Daniel Metcalf 0:01

Welcome back to the Scale Your Insurance Agency Podcast, the show built for independent agency owners who are done being the bottleneck in their own business. I'm Daniel Metcalf, and every week I'm joined by my co-host, Mike Stromso, one of the most respected operators in the independent agency world. Between the two of us, we bring you the real levers that move a $3 to $20 million agency from successful but maxed out to systemized, scalable, and running without you holding it all together. Here's what we focus on. Mike brings the people side, leadership, team development, niche sales mastery, and a three-piece system that helps agencies build a business worth owning. I bring the machine side. AI, automation, and workflow design that frees your team from the operational drag, eating your margin and your time. Together, we're building a framework that can grow an independent agency 4X to 9X without burning out your people or your checkbook. If you're an agency owner who's tired of growing by hiring, who knows you have a capacity sitting on the table but can't figure out how to unlock it, this is the show for you and your weekly edge. All right, Mike, I am super excited for this week's topic because it's one as near and dear to both of our hearts. We love talking about sales and we love talking about pipelines and math. And so today, I'm excited for this. I'm excited for the subject.

Mike Stromsoe 1:31

I love, love, love this subject as well. And I love it even more when it gets to the point where we can actually close and start helping people. And I've loved that forever. But most importantly, as you and I both know, Daniel, we need to know how to build a pipeline that you can actually run a business on. And, you know, we we both follow many smart people in sales who have taught us so much. Uh, one of those people in my life has been Jeb Blunt, uh, who is a sales guru beyond expertise. And he said, if your pipe is not full 90 days out, you're gonna be hungry in 90 days. So in today's technology world, because of your expertise, Daniel, with your team, let's talk about CRMs. Sure. Client relationship managers. Most CRMs, Daniel, track stages, but they don't track truth. And the truth doesn't lie. How deals really move through the pipeline.

Daniel Metcalf 2:35

Yeah, let's talk about what what a customer journey looks like, the difference between stages and statuses versus actually going through gates. And so what a customer journey really is, is a commitment, right? And so um each part of the gates is the commitment to the next part of the sale, right? And without those commitments and being able to measure those different commitment, you know, different parts of the commitments right before it gets to not gonna buy from you, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:09

And what's the number one decision, Mike? What's the number one decision that is the ultimate deal killer?

SPEAKER_02 3:19

Not to follow up.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

No decision.

Daniel Metcalf 3:22

The no decision decision. Okay, fine. I set you up for that one. It's all right. Hey, I stump Mike. This one, we're gonna put this one in the Hall of Fame reels. Uh future one, Daniel stump Mike, because he's the one usually stumping me. So, all right, here's so the the num the the number one decision that kills all deals, if you will, is the no decision decision. So we want to create commitments along the way, and then that's where the math comes in on where are we in each one of the gates of a commitment, right? So the first commitment is like, hey, raising their hand to say, I am interested in having you provide me the services that I need to fulfill my pain on whatever it is. So I'm willing to put you on my list, right? And they have to commit to that, whether it's downloading a white paper or calling the phone or filling out a form or action, right? Some form of commitment, right? They've committed to something, right? And then we move them through those series of commitments, whatever it is for your sales process, in order into where the last commitment is, they write you a check, right? For whatever that that product said. That is the last commitment on sales as far as the pipelines that we work on. So your CRM needs to figure, or your sales team and production team need to figure out what those commitments are, and that is the measurable of those commitments. Now, one of my um mentors in the sales game, when I was in um as our chief revenue officer and I was on the technology team to help them build out the software, he had an ingenious system to make it so that each commitment was worth equal amount. So it was 25, 25, 25, 25. So there was no room for interpretation, right? As far as where are they in the commitment journey. So, and then in some instances we would we would adjust and we, if there was a five commitment process instead of a four commitment process, it was 20, 20, 20, 20. You get the idea, right? But it has to be the same value no matter what. That's how we can see where we're at. So let's just use the 2525, right? So that way, if there was only, let's say that the value of the opportunity was a thousand dollars, okay, and you only had two commitments of the four completed, right? That means it's worth 50% and it's a $500 value.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

Right.

