How to Make a Great Introduction to a New Process

Joey Giangola: Patrick McBride, how you doing today, sir?

Patrick McBride: I'm fantastic. How are you, Joey?

Joey Giangola: Patrick, I'm doing all right. I'm going to have to try to match that energy, we'll see how I do. Before we really get into anything to too serious, I want to know this before we get into it. What's something that even when it's clean, you feel like people should treat as if it's still dirty?

Patrick McBride: Oh, that's a great question. So this will probably give you a little insight into my background, but I think bicycles. Even when you think it's clean, they're absolutely dirty. If you could see on camera, just off my right-hand shoulder, I've got a bicycle hanging on the wall, and no matter what you do, you got to stay clear of it. So chains, grease, tires, you name it, brakes, there's always something dirty on there. Even if you've cleaned it.

Joey Giangola: I would've not guessed that one. I think there's a clear answer and I'm glad you didn't go with it because if you didn't, I wouldn't have had one, but it's the toilet. I think it's just obvious, no matter how, that thing is just get away from it. I don't like people casually treating something that even if it's clean, I feel like you should treat it like it's dirty all the time.

Patrick McBride: That's probably a better answer. I like yours.

Joey Giangola: Well I mean I had more time to think about it, it's not really fair, Patrick. But I want to move this over to the world of insurance and I think the logical sort of thing that I would like to know is that there is a lot of things that people maybe have misconceptions around insurance a lot of times. Where they think something's one thing and it's actually another, and they treat insurance a certain way when maybe they shouldn't. What's I guess maybe the thing that you kind of come back to yourself and your conversations with clients constantly having to remind them about like, "Hey, it's not this, it's that". Is there some sort of foundational piece that you find yourself constantly realigning people with?

Patrick McBride: If there's a constant, number one is always that insurance is nothing more than the transference of risk. And the riskier you are, your driving habits, your home or your business, the more expensive it is. And that's where I think that translation gets lost, especially in a world where every advertisement says, give me 15 minutes and we're going to save you a bunch of money. You can't save risk. The only way to save that risk, I guess, is to reduce the risk, you then save the money. So risk equals premium. It's just the way it goes. I think if we had to look at it at a core point, that is the core of everything we do.

Joey Giangola: How does it feel if you get somebody to an epiphany like, "oh, wow, I never really thought about that". Or "Man, Patrick, you're the smartest insurance person ever". Why are you making this make so much sense to me?

Patrick McBride: I feel like that is, it's so lost with the majority of our counterparts that that's actually what we're doing. We're not just selling a policy, we're not trading one new client for one who left because rates changed. But when we can really have a conversation around risk, you break this up a little bit with personal lines, it's really easy to see risk in life insurance. The more expensive that policy is, the more the underwriters think you're going to die. And without being morbid, without being scar or just making fun of tragedy in people's lives, the more expensive that policy is, the more the underwriters think you're going to pass during that policy term period. We translate that over to home insurance or auto insurance. The more expensive the risk is, the more risky they see you and your behaviors and your habits and all of those.

That recipe for success here, right? What car you drive, where you drive it, how often you drive it, what are your particular or unique factors for your auto insurance? Same with your home, where do you live? What's the claims data? What's the 100 year weather patterns? All of the different pieces, and how expensive is it to repair or replace that home. When you get a client to see that light bulb, it's a special thing and at that point you get to have a real conversation around value and how to mitigate risk, not just around the premium itself, and that's what we're trying to do every single day.

Joey Giangola: I guess I would kind of be curious to know if there is anything that you guys do in the agency to make it easier for those epiphanies to happen. How are you communicating? How are you presenting information? What are you doing to get them there in the most sort of efficient way, effective way possible?

Patrick McBride: For the most part I would, and again if we break this up a little bit, personal lines and commercial lines are dramatically different. If we look specifically at personal lines, the example is always, 'Hey, Mr. Customer, we're going to look at your home. Here are the pieces that make your home unique. Here is what makes your home as expensive as it is. We're looking at the risk factors, the risk alone with that replacement cost means the premium is here. This is where the carriers believe you are, and that's based on a number of things'. We kind of go into it a little bit there, so we talk about the risk, we talk about the value, we talk about the benefits of a policy, then we talk about the premium, and then we talk about how that premium is equal to that risk in the pool of large numbers.

And it's a basic conversation. It's super high level. I think anyone out there could understand it if we had it. You don't have to go deep, you just have to be confident what you're saying. When that customer asks the question, you need to know the answers. But you don't have to go into the fifth course of a CIC to be able to explain this kind of stuff to our clients. They're not insurance professionals. That's our job. Our job is to translate the nerd dumb and the geekery, right? Is that a real word?

Joey Giangola: It can be for today. Sure.

