97. Content Is King With Chris Greene

Chris Greene from Flood Insurance Guru shares what he's learned about creating the most robust library of content that is selling flood insurance like hotcakes. In fact, he created 1,500 videos in 1,500 days! He also discusses the importance of perfecting your processes so you can free up your time to "Wow" your customers.

3 Key Takeaways

• The most effective way to create content that sells insurance for you while you sleep is answering questions your clients and prospects constantly ask you.
• Creating consistent content positions you as an expert in your field.
• You need to perfect your processes so you can keep your customers engaged without you having to exert extra effort.

Resources From Chris

Website
YouTube
Facebook
LinkedIn
Munch AI
HubSpot
Building A Story Brand by Donald Miller
Marketing Made Simple by Donald Miller

About Chris

Chris Greene is the owner of the Flood Insurance Guru where they provide "Coverage For Now and Education for the Future." After buying a house in a flood zone 12 years ago and having a terrible experience with it Chris has spent the last 12 years helping property owners, real estate agents, real estate investors and business owners avoid the same thing he had to go through.

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Transcript

Jim (00:01.527)
Welcome to Agents Growth Academy. Class is now in session. I hope you're ready to grow big or go home. I've got the man in, we'll call him pink, salmon, orange, whatever it looks like on your screen if you're watching this. The man, the myth legend, Chris Green from Flood Insurance Guru. He's the owner, the founder of Flood Insurance Guru where he provides coverage for now and education for the future.

After buying a house in a flood zone 12 years ago and having a terrible experience with it, he spent the last 12 years helping property owners, real estate agents, investors, business owners, avoid the same thing that he went through. He's a good storyteller. We were talking off air a little bit about StoryBrand, and he is, in my mind, the content master. So welcome to Agents Growth Academy, Chris Green. What's up, my friend?

chris greene (00:53.712)
Thanks for having me.

Jim (00:55.615)
Yeah, I'm excited you're here. Where'd you get that snazzy jacket?

chris greene (00:59.908)
I got it at Kohl's this weekend. I was trying it on as a joke as a tribute to David Crowley, my buddy, for his 50th birthday. And I was just taking pictures, you know, tagging, and then I liked the jacket so much, I actually went back and got it the next day and said, look, I think this will pop out in our interviews, it'll pop out in our videos a little bit. It's outside our brand colors, but it's something different, especially when you add the black.

Jim (01:04.207)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Jim (01:18.499)
Dude, like you need anything to pop out. The first time I met you in Kansas City, like a year and a half ago, whenever that was, you popped right out. I think you came over and I don't remember if you bear hugged me or like almost broke my hand shaking it. It was a super, super charged introduction, so. No, I'm excited. So listen, content creation for you.

chris greene (01:31.057)
Yeah.

Jim (01:46.935)
You know, flood insurance guru, when I think of Chris Green and flood insurance guru, you have put out a monumental amount of content. And one thing that I'm big on is create, captivate and communicate. If you can do those things with your audience, you will win the day. You seem to have won the day. Was there an epiphany for you or like an aha moment where you said, okay.

I'm gonna do this thing and I need to do it through content creation.

chris greene (02:18.476)
Yeah, so it was actually back in 2018 when I was still in the PNC world and we were a little dabbing in flood like, look, do we go full-fledged, whatever. I was taking Nicholas Ayres' major look video course and he says, hey, just do a video for 30 days and let's just see what happens, consistently 30 days. Well, I had done like 10, 15 days. I had been doing video before this. I just hadn't been doing this consistently. So at the end of the 30 days, I saw a massive engagement in our business. I mean, I had been shooting videos in my daughter's dollhouse talking about roof coverage.

Jim (02:26.306)
Yeah.

chris greene (02:46.328)
I was really trying to get into some creative things. At the end of the 30 days, I saw a big impact. I said, you know what? I said, for the next year, we're going to do a different flood education video every day and we're going to travel the country doing it. We got into the year and we started doing it. I started blogging. I started podcasting. We started getting all these questions. I said, you know what? We're walking away from PNC completely and we're going to do flood only. We walked away basically from a million dollar book of business and said, we're going to build this thing. We're going to build it with Marcus Sheridan's They Ask You Answer.

is what I started out with. We're going to answer our customers' questions. We're going to obsess over them. We're going to be willing to do the things on our website that no one else is. If I'm answering someone's question, generally I'm going to be standing in their neighborhood addressing their issue. I'm not going to be standing in front of a green screen. So I got through 2019, 365 days, the videos in 365 days was great. I actually did an article with Insurance Journal on it. But we got to the end of the year and people kept asking us questions. I said, let's just keep this thing going. Well, I got the 500. Still kept

So, I ended up finishing this thing earlier this year at 1500 videos in 1500 days. I'm still doing video every day during the week. Usually, I have some post on our YouTube, shorts and things like that. I'm not doing it on the weekends and all that stuff anymore, but I didn't have a good strategy at first. So, strategy was terrible. I created all this content. I'm meeting with the SEO person for a website and said, look, you've done the hard work. You just haven't connected the dots. And so, now we're reverse engineering our content strategy with, hey, how do we connect these dots? If this customer is viewing this, how do we connect these dots?

Jim (04:14.799)
Hmm.

chris greene (04:16.042)
How do we make sure the next piece they get is the exact piece they need? Not just some random video, but how do we really bring them to that journey? And so I'm really reverse engineering that with the content, with StoryBrand, working with our StoryBrand coaches, with the messaging and everything of, hey, how do we ask simple stupid questions on our YouTube channel? What is flood insurance? Things that we assume that people know, but usually there's nobody out there answering the question. And so that's what we've been doing for the last five years.

Jim (04:19.979)
Yeah.

Jim (04:37.858)
Yeah.

Sure.

chris greene (04:46.142)
5,000 pieces of information over that period and now we're actually building unique learning centers for real estate agents, insurance agents, loan officers, property owners, and real estate investors that only apply to them or they don't have to go and search to a bunch of information that doesn't relate to them.

Jim (05:01.583)
So that's a lot to unpack, but before we move any further, what impact has that had on your business itself?

chris greene (05:09.632)
I'll be honest, I don't transparent people. When I was in PNC, we never made more than probably $12,000 a month in revenue. In flood, we probably averaged around $75,000 a month in revenue now.

Jim (05:20.604)
75,000. Wow.

chris greene (05:22.296)
Yeah, in revenue. And I said, you know, the goal is to get above that. But one of the reasons is that the way we're answering the question, when the customer picks up the phone to call us, a lot of times it's to give us our credit card information. Look, you sent me a video proposal. I was on your YouTube channel. I read your blog. So you've literally answered every question I had. I'm ready to buy.

Jim (05:32.665)
Ha ha

Jim (05:39.787)
Yeah. Wow. I'm curious, where are you getting the most traffic? Is it from YouTube, your blogs, somewhere else?

chris greene (05:47.632)
Actually, a lot of it is from my blogs, but when I tell people this about YouTube, our average age of our YouTube subscribers is 72 years old and they've watched five videos and they've read two blogs before they pick up the phone to call us. And they're usually calling us because, hey, you sent me the insurance proposal, answered all my questions, you had a video explaining to me exactly what the next steps are, I've already filled out the finalization form on your website, I just need to go ahead and give the credit card information.

Jim (06:13.871)
You had me except for 72 years old. That's an interesting demographic. I wouldn't have expected that.

chris greene (06:18.791)
Yeah. No, and people overlook the older crowd. Look, things like YouTube, they're going to it because they want the answer to a question. Actually, the older crowd uses it more than the younger crowd does.

