AI Submission Flow With David Watson

What do you feel like insurance agents need to do in terms of branding themselves, their agencies, the carriers they represent? When you are marketing something you're not in control of, you're not in control. I mean there's so many technology tools out there now to help agents feel like a global shop even when they're not. We were talking to an agency the other day that reduced their... on the phone by 70% using Gale. The very last thing I do, I get agreement from them.

And then I end the call with making damn sure whatever I say I'm going to do gets done. The reason that I love Ascend is they're the only vendor focused on helping agents automate. all of their manual finances and accounting practices, which is really the boring stuff, but that's really where the rubber meets the road in terms of profitability to your agency. Steadly specializing in landlord insurance.

across long and short-term rental properties in most U.S. states. You know, I think the reason we've started writing a pretty good bit of business with you guys We're going to write business with carriers that make it easy for us to write business with. If the conditions have to be right for you to succeed, your success is conditional. It's not real success. Play like champions, man.

Here we go. Insurance agents from around the world, welcome to the Insurance Guys podcast. My name is Scott Howell, your fearless host and leader. Insurance agency on an insurance specialist for I protect insurance and financial services based out of Huntsville, Alabama. And before we get started on today's episode, please help me welcome, he is a 6'3 sophomore from Mobile, Alabama. Parade first team All-American, rivals five-star recruit. He is a fantastic insurance agent.

and a great American. Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together and welcome the incomparable Mr. Bradley Flowers. How are you, Bradley? I'm fantastic. I just actually... reverse Google image search your shoes because I'm going to buy me some just like those. Cool, cool, cool.

Yeah, I'm kind of hip, you know, 53, hip, wear all what the hip kids wear. You know how that goes. Bradley, we finished up our last podcast. We said I love you. Well, I said it to you. And then we let the guest off the – the program and the doors the two huge uh game of throne doors open and kenneth kenneth our friend kenneth is standing in the door he's standing in the game of thrones door And he says, Scott, there's a auto mechanic that wants to see you out here.

Now, for those of you that are lifelong listeners to the podcast, about two episodes ago, I told you that I limped into Mobile last night. My car wasn't working right. Don't know what was wrong with it. Could barely get here, but by golly, I got here. And Gio, our friendly parking lot mechanic. who now has my American Express card and is probably on Amazon right now buying. Did you really? Yo, he's got it. He's got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He comes in here, and he's got his little machine that they put in the diagnostic port, and he says, well, you want the good news or the bad news? And I'm a bad news first guy. I always want to hear bad news first. He said, well, bad news is, you know that rattling that you're hearing under your car? Well, that's your alternator. You got a bearing that's loose in that alternator. Let me look that up right here on... autoparts.com, see what that's going to run you. That's $569 plus labor.

The good news is what was causing your car to misfire on the way down here is you need three spark plugs, and those won't be very much. They're only about $20 apiece. So, guys, as it stands here today, minus labor, which I'm about to get my head ripped off, I'm at about, what's that, Bradley? You're the mathematician. It's about $615, somewhere in that range. Probably looking at.

At least another $600 in labor. Yeah, yeah. So here comes the great part of the story. Bradley's kind of back behind me watching this, and I give the guy my American Express card, which he's just... booked an Airbnb in Montana. And I say, Gio, let me walk out in the parking lot with you. So we walk out together. Now we're bonding. I've given him my American Express card. And he's going to go buy a bunch of stuff to fix my car and charge me $1,000 in labor.

He looks at me when we get out in the parking lot, Bradley. He says, I just called the Audi dealership and quit. And I said, do what? And he goes, Well, I was full-time over at Audi as a mechanic, but I can't make no damn money over there. I just called them a minute ago on my cell phone and quit. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What do you say to that? What do you say to that? There's a lot to unpack here. I swear to God, this just happened 30 minutes ago.

It's never a good sign when you give someone your American Express card and they say, okay, I'm quitting my job. No, I just quit. I called. His words, not mine. I called five minutes ago and I quit. So this guy was already here working on a car. Scott pulls in. He's like, hey. My car is screwed. Hopefully he doesn't think that's going to happen on every job. Wow. Homeboy just called Audie and quit on the spot right before we quit that last podcast.

Wow. Anyway, you had a story to tell. Well, this will be a quick story. So I've been saving this one, too. I don't think I told you this. Oh, no. So when we record our podcast, we record on a Rodecaster Pro 2. We're kind of a big deal. Same thing Joe Rogan does, but anyway. And we have the memory card that is on that is a micro SD card. So it's about a centimeter, maybe even less.

It's a very small card. And so Johnny and I figured out this cadence where I don't send him all of the episodes when we get done batching at once. I send them every, every, so every, he did it this morning, every Monday. He pings me, hey, need this week's episode. I come pull the card out of the board, stick it in my computer, transfer the file, put the card back. Takes five minutes. Yeah. So a couple of weeks ago.

I needed the card at my house to send the episode. I think it was like end of the day, something to that effect. And I didn't have time to send it. So I took it home, did it from the house. And anything important in my vehicle that is small that I cannot lose, I keep it in the cup holder. P.O. Box key, key to...

storage unit. It's just where business stuff goes. If I'm at a networking event, somebody gives me a business card, I put it in the cup holder. Okay. Nobody hardly ever rides with me in my front seat. So the cup holder is mine. All right.

So some of y'all may remember I talked about this on the podcast a few years ago. So we had a guy that would come here and detail our vehicles. It was like an employee benefit, and they would come detail everybody's vehicles, and he was super cheap, so cheap that he went out of business. He would detail everybody's vehicles for like 600 bucks. It's like 10 vehicles. Now, he wasn't doing full like...

I think he washed mine one day when I was here. He did. We actually timed it right where you were here, so we just threw Scott's in there, too. He went out of business, and so we ended up... We don't do that anymore. And so my vehicle and my wife's vehicle had both gotten where they needed detailing, right? And so my sister-in-law, we're riding with my sister-in-law to dinner.

