Optimizing Tech and Leadership in Insurance Agencies with Mariah Gates

[Music] Okay well I am joined today with Mariah Gates who is the founder and CEO of Accelerated Automation. What's up Mariah? Thank you for having me, Matt. I'm excited to be here and yeah life is good. I'm actually going to Vegas next week to me in a bunch of agents for a conference so life is good. Vegas is on the horizon. A lot of people don't know that like we live in the same town. Yeah. So like you're in my office right now. This is old school stuff. We're not zooming. No, no we're not. I drove here. That's kind of fun. Got it in stuck in traffic which never happens because I always am in my home office. So thanks for making the trip. Of course. Thanks for getting me out of the house. Well, gosh we have a lot to talk about. I mean you do such a good job with what you do and I'm in the field as well and I think it's just good to have a fruitful conversation about you know whatever really comes up but I want to touch on things that you want to touch it. Touch on. You've been doing a lot of good work in the field working with a lot of agents and you really I just want to pick your brain about what you're seeing out there. We can talk some best practices. You're heavily embedded in helping agents with their tech stacks getting them started fine tuning them and all of that. So we were just talking before I hit record about tech and agents and how some agents when they get excited about tech and they're like oh I found this thing and then they onboarded. I had this problem too. I'm very ADHD so like I'll have an idea I'll come in and I won't follow through on it all the way or I won't work the tech as deep as I should you know and it just kind of sits there in flounders and it's like using Excel for a calculator when you know Excel is a very powerful program. So do you see a lot of that out there and you know how do you get agents or agency owners to really embrace and use you know the bulk of the tech that's available to them. Yeah that's a great question. So I mean the technology implementation process in general and like utilization it's not hard for insurance agents it's hard for business owners. General blanket statement every business owner has to wear 15 hats especially in the beginning or if you only have a couple staff members or if you have no staff members you have to wear all the hats. So technology can be a great way out of that because you don't have to do everything physically but it does you do need to really think it through. So when it comes to what I am seeing in agencies it's a lot of that that you said ADHD shiny objects and drum and it's something like 90% of business owners have you know ADHD is because we can take on a lot and deal with a lot but unfortunately that usually means it goes along with that personality type you don't really finish a lot. That's very true. Really good at starting things and it sounds great and then the finished product is like maybe 40% of the way there anything that's good enough and then you're on to the next thing. So it's very hard to manage that for any business owner. Yeah yeah there have been so many times throughout my career I probably still do it especially when I have a team because I never I never am not thinking about my business because I love what I do I'm very I'm one of the lucky ones you know where I'm driving around I'm at home and like it's always going to I have a hunch that you're probably the same way like I can do this better what if I did this or what if I did that and then I'll come in and I'll dump these ideas on my team I'm like we're going to start doing this and we're going to start doing that and I'm going to track this and this and this and I'll throw it out there. I think the dream is that the team will just absorb it and do it on their own that does not happen like you have to manage it the habits and systems that need to be built need to have you know pretty deep channels to make sure that they're repeatable and that they're easy and that's the part where I think a lot of people will fall short the hope and and what they're aiming for is pure but the execution is poor and how would you help an agent who has these ideas and you agree with them and you're like those are all really good ideas but there's like three or four things and it's going to take four or five months you know to get going you know how would you help an agent you know get there. Well, so I think the first thing to before you get into like the actual helping it's it's why is this important so that you really understand the process that you're going to go through over three or four months is worth it and you feel that conviction because so I came from the corporate world you know I worked for Chase and Wells Fargo and there was a written procedure and policy for every single thing you would do in your day today. So you didn't really have the ability to say like well I didn't know I was supposed to do it that way because we were trained from day one to look up the procedure because the procedures would also change and banking is very regulated which insurance is also very regulated and when I switched from banking to insurance one of the first things I remember telling my husband was this is crazy they didn't give me an agency policies and procedures there's no manual I'm like hey I need to add an SR22 how do I do that. Where's the procedure to add an SR22. Go find the button. I didn't know what an SR22 was probably for the first thing. I did in the beginning either of the brand new. So I mean that's that was like eye opening to me when I own join the industry but when you look at these big companies even if you look at large agencies because at this point I've been doing this for six years and we have you know our largest agency that we're working on with a annual contract basis is 32 million premium and you know the smallest ones a million they're all over the place but even big small little like the the lack of procedure the lack of process is consistent in most of these businesses the ones that scale really fast and consistently and stay there they have a procedure for almost everything so it is a different mindset there so understanding that whatever your goal is because when I became an agent like I did not want a massive agency I really didn't I'm pretty simple person I just wanted like I became an agent because I wanted freedom with my family sure and get that but that's what I thought I was going to get got a lot of those recruiters right anyways so I I wanted to have you know a small team I wanted to do right by the people in my community and have a nice you know profitable business but whatever your goal is if you want to be big or medium or maybe you just don't want to be stuck at your desk for 12 hours a day seven days a week which a lot of agents do in the beginning you've got to start by understanding that you have to work to replace yourself right and the only way you can do that is through procedures and then the only way to do that and super power with tech is understand your procedure and then plug in the tech so how I would help an agent is start by defining their process what are you trying to fix what is not working well a lot of them don't know the answer to that because there's some tracking or maybe they don't know how to decipher the information or they don't they don't even know the answer to that question right so if it's a renewal process or something like that they don't know what an effective for a new process even looks like you have to you have to you know figure that out by hand and you have to you have to kind of probably just some clients offers and