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How to Actually Grow an Insurance Agency ft Ryan Hanley · Elevate The Hustle

• 0:00
  So I grew up super poor in a small town in upstate New York.
• 0:04
  Um, so at 10 years old, I started getting up at 5 a.m.
• 0:09
  every morning and walking the streets of my town every Thursday and collecting five cent recyclable bottles.
• 0:16
  And in about an hour and a half, which would uh put me back home in time to get to school, I could collect about$40 worth of bottles.
• 0:25
  Whoa.
• 0:26
  And I did that every Thursday for a year uh until some adult realized what I was doing and had a car and started driving around and picking the bottles before me.
• 0:37
  And that was my first introduction to capitalism.
• 0:42
  Elevate the hustle.
• 0:43
  Yeah.
• 0:50
  Welcome to Elevate the Hustle, where we break down what it actually means to build teams, scale companies, and lead with intensity.
• 0:58
  I'm your host, Stanley Mayton.
• 1:01
  And I'm Dom Picharillo.
• 1:02
  Today we are welcomed by Ryan Hanley, who has over a decade of experience in the independent insurance agency world.
• 1:11
  He's a marketer, a podcaster, and uh I'm gonna call you an insurance influencer, Ryan.
• 1:19
  We're super, we're very happy to have you.
• 1:20
  We're super excited.
• 1:22
  So thanks for joining.
• 1:23
  Oh, yeah, no, it's my pleasure.
• 1:25
  And um, what's crazy is that uh I don't know if I look like it or not, but it's actually um, this is officially two decades in the insurance industry.
• 1:32
  Oh man, me too.
• 1:34
  So I've hit the I've hit the 20-year mark for better or for worse.
• 1:39
  Congratulations and welcome to Elevate the Hustle.
• 1:45
  Um so big question What does hustle mean to you, Ryan?
• 1:53
  That's a good question.
• 1:54
  I I have a love-hate relationship with the word.
• 1:58
  Uh I love it in its pure sense, um, I guess both physically and uh, you know, kind of work-wise.
• 2:05
  Um but I hate what the word how the word is kind of been bastardized by some people and turned into this like on all the time, if you're not working, you're not, you know, you're not breathing kind of thing.
• 2:17
  To me, but um hustle is just that relentless pursuit of whatever your goal is.
• 2:27
  Um and I don't think it needs to be too terribly gussied up because if you can relentlessly pursue any goal and st and just stay on top of it and stay with it, um, it doesn't need to be a hundred miles an hour all the time.
• 2:40
  But if you're not constantly moving forward, you're moving backwards.
• 2:42
  What is that Ricky Bobby line?
• 2:44
  If you're not first, you're last, right?
• 2:45
  So um I think there's a lot of truth in that.
• 2:50
  Great reference.
• 2:52
  So at what point did you decide that you were you know a hustler, an entrepreneur, a builder?
• 3:01
  Was was was Ryan eight years old hustling the main streets or or or not?
• 3:08
  Yeah, to a certain extent, yes.
• 3:10
  Um, so I grew up super poor in a small town in upstate New York.
• 3:15
  Um and we used to say you could leave the doors open because the criminals lived in our town, they didn't rob in our town.
• 3:23
  Um so like I had to make money early, or I just didn't have any.
• 3:30
  So at 10 years old, I started getting up at 5 a.m.
• 3:34
  every morning and walking the streets of my town every Thursday and collecting five cent recyclable bottles out of the little blue recycling bins in front of everyone's homes before the recycling truck would come around and take them.
• 3:48
  And in about an hour and a half, which would uh put me back home in time to get to school, I could collect about$40 worth of bottles.
• 3:58
  And I did that every Thursday for a year uh until some adult realized what I was doing and had a car and started driving around and picking the bottles before me.
• 4:10
  And that was my first introduction to capitalism.
• 4:14
  And uh it was uh a wonderful lesson.
• 4:18
  But yeah, no, I mean, look, I have very severe ADHD, um, not like the self-diagnosed kind, like the real kind.
• 4:25
  And I've just been out over my skis, moving at 100 miles an hour since the day that I was born.
• 4:32
  I just have no other way.
• 4:33
  Like I don't have slow mode.
• 4:35
  It's why I've been fired from every corporate job I've ever had.
• 4:38
  Um is, you know, I see a bunch of bureaucrats who are there mostly just protecting their territory, um, who, you know, probably haven't really dove into even the job that they're doing.
• 4:53
  They just know how to politically maneuver enough to stay there.
• 4:57
  And I just simply can't tolerate it.
• 4:59
  Like I have literally no patience for that mentality.
• 5:01
  So the only place for me left was entrepreneurism.
• 5:06
  Um, you know, I have a creator business, you know, I have uh coaching and consulting business.
• 5:13
  And I yeah, I guess I guess to answer your question from from the from the rip, uh I came out hot and been running hot ever since.
• 5:22
  Most two things I learned.
• 5:24
  One, the the neighborhood full of criminals still recycled, which kudos, kudos to them.
• 5:30
  Yeah.
• 5:31
  It's true.
• 5:33
  And competition could be a bitch, right?
• 5:36
  Especially when you get smacked in the face with it really early.
• 5:46
  No, was not was not expecting that.
• 5:48
  Um and what's funny is like it was just, you know, and again, this is just the way that I'm wired.
• 5:56
  Like, as soon as I noticed what was happening, it was just like on to the next thing.
• 6:02
  And I I ran, you know, I don't publicize it the way Gary Vaynerchuk does, but I ran like a lot of kids.
• 6:09
  I used a lot of that money to buy sports cards and candy and gum and shit, and I sold that in school.
• 6:15
  Um, so I ran that game for a while.
• 6:17
  And then at 13, I could get like a real job, um, you know, with like my parents' signatures.
• 6:24
  So I I've been working, you know, in a in a real job since I was 13 years old.
• 6:28
  Like a like a paid, you know, pay have to pay taxes on the shit job since uh, you know, I was 13.
• 6:34
  Um Yeah.
• 6:36
  So it's it's it it it very early on.
• 6:40
  I realized that if you wanted to make money, you had to work hard.
• 6:43
  And that just about everybody was watching to see how you were making money and to see if they could steal it.
• 6:49
  And, you know, that today, I think that's a good lesson for today because I think there's a lot of people that start businesses and think that it's all kumbaya and rainbows and you know, why combinator parties and social media posts and shit?
• 7:03
  And it's like it can be that, but you gotta be a brutal barbarian willing to, you know, hack your way through the jungle and conquer every village that you see, or someone else is gonna do it.
• 7:16
  Which, which, which is an interesting point.
• 7:18
  Do you think like currently, I mean, everybody says they want to be an entrepreneur, everyone wants wants to, you know, publicize on social media that you know they're a guru or whatever it might be.
• 7:28
  But uh are they willing to put in the blood, sweat, and tears?
• 7:32
  Are they willing to take the punches in the face?
• 7:34
  Are they willing to literally, you know, miss kids' birthday parties or whatever it might be to actually build a real fucking company?
• 7:43
  No.
• 7:44
  No, it's all this is all this is all entrepreneur porn and fan fiction, is what this it's so much of it is complete nonsense.
• 7:51
  And I think this is a beautiful time because if you are wired that way, there's infinite possibilities.
• 7:58
  There's literally you can't fail if you just keep trying today.
• 8:02
  There's just another type of business that you can start, another type of business that you can start, and you can keep working until you figure out what works to you, which I think is the beauty of today.
• 8:10
  The the other side, the reverse side of that coin, is that you can also virtue signal your way to feeling like you're that person, even if you're not.
• 8:22
  And there's so much of that crap that goes on.
• 8:25
  Um, you know, it's annoying, but honestly, I I don't know why people, and I'm not saying that you are, but I don't know why people let that crap bother them because those people just fade away anyways.
• 8:36
  Like at the end of the day, game recognizes game.
• 8:40
  Like the people who play know and see, you know, we all got different scars, we've all made it to different rungs of the ladder, but you can smell pretty quickly who's here, who's played, who's bled, you know, who gets what it takes to be here.
• 8:53
  And some people like to keep playing, and some people are like, hey, I've done that once or twice and I'm good, but you can tell the people that have played and the people that haven't.
• 9:01
  And I feel I honestly I just feel more sad for the people who try to pretend they're you know that they're that thing when they're really not, because it just becomes so obvious so quick.
• 9:14
  You gotta love the game, right?
• 9:17
  Like I think I think a lot of people look at at the success and whatever, and they're like chasing these whatever goals they might be, but they're chasing them without actually having a real love for building shit.
• 9:31
  Yeah.
• 9:32
  And you know how you can tell?
• 9:34
  You can tell when people talk about this like everybody gets along or that there's something nice in this game, right?
