IA Forward
IA Forward is your playbook for success as an insurance agent.
Every week, Shane Tatum, Tonya Lied, and Mike Boesl tackle the real challenges insurance agents face, from growing a profitable book of business and building a stronger team to marketing, leadership, carrier relationships, industry changes, and the decisions that come with owning and running an agency.
No corporate talking points. No textbook advice. Just honest conversations, practical strategies, a few strong opinions, and lessons you can actually use in your agency.
Whether you’re building your first book, growing an established agency, or trying to figure out what’s next, IA Forward is about helping you think bigger, lead better, and build a business you actually want to own.
Learn more at www.integrapartnernetwork.com
IA Forward
The Hidden Cost of Chasing Everything
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Every week, agency owners are faced with another opportunity. A new product. A new carrier. A new technology. A new revenue stream. The question isn't whether you can pursue it, it's whether you should.
In this episode of IA Forward, the team explores why some opportunities build stronger agencies while others quietly steal your time, create unnecessary risk, and keep you from reaching the next level.
Learn more at IntegraPartnerNetwork.com.
This is IA Forward, your playbook for success as an independent insurance agent. Now, here to help you knock it out of the ballpark are your hosts, Shane Tatum, Tanya Leed, Mike Basil, and Robbie Javor.
SPEAKER_03Welcome to IA Forward. And today, Shane is going to be making an announcement that changes everything for the last four years.
SPEAKER_02I'm making an announcement.
SPEAKER_03So he has for four years been telling us don't dabble. Don't dabble. Don't dabble. I mean, like there are podcasts after podcasts. He probably mentions this in about 300 of our 309 podcasts at some point. But today, he has given you permission to dabble.
SPEAKER_02No, I'm not giving you permission to dabble. I'm telling you to be an informed dabbler if you must commit the sin of dabbling. That's what I'm going to do.
SPEAKER_03That's really not what you said initially. Initially, you said, I am changing my mind. I think it is important. You know, sometimes that, you know, it's good to dabble, but you just, I'm changing my perspective to it's okay to dabble as long as you're an informed dabbler. And I think that you can back me up on this. We were sitting at a table together.
SPEAKER_02We we have to look to decide and and really understand what the difference between dabbling and taking your your business, your agency off the rails, and research and development dabbling, or curious dabbling, or trying to figure out like what will help my business versus what will derail my business. And I you know, I guess in my brain, I've always thought that, but maybe I didn't clearly say that, or maybe I just was like black and white, don't dabble, don't dabble, don't dabble. Um but you have to understand that focus is where success comes from. That's just the reality. Every really good business had a beginning of focus. Like there's there's no successful businesses in the world, like General Electric, as the conglomerate that it became did not start out as a conglomerate. It started out as a very, very focused business. Independent agencies that you look out out look at out across the street or the you know the comparison environment that has, you know, personalized department, high net, high net worth department, commercial lines department, a bonding department, a life health benefits department. It didn't start there. It started with some focus. And the only way that they scaled to reach a level where they could then say, we're going to invest in other areas of our business, that was after the focus allowed them to reach a scale. And so I just make sure that we're we're thinking logical when you're hearing these words of informed dabbling, right? Like, you know, um life insurance. Robbie and I had this brief discussion before uh before we jumped on. Is life insurance dabbling? Why not? I don't think it's dabbling if you're doing it in the right way. If you're a property and casualty agent and you're informed, it's actually the fourth or fifth policy for that client, potentially, which is going to create stickiness. Now, does that mean you should run out and get a life license if you don't have a life license and you know change everything you're doing before you're ready to jump into that? If you if you didn't start there? No, that's not what that means. And but it also means if you're coming out of the exclusive agent system and you have a life insurance license and you have a life insurance background, why wouldn't you offer life insurance to every one of your auto home property and casualty customers? That's not dabbling to me.
