Office, Hybrid, or Fully Remote: Designing Your Agency Your Way

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to agency structure (and that's the point of an independent insurance agency). It’s not about what’s "normal," it's about what works for you and your carriers. We discuss the real role of physical space in an agency, from training and culture to trust and perception. Whether you're building from scratch or rethinking your current setup, this conversation helps you build a business model that aligns with your strengths, your market, and your goals 

Learn more at IntegraPartnerNetwork.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

This is IA Forward, your playbook for success as an independent insurance agent. Now here to help you not get out of the ballpark for your host, James Tatum, Tony Lead, Mike Basil, and Robbie Damore.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Welcome to IA Forward. Today's topic is super relevant because it is a question that I get all the time when I'm talking to prospective agents. And that is do I need to have a physical office?

SPEAKER_01 0:32

I'm going to be a minute because I just noticed Mike's props. And I you're probably going to have to, you're going to have to uh repeat the question because my every y'all is surrounding me with toilet paper. This is where we're at. This is where we're at. Nice.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Well, you know, if we're talking about physical location, we're going to start out talking about the most important part of having a physical location.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06

All right.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Tell him give us the update. Well, we have improved our TP situation in Huntington, Texas. Um, we have found septic safe, tushy friendly toilet paper. And um, I can't believe we're talking about this on the podcast, but here we are, and this is the the world we live in today. Um, but now if you visit us in our wonderful office here on Main Street in East Texas, then um, you know, and you gotta you gotta go. Well, then you're in good shape from now on in the TP arena.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

What this means is that I can now travel more lightly to our home office because I no longer have to bring my own roll of toilet paper with me to go to the bathroom, which is very exciting.

SPEAKER_03 2:05

So when you are deciding or have decided that you do need a physical location because you will occasionally have walk-ins or reps from carriers are going to come visit you, you know, plan accordingly. Give them something worthwhile in the restroom so that they're comfortable and they're happy to come visit you. You know, that's the bottom line.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Because I mean, I judge places based on the toilet paper they have in their restroom. I mean, like I judge restaurants by that, I will judge a clothing store by that. Because do they care about their customers' comfort? Do they care about their team members' comfort? Like, that's actually a thing.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Yeah, I mean, um, you know, I think I I think we've moved society is moved from what I grew up with. Like, I think that's the generational issue, right? The Gen X environment. So raised by boomers for the most part, um, and you know, Gen X business owners employing millennials, employing Gen Z. And like when I was a younger employee, um, like I guess things like the internet boom and things like um pool tables and foosball tables and ping pong tables and sort of fun things around the office, like it went through its phase, right? Like all of these huge corporate campuses, social media has been, you know, a big part of this viralness of some of these corporate campuses out there. And as a small business, like I never really experienced that from an employee standpoint. So it's a really difficult shift for me to just think about like where's the line with um office, physical location, like what where's the line with benefits of and need, right? Where does it fit? And then you kind of blend blend that and mix that all together with the fact that there's so many businesses, agencies that are for the most part virtual and nobody really works in an office in in a lot of cases. And so uh it's a really confusing area for me personally, because we do have physical space, we do have physical offices, and 90% of our people are located in those offices. Now, you two are not, but the majority of the people are, and so um there are things that come with that. There are there, there, there's toilet paper problem. Like there's just lots of different areas that you just don't think about when you are trying to build a business and have a place for people to come work.

SPEAKER_03 5:21

Tiny, you were right. You hit it, you hit the nail on the head a few minutes ago when you you judge places by that. Saturday, uh Sydney, my daughter, had a dance competition um in Rochester, which is a city about an hour from here. So she and my wife went up and I got there a little later. And I walked into the restroom when I first got there because it was an hour drive, you know, and uh the bathroom not particularly clean. You know, restroom had low-grade toilet paper, had the paper towel holder right there, empty with a roll of paper towels sitting underneath it, you know, off to a great start. So I knew what we were dealing with there. Then we go. I mean, this was a fiasco. I mean, so I go downstairs because someone told me, hey, you know, I heard you parked a couple blocks away. Go downstairs, get a parking pass, and you can park in the lot right here. So when you leave, you can just scoot out. I come down, I go down the stairs to the first floor. I'm starting to come around the corner. I see a line of like five or six people standing in line at the desk. I'm like, oh, here we go. Then I get all the way around, I see the three computers and zero people standing behind the three computers. Not good. Stood there for about 20, 25 minutes. Finally, someone comes out, talks to some people who were sitting down. Apparently, they were the ones that were first in line. So they're finally finished their conversation. It was not in English, so I don't know what the conversation exactly was, but I but I'll come back. So they leave, the next person in the line goes up. Then these two folks come back. Now it's higher volume Spanish. And I'm like, oh, all right. Now finally one of them starts speaking English. I found out that they were giving rooms away that were already occupied. Can you imagine? Can you imagine being on either side of that little fiasco?

