Episode 330: Disruption, AI & Leaning In with Troy Korsgaden

What if you could step out of the day-to-day and see your business from a whole new perspective? Welcome to Above the Business, where we empower you to rise above the daily grind and embrace a higher way of business ownership. It's time to build your business by design. Welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast. My name is Bradley Hemney, your host. In today's episode, I think he has come on 4 times, Mr. Troy Korsgaarden. We really love this rhythm that we have with Troy to come on the first part of the year to give us perspective of what all was going on in the marketplace in 2023. What is he seeing around the corner in 2024? How does this affect the insurance carrier side? But then all the way down to your own individual agency, we cover, as we always do, a number of topics. And as I shared with Troy after our recording. He does such a fantastic job of giving clear, concise, not just high-level but also down-to-the-eye-level things that we can do. How do we perspect— how do we have a perspective on it? What do we do? How do we change? What's our mindset towards this? How do we approach it? For some big meta-tectonic plate type things that are happening in the marketplace, I think you're going to get a ton out of this episode. With Mr. Troy Korsgaden. All right, here we go. Hang on. Okay. Troy Korsgaden, welcome to the Above the Business podcast.

Great to be here with you.

I should say welcome back. This is your 4th episode to come on the podcast. We always love— as I hit— before I hit record, I said, you know, you're the one person, especially in the insurance space, that kind of can talk about from a meta tectonic plate perspective. Before we talk about any of the things that you see, let's talk about what you saw. What did you notice in 2023? What were some of the biggest changes that you started to see last year?

Well, it's great to be back with you. I, I think the obvious one is just the disruption, right? And the economy started everything, and, and then supply chains and just a tsunami and it just hasn't stopped. And I say hasn't stopped because that, that was the big news, right? Everybody had to reset and stabilize, you know, to try to deal with what's going on. So as we go into 2024 in the first quarter, it's still here. It's not over. The disruption is going to keep coming. And then I talk about this in different areas. It will have to flow through the entire system. Everything that renews in January, you know, is going to be affected 6 months later, and so on and so forth. If it's an annual policy and it renewed in October, the big, the big draconian changes might not hit until this coming October, right? So I think everybody needs to brace themselves. This is not over. You're going to see more action going on in the industry for good reason. And then for everything to flow through the entire system in the industry. So we've got a ways to go.

I don't think that there's a company that is immune to the changes, right? That's the one thing that you can all— misery loves company is what it's sometimes said. But what was— what happened? It's easy to kind of throw out COVID, etc., and maybe that's certainly it, but like really what was happening underneath? And when do you think that we're going to come out on the other side of the wave? When's the insurance space going to come outside of this and begin to see that? What does that— I mean, we got presidential elections and a lot of things happening, and how's that going to affect everything? But when do you see that, that this wave beginning to or storm maybe is a better way to put it, beginning to settle down?

I don't have a crystal ball, but if I'm playing the odds, I think you're going to see instead of the draconian cutting, cutting of people, cutting of expense, which they needed to do, right? There were some areas where they were spending too much money. But in the insurance industry, the carriers and it trickles down, is the expenses had to be put in the right place. And to compete, whether you're developing a rate for auto, developing a rate for home, developing a rate for business insurance, and so on and so forth, you need your expenses in line. And I, I think we've got the discipline going as an industry, and that's getting done. I think you'll see investment start up again. Investments in people, investments in systems and processes and tools, technology. I think you'll see dollar investments and more importantly, energy put back into that probably towards the second quarter. I was thinking first quarter, but I'm just not seeing it when I, when I talk to carriers and vendors. You're just still seeing a honking down. So I would just say I think you'll notice a change. At the end of the second quarter.

You have— and I've said this before, and I'll probably say it every episode because I think that you have a perspective that really not very many people have. You've got the perspective all the way down to the individual insurance agency owner, all the way up to the top of the carrier ranks. And so we've kind of talked big picture-wise, but for the people that are primarily listening to this episode, they're saying, what do I need to do? And they're getting a lot of ideas. They're getting a lot of best practices, but what are the things that they can do to begin to try to insulate their book of business, keep on to the ones they have, let alone go about, you know, acquiring new customers to grow their individual practice?

