Solve Problems, Don't Just Sell with VP Ryan Messer of Meridian Insurance #sales #ai #insurance

Ryan, good to see you, buddy. As a way of getting started, tell us a little bit more about yourself and what you do now.

Yeah, Harper, good to see you again. I have for the past 18 years, this is actually my— May is my 18th year anniversary. I graduated from Morehead State in 2008. So I can't really believe it's been that long. But, uh, I am the VP of Radiant Insurance. I basically run the day-to-day operations of the company. Uh, we have offices in, uh, home office is Dayton, Ohio, where me and you were thankful to grow up at. Got an office now in Dublin, Ohio, Montgomery, Cincinnati area, Ohio, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Scottsdale, Arizona.

Nice, man. Yeah, definitely Ohio, great place to grow up, and, and good to catch up on that as well. So For those that might not know as well, when you think of insurance, is that— can you explain the sales process a little bit? Because I think it might be pretty quick, it's more transactional, but then there might be situations where it's a longer sales cycle and it's more commercial. But what do you guys focus on there? Tell us a little bit more about the sales process.

Yeah, so our agency, so we're independent, so we represent a lot of different companies, you know, depending on what state you live in. It could be 5 companies, it could be over 20. When you're talking about personal lines, you're talking about— and that's what we focus on, you know, your home, your auto, your toys, such as your boats, your jet skis, your side-by-side, stuff like that. That usually doesn't take too long. I mean, to quote, to get with the client, to get that information, that's something that could be done in as little as 30 minutes. It could take, you know, half a day. Nothing, nothing too crazy. If you're, you know, then there's another side of the business, you know, commercial lines, where somebody might be insuring a very large company. Maybe a very large building, so on and so forth. That kind of stuff can take days, even months on end. So it really just depends on what field you're in. You know, the sales cycle obviously varies.

Makes sense. Makes sense. But in general, probably a little bit quicker. So based on that, I mean, what— and you've been doing it for a minute. I know we're both getting up there now with how long we've been out of school and whatnot. So 18 years you've been doing, insurance for majority of that time. What's, uh, what's changed recently? Has anything major changed since COVID I mean, do you see— is it harder now? Is it easier? Do you have more leads, less leads? I mean, what, what's changed in your opinion the last, you know, 5 or 6 years?

Well, in the, in the short time frame, you know, we've obviously had COVID, which was a complete change. You know, people moved remotely, people moved from, from from places like where we grew up in Ohio to the Sun Belt for better weather. Um, uh, we also— a lot of people don't know this if you don't work in the industry, but we had, you know, the past 3 or 4 years has not been good for insurance. Last year was a very good year for insurance, but 2 or 3 years before that— so what happened is we had COVID, and when COVID happened, people weren't going to work, people weren't driving their cars. A lot of people even got refunds You know, from from from their insurance companies for not basically not using it. You're paying for something that you weren't using. Well, after COVID, we had massive inflation. We me and you were just discussing before this call about how the houses we grew up in. You know, your parents probably bought that house. Your mom probably bought that house over there for $160,000-$180,000. Probably worth $400,000 now. Okay. So everybody's really happy about. You know, the price of their house going up. I make, you know, if I sell this, I'm going to make so much money, you know, so on and so forth. Well, what is, what does insurance pay for? If you, if you had to say, Harper, I mean, what, what does insurance pay for? What do you think of insurance?

Well, I guess they have to pay for the, the premium. They have to, they have to pay for that inflation, right? I mean, you got to protect, you got to protect that home. So the more expensive the home is, Probably the more the rates are going to go up. So maybe that creates some challenges.

