What Insurance Agencies Lose by Not Recycling Old Leads

Jordan Lally:0:00
Welcome back to the High Ticket AI Systems podcast. Everyone, please welcome the winner, me, Mrs. Bolton. Lindsey, how you doing today? Fantastic, we're happy to have you on. Now, for those of us that don't know the name or the brand just yet, please explain to us basically what you sell and who you guys sell to.

Lindsay Bolton:0:08
Doing good, how are you?

Lindsay Bolton:0:20
Absolutely. So my husband and I own a insurance automation company called Agency Zoomify. Agency Zoom comes as a blank platform. It's a CRM where everything inside of it has to be built from the ground up. And so what we do is we come in and we build out everything in the background of the system, including every single piece of automation with all of the pipelines needed to be successful as an insurance agent. So our market is to insurance agency owners.

Jordan Lally:0:49
How did you manage to get into this space and why systems and processes for agency owners or insurance agents?

Lindsay Bolton:0:54
Yeah, absolutely. So my husband and I owned an insurance agency prior to owning agency zoomify.

We were insurance agency owners for roughly five years, little over five years. And in that period, we were able to grow our business from zero dollars in premium to over 15 million as a scratch retail agency. And a lot of that was due to the systems and processes that we put in place in our agency. Right. And so I'd have people come to me throughout the years and say, hey, Lindsay, how are you doing what you're doing? And I would point to the system that we built and I'd help them to build it on the side that kind of turned into a full-fledged business as we sold the agency in March of last year.

Jordan Lally:1:37
Wow, so you sold it. That's amazing, congrats. That's super cool. Yeah, one of my goals is to sell my agency one day. how was that experience? Was it like you won the championship almost, you know? Is that how it felt?

Lindsay Bolton:1:39
Yeah.

Lindsay Bolton:1:50
Yeah, we were able to sell to another agent in our area and it was more so like a relief in a way for us. We wanted to have more time to spend with our daughter whom we took a long time to try and conceive and have and so we were just grateful to do something where now we work from home and we get to work. not only work from home but make our schedule. People say that you get to do that as an insurance agent but if you're trying to be a successful interns agent there isn't much downtime.

Jordan Lally:2:29
Yeah, that is is extremely factual. Let's talk about the systems and processes that you actually cultivated and developed when you weren't insurance agents and now that you teach other insurance agencies. What are some of those systems and processes if you don't mind sharing?

Lindsay Bolton:2:46
Yeah, so a lot of agents, especially what we found since starting agency zoomify are flying by the seat of the pants. Like they are just calling their leads as they come in, but they don't know how many times to call them, what date time of day to call them, what to say whenever they're doing their follow up process, so on and so forth. So what we do is we come in and build the system the same way that we use the same system we use in our own agency. for instance, many agents are buying leads and they don't have a process when they come in, how many times do you call them? So we have a new purchase leads pipeline where those leads funnel into and it actually schedules out those calls as well as the automated text and emails to get that prospect on the phone to have a qualified conversation. And then on the back end many people are wasting a lot of money not recycling their data.

And so they're spending money on leads in the front end and they just keep buying, buying, buying, buying. But after they, you know, called this person 10 times, they're like, all right, it's dead lead. Well, no, it's not. I like to use the story my husband and I, we first started, we were so broke. We were calling out of a phone book, sitting in our kitchen table and we would, we're calling from our cell phone, right? We didn't even have a dialing system or anything like that. And neither one of us were able to get up to go to the bathroom, to eat, to do anything until we made 300 phone calls. And whenever we were making these calls, we'd these people, their quote sheets on paper and write down their information. And then whenever we started using agency Zoom, like two years down the road, I took those quote sheets and put them into the system as leads. And our team was now closing people that I cold called from a phone book years later.

