Non-Resident Licensing: Are You Growing or Chasing?

This episode talks real strategy behind non-resident licensing: when expansion makes sense and when it becomes a costly distraction. From holding on to relocating clients, to the temptation of “collecting states,” our team discusses local expertise, licensing costs, operational complexity, and what it really takes to scale beyond your home state in the most effective way.

Learn more at IntegraPartnerNetwork.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is I'm a forward, your playbook for sixth sense as an independent insurance agent. Now, here to help you knock it out of the ballpark are your hosts, Jane Tatum, Mike Basil, and Tanya Lead. Welcome to I'm a Forward.

SPEAKER_03 0:16

And we have actually found a topic that in 3 almost 20 episodes we have not discussed.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

The Savannah Bananas.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

I think we've actually discussed the Savannah Bananas because when we did your daughter's engagement announcement, I had a Savannah Bananas uh banana ball then. But yeah, I'm always up to discussing the bananas. So if that's where we're going, let's do it.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

Well, I don't know about that, but I do have one update for everyone. In the episode where Shane wasn't in, it came to light that I had never received anything from Integra outside of a hand-me-down shirt, which I just happened to be wearing today. But I at conference did receive the crystal block. So I mean, I feel I feel awesome.

SPEAKER_03 1:21

Whose crystal block did you steal?

SPEAKER_02 1:23

I didn't no, no, no, no, no. I didn't know I didn't see the window.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

It was gifted. It was gifted to him. There was no there was no theft of property while in Texas. He's not under arrest.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

So you know, this this is this has justified everything I've worked hard to achieve. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

If you've received the uh Chris is that crystal, what do we call that? Crystal. Is that if you've received the crystal leadership cube with core values and slogans on it, then you've reached the pinnacle of integra success 100%.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

So let's let's not talk too much about the leadership part. I mean, someone listens to this podcast and they say I'm getting something about leadership. Let's leave that part out.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Well, you know. You know, there we go. There's no more rungs on the ladder to climb, Mike. You've reached the top of the ladder.

SPEAKER_03 2:42

Yeah, once it gets a ribbon on his name tag, though, that's next level. I just want to point out after eight years, I had to bring my own ribbon this time. Well, which I did.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Yeah, that the leadership doesn't get ribbon because we don't do ribbons. We we we we provide ribbons to others, but you know, you're supposed to be intrinsically confident that you don't need a ribbon. Well, I brought my own anyway.

SPEAKER_02 3:13

You have no idea how bad I felt about myself not thinking of that when I saw your ribbon.

SPEAKER_03 3:23

So bringing your own. That was that was so just so our listeners know, I brought a ribbon to conference to go on my name test that sounded.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

We've now covered the high point and the low point of conference for me.

SPEAKER_03 3:41

But my ribbon said, oh, my ribbon is better than yours. Yeah. So yeah, I brought my own. But anyway, the new topic that we have not yet covered is non-resident licensing. And this one to me goes to that whole idea as an agency owner. You're thinking, how do I get more leads? How do I grow revenue? How do I do all the things? I have two or three of my best, uh, two or three of my best clients have moved. And so I'm going to get a non-area license, a non-state, uh non-resident license to try to help those guys so I'm not losing them as clients, or is it a a good growth strategy, or am I overdependent on one market? All of the things.

SPEAKER_02 4:46

So, Tanya, I'm sure you hear this all the time when you're talking to new agents like I do. That's one of the first questions. It's the it's definitely in the top five of questions I always hear. Well, you know, I'm in whatever, I'm in Ohio. So I'll all, you know, can I get Pennsylvania? Can I get New York? You know, some surrounding states is is always a question I'm hearing up front. And it's just let's just remove whether you should for a moment. We will get to that. But even just the can is a problem, especially in the past with the market being a little tighter, carriers were not particularly interested in taking business away from people who are in those areas to give it to someone who's not in that area.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Yeah, so I there's a couple of things on this. Um, that's right. There, but it really had to do with capacity, right? And so uh between 2023, 24, and most of 25, there was this carrier strategy to leave capacity in a given state for the resident agents of that state. That's why there was a lot of pushback on giving access, you know, extend extending your appointment into a non-resident environment. Now, before that, there was probably a few decades, a couple of decades at least, of it's just pretty much free market. Like if you had a license, you could pretty much, you know, extend uh within reason, you know, your appointment across to multiple states. It was the cost of getting the license in that state, and then um your ability to most of the time with most major carriers prove out some type of business plan that justifies the cost to the carrier for expanding your appointment across, you know, other states because it costs the carrier appointment fees. Uh, it just there is cost associated for the carrier on their side of things to do a non-resident appointment across other states for uh one of their agents.

