--:-- Ryan Hanley: In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home... Hello everyone, and welcome back to the show. I know I probably say this every week, but I have another one of my all-time 2023 favorite episodes that you're about to listen to, with Aaron Gordon. Aaron Gordon is the man. If you don't know who Aaron Gordon is, that's a you problem, not an Aaron Gordon problem.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I am so incredibly excited to share this episode with you because I think the world of Aaron. I think the world of the way he thinks about the business. Not all of what he feels is exactly the way I feel. But what I do love about him is that he's constantly thinking about his business. He's constantly marrying a very difficult kind of traditional legacy setup with where he wants to go in the future, and doing it in what I think is an absolutely incredible, respectable, and admirable way. Also, just a super cool, ridiculously cool dude who I got to spend a lot of really good time with recently in New York City for Doug Benz's The Business Meeting. So I just couldn't be more excited to share this episode with you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Before we get there, guys, if you love the podcast, you love the blog, findingpeak.com. Go to findingpeak.com. Stick your email address right in there and you'll get great articles delivered right to your inbox every week. Appreciate all the subscribers. We've been live there for about four months and we're doing just over 1,500 subscribers, which is tremendous. And I love you guys for doing that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Big shout out to Tivoli, T-I-V-L-Y.com. They deliver a foundational small business premium for us every month. Every day, every week, every month, we're getting calls from Tivoli—warm, live call transfers from their front-end triage specialists directly to your agency. The business owners are transferred, and you're literally on the phone with someone who's raised their hand and needs insurance. For as much as I've butchered this ad read, Tivoli is the 180 degrees opposite of a quality lead generator for your business if you're interested in commercial lines. Think about how terrible this ad read has been, and then flip that 180 degrees—that's how good Tivoli has been for Rogue Risk. We've been a client of theirs for almost two years.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Guys, the fact that you're willing to deal with me as I try to do some of these live reads for sponsors is why I love you guys so much. All right, with that, let's get on to easily one of my new favorite episodes of 2023. This conversation you're about to listen to... I'm going to the gym. Here we go.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I don't like the way this sounds, but we're going to have to go with it.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: That's a lot better, though.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, I know, but I like the look of the other one better. I don't know why it wasn't picking up my USB there. You'll edit this out. It's all good. You hear me better now? Is that good?
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Yeah, you sound good.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, you sound good. I mean, it's not normally that high-fidelity microphone that you have. I don't know why. It's literally not coming up as an option on my computer right now.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: You know what it is? It's because you downstate elitist. Your technology refuses to work with us upstate bumpkins. That's what it is.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think I know what it is. I don't think the power is connected.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: But yes, it is our upstate elitism. What the heck?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, it's literally not... hold on. But anyway, what's going on? How are you? I know we'll get rolling in a minute. I'm sorry.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Yeah, good, man. Just doing the thing, you know? Doing the thing every single day. That's what we're stuck doing. It's the business we got forced into, what I'm going to tell you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, it's very interesting. You know, at Rogue Risk, I love to read. I read a lot. I read just about every morning. I've started to realize that even without being a conscious decision, what I'm reading will skew towards whatever the issues or problems are that I'm sensing, even if I'm not aware of it. It's not like I sit down and say, "I need to do this." I was reading... I've read *Never Split the Difference* before, but it was when it first came out. I'm in the middle and I've gotten lazy.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Yes, I'm actually reading it for a second time because I'm working a lot more with the sales team and we're doing all kinds of different things at Rogue. I'm trying to build this human-optimized model, and I'm struggling with certain parts. Sales leadership and salesmanship in general is not my specialty. It's just not. I can sell. I'm very good at business development and deal making, but sales is not my specialty. So I'm reading this book. What I found is I just couldn't get through it. I gravitated towards Ryan Holiday's *Courage is Calling*. I've never read that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. I mean, it's an airplane read, but there's a ton of thought-provoking ideas and stuff you can underline. Little ditties. I love little ditties. It's like brain food. Some people call it mental masturbation or whatever, but to me, I don't have any problem with masturbating. But it feeds you these little things during the day. Left to your own devices, you can make all these whacked-out, crazy decisions that are not good for you. If you're constantly feeding your brain these little ditties, these little one-liners... It's one of the reasons why I don't love how reels can be a debt, a bottomless pit. But give me five or six scrolls of some David Goggins or some Jocko Willink Instagram reels, and I get all jacked up and come back firing.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Did you ever read *Your Next Five Moves*?
