InsurePodcast #2: Jeremy Stepp

And thank you so much for taking the time. I think when you look for information on independent agents, you really just don't find that much online. So what that opportunity is there than to the ultra-publicarts to talk about this in more detail. Tell me about how you and Tonya decided to build your own agency. Sure. So about 2020 when COVID happened, the world sort of shut down. You know, Tonya was a dental assistant and so can't really go and dental assist when the world is shut down. And so during that time when it was like the apocalypse happened, right, you go outside and there's no one on your street. And if you've been checked out to the convenience store, you're like the only one there with a mask. And like the one else is there. But anyways, she was approached by our sister-in-law about learning to sell life insurance. And so she went ahead and got her life and health license here in Arizona. Being the supportive husband I am, I went in and got my life and health license as well. And she really enjoys life and health. Not me, not so much. I mean, I still have the license, right? But over the years as I've watched her build her business, I've kept saying for a long time, I'm like, you know what, so many people fail in life and health because selling life insurance is really a hard, tough nut to crack for a lot of people. And so you sort of need an easy way in. And the easy way in that I finally, in September of 2024, decided to go ahead and do it is through a property in casualty. - Interesting. So how do you get into life and health through property and casualty? - Well, because legally, if you own a car, you've got to have insurance. If you own property and you own money on it, you've got to have insurance. If you're doing anything professionally, like sign insurance, you've got to have insurance. You know, if you own a business, you've got to have general liability insurance. You've got to have workman's comp insurance that needs type of things. So basically the idea was, and still is, you get them with the easy sell, right? The low hanging fruit, right? Not the six, seven. The low hanging fruit. I put the car insurance, the homeowners insurance, renters insurance, business insurance, things like that. And now, once you've done that, and if you've renewed them a few times, and you've built a relationship, they know you, now they're part of your war circle, right? - Of course. - And so it helps have that conversation, having that conversation to be much easier, right? - What were you doing before you joined Tonion in that endeavor? - So I'm actually, my regular JLB, 'cause we're still building the agency, so that I can go full time. I'm a special education teacher. - Interesting. Okay, nice. And you decided that you're soon or later, you're gonna do full time PNC? - Yeah, actually, in July of 2024, I just had a really challenging moment we were living in a community that the management, it's like H-O-A on steroids, right? And it wasn't like we weren't earning decent money, we were, it was just though that we were sort of in that middle class, right? That we had enough money to live comfortably, we had enough money to maybe go on a vacation, year in there, once or year, two years, but when it came down to, okay, well, how do I handle this situation with this? Homeowners Association, I didn't have, I didn't have the money to go and get the legal advice and the help that I really needed. And so I felt like I was backed into a corner. I was painted into a corner, and at that point, I'm like, you know what, I don't want to ever be in this situation, especially, you know, I'm not old, and I'm gonna be 50 this year, especially as older as I get, that I'm like, I don't wanna be in this situation ever again. And so what I did, I reflected back on, I had owned a service business for 11 years, and then I closed it in 2008 when the economy collapsed. - What was this business? - I'm sorry? - What was the service business that you owned? - It's clock repair. - I don't know it. Interesting. My grandfather, my grandfather learned from a clock and watch maker who loved to repair watches, but he hated clocks. And then my grandfather started teaching my dad when he was 12, and my dad kicked me out of bed when I was 10, starting teaching me. And when my dad retired in 1997, I took over from him. And he had concentrated primarily on retail and repair. I just concentrated on repair. But one thing I learned reflecting back on that experience was the time that, because of all the tax deductions and things like that, you get when you're a business owner, the time that I ever had the most freedom, the time I ever had the most money was when I owned my own business. And so, am I okay? What's the easiest way for me to get from where I'm at now to where I want to be? And at that moment, I'd actually let my wife and health license lapse. It wasn't that long. And so, but the state of Arizona, I just had to do some CE's and pay the fee, and it got reinstated. And then I was hooked up by one of Tony's business partners. I was hooked up with a lady in Texas, who I didn't know who this lady was. She ended up becoming my mentor and a really good friend, Kristen Heisler in Texas. She owns Think Pink Insurance and Universal Wealth Property and Casualty Insurance. And she's like, "Hey, you know what? If you get your ears on a license, then your Texas