[Music] What do you feel like insurance agents need to do in terms of branding themselves, their agencies, the carriers they represent? When you are marketing something you're not in control of, you're not in control. The very last thing I do, I get agreement from them and then I end the call with making damn sure. Whatever I say I'm going to do gets done. The reason that I love a sin is they are the only vendor focused on helping agents automate all of their manual finances and accounting practices which is really the boring stuff but that's really where the rubber meets the road in terms of profitability to your agency. You know we're going to ride business with carriers that make it easy for us to ride business with. If the conditions have to be right for you to succeed your success is conditional. It's not real success. Play like champions, man. Here we go. [Applause] Insurance agents from around the world, welcome to the Insurance Guys Podcast. My name is Scott Howell, your fearless OSTEN leader, Insurance Agency owner and insurance evangelist for I Protect Insurance and Financial Services based out of Huntsville, Alabama. And before we get started on today's episode, please help me welcome. He has a 6'3" sophomore from Mobile, Alabama. Parade first team all American, rivals, five star recruit. He has a fantastic insurance agent and a great American. Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together and welcome the incomparable Mr. Bradley Flowers. How are you Bradley? Good to be back in the studio with you Scott. It is. It is a proud, proud moment. Guys, I'm just proud to be alive today. I'm in Mobile, Alabama, land of the free home of the brave. It's a perfect 80 degrees outside today and I am sitting with my friend Bradley Flowers and we were supposed to do this together. I was going to say first week of January. It was like November, end of October, November was the last time we did one of these and then we other than a little progressive trip. I don't know how we made it. You know, I look back on the podcast that we had to do remotely, which has been basically every once in January. I don't know how we made it to today without one, you know, having a run of pre-recording. I'll answer that. Shelby. Really? I kept a running log without me asking her to. She said, "Hey, you've got this many in the hopper. You've got a schedule." She keeps a running list of every guest that I want to have on. Every time we do a session or we need to record an episode, she sends a bunch of emails out. First person that grabs it gets it. Please don't email Shelby. Ask him to be on the podcast. He'll come through me. Can I ask a question? Yeah. How have we, you and I, over the course of the last three weeks, started getting inundated with people wanting to advertise and like crazy. Like crazy. And I welcome it. That's great. I mean, what? 10, 15 emails? Yeah. At least. Hey, we're interested in advertising. Yeah. I think part of it is, so we first started hitting our, getting our big advertisers at the beginning of COVID, because all of these vendors had allocated money towards marketing and the bulk of that marketing were state association and events. And so they had to redeploy that and that's where we started picking some of those up. I still think a podcast is better advertising and going to an event and I'll say that as a guy who's put on events. And then things slowed down for us. Kind of in the middle of the hard market, which was affected by interest rates and companies just weren't raising money. Now we're back in that cycle where, you know, I talked to a company this morning that's about to announce a series B that's going to be, you know, telling how many hundreds of millions of dollars. People are raising money. Economies doing okay. So I think that's why. One thing Bradley taught me that I didn't know and I'm, you know, my lens that I play off of is I want to make sure that, you know, we help agents any way we can. And one thing you taught me in the course of the last five years when we started taking on advertisers is that these people that are raising money for insure tech type products there's some kind of requirement there where they have to add use a lot of time X number of dollars to advertise. Depending on the VC, you know, but I've always said like, you know, my favorite companies are the companies that are that have an MVP. They're fully fledged or close to fully fledged. What's an MVP minimum viable product? They have a product they can sell. It's not a thought yet or it's passed me in a thought and nobody knows who they are. Like, I can put you in front of 30,000 insurance agents tomorrow and now everybody will know who you are. Right. That's the