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Colt Halloran: Lender and Real Estate Focused Insurance Agent
19 Plays1 year ago
Colt Halloran is an agent with Goosehead Insurance, located in Downers Grove, IL. Colt joined Goosehead because of his unwavering commitment to take care of his clients. Using cutting edge technology to shop with dozens of "A" rated insurance companies in just a few short minutes, he is able to find the right coverage at a competitive price. He takes the time to review all of the options and customizes a policy based on the unique risks and desires of each client. After finalizing an option, Colt is backed by a service team that has the highest client loyalty rating in the industry. Request a quote from Colt and you will quickly understand why Goosehead is one of the fastest growing distributors of home and auto insurance in the United States.
Check out Goosehead here: https://www.goosehead.com/?t=y&id=0053c00000DNvadAAD.
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Transcript
From Rural Beginnings to Insurance Career
00:00:00
Speaker
B O O F
00:00:26
Speaker
Colt Talloran is an insurance broker with Goosehead Insurance Agency, a national company that offers a plethora of coverage for homeowners, landlords, renters, and virtually anyone else you can think of in the realm of real estate, vehicle ownership, and weather protection. Colt personally specializes in working with mortgage lenders and realtors around the country. A native of central Illinois, Colt has applied the many life skills he's derived from a longtime love and
00:00:54
Speaker
of sports, as well as the ability to really empathize with others to a successful career in insurance sales. In this episode, we discussed his rural upbringing and the influence that this had on his academic and early professional experiences, how it is that he transitioned into an insurance career, both the challenging and more inspiring realities of being in this commission based business, as well as what it takes lifestyle wise to really be a player in the industry. Enjoy the episode.
00:01:25
Speaker
I wanted to start with something that I did ask you in the intro call, but I feel like it is really great to give some background about your childhood and how you grew up, where you grew up, the kinds of things that you did as a kid. So I don't know if you could give some color to your upbringing for us. Okay. Yeah, cool. So yeah, so we'll appreciate you having me on here, Julia.
00:01:48
Speaker
So I'm Colt Halloran. I am actually a franchise agency owner for Goosehead Insurance here in the Downers Grove, Illinois area. Um, so a little bit about my background and kind of how I grew up was I actually come from a relatively small rural community in East central Illinois called Paris, Illinois. So grew up on a family farm down there. So I'm a, I'm a parasite, you know, in a good way though. Is that really what people call themselves there?
00:02:17
Speaker
Some of them do. Okay, sorry for interrupting, but that's awesome. Yeah, so I grew up on a family farm down there. You know, I've got one older brother, so obviously my dad was a self-employed farmer. You know, he and my grandfather ran the farm and we had a couple of people that would kind of help us out, especially during the busy times like planting season in the spring, harvest season in the fall.
00:02:43
Speaker
But yeah, and then my mom, actually, growing up, she was what was called the circuit clerk of our county, which was Edgar County. So she dealt with a lot of child support cases, a lot of court cases, stuff like that. She worked at the courthouse there in Paris. But growing up, I was very active in athletics. I played everything from soccer to baseball, football, basketball. Baseball, basketball, and football were the three main sports that I played all through growing up in high school.
00:03:12
Speaker
You know, did relatively well in school.
Career Transition and Mentorship
00:03:15
Speaker
It wasn't really all that hard though, just, you know, kind of being in the smaller community, I guess maybe not a lot of, you know, higher, higher courses, I guess we'll call it, but, but went to college to the University of Illinois in 2007, graduated in 2011 with a degree in crop sciences with a concentration in agricultural business.
00:03:37
Speaker
And then for four years after college, I worked in the agricultural sales industry. So I worked for a couple companies that would sell
00:03:47
Speaker
seed programs, so corn and soybean programs to retailers and farmers as well as another company that would sell crop protection packages to the retailers and farmers. So, you know, once the seeds are in the ground, obviously, you know, there's, well, I mean, sometimes there's a pre-emergence herbicide that you want to spray and then post-emergence and then fungicides like that. So did that for four years after college. And then, you know, long story short, went through
00:04:16
Speaker
a very large layoff for one of my companies. They let go of about 5,000 people, kind of cutting some fat in some places, and that was late 2014, early 2015.
00:04:27
Speaker
And then, you know, kind of took a few months and, you know, went back into another agricultural sales job. I just didn't really like it all that much. Didn't really feel like I fit in as much. So I ended up going into the insurance industry in about June of 2016. Made a career change and been in insurance ever since. Sure. Sure.
00:04:51
Speaker
Were you always set on studying ag business or were you kind of rolling around some other some other ideas of maybe taking on like more farm work as an adult? Just kind of wondering what the thought process was there before applying to college. Yeah so before applying to college yeah I was pretty much set that you know I was going to you know go and study agriculture. I wanted what the original plan was to get a job you know making my own money
00:05:17
Speaker
Um, having my own benefits, stuff like that, having my own life, but then also help out on the farm kind of part time. Um, that if I didn't do anything in the agricultural field, I probably would have chosen something in athletics, you know, sports management or, you know, just something along the lines of that. But, but yeah, um, I would say for the most part though, went in with the idea of the mindset that I was going to study agriculture via a sales rep and then help out on the family farm, um, you know, as a part time kind of deal. Sure. Got it.
00:05:46
Speaker
And when you made your transition into insurance, did you always kind of have the intention of working specifically with real estate professionals or how did you come to adopt the niche that you currently occupy?