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Honestly, I'm not a big reader. You can also audio book it. This guy, Patrick Bet-David. I love Patrick Bet-David. This is his book. It's the only book that I've ever read where I had that kind of real impact. The other one is midway through the book. *Your Next Five Moves* is literally saying—and I feel like you'd be really good at this—his premise is that a chess grandmaster, if you sit down against them, you're thinking, "Okay, I'm going to move the pawn here." They're five moves later, they know what they're going to do based on everything that you're going to do over the next five moves. If you plan your business development five moves ahead, you'll come out on top. The here and now, that thing you're thinking about right now, is not going to actually be as important or might not be the decision that you ultimately make.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, this little fancy thing that's sitting on my desk is dead. That's why the microphone's not working. When I go to power it on, it's dead. I gotta figure that out. Sorry, I should have had my tech better prepared.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: You're good. We're talking about... I'm listening to you fix your microphone while we talk about books. This is amazing podcast radio. This is why the people tune in right here. And I just bought that book.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, it's good.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Yeah, that's cool. It's not a heavy read, like the rest of them, but it's a pretty good one. I like it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'll be honest, I am a ferocious reader. I am constantly consuming. I can't help myself. I love consuming. I love creating. If I'm in a car, I'm listening to a podcast. If I'm walking, I'm listening to a podcast. I have two books sitting here on my desk that just came in the mail today. I have Daniel Pink's *Drive*, which I'm trying to be a better leader. I'm realizing I have some blind spots in my leadership and I want to be better at that. And I also have *The YouTube Formula* by Derral Eves, which was referred to me as an easily skimmable book with some really solid tactical stuff for YouTube. YouTube is obviously our largest driver of traffic and leads to Rogue Risk.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Well, I listen when you talk, so I actually knew that. But that's only because I listen to when you talk.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, most people don't. But the YouTube thing is crazy. I've become a great consumer of people who do alternative living. If I wasn't married with five kids under the age of 12, that might be something I would do. I don't know if you follow these people that live out of vans. There could be a Sprinter in front of my office and it's someone's entire house with a shower and all that stuff. You have to get past the gray water and black water, but the whole idea of people flipping things on their heads and making entire livings off of YouTube... There's these people in Virginia called Life Uncontained. They have over a million YouTube subscribers and they live in a container home. They put two containers together, built this really nice home. The first five years, they lived in a van that wasn't even built out, and their entire revenue for them and their two children is YouTube. If people don't think that's a thing and it's not going away... The formula, the algorithm may change, but these people who put out one or two videos a week and get 1.2 million views and have X number of subscribers—they might not be making tens of millions, but they're definitely making money with sponsorships and all that jazz.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: I got a taste of that lifestyle when I was building the Agency Nation platform and doing those videos on YouTube. I'd travel or do whatever. You do all these cuts and B-roll cuts. You try to make it entertaining and educational, and you're building this community. Some of those videos have two, three, 4,000 views, which in the insurance industry is a lot. We got monetized really quick. At one point, we were adding almost an additional thousand dollars a month in revenue. That isn't a lot for a company like TrustedChoice.com, but if I was running that solo, that's an extra thousand dollars a month for something that basically took me one day a week. In exchange, you're making a thousand bucks. If I had put more time and effort into it, if it was my whole job, if it was a primary driver of ticket sales to the Elevate conferences... You can see how this is monetized.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: The part that I come back to with this kind of alternative lifestyle or content creator lifestyle is that it is very difficult to stay grounded and understand that behind what you're sharing, there has to be a real life. The beauty of Agency Nation was that a lot of the videos were me traveling to different events, traveling to see agents, traveling to Trusted Choice headquarters, sharing this experience and journey as we built this platform. There was a real business behind the content we were creating. I think where some people get in trouble—and there are a lot of people in our space that this happens to—is you're talking about insurance and you get 10 views on a video. Sucks. No one cares. Then all of a sudden you post one about prospecting and you get 500 views, a thousand views. People start sharing it, asking you questions. You're like, "Oh shit, this is way cooler than doing the insurance videos." Granted, it is way cooler, but is that real? Or are you just getting more attention because you did something different? No one is going to buy anything from you. You have to be careful that what you're creating is actually going to be a business, and not confuse it with something you do for fun.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm not sure if you're talking directly to me, but I can take it.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: I am not, but I have other people in mind.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But I think the challenge we have is that insurance isn't cool. One of the things that I at least try to do, and that I think you try to do also, is I want people to buy from the person. What I don't want is for people to think that this person is a jerk or this person doesn't know what he's talking about. There's this guy I became friendly with, a State Farm agent. He has put out some really great content. To your point, he put out this one really silly, stupid video—he even told me this—which was green screen. He's looking at a guy crash a motorcycle and he doesn't say anything, just his facial expressions. He got like 600,000 views. The thing I think about as it relates to insurance versus non-insurance, or the trusted advisor versus not, is you can't replicate those one-offs. What gets people in trouble, to your point, is when they try to replicate that. They say, "What was it that triggered the really silly facial expression?" Well, you can't. So now once a day, you're going to post you making a dumb face. Now you're the goofy facial expression guy. What you don't want in a profession—there are obviously people that have done this really well on social—but there are those people whose entire social media presence is them commenting on other videos of people doing really stupid things in the kitchen. "Did you just blend pasta to make new pasta?" That's a persona. But if you want to be a professional, you can't be the guy or gal who's green screening on top of people doing dumb things and saying how dumb they are, unless that's how you want to be.