Episode 146: Helping YOU Write Lots of High Net-Worth Business with Bob Klee

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. Welcome, everybody, to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. I am excited because we have an opportunity to help you grow your agency, create wealth, and to have more freedom to live life on your own terms, because the people that this highly successful agent helps have already done that. And it's a constant question from agents, how do we get into that space? And we don't necessarily have the volume to get an appointment in this particular space. How do we do it? How do we do it? How do we do it? And this recently came up at our most recent boot camp. And that agent said that to me and I said, oh, there's the man right there. And I did the introduction and he took it away. The unstoppable Bob Klees on the podcast with us today. Bob, how you doing, sir?

Better than I deserve, buddy. It's nice to be here with you and your folks here.

Absolutely. I 100% agree with that. And Bob's teammate, if you're watching this visually, Heather's going to chime in today as well. They're teammates in helping agents grow their business and that's what we want to get to today. So the space that I was referring to is the high net worth space, and that's something that Bob has extensive experience in and he now has the ability through his facilities, Kelly Klee, to be able to offer that to agents on a brokerage basis. And we want to introduce that to you. But before we go there, let's have Bob introduce himself. Bob Klee. Who the heck are you anyway? And how'd you get started in this crazy industry?

Sure, wow. Seems like another lifetime ago, but I've been in this industry actually started in Southern California when I was another lifetime a motorcycle dealer, believe it or not, in Torrance Lamita, California. Got licensed to sell insurance there, transfer later got rid of that farmer's agent for a brief time. For those of you that are farmers, I have a order of the blue vase. I have a blue vase packed away somewhere. Left California for Kentucky, did a scratch Allstate agency there. Only because farmers wasn't there. I needed to find somebody bigger with Allstate. Six years later, sold that, moved down to Nashville, did another one while I was there, started A little shopping portal online called Hometown Quotes for consumers where we sell leads to agents and then segue from that. I partnered with a guy in 2012 and then 2015 we started Kelly Klee and then a wholesale division out of that called Kelly Flea for agents. So been doing it a few years.

Just a few. Yeah. So by the way, I want to just give a little bit of a teaser on Hometown Quotes. That is something that is an opportunity and remember the opportunity is always knocking. So we're going to circle back to Bob Klee 2.0, another podcast we're going to bring to you, talk more about Hometown Quotes on how you can get more leads for your agency. But so let's stay focused on the high net worth niche today, Bob. So congratulations on all that you become in the industry and I don't know anybody that's living and breathing. I'll suggest that is as knowledgeable in the high net worth space as Bob is. He can walk the walk and talk the talk. I mean recently we were connected out in California and you were going to go insure a house was at 34 million dollars or something.

34 million dollars over in Malibu. Yeah.

For only 320 some thousand dollars a year.

Yeah. Well, hey, if they've got a 34 million dollar house, there's a good chance they can pay the premium.

Yeah, that's what it came down to. Either what a self insurer or pay two, you know, $300,000 a year. It was, it was a no brainer. It was not. It didn't swallow down easy. But that versus nothing was the way to go.

Yeah, exactly. Well it's all about risk and it's all about scale to risk in the whole nine yards. So Bob, talk about the high net worth space and let's look at it nationally. Okay. Because you participate in the national market, you can help agents all over the country. And so what does it look like? And we'll just start in the east, what does it look like on the east coast? Travel cost of Midwest, what is weather and the catastrophes and all that done to the high net worth market. What do agents who might be listening and or watching this podcast need to be thinking about with regard to the high net worth market?

Sure, great question. So yeah, we do write in every, in every market United States and they all have kind of interesting.

I guess.

Interesting stories about what works and what doesn't work. I mean you start on the east coast, you have obviously down in Florida, you've got hurricanes, you all have the coast of New York, you have hurricanes and the coastal risk, flood is a big issue back there that we don't see a lot of say in California to go west.

