Episode 312: Win Win Win with Elevate Teams with Dominic Piccirillo

Greetings, everybody. Welcome to the next episode. Super, super pumped, super, super excited to have on uh a new friend, uh a colleague, an incredible multi-agency and business owner, the one, the only Dom Picarola. Dom, how are you doing, sir? I'm doing great, Mike. Thanks for having me today. Hey, you're welcome. You're welcome. Thanks for joining us. And uh, you have come to our events. You've been a great uh support of Unstoppable Nation, uh, our tribe of independent insurance agents who are constantly striving for more, striving for higher. And many of our members already invest in Elevate Teams, and we're gonna learn more about Elevate Teams today. But you know, what I want to start off with today is tell us a little bit more about who Dom is, and you have a unique history uh in leading Elevate Teams that comes from the independent insurance agency side. Where did you get started in this industry?

Yeah, so I I actually got started as an intern uh back in 2006 when we still had a file room and paper files and mail that got dropped on your desk instead of PDFs, believe it or not.

So what are paper files and snail mail? I haven't but you act you act like you weren't there at that time. Yeah, no, we had a whole wall of paper files. I think it was a Jeter filing system. Back to you.

But yeah, so I started as an intern and um I was working at the time for my then girlfriend, now ex-girlfriend's stepfather, who you know decided to give me an internship. And I lived about an hour outside of New York and uh on Long Island. And the first day he picked me up for work in a Mercedes-Benz with a Cuban cigar and a four-strock cappuccino, and I thought I could get used to this. And so that was that was my entry into the insurance business. Um, and then I realized it wasn't all Cuban cigars and Mercedes-Benz cars, so it was it was a quite a long journey from there for me.

Yeah, yeah. So um good ride though. I mean, you know, the the desired outcome and if you hit some goals and and and follow a plan and a strategy, uh, leads to a very good place. Would you agree?

Yeah, absolutely. And honestly, that's why I love you know what you're doing with agency owners. You know, we had or I had my own system for mine uh that was built off of traction, which was EOS. So, yeah, I mean, we were running EOS, and um, you know, for us that worked, but I think there's you know a lot of similarity, similarities between, you know, what I was doing in my business and and what you're doing now and and how you're you know hyper focused on insurance. I think it works incredibly well. Um, but for me, I kind of just threw a bunch of stuff against the wall to see what would stick. And I was going to, you know, VI networking groups and evening events and calling friends and family and doing all kinds of uh outreach, so to speak, and trying to build up a business. And then uh ultimately I found some good centers of influence and I was able to start getting referrals, and and that ended up really working for me. And I ultimately ended up leaving uh mobile insurance for an agency out on Long Island uh where I worked for about two years. And then in February of 22, uh I launched my own insurance brokerage called Cody Group in New York City. Um, you know, at the time it was it was myself and one employee, and uh we were kind of off to the races. So, you know, once I started, you know, there were a lot of things I didn't realize about, you know, actually running a business as opposed to just selling insurance. So, you know, at the beginning I was the janitor. I took out the trash, you know, I had to clean up after myself. Uh, I was answering the phones, I was doing pretty much every single job in the business that you could possibly do. Um, and after about a year or two of really doing everything, we were we were super busy, our renewals were starting to come in, new business referrals were coming in, and you know, I was really struggling to keep up with the work. You know, I was working 70, 80 hours a week. And, you know, a friend of mine had had recommended that I do an exercise where I write down every single task that I was doing and my employee was doing for a week, and then take a look and see what we were spending our time on. And ultimately I realized that most of the things that were taking up the majority of our time were things that I did as an intern. And so, you know, from there, I said, well, if if we're spending a lot of our time on things that I was doing as an unlicensed person, it made sense for me to hire an unlicensed person outside of the country to take on that work for us. And so that was my kind of aha moment into outsourcing. Um, so we started in India. I had a VA in India for about a year, and then my now business partner in L of A team, Stan, uh, recommended that I try working with people in Latin America. Um, and so I did, and ultimately we built up a team of uh five people in Latin America at Cody Group, my insurance business, before uh we sold it in 2022. So, you know, we essentially had a proven case study for LA teams. Um, so when me and Stan launched that business, you know, we had a really good idea of you know what the market looked like. You know, we had the training modules and procedures set up and ready to go. And so, you know, it was really just figuring out the recruiting side of it and getting people trained up and then trying to get some sales in the door.