Patrick McBride: Yeah. Yeah, so taking that insurance geekery into common language. And this is my soapbox, I don't get mad that my customers say full coverage. Now we don't use that term out, but that's common vernacular. If I try to correct or if I'm angry at them, my job is to instruct and educate, but if I correct them, all I've done is I've created a hill that we're going to die on and it's not worth it. So we speak their language, we talk to them in a very common language and exactly what they want to talk about. Commercial lines I think is dramatically different. We talk about risk all the time, that's all commercial lines is. If we can mitigate risk, if we can lower your risk factors, then we end up lowering your total cost of risk and end up lowering your premiums and all of the pieces that go with it. We're going to spend money on the actual mitigation side, but that's going to offset the premium or future claims. That's a much, much easier side to play with, I think.

Joey Giangola: Yeah. I was hoping you took us over to the commercial side, and going into that it's a more matter of fact, right? There's less emotion attached to it because obviously your distance, you're dealing with a business as opposed to your personal sort of risk, right?

Patrick McBride: Right.

Joey Giangola: What are you doing on that side of the business that, you strike me as a guy who's paying attention to the industry that knows what's going on, where are you trying to push forward to sort of maybe do things a little bit differently that you feel you might have somewhat of an edge on?

Patrick McBride: I said this the other day in a meeting with one of my mentors is I'm only as good as I am because I stand on the shoulders of giants. If you've been to an insurance conference you know that everyone who's successful at insurance is like 6'5" or taller, and I'm not so clearly I have to be the guy standing on the shoulders of giants because I'm not one. Our uniqueness comes from a mixture of technology and automation and my ADHD brain paired with the strategies that are out there in the industry as far as risk management and deploying the right technologies, deploying the right pieces. Our goal is always centered around risk management, so when we look at our perfect client, whatever that definition is for you, you look at that perfect client, you figure out what that pattern is, what are the repeatable patterns, what are the things that can be, not necessarily automated with the fact that I don't have to have the conversation but automated to remind me to have the conversation because we're going to bring it back to that ADHD part.

How do I keep my brain and my tasks focused or sometimes that automation and that technology is just, 'Hey, Patrick, quit looking at squirrels and get back to work". Your clients need you here for this minute, and then my attention gets focused back in because I have a task to do. And again, my neurodivergence means I need to check off a task no matter how long it takes, no matter how hard it's, I'm going to check the task off.

Joey Giangola: I kind of want to dive into the more specifics of that and maybe if you could give an example of maybe those tasks and how you've sort of been able to nudge yourself back on track or bring something back to the surface that might've otherwise fall into the wayside when you started to implement some of these things, and what goes through your mind as you look for ways to identify areas to make these improvements?

Patrick McBride: Our business is focused so long around selling a policy, right? Sell a policy, sell a policy, sell a policy. And for the most part there's a gap, not for the most part, there's a gap. There's a gap between agencies, good agencies and great agencies. I think that there's, we're going to leave out the bad ones. No one wants to talk about the bad ones, we all know they're bad. They could do things different, move on. So between a regular agency, a good agency and a great agency, the difference is not just we sold policies. And when you sell the policy, now you have to work on the onboarding and you have to work on introducing your client to a new way of doing things. No matter how you've done it, no matter how similar or dissimilar you are, you have to be able to take everything that's different, break it down into bite-sized chunks, and there's repetition there.

We have to get signatures, we have to get payment, we have to get the invoices done. If you're doing any sort of ENS, right? You've got to send the invoice, you've got to receive the invoice. You've got to make sure that the invoice is paid with the carrier. Did your fees get paid? Did that get reconciled? Did the policies get created in the AMS? Because those don't download. There's a certain number of things that have to be generated, so understanding the process is always number one. Reminding yourself how to replicate that process every single time for every single customer is going to make their experience similar. And if you've ever heard, actually I'm going to steal a very little bit of [inaudible 00:09:33] where he talks about what do you sell and you sell the experience. Our salespeople, our producers, sell confidence that we're the right agency to work with.

The product is the product. Let's not beat around the bush. The product is the product. All of us are selling the same carriers in the same states to the same customers, we are right. I'm glad that there are a certain number of people that die every day. There's certain number of people born every day. The population is getting bigger, so more people need insurance, which means there's a little more opportunity for all of us out there. But when we look at this, we're doing the same thing, but when I can communicate to my customers exactly what to expect when they move from their existing relationship and an existing way of doing business to our way, when we introduce that in a systematic approach, their onboarding. Onboarding is number one, so that the signature documents, again the introduction to their account managers, the introduction to how to get a policy service, whether that's through the direct email link or text message line.