make I guess we can't do it that way you know we need to do it this way so there's so much like trial and error for those who aren't getting direction you know and that's how I learned it's probably how you learn to it's like oh I guess we can't do it that way so yeah sometimes they don't even know what what direction to point in with some of the stuff you know and I agree with that and it's also a different type of personality and a different type of person who is really good at sales versus a person who's really good at like operations and procedures and if you look at an agency that is well rounded they usually have somebody who is completely sales minded and that's all they want to do every day and they have the operations person who is looking at the procedure and the reporting if you can find two people like that like if you're an agency owner right now and you're like man I love to sell that's my personality I can bring in business all day long but I have no idea what my team should be doing throughout the day go find a partner if you can or an office manager that's a great first step somebody who wants to be in your operations a lot of people look at operations as an expense but without it there's no ability to scale up in the especially in the independent world this is talked about all the time that a million dollars in revenue is like no man's land you hit a million in revenue and everybody stops growing yeah and that's because that's where the chaos sets in yeah there's a ceiling there yeah if you don't know how to continue to support your team what they should be doing coaching them bring in a new hires training them appropriately you can't scale pass that and I'm not going to say can't people do it but it is very rare yeah they do hit a point where they've grown to a certain part they've done certain things well you know they can sell well they can manage the size of book that they have but it does get to a breaking point where like where things will just maintain because you're going to be losing the same amount that you're writing you know every agency has that curve where your retention is going to you're going to be losing the bigger you get the more you lose and you have to be able to write more if you want to continue to grow and that's where people start putting their head up against the ceiling and they need help so when you were talking about like the why why when agents have these ideas and you come in that why do you want to implement this idea I mean that's a great question I think for me I have a tendency to simplify things and for me the answer generally is I want to write more business or give better service like that's that's the why for I believe most of those stuff we do now you can go and you said look I want freedom in what I do and that's why I have this agency, but in order to have the freedom, you have to be able to generate the revenue for the freedom. So I think for me, it's like whatever you're doing in your agency, is it driving more revenue? Is it helping you keep your clients longer? And even inside of that, if you go to the next phase of that, it's like, are you driving more revenue in the most efficient way? And that's probably where a lot of this will come in. Like, are we being efficient with our, being efficient with our time and our money? I think is something that a lot of agents don't have conversations about, you know, until it's either too late or they don't even know how to look at their data or be like, I don't know if I'm being efficient with my time or my money. And so that's when I work at a lot of agents, that's really, that's some of the stuff that we start on. Like, how are you spending your time? You have eight hours in a day, like, what are you doing? You know, or like, why are you spending $1,000 over here? How much is this driving you? And so these are the conversations that a lot of, they're not trained on that, you know? So what kind of things do you do with agents to help them be really efficient with their time and their money? Yeah, well, we just recently started working with agents on an ongoing basis. So obviously, you know, your program is to help coach them and work with them ongoing. Traditionally, for the first, you know, five years of our company, it was, we would basically help them get set up and trained and in the beginning phase of their CRM and teach them how to use it. So we were really in that implementation phase. And we still do that today. But now we've, we've launched into more of a fractional COO service that we have as well. And the group of agents we started with from our existing client book, we'd already helped them and really great relationships with them. And they're learning along with us, which has been really interesting. So I'm so grateful for, you know, anytime you have somebody who comes into, or be an early adopter in anything, a software or, you know, consulting or coaching, they're taking a little bit of a leap of faith and trusting you. And so we have, we really appreciated that. But what we have come to is that initially, we got wrapped up with the agents in, in just putting in small pieces, like not looking at the process holistically. So, you know, they might, we might be looking at the system and say, well, you're really trying to drive appointments for insurance, like you want to schedule an appointment for a presentation because you're having a hard time reaching people. So you want to take that approach and see if it works. So then we would implement, you know, calendar integrations and zap years that would connect the CRM and make notes and send tasks and reminders and like just a little piece of the process. And we were doing all these little pieces for agents, which were helpful things. But then the staff is like, wait, these things are changing and now we're doing something different, but we didn't really get training on that. Well, it was kind of a small piece. What we realized very quickly is it was a small piece of a much larger project. And so what we have learned is in the last four months of doing this really on an ongoing basis with the EJ agency is something that we already knew. But it's that these projects have to be slowed down and thought through much more intentionally. So, you know, really thinking through the entire process from the lead capture kind of what, you know, that initial marketing, how you're capturing that information, I'm just talking sales process, obviously, we could talk renewal or, you know, retain or audits, whatever, all these different processes. But what are the stages? Like what is going to happen? And like I said, people who are in the sales environment, this, if this, then that type of mindset or mapping out a process can be very, very difficult. So luckily we have a really great team whose very operations focused. But we have learned to walk them to really slow down and be intentional in thinking about the entire process and trying to capture as many what ifs as we can. - That's good. - Mapping it as an entire process and then implementing and not implementing in the way of putting it into the agency but building it, building the process out throughout the systems and then creating training material and training the staff as a whole, a holistic change. So for example, an agency might decide, hey, I need digital forms, I do everything on paper, I need digital forms, phenomenal idea. They go to salt or risk advisor or whatever company, all of them are great. And they decide to implement that. And they're like, hey, staff, we're gonna use forms. So they show them how to use the forms and then they're like, okay, great, but what happens to the form? And