Exactly. So, you know, you're talking about, you know, what insurance pays for labor. Somebody's got to build your house. They gotta, they gotta put the windows in, they gotta put the flooring in, the concrete, so on and so forth. You got— if you, if you wreck your car, it's going to pay for that mechanic, that body shop to pay for it. Well, what also happened, you remember when we were having that, you know, COVID and that inflation part when supplies, you remember thinking of simple little things like toilet paper not being at that, not being at the store. Well, everything else slowed down as well. Car parts, shingles for roofs, everything. So when you have, and at the same time, there was some pretty decent storms, some claims. So when you've got a bunch of claims coming in and then you've got staggering inflation, That's a that's a double negative for insurance that doesn't create a positive. So, you know, when I first started this, you could sell a homeowner's insurance policy in Ohio for five hundred dollars all day long. You know, then all of a sudden, the insurance companies when this was going on, they said, "What? You know, if your house is not worth one hundred eighty thousand dollars anymore, it's now worth four hundred thousand dollars because the labor costs and the material costs have all gone up if something bad happens." They've got to increase their rates. So within 1 or 2 years, people that were used to paying $600, $700, $800 in some areas, whatever, were all of a sudden getting bills for $1,400, $2,000, so on and so forth. So the market was crazy. So you found yourself re-shopping clients, which internally was, was a tough thing to do because people were basically saying, you need to get this down or we're leaving. On the outside though, it was a good thing because Because the whole nation was shopping, and if you were there to collect and and and do that for them, then it was a tremendous you know time for growth. I think we did a pretty good job as an agency of doing that. We've had a lot of growth in the past 18 years. But to summarize your question about it's hard. You know, we just talked about coming up, and we're not as young as we used to. Well, since I've been doing this in 18 years. When I graduated in 2008, and you weren't that far behind me at Georgia, there was the Great Recession, right? You got out of school and all of a sudden there were no jobs because all those people lost half their life savings, half their 401. So instead of retiring, they kept them. Then you had things like COVID. You've had multiple conflicts, multiple wars across the Gulf and other, other places. Uh, then we just had inflation, uh, on top of it. So in our short time of me and you being in the professional industry, we've seen 5 or 6 disruptive things, and it's not all smooth sailing all the time. So, um, I hope that kind of summarizes kind of what, what's been going on recently.

No, it does. That's, that's very good perspective. And then, yeah, you're 100% right, those memes about millennials, just all the stuff we We've seen since we got out of college. I mean, it's actually— it probably sets us up for success long term. I mean, I feel like the best salespeople— going back to sales, you learn way more from the tough times than you do the good times. When things are going good and just everything's flowing in, you're closing deals, I mean, it's great. You're patting each other on the back, but you might get a little complacent. Maybe you don't do the same process you usually do. But when things are tough, you have to be scrappy and like really figure it out. So, uh, on that note— Good transition. You guys have grown a ton. I think you have a lot of people on your team, and then there's some different locations that you have that you keep expanding. The best salespeople you have are the best insurance people. What separates them from the rest of the pack? Is there any traits that stand out that make really good insurance salespeople from your perspective?

So what we do is, you know, we're very localized. We're involved in our communities. Um, so on and so forth. I haven't dove into personally trying to use things like AI, uh, you know, as a lead source and so on and so forth though. Um, it's been going on forever. You know, you can buy insurance leads online, you can— people telemarket, there's many ways to do it. But your best insurance person, your best sales agent, is going to relate to those people around the community. And what we're really doing, what you're really doing is solving a problem for somebody, okay? 90% of the population doesn't wanna talk about insurance. They think it's Greek. You know, they don't understand what's on there. They just wanna know what's covered and taken care of and so on and so forth. So what a good insurance per— person does is they, number one, they have access to the markets, you know, which, which we do. But they, they find these customers and they solve a problem for them. And the problem is pretty simple: I want to pay an honest price for what, you know, um, you know, for my house, for my car insurance. I want to be properly covered. And if you can solve that problem, you know, and, and, and do that for them, then you're going to get more and more referrals and so on and so forth. And the other thing about that is Um, you know, insurance— a really good insurance agent is going to provide a really, really good amount of service. And what I mean by that is you can buy insurance anywhere. You can buy it online. There's— you're gonna— you drive, you leave your house to go get lunch today, uh, or you're gonna see 10 insurance agencies, whoever it is, whether it's independent State Farm, Allstate, Liberty, American, whatever you name it. Okay. It's also that person needs to provide a good amount of service, you know, and be there when that client needs them, if that makes sense.

Yeah, no, no, it does for sure. You got to keep it simple. You're solving a problem. And then it's not just that, that one-time sale. Obviously the transaction is important, but it's the follow-up and continuing the relationship, like providing value with other stuff. And I'm sure that leads to what you're talking about, referrals. And new business in the future. And it's just, you know, that giving mentality that usually comes back around at some point, although you don't always expect it. So in your role now, like, it sounds like you're a little bit of a— I know you're definitely a coach and you lead a team, so there's like some leadership part of it, but it sounds like you still sell some things yourself as well, from what I understand. So how do you balance that, like a little bit of a player coach, or could you maybe explain that a little bit more?

