How Top Insurance Agencies Stand Out in a Crowded Market

Callan [0:00:01]: Welcome to The Insurance Growth Lab, where we go deep on the growth campaigns and strategies driving real results in the insurance industry.

Callan [0:00:09]: I`m Callan Harrington founder Flashgrowth And in each episode, I sit down with marketing and growth leaders from carriers and shirt tech and top brokers to break down one specific initiative, whether it's how they marketed a product, scale a channel or solve a specific growth challenge.

Callan [0:00:26]: It's no fluff just tactical insights you can apply in your own company.

Callan [0:00:31]: For today's episode, we've compiled some of our favorite examples of agencies that have created real separation from their competition.

Callan [0:00:45]: That can oftentimes be really difficult to do within the insurance broker world because there is so much competition.

Callan [0:00:54]: But for the best agencies, they are really, really really good at creating separation.

Callan [0:01:00]: And so these are some of our favorite examples that we've seen from the show so far.

Callan [0:01:04]: Now that being said, a lot of these you could take these exact examples and deploy that yourself.

Callan [0:01:11]: But what I'd really encourage you to do is what are some of the trends that you're seeing and how can you really make those own in your respective area, your respective niche, your respective industry?

Callan [0:01:22]: Whatever that may be.

Callan [0:01:23]: But regardless, these ones are all excellent examples and I hope you enjoy.

Callan [0:01:28]: Ryan, I think one of the things that's obvious.

Callan [0:01:31]: Anybody that's been in the space for any amount of times knows you're one of the biggest voices within the insurance community.

Callan [0:01:37]: So I would love to dive in on the content creation for the agency audience as opposed to the consumer and business audience.

Ryan [0:01:48]: I learned the power of content marketing in general through my work direct to consumer through the agency.

Ryan [0:01:54]: I learned the power of what it meant to build a personal brand and have a voice and a take.

Patrick [0:02:01]: Through

Ryan [0:02:02]: My first podcast, which is called content warfare.

Ryan [0:02:03]: I've always been a staunch believer that what content what telling your story consistently, your value structure, what you believe in your thoughts, your takes, etcetera, What that does is...

Ryan [0:02:16]: Yeah.

Ryan [0:02:17]: It builds an audience and some people do it because they wanna be a celebrity.

Ryan [0:02:20]: That's never been the reason for me.

Ryan [0:02:22]: My take is that every person in a leadership position or every person that desires a leadership position should have a personal brand.

Ryan [0:02:28]: Because when people wanna partner with you, they wanna know what you're about.

Ryan [0:02:32]: They go to your Linkedin.

Ryan [0:02:33]: If someone wants to find out more about you as a person, Maybe they go to your Instagram or your Facebook.

Ryan [0:02:39]: If someone wants to see what does this person actually believe.

Ryan [0:02:42]: What's their philosophy?

Ryan [0:02:43]: Fee around sales or marketing or HR or customer experience or web design or whatever thing it is that you do?

Ryan [0:02:50]: Are you writing about it?

Ryan [0:02:52]: Are you talking about it?

Ryan [0:02:53]: Is there a place where I can go and actually get a feel for who are you following?

Ryan [0:02:57]: If you're telling me that you're great at what you do.

Ryan [0:02:59]: And you haven't shared a single take or haven't commented in a forum or haven't written a an article or a white paper or done a few videos on what you do, how much do you love what you do?

Ryan [0:03:11]: In today's world.

Ryan [0:03:12]: Ten years ago, this is not the same thing.

Ryan [0:03:14]: But today, if you wanna be a leader or you're a leader, I need to know what you're all about.

Ryan [0:03:19]: If you wanna be the person grossing the the top income, the person who who recruiters are reaching out to who the company or the the CEO that's always getting inbound partnership requests, etcetera, you have to have a brand.

Ryan [0:03:32]: You have to be out there sharing your thoughts and feelings.

Ryan [0:03:34]: Every prospect starts at zero trust.

Ryan [0:03:37]: And when you get them to a hundred trusts, that's when they buy.

Ryan [0:03:40]: Content is the mechanism to fill that trust gap before they ever talk to you.

Ryan [0:03:47]: So the more targeted your content is, the more it speaks to your target audience, the more consistently you're put out your value structure, who you are, what you can do, who you help adding value, contra ideas, thoughtful stuff.

Ryan [0:03:59]: Whatever it is.

