Episode 55 : Special Guest Russ Castle

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. This podcast will give you all the tools to grow your business and live life on your terms. Millionaire agents and entrepreneurs think and act differently than others. This podcast will give you a simple, proven three step blueprint to grow your business. Over the past 31 years of research in your industry, Mike Stromso has created a unique philosophy called the three people process and production motion. This outside the box thinking and guidance provides agency entrepreneurs just like you the knowledge and tools you can quickly implement to explode your agency business. He has been there, done that, and he's still doing it. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or are 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 Stromso.

Welcome everybody. This is Mike Stromco coming to you live from the Living Agency Laboratory. And we're here for another episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. I am uber pumped, uber excited and uber grateful to have a top performing niche agency on the line today to share with you gold nuggets that you've never heard anywhere else. Thank you, Mr. Russ Castle for bringing with us today. Russ, how you doing?

I'm great, Mike. Thanks for having me.

Hey, fantastic. Thank you for being here. And as you know, we're having a little technological difficulty with the camera. So anybody, if you see my hand, we're just refocusing the camera today and we've been playing with the tech for five minutes and that's about four minutes and 59 seconds too long, would you agree?

Oh, yeah.

Having known you for many years, you're as impatient as I am. So anyway, we want to get right to the crux here. So, Russ, thank you for investing time today to continue to give back to our industry and others outside of our industry. I know that's what you've been doing for years. We're grateful for you. Thank you for investing time today.

Well, back at you, Mike. Thanks for all you do too. You know, like you, I wouldn't be here where I am now without you. So thanks, bud.

Well, you're welcome. Thank you for saying that. So, Russ, to help everybody understand a little bit more about you, give us some details on who you are, where do you live, city, state, a little bit about your agency, family if you wish.

Sure. Third generation agent. I've been doing this. April 15th was my end of my 28th, starting my 29th year. So just coming up to 30. I did do a couple of years before with farmers, so I've actually been in the industry just over 30 years, but an independent broker for 28, almost going on 29.

Family, wife, two kids, two grown kids, both just getting out of college. We live our agency and our home is in Redwood City, part of Silicon Valley. When I took over or when I started working with my father 30 something years ago and he had worked for his father in law prior to that, who started in the 40s, grandpa started in the 40s, dad started in the 60s and I started, you know, as I said, 30 years ago. We were a generalist and probably about 20 years ago started really looking at niches and doing it. And 15, almost 16 years ago, started in the habitational business in California. And that's pretty much what our focus has been exclusively for the last few years. One stop shop to those owners. But if somebody were to call me and did something other than habitational, I'm really not going to write it, I'm going to refer them somewhere else. So all of our marketing and our growth is in habitational. Most recently we were very honored to be Rough Notes agent of the month for March of this year. That was a huge feather in our cap for as a team, not only just me and our revenue, our numbers continue to just blow us away. And it's all attributable to being a niche player, you know, efficiencies, et cetera. So one of the things I learned in Rough Notes that I really wasn't aware of is, you know, where I stand versus other agencies because I'm always, you know, I can do it, everybody can do it. And I was told in Rough Notes that my revenue per employee is about triple of the national average, which just totally blew me away. But it's a, you know, it's a group effort and I attribute that to my team. It's not just me. So thanks for asking, Mike.

Hey, no problem whatsoever. And I will second that and agree with what RoughNote said. I am familiar with the numbers of a lot of agents all over North America and you, my friend, are at the very top of the charts. You're to be highly commended for that. But I also know because of our relationship and what I know about your agency in that it's because of the niches. And at the end of the day, the niches are something that when you're willing to do the work, because as you know.

The only time success comes before work is in the dictionary, right? Yep. Okay.

And you've done the work so.

Relatable to other people that are on here at the stage I am in my career, I always want to help you get back so to relate to other people. I only have three employees and the numbers that we do are commensurate with in my peers. People that have, like I said, three times, four times that many employees. So I'm very proud. We were up to seven at one point, plus me, so eight of us. And I'm glad that we're only. I don't want to manage people. My business is set up that it's fitting what I want to do. And so I've got rock stars in those three ladies, but we're a small office, so don't look at this. If you're hearing this and thinking, well, he's huge, he's doing X, he's doing Y, there's three ladies and me. And when it comes to the habitational niche, it's one lady and me. So anyhow, just trying to give that to put in perspective more to people that are listening.