SPEAKER_03 7:15

I understand the idea of capturing referrals that you're turning away, or when you have a really great client that maybe has a beach property, a vacation home. There are so many reasons that I can see that agents want to do this, it just makes sense. So, do we believe that it's a good idea or a bad idea?

SPEAKER_01 7:41

I don't know about we. Um, I know what I believe. I will let you guys, you know, throw your opinions in there as well, or even just question what I believe. And I think that chasing a client or two that's moving on the surface, because we're salespeople and we take it personal and you know, we don't like to lose clients. Like it's like, okay, do I spend$500 on this state's non-resident license fee um or whatever, you know, whatever it is. It's probably anywhere from$300 to$500 a year for you to have that that license. Does that state reciprocate? Okay, so let me say what that big word means. Um there are a handful of states who are not who may not reciprocate with the state that you're a resident of, right? And so it's not just a rubber stamp, get a license, show your EO, do the paperwork, pay the fee. Uh there are a few who are a little more, maybe my word, there, protective of their residence, and you actually have to do something more. You don't just get this rubber stamp reciprocation to your residence state. And so that's rare, like probably less than 5%, 3% of the states, probably a handful of the states that don't do that. And so that really won't be a problem for most of us. Uh the the issue just comes down to a little bit of cost on your end. And if you're only going to do this to keep an account that's paying you maybe the same amount of money that you're gonna spend, why? Like if you don't have a bigger plan for that, if you're not going to market that state, then I don't I've never understood why you want to spend those dollars to just hang on to that one or two clients. Now, if that client also happens to be a mortgage broker or a huge referral source for you, and they're gonna refer you business from that new non-resident state, different ballgame, maybe. Maybe it's a different approach. And so my opinion is that insurance is still local. That's where people are, and if you're doing it just to hang on to a client, if there's not a grow your business kind of thought behind the non-resident approach, then I would I would seriously like you to ask yourself, is this really, really worth it? Is this where I need to invest my money and my time and my energy into a non-resident plan?

SPEAKER_03 10:41

So what exactly do you mean by the plan? Because a lot of times what I see agents do is they'll hop on to Chat GPT or they'll Google, you know, business market, you know, marketing plans or insurance agency, and then they copy and they paste, and and that's it. And we see that. I mean, I I get it. But what are you really talking about when you say the plan?

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Yeah, first of all, don't do that. That's overkill. That's not what I mean. What what the carrier rep is wanting to know is what is your sales plan, production plan, like numbers, not like this big formatted outline of your quote, business plan for the non-resident state that you're asking for. But hey, what what how are you going to replicate your success in your residence state? Because we're going to assume that you're successful and you're doing what you're, you know, you're you're being successful. Because if you're asking for that and you haven't really been successful with a carrier in your residence state, well, they're going to really question that. So let's just know that level set that that thing first. Um, take care of the home base first. Then is there a numbers plan? Is there a sales plan? How are you going to make this worth our while as a carrier on the carrier side? Got to understand what they're thinking, how they're thinking, because they're going to pay for these appointment fees, they're going to go through this process. They may have to get approval from their uh boss in order for you to uh have this extended appointment. So as everybody's going through this exercise, it can't, it can't really just be, well, my buddy Joe's moving to Virginia, right? Like the it that's not enough. That that's generally not enough to justify it. It needs to be, you know, hey, I really think I have an opportunity because of these two or three reasons for uh to grow my business in XYZ state, and this is this is what I think I can do over the next six to twelve months, and then over the next two to three years. That's what I mean by what you're planning.

