--:-- Ryan Hanley: What's up guys, welcome back to the show and a very Merry Christmas and holiday season to all of you, depending on when you're listening to this. This is being recorded the week of Christmas, and hopefully Cass and his amazing team can get it out this week for me. I'm sure they will because they are the best.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If you're listening to this, I just want to quickly say I love you. I think it's amazing that you spend time with me between your ears. You have a lot of shows, a lot of content. You can read, watch video, listen to podcasts. If you choose to listen to podcasts and you choose to listen to this podcast, I just appreciate the hell out of it. It's why I work so hard to deliver value to you guys.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Lots of great stuff coming in 2023. Finding Peak is growing every week. That was a cool rhyme. Didn't mean it to be. If you're not subscribed to Finding Peak, go to findingpeak.com. You're going to get articles on content marketing, what we're doing to drive lead gen, inbound insurance stuff. You're also going to get a lot of the stuff that I like to write about that is very cathartic to me around personal development, peak performance, and business life. Insurance is what it's all about. Go to findingpeak.com. Great community over there. We're well over 1,300 members and growing all the time. I appreciate the hell out of you if you're subscribed there. Most of the content is free. There is a small paid section, but that's only for you nerds that want to go deep diving on what we do at Rogue to drive inbound business and create that foundation that is our lead flow.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Okay. I want to give a quick shout out to a new sponsor of the show, brand new sponsor of the show. Sponsor alert, sponsor alert. Tivoli, formerly known as commercialinsurance.net. Tivoli is the rebranded, renamed version of commercialinsurance.net, and they are part of the bedrock of how we create consistency in our lead flow at Rogue Risk. They deliver warm, qualified, live phone call transfers for the industries we want, the class of business we want, the size companies we want, and the geographic regions that we want.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What I love about Tivoli Leads is that you're talking to the business owner, literally the person who you want to get on the phone with. We work so hard. We do all this cold calling, content marketing, inbound marketing, Google ads, and all this stuff that we do. And Tivoli delivers those people to you live on the phone. We have a very high close ratio. The last time I looked, it was north of 60% on Tivoli leads. Obviously, you're paying for those leads. That's how they make money. But if you're thinking about return on investment and lifetime value, Tivoli is a tremendous place to get that ROI that you're looking for, to get activity.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I love it too when we get new producers driving those Tivoli leads into the new producers. It just gets them at bats right away. Right away, they're talking to people. I can see how they respond, how they deal with customers, all that kind of stuff. Tivoli is a sponsor of this podcast. If you go to tivly.com, that's t-i-v-l-y.com, you will find Tivoli and you can sign up, become an agent. I highly recommend that you at least check them out. I never say that you should absolutely do one thing or another, but we use Tivoli. They get our highest recommendation and I hope that you'll check them out.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: With that guys, let's get on to today's show. For today's show, it's a solo episode. It's going to be just me today. Didn't have anyone else on purpose because I wanted to talk about the number one lesson that I learned this year growing Rogue Risk. This is a lesson that I think has been talked about a lot. Cass and I have talked about it for a long time.
--:-- [Sound of a drink being opened]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Unfortunately, that's not a beer. It's a bubbly. It's too early in the day for a beer, and it's not a weekend, so that's just a bubbly. So all you that like to give me crap for drinking beers while I podcast, today you're getting sober Ryan.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That being said, this lesson is a hard-fought lesson. It takes a lot of introspection. It's something that seemingly is in my own DNA in the way I'm pushed. There's no right or wrong to this decision. Absolutely no right or wrong. So please take everything that I'm going to say in the rest of this podcast as not a judgment one way or the other. There is no right or wrong.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But I do think that when we find ourselves at crossroads, faced with obstacles that are seemingly very difficult to make a decision on, oftentimes it is because we have not answered this particular question, this very specific question about our business. We have not answered that question yet, and when we do, everything changes. Everything about the way we operate changes. The tools we use, the people we hire, how we market our business, how we brand our business, the associations we're part of, the networks we join, the agents we surround ourselves with, the agents and the thought leaders that we follow both in the industry and outside the industry. Everything changes when we make this one singular decision, when we answer this one very specific question.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So with all that buildup, what is that question? The question is: Are you building for personal wealth or are you building a business? In your insurance career, are you building for personal wealth or are you building a business?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: For those cheeky people listening, you're probably saying, "Well, Ryan, I can do both. I'm building a business that provides me with personal wealth." If you're building a business, personal wealth may be a byproduct. Maybe. But you're probably not going to necessarily maximize your personal wealth, and certainly not in the short term. I'll get to what all this means.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If you don't know the answer to this question, then you are most likely, or have in the past, made decisions that may have seemed right but ultimately felt off, didn't connect with what you were trying to do. Let's break that down.