Episode 282: 7 Doors Niche to Leads Multiple 7 Figures with Russ Castle

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. I am super pumped and excited for our next episode featuring rough notes cover agents who are also part of UPP membership. And I've got the one, the only, Mr. Russ Castle on the podcast today. Russ, how you doing, sir?

I'm great. Happy to be here, buddy.

I, I'm grateful to be able to tr. You know, finally find you wherever you. You travel the globe and you told me that this year. How many days of travel?

95.

Okay. Sorry. Yeah, yeah, he, he, he. I think he feel he's so humble. Russ is very humble in nature and he didn't want to share that number, I think, because it's great, it's fantastic. And that's what building the type of agency that Russ has built does for your personal life and your abilities. But.

You know, that's been the long going joke and all of the time of Russ's membership in UPB is, you know, Russ has never. Russ always has to check his calendar because he's got so much travel booked, he may or may not be available. He's got, he's got time. Freedom is what he has, which is one of the three pillars that we want to get people to grow your business, create wealth and have more freedom, AKA time freedom and money freedom for that fact. So, Russ, you've achieved all those, so congratulations.

Thanks, buddy. You've been.

Yeah. And so what we want to do here today is help some agents. You ready?

I'm ready. Let's go.

Okay, good. We've designed three things today that we're going to share with everybody to hopefully help you. So strong encouragement right now. Get something to write with and write on. If you hear something, you can pause and stop. If you're watching this or even listening to it, you can watch it on our YouTube video channel. Just go to YouTube and then search Unstoppable Profit producer. Go to the videos and all of our podcasts are there. So, Russ, just in case anybody hasn't heard of you or doesn't know you, which would be hard to believe, but I'm sure there's A lot of people out there nowadays who might be newer to the industry as well. Just give us a brief background. Who's Russ Castle? Where'd you come from? And anything else you'd like to add? Maybe a little. Tell us about your family.

Sure. I'm third generation insurance broker. My grandfather, my dad, and then me, wife, two grown kids. I reside in what I call Silicon Valley, Redwood City, California. It's on the San Francisco peninsula, about a half hour south. Didn't really think I was going to get an insurance and here I am today. My dad grew. When I grew up, my dad was a broker and we were on. He was on straight commission. So some months we had Mac and cheese, some months we could have a steak. Didn't really want to do that when I started thinking of a family. And, well, here we are now, and it's been a dream. Been a lot of hard work, and we feel very blessed. But I'm living a dream right now. So that, in a nutshell, is where I'm at.

So let's pause and think about what Russ just said. It was a lot of hard work, but now he's living the dream. You know, there may be, may or may not be people out there, I don't know. But it is hard work and it takes time. And. And you will be the first to say that. I'm going to pull that out in just a couple minutes. But, you know, a persistency and hard work and discipline and focus and all of that is necessary to get there. And would you agree, Russ? A lot of failure.

Oh, yeah, yeah. But. But you learn from your failures. You know, the consistency is continuing to tweak or continuing to test. So the failures, you learn from and move on.

100. 100. So you built something extremely special. So congratulations on that. But let's talk about what I say. From resistance to living the dream. And you just said you're living in the dream right now. Russ, you initially, and I didn't know this until we were talking recently, you initially rejected the idea of a career in insurance. Can you share more about that turning point at that little league game and how it shaped not only your career decision, but all, you know, totally the culture and the values of Castle Insurance. Because.

If you're like me, most people don't, you know, when they're growing up in high school and they say, what do you want to do in life? I'm gonna say 99 out of 100. Don't say they don't say they want to be insurance agent. Would you agree?

Totally agree. Totally.

Yeah. So talk about that turning point and anything else you want to have.