now if you don't have things integrated or you didn't ask questions about integration, now your staff is like, why don't we use that form 'cause now I have to type it into the form and into the radar or into the form and into the carrier and then into every carrier and then I have to put it in my CRM and then I have to put it in my AMS. And now they don't wanna use it. It's the right solution, it is the right piece of technology. You should be using that. But if you don't think through the whole process where is this information gonna go, how are we gonna use it today? How are we gonna use it next year? You're after that. What if they become a client? What if they don't become a client? Right, what are we doing with that information? Is this adding more work to our staff? How can we minimize the work to our staff while still gathering the right information? Underwriting quality is huge. I mean, unless you wanna lose your carrier appointments. So if they don't ask the right questions, you're gonna put yourself in a pickle anyways, but then if you try to get staff to enter information for five times in a different systems, they're gonna push back. So you've gotta think about this as an entire implementation. Think through the whole, all the steps, train your staff and show them the benefits of this and then hold them accountable and follow up. The other great way to do this is through a champion in your office. If you have somebody in your office who is very adaptable to change and has a lot of ideas, bring that person in to your process and have them test it and then be able to champion that message with your staff. 'Cause every staff is different, that's another piece. - Yeah, you would get immediate feedback for sure from someone and definitely help fine tune the process. So slow down to speed up essentially, right? - Yeah. - It's really, I think that's smart. And if you're doing all these things, the thing you don't want to have happen is you're trying to build this out, so it's more efficient for everybody. And they have to understand each step of the process. What I have found where a lot of agents lose time is through making simple mistakes because a mistake can cause hours of trouble. And I learned that early in my career where I had two staff members, we were doing a lot of business and we were busy. And they came to me one day and they're like, we need help, we need an assistant. And I knew we didn't, like we were not that big yet. You know, and over the course of time, they both kind of flamed out and I changed the way that I hired and I brought somebody in that was higher level, a different level of professional and was just one person. And everything became significantly more efficient. The phones actually slowed down to a point where I was freaking out. I was like, why am I not phone ringing anymore? It's because we weren't making mistakes every day. So much of the work they were doing were cleaning up mistakes that they made. And so really making sure that your people know every part of the process and that's what I try and tell people not spend an extra five or 10 minutes making sure all the eyes are dotted or tees are crossed. Because it'll save you hours down the road. 'Cause some of these problems take 10 people to fix. You know, not just in your agency, but like with the company, now you've got tech, you've got billing, like it sucks. So, and that's something that people don't really think about either is like just make sure you're doing it right. Now everything can be fixed. And I tell people that like to give them a little bit of, you know, it's okay to make mistakes. We have to make mistakes to learn, but we don't want to repeat them. So I think that's smart and make sure you're learning things the right way, 'cause it can, going back to being efficient with your time, like that's the best thing to do is make sure you're doing everything right. That's how we can be efficient with our time. And then if you're doing it while you're building out ways to really be efficient with the way you're doing things, yeah, you can be really efficient with your time and sell more and keep more, right? That's essential. - Well, in that efficiency piece, right, that is a great place for tech. - Great. - Like a tech will bring you efficiency, but it also will help eliminate human error. Because you're right, like if you cause a problem, if you make a mistake on a policy, now you got the underwriter and you got to nod it and you've got to get the client back on the line or have them send you something or sign something. I mean, like you said, hours and hours of extra work that could have just been avoided by not making the mistake. So technology, you know, robots for the most part, don't make a lot of mistakes, right? I call them robots software, but-- - Yeah. - They do what you tell them to do. - Right. Yeah, usually it's the mistake is the prompt. Every now and then things get buggy, but it's way less than human error. So if you can implement technology to help make it easier for your team to do the right things, and some of those things you don't have control over, like you can't change the carrier's rating system. You can't go in and change the way that their platform works because it's not, you know, it doesn't flow correctly or something or there's a button missing somewhere that's not required and it should be required, there is things that are out of control, but look at what can you control in your business? What systems could you implement? My example of forms is easy because so much of back and forth when I became an agent 'cause I had a quoting, you know, piece of paper, like this is my quoting piece of paper right or thing down, and I'd be on the phone and I'm like frantically being trying to think, like did I get everything, right? Did I ask all the questions, you know, do you have a pool and is there a dog, bite anybody, you like, I ask all the questions. - Right. - And hang up the phone inevitably, you know, probably 80% of the time if not more, I forgot something. But I needed to know that I have to call the customer back and then you, you know, more time wasted voicemails, text messages, emails, please just tell me if your dog is ever bitten anybody, you know, I mean, it's so much time wasted, but if you have something like a virtual form that just walks them through and they can't move forward, you know, forward without asking the question, that eliminates human error. It makes the team members job more enjoyable because they don't then get stuck in that tracking somebody back down. When you were talking about earlier, you know, raising revenue and taking better care of your customers and providing better service, taking care of your staff is a huge part of this as well. Because if you are, you know, if you're the shiny object agent, I mean, our, our fractional COO agents, we have a system called a work request form. So we tell them every time you listen to a podcast, right? Maybe they'll listen to this one good idea. If you listen to a podcast, you go to a conference, you do a software demo and you're like, this is so cool. I really like this. I want to implement this. I want this now. I want to make this change, put it in a work request. So we can see it. And then we help you decide like through that process. Now we have some agents who have skipped the work request and added things. One agent in particular just changed their phone system, which changed their entire project because the new one won't integrate. And we're like, okay, this is going to push us back in another couple of weeks. So it is still human behavior. It's hard to change. You have to get used to it. But your staff, if