SPEAKER_03I think that's being a responsible agent. Uh, speaking to the agents, the prospects, the people that are producers or exclusive agencies who right now are being forced by their district managers or by corporate to write life insurance, we're not saying this is something you have to do. What we're saying is if you decide to do it, know what you're doing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, just like just like any other type of dabbling. I mean, it's always focused on commercial, right? Just because it has the largest exposure, probably out of the additional products that you can offer it at Personal Alliance P and C. Um, you know, I I dabble in life insurance, but I'm an informed life insurance dabbler. You know, I mean, my primary focus, as we all know, is you know, uh over the South Central region and in recruiting, basically. And so from time to time, uh I I quote life insurance, but I have pretty extensive background in it. I came out of the captive channel. So people that don't know where I came from, I came from State Farm. And State Farm is to Tanya's point from earlier, it you know, the captive channels really kind of focus on it. So there's a bunch of training, and there's just a whole lot that go into that to where you when you come out of it and go into the independent world, you have lots of knowledge regarding that product and the different avenues that you could go, but it's probably not gonna be a problem of your focus, right? I mean, it's something that you're gonna offer from time to time, not regularly.
SPEAKER_02You know, I would I would kind of put this and frame this, just kind of going on that, and obviously commercial needs to get a lot of our attention here uh because we're mostly talking about personalized agents, personalized property and casualty agents, you know, coming into the independent agent system. But, you know, let's just stay with life insurance for a minute and say somebody walks in or you have a referral source for a very sophisticated wealth management strategy that's going to use life insurance as a funding mechanism. And and someone comes to you and says, Hey, can you help me put together this life insurance strategy that's way out of your your knowledge base, right? It's just it's just not part of your knowledge base, and it's not necessarily for a client of yours. What really happens is you get a call from your lions club buddy, and this is great on the surface. It's like, hey, you know, I've got a client I need you to help me with. I can you help me with this client? And and they start talking about a lot of very difficult things that you don't have any knowledge about, and you're afraid to say no. One, you don't want to tell your buddy no, two, you don't want to somehow, you know, um sound less knowledgeable than you might be about the topic because the world, insurance is insurance, right? That's the way the the non-insurance world sees things. And then there's just the reality of this thing could be worth tens of thousands of dollars. This one, this one account, right? And if you're a life, if you're a property and casualty guy and you don't know that the life insurance world calls accounts or quotes cases, well then you might be a little bit out, you might be dabbling, right? And so it's it's just understanding what there is to understand. And that insurance isn't just insurance, like there's so many facets of it. And I think part of the informed dabbler approach that we're talking about, that I am somehow in Tanya's mind shifting to, um, that we it's basically understanding what you don't understand, like understanding that you don't know everything and that you can't be an expert on any on everything. And so then you become this informed dabbler, like, yeah, I do life insurance for my clients, but then when this thing gets into extremely difficult life insurance cases, because we're trying to do some heavy lifting around estate planning, wealth management, high-end stuff. I don't know. I I don't know that you should go there without having some knowledge because you can get yourself in trouble. But more importantly, you could lose opportunities in your system because you no longer are working on the things that are the most important things. You're working on this one-off case.
SPEAKER_03To me, it's the difference in when we say don't dabble, we're talking about not writing random stuff you don't understand. We're talking about not chasing one-off policies, right? To me, the the concept of the informed dabbler is that we understand enough to identify when an opportunity exists to help us be successful long term. It's not writing everything, but it's more the the idea of understanding everything and also knowing when to bring in expertise. And to me, that's that's the key is saying, okay, I can dabble up until this point, and then there's a cliff there, and I am not gonna jump off that cliff.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I think that's right. I think it's um it's knowing your knowing your your barriers, right? Or having some boundaries. Maybe that's a better, maybe that's in my brain, like, yeah, don't jump off the cliff, set some boundaries, create some boundaries. Um, I know we're talking about the life insurance comparable, but you know, commercial is where most personal lines property and casualty agents tend to dabble the most and tend to get themselves in trouble the most. There is a way to be an informed dabbler in commercial lines. Uh, there is uh an opportunity to be in the small business area, uh, to have three or four standard preferred Bop commercial auto type carriers, understanding there's a difference between riding some commercial auto and riding trucking. Like that's an informed dabbler, right? Um chasing a risk or trying to turn over every rock, find a market for a risk, instead of setting boundaries, like you're gonna work with two or three ENS brokers that you develop a relationship with, instead of ending up with 10 to 12 ENS brokers, because every time those those core ENS brokers couldn't help you or didn't have the right pricing for a risk, you went out and found another ENS broker who who could help you be better in a pricing standpoint. That then you look up three, four years and you've got 10 to 12 ENS broker relationships, but you only have one account with that with that ENS provider. That is dangerous dabbling, right? Uh informed dabbling says look at your carrier and market portfolio and then create boundaries for yourself around those those partnerships. And if it can't handle, if you're those, those markets can't handle the account you're bringing to the table, then maybe that's your boundary, that's your sign, you should you should let it go, right? And I think that's the part that's really hard for salespeople is to create those self-enforced boundaries, right? Um, commercial producers at large multi-generational independent agencies, large national brokers, they have these boundaries created for them. You know, they they may only be allowed to do business within a certain number of classes, right? They may be like, you know, you can only work in these four classes, you got to go be the expert. That's how larger brokers handle the boundary game. And they put some boundaries around those individual producers, and they they they prevent them from causing chaos for themselves and for the agency brokerage itself. And so as a as an independent agent business owner, someone who's moved from the exclusive system, smaller, you know, uh in nature, maybe even a solopreneur, it's on you to create your own boundaries around this game.