00:06:00
Speaker
Yeah, so like I mentioned earlier, you know, I went through kind of a huge layoff for a company. So I didn't really stumble upon insurance until I was speaking with one of my mentors who happened to be our family state farm agent. He's actually a very, very good family friend of ours. You know, I kind of talked with them and said, hey, I'm just kind of looking around. I'm not really sure what I'm doing.
00:06:25
Speaker
interviewed for a couple of sales roles kind of around northern Illinois. I was
Navigating the Insurance Industry
00:06:30
Speaker
living in Champaign, Illinois at the time with a friend of mine who was actually going to law school and interviewed for some sales roles in the northern Illinois area just doing various types of sales. And I'm like, you know what, I just, I'm not really finding what I want. And then my mentor
00:06:46
Speaker
he had said, well, you know, if you don't find anything that you like, you know, I can really see you doing well in this industry. So just let me know if that's something that you'd be interested in. So I was like, okay, well, keep you in mind. And, you know, a couple other weeks went by and didn't really find anything I liked. And I had another friend who had actually been laid off from his agricultural sales role in his company. And he had decided that he was going to get into the crop insurance sales business. So
00:07:10
Speaker
Obviously, if there's a big hailstorm or something, just like a home insurance policy, you need to have a crop insurance policy in case you don't have any crop to bring in and don't make any money on it. But he needed to get his property and casualty license in order to do so. And he was like, well, if you're thinking about insurance, why don't you just come to take this class with me? So went down there, took the class, and then got my property and casualty licenses. So it's basically home and auto type of lines of business.
00:07:38
Speaker
And then both of us were like, well, you know, we've pretty much got two of the four licenses required to be an insurance agent. So then we went ahead and did our life and health licenses as well. Yeah. Went back to my, my friend and mentor who was the state farm agent. Like, Hey, you know, I,
00:07:55
Speaker
I want to give this a go." And here's kind of proof of it. She made a couple calls and made it happen and then came into State Farm in June of 2016. And now I'm an insurance agent for a different company, but I'm still in insurance today as of June of 2016. And now it's October of 2023. Amazing. That's awesome.
00:08:14
Speaker
how long does it take to get all four of those certifications done? Like, if you were moving at average speed, let's say, because I assume that if you're really super motivated, maybe you could bang all of them out quickly. But you know, for the typical person, how long does it take?
00:08:29
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I was motivated, but then again, there wasn't a timeline that I had to hit either. But if you're a motivated person, I would say you could probably get all four of them done in a matter of about two weeks. Sometimes it would be, you know, like the property and casualty session, for example, it would be on Monday, you do the property on Tuesday, you do the casualty portion of it.
00:08:52
Speaker
You could study the rest of the week or another day or two, take the test for both lines of business on that same day. So a lot of people would do it that way. And then the very next week, if you wanted to, you could do the life and the health and then take the test in a couple of days later. So yeah, if you were really, really moving, you could get it done within a two week period or less, I would say. But for me,
00:09:15
Speaker
Like I said, I didn't really have much of a timeline on it, so it took my time. I really do like to study things. This is the way that I am. I always like to make sure that I'm well prepared. It took me, I would say, probably about a month to do all four of them. Right. Once you get all of these done and you start at an insurance company, what's
00:09:35
Speaker
the career trajectory. I guess like how do you start in what role do you begin in and how do you kind of progress through things over time? Like I know for example in investment banking like you typically start off as an analyst and then you gain more experience get promoted into the next role. Is there something like that in insurance or you just start off as an agent and you just become a more experienced agent?
00:09:57
Speaker
Yeah, so the way that it started, I mean with my role particularly or particularly with State Farm was who I had started my insurance career with.
00:10:08
Speaker
He started off as what was known as a CCC sales rep, which stood for customer care center or the customer call center. So basically you're kind of like a fear member, or I guess, you know, it's still up the commercial with the Jake from state farms, but you know, the original one where the guys call and it's three in the morning and the wife comes down, who are you talking to or Jake from state farm? So yeah, you, um, you had to start off in that role for at least a year. Um, and then kind of, you know,
00:10:37
Speaker
Bites your time, get your teeth cut, and that part of the business. Prove yourself that you could do that well before you could post amusement airports here, post out to any type of different roles. But from there, it's really, you could do a number of different ways. So you could go towards an underwriting career if you wanted to. You could go more towards a marketing career. You could go towards an agency life. With a huge company like State Farm,
00:11:03
Speaker
there are a lot of aspects to insurance, and there are a lot of different aspects to a huge company like that. But for me, it was pretty much, you know, once I had done that role for a little while, I'm like, this is kind of cool, you know, I get to talk to people from all over the country, you know, in my particular op, they called them ops, so there were five ops, I think, and each op had 10 states. I had 11 because they threw in District of Columbia, and that was the 11th one.
00:11:31
Speaker
But I mean, I got to talk to people from Virginia, Hawaii, Alaska, California, Florida, I mean, everywhere in the country. And you just kind of get to learn people's backgrounds and you build that rapport on the phone. And I'm like, you know what? I couldn't see myself doing this.
00:11:46
Speaker
I chose the role to kind of learn a little bit more about the agency life, so that took me down the role of what was called an agency field specialist, which in layman's terms essentially you had a territory of about 50 different agents with State Farm in particular at that time that I would kind of help them
00:12:06
Speaker
train their team members a little bit, help that agent determine what type of marketing they were going to do as far as direct mailing, kind of digital marketing. Basically, how were you going to bring leads in the door? Once you got them in the door, what was your contact strategy going to be like for your team members? How are you going to hold them accountable? How are you going to use your own book of business to cross sell? How are you going to train your teams to cross sell to do multiple lines of business to grow it that way?