Jim (06:21.58)
Yeah.

Jim (06:29.771)
Yeah. Wow. That's really interesting. Fascinating. You mentioned, oh yeah, go ahead. Yeah.

chris greene (06:33.968)
But the other thing is, you know, when we have a customer go down the street to a competitor, for example, they're like, wait a minute, the competitor is saying that they're the expert and all this stuff, but you're showing me actually how to solve the problem. You're clearly the expert here, not them. And we let the customer figure that out. You know, the competition can tell them, oh, we're this, we're that. Look, we're going to provide you what you need. We're going to provide all these eBooks, things you need to know before purchasing insurance, questions to ask. And they're like, wait a minute, the people down the street are not telling me to ask those things.

Jim (06:41.804)
Yeah.

Jim (06:46.016)
Mm.

Yeah.

Jim (07:02.029)
Yeah.

chris greene (07:02.732)
And that's when they come back to us and say, look, we're going to do business with you because you're actually helping us solve the problem. Everybody else is just begging us for their business.

Jim (07:11.679)
Yeah. Well, that's, that's a brilliant way to put it. I mean, it truly is about solving problems. And like you said, you started out with just asking, Hey, what, what questions do you have? So how did you tell me a little bit about that backup? How did you get people telling you what questions they had so that you knew what to answer?

chris greene (07:30.588)
So I actually put it on the form on our website. What's the biggest problem you're having with flood insurance? And they actually will write a book sometimes. And when we call them back, we can address the problem immediately. Or when we send them an insurance proposal, we can put it into the proposal. Hey, here's a problem you told us you were having. Here's the solution that we've got below for you. Here are three simple steps to put that solution in place so that you can get back to living life.

Jim (07:35.215)
Okay, it's pretty simple.

Ha ha ha.

Jim (07:57.207)
Wow, it's beautiful. Kind of makes me wanna cry, man, it's so simple. Tell me a little bit about Storybrand. I mean, I know what it is, you know what it is, but for those who are listening or watching, I hadn't heard about that. What is it and why is that important for what you're doing?

chris greene (08:13.068)
It's clarifying the message and it's simplifying the message. And I'll tell you something that one of the YouTube mastermind groups I'm in teaches reverse engineering and Story Brands kind of taught me that as well. But we're going back and reverse engineering every single process inside of our agency, all the way down to our phones. Somebody in the group got mad at me and they said, you know, how do we be successful in this hard market? And I said, answer the phones. And they're like, don't be a jerk. I said, I'm not being a jerk. I'm serious. Think about it. How many missed calls do you have on your phone system? Are you calling those people back? Those are the kinds of things I have reversed.

Jim (08:22.786)
Mm-hmm.

chris greene (08:42.921)
engineered in our company. Everybody miss call? I don't care if it's a mortgage company, everybody gets a call back. You know, we have increased deals 25% simply by calling people back because they didn't want to leave a message. Or maybe someone wasn't available. But that's something people miss and that's something Storybrand has taught me though. Is hey, how do we clarify the message and simplify it so that we don't overwhelm the customer? Things as simple as a script on the phone, as simple as an email or a text message. Storybrand will be part of every single thing we do, every part of messaging.

Jim (08:49.056)
Yeah.

Jim (08:54.071)
Wow. Yeah.

Jim (09:05.964)
Yeah.

chris greene (09:12.842)
We will simplify and clarify the communication internally and externally.

Jim (09:17.643)
So, and for those who don't know, Story Brand is a book written by Donald Miller, but it's also a concept, right? And you told me that you're taking flying lessons with him? Oh, flight school. When you said that, I was like, dude, seriously? Ha ha ha.

chris greene (09:26.436)
No, it's called Flight School. So I've actually got a book back here. No, he calls it Flight School. There's a book back here he recently released and I recommend any business owner to get it because let's be honest, most agency owners suck as business owners because nobody ever taught us. And it's called How to Grow a Small Business. It goes through six areas. It teaches you, hey, these are the five bank accounts you should have, one for taxes, one for profit.

You know how to fly the airplane. This is the marketing side. This is the side sell side This is the cash flow side, you know what he talks about is I love where most business owners get in trouble is The jet runs out of fuel and you have to circle the airplane for a while I mean circle the airport guess what happens when you run out of fuel you had a crash That's where your reserve cash flows there in case you have to circle the airport things get slow in a hard market Whatever having those funds there because you put them away It just is part of the process through the years that you don't have to worry about that now you survive when others don't

You know his big thing is I said, you know, don't overrun the human brain. You know, here's the problem Here's the solution here are three steps to put in place just like when someone says hey, we have 50 insurance options Immediately the human brain shuts down that is too much for me to process We have options to a hundred different carriers. I don't care if you have access to a hundred carriers I want to know that you have access to the three carriers or three options. I need

Jim (10:42.978)
Yeah.

Brilliant, I love it.

chris greene (10:46.788)
And so as I said, I hired five star story brand coaches. We have a copywriter who has been phenomenal. Probably the best copywriter in the story brand community because I even went and verified, I just want to make sure we're making the right decision or you can't beat her. We went and decided to do a new logo to really make things, clarify things, simplify things.

Jim (10:58.699)
Yeah.

Jim (11:04.967)
I saw that by the way, it looks good. Yeah.

chris greene (11:06.84)
Thanks. We hired the same company to help us with a brand guide and colors. And then we hired a designer for the website mixed with our development team, a store brand SEO coach and data scientists that help us understand, Hey, where are we losing customers on the website? Where do we need to adjust things on the website? Things from the bottom move to the top, vice versa. Where are we losing them? You know, where can we localize content? Maybe where our competition's not. You know, your competition may be creating content for the state. Let's go create content for the zip code.

Jim (11:26.144)
Yeah.

chris greene (11:36.834)
and just blow them out of the water. So those are things that Storybrain is teaching me. Now, this is a process you go through, but honestly, I think I'll keep most of our Storybrain coaches forever. Like with our copywriter, I do coaching calls with her once a month just going through email writing, understand the controlling idea on all these different things. This morning I had her go through one of our flood risk assessment tools on our website and say, hey, I just want to focus on the copy. So we focused on the copy and we actually wrote an automated follow-up email when they

Jim (11:37.155)
Hmm. Yeah, that's brilliant.

Jim (12:00.undefined)
Yeah.

Jim (12:04.791)
Wow, that's awesome. I love the automation, but off air you were telling me just what was the tool that you're using to chop up your content into micro content? Get munch, okay. Yeah.

chris greene (12:14.156)
Oh, it's called Get Munch. Yeah, it's pretty cool. You can do it for TikTok. You can do it for YouTube, whatever. You select it right there. That's actually where I'm on LinkedIn. Uh, content's coming from right now. And then I'm going to HubSpot and generating a blog to go with it.

Jim (12:25.699)
Yeah, that's awesome.

Jim (12:29.963)
It's beautiful. So, you know, thinking about like the people who are listening to the show are agents, agency owners, and they're trying to think, okay, like he's got flood insurance. How could I do this? What could I possibly do as an independent agent who's maybe trying to go after either a particular niche of business or a particular, you know, coverage that they wanna double down on? Like, what would your advice be to somebody who wants to start that process?

chris greene (12:58.232)
My first recommendation would probably be to go out and do some research and make sure there's enough demand for it. You don't want to get into a niche where there's no demand.