SPEAKER_00 7:39

You're the Natchez Mississippi.

SPEAKER_03 7:42

You put the card up to the door, you hear it click, you start to open it, and all of a sudden, you know, you've got some hysterics on the other side.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

The Hampton Inn in Natchez, Mississippi. I've had it happen.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

I I've been on both sides of that. I've been on the receiving side of that in the room. Not fun. I've been on the walking in the room. Thank goodness it was the latch, right? The the security latch was was uh was was done. And that one when I was trying to walk in the room was around 11:30 at night. Not good. They were asleep, it wasn't good at all. And so um I've never heard of this happening before. Yeah, no, I've I've had it happen to me and I've done it to someone because the hotel gave me the wrong, gave me an occupied room or gave somebody else an occupied room. So scary stuff.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

Okay, so back to our agencies. And do we have to have uh do we have to have an office space, the old model, main street location, walk-in, signage, or do we transition to this new model of Zoom calls and remote CSRs and in the whole virtual agency thing? Are we losing something there? Um Shane, go for it.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

So I I think I think this is kind of preference um with one asterisk. And I think the asterisk is, you know, and again, mostly on the personal line side for for whatever reason, right? Maybe it's the the traditional exclusive agencies around the country. Um, you know, maybe it's the state farm, all state farmers effect. But most of your larger traditional national personal lines carriers want to see that you have an office location, right? They they have been through periods of time where you were going to have a virtual agency, but you were you were you weren't really serious, and you you you were kind of part-timing it, side hustling it. And one of the barriers to entry that a lot of these major national markets have put in play is your investment in an office space, right? You don't have to own it, you can rent it, lease it. Um you don't even have to, you can actually do it on a really small scale. You definitely do not have to have uh storefront retail space, right? You can have something that's in an office complex uh that really doesn't even have any consumer traffic at all. Um, there's ways to kind of minimize what you're doing. And, you know, you can set appointments to meet with that that rep, that carrier rep, um, and you can work from home the rest of the time, right? You can set the office up sort of as a um a way, right? Without to to to get the things done that need to be done to satisfy it. Or you can say, no, I'm not a work from home person. Um I am a um I'm a I'm gonna go to the office kind of kind of guy or gal. I'm I want my people with me at the office, et cetera, et cetera. Right. So that's really in the preference side of things. I also think the third option is you can go 100% virtual. However, what you have to understand is that there will be some carriers still today, post-pandemic, that are gonna not want to do business with you or not want to offer you a carrier appointment because you have no quote official place of business. Right. And so this is still a thing, and it is still out there, and um there are things like Lexus Nexus and uh being able to order the insured score reports that the carriers use in order to, you know, look at clue reports, claims activities, um, look at uh driving information, and those third-party facilities still require some type of physical space, business space that they can connect you with because that's where they are, right? Now, will this change in the future? Maybe, but I mean, we're pretty far out. I mean, you know, we got we're in a world of fast evolving AI, and we're still doing this in in our industry. And so I'm not ever going to jump out there and say, hey, you know, in a couple of years this will go away. It does not appear this is going away anytime soon. And so it kind of becomes a combination of personal preference, but also the realization that if you do go birth virtual, that there may be some carriers that don't want to do business with you.

