Episode 92: Uncommon Protégé In A Common Environment

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. Hey, everybody, it's Mike Stromco coming to you live from the Living Agency Laboratory. And we're here with the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. And today we're going to be talking about true profit. Not that we don't on our other podcast, but this guy has profit as a main result in everything that he has his hands in, and he's got his hands in a lot of things. And I can't wait to spend more time with Mr. David Carruthers. We got to meet virtually a couple months ago, and we traveled in a lot of the same circles and we met and it's like, you know, I think he's part of my family in some way because we hit it off so well. And I can't wait to hit it off with David on this podcast. David, how you doing, sir?

I am doing very well, Mike. I really appreciate you having me on and look forward to the conversation.

Yeah, ditto, and thank you for sharing. And you're always more. I've learned about you. You're just a true giver at heart, and I love those kind of people and I love everything about that environment. So thank you for continuing to give back. And tell us a little bit about yourself.

Where are you from, a little bit about your family, geographically, city, state, anything about your business you want to share?

Yeah, no, absolutely. I was actually born in Lorain, Ohio, right up off the coast of Lake Erie, outside of Cleveland. My extended family, all my aunts and uncles and remaining grandmother, still lives up in that area, but lived there for a very brief period of time without going through all the gory details. My dad was a corporate risk manager as I was growing up, so. So for him to move up the corporate ladder, that required my family to move about as frequently as military families moved. So when I tell people all the places I've lived on the east coast, they automatically assume that maybe I'm a military kid, but I'm not. I was a child of a guy that was just very ambitious and moving up the corporate ladder, and we picked up and moved literally every every two to three years. And, you know, when you're going through something like that, you don't really realize how you're being Prepared for the future. But I think one of the reasons why I've had a successful career in sales is because I moved every two to three years as a kid and had to make new friends every two to three years. So, you know, when it, when you boil everything down, it's like I tell my kids when they want to know what it is I do for a living. I get paid to make friends. And I had a lot of practice growing up.

You had agility built in at an early age.

I did, I did well. And you know, it wasn't always a pleasant experience, you know, when you're going through it, especially when you get into the junior high and high school years. You know, I moved from the area that I live right now part way, like right before basketball season, my junior year of high school, so that I could be at my new school in West Virginia to play basketball prior to the season starting. And so I graduated high school from Parkersburg, West Virginia, which is like the exact opposite of Tampa, Florida. And you know, it was again, you know, you draw off all the experiences that you have in life and that just prepared me for a whole other set of things that I would use going forward. So ended up playing base baseball in basketball and football in high school. Ended up going on and playing baseball in college in West Virginia. Blew my arm out. Walked into a grocery store in Birmingham, Alabama, which is where my family was living at the time. And I guess I thought I was going to be the next Kurt Warner. Man, I don't know, I thought I was going to stock shelves and rise from the ashes and become a professional baseball player. And that never happened. So I just worked my way through the ranks in retail and I got to be 30 years old and said, you know what, I make a good living, but my quality of life is horrible. And I have a 2 year old son who is now 18 that didn't know who his dad was. And I need to find out what is it I can do that's going to give me the work life balance that I need. And I was 30, you know, I wasn't terribly old, but I was old enough that I knew I could have an opportunity to change my trajectory for the rest of my career. And as it turns out, I met a guy who had owned a very successful agency that was sold and was sitting out his non compete, getting ready to start his next iteration of that agency here in Tampa, which crazy enough is now publicly traded on Nasdaq and does about 184 million in revenue a year, which Just blows my mind.

But I went to work with him as a producer, and there's a lot of nuances to how that happened and some of the things I experienced along the way. But that's how I got into the industry. How I got to where I'm at today is I just can't work with. For anybody else. I just. I can't. I have to be. I have to be in the front of the line. And so.

With that comes its own set of challenges and circumstances. But, you know, I launched Florida risk in 2016, and, you know, we have had a really good run for the last four. We're in our fifth year now, and not even thinking about looking back at this point. We're just pushing on.

Fantastic. Well, congratulations on your journey, on your success, and I'd like to dive in and learn a little bit about Florida Risk and how that operates in the area. But ultimately, at the end of the day, the other thing that I'd really like to dive into today is your book. Just whatever you're willing to share about the book, obviously, I picked mine up on Amazon, and it was super easy. I pushed a button and like, two days later arrived at my house.

Funny how that works, isn't it?

Anyway, so congratulations on putting all this together. I've been going through it, and I can't wait to get this into the hands of our sales team. So they can be killing it in commercial, and there's another way that they can learn more about commercial and how to be better in commercial. Correct?