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Here's a lesson that I had to learn the hard way and still try to preach today: you get exactly back what you put out. If you are the doofy dumb face guy who makes fun of crashes or does wacky faces, you're going to get goofballs who call you. Someone who's serious, they're going to be like, "Oh, that might be fun," but whatever. You get back what you put out.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: It's super interesting. One of the debates that my parents and I have—they have different views on social media. My mother kind of sees that it could be a thing. My father literally can't even. He's like, "Where's the ROI?" One of the things I say to him is, "If you really wanted to see a direct ROI where I could pull up a dashboard that says this person clicked through and this person bought, those people are the exact people that you told me never to sell to." It's going to be because I make some sort of cutesy video on saving $4 on your auto insurance, and then those are the people that are going to call us and cancel the next day because someone else offers them $4 off. That social media pitch is different.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: What I can't say is that brand building is a thing. I really think there's this thing where people just kind of see you. I think lurkers are a thing. People don't realize the value. I look at views, I don't look at likes, even though they say you should look at likes and comments. How many people do I meet in a given day or at a conference that say something like, "Oh, I saw your videos," or "I feel like I saw you somewhere. I don't know if that was Facebook or LinkedIn, but I've seen you somewhere." My usual response is, "I'm an identical twin. You probably saw my brother." But that answer is, you saw me somewhere. That means that what I'm building had some sort of impact. You might buy from me later. But to your point, anyone who's going to click on an Instagram message and click through your job form and buy from you two minutes later are probably not the ideal client for us.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, yes and no. To your point on brand building, that customer that you really want—if you're doing it the right way and speaking to them in the way they speak, talking about the things they're interested in—maybe they don't click the first one they see, but they might click the seventh one they see.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: But that's what I'm saying. If you want to say, "I have a reel that got 50,000 views because it was random, and I have no idea why I got 50,000 views because it was stupid, and 20,000 people clicked on the link," even if I could convert 10% of those, those are horrible leads and horrible conversions because it was a gimmick that brought them in the door.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yes. This is like the whole Facebook rage not that long ago with running a stupid contest that people signed up for for something they never wanted. Then we gather the information and try to call them and sell them insurance. I get that there are some captive agents and personal lines only agents that are built a certain way that made money in that process. But the dirty little secret that maybe isn't so secret is that business retains for shit. Even if you were really good and had an awesome process with the 17-point touchpoint with voicemail drops, text messages, emails, phone calls, and auto dialers, that business does not retain. That person sees the next Facebook ad that offers them a $25 gift card to the Bronx Zoo, and they're signing up for that one and getting called 10,000 times by that person.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: 100%. I always like to think, what would at least give the people a chance to sell me on it? It's not a car warranty. An interesting thing was I was recently on the phone with Progressive changing a vehicle for someone. I called twice because the dealer gave me the wrong VIN number. Both times, the script that the customer service rep read me about homeowners insurance was so good. I wish I had recorded it. It wasn't "I can save you 15%." It was, "Are you happy with the service that I provided? If you like your service so far, can I put you in touch with someone who could give you a quote for your home, which may be able to save you on your insurance while you're achieving the same service that you said you liked from Progressive?" They played to exactly what I said I liked. It wasn't too pushy. By the way, they never called me because I said I was an insurance agent. But those people want to listen. That's not you saying, "Here, click this QR code and you'll get a four-cent thing to 7-Eleven."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh, dude. The stuff that I've learned just in the last three years, not to mention the last 17—I could take just about every traditional piece of ideology that exists around our business and show you a very well-run counterexample. Call centers is one of those. I was actually having this conversation with someone internal at SIA today because we're doing some testing around using carrier sales centers for certain types of business. I am convinced that at a minimum, $1,500 to $2,500 BOPs, you cannot write them profitably. Not at scale, not even in your agency. If you're writing a $2,500 BOP, you are on prep is unprofitable.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: What about a $500 BOP?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, completely unprofitable. It doesn't mean you're not writing it to write a piece of business. Purists come at me: "Small accounts grow." I know that. I believe it. That's why I write them.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: You got to do what's right by people. I completely agree. We have "no customer left behind" as our strategy. But to your point, I am the purist and I would tell you both of those things. The response that I have—and my father and I have this back and forth all the time—is that doesn't mean the $500 BOP is profitable. It's not profitable now. You're just willing to take it as a loss leader for future growth. But you can't say that it's profitable. When it grows, it'll be profitable, but it's not profitable right now. Or you send it to a carrier sales center, let them write it, let them service it, and pay about 20% the cost as you would if you wrote it inside your agency.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So the average...