Daniel Metcalf 5:46

Okay. And then that way you can you can measure based on what's our average percentage of our pipeline, right? Based on the number of commitments. So if you're at 50% or less, we've got a long way to go, right? Yeah, and if your forecast closed date is tomorrow, wow, how are you gonna get from 50% to 100% right in one day?

SPEAKER_01 6:10

Yeah, so is that forecast really tomorrow?

Daniel Metcalf 6:13

And if they can prove it, right, whatever, fine. We'll we'll we'll we'll we'll believe you, right? And then that also shows you, hey, if your goal is a hundred thousand dollars, making it up, but a hundred thousand dollars, and right now you're at fifty percent and fifty thousand dollars, it's how they correlate, you have a lot of work to do to get it above. And we'd always say the same thing. Your pipeline should be about one-third of what your goal needs to be, right? Uh one-third above of what your goal needs to be. I love that because there's always a fudge factor around hey, um life happens, is what we call it, right? You know, got really busy, or something happened with my family, or to my health. There's all of these conditions that can help that can help move it along. But we also want to, and his other statement was always his his name was Carl Moe, is get to the no Carl Mo. Because we know by getting to know that moves us to our next yes. So whether that's no to us, that means we can work with the next person on the prospect list to getting them to a yes, or they're saying no to something that we're selling, and we can help get to, well, what help them get to what would you want to buy then, right? From that, from that standpoint, even if it means nothing altogether. So by having those, having a CRM that doesn't just track the stages like I had a conversation or I sent them an email or hey, I sent the proposal or whatever, any action we do, that is only vanity metrics. Commitments by the person on the other end is act, that is actual predictable revenue activities. So that is where we want to get to. And then that's where we can start predicting with all analysis, hey, we know almost within um 10% fudge factor, this is how much we're gonna make, we're gonna make this quarter, right? And you should always want to know what that looks like. That's what a true forecast would be, right? We're not like the weathermen and right and weather, weather people where you know we're we're can be 50% wrong and still keep our jobs, right? Unfortunately, in the in the sales department, that's not true. But that is how we can truly give a forecast if we leave the emotion out of it, which is gonna get to our next part in in a second, but that really is by there's a difference between math and emotion. And whenever we put them, we always think we're better than we are, we always think we're worse than we are, right? So we always think we have a better opportunity, a great conversation or whatever we're gonna get to that to the next pipeline lies. But I want to if the more we can leave uh emotion out of it and rely on the math, the better opportunity we have to create predictable revenue. So that is where how we how we set up CRMs for agencies.

Mike Stromsoe 8:55

Well, this is a wild out of left field thought, but maybe that's why people are so attracted to AI because it's full of logic and not emotion, and we are an emotional species, and they just want to remove the emotion and move the drama and get right to the logical truth.

Daniel Metcalf 9:10

Right. Well, if you really want to go to left field, but just remember AI does lie. That we just call them hallucinations, but it's really lying, and it's not lying to be uh um malicious, it's just that their job is to fulfill the pattern, right? And so they're just gonna fulfill whatever it is. So to be careful, right? It gets better over time, right? But humans still are humans and they still have emotion, so you can't eliminate hallucinations with well, we'll go deeper into why on left field.

Mike Stromsoe 9:36

So why not? You made Joel McKinley and I were speaking this morning about an AI tool, and we were on the AI tool, and he goes, That source right there, it's coming, it's go to the internet as the sour data, uh data source. And I said, All right, let's think about it like this. You click on that, it's a data source here, it's out there on the internet. Where did the internet get its content and information? Well, somebody wrote it at some point. I said, Okay, the person that wrote that, what are they? He goes, a human being. I said, exactly. Right. It may or may not be accurate. Right now, let's get back on track. I won't want to reinforce something that you just said, Daniel, which is absolute gold. And I intentionally pause to make sure everybody gets this. The pipeline should be about one-third of your goal. I love that. I love that. So that's easy math. It's an easy thing to think about. And of course, my definition of no is next opportunity. So if somebody says no, your next opportunity is your next action. I love, love, love that. So let's talk about the three pipeline lies.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

All right.