Obviously cold, so a lot of homes, they require temperature monitoring in the homes. We don't see that in the south per se. Don't freeze here. You have mold and water. More issues down in the south than you have in the north. And so, yeah, east market's unique. It's kind of interesting, Mike, how people, I've had people call and say, hey, how this interesting situation? Million dollar, half home, maybe it's 4 million, 5. I think the most expensive was the 34 million recently. Before that was like 25 million up in the Dallas area. We're talking wholesale side, not my retail only. And so what's interesting is things start as stories sometimes and then the customer has a need, they have a relationship with the local market or referred to a local agent. And then they realize that, you know, I don't have a lot of expertise there. So what's the difference in, say, calling my office and dealing with us versus, you know, the competitors out there? We're not an mga, we're a wholesaler. And the difference, some people don't realize the difference is I don't have the pin. I still have to go to the underwriter for approval. MGA has the pin and can do a lot of underwriting without going to the carrier underwriters for approval. That's the biggest difference.

We chose to stay in this niche. My knowledge were the only ones that do. I have Chubb and AIG currently in this market. And, and so what does that mean is that we can give because of our expertise. We don't just say we don't even have an Accord forms. I hate a cord forms. I know hate a cord form Especially, especially in the personal lines market. The, the, the obviously commercial lives in them. But personalize, we tend to not like them. So we have our own intake form that the agents can use. It's mimicked right after our retail form. So we ask the right questions. That's to be good at this. It starts with asking the right questions, but you back what you say. So the east coast obviously have hurricanes and water risk. Down here in the Texas area where I live, same thing. You go out west, you have wildfires. We just had a fire in the Denver area and the Front Range part of Colorado that, you know, damaged overall, burned up over a thousand homes in December. Wow. And so the study I've done actually did a paper with this with some of their agents represented 2019, I guess the PRMA, the private risk Management association about wildfire, everything's California when they think of it. But all the climatologists and all the data suggest it's moving east. And when it moves further east, we have problem with population densities that we don't see out west. So they consider actually it's going to be a way worse situation come 2050 than it is today. Who knows? That's just what some of the experts at different universities are talking about. But anyway, right now, so we don't see a lot of wildfire risk east. I see wildfire in Texas. We have parts of Texas for wildfire, Arizona, Utah, north and South Dakota areas as you go on out west. So they all have different risk. And part of knowing, helping the agents is knowing the right market to go to and knowing how to ensure these correctly, if that makes sense.

Absolutely. So bottom line, rely on the people who have expertise in what you're trying to accomplish. And for the retail agent out there, Bob, who might be either watching or listening to this, what does that look like? I mean, so they contact Kelly Klee, because you guys have the expertise, you've got more knowledge about the high net worth space than anybody I know. And they just want to make sure that it gets placed properly. I mean the agent gets paid commission, correct?

That's correct. And the first thing I tell agencies, once you get above a million dollar coverage, a million dollar replacement cost, even if you have a carrier that will write it, it's not necessarily doing the insured a favor. You're not doing it the right way. And so part of what we do, you know, as an agent I used to say, well I'd rather refer it than not do it right? Because if you know that something's there and again, some agents don't know that something's better is there and they don't realize that they're doing a disservice to the customer. But part of it is just helping them recognize generally they can afford a million dollar house. They need more than a million dollar umbrella and they need umbrellas that do a lot more than the standard market does. Again, farmers and ex Allstate agent here and because of hometown quotes, the leads, I've been to conferences of all the different, whether it's captive carriers, independent agents, and so I've talked to them and again, it's not, it's not their fault if they don't understand it's there. But again, if we're getting students of the business I know Mike is. I know I've learned in a time. I'm always, always learning more. I'm not the smartest guy in the room. There's always something more I can learn, whether it's reading a book or going to conferences, things like that. And so the thing is, just recognize that something's there. If it says a million dollars, you know, you might want to talk to someone again. We're happy to even just have a conversation. I have helped guys had access to Chubb through their aggregator. They just don't know how to sell it. And so, you know, again, I met them either through Mike or through some organizations online and is happy to help because again, only way I got here is because other people helped me, mentored me. I know Mike would say the same thing. I've heard his story. Again, it's just. It's just about giving back. If I can help you, like say, okay, get it, you make more commission, that's fine. But here's how you have to present it. Here's how you have to do it. I know one of the first cases I helped Mike's team with.