--:-- Aaron Gordon: But it's still not profitable.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, no, that changes. Let me run this through for you. Let's say our cost of acquisition at Rogue is $50. It fluctuates depending on the month. We dial up Tivoli, it gets a little more. We have a lot of different places where business comes from. But let's say it's around $50 per lead—not closed business, just a lead that we could potentially write. If that's the case, a $500 BOP is going to make us about $75 in revenue, depending on the carrier. You get 25 bucks.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Okay. So instead of us writing it, we have a deal with a carrier. They take one point year one, and they take two points until we get to a million dollars in premium with them. Then they go down to one point. No one gives a shit about any book size that's less than a million dollars. We all have them, but you have no juice with a carrier until you're at about a million bucks. If you're stacking your chips with certain carriers trying to get to that million-dollar mark, you start to have some juice. That seven-figure premium book starts to trigger with that particular carrier. I'm not talking about total for the agency, I'm talking for a single carrier.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If I were to send every BOP that came in that I eyeballed was going to be $2,500 or less to the carrier, I'm getting hit with one point year one. When I hit a million, I now have a million-dollar book of business serviced at a 92% retention rate for $10,000.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: You're right. By the way, your acquisition cost is an acquisition cost year two. So your profitability on that skyrockets. Even if you made nothing year one, no revenue, no work.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: This is why I think what people miss about carrier sales centers in general. Look, they're not all the same. I've done a tremendous amount of vetting. I have three that I really like that we're testing right now. But my point is, the carrier sales center is not meant to replace the work you're doing. It's meant to be additive. If Aaron Gordon is sending the business that's small, that wastes his time from a profitability standpoint, to a carrier sales center, then he should still be writing all the same bigger accounts that he wants to spend his time on. All you're doing is not taking away from those accounts that you really want to write that are profitable, that do need your expertise, time, attention, and handholding. You're just saying, "All that other shit, I still want to write it, I just don't want to have to deal with it." When you look at the math and the process, how additive they can be, ego is the only reason why people don't use them. That's my personal opinion. I could be wrong.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Do you think it's ego or just the way it's always been done? Do you view that as ego?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think the way it's always been done is ego. I think people have this...
--:-- Aaron Gordon: I never thought of it that way. I never thought that the carrier service center... You're right, they're probably also better at cross-selling at a certain point. Most people probably don't care because the average consumer is used to consuming call centers, so it doesn't really matter. I bet you could probably cut it where if the premium ever increases above your threshold, they kick it back to you. Forget about the premium, but if the service becomes a higher level of service that you want to bring in-house...
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, maybe you have to say that to Brian Hanley. But maybe you're right. You have to believe in it. You also have to believe that the carrier is not going to screw up the lead, which I think is another piece.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Yes. Well, you're saying about ego, but you're right. Statistically, your staff will probably screw it up before the carrier. Even a best practices agency has a retention of what?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Somewhere between 89 and 92 percent. That's a best practices agency per the Big I, it's going to be in that range.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Right. Right. Right. OK.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So the three carrier sales centers that I'm currently testing all push 90, 92 is a minimum threshold. In given years, they push 93 or 94%. So technically, these carrier sales centers, if you're utilizing them properly, would be best practices of the best practices agencies. They would be the top from a retention standpoint.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Well, that's actually probably why. That also has to do with the fact that they're probably really good at getting ahead of the service requests. They're probably really good at getting ahead of some of the other challenges, and they also probably just don't drop the ball the way that... They have systems, processes. They're open. All three of them are open a minimum of 8 to 8 Eastern. The phone comes in, the phone call comes in, they already have the account up, which I know a lot of agencies do, but you'd be shocked at how many don't. So they're probably able to pull all that in a different way, which I guess works out.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So again, I'm not advocating everyone go to carrier sales centers. That's never the case. What I've tried to pride myself on, right or wrong, and trust me, I take a lot more shots and have a lot more failures than most agencies because I have this methodology. I have a Bruce Lee mentality to this business. I'm running a business that I'm trying to grow profitably while taking care of my customers. Who does that, how it gets done, the method in which they purchase, I don't really care. As long as it serves our customers and does right by them, gets them in good coverage, gets them good service. I'm not saying I don't care that they're taking care of. All I want to do is write business and screw the customer. What I'm saying is, as long as it meets a bar of expectation of service, then I don't care how they come in.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: That's one of the things that I think a lot of people face when you talk about it, especially on the personal side. I know you don't do a lot of that, but when you talk about minimum coverage, it's maybe on the commercial side. At what point do you set your threshold and say, this is a minimum threshold for coverage, for quality, for everything like that? And then how much business are you willing to let go out the door theoretically, realizing that you'll be more profitable in the long term? I don't think that people really analyze the profitability of the different silos of their business enough.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: I think that that is complicated. Because if people really did a deep dive, and they don't want to spend the money or they just don't want to, people would realize that there is so much stuff that is not profitable. And probably if you take really big business clients that are that top 2, middle market or large middle market accounts that everybody knows are the most profitable because they're the same work as some of the smaller ones, if you take that as an obvious answer for profitability, I bet you that most people will probably miss on what their most profitable process line path is versus what the really bad ones are.
--:-- [Host Interjection]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What's up, guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show. In exchange for that, I need your help. If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes. This helps the show grow. It helps me bring more guests in. We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in, men and women who've done incredible things, sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales, the things that are going to help you grow as a person and grow your business. But they all check out comments, ratings, reviews. They check out all this information before they come on. So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help. Share the show. Subscribe if you're not subscribed. 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.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Yeah, there's actually, if you're a Hanover agent, they have a free service. They will come in, digest your book of business. They will find personal and commercial, they'll do profitability, they'll do cross-sell opportunities, they'll do a full report that breaks down your entire book, all carriers. You sign an NDA, they're not taking your information, but they will come in and do a full analysis of your book of business and hand you this report and say, "This segment is this and this is here. Here's your retention on personal lines outside of this range, and here's your monoline." It's really interesting stuff. Then you can decide to do with that information whatever you want. I think a lot of people would be super shocked with how, "Oh, I really thought this was profitable. What do you mean?"
