Episode 103: Tapatio Reveals All

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or are well on your way to the success you desire, with the right people, processes and promotions in place, you will be unstoppable. And now I'd like to introduce your host, Mike Stromso.

Hey, friends, this is Mike Stromso. Come to you live from the Living Agency Laboratory with the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. I am pumped. I am excited to have a very special guest with us today. This was born in a recent Platinum coaching mastermind, because during the entire week, we kept dropping marketing love bombs on the group. The entire week and through the masses, through high demand. They said we need to get this person on the podcast so we can learn more, so we can have something that we can watch again and. And again or listen to again and again. And I couldn't be more proud. I couldn't be more excited and pumped to have the one, the only, Andrea Unstoppable Tapatio Rock Aw. AKA Andrea Wyatt on the podcast. Andrea, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much, Mike. I'm usually on the background here, but this is pretty fun being on the forefront, and I hope that I can bring some valuable information to share with our community today. And just grateful to be here.

I'm grateful to have you and I'm grateful to have you in my business life and personal life in the fact that you have become such a great support and mechanism for everything that we do. And it's been good to get to know you and Mike and your family as well. So thank you for all you do for so many. Andrea and I started working together more than 11 years ago. It's been 11 years already, so we've had some phenomenal, wonderful times together. Growing businesses, helping people, helping them grow their businesses, create wealth, and have more freedom to live life on their own terms as well. So before we get started today, let me just ask you a couple of questions. Let everybody know something you love to do when you're not working. I know you've got a couple things you love to do.

Oh, I love.

Camping in my travel trailer. I like going out to the desert, riding dirt bikes and sandraels and fishing. I love fishing. So.

Wow. I didn't know lake or ocean or both.

Both. But I'm more lake tendency now because I have my travel trailer right in the ocean. But no, I do love both though. I've always been.

Fisherwoman, I guess you'd call it.

That's awesome. That's Fantastic. Yeah. So let everybody know. Where did you originally come from? You have a very special place in America that you came from.

I'm originally from Sentinel, Oklahoma.

Exactly.

Zoom in pretty close to find that on the map. There's not many people there. I think there's maybe a thousand nowadays. Maybe well honored, but yeah, definitely close to my heart. All my family is still out there. So.

Yeah. And you are well traveled and you have been to a lot of places and they got a lot of cool stories. And that is part of the depth of your background that helps you help so many other people. And another quick story from our own personal training and development. We were sitting in our own mastermind because we train with many coaches to continue to grow, to continue to get better, to bring this kind of information to the masses. And so it was in a group setting, and the people around our particular table were looking at us. We're sitting next to each other and said, you two work together, right? We're like, yeah. And they said, what do you do? And we told them, we help independent insurance agents across North America grow their business, create wealth so they can have more freedom to live life on their own terms. And they said, but what roles do you play in the company? And we told them a bit, and they go, oh, we got it. You're the talk and she's the rock.

It couldn't be more true. So that's where that part of the nickname came from. So just great stuff, great stuff. So let's dig in and let's help some people. Sound good?

Let's do it.

Fantastic. So in our mastermind sessions with our platinum coaching groups, we kept dropping these bombs, and they're going, wow, how do you do that? Or how does that work? So, Andrea, I'm going to see if I can pull out of you some of these strategies to help people. And keep in mind, everybody, that what we bring to the table in UPP comes out of our own living agency laboratory. That's our own independent insurance agency, Very successful independent insurance agency that continues to grow. And so we bring the strategies that work and we share lessons as well. So, Andrea, we have this little adversity come up in history, and we made a decision through our own personal training and development to grow through this adversity. Remember the conversation?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

All the way.

Yep, yep. It was awesome. So share with everybody the top three strategies after we made a decision to grow through the adversity that we actually implemented. That worked. You want to talk a little bit about those yeah.

And some of them were strategies that we had already had implementing and maybe it was a sense of more of a tweak to the environment. Obviously we're in an ever changing world. So as marketers we test and we've always got to be testing and tweaking and growing with the times and growing with technology and things. So I think one of our biggest successes last year was actually completely revamping our lost soul campaign and that the addition to that was putting in, you know, some non pay cancellation automation where we weren't actually reaching out and saying, hey, you didn't pay your bill. However, we were saying, oh, so sorry to see you gone. And that tremendously changed our non pay situation. The numbers were insane of how many would reinstate without our interaction with that. So that was huge. Also we had.

Andrea, can I stop you real quick and make sure that everybody understands that? So expand a little bit on what exactly is a lost soul in our world at least.

