Insurance Agency SEO and AI with Brandy Henriquez and Tom Polowy

[00:00] A little bit of a background so that you kind of know where this is coming from.

[00:03] So I've been in insurance for about 10 years. I've mostly worked with the carrier side.

[00:08] And it dawned on me that the majority of insurance still comes from independent agents.

[00:11] And so that's why I was like, the best way to learn more about it is to, you know,

[00:16] to talk to some of those folks and invite them to podcast. Let's start with the introduction on you.

[00:20] Like what's, who's Brandy and how did he end up working in insurance?

[00:25] Long story short, I come from the entertainment industry.

[00:29] I worked in radio for 20 years.

[00:31] And I still have my production company that I would do like side gigs after like my nine to five was over.

[00:37] And I just got to a point where I didn't feel any like fulfillment anymore because I was just working the corporate job.

[00:46] It was the same monotonous type of productions that we were doing.

[00:50] I mean, it was fun, but I've been doing it for 20 years and I'm older now.

[00:54] I don't want to work late nights, that type of thing. So I started looking around for a business

[00:59] that I could get into where I could build it in two to three years, have a solid team,

[01:05] and I could step away and just kind of like oversee it, but have a day-to-day manager run the business.

[01:12] And I settled on either real estate or insurance. Those are two industries that I feel that in one

[01:18] way or another, they're not going to go away. I went to school with someone who now, well, I mean,

[01:25] we had the conversation with me not knowing that he was like in the top 3% of agents for this captain,

[01:31] but he was just a guy I went to college with. You know, we had a good friendship in college,

[01:37] kind of like drifted away after college, but I always trusted this person and I considered this

[01:42] person smart. So I said, hey, can I have a conversation with you about insurance? And he

[01:47] was like, what do you want to know? And I said, is it a good time to get into insurance right now?

[01:52] And he said, it's always a good time to get into insurance. And we had lunch. I met his number one

[01:58] guy. He brought him to lunch and I just picked his brain, picked both of their brains. And he

[02:03] sold me on it. Basically said, hey, listen, this captive has a great program. If you give me three

[02:09] years, I'm going to get you your own agency. Commit to me for three years and then you'll get your own

[02:15] agency. And if it wasn't for the pandemic, it would have been like two and a half years between when I

[02:22] got licensed to when I got my own agency. But pandemic slowed things down. I got out of it for

[02:28] a year. Then I came back and I went through a program to just to basically like it was like six

[02:36] months of schooling. Before that, I had to do two presentations, three interviews. I had to pass

[02:42] aptitude tests and all kinds of stuff. But I got selected, got selected for an opportunity,

[02:47] opened my captive May 1st of 2022. What's the captive for? Is it State Farm?

[02:55] State Farm, yes. Great company. I love it. It got hard for me with the market to stick to one

[03:03] company. And at the end of the day, I want to serve my customers the best way that I can.

[03:08] And it just got to a point where I felt that I couldn't offer that being under a captive.

[03:13] Not necessarily to reflect that the company was bad.

[03:16] It was just that that business model did not work for me.

[03:19] What did you do during that time if you didn't have an insurance product to serve the customer's needs?

[03:26] I have a great referral network.

[03:28] So I would refer them out to somebody that I trust that I know they're going to take care of them.

[03:32] Like I would take care of them.

[03:33] And yeah, and then through that referral service, I started learning about the options and basically the flexibility of being independent and how much it's changed from when I was first looking into insurance to now.

[03:47] It's a lot easier to get appointed.

[03:50] It's a lot easier to get multiple licenses in different states.

[03:53] And I actually ended up, while I was being captive, partnering with an independent broker in a content business for professionals.

[04:02] So we have a studio now where we have, right now we have one podcast room dedicated to podcasts.

[04:10] We have one smaller room where a person could just sit and record just like you're doing.

[04:16] Soundproof, all the equipment, all the cameras, internet, all that stuff.

[04:20] They just got to come, sit down, press record, do their thing.

[04:23] And that went very well.

[04:24] So once I started looking for options about where to go, I had a serious conversation with him.

[04:30] So me and him partnered and he wanted to focus on wealth management.

[04:35] So it worked out. So now I'm overseeing the personal and commercial insurance policies.