Mike Stromsoe 10:49

There's pipeline lies, right? So good relationship. My relationship right now with my current provider is good.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Is it, Daniel?

SPEAKER_01 11:05

How would you measure that?

SPEAKER_02 11:07

Uh-huh. I've never thought about it like that. What do you know?

Daniel Metcalf 11:13

Well, let's think about why we use things like good relationship, waiting on them, they love us, right? Because we work really, really hard, we don't like rejection, we work really, really hard to get them to know, like, and trust us, and we want to believe that all that hard work is paying off, right? And we and we show the value of that in good re words like good relationship, waiting on them, they love us. We call them fat words in my industry, right? Because what does good really mean? What does waiting mean? And what does them mean? What does love mean, right? Us mean. Those are all fat words. But if you came to me and said, we had a very good commitment from the client because they took the next step. They are they already sent us this information. We need to analyze that information. So that is right, in order to build the next the sales proposal. That is how we can measure act a commitment, and that means it's not just based on the fact that they maybe gave us a compliment, or maybe they didn't yell at us that day, or whatever it might be. And so I always say the same thing as I can't eat on fat words, right? I can only eat on money, right? I can only pay for pay my bills with money. So what are we doing to move it to the money line, right? What commitments are being made to move it to the money line? And did you think it or did they say it or commit to it? That's also the difference when we talked to uh again. My sales mentor did this to the team, right? And I was just the one helping build the CRM, which was the hey, Sally, I believe you have a good relationship with them. Help me understand what did they say and what did they commit to to moving to the next step. Well, they didn't. Okay, so what are we going to do next to get them to commit or to say the next step? Well, I guess I can do X, Y, and Z. All right, let's get that on the let's get that as the next action step. When are you gonna do it by? And then we'll come back next week and see what happens based on that next action step of what happens. That gets the that gets the emotion out of it. We've put the task to it, and now we can we can move that that commitment forward.

Mike Stromsoe 13:35

100%. So don't depend on the words, it's back to the actions. Right. It's back to the actions and the actual results of those actions that lead us along the path of the pipeline. Right. The pipeline path. You know, back to numbers and back to the truth, right? Because there's math basics that are involved in every deal. You have things like conversion rates, the the length of the cycle, and in the independent insurance agency business, that cycle is different based on the line of business. I mean, as an example, in personal lines right now, um, it's a very short cycle in many, many situations, unless it's a large uh, you know, high net worth account or ultra high net worth account where it's got complexities about it. But in the larger, in you know, the mid-size and larger commercial, that's a longer cycle as well. Uh so it just varies. And so that cycle length is different. And then, of course, the weighted pipeline. So let's unpack that. So conversion, um, it's back to automation. And obviously, in today's world, I mean, we started uh in our independent insurance agency business with something we called a bind hit ratio sheet. Okay. Which before the days of automation, which you guys deliver, you and your team, Daniel, deliver for independent insurance agents. That's how we tracked our conversion. Sure. Okay. It was basically number of opportunities versus the close ratio uh in a given month, supported by our goal, and it was all a formulated sheet, and we knew our numbers at all times. And we had a monthly meeting within our team. Everybody knew exactly what our blind hit ratio was. And when it was off, okay, fine. But here's the bigger thing, and this just it's one of those things that drives you crazy. An opportunity, let's say it was just used around the number of 100 opportunities, and we close 30 of them, so that's 30%, right? My question always was 30%'s okay. One, what can we do to move that 30 closer to 40? Not huge steps, but incremental steps. Small wins lead up to bigger wins. But what about the other 70%? Why didn't we close them? That's what I wanted to know. So knowing the number at all, right? You know, what else do people need to know in the agency business about conversion rates, Daniel?

