Episode 61: Special Guest Andy Priesman

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. 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.

Greetings, friends. This is Mike Stromco coming to you live from the Living Agency Laboratory. And I am pumped and I'm excited to bring you the next episode in the Unstoppable Profit podcast. I'm here with the incredible leading industry agency owner and business owner Andy Preisman out of Austin, Texas. Right, Andy?

Yeah, Austin, Texas. Thanks for having me, Mike.

Yeah, fantastic. And do you have multiple locations, by the way?

We do. We're Houston, Austin, Dallas. We have one producer in Oxnard, California. So we are very decentralized.

And it's gone real well. So, yeah, everything's really good.

Yeah, fantastic. So as I was looking up information about you, I continue to find more that I didn't know, and I can't wait to dive in and just continue to learn about the incredible entrepreneurial efforts that you continue to put into your agency business and your other companies. So thank you so much for spending time with me today, sharing with Unstoppable Nation, and let's get going.

Yeah, definitely, definitely love it.

Get to know you a little bit more. Give our listeners a quick two to three minutes feel about who you are and where'd you start? How'd you get into insurance?

Yeah, so, you know, right out of college, I went right into insurance. I was in marketing in college, had a small little marketing company and I had a rep that worked for me, and she said, hey, you should sell life insurance. I do this a little bit. I make really good money doing it. So I graduated from the University of Kansas in Lawrence and researched about life insurance and talked to family, friends, things like that. I ended up working for the New York Life Insurance Company for a couple of years. And that's really where I got a lot of training, realized it was very hard to sell life insurance being that young. Every time I went on an appointment, I had to take somebody with me that was older because I looked young. Who's gonna buy $1,000 a month whole life policy from this young kid? So, you know, got really good training. You know, I look at it as a successful venture. But for me, I ended up wanting to sell products and services that everyone needed to have. So I really ended up starting my agency in Houston, Texas, with Farmers Insurance. And I was a farmer's insurance agent for a long time. And really in about 2008, after Hurricane Ike, that's when we went independent. We had the best of both worlds for a couple years only because my dad and I wanted to work together. And my parents were always very entrepreneurial. They owned businesses. We always wanted to have a business together. So he ended up coming into the business. I started the agency and we worked together side by side for a long time and he still works in the agency today. So we went independent right after Hurricane Ike and here we are in Houston, Dallas, Austin. And then in 2009, my wife says to me, why don't we move to Austin, Texas? And I said, why don't we? Not all my contacts are in Houston, where I'm from, born and raised. All of our employees are here. And then I didn't win that time, so. So we moved to Austin. We had a young family and we had already had a producer there since 09 and we actually moved in 2012. So things have gone really well. We've grown into a multi location agency. We've got a wonderful leadership team that really they allow me to do the things that I want to do and the things that I'm not good at. We've hired people to do those things. And really for me, a lot of the success that I've had is really surrounding myself with people that just good mentors, good consultants, that just having a good team. Even from the start of the agency, I've never tried to do everything myself. I think there's been a period of time where I did try to do everything myself. But as far as bringing in experts is one thing that's really kind of helped with the growth of Greenway because we started from scratch, you know, and now we're a pretty large agency kind of spread out around Texas and we kind of feel like we're just getting going. I kind of feel like I'm 22, 23 when I first started and I'm still working 12 and 13 hour days or longer in some cases. And that's by choice, you know, so it's been good. It's been really good.

So that's fantastic. What a story. And I didn't know all that stuff. I'm so grateful to be able to learn that about you. And I just have even more respect now. So. Did you say your dad's still in the agency?

Yeah, my dad's still in the agency. He's a producer. He sells home and auto and commercial lines. And you know, he kind of is The I say the eyes and the ears of the agency in Houston because I'm not there. But we've got a team there and he goes into the office every single day and we talk all the time. And yeah, it's really, really good. At one point it was very difficult. We really wanted to do things a little bit differently and things didn't really go the way we wanted them to. And I don't think I was as easy to work with back then. And I changed and I just wanted my dad, I didn't want a partner that was my dad.

