474. The Future Insurance Agent and Why New Agents Quit Before They Get Good

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What's in this episode:
Most new insurance agents don't quit because they're not smart enough. They quit because they're thrown into the field without ever practicing first. In this episode, Michael and Courtney sit down with 40-year insurance industry veteran Greg Smith to break down the paradox of learning: why new insurance agents lack confidence and competence right out of training, and why the industry's outdated onboarding model is setting new agents up to quit before they ever get good.

[00:00] Why rapid experience acceleration could save the industry millions
[01:00] Introducing 40-year insurance veteran Greg Smith
[02:00] Greg's family legacy in insurance and how he built a 40-year career
[05:00] The paradox of learning and why new agents freeze up
[08:00] What sports and surgery teach us about practicing before performing
[10:00] Why the industry's onboarding model sets new agents up to fail
[12:00] Diffusion of innovation and why only 16% of agents adopt change first
[15:00] What carriers should actually be solving for right now
[19:00] Why AI sales agents will replace transactional selling within five years
[23:00] How AI lets managers coach 15 to 20 people instead of five or six
[25:00] Turning AI into a technical knowledge assistant for agents
[27:00] Why professional advisors still beat AI on trust
[30:00] Functional courage and the coyote mindset for new agents
[32:00] The team member who logged 150+ role plays in a single month
[36:00] Greg's new book and where to connect with him

Connect with Greg:
linkedin.com/in/greg-smith-35788063
https://www.meetgregsmith.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

I started getting very interested in what you guys are doing. I called it rapid experience acceleration, but what you're doing with AI and some of the stuff to compress the learning is going to save the industry literally millions of dollars. Because if I can be six months faster to my productivity, well, what's six months times like Farm Bureau, for instance? We recruit 70, 70 advisors. Well, six months times 70 is a is a pretty good amount of years of production.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

On today's episode, Courtney and I sit down with longtime expert Greg Smith, over 40 years of experience, uh, and he's really done it all. Everything from agency ownership to corporate leadership to running an entire state for a carrier. Um, in today's episode, we're really going to be discussing really what the agency ownership opportunity looks like now, but also what the future agency opportunity looks like, which I guarantee is different than what most of you are thinking. Um, we're gonna be talking about the paradox of learning. We're gonna be talking about the rapid experience acceleration and more. So, with that being said, let's start the show. Hey, welcome to the insurance buzz. We are your host, Michael and Courtney Weaver. And today we have a very special guest with us, Greg Smith, over 40 years of expertise in our industry. We are super excited to have you on today, Greg. So welcome.

SPEAKER_03 1:37

Thank you. Thank you. So uh great to be here, and I'm looking forward to the conversation and really appreciate what you guys are doing in the industry and what you're bringing to the training and development of advisors because uh Lord only knows we need a lot more of them and they need to be competent and confident in what they're doing. And I think you guys really hit that part of it tremendously. Uh, confidence is, you know, you look at that with little kids, and it doesn't go away when we're adults. If you're not confident, it's tough tough to do stuff.

SPEAKER_02 2:06

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Greg, we appreciate having you on. We've obviously uh we've been connected on LinkedIn for a while. We've we we vibe really well because we both believe in transformational selling versus transactional selling, and we've got into uh probably some rants in the DMs with uh the transactional BS that kind of happens in today's world with people being insured but not protected. But um, I would love for you just to talk a little two, three, five minutes kind of around your experience, around where you started in the industry, where you're at now, because you have a really unique story. I mean, it sounds like sounded like to us just in getting to know you that your family was in insurance, you got in insurance now. You have 40 plus years, you're retired, but you're still consulting and coaching. So I'd love to love to learn a little bit more about you before we get into it today.

