How HubSpot is Revolutionizing Insurance Agencies | CJ Hutsenpillar's Journey to Success

Ladies and gentlemen, Sidekick Strategies Community. Today we're diving into the world of insurance. What with a twist. How a forward thinking approach driven by curiosity and a little HubSpot magic can completely transform how you run your business. If you're ready to learn how to outwork over, communicate and outperform in your industry, stick around, you're in for a treat. Let me introduce to you CJ HudsonPiller. So CJ is the driving force behind Hudson Pillar Insurance, but he's also a HubSpot enthusiast who's redefining how agencies operate. With a mindset rooted in both competition and collaboration, CJ blends tech savvy strategies with old school customer care. To set his agency apart. CJ channels the hustle of an athlete into every process he builds, ensuring his team not only meets but exceeds customer expectations. Sidekick Strategy's Community get read ready for a conversation filled with actionable insights, a touch of tech geekery and the energy that only CJ can bring. His mantra, remember, outwork over, communicate, outperform. Cj, how the heck are you doing today, brother?

I am fantastic. I'm just trying to decide if it's in my budget for me to hire you to say all those things you just said every time I walk into a room. If that's in my budget, I'm going to have to pay for that one.

Yeah, we can talk about after the interview to see how I can just follow you around all day, every day.

I love it. Thank you.

You bet. Without a doubt, I'm glad that you're here. I'm excited for the value that we're going to bring. And so I did say a little bit of kind of who you are, what you do from just a high level, but give the Psychic Strategies community, the audience, the listeners and viewers, maybe a second layer of who you are, what you do, why you do it type of thing.

Yeah, absolutely. So I am a second generation insurance agency owner. So my mother actually started in the insurance business way back in 1978 and she's drug most of our family along with her kicking and screaming. So I am the second generation owner there. I am a little bit of an anomaly in the insurance space. I speak geek really, really well. I'm a, I'm a techy, techy guy. I love, you know, pushing the boundaries on things and just challenging the question of we've always done it this way. My answer to that is why have we always done it this way? So kind of push it, pushing into that a little bit. And I'm just outside The Nashville market. So I'm here in Tennessee and I'm super pumped to be all here today.

I love it. And we're pumped to have you here today. Otherwise, this would be very boring. Me just kind of staring at the screen and not talking about insurance at all. But really HubSpot, here's the thing. I do want to get into that. You said tech, you know, geekery, loving to kind of push the buttons. I want to start by just level setting here. When did you start using HubSpot? And then kind of on the piggyback of that. How long did you use HubSpot before flipping the switch of, like, customizing it to your needs?

Sure, absolutely. So we have been on and off HubSpot for probably like six years, I would say. And every time, this is. This is what would happen. And we could get into the larger problem within our industry as well, which. Which I'd love to dive into. People that aren't in the insurance industry hear, and the way that insurance is set up, and they go, surely that it can't be that bad. I'm like, hold on. Yes, it is. Let me, let me, let me go. But I say all that to say every time that we jumped on HubSpot in the past, you know, and I've used it in other businesses as well, the answer was always, oh, my God, I love this system. Too bad it doesn't work for insurance. Right? And that was the thing that, you know, you talk to other people. Well, it's great. It's a cool platform. It does everything you'd want it to do, but it doesn't work for insurance. And I want to give your audience the context of why it, quote, unquote, doesn't work for insurance and how we were able to kind of leverage against that. So in the insurance space, there are two types of insurance agencies, right? There are captive agencies and independents. Your captives are the things that the brands, you're probably familiar with, the state farms, the allstates of the world. The independent agents are what a lot of people would consider brokers. And brokers are the largest portion of the insurance market. And so we have all of these carriers, right? We have different insurance companies that we represent, and those carriers all have data on our customers, right? And so we need one place to house that data. And for the entire insurance space, all of that data flows through one vendor. And if you don't have access to that one vendor, historically, if you don't have access to that one vendor, if you're app, you know, whatever it is doesn't have access to that one vendor, you don't get your data. And from an insurance standpoint, especially in the insurance space, we're already behind on tech as it is. You're not going to find a lot of forward thinkers. And so there's these. What we end up with is these really bland out of the box solutions that have the capability to access the data, but that's their bells and whistles in there, if that makes sense.