And this guy exclusively dealt on Venmo. And she happened to see on Venmo where somebody Venmoed this guy for car detailing. So I text him. I'm like, hey, are you back in business? He's like, well, I'm only doing weekends. I was like, sweet. I would love for you to come to my house on a Saturday and detail mine and my wife's car. Okay? Cool. So he comes to the house, details the vehicles, no big deal.

I didn't send Johnny the episode on Monday. On Tuesday, he's like, hey, I need this week's episode. I'm like, oh, that's in the cup holder of my car. Oh, no. I'll give you a guess what happened. Sucked it up in the damn vacuum. Sucked it up in the vacuum. You find it? Six weeks of episodes sucked up in the vacuum. And I called Laurel first and I said, you are not going to believe what happened. And she said, Scott is going to murder you.

Is this a joke? Wait, is this a joke? No. Not only is it the fact that we've recorded these episodes and we don't have them, but you take way more effort to come down here than I do. Thankfully... our phenomenal videographer, Rand, records back up, which I get him to do. Holy shit. On every single episode. So anytime...

So lesson for all of you, whether you're doing content creation or whatever, you always have a backup. Always, always have a backup. So we were able to save the day. So I called Johnny. I'm like, Johnny, you're not going to believe what happened. He's like, what?

I told him that the car detail guy sucked up the SD card. And the problem was I discovered it on Tuesday, cleaned the car on Saturday. If I'd have realized it right away, we could have. But I wasn't even going to attempt to get it from him. Yeah, right. So, yeah, that did. happen that where all our episodes were yeah yeah i'm getting hot just thinking about the

12 hours of driving. Yeah. Anyway, guys, we've got a special guest on for you today. I've got so many questions. He's got so many answers. I want to give him the introduction that he's always deserved. He was born and raised in Anderson, South Carolina, and he currently resides in Lexington, South Carolina. He is married to the beautiful Caitlin. Did I say that right, Caitlin? You did. Absolutely. And he is a graduate.

Of the University of South Carolina, the real USC. That's right. Their football season is going about like ours is. Bradley, first question when we finish this incredible introduction. 19 vehicles in 19 years of driving. Interesting. Put a pin in that. And the Tesla was his favorite. I'm joking. I know it was. Listen to this. Been with State Farm 2012 to 2014. Blue Lake Insurance, 2016 to 2018. Mappas Insurance, 2018 to 2024. And today.

He is a partner of Mappas Insurance Agency, an independent insurance firm in South Carolina that specializes in both personal and business insurance. He is also... The founder of Risk Advisor, an insure tech SaaS tool, don't know what any of that is, that helps independent agents. be more profitable in personal lines accounts. With Risk Advisor, over the past two years, he has written over $1 million in personal lines.

insurance premium each year, and his goal is to help other independent agents write more profitable accounts. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my profound honor today to introduce to you First time guest on the IGP, Mr. David Watson. How are you, David? I'm good. I appreciate that intro. That was definitely something I've been looking forward to. I appreciate y'all having me on. 19 vehicles in 19 years.

What in the fresh hell is going on? Well, the craziest thing about that stat is if it was five years ago, it would have looked a lot worse. It was probably like 17 in 15 years or something like that. The ratio was – I've slowly been catching up because I've been keeping my vehicles a little bit longer. But yeah, I used to bounce around on vehicles quite a bit. For a while there, I made some money, but then –

it kind of caught up to me. So you're just a guy when you bought that Tesla, you're just a guy that quickly tires. from the vehicle you're driving and somehow, some way in your mind, you think to yourself, I just want a new vehicle. See, here's what's funny about that. How long have you and your wife been married? 13 years. So let's pretend you're single.

And you put that in your Tinder bio that 19 vehicles, that's a huge red flag. Huge red flag. This guy gets tired of stuff really quick. That's right. So is that, am I right though? Or is your mentor, do you have some kind of... mental hiccup that you need therapy that like a car vehicle Now, yeah, I mean, some of it is definitely like, hey, a lot of it was I would get rid of a truck, go into a car and realize, hey, I'm a truck guy and realize that I've done that a couple of times. Been there.

One of them, you mentioned my wife and the Tinder profile, all that fun stuff.

uh one of them my wife told me that she always dreamed about driving away from her from her wedding in a jeep wrangler with the top down so bought a uh jeep wrangler did you have the duck ducks on sold the truck got the jeep wrangler use the money the difference in the money to pay for her engagement ring while getting her what she wanted to drive away in so but uh i used to have a lot of fun with like the craigslist thing

And now with the kids and not having any spare time to do anything, it's now not something I enjoy doing nearly as much. I love haggling with people on Facebook. My wife bought a, this summer, I come home from work one day, my wife has paid $2,500 to a crackhead for a... 2007 jeep cj7 wrangler never i've never put the top on it tops off of it right now sits underneath one of our carports and i said

What'd you pay for this? She said $2,500. He's a crackhead. Bought a lot of crack. Hey, I went down. Title was clean. There you go. I got a tag for it. Have I ever told you the story about my minivan?

No, you never have told me you had a minivan. Why aren't you driving one now? So when I was at Alpha. I got one out in the parking lot, I'll sell you right now for whatever. If it ever comes back. Whatever that repair costs. So. So when I was at Alpha, the insurance people listening to this will appreciate this. The captive companies have all these co-op programs and even some of the independent companies like Progressive and whatnot. Alpha had a program.

And I might get my facts slightly wrong on this. I don't remember exactly. But it was something like, if you got a vehicle wrap, Alpha would pay 50% of the wrap. Pay for 50% of the wrap. Alpha had a deal with Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Blue Cross Blue Shield would pay an additional 25%. So you could get a wrap and it only cost you 25% of what it cost to get the wrap. Okay. So back then, what did a wrap cost? Cause I bet it's double that now. It was.