SPEAKER_03 2:53

Yeah, uh my my father actually uh worked at Ford Motor Company as a foreman, and he which was a great job for us kids in the downriver area, right? I mean, everybody wanted to be with the auto industry, and uh he decided at about 28 years old he was going to go into the insurance um industry, much to the chagrin of my grandparents and everyone else who was involved. And uh he did really well. Twenty years later, in 83, July 1st, actually, we were 20 years to the day, I got into the uh business as an agent, and we worked together in a partnership for about four years. And one day I walked into his office and I said, Hey, I'm gonna go into leadership. And he was not overly pleased, and he he said to me, uh, just remember, uh, the further up the ladder you go, the easier sales becomes. And it was my coaching as a leader that you better stay close to the field and you better understand that it's hard and rejection is there, and January starts over, and everybody's wanting you to do more every year. And so I took to heart that as a leader, and I went into management, field management, eventually ended up being a state sales director, had an incredible team around me of managing partners, people who actually did the recruiting, training, and development of our distribution system, which was at uh Farm Bureau of Michigan. And I think you've had uh Michael, I think you and Courtney have had some exposure to some of the people. Uh I know Alyssa Galvest has been on here, and she's one of the stars that we brought into the business and is doing extremely well. But there's a lot of really, really good managing partners. They did they did the hard work. I was the I was the leader who got to enjoy watching them develop and help our team grow. And our distribution system was very, very good and very powerful for the industry to protect people, and that's what we did.

SPEAKER_02 4:45

Yeah, we we love your peeps in Michigan, man. Uh Mason, Alex, Alyssa, shout out to all of you guys. You guys are uh you guys are incredible. We've been up there a few times now, and your agents are incredible. Um, we have quite a few that work with us. So um, Greg, let's get into because we touched base on this. Courtney got fired up before we got into it.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Fired.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

You're you were getting me fired up talking about it, and it's the the paradox of learning and and really where we're at in today's age with what you've seen in your experience, and that's where we can kind of start with where you see what you've you've experienced, and now what you because you still, even though you're you're retired, you still have a lot of connections in the space, you're still watching it. So I'd love to just kind of start there and then we can kind of dial in the conversation moving forward.

SPEAKER_03 5:32

Yeah, I I think you know Adam Grant wrote about the paradox of learning and hidden potential, and it struck me when I read it that that's exactly what our issue is, is that people are not competent and confident when they first start in a new career. I I mean some are better than others, but we typically like to bring people in from other pathways, other careers, or that we don't like to switch agencies, and that's kind of a thing we don't do in this industry for the most part. So what happens with the paradox of learning essentially is people aren't confident enough. They don't like doing things they aren't good at. I mean, go to your go to a golf scramble and someone's uh that they're forced to go to for a company event. They've never played golf before and watch people on the first T who've never swung a club. It's it's really uh it's really the the metaphor for being an agent when you're first starting. Like, what am I gonna say when I get out there? And I started honestly, I started getting very interested in what you guys are doing. Um, I called it rapid experience acceleration, but what you're doing with AI and some of the stuff to compress the learning is going to save the industry literally millions of dollars. Because if I can be six months faster to my productivity, well, what's six months times like Farm Bureau, for instance, we recruit 70, 70 advisors. Well, six months times 70 is uh is a pretty good amount of years of production. So I was talking to uh one of the guys at our company who's the controller and uh the uh the financial guy, and he is extremely interested in investing because if he can save six months times 70, well, everybody's gonna win, including clients and the companies that put that money out. So I'm very passionate about the fact that we have to compress learning. I think you guys are on the edge of starting that whole thing. Five years from now, it'll probably be revolutionary. We'll have an avatar sitting here, really able to interact with me, and then I can have an avatar conversation before I go out and embarrass myself in front of my uncle who is gonna make fun of me because I don't know what I'm talking about. So that's where I really get excited about what you guys are doing as well.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