You know, a lot of different, you know, a lot of stuff there, but you know, it's hard to work with family. And we actually have two producers in the agency that are related to me as well and they're some top producers that we have. And so we've got a little bit of family too in the agency. And you know, it all seems to work out. There's no drama, no politics. You know, we're about 20 people in the U.S. mainly a personal lines agency. High, high volume home and auto coastal and non coastal business. I grew the business with direct mail advertising at a very high volume. We would mail 50,000 direct mail pieces a month for homeowners insurance. And everyone would look at me like I was crazy for doing it. But it's how we grew from zero to where we're at today, right? And we still do it not at the level that we did do it at because it's very expensive.

And just, you know, stamps have gone up. So it's just, you know, it's just different. But direct mail is not dead by any means until the USPS goes away. It will always work. There's always 1 to 2% or less in certain areas that will read their mail and call you for a home and auto quote.

I could not be happier to hear you say that. I 100% agree. I have found through my observation and working with agents all over North America that a sweet mix of online and offline, when blended together in the right way, with the right messaging, the marketing is, that's just what is the secret sauce that makes it happen. Would you agree?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, and it's fun. I mean, I mean, just getting those calls. The one thing that we always loved and we built a producer team around the direct mail because they were calling us and they might have been calling the agency down the street and more and more people started to mail. But what we always loved about direct mail was that we already had their information when they called us. So when you called, Greenway insurance said, hey, I got your letter in the mail. I want to buy this, because, you know, they're mainly presumptive estimates that we would send out. You'd always say, great, wonderful. We need to get additional information to offer you a quote. But we always had, you know, their square footage, and we always had their year built, and we always had their name when they called us, and we made them feel special because we already had that information. It wasn't like, hey, what's your name? You know, we had some of the information, which always worked really well for us. And we still do it today, not at the volume that we once did it, but with COVID we're reevaluating all of that because we think there's some opportunity in the market to kind of turn the mail back on the way that we once did. So, yeah, it's good.

Well, by introduction, and you know him, I'm sure Russ Castle, he has tripled down his investment in that particular arena. Direct mail through this, and he's having great success. So maybe reach out to him and have a quick conversation. You guys can generate some kind of activity.

So ye love to do that. We've actually talked about direct mail in the past, and those are always great conversations. So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's got it down. Just like you were mentioning. When they call, they're already in the system. It takes them about three minutes to get to where they're at the decision table, and that's what people want. They don't have time to rehash all of this. I've got a burning question I can't resist asking. So how's the conversation at the holiday table in the Priestman household when the producers aren't meeting goals?

Well, you know, so luckily, you know, there's, you know, two sides of the family, and we're not always getting together. But, you know, I have Thanksgiving with my parents, you know, usually every year, and other holidays. So we're always talking about insurance, and that's something that just doesn't go away. But luckily for the two that, you know, you know, our family, they're actually really good. Some of our top producers, and we've treated them like anyone else. They need to hit their goals. They need to do everything the same way. We've got about nine producers that mainly focus on home and auto. And one thing that is different about greenway than most agencies is most agencies do not hire producers to sell personal lines insurance. And for us, we were able to make it work where it's truly a producer program, It's a career program more than anything, allowing our agents to have a career opportunity, you know, unlimited. You know, sky's the limit. Opportunity as to where with a lot of agencies, it's more of a CSR account manager that's selling that home and auto policy. So we've been able to find success. And it might be because part of it that we're in Texas and homeowners rates are high and, you know, there's a lot of disruption in the marketplace, probably much like California. And typically when there's disruption, there's opportunity. So we've been able to kind of take. Take that to our advantage.

A problem solved is an opportunity for sale without question. So congratulations on that. So I can't resist your producer situation. And we won't go into great detail, but did they get paid first year only, or is there renewal involved as well?

