RHS 161 - Chris Cline on Death by Overcomplicating Insurance

Host: Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. We have an absolutely tremendous episode for you, a conversation with Chris Klein, the executive director of ACT, the Agents Council for Technology, and all around absolutely tremendous dude. One of my favorite people in the industry, and one of my favorite people in life.

Host: Chris and I have wonderful conversations about all different kinds of topics, most of which have nothing to do with insurance. But since our backgrounds are so different, yet we think very much alike, we always have these dynamic conversations about what's going on in our space. Success and what it looks like. Not just the shallow tactical things, but the deep strategic thoughts, conversations, cultural issues inside of businesses, leadership, and the dynamics of personal behavior. They're always awesome conversations that I enjoy.

Host: This conversation admittedly starts a little slow as we get into the meat and potatoes. But once we do, I think you're absolutely going to love it. We talk about why we are overcomplicating insurance and why now more than ever is a time to simplify, to dial in, and to really attack advanced leadership tactics. We talk about why we have to be leaders of ourselves and of our businesses. Whether you are an actual leader in your business or not, you are a leader of your own career, of your own life, of your family. It's time to think about these things in a deeper way.

Host: I'd also encourage you to stick around because at the end, Chris has released his very first single. Chris is a musician and artist. You'll get to listen to that at the end of the show. You can also find it on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, iTunes, all the places where music is. Instead of the normal outro, you're going to hear Chris's new song, "Let's Go For A Ride." So with that, let's get on to Chris.

Host: One quick thing before we get there. I'm relaunching a branded newsletter that I had for a while and set away. We're relaunching Finding Peak. Finding Peak was a concept around professional development, growth, personal development, and how to be the best version of ourselves. Things that I struggle with, things that have been successful, things that I learned. I want to share these topics with you because the way I operate is always trying to iterate that James Altucher kind of 1% better, choose yourself mentality. I'm always trying to find little tips, little hacks. I'm always developing different mentalities. I'm always trying to mature into what can help me be the most successful version of me. As a dad, as a partner, as a leader, as a salesperson, as a baseball coach, all these things.

Host: I want to continue to share that journey with you. Starting Rogue two and a half years ago, I just didn't have the time for it. But as we evolve as a business, I'm starting to have these moments where I can create a little more and share some of these experiences with you. Hopefully help the listeners to this show, members of our industry, members of the SIA ecosystem and network of families. It's not specific to SIA, but in general, I want to help the people in our world who think the way that we do. I want to help them and share some of these stories.

Host: If you're interested in any of that, go to findingpeak.com. That's F-I-N-D-I-N-G-P-E-A-K.com. That's going to be the name of the newsletter. We have about 1,000 subscribers today, and hopefully we're going to grow that and just continue to share. Go check it out. You'll get updates from the show, updates from people who are on the show, updates on books, on tactics, and articles, videos, and different pieces of audio that I create. Hopefully it will help you in your own journey of peak performance. So I'm relaunching that brand, kind of excited about that. Go to FindingPeak.com if you want to subscribe. Otherwise, I love you for listening to the show. Let's get on to one of my absolute favorites, Chris Klein.

[Music transition]

Host: Dude.

Chris Cline: Panda, man. Mash reruns. What mash reruns? What? You going creeper on me? You going no video or what?

Host: Oh, I'm not on video. No, not intended.

Chris Cline: Oh, there he is. What's up, dude? This is it. This is the deal. This is the one. Miserable rainy weather out there. I don't know, it's just that time of year. At least it's not freezing out.

Host: It is not freezing here. It's like 60. It is also rainy, but it's November 1st and it's 60 degrees out. It's crazy. I'll take it.

Chris Cline: Yeah, I was looking back. I guess that's one of the weird things about these memories that pop up on social media. We've had some pretty cold days by now in recent years. So all the running I'm trying to get done, it's been good.

Host: Last night was obviously Halloween. My kids are still young enough that they do Halloween. I don't know if your son does. Last year trick or treating, we walked with the same families every year. We were talking about how we only made it to this one corner of the neighborhood because it was so cold and windy. Everyone was so miserable that we kind of looked around the bend at the house and said, let's just head back. This year we went farther down the neighborhood just because it was beautiful out. It is interesting how much the weather impacts our life.

Chris Cline: One of my favorite quotes is from Nuke LaLoosh in the movie Bull Durham. At the very end, the woman is interviewing him. He's finally in the big leagues. He's ripping off all these cliches that Crash Davis had taught him. At the end, he says one that Crash hadn't. He says, "Baseball's a great game. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes it rains." It's a silly movie and a silly quote, but that quote has always stuck in my mind. Not because of the weather aspect, but because basically what it says is if you love what you do, it's just another day. You show up and play baseball every day. That's what you do. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes it rains. But you play baseball every day.

Host: When you were a kid playing Little League, the most heartbreaking thing in the world was a rainout. You would have played in the rain and the mud because you loved what you did. You were willing to endure all that. It kind of stinks that games get canceled for rain now because it's not perfectly manicured. In the bicycle world that I always did, as a kid, who cares if it rains? We'll just get muddy. It's fun. There's always the other side of the coin, I guess.

Chris Cline: Wild.

Host: This year has been an interesting year for me as a human. I've had to reflect and grow. Even with this podcast, I've been off and on. You're actually going to be the first interview of a relaunch of the podcast. I'm going to double into it a little bit more, put a little more work and effort into this venue. I've gotten Rogue to the point where I'm not implementing every strategy anymore. I can research, discuss, strategize, and then test different things in different departments in the business and help it grow without everything having to be me. That kind of crushes the researching and discussion part.

Host: My point in saying all that is, as we mature, you really have one of two options. When you're young, it's all passion, it's all go. You can be pissed that your kid plays video games all the time, but they're passionate about it. They love it. That's what they're into. I just read something by James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits. He's done a ton of research lately on kids playing video games. What they've found is that kids who play three hours or under of video games actually have improved analytical skills in certain areas of their life. Specifically things like problem solving, math, and narratives and storytelling. They can find inconsistencies in narratives because they're basically playing out these worlds over and over again.

Host: My long way of saying this is, I think as we get older, we become wusses. We get to these places where everything needs to be perfect. The perfect situation, the perfect setting. I'm not going to take that job unless every one of my peers and my mom and every book I read and every news article says that this is right where I should be. I wanted to make $50,000 a year, but this is only 47, so no, I'm not going to do it. Instead of sucking it up and just getting after it. I just come back to that a lot. I've also tried to hire a lot of people this year. If you want to get a master's degree in psychology, try to hire people. Woof.