Daniel Metcalf 16:22

Um, so ultimately, the biggest um area that we've really been able to start to uh look at with agencies is like you said, it used to be just one number, right? How many got started, how many close, and there's a close rate. Well, now we can break it down based on those commitment gates so we can say, hey, look, once we get to this commitment gate, right, this is the this is our chance of closing. Um, or even so of like, hey, we have so much in the pipeline at the front that isn't making it to the next gate. Is that a ICP issue, an ideal customer profile issue? Is that a targeting issue? Is that a lead source issue? Uh, we can start to break down conversion by parts within the within um within the organization. And my system's a little bit different than what others. I don't look at things as a pipeline, I look at as an hourglass. So here's what I mean by that. So the top of the of the funnel that goes all the way to the bottom, right? It from a new business perspective goes down like you know, like a typical upside-down triangle, right? And then the hourglass side is okay, what are we doing to expand all those relationships, right? Whether it's a referral, whether it's cross-selling or upselling, all the way to the bottom. So we measure the conversion rate all the way through the hourglass rather than just what went in, what came out, what came out, what retained. We look at it from a whole from a whole hourglass. And now we can let the computers and the software do all that analysis for us and build those out instead of the old tick sheets that we used to have. I don't know if you had a tick tick sheets at your agency, but we had a tick sheet with that was a basically a printed out spreadsheet where we'd put pencil ticks in the street. Yeah, yeah.

Mike Stromsoe 18:04

Now that you say that, I remember that was a while.

Daniel Metcalf 18:06

That takes a lot of time, right? That took a lot of time, and I remember you know bringing this big sheet tape with masking tape and the whole king caboodle. But um that is that that is where we're at today. And the and the the other numbers that we look at is cycle length. Um and what I mean, what we mean by cycle length is think about a flywheel. And so if you can, if you can figure out a way to reduce the cycle that a person comes into the into the system and comes out from either a no or a or a check, that means how much more velocity can you run through there until it breaks, right? So here I'll give an example. So if you can bring in 10 deals and close three within 90 days, but you come up with a way to bring 10 deals to get them done to three in 30 days, that's the velocity portion, right? Because now we can close more in a year, because right, we closed the same amount but did in less time, right? We're actually going to be able to triple our our revenue without any conversion changes whatsoever. Now think about if we can go from 10, 10 come in, 3 come out in 30 days, now 10 come out and six come in and six come out in 30 days. Now think of scalability. Those are that is what we look for cycle length. And are we allowing items to drag past what our average sale number should be and what is going on with those? What if we just you know pressed on it to get them to the no so that we can move on to the next opportunity because we want to keep our cycle length where it's at. And then lastly is weighted pipeline. Now, again, if you use the the previous system that I was speaking about with the even numbers all the way across, the right, that that is a weighted pipeline. If you have this, like, hey, if they get to this stage, it's five percent, if they get to this stage, it's 20%, if they get to this stage, it's 40% likely, whatever, you're really gonna have to work hard on a weighted pipeline. And on that side of it, it doesn't mean it's wrong, it's just you're gonna have to spend more um mental gymnastics and data analytics around that weighted pipeline because somebody that's uh you know 5% close rate is not worth as much as somebody that's at a 95% or 80% or whatever it might be. So you have to make sure you understand it can't just be, hey, we have a conversion rate of 30%. Okay, great. But what about why do you have all these still in the pipeline that are barely moved from one stage to the other? We can't really count that, right? Because it's it's not it's not weighted. That's why we really like having those even numbers all the way across.

Mike Stromsoe 20:47

Yeah, I was just sitting here thinking, I'm just so excited, listening to what you're saying, and and now I'm envisioning you know, independent insurance agencies working with you and your expertise in AI and automation and technology, and add on uh some fire in the form of Jesse Parenti bringing the producers through the production process based on all that you're talking about, it's gonna accelerate things like there's no tomorrow. Man, that's exciting stuff. So that's gonna be great. So I'm glad you talked about sales velocity because you know, I and I see that on the dashboard, which is something very custom for agencies that you work with, I know. And so, you know, they're they're looking at the dashboard and sales velocity is on there, so that was a great explanation of that. But the other thing that I see, you know, as far as cycle length and dilute and uh conversion rates and and all of that is you talked about the ideal client profile. Okay. And I also know that in in working with teams that we watch conversion rates and the conversion rates go down. And one of the um case studies where we started digging in a little bit and trying to find out why didn't the conversion rate go at down? Because you know, A B test, right? You know, an A B test marketing test, right? So we kind of did a kind of an A-B test, and we found out at the core that a couple of the producers were diluting the story, saying the three uniques or the points of differentiation, with all the other things being equal, and that little because they I'm gonna tell it my way, right?