license, I'll throw some work at you because she was so busy." And so, I did that. And I was in September of 2024. So, you know, from nothing in no way to now, where we have a physical office, you know, the PNC part of the business is part of an aggregator or insurance network group, whatever you want to ever send an Emmy on a deck. - What's working that like old? - It's called Pacific Crest Services, they're out of Idaho. And for me personally, I've been looking at a lot of different ones, you know, I felt the most comfortable with them. And I primarily did that to get access to more markets here in Arizona, specifically in Arizona, because that's where I live, you know. So, you mentioned that it's hard to find people for the life and health side. And for PNC, it's easier because more people need PNC insurance products. How do you do cost of acquisition for PNC right now? - So, our office is in a town of about 20,000 people. - Is this coolant? - Yeah, and coolant your ears on it. - Yeah. - And so that's in Penel County. And Penel County is the swath of land that's between Maricopa County where Phoenix is and Pima County are Tucson. And so where we live, we live in Arizona city, which is just south of Casagran, which Casagran is the bigger city in that area. And then our office is about 18 miles from where we live, which in Phoenix, I can California distance is nothing. But the area we're in in Penel County is hugely rural, agriculture based, a lot of hard working families. And so the way that we advertise, when we have our website, to we have our signs on our business, for our office, but we actually advertise a lot through the Penel County newspapers, the Casagran Valley newspapers, and we advertise in print, which then also goes online with their setup. And so we've gotten quite a few customers, we've been doing it now about three months. So now we're starting to see, the customers that are coming in from that. - And so if you done it the three months, historically the majority of customers wouldn't have come through that channel. They would have come from, is it referrals mostly? - Well, and that's a thing. We get a lot of referral. I get a lot of referrals. I mean, a lot. So I read a lot of ENO insurance, because within Tanya's life insurance group, right? You bring on the new agent. I'm generally probably gonna write there very ENO. I don't have a problem writing ENO, but you end up writing a lot of ENO to make ends meet. But you know what, if I had to write it all day long, I'd write it. It's very easy. It's not difficult to do easy money, right? - Is it important insurance agent ENO in particular? - Yeah, correct. For life insurance, I have a customer right now that I just had done a quote for today that she also is life insurance and PNC licensed. So when they had an ENO insurance for that individual, obviously she found out what I found out when I decided to add property and casualty to my ENO insurance, which was more than double. (laughing) You know, there's a lot more risk there with property and casualty than life and L. But you know, the other way we get, that we get our customers. And this, I have people ask me all the time, especially in the industry, or where do you get your customers? Where do you get your customers? And it sounds so weird, but it's the truth. Dude, it is like they fall out of the sky. - Really? - I mean, we have a, you know, we have a sign, a big sign on the front window of our office. And then we have this, you know, plastic a-frame. Like you see at restaurants and stuff like that. And we take it out and we put it out in front of our office on Central Avenue, which is the main drag through Coolidge, as far as going through downtown. And so just the other day, a guy calls me. And I asked him, I said, "Well, where'd you hear about us?" He said, "Well, I saw your sign. "You're a frame sign. "I went to your website." And I'm like, "Hey, they could probably help us." I've had people call me and say, "Hey, I saw you, "I saw you on Google." Now this is even before I had, we had a physical office when we were just doing remote agency stuff. I saw your ads on Google. We're in the car and I look at my wallet. and I'm out there and I'm like, "I don't have hats on Google." You know, it's literally people that just drop out of sky. You know, and I'm a spiritual person, so I thank God for that, you know, 'cause it's not me. I'm granted I sit there and I do my, I read my goals at least twice a day. I repeat my affirmations multiple, you know? But help keep my mind bright, that it's really interesting. And then we just went ahead and signed up to be a sponsor for the Coolidge High School football team for this coming year. So we're gonna have a six foot by three foot banner on the field facing the home stands. So, you know, that type of stuff. - Are there other insurance agencies in Coolidge? - Yeah, we have a state farm, AJ, we have. - Okay. - We have another independent agent, the state farm agent and I, after we did our grand opening, I went over to their office at their request and we met. They refer business to me that they can't write. - They, 'cause they can only do state farm. Can you write a state farm? Probably not. - I can't write state farm, because they're capital. - We're the main markets that you tend to go to. Is it like a long list or is it a charter? What are the consequences? - I think it's a right to come in selecting