--:-- We have this thing where we have one outside producer and he specializes in smaller-ish dealers block policies and the ancillary business that goes with it. It's a fascinating business to be in in New York City, especially if you're willing to chase people every single month for their non-pays. I have told my parents that there's no way that it's profitable for him. For us, it's very profitable because we give him a better commission split. Since he gets a better commission split than he was getting elsewhere, we also force him to do more of the work, which he's willing to do. I will not walk up and down 47th Street between 5th and 6th Avenue every single month and collect three or four checks for $200 each. It's never going to happen. I'd rather pay you, like the service center, an extra 10% and you deal with it. I can't figure out how this guy's life is profitable, but I can tell you that's profitable for us. My father says, "What do you mean? He's making X a year." I'm like, "Do you realize what he does? If he cut out this smaller business, when he pays for parking to go see this guy, it runs off his commission, kills his commission." I think that's a fascinating part of this business. Also, how many people have just never thought about these things?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I was going to ask you how many people actually think about this. Cass was the one 10-plus years ago that started raising this flag. He and I have talked about this in detail. When you go to a conference, there are a couple of things that you realize right away. There are lifestyle agents and there are growth agents. Inside of those two segments, there are sub-segments. Lifestyle agents, I think, are the majority of agents. They have either inherited, perpetuated, or built an agency in which it serves their lifestyle.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: What do you think the percentage is there? I have a number in my head. I'm just curious what it is.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I bet it's somewhere between 65 and 75 percent of agencies are lifestyle agents.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Yeah, it could be. I think it easily could be. If you drive down the street in any city...
--:-- Ryan Hanley: There's a road over here that's got four of them. None of those are growth. All four of them have a Travelers sign and a Progressive sign from the 90s sitting in the window. All four of them, the exact same signs in their windows. They're all like three last names. It's whatever. It's okay. So you see that. Let's carve those guys out because what they're trying to do, all they want to do, and not wrongly. That's not a knock. If this is what you do, trust me, there are days I wake up and ask myself why I didn't start a lifestyle agency. What I'm doing today is terrible for my stress and emotions. I love it, but it also forces me to drink a lot.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Good thing you're coming to the city soon.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yes, which is going to be awesome. I can't wait. But then there's this growth segment. Let's say it's somewhere between 15% and 25% of the market are growth agents, people who grow their business. Inside of there, I think we have two groups. We have marketers and we have business owners. We have people who are just good at putting business on the books. It's grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. They're doing the Facebook stuff, they're trying all these different things, but it's just grow, grow, grow. They're not thinking about how their agency is set up. They're not thinking about retention. They're just thinking about growth at all costs and trying to get acquired and get out. There's those.
--:-- Then there is this very small group of people. I think it's what brings together a lot of us. I think you think this way. I know Paradiso does. The crew that we are starting to run with, a lot of people at One City World Tour, I think, think this way. They think about their business not as an insurance agency, but as a business. An insurance agency just happens to be what they do. It doesn't mean you don't have to be good. It doesn't mean you can't be nerdy or wonky. It just means that they look at it like a business. They don't hide. You can also be a purist in what insurance is and does and be a business. It just means you think about things like what you said: "I'd rather pay this guy to go walk the streets and pick up $200 in cash for jewelers blocks than me do it myself because when I do the math, it doesn't make sense."
--:-- Aaron Gordon: I think that when people start thinking about the business, being able to be a business owner, like you say, is a luxury in our generation. I realize it's not like a millennial take, but I am lucky enough that I've never had to say, "If I don't make a sale today, then payroll is not going to be made." I've spoken to my dad multiple times. He talks about the first sale he ever made. It's still a commercial client of ours today. I can't imagine being that guy who says, "Hold on, if that commission check doesn't clear." With that being the mindset, I think that until recently, people kind of hid from how we made money, how much money insurance agents were making. It was some sort of dirty secret. What I found is every single time I either bring it up to people or people ask me and I tell them directly, they think we should be making more for the effort.
--:-- We have a client, a large jeweler. One day, maybe five years ago, we were sitting in his waiting room for a long time. He came in, said sorry to keep you waiting, and then he was complaining to my dad about a 12% increase. He looks at my father and goes, "How much are you making off me?" My father says, "Do you see that number? I'm going to make 12 and a half percent this year. You want to do the math?" He looks my father right in the face and goes, "I want to deal with me for that amount." It's a big account, a nice middle market commercial account. I don't think any business owner would say that's not a good account. It's been very profitable. It grows every year. It's above anyone's minimum threshold. But even from the outside, people are like, "You have to start thinking about this as a business. You have to start thinking, is it a good use of my time?"
