Why This Insurance Agent Doesn’t Know How To Turn On A Computer!

Another spectacular episode of coffee talk with the Idudes! As they dive into the story of how Craig got inspired by a fellow industry expert, Bill Eggert! 

The conversation delves into the importance of effectively forming control, leveraging time, and investing in personal and business growth. The discussion also touches upon the changing landscape of technology in the insurance industry, with insights into the Green Sheets framework and its relevance in today's digital era.

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The Insurance Dudes are on a mission to find the best insurance agentsaround the country to find out how they are creating some of the top agencies. But they do not stop there, they also bring professionals from other industries for insights that can help agents take their agencies to the next level. 

The Insurance Dudes focus on your agency’s four pillars: Hiring, Training, Marketing and Motivation! We have to keep the sword sharp if we want our agencies to thrive. 

Insurance Dudes are leaders in their home, at their office and in their community. This podcast will keep you on track with like minded high performing agents while keeping entertained!

About Jason and Craig:

Both agents themselves, they both have scaled to around $10 million in premium.  After searching for years for a system to create predictability in their agencies, they developed the Telefunnel after their interviews with so many agents and business leaders.  

Taking several years, tons of trial and error, and hundreds of thousands of dollars on lead spend, they’ve optimized their agencies and teams to write tons of premium, consistently, and nearly on autopilot!

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Transcript

Craig Pretzinger: 0:00

Well, hello, Mr. Jason.

Jason Feltman: 0:01

I guess this is a coffee talk

Craig Pretzinger: 0:03

is Is it a coffee talk? Are we going back to the old?

Jason Feltman: 0:07

I think so.

Craig Pretzinger: 0:08

All right. Well, yeah, we had a lot of folks sending some death threats and hate mail that we didn't have coffee talk. Yeah, insurance dudes are on a mission to escape big hiccup by our agencies.

Jason Feltman: 0:24

How? by uncovering the secrets to creating a predictable, consistent, and profitable agency Sales Machine.

Craig Pretzinger: 0:32

Hi, I'm Craig Pretzinger.

Jason Feltman: 0:34

I am Jason Feldman.

Craig Pretzinger: 0:36

We are agents. We are insurance.

Jason Feltman: 0:40

So we were just talking. I love the story that you just told. Yeah. Just told of somebody. Yeah, an insurance agent that that gave you inspiration. And you're you are definitely in a different spot than you were even when I met you with your agency and everything else. So I think that this, if you stick around to the end of this, you're gonna get have a few huge takeaways from the story that Craig is going to tell. But Craig, tell me about this agent. They How did you go to this event? What What was it?

Craig Pretzinger: 1:16

So there's an agent in the carrier that we're with? Yeah, if you're with this carrier, then you've heard of the green sheets. And you've heard of this guy? Bill? Edgar.

Jason Feltman: 1:26

Yeah. How long ago is this? This

Craig Pretzinger: 1:29

is 20 2017. So six. Yeah. 2726. I think 2016. Okay, yeah. 2016 Because Neil and I went out there. So we went to, to Texas Leaders Forum. Right. And I was like half as an agent half as doing some other stuff. But, but I went in and it was great. Tolga was there was like all the old guys that we talked about, and

Jason Feltman: 1:55

where were you at in your agency? Like, what was your day laundering?

Craig Pretzinger: 1:58

Man? It was it was tough. Like, we were really good at sales. But we're really bad at prospecting. And what we didn't realize was, of course, we're really bad at prospecting, because we don't have enough time in the day to prospect, right. Like we didn't. We hadn't put that together yet. Like, we didn't understand that. When

Jason Feltman: 2:14

you say we you were in the trenches, too. Oh, yeah.

Craig Pretzinger: 2:17

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was selling. So that's what how long have those four? It's 20. It's 2024. Happy New Year. Mr. Jason.

Jason Feltman: 2:26

Yes, I totally forgot about that.