I am on the same page, like I get so fired up because it I grew up playing sports, and for me, when I hit the career path, it didn't make any sense to me that all of a sudden you spend your whole life practicing things to compete, to do the thing, and then you hinder enter the professional game and you don't practice anymore. And it's like, yeah, but how do you learn? Like as human beings, we all learn through experience. And if we're we're not given that a place to experiment and actually go, okay, how do I gain this experience without feeling like we're gonna sound stupid because that's that's the thing that we're all afraid of. I say this a lot and I didn't come up with this. Is this was Julie Cameron and the artist's way, but she said you don't get better and look good at the same time. As human beings, we have this like overconfidence that we're gonna come out and we're just gonna hit a grand slam on our first swing of the bat. And it's like, no, that doesn't work anywhere. Like that's never how it goes. So to me, it just it's never made sense that as professionals, there's no warm-up, there's no practice, there's no place to like, especially as somebody who I don't like to look stupid. I don't know that anyone does, but I especially don't. So I want to be able to practice in the dark. Like I want to be able to sit down with an AI role play and go, I'm gonna do this a hundred times until I can say what I need to say when somebody says, Yeah, I already got it through work. It's like, okay, I'm ready. Like I already know this ejection.

SPEAKER_03 10:59

A hundred percent, Courtney. And the if you think about it, aviation, people fly flight simulators. They don't get on there and announce, you know, Captain Smith, he'll be taking his first flight, and you guys enjoy your extra cocktail because you're gonna need it by the time he's done. And and uh doctors, you know, I look at Guandy who wrote the checklist manifesto, and he he wrote an article in a magazine about he hired a coach to watch him after he was an extremely gifted uh surgeon. Well, if an extremely gifted surgeon's hiring coaches, why aren't we practicing more, as you're saying, up front? So we send people out into the world, they don't have the confidence, they don't have the competence, and then we want them to go really super fast, and then we fail them through validation or whatever weird thing we consider in the industry to save the money, and then we get mad and say, Oh, we're not retaining enough people, what's going wrong?

SPEAKER_02 11:54

Yep, yep, so it's so funny because we were just talking about this this weekend, is and I think as a small business owner, I've got it wrong. As an agency owner, I've got it wrong, and I see carriers get it wrong with the training they have, and it's we all think that our one week, two week, three-week, four-week training plan that we have is incredible, it's awesome. The person's gonna come in, they're gonna learn, and then when they're done, they're just gonna hit the ground running and they're gonna be rock stars. And unfortunately, that's the biggest disconnect I see across the industry wide. It doesn't matter if it's an agency owner's office or a carrier with their training curriculum. It's okay, I have this upfront training, but then what happens when the training's done? There's a giant disconnect in our industry, which is what you're talking about. It's like, okay, we can train them, but just because you trained them once, and what you both are hinting at right now, it's like Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time, he still watched game film after every game, and he still practiced chess passes and layups during every practice leading up to a game because he knew he knew that's what he did the most. It's not like the greatest in any sport, and you can go with Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady, uh, any sport across the like you always are going to practice, you're always going to continue with the ongoing development, you're always going to try and master your craft, or at least that's what the best of the best do. And now we actually have the ability to do that in today's, like what I think, for the first time ever, and maybe not first time ever, but it makes it more efficient with using AI and some of the systems that we've built, agency coach AI, for example.

SPEAKER_03 13:24

Yeah, well, absolutely. And the the other, one of the other things, and I didn't mention this earlier, but I've been studying a lot about you know performance valleys. And one of the things, you know, you talk about diffusion of innovation. Anytime you come up with something new, there's only a very small percentage, about 16%, that will go at go at it right away. And then there's 34% that'll sit there and say, Well, until one of my friends can prove that they use this, and you guys live this, I'm not going to try this. Well, that's 50%. And then there's the other 34% who kind of watch from afar, they're the skeptics, and then the laggards, they the 16 at the end, they don't do anything. So everyone hears it the same way. If I'm a practitioner and I'm going to start using systems that are different, or you want me to sell more commercial or more life insurance or whatever else, I sit back and say, okay, what is this going to cost me in my performance? Because I already have my jam going on. I already know what I do every day. I get up on Monday, go to work, but I'm going to create some disruption in my velocity of my business. Now, on the other side of the performance peak, how great is it going to be in the future? But that's the thing we always, as a leader, I always used to sit there and say, why did everyone want it to be a hundred percent or we won't invest in this? And after I retired and after I went into more consultative role, I realized that you never get much over 50%. And if you get to 70, you're like a rock star. So you guys naturally suffer from companies sitting there going, we know we have a paradox of learning, but we don't understand the fusion of innovation and we won't accept it, but we want 100% participation rather than saying, let's get some started, let people watch them, and then we make, you know, we really make bank on the other side of this in terms of our investment return philosophy that we have. And I think that's the biggest thing that um we have to solve as an industry, or we're going to continue to suffer, and our distribution will be online sales that people don't know anything about what they're getting, and we'll have more and more people misinsured, and life won't be good for the industry because people get upset about it.

