InsurePodcast #1: Kelly Bishop

I'm Ben Shaw and this is the insure podcast. The show is one of a kind conversation, an hour with the owner of a small independent insurance agency, the people who built something and kept independent. And I spent the last several years working in commercial insurance on the Caribbean broker side. I'm not an agent, I know I run an agency. I actually started the show because I wanted to hear more from the people who are actually doing, you know, the broking themselves. So I'm joined by Kelly. And then I would love to kick it off. I just asking you about yourself. - Okay, no, that's fine. I'm Kelly Bishop and I have been doing insurance literally since I was between my junior year and senior year in high school. I actually started working for my insurance agent and took my licensing exam on my 18th birthday and was with farmers for over 20 years and then kind of retired from farmers and kept my outside book of business. It was an independent book that I kept for probably another 10 years after that. And then when that kind of dwindled down, I sold that and then just kind of focused more on my real estate for a few years and then I made a move to Las Vegas for a few years. And actually was a shelter insurance agent in Las Vegas for a couple of years in addition to our real estate brokerages down there. And then shelter pulled out of the state of Nevada. And I just had a lot of family and friends back here in Montana, I just always say, oh my gosh, we miss you. Nobody will help us. We have no choices. And so I, about a year, almost a year and a half ago, started working on trying to become independent because I thought if I'm gonna do this in Montana, I'm not gonna be a captive agent. I wanna be independent again. And so another young gal that works with me had approached me as well. She says, I wanna learn, I wanna do this as well. So undoubtedly she's out of town today. Otherwise I would have had her come on to. But we started the brokerage again just a little over a year ago and as independent and it was a little bit of a learning curve 'cause we had to get all of our appointment agreements and then trying to learn all the companies and then it's starting marketing. But and then we moved office spaces right after the first of the year right in February. But since we moved into our new office space, we have been slammed crazy busy and it's been awesome. - That's always great to hear. What do you say between your junior and senior year, what was the impetus back then? What was the reason that you started getting into insurance? - I just, you know, I had been working. I had worked for the soil conservation service, which was a government job which I did not like. And then I had also worked at our local bank as a bookkeeper down in the base when they filed checks by hand. - No way. - And I just didn't like it. I wanted something that was more challenging and something that was a little bit more different and insurance is definitely that. It has its daily challenges, whether it's your clients, the companies, you know, claims, I mean, there's just a variety. And I'm something that like, I don't like monotonous things. I like, you know, that change and, you know, keeping track of things. So I think that's probably what more attracted me to it. And then I knew that Carl, my agent that I worked for, I knew he was going to be retiring and just knew that there was a great opportunity there and it ended up being one. So yes, definitely. - Very interesting. And you've done it for now or you've become independent for the last 18 years. Sorry. - It's been a hot minute, so yeah. - For sure. Can you walk me through sort of what the typical day to day looks like for you? And so not what you would like it to look like, but rather, you know, in what it really tells them. - What it really looks like? - You know, I hear he's like, he's like, he's like, "Well, I could show you what my desk looks like and that would probably scare anybody." No, I try to keep it pretty organized, I have to. I, typically I'll check emails first thing in the morning. I try to, I'm very, you know, time blocking time organized. I teach a lot of coaching classes on business things like that for other people. So that's one of my biggest things because I was like, how do you do what you do? I'm like, you time block and you just have to. And so I do a lot of, you know, the time blocking where I just, I check all my emails and then I'll go back through and prioritize. I keep, I mean, my husband laughs at me because he's Mr. Electronic Calendar is a lot, Electronic tasks. I'm a writer down kind of girl still. It just, my brain keeps it better and I mean, I can recall things so much quicker and better when I'm writing things down versus just putting it on an electronic calendar. So I have a day planner, you know, my appointment book that I keep every day. So I look over that, look over who my priorities are. You know, work back through those people, respond to those emails that need responded to and then just start going down through my list of my priorities of who I need to work on for the day. Of course, the phone rings, like guest, you add all three phone lines ringing at once and only me here to answer them. So it's kind of like, okay, you're all going to voicemail and then I'll go back to my train vocal. - Okay, through your phone right away. - Yeah. - And then you get, walk in the door and then you have some of your clients that you love because you know that