But at the end of the day, the most important thing about them is that they get done every time, all the time.
Because the simplest answer can be the right one a majority of the time.
The truly remarkable aspect is having your agency take the time to commit to that answer.
Erik Garcia, owner of Garcia Insurance Services, talks about what happened to his agency when they put the process above everything else.
Joey Giangola: Mr. Erik Garcia. How are you doing today, sir?
Erik Garcia: I'm well, Mr. Joey Giangola. How are you?
Joey Giangola: Erik, I'm doing all right. I want to ask you this before we really go anywhere. I think you're a fitting man to ask this question too. Is there a combination of things that you see, a combination of decisions that you see people make that make you question their decision making ability? Generally a purchase, a combination of things and say, "Man, I really don't know what you guys were thinking here."
Erik Garcia: Man, you go deep really fast. Say that question one more time. A combination of things that makes me question people? I question people all the time.
Joey Giangola: Their decision making ability.
Erik Garcia: Oh, yeah.
Joey Giangola: Like a purchase decision.
Erik Garcia: Yeah. Absolutely. I question my decision sometimes, right? I think we tend to... I think as humans, we're incredibly emotional beings and so many of our decisions are emotion-based, which it's not always a bad thing. There's a good reason why we can make quick decisions sometimes. Bigger decisions, sometimes, we probably need to be a little bit more thoughtful and less emotional. So yeah, I do question people. I question myself.
Joey Giangola: So for me, there's one that stands out above them all. I haven't seen one lately, but it's the luxury station wagon purchase. If you're going to go station wagon, I don't know why it needs to be a fancy vehicle. If you're going to get a fancy vehicle, I don't know why it's a station wagon.
Erik Garcia: Do they still have station wagons?
Joey Giangola: Yeah. Mercedes used to make a station wagon.
Erik Garcia: Yeah, they used to. Do they still?
Joey Giangola: That was like five years ago, I think.
Erik Garcia: I really wasn't conscious of people making station wagon purchases. I think that was like... I'm not that old, man.
Joey Giangola: It was definitely within five years, maybe 10 at best. It was like a classy, slimmed down...
Erik Garcia: Like a hatchback kind of thing?
Joey Giangola: It was like... They probably weren't going to call it a station wagon, but if you looked at it, you'd be like, "that's a station wagon." Maybe this is just me, but that's like those...
Erik Garcia: Crossovers.
Joey Giangola: No it's definitely not a crossover. It was... Alright. Fine. We're going to agree to disagree on this one apparently Erik.
Erik Garcia: Who makes that...? I'm trying to think of that decision making process. Is that an emotional decision or is that a thought out, "I'm going to go buy a luxury station wagon"? Do you see it like, "oh I got to have that"?
Joey Giangola: I can't imagine that's the response. That's why I don't know. That's why I'm perplexed by the whole ordeal. And I can't understand why that would be a combination of things that you would want together. That makes me question somebody's decision making ability.
Erik Garcia: Did you stay up all night thinking of that question?
Joey Giangola: No, I just write them down as they come to me and then save them.
Erik Garcia: Yeah. Okay.
Joey Giangola: Sorry. Threw you for such a loop. Let's move this over to the insurance side of things, right? As somebody that has paid attention to the industry at large for a while and you occupy an interesting position being, we'll say commercial insurance adjacent at times from your normal chair. Is there decision making happening in that side of the industry that you often look at and think, "Hmm. I don't know if that's necessarily the right thing to do"?
Erik Garcia: That's tough because I feel I'm a coastal agent down here in New Orleans and I feel like there's the rest of the world or the rest of the country, what insurance carriers do. Then there's Coastal, what carriers do down on here. So there's a bunch of conversations that I don't even pay attention to because it has absolutely no relevance to me here down the coast.