You know, Mike does a really good job. He always has. He has the processes in place. We talked about it. Look, go to the customer because she had a great personality. I said, and tell him, look, I got good news and bad news. What do you mean? I said, well, the good news is I got great coverage for you. The bad news is it's going to cost more money. Now let me explain why. It's all about the why. And so when you go to talk to people, the first thing we find out whether again, Mike, you know, I think retail side, because that's where the agents are on the wholesale side are, is find out what their why is. What's the burn? What's, you know, how long they've been their current agent, why, you know, what do they love about that agent? Why are they looking to leave? All these things you find out about. And then again, I always tell people, don't fix while you're doctor never fixes why he's asking you questions. So don't fix the problem while you're asking questions. Just ask why. Write it. That sounds important. Let me write that down. And we teach the agents on the wholesale side, just like you, the retail side, try and help you. I've got to get one or two quotes a month from an agent. Then we close both of them, then get 10 and we close none. And the reason is, you know, it's all about helping you recognize things that help you close this business. And so if you ask the right questions, and that's why we have, you know, we ask all those right questions, somebody say it's really long. Well, it is because it gets really into what we can do to offer better protection. You only have four arrows to play on when you're trying to sell business. And this is whether it's a standard market, commercial lines or my line in the niche, there's only four strings you have to play, and one is price. And that's not the string I want to play on. I want to play on finding gaps in coverage and weaknesses in their current program. And then the other two strings the incumbent agent owns. And that's the relationship and that's the service. So what can I do? If I can weaken two of these strings, two of these four strings, then I can probably win the business can't win it just on gaps alone. Generally, again, that'll get. If I have a really high net worth person when I say that somebody whose replacement cost is 2 million or more, then the gaps are more become more important if I can really identify them. And how we identify them is with stories. Not, you know, hey, we have cash out ability or we guaranteed replacement cost. That's like inside baseball again, what's the old saying, a feature without a benefit, you might as well bring it up. And we bring up the benefits with stories. I know Mike's good at that. And so the thing is though, ask those questions realizing you have four strings. I don't want to play on price. So how do I help you understand the gaps and coverages? Well, if you're one of our agents, we have a thing that talks about coverage differences. It talks about what's in this niche and what on average is in the standard market, which is 100%. Right. Because in the standard market niche, you know, some companies are always adding endorsements or well, we can do that for this much money, but generally it's not available. And so whether it's the home or it's the auto, it's the umbrella. I always like to focus on umbrella because no matter what the standard market can do with the homeowner's policy, and there's things they can't even come close to what a chub or AIG the carriage in the space do, none of them can touch the umbrella coverages. We can write up $100 million. We can add uninsured and underinsured motorists, which the standard market did until the late 90s, a all state, state Farm, all the standard market you could use to add umuim on an umbrella. I remember as an all estate agent, it was a $45 rider for $1 million. I still remember that. But they don't offer. They quit offering in the 90s. Well, we can offer up to $10 million with our carriers. So all of a sudden I'm playing with the space. Well.

And I always tell a person, you know, especially if they have kids, kids could be adults, they could have grandkids or their own lives. So close your eyes for a minute, let's talk about what could happen. You know, most of us get out of bed in the morning, our feet at the ground, we run to the restroom, go get the coffee on, you know, get the kids up, get them ready for school, get their backpacks and get them off to school. Right. But now think about if you woke up and you had to hop in a wheelchair instead, you're permanently disabled. And that wheelchair, you know what, it go into the master bath because the door is too narrow. How do I get to the cabinets, how do I get to the kids? Much less how do I get them in a car.

Yeah.

And so if that happened to you or especially your kids, well, granted you're, you know, you have a good income, you're very successful, but you know, for $3,000 a year you get a 10 million dollar umbrella with us that has uninsured motorists attached to it up to that. You can't get that with State Farm, you can't get that with usaa. Right. Get with that, who you're with. Again, stories make a difference. And so when you bring stories like that, again, these are things we help our agents with. We don't just give them a price. I mean the typical MGA is give me the court form, here's the price. Good luck. We help them with, well have webinars like somewhat like Mike's doing here where we teach and they can listen to those. But again, you have to relate it to the customer.

Yep.