SPEAKER_03 13:15

So, but if you're like talking about pure return on investment, what I think we're gonna say here is you know, the days of putting extra money into making sure you have a storefront that's between the supermarket and the car dealership, like that is not worthwhile. That is not a direction you need to head. There's walk-in traffic in terms of your client base is not a thing anymore.

unknown 13:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

I think we can say that for a standard preferred agency, which is usually the people that are talking with us, um, listening to us on the podcast. Um, I think that's different for um a non-standard agency. I think that walk-in traffic happens a little more there. Um, Shane, correct me if I'm wrong when it comes to that.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Um, what do you think about co-working office spaces? Which I love. I know that a lot of our agents, a lot of our new agents are using that co-working office space. Um, and I love those for networking because there are so many events that go on um at those co-working spaces. They have the happy hours, they have the the morning coffee, um uh coffee time, they have uh the networking opportunities where you trade business cards and talk with each other. And um, I believe that is the best, um, I guess the the best way right now of having that physical office space, but making it economical and actually making it work for you.

SPEAKER_03 15:02

They have high-end janitorial staffs as well, just add that in. Really good toilet paper.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Absolutely. I you know, I think the yes, I like the co-working space um as long as that co-working space can help you satisfy the office address requirement that is going to come running at you from certain carriers, again, Lexus Nexus, um you know, data management companies that rely on, you know, some specific things in order to identify you, right? And it's all under the label of fraud protection. Um, you know, it's really all about that when you get down to it, how to tie you to a location if there's a data integrity issue, all that, right? Because the insurance agency channel handles a lot of data, even though we forget that sometimes. We we handle a ton of data. And so I do love that for the same reasons, Tanya, that you're talking about. The the networking, the referral generations, uh, all of that is wonderful as long as you can solve for the legal side of things that are going to come at you from certain markets.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

Most co-working office spaces provide a receptionist for you that answers the phone with your business name, um, individual office space, shared office space, a conference room that you can use for any type of meeting. Um, and I really like um the the overall concept of that co-working space. And I haven't seen yet where there has been a challenge with a carrier not being at the home office. There's, you know, sometimes I miss things, but have we had any kind of challenges yet as far as new care, uh, as far as new partners go, Shane?

SPEAKER_01 17:10

Um, I not necessarily. I mean, yes, there have been uh occasional issues. Generally, it's because of something to do with um the co-working space. Like maybe it's not it's not a uh, you know, it's not a regis, it's not a uh um oh, what's the other really large uh up uh not upwork? Um anyway, there's another one that's really we work, we work. It's not it's like a local thing, and maybe they don't have the sophistication in their structure that kind of caused a problem. Um that that has been something, but again, that's a really small percentage uh of the time, the majority of the time. No, I haven't really seen the issue pop up because those major co-working organizations, they they got it down, they know what they're doing, they know how to deal with this. And so uh generally not a problem, hasn't been a problem. Uh, and and a lot of our uh scratch uh partner agents start in either some type of executive office suite um or some type of co-working space in the beginning.

SPEAKER_03 18:31

So if someone didn't go with that and they truly did do the entirely remote to start, what would their letterhead look like?

SPEAKER_01 18:40

Well, interestingly enough, you can get an address, right? Like without actually having an office. Um, you know, UPS mail stores around, uh, there's other places that you can actually get an address if you didn't want to quote, put your home address on your letterhead. Um, the other thing is uh, you know, while I get you and you and we're all on this call gonna say that, I just wonder if every agent today, depending on their age, are they gonna actually think about letterhead at all? Um, are they going to do business? But what are they gonna put on their business cards, right? So there's gotta something like anywhere you go, even if it's like I don't do business cards, I just do a QR code or I do a digital thing on my phone with an app. Like, yeah, but there's gotta be something tangible somewhere that says you're real, right? Because you're trying to prospect people and in a world of scam and deep fakes and AI and like you know, there's there's some there's some opportunities for authenticity around this.

SPEAKER_03 20:04

Now, what about is there a difference, I should say, when we're having this conversation around personal versus commercial? So personal lines, it's like, well, you know, people are are it's just it's their home, it's their auto. It maybe doesn't make that much of a difference. If I'm going to go solicit a business uh to get them to come and get their insurance through me, is a physical location a different story then.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