It does, it does. So you had HubSpot, you didn't have HubSpot. It was kind of this love hate relationship. It's been years. Then you get to the part of like, here's the missing ingredient. I need to push through this, I need to get to the next level. So I'm super curious, like, what motivated you to push beyond the historical limitations of traditional, like InsurTech and the tools that were available to you to explore what I'll call right now, as you're kind of getting into it, a more dynamic, dynamic solution with HubSpot.

Yes. So. So in the insurance space, the technology pieces are extremely segmented. And this is what ultimately pushed me to this. I'm obsessed with customer experience, right. In my business, like you can go buy insurance online, so I have to as a business owner think, okay, if somebody can go do this online, how do I create a personal touch but keep the friction as low as possible to compete with these people that are going direct to consumer. And part of that is creating great customer experiences. Well, the problem with like legacy insurtech is like there's a system for sales, but that system doesn't do anything with customer service. And then there's a system for customer service, but it doesn't do anything for sales. And then there's another system for accounting, but it doesn't talk to either one of those. And these two don't talk to each other or they, they kind of talk and it's just this big mess. And so what you end up with is frustrated employees and frustrated customers because they're having to essentially like we kind of reference it as like a tech overhang or hangover. Overhang, Hangover. Where they're like, I need this. I think it's in this system, but it's not there. Then I have to go look here. And you end up just with this loop that is just super frustrating for everybody involved in. The worst part of all of that is extremely inefficient. You know, HubSpot users are spoiled with these like, like an activity timeline where you can everything that's, that doesn't exist in the insurance space. Like I'll give you an example. We do a lot with Facebook messenger. And so having the ability to see if a customer had messaged us on Facebook in the past, what required somebody to go to our Facebook page, log in, search Facebook's inbox, which on business pages is atrocious and try to figure out, you know, hey, have we ever talked to this customer? Where are they referencing? And that kind of thing. Now it's just all in the activities. So like just cleaning that up was really the kind of the straw that broke the camel's back, if you will. Like, hey, we need to push forward. We've got, we figured out the biggest problem that's taken care of. We can get our data now. How do we make this thing work for insurance agencies?

I love this. I do want to go off the beaten path for a second because you like quick split real quick said passionate about customer experience. And I believe when I'm listening to you, you're passionate about customer experience, but you're also passionate about maybe employee or team experience too. Of like it being simplified. This is where I want to go off the peaton path. Like why do you think cj, it's in your core. Why do you think you're passionate about providing a dope customer experience?

Yeah, because I think in the insurance space, that's the differentiator. Like our agencies always try to be what we consider like concierge, meaning that like if somebody needs something, they send one email and it's done. They don't have to worry about it, they don't think about it, it's done right. And that is kind of the driving force of like trying to achieve that goal for the customer. And like you said, not just the custom, my team members as well, because there's, like I said, the fatigue that comes from, from having to use all that different tech weighs on them too. And I'm not even going to get to give percentages, but I would, I would wager to say there's a major percentage of employees in insurance agencies today that given the opportunity to leave and not have to use the tech that they're using and having one platform would be a motivating factor to leave a job and go somewhere else.

Let's kind of dive into that a little bit because originally I was going to ask this question in one direction, but I think I want to ask it in a two direction piece here because I want you to explain why you think many Insurance companies either don't think out of the box or do think out of the box. And what the right or wrong way to be thinking about this kind of from the HubSpot employee customer experience standpoint. So in the box, out of the box, thinking like go.

