Episode 176: The Unfair Advantage with James Jenkins

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit podcast. This podcast will give independent insurance agents all of the tools to grow your business and live life on your terms. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or 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 Stromsol.

Hey, welcome everybody, to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. I'm excited to have somebody on the podcast today who we've been connected for a while, but we keep missing each other, if you know what I mean. I mean, busy entrepreneurs, they're elusive, they're hard to catch. But finally, I caught up with Mr. James Jenkins, who I'm proud to have on the podcast from risk well, in McKinney, Texas. James, how you doing?

I'm doing great, man. I'm glad we could finally get on the same page. But like ships in the night passing on the ocean, you know, you got a lot going on just like I do. So I'm grateful to have some time with you today.

Yeah, I'm grateful as well. You know, this, this pursuit of entrepreneurship in the insurance agency business is. Our space is an exciting place, but, you know, money and success loves speed, money and success. Number sleep. So we've got to stay after it. We were talking before we got started this morning about a plan and having a plan. We'll dive into that in just a minute. But for anybody who may not have heard of you or knows a little bit about you, tell us some more. Introduce yourself, who are you time in the industry. If you want to talk about anything personal, family and all that, feel free.

Cool. Well, you already gave him the name. I'm in McKinney, Texas, on the north side of Dallas. It's about 30 minutes north of downtown. For those that aren't familiar, we just say, oh, I'm from the Dallas, Dallas area. That's kind of how it goes here in North Texas. It's like the DFW area is the size of the state of Connecticut and has about 8 million people that live here. So it's, it's a wild place to run an agency, that's for sure. On the personal side of things, I've been married to my bride Allison for almost 12 years. It'll be 12 in December. We have a five and a three year old kiddos, boy Charlie and girl Emmy, and they are just the absolute most fun. It's, you know, flip a coin on which Is more interesting from one week to the other. My kids or my agency, depending on where they are, you know, it might be one or the other from one day to the next. It's, it's a wild ride for sure.

Go ahead.

No, please.

December will be 10 years in the industry. I spent the first six and a half on the captive side. I owned a farmer's agency. I got into that after languishing in mediocrity in corporate America at a variety of dead end jobs and bosses that were less than ideal. Made the jump back in 2012 and just wow, what a wild ride. I absolutely love being in the risk and insurance industry. I can't think of spending my time in my career doing anything else. It is the most fun that I've ever even imagined. The, the, the business model, the revenue, the way that work happens, relationships and talking to people and solving problems is, is just an absolute blast. Our team here at Risk well we just hired full time team member number nine and we have two full time VAs. One in Pakistan and one in the Philippines. That's, that's what our team looks like. Just some quick hits on us. We're about 80% commercial, about 20% personal. About half of our entire agency is excess and surplus which creates some challenges. Procedurally our ops side of things is a little bit more complicated than some folks might be really heavy into real estate investors, roofing, general contractors and other heavy trade contractors like concrete and excavation. The harder it is, the more interested I am just philosophically because anybody can do the easy stuff. But when you find a niche and when you find a profitable one and it's hard if there's a lot of complexity, there's a lot of moving parts to it. A lot of folks are going to shy away from that. And Risk well leans into some specific hard things because we found it to be highly profitable and a really effective way to, to create a niche that you know, I like the term around here. My team gets tired of hear me say it. I love an unfair advantage. Risk, well, is looking for unfair advantages anywhere we can find them. I always tell my people I will never go anywhere near breaking rules that are ethical, moral and legal. Not going to go anywhere near those three. Every other rule, totally fair game. So that, that's kind of the, the real quick version. Some nuance about us. We don't really engage in any sort of outbound cold prospecting. Everything we do is other content or local natural market or channel partner relationships. We don't do the cold outbound prospecting at all. I don't believe in it.

Awesome. And your pipeline is full.

Yeah, yeah. It is the, the channel partner marketing that is about as close to outbound as we get. One of the things that is central to how I operate as a professional is I'm not interested in prospecting the buyer. I don't want to prospect the buyer. You know, as, as our mutual friend David Carruthers says, I don't want to make a call and get one lead. I want to make one call and get 10 leads. It was like prospecting. The channel partner relationship is a lot more effective use of time than prospecting an individual buyer.

Right. 100 agree. That's fantastic. And money follows trust.