So, you know, our experience is most of commercial lines arena is prospecting in the field. Um nobody's ever coming to your place of business to buy insurance. The the business owner doesn't do that unless they themselves happen to be small virtual business owners. Like, I mean, I'll use the the I'll use our local East Texas small town. Um, yeah, the guy with that's the rock caller, dump truck guy, works out of his house on the kitchen table. That guy's probably coming into the office to do business. We're not going to him. Um your more established commercial accounts, your your middle market commercial accounts are mostly going to be places of business, and you're going to go solicit them, prospect them in their place of business. Even if you're doing, you know, uh electronic leads in some way, you're still ending up in their place of business at some point, is my experience. And so your office becomes less of a thing. And the carriers tend to be less political around that. They tend to be more flexible around your agency. Being virtual, the one place that you have to realize you're you're kind of uh working from a brand building standpoint is you may be working against a more established branded agency in your community who has the third or fourth generation real estate building office complex. And there's sort of this are you real? Are you professional? Et cetera, et cetera. I think it's worth it to be virtual in a commercialized focused space because how are you going? You're not going to compete on the real estate brand anyway. The office brand, you're never going to compete with that day one as a small agency because the third or fourth generation office that that's been remodeled a couple of times is always going to outdo you because you're crazy for spending that kind of money on office space just to compete on that peer-to-peer level. So I tend to say, hey, find another way, right? You know, if that's a holdup for somebody, well then bob and weave and find another way because you're not going to compete toe-to-toe with that.

SPEAKER_03 23:38

Yeah, I think that's right. You have to you have to realize where you're where you're slotted in. You know, we have some agencies in up in my area here that are, you know, the 40 to 50 employee agency that are in the larger glass buildings. That's you're just you're not going. If someone is looking for that as their insurance agent, you're not going to change their mind. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:05

I I was rolling through, uh headed to uh uh through Dallas the other day uh on a on a road trip, and uh an agency that I know that is in their maybe third generation um has um I think a floor or two of about a 20-story building uh in one of the Dallas suburbs, um, has their name, Monica Brand, on the top of that building. And um they're they're very strong, traditional independent agency, uh larger in nature, 40, 50, maybe even more than that, employees. Um I know the owner um pretty well, served on agency council, carrier councils with them. And like you're you can't compete with that starting out day one, like find another way. Like I was I just rung a bell. Like he doesn't own that building, he leases that building, but he leases enough of that building and pays for the right to put his signage, his brand at the top of that building for all of the North Central Expressway to see every day, right? So you've got a bob and weave there, you've got to figure out how to do something different. You're not gonna compete toe-to-toe with that.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

Now, when you say you can't compete toe-to-toe with that, you're talking about physical presence. You're not necessarily talking about relationship building. Can I make a sale? Can I can I do what I'm doing?

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Right. That that's right. Like, I don't believe what I'm saying is it does, it would never make financial sense, right? I mean, I'm stating the obvious. It would never make financial sense for you to rent two stories on the other side of the Central Expressway just to put a sign up there and put a little one-desk person in there and say, Welcome to such and such an associates, right? Um, I'm saying that's what I mean by toe-to-toe. Now, there's there's ways to compete well. Nimble movement. Um again, I don't know why I'm stuck on this boxing phrase of Bob and Weave today, but it's coming in, it's in my brain, right? Like, like there's other ways. So when I say toe-to-toe, I mean, you know, you don't need to get in a wrestling match. You you need to be David against Goliath. There's another way to do this, just don't look at it through that lens.

SPEAKER_03 26:49

Lean into the, you know, personal touch. You're always gonna work with me, you know, that relationship building. There, there's things you can do. Yes, there is a small segment of people who just want to have the the big, shiny building that makes them feel better for whatever reason. That's not your client, move on to the next one.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

You know, we have some agents in our group. I know some agents that take pride in their offices, even from the very beginning. They thought it was important, it was important to them that they had a really nice office space and they had that sign out front and they had the the beautiful setup inside, and that it was decorated well. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. If that's what you want to have, then absolutely you should do it. Um, it's kind of like, you know, do you wear tennis shoes from the Walmart? Or are you choosing to wear, you know, a$300 Nike something, something? They're both tennis shoes. They're both gonna get you where you need to go. One costs less than the other. One may have more um more features than another, but they're both gonna work, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:07

