Episode 322: When Technology Does The Work Of Machines, People Finally Get To Do The Work Of Humans

Welcome back to the Scale Your Insurance Agency Podcast, the show built for independent agency owners who are done being the bottleneck in their own business. I'm Daniel Metcalf, and every week I'm joined by my co-host, Mike Stromso, one of the most respected operators in the independent agency world. Between the two of us, we bring you the real levers that move a three to twenty million dollar agency from successful but maxed out to systemized, scalable, and running without you holding it all together. Here's what we focus on. Mike brings the people side, leadership, team development, niche sales mastery, and a three-piece system that helps agencies build a business worth owning. I bring machine side. AI, automation, and workflow design that frees your team from the operational drag, eating your margin and your time. Together, we're building a framework that can grow an independent agency 4x to 9x without burning out your people or your checkbook. If you're an agency owner who's tired of growing by hiring, who knows you have a capacity sitting on the table but can't figure out how to unlock it, this is the show for you and your weekly edge.

Greetings everybody, it's Mike Stromso, and welcome to the next episode of the Scale Your Insurance Agency podcast. My co-host Daniel Metcalf is on the road this week. He's a coveted and high-demand speaker helping independent insurance agencies with technology automation, all powered by AI, and he is out helping agents this week. So the conversation I want to have with you goes back in time. One day something happened that was utterly ridiculous. I desperately had to go to the bathroom, but one phone call after another after another after another. Decision after decision after decision. I was literally squirming in my chair. I couldn't handle it any longer. So I ran down the hall to the bathroom. That night, after the phones finally stopped ringing, and I had time to think and reflect on what happened earlier in the day, it almost scared me. What if a critical decision needed to be made? And I was doing customer service and paperwork that a leader should not be doing. After all, I had already learned that the role of an entrepreneur is to build a business that operates without him or her. This was my aha moment. Today I want to share with you where we are now and where we're going into the future. Because when technology does the work of machines, people finally get to do the work of humans. And this is our story. Our story as proud independent insurance agents. This is us as independent insurance agency owners and leaders and team members. Inside every agency, there's two kinds of work that are being done every single day. Machine work and human work. Machine work, those are things that are repetitive, rules-based activities that have predictable outcomes. You know, things like downloads and policy data entry, quoting and remarketing activities, client service workflows, sales pipeline administration, and at least thirty more, right? You see, that's all machine work. Human work is different. Things like advising a business owner on the right insurance strategy, helping a family truly understand risk, and protecting their personal assets, everything they work so hard for, building trust with people, critical thinking, and decisions that need to be made when a claim happens, and what are the next steps through all of that? The problem, though, is not technology. The problem in today's agency and going forward is that humans are still doing machine work. And this is where it gets real, my friends. Because every one of us knows exactly what that looks like. And agencies are living it every single day. Just like I have for the last 40 years. Picture this with me for a moment, please. It's Tuesday morning at 9.17 a.m. in your agency. A download has hit your system overnight. And instead of flowing cleanly into your operating systems, a human has to stop what they're doing. And open it, review it, fix it, reattach it, rename it, file it, and refile it. Not because it's hard, but because that's how it's always been done. And then, you know, the monthly remarketing spreadsheet. You know the one. Renewals coming up, copied into a spreadsheet, marketed manually, notes added, emails tracked, version after version after version, saved as final, version three, actual final. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Hours and hours and hours of work that highly skilled, licensed, independent insurance agency professionals are handling organized, structured, repeatable activities. That's machine work. And then the endorsement processing. A client calls in with a simple change, an address update, and a vehicle swap, which should be a two-minute transaction, turns into a twenty-minute workflow. To the carrier website, data entry, verification, documentation, follow-up, note the file, suspense for more work in the future. Again, not complex, just repetitive. And oh the loss runs. You know, requesting them, following up on them, waiting on them, downloading them, renaming them, saving them, emailing them over and over and over again. And here's the part that most people miss. None of this is bad. It's necessary. But it's not what your best, highest compensated team members should be doing with their energy and talent every single day. Because while all of this is happening, the teammate who needs guidance and collaboration about a top client is waiting. The client who needs clarity about their entire insurance program is delayed. The relationship, the key relationship that could be deepened, it isn't. And leaders wonder why. And then they think, we don't have enough time. Our team feels overwhelmed. And then they start thinking, we need more people. No, what is needed is a different design. Because if a human being is doing machine work, we don't have a capacity problem. We have a design problem. And unless the agency design changes, you can add more technology, you can add more people, you can work longer hours, but fundamentally, nothing will improve. Because the wrong work is still in the wrong hands. I want to share with you a story about a five million plus revenue agency that I work with that implemented a custom technology platform in their agency. And the results that the technology platform produced sound simple on the surface, but the impact it had was enormous. The platform connects their agency management system, their carrier websites where possible, their internal procedures and underwriting guides, coverage explanations, past emails, and more into one searchable machine-powered intelligence system. So instead of someone interrupting a teammate with, hey, does anybody know how this carrier handles vacant homes? Or where's the procedure for certificates for these contractors? Or who knows how to process this endorsement? You know, the God a minute that turns into twenty. Remember, the true cost of distraction is as many as twenty-three minutes and fifteen seconds to fully recover from interruptions. And while on the surface, this is a non-monetary impact, the results are