Chris Cline: You said a lot. The whole nature of it is so weird. People older than us — I've got a decade on you, right? — might say there's a wussification of youth. Yet I find myself combating this a lot. As people age, the amount of responsibility you objectively have, but also keep upon yourself, naturally makes you more conservative. I have zero interest in talking politics ever in my life if I can avoid it. But you see that in the way politics works. It's fascinating.

Chris Cline: I'd love to read that book about kids with boundaries. The video game thing is not as bad as it seems. You see it all the time: these kids today, they're on their phone. I think back to when I was a kid. I was running around. I never really had a Game Boy, but kids had Game Boys, they had a Walkman, they had the TV. Every single thing in the world is now on one device. So it's not so much about being on the phone. It's about what is being done there. My son doesn't watch a lot of TV, but he consumes legit content. He loves dinosaurs and science and biology type stuff. He's watching that stuff on his phone. So he's on his phone, but 20 years ago, he just would have been curled up in a ball on the sofa. Or listening to music. It's all about context and the journey over time.

Host: My kids are obviously playing video games. I let them play more video games than their mom does. I've done a lot of research on it. I don't just let them play because I'm a lazy parent. I let them play because I read about stuff. There's always a counter argument to this. Someone listening might say, "They rot your cortex and they're all going to be dummies and zombies." But there is research I found as well. I can't remember where I read this, but it's about how we've sterilized our world. Kids don't play outside. Not because of video games, but because of helicopter parents. People don't play outside because they watch the news and some kid in some town they've never heard of had something happen to them. So they assume it's going to happen in their backyard and they don't let their kids run around the neighborhood.

Host: What do kids want to do? Explore, get in trouble, learn things. They're in full sensory mode. "What is this? What happens here? If I do this, if I jump off this, if I break this, if I whack this tree with this stick, what happens?" That's the world we all romanticize. Yet we don't allow our children to play in that world anymore. So these kids are seven, eight, nine, ten, in full exploration mode. All they want to do is bump into things, try things, run around, get hurt, play football. But instead we say, "No, you will sit in the house. I will know where you are at all times. I'm going to put this device on your leg so I can track it on my phone. You need to tap that device every 30 minutes so I know you're okay. Then I will give you your 30 minutes of tech time. Then you're going to go for two hours to baseball. Here's what you're going to do." These kids don't get to explore anymore.

Host: When I watch my son play video games, that's his explore time. I live in an apartment building. I'm bitching about this, yet I will not allow him to go play out in the ditch. There's a ditch next to my apartment building. That's the only patch of grass. It's where we play football and baseball. It crushes my soul as a parent that my kids play in a ditch. I don't want them out there because there are a lot of wackos that live in this apartment complex. I get nervous. He's still just eight. But at the same time, all he wants to do is go explore and I won't let him. So I let him play video games. It's exploration. It's a chance for their mind to try new things and jump off of stuff and die in the game. You can't do that in real life. Not that I want him jumping off things and dying, but we don't let them explore as much. This is their chance to explore. This is how they try new things and test stuff. I don't know that I'm fully bought into this concept yet, but there's something to it.

Chris Cline: God, we could spend hours on this. People dedicate their lives to these studies about what's good and bad. How do you let kids be kids? How do you know an oven is hot unless you burn your hand once in a while? Your example of hitting trees with sticks — will it work, or is it going to recoil and you're going to go to school with a gash across your forehead? That was kind of cool because little Chrissy liked it when you came to school with a cut on your head. I don't know, man. It's fascinating. How do you keep that spirit as you get older?

Chris Cline: We talk about it a lot. How do you stay in a world where you're continually focused on this whole continual learning thing as a catchphrase? It's worse than that. It's a little bit of risk. It's putting yourself out there. What's the new hot? Paris Hilton hot? Is Paris Hilton still who we're referencing as the hot person of today? I feel like I don't know. Maybe it's Kaley Cuoco? Did I just date myself? Cindy Crawford? There we go.

[Both laugh]

Chris Cline: It's fascinating to think about pushing yourself and taking things that are not risky, but that do get you outside your comfort zone a little bit. I've been thinking about that a lot. The creative process. What are things that you allow — the raising of the kids, the career, all the things you have to deal with in your personal life — you allow it to suppress some of that creativeness. I think everybody has it. Some things I've been trying to do lately, I know I've shared this with you for like three years: I'm going to write a book. All the notes are here. But why haven't I sat down and started to write the thing? I've been trying to figure out how to play music. I wrote a song and released the damn thing. That was scarier than anything I've done professionally. Maybe four people have listened to it. I don't even care. It was the process.

Chris Cline: When I was in school, I was a fine art major in college. The quintessential art kid with the goofy hair and the funky clothes, just trying to figure things out. It was deeply rewarding. What was going on with people in that world is that they really exposed their passions and the things they were dealing with internally. How does that all come together in the creative process? It hit me recently. Comedians are tortured souls or something like that, which is perhaps overly dramatic. But there's something to allowing that to come out in a somewhat controlled way, just to not let it fester and end up with simple regrets.

Host: A lot of my thinking on this particular topic has come out of a book I'm reading called Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. If anyone wants to expand their mental horizons, take on this particular book. It's 400 pages. It's thick. There are words in it. According to Grammarly, my vocabulary is wider than 98% of the people that use Grammarly. I have probably looked up 50 words. It's wild how smart and deep and twisting this is.

Host: The concept is really interesting. He calls it the triad. People, systems, communities — take any entity you could wrap your head around. I think about this not from a country basis or a community basis, but I've been running what he's saying through the frame of my company, Rogue, and what we're trying to do, and then my own personal life. Basically, you can be fragile, you can be robust, or you can be antifragile. The definition of antifragile, broad stroking here, is you benefit from downside with infinite benefit from upside. No matter what happens, you can't be hurt. Some of this is frame of reference, how you position your mental, but some of it is also very much how you position your life and the things that you do.

Host: This is also the guy who wrote The Black Swan. I just read another book by him called — it's going to kill me — Skin in the Game. The long and short of that book is never do business with someone who is unwilling to put skin in the game. He uses examples like politicians. For the most part, politicians are the worst version of our society. No A-plus players are becoming politicians. All these people we debate as being awesome, no matter what side you're on, we're basically dealing with C-plus and B-minus players. He talks about how so much of political systems, the banking system, these different things, are fragile, non-skin-in-the-game systems. People are able to re-benefit without having to take any of the downside.