Right. And, and so if you don't relate it, you know, you're just throwing price. I always tell agents when they call, I have some say, well, I just want something cheaper. You know what, you're the wrong place if you're looking, if you're looking just for cheap and your customer doesn't care about coverage, then you're looking at the wrong place. Don't even bother. But I will tell you it's the more, it's really, really satisfying. Have an Agent call and he has this, you know, $4 million house. This happened up in New York actually. And it was a friend that, a friend, you know, I forget how he met. Maybe he's golfing somebody. It's typically a lot of people meet there and he liked him. So he's gonna give him this house. We come to find out this guy had eight homes in different states. He's extremely wealthy, has, has auto in several states. And the count that ended up that started out around $20,000 ended up being 130 some thousand dollars dollars because we could write it off for him and because of how he was with the aggregators with we could, we have an arrangement, we pay them, they pay him. So their license, every state, whether he was or not. And so it just, it is just amazing. If we help ask questions, you keep digging because the guy, you know, a guy in this space, usually you know more and more. Most of our space, a lot of them have more than one home. And when they're in the million, a million and a half range, they're stretching to get that. They don't. But once they get above 2, 3, 4, $5 million, they tend to have multiple homes in different states, sometimes in different countries. And we can help with all that again by helping you ask right questions. And again going back to what Mike's also helping with. How do you present this? How do you get the aha moment for the customer? Wow, this is totally different than USA or State Farm or the independent agent I was working with talked about.

That is great information. Thank you for sharing in such depth. Bob. That is fantastic stuff and we find that a lot in the high net worth space. I mean these people are already high achievers, if you will, successful. They have wealth, they understand the value of things, including insurance. But a lot of people just haven't asked the right questions to get them to help understand that. And Bob, so just to confirm if there's an agent out there who wants to start playing more in the high net worth space or keeps encountering it and wants to be a better agent in the high net worth space, obviously you can help them think through all of that. You can put together presentations for their teams. Correct?

Correct. Actually it's not going to roll yet, but soon we're going to roll. Where actually you can just click link and it'll help, it'll give you the presentation. We're making it for our retail side right now. We're just finishing it up. And what we do on the retail side we then try and Tweak it. So if the agent wants to use it, he can use it on his side. It'll have your name on it and so forth. But yeah, because how you present it makes all the difference. In this one case, you know, they only gave his gals home an auto, but she walked out. There's this huge rv, the huge boat. The guy never even talked about those things. But once he gets a little, once you get a little trust established, once you get the conversation established and they realize, oh, you know what you're talking about, then you can get all these other things.

Money follows trust. Would you agree?

Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. So let's begin to answer a question for everybody out there. Why should people do business with Kelly Klee in the high net worth space for their clients? And because the clients trust them and they want to make sure they're protected, why should an agency consider doing business with Kelly Cleeve over and above and in all the options available to them? That's one of my favorite questions of all time. I know there's three things that people get when they choose to do business with Kelly Klee, and it is, if you will, it's EE the formula is eea. And, you know, I'm big into formulas. The first E in that formula is expertise. And Bob has been dropping a gold nugget after gold nugget about his expertise, and he's got almost more than anybody I know. But how do you, how do you, what can you expand on, you know, additional expertise that Kelly Klee might bring that they can't get elsewhere?

Well, the cool thing is, yeah, you got, ultimately, agents can always talk to me if they, if they and my team will get me involved. Because sometimes balancing ideas, situations, especially when you get, when you get involved with wealthy people, you get trusted. A lot of times you get LLCs. And so how do I ensure this correctly? Comes a lot into play. And so we offer that. Interesting. So a lot of wealthy people, they have passions about things they can afford to pursue those passions, whether it be collections, but also giving back to their communities. So we find a lot of our clients are on the boards of nonprofits. They serve as volunteers on boards because.

Yeah, you were talking about that recently.

Go ahead. Yeah. And so what's important to know is several of our carriers limit the number of nonprofits to five boards. And so you need to know how many nonprofit boards they sell on. You can endorse the umbrella so they have that same amount of coverage if they're sued for decisions that board makes. It's typically nonprofits. They're proud. Oh we had a million dollars directors and officers coverage. Great. There's 10 of you. It's about $100,000 apiece. And all of your millionaires. Okay. Doesn't go very far. So you can endorse that. But actually we.