Yeah, but. And we're going to get to this a little bit later on in the podcast, but you're living life on your own terms and there is a lot of people out there that would give a body part and we won't get specific on that in the podcast today to be able to do what you do. And I hear it from not just my earshot, but a lot of other people within the industry that, no disrespect to us, we're talking behind your back out of deep admiration for what you built. So kudos to you.

I feel honored and blessed and it's because of a lot of people that have helped me. I want to do the same and.

Giving back, so fantastic. So let's talk, let's go back a decade or more and talk about some of the biggest challenges that you had in starting to grow your niche business. I mean, let's take a zoom back in time if you will, literally and share with us the beginning and what you needed to do to really identify the niche. Number one, what were some of the nuts and bolts actions that you took to begin to develop the niche?

Good question. I'm asked this a lot and it's where I share with others how I did it. Not saying it's the foolproof way to do it, but it's how I did it. I looked at what we wrote. You know, again, like I say, when we started, when I started out, it was my dad's agency. I was an Employee. Thank God he, you know, let me come to work for him now he's retired. But at the time it was a generalist. So I really went in and looked and said, okay, what do we write now that I like? Big key. There is. I'm not going to. My dad wrote law firms. I would never write law firms as a niche. He did it successfully, didn't do a ton of brokerages or law firms, but did a few and made a good living at it. I said no. Well, I stumbled across. My first niche was the industry I was in prior to insurance, which was fire sprinkler installers and extinguisher. People learned early on, especially in California, I didn't want to do contractors. I did that for a while, got good penetration as far as market share and eventually after a couple of different trials and errors and different niches, came across apartments. And now I refer to it as a habitational niche because it's not just apartments that I'm writing. I've sub niche from there. But I had to find something that I knew our companies were good at. I ended up getting an appointment from one of my carriers once I started that niche. That was competitive, but then also the numbers worked. Not only did the numbers work for the amount of prospects that were out there that I wanted to market to, but when I write a particular client, I look at that whole client and is there enough revenue? We can't spend premium, we can always spend revenue. Is there enough revenue in that client to make all that marketing effort to get that client on the books worthwhile? And that's how habitational and landlords really got. So you can start it off with.

Yeah, I remember the part of the story is you were actually going out in the beginning yourself and then you had somebody else do it, but you were taking pictures of the prospect's property and you would send them the photo along with a quote and they started buying just like that.

So this was, this was my father Jack's idea early on in one of the marketing pieces. So I spent this is back in 2004, the last three months of the year. I spent every Friday driving. This is before Google Pictures. You know, again, I'm dating myself, but I went out with a digital camera and took a picture of every apartment in my county and then I paid a buddy to do the next county. Well, the flyer was literally, if Mike was on that list, it was a picture of Mike's apartment building with an estimate of what his premium was with that picture. And the picture was the Hook. Well, that only worked for the first few months because as soon as I decided to go statewide, that wasn't feasible. Plus, it was very costly to do it. It was a lot of nights and weekends on my part, but I was willing to do the sweat equity and get that off the ground. And then through the process, it's been a lot of my biggest success for me has been in roi, has been direct mail. I do a lot of associations and referrals and other things, but it's direct mail. But that direct mail has been through, literally, I'd say, close to 100 different iterations. That first flyer was the sweat equity. And then through time and testing, ab testing, we got to where we are today, and we still AB test. You know, what we, what we're doing today probably won't look the same in another year because we continue to try and tweak it and improve it.

Well, for those who don't have the marketing background that you do, Russ, give us 30 seconds on what is an AB test.