SPEAKER_03Shane, I want to ask one of those questions that I I believe probably needs a disclaimer to go along with it. This is a this is a personal opinion. This is not something you should long-term base your business on. We are not liable for the answer to this question. But at what premium does dabbling become dangerous, in your opinion?
SPEAKER_02At what premium?
SPEAKER_03Like at what premium level is dabbling become dangerous?
SPEAKER_02Um, are we talking about on a per account basis? Is that where that question's coming from? Yeah. Um, you know, you've already given the disclaimer that it's it, you know, it really could be a $2,000 account because it could be some surplus lines, GL policy that you don't understand the real risk. Maybe your customer didn't tell you what you needed to be told, right? They just said, I need a GL policy and I've got a I've got a sand and gravel hauling business. I got a dump truck, and you, you know, you need a commercial auto and a GL policy. And the GL policy might be cheap because it excludes everything under the sun that you don't recognize that it excludes, right? And so, you know, next thing you know, you got an ENO claim on your hand. So, but I think I think the better answer to that is um it's more about sophisticated risk or complicated risk than premium, right? Like you could write a um, I don't know why dry cleaners is coming in. Dry cleaners isn't a simple class, but I'm gonna go with it. For whatever reason, dry cleaners is coming in. But there are some carriers that will write a dry cleaners on a bot, which means the premium can be, you know, 10,000, 15,000, depending on locations in a lot of cases. And it doesn't feel like there's a lot there, but you could end up in a dry cleaning situation where they need um uh they need pollution liability cleanup, okay? Uh just to bring something out of yeah, out of left field here, and you're like missing it because you don't get it, because you've never done that business, and you don't understand that a dry cleaning environment could actually end up in a pollution liability situation, and you just simply handled what the bank needed for their mortgage uh or their loan. You handled what you thought on the surface because that's what the bop covered, and they had some, they had no pollution liability within that bop, and you needed to actually go out and get a standalone pollution liability policy. So I'm saying this kind of intentionally to scare the mess out of people, but the point of it is that I want you to understand that there are landmines that are more than premium-driven landmines, they're class of business landmines. And as Tanya would say, don't ask me how I know this, right? Like I've been in that seat, I've I've gone to try to write those accounts. I did it when I didn't know anything. I luckily didn't experience an EO, but I could have easily experienced an EO, right? And that's kind of the understanding that I would rather people think about. It is easy to Tanya's point to say, well, where's my premium level? It's very difficult to say, well, anything over 25,000, be careful. That's not that that actually you can't really do that. You have to say, well, what's the exposure? You know, you're writing million, two million dollar limits. So, you know, did you miss something? Did you miss a a coverage scenario? Uh is it the same thing? What if you'd just kept going on your auto home, added life, had some umbrella coverage in there, had some boats, had some RVs. Like, I'm not, I know I get kind of tagged as this guy that doesn't want people to venture and be adventurous and grow their business. I it's not it at all. I just want you to be serious about what you have become an expert in and what you haven't become an expert in. And that's where I think the informed dabbling versus just absent, just total, maybe ignorance dabbling kind of come in hand here.
