Episode 298: Smart Agents, Smarter Back Office with Chris Paradiso

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 everyone. I am so excited that you get to experience this podcast with the one, the only, Mr. Chris Paradiso, nationally recognized, award winning, incredible independent insurance agency. And we take a deep dive into technology, automation, AI and everything going on in his agency. However, we were both so excited about the podcast, I neglected to let you know and how to get the information. So I've got it here for you right now and it's on your screen. If you're watching this, send an email to VIP@upplife.com VIP, Very Important Person. That's you@upplife.com make sure you put the subject line A I agent, AI agent. That'll be the prompt for our system to kick you back the information on the technology that Chris continues to refer to in this podcast. And one more thing. We have our end of the year Mastermind, our grand Mastermind session coming up in Phoenix, Arizona in November. November 6th, 7th and 8th. Don't miss it. For all the details, just go to your uppmastermind.com you'll learn all about the incredible opportunity that's there for you. I look forward to seeing you there. Bring a guest or two and let's grow together now. Enjoy the podcast. Greetings, everybody. Welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. I am grateful and thankful that I was able to corral our guest today. Very elusive he is. He's either running before dawn in the morning or on an airplane somewhere helping agents or growing his own nationally recognized agency. Chris Paradiso, welcome back to the podcast.

Thanks for having me back.

Hey, you've earned the right. And I want to dive into something that a lot of people are talking about, but you're not only talking about it, you're doing it in your own independent insurance agency. And, and I want to give everybody a visual to start with. Chris and I thought this would be a good way to launch the combo. Okay, so if you're listening to this, visualize with me for just a moment this platform or this framework. Okay, if you're driving, keep your hands at 10, 9 and 3 or 10 and 2, but visualize this with me for a minute. An activity starts in your agency business, whether it be sales or service. Okay, what is the first step? And some of the more progressive, proactive, growing independent insurance agencies. This is how they're thinking about starting that activity. It starts with AI and automation. And if AI and automation can't figure it out, it gets passed to a processor. And if the processor can't complete the activity properly, per agency standards, then and only then does it go to a licensed insurance professional. AI and automation next to a processor, then to a licensed insurance professional. Chris, based on the look on your face, you understand what I'm talking about?

I do.

What's your thoughts on that?

I think there's a big step that's being allowed that AI fills tremendously. I think RoughNotes did a great job, but I think with the evolution of technology and where people are going and the industry, AI is really there fulfilling what roughnotes created, which they had created a questionnaire for all risks. Think about this. How many agents get a risk? Unless if you're a niche. Right. Niche marketer, and you focus on that same industry day in and day out, which I have teammates. That's all they do. But I also have a bunch of generalists. Those generalists get drilled from everything from contractors to technology to restaurants, all across the board. Well, AI today gives us a questionnaire because unfortunately, in our generalist division, they don't have all the answers. And more now than ever, there is more and more questions more than ever before. So that's where AI starts. So I know where you were diving into, but I wanted to back up even a little bit farther when we get into once. Now we take a questionnaire in what. What's. What are the next steps? What are we doing, how are we using AI? All the little steps that go on from there. But I just wanted to take a step back really quick, Mike, and say one of the biggest things AI is doing that we're utilizing is not only is it building questionnaires, we're utilizing it to help and assist us in emails. So once we start working on that questionnaire, let's just say we now communicate with a carrier, and a carrier now comes back and asks for additional information. We're actually using AI to help us explain what we need and why we need it, because that. Why plays a role in the process and the experience a prospect has with our agency. Because, as you know, with all these questions, you answer them, and now a prospect says they're coming back with more questions. Why? We want to make sure and answer the why with it. We're actually utilizing AI to not only ask the question, but to write the whole email for us. And we actually ask it to write it in the eighth grade level. Because the one thing that I definitely learned from my father, even though he was a, a lawyer, he said, chris, I hear you talking with some clients, you got to dumb it down a little bit because you're, you're an insurance nerd. Right? You're talking insurance verbiage. And that is absolutely critical. And not saying that people are dumb in any which manner, but once you get into, you know, hey, in H05. Well, do you think people really know what an HO5? I hate to tell you, a lot of licensed people can't explain what an HO5. If they can, they explain it at such a high level that they don't really understand it.