Bradley, I think Alpha still does that because a bunch of these Alpha agents in North Alabama have their cars wrapped. Yeah. So I'll tell you in a second because it's going to come into play. So I had a good buddy. that owned a used car dealership and i'm not talking about a you know like this is your stereotypical used car dealership not not quite but pretty

You know, a good buddy of mine, he was in my wedding. And in fact, he wears a T-shirt that says, I buy shitboxes. That's his. Well, I got one if he wants to come over the portal. Yeah.

yeah so i tell him i was like hey dude i was like you know we have this program i was like i've always wanted to buy a bigger vehicle that you could wrap very easily that gets six miles to the gallon yeah and just park it all over town it's not going to be a daily driver just like move it to the public's parking lot okay two days later move it over here that's brilliant that's brilliant so i conspired this scheme not a scheme but this plan

Where the other agent in the office was going to split the wrap with me. Okay. Alpha is going to pay for 75%. And then we're going to wrap three quarters of the car in alpha. And the back was going to be advertising his car dealership. And then he was going to split that cost with us. Wow. This is complicated. So 25% of 25%.

It just so happened that one of his tenants in a shopping center that he owned was a car wrapper. So that guy was going to do it at cost. It was going to cost like six grand. That kind of gives you an idea. So six grand, you know. that's, you know, 1500 bucks divided by four. It was going to be like, you know, so I said, look, I said, here's what I need you to do. I'm going to let the next time you get just like,

The worst of the worst trade-in. Like, you give these people $500 for this. All it has to do is crank. We'll get it wrapped. And he's like, all right, sweet. Like, two weeks later, I walk into my lobby in a... A good friend of mine that worked for this guy is sitting in the lobby. I'm like, hey, Mike, what are you doing here? He's like, I'm waiting on something. I'm like, and about this time, dude, this freaking shit box.

pulls into the parking lot and it is a i don't even know the brand minivan that they had just gotten you know trade in from a family that homeschooled it had never been cleaned ever I rolled the window down and the window did not roll back up ever, ever again. You know how Rolls-Royce, the ceiling of a Rolls-Royce has the stars? It had that same thing, except it was bobby pins holding the upholstery. I mean, it was. I never could have fathomed a worse. It was terrible. So.

I was like, all right, pull it in the back. So we pulled it in the back of the office, behind the office. There's like a little area where the employees parked and we parked it in the grass, right? I never got around to wrapping it. We just never.

Around that time was the time I decided I was going to quit. This was like six months before I quit. So I forgot about it. And you know how when, you know, if I put a billboard in front of your house, David, you're going to notice it immediately. But after about six months, you stop seeing it.

I stopped seeing it. I stopped recognizing that it was there. Also, the parking lot was full of cars, right? Yep. And by the way, the wind is down, so I'm sure it's raining in about every four days. Every day. Yeah. So about two months after I quit... Son of a bitch. I get a text from my manager, who I was good friends with when I worked there. This was the last time I talked to him, and it said, Bradley, dot, dot, dot, please come get your van.

I left it there. I didn't even think about it. I just left it there. So I texted my buddy that owned the car dealership. I was like, hey, look, man, I'm, you know. Transitioning. Well, I'd already quit. I'm like, I probably don't need to show my face around here. Would you mind going and getting it? Sure. Didn't crank. So you had to tow it away. It was a whole thing. Anyway, that's my car rap story. So.

So, David, 19 cars, 19 years leads to the most important question on everyone's mind that's watching on YouTube. and listening to this podcast, of the 19 vehicles that you have driven, which one holds the closest and dearest spot to your heart? That's a great question.

The most fun was an 06 Mustang GT that I had as a freshman in college. The reason I got that one was I let a buddy of mine borrow... my truck freshman year of college to take his girlfriend home she lived at a different school and the whole reason he didn't have his car with him was because of the fact that he was rushing and they were making him run errands so he's like i'm just leaving my car

So that way I can't do things for him. I told him that night, I was like, do not drive back. You're leaving at 10 o'clock at night. It's a four hour round trip. Just come back tomorrow. And as he drove off, I knew, like I had a feeling, I was like, I'm never seeing that truck again. get a call the next morning from my dad freaking out because the cops had called him and said that they found the truck flipped over on the interstate and didn't tell him that it wasn't me in the car. Was he okay?

Yeah, completely flipped. Axle split because it landed straight on the wheels, and he had a scratch on his cheek. That was it. Progressive said it could be fixed. Yeah, well, so his dad owns a car dealership, so he's like... tell me what you want we'll find it at cost we'll like we'll make it right and so i'd always wanted a mustang gt so that's that's how i got the mustang gt

The one that probably is the one that I wish I had never gotten rid of was a 2016 Ram 1500. I actually bought it two weeks after I started with MAPIS, after I sold it.

sold merged my scratch agency into them actually had a paycheck again so naturally i immediately went out and got a car note but uh that was the that was the first one that i held for over a year i ended up holding it for two years but that one's probably the ones i especially because it was paid off when i sold it i wish i'd never gotten rid of that truck so one of my agent's husbands brandon

HVAC guy, Marine Corps, same time I was in, about a month ago, goes through his fifth interview, gets a job as an HVAC maintenance guy. at all the Google facilities in the southeast, gets like a double, triple pay bump. Friday, so today is, what is today, Monday? Friday, I pull up to the Athens office right around lunch, and he had taken her to lunch.

And he's walking out of the office and he gets in a brand spanking new Ford Mustang with all the fixings on it. Just like you said, that money was burning a hole in his pocket. Well, he had to go get that brand new Mustang.

He cranked it. I was like, yep, somebody done got him a new, got him a raise, got him a new car. Hey guys, it's Bradley. I wanted to talk to you today about Gail. You know, one of the biggest frustrations that Scott and I hear from agency owners is the need to hack together different AI platforms.

They get a voice AI from one provider, an AI that can answer questions from another, an AI that can talk on chat SMS from another. The list goes on. Gail changes that. Gail is an all-in-one AI platform built specifically for insurance agencies. They can provide an AI tool that is fully configurable and can speak in a dozen different languages on the phone and through text message. It also has an insurance GPT to save them from the liabilities of using generic AIs and so much more.

Gail connects directly to an agency's AMS and helps automate everyday workflows from outbound follow-ups and renewals to scheduling and customer support. Agencies using Gale are seeing a 70% reduction in talk time per hour. Effective AI staffing costs at $3 an hour versus $20 to $40 an hour for traditional staff.