[04:41] And he could concentrate on the wealth management. Is this in Shull CT?

[04:45] Yes. Yes. So I am. We're based in West Hartford. That's where our office is.

[04:51] But we cover all Connecticut and we're licensed in 17 eastern states and growing.

[05:00] Where is your base?

[05:01] Like where are you mostly generating your new client base from?

[05:05] It's referral.

[05:06] So I kind of go to networking events and try to meet people that I know constantly have a need for insurance.

[05:16] So I go to real estate investor networking events.

[05:19] I try to meet all the movers and shakers that are real estate agents, mortgage brokers.

[05:26] because a lot of people don't think about insurance

[05:30] until it's time to figure out the closing.

[05:33] And they're like, okay, you need a policy now.

[05:35] And honestly, we're the last step.

[05:37] But if you don't have a policy,

[05:39] you're not going to close on the house.

[05:40] And the way that the market is right now,

[05:42] especially in Connecticut with all the old houses

[05:45] and so many claims that we've had in the year before,

[05:48] it's a lot more complicated.

[05:50] It was more complicated, the process.

[05:52] It's not so much of just calling somebody and saying,

[05:56] hey, I need a policy because it's going to be like $5,000 unless that broker knows what they're doing

[06:02] and they know what they need to show the carrier, hey, this house is not in as bad a condition as

[06:08] you think. So most agents will be like, hey, it's going to cost this much. I'm going to say, hey,

[06:13] this house was built in the $1,800. Send me your appraisal. Send me your roof inspection. I'm going

[06:19] to send that to all the carriers so they could use that when they're giving you a rate. Because if not,

[06:24] they're just going to see a 200-year-old house

[06:26] and they're going to say, oh no, this house.

[06:28] You're either not going to be able to get insured

[06:30] or you're going to get a crazy rate.

[06:31] So if someone comes to you and says, hey, I want this crazy house insured

[06:34] and you say, I'm going to send it to all the carriers to get your rate,

[06:37] how many carriers are we talking?

[06:39] How many carriers are you appointed with?

[06:41] It depends on the specific house and where it's at

[06:44] because every carrier is different.

[06:47] And we have an AI that we feed all the carrier appetites to

[06:51] And then we could ask it, hey, this is the type of property. This is how far from the coastline it is. It's not in a flood zone. Who can we try to quote this with? And it'll give us a general outline, a good starting point. And then from there, if we don't get good results with that, then we'll start using our relationships and just basically calling on the riders and saying, hey, I got this case. Is there anything that you could do for us?

[07:16] But in average, we have about 20 carriers for home insurance, probably something like 12 for auto.

[07:26] And then we can broker it out to wholesale insurance.

[07:30] So basically, like I'll talk to the people, I'll get the information, I'll go to the AI, I'll start doing the quotes that I can.

[07:37] If there's no luck there, then we have Alan.

[07:42] Everybody should have an Alan.

[07:44] he's kind of like the MacGyver.

[07:47] So if you have a situation that you can't figure it out

[07:50] he'll figure it out and say okay yeah I know exactly who to call.

[07:55] He'll handle like the wholesale brokers

[07:57] or he'll have personal relationships

[07:59] because he's our guy that's on the phone 24-7 talking to our underwriters.

[08:03] When you say you go to the carriers do you do that yourself?

[08:07] Like will you log into portals yourself and type information in?

[08:10] Yes.

[08:11] So that was one thing to get used to.

[08:14] coming from a captive and then going to independent captive has, well, most, most of them have like an

[08:19] all in one software that you log in and everything is there. You got to go to every carrier's portal

[08:26] and, and you got to learn their system and you got to learn like the tick, the tricks in, and kind of

[08:32] like the back doors and the loopholes to get around certain stuff. Everything's different. Everybody's

[08:38] system is quirky. And then some carriers don't even have an online portal, portal, you got to

[08:43] email an underwriter directly, or they have like a general email where you send a court forms,

[08:49] and then they'll reach out to you with a quote or tell you if it's eligible or not.

[08:54] Yeah, that's kind of consistent across what I've heard, but it varies a lot. How do you make sure

[08:59] that all the questions are answered by the insured before you go to the carrier portal? Do you

[09:06] maintain like a list of all the things that carriers could potentially be asking?