SPEAKER_03 13:10

So I get this idea of wanting to build this agency with reach, right? And you talk about insurance is local. So why do you think local is better?

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Well, I think there's just a familiarness, a proximity uh to your clientele. Uh there's there's cultural differences the farther away from home base that you get. Uh, there's just a lot of different things that you understand and your customer understands about you. The local agent is a really one, I'm I'm very much a champion of the local agent. Uh I think that we went through, especially in the early 2000s, we were we were at the dawn of the internet, and you know, there were a lot of it's hard to call them direct because they were insurance agencies, right? So that's weird to me. They they like to call themselves direct, quote, direct. Um, but what they were was they were national in scope, you know, 40, 50 states. Um they were they were marketing themselves on the internet, they were doing a ton of lead buys, they were high volume uh quote machines, and you could just go online, get a quote, that type of thing. But underneath the hood, they were an insurance agency, right? And uh carriers went through this of do they approve them, do they not approve them? Uh some of them went into what they call platform agencies or national account platform agencies. There's a few of them that still exist today. Uh nothing, you know, great, but the overwhelming majority of independent agents around the country are are local, right? And and this idea of increasing your your cost, because it costs a lot of money to quote be national, right? I mean, for us as an agency network, we even have um really wrestled with this. Like we are not trying to necessarily just be national because it's expensive. I mean, being licensed in in 50 states or, you know, just even in the continental US, right? Um, that can run you$25,000 to$30,000 a year in licensing fees, with you end up high having to hire a licensing firm. We have a licensing firm we pay fees to, we pay them for their service. Um, you know, I know that's way beyond the one or two non-resident states that a lot of agents talk about. Um, and there are some unique differences and things that I would agree with that we can get into in a second, but I just feel like you know your customer and your customer knows you on that local scale. And you, in most cases, in most independent agencies, you have enough business right underneath your nose to really focus on your local market.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

So here's a spot that I think it does work. And this, I'm gonna use a term here that I don't know if people in the South know this term or not. We're we're about to find out. But you know, if you're someone who's been in the insurance agency or in the you've been an independent agent for a while, you know how it works, you're settled in in your area, uh somewhere up north, and now you're looking to grow a little bit and you happen to be a snowbird. Do we know this term? I do.

SPEAKER_03 17:01

I live in Florida.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

I saw one because yeah, I I I saw I saw one the other day. They were creeping down to Texas.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

So in that situation where you kind of really do have two home bases, to me, that works, and and that can definitely work. So, you know, you've got whatever, or Florida is generally the spot for the Northeast. You know, you got a home in Fort Myers and uh hold in Buffalo, New York. You you can be productive and you can be the local guy in both places.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

I think that's the exception. I think yes. Um, I I I have no argument against that. I think that you're involved in your community, and so you're maybe dual local, maybe. I don't know, make up a word there. Um, but you you can actually be local in both cases in the in that. And I don't necessarily think of that example when I'm thinking of what I hear from agents most of the time. Um, I think that really, really works for those that are at the latter stages of their career, especially, or maybe they've just been extremely successful financially and they have an opportunity to have that second home. Um, I know that we had an individual several years ago who was doing that in both Texas and the state of Washington. They lived up near the Canadian border, um, and and they lived in an RV in the summers up near the Canadian border in the state of Washington, and then they lived in Galveston in the winters, and they were doing both Texas and the state of Washington. They had two state licenses. They had a resident state license of Texas and a non-resident state license in Washington. Uh, and it worked, right? They they sold to their community in both areas, and so I've actually seen that work and be successful.

SPEAKER_03 19:11

Does it add value uh as far as resale goes or as far as catastrophe diversification? Um, are those good reasons to do it or does that exist?

