The Entrepreneur is Changing Flood Maps and the Business of Insurance

Ryan Hanley: Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Ryan Hanley Show. Today we have a really interesting interview with an entrepreneur that most likely doesn't fit the standard mold. Though our conversation starts a little slow as we kind of feel each other out, I highly recommend that you listen all the way through to the end and get a feel for what Chris Green has been through as an entrepreneur, his journey, how he makes decisions, and the way that he set up his business to be successful in the future.

Ryan Hanley: In an unexpected niche, in a boring industry, Chris is thriving. It really speaks to what I believe is one of the key aspects of success in general, but certainly entrepreneurialism: attacking problems from an angle that most people don't see. Whether it's Chris's learning disability or just something inside him or the way that he has built his life, Chris is absolutely attacking common problems from a different angle and has created a business that many in his industry and many people in general would be envious of. It was a pleasure to have him on the show.

Ryan Hanley: Before we get there, I have a new project coming out. It's ultimately going to be a product, the first product that I've ever created myself. It's something that I think is going to change the way we build our brands by making our communications more accessible, more consistent, and more tailored to what our audience needs. Also super easy, fun, and all your wildest dreams will come true kind of stuff. It is pretty fun to really take on what I believe is my first entrepreneurial journey. Even though I've cashed many checks under my own company name, I've never actually felt like an entrepreneur because I was always really just acting as a speaker or doing workshops, consulting work. That's more of just a business than it is being an entrepreneur, I guess. Maybe some would argue with me. It's just the way I personally feel.

Ryan Hanley: This is putting my own time, energy, capital, and resources into building a thing that I think over time at scale could change how businesses communicate online. The first iterations will be basic and simple and straightforward. Over time, if the customers of the product—if that's you—find that there are additional features you're interested in, we'll consider building them. I have a list of features and different iterations and versions of the product already mapped out. We'll see, based on customer demand, where those things go and what this ends up being.

Ryan Hanley: It has a name. The name is The Daily Material. dailymaterial.com. If you want to know more about this product, go to dailymaterial.com, enter your name, enter your email address, and you will be one of the first people to know as updates come. The beta for the product is going to launch sometime in the next few weeks, and then the actual first iteration of the product will be sometime in Q1. Keep your eyes open for that. dailymaterial.com, name, email, and you will be on the list to find out more. As updates come, I'll be updating you on what that product is all about, what it looks like, and how you can be more involved and potentially a beta tester of The Daily Material.

Ryan Hanley: With that, I want to get to Chris Green, the Flood Insurance Guru. I hope you enjoy this episode. I love you for listening to this episode. Let's do this.

[Interview begins]

Ryan Hanley: So you have a pretty interesting story and you've done a lot of really hard work over the last year plus. I'd like to start with: why flood insurance?

Chris Green: Well, my master's degree is in flood mitigation.

Ryan Hanley: Say again?

Chris Green: My master's degree is in flood mitigation.

Ryan Hanley: So why get a master's degree in flood mitigation?

Chris Green: Well, I've actually had my master's degree for like 10 years. My master's degree is in emergency management with a focus in hazard and flood mitigation. I wanted to go work on weapons of mass destruction overseas. But what happened is when I started my master's, Hurricane Katrina hit. So I just kind of accidentally got into it.

Chris Green: I bought a house about 10 years ago in a flood zone. Didn't know it was in the flood zone until probably 10 days before closing. Had this horrible experience. Realtor had a bad experience. Lender had a bad experience. Through all that, they said your premium is going to be $3,000. I said, no, it's going to be $300, and here's why. I showed them the law, showed them what I found. Through all that discovery, I said everybody's having a really bad experience. Nobody knows what to do.

Chris Green: I still worked for a casualty agency for about five more years after that. I started my traditional P&C in 2015. I just came up with a catchy website, floodinsuranceguru.com, just to start the conversation. But once people started learning what our educational background was, it got deeper and deeper. Then starting in 2020, we're not even going to offer auto insurance anymore.

Ryan Hanley: Really?

Chris Green: Yeah. Because I also run a flood education company called The Flood Professor, where I teach CE now to insurance agents, realtors, and lenders across the country. I also run a flood consulting company where we help property owners with navigation, getting flood zones changed, disputing with FEMA, and all that stuff. Right now I'm helping a property owner who FEMA told them—or the community told them—they have to fill their basement. So we're helping them argue that case.