unknown 15:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 15:45

Sorry about that diatribe.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

I'm just I'm literally nodding my head in agreeance because completely agree. And I think as and I get it, as a business owner, there's so many things that you're constantly like, am I going to take some time? Because that's the thing. Like, I have to take time and I have to invest in not only myself learning a new skill set, but also invest in my team learning new skill sets and growing in new ways. And and I think there's not an option anymore. And I understand that it takes time, but I think as fast as technology is moving and innovation is moving and customers are experiencing and expecting different levels of service, I don't think you don't have I like I think you have to make that decision now. And even Greg, I'm so glad that you said that because to me it's like if I don't get 100%, that's fine. But if I get something out of this that in some way can spark confidence or generate revenue or improve my conversation or have my somebody on my team feel more competent, then I it's done what it needs to do. Like we're in the business of making people better. Like that is who we are as as humans, and so we're going to continue to show up for that. But that's our business. So you coming from the leadership perspective, what are you seeing from a carrier standpoint that you're like hearing them saying, okay, this is what agents and the agency force sticking close to the fire, they need to be focused on. Is it learning or is there something else that we need to make sure that we're bringing to the forefront?

SPEAKER_03 17:10

Well, I I think the I think the reality check is that rather than going to other distribution methodologies, we need to double down on the fact that people like to work with people that they respect, like, and know and trust. Mark McCormick said that long ago. All things being equal, people buy from those they know, respect, and like. All things being unequal, inclusive of price, they buy from the same person. You think about it, Michael, in your career, people would buy from you, whether they spent more money or not, because they respected, like you, they knew you. And there's no way to ever get referral gravity in your local communities unless you have that person that you've recruited. All that being said, here's what I think companies are doing now, as I can sit back and talk very candidly, is that they keep bringing people into the business and they are doing the same things, the insanity clause of expecting different results. We have to get people experience more rapidly up front. We have to use technology to, we need to use technology, as my son-in-law would so want me to say, co-pilots to help people become better at what they do, right? He's a Microsoft guy. And it's just the the thing is that as a as an industry, what we're doing is we're letting great talent walk out the door because they want to be trained differently, especially younger people. They're very technologically oriented. They would sit there and chat with an avatar about give me all the excuses in the world why I shouldn't do an insurance review. But we have to be realistic that just because we have an innovation here doesn't mean that the rules don't apply to innovation. So I think if we could get the industry to realize that if we got 50%, 60% of our advisors plugged in using the system, and then all the new ones would learn the new system. So eventually we might get to 75%.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 19:18

We would just own the world of distribution. We would be amazing. People would love their agents, they would think that the industry was so much better, they'd understand their products, um, they'd be connected to the life they want to protect by a person who really spoke their language. Yes, you have children, yes, you have a nice home, yes, you like to ski. All those things we have to know. That's not gonna be replaced online, but the industry's hell bent on trying to do that. And I'm just saying that somebody's got to stand in the void of saying distribution should be local, referral gravity is local, and people who care about other people are always gonna be very, very much appreciated, whether they're a lawyer, a doctor, or an insurance professional.

