Cyber Insurance, AI and Building an Independent Agency with Brian Mahon

[00:00] Yeah, I think background for this is I just left the role where I was looking at enterprise brokers.

[00:05] Familiar with that world. Didn't really know much about independent agents, people starting out.

[00:10] And so I started a podcast to really educate myself. That was the main goal.

[00:14] And obviously it helps if other people can then learn as well.

[00:16] Interviewed a number of independent agents, all had slightly different focus areas.

[00:21] Most of them were P&C, some of them were like...

[00:23] I usually start off by just asking you to introduce yourself and a little bit about your background.

[00:28] Yeah, my name is Brian Mahon. I'm the founder of Igloo Insurance. I'm about 30 years old.

[00:34] About 10 years into the industry. I've worked for two startups and two top 100 firms.

[00:40] And just went out on my own here as an agency owner last June of 2025.

[00:46] So yeah, next week will be our first year anniversary.

[00:49] Congratulations.

[00:51] Thank you.

[00:51] What made you make the jump?

[00:53] I'll say about three years ago, I kind of realized like my clients weren't necessarily

[00:58] buying like the carrier or the agency like they're buying Brian. And at the end of the day, I was like,

[01:03] you know, if I'm going to do this for another 30 years, I kind of want to steer my own ship.

[01:07] So yeah, I got the idea maybe three years ago and then started seriously game planning and actioning it

[01:15] probably last, yeah, maybe like February of 2025. So two winters ago.

[01:20] Very cool. What's your current focus with Igloo?

[01:23] That's a great question. We've, we've been slowly pivoting. I mean, we do business life, home and auto.

[01:28] I did mainly just commercial PNC for, for nine years, but ended up getting kind of a scratch agency

[01:34] contract with Erie insurance company, kind of a regional player around Pennsylvania and picked up

[01:41] kind of doing and learning personal lines and, and, and life insurance. I'd say right now we're working a lot

[01:47] in kind of the hospitality and real estate industries, construction industry, little bit of

[01:52] uh, manufacturing. I also, uh, one of those startups I worked for was a cyber security company. So I do a

[01:59] fair amount of cyber liability insurance. I actually think that's how, how we met Ben, uh, virtually way

[02:05] back when. So I'd like to say our focus is, is narrow, but it's, it's not.

[02:09] It, it's almost circumstantial, isn't it? You have a client who's like, oh yeah, I approached you for this,

[02:14] but could you maybe also, I approached you because I bought a new home, but could you maybe also enjoy

[02:19] my car and then I have a business and you know, and then I think your expertise with cyber probably

[02:24] helps because there's still a lot of demand creation to be done inside, but a lot of the business owners

[02:28] don't even really know about the huge risk that they have in that space. Would you agree with that?

[02:32] Totally. Yeah. I still do a lot of webinars, you know, industry associations, speaking gigs. Like I,

[02:39] I did a LinkedIn live a few weeks ago. I have another one coming up next week. The cyber

[02:44] security, cyber liability insurance conversations kind of getting lumped in with AI these days,

[02:49] you know, AI being just a new technology folks are going to end up relying on. So, you know, any

[02:57] technology, any, anyone relies on, you know, can be insured from a cyber perspective. So, so yeah,

[03:02] a lot of education still, you know, the myths of, oh, everything's in the cloud. I'm safe. I don't need,

[03:09] you know, to spend all this money on, you know, managed detection response or cyber insurance or,

[03:14] little old me in South Central Pennsylvania with the, you know, the Amish and Mennonite,

[03:18] we're never going to be a target. Not necessarily true. I've seen large accounting firms, small

[03:25] insurance agencies, general contracting construction firms, vet clinics, all printing kind of media,

[03:32] marketing companies, all have been hit, you know, within 10 miles where I live. So.

[03:37] Can you walk us through sort of your average day? What are the first things that Brian does when he wakes up?

[03:43] Good morning.

[03:45] So I, I, I studied entrepreneurship. That's my undergraduate was in technology,

[03:52] bachelor's of science and entrepreneurship and technology innovation. So I'm a big fan of like the

[03:55] e-myth book, right? Working on your business, not in your business, or at least acknowledging which one you're

[04:01] doing. So I really try to have like a month Mondays and Fridays working on my business and kind of Tuesday,

[04:07] Wednesday, Thursday, longer, kind of 10, 12 hour days where I'm grinding in it.