Yes. So. So for me again, I think it all stems back to we've always done it this way. I hate that phrase. It's my, my least favorite phrase in the world. But I think that a lot of insurance companies, like if you go all the way up to the insurance company like carrier level, there's a sense of the people underneath us don't need the tech. So we're not going to invest in it. We have it for our own systems, but we are not going to give it to agents because the agents wouldn't get it anyway. That's kind of the, kind of the overarching thought process. And then from the agency standpoint, I think what we've run into in the industry as a whole is there's a lot of, I'm going to call them legacy insurance agents out there, meaning that they've been in the business a long time and change is scary for me. I hate to even say it this way but like for the insurance industry, like Covid was awesome for the insurance industry from a tech perspective, obviously for a thousand other reasons, it was terrible. But from, from that because what it did was it forced the hand, hey, you can't go meet with clients and get wet signatures. You can't do all these things. They had the, and it was really, it was really wild to kind of watch during that time of like how quickly that switch flipped, of like, oh, y' all just figured this out? Yeah, no, you had the capability. You just wouldn't let us, you know, so, so pushing, pushing that. So I think really what has to happen in the insurance space or at the agency level is you have to start seeing agencies that are more tech savvy, that understand how important and making sure that having all your data in one place and having everything clean and being able to retarget, follow up like how important all those things are. Because at the current state of the insurance market, the landscape is very plain, if you will. The insurance industry is full of C players. A good friend of mine, David Carruthers, which is I think how I ended up meeting you through David, through Mick Hunt, which is a friend of yours, they say that all the time the insurance industry is full of C players and it's the same thing on the tech side of things. A lot of C players. No, no A players.

It's so interesting because when I hear you talk about that last segment, my mind goes to wow. Insurance agencies probably don't realize the thing that is in their way is having like a HubSpot super admin that can do the techie stuff and talk the HubSpot talk to the insurance talk. You're probably a super admin without knowing you're a super admin because you're a business owner that just is techie and wants to fix it and wants to do it. And what I mean by that is this level of curiosity. We'll get to that. But if you're an insurance agency watching this and you're like, what is a super admin? Well, you should go to sidekickstrategy. Com under Solutions, there's super admin training. And if you did hire a human that you wanted to be your super admin, we can train those folks for you. CJ though, here's the thread that I want to pull moving forward. We had a chance to talk before this interview because I wanted to see like, okay, everybody says CJ is awesome. Let me see how awesome CJ is. And during that pre call, you mentioned the importance of curiosity in your approach. And I want you just to discuss for a little bit how that mindset has driven your business forward and why you passionately feel that other insurance agencies should adopt this mindset of, of curiosity.

I am always, to a lot of times to my own demise, somebody that says, hey, okay, we're doing it this way. Why are we doing it that way? And then when we make, you know, well, okay, cool, we don't have to do it that way. We can do it this way now. We've updated it. And then I'll just revisit this stuff, you know, in time. Okay, we're doing it this way. Why are we. Well, we're doing it this way because this is what we said a year ago. Yeah, okay, that worked a year ago. And I think like, that curiosity of like, could we be better? Could we be faster? Could we, you know, try this tech or try this or see, see what these things are in the insurance space. I'm one of those people that like, I buy all the new tech not because I'm going to implement it, because I want to give it a shot and try and see, hey, does this make sense in my, in my agency? Is this something that I feel pushes things forward or is this just a washed, rinsed and version of something else that's already out There, Right. So, yeah, that curiosity of like, never, you know, never being satisfied. And that's, that's really, you know, when we started with HubSpot, that's literally how this happened is we said, okay, I told you we've been on and off HubSpot in the past. And I told you, man, I love that. Wish you could work for insurance. The problem was the data, right? Well, how you download your data, how do you get that data in there, that stuff, you know, because just to kind of dive into that a layer deeper, that data is like real time with the carrier of like, all right, I have these policies enforced or there was a change made to this policy or there is a cancellation or whatever. Like, whatever that is all that needs to update pretty frequently within your system. And so having access to that data. And a lot of people out here are probably like, why don't they just have APIs? Don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Like, you tell me. It would make more sense. But they don't. And that's. That is what it is. So when we got on HubSpot, it was like, okay, we've got the data piece. Okay, cool. We figured out how to do that. That came from curiosity. Okay. Then it said, okay, well, what's the next big issue? Well, the next big issue in insurance is commission payouts. How do you pay out on these different policies? You've got different splits with different agents in your team. Okay, cool. All right, so let's be curious. Let's see if we can use deals. Let's see if we can use calculated properties. Let's see if we can make that work. Okay, that actually worked really well. Okay, cool. Now we've got that and we just kind of kind build, build onto that and we end up with something that was really cool.