Host: Look at something like the insurance industry. While I'd say we probably are more in the robust category, if you can position your career to work in the insurance industry and develop world-class sales skills, you're creating what can be considered an antifragile career. We're a very inflation-proof industry. We are ubiquitous throughout every other ancillary industry that exists in the country. Many of our products are mandated. If you can sell that product, you'd be hard-pressed to find a black swan event outside of the apocalypse where you can't have a job that you can sustain and get by. Being antifragile is about surviving.

Host: A big part of his pitch, and this is kind of where I position my mind, is that too often we position our lives to maximize the current moment without consideration for what the downside could be in certain situations. We just assume certain things can't happen. My company can't go out of business. My department can't be let go. My spouse will never cheat on me. I can never get sick. We don't consider these things coming down the pipe. We've created all these fragilities in our lives because we assume what we're spoon-fed is the appropriate life to live, the best life. In truth, what you're really doing is placating entire industries set up to maximize benefit from you without any negative impact to them.

Host: It's very heady. I still don't have my brain fully wrapped around it. But it's really made me start to think about how I position myself in the world, the skills I want to accumulate, the books I read, and how I want to set up my business and ultimately my career so that I can sustain personally and as an organization. How often are we thinking about concepts this deep? Should we do it more often? Do we just allow life to flow over us and not consider all the decisions we're making day to day?

Chris Cline: There's a lot inside all of that. As you were explaining that book, I was scribbling. There's so much that goes deep down into the evolutionary science of the brain and the way the brain works. It comes all the way down to some of the fight or flight things and how the brain normalizes things and keeps us focused. There are reasons why quotes like "The most common cause of failure is sacrificing what you want most for what you want now" exist. Under cheesy cliches, there are psychological, deep evolutionary reasons. Why do we overeat on candy? Because there's sustainability and availability. There's something about survival that seems to take over. That shows up everywhere in every aspect of life, whether somebody is thinking about it consciously or not.

Chris Cline: When you read the books, it's easier to wrap your head around that and see whatever examples are in it. But when you carry that all the way out into the business world or these deep complex systems, they're all based on a standard set of principles around the evolutionary way the brain works.

Host: That's one of the things I took from this particular book, which I cannot recommend enough, although you will hate me while you're reading it. I read for 25 minutes before I jumped on the podcast and I got through maybe 10 pages. It's heavy. But one of the things he talks about a lot, especially at the beginning, is how complex systems tend to be more fragile. We need to really fight our urge, which seemingly is natural, to make things more complex than they need to be.

Host: Antifragile systems tend to be the simplest version of whatever that system can be and still be successful. The more parts you have, the more people you have, the more everything you have, the more opportunities you have for some event — whether normal or black swan, a black swan being an event you can't see coming that has devastating effects on a system — the more you can't see these things coming. They become blind spots. They become obstacles.

Host: One of the things I'm working on with Rogue, we're not nearly there, is how do we simplify process? How do we simplify systems? You don't need some 30-point sales script. You don't need complex follow-up sequences of 17 different touches. You don't need that stuff. All that stuff does is lend you to some change in the texting notifications. Now 15 of your 17 points you just can't send out anymore. Now you're screwed.

Host: And all this stuff. And it's like, get to the simplest version of what allows you to be successful and develop the skills in those simple systems that allow you to be the most successful. Ultimately, you're creating a process that allows you to navigate and move through these events versus them wrecking something and having devastating effects on you. Simple is hard. Simple is really, really hard. It's also incredibly uninteresting. When you talk about simple concepts, people are like, "I'm not willing to pay for simple. Simple's too easy." You look at a lot of speakers, they all have these five points here in the triangle of this and the work through this thing and all these touch points. I feel like the more we can focus on simple systems, the more we can get — I don't want to say get back to basics, because simple doesn't necessarily mean basic — I feel like that's the path to success in what is increasingly becoming an overcomplicated world with so many voices that it becomes hard to manage. We open ourselves up to a lot of vulnerabilities.

Chris Cline: It's interesting. Yeah. So I'm guessing the book will eventually get there, or at least there'll be some commentary on that. I think about this a lot too. The proverbial way, but also probably the literal we too. I think even just inside the space where you and I play, this industry, what's the future of the industry look like and how does tech adoption look, all that kind of stuff — which I'm probably boring in the grand scheme of things — but we overthink it. We just have this natural tendency to make things really complex. We just become devoid of fundamentals, and volume and conviction become a proxy for accuracy in this dynamic. It seems counterintuitive, but I find myself having that conversation more and more.

Host: Not to get too insurancy here, but that was really the genesis of that article I wrote in IA Magazine. Slow down. Slow down to speed up. We're making stuff too complex. Billy Williams has that concept — there's only however many ways you want to build it, there's only like 21 or whatever number it is. There's only so many processes in an independent agency. To your point, just make them as simple, as efficient as possible. I'm a firm believer the average customer doesn't want the number of interactions that we're trying to create. We really are making this complex, and that's in our industry and that's in our lives. I don't know what that tendency is because it's counter to what we just talked about, which is the brain's natural tendency to want to sort of set aside the trivial stuff that doesn't allow you to either fight or flight. There's a reason why we all see things differently — our brains are processing what's in front of us differently based on the experiences we've had. You and I could be in the same room and see very different things, but the core fundamental things, I think we would see. It's just, how do you let that stuff that sits in the margins, the complex stuff, the subconscious level stuff, minimize the interpretation of laziness?

Chris Cline: I think the reason we like overcomplicated things is we're lazy. What I mean by that is, it permits procrastination or decision-making. It's an excuse mechanism. It's like, "I didn't buy her 10-point strategy," or "I did this, I bought this course, but it's never put into place," or "I did all these things and it didn't yield this result." How about the Rogue Risk lead generation strategy is the same freaking strategy that I've been using since 2009. Nothing has changed. I use a simple keyword research tool to find keywords that I then create videos about, that I then turn into blog posts, that I then share on social media. I have done that simple process over and over and over and over again for more than a decade. It drives my business forward today. It's been the catalyst for every bit of success that I've had in the insurance industry as a practitioner. I've looked at LinkedIn strategies and lead buying strategies and follow-up strategies and all this fancy, crazy stuff — start a local podcast, which is not a bad idea — but for me, it's simple. It's repeatable. It's not sexy.

