Episode 232: Bot-Driven Standards, Procedures & Workflows with Mike Fusco

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.

Greetings, everybody. Welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. This podcast is long overdue because not only do I have Mr. Mike Fusco of Fusco and Orsini. Right.

Right on, brother.

Fantastic. On the podcast. Hey, Mike. Welcome, Mike.

Thanks for having me, man.

No, I'm. I'm super grateful that we were finally able to track each other down, because it was, what, three, four months ago? We were standing in line, get ready to head to an industry event, and. All right, we'll name the airline. We're in line to Southwest. And you were on one side and I was on the other, and I. I looked to my right and there you were.

Hey, man, that was a fun trip, man. We got to catch up and talk on the flight and then kind of ride a little Uber over to Lodi.

Yeah, exactly.

Is that the name of the area we're in?

Yeah. Yeah, I don't know, but I can't remember the Galfa in the Uber. She had just been in the country for two years, and we had some cool stories with her as well and learned a ton. But not only what I remember, also, the guy sitting in front of you, based on our conversation towards the end of the fight, turn around, said, wow, that was a great conversation. What do you guys do? So I love that. That is awesome.

Yeah, he was a software guy, too, so it was funny.

Yeah, exactly. Speaking of technology, let's dive into it. And before we get started, if there's somebody out there who has not heard of Mr. Mike Fusco. Who are you? Just share a little bit about yourself. Personally, professionally, whatever you want. And I also have the copy of the Rough Notes magazine that features you on the COVID So a lot of people may know, may not. Mike, who are you?

Yeah, man, I'm just an agency owner here in a little Southern California, San Diego, in the same geographic area as Mr. Stompso, which is we love living here, but, you know, we have our challenges. But yeah, man, this is what I do every day. I sit here at my desk and I work on my agency.

Great philosophy. So you started on the east coast in life, right?

Yeah, I grew up in, in Jersey, went to college and at the University of Maryland and then came out here to. In 2001, June 19th of 2001, I arrived in San Diego with the suitcase and no job and no car and a little house on the beach with a bunch of buddies from school and what else can you ask for, right?

Life was good and life is even better now. So you have done phenomenal stuff in your entrepreneurial growth. And I want to dig into that, help some agents with that story. And I didn't understand it, but now I understand it. Coming from Jersey, why you like hockey, ice hockey specifically, and you've got a family now and you like to get out there and coach and, and you know, play ice hockey and hang with your kids. And I think that's fantastic. Just love that.

Thanks, brother.

And so let's dive into what supports all of those activities, which is the agency. So give it, give everybody a little taste of who your agency is. Personal lines versus commercial lines and the breakdown.

Yeah, man, we're not real, we're not real heavy in person. I mean, we've never been a personal lines agency. We have, you know, one great soul. Her name is Joanne and she's awesome and she takes a lot of bullets these days. But she's our personal lines broker and, you know, she does all the servicing and renewing. Not a big personal lines book. We're a commercial lines agency. It's what we do. Most of our personal lines accounts are cross sold from our commercial line clients. You know, they've asked for help with their homes, their autos and their umbrellas. That's why we write that besides that we don't market it and never have. We write a lot of PNC and benefits. We have a growing benefits team, up to five people now in that division, which I'm very proud of, considering we started in pnc. But yeah, man, that's what we do. A lot of our clients are what we call core clients. So they're 5,000 and under commercial lines revenue as an account. So, you know, from there we have what we called our enhanced clients, which goes from 5,000 to 25,000 in revenue. 25,000 to 50,000 are key clients. And then 50,000 and above, which we now have 10 premier clients in the agency and they generate 50,000 or more in revenue. Of course, Mike, as you know, being that you're an agency guy yourself.

You worry those accounts keep you up at night because you don't want to lose them. Right? But correct. I think we have a Nice. I think our spread of accounts throughout is where we want it to be. We want to try to grow enhanced and key. That's what we're shooting for. That's been our, our goal the last three years. But yeah, man, that's what we do. That's who we are.

Yeah. And for everybody out there, this is not intended to be an insensitive comment, but, you know, I, I was, my mind was shifted and it's all about our mindset. Right. Our mindset's our skill set and how we think about things. But when I hear that kind of comment, my first question that comes to my mind is, how many team members do you have?