There's renewal involved. So typically when I first started this, we hired our first producer in 2009 in Austin, actually, and we had no idea what we were doing. We really leaned on Safeco Insurance in their producer development program for many, many years. But we typically hire producers, pay them a salary, lower salary, you know, not really lower for insurance, but we really are, you know, when we hire people, we're selling the opportunity, you know, for, you know, three, four, five years, 10 years down the line, and not just what you're going to make right now. So, like, we see a producer, you know, making 30,000, 35,000 base salary, plus a new business commission and then a renewal commission. We are changing our commission structure for 2021. There's a little bit of a wrench that's been put in it with COVID because they can't get out and about and do the things that we want them to do with, you know, referral partners and things like that. But we did up the ante this year with saying, hey, we're going to pay you as high as 30% on renewal, and we're at a 25% renewal commission. We'll pay you 30%, but you need to get here. And if you don't get here and you write less, you're going to get paid less. Because we do feel like the renewal commission has changed. So we really have our producers focused on new, new, new. They don't service any business. All the servicing is going through an account manager and processing team. So their job, they don't even do the post close. You know, we're doing all post Close for them. From the docusigns to the applications. Their job is to sell, hit, bind, next, sell, bind, next. And that's their job, is just to sell new business. We do not want them servicing any business unless it's more of, like, keeping a relationship and. And taking a client to lunch. But we really changed our model with the direct mail. We replaced all the premium and new business to referral partners, focusing on mortgage lenders and real estate people, professionals. And that's how we get the majority of our business today, is just by focusing on those people. And those are our clients. We take care of them. If somebody wants to throw an event for a mortgage office and a real estate office, because the mortgage office, mortgage officers, want to meet real estate agents, we'll put on an event or they'll put on the event, but we will sponsor it. We'll pay for that. We'll help them. We'll do all the things necessary to make that successful. And if they want brochures, you know, we'll pay for the brochures. Whatever they need. As long as they're sending us business and they're the only ones sending us business, we're happy to partner with anyone like that.

Fantastic. So just to give everybody an idea of the picture of your agency, roughly how many clients do you have and what percentage of your business is personal lines?

Well, we're 98% personal lines.

Okay, fair enough.

You know, so we have about.

$25 million in premium. I don't know what that equates to in policy count. I'd have to look at it, but it's, you know, 19,000 policyholders. It's a lot. Yeah, a lot.

Yeah. Well, congratulations on building that. You know, in a few short years, you have built that, so congratulations. What a great job. And, yeah, I want to keep digging to pull out even some more secrets on how you did that. And I know that you've also got some secret sauce behind the processing and service, and we'll get that in just a minute. So in your opinion, since you've grown this phenomenal agency in a fairly short period of time, you mentioned hiring early on the people listening, because we talked about the three Ps in our program, people processes, and promotion. But 80% of the emergency calls from our members are about the first P, which is the people issues. What kind of tips would you give to people based on what you've learned so far about finding excellent people to come onto a team?

Yeah, so, I mean, so the first thing that I ever really learned in the insurance business was I had a district manager with farmers and he said, you need to hire immediately. And that's what we did. I mean, you have to hire quick, you know, if you want to grow your agency. One agency owner cannot do everything. You know, for me, it was always about how many times can I replicate myself over and over and over in the sales process. And it took a while to get to where we wanted to be. But it's all about hiring the people and hiring really good people and paying them as much money as you possibly can afford to hire those people because you pay for what you get. So for us, it was always about hiring good people, treating them like family. We've got people in the agency that are going like an 11 year anniversary. You know, I'd say, you know, producers probably stick around more than account managers for some reason. But I think that's just, you know, kind of the way of the industry. But we've got some wonderful account managers that have been with us for a long time. And then we've got newer account managers that have been with us for, you know, two, three years that were speak that were somewhere that they weren't being treated like family. So they got to green. They finally found Greenway and said, wow, this is great. I mean, we close our office for two and a half days during the holidays and we have a big event and it's usually a team building event led by additional training and a lunch and a dinner. And I always say the hardest thing about what we do at Greenway is that we are decentralized and we are not all together in the same office every day. It's the hardest part. So once a year we get together and we have, you know, we have our time, but we've always been on the same phone system. We have zoom meetings regularly. I mean, that's just something that we've always done. I don't know, I think I'm kind of going off topic of your question. But as far as the people go, you got to hire good people, you got to hire people fast. You can't be afraid to hire people if you want to grow. I said something, I asked a question to an agency owner one day. I said, hey, I want to grow. What do you think I need to do? And he said, sell more insurance. Okay, that wasn't, you know, of course that, that was the answer that I deserved. But in order to sell more insurance, you need to hire more people. That's the only way. One agency owner is not going to sell Enough premium to grow their agency. And some agencies are highly successful. Being a two or three person agency. And there's nothing wrong with that. You know, for me, it wasn't about. I don't really know what keeps driving me. Maybe it's my family or just how far can I really take this thing? I kind of feel like we're just getting started. But I know some wonderful agencies that are highly profitable and they don't have the same issues that I have with personnel. We have wonderful people. But there's always something every single day. There's always a challenge. I think that's why I love this business is I'm challenged every single day. And there is not a day that goes by that is the same. Yeah.

