--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hey guys, by now you have heard about SIA acquiring Rogue Risk and you've most likely heard the episodes with Matt Maciello and some of the other guests where we've talked about what we're doing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If you're a producer, if you're an agency owner, if becoming part of Rogue Risk is something that interests you, if our methodology, our process, the markets that we're using, if you're looking to remove the ceiling from your career, if you're looking to take your agency or your book of business or your production career to another level, go to join.roguerisk.com.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Go to join.roguerisk.com. Check us out. See what the no ceiling career is about. Learn more about what SIA's partnership with Rogue Risk is all about. Learn more about what we're trying to do and where we're going. And if it seems like a good fit for you guys, we would love to talk to you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We're taking Rogue to another level and we're putting producers at the forefront and giving them the ability to take their career as far as they want to go. And if that means all the way to owning their own agency someday, we will happily help you launch your agency into this marketplace. That is our mission, the no-ceiling insurance career, and if you want to learn about it, go to join.robrace.com.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. So today we have a tremendous episode, absolutely tremendous episode that I have been waiting to do for a while. It's with Gordon Coyle, the founder and president, CEO, whatever, of Coyle Insurance, downstate, about an hour, 45, two hours south of where I'm sitting right now.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Gordon and I have been, I guess we started out as accountability partners. We met quasi-randomly — we talk a little bit about how we met when we get into the episode itself — but we met through Benjamin Dennehy who is a cold calling consultant's program. He was like, you know, you got to find someone to hold you accountable. And we talk about it, but we started this kind of thing. Gordon and I for more than two years now have been chatting just about every other week for an hour on Fridays. We just talk about the business and we talk about our lives and what's going on.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I kind of try to cut him loose from doing things the regular way, and he tries to keep me semi-attached to the ground. In that relationship, we've helped each other grow and prosper. My conversations with Gordon are a big part of the reason why Rogue has been as successful as it is. I value the friendship that I have with him.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think his story, particularly someone who — and I don't mean this in any kind of negative way — but Gordon is over 60 and he's taking on content marketing and video marketing and using them to grow his agency and get real, very specific, very specialized leads that are his expertise. It's helping him grow his business. It's just so much fun to watch, and I'm so happy for him.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Just to put Gordon on your radar, all you listeners, as someone to connect with and keep an eye on. Gordon's a great guy, and this is just an episode, like I said, been waiting to take one of these conversations that Gordon and I have and share it with you guys for a long time. Happy that I finally get to do so.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Before we get there, I want to give a big shout-out to today's sponsor, and that is Tarmika, T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. Guys, if you haven't at least got the demo for Tarmika, go get the demo. I'm not telling you to purchase. That's your decision. But I'm saying know what's out there. Know what the tool does. Go get a demo. See what Tarmika could do for your agency.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If you're thinking about attacking small commercial or small commercial is already a part of your agency and you're just looking to streamline it a little bit to be able to maybe shop quotes more often or more accurately or more consistently, Tarmika is a tool that's going to allow you to do that. There's no better tool in the market. T-A-R-M-I-K-A dot com. Go check out Tarmika. And once you do that, come back and listen to this episode again, this tremendous episode with Gordon Coyle.
--:-- [Audio issue - speaker checking microphone]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You're still muted. Do I have you now?
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Yeah, I'm good. How's it going?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You're still muted.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Make sure it's not me. It's you.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Yep. It was me. I'm the asshole.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So you're relieved to have the news out in this?
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Incredibly, incredibly relieved because I am the worst secret keeper in the history of the world. My wife always used to say that she never had to worry about me cheating because she knew that the minute it was over I would be texting her like, "This was awesome, we gotta try this sometime."