Even in the insure-tech space. There's all these really cool stuff happening. Doesn't solve one of my problems. So, I'm not even going to pay attention to it. So are there decisions... How about decisions to solve my problem down here on the coast. Not just mine, but Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, you get the picture, as opposed to another... I was having a conversation with somebody the other day. Another piece of technology to more efficiently write cars in the Midwest. Okay, there's 10 solutions already for that. Solve my problem. Why are you not solving my problem? There's a lot of people on the coast with big problems and no one's solving it. So I question that decision sometimes.
Joey Giangola: Are you feeling a little neglected with all of the shiny things happening elsewhere in the country?
Erik Garcia: Maybe. Sometimes. I do think that the solutions that we have down here are quite limited. Whether it's our writers, not all of our carriers are the writers. We don't have big national carriers down here where I'm at. We have smaller regional carriers sometimes, or just in one state, or they're in Florida and Louisiana. So, they don't have the budget that some of the other big carriers have from a technology standpoint.
Joey Giangola: So then, the better question is how do you overcome those challenges in some way? What do you think other agents, that may have it easier, can learn from that adversity that coastal agents have to deal with in their way of life?
Erik Garcia: Yeah. Easier, harder. I don't know if I'd characterize it that way. It's just different. My problem is different than someone else's problem. So the way you have to handle it is to really understand what your problem is first. What am I trying to solve? Then work from there.
I remember we were chatting before we hit record. The last time you and I podcasted, you were doing your call-in show and you had called me and I'm like, "oh man, Joey's calling. He's gonna record." I was in a bad space. I was playing CSR. I was in the middle of playing CSR for my agency. This was four years ago. I was in the process of figuring out, what are our problems? So we can build processes around these problems so they're not problems anymore. Whatever the issue is, if it's carriers with limited technology or limited tech solutions to help me manage my business. I got to find the best way to manually build those into some automatic process or automatically manually process them or manually automatically build that out, if that makes sense.
Joey Giangola: I prefer manual automation. I think is the way to say it. Yeah.
Erik Garcia: Okay. Manual automation.
Joey Giangola: What have you learned in that manual automation process that you think — I think there is a lot could be manually automated, as strange of a term as it is, that we don't take the opportunity to at least outline, define, and put into place. What stood out to you as having the biggest impact during that whole transformation process?
Erik Garcia: A huge thing for me and our agency was really understanding how the different data from the different carriers comes into our agency. Whether it's through download, which companies download? Which companies download accurately? Which companies email us? Which companies mail us? Yes. We still have companies that still mail us stuff from time to time. So really understanding how data enters our agency management system, whether it's automatic through download or manual through an email that we have to later input or an email from some of our ENS carriers that we have to go and put all the data into our agency management system, because there's no download. So really understanding the way the flow of data into our agency to me was fundamental in building processes.
Joey Giangola: Well, that's interesting, right? There's a lot of lighting of torches and sharpening of pitchforks around how information is sent from carriers in the agent community. There's only so much you can change so quickly, right? Just accepting the reality of your situation. Did that take a little bit, to just say, "listen, there's not a whole lot we're going to do here right now. Business still has to get done. I got to make do with what's happening."? Was there a moment that helped flip that switch and what happened? What happened as a result?
Erik Garcia: Yeah. So early on, there was a sense of trying to emulate other agencies. "How are they doing it? I have to do it that way." Then real quickly realizing, "Hola, wait a minute. They're writing with the top three national independent carriers." My carriers just don't have those capabilities. So I had to stop looking at how other friends of mine were running their business and say, what's going to work for my agency? It might not be fancy. It might not be sexy. It might not be high tech, but what's going to work? Then finding a common process across all of our carriers that was easy and consistent for us to be able to execute. So, when I have 10 or 15 carriers that I'm dealing with, we're literally dealing with 10 or 15 different processes. 10 or 15 different ways data comes to our systems.
Now some of our carriers are working off the same platforms. So what we did was we grouped which carriers are similar, let's group those in terms of their portals. So we grouped those and figured out which ones are the majority of our business through. Let's build processes around those first. Then what common processes could we implement across all of our carriers. So we try to, as much as possible, keep a similar experience for our staff and the client experience across all of our carriers for obvious reasons.