Ryan Hanley: Where did you get this entrepreneurial bug from? Because I've known you online for a while. You look like the crazy ass flood guy. I've heard you talk about some of this other stuff, but you go get a degree that is very specialized. There can't be that many people in the entire country or world that have a higher level education in this. It's not like a psychology degree from a liberal arts school. It's certainly specialized. Then beyond that, you have this really interesting mix of a flair for branding and entrepreneurialism. Where do you think that comes from?

Chris Green: I grew up with a fair learning disability. I was always trained growing up because I wasn't even supposed to go to college. I had a 1.9 through my second year of college. I ended up graduating top class for my master's. It was always beating me as a kid that I had to work three times as hard as everybody else just to get on a level playing field. As I grew up, I just kind of kept that mindset. That's where it comes from.

Chris Green: It's funny because I don't come from a family of entrepreneurs. I come from a family of engineers. Dad's a physicist. Brother's a civil, chemical, and environmental engineer. I dropped out of math classes because I wanted to be lazy in high school and didn't want to take calculus like everybody else. So I kind of accidentally got into it. I used to be a certified storm spotter.

Chris Green: Most of the people who have my degree are usually emergency managers in local communities or people working for FEMA. I'm also working on my certification as a floodplain manager so we can help communities even more.

Ryan Hanley: What does that mean, a floodplain manager?

Chris Green: Basically, when you get that certification, it means you know your stuff in and out when it comes to flood, mitigation, understanding maps, this thing called base flood elevations. All flood is based on that. A lot of times when there's not one, if you have that certification, you actually have the authority to go in and calculate one and turn it into FEMA.

Ryan Hanley: You have a science-oriented family background and a master's degree in a very technical, specific area. You've transitioned that into your professional career. It makes sense. Though I'm sure it was not linear, if there is a linear mental path looking back, it makes sense that you are where you are. That all being said, it would feel scary as hell to many people listening to focus all the way down on a product like flood. There can't be too many other insurance professionals who have focused solely on flood to the point they would consider dropping home, auto, and other lines from their agency. What gave you the confidence—or maybe you didn't have confidence when you started—but what pushed you down this path? Most people would say, "I love flood, but I want to keep this other side." They want to keep the safety net. You have worked away from that. How do you think you got there?

Chris Green: I'll tell you how I got there. You know, listen to Jason Cass. He's always talking about going after the well or focusing on that great thing. I've always had this saying: I would rather be great at two things than good at 30 things. It's just not fair to clients. It's not fair to everybody else that I can give you average service or I can help you like the average person, or I can help you like nobody else can over here. It's not fair to those individuals over here.

Chris Green: Finally in 2018, 2019, I kept getting pulled and I had to make a decision about where we are going in the future. There are probably 10 or 15 companies that do flood only, but a lot of them focus strictly on sales. We are all education based. With our 365 education videos, 365 days, our daily flood blog on our website, now our daily podcast, it is all education based. There really isn't anybody else in the country right now doing that on flood. They'll be kind of generic about it with their blogs and a webinar. But I mean, we've traveled the whole country. Every time there's a flood map update, we address it. Today I'm putting something out on San Diego.

Ryan Hanley: I want to go back a little further. If you're watching this on YouTube, you'll see Chris has got the Flood Insurance Guru shirt on, the hat, all decked out. I love the branding. But I'd like to go back before you fully embraced the branding, to when you started your agency. Give me your first step into the entrepreneurial path, when you weren't the flood guy, when you weren't creating all these videos and content. What did that version of you look like? I want to talk through that transition because I think there are a lot of people out there who may see a thing they would love to grab onto like you have, but they either don't have the confidence or don't know how to do it.

Chris Green: I started a P&C agency back in 2015. I worked for captive agents for about seven years before that. Every single year when my contract came up with a captive agency, I reviewed it. Am I ready to go independent? Do I want to do this? Finally in 2015, I did it. But what actually pushed me out the door is we adopted our daughter in 2015. I thought, how am I going to raise my daughter to take chances in life and go out there and do it if I'm not willing to do it myself? That's what pushed me out the door.