So it's, it's wild because this goes back, I want to say, almost 30 something years ago. Went to a little league game that my cousin's son was in and at the time I was working for someone else. Had the 8 to 5 job, I believe I was dating my wife or dating my now wife. And when we went to that game on that Saturday, they won the game. And I'm sitting in the stands with my cousin and his wife and their daughter and next to me is another dad. And this little kid runs up to him and says, dad, dad, we won the game. And yeah, obviously we won the game, but our championship game is Tuesday at 2:00'. Clock. And the dad quickly had to inform him that he had a boss and his boss wasn't going to let him have the time off. And that was a turning point for me because I'm thinking if and when I get married, obviously now we're, you know, decades later, I want to have that freedom to come and go. You know, you can't get back those younger years of the kids. And that's where what was important to me. So that's when I decided, you know what, I got to pivot here. Get out of the 8 to 5 job, get her. Get a job where I have control of my time. Ironically, my dad let me back up before that. Ironically, I started being a farmer's agent because we thought that was going to be the best of both worlds. My dad was and my grandfather were independents and my grandfather retired at this point. And if I was a direct writer, we could, you know, combine the two. Long story short, when I went full time, that didn't work. They wanted me to do just personal lines and farmers did. And my dad was also needing some more production, so I joined the firm. And you know, it's not easy working with family. I think a lot of people that do work with family understand that that's a special gift, but it's been a lot good, great run. He retired probably about 10 plus years ago. And you know, thanks to Mike and UPP and others, over the years I've built what I consider.

Just a side note, what I built from an employee standpoint is not something that they're going to tell their friends. They work for an insurance brokerage. We provide a lifestyle is what I tell applicants when they apply. I'm paying you to do a job for whatever is important to you. I'm down to only Three employees. One point you had seven. I don't want to manage people, but when I interview them, two of my employees, for example, don't have kids. It's their dogs that are most their pets. One employee has a grown son. Well, your time here is paying that lifestyle of what you want to do and how you want to live it. Whether it's like I wanted to be there for the play, the little league game, whatever it might be. My youngest son, who is now in his late 20s, is in New York trying to follow his passion. He was a musical theater kid. Well, we were able to go to every play he had, not just at night, but during the day. So that was a big important to me and that's how I built the business. And I think that's what's great with entrepreneurs and especially in this industry is we can tailor it to whatever we want. There were a lot of late nights I worked after the kids when they were little, went to bed. But I was able to be there for the important things. So thanks Mike, for that reminiscent down memory lane.

Absolutely. And that's why we're entrepreneurs, because we have that time. Not only time, freedom, when we can get to the point when we earn it, but through all of that we also have the time flexibility to be able to do the important things and also get everything done that needs to get done. So you started in your career, you know, on the captive side and then you, you went over to independent at some point. But I'm going to jump into niches in just a second. But I want to set, you know, a visual picture, if you will. How many years was it from the time you started an insurance until that light bulb went on? Wait a minute. Niches. And I know there's always circumstance that happens which leads to that light bulb moment or that aha moment for you. So roughly how many years was it?

Well, I'll just give you that. So I did end up, I did the direct writer, the farmer side for just over a year. And when I was going to quit my full time job, that's when I realized no, that's not for me. So I started with my father. And I started with my father. It was probably six to eight years before I. Well, even when I started with my father, my first niche was fire protection, fire sprinkler and fire extinguisher contractors. That's the industry I was in prior to becoming into the brokerage. So that was an easy segue. I hadn't knew a bunch of people in that industry and we got to be pretty good at it. At one point we were 60% of the market in California, which was phenomenal. But it was very labor intensive. But around that time I was in a marketing group and the term niches to riches and I really light bulb went off at that point and that was probably, I'd say eight years into my career, so.

So you cut your teeth for seven, eight years, you know, trying to find your way, learning how to do things, setting up the right excellent people, world class processes. But you were just trying to find your way to figure out what am I going to really with both feet in jumping in the water, promote the heck out of it too. And after that seven or eight years you found niches.