--:-- Gordon Coyle: It's funny. I'm a terrible, terrible secret keeper. I can for some reason keep other people's secrets fine. I have a lot of things that people have told me. But my own secrets, I just can't keep them. I just can't not say what's happening in my life or my mind. I don't know what it is.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: My wife is like, "Oh, I got you the best birthday present, you're gonna be so amazed." My birthday is not for like a month. She'll just keep going on about it. I'm like, "You're going to spill the beans. I know you're going to spill the beans before my birthday."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That was always the big joke in our house. I would get her something and I would give it to her like two weeks early because I just couldn't handle it. It would literally be burning a hole in my mind that I had this thing that I was so excited to give her and I just couldn't wait.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Like when I proposed to her, it was in Aruba. I had built up — I was working for American Express at the time and I was flying from New York City to — no, I was working for a company called RSM McGladry, which is the fifth or sixth largest accounting firm in the country. I was a math major, so I wasn't an accountant. I worked on the consulting side. I was basically the accountant's little bitch. They all would pat me on the head, "Oh, you little math major."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So I was flying from New York City to San Francisco every week, Monday to Thursday, auditing the California State Workers Compensation Fund. I don't know if anyone listening remembers, but back in the early 2000s, a couple of the executives got caught embezzling funds, but they couldn't figure out how much. We were there doing the audit to figure out how much they had actually stolen. I think it ended up being like 60 million or something like that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'd been flying back and forth, built up all these points. I wanted to propose to my wife. I said, "Let's go to Aruba." Obviously who doesn't want to go to Aruba for free on points. We get there and our two year anniversary of our first date was September 29th. We got there on the 26th. My plan was to wait for the 29th and make it this big special thing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I brought three presents. One present was a sweatshirt, sweatsuit top. The next present was the sweatsuit bottom. I'm trying to build her up that this is just something nice. The last present was a regular sized box, but it's just filled with garbage — shredded paper and tissues — but at the very bottom was the ring.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: In my mind, we're flying down and I'm a wreck because I'm not going to be able to wait. I'm not going to make it to the 29th. She's like, "What's wrong? What's wrong?" It wasn't the proposing that I was worried about, it was that I couldn't make it to the 29th. Sure as shit, as soon as we walk in the hotel room, I'm like, "I know I'm supposed to wait till the 29th to give you these presents, but I'm going to give them to you today."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: She had no idea. She opens a sweatsuit and you get the "Oh, this is nice." But I can tell it's just a sweatshirt. Then the sweatpants. I'm like, "Ha ha ha, it's the bottoms matching." She's like, "Oh, you're trying to be nice." I made such a big deal out of it and she's getting a track suit. Then the last one she opens and she's like, "What is this?" I was like, "Oh shit, I grabbed the wrong box." I said, "Make sure it's in there." She goes, "Well what is it?" and digs at the bottom, then she finds it and loses her mind. I got laid like 10 times. It was awesome.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: That's basically my story on I can't keep anything. So holding back this whole SIA thing was absolutely killing me. For the last seven months, I haven't been able to talk to anybody except for like you. These little, "Oh, wait till you hear this news." That was me just venting a little gas. It was basically you and like two or three other people that knew. No one else knew for six months. It's been absolutely killing me that I couldn't tell everybody.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: My way is just to talk about things. Obviously, I'm supposed to be interviewing you and I haven't shut up yet. But what's up with you, man? I'm so excited to be doing this.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: For people, I just want to set a little context for everyone listening. You may or may not know — no one probably knows — but Gordon and I have been doing regular phone calls every other week for a year and a half at least, right? Maybe more.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Well, get this. I thought about it. The reason we connected, which is so weird, is that we were both on a webinar with Benjamin Dennehy.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That's right.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: And we were going to be holding ourselves accountable to a cold calling program.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Which we didn't do. Within six calls or four calls, we were like, "Ah."
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Yeah. We're not going to do this. This is craziness.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That was like December of 2020-ish, November.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: I think it was fall, winter-ish.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, it was December. It was pre-COVID, so that would have been 2019, right?
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Yeah, 2019. Shit, it's been that long?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You opened Rogue that's right later. Wow, I can't believe it has been that long. That's great. I just didn't realize it had been that long.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So we've been doing these regular calls. They started out with a purpose and then we both were like, "Fuck it, we're not doing that." Even though it's important and we all should do it. Then we just started rapping for an hour every other week and we've just been going. Sometimes longer.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Yep. You've walked me off several ledges. Talk the ears off a brass statue. We don't have a problem there.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Several times I've been on the verge of doing something dumb and you've walked me back from that, which is great. You've been my rational sounding board. Sometimes you're like, "No, that sounds great." Sometimes you're like, "What you're saying is crazy right now and I need you to back up."
--:-- Gordon Coyle: And you play the exact opposite role for me. You're the one pushing me closer to the flame.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, go and keep going. A little bit of fire is good for you. Never hurt anyone.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: For everyone who doesn't know you, hasn't met you, maybe just break down — because I have a bunch of stuff I want to talk to you about and share with the audience. I think a lot of what you're doing is absolutely incredible. Just kind of break down real quick for everybody, highlights of your agency or history, that kind of stuff, whatever you think is important.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Sure. So I came into the insurance business out of college in 1982. So I'm at 40 years in the business, which I sometimes think to myself, that's kind of an amazing feat in and of itself. Came into a family agency. I was third generation.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: If you were to try to sketch out what a traditional agency looked like in the 80s — you got to remember, this is pre-internet, pre-computers. It was a pretty traditional agency: home, auto, small business, life insurance, benefits. Benefits back then was easy peasy, not craziness like it is today. We did a little bit of everything.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: My father and my uncle ran the agency. I came in, and my uncle retired pretty soon after that. It was a weird way of doing business when you think back about it. You were typing up sales letters on a typewriter, on an IBM Selectric, and sending them out one at a time. Today you're sending out 10,000 emails at a time. The scale of the way we did business changed.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Over time, my dad retired when I was like 27, 28 years old. I was running an agency and I was learning the hard way how to do it. I didn't have a mentor. I was kind of just muddling my way through. Over time we changed the agency around. We had bought a couple of books of business, merged with two other agencies, then split off those partners over time, then started another agency with another partner. This spans different decades.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: I owned a second agency with a large real estate broker, and we were rapidly growing personal lines because every deal they did was an opportunity to sell home insurance. After doing that for probably five years, I went to my partners and said, "The transactionalness of this business is not what I am cut out for."