So let's take my direct mail piece. And I've got, in my habitational niche, I have different, what I call subsets or micro niches. Apartments. Let's take apartments. I send out a mailing piece, and however it is, whether it's a postcard, whether it's an envelope, whatever it might be you want to do, you want to take your list and you want to have two different groups in that list. So I try and do, at least for a good test, 500 pieces or more. In my case, it's Thousands because there's 128,000 apartment owners in the state. So I'm doing a lot of direct mail. But get it back to the entry level. If you've got a list of, let's say 500, you take 250 in each list and your test might be one simple thing of a headline or a colored ink or the day you put it in the mail. But you can only test one thing at a time to know, okay, in my mailing pieces, I've got my existing envelope, let's say. Well, that I know has gotten certain, over historical data, has gotten certain responses and continues to get certain responses. And I take that mailing group and cut it in half. And then I make one minor tweak, let's say the day of the week. I now have learned Monday for me is, and I do bulk mail is the best day of the week to drop it in the mail. Well, because I've tested. So once I did, let's let's do the number again of 500. I mailed 250 on Monday until 250 on Tuesday. The next time I did a mailing, I did Monday and Wednesday, et cetera. But I'm only testing one change from everything else I'm doing to be able to get that AB differential and know is my A constant going to do the same or less than my B constant and my B pulls better. I know that tweak was. Was improving and moved to that as my constant.

So.

So that's the difference that I look at is between an A and a B test.

That is fantastic data, Russ. Thank you so much for sharing those intricate details. So, you know, there's a lot of talk out there about online versus offline and offline being, you know, direct mail, as you mentioned, telemarketing, that kind of stuff. What percentage of your total marketing investment is direct mail?

Of the investment itself? Again, I like the way you use percentage. Yeah. And not, sorry, there's a fire truck going by. So if you're here.

I like the term investment. It's not an expense. I have a budget that I use and my budget and my investment. As long as I'm getting first year dollar for dollar, I'm happy in some cases. And over the years of doing it, I've actually gone a little bit upside down as long as I could cash flow. But I look at my investment in my marketing budget is going to pay dividends in the renewals. I keep a client at least eight to ten years on average.

So you're looking at lifetime dollar.

I'm good.

But what was your question again, Mike? I'm sorry.

It's all good. It's all good. So what percentage, if we're looking at online marketing, digital marketing, which is big nowadays, versus offline marketing, which is telemarketing, and maybe direct mail, which you were just referring to. Of your total marketing percentage, what percentage is direct mail?

Almost 90%.

90%. So 90% of the dollars that you're putting into marketing to continue to grow your niche is direct mail. Correct.

So that success in it again, it's that testing. Whether it's testing or anything else. And here's an interesting one. And depending on when this airs, we're right now in the middle of a pandemic with the coronavirus. Okay. And today, in the last probably month, I've noticed mail has really slowed down both at work and at home. Well, I'm all in. I normally mail somewhere between 10 and 15,000 pieces. And the last two. Well, this month alone, I'm over 50,000. Well, again, if the numbers continue to work like they have in the past, that means I'm quoting a lot more. That means I'm writing a lot more. And I think the main reason is, Mike, you and I've talked about this a little, is because now people are looking at direct mail. I don't know how it's going to be after the pandemic's over and we get a lot more junk mail or not. But I've one, landlords have a lot more time on their hands, and two, they're actually looking at what's coming in the mail as opposed to getting a big stack of mail. So I see direct mail in my particular niche as a huge benefit. Not saying it works for everybody, but again, it's not testing well.

In addition to that, I mean, they're probably having trouble collecting rents right now, and they're looking to save cost. And so here comes the white knight, as we call it, Russ Castle, who's going to save the day.

Yeah. This particular niche I picked is very price sensitive. I agree. But again, it's the testing and making sure that, you know, you're doing. You are the one standout amongst all the rest of everybody out there.

Yeah. But I will suggest because of your authority, we're gonna get to that. Just a second. It's not all about price, so kudos to you. I just want to make sure everybody heard what you just said. So you normally drop how many pieces per month?

Normally is 12 to 15,000.

12 to 15,000. So you said 12 to 15,000.

So, yeah, 12 to 15,000 pieces per month, my friend. That's. That's a lot. But congratulations. You know your marketing, you know your numbers, you're gauging the roi, you know the lifetime value of your customer friends. For anybody that's listening or watching or both, that is critical information that you should always know with regard to your marketing, Russ. But you say right now because you've identified opportunities in the market, you've not chose to go through this adversity. You've chosen to grow through this adversity. Kudos to you. So you're up to how many pieces per month right now?