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What I see in the industry is what I call lifestyle agents or growth agents. There are really two types. Lifestyle agents tend to have smaller agencies, three, five, seven people. They tend to be very owner-centric. The owner is probably also the biggest producer at the agency. The owner's name is most likely on the outside of the building. Everything is kind of geared around the way that the owner likes to operate. That is a lifestyle agency.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Things like automation, digital, remote, ease of business, connectivity, APIs, integrated systems, paperless, touchless—these types of concepts that we talk about a lot on this show, especially when we're talking to insurtech founders, or when Cass and I get on and we riff, or Bradley Flowers—to a lifestyle agent, those things don't really mean as much, or certainly shouldn't mean as much.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oftentimes where I see lifestyle agents go wrong is not in their decision to be a lifestyle agent. Trust me, there are many days where I say to myself, "Shit, I wish I was just..." There are definitely days, if I'm being all candid. It's Christmas time so we can be honest, right? If you can't be honest during Christmas, then when can you be honest?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: There are definitely days where I wake up and I'm like, "Shit, I wish I just had like a four-person agency and I was out working middle market accounts and had some personal lines and had a nice little book going and that I could carve out a good salary from. Wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't that be nice to not have 10 bazillion things happening all the time and have to be looking to scale and grow?"
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But the truth is I'm not a lifestyle agent. I'm not geared that way. It's not in my DNA. I am a wartime general. I am the guy who looks at the well-laid, well-paved, well-manicured, wide trail that everyone uses to get from A to B and goes, "Well, what happens if we climb this mountain over here?" That's just how I'm wired. I don't know how else to be.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Look, it probably got me fired from TrustedChoice.com. It definitely was part of the issue that I had at Bold Penguin. It's also most likely the reason that there was some friction at the fitness place. I don't know how to fit in. I don't know how to just fit into a nice little box and show up every day and check that box and do my job and stay out of other people's lanes and not push. I want to go all the time. I just want to go.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Seemingly part of that, or what has helped me a little bit, is understanding that in the last few months I have kind of been diagnosed with ADHD, which is fine. To me, it's a superpower. It's not like it changes my life. It's nice to know. What it has helped me do is communicate with people a little better because I understand that the way my brain works and the contextual or tangential way in which I communicate or think is not the way that everyone else thinks. I have to sometimes rein myself in or try to be very succinct or concise in an effort to get my message across.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time, I don't try to do those things on this show. Obviously, we go in 10 million directions, which we're on one right now. But my point in saying all that to you is I have realized about myself that I'm not a lifestyle agent. I am never going to be content having my place, maximizing my personal wealth, taking things brick by brick, step by step. That's just never going to be my way. There are days when I wish it was.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I have all the respect for someone who says, "Hey, I want to get my agency to seven people, make a million in revenue, and just be happy. That's what we're going to be and we're going to be great and I'm going to have a lake house and coach the kids' teams." I think those things are amazing. Trust me, I want those things except I'm not wired to be that thing. I can't help not wanting to push. I can't help not wanting to find a bigger deal. I can't help wanting to add another employee and bring them into the team and scale to the next level and find that process that just done repeatedly generates more income. I can't help but want to follow those things.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I don't have patience. I wish I had patience. I just read a great quote today on investing. I love investing and reading about investing. A lot of my non-insurance content is either in personal development—I can't help that—or in investing because I'm just very interested in that. I read this great Warren Buffett quote: "The key to investment success is..." or, fuck, it was something to the effect of "Investment success is the result of patient people taking money from impatient people" or something like that. I read that and I was just like, "Shit, I'm screwed. I'm screwed." I'm just so impatient, which is why I try to surround myself with patient people, process people, brick by brick people. Those people are amazing compliments, and I would like to think I'm an amazing compliment to them in the right scenario because together we can get where we want to be. I know that about myself.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: My reason for this big, long, seemingly 10-minute diatribe is to say: if you have not answered this question, I hope that as you're doing your planning and you're thinking and you're going into 2023, this will be the first question that you have to answer. When young agents, new agents, agents that are struggling call me these days, reach out or DM me, one of the first things that I ask them is: "Are you building a lifestyle agency or a growth agency?" Because a growth agency is a completely different monster. A lifestyle agency is more of the classic traditional model, which I think can be incredibly successful. Again, not a judgment. It's what makes you happy. What fulfills you? What puts you in a position to live the life that you want to live? Where do you want to be?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Both are incredibly important, incredibly respected paths. There's no wrong answer, but you need to know the answer. If you're a lifestyle agent and you start chasing growth-focused tools or processes or listening to people who are giving advice for growth-focused agencies, but you're a lifestyle agent, you're going to find yourself wasting a lot of money, a lot of time, creating frustration, creating friction in your business that's unnecessary.