--:-- Gordon Coyle: As some context, I always enjoyed commercial lines. I have four professional designations. I'm kind of a geeky nerd around insurance. I love digging into stuff, figuring out what's right and what's not right. Transactional work really was not my gig. I said, "Hey, would you guys want to buy me out?" They were like, "Sure." I said, "Would you be interested in buying my book of home and auto accounts?" They said, "Yeah, because we need that to scale to get to the next step."
--:-- Gordon Coyle: That took a couple of months to fine tune. With that deal, I got out of the personal lines business. I had gotten out of life insurance and benefits years before that. I became a commercial only PNC broker. That was nine years ago, eight years ago, something like that. Took a significant hit to revenue.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: But we also had reduced expenses. Over time, I built it back up and it's going really well. My book of business ranges from a startup tech firm to large commercial accounts. Our largest account does probably $400 million a year in sales, million dollar account, great account. I love doing those, but I also love everything in between. I'm a good problem solver. Nerdy around the insurance language. Does that answer it?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It does. So what I find most intriguing about your story is that you — and I mean this with no disrespect — at your age and experience level in the industry, you were willing to take a step that the vast, vast majority — 99 point plus percent — of agents in your space, agency owners in your space, your generation, would not have done. You transitioned that traditional experience, expertise, and nerdiness into a digital marketing program, a content marketing program, and have seen some real success and pickup. It's been a huge advantage for you, especially in the market you serve, which is just outside of metropolitan New York.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You had started that before we started having conversations, or at least started thinking about it and doing some stuff. You obviously had a nice website at that point. What was the moment where you said, "Hey, I'm going to start there"? What was the moment where your brain kind of went, "I know I've always done business this other way, and over time technology has kind of come into the business," but when did you decide that when everyone else is kind of dialing it back or just doing what they've always done, you decided to take it in a whole other direction? I'm really interested in that thought process.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: I don't know if there was any one point in time where the switch flipped for me, but I got to say a lot of it had to do with conversations with you. You were very motivating and you said, "You've got to do this." So I've known this dude for two months. We're talking on the phone or on Zoom and I'm going to follow his advice.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: But I have a natural curiosity about things. I saw what you were doing and I saw that not a lot of people were doing it. I was like, "This is interesting." On top of that, go back to the beginning of this conversation. We got together because we were going to hold each other accountable to a cold calling program that some wacky dude over in the UK was training us on. We both discovered we freaking hate cold calling and we suck at it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I don't know if age has a lot to do with it, but we always kid around, "Oh, for a guy for 61, you're doing pretty good." For everyone listening, Gordon is doing himself a disservice. He's doing well for any agency, not just an agency run by a 61-year-old agency owner. I don't want people to think like, relatively speaking, you're doing well. You're doing well for any agency, let alone that demographic.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We've talked about it though. So many of your peers — you even said you're in a lot of masterminds — they look at and listen to you talk about the way you've transitioned your business, or at least a large portion of how you market. I know you do some interpersonal stuff too, and referrals. They can't relate to it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I wanted to start here because I think a lot of people listening either are the generation below trying to get their agency principal to take on some of this stuff, or they're an agency principal of a similar age. They're saying, "Geez, I —" well, if they're listening to this show, they probably are doing it. But I think a lot of your peers are perfectly willing to just keep doing what they've always done. I think it takes a lot of guts. I think it takes curiosity.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm just interested in what you think those traits are about yourself that said, "I'm willing to listen to this wacko kid from two hours north who's never really built an agency before, listen to him, and then stick with it." Because you have, and as we've always talked about, that's really the key.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Consistency and discipline, I think, are key not only for marketing but a lot of things in whatever you do. Whether you're great at cold calling or drop-bys or referral networking or exercise or lifestyle, whatever it is, consistency and discipline are really important. I think that's probably one of my stronger suits.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: But maybe what I kind of viewed was, look at where we are now. I'm only going to talk about commercial lines because personal lines to me is a totally foreign subject. I don't really understand it anymore. That's so transactional.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Commercial lines, whether we're talking about small business owners, medium-sized business owners, esoteric coverages — and I don't really think it's esoteric, but specialty coverages — look at what we're looking at right today. We've got our own insurance companies beating the hell out of us online. They're outspending us. If you do a search for any business insurance term online, who's going to be at the top of paid and organic search? The carriers that have called us partners for a million years, and they're forcing all that business that they're harvesting from online sources to their own agencies that they own for their own benefit. Let's just be honest about that.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: We've got insuretechs which have changed the entire model of how business is conducted. They've made it fast and simple. Sometimes I believe that fast and simple isn't necessarily a good thing. But for the person that's looking online — and that's where every buying process or journey starts — they're at the top of every organic and paid search for a particular product or vertical or service. They've got a better product, a better price, a better process. It's faster.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Then in the traditional sense of agents like me, many of them have been rolled up into these big organizations who have a lot of great services and tools and techniques and resources that maybe these smaller agents didn't have on their own. You've got this trio of forces that are changing the marketplace.