Joey Giangola: Yeah. So basically getting down to the lowest common denominator. Was that practical enough? Because I think there might be some anxiety trying to get to that in some basic fashion.
Erik Garcia: It's a nightmare because you're trying to manage a lot of information. Nothing we do in this industry is really hard. The hard thing is, you're managing so much of it at one time. So, it's having systems that help you manage it. Then you're running into limitations with the systems that you have, not to go into great detail, but you're running into limitations of the tech that you have, the systems that you have that are supposed to help you manage your agency. That's not an easy... You can't just like, "oh, I'm just going to switch to another piece of technology." That's a big decision to make.
So then, you're trying to force things and figure things out. It's a challenge. It's a constant balancing act and it's something that I've come to accept. It's a problem that I can't solve right now. It's a tension that we have to manage. There is constantly going to be this tension with managing these processes with our carriers, the way we interact with these carriers. I can't solve it. When I realized that I couldn't solve it, it was probably less, crazy making.
Joey Giangola: So the other end of that. It's maybe a minority popular opinion is the idea of, if they're not going to operate or interact with your agency the way that you think that they should, that you maybe shouldn't necessarily use them as a carrier. There's a certain reality to that I don't think connects in a lot of spaces. I don't know how practical it is. I think there's a little give and take, but ultimately you still need to do what's best for your customers. Just because a carrier doesn't do something a certain way, they still have maybe the best rates, the best coverage and those things might have to take precedence.
Erik Garcia: Yeah. If you operate in a volatile market, then the idea of saying, "I'm not going to work with you, carrier, because your technology just doesn't meet our standards" then you're going to go hungry. That's just the reality of it. My top carrier this year might not be writing next year. My top carrier this year may come in and, across the board, increase everyone's storm deductible to 5%. That's not a fun situation to deal with. My top carrier may come in and file for a 30, 40% rate increase. You can't just make those decisions when you're in a volatile market. In terms of, "I'm just going to write with one or two or three or four of these carriers because they fit my process to a certain degree." You're at the mercy of these carriers
Joey Giangola: Yeah. It's certainly a give and take. Has it ever made your eye wander outside of your complicated neighborhood, your territory and say, "man, I could write some insurance somewhere where it doesn't do this all the time"?
Erik Garcia: Joey, I got to be careful what I say here. It's made me do a couple things. One is, "my God. Can I sell this thing right now?" Doing the mental calculus, will I have enough to, to carry me? The second is if we just became so super niche, maybe we can just simplify everything. Just work in one very specific niche. Then this carrier may work or that carrier may work. But those are two unrealistic things I'm not selling right now. New Orleans is not a huge market to be able to say, "I'm just going to go work this particular niche." At that, again, being a volatile market, depending on what you're doing, we rely heavily on the ENS markets and those change from year to year.
Joey Giangola: If you had to, not that they're hard or challenges than other agencies, but if you had to look at something that you often hear agencies and maybe milder climates struggle with, is there something that you think that... Again, the difficult environment that you guys have down on the coast, is there something that you could say to those agents that maybe struggle with other things? Is there something that you have an advantage of that you've learned to sift through that stands out above that you constantly hear them maybe struggling with? Is there a piece of advice there that you would want to pass along?
Erik Garcia: So advice that I would pass along to them based off of... Yeah. Probably not the most helpful advice, "guys, like seriously, you're complaining anything about that? How about a Category four bearing down on your..." Try having a conversation. How about this one? Try having a conversation with 90% of your clients in a two week period because they all want to file claims. Maybe you should, again, probably not the best advice, but seriously, "you're complaining about what?"
Joey Giangola: I think maybe we just start an insurance gratitude hotline or perspective hotline. If they're having a rough day, just call Erik in New Orleans and ...