perfect right company, you know, and we're having a lot of those, a lot of those discussions, you know, we only sell three advertising spots a year. We've got two. We're going to have them come in and mud wrestle this week. We've got one contract out this waiting to be signed. We've got one that's currently active as in and we got one available. So anybody listening to this interest, did you need to send me an email yesterday? Yeah. Hey guys, the other part is like, we really want to protect our listeners. Like, we want you guys that are listening this to know, I get to be very easy for us to have 15 sponsors. Maybe the Taco Bell pins, all NASCAR, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Ford F-150. Yeah. Yeah. We were very, you know, we want to protect the audience. And the flip side of that is is if you guys are listening to this and we recommend a product just know that we have vetted it heavily and you can sign up with the full confidence of the insurance guys podcast of America behind it. Yeah. I mean, I can say it all the time every episode practically. I'll say, not asking you to go use the product. I'm asking you to go try the product to see if it fits in your agency and what you guys need. And I would say 99.9% of the time that we promote a product, there is no big long-term contract. So if it doesn't fit, just don't use the son of a bitch. But yeah, I don't think it's too much for me to drive six hours down here and six hours home for you sons of bitches to at least go try the products that I put in front of you because we have vetted those products. And here I am, you know, do I need to be an agency today? Absolutely. Got new people starting just like Bradley does out here. Bradley just introduced me to two new people. We're taking the time to do this podcast for you guys. And all we're asking is that you go try the products. I don't think that's too much to ask. And one thing that we are in the process of developing very, very soon, if so, if you go to insuranceguyspodcast.com, you will notice we have a new website. I get a lot of people reaching out, hey, who do you use for this? Who do you use for this? We are putting together a recommended vendor's page that are people outside of sponsorships that are companies that we use in our agencies. And it's going to be segmented by Bradley's recommendations and Scott's recommendations. And that way because there's some people that, you know, our agencies are different. Sure. You know, but they're also kind of the same. Yeah. Yeah. But there's some, you know, like you use Hawksoft, I use momentum. The artist formerly known as Nell Sturts. That's going to say the artist. And so you use Ring Central, I use light speed. Correct. I mean, tomato tomato there. It's just to kind of give you guys an idea. Yeah. Anyway, hey guys, I want to bring on a very special guest today. He's made 14 appearances on the insuranceguyspodcast.com. I believe I'm not mistaken. I'm going to get to see him kneecap to kneecap here in a few weeks. Could be mistaken about that. We need to talk about that. Believe it. Let me give him a very short introduction. You all know him. You all love him. He's originally from Nashville, Tennessee. He currently resides in Lebanon, Tennessee. He started working at his mom's agency at the age of 12 years old. She was breaking every labor law in the United States of America. He's been receptionist. He's been head, head cook and bottle washer, personal line CSR, producer, sales team leader. And now he is the agency owner of Hudson pillar insurance. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome. Is the 14th time guest on the IGP, my friend, Mr. CJ Hudson pillar. How are you, CJ? What's up, guys? How are you? Man, I'm the best. Hey, am I going to see you at the Paradiso mastermind in about two weeks? Unfortunately, you are not. I had a scheduling conflict. Oh, man. Yeah. I wanted to go to that one, but I wasn't going to be able to. So unfortunately, I'm going to miss out on that. Well, you know, CJ, for you and I, it is a long damn way from Pine Ridge, Alabama and Lebanon, Tennessee to Arizona. It is. That's a, that's a, that's a whole, that is an end time zone jumping. Oh, wow. So I just got back from my other mastermind with a Greenwich group in Phoenix, Arizona. And I, I am not exaggerating, Bradley. It took me of being there for two days. That Kim went with me. We stayed a couple of days after the mastermind event for this very reason. It took us two days to get over the jet lag when we got out there. And it took about two days once we got back. I think, you know, I never have problems when I go west. It's when I come back. Mm. To me, going, going east to west is easier than west to east.