And so that's kind of like where this system, this process came into play where we can help agents to stop buying leads in the future if we have a pipeline set up to recycle that data. In addition to that,

Lindsay Bolton:4:55
We also created our website leads pipeline. So as their website leads we can connect those into agency zoom to flow directly into a pipeline where they're immediately getting called and then we also found that on our referral side I was getting referrals to my cell phone or to my email and I would quote them maybe we'd be too high and I never reached out to them again Well with agency zoom we can actually connect we can give each person in the agency their own personalized referral website and on that website the person that's referring the business puts in their information and then who they're referring down below and when they click submit it goes directly into the referral pipeline that we've built where that person immediately gets a text message saying hey Brandon it's Lindsey with the Bolton Agency John Doe referred you over to me to reach out and give you you know your home and auto insurance quotes when's a better time to reach out to you. And it has a scheduled calls along with that. It has a 15 day follow up process. And if they're no longer answering, it recycles back through and six months to try again. So we're essentially able to create a funnel where they can stop buying leads in the future.

Jordan Lally:6:07
You are saving so many agency owners a ton of capital by doing that. I come from a hardcore sales background, obviously kind of like you. I started out in insurance and then I swapped over to solar sales because like you earn more per sale basically. I'm like, okay, let's go ahead and do that. But I didn't knock on doors how it's traditionally sold. I cold call. And it teaches you a lot. I personally love cold calling. I love the hardcore sales background. It's kind of fun, know, especially when you and success in that industry or that thing, whatever it is you're doing. But zooming out for a second, no pun intended. If you look at businesses, they are just well-oiled machines. And it kind of sounds like how you're describing it, like you have a machine put together. You essentially just install the machine into other insurance agencies business and they can plug and play and be successful, which I absolutely love. How long do you feel like it took you whenever you were starting up the agency with your husband? to like finally dial in this system and process. Like how long do you flag?

Lindsay Bolton:7:11
So one thing that you just said that was really interesting is having a heavy sales background. I actually didn't. Before agency ownership, I was an elementary school teacher. Yeah, I went into the insurance industry knowing absolutely nothing about it. I graduated college, I taught for a year and a half, and my husband came home from work one day and accidentally recruited me because he was a recruiter for the carrier that we ended up working with.

Jordan Lally:7:20
No way!

Lindsay Bolton:7:37
And he was showing me the numbers and I was like, my gosh, you mean if we do this, we can make this. And he was like, well, the agents can. And I was like, no, no, no, no. if I leave teaching, even though I just spent four years getting a degree and we go and do this, this is the opportunity at hand. And he was like, well, I guess I'm not really trying to recruit my wife, but sure. And I learned everything that I could from podcasts, videos, YouTube videos, really trying to just absorb from those around me. I didn't know what I was doing. I just knew that we had to find something to streamline and create these processes. at first, you know, I said we were calling out of a phone book and then I was like, to somewhere to put these people and like at first we had those quote sheets and we'd flip them over and on the back it would have like call number one two three four five and then it would say whether I texted it or emailed them and I had to circle it that day. It was so it evolved from that process into a system called DYL and DYL is essentially a phone company but then I created inside of their folders in the inside of DYL a process in there to move people from day to day on the follow-up process.

And then, DYL wasn't growing at the rate that we were as far as functionality went. And so we ended up converting over to Agency Zoom. Now with Agency Zoom, I have thousands and thousands of hours logged in Agency Zoom. And I still feel like there's so much room for growth. Like we have...

Like I feel, you can ask my husband, like I have a process for everything, not even things that are related to the business world, but even just in our household. just, that's just the way my brain works as operations and processes and it's never, nothing is ever good enough. There's all this guy's the limit and I just keep wanting to do more and more and make it better and better.

Jordan Lally:9:29
Isn't it so tiring though? Because I'm the same way, like nothing is ever perfect. I'm always trying to improve, but I also feel like, man, like it's never ending. You know, I'm never satisfied with whatever it is that I have, you know? Anyways.

Lindsay Bolton:9:43
It's exhausting. It really is. It's also a blessing too, because it's one of those things where, you know, I'm grateful for the drive that I have. Because I know that it's not normal. I get told that I'm not normal all the time. But yeah, but it's, it's a, I think of it as like a superpower in a way.