[04:12] But I also have this weird hybrid thing going on. I kind of work two different counties where I live,

[04:18] Dauphin County where Harrisburg is and Lancaster County where Lancaster City is. So I have kind of my

[04:23] Lancaster days, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, my Harrisburg days, Tuesday, Thursday. But I mean, as far as

[04:29] hour by hour, like I could be, you know, doing downloads in my agency management system to doing accounting,

[04:37] to following up my personal lines quote, to getting a phone call that's coming in right now that I forgot

[04:43] to turn off. So yeah, let me, let me close some stuff, my computer. So it could be, you know, a number

[04:51] of, of, of different day to day agenda. Yeah. I have an intern starting. He'll be a senior in high school this,

[04:57] this summer. So he'll come in kind of Tuesday, Thursday in the afternoons. So that'll kind of change in the

[05:02] dynamic up a little bit as well. Where do you find your clients? All over. What's nice,

[05:08] I'll say about being an Erie agent is they have a very, fairly good brand name recognition. So folks

[05:14] will Google Erie insurance. And if they live in a zip code near my agency, they ended up making their

[05:19] way to me on the personal line side. I've experimented with buying leads, right? If you Google insurance

[05:26] near me, you get on all these various websites on the internet, cheapinsurance.com, lowerrate.com,

[05:31] blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, and we've played with those engines of, you know, just folks searching

[05:38] from a personal perspective. I do a ton of, of networking, right? Like I'm in a referral partners

[05:44] plus group, kind of like a BNI. I'm in probably four different chambers. I'm in probably three different

[05:50] trade associations. I do some social media, you know, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, people are starting to

[05:57] know me in the industry, right? So they, you know, just know and the insurance guy and you know,

[06:02] that's kind of a top five lead generator for us. I also do cold calling. Like I'm not, not opposed to

[06:09] that. I think if you do it the right way, it's pretty effective, right? Like you want to do research

[06:13] and be pretty confident. It's a size and industry and you have the markets for that risk from a commercial

[06:21] perspective, right? I'm not cold calling homeowners or anything. I'll do, you know, email, phone,

[06:26] research, like the chain of command. If they have a gatekeeper or, you know, a brother that's owns half

[06:32] the business or something. And I will send them mailers too. I have like a little, takes three minutes

[06:38] to read. I think it's five or six pages, but it's a business procurement guide, so to speak, you know,

[06:45] how to, how to win the insurance game from a business owner perspective, right? Basically laying

[06:51] out that appetite changes, carriers come in and out, they take on claims. You got to do due diligence

[06:56] every three to five years. That's, that's kind of the premise from the beginning of, of conversations

[07:01] with clients. So yeah, not kind of a one trick pony, I suppose, in terms of where the heck we find

[07:06] business. Yeah, but that's, that tracks us. It's very common that you kind of try and take an

[07:11] omni-channel approach to get in as many conversations possible. And then you're kind of

[07:15] figuring out who you can start in the best way. You mentioned, you cold called those where you have

[07:21] the feeling that you likely have the right markets that can really serve their need. How many markets

[07:25] are you appointed by? And how do you think about that process? Yeah. The Melville Mutual, openly,

[07:31] steadily, a couple of work-run markets, like employers, pie. So maybe less than 10 carriers we have

[07:38] directly. And then we work with like the Burns and Wilcox's and like the Big Eye has a kind of a

[07:44] wholesale arm where we can get like, you know, Hanover and the Chubbs and Travelers of the world.

[07:50] You know, you take a commission cut and there's pros and cons to all of that. But yeah, from my

[07:56] understanding, if you don't have industry experience, it's pretty difficult to get direct carrier

[08:00] contracts in general. I mean, like there was a carrier today that's kind of a regional player moving into

[08:06] our state more and more. And they're like, hey, like we want personalized agents. I'm like, okay,

[08:11] well, you know, what about commercial? Like, oh, you know, you need $3 million in premium before we

[08:15] even consider you. So there's a lot of that going on. It just kind of depends. And again, if you have a

[08:21] niche in terms of an industry or product type, like, like it was very easy for me to get a lot of

[08:29] cyber appointments where I worked previously, because I was kind of known for cyber, did the Chubb

[08:35] cyber cope insurance certification program, you know, cyber was in our business name. I was like,

[08:40] this is what we're doing. So yeah.