SPEAKER_03Two years ago, we were at a conference and listening to a gentleman talk about ENS markets, and you had shared with me about ENS markets several years ago. And listening to this guy talk about ENS, like it scared the crap out of me. And I don't write insurance, right? I mean, like it literally scared. I mean, I was just like, why would anybody ever do this? And we were in the midst of the hard market and we were trying to find places to write business just like we are today. To me, ENS is one of those places that our independent agents have really had to figure out how to become informed dabblers. I know the use of Gemini or Gronk or Chat GPT. There's ways that we can do this to really help us be more informed dabblers when it comes to the ENS world because we've had to. What advice would you give to agents um that are having to look at more and more ENS and being that informed dabbler?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, um, it's I think it's it's a reality. The surplus lines market, the other term, E excess and surplus, ENS, surplus lines, same thing. It's one of those areas in our industry where we use like two or three different terms for the same exact thing, right? And um what I think first and foremost. Understand that when you jump into the ENS market, it's the Wild West. So it's always going to be the Wild West. It's always been the Wild West. And the reason that it is that way is because it is unregulated. Okay. So the surplus lines market is an unregulated market. It is an area where people write what's called manuscript endorsements, which is the insurance industry's term for the underwriter just made it up.
SPEAKER_03And they can change it because it's Tees Day.
SPEAKER_02And they can change it, right? And they can decide, you know what, I don't want that anymore. I'm gonna, I'm gonna write, I'm gonna do an endorsement. I'm gonna I'm gonna change this, right? Um, there's there's misconceptions about what they can and can't do, and they can change it at renewal, and they don't necessarily have to tell you because the the policy term is for the term, right? It's a contract for one year most of the time, 12-month policy. And at renewal, like, you know, if you're in admitted market and you're riding homeowners or even commercial lines in admitted market, like your policies are regulated. You're you you have to file your form with the Department of Insurance. And if you're gonna change something, you got to file the change, right? And then you got to tell the world. In the ENS market, you just anything goes. Like you just decide, like, I don't want to do that anymore at renewal, and I don't really have to tell anybody, right? And so understand first and foremost that you're in the Wild West when you go into the ENS world. Now, I have moved to a place where, and I've always been here, but I don't know that I've ever communicated it this clearly. Like, I'm not saying that you shouldn't do business in excess and surplus lines. I'm just saying you should do it fully informed with the understanding and expectation that you're you're doing business in the Wild West, right? That you're almost, I mean, unless unless somebody files a lawsuit, you're almost in lawless land, right? Like this, I don't know, think about your movies that you want to think about, right? And just go there mentally and put it in the context of the insurance space.
SPEAKER_03There's the why of insurance at that point, right?
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Like, you know, it's it's it's uh it's tombstone, Arizona. From the my one of my favorite movies uh growing up uh in when I was in college was uh Tombstone, right? Wyatt Wyatt Earth, um Val Kilmer's incredible Doc Holiday portrayal. Like that is the ENS market. You want a picture of the ENS market? That's it. I think just understanding that is step one. Then it's you know, you got to understand what the underwriter and these terminologies that they use are very confusing. An endorsement, okay, like my brain, right or wrong, has always thought of an endorsement on a policy as an enhancement. A lot of people believe this too, right? Like the policy has been endorsed, right? It's been changed, it's been enhanced in their mind. Well, the ENS word world uses terms like oil field limited endorsement. Now, on the surface, you read that and you go, hmm, okay, well, looks like we were covering the oil field exposure. Okay. It's not what it means. What it means, if you go read it, this particular case that I'm referencing in my brain in history, is it actually says we do not cover anything that happens in the oil field. Oil field limited endorsement was the actual name with a form number to be referenced on an actual policy for a pipe manufacturer whose ninety percent of his pipes went to the oil field. And the general liability policy said oil field limited endorsement. So he had no coverage for 90% of his products. So this is an example that I'm referring to, kind of a case study I'm referring to uh way back in the early 2000s, almost 25 years ago. And it's like, wow, like this, but that's how confusing it can be. And so it's just throwing down, and when you're an auto home, personal lines, small commercial, maybe a little bit of informed dabbling, life insurance, term life insurance, a little bit of informed dabbling, and this makes up the book of business that you write. And you're used to doing kind of a high transaction sales, like you're you're quoting and selling and quoting and selling, and then you slip in this random prospect that shows up on your doorstep who wants you to do something, and all of those standard preferred markets decline, and you go out to the ENS market, and now you you continue to do that high transactional fast stuff, that's when you're gonna get in trouble. You gotta stop, slow down, fine, use your your favorite AI tool to tell you some things quickly, but you gotta stop and read, and you gotta stop and ask questions, or you can end up on you know the ENO environment, you know, an ENO claim. And that's why I'm so passionate about not dabbling and being very careful about dabbling.