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'd love for you to tell me the answer to this question. If you're listening to this, DM me on LinkedIn. Hit me up on LinkedIn and just put "lifestyle" or "growth." I'd love to know what your path is, understanding that regardless of what your answer is, I know what my answer is, and I'm not saying that that's right for you. I'm just saying I know what my answer is. I'm not a lifestyle agent. There's a big part of me that wishes that I was because I love to do things like ski and fish, and I feel like if I had a lifestyle I'd be able to build more of my life into it. But being that I can't not be who I am—someone who is always out over my tips, always pushing, leaning in, who sees this big, huge path to success and decides to climb the mountain—I don't understand why I do that or why I'm built that way, but I am. I know that about myself. It's taken 40, almost 42 years to get there. It just is what it is.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: DM me on LinkedIn. Or if you want to be super froggy because it's Christmas time, we're going to share this podcast on LinkedIn and just put as the comment "lifestyle" or "growth" so I know. I'd love that. Just ping me. Hopefully this helps.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Now, let's talk about breaking down some of the decisions that we have to make and what I've seen over this past year and what I see coming. When you make this decision—whether it's lifestyle or growth—some of the things in our business, some of the key ideas and how they break out.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The first one is technology. Let's go to technology. That's an easy one. Everyone talks about technology, InsurTech, all this kind of stuff. Love it. I obviously love InsurTech. One of the really fun things that came out of this year was, with the acquisition, I had a little extra cash and I was able to do some angel investing. Took four positions, small positions in insurtechs, in the industry, companies that I believe in, really founders that I believe in, missions that I believe in. Very, very thankful to be part of those in a small way. I love it. I love watching the growth. I love learning from the founders. I love reading their monthly or quarterly reports. I love following the business and watching what they do. Hopefully someday one or two of them hit big and I make some cash, which would be sweet. But really, I just love supporting the industry and being part of some of these companies.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Maybe this sounds weird, but I'm buying access to founders. Not necessarily from a "I'm going to call them" perspective, but just watching the way they operate, seeing the behind the scenes, and getting to learn from them. It's almost like I'm buying a mentorship to a certain extent, if that makes sense. So I've gotten to do that. I obviously love tech. I love InsurTech. Believe in it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But if you're a lifestyle agent, you don't need all this bullshit. Guys, you don't need all of the nonsense if you're a lifestyle agent. You need three to five solid carriers, the majority of which should be regionals who actually are there for you as a smaller, local, most likely geographically oriented single state agency. If we're in New York, that's a Merchant or a Dryden Mutual or a Leatherstocking. If you're on the personal lines side, a New York Central Mutual. Maybe you get an Acadia, someone like that—I love Acadia. Then you backfill with maybe one or two nationals, a Travelers or a Hartford or a Nationwide or someone like that. On the personal lines, maybe you also need a Safeco or something. Just a nice, tight mix of carriers that are going to believe in you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Maybe one solid E&S relationship. I would probably go with like an RT or RPS or something like that. Maybe a Pathpoint. I love Pathpoint. I think they're a great company. They don't have all the markets yet, but their workflow is very, very easy to use. It makes E&S very accessible. I really like a lot of what Pathpoint is doing. They were a former sponsor of the show, but not anymore. But we still use them all the time at Rogue Risk. I love Pathpoint. So maybe one or two solid E&S relationships and five to seven carrier relationships and that's it. Stop chasing carriers.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: As far as tech, you don't need tech. You don't need all the fancy bells and whistles. You need a simple, straightforward agency management system that's going to allow you to capture the data that you need, get your downloads, service your customers, and have a good comm system.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If I had a single location and I didn't need to do all the fancy shit, but I was trying to build a legitimate agency, I'd look at Applied. I like some of the people that I'm starting to see float around Applied. Obviously, I've always been a fan of Reed Holsworth, who is kind of tangentially with Applied with Ivans. I'm a huge fan of Raghav and the entire team of Tarmica that were just purchased by them. I know a few other people in there. But Applied is tough because they seemingly have the data stuff and the control. That being said, I think they're trying to do some of the right things. This is not like an apology, I'm not an Applied apologist by any regard. But I'm just saying if I was a lifestyle agent, I wouldn't worry about all the bullshit. All the bullshit that you hear me talk about and different agents talk about with some of these big agency management systems—I wouldn't worry about that if I were a lifestyle agency.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I would get a system that was rock solid, that worked, that I could train my team on, that would do the job, that I wouldn't have to worry about the nonsense that comes with connectivity. Because guys, connectivity creates as many problems as it solves. Today's technology in the insurance industry—the more connected a tool is, the more connectivity that's involved with a tool—it solves problems for sure, but it also creates problems. We can get to that in a second maybe.