Absolutely. Yeah. So it's a lot easier to close someone that came by a referral of some sort rather than. I'm sorry, who are you? Where are you from? Not really interested in that one.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you remember James Jenkins, right? Oh yeah. James Bam.

Yeah, exactly. You know, it's not an accident that we do not have the word insurance in the company name. And that is just incredibly intentional because as, I mean, you know, it's better than I do being in, in California. It is becoming very commoditized on the personal side, on the small commercial side. Even, you know, you're, you're run of the mill vanilla retail. Bop is becoming a race to the bottom. And you know, I was sitting at a thing yesterday in Austin. It was a panel with InsurTech, ATX and Gerald, I forget his last name. He's a gentleman with State Auto. He's on the carrier side. And the quote from him, I cannot believe I'm blanking on his last name right now. But the quote was, the value of the advisory increases as the complexity of the conversation increases. The value of someone's advice is not as readily seen if it is a low level conversation. You know, a consumer at this day and age, there's so much information available in the marketplace. YouTube channels and blogs and websites and whatnot. You know, the independent agent doesn't have the power of an information gap like we used to 10 years ago. We were the compendium of all knowledge. And you have to come to me because I know things that doesn't really exist anymore.

Right.

You know, the, the client can spend 10 minutes on Google and they're probably as well prepared as your average CSR is to talk about product so that you have to find ways to deliver value in meaningful ways. And that value is more readily obvious in more complex conversations. So any I I don't know. Leveling up, I feel like is good for business because it makes you harder to replace by a robot or a call center.

Exactly. And that's your. Part of your point of differentiation. To use a thought process. Right. Is make yourself super difficult to replace.

Absolutely. You know, personal lines, I hesitate to say I don't care because I do care. It's, it's good revenue. It's bread and butter. It helps defend our flank from the commercial side of things. I don't find personal lines compelling at all because, I mean, it's very, very difficult to stand out, to differentiate as a personal lines agent. We don't have bors to play with. Everybody can get access to the same products, same company, same quotes. Your value proposition is what a personal inventory worksheet, Travel safety. Where's your angle? Unless we're talking about high net worth clients where you have executive risk and you have DNO exposure and valuables and furniture and art and more nuanced stuff outside of the high net worth subcategories, I honestly have no idea how to differentiate on the personal line side. I don't have a clue. So because of that we, we steer hard in the direction of real estate investors and then those trade contractor classes we talked about.

But you know, I love what you said and I'm going to repeat this just for the good of the listeners and the people watching this. The value of the advisory increases with the complexity of the risk.

Yeah, absolutely.

I love that thought process.

And you know, I was at that panel for two hours yesterday. And Gerald, while we're talking, I'm going to look it up. I got to give this guy credit because he, he had, he's been in the industry almost 45 years and he's.

He'S been there and done that just a couple of times.

Yeah, Ladner, Gerald Ladner at State Auto. He referenced yesterday that he's retiring soon. I imagine Liberty's acquisition of State Auto might have accelerated his retirement timeline. Who knows? Might be a good way to, good way to find the exit there after 40 something years of service in the industry. But I can't take credit for that quote. That was all Gerald.

We'll give it to Gerald Ladner at State Auto. Thank you, Gerald, for sharing that. And I love the unfair advantage thought process as well. And you were doing that and you're looking for that unfair advantage. And speaking of the great state of Texas, I learned something from somebody in your state, very successful agent a number of years ago with regard to commercial lines and Niches and that kind of thing. He taught me that you want to look for things that are misunderstood and underserved.

Yep.

That might kind of piggyback on what you're doing.

Absolutely. You know, it is finding the opportunities that are not on the carrier hit list. And when we have these conversations with our reps that come in and they hand us the hit list of, oh, we've wrote 47 flower shops, and their average premium was $1300. It was like, yeah, okay, cool. I'm not really interested in your hit list. I don't want to know what everybody else is doing. I want to, you know, I talk to the underwriter and find out, what do you guys love to do that you don't have the submission volume you wish you did? Is there a class of business that's highly profitable that you want to write more of that? Your underwriting guidelines are very friendly. You're just not getting submission volume because the agents aren't putting that in front of the underwriter. That's where I want to be.

Yeah. That's awesome. And isn't that why we love the industry? I mean, some. I always have loved the complexity of it, the thrill of the chase, if you will, but really the challenge of it. And that's exactly where you're playing. And the complex risk. I mean, having to dive in and figure it out and try to identify things that they can't see. That's why they have you.