SPEAKER_01 19:28

So um I'll take both and I I have an opinion on both. Catastrophe mitigation, let's do it first. Most independent agencies, right? When I when I'm gonna say most, are not large enough in terms of just their hit in that catastrophe year, maybe they're not gonna, they're not large enough to write their way out of that alone, right? And again, this is where uh I'm gonna be tagged with some bias. Well, you run an agency network, you're just promoting the agency network. It's just numbers, right? I'm not necessarily just promoting the agency network concept, but the network itself can help mitigation there. But the individual agent, unless you're 100 million in premium, you're, you know, maybe 50 million in premium at the smallest, you're probably not going to mitigate your your catastrophe um enough to, you know, to be writing in other states alone. So I don't think it's a good benefit there. Um, where I do think it's a little bit different is uh the the issue of does it help with the valuation? I again a Shane Pinion here, maybe as you would call it. Um I think you're more valuable when you're concentrated and you know you you you've got a really strong local book. If I'm looking at your agency and you have stuff spread thinly across a few extra states, like, uh I don't know if I want to mess with that. Like, uh, you know, you've got this nice book of business here in your resident state, but 20% of your business is spread across these four non-resident states that you got into, and that's just gonna be a mess for me. I I think I'm out. You know, you just become less attractive, my view. Uh, if you've got, you know, you're a San Antonio-based agency or you're a Buffalo based agency, and that's where your business is, and I know that I'm gonna get all of it right there. I'm looking for that as a buyer. Like I'm looking to expand my footprint. Most buyers, true buyers, uh, are looking to expand their geographical office footprint for the most part. Now that's attractive to me. But to be thinly scattered across a half a dozen states, that's an efficiency nightmare for me. I don't really think that's very attractive.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

How do you here's the thing for me? Because there's a catch-22 in my mind. How do you get started when you're trying to scatter like this? Because you go to the carriers and you say, Well, I don't really have anything yet, but I'm going to do this one and it might turn into two or whatever. Okay, maybe you can get one carrier to say yes.

unknown 22:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:39

Okay, now what? You have a carrier. You don't have enough volume to get more carriers, and nobody's going to say yes until you can show that you can do something in this other area. And if you only have one carrier, you're not going to accomplish anything. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:55

This is the most non-tanya thing that Shane may have like ever heard me say. But growth without process creates chaos, right? And our whole idea for this year and Shane's phrase of the year is embracing the chaos. But if you don't have the right multi-state systems in place, like don't even think about doing this, right? I mean, can your systems handle it? Are your people trained for it? Is your tech ready for it? And my my for instance on this is we do have a retail agency right here at Integra. And my car insurance is written through our retail agency. I have a fantastic agent. I love Amy. She she takes wonderful care of me. But when we bought our house, we had the conversation, and Shane felt as though it was better for me to get my homeowner's insurance by through someone here in Florida that knows more about what we deal with from a cat perspective. Yes, we are licensed in Florida. Integra could have written my insurance. At the time, we didn't have any agents in Florida. So I chose an independent agent based on friendship knowledge, people that are in my um Supper Club group. Then when we purchased our boat and I had the same discussion, you know, Shane said, you know, I think I would feel better if you look had somebody that knows more about boats in Florida take a look at it, right? And so, yes, we could have written those things internally, but the conversation that we had was it's better to go with someone local that knows what you're dealing with. And we didn't have the systems at Integra retail at the time to do what I needed to do.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

That is also an efficiency issue, right? Like we understand at our office here in East Texas, we understand what our strengths and weaknesses are. Even though we're in Texas, we're three hours from the coast, we do not write coastal business. We refer that business down to one of our partner agents who's on the coast, right? And and we give them, hey, here's three of our partner agents down on the coast. I recently had a friend of mine who had moved up here, bought a place near the lake, um, big account for us on a personalized basis, like auto, really nice home, RV, uh, side by side. Uh, it was just a really nice account. And um they grew weary of not being close to the grandkids who were down where they originally came from. So they sold their place here. They went back to the coast and they bought a place on the water. And um, it was out of our expertise. It was just an area that our retail unit, even though it's in the state of Texas, it was in an area that's not in our expertise. And this isn't this is something that Terry Graham, our retail operations director, is very, very disciplined about. Like, hey, this is how you get into an EO, this is how you get yourself in trouble, is trying to do stuff that you don't do every day. Trying to do Texas windstorm insurance policies when you don't do them every day. And and so this is uh there are geography-related questions around this, the whole non-resident situation and what do you do? And it's you don't want to lose a client. Um, but there's there's another view of this, and it's loss control, it's risk management.