How old are you 38 oh why? Yeah, wait till you get to be about 55 you'll be you'll be seen that That'll be like you'll be in bed for two days there and back. It's it's just I Get why people say to me when I was younger man Hey, you better travel now because when you get older it just keeps getting harder and harder to Get you know drive to the airport get on one plane change planes in Atlanta biggest airport in the world You mean like I went to how I went to Arkansas for the day last Thursday. I wondered where you were I went to little hot springs Arkansas hometown of Bill Clinton to do what? Speak hey everybody this is Bill Clinton. I'm just glad. I just want to tell you that hot springs Arkansas's where I grew up. Yeah, even though he hadn't been there in 35 years Um, so this actually leads right into the podcast today Um, so I spoke to a group of young agents For the Arkansas big eye. Mm-hmm. I was literally on airplanes longer than I was in the state of Arkansas You look great. You had your sport coat on your sunglasses and yeah, the So I was going to give this presentation about AI. There's been a lot's happening with AI CJ nose and Scott nose and Alyssa from the big eye of Arkansas who's fantastic by the way one of my favorite Relations to work with about a month before the presentation. She says hey Bradley send me the outline of your presentation We want to get it approved for CE and I said how late can I send it to you? She said why I said because If I would have put it together two weeks ago, it would be irrelevant The stuff is moving so fast so fast. I mean we've got clawed Purposefully launching a new feature every single day and it's almost what you said purposely what's the purpose like like on purpose They are launching a new feature like they have made it their mission to bring out a new feature To take to get ahead of jet GPT. Yeah, and I mean they were ahead of jet GPT when they launched I believe But yes, it's moving so fast and so the main reason I wanted to bring CJ on is to talk about some of the ways he's using AI And he's seeing other people using AI we can talk about how we're using AI and things like that So and the presentation went great It's always tough when you're speaking to young agents because 90% of that audience are non-agency owners a lot of them can't implement Some of the things they're doing so my talk was around like hey here's how you go to your agency owners and say hey We need to do this, you know CJ talk to us a little bit how are you utilizing artificial intelligence and I'm gonna tell you A story about what happened to me Friday in my office with Artificial intelligence, but what are you doing right now? Yeah, so we're we're a very very quickly integrating it into Essentially every process that that we have, you know, Bradley reference Clawed. I think You know, I feel like this is it I love to hear Bradley's self in this tube But like I feel like this is the first time they like a AI tool has come out They you start really starting looking at okay, do I need to hire additional people? For some roles within my agents. Yeah, and like I really don't like hiring because of AI Yeah, like unnecessary To have I mean I'll give you examples So I would make the argument right now that well I can do pretty much anything that you are currently paying a VAT to do In a lot of instances Bradley what would you think I would agree? I think that's the most vulnerable sector right now Especially if if you have your VA's doing a lot of data entry and moving things from one place to the other And they're not on the phones and that sort of thing But how do you connect Clawed to like your Agency management system like I don't understand how to do that So you know what I'm gonna give I'm gonna get now cert slash momentum probably the The biggest shout out about this so like obviously my agency is a little different We we operate on HubSpot so that's kind of an anomaly with within the industry But I believe now search was the first one correct if I'm wrong Bradley because I know you're on their platform But they were the first one that released like a full MCP is that correct? That is correct. So yeah, so they they have a essentially a direct integration with With Clawed and what what they did so not only that they've launched a bunch of new AI stuff into their Management system which we're gonna hear about in a couple of weeks. We're gonna have them on to talk about that but What they did By pushing that out is they put every other agency management system on notice Because now I can go into Clawed and have it do things in my AMS Without going into my AMS Run reports run reports update policy. I mean whatever the and they did it to an mcp and I've seen Let me just say this very carefully. I have seen internal emails From other AMS systems that I'm not supposed to see where Their hand is being forced and now they're looking at this as well. So Talk CJ talk about the difference briefly Between an mcp and an api Yeah, so basically, I mean an mcp is essentially a suite of apis for all intents and purposes So everybody's you know familiar we've been trying forever to get people to give us you know access to you know APIs for different systems, but then they do the api and you have to hire a developer to connect it to Correct you're right you're exactly yes So you had to have a developer and so like let's use what you now starts as an example Even if they didn't roll out an mcp they do have a full suite of api of apis that you can use publicly It's not you know, they're not Hide behind an ivory tower or anything like that But we're where that gets powerful with what what it mcp does is it essentially is a set of apis and then a knowledge base to go with that to let your AI model understand what each one does Yeah, and so what that allows it to do is to move very quickly and efficiently Through through the system because what I'm seeing it like let me give you an example So let's say Bradley wanted to update a policy within now certs right Typically what people have been doing and I'm throwing airports