[Chris Cline continues]

Chris Cline: I hired this young girl to come do marketing for us. She's a marketing major at a local college. I explained to her our process, and I could tell she looked at me and she didn't say it — she's nice and she's working hard and she's going to be good — but I could tell when she first looked at me, that was it. That was her look like, "That's it? That's what you do? That's the whole thing?" I was like, "That's how we get 300 leads a month right there. That's the whole secret." I just rinse and repeat. I am okay with simple, basic, repeatable processes that yield results. I don't need the new, good, granted. I've tried them all. I've made all the mistakes. This is a learned thing. This is not intrinsic to me. I didn't wake up with this knowledge. This is 40-year-old scarred, beaten, stepped on, sued, fired, hated, shamed — that version of me, now battle tested, can stand here and say, as soon as something feels complex to me, I basically just write it off. If I'm at a conference or I'm reading an article or I'm listening to a podcast and something starts to feel complex, I'm like, "Nah, I'm good. Don't need that. That's way too difficult." The only things that work long-term are repeatable and simple. If it's not repeatable and simple, it has no chance of success. The third phase is, does that repeatable and simple process yield results? But if it's not repeatable and simple, there's no way to get consistent long-term results because you'll give up, or something will change. I didn't understand this term at the time, but you're essentially building fragility into the process because there's so many steps or so much complication. This is a major move that I've made in my own career and in my leadership specifically over the last year. It's yielding results. It allows us to measure and be successful, but it's not sexy. No one wants to hear about that. No one wants to hear that one simple process done repeatedly into monotony has been the secret to our success. No one gives a shit because none of them have done it. I've told them for 13 years, they don't care. I can tell you empirically, no one gives a —

Host: Well, it's not the shiny new toy. To your point, it is not sexy and romantic. It takes a relentless commitment to execution too. Even with all that you just said and what you empirically know about your process, I'm certain you can look back and say the way you're executing and the tools you use might have evolved, but the recipe is the same. You're just committed to it. But that's not cool for some people. People are being sold stuff all day long. The cake mix that you're using every day that you like and you enjoy isn't good anymore — it's out of date. That level of — I feel horrible for agents everywhere. It's another conversation we have. In the spirit of all that, just because somebody wants to sell you something or they have identified a friction point doesn't mean it's worth solving for or spending the time, effort, and energy. I was beginning a little bit again to insurance here, but I was really looking at the market share data and universe study. Then you start to think about the amount of tech adoption. A simple one — one of the hot buzz things right now in our industry is commercialized comparative rating. You and I both have personal friends that own fantastic firms that are doing that. But adoption is still very, very low at the agency count level. By some accounts as low as like seven or eight percent, maybe as high as 25 percent.

Chris Cline: I can't wait for you to finish because I have an entire thought process on this. I'm chomping at the bit, not to interrupt you.

Host: Please keep going.

Chris Cline: My ADD is firing off the hook right now because it's so early in the morning. But I had to say that. Keep going.

Host: I'd come back and say, how much of the market is controlled by the firms that have adopted it? But why are we not — and now I got derailed on my whole thought process on why we're not adopting it. I think the way our industry is set up, it's not a requisite to success for 70 percent of the agencies in the middle of Elkhart. Not yet, perhaps. So man, I got completely lost on my thought there. Sorry.

Chris Cline: I don't know, it'll come back.

Host: I mean, that's all me. I'll come back or I conclude that it was a worthless thought. But there was something where I was going down this path — like, why isn't the adoption there? It's not a reluctance to change.

Chris Cline: I'm going to tell you my thought on this so I can get this out of my face and stop interrupting you like a jack. They're not necessary. They're not necessary. Doesn't mean they don't add value if you can build the right process around them. They certainly do. But again, I think you don't need that. Dude, I did a video the other day just on a whim. I was walking a couple weeks ago. I just got done with calls with two different carriers who had told me that their UX was this. I basically told them, "Your user experience is a dumpster fire. It's absolutely terrible." They're like, "Well, why aren't you writing more business?" I said, "Because look how freaking hard it is to use your system. You got this little technical hang up and you won't open up states unless we have a piece of business that we're going to write there. Why would my team stop what they're doing and send you our license, even though I've told you 400 times that we're licensed in all 50 states, and then have you open up the state and then go back into quote? They've already moved on. They're not going to do that." All these little UX things. So I'm having this frustrating day, I go for a walk, and I did this video. The title of it was "Maybe We Should All Just Be Hartford Captives." This thing went a little viral, both for good reasons and for reasons that some people found negative. I didn't find them negative because, screw those people. But my point was, The Hartford is easy to use. They're easy to work with. It's intuitive. I can train someone on quote, bind, issue with The Hartford in less than five minutes. Five minutes. I can take one of my new producers and go, "Here's how you quote, bind, issue with The Hartford in less than five minutes." It all makes sense. It all works. If you have a license and understand basic insurance terminology, you can quote, bind, issue most accounts with The Hartford in their system. It's amazing. Then on the back end, they have all servicing functionality. Essentially my point was, if I weren't a dummy, which I am, I would go back in time, I'd get rid of all my other appointments, and I'd be a Hartford captive until the day I found that I wasn't making money because I was a Hartford captive. I wouldn't need an agency management system, which means I wouldn't need download, which means I wouldn't need insert 17 other freaking stupid tools that I have to have because of multiple carriers and all the billing crap and all this nonsense that takes place in an agency. I would just be a Hartford captive. That's what I said. I ended it by saying the reason companies like — and I'm not going to say their names because I don't want to get in any more trouble than I already have — don't understand what I'm saying is because they're talking to where the puck is today. They're calling their agent with $2 million in premium with them in Indiana, who's 67 years old, a good guy who's been writing with them for a while, and goes, "What do you think about our UX?" And he goes, "Hey, Tammy, what do you think about insert carrier?" And she goes, "Ah, they're fine." And they go, "Great, checkbox. We're doing awesome." My point was, I don't know many carriers. I would put pie in this. I think Chubb is doing some good things. They're not at Hartford's level yet, but they're on the right path. Hartford obviously there, and a few others. Travelers isn't bad. I think Nationwide tends to be a two steps forward, three steps back kind of carrier. There are other carriers who I feel like are pushing to where the puck is going. My point in saying all this is simplifying, bringing all this stuff in, thinking about only what is necessary to run your business allows you to do more of the things that actually generate business.