00:12:32
Speaker
So that was kind of the trajectory that I went. And then, you know, after doing that for, I believe, I did that for almost five years. I'm like, Hey, you know, I want to take that next step and become an agent. You know, just unfortunately, it wasn't going to work with, you know, the area that I wanted to be in particularly. And, you know, I had been recruited again, using my air quotes by, by who said insurance, who's an insurance broker, the largest insurance broker in the country.
00:13:00
Speaker
I really liked their business model. I liked their fit. I liked how I had multiple companies that I could essentially sell. If one option didn't work for someone price-wise, there's another one that's equally as good. It was a good fit for me and my family and it's been good ever since.
00:13:19
Speaker
There's definitely been highs and lows, of course, along the way, but I think that's going to happen with any business. But no, I'm happy with the role and the trajectory that I kind of took. And it's something that I'm continuing to try to grow up and get better at every day. Absolutely.
00:13:34
Speaker
So actually I'm curious these roles that you're describing having occupied over the years with being on the phone with a huge diversity of people training agents that are a little bit like newer to the business than you are. Sounds like it would require a set of skills that is relatively similar to what you need to be a good
00:13:54
Speaker
Salesman and yet you mentioned earlier in the conversation that this mentor that you had when you were younger suggested that you move From sales to insurance that you might be really good at insurance in this industry So how would you say the skill set needed in your industry is actually different distinctly from sales?
The Role of Empathy and Connection in Insurance
00:14:14
Speaker
Well, you know with him kind of knowing me and my family and my personality and you know You know, he was obviously
00:14:22
Speaker
He was my brother's basketball coach and some other sports coaches along the way too. I always wanted to play for him as a coach, but unfortunately I never had the opportunity to. Just didn't work out with the timing and everything. He would always follow me in my athletic career and everything. I was one of those people that just
00:14:40
Speaker
I just went balls to the wall. I mean, I would always give 100% in everything that I did. It was evidence, you know, just, you know, in junior high, you know, he won the Hustle award or something like that. So I was always doing something like that. And, you know, after any game in high school football or basketball, I could barely walk afterwards. Yeah, yeah, you sound like a coach's dream. Oh, my God.
00:15:03
Speaker
Well, we weren't very good, but it was fun though. It was always fun. But I think he just noticed that drive and the commitment that I had. He saw me just get the crap kicked out of me and I just kept coming back for more. I think that's a strong mentality to have in sales or really any profession.
00:15:24
Speaker
You know, it's not if, it is when, is your bat going to be put against the wall, or when is something going to go wrong, when is there going to be a mistake made, and what are you going to do to rectify the situation. So I think that was really kind of what led him more towards like, hey, let's see what this does for you. I know how you are in life.
00:15:45
Speaker
you know you made you have great grades all the way through school too so you're obviously very driven and determined so I think this would be a great fit for you so I think that's probably the the main reason why you know he kind of wanted me to look into this role a little bit but I guess maybe to answer your question I don't think it's really any different from a sales role or this role or really any other role just resiliency, likeability,
00:16:11
Speaker
Yeah, resiliency, likeability, and just put yourself in your client's shoes. Try to make someone's life better. Be a better human, essentially. Sounds like you need a pretty strong sense of empathy for other people, too, which is probably something that listeners should recognize, right?
00:16:29
Speaker
I think it's very common for younger people especially to be like, well, I want to help people as a general reason for why they're going into a role. But in this case, it really seems like that needs to be true. Absolutely.
00:16:45
Speaker
fallen on hard times, or they've had a hard time in their family, or maybe they can only afford so much right now. You have to put yourself in your client's shoes. And I've been in my client's shoes. I've been broke. I've been unemployed. I've fallen on hard times. I lost my mother at a young age. So I can understand and empathize with that. It's not me just being fake about it.
00:17:12
Speaker
So you really have to be able to do that in this type of role to be successful. And I think people have a really good kind of BS monitor, especially nowadays. Like they can tell if you're being genuine or if you're just kind of like going through it kind of quickly. Like maybe you're showing a little bit of empathy on the phone, but then you move on to the next subject real quick. Like, okay, what's your credit card number or something like that? You know, people pick up on something like that.
00:17:36
Speaker
And it's something that I would say other sales coaches and mentors have said with me, like you need to kind of push for that sale a little bit more and be a little more pushy, but it's not my personality. Anyone that would know me would say that about me.
00:17:54
Speaker
You know, you have a good way to just kind of ease into people and you can put yourself in their shoes. And I think that's what you have to do. You have to have that work ethic. You have to have the determination and the drive, but you have to be able to relate to people and you have to empathize with them. If you can't do that last thing, that empathy, it's not going to work. People are going to see right through that and they're going to go to the next person. You have to be able to have that relationship with them.
00:18:21
Speaker
Okay, so I'm definitely getting a sense for why it is that you switched industries and why it was a good fit for you.
Building and Maintaining Professional Relationships
00:18:27
Speaker
Your whole sports background, I mean, talking about being this incredibly and naturally resilient person makes me wonder
00:18:35
Speaker
the situations in insurance where you really need to kind of have that same mentality, like what the tougher challenges are that you might face. But before we get into that, I guess it makes sense to start by asking what you actually do on a daily basis at Goosehead, like what do your responsibilities look like?