Jim (13:03.554)
Mmm, yeah.

chris greene (13:06.54)
Or you're not going to be able to sell policies because it's something so rare that never comes up. Now honestly, most people probably would have said that about flood outside the coast. That's where people come and be like, look, it's not going to work. You're going to fail. There's not enough demand for it. Well, guess what happens? If there's not enough demand, you've got to find a way to create demand by letting people know they have a problem before they know they have a problem. If you can do that, you can be successful. Whatever. I don't care if it's auto insurance, it's home insurance. Just be consistent with it. Answer those questions. Because I promise you.

Jim (13:06.605)
Yeah.

Jim (13:10.943)
Yeah.

Jim (13:17.537)
Yeah.

Jim (13:27.007)
Yeah.

Jim (13:34.991)
Sure.

chris greene (13:36.974)
There's questions that might be answered out there, but there's a different way for you to answer it. You haven't answered it. Maybe they've answered it from their point of view.

Jim (13:44.575)
Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.

chris greene (13:46.208)
Or reaction videos is a big thing that my YouTube coach is teaching me now. Hey, do a video reacting to this particular video. Do a video reacting to changes in the insurance market. These insurance carriers moving out of state. Hey, how's that going to impact you? Different things like that are easy ways to create content.

Jim (14:05.352)
Yeah. And something you said is like the fact that no one else is going to tell it like you tell it. You have your own perspective. You have your own life experience. You have your own stories and you have your own clients that have their own stories that can trump anything anybody else is trying to do. Even if somebody's already like if somebody said, I want to go after cyber. That's all I want to do.

and say, well, somebody's already doing it. Well, it doesn't matter. Like they're not doing it the way you do it. I mean, when I got into the podcasting arena for insurance, James Jenkins, he was one of my first guests and he's a great guy, I love him to death. When he gives me hugs, he really does crush my spine. He's a massive man, I appreciate that. But he took me to task after we hit end on the first recording, because I said, hey, who should I have as my next guest?

chris greene (14:44.026)
Yes.

Jim (14:55.947)
And he was like, well, what's your show about? And I was like, dude, we just recorded a whole episode. And like, long story short, he was basically like, Jim, you need to figure out what the purpose of this is. What does this look like 10 years from now? And not only that, like, how can you do it differently than everybody else? There's already a lot of insurance podcasts out there. How are you gonna be different?

chris greene (15:16.908)
And I'll tell you this, this will go back to agency owners. Here's the problem with most agency owners and agencies, they don't know their target audience. They don't know their purpose and they don't know who they want to serve. Or more importantly, they don't know who they don't want to serve. And they're so afraid to say it on their website, hey, if this is you, and I say it on our YouTube channel, if I'm talking to homeowners and real estate owners, this video is for you. If you don't follow this audience, this video is not for you. Just qualify them right away.

Jim (15:19.437)
Yeah.

Jim (15:22.963)
Yeah.

Jim (15:39.243)
Yeah.

chris greene (15:41.796)
So you're not wasting your time with the time kickers, but right away people respect you more because I know I'm not a good fit for the agency. Hey, I don't do dot standard auto insurance. Hey, if your insurance is less than the last six months and you're looking for insurance, we're not a good fit for you, but here's someone who might be. But you're so afraid to turn things away sometimes that.

Jim (15:56.351)
Yeah.

Jim (16:01.281)
Yeah.

chris greene (16:01.636)
You know, same thing with our team. Oh, I wanna do this. I said, well, you gotta think about it. You know, long term, 10 years from now, is that really what's gonna get us there? Is that part of our purpose? Because all the time people are, oh, you should offer commercial insurance. You should offer home insurance. Look, if I go and offer all those things.

Jim (16:10.797)
Yeah.

chris greene (16:17.668)
A, it's going to take away from the value of what we offer on flood. It's going to take our focus away from that. It's got to honestly take away from what we're really good at. Cause not only do we all have flood insurance, I have a company called the flood professor where I actually teach continuing education, insurance agents, real estate agents, and loan officers. I have a flood consulting company where we do mitigation projects and flood zone changes. If it's flood, we do it, but that's just kind of developed off of flood insurance. I wouldn't have time to do those things if we were trying to do home insurance and auto insurance. And honestly, we probably wouldn't make as much revenue either because of all the changes that are happening.

Jim (16:24.547)
Yeah.

Jim (16:38.411)
Yeah.

chris greene (16:47.642)
right now.

Jim (16:48.679)
know what you're good at and double down on it, right? Yeah, that's brilliant. I love it. What's next for you? What's exciting that you're working on right now besides like the Storybrand stuff? Or is that it? Is that like what you're fully engaged in right now for?

chris greene (17:03.852)
I'm talking like full engagement until three o'clock in the morning every night right now.

Like writing the blog, getting the blogs out, updating our blogs. But no, I mean we're still we're bringing from the top of the organizations to the bottom combined with they ask you answer. And so first of all, hey, let's make this, share the websites here. Hey, when a lead comes in, what's the first thing that happens? Are they getting a phone call from our team? Are they explaining the next steps? Yes, they're getting an email. You know, perfecting that process of when a lead comes in, just creating an incredible experience. I love it when our team calls them and the forum is filled out. They're like, holy cow.

Jim (17:17.72)
Yeah.

chris greene (17:38.438)
to someone else five days ago and they still haven't called me back, you called me within two minutes.

like really obsessing over those things and reverse engineering that process. Hey, what is this process look like? What does this process look like for renewal? What does the process look to get something as simple as a Google review? Literally, that's what I'm obsessing over right now with our team is, hey, we've got, I've got to perfect the process. By perfecting the process, I'm bringing in the leads. I just need you to wow the customer. And what I also tell my team is, hey, look, there's three T's that one of my YouTube coaches taught me and it's called things take time. They're like, they beat themselves up.

Jim (17:54.211)
Hmm.

Jim (18:11.489)
Yeah.

chris greene (18:12.938)
because of results. I said, don't. I said, if you focus on the process, you'll never have to worry about results. There's two things in this world we can control every day. That's our attitude and our effort. Those are what I call controllable variables. Let's not worry about moratoriums and things like that. They're out of our control.

Jim (18:22.635)
Mm.

Yeah.

Jim (18:29.247)
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. You know, I think about...

chris greene (18:33.7)
Like did our team, hey did you send a video welcome to a customer just introducing yourself? Maybe that's why the business didn't close. The business only didn't close because we didn't follow the process. It wasn't the result. It was getting to the result that we had a problem with.

Jim (18:37.061)
Yeah.

Jim (18:47.603)
Yeah, that's true. Yeah, focus hyper focusing on process is something that I've, I've quite candidly have been challenged with in our head of administration and finance and our agency. She is all about process. Sometimes I feel like to a fault but so often it comes down to

you know, I want to move so fast on something. And she's like, whoa, we got to develop a process for this. Otherwise you know, how many people we have in our agency were spread out. Like they're going to be doing things all different ways. If we don't have the one way, you know, the SSI way or whatever it is that we're doing it. Yeah.

chris greene (19:26.192)
And that's actually why we created Playbooks. Like I told him, I said, look, whether you've been with us two days or 20 years, you can go straight to Playbooks.

know the exact process, but you can also explain the exact answer to the customer. So when the customer calls in, they get the same response every time. That's one of the biggest frustrations for customers. I got 20 different responses. Heck, that's a problem we have with the federal government when we call FEMA. We're getting a different response every time. It's so frustrating creating that universal response for the customer. But now we're also creating a unique experience for the customer and the employee. So we're story branding internally, externally, where we're doing, they ask you answer internally and externally, because what we're doing is we're answering the

Jim (19:47.042)
Yeah.

chris greene (20:01.887)
our team is asking us, we're creating playbooks for it. We're making our jobs easier every day.

