

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>0:03</time>
      <p>
          Buckle up, it&#39;s the insurance dudes podcast. Well, hello, Mr. Jason. Well, hello there, Mr. Craig. I&#39;ve got some questions for you today. Oh boy. I&#39;m a little noivous. Oh I&#39;m a little noivous, Mr. Jason. So, Craig, I want to get a little bit we&#39;ve heard bits and pieces of your background and how you came into the insurance industry. Yeah. I want to know let&#39;s let&#39;s do a little uh deep dive what has gotten you to where you are today.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>0:41</time>
      <p>
          Okay.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>0:42</time>
      <p>
          And so take me back, Mr. Craig. Who was your first concert?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>0:46</time>
      <p>
          Who was my first concert? My first concert was Oingo Boingo.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>0:51</time>
      <p>
          Oh with Danny Elfman. That&#39;s a Danny Elf.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>0:56</time>
      <p>
          Yeah. My very first oingo boingo.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>0:59</time>
      <p>
          So take me back from Dead Man&#39;s Party to today.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>1:04</time>
      <p>
          It was Dead Man&#39;s Party, actually. That was the tour. Oh, was it? Was that 19 was that 1943?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>1:15</time>
      <p>
          Yes. So what what did you do out of high school? Out of high well, we&#39;re going that far back. Yeah, yeah.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>1:25</time>
      <p>
          I I moved to Tucson. Throughout each decade. I moved to Tucson. Okay. And uh went to University of Arizona. And I was on the six-year plan. So yeah, sh shifted gears a couple times and then continued on. After after I finished, I still was kind of struggling with where what do I do? You know, it was it was really hard to figure out a purpose. My twenties were kind of rudderless. I did different sales jobs. I I got a job um at a dealership, sold cars, and that was a struggle, but I I learned how to sell. There was a lot of there was decent training, and I learned, you know, I learned who Zig Zig Zig Ziglar was, and you know, all the sales grades, down, you know, all the different folks and went from there, uh, actually ended up did that for a while. It was tough, six days a week, and just you know, it&#39;s it&#39;s a grind, but I did learn about sales and and the whole idea of you just need to talk to as many people as possible. You can&#39;t listen to the the the older dudes that are trying to tell you, oh, that&#39;s a good one or that&#39;s a bad one, all this pre-qualifying, sort of like what our producers will do, right? If if we don&#39;t help coach them to get through that, like you kind of pick which ones are the good ones and which ones are the bad ones, so then you&#39;re not consistent. And I think at the beginning, what I learned was, and I you could match this to to what we&#39;re doing. At first, like my first day, I remember I would I&#39;d talk to somebody and I would hand them the pamphlet, and then I&#39;d go, Oh, that was a good one. And and I&#39;d let them leave. And then if I followed up, they&#39;d say, Oh yeah, I bought a I bought a car down at the Toyota dealership. So everybody that I handed the thing to ended up being sold by somebody else.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>2:59</time>
      <p>
          So well, you sold it and then let the other person collect the money. Exactly.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>3:04</time>
      <p>
          I realized that I was the one that created the rapport, and then somebody else ended up closing it because it didn&#39;t matter which car. If they were shopping, if they were going to multiple dealerships, they didn&#39;t know what they wanted. All you had to do was help them find something that would fit their need and then close them. And once I understood that, then it then sales became kind of fun. You know, I got a few trophies and stuff. I don&#39;t even know if I have those anymore. But why&#39;d you leave? It just was a grind, and another opportunity came that was better. It was driving around, which I was in charge of all the Walgreens in Tucson for their booze department. So I&#39;d sell the booze. Yeah. So that was that was uh interesting next type, you know, learning a different business. And from there, ended up um, I went back to school after that, got an MBA. And after that, I went to Merrill Lynch, did was financial services for for a while, and that was a whole different kind of sale. So from from that side of it, it was totally different than than where we are now, in that there was a very, very limited pool of people that actually qualified to be a client. And we were calling, and this is pre pretty much pre-internet. I mean, there was internet, but it wasn&#39;t it, it didn&#39;t exist.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>4:15</time>
      <p>
          But not pre-phone books.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>4:16</time>
      <p>