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: How do you combat that? I don't think that traditionally you can make enough cold calls to get enough traction to grow a book of business. If you want to 5x or 10x your business, how do you do it? How do you scale it? I think that we're seeing that inside insurance, outside insurance, a durable product, a non-durable product, an intangible product — everybody is gravitating to the internet, of course. How do you get traction? How do you get recognized? How do you get noticed? That's where the consistency comes in.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: In a long roundabout way, I think that's what drove me to say, "Pushing the chips forward. I'm all in. This is what I think is my future." I think it's the future. It should be the future of a lot of agents and brokers around the country.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: One of the things that I want to highlight is you're not working on your primary market being main street BOPs, $500 contractors. It's specialty coverages. I've been blown away by Gordon's success in the spaces that he's attacking: large scale D&O accounts, financial institutions, investment, venture funds, PE companies. Then they're referring you into their startups that are doing cool technology things and all kinds of international companies that come through the city that need whatever.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That to me is what I love about it. One, it's what you enjoy, so it's feeding your personal enjoyment in the industry. If you were getting $1,200 contractors, you'd shoot yourself. There's not a lot to enjoy about a $1,200 contract. We write a decent amount of them because it's part of our mission, but it's more like a labor of love than anything we truly enjoy.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But you're getting accounts — some of the accounts that you've discussed with me at least have been meaty and interesting. I'd love for you to talk about the guy who watched — I don't want to give away the lead — but basically watched, came to your website, and essentially it was like, "You're the guy. I watched a couple of your videos. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it." Do you remember that story? Or at least part of it?
--:-- Gordon Coyle: A couple of them like that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So talk about that. I think that's interesting.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: There was one that was really kind of wild. It was a horse farm in Lexington, Kentucky that had multiple businesses — a wedding venue, a photography studio, all these different things. He goes, "I watched a couple of your videos, man. You are on point, man." It's always nice to get stroked and everything.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: After I talked to the guy, his renewal is like four days away. I'm like, "Dude, I'm sorry. There's not a heck of a lot I could do for you. But here's kind of the things I would think about for the future." He also had a big hail loss, I think all the roofs on his property. That was an interesting conversation.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: What I was just telling somebody yesterday was a lot of calls start with, "Hey, I saw you on YouTube. I feel like I already know you." When you hear that, you're like, "Wait a minute, you watched a seven minute video and you feel like you know me?" What does that tell you? There's a high degree of trust that's imparted through video.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Maybe take a step back and think about the way the traditional sales process works. You make a call to somebody who's not expecting your call, who doesn't want your call, who doesn't want what you're selling, and you've got to push them into thinking about having a conversation with you. Versus digital, where somebody's searching for something because they've got a pain or a particular issue or problem, and they find you or somebody else online, and they say, "This guy sounds like he knows what he's talking about. Maybe he can help me with my problem."
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Last week, I had a call from a guy who's in a — I don't want to talk too much about it because it's still in the works — but it's a tech firm way out there. Not technology from an aerospace perspective, which is like, where in the world is this coming from? Small public company, so they're publicly traded. They said, "I watched a couple of your videos on D&O insurance. I'm totally confused and my partners don't know what to do. We're looking for D&O insurance."
--:-- Gordon Coyle: That deal hasn't been put into the market yet, but it's going to be six figures. From an ROI perspective, if you watched a couple of videos that I invested a few hours in and here's a six figure premium, that's going to be a nice commission check. That's not uncommon. Maybe not to that degree, but we've written some larger accounts and more sophisticated, complex deals all over the country because we've been able to answer a question.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I am convinced that we have hit a point where we're at an inflection point. It was part of the reason I did a deal with SIA, because I believe we're currently inside a window of time in which — as you described earlier — directs, captives, insurance carriers, all these lead gen companies have dialed down and commoditized the form fill online leads so much that people who are willing to spend the time to actually explain things, to truly deliver value, to go deeper and be subject matter experts online are about to reap major reward.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We put out videos ranging from three to seven, in some cases 10 minutes, about everything from bakery insurance to nail salon insurance to whatever. People love it. They love it. Because we think, "Who would want to watch about nail salon insurance?" A nail tech would. Someone who owns a nail salon would love to watch a video about the nuances of their business and how they apply to the insurance coverages they have to purchase.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: There might not be 10 million of those people. That video may never get 100,000 views, but it could get the right 5,000 views or the right 10,000 views.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Or the right 50 views.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Or the right 50 views. That's one of the problems that I have and you probably share — we look at the metrics and we're like, "This video has only got 45 views." But in my opinion today, you can't look at that one video. You've got to look at it in the whole of what you're doing.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Watch hours. When you think that there's a population out there that's watched — I don't know, a thousand hours of my videos — I got to bring up a quick spreadsheet just to verify that number. But watch time, 65 hours, 70 hours, maybe that's not right. But whatever the number of hours that your videos are being watched, there's something going on there.