you are constantly throwing new things at them that don't get finished and then you change it again, you change it again. Like I like change. I live, I actually prefer working in the tech space and I did in the insurance space because I like more change, faster change. That's my personality. That is rare. Most people are adverse to change in a general statement. So if you throw too much at them and they don't see the benefits of it, you're going to have immunity on your hands. What are you going to do if you want any ways or the leave. And we have seen like in my own office when I implemented agency zoom, I lost a team member over it. She was only going to use paper. And I was like, this is not acceptable. You cannot use paper. Everything is in the CRM. Finally I said, if I see a policy that you earned commission on and I look at the system and your notes aren't in there, you forfeit your commission. So she quit. She's a perfect way to get her to quit and after fire. So there's things you don't want people to do. And there's a better way to manage it. I probably could have managed it better, but that was new for me. But you've got to get your team on board because if you get great systems, great tech, you think it through, you get your team on board. Those are the agencies that are unstoppable because you can plug people in. If you lose a really tenured team member and you've got great procedures and great processes, you can plug a new team member in and they'll knock your socks off in the first couple weeks. How do you build out a library of procedures so that somebody can plug and play? So there's a lot of different resources out there. I mean, when I started doing it, I just had a Google Drive document and it just said employee training. And every single time somebody asked me a question, I made a video. Yeah. So I just went to loom.com. And I like if they were like, how to do an SR-22. I would record my screen and do all the clicks and explain it. And I put it in a link and then I titled it SR-22 and it's a searchable document. So that is a very cheap and easy way that anybody anywhere can do training. The more advanced version of that is there are learning management system softwares where you really build your own course. So if you think about it, if you've worked at any big company, you probably went through some kind of on-demand virtual course that you sat down in front of. All of us that do our training are-- I see ease. Thank you. We sit there and we click through it, take the tests. And we're like, we know the answers. It's been 10 years with the same ZEs. We get it. But you can build a course and there's a lot of great programs out there done for you, the pre-built, you know, and they're really not that bad. My preference is a company internet. So if you're on the Microsoft suite, it's SharePoint. If you're using Google Workspace, they have Google sites. My company operates on Google. We use Google sites. We have a really robust company. Google company portal is actually for different departments. And then there's even some website vendors who come with an HR portal. But this is where-- anytime anybody asks a question or they learn something new, you make it the virtual brain of your business, if you will. So here is our employee benefits. This is our PTO plan. That's in your portal, right? Anybody says, what's the vacation policy? Have you checked the portal? Don't ask me that question until you check the portal. Think about it, you guys. You could get your staff to stop asking you questions all day. How much time would you save? Yeah, and you want freedom? How much of business could you write? Right. If you're still writing business, if your staff used their resources first and they had one resource to use. Now, you might have to go to a carrier to look at underwriting guidelines. But even that, we have agents put that in into their portals. You know, you say a part of your portal should be new hire training. So in your new hire training, you have it broken out by this is for sales people. This is for customer service people. You're going to learn how to sell personal lines insurance. This is our process. Now they're also going to have to learn how to work with the carrier and the underwriting guidelines. But that is what we've been building. And the whole goal is for you as an agency owner to know that if your team comes to you, they have used every resource available and you don't answer questions more than once. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Obviously, I know the goal for me is to have a team that eventually I don't have to manage it all. You know, that if I leave the office, the level of work that's happening, even if I'm not there, remains the same, right? Like I don't want to go and then have be out for a week and have my phone traffic decline or have my premiums knock. You know, that's not what any of us want. And the goal is to build a team that's self-sufficient. You know, I can find answers for themselves that are motivated. All of that is some, it's hard to do. It's hard to achieve. You have to have the right people and the right chemistry and things like that. But that's the goal is, and I tell my team that even before I hire them, I was like, look, my goal is to get you to a point where I don't have to manage you at all. I just want to support you. And I want to be your biggest fan. Like that's what I tell them. You don't want to be managed. I'm sure. You know, so let's work on that together really hard over the next three to six months or whatever. As long as they're hitting their numbers, they can have a very long leash here. You know, that's the goal. So, and it's possible. I've been able to do it and it's the best when you can get it there. Right. It's the best. Yeah, there's not that stress of taking time off or that feeling of guilt or like, what am I going to walk back into? No, it's very hard to do because a lot of people haven't had to work that muscle to build a team and to build culture. That's something else I wanted to talk to you about because I think it's something that you have, you write more about it, you post more about it, but like culture and leadership is something that I think is obviously very important to you and it's something that's hard to achieve. And so I wanted to, you know, pick a brain about that. What have you seen out in the field when it comes to agencies that have like the proper level of leadership and that are humming at all levels versus the ones that really need to learn how to do that better? You know, like what's, you know, how would you define a perfect form of leadership for an agency that's running at all levels? What does that look like from the top down? Well, perfect is, I don't think ever achievable because I think everyone has a different view of what perfect would look like. But I would say that over the time I've been a business owner and, you know, when I first started as an agency owner, I was the only, I mean, I knew commercial clients, I guess, but I was the only business owner that I got to see behind the scenes of a business. When we started working on CRM's, not that we were asking questions, but agents were sharing with us, their revenue, their staff, their struggles, you know, because we were just training them. So we were spending a lot of time with them and I was like, wow, this is, I wouldn't guess this from the outside, I don't know what was happening. And now we work with agents on a much more ongoing basis and we see a variety of different types of leadership. But what I would say is that you can't be an effective leader if you're talking to customers all day. So what you said, where