Freedom Through Thinking Differently with Troy Thompson | Episode 141

This is one thing we do. So the first time you do a hundred K of new business. Oh it's like a Super Bowl ring. Yeah, it's like a Super Bowl ring. So it's not they're not cheap either. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Oh wow. We give our new sales guys a hard time until they get that. We also have these customized wrestling championship belts. In fact, see if I can do one of those.

Is that Randy Randy Macho Man Savage on it? I am the Queen in the World Wrestling Federation. Oh no. Oh hell yeah. Look at that. Jeez. Welcome to the podcast dedicated to real estate insurance and building your business. Join us as we take you along our own business building journeys with additional wisdom from our network of local and national experts. Welcome to Bricks and Risk.

This episode is brought to you by Property Management Redefined. PMR is not just managing properties, we're creating partnerships that build long-term success for property owners. John and his team can be reached at manage at gopmr.com or by phone 267-753-6005. Tim.

Yes, John. Who's a good client for PMR? Property manager redefined is looking for property owners to value three things accountability, reliability, and a results-driven approach. I want to maximize returns, but still provide client and tenant satisfaction.

There's a lot of property managers out there.

What does PMR do really well? Biggest thing is they're seamless and they're worry-free. So with that approach in mind, it allows the property owner to put their trust in PMR and know that the results will be there. The other thing I think a property owner is really gonna value because they do it so well is that they have a local expert team boots on the ground, managing your properties and your tenants' expectations every day so that you feel good about your investments.

We have millions of listeners out there, tens of millions.

If they want more information, how do they find PMR? Right here, guys, reach out to John Stacks and his team at Property Management Redefine. We'll take good care of you. I'm Tim Garrety. And I'm Sean Mooney. Today's Sean, we have one of your insurance pals on. We have Troy Thompson, Minnesota boy and owner of Pinnacle Insurance. How are you doing today, Troy?

I'm doing great, Tim. Thanks so much for having me.

All right.

I go way back with Sean, so excited to be on the show.

He was like, when did you meet him? I was like, well, there was an IAOA conference in uh Vegas like uh 10 years ago, probably, that we met at some point. That's awesome.

Yeah, but we don't remember that.

All right. So uh ladies and gentlemen, uh Troy Thompson is the real deal. He's the owner of Pinnacle Insurance out of Coon Rapids, Minnesota, one of the fastest growing independent insurance agencies in the state. Pinnacle is a powerhouse operation that's redefining what client service looks like across the upper Midwest. But Troy didn't stop there. He also built Savital. Am I pronouncing that correctly?

Yep, that's correct, Tim.

A virtual assistant company that's helping businesses everywhere scale faster and work smarter. Troy is a builder, a closer, and an entrepreneur who doesn't do anything halfway. He graduated from the University of Minnesota. Gophers? Go gophers.

Golden Gophers. Bulldogs.

Oh, okay. Duluth is different. I thought it was a branch of the main one. It is kind of. Oh, okay. But they're but they're the Bulldogs. Bulldogs. No gophers, Bulldogs. Bulldogs is better. Uh he's a Vikings fan, as you can see from his shirt, and also a dad to his kids. All right. So, Troy. While you were in college, you started selling educational books door to door. How did you get that job?

Southwestern Company is one of my that's probably the number one um reason I became successful in sales and in business.

Okay.

You basic you basically go to a different state and sell these educational books for 80 hours a week. And I did that all the way through college. I was able to pay my way through college.

Wow.

They still have it. Um it teaches you um persistence, um, learning your script, um, how to sell, how to close, how to get pre-approach, how to use testimonials. And uh, I intend to get my kids into Southwestern as well just because it's such a great program. And um it's still going on today.

80 hours. What are they set you up in like a little condominium and rise and shine and sales out the door a m and what's what was that all they don't even set you up?

This is and I'll give you the pitch.

Yeah.

Sell me a book. Oh good, this is better. Oh I wish you guys would catch this. Um because I when I see my face, then I'm delayed, but yeah. Um I would knock on the door when you get get to the state. Like the first the first city was uh Fayetteville, Arkansas. So I'd be like, hey, I'm trying, I'm a college kid um here from Minnesota, and with a few rim roommates, we're gonna be here all summer selling educational books to kids. The first thing we need to do is find a place to live. Would you happen to know of anyone that has a basement or bow garage apartment? Wouldn't mind making an extra 25 bucks a week.

You're selling, you go not only you selling door to door, you're door-to-door looking for housing.

Yeah. Yeah, that's how that's how you start. And um, yeah, Jeff and Deb Spencer were the first family we stayed with way back in like 99, I think was my first summer.

Oh, this is so great. Yeah, it's Arkansas. Like you're like can't relate, like completely fish out of water.