your market. - Oh, my, so our business is tagline is, yes, we can ensure that because no isn't a strategy. - Okay, no. - And, you know, because when I first started this, I would have customers, I would say, "Hey, can you do this?" And then I'd go and I'd contact my friend Kristen in Texas and I'd be like, "Can we do this?" You know, and finally I got tired of saying that. So I just started saying, yes, you know, figuring that, well, either we're gonna find, either we have the carrier, we're gonna find the carrier or we're gonna partner with somebody who can write it. You know, I'm just, I'm gonna get the job done as long as it's ethical and legal if you wanna pay me fine. - Right. So with, if it's like personal property and casualty type stuff, then it depends on the individual. You know, all this depends on the individual, but if you're a good driver, if you're good risk, so you don't have any tickets, any accidents, any claims, you credit's good, you've not skipped around, so you have good insurance scores for as long jeffity and things like that. You know, and if you own a home or a condo or whatever, I'm probably gonna be able to write you like with foremost signature or travelers 'cause they're gonna bundle and they're, those check boxes, that's what they're looking for, right? Very low to no claims, good and VR, all these things, progressive as well, progressive loss customers like that, but unfortunately right now because progressive has like a lot of carriers has put a hold on adding agencies to their home, to their home company. So we can't really, we can't bundle homeowners, I can bundle manufacturer home, I can bundle rental, I can bundle condo, that type of thing, a guy co, in a way guy co is a step down, I've learned over my time now, there's a step down from progressive. And part of that I think is because they just within the last year and a half or so started allowing independent agencies, 'cause before then if you wanted a guy co, you had to go guy co-derapt to the company. - Yeah, like steak, bomb. - So again, guy co-partners with separate companies like travelers for homeowners and stuff like that, but they also do some other commercial thing, commercial lines and stuff like that. But then if you're somebody that has had some mistakes, like the all make mistakes, say your motor vehicle record isn't that great. You have lots of claims, your credit isn't good, you're struggling in that area, I get it, I've been there, we've probably all been there at one point in our lives. And then we have what we would consider non-standard companies that we can run through. Like Gaines Co, and a Gaines Co zone by State Farm, but Gaines Co is specifically meant for individuals in those situations. And other off brand that you may not even recognize the name, but then personal stuff in general is pretty easy for that. But then it's the commercial stuff that really gets weird. - Yeah. - Because-- - Do you get all of the insurance agent, you know? - I'm sorry. - Which carrier do you go to for insurance? - For you know, if you fit within certain boundaries, I'll go to Erdo next, relatively easy to quote. - They changed the name. - Relatively. - Exactly. - It was next up until recently, I think they only recently-- - Yes, and then Erdo bought them. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And emerged with them, which really, I mean, allows next to have a lot more power. It actually increased their insurance ratings for, - Interesting. - You know, which is good. But next offers very much an entry level, you know, so if you're just starting out, or if you're somebody that's been in the business for years, but you're very limited in what you do, right? Then as you grow, as I've found out, next has so many exclusions. A lot of times that you outgrow that policy, you know? So if you're doing a lot of excess and surplus lines riding for risks that just can't be placed with an admitted carrier on the business end, if you're using premium financing for that type of stuff, those risks are excluded by next, right? So then we would look at somebody like ViBerke or his cocks, you know, that type of thing, the biggest challenge that, not for me, but for other people is that you end up with it with a higher price, right? - Yeah. - Yeah. - But because part of my, part of my, or the agreement for me to join my aggregator was that I needed to get rid of NACS, that I needed to get, I needed to go with ViBerke fine. You know, I wrote my own policy through my access to ViBerke and so I'm getting paid for my own, for my own policy. - That's great. - And I think it went up maybe $10 a month compared to what I was paying next for both life and health and property and casualty and but ViBerke has very few exclusions. I mean, it's like, here you go, you wanna write whatever, like go and write it. - Yeah, well fascinating. I think a lot of people really underestimate where insurance agents spend the most of their time. You know, like could you, could you sort of walk me through when you get up on a Monday morning to start your day, you know, assuming this is for P and C and not in your previous role as a teacher, then like what is the first hour normally look like where you check in with your girl? - Yeah, so I mean, it's making some Facebook posts, just that's the one thing that I've been doing since December is being consistent about, you know, interacting with