Yeah. Fantastic story. And, you know, the basis of what you've got and and you know, because my question is always, always, whether it be, you know, one of our partners in business or a new team member or even the consumer marketplace, why should somebody do business with you over and above any and all other options available to them? And we've got to be answering that question in every way, every single day, right? So, why should somebody do business with Elevate Teams as an example? I mean, you have a history as an agency owner, you understand what it's like in the trenches out there networking and marketing and creating processes and growing teams and all of that. So you've been there and done that, as they say, and now you're helping independent insurance agency owners across North America have the right people in the right seats, back to an EOS term, for their agencies to help them grow and scale, right?

So yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, for us, it's really it's really about helping our clients grow. And then also, you know, we're helping people in Latin America grow as well, right? So one of our clients said it to us recently that we set up a model where it's a win-win-win, right? It's a win for us as the as Elevate Teams as a business. It's a win for the people in Latam that we're placing with our clients in the United States. And it's also a win for the agency owners in the US that are getting high quality talent, you know, at a lower price point than what people are paying in the US. Um, but you know, for us, we we're not looking at ourselves as necessarily a replacement for people that are in your office, right? We're more of an augmentation of your staff. So a lot of people come to us and they say, you know, Susie in the office is so busy and you know, she can't get to calling our clients to cross-sell them, or she can't get to the pile of quotes that she's supposed to be doing that's on her desk, so to speak. And so I well, what if we took, you know, what if we took certificates off of Susie's desk? What if we took binders and ID cards off her desk? What if we were able to set up the clients for her in your management system, or we were able to handle an intake form that would gather the information that she needed to do the quote, go into a comparative reader, quote it, and then hand it back to Susie to go finalize the quote and sell it to the client, right? Like there's a lot of things that we could take off your existing staff's desk that you don't need to be licensed to do that will allow them to function at a much higher level and also allow them to drive revenue for the business, whether it be through, you know, cross-selling or upselling or asking existing clients for referrals, right? And so that's really the way that we view this model.

Yeah, and and you have multiple types of people available, even customer-facing team members, right? Correct. Yeah.

So we have three offerings soon to be four. Um, our first offering is a back office um customer support level person. They're still going to be bilingual, they're fluent in English, but they may have a little bit heavier accent than counterparts. Um, we have a client-facing offering where uh these are people that are more comfortable on the phones. Most of them have, you know, BPO or business process outsourcing experience uh in call centers in Colombia, Nicaragua, other parts of Latam. Uh, and then our highest level offering is, well, our now second highest level is our elevated VA. So we're we're taking the best, uh, the best of the best of each training class. Um, so we recruit people in Latin America, we bring them on board, we train them, we pay for training for four weeks. They're trained in the four largest management systems. So AMS 360, Applied Epic, Hawksoft, and Easy Links. Um, and then about 50% of the people don't make it through training. And that's because we don't believe that we're not going to be putting forward anyone that we don't believe is gonna be a good fit for our clients. Um, and so after they go through the extensive recruiting and training process, it's only at that time that we put them forward for interviews with clients or potential clients for placements. Um, and so for us, you know, we're really trying to uh get the best people available. And then within that class, the top of the class we put forward for what's called our elevated offering, um, where they're amazing English, uh top performers. And then we also will train them for two weeks on specific tasks that you might want them to do. Usually it's stuff like quoting or accord forms or excess lines, things that are a bit more in-depth. And then as of you know Monday, the Monday the 16th, we'll be live with our most uh our newest offering, which is gonna be we are offering to to build out SOPs for people. So if you come to us and you say, hey, I really want to hire someone, but I don't have any training, you know, training modules available, or I don't have my SA SOPs built out, um, we'll say, okay, you know, we're gonna bring you our top of the class with the best English, and then we're gonna sit with you and take a look at how you process your work. From there, we'll create the SOPs, we'll get sign-off from you, and then we'll train your remote worker from us on exactly how you want things done. Um, and then from there, you can then use those uh those procedures to train other people as well.