I love this so much. There's a couple things that are kind of rattling around in my brain when you're. I heard like, test and iterate, test and iterate. Like that curiosity of like, is this just the same old, same old, or is this actually like a trip to the promised land, if you will, from a tech side of things? But I also loved when you were talking, I got this kind of vision of this is where we're at, but what if. And then followed up by a is it possible? Like, this is where at, but what if? Is it possible? And then also, and I love that you got techie about like deals and calculated properties. And some people are listening to this and going, a calculated what? Here's I Want to rein that in just a little bit because I want to give the people who are watching this, listening this, I want to give them kind of the best first step. And by the way, you've alluded to data and getting the data connected, that might be your first step. Something else might come to mind. But what would be the first step to start integrating HubSpot for an insurance agency currently relying on like outdated tech. Like the way that I want you to think about this, what's the low hanging fruit for them where they're like.

Oh, if I was gonna, if we take the data piece away from it, like being able to, if I was a startup scratch agency, I had zero money, zero policies on the book. I'm thinking that I start with deal pipelines, which are, you know, essentially lead pipelines for, you know, most people are more familiar with that term and using it for the sales side of things. It has a ton of capabilities with like lists and static lists that you can't, you can't, again, you can't do with other systems. You know, building out dashboards is really important so you can see how things are actually happening. But with anything with tech, I feel like, and this is any tech, this isn't just HubSpot, but like, I've always felt like there's a lot of people that when they want to adopt a new tech, they jump into the deep end of the pool and they end up drowning because they don't have a swim. So for me, what I like to do is say, okay, what's a pain point? Like what's something in your business that's causing a problem? Let's fix that thing, like whatever that thing is and then build from there. And so like, you know, in that instance, if I'm a new user, the pain point may be, hey, I'm getting leads, but I'm not really following up with them or I'm forgetting people or I don't know. Okay, cool, a lead pipeline can fix that. Let's set that up and then from there we might go, okay, cool, well, now we have this pipeline. What about if we had some automation? And so now we can dive in and just build and build with them.

I love this so much. And it's funny because you kind of mentioned like, what's the problem? Let's solve for that. And it makes me think about how HubSpot is also not just a CRM, not just a place where you could put the deals and the lead pipelines, but they've really tried to make it an all in one platform. They have a very robust marketplace of apps that you can integrate with the base of what you're doing to solve the problem. And some of these apps help solve those problems as well. So when CJ sits back and thinks about integrations or tools within HubSpot, what tools would you say have been a game changer for your kind of customer experience and your sales process? Which by the way, you can go sales process and then customer experience or customer experience, it's up to you. But like what have been the tools or game changers in HubSpot or apps that you're like, oh, people need to know about these.

I think probably the biggest thing in, in most businesses, not just insurance agencies, is your phones. So obviously HubSpot has the built in phones that you can use, which is great. We ended up opting into a little bit more robust solution. We use Aircall for ours which is also has a native integration with HubSpot. And for me, I went from my phone system, again, phone system didn't connect with any amount of legacy tech, was it? And then I also like to put this out here in case, you know, any of my peers listen and they said, well hold on cj, you can do it with Zapier. Cool. Like that's, that's fine. Okay. But having a native integration and a Zapier connection are not the same thing. Like they just, they don't work as well together or whatever. So we went from no connectivity of our phone system to any of our management systems, CRMs or anything to a native integration, you know, within HubSpot. So now my team can a, you know, see calls, they can see the recordings, they can see the transcripts, and they also see summaries all right there within that activity timeline. They're not having to jump around and chase things. That was big for us. The second one was like, all right, cool, we've got that. Now we need to do sms, right? So we already used sales message. Sales message has an integration, boom, done, problem solved. And so, so those are two big ones. And then for me being able to customize properties at the deal contact level or really even the custom object level, which I don't know how if we want to dive into that. Being able to customize that stuff for the needs of your specific use cases is huge. Right? Like I'll give, you know, I'll go insurance with people. We have a custom object for claims. So if a customer has a claim that's a custom object, we can detail everything. That's happened, you know, there, within, within the claim. But when my team sees the claim is closed, we update a property, it says claim is closed. Cool. That's easy enough. Well, that one trigger now sends a follow up, you know, follow up. Hey, how did it go? What you know, and you can trigger all these things and so the customization is critical. You alluded to this a second ago. Our agency eliminated 12, I think it was 12 providers when we went to HubSpot because we didn't need them because they were all, they were all within hubzone. Just to tell you how fragmented and segmented the insurance space is.