22.

Yeah. So if you have 22 team members, I mean, God forbid, one or multiples of those accounts leave. Unfortunately, we got two options. We're going to make it up or we're not. And if we can't and don't, then unfortunately, maybe our weakest link might be at risk. Right.

Yeah, that's something I've always worried about. You know, I really like to have our 2200 core accounts. That's what I love.

Yeah, yeah. And, and you can do it. I know you can, Mike.

Yeah.

And by the way, so just to let everybody know why you might be thinking like that. And I have a feeling I know why, but I'll try to pull it out of here. You operate within a platform, eos, right?

Eos.

Yeah. So did that help your thinking as far as identifying what you call those account segments?

Absolutely. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. I think when we, when we started with Eos, you know, I think, I can't remember exactly when it was. I think it was at the end of 2019. That's what I tell. I think I told you and Chris that recently, but.

Right.

It was because I wanted to get more, a big, a better grasp on what we, what's inside the agency. You know, what is our booking business doing? You know, we have all these macro level type reports that we can look at and.

Right.

But really, what, what are we, what are we made up of? And, and that was the whole reason that we, we went on this EOS journey, which is four years in now, and just to get a better understanding, you know, what are we. And sometimes I think you get to that point without much intention. You just kind of one day arrive at, you know, this, this agency of how the heck did we get here and what are we now? And EOS has really helped us uncover a lot of that. And what I Just talked about with those client tiers which we call fo360.

Really gives our team a good insight of, of what we're dealing with on a day to day basis. And that's why we did it.

That's fantastic. And you have a blueprint, you have a game plan, you know where you're going, you have a probably leadership team that is involved in that, that keeps, you know, everybody rowing in the same direction, I like to say, and everything else. So congratulations on that, that's fantastic. I want to keep moving. By the way, I was doing some preparation work on you this morning and I notice you have a pop up on your website and I'm bringing this up solely. I know you're not a personalized agency, but I bring this up solely to help people think outside the box and maybe think differently to see the forest through the trees, if you will. You have a pop up on your website that says we're no longer writing new business for personal insurance in California because of the marketplace and it invites people to input their email address if they want to continue to learn more. I, I think that was a very smart move. Based on my observation. What led you to do that?

Man, you know, we have a very strong reputation online. So organically we were getting people reaching out. You know, when they're getting the non renewals from farmers and all states, you know, whatever. There's, you know, people, they panic, right. So they go and they do a search and they see that we have 500 reviews on Google and they say hey, can you help with our all around home? Well, we can't. We can't. And, and I, it was, we were spending a lot of time telling people that. And really what I need our team to do at this point is focus on our clients that we do have that we're responsible for to make sure they're covered. And we couldn't spend our time chasing our tails trying to cover people that aren't our clients when really our options are so limited it's insane. I mean, we just don't have any options.

Right, right.

And that's really the truth. So that's why we did that, man. And we're getting less people reaching out now because of that, you know, and.

I love that you said that because really what I first thought about was your ideal client avatar. And I'm sure you guys are super clear on that. Who it is from a personalized perspective if you decide to write it at all, but definitely from a commercial lines perspective as well. And you've got the various tiers and everything else. And at the core, you're a risk management guy. And I think that your website warrants a visit by anybody in the industry. You guys have done a fantastic job. Congratulations on that. You have your very own podcast where you're bringing in clients into the mix and you're spreading your knowledge and wealth of risk management. By the way, you formed that other little company. Tell us 30 seconds what that is.

Yeah. So 4C, it's. It's. We. That's our. I like to call it consulting. It's our advising brand where we bring risk management, compliance, HR and employee care solutions to the table outside of the agency. So the agency, we really want people thinking of us as just insurance services. You know, we sell insurance products, we service insurance products. That's it. Anything else? We decided to rebrand just to, you know, we didn't want to confuse people about what we're trying to be, and that's why we started 4C.

Yeah. If you will separate the credibility and authority of what you do.

Absolutely.

Is that a separate revenue stream? It is. Good job, man. Fantastic. Thanks. So, yeah, and. And I'm looking at the article from Rev Notes and. And I saw something. You've got the podcast, you've got the team meetings. How often do you have your team meetings, by the way?

So we do. We have. Man, we have a lot of L10s now.