Right. So 100%, it's back to exclusions.

So there are exclusions and.

Exactly. So. But yeah, so I'm, I agree 100% of that with 100% in that we have to bring it down to their level. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, insurance is a mystery. And that's why people hire an independent insurance agent that they know. I like to say love and trust. We need to build that relationship first. So how can we use all this to build the relationship, to deepen the relationship. We earn the right to be trusted. Right?

Sure.

So I want to get. Go ahead.

I actually, before you go on, and I apologize for interrupting you, but one of the things that AI has done for us, and I'm going to keep probably saying, you're going to say, Jesus, if it's bigger, it's bigger. It's big. It's. How about the ability to take their existing policy, plop it into AI and then have it dissected versus what you're actually quoting and it's going to dissect it in a carrier that you might not even know you don't represent. It is absolutely amazing what AI can do. Not to take jobs, but to help our team do a better job. Our licensed agents can become better agents because of AI and that's what I caution people. It's not here to replace people. I'm not here to dwindle my people down to in half. That's not what I'm here. How do I help give them an arsenal to do a better job so that we can dissect what they have. And by the way, dissecting what they have. We're humans, we make mistakes. AI is much more accurate than we are. So the amount that it's actually reading, dissecting, and spitting back to us, it's remarkable on things that we've missed that the AI picks up and it opens the door to opportunities because we tell prospects on a daily basis that, hey, did you know you don't have this? And this is the reason why you need.

Takes the emotion out of it.

It does. But I also think it does a tremendous thing. You brought up the T word trust.

Yeah.

So I do feel it plays a huge role in trust because guys like me who have massive adhd, just in case I have to tell the people, Mike, you know that you stay.

I do.

Most people like Patty, Lars, and all the other people, Daniel Song. And they all know that.

And we still love you.

Yeah. But the AI seems to give me my father's patience.

Yeah, well. And I must pause for just a moment. It is this week that we honor Mr. Joe Paradiso. Three years, but it's just like it was yesterday. And we're so thankful and grateful for his contribution to all of our lives. So in his honor, this podcast.

Appreciate that.

Back to the matter at hand, Chris. So, helping agents. Let's help some more agents. You're talking a lot about, you know, what I can do. How can it enhance and support insurance professionals and team members and what they're doing to serve the people in the marketplace? So we talked a lot about, you know, what it can do and all this, and it's doing this. But, you know, let's talk about some hows. Okay. How is it doing it? I mean, there's lots of tools out there. What are some tools that you're using or that you're aware of that people should be thinking about and support via AI?

Well, we use a tool called the intelligent agent. And you know, the one thing that I just want to grasp when I say the intelligent agent? The intelligent agent is kind of deceiving because I gave you some things that an agent can do. But let's back up. The intelligent agent also plays a vital role inside of our marketing department. Why, you might ask. Number one, when we go to the intelligent agent, we ask it to assist us in creating email templates. If you have a CRM tool and you're creating email templates, what a great way to be able to say to the intelligent agent, hey, I would like prospecting to roofers who only do commercial flat roofs, and I'd like three touch points. Can you please give that to me? What does it do? It Creates three email templates. Obviously you can plop your own pictures in there and they are rare in the go in a matter of maybe a minute. So that's marketing. It doesn't stop it there at marketing we then utilize, we no longer utilize fiverr and going out and looking for bloggers, we actually use the AI. So we take our old blogs, we upload them. Because inside of the Intelligent Agent you're probably going to say careful with what you're uploading. No, I would say yes in most cases. But with the Intelligent Agent it's closed. Which means not only is it closed, it's not public like some other chat GPT platforms. It's closed and it's closed and maintained by our agency. What that means is, is if I upload a policy, it is not if you, if you go to chat GPT the public one, not the paid one, it's going to go out to the Internet world, which I can tell you agents do because I've gone in there and I told deck pages that other agents have uploaded which please be careful of that. So that closed is absolutely critical to us. So we'll take and upload our blog even though our blogs are public. You can see all of our blogs and we'll ask it to rewrite it. So it's rewriting our blogs as we speak every three a week is what we, we have it rewrite. So marketing, when we say intelligent agent we think of agent. Agent. Agent. Right. That's where, that's where I would tell you it's not fair. It's more than intelligent agent. We've also utilized it for some of our marketing budgets. So we will give it some details like how many clients we have, personal lines, what's how much premium we have and we will ask it to dissect and give us a marketing budget. It will actually create a marketing budget for the agency which is fascinating.