increased mistakes, slow decision making, and productivity. This is monetary. My friends, by allowing technology to do the work of machines, this agency didn't have to dig through emails, open five different systems, or interrupt a leader. They just asked the technology platform, the system. And in seconds, it returned the procedure, the carrier guideline, the coverage explanation, and the next steps, including the documentation requirements and in many cases, the documents themselves. What used to take ten minutes now takes thirty seconds. What used to take thirty minutes now takes three minutes. And what used to require a leader now requires no intervention. And this is where it gets really, really interesting. The agency leadership team didn't assume these things. They measured it and they tracked it. The average time to process endorsements, the average time to answer coverage questions, the average time to handle renewal remarketing preparation, the average time to spent searching for information throughout the enterprise. Before the technology platform, they estimated their licensed and unlicensed team spent about fifteen to twenty percent of their time just looking for information, for procedures, and answers. Fifteen to twenty percent of their time. After installing the technology platform, that number dropped dramatically. When they added it up across the entire team for the year, the time reclaimed was approximately seven thousand five hundred human hours. That is not a small efficiency gain. That is the equivalent of multiple full-time people worth of capacity. When they converted that time into payroll value, it came out to roughly four hundred thousand dollars per year. Four hundred thousand dollars worth of capacity restored back into the agency per year. Now here's the important part of the story. They did not pocket the money. They did not reduce staff, they did something much smarter. They reinvested that capacity into three strategic initiatives that change their agency forever. The first initiative was a proactive account review program to improve retention, to leverage and strengthen the existing relationships with their most valuable asset, their clients, the creation of a strategic plan using their client segmentation to conduct these reviews, cross-selling of additional lines of business to increase their profitability per client. Using this newfound time, they set an aspirational retention goal increase of seven percent. If they hit this goal, this will result in an additional eleven million dollars of additional revenue over a 10-year period. Eleven million dollars. And that doesn't take into consideration what that does to their valuation. The second initiative, an improved new business and referral growth system. While their strategic network of referral partner relationships was good, now the free time allowed those relationships to become better and stronger for both sides, which is a true win-win for all. They built and implemented a strategic referral program that tripled the number of referrals they were earning. The team had time to follow up on their quotes that were not sold. And the improved closing ratios resulted in even more revenue. They improved their marketing consistency, resulting in full pipelines for their production team. All of this new capacity turned into consistent organic growth of ten percent or better in some situations. Conservatively speaking, this brought an additional seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars and new additional revenue. Again, without taking into consideration their valuation. And the third initiative: an elevated leadership and team development program. The reclaim time was invested back into leadership and back into team development. A robust training program for all of the team members gave them better skills and confidence, which created more consistent overall results. And the development of future leaders within the organization to strengthen their leadership team. But there's more to this amazing story. All of this new capacity also freed up time to take action on their three big agency dream goals. They have three dream goals which will change the paradigm, not only in their agency, but within the industry from an MGA perspective and from an acquisition perspective that will lead to further domination. This turned their capacity into true scalability. And this is what a lot of people misunderstand when integrating technology, automation, and AI as part of their agency operating system. The goal is not to reduce people, the goal is to increase capacity. And when capacity increases, great agencies don't remove people. They elevate people. They move people from processing to advising, from reacting to planning, from answering questions to building relationships, from doing the work to redesigning the future. Technology did not replace their team. Technology gave their team their time back. And when leaders and teams get their time back, they can finally build the agency they've always wanted to build. And the best news about all of this, you can build this type of agency too. I'm here to help you. Our team is here to help you. Because when technology does the work of machines, people finally get to do the work of humans. Another independent insurance agency leader we work with is Michael. Michael spent twenty-five years being the agency hero. He solved problems, he answered questions, he handled difficult clients, he wrote new business, he filled in when employees fell behind. He fixed technology problems. He fixed carrier problems. He fixed people problems. And for a long time, that worked. The agency grew, the clients stayed, the revenue increased, and the team depended on Michael. And like many agency owners who build their agency from the ground up, Michael believed being involved was everything and the reason that the business was successful. Then something happened that changed everything. Michael attended a mastermind with his coaching group. During those two days, they told him something candidly and honestly because they care that he did not expect to hear. They said, Michael, you are too involved in everything. You're controlling too much, and you are the reason the agency cannot grow faster. For Michael, that was not easy to hear. But it was true. Like many founders, Michael had controlled everything from the beginning. He hired the first employees, he knew every client, he knew every carrier, he knew every process, he knew how everything worked because he was involved in building it. And control had helped him build the business. But now control was preventing the business from growing. That was the moment that Michael realized something very, very important. He had become the ceiling. Too many things still depended on him, and if the agency was going to grow and scale, he had to change his role. So Michael got to work and implemented the changes. Kudos to Michael. It started with a quality leadership team with a sales leader and a service leader, a clearly designed organizational chart for the entire team, defined roles and responsibilities for all of the team members. And one of the most impactful decisions