Yeah, it's interesting to hear you say, like we got rid of 12 and the ones that we're using are now in one spot and we can customize it and wrap HubSpot around our business instead of feeling like we're cramming our business into just a SaaS software. Which, which is beautiful. It's interesting because when we again had a chance to talk before this interview, you were explaining kind of the process and how the journey you went through with this and you had mentioned that you got customer service using HubSpot first and then you brought on the sales team. I think there's some valuable information in your brain around why that journey, why that pace. I'm just going to ask the question for all of your peers that might be watching this or listening or folks who are meeting you for the first time, like, why was sales the last team to be moved over to HubSpot in your mind, like, what was, what was the strategy there?

Yeah, so, so for me again, the driving force behind me moving to HubSpot was the customer experience on really for my existing customers. Our agency has a fairly large book of business of these existing clients. And my pain points were, you know, kind of going back to that, that, you know, start with the pain point. Was my service team not having or being able to see a full picture of what was going on with the customer. All our data was too fragmented. We didn't know, you know, all the, all the different things that was our driving force. The other, the second part of that was kind of the cheat code in that I told you I'd use HubSpot. In the past, I knew the sales piece HubSpot was going to knock completely out of the ballpark. That wasn't even a question to me. So my, but my original question was can it handle the service piece? Once I figured out the answer to that was yes, we put the service team on, had them good to Go. And then I just moved my sales team back over a lot of which, like, half of them were already familiar with HubSpot because they'd used it in the past when we tried to tried it in the past. So that was kind of the reasoning. We went service, then sales, instead of what I think most people do, which is sales then service.

So good. So much value in this interview so far. C.J. i'm gonna break probably a cardinal interview rule, and I'm gonna ask you a yes or no question.

Okay.

Which is kind of usually dumb when you're interviewing people, but I'm gonna ask you this because I believe after the answer you give, there will be more that you want to unpack in your brain based on the question I'm gonna ask you. Plus, I just want people to hear the instant answer because I think it will be unlocked for folks. CJ I'm gonna ask you. Does HubSpot help insurance agencies be more modern? Like, does HubSpot help them move from 1944 to 2024?

Yes. Yes. Let me. I might give you guys some more context. Again, every insurance agency is different. They all operate differently. There are no two insurance agencies that really operate exactly the same. But I can tell you that as of us recording this, that is 2024, there are insurance agencies that still to this day run off filing cabinets in their office. Literally. You guys can see out behind me here. I can tell you almost could hit it with a driver. An agency that's behind me here in this view, that operates off of filing cabinets. The reason that for that is because they've always done it that way. That's how it works for them. And, you know, God forbid they have a fire or anything. But it's funny too, because, like, agencies like that are then, like, we can't find any help. And I'm like, well, hey, have you tried remote employees? And they're like, well, we can't because they couldn't access our system. Like, yes, because you don't have to have a system. You have a. You have a filing cabinet.

Oh, man. Yeah, that's so I. I love diving into these people who might have this, like, pain point or the. Or this problem that we're kind of alluding to or. Or shining a light on. So, C.J. what would you say to either that insurance agency or even just an insurance agency who maybe isn't filing cabinet but sits here and goes, oh, it's just overwhelming. Like, what would you say to the insurance agency owner that's overwhelmed by just the idea of switching to a new piece of tech, a new CRM like HubSpot. How do you soothe the pain? How do you evoke action? Like, where does your brain go?