Daniel Metcalf 22:35

Sure.

Mike Stromsoe 22:36

But they're getting away from the systematic way that we've been proven to close.

Daniel Metcalf 22:40

Right.

Mike Stromsoe 22:41

Right? So it's vitally, vitally important that we have complete alignment. So such good stuff, such good stuff. So um pipeline hygiene.

SPEAKER_03 22:55

Let's talk about that.

Mike Stromsoe 22:56

So what I just said couldn't be more uh in line with talking about this next, because they decided that they're gonna you know get a little dirty in talking about the three uniques are points of differentiation and do it their way. Well, that's improper pipeline hygiene in a way, right? Right. So, how can we make sure that we keep the pipeline hygiene clean and beneficial for all for concern to get to maximum uh results for a given pipeline?

Daniel Metcalf 23:32

Yeah, and you know, and in in today's day and age, it's getting even um more simple and more powerful from this standpoint, which is the simple and powerful way is first of all, if you have those stages of commitments that allows you to do you know, pipeline hygiene. Yeah, the more we, you know, with all these wonderful tools around um AI note recorders and note and um transcribers and all those things, right? And if we put that information in each of the opportunities, we can use artificial intelligence to help us identify for ourselves, right? So the bet the better the data, the better the results, right? So even if I'm a producer, I can have AI look at all my current opportunities, run through all the transcripts, run through all the notes, and do an analysis for me to say, which ones am I not rating correctly? Like which ones am I not seeing the buying signs, which ones are the ones where I'm seeing that this one's really stalled? And it can help you identify those and you can make those corrections um or adjustments wherever it might be. So there's there's one place where you can create hygiene. Like let the computer that doesn't have any emotion behind it, right, doesn't have any skin in the game, let them help us decide what you know where the truth and where the where the next steps should look like. So that's number one.

Mike Stromsoe 24:48

And then again, let me ask you an apology real quick after number one. Yeah. I mean, if anybody out there listening or watching this has a blocker in their mind thinking, what do you mean notes? It is very normal nowadays if you're on a discovery session or maybe even what we call a sales call with a prospect. It is very normal nowadays for people to say, Hey, do you mind if I take notes? That elevates your level of respect in the eyes of the prospect that you're taking notes and you really care about what they're saying. So by all means take the notes. And I don't know if you remember our conversation months ago, which led to us working more closely together, the epilogue from that book. Remember that? Yeah, I see, and you go, that's exactly what you were just saying, which is reality in today's world.

Daniel Metcalf 25:43

Yeah, absolutely. And and I mean, we're we're helping agencies with well, what do we do if they're in inbound phone calls or outbound phone calls? Well, there are whisper agents, right? There's agents that can sit on the phone with you and it can help you, it can help analyze in real time what's going on with that phone call. What are some of the questions you should ask? What are some of the commitments? Because we've trained the agent on look listening for things because we're trying to build that relationship, right? We're trying to know like and trust, and we're we don't want to sound, you know, like we're just trying to sell them something, but it can help us make sure that we ask the right question, fulfill what we need to do in order to move the commitment forward and remind us about our commitments, right? You know, did you ask them about um do they have life insurance? Did you ask them about this? Did you ask them about that? Like it help you and assist you while you're on that call. Um, and if it transcribes right and what we're working on in the background is, it can start to automatically upload into things like Accord forms or into um uh into like tools like Gaia or Asalt or whatever, where it can gather and and parse out that information to make it easier for you to quote and create a sales proposal later. There's so many cool things going on. But if you don't commit to actually using the tools in every interaction and utilizing your CRM in that way, you won't be able to get what you want out of it. So the real hygiene routine needs to be let's get the data as accurate as possible and getting it in the right spot no matter what. Um, the second part of hygiene routine comes in your pipeline reviews with your leadership. Um pipeline reviews are are a good thing. It allows you to have, we've talked about accountability partners in other sessions, we've talked about coaching, we've talked about um, you know, it takes a team. If we treat pipeline reviews like there's some type of punishment or consequence or some kind of uh interrogation, like I like we used to say, like, then then you're you're not going to get what you want out of it in order to help you succeed. What you want pipeline reviews are is to have somebody's third-party view of it, because they're not as close to you on it, to act to go through those gates together to say, did they actually make this commitment? Do you are they actually in this stage? What could what commitments did they make? Um, what are the next steps? Hey, this one's been this one's past um uh this one's past our cycle length. Like, is this something we still want to hang on to? You know, what what what what's changed, right? What what else other commitments can we get them to work on? What are some other ideas we can get to re-engage them? That's what a pipeline review should look like. And the more you can you can keep that pipeline as tight as possible allows you to feel more confident in where your sales need to go going forward. So those are the two ways of to of simple simply um creating pipeline hygiene for each producer that they can follow.