you want to have a team where you can be their biggest leader, like you want to support them. And in a business, you have to have somebody who's looking forward and trying to, you know, I don't, this analogy came up on social media that day. Like they have to see the icebergs, right? You have to have somebody that's looking out, you got the captain staring the ship and then you've got somebody that's looking out to make sure you don't hit an iceberg. The ship doesn't hit it. The crew has passed, right? But this is the thing. A leader can be anything, like it could be, you know, something that a customer says or does that like creates a problem with your reputation in the community. It can be a staff member who, because you're talking to customers all day, they're dealing with a life crisis and you don't know about it. And that chooses them, that that results in them making a poor decision or stealing from you or being dishonest or whatever. It can be anything. It can be, you know, trouble between staff members. It can be your technology that's broken or outdated. It could be a carrier, you know, that you're having an issue with or maybe the carrier that hasn't paid you a commission on a policy that you wrote seven months ago because you're not auditing the financials. Right. Or maybe the carrier doesn't write insurance anymore or her name pulled out and you can't do it anymore. So now you got to find something else, right? That is also bad. That happens all the time. What is my choice here? So you have, I think that leadership in general is, it is so broad. Even if you have one or two employees, it's broad. You got to do everything you can to get yourself out of the day today. That's the decision that is like now and grained in my heart and soul. Like a business owner, you know, the e-meth, the book, the e-meth verified, like that book, I read that a long time ago and I read it and I was like, oh yeah, this makes a lot of sense. You know, if you're the best baker in town, doesn't mean you're the best marketer or accountant or, you know, manager or leader. But you can bake a great pie. So it doesn't mean you can't evolve into a great leader, but you've got to focus on removing yourself from the day today. That should be your top priority. In my opinion, if you want a business that's going to grow and can function without you, if you like being the person who's at your desk all day long working with clients, maybe do some self-reflection and reevaluate if that's where you want to go. Maybe you need to hire somebody and who can do leadership. That's the beauty of small business ownership. You can hire in whatever the hell you want, right? I don't want to do accounting, hiring a accountant. I don't want to market. I can bring someone and who wants to market. Maybe a part time or do it on a contractual basis. It doesn't have to be all of that right away. Have that in mind. Be honest with yourself. What am I really good at? What do I enjoy? If you don't enjoy it, even if you're good at it, you won't do it consistently. The leadership of a small business owner, especially if you're not scratch, but want to start your business, the journey of leadership is long and it's changing. It evolves because in the beginning, you have to do everything because you have to know how to do it. And so in the beginning, you have to do everything. Some people have a hard time letting go of some of those things. For one reason or another, most of the time it's because they don't trust their team to do the right job. They don't think they can do it right. They don't think they can do it as well as them. That's a problem. That's their problem, right? That's because why do you have people if they're not there to help you unload the things that you don't want to do? So, delegating is something that people have to learn. They have to learn how to do it well. Some people thrive. They're like, "I don't want to do this anymore. You do it. You do it. But some people are a little bit more involved with the control and they have to release that. And until they do that, there's going to be a limit on how fast they can grow or how much they can do and things like that. So when I am working with agents, I tell them certain things that were important to my journey, which at some point in time, I was like, "I'm not answering the phone in my agency anymore." And I tell agents, some agents that, and they think that that's crazy. And I'm like, "No, it's not. I'm like, that's what I want to do. I don't want to answer the phone anymore." And you do it. There's a process there. Your clients that want to get to you, you have to train them. You know what? I don't do that anymore. And Meg does this for me now. Mariah, when I pick up my phone, if I answer my phone, my clients are worried. They're like, "Why are you answering the phone, Matt?" Or Smeg. They're freaking out. I'm like, "She's just busy or she's out or whatever like that." But that's, I love not answering the phone. I love it. Because I trust my team is going to take her any phone call that comes in. It's not that I don't talk to my clients or anything like that. Of course I do. But that has freed up so much time. And there was a period of time too, where when I'm fully staffed, I only work 40s a week. That's, you tell agents stuff like that and they have to learn that that's something that is possible. You know? Yeah. I heard Jack Jameson speak one time and he had said that in his agency, his customers were so well trained that if they called the office and Jack answered it was the same thing. But he had trained the team to say things like, "You don't want Jack to do that, I hope you're hit." I remember he said that in his speech and I was like, "Wait, your staff says that you'll do it wrong? That's weird." But it's because they're making themselves the expert in these policy changes or customer maintenance or whatever and that's not what his role is. And that was the first time I ever really heard that. And then I was, I am, you could ask me how it's been, I am a control freak. I want to have hands on everything. But when you realize what that leaves you with, when you finally actually realize like this is going to be my life always and it's so stressful and then you do delegate. Now the first time you delegate, what's probably going to happen is someone's going to mess it up and then you're going to be like, "Well, I knew I should have just done it myself." Right. Confirmation bias. Right. I knew this was wrong. Those guys on those podcasts had no idea what they were talking about. So you have to do it obviously a few times. But I also had heard several times from other people that they said, "You know, really all you need is someone that can do the work to the same level, like the 60% of the level that you would do that." So if you're going to do it at 100%, and they can do it at 60%, that's a win. Because you're not going to hire another person that's going to have the business owner mentality. They should be a business owner or they won't be there long. So you're going to hire people that are going to have a different level of ability to accomplish tasks than you will. And that's okay. I mean, that still does mean they're the wrong person. They can still be a great member of your team, but 60%. So remember that they can do it at 60%. Now I'm going to go do something else. And when you do it and you delegate, at least for me, you get a little addicted to delegation. You're like, "I don't want to do any of that stuff." I mean, I love running my company, but you know, we're at like 14 staff members now. And we've helped over 700 agencies. So there's a lot. I mean, you want to, you know, the