Yeah, I get it. Yeah.

We have a leadership weekly. We have a. Each. So we break down into small teams within the agency.

Yeah.

So each team runs their own L10. We have department L10s. You know.

Yeah.

You know how it goes. You're. You're an EOS guy.

L10 and L5 is what we do. Yeah. And then the huddles, obviously. What's working, what's not working? Let's get back to it. So you. You've got very strong play on workflows led by Valerie, which is fantastic. But one of the things I wanted to ask you about very quickly, and I'm looking at the Rough Notes magazine that you were in. Dan said at the time, our communication system lets us know how busy each producer is. Do you have something that monitors activity? We do.

We have.

We have a few different systems that monitor.

And you're a tech guy, so that's fantastic. So let me jump into an area which I think might be working for you there. Sound good?

Yeah, for sure.

So one of the things I definitely wanted to take a dive on today was bots. And in that plane ride that we were on. I think that's what started the conversation. And I love your first sentence. I'm looking at an email communication after that session and you said I want to share with you how it came about because it may prompt your thinking. And that's the key guys and gals, your thinking, thinking, think, please, please think differently than you've ever thought before because that's where the, the, the, the good things are. The new opportunities for you, the, the way to grow your business and tweak your business and, and really advance it into the future, you said because it may prompt your thinking about how to use RPA in your agency. Just for anybody out there who may not be aware, what is rpa?

So it stands for Robotic Process Automation. I call it Repetitive Process automation because what I've done with it is simply take the low hanging fruit off of the plates of our team and allow robot to do it. Simplest form, that's what it is.

And by the way, those robots, do they show up every day?

They do.

Do they call in sick?

Never.

Do they have an amount emotional outburst?

Never ever.

They have emergencies in their life that pulls them out of the office? Nope.

They do go rogue sometimes. But we can fix them.

I mean you have control over them if that happens immediate.

And it's never pretty, is it?

No. So they go, they go sideways. But hey man.

Yeah, it is what it is.

It is what it is. But ultimately at the end of the day, I mean this is part of our future. I mean we're not saying that people aren't important, but really we talked about a few minutes ago about your weakest link, right. If the weakest link doesn't survive and is maybe replaced partly by an rpa, so be it. The highest performing and your absolute a best players will always be there if you will to talking to people about their insurance program. Because I learned a lot of years ago Mike, insurance is a mystery and people don't want to deal with it, they don't want to talk about it, they're confused by it. They need us 100%. Before we jump more into the bot conversation, I want to stick with the power of three. I want to focus on three bots very quickly.

You know, the fact of the matter is they need us and they will always need us. And by the way, part of your sweet spot as an organization, you help with sometimes more difficult commercial lines. Right. Don't you have a pretty heavy play any ens?

We do, yeah. We have a heavy plate in s especially high risk industry.

Yeah, yeah. So it has to be said, causes the need to be even more efficient.

100%.

And is that part of the reason you started thinking about RPAs and the such?

Yeah, I've always tried to find ways to be more efficient, especially because of the ENS play. You know, I've seen, I've worked in situations where there was no efficiency in ens and it can really get you going sideways, man. I mean, I don't, you, you could lose money real quick if you're not, if you don't have your eye on it. But this is just another step in our, in my goal to become the most efficient, most productive, high level working agency from our people standpoint. And you said this before, Mike, and you're right, you know, you gotta elevate your people. And I mean something that we've all talked about the last three years especially is our struggles and finding those people. You can't just hire anytime you want anymore. You got to find ways to use your people to the best level of productivity. And that's why we brought in the rpa. We have four bots now. We're starting to develop the fifth.

So you already got through the fourth, that's fantastic.

The fourth we just launched, that's, that's Luca Boxi. That's our cancellation bot.

Fantastic. Congratulations. So, I mean, ultimately, at the end of the day, you figured out a way and just to set the tone for everybody. Your agency management system is epic.

It is. Okay.

And then you have a CRM that's compatible with that and the bots working in and around that. Right.

And the only reason it's compatible at this point is because of the bots.

Right. Okay, so, so let's dive in. Bot number one, you've been researching bots and then both of our great friend Mr. Jeff Roy was talking about them. And then, you know, you had the thought process of breaking down repetitive tasks that are foundation and then using the bots to complete them. You did research on bots and found that one of your already industry partners gave you a quote and was like, north of 70K and you said, wait a minute, I'm going to find a better way. Right?

