Episode 242: Using Data to Power Your Agency Profit with Sherif Gemayel

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 everybody. Welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. This is going to be a fun session. I've gotten to know Sharif just recently, but every encounter we've had has been practically perfect. It's been a gem. This guy is a lot of fun, but bigger than that, he is an incredible industry entrepreneur and it's my privilege and honor to share a little bit more. More about what not only where he's been, but what he's doing. Sharif Jamal, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, Mike. I appreciate it. It's great to, it's great to be here. I'm, I'm excited. This is, this, this is fun.

Yeah, Uber pumped and excited, right? So when we first got together, we, you kindly said tell me about you and we shared our stories and eerily they're very much alike. But who is Sharif Jamail?

Sharif Sharif Jamail is a part insurance guy, part tech guy.

You know.

Lots of things, but master at none. I'm just trying to kind of figure things out as we go along. I'm actually an ex agency owner. I started an agency here in Canada called Sharp Insurance that I started back in 2009. The agency was more of a tech digital enabled agency that quickly grew into the fastest agency, the fastest growing agency in Canada in the last decade. And from there I spun up this little tech company called Trufla because we were trying to constantly solve tech problems and to find technology that just wasn't available for us. So we just set out to start building it and fast forward now, you know, X number of years. I've now sold the agency. I'm focusing solely on the tech side of the world and providing technology to agents because I am very bullish that agencies are the, the future of distribution. I've always been bullish on, on agencies that there is no better way to distribute insurance than through an independent agent. And now we're just going to provide the technology through true flood for them to be able to do that.

The independent insurance agent who is not beholden to any insurance company, they work for you, the customer first.

That's the only way to buy insurance.

100% agree. And relationships are everything. And you built a very formidable agency.

Yes, I started the agency from scratch. I'm one of the crazies that built it from policy. I was policy one, my business partner was policy two. And in 10 years we grew it to just over 80 million in premium. And that was almost all organic growth. So it was, it's, it was a good run for sure.

So some of the secrets that you learned in building that agency, you built into Trufla and other wild ideas that you've come up with and knowledge because of tech ups, if we will. But I, I've seen.

Just some of the inside of Trufla and I was like, blown away. And that's when we first met. I said, we got to share this with other agents out there. So that's exactly why we're here today, to share with you just the vision, the future possibilities and the current realities of truthful and everything you got going on. So how should we take this away to help some agents?

Well, can I provide some context first?

Yeah, please. Yeah, of course.

So I, I, I, I, I talk to a lot of agencies, I go to a lot of different conferences and I speak at the, at these conferences. And I, you know, I'm almost like a comedian. Comedian has their, has their skit and they've got their routine, they kind of, you know, do it over and over again. Well, I've got, I've got this presentation that I've done over and over to agencies and to brokers. And the title of it, of the presentation is Dear Broker, you're more like Amazon than you think. And when I first started doing this presentation, people would say, how the heck are you trying to compare an independent agency or a brokerage to a tech company like Amazon or Google or Uber or Airbnb? And I was like, actually there's, there's lots of comparisons that you can, that you can compare these companies to. And, and that was, it was really this ideology that, that, that fanned the flames of wanting to be, you know, of creating all the technology that we, that we have for.

For agencies through Trufla. So the three things that, that you can compare an independent agent to these big tech companies.