Chris Green: I started an independent agency basically with no cash, no income, two months after we adopted her. I was the main provider of income. For the first two years, it was just incredible, just crazy trying to make money anywhere I could. I was on the ground, pavement, door to door, trying to get mortgage companies and realtors. I killed myself for three years. I thought, I'm killing myself. I can't keep this up. But at the same time, I don't feel that I have the passion on the home side that I do in the other stuff. That's how I made this flood pivot.

Chris Green: I've always been like this: you might be a better salesman than me, but I promise you, you'll never outwork me.

Ryan Hanley: What I heard in there that I think is a good takeaway—correct me where I'm wrong—you did what you had to do to get off the ground. I hate the cliche "follow your passion." To simply follow your passion is a recipe for failure. I think you have to follow something you have incredible expertise in, something you've worked at, something you have proficiency in. Flood and emergency services is a passion of yours, but it's also something you have incredible expertise in. If someone walked in with a question about their house or their business or their car versus some water damage from a flood, one you can snap right to and own, the other you may know but it's just not in your wheelhouse. We tend to gravitate toward what we're good at. I like that you did what you had to do to get off the ground to follow your passion. If you didn't hawk home and autos at the beginning, you probably couldn't have built the business on flood. But once you were able to, you started to go to that next space.

Ryan Hanley: Did you always see flood as a niche you would eventually move to, or did those three years teach you that being a generalist was just not it?

Chris Green: I honestly never had the idea of going flood only. I didn't even think that would be a physical possibility. There's not enough demand out there. When I first got into it, all flood is the same. There's no opportunity on the education side, no opportunity on the consulting side. But as I got deeper and deeper into it since 2015 to now, spending an hour and a half studying the FEMA manual every day, answering every single question, I realized if I knew what I know now, I would have never started a P&C agency. I would have just gone straight into flood. It would have been a whole lot easier. There's not as much competition, not as much overhead, not as much servicing. And when it comes to the insurance side, that's the one thing that drives most people either out of business or they just don't enjoy it anymore.

Ryan Hanley: That is the part I find interesting about the insurance industry: how many products our peers sell that they don't even like. They're not interested in it. It's not something that wakes them up in the morning. You're talking about reading the FEMA manual for an hour and a half every day. When's the last time most of our insurance peers even looked at a policy form? Besides whatever's necessary to get some CE credit, no one's diving into this stuff.

Ryan Hanley: So you start to realize you enjoy the flood, that's where your passion is. When do you start to think this could be something more than just a nice secondary policy you add into a package?

Chris Green: When I started looking at revenue. Like my boss Cass says, you can't make a business profit off premium, you can only make a business profit off revenue. When I look at the opportunities there, the commissions that pay without the overhead, without the service, but with our background and being able to negotiate some of these contracts that no one else can negotiate because of our background, I realized I can work half as hard as I was before and make twice as much money, but I can make a bigger impact with that money.

Ryan Hanley: When someone comes to you with a flood question, how are they finding you today? Were you building this niche at the beginning off the standard way you would get opportunities, and then you started to work more toward flood? When did people start coming to you first with flood? Talk me through that transition.

Chris Green: I'll tell you the way I look at things. Everybody looks at referrals and all this. I try to turn all of our customers into cheerleaders. That might be an insurance agent, a mortgage company, a realtor. When we started doing that, that's when we started to see the change. But when we really started to see the change was when we started investing in those educational videos. All of a sudden, these insurance agents are sharing it. Their audience goes, "Look, this guy's helping me with this. He's helping me keep a client. I'm going to share his content all day long." All of a sudden, people started coming to us for that.

Chris Green: Then back in February, March, I decided to put together this disaster assistance video series to help the people in Oklahoma, Nebraska. We weren't getting anything off of it. But when they started sharing all of our video content, that's when we started seeing the change. That's when we started saying, if we keep investing in these videos—not selling something, strictly educational—people are going to keep sharing it. Those Walmarts that are spending millions of dollars a year to market, we don't have to spend that. That's when it took off for us. People started seeing that this guy really knows what he's talking about because of some of the subject matters we were discussing. We would go through the FEMA manual, but every single question we got from a lender, a realtor, an insurance agent, we wrote it down and we would either do a video, a blog, or a podcast about it every week. Right now I'm doing 26 days, 26 videos, 26 blogs, and 26 podcasts on FEMA cancellation rules.