• 9:41
  Like when they're like, oh, you know, you know, we just, you know, if you just have a good product, people will buy it.
• 9:48
  No, they won't.
• 9:49
  Like, what are you talking about?
• 9:50
  Like, you have to have a good product, a good brand, you have to be highly consistent, you have to be priced correctly at the right time, in the right market, you then need to be able to sell that shit, market that shit, retain the business, renew the business, and service the business.
• 10:04
  That's what that's 12 things that I just rattled off off the top of my head.
• 10:07
  If you can't do those things, you're screwed.
• 10:09
  So when I see some, you know, guy or gal sitting on some stage and they're up there and like they had their little whatever, uh, or they're just a journalist or a commentator or a blogger or whatever, which there's nothing wrong with that, but they want to pretend like they're like they understand what's happening.
• 10:23
  And it's like, that's not this isn't nice.
• 10:26
  There's nothing nice or easy about this.
• 10:28
  And it doesn't mean you have to be a jerk.
• 10:30
  That's not what I'm saying.
• 10:31
  But like if you if you think you're gonna get into this game and build anything of that's worth, you know, that that's substantial or or or worthy of any type of of growth, and someone isn't gonna try to take it from you, you are out of your mind.
• 10:47
  You're absolutely out of your mind.
• 10:50
  And like that's where this like kumbaya stuff, I I just I don't I don't get down on it.
• 10:56
  I don't get down on it at all.
• 10:57
  To me, it is you're either selling me something or you don't know what you're talking about.
• 11:02
  And you know, maybe this is because I just again I don't know how to operate in the world that isn't reality.
• 11:09
  And you know what I mean?
• 11:10
  Like you have to play the game that's on the field.
• 11:13
  And when you hear things said or advice given that isn't what you've experienced on the field, it it's very obvious.
• 11:23
  But the people who haven't played the game yet, they eat that shit up because they think, oh, well, if I just get in and I start this little business and I make some peers and friends and I'll find a mentor and I'll run some Facebook ads and everything's gonna be great.
• 11:34
  And it's like, no, you're gonna get slaughtered.
• 11:36
  So how how how does how does someone like you who's been you know hustling from the womb get into the wonderful world of insurance?
• 11:45
  Seem seems like a very, you know, non-traditional round.
• 11:50
  Yeah.
• 11:51
  So I lost my way for a bit.
• 11:53
  Um, so I was I was a hustler until I got to college.
• 11:58
  And then when I went to the University of Rochester, and um I thought like I I was raised by an administrative assistant who's been at the same company for 45 years and a mechanic on the railroad.
• 12:14
  All they ever told me was go work for the big company, get the safe job, get the big paycheck, that way you don't have to worry.
• 12:19
  Right?
• 12:19
  That was that was what was banged over my head.
• 12:21
  And here I am, I'm out collecting bottles, right?
• 12:23
  I'm doing the shovel snow thing.
• 12:26
  I got, you know, I'm flipping candy.
• 12:28
  Yeah, I've been you know, flipping candy and baseball cards.
• 12:31
  Like we used to play high stakes uh poker games at my buddy's house.
• 12:35
  High stakes back then was like hundred dollar buy-ins, but like, you know what I mean?
• 12:38
  For like a bunch of 15-year-old kids, like we would be bring kids in and we we would bring them in and and into this poker game that we played.
• 12:44
  Like all three of them.
• 12:46
  You knew the donors.
• 12:48
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:50
  We it was like um, I don't want to say it it would be crazy for me to say it was like rounders, but it was a little bit like we would bring these fish in to play with us.
• 13:00
  And like, so I had all these things going.
• 13:02
  And then when I got to college, I was kind of like, oh, well, now I'm now I have a degree.
• 13:07
  Now I go work for the big company, which I tried to do.
• 13:10
  I worked for a company called RSM McGladry in Washington, D.C.
• 13:13
  Um, it's a fine company, it's the fifth largest accounting firm in the country.
• 13:17
  Um, I was bored out of my friggin' mind.
• 13:19
  Uh it, you know, there's nothing wrong with that company, but I was just bored.
• 13:23
  I was basically a translator for the nerds because I wasn't, I didn't have an accounting degree, I had a math degree.
• 13:28
  So, you know, the nerds couldn't talk to the customers.
• 13:32
  So I would basically sit between the accounting nerds and the customers and translate what they were saying.
• 13:36
  And I was that's kind of my role there.
• 13:38
  And it was boring as hell.
• 13:39
  Uh, I left there and I tried, I was like, all right, well, maybe my problem is I'm just not a DC guy.
• 13:44
  So I went to New York City and took a job at American Express, and that was even worse.
• 13:49
  Um, and again, nothing against American Express, except I was referred to as, and I'm gonna only remember the first three, M2B, and about four other letters and numbers.
• 13:59
  And it was just like, you were just a cubicle with a with a number next to your name, and that's what you were there.
• 14:06
  And that didn't work either.
• 14:07
  So uh at that point, I met this woman who eventually ended up becoming my wife, and her father made me um kind of an offer, like like right out of a mafia movie.
• 14:16
  Like, took me out of the Christmas party, pulled me into his office, high leatherback chairs, wood paneling walls in the office.
• 14:24
  You know, he's sitting there.
• 14:25
  We're yeah, I'm telling you, right out of a yeah, this is like if you took a snapshot of my visual, I'm like, I'm either getting made or whacked.
• 14:34
  Um and his, you know, his son, my future brother-in-law, is standing over his shoulder, and he basically says, like, I think you should come sell insurance.
• 14:45
  He owned an independent agency.
• 14:47
  He's like, I think you should come sell insurance for me.
• 14:48
  And I think basically he just didn't want his little girl to be married to a bum.
• 14:52
  So um I kind of didn't have a option.
• 14:56
  Let's slow that down.
• 14:57
  So, what's going through your mind?
• 14:59
  Are you like, okay, you know, hustle, hustle, hustle.
• 15:04
  I took a big corporate job.
• 15:05
  Then the mob now the mob is encruiting me, recruiting me to get into the insurance game.
• 15:09
  Are are you just like, well, I want to marry his daughter, so I'm just gonna take the job?
• 15:13
  Or partially that, and partially I was flailing, and I didn't, I was like, I don't understand.
• 15:20
  Like, I'm smarter than most of the people I work with, I work harder than most of the people I work with, and I am just not doing well in either one of these environments.
• 15:28
  So big corporate, or at least what I've done so far in big corporate, can't can't be the answer.
• 15:34
  So I saw a sales job.
• 15:36
  I like the kind of quasi-entrepreneurial, kind of keep what you kill nature of the sales job that he was offering.
• 15:43
  Um, and I wanted to marry his daughter.
• 15:45
  So uh, you know, my 25-year-old brain or whatever it was, you know, probably that was the math.
• 15:53
  Like it was like, want to marry daughter standing in this weird room with her entire family in the main room uh while he pitches me this job and I'm not doing well in these other companies and sales seems like maybe what I should be doing, so let's give it a rip.
• 16:08
  And that was what it was, that was about the end of it.
• 16:10
  Are you looking at this guy?
• 16:12
  I'm assuming he was pretty successful in having his own agency.
• 16:15
  Are are you looking at him being like, well, you know, this guy seems to have done pretty well?
• 16:20
  Yes.
• 16:21
  I think I could do what he did, and like, yeah, I'm gonna give it a big thing.
• 16:24
  That's exactly it.
• 16:25
  He was a smart guy.
• 16:26
  Uh my I mean, he's still alive.
• 16:28
  Uh we're uh we're divorced now.
• 16:30
  We're divorced after 15 years, but um uh but we still I have a still have a good relationship with her and her father or her and her family.
• 16:36
  But uh he was a smart guy, he was athletic, he played golf, funny guy.
• 16:41
  You know what I mean?
• 16:42
  Like I could just I saw, like I'm like, I'm I'm kinda like I can kind of see myself in this guy.
• 16:48
  Like if he can do it, like if this if this guy can do this, um why can't I do it?
• 16:54
  You know, and and he was living a pretty good life.
• 16:56
  I mean, he was living in a gorgeous home, he had a home in Florida, you know what I mean?
• 16:59
  Like he was living that classic independent insurance agency lifestyle.
• 17:02
  Um the cars, and I'm like, this is seems fun.
• 17:06
  Like I could do this, like all I need to do is convince people to buy insurance.
• 17:10
  Like, this doesn't seem hard.
• 17:11
  I ended up being fucking terrible at it.
• 17:14
  Uh, and he fired me two years later, but um, but yeah, that's a that's that yeah, that was my thought from some time.
• 17:23
  How did that how does that happen?
• 17:24
  Like, what what went wrong?
• 17:26
  And I've known you for a while.
• 17:28
  I know you started your own independent agency.
• 17:30
  So, like, what were the biggest lessons that you learned in working for someone else?