If you want to go straight through the client hub or mobile app, whatever you want to do, training people that is the right thing and how to do that is extensive in making sure that that happens. On a certain level of commercial clients and hire, we kind of break this up by revenue. We actually have specifics that will, we have an onboarding pipeline in our, so we use Agency Zoom, so just to shout out there, I guess. We use Agency Zoom, we have an onboarding pipeline. It's eight or nine stages. It goes through it, again it's replicable across the board. When you're done with that eight or nine stages, you'll actually go on a pause, kind of a holding pattern until 45 or 50 days after your policy is effective. And this is our secret sauce I guess. That 50 days afterwards we have what's called a post onboarding pipeline, and this goes from 50 days after effective date until 120 days prior to renewal, and there's different pieces in there.

These are all particularly commercial clients, but there's the audit prep. Are we making sure that the first year client is on board with us, that they get a copy of our audit prep documentation. We're not their agent for the previous policies, but we're going to give them documentation on how to be ready for their audit, whether they've had one or 50 or 500. Here's what we want you to be aware of. Here's some collateral from us. Here's the audit prep. Here's what to look for. Then we go through and make sure that all the expectations were met with a phone call or a Zoom call that we're going to go through on that side. Did all the documents, did everything we say on the front end match up with your experience so far? How can we be better? What are you looking for over the next three to six months? How can we make sure that that's done right and well?

Six months in, we have another follow up. And honestly Joey, we don't even talk to them about their insurance at that six months. We just talk to them about them. How's business, how you're growing, how your people, are they happy? What'd you guys do for the holidays? Whatever holiday was around, we want to get to know them a little better to build that relationship. And then that progresses even in through 100 days prior, letting them know what our process is for renewal and what they can expect based on what we've seen through their account performance over the year. And if we have tasks that they need to do, operations that we've recommended, do this with your safety protocols, your return to work, whatever you're doing here. We're checking in at that point. And then our renewal campaigns kick in, 90 days prior for our commercial clients and 65 days prior for personal life. So having that process has been outlined, but making sure that we can use technology to keep us on track. How do you herd a cat into a bathtub? Carefully, very carefully.

Joey Giangola: There's a lot there, and I kind of have a couple questions from there, so I'll try and slow myself down here, Patrick. But I think the first one is once you get somebody to a certain place, you sort of gather appreciation from them. Is there a moment where you sort of hit on consistently throughout that process to where it triggers that appreciation from the client? Something that you could sort of pull out and say, listen, if you're looking at boil it down to this core emotion that you're trying to get and somebody else wants to try and replicate that, what's the most thing that stands out to you in terms of what they send back to you?

Patrick McBride: It's different for everybody. Sometimes it's the way you just answer the phone. All of us can put a call tree in place and have a virtual receptionist that just answers the phone and routes it where needs to go. Sales, service, Patrick, any team member name or push the buttons here. And any of us can do it and it's extremely efficient and cost effective, but you remove that personal connection. Some folks, it's just the fact that our phone gets answered by a real person in six seconds or less. That's it. Some folks, it's because we had the conversation about coverage. They experienced the claim and now they're actually seeing the benefit of. And we're going to knock on wood here because we all love good loss ratios. No one wants to have people experience a claim that they were right about, we don't.

I say it to people all the time, "you're going to have a claim. I hope it's not tomorrow, I hope it's not bad, but you're going to have one. And these are the things that I have to be concerned about as your agent because if you are going to move forward with our office and you don't have the right coverages when that claim happens, are you mad at yourself for not choosing it or are you disappointed or upset with me because we didn't emphasize these coverages enough". Some folks right there, that's it. You'll never lose that customer. And we've experienced that, whether it's a life claim, a fire, an auto claim, it doesn't matter.

Some folks is when the work that we've put in on making sure that their commercial risk has gone from, their experience mod has gone from 1.2 down to 0.95 or even taking folks that are sub one and taking them to 0.77 or 0.75. Just because the practices that we put in place in making them attractive and marketable to the underwriters at renewal. Sometimes it's just that. It's just, wow, what you said worked. Again, the producer's job is to inspire confidence. It's our account managers in that year long process between that first policy and the second policy, I think the renewal is far more important than the initial policy ever will be. I can get anyone to trust me once, but if they can trust me twice or three times or four times, that's a different ball game.

Joey Giangola: The other thing that kind of stood out to me in all of that is like you mentioned, the consistency and making sure things happen every time, right? The same thing every time. I'm sure probably before you initiated that process, maybe discounted that. How big of a shift was it once that started to happen and just making sure that those things happened and again, the overall just I guess, change that you saw in the agency.