That doesn't care how many boards you're on. And so after you get more than five, you end up having to get a very expensive commercial policy typically. But with this one carrier, actually in our case, it's pure which we don't offer those deal. But in knowledge is everything you need. You know who does it, they don't have a limitation. So husband and wife serves on 10 boards. It's no big deal. It's the same price. So the expertise and knowledge just comes into play. Mike. And knowing where do I put this customer that the agent has that comes to our attention, how do we best cover him correctly? And again, it's all about asking questions. And a lot of times, you know, again, our intake form helps, helps make you, the agent seem like an expert because you're going to ask the right questions. We always tell agents, even though we ask homeowners information, look, if you can find it out online, you don't ask the question. We have it in our form, but it's not necessarily meant for you to ask the question if it's online. But a lot of folks have brand new homes and there's no data online. A lot of them held them for a number of years before. The digital age has never been for sale and you can't find information online. So those you have to ask the questions. But never, we all tell, we teach, never ask the question. If you can find the data someplace else.

Exactly. And the other part of the expertise is when something, an event happens in life, you can be there to help. I mean I'm looking at an example of something where you help somebody. A client walked in and said that she's inherited a painting valued at just over $1 million.

In the high net worth space. And how you help people with your expertise, that's no problem, right?

That's no problem. What's interesting is we see people buying million dollar paintings. We see people.

Gifting them, loaning them. And so it's just, it's very, very interesting.

What can happen. I had a call on a weekend, the customer's buying a $1.4 million painting and the gallery is telling, oh, don't worry, you're automatically covered. And they're going, okay, I don't, I Think Bob or his team said something about this. And so they gave us a call. Well, we have 24 hours service. How do we differentiate ourselves? You have 24 hour service. So we answer, you know, we answer the phone, say, no, that's not right. The art. The. Get this, the gallery's arguing. Well, if they had Chubb, it'd be covered. Well, no, we handle Chubb. No, you're wrong. They have a 1 million limitation. This is 1.4, when you borrow things or loan it. Plus, the gallery wanted to loan it to them for three days. And while, you know, for them to see if they enjoyed it, they were willing to pay the shipping, but if they didn't, they want to give it back. And the gallery says, yeah, but while it's there, you have to insure it. Okay, well, that doesn't work for you quite that way. So it's interesting how these, you know, the experts in the art field or whatever, you name it, think that they know more than the agent does. So we get those questions a lot.

So there's a lot of licensed agents running around in the art gallery industry nowadays, eh?

Yeah.

So we've all seen them, whether it be Otto or Art or home. Oh, your policy does this. Really? My agent didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, that's the value of having expertise on the side. And I'm going to get back to the eea, the A part in just a minute because you just dropped us a teaser on that. But why is efficiency, which is the second part of it, so vitally important? You know, time is of the essence in many cases, right?

Well, it's because sometimes, you know, the clients created the fire by not getting the right coverage or the right policy in place. And so.

Maybe the client's heard something from a friend or another agent. And so what we've learned is that, you know.

We have to be fast. We have to, you know, we have to be agile in this space sometimes. And so it's interesting, in the standard market or even in people in our space that are big in this space, big, big names. If you ask them, how long do you take you to quote to the client? They'll tell us 10 days to two weeks. Really? Of course, all of our clients came from the Internet. That's a hometown quotes conversation. All of our clients on the retail side come from the Internet and the Internet, you expect results like this. Now, I can't give you a quote in 10 minutes, but if you have somebody closing, we can get one turned around in an hour or Two, if it's a fire. We don't like fires every day, obviously, but we can help because we know what we're doing there. But the clients in this space, they expect more. They expect concierge service. They expect, you know what you're doing, they expect that you're not going to leave them with gaps in their coverage. So they have a, oops, I can't sleep tonight because I didn't know whatever was covered. And so the experience of my team brings, I guess maybe part of that efficient part, but the experience we bring to the table and helping agents understand this and get through this. Remember, in a wholesale space like an mga, it has Kelly Klee on it and our number, not yours. So sometimes they do call us, my team once, they always give it back to the agent. David. Oh, it's a wholesale account. But at the same time they don't make it difficult for the client. So they Great, tell me what's going on. Great, I'll get your agent. And so we'll either transfer them back if we can or take it and say, look, we'll tell the agent, then the agent will call. Got that? We're working on it. Because we want to make sure you are the agent in the customer's eyes, not the Kelly Clee wholesale side.