So this is a— I don't know if it's right or wrong. Eventually it's probably going to be wrong, but I've always believed in leading from the front. Um, whether that's when me and you were playing ball back in the day, whether you're in the military, whether you're whatever industry you're in, uh, you know, I think if my Personal experience is I think people are going to respect you a lot more when you're doing the same things with them. You're in the trenches with them, you know, when you can relate to that, that person. You know, we just hired 4 people. They're just starting right now as we speak. There is a guy 20 feet behind me training, whatever. Okay. My sales numbers are usually the top 3 or 4 Every single month. You know, number one, that's how I make my money. You know, number two, I think that person's going to respect that that leader when they're when you're in the trenches with them and you can have that same discussion. You can say, you know, hey, I'm on this, I'm on this call, but I'm getting a lot of rejection. You say, well, I've been here eighteen years. I've seen this four thousand times. This is what we're going to do. You know what I mean? You know, there's probably going to be a day when rating gets. Hopefully, this would be a good problem to have, that Meridian gets so big that I'm gonna have to step back from that. But that's not that time. Balancing it, you know, I haven't figured that out yet. I am, um, you know, uh, there's— I work, you know, I put the baby to bed and spend about 2 hours working from home. I don't have the balance down yet, but I have a tremendous— we have a tremendous support staff here at Meridian. Uh, both, uh, you know, account managers, uh, executive assistants that really keep the machine running. Going back to what you were talking about, sales and stuff like that, and, you know, you've been in this a long time, uh, and I know you've been to a lot of the same meetings where you go to the mixers or you try to meet random people and stuff like that. It's taken me a long time to figure this out, but I think People can smell a salesperson, sales, you know, coming a long way away. You know what I mean? If you genuinely come up to somebody and you're trying to solve a problem for them, you know, wow, my insurance is too high, or can you— I just, you know, worked on a guy. He didn't— he was buying a quadplex. That's a 4-unit house basically in Columbus, Ohio, which is a great way to get people to pay your mortgage for you essentially. Okay, but what people don't realize is a lot of companies don't want that kind of business. So what I did was solve a problem for them. So, you know, in summary, going back to what you were saying earlier, if you could help people and you can solve a problem for them, whatever industry you're in— if I've got great friends that work in the medical device field and stuff like that, well, I, I hang out with them and their doctors at the same time, and I realize how much service and how much they're providing to that doctor, you know what I mean, and making their lives easier. So when that person makes that doctor's life easier, or the insurance agent makes their customer's life easier, or gets them, then everybody's winning. But when you walk into a sales thing and it's like, oh, can I quote your home and auto? Like, what can— it's like a situation like, what can you do for me today? You know, people feel— you can feel it. You can't— I don't know how to describe it. You can just feel it. And it's an instant turnoff. You know what I mean?

Not to pick on car salesmen, but you walk into a car dealership, that feeling you're talking about, you usually get it. You just see, you see that salesperson just make eye contact and they're coming right for you and your, your eyes kind of roll back. And that's unfortunate part of sales is like, I think, you know, I want the profession to keep doing well. I'm sure you, you the same. There's a lot of great people in it, but then there's also some people that it's not even necessarily their fault. They just get taught. A certain way of doing things, and it's like always about pitching, always about closing, and it depends on the industries. But the funny thing is, like I'm in sales, like I want salespeople to be successful. But that that moment when I'm at the car dealership, I don't want to talk to the sales rep. I'm like, "Oh man, I don't want to get pitched on something." It's exactly what you talked about. So the best quote I heard about it was like the best salespeople don't act like salespeople. They're exactly what you said, right? They're they don't feel like a salesperson. They're helping you. They're they're friendly. They're solving a problem. That's where you want to get to. You don't want to be the person that. People are dreading to talk to, or they're like, oh man, they're going to push something down my throat. That's not a good place to be. But we have pressure. The company needs to hit the numbers. We have quotas. That's where it gets tough. And I think people do stuff out of character. And that's just— I've done it many times. I'm sure you have as well. It's just part of it. But over time, you kind of learn that. One, one follow-up there, and I definitely love the leading from the front because that gives you so much respect. I think with, with Insurance folks or salespeople, there might be a balance there to your point. But I think the fact that you know what's going on, you've been there, you've, you've gotten over some of those hurdles, you, you run into the same challenges they do, just so much more respect for that. So I, I love that. And then, yeah, what mistakes are you seeing right now? You mentioned a couple that we talked about, like acting like too much like a salesperson. But what, what other mistakes are you seeing people, either yourself that you've done that you've, you've tried to change, or some of these newer people that they might do out of the gates? What, what, what mistakes do you think these salespeople are making?