And that means I second and I agree absolutely, hands down. That's what keeps me going. That's what kept me in it for the last 34 years and will keep me in it is that constant challenge. And it challenges you to become more every single day. And so, you know, I don't know what the question in your mind. Let me ask you that question in just a second. But for me it is, you know, the chess pieces of figuring out how, how am I going to beat what's in front of me today. Right. What's your, what's your thinking on that?

Yeah, I mean, it's just, you know, I think really, it's, it goes back to the people. It always goes back to the people. You got to have good people to make it work. Because there's too much in this business. I mean, just the carriers alone and keeping, you know, we have wonderful relationships with our companies, but they, they want to come see you every month. Well, do I have time to talk to every carrier? I want to talk to all of them, but I don't have time to talk to all of them. Then we finally got smarter and we said, why are we all meeting with these carriers? Like, I want to meet with them once a year, twice a year, when needed, and I want to choose those meetings. But there were people that were dictating my time and they want to shoot the shit. And here's your production report. They weren't driving any value to me. So I hired somebody, an ex carrier rep, part time, not even full time, just 10 to 15 hours a week to handle those relationships. And we started taking control of those conversations. So I think it's just being strategic.

You know, having good people and, you know, trusting those people, because I don't, I want my people, not my people, our people, to make decisions on their own for themselves. And if they make a mistake, that's fine. We'll learn from our mistakes. But you know how nice it is. Like we've had to, you know, everyone's had to, you know, let people go in the past. Well, guess what? I hated that job. Guess who's not doing that anymore? I'm not doing that anymore. Yes, maybe if it's like, you know, someone that, you know, it's a different. Maybe it's a producer or something, which we don't lose people very often. But you know, I have a personal lines manager, we have an operations manager, and we have a director of development and we're all on the same leadership team. But I don't get involved with some of that stuff. And even in the hiring process, I'm meeting people, but I trust them to make the right hiring.

To make those hires. And they don't always work and mine don't always work. But I think it all goes back to the people, in my opinion. I think I'm off topic on your question, but I think that's for us, that's.

This information is extremely valuable. Thank you so much for sharing.

Sure.

Greatly appreciate it. So I heard you say earlier that sometimes account managers can be more of a challenge than say, producers. So you came to a point in the growth and evolution of your agency where you needed to figure out how, if I need to replace account managers or even processing people, is there a better way? Was there a time when you really weren't finding the right people in your local markets?

Probably five years ago, almost five years ago, we were not finding that. And that's when I had two friends that came to me and said, andy, you should hire a virtual assistant in the Philippines. And I said, no, we shouldn't. Why would we do that? Why would we do that? Right? Here we are, we hired our first virtual assistant.

Over four years ago and we said, could we give them eight hours of work a day and what would we give him? So we finally realized the work that licensed people are doing, account managers, producers.

Especially in personal lines, they're doing work that you don't need a license for. They're doing a lot of process work. And what we found is we hired our first virtual assistant and we gave him a bunch of work. And we said, wow, this is really great. How do we hire more? And we hired more. And we started taking away work from our account managers and our producers. If they could focus on retention, new business.