• 17:34
  And how did that parlay into like your own your own thing?
• 17:38
  So, my my so thankfully I was able to convince him not to fire me.
• 17:42
  He did technically fire me.
• 17:43
  And then I quite literally got down on one knee in his office and was like, his name was Jim.
• 17:49
  I was like, Jim, you gotta give me more time, man.
• 17:53
  Like, you do not want me going home and having this conversation with your little girl, and you do not want to get the phone call that you know you're gonna get.
• 18:00
  And I don't think he had thought all the way through it.
• 18:02
  Like, I don't think he had connected, she's gonna call me after I do this.
• 18:07
  And when I kind of when I said that, I could see like the the rat kind of turn the wheel in his brain and him go, like, yeah, I kind of don't want that phone call.
• 18:17
  So, okay, you have you have six months, but you something's gotta change.
• 18:21
  So basically, the the long and short of it was I had never sold anything before.
• 18:25
  And as much as Jim was an amazing mentor in the insurance industry, he was not a very good sales coach at all.
• 18:32
  It was basically just like go sell shit.
• 18:34
  If you're in the office, you're not working.
• 18:36
  Um and we like literally, he would have us come in.
• 18:40
  So this is this was the standard day.
• 18:42
  So I feel blessed that I got to see this side of the business.
• 18:45
  Um, our standard day was you had to be at the office by 8.
• 18:48
  From 8 to 9.30, you did any paperwork you needed to do at 9.30.
• 18:51
  If you were in the office, you were quote unquote not working.
• 18:55
  What you did when you left, but you had to be out of there.
• 18:59
  What I would do is just go troll strip malls.
• 19:01
  I knew basically the best places to shit within a 50 mile radius of the of their building.
• 19:06
  I put 55,000 miles on my car.
• 19:09
  I just drove from business to business, dropping off my business card.
• 19:12
  And shockingly, nobody called because that's a ridiculous way to prospect, but I didn't know what else to do.
• 19:18
  Um and then at night, okay, so you do that until 4:30.
• 19:22
  From 4:30 to 6, you got to go home for family time.
• 19:25
  You had to be back to the office by 6 30.
• 19:28
  And from 6 30 to 9 30, you either um had appointments or you were cold calling literally out of the phone book.
• 19:35
  This is so this is how I started.
• 19:36
  Sounds like he runs a great business.
• 19:38
  I got it from it.
• 19:39
  I love this guy.
• 19:40
  I like it.
• 19:41
  I mean, they bang.
• 19:43
  I mean, for you have to be a psychopath, but if you were, oh my God, they made they just picked, they made so much money.
• 19:48
  So, but here, my problem was I had like this physical reaction.
• 19:53
  And I am not even joking.
• 19:54
  Like, I'm I it's funny.
• 19:55
  Like if when I do this on stage, sometimes when I'm keynoting, like people will laugh.
• 19:59
  But like the truth is I would have like a physical reaction to picking up the phone.
• 20:02
  Because I I didn't understand the value.
• 20:04
  Like, I don't want to get into sales stuff, but like I I I just I didn't have it.
• 20:08
  I didn't have classic business.
• 20:09
  So when he fired me and he said something had to change, I was like, something has to change drastically.
• 20:15
  And this is right around when LinkedIn and blogging was very popular.
• 20:18
  This is like 2009, 2010.
• 20:20
  Like LinkedIn is becoming a thing, X a thing.
• 20:23
  And I'm I'm looking at LinkedIn and I'm going, oh my God, like there are people I would like to do business with here, and they're like communicating in this in this format.
• 20:30
  And uh, they're using blogs, right?
• 20:33
  That's this horrible word.
• 20:35
  And I'm reading them and I'm going, okay.
• 20:37
  And they're and there's then there's like mark marketing gurus talking about how they're using these to attract business.
• 20:42
  And I'm like, I can do this.
• 20:44
  So I just started writing blog posts um answering the questions that I would get from the few clients that I did write, like, what is underinsured motorists coverage?
• 20:55
  What is general liability?
• 20:56
  And I would write these, and I'll tell you, I you know, I've not to go too deep on this story, but um, my light bulb moment happened nine months later.
• 21:04
  So for nine months, literally nothing happened.
• 21:05
  Nothing.
• 21:06
  I'm just writing these things, throwing them out into the ether, and nothing is going on.
• 21:09
  And I'm getting more and more stressed every day because more and more often I'm getting the like, when's this big change gonna happen?
• 21:17
  Um, where you start writing business.
• 21:20
  And nine months into my online marketing journey, I get up, you know, I get butt.
• 21:25
  I'm sitting at my desk at Mr, you know, Ryan, phone call, pick up phone, yeah, Ryan Haley.
• 21:29
  Um, and this woman says, Hi, my name is Virginia.
• 21:33
  You don't know me.
• 21:34
  We've never met.
• 21:36
  I live uh in a town called Clifton Park, which doesn't really matter to the audience, but it's about 25 minutes away from our office.
• 21:42
  There's no reason she would ever drive by our office.
• 21:45
  Um, and this is back when, you know, like people didn't do Google searches or whatever.
• 21:49
  She she found us, uh, I think she said through LinkedIn, found me through LinkedIn.
• 21:53
  Um, she said, I've been reading your blog for about three months.
• 21:56
  Uh, I'm gonna send you everything I have.
• 21:58
  I want you to make sure that.
• 22:00
  That my insurance is set up right, send it back to me and um we'll do business.
• 22:04
  And I go, Oh, you're looking for a quote.
• 22:05
  And she said, No, I'm not looking for a quote.
• 22:08
  I'm gonna send you what I have.
• 22:10
  I want you to review it and make sure that it's what I should have.
• 22:13
  Whatever you send back to me, I will sign and send you a check.
• 22:16
  I want to do business with you.
• 22:18
  And it was a light bulb moment for me in which I was like, holy shit, this woman is already sold.
• 22:24
  I didn't have to sell.
• 22:25
  I didn't have to sell anything.
• 22:27
  I had already sold her by creating content over and over and over again on this website, talking about, you know, my philosophy on protection and different things, all the different stuff.
• 22:37
  Very remedial, but um, but still.
• 22:40
  And I was like, if this can happen for one person, this can happen for more.
• 22:43
  And it basically set the keystone for the rest of my career, which has been um primarily using uh content and inbound marketing tactics to you know create high growth businesses.
• 22:55
  So at that point, you know, are you like, holy shit, I'm a I'm a marketer now, right?
• 23:02
  Like, like I I've uncovered this whole new way of doing business because it it's not traditional, right?
• 23:09
  You know, I think even I don't want to say now, I guess it is more traditional in the insurance space.
• 23:14
  But insurance agents, insurance brokers are very cookie-cutter of of their game plan of how they go.
• 23:22
  Dude, I used to get heckled.
• 23:23
  So, so about a year and a half later, I get my first keynote, um, the national young agents big eye event in San Francisco.
• 23:32
  They wanted me to come in and talk about some Facebook thing that I was doing.
• 23:36
  This is back when you could do all those like scammy contests and stuff like that on Facebook.
• 23:40
  I don't know if you remember that stuff.
• 23:42
  Um but so I did that, and then after that gig, I started getting asked to speak at other state associations.
• 23:50
  I would get heckled, heckled for talking about marketing tactics, inbound digital marketing tactics.
• 23:59
  I would get heckled by agents, and that's not a joke.
• 24:02
  Connecticut, I had some guys sit front row and literally just pepper me until I had to embarrass him, and then he ended up doing a consulting engagement with me.
• 24:11
  Um Illinois, I had a rep from a very large insurance carrier um stomp up to my, stomp up to, you know, the stage after my keynote was over and just lamb-based me on all the I'm gonna ruin this industry.
• 24:30
  There's gonna be more EO claims than ever before because of what you're teaching agents to do.
• 24:35
  Here we are 20 years later, and we still haven't had an EO claim uh in the property casualty industry related to digital marketing.
• 24:42
  So, like, you know, but it was brutal.
• 24:44
  I mean, literally, it was like I was questioning their entire existence by saying, you know, because my message then was we're no longer the gatekeepers of insurance information, right?
• 24:55
  Like we, your value can't be that you gatekeep the answers to common questions, right?
• 25:02
  Your value has to be your relationship, your ability to solve problems, your, you know, whatever, you know, these other things that actually have value, but just you need to come in and sit with me, or you don't know anything about insurance.
• 25:14
  Like that day was over.
• 25:16
  And so many agents who would sit there and pound the table and tell you, we don't sell on price, and you know, we're, you know, all these different nonsensical things, all they really were were gatekeepers.
• 25:28
  That's all they were.
• 25:29
  They had all the information, they all the access to pricing and product, and all they did was force you through down a funnel to get to that information.