Correct. And I think part of this is, we talked a little bit about this is cutting your teeth and learning from your experiences. They're not negatives, they're experiences or they're not losses. When I first started, anybody had a pulse, was a prospective client and I would try and write everybody in anything. Well, simple thing, I don't need to be a bill collector. I learned you learn all these different lessons over those years of experience. And then once I made the decision to really focus on niches and it took a few years to get into the right one and I'm a big proponent in don't try and do four or five niches at once. Do one, do it well and then sub niche within. But once you start to do that, you start to realize what, what's the most important processes to be able to make it as efficient as possible. As a generalist, I'm not knocking generalists. There's some generalists I know that are very successful but you're doing 30 different things. If you just do one thing or one process over and over, you get it down. I tell people not to brag, but in three questions I can have you a proposal in my niche. So that's because it's been decades to get to that point. So that's kind of where we're at.

Well, not only that, you're an expert list cleaner and creator, so.

Well, I don't want to go deep.

In the list right now, but go ahead.

I'm just going to make a point. The success of my niche has probably been 80 to 90% is the list. So that's all I'm saying.

Yeah. I don't know if you're willing to share this or not, but you have invested and it's a mindset, not spend invested significant money in a custom list. For your niche, which, the one that I'm thinking about is the landlord niche.

Well, we're going to circle back in.

Just a minute to the beginning, but.

Yeah, landlord niche itself. Yes, but I've also sub niched in that over the years and ironically in the current market we're in now, one of those sub niches is no longer. But back in its heyday There was about 70,000 prospects in the state and it cost me 70 grand to buy. That list wasn't day one. It took me a while to get into that niche. But that niche, multiples and multiples of that 70 grand is what we made off of it. So you know, don't be foolish not telling you go out and spend 70 grand day one. But if you start to get traction on something, you've got to invest, you've got to, got to spend money to make money, but you've got to invest.

Wisely 100% and, and you did your. Well, we'll just say marketplace research and experience, gaining wisdom in the niche, etc. Etc. Which led up to the point where yes, this is a good idea because I now know this niche well enough to be able to do so you created your own custom raider within your agency. All other three questions, but let's help everybody else concerning this because I, I believe that we already knew each other way back when when we learned this strategy. Disqualification. That's absolutely critical, is it not correct?

You and I probably met each other 20 plus years ago, Mike. But it's exactly. I'll give you not getting too much in the weeds. So my habitational list is primarily apartments, but that apartment can be two or three units and up. But for three units and up in California there's a quarter of a million buildings, right? Of that quarter of a million, I have that entire list. Well, less than half of it is all I market to because I've disqualified all of the others. Most everybody's written in a landlord policy. So whether it's age of construction, whether it's the ownership, it's an entity you're never going to insure, etc. Etc, etc. So when I do my marketing, it costs me almost a buck or prospect to market well by disqualifying 150,000 prospects out of that quarter of a million list, you can see the math. So you're, it's, it's key and you don't want to spin your wheels on it 100%.

So you, you got it, you have it so dialed in, but you've got to go through the process to be able to get there. So let's just finish on niches with this.

So fire sprinkler systems and apartment landlords transformed your agency. You started with fire sprinkler with contractors, which you had a significant amount in your book, and then apartment landlords. I'm going to circle back on something else in a minute. Walk us through, I mean, the short version of identifying and executing these niches. And what advice would you give to other independent insurance agents to achieve similar growth? And I'm going to see the first thing that I want you to say because I mean, when I think about this, you are somebody who said it over and over and over again for a lot of years. Where should they start to look, Russ?