Yeah, absolutely. The more work you put into a niche, the more you get to enjoy that unfair advantage, you know, because, you know, we were dealing with a custom homebuilder, this is about two months ago now, and they had a full recommendation from one of the big boys, the national brokers. I don't remember which one it was. You know, one of them. Who cares? And they had a recommendation there. And because I have a very deep understanding of that vertical, I called the shots. Like, without even looking at the recommendation, I was like, I bet he did this, right? Oh, and he. The. This. The GL was with Evanston, part of the Markel family. He's like, oh, they've got this exclusion for track homes that, you know, was. Was that exclusion on there? Go ahead and look at the forms list and look for exclusion. I forget what it was off the top of my head, but he was like, oh, yeah. It was like, but you do. Occasionally. You do track homes, right? You. You do some subdivision work, don't you? It's like, well, yeah, we might take one of those, you know, once or Twice a year we might do some track work. It's like, well, that quote's not written correctly. Then I'm just like, if I didn't have the time spent in hours of research and understand the nuance of that one particular vertical, I wouldn't have been able to call the shots on my competition and take a bor on a nice account.

Congratulations.

Yeah, yeah, it's it. That's the beauty of the niche thing. Right?

Right.

Because if you're not putting in the work, if you're not, you know, grinding on your craft, then you're replaceable. You're just like anybody else.

Right.

You can get replaced by a call center, you can get replaced by the personal lines agent who gets a chance at a big commercial account and they try to flex outside of their comfort zone. If you're not investing in your craft, you're going to get beat by somebody like that.

I love that. And let's keep digging on the niche. But before I go there, even more, tell me about Risk. Well, I mean, where did that name come from? Why did it come to your mind and why did you end up using it?

You know, I have to make fun of myself a little bit because our first name on the insurance on the independent side was James Jenkins and Associates-Insurance and Risk Management. Our website was jjairm.com it was the worst website in the history of websites. Like every time I see it now, just like, oh, gosh, that was such a bad name. It's like, are you a small town law firm? No, we're an insurance agency. My bad. Yeah. So about six months into launching what is now Risk, well, I realized that my branding was terrible. Was like, we're the most generic thing ever. And right about that time, I had read the book Shoe Dog by Bill Knight. Phil Knight.

Love that book.

Yeah. Wow, what a great book. But the conversation they had about the name Nike was like, it doesn't say anything about shoes at all. Nike is one of the most globally recognized brands in any industry. And that I just got stuck on. I decided it had to be eight letters or less. Don't. Don't ask me why it was eight letters. Was like, it can't be more than eight letters. It has to be immediately recognizable. We need to have an icon for a logo. That little RW with the box around it. We call that the, the icon. But the name could not have Jenkins in it. It couldn't be last name insurance agency and couldn't even have the word insurance. Because the moment that we have the word insurance, subconsciously we are immediately commoditized in the brain of our prospect.

100% agree.

Because I want to be middle market in the coming years. I want to have really high level strategic operational conversations that have absolutely nothing to do with insurance. There's no better way to differentiate the value offering in the marketplace than to move beyond the product because everybody can sell the product. But the. I mean, I have a bunch of letters after my name. The only reason I went out and spent hundreds of hours getting three designations is I recognize that if I'm able to talk on those levels that I get more of that unfair advantage. Because your run of the mill producer at, you know, Aon or Marsh or Lockton or Gallagher or Willis or Brown and Brown or whatever, I mean they're a carousel for starters. But secondly, most of them, if they have a designation, they have the CIC and that's it. Most of them can't talk coverage, they can't talk nuanced risk management topics. They don't understand loss controls, they don't understand a lot of the more tactical ground floor stuff with an account and they don't know how to break apart a work comp mod audit and look and make sure that things were reported correctly. They don't know the nuance, the practice of risk management, which means they are vulnerable to attack from other angles other than, oh well, my price is better than yours, so pick me. I don't really see any value in that. Right.

You know, I, I've done some study in my history and I'd love to hear what you have to say about this as well or if you've done it, maybe share a little bit. This was probably five or six years ago in the middle market, commercial and up. This particular agency, who I've got a really good relationship with, actually uses a company's profit loss statement and balance sheet as a beginning point for conversation from a budgetary standpoint. And then they move it into risk management, how much they're investing in risk management to keep that line item where they want it to be. And really what they do is they teach people how to increase their profit because they're bringing their insurance in line to where it needs to be based on the risk and the exposure and everything else. And I thought it was beautiful. It was a great, great study.