Jim (20:07.235)
So what does the playbook actually look like for those who haven't experienced that before?

chris greene (20:11.46)
I mean, all it is like a God by God document. For example, what is an agency fee? And it's an explanation of what an agency fee is. Hey, how do I cancel a policy with this carrier? Or who takes this risk? Or, you know, can we, you know, will flood cover this? Literally anything you can think of is inside the playbook.

Jim (20:15.039)
Okay. Yeah.

Okay. So it's just like a resource tool. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jim (20:29.535)
Okay. Yeah. Now, is anybody else on your team also creating content? Or are you the sole content creator that's pumping everything out? Yeah.

chris greene (20:38.508)
I'm so content creator right now, but we just hired someone who will be creating content because I've really taught her how to use video the last couple of years. And she was with another agency that actually had some layoffs and kind of worked out well that we finally got her to come on board and I'll eventually probably develop her into our business development manager.

Jim (20:43.234)
Okay.

Jim (20:46.53)
Yeah.

Jim (20:50.688)
Yeah.

Jim (20:56.223)
Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I mean.

chris greene (20:57.796)
But what will happen once we get StoryBrand implemented, then she'll be meeting with our StoryBrand coaches, probably four times a month on coaching calls of, hey, they'll work with her. Hey, if you're gonna be doing commercial, residential, whatever, the coaches are only focusing on you and what you're doing. Nothing else outside that.

Jim (21:11.759)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Man, it sounds like you've got it locked in, like you're laser focused on exactly what you're doing.

chris greene (21:18.34)
That's actually what I was doing with Coach, because I'm there to see someone who's so passionate, but they're so focused on the process and critiquing it and just, you know, really about what the customer thinks about the whole process.

Jim (21:31.307)
Yeah, and he does it all in a pink jacket. Holy cow.

chris greene (21:35.832)
And a poop hat sometimes, but I haven't worn it in a while.

Jim (21:39.419)
Why is that?

chris greene (21:41.48)
I've just transitioned into the brand a little bit. Like I tell people, sometimes it's time for the brand to grow up a little bit. I use it a little bit still on my YouTube channel.

Jim (21:43.491)
Ha ha!

chris greene (21:49.028)
Just like I used to wear a hat backwards and a t-shirt. And my wife was like, hey, why'd you change the logo? I said, sometimes, yeah, so I built that logo five years ago when I just started our company. It wasn't that professional. And sometimes the brand just has to transition and grow up. And that's what we're doing with the logo. That's what we're doing with Story Brand. And we're just naturally developing, just like a child to an adolescent to an adult.

Jim (21:54.944)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jim (22:02.957)
Yeah.

Jim (22:11.807)
Isn't it funny how over time you can actually watch a business grow like it is a human being? It is a living, breathing entity that changes over time and can obviously put you through. Like I have three teenagers now, essentially. My youngest is 12, but she's practically a teenager. It's like the hell they put you through, but you learn from it, you grow from it. One question I'd ask you is what's one of the biggest

mistakes you've made that you've learned from through this whole process.

chris greene (22:44.544)
No content strategy. That's the biggest thing, and not hiring coaches. If I had to go back over, I would hire coach day one, because we've always had this goal, hey, how do we generate a million dollars in revenue a year? Well, guess what? Instead of struggling for three, four years, we could have put that money into a coach and probably done away with a lot of that struggle.

Jim (22:46.589)
Okay.

Jim (22:50.003)
Okay, tell me about no content strategy.

Jim (23:08.179)
Yeah, that makes sense.

chris greene (23:09.024)
And the mindset of thinking of things as an expense versus an investment. Like our people are investments. StoryBrun is an investment. It's not an expense. Bone System even really is an investment, not an expense.

Jim (23:13.592)
Mm-hmm.

Jim (23:19.375)
Yeah.

Jim (23:23.251)
Yeah. And especially the people.

chris greene (23:25.444)
Much as I hate to say it, probably my CPA is an investment, not an expense.

Jim (23:31.808)
They don't want to make their head get too big.

chris greene (23:34.128)
But it's really a mindset change of expense versus investment. Not what's gonna happen tomorrow, what's gonna happen in the next 10 years, what am I doing today and tomorrow to get me to the next 10 years?

Jim (23:45.163)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. A lot of sense.

chris greene (23:47.56)
Because we have a team of about seven VAs now in the Philippines, and we've got basically three licensed people here in the U.S.

Jim (23:54.839)
That's right, you were one of the first people I talked to that had really gone all in on VAs when I met you a couple years ago. Tell me about your journey with that, how has that helped you guys grow? Okay, go for it.

chris greene (24:04.9)
I'm gonna give CoverDesk a huge plug here. So I'll tell you, I originally got VAs on my own back in like 2018, tried to do it on my own, hired somebody, it didn't work out, paid them for the whole month. So hey, it didn't work out, here's pay for a whole month. They ended up hacking our PayPal account somehow because that's how I paid them. Hacked into my Microsoft office, ended up trying to pay themselves $2,000 to our PayPal.

Jim (24:10.403)
Yeah.

chris greene (24:27.076)
It just so happens that I was on the phone with PayPal and they could track the IP address. We had to get the Philippine government involved and everything. Well, Andy Priest, maybe the cover desk, walked me through this whole process. Okay, here's how you correctly pay it. Here's the process. So I ended up using cover desk for four and a half years. Now don't use them today. It has nothing to do negative with them. What happened was I was building a house and I had to cut some costs and I actually had built a contact with one person over there. And so we just went to that one person

Jim (24:33.871)
What?

Jim (24:46.464)
Yeah.

Jim (24:54.115)
Yeah.

chris greene (24:56.97)
we had at the time because we couldn't use their VAs, of course, because of our contract with them. So we had to let them stay with a cover desk. And we basically just hired people within their circle or people similar to them. Maybe someone who lost their job as a school teacher or what we would do is we would go to Online Jobs PH and we would hire people who had experience with HubSpot, which was our CRM. We felt like that was the hardest learning curve. So if we could take that off the table, we could really do well. So now we have a kind of a content writer that helps us a lot over there, really a VA

Jim (25:08.175)
Sure.

Jim (25:15.873)
Hmm.

Jim (25:27.352)
Mm-hmm.

chris greene (25:27.672)
We've got a renewal specialist, we've got a quota, we've got a phone specialist, I've got two video editors over there.

Jim (25:34.967)
Wow. Holy cow. And

chris greene (25:36.9)
Yeah, and so that's, you know...

I send my videos out to my editor. They only edit one video a day, but they do a pretty good job. Sends it back to me, then I throw it in to get munched. We got our shorts, we got all that stuff. And so they're just editing one video a day. I get my blog ready. I take it to my content manager and say, hey, we need to add images, make sure tags and all this stuff is done. He messaged me and says, hey, it's ready to publish. Or I got a presentation to make. My content writer will go and write that presentation for independent insurance associations for me. I say, hey, here's your three hour PowerPoint presentation that you needed. Or even for my wife who works on her master.

Jim (25:42.753)
Yeah.