Jordan Lally:10:03
We're crazy.

Jordan Lally:10:10
I love that. mindset. Great mindset. What guiding system do you actually use? And what do you recommend when it comes to, okay, call leads this time of day, call leads this day, call them X number of times? What are some philosophies you have there?

Lindsay Bolton:10:24
Yeah, so we for our own business, we don't use a dialing system. We but for eight insurance agency owners, what we recommend is a company called Ricochet. And with Ricochet, it will actually score the leads and tell you which ones to call first as far as like priority level. And so they have what's called a shark tank. And the method that we use is to have them dialing out of Ricochet and

Jordan Lally:10:33
Ricochet.

Lindsay Bolton:10:51
leads are assigned to one fake person named Jordan Smith, for instance. So they use this fake AI person as they have their cold callers calling out to the leads when they have a qualified conversation. They then take that person agency zoom and move it over in the follow up pipeline and it reassign it to the sales rep that they're giving it off to. So they have a qualified conversation and then move it throughout the follow up pipeline accordingly. But that dialing system does help them to make more calls and prioritize whom is most important to call today. When it comes to timing, using Ricochet, really isn't other than the scoring feature on who to call first. That's kind how you would handle your newer leads. Now, if you're not using Ricochet and you're solely using agency zoom, We do schedule out the calls at specific times of day. Normally it's like nine, one, and four p.m. They're calling on the first day for that lead. We can also do it for like text messages. We have all of our texts going out at nine a.m. and our emails go out at 11 a.m. on specific days, business days of the cycle.

Jordan Lally:12:08
Gotcha. So just to clarify, is a real human calling on Ricochet or is the AI calling to generate a qualified prospect?

Lindsay Bolton:12:19
It's a real human. So we have some agents that have their sales reps calling out using Ricochet and they are the ones that hold on to it from the beginning to the end. And then we have some agents that hire VA's to do these calls and you can get a VA direct for as low as like $5 an hour. then you have VA's.

Jordan Lally:12:38
We love you. Of course.

Lindsay Bolton:12:41
Yeah, yeah, having the VA to dial out one thing and then also some people just have specific positions in their business for cold callers.

Jordan Lally:12:53
Gotcha. Okay, cool. yeah, I think you said you call a brand new lead three times a day on the first day. I completely agree with that. Why would I go down the entire list and call every lead once in the morning and then once in the evening? Right. Why would I not prioritize the freshest hottest lead that just came in? I'm going to call that person three times a day for the first three days, unless they block me, of course. But that, but they just came in. are, you are on the top of their mind. You should definitely reach out to that lead over someone who opted in two weeks ago or two months ago.

Lindsay Bolton:13:29
Yeah, absolutely. The interest level goes down the longer the lead sits in there. having a heavy heavy hitting from the very beginning is really important for that connectivity rate.

Jordan Lally:13:40
Absolutely. What insurance are you actually selling? I've never even asked this.

Lindsay Bolton:13:46
Yeah, no, everything. So personal, primarily PNCs. So personal lines, home, auto, boats, RVs, the whole shebang. And we also have commercial add-on.

Jordan Lally:13:48
Okay.

Jordan Lally:13:56
Gotcha.

Lindsay Bolton:13:58
So our commercial add-on, the way that we structure that product to put into agency zoom for our clients is we ask them to choose five different target markets. What we learned through our careers insurance agents is that it's really important for you to choose five different target markets within whichever carrier that you are wanting to push out. Right. So for instance, let's say trucking is one of them. Trucking. hair salons, CPAs, boutiques, florist, right? So we would build out the automation for those five different target markets. Many of them, would say the majority of them we already have built out and ready to go. But by doing so, you learn where to quote them, with what carrier, you become known for that. one particular target market. the people that you're writing are also referring you out to their buddies that do the similar thing. You know what coverages are important to them, so on and so forth. You become kind of a be-all for that market.