24-7 multilingual customer support that makes even small agencies feel global. And there's real results, guys. There's a farmer's agent that's using Gale for renewal scheduling, and he cut 30 hours of outbound calls per week down to two. Work Truck Insurance has driven $175,000 in new business this year by re-engaging old commercial trucking leads through Gill. Guys, you want to check this out, head over to meetgayle.com. Tell them the insurance guy sent you. Really appreciate it. Thanks.

Hey, David, I got lots of questions for you today. Yeah. You started in 2012, merged your agency. Where are you today? What are you doing today? I mean, I know what you're doing, but are you spending more time? Are you selling policies and really working in the agency, or are you screwing around with that, but really you're focused more on the risk advisor side? yeah i am a full-time risk advisor i uh stepped out of my day-to-day role with the agency uh february of last year so february 2024

We sold MAPIS back in 2021, so it was near the end of our earn-out. But I still work with Afford, the company we sold it to. tech advisory role um when they need things like that but uh full-time risk advisor um making a run run at this uh risk advisor thing how long was your earn out i know they can vary between three to five years but how long was your earn out period

Ours was three years. Okay, 36 months. Yep. And tell me today what's going on. I know Bradley uses Risk Advisor. Tell me what y'all do. For all these agents out there that don't know. like Aaron Robertson and other agents that don't know what risk, I know what risk advisor is. I've read some, some brief summaries about it in your bio, but tell these agents that are watching and listening to this right now, what is risk advisor?

Yeah, so for the past couple of years, we've been a digital intake platform for Purcellons, something that kind of differentiates us from some of the other ones in the marketplaces. We built it around the conversation, built it around rapport building, guiding the conversation. We call it conversational logic. What we have launched here this month is a new...

New major piece of that, our first step into AI called Underwriting AI. That will be a huge game changer for agencies and something that... We've already seen a lot of success within MAPIS and a couple other agencies that have been testing it. That kind of redefines what we're doing as a company. Okay, let's deep dive. Now, when we talk about Risk Advisor, we're talking personal lines, correct? That's correct. Just on the personal side right now.

So what will this artificial intelligence capability, I would say I've got, let's see, one, two, three, four, I've got four personalized agents. And I'm just, I'm pulling my pants down to show you my moon. like I did at the Greenwich Group conference a few weeks ago that Bradley and I – anyway, I don't want to talk about that right now. You and I get on a demo call with my personal lines agents. What's going to blow their bell bottoms up? Yeah, so –

What we are doing with Underwriting AI on the AI side of things is our system will allow you to upload your carrier guidelines for home, auto, and umbrella as of today. Okay. As you're doing the intake. I'm listening. Keep talking. Yeah. As you're doing the intake, something that no matter how you do it inside your agency, you're doing that every single time for personal lines. Underwriting AI actually starts to disqualify carriers.

So we've got it set up that when you get to the review and send page, which is where you'll say, hey, if I need to send it to a VA, wholesale broker, Raider, CRM, wherever, you now have a green, yellow, red light. green light these carriers are good to go no concerns based on the data that you put in yellow light this is going to be where you get prompted about

sub limits. The closest our agency ever came to an E&O claim was a water damage limitation put on a policy because of the age of the home and a newer producer thought it was a water backup and wasn't caught until a claim. um so this is going to prompt your agents right as they're filling it out on the front end hey this one's going to have a sublimitation inspection requirements documents that are required if it needs a referral

And then red light is going to be, hey, it's ineligible because of X, Y, and Z. So that way you no longer waste any time going to carriers that don't want the business and don't accidentally place it with them. And it causes issues. So, okay.

All right, well, I've got no less than, for any account, I've got no less than 10 possible places it could be put. Do you have the integrations or the... the underwriting stuff for all I mean most carriers you've got access to all that so the way we built it is to where you'll actually be the one to upload the documents and we've done that for a couple reasons One, it allows us to move quicker. There's no limitations based on who we work with. It's who you work with. Two, it also...

I've served with a couple carriers on their advisory councils in the past, have conversations. 99% of carriers are perfectly fine with it. We want to be conservative on the front end to not get you in trouble, to not get us in trouble about sharing these guidelines amongst agencies. So are you, am I uploading? The actual sample policies from these people or the underwriting guidelines from each one?

Underwriting guidelines, quick reference guidelines. We've also got it to where like one of our major carriers, there was some stuff that they wouldn't put in the guidelines. They would just put in the portal so you can add custom knowledge to it.

You can make carrier like agency guidelines if you won't like, hey, I might have a carrier to write this, but I don't want this as an agency owner. Yeah. And we're going to disqualify it and put the note so you can put a script in there that says why you don't want your agency to write a piece of business, things like that.

That's it. That's one of the biggest training hurdle. Is this live? Is this live yet? This feature? Oh, yes. Yes. You thought I meant the episode. I don't know. It's a podcast. That's one of the biggest training hurdles with newer people with us is them knowing where to go. Bradley, do you have one of your personalized agents back here?

let's say a prospect calls in today or you get a you know prospect intake form somehow some way are they are they required to do this with risk advisor before they Go to the carrier site. We use Risk Advisor for all of our intakes. Really? And it's because the main reason is we want the customer journey started the same way every single time.

And we want to get the same data every single time and get it in a structured way every single time. Because when you do that, you can do things with that data. You know what I mean? That's essentially... We always had an intake form. It was always something I built. The reason I went with David, other than it being a great product, is I was just tired of maintaining that form.

And I'd rather work with, you know, if my form broke, I had to fix it, right? If David's form breaks, David has to fix it. It's never broke. But you know, you get what I'm saying? Yeah. So that's where if somebody calls in, that's where it starts. That's where things go first.

To me, it seems like a big win would be getting direct connections with the carriers, almost like Ask Kodiak. Yep. That is our major goal in 2026. We've already started some initial conversations with some carriers. As I was mentioning earlier, we wanted to start out on a conservative side. It is a little bit of like a one time pain of having to upload those documents that you already have in a Google Drive or something like that somewhere. But wanted to be conservative to make sure that we.