00:18:53
Speaker
First and foremost, my responsibilities to my customers and to my referral partners. On a typical day, it looks like if I have some pipeline that I'm working on for a referral partner, and most of my referral partners, as I'm sure we'll kind of touch on a little bit later, are mortgage lenders in the industry as well as realtors, or that's basically any type of a real estate professional.
00:19:16
Speaker
As well as, you know, a lot of friends that are captive agents that, you know, maybe the customer is getting dropped from them and they need some place to go for a while before they can go back to whatever captive agency they want. But on a daily basis though, it's basically just reaching out to a lot of folks, trying to prospect, trying to find some new referral partners.
00:19:36
Speaker
There's quite a few networking events that are available to do. So as far as a typical day, you know, like to come in early in the morning. Well, I mean, I guess a typical day if you wanted to bring it all the way back to early in the morning, you know, get up late. You know, I always do a good workout. I think that's good for anything just to put yourself in the right mindset.
00:19:56
Speaker
to get the day going and then it starts hammering out the phones, catching up on any pipeline from the day before, trying to work on closing a deal, making someone's job a little bit easier, being a better part of their network. Like I said, for the referral partners, they're essentially trusting me with their business when they're referring someone to me.
00:20:19
Speaker
You have to do well. And then afterwards, it's just following up with them once the sale is made, the customer that is once the sale is made, checking to make sure that everything is okay. They got moved in, the closing went well, and asking for referrals and kind of starting that cycle all over again. Right. Okay. And so these people that you're asking for referrals from are realtors or who is the population that you're targeting for the most part?
00:20:44
Speaker
Primarily, my referral partners are mortgage lenders. Like I said, I do work with several realtors as well, trying to get better at that, and really just any type of a real estate professional. But I would say primarily lenders, realtors, and title reps. Do you have any general tips? Maybe this is more of a selfish question, but reaching out to people that you want to do business with in those situations, how do you
00:21:12
Speaker
present yourself in a way that doesn't come across as salesy. Like you don't seem to be of the used car salesman personality, which I love. Right. Like you are looking for business. So how do you walk that line between being friendly and caring but also wanting to make a sale?
00:21:32
Speaker
Well, that's a great question. And once I have that figured out, I will let everyone know. I mean, what's made me successful with a lot of the referral partners is, you know, one of the very first questions, if not the very first question, that's, you know, how you doing, you know, how's things going is, what can I do to help you in your business? You know, you got to prove to them that you are truly going to be a referral partner with them and help them grow their business.
00:22:01
Speaker
If you're strictly just going in and be like, hey, I'm a new insurance agent, I'm just trying to network with some people, looking for some leads, you know, will you hand me some? It's not gonna work that way with some people, you know, they really do like that assertiveness, but I've found it doesn't work as well that way. I found it works much better whenever you go in trying to figure out
00:22:20
Speaker
What is a pain point for them? What is something that you can help them with? And when the opportunity presents itself, you're like, hey, you know what, Mr. or Ms. or Mrs. Linder or Realtor or whatever, you know, I've shown you what my portfolio is like, I've shown you what I can do, you know, give me a shot, you know, and then when you get that shot, you just got to be able to knock it out of the park and then
00:22:41
Speaker
when you do that be like you know what see i told you so i mean let's let's do this again you know and then of course you know whenever you get the referral from someone that they had referred you like let's say that you know you were a referral from a lender that i got julia and then you referred me you know your friend tom down the road
00:23:00
Speaker
If I do a great job with Tom and be like, hey, you know what? I think your personality would match really well with this lender that had referred Julia over to me. Why don't I set you up with them? Know that you'll be looking for a house here soon, or maybe you've got some equity in your home that you want to take out, or maybe you want to refinance, which right now, of course, the mortgage rates are not really strongly favorable for refinances, but when they come back down,
00:23:25
Speaker
I've got the person for you. So whenever you can take a referral that you got from someone else and send that new referral back to the original lender or the realtor or whatever referral partner sends you that business, you're not only talking to talk about, Hey, how, how can I help your business out? I want to help your business out. I mean, that's, that's proof right there. So I mean, that's, that's key. Right. But you're also turning around on the other side and communicating with
00:23:51
Speaker
home buyers who in the future are going to buy other properties, right? Referring them back to these other people. Mortgage brokers or whatever.
00:23:58
Speaker
Oh, yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of renters out there, of course, too, and, you know, that are kind of afraid of interest rates right now. But, you know, if they find a house that they want, I mean, my wife and I have even ran into this situation before and there was a house we really liked, but we weren't pre-approved. I mean, if you're thinking about buying a home soon and, you know, not to throw my pitch out there, but, you know, but talk to a lender, you know, or talk to me, I can set you up with someone. I mean,
00:24:23
Speaker
It doesn't take very long to get pre-approved, but if you come to the table, you really like this house and you're not pre-approved versus someone that is pre-approved already, guess who's getting the house first. You always have to be... Cross all your T's and down your I's before you actually go looking. When it comes to the actual insurance that you're offering home buyers or people who are looking to buy things, is that insurance on the mortgage, insurance on the home itself, is it just like a whole
00:24:52
Speaker
Package, what exactly are you offering as a product?
00:24:55
Speaker
Yeah, so the key buzzword in the industry that I'm sure everyone's familiar with, and they've seen it a million times, is that bundle, that quote unquote bundle. There is a lot of truth to that. If you have just a single line product like a homeowner's policy, you're not going to get the best price if you don't have what's considered a multi-line discount. So I'm always going to strive for that, be like, hey, Mr. and Mrs. Customer,
00:25:23
Speaker
I want to put you in the best possible position. I want to provide you the best coverage, but I also want to provide you the best savings. The best way to do that is to pair this with your auto policy or whatever other policies you might have. What's your VIN, your year making model of your car? What's your driver's license number? Let's just offer you a quote.