Makes it easier on your team too. So we ask you to choose five target markets. We also build out your commercial follow up pipeline to get those people through. We build that in all industries pipeline for your one off opportunities that come in naturally. And then we have your commercial retain for retention and onboarding. And so it walks through that process with other tasks, email automation, text automation, calls, so on and so forth to get that for you to be.

Jordan Lally:15:30
It sounds like you're niching down in a way.

Lindsay Bolton:15:34
Yeah, we're primarily on the the personal lines side and our person shouldn't say just personalized PNC side right now we are working on our Medicare and life side for 2027. So we launching that in 2027 to expand into that realm.

Jordan Lally:15:51
in my mistake, mean, definitely you've niched down for your own business, but the philosophy that you teach other insurance agents going after high target markets, I actually think that's a pretty good idea. I haven't heard of that before. yeah.

Lindsay Bolton:16:07
really? Yeah, I learned it from my business coach when I was an agent. We were starting to get really heavy into the commercial realm.

It can be time consuming. If you're just taking in whatever lands in your lap, you're spending so much time just trying to figure out where to quote it, how to sell it, what's important to them, what coverages do they need to be fully protected, so on and so forth. But if you really study and learn the markets that you're going to target, then it becomes just as easy as doing a home quote or an auto quote.

Jordan Lally:16:40
Yes, we call this the optimal self system, right? It's basically like the same person with a different face coming through your funnel. They have the same problems. You solve those problems to the same solution. Like you fulfill that service the exact same way. It allows you to really scale the company whenever you have a repeatable process, you know.

Lindsay Bolton:16:58
We used to have a problem where I was taking in whatever would land in my lap and then it was like, okay, I tried to do this quote and I forgot I need to ask them for this or I need to go get this document from them. now the company wants this from them. And it just feels like to the client that you're unprepared or that you don't know what you're doing.

Jordan Lally:17:14
this.

Lindsay Bolton:17:17
And so if you already know the carrier and the market, then you already know what's expected and you can ask for it upfront. And it just makes the process a lot more streamlined and professional for the client.

Jordan Lally:17:29
Let's kind of flip it. Take that same philosophy and talk about your own client acquisition system. Do you find that to be true with speaking with other potential clients, other insurance agencies?

Lindsay Bolton:17:30
Thank

Lindsay Bolton:17:42
So when you say that, mean...

Jordan Lally:17:45
Like helping them with your automation company, basically.

Lindsay Bolton:17:51
Yeah, so we do use agency zoom for our own business. We have several different marketing pipelines, whether it's an event that we attended to help getting people booked and so on and so forth. When it comes down to targeting, right now, about 75 % of our clients are farmers agents, and then 25 % are independent. And so we're trying to gain more traction in the independent space. And with that, we're trying to use our system in a way where we can find what's important to the independent agents as a market so that we can alter and make changes to adapt to them in particular. So does that kind of answer your question in a little bit?

Jordan Lally:18:35
Yeah, it does. Why diversify? Why not just stick with farmers? agents in life.

Lindsay Bolton:18:41
Well, there's only so many farmers agents, right? And it's just a whole different market of people that are lacking structure. With on the independent side, I feel like there people are jumping through carrier to carrier to carrier to carrier and they most of them are lacking one CRM where they're managing their entire book of business. They're just jumping through all these different carriers and having to try to remember who is where and what's happened and so on and so forth. With Agency Zoom, it pulls it all together because we can link to their AMS system. And so whether they're with Hawksoft, AMS 360, Easy Links, whatever it is, it's going to pull that data in and then they have one centralized place to use it. So I feel like while Agency Zoom is a benefit for farmers agents. It's really built for the independent side.

Jordan Lally:19:33
Got you. Okay. How did you manage to have so many farmers insurance agents working with you guys?

Lindsay Bolton:19:40
a farmer's insurance agent. So I just feel like people know who I am and so they kind of gravitate to wanting to do what we did with farmers and so we're able to replicate exactly what we did for them.

Jordan Lally:19:54
Gotcha. Okay. That makes sense. Did I hear you mentioned that you have a recruiting side as well?