SPEAKER_02 27:03

Are we just gonna gloss past the fact that Tanya used a term that is never used by anyone under the age of 95? Supper?

SPEAKER_01 27:13

Did you say supper? I I didn't understand what she said. I was just gonna just ignore it and move on past it. Um, but yeah, if it was truly supper, um, yeah, I haven't said that since 1988 when I got called in for supper. So supper club.

SPEAKER_03 27:34

You don't like, I mean, you know, like when you all get together and you have supper.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

Yeah, no, we have dinner.

SPEAKER_03 27:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

That's right. We have dinner.

SPEAKER_03 27:45

So I didn't know, like, you know, down south, you know, lunch is dinner and dinner supper.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

Yeah, it is. I get you. I'm with you. We call both both. I get it. Like it's weird, but I haven't used supper in a while. What's for supper? Well, you know what? No, you know what, Mike? I think I actually asked what was for supper last night. Sorry.

SPEAKER_03 28:06

Yeah, what's for supper? Do you want hot supper or you want cold supper? You know, that's a thing here.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

You want me to go pick up supper? Yeah. I think I actually said that last night. And it was like, no, we're having enchiladas. I was like, ooh, great.

SPEAKER_02 28:25

So let's try to get back on the rails here. So that's my fault. Um is there a difference? Because in my mind there is, about where you are trying to get to in an agency. So we've talked in the past, or even at our conference, about solopreneur versus enterprise. You know, the problem with doing this in solopreneur is there's an opportunity cost to every single thing you do, right? If you're going to devote some time and energy to this other state or other states, now that's time you're not putting into your actual state of business you could be getting from there. Now, if it's in the enterprise environment and maybe you have the resources to hire a producer in that area, okay. Well, you know, that might be a little different.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

Sure. Sure, different story, right? I absolutely think it's uh again, it it is situational, and and there are differences to this. I think the problem is that people don't understand the differences. They don't understand that it is not nothing to use a terrible southern term that I love to use all the time. Like it it costs money, it's a distraction, there are huge opportunity loss, you know, cost there. Um I just I I think you're right, Mike. Like, I have this, I have this thing beyond just non-resident states. Like, I would go into things like if you're a focused personal lines agent, you know, don't get into commercial until you're paying the bills and creating a standard of living for yourself. Vice versa, right? If you're a commercial lines agent, don't get into personal until you're paying the bills, until you've got some stability. I think this applies to don't jump into the non-resident environment in other states where you got to learn possibly some different insurance code situations. I mean, are they a um, you know, how do they view uh, you know, hip personal injury protection? Are they, you know, an uh a not at fault state? There's a whole lot of technicality that goes into those questions that some agents may not even know because it's like, I don't even know what that means, because your state doesn't do that, right? And so you you you have to be careful as an agent to not get like consumerized with this, like, oh, it's just insurance, right? Like insurance is insurance. Well, insurance is not insurance, right? It's different from each state, and you got to become the expert to that. I'm just a big uh uh proponent of grow to the level that you have reached some financial comfort, then you can think about where do you want to invest. And unfortunately, most business owners, this is not just insurance agencies. I was guilty of it. I sometimes still do it. We we we start to think about growing our business in a different direction before we're ready. That happens a lot, right? I mean, if you if you're a um the founder, uh the movie, the founder, you know, there's a scene where he's like walks, go check on one of his franchises and they're trying to sell tacos, and he's like going ballistic, like we don't sell tacos, right? We don't do, you know, we we sell burgers, you know, this way. And this is the McDonald's movie, right? Yeah, the McDonald's movie, right? And it's like there's that's a little different. I know I'm using a franchise example, but like it can apply to us in the independent agency world because we can do so many different things, but we shouldn't all the time. Like that we shouldn't until we're ready, right? We need foundational revenue before we get off into some of these things.