First and foremost, if you think about every big tech company in the world, whether it's Google or Amazon or Uber, Airbnb, you realize quickly that these companies are nothing more than distributors. They don't actually build things. They don't actually, you know, like Amazon puts their, you know, you get the Amazon brand for the product but they don't actually build the product. They're just a distributor and they're a mass distributor of a lot of different products. And in the, in the business world, the distributor is always king. It's never the manufacturer, the distributor who is king. So comparison number one, comparison number two. If you went to Amazon to buy a product, so let's say you were buying a USB C cable and you only got one result, or you were looking for something for your kitchen, you only got one result, or you went to Google and it only gave you one website, or you went to Airbnb and it only gave you, you know, one bedroom apartments. It was ultimately going to fail because you have to be able to offer choice to the consumer and you have to be able to cater that choice to the vast, you know, differences that the consumers are looking for. Whether it's a high luxury item to a really cheap and expensive inexpensive item, or choice is king for the, for the consumer. And that's what the independent agents do, is they offer choice to their consumers. And the third one, which is where the agencies typically are tripped up and where these big companies have won is in their use of data and how they use data to power their technologies. I mean, when you're going to Google and you type anything in, it's already filling in your query for you before you finish. Because you know, all that data intelligence behind it. And typically big data has been reserved for carriers and for, you know, behemoth companies. And so our dream was always, how do we bring that kind of data and intelligence and AI capabilities to an independent broker, empower them with it so that they can distribute faster with the choice and really be able to compete in a digital world. So that's kind of the context of what.

What I wanted to, what I.

Want to show today before we go to the next piece, which we want to show you a little bit about.

The product itself and what they've done so far. Sharif and his team, you told me a story and I just remember this. When we first spoke about Google and they tried to get into the insurance agency business, what happened?

So 2015 was around February or March, I believe it was March 1, 2015, Google decides we're going to get into the insurance space and we're going to start offering auto quotes right on to, right on the search, right in the search engine. So they acquired an agency in California, in San Francisco, that they licensed in all 50 states. And then they started Google Auto Compare. So when you went to the search engine to search for auto Insurance. And instead of seeing the organic results, there was a box there that said zip code. And you could put in your zip code and you can start getting the quote right from within the search engine. Similar to like Google Flight or, you know, Google Shopping or whatever else. And so they started going down this road and all of a sudden the big carriers were not just falling off, but a lot of them weren't even joining the panel to get the quotes. And they all got together and went to Google and basically said, listen, and I'm obviously, you know, adding a little drama to this, but sweetheart, you. Do you know how much we pay you for advertising annually? Because most people don't know this, but the keyword insurance makes up over 20% of Google's annual ad revenue. There is no keyword on Earth that is more expensive or generates more revenue than no keyword that generates more revenue for Google than insurance and 20% over revenue. Yeah, yeah, it's nuts, right? So think about your, your state farms, your Geicos, your farmers, your Allstate, you know, everywhere, how much they're spending on. On, you know, to drive leads. And they basically got together and said, you're not going to play in the space. And exactly one year to the day, Google shut it down. Did not work. So why. This is part of the reason why I believe I'm still, again, very bullish. Bullish on independent agents. Even Google found it's not so easy to compete in this space.

Relationships.

Relationships.

Beautiful. So super pumped and excited. I gave you permission. If you just want to run through. And by the way, if you're listening to this podcast, absolutely. Take copious mental notes. But remember, our podcasts are also on our YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube and search Unstoppable profit producer. Click videos and you will see this podcast and all of our other ones because you're going to want to go back and revisit this because Sharif is going to share his screen. We're going to share screens and just run through a little bit of the detail. You'll still get lots of value listening to it, but you want to listen and watch. Remember, when you hear, you learn. When you hear and see, you understand. We want to bring you to a point of understanding, Sharif.

All right, so one of the things that we learned early on at the agency that I was managing was in the insurance world, price is important. Absolutely. But speed was actually more important because it was a painful process.

For the consumer to get a policy in place. And they would have to go through several sites and call Several agencies just to be able to get the pricing out. And so we learned that if we can get in a quote request or a lead in really fast and we can get to that lead really fast. And as long as our pricing was fair, so kind of met, you know, kind of the fair pricing threshold, we were more than likely going to win that opportunity because the consumer is not that excited to buy insurance. Like, nobody wakes up on a Saturday morning and thinks, oh, man, what a beautiful day out today. I'm going to go get a coffee and a muffin and I'm going to go shop. Insurance day. Today is a good day to buy. Buy insurance. Right. That's.

They don't.

I. I was surprised to hear that too, but they don't. I know. It's weird. I know, right? So, yeah, the secrets out of the, you know, the cats out of the bag. Secrets out. People don't like to buy insurance. Right. They want to do it.