That's genius. That is how you get a CFO's attention.

Yep.

Because exactly that's in the middle market in this. I don't have too many reps in the middle market of My entire book of business. I have seven accounts with greater than 200,000 in account premium. We in our office, we think of middle market as anything that's higher than 15,000 in revenue. We have seven accounts that fit that.

And the. Sorry.

The premium number is not in alignment with revenue number. I just realized. Toss out the premium. It's 15,000 in revenue. Anybody who does simple math realizes what. James. 250,000 in premiums. A lot more than 15,000 in revenue. So are you getting 7% commission on your accounts? No, no. Toss the premium, keep the revenue. Sorry, I can't do math apparently. But that. The P L, the balance sheet, that is exactly how you talk to a CFO is business impact. How do we drive more of your revenue to the bottom line? That's brilliant. I love that approach.

Yeah. And I've got the book. I don't have it at my fingertips and all kind of. I remember the guy's name was Tim, who wrote the book, but that's all I can remember. But anyway, yeah, I'd love to follow up on that because we'll have an upcoming conversation. Maybe gonna have it ready at that time. So. Great stuff. So I love what you're doing. So what's next for risk? Well, I mean, what do you have envisioned for the future as a result of your most recent investment in yourself? What kind of new ideas are on the burner? I mean, we're right around the corner planning for the coming year. What do you got in plan?

You know, we recently went back to my friend Mick Hunt, who has a company called Premier Strategy Box. And he. He is a. An evangelist for revops revenue operations. And we're in the middle of a deep dive in rev ops and looking at what does it mean to the. What's the. Deconstruct the sales, the marketing, the ops, the accounting and finance, and get them out of their silos and start thinking about things holistically. Because at this point, year to date, we've done a little more than 2 million in new business. At some point, I don't know exactly when it is in September, we'll hit a million in revenue, annualized revenue for the agency for the first time. That happened a little bit faster than I thought it was going to.

Yeah.

Thank you. No, it. It's like, okay, we're having success, but we're really, really inefficient at several places in the operation. How do we button up that client lifecycle? How do we button up our talking points in discovery? How do we get more Buy in and more commitment from the prospect in discovery. Now, how can we box out the competition? Throw those elbows around in the paint like a basketball player? How do we make the right prospect want us more and the wrong prospect self select out of our pipeline? You know, if we can do that faster, more efficiently, then profit goes up. You know, we're running about a 21 EBITDA year to date right now, and I feel like for being high growth like we are 21's okay.

Yeah.

But we can get a lot better than 21 when these things get tightened up.

I love that. Great job, by the way. I mean, the fact that you've got that number like that and you're doing what you need to do makes a great guy. So that's fantastic. Just quick take for you, if you don't mind.

Yeah.

What you got?

I don't know if you do this or not. I'm sure you probably do, but you record your calls.

Yeah. Okay.

So, I mean, that's an absolute training ground for role play and everything else. I'm suggesting based on what you've done so far, you probably already do that.

But you're giving me a little bit too much credit, Mike. I'm actually really bad at listening to. To my calls. I'm good at listening to my team's calls randomly for accountability purposes. Not very good at listening to my own calls. So I probably should.

Well, the fact that you're doing it for your team and then you're helping them on a proactive basis with. The only desire is to help them get better. But, I mean, are you selling?

I. I think of myself as the rainmaker, but I'm still personally involved in the quote unquote, big accounts.

Yeah. So you're having conversations with people. So, I mean, I'll be transparent with you since you're being transparent with everybody else here. Thank you so much, by the way. I mean, I'm privileged to be out there. I speak to people in around the country and it's painful sometimes to go back and watch yourself have talked because I personally started identifying. Did you really say that? And did you really say it like that? I mean, I mean, we're our own worst critic, right?

Yeah.

But it's the advent of getting better every single day, so. Yeah, maybe that helps.