That's fantastic.

So to position this, an agency who is playing in the high net worth space or has clients that might be in the high net worth space, they may or may not have the expertise to be able to properly help you are just their liaison, like another desk in their office. To be able to help them place the business, to keep it on their books. They get paid a commission and the client is properly protected.

Correct. We struggle a lot with that early on because typically, I mean, if somebody calls, you know, Burns and Wilcox or anybody in this space, they say can't help you call your, you know, here's the number, call, you know, Mike Stroms or whomever we again, because the tie net worth we try to be even working. You know, I'm not your agent. I know our name's on there. Let me take some data here. At least transfer your agent. And if we do live transfers that we can, but if we can't, we say, great, how do I best get hold of you? What's going on? Great, I'll call your agent, they'll get in touch with you because you to be the conduit, you to be his expert all the time. And so again, we just reinforce who you are to your customer.

So I remember a story that you told me one time. You had a. And I don't know if you remember this or not. I'm going to come out of left field here. Just a moment. It was on the west coast and was an executive at that company. I'm not going to drop company names, but people commonly go there to search for something all of the time and it starts with G.

Remember that conversation?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean that person had an expectation, needed availability and you provided that to them. It was like on the weekend or late at night.

Right, right.

That account was sizable because that was an executive at that G company.

Yeah, yeah, it was, it was, it was very interesting. I won't give away too much, but yeah, it was very interesting. And he was blown away that we were available again. The 24 hour number we have for our company works on the wholesale side too. So. So the customer. So we're taking care of your customer even after hours. Yeah, that was an interesting one. And the interesting thing about talking to this guy is he gave us by email, we had to give a code phrase and we called him some phrase to identify because he's very secretive. So to identify that, yes, we're the person that said we call. And it was. Yeah, I've never ever, ever, ever seen anything like it. This guy. But he's. You can't find anything about him online.

But the bottom line is you wrote the account.

Yes, we did. Because he liked the way we do business. And actually that's another thing, it reminds me, we use NDAs for our customers.

Non disclosure agreements. So basically we're saying all this is confidential and so we're not going to disclose names unless they give us the right to disclose names. Obviously we ask for referrals. I've actually, we just implemented Mike's referral program. So Heather actually right here has been charged from doing it with me. But we ask for referrals. And again there, you know, but again, if we're using someone's name, we get permission. We don't just say that, you know, I'll use Steve Jobs, he's deceased. We don't say, hey, at a party, hey, Steve, did you know Steve Jobs? A custom of ours, you know. No, because. And so for you, all these people, especially the more up the ladder of success they get, are very, very.

Serious about privacy and about who knows what they do and when they do it and who they do it with. And so an NDA gives you that extra level of trust when you're working with this client in this Space as well.

Yeah and just to remind everybody, money follows trust.

Yes it does.

And they are the trusted resource have built a phenomenal online company if you will talk a little bit about that. I mean you know part of the great greatness of Kelly Klee they are, they were born if you will as an insurtech of sorts of online an online company to properly serve and protect the high net worth community. And you guys are big in technology. Talk a little bit about that.

Sure. My course out of hometown quotes my partner John Kelly if you go back to 1999 he was on the front page of Forbes, Fortune magazine. He was hired about four or five years out of Stanford to start Geico Online. The company called E Coverage and six months later Esurance who everybody's heard of started up. They both went belly up. In 2000 the dot com bubble White Mountain which is some VC folks came in and offered first his company $5 million and as he says his board in their infinite wisdom turned them down. They went down the street to assurance who took the five million dollars and seven years later that was a one billion dollar exit to Allstate.

So you know we the expertise in this space, you know John's been doing it, he's never been, he's never been a licensed agent. He started a carrier from scratch because I've been the agent side. But.