          No, there were phone books, and we actually did so they&#39;d print out leads, we would work leads like on paper, and you know, at some point they got a management system in there, but we didn&#39;t know how to use it really. So it was it was really just dialing. Like we dialed, dialed, dialed, dialed, dialed. Tons of dials ourselves.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>4:32</time>
      <p>
          That suit scene in Zoolander where they&#39;re hit banging on the computers, yeah.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>4:38</time>
      <p>
          Like that. Yeah. So there were there was a lot of there was a lot of that, and and at a certain point, like that was a grind too. It was fun because you&#39;d find the needle in the haystack, you get an appointment, and and then when you close somebody, it paid well enough where you know one sale uh you know a week or a couple sales a week resulted in in decent income versus you know here where you need so many so rapidly. And and from that I met somebody who you know knew people that you know introduced me to the carrier world uh that that we know and ended up purchasing an agency. Looked like a good opportunity. The challenge coming in was up until then I had been lone wolf, right? And so my my mental my mentality was on the sales focus and doing and not on building out the team and creating processes and and doing all these things that that we now do. And so it was challenging and managing people. I was still pretty young, so I couldn&#39;t it was tough to get that the C legs in on that, on you know, being the guy in charge, because I&#39;d been always reporting to somebody, and now all of a sudden I&#39;m I&#39;m not. And and so there was that the whole learning curve of of becoming confident in my own skin of being a leader and looking up to that and then believing that I could do it. And it was really a struggle at first. You know, there were many years where it was very, very frustrating, and I think a lot of agents come into this world from a different background and and really don&#39;t know all of the different pieces that it takes to put it together. And you know, so that could be a struggle. I did figure it out, and it was finding the right people, getting connected with the peers, because at that point, uh so it was 08, market crashed, all that happened. Everybody was on an island. I mean, there wasn&#39;t even Facebook yet. And so when Facebook came out, that kind of changed a lot, right? I mean, you know, you and I met on well, we met on a sales call, but we probably met prior to that on Facebook. And you know, I&#39;ve met now so many agents as a result of Facebook. That&#39;s a really important takeaway is getting plugged in with as many high performing agents as possible and then running from the complainers. I found that in the beginning, like I was struggling, and I&#39;d gravitate to the other ones who were struggling, and then you then you commiserate, and it just becomes it&#39;s it&#39;s it doesn&#39;t solve anything, right? It doesn&#39;t make the note change, it doesn&#39;t make the results change, it just you know, you&#39;re you settle for it at for being inadequate. We we had some good years, but there was nothing consistent. It was always chasing and looking for the next big thing, and you know, that brings brings me up to the point where you and I connected and we started talking and and created this podcast, which is now remarkably 300 you know episodes ago.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>7:23</time>
      <p>
          We&#39;re getting there. Yeah, this is the road to it, yeah.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>7:26</time>
      <p>
          This is so it it uh anybody that&#39;s listening that hasn&#39;t listened in the beginning. I encourage you to listen to some of those and you can laugh at us because uh it was you know, we didn&#39;t know what we were doing in that point. But I think over the career and now being in old age, right, and still, yeah, definitely still don&#39;t. It&#39;s it&#39;s become this thing where now it&#39;s I&#39;m comfortable with with just going, and sometimes maybe I even push too soon, like jump in, but not afraid of of screwing up. It&#39;s like, hey, you know, go for it, pick up the pieces and and put it into place and learn from the actions.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>8:00</time>
      <p>
          Love it.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>8:00</time>
      <p>
          Yeah.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>8:01</time>
      <p>