That is fascinating.

So that is on the marketing aspect but in some of that that's actually at the agency owner level. Right. When we want to dissect marketing budget it doesn't stop there, it goes on to dissect other areas. For example sales, hard market. Can you help us with hard market conversations? It actually has sale techniques and things in there that are built in a PDF and there's about 300 videos. I believe we are utilizing some of that. We still outsource, we still hire. But the intelligent agent is probably become our number one piece of technology next next to obviously our management system which plays a huge role in errors and emissions. The Intelligent Agent is by far probably the most powerful tool we're utilizing inside of our agency, Mike.

You're using it for guidance and making it your own. And I heard that late last year and I love that thought process concerning any AI, any technology. We're using it for guidance and then making it our own and how we output to, you know, the prospect, the client or the consumer marketplace, whatever that might be, that's fantastic. So the Intelligent agent, if you want to learn more about the Intelligent Agent, because I also access the Intelligent Agent, drop an email to VIP life.com VIP life.com we'll get you some information on how you can access the Intelligent Agent at a proprietary level. So great stuff, Chris. So, you know, you are making sure that your insurance agency business, you just talking about budget, you know, the P and L is your ultimate scoreboard, right? So you're making sure that you are as efficient as possible and serving your marketplaces with speed. Because in today's marketplace it's absolutely necessary that you're aware of that and cognizant of that because if you're not, you're going to get left behind.

Speed plays a huge role in your closing ratio.

Okay, tell us more.

Well, at the end of the day, if you look at how society is today versus even 10 years ago, some of us. I got some gray hair. I've been in the industry now sometime it's amazing how people want it and want it now. For example, had an email back on Friday and the email came back, hey Chris, you know, we've been a longtime client of yours. We've recently got a quote. We, we went to a direct writer. They quoted us this. I said, great. So I took that and I were like, they quoted an H03, they're on an 805. I went to the Intelligent Agent. I said, can you please explain the difference between an H03 and an H05 and why my client who has an H05. And I listed how many cars, how many kid drivers, size of the house, I listed details on it and it actually crafted me the email. And I did ask it to write it at the 8th grade level so that it could really be understood. And it was amazing. And the client responded back on Saturday, hey Chris, thanks for getting back to me. I figured there was probably some differences between the quotes. I didn't realize the difference differences between the two. For $262, I am much better served with you and the carrier. You have me with versus quoting this out. Thank you Very much for getting back to me in detail. Now, this is a specific client who likes emails and texts. So we had that system and understood that in the management system. So otherwise I would like to pick up the phone. But we more and more clients we have today want text or emails because we're living in a very busy world today or we think we're busy. And what better way to use AI to be able to explain it to a T and be able to just lob a softball to this client of ours that she could read on her own time and respond to me on her own time?

Well, even if they do like phone.

It'S just one of many. On Friday, we also had. Hey, Chris, I wanted to reach out to you. Stephanie from your team recommended me an EPLI policy. I'm still not sold on it. Can you just give me a few bullet points? You know what I did? I went to the intelligent agent and said, hey, restaurant owner, can you give me why this restaurant? I explained the restaurant in there. They need pli. And can you also give me court cases in Connecticut? You know what it did?

Boom.

It wrote the email and gave court cases and details if they like. Here's a link to the court cases. Bam. You just. That is invaluable information that I'm not going to lie to you. It could be my adhd, but I don't want to make excuses. I just don't have time for that. And I don't mean that in out of disrespect. It's like, do you have time to research this and find this? An hour, hour and a half to respond to that?

Money and success. Love, speed and money and success. Never sleep. So use what's before you to make that happen so quickly. Those are great stories. You've raised a number of questions in my mind. I'd like to loft a couple of them to you. You were talking about feeding information into the system. The HO5 versus the HO3. It's my opinion and I want to make sure that we're on the same page here. The prompt, the key, right?