Oh, I agree with you, by the way.

Possible.

So we built out our own lead management tool to be able to capture leads quickly and be able to quote it out. And so we've been able to replicate this, but in a, in a, in, in a. In a faster fashion. So on the left side, what you're looking at is our lead management. One of our lead management tools, you know, and I, I'm not going to go into a lot of the details of it. And on the right side, what you're looking at is an agency's website that, you know, that we built out for them with some of the quoting capabilities. So I'm going to select a motorcycle quote in this case, because we're going to look to get a motorcycle quote. And the first thing that's going to appear on the site is the knockout questions. So I'm just going to let this load up. Here's the knockout questions here. So will this person even qualify to buy insurance? And I'm just going to select. No, no, no. I'm gonna. There's my privacy policy.

Some people call those disqualification questions.

Disqualification questions. Perfect. And so I'm gonna go on the left side here and I'm just gonna speed this up just a little. And you'll see as soon as you. The client answers the disqualification questions. The first line here, the request has already come into the, into the agency. Okay, let's follow along on. On both sides so an agent can see what happens when someone's actually doing a quote request on the page. So I'll put in my information here. Whoops. I want to get that out of the way. And I'll put my name here.

And I'll just put a fake phone number and my email address.

And next. And now it's going to go to the next part of the, of the, of the quote experience. And you'll see on the left side, the information pops up right away.

So that's real time inside the agency, likely at somebody's desk.

That's live time. So by the time they've answered the disqualification questions, an agent has been notified that a quote is coming in. The agent can open it up and literally watch as the information is coming in from the site. So again, the right side is the site, the left side is the agency side. Select a motorcycle here. I want to do a Harley Davidson, let's say, and my favorite model, the Fat Boy. And it's going to fill in the. The engine displacement. It's going to give me a value for it. Let's say the client says, actually, I don't think that's the value. I think my bike is worth 28,000. And I'll put my zip code or in this case, postal code, we're in Canada, and I'm going to put it in a private lock garage. And next. And now it's going to go to the last part of the quote. You can kind of see how fast we can do that. And by the time you're even scrolling down, the information is already right there.

Wow.

Tell you that the actual value of the bike that was pulled from Kelley Blue Book was, you know, 24 999, but the client entered in 20, 28,000. It's probably a good opportunity to ask some underwriting questions. Why is it worth more? Right. Okay, let's go to the last part of the application here. I'll put my date of birth. And yes, that is my date of birth. My birthday is coming up on Christmas Eve.

Very happy early birthday to you.

Thank you, sir. I don't celebrate it on Christmas Eve, though, because I've learned that if you celebrate your birthday the same day as, as Jesus, you get ripped off for gifts. You only.

I got it present.

So, okay, let's put in the rest of the information here just to get a quote. And here we go. We're gonna go get a quote. Okay, so the rest of the information is filled in. There it is. It's populated on the left side. And on the right side, the client is going to go ahead and get a quote.

So the quote here will appear and almost at the exact same time the agent is getting that quote as well. They can see it. Everything that's happening in real time. Even if the client goes and says, oh okay, that's great, I get this quote for 600 bucks. I wonder if I change the deductible if that's going to change my quote. So I'm going to re quote it here on the left side. On the broker side you're going to see it's going to say waiting for price. There it is. And then the price is going to reappear for the broker or the agent and it's going to reappear for the client. It's all happening in real time. It's never happened before that an agent and a client can interact in the same, same quote together. That takes the quoting experience to a whole different level. Like imagine the agent can then interject, say with a chat bot or whatever it says, hey, can I help you out with the, with the quote here? Let's, let's get on the phone, let's walk, let's walk through this quote together. And, and they'll be able to see all the same, the same information. Like you could just take it to a whole different, to a whole different level. This is the kind of stuff that we focus on and how we can speed up and improve the interaction between the agent and the client. And then when you start layering in some of the other stuff that we have such as AI, bringing in AI rating capabilities, AI capabilities on the retention side, can we predict which of your clients are most at risk of being lost? Which we've built out and we've deployed, you know, or bringing even AI on, on, on the web front, when you're looking at content and you're doing SEO and you want to drive in more leads, the more intelligence we can bring to the table and the more real time capabilities we can bring, it just completely changes the interaction between the independent agent and the, and the client. And this is the kind of stuff that we were doing that propelled our agency that we're now bringing to every agent.