[09:10] Yeah, so we have, we have SLPs for every line. And then it's basically like a list of carriers and what they're, what they're best suited for. So we have it divided by commercial auto, builder's risk, landlord insurance, personal home insurance, personal auto, business policies. And then it's just a list of carriers that are best suited for those types of general risk that we kind of deal with most frequently.

[09:39] and then also for each of those risks,

[09:43] we have about 20 or so questions

[09:45] that is the basic information that we need.

[09:49] Every carrier is different.

[09:50] Every carrier is one and all certain stuff.

[09:53] So at the very least, we'll fill out the application

[09:56] and then if there's something that we don't have,

[09:58] then we call back the person and get that info.

[10:01] And then usually, I want to say nine out of 10 times,

[10:06] if it's a riskier thing, like a builder's risk,

[10:09] the underwriter is going to call back or email with more questions.

[10:14] So we have to contact the customer again.

[10:16] Supplemental questions.

[10:17] That makes sense.

[10:18] I'm really intrigued by the AI tool you said you built and you use.

[10:22] Is it like, how does it work?

[10:24] It's called Cara.

[10:25] You can subscribe to it.

[10:27] It's C-A-R-A.

[10:28] I believe it's for the insurance industry.

[10:31] It'll fill out a court forms for you as well.

[10:33] Given that you came out from outside insurance,

[10:35] What is like the biggest, you know, surprise for you having now entered this new world six, seven years ago?

[10:42] I had anxiety and I was very nervous about investing all this time and all this money into something that it was just kind of like, I need to do something different.

[10:52] You know, it's not my passion.

[10:53] It's not.

[10:54] But deep down, my passion is helping people.

[10:58] And that's what you do in insurance, especially with my background in the Hispanic community.

[11:04] insurance is kind of like a requirement to drive your car, you know, a requirement to get a loan.

[11:10] We don't think of it as a tool. It's just, you know, like a light bulb. And growing up,

[11:16] I'm first generation born here. So I did all every phone call, every important phone call for my

[11:23] parents because I was the first one to really speak English. So I grew up with my dad's telling

[11:29] me, hey, I got to renew insurance. So let's call. Tell them I want the cheapest. So I grew up with

[11:35] that mentality. Like, yeah, I'm not going to pay more for insurance for what? I just want to drive

[11:40] my car. And then as I got older and I started having my own business and having my own car and

[11:47] stuff like that and got into my first accident, I realized that insurance is important. Like it

[11:53] It really got me out of a jam.

[11:55] It replaced my car.

[11:56] It paid the damages for the other person.

[11:59] I didn't have to come out of pocket

[12:00] except for the deductible.

[12:02] If I would have had,

[12:03] luckily it was under the minimum coverage

[12:07] that I had at the time.

[12:08] But if it was more,

[12:09] I would have had to come out of pocket.

[12:11] So that was a big kind of like

[12:13] aha moment for me that I learned very young.

[12:15] So coming into insurance

[12:18] from the entertainment industry,

[12:19] I realized that a business is a business. As long as you have your systems in place

[12:27] and you give it 110%, you're going to do okay. So once I got into the thick of it, I was hiring

[12:34] people. I was in the office day to day. I was comfortable with all the policies and how to

[12:40] quote and all that stuff. I was good. So that was really what surprised me the most. It was the

[12:45] learning curve. I was expecting it to be a lot. Not that it was hard and not that it isn't hard,

[12:51] but that I was able to do it so quickly. I surprised myself.

[12:54] When you say that insurance isn't all the same and you don't just want to get the cheapest rate,

[12:59] have you noticed a quality, you know, in the different carriers? And are you comfortable

[13:03] sort of sharing some carriers that you would always go to and you have good relationships with?

[13:08] oh yeah 100 so um my goal tool right now i like um let's smooth back in so just some context for you

[13:19] tom Brandy and i spoke last week and then halfway through i think he was looking something up to

[13:23] answer a question i had for a podcast that i've been recording and the recording cut out from

[13:27] that point onwards so i'm hoping it won't do it today but good to have you back brandy and uh tom

[13:32] thanks for joining do you want to maybe kick us off by introducing yourself Brandy already gave

[13:36] an introduction? Sure, yeah. My name is Tom Polowy, the founder of Insure Connecticut,

[13:40] independent agency in Connecticut, looking to change the way insurance brokerages do business.