Ryan Hanley: That sounds thrilling. I love that. Tactically though, where did you pick up on this idea of doing educational videos? I've been banging my head off the wall for a decade trying to get insurance agents to do this. You're one of the few, and one of the reasons I was so interested in interviewing you. You have really taken this to heart in a niche that no one would expect, in an industry that is often completely blank from real education from the actual practitioners. This is a tactician with deep subject matter expertise who has his own voice, who's able to create and is doing it at scale. You're proving a case that 99 point something percent of the insurance industry pretends doesn't work or that they don't have time for. Where did you pick up on this? Why did this trigger in your head as something you needed to do?

Chris Green: When it really changed for me is when I invested in Nicholas Ayers' Major League Video Course. I think it was last August of 2018. When I started learning from him—not about ads and all that stuff people would think about—but about the psychology of video. I was using video for video quoting all the way back to probably 2016, 2017. I was probably one of the first to do it, even before Neoteric came out with their app. But when he taught me the psychology of it, and mixing that with Donald Miller's story brand, walking people down that journey, and using video as a solution to a problem—that's where YouTube is going to play.

Chris Green: I tell people, I don't get a ton of business off of YouTube, but we use YouTube as a knowledge-based article we've built now. When people have these questions, we can share these videos. We've already got something built for them normally before they ask the question. That's what changed for us. That's how I got into it with his course. I tell him he's almost criminally responsible for where our business is at because of video.

Ryan Hanley: Nicholas Ayers, the fanny pack wearing, rollerblading video advertising guru of the insurance industry. Also a former guest on the podcast. Go back in the archives and listen to my interview with Nick. You mentioned Neoteric Agent, whose founder Grant Botma has also been on the podcast. Go back and listen to those episodes.

Ryan Hanley: You've mentioned Cass, who hasn't been on the podcast but will be—I'm just saving his crazy ass for when I'm emotionally ready. Nicholas Ayers, Grant Botma, and Don Miller, who's not in the insurance industry but is one of the most authoritative voices on using story to build an audience, garner appreciation for your product, and serve value. You are surrounding yourself with these people. This is what I enjoy about entrepreneurs like yourself. I like to talk about you as an entrepreneur and not an insurance professional because one of the issues I've always seen with our industry is we think of ourselves as insurance agents. Insurance agents take orders and process changes. That's what insurance agents do. But an entrepreneur is part insurance agent, part marketer, part brander, part communicator, part accountant. They piece all these things together, including being a technologist and a futurist.

Ryan Hanley: What I've heard you say in this brief interview is a full 360 view of a business. You help with flood, you have these other pieces of your business, the educational platform, the accreditations you're getting, the expertise you're building. I'm sure at some point you'll be on the witness stand as an expert witness. I had a couple of storm chasers as clients up in the Albany area and they got called to the stand all the time as expert witnesses. I'm sure you'll be there soon. That to me is how you maintain and grow a business that happens to do insurance moving into the future. Your story is why I was so excited to have you on the show. This is the type of story more people in the insurance industry need to hear.

Ryan Hanley: If you want to be out of the insurance industry in the next three to 10 years, become an insurance agent. If you want to survive for the next 20 or 30 years, think of yourself as a marketing agency who just happens to have an insurance license and offers insurance. That needs to be your first mindset. People say, "Oh, I'm an insurance agent." That's great, but how do people get to your door? They got to your door because you were a marketer first.

Chris Green: You know, part of my keynotes that I used to do to the insurance industry, I had this module I talk about. People calling themselves insurance agents is a huge pet peeve of mine. Call yourself a business person. Call yourself anything other than an insurance agent for the reasons we just discussed. A business person looks deeper. They take on that next layer. It's not just, "I need to make 15 phone calls so I can sell one policy so I can hit my quota for the day." There's no future in that. That day has come and gone. The agents that built their business that way—if you're 50, 55, 65 listening and thinking that's exactly how you built your business, that's great. 20, 30 years ago, you could build your business that way. Make 20 phone calls, set up two appointments, sign one of them, do it again. That methodology worked 20, 30, 40 years ago. It does not work today.