Thank you. I just have two words. Freaking amazing.

Well, thank you.

The system. But YouTube.

Yeah, this is, this is the kind of stuff we've been, we've been working on for years. We work with a lot of agents and we are now in the, in a place where 2024 is the year where we're going to start introducing the product en masse in the, in the US market. So we're working with it, with, with amss right now. There are some amss that we're going to be announcing in the, at the beginning of the, of the new year that'll have this kind of integration with it. So that, that's still your source of truth. But you can drive these leads into the AMS as well. Like that's, this, it's all about the agency and what we want to bring to the table for them.

That is fantastic. I just, I happen to be privileged to be speaking at an AMS event in the spring in Southern California. I'll just say so. I don't know if you're going to be there. If you are, I would be honored to connect. We'll talk about that offline. But so let me dig in there.

If I'm thinking what you're thinking, you.

Are going to be there.

I'm likely going to be there.

I can't wait. So let's keep in touch on that. Fantastic. With that being said, let's dig in a little bit. I mean, this product, this part of the product, am I correct? I mean this is just a piece of the pie.

Yep.

So if you think about Trufla as a whole and the whole pie that you can bring to the independent insurance agency operation and I know you're, you're, you're newer in our markets and I don't know how much you can talk about, but give us some more. I mean, that's not all. There's more.

There's more. So if you break down our products, what I, what I showed here was actually two of our three products. So our three products cover the entire life cycle of an insurance policy. The first product, which is true Web, which was the website that you saw there and kind of that quoting experience and everything around that, the focus of that product is acquisition of client. You can have the greatest technology internally, but if you can't drive a client into your agency, you're going to struggle. Like that's, that's.

And keep them there.

And keep them there. I mean, that's. Step one is acquiring the client. So what a lot of agents do right now is they will spend enormous amounts of money on buying leads from, from lead aggregation sites to drive those high quality leads.

Right?

Super high quality. Best of the best.

Yeah, yeah.

You with our agency. Our agency was consistently ranking on page one of Google and we're in, we're in Canada. I mean there's not as many, as many clients in Canada as there is in the US we're consistently ranking on page one of Google. We never spent money on buying leads. We never spent money On Google Ads, all we did was organic SEO and we kind of knew what we were doing in that space. And we were driving over 1500 leads a month through our agency.

1500 leads a month?

1500 leads.

Anybody else want that? Go ahead.

100 leads a month. And again, smaller market and we were able to do that. We're just, we just knew how to compete in that space. So the technology that we had there, that helped drive those leads, we're now bringing it to agencies and that's the true web platform for, for us. So that's the first part of the, of an insurance policy. The second part of an insurance policy is you can drive a in but now you got to know what to do with it. If and when you get a lead in, especially in the PL space, even in the commercial space, if you're not fast to get to that lead, the client's likely moving on. And it's quite possible that by the time you get to it, it might already be done, it might already be gone, depending on the line of business. So speed was the name of the game. So we built out our own lead management platform because there was nothing that was out there that was fast enough for us to be able to grab leads in, get it in real time. And we even built out the ability which we have in the platform to dynamically distribute the lead to an agent based on survival of the fittest. What's your bind ratio? How many leads do you have on your, on, on your, on your desk right now? What's your success? You know, and so those that were more successful with the leads, 10 would get more leads, right? So they were building up their books even, even faster. And we managed the leads. It was a CRM we tied, tied into so many external experiences that was really what powered the agency. After a policy is sold, you then have to service that policy. Now now comes the, the servicing part and the, and the annual renewals and the changes, change management and whatnot. And so we built out a platform called Trobil, our claim to fame, which nobody's disputed us yet. We had actually built out the very first agent mobile app and portal in North America because the first version of it was built in 2010 for us and we were using it in our, in our agency. So now we've got a white labeled mobile app and portal and the portal really takes, that's where we bring in a lot of the AI and the intelligence and the renewal intelligence for agents. But it brings the agency to the, to the customer, to their client. So that it prevents call ins. They can manage policies on their own. It gives the agent the ability to really focus on the relationship versus the admin stuff that can easily be facilitated through the. Through the platform. So that's. That's it. That's all we do.