You'Re going with that story as far as expertise in the space I mean we, it's just, we know this space. Oh so hometown, hometown quotes out of that. John wanted to start insurance company online and I said John I don't want to write standard market. Standard market, you know they're going to complain about the premium. I'm not going to be local, it's off the Internet and you're going to have, we know people in this space that doing standard market all they have is churning of clients. And so I said you know you sold your company for a lot of money. I've got, you know I've been doing this for a while. Let's look at this niche because we kept seeing leads come in for million dollar plus homes. So I said you know I'm the dude, let me pick up and call the president of the company and see if they're real. Over half of them were not real and that's probably being generous probably more than that. And the reason is the space doesn't care about the value of the home. All we care about is name, address, phone number and can be how do we contact you? That's all we care about value of the home we don't care about. And so it's not data verified, but they were real leads. And so from that we said, hey, we can do this. So we started in hometown buying clothes for ourselves and our competitors because nobody generates all the, all the best or right leads or the volume of leads you need in a certain niche. And so, and we had to develop our own software for scoring the lead real quick to make sure it verifies the value. And we're not always right because the industry doesn't do it. Otherwise we're buying a lot of junk. And because of who we are, we can't return leads like the agents can. So out of that we, you know, sure, they're real and we got better at it and better at it, raised a little money doing it to build, to be able to build a lot of growth into it. And we're better today than we were even a year ago. But so lead, you know, back to Internet leads, do they work? Well, that's the only way other than referrals that Kelly Klee's gotten the customer all in this niche in the high net worth space. But again it takes processes and that's like I said, as Mike said, that's another discussion of hometown quotes. But it does work. And these people, they expect you to know what you're doing. They expect fast response. And again that's why we have 24 hour service. Actually they're told if the people on the phone that are nights and weekends on our licensed staff, if they can't help them, they either call my cell phone or they call.

My head of my service department. And on the retail side we actually have our own mobile app which is unique to the retail. Unfortunately. We have ideas to make it work on the wholesale side, but it's not going to happen this year. But we have our own app. And the reason is again, service and relationship. How do I weaken that? Well, for me, for my agency it's 24 hour service and a mobile app. Because I've never met almost all of my customers, as in a neighbor, face to face, all been here by the phone, on the Internet, on an email. And so it takes really good. You know, I've heard Mike say this vp, every agent thinks they have great service, but do they really? What is it? What is the great service in the eyes of the customer? Not in mine and Mike size. Right, right. And so how do you, how do you make that work so you can weaken those two bonds that the incumbent agent has and that's what we do. Doesn't mean you can't do it either. But, but again that's how, that's how we do it.

Yeah. And you have phenomenal technology platforms and presence in place to provide that availability. And just to remind everybody out there, Kelly Klee on the wholesale side is positioned as your liaison, if you will, an agent in your office to represent your high net worth which really gives all the credit back to your agency so helps you place the business properly, protect your customers. Phenomenal. Phenomenal resource. They have been our go to resource, our insider secret for protecting our high net worth clients for years. So thank you for that Bob and team.

Yeah, thanks. We had some fun clients we've worked with in your team.

Exactly, exactly.

Big ones. Yeah.

Because that's all they do. They are familiar with the moving parts within the high net worth space like nobody else. So great, great stuff. So Bob, anything else to add before we drop contact information for everybody here?

Sure. I will say that a lot of people come to us, they have YouTube millionaires, they want to make clients. They have, you know, a guy that they know from, they went to school with, went through college with, he's an MBA guy. Those are, I can tell you golfers are the easiest pro sports to, to write because they admit when they do wrong, right. They admit when they create a foul. You don't see them, the drunks, you don't see them, you know all the crazy stuff and fights. And so the young, if you look at sports, NBA is the hardest until they get well into their 30s and or retired. NFL's next. Then you got, you know, baseball, hockey players aren't bad in golfers, but the younger they are, they're in their 20s. You're talking excess and surplus lines or the standard market will sometimes take them because they don't do a research of who the client is. But the YouTube folks, I mean if you, if you really look at the YouTube millionaires, like we had a guy, one of our agents brought to us and Guy had a $4 million home here in Texas and the guy had expensive cars but yeah, he has YouTube videos doing 100 miles an hour in a 30 mile an hour zone. Is Lamborghini not a really good risk. No, no. And so in most of YouTube folks, you're the only place you're going to find a home for them is an excess surplus. Again, it's because we work in this space. The, you know, we have some, we have some pro players in different sports as clients that some of our own, some that our agents have brought to us have been able to help place.