Lindsay Bolton:19:56
Yeah, so we do have a recruiting pipeline to walk through that process. pipelines, I would do want to say that are all customizable. So, for instance, when we upload something, there are some pieces where I'll give pushback to clients if they're trying to change something that I know we have split tested to the end and this works, like do not change it. But when it comes to things like your recruiting pipeline, we can customize it to their specific recruiting process because it may be different than what we did as an agent or as an agency.

Jordan Lally:20:35
I wish you recording. That's for fun.

Lindsay Bolton:20:38
Our recruiting process was for our office manager would schedule a phone interview with the prospect. If they passed the phone interview side, then they would move into a meeting with our leadership team in person or virtual if they were remote. And once they go through that interview process with the leadership team, we use what's called a Berkman personality assessment. This Berkman personality assessment will tell you literally how you tick. down. It's how you take. Yeah, it's crazy. mean, it told me things that I didn't even recognize about myself. And now that I have read through it and understand it, I'm like, Yep, that's right.

It'll tell you if you're hiring someone for the right position. So I wish I would have used it a lot earlier in my career because I would have been able to Refrain from putting people where they didn't belong where they wouldn't be happy, right? And so when I started putting people in places where they belonged and where they were going to thrive such as a sales versus service position Like I was gonna have a stronger retention of retention of our staff, right?

And so that Brooklyn personality assessment was a huge piece because also it'll tell you how well they handle, how well they handle directness. And I'm a really direct person. And so if someone had a low score for that, it just wasn't going to work because they weren't going to be able to work with me and be happy. Or if they had a high emotional score, I'm very low emotion.

So I can't handle people that are emotional crying in my office. Like there's get out. And so I really liked that piece. And then when they got past the Berkman personality assessment, then they would meet with me and my husband as kind of a final, like, let's hands, you're hired kind of deal. So we let our leadership team really manage that process and get them through at the Brooklyn past, then they would meet with us.

Jordan Lally:22:23
Thank you.

Jordan Lally:22:42
Gotcha. Do you encourage that process to your clients?

Lindsay Bolton:22:47
Yes, yeah, many of our clients, especially on our executive advisory program, they're also working with our business coach and he has some sort of deal with the Berkman personality assessments and he does a full review with the staff member that's being hired of their personality traits and with the owner of the agency so that he can navigate and see whether they're going to be a good fit for the organization.

Jordan Lally:23:15
what's it called? One more time.

Lindsay Bolton:23:18
Birkman birkman, no sorry birkman Birkman I can leave a link if you're interested in them because normally there's $600 per Birkman personality assessment, but I have a link to get on for $250

Jordan Lally:23:29
Okay, guys.

Jordan Lally:23:42
Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah, I used to have a leadership podcast and they talked a lot about this, not to get like to psychology and philosophy on this, but this really helps with knowing yourself, right? If you truly know yourself to your core, you can plug into a goal where you absolutely will thrive in.

The challenge is not a lot of us truly know ourselves to our core. think we get caught up in the day to day of like the grind of not allowing ourselves to like think deeply or like feel the deep, deep emotions, you know? That's kind of how you get to yourself. Again, not to get all philosophy and psychology about this, but I will.

Lindsay Bolton:24:21
It's so interesting. Like it really is. And if you, when you, when you know it about your team members too, like you can find what is, motivates them. Right. So like some of them will chase money. Some of them really want the team to win rather than themselves to win. And so being able to put together promotions and stuff around teams to go against each other or so on and so forth.

Like we used to do, we had a mix, right? Our service team were typically people that wanted the team to win. And then our salespeople were after wanting to make money.

Jordan Lally:24:56
Sure, yeah, really. They should want to make money. They're in sales.

Lindsay Bolton:25:00
But we had two separate teams in our agency where we did like a goalball machine. It was a poster where we cut out like a big gumball machine, right? And what we did is it was for life insurance policies. So there was blue team and red team. When they would sell life policy, they get to go put a gumball on the gumball machine with their name, the premium, and the amount sold. And what we did was at the end of the year, we take them to Dave and Buster's in a limo, whichever team won, and like go have fun. know, something silly, something fun that they were competing for all year. So that sort of thing I think is encouraging.