          Love it. Well, there you go. I love that you came from different experiences and were able to, you know, kind of draw from those experiences that you came into the industry. I think everybody that comes into the insurance industry, it&#39;s the same story, right? Now, whether or not I don&#39;t care what what background you come from when you come into the insurance industry, the you have some qualities that and some experiences that you&#39;re gonna thrive in with the agency. But the agency is so complex that there&#39;s gonna be some parts that you&#39;re clueless on, and you&#39;re not gonna be good at it. And you&#39;re gonna feel like you felt in the agency and you&#39;re gonna need to reach out to peers and you&#39;re going to need to uh learn some new things and and then uh find your way. That&#39;s what&#39;s cool is that we all come from different backgrounds. So there&#39;s you know, something that you excel at, I don&#39;t excel at. And something that I excel at, you don&#39;t excel at, and then coming together with those minds together just creates this rocket to success.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>9:03</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, and I think one of the biggest learnings along the way is the ability to surrender some of that control. Like you you just can&#39;t control everything. And you know how I I can get into the weeds really easily, and instead of being staying up at the strategic level, you know, getting down into all the all the granular stuff, uh, because you know, some of that stuff I like to do. And what I think you and I have both learned uh in this journey, you know, in building teledudes and doing all the other stuff is is there is such a limited amount of time. And that&#39;s the hardest thing to manage is that time, because I think we care so much. Like we care, we care about our clients with teledudes, we care about our clients with the agency, we care about our team, and and it there is only a very limited amount that we can put pour our heart into. So we have to pick our our battles. I mean, not really a battle, but we have to pick where we allocate that resource, and it is what it is, and not feel bad that you can&#39;t get to everybody because you also care about your family, and you also care about all these other things that are besides your agency.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>10:08</time>
      <p>
          So there is a finite amount of time, and the more you do, the the more you have to be able to say no to some things and you know limit yourself in other things. So yeah, and it&#39;s okay to say no. I love that every time. Well, yeah. Well, thank you, Mr. Craig. That was incredibly insightful.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>10:28</time>
      <p>
          Well, thank you. I hope it helps. It was so good to be on the hot seat.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>10:32</time>
      <p>
          Put you on the hot seat. Bye.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>10:43</time>
      <p>
          Hey Jason. Yes, Mr. Craig. That was another awesome episode, wasn&#39;t it? Mm-hmm. Well, if people want to get a little bit more action and learn how to do uh write 100,000 in premium, yes. Even the worst internet leads, where could they go?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>11:02</time>
      <p>
          They can go to live.teledudes.com. Ooh, that sounds exciting. Are we gonna be there? Yes. It&#39;s a weekly call that we&#39;re doing right now that will, it&#39;s live and it will show you the process. The entire process is super awesome.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>11:20</time>
      <p>
          I love it. Let&#39;s do it.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>11:22</time>
      <p>
          Let&#39;s do it. Sign up right now, live.teledudes.com.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>11:26</time>
      <p>
          Live.teledudes.com. That&#39;s live.teledudes.com.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>11:33</time>
      <p>
          Hey Craig, there&#39;s a new community that we are starting that I cannot wait to tell everybody about. It is our live texting community where you and I are going to answer people&#39;s questions and give them free content.
      </p>

        <cite>unknown</cite>
      <time>11:48</time>
      <p>
          Right?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>11:48</time>
      <p>
          Are you kidding me? We get to talk to them? Yeah, which is awesome, but they have to opt in. They have to text us at 520-214-2219. That&#39;s 520-214-2219. Nice. I&#39;m into it. Craig are you gonna respond to these texts? I&#39;m gonna respond to them for sure. Live. I&#39;m into it too. It&#39;s gonna be awesome. And it&#39;s a it&#39;s gonna be our new texting community where we&#39;re gonna get back to everybody that we can and drop some crazy content. Free content and free um the calculator that you just came up with. Mmm. That&#39;s right. The calling calculator. Sales material. I mean, everything for insurance agents. This is it. It&#39;s the best texting community out there for insurance agents. Well, what the heck is that number again? I can&#39;t remember it. It&#39;s 520-214-2219. That&#39;s 520-214-2219. I love it.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>12:51</time>
      <p>
          I&#39;m gonna text it right now.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>12:53</time>
      <p>
          520-214-2219!
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>12:57</time>
      <p>
          All right. I&#39;ll see you later, Mr. Jason.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>13:01</time>
      <p>
          Can you even listen to this on the radio anymore?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>13:08</time>
      <p>
          I love it. Nice.
      </p>