Yeah, I I got I have a a a mentor, older mentor uh at the time. Um, and you know, it's kind of one of those things where I was in my mid-20s. Um I I sort of a second generation agency owner with my dad, but he was a banker, so he wasn't really in the insurance space. So I'm almost first generation in that way, but anyway, uh kind of a weird, weird explanation. But I had another agency owner that I considered a mentor uh for a while. I I figured out after a few years that I didn't necessarily align with his thinking. And so I kind of decided, okay, maybe I need to go a different different path. You know, one of the things in in what Tanya's saying is real because this is kind of what I experienced. Like his thing was uh East Texas, uh, we have a lot of um, we have a lot of loggers, um, logging industry, timber industry. We have a lot of uh ranches, we have a lot of um really just oil and gas. I mean, there's a lot of industry in our area. And he grew up a little bit older than me, uh, I think he's technically a boomer. He grew up with this adage of you gotta look successful in order to be successful, right? Um, that is not me. Uh, if you know anything about the way I dress, sometimes uh my wife is like, you can't leave the house in that. You gotta put something else on. Not for this event, right? So sometimes that happens. I'm 50, 52 years old. That happens still. Um, so sometimes I'm uh my teenage boy comes out, right? My middle school boy comes out in me. And and I figured out early on I was not that guy. And number one, I couldn't afford the really expensive pickup that he was saying I needed to have because he always had that pickup. He lived in the country club, he he he he went in those circles, and it was never me. Like I could never really get to the place where I was comfortable with you gotta look good to be successful. But that exists, like that's that's not like in some places in the country, in some circles, there's truth to that. If that is who you are, own it. Like if you grew up in a country club and that's part of your market, own that. I'm good with that. But what I'm not good with is if you're kind of a country boy raised in the country like me, trying to fake your way into the country club, right? Because there's plenty of marketplace somewhere else for you to be authentic, especially today. And I think that centers right around this whole office or no office or what type of office question. I think that matters because at the end of the day, you got to be who you are, right? You can't be someone else.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

You know, what percentage there in Huntington um is walk-in versus call in now?

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Um, you know, it's it's a really small percentage. Uh, we're probably less than 20% walk-in on anything. A new policy, a new sale, a new client. Uh, that number goes down to less than five percent for commercial, by the way. So uh personal lines is a little more. What they have of that number, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:11

What percentage of that is people over the age of 65?

SPEAKER_01 32:14

To where I was going. So um the older population, the older clientele is going to be 80% of the 20%, right? And so um, when you get down to it, we are still, well, we're always going to be a main street business. We're a little bit different animal in that, you know, part of part of our um vision for our business is to be uh is to be a piece of pride for the community, right? Like um, you know, there's just like our our building on Main Street is the largest non-school, non-church building in our community, right? And we want to keep it nice and we want to keep it clean and we want to take care of it. And it's a sense of pride for uh the local community when you know people come and and so forth. People come and say, hey, you know, do I want my kids to come to school here? Small community, do I want to, do I want to plant roots here? Do I want to build or buy a home here? Um, part of that small community environment is is part of our business model on our retail side. So, but like the function of the office is not to be here for most of our customers to come see us. Um, it just doesn't happen that way. And some of the older customers, it's it's their way of coming by and being social, right? And that's part of it as well.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

I having a physical office location does create credibility. It does create trust. Um, like Shane said, that community involvement, um, especially during claims. To me, claims are one of those times we're having that walk-in reassurance, especially for that older demographic. But looking at it from a culture perspective, an internal culture perspective, you know, that's going to make onboarding for your team easier, being in that, in that space. There's there's learning by proximity. There's those questions that you ask at the water cooler that you don't necessarily get when you're on a Zoom call. There's a certain energy um that that's on a sales floor that you don't have when uh when everyone is is remote. And so my question is maybe is the office really for customers, or is it really for your team and your producers?

SPEAKER_03 34:50

Yeah, I think for me, like once you get out of solopreneur and you start talking about having a team, that is definitely when the conversation shifts. Um, because you are adding quite a bit to your own plate when you are the salesperson and you are now the trainer, and then maybe if you do this in a remote way, you're adding this third tier of now you're this worrier about is this person doing what I actually need them to do because I'm not sitting next to them holding their hand. And there is a lot of validity to that. If you can take the if you know it's your personality that you're gonna worry about that every single day, then you need to find yourself some office space.