Yeah. Well, let's first be honest with ourselves, and this includes all of us. We've been on easy street, lots of money. People buying things. We were on easy street, so we got a little lazy, if you will. The fundamentals needed to be done, and they weren't. Now the fundamentals really need to be done because people are doing business. If you're a local distributor and you're an independent contractor, or even if you work for somebody, it doesn't matter. People are doing business with you because they know and trust you, number 1. And number 2, this is the time they need you. You know, it's easy when you're just going, here's your coverage and here's your price, do you want it? And you're making everybody's day. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. But people buy security and peace of mind. Well, there's never been a time like this, and you said it, everybody's in the same ballgame. Nobody's immune. Everybody's in this. And really, we should be running towards them going, I want to help you. I want to hold your hand. It's crazy out there. It's a maze of madness. And hold my hand. I don't have every answer, but I've got places to go to get the answers. And there's some fundamentals that need to be done. And we owe it to people to do it. We really do. We owe it to people to be there for us. For them at a time they need us most. So I would just say, you know, there are one or two things. The first one is sit down with your clients, make sure they understand what they have, make sure that you're giving them advice on what they should be thinking for coverages, uh, discounts, personal risk management, business risk management, whatever you're talking to them about. And then thirdly, tell them what other people are thinking about. That's what they want to know. What are other people doing in a situation similar to mine? So that's a fundamental that we lost our way on years ago. And now people really need us to step up and give and deliver on that business promise we made them when we first sold them insurance.

I heard this recently. I loved it. And so much so, I actually captured it in my 2024 log of lessons learned. I kind of keep this journal of log of lessons learned, and one of them was calm seas don't make a great sailor. We wish to be a great sailor, yet, you know, we have to actually— it's the storms that actually help us. And to your point, if we go back and develop the fundamentals, then whenever the storm subsides, then we'll be able to succeed and really go through it, right?

So I love it.

I use this term, and I don't want to be disrespectful at all to our firefighters and police officers, etc., and that is front lines. So I'm referring to that of the front lines team member. So speak to the leader, insurance agency owner that has a team of 2 to 12, it doesn't matter, or 22, it does, you know, whatever the number is of frontline customer service representatives that are being bombarded and they're worn down because they've got 22 calls today of people yapping in their ear. That's real life, right? Let's get down to like actual real life stuff for a second, then we're going to go back to metal stuff. But like, really, how do we get through that to kind of keep them persevering versus the man every day? I'm just getting beat down with like rate changes and rate changes and rate changes. And it can, it can wear on somebody.

I had a question an hour ago from a big group out in the Midwest, a large group. And that was a question. How, how do I stop from burning out? How do I stay motivated? You know, one of the, one of the things I would tell you, and this was the same answer I gave to the person that asked it, because they, you could tell that you could feel the question. You could really feel it. And you're right. Team members are the Marines. They're on the front line. They're taking it. It's not easy. No call is a softball anymore. They're just— people are on edge. Yeah. And they have zero tolerance when things aren't perfect. And then you couple that with rate action, availability of insurance, capacity issues that carriers have. I think people are on edge. So Number 1, it's communicating with people. Communication is so important. Meeting with people when they want to be met, where they want to be met, how they want to be met, but getting on the offense so you tamp down the anxiety, right? It's never going to go all the way away. People are worried today about making their mortgage, making their car payment, getting the kids to school. Paying for eggs and milk, and insurance has gone up, you know, it really has gone up. And so they're anxious. Yeah, but the best defense is a great offense. So how do you stop from burning out or just getting beat up all day? You get out in front of it, right? And, and so getting a review program that is not reactive, it's proactive. So Separating the renewal from the, the review is one of the most important things that you can do. And you call everybody consistently, and it takes a while to get through your whole book, whether you have 1,200 accounts or whether you have 12 million. It takes, it takes time to get a hold of all those people one by one, belly to belly. So What I would say is we get on the offense. And now when the anxiety calls come because their rate went up 20%, 40%, doubled, whatever it is, they're not as, you know, in your face because you've already tried to help them. You're already giving them strategies. So, man, you know, I knew it was going to go up, but I didn't think it would be this much instead of, hey, you ruined my life. You know, that gets wearing all day long. So you're still going to get some of that. And then if I can extend the answer here just a little bit, it's always about who we're around. If we're around negative people, we're going to be negative, right? There's enough negative going on. Nobody needs to point it out to me every 5 or 10 minutes. If you're my friend, I don't want you telling me what I already know over and over and over. And I'm I don't hide from the truth. I know the truth, but I'm looking for ways that I can literally find solutions, workarounds, you know, something. There's, you know, the grass. I said this the other day, the grass is always greener where you water it. So I'm looking for ways to really go out and be around the right people so I can say the right things. Things are still tense. It's a tense time, but I'm not going to react. I'm going to be proactive in everything I do. And it's just going to, it's going to serve me well.