Absolutely.

Yeah. So you did. I mean that, that's, that's why Mike Fusco is who Mike Fusco is. Because Mike doesn't take it lying down. He finds a way, ladies and gentlemen. So congratulations, Mike.

Thanks, man. Yeah, I just went for it, you.

Know, hey, you got two options in life, right?

I just went for it.

Go for it. I mean, we don't ever want to leave any regrets. Okay, so bot number one works off the renewal list. Share just a little bit more about that if you would.

So, yeah, man, all bot number one does is it works off our renewal list in EPIC and it works. I think it's 120 days out now. Yes. So it takes, all it does is takes the renewals like today's October 11th, you know, it's working in February. Takes the renewals and puts them right in our CRM. Because we work all of our renewals out of our CRM. We knew that's what we wanted to do. We knew that's where we're going to get the most touch points in automation. So it takes them and it puts them in our CRM and they're ready to roll for our account managers the next day.

So does your workflow also build in? Let's say that the client doesn't respond to some of the automation touches. Do you have an, an offline, if you will, piece where an account manager might circle in and make a call?

Yeah, yeah. So we, it's pretty, it's, it's not very often that happens though because we do have, you know, we have text outreach, we have email outreach. We're hitting them from different places. Right. So, and really text has been the most. Text is our best form of communication in terms of response. When we have those outreach about our renewal and we're touch pointing them and saying, hey, we need this, this, this or this or look out for this in your email. It's kind, it's because our text messaging is so dialed in and that's why we really want to use pipedrive and that's why I needed that connection because the AMS is not that I know of have the ability to text message to the level that we want to text. Very conversational, very pointed. From our desktop phone number. So it's a number that people recognize. It comes from each team's line. You know, it's extremely pointed and it's very conversational and that's why we use that system and that's why I needed those bots to move that data in there for us. Saves us six to seven minutes on each. Deal.

Wow. And multiply that times your team members, 22 of them times the number of working days in a year, roughly 240. Do the math very quickly.

Exactly.

Brilliant. So what I heard you say, what you're doing, you're using automation to the beginning of the heavy lifting and it's leading everything to happen. And you've trained your marketplace, but bigger than that, you're investing in the back end technology as well to support that and lead that and use very smart people who are trained, who you consistently train via your platforms, etc. Brilliant. Great stuff. So bot number two, it creates accounts in your agency management system off new deals into the CRM. Yeah.

So we have two pipelines in our CRM. We have a new business commercial pipeline, which that's the one that gets the most activity. We also have a new business personal pipeline. Now, bot number two works in real time. Okay, bot number one, by the way, does this work overnight? You know, we're all sleeping, we're having fun.

You mean they're limited by the number of hours by per day too.

Isn't that awesome? Bot number two is just combing our system every five minutes and it says, okay, here's a new deal that we haven't seen yet. Here's a new account that does not exist in AMS and it creates it in ams. Right? So all that double keystroke that we hate to do and putting the person's contact information, email, phone number, address, type of account, the bot does it for us and it does it extremely consistently.

Accurately, and the same way every time. So now.

Two things can happen, right? Our broker wins that deal. You know, they become a new client. Now it's all set up for them already. All they have to do is put that activity in, task it to their CSR and move on if they don't win the deal, which is also very important. And our good friend Chris Paradiso talked about this and it made me implement the fact that I want to send a closeout letter to those clients. Hey, our agency has not placed a piece of business for you. You know, we did not write your auto, we did not write your work comp. We did not write your gl. I want to take that activity and I want to put that in the AMS also though, right? Even if they're not a client, I want to have an account in the AMS to drag that activity to show that we sent a closeout notice and it now lives in our ams, which is our best form of documentation. Right? That's where we want to have all of our stuff. So that's what we do with that. So bot number two just simply creates it.

Well, I mean, maybe we can get a side conversation. I'd like to meet bot number two and have a conversation with them and see if they can up their game.

They need to, right?

Bot number Two, by the way, can we go ahead and you know, make a goal for the coming year? And can you actually get people to sign off on the fact that they don't like want this? You know, they don't want epli, they don't want cyber. Can you get them to sign off on that bot number too? Make that part of your game, dude. It'd be.