• 25:36
  They weren't actually selling you, they were holding you hostage.
• 25:39
  And when I started to call that out, it did not go over very well.
• 25:42
  I've been blackballed from from speaking at big eye events on two separate occasions.
• 25:49
  Two separate occasions.
• 25:50
  The big eye nationally has blackballed me from speaking.
• 25:53
  I mean, so in my mind, as you know, somebody that understands psychology and marketing, I'm like, you're doing the right thing, right?
• 26:01
  Fuck them, keep going.
• 26:03
  It's obviously working.
• 26:04
  Uh, but your state of mind, like at what point you're like, oh, I'm gonna keep going.
• 26:10
  I'm gonna keep pushing.
• 26:12
  Like, did you ever question?
• 26:13
  Like, maybe I should fuck that.
• 26:16
  Are you kidding me?
• 26:17
  This is this is why I'm a pariah in the industry, is that I won't bow down to these, these, you know.
• 26:24
  Look, just about everyone in a position of power in our industry and a business that isn't growing, either got there through nepotism or corporatism.
• 26:33
  Not because they are the best person for the job.
• 26:35
  And you can see it in results, right?
• 26:36
  Again, we have to live in reality.
• 26:38
  Um, the fact that I was able to be seen as some innovator in the insurance industry was solely because I looked at what was happening in every under industry today and applied it to our space, which constantly is 10 years behind, not because independent insurance agents are not capable of keeping up technologically or innovatively, but because the people and gatekeepers from a technological and manufacturing capacity have as a feature, not a bug, throttled our innovation, right?
• 27:08
  Like it, this is this is not like we're not behind in every technological aspect possible because like because of regulatory issues or because there's 50 states that have different rules.
• 27:23
  None of that is true.
• 27:24
  Look at finance, look at life insurance, look at health insurance, look at all these other products.
• 27:29
  They're way out ahead of us.
• 27:30
  It is because the technological uh duopoly and the large manufacturing organizations in our business have intentionally throttled innovation as a way to keep the business where they want it.
• 27:44
  And I completely understand why they did that.
• 27:46
  I don't fault them to do that.
• 27:47
  But to act like that's anything other than old-world draconian tactics is crazy.
• 27:55
  I mean, it's strong arming an industry into staying in a lane that has not allowed them to innovate or or move as fast as possible.
• 28:08
  And it keeps the small agencies small and the middle-sized agencies middle-sized, and the large agencies just get larger by buying them all.
• 28:15
  And that's all they really want.
• 28:17
  So you're you've been talking about some of your keynote speeches.
• 28:20
  We actually met, I don't even know if you remember this, but we actually met at Gary V's conference.
• 28:24
  I think it was like Agent 2021 in Miami.
• 28:27
  Is that when we first met?
• 28:28
  I knew we met at a keynote.
• 28:29
  I didn't know it was at Gary V's thing.
• 28:30
  That's funny.
• 28:31
  Oh my gosh.
• 28:32
  So just curious, like how you got from banned at uh big eye events to getting asked to speak at Gary V's conference.
• 28:40
  Oh, because I think I think, you know, the first time.
• 28:46
  So the first time I got banned was because um, so I don't know if you guys are familiar with trustedchoice.com.
• 28:53
  They ended up just selling to uh momentum recently.
• 28:55
  Okay.
• 28:56
  So that version of trustedchoice.com, completely on the up and up.
• 29:00
  Um, as much as Chip had fired me, is the one that fired me, he he and I are still friends.
• 29:06
  Um, you know, he worked his butt off to get that thing to where it is for, you know, get his hands tied for most of the time.
• 29:12
  The previous iteration of trustedchoice.com was a complete scam, complete and utter scam.
• 29:18
  And that's not, that's not a, I'm not breaking news here.
• 29:20
  That's public record.
• 29:22
  Um and and Chip is the one that saved it to his credit.
• 29:26
  Like, so, so, you know, I'm I'm not trying to throw anyone under the bus.
• 29:30
  Chip Chip is the one that was brought in to turn it around and make it legit.
• 29:33
  But I was on stage and I knew what the previous group was doing, and someone asked me, what do you think about trustedchoice.com?
• 29:40
  And I said, the way they're building it is a house of cards that's gonna come crumbling down.
• 29:45
  They're not building it the right way.
• 29:48
  So I wouldn't invest in it.
• 29:50
  And because I said that in I was in um Rhode Island, uh, I had five more gigs that called me the next day and said, Yeah, no, we have to cancel.
• 30:02
  Didn't tell me why.
• 30:04
  And then about three months later, I had to kiss the ring um and apologize for my uh inappropriate language um in order to be able to speak at big eye events again.
• 30:16
  That was the first time.
• 30:18
  Then how'd you get to Gary V, though?
• 30:20
  How'd I far lay this into Gary V.
• 30:22
  Yeah, sorry.
• 30:23
  So, okay, so that happens.
• 30:24
  Well, I'm not gonna stop speaking.
• 30:26
  I mean, I love that shit.
• 30:27
  I mean, it's probably my one of my favorite things to do.
• 30:29
  So, I mean, what what the individual and individuals who banned me the first time, what they thought was by banning me, that would like, I don't know, like shame me or dis dispel me or just you know, whatever.
• 30:47
  They probably were just putting on their they were just flexing, right?
• 30:49
  I don't I don't think they were shaming you.
• 30:51
  They were just like, I think they thought I think they thought that that would stop me from I like I would I would stop talking.
• 30:59
  All it did was pour gasoline.
• 31:01
  Like they don't completely didn't understand how I was wired.
• 31:03
  All that was was like they dumped rocket fuel.
• 31:06
  So now I'm doing videos, I'm doing uh I'm all over social media.
• 31:12
  Um I am uh picking up some uh uh consult, I call them consulting clients back then or coaching, whatever, uh helping agencies do what I was doing.
• 31:21
  I mean, it was only rocket fuel.
• 31:23
  And all that ended up doing was eventually I broke through and uh I got offered a job uh to become the chief marketing officer of trustedchoice.com.
• 31:33
  And um and I left the independent agency and moved there because I just I just wouldn't stop, man.
• 31:40
  I just wouldn't stop.
• 31:41
  Like, why this I felt like they're I I firmly believe in the independent insurance agency channel.
• 31:47
  I think these are some of the greatest people in our country.
• 31:50
  They they per per per individual, we give more uh than any other professional service to nonprofits.
• 31:56
  We are oftentimes the bedrock of many communities, uh the product that we sell, like our economy literally couldn't exist if we didn't.
• 32:04
  And just having known tens of thousands of independent insurance agencies, like you don't do this job unless you actually care about the people that you're insuring.
• 32:12
  Like it's just you can't.
• 32:13
  Like you, it's there's too much nonsense in this work to do this just for the money.
• 32:18
  Now, maybe at a certain level that that changes, but I'm talking about, you know, you're you're five to 10 million revenue agencies and below, you you are not doing this because just for the money.
• 32:31
  Like it's just too difficult.
• 32:33
  So like I wanted to help these people, and that's why I wouldn't stop.
• 32:38
  Like I felt like I had cracked something open that if I could get it into the hands of these of these of these agencies, agency owners, agency producers, that they could they could grow in a way that would be meaningful to them and ultimately meaningful to their business.
• 32:52
  So I was never gonna stop.
• 32:53
  And Gary V came along because I was doing a ton of stuff on X.
• 32:58
  Um, that's how that's how they reached out to me.
• 33:00
  Um, you know, it just seemed like a cool idea.
• 33:04
  Go down and speak at Miami Dolphin Stadium with Gary Vaynerchuk.
• 33:08
  Andy Frisello was there too.
• 33:09
  It was my first introduction to Andy Frisello, which is really cool.
• 33:12
  Yeah, I don't know if you guys know Andy, but uh some street thread there.
• 33:17
  So what it so what made you take the CMO job?
• 33:20
  Was it was it because you felt like you could make a bigger difference and bigger impact?
• 33:25
  Well, the entire time that I was at the Murray group, it was filled with friction because my father-in-law and my brother-in-law did not appreciate the digital marketing asset, even though I was bringing in leads.
• 33:34
  I was bringing in a hundred inbound leads a month on a$100 budget in 2013 and it wasn't good enough.
• 33:41
  Um, or and it was all they were all price shoppers, entire kick.
• 33:44
  I mean, this is all the perceived nature, right?
• 33:46
  I'm writing them.
• 33:46
  I mean, it's how I'm growing my big, but they would just to them, if you came through the internet, you must be a loser.
• 33:52
  That was essentially what it was.
• 33:54
  So I there was no real growth opportunity for me there.
• 33:57
  And plus, um uh I ended up finding out from my brother-in-law that I would never own a piece of the quote unquote, my name would never be on the box.