Mike Stromsoe 28:27

And and the big tool that must be in that pipeline hygiene toolbox consistency. Absolutely. Just need to be consistent because you don't want to have missteps because it'll skew the data and then you don't have accuracy.

Daniel Metcalf 28:44

Right. So may I just tell a quick story from a from a uh an agency that has just really embraced um embraced this since they've been able to use AI and automation as a way to to run their pipelines. And have they worked tremendously amount of time building out a pipeline um system within their CRM, right? Very thoughtful about it, very um uh really looked at the stages that are the winning stages for commitments, and they were just trying to use the conversion rate and the cycle length and the weighted pipeline and all the reports, right? And then and to try to figure out what the story was, right? And and then they kept missing their forecast, they kept missing their goals. And and we had a conversation while we're building out a dashboard for them, and we started saying, well, when you're in your pipeline reviews, what do they say when of how this because this number doesn't make sense? It's going from here to here, and everyone else is getting a conversion rate at 60%, but these two individuals are only getting a conversion at 30%. What are they doing different compared to the other two? Oh, we didn't eat we've never asked them. Okay, well, in the next pipeline review, let's let's see if we can figure that out. That could be very powerful information for us. And it turned out all they were doing was moving the stage, they weren't actually getting the commitment.

SPEAKER_03 30:06

Uh-huh.

Daniel Metcalf 30:07

Right? But their conversion rate was fine, so they kept complaining, I need more leads, I need more leads, I need more leads, because look at my conversion rate, right? But what it turned out was, no, they weren't working the leads that they were getting all the way through the winning process. They were just moving, they were just clicking the button to move the stages because they didn't want to get the commitment. They didn't think it was necessary, right? To their sales process. And when we showed them the success that they could get, if they were just to actually do the stage and get the commitment rather than just moving it along. Well, one did it, one didn't, right? And you can probably tell who the one's succeeding and who's the one no longer at the agency. So that is where, again, it's not that the pipeline reviews I just want to be clear on that, right? The data helps us keep the emotion out of it. It just allows us to ask a simple question. Geez, we're just trying to figure out what you're doing different than them, because when when they move it from this stage to this stage, right? So that's just the math. We're just figuring out whether math ain't mathing, right? And that allows us to get to the to the to the bottom of what's really going on. And that's that's where we want to be, rather than everyone feeling like they're being attacked for the way that they do business or their relationships or something like that, right? You're gonna get more with the honey than the stick necessarily on that in in that state standpoint.

Mike Stromsoe 31:22

All right, it's just the right way to run a relationship both ways. It's like, you know, we're both married men. I mean it's like going out and buying an expensive item without consulting your partner, right? Correct. Hey, I just decided to do it. How's that work out for you?

unknown 31:38

Right.

Mike Stromsoe 31:40

So I'm off course here. So what is all this leading up to? I mean, the essence of scaling versus growth, right? Scaling your business is operating your business as the future agency that you're gonna grow into in the present, where growth is based on the past and is linear, doing the same old things that you've always done. What are you gonna get? The same old result, right? So implement all of these things that we're talking about, you can begin to forecast with confidence. You have greater ability to make commitments, to take action on things, to take greater next steps and have mutual plans to move it along the pipeline to get to a business relationship.