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So just get something rock solid. If it can email, it can text, it can capture your phone calls. It does great with download and captures all the information you need so you can service your customers. I don't think you need a lot more than that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If you're startup startup, like brand new, brand new, I would look at Better Agency. Personally, that's where I would go if I was brand new. If I'm brand new to the business, I would go to Better Agency. I think the things they're doing are wonderful. I think they give you a dynamic tool. I think they're a little behind on accounting. I think they're a little behind on commercial, but not that far behind and seemingly making huge strides all the time.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If I'm steel manning the other side of the argument against Better Agency, I think they came out a little early with some of their marketing compared to some of their functionality. Some of the disconnect with Better Agency has been that there was a lot of marketing before all the functionality was in place. I think agents kind of got a little disconnected there, partially because it's so easy to get on Better Agency, which I think is a huge advantage. If you want Better Agency, you can turn it on today and it's so easy to train on that you could have your people up and running. The flip side is I think that because it's so easy, people don't give it the time or grace needed to learn the system and integrate it into your workflows, whereas they do with something like an Applied Epic where it takes months and months to get on the tool and there's all kinds of trainings and trainings on trainings. We just set our mind to a longer timetable. I think seemingly that's a big part of the difference.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But pick a system. Don't overthink it. Commit to it. It's just an agency management system. Don't overthink it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: A few other tools that you could pick from depending on what you're going to do. If you're going to go commercial, get something like a WonderWrite. Just a simple form. I want to say simple because I think WonderWrite is a great tool. We use it. Get a form tool, get your agency management system, and if it were me, maybe get a Loom so you can do some cold video outreach. And then get to work. What else do you need? You need a phone system, an agency management system. If you're doing commercial, you're going to need forms, supplemental forms, which I really like WonderWrite for, especially at the price point. And maybe something so you can do some video replies and video outreach, which I think is a huge part of business today. That's just me personally.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: How much more do you need? Get to work. That's it. Don't worry about all the other crap. Don't worry about the fancy bells and whistles and the digital bots and the VAs and all this kind of stuff. Don't worry about that. If you're struggling to get appointments, join SIA. I know I'm biased, but the deeper I get into knowing what this organization is all about, the more I believe it's like a no-brainer to join it. I get there's a fee, and I get that if you leave, there's a fee, but my God, the access to carriers, the immediate access to carriers, and your ability to maximize revenue day one—it is a no-brainer to me. I don't know why I wasn't part of it before. I think I just didn't know. A big part of it is I didn't know, honestly. There's going to be more to come out on this.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm not saying SIA is the only network. There may be other networks that are good for you. I just think that I wouldn't get so caught up in doing it yourself. Get out of that Facebook group ego-stroking bullshit and grow your business in a way that allows you to live your life if you're a lifestyle agent. That is my best advice. Don't chase rabbits down holes. Write the business that you know how to write and write it often. Be a person around town. Enjoy the lifestyle of being a local independent agent. Be that thing. Don't keep chasing nonsense. All the nonsense technology stuff is a distraction.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Now we're going to flip it and go to the other side. If you're a growth agent, you better get your head in Coverage-er. You better be on LinkedIn. You better be going to conferences. You better be listening to podcasts. You better be doing independent research because connectivity is the game. And ease of business is the game. To a growth-focused digital agent, ease of business, connectivity are the game. That is the whole game.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You cannot be a growth-focused, high-growth-focused agency... Now, Grant, if you're writing big $500,000 accounts and you're doing three or four of them and you put numbers on the books, that's great. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about agents that are looking to put $5 million, $10 million, $20 million in premium on the books that want to freaking grow. And don't tell me you're too small. You're not.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: In two and a half years, I've taken this thing from freaking nothing to—we did, what, just in the fourth quarter, I think we did close to two and a half, almost three million in premium just in the fourth quarter of a two and a half year old agency. We're just getting started. So don't tell me that you guys can't do it. You can do it. It's all there for you. But you got to choose to be growth focused and you can't make lifestyle decisions. You have to choose.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The reason that I would never choose Applied is that their system isn't open. For a lifestyle agency, all day, I actually tell people I think it's an incredible platform. I think it is. But today, and I'm not banging on Applied—I have tons of friends there and I'm not knocking them—but right now, that is not a quote-unquote open system. Connectivity and ease of use is the game. So if that's the game, I personally cannot consider them.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You've got to look for platforms that are going to let you build, connect. We're on Nexture. I like Nexture a lot. I think it's highly antiquated that they charge you for API access. Applied does the same thing, but it's more expensive and convoluted. Vertafore, in my opinion, is kind of a mess with that side. There's all kind of like hacks that you do which are crazy. I'm not interested in hacks. But with Nexture, you pay a fee, they open up that spigot, go to town, build whatever you want. That's what we're in the middle of doing because connectivity and ease of use and access—that is the game if you're going to be growth focused. That's where your head needs to be.