Great people though. I mean, I Oh yeah. In fact, Jim and Lynn Walton, I knocked on their door. What? Yeah. They're just very humble, very uh the house was probably a single-level house. I was able to walk right up to it. At the time, they were worth $20 billion. Talked to Jim Walton and he said they were pretty dialed in on the books, but um he's got that covered.

Yeah, I wish they bought, but great. Did you only go once or did you get the no and then go back like a week later and say, Hey Jim?

I wish should have persistence, but it is my heart was beating pretty, pretty hard just to have the nerve to go up and talk to him. But really great, great family.

Uh, it's unbelievable.

That's cool.

Yeah.

What a start in sales. I mean, yeah, so Southwestern, is it um, is it a company that they look for college students to get started like working while they're in school? Is this someone is this a company that people usually work with after college? Like, how'd you even get connected with them?

Yep, they focus only on college students. So the college students are um, you know, they have recruiters. In fact, I did that my last summer as I was a rec I recruited kids at University of Mankato. Um, but yeah, it's a summer job where it's like this is a great, they sell it as an internship.

Okay.

Half the people, half the professors say it's a scam because they're like, oh, you don't get paid a base, you don't learn this, you know, it's not a real job. It's like it doesn't get more real than that.

Right.

I mean well, and you don't learn more than that. Like, where are you gonna learn more in sales than like getting plunged into door-to-door sales?

You got it. And yeah, to learn persistence, to learn running your own business, your own schedule, dealing with rejection. I say this is was way more than important than even college.

Yeah.

Um, my success in life, a hundred times more valuable. In fact, like on my Facebook page, part of these local groups, and one of the groups um caught somebody on their ring camera with a southwestern shirt. Yeah. And they're like, Who is this? This is a scam. And they're like, you know, they take advantage of these kids, and blah blah blah. I'm like, this is the best program out there. You should you should talk to them, they're the best books out there. So we'll see.

Well, it's like in in life, I always say that if some of the best people are that have worked in hospitality, right? Because you know how to talk to people, you know, you can kind of get on their level, you can kind of have a better understanding of where they're coming from. And and so that builds you in life to understand what that person maybe has been through and where they are and and how to relate to them. I think in your instance, it's great because what better sales training can you have than that? It you it you collapse a whole entire probably 400-level college sales business class into uh into a summer, if not more, and and that could you know put you on a different trajectory if you go, if you choose the way of sales to be way further ahead than anyone that would be starting out, you know, out of college.

All right. So the selling door to door, just so I'm clear, is that the company's method for the only way you sell? Are they telling you to like hop on the phone or is it all door to door? That's just what they're doing.

100%. Door to door. And they've done, I think since like 1858, they started selling Bibles. So um that's the only way they do it. They still do it. Now technology and AI, who knows where it's going, but there is something to be said about the tangible book too that is kind of getting lost in all this technology, and I still think that's very important.

Something uh to uh well, door to door, I think a lot of I I'm a little different in this category, but uh a lot of people when they said door-to-door, like oh, they shudder. And I'm like, I'm like, I welcome them. I like I wish I had like a kid, college kid, high school kid at my door every day. Like, like, come in, give me your pitch. Like, I want to hear I have a no soliciting sign. That's not a door, just so you know. But I like if I see a lemonade stand, like I have a rule in life, always pull over at the lemonade stand because I'm like, oh, what are you sounding at, man? I love it.

I do love that.

And then I'm like, all right, give me your pitch. What do you got? You know, any deal, like like I like to engage and hear that because I don't know, it's just maybe why I'm how I'm wired, but it also is good for them, like a learning experience type of thing. Like, all right, I gotta be fast. Oh, he's oh, this guy's got questions. Girl scout cookies, same way. Like, I'm like, oh, you know, always setting the girls when I see the tables up.

But years and years of getting rejected, I actually have not done this yet. I was like, once I get my dream home, I'm gonna put a nice sign up on my door or next to my door saying soliciting. Yeah. So you're saying please I want to do the opposite of all the pain that I've gone through over the years and like you know, getting rejected. I'm gonna just say soliciting.

You should say, you should have like a sign over your doorbell. Solicitors ring bell here so that they know exactly where to go.

Funny story about that. I always give my wife a hard time. I'm like, just like you, Sha, buy the Girl Scout buy the stuff from the door-to-door people. Always. And one time she turned a Girl Scout down, and I'm like, Are you kidding me? Uh always buy the cookies. Yeah. And after that, she started buying from every one of those damn bug guys that comes by. She was getting a new bug service every six months. Yeah. The guys that go around on the segues. Yeah. You know, they're cute college kids or whatever. Yeah. Well, Charlie said I have to do it.