In their own. We call it acre of diamonds, but they're business. The way I found the. There you go. The way I found the fire sprinkler and extinguisher contractors. That was the industry, that was an easy one. And I found a company that would do it. The reason I really don't market that anymore is it's way too labor intensive. Commissions aren't enough, contingencies, etc. Etc. So it's just working smarter, not harder. The way I found landlords, everybody, I think almost every agency has some landlords. Well, I found it by one testing, but there's probably 100 different criteria. The key ones I look at first are you have to have a passion for it. A good example is my father tried to start or did start a niche that was doing law firms. I'm sorry, I don't want to write law firms for a number of reasons I won't get into, but I had to have a passion and consequently I now am a landlord. But that was an easy. That was a good one to get into. Secondly, is there enough revenue, not premium, you don't. You can't spend premium, but revenue per account to make it worthwhile. So it could be the whole package. In my case, a lot of times it's monoline. You know, it's one per building. But what I've found over the years is most landlords don't own one apartment. They own many. By being a niche player, one of my biggest aha moments, I've got my script down where it's, you know, off top my head, but the very last thing I say, and what else do you own? Yes, they're calling about one building, but now they start to tell me about all the others. They might not want to talk about him yet or Maybe they do. But don't just react to what they're giving you on the phone. Ask about other things. So revenue per, per account, the other is then starting to find a good list. As I said, 89% is the list but it's also how much, how well you scrub it and what information is available. For example, my what I consider the granddaddy of all this is a place called Info usa. But I don't go to infousa because they don't give me enough information. The list brokers that I use are real estate list brokers that I found totally outside our industry. And then depending on what you're trying to get, I tell everybody, if you find a good list purse, company person association, whatever it might be, try and get everything they've got as long as there's no extra expense to it. You'll be surprised at some of the information that they have. A great example is number of employees in the company. If it's a commercial niche, well, that's an easy segue to go. Is a one person shop make enough money for you or do you need so many employees to trigger something else? So basically the list and then we can go on and on. There's lots of promotions and marketing, etc. But that's probably the very first. And then test and be able to walk away. Everything that you learn in marketing, what I learned in the beginning with contractors or fire sprinkler and extinguishers is transferable 90% of it. To the next niche. To the next niche. But you've got to look at it and make it do a good job. Don't just get one or two and say it's not working. But. And you've got to be consistent. It didn't, I didn't come into the habitational right off the bat and it hit a home run or a grand slam. It took some time and consistently working it 100%.

He just dropped a whole bunch of gold nuggets with that analogy. Thank you Russ for that. But you know, my own property, he is one of them. So he can share the example, what's going on in his world with his own properties to his prospects.

But I will say one thing.

Yeah, go ahead.

Just because you're doing a niche. My father in law firms, he doesn't have to be an attorney, but you also get to speak their language, you know, inhabitational. Those that have a big portfolio, they refer to it as doors, not units, not, you know, apartments. So depending on the niche, that's a, that's an added plus.

Right. And you created your own sub brand. And we're not going to get into the weeds on this one either, but this is a fun story. So Russ, because he became such an expert, created his own sub brand. Was it seven doors?

Seven doors or more? Which basically was. It's not around anymore because the way the market's gone. But it was. Anybody that owns seven rental properties, non owner occupied, you know, rental houses, duplexes, what have you, seven units total. And it would be written on a bop. We're in insurance terms. And it could also, if it's. If it's available, if it fit right, be on one policy. But I use that as my marketing. And what I. Where you're going with this? Mike is my premier company that had this. My rep came in and said he's got agents that are wondering what deal insurance by Castle has that they don't. And it wasn't. It was just I was marketing to it and, you know, I did the list, etc. And then fast forward when they started promoting it, because I was getting so much traction, I went to one of their dog and pony, you know, road shows, and they were calling it the seven doors or more. And why Mike's got a grin on his face is I called the vice president who obviously I know and said, excuse me, but that's been trademarked for me. You don't need. You can't call it that. That's my proprietary name. So it was kind of a ha ha. No one ever really that I know of took off with it, but I did. And it was very, very probably the. The most successful sub niche rather than the big umbrella, you know, apartment one.

So well. And I'm just gonna drop this. And I don't know that it's really out of bounds anymore. Anyway, Russ had leverage to command a higher new and renewal commission because of that play right there than anybody else in the marketplace. So come up with something that's unique, uniquely your own, that was a marketing brand and nothing else. Russ, where did you come up with that?

It was in their underwriting manual that basically the carrier said anything that has set if, if, if a portfolio. Let's use the example, best example of rental houses.

Yeah.

They would write up to six dwelling fires, single policies in personal lines. And if they had seven or more had to go to commercial.