We weren't crossing over any lines with the carrier. But next step is to go to the carriers and, hey, you got an API? Anytime you make an update, update us via an API. If you don't... let's create a process where anytime you make a change we receive it as risk advisor and we update your carriers for you or your agencies for you instead of the other way around your pitch is just like hey that's this is going to feed more business to you

What we ultimately believe is, and the numbers are already showing this a little bit, where we, for a carrier, the quote rate's going to go down. but the buying rate is going to go up. And so the story we're able to share already and we're going to continue to be able to share with carriers on the carrier side is, hey, your underwriting expense per quote

We've already heard that's around $10 to $25 just to put the quote in the system for the carrier. And so if we can start helping you save money on that side of things with the carrier. then that allows them to be more effective, allows their underwriting expense ratio to go down and allows for more incentive on why they they would also help push risk advisor on that side of things as well. I've got an idea for you.

Let's hear it. So you guys have an API connection to agency zoom. Yep. Do you know if I, let's say I put customer data into risk advisor and then it flows over to agency zoom. Does Risk Advisor know if we bound that policy? Not yet. Okay. I have an idea for you. Damn it, David. Get your shit together. So Kenneth built this tool that we use. And it's basically, it's a map of all of our customers, okay? And what you can do is you can put an address in, okay? And it will...

map that address and it will show you all of the other customers we have around that address. And then you click on them and it shows you the carrier and the premium. And so we use that. I don't think it's fully rolled out yet, but we have some people using that to get an indication of where to go first. What would be really cool is if Risk Advisor knew that...

This policy was bound or we could somehow upload a book of business list or report. And then when a CSR, an account manager or producer is adding. data into risk advisor for a new quote it's using ai on the back end to say based on the policies you have on the books

this carrier is probably going to be a good fit. You have 15 policies in this area that fit this year built square footage, whatever. Yep. And know that. And I'm sure you guys have thought of that. And then another cool thing would be. If I lose on a deal, somehow getting that data, like, hey, your competitors have, you know, you've quoted against 15 competitors and this has been the best carrier. You haven't bound it because they already had it. You know what I mean?

Because we always try to get current deck pages, and then if somebody cancels, we always try to get current deck replacement data. 100%. So having that data would, I think, be really cool. There's a million ways you can go with this. Yeah, we have... the ultimate long-term focus of this is not just underwriting ai but sales ai with a lot of what you just mentioned being being thoughts that we're working towards um using that data to

Honestly, even show like, hey, by every question you ask a customer, the impact it has on the closing ratio. One of the things with this as well as on the carrier side is to be able to work together with the agency, the carrier, even wholesale brokers on.

Hey, why should an agency receive an appointment? Carriers ask the wrong questions when it comes time to get an appointment. They ask about what you're in AMS, but then they give you the appointment. They don't care about what's in your AMS anymore. What they should care about is what you're quoting or what you have quoted.

over the last 18 months and you haven't sold that they won't that way you can go after it together um so there's a lot of different ways and one of the things that you mentioned that's super important to us is the data that you collect making it that much more valuable and easier to use with these other tools. whether it's agency Zoom or another CRM or a side tool. One of the things that I would love to talk with Kenneth about is our open API. Allow it like if there's...

benefits until we build it of exposing the API to allow him to do something with that on that side as well. But yeah, no, it's just the beginning for us when it comes to the AI side of things.

David, I got the million-dollar question. Now, all I do is represent the 40,000, 45,000 independent agents that are out there, plus a lot of the captive agents that listen to our show as well. they're all sitting there right now thinking the same thing that i'm thinking you know i just let geo out in the parking lot have my american express card to buy a brand new ford raptor so i ain't got no money but

What does this cost? Is this a bunch of money? Is this thousands? Because if I'm an independent agent listening to this show right now... And I've listened to all the blah, blah, blah, and it does this, it does that, and it's great. Bradley uses it, and Bradley's, you know, real tech forward. But I'm thinking, man, I got $16 in my checking account. I can't afford this. What's this called, Scott?

yeah so our our standard plan uh starts at 2.99 per month that includes uh five users and then um it's a per user cost after that five Right. Big thing that we do with that is include a good bit of data enrichment. So it's going to help pre-fill the form, whether that's the client facing or the agent facing. Right. If you're connected to agency Zoom, a lot of that, if they put the.

prospect and zoom should flow over to the the form right yep so you can uh you can import from agency zoom the same thing like if you're like on easy links uh we have a Integration on that side of things as well as some of the other Raiders, CRMs, and AMSs as well. But there is a time commitment up front because Scott is going to have to – so are we talking home, auto, or both?

on the underwriting ai it works with home auto and umbrella so i'm gonna have to take the time of on the front end to get these downloaded into the risk advisor portal for i protect all the underwriting criteria for each carrier. Yep, that is correct. So whether it's you or someone on your team or VA, you'll need to download and then upload those. until we're able to make those direct connections. I'm going to hire Kenneth away from Bradley. There might be a little bit of a hiccup there with...

the podcast for a few weeks until we get that worked out. But once I get him hired, man, he'll already have that shit figured out. Kenneth's contract buyout is right up there with James Franklin. I love it. I love it.

I've got a question. So my favorite type of entrepreneur... Uh-oh. Here we go. Let me tell you a story. I knew a guy one time who...

had a dream, it was an entrepreneur, had a dream to be a DJ, like radio DJ. And the radio station wouldn't let him, the local radio station wouldn't let him be a DJ. And so he... started his own radio wouldn't let him like be on the radio or behind the microphone correct got it got it so he started his own radio station damn and tried to put that radio station out just to be i love people that work in an industry see a problem

And then say, I'm going to go do this. And you are that. I mean, you were an agent. You're an agency owner. You saw a problem. And you said, you know what? I'm going to go do this. So two-parter. A. you know what happened that led you to start risk advisor and we kind of put the cart before the horse a little bit but what led you to start risk advisor

Was there like a moment, you know, was there an inflection point, so to speak, that you were like, yeah, we got to go do this? B, what's been the biggest surprise or takeaway now that you're kind of on the other side of the industry? And maybe what is there? Are there misconceptions that agents have about the tech side of things? Yeah. Yeah. So the biggest reason why it started out, we, like most agencies had.