Jordan Lally:25:36
No, it is. And I'm not sure sports background or if your husband does, but when you are competing at the top, money will definitely, you know, make you do things that you probably didn't think that you could do. But competition, more importantly, saying that I beat you or saying that I wanted something will probably push you further than money than actual dollar to a certain extent. Right. Once like your, needs are met, it's like, okay, how can I be the best of this thing, even though like the thing is silly, the thing is so dumb, and it's like, I'm still gonna win at this thing. You know what I mean? At least that's how I am. It's ridiculous.

Lindsay Bolton:26:10
Yeah, my thing was trophies. Like I would lose money to get the trophy. I would do whatever it took to get the trophy.

Jordan Lally:26:19
for sure. When it came to selling the agency, because I'm sure a lot of people out there also have that dream, what was the process that you went through? Did an investor approach the business or did you guys seek to sell

Lindsay Bolton:26:36
It was another agent that purchased our outside book of business and I just. put a word out that I was selling and wanted to sell that process went really smoothly because I had a cash buyer. For a typical sale though, I purchased five books of business in my career. So I'm very familiar with the process of acquisitions. Now, I think the hardest part nowadays for captive insurance companies is finding someone that will finance it, right? So some of the companies that I would recommend for like a farmers agent would be I think farmers federal credit union and then also Northwestern preferred those are both good options for that now on the independent side there is a company called when trust that I would recommend when trust is been I've worked with them in the past and they have been nothing but good to me and really easy to work with Now on when you're actually going through that acquisition with the perspective buyer or client or whatever, I think it's not client. guess am I talking about buying or selling right now?

Because if I'm selling, my sale was so easy. It was just like, okay, I know this guy, like, I know he's a great agent, he's gonna take great care of my policies, and it went through super smoothly. But on the acquisition side, there are, if you're like buying a book of business, I feel like there's, from a protection standpoint, there's so many things that you need to.

Lindsay Bolton:28:14
attention to, right? There's just like buying a home, there is a time to buy and there's a time to not buy. It's a market, fluctuates, right? On the captive side right now, a lot of the captive agents, the captive companies, the way that they're structuring things is they're making their bonus programs where the small agencies can't survive. If you're not hitting your bonuses, you're not going to be able to survive as an agent. and they're making the metrics to where it's really difficult for them to hit. And so what that says to these larger agencies is you're going to be able to go buy these smaller agents out really cheap.

And you can just offer them a little bit more than their contract value to get them out of here as the carrier wants. Right. And then on the independent side, though, it's a bit more competitive because on the captive side, you're doing a two times multiplier up to a two times multiplier. And on the independent side, it can go six, seven, eight times. But being able to know how to negotiate that rate based off of how the market is performing, I feel like it's really important.

And a lot of people just don't know what they don't know, right? And so they don't know these multipliers. And they're like, I don't know what to offer. I don't know what to do or how to work through that. And I only learned what I know from absorbing from everyone else around me and asking questions.

Jordan Lally:29:43
Right, right.

Would you say that buying a book of business, it's like an investment, right? Because it essentially adds to your monthly reoccurring revenue. It adds to your EBITDA if you are looking to sell. Gotcha. What was the biggest one that you bought out of curiosity?

Lindsay Bolton:30:00
5.4 million.

Jordan Lally:30:02
5.4 million. And how did that work? Did you finance that or did you pay for it in? Okay, okay, okay, for sure. How would that work? mean, is it like financing anything else? Like a house or?

Lindsay Bolton:30:07
finance it.

Yeah, that was fun.

Lindsay Bolton:30:16
I mean, they ask for a lot. They're going to ask for basically everything that you would buy, go to buy a house, but then they're going to ask for all of your business proformas, your folio statements, like your, your income statement, so on and so forth. Maybe they, depending on the size of a loan, they're going to ask for a business plan, what you're going to do with this, so on and so forth.