Wow. That is significant because I know in the scaling world, there's a difference between growth and scale. And I'm not going to get into it on this podcast, but you know, scaling is growing into your future self. But a key component is the self-identity and knowing that you might be the bottleneck, one, two, letting go of that responsibility and allowing somebody else to help build your system so that the system becomes the default go-to for everything that happens. And now here you are. And I heard you say that. We were recently talking on another subject, and I heard you talk about that, and I said, huh, here it is. So that is fantastic, and I can't wait to watch that evolve. So if anybody out there is listening, you know, if your systems need to be built out, your SOPs need to be built out, and you don't have the capacity, the bandwidth, or all of the above to be able to do it, uh, Dom and his team just showed up to help you out. So I can't wait to hear more about that. So before we go any further, if somebody wants to reach out to you and learn more about that, how can they get in touch with you and your team? Sure.

So you can check out our website, elevate teams.io. Um, my email is dominicdominic at elevate teams.io. Um, so feel free to check out our website, reach out to me, our own podcast called Elevate the Hustle. That can be found everywhere. But uh we have a bunch of, I think we have 25,000 subscribers on YouTube, uh, Spotify, Apple Music, et cetera. So feel free to check us out there too.

ElevateThe Hustle or Elevate Teams.io. Check those out or Dominic at elevate teams.io, right?io.

Yeah, and check out Mike's episode on ElevateTheHustle.

Hopefully it was helpful. So anyway, yeah, um, super, super excited just to help more agents, most importantly. And let's get back to helping agents. So you talked about the different levels in which you can help agencies, but let's talk about what you've learned because you know I've talked to many people uh within the industry who are of the opinion, and what I want to know is what your experience has been. Is it fairly realistic that 30 to 50 percent or more, 30 to 50 percent or more of all activities that go on in an independent insurance agency can be done by a non-licensed team member?

I I personally think it's more than that. Okay. Um if you I think it's like 70 percent, 70 to 80 percent, honestly, depending on the person and the test you're doing. I mean, look, if you're a producer and you're you're like selling and you're constantly selling and talking to people, then it's obviously a lot less. Um, but if you're an account manager or a CSR or someone that's really more on the service side, I think it's gonna lean more towards that 70 to 80 percent, right? Because most of what they're doing is, you know, processing applications or doing quotes or, you know, um handling billing questions, right? It's a lot, there's a lot of things that they're doing that you don't necessarily need a license to do. Um, and you know, in my opinion, as an owner, I would much rather have those people building rapport with my customers, creating relationships, generating referrals and cross-sells because of the high quality perfor or high quality service that they're providing for my customer as opposed to being bogged down with certs, ID cards, binders, notices of cancellation, you know, even like tracking down renewal quotes for excess lines placements or tracking down, you know, supplemental applications or total cost forms, like all of these relatively small tasks that are still important and need to get done. Um, you know, they're gonna need to get done. They just don't need to get done by a licensed person. Right. So, you know, in my opinion or what I've learned as an owner was that, you know, the more of that work I could take off of their plates. And honestly, one of the questions I always ask people when I was hiring was, you know, what do you hate doing? Like in your current role, you know, and presumably I'm hiring them for a very similar, if not the same, role. It's like in your current role, what do you hate doing? And almost always it was certificates, ID cards, notices of cancellation. And I'd say, great, like, how about if you came to work with me, you wouldn't have to do those things anymore because I have a team of people that process those and their face light up, right? So I was able to not only, you know, use it to make you work with people in Latin to make my agency more efficient, I was able to use it as a recruiting tool for people in the US because I was taking work off their plate that they didn't really want to do anyway, that they just had to do because someone has to do it. Um, and you know, honestly, I was able to retain and you know keep my employees for a very long time because of the environment that we had.