insurance agencies want to talk to you. Like they want to talk to me or they want to talk to this person. Like my phone doesn't ring. I don't even have a phone line that could ring if a client was trying to reach me because my team does that. Because if I'm doing those things and I'm helping agents directly with the service we provide, then the innovation, like for example, we're always demoing software. I have demoed three software this week alone that are specifically targeted to the insurance industry, not to mention reviewing updates to existing software, to then put that into our portal. Right? I put it into the portal. So then my team, I can say, "Hey guys, there's an update with this. Go check the portal." And I don't have to then spend time training all of them. They go find that information. But somebody still has to lead that. You have to be looking out forward. So with your insurance company, with your agency, you know, if you've got carrier changes, if you're not working with your wholesalers, you're not asking what's coming down the line, "Hey, is the company going to, you know, submit rate increase or what does this look like?" If you're not in front of that, then you're going to be reactive to those changes when they're announced to everybody. You had no time to adjust. Right? What's going on in your company? So if you're listening to this and you're like, "But I've got to do it best. Just try it." But for like three months, that's the other thing. Always try stuff for a period of time. Give yourself a time period, whether it's a lead vendor, delegation, you know, working out, whatever you're trying to do, different. Try it for three months and then assess, "Don't try it once." And quit. It didn't work. Keep trying. I tried that Facebook ad and it didn't get me any leads. I spent $50 on Facebook ads and I did so many things. Facebook ads, so stupid. I mean, they don't. They're actually really phenomenal. They're a great way to market. You do it right. Yeah. Yeah. Now, all of these are so important. If you had somebody holding your hand through specific important parts of your career as an agency owner that would help you avoid these mistakes and help you make the right decisions, it really accelerates your career by years. I didn't have, like, we, I had mentors and things like that, but it wasn't like on the day-to-day or regular. It wasn't a regular thing where I was being helped every week and it's so, if you can find that, it's invaluable. It's really valuable. Well, when I got recruited, my district manager, I told him flat out, I said, "You know, I have been in sales for a long time at that point, even." This was 10 years, 11 years ago. And I was like, "I'm really good at sales. I'll learn the product and I'll sell it. I don't need you to teach me that. I need you to teach me how to run a business." And I knew more than most because I was a commercial business banker at Chase and so I actually worked with business owners all the time, like on their cash flow and their business. So I knew that a little bit, but there's so much more to it. But I had asked him, "Can you help me learn how to run a business?" For example, I've never used QuickBooks. But when you're a scratch agent, which is what I was, I couldn't afford an accountant or a CPA. I had to do it on my own. And in the recruiting process, like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll help you." Great. When can I come up to learn QuickBooks? Well, it's ghosted. So getting help is hard. But I will say when I started and probably when you started as well, there was nothing available like there is today when it comes to free resources. I mean, your podcast alone is an example of this. These huge available resources that are free and all you have to do is spend the time to listen to the podcast or watch the video or go to the conference and hear somebody speak, right? So you're spending your time. You don't have to have a ton of money anymore to kind of learn this stuff, but a lot of it is holding yourself accountable. So I hired-- We've both hired business coaches, right? I hired one in January. And it's been great because I made HG as well. I'm very squirrel syndrome. So it was nice because we put together a plan and it's like, this is the plan over the next six months and this is-- and we're not deviating. And I meet with my business coach every week. And literally all we do on this business coach and golf is I tell her what I've done. Right. The accountability, right? Yeah. There was one day-- my husband was on the call and he's like, what are you learning from her? And I'm like, self discipline. Mm-hmm. That's so true. So that's one of the main things that I think agents that I work with. And I tell them out of the gate, I'm like, look, you're going to learn a lot of things working with me. But one of the most important things is accountability. Like, you're going to show up every week and you will probably have done what I asked you to do last week or else what are we doing? You know, people are investing in their own growth. And if they're not going to do what we're talking about, you know, the accountability portion is so crucial. Yes, the first iteration of my training was all online. It was just an online library of everything that I wish I knew when I was an agency owner. And it was really good. Like, there was a lot of stuff in there. And people would buy it. And you could see who's watching your videos and stuff like that. Nobody would freaking watch. No one would watch. And I'm like, what the hell are you doing this? And it's all there for you. It's not working. And so that was like, all right, I'm going to jump into the different level of coaching. and that still comes with the coaching and stuff like that. But yeah, I was surprised that people, maybe I'm not fully surprised. Have you ever bought something that you never finished or that you never, yeah, I've done it too. But, and we talked about pricing before, there's gotta be a little bit of pain, you know, I think in the pricing, so that you're actually gonna do the work, but that works. Well, I was gonna ask you, as far as tech goes, you held so many agencies with getting a tech stack and getting everything on me. Is there any such thing as like too much tech? - Oh yeah, 100%. - Yeah, like, one doesn't agency know, like, like you don't need, simplification is something that's really important to me, and it's something I'm very good at. Like I can simplify, that's why I'm a good coach. I can simplify ideas, I've simplified my business, like very, like something that I'm naturally good at. But when it comes to certain things, you can overdo it. You know, if you're doing too much stuff, now you're not efficient anymore. So being really efficient by simplifying is, it's hard to do, you know, because we all wanna do things perfect, and we all wanna do it really well. We have all these tools at our disposal, more than ever before, you know, but, what's the sweet spot for that? - Yeah, I think that actually goes back to that whole slowing down process, because in today's world for insurance, if you're trying to solve a problem, there's probably four or five different companies that can solve the problem in some kind of way for you. And so if you have a good process in place, even if your process is complete manual, if you, you know, write everything out on paper, type it into your radar, whatever it is, whatever you're doing, if it's automated or not automated, when you decide I wanna make this more efficient, slow down, know what you're looking for, like what would help me with this? Man, I'm retiping this information. That's an easy example, right, that we