--:-- [Discussion continues...]
--:-- 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 listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment if you're on YouTube, or 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, and 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. I love you for listening to this show and I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoy creating it for you. All right, I'm out of here. Peace. Let's get back to the episode.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. I mean, we just crossed this month. We crossed 10,000 views in the last 28 days. We had 10,280 views in the last 28 days on our YouTube channel. When I think about that, I'm like, that's freaking nuts. 10,000 views on an insurance YouTube channel in 28 days. And look, I've been building it for two and a half, going on three years. But it just keeps adding and it keeps snowballing. And what YouTube—and again, I think people forget this—what you're doing is you're helping YouTube do their job better. By answering questions, by the Marcus Sheridan "They Ask, You Answer" thing, which we talk about all the time. YouTube's job is to get people the solution they need so that they come back to YouTube again. That's what YouTube wants. YouTube wants everyone to keep coming back to YouTube. If someone comes to YouTube and they type in a search and there's no answer to their question, or at least not one that they like or that they watch, then that person's not going to come back to YouTube again. By serving these questions, solutions, or videos to YouTube and to search engines over and over again, what you're doing is telling Google, "I'm helping you do your job," and they reward you with traffic.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: That's right. That is the whole game. If you can just frame it that way, you don't have to go any deeper than that. You're helping YouTube and Google. They are selfish, and you are helping them be selfish. That's what you're helping them do. And in return, you get to reap that benefit. It is just nuts. It works every single time, in every industry, for every agency, for every business. It works no matter what you're going after. You got an Arrow publicly traded aerospace technology company to watch your video, call you, and think that you know what you're talking about. That is insane. It is insane.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So I'll tell you a quick funny story. Last week I had to go to a sign shop that was doing some no parking signs for me for my parking lot here at the office. He starts asking me about—and I've known this guy for years, he's done signs for my office. I have a main street location, which is totally unnecessary because I have a remote workforce. Everybody works virtually except for me because I come to the office every day. So he said, "Well, what about redoing the sign on your lawn?" I was like, "I don't really... why?" And he goes, "Doesn't it attract business?" And I'm like, "Yeah, maybe a hundred years ago, but come on, dude." So he goes, "Well, how do you get business?" And we start talking about it. I said, "I don't need this. I could work from anywhere." He goes, "What do you mean you can work from anywhere?" I said, "I could work from a boat in the Caribbean." And he keeps probing. So I start to tell him about YouTube. His head's spinning. He goes, "I'm on YouTube all the time. I don't watch any TV." I said, "And what do you go on YouTube for?" He says, "Really to learn stuff. I'm kind of a constant learner." I'm like, "Well, if somebody's got a question or they've got a problem or they have an issue about anything, where do they go? They go to Google, they go to YouTube." He goes, "Yeah, yeah." I said, "The same thing applies for insurance. Have a question about business insurance or D&O insurance or cyber insurance? They're going to look. And that's where this traffic is coming from. And that's where my leads come from."
--:-- Gordon Coyle: But the other thing that it does is that it expands your horizon. I'm not doing business in downstate New York exclusively. A lot of my business is here, but a lot of my business is out West. It's all over. This aerospace company—
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, we've talked about targeting Chicago and how you would target Miami and some of these other epicenters where a lot of businesses and funds are starting to pop up.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Yep. So it's just a funny perspective. When you talk to the quote man on the street—meaning this guy at the sign shop—it totally blew his mind. He had no point of reference. Like, how in the world is this guy doing this?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. And I just chuckled. I thought, this is great.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Dude, it is. I mean, we're both doing something wrong because neither one of us are doing this from a boat in the Caribbean. So that's definitely next winter.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Next winter, buddy. I'll send you an invite.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: That would be fun. What are you guys doing? We're going to go work. We're just going to stare at each other and do work on a boat in the Caribbean.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That'd be great. Free from everything. Oh my gosh, I couldn't even imagine. The worst part is what I would want to do is set up a video studio just so no one would bother me and I could just pump out videos. That would be heaven for me. At the end of the day, there's a cool view. I can go for a swim, but just have no one bother me for eight hours so I could just do videos and create more content. That would just be amazing.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: So Ryan would be in one of the master suites in this big old yacht making videos. I'd be sitting out back surfing or fishing or whatever. It's funny, man. I just believe—I've learned, I believe in my core—it's probably obvious to everyone listening that a habit of constantly creating content will do nothing but improve your life. Unless you're being a complete a-hole, because you get back exactly what you put out. So if you put out negative content, you're going to get negativity back. But if you're positive and you're trying to help people and you're educating or trying to be funny without being overly offensive—although I think you've got to be a little offensive to be funny.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We like to make fun of Democrats on this show. I know, Gordon. I know. I'm just saying—actually, well, whatever. Not going to go there.