Ryan [0:04:00]: Right?

Ryan [0:04:01]: The more you do that, the more people see it, the higher that trust bar goes up before they ever speak to you.

Callan [0:04:08]: I think that depending on what you're doing.

Callan [0:04:11]: There are tons of people that are ultra successful that you've just never heard of whatsoever.

Callan [0:04:16]: But the caveat to that is if you have a personal brand, if you're putting thoughtful content out there, it is absolutely a catalyst.

Callan [0:04:26]: And the opportunities that can come your way that you're not expecting are hundred percent there.

Callan [0:04:32]: Like there's no question.

Callan [0:04:33]: Matt, we've been talking about this for a while.

Callan [0:04:37]: You founded G n, G n became not only one of the fastest growing agencies in the country, but you're also one of the fastest growing businesses on the Inc five thousand.

Callan [0:04:46]: And then you sold G end to the Hill group, and you just sold a hill at a really interesting time.

Callan [0:04:52]: Like, that's when they were on their rise as well, along that rise, one of the things that I've thought was super interesting, and we had talked about it before, but then I...

Callan [0:05:01]: Then doing my own research is, this bob head campaign, I would love to get into the weeds.

Callan [0:05:07]: On.

Matt [0:05:07]: We had no idea what we were doing, but we were throwing everything against the wall and we'd recently seen an office episode of, you know, Dwight fruit and his Bob head and.

Matt [0:05:14]: And, we weren't taking good money at the time...

Matt [0:05:16]: We weren't taking any money at the time.

Matt [0:05:18]: So, you know, the the ten thousand dollar purchase of a hundred Bob is a big deal.

Matt [0:05:22]: You know, we're having some success with realtors and mortgage brokers and attorneys and, you know, engaging with them and getting referrals and and creating a network, you know, opportunity there.

Matt [0:05:31]: We just decided to go all in in that space.

Matt [0:05:33]: And so we we researched and found the top producers and those different, you know, industries or mortgage and real estate and attorney.

Matt [0:05:41]: And we made them all into bob had dump unbeknownst to them.

Matt [0:05:44]: So custom them to them.

Matt [0:05:45]: And then we hand delivered some of them, and we mailed it out a lot of them, basically, nice packaging branded to them, what it means to be part of the bot family and community.

Matt [0:05:54]: And, like, we got two reactions.

Matt [0:05:56]: It was either...

Matt [0:05:57]: This is so weird, but let's meet because they'll thank you.

Matt [0:06:00]: And this is the coolest gift I've ever got I'm gonna put it up and, you know, we even have people who received it, and their kids had broken it, and they reach back Alec.

Matt [0:06:07]: I'm so sad because there any way Can get another one.

Matt [0:06:10]: And I we realized quickly, like, that was a an interesting way to get in the door with a network with...

Matt [0:06:14]: You know, from a network effect perspective and create relationships right off the bat.

Matt [0:06:18]: With people that probably would have taken a lot longer to say yes to to meet with.

Matt [0:06:22]: And it just generated a lot of momentum.

Matt [0:06:24]: And then we just kept on doing it.

Matt [0:06:26]: So over the course of,

Curtis [0:06:27]: I don't know,

Matt [0:06:28]: call it seven or eight, nine years we We made thirteen hundred bottle heads, You know, and there's probably not a mortgage broker or realtor to massachusetts who was a heavy producer.

Matt [0:06:36]: Who didn't have one.

Matt [0:06:37]: It then spawned into...

Matt [0:06:39]: You know, hey.

Matt [0:06:39]: This is this brand is working.

Matt [0:06:41]: We started consulting across the industry and speaking on different stages, you know, different events and started a, you know, consulting firm called Bob.

Matt [0:06:48]: It just naturally morph into vlogging and video video series and podcasting and all the other things and kind of drove the brand internally within the industry, which we had never any intent in doing.

Matt [0:07:00]: And, you know, to today, it it really created tremendous amount of relationships and partnerships and trusted friendships that would have wouldn't have had otherwise.

Matt [0:07:08]: So it was it was good to decision

Callan [0:07:11]: talking with mortgage and origin and loan officers a pretty...

Callan [0:07:13]: Yeah know, it's pretty common practice.

Callan [0:07:15]: But why was it, like, what was kind of some of those early points where, like, you know what?

Callan [0:07:19]: We gotta go all in on this?