SPEAKER_02 20:05

Are you embracing AI in your business? Are you afraid of potentially getting left behind? Make sure if you haven't already, book a call with us at agency coach AI. The reviews have been incredible. We are the most advanced AI software solution for you as an insurance professional, giving you and your team the ability to get live grading and coaching on every single call. Doesn't matter sales call or service call. How about the ability to role play full-blown sales conversations, taking the awkwardness, the weirdness, the shame out of the peer-to-peer role plays that aren't that effective? How about the ability to have amazing reporting that's gonna give you more data than you've ever had the ability to have as an agency owner? If you haven't booked a call with us at agency coach AI, make sure you click the link below. Other than that, let's get back to the show. I agree 100,000 percent. And this is probably why we've jammed in our DMs on LinkedIn. Um, because I'm at the per I'm at the honestly at the point where I don't care how good of an agency you run or how big of an agency you run, that if in the next five years, if you are not entrenched in your community, you are not having appointments with your customers, you are not doubling down on the human aspect of the business, you will be replaced by AI sales agents that your companies will um are going to take a ton of data, they're going to build, and they're going to be better than any salesperson that you can hire for transactional selling. Like there will not be if you're the biggest agency owner in Dallas, Texas, that has a team, four locations, and a team of a hundred people. If all you do is transactional sell life insurance, auto insurance, fire insurance all day long, you are going to potentially be replaced over the next five years, unless you double down. Now, that's just my opinion. We'll see if Michael Weaver is right or wrong, but that is my opinion of what I see where I see the industry going because it's so it's so much less expensive for a company to build AI sales agents and do it that route and then double down on their agency force that actually wants to be involved in the community, involved in their boards, involved in their uh like rotary, all that stuff to where that's where the distribution channel has to go. Not that you can't market across the state and still write big numbers because you can, but you are going to have to have a very relationship-based team, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_03 22:28

100%. I I totally agree. It's uh, you know, this might this might seem kind of strange, but I was sitting over at the golf course the other day and I was watching this uh mechanical mower. They named it lightning because it goes kind of slow. But he's out there every day in the rain, doesn't complain, all the things, right? Well, that's the that's that uh that opiate that the industry wants. You know, they look at that transactional thing and they say, well, if you're not going to offer any value or service, I can train this avatar to to do it exactly right. And I don't even have to worry. They'll work 24 hours a day. They'll never take a vacation, they'll never have the 4th of July. But the client, in my opinion, just like transactional sales with advisors, they're really not advisors agents, they're going to have misinsured people because it's not going to be taken care of. There won't be, there won't be the uh transactions transaction, in my opinion, and care and competence and sitting back and really understanding what those people's risks are, connecting them to that life they want to preserve. That is where the gold standard will be. And I believe, wholeheartedly, companies will split and go two different ways. I believe there's going to be a whole group of them go the other way, but I believe there's going To be a really great niche in the transformational selling, the consultative selling, being your practitioner, where uh those companies are going to prosper too. And and maybe the other companies will be bigger. Very well could be. Who cares if you have a very highly profitable company, right?

SPEAKER_02 24:05

If profitable, that's the thing. It's like right now, just because you write a lot of business doesn't mean you're profitable. When you're churning 30 or 40 percent before the 18th month mark, you're not a super profitable company, you're just chasing your tell. And that's what we're seeing across even the big boys right now across the board. So um you said something though earlier, and so uh and I want to reiterate this because this is what we're seeing right now, even in our like where we're at, and talking with carriers and things of that nature, is right now you have some of the agents that are kind of fighting back against AI. Now, you have a lot of your good agents that are like, I need this in my life, ASAP, because they see where the industry is going. But even some of the good ones are a little like, uh, I think we're still gonna continue to do it the way we've always done it, and which surprises the hell out of me that good agents say that. But um, either way, what I see, and you hit on this, and I want to, and the reason I'm gonna bring this back up is I think it's really important and where we're going as an industry is the carriers, the agents that they adopt this before anybody else, you're now building a culture around AI. You're now introducing people from the day one that's like, okay, I'm practicing with AI, I'm giving getting instant grade back and and feedback, I'm getting instant grading on my calls to make sure I'm doing the right thing.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

And when you look at how humans want to be sold to, you're tracking compliance, you're looking for keywords, did they bring up this pivot? Are they covering this all that?