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: But it just—this process of—again, I'm referencing Mark Sheridan again just because I think people know him. He's a pretty good buddy of mine. He had a goal last year of getting to 100,000 followers on LinkedIn. He didn't get there, but I think he got to like 60 or 70,000, and he started with like 15 or 20. He did it by every day just creating a text-based LinkedIn post. He still does them to this day. If you follow him, he does these text posts. Some of them are short. Some of them are like five sentences. Some of them are paragraphs long, all the way to the character limit. Some of them are really introspective. Some of them are just talking about something fairly shallow. It's different every day, probably just whatever mood he's in. But that consistent content creation allowed him to build up an audience that then allowed him to launch a second business, which is now this charter fishing business because that's a big hobby of his. So he's got his pool business, which he started with content marketing. Then he's got his speaking marketing business. And the point to people listening is not about Mark's fishing business. It's that if you wanted—so bringing this back to insurance—let's say you were consistently creating content, Gordon. And now you said, "You know what? I really want to get into media tech liability. It's a new specialty liability coverage that kind fits what I'm interested in, but I've never really gone after this vertical. I like to work with startup media companies or companies that have media tech liability." Because you have this consistent base of content, because you have this routine, because people are used to seeing content from you, when you release into that new market or vertical or product, it's just—everyone immediately gravitates towards it and immediately, whether it's true or not, believes you know exactly what you're talking about.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Just to interrupt you for a second, what happens is that the consistency around video creates an aura of expertise, knowledge, whatever it may be. You become a very believable character. I think you know everything about insurance. You got everybody beat. It's working, Gordon. It's working. We hope your new partners aren't watching. [Laughs] Turn this part off. I actually don't know shit. But it's true. So to go even one step further, I could go into media liability. But if I wanted to open a deep sea fishing charter boat in Miami or wherever, I could do that and harness the followers, the skills, the techniques, everything that you've already built to transition and transport it to another area.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: What I don't do a really good job at is repurposing content. It's very difficult on multiple platforms. And my marketing assistant probably should be doing more of that for and with me. But just to continue the thought process of media liability or a fishing boat, what would happen if you created a two-minute video on whatever subject it may be, and you put it out onto your social media where you have 500 or 5,000 or 50,000 followers? Now you're introducing that audience to a new product, skill, or whatever you have. That's walking through a doorway that most people don't have access to. So funny story—you actually encouraged me to do this. I started a podcast. So I post the first episode on our platform and on YouTube. Then I cross-posted it on Facebook. And my daughter-in-law texts in the family text chain: "Podcast? What?" That was the whole text. So my son then texts: "Hashtag media, hashtag mogul." And my response was: "Hashtag not quite. Yeah, not yet."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But that's the point. You're creating whatever you want to call it—content or media—that very few people are doing. And the more you can broaden your audience, the more powerful that becomes.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Yeah. I think a very, very underestimated benefit of consistent content creation is that inferred expertise. Like you said, let's say you did start a fishing boat. If someone had been watching your videos on D&O insurance and appreciating them, and they think, "Man, when we're ready, this is the guy we're going to call. This guy is legit. He knows what he's talking about." And then you start the fishing boat thing. What I think a lot of people would go is, "Ah, people are going to think, what the hell do I know about fishing? No one cares." But that's not actually true. Now, some people will—I'm not a big ocean fisher, so I think it's cool but I'm not particularly interested in it. However, let's say I was. I would immediately assume that if you're as thoughtful, as authentic, as caring, and have as much expertise as you do in insurance, that when you did start something new—like a fishing boat, or a jump from personal lines to commercial lines, or commercial lines to health insurance, or adding a life insurance product, or a second location—whatever it is. So don't just think this kind of big jump. I would say, "Geez, if he's willing to put that much thought and energy into his insurance business, I'm sure he's going to do the exact same thing in his fishing business." That jump may not seem logical to everybody, but it is exactly what happens.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So that's why—once I've put the tag on you—"this guy's a smart guy" or "a thoughtful guy" or "an organized guy" or "woman" or "person" or "human"—that doesn't change because you're talking about something different for most people. Now, there are going to be those people out there that love to find holes. "What does Gordon know about fishing?" Those people are assholes. You can't even worry about them. The vast majority of people are just going to continue to apply that expertise over to the new thing or the new area or geographic area. And the work just builds. It just continues to build. That is a loss—I think a lot of people don't pick up on that nuance of content creation and the opportunities that come to you. I know you've talked about how a couple of the podcasts, people have called you about different interviews. It opens up so many doors when you're creating content. And it doesn't have to be a podcast. It doesn't have to be video. But it really needs to be something. We need to have some vein that we're consistently creating on.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Well, I think outside of insurance, every sales job is all about getting noticed. You have to build interest. You have to get your foot in the door, your toe in the door. How do you do that? How do you get noticed? I think there's a lot of good opportunity to do that with content, whether it's written, whether it's podcasting, or it's video. The more you do it, the more you're going to be known. And you may only be known within a small community, but a small community of a couple hundred people is better than not having a community at all. And if you can go from a couple hundred to a couple thousand to tens of thousands—am I going to have 100,000 followers on YouTube? Probably not. But that's not really my gig. That's not why I'm doing it. Is it necessary for you to be successful?