Higher revenue generating opportunities for those people, that's exactly what we did. We have a whole processing department now where, you know, the mortgagee changes are not being done by a licensed agent. You know, ID cards are not being done by a licensed agent. Certain processing just isn't being done by a licensed agent. So we found a better way, you know, and we said, look.

Let'S hire people to give our people more capacity. Because they're staring at their phone saying, please don't ring again. I have enough work to do today. They're all looking, everyone, they're all doing that. So we said, let's hire assistants. And that's what we did. And here we are two and a half years later. It's hard to believe that I had a lot of friends that said, hey, Andy, I want to hire VAs and I guess to kind of tell you the story. So I started Coverdesk two and a half years ago. We had some friends that were like, hey, we want to do the same thing that you're doing. So we did that. We also have an agency network that is part of Greenway. So we've got Greenway and then we've got an agency network that's very tiny. And basically what we did is we helped a couple of those agents and we saw that it worked. So we said, hey, Wedstar covered us. This was January of 2018, right after IAWA. I'd given a sneaks presentation on VAS. It was a thought that we could do something, but honestly, I had no idea the ins and the outs of the Philippines. And it turns out we started, we had no office, it was all home based. VAS worked very, very well. And then we got a call from a client. And mainly the people that we were helping were people that I had networked with over the last five and six years or 10 years. Different agency councils or met at different events or trips, you know, here and there. And then when I first started, you know, these Facebook groups weren't around, you know, I didn't have base, you know, to ask somebody a question, you know, how do you do this? You figured it out on your own. And I had a couple mentors, but so we started Coverdesk. We got a client that said, andy, I need 15Vs all at one time. I said, 15Vs, that's a lot of people. And then a month later I get a call from their operations managers or their operations manager, hey, the owners are gonna fly to Manila next month and they wanna meet your team. Meet my team. I got one guy there that they can meet with and turns out they took them around and we ended up hiring 15 people. We found an office and today we Coverdesk has two sites and we provide back office services to independent agencies, you know, really to handle those tasks. And that's the better way, hiring people and taking away work from your, from your employees that don't generate revenue or is busy work for them. So for us, you know, it's been great. We've taken it to another level that I think not every agency has yet, but I think they're getting there. It's just a matter of time. There's a better way where agencies can outsource the quoting, the quoting process, or the mortgagee process, or the ID cards or even. We have clients that have VAs that are answering phones and taking in inbound phone calls for customer service and they know where to stop. When somebody says, hey, I need to talk to you about my coverage, then that goes to a licensed agent, back to the office. And our people act as full time employees for the agency on their line of business applications. And that's the beauty of it. They're on your Ringcentral, they're on your Hocsoft, they're on your slack or your teams, and they act just like anyone else, working your west coast or east coast hours alongside your team. And if you have a Monday morning meeting or whatever day it's on, they're happy to be there. So, yeah, it's gone well. It's challenging.

And I wouldn't have it any other way. The people that we've hired are wonderful. We've got operations managers and team leaders and trainers and we're really teaching insurance. Like if you really wanted to go hire a va, you could probably do it on your own. But they're not going to know insurance, they're not going to train them on insurance. And we really specialize in the insurance agency business and we consider ourselves experts in that field.

Absolutely. You are, and we are proud users of your services at Coverdesk in multiple venues and multiple ways. It's working very, very well. Thank you for your vision.

No, thank you.

To put the company together. But you're the one that took the action on somebody's request. So thank you for that.

Yeah, you're welcome. And we appreciate, you know, just the partnership and the opportunity because not every agency, you know, my goal is to have, you know, find more agencies that want to think out of the box and try new things. Because the old way, it's not going to continue like other agencies and it's not, it's not going to be that agencies need to go acquire another agency. It's going to be that agencies gonna just go take the next agency's business down the street because they're doing a different process, a different procedure. They're adopting technology. They're doing all these things to make the consumer, you know, that process and that user experience just that much better.

Right. We were just discussing yesterday on an event that we put together for agents who want to build their businesses and niche businesses, and there was a lot of conversation that life becomes. Life begins outside of your comfort zone. And we've got to get out of our comfort zone in order to take those next steps because we are now in the next reality, right?