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That is why if you're growth focused, if you're building a business—lifestyle agencies are for personal wealth, building businesses are for growth—if you're building a business, a growth focused business, you need to grow. Because you want the top level contracts. You want all the special schmoogies. You want all the programs from the carriers. You want attention. You want APIs. You have to be putting business on the books. That is the game.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: When it comes to technology, if you're lifestyle, get your core pieces, get to work, go do your job, live your life, make your money. God bless you. That's amazing. If you're going to be growth focused and make that decision, then you need to understand that you need to stop selling insurance. If you're an agency principal and you're selling insurance and you're calling yourself a growth-focused agency, in my opinion, you are not growing as fast as you could. You're probably making a lot of mistakes and creating a lot of blind spots in your business because instead of being a business leader, you're being an agent.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: To grow a growth-focused business, you have to be a leader, or there needs to be a leader. You have to give up control. Be the top producer, the big dog producer, but then hire a president or a COO or someone else to run the business. In a lifestyle agency, the producer is the business. In a growth-focused business, the business is the business. You're just another person in the business. You just happen to have ownership in it. That is a big core thing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So don't tell me you're growth focused if you're not researching, if you're not up on the trends, if you're not pushing the technology, if you're not thinking about process and execution and access and ease of business and connectivity. If you're not thinking about those things, then you're not running a growth-focused business, or you're creating a lot of obstacles and blind spots. If you're a lifestyle business, get your head out of that shit and run your freaking business and make money and take care of your family and live your freaking life.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And that's the technology piece. What's up, guys?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show. In exchange for that, I need your help. If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: 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. Let's get back to the episode.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right, so the next one I want to talk about is carriers. I think carrier mix is highly dependent on whether you're growth-focused or lifestyle. For lifestyle, I like regionals. Love regionals for lifestyle businesses. Regionals take care of you. Regionals care. I mean, to all my national carriers, I love you guys. I do, because I've grown and I've kind of come back to the table on a lot of the nationals. I've gotten to know them, but it's different. Large national businesses have different priorities.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I don't think I'm speaking out of turn when I say this: it's not that they don't care about the lifestyle businesses, but when you look at the balance sheet and the income statement and where they get their money, it's big deals, it's big agencies, it's networks, it's the top 100. That's what's growing their business. Not a seven-person, $750,000 revenue agency that's growing at 10% per year. That is not growing The Hartford. That's not growing Travelers. Not that they don't want them and not that they won't support them.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But you look at some of the ones I used in New York: Acadia, Merchants, New York Central Mutual, Dryden, Leatherstocking. Those are some of my favorites. Although Merchants unequivocally denied an appointment to us on multiple occasions because we weren't a good fit, which we probably weren't. But I still like them. And my buddy Doug Benz likes them. I like him because he likes them.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Those types of regional, super regional, single state domicile carriers like Dryden, Leatherstocking, New York Central — your $750,000 revenue agency growing at 10% a year, you're growing their business. They love you. You're putting profitable, consistent business on the books and you're helping them grow. What they're going to do in return is pay you higher commissions. They're going to give you access deeper into the business from an underwriting perspective, from a programs perspective. They're going to give you some more leeway, especially if you're putting profitable business on the books. They're going to work with you, create marketing plans. That's the type of relationship that you need for a lifestyle business.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: For someone like us, who's writing in all 50 states, 250 class codes, probably all 15 to 17 lines of commercial insurance that are mainstream, we need big national relationships for the most part. We do have a couple regionals like Acadia. We are pointing to Acadia. I love Acadia. We're going to continue to grow with them. We do have some regionals that give us some of that leeway and access that we need for certain accounts. But for the most part, we need broad appetite, high access, ease of use carriers that can allow us to flow massive amounts of business through them. That's what we need. That's a different type of relationship.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We probably aren't a great fit for Merchants, as much as I have respect for them. And just like a single location, geographically based, single state agency isn't going to be a huge source of interest or growth for a large national carrier or international carrier. So we have to consider these relationships. You probably need a mix of both always. But if I'm lifestyle, I'm skewing more towards my regionals. If I'm multi-state, if I'm high growth focused, I'm probably skewing more towards my nationals.