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think that's a good point. True. I think we have to align our goals with what is necessary for success. Again, I keep bringing up Marcus. I don't mean to, it's just a good example. I think he's an excellent example of what happens when you do this. For him, as a professional international speaker who charges five figures, 100,000 followers is an important goal for his business because it gives him social credibility. He needs to reach a layer inside an organization that will write a check that big. If he had 5,000 followers on LinkedIn and someone who puts an event together comes to their boss and says, "Hey, I'd like to have this guy speak. He seems amazing," and the boss goes and checks it out and says, "Jesus, only got 5,000 followers? Who the hell is this guy?" That's something to overcome. But if that same boss goes on LinkedIn and sees 100,000 followers and he's consistently creating content around his topic, now the boss is going to go, "Yep, he looks awesome. Let's go." And that's the same thing with us. It is not always that the business owner is the one who's actually doing the research. We get a lot of calls from office managers or executive assistants or receptionists or someone inside the accounting department. We get calls sometimes—I'd say the accounting department is rare, but we do get some calls there—and they have to run the decision up the tree. When they can show the decision maker our YouTube channel, and we have almost a thousand followers and 100,000 plus total views and all these videos, the boss goes, "Ah, these guys seem legit. Yeah, we can do this. This is fine." That's a huge, huge bonus.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Something else you just said that triggered an idea in my mind. For a lot of the folks that are listening, you mentioned business owners. So I'm thinking this strategy of content is not just about agency principals. It's certainly a lot easier if the agency principal blesses it and gets it going and funds it. But if you're a producer in an agency that is not into digital, there's no reason why you can't do it. I've seen it happen where producers become successful through their Facebook channel, through video, whatever it may be. If you're a producer, don't wait for your agency principal to sprinkle holy water on this and say it's a go. If you're excited about doing it, do it. There's really nothing that should stand in your way.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Look at somebody like—oh, the producer that we both know down in Austin that just changed jobs not too long ago. We see him on LinkedIn all the time.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Micah Saas. Micah. He's not doing the kinds of videos that we're doing. He's running on a different track. But look at the following that he's creating. He's talking about why the insurance process is all fouled up, why the bidding process is all screwy. That's his message: "You gotta reinvent the way you're selling insurance." So who's following him? A whole lot of producers, a whole lot of agency owners, a whole lot of people in the insurance industry. But there's also a lot of other folks that are probably following him and saying, "That's interesting. I never thought of it that way." His videos are pretty short. Some of them aren't even video, just posting on LinkedIn. I think he's doing a brilliant job of building a following and being consistent around the theme. The theme is that the commercial insurance industry is broken. If you keep doing it the way you're doing it, it's a road to ruin. You gotta fix it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Think about the asset that Marsh lost. I mean, I know Marsh is so big they could give two shits about somebody like Micah, but what a talent. He basically—I don't want to tell his story for him—but he made that move to have more freedom to do the things that he's doing. I think he's absolutely crushing it. He is someone—and if you guys didn't hear it, it's Micah, M-I-C-A-H, Salas, S-A-L-A-S on LinkedIn. I would go follow him today and just watch what he's doing. One, his message is completely on point. Two, the way he's going about it would be considered a best practice. Very authentic. And what holds back a lot of folks from getting into this is, "Oh, I don't have all the right equipment." I think he's doing most of this on his cell phone in vertical form. He literally told me before he just props the phone up on his dresser and does the videos. He's sometimes in his dining room or living room. It's not like he's in a professional studio. I do wish that he—and I've told him this before—that he took some of that stuff and put it up on YouTube because I think it's tremendous and it would give him more run. But he's not doing anything overly complicated from a technical standpoint. He's just creating content. Now, it helps that he's a good-looking fit dude and he talks very well. But that just comes with practice. And if you're not fit, start walking 30 minutes a day and you'll get fit fast.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: What's really cool about this time is that when I first started doing this—geez, I did an interview with Cassie the other day and we were talking about when we first met. It was 2009. I think 2010 was the first keynote that I ever did. It wasn't a keynote, it was just a speaking gig, but I did it for the Young Agents National Conference in 2010. So I've been talking about this stuff for almost 12 years. Back then it was a bunch of 20-something-year-old kids talking about shit they really didn't understand. The internet was a complete wild west. It would take 30 minutes to upload a three-megabyte video in non-HD. It was crazy. Fast forward 12 years—I wish it hadn't taken so long, but it did—we have this diverse group of people from all over the country, all different backgrounds, all different ages, all different agency sizes, creating all this really interesting content. That's one of the reasons why I think we're in this window. We're in this time where if you're willing to share your expertise—Mike Crowley's another great example of a guy doing great work. We're in this window. If we can, as a group, the people who are willing to take this on like yourself, tell these stories and share expertise, man, there are benefits to be reaped right now. It will probably change. These big ships will probably never shift fast enough for it to really matter for the early movers. But if any of these organizations that are large and had real big-time budgets were to take this on—which Rogue is obviously not one of those organizations—you could do some real damage. Just paying for SEM, paying for search results, that's fine, except you can't turn a profit on that business. That's just market share grabbing. This stuff that we're talking about is profitable business. The cost of acquisition is extremely low versus paid channels, and it's still wide open.