Ryan Hanley: The agents of today, like you—floodinsuranceguru.com—this is the path of sustainability. It's the only path of sustainability. There are many iterations of this. It doesn't have to look exactly like you do. It doesn't have to be as niched out as you are. It doesn't have to be as tightly branded as you are. But it certainly has to be as strategic as you are, or you're screwed.

Chris Green: It does. What's funny is to hear the people that two years ago said, "You got your face. There's no way you can build an agency on flood outside the coast." And now they're like, "Well, maybe you're onto something."

Ryan Hanley: I was told a while ago that you couldn't build a high net worth agency online, that high net worth people didn't go online and look for accounts. Now we've seen five or six agencies pop up. I was told that big business doesn't go online and shop. Yet we've seen over and over and over again that this isn't...

[Sound of something falling]

Ryan Hanley: We got a little bomb there. I like it. A little video.

Chris Green: Hey man, this is real life. I work out of my home too. The whole time my dog has been nose bumping me because she wants me to scratch her while I'm talking because I finally sat still for the day.

Ryan Hanley: This is the future of our industry: thinking this way. One thing I want to circle back on, and then we can keep moving forward with your story because there's more here I want to dive into. You said that after your first or second year, you had a 1.9 grade point average and you had a learning disability. I'm super interested in how you overcame that. When you say that, what I hear is the ship wasn't going the way you wanted it to, and you turned it around. How were you able to do that? What did that look like for you? Was there a moment when you said, "I have to do things differently"? Did someone step into your life? What did that look like that you were able to turn that around?

Chris Green: For me, it was when I met my wife. I was 19, 20 years old. She was a couple years older than me, and she kind of forced me to grow up. We dated for a couple of years, and I was 64 hours short of graduating when we got engaged. She said, "We're getting married at the end of next year, so you've got to make sure to be out of school." I was even wanting to change my major to emergency management at the time. I ended up completing 64 hours of college in one year so I could graduate in time. My friends did not see me at all. It was 21 hours, 21 hours, 21 hours, but I got it done. When she stepped into my life is really when I grew up.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah.

Chris Green: It just changed things for me. But then when I started getting into the things I had a passion for in college, it also changed for me. Growing up with a severe learning disability, I was also able to teach myself what my best learning style was in college. It took me until I was 22 years old to figure that out, but once I figured it out, I could excel.

Ryan Hanley: So beyond that, I think a lot of people would have given up. A lot of people with learning disabilities, a lot of people who struggle, whether they have a diagnosed learning disability or not, they give up and they give in. They take what's given to them instead of standing firm. But you didn't do that. You pushed through it. Do you think if you hadn't met your wife, or do you think there was something inside you that kept you pushing to find that right style? Because so many people give up.

Chris Green: I had two educators who stuck by my side. One was my mom. One was a high school teacher I had all the way through college. It took me six tries to get past my first English course in college, which is really funny because now we blog every day. That's what I tell people. It was really them pushing me and helping me and finally helping me figure it out. Years past, I used to work with a lot of kids at a high school level that dealt with learning disabilities as well. I would teach them that a lot of them would get into detention centers or school suspension, but it wasn't because they were bad kids. It was because they didn't learn inside the box that the teacher told them to learn inside of. Because of that, they acted out.

Ryan Hanley: Right.

Chris Green: I built a Partners in Education program when I first got into insurance back in 2009 when I worked for Liberty Mutual and MetLife and on my own. We grew it to about six districts. We did stuff for staff appreciation, student achievement, parent involvement, community involvement, because education was my passion. We donated 20% of our revenue back to that every year. Over about 10 years, it was about a million dollars back to the schools. That was where my passion was. I didn't really find myself living that until I saw the need on the flood side. That's when I ended up leaving. I said, "I can serve a greater purpose here." As much as I love these schools, there's a greater purpose out there where people need our help. That's where we started to make that transition a couple of years ago. We still do some stuff with our schools, but we're kind of selective now just because of my time. I still have that passion there.

Ryan Hanley: Do you think that the learning disability and the work you had to do to fight through it helps you see alternative options where many people just see what's presented to them?