I'm going to attempt this analogy and we'll see if it lands and you be honest with me and tell me. So I was watching, I think it was my kids were watching it on YouTube, I believe. And it's these cliff divers and these cliff divers, they don't die, but there, there's the cliff divers who actually literally dive in. Then these people though were almost doing belly flops, which it was really unbelievable. And they're jumping from unbelievably high places around the world, right? And so they were doing the interviews, and of course they were in some, uh, beautiful locations. And then they were showing someone in a pool who had never done this before how to do it. And they said, you know, he was literally just standing on the side. He wasn't even jumping off of a, off of a diving board, let alone the high dive, let alone out in the ocean. And they showed him right before you land, you actually punch the water. And they showed it in slow motion, and you actually start seeing them punch the water. Here's my analogy, okay? The idea is that they know this thing is about to hurt, but what they do is they punch the water. And so like, there's this thing of like, I was thinking lean in, right? Being proactive. And so I think that there's this thing of like, oh, the guy said, yeah, you're right, that actually does it. That doesn't— that, that really changes the way that you interact with the water because you're being proactive and punching the water. Somebody can go and look that up on YouTube. But I think that's what you're trying to say, is that you're actually like, hey, it's probably going to hurt a little bit. Yeah, you're going to get beat up, but boy, it's going to be a lot different than if you just jump off and you belly flop and don't, don't punch the water at all. Then that's when it's going to hurt a lot.

I think you knocked it out, man. That was a great analogy. Great analogy.

I tried it. I tried it. Some of them land, some of them don't. Okay, so now let's turn our attention— you've already talked about it a little bit, but what are some of the other big trends that you're seeing, um, around the corner, maybe second half 2024 and even beyond?

So as we look at, and I'm going to relate this to agency, if you will, right? Because the companies have so many facets. There's so much going on. Underwriting is an issue. Claims is an issue. You know, cat claims, all those, that, those issues are still going to be there. But I love to talk about agency because I owned an agency for 35 years. I, no matter who I'm working with, I always get to work with their frontline people that are in the local communities. I think people were writing off the local agent. I really do. I mean, they wouldn't say it, but I think a lot of people thought that's a dying breed, it's going to go away. And there were articles written about it. There were people saying it from the stage. But I think insurance is so complex, no matter how great AI gets or how great our sharing of information gets, I think people need somebody to connect the dots for them. And they're not just buying one product. So you don't buy one product that covers everything. You buy multiple products, and insurance doesn't cover everything. So they just need somebody to be their discussion partner. You and I have talked about this before, but more importantly, they need somebody that's really smart. And our profession, you know, the agents make a lot of money. I mean, it's a high income for the ones that are successful, great income. Well, we need to deliver on that by upping our game to be smarter and to connect the dots. So in the future, I see the agent playing a huge role. Will they play the role they play today? No. Everybody's rethinking the agent of the future. They're going to be younger than me. They're going to think different than me. The people that they attract are going to be different than me. I'm in the 7th, 8th, maybe 9th inning of my career, right? So everybody's retooling what they want their agency force to look like, and then What type of technology is going to be necessary? And because we've got to interact with the client the way they want to interact, not the way we tell them to. And there's still companies still trying to tell the client how they're going to interact with us. Pretty soon that's just going to all go away. The client will say, you do it this way, I'm not going to do business with you. So I just, I see huge investments still in technology. But you had a pullback in technology, and now we got to get it right.

It's—

you can't just have technology for technology's sake.

It—

there isn't one technology, but the client expects a seamless, easy-to-do business with— when I'm dealing with an advisor versus technology, I want them both to be easy.

There was— I was just in the market for a new MacBook computer, and I just pulled the trigger on the most expensive computer I've ever— I didn't even know I would be buying ever a computer this expensive, but here we are, $4,200 less. Anyway, when the reason I bring this up is to your point, when I went to the Apple site to go into that, there are multiple options. I can call, I could email, I could chat, like, etc., of how I wanted to be able to interact. Based on that day. Now, there's sometimes I'm on call, there's sometimes like in that day I wanted to chat, I was doing something else, I wanted to chat, etc. Do you think that if we take that idea and maybe bring it down to the agency level, do you think it's even as simple as, as putting into your processes asking the question, what is the method of, uh, preferred method of communication, asking the client You know what, I'd like for you to text me, and then they just, we just notate that and we make sure we have that in our process that, hey, if we're going to reach out for a review, we're going to reach out for an issue regarding their account in any way, this is their preferred method of contact. So that's the one that we're going to go with.