that Michael made was hiring a true A player as the service leader. Michael had known this person for many years, but was always hesitant to hire her because he felt like the salary was too big an investment. Sherry was hired to lead the service team on her own. Michael realized something critically important after this. A true A player does not cost money. A true A player creates money through better organization, service workflows, retention, and leadership. Sherry's Hire paid for itself and then some. The leadership team, along with their automation and technology partners, created a custom dashboard that provides real-time visibility into the key KPIs for the business. Instead of Michael trying to control everything, the leadership team could now see performance, identify blind spots, and make adjustments together. For the first time, the agency was being led by a team, not by one person. The hardest changes for Michael were not structure. The hardest changes were changing his self-identity and patience. Michael's role in the agency changed completely. Now, Michael works on the three-year, five-year, and ten-year strategic vision plan, marketing and growth strategies, automation efficiency, leadership development and culture, recruiting and hiring A players, acquisition opportunities, and designing the future of the agency. In an orchestra, the first violinist plays beautiful music. But the first violinist only plays one instrument. The orchestra conductor does not play an instrument. The orchestra conductor leads the entire orchestra to work together. You cannot be the orchestra conductor and the first violinist at the same time and effectively scale your insurance agency business. Michael is no longer the first violinist. Michael is now the orchestra conductor. The agencies that truly scale, the agencies that grow faster, become more profitable, build great cultures, and they create ROI because of scale. And they're led by owners who sit in the orchestra conductor seat. Michael is no longer the hero of the agency. He is the orchestra conductor of his agency. Michael's identity shift changed everything. Think about this with me for just a moment, if you would, please. Do I want to be the hero of the agency? Or the person who builds an agency that no longer needs a hero? Because those are two very different careers. Most independent insurance agencies today are trying to scale into the future with a past tense operating model. My friend Dr. Benjamin Hardy said the reason people are not able to truly scale their business is because their future is grounded in their past. Our independent insurance agencies today, they don't have a motivation problem. They don't have a technology problem. They don't have a time problem. What's happening, and I live this day in and day out, and I continue to research, what is happening is they add software without removing friction. They hire people without increasing leverage. They grow revenue without redesigning structure. They work longer hours instead of building capacity. And until the design changes, fundamentally, nothing improves. Albert Einstein said, the significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created them. Remember, you cannot scale complexity. To scale your agency at maximum speed, you must always be simplifying. And this is where technology changes the conversation. Because when technology does the work of machines, leaders lead people to do the work of humans. It's not about adding more tools. This is about redesigning work so that leadership and trust sit together at the center, exactly where they belong. Because the future agencies will not be the ones with the most people. They will be the best designed agencies who are designed to reach their full potential. Where leaders design capacity and are no longer the bottleneck or the ceiling. Where the leadership identity has shifted and the agency can operate without the founding leader. Where leadership and the team know that a true A player does not cost money, they know that a true A player creates impact and profit. An agency where humans build trust, relationships, and strategy. And that brings me to one final thought for this podcast. Right now, somewhere in America, there is an independent insurance agency that does not yet exist. The clients don't know about this agency yet. The team that will work there hasn't been fully formed yet. The culture that defines it hasn't been fully built yet. But that agency is possible. It's an agency where leaders have clarity, where systems create capacity instead of chaos, where technology removes friction, where the team operates with confidence and clarity, where clients feel deeply protected and guided. Where young professionals want to work, where carriers respect the operation, where business grows stronger every year. Not because the owner works harder, but because the agency was designed to scale. This agency is not hypothetical. That agency is sitting inside the decisions that you make as leaders and team members every single day. Every standard you raise, every distraction that you eliminate, every system you build, every leader you develop, every future you choose to lead. Because the truth is, scaling agencies are not built by accident. They are built by leaders who decide the future first and then design the present to operate as their future agency. And the moment a leader becomes clear, crystal clear about that future, everything begins to change. So the question for everyone here today is really simple. What future agency will exist because you chose to lead it into reality. You chose to participate in making it reality. And remember this: the future of the independent insurance agency system will not be decided by technology. It will be decided by the leaders and team members and agencies like yours who choose to design it. This is my vision for the Independent Insurance Agency of the Future. I hope this has helped you. And if you got some ideas today in this podcast, or you want to learn more about anything that we discussed, like I said, myself and my team is here to help you. Around the show notes, there's a link where we can get in touch, where we can take a deeper dive to design the agency of the future in your organization. This is Mike Stromso, your co-host for the Scaling Your Insurance Agency podcast. Get out there and design your future today.

Quick reminder: everything we talk about on this show is built to do one thing: turn your time into profit. More revenue, more margin, more freedom without adding headcount to make it happen. If something landed for you today, please share it with another agency owner who needs to hear it. This community only grows when good operators help each other level up. Please subscribe, download, and share our podcast and all your other favorite podcast engines. And if you're ready to stop figuring this out alone, Mike and I are both in the field working with agencies right now. Please reach out. Find us on LinkedIn or on our websites, and we'll tell you exactly where your biggest opportunity is to scale. Until next week, build the system, protect your time, and scale the right way. See you next week.