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Again, don't chase — this is a huge mistake that I made, huge, enormous mistake that I made. Don't chase carrier appointments. I took every appointment that I could get early on because I was just trying to survive. And while it allowed me to survive, right now I got a lot of mouths to feed. And it's hard. I like all the carriers. I can always see the best in what they're doing. There's some that I'm not a big fan of, but for the most part, I can see good in all of them. And I want to put business with all of them and it's a struggle. I want to have successful relationships and we're going to have to make some hard decisions in 2023 and pare down our carrier set to a core group that really allows us to be successful and build and grow.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But chasing carrier appointments is just a waste of time a lot of the time. Now, there are going to be strategic moments, strategic appointments that you go out and get because they help you, but be very, very particular. The carriers are being more and more particular in who they appoint, and I think in turn, we as agents have to be very, very particular in who we take our contracts with. In a hard market like what we're seeing today, in a rapidly contracting market, it is important for us to be diligent in those contracts that we sign. Not from an accountability standpoint, like can you hit the number, but it's just time away. It's more distractions. It's another appetite mix that you have to think about. And those things take up a lot of brain cycles.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I would highly recommend that we get a good, solid, tight carrier mix. We become very good friends with them. We feed those carriers. And in return, I think we're going to get a lot back. Especially today, carriers have to survive too in a hard market. And the agents that are feeding them, that are putting good business on the books, they're going to move towards those agencies, both on the lifestyle and in the growth aspect. So just don't take on too many carrier relationships. I am dealing with that every day. It's not my favorite. And you do what you can do, you got to survive, but it is what it is.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The next one is kind of a tough one because a lot of you are not going to be, many of you probably won't agree, most of you probably don't want to hear this, but commercial insurance on Main Street under $10,000 in premium is 100% a commodity these days. It's a commodity. It's probably as much or more of a commodity than personal insurance. I don't really write a lot of personal insurance, but it just is. The number is $5,000, maybe it's $10,000, somewhere in there, but a lot of the BOPs, the GL policies, the workers' comp policies, the commercial auto policies, they're all exactly the same. Exactly the same.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: As long as you are partnering with the large subset of carriers that do a good job on claims — obviously there's always differences in how claims are handled, but for the most part, most of the names that you know in commercial insurance on those size accounts are pretty good about handling claims. We have not had a lot of problems with carriers paying claims or taking care of our customers. So I don't have anything negative to say there. All I can say is it's all the same stuff. A lot of it is pricing and ease of business.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So I wouldn't — if you have a Travelers appointment, I don't know that I would chase a Hartford appointment. I don't know why you would do that. I think Hartford's a little easier to do business with maybe. But Travelers is a great company. Pays claims, does a good job. I know they've messed around with commissions on the personal lines side. I haven't seen too much of that on the commercial lines side. But we're talking commercial lines because that's what I know. Hartford's incredibly easy to do business with. Employers on the workers' comp side, easy. PI's easy. I think ease of business is a big part of the decision these days because it's all the same stuff.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Frankly, it's mindless. If you work our process, the Rogue Risk inbound lead process, you should be closing 90% of all the qualified leads. It's just mindless stuff. The problems are all the same. The products are all the same. The companies, for the most part, are all the same. Now you get into contractors, a little different. Anything that deals with transportation is a little different. I'm talking mostly Main Street, the majority of classes down the middle. It's all the same.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: My point in telling you that is, it goes back to the carrier thing a little bit. One, understand that that stuff's going to be automated away with AI in the next 5 to 10 years. So just be aware that that's coming. Two, for that type of business, don't chase carrier appointments thinking you're going to get something better. You're not. Unless your carrier set is so incredibly difficult to deal with from a quoting and binding perspective that you're literally struggling to do it, which today most people aren't, especially if you're a lifestyle agency and you're doing 10 quotes a week or something. You should be able to plow through any system with 10 quotes a week. That's nothing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So just don't be chasing carriers. That stuff is commoditized. You're not getting anything less from one carrier to another within reason, as long as you're in an A-rated national or regional carrier. If you're in New York and you're with one of the mutuals, just make sure that their BOP line is up, but their GL is going to be great usually. Make sure they don't have any special exclusions. But outside of that, a lot of the products are exactly the same. So what that says is it's process, process, process, process, process. That is the whole game.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's not my specialty. It's what we've had to do a lot of work on. But with every new process, with every new system — not from the technology standpoint but from the actual working of flow that we put in place, that we commit to — we watch our production go up. So don't get too caught up in that business, that commercial business under $5,000, $10,000 premium. That is process. Not that you shouldn't write it. You should. Those are business owners. Those are real people, people in your community. It's great business. Love that business. That is our business. I love those people. That's not knocking the consumers. I'm just telling you the products are all the same. So just don't get messed up over the products. The products are all the same. They just are.