Yeah. So I know you're right. In fact, we've got a process that we teach and it's a household update sheet and it's a sheet that you follow. You can do it online or you can. Have it in front of you asking the questions. And I ask you, which is your preferred method of contact? Some people like text, some people like Messenger on Facebook, some people like WhatsApp, some people like all virtual, FaceTime, you know, whatever. I just need to know which one is the best for you. And some people pick 1 or 2, but most people pick 1. You know, right now I've got my own favorite. And, uh, but I will tell you this, if I'm on a plane, I'll talk to a bot, but I can break the bot in 5 seconds. I mean, it just, you know, they can only do so much. It's going to improve, but you can't just have one thing. So you and I are friends, and let's just say I know you want to chat. I, I, I'm going to chat with you, but then there's days you go, Troy, man, I just haven't talked to you in a while. I want to talk to you.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah, I got to be able to pivot very quickly. I got to know ways to contact you. I got to know what your 360 view is, what you— you know, I know more about you than most people do. I, you know, you're— you, you have a lot of depth to you, so I've gotten to know you. And every time I get to know you a little better, now I— next time I go buy a Mac, I'm coming to you, right? I've got that part of my 360 view. Yeah, that makes So I'm with you on this, but we're there. We're already there. We're asking people. And then when holograms come to fruition and everybody's using them, we're going to put that on the list. Is that a preferred method of contact for you?

Yeah, I mean, you know, Vision Pro, the Apple Vision Pro, I mean, that, that will take iterations over the next couple years. And, and, and what a great thing. And so like, you're leaning in, you're leaning in and you're aware of it. Maybe Maybe the, the company that you work for, support, that you represent, that technology is not there yet, but that's okay. You're just aware, you're being— you're abreast of it versus whenever it happens, it doesn't just, uh, you're going to ride the wave, not get dumped by it, basically.

Without a doubt. Let me, let me tag on to something you're saying though. Uh, Apple, they got it going on, and, and you and I have talked about the this before. I like to look at other businesses and how they do business. How do successful real estate people do business? Dentist's office, doctor's office, people that are selling something. And we should take a cue from Apple because you said it. I, I was in Scottsdale the other day and I was right by their store. I just wasn't in the mood to going in, but I bought something from them. Because the Apple Store was literally blocks away from my hotel, but I could do business however I wanted to do it. And it's easy, and that's the key. Sometimes in insurance, we're difficult. And agents, as much as they like to think they're not difficult, agents can be difficult, you know. But we just need to be honest with ourselves.

Yeah, yeah, that, that, that's, that is, that is so good. And that was actually part of my journey. We won't make it about that, but I actually did want to go in, not just get my hands on the machine, but I wanted to ask specific questions, right? I didn't want to just Google forums and watch YouTube videos. I mean, that was helpful. It gave me kind of a frame, but I needed to go in and say, like, this is my tech. This is what I'm trying to accomplish. This is what's happening to my current Mac. It's not working as well. You know, what's the solution here? And that's how I wanted to be able to interact with them. And they ended up pushing me to the business department. I was like, oh, okay, great. There's business specialists. And like, that is the experience. And it ended up being beautiful, right? I mean, they— I felt like it was the right experience for me, and I— and, and, you know, even though it was more money than I thought, I feel very comfortable in what ultimately I've ordered now because they, they interacted with me in the way that I kind of wanted to be able to interact, um, at that point, and they were not pressuring me at all. Now granted, they— the way their structure, their compensation— I didn't feel like I was being sold to, But yet I'm in the Apple ecosystem and just made a really big purchase. I love it.

All right. So we—

there's a big thing that I'd love to ask you about, and that is I'd love for you to kind of share with it both from the carrier side and the agency side. And that's AI. Okay. Now we've— I've danced around AI a little bit on the podcast. I think 2023 was definitely the year you could dabble with it. Primarily you saw for me personally, it was a lot of ChatGPT. There've been some other things that I've messed around with. It's pretty amazing, obviously, what it can do. It's, it probably has the ability to be as big of an advancement as the agricultural revolution, right? I mean, with the steam engine, etc. I mean, people know that that was, that's a big transformative thing. Where do you see it affecting carrier side first? What do you think things are coming? What have you heard? What have you seen maybe? And then also, what about on the agency side?