Well, I mean, just to get started, right?

Just to get started. Just to get started.

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, just to recap and correct me if I'm off kilter here at all, I mean, you provide a web platform, a website. Right. For independent insurance agents. Okay. This is the beginning point. Their online presence, if you will. And you can help with, help them with anything regarding that positioning. You help them design it and everything else.

We do it all.

Okay, fantastic. So next, the goal is the quoting piece and the conversion piece.

Yep.

Because I'm sure you all know as well as I do the definition of marketing is the attraction and conversion of your ideal clients.

And the leads and everything else.

Okay.

So it helps with that filter and the whole nine yards. And I'm sure you can structure. We just saw the side by side real time, but you can structure that disqualification any way you want, right?

Absolutely. And you can even create your drip campaigns from there. Automated messaging and market, like everything is built into the. Into the platform.

Wow. And so is the drip campaigns and everything else that you just referred to coming maybe in phase two?

No, it's live now.

Oh, in your, in your platform.

It's already live in the, in the platform now. So we can create the entire workflow with automated triggers and, and whatnot. If the person, you know, ends at this process, send them an email and bring them back in. If they complete and you know, they. We haven't heard back from them in some time, send them an audit. Like there's so many different. The. That entire experience is built into the platform already.

Oh, now I'm really excited. So if you want to reach 100% of the marketplace, you got to use 100% of the ways.

So you know, my thought process over all of my career experience, you know, email, text, phone, snail mail, now videos and more. How many of those components are available in your platform?

All the above.

Cool. I can't wait to hear more. We don't have enough time on this podcast to really get into the weeds on that. But anyway, so we have the website, which is the online presence and the visual and everything else, and people can gauge your credibility and everything else. The leads come in there, they can get a real time quote. It notifies the person at the desk in the agency that somebody's online getting a quote. You're able to watch that ultimately go move to convert. It measures bind ratios and everything else. So it's doing the math. You can analyze your investment and tweak based on all of that. And if they don't buy particularly on the spot, it will help with the follow up. Because you know my sales statistics that I've followed for years. You know, 48 of salespeople never follow up with the prospect and 80% of deals are closed on the 5th to the 12th contact if they don't buy on the spot. So that's ultra important.

And then all in there.

Come again.

It's all in there.

Yeah, I know, I know. That's why I'm so excited. But, but next.

Is because I'm sure you're aware based on your achievement over a short period of time, the super complicated business plan, right. Get clients, which we're talking about, but now we're talking about keeping clients. So it also aids with the servicing through your originally first developed True mobile app.

You got it.

Fabulous stuff.

Can I show you something cool?

Yes, please.

Okay, check this out.

No, we don't want, we don't want cool stuff here. We want boring insurance stuff.

Perfect. This is right up your alley. So one of the, one of the toughest things for an agency, especially when they're trying to acquire a client, is you hear constantly in, especially in an SEO world, you want to create content, you have to create content. You have to, you know, you're constantly have to create this content, create blogs and do all these pages, you know, to make your site relevant. Agents don't have time for that. They legitimately do not have time to do that. So they end up hiring companies and they hire third party companies that don't necessarily know about insurance. They have to try to train them about, you know, what they should and shouldn't say related to insurance so that they can write these books like it's, it's, it's, it's a tough world for them. Right?

Let's experiment here. This is one of the latest tools that we've built out for an agency. So Mike, I'm going to get you to help me prompt this. Okay?