[13:46] Very cool. What's different about Insure Connecticut to other agencies?

[13:49] It is, not to put anybody else down, but I feel like the industry doesn't really operate as a

[13:53] business, meaning individual brokerages do not. They don't think of themselves in a business. And

[13:58] what I'm alluding to mostly is what you would think of as the mom and pop shops on the corner

[14:04] of a street. My house was built in 1890 where the pipes don't work. They're probably made out of

[14:10] galvanized steel and they're just there existing. They built the agency in the 80s and 90s on

[14:16] walk-ins where that doesn't work anymore. You got to be fully digital and have a presence online and

[14:23] in person and you got to attack marketing from multiple angles. So that's what we're trying to do

[14:28] at Insure Connecticut. We're trying to empower people through the power of insurance to have

[14:32] healthy and productive lives, whether it's our stakeholders, our agents, customer service reps,

[14:38] prospects, clients, everybody. So we have a different energy. And we're very passionate

[14:45] about being able to do that in an industry that is very old school and not willing to change. I do

[14:52] feel that there's a lot of hope. There's a huge wave of young energy in the industry. As the old

[14:59] fogeys die out and retire. There is a large group or contingent of people across the country who have

[15:06] the same kind of energy and are looking to grow and are looking to find unique ways of growing.

[15:11] Because what I see across the board, which is great for us, everybody's still doing the same

[15:16] kind of marketing strategy of buying leads. And that's pretty much all they do.

[15:21] Maybe they'll link up with realtors or mortgage officers and buy leads. I was at the Ageless

[15:27] Brokers United conference a couple weeks ago in Vegas. And that's all I heard. It's all they do.

[15:32] How do you guys acquire customers? It's all SEO right now. We have a roadmap for what we're going

[15:37] to be doing for the rest of the year and moving forward in terms of generating content, creating

[15:41] content and getting on social media. But right now it is currently all SEO. We're averaging 80 to 100

[15:48] leads a month. It's mostly through SEO. The rest of it is through referral partnerships. And I feel

[15:53] like we don't even know what we're doing quite yet. And once we do, I mean, you never do, right?

[15:58] The journey never ends. It only continues, but we're only going to keep getting better at what

[16:02] we're doing. And we're going to be start generating some buzz about around our success.

[16:07] Insurance agents is at the intersection of like supply and demand to some extent, right? You've

[16:11] got the demand side of folks where you're buying leads to find them that might need an insurance

[16:16] product. And you then have to match it to the best product offering out there. Ideally, it's a carrier

[16:20] you have a direct appointment with. Maybe it's a wholesaler who can help you get a product that you

[16:23] don't sell that often how do you think about that space like is there is is i'm hearing you use seo to

[16:30] grow the demand side how do you think about the supply side it's a struggle and speaking of old

[16:35] school a lot of old school carriers and wholesalers are still still stuck in the mentality of show us

[16:41] your numbers which is all backward looking they're never looking forward to what's going to happen

[16:46] and where the growth is they're not looking at momentum or or a trajectory of an agency they're

[16:53] just looking at what do you currently have and we're either going to get you appointed or not

[16:57] and that is a huge that's been a huge limitation i started my agency during covid which you could

[17:02] imagine i mean that's that was during the pnc apocalypse nothing was moving all the carriers

[17:06] were shutting down and there was no carrier appointments to be had what slim pickings i was

[17:11] able to get i got and only now are they opening up a little bit and more open to the conversations

[17:16] and appointments but you still have to prove a track record of performance but it's a chicken

[17:21] and the egg thing. How are you supposed to place business if you don't have a place to place it?