Agreed. Yeah.

Let's start with the end in mind. Tell us how, if there's a commercial agent or even somebody who wants to be a commercial agent out there listening or. Or watching this, how can they find you? And how can they become a better commercial agent generating more profits?

Well, I think that they can find me. I hate to say this, but literally type my name into Google and I'm gonna be like the first two pages. And I don't say that in a bragging fashion, but that's the easiest way to find me. You can find me my website, floridariskpartners.com or killingcommercial.com, we have a YouTube channel. We have the Power Producers Podcast, which you've been a guest on. Just. There's a lot of different things, like you said in the intro, that I have my fingers in. And so it's relatively easy to find me if you're looking for me. But it's interesting because as I went through that transition from retail into the commercial insurance arena. What I found was a couple of things. Number one, agencies, by and large, aren't willing to take too much risk on bringing talent in. Okay? And so from a financial perspective, I was going to have to take a really, really big haircut on my salary from where I was to start. I've never had a problem with that. Risk has not been a problem for me, especially when it involves betting on myself, Because I feel like if there's anybody in the world outside of my wife that I'm going to bet on, it's me. And so I didn't have a problem taking the pay cut. My wife bought into the concept. But the second issue that I realized was there's no training program. You get into these agencies, by and large, nobody can tell you how. Nobody can tell you the why. And I'm not talking about placing commercial insurance. I'm talking about the sales process. I walked into an agency my first day, and I was told, you need to go out and write accounts that are 250 to $500,000 in premium. I said, great. How do I do that? Well, we don't really train you on that. You have to figure that out. But when you find that account, you bring it back, and we'll handle all the insurance stuff and make sure you know that. So I basically had to develop my own sales process from the ground up in an industry that I knew nothing about, just so that I had a fighting chance. And so I learned very, very quickly that there's a couple of different ways to approach sales in the commercial game. You can focus on the sale of an insurance product, which means you're selling a commodity, essentially, that's got a price attached to it, or you can solve a problem and sell a value proposition. And what we have to realize is that the average client we get in front of, they're complaining about their premium being too high. That's not the problem. That's a symptom of the problem. Okay, so if you can dial back and figure out, okay, well, here's your real issue. It's not really that your premium's higher. It's that your experience mod went up, and your experience mod went up and drove the premium up because you have an abnormally large amount of indemnity claims on your mod, and you have some frequency issues. So what we really need to talk about is, why do you have so many slips, trips, and falls? What's with the manual material handling? And I could understand and relate to that because in my career in retail, I traveled the country at the end with Super Target, working on broken stores and opening new locations for them so I could get behind looking at a problem and a process and something that was broken and trying to fix it. And I quickly realized that if you took that approach, the insurance piece became much, much easier. And I talk about this all the time, anytime I get up and speak or I'm on a podcast or whatever else. But insurance is what I call the common denominator. If I'm in a competition to win a piece of business and there's three other licensed agents in that competition to win that account, the one thing every single one of us has in common is we can all place the insurance.

That's right.

So I tell people, you have to become uncommon in a common environment. What is it that you can do to make yourself stand out from the crowd? And so we've developed our entire approach around a risk management angle and a value proposition as opposed to the sale of an insurance product. And the way that I explain that when I go in and speak with a decision maker is, number one, you know, my company is Florida Risk Partners, and I set the tone and keep it light and just tell them, look, I'm sure you don't like insurance. I don't like it either. It's not even in the name of my company, for crying out loud. That's intentional.

That's Good point. Great point.

So the reason why is because I want you to focus on everything else. So we're going to talk and we're going to go for 45 minutes, and I will never even mention the word insurance the entire time. And when we get to the point where it's time to talk about how we're going to go and get the deal done, that's when I bring it up and say, look, you've listened to everything that I've talked about for the last 45 minutes. Does it sound good? Is this something you feel would take your organization from where it is and move it to the next level? And they're always going to say yes. And I say, well, then let me tell you something. I know you're concerned. I know that you've heard this, and it sounds awesome. We did that intentionally. We wanted it to sound awesome to you. So I want you to understand you don't have to pay me any extra money than what you're already spending to get this. If you want my learning management system that every one of my clients gets, that if you want to have the data analysis that we do Regarding your experience mod and all of your claims and everything, all of our clients get that. The one thing I'm going to tell you is in order for you to do that, I need you to allow me to place all of your insurance coverage for you. Because we don't view insurance as what drives the relationship. What drives the relationship is the value proposition. The placement of the insurance products is the funding mechanism that allows you to take money you're already spending with somebody else who's not giving you everything over here and buy everything that you really need to get the ship on the right course.