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, you're only comparing online paid versus organic. But look at even traditional marketing—knocking on doors, delivering donuts, all the traditional things that we've always done. That gets expensive as well. The ROI on that, unless you're really good at it, is mediocre. And you can't do it at scale. If you're a single producer, you can only do so much every day.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: What's interesting to me about that too is when people do that work, they don't count their own time as an expense. They'll be like, "Oh, I didn't pay any money, but I drove around for two hours and stopped in businesses." That's great. And I'm with you, that can be a very successful model. But are you taking the fact that your time is probably worth three to five hundred dollars an hour if you're a major producer in an agency, and you just took two hours of time? So did you track—let's call it $250 an hour—did you put $500 down plus the cost of gas and any donuts you got or whatever the hell you ate? Did you add that up as the cost of acquisition for any of those businesses that you stopped in? Probably not. They just put down zero because they didn't pay for anything. What I'm saying is that if I can create nine videos in an hour, let's say that's $250 an hour for my time. That's $250. Probably takes another 30 minutes for me to package them all up and export, maybe another hour. So it's $500. For $500, I can get nine videos out that will eventually have thousands of views. Those nine videos will, over time, produce hundreds of leads. The cost of acquisition is tiny. I have not seen another channel that you could convince me produces more. And this is the last thing I want to talk to you about, and I'm super interested in this from your perspective. I think the days of the pushback being "internet business is crap" are over. If you are still saying "internet business is crap," understand that you are wrong.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Unless they're buying leads through a lead wholesale type operation where five other brokers are getting those leads as well. So set the stage properly.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I would say if you're buying leads online, the only place that I've ever had success is CommercialInsurance.net. That's the only online paid source that I've had what I believed was consistent positive success. There may be others, and that's not a knock on any others, that's just my personal experience. I tried quite a few, but that's the one that I've had some success with. We have a like—I think a 40-something percent close ratio on the stuff that comes in from there. That's pretty darn good. And being able to target the states and the types of business you want to go after.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: Yeah, I thought that one was pretty good. I still don't think it beats inbound business personally. When you were talking about inbound business versus non-inbound business, think about the whole sales process and the closing ratios and the whole way you have to get business in the traditional sense. I'm not throwing shade on the traditional way of doing business because I still do that. It's more of a layered or blended strategy to be successful. But if you have to convince somebody to buy your product and then you're going out to the market and you're probably still bidding it, price is a major determinant. The value equation is at a very low number. Price is a bigger determinant than value. Look at all those factors that you've got to overcome to get a piece of business done. Now compare that to a referred lead. Networking still is a big piece of what I do. We get a lot of business from referrals. So value is high, price is not so high. Inbound business—value, they've got an itch that needs to get scratched. There's a problem that you're going to fix. Value is very high. Price is somewhat inconsequential. When you think about the whole thing from a producer standpoint, think about the productivity that you can deliver through inbound. That's really what's driving me to do this. And the fact that they're already sold when they call you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, pretty much. That to me—I used to do a keynote for a few years. It never really worked exactly the way that I wanted it to, so I kind of bagged it as an overall theme. But I used to call it "Already Sold." It didn't really connect with people because at the time it didn't make sense to them. But the whole concept was that what we're doing is so that when you talk to somebody, it's not "Let me build expertise with you." It's "You're already convinced I know what I'm talking about. I'm a valuable resource." That's already done. Now all I need to do is solve your problem for you and provide you with a solution. That concept I thought was really powerful. It never really clicked in a keynote, and maybe some of that was me. But that concept to me is really important. You're picking up the phone and you're talking problems and solutions, not "Hey, I've been in the business for 20 years and we have 20 carriers and we've written 10 businesses in your geographic region." You don't have to do any of that crap because they already believe you. They already think that you have the answer. They're just hoping you have a solution. And that's really powerful.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: So dude, I want to be respectful of your time and that of the audience. I'm so glad that we finally got this on tape to share. If people want to connect with you, is LinkedIn the best place?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Sure. LinkedIn, just look up Gordon Coyle. There's probably a couple of us out there. I think there's actually a couple of Scottish guys named Gordon Coyle on LinkedIn. But LinkedIn, go to my YouTube channel. If you go to my YouTube channel, make sure you like a couple of them and subscribe. Get them pumped, get that rating up. Insurance agents subscribing to insurance agents—that's how we break the algorithm.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: All right, Gordon. I appreciate you so much, man. I'm so glad we got to do this and look forward to the next time we get to chat.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Thanks, Ryan. See you.
--:-- Gordon Coyle: See you.
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