Patrick McBride: I don't know that, there wasn't really ever a point where we didn't do that. So even from the very beginning when we opened our doors for the very first time in our very first agency, it was me in the office and only me in the office as a scratch captive agent, and I was selling policies, but I didn't do paperwork well. And by didn't do paperwork well, Joey, I mean I didn't do paperwork. It stacked up in the box on my desk that I thought you had to have the inboxes. So I bought one and the paperwork just sat there and that's what I thought you did with paperwork. I had no idea. And corporate came in, they're like, "Hey, you're supposed to do this with those". And I immediately hired someone and said, "Hey, you're supposed to do this with those". And we then had to create the very first process, how to file the documents to stay in compliance to make sure they still cancel out and I don't get fired, right? I don't lose my contract.

And from there, it's never been a question of how to create that process or should we create that process. It's always been how do we continually improve. I think if we're writing 100 page document, some folks are on page two, some folks are on page 10, some folks are on page 75. We're not on page two, and I don't think we're on page 90. I think we're probably on page 11 or 12. Really, if I look at what we're writing here. It's how to write the right story. What's the next right step? Every day is always what's the next right choice. We're never there. We're always looking at what to do and what to do and what to do next.

Joey Giangola: All right, Patrick, I've got three more questions for you, sir.

Patrick McBride: Okay.

Joey Giangola: And the first one is what's one thing you hope you never forget?

Patrick McBride: I hope I never forget how hard this was, really. I say that because if you know any of our story, we started a captive agency in 2017, scratch. That captive carrier was acquired. So we kind of technically started a second agency, even though we kept all our book and that went downhill real fast. So we walked away, no equity, no contract values, no ability to sell because all of our tenure was wiped away with that new purchase. And we walked away, started over scratch just under two years ago, so April of 2022. So we're 20 months into this now and turning around and keeping our staff and walking through the entire market that we're experiencing today and the hardest market in a generation, we're less than a two-year-old agency growing at a pace that I can't imagine.

But I hope them never forget how hard this really was. And I never forget how grateful I am that we were able to do it and that not only did our team trust us, but our clients trusted us. And then every person coming through, and that's probably number one. And I think if there's a second one, never forget that I'm not the smartest guy in the room, that the only reason we're as successful as we are is because there have been people on podcasts sharing their stories and sharing their tactics and freely giving of themselves and what they've experienced without having to get behind a paywall to get some crazy nugget to change our world. It's all of that is I'm a combination of the industry and the people who've so freely given, 100% of the time.

Joey Giangola: Now on the other side of that, Patrick, what's one thing you still have yet to learn?

Patrick McBride: Patience is a virtue. We're on page, if it's a 10-page book, I'm on page two. I use that phrase all the time, right? "Hey, you're on page 10. I'm on page two". So as we look at this, I want more than anything to be three years ahead of where I'm, and actually reading and some of our reading and just kind of some of the pieces you do to self develop and all the right things. And sometimes I just do them, Joey, because everyone says you're supposed to. So I do it. And I read book after book after book, after book after book, trying to get better at business, and every book I read said, "build the man, build the business". So when you build the man, and that's not a sexist term, I promise. Build the person and then the business will be built because of building the person. When we looked at that, that was wonderful, and I'm like, okay, so we're going to keep building me, but all I want to do is be three or four years ahead of where I'm at. I want the next acquisition. I want the next big client. I want the next producer. I want the next team member on the team. I want the next, you name it, right?

We've got a goal in our life and we actually put it on paper, my wife and I put it on paper over the last couple weeks, and I'll share it here because I'm going to hold myself accountable to this for years to come. We want to generate 100 years of income for our family after I'm done working, so I have, let's call it 30 years, which is generous because I do not want to work until I'm 75. So that'd be 33 years from now. I need to generate somewhere in the range of $40 million, whether that's through the equity and selling the business or properties or whatever else we do in the world. We have to generate that kind of income. $100,000 a year. I've got four kids. I think if each of them got 100 years worth of $100,000, I think that trust would be pretty well said, and they could live pretty good lives for a long time, and my kids and my grandkids and their grandkids could do well. That side of things is I don't have a lot of patience and I'm constantly looking at the next thing while having to remind myself that don't get distracted by shiny objects and task lists and automations to remind me to stay focused.

Joey Giangola: All right, Patrick, last question to you, sir. If I were to hand you a magic wand of sorts to reshape, change, alter, speed up, really any part of insurance, what's that thing? Where is it going and what's it doing?

Patrick McBride: Oh, I can change anything I want. So A, change how data is changed hands, and it's going to be technology based. So number one is change how the data is exchanged between carriers, AMS's, rating engines, all of it. It's not X's and O's, it's not box for box. It's the way that data can be shaped now. If we could wave a wand and change anything, that would be it, because that has such a large implication on the grander scheme and what data is available and how fast the data can transfer. Without question I think that if anything could happen, that would be it.

Joey Giangola: Patrick, this has been fantastic, sir. I'm going to leave it right there.

Patrick McBride: Awesome, man. Thanks for having me.