like a fillable PDF. So our process is... Most agencies aren't even that advanced. True, true. Brenda's got her notebook over there, spiral notebook composition. You are currently describing I protect insurance and financial services. There you go. We always believe in leading with the conversation. So we use that fillable PDF.

to kind of guide the conversation loosely. And then here's the best part is we would take that fillable PDF and transpose it over to another fillable PDF and send both of those to our VAs to do the quoting. And then... The VA was responsible for putting it into agency Zoom, putting it into our radar, into our carrier systems, things like that. And so it really just started out like there's got to be something that does this.

for me that we can just buy instead of building. I tried to buy before. I probably sat on 15 demos, some inside the insurance industry, a lot outside, tested out a bunch of different form builders.

originally built the first version of this on jot form with a little bit of code that i learned in high school and then we used that for about a year and up until that point there was never hey i'm gonna build this to go sell it to other agents it was hey i want to make a better process for myself and then also my sales team that i led at mapas and once i started seeing the uptick in my my uh my personal career

Full year before, I did about $450,000 of purse launch premium. Full year after, I did about a million. plus of personalized premium. And then we saw that with the team as well, where at minimum between four other producers, we saw a 27% increase. And a lot of that came from just boosting efficiency, but...

creating a repeatable process that just made it, hey, this is exactly what to do, which questions to ask every single time. And then as I started jumping into it, I was like, you know what, this is something that can be helpful for other agents. Let's look into I actually tried to white label another solution that was in the marketplace for a while and they told me no.

Got to tell that CEO that earlier this year, and he just kind of laughed about that, that his partner had turned me down on white labeling it. But as we started building it out,

I guess kind of answer the second part of your question when it comes to misconceptions. That's an interesting one. One. The first thing that comes to mind for me is when we started getting into auto insurance, this is still on my side. I knew state-specific coverages were a thing. We wrote it in a couple of different states. But I did not realize how chaotic every...

Like every different state is like anytime I hop on a demo with an agency in Michigan, I just see all the state specific auto coverages drop down from Michigan. Just like my eyes glaze over. But who on the agent side. I think it's, hey, I asked for this feature. It sounds super simple. You should have that to me by like two days.

and that's being generous like most of them are like can i have that tomorrow and that was a learning learning curve for myself like i would pass on early on to our dev teams like hey like can we like can we change how the the phone field looks and it's like Hey, it's not only just changing what future ones look like, but we also have to make sure that everything in the database still works. And oh, by the way, we integrate with seven different systems. We got to make sure that they receive it.

OK, so that way it doesn't break on that situation. So I think that's a lame answer to your question there, because that was a good question, but I don't think it's a great answer. That was the answer I was expecting. Yeah, that's having built my own tech before, hired people to build my own tech. It's something. Things can sound really simple, but be really expensive and complicated. And for you, and I don't think you meant...

You still want people to give you recommendations. 100%. It's almost like we were talking about golf before we came on the air. When you first start playing golf, like if you picked up golf today, you were going to have... 800,000 people give you advice. People that play golf love to give new golfers advice. And what I always tell new golfers is you have to pick and choose who you listen to. And a good rule of thumb is for any level of golf, if they can't beat you, don't take their advice.

And in your shoes, you have to be really intentional with who you listen to and who you don't listen to. You know what I mean? Like, where are they coming from? Like, okay, there's some people that ask for features. Yeah, that's... Where it gets muddy is if it's a feature that's only going to help this agency. And that's where you don't want to build custom iterations and all that sort of stuff. You don't want to change something for everybody else. It's like...

When we built our Raider, Chris May, that I built it with, we had an MVP in like six weeks. And he said, why is this so easy? And I said, because we are building it for us. If we were building this to sell, we're trying to build this so it hits 80% of the market. That's a lot taller task.

because you're building it for a bunch of people. And then you're going to get those people on, and they're going to make recommendations, and you try if this, then that. So my advice to you, David, is just only listen to Portal Insurance. Don't listen to anybody else's recommendations.

I will say a great example of feedback that after we kind of thought through it was something that Kenneth passed on about our quicksend feature where at any point like. He wanted data into AgencyZoom. We've expanded that from AgencyZoom to Gaia to EasyLinks and expanding it over to a couple of other integrations where for the longest time, the MAPIS process, the MAPIS way was...

The quoting process, the CRM process does not start until full intake has been completed because we do that on the first call. If we're not going to chase you for intake. But that's not how majority of agencies think. They want whatever they can get in their CRM, which makes sense. And so that piece of feedback was a very specific scenario for a specific agency.

But once we started thinking through it and started asking some of our other users, it was very clear that that was something that was very much wanted. And so it made that was one of our best releases this year when it comes to feedback of what we've.

what we put out in the world. And it came from an agency's feedback. Hey, David, I need you and Rand to pay attention for just a second. Bradley, I need you to listen as well. A little something you don't know about me. I'm a good idea machine. And I only spit out billion-dollar ideas. So the four of us, I'll let each one of you invest in this business as a billion-dollar idea machine.

I have come up and solved a problem that the whole world has. Are you guys ready to be billionaires? David, do you want to be a billionaire, David? Absolutely. Let's do it. So, Ran, are you listening? I travel all over the world. I went to four cities in four weeks in September. I stay in hotels. I'm in a hotel right now. I'm in a Hilton Garden Inn paying like $200.

$20 a night. And you're having to listen to jackhammers. And that some bitch is tore from one end to the other up because Travelers or Safeco or Nationwide is paying to have the hotel completely refurbished. Long story. Here's the idea. All, all, every single hotel that I go to on each floor has the shittiest ice machine. that I have ever seen in my entire life. Every one of them is exactly the same. And it wakes the whole floor up. It's got the ice. The ice in it is like two degrees.

below what it would be if it was just water so as soon as you take your little bucket in there and you stick it under the thing and then push the button you know the brown button where it comes out it's already so wet That by the time you get it back to your room, it's pretty much just water. We come up with this really sleek machine and the front of it says perfect ice.