[08:42] It depends. Can you walk me through, let's say you get a referral and someone calls you right now and

[08:47] they say, hey, Brian, I really need a homeowner's quote for my new house. So I can even, so I can even

[08:53] complete the deal. What would happen on the other side of that phone call? What would Brian do right away?

[08:59] Yeah. I mean, you have a conversation with them, right? You know, are you buying this house or do you

[09:04] already own it? You know, what made you, what made you want to look into it? You know, I got my

[09:09] mortgage statement and you know, it went up or, oh, my agent's a jerk and he never answers the phone,

[09:15] you know, name, date of birth, address, dogs, swimming pools, wood burning stoves. Like you need to

[09:20] kind of get the underwriting data, whether, whether you send them a link, like I work with

[09:24] assembly where I can kind of make custom forms and then that syncs to my CRM agency zoom. And then my

[09:31] agency zoom CRM can sync to my agency management system, momentum now certs. So I try to be kind of

[09:37] smart in that way in terms of the data collection, but then on the backend, once you kind of have

[09:42] everything right, unfortunately, some carriers work with these comparative readers, some of them don't.

[09:48] So you got to go in, log in all these carriers and plug in the information or plug it into a raider.

[09:53] I don't use a raider just yet. I probably will in the future, but yeah, sometimes I'm even driving

[09:59] out and taking pictures of their house, depending on if I think something, you know, goofy is going on,

[10:05] right? Oh yeah. You know, I need this tomorrow and I have a pool and a pit bull and it's like,

[10:12] okay. And then you go there and then the roof's falling off the house. Right. So.

[10:17] And then you have to validate yourself. Are there any third party tools that you use to validate some of

[10:22] this information that you get on the phone? I'll say I don't personally, some of our carrier portals have

[10:28] partnerships with like LexisNexis or kind of satellite imaging technology where it's like,

[10:33] Hey, this guy told me his roof's only 10 years old. Here's the photo. It kind of looks bad, but we

[10:39] can't really tell. The photo's kind of grainy. Underwriter can go look it up satellite and do some scoring and be

[10:44] like, Hey, you know, this, this roof shot, we don't want to write this or, Hey, we'll, we'll get on it. But if they don't

[10:50] replace the roof within a year, we're going to get off of it. Like it could be that type of situation.

[10:54] So then you, it sounds like you manage your submissions assembly, but specifically for homeowners,

[10:59] right? Where a lot of the submissions still run or run the other way around. A lot of the submissions

[11:04] are already available to be gotten by portals. You then still have to go into the portal, you key in

[11:09] the information and then you get your quote that way. Yes. And, and some are better than others,

[11:13] like openly kind of a newer insured tech homeowners carrier. It's like name, date of birth,

[11:19] address. And it's like, boom, like here's all the coverages. Here's the pricing. Like,

[11:25] you know, here's the decline. Here's the acceptance. Like it's very fast. Yeah. Some of

[11:29] the older one, it's like, you know, I have to specifically tell them what year the roof was

[11:32] updated. They like, it doesn't, it doesn't guess, or it doesn't have that data pre-filled or yeah,

[11:37] we're messing around with multi-policy discounts and you know, do we want the water flood coverage or

[11:43] whatever. So I would say on average, maybe it takes about 10 minutes to go through kind of a personal

[11:49] lines quote process. When you have all the data, it could be as short as maybe one or two minutes

[11:54] with the carrier, like openly, but yeah. When you think about, when you think back a year ago,

[12:00] when you started this, what, what were some of the pain points that you really didn't anticipate

[12:04] coming your way? They've, they've changed. At first, I mean, I was learning personal lines. Like

[12:09] you actually collect a lot more data and personal lines than you do in commercial lines, which is