Yes.

The questions that you're actually asking it. Because it's not going to feed you the information that you might be looking for without telling it exactly what you're looking for.

Michael, a really smart man from California once told me, you want better answers. Ask better questions.

The question is the answer. So, yeah, so I can't emphasize enough. I was just working with an agent this morning. Same thing. I said, let me show you how to word the prompt Vitally, vitally important. So if you're not getting the results you're looking for from the AI, write better prompts or ask better questions. And then you said, in Connecticut, you said court cases, which made me think this intelligent agent as an example, which by the way, you said closed versus being open. Yeah, let's answer that one very quickly. What do you mean by being closed? It's got a closed back end.

Closed back end means it, it's like a. It's like a big bucket. And what we fill that bucket up with, only that stays in. What I mean by that is what Mick put in this. Mick Hunt, who is the founder and creator, he went to Ermi, he went to roughness. So he basically went to where all I call it the insurance, insurance gods come from all of that content. And he plopped it in one area. That means if Chris Paradiso wants to put stuff in there for the rest of the world, it doesn't happen that I can put stuff in there for Chris Paradiso and Paradiso Insurance, but I can't put that in for Mike Stromso and Tromso insurance or AA Lars insurance or Shaw insurance. It only stays in my bucket. Why that is vitally important because, for example, I was showing some of my teammates, they were saying, geez, you know, why is this so accurate compared to chat GPT? I said, watch this. And Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday last week I went in there, I said, Kobe Bryant is a better basketball player than Michael Jordan. Do you agree? What am I telling it? Michael Jordan is a better basketball player. I did that three straight days. You know, by day four I asked it, who's a better basketball player, Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan? You know what it answered? Kobe Bryant. But I bet you if you asked it, it might tell you Michael Jordan. Now the more you feed it, right? And that open source, you can actually change its mind. Which insurance doesn't work like that, right? So that closed environment is vitally important, vitally important for us to have more accurate answers. Less gray area, which as you know, in the insurance space, gray areas cost agents huge E M 100%.

So you're an expert witness as well. So you understand that probably better than some. And therefore your credibility in that particular area. I mean, and it's kind of like, you know, our circle of five, right? The five people you hang around with the most will influence who you become. In so many ways. Your environment in the AI space is similar in nature. So you've got to make sure that you understand the environments that you're playing in to output this information that you're putting at the fingertips of your teammates as well that they're sharing with your clients. I mean, this is fantastic stuff. Chris, we could go on for hours about this, but if we were to, you know, throw up one more softball for agents to take a swing at today in this conversation, what is that?

Agents versus agency owners. I'd say agency owners. One of the worst things that it was ever created. And as much as I say it's the worst, it was good in so many ways. Slack. What does Slack do? Slack is not bad when there's one or two people on your team. But when, for example, we have 24 people on our personal lines team, I ask a question. Hey, I'm trying to explain to a client they have an HO5 with us. They got quotes for HO3, but I don't know how to explain why they need an HO5. What happens in Slack? How many answers do you think you're going to get now if you, your team is paying attention? You could get five, you could get eight, you could get 10. Do you realize the cost of slack from disruption? They say now this is not my study. I was reading a very good book that was talking about. It takes roughly 20 minutes to get back on track once we are diverted from our attention. What is Slack doing? It's diverting people. Not only diverting people, then you got it. Read each answer. Where the intelligent agent we, we do not use Slack. We don't want to use slack. Why? Because if they're going to ask that question, they should ask the intelligent agent. And the intelligent agent is going to keep them where it's just the intelligent agent and, and our, in our agent. It's not going to divert the other 20 something people with that one question. So I would say to you at the top level from an agency owner stance that is instrumental, how much money that can save you? It's a lot. But I would also say the frustration level of agents having to ask questions and then dissect 15, 10, 12, 13 different answers. There's frustration there too. I love the fact that my team really appreciates that we have not only removed all the distractions, but we've also allowed them to remove some frustration. So I actually think that is a softball. Saves a ton of money for the agency and it builds a better culture. Anything we can do to help better the experience where people want to come to work, enjoy work, they're already getting creamed with, you know, 18, 20, 25, percent increases and people are calling up and they're not happy, so. Absolutely. And I don't know if that's a big enough softball for you, but that's a huge softball.