Jordan Lally:30:44
Gotcha. Okay, All back to to insurance. So when it comes to selling PNC insurance, would you say that you have a dive in sales process? Or would you say that? Let me just let me just ask that question. Can you describe your sales process when you were an insurance agent selling PNC?

Lindsay Bolton:31:04
Yeah, so when you're saying the sales process, do you mean what we are using on the automation side or like scripts?

Jordan Lally:31:13
yeah, I would say scripts. Yeah. That was a question, but you can talk about that one as well.

Lindsay Bolton:31:17
Yeah, so as an insurance agency for our sales process when it came to scripts as I would go and Again absorb from those around me. I would go to these conferences or join in on these Have you ever heard of insurance sales lab like Vlad Turchenko? or correct Vlad Vlad Turchenko

Jordan Lally:31:39
But who? What's the name?

I think I've seen him on like Instagram. I think I have.

Lindsay Bolton:31:46
Yeah. Yeah. So he has a great sales process built out and so does Craig Wiggins coaching. We've used both of them in the past and what I did was from their scripts, I just picked and pulled things that fit our agency and then like altered the wording and so on and so forth. I like psychology behind certain words like with Vlad scripts he asked the clients or the prospects how much are you currently being charged for your insurance instead of saying how much are you paying or whatever like how much are you being charged i feel like it changes the script of it right and then like

Jordan Lally:32:16
Okay.

Jordan Lally:32:25
It does, sorry, it does because I said the same thing back when I was seven solar, like how much does the utility company charge me right now? didn't even Let's go for it.

Lindsay Bolton:32:32
Yeah.

It does make a difference. And so just using the little words and stuff we picked and pulled and kind of put everything together for our team. One thing that we did was we used a lot of assumptive sales language. So we're not asking at the end, like, do you want to move forward? It's like, okay, what's your routing and account number? And so putting things to play where you're not

Jordan Lally:33:01
No, yeah.

Lindsay Bolton:33:04
you know, giving them an option, right? This is what we're going to do and we're going to move forward right now. It's harder for them to say no and so it converts more.

Jordan Lally:33:09
You're right. Go for it, go for it.

Jordan Lally:33:17
It is. And people from my experience in sales, and I'm sure you, you know, you and your husband have a tremendous amount of experience in this, but people say one thing like, yes, I want it. Yes, I want it. And then whenever it comes down to like actually purchasing, they, they all, they're a little hesitant, right? So we have to take like a leadership approach and just kind of walk them through the process, like hold their hand and kind of take them through that process. Because if you ask somebody, do you want this? Now they have to think, do I want this? Now I have to say yes, opposed to saying, OK, what is your bank account? Or you're writing, OK, let me just get that for you. But that only works if they view you as the authority figure in the conversation. You know what I mean? You can't.

Lindsay Bolton:33:49
We'll you

Lindsay Bolton:34:00
That's why you have to have those sales reps. We call them the gorillas, the people that go out and get the meat and slam it on the table. Like I want those people in my agency. I don't want people that are like scared to step on others toes, right? You want those hungry people. Now I will say that my personality type does not work well with the people that I need in the agency for that, right? Like, uh, and so you kind of have to like, like my business coach would just say like, Lindsay, you're gonna have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable around those types of personalities because those are who you meet on your team. And so I would have to distance myself and let my leadership team be the ones to interact with that type of personality, so I don't butt heads with anybody. No, I...

Jordan Lally:34:47
Are you, would you say you're that type of person?

Lindsay Bolton:34:53
I do have a really high sales score. I really do enjoy selling, but I'm also, I have a really high social service score on that broken personality assessment. That's my highest score, which is like helping, teaching, volunteering, counseling, and so I...

Jordan Lally:35:11
Pure teaching.

Lindsay Bolton:35:17
Oftentimes people that are those gorillas may have a low social service score and a high sales score and they're just going out there. They don't care if they hurt your feelings. They're just gonna go and sell, right? And I really care. And so, I really care. And so that's hard.