It absolutely helps. And I appreciate the accountability there because I do need to listen to my own calls. It. I think I get a little bit taken off sides because I. I started a podcast to help people move from the captive world to the independent world. It's called Agency Freedom. And the evolution of the podcast has become more just like leaving behind antiquated ways of, of operating, whether it's systems or processes or training or workflows or whatever. But at the beginning, the first, I don't know, 10, 20 episodes, it was so cringy. Listening to my own episode was like, oh, that's, I, I didn't do a very good job with that. I was stumbling. I did, you know, I should have asked that question at that point. And I think there's a lot of common ground between being a podcast host and being a really high quality sales professional, because in the same way you can dissect an interview, and if you think about it, Discover is nothing but an interview. Are you trying to build rapport with your podcast guests, which you're doing a great job with me right now, you're trying to build that same kind of rapport with your prospect in discovery. So it, you know, I think it's, I'm just realizing that the correlation is pretty tight there. I need to go back and listen to my own calls. I probably will cringe even more than I do on my podcast episodes.

So I was also collaborating recently with a very high performing agent who has a national niche, they dominate. And he was talking about one of his producers who deals in middle market, and he was talking about that producer's discovery appointment.

Right.

And the discovery appointment was all about building the trust and earning the trust. And this producer's fairly seasoned and darn good at what he does. Yeah, but the producer, if he doesn't identify that the trust exists and he's had some, some questioning that he's put together that identifies whether trust is present or not, if he identifies, it's not present, he doesn't go any further until he establishes that the trust is present. So yeah, that would be my great encouragement. And the, the thing that you might be thinking about looking for in studying yourself to get better, it's all about trust. I mean, money follows trust. And it's the trust. It's the trust. And you build that trust through differentiating yourself as well, which you already do. Great job.

That's a great point, man. Money follows trust. That's, that's quotable. It might be a little graphic of this episode. Money follows trust Dash. Mike Stromso.

Well, I, I, I, I like the unfair advantage and you may see that again as well.

So, man, this has been brief and fun. I, we've, we've covered a lot of ground in just a few minutes here.

I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna add a couple more gold nuggets if you have a quick second.

Yeah, man, go for it.

And I just want to help you. That's my goal.

Fantastic. I'm all ears.

By the way, I, I did in preparation for today, take a sneak peek at your website. Great job.

I mean, well, now I'm just self conscious, very, very solid. But I was just on a session with a, with a member of our program earlier today and we were talking about the one thing that is vitally, vitally important because one of my favorite questions is why should people do business with you over and above any and all other options available to them? And they have options and you're already, you know, barking up the right tree, excuse the term and helping people get to that point. But the other part, answer to that question for them is with what other people say you've already done for them. And so it's the social proof aspect. Do you have a written guarantee?

What does that look like? Because I'm a big fan of traction of the EOS operating, you know, the entrepreneurs operating system from Gina Wickman. I haven't quite wrapped my head around what a guarantee would look like for us because I'm, I mean I'm not in charge of commissions earned from premium on a lot of our accounts. We do have fee based in a revenue fee for service. If we're doing something beyond just placing an insurance product.

Right.

What's your take on what that would look like for somebody like you and I in the insurance world?

Well, what we've developed over a lot of years is I started with a one page 100 money back guarantee. And to be honest with you, it was simply, hey, this is what we are going to do for you. And if we don't do it, you're not completely satisfied, we'll cancel your policies, return the unused portion of the premium and we'll part friends. And there's a way to position it with the wording and everything else that works. And the, the thing about it is nobody else is doing it. Yeah, nobody has put it in writing. And back when we had it notarized and all the team members signed it and the whole nine yards and still, you know, going forward the team members always signed it. But the notary became a little bit more challenging so we just moved to another visual. But it became a four page risk removal guarantee. And I'll be happy to share a copy with you.

I mean, I'm terribly fascinated at this concept of how this is worded in a way that doesn't result in you putting your entire revenue on an account at risk.

Well, here's the question. You know the other fun thing we've got.

And I don't know if you've seen this or not, but you know, there's only one person that stands between you and everything you want, right?

Yeah.

And it's really yourself. It's the mirror, what we affectionately call the mirror of truth. Right. So, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being best, James.

Rate yourself in confidence with 10 being the best.

Where does overconfidence follow the scale?

11 or 12?