But again, I would say again, if you look at your book and it's over a million dollars and you've got it with State Auto or whomever and they have needs that, you know, maybe you suspect they have needs, we can help you just to start asking the right questions. But again, the product we have and again it's, we have a place on our site that shows us, but the product is so broader that no matter who the standard market carrier is and what endorsements they have, they can't be a Chubb or AIG or any of the carriers that are experts in this space. They don't offer any of the great services endorsements that are available in this space for those clients.

Fantastic. So Bob, let's help everybody here. If you're playing in the high net worth space, maybe you don't like the relationship you have now, maybe you don't have a relationship at all and you want to write more high net worth business because like I've, I keep repeating this because it's true. There is more money out there than there ever been has been in the history of our country and it's not going to go down, it's only going to go up. So these high net worth opportunities are going to continue to come. Bob, go ahead and pull up the screen for anybody who's watching this on YouTube and if you're just listening to the audio, I'll go ahead and repeat this. So we've got Bob's contact information here on the screen. If you've got questions, if you just like to have a conversation with Bob, find out more about how Kelly Klee operates, how they can help protect your clients, how they can help your agency grow in the high net worth space. Bob has generously offered his contact information. Again, if you have the visual, you see it on the screen. But his email is Bob, Bob Kelly klee.com k e l l y k l e e.com and I spelled that because Kelly has, you know, different spelling and stuff. So Bob, at KellyKlee.com you can call Bob on his direct phone, 832-240-7594 or on a cell, 615 586-5533 so you can call him or text him on his cell. Bob, thank you so much for generously offering that information and go ahead and pop that back if you would please.

There we go.

Fantastic. So Bob and Heather, thank you so much for joining us today. Anything else to add as we Move to wrap.

Mike, it's a blessing for me to work with you all the time. I guys met you five or six years ago and San Antonio, Texas, I'll never forget it actually. And so I just, I'm impressed with what you do. I appreciate you having us on to talk about our story a little bit. And again, as Mike says, that's why I gave up my cell phone. I only got here because other people helped me. And if I can help you, whether you do business with me or not, whether it's talking about leads or the high net worth space, I'm, you know, shoot me an email, I'll reply with account. You can pick a calendar, invite there and pick a time that works for us. I'm happy to talk and I really appreciate what this industry has done for me.

Double, double, double fingers up on that. I could not agree more with exactly what Bob said. We're all here just because we want to give more back because of how good it's been to us. But you know, that's really where it all begins in anything in life. Just give to others first. That's who Bob Klee is. That's why Bob Klees on the podcast because Bob believes in what we believe in, giving first to other people. He has a great knowledge in this particular niche. So I wanted to make sure that everybody learned more about Bob. And we'll have Bob back for and Heather back for version 2.0 on hometown quotes on another podcast to talk about getting more leads for your agency if that's what you want to do. And I've never run into an agent who wants to grow, who doesn't want more quality leads. So Bob, thank you so much for joining the podcast today. Heather, thanks for joining us. Hang tight for just a minute and we'll wrap this up. So hey, if this is your first time on the podcast, welcome. My name is Mike Stromso. I'm the host. I'm widely recognized as a leading author, speaker and coach for the independent insurance agency industry. You can find out more at Unstoppable Profit Producer. If you're interested in attending a virtual or live event to grow your business, create wealth so you can have more freedom to live life on your own terms, you can visit our virtual portal@uppfaststart.com or if you want to attend one of our live events, beunstoppablebootcamp.com all of our events are designed to share our greatest money making strategies developed over 36 years of research in your industry. Again to help you grow your business, create wealth to have more freedom to live life on your own terms. And remember, please make sure you subscribe to our podcast, Unstoppable Profit podcast.com where this podcast is going to appear, Bob. Feel free to share it with anybody that might get help from it on your own. And you can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and of course our YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube search Unstoppable Profit Producer. Hit the videos. And all of the videos of our podcast, including this one, will appear. A lot of people like to watch it visually as well. So again, Bob, Heather, thank you for joining us today. Thank you for sharing the depth of your knowledge with everybody out there.

Thank you, Mike. Appreciate it.

All right. All right, everybody. Thank you for joining us today. Remember, get out there, make a difference, be unstoppable, leave no regrets. And remember this. You got this. We believe in you. We'll see you next time. Take care, 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 regrets.