SPEAKER_03 32:32

I think some agents see this idea of collecting licenses as kind of a trophy. In other words, people are going to be more impressed with them if they can say, I'm licensed in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, that you know, they put all of that at the at the bottom, you know, in their email signature. And it's not really uh strategic, it's more of that I'm bigger or I'm whatever, and um they feel as though it makes them look um like they're more proficient.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

Absolutely. I I went through this phase in my late 20s where you know, I would have said, my, if you would have asked me at 28, like what do you want your insurance firm to look like? I I would have said, well, I want it to be, you know, integra insurance or integra financial or whatever it was it is there in the, you know, and and I want it to be like um, I don't know what we call them, but it's like integra financial or integra, you know, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, Boston, New York. Like I want those, I want those city labels. Like I went through this phase where I thought that was really cool and awesome because that was kind of during the period of Financial Superstore in the in with D um well when we got some uh we went through this period where it was going to be investments, insurance, banking, everything under one roof, which is why our we went from Huntington Insurance to Integra Financial. We fell for it, and our legal name is still Integra Financial, even though we do nothing with financial, we are insurance, property and casualty insurance, 100%. And so we went through that same period, and that was something that was something to be able to tell people at a reception, at a carrier reception, right? Like, you know, so where do you where's your where's your office? Oh, we have 10 offices in these cities, right? And it's like, you know, what are we doing? Why don't I've obviously gotten old and matured since then, but I think we get caught up in that. And it's sort of that comparison game, and it's not good for our business. Well, we know you've gotten old because you used the word supper.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

I did. Um what just to circle back on what you had said about you know state-specific things, it's also I think important to note that obviously not all states are created equal, and some of them are way more regulatory than others. You get into your Michigan, New Jersey, Florida, California. There are big time change differences there that you have to be aware of.

SPEAKER_01 35:42

There, there are, and I think that's definitely, you know, low-hanging fruit to investigate why I think a licensing firm is is probably worth it. Um I I would not want to try to get licensed. We did it for a while. I wouldn't, if I'm an agent, I would not want to get licensed in another state without somebody holding my hand. Just me. I know it's paperwork and you can go fill it out and go do it, but did you really cross all the T's and dot all the I's? Did you really do everything you needed to do? Um, that's just me. That's how I feel these days. I know people like to save money, but it's worth the money. If you're gonna make the investment and grow into other states, get you a licensing firm that can work with you, that you can, you know, have as a vendor, uh, like any other things that you do. Um, and so I think that's really important as well.

SPEAKER_03 36:39

So, my question to you is with the idea of remote work. We're on this call right now, you're in Texas, Mike's in New York or South Canada, whatever. I'm in Florida. So, in theory, with the three of us, you could build this idea of a borderless agency with remote teams. Is that some not that we're going to do that, obviously, but I'm just saying, like, is that is that does the idea of hiring people in states to put it all under your agency, would that work?

SPEAKER_01 37:21

Um, and and I I just want to clarify the question, but do you mean from a insurance like you're gonna hire in other states uh from a sales standpoint or just people, just employees that did different functions?

SPEAKER_03 37:34

Yes, and or hiring producers. In other words, if you had started a new agency, yeah, and you knew me from whatever, and you're gonna hire me to sell in Florida, you knew Mike from a past relationship, you're gonna hire Mike to be your salesperson in New York. Uh, you have Deanna. Deanna's gonna be your salesperson in Louisiana. So would that work from a state expansion concept?

SPEAKER_01 38:04

Uh it can if you have the right people, right? Um, so we're gonna assume that, okay, you know these people and you have the right people, and man, they're gonna be great at this. If you, if you all I think that's the biggest challenge, right? Like having someone you know that can immerse themselves in the state that you're trying to expand into, I think it's kind of the biggest challenge, right? You can you can hire the licensing firm, you can you can deal with the compliance side, you can you can manage the carrier conversations and and go there and get that done. So then it's like, are you gonna take I'm we're just gonna use our example, build on that example. So our we're our organization is home based in Texas. So I would much rather say, hey Tanya, you know, grow Florida, sell in Florida, be you're in Florida, become immersed in Florida, and become our Florida expert. And everything that every opportunity in Florida is going to come to you, versus, hey Brent, uh Brittany, I know you're in Texas here in East Texas, but we want you to grow uh the Emerald Coast business there in Florida. It can be done, but it's much more difficult. Number one, you're not gonna get any community relations out of that. You're not gonna get local referral sources, you're not gonna be immersed in that local culture or community. It's gonna be much harder. So, yeah, I think that's a much better way to go about it if you happen to have the people first.