Callan [0:07:20]: Because that's a very scary move to go from friends family just pushing referrals as much as you can in that world versus we're just focusing on a home buyers.

Callan [0:07:30]: Home buyers specifically, not necessarily just homeowners, but home buyers.

Matt [0:07:34]: One of the things I mean it's successful previous to starting your own business.

Matt [0:07:37]: Was understanding the power of referrals, not just from former clients, but when you don't have inform clients, you need to get referrals from centers of influence.

Matt [0:07:47]: Mh.

Matt [0:07:47]: And so when we started our business, we had a lot of centers of influence, they were just across the full gamut.

Matt [0:07:53]: You know, And for from all different industries from different relationships, not all leaves are created equal.

Matt [0:07:59]: Not all of our referrals are created equal.

Matt [0:08:00]: So, you know, the about a year in, we started do assess, you know, hey.

Matt [0:08:05]: We we get this number of referrals leads and opportunities.

Matt [0:08:08]: What, you know, what what close we feel like these are better than these, But like, let's actually look at the numbers and the data.

Matt [0:08:14]: So we did an assessment.

Matt [0:08:15]: It was very clear when we got introduced to people were buying property.

Matt [0:08:19]: They needed what we had to offer.

Matt [0:08:21]: It was time based.

Matt [0:08:22]: Closing ratio was much higher.

Matt [0:08:24]: The speed from open to close was a lot quicker.

Matt [0:08:28]: It just made a lot of sense.

Matt [0:08:29]: And so...

Matt [0:08:29]: Well, there's a big enough industry here.

Matt [0:08:31]: We only do x number of closing or, you know, clients that are closing a year.

Matt [0:08:36]: We can cross almost every time to other lines of business.

Matt [0:08:39]: Let's just try it.

Matt [0:08:41]: Let's go all in on it.

Matt [0:08:42]: So I think it was it was enough proof in, in, our relationships that we had.

Matt [0:08:46]: We just needed more of them.

Matt [0:08:48]: So this is, like, a fun marketing event early on that that sort of spawned into bigger things.

Callan [0:08:53]: So, Curtis, when I was researching, if you look at A, twenty one on insurance journal top one hundred, over fifteen hundred employees, ninety plus different offices, thirty five states across thirty five states, two billion in premiums written.

Callan [0:09:08]: And then probably the one that I'm most impressed with is over a hundred twenty two million in Eb.

Callan [0:09:13]: I've heard you talk a lot in previous interviews about one, how you had grew your initial book to two and a half million when you were first getting into this with security guards and a number of different niche markets.

Callan [0:09:26]: And I heard you talk about how you guys are arming your producers with a process I technology to essentially, my words not yours, put that on steroids.

Callan [0:09:38]: What does that look like?

Curtis [0:09:41]: When, you're in sales and you're starting off and you're starting the zero.

Curtis [0:09:43]: It's it's a hard business to start it.

Curtis [0:09:45]: And that's why the fallout rate, The dropout rate is so high, especially on the commercial side of the business is because it's really challenging to get a book moving.

Curtis [0:09:52]: And so I always tell people if you're gonna start in the business, pick something, and maybe it's not a passionate thing, but pick a niche that you can be good at and then hyper niche, which means drive deeper and niche within a niche.

Curtis [0:10:05]: Yep.

Curtis [0:10:05]: And that drives diversification.

Curtis [0:10:07]: What what it does is it drives expertise, and then you be a thought leader.

Curtis [0:10:10]: And so you put a lot of content out around that specific niche.

Curtis [0:10:14]: So that you're constantly in front of people talking to them about problems that their business is facing, and we took a step further my agency where we front branded every one of our producers had their own brand that they ran that was specifically geared towards the niche they were in.

Curtis [0:10:29]: And I'll use security guards as an example.

Curtis [0:10:31]: At the time we we started by securityguard.com.

Curtis [0:10:34]: Super simple.

Curtis [0:10:35]: It was a direct head.

Curtis [0:10:36]: This shows y'all long ago was, but you know, we were able to run that.

Curtis [0:10:40]: The whole website was geared towards security guards obviously.

Curtis [0:10:42]: So you're not searching through a hundred different things to figure out who is the guy that handles security guards.

Curtis [0:10:47]: Your front and center, it's all about you.

Curtis [0:10:48]: It's all about your business.

Curtis [0:10:49]: It's all information geared towards your business and makes you an immediate expert.