they're just gonna be in and out and then you have other ones that take an hour of your time and you're like, we got nothing to accomplish, but thank you for visiting. - Interesting. - You have your options. - Yeah, they had real, because I don't really have an assistant right now, which I would love. - Of course. - I was here till eight o'clock last night, but you know, that's okay. Because again, there was people in front of me during the day and those people take priority. So then I just stay later or come in earlier to get caught up on the work because I can plough through a lot of things when there's obviously no one around and the phone's not ringing and whatnot. And again, that's part of the reason I time block. There are times I will just let the phones go to voicemail so I can get a lot of things done because I know I can do a better job when I've got all that work off my plate for the day. So. - Very interesting. If you look at your existing book, where do you think, or do you have a feel for like what time insurance you place the most? - We focus more on doing the commercial insurance. It's not the easiest by any means. It's more time consuming. And then we do a lot of firm and ranch because there's a huge need for that in our area and we have multiple companies that we can write through. So just trying to save our business owners and our farm and ranch community a lot of money. We know the autos and homes just come naturally and they do. So that's been kind of fun. Those people are gonna call and then again, your business owners always have their personal insurance as well. So there's a lot of really big households that we end up quoting. And I won't even sugarcoat it. There's days that I can only do one household. I mean, that's how long it takes. Just to get through all of their stuff, analyze it, put it through our rating systems. And again, we farm it out to more than one company on every account. So we do at least two to three auto quotes. We do at least two homeowners quotes, depending on where the home is located, our commercial lines, depending on what kind of business it is. We've sometimes farm that out to at least eight companies just to see who can't get right it, who can get us the best rates for things. You know, our farm and ranch companies, we actually have four companies that we rate our farm and ranch through. So again, we've got a really good base of companies to farm it out to to see who we can do the best for. And that's my goal is I don't care that it takes me more time. If my clients are patient, I wanna save them the most money that I can. And that's, yeah. - And then you just alluded to the fact that something a complex quote process can take a really long time. What is the biggest time spent on in that process? - A lot of times it's just like, it depends on how organized the client is and how organized their materials are. If they can get me their existing policies, it's a lot easier to extract things off of them. But there's times like I've got one client where they have like a farm and ranch policy, they've got four rental properties, they have a trucking company, so it's got like 50, you know, vehicles, trailers and trucks on there, and equipment. And then they've got like, you know, 16 to 20 drivers. So you have to compile all that information. You've got an organ, things that pull it into spreadsheets because every company that we submit it to, a lot of times we'll ask for different forms, they'll ask for some locations, and then you're having to cut and paste or say, hey, can you at least just take my spreadsheet and you know, take some pressure off me or hey, if we pull these into the accord forms, which are not my friend, you know, can you just extract off of those? So there is a lot of that, you know, and like I say, that's probably the most time consuming is just breaking down all of their stuff and then seeing who, what companies are gonna fit the best for them. So yeah. - Does it happen that you sometimes try and market it or like submitted to a carrier? You put all the information in, you've gone through this whole lengthy process and it comes back with actually, we're not gonna write this. - It happens all the time. - Oh no. - Yeah, we actually, one account this last fall that I think we literally submitted it. I want to say like almost 12 companies. And we were, I think, I don't, in fact, we didn't even end up writing it because it was a place one. And I mean, and I'm the type of agent like, you know, because we have wildfires here in Montana and everything's so remote rule and our fire departments are everything else. They have these wildfire squires, which I hate. It's the stupidest thing I've ever owned. But not my rules, obviously. - Of course. - I had a lady that came in with her home insurance the other day and she wanted it. And I quoted it and I was less, but I told her, I said, you know, realistically, I said the policy you have, I said with the wildfire scoring and everything going on, I said, you need to hang on to what you have. I said, I would love to write your business. I said, but I don't want you to lose your policy that you've got because the companies that I was writing were comparable in coverages. But I knew the company that she was with is probably a better company at the end of the day from what I was able to quote with her because of the wildfire scoring. So I told her, I said, we'll check next year. But yeah, I said right now, I said, don't mess with that, especially with