[12:14] absolutely mind blowing to me that these carriers are underwriting, you know, Joe Schmo's car insurance

[12:20] more aggressively than like Bob's ice cream store. Like, but it's, it's a fact. The other thing that

[12:26] was kind of frustrating, you know, becoming a business owner is just like the, the, the, the marketing

[12:32] people, the life coaches, the business coaches, like the sponsor, the kids T-ball, like you get inundated

[12:39] with a lot of that stuff. And like, you want to do it because you want to grow the business and you

[12:44] think it's a good idea and blah, blah, blah, but you have to learn how to say no to a lot of that really

[12:48] quickly because it just, it just piles up. So that was, that was something I think was, was tough that

[12:54] summer. Can you expand on this? So you mean people who inquire and say, hey, Eagle Insurance, can you,

[13:00] you know, do you want to use this tool or do you want to help out with this sponsorship and your,

[13:04] is that what you're talking about? Yeah. Like people will kind of ask for a lot of your time,

[13:09] just because they know you're a business owner wanting to sell their services or their sponsorship

[13:14] or their whatever. And it's like, you know, I just can't say yes to every single, you know,

[13:19] financial advisor meeting, business coach meeting, marketing guru meeting, sponsor the T-ball team

[13:24] meeting. Cause they, they just pile up. And I'm not saying all of those things are bad. You have to do

[13:29] some of that stuff, but I mean, yeah, I got a little inundated, but I was, I was pretty diligent with

[13:36] kind of our trusted advisor circle and our tech stack. Like I did a lot of research on that.

[13:41] You know, I did, I did pivot a few kind of key folks in terms of like bookkeeping and accounting and

[13:47] finance or not finance, marketing, which, you know, you just live and learn from a, from a kind of

[13:53] focused perspective. It's just really hard. I think a lot of time, like I saw a post online and like

[13:59] last night and like an agency owners group. And he was like, yeah, I'm just reminding, you know,

[14:04] my team of producers that like your only job is to call people and ask if they need help with insurance

[14:11] with insurance. And then people who do need help with insurance, go out and visit them. Like,

[14:15] those are the only two things you have to worry about. I'm like, well, yeah, I guess when you say

[14:18] it that simply it is, but there's underwriters and there's golf outings and there's networking groups and

[14:24] there's, you know, prospecting tools and AI things to learn and all sorts of other things. But

[14:30] yeah, I think you underestimate probably the supply side, like ensuring that you do actually get access

[14:36] to the best insurance products for your clients is almost as if not more important in some cases,

[14:41] especially when it comes to commercial insurance. Totally. Yeah. And then that's, that's tough when

[14:46] you're not part of a giant organization that's been around a hundred years, you're not part of one of

[14:50] these giant aggregators or cluster groups or whatever. How did you even find out about all the carriers

[14:56] that you just mentioned being able to write in your state? Yeah, I would say some of them I've just

[15:05] known about from being in the industry and competing against. Some of them, you know, approached me,

[15:10] like I think one of the carriers, I got like a letter in the mail. And I was like, yeah, I think I've heard

[15:15] of them. And, you know, it's kind of a newer insure tech carrier. And I was like, well, you know, we're

[15:20] working with a fair amount of landlords. You guys want landlords, like, you know, let's give it a shot and

[15:24] get appointed. Other are like talking to other agency owners. I'm like, hey, like, I'm really

[15:30] struggling to place people who have had DUIs or really trying to get away from this carrier. What's

[15:36] a good alternative to them? And hey, I've been writing a lot with X lately. So why don't you reach

[15:41] out to them? And well, hey, do you have a marketing rep sales person there you could share their contact

[15:48] information with? And then you kind of just name drop them and get a meeting and talk about why it makes

[15:53] sense. I find it interesting that there's no sort of overview tool where you can really see which

[16:00] carrier rights and what state that that's very that information is very, you know, spread all over the

[16:04] place, right? Yeah, I've, that's all I think always been a frustration in the industry. Like, I remember

[16:12] having this crazy spreadsheet at one of the agencies I worked for that like the columns were like, you know,

[16:19] healthcare, habitational, you know, multifamily, like all these different kind of industries or classes of risk. And

[16:26] then along the rows were like just different carrier names. And there was either an X in the box or there wasn't an X in

[16:32] the box. Like, well, who can I go to for a contractor? And it's like scrolling, you know, to the right and seeing all the

[16:39] carriers on the top and the main like, oh, there's only like three Xs, you know, so I'll go to those three.