Um, you know, it's— I think it's important. People sell price too much, and, and that's very important. It's very important no matter what you buy, whether it's that car you were just talking about, or, you know, believe it or not, you know, And I find this for the most part in my industry, you know, 90% of people I run into. If a new client comes to me and I've got my 8 to 10 carriers or whoever I'm using, whatever, there's 2 things I'm looking to do. Number one, I'm looking to provide the best coverage that I can, okay? Because when you're selling to your neighbors in your community and stuff like that, The last thing you want to be doing in the in the world of insurance is walking down the street and saying, "Ryan, you missed that one." You know, I just lost forty thousand dollars. So that's not where you want to be. The second thing that, and I'm sure you can relate to this in your sales career, but the cheapest is not usually the best. You know what I mean? You can you can buy something real cheap. You can buy a lot of things. Go to Home Depot or whatever you buy, but you're gonna get what you paid for it. You know what I mean? So go buy that cheap insurance or do this and do that, whatever. But I think what what people do is they try to be the cheapest in sales, and a lot of time in sales, that's not always the best. You know, I would rather somebody sit me down and say, you know, hey Ryan, this whatever I'm purchasing, this isn't the cheapest thing. And this costs X amount more, but this is what's gonna happen, and this is how much longer it's gonna last you. So, so on and so forth. Like, you know, just buying like an air conditioning unit like I had to last summer. Okay? I, I didn't buy the cheapest at all because I want that thing to last. The guy said this thing's gonna probably last 12 to 15 years. This one, you're probably gonna get 8. Well, that he just showed me value. You know what I mean? Value in an insurance policy when you have full glass on there. You know, people, people, some people buy their insurance online. It's about 20% of the market or so, and there's nothing wrong with that. Let me ask you a question, Dustin. Yeah. Do you really think the insurance company is going to design an online platform to the benefit of the customer?

No, no, there's no way. You're not going to even be— you probably can't even talk to anybody. It's probably like some AI agent at this point.

When you move that needle, that price needle back and forth, you say, well, I want to pay this. All they're doing is increasing your deductibles and getting rid of coverage. That's all they're doing. You can, you can get, uh, you could have $40 a month car insurance, they'll give you a $5,000 deductible that you can't use. You know what I mean? It's not— so I think the mistake that a lot of young salespeople make, and no matter what industry you're in, is Don't necessarily try to be the cheapest out there. Be the person that provides value and explains that person what they're buying. You know what I mean? So heaven forbid you have to use that. And if somebody, if somebody wants the cheapest, frankly, they're probably not my customer anyway. You know what I mean? You want to go buy cheaper? Yeah.

I couldn't agree more. That whole call it price versus value. It's, it's natural for the customer to ask how much it costs. That's going to just. That's just natural what we do when we go to a store, we go to the car dealership or insurance, whatever. So it's not like meant to be hurtful or anything. I think sometimes people take it personally when they get asked how much it costs. That's just a natural human behavior. But how do you show the value over the price? It's always price is rarely the issue. And I think you would agree it's, it's, it's the other stuff you talked about, right? And you don't want to be, at least I agree with you, I don't want to be the person selling the low-cost leader or something. There's a time and a place for that depending on the industry, but Yeah, you're 100% right. That value over price. One more thing, a little bit, a little new topic here. You mentioned it earlier. I know maybe it hasn't disrupted insurance as much as other industries, but all you hear these days is AI, AI this, AI that. It can be overwhelming. It's confusing, exhausting. But there are some ways that it can help companies. There are some ways it can help salespeople. What's, what's your thought on it so far? Is it something that you guys have looked at, or is it something that just hasn't been a top priority?