no rain this year. How many areas of rule do you work with? - We have about 60 appointments that we work with. So we can do-- - All in all in Montana. - Yeah, yeah. And our next phase, probably within this next year, we're gonna do the licensing so that we can write in all 50 states is our goal so that we can branch out more. So that's one of the things that we're looking at wanting to do. And I'm sure we will probably get that accomplished because we have several, again, I have people. go back into Nevada asking me if I can do insurance there again. And then, Bri, Bri, that works, that she lit, her farm is on like the Montana North Dakota border. So she's got a lot of North Dakota things and people there. And then she also has a lot of family in Minnesota. And then we both have a lot of contacts in Arizona. And I also, we have a lot of clients that go from Montana to Arizona. So it'd be nice to bridge that for our clients to say, hey, we can assure you in Arizona and in Montana or Nevada and Montana, because there's a lot of those connections. So that is one of our goals to have it, you know, some of those other states that we can write in. Do you have a feeling for certain lines of business already sort of what carriers you tend to go to? Are there any carriers in particular that come to mind that you tend to write with more? I would say for the, you know, the mainstream markets, you know, we write through, you know, from travelers nationwide, mainstream America, Liberty Mutual, Hartford, like all the big names like that, you know? So we have all of those appointment agreements. And then we've got a lot of, you know, surplus lines companies that we write through as well. And other smaller standard companies that we write through for a lot of things too. So yeah, like I say, we can do everything. We have, we can ensure your pets, you know, your, to your motorcycles, to your yachts, to, I mean, like, they're just almost as an anything we can't ensure. As long as it's, you know, early normal. I mean, like I say, everyone's smell. We run across these bizarre things, but. So when you listed all these carrying names, that means that your agency has a direct appointment. So we'll walk through like a broker's broker. We do. So we actually are members with what's called Montana Agency Alliance, which is part of the SIA Alliance too, which I can remember what all that stands for. So that's part of the join. And then we actually have direct appointments as well with a lot of these other companies too. So. And I think that has been, you know, an asset because coming into the independent market, we were at first, Bre and I, we spent like probably three or four months and I was really struggling to just reach out to companies, getting appointment agreements like all those kinds of things and even companies that I'd written with you for and not realizing that they'd had kind of like a hold on giving appointments. So that's why we ended up joining, you know, the insurance alliance and it actually, it's been good. They definitely, you know, have a lot of pull on getting your appointments, you know, and then getting you in with your carriers. In fact, one of my carriers was just here this morning, out of North Dakota, pin Minnesota, as well. They're based out of. And so they actually stopped in there doing a little drive through Montana. So that was, you know, fun to get an underwriter and, you know, produced a lady that I'd been working with for, you know, 20 plus years and got to actually finally meet her in person. So that was really nice. So yeah, like it's a variety, you know, of those appointments, but for the most part, most of them, you know, we were able to obtain by being members of the agency alliance, which I think that does help, you know, and they've got a great program where like if you're a writing business, you get like kind of like profit share off of it too. Yeah. So yeah. The typical placement process. So let's say a customer calls and they say, hey, I really want to quote for commercial general liability. What would be the sort of the typical steps that you would take to be able to produce that quote? I have a whole list of questionnaires, depending on the type of business. So yeah, everything from, you know, their name of their business, their tax ID numbers, emails, phone numbers, the type of business, you know, if they, you know, hire contractors, subcontractors, if they have employees. I mean, every business has a little bit of a list of different questions, you know, to some degree. So it kind of depends on what the business is. So, you know, obviously learning more about their business because sometimes it's based off a payroll. Sometimes it's based receipts. It's based off of, you know, how many subcontractors they hire, things like that or like, you know, sometimes habitationals based off of square footage, restaurants, a lot of times are based off of square footage, you know, and gross receipts will kind of break some of those down on your liability and property quotes that type of thing. So it kind of, you know, it just depends a little bit. I mean, there's always some basic information that everybody, you know, has and needs to know. But then, you know, there again, then there's like some of the little niche, you know, market areas and classification codes through, you know, the, and I see codes and the SIC codes and all those fun things we have to look at. So yeah, we still do you use any, do you use any tools for intake? Right