SPEAKER_02 39:49

Do you guys feel like 2025 started showing a pulling back of remote work?

SPEAKER_01 39:58

Well, I think it was all over the news. Yeah, there was definitely a uh uh a return, return to office, uh, you know, RTO. I heard somebody say it the other day. Oh yeah, you know, we're an RTO. Uh yeah, I was like, what are they talking about? You know, oh, return to office, right? So the the corporate world is has, I think, definitely uh initiated that. Um obviously government agencies, uh Trump administration, big initiative through duh uh uh what was it called? Uh oh Elon's uh original role there. Um, you know, that that became a big deal, right? There's lots of people that were furloughed because they didn't want to move and they were allowed to move during COVID. And and so um, you know, it's yeah, so I I think for sure it was it was a big move away from that. Uh, but yet I still see smaller firms still handling the remote thing maybe better, um, and and even growing their remote workforce in some cases.

SPEAKER_03 41:15

I've seen a lot of turnover because of it. People that have been at companies for years that when they started putting RTO in place have left and gone somewhere else, especially if they live in a large city, because the idea of going back to commuting four hours a day. Yeah, just yeah. So, so I think people have been trying, and I I think there is some of it, but I don't think the media is covering the flip side of it where people are actually leaving jobs and yeah, and you know, not really having that reaction.

SPEAKER_02 41:55

So but I think you know, whether you're enterprise or a solopreneur, you're still small business, right? Anyone we're we're getting to here is small business. So you have to know who you are before you tackle remote work. If you're a micromanager, that's gonna drive you crazy.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

That's right, that's right. There are some really good books that you need to read. Um, you know, one of them, the rework. Um, uh, the guys from 37 Signals, there's a podcast called Rework. Uh, they they wrote a book on remote, and it's fantastic, and uh there's a ton of trust that has to be extended. Uh and and uh matter of fact, I need to read it again because I'm not sure what y'all are doing every day. So uh I probably need to read it again.

SPEAKER_03 42:46

So ultimately we have talked about personal lines all day today. Um maybe we'll do a follow-up about commercial because commercial has a very different look when it comes to state expansion. And are we following states? Are we following niches? So, do y'all want to come back to that one on the next episode?

SPEAKER_01 43:17

Yeah, I I think that's a really good point. And I know Mike has some thoughts around commercial there, and I think when you start to get into the niche business, also I want to I want to not forget to come back and talk about a little more geography, especially around the Northeast. Because I think things look a little different in the Northeast when it comes to the the cross, you know.

SPEAKER_03 43:40

They have the little beady states.

SPEAKER_01 43:42

Yeah, I mean, look, you you can Rhode Island's gonna probably write more than Rhode Island. I'm sorry, right? Like you're you just when you can go to lunch in another state, we can't down here in Texas. It'll take us a day to get out of the state, but um Um, you know, when you can go to lunch in another state, you're probably doing business in that other state. And so that may not resonate as well, right? So I understand agents specifically in the Northeast or specifically in communities like Kansas City, um, St. Louis, um there's border states, right? Chicago, maybe you're gonna write a little bit in Indiana, but you don't have to. But you know, you just have some different things that are going on depending on your proximity to that other state. And I don't know that I consider that the same thing. And then you also have to think about this whole niche thing around commercial lines, and I think there's a whole reason there where you may need to be broader geographically, right?

SPEAKER_03 44:53

I am gonna leave us today with this quote from Bill Walsh. The score takes care of itself when you focus on expansion and execution.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

Attitude to choice, make a great one.

SPEAKER_03 45:04

Bye, y'all.

SPEAKER_00 45:05

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