Awesome. Well done, sir. And how's that working out for you?

That was my first time. Was it okay?

How's that working out for you?

It's working out pretty well. I mean, we, you know, we have scaled quickly. I find that when you don't focus on technical insurance stuff with newer producers and you just talk about a sales process that you can let the national alliance and CPCU take care of teaching them the insurance piece. I'm not worried about that. You know, one thing that's unique about my agency, or maybe it isn't, but I don't hire anybody with insurance experience to be a producer with me. I only hire business to business salespeople. I want people who come from very difficult industries that don't have residual income. So if you sell credit card processing or payroll or IT services or office equipment or office supplies, I know you know how to cold call because you have to to survive. I also know you're not making nearly as much money as you could be, especially if you've been in that job for five years. So I don't even have to look at a resume. If I see somebody that sold credit card processing or payroll and they've been with their employer for four or five years, maybe I'll look and see if they had some progressive responsibility. But I understand the churn in those industries and you have to be good to last that long. You're just not getting a maximum return on your investment in terms of your salary. So that's low hanging fruit for me. I like to bring those people in and then show them how to go through our process. And it's easy for me to teach a process around data analytics, loss runs, you know, total cost of risk and things like that. Then you can start getting into insurance coverage forms and endorsements and all of that. Everybody needs two things to be successful in commercial insurance. You have to have a proven, replicable sales process that can scale with you. And you need to have a foundational understanding of insurance products. Right. You're not. There's nothing out there that I found you might know about it, but there's nothing out there that I'm aware of that will allow me to plug into the wall and download insurance information into my brain without me actually having to sit through classes and take time to learn it. So for people who are coming into the industry new, you've got about a three to five year learning curve before you're going to be able to go out and answer a bunch of technical insurance questions on the fly. That's okay. You're also going to take that long before you're really clicking on all cylinders on the sales side too. So they kind of match up. But I can tell you this, Mike, I've never gone in on a cold call where I've walked into the lobby just to introduce myself to a decision maker and get a name and a contact and all of that, where they've come out and said, hey, can you tell me about the CG 2010 endorsement? Blah, blah, blah, it never happens. That's not part of the sales process. When you're going in and introducing yourself to people cold, they just, if you get to meet them, it's a matter of, hey, I'm David. I'm with Florida Risk Partners. I just want to stop by and introduce myself. I'm going to be in your area on a regular basis. I'll come back by some other time when you're expecting me. But hey, I want to let you know I know your industry's having problems right now because the trades are depleted and you can't find.

So I brought you this benchmarking report on salaries and it gives you the salaries for your city, for your state and for the country, for electricians or whatever the class of business is. But I thought this might be something that you would find useful. Just wanted you to have it. If you can use that information, great. If not, I'm going to bring you something else next month when I stop by. Have a great day. There's never going to be an insurance conversation on a first meeting like that. If you are going to have that insurance conversation, you know ahead of time, you are going to have the insurance conversation. So one of the things that I did early in my career, and this is something that I teach to people that I work with on production, is I realized that I could stack the deck in my favor and give myself more time to prepare for an appointment if I did one simple thing. And that is I send a copy of a proposed meeting agenda to that prospect I'm meeting with prior to me ever getting there to meet with them. That does a couple of things. Number one, it gives them the first time anybody that's ever come to sell them insurance has ever sent a proposed agenda. People don't do that. But number two, I want to say, hey, here are the things I'm thinking about talking about. I'd like for you to add or take away anything, and if there's. Then I get the notes back and I have a really good idea of how that conversation is going to go so I can go deep in the areas I know we need to discuss, plus whatever else they added to it. But here's a news flash. To anybody out there who's uncomfortable talking about this stuff, you don't have to answer every question on the fly. No, it's okay to say, I don't know. You know what? That's a really good question, man. Bang, you got me. I don't know the answer to that. But you know what? I know the person who does. So here's what I'm gonna ask. Let me just get back to the office. I'm gonna present this question to my mentor that I work with, and I'll be back to you this afternoon with the answer to that. It's not something that's difficult. I think too many times we don't realize that it's easy to gracefully excuse ourselves from an uncomfortable situation. Everybody's human, man. You know, you could be sitting across that cfo, and even though they may be getting ready to stroke a check that'll earn you 25 or $50,000 in commissions, they put their pants on one leg at a time.