[16:44] Like, is this a writer that you're using? Or where did you find that? No, it was just a homemade Excel

[16:50] spreadsheet. Problem was, you know, whose, whose, whose role was it to keep that updated? And as carriers,

[16:58] you know, appetite guides changed. And some carriers don't even have appetite guides. And some of their

[17:03] appetite guides are like, hey, we maybe want this. And it's like, okay, well, do we put an X or not? So it

[17:10] wasn't foolproof. I know there's been, I think there was like Ask Kodiak, Applied Epic had like an

[17:15] appetite tool that wasn't the best. I think a lot of people now are using like an AI agent for almost

[17:22] like appetite inquiries to where they throw in all of those appetite guides and maybe one of those

[17:29] spreadsheets. And then they can type in like, where should I go for a roofing contractor? And then it

[17:34] can kind of spit out an answer. But a lot of smaller agencies may have zero markets for

[17:39] something like that. They might have to automatically go to a wholesale broker. Yeah.

[17:44] How much of your book right now is PNC versus life versus, you know, wholesale?

[17:50] Probably less than 1% life. I believe from a revenue perspective, commercial is like 60%. And then

[17:57] yeah, personal is probably 39%. And from the 60%, do you, is the majority of it through wholesalers? Because

[18:04] you're still starting out? That's a great question. I don't know. I have a fair

[18:09] chunk with like a Burns and Wilcox, but a lot of that's like cyber professional management liability.

[18:15] Yeah. Maybe, maybe like 10% of that 60% of commercial. Yeah. Just renewed my agency, you know,

[18:23] so I had to put this all in an application. Yeah. We've talked a lot about tools and, you know,

[18:27] you talked me, you walked me through using Momentum and what's it called? Agency Zoom and,

[18:34] you know, and various different tools along the value chain, essentially. If you could wave a magic

[18:39] wand for a part of the process that you need to be working on to get your job done, to be fully

[18:44] automated, what would you want to automate? Probably quoting. It's just a lot of data entry,

[18:50] right? Whether you need to fill out the accords and then email them or upload them, or, you know,

[18:55] you need to put together an underwriting narrative with photos and a kind of description of what the

[18:59] heck's going on. I mean, I will say Copilot has helped me a lot with, I'll say, underwriting

[19:04] narratives, which is, you know, just kind of a document that goes beyond the applications that

[19:09] tells the underwriter story of like why this is a good risk and, you know, what they're looking for

[19:14] and how we can help them. This is Copilot that sits in MS Word. Yeah. Microsoft's chat GPT, basically.

[19:22] Yeah. Quoting is still, that's definitely the pain point I've heard the most. It's sort of the,

[19:25] the problem is that there's no one size fits all and every carrier has a different way in which they

[19:30] want you to talk to them, right? Right. And the raters are nice, but you still typically have to go

[19:35] bind in the carrier system and the raters aren't the most accurate sometimes. And, and in, like in

[19:42] personal lines, it's a lot better than commercial lines, but you still, you know, do we want to pay

[19:46] for the MVR reports? Like some carriers charge money for those. So if you don't think you're going to bind it,

[19:51] like you need to kind of not do that or else you're just be flushing money down to it, which I hate that.

[19:57] I had to learn that early too. Like, why am I getting a bill from, you know, progressive or whoever?

[20:02] Cause I ran MVRs and never bound a quote. But yeah, I mean, I think like there's Gaia AI is pretty

[20:10] interesting. It's like a super copy paste, a little pricey for a one person insurance agency. But I think

[20:16] if like you had a team of like virtual employees or CSRs, like that's a no brainer. I've messed

[20:21] around with one fork before. And it's kind of a AI wholesaler kind of quoting engine, so to speak.