00:25:43
Speaker
If we don't come out competitive or more competitive than what you are right now, it's free. You're not out anything. Just let me do the work for you. Let me prove to you that I'm on your side and that I'm on your lender side or your realtor side or whoever. I'm an extension of them like we had talked about before. I'm going to take care of you. We're always going to look to bundle things together.
00:26:05
Speaker
Many, many, many times it works. Sometimes it doesn't for whatever reason, and that's okay. But that's something that you can kind of come back to. So you always want to kind of stay in contact with them, you know, every couple months or so. It's always something we can take a look at again. It's smart. Everybody needs insurance, right? You can't drive a car without it being insured. You definitely don't want to live in a house without it being insured. Like shit happens all the time, right? Pardon my French, but... Definitely. Yeah. Part of life. Everyone needs it.
Challenges and Inspirations in Insurance
00:26:34
Speaker
So what are the most difficult aspects of your job, would you say? And you're interacting with a lot of people on a daily basis, so I'm assuming that it might have something to do with this, but you tell me. Yeah, so, well, I mean, it's...
00:26:52
Speaker
There's a ton of things that are very difficult about this role. So it's hard for me to pinpoint what would be the most difficult. But if I had to pinpoint what I thought would be the most difficult, I would just say it is that resilience piece. You know, especially whenever you're first starting out, you are going to have to be doing a lot of cold calling. You're going to have to
00:27:11
Speaker
you know get told no a lot like you know you have to just grow your thick skin and kind of become numb to it it's nothing personal you know you just have to be willing to face it be like okay you know and i've seen you know some things on instagram and stuff like that about acronyms about what words are and stuff so no is just an acronym for an o which means next opportunity so you know you just gotta just gotta move on to the next one so i would say the the mindset of you know
00:27:40
Speaker
just picking up that phone or driving to the next office whenever you've gotten told no, or maybe someone yelled at you, or like, oh, I'm having a really bad day. That may not be something that you need to take personally. Maybe they're just having a bad day and that was a bad time. Maybe you can try them again later. And then I would say the next hardest thing
00:28:00
Speaker
would be you have to continue to follow up. Not everyone's going to buy for near the very first time, even if it's the best deal that you've ever come across in your life. A lot of people don't want to rush into making decisions. So just that continued follow up, the resilience piece of it, having that positive attitude,
00:28:22
Speaker
those are things that you have to keep with you at all times and you have to be able to overcome a bad situation. If there's going to be a mistake made or I'm sorry, not if when a mistake is going to be made or when something goes wrong, you have to show your clients or your referral partners that you're in their corner. You have to take the steps necessary to rectify these. Sure. Well, okay. So I think there's something in this that is really generally applicable to
00:28:45
Speaker
being employed anywhere, but especially in real estate, right? Like if people want to buy from you and work with you, they have to like, know and trust you or whatever the general order is, right? Know, like and trust you. And to do that, they have to see your face like often, right? You have to show that you're following through with what you're doing consistently, right? So they have a long-term relationship with you and are willing to do business in the future. So that makes a lot of sense.
00:29:11
Speaker
And on this note, I know that you and I got in contact initially because of your connection with Colleen Rudnick and John Horton and both of them. Your mortgage partners for life. Look them up on Instagram. They were so cool. And they mentioned in this specific context, like for sales, that mindset and following people like Zig Ziglar or Tony Robbins and being into mindset cultivation is super
00:29:39
Speaker
important. So would you say that that's also the case for you in your position and insurance or are you more so just on like finding inspiration within yourself?
00:29:49
Speaker
I think it's really a little bit of both. I'm not only an insurance agent or a business owner or anything. I'm also a father. I'm also a person. I'm a husband. There's tons of things out there to put yourself in that good mindset. Let's say that I've had a very bad day.
00:30:11
Speaker
you know, got told no with every single person that I talked to. I didn't sell a single thing, which has happened before. So then I go home, you know, my tail's kind of between my legs, I'm getting in the car, and I can't bring that attitude home with me, especially when I've got a two-year-old son who is my world. I don't want him to always see me sad, down, you know, not smiling. Right.
00:30:34
Speaker
you know, no matter what if you've had a bad day and of course I mean even for you know not that I'm a marriage counselor by any means but you don't want to come home be like oh honey today just sucked again you know this is horrible like yeah that rubs off on people so um there are such a thing as energy vampires or energy suckers anything like that so
00:30:55
Speaker
It's not something that I want to be. I'm not saying that I'm perfect by any means. I mean, I have come home a couple of times like that, but we've always tried to not do it two times in a row. We'll put it that way. Absolutely. So in the spirit of being positive then, I don't know if you can share any like big wins from your career or just instances on the every day that make you feel really good about what you're doing. Oh man, some big wins lately.
00:31:25
Speaker
So yeah, so one of my referral partners, um, who's a, I don't know if you guys do names or not to whatever you're comfortable with. Yeah. I'm good either. Well, I hadn't run it by them. So I don't know. Sure. Sure. I guess I'll start the question over if you need, if you need it. Oh man. So, so some big wins lately. Well, I'd say probably my most recent big win that I would call is I have a title rep.