now we don't have any specific intake form. I mean, like just once we've created ourselves, that's one I have, um, Jesse kind of helping us work on is more of an automated form. I will say it's, it's kind of hard. Autos and homes, your personal lines, those are pretty basic, you know, you have to ask the same questions over and over again. So I kind of memorize them. But when it does come to commercial, I mean, and farm and ranch, it's, it's usually fairly basic, you know, as far as equipment and cows or sheep or pigs, whatever they've got type of thing. But like on the commercial side, like if I've got a guy that's a fencing contractor, I've got to ask him a whole nother list of questions versus if I've got a housing, you know, specialty contractor that does drywall, shoot rock, painting, you know, those types of things. So those things, yeah, it just, everybody's a little bit different on some of those things definitely. Yeah. For sure. And then I guess because some of the other independent ages I've spoken to, they do a lot in personal, but then in commercial, some of these carriers don't really have portals. So how do you procure the quote? Do you, do you email them? Yes, I do. Okay. But you could also some, some also have portals. Some have portals, not very many. They want a company that just came in today to visit with me. They've updated and upgraded their system and they've got a whole new portal system. So I'm like, yay. So you know, is what I've been doing sadly is I, some days I wish we were back when we had to fill out everything by hand on these accord forms and we literally fact them in, you know, I don't know how it's all about. We had the old fax machines and you would like to do a cover sheet, fax to one company, cover sheet next company, cover sheet next company. I mean, like that's, and the files could be this thick. But now we try to email them. And so that helps a lot. And then I just create email file folders within my email. You know, so that's about what I do is about the easiest. And then I just keep track of the submissions through there. And then we create like a sheet here in the office. So we actually hand right like who all we've sent it to, what the responses are so that we can keep track of it that way too because I mean, I'll get 100 emails a day, you know, on average. And it's like, okay, I mean, if you're working on multiple accounts, you're like, okay, which one went where? So I try and keep everybody labeled and organized and set follow up things and stuff like that for people. But yeah, there's, it's not an easy process. I wish there wasn't easier process. I haven't found a software company yet that I feel is really that great on setting up those tasks, those reminders, you know, things like that. I've looked at a lot of software and I have, I think I should design my own. Just like today, I was like, wait a second. I haven't heard back on so and so as file. So here I am, emailing the interwriter going, hey, were you missing something or did you need something for me? I'm like, what's the hold up here? You know, it's been, of course, then I've got my clients that, you know, you run into or they go like, um, hey, have you heard anything? And I'm like, no, I haven't. So when I'm back home, right there, send in another email to my interwriter, it's going, hey, my clients kind of need this coverage yesterday. So yeah, definitely. Do you have a sort of like what type of tools do you use to store policies? Do you have like an agency management system of some sort? We have been using what's called easy links, which has, yeah, I'm not a big fan. They've actually, I think, been more of a hindrance than a help this last few months. So I'm in desperate need of trying to find something that's better. I mean, they have a rating system. They have like the, the radar that you put everything in and it sends it after the company is on the personal line side and you're supposed to be able to download people's policies and information. And then their commercial stuff is just highly inadequate. In my opinion, I started using assembly these last couple of months for their commercial side of things. Night and day difference from trying to boggle my way through easy links. Their stuff uses some AI or sort of extracts things that fills in your core forms. That's up your client for you. I've been able to send out signatures in minutes rather than hours that was taking me through easy links. It fills the accord form sends the accord forms way more accurate. Just it's a way smoother process. So that's, that's probably one of the biggest hiccups I feel like has, has been for us is finding a good commercial company that has been, I feel like assembly's been, you know, definitely might go to at the moment for that they've really been helpful as far as that goes. And plus they'll create like that take the supplemental applications. If we need to and they'll make them PDF fillable for us, which is really nice. So that we're not having print them off, fill them out, scan them back in, email them up. Oh yeah, very time consuming. So so that that part has been helpful. Having them do that. I again, you know, trying to find a company that could meld everything together would be amazing. I don't know that that exists from all of my research that I've been doing on software companies. So how do you handle renewals? How do you keep on top of renewals? Right now because we don't have a crazy, huge book of business. I make myself notes. I set