• 34:04
  And I had to be okay owning the agency through my wife.
• 34:08
  And I was like, yeah, no, that's that's not that's not happening.
• 34:11
  So um, so when uh the chief marketing officer job came around for trustedchoice.com, I was like, I get to do what I love, create, help agents, grow business, generate leads, but I get to do it on a national scale.
• 34:25
  Seemed like a no-brainer.
• 34:26
  It was also more money than I had ever made in my life before at that time.
• 34:29
  Um, so that was an easy jump.
• 34:32
  And uh, and then very quickly we launched Agency Nation, the content platform uh sister company that uh ended up doing multiple conferences, uh, grew that from zero to 500,000 eyeballs.
• 34:43
  Um in less than four years, we put on two conferences.
• 34:47
  We had two podcasts that did more than 20,000 downloads a month.
• 34:49
  We had a YouTube channel with more than 10,000 subscribers.
• 34:52
  Like we were the up-and-coming upstar media company in the insurance industry, and um for a few years life was good.
• 35:01
  What happened to that?
• 35:02
  Yeah, then what so Elevate 2018 happens, it's the greatest insurance conference that ever put on, hasn't been one like it beforehand, hasn't been one like it since.
• 35:16
  Um it's an absolute rock concert.
• 35:20
  Um so much fun.
• 35:24
  And what I found out later was the powers that be felt I was getting too big for my britches.
• 35:38
  And I was fired is essentially a way of throttling it felt like they couldn't control me, so they fired me.
• 35:48
  And I found that out a year later.
• 35:49
  I had no idea why I got fired the first at first.
• 35:51
  No idea.
• 35:52
  Just three weeks after Elevate 2018, it was basically sorry, this isn't working.
• 35:59
  Your time here's over, have a nice day.
• 36:02
  And then a year later, so I was a number two in that company uh in trustedchoice.com.
• 36:07
  A year later, they needed my signature in order to pay out um performance bonuses because again, we're not talking this is this is the national big eye, we're not talking about high achievers here.
• 36:17
  Um the like so they called me and they need my signature, so I'm like, I'm not signing shit until you tell me why I actually got fired.
• 36:26
  And essentially, I had they didn't like that I had quote unquote become the face of like the independent channel.
• 36:36
  And so they fired me.
• 36:39
  So when it it seems like you were very upset about this, right?
• 36:43
  I mean, you were thinking about I love that job.
• 36:45
  I would I'd be still doing that job today if I could.
• 36:47
  I loved it.
• 36:48
  I loved that job.
• 36:49
  I loved it to death.
• 36:50
  I felt like I was helping real people, you know, everyone from single person, startup, you know, three months in the business agencies up to, you know, we're working with with with you know, locations for some of the big guys, Gallagher, Brown and Brown.
• 37:06
  You know, if they if they needed marketing help, if they needed to know what was going on from like a, you know, our expertise was kind of like, we'll say digital growth and all the things that came in that.
• 37:15
  That was kind of the vein that we sat in in terms of where we what we talked about.
• 37:19
  We had people from across, I mean, I've sat in the 42nd floor of almost every insurance carrier in the country.
• 37:25
  Like, I mean, we were all over the place because we were the thing.
• 37:28
  We were, we were helping agents, we were getting agents, giving agents the ability to scale in ways they hadn't scaled before.
• 37:34
  We had all kinds of case studies, and um and I loved it, man.
• 37:38
  My job was to research what was going on, figuring out ways of taking those new methods, new tools, new ideas, applying them to the independent insurance industry, and then and then teaching them like and got paid pretty well for it, got to travel the country a little bit, got to meet a lot of great people.
• 37:52
  Like, I love that job.
• 37:54
  What happens next?
• 37:55
  What do you do?
• 37:56
  Joined Bold Penguin.
• 37:57
  So I took the I took the chief marketing officer role at Bold Penguin.
• 38:01
  Um, Bold Penguin wasn't a great cultural fit, but um, it was a good experience.
• 38:07
  And unfortunately, I had to leave that job uh not for any other reason than I had a family member get terminally ill.
• 38:13
  And that job was a three-week a month travel job, and I just couldn't be on the road anymore.
• 38:18
  Uh, unfortunately, my my ex-wife's uh brother, um, brother-in-law, who had been part of the business, he got an incredibly rare illness and it was kind of horrible.
• 38:28
  But um uh she basically said to me, like, I have to take over a larger role because she worked in the agency too.
• 38:33
  I have to take over a larger role in the agency.
• 38:35
  Like, I can't have you on the road all the time.
• 38:37
  So after about a year of Bull Penguin, I had to put in uh my two weeks there, which is tough because it was about 18 months before they sold for$650.
• 38:48
  Um so I took a job as the CEO of a local fitness franchise.
• 38:55
  It was a seven location fitness franchise.
• 38:57
  I had worked there for five years when the uh when the you know, I gotten to know everyone really well.
• 39:03
  It was a really cool workout.
• 39:04
  I really liked it.
• 39:04
  It was like this cool kind of strength hit class.
• 39:08
  So it kind of mixed, you know, it was strength hit class, kind of like uh F-45, a little less than F than CrossFit, but um a little more than like an F-45.
• 39:18
  If you've seen any of those um workouts, okay.
• 39:20
  Very cool.
• 39:21
  Loved it, had been working out there for a long time.
• 39:23
  And when the guy heard, the CEO came to me and said, Hey, look, like I'm a gym guy, you're a business guy, like the business is kind of stagnated.
• 39:29
  I really want to work on making the workouts and the gym experience better.
• 39:32
  I need someone to grow the business.
• 39:34
  And I was like, I love fitness, I love working out.
• 39:38
  If I knock Albany is not a bastion of insurance innovation, so there wasn't really a lot of opportunities for me here.
• 39:44
  Um, so this seemed like a good thing, right?
• 39:47
  Uh, I did it, I moved over.
• 39:50
  It was fantastic for 10 months until I got fired from that job, too.
• 39:55
  Um point do you realize you're unemployable?
• 40:00
  Like we know that we're unemployable.
• 40:03
  This is the minute.
• 40:04
  This is this is the moment.
• 40:05
  So okay, so let me explain.
• 40:06
  Good job.
• 40:07
  You got it.
• 40:07
  We're following that.
• 40:08
  Yeah, so I so I joined this fitness business and um great product, great people.
• 40:16
  They have two, they've been stuck at around 2,000 members for about a year.
• 40:19
  That was that was his pain.
• 40:21
  He's like, We got the 2,000 members, we're really struggling to get past.
• 40:24
  In 10 months, I put another 1,000 members on.
• 40:26
  This was like shooting fish in a barrel.
• 40:27
  After having marketed insurance, marketing fitness is like selling candy to a baby.
• 40:33
  Like, well, I just take pictures of hot young women and men and post them on social media and 45-year-old men and women who haven't taken care of themselves in a long time show up and pay money.
• 40:44
  Like, this is amazing.
• 40:45
  Like, let's go.
• 40:46
  Um, all I did do was like put some chirpy chick on an Instagram story, and we were selling subscriptions.
• 40:52
  Um so, like, so we're doing so well that so every morning at 8:30, this is October 6th of 2020, um 2019, sorry, right before zombie apocalypse.
• 41:05
  Um uh I'm sitting there and every Monday morning at 8:30, I had this standing meeting with the CEO.
• 41:11
  So, or with the founder.
• 41:13
  I'm the CEO.
• 41:14
  So he I'm sitting there, I mean, I'm kind of dressed like I am right now.
• 41:17
  I got Lululemon.
• 41:19
  It was a great job.
• 41:20
  Literally, I showed up in a track suit, did like some business and marketing stuff, which was pretty easy.
• 41:26
  And then I got to work out every day with the members.
• 41:29
  So I'm like super fit.
• 41:30
  I mean, just sexy as hell, feeling good, making money.
• 41:35
  Business is good.
• 41:35
  I'm surrounded by all these high-energy young people.
• 41:38
  I'm like, let's go.
• 41:39
  Like it was great.
• 41:40
  And um, so I'm sitting there, you know, and I could see out the conference room window into the parking lot, and he pulls up and he gets out in a suit with his lawyer.
• 41:50
  And I was like, there's a chance he's coming from another meeting, maybe.
• 41:58
  So no, they walk in, sit down, he leans forward, he goes, um, he goes, You've hit or surpassed every goal you've had for us.
• 42:11
  We appreciate your effort.
• 42:13
  Unfortunately, you've made the business so profitable that I don't want to expand anymore, and you're my largest expense.
• 42:22
  You get six months' severance, have a nice day.
• 42:24
  This will be the last thing I ever say to you.
• 42:26
  The attorney pushed the piece of paper across the desk and said, Have a nice day.
• 42:32
  So you sign the paper, walk down, you're you're like, I can't have a job.