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You can see a little bit of difference in some of the professional lines stuff, maybe. But workers' comp? It's all the same, it's just pricing. BOPs, pretty much just all pricing. GL, pretty much all just pricing. That's what it is. Commercial auto, pricing really, I mean if they're willing to write it. So don't get too messed up about that stuff. Get slick — slick is the wrong word — get standardized, consistent processing in place. Do a really good job, but churn it and burn it because one, it's tough to make money on, and two, all the products are the same.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right, I wanted to share that. Hope that came across the way that I wanted it to. I have no idea. Sounded better when I wrote it down.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: A couple other thoughts on this particular vein. Whether you are a lifestyle or a growth-focused agency, you have no competition. Get the idea of competition out of your head. Directs aren't your competition. Your carriers aren't your competition. The agency down the street isn't your competition. Captives aren't your competition. Insurtechs aren't your competition. There is no competition. There is only brand. I'm going to say that one more time. There is no competition. There is only brand. Your competition is you. It is: do people trust you and do you do a good job? Because if those two things are true, you're going to run a ton of business, regardless if you're growth or lifestyle focused.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I continue to see — and I'll be honest with you, I'm this close to just getting off of Facebook because I find Facebook to be such a waste of time. But I do jump in these Facebook groups and I look at them and it's just, "Oh my God, people focused on what I believe are all the wrong things." This company did this. Did you see that these guys did this thing over here? This carrier's advertising direct. Do you see what the latest Goosehead recruitment campaign says about this or that? Who gives a bleep? It doesn't matter. There's so much business out there for everybody, regardless if you're geographic lifestyle or your national high growth focused, embedded insurance, whatever. There's so much business to write that the only competition is you. Are you creating trust? Are you easy to do business with? Do you do a good job? That's it. That's the whole game. That's the whole freaking game.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: To get caught up in any of this other nonsense is just a waste of time. One of the things that I've loved about Rogue Risk is that I've been so caught up in growing this thing and creating systems and processes and putting leads in the top of the funnel and figuring out how to shake them out and maximizing our revenue and cross-selling and hiring people and all these things, I haven't thought about competition in years. I was reading a Facebook group one day and the thought popped into my head and I just was like, "Oh my God, all these people think that they have competitors. They don't have competitors. There's no competitors."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You take business from this agency or that agency. But that's not — they don't want to be choosing you over the competitor. It's: do they trust you? Do they believe that you're going to do the job? Are you properly setting expectations? And do you meet those expectations when it's time to take action? If you do those things, you're going to win more than enough business than you could ever want, regardless if you are growth or lifestyle. Stop worrying about the competition.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Now, if you are in the marketing function or you're trying to figure out new things, I'm not saying don't do market research. I'm not saying that you should just forget that they exist completely. But just understand that every second that you waste thinking about or worrying about your competition is exactly that: it's wasted time. Being in this space for 17 years now, two and a half, these last two and a half, almost three years as an agency owner, there's no competition. It's only how good is your brand. And I don't mean brand in the hack marketer, bait and switch kind of way. I mean, do people believe you do what you say? If that's true, you will write an absolute mess of business and that's the whole game.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So stop worrying about the competition. I can't read another freaking Facebook post about one of the carriers that works with independent agents going direct. They all want to go direct. I hope we're not blind to that. They all would cut us all out in a heartbeat if they could, but they can't because we're really valuable. So they have this constant tension. We have this constant tension. It's just part of life. Get over it. Move on. Get back to growing your business.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: To that end, this business takes experience. For you younger agents or for people who are dealing with younger-in-the-business agents — not necessarily young in age — understand you can either buy experience or you can earn experience. Those are your only two options. But to be successful, you have to have experience. I learned this the very hard way in growing Rogue Risk. Even though I had tons of experience selling, that part isn't really where I needed the experience. I needed experience learning how to run an agency.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Up until basically November of this year, I had to earn every bit of that experience because I didn't have someone working inside my agency who had the experience. Even though I have tons of friends who've been absolutely amazing and share so much in masterminds and groups — I got to give Gordon Coyle another shout out for all the advice that he's given me, and Paradiso and Carruthers and Cass and everybody, Doug Benz and all my friends. And if I'm forgetting you, Namoli. All my friends, thank you so much. But it's not in the day-to-day experience. So you have to earn that. And you make all kinds of bad decisions, which I've made. My God, I could do a four-hour podcast on all the bad decisions that I've made learning how to get to where we are in Rogue. That's how you get better.