I mean, you know, back in the day, because it came very common, even on our own independent insurance agency with, you know, 20 plus people. Well, you know, I can't get a hold of the underwriter. I need an answer. What do you think I should do? I mean, it's going around the horn, interrupting people. I agree. It takes 11 to 20 minutes to get back to the same focus point you were. When you get interrupted and you know, it interrupts the whole flow of the organization. Well, you know, my thing was because I started from scratch, it was me and me alone, I had no choice but to call the underwriter. Yeah, but nowadays because of the underwriting groups, nobody answers the phone. What do you do? That's where the intelligent agent as an example. So get rid of the round robin and interruptions and have a singular source that you put in the fingertips of your team leadership and training. Lead them as to why this serves the customer better. Train them on how to use it for their own benefit. So 24 7, 365, they're operating on the fly. I hope that supports what you just said. Did I miss anything, Chris?

No. The only other thing I would add is middle to larger market, which we serve quite a bit. The number one thing, our producers are looking for supplemental applications, standard supplemental applications where they're out with a prospect or, or, you know, you know, head hunting. What easier way to be able to pull those? And the intelligent agent has come through for us and you know, wow. Any way we can make it easier to write more business service? More business AI is here, man. And it's only going to get better.

Yeah, I'm up. Your time is so valuable, Chris. Thank you. Do you have one more second? One more minute?

Of course I do.

Okay. So I just want to add this. This is so vitally important. For instance, the intelligent agent, the closed back end. All of this is only as good as the information that was fed into the system for you to access. So I heard you mention the intelligent agent has access to data from rough notes. 146 years. Correct court cases.

Also monster amount of court cases which are instrumental to, you know, why our clients are asking for EPLI and cyber liability. Because we're. We propose it on every single. Why do I. Very common. After we do it the next day. Hey, can you. Can you help me understand why I Need eplra, Cyber Liability. We actually go, as we call it, to the Honeywell every single time. And the Intelligent agent not only gives us a really great email on why we always say what industry they're in, and it gives examples and it gives correlations, which is invaluable.

All of that rough notes, Ermi. And there's others.

So, so much information in there.

Yeah, I mean, all the industry leading resources are at the back end of the Intelligent Agent as an example. That's just one tool. So, you know, make sure that you understand whatever's feeding you the information, where it's getting the information from, and is it accurate and is it good enough for your customers and to put your own reputation on the line. Chris Paradiso, thank you for sharing. You're supporting our theme for this year, which is to get agency owners and leaders and entire independent insurance agencies up to speed. In the AI automation technology age, there are so many that are getting left behind. There's people out there, this may come as a shock. They're still operating with paper files. Get up to speed. Come on everybody. We want to help you in any way possible. And thank you. Thank you, Chris. And if this is your first time on the podcast, welcome. My name is Mike Stromso. I'm widely recognized as an industry leading author, speaker and coach. And you can learn more about what we do@upplife.com upplife.com and if you want to share this podcast with somebody else who might need to hear this important information generously shared by Chris, just send them the link. Unstoppable Profit podcast.com send them the link. We're out there on all the channels. Spotify, Stitcher, Apple podcast, our YouTube channel and more. They can find the information, share this information with people so they too can get up to speed. And if you would like to learn more about the intelligent agent that Chris mentioned multiple times, send us an email please. VIP life.com we'll send you back some information on that so you too can learn more about how to be leading the pack in today's opportunity filled world. Chris Paradiso, thank you for all you do for the industry. Thank you for the person that you are, your friendship, your guidance. For being on the podcast and sharing this information, it's an honor.

Thank you, my friend.

Thank you, sir. All right everybody. Until the next episode, mindset is your skill set. Implement, execute and take action and design your impossible goals. Because I learned from Irma Bombeck, when I stand before God at the end of my life, I want to be able to say that I've used everything that he's given me. Use everything you've been given. All we want. I know Chris wants the same thing for all of you. We want your full potential. Agree Chris?

Thousand percent, my friend.

All right everybody, have a great day. See you in the next podcast.

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