Jim (25:56.376)
Wow.

chris greene (26:08.426)
help with something. Hey, I can't figure out how to use Canva in this. She goes straight to our VA team and they help her with it. But I'll also tell our team this. I said, look, you're here in the US doing the field plans. There is no difference between the two of you. We will be on video with each other throughout the day and we will not treat each other different because just because they're over there, they have a different role. It doesn't make you any better than them. In fact, they may be more of a crucial role than you are.

Jim (26:13.035)
Yeah.

Jim (26:21.663)
Yeah.

Jim (26:28.354)
Yeah.

Jim (26:31.823)
Sure.

chris greene (26:33.044)
And I even have one of our VA on board our new employees when they're learning HubSpot. I've had one of my VA's teach them HubSpot the last three days and she's like, man, they're so good. Like I said, well, they used to be school teachers and they lost their job during COVID. And that's how a lot of them ended up coming to us or we look for people who were former school teachers. And one reason is that English is very good. And what most people don't know is over there, actually English is a native language. There is another language over there, but the reason English is because they know that eventually one day they're probably going to end up in call

Jim (26:50.906)
Mmm, yeah.

Jim (27:01.359)
Sure.

chris greene (27:02.898)
school and everything else. And so I am actually obsessed over accents and things like that. Now, I have found some people with accents aren't that good, but their work ethic is phenomenal. And so we have them on the back end. And when we hire a licensed person, we go and hire a VA to go with them. And they are a team together.

Jim (27:04.396)
Yeah.

Jim (27:11.339)
Yeah. Wow.

Jim (27:20.627)
Wow, wow. Man, you're kind of blowing my mind with some of this stuff. I mean, the amount of outsourcing that you're doing, I mean, you can call it outsourcing, but I love the way that you humanize it. I mean, it doesn't matter that they're on the other side of the world. Like they are still human beings that are doing a damn good job for you and probably better than some of your other people that are here, it sounds like.

chris greene (27:43.172)
Yeah, I mean, and I guess what? Just like our team here in the US, they get a week of vacation every quarter.

Jim (27:47.755)
Yeah. Wow. That's awesome.

chris greene (27:49.712)
I mean, that's a requirement. Hey, you gotta take your week of vacation every quarter. That's part of our mental health plan here is you gotta take a week of vacation every quarter.

Jim (27:56.939)
Wow. It's fantastic, man. You're a darn good human being. I appreciate you.

chris greene (28:04.328)
I've learned the hard way. You know, Grant Baupman has taught me that through his book, It's Not About Your Paycheck. You know, I've learned a lot of that through story brand of, you know, just being, I hate to use the word manager, being a better leader, manager, but you know, really trying to be in their shoes. As I said, not treat them like an expense. Treat them like an investment.

Jim (28:08.565)
Yeah.

Jim (28:13.856)
Yeah.

Jim (28:22.431)
And I think we could all take that advice as far as treating people like an investment. Yeah.

chris greene (28:25.144)
Like paying people, like, oh, I got a way with paying them this. No, paying them with the really worth. Overpay them and I promise you, you may never lose them. Like my office manager or my commercial personnel, she goes, you don't understand how much I enjoy working here. And I guess one reason is because I removed commission from our organization about four years ago.

Jim (28:32.876)
Yeah.

chris greene (28:43.332)
So it's not sales driven. Instead, everybody gets a base salary. Everybody gets a portion of company revenue. So as the company grows, so does the paychecks of our entire team. And so they're always looking out for healthy company growth, things like Google reviews. And we still do bonuses when we hit certain levels and things like that, but they don't feel the pressure. Oh, I can't go on vacation because I can't sell this policy. What happens when I'm on vacation? No. Or what happens if I'm working on these two big commercial policies? Who's gonna handle this other stuff? And that's why our team is set up with a kale manager. She's like, look,

Here's our company goal. I don't care how we get there. We're going to get there. Here's the process we're going to follow to get us there. You could be working on something big over here and I'm working on a ton of small stuff so you can get that big thing done. My commercial lines manager who's working maybe on five big commercial counts that may get us to that goal this month. But I got to work on these small things with our other team members so that she can help us get us there.

Or like, I'm working on StoryBrand right now. They understand that. Hey, this is the process that's gonna get us there because he's worked on this. I gotta work on this over here. That's why I tell people, if you're the best salesperson in the world, you're probably not a good fit for our organization because we're such a team player organization.

Jim (29:50.639)
It sounds like it. And it sounds like with the pressure that you're taking off of them from the sales perspective, it really does almost force them to work more in a team together if their compensation increases or bonuses are coming from team growth.

chris greene (30:05.368)
Yeah, I mean, look, they still have to close the business. I got to tell them, look, we still got to close business or we're gonna have to close the doors. I mean, it is what it is. But what I tell people is we're an educational organization that owns an insurance agency. When we take that approach, the sales are gonna take care of itself. If we follow the process of following up people correctly, like our team sent out an email, I said, hey, I wanna follow up with you on those quotes from last week and I said, look, I almost threw up in my mouth when I saw that email. And she's like, wow. I said, one, we could have automated that. Two, there was absolutely no emotional connection on personalization.

Jim (30:10.387)
Yeah, sure.

chris greene (30:35.262)
In case scenario, what you should have done was send out a video saying that. Because at least then they see your face, they know who you are, and now you've built an emotional connection with them. Because I have a rule. If a customer asks us more than two questions, we respond with a video. We mention them by name and we mention the questions we're answering for them. We know when they watch the video, they can share the video, and immediately they know that somebody's behind that email.

Jim (31:00.015)
This is brilliant. I don't know if you can see me. Like I keep reaching forward because every time you say something that's a golden nugget, I hit M on my keyboard to mark it for later. And so you keep hitting me with all these amazing, these amazing points, man. I just wrote down.

chris greene (31:13.862)
Yeah.

Just like when I hire some people, I hire people who have experience with good referral partners, for example, I love hiring people who have state farm experience because when a state farm agent calls and says, look, this is a struggle with having on flood. Look, I know, I've been there. I worked inside of a state farm agency, maybe an all state agency, maybe someone who used to be a mortgage lender, look, I understand how stressful the process can be. I used to work in the industry, I immediately can identify. I like hiring people who experienced a flood claim or some kind of water damage in their property, so when a customer calls in, they can do a little storage.

Jim (31:21.824)
Yeah.

chris greene (31:47.186)
They can show them that just like when people come to me and I say look I know how you feel I bought a house in a flood zone. I did a flood zone change on my personal property and that's exactly what I've been doing for the last 12 years is helping these people with these flood zone changes. It shows them the authority, it shows them the empathy, but it also shows them that they're in the right place for someone to help them.

Jim (32:04.499)
Yeah, it's brilliant. I love what you said about being an organic, an educational organization that offers insurance. That's what a brilliant way to look at it.

chris greene (32:11.405)
and educational organization that offer, yeah.

chris greene (32:17.168)
So that used to be our tagline. And then our story burn coach said, look, I understand your education, but what happens is you can't forget why people will come to you. So let's go with something different. So I came up with coverage for now, education for the future. And she joked with me. She goes, I feel like you should send me a check. I said, you probably should at $400 an hour. I'd really appreciate it. She goes, no, that's a great tagline. And she goes, I didn't even help you with it. You came up with it on your own.

Jim (32:25.219)
Yeah.

Jim (32:36.82)
That's brilliant.