Jordan Lally:35:36
No, I laugh because I'm the same way and it's so annoying. Our damn feelings, man. Like, why are they not getting away? You know what I mean? No, I'm just kidding. How was your husband? Is he similar to you or is he a good level man?

Lindsay Bolton:35:40
Yeah.

Lindsay Bolton:35:47
We're completely opposite. I think that's the only reason why we work well together. People ask me all the time, like, how do y'all work together in the same office all day long? Like, don't y'all want to kill each other? And I'm like, honestly, I prefer it that way. I can't imagine him having another job where I didn't get to see him all day. And so I don't say that to be nice either. Like, just, I genuinely, like, I we just mesh really well in that regard now.

His Berkman actually said that he doesn't belong in, what was it Brandon, doesn't belong anywhere, in any organization. He belongs outdoors working alone in the woods, doing like as a game warden or something like that. Like he does not belong in an office atmosphere. So it's kind of like funny that like.

Jordan Lally:36:27
My god.

Jordan Lally:36:38
Thanks.

Lindsay Bolton:36:41
This is what he's doing. But yeah, he should have joined the military or something a long time ago. I probably ruined that for him, but.

Jordan Lally:36:49
This, do you guys ever hike? Does he hike alone or like do things out there alone or anything?

Lindsay Bolton:36:53
No, no, he likes to hunt, like hunt and fish and stuff like that. But yeah, I'm very much a AC girly. I like being inside like air condition. Yeah, we're actually leaving to go camping tomorrow and we have like a 43 foot like

Jordan Lally:36:57
Okay.

Jordan Lally:37:06
Yeah, right. Right. Yeah. I'm glamping for sure. I'm not sleeping out there in the sleeping bag. I've been kind of... So, you know, I was kind of flim...

Lindsay Bolton:37:19
nice camper because I will you will not catch me in a tent I'll tell you that if the AC goes out we're coming home.

Jordan Lally:37:22
Exactly.

For sure, for sure. I smiled and laughed when you said you couldn't imagine a world where you don't work with your husband. I have that desire or fantasy one might say and I don't know if it's possible, I'm sure it is, but I think the only way it would work, like you said, is if you guys were opposites. If you guys are way too similar, working 24-7, you probably would want to kill each other, right?

Lindsay Bolton:37:53
Yes, exactly. It wouldn't work. It wouldn't work at all. He's good at things that I'm not good at and vice versa. He does a lot of our behind the scenes stuff with like the pipeline creation and building and implementing and he doesn't do a whole lot of client facing communication. That's where I come in and I, you know, do all of the training or sales and so on and so forth, especially at the beginning. Now our team has taken over that and I'm doing more things like this, just trying to put our name out there and helping agents to find us so that we can help them to scale.

Jordan Lally:38:32
For sure. You did do I think on our initial phone call, you guys have a coaching program on top of the systems and processes. Company, I don't know the best way to describe it. I'm so sorry.

Lindsay Bolton:38:35
Thank

Lindsay Bolton:38:43
Yeah. program long term. So what we find is our regular program personal line sales and service side, it's a four month contract. So we work with the agents where we have eight scheduled one hour trainings over the first eight weeks. And then the contract period is for any additional training, troubleshooting or customization. Beyond that, what we're finding is that, you know, people are human. They're going to stop using what they learned. They're going to try to adapt it to their own liking. They're going to try to move and do things differently. what we've built works and we know it works, right? And so we wanted to make sure that we have these coaching programs long term to ensure the success of the agencies because at end of the day, our names tied to it, right? So just because they stop using something or they're not using it correctly, I don't want people to say that what they're doing or what we built didn't work, right? It's just, no, you're not using it right.

And so we have our group coaching program, which is for our agencies less than 8 million in premium. And that program, we have the agent or their or their leadership team on the call. And we go through different topics. Sometimes we may have like a lead vendor join in and

Jordan Lally:41:30
No, for sure. I do wish we had more time, but where can they find you if they want to?

Jordan Lally:41:59
I love that. love that. Lindsay Baldwin, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us.

Jordan Lally:42:07
Thank