[17:26] And then how are you supposed to get the appointments if you don't have a place to place

[17:28] the appointments? So then you're stuck going to brokers. And then a lot of the business that you

[17:33] place is spread out so thin, that's very difficult to get numbers to show the carriers that look,

[17:39] we're producing, give us an appointment, because then you also have to produce loss runs and

[17:44] experience. And you can't do that from a broker. So that's a huge limitation. So it's just grinding,

[17:50] hitting the pavement uh networking and going to conferences and reaching out to carriers directly

[17:56] and try to be seen and eventually get an appointment uh it's worked with a couple of carriers and we have

[18:01] great relationships with those carriers now we've met all and exceeded all of our expectations but

[18:06] again it's how do you get more so there's always there it is always a balancing act so it's that is

[18:12] a very that's been very challenging the the part it cut out branny is when you wanted to walk me

[18:18] through the whole workflow, like how do you actually end up getting quotes?

[18:20] My understanding was that you've now grown with internal Connecticut.

[18:24] You've grown to the point where you have folks internally who can help with some of those requests

[18:29] that come in.

[18:30] How do you generally like get quotes from carriers?

[18:33] What's the number one way?

[18:34] Go ahead, Tom.

[18:34] So yeah, we do have a workflow.

[18:36] We go through a pipeline.

[18:37] We have our steps and we do have some backend help to be able to quote.

[18:41] And because we don't have a lot of direct carriers, we have to create the Accord forums,

[18:45] data gather and then send out, send those out to our contacts. So we do, yeah, so we do have some

[18:52] back-end help with the data gathering and forum filling. And we use some fantastic AI tools,

[18:58] mainly Kara to give them a shout out, Kara. They've been instrumental in helping us make our process a

[19:04] lot more efficient. And we're, I mean, I think that we are on the forefront of what's available

[19:08] in technology in the independent insurance space.

[19:12] So we could handle more business,

[19:15] more complex business faster

[19:17] than a traditional brokerage can.

[19:19] If you could wave a magic wand

[19:20] to take any of your process

[19:22] and fully automate it,

[19:24] what part of your process

[19:25] would you want to automate?

[19:26] That's a loaded question

[19:26] because nobody has solved for that yet.

[19:28] I've talked to a lot of startups

[19:30] over the last several years

[19:31] and everybody talks about it,

[19:32] especially at ITC last year.

[19:34] Everybody was talking about

[19:35] we could build you a workflow.

[19:36] What problem do you have

[19:38] or what can we solve for you?

[19:39] Nobody actually had an idea of how to create the workflow

[19:42] to automate it, and nobody's built it yet.

[19:45] I have spoken with several vendors

[19:49] that are working on similar types of things,

[19:52] but there is no good way of...

[19:55] So if I was to wave a magic wand to automate the process,

[19:57] I would be able to, in a portal,

[20:00] essentially have a Domino's pizza tracker

[20:03] that goes from funnel entry to quote proposal

[20:06] in an automated way that talks to the rest of my systems.

[20:09] And that's part of the problem in insurance

[20:11] in the independent space specifically.

[20:13] There's so many damn systems.

[20:14] They all claim to have integrations,

[20:17] but they're all shitty and nothing works.

[20:20] And you're still going to multiple places to reenter data.

[20:23] And a lot of times it's the software is being built

[20:26] by programmers or by insurance people.

[20:28] It's never really a combination of engineers

[20:31] and insurance people.

[20:32] So they make assumptions about what we need

[20:35] and they just fall flat on their face

[20:37] when it comes to execution.

[20:39] And that's why nobody's been able to do that yet.

[20:40] I'm hopeful.

[20:41] I see some cool things happening around AI,

[20:43] but AI itself also has a lot of limitations.

[20:46] So that magic wand is not coming anytime soon.

[20:49] So at a certain point,

[20:50] it's got to grind to work through the workflow.

[20:52] I think one of the troubles

[20:53] for building new tech in this space

[20:55] also is the complexity.

[20:57] And I think when you try and create a new tool,

[21:00] you always have to think,

[21:01] do I go broad or do I go deep first?

[21:03] And so I would put that question to you, actually. If I could say I'll wave a magic wand for you and you can get every line of business with your top two carriers or I'll wave a magic wand for you and you can get homeowners with 30 carriers, right? And in either direction, it will be fully automated. Would you rather have, you know, the breadth with two carriers or the depth for one line of business?

[21:25] That would depend on the brokerage's business preference, right?

[21:31] What would be in Shaw Connecticut's business preference?

[21:33] For us, I hate the answer I'm going to give you because it's the wrong answer.