Yeah, I mean, it's obviously, you know, the insurance industry is always rapidly developing like any other industry. And, you know, there's a lot of money in insurance. You know, we all know that. So companies, you know, the big companies are always looking to incorporate this, how it's going to be used. It's not necessarily really disrupting anything yet. I think This is my opinion. You know, I think your local insurance agent provides a lot of value. You know, they're there working with you in what you're buying and providing years and years of knowledge, so on and so forth. You know, I'll give you an example. 20-something years ago, maybe longer now, I don't know what company it was, but you can look it up. The first the internet came out, right? And you could buy your first insurance policy online. Some company sold the first insurance policy online twenty thirty years ago. Don't know the exact thing. We can all look it up in our industry. People said they started thinking, oh, the internet! This is the end. This is it's over. It's just everyone's just gonna go online and buy it. Well, what happened was exactly was that you know the opposite is there every every single meeting I go to. Every single one, and I've been at some big meetings with the biggest names and the presidents in the entire country, there's a, there's a circle graph, okay? And you've got 3 main players in insurance. You've got your captive insurance agents, so that's going to be your Allstates, your State Farms, those signs you see driving up down your main strip, okay? You've got your independent agents, you know, the brokerages that have the family name or the weird names, but they represent a lot of different companies, okay? And then you got your online consumer. Okay. Did internet carve out a large portion? Yeah, that's about 20% of online purchases. You know, now whether you want those customers or not or whatever, but what they found out is yet there's going to be a certain segment of the population that doesn't mind buying like maybe their car insurance or renter's insurance online. And maybe they're looking for the cheapest thing. And a lot of times, and I hate to see it, say it, but I've seen some very poorly written policies where people were paying for something basically didn't exist. You know what I mean? Like, you don't have the coverage. But what they found was a lot of the population gravitated toward that local agent, that local salesperson, because they still wanted that hands-on, you're the expert, you live here, I don't trust this, whatever, service or whatever. You know, you can buy it online. That's fine. What they found is that there's still very, very, very much a need for those local people still, and it really hasn't changed over the years. You know, there's— is there a segment for online purchases and people calling in? It's called direct. Can you buy directly from Liberty Mutual, Allstate, so on? Absolutely you can. You can do it right now. Okay, but there's still a huge demand for that hands-on Custom approach that they found regarding AI, you know, to kind of summarize, I think what it's going to do, honestly, in my opinion, it's not going to get rid of anything. I think it's just going to make things you need to do much smoother and much more. You know, there's just things if you need an ID card, let's say you're going to that car salesman and you're buying a new car. He said, I forgot to call Ryan. I need to get— I show proof of insurance to this car salesman to get out of here. Um, you don't really need a person to do that. You can get a hold of your insurance company using your app on your phone, put in who you are, and the AI can say, oh, I need an insurance card and give you an insurance card. Do you need a person to do something that simple?

No.

No. You know, do, do you need a person? Say, I'm not sure what my bill is this month. Can I look it up on my app? And can AI get you in the right direction to, you know, to get you your bill? So I think it's just gonna make, like, companies and processes more efficient. I think, you know, I use AI to kind of do research, to, to run— I run ideas off AI. And some of the ideas that come back are like, that doesn't make sense. Like, you're not there yet. But I also get some stuff back and I'm like, I did not think of it in that way or that angle. You know what I mean? So in my personal opinion, do I think AI is going to take over the insurance industry or other industries and we're just gonna go not have jobs? No, I think it's going to streamline and I think the people that use it right are gonna be much more effective at their jobs. Yeah, well said.

I think you're 100% right. It'd be foolish not to embrace it in some form or fashion. I do think it can help with all that admin-related stuff you talked about, the monotonous things, the things that aren't, let's say, revenue generating, but they still bog people down. You know, for example, the meeting research, the meeting prep, some of the basic follow-up CRM data entry, a lot of that can be Automated with AI, and I think that gives salespeople more time in front of the customer, more time to be the the best version of themselves. I found that some of the most burnout I've had was doing the admin-related stuff that I didn't want to do, and that's what that's what held me back. And then I wasn't my best version when I had the meeting with the client, which isn't good. So if you can use it to to get rid of that stuff, outsource that stuff, to have more meetings, more client-facing opportunities, that's good. And then you're right, the the people. The, the people that are already good at sales, and then they also figure out that part that I just mentioned, they're just gonna keep staying at the top and probably rise even further and, you know, be even better. So it's definitely not going away, but it, it does take time to disrupt. You, you mentioned the internet, that was what, 25, 30 years ago? And now they have 20% market share. That's pretty good, but it's still only 20%, and that took a long time to get there. So AI's moving faster, but it's still not gonna— It doesn't happen overnight, right? You can't just implement AI and expect to have this crazy ROI. That's just not the reality. It's still dealing with people and you got to find the right use cases that, that really help. Cool, man. A couple more questions for you and then we'll, we'll get you out of here. If you could go back and give yourself some advice when you first started in insurance 18 years ago or so, what would it be? Is there anything you would change or any advice that you would give yourself back in the day?