Craig Pretzinger: 2:30

Um, yeah. So it's, uh, you know, eight years ago, I was in there doing it. I mean, I haven't even I don't know how to do that anymore. But he was the he was the inspiration for that, right. Like, I remember going to Texas Leaders Forum. Tolga was there and Tolga was kind of like that to not really, as are not writing business. You know, he was he was more as the business owner. And as an A lot of the agents that we sort of connecting with, and talking to, or I was talking to, are kind of in that place, where they're more like pulling the strings. And they were real plugged in with Bill. And I just looked at him when he was up there. And he said this one line that it was like that was it. He says he gets up on stage. Somebody asked a question about well, when you do this, maybe he said, he said, Whoa, are you asking me about how to do something in the system in the computer system? I don't even know how to turn on my computer. Like that was what the age the guy that's the agent of this very large book in out in Texas, said I looked at I said, Wait a minute. He doesn't even know how to log into his computer. That's the best, right? I'm over here. Sweating, sweating, sweating. What is he doing? That that's the case? Right? And he was crushing it? Oh, crushing it, right? I mean, any other businesses too, right? He's running. He's running this event. He he created the green shoots. So he did, he had all these other things, which I also was very interested in that too. I didn't want to just be the agent. And then that's it. Which there's nothing wrong with that. But you know, I get a little bored. So want to do other fun things, too.

Jason Feltman: 4:06

Yeah, that is crazy. I mean, he was probably joking a little bit about the computer. But I mean, oh, and I, you and I, when

Craig Pretzinger: 4:17

was the last time do you? Without?

Jason Feltman: 4:19

I don't know much about the systems? That's for sure. Right?

Craig Pretzinger: 4:24

I'm not the person to go to when you have a question about how to run the coding system. There's people that are much better than me. So

Jason Feltman: 4:31

the question is, so you take this guy that doesn't know how to turn on a computer is inspiring. Now we're talking like we're kind of doing the same thing. So what are the steps for an agent to go from being in the weeds which we all have to be at some point them in the weeds to be able to operate like this and being able to not just survive, but kind of thrive in that? Sure.

Craig Pretzinger: 4:56

Well, I mean, there are steps to it, right? You can't just all of a sudden say I'm not going to do quotes anymore. Right, there's a, there's a gradual shift. You know, if like, think of think of an estuary, right? The water comes in from the ocean, it mixes with us freshwater, and then there's a whole nother environment. So we have to, we have to slowly do that we can't just automatically, like, instantly pull ourselves out and expect everything to go. Well. I mean, I guess you could, but it's not gonna go well. So I think at the beginning, the first thing that I did was stop taking phone calls. Like that was the first thing, like I said, and it was very, very, very difficult. Yeah, I was very stressed. And it's really interesting. Like, I've gone, you know, I've done a lot of things since then, like, personally to work on on growth. And, you know, just taking all that, like, applying that back. It's like such a control issue, to have to answer every phone call and talk to every person. It's like, so unnecessary, right? It's not moving the needle. For me to think that me talking to Jim, is the reason that he's gonna stay for 20 years, right? Doesn't matter. Yeah, that

Jason Feltman: 6:03

was, that was the single hardest thing for me as well. And the biggest turning point oh, yeah, was when so I did the same thing came into the book had to call everybody to make sure everybody doesn't leave kind of thing. We all did. But I remember, like two years into it. And I was still like, I love talking to people. And I would come out and talk to people and and there was all in, I would always say I got to that point of were where you were in like other people where it's like, only, you know, try to try to say that I'm busy and try to handle the situation. And then of course, they would, but only half the time because the other people, but this guy really wants to talk to you. He said he knows you. And you guys have been friends forever below whatever. Right? Right. And then, so I'm still taking calls half the time and then I'll never forget, there was I was talking to one who became my service manager. And I just had to tell her because there was so many, I kept I kept taking these conversations, and I was growing the business. And I just didn't have the time in the day. And I was leaving late from work. And I was it was just so stressful. And I just had to tell her, I'm not going to take anybody no matter what. Like, that's the only way I can do this.

Craig Pretzinger: 7:27

I can hear the stress in your voice thinking about it. Right? Like, like putting yourself back in that situation. It was dude, it's the worst because you want to deliver. Yeah, you want to be the good guy like the good agent. And and I think the your carrier, the commercials, TV, whatever, there's this perception of the agent is this person that comes and talks to everybody and, and does their claim and goes out to their house and does all these things. But guess what, he's this person is also human and only has 40 hours? Or let's say it's, well, it's 168 hours. Okay? You have 168 hours in the week. But you can't spend all 168 At the office because you got to serve everybody. Right? That's not serving everybody. Very well. Yeah, by getting the right people in place that can then serve them. Now. Things change, right? Because now you're serving the people who serve the clients instead of trying to serve every one of the clients because it's impossible, right? If you, you scaled for what you went from 2 million to two, 9 million or whatever, how much? Yeah, yeah. So I mean, it