• 42:39
  I I I'm too good.
• 42:40
  This is it.
• 42:41
  That's right.
• 42:41
  I need to figure some other shit out.
• 42:43
  That's right.
• 42:44
  So I walk from so that that meeting lasted six minutes.
• 42:47
  It's 8 36.
• 42:48
  I remember looking at my phone.
• 42:49
  I'm walking through the parking lot to my truck, and I'm like, it's time.
• 42:55
  Like, stop being a scared little bitch.
• 42:58
  Like, it's time.
• 42:58
  Like it's time for you to go do your thing.
• 43:00
  Like, I've been doing these like side hustle entrepreneurial things my entire life.
• 43:04
  Like, it's time to make this what you do, and it's time to go.
• 43:08
  And um I came up with the name Rogue Risk, mostly because I like alliterations.
• 43:14
  I wanted something different.
• 43:15
  I didn't want to put my last name on the business like every other egotistical insurance agent.
• 43:20
  Um, the world doesn't need another last name insurance group.
• 43:24
  Um, and the URL was available.
• 43:27
  So I named it Rogue Risk.
• 43:30
  I took my notes from the 10,000 plus conversations that I had had with, I mean, literally, I'm talking to, you know, the head of all personal lines and commercial lines of travelers all the way down to the brand new startup agency in southern Alabama who's trying to figure out coastal risk.
• 43:45
  Like I've had every conversation that you could possibly have in this industry.
• 43:49
  I've talked to every type of technologist, MGA, wholesaler.
• 43:53
  I know all of these businesses in and out.
• 43:55
  I've been in almost every carrier in the country in probably the top 100 carrier.
• 44:00
  Barriers.
• 44:00
  Like, and I took all that and I boiled it down to what I believed was the perfect agency for the moment, which was I wanted to sit slightly above the small business that your kind of main street agent falls into and below the 5,000 revenue accounts that the big guys, you know, won't pay their people on.
• 44:23
  And I said, I can deliver just as much value digitally as these agents, because all everyone is still trying to do in-person meetings.
• 44:30
  Now I didn't know COVID was coming, but so I set my business up remote native, digital native from the rip, right?
• 44:37
  And so I launched my business March 9th of 2020, seven days before quote mote shuts down New York State.
• 44:45
  And it was brutal for about three months because I'm just watching money, you know, light on fire.
• 44:49
  But what I was doing during that time was building my marketing assets.
• 44:53
  So I literally re-ran my entire video playbook that I did before and just was cranking out YouTube videos.
• 45:00
  And um, we wrote our first policy in July, we wrote our third policy in August.
• 45:05
  And uh in 2021, we were the fastest small, we were the fastest growing small commercial agency in the entire country.
• 45:13
  Um in 2022, uh April 1st of 2022, uh I sold that business to SIA.
• 45:20
  Um and I'm not sure what I'm allowed to say, but it wasn't my favorite experience until I left in November of 2023.
• 45:35
  I I I have a question.
• 45:37
  Did you take out like a video and send a big fuck you to like the gym, the father?
• 45:43
  No, no, and no, no, because like he's not he's not he's not spiteful like you, Stan.
• 45:48
  Yeah, well, no, no.
• 45:49
  I'm spiteful to some people.
• 45:51
  I absolutely have a list.
• 45:52
  Jim's just not on it.
• 45:53
  Um, you know, my my my ex-father-in-law has never been anything but good to me.
• 45:57
  Like he he his you know, our friction was just was just philosophical.
• 46:03
  It was never, you know, he he always only wanted me to be successful.
• 46:06
  He just didn't think I could be successful in the way that I was going about it.
• 46:10
  Like in his mind, he was looking out for me.
• 46:12
  There are people that have absolutely done nefarious shit to me, and there's a list.
• 46:14
  And if I have a chance to shove my fist up their whatever, I'm going to do it.
• 46:18
  They are marked for death.
• 46:21
  I will 100% apologize to St.
• 46:23
  Peter for any actions that I take against those people.
• 46:26
  But if I have ever had a chance to press the whammy button and have them like, you know, fall off the map, I I would eat their lunch in a heartbeat.
• 46:35
  Like there are people that deserve it.
• 46:37
  And um, and not just because of the shit they've done to me.
• 46:40
  So uh, but but yeah, so so that was tough.
• 46:43
  I I should have never sold the business.
• 46:45
  Um, that's a big mistake.
• 46:47
  I didn't really have a lot of options.
• 46:49
  Um in December of 2021, my then wife, now ex-wife, kind of decided she wasn't living her best life and it was my fault and uh just wanted to be done.
• 47:05
  And I had told her the deal that I made to her when I launched Rogue Risk was if you give me three years of not taking a salary, I'll give you an eight-figure exit and eight.
• 47:13
  That was our that was our deal.
• 47:14
  And we were a year and a half into that deal.
• 47:16
  And she made enough money through her job that, you know, we were fine.
• 47:19
  And um, we were on pace.
• 47:21
  We were cranking, cranking.
• 47:23
  I mean, we're doing 20 to 25 inbound leads a day just from YouTube with 80% of those qualified.
• 47:30
  And um, while most people hire me for marketing, um, my actual genius is in sales strategy.
• 47:35
  And we were closing qualified leads at a north of 80% clip.
• 47:38
  I mean, that's how we grew so fast.
• 47:40
  It wasn't our inbound lead traffic.
• 47:41
  It was the fact that I had figured out an inbound lead sales structure that allowed uh uh CSRs.
• 47:47
  So I hired CSRs because producers are chest thumping egotistical maniacs, um, which makes them very good at cold calling, but horrible at at problem solving.
• 47:57
  And um, and we were just cranking.
• 48:00
  I mean, we were right in tons of business.
• 48:02
  And uh uh unfortunately, I had built the business in a way that I couldn't extract any income.
• 48:08
  So when she kind of flipped out and decided that she didn't want to be in the marriage anymore, there was no way for me to take an income.
• 48:16
  And I had put all of my resources into starting the agency, so I didn't really have anything to draw from.
• 48:20
  So my only option was um was either to raise money or sell.
• 48:26
  The problem with raising money is if I raised money at that time, I would either have to give away too much of my business in exchange for an amount of uh investment capital that I could actually pay myself for, or I would essentially be nuking the investment on my own income if I took the amount that I would want.
• 48:43
  So selling the business really became the only option.
• 48:46
  And um when SIA, you know, when when SIA decided that they were willing to buy, um I thought it was a match made in heaven.
• 48:58
  And it seemed like, you know, all things considered, again, I have to play with what's on reality, right?
• 49:02
  I could have, it would have been fun to imagine a fantasy land where what was happening wasn't happening, but I had to play the game that was happening.
• 49:09
  The game in front of me was I didn't have an income, I didn't have a savings, I was my wife was leaving me.
• 49:15
  Uh, I didn't know where I was gonna live.
• 49:17
  I had a business that was doing very, very well, and I had to make something happen.
• 49:22
  So um on my way to pitch SIA, she called me to tell me that she wanted to break up as I was driving to the meeting to pitch SIA on investment.
• 49:32
  So just to give you clarity on one more dick kick that I've gotten in my life.
• 49:37
  Um but so as I'm driving down the mass pike, because I live in Albany, New York, and SIA is headquartered in Ham, New Hampshire.
• 49:45
  I pull off the mass pike into a into a rest stop and I pop up my laptop and throw on my hotspot, and in real time, I add three new slides.
• 49:55
  So there was the whole point of the meeting.
• 49:58
  I had 17 executives, they were going to invest like between a million and a half and two million.
• 50:02
  That's what I was pitching them.
• 50:04
  And I added three slides where, hey, what if instead of investing, you bought me?
• 50:09
  And then I made the investment kind of sound not awesome and the buying me sound awesome.
• 50:14
  And um, and I the rest of the way, I kind of game planned how I would position that, and then I showed up and, you know, did my thing, got them to buy me.
• 50:23
  So that's how I survived that.
• 50:25
  On this, on April 1st of 2022, I divorced my wife at 10 30 a.m.
• 50:31
  I signed the lease on my new apartment at noon, and I sold Rogue Risk at 2 30 in the afternoon.
• 50:36
  It's a busy day.
• 50:37
  It's a busy day.
• 50:38
  That's a good day to me.
• 50:40
  I mean, yeah.
• 50:42
  If if the if if selling Rogue Risk had worked out, it would have been an amazing day.
• 50:48
  Um, and unfortunately is bittersweet at this point because I would still be running that business.
• 50:52
  And with AI, oh my God, we'd be printing money.
• 50:55
  This I don't understand, like, this is the easiest time ever.
• 51:00
  If you have an if you have an established, I'm not gonna say to start an agency because starting an agency is very, very difficult.