[Host interjects with a sponsor break]

Host: 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 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. They all check out comments, ratings, reviews. They check out all this information before they come on. So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help. Share the show. Subscribe if you're not subscribed. I'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments. Or if you're on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating review of this show. I love you for listening to this show. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I do creating the show for you. All right, I'm out of here. Peace. Let's get back to the episode.

[Discussion resumes]

Host: That is the big lesson. One of the big lessons of Rogue for me is there is no greater detriment to our success than the excuse making and procrastination that comes from chasing shiny objects. If we can just get that cancer out of our day-to-day mental thought process, things like, "Should I use a comparative rater in commercial? Yes or no?" Well, do you not know where the business goes? No, I pretty much know where the business goes. You don't need a comparative rater in commercial. You don't. If you work in the Eastern half of New York state and write mostly main street BOPs and consultants and maybe a couple LROs, you know exactly where the business goes the moment it hits your desk. You don't need a commercial comparative rater. They're unnecessary. You do need a commercial comparative rater if you write in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York and write 10 different industries. There's no way for you to know what the appetite is in all those states and what the pricing is going to be. You need a commercial comparative rater. These are some of the things that we don't think about. We think, "My big I tech person told me I need a commercial comparative rater because that's what all the best agencies are doing. So now I got to go spend $500 a month." It doesn't mean you don't, but it also doesn't mean that you do. Nothing against the Big I, that's just where you get information from. It's neither here nor there.

Chris Cline: It's exactly the concepts I've been thinking about a lot. It's overly cliche to say it, but anytime I stand on stage, I try to qualify: I've never had to buy one meal for my family from a commission check by running an independent insurance agent. It's purely just observations and having had literally hundreds, if not thousands, of these conversations over the years. But it's people, process, technology — exactly what you said. I've tried to say this all the time. It's so easy to get influenced by really loud voices and the promise of something. There are very different — you have a slide that I use now. It just says "40,000 equals 40,000." Used to say "35,000 equals 35,000." However many independent agencies there are, there's that many different opinions as to how one could be run. What a highly digitized agency trying to write minimum premium BOPs in 48 states needs is exactly like you said — very different than an agency that's got one or two locations that wants to serve Main Street in five counties. It's a very different set of tools that are needed. Both of those organizations are being sold, just generically sold, the same set of tools. Every contractor doesn't need the same set of tools. Nobody needs the same set of tools. This whole "what's the best tech stack?" — to me, it's a fallacy. There is literally no such thing unless it follows exactly what your agency's business strategy is. You've got a relentless focus on processes first, making sure you got the right people in the right roles, doing the right things, and then use technology to bring that stuff to life.

Host: I've realigned the way that I think about new technology. I'm blessed that I get to speak to a lot of technologists, and the podcast also affords me a lot of opportunity to talk to people who've had experience that I trust. Versus maybe the standard Main Street agent who doesn't get to have some of the conversations I do, I understand that I am blessed in so much as I get some additional insight. That being said, if you're not explaining to me who the product is not for and who should never even consider it, and going even a level deeper and saying, "If this is what your goals are, we can't help you or maybe shouldn't help you" — if you're not almost anti-selling me your product, I kind of tune you out at this point. Walking through the ITC showroom, which was an incredible event — absolutely incredible event, nothing against ITC, it was one of the best conferences I've probably ever been to in the insurance industry — everyone is telling you why their product is for you. "Plug this in, attach this here, bup bup bup." The deeper I get into Rogue, and as we try to go from — a year ago today, I had three people. It was me and two other people. We're at 19 now. We are making all the mistakes really fast. What I'm realizing is the longer it takes to train somebody that can blow up your business — if it takes three months, six months to get somebody rocking and rolling, that's a killer. Products that are easy to train on — it's why I hate Salesforce. I hate Salesforce in our industry. Hate it. We'll never use it unless I'm absolutely forced to by someone who's paying me a lot of money. I will not use Salesforce because it's hard to train on. It's incredibly difficult to train someone on Salesforce. I've done it. It's really, really difficult. I found that HubSpot, for a marketing professional, very easy to train on. Try to train someone how to sell on HubSpot or service on HubSpot — very, very difficult. That's why HubSpot failed for us as a potential transition away from traditional agency management systems. Big fail. Now Certs — super easy product that a lot of startup agencies use. I got nothing against the Now Certs guys. It is incredibly difficult to train someone how to use Now Certs. That's the failing. Better Agency — one of the reasons I really like Better Agency. Will and Nick and team, a lot of friends there — very, very easy to train people on Better Agency. You might say, "Hey, they're a lightweight CRM agency management system, whatever." That's true. Not taking away from that, not saying that they're perfect. Very easy to train on. These are some of the things that I feel like when we start thinking about our business beyond just "what's the new process or tool that I can plug into the side of this thing" — when we start going down deeper and saying, "Okay, I'm going to put this in place and get say a 3% incremental benefit. But what is the downside that I get from now it takes me six months to onboard someone versus the two months or one month that it took before I used this system or process?" We're not weighing all those things. We're not thinking about the places where this isn't for us. "Tell me why this product doesn't work for me. How am I going to fail using this product?" That's a question that I ask every vendor now and have for a while. I actually picked that up from — geez, I can't remember who — but I picked that up back in my Big I days. They used to always ask, "Why would this not work?" I get all the reasons it would work. You, vendor person selling me, tell me why this wouldn't work for me. Then you get some really interesting answers. Sometimes that's what sells you. A lot of times when you buy something, that's what sells you. But what it does is it cancels a lot of people out because they can't tell you why it wouldn't work for you. And that's scary.

Chris Cline: It's interesting. I admittedly had not contemplated as a line item the difficulty in training and how much ineffectiveness that can create across an organization. If you've got a set of processes that are built around people doing certain things in certain timelines, it can disrupt a lot of things. Being able to think through that just continues to support not just bolting stuff on. The analogy of Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation where he just jammed everything in and nothing worked — it comes back to the most simple explanation of the scientific method. You can't test variables singularly or you'll never really know what made a difference. Being very intentional about how you deploy anything new or remove anything — the amount of intentionality of that is critical. Otherwise, you'll never really know what did or didn't cause the benefit or the detriment.