That's. I like that, Mike.

So that, that's, that's maybe a little bit stronger for him. But you know, it's, that is one of the greatest selling opportunities there is out there is those sign off forms. Yeah. When Mike or Mike have to sign something acknowledging the fact that I'm declining coverage, it makes me think twice. It's like, what, wait a minute, what am I signing here? Right?

Yeah. The problem is, I think one of the. For an existing client, I love that.

Yeah.

You know, for a new client, you might have a hard time getting them to sign something, but.

Well, then you do. Part. Part of how we operate here at Fusco and Arina is we do this. So we're going to be in constant communication. I agree with you. I would circle back around, you know, first quarter, second quarter type stuff.

See, man, that's why I love. This is why I love talking to Mike St. Because now he gets me. See, and this is the great thing about RPA technology, Mike, and this is what I think your listeners need to understand is there's always an opportunity to further develop.

Hey, the day we stop learning is the day we stop growing. Right?

And you could say, hey, bot number two. And I've done it with bots, I've done bot number three, which we're going to talk about next. I have brought that bot from what I thought it was going to be to what it is now, and it's 10x what it was initially.

Fantastic. So 10x by bot 10x to agency works really well.

It does.

Fantastic. By the way, a question that came to my mind a minute ago, and you may or may not know the answer to this, and if you don't, that's fine. But do you think the bots work obviously with your agency management system and CRM? Do you think the bots can work with any agency management system in CRM?

100%.

Okay, so you obviously found a comp. An outside company. I'm not going to ask you to drop that. But who makes these custom bots for you?

Yeah. And I'm happy to drop it if you guys, if anyone ever wants a referral, there's Others out there too, that I tell people, hey, call these four or five companies, see who works best for you. Right.

Okay.

Might be a better fit. But yes, my. The company that I use, they've developed custom bots and they'll do it with any system. Doesn't matter what system it is. That's the beauty of better bot. The bot, it can teach it to.

Work anywhere, right, Based on your criteria, the way your agency works, etc. Etc. That is fantastic stuff. Thank you, man. So let's get on to bot number three. Now, does bot number three only work eight hours or does bot number three work around the clock or different personality?

Bot number three is an early morning.

Bot and they're, by the way, they're the onboarding bot and probably the best creation you had. You said this is the best creation we have. But this is a few months ago that may have been overtaken by bot number four, your new one. Go ahead. Bought three. The onboarding bot.

Yeah, Bot three, the onboarding bot, works in the mornings because we don't want to disturb people because bot number three does communicate with our clients. It sends emails. And what it does is it sets our clients up in our CSR24 portal. It gets them the credentials with their email and a password, which, by the way, it changes every year for them. And then it sends them a copy of our client perks with their verification of coverage, which is on an Accord 25 form or, or an evidence on a property form. And it sends a welcome email from our CSR to the client. Welcome onto the agency with that information.

That is fantastic. So, and then I'm also looking at something. You've got a mobile app, you have a fo360 offering. Is that a risk management opportunities and so forth.

Yeah. So that's changed a little bit. Now we call that our FOA client perks because of 4C.

4C.

4C kind of overtook FO360. But yeah, man, we do, we do have perks that we like to. We like to advise people what we have to offer.

Right.

I mean, we are in the business to grow. Right?

I mean, well, I mean, it's. It would be completely unfair if we didn't let them know about it. Yeah.

Because then what if they found out? You know, they're like, hey, why didn't you tell me about that?

The last person we'd ever want them to hear it from is another insurance professional. Correct.

And I'll tell you one thing, man, and you know, we've had this push the last four years to get people to use the client portal because we know that when we issue a coi, when we issue an AI, we issue a policy. Whatever it is that they need, we want them to have access to it 24,7 in their client portal so they can gather it ID cards. Because if they're in a pinch or if they need to give that cert to their client, or if they need to get on a job site with the ID card or if they need to file a claim on Saturday, now they can go to a place where it's always there for them. And this onboarding bot has really helped us push that drive forward because now it's telling people, hey.

Here'S your VOC attached. But once your policy is ready, once we any AI that we issue, we're going to file it in there for you. So get used to entering in there and gathering that data when you need it, you know, pulling that information or accessing it whenever you need it. I can't believe we're at a half hour already.