SPEAKER_03Something else that agents tend to dabble in is technology dabbling. They are constantly using tools without understanding the tools they're using, whether it's their CRM, whether it is AI tools, um, maybe it's maybe it's marketing platform hopping because you're not mastering what you have. But I see a lot of technology dabbling going on.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, uh, this is an unfortunate uh experience, personal experience on my end. You know, I I get PTSD from thinking about my early days of I was a shiny object guy. I was I was a technology dabbler, and I I you know I know Robbie hears a lot of this with with agents, like you know, different things and different types of things. And um I I don't know, like I don't know why this is a struggle for us as as independent agents to think, okay, I I've got a system. If you find a system platform, and and again, this is something we've also talked about, Tanya, that can get you 80% of the way there. Like, I personally think we have to think about things being good enough. That's just the state of our industry and our our technology environment. And you you can spend a lot of time on that other 20%, and you can find a lot of pieces to close that 20% perceived gap that you have in your technology. My question is, is it's kind of a diminishing returns. Like the money you're spending and the energy, your time you're spending, you're not really gonna get the return that you're after. And so why do it? Becomes my question.
SPEAKER_03I got a new phone recently, and it's driving me crazy, right? It's absolutely Shane had that experience, Robbie had that experience with me on like the day after I got it when when we were in in Tampa for INA. But I had started a chat GPT conversation of okay, I need this in my world. Will my phone do it? And it's so amazing how many times it will come back and say, yes, your phone will actually do that for you, right? And I think that's one of the challenges that we have as agency owners is that we buy something, we invest in something, it um it takes three clicks to do it. We want it to do it in one click. So we say it's bad. I want to find some place that it will do it in one click. Or we see a shiny new object, we have a great salesperson that comes to us and says, my product will do this. Well, what we don't know is in the year and a half since we purchased what we are currently using, there have been five upgrades. And yes, the company sent me an email that told me in some technology speak that they have added this, but I either A couldn't read or didn't read or it went to my spam, or I don't remember the email that I got 15 months ago that said, Hey, your product will now do this. So what if instead of investing in a new product, you create a will Easy Links do this, will Hawk Soft do this, will insert CRM, will insert technology product do this today? And you will be shocked how many times they have added something without you realizing it, and you're paying for something that you don't need.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I that's right. And there's the longer you're on a platform, by the way, the more important it is that you stop and and and check to see if your platform will do it. And then also check to see if it's in the pipeline, if it's in the roadmap, right? Um, sometimes it's it's it's better, and that's something we're we've done and learned to do is is wait on it, right?
SPEAKER_03Like you can do that.
SPEAKER_02I yes, and and I I think I think that's the the thing that blows my mind a little bit, and this is something that that's that's very fresh for me and real for me, is that you try to do something, and you you you want your system to do something, you set it up to do it, and then it does it, but it doesn't do it well or it does it wrong. And instead of going to you know, support or the people that are are building this stuff, the the technology provider, the software provider, your sales rep, whoever, your if you're in an agency network, um someone at the agency network that's like the point person, and then just saying, hey, my experience is this is working, but it's not working. Like I see that it's working, but it's not getting to the end point or whatever it is, because that happens, right? And then you figure out through a five-minute conversation that, oh, we need this to happen, and you don't have that going on, right? And so we that can be done in a matter of you know, really quick time, and things start working correctly. I see a lot of agents who throw their hands up and get mad and frustrated instead of asking the question. They just say, This system sucks, right? And then they go over here to another system and they invest because they got a really shiny, pretty demo from guess what, a sales guy or gal. And they, oh, this is gonna solve all of my problems, and they go over here and they do this thing, and then lo and behold, six months, eight months, twelve months later, they're out of that system, right? Because it frustrated them, right? We are salespeople, insurance agents are salespeople first and foremost, and we need to remember that. And then we need to settle on the platform and use it to the most potential that we can get it to work. And I'm hoping for 80%. That's my goal in everything that we do. Um, and and so, you know, even looking at new technology is with an asterisk, like, okay, how does this fit into our existing stuff? Like, oh, this it does this one little piece better than the piece of my CRM or the piece of my management system, but is it worth the change? Like, is it is it worth going from two clicks to one click to go through the pain of your team and your people? You know, that's the thing that as business owners, as agency owners, we have to come to that place and go, okay, we got to make some business decisions here, and we got to keep the main thing, the main thing, which is our clients and us as risk managers and insurance professionals, not AI professionals or technology professionals.