This month I'll hit 50.

50,000 pieces because of the opportunity that surfaced. Kudos for you for taking massive action through this opportunity to grow through it. So I, and I don't want to go off on a tangent on this, but I want to make sure that. Because I know something else about something else. You're doing within your agency business because you also handle personalized insurance for your niche customers, if you will. So you also identified that the mailbox is slowed for the personal line side. So you also took advantage of that and started upping the ante there. And what's happening on the ROI there.

It'S through the roof.

In the pandemic, I've definitely identified mail as a source, but I also identified. So when the pandemic first started, I'm hearing from my fellow agents, and I'm in a number of different mastermind or coaching groups, which I'm sure we'll talk about later. But a lot of the personal lines agencies are seeing it's really slow or they're not really, you know, they're not writing the new business they used to. Well, I took it as a. As a test again, to do a direct mail campaign to my existing clients. And primarily the premise was, if we didn't write your home in auto, you got a letter from us. So the letter was, okay, we write your auto, how about your home? Or vice versa. And then most recently, it was the letter to all of our commercial clients. We didn't write personal, which is about 75%. We normally statistically will write 25% of our commercial clients to personal. So it was an easy segue to say, well, if we're writing your apartment business, let's say, what about your home in auto? And to be honest, I had to slow down the mailings because the personal lines department couldn't handle it. So it's been a godsend.

That's a terrible problem to have. And at a time when a lot of people are looking for the next opportunity, you've got so much opportunity, you've got to slow it down. So congratulations for not only doing it, but I will also suggest that you are prepared to do it because of the fact that you started this, you honed your craft, and when that opportunity surfaces, now you're in a position to just take advantage of it, right?

Yes. Correct.

Kudos to you. So let's go back to something that you talked about. I want to talk about two things in the time that we have together today. So through the growth and change of your organization, through becoming a niche player, the mindset of your whole organization is of sales. Is that accurate?

Correct. Yes.

You're a sales organization. And. And that permeates throughout your organization. Talk a little bit about that.

There's a board. I'll screw up the camera. If I move it, that's over to my Left with all the numbers. And it's been that way for years. And similarly, just again, tracking numbers. I tell people a lot now. I want to be. My DNA is to help people in whatever way I can. Giving back, helping. And that's, I think, why most of us are insurance agents. We want to help, but it's more to me. It's gotten to the point where now I'm in a numbers game. I know. And I'm. Let me back up one second. And I'm not saying the 50,000 to impress anybody.

Right.

People that really know me, I could care less what you think of me. I'm just trying to give it so that you can relate to scaling up or scaling back. But when it comes to those 50,000, I know how many out of those 50,000 pieces, what percentage I'm going to get phone calls on, what percentage I'm going to write. And then the ROI on that. And I'm just trying to improve that month over month, year prior or year over year. So when it comes to the rounding of personal lines, the same thing, you know, rounding whether we didn't write all your personal lines or rounding whether we're writing you as a landlord, what about your umbrella, what about your home and auto, your boat, whatever it might be. We, we don't market to other niches or other general, you know, lines, insurance on purpose. But we want to try and be there as much as we can for that one stop shop for that landlord so that we have all their policies. They don't think of anybody else so well.

And you don't want them talking to anybody else.

Exactly. Exactly.

Because if they get in friendly with somebody else, I mean, only takes a piece of paper in today's world called a broker of record. You're done.

Yes, exactly.

You've got, you've got to protect and put a fence, if you will, around your herd, so to speak. So, Russ, I want to make sure I get to another subject. And as you continue to develop your niche, as you've continued to develop your presence in your niche, and I also heard you say a few minutes ago that your entire marketplace, you're in the state of California. Correct?

Correct.

And a very large economy. But where does your license encompass?

The entire state.

The entire state. So you've took it upon yourself, you learned early on in your niche adventures that you are marketing to the entire state.