True. I apologize for that.

Oh no, it's all good calling it that.

So that's a current client that is canceling and leaving us for whatever reason. And so this is just our touches that continuously touch them because we get lost souls back all the time. I mean, what do they say? Grass is greener on the other side?

Yeah.

I'm going to jump over to company A over here. But wait. Oh, I realize company A doesn't talk to me and doesn't send me birthday cards and doesn't give me newsletters. Doesn't really care about me, honestly at the end of the day. So those, they have situations and when a claim comes up and they're not properly taken care of, where do they come back to us? Because guess what, we're still right in front of them. I do not off a newsletter list. I do not stop emailing them e newsletters. I mean these people are seeing us.

All of the time and they get touched on every holiday. In fact, it just happened last week. We had a major holiday during the year and I saw that we sent out a communication and one came back from somebody who decided to move out of state, right?

Correct. He moved up to Arizona, I believe, but said, oh my goodness, if you, if you offer Arizona, please call me. I'd love to have you guys have our business. Yeah, awesome. We had another one the week before that was just had switched over and said, hey, you know, I really just want to come back. Can you re quote me? I'd love to be back with you all. So I mean these things work you know, it's just showing you care, have some emotion and have some fun and be real, be people.

Right. People do business with people they love and trust. Absolutely.

That's love.

Love, right, Exactly. Well, I mean the normal people say like, but we're not normal, high achieving, growth oriented marketing people say love.

Correct, Correct. We want to be loved.

That's right.

Yeah. So I mean that was a real game changer for us, just really utilizing, you know, texting, emailing and direct mail. It was amazing to see the responses because previously it was automated and we weren't doing the direct mail portion as much anymore. And we had over a 59% response rate.

Wow.

And over half of those were coming back. People literally filling out a survey and sending it back in the mail to us. Which, you know, you just. Sometimes people get wrapped up in the technology world and forget that there's actually people that don't do that.

To reach 100% of the marketplace, you have to use 100% of the ways. So it was a good reminder and it was, it was a reset. So absolutely killer. So that, that's one of my top.

Ones and that's one of the reasons I'm so thrilled to have you on, because we are, we were in the middle of the great reset and it's the opinion of many, including myself, that our society has reset forever in some ways. So thank you for being your willingness to share strategy today and concepts and everything else.

Oh no, definitely. As I said, I'm grateful to share and I love this opportunity and we just had some amazing things happen through such a.

Adverse time. So.

Anyways, my next one was actually Jotforms and you can use any form system. That's just the one that I chose to play with first and fell in love with. And so that's what I use. But there's other form systems as well. But it was key to know that, you know, it's like personalized. So if I'm sitting there, you know, I'm usually working 8 to 5. So if I'm texting you or emailing or calling at the same time, I don't really have that much time. I might be on a 10 minute break. Do I have time to run down on everything? So we implemented all of our quote forms on jotforms and we're utilizing that through any platform. Whatever they chose to come through at, that's what we did. But you make sure that you have something where they can upload deck pages too or just take pictures because they like to do that as well and just asking. And they just start rolling in and we have all the info. So. So we've saved our sales agents times, we've saved our service agents time if they have a change. So they call with the good news. Here's your quote, your proposal, I've saved you money or whatever, I've got you better coverage or everything's done, you're taken care of. Thank you so much for your business. So that was huge too.

Yeah. And you came up with another part of the strategy in using these electronic communications, whether it be Jotform or whatever you decide to use. If you've got another system to include a video, do you think that has helped increase the relational communication?

Oh, definitely. People are, I mean I think it's over 80% now are more likely to read, to listen to the video than read any content. Yeah, just engages it, tells them what you're sending them that for. And that's a lot with our renewal, you know, we didn't have as good of a response rate on any of our renewal communication until we added all the video. People see you saying, hey, you know, life changes, you know, let us know so we can make sure that one, you're covered properly. You might be missing out on discounts or to help you better. So no, that definitely changes. It's a game changer. And if you're not using video, we're setting on a zoom platform right now. It's free. If you want to choose that level up to 40 minutes, use it you can.

On a video.

Yep, absolutely. And you designed your background and you were the key behind the one behind me. If you're looking at this on YouTube and if you're not, just go to YouTube. Unstoppable profit producer. Search Unstoppable Profit Producer and you can find all of our podcasts right there via video so you can see this stuff. Great job, Andrea. Thank you for making sure make it happen.

You're welcome. So third top tip or top strategy should I say that we implemented and this was actually this year and as businesses started kind of reopening and things and we're going, you know, the community.