--:-- I used to be a serial networker. When I started, I was frustrated because my parents wanted me to sell and I couldn't figure out how to sell. I said, "I suck at cold calling. I'm really good if you put me in a room. I am not afraid at a bar or at a crudités station. Worst case, the person thinks I'm a weirdo or doesn't want to do business with me. Best case, I get to write their business." I was networking every night or a few nights a week. The rest of the time, I was either following up on bad leads from networking events or trying to chase the next networking event. I started to realize if you focus on certain silos of networking and say, "This is where I'm really good," I'm going to take my skill set, which is not cold calling, which is being in person. I'm going to go to two a week or maybe even one a week. But then I'm going to be better at getting the leads that I want. When I follow up with them afterwards, I actually get to write the business. I'm not just tearing my hair out after we get nowhere or get $5 when I just paid $40 for parking and $100 for an entry ticket.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's funny how similar that story is to me. That's literally how my story was. I sucked at cold calling. I hated it. I hated interrupting people. There was something about calling someone on the phone and interrupting them that I felt like I wasn't adding value. Now I know, and Caruthers has pounded this into my head, you are adding value. I get all that. It does not wedge into my brain. I get it logically. I hear it and I'm like, "How many cold calls in your life have worked on you, Ryan Hanley?" Like zero. Zero. And that's not a knock on them. My wife and I always joke about the fact that ever since we got a house phone, we get a billion of these calls. She always says to me, "Why do these people do it?" I said, "There's somebody somewhere who's running some algorithm who figured out that all of these companies are not losing money every single day." So you just have to figure that out. It's just not for me.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: This business allows people to do... By the way, you know what makes a lot of money? Really good inside salespeople.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Which are very difficult to find. But it should be easier. They have no awkwardness. All the hard part has been done. All I need them to do is cross-sell. I've sold these people on our value. Let's say you just sell people who have been clients of this agency for more than five years and love us, or clients who have recommended us to other people, which means they like us. Now we're just going to go back to them. I've done the hard work. But it's very hard to find because people don't realize that that's actually not a cold call. It's a cold call, but it's not a cold call. When these people hear "Gordon," they're not going to say, "Hang up, who are you?" They're going to be like, "Oh, how's Goldie?"
--:-- Ryan Hanley: This is why everyone grows their agency on referrals. What I love is when I see someone talk about how they work on referrals. "We work on referrals. We work on referrals." They get this look. You've seen this look that guys get, especially guys. They get this look, shoulders kind of roll back, and they look at you like they got this secret that you don't understand. "I work on referrals." It's this look. If you've ever seen a guy posture, it's specific to dudes and their unique ability to posture. They get this look like, "I referrals." Then they look at you like if you do it any other way, you're an asshole.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: You know what I started saying to them? I go, "Oh, you're lazy." They go, "What? No, you don't understand. We work on referrals." I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, no, you're lazy. I get it. I completely get it." To me, I love referrals, don't get me wrong. But the point is, a referral is the easiest thing that you can get. It's the easiest way to sell. None of those people, guilty as charged sometimes as well, really work on referrals either. Do you know what working on referrals should mean? When someone's really happy with your service and they're like, "Aaron, I love you. Thank you. You came through for me. You're the best." When there was a super storm Ida and I showed up to 15 people's houses that night just to show them emotional support, you're going to tell me I'm crazy, but it's just what I do. What I should have done the next week was asked each one of them for a referral. That would be working on referrals. That would be saying, not awkward. I know that these people are very happy right now. They're probably thinking, "How could I really say thank you to him?" So if I ask them for... When most people do that, what you're saying, the reason why it's really lazy is because they don't even work the referrals. What that means is they wait for the phone to ring.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Some people are really good at prospecting. Some people are not. But Mick Hunt would say, and it's true, and he's yelled at me about this, every single agency, all of those lifestyle agencies that you discuss, I bet you have 50% more revenue sitting in their business easily, to do nothing. If you sent one email out that says, "Did you know that we do life insurance?" Nothing else. One email. You can make X number more for your lifestyle.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: I'm going to give everybody that wants to make more money: sign up for Propeller Bonds and Zip Bonds. Sign up for those two services. Then email every commercial client you have. Email everybody. A lot of regular humans who don't have businesses also need bonds for different things that they do. If they show up at a trade show where they make honey from home and they have to go to a bazaar to sell it, a lot of times you might need bonds for these things. If it's a simple bond, Propeller can do it in five minutes. If it's some big handholding bond that you need help with, you send it to Zip and they do the whole thing for you. You literally don't have to know anything about surety. That's what I'm doing. That's what we're doing on the personal side as well with Armadillo. It's the same thing. I do nothing. People complain, "This wasn't covered." I don't want to deal with it because I'm not going to make any money off of it. But if they have just a decent experience or they buy a product, I get the data. Forget about the commission. I would do it for no revenue to solve my problem and give me the data. Then I know when people buy new homes, I can pitch them. Tell me when they have a claim. If they have a good experience, I'll try to pitch them again. It's easy. There's no touch.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: My parents would say, "How could you have no touch?"