Host: I'm going to give you another example. We just recently moved to Nexure. X-Dimensional's agency management system, Nexure. A lot of people in the retail space haven't heard of Nexure. That's because they've been very successful in the large agency and network space, but they're moving into retail. I'll be honest with you, it's a pretty incredible system when compared against other agency management systems. I wouldn't put it against other industries' technology, but as an insurance piece of technology, it's a really powerful, great system. One of the things they do not have is a Kanban or pipeline style view of their sales process. That's a fairly standard feature in most sales systems. It was funny, I was texting with Mick because he's doing some different stuff and working for a couple of clients. He was checking out Nexure and he's like, "I love this, I love this, but I can't handle not having Kanban." I said, "Bro." So I called him real quick and I said, "I'm gonna tell you a quick story." When we did the demo for Nexure, I had my entire team at the time — I think we were like 14 people, six of them are salespeople. We did the demo. We go through the demo, service teams are raving. "This is going to be amazing." They also hated our other setup, which was basically AgencyZoom, HubSpot, and NowCerts — I'm surprised I didn't wake up with one of them standing over me with a knife to my throat one day. But they're like, "This is gonna be amazing, whatever." I said to the sales team, "Geez, I don't love the sales." They go, "What are you talking about? This is gonna be great." I go, "It doesn't bother you there's no pipeline view?" They go, "Why would we care that there's a pipeline view? It doesn't mean anything. All the information we need, every communication we need, every communication with service, our ability to push to record forms and push those out and send them direct — everything we need to be successful is in there. Why do we need a pipeline view?" Dude, I'm telling you, if this was a Jet.com commercial, my head would have exploded and blue smoke would have came out. I was like, "What are you talking about? This is a pipeline." Didn't mean anything to them. It meant nothing. So when I called Mick, I go, "Bro, I'm gonna tell you something. Take this for what it's worth. You and me, we're like new tech, work the process, this visual — that's who we are. We're putting all this emphasis on this pipeline view. I'm telling you, six out of six of my producers could care less. Didn't bother them at all. Everything else, everything we need to be successful is here. That's a you thing." I was like, "Oh my God." That's why we completely moved off. We don't have any kind of pipeline view. We're not using Pipedrive or even what you'd consider a classic CRM because none of them need it to be successful.

Chris Cline: That's interesting. It just shows you that every role in any business has a slightly different perspective on stuff. I think that's why — I'm going to say this out loud and you tell me if I'm nuts — I think this sort of mid-funnel tech is what is actually the most successful right now.

Host: Give me an example of mid-funnel tech just for the audience.

Chris Cline: Like what Peter McDonald's doing with WonderWrite. These kinds of things where a human being enters meaningful data one time and it populates the stuff they need to actually transact business. I remember this going back to my days leading an underwriting team. You get an underwriter and it's frustrating. "How come when a CSR calls me, they demand an answer in like five minutes, but when I need a piece of information on an account, it takes five days?" To your point, not to overly simplify this, but it's inbox to outbox, inbox to outbox. Anything that makes that easier in the amount of transactions — getting an app, getting a car — is simple. That kind of stuff, it's not sexy, it's not romantic, it's sort of in the bowels of a business, but that's where the efficiencies are ultimately gained. People don't feel like they're turning their wheels all day long. I don't know if that's the perfect example, but that top of the funnel stuff is really romantic. "We're going to fill up full leads and everybody's going to do all this really cool stuff. We're going to talk about marketing and branding." But if it just gets log jammed and people don't have any effective tools to do anything with it, or they're entering the same crap over and over again, it gets really frustrating. That's where the opportunities are starting to move the needle.

Host: To this point, that's why I look at what Relativity 6 was doing, which most agencies will never even know that they're using a Relativity 6 product.

Host: They're the Relativity Six. If you guys go back and listen to the episode with Alan, probably somewhere in the last 10 episodes or so, I interviewed him. But they basically have an algorithm that when you type a business name or a business location into their search bar, it goes out to the internet, scrapes hundreds of websites and does all this different stuff and pulls back a very accurate depiction of what the NICS code is for that particular business. Not just based on what's in a database somewhere, but what they're actually putting out on the internet and all this kind of stuff. And it's actually really, really interesting. And even he would say, it's not a hundred percent, but combined with maybe a traditional database, if you compare the two, you know, whatever. But like, I look at that and I say like, that is the future of us doing business better. Third party tools that are outside of — and again, my opinion changes a lot, so you guys are going to hate me for this — but if you make me input data twice, I'm probably not using you anymore. And if you make me input data twice, I'm probably redacting you from my tech stack. Because I know this isn't new and it's not sexy. And that's why these type of opinions don't go viral. But duplicate entry is the killer of process.

Like I just found out that one of my producers — and she is an absolute rockstar — has been using Hiscox to put a lot of business with. And I was like, you know, I immediately made this face and I felt bad because she's killing it. She's doing great. But truthfully, we write so many policies in a week now that I'm not able to stay on top of everything. And I said, "Why are you using Hiscox?" Because I only have to put in four pieces of information and I can quote. And she inserted like seven things. And I was like, you know, it's not the best policy form. And I don't, you know, it's not really, you know, we, you know, there's like a whole bunch of reasons I don't love that you're using them. Nothing against the company, they do have some good products too. But I was like, "Why aren't you using like Chubb or The Hartford for these classes of business that she was writing with Hiscox?" And she's like, "Well, yeah, I don't know." And I just was like, this was the easiest path of least resistance. And that's just whack. There was like a neuron built into her brain. Easy path, easy path, first path she tried, bam. And now, these types of things are what get us into trouble. We take this first easiest path. Or we want someone to use a carrier, but they're really hard to use, or they make us duplicate entry, or their download sucks, or their billing is — and these little touch points — it's just becoming, at least in my world, all the paper is the same. You can't sell me on how great your paper is. It's all the same today. So now it becomes UX, UX, UX, UX, in my opinion. That is going to be the killer for these carriers — is UX. And it's got to get easier. That's inbox to outbox.

Chris Cline: Yeah. Like, I mean, she wasn't thinking about stuff the way you were, which is, you know, risk. Am I maximizing commissions on every one of these accounts? Those kind of things, right? But it was four pieces versus seven pieces versus 17 pieces versus 47 pieces, right? And she sold an account. Yep. And so, you know, there probably is some dialogue around buying a tool because your staff finds it the easiest and they don't care about the funnel. You might care about the funnel, right? So how do you sort of blend those?