Got it.

All right, so here we're gonna write a, let's write an article on the page. So a blog post, basically, what kind of a topic should we write about?

Umbrella insurance.

Okay, great. And where are you located, Mike?

San Diego county in Southern California.

Why? You should have umbrella insurance in San.

Diego.

California. Let's just do that. Okay. What are some of the keywords you think that we should. We should stuff in there?

Assets.

Okay.

Yes. Including ETS Assets.

Wealth.

Wealth. What else? How about earnings?

Okay.

Agency, agency, agent, earnings. Should we. Should we just leave it at that?

Sure.

Okay. Let's leave it at that. I'm going to. I want to write it casual and.

I know where they are.

A thousand words and put it into four paragraphs.

Okay, sounds good.

Let's generate some content. Let's see what it does for. Let's see what it does for us. Okay.

So we'll give it a second.

We'll give it a second.

Let the AI do its thing.

We gave it too many keywords.

No, no, smart. It's what AI does.

Okay, I know, I know.

Here we go. Here's the content here. Why you should have umbrella insurance in San Diego. Okay.

Can protect your assets and wealth. Having an insurance agency or agent. You work hard to build your earnings. Oh, it's writing it as an insurance agency or agent, so we would have to make a little bit of an adjustment there. But effectively it's writing all the content that an agent would need. From there, they can make some small edits to it to make it more valuable. And if they want, they can publish it straight to their site. Now they have to do some editing on some of the formatting. They can put in an image or whatnot, but they can post these right to their sites.

Instead of taking any time. I can do this in 10, 15 minutes.

Amazing.

This is the kind of stuff that Google loves to see. And if you can do it right and you've got AI to help you do this now, you don't need to hire external companies. You can basically get an AI bot to write content for you regularly. And this is just so you know, this is chat GPT that's built into the back end of our platform. So.

Beautiful. Beautiful. And. And I've done enough educational work on that platform to know that the better the prompt. And you got to keep digging on the prompt. You got to write. Wrote it right in a certain voice tone and the whole nine yards. So that's the 8020 rule. Because what we teach agents, because of our depth of knowledge and continuing ongoing education is the fact that, you know, it's an 8020 proposition. You've heard of the 8020 rule, pretto principle, right? So let that do the 80% of the heavy lifting based on what you're telling it. And then you've got to go in and put in 20% of your time to customize it, make it your own. And duh, you and I both missed the most important word probably around insurance, which is independent.

Independent.

You got independent agency.

So for the 20%, what we tell clients is that 20% is the soul that the AI is missing. So you're putting your soul into it with that last 20%, right? That's you, that's the handprint, that's the fingerprint that you're putting on the, on the content. So you let the AI do the heavy lifting. You just tell it what you know, what you want, and then the last 20%, the last mile, that's your soul that you're putting into. Into the content that you're writing. So it's.

So since we're in a public forum right now, would you mind if I use that from time to time?

Oh, please do.

I'll give you all the credit you deserve.

Please do.

It was a gem from the gem.

That I love. That 20 is the soul. That is fantastic. The heart and soul.

Heart and soul. You got it, Sharif.

I am super, super excited about the future and what truffle is going to bring to the platform. And platform's not the right word to the inner workings of the independent insurance agency. Platform, probably more specifically, and the given abilities that they're going to have at their fingertips to absolutely dominate.

That is. That's music to our ears because when, while everyone was betting against the independent agent and, you know, was. Was saying that, you know, the, the directs and the direct to consumers and your lemonades and roots and Metro Miles and everybody was absolutely going to obliterate the agent, we were out building the tech that is going to enable the agency of the future, because we were still bullish, saying that ain't gonna work. Agencies are what work. Independent agents are what work.

Well, there was an investment firm who also claimed they were bullish. So I'm not going to compare names at this point, but you are the bullish one of the independent insurance agency world. So thank you.