Daniel Metcalf 32:37

Yeah, and that's where predictive analysis allows you to be able to scale. And this is the this is when I'm out at the association of uh association events and I get a chance to be in a breakout session, I really like explaining to them the power of predictive analysis, right? So if you knew that for every every $3 you put into your marketing and sales, you got 10 out of it with all predictability, would you put in six to make 10 or 6 to make 25?

SPEAKER_03 33:09

Right?

Daniel Metcalf 33:10

So now you can say, okay, well, let's put it, well, we're just we're just gonna keep running this as long as we're putting three bucks in and we're making 10, we can we can create this flywheel. Then the next way to scale is well, let's put in six and see if we get a 25. What can we do different, right? That is the ability to scale. And so that is where we're trying to teach agency owners and the and the production team of what it looks like. If you know from all predictability, if we put in three, we're gonna get 10. Think of what you can test now to try to go from six to twenty or whatever it might look like. That is the power of predictable, predictive analysis. And what we've always had to do up until this point in human history is always rely on the past to try to dictate the future. Now we can take the present to then predict the future. And when that future doesn't turn out, for whatever reason, we can adjust faster than waiting for the for the past numbers to show up.

Mike Stromsoe 34:04

That's why you say, and I hear you say this fairly often never in human history have we had this opportunity, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:15

Correct.

Mike Stromsoe 34:17

Amazing. It's great, great stuff. So I mean, what's holding independent insurance agencies back as we're gonna wrap, what's holding agencies back from having all this and more?

Daniel Metcalf 34:30

Well, just what holds anybody back, right? It's the idea of lack of understanding, lack of trust. This is the way we've always done it. I've already been successful up to this point. Why do I need to change? Um, and we're just looking for those that have finally just had enough, right? The old Jim wrote, I'm fed up, right? Um, that's that's where we're trying to get to is like once once somebody sees that the current pain that they're in is greater than the pain of change, that is when we're going to get our agency owners who want to scale to move that direction, right? When they've had enough and that the pain is where like I know there's more on out here, I know there's a better system than what we're currently doing, and I just need to figure that out. That is when people are gonna start to embrace this. Um and and that's what that's when we'll be there, right, Mike? That's when we'll be there. And and we will be there to help guide them based on what others are doing, what we've seen that's working, we'll we'll be willing to do it. And so, and I'm not saying it just has to be you and I. There's plenty of other people, smart people out there that can help them. I'm just stating that that's where I want the industry to get to. I know you do too, is to get to that place where they know they can have more, right? They can they can have more, they can get more with just a little, they can get a lot more with just a little bit more. Um, they can embrace technology and it's gonna be crazy what leaps and bounds that they can do. Does it mean it's overnight? No. But does it mean that it's faster than they can do it doing what they're doing today? Absolutely. And that's where we want to, you know, keep doing the best that we can to express what others are doing so that they can feel the confidence that they can do it too.

Mike Stromsoe 36:20

Right. It's just crazy to me that we continue to uncover within agencies things that we assumed were probably the norm that are not. Just those little tweaks that change everything.

SPEAKER_03 36:35

Right.

Mike Stromsoe 36:35

So exciting, so exciting that opportunity because the outside perspective, also known as the law of familiarity, comes into play. I didn't see that. Yeah, because they're too close to it. Daniel, that was great stuff, my friend. Well done. I can't wait for agencies to you know take advantage of the opportunities before them. Great job.

Daniel Metcalf 36:55

Yeah, yeah. Thanks. You two as well. And you know, for all you agency owners out there that feel like there can be a little bit more, or that you have another agency friend that you think could really get something out of this episode, please feel free to share it, like it, download it, um, review it, because if we're going to grow this community, it's going to take other great operators working with other great operators. And so we want to build that out, and we're here for you. And if you ever want any type of one-on-one help whatsoever, Mike and I are out there in the industry, find us on the socials, find us on our websites, reach out to us and let us know what you're dealing with individually, and we'll help you find out where you can get the greatest leverage in order to scale your agency. Um, that's it for this week. I really appreciate again everybody tuning in, and I can't wait till next week.

Mike Stromsoe 37:47

1000%.