[21:38] Tell me.

[21:39] But I want it all.

[21:41] I'm not going to stop.

[21:42] We are going to be building towards being a full-service brokerage that can handle it all in an efficient way with all the students talking to each other.

[21:50] Where every team member and stakeholder is involved in the process for a seamless process for a client.

[21:58] That's a huge undertaking and it's going to take a lot of work.

[22:02] but also I'm not going anywhere until I die.

[22:05] So until that happens,

[22:06] that's what we're working towards.

[22:08] So to answer your question more directly,

[22:10] yeah, give me the breadth

[22:11] and I'll figure out the rest.

[22:13] Interesting.

[22:13] So the breadth of your top two, three markets,

[22:17] which I think Branny and I spoke about a little bit.

[22:18] I mean, the riches are in the niches, right?

[22:20] That is true.

[22:21] That is a fact that's undeniable.

[22:23] Yeah.

[22:24] I also have wants and goals of dominating everything.

[22:28] So we're going to work on both.

[22:30] We're going to burn both ends of the candle, and we are going to achieve that.

[22:34] How are you thinking of being able to achieve that for Insure Connecticut?

[22:37] Are you investing in your own technology?

[22:39] No, but we love working with startups, and that's both true of technology and insure techs or carriers.

[22:44] We work with a number of carriers that most people have never heard of,

[22:48] and also insure techs that are technology companies that work in the independent insurance space that a lot of people haven't heard of.

[22:56] So that allows us the ability to have direct impact and how the tools are being built.

[23:01] I was actually part of an insurtech for a little bit.

[23:04] We were trying to build something specific to a workers' comp.

[23:07] And I'm actually helping Sonny to develop faster, to build a platform for insurance agencies to have a full-fledged website and marketing platform, WorkOn.AI.

[23:18] So I guess to answer your question, no, I'm not involved directly in building something, but I am also helping to build something specifically.

[23:26] To finish us off, what are the next three to five years I'm in store for you all?

[23:31] I think for me, it's still the same as just having the freedom to spend time with my family and watch my kids grow.

[23:38] versus two years ago, I wanted to be the number one in my market

[23:43] and then start taking over other markets and just scale and scale and scale.

[23:49] And it's like you just end up chasing your own tail at some point

[23:53] and you don't live life.

[23:54] And then your kids are all grown by the time you want to slow down.

[23:58] They don't know you. You don't really know them.

[24:01] For me, that's the most important thing right now is just being in the moment with my kids,

[24:06] but being able to provide and also being of service to our clients.

[24:12] I think that when you're on that scaling program and you're trying to get big, big, big,

[24:17] you lose sight of the client and the service suffers.

[24:22] Tom, anything to add to that?

[24:23] I have a lot to add. So how much time do you have?

[24:25] So to Brandy's point about that, you try to scale and then you lose focus of the clients.

[24:32] Part of the challenge of this industry and why people don't grow.

[24:34] And anecdotally, I've noticed that agencies don't really grow past 10 million premiums.

[24:39] I think part of that is we're in a low margin industry because the more clients you have, the more CSRs you need, in theory, CSRs you need, the more that costs, the more clients you can't handle more.

[24:51] Like there is a ceiling.

[24:52] So for me, part of the fun of it is solving the challenge of that $10 million in premium ceiling without sacrificing client relationships and experience, but actually enhancing it. And over the next three to five years, I am looking to continue to grow to an inflection point where we can scale.

[25:14] My whole goal is to step away from the day-to-day so I can focus on the larger problems and spend time with my family, to Brandy's point, because that's extremely important.

[25:23] Because this industry is very easy to burn out, but I feel like we're getting close to our goals on the marketing side.

[25:32] And once we put that in place, everything else is going to take care of itself.

[25:35] Because I feel like nobody is doing what we're trying to do in the industry.

[25:39] Nobody's really approaching this business from a marketing perspective, and that's really the perspective that we're coming from.

[25:44] Have you thought about AI or engine optimization?

[25:47] Of course, every day.

[25:49] And I mean, I could talk about AI for several hours

[25:52] because so through Faster,

[25:54] I have an intimate knowledge of the pros and cons

[25:57] of building something on AI.