Chris Green: Yes. I saw a sign on the door a couple of weeks ago and absolutely loved it. It said, "If all you see is a disability, you'll never see the opportunity." It has always stuck in my mind ever since I've seen it. That's what I always try to think about every day. Maybe I was dealt a bad situation, but how am I going to respond to it? Am I going to dwell on it, or am I going to say, "How can we take advantage of this?"

Ryan Hanley: I don't have a diagnosed learning disability, but I do think that one of the keys to long-term success, and the more people I've interviewed the more this has become clear, is a willingness to look at things from different angles than the average person or the standard viewpoint. While I don't think anyone would ever wish to have a learning disability placed as an obstacle in their life, from other interviews I've had with people with dyslexia and things like that, oftentimes overcoming those things gives them this trait of forcing them to look at different angles of problems. I would look at a problem and say, "Okay, this is the way it is." You would look at that same problem from a different angle and see it in a different way, possibly finding a more efficient or just different outcome. I think it probably has impacted your willingness and ability to go down this path when so many of our peers are willing to just put the shingle up the standard way. "What's the standard way of doing this? What's the standard email service? What's the standard AMS? What's the standard products? What's the standard carriers? Okay, I'm an agent. Now I'm going to complain about all the same things everyone else complains about." That feels to me like the standard agency operation. When I see someone like you, or Cass, who has always done it different, or Heirs, or Grant, or any of the other men and women that run in some of the circles you and I run in, they attack this problem of serving insurance from angles that the standard guard or the best practices community laughed at five years ago. Today, everybody wants them to speak at their conferences. Everyone wants to know what their secret sauce is. There is a huge lesson to be learned from these people. It is no surprise to me that when you reference the individuals who have had an impact on some of the decisions you've made, it's this group. I'm positive that the things you're doing are going to have an impact on many others in this industry as your story starts to permeate out because it's just too intriguing. There's too much meaty, meaningful decisions and work that you've made. You didn't just fall into this. You made some very meaningful decisions. I want to learn a little bit more. You mentioned this Flood Professor program, and you're also doing some flood plain or flood related consulting. Talk to me about that, because that's not selling insurance products. Those are different things. How did you see the need for them, and what are they?

Chris Green: Cass mentioned this on an episode a couple weeks ago about how we're going around changing flood maps. What most people don't realize is when a map is done, you might have three structures in a high-risk flood zone that shouldn't be there because FEMA bases it on a parcel. We teach people the process to follow, how long it would take, and how it would impact their property values. We go across the country doing it. When a customer comes to us, it's the first thing we look at. They say, "I get a flood quote because I'm in a high-risk flood zone." Well, you cannot be in a high-risk flood zone. Let's show you if you are or not. If you're not, let's show you the other options. If you are, let's show you how we can help you lower risk and lower the premium through mitigation efforts. If you're building a house, like a builder for example, we work with a lot of builders. They say, "I'm in the Special Flood Hazard Area. What do I do?" We teach them how to build the house so it's out of it. I've got a case in Texas right now where an insurance agent sent us customers. They had very bright ground on it and they were going to break ground on a slab. We showed them how to break ground on an above-grade crawl space instead. It's going to help minimize their exposure over the years. We don't charge for that. We're helping an insurance agent. Now, when we do flood zone changes and things like that, we do charge a consulting fee, but we only charge it if we win. If we lose, we refund all that money back to the customer. Right now, I've got 12 hotels for Hampton Inn that I'm removing in Cincinnati. He was paying $50,000 a year for flood insurance. We show them that if we get the flood zone changed, the flood insurance costs about $500 per property instead of $50,000. We're doing that right now for them.

Ryan Hanley: Wow. That is just crazy. It's a whole different level. People just getting a flood insurance quote don't realize. I tell people it's all about the customer experience. You have to create such a unique customer experience that when people experience it, they step back and say, "That was refreshing. Finally, someone is listening to me. Someone is pointing me in the right direction." Not just, "Hey, I can get you a quote and save you 20%." I know you can save me 20%, but I need you to help me get from point A to point B. I don't just need you to throw me to point B. I need you to show me how you got me there.

Chris Green: Yeah.