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So you can either earn or you can buy it. What we recently did was bring in two consultants for one position. They're kind of tag teaming it. It's our head of revenue position. We brought in the guys from Insurance Labs, Michael Blake and Kevin Kelly. They are acting as our head of revenue. Technically, it's a consulting position, but it's full time split between the two of them. We essentially bought their experience to go along with the earned experience that I have. In just one month, the results have been absolutely phenomenal.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: My point in telling you that is any experience that you haven't earned that you need, consider going and buying it. That's exactly what I did. I don't have these two guys' experience. I don't have Michael's experience. I don't have Kevin's experience. They have twice the experience, two times as many years, both of them in the business in different aspects of the business with different specialties than I have. Versus me continuing to bang my head off the wall, continuing to grind and make mistakes and be frustrated with things that I'm not great at, I went out and bought that experience and they've been phenomenal. A big part of the success and growth that we're going to have in 2023 at Rogue Risk, which is a very big number, is going to be because I made the tough decision.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I only have so much budget. Obviously we were acquired by SAA, so I have more budget than if I were still bootstrapping. I probably couldn't have afforded them in my previous iteration. I still have a budget that I have to maintain. This isn't an endless pool. This is a real business. And I chose versus other things to allocate the money to buying this experience. It has been absolutely phenomenal. I want to say thank you to those guys.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I wanted to share that lesson with you. The only way you can be successful is you either buy or earn experience. That's our business. You do not get to come in and win at insurance without that. You just don't. I don't know anyone who has. I know nobody who has just popped into this business and been immediately successful without earning the experience. If you know an example, I'd love to hear of them. But seemingly, you either have to make every mistake and trip over every branch and fall down every hill and pull yourself back up and keep going, or you need a guide. I'm very happy that I made the decision that I made and combined with my own earned experience and Michael and Kevin and the team that we have. When I say mine, please understand I'm talking about my entire team's experience, not just me personally. Although I do have the most experience on our team without Kevin and Michael.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I want to share that lesson with you. And then I want to reiterate something that I said a few podcasts ago. I think it was the one about being uncomfortable. I think it is incredibly important that while I love to push and I love to bang on boomers in our industry, and Michael is a boomer and seemingly gives me crap every time I talk smack, understand that it is incredibly important to have respect for where we came from in this industry. While yes, do I love to give all the old fat white guys in our industry shit? For sure I do. Because one, it's fun, and two, seemingly they have been around for too long. I wish they would start passing the torch. Not because I don't want them around, but because our industry needs them to do it and it's time to do it. It's time for the next generation to start to do these things.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Granted, that doesn't mean sacrifice your personal wealth or what you've built. I don't mean any of that. I just mean leadership positions and associations or councils or create a mentoring program that allows people to get there. That kind of stuff is really what my point is.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: At the end of the day, if you are struggling to be successful, surround yourself with people who walk with a limp. What I mean by that, building off this idea of experience, is this business is going to beat the absolute shit out of you. It just is. I experienced it firsthand this year all over again from my previous experience. I've had many business and many career moves where I just got the absolute shit beat out of me. And that's a good thing. That's a good thing, because if you can take the abuse and keep ticking, keep walking, keep learning, keep growing, keep fighting, keep connecting, keep going, you deserve your place.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That may sound a little counterintuitive to the "boomers need to get out of the way" thing. I don't mean it to be. I mean there needs to be more people with less experience at the table to learn from the people who are there, who've had the perseverance, who've had the guts, the gumption, the grit to fight through and survive. This is a tough business. A lot of people don't survive. There's an incredible amount of money made, incredible lifestyle to have, but there's a lot of people that don't make it. Because this business will beat the ever-living shit out of you and it doesn't care. It doesn't care. Life doesn't care. The universe doesn't care. No one cares.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Go out and get beat up. Go out and get beat up. You should want at the end of your career to be walking with a limp. Because what it shows is that you came and you played the fucking game. That's what I hope for you for 2023. All of this that I shared with you, all these notes and nonsense that I just shared with you, I hope in 2023 that whatever fear you have, whatever hesitation, you go out and you play the fucking game. Go get your head bashed against the wall. And for God's sakes, get the fuck back up, because we need you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's a hard market. Shit's tough. Business owners need you. We got Democrats in power. They are fucking with our small businesses. They're fucking with our lifestyle. Inflation is off the hook. Anyone who says that inflation isn't bad hasn't bought their own groceries. Play the game. Get the crap kicked out of you. Feel it. Feel what it feels like to lose. It sucks. Pisses me off. I hate losing. But you know what? I rarely lose twice. And I think that comes from getting back up and playing the game.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So I hope that whatever holds you back in 2022, say fuck it. Get back up and beat it in 2023. And if I can help, I'm always here. I love you guys. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. I'm out of here. Peace.
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