[20:28] But yeah, I would say that's probably one of the most time consuming things. That's just frustrating

[20:34] because it's, you know, and you have to know from a commercial perspective, like you may be tweaking

[20:38] coverages. And if you're going to automate that, like what's your protocol for tweaking the coverage?

[20:43] Like you almost can't give that to a novice junior person. Like, Hey, this is a restaurant. Like you

[20:49] didn't add liquor liability. Like now you got to go back in anyway, like you might as well have gone in

[20:53] the first time. I'm almost hearing two different things here, right? It's like the actual process of

[20:58] entering information to get a quote out and then, and then the quality management to ensure that the

[21:04] coverages that you want to give to your clients really fulfill the exposure that they have. You talked

[21:10] about some of the industries you go after is, are there, are there any industries in particular where,

[21:16] you know, you, you found, you found a good way that you feel you can serve them better than others.

[21:22] Hmm. With our tech stack, like now certs, our momentum agency management system was kind of born

[21:28] out of now certs. So like contractors who are very certificate heavy, I feel like we've built out a good

[21:33] offering for them. I mean, we have many work comp options, which is typically a big pain point of

[21:38] theirs. We have good, you know, general liability options, but then once they're a client, it's like,

[21:44] hey, we can deploy mock OSHA inspections. We can deploy the 24-7-365 portal to get a certificate.

[21:52] And if you email us, you know, we get back to you fast enough, you know, one to four hours at a minimum.

[21:58] So yeah, that we've kind of built out. Cyber too. I mean, I really, that's kind of industry agnostic.

[22:05] It's more of a product niche and an industry niche, but those who care about cyber, I mean, we do

[22:11] a much better job than I think most agencies where we'll actually talk to their MSP. We will know what

[22:19] the heck their MSP is saying. We'll actually analyze their risk from a, you know, cyber perspective,

[22:25] not just like, oh, hey, you need a $1 million policy because you've never had a policy before,

[22:29] or, oh, hey, you just need to comply with this customer contract. Well, you know, kind of right-sizing

[22:34] it and then comparing it contrasting, right? So like I have an opportunity now where like we're getting

[22:40] into the weeds and like wrongful collection of data sublimits and, you know, excess coverage

[22:46] and does it drop down or not. And, you know, like most insurance agents from a cyber perspective

[22:52] are just going to be like, yeah, here you go. Like, so.

[22:55] Yeah. Very cool. I'd love to sort of look to the future with you. Where do you, where would

[23:00] you love eGlo insurance to go? Where are you sort of seeing best in the next three to five years?

[23:05] My daughter's two years old. When she's 30, I'd love for her to take it over. So we'll see if that

[23:11] happens. And, you know, if she doesn't want to, that's cool. I'll have two other kids with an

[23:15] opportunity to do that. I kind of have this triangle in my brain and whether we kind of complete the

[23:21] triangle or not, it's okay with me. But I grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, and then I'm now outside of

[23:27] kind of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. And then my wife is out. She's born in the Hagerstown,

[23:32] Maryland, kind of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania area. So I'd love to kind of have like two satellite

[23:37] offices and like a main office, have this little mid-Atlantic triangle thing going on, Delaware,

[23:43] Maryland, Pennsylvania, you know, having a presence in all three of those, I think would be,

[23:47] would be pretty cool. So I also kind of want to flip the, like it's on its head a little bit. Like I

[23:53] want to be like half, you know, full-time American employees and half kind of offshore virtual

[23:59] employees. Almost like, you know, once you build up a book of business and you need to help, you,

[24:05] you know, have your kind of counterpart overseas to back you up. I also think from a career perspective,

[24:10] like being more of a risk advisor and not being like, well, I'm a commercial producer. I'm a personal

[24:16] producer. I'm a personal CSR. I'm a commercial CSR. Like I think, like, sure, it's, it's difficult.