can go to. But like another easy example is, I don't know when people are on my calendar and I have to update my CRM. Okay, well, maybe that's a little pain in the butt, right? Whatever it is, that is the pain point. So this is a problem. Look for some companies that do it. And I have partner companies, I have companies I prefer, like I really prefer salt. I love that form system. But if you wanna go with gravity forms or jot forms or risk advisor or maybe you do commercial and you do wonder, write or whatever, there's so many solutions you guys. So slow down, do some research, ask around, say hey, I'm trying to find something that does this, and then schedule demos with all the companies. Take your notes, compare and contrast. Always look for integration. If it doesn't integrate, it's gonna be harder. - You're adding more work, right? - Adding more work. Can the integration be built? That's the second question to ask. And then make a decision and then implement. If you do that, you won't end up with this massive tech stack. Now, the other side of that is if you also fully implement that, meaning you learn, you do their online training because all these software companies have on demand training and nobody looks at it. And then they complain about software training. So own the process, go through all their training. If they have webinars, if they have a YouTube page, watch every video on their YouTube page that shows you how to use the system. One thing at a time, because what I'm seeing consistently is that these companies are starting to overlap. So I'll give you a very easy example. I'll just keep using forms. I'm just gonna keep picking on the salt. So salt is intake forms for personal lines and then canopy connects, which I love. I was a really early adopter with that system where you can get deck pages, right? Which is so helpful. We know a ton of agents, they won't even quote without deck pages 'cause they don't believe that there's enough buy-in from the prospect and they don't wanna waste their time. So they're a lower quote volume, but really high-close ratio. Lot of independents do that. But they were two totally different things and you needed both of them if you wanted to have that more digital client experience. Now salt is forms and they can get deck pages. Okay, and then canopy came out with forms. So you have forms and deck pages and now canopy can do commercial and now canopy has a master copy paste, which only used to be with Gaia. So there is, it's evolving. - Yeah, it's a lot of interesting. - And so if you started with salt and Gaia and canopy, technically you could consolidate into one now. So that's where that too much, right? Like what do you have? You gotta have again, someone looking forward, leading the business. And when you have a piece of tech and they launch something new, you take the time to go, oh, this is new. Well, maybe you were looking for another solution is that the solution. Do you need something else? And utilizing the whole system. 'Cause usually people end up with a really ridiculous tech stack when they actually don't know their existing software will do it. - Yeah, ton of redundancies, right? - Exactly. So redundancy redundancy. So again, it goes back to like slow down, take your time, implement, have leadership through your implementation. And then you've got to be free to be able to be ahead of this stuff. Same thing with carriers, it's the same thing with your staff and coaching, your billing. But if I really just, it's hard for me to wrap my head around. If, unless you just love that, unless you just love working with your clients, but you need to find somebody else in your business who's gonna look ahead. Who's gonna help you look ahead and stay on top of things. When I was at Indy Tech last year, I had to do an impromptu main stage speech because of the hurricane. - Right. - Oh my god, most nerve wracking. I didn't even sleep that night. I was terrified. I was up in my hotel room, like repeating myself. - Right, pacing, I know, it's scary. - Yeah, slapped together five slides. That, you know, I was ridiculous. Anyways, but one of the things I want to talk about was, you know, like Netflix and Blockbuster. We all know exactly what I'm talking about when you say those names. And insurance is becoming more and more digital. That is just the reality of it. Like you do a phenomenal job, Matt, working our local community. We have a great growing community here in Ineagle and you have a great presence and people know you and business owners look for you. And that is wonderful. And that is hard to do and that's taken you a long time to do, right? That's years. And if you're a new agent, like maybe you have some time to do that, but the generation's coming up behind people myself, I'm a millennial or younger than me, the TikTok generation. I mean, that might be a little harder. There will always be relationship building, but you're gonna have to have a portion of your business that's virtual. - Well, it has to be sped up. - Yeah. - Yeah. - They're not gonna wait a week for a quote. They don't even wait a week for anything for their house to be built. I mean, they get impatient doing that, right? It's just the generation. - That's true. - The world moves faster. So, I guess in general, like I just, you know, if you don't, if you can't keep up with that and then you're wondering why your business may be shrinking or you can't grow or somebody else comes into your town and blows you out of the water, there's reasons for that. Like, innovation has to happen. It has to happen in every business or you will be the next blockbuster. - That's true. - I mean, so that would be, I mean, that sounds super harsh, people are like, oh, you don't have to be virtual to be a good agent. That is true, maybe today. But do you think it'll be true in 10 years? I don't know. Funny, I, in a prior life, I was between jobs and we moved across the country 'cause I was supporting my wife who was going through a program in North Carolina and I was between fields and I was like, I'm just gonna take a job. Like, and I worked at a blockbuster in 2003 for a year and it was a really intense time. 2003, like Netflix was out. Like, they were sending DVDs in the mail and stuff like that and like blockbuster had to respond. But they were too late. Blockbuster started a mail program and we were getting discs back in the drop box from their mailers and stuff like that. They started to try and do a streaming thing shortly after but they were way too late. They were 'cause Blockbuster Thunder knows that Netflix years ago, Blockbuster could have bought Netflix for $50 million. That was on the table in like 97 and Blockbuster thought it wasn't gonna last. And I think Netflix is worth $500 billion now. They could have got it for $50 million. - Yeah, they wrote, there's a book written about the Netflix story. Oh my gosh, now I'm forgetting the name of it. But I read it, well, when I say, anytime I say read a book, I mean I listen to it. - Sure, same type. - Paper books put me to sleep. I have to do audible. - Yeah. - But we drove to Las Vegas last year for a conference. We decided we wanted to road trip down and I listened to that thing in the car. My kids were like, "Mom, turn it off." No, this is incredible. - I don't care about the CEO at Netflix. It was hilarious. I loved the book though. And it was a lot about innovation. And like, oh, it's called No Rules Rules. That's what it's called. And it's a lot about taking off guardrails in a business when you hire the right people. It's just really cool. But their story is amazing. And you don't have to be, like, if you're an insurance agent listening to