SPEAKER_03It is amazing if you have 365, what it will do. There are so many products that I see advertised on TikTok or whatever social media platform that is you're constantly being advertised to on. And if I go in and look and see, okay, will will what I have do this? Usually it is in 365. One of the interesting things about 365 that so many agents don't realize is that most people use the app version of 365, where the online version, the web version, is much more powerful and has lots of additional tools that the app version doesn't have. This may be one of those places that if you go to your AI of choice and say, hey, I'm trying to do this, hey, I need to do screen videos, I need to do transcriptions. It's going to say that your app version doesn't do that. But if you go to the online version, this is how to do it. And I didn't know there were differences until about a year ago between the appropriate. I just assumed they did the same thing, right? And that was a 30-second life-changing thing for me to be able to say, okay, well, this will do this online, right? I mean, and it was like a one of the thing I'm thinking about was like a $37 a month subscription. Okay, $37 a month doesn't seem like a whole lot, but that's $444 a year. That's pretty substantial. And just by asking and saying, okay, well, what I have, do this.
SPEAKER_02And it can it can multiply, and then you multiply that times 10, right? Because there's 10 different things that you experience that with. And so now it's not four or five hundred dollars, it's four or five thousand dollars. And that's the other side. You can take that to your personal budget too, right? Like, you know, all the subscriptions, all the different things. And maybe that's what you do. Like, like you're just an entertainment junkie and you want all the subscriptions and packages. Uh, I, you know, there's things, and I think that's that's relatable to our business. You have a customer as an independent agency owner, you are a producer, you have a customer saying, Look, my my insurance, my auto insurance is with State Farm or Geico Direct or whatever. I just need you to look at my homeowner's insurance. Now, at this point, you have this sort of decision, right? Like, okay, am I going to just do the home and never say anything about the auto? Am I going to allow the customer to dictate how my business should look? And in the same way, I'm kind of comparing this fragmentation thing that can happen to us with what can also happen to us with our technology. There's a reality, I'm thinking of like Loom. It's a screen record video thing, it's good for training. Well, to Tanya's point, in 365, um, there is a chip, the clip champ, clip champ, I think is what they call it.
SPEAKER_03It does the same thing, plus more. And so does Microsoft. Microsoft provides that in there. So you if you if you have 365, but if you have a computer that runs on Windows, guess what? Your Windows does that for you.
SPEAKER_02Right. So you've got all these different things that are already there, and then you go out and buy something different, right? And and that leads to fragmentation. The relatable picture is in your agency. Is your book of business getting fragmented? Or are you being disciplined around that? I mean, these things, if you have technology fragmentation and that becomes the way you operate, the more there's a really good chance you have client fragmentation, you have book of business fragmentation. Business success, like the most success is going to be through this discipline, obedient nature of just you've got enough business coming at you, more than likely. But how you handle it and what you do with it and how efficient you are with it is going to dictate your profitability when it comes down to it.
SPEAKER_03When Amazon went from being a textbook resale org to selling everything you can possibly imagine, they didn't keep it under the same structure, right? Same thing with eBay. When eBay went from being the PES dispenser auction house to allowing you to be able to buy all sorts of things, they actually have different internal departments for those things, right? Yeah. And so to me, when we put that in the perspective of our independent agencies, when you're an uninformed dabbler, you're creating chaos for your CSRs, you're creating chaos for your account managers. Because even if you understand what you're touching, the people that are supporting you probably don't understand it. Are you taking them away from what's making you money?