00:31:52
Speaker
that works for a larger title company around the Downers Grove, Westchester area. We just became really good friends. You know, I cold called his office and said, hey, I'm a new business owner in town looking to network with some folks. I'd love to help you out with some events, you know, get some real tours or whatever you're kind of looking for.
00:32:11
Speaker
We just kind of hit it off. We found out we both live on the same street, but on the opposite side of the tracks of Westmont. We have a lot of the same interests. He's very big into sports. We like to drink beer, like to have a good time, do networking that way. We're both family men. He actually had his fifth child. I'm about to have my second, so I keep joking with him that I'm trying to catch up to him.
00:32:38
Speaker
Sounds like it, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, but the biggest win though was, you know, he actually trusted me enough to have me write his own business last year on him and his wife and his then four kids, soon to be fifth kid. But even more so, my most recent biggest win is
00:32:54
Speaker
He sent me a text the other week and said, hey, I, you know, referred my parents over to you. So then I just wrote business on his parents actually went to their house and helped them, you know, do all their docu signs and stuff like that and got to meet the parents and just kind of became a deeper part of his family and his connection.
00:33:12
Speaker
um in his network and you know we talk a lot all the time too because I mean like I mentioned I'm getting ready to have my my second child in February so congratulations oh well thank you thank you it's uh it's gonna be a girl this time so not really a whole lot of girls in my family so freaking out a little bit so you know but it's all good it'll be all good
00:33:31
Speaker
healthy children of course is what we all want regardless of anything else but no we just kind of talked about you know being a man and you know what it takes to be a father and you know what some what are some of the things that he does with his kids to stay active with his family and something like that so so yeah the fact that I became really close with him
00:33:50
Speaker
able to write his own business and that he trusted me enough to refer me as parents. He's actually referred me to a couple other families too that I wrote business on. I can't really ask for anything better than that. That's happened several times, but the most recent big win, I'd say that's my most recent big win.
00:34:07
Speaker
And so when it comes to socializing, are you naturally, I mean, so I get the sense typically when I hear from people that they've been involved with sports for a prolonged period of time. What comes to mind is somebody who is, who you're describing yourself to be like gritty, super resilient, is into the sport, has a love for self development. But how about being social? Like, have you always been really
00:34:31
Speaker
of like a team oriented mindset? Or did you kind of have to work over the years on becoming more extroverted and outgoing? Because it sounds like that would really be a leg up right in your line of work when it comes to reaching out to people.
00:34:44
Speaker
Yeah, so I would honestly probably call myself more of an introvert than an extrovert, and that is something that I've had to work on a lot more. I'm especially becoming a business owner now, but you know what? I married the right person. I don't think anyone could ever say that my wife is any type of an introvert. She will literally talk to a brick wall until the thing starts talking back to her.
00:35:08
Speaker
So i think it's a couple of things. One, you kind of hit on it. You have to be willing to self-develop and you want to try to become the 1% better every day. But you have to also have good network around you. You have to have a good partner. You have to have good referral partners.
00:35:25
Speaker
I mean, if you're around a ton of other introverts, you know, there's, I mean, I don't really know how anyone's going to really get anything done. You have to have that one person at least come through and be like, well, folks, I mean, we gotta, we gotta do something different. You know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So.
00:35:44
Speaker
Yeah. So, I mean, I would say maybe growing up just being kind of in a smaller town and maybe being, you know, just the fact that, you know, everyone in the town, you know, would go to the basketball game on the Friday night or the football game. You know, I would always be there, of course, if people knew me a little bit more. But I would always, you know, be told by my coaches, hey, you need to be a little bit more outspoken. Even in other clubs that I was in, you know, high school or college or, you know, some other networking events that I've
00:36:11
Speaker
become a part of or conveys or something like that. It's, you know, it's uncomfortable at first, but I mean, you got to take the first step. So I'm not perfect by any means. I've said that several times now and I'll probably say it again before we're done here, but it's just you have to find the right folks to be around, you know.
00:36:32
Speaker
Be around positive people, be around people that will bring you out of your shell, not only for life, but for business, for anything. I love that. Yeah. How about on the daily, on this note, I guess it feeds into my next question. On a daily basis in your role for Goosehead, what's the split of alone time that you have where you're doing calls at home versus in the office around other coworkers?
Balancing Solitude and Networking
00:36:59
Speaker
What's the work environment itself like?
00:37:03
Speaker
Yeah. So I know that the listeners can't really see me or anything, but literally in what I would probably call a like eight by eight little cell here with no one knows a single door. Um, so I would say it was pretty much spent by myself all the time now. I mean, well, I guess I shouldn't say all the time. Whenever I'm in an office setting up, I'm by myself, you know, I don't have any other team members. I'm just a single, uh, single member LLC set up right now. Um,
00:37:32
Speaker
Obviously, the goal is to grow and to scale and have some other team members, of course. But the majority of the time is spent alone prospecting, working on leads, stuff like that. But of course, you always want to try to have some breakfast meetings or some coffee, lunch meetings with any other referral partners, potential customers. Customers keep their relationship going.
00:37:56
Speaker
If I had to put a percentage on it of alone time versus with someone else, I would say probably more of a 75% alone and 25% with someone else. But I mean, part of that is me as well. You know, we do have a corporate office with Goosehead that's in the Rosemont area, which, you know, I live in Westmont. My office is in Downers Grove, so it's not too far away. But of course, you know, you use the excuse of Chicago traffic and
00:38:25
Speaker
kind of a pain to get to. That's a very real reason. That doesn't even sound like an excuse to me. Yeah, it's a real thing but it is something that's always been available to me and I did do a lot more of that whenever I was first starting off because you did see the other energy of the folks that are you know kind of in the other you know not necessarily cubicles but other desks around you and stuff and you kind of feed on that.