Well, I'll back up. So when I explained the flyer with the pictures, that was my county, which was, I don't know how many, you know, thousands of apartments that I took pictures of for three months and then I went to the next county and paid a friend of mine who wasn't working to do that. Well, within less than six months of starting the niche, it was obvious that I went statewide. Well, those numbers are so mind boggling because our state is so big that luckily I was fortunate enough after doing it for about a year, maybe two years, that I really stepped back and sliced and diced. So for example, I say I market to the entire state of California. That means to me that's true, but I don't market to the city of San Francisco, the city of Oakland, the county of Orange and the county of LA because the ROI numbers weren't there. So my reason again for helping people that are hearing this is you don't have to go big and go to all 128,000 apartments. I've scrubbed that list back to where I'm only marketing 60,000 of them. That's still a huge number. But why am I going to waste the revenue on non productive area either? Not being competitive, too many prospects, we're not getting enough return whatever it might be. So when you're looking at a niche, you do it to a demographic that's enough to be able to get a good test, but then you can scale up from there. I've helped people over the years that have done this landlord niche in Pennsylvania that are doing it in the surrounding states. Their numbers still aren't what I am in California, but they've scaled it by starting in their county, then going to the state of Pennsylvania and then going to surrounding states. I similarly looked at other states around me. Unfortunately the data is not there to be able to purchase it. To do the western states I'm doing some, but it's more of a portfolio. I'm not really marketing to Washington or Oregon or Arizona, etc. But that doesn't mean that people that are doing other niches can't do that. Where's your, where is your license? It's to the state or it's to multi states. So depending on the success you have in that niche, you can grow it to as much as you want or stay as small as you want. I personally want to do. I have a mantra that I always come back to is less is more. I don't want to have the mike and I refer to this a lot of the shiny object syndrome. I don't want to hear all the different things that are going on in garage keepers or event planning or whatever else the other type of commercial insurances are I'm staying in the habitational area and then I'm going to try and do more that I can in that because I know that market.

Fabulous. And this is all my friends in a fun way say sincerely, the voice of experience, my friends. This is the voice of massive experience as a niche dominating player. So I hope you're taking copious notes on what Russ is sharing. And the good news is you can go back and watch this again and again and again and make sure you don't miss anything because that's my strong suggestion. So Russ, as we kind of move to the end here, wrapping this up, there's another thing that I want to make sure that I get out of you and that's the authority that you've built. So because of your work, because of your sweat equity, as you mentioned, because of the blood, sweat, the tears and everything else that you've poured into building a dominating presence in this particular niche, I know that companies come to you now. You don't need to go after companies. They're all coming to you saying we want to be.

You to represent us. And you don't always take all that. I know that. But you also elevated yourself through writing a book. So I don't know any other agency out there.

Who has actually written a book. Well, I do know maybe one other one, but I mean a book that talks to the marketplace about them. So tell us a little bit about that.

I don't know if you're going to get into this later, but I'll segue into this as well. Excuse me. I'm a big one in masterminding with other, what I'll call experienced professionals in our industry and have for 15, almost 20 years, different groups. Presently, right now I'm in two mastermind groups which are agency owners from around the country that help each other. I refer to them as my uninvested partners. But I also am in a coaching program that Mike is doing, his UPP program. And with Mike's direction, two plus years ago I was asking the question, how do I elevate this niche to the next level? And he threw out the idea of writing a book. Well, I thought it had merit until I was actually in one of his conferences and he goes around like he always does with the microphone, asking different people questions and he stops next to me and he says, do you mind if I share with the crowd of probably 300 other agency owners from around the country or North America what we talked about? Now I've known Mike for Years I'm thinking, okay, I know he's not going to embarrass me and you know, tell some embarrassing story, but he brought up the idea of the book. Well, I knew why he did that because he knows my personality. And saying that in front of 300 plus people around the room that got me off the couch and onto doing the book. And by the next conference I wrote it. Well, it's amazing what authority that has really given me in this niche because the book isn't about insurance. There's insurance in there. But it's my 30 years of knowledge working with landlords on all different facets. And I wrote it such that the novice to the expert can write, can read it, but also it's can be, you don't have to read it cover to cover. I joke that I think the only one that reads read it cover to cover was my mother. But each chapter is specific to a specific topic that is helping educate. And again, it's my way of giving back. But I did it also to be the divider between my competitors. You know, when a prospect or a client gets this book, they realize hopefully that I know what I'm talking about, I'm not just guessing. And that hopefully because of that knowledge I'm looking out for their interest because I'm trying to help protect them. So I did more than probably your question asked, Mike, but that's kind of where I'm coming from with the book and other things. You know, it's all that social proof of why come to me over and above everybody else.