around this They're quote-unquote using ais. They're they're having they're telling AI to do something and they're giving it Browser access to their system whatever it is right so there it's going in now certs and it's clicking buttons and going through the problem of that is Slow be it eats up a ton of tokens, which is compute essentially And it's just not really efficient whereas with an mcp or an api It can do all these things essentially instantly so it doesn't cost much to do it It does use a lot of tokens and it's way way way faster And so those mcp's are you know in my opinion even if they don't run mcp just having api access is massive and with the new systems and the new tools like there's probably people who hear me right now I don't understand anything. He just said api is not anything new right a lot of people are familiar with with apis But the problem is in order to use them you had to have a little bit of knowledge around you know Plants are running from where you send in the data like there's a lot of there's some prerequisites to it Claude and I mean chat gvt would do this as well, but Claude handles all of that for you, okay? And so what that what that means is that by having all these tools Connected you can start creating an AI assistant for your team that is actually able to do real work within your agency Let me give you an example. So my agency again. We run on HubSpot. HubSpot has a connector to to Claude We also use back nine for life insurance now. Why do we use back nine? Well because they have an api now I'm assuming most agency owners would agree that They'd like to sell more life insurance and their agency except for rather flowers who who says no, no, it doesn't like life insurance but the Every day in my now obviously we tell teams hey, it'd be great if you sell more life insurance We're all agency owners. It's got to be told everybody to sell more life insurance. What actually happens? Usually my people start selling more life insurance, but then we sell less P and C insurance Yeah, exactly because you get you get distracted or whatever and or things just don't happen Right We're able to do with things like Claude and these connectors is we built out a A routine in our system that every day Every agent I have their clawed assistant goes to our agency management system It checks and finds a random person that we have a home insurance policy for and no life insurance It pulls that person's information in the clawed it then takes that information parses it out and does an api called a back nine that then quotes it Returns the life insurance quote then goes to Gmail quotes or drafts an email to sell the policy and puts the draft in my client or in my team members inbox So when they log in at eight o'clock every morning there is a prospecting email to a fresh client Trying to sell them life insurance and all that happens in centenias And all they have to do is hit send so that's we're forgetting so Help me out here because all I all I am there is is is every agent listening to this right now There are some agents that are on now search Bradley talked about now search and
And it sounded like y'all renamed now searched to something else 'cause you called it something else. - No y'all, they renamed it to momentum. - Okay, whatever. - Which I wanted for me up to. - Yeah, momentum instead of now searched whatever. We know how that's working. Now search is small enough and nimble enough that it can on the dime switch and say, all right, we're gonna utilize a API connection to call it to let people like Bradley do all kinds of cool shit now search. That's one example of this. CJ is on HubSpot. There's about three agencies in America that have utilized HubSpot. I know David Carruthers is one, you're one. There's some others, there's a handful, there's a smattering. Let's call it a smattering. - There's a bunch more people looking at it now with all the AI stuff available. - Correct, they're looking at it. But the majority of insurance agents like Scott that are on this podcast today listening to this are Hucksoft, there's two or three others of these AMS systems out there. All the people that are on this other stuff, what are we supposed to do? Are we supposed to call Hucksoft and raise hell until they allow Claw to integrate with Hucksoft? - Well, let's use Claw as an example. Hucksoft is an example. Hucksoft has its own API. And so it's got, I don't know, it's very, it's a small amount compared to like a momentum or whatever. But it's got eight or nine functionality things that you can do within their suite of calls or whatever. So yeah, I think the bigger question there is, there's a lot of these like what I would call legacy insure texts, right? That have really started, or have traditionally been really hard to connect to, right? Y'all know the ones that I'm talking about. I think what's gonna happen is this, and I could be wrong, but I don't think so. These tools are gonna start catching on and they are going to be going to be the next wave of insure tech, right? Like there are things that are gonna be coming out there, there's gonna be capabilities that agencies have that are going to put them at a competitive disadvantage if you do not have them. Every software company in the world is worried and they're going one of two directions. They're either demonizing AI, which is not the solution or they're developing their own AI capabilities, which is the right way to build your mode. Right. - And you know, like I always point to this, there's an article, one thing that I think is interesting that I think a lot of like the insure tech companies need to hear is that like, you know, we normally say, you know, you said it a second ago, you know, momentum is smaller, they're more nimble, they're able to implement things like this much quicker. - Sure. - There was actually a news article came out in February that I point to this quite frequently because I just think it's interesting. And I just pulled it up so I can read to you. And the headline is, hub international brings andthropics called to 20,000 point