00:38:49
Speaker
But I do always try to keep in touch with other Gooset agents that are around me. We like to get together for lunch every now and then and stuff to talk about what's going on good with them, what's not going good with them, what are some ways we could fix this. So yeah, always trying to be around someone whenever I can. But a lot of times you kind of have to be alone too, especially if you're on a sales call. I don't think they're really going to want to listen to the next guy around you.
00:39:16
Speaker
That's not necessarily conducive to you making commissions or anything. No, it's just part of the game sometimes. You know, you got to be alone at times and then you really got to work together at times.
00:39:30
Speaker
How many hours a week on average do you work? And is it like, I always like to ask this, is there any sort of work-life balance or as one of my guests put it, work-life harmony, or are you very much a workaholic?
Work-Life Balance and Personal Interests
00:39:44
Speaker
Where do you fall in this spectrum? Oh my gosh, that is a tremendous question. And if I had to average it out, I mean, I am working, you know, some nights and weekends, of course, too. So I mean, God,
00:40:00
Speaker
If you're going to hold a gun to my head and you put a number to it, I don't know, maybe maybe it's 65 hours a week, we'll call it somewhere between 60 and 70. But, you know, every day is different, of course. You know, sometimes you have days when you're done early. Sometimes you have days where people don't really start calling you until 5 30 at night because that's when they're getting on work and you have to make yourself available to them.
00:40:22
Speaker
So, you know, I always start my day, and like I said, I like to, like I said earlier, I like to start off with an early morning workout. So, you know, I'm in up normally between 4am, 4.30, I'm getting some coffee. I applaud you. Oh my God. It's not every day, but I would say probably four out of the five days a week, it's in between there.
00:40:47
Speaker
You know, I like to, you know, knock a couple of emails out or knock a couple of quotes out or something in the morning, you know, go to the gym for an hour, come back, and then I watch my son for a little bit, and then my wife goes to the gym.
00:40:59
Speaker
that whenever she comes back home, you know, we kind of park ways and then you go out and I always try to be home for dinner. No matter what, I always try to be home for dinner. You know, sometimes of course the calls do come in and ride at dinnertime or right around dinnertime. So it's not always that happens, but the work life harmony, you know, I'm more of an early riser. So I would say I try to get more definitely.
00:41:21
Speaker
I get more done early in the day as opposed to later in the day. Well, what I didn't say is if I'm getting up before a.m., I mean, I'm pretty much passed out by like eight o'clock or eight thirty at night. So I have not a Netflix binger or anything like that. I mean, of course, we've got TV on in the background, but now I I couldn't tell you the last series I've really watched together. My wife. Yeah.
00:41:43
Speaker
What do you do for fun? I'm curious. I'm very familiar with the Westmont Downers Grove area. I think I mentioned to you in our first call. I went to high school right there. What do you get up to in the area? Yeah, a lot of my wife's cousins, I'm sure you probably went to school with some of them. Probably. I looked at that offline here, but I looked like you were around the same age.
00:42:04
Speaker
What do I like to do for fun? I mean, of course now it's all about my son right now, especially with my wife. She's five months pregnant right now. So we're trying to spend as much time together as a family of three before we become a family of four. But I would say personally, I do like to hang out with friends, of course. I play intramural softball.
00:42:25
Speaker
You know, we're getting our son, even though he's too involved in some soccer activities right now, so we've met some other families that way. My wife has a huge family, so there's always a party no matter what weekend it is. It seems like there's always a party going on.
00:42:41
Speaker
So a lot of family stuff, a lot of sporting events. I like to go to the Cubs games whenever I can. I haven't been able to go lately just because of scheduling and stuff like that. But I love watching the NFL. I mean, pretty much anything with sports or adult beverages or, you know, nice to meet you. Adult beverages, love those, yeah.
00:43:09
Speaker
anything pretty much that involves drinking or hanging out with my friends or family or something. I'm pretty much known to have a good time there. Nice. Awesome. So final question, which is kind of two questions in one. So part A is, do you need to go, like, do you really need to go to college to work in insurance?
Education and Experience in Insurance
00:43:26
Speaker
And if you don't need to, what are some kind of, or just like, what are experiences that you would recommend young people go and pursue to get a head start in the industry?
00:43:37
Speaker
Yeah, so this is a question that I've actually thought about before because I've been asked this before, not in the podcast, but just from other folks around. So do you need to go to college to be an insurance agent or be in insurance? Well,
00:43:57
Speaker
If I'm being honest, what I would probably say is no, a degree is not necessarily required. However, I would say that it is very well received. It's strongly encouraged. Can I say that for a couple of reasons? I mean, I'm obviously a believer in higher education.
00:44:16
Speaker
But I don't think it's always necessary. I mean, obviously trade schools and stuff like that or any other kind of self-education that you can do I think is phenomenal as well. But I think if you have a degree, especially if you're going to start off in a corporate role first before becoming an independent business owner, a lot of employers are going to like to see that you've gone to college and
00:44:38
Speaker
really for a couple of reasons. I think the biggest thing that I got out of having a college degree or going to college was so two things. Number one, it taught me how to be organized. I mean anyone that's been to college would say that the studying part of it or the classes, the classes were very hard.