SPEAKER_02 25:31

Yep. So so now what AI is doing from our perspective is we're helping managers be able to now manage 15 to 20 people effectively versus five to six. We're helping agencies be able to scale more efficiently. We're able to change positions in an office because of the amount of time they save, and we're streamlining not only our upfront training, but ongoing training and development along the way. And so when you think about those aspects of a business and getting people in day one that's used to practicing with AI, used to getting feedback with AI, used to having an AI coach, not only does that make you more efficient and more effective, but now you're building a culture that that's all they know. And that is what I think is most important going into the future of what do you want your culture to look like? Like if you're listening to this right now as a carrier or an agency owner, what type of culture do you run today, and what type of culture do you want to run in the future?

SPEAKER_03 26:23

Well, I I I I 100% agree with what you're saying. There's two aspects of it though, from my perspective. This is your this is your assistant who's going to refine you and make you better and make your team better. Compressing time. I can't I can't overemphasize that enough. Do you want people to learn in a year, or do you want them to learn, as Courtney said, in a month because they sit there and listen to a hundred uh renditions, that they feel comfortable to go fly the plane. The other aspect of it is, and we haven't really touched on this, I used to send out all the large losses every week to the entire fields force that were over $100,000. Because I wanted the agents to be sensitized to the fact that these things happen. I also would send out all the, I'd sanitize it, of course, but the death claim reports. Person's first name, their age, I said I would always say, you notice they're not all the same age. That's not how life works. But I think one of the biggest aspects of, just like your drug companies do, your pharmaceutical companies, the interaction of your advice with the policies. You can simply ask AI, hey, I'd like you to search. I have a question on a homeowner's uh coverage. I want you to search all the carriers. I want you to tell me if if and where this can be covered. So I can become so much more technically oriented too by having this assistant. Now, I was an insurance major in college, so I was a nerd who actually had to read the policies. But very few people enjoy reading insurance language. Well, if you have an assistant that can point you in the right direction, the form of AI, not only are you going to learn to sell better up front and to interact with your client, now I actually have a crutch of a technical knowledge. I should never be unaware of a coverage ever again in the history of the world. I should be able to research it very quickly. And I think that's going to be one of the biggest tools that eventually claims and underwriting and that interact with the advisor to really rapidly increase our knowledge out in the field.

SPEAKER_02 28:33

And the flip side of this is if you can do that, so can the consumer. So if you cannot be a professional, an educator, a doctor, an advisor for your customers, why do they need you? One 100%.

SPEAKER_03 28:50

Because now most people don't even think about insurance until my this has been my experience 40 years, until they have a wreck or the house is on fire. Or wow, I didn't even think of that risk. I mean, all you have to do is do the 4th of July, right? Guys shooting off $8,000 worth of fireworks next to me. One of them goes off and wings over by the other neighbor's house, and I'm sitting there going, nothing happened, but let's say it did. Um, you know, that's when they start thinking about liability and all these things. So I I personally think that people will always want to have a CPA. They're gonna want a lawyer who's gonna hold their hand, they're gonna want an advisor, but we're making it awfully easy in a transic transactional world to say I choose my avatar because they're nicer to me, and uh ideally they may know more than you do in transactional type living. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