up, you know, little reminders on things for people right now. And a lot of times it's just going in and like, you know, we have to go in and log in to each one of the companies. So again, even I guess I need a virtual assistant that can just, you know, make that daily, you know, who's coming up for renewal, you know, so we can check on their stuff. And again, easy links are supposed to be doing that for us. It's not real accurate. So either better, I've got the clients calling me screaming, going, what did my rates go up? What happened? Okay. I'll go in here. So we can do what is the biggest thing that changed for you in insurance insurance? In insurance, I would say the internet, the automation, the quoting. And you know, and I will be honest, we all think, you know, oh, this technology and being online with everything is supposed to be a time saver. It's not not in my opinion. And I will say we were just at our insurance conference about a week ago and a lot of us had been in the business over the years. We all feel like even though everybody is online and you have all this automation, it takes longer. I feel like it takes longer. - No, it isn't. I think the quality process takes longer because you're sitting online, you're waiting for screens to change your waiting for. And then you're waiting for responses back. You can't call your underwriter direct like you used to be able to. You never know who you're going to get. So one underwriter might give you this answer today. You could call back with the same question tomorrow and you're going to get a different answer, which is a little hard. And so I just think that and then just the process of everything. It just seems so much more time consuming because I used to write an average of like 50 to 100 policies a month when I was with farmers. And I can't even imagine with doing all the independent things of even attempting to try to write 50 to 100 policies a month right now until we get some more, you know, streamlined process is going. So yeah, I mean, I think we've looked at that. No, it does. It takes way longer. It took me a couple of weeks ago. I had two large commercial accounts and then it had some personalized stuff into it too. But I literally spend an entire day on two accounts. And I'm like, this is not okay. This should have taken a couple of out. You know, I wish I had a better explanation of it because I feel like again, and I'm spending way more hours in the office than I thought I would be just to stay ahead of things, you know. And again, thank goodness clients are understanding and you know, patient about things, you know, because like yesterday I had some clients that came in, we decided which policies are going to write and how we're going to do some things I have sent them to get me more information. And then we're going to meet back again next week. And this will be the third time I will have met with them going over stuff. You know, I mean, they've got a lot of stuff going on. But at the same time, now I'm going to have to go back in to all of those companies. See who's going to write this one, make sure we secure the premium on this one, get the effective dates ready on this one. And so I'll spend that much more time again. I just feel like it's way more time consuming. I really do. I think I and where that hiccup has come over time. Like I say, I know it's not just me. But it is. It's interesting. You would think with being with the internet and supposedly these softwares that bridge everything over. I just don't think it's time saving. I think about the insurance industry in general and your your word that you do that you wish more people understood better probably the value of knowing that insurance isn't a catch all. And I think people are realizing that it's not a maintenance policy. It's a catastrophic policy. And so one thing that I try to educate my clients on is going with those higher deductibles, saving your premium, especially if they've never had a claim or they know they can afford a thousand dollars or $2,500. If they do have a claim because they're not going to file a claim of it small anyway because the premiums will kill you and then you risk losing your insurance. And I think that's probably one of the biggest things I work on educating my clients on is reaching out to those higher deductibles and saving saving the money in your pocket. You know, because like I did a comparison for a lady yesterday. I said, I said, if you go with a thousand dollar deductibles. I said within one year, you've saved enough premium to make up the other $500. And she's like, Oh my God, you're so right. And I'm like, Yeah, I don't know why all don't do that. But yeah. So that that's one thing I feel like people, you know, need to understand more is it's not you don't want to make a claim unless you absolutely have to. So yeah. You have such an unusual profile given that you're also doing real estate. Can you can you walk me through that a little bit? So what is the how do you see those two worlds work together? It actually works out great for me. If I've got insurance clients, they know I do real estate and like these last couple listings that I have, they're like, Oh, hey, will you list our house for us to make of course. So you know, it's a great sell for me. And then a lot of if I'm, you know, if somebody's called me randomly to list their house or whatever, then they're like, Well, we don't have anybody that doesn't sure. So I'm like, let me get you. It works out really well. And