That's right.

That's the biggest, you know, the biggest piece of advice. The number one thing, and I see this unequivocally, I tell it to everybody. It's in the intro to our podcast. I talk about it when I talk with producers one on one. The biggest piece of advice that I would give to anybody is you have to believe in you. You have to believe in yourself. Selling. I don't care what you're selling. You have to have self confidence and belief in yourself to be able to go out and do that. Even just to open your car door to get out and go knock on that door. But, you know, anybody who's heard me speak before has heard this story. But that stems from an event that I went through in my personal career. I was 30 years old. I was a Year into the business and I was sitting in the parking lot of a company that had $750,000 in premium, and I was sick to my stomach thinking to myself, why am I here? I have no business talking to this company. Look at all of this equipment. Look at all of these employees. I'm gonna be responsible for insuring this. I just need to kill this meeting, turn around and drive back to the office. I have no business going in there. And I stopped and it was the number one defining moment in my entire career. And I said, you know what? Suck it up. The only person who doesn't think you deserve to be in that appointment is you.

Right.

That CFO has already validated your existence by agreeing to take the meeting with you. They don't know any different. You just insurance yesterday. You already have the meeting. Go in there and talk to them. Get through your head that you belong there and crush it.

Yep. I mean, I was having that same conversation with my 14 year old grandson last weekend. Yeah, I was talking to him about the fact that we need to act like we belong there.

Just act like you belong there.

You do belong there.

Agreed.

Nobody else knows any different.

Agreed. And you learn a lot that way too. You put yourself, if you can, push your comfort zone, like my number one goal. I mean, my number one role rather in helping anybody as a mentor, coach, teacher, trainer, whatever you want to call me is I have to get them to believe in themselves first. If I can get them to do that, then the world is wide open for them to have as much success as they want. But it's the things psychologically that are holding people back. Because maybe people told them their whole life they weren't good enough. Well, why do you let that affect you today? Maybe they had a weight problem. So they're self conscious about their appearance and they don't want to walk in because they don't want to be judged. It's any number of things. But at the end of the day, all of that is controlled in our own mind. And if we can't train and coach our own mind into the right belief structure for self belief, we're killing ourselves. We're dead in the water before we even start.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I know I've showed this to you before, but at the end of the day, there's only one person that stands between you and everything you want.

Right?

Yeah.

Nice.

You can't see it, but I got it.

Yeah, no, I saw it. It's blue. You have the version number two.

Well, I appreciate that because my colors are blue. So we're good.

Exactly. So you have the most recent version, so great stuff, David. Thank you so much. I know that from my own journey. That place where you learn it. I graduated from the university of Hard Knocks. I mean, it's the greatest learning environment that I've ever been in. And once I graduated from there, it stuck. It stuck here, and it's stuck here. And on we go. So a problem solved is an opportunity for sale, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah. And that was a big takeaway. Not that statement, but I believe that in the sales world as well. And that's what you were alluding to when you go in. If you can solve a problem that they've got right now, whether it be insurance or not, that's the beginning of your opportunity. And I love the fact that you're leading without any conversation about insurance at all. You're looking at other ways, to use an old sales term, the wedge. Right.

Hey, well, listen, man, I don't want to put you on the spot in your own podcast, but, I mean, what do you think the number one way for me to engage somebody that's a business owner in conversation or a decision maker in conversation is when I go in. What's the number one thing every one of them wants to talk about?

Themselves.

You're exactly right.

Don't ever hesitate to say whatever you need. I've learned a lot, and I got pretty thick skin. You know, they're playing their favorite radio station, man. You know what that is, right?

What's that?

Wiifm.

There you go.

What's in it for me?

Yeah, I agree.

Favorite subject. And they'll talk about it as long as you can. It's 4 to 1, right? 2, 2 and 1. Use them in that proportion.

Yeah. And it's funny because I lead with marketing, like, it doesn't matter. I mean, granted, I go in, I understand workers comp. That's how I typically open the door. But for me to break the ice and have a conversation. Talk about marketing, man.

Promotions. Promotions and marketing. I mean, that's the number two thing in your book. So you're just talking a little bit about prospecting. Talk about marketing. I mean, how to prepare to make an unforgettable first impression.

Yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of crazy stuff. I mean, I tell people you learn so much by hanging out in the lobby, right?

Yeah.