So I think there's such a shift too. I'm seeing that with marketing happening right now where we no longer trust the internet anymore. Like we are scrutinizing over and over again, and it's almost the shift where we're seeing this rebellion against like the superficial and the thing that we can't trust. So I I was having this conversation, my brother's a football coach and he's a teacher. And kids all the time are coming up to me and they're like, Oh my gosh, I love coach, he's the best, he's the best. And I was having this chat with him, and he's like, it's easy. I'm like, it's easy because pardon my French, you give a shit. Like and and I think that's the thing that I'm seeing more and more is it doesn't matter what you do. I know we're talking about insurance right now, but AI is affecting every single industry across the board. It's affecting it, doesn't matter if it's my parents, grandparents, all the way down to kids. Like we're we're seeing technology shift. But I think the one constant that everyone is craving is do I have somebody in my corner when I need them? And I think even more now than ever before, we have an obligation in the insurance profession. You brought up the fireworks. My parents had a massive tree just slide through their fence over the weekend. And it's this conversation of like, okay, can I get a hold of my person? What is this next step? How does this work? And I think we use AI, this is always my belief, but let's make it something that makes us better. Like, let's use it to help us so that we can actually help people. Because if we're not helping people, what's the point? What are we doing? If we're not showing up and making the world a better place, then I I don't know. I just to me, I think we have such an amazing opportunity because we have so much access to information to actually grow and get better and serve our customers and serve ourselves, serve our family, make more money, make a bigger impact. It's like, let's take this, let's actually do this, let's adopt it, and let's become the best we actually can and help people. And the money tends to work itself out when you do that, at least from our experience.

SPEAKER_03 31:47

Well, friend, uh good friend, I'm sure you guys know the name about Ed Deutschlander who runs North Star Financial. He'll he'll say, Do well by doing good, you know, and he he lives that. And that's what you're saying, Courtney, is that you can do well by doing good and helping people and being there for them. And I I just think one of the other things I was going to touch on too is uh what I think that you guys are doing also is you know, I call it functional courage. And I I I did this post um uh and I put a picture of a coyote, maybe you saw it, but this this coyote post had over like 10,000 views. And I'm sitting here going, this is really stupid. I mean, but but it and the reason I did it, I was curious because if you ever look at coyotes, they're kind of cocky, right? They can live anywhere. They always they come cruising across the golf course, they glance at you like, hey, what's up? What are you doing? I'm chasing squirrels or rabbits or whatever. But they always live with functional courage, like they adapt to their situation. They keep moving forward because they because what you guys do is you guys bridge the gap from confidence, competence to self-efficacy is that coyotes know that they can handle it, right? They're gonna cross a road, they look both ways. This this one on our golf course looks both ways, goes across the road. They adapt to their reality, and that self-efficacy of I can handle this, that's what you guys um are on the cusp of with your AI training, is because if I've heard it a hundred times, I can maybe handle this. So all of a sudden I go all the way from confident to this, I don't care what happens. I'm up in the airplane flying this plane, I'll land it upside down if I have to, like Denzel Washington, but I will land the plane. And and uh I think I think that's the magic of what we can do in the training to stand it on its head, compress time. Because if I was, if if I were you, I am sure you said this, you're going to save the industry millions of dollars. There's no sense to go down this road of online transactional, insured but not protected clients when they could be protected properly because we can compress time, save a bunch of money, not waste time with recruiting the wrong people, and it all works, it all works out.

SPEAKER_02 34:18

Yep, agreed. I mean, to the point you're making, what what was the leader last year or last month? We had two team members that each did like 170 role plays apiece, something like that.

SPEAKER_00 34:30

Yep, they did um, yep, they totaled it was like 310 combined. One had like 155 and one had 154. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 34:38

Can you imagine that can you imagine that, Greg? A team member or an agent that has a hundred and fifty plus practice conversations in a month.

SPEAKER_03 34:47

That's that's just it's just incredible because you know, well, you know, velocity in the business cannot increase to we you know, we talk about dynamic stability, you know, paddling uh uh paddling a stand-up paddle board. Well, you can't stand on it in the lake, but if you stick your oar in the water and start moving faster, it works. Well, the same thing with this practice, you're creating stability, which then allows you to have faster velocity, and then all of a sudden you have enough appointments. And because I don't want appointments if I don't know what I'm doing. Right. That's the thing I want to avoid, like the plague. Hey, let me guess, I'm gonna get up today and just go embarrass myself with a few dozen clients. I mean, who wants to do stuff like that? No, it's it's it's ridiculous, and that's what the industry does, though. We give them a three-week training class. I went through three weeks of career school. Had I not been an insurance major, I wouldn't have made it. I just remember being scared about what to say and what to do. And my dad was in the business for 20 years. Imagine that. He didn't he just said, hey, just go out and see people. Great, good advice, dad. I mean, he was a wonderful practitioner, but that was not good training advice. So now we can say it out. My daughter always says that to me. Just figure it out, dad, about technology. And I go, hey, you went to school so I could be told how to figure out technology.