And it's, I was going to call it rat turd ice, but I didn't realize that might cut down on the sales. But the funny thing is I know exactly what kind of ice you're talking about. Yeah, I call it rat turd ice. And I was going to call the ice machine rat turd ice. But then I got thinking about that, and I was like, well, Rat Dirt Ice is a little bit over the top, right? A little on the nose. So we call it Perfect Ice. And it's got this real sleek silver machine.

And, y'all, we just go around the country, the four of us, fan out. I'll take the Southwest. You take the Southeast. You take the Northeast. You take the Midwest. And we go sell. perfect ice and replace all these shitty ice machines that are in like high-end resorts and hotels i don't want to poo-poo on your idea but do you know why they don't have the rat turd ice

No. So when we built our house, we put an ice machine in with a little door. Fancy. And it cost $1,500. For me to get the rat turd ice, which is what I wanted, it was going to be like $5,000. The mechanism that makes that ice is... insanely expensive. But that's why we have David. We send him to like China or Korea and he negotiates and he's like, hey, do you realize how many rat turd ice machines we're going to sell? And they're like, yeah, we'll sell. Okay, we'll give you these.

for $800 instead of the retail price. That's a great idea. You know what I think every time I see one of those machines? I'm about to have water come out of the bottom of it. I think about King of the Hill. They're on vacation. the mom looks at the son and says, hey, Bobby, go get some ice. I want water to drink in the morning. A hundred percent. Yeah. Because six minutes after you get that ice bucket in your room, it's just water. Yeah.

Hey, David, I'm going to poke the bear real quick. Have you guys looked at integrating with LexisNexis? Yeah. I'm referencing a specific LinkedIn post. I've not heard any comments or feedback on that one, unfortunately. I've had at least 150 people that work at LexisNexis view my LinkedIn profile. That's fantastic. When are they coming on the podcast? Probably never. I thought LexisNexis' favorite word was no. It is. It is, yes. They don't like money over there. Hey, LexisNexis.

We understand you don't like money. It's fine. Just stay in your lane. Go ahead. Sorry. The problem is, I think it's the opposite. And of course, that's the answer. But... When we've reached out to him, I've reached out to him three times, had a conversation one and a half times. Hung up on you. It was a good conversation. I'll give them that. The problem is they're so embedded in the carrier flow and the rater flows that unfortunately they see us as a competitor.

to their own product and the reason they're at least from my understanding i would love to have a conversation with somebody to help me understand differently if someone from lexus nexus is listening but the problem is They get to charge every single time that data, the same data, is ordered by multiple carriers. Right.

Different carriers handle that differently with their agents. And with our system helping you cut down on how many carriers you have to go to, unfortunately, it's something that does impact their profit because...

the same data is not being sold multiple times. Yeah. Um, again, that's my understanding. If you're someone from LexisNexis listening or watching this, I would love to be proven wrong. And I would love to have a detailed conversation about that. So they start taking my phone calls. I used to call them about one.

every three months with an idea. And finally, I think they put my picture up beside everybody's phone and they're like, if this guy calls, do not answer the phone. Let me, like when you go through the process to get your note ID. which is the most freaking governmental red tape. It's like getting a driver's license. They treat it like they think criminals are going to break into an insurance agency and run an insurance score fraudulently.

Like that's what the criminals are going to do. They're going to go run people's insurance score. It's ridiculous. So let me just loop everybody in. So I view Scott and I's role in the insurance industry as we are the... The only reason I still do this podcast other than hanging out with Scott is we are trying to be like the champions of the independent agent or just agents in general, like the Pied Piper.

Anytime you see me being a jerk or what looks like me being a jerk to someone on social media, it's because... I'm trying to do that. I'm trying to have the backs of agents and or someone is so wrong in the advice they're giving. that it needs to be called out because there's going to be a young, impressionable agent that's going to see it and take it as gospel. Those are the only two scenarios that I'm a jerk online. Well, the CEO of LexisNexis posts...

post on LinkedIn three weeks ago. I'm not going to read it, but basically how great his company is, right? In a nutshell. And I give them credit. They were revolutionary, I'm sure, when they came out with that. They print money. And I see that David commented on it. And so I commented, and I said, I mean this respectfully, Bill. And I did.

I do. Do you guys have any idea how difficult you make it for new agencies to sign up and how unhelpful the employees of LexisNexis are during said process? That comment. On the post, got 12,643 impressions. Just my comment, not the post. I can't believe you didn't delete it. And so I did a literal, guys.

And we're just talking about the note ID. We're not talking about all the other stuff. I did a literal two-minute search for 120 seconds. I searched in InsuranceSoup and IOA just the words note ID. I screenshotted some of the comments and replied under my comment. Right. Has anyone ever had issues getting their Lexus Nexus Note ID? My application's been denied. No idea. Thanks. Lexus Nexus Note ID. Maybe worse than DMV.

Has anyone ever had an issue getting their LexisNexis note ID? My application's been, I'm not going to read it, but like it was this and this. It was literal people in these posts saying they cannot feed their families. Because they cannot get a LexisNexis node ID. And when you call LexisNexis, they are not helpful. It took me portal insurance. We were in business two years. We had already changed locations before we got our node ID.

And so my comment was I was not trying to be a jerk. I was trying to say, like, hey, A, are you aware this is what your customers are saying? And B, you literally got folks out here saying they can't feed their families.

And oh, by the way, I changed locations. And part of the reason I changed locations is you guys, they had an issue with the address at my first office and they wouldn't tell me what the problem was. So like, hey, this address is not the way we want it. And it was, there was a sweet number.

And they literally and then when I did my inspection, the guy asked me where my filing cabinets were. And then he asked me that they requested another meeting after the fact. And it was like, we've got a problem. Can I ask a question? And I'm like, okay, what's the problem? They're like, your business name is Portal LLC, but the sign out front says Portal Insurance. Wow. Hey, can I ask a question? Anyway. When these carriers pass on like... The cost to me for like an auto MBR and all that.