This is. That's where my heart. This is where my heart is. That's. This is where I came out of. And that's. The differentiator for Trufla is that I live that world. I sat in that chair, I ran that agency, I was selling those policies. I was the csr, I was the producer, I was the person transacting in our AMS system. I did it all. I knew all the pain points, and we just wanted to build the right tech to solve those problems, those pain points.

You are one of us. It's in your, it's in your soul.

You know what I'm gonna send you, I have to send you one of our, our most popular T shirts at Trufla. I gotta send it to you. And I should have actually worn it today. If I was a smart marketing guy, I would have worn it today. It's, it's, it's the Batman symbol and it says Broker forever.

Awesome.

It's, it's, it's a, it's, it's a badass shirt. I'm gonna have.

Hang tight when we wrap up. We'll, we'll work on that real quick. And I have the same treat anyway. Fantastic.

Anything else to add?

I mean, I, I could talk about this stuff for forever.

I know, so could I.

So there's so much we could, we could talk about at the end of the day. You know, Trufla is going to be coming into the, into the US next, next year. 2024 is the year. We've already started working with a bunch of agencies. We've got a bunch of their sites that are going live with, with a lot of the lead need management stuff. Some of the bigger names in the, in the insurance world are, are going to be using our, our tech.

But let me just be clear. Not always better.

Not always better.

But I understand you got to start somewhere.

Got to start somewhere.

Thank you for using them as the testing ground to perfect it for, you know, everybody else.

Exactly.

Exactly.

You know, we're going to be at a lot of conferences this year. More agents are going to, are going to see us. We're thrilled to be bringing it, you know, this tech to independent agents in the U.S. i think the market is ripe for it and agents are hungry for disruptive technology and that's, that's what we're, we're, we're going to be bringing.

I, I am pumped and excited, so I can't wait to hear more. I do have one last burning question and you may not have an answer yet because you haven't had the opportunity to penetrate enough. Or maybe you have an opinion on it. We'll just leave it at that. So you provide real time rates. What about the carrier side as far as your ability to get rates from the majority of the carriers that are out there? What have you, what have you been able to learn about that so far?

Yeah. So carriers aren't, aren't that, aren't as advanced as, as the market thinks they.

No.

No. There's this, this mythical magic three letters acronym that everyone just keeps bastardizing out there, which is API, you know, and most carriers are nowhere near being API ready. Some are, and there are some APIs. But we've still got a long road to go before you can even get to a place of good APIs. The, the biggest challenge that the industry is facing right now, which is some are trying to solve for, is standardization of data. We've worked with a lot of carriers. We've worked with some of the biggest carriers in the world. You know, they do have APIs. There's still that challenge of data standardization. And we're going to continue grabbing those APIs, plugging it into our platforms to bring that, the rating capabilities. But in, in our world, we don't necessarily have to solve it all. We know there's other partners that have, we love working with other companies that have solved, you know, certain parts of the, of the, of the value chain. You, including that connectivity that we can just kind of plug in to enhance their value, enhance our value and bring more to the agency. But we are, we, we have gone down this road. We're continuing down this road. But it's, there's a, it's, it's a long road. It is a long, long road.

So one last little piggyback question. So we, you did a motorcycle example side by side today, right now.

Personal lines to start. Maybe small commercial in the future. Don't know yet.

We've already done commercial. We've done everything from.

You know, eno, dno, cgl, Cyber.

Property. We've done pl. We've kind of done in the same.

Manner that I just saw.

Yeah. Actually one of the, one of the things we've done is we, we can even get to it. We've already done it. We've gotten to a place where you can get multiple quotes from multiple markets in real time in one place using one application.

Awesome.

It's not distant to us.

No.

I'm ready to jump out of my skin and get back to it. So anyway, yeah. Sharif Jamael, thank you. Thank you for sharing just the beginning of the insight of what Truffle is working on for the independent insurance agents. And now coming to us location near you. But you know, just like everything else and we were talking about this before we started. Money and success. Love speed and money and success. Never sleep. So only do you by chance. This is a wild out of left field and if you don't, that's fine. Do you happen to know Frank Sentner?