By the way, I know when I.

Talk to you, man, it's like the days go by so quick, Mike, you know.

Thank you, Mike. So just for everybody, because you said that and I'm looking at it in written form. What is a vocal.

Oh, I'm sorry. Verification of coverage.

Okay, cool.

You know, they're proof.

Yeah, I was going to do some quick math and in case anybody out there is envisioning.

Wow. I want to check this out. More bot number three only we're not talking about semi lazy bot number one or full blown kick butt bot number two. I hope the bots aren't listening. But, but number bot number three has saved your team thousands of hours annually. So let's just pick a number. 2,000. Okay, so 2,000 hours times we'll just throw out a number. 20 bucks an hour. That's $40,000.

Yeah, but by the way, the bot cost me 350 bucks a month.

That's what I wanted to get the point out.

Still do the math. Right?

Let me think about that. $40,000 or 350 bucks a month, I mean. Oh, and we're not, we're not including in that $40,000 figure the aforementioned sometimes calls in sick, sometimes has emotional outbursts, sometimes makes mistakes, etc. Etc. Right.

And all the time needs payroll taxes and all the time needs benefits. And.

Of course the government needs to make money off that person. So.

Right. Don't give any.

This is a add another ten grand to that one. Right.

So I hope that helps you think a little bit differently about things, everybody out there, because you know, the, the same opportunities out there for all of you. And Mike, let's go to the customer and the prospect in the, the community marketplace for a second. Have you heard once that they're not as satisfied because of the work the bots are doing?

No, never once. Never even an inkling of it. In fact they're way more, I think our client satisfaction levels and we, we, we look at them, you know, we.

Yeah, back end analytics.

Analytics, we measured this stuff. I mean I want to be higher, but you know, we're, we have some pretty high scores, man. I mean, you know, we're in the, in the 90s in our. Yeah, yeah. And even I'm sure you guys, you know, Donna, you know, that's great. I mean our sentiment scores are in the low 80s so we're, we're doing all right, man. And we've never had a client say.

Hey, you know, it sucks that you're reaching out so, so much to me and consistently with good information.

Yeah, they're never gonna say that dude, over communicate, you know, aha.

Don't get me started on that one because I gotta big opinion about that. Let's get back to it. So as we begin to wrap up and like I said when I before we started, I could go on with you for three hours easily because there's so much great stuff that you're doing. Congratulations, by the way. And I know you're just getting started and there's lots of information out there online. I'll just say about Michael Fusco and the amazing things he's done. It's on you to go find it. You have a fourth bot which has been developed completely now which is your non pay. Just because of time. We're not going to go into that one. And you've got a fifth that's in motion, right?

Yeah, the fifth is our inspection but.

Inspection bot. Give us 30 seconds on what's an inspection bot.

So one of the time wasters in our agency. Things that people hate to do. And ask your people what they hate. They'll tell you. Try to get.

Let's pause on that for just a minute. Make sure we reinforce that. What people are you asking?

Our account managers, Our CSRS team members. Team members.

Ask the team members. What are the things that hold you back in your professional advancement as an insurance professional? What are the things you hate to do? Suggested wording out there, everybody. I hope you wrote that down. If you didn't Stop, pause, rewind. Ink it, don't think it. So you asked your team what are the things they hate to do, and that's where you begin this bot building adventure, right?

Absolutely, man.

Go ahead.

So, inspection bot. Mike, if you've dealt with PNC and commercial lines, you know that inspections, people don't call them back. People tell the information different than what you wrote. The policy is, there's an endorsement ap, there's this problem, there's that problem, there's every other problem, right?

And then policy goes into cancellation for non payment because they didn't pay the ap. They weren't expecting it because they don't understand what an inspection is.

You got it.

Right on, brother.

Experience, man. I remember from an inspection standpoint, I'm gonna date myself a little bit back in the 1980s, when people used to go out and inspect property. Well, they still do, but I mean, back then they inspected every property. Every property, I should say. And I got a memo from the underwriter. Some of our faves, fave people in the world, right? Said, we're gonna cancel this policy because of the inspection, blah, blah, blah. And I said, bs, I know this property inside and out. And I drove out to the property. Long story short, I found out the inspector had gone down the road, the property was right to the left, had gone further down the road and took a picture facing into the distance.