Jason Feltman: 8:30

would never Yeah, would never have happened, there's no, there's absolutely no chance. And it it's, I was just talking to one of our agents, Nate, that's in our group this morning, about he's an awesome agent, he's selling with his team, they're crushing it, they're doing a great job. But I was just saying like, he's a newer agent. And I was saying like one of those, one of the things that you got to do at some point is there's going to be as a business owner, there's not really linear growth. And if there is linear growth, it's usually incremental kind of a 2x thinking, but if you want to kind of 10x you have to do these things that like you step back, like you, you take a big pay cut, you invest a lot of money in or something to make an impact in your business that can push you to that next level. And one of it was when you pull back of being in the weeds, and then you now are not selling to leads and clients and stuff like that you're now in the role of selling your team on the vision on the mission on the values of the company. And that's a hard transition. Because to your point of the ego. You are the one that's kind of steering the ship, you're in the weeds and you know, everybody's looking to you, you're the hero and from the ego standpoint, you got to make somebody else the hero and then also you got to take a pay cut, because now you're not going to be on the phones, like there is a pay cut that needs to be taken to give somebody else. But the leverage has changed. There's only 16 hours a day that you could possibly put into an ad. Yeah, that you could possibly put it for your own hours. But as soon as you start leveraging other people's time with the money that's coming in, in the agency or borrowing somebody's money, now, you have infinite possibilities with the time because now you can hire multiple people to start doing these things. And that costs at the beginning, right, but then it builds over time. And it's it's a tough transition. It is.

Craig Pretzinger: 10:40

But it's it that's how you get the exponential growth, because I can see like you talking to, to Nate, and going through that, in his in his mind, I would think that he's he's thinking like, Hey, I'm part of the I'm part of the thing. I mean, all the excitement, I'm doing all this stuff. And what he's not thinking about is, is all of this time that he's spending doing this doing this, let's call it level one activity, right? He's doing level one activity, when instead, let's say that's for a year, he does that, right? So that's 40 hours a week for a whole year, they'll have 2000 hours however many hours right? So now he's now he's spent 2000 hours selling, which he could have just had a salesperson do instead of 2000 hours focused on exponential you the next thing, what was he going to do? What's the next marketing thing? What's the how is he? Or is he gonna go on fire spend all his time hiring three more people, whatever it is, there's there's an infinite number of things that could scale his business quicker than him writing that business and doing that level one activity 100%

Jason Feltman: 11:45

It is tough, though. I think that that's that mental mind shift to get kicked in the pants financially to make that step. And then also humility, and it's a lot more work at first to write is is a tough is a tough transition.

Craig Pretzinger: 12:00

It's, it's funny, because in the world of immediate gratification, if we're looking at, okay, I can keep doing what I'm doing. And it'll keep it'll, it's okay. Right? Or I can do a whole bunch of more work right now. And it may work. Right is the is kind of like what we think, right? It's like the emotional side of us says that right? Come up with all the excuses why it won't work. And then on the logical side, we do the math and the math. It's like the math is the math. And like, even having the maths, sometimes it becomes emotional, right? But um, that's the key secret math. Love it.

Jason Feltman: 12:36

Any other insights with the bill Eggert?

Craig Pretzinger: 12:40

No, just, um, well, the green sheets were great. I mean, we don't really do that anymore. Just the way that, you know, technology is, but that idea of having a framework of different questions to ask, it was really good, how they would follow up. So I think there's good takeaways. But I mean, at the end of the day, it was it was I looked at him, and I thought that dude is, has multiple businesses, and doesn't know how to turn on his insurance computer. I like that. Like, I want more of that. Because I don't want to be stuck to this stupid insurance computer. Where I was actually I gave my I don't know if you ever did it, but I get my cell phone out. So I have clients that would text me, hey, I need to add a car. And I would do it back in the old days, right? There's still one. There's one left. And I mean, I stopped eight years ago, eight years ago, taking calls. There's still one that still texts me. I mean, it's someone that I'm friends with, but I just forward it to you know, I'm like, here you go Jazz.

Jason Feltman: 13:44

Well, cool, man. This is good to do a playbook slash throwback, coffee talk.

Craig Pretzinger: 13:52

It's a coffee talk. We're talking about daughters, dogs, dogs, coffee, duels.

Jason Feltman: 13:57

Anybody that's thinking about taking a leap in your agency. Just do it. I mean, investing in yourself is so much better investing in yourself or your business is so much better than investing other people's businesses? Well, and

Craig Pretzinger: 14:12

it's a lot less expensive, right? Yes. A lot of that 100 G put it in the market. You're gonna take a big cut. Are you looking baller? Well, no, I'm just saying for you.

Jason Feltman: 14:26

And that's a coffee.