I do know Frank Sentner.

I'm not surprised. So I was sitting with Frank, a couple of months ago at a conference and we were waiting for the, the aforementioned, one of the three technology companies who gives you a ride to the airport. And so we're sitting there talking and we were talking about people's ability to make a decision.

And so, you know, Frank said, and, and I have a picture of Frank because I, I asked him to do something when he said that, because I'm going to share it with everybody just to help encourage them. Right. He said business entrepreneurs or anybody who can't make a decision.

Will not succeed into the future at the highest level, something to that effect. So it's really all about not only the speed, but people's ability to make a decision. Right.

And if you can help your own client make a decision faster, you're helping yourself. You got to make a decision, they got to make a decision. We're just there to help enable everyone make a decision even faster.

So that's why I am privileged to exist, because I can help with everything surrounding that and positioning people to know that, hey, this is 100 trusted authority. We just need to help you make the right decision.

Right decision, yes. And I'm actually going to be meeting with Frank very early in the new year. He's going to be seeing a lot of what we're, you know, what I showed you. So you got that. You, you got a little ahead of him on the, on the sneak a peek. But yeah, he's.

Well, you talked about the Batman shirt. I'm gonna put my fly shirt on, my fly costume on so I can be a fly in the wall in that room.

We were going to meet earlier, but he was kind enough to say that, you know, tis the season for him and he does a bunch of the, the Santa stuff right. Right now. And so it was pushed into the new year and that's right.

He is doing that because his permanent costume. Yeah.

Love it. I love it, I love it.

And his demeanor. Yeah, he's, he's loved it. Wealth. I mean, you know, he's kind of the EF center. Right. Anytime he's talking, I'm listening. So and so now getting to know you, the EF of the trufla world or Canada. I'll have to digest this one. So anyway, let me do this. I'm gonna do two things. We're gonna get this thing wrapped up because I want to let you go. I know you've got high priority stuff to do, but since I now saw this again and I now have digested it just here coming up in just 11 short days. Sharif Jamayel. 1, 2, 3. This is your birthday song. It isn't very long. Hey.

An early, an early, early. Happy birthday to you, sir. Please enjoy and have a great one.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for sharing. I hope to meet you very, very soon. And can please let us know how we can serve you as well in any way possible to most importantly, help independent insurance agencies out there win more with speed to help people make the right decisions.

I absolutely will. And I'm looking forward to connecting with you in Southern California, April.

Exactly. Ditto. Me too. I can't wait. I'll be in touch on that. Hang tight when we wrap up today. All right, everybody. Was that flipping awesome or what? And the future is bright, but your mindset's your skill set and what you perceive is what you believe. So make sure your mindset's in the right place and your perception is right. And you're partnering with the right people who will walk beside you into the future. And if this is your first time on the podcast, welcome. My name is Mike Stromso. I'm widely recognized as a leading author, speaker and coach for the independent insurance agency industry. If you want to learn more about what we do, please Visit unstoppable profit producer.com everything that we do is designed to bring you the best money making strategies developed over 36 years of research in our industry to help you grow your business, create wealth, and have more freedom to live life on your own terms. That's why we exist. We're passionate about it. It's who we are and the soul, as Sharif mentioned. And please remember, if you got great value out of this podcast, first and foremost, go to unstoppable profit podcast.com, go up to the top hit, subscribe so you don't miss one valuable episode and then share Unstoppable Profit podcast with anybody that you know and you care about so they can get the great value that Sharif just brought and what we bring down the pike every single week. And we're out there on all the channels, Apple, Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon, and of course our YouTube channel and more. So please share, share and like, it's a big, vast opportunity we've got. We only have a short window. So thank you. And Sharif, thank you for joining us today.

He's been having tech issues. There he is. Thank you for joining us today. Yay. Anyway, you rock, man. Keep it going.

Thank you, Mike.

All right, thank you for joining us. Until next time, get out there, make a difference, be unstoppable. Leave no regrets. And remember, you got this. We believe in you. We'll see you on the next episode.

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