Again, you, you alluded to it earlier. I, I'm a, I'm a competitive person. And my, my response to agency owners, like, because, because again, I view, like my agency, we view the direct to consumer as our enemy, if you will. That's the people that we're competing with. Other local agents. Like, I don't really view them as competitors. So I'm pretty open in dialogue with them. And for me, you know, if I, if I had an agency that I was talking to, that's, that's on those legacy systems, my answer to them would be like twofold. One, you're gonna go out of business. My team is going to be faster than you. They are going to provide a better customer experience. Give me some time and I. An agency like mine, and it's not just me, there's agencies out there that are just like I am, you know, they're real tech forward. You're gonna push the envelope. They will run those legacy companies out of business. Part two, if they say, okay, well, I want to sell, you murder the value of your company. On the insurance side, you are killing the value of your company because you don't have access to. People can't access the data. They, you know, what are you gonna, you can cook your books, if you will, you know, because they don't know what you do or don't have. And so for me, it's just one of those things that, like, the longer you wait, the bigger the problem gets. So why not just go ahead and pull that band aid off and let's get it over with and, you know, deal with the stuff now rather than, you know, if you wait, you know, 10 years. Yeah. You know, like every day I write a new policy, right? Like, we write new policies every day. My filing cabinet theoretically is getting bigger every day. And so the problem of getting it out of that filing cabinet is getting bigger. So why not let's just, let's knock it out today and get, get it over with especially. And I don't know if you guys recommend this, but, like, especially in, like, now it is so easy to digitize things. Like, it doesn't. Like, that's not even even all that difficult. Our agency went. You'll get a, you'll get a kick out of this, George. Our agency went paperless in 2006 when I was graduating high school and my summer Job that year was at my mom's. At my mom's shop was I had all these filing cabinets, and my job was to scan documents into the system. Right. And save it. But now there's services that'll do that. You can hire somebody for 1500 bucks to come in and knock that out or a VA or. I mean, there's all kinds of things you could do.

Yeah, you got to figure out how to get over those hurdles. I'll tell you, ladies and gentlemen, C.J. when you said, the longer you wait, the bigger the problem gets, I was like, my dude is throwing out life advice right now. This went past HubSpot and your insurance agent. This is literally life advice, and it is true. Listen, now's the time to act. What was the best time to act 10 years ago? Now, though, is the best time to act. C.J. i want you to get your crystal ball out for a second, and maybe it's a little crystal ball with a dash of aspiration, right? Like, if we sit here and we look forward, how do you see tools like HubSpot changing the insurance industry landscape over, let's say, the next five to ten years? What. What's happening that people might not be thinking about right now?

We have to lean as an industry. We have to lean into the customer experience, right? Because let's just call a spade a spade. People do not like insurance. So any friction that we add to that process just amplifies it. And what I kind of see happening is you've got, you know, systems like HubSpot that have the capability to provide a better customer experience. I think you see those companies and those. And agencies kind of wake up and say, hey, we don't have to use these legacy tools. We can use some. Some of these tools. And that's going to give us an edge on our competitors because we're now able to see our customers in a more holistic way. And with that means that we can make decisions more in a more holistic way. So for me, I think there's going to be a lot of shifting in the. In the insurance space around where you house your data, if you will. That ball is already rolling a little bit. And so we'll just see. We'll have to see how it all shakes out.

I love it. What a great glimpse in the crystal ball. C.J. you're awesome. This interview has been awesome. The value that people are going to get from watching this, I can't wait to see. My last question for you is if people have questions or maybe after this interview, they want to buy you a steak dinner or sushi or whatever, whatever you like. After this value packed interview, like where do you want to send them? Where can they connect with you?

I have one distinct advantage over a lot of my fellow markers and that I'm the only CJ Hudson filler on the Internet. So, so if you, if you literally just search me, you can, you can find me. If you, if you want to come at me and get a little spicier stuff from me, X or Twitter is where you, you can follow me there. But obviously LinkedIn, Facebook, either one is what works as well. Again, I'm the only C.J. hudson pull there.

So I love that you brought up this thing of X or Twitter. Me like, listen, ladies and gentlemen, you used to be able to tweet something out, now you X something out, which doesn't even sound right anyway, not why.

To me sounds like I'm canceling them.

Exactly, exactly. So branding, I'll tell you. But hey, C.J. again, this has been great. Psychic strategies, community insurance agencies, whoever you are watching this, I hope that you've taken a ton of notes. I hope that you have action items if you need help or have questions along the way. Of course you can reach out to cj, you can reach out to us. But remember, along your journey, along your path of figuring out the best way that you can be the best you and provide the best customer experience, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human and do some happy hubspotting along the way.