to get it in the native player. And that's what the native player is.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): So Ryan, I know you're on the road, man. I know you're out at ITC. You're getting ready to shake hands, kiss babies, and run that thing. I appreciate you taking an hour out of your time to come join us today. And actually, this was like the perfect segue into Mr. Lynn Jill, so.
--:-- David Carothers: Hey, pleasure, man.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: For you, always. For the Killing Commercial community, whatever you guys need. Love you guys. You're good.
--:-- David Carothers: All right, brother. Take care, man. Thanks.
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