educational type Facebook posts every day. - Very welcome. - You know, and but then I get up and I start to prioritize what's, what are, because it, you know, yes, I work with Tanya, but she's doing the life and health side and the P and C side are totally different, right? Because life and health is very slow and methodical, right? And P and C is very fast, fast, fast, fast. I need to quote now. So I break things down into, I've started to really learn, break things down into, well, what's this, what's the end result of this? Okay, so is this revenue generating for me? So one thing I do that a lot of insurance agents don't do is I go and I actually check on my clients every month to make sure that they've made their bill. I go into the, into the system for each carrier and I check and people are like, that's a lot of talk, yeah, but how much time are you gonna spend to try and rewrite that client if their stuff cancels? Because I used to be that guy, right? So that, to me, that's revenue producing. But then the other thing I look at is, okay, what's more revenue producing? Because I can sit there in general and check stuff at night when I'm at home in my recliner, right? More revenue producing is, oh, you know what? I have life quotes. I have people that like the gentleman who saw my sign and he's like, I have, I need some business insurance. Those, you know, life quotes, customers, existing customers that are, hey, can you, can you recode this? Hey, can you, do you do this? Yes, I do. Will you quote that for me? Because I mean, that stuff is money just hanging on the tree, right? I don't want that stuff to go cold. Yeah. And with, especially with business stuff, you may be more challenging to place the risk. So it's important I found to one, find out if, if the customer is a time-wind, 80 of a turnaround time that you're looking for on this and communicating that and then looking and then checking back with them. Even if it's every couple days, hey, I'm in front of you. Right? I'm still looking. Soon as I find you, when a client calls an R suite, let's say as an example, like for a home and also bundle, right? Something like that. Like what would be the first thing you would do once that request comes in? So if a customer contacts me, general, I mean through, through, phone or text or email, I'm surprised somebody hasn't done it through smoke signals, you know, but if they, if they did, then I'm going to go and I'm going to want to send them a link to a Google form that we have that's an intake. One of the things that I've learned over time and I keep being reminded and I keep being reminded, so it's a lesson I'm still learning is that I really don't have the time anymore to go and to not have the majority of people not use that, right? I'm not saying that I'm gonna have, every answer that I need. I'm not gonna ever have to go back to the customer and get a clarifying question answer. But in general, I'm going to the point where it's like, look, here's my auto quote intake form. Go and fill that out. As soon as I get it, I'll go in and start working on quotes for you. And if the customer is not willing to do that, which I've had them, and I used to get really bad heard about it because, you know, and now I'm to the point where I'm like, you know, at next, if you're not going to go and make this easier for me to so that I can give you an accurate quote, that's not just what what does when the customer doesn't want to do it. Like what, how do they think you can get the information? Well, there's I've got an information from people many different ways, you know, it's they would give it to you on the phone. Is that what they're hoping for? I've had people give it to me on the phone. I've told people, hey, an easy way that you may find to give me the information to be to take pictures of your of all the drivers licenses for all the drivers send them to me, take a picture of your insurance cards that way I have the bin for every car. If you have an app going your app and take screenshots of your of your coverages that way, I make sure that I'm giving you an Apple Stapples comparison, that type of thing. How many of your submissions do you think come by the intake form versus some other some other creative way or are you saying that you've blocked you've completely blocked off all the creative ways now? No, there's still a lot of creative ways. Yeah, I'm not and I and I on one hand, see this is like the balancing act, right? I want to make sure that I don't forget that my job is to get and keep customers. And if I get and keep customers and profits will take care of themselves and my business will grow and this and that. And if I put too many obstacles up, then I'm not going that I fail in the job, right? I'm not going to get and keep customers because I make it too difficult. So it would be nice to use the intake form because of the amount of time it saves. That being said, when I was down the street for my office at a second yen store and the owner was like, Hey, do you do you ensure box trucks? And I'm like, Yeah, sure do. And she said, great. And I'm like, okay, let me text you this link and then you can fill it out. And she said, you know, when I get home, I'm tired. I don't want to get on the internet and do stuff like that. Now for a lot of people, they may hear well, well, for me, because if heaven had raised in a family business, then my service business