Could not agree more. Everybody needs to be answering the question, why should people do business with you over and above any and all other options available to them.

Book and say, go ahead, I'm sorry.

I am the insurance agent on Amazon that's written a book on investing.

Right.

Not many people can say that. And I'm not saying it again to toot my own horn, but depending on the niche that you do, it's a self published book. I'm not going to lie. You know, I paid to do it, but people can buy it on Amazon or either hardbound, paper bound, etc. I think it's even in the Kindle version and I say even in the book. All those proceeds go to breast cancer. My wife is a breast cancer survivor. I'm not doing the book to make money, I'm doing it to help. I also did it selfishly to help increase the retention that I have on clients. You know, if I keep client a one more year longer because of the book, it more than paid for itself. So anyhow, didn't mean if you do.

The math, because you're such a numbers guy, what's the cost? What's your investment cost per book to print that thing, a to Z, 3.

Or 4 bucks hard copy out the door. It's now costing me $7. And the more I do, obviously the price goes down. So it's less than $10. And paperback was less than 5.

Yeah. So I mean, 5 less than $10. But if you think about your clients, and I know the average premium of your entire client base, so your one year commission on that client's what, four to five hundred bucks?

Yep. 387.

387. Surprise. You knew that. So if you take that times a lifetime value, you know, that's what, $3,000 plus for a $10 investment, like, duh, how many times you can make that investment.

Right, right. Well, there's a saying that the law of reciprocity, and the way I say it when I'm explaining it to people in english is if I give you something free or inexpensively, but I give it to you, the human nature is that you want to do something back for me. So in the books case, if I'm giving this to a large enough prospect or a client, they're hoping to want to do something more for me. And in my case, that's stay with me. I'm just trying to help educate you or tell you more about what's going on, so.

Right, right. Fantastic.

So.

Great stuff. And you know, there's something about a book that just lends that authority like nothing else. I know we were going to show it in the very beginning, but something just arrived in the mail either yesterday or today that you have right behind you. Right.

I don't know if it's going to come across.

That's okay. Go ahead and hold it up anyway, because I happen to know from insider information that Russ was recognized by rough nose magazine as the top agent of the month for the entire country. And I know a contributory factor was he wrote the book on his particular niche. So, you know, this will begin to continue to open doors. Yeah. Fantastic stuff and kudos to you, Russ. I mean, you took the action, you made the decision, you. You did something with it. And it's all about making a decision and everything we do. Is that correct?

Correct. Yeah.

And if you wanted to talk just a little bit about you're in a coaching program called platinum or something like that.

Yes, yes, yes. So I mentioned it Earlier, I'm in two Masterminds, which are other agents helping each other. But then I'm in the UPP Platinum Group, which is a coaching program of roughly 10, 11 agency owners from around the country.

And what it really does, it's a couple of things. And again, let's go back to that investment comment. It's not an expense. It's an investment. I invest in myself, in my future, in my family's future, in my lifestyle. Right now my kids are grown, so my wife and I are trying to travel more.