How much can you learn? I get to appointments early. Yeah, it looks good, but I'm doing recon in the lobby the entire time I'm there. And the earlier I get there, the more time I have before that person's going to be ready for me. And you can learn so much about a company to break the ice in that conversation. You can see awards they've won, you can see community service that they've done, articles that have been written and published by them, articles that have been written and published about them. You know, you can follow the lineage if it's a family owned company, you know, all kinds of things. And so when you go in to talk to somebody, if you're in that lobby, you're golden. My number one thing is I like to show up when I talk about making an unforgettable first impression. One of my favorite companies is Fracture. Okay. Fracture is a company that will print anything on glass. So I do talk about it in the book in that I like to take a photograph or something from the media about the person that I'm going to see or their company, and I will have a fracture created. And then that can be hung in the lobby with all of the other stuff. Now I make sure my logo's on it too, because it says presented by. So my absolute worst case scenario is I'm getting free advertising for everybody else who goes in there. My best case scenario is, holy cow, man. I had my other agent for 15 years. He's never done anything like this for me before. Wow, this is really cool. Where did you get this?

What were you here for again?

Because that's the best compliment to me is if we're not. If they get lost in that conversation and you, you know, obviously they don't forget that you're there to talk to them about that, but they kind of do. You can tell you're interacting with somebody, you're playing off of each other. You know, I can tell you, I think I talked about it in the book. I don't remember for sure, but that same company that I mentioned, where I was sitting in the parking lot, I had done my research before I went in to talk to the guy. And this is a company that was facing a very unfavorable situation. They were over in unincorporated Pinellas county, which is on the other side of the bay from Tampa, and they were being forced zoned into the city of Largo. And this was going to cause them a ton of. Of trouble. Time, money, heartache. They were fighting it. They were losing the battle. It was documented all over the place. But I found all this information, read about it, and when I walked in, the guy that's the decision maker is who I was meeting with. And he said, well, let's go ahead and talk about insurance. And I said, you know what, hold on a second. Let me tell you something, man. I said, I want to let you know I'm pulling for you. I followed everything that's going on with litigation. I don't agree with what's happening, and I just want to let you know I'm here to do anything I can to help you, to help your voice be heard. I don't know what good I can, but I buy into the fact that you're a third generation family owned business that's facing a serious problem. And I want to do whatever I can to help. Even though we've never met before, his guard came down completely. And for the next 20 to 25 minutes, all he did was talk about how bad it was affecting his family, how bad his marriage was suffering, his relationship with his siblings that were also executives at the same company, and just went on and on and on. And after 20 or 25 minutes, he said, I'm sorry, I know you want to talk about insurance, but I feel so much better. Thank you for letting me vent to you. Said, it's not a problem at all. I figured you probably needed that. I said, listen, I'm not here to put the hard clothes on you or anything else, but it's also not an accident that I'm here. There's a reason why. And so then we went into that conversation, and it was very natural at that point. I don't think very many other people realize that it's okay to not talk about insurance when you walk into the meeting. You got to build that rapport, and you have to do it the right way. And the more patient and intentional you can be in that process, the better the bond, the stronger the bond that you're building with that person sitting across the table from you. And it makes the rest of the conversation about the real business that you're there to talk about so much easier.

Yeah, absolutely. We developed a philosophy called E plus F equals C. Experience plus feeling equals connectedness, which is exactly what you're doing. R +T equals MFT relationship plus the thing that you're building is trust.

And the result is money follows trust, because at the end of the day, they will never be willing to open up their checkbook. And thus, to some extent, they trust you. And what a great way to build a business. Getting to know people first and finding out what that problem is, to solve that problem, and then to bring to the table whatever you need to bring. Oh, that's just the gravy. Right.

Well, the other flip side of that is I'm also interviewing them while I listen to them talk about everything else.

Right.

I literally just published a blog post either this morning. Was it the one this morning? It was. It was the one this morning that talked about.

Don'T sell yourself short. And I think a lot of times as producers, we're so focused on getting the sale, we're willing to write anything that walks past us and we sell ourselves short in that process. It's okay to go into a meeting and tell the person that you're meeting with, hey, I understand you have a lot of questions for me, but I want you to understand this is kind of a two way thing because I'm also here to make sure that you're going to fit into our culture. You're going to fit into our ideal client scenario. And I did a post and a video about it. And I think I probably did talk about this in the book because I usually do.