[26:00] And we're talking about the latest AI models.

[26:02] Like we're not talking about, you know,

[26:04] some rink and dig thing that somebody put together

[26:05] on top of an old Gemini model.

[26:09] I'm talking about the latest Claude,

[26:11] the latest ChatGPT.

[26:12] And no matter how far you get, there's going to be issues because AI is inherently limited in being able to, the further you go out of the original question that you ask AI or the original task, it will falter.

[26:27] Yeah.

[26:27] The better models, you can go further out from sure, but it's still going to falter.

[26:33] So for AI to actually work, you have to learn that you have to give it very tight parameters with which it could only think within those parameters.

[26:45] It can't go outside of those parameters.

[26:47] So other companies building technology on AI, they're limited by the same rules.

[26:53] They're limited by the same laws.

[26:54] So in terms of what's possible, everyone's limited to the same thing.

[26:58] agents bring a new layer to it, but you're also now introducing a lot more security issues and

[27:05] things that could go wrong. I've seen people in other industries glow about, oh, I've built this

[27:11] agent, 60% of my company's being run on it. Several days later, I see a post on Facebook.

[27:19] Well, everyone's websites got deleted except for one. So thankfully I had to back up.

[27:24] Yeah.

[27:24] So there's only so much that you can do with AI currently.

[27:28] You can't eliminate humans at all.

[27:31] But with the help of AI, we're able to see a lot more productivity per person.

[27:35] I guess my question was also around, you focus a lot on SEO.

[27:40] And of course, there's the new, you know, the new horizon of SEO, which is how do you ensure that when you search and chat to your team for something, it brings up ensure CT as one of the solutions, right?

[27:50] The rules aren't much different.

[27:51] I'm not going to give away all the trade secrets, but the rules are not different.

[27:56] If you know, you know.

[27:57] And I mean, we've started getting a very regular stream of referrals from AI models.

[28:04] It's become a regular thing.

[28:06] Listen, the first time it happened, it blew my mind.

[28:08] I didn't believe it.

[28:09] I didn't.

[28:09] I was like, why?

[28:10] Why are we there?

[28:10] And again, I go back to, we don't know what we're doing yet.

[28:13] But that is the frontier.

[28:14] And there's a lot more things that we could do to enhance our ability to show up in AI.

[28:18] But there's challenges to that and roadblocks to that.

[28:21] So it's all fun stuff to try to overcome.

[28:24] But there's a lot of work for us to do in order for us to dominate where we are across the country.

[28:30] Was there something else that you guys wanted to cover, Brandy?

[28:33] For other professionals, because I'm assuming other people in the insurances are the people that are listening to your podcast and watching it.

[28:40] Don't forget that a lead is a person with a problem.

[28:45] Yeah.

[28:45] And sometimes we get caught up in, I got to follow up on these leads.

[28:50] I got to follow up on these leads and close and close and close.

[28:53] But at the end of the day, we're both just two humans trying to do something.

[28:58] I'm trying to do my job so I can feed my family.

[29:01] And then the client needs this insurance for their business or what have you so they can feed their family, you know.

[29:09] And it's like, listen to them and then you'll know what you have to do instead of just being on autopilot the whole time and thinking that you know all the answers.

[29:19] because you've done a thousand of these policies.

[29:22] Yeah.

[29:23] One last thing about marketing,

[29:25] if I have two seconds.

[29:27] Of course.

[29:28] Something I want to speak with other business owners

[29:29] that we're networking, we talk,

[29:32] and they ask me about marketing and things like that.

[29:34] The question I ask them that perplexes them,

[29:37] and anyone listening to this,

[29:38] I would encourage you to really meditate on this question

[29:40] because most people, again, buy leads

[29:42] or they're waiting for people to find them.

[29:44] But have you allowed people to find you?

[29:47] And that's where if you shift your perspective

[29:49] from looking for them to allowing or giving permission to people to find you,

[29:54] it changes your paradigm about how you think about marketing.

[29:56] Really cool.

[29:57] Guys, Brandy, Tom, thank you so much for joining the podcast.

[30:00] Thank you, Brandy.

[30:01] Man, thank you.

[30:02] Thank you for your time, man.

[30:03] Yeah, this was great.