points. Reports, 85% productivity gains and 90% user satisfaction. That's hub. That's a, you know, that's obviously a really big agency. And so you have companies like that of that size that are then going to, you know, a company, they're in their AMS saying, hey, we need these features. The AMS is going to have to adapt or they're going to lose clients like this. And I just feel like when people understand what actually is, what these systems have the capability to do, these legacy insure techs are either going to either get with it or they're going to get hit in my mind. - Well, and it's like when something is threatening your business, you can either stand in the corner and pout or you can make your business stronger. You know what I mean? You fight fire with fire. You know what I'm saying? - Yep. - Like, you know, it's now's the time to adapt. And there's a lot of stuff that's being threatened by AI because the tools are now in the user's hands. Whether you agree with building your own tool or not, I think it's very situational. It's case-by-case basis. But, you know, I'll tell you, so the end of my presentation in Arkansas was in the 1800s, late 1800s, there were people who their entire job were what they were water carriers. So, this was before indoor plumbing, they would bring the water to your house. When indoor plumbing became available, those guys didn't have a job anymore, right? Fast forward, I don't remember the name of the program, but there was a company that created the first program that had online spreadsheets. Every accountant and CPA in the world was scared to death that these spreadsheets were going to replace them. And it didn't replace them. We still have CPAs. The difference in those two roles is a water carrier role is a non-knowledge, non-skilled labor. You're taking the water from one place to the other, right? The accountant, there's actually an advisory side of that. There's a knowledge side of that. And I think insurance agents need to look very introspectively. Are we the water carrier or are we the accountant? 'Cause the thing that AI can't replace is the advisory side of things. Can it help a little bit? Yeah, sure, right? Our customers are gonna be more informed for sure, right? But that's where I think we need to hinge. And there's so many agencies that are just very transactional that don't have the relationship with their customer that I think are gonna hurt. - Well, in some policies are just transactional. - Yeah, like, you know, I can line up, I can throw seven to 10 auto personal auto policies in a bag and shake them up in terms of the contract. And that damn auto policy is gonna be just about exactly the same for every one of those damn auto carriers. Auto insurance, which has been proven by GaiKo and progressive is a very transactional purchase that you can do online, that you don't really need an agent for. But then there are some transactions in the insurance business. I would argue home insurance is this way because every damn carrier in America has turned homeowners insurance into a complicated, hard to understand, roof surfacing, your roofs now 11 years old. So you're on ACV, roof light. They have turned homeowners insurance into a complicated purchase. Do you agree or disagree, CJ? - Yeah, no, totally get it. I think that I think the difference though with like this AI movement, this is where people have to just pay attention is, let's use the online buying of insurance, right? The thing that insurance agents always joke about, you know, we're like, oh, you buy it online, you're your own insurance agent. Yeah, good luck, you know, whatever. Well, now they're able to get actual knowledgeable advice and context within these systems. They're buying them on. They can actually have, you know, they can ask questions. They can have the the online, I'm air quoting online has context, you know, if they had, you know, previous policy information. So I just think like agents, you know, the common agent, I think the problem is is that there's so many agents that won't wait and not act. And this is the first time in my career, and I've been doing this, like you said, Scott, since I was 12, I'm a little nervous. To be honest, like I'm not nervous that the industry is going to go away, but there's definitely going to be a shakeup. And there's a lot of, and I think what I'm nervous for is there's so many agencies that are going to do what they always do. And that's nothing. Correct. And those are the ones that I think you're going to get some. And what I tell people is if you do nothing, that's fine, but at least pay attention to what's going on because you may spot something that you can use. So Jeff said this since the lemonade days, like even if we want to demonize lemonade, like let's at least pay attention to what they're doing. Or specifically what the customer thinks of that. Yeah. And the other side of this 2CJ is the Silicon Valley tech bros wildly overestimate the fact that the rest of the country thinks like them. Sure. And the way most of those guys think is that everybody solves every problem with technology. I saw a customer of mine on posted on Facebook two weeks ago. Can I go to the UPS store and they help me scan a QR code? I don't know. So that's the other piece of this. Yeah. Were they from Athens, Alabama? Yeah, maybe. Now we'll say that we have seen-- we track every lead source in our agency. We have seen a huge uptick in people saying they found us on chat GPT. Well, AEO is a whole new classification of SEO. That is happening currently, which is from a marketing perspective, is something else that you have to look out for. And I'll tell you a couple things. I've been saving this for you, Scott. A couple things that we're doing in our agency with AI. And I feel like I'm wildly behind. And I'm spending probably two or three hours a day on this stuff. So we built an AI agent that-- not agent in the insurance sense. An AI agent is a classification of AI. We built an AI agent that sits in our slack. Beboop, bop, bop. Beboop. What kind of insurance do you want? It's a robot.