this, we're not saying you have to be first. But the thing is, at this point nobody's first. If you're trying to build a digital footprint as an agency and you're trying to be efficient and move faster and have good, like, a good client-facing process that is more virtual, that they have the option for and then they still have the option to come into your office. You're not first. You're way towards the back end. So, you know, and it's not gonna be avoidable. So we know it's, anytime you look at things that make stuff more convenient and faster, it doesn't die. You know, less friction at something that we talk about all the time. Like, I ask agents all the time, is there something in your office that you do regularly that if you stopped doing it, no one would notice and no one would care. It's a great question. And I'd want every agent who's listening to think about it 'cause I, and some of this stuff takes a little bit of risk and things like that 'cause, you know, there's, there are all leaps of faith and a lot of the decisions that we have to make. But, you know, in the best interest of being efficient with time and money, I mean, you have to try these things, right? So for example, I turn my phones off in my agency, my whole agency, between 12 and 1. Because we were busy and like, that's a great hour to catch up. It's a great hour for my team to take a deep breath, have lunch and like take care of the really important stuff that might be on their desk at that time. And I was like, all right, well, we're going to see how this happens. We're going to see what happens here. We're going to see if anybody's, you know, if my clients are going to really flip out or if they're going to be pissed that they can't get a hold of me between 12 and 1. I did this seven years ago, nobody has ever said anything. And it's been an invaluable part of how we are so efficient. Like that hour is really important to my team. It really, you know, a lot of work in an hour, you know. And so, and the phone's not ringing even more, you know, and so stuff like that. I just, I don't even know how I thought about it. But I was like, what if we tried this? But I like tinkering. It's one of my favorite parts of being an agency owner. You get to, that should be the fun part of the job. You get to play with things and you get to try new things. And if it didn't work, like, how would turn the phones back on between 12 and 1? You know, these changes do not have to be permanent. That's another thing that I want to talk to, that I talk to agents about. I was like, we can try this stuff. And if it doesn't work, just go back, you know, it's okay. We can do that. So at the same time, though, it doesn't work. That doesn't mean that one person calls you and says, I called it noon and your phone didn't ring. Nobody answered. That does not mean it doesn't work. We see that with automation. We put an automated campaign and it goes out. You send out your first five emails and one person replies and they're like, I didn't like that you emailed me. And then the agent turns it off. They get a hold of us and they're like, your automation sucks. Those work. We're like, oh my gosh, really? Well, let's look. So we get in their system because we can see everything that's been sent. And we're like, but you only sent five emails. How do you mean it doesn't work? And 40% of them opened it or whatever the percentage was. And well, this one person was mad. And I'm like, okay, good for them. Keep going. Turn it back on. Yeah. Because the other people didn't care. And you're never going to make everybody happy. That's just not how the world works. No. So you have to give it some time and decide if this works. If turning off the phones and noon works, if your team is more efficient, keep doing it. I spent a week in an agency down in California. My team and I did helping them in person. It was the first time in the only time we've ever done this. And a captive agency with a large outside book. So it was like this blend of captive and independent. It was very interesting. And their phones ring all day long. I mean, this agent is so great at network marketing. They don't have to, they don't buy it leads for anything. The business just rolls in. He knows everybody in that town. It's phenomenal. But he has the team fraction between commercial and personal lines and service, which is good. You know, sales, personal commercial and service. They have different specialties and they work even in different systems. And, but the phone rings and all their desks ring. So I'm in this office for the week and their phones are ringing. I'm like, oh my god, I'm going to have like, I'm going to hear ringing all night in my hotel because the phones are always ringing. It was driving me crazy. And I was like, why don't we do a call tree? They call in. If you need help with a new personal policy, press one. If you, you know, and the agent was like, but we are very customer centric. Like, I don't think my customers would like that. You know, that they're pressing a number. And I'm like, I get it. Have you ever tried it? No. Great. The thing that I want to say is, you know, like when the phone picks that, thank you for calling the blah, blah, blah agency. You know, because of wonderful clients like you who are constantly referring business to us, we have grown. And to be able to better serve you, we have split our teams. So press one for personal lines and two for commercial or whatever, personal insurance, business insurance. I go, well, that alone separate the calls because the commercial team, two of them are remote. They don't even work in the office. Think about how many phone calls it would not ring in that office. Right. Plus poor people. And so the agent agreed and we implemented it and it works perfectly fine. There's no complaints. It's fine. But we trained the client with a very flattering statement. Thank you so much. Because of you. Yes. Because of your wonderful referrals and your, you know, what's the word when you're oil, your loyalty, right? Yeah. Getting a bit. And it was flattering and they didn't have any problems. So sometimes you're imagining the problem, right? My first sales job I had. I was a bank teller and I had to sell credit cards and I was like, I hate credit cards. Well not everybody hates credit cards, Maria. But they can, they're high interest. You know, like what if they go to bankruptcy and they're like, but what if they don't? Like, so if they take advantage of what the credit card can offer them, right? Yeah. Like, so what if it helps them make not not get evicted? You know, I mean, like, so there's don't worry too much about your own preconceived notions. Give it a try. Yeah. And then decide. Absolutely. Well, I'm out of time, Maria. Thank you so much for coming in. I mean, I love talking in shop with you. You are a huge asset to the industry for what you do to all the agencies, new agencies, growing agencies, seasoned agencies that need, you know, to make a leap. I know that your team works very hard. I know how you do, all of you do diligence with everything that you recommend to agents. And I know that they trust what you do and what you do for them and what you bring to them. So, and you put out great content too. And it's, you're one of the people in the industry that I trust too. Like whenever you put something out, I'm like, I pay attention to what you say because I know that you care. And I know that your best interests is with the agents. And I appreciate you and I appreciate you coming in and talking in shop. Thank you for having me and I feel like that flew by. So thank you. I had a lot of fun. Yeah. All right. Thanks, Maria. Take care. [MUSIC]