for 11 years, I hear opportunity, right? I'm like, okay, do you have your, do you have your your license with you? Yes, I do. Great. May I see it, please? Yeah. She gives it to me. I put it on the counter. I bring my phone out, take a picture of it. Right? Is that the box truck you're talking about out there? Yes, it is. Great. Is it unlocked? Sure. Meg, go open it and get the bin yet. So I go take a picture of it. And I ask her, I'm like, is this is the address on your license accurate for your for your residential address? She said, yeah, and I said in the business card here, does that have your right address for here? And she said, yeah, so okay, I'll be back later today or tomorrow with, whoa, so we're a lot of people in this industry have told me you spend way too much time with people like that. I think, well, guess what? I wrote her business. I, you know, goes and there's the opportunity for me to potentially write her personal vehicles, her business insurance, you know, those type of things because we should never look at even the intake for my deal. We should never look at it as a one size fits all tool, right? You know, meet customers where they're at. It does seem to come and thread in all these conversations. It does seem to be the most successes had by being patient and being willing to, you know, sometimes we have it scrappy, right? Just it's not one size fits all by any shot. So, yeah, do you, how do you, do you feel like insurance has all changed since you started? I know that you said COVID was the first time you sort of started thinking about it. And, you know, now this is now until five years ago, the tonnier started her business at least like with any reflections you have on how it's evolved since then. Yeah, it's not the hardest work I've ever gotten. I'll tell you that it's still a lot of hard work, a lot of mental, just mental work in myself and leaning into it and really grinding and grinding for me because, you know, in my service business, I grounding ground for years, you know, but I was also single and wasn't dating anybody in this and not, I mean, not my dad. I got two teenage kids and stuff like that. But for me, it may be grinding today, maybe okay, because we live an hour away from Phoenix, if my wife is driving or my daughter's driving, I'm in the passenger seat. I'm running quotes. I'm researching stuff. I'm emailing clients grinding for me, maybe, you know, somebody just, like, this happened last night, a good customer texted me and said, hey, we're buying a new car. Would you complete, here's the information with the van? Would you please run some quotes for us? So, you know, I brought out the computer. I already shut everything down, but I brought out the computer and went ahead and normally when I'd be going to bed, you know, I spent a little extra time and got that information out because I realized if I want things to change, I have to change, right? If I want to be in a different place, then I have to act in a different way. It doesn't mean that I personally will have to do that type of stuff in the future because hopefully I'll be able to get some automations that will take care of that type of thing, you know, but do you have any operations already? Do you use any systems? We're working on it. Nice. How did you, do you use any, I think there's like agency management systems, right? Things like that. Do you have anything like that already? Yeah, so I mean, we have hawks off that's through our aggregator. Yeah. I also use a program that my friend and mentor, Kristen Heisler in Texas that she uses in her agency called digital mentors and that it's it's a really good CRM generically, but the main reason I got it was because it has an amazing task reminder system. The hawks off has that too, but I like the digital mentors one because the whole purpose of that is so that eventually I can get rid of this tickler file, right? This manual tickler file so that I'm not spending time printing stuff, making, you know, short notes on there, hey, you know, here's the date. Did so and so contact me back. Those types of things. So in that way, that's an automation, you know, it's just a matter of time. Wave a magic wand on what you would love to automate even more. What would it be? If I could wave a magic wand, I'd have I would, if I could wave a magic wand, I would have a virtual assistant. So it takes the photo that you took of the drive as license and can produce the quote for you, something like that. Yeah, and if they're not licensed, they can at least do the low hanging fruit that doesn't require a license like checking to make sure that people made their payments. Yeah. Contacting customers when renewals are coming up, things like that. My wife has a coworker that she and her significant other just got a notice from their insurance agent that, hey, your insurance company isn't renewing you in June. And so when my wife's coworker reached out to them in the meantime, you know, I'm I'm recording their stuff to try and earn the business. If you reached out to them and their response in her text to me today was, well, we'll we'll get around to it in a couple of weeks. Now, like, my response to her in the text was in my opinion, especially because they know and told you that you're not getting renewed in June and you're an existing customer that's been with them for over a year. I would be bending over backward to make sure I