• 51:06
  Um, but if you have even a remotely established agency, logarithmic growth is at your fingertips right now.
• 51:15
  I mean, it is just like this, like I couldn't imagine, I couldn't imagine still having rogue wrists today, how much money we'd be making.
• 51:21
  It's just so easy.
• 51:23
  I mean, it's just so easy.
• 51:25
  So, talking about AI, you have a new venture that you've been working on.
• 51:29
  Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
• 51:31
  The segue.
• 51:32
  You heard that segment.
• 51:33
  We're professionals here.
• 51:34
  We go, you met AI, we go to the AI.
• 51:36
  Yeah, yeah.
• 51:37
  You're talking about which which which one?
• 51:40
  Link Linkora, what are you talking about?
• 51:41
  I was talking about Linkora, but if you have other things.
• 51:44
  Yeah, Linkora.
• 51:44
  Good, good, good.
• 51:45
  Okay.
• 51:46
  Sorry, I didn't I have the AI part.
• 51:48
  Um, yeah, so Linkora is um probably my biggest uh uh uh company that I'm working with right now.
• 51:55
  I have some smaller coaching and consulting clients that I work with, but um what I loved about Linkora was there's they're solving a problem that I thought would allow both agencies and carriers to operate.
• 52:12
  Um so so if we want to leverage AI, you need to have good data, right?
• 52:16
  So I saw AI coming, AI is coming, we know it's coming.
• 52:18
  But if you don't have the data behind the scenes, the intelligence of AI doesn't matter.
• 52:24
  So one of the early problems.
• 52:26
  So I started with LinkCorus is a board member, right?
• 52:28
  So I've I'm technically I'm a board member that works operationally for them, but I'm a board member.
• 52:34
  And I saw, okay, AI is coming, but the data that we use in the insurance industry is crap.
• 52:41
  And that's not necessarily anybody in the insurance industry's particular fault, just data's really difficult.
• 52:47
  And what Lincora was doing was solving that data piece because uh by, you know, they built some proprietors, there's uh some proprietary algorithms and all this AI stuff, which essentially allows them to create um a seventh and eighth digit to NACE.
• 53:03
  So their bread and butter is they can see beyond six-digit NACE.
• 53:07
  So what that looks like is um landscaper who also does tree service, right?
• 53:12
  So with name of name of business and address, you don't need to go to their Facebook page, you don't need to troll through their website.
• 53:19
  With name of business and address, we can tell you every product and service they offer, as well as every relevant uh associated insurance risk keyword to them.
• 53:28
  And what that information allows you to do uh from a carrier perspective is not have any nuclear bombs sitting in your book of business and triage accounts at the front door instead of the back door.
• 53:39
  So essentially, um we found we were we did a test case uh with a with a uh A tier carrier.
• 53:47
  Um they sent us a bunch of everyone ever sends us their most challenging shit because they want to trick us up, right?
• 53:51
  Which is the way it should be.
• 53:52
  That's not a knock.
• 53:53
  And they sent us this one, which was a coffee bar, and it had been submitted to them as a coffee bar.
• 53:59
  And they originally wrote it as a$1,200 Bop coffee bar.
• 54:04
  Except on on um on renewal, they caught that they actually had a full service dining experience.
• 54:11
  So now they're a full service restaurant, right?
• 54:13
  Except what they had missed until a year after that, uh, and they only they only they only found it was because there was a claim, was that they actually had a 2 a.m.
• 54:24
  DJ booty bang in on Saturdays, where so now it's an ENS account, right?
• 54:30
  So now they they it was originally put on their books as as a coffee bar, right?
• 54:35
  But it wasn't until they actually had a claim, which thankfully wasn't large, but uh large enough for them to figure this out.
• 54:40
  This shouldn't even been on their books in the in the beginning.
• 54:42
  And if it was on their books, they should be getting about 10 times the premium that they're getting for this account.
• 54:47
  So what so they knew they had this, they had this, it had this word attached to it, and they hit it with, hit us with it, and we picked it up right off the rip.
• 54:55
  Live music, dance floor, you know, et cetera.
• 54:58
  Uh, they did not post anywhere that they were open until 2 a.m.
• 55:01
  because they knew uh that that would, you know, I mean, so we caught all that stuff.
• 55:05
  And um I was just enamored by that technology.
• 55:08
  Now they have, I think, 1,700 data points that they track on an ongoing 90-day basis.
• 55:14
  So uh our customers come to us because um they not only get relevant data in this moment, but every 90 days they get a refresh on that data.
• 55:24
  So you can see you get a time slice, not just here's what it looks like today, right?
• 55:30
  It's every 90 days you have a new time slice of information and you can track, hey, did they add another location?
• 55:36
  Has their revenue gone up?
• 55:37
  Uh, have they added a new product and service?
• 55:40
  You know, have they expanded their, you know, their square footage, whatever.
• 55:44
  So um uh there's there's really no one else in the game that handles data and that method.
• 55:49
  And you know, that's why that's where we're at right now.
• 55:53
  So what's next for Ryan?
• 55:56
  Where do you where do you see yourself in 10 years?
• 56:00
  Um so I just got uh I just signed my first uh traditionally published deal with uh Simon and Schuster imprint called Bembella Books.
• 56:09
  I'm very excited about that.
• 56:11
  Uh the book's gonna be titled Easy Mode, um, how to find how to find your edge, build your life around it, and remove everything else.
• 56:17
  And it is easy mode is a commercialized version of the methodology that I use to grow rogue risk.
• 56:23
  So I believe in something called a human optimized business model, which is a mouthful, uh, non, not very marketable.
• 56:32
  Need to come up with something more markable than that.
• 56:34
  But uh how I how I was able to grow rogue as fast as I was was I did not, I wasn't a producer.
• 56:44
  So I firmly believe uh agency principals either need to be agency owners or producers.
• 56:48
  You can't be both.
• 56:49
  The ones that are both are either stressed out or their business doesn't grow as fast as it should, or all their people are miserable.
• 56:54
  So you have to choose one lane.
• 56:55
  I'm not a I could care less about selling stuff.
• 56:58
  I care about growing the business.
• 56:59
  So I took the role of agency owner and I made it my job to um kind of execute this, this, this idea of a human optimized business model, which came off a stat that I found in 2015, where the average CSR from notification of task to completion of task takes 20 minutes on average.
• 57:19
  There's some that are way quicker, there's some that are way longer on average.
• 57:21
  It's about 20 minutes.
• 57:23
  Of those 20 minutes, five of those minutes are spent talking to the uh customer or prospect, and 15 of those minutes are spent transacting whatever they need to do.
• 57:34
  And I was like, I want to flip that on its head.
• 57:36
  I want to create automation and outsourcing and systems and frameworks so that my people can spend 15 minutes on the phone with the prospect or customer and only spend five minutes actually doing the transactional work on the back end.
• 57:51
  So humans are better than than machines at three things building relationships, solving problems, and selling shit.
• 57:56
  I want, I, every 90 or yeah, once a quarter, every nine days, uh, I would have my team audit their time every 15 minutes.
• 58:04
  And what we would find is where are you spending time on no value transactional tasks?
• 58:10
  Is it double input into this system?
• 58:12
  And we would cut carriers because their portals would not allow us to rapidly copy, paste, and fill out the portal.
• 58:18
  Like carriers, I mean, again, I'm not the average agent, so they don't give a shit about this.
• 58:22
  But like we we stopped doing business with carriers because their portals were so bad.
• 58:26
  Not because we didn't like the carriers.
• 58:28
  In some cases, I loved the carriers.
• 58:30
  Great product, great, great pricing.
• 58:32
  But if you could, if you took too much of my people's time, then it wasn't worth it to me.
• 58:37
  So we did everything that I did every day was about finding these little no-value transactional tasks and removing them from my people's daily jobs so that they could either be building relationships, essentially taking calls, solving those problems, figuring out what the person need and putting a package together, and then selling them that package.
• 58:56
  If you were doing anything other than those tasks, I wanted to know and I wanted to figure out if we could outsource it or automate it.
• 59:02
  And now I would AI the shit out of it.
• 59:04
  So, like, you know, like it's just insane to me that we just go, well, you know, this shitty piece of technology that's been shoved down our throat by the insurance industry, it's just what everyone uses, you know?
• 59:17
  And it's like, no, I used now search, now momentum, and agency Zoom.
• 59:22
  Why?
• 59:23
  Because they're cheap and they work, right?
• 59:25
  I love when people bang on what Libor and stuff have going on at Momentum.
• 59:30
  I think those guys are pushing the envelope and doing a great job.
• 59:33
  I put$500,000 in revenue in less than two years uh using now searts, which is now called Momentum and Agency Zoom.
• 59:42
  You don't need fancy products, you need products that work.
• 59:44
  You don't need fancy products, you need products that that are easy to train your team.