[24:23] You have to learn a lot of different things and maybe you're not, you know, amazing at just one of

[24:29] those. But I think as someone progresses through their career, like it would be cool if they could

[24:34] get to learn business, home, life, auto, and kind of chart their own path as just an, an advisor,

[24:41] instead of kind of being, you know, pigeonholed into, into sales or service. I know, I think at a certain

[24:46] point, a lot of folks careers in our industry, you have to pick one. At least I felt that way,

[24:51] but I always, it kind of felt bad for folks who, who worked at bigger shops. And it's like, oh yeah,

[24:56] like one of my awesome clients, I have a really good relationships, like ask me about life insurance

[25:00] and I just have to like send them down the hall or send them across town. And that's like, you know,

[25:05] like you can learn enough to still keep that personal relationship and help them through that process.

[25:09] It's just, you know, basically a very cross, cross-functional team in terms of that type of stuff. Like,

[25:16] and I think it helps like a lot of commercial producers, I think are overlooking,

[25:21] you know, the low hanging fruit of cross-selling personal lines to their commercial clients.

[25:26] But like, it's much easier to do that if you know how to talk the talk and walk the walk versus like,

[25:31] let me, let me introduce you to John, my partner or my colleague or my employee down the hall. It's

[25:36] like, no, I can, I can figure that out. I'm smart enough.

[25:39] Yeah. You need to learn more to show them that you can also help them with the other side of their

[25:45] exposure. But at the same time, that complete construct of an individual agent is very difficult

[25:51] to scale. Right. So it is, it is. Yeah. I mean, how do you be good at, you know, four different

[25:57] types of insurance products and, and, you know, kind of two different industries. It's, it's hard.

[26:02] Like going back to, yeah, kind of having your counterpart virtually to help you with all the

[26:07] paperwork and that type of stuff. Yeah. I don't know. Like I've, I've been following David Crothers of

[26:12] Florida Risk Partners in, in, in Florida. He's pretty active online and like his son came into

[26:17] the business and they basically never did personal lines until like a year or two ago. And I was like,

[26:22] damn, like, like what a missed opportunity. And it's just kind of, you know, doing both at the same

[26:27] time, even, even if it takes your attention and time away. But I mean, at the end of the day, it's a,

[26:32] it's like, I always think insurance agencies are kind of like a bond portfolio, right? Like they never

[26:36] boom and they never bust. They just kind of hum along. So, you know, having that

[26:42] diversity of types of products, I think is, is smart. And then not having them siloed amongst your,

[26:48] your staff, I think is, is nice too, because this, you don't have to worry about, you know,

[26:53] the referrals and the sharing and the getting paid and then this and that, and, and just, you know,

[26:58] keeping your head down in your own little box. But how does AI play a role in the future of your

[27:04] business, do you think? Yeah, I think AI is going into impact insurance a lot. I mean, it already

[27:10] is, I mean, it's, it's helped. Like I actually, for the first time this last week, got an AI

[27:16] policy comparison. That was very cool. It, I don't know what the name of the type of graph it was,

[27:23] but it kind of had, you know, 10 different coverage areas and then a little red and blue map

[27:31] for carrier one and carrier two. And kind of, you know, if carrier a was really good at spike out to

[27:36] the one end and, and it was cool because I could send it to the client and be like, Hey, here's the

[27:40] AI comparison. And then here's the human comparison of like what AI really harped on and what the human

[27:48] harped on and kind of compare and contrast. Like AI was obsessed with like the lack of subjectivities.

[27:53] Like, Hey, this is ready to go. It's ready to buy. And it's a lower price. It's a lower deductible.

[27:57] Then the human one was like, watch out for this sublimit, watch out for this sublimit,

[28:01] watch out for this sublimit. So that was pretty cool. And I know like XD on a lot of bigger

[28:06] agencies are using where you can compare like last year's renewal to this year's and sure,

[28:11] account managers are supposed to read every page of every policy, right. And do policy checking. And,

[28:15] you know, it goes by the wayside because they're busy with, you know, more relational work,

[28:19] arguably more important work. So it'll flag that, Hey, we were with, you know, the Hartford with a

[28:24] thousand dollar comp and collision deductible. And then we moved to Chubb and we quoted a thousand

[28:28] dollar deductible, but actually got bound with a, you know, $500 deductible. So we need to go back to

[28:33] Chubb, you know, a AI alerts, the account manager, Hey, discrepancy. So then account manager has to be

[28:38] like, well, I got to go back to Chubb and ask for a premium reduction, or we need to get this fixed.