Absolutely. I mean, yeah. I mean, if you're. I mean, there's nothing comfortable right now at all. And it's going to be very interesting to see what happens in our space because agents are going to have to really make some changes to keep operating even at the same level. I mean, for me, you know, I grew an agency on an Excel spreadsheet. There's a lot of agencies that grew an agency on an Excel spreadsheet. We've made a lot of changes. We're adopting technology, we're building technology, we're doing a lot of cool things. And we think now is when we can double our business because we're doing all these things. But, you know, for those agencies that are still using an Excel spreadsheet, those days are gone.

Invest in technology, Invest in people. Invest in technology, invest in people. That is fantastic stuff. So I learned from people that I study as well recently that as we head into these next realities, that it is not going to be the smartest who are going to thrive and win more, and it is not going to be the strongest who are going to thrive and win more. It is going to be those who can change and adapt better and faster than anybody else. Would you agree?

Oh, 100%. Yeah, absolutely. I think that it's all about changing and adapting to the new way. Even before COVID happened. I mean, if you're not changing, you're gonna be left, you're gonna fall behind, and.

You'Re gonna be lost. That's just the bottom line. And there's wonderful agencies that are a part of your group and other groups, and those agencies are making changes, and those are the people that I want to be associated with. And, you know, for us, you know, I'm not doing cover desk for the money. You know, this is about helping the industry and, you know, finding A better way for everyone. And you know, you know, you know, getting agents out of the weeds. There are too many agencies that are in the weeds all day long and they need to be focused on their business and growing their business and not doing service work, not doing the things they don't like. So that's why we're here and that's why we want to help. We want to help you provide more capacity to you and your team. That's the bottom line.

That's why we're here changing an industry. And thank you for all of your contributions. So you're growing an independent insurance agency in a great way. You're up to 20 some odd people in your agency. Out of a need blossomed another company. Roughly how many team members does cover desk have now?

Well, so we've got about 25ish people that work on our admin team, which with. So there's about 200 total. So that includes the VA. 200 people.

On the Coverdesk team total?

Yeah. So we're at 200. So those are VAs work for agencies. And then we have our admin team, which admins kind of this, this word that's used in the Philippines, but that consists of IT folks. Trainers, operations manager, you know, everyone that works for Coverdesk to make those 180 VA's or whatever that number is work and work successfully. So, you know, it's, it's a lot of people we moved. I mean, crazy. I mean, so Manila's in a little bit of a different situation than the US Under a lockdown right now. Enhanced quarantine lockdown. And we thought it was just gonna be like a lockdown. And it changed to an enhanced quarantine where the government gave us three days to move everyone from our office to home. We moved 180 people and more with our admin team. We had some people already working from home, but we moved everyone in three days. We brought their computers, their monitors, everything to their houses and they're all working. So we're 100% operational. I think we just have a few VAs that can't work because either there's a bad Internet connection or they don't have an Internet connection. So, you know, we're in a good place, we're growing. We have, you know, a lot of clients that we've talked to in the past that are like, hey, we're ready to go now. You know, perfect timing, right? You know, but it's, it's good, you know, it's challenging and it's Good. And you know, we're solving real problems every day.

You are solving problems. So you're protecting people and everything you work so hard for in your agency business. You're solving problems for people like us, agency entrepreneurs who need people within their business to continue to grow their business. So thank you so much for all you're doing. I could sit here and talk to you all afternoon, but I know you've got other appointments you need to get to. So as we begin to wrap this up, Andy, based on what you've learned since you opened the agency and growing the agency business and now cover desk. And I didn't know you had so many people. That is phenomenal. Great job, man. So.

If somebody is listening to this, that might just be starting out in the agency business or in any business, based on what you've learned so far, and you were up in front of the room covering the audience, what would you say to these people that are just starting out based on what you learned so far? What are the.

So for me it's been, I don't think I was ever the smartest guy in the room, you know, but I was always the guy first and I was always there, the guy last to leave, you know, and for me it was about putting in that time and putting in that hard work.