that's what I mean. And I've had the combination of those things since like 2000. Yeah. So yeah, but having the insurance down the real estate together. I'm the only insurance agent my family. So yeah, my dad, everybody's self employed pretty much in my family, though, my dad had a logging and road construction business had a sawmill. You know, my grandpa had another, you know, my dad's dad, they also had construction and road building business. And then my grandpa, my mom's side, he owned a grocery store and owned a meat packing plant. So yeah, lots of entrepreneurial things in my family. And my sister owns a store. Yeah, also here in Montana. Yes, she has a oil and vinegar store. So yeah, that's amazing. Very inspiring. Love to look forward with you. When you when you think of your businesses, you know, like sort of the real estate in the insurance world and how that's moving forward in the next five to the years, what do you think success would look like? Where where are you trying to take your your independent agency work? Well, eventually is what I'd like to get this bill back up, you know, to where I kind of before I retired, you know, well, however many years, I kind of retired the first retired the first time. I think I would like to get it, you know, built up and then like someone like Bri, you know, that works, you know, with me for me, you know, have them kind of take maybe over more of the reins of the business. And I could maybe semi retire. See myself or fully retiring because I think I would be bored. Of course, I do, I do a lot of, you know, volunteering and like do, you know, sit on several boards of things. And just because I'd like to give back me and I'm also like a quarter point of advocate and you know, I've involved with our chamber and all those types of things too. So things like that, I, you know, I may always keep busy, you know, with those types of things. But, you know, I think, you know, in the next, you know, 10 to 15 years, I'd like to cut back, you know, of course, yeah. So we'll see where our crazy world goes. I don't know. Sometimes I think I'd like to travel. There's other days I'm like, no, gas prices just went up to almost $5 a gallon and it, you know, $250 a night for hotel. I'm like, I think I'm good home. It's interesting. I think it sounds like on the road for you to have Bremort responsibility. You and hire an assistant right there's like a few more steps you could do to really streamline some of these processes. Yes. Yeah. And I'm always open for some suggestions. So if you find anybody out there that's got some, you know, like, hey, really, really grasp on to this whole VA thing, the VA thing, I, I'm just not 100% sold on it yet. We tried to do some of it with our real estate company a couple of years ago and did not have a good experience. But I know insurance and real estate, you know, for VA is is a lot different. So I'm thinking I might actually venture in and see if I can handle trying to hire a VA for the answer. If you don't mind going down the rabbit hole for a second, what was the main reason that VA is for the real estate space didn't work for you? Basically because they didn't have enough knowledge of the real estate industry and and for them to really help us, you know, because you're writing, you know, a contract law, basically, I mean, even though some of it's not available, you know, as being a broker, I mean, I'm the one responsible for my 200 agents that were working for me. And so it's like, I've got to make sure that all the verbiage is correct in that type of thing too. And if you have a new agent and they hire what's called a transaction coordinator and the transaction coordinator doesn't, you know, put the proper verbiage in it can, you know, kill a deal, it can, you know, put a buyer at risk, it can put the seller at risk, it can leave the brokerage at a risk. So there's just a lot of, you know, things like that that I feel like the VA that people were using their VA's for and that we tried to as well. And just trying to like the compliance, you know, to make sure people have all their paperwork and files in order and that type of thing. Because Nevada was really big sticklers on all of that kind of stuff. I mean, there's there's no mercy there if you mess up something. And so important that we know we had everything, you know, done properly and correctly. And so I think the VA's just weren't able to, I mean, if it was just paper shuffling and task managing, they're great. And even like some of the social media posting if we needed them to do things like that, which, you know, that's pretty simple basic. Anybody can do those things for you. So I just didn't seem like it was as worth it for us, you know, as far as a VA goes in the real estate, you know, area. But I think I think in the insurance, it could be more beneficial. I there was an older gentleman that I spoke to at our meetings last week and he was even like, no, it goes, I have a VA has been a game changer. I think, okay, if this man is in his 70s and he can do it, I can do it. So I'm a little bit more, you know, inclined to see. And the other thing I was thinking of too is if that it might actually Justin, I was just talking about this earlier this morning is maybe hiring that VA. So like we're saying with the bottle neck of where we're kind of slowed down of doing the intake, you know, on over the phone or in person with those people and then handing that off to the VA and having her manually go in and get those