They're just passing on their cost from LexisNexus, right? Is that coming from LexisNexus? Do NVRs come from LexisNexus? What's coming from LexisNexus? Is it NVRs? NVR, Clue, they have property. county assessor data, some roof data, some stuff like that, which is all the things that we would love to be able to offer inside of the risk advisor app. But the problem, something that kind of stuck out to me, Bradley, is the problem is you're not the customer.

Correct. Correct. Yeah. As soon as I said customer, I was, but, but if I'm, if I'm this guy and I'm like, there's literal people that say they can't feed their families because of something I'm doing. And I don't know if you've noticed this, David, but a lot of carriers are moving away from LexisNexis. Like a lot of the InsurTech carrier, it's Hazard Hub and some other folks.

You have to disrupt yourself as a business owner. You cannot stick to the, it's the way that we've always done it mentality because eventually somebody's going to slip up and disrupt you. Wait a minute. If I'm the son of a bitch paying the eight... a hundred dollars a month for that am i not the customer it's the carrier and that that's also one of the things that can get agencies in trouble is if they order it with one carrier and then take that data

and then move it to another carrier and re-enter it into those other systems that's where a carrier can get can get on to you because hey you're taking data that yeah like Even though they're charging it back, it's still their expense. They own the data. Everybody does it. Everybody does it. If you've got a carrier that doesn't charge, where are you going to pull it from? The one that does or the one that doesn't?

Hey, I got one last question, David, and I got to let you go because I got to go out. Gio's outside wanting $2,000. No, he's not. I have a good news. I went and fought Gio, and I got your credit card back. Yeah, but I ain't no telling what's on that Sunday. There you go. I got it back. Hey, I got the most important question of the day, David. Are you ready for it? Let's do it. I need you to get clear eyes, full heart with me for just a second. Can't lose. It was warm when I picked it up.

It was hot because he had been swiping the hell out of it. Is he out there working on my car? I didn't see. It was on Shelby's desk when I walked out there. Most important question of the day. David. Yes. How many times a day? a week, a month, and then a year, does somebody walk up to you and ask this question? Are you Luke Combs? uh i don't think i've had that one really no i mean it normally i keep the beard a little bit shorter

We're getting into the front end of winter beard season for me, so I'm starting to grow it out a little bit. Get your winter coat on. Get ready for winter. Yep. But, I mean, as soon as you said that, I can see why you asked. That's funny, though. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what's different, but with that hat on and the shirt and that beard, does he not look just like Luke Jones right now? I can see it. I can see it.

Hey. Unbelievable. Man, I appreciate you being on the show today. Hey, it's been an absolute honor. This is something that I've been very excited for for a long time. I've got your cell and your email. I'm going to set something up when we... When I get back to the shitbox hotel I'm staying at tonight and my shitty car that probably won't run, I'll probably have to walk back to the hotel.

uh for next week for us to get on with my personal lines team and and i think i think this is something we need to do we use agency zoom that's an easy connection for us so i think i think we're gonna do it Is there some big, long four-year contract that I'm going to be tied into? No, month to month. I hated signing a contract as an agency owner, so I'm not going to make you do it. Every insured tech advisor tells me I'm stupid for that.

My corny insurance joke, though, is that if you pay in full, we give you a little bit discount, but it is like a fully earned premium. So no prorated refund on that. But we do have a monthly option.

Oh, that's fine. I don't care about that. As long as you don't tie me into a three-year contract and we're down, you know, got our hand up our ass and not using it and I'm paying $2.99 a month for... freaking six years or whatever a bunch of them want to do we want you paying for it because you're using it it's making a difference in your agency well i appreciate you brother and if any of these other agents listening to this right now

Need my American Express. No, I'm kidding. I made sure and turned it the other way when I handed it to you. 3792. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Tell them where to go if they want to. You know, they don't have your cell phone. They don't have your email address. Where would they go? And by the way, before you sons of bitches start in on me, David, how much am I getting paid for this podcast? Not a single thing. Not one damn dime.

And as I tell all of you every single time, I don't care if you do it or not, but you ought to at least try it and see if it moves the ball one step closer, one foot closer to that goal line that we're all trying to get to. But you know what? Don't use it. Don't use it, because I know you sons of bitches will be emailing, you're sitting as good as... Anyway, where do they go if they want to sign up for a demo? Yep, just riskadvisor.insure.

Riskadvisor.com was $50,000, and we're not trying to blow a bunch of money like a lot of the companies that were at a couple of conferences the last couple of weeks. Oh, we got an intruder behind you. Oh, thank you so much. I just got a Pop-Tart for dinner. All right. Hey, hey. We should have had her on the show, too. I'm going to finish it up, baby.

But yeah, riskadvisor.insure. Check out the demo page there. And I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. Twitter's for bad sports takes and complaining about my old Tesla. So if you want to see those conversations, you can go hang out there. Awesome. Guys, you are listening to the Insurance Guys podcast. And as I end every episode, rewards come from action, not discussion. Get your ass out from behind that desk today. Quit shuffling paperwork.

Stop doing TPS reports. Stop doing all this crazy shit. Stop being fake busy and taking your dog to the vet and then, you know, going down and getting the spark plugs changed in your car. All this other crazy shit. Go build relationships. Become the mayor of your village. Make money for your family, for your wife.

For your husband, for your kids' college fund, for your parents and your in-laws out there that are struggling like mine are, go make money for them. Write good business for the agencies that you represent and write good business.

for the carriers that you represent. Bradley Flowers, I love you. Thanks, man. Thanks, David. David, we love you, too. Thank you all. Hang in there. Guys, you were listening to the Insurance Guys podcast, and we love each one of you. Thank you so much for being a part of our family.

And we'll see you back next time. Take care. Thanks for listening to the Insurance Guys podcast. If you need to know more about me or you need to get in touch with Scott, you can always reach me at the insurance guy online.com or email me at Scott at I protect insurance.com. And if you need to get in touch with Mr. Bradley Flowers, go to portalinsurance.com or email him at bradley at portalinsurance.com. Guys, we love you.

We thank you so much for listening to our show and being a part of our family. And we look forward to seeing you again next week on the next episode of the Insurance Guys podcast. Take care.