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Yeah, so I agree with you. It is, it is life-changing. Um, and I'm going to give you my own personal perspective. Let me start with the carrier. So you're, you're already seeing it has capabilities to help claims, it has capability to help develop rates. I mean, complex rates, right? That you're, you know, that maybe with millions of people you can get scale in the way you rate. This thing could take it down and we can create a, develop a rate for a certain specialty, if you will, in business insurance or personal insurance. So I think the technology, quite frankly, from what I've seen, and I'm a novice, So I don't claim to be an expert at it, but there isn't a day that goes by where I don't get called as a consultant to either partner with AI, uh, vendors or to see my opinion about how it works in a company and how it will affect the downline, if you will. So let's go downline and go to the local office, whether you're an independent agent, whether you're exclusive agent, whether you're tied and captive completely. This is going to change the way things work. And I think if I'm an agent, I'm looking for ways to get immediate benefits, right? Everybody complains, I need more help, I can't find anybody, you know, and I hear the same things every day. I don't agree with I can't find anybody, but let's just say you just need some help. There's some basic stuff that it can do that we should be immediately turning over to it so we can do more people work rather than busy work, right? So the people work is advice, service, and then designing and offering product solutions. Those are the 3 things we should be doing. That's where we get paid. Uh, we want to renew everybody so we keep getting more swings at the ball, right? So I want more at-bats. But the only way I'm going to do that is if I reduce my cost, make it easier for people to do business with me, and I earn the right to offer more advice, service, and product solutions. So I think you're seeing independents are using it right out of the gate. I know some right off the top of my head that embrace this, you know, right when they had the opportunity and they're implementing and executing. Execution is everything, whether you're a carrier or whether you're in the field and you're offering this on a local basis. I, I think where we're going to stub our toe as an industry is in the execution. You know, there's been a lot of great technology over the last 20 years that wasn't executed real well. Yeah, by the carriers, not all of them, but there just were a lot of carriers that didn't execute the much-needed technology, whether it be CRM, policy issuance and delivery, and things like that.

Do you think one of the frames— that's probably the best way for me to put it— one of the frames that I heard that I had not considered and now personally adopted was to look at AI as part of my organizational chart, like my org chart, and actually like having AI like over somewhere on there because it then starts framing of like, that's not something I typically would think of. Like I need someone to do this. Like I'll give you an example. I had a team member, we just had a team member that was fractional with us and then they've, she just got her dream job. Full-time. And so she's leaving the company. So we're super happy about her. Hate to lose her. She's certainly an A-player. But one of my team members said, hey, let's look at and see what responsibilities. And so we're going through our normal process, right? She said, you know, I think there's some of these we could actually leverage AI. And it was like not even in my scope of doing that yet. I used ChatGPT and I said, Oh my gosh, you're, you're so right. Like maybe there is one or two of these things instead of the immediate shift is to give it over to someone else. Maybe we could look at AI to be able to do that. And so that frame has been personally helpful for me. What is your thoughts on that?

So I think that's brilliant. And I think that everybody should be doing what you just described. I think, but for most people, they're gonna see some roadblocks, right? It doesn't do something or it only does a little bit of it. I'll give you a personal example. And again, I'm a novice, right? But I've got somebody that does this specifically. That's all they do is look for AI opportunities. And for me, research is very important. I've got to back up what I'm thinking and I've got to have facts. So I'll give you an example of something I'm working on right now, and it's the cost structure to deliver, uh, from a direct versus an agency system, right? And, and everybody says the agency system is more expensive, and nobody pushes back. I, I don't agree with that. It just depends on— you have to look at the bigger picture. So in a micro sense, they're probably right. In the macro sense, I don't, I don't think they are if, if everything's lined up. But I went out to prove myself and I've spent a lot of time trying to gather data. And there just isn't a lot of data that gets me to some, something where I could say to you, okay, here's my hypothesis. Here's, here's the facts.

Mm-hmm.