Oh man. No. You know, the funny thing is, and I, I know you and your listeners appreciate this. You know, some days it's a 14, some days it's a 2. You know, and I think maturity and for me, what personally, what I'm working on, I have a counselor I got with them back in, you know what, I should just be true to myself and call them what they are, they are. A therapist. Counselor sounds less weak, like, oh, I don't, I don't need a therapist. It's a counselor, whatever. Anyways, one of the things that, that I'm working on with them is entrepreneurial anxiety and the whole like performance based acceptance inside my own head. And for me, what growth looks like is a stabilizing of that variance between high confidence and low confidence. You know, the 14 to 2 maybe needs to be like between a 9 and a 6. Maybe that's where the variance needs to be if I'm being healthy as an entrepreneur. So I know you didn't mean to get all existential with that question, but I think that is definitely something that I'm focused on in my growth as a, as a professional, just in my office, but also as a peer. No back episode. What was it? 52, I think episode. Back in May, I, I posted a mea culpa of sorts at the urging of a couple of people. And it was basically talking about how to maintain competitive edge and be a fierce alpha type personality while at the same time being, you know, pleasant to be around and being a generally nice and kind person. Because the two, there's a, there's imbalance there that's really hard to keep because you either end up being a doormat or you end up being, as I not so affectionately refer to myself as the unintentional, where you don't mean to steamroll people, but it happens more often than it should. So I'm chasing a rabbit here. I'm sorry, but, you know, question that. That is something that I think all of us really need to nail down and be honest with ourselves because that's the difference. One of the key differentiators between, you know, good, great and great to, you know, best in class.

I love your transparency. Thank you. Thank you so much for being willing.

I'm probably oversharing there. I'm sorry.

No, no, no, I think it's fantastic. I mean, I love that. I mean, I too. I mean, we all have our days.

Yeah.

And I had a situation yesterday on the personal side which kind of knocks you down a little bit. You think you're, you know, being a great dad and all this kind of stuff and something happens. It's like I should have been a better listener at that moment.

Yeah.

So, you know, we got two ears and one mouth. We call it seven to one, but I won't go there right now. But we got to use them in that proportion, you know. And you know, one of our kids said, I just need you to listen for a minute.

I'm glad, I'm glad that happened because that reminded me I need to be a better listener.

How old are your kids?

The youngest is 34.

Okay.

They're all adult children, so.

Okay. Anyway, I wish I could get my 5 and my 3 year old to say, hey, Dad, I just need you to listen to me.

That's not going to happen at this stage of life, is it?

You're in the change stage right now, which I, I had a comment on that, but I'm going to keep moving back to the guarantee and then we'll begin to wrap up because I know your time is extremely valued. Thank you, by the way, for being here. So it's now a four page written unconditional. You can call a client satisfaction guarantee. You can call a money back guarantee, whatever you want. Some people like to lean towards client satisfaction that we are not putting money in the line. That's fine, but nobody else has put it writing. So the front page is a descriptor with photos. The second page is nothing but testimonials, AKA social proof with assigned the signatures of the team members. The third page is something that I developed. This is 15 plus years ago and I was out on a large commercial account with a new producer. New producer said, hey, you know, this is a big account, It's a referral. Would you go with me? I said, no problem. I love this kind of stuff. We went down there, we're doing the discovery and all this kind of stuff and we said, is there any other. Do you have any other questions for us today? And he goes, yeah, I do have one question. And we said, what is it? He goes, you know, you do a lot of business in my industry. You told me you did. I would like the names of five other people who you do business with in our industry.

Okay.

And along with their contact information, I might like to reach out to them to see how their experience has been with your agency. And I'm like, no problem. Patrick and I will get to work on it. We didn't have it. So we had about an hour drive back to the office, and I got on the phone with my team members. I said, hey, Nance, I need you to call this person. This person, this person.

Get me five now.

Yeah. I said, just email me when you get it. And I had it later that day, sent it on. Long story short, we wrote the account.

Nice.

I went back to the account manager and I said, hey, by the way, all those people that we gave to that risk, you talk to them all the time. Did you ever think to ask them if they were ever contacted? She goes, funny you say that. I have asked. I was thinking the same thing. I said. And she goes, not one of them were contacted. That's where we developed the live reference part of the guarantee.

Page four is just 11 questions you should ask your agent type thing. And they're probing questions to, you know, make them uncomfortable and separate yourself. So it's not rocket science, but you just put it in the format and you present it in a way that helps them think about you differently because you're the one asking, just like you said earlier about the exclusion.

So, man, I gotta. I gotta hand it to you, Mike, that I. I have heard a lot of clever tactics and. And it might be insulting to refer to that as a tchotchke, but I. A thing. A little widget inside of your operation that's got to be one of the most interesting ones. It's a different take than what I've heard before. I like that.

Well, as marketers, it's like you're a.

Professional sales coach or something.