kept you because it's easier to keep a customer than it is to try and go on and get a new one and to go and to say, oh, get to it in a couple weeks. Look, don't get me wrong. I don't want to come across as being hypocritical. I have stuff in my stack of stuff for re quotes from stuff that I've quoted before for people that I didn't write the business for. Right. So lost opportunities trying to regain lost opportunities. And that stuff will get taken care of, but we're not talking a customer and existing customer like my customer last night. Hey, we're buying a car. He called me on Christmas Eve. Hey, I'm buying my lunch for car. Can you give me a quote? You know, this Christmas Eve. And I'm on my computer. And you know, on Christmas Eve, how long do you try and tell your turn of quote around for a customer? What was that? How quickly do you try and turn around a quote for a customer when they ask you on Christmas Eve? If it's something like that, I mean, that particular one took a little while because there was some challenge. The guy could was having some challenges with its system. But in general, I try to get, if it's a straightforward quote, I try and get it out and no less than an hour, depending on, uh, have it right? This, so I have a queue. And that's one one, that's one thing I'm working on, right? It's the idea of this key system that great. I'm glad that you want me to give you a quote that I have five other customers ahead of you. And so then it's like, okay, I may have a really difficult like business quote. So I work a little bit on that. And then, okay, let me knock this one out because I know it's going to be quick. When you think about what will take longer and what will be faster to quote, like, do you, are there various different ways in which you get to a quote? What are the sort of most common ways in which you can produce a quote? So I mean, if it's if it's personal lines, right? Then I just use easy links, which is our comparative online writer. And that works great most of the time. If you have a manufactured home that's not going to work, I have to manually do it. But I've gotten really, before I joined my aggregator, I got really good at being doing quick quotes with multiple carriers without an online aggregator, without an online radar because I didn't have one. And so I started noticing, I would use the rule of three because I started noticing, like, well, wait a second. If I'm getting three quotes and these quotes are a pretty good representation, like this one's high, this one's low, this one's in the middle and they're all pretty much the same. I'm going to stop. There's no reason for me to continue looking at that point because I'm going to save the customer $5 a year if I keep looking. You know, and at that point, it's like, look, I've done my due diligence, right? And then I send them out the quote, hey, this is the best we have. How much? Many carriers do you get via easy links? So, I mean, easy links has a pretty good amount of carriers that I use that either require and or just use easy links. Personally, right now our agency has about 10, but that's mainly because we're new to the aggregator. We're still growing. We have to, you know, show our worth and so did I get it, but I just really like the number three because I would like. It's like I'd like three non-standard car carriers. I'd like three classic car carriers. I'd like three preferred car carriers and I'd like three, you know, really preferred like traveler, safe co and foremost signature because in general, again, if I have one, it's hard to compare anything. If I have two, I can compare stuff, but if I have three, I have, you know, it's like triangulation. I have a pretty good idea then of where things are going to go. So, where do you use the artificial tool? Yeah. That makes sense. Is it the other quotes typically on the carrier portal where you type in information and then it just produces a quote for you? Yeah. Either I have a direct appointment to the carrier or I have a sub appointment through managing general and agency at MGA, something like that. I also have a couple of appointments that are broker counters and in those situations, yes, the percentage of commission isn't as good. But for example, like travelers or Liberty Mutual, okay, for commercial, right? These companies because they're preferred, like highly preferred companies, they have writing requirements where you need to write at least this much premium a year, you know, like $50,000 in premium a year per company. So many packages a month, that type of thing. Where if you're able to use a broker counter, then you're, yes, you're losing some of your commission, but you're not bound, you're not bound to those requirements, you know, which is great for a, for an agency, a newer agency like mine, that's in a very, you know, young growth path. Who do you use as an opus? Mostly. Yeah. I've used RPS quite a bit, especially for E and S, but the biggest, so this was, this was something I learned going along and it wasn't until later that I realized I'm supposed to be doing due diligence. I'm supposed to be having these customers sign these forms that understand that this is an E and S place, you know, all these things a long time ago. And so where I used to use RPS for a lot of things or that type of thing, like Eastern underwriting, whatever that deals with a lot of E and S, I don't as much anymore