So I think as an industry, when you get down to the end user like you and me, and we're in the field, we're gonna go, ah, it didn't have what I needed, and so I'm gonna move on. AI, that isn't AI. It just keeps getting better and better and better. So we just need to have the discipline to think about it like you said, I'm with you, and then not get frustrated when it doesn't answer everything. It's not gonna answer everything right away. Ultimately, we'll have nirvana. I don't know when that is or what it looks like, but I think it does speed things up and it does give us information that we need. We need more information, but targeted for whatever we're working on, not just a shotgun spray like it is right now.

Yeah. You know, I can think around some use cases. you know, the documentation of your systems and processes, the ability to write some better emails. Not all of us are experienced copywriters. Not all of us are writers like you have developed that skill, right? To be able to do that. And it can become a writing partner for you in a lot of ways for those. How do you respond to a really nasty customer message? Well, you may have your way of doing it and then you throw it into ChatGPT and say, make this a lot nicer. You know, and it is able to do that, you know, in some ways. And so I think that it can become kind of a partner for you and as really just kind of a tool right now. And I think even just that use case is something to where you are leaning into it. You know, back to the cliff diving analogy, you're kind of punching in and saying, okay, look, I don't know where this is going to go. I don't know what I'm going to have the capabilities to do, but I'm certainly not going to be reactive and wait and get dumped by the wave. So I think that's good.

Um, I think the key word though is partner. Yeah, it's partner with you and it's not leading you because you really gotta, you gotta, it's gotta be you, right? In the end, if you wanted the machine to do everything, they don't need us. You, you've really got to personalize whatever information that it's giving you. But I, as you were saying, the email, I could think of 2 or 3 people I know that could use help writing emails because I'll get them and I'll You know, they, I think having that partner would be very helpful for them.

I think we just, we just, we just got the title of, of Troy's, one of Troy's next books. I know he's got a, you've probably got more than, more than one that you're working on right now, but Your AI Partner. Okay. Not Discussion Partner, Your AI Partner. There it is. So awesome. Uh, Troy, anything that you, that we have not touched on today that you think it would be relevant for our listening audience and specifically agency owners? Yeah.

So Michelle that works with me, uh, does a session, uh, at CourseGarden International. It's called Leading with Purpose. I think we need to get back to our roots. Now, this is me, not her, but she does such a fabulous job when she does this session. Um, I think we all need to lead with purpose. I think that the time is right now. There's never been a time when our clients need us more than they need us today. If you're listening to me, I'm asking you not to lean in, to jump in and get a hold of every one of them 100% and let them know that you want to tell them what they've got. Tell them what they should be thinking about in the relationship that you give as an advisor. And number 3, tell them what other people are thinking about. They deserve this. They bought from you 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 40 years ago. I don't know how long they bought from you, but you told them you were going to be different. You made them a promise that you would meet with them and you would always be there. Don't do like a lot of people are doing, and it's hiding. It's being embarrassed about the rate or being embarrassed about the, uh, things that are going on in the economy and the climate in the industry. You promised them you were going to help them. I'm asking you to get a hold of every one of them and give it your all, to give them the type of service and advice they desire and have every right to expect, never more than this time right now. And if you need help in doing that, there's a lot of people out there that would help you to be able to do that. I understand it's a, it's a complex time, but we need to step up as an industry and deliver so that we have a future 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 50 years from now, 100 years from now.

Bam. That's great. What a great way to end the podcast. That's awesome. You did so well. People want to know how you can help them, how they can connect with you, your team, your company about how you're working. How would you have people connect?

Go on to korsgarden.com. Like everybody, we're always retooling. You're going to see a lot of new things on there, redesign. We've got a lot of great stuff coming out, but Also, LinkedIn with me. I throw up videos and our video will be up there. You know that. And we'll clip it out. We'll send it in its entirety. But there's always little nuggets that we throw out on LinkedIn. So I'd love to have you join us in the movement.

Troy is a great follow on social. You always see his airplane travels, his food travels, and you get to connect with him as a personal brand. I love seeing all of it. I love seeing the food that you have. It's great. Troy, I love having you on, my man. Appreciate you.

Always good to be with you.