Feels a little different because we live in a really tight knit community. So it, you know, there wasn't the mixers, it wasn't all the golf tournaments and all the fun things to go do. So we really wanted to solidify those relationships for referral partners. And as an independent agent, one of our best ones is leading in with a mortgage lender. So we compiled a list and then one of our leadership team happens to be really close with, with a local escrow gal that is very well known in the community. And so she was kind enough to take our list and kind of look at it and said, hey, you know, here's a top 16 I think is what we started with. You know, let's go out and I'll introduce you. So they took our leadership person, went and introduced. We did cool little packages with some candy and some fun stuff. But prior to that I had taken the jotform thing, said, hey, what if I did personalized links for all these companies? That would be cool. So I literally went online and just pulled all their logos and now they all have their own personal little link that they get to send leads in. One, it's great for tracking. Two, they feel like, oh my gosh, they made this for me. So it was, it was a great experience. I mean, that day from three brand or 16 brand new introductions, we got three leads before 12:59 that, that morning a.m. i guess so.

Wow. Yeah. I don't know anybody that wants that many new leads so quickly. So, you know, if that's too much work or anything like that, don't do this stuff. But if you're interested in more leads, I mean, this is just the tip of the iceberg, my friends. I mean, Andrea and her team, she's got other teammates around her to help make this stuff happen. It's just an incredible inspirational thing to watch. Let's give everybody one good couple, good reasons they might want to be doing this because a lot of people say, well, talk to us about results. Ok, so this past year end, we closed the year during possibly what some call a difficult year with a record year as far as production. And I will say that we had a goal. We beat that goal by 11% and it was also topped our highest previous year by 11% as well because that was the bar that we set. So it does work when you take action and implement these things and continually inspect what you expect and you put yourself in a position to win by having incredible people like Andrea. And I'm going to get to that in just a minute. In addition to that, what's happened from the retention standpoint out of the gate, we have been in the mid-90s so far and it continued from the end of last year by other strategies that we teach in our program. So record years in new business, record times in retention. If that's important to you, I would recommend that you pay attention to the next things that I'M going to pull out, Andrea, as we go to the next segment that we have for you today. Great job. Tapatillo, you rock. Thanks. So I want to hear if you're willing to share three key tips for anybody that's got a marketing department in an insurance agency business. And by the way, if you just happen to be listening to this or watching this and you're not in our industry, these still work in any industry. So, Andrea, what are some of the tips if you've got a marketing department you should be employing consistently, not just sometimes when you feel like it consistently.

I think one of the, I'd say number one. Well, actually number one would be your list. Always have your list. I mean, every prospect you quote or comes through your doors, if you're in a different industry should be on some kind of list. Have them hop into something. List is king. Second is data. I mean your data is so important in having really sound data and having someone that reviews that data to make sure it's sound. And some of our biggest things for our AMs, we personally use hocksoft at this time and we have like communication logs. So we really went through and dialed down to where we could just track everything we're doing with those clients and the cancellations. Why do they cancel? I don't want to just see that this policy cancel. We want to know why. We want to know where they went. So it's like price, aaa, all these things. Think about it, we know how AAA works, they're low. And then next year what happens? Rate hike up.

They go, yeah, guess who's pulling a.

AAA list next year.

Hands down marketing is going.

So thank you very much.

So your, your data is so important and just make sure you keep your eye on it and make sure you're utilizing your AMS system because I know a lot of people that underutilize it. And you know, our industry was always a dinosaur, honestly with technology. But they're really stepping up. They have made some great changes over the past few years and they're really coming out of their shell and allowing a lot of customization and things that we can really use. And if you're not using them, you need to dig deep and make sure that you're knowledgeable on what you can do with your system. Let's see, my third is going to be automation. Use automation. People like, don't try to do it all yourself. Utilize the automation. As I said before, I mean a personal lines customer, just like a business, I'm busy all day. They're at work all day. So how about those few that you can't catch on the phone? Call. Yes. Use the phone.

Right.

Catch them on the phone. What are you doing next? So make sure you have. And as I said, our industry is coming out of their shell and there's integrations available now that there never were before, which is making my world amazing. Might I add some.

But make sure you're. And interview these companies that integrate and make sure, knowing your head, what you're planning on doing, don't do their standard demo. Ask them questions and enter more than one. Make sure it does what you're getting at.

Because if you don't challenge them, they're just going to tell you what you want to hear. Right. What they think you want to hear.

I mean, I see people jump on marketing systems or this or that and they're out in a month and it's like.

It'S hard.