It's funny, my marketing is around my travel schedule right now. I'm home a lot, so I'm mailing more my 50,000 pieces. But there's times when my travel schedule doesn't allow me to market for a month or more. Well, I built the agency to what I want. Again, I'm not trying to say this to brag. I'm just saying it for people that are out there that want to get their agency, their business to run the way they want, rather than being a slave to them. Well, the investment in platinum is well worth it. It's primarily two things. I would pay the price, and I'll say this to Mike, but at the same time, kind of tongue in cheek, I would pay the price for the investment in platinum just for the one day that. That allows me to spend working on my business. Eight hours straight with just Mike and I locked in a room, no phones, nothing else, and planning for the next year. The other part of it, which is equally as important, is that we do two times a year, face to face. And I believe it's every. It's on a regular schedule. I can't remember if it's. If it's every couple of months. Zoom call. But it's okay. As an owner, I don't have partners. Even if I did, it's what I'm trying to do. What are my concerns or my obstacles that I'm. That I'm dealing with today? It's going to that group and saying, okay, you know what pandemic has hit? Here's what I'm dealing with. What would you do? Or in my direct mail, in my niche, here's how I'm doing this. What have you guys done in your market in the past? So I'm learning from experience, but I'm also getting advice on how they would do it if they didn't already do it based on their experience. And that's huge, because then you're. You're not jumping off the cliff by yourself. You're basically looking at your friends and they're holding you on. They're not letting you fall off that cliff. They're there with experience, knowledge, and giving you their input. You can take it. You can leave it. You know, there's sometimes I'll bring stuff up very candidly where maybe a particular member on the group gives their opinion, and I'm like, no, that's way off base. Well, they gave their honest opinion. That's all I'm asking for. But having those two components of platinum, it's a game changer for me. And I can honestly say it's the reason I'm sitting here now in niches is because of that over the last number of years, I've invested in myself, Plus, I've got some good friends out of it. But that wasn't. That was. I have enough friends. I didn't do it for the social aspect. I did it because I wanted to get the business where it is.

So fantastic. So anybody who's listening or watching and listening to this Russ, and they're thinking about should they invest in themselves or not invest in themselves, what would you say to them?

I don't think it's a question. Why are you in business? Why are you an agency owner? Why are you a salesperson? Depending on what you're doing in the agency, are you doing it to provide a lifestyle? Quick, quick, easy segue. When I hire an employee, I'm telling them I am not.

I don't.

When I die, I don't want my obituary to say anything about what I did for a living. I want to be able to help family and friends. When I hire employees, I do the same thing. My three ladies, I'm providing them a career to be able to provide for their lifespan. Two of them don't have kids. It's all about their animals. That's great. They get to do what they want. Same thing. Here I am investing in my future of my agency through this coaching program, through this platinum program for the future of my agency and for me personally, for my family, my friends, too, but my family and what I can do for them. And right now for that, for my wife and I, she's now retired. It's our travel schedule, you know, to be able to come and go as much as we want and have the business run on autopilot when I'm not here and when I am here, for me to be able to do what I want. That's the thing. We didn't even touch base on Mike, that you've helped Me with over the years is, you know, I used to be the jack of all. Now I decide what I want to do and I hire the rest for the employees to take over. You know, I don't handle the service, for example. I don't answer the phones, do the mail, whatever it might be I did years past. But now that it's my company and I've gotten to that point, I decide what I want to do and I hire employees to do the balance. So it's. To me, Mike, it isn't a question. It's a matter of where do I want to be in the next year and how can platinum help me get there. So thank you for that. And he didn't pay me to say that either. Anybody, especially people that know me.

Yeah. Well, you know, it's back to you should only be doing the things that only you can do.

And that's an entrepreneurial mindset. So, Russ, last question for you as we wrap this up today.

What have been the results? And you touched on it just a little bit. I mean, you live life on your own terms.

Is that accurate? Yes.

What have been the results of investing in yourself and your business and getting clear on what you want, where you're going? You live life on your own terms. What else?

I mean, I know my numbers, but at the same time, I haven't known what it is relative to other people. So some of the numbers, again, not saying this from a bragging standpoint, but just, you know, relative to relating it. So the habitational niche, and this is what this topic is all about, is niches. So I've been in it 15 years. In the next year, I will surpass the 100 million premium work. To me, that is a huge number. Didn't realize it until our friend here on the call pointed it out to me and asked me some questions. Now, the revenue per employee rough notes help that. So if I'm benchmarking where I am versus where others are, that's helpful. But in all candor, I might be the best at topic A, whatever it might be, or numbers. But if I'm not living my lifestyle of what I want, it doesn't mean anything to me. So, yes, I'm honored to be on rough notes. Yes, I'm honored with whatever the numbers you might say they are. But more importantly, it's providing that lifestyle so that I can come and go as much as I want. And that's what niches have done. I mean, I could go on for a whole other hour on the efficiencies you know, I'm down to a sales pitch that obviously I know like the back of my hand, but I've been testing it. You know, a very easy tip. Two ninja tips for you. One is if you don't do it now on Outlook, look up quick parts. It's basically a titled memo that's over and over the same. That's been a huge game changer for me. And the second is, say again, quick.