--:-- Aaron Gordon: I think that there's a place for both. I really do. I think you can convert, like you said about the BOPs, no touch into touch. That's where the secret sauce is. The secret sauce is not worrying about how you bring them in the door, but worrying about how each year, not just on rate, you increase the revenue per account.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Dude, you just hit it out of the park. I'll give you an example of this. One of the things that we were finding is with our leads that come in, somewhere between 15 to 30% of those leads fill out the form. We call them within 30 minutes, which right now is our bar. I want it to get quicker, but it is what it is. We call them within 30 minutes, they completely ghost us. Never call us, never respond to a text, never respond to an email, never respond to another phone call. Completely gone. But all their info, I've gone in and audited this, all their info was 100% accurate. I can tell you exactly who the business is and exactly the person is. Here's what I think happened. They watched a video, they read a piece of content. They saw something that brought us to the website. They said, "I like these guys. I would like to get a quote." They click on the "Get a Quote" button. They fill out the first page of the form, expecting the next page to give them a price. And it doesn't. And they go, "I'm out."
--:-- I believe that somewhere between, and I will figure this out before I'm done with Rogue Risk as a project, I will figure out what this percentage is, but I believe somewhere between 15 to 30% of small business consumers want to see a price. It doesn't mean they're a bad customer. It doesn't mean they're a price shopper. It means for them, for their personal customer experience to be validated, they want to know what the price is going to be about. What we're testing right now in partnership with Great American is a two-path call to action. We're slowly redesigning Rogue and testing this. We're going to have, "Are you a DIYer? Click here. Get a quote today for BOP or Workers Comp right on the spot that you can bind and purchase if you like it." Or, "Would you rather work with one of our licensed agents? Click here, call us today." It's a different form. That allows us to bifurcate and track how many people actually want to start as DIY. The cool part is if they go through and they don't ultimately purchase, we get all the information that our team can call out and try to close the deal. It's not like we've lost the lead.
--:-- Do I love quote-bind-issue online on your own? I don't love it. Despite the way that I think and believe, I am more of a purist. I do believe that there's a ton of value in what we do. It has to be done right, all those things. But should I philosophically take that 15 to 30% and just throw them out the door because they want a number and I don't believe they should have a number? I don't think that.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: I'll tell you something really interesting that we found. We've done some studies into this, obviously not as good as they should be. When people get pricing, if there's a lowest and a recommended, even the price-conscious buyer, assuming that it's not 3X, 4X, 5X, 6X, will take the recommended from the agent that they clicked on over the lowest. To your point, when they click or when they disappear, it's not that they just wanted the cheapest, easiest option. It's that somebody told them that in order to get to a place tonight, to do an event tonight, or to sign their lease, or whatever, they need insurance. They came to us and didn't get that. So they had to go to somebody else. But if we gave it to them, regardless of what we gave them, they would probably see that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Dude, it is incredibly interesting.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Do you want to know what it's like to live in New York City right now? This is great.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Do you do video podcasts? I've never seen a few videos.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: No, I don't do the videos. For all those loyal listeners, my nose literally just started bleeding randomly out of the blue.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What's that about?
--:-- Aaron Gordon: To ride New York winters. Look at this, straight up.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh yeah, this is the real life of insurance agents with Brian and Aaron here. We go. Those bleeds live on air.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Well, the good news is we don't... I kind of wish we produced the video now. But I'll be honest with you, I would love to produce the video, but it's just another step that I don't feel like dealing with. I've also found that when you produce the video, people get squirrely. Maybe that's not as much the case today because video is so much more ubiquitous and part of people's lives. But I found even as short as a few years ago, a lot of people don't care. A lot of people are perfectly fine with it. But then you get a lot of other people who get a little squirrely. They're a little more tense. They want their facial expressions to be right. They don't respond the same. All I care about is the conversation. I want this conversation to be the best conversation that we possibly have. I don't want you going, "Ah, no, I can't talk now because my nose is bleeding," or, "I don't like the way I look."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: How many videos and podcasts total do you think you've done in your career?
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Oh, thousands.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Has yours or anyone else's nose started to randomly bleed?
--:-- Aaron Gordon: No, you're the first nosebleed I've ever had on the show.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: First nosebleed. There it is. Hanley has waited long enough. We're opening up the gates right here. The keys to success. First nosebleed on the show.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: That's true. This work that we do, it's so incredibly important. It's very difficult to manage. I think people start to feel that it diminishes what we do when we talk marketing and we talk cost of acquisition and social media ads. I feel like a lot of the more old school, the people who are very hardcore purists or more traditional, they take that talk as diminishing. I think what I like about what you do, hopefully the message that comes off when I create as well and others like us, is that you can be both a marketer and a salesperson and a high volume grower and still care about quality of customer experience, the quality of the coverage, all that stuff that is the bread and butter of an independent insurance agency.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's like the joke that I say about e-signature, but it's not a joke. When I wanted to institute e-signature in our agency and my parents were like, "No, why?" First it was, "Is it legal?" Then once we got the legal, "No, nobody wants that." My contention was 30 years ago, part of the broker relationship was the person came in, they signed the forms, they gave you the check. That was your... Nobody that we interact with ever wants to print, sign, and scan forms. No one ever. The way I proved it was I took a hundred signatures that we got in three months. I said to my parents, "Look, over 85% of those, the people just sent back the signature pages." Which means that what we had to do on those Accord apps, no joke, was reprint the whole damn thing, swap out page 11, page 18, and page 22, and put in the signature pages. That doesn't take away from coverage, expertise, purist, any of that. It's just saying, "How can we make the customer experience the best?" I think that there's all of that. Yes, I'm a purist. People tell me that I'm old school and that I should be doing things differently. But I'm mixed of lifestyle and growth. This is just how our agency is. By the way, it's given me a great life. So who am I to... Who am I?