SPEAKER_00 36:11

You are permanently my IT person.

SPEAKER_02 36:13

Exactly, exactly. We we have a stain for that. GTS. Google that shit.

SPEAKER_03 36:20

Isn't it true though? I mean, so I don't know. I'm just very excited about what you guys are doing. I I in all sincerity, I was stunned. I was thinking, you know, rapid experience acceleration, and you guys were already doing it. You know, there's nothing new under the sun. You know, the old the old wisdom from Proverbs. It's already been thought of. I I went to a cathedral in Siena, Italy, built eight, uh, it took 800 years to build. So the guide says the floor took 200. The guide says, what do you see on the floor? It was a 3D image of the tile. They were 3D. And we have these goofy glasses. Yesterday I took the grandkids to a movie and they wanted to know if we wanted to watch it in 3D. And I'm sitting here thinking, these people were doing this 800 years earlier, and we think, oh, we've invented all this cool stuff. Well, you know, adaptability is what AI is. I mean, we've thought about all the adaptions, and now technology is starting to give us the ability to think a little bit more deeply about how we can do it. But there is, you know, innovations, innovation just it's it's not as innovative as you might think, I guess is what I'm saying. People still love to talk with people, and you guys are just accelerating the process so they'll be comfortable.

SPEAKER_00 37:42

Yeah. And it's so fun. So thank you for uh spending this episode like literally gassing me up. I feel for me. I feel like I could like take on the world. But I I love that you're bringing this up because it it really does. It allows, especially when we're talking about a team, that we can kind of get through that the nerves and not feeling competent, not feeling confident, and then we can start having bigger conversations of okay, so you're not bringing this up in a conversation. This is clearly not a confidence issue. There's something else that's going on here. Let's talk about that. And I think that that's hugely important. But to your point, yeah, I think we're built for this. We're built to adapt, we're built to innovate, we're built to take like whatever building block has already been laid before us and go, how do I make this bigger and better and faster and and do all? I think that's that's us as humans. So I have thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, Greg. I could spend all day doing this, but I do know that you have other things to do. So um, if somebody so much follow you, connect with you, buy your new book that's coming out this fall, how would they do that?

SPEAKER_03 38:46

Um, meet Greg Smetgregssmith.com. And uh I'm also on on LinkedIn, right on there quite a bit, and uh excited about the things that you're doing, excited about things I'm doing now, getting a chance to talk with a lot of companies. But I bring up rapid experience acceleration, my my way of explaining what you guys are trying to do, and I think it's the future of the industry. I think it has to be done to save the money. If we're gonna continue to recruit people, this is what's gotta happen to get the returns we need so that all the companies don't migrate over to a disaster uh for people, which is online distribution with people being misinsured and insured but not protected. I believe that to the bone. I've experienced it in my personal life, and uh it's not a good thing to not have people properly taken care of, that is for sure. So really appreciate uh you, Michael and Courtney, and uh you guys have a great uh rest of the week. And thanks a lot for thinking of me and uh have giving me this opportunity.

SPEAKER_02 39:51

Well, Greg, this has been awesome. You're invited back anytime. This has been great. So, guys, again, make sure you connect with Greg and myself if you haven't already on LinkedIn. His website is meatgregsmith.com, meetgreggsmith.com. So make sure you check it out. Other than that, um, as always, time and attention are by far our most important assets. We appreciate you spending time with us today. I would personally love to know what your guys' take is on our conversation that we had with Greg today. Do you agree? Do you disagree? Shoot us a text, 816 727 7610. Other than that, Greg, thank you so much for your time today, my man. Thank you very much.