Mm.

It's a lot of work jumping into those and setting them up and everything else. So, you know, make sure you're do your due diligence and interview companies and interview multiple. Because every agency is different.

Yes.

Graphics different, your clientele is different. So you need to know what you wanted to do and you ask them and you push them and you make them show you what you want.

That's right. Prove it.

Prove it.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Those were my top three.

Tips for any marketing. Oh, and actually on that integration thing also, I get this a lot and people say, oh my gosh, you guys have a two year welcome kit. Like, how am I supposed to do that? Well, this is a ninja marketing tip for your marketing rooms. People pre assemble your packages. Ours are all pre assembled. And then we use our automation system that sends out a little tickler to our department, whoever's in charge of that specific task. And it says, hey, you need to mail day 14 to this person. So what happens? They go in our marketing system, they print the customized thing in there to that person, throw it in the box because the rest is done except for the COVID letter and mail it. So it's all, it's easy if you just, you have to, you pre assemble everything and I have big boxes and it says day 14, day 34. So it's, it's not all that much work. You just have to pre think it. So pre assembling is my biggest tip for actual direct mail pieces.

That's fantastic. And we've learned through our own personal training and development that it's not necessarily working smart, smarter, it's working right is that correct.

Perfect. Hands down.

And that's exactly how Andrea and her teams work. They work. Right. So props to you. Kudos to you for making that happen. And that's just one of the many, many things that we share in the UPP circles for agents to help them grow their business, create wealth and to have more freedom to live life on their own terms. So let's make this super easy for them. If they wanted to get started fast, is there an opportunity for them to take immediate action and to started fast to learn all of this like in one day?

There is.

Where should they go?

You should go to uppfaststart.com that's upp f a s t s t a r t dot com so they can.

Learn all about the stuff that we just talked about and so much more in just one day.

One day.

Wow.

To leave your office or your home.

Fantastic. And they can bring team leadership and they can bring people from their own.

Marketing department highly encouraged.

Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. What a great opportunity. Thank you for sharing that, Andrea. I think it's a great thing people can take advantage of and they happen fairly often. So you can just pick the date that's right for you.

Exactly. If you go on that website, it gives you the dates that are available and so just select a date that works for you. And we love to have you join us and love to be able to share with you and just get you really kick started for 2021 here. I mean, this is going to be a great year. I can feel it.

Absolutely. I can feel it too. I just got an email to the effect of it is going to be a great year because things are continuing to get better all of the time. It seems like every day something great is happening. So. And remember. Right. What do we learn if we want things to change? Who has to change?

We have to change.

We have to change because if you're willing to change, everything will change for you. But you know, the maybe 80% of people aren't willing to change and are not willing to do what it takes to change. So they're just going to get the same thing they've always got, which is the same thing. Right.

You got it.

We don't want that for anybody. So that's, that's part of the reason that you're also in the program director's position for the UPP programs doing a fantastic job. Thank you for all that you do, Andrea. For so many agents. I'm going to ask you one last question before we move to wrap up today. So in that particular chair, you take lots of incoming inquiries about a lot of things. Now, keep in mind, these are the top performing agents across North America. So the top performing agents across North America will reach out to Andrea and start asking questions about certain. Is there a common question that you get asked a lot topically? There's a lot of, yeah, the three P's, right. People, processes and promotion. But what's something that's just very common? Is it people oriented, process oriented promotion?

It's usually people oriented, honestly.

Okay. And so what do they want to talk about? Is it hiring or something else?

It's usually hiring and culture.

Okay.

Hiring culture.

Yeah. So.

And team accountability. I think a culture might be off because they haven't set clear expectations.

Oh. And they do that through team accountability. So you've, you've had a major hand in developing a little piece, what do they call it? PP PX3. That's right. Anyway, seriously, that was, that was born in our own insurance agency business. Keep in mind, friends, everything that we teach, we gave birth to, if you will, in our own insurance agency business. It's tried, true and tested. So that's why we share this. And so that's just great information. And so what we're here to tell you is you're not alone. Everything you're going through in your insurance agency business or any business for that fact, it's happening to everybody. But we figured out so many things, so many strategies to help people to make it better so that can you, you can grow, create wealth and have more freedom. You're going to say something, Andrea?

Yeah, I was just going to say to that point, we're still in the agency. So that's the cool thing. I mean, like one of my top things was the Lost Soul program. Well, that was revamped this year.

Right.

Everything that's going on right now.

Right.

The other one was made maybe eight years ago, was probably the last time it was revamped. So that is one of the great things about our program is that we both see set in the agency chairs still. So we know what's going on. We feel everything that you're all feeling.