And of course, there's brush in the distance, but it was like a mile away.

Anyway, I digressed. But anyway, the inspection bot. So fantastic. Do you have, in your vision, Mike, what bot number six is going to be?

I would love a client facing chatbot, but one that is very intentional, that can actually deliver data from their account.

Yeah, that's been hard.

This is a very hard one because there's a lot of privacy laws and things like that that go into this that you have to be careful about.

But, man, I'm thinking, you know, that's the one I love. But I, I do, you know, we have, you know, audits are, are a problem. Audit bot, audit bot. You know, what can we. And even if it gets us, Mike, and you said this early on, and I want to make this clear again to the, to the, to the audience. Even if it gets you 80% of the way there, 85 of the way there. Right. The inspection bot, the non pay cancellation bot, the onboarding. Well, the onboarding bot gets us 100%. But these, these new bots that I'm developing, they're not always going to take care of 100 of it, I want to make that extremely clear. But if it can do 80 to 90% of it and then your team does the 10 to 20, you're still way ahead on a lot of these inefficiencies, right? And that's what these things are, they're inefficiencies, you know, and every carrier is going to do it different. But if you can standardize your process and then insert a bot into your process to do it, to make it a standard operating procedure for your agency, right? Standards, procedures and workflows, boom, you're 85 of the way there. You're gold. Yeah, you're golden brother. You know, our cancellation non pay bot takes care of all of our non pay cancellations. 8, 90% of the way. I mean where our team doesn't even have to touch nine out of ten of them anymore. I mean that's a win. That's an absolute win in my opinion. So just some things that, that's the way I think and I know that's the way you think, man. And I think, I just think the audience needs to think and you know, as agency owners, I mean we need to find ways because costs of doing business are higher than they ever been. Insurance companies are looking to, to pull back on us. You know, it's not as easy to hire anymore. Where can you, where can you improve your agency so that you're more relevant in the next three to five years, which is going to be. I don't think it's going to be an easy three to five years. I'm just saying I don't think it's going to be easy for the industry. That's just my own take.

I don't disagree with you at all. But I also believe, and this is my personal opinion, that those who are forward thinking, those who are willing to change, those who are willing to think differently and do some something new that they've never done before to become even more uncomfortable and are comfortable with that discomfort and everything else is surrounding that will win more, they will achieve more and there will be some who can't play the game, who will want to get out and they will win more because of that and so much more. I just have to ask you one last question. Go ahead.

I can't agree with you more than man. No. And we're seeing wins here like our new business. We've. How many weeks have we been through the year? I mean I think we've only missed Our Revenue Goal 3 weeks for new business commercial lines this year. I mean we're getting the wins, you know, because we're there. I mean, our process is there, and it's. It's easy for us at this point, I'm saying, as an industry in general. And you're right, people need to do that. You need to do different things right now, man. You need to be different because it's not the same. This industry has. Everything's changed so much, you know, but. I'm sorry, I didn't want to interrupt. You said he had.

No, no, no. Hey. This is an open collaboration, man. It's all good. I. I just. I'm looking at the time. Like I said. We can keep going for three hours, and I want to respect everybody's time out there. Last question for you, and we'll wrap. I'm an EOS guy. You're an EOS guy. Do you have somebody in the agency who owns the bot operation?

Okay, so one specific person who, who, you know, inspects what the expect. Trust but verify and all that.

That's the best question I've ever had on, boss. And yes, it depends. So, the onboarding bot, our service manager looks at an Excel sheet every morning. The two apply to pipe drive bots. Our sir, our sales manager, our PNC manager, looks at it every morning. The cancellation bot, for now, because it's so new and I'm the one that built it. I look at it every morning. And then, you know, the inspection bot will be whoever. Eventually that cancellation bot's gonna go over to my service manager. She's gonna be the one who looks at it. And at this point, man, it's 30 seconds to 60 seconds every morning. They can see right away if something went sideways. At this point, when we first roll out, you really have to. You have to look at it. You know, you have to go through. It takes time. I mean, you can't just set it and forget it. That's not how. That's not what this is meant to be. This is not a set. Forget it.