00:44:57
Speaker
you know, especially if you're taking subjects like chemistry, math, something like that. I mean, and if you've got exams, you know, one right after the other, I mean, you really have to be organized with your time. You know, obviously there's a ton of other things you can do in college that will take you away from that, but you have to be
00:45:14
Speaker
focused and organized if you want to make good grades. And then two, I would say it does show that it helped me with my commitment to any future employer that I was potentially handing over a resume to. Especially if you can prove to them that you've had good grades, it shows them that number one, you are organized and number two, probably more importantly, you're willing to put in the work necessary and to do a good job and be organized with it.
00:45:41
Speaker
Now, I would say the most important thing that anyone could do, though, is to get the real world experience. So, as much as I would believe that college and, you know, education, higher education is greater, I think that there is no substitute whatsoever for real world hands-on experience.
00:45:58
Speaker
Because what the real world experience does is it gives you the chance, myself included, to show your employer, your future employer first hand that you're not just good on paper, but you're good in real life. It was also great because like I said before, it's not a matter if you're going to fail at something, you are going to fail at something.
00:46:21
Speaker
But what is your response to that going to be? Are you going to just freak out and just throw your hands up in the air? We've heard of the fight, flight, or freeze response before. Which one are you going to do? Are you going to fight for it? Or are you just going to freeze up? So I mean, I still make mistakes every day. But I think that any other employer that I would say that I've had would say that I took whatever steps that needed to rectify and do everything I could to make it work out. So I think those are the biggest things
00:46:50
Speaker
as far as the real world experience. There's nothing like that. It gives you an opportunity to put your best book forward and show them what you can actually do. Show them you can be a part of their team and you're not going to screw them over, essentially. So that's what I would say. Yes, college can be important, real world experience, nothing more important than that.
00:47:10
Speaker
Sure. Were you, I mean, like, of course I have more questions. Were you able to work in college while earning your degree? Or did you seek out like summer employment internships, anything like that?
00:47:21
Speaker
Yeah, so I did work, you know, I would, you know, I went to school at the University of Illinois, which was really only about an hour away from my hometown of Paris. So, I mean, you know, I would go back on the weekends and stuff and help farm, especially the older that I got in college. And, you know, that became more important to me and I knew I was going to go down that career path. But yeah, then I did do summer internships, of course, as well. I did other summer jobs if I didn't have an internship. So, yes, I did have the ability to work and go to school too.
00:47:51
Speaker
Got it. Yeah, that is so important. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't really work during the school year as much until I got probably more into my senior year. Yeah. A lot of several summer internships, but always had some kind of a summer role. Right. Well, but it also really does sound like from what we were discussing at the beginning of this episode is you grew up working, right, on your family's farm. Like that is you are
00:48:16
Speaker
being taught something from a very young age right strong work ethic like being accountable especially to your family right like that's a different degree of responsibility that a lot of people just don't
00:48:27
Speaker
have or encounter until they leave school and actually are getting their first job. Even for me, and I'm sure it's especially apparent to employers, the difference between people in college who have worked, whether as kids or while in school versus those who have not, it's night and day. It's so apparent.
00:48:47
Speaker
Oh yeah, I think an employer or some kind of a manager or boss can definitely tell if someone's had that discipline kind of instilled in them by their family or a job, something like that. That's why I say education is great, but first-hand experience is nothing better.
00:49:06
Speaker
Right. Completely agreed. Well, Cold, this has been amazing. I don't know if you have any other insights to add about your career if you do speak now. Speak now or forever hold your peace. Yeah. I mean, I guess the only really insight I would say is just anyone that's looking to do, you know, insurance sales, insurance ownership is, you know, be yourself. You know, people are going to gravitate and do business with people that they know, like, and trust like you had talked about earlier. So
00:49:34
Speaker
be that person, you know, be that likable guy or gal and, you know, just go out and work for it and make it happen. Prove to you, prove to you, prove to your customers and prove to your referral partners that you're always going to be in their corner and you're going to help them out no matter what it is. Don't talk about it, be about it. Right. But the nature of your job just like does seem tough. So if you really aren't that person, like if you have to pretend to be that person, doesn't seem like it would work out for you. People are going to catch up on that. They're going to chew you out.
00:50:04
Speaker
Yeah. Don't be something you're not. Always be yourself. Right. That's the hardest part of growing up and figuring out what to do, right? Is what are your actual skills and talents and traits?
00:50:16
Speaker
Oh yeah, but I mean you know as well as I do. I mean there's plenty of resources online or other people that you know on your network or something. There's always something you can do if you think you like something. There's some type of activity or a workshop or a seminar or an online class or something you can do to see if you truly like it and see if you want to take that next step. So I would just encourage anyone, no matter what it is,
00:50:38
Speaker
whatever you're interested in, seek something out because it's going to show in your performance if you like something. If you're doing a job that you don't like, yeah, the performance is going to suffer, but if you do something that you like every day, it's going to show. People are going to notice and you're going to be happier. It's all about life short, so we got to be happy doing what we do. That is the truth.
00:51:04
Speaker
I have to get too deep on anyone. Life is scarily short, I agree. This has been wonderful. To be completely frank, I have just too much going on in my W2 over the next week. I'm probably going to take four to five days, maybe six days to edit this. Take your time. Take your time.
00:51:27
Speaker
I'll send you what I come up with whenever you have a free hour or so maybe at the gym, although I cannot listen to podcasts at the gym, so I totally understand if that's a no. I do CrossFit, so I'm not listening. I'm not one of those guys. I just like it because of the class, the workouts there. I don't have to think about what I'm doing.