unless it fits that specific need where, okay, I've totally, I've got my, I've done my due diligence, I've got my three admitted carriers and they're not wanting to do it. And so, you know, I'll go to RPS, I'll go to Eastern underwriting, any of these companies, whole, whole sure, whatever. And I'll do that. But one thing that I like about RPS, and it's the same thing true about Eastern underwriting or even whole sure is they have, they have admitted companies too, you know, and in their own way, they have their own sort of broker counters set up too. So it's like, okay, well, in the past, I haven't had SafeCo, well, I had a guy who had a motorcycle and SafeCo was the only place that would ride in. I wrote it through RPS standard ones, right? So was the percentage as good? No, but guess what? I had access to SafeCo, I was able to do it without getting a direct appointment to SafeCo and without needing to meet all those, all those premium requirements. Yeah. So it's, there's so many ways, you know, so many different, it's to work it, right? You just have to have an open mind and be willing to, to see the good and know that ultimately you're learning, right? You mentioned so many different parts of your, of what the job entails, you know, what, what would you say now that we've talked about? Most of them, like what would you say is the most painful part of your, one of the most painful parts to me is finding or has been finding answers to question. Like what? Like builders risk, for example. Okay. So I've worked with this hard money lender here in Arizona and they, they were nationwide and I'm licensed in 26 states. So, you know, over halfway there, but they would keep coming to me with, hey, we have this, this fix and flip or we have this new build for Ronda, right? And the general contractor will not allow the owner to be put on as an additional insured on their, on their certificate of insurance. And so then trying to find companies that would actually do it, not personal liability, but actually general liability where that, where it says general liability because the, the lenders wouldn't take personal liability. And finally one day, one day, it was about six months after I've been struggling with this, right? I get, I get some more, you know, the, the last light and the chandelier comes on. The elevator is all the way to the top, probably some squeaking, you know, and I, I reach out to the, to the lender and I'm like, hey, you know, I really want to solve this problem. Do you have any old policies or quotes laying around from companies that were able to do this? I said not, not insurance agents, but carriers. And so they sent me a couple and as soon as they sent me a couple, I talked to my aggregator and they're like, oh yeah, here, let's give you US Assure. Daniel is like, I was in Indiana Jones and I found the Holy Grail, you know, because not only could I do the builders risk with them, but then I could go and I could do the general liability that actually says general liability with them. And it was like the movies, you know, it lit up, you know, after all these months, really hammering at this thing, I know there are a lot of people out there that would just say, forget it, man, just move on to the next thing. My, my life, my pattern has always been if I follow the hard things and figure them out, there's going to be a major payoff for that. Where do you see your agency in like five to 10 years? Do you have sort of a vision for what success would look like for Jeremy or Jeremy and Tonya? Yeah, I would like, I would like to buy a piece of land that is fun. Arizona Boulevard, which is the main sort of state highway through Coolidge and build a, build a very unique building. It was a building that my dad wanted for his clock shop. He never saw it, you know, and but build it so that on the exterior, it looks like the Glockensh fuel in Munich and has the moving people and everything like that. That way it's not just, it's a destination. It's another way of drawing people in, right? That's cool. But also when I dedicated to my folks, you know, and then really growing the idea of what synergy, wealth, insurance and planning, yeah, that's right. The wealth is one part and there's so much involved in that insurance is another part. Planning is a totally different thing. And I would like to see us expand in truly into all 50 states, including, you know, Alaska and Hawaii and be able to expand physically into each of those states. I mean, you know, my first, my first office, I'm going to open outside of Arizona is going to be in Hawaii because man, I need that. You know, but that's one big, one big challenge that a lot of people that I've noticed a lot of people have when they try and scale outside of their state is if you don't have a physical location in that state and by physical location, even if it's a, a regius office, right? That in an agent of record or whatever that in places like California, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, you're just not going to get access to the carriers that are, the good carriers that are going to want to write in those states and you're going to find a strong. So I figure I don't want to just do it, do it. I want to do it to do it and expand and leave a legacy for my, for my family, you know. Jeremy, thank you so much for joining me and yeah, hopefully speaking on soon, you're welcome. Have a great day.