But I talk about, does this person deserve a seat at the table? Do they belong at the table? I literally visualize. So there's several things I do before I go into an appointment every single time. The first one is I have a cup of black coffee. Coffee's for closers, right? I have a cup of black coffee. But the second thing that I do, and I literally do this every time, is I visualize a conference room. And in that conference room is a table. And there are people sitting around that table with one empty chair. Everybody around the table is my current book of business. And the empty chair is for the person I'm getting ready to meet with. And the question I have to ask myself is, does this person deserve a seat at the table? Will they do something to make everybody else that's my client better? Will they interact with them? Will they, you know, will they get along? Or do I have a reputational risk by bringing this person into my book and it's going to cause me strife? I don't think producers are wired to think that way. I think that they want to write every piece of business because we have production pressure, we want to make the money and everything else. But what I've found is you can be selective. You can't be all things to all people. And that's okay. I'm not saying somebody's a bad person if they're not going to fit my agency. There's a lot of people out there that are general contractors. I don't represent A single one. A lot of good people, they do great things in the community, great things in church, whatever. And they're not in my book, nothing to do with them as people. It doesn't fit what we're doing in the mission of the agency and we will stay true to that mission 100% of the time.

Absolutely. Fantastic. I gotta ask you something before I forget. Take it back about 10 minutes. So you talked about bringing producers on that don't have any experience. I too, by the way, are you either win or you learn, Right?

Agreed.

So. And we don't call them failures, we call them lessons. But I had a lot of lessons in trying to grow sales teams and one of the things that I learned was I wasn't giving them a fair shake time wise and training wise. So if you're willing to share just a minute or two about who trains the people on your team, the new producers, let's say I walk into your shop, I'm a new producer that fits your mold, your culture and everything else and you bring me on who's going to train me.

So that's a crazy story, actually I do, but I do it virtually. And so what we've decided and this is kind of where we go with our online killing commercial training community and everything that we do, you know, I bring people in and because of how I have a very. I don't want to get into it now because I've talked about it a lot in terms of that, just a short tidbit, but bringing people in, it takes time. And so I realized I've got to make this digital, I've got to make this digital track, digital trackable and then create an environment where these people can learn. But it's not going to be a time suck to me. So I essentially created what is now killing commercial insurance training internally. It's mine. So when I talk to people who want to learn how to go and sell commercial and do the things that we're doing in the middle market, I have credibility because this is actually something that I used, developed and still use in my agency today. So we plug them into that community and the thing that's awesome about it is is that they're getting access to other agents from all over the country. It's a very limited number of people because I handpick everybody who's in there. I've got to make sure that they're going to fit. I'm a big believer in putting highly motivated and driven people together to make each other better. So I want to make sure that they have the same general traits that way. But then we have all of the basic training stuff, video learning and exercises and tests and all of that to get them through the sales process. In the meantime, they're interacting with people who've been doing this for longer than they've been alive in some cases. And, you know, they're learning from them too. So it's really what used to be a daunting. And time, you know, time investment on me isn't anymore because I decided, you know what, I just need to sit down and run through all of this curriculum that I would normally have to do one on one. And now I never have to do it one on one anymore. I can have them run through it. When they get at the end of a module, we have a one on one meeting. I can make sure that they understand it, we can review the work product, we unlock the next module, and then they're on their way to go through it. And that has made all the difference in the world for me. I have to have it that way because there's a very long tail on how I hire people because of the way that I do that. I have a pipeline of producers coming into my agency, just like I have a pipeline of business. So I reached a point in 2020 where I know that in the next 12 to 18 months, in 2021 and into 2022, I have six to eight producers that are going to land in my agency. I don't have time to train six to eight producers myself. I had to develop something.

Can I ask a question?

Sure.

Thanks. So I have a young person with lots of sales acumen, et cetera, et cetera, according to all things that we've learned about this person. They've got it. You know what it is, right?

You've got an acronym for everything. Mike, I figured this out pretty quick, so your definition of it and mine are probably going to vary.

Okay, well, intellectual technology is what I picked up on my end.

Okay, there you go.

So anyway, so they've got it. And if I want to train them in commercial insurance and how to sell commercial insurance, simply all I need to do is turn them over to you and your systematic program.

Yep.

Well, let me just make sure that I repeat that so everybody heard what I said. I find a potential sales producer who has sales ability, who has no insurance experience, albeit commercial or otherwise, who needs to be trained. You give them to David and his team, and over a period of time, they will do all the training while you're doing only the things that only you should be doing. And in the entrepreneurial realm, that's what we all should be doing. We should only be doing the things that only we can do.

Kudos, dude. And I'm so glad you did this for others and you had no selfish intention whatsoever. Major high five. Props to you, man.

Yeah, I actually did it for myself. It was selfish to be honest with you, because I needed.