Ryan Hanley: Cass was talking to me the other day about this workers comp mod thing he does now, which is bananas. Then I hear you talking about work with flood maps. I come back to this idea of how the individuals who are changing the way insurance is done, who are leading this charge into what being an insurance professional is going to look like three, five, ten years from now, it is so much more as a consultant. I hate the term "trusted advisor." I'm only going to use it to say how much I hate it. If you want to be trusted, you shouldn't have the word "trusted" in your name. That being said, it's just like CSR. I don't use the word TSR. We use "Flood Education Specialist."

Chris Green: This matters.

Ryan Hanley: This stuff matters. If I was at a big I-Day event doing a breakout and there's 200 people in that room, half that room would say, "Chris, who cares? It's just a name." I believe it matters immensely. It matters as much as the work they do. It sets an expectation for the level of professionalism you're going to receive. Am I wrong about that?

Chris Green: No.

Ryan Hanley: When I was with MetLife for my brief stay, we renamed our service agents to "Member Success Managers." Not my best or most creative work, but just that simple change from "customer agents" to "Member Success Managers" basically said, "We want your membership to be a success." It makes an impact. People approach these individuals differently because they don't feel like they're dealing with a call center. As soon as you have anything that feels call-centery, they immediately think they're talking to someone offshore who could give two flying craps about them. When you give them a name that's a little meatier or more meaningful, the clients approach that person with maybe a little more respect. Have you found that to be the case?

Chris Green: I have. But I've also found the opposite about the people overseas. We've used a lot of people overseas. People just want someone who's going to listen. A lot of times, it doesn't matter who they are or where they're at. They just want someone who's going to listen to them. If you can build your team and teach them that, it doesn't matter where they're at. If they're creating a great customer experience, then you could have someone next door. It doesn't matter where they're at. It's all about how that customer feels through the process.

Ryan Hanley: Yes. Let me reframe that. I don't care where they are. If anyone listening is considering VAs, go talk to Wesley Anderson. I am a huge proponent of VAs. I actually don't think customers care. But when you say you're an insurance agent, the very first picture that hits someone's mind is a ratty suit that doesn't fit and a briefcase knocking on their front door. When you think of a call center person, you have this meme of what a call center person is. I think people are perfectly willing to talk to someone overseas. You just have to present that individual in the proper light. You don't want the person to engage them with the worst-case scenario meme of what that person could be. Does that make sense?

Chris Green: It does. That's why even with our VAs through Cover Desk, we use video. If they're sending something over to a customer, it's all through video. That customer, whether it's me or them, has that instant connection. They know they're not dealing with a call center. They're dealing with this individual who sent them a video, explained what they did, and did what they said they were going to do. That's why video has been so important for us. Whether someone is two miles away or 2,000 miles away, we can build that instant connection through video.

Ryan Hanley: I couldn't agree more.

Chris Green: The other day, I had a flood quote. They said, "Can you send an email or call about this flood analysis?" I said, "I'll put a video together and explain what these flood zones mean, what it means for this property, and what your options are based on her loan type." I did all that without even doing a quote for her. All three parties saw it. It addressed every single one of their questions immediately. It took a two-week sales process down to two hours. They sent us an email today. They finished everything up because they're buying the house now.

Ryan Hanley: So you've been using personalized video for a while?

Chris Green: Since probably 2016.

Ryan Hanley: Are you using Neoteric Agent?

Chris Green: I'm not anymore. The only reason is I've kind of invested in HubSpot. I got frustrated with AMSs, so I started to build HubSpot out as my own AMS. I use Vidyard inside there. I get a notification each time a video is viewed so I can create automation off of that. That's the reason I'm not using Neoteric. I have some other tools that have native integrations with HubSpot that have been a little bit better for me. I was actually a beta tester for Neoteric originally.

Ryan Hanley: HubSpot and Vidyard are more of the Cadillac tools for sure. They work really well.

Chris Green: They better.

Ryan Hanley: Exactly. What does the future look like for you, man? We've talked through this journey. I wanted to bring you on the show. You reached out and we talked. I've been following your journey for a while. I'm glad we're getting to know each other better. I'm glad I'm sharing your story with this audience. I do believe some version of what you're doing is the future of insurance. This more consultative approach, being a marketing business first that just happens to sell insurance. This is the way you can stay independent. Otherwise, the only other option is a slow burn into nothing, getting gobbled up by a large conglomerate, or having to give away equity or revenue or profit sharing in exchange for volume. Those are the only paths left. We're approaching 700 transactions in 2019. This is the only way to really stay relevant and independent. What is the future look like for you? What are the next steps? How do you continue to build this out? You have this ridiculously amazing content campaign coming up over the next 26 days, but even further out, how do you keep moving this forward?