Jim (32:42.731)
You're a big boy now, Chris. Good job.

chris greene (32:44.872)
Well, no, that's what she's talking about, because she's got a course going on. She goes, look, you don't need my course. Like the way you're developing with StoryBrand, you're going to be a StoryBrand guide one day.

Jim (32:48.451)
Yeah.

Jim (32:52.619)
Wow, is that one of your goals?

chris greene (32:54.76)
I wouldn't say my goals, but I feel like I will naturally transition there of not necessarily helping insurance agents, but look, our ideal audience, but real estate agents and loan officers, the way we build stuff out. Naturally, we may become a coach and help them down that journey. Look, we went down this a few years ago, just like I'll eventually probably create a content creation course. Look, here's the case study of our company over the last five years.

Jim (32:58.477)
Yeah.

Jim (33:14.605)
Yeah.

chris greene (33:15.572)
Or, here's why you should trademark a company. And here's how you go through the process. Here's what happened to me and how it cost me almost $75,000 over a four year period.

Jim (33:24.591)
Wow, yeah. God, you got so much going on, man. I don't know how you, do you only function on like two hours of sleep every night?

chris greene (33:34.416)
I usually go to bed about three, I roll into the office about 10.30. I tell people I only work 10 to three, I just do it twice a day. Because I've worked in seven time zones. And so I'm very strict with our mental health plan and that is that our team works nine to five. I don't care what zip code you're in, generally you work nine to five. I think we have one person who works eight to five. If something comes in outside the hours, our VA team who works over those hours either handles it or I handle it.

Jim (33:37.963)
Oh my gosh.

Jim (33:43.159)
Fantastic. Yeah, well, yeah, true.

Jim (33:59.714)
Yeah.

chris greene (33:59.848)
That's the whole work-life balance for them. I said, you're not going to stress about, oh, something didn't come in. No, let the person behind you. And that's the reason why we hire people in different time zones. It's the reason why we have a lot of teams in Alabama is that they're available from 10 to six, nine to five, their time. We've got someone, I mean, there are VA's who are quoting until 8 p.m. at night. And so that when they come back in the next morning, things are ready to go.

Jim (34:14.818)
Yeah.

Jim (34:22.847)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Uh, you know, you put a lot of emphasis on mental health. Is there something that like some event or something that kind of happened in your agency that you decided like, this is really important for us.

chris greene (34:36.584)
Well, I realized working from home, I wasn't getting the human interaction and that's why video is so important. But what I've realized is too, we lost a really good team member and I feel like I didn't focus enough on the mental health. We weren't on video enough for them. I wasn't engaging enough, great team member, was with us for two and a half years, took a corporate job. But I feel like that was coming some of the lessons I learned that wasn't a good enough leader there. I didn't help them grow. And it's something I really try to focus on.

Jim (34:40.14)
Mm.

Jim (34:47.364)
Mm. Yeah.

chris greene (35:02.628)
But working from home, if you're not on video like this, if you're not interacting with people on video, you look down and you haven't seen anybody in six weeks and you become depressed. That's why I tell them, hey look, part of the condition is you have to leave for an hour at lunch every day. I don't care if you go walk the dog, you go have lunch. Me personally, I go have lunch at the same daily almost every day of the week, interact with everybody. But for me, it's about getting out and having a human interaction. And it's something I've been more self-aware of, but most people aren't, especially if you've never worked from home.

Jim (35:11.628)
Yeah.

Jim (35:16.322)
Yeah.

Jim (35:21.775)
Thanks for watching.

Jim (35:26.112)
Yeah.

Jim (35:31.663)
Sure.

chris greene (35:32.542)
say you don't have kids and you're not interacting with those people. I see people that cut off. And for example, I have a family member that we would probably hire to be a content manager, but they really strive to be around people. And I feel that mental health would be a really big struggle for them being remote because they would cut people off. And I'm like, look, that I think that would put you in a worse mental health situation. And so when people come on board, I said, look, you only work nine to five, you've got to have an office with a door and that's got nothing to do with micromanagement. What that's got to do is when you close that door, work here, home there.

Jim (35:43.161)
Mm-hmm.

Jim (35:46.657)
Yeah.

Jim (35:51.949)
Yeah.

chris greene (36:02.822)
You're not working from the kitchen table. You're not working dining table associating to work with those things You're taking an hour lunch break You're taking a week of vacation usually every quarter except for the fourth quarter because we have a lot of breaks So that you can get that mental health break

Jim (36:13.358)
Yeah.

Jim (36:16.727)
Yeah, you're doing it right, man. I love it. It's fantastic. I could keep going on with you forever on this stuff. I do wanna get into the rapid fire round. I feel like you've given me so many golden nuggets to go back and highlight and probably put through Get Munch, but I just made it easier for myself by marking all of them, so. I'm pretty excited about that. What's one piece of technology or software you can't live without? We talked a lot about different things.

chris greene (36:22.009)
I'm winging it.

Yeah, I'm winging it from that.

chris greene (36:43.936)
Hubspot.

Jim (36:44.779)
HubSpot. Okay, yeah, I thought you were gonna say that. Tell me what it is. I've never used it before.

chris greene (36:49.82)
Pops by with my talks, but let's compare something like agency zoom maybe or.

I want to say better agency, better agency maybe they're a level. Agency Zoom maybe more of a CRM. What I tell people is HubSpot or Salesforce is more like an ecosystem. You can have your website. Literally you can have everything in it. I don't think the agency Zoom is that level yet. Maybe they will be not at vertifor bottom and they're developing them. But people say, oh, it's just a CRM. I said, no, it's an ecosystem. Literally our team doesn't have to leave at all. Phone calls come in through HubSpot. Everything on our website through HubSpot, our blogging, our SEO recommendations.

Jim (37:10.7)
Mm-hmm.

chris greene (37:25.026)
The only thing we have to use HubSpot not for is checking a carers website for something. Emails, facts, Facebook Messenger. So my message is on Facebook. It's coming in the HubSpot in the conversations. LinkedIn, you send me a message there. It's coming through HubSpot. We're communicating through HubSpot and it's going back out. I built our own AMS inside of HubSpot.

Jim (37:30.408)
Okay, wow.

Jim (37:37.046)
Mm.

Jim (37:46.295)
You built your own AMS?

chris greene (37:48.072)
I built long laughs because we didn't do downloads. So I built the policy part inside HubSpot using custom objects. So when we win a deal, it goes over it automatically creates a policy with that policy number. 90 days before it's scheduled to renew, it creates a new renewal deal where we start working that renewal deal. And then at the expiration date, it changes that from an active policy to an inactive policy and archives it.

Jim (37:51.04)
Yeah.

Jim (38:11.107)
Jeez, man.

chris greene (38:12.188)
I mean, I used to be, and that's why it's our team. I said, look, we spend the first two weeks when somebody went on board somebody to teach them HubSpot because we literally use it for everything. Like that's how I have Vidyard built in where someone watches a video on my website. I know that they watched this video and they read this blog and they downloaded this ebook. So when I follow up with them, that gives me, all right, you're basically telling me that you're in the process of purchasing flood insurance in Huntsville, Alabama, because you read the Huntsville blog, you downloaded this book, and you watched another video on the guide to Huntsville flood insurance.