I just like to sell personally, you know, and I've tested a lot of stuff and. And I will candidly say I've. We call them lessons, not failures, but they're really failures that are lessons. Nobody died.

We're good.

But I. I've learned three times as much as I've won. So, yeah, that's how it works.

So, I mean, I just got to reflect for. For a Second, on how privileged the PNC independent insurance world is to have folks like you and the other really high caliber agents who are still actively involved in the agency game, but also have, you know, verticals in your operation where, you know, coaching and mentoring your peers is a big piece of what you do. Because there's, there's plenty of folks that are great at consulting that are not active participants in the agency game. Whether it's, you know, Carrie Bell Wallace or, you know, Heath Sheeran or Kelly Donahue Piro or Mick Hunt or whatever. Like, those folks do a fantastic job at what they do. There's something extra about still being in the game, still having an agency where boots are still on the ground. I think that's just an incredible privilege for all of us to, to have you and, and Carruthers and, and. Oh, gosh, what's his name? The work comp renegade is Mike. He's in California. I'm. I'm sorry, I'm McDonough. Right. I was like blanking on him for just a second.

He likes pizza, too.

Yeah. I don't trust people that don't like pizza. There's.

Well, no, he loves pizza. He makes pizzas. It's kind of a side gig for him.

Yeah, I. If somebody says I don't like pizza and they're not like some sort of dietary restriction like their doctor said, don't eat pizza. Yeah, I don't know. I just have a trust issue with.

Well, it's one of the food groups for sure.

Absolutely. We ran a little bit long on time, but hopefully it was worthwhile for your audience.

Oh, I have no doubt. I'm. Hopefully they're taking notes and if you didn't take copious notes on everything we just learned from James Jenkins, please stop what you're doing, go back and watch or listen to this again. Because there was gold nugget after gold nugget, and it's all about the unfair advantage. James, anything to add as we wrap that up today?

No, I, I think the best thing I, I can just encourage the listeners with is, is figure out what your thing is, identify what all of your peers in, in your part of the country, in your market, in your vertical, be aware of what they're saying, be aware of the common talking points and find some way to be different. Find some way to get that. That thing that you say lodged in the ear of your prospect. Because if you sound like everybody else and you look like everybody else, then why on earth should someone do business with you instead of your counterparts Locally, one of the things that we've done really well in my office is find unique ways to have success that are off the beaten path. If I go up against a generalist agency on a, you know, a flower shop or something, I have no advantage. There's. There's no way to tell who's going to win that one. It's a coin flip. And as we talked about earlier in the episode, I don't really like a coin flip. I like an unfair advantage. So, you know, everybody out there listening, you already have the tools necessary to make your own unfair advantage. If you don't know what that is right now, just put some effort in figuring out what your unfair advantage is and drive that hard. And that's really all I got.

Well, and the best place to start that research, if you will, is your own existing book of business.

There is gold in that acre of diamonds.

There you go.

I mean, so much more. And, you know, I've learned from many, many people that, you know, everybody knows 250 people that will either come to their wedding, come to their funeral. I mean, if you've got 500 clients, if you got 750, a thousand or more, I mean, you got everything you would ever need right there.

Yep.

In your own acre of diamonds. So great.

This has been fun. Thanks, Mike.

It's been fantastic, and I look forward to catching up with you.

Soon.

We're scheduled to have another quick combo, and I can't wait to learn more, to help more.

Yeah, you get to be on my show. I'm on the other side of the microphone for that one, so I can't wait.

I can't wait. Figure out how I can help, because like you said, we're just trying to give back to others. We've been so blessed by this industry, and we just want to help others out there so they can experience the same thing. James Jenkins, thank you so much.

Alrighty. Thanks, Mike. Y' all take care.

Take care. All right, thanks, everybody, for joining the podcast today. If you. This is your first time on the podcast, welcome. My name is Mike Stromso, widely recognized as a leading author, speaker, and coach for the independent insurance agency industry. Please go to Unstoppable Profit podcast dot com, Go up to the top and hit subscribe so you don't miss one episode of the Value content, like all of the gold nuggets that James just dropped for us today. And we're out there on all the channels like Stitcher, Spotify, now, Amazon, Apple Podcast, and of course, our YouTube channel. So we look forward to helping you and serving you on the next podcast and into the future. And until then, get out there, make a difference, be unstoppable, and leave no regrets. We'll see you next time, James. Thanks, buddy.

All righty.

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