Back to the 80, 20 rule. I mean, 89 of 80 to 90% of the time is on point, but there's going to be that time. That's why you got to inspect what you expect. Or trust but verify, kind of the same thing.

Ultimately, at the end of the day.

Amen. If you're watching this on our YouTube channel, by the way, you'll see what we just threw our fingers up, which means we second or we agree. But, you know, ultimately, at the end of the day, that's it. And I gotta say this because of Something you just said wisely, Mike.

He is leading and learning about the non pay bot himself before he passes it off to somebody on the team. I learned this back in 2002. Do you remember the little scanners 2001? I don't know if you're in the industry yet, but anyway, we had these little scanners on our desk that were like about this size. And if you're watching this on YouTube, I'm holding up an 8 and a half by 11 piece of paper and I rolled it up. We had scanners on our desk that were this size. Right. But before I put one on everybody's desk, I had to learn how to use it myself self. Because the thought process is this. You can't teach somebody else how to do anything unless you know how to do it yourself. I'm not suggesting that you do it for a long period of time, but you got to have knowledge. And what does that give you in teaching and training somebody else? Well, it gives you confidence. I've done this myself. I know how it works. And these are the nuances and these are the things to look out for. But as anybody in a leadership chair, you have to take that thinking into it. It's so vitally important. And wisely you do that great job.

And I do that with almost everything in the agency, so. But that, that's. That's a great point, man. And I've learned my lessons the hard way on that. Trust me, I've learned my lessons the hard way.

So you had pain like I have.

Oh, man.

Yeah. Hey, look, you're the one, you learn, right? We just want to limit the pain. Well, the bots take the pain. They don't care.

They don't know. They don't feel pain, brother. They don't feel pain.

Yeah, they're like back, back to the fingers like Mr. Spock. My dad was a Trekkie, Right. So you're acting emotional Captain Kirk. We're way off track here. Mike Fusco, thank you so much for being with us today. Absolutely unstoppable. You are. Any last parting words?

You're the man, Mr. Shamsa. I always enjoy my time with you, man.

No, you're the man, Mr. Fusco. I equally enjoy the time one of these. I'll see you. I'll see you, I think next week, so.

I can't wait.

Thank you. If. If you are dialed in for Be Unstoppable boot camp this year, Mike will be there. You can shake his hand, congratulate him. You can learn maybe a little bit more. About bots. I'm sure he'll have to eat wink wink or needs liquid at some point. Wink wink. But we're super grateful that Mike continues to invest in himself to become more. Because like we talked about earlier, the day you stop learning is the day you stop growing. Thank you everybody for being here. If this is your first time on the podcast, my name is Mike Stromso, widely recognized as a leading author, speaker and coach for the independent insurance agency industry. You can learn more about everything that we do @unstoppable, profit producer.com and our live event portal. I'm just going to cut this short be unstoppablebootcamp.com that's next week. Everything we do in our programs is designed to share with you some of the bust best money making strategies developed over 35 years of research as a proud 100 of the time independent insurance agent. So you can grow your business, create wealth and have more freedom to live life on your own terms. And if you haven't gone there yet, go to Unstoppable Profit podcast. Go up to the top and click subscribe so you don't miss one valuable episode. And if you got great value out of today's podcast, I strongly encourage you to share Unstoppable Profit podcast with somebody you care about. Another agent, another business for that fact. Because business principles are business principles. Right Mike?

100%.

And that's what you're doing with your commercial clients. You're teaching the business principles and they get loyalty and ally allegiance with you.

Aha. Good job, buddy. By the way, I don't know if you have one of these. That's a gold nugget moment. Thanks to you, Mike Fusco. So anyway, please make sure you go and share that URL unstoppableprofitpodcast.com and we're also available on all the channels out there. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, our YouTube channel, and beyond. So check us out. We can't wait to help you every week with the gold nuggets like Those dropped by Mr. Mike Fusco. Mike, thanks so much.

Good seeing you brother.

Good seeing you.

Look forward to seeing you in person next week.

Ditto. I will be there and I will be ready. Guaranteed.

You always are.

Get some rest. All right everybody. Until the next time you got this. We believe in you, but you gotta take action. We'll see you on the next podcast.

You love the podcast but don't know where or how to get started. Come join our next virtual training while seats are still available. Register now. @uppfaststart.com that's upfaststart.com.