• 59:48
  If it took more than one day to train my team on, the technology did not enter my organization, did not enter it, right?
• 59:55
  Well, that was until we got bought, and then we got all kinds of nonsensical professional products shoved down our throat, which costs exponentially more.
• 1:00:02
  And I'm like, oh my God, this is how these guys make money because you've convinced an entire class that somehow Momentum or Nowserts is a not professional AMS, and one of these other ones that you have to pay 10 times more that is a professional.
• 1:00:19
  I, you know, to me, I just don't have the ego to the product.
• 1:00:22
  I don't care what the product is.
• 1:00:24
  I want something that is gonna work, is cheap, and is gonna get my people doing the things that they do best.
• 1:00:29
  If it takes you a long time to train on the product, the product is probably not worth having.
• 1:00:34
  Because now you have all that, you've trained all that time training, and then they're gonna constantly mess stuff, they're gonna constantly mess up stuff.
• 1:00:40
  You're gonna have to train them again, again, and again, and you're wasting time, right?
• 1:00:44
  The goal of a business is to grow.
• 1:00:46
  So you need your people in growth-focused positions as often as possible.
• 1:00:49
  So, long story short, long story very long, because I'm just you guys caught me and I'm my mouth is working today.
• 1:00:55
  Uh, I think it took me a little while to get going at the beginning, but now I'm out over my skin.
• 1:01:00
  Um, to answer your actual question, 10 years from now, what I would love to be doing is helping organizations and individuals implement this idea of easy mode into their lives and businesses, because I truly believe it.
• 1:01:13
  It's not just an unlock for growth, it's an unlock for satisfaction in your work.
• 1:01:18
  The reason that I think so many people are unsatisfied by what they do every day is because they're they're doing things that actually don't have value.
• 1:01:26
  And the majority of their job is just stamp TPS reports slide across desk.
• 1:01:31
  But if you're interacting with a human in your easy mode, right, it doesn't matter how hard the work is.
• 1:01:37
  I'm not saying easy mode doesn't mean easy work.
• 1:01:39
  Easy mode, it means what is the thing that you do that looks like cheating to everybody else?
• 1:01:45
  For some people, that's you're the you're the uh a customer rep who can take the call from the angry, belligerent dude who and and calm him down and get him back on your side and get his problem taken care of.
• 1:01:58
  And he go, he hangs up the phone feeling good, right?
• 1:02:00
  That's your easy mode.
• 1:02:01
  That would be horrible to me, right?
• 1:02:03
  For other people, it's cold calling.
• 1:02:04
  For other people, it's digital marketing.
• 1:02:06
  For other people, it's technology shit, right?
• 1:02:08
  If you can get your people and yourself into your easy mode as often as possible, you're sad it's not just that growth happens, but your satisfaction in your work increases as well.
• 1:02:22
  Well, Ryan, you told us everything today.
• 1:02:26
  Uh and you did a great job explaining it.
• 1:02:29
  But kudos to you, man.
• 1:02:31
  You're you're you're doing it your way.
• 1:02:32
  You're you're following your own rules.
• 1:02:34
  You're not, you know, you're saying fuck you to the band, which I I'm I'm completely okay with.
• 1:02:40
  Uh and yeah, excited to see what you continue to build.
• 1:02:45
  Where can people find you?
• 1:02:47
  How do you want them to contact you?
• 1:02:49
  Do you want them to contact you?
• 1:02:51
  Yeah.
• 1:02:51
  Um, if you're interested in learning more about easy mode and and what I do there, just go to RyanHanley.com, um, contact form.
• 1:02:58
  That's where all the uh podcasts and stuff are.
• 1:03:01
  Uh LinkedIn and Instagram are probably the two places that I'm the most active.
• 1:03:05
  Um if you want me to see me be a belligerent conservative, follow me on X.
• 1:03:10
  Um otherwise, uh, I just appreciate the hell out of you guys, the opportunity.
• 1:03:16
  And, you know, I think, you know, I one thing I just want to push back on for a second is I'm not anti-large corporation or or like quote unquote the man, right?
• 1:03:27
  I I'm not intrinsically.
• 1:03:29
  I would love it, and there are organizations.
• 1:03:32
  Yeah, no, I well, I think that I think there are organizations and I think there are people who run large corporations that are fantastic and phenomenal, and the way they grow those businesses are exactly the way it should be done.
• 1:03:44
  I just refuse to tolerate I refuse to tolerate bureaucracy as a growth strategy.
• 1:03:55
  Which which which makes sense.
• 1:03:56
  I mean, look, you what you're saying makes a lot of sense, right?
• 1:03:59
  Like, and and I think that's the beauty of this world.
• 1:04:02
  Like everybody everybody could do it their way.
• 1:04:06
  You you obviously prove your way works, right?
• 1:04:09
  And there's people that are doing it their way with works, and I I I think that's also okay.
• 1:04:14
  Yeah, I completely I completely agree.
• 1:04:16
  Completely agree.
• 1:04:17
  That's that's uh and and that's listen, you know, we're we're we're we're in, you know, in this business, and you know, as not an insurance native, I'm looking at it and I'm like, this is crazy to me how 95.7% of the people run their companies and what they're doing, and there's a thousand different better ways of doing it.
• 1:04:37
  But with that being said, a lot of them are super successful and they build real businesses and they make real money and and and it works for them.
• 1:04:44
  Is there a better way of doing it?
• 1:04:46
  100,000 percent, right?
• 1:04:49
  And I think I think I agree with you also, insurance is late to adopt.
• 1:04:54
  But I I do think it's getting a little better.
• 1:04:57
  I mean, it it it is getting a little better, and it's probably gonna continue to better and continue to innovate.
• 1:05:02
  I think I think you know, younger people are coming into the space, they they want to utilize technology, they want to grow.
• 1:05:10
  And I think that's you know, like when we talk to clients and we're like like what are your goals, right?
• 1:05:15
  If they don't want to grow, if they're not looking to build, we're probably not gonna be able to help them, right?
• 1:05:21
  Like if they're just looking for somebody to do a task, there's you know, 50 other VA companies that could help them do it.
• 1:05:27
  If they're looking for somebody that's gonna help them grow, then then I think we are the right solution for them.
• 1:05:32
  So I I think it just depends on I love it.
• 1:05:35
  I I it's the beauty of the industry, and um, I think we finally hit a point where we have technology, truly talented technologists coming into our industry who've also had some sort of insurance exposure.
• 1:05:47
  And I think that's why we're seeing these leaps in technologies.
• 1:05:50
  Before you were either a tech with no insurance or insurance with no tech.
• 1:05:54
  And I think we're now we're we're into this deep enough where we're starting to see, you know, individuals who have a little bit of both coming in.
• 1:06:01
  And I think that's why we're seeing this rapid kind of escalation in in technology adoption, which I love and I'm here for it.
• 1:06:08
  And I hope uh I hope it continues to push the industry forward.
• 1:06:11
  But uh, I appreciate you guys.
• 1:06:12
  I appreciate you tolerating my manic uh uh uh process here.
• 1:06:17
  We love it.
• 1:06:17
  We love it.
• 1:06:18
  We enjoyed it.
• 1:06:18
  We we have the good, the bad, and the ugly.
• 1:06:20
  And that's how that's how it should be the vulnerability.
• 1:06:24
  I guys, I this is the last thing I'll say to anyone who's listening who's made it this far into this fucking podcast.
• 1:06:30
  Like, like, like I don't advocate for my way.
• 1:06:37
  Like, please, I'm I share this journey to say, like, figure out what works for you and your pain tolerance.
• 1:06:44
  I I have felt a lot of pain, and a lot of it is self-inflicted, and I am completely reasonable in that, but like you can't do anything worthwhile without pain.
• 1:06:53
  So if you're unwilling to take on pain, I mean just look at you know, look at you guys.
• 1:06:57
  I mean, I know what it takes to grow businesses.
• 1:06:59
  I mean, you guys know as much as I do.
• 1:07:00
  So, like, if you're willing to take that pain and you have a good idea, just fucking go for it.
• 1:07:07
  Like it's worth it.
• 1:07:08
  Like it's just it's worth it to try.
• 1:07:10
  It is so worth it to try.
• 1:07:12
  And you may just get dashed across the rocks, bloody and beaten, and have to pick yourself up and walk back into a corporate job.
• 1:07:18
  But do it anyways, like freaking try it, like it's just worth it.
• 1:07:23
  We're gonna leave it on that note.
• 1:07:25
  That was the highlight of that.
• 1:07:27
  Let's go, Ryan.
• 1:07:27
  You guys enjoy check out Ryan, hit the subscribe button.
• 1:07:31
  We'll see you guys again next week.
• 1:07:33
  Thanks, everybody.
• 1:07:33
  Thanks, guys.