--:-- Aaron Gordon: A hundred percent. And that is the key. The way my brain works, I tend to focus on the tactics and strategies that work for more growth-focused agencies. But the truth is, there isn't a day that I don't wake up and wish that I was running a lifestyle agency and that my daily operation was maximizing revenue per client and overall profitability of my business.
--:-- So that today, instead of having 15 meetings and stressing the fuck out at 5 a.m. about the five fires that I have going because all these projects aren't connecting... I could just be like, "It's fucking snowing out, I want to go to Mount Snow. Peace, I'm out. I'm going skiing." I would love to be able to do some of that stuff because I have my business. The likelihood of you losing one single dollar of revenue by doing that is minimal.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: The likelihood of you going skiing and saying, "I'm out for six hours today," if you had that historically... you might lose four dollars. It's just not... So we'll see. I think that there'll be a mix going forward. I think it ultimately is a mix. I think that there is a day of reckoning coming for those random older time agencies that haven't adapted at all.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: But then again, I get back to the story that my father tells. If I wasn't here, he probably would have done one of two things. Either sold ten years ago because my siblings wouldn't have been interested either, assuming that no one was interested. Or he would have said, "I'm going to continue to work at the pace that he was working at, slowing down slowly." Right now he's 82. And this is a version of a retirement plan, even though I planned for my retirement, that other people didn't realize.
--:-- So if you went to one of those four agencies that has the oldest principal, and you told them, "We're going to force you to close your doors on December 31st, 2023, because you're going to lose all your carrier appointments since you haven't produced in the last five years"... again, the oldest one would probably say, "That stinks, but it's been a nice ride." Like, "Can I get an earn out for a couple years? Who's going to service my book? Okay great, I'm moving to Florida."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, no, I'm dude. And I want to be respectful of everyone's time and yours as well. I know we started a little late. An episode that hasn't gone live yet, but I recently recorded was with Billy Vangura. He does a lot of traditional agency prospecting, primarily personalized agencies inside upstate New York. He finds these kinds of hole-in-the-wall agencies, and he's doing his thing. It's really interesting what he's doing.
--:-- He was telling a story about how he came across this guy. He's got four agency locations, almost a million dollars in revenue between the four locations. Some of the locations are basically just one person sitting in a room. The guy makes an offer, he's kind of negotiating, and ultimately it falls apart. Not to bury the lead, but what he said was the reason it fell apart is this guy is making enough money to finance his entire lifestyle. Everything that he can want, he wants nothing else. He's in his 80s and he hasn't reshopped an account in three years. Hasn't reshopped an account. Hasn't touched it.
--:-- And by the way, even if I purchase his agency or partner with him, or he partners with Billy or anybody, if we would say to him, "You will never have to do one thing differently," he might consider it. But we might say, "Listen, what we want is for you to allow us to send emails to your clients." Why should I do that?
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Yeah. Why? Again, I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but why? I don't need to do that. Eats his breakfast, says hello to his wife. Not to give away his pitch, but you know why Bradley Flowers became an insurance agent?
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Right? He found the guy in his community that played golf the most. He said, "I want to be that guy." It's not a joke.
--:-- I tell people that my dad is the only person, I believe, that's been in the insurance industry as long as he has—since October of 1958—and has never played a round of golf. Never.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That stinks. My summer Fridays are a whole different level of stinking being his kid, but whatever. It's all good.
--:-- Dude, this has been awesome. You're awesome. I'm sorry that it took us long to get going. I'm sorry my nose started bleeding to all the listeners.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: You don't have to apologize for anything. This is a conversational show, man. We're real people just having conversations and sharing with an audience. I love it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: This has been great. It will not be the last time, and I'm sorry it took so long to get you on the show. That's not intentional, but I'm glad that we did it. And I'm going to see you tomorrow. Tomorrow, next day. Can't wait.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Right. Wednesday or Thursday. We're going to shovel the snow for you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We're going to shovel the snow. I love it. I love it. And if people want to get at you, connect with you on social, where's the best spot?
--:-- Aaron Gordon: NY Risk Advisor. Any LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter: NY Risk Advisor. I've been loving Twitter lately because I'm just having a lot of fun with it. I feel like it's the most fun of the platforms, to be honest.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It is. It's just awesome. It's great.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: My brother's on it. My twin brother's on it. So we get a little banter there. It's good times.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That's great. I sold my first policy ever on social media off of Twitter. $10,000 in revenue off of Twitter two weeks ago.
--:-- Aaron Gordon: Boom. There it is. Mic drop moment to end the podcast. I love you, bro. I'll see you in a couple of days. Peace.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Thank you. Thanks.
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