Yeah. And you list on your website, I'm looking at it right now, all of the tasks that they can do. And actually, you put out there, you know, the rough cost per hour uh to an agency for those specific tasks. So I love the transparency uh there as well. And there's lots of client testimonials of the various agency management systems as well. So take us through I run into agency uh leaders and owners fairly often who are still a little leery about the VA environment and and so forth. What would you say to that person?

I mean, look, if you're someone that still has paper files, like I described in the beginning of this episode, and you know, you're not operating on a real management system, um, we're probably not the right fit for you. Right. Um, but you know, if you have employees who, you know, work from home in the United States, even if it's one or two days a week, you know, you already have people who are working remotely. It's not that big of a leap to have someone working, you know. I I had someone who worked in Georgia uh for me, and our offices were in New York City. Right. Um I'm gonna have someone working in Georgia or Florida, like what's the difference of going a little bit farther south and having someone work from Latin America? Um, and honestly, you're getting, for all intents and purposes, you're just expanding the labor pool that you're getting, and you're gonna end up getting much higher quality people that are willing to work, you know, for less money as opposed to hiring an entry-level person in the United States who, you know, may or may not be good or may or may not have like the skill set that's needed uh to do the job well. You know, all of our people are college educated, they all, you know, are really willing and able to work in this environment and they're they're hungry. So it really works out well.

Yeah, fantastic. And and part of the reason that put us together, I believe, is that what Elevate Teams does, like you said in the beginning, you do a really good job of vetting your people before they come on board. And therefore, and with your insurance agency background, you have uh a lot of knowledge on what the right fit might be for an insurance agency position. So you combine all of that and you get the right uh result, if you will. So I think that's really you know brought a perfect storm, if you will, together uh that benefits independent insurance agencies. And what's coming to my mind is you know, I learned this long ago that you should only be doing the things that only you can do. And that that holds true, that holds true for owners and leadership, and it holds true for producers, and really it holds true for licensed insurance professionals who are account managers and CSRs. All of them should only be doing the things that only they can do, and everything else is done with somebody who's a team member of Elevate Teams. And yeah, they they just, you know, once they're trained, and now you can provide the SOPs and everything else. I mean, the skies are parting, right? So that's really, really good stuff, and it will allow you that that great opportunity to scale and grow like never before. So take us through one last thing and we'll just move to wrap this up. So somebody raises their hand, they get in touch with Don. Dom, maybe Don puts the person in touch with one of your teammates who does a great job, sets up some interviews. What does that look like?

Yeah, so we have a director of matchmaking whose name is Carrie Gilbert. Uh, she's been with us for several years now, and she's actually known Stan, my business partner, for over 20 years. Um, but Carrie will go and she meets with every single person about a week before they graduate from training. Um, and then she meets with them again after they graduate from training. And so she's getting an understanding of who these people are, what their personality is like. And then she also will go in and check the stats throughout training, who scored well on which sections of our training class. Um, and she also gets an intake form from prospective clients to understand exactly what it is they're looking for in the role, and then she'll put together the perfect match for our clients so that we're not just handing you the next person up who you know just graduated from training in in sequential order. It's really very intentional and uh very data-driven the way that we handle our matchmaking.

That's awesome. So you make sure it's the right person, right fit for that right seat in the agency. And if for some reason it's not a good fit, then Carol just say, hey, this is not a good match. We'll find somebody who is, right?