Chris Green: I call it the trifecta. We're going to have the flood insurance side, the flood education side, and the flood consulting side. We're going to keep growing. My goal is not to have a $10 million agency. My goal is maybe only have a $1 to $2 million agency. But on the consulting side or the education side, if we're able to help you through that journey, get your risk down, get your premiums down, then maybe we'll have a $10 million agency because we walked you through that journey. Also in 2020, I'm starting what you'd call a digital marketing agency. I'm going to be teaching small business owners completely outside of insurance how to compete with companies like Walmart. Let us show you what we did in our journey with content. Here's how to build a million-dollar brand with a hundred-dollar budget. I call it that a lot of times. Here's how to address those local questions and local issues with content. Here's how you can compete with them. In 2020, I'll be working with a lot of small business owners, helping them understand their business process, when to use automation and when not to, and how valuable that content is. I tell people, "You put this content out and you get disappointed because somebody didn't read it. Remember, it's there for when they need it. They may not read it for six months, but when they do, it's there. All of a sudden, you've got leads coming in from that." That's why you just have to keep committing to it every day. I have this goal of a thousand videos in a thousand days. It's ridiculous. Today is day 345.

Ryan Hanley: You're putting my 100 videos in 100 days to shame. I both love you and hate you for it. I think it's amazing, dude. You are one of the very few people who embraced just putting content out consistently. I'm so glad it works for you. I wish there were more case studies. I wish I could not be paid to go talk about the things I want to talk about because everyone was already doing it. That's not the case. That keeps my family fed, so I'd have to come up with something new to talk about. I'm so happy for you. I'm glad we finally had a chance to connect. Crawley is another one that has done it really well.

Chris Green: Oh yeah. Crawley.

Ryan Hanley: I love Crawley. Where can people get ahold of you? If they want to connect with you, see what you're doing, what are the best places for them to get to know you better?

Chris Green: You can connect with me on LinkedIn. You can connect with us on our business Facebook, Flood Insurance Guru. Our YouTube channel. Twitter at CF Insurance. You can just go to our website, FloodInsuranceGuru.com. Just send me a quick email. If you want to have a conversation about video, about how you can use video, I just did an interview with Digital Broker this week about that. They asked, "What do you think the biggest struggle is? Why don't people do it?" I said, "They don't pick the camera up and start recording."

Ryan Hanley: Well, man, I wish you nothing but the best. I'm sure it's going to be fun to watch what you're doing. I can't wait to see you get to 1,000 videos. That'll be ridiculous. I'm sure your wife doesn't divorce you before then. Keep cranking. I can't wait to see where you go. Thank you for your time. This has been tremendous. I appreciate you. Thanks to everyone listening at home.

Chris Green: Thank you.

[End of interview]

Ryan Hanley: Hey guys, sorry to interrupt the fresh hypno beats, but I just wanted to remind you if you're interested in learning more about the new project I have coming out. It's basically done-for-you, in-your-words marketing. It's a new product, new project. Go to dailymaterial.com. That's dailymaterial.com. Enter your name and email and you'll learn all about it. I am incredibly excited about this. It is the very first Ryan Hanley original product to ever be released, I guess outside of Content Warfare and my book, but we won't count those right now because it's more exciting to say it's the first. If you want to be the first to know about it, enter your name and email at dailymaterial.com. Thanks again, guys.

[Advertisement]

Narrator: Close twice as many deals by this time next week. Sound impossible? It's not. With the One Call Close system, you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals in one call. This is the exact method we use to close 1,200 clients in under three years during the pandemic. No fluff, no endless follow-ups, just results fast. Based in behavioral psychology and battle-tested, the One Call Close system eliminates excuses and gets the prospect saying yes more than you ever thought possible. If you're ready to stop losing opportunities and start winning, visit masteroftheclose.com. That's masteroftheclose.com. Do it today.