that sits in our slack that integrates with agency zoom, which has an MCP, and for this particular platform we built this on, and we can ask it questions. So let me just give you a simple example. Miss Johnson, you know, Cole is out, Cole usually deals with Miss Johnson. Miss Johnson calls in and wants to speak to the agency owner. Well, what I do in that situation is I go to the, go to Nell certs, go to the account, read through copious pages of notes to try and get a sense of what's going on in her account. That's probably the same thing that every account manager does, right? Well, now I can just go to this agent in Slack and say, "Hey, what's going on, Miss Johnson's account?" It'll ping the MCP, it'll summarize, here's everything that's going on with this account. It is also, we don't have this piece on yet, but it'll also be proactive. So for example, it notices a commercial account that renews in seven days, there's been no activity on. It'll look at who the account manager is, and it'll, it's not only reactive, it's proactive. It will notify the account manager, "Hey, you may want to take a look at this," right? Did Clawed build that for you? So I built that on a program called Hyperagent, but it runs on Clawed. Hyperagent's a program that allows you to build agents a little, it gives you a little bit of a head start versus building it directly on Clawed. I haven't got the punchline yet. This is real, okay? So we had to name it something, okay? So I had to give it a name. Oh boy. Okay, CJ already knows. I already know, it's great, it's great. What have you called yourself the last couple weeks 'cause you're sitting in that front desk? The most expensive account manager in America. That's real talk truth, that's truth, bombs. We named it Scott. (laughs) I love it. Not only did we name it Scott. I am the most expensive account manager in America. Not only did we name it Scott, it has your picture on it. So his profile picture is your picture. I'm finally being recognized as I should be. And he talks like you. He actually speaks like me. Well, it's got my text. It's text. So like, I'll be like, "Hey, what's going on, "Mr. Johnson's account?" And it'll say, "Well, shoot." That son of a gun canceled two days ago. And I did that to be funny, but we actually did build that. Hey, CJ, my watch is telling me, get moving fat ass. Yeah. I've been sitting too long. Another thing that we are, we don't have this fully there yet. There's a bit of a manual process to it, but the dashboard is live. So when we remarket a policy, it goes into a remarketing pipeline agency zoom. And then once that remarketing process is done, we assign one of three conclusions to it. Remarket successful, meaning we found another company for them. Remarket stayed with current carrier. We couldn't find a better option. And then remarket canceled. We lost the business. Well, every agency has some kind of threshold that they remarket on. 10%, 15%. You know, most agencies do. Well, where did you get 15% from? You pulled it out of your ass. Right. So I started thinking about this in an AI context. Like, what if we could pinpoint the exact like premium increase breaking point that shows us, hey, we need to remarket this? So what this tool does is it takes a report that shows all of my renewing policies and the percentage increase or decrease. And then it takes the report from last month that shows what the one of those three conclusions were. It cross references that. So now I know if we have a 7.5% increase, there's almost a 100% certainty they're going to have to stay with that current carrier. If there's a 12% increase, we're going to be able to find a better option. And if there's a 17% increase, we need to work these first because we're going to lose them. Right. And I can also break it down by carrier. So I can look at travelers. Their percentage might be lower or higher. So that's another-- just like the way I'm using AI mostly is not replacing tools. It's like, hey, what are some business intelligence things that I can layer on top of my AMS and my CRM that gives me more of an insight into what's going on in the agency? I've got two on those lines where you've got a few if you want to hear those. Go ahead. We're a personal on-shop, right? Almost all personal on. And one of the things that is extremely hard to understand in a personal on- agency is how much are you actually spending to service the accounts you write? That is a number that is hard to calculate. Agencies do not know how much it costs to service accounts. So we built this with HubSpot and Claw. And essentially what Claw does is every day it updates this. But it goes in. It pulls every phone call that we've ever had, every email that was sent, every service task or ticket that was created, any communication, any notes, any internal emails, slack messages, whatever, any amount of time that was spent on an account, we were able to aggregate that data. And then Claw actually assigns values to it based on what employee did the activity. And we were able to back into an actual cost of service number that updates in a real time. So every time Johnny Smith calls the office, that time is calculated for who he talked to. Is accounted for. And we actually get a true cost of service on our accounts. And so I made this example with my team the other day. We have a guy that, for whatever reason, he calls in once a month, he takes about 45 minutes a time. But everybody likes him because he's a nice guy, whatever. The agency revenue per year on that account was $67. Small teeny tiny account. The cost to service was like $380. And so I was able to show my team, hey guys, this is the math behind what's going on here. And so we were able to, obviously, we don't, we don't, we have to keep that customer, right? I