Jim (38:18.412)
Yeah.

chris greene (38:42.522)
So I call them and say, look, I'm pretty good at this, you're probably looking for Flood and Shards Huntsville. Yeah, I am.

and then they feel like they can identify with them better. You know, our team can go through there and look at all that data and know, oh, customers are like, hey, you never sent me this. You know, we sent it on this day and this day and this day, you open up the doc you signed here, or PandaDoc, which is what we use. We put everything in there. We're doing our, we're switching our insurance proposals to something called Quiller, which is more website-based, but all that data is pushed in the HubSpot, so we know when people view it. We know when they accept their proposal, so now our team can pick up the phone and say, hey, this is the onboarding team at Flood Insurance Gear, we're just giving you a call to start the process.

Jim (39:00.045)
Yeah.

chris greene (39:18.474)
to complain your flood insurance policy. Or someone opens an email, clicks a video five times. Hey, I noticed that you watch this video a few times. There's some questions I can answer for you. Or maybe they do open an email and we just send them a general email back. Hey, just wanna follow up. Oh, I'm glad you followed up. I was looking for this. And they feel like we can almost read their minds.

Jim (39:37.295)
It sounds like it needs to be rebranded as stalker.com. Yeah.

chris greene (39:41.432)
I was telling you, the data is great. And the development they're using with AI, for example, with conversations, you know, one of my new team members, because I think it's so amazing that I can write a conversation to a customer and decide if I want to send it in friendly mode, professional mode, or even a witty mode. And I can reword it using content AI. It's how they have everything built into it. I said, no, it's great. I said, I use it every day to reword my emails because I'll just start writing and things don't flow right. And I go to the AI tool and I let it rewrite it for me.

Jim (39:59.011)
Yeah.

That's beautiful, man.

Jim (40:07.971)
Yeah.

You sound like Mark Twain all of a sudden.

chris greene (40:13.893)
No, no, it's great. It just flows a little better. It sounds a little more, maybe more professional.

Jim (40:16.299)
Yeah. No, I totally agree. Using AI, what little I have, it definitely just speeds up the process more than anything to help you get where you're trying to go faster.

chris greene (40:26.864)
When I tell people, look, AI is not the tool belt, it's a tool in the tool belt. The people who use it as a tool belt are the people who will get left behind because a lot of it's not accurate. We still need to humanize it. Like, people who write a blog, the blog will be general, but what we do is we go back and we have very local cities. We research, hey, what are the suburbs in this area? What are the flood-prone areas? I get so local with our content that it's not even funny.

Jim (40:30.348)
Yeah.

Jim (40:34.048)
Yep.

Jim (40:38.701)
Yep.

Jim (40:52.083)
Yeah, that's awesome. What's up?

chris greene (40:54.788)
But yeah, my team loves HubSpot, went down a little bit today, but we have a joke, if it didn't happen in HubSpot, it didn't happen. That's what I tell myself, look, if you didn't put it in HubSpot, I don't know. Just like when our calls come in, the recorded call that we use right now through air call, call comes in, message comes in, it's automatically recorded onto the customer's profile. Don't have to do anything. If I'm on the phone and I want to make a note on their file, I do it from the mobile app and it automatically downloads in the HubSpot.

Jim (41:00.811)
Ahahahahahah

Jim (41:04.845)
Yeah.

Jim (41:15.917)
Wow.

Jim (41:21.815)
Wow, man, that's pretty slick. All right, I'm definitely gonna check it out. I know they're based out of Boston, which was where I went to school, so. Ha ha.

chris greene (41:29.252)
And everybody asked me my bill with HubSpot and said, look, my bill with HubSpot now is about $3,500. And that's because I've added an Operations Hub. And what that means is I can take any other app and basically make, can do anything I want with it because Operations Hub now has custom code. And so I can go and do whatever I need to. If I need a workflow done that, for a say, for example, that DocuSign does not have out there, I can do it with Operations Hub because of the custom code.

Jim (41:50.412)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome.

chris greene (41:56.448)
I built HubDB tables, so like for our referral partners, each referral partner has their own link and they have their Check Your Flood Zone in there. And so when they submit it, we have an email address in that HubDB table and automatically sends a response back to them in that email address. You know how many deals are being submitted through that. Like, I used HubDP, all the information on our learning centers is done through HubDB, which is basically just huge spreadsheets. It's HubSpot and it's pulling that data and it's pulling the filters, all this different stuff. I go way deeper than most people do.

Jim (42:19.97)
Yeah.

chris greene (42:26.963)
But I think HubSpot is probably one of the best CRMs out there in our ecosystems. I tell people it's because they listen to their customer and they're constantly making these changes.

Jim (42:35.519)
And you don't think that from an insurance perspective, like insurance industry perspective, you're missing out on anything that some of these others that are built for our industry would be able to give you?

chris greene (42:45.824)
I'm not because I don't, as I said, we don't have downloads on Flood really. And that was literally the only thing we were missing. What I tell people is that, look, I'll put HubSpot against any AMS you have all day long and we'll run circles. My one reason is they don't have, they may be really good at this, but they're not good at this. They may be able to have recorded phone calls. They're not able to add all these AI tools yet. They're not able to implement their website in there. Like, you know, it's just, it's a different kind of system.

Jim (43:00.991)
Yeah.

Jim (43:09.697)
Mm.

Yeah, that makes sense.

chris greene (43:12.952)
And it's David Carolla's fault that I'm broke. He got me into it many, many years ago. He does. So David jokes and he says, look, if you like what I do with HubSpot, then Chris is like a ninja on it. And even he has a HubSpot coach that helps him with all the stuff. And I try to get his HubSpot coach to help me. I said, no, you're way past me. Like I can't help you. Because we literally have conversations every week.

Jim (43:16.223)
Yeah, I thought he used that too. Okay, yeah, yeah.

Jim (43:31.undefined)
Hahaha

Jim (43:34.456)
That's funny.

chris greene (43:35.48)
Like AI forecasting sales now based on conversations that have happened between text, phone, and some really cool tools like that.

Jim (43:42.595)
Jeez. Wow. That's way in the weeds, man. But that's pretty cool.

chris greene (43:47.724)
Or like pulling, for example, have you ever heard of Hazard Hub? All right, so Hazard Hub is actually one of the biggest risk data companies out there, for insurance companies. What it does, it tells you like your fire, it tells you your ratings, hey, what year was the house built, the flood risk score, all this stuff.

Jim (43:51.008)
No.

chris greene (44:04.188)
Well, we take that data and we pull it in the HubSpot and we display it on a dynamic page. When a customer requests a flood risk verification, right away they know what flood insurance is required, what flood's on the property is in, how close to water they are, and what their estimated premium is instantly because it's pulling API data. And then our team, and that goes in there when they're quoting it, they know what year it was built, they know the foundation type, all this different stuff, and so they're not researching that information. So now a quote time of 45 minutes may turn into 20 minutes.

Jim (44:20.288)
Yeah.

Jim (44:33.475)
Wow. Geez, man. That's insane.

chris greene (44:36.164)
And then look, I'm pushing like a million pieces of data in there, but I'm only displaying about 10 pieces of data in front of each team member, and it's the exact 10 pieces of data that they need for a customer. It's usually three in pieces of information, and that's it. Like, look, when they're trying to figure out their flood risk verification, they don't need to know the replacement cost of the property yet. All they care about, hey, is flood insurance gonna be required, and how much is it gonna cost me per month?

Jim (44:39.16)
Yeah.

Jim (44:48.237)
Yeah.

Jim (44:52.6)
Yeah.