I heard you say that. Remember, David, one of the things that we talked about today so far, show up like you're supposed to be there. Yep.

Agreed.

You know, back to your $750,000 training account. In the beginning, you were supposed to be there. You were supposed to show up to create that for yourself. But, you know, kudos to you, man. Now you're helping other people. And I love the fact more than that is, you know, I also learned from many, many mentors that I've studied over the years. You are the result of the five people you hang around the most. And I love the fact that you said you got a small circle of people within your training programs who you've pre qualified from, pre vetted to make sure it doesn't, you know, pollute the environment, I guess, if you will.

Right, yeah, agreed. No, it has to be that way.

Yeah.

I think, look, we're all the same as far as that goes. We need to have those people that, you know, you have the people that you're friendly with.

Yeah.

Then you have your friends.

Yeah, that's right.

And I can count those friends on one hand.

That's right.

That's no disrespect to people that I'm friendly with, but I'm not gonna call more than one or two people at 3 o' clock in the morning if I need something.

That's right.

I know that the first one or two I call are gonna be there for me, and that's how I judge that. You know, outside of my wife, I'm a relatively private person as far as relationships go. Granted, I'm, you know, I'm all over the Internet. I can get up and speak in front of a thousand people and not blink an eye or whatever else, but I'm guarded in who I let myself get close to because of that.

Amen. Yeah, absolutely. Especially with today's social media and all that kind of stuff. One small thing can blow up into something which is totally unintended and totally misunderstood. Right, Agreed. So, anyway, out of respect for your time, I know how busy you are, how in demand your time is, and how much you have to do. I know that. Thank you for the time that you spent with us today. I'm going to go ahead and drop this for you if you don't mind. Get something to write with. Get something to write on. If you need to pause this, go ahead and do that. Okay. Get something to write with, something to write on. And just write down killing commercial.com killingcommercial.com go check it out. Find out more about what David has. If you've got up and coming commercial producers that want to learn from the best of the best in our industry, one of the other things that I learned in 1999, in one of my very early sales and marketing training, I was sitting in the room, I was listening to this guy from Riverside, California, about 45 minutes from me, okay? So he was talking, and he was a contractor specialist. You and I don't do contractors. But he is. In fact, I still refer business to him this day because that's all they do and they know what the heck they're doing. So anyway, so he said, they're talking in the room. He's talking about his marketing and all this kind of stuff. And after he's done, I ran up.

To the front of the room and.

I said, oh, my God. God, that was awesome. Thank you so much. And he goes, now, no disrespect to anybody. I love everybody, too. Italian guy, smokes a cigar, not real tall, right? Looked me in the eye or looked up a little bit in the eye and said, what's your name? I said, my name's Mike. And he goes, where are you from? I said, well, Temecula, California, not too far from you. He goes, oh, great, because we're in Chicago at the time. And he said, so I'm glad you liked it. Tell me about your agency. Blah, blah, blah. I said, well, I do some contractors, but don't worry, if I ever see your name, I'm never going to step on your toes. And he goes, let me tell you one thing. And he looked me right in the eye and said it as.

Direct as he could. He said, let me tell you one thing. There is so much business out there that you and I can write business all day, every single day for the rest of our lives. And it's unlikely that we're going to even run into each other. So I want you to drop that thought out of your head right fricking now and let's go. How is going to help you is what he said. Yeah.

Isn't that crazy, though? I mean, that's so true. We were so worried about who our competition is, yet I never see half of the people that I would expect to run into. I do want to say one thing real quick before we close up. If you go to killingcommercial.com There is a ton of free information there. Please take advantage of it. You know, we have a blog, we have a podcast, we have. We also have a YouTube channel because.

You mentioned the blog that you wrote earlier today.

Is it@that killingcommercial.com everything is there. And the one thing that we haven't talked about, and I don't even know if you know about this or not, but we have a reality TV show that we created for producers called the Protege. And essentially what it is is we had 76 applicants from across the country apply to come into this program. And it's essentially producers that are competing to get a lifetime access scholarship to Killing Commercial for whoever wins. And they're going through a series of challenges. I don't want to say the Apprentice because people are going to automatically think that that's exactly what it's like, but it's not right. We're running them through a series of challenges and we're taking producers that have been in small business or personal lines and we're teaching them the techniques that they need from a sales standpoint and a strategy standpoint to get into the middle market and be successful. And so I'm extremely proud of the people that have applied. Out of the 76 that applied, we picked 10. And they are competing like their life depends on it. And it's insane to watch the level of intensity and it's humbling and it's even kind of scary at the same time because I'm have to tell some of these savages that they have to go. Not everybody can win. So these people at some point are going to be told that they've been booted from the show, but everybody's going to win. And you know, I tell you that because I think that if people watch this as they go along when they see the behind the scenes and the coaching that's happening from other very well known agents across the country because we have coaches for each of these people, you can't help but learn from watching it. So I would encourage everybody when those episodes start, there is a section on killingcommercial.com for the protege. You can also go directly to the Protege show and you will see.