quotes for us, you know, rather than paying the easy links software, which is completely inaccurate. Anyway, because by the time it comes back with the quotes and then we have to bridge over there's a two to $500 difference in the premiums. So we're like, this just didn't do us any good anyway. We might as well have just gone in directly to the company website and just quoted it. So we're kind of, you know, leaning more towards possibly doing that, I think in the next, you know, maybe even this month of trying to see. Very cool. That's exciting. Yeah, because I think from the get go, you would also assume that an insurance has a lot of domain expertise that VA might not have. So if that doesn't turn out to be true, then that would be great. Of course. Well, and I think one of the things with trying to do the VA's if they, you know, can input a lot of the information so that you're not sitting there doing all the general inputting of everything if we could have them set up those tasks, you know, and those reminders on things and then being able to teach them how to do the quotes, at least on the front side of things. I mean, obviously I'll go in and check everything before I'm going to call the client back. But if they can at least get that bulk of information put in force, I think that's going to be very helpful. Yeah, that definitely sounds like it. Where do you think in the next sort of three to five years, your main, you will get your main new clients from like what, what channels? I'm going to say at that point, it's usually all referrals. Yeah, it is. That's how I, you know, really built the bulk of my business before it was off of, you know, word amount referrals, you know, right now, like I say, we've got this call system thing that Jesse has that it drops. I drop a voice. to people, but so it's actually my voice to people. And it's funny 'cause it's working. And it's funny 'cause I'll run into people and go, "Was that you that left me a message third day?" I'll be like, "Yes, it is. Give me a call." So that's working. Jesse, we work a lot of stuff on Facebook. We look for people, looking for things in Facebook groups. We do posts and different things. So that works a lot for us. Like I say, right now, other than the calling system, you know, it's a small fee for what we pay. And then that has helped just get our name out. And then I've been getting involved back in the community things. I helped work on a couple of political campaigns. So you're out. You're like, "Oh, you do first again. Yes, here's my card." So, you know, I think just being visible and being out in front of people does make a difference, definitely. Yeah. - Was that any topic in particular where you're like, you know, this is something that you feel passionate about or you would have expected me to talk about more? - Not specifically. I didn't know really what you were wanting to learn. I just, I have a talk all with a young guy that is wanting to, you know, pick my brain tomorrow about doing captive versus being independent tomorrow. And so I am gonna have a conversation with you about that. I mean, and I will say, sometimes the captive market isn't always bad, obviously. And it's got it's, you know, because I know certain companies like shelter, farmers, I'm not sure what state farms program is, but I know that there's certain companies that like they actually pay you to be an agent for so long and then you do so much business. You know, you know, get that amount taken back off. But like as you're going into independent, you're not getting paid. You're paying to be an agent basically. And so, you know, that is a big difference. You know, so I'm one thing I always tell anybody whether if I'm recruiting them to be an agent with me or recruiting them to be a realtor with me, I always say, don't quit your day job if you're brand new. Unless you've got a huge database of people that you know are gonna write business with you. Or if you again, even for real estate, if you know you've got a huge list of people that are all, you know, getting ready to move and sell or they're dying and you need to list a bunch of houses. Because this market is hard. It's time consuming. And even with my being in the business as long as I have, I mean, we got appointed, I think it was back in March of April last year. And we didn't get to write our first policy till July. And so, yeah. And that was like just that appointment time, that learning curve, getting things going and then we kind of had a little low in August, even into September a little bit. And then October finally started kicking off. So you're talking a good six months, even just with insurance. And even when I started with shelter down there in Nevada, it took me, I'm gonna say nine months before I really started writing policies. And since we're in our new office here, it's been a game changer of, you know, just the foot traffic. People knowing that we're here now, you know, we've got a nice big sign out front. But it takes time. You know, it just does. And I think anybody thinking that, oh, I'm gonna make all this money. Yeah, it's great, but it takes time. And it takes time to build it up. So, yeah. And you need to be patient. It's just like you just need to keep pushing. Yeah, yeah. Definitely. Kelly, I really appreciate it. That was really the bulk of the questions I wanted to put to you. And thank you so much for, you know, walking through them with me, because it certainly always adds. So I love learning about these things.