Well, as I said in the intro, Troy covers just so many different topics and he does such a great job of doing that. And I think he's one of the few people that really can have that perspective that he has of both what's, what's happening at the carrier level with some of these bigger things, but then also how does it affect the individual agency level? I think that there's a few big topics that really stand out to me. I think number one is he said, hey, look, this disruption, it's, it's not over yet. Well, eventually the storm will pass and things will begin to change, but it's not over yet. Secondly, I think is that, hey, we can look back on it. We had it easy for a period of time. Many of you may have had it easy, and maybe that resonated with you, that, hey, you kind of getting a little lazy. Kind of remove the fundamentals because things are coming so easily. And this is an opportunity for us to retool. This is an opportunity for, you know, this is not calm seas, but yet this is helping you to become a much more skilled sailor so that when smoother seas come, you'll be able to make so much more forward progress. I think obviously the discussion of being proactive and leaning in or reaching out to your customers and to your clients. And I think what Troy said at the very end, he certainly had me motivated, and hopefully he did for you as well. And that is, this is the time to be able to step up and do what needs to be done. And then also, I think that the approaches of just how do you interact with clients and doing things like actually having it in your process to capture how somebody wants— they prefer to be contacted and looking at what other people in other industries— that's, that's, that's something I can certainly share with you is if you can get out of your own industry bubble and then see what are some of the principles. Like, we happen to, in that case, use my recent example of interacting with Apple. And so what are the things from that that we can learn to apply back to our business? That is a, a and a skill that you can really develop. And I think it will help you versus just kind of— yeah, industry best practices are good and you don't want to put that away, but sometimes it can become a regurgitation of the same things all the time. And learning things from outside of your industry is incredibly valuable. As always, check out all the things Troy has going on. Go to korsgarden.com.

.com.

Big shout out to our podcast sponsors Club Capital, Coach B Consulting, Today App Pro, and Autopilot Recruiting for being able to help us to bring on amazing guests like Troy. You know, I told Troy after this, like, he is a pro. And there's a book, um, called Turning Pro, and it really has resonated with me for a long time. And then I kind of look at a guy like Troy, and I, I'm like, He's a pro, man. He is a pro in everything that he does. But I'll tell you, that's also the same thing with our podcast partners. When you work with Alex and his team over at Autopilot Recruiting, they're, they're pros. They know what it is that you're facing. They know how to be able to help you get to that next level. They know how to help you to be able to build a team of A-players to help you to be able to— if you maybe are have, you know, deficiency in your team and you've got a gap in your team that you're trying to fill, they know how to be able to help you with that. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com, autopilotrecruiting.com, and let them know that you've been listening and hearing me talk about them on the Above the Business podcast. You know, one of our longtime partners, David and Coach P Consulting. You know, there's not many places. Sometimes, you know, you want to be able to have that interaction, as Troy was saying. You know, you can watch a video, you can listen to a podcast even, but there's nothing like actually being in community. And I'll say this, I've actually never said this before, maybe I should talk about this one day. I think one thing that AI can't do, AI cannot AI community. I mean, there's at the end of the day, even more so, we're going to want to be in community with other people.

It's why.

We're certainly building our community because you can't, you know, you can't AI that, right? And other things. And so people want to be with other people. And so that's what you get whenever you work with David and Coach P. You're going to get his scripts, their processes of how they do things, the systems and processes of what it's actually taken to be able to grow and scale. But it's not just for you. Which is valuable, but also for your team. They're going to be able to get inspired and working with and seeing other team members to help them to know, okay, wait a minute, maybe I have some beliefs I need to break. And they're seeing what other people are capable of doing. That is incredibly inspiring. So if you want to be a part of that community with other insurance agency owners and team members, go to coachpconsulting.com. You know, with Troy, we were talking about technology, and that's what you— some of the best technology and pros is today Pro. Go to todayapppro.com. Get away. It's time to upgrade from the Excel spreadsheets or maybe some of the other complicated software tools that maybe you've been frustrated with over time. And maybe it's just time. Yes, there is a kind of a cost to switching, but there's also sometimes the opportunity cost of not having a tool that your team loves, that you love, that's easy to use, that's beautifully designed. And of course, it's going to work with all of your corporate-approved CRMs. Go to todayapppro.com. Even though my degree was in finance at Auburn University, I really did not know how to manage small business financials. I knew how to calculate the net present value of a stock, but I did not know how to be able to really manage small business financials. Probably should have known, but I didn't. Well, if you're in that case, You're not alone. There's many people that really— there's many people in my community, uh, business owners that have admitted like this is just not a skill that they really know. And that's okay. But, and that's okay because Club Capital can help you. Go to club.capital, book a no-obligation demo, see how they can take that back office thing that maybe has been a pain and maybe look at once a year to actually helping it to become a tool, a strategic tool to help you get above the business, make better decisions. And get to the next level. All right, everyone, that was a great episode with Troy. Till next time, lead well.