Curtis [0:10:54]: And so you become the expert in the industry.

Curtis [0:10:56]: And then basically, as Google switched their kind of their calculations around on how they looked at direct it Urls, we moved to Guard insurance and still exists today as a sub brand.

Curtis [0:11:08]: But you know, the bottom line is is to create...

Curtis [0:11:10]: I don't know to say illusion.

Curtis [0:11:12]: But create the illusion that that's all you do.

Curtis [0:11:14]: Yeah.

Curtis [0:11:14]: Know?

Curtis [0:11:14]: And it just makes it life a lot simpler.

Curtis [0:11:17]: And when you know your product and you know the industry that you're going after it makes your yourself process that much stream more streamlined because you know where the holes are.

Curtis [0:11:26]: You know where the problems are, you not fix them quickly.

Curtis [0:11:28]: When you're sporadically just writing anything.

Curtis [0:11:30]: You can't be an expert of all things.

Curtis [0:11:33]: You know, Jack all trades, it's master of non touch area.

Curtis [0:11:36]: It's like really no.

Curtis [0:11:37]: And you...

Curtis [0:11:38]: And then you can start to predict and analyze, like, what are their issues why are they having issues where do you see it?

Curtis [0:11:44]: And the those discussions aren't then about a sale?

Curtis [0:11:47]: It's an educational process that leads to sell later.

Curtis [0:11:51]: And and that's the way we've all thought about it.

Curtis [0:11:53]: So we really look at A when we look for bolt on acquisitions, do you really look for people that have a specialty.

Curtis [0:12:00]: What what is different about you as an agency owner and your agency in particular, that's gonna make me interested in it.

Curtis [0:12:08]: Right?

Curtis [0:12:08]: And why do I think that that's gonna be interesting for A me as a whole and for all the shareholders I work for?

Curtis [0:12:13]: And how do I create value through that?

Curtis [0:12:15]: And so what we always look at to say is, what what industries do we like?

Curtis [0:12:20]: What industries do we think we can mirror and counter and actually put into our puzzle and kind of bring across the rest of our our network and and create internal cross sell, which then pumps organic growth.

Callan [0:12:33]: Patrick, I'm super excited to have you on the show.

Callan [0:12:37]: One of the things that I really wanted to dive into was when we spoke, you talked about a niche focus that you had on going after owners of Harley Davidson motorcycles.

Callan [0:12:50]: And My first thought was that...

Callan [0:12:53]: Alright.

Callan [0:12:54]: That's pretty unique.

Callan [0:12:54]: I mean, yeah.

Callan [0:12:55]: Those are expensive, but I just didn't anticipate, like, a biker or gang being like, that was the niche that you focused on, but I've...

Callan [0:13:03]: As I'm thinking about, I'm, okay.

Callan [0:13:05]: And then you quickly like, well, I'm not targeting biker games.

Callan [0:13:08]: Moderate.

Callan [0:13:09]: No.

Patrick [0:13:10]: The one...

Patrick [0:13:11]: The one centers are not the percent I'm looking for.

Callan [0:13:14]: Yeah.

Callan [0:13:14]: Exactly.

Callan [0:13:15]: So where did this start?

Patrick [0:13:18]: So I actually grew up in the...

Patrick [0:13:19]: It kinda in the motorcycle world.

Patrick [0:13:22]: My dad, who passed away when I was very, very young, and I never knew in personally, but he rode cross for Honda, my grandfather rode, moto cross for Honda, and it was actually a couple years ago.

Patrick [0:13:36]: I just went out on Saint Patrick's day.

Patrick [0:13:38]: I went out and bar motorcycle.

Patrick [0:13:39]: And my wife was mad.

Patrick [0:13:41]: Matt.

Patrick [0:13:42]: She was so mad.

Patrick [0:13:43]: I had to tell her and find a reason really.

Patrick [0:13:46]: I had to find

Ryan [0:13:47]: a

Patrick [0:13:47]: reason.

Patrick [0:13:47]: Why this was going to be a business expense or business related.

Patrick [0:13:52]: So the more I dug into how I could do this, I kept realizing the similarity of people with bikes like this.

Patrick [0:13:59]: And I hung that bike about a year, and then I upgrade to a nice really big full dresser Harley.

Patrick [0:14:03]: And

Callan [0:14:05]: everybody who

Patrick [0:14:05]: has a full dresser Harley is making their upper income they're the upper operational echelon amount of income in our region.