That each person there, they have video submissions to get for their application to get in. They have a Video bio, a little bit of history on them, and all of the coaches and everything are featured. We just wrapped up the third week of filming and we're moving into the fourth week, this next week. And here's why I bring this up. My friend Bradley Flowers told me that real estate wasn't sexy until they had million dollar listings. We're doing this because we're going to make insurance sexy for people who never thought that it could happen. And we're going to make this as big as we can, as flamboyant as we can, but we want people to see what happens. And here's the cool part. You know as well as I do that any successful agency out there, the most successful agencies, have a component of that agency for giving back, giving to their community, to not for profits, whatever else. That's one of the challenges in there. And I hope that everybody has the ability to see what these very creative individuals come up with because they're being challenged to do things they've never done before and they're just taking it and running with it. Yeah.

No, I wasn't trying to cut you off. I was trying to clap but without making noise.

Great.

That is freaking awesome, man. Kudos to you.

Thank you.

That is fantastic. I can't wait to learn more about that. Just to make sure everybody caught that. It's theprotege show.

Correct.

Okay.

You can also get there from if you go to it's how is Don killing commercials. So if you go to that address, it's gonna redirect you anyhow.

Right, Right. David.

I can't wait to hang out with you more often. I mean, this has been every time I hang out with you, it's just awesome. Incredible. I walk away in that natural buzz that we get in our head and I'm high the rest of the day in a good way in a natural highway. Thank you, sir. Just incredible. Oh, by the way, just to make sure that in case you missed it, the extra two minutes. The extra two minutes by David r. Carruthers is on Amazon. That's where I got mine. If you want to get a copy of the book, I strongly recommend that. I can't wait to finish this up and get it into the hands of our production team. And I've got some more information for our production team that they don't know is coming to them yet. So thank you for that opportunity and I'd love to hear any feedback that you've got. Last thing, David, as we wrap today, if there's anybody out there that's listening that might be newer to the industry or might be thinking about jumping from personal to commercial insurance and is unsure. What would you say to them?

What's it going to take for you to be sure? Where can you find your passion? If you're looking to leave where you're at, it's because you don't have a connection to that role and you're not maximizing your own ability every day as a result of that. If you're going to move into commercial, that's the one thing that's beautiful about it. You can find something you're passionate about and create a business model around that doesn't matter. You might not like workers comp at all. Great. Go build a cyber practice. You know there's any There are no rules other than what the regulators put on us with the insurance, but from a sales and marketing standpoint, you can really do whatever you want. It's a blank canvas. So think about what are the things in life that make you happy? What are you passionate about? Where do you want to spend the most time and then make the jump? Go into commercial insurance and build your business around those things and you'll be wildly successful.

Fantastic. Fantastic. I hope you got all this. If you didn't catch everything that David said, please go back and watch and or listen to this again. Make sure you have something to write with. Make sure you have something to write on. Because he dropped gold nugget after gold nugget. Gold nugget after gold nugget. I'm so excited I can't even talk. David, thank you. Thank you for being here today. Kudos to you and your success so far. Thank you for giving back and most importantly, helping others.

Yes sir. My pleasure and honored and humbled to be here. Thank you so much.

No, thank you. Hey everybody. Unstoppableprofitpodcast.com Unstoppableprofitpodcast.com if you like what you're seeing and or hearing, please send anybody you know to unstoppableprofitpodcast.com have them subscribe at the top. You'll automatically get notified of the next upcoming episode so you won't miss anything that you need to be hearing to continue your path on getting better every single day. Because as you know, the day we stop learning is the day we stop growing. And our podcast is out there on all the networks. So just go to unstoppableprofitpodcast.com you will find us. Get the app, get it downloaded so that we can continue to help you learn every single day in every single way. Friends, thank you so much for being with us today. Until next time, get out there and make a difference. Be unstoppable, leave no regrets, and you must take action. It will lead to your next win or your next lesson, but that's where the learning starts. David, thanks again buddy.

Yes, sir, my pleasure. Thank you for listening.

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