mean, we have to have that customer, but we changed the how proactively are on different things. And I basically say, look, we don't want to lose a customer, but if we lost that one, okay. >> Yeah, there's a hidden cost that you don't know about. We've run that same metric, but I do it manually, and I do it like once a year. And for us, the least profitable line of business were builder's risk and vacant dwellings. And if you just think about the structure of those policies, usually they're less than 12 months, there's a lot of back and forth. The most profitable was cyber. >> Yeah. >> Our average cyber policy had less than one service request per year. And the catch is for those of you listening, in order for you to accurately build this, every single thing that the account manager does, has to be in some sort of system so you can pull the report to see. >> And that system can be a following cabinet. >> It cannot be a following cabinet. >> And the carrier is most profitable. Every sales manager will tell you the most profitable line of business for all of these carriers is workers comp. They love workers comp, because it is so profitable, which is why every one of them sends out 714 emails a week on workers comp. And if you're out workers comp, you get 38% commission and blah, blah, blah, and all this. Anyway, I want to end with this. >> Nope, I got one to end on, but go ahead. >> Well, let me say this. So when I was in Arkansas, because I know there's people listening thinking this, when I was in Arkansas, this lady raised her hand, and she said, let me ask you a question. I get it, I get all of this, I get, we need to use it, I get what you're doing. I don't know how to implement any of this stuff. How do you recommend learning how to implement this stuff? And I said, please don't take this the wrong way. I'm not being a smart ass. She said, I know Scott Howell, I'm not gonna take it the wrong way. That's actually what she said. I said, whatever AI tool you're using to build or do whatever you want to build, ask it. It's the first technology to my mind that's ever been invented that not only will it create and do something for you, it'll tell you exactly what you need to do to implement the thing or how to do the thing, right? Like go into your system and say, hey, I'm trying to do this thing. How do you recommend building this? And then how do you implement it? >> And I'll do it. >> And I'll do it. Like especially with like cloud co-work that lives in the browser. You know, like a couple of the AI tools that we built, there is a coding aspect you need to know in order to deploy it. I just literally copy the whole thing and claw it, go to clawed, co-work, hit the browser extension, paste it, hey, do this. And boom, it does it. Like the insurance guys website, like I know how to build a website on WordPress. Like the insurance guys website, I just literally like paste it all in clawed, co-work instead of, hey, deploy this. Okay, done. And I don't have to spend 45 minutes doing it. Just ask it. And if you're not sure what to build, the beautiful thing about clawed is has all these connectors. So you're able to connect your Gmail, you're able to connect your drive, you're able to connect your outlook, your AMS in some cases, your CRM and all these tools, right? My meeting notes, everything's connected. So within about the process of about 20 minutes, it knows everything about your business. So I literally go in,
and say, "Hey, won't you give me 10 ideas of stuff I can use you for to make myself more efficient and it gives you the ideas." So my agency is doing what Bradley's agency is doing and what CJ's doing, but instead of doing it inside our current book of business, we're utilizing artificial intelligence to help us sell more policies outside with prospects and niches that we're looking at. So we'll spend two or three hours a week creating marketing plans for niches, asking cloud and chat GPT things about, you know, what is the best way to reach these people? And you can even start asking those particular artificial intelligence platforms like where to go to download leads for this type of risk. And it will start giving you HTTPS places, links that you can click on to go download those leads. I purchased a sales book. It was sales scripts and how to talk to customers and things like that. And when I bought it, they sent me a digital copy. I just threw it into cloud and said, "Hey, I want you to rewrite my scripts using this info." Right. And it does it. Absolutely. So CJ, here's the last question of the day. Honey, you're going to want to drop a bomb on this. You said earlier, this artificial intelligence stuff has gotten me and then you kind of paused and you said, "A little nervous." That's the exact words you used in earlier in this conversation. I have spoken to no less than five agency owners who are considering selling their agency because of the what I call artificial intelligence fear that's out there right now with, you know, I think in a lot of people's minds that are agency owners and you and Bradley touched on it a little earlier when you were talking about like, you know, don't know what's going to happen. I think there are some people that are considering selling their agency right now today that maybe didn't consider that a year ago because they just don't know what's going to happen with artificial intelligence. Yeah, I think there's definitely people out there and, you know, I would make this argument. I think that it's an opportunity for agencies. I think that this is, it removes, you know, let's use my agency as an example. One of the big things that like always set my agency apart from the ones near me is that, you know, we were technologically better than our competitors locally here at