Patrick [0:14:10]: They're thirty thousand dollar motorcycles.

Patrick [0:14:12]: When you've got a thirty thousand dollar motorcycle, and you have a new seat that you put on and new handlebars is a new exhaust pipes and all the things that people do, a new seat or saddle is a thousand dollars.

Patrick [0:14:23]: Handlebars are twelve hundred dollars plus labor.

Patrick [0:14:26]: New pipes are extra twenty five or three thousand dollars.

Patrick [0:14:29]: This is not something that every person out there could for.

Patrick [0:14:33]: So if I start looking at the soc economic platform of a who these people are.

Patrick [0:14:37]: This is not the bare minimum street bike.

Patrick [0:14:40]: This is somebody who's got whether they're paying cash or they're paying at, you know, five to seven hundred dollars a month car on a motorcycle.

Patrick [0:14:47]: On top of the upgrades and accessories.

Patrick [0:14:50]: And then all the gear that goes with it in the riding and the touring and all the things that happened.

Patrick [0:14:54]: I started looking at the type of person that did this.

Patrick [0:14:57]: And these folks own a home.

Patrick [0:14:59]: They typically have...

Patrick [0:15:00]: They're typically married one to two cars they've got a truck and a trailer, that they're putting that bike on.

Patrick [0:15:04]: Mh.

Patrick [0:15:05]: These are the people that have the ancillary money or that that disposable money to spend on these items, and they have the ancillary lines of business that we can go grab.

Callan [0:15:14]: Yeah.

Patrick [0:15:15]: So they own a home, which means they own two cars which means they have a motorcycle and a trailer.

Patrick [0:15:19]: So instead of one to two policies that we can put in place with two exposures, we went to five to six and a heartbeat me.

Patrick [0:15:27]: Just by targeting people that would buy that harley Davidson.

Patrick [0:15:30]: And we did this through a lot of content, we did a lot through reddit, and we started putting gl out there, reddit on which seats you should buy for this type of bike.

Patrick [0:15:39]: Well charge handlebars can you buy for this?

Patrick [0:15:42]: And if you're looking at what saddle goes on my twenty twenty five Harley Davidson Rogue.

Patrick [0:15:48]: That means you've got one or you're buying one.

Patrick [0:15:50]: Okay.

Patrick [0:15:51]: Reddit was more of a...

Patrick [0:15:52]: It was actually less expensive to put product on there and if we wanted to advertise, we tried this very little.

Patrick [0:15:58]: We did past to because there wasn't a ton of content out there.

Patrick [0:16:01]: So we would actually go out there, post the content, and it would pixel, pixel that audience, and then we would run ads to that audience.

Patrick [0:16:10]: Instead of running ads on reading itself to promote that content.

Patrick [0:16:14]: We would pixel the content and then run ads to that audience once they hit it.

Patrick [0:16:18]: So it's a custom audience based on people looking at this saddle or these handle handlebars or what we had to do.

Patrick [0:16:23]: So we wrote at some content.

Patrick [0:16:25]: I put it out there and we're able to do substantially well with it because we knew what they were looking for.

Patrick [0:16:30]: We didn't spend a ton of money on the ads, and we didn't spend a ton of money anywhere.

Patrick [0:16:34]: But when we did is we became the people that knew about your motorcycle, and we knew if you had a motorcycle or you had a certain style of bike or been riding for certain products on you had certain assets that we could be the person.

Patrick [0:16:45]: And it almost almost immediately after that first nine to ten months.

Patrick [0:16:49]: Because we started it in the spring through the first winter.

Patrick [0:16:52]: And by the next spring, we actually didn't turn the ads back on.

Patrick [0:16:55]: Because we were already engaged it's such a deep enough level with the referral networks inside the groups.

Patrick [0:17:00]: We had perm the groups locally.

Patrick [0:17:02]: That people were like, hey, this and mc Mcbride does a great job.

Patrick [0:17:05]: I had never met most of the people that say I wrote, which was which was the wild park for me.

Callan [0:17:09]: That is so cool.

Callan [0:17:10]: So you used the paid ads to get you into the space, and then Yeah.

Callan [0:17:14]: Then you became.

Callan [0:17:15]: You just you're part of the community.

Callan [0:17:16]: It it was a natural fit at that point to pass it to you.