Parts on.

Parts, just Google it. The second is that because of doing niches, my script, for example, my last comment to a prospect is, would you like me to email, fax or snail mail that proposal to you?

I under promise and over perform, I tell them I'll have it by the next day. I usually have it to them within an hour because again, it's a specialty. It's not, look at Russ, what he's doing. It's this is what I've been able to do because that's all I do well, the three things of how to get it to them. I do it in that order because 99% of the time they're going to get an email next, maybe fax. And third is snail mail. But if they're talking to you about it right now, it's important to them so I can get them the proposal in their hands or on their computer in a short amount of time, they're going to react quicker back to me. So by being a niche, my point of saying all this is less is more in that I've focused on this so that I'm not having to reinvent the wheel every time and I know which carrier to go to so I can do it really quick. There might be five carriers doing apartments, for example, but based on the underwriting criteria, I know at least the one or the top two to get the quote from and not waste time with the others. So you focusing on a niche, you become so expert in it that you can do it quicker, better, faster and mostly more efficient than others than being the generalist. Not saying generalist is wrong. A lot of people are generalist. That's fine. I just chose to do it this way and that's what I want.

And we're out of time, so we can't go into details about this. But I know, because what I know that it also helps you with some points with the carriers, right? So I mean, there is so much opportunity out there by investing, learning, doing the work to build and grow a niche that it's a wonderful life. Right, Russ? And what happens when we get to that end of that life. And I couldn't pull it out of you. So I'm just going to say it. You earn yourself up to a certain wealth point where now naturally all you want to do is what?

Get back, get back.

And that's what you're doing and that's what you've done today and that's what you're going to be doing in the near future again, because, you know, you're the one that brought it up. You said, mike, can you help me give back to more other people? I said, yes, we can help with that. So thank you for that opportunity. Stay tuned because there's going to be more coming from the unstoppable Russ Castle. He wants to get back more. So we're going to make that platform happen for everybody. Russ, you got 30 seconds.

No, I was just going to say I mentioned it earlier and this is my whole mantra is others have helped me in the past and then when I've been able to help others since, you know, the guy that helped me the most early, early on, I wanted to buy him dinner. I wanted to do this and that. He made a great comment to me and I have adopted it. It's just paying it forward. So, you know, if I am able to help Mike, my comment to Mike is don't give me anything back. Go and help somebody else and just keep, keep doing that. We'll be a better society because of.

Absolutely. And that's what we're going to do. We're going to keep paying it forward at every single opportunity. I just had a conversation with somebody about an hour ago on that same subject. You know, we're doing this for one reason, to give back and to pay it forward to help other people build this, if you will, legacy agency. I mean, I know that if you decided to put yourself on the market because you had to, because let's say a health issue came up, that it would command absolute top dollar out there because it is something. It's a gold mine, for lack of a better term, that a lot of people would, we talked about bodily parts, would love to have jewel.

I keep polishing, as you say.

That's right. Polish the shiny jewel all of the time. So, my friends, thank you so much for investing time today to learn more about just the beginning phases of niches. And there are riches in niches. If you'll learn what you need to learn and do the work, success does leave clues. Speaking of success, Russ, thank you for investing time today to be on this episode of the UNSTOPPABLE Profit Podcast.

My pleasure, Mike. Anytime.

Alright. Hey everybody. Thank you for spending time with us on this episode of the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. And I can't wait to bring to you even more success on our next episode. So make sure you continually tune in. Until then, get out there, make a difference, be unstoppable, and leave no regrets. Until next time. We'll see you soon, friends.

Thanks. Thank you for listening.

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