[28:42] So, you know, I think, I think the sales and marketing and the AI assistant, not assistant,

[28:49] but receptionists, I think that is totally over, overvalued. Like I cannot stand when I have to call

[28:56] any business and it's an AI receptionist. I don't like it. I don't, I especially don't like when they

[29:02] don't tell me they're an AI receptionist and they pretend they're a human because, you know, I just

[29:07] don't think they're that good yet. And like, I'd rather just go to voicemail, to be honest.

[29:12] Like, just tell me Bob's busy, busy. I'll leave him a voicemail and I'll shoot him a text and I'll

[29:15] shoot him an email versus you just being like, all right, like, thanks for having this fake

[29:20] conversation with me. I'll get a transcript to Bob. It's like, I just stayed the last three minutes of my

[29:25] life and made my own transcript for Bob in my own voice. And, and again, like whole value of an

[29:30] independent agent as it's a local person that's knowledgeable that you trust and like you're

[29:35] totally dropping the ball, you know, by not picking up your own phone, I think. And, and just like the

[29:40] LinkedIn automations, like, oh yeah, we're one year, we're one year in business this week. I got like

[29:44] four or five LinkedIn messages that were a hundred percent all automated. Congrats on your one year

[29:49] anniversary. And I'm just like, get out of here. Wait, I thought it was next week. You already got

[29:54] LinkedIn automations. Yeah. Maybe, maybe I changed LinkedIn a couple of days ago, but I don't

[30:00] I've been using a Apollo to like the zoom infos. Like I think the AI stuff for like prospect research is

[30:08] pretty game changing and faster, better, stronger. So I think, you know, I don't, I'm not never worked

[30:15] on the carrier side. I imagine AI could help a lot on kind of paying surplus lines, taxes and, you know,

[30:21] auditing claims and that type of stuff. But yeah, I think, I mean, agents should embrace it, but they

[30:27] should embrace it pretty strategically. I mean, I've done demos with Kara AI and like, again, kind of

[30:33] pricey for a one person agency, but like, I would love for Kara to pick up the phone on weekends after

[30:39] hours to be like, Hey, I know you're shopping for insurance on the internet right now. You gave us a

[30:43] call and like, we'll be on top of this Monday morning. Cause we're going to get all the data we need

[30:49] because you had this AI conversation. Um, which I don't see a problem with that, but Monday through Friday,

[30:55] you know, nine to five, I don't, I don't want AI answering the phone. I think that tracks what I'm

[31:00] hearing from you and other, other agents. It's wherever the relationship was the key part of you

[31:05] doing your job. You kind of want to have as little AI as possible because it's the relationship and the

[31:10] trust that you build in the person and wherever it has nothing to do with the relationship. So a really

[31:15] good example of that would be you messaging a wholesale of my email would be a relationship, but you

[31:21] logging into a portal to extract a quote would not be right. Wherever it's the second example, you kind

[31:27] of would like AI to do the chunk of that work for you. So you can focus back on the relationship part of

[31:33] your job. Yeah. And the, Hey, I need to a billing question or, or a endorsement question. Like that's

[31:41] kind of a slippery slope too, because maybe there's a cross sell opportunity, or maybe there's a time to

[31:47] reconnect personally with a client, but at the same time, like, do I really need to, you know, go change

[31:54] the 16 digit VIN number from the Camry to the Subaru? Like I'm happy to have a conversation with the

[31:59] insurer about that, but then logging into the carrier and actually, you know, spending two or three minutes

[32:05] to click through all the screens to be like, yup, drop the Subaru, add the Toyota, like tell me the

[32:11] additional premiums, 400 bucks. I'll let the insured know. Like I, I find that like a lot of the carriers

[32:18] aren't even letting AI into their systems to do those types of things. I'm sure it's possible, but it's,

[32:24] I don't really see it happening just yet. At least I've seen, but that would be awesome. If I could be

[32:29] like, Hey, AI agent, like I'll talk to Bob, you know, delete this VIN number, add this one number, save me 10

[32:34] minutes. Brian, thank you so much for joining the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. Cool.

[32:39] Have a good one. See you then.