unknown 35:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:41

There we're so just kind of by the numbers, real quick. There's 41 people in the integra organization, all in, right? All right. So two of those individuals are virtual assistants out of the Philippines, right? So obviously they can't be in the office. Um, and uh five additional people, uh, two of which are you guys, um are remote, fully 100% remote. Uh so that's seven. So now we're down to 34 people out of our 42 are located in an office, an office, a place of business that we have. Now we have a couple of different offices, so not everyone's in uh one single office today. My reasoning for that, like, okay, well, Shane, well, where do you fall? Like, you got both going on, right? I'm an office guy. Okay, so if if it was like everyone, if that was a possibility for our business, like I would have everyone in a single office today, um, which is a shift from some schools of thought from probably 15 years ago, go back about 15 years. Um, there was once a time why when some on our retail operation purchasing a book of business, you know, a couple hours away, um, where you needed to have a presence in that town, right? You needed to have a local proximity presence. Um, I don't know that that's correct today, uh, post-pandemic. And I think there's a lot of evidence that says that's not always necessary. You might have a little bit of leakage in the book of business, but an overwhelming majority, if especially your personal lines, uh, an overwhelming majority of your clients uh are going to stay with you if you take care of them, if you give them a good customer experience, regardless of where you're located. However, flip that forward. Um, I think for what we do, to be transparent and clear, uh, with our partner network side, there were situations that started out in introductory relationships. Both of you guys started out that way. I got to know both of you through uh actually the same person, ironically. That's kind of interesting and funny. Um, and you know, there are a couple of other situations um that were also uh through another individual. There is one remote, fully remote employee who used to be in the office, got married, moved with her husband to his job opportunity, and we did not want to lose her. And so she became remote, right? Um, and then we are just hiring uh a young lady that's gonna graduate in May that'll start with us full-time in August. It's a relationship that's been cultivated over the course of the last three to four years, and she's going to be fully remote, right? So there is a lot of trust, to Mike's point, that is built into our remote, fully remote, non-office-based team members. Um, that is not something we're just jumping up and down to do with just anyone, right? It's not like, hey, let's hire this person or let's hire this role. Let's put something out across the country, and you know what, they can be remote. We're not gonna do that. We're gonna hire locally first, come to the office first. That's that's our goal. That's always gonna be kind of our goal for full transparency. However, there are situations where I do not regret, and I'm actually very pleased with where we've landed with the individuals that are remote because they started through trusted relationships and trust was built over time.

SPEAKER_03 40:12

Well, also, you know, you have to be realistic about situation. So if Integra hires someone today remotely that doesn't work out, integra will be fine. If you are a solopreneur that has just decided to add your first employee, you have way more at stake. Absolutely. Great. So having that person next to you would probably be very, very helpful.

SPEAKER_00 40:43

I'm gonna take the devil's advocate on that. There are really some advantages, advantages of going fully virtual. Um, the rent savings, the marketing spend that you're able to get, even if you use half of that money for your marketing. And I and maybe not traditional marketing, but um just that in and of itself, the rent savings is huge for your business. Um, it does give you some staffing flexibility. You're able to hire outside the local talent pool. You are able to leverage relationships and connections that you have beyond, you know, a 30 mile, 20 mile, 10 mile radius, if you find the right person and the right person doesn't happen to be within driving distance to you. Um, you know, there there may be even be some multi-state growth opportunities there. Um, I think you're able to scale faster if you are not having to pay to pay the rent, to pay the lights, to pay all of those things. Um, I will give you a very practical tip. If you are starting an agency at home, use a suite B or a suite C or whatever suite you want to be. Because if you are just using your regular home address, if you decide, when you decide to open a location, it is very difficult to change the mailing address of your commercial mail to go to your new location. Where if you if you use a suite B, then it's very easy to forward that mail to a commercial location. So just a little tidbit there.