It would go back to something we've discussed already, and that's to, you know, solve that problem and not necessarily think of it as so much as sales. I absolutely— I hate those Wolf of Wall Street memes where people are just trying to slam sales stuff down people's throats. You know, I find my best people, like once again I said, solving problems and provide great service to that client, and that's what they remember. You know, so I would go back and say, stop watching that movie, you know, which honestly provides tons of terrible advice. You know, sell this, slam it down to someone that, you know, it's— I mean, the whole movie is, when it comes to sales, it's like basically unethical. So, you know, why would you— but, but, but yet, you see, when we were kids and we were coming out of college, people, everybody wanted to do that. I go, The Wolf of Wall Street, you know. And it's just, but you look back at it and it's just like, no, the best people in the world are the people that solve that problem and provide great service. You know, that, that, that's, that other lifestyle is not sustainable. And it's been shown a million times over again, you know.

But it's a good point because some people that aren't in sales or they don't understand everything, they, they see Wolf of Wall Street and they think that's what it actually is. And it's, you know, maybe a 0.1% of, of the whole, all the industries is like that. And, you 30, 40 years ago was a little bit different, but still, yeah, it's not like that. And, and I agree. All right, and then last thing is, what's something you're really excited about the remainder of this year? It could be for work or it could be personal. Well, what's something you're really excited about for the rest of the year?

Wow. Um, really excited about, um, you know, I just, I don't have anything terribly exciting to go on. Life is really good. You know, got a great, got a great thing going at work. I got a beautiful little two-year-old. I just hope, and this is specifically, it's weird being in insurance because unfortunately people call us when they need us. We don't want to be called because if somebody calls me, something bad happened, right? A lot of people don't realize this, but you know, you're in hurricane country now, Harp. And I hope it never, uh, I hope it never happens to you. But, you know, they forecast them, the models come out year over year. I never, I never stopped— started watching weather so much until I got into insurance, because as soon as that windstorm comes by, that hailstorm, that hurricane, um, you know, a lot of people don't realize, but 2 years ago, you know, Hurricane Helene hit parts of Florida, I believe, and it kind of did this weird thing where it turned. And it turned through western North Carolina and East Tennessee. So it affected my neighbors. This, this— who thinks— you think of East Tennessee, you don't think of hurricanes. Why would you think that? That's your territory, not mine. You know what I mean? So that hurricane came by 2 years ago. We actually drove right through it. We were going to go visit my in-laws in North Carolina. And little did we know, we were driving through the remnants of the hurricane. I turned on the news the next morning. And a gas station that I passed on the border of North Carolina and Tennessee was under 12 feet of water. The whole the whole town was destroyed. So, you know, long story short, two years ago that was terrible. I mean, people in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina, they they were dealing with something, and frankly, a lot of people had no coverage for something like that. Um, the past couple years have been. Very turbulent times in the insurance industry. What I'm excited about is last year we had a very good, very normal year for the most part. I can— I hope for the consumer, for the industry, stuff like that, that we continue to have somewhat favorable weather because not only for the insurance but the consumers, because when you're calling me You know, if something happened wherever you're at and it was cat— they call them cat claims, means catastrophic, means something catastrophic happened. Those are our worst days. And I hope that we can— a couple years ago, not so great. Last year, had a really great year. Hope we can continue some normalcy and have some good years.

Well, I agree with you on that one for sure, especially being in Florida. That That 2024 was a little rough down here. Tampa, St. Pete got, got blown up pretty good, so hopefully doesn't happen again. Um, and then last thing for you is just if people want to get a hold of you or learn more about Meridian, what, what's the best way to do it?

Oh shoot, uh, give me a call. Look us up on— we're on LinkedIn, obviously. Um, I follow your page, uh, I see it every day. Um, my name's Ryan Messer, uh, Meridian Insurance. Shoot me a message. Share your phone number. I'm happy to discuss, talk, you know, whatever with you. Pretty, pretty down to earth.