Yeah, absolutely. And such an honor and a privilege to be able to help people. Speaking of helping people, we also have a major annual event coming up, boot camp. So that's become a very special place. Are you going to be there?

Oh, heck, yeah, I'm going to be there.

Yeah, absolutely. We're going to be there live this year. We missed last year, but we're going to be There live. This year we're looking forward to having just an incredible group of high achieving business entrepreneurs. They're sharing with everybody. In addition to that, a couple hundred people who are the top of the top creme de la creme insurance agency people across North America. So excited about that atab.

Oh, I can't wait. I can't wait to see everyone face to face and just really collaborate and have a great time and learn some great things to implement in your agencies so you all can grow and have some UPP life.

Exactly. We're going to experience the UPP life like nothing else. In addition to that, it will be a safe zone. We've got every precaution in place, working in place to make sure that everybody is safe, protected and we keep everybody safe and protected while growing in that particular environment. So we're excited about that. We're pumped. We can't wait. November 4th, 5th and 6th, just go to beunstoppablebootcamp.com that's beunstoppablebootcamp.Com and make it happen for yourself. We can't wait to see you there. We can't wait to help you learn and grow. So, Andrea Wyeth, thank you so much for sharing today. Those are great strategy tips for anybody to implement in their agency business. As we wrap it up today, do you have any last things to add?

No, I just wanted to say I'm so grateful and go out there and market.

Exactly. It's all about the marketing, right?

Yeah. I don't care what business you're in, it's all about the marketing. You're all in the marketing business.

That's right. But you know, as we talk about the three Ps, you got to make sure you got excellent people on your team working within world class processes and systems. Then you get to promote and market the heck out of it. And that's where it gets really fun and really special. And that's what we help with. So. And you are a major part of that. Thank you for your partnership. Thank you for doing all that you do. You rock. Rock.

Grateful for you talk.

Hey, I do it pretty well. In fact, there's some say that I do it too much, but we'll save that for another day.

Hey, I got to talk today.

It was a privilege listening. So. Hey, by the way, here's another little tip that we. I don't think we've ever revealed this publicly.

Oh, no.

Should we let them know?

Yeah.

All right. Today only. Okay. And if you're not watching this on YouTube, when you get in front of a computer or your handheld device, go over to YouTube, search Unstoppable Profit Producer, go down to this episode. So we say in the beginning, we said, you've got two ears and one mouth, right? Use them in that proportion. Then through the stories in UPP Life, it became four to one. We got two eyes, two ears and one mouth. So use them in that proportion, right? And then our implementer of the year recently dropped in Mastermind. It's not 4 to 1, it's 5 to 1. And I said, 5 to 1. What's number 5? He goes, you teach it. I said, I do. What is it? He goes, you know, you say your mindset, your skill set. I said, that's right. Your mindset is your skill set. He goes, number five is your mind. So you get your mind, your two ears, your two eyes and your one mouth. Five to one. And one of our 13 cousins I was recently hanging out with who likes to use that one all of the time. So because they are all involved in cousins camp, we have this thing, 5 to 1, 5 to 1, 5 to one. And his name is Joe. He said, all right, Joe, five to one, remember? And he got this look on his face like, oh, bummer, I can't talk anymore. Five to one. We didn't have to say anything else. We just held up one hand with five and one with one. So it is five to one.

I love it. Love it.

Thanks to a platinum coaching member implemented the year, Jose, for sharing that wisdom. That is the kind of stuff that happens when you get to experience UPP life. Andrea, thank you so much for being with us today and for everybody. Just get out there, make a difference, be unstoppable. You will leave no regrets only if you implement, execute and take action. If there's any ever anything more that we can do for you to support you, please let us know. And if you got great value out of this podcast, we would be grateful if you would share it with anyone, Anybody and everybody that you know so they too can get great value. All I have to do is go to unstoppable profitpodcast.com and subscribe at the top. Or you can go to any of the channels out there, Stitcher, Google, Apple, whatever, or on all those channels, encourage them to go there so they can continue to receive the great value that we try to bring on this podcast. Andrea, thanks again.

Thank you. And don't forget, upp fast start or.

Uppable boot camp.com uppfaststart.com or be unstoppablebootcamp.com Great reminder. Thanks. All right. Have a great day everybody.

Thank you for listening. If you would like to listen to more episodes or share this podcast with someone you care about, please visit www.unstoppableprofitpodcast.com now go out and make a difference. Be unstoppable and leave no regret.