SPEAKER_01 42:38

Great, great tip. And in true independent agency fashion, um, I agree. I I love all of that perspective from Tanya completely. But I'm gonna play devil's advocate to her devil's advocate, right? Okay, which is gonna drive Mike crazy here. So um, okay, we I agree that cost savings is great. Lest we not forget that most, let's just call it all, independent agency owners, starting from scratch, are salespeople who are not good documentation people, whose policies and procedures are not on paper, on an electronic document. They're in your head. And what I want you to think about is what is the trade-off? What's what's good for you? You know, where do you fall in this? Because that's really what we want this to be. It's not like tell you what to do. It's like, hey, think about all of these points and then decide what works best for you. But are you going to need that person sitting beside you in an office? For a year so that all of these things that are stuck in your head come out of your head and get documented? Or are you going to be able to do that if someone is remote that you've hired, which is going to work for you? And again, I I'm not really against either. I'm just saying you have to think about this as an agency owner. And you have to be brutally honest with your own personality and your own weaknesses. And that's, I think, where Mike's risk factors coming from, right? Because it is a huge risk factor. You're hiring somebody and you're you're gonna spend this money, you're gonna spend all this money and you're hiring this person, and you know, letting people go when you fail isn't fun. That is not fun. So, you know, if you've never had to do that when you have to do that for the first time, you're not gonna sleep for a few nights.

SPEAKER_00 45:02

This is one of those places that AI really helps too. I mean, if if you have specific processes that you need someone to be able to reproduce, record yourself, upload it to Gemini, say create a process from this video, and that will help you do it. So there's ways to do this that we as normal salespeople would used to have to take hours and hours to sit down and figure out our process. We can do that much faster now. Um, so so there are answers to it, but like Shane said, you can't just give people stuff and say go do it and expect them to either do it your way or know how to do it at all. One of the things that that I will say, and this is a shameless self-promotion for the Integra Partner Network, is we know that every agency's answer to this question is different. I mean, we know that, right? I mean, that's the whole concept of being an independent agency is you get to design your own operating model and having a partner who can help you think strategically through that, how to build a virtual team, how to create a hybrid culture. If you want that main street presence, just helping you figure out your process for intentional growth. We spend a lot of time helping agents do that at the Integra Partner Network Network.

SPEAKER_01 46:31

That's that's what we Yeah, that that is 100% at our core. Um you know, we kind of look at that as uh the consultative part that's just embedded. Matter of fact, it's so embedded that our agent council sometimes tells us we've got to be more intentional about telling agents what we do for them behind the scenes or reminding them of you know how we help them get from point A to point B. And um, you know, that's really hard for us, right? It's really hard, you know, our conservative nature. Um, but that is our that is kind of part of who we are, is is the consultative nature of helping agents through various life stages. And and whether that's mostly business life stages, but sometimes sometimes that gets into personal life stages, you know, like hey, I've gotten phone calls from girl dads. Hey, can I ask you a personal question? I mean, you know, yeah, sure. Let's let's have at it, talk about it, whatever. And so um, you know, it's just part of of how it works, and I think that's part of that culture.

SPEAKER_03 47:39

Yeah, there's a reason that it's called the Integra Partner Network, right? Partner, not there's no dictating how you handle your business. That's right. And and that's because that's what everyone here truly believes.

SPEAKER_01 47:54

Yeah, we're not franchising. You don't have to go to McDonald's University, Hamburger University, learn how to do it exactly the way we do it, right? Um, we talk about best practices, we talk about guardrails. You go outside those rails, right? You don't have to stay on the tracks, but we talk to you about that. Like, that's how we approach life. That's how we approach building a business, building an agency is like, hey, these are sort of best practices from the most successful agencies in our partner network. And so um, that's natural for us to kind of do it that way, but we've also got agents that are like, yeah, you know, I got this vision for this other thing, and I'm gonna go do that. Um, one of our original partners, the Phoenix, uh in Phoenix Insurance, like those guys have always um, you know, kind of kind of walk their own walk from day one, and they are incredible partners to our to our network. And um, they they've got some unique things they do that isn't for everyone. Like it's not, it's not for everyone, uh, but it's perfect for them.

SPEAKER_00 49:07

Right. I'm gonna leave us today with this quote from Urban Meyer: Leadership is about creating an environment where people can perform at their best.

SPEAKER_01 49:18

Attitude to choice, make a great one.

SPEAKER_00 49:20

Bye, y'all.

SPEAKER_02 49:21

At the Integra Partner Network, we understand that carrier access is the key to your agency's success. That's why Integra offers direct access to top-rated personal and commercial carriers, ensuring your agency thrives in today's challenging market. And with our comprehensive resources, profit sharing, and bonus opportunities, technology and peer support, all of you are taking 100% of your books with no families to exit. Integra is ready to empower you and your agency to find sustained growth. Find your way to Integra. Visit IntegraParner Network.com today. That's integraparternetwork.com.