All right, so you're in the underwriting manual one day and you go, oh, seven or more. Seven doors, Boom.

And I will say, when I first bought that first list with different vendors. It was 2000. It got up to almost, I think it was 80 something thousand. There's 80 something entities, 80,000 plus entities in California that own seven mostly single families but rentals or more which is just mind boggling.

Right. And so a reminder for everybody as well. Ideal client avatar, absolutely critical and be disciplined to disqualify. And I hope you caught this. I'm going to repeat it just in case you didn't. Russ got so good at this. He learned to ask the question when he's on the phone with the people after they finally contacted him. Even after 5, 6, 7 years when they call and say Russ, you, you say this so well. You had been marketing to them. Marketing them, marketing them. They call up.

I do a ton of direct mail.

Yeah, right.

It's I've tested over the years and it's a golden rod trifold. You know, it's folded in third or.

That niche for that niche.

It calls it out all the like I say I can get into the weeds but I will have a lot of times where either it's a phone call or even an email. Sometimes I don't even talk to the question clients but they'll say I've been getting your fill in the blank junk mail marketing piece, whatever you want to call it for years. And this is why I say consistency. And now I'm calling you or I'm emailing you or what have you. And I'm like I and I don't say this to them but I'm thinking as long as you reached your raised your hand, I'm good with it because the marketing's working.

So that's right, 100%. And so then he gets them on the phone because he's.

Pre qualified them, pre dispositioned them is what I call it to be a buyer. And then he says what else do you own? The better the question, the better the result. So great job. Great job. Exploded your particular niche. Russ. I just want to touch on one more thing and then we'll begin to wrap. But the next topic is giving back and legacy. So you built your independent insurance agency through a lot of these things. By the way, one other little item. Russ, because of his generosity in giving back has also been a faculty member if I'm not mistaken, three times for our million dollar sales producer training program for independent insurance agents and our niches to riches. Right, Correct. Right. So thank you for that. So Russ has also been out there giving back through teaching and educating agents and in this realm, which is, you know, all of that.

Information and faculty information is, you know, part of our program at upp. But Russ, you've always had a heart and you've always expressed a passion for helping other agencies succeed. That was just one example. Why is giving back important to you and how has it influenced the way that you continue to give back? And now you or prosperous and can have an even higher level. Why is that important once you start, shall we say, becoming successful?

Well, the golden rule, do unto others. That's the top of everything. Most everything I do, if not all. The second is when I started helping others, primarily in presenting, it wasn't more of a one on one, one on ones I don't mind at all. I enjoy doing it. But the presenting, I probably learned as much, if not more by getting prepared for that presentation than I did before. And I knew a lot of it, but I did a lot more fact finding, etc. And much like I said earlier on my philosophy and what my employees, what their paycheck is going towards, that's the same here. I've said this, and I'll make it short, Mike, but a lot of people think, okay, today, what do I want when I die? My obituary? My epitaph, whatever to say. And in mine in particular, I don't want to say anything about me being an insurance broker. I want to know that I help family, friends, others. That's what I'm my, the root of what I do. That's why I get back in UPP and helping others as much as I can. You know, others help me. I didn't do this on my own. They helped me get there. And I tried doing that in my community as well. And, and that's whenever I decide to retire. That's probably what I'll be doing till the I give my last breath. Just because I enjoy doing it, I'm able to pick and choose what and how I want to do it. And I've done that even while I'm running the business outside of the business, volunteering, etc. So that's just in my DNA. And this, this industry and people like you, Mike, that have helped me over the years have been a big part in getting it to where it is today. So thank you again.

No, thank you. And I know you give in significant ways in your local communities through things that are close to your heart, your church organizations, things attached to that and so many other causes. So thank you. And, and I know your family is vitally, vitally important to you. You recently, you've coined it in some way Mary's milestone. So just got back from Mary's milestone, Russ, without going into the weeds. I know we've said that multiple times, but everybody out there, Russ and I could probably go on for a couple of hours on a lot of these topics and. And we just want to give you the, the meat and the gold nuggets. But you recently went on a Mary's milestone trip to celebrate not only your brides so significant birthday, but you took your kids. Where did you go and how many days was it?