And I think you need to surround yourself with really good people. You need to do your research, you need to see what other people are doing. But just because somebody is doing something doesn't mean you should be doing it. Because every agency is different. And what I keep seeing is there's a lot of agencies that say, hey, I want to do this because they're doing this. And I think every agency is a little bit different. And you know, I think, you know, you can't just follow all the time what everyone's doing because it might not be right for your agency. You know, whether that's because it's geographically different or you're a home and auto shop and this person's a commercial line shop and they have a niche, you know, But I think, you know, if you're starting an agency.

You know, talk to as many people as you can. And I would talk to people that have experience in the business and then, you know, talk to, you know, I learned from all sorts of people, new people, old people. But I think, you know, surrounding yourself with a group of people that are like minded is the most important thing. You know, joining some sort of mastermind is very important because you learn from people and you learn from their mistakes. And I'll tell you, for me, in the beginning, my mistakes, I didn't learn, you know, from other people all the time. I learned from my mistake at the cost, my own cost. You know, so the billboard that I had that I paid $1,000 a month for, that I really couldn't afford, you know, that I had for 120 days, that drove zero, you know, I lost because I thought it'd be great. And maybe I wanted to be on a billboard, not on a busy street. But, you know, I'd say talk to as many agencies as you can, because there's always somebody that's done something and you can learn a lot from them. So for me, it's surround yourself with consultants. And maybe not necessarily consultants, but people that have experience in what you need, and I think that's super important.

We call them wins and lessons.

Right?

But the wealthiest man that I ever studied under was on a Stage in the mid-2000s, and he was a billionaire. And he said, look, when things go wrong, think about it like this. Did anybody die? No. You can recover. You can recover multiple times. They're just lessons. And that's when I converted in my mind the word failure. It's not failure, it's a lesson.

Absolutely.

And the only time success comes before it works in the dictionary. Congratulations on doing the work. And I'm the same way you are. I'd love to get out of bed in the morning. I love what I do. I love to, you know, figure out that next chess move and make progress on what we're doing. So, Andy, definitely, it has been an absolute pleasure. Pleasure, sir. I think we should have you back sometime in the future because I know there's a lot more inside that heart, soul and heart.

No, I'd love to be come back. And this has been a good conversation, and I hope that, you know, I can, you know, hope some. Hope your audience can learn from some of the things that I've done. And, you know, if anyone wants to talk about insurance and talk shop, I'm always willing to do that. And I love the agency business, and this has been fun. So thank you very much.

You're welcome. Congratulations on your success so far in the agency business. Greenway Insurance out of Texas and California and beyond. And then Coverdesk, Holy Toledo. Over 200 VA's, supporting independent insurance agencies all over North America and beyond. Grateful for that, and we look forward to. I know you've got some new things that you're working on in that. That we've collaborated about. So I Can't wait to hear more about that. Things like the answering service and whatnot.

Yeah, we just added accounting as well, like US based accounting, you know, management system type, you know, insurance agency accounting. So we're super excited about that. We've got a lot of good things coming on. So thank you so much for having me on today.

That is awesome. I can't wait to learn more about that. I remember back in the early days, me and accounting didn't get along too well. I used to have a little post it note at the bottom one of my monitors. It says debit equals credit.

Yep, I'm the same way. Yeah, I have to hire those people, you know.

Yeah.

No good at bookkeepers and CPAs.

I just want to help people by writing new policies. That's what I'm all about. And keeping the ones.

Absolutely right.

Andy Priestman, thank you so much for your time today. Great job. Super proud to be standing by your side. Super proud to know you, to continue to learn from you. Keep doing what you're doing. Any last things, dad?

No, I hope. I wish everyone well and be safe out there and in the new normal. And we'll talk to you soon. Thanks so much.

Hey everybody. Thank you for joining this next episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. This is Mike Strom. So get out there, make a difference, be unstoppable and leave no regrets. I'll see you on the next episode. Take care, everybody. Love you all.

Thank you for listening. If you would like to listen to more episodes or share this podcast with someone you care about, please visit www.unstoppableprofitpodcast.com now go out and make a difference. Be unstoppable and leave no regrets.