SPEAKER_02I think the example of Amazon and eBay is important. Just like Starbucks, just like so many other just really global brands, uh Walmart, you know, they didn't start out where you see them today. And they started out in a lot of cases, Amazon started out as a very focused model, right? Like um Easy Links, one of our partners, for years, from 2004 to around 2012 or 13, Easy Links was rating comparative personal lines, auto and home rating. And the founder of Easy Links was being pulled in 42 million directions to develop new things, other things. All these things. And he was brilliant about being disciplined to do the thing to create scale. And at the time that they decided to go into the management system business to expand into the all-in-one platform that they are work that they they have become and that they're you know trying to now enhance and add features to, it took him like almost 10 years of reaching dominance, like 80% of the market share or something pretty close to that, in personal lines, comparative rating, before he was willing to then say, okay, it's time we can we can start expanding, right? And so kind of to come back to this idea of informed dabbling and when to dabble and and how to create scale. I'm not saying you shouldn't open up and start doing commercial lines if you're a personalized focused agency. I'm not saying you should like ignore all technology forever and ever. What I'm saying is, is you need to create a business model for yourself that's going to allow you to do enough over and over and over again so that you can create scale in your business. Then you can invest because you have excess profits, because you scaled, and you can invest in that next direction, adding commercial lines department. Instead of saying, I'm gonna take my part, my my personalized, my third personal line CSR, and I'm gonna put a commercial hat on them, you can actually hire a dedicated commercialized CSR, or you can hire a dedicated commercialized producer. Agents don't allow themselves to get far enough down the line, in my opinion, and get scaled to the point that they can invest those excess profits. And if you want to know why the that third generation owned independent agency across the town with 30 employees, why they have everything that they have, you got to go back to their beginnings when they didn't have that. It took time, it took being really, really good at something and getting scale before they could go to the next level.
SPEAKER_03Robbie, you have a lot of interactions with our agents there in the South Central region, especially in Texas. When have you seen agents really be successful at being an informed dabbler?
SPEAKER_00Um, I think it's one of two ways. I think it's it's taking the time to learn whatever that part of the industry is on the commercial side, you know, like picking a segment and sticking with that segment and being really good at it, or hiring a producer to focus on commercial sales for you. Uh, I think those are the two that that come to mind. I was also thinking when when Shane mentioned, you know, whether you hire a sales producer or not, you know, you still got to set boundaries for that producer, right? Because if you're not informed and you're and you're leaning on your commercial producer to do all of that for you, I mean, there still could be opportunities where you know exposure could could take place, right? And and I think you still have to be somewhat informed on the products that your producer is going to be focused on. I think that's the only way that you can really kind of, you know, uh protect your agency, you know, in what you build.
SPEAKER_03I love that word informed. Um, one of the things that Shane has talked about over and over, uh, along with not dabbling, is um being a great leader means that you respond and not react. And under that same thought process, I I believe that we could add informed, not impulsive, goes along with that when it comes to adding things to your agency.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think we're salespeople. And and you know, I want people listening to understand, I get it, you're a salesperson just like I'm a salesperson. And the attraction of that extra revenue or a quick revenue, like on the surface, it it's like, ooh, this is a great opportunity. What we don't think about when that happens to us is the time and energy that we're gonna put into that thing that you think is gonna be easy, but it probably isn't gonna be easy because you don't do it and you haven't done a lot of it, if at all. And then the opportunity loss while you were over here doing that one thing, the things that got behind over here in this system you'd already created that's helping you reach scale. I I don't know if it's I don't know what the internal like thing is for us as salespeople that makes us this way. Uh and and I I want people to understand, like, number one, you're not alone. It's pretty much every insurance salesperson out there has this mindset. I think the thing that I strive for and and hope for and try to help agency owners understand is that we have to be more disciplined for our businesses and for our people, right? We have to be able to say, let's let's think about this. Like just because the premium on that thing's $300,000 a year doesn't mean that you're going to actually make any money off of that after you put all the energy and time after you have the opportunity loss created uh in your core, the core function of your business. And then the ENO exposure that you start opening up because you're doing something you don't necessarily know how to do. There's a there's a way to bridge that knowledge gap and get there, but it's not the impulsive response reaction to that opportunity. Like it's maybe it's our own version of the 24-hour rule, you know, like okay, the impulsive shopping, like okay, you see something, you really want it, wait, wait 24 hours. For some of you, it may be wait 48 hours. Um, you know, like wait a little while and like, do you still want it? You know, um, do you still do you still need to do it? Or, you know, are you really understanding the full picture here?
SPEAKER_03Since Mike is not here, I am going to honor him with a quote by his uh favorite football player, Tom Brady. I love it.
SPEAKER_02That's always good.
SPEAKER_03The only thing I ever really worry about is what I can control.
SPEAKER_02Attitude of choice. Make a great one.
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