Host: I think as a leader, we got to get past ourselves, Chris. I think that today — I did another video about this on LinkedIn the other day — I think now we are entering a period of time where your leadership abilities can separate you and really drive success. We're going to see success in business based on leadership today, where I think for the last 10 years or so, basically from 2008 to today, everything was growing. Everything was easy. Tech was everywhere. Budgets were big and shitty, bureaucratic, middle manager leaders could sit in these organizations and see success, even though they weren't actually leading. And I think today, with how fast the world is moving, money is starting to dry up, especially in our industry. Markets are getting hard. We got 5G on our phone, so everything is faster. Everything is quicker. Everything is more mobile. Today, more than ever before, I feel like real thoughtful leadership is going to define the winners and the losers. Where before it was just how much could you fundraise or if you had a good idea or whatever, you could just kind of scrape by being a fast follower to best practices. And I just don't know that that's the case today. I think active, engaged, thoughtful, empathetic, caring leaders who are reading, who are communicating, who are talking, who are engaged, who are asking their people, asking their customers what they want and getting beyond themselves, getting beyond the ego of themselves — that's who's going to separate themselves. I mean, that's what I'm trying to work towards. And some of those things are not easy for me. But I just honestly believe that the winners and losers are going to be separated by true leadership moving forward. And people who are willing to take risks. And I don't think you can just coast by anymore. I just think we're hitting an economic cycle where, for the first time in a lot of people's careers — I started in this industry at the last year of the last hard market, 16 years ago, 17 years ago, depending on how the timing works. And so I've really never experienced a hard market. I've read about it. I've talked to a million people who lived through them. And I kind of am aware of what's coming. I don't think a lot of young leaders and a lot of even people in their forties and early fifties really understand what's coming. And even if it's short, I don't know. I think it's going to be really interesting. I think there's going to be a lot of fortunes and a lot of failures over the next 12 to 24 months.

Chris Cline: Yeah. I think I should love to kind of hit sort of this, like put something on the calendar out there for 2024 and kind of revisit that. And you're right. I mean, I think that's the thing that cycles are — I don't know. It's hard to say they're really different when you're talking about 20 years. But we used to talk about on the carrier side all the time, as you're talking about underwriters and producers who've never had to sell in a dynamic where not only are prices going up, coverage is getting harder to find in terms of conditions are becoming a little bit more aggressive. And cyber's going through that really hard and there are other markets all over, or other product lines all over the place. So we'll certainly go through that. And leadership starts to — I don't disagree with you, I guess a long way of saying, I completely agree with you. And I think that whenever things get funky, leadership wins. Being able to set a clear vision, remain steadfast to it, be a clear and active champion around what you're trying to get accomplished and truly give your teams what they need to be successful through that is — I mean, it sounds really simple. Anybody can stand on stage and talk about it, but it's hard. It's hard in the moment.

Host: Yeah, it's hard. I think the Bruce Lee quote — I'm going to butcher the quote, so I'm paraphrasing — but basically, "I'm not scared of the guy who's practiced 10,000 punches. I'm scared of the guy who's practiced one punch 10,000 times." I think if I can give any — what I'm telling myself, I'm not going to give anyone advice, this is what I'm repeating to myself over and over again — is be the company that practices one punch 10,000 times, not the company that practiced 10,000 punches. I think that's who we were early in our career in Rogue's history. I think that's what I've been in previous iterations of my career, trying to be that thing. And I think that's a more immature view. I think the more mature view of success is the person who practices one punch 10,000 times. I think that's where we're headed. And I think in a hard market, competitive environment where there's less money, more scrutiny, I think that's the path to success.

Chris Cline: Well, you know, just to pull that thing at a very tactical and elementary level — what does that actually mean when you say that out loud? That's niches. That's being very, very clear about who you are and who you aren't and remaining steadfast to that and not chasing shiny objects.

Host: Right. Yep. And so making that decision would go out circling back around through a number of different things. It's really important to be clear about what you want your business to be, what you want to be as a person. And you can't — if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. If you don't have a path set and say, "I want to be X," then every exit's cool.

Chris Cline: Yeah. I completely agree.

Host: I know we're five minutes over. I have just a couple of questions I want to pepper you with because we didn't talk about any of the things that I had you on to originally talk about, although that's often the case with our conversations. What was the name of the song and where can we find it?

Chris Cline: It is "Let's Go for a Ride" on all of your popular streaming services. The story on that, super short — it was never really intended to be released like that. But I wrote the song — I had written the music, and "written" is probably even more proactive, but I had just come up with this melody. And I'm like, "Oh, I want to figure out a way to frame it." And every time I kept playing, I kept hearing words and they were kind of been inspired over the last few years of things going on in my life. And then it just — like you hear musicians say "it just came to them" — it literally took 10 minutes to write the lyrics. So then I practiced it. I performed it. And I recorded it, just my cell phone leaning up against a stack of books. I'm like, "Well, how do I get this to where I can listen to it?" And my buddy actually produces music and publishes. He's like, "Ah, here's the service you can go." And next thing you know, it's on all these streaming services. So it's kind of wild.

Host: So is it cool if I download it and play it at the end of the episode so people can hear it?

Chris Cline: I don't have a problem with that at all.

Host: Right. I'm not trying to get rich off of it. It was just — it's just going all the way back to the very beginning. It's just how do you not justify yourself and try new things and put yourself out there? I can stand on stage in front of 500 people at an industry event and talk about the crap we talk about. But going to a bar for open mic in front of 20 people and then releasing and putting this song on iTunes — that's scarier than any of it. It's amazing. I'm so happy for you. I love it. I love it. So, guys, I have a couple more questions for Chris and we're going to let him go because I'm sure he's very busy and I'm sure I'm supposed to be doing something other than this. But the song is called "Let's Go for a Ride" by Chris Cline. Obviously, you know who we're talking about, but I'm going to play it at the end. So keep listening. Keep listening at the end. Instead of the normal outro, I'm going to find the song, download it and play it so you can hear it. But then go download it and buy it and listen to it on Spotify so that Chris makes like one hundredth of a penny. But we want to support him in that journey.

Chris Cline: No, but go listen to it. I think that'll be great. And for all the people that would even read, that even actually do listen to it all the way through — I know I can't say — we'll just leave it at that. It's a pure, full-blown, pour-your-heart-into-something. I'm a horrible, horrible, horrible singer. It's bad.

Host: I find that hard to believe.

Chris Cline: But also, so is Janis Joplin, and we love her. So there we go.

Host: The book. You've mentioned the book before. I know it's going to happen eventually. I know it's not a book yet. What is the working title for the book? And what is the working subtitle? If you had to give us one right now just to tease us so we know what's coming, give us just that.