Jim (44:57.123)
Yeah.

chris greene (44:58.028)
at that time and what their overall flood risk is, which is zero to 100 in our score that we built that basically tells people no matter what flood zone you're in, here are the actual chances of your property flooding. So we're working with the law, the APA, different API, realist API companies pulling all this data in and then just displaying it to customers and creating this incredible experience for them.

Jim (45:07.607)
Wow, that's pretty cool, man.

Jim (45:19.567)
That's awesome. All right, I got another rapid fire question for you. Rapid fire is hard with you because you want to go deep and I love it. I will let you go and go and go, but one book that you're reading right now or that you've read recently that you just have to share with folks.

chris greene (45:34.364)
They ask you to answer, I've read it 38 times. And it would actually probably be two books. It would also be building, not building a story brand, marketing made simple by story brand.

Jim (45:37.527)
What?

Jim (45:43.042)
Yeah.

Ah, okay. Also by Donald Miller or? Okay. Yeah.

chris greene (45:48.248)
Also by Donald Miller, he has three books, actually four books. He's got How to Grow a Small Business, he's got Story Brand, Business Made Simple, and Marking Made Simple. Now the important thing is Marking Made Simple also has a podcast. The first eight episodes of the podcast is basically the book and he talks about your messaging on your website, building that website, not just to convert and all this different stuff, but today is actually Wednesday which means one's out. They've had a series out the last six weeks of How to Build a Sales Funnel.

And then what they do is they give you one nugget in each podcast. It says, �Hey, go to this link, download the free sales funnel, step by step guide.�

Jim (46:21.951)
Yeah. Cool. Love it. Um, what's one piece of advice you would give to your younger self?

chris greene (46:31.42)
Think of things as an investment, not an expense. Take the risk earlier rather than later. That's how my wife, on top of it, I basically just gambled a whole company on story brand. Like, I got sick. I had congestive heart failure last November and lost feeling in my legs and my feet. They told me I had about seven days to live had I not gotten to the hospital. And I ended up losing my vision about 60 days after that, completely in my left eye, 40% of my right eye. The point be told me, you probably never gonna get your vision back.

Jim (46:42.017)
Yeah.

Jim (46:51.639)
Jeez, man.

chris greene (47:00.524)
Because what happened is the congestive heart failure set my diabetes fast forward to 25 years. And when it did, it took my vision and caused bleeding and blood loss. I said, well, I've had six inch injections put in my eyes every month for the last eight months. I've had laser treatment done and my vision went from 2100 to 2020. And I finally got it back and then I was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. Now I've started to lose my vision again because they stopped the shots. I got to go back and get them again. But in doing all that, what happened is I couldn't travel. And the way we were making a lot of our revenue was...

Jim (47:24.003)
Yeah.

chris greene (47:30.398)
I was traveling and speaking. So we lost 70% of our revenue this year. And so I took a huge gamble with Storybrand. I made this huge investment of our website and all this and look, I'm making this investment because this is where I envision as being the next five, 10 years. This is not about tomorrow. This is like, how do we survive, A, in this hard market, the way things are changing with AI and all this, how do we survive the next, not just the next 10 years, how do we thrive the next 10 years? How do we create an environment that people really wanna come to work and enjoy what they're doing every day?

Jim (47:31.712)
Yeah.

Jim (47:35.503)
Wow.

Jim (47:44.525)
Yeah.

Jim (47:51.01)
Yeah.

Jim (47:55.724)
Yeah.

Jim (48:00.333)
Yeah.

chris greene (48:00.738)
And so, yeah, we lost 70% of our revenue. And I did a podcast with Kerry Wallace about what happens when a small business owner gets sick.

Jim (48:08.355)
Yeah, that's an important one because I mean, you know, it's like the shoemakers, kids never have shoes like the insurance, you know, like, do you have the right insurance or not even the right insurance? But what kind of plan do you have in place for when people get sick or get knocked out and can't perform? Yeah.

chris greene (48:25.924)
Yeah. And that also goes back to while we hire VA, to go with a team member, the maid has to be out. The VA can keep the job going about 80% and the 20% could be broken up.

Jim (48:32.365)
Yeah.

Jim (48:36.767)
Yeah, brilliant man, brilliant. I'm glad to hear that you're on the mend from the other stuff. I hope that this is gonna hopefully get cleared up too. Goodness, holy moly.

chris greene (48:46.056)
I lost 60 pounds in about three weeks. Yeah, I had so much swelling on my body that I went from 259 down to right at 200. And the doctor even weighed me three times and he even checked my numbers three times. He said, look, in my 30 years, I've never seen this happen. He said, I didn't realize you had that much swelling on your body, but I've never had someone lose that amount of weight in three weeks.

Jim (49:09.571)
Dang, man, wow. Well, you look good now.

chris greene (49:13.488)
Yeah, I had gotten to a point where I couldn't even get dressed. I had so much swelling on my body. Yeah, it was crazy.

Jim (49:16.543)
Wow. Yeah. We're all lucky to have you here, man. What's one final piece of advice or, or an actionable step that you would leave our listeners with today based on what we're talking about? Yeah.

chris greene (49:29.02)
Just do it. Like, everybody overwhelms, I don't know where to start, just start. Video, I'm not sure what tomorrow's video is gonna be about. Shoot today's video. You're just going, whatever action, plan of action you're putting in place, put it actually in place. What I tell people is this, look, the greatest idea in your head, the worst plan in place is better than the greatest idea in your head.

Jim (49:37.815)
Yeah.

chris greene (49:55.152)
because at least the worst planet place you're gonna learn from. You're not gonna learn from the greatest idea in your head because you never put it in place.

Jim (50:00.407)
Yeah.

Sound advice, my friend, sound advice. Chris, if people wanna get more of you in their lives because they just can't, they can't go two minutes longer without having more Chris Green in their lives, where do they go, where do they connect with you?

chris greene (50:17.34)
Then connected me on my website, floodinsurancegiru.com. YouTube channel's the same thing. You can even email me, flood at floodinsurancegiru.com. You can find me on LinkedIn, find me on Facebook. Those are usually the places I hang out. I'm usually cooking something different, trying about one of my 12 grills on Facebook. Cause that's actually how we generate a lot of our insurance business, actually through our Facebook page with the different cooking things that I do.

Jim (50:40.615)
Oh, that's cool, man. What's your favorite thing to cook?

chris greene (50:43.8)
Actually, David Carolla has got me in the making bacon a few months ago and I really enjoy the whole process of making bacon. It's a 10 day process, but it goes back to really enjoying the process.

Jim (50:47.079)
making bacon? Wow.

Jim (50:55.175)
Oh, that's funny. Wow. You it really is all encompassing in your life, isn't it?

chris greene (50:56.849)
Yeah.

But honestly, sous vide is probably my favorite too. He got me into sous vide. He got me into a vacuum sealer. My wife is like, he's the reason we've been broke. So it's an ongoing joke that if my wife ever sees him, she's gonna break his leg. Yeah. So, but like, you know, I love a sous vide cause I can throw dinner in it at four o'clock and throw it on the grill for five minutes. And it's perfect.

Jim (51:07.512)
Ha ha ha!

David! Ha ha ha.

Jim (51:21.347)
That's phenomenal, I love it. Chris, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on today, man, I think this is gonna be super, super valuable. With the amount of times that I hit M on my keyboard, man, I'm telling you, there's a lot of good stuff in here, so I really appreciate you being here. Yeah, absolutely, you stick around with me for a second, but for everybody else, until next time, grow big or go home, see ya.

chris greene (51:33.82)
Thanks for having me, man.