Erik Garcia: There's agents around me. I got friends who are in way worse situations from a claim standpoint and what they're dealing with post Ida. I don't know. I would say... It sounds like I'm beating a dead horse here. Just the importance of processes and systems. Processes and systems are in a way... If you don't have technology and you really haven't implemented a lot of technology into your agency, processes and systems are, in a way, a form of automation in that when I do this task, these six things need to happen.
So that's your... You have your pre-built workflows or templates, but building out processes are huge. I would say, this is making sure that your processes are stronger than your people. That doesn't mean that you don't hire people who are strong personalities, who are going to think on their own. The point is that when you have a process and someone goes off of that script, it's not highly automated or highly tech, then it becomes problematic... Creates further problems down the road. So making sure that people understand the processes and getting buy-in from your people on those processes. So they understand why they have to do it this way.
Joey Giangola: Alright, Erik, completely unfair question, but I'm only going to leave you with one process. You cannot have any others to run your agency. What's that one process that you're absolutely taking, no matter what?
Erik Garcia: Oh my Gosh, man. I got to answer this on the spot. One process... Probably my renewal process, since the majority of our revenue comes from renewals. I would say, forget sales processes, forget anything else. I need to make sure that 70 to 80% of my revenue, which is renewals comes through the door.
Joey Giangola: I think you did alright with that. That was a good answer.
Erik Garcia: That was good? You like that? Okay.
Joey Giangola: Yeah. Yeah. That it was good. All right, Erik. Well, I got three more questions for you.
Erik Garcia: Three more. Gosh.
Joey Giangola: The first one, very simply, what is one thing that you hope you never forget?
Erik Garcia: One thing that I hope I never forget the importance of relationships.
Joey Giangola: Alright.
Erik Garcia: Is that good?
Joey Giangola: Anything else about the relationships?
Erik Garcia: That relationships are more valuable than commissions in the door. They're more valuable than my bank account. They're more valuable than any worldly possession.
Joey Giangola: Now on the...
Erik Garcia: I felt like this is a speed round, so that's why I answered so quickly.
Joey Giangola: That's all right.
Erik Garcia: You know, so it's not a speed round.
Joey Giangola: Feel free to elaborate a little bit.
Erik Garcia: Okay.
Joey Giangola: You can elaborate. I'm not holding your feet to the fire just on three words or anything here.
Erik Garcia: Okay.
Joey Giangola: Now on the other side of that, Erik, what is one thing that you still have yet to learn?
Erik Garcia: That's probably a better question to ask to my wife about me.
Joey Giangola: Wow.
Erik Garcia: One thing that I have left. Oh my gosh. That's a hard one, Joey.
Joey Giangola: It doesn't have to be the ultimate one. It just could be a thing that you still have yet to learn.
Erik Garcia: So my present situation is how to... In Adobe Premier, when I'm editing something, how to take one file that's like a long file that I'm going to use multiple times in multiple videos, how to retitle or repurpose those across multiple videos. I've yet to learn that.
Joey Giangola: All right Erik. Last question to you, sir. If I were to hand you a magic wand of sorts to reshape, change, alter, speed up any area of insurance that might be pertinent to your geographical location, what is that thing? What's it doing? Where is it going?
Erik Garcia: Ooh, this is a good one. This is a good one. So it's a little bit... Probably not what you were thinking, but it has a huge impact on insurance. If you could wave a magic wand and drop the ocean temperatures by six degrees or seven degrees, you would make my insurance life so much easier. Was that, is that okay? Was that an okay answer, Joey?
Joey Giangola: Yeah, it's certainly in very firmly in magic wand territory.
Erik Garcia: Sure. Okay. How about this one? A little bit more real, not realistic, but more practical. I want you to wave a magic wand so that all the carriers that we write homeowner's insurance with are on my radar.
Joey Giangola: Erik, this has been fantastic, sir. I'm going to leave it right there.
Erik Garcia: Thank you, Joey. Appreciate it.