Chris Cline: So this may be familiar to you because we talked about it over Mountain Dews and chicken wings in Kentucky. But it's "The Inertia of Legacy." And in full transparency, I actually formed an LLC by the same title, just to let some of this creativity kind of flow through something like that. Right, wrong, or indifference, I was advised to kind of just put all this stuff over there. And so even though the song is through me behind all the scenes, it's still an Inertia of Legacy thing. And so just the concept is — and I know I thought you and I would talk more about this and we probably could crank another hour out — but I'm a science junkie, a space junkie. And there's something about legacy that in our industry can have a negative connotation, but I think in the real world, it's a powerful tool. And inertia, right? It's just about an object at rest stays at rest unless acted upon, and an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon. So it's all about really managing your legacy. So there's some sort of self-help kind of connectivity to science and mathematical stuff.

Host: I love it. Come together. Well, I remember when we talked about the concept that I just thought it was great. And I do think you're on the button. I mean, one of the first lessons that I actually learned from Chip Basioko — friend turned frenemy turned friend again, Chip and I are on very good terms now and busting balls via text again — was how as much as we want to push forward, we need to respect the past and respect the people that got us here. And I think that it's very difficult. And you and I have talked about this. When you and I are sitting in the audience and someone is talking on stage who is disrespecting the people who got us here — it's okay to question the things that they're continuing to do or decisions they made or to present other options. But to disrespect the people in our industry that got us here, who provided the environment that allowed insurance professionals to live the lives that we live — I feel like you're setting yourself up for failure. Because the people that came before us, while we may disagree with their methods in this moment in terms of applying all of those methods to this moment, they're the ones that set the stage for us to be able to do the things that we do today. And there's no denying that.

Chris Cline: I love that. But how do you turn that legacy? How do you — what are those small little — like, didn't we blow up some asteroid with a rocket? How do you skip a rocket off that asteroid and get it back onto course or something that's gone off center? And I keep putting these notes together and kind of framing together an outline for them just exactly like you're supposed to do. My son's a senior, so we're learning how to weave as we do research for papers together. But yeah, you're right. We launched a rocket ship seven million miles away or something like that. It took like six months to get there and we flew something the size of a refrigerator into something smaller than a football field. And not 21. I mean, that's total inertia. But it's also just as simple as getting up 15 minutes earlier to write or to get another mile in the treadmill. Those little things are very meaningful in all of our lives. And your point about standing on stage, taking shots and disrespecting — one of the things that this industry I think is past a little bit, but people coming into industry and trying to convince us to change by telling us we suck — it does not work.

Host: No, because we don't like — tell it like "you're fat, you should lose weight" — well, that's not a way of motivating you. That seemingly does not work.

Chris Cline: Yeah. You know, I don't know when it was — 2017, 2018 at some point, maybe even 2016 back when the insurtech revolution was really hitting us — I started saying like, "Insurance is not broken." This isn't broke yet. There are course corrections or pivots. There's maybe some things that we could sail off into the sunset. But in general, this is not broken. When your house burns down, you get a check back. You know what I mean? I used to say that to my customers who would bash — when I hear someone bashing insurance at cocktail parties, "Ah, insurance" — I was like, "You know what? I hear you and I get it. And I get that insurance can be frustrating. But when your house burns down, the town isn't rallying to barn raise your house back up. That's not happening. No one gives a shit. They're just going to drive by it and point and go, 'Geez, I wish they would get rid of that ugly thing.' The only entity that is coming to save you is an insurance company. And for that reason, we're not broke." So I think it's very important.

Host: So I know we probably got to wrap. We're going to have to schedule something again, because I didn't even get to — I came in on another topic. I shouldn't have read before I came in. That's the problem. Right before I came into the podcast, I had all this stuff on my brain. But I love this concept of not overcomplicating insurance, of really taking a step back, of getting away from shiny objects, getting away from 20-step brand new tactical programs. I think less is more. Get really, really good at doing one or two processes and just hammer — just dump money into those things, that punch that you've taken 10,000 times and you're the best at. I think now is the time more than ever to do that. I think niche is one way to go about it. It doesn't have to be a niche. It could also be a process. It could also be a way of delivering something. Figure out what that thing is and be really good at it. And I think simplification — I think the answer for the foreseeable future, and certainly what we're working on at Rogue, is simplification. How do we simplify what we do and get really good at those simple processes? It's so much harder than just buying more shit and trying to plug it in and thinking it's all going to work.

Chris Cline: I don't know. I love this way. And you know, I mean, just the simplification — be very clear, whatever it is. Call a play. Just be convicted to a play. And it's football season. And I know you're a diehard Bills fan. Oh, by the way, the Cowboys are on a roll too, so maybe you get a shot to recover from Mr. Norwood's kick 30 years ago or whatever it was. But when they get into the huddle, they don't just go, "We'll just go run whatever route makes you happy." They run a play. And I guarantee all 11 players don't go to the line of scrimmage thinking, "I might've picked a different play." We call a play. The coach, the quarterback — somebody said, "This is the situation. This is what we're going to do. And it's my job to go run the play." If it doesn't work, you'll learn from it. But you just can't go out there and have everybody doing whatever they want. Or back to the every road thing — you just got to have some conviction. And I think that's a personal thing. That's a business thing. Whatever it is.

Host: Chris, it's always amazing getting a chance to talk to you. I appreciate that you allow me these meandering conversations, although I love where we went. And I think we had a really good chat. I appreciate the hell out of you, man. And people want to get at you — LinkedIn, where would be the best place for people to connect, learn more about the work you're doing at ACT? What's the best website for them to check out? Where are all the places they should go?

Chris Cline: Yeah, I mean, I'm on LinkedIn pretty actively. And no pun intended, but Capital ACT — we've been trying to do more on social media. One of the things I noticed about ACT, predecessor Ron and Jenny had done some great stuff, but it's the proverbial "if a tree falls in the forest and nobody's there to hear it, it doesn't make a noise." So we're trying to do more on social, try to productize our content. A lot of rooms to go, a lot of ways to go. But LinkedIn and Twitter, probably the best professionally. And of course, iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.

Host: I love it. I love it. So guys, the next thing you're going to hear is "Let's Go for a Ride" by Chris Cline. Go get it on Spotify. Bro, I love you. Be good. Take it easy.

Chris Cline: Take it easy, buddy. Thanks, Brian. Bye.

[Song: "Let's Go for a Ride" by Chris Cline plays]

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