students, right? Like we just work. The gap is, it came from me being techy. The gap is, you know, yeah, like everybody can do it. So is that an edge for me, so like for me, like that's a problem, but for like an agency that wasn't that techy, like, hey, guess what? The playing field is much more level now, you know, in that instance. So now people that have really good ideas that don't know how to implement them can implement them. And so for me, I just, like, I get to be nervous thing. I mean, I definitely, yeah, I think you'd have to be a little naive, do not be nervous at all. But like, you know, I think I'm more nervous about like government intervention than I am of that. Then I am about AI. And so like if you looking for the thing to be scared about in, you know, in the insurance industry, I don't think it's AI. It's, you know, what about when I don't have to drive my vehicle anymore and you don't have auto insurance? Like that's a bigger, like I feel like a bigger thing. And by the way, that's coming also, also, also in my opinion, the worst time in the history of the last 10 years to sell your agency. Right. You say, worst time? Yeah. And here's why rates are going down. Your earn out is going to be based on growth, profit or EBITDA and rates are coming down. So you're selling right as rates or, you know what I mean? I don't. So are you saying, so if you sell your agency too? Because when rates go down, there seems to be more people wanting to buy agencies. For sure. Yes. But if you're selling your agency all cash up front, best time in the world to sell. Rates are at their highest. But if you're selling to a big shop, you're going to have upfront payment plus earn out. And that earn out is going to be based on your growth, your profitability or your EBITDA. Right. If rates are going down, oh, you mean insurance rates? Yes. I thought you meant interest rates. Insurance rates. No, you're 100% correct. So now, maybe the big shops have a workaround for that. Maybe in everything's negotiable. Sure. Right. And granted rates coming down, creates a new opportunity for sales. Right. And I think it's not the best time to sell if you're going to sell in a situation where you haven't earned out. Yeah. I think it is the worst time to buy an agency. Riley Farrer says, never been further from buying an agency. And you know how much I love doing that? Yes. I've never been further from buying an agency that I am right now because it's the equivalent of buying a stock at its absolute top of the market. It's going to go down. So where if you look at the cycle of insurance, like you like to talk about the best time to sell in my opinion is like right in the middle of that hard market where rates are not as high as they're going to be, but they're not low. So you get the beefy up front and then you're earn out, you can ride that growth. There's been a lot of agencies guys in the last five, six years that all of their growth is attributed to rate increases. That's not good. Hey, that's not good. Rate increases. You know, hand raised guy right here. You know, so you've got to prep for that. Now that's why we're, I mean, I'm putting in a, I mean, I'm putting in a ton of effort right now into new business. I had a meeting right for you got here. We're looking at our sales process, you know, because that's how you make up that gap. So anyway, I'll let you close us out. CJ, we love you very much. Thank you for being on the show today. I'll keep you posted with all my goings on that we've talked about prior to the show today. And I hate that I'm not going to get to visit with you in a couple of weeks, but I completely understand it is a, you actually live a long way away from each other. We need to just go do lunch one day. Absolutely. It is a damn big commitment to fly all the way to Arizona. It's Arizona's a long way from us. You could, you could drive to my office before you got through a security at the airport. 100%. That's that's true. I was right there. Guys, you were listening to the insurance guys podcast. And if you, as I end every episode, rewards come from action, not discussion. Get your ass out from behind that desk today. I know, I know you want to sit there all day today. And I face the same battle. I want to sit there for six hours and play with Clawed and chat GPT, whether it's to make your agency better or whether it's to come up with an action figure of yourself as the insurance superstar. What do you call it? Like insurance superhero action figure that you can create on chat GPT or Clawed. I know you want to do that. Don't do that. Here's what you need to go do. Go make 25 calls today. Go out into your community. Be seen. What was it that Kevin Painter said? If you give, if you give to your community, your community will give back to you. Go write good business for your agencies that you represent and go write good business for the carriers that you represent. Bradley Flowers, I love you. Thanks brother. Thanks CJ. Thank you CJ. We love you too. Guys, you were listening to the insurance guys podcast and we love each one of you. Thank you so much for being a part of our family. And we'll see you back here real soon. Take care. Thanks for listening to the insurance guys podcast. If you need to know more about me or you need to get in touch with Scott, you can always reach me at the insurance guy online dot com. Or email me at
[email protected]. And if you need to get in touch with Mr. Bradley Flowers, go to portalinsurance.com or email him at
[email protected]. Guys we love you. We thank you so much for listening to our show and being a part of our family. And we look forward to seeing you again next week on the next episode of the insurance guys podcast. Take care.
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