Well, it was supposed to be 18, but thanks to some delays and flights, on the way home was almost. It was 20. I have two sons, a 28 and a 31 year old. And we took them and we've been planning it for about a year. We went to Munich for Oktoberfest, Austria, Florence, Italy and Cartona, which if you ever seen the movie under the Tuscan sun, that's what was filmed. We had a villa there for a week. And it was just as having adult sons, you never know how many more family trips and hopefully there'll be many, many more. But they're starting to be to the point of their significant others, which I'm all for. But having it just be the four of us was a lot different than having one of my sons with their significant other and them being a two and the rest of us being a three. And it was. My wife was just ecstatic. The kids were ecstatic.

Not saying that because we paid for it all, but both, both of my sons, I didn't have to lift a finger on doing any cooking when we were anywhere. We were doing our own meals, which I don't mind. But at the same point, hey, this is. Mom and dad paid for this. So that was their way of giving back. And it was, it was. We came back with something like almost 2,000 pictures and just great stories, great events. It'll be something we'll remember forever.

So 100%. Well, that's good for you, Russ, because I know sometimes your beverage glasses have a hole in the bottom and so you always need somebody to help you out there. And if anybody knows Russ well, they know exactly what I'm talking about. So, Russ Castle, that's where I've learned.

A lot of my knowledge is from either meals together with, you know, fellow agents or afterwards enjoying an adult beverage or two.

Right. And that's where sometimes the greatest ideas come from. See everybody, just one great idea and then what, Russ?

Take action.

Take action. That's right. Nothing will happen if you don't Take action, implement, execute, Take action. But get that idea and take action. And we just got done with a significant annual event in UPP. Super fortunate Andrea White, Joel McKinley and myself. The next morning before we left, we spent probably almost two hours debriefing, making sure that we're getting every detail down so we can continue to grow on that. And the ideas were just flowing at that point. So take action on the ideas. Mr. Russ Castle, thank you very much.

Thanks, buddy.

Thank you for continually giving. We are grateful. Thank you for sharing with everybody. And just so everybody has a quick visual, let me just go ahead and.

Do this real quick as you're doing this. Always here to help, buddy.

So yeah, no, there's Mr. Russ Castle on the COVID of Rough Notes. California agency improves return on investment or ROI with niche focus. Russ spilled the beans. I'm sure you can look it up online. And let me just share this before we wrap up today. Thank you and welcome. If this is your first time on the podcast, welcome. My name is Mike Stomso. I'm widely recognized as a leading author, speaker and coach for the independent insurance agency industry. You can learn more about myself and what we do to support agents to help them grow their business, create wealth and have more freedom at our website upplife.com upp L I F like Frank elikedward.com check it out. There we share some of the details of our journey over almost almost 40 years with a license now of helping independent insurance agents explode their businesses and grow, create wealth and have more freedom. Everything that we do is designed specifically for that. And if you got great value out of today's podcast, please go to unstoppable profit podcast.com that's unstoppable. Profitpodcast.com and go to the top. Make sure you click subscribe so you don't miss one valuable episode. In addition to that, if you got great value, please forward Unstoppable Profit Podcast to anybody that you know and care about, another agent, even another business calling. Because business principles are business principles and share all that with them. Of course, we're out there on all the channels including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, stitcher, Amazon, our YouTube channel, and more Unstoppable Profit Podcast. So thank you. Thank for allowing us to share information which will help you if you take action. Thank you for joining us. Until the next episode, hang tight, Russ. Thank you very much, sir.

Thanks, buddy. Always a pleasure. Always here to help.

My pleasure. Remember, everybody, implement, execute and take action. Nothing's going to happen until you do that. And what's going to happen. In addition to you growing, creating wealth and having more freedom, you will be unstoppable. I will see you in the next episode.

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