Correct. Yeah. And, you know, if if our bench is running low and we don't have someone that we think is going to be the right fit for you, you know, we typically have another class graduating in two weeks. And so we'll be, we'll put forward candidates from that class uh who we do believe is going to be the right fit. But we're not just looking to place people for the sake of placing them. Like we really view, you know, our relationship with our clients as like long term, as a long term partnership. And so So, you know, we want to be there to help them succeed. And, you know, we're not going to just put someone in a seat without the belief that it's it's the right person.

So turnover in the VA world is just as costly sometimes as it is in the US with a licensed person. So uh I couldn't agree with that more. You're looking for a long-term, like we say, a career fit if possible. So great, great stuff, Dom. You guys are doing great work and upping your game to the fourth level now. And I can't wait to see that develop. Any any last words of wisdom as we wrapped up, wrap it up today? Because I know Stella's calling. Yeah, Stella Dom's daughter, by the way. So something exciting happened in Stella's life. Yeah, you were like doing two things at once, right?

I I was. We had we actually had my daughter. Well, my wife had my daughter. I should correct myself. Um in February, uh, the first week of February, or February 9th, sorry, of 2022. Um, and we had launched Elevate Teams about three or four days before she was born. So it was a very exciting and very exhausting time in my life. And actually, coincidentally enough, Stan, my business partner, actually started his prior business, a film production business, the same week um his daughter was born, his first child. So it something about starting businesses and having kids at the same time, you know, while maybe not recommended, seems to have worked out pretty well for us.

So well, you survived and happy birthday, Stella, because we're right around that date as well. So yesterday, she's four. Yeah. Yeah, congratulations. So, anyway, that's the Stella who's calling and uh family first always. Dom, thank you. And and for everybody out there, elevate teams.io, elevate teams.io, or dominic at elevate teams.io, or check out elevate the hustle podcast over on YouTube. You can find lots of cool uh not only information, but just learn a little bit more about Stan. We couldn't crowd him today, but hey Stan, uh we're super grateful and thank you for your support of UPP and Unstoppable Nation and all the agents who are, you know, uh daily on a daily basis elevating their hustle in pursuit of the next level. So, Dominic, thank you, sir. Absolutely.

Thanks for having me. It's not easy out there. So um, you know, I've seen the work that you've been doing and we've been to your conference, and I think it's really amazing. So um, you know, big shout out to you and the work you do, and you know, I'm glad to uh that we've met and that we've been able to collaborate a bit.

So well, we look forward to seeing you in the future back again uh because they are coming up. By the way, let me uh drop you a couple of other pieces of information concerning conferences. You have two opportunities to learn more about what we do at UPP. You can go to uppmasterclass.com. That's uppmasterclass.com every month. We bring the best of the best on growing and scaling your business, uppmasterclass.com. Uh, you'll uh be able to see our next upcoming masterclass. Or if you want to come to one of our live events, just go to upmastermind.com. That's upmastermind.com. Dom and elevate teams have been kind enough to sponsor our events. Thank you for your support there. And maybe you'll just run into them at one of our future events. So we're super, super grateful to support uh the agents and everything that are going through out there. Uh, we know, like Dom said, I couldn't agree more. It's not easy out there, and we know, but uh it's our honor and privilege to be able to support you and everything that you do. So, and by the way, if this is your first time on the podcast, welcome. My name is Mike Stromso. I'm widely recognized as a leading author, speaker, and coach for the independent insurance agency uh industry. You can learn more about everything that we do at uppponyx.com. Upponyx, that's o-n-yx.com. Uh, it's our greatest opportunity for agents out there to grow and scale your business and so much more. So check that out. And if you got great value out of today's podcast, please share this episode with somebody else out there. I mean, pay it forward, help them out. If they might be thinking about VAs, get them the great information and the gold nuggets that Dom dropped here for us, just so we can all learn and grow together. Thank you, everybody. Until next time, get out there, make a difference, be unstoppable, leave no regrets. By the way, congratulations on the next level. Dom, thank you, sir. Have a great day. Thanks, Mike. Have a good one. Until the next episode, we'll see you.