So dude, that's why I put the sign up at my house, it was purely from the suburban bug guys. Actually, if someone if someone came with Girl Scout cookies, uh, actually, one of our neighbors came over with bracelets like six months or 12 months ago. I was like, yes, I'd I'd love to buy some. But it was really, it was that. But uh no, I see the value in it, obviously, because I actually think, and this this brings up without getting into AI, because everyone's talking about AI every second of every day, this brings out the one of the effects that people are starting to slowly talk about with AI is like the return of analog, the return of tangible, the return of eye-to-eye, of human connection. Because even in today's world, so I'm in residential real estate, it's like I hear from most people when they're like reaching out to me for help, like buying, selling, investing, renting, it's either an email or a text message, usually. And then we start the conversation that way. There's a little back and forth, and then maybe we'll hop on the phone, or then we'll hop on a Zoom. But it's rarely we're meeting eye to eye until we're actually like looking at homes.

You're speaking my language, Tim. I've been saying that for years, and even before AI, I was like, digital and automation is not as uh important as analog. Um eye to eye, voice to voice, pick up the phone. This works as a device to call people, not just to text people and uh DM people. And I think it's more powerful than ever before in human history to go eye to eye and voice-to-voice now because nobody thinks you need to do it. Everything is like AI, automation is the future, which sure you gotta embrace that too. But I'm I'm definitely um more of a 180 degrees um opposite of that. Uh when when everybody does one thing, you know, the successful people have to do the opposite. And we're yearning as human beings to be to have that face-to-face, that voice-to-voice connection more than ever, which is why it works now more than ever.

Well, it's rare, right? So, like if you have, I always said this about postcards. I'll use postcards as an example. Nobody believes postcards work, right? So everybody, nobody bothers with it, you know. But if you're the singular person that's doing the postcards over and over, just by way of being the one or the you're the exclusive in that space. So I gotta believe that you're going to be more valuable. Uh the conversion will probably be higher if everybody else is not doing it. And the phone works the same way. You know, if you if you go for an in, hey, I want to get an insurance quote, and you reach out to someone and you get an email and you get a text, and there's that one guy that is on the phone with you calling you immediately, it Who's gonna win? Who's gonna win? There's a better opportunity and a better chance to make that connection because a lot of times it's it's getting to the problem, right? Like, why are you calling? What are you looking for? What do you need? What can I help provide to you? And by asking these questions that you can't go back and forth on an email, right?

But in a it gets lost in translation, people take things the wrong way, and you can solve that problem so much better by picking up the phone. If it's a big client, a big opportunity, take them out to the nicest dinner you can.

Yeah. Yeah.

That will blow them away. Nobody does that.

No. So I think I think just being different bodes well in business and sales.

Yeah. Going back to how business was done 50 years ago, which is crazy to think with all the tech out there now.

Yeah. Yeah.

But um, it still works.

Yep. All right. So let's let's shift a little bit. So in 2010, you went to work for your dad, Mike. He started Pinnacle Insurance, correct?

Correct.

Yeah. So what made you want to go work in the family business? I mean, it's it's your dad. So, like, what what prompted that?

I always give my dad all the credit for this. He was a farmer's insurance agent for 25 years, so he was 62 when he went independent.

Oh, wow. Oh, wow.

Crazy. I mean, you know, being an insurance, the renewals, that's a huge uh cut in pay to take the chance.

Yeah, to walk away from that at 62? Nobody's doing that.

He was tired of it. He knew independent was the way. He didn't like not being able to help his clients. I started a year or two after and um helped grow the business. At first I was a little, you know, when people are like, You're lucky, you're Mike Thompson's son. I was like, You don't know. I'm knocking on doors. And we're growing the business because of the stuff I'm doing too.

Yeah.

Um, but over time, like I always give all the credit in the world to uh to my dad because he started it, he deserves the credit. We we grew it, and then I bought him out about 10 years ago. Oh, nice, and gave like 4x to the business and in uh since then. So um it's been great. But yeah, my dad, my dad's the best. He still comes into the the office two, three times a week and hangs out, has coffee.

Nice.

And um got a picture of him right here. Right on my oh yeah. Let's see.

There he is. Get him in there. There we go.

What's up, Mike?

Mike Thompson bottle glasses. All right, so but the uh the other thing too is we talk about this a lot, uh Troy, because my my previous background was all state. And at the time when I decided 2013 to start my agency, it was not like a popular decision to do that because the big name brands, the big box shops, it was like, you know, you're you're kind of foolish to try to start this to do an independent agency on your own and not have the backing of that big brand. Um so probably even more so for your dad to walk away, and I didn't have that book of business that your dad had, so it had to have been even harder. But now, now as we see things kind of come full circle in you know 13 or 14 years, you're starting to see that that my decision was was probably the most correct uh decision to to make. But also with your dad, uh and I just wonder about his thinking about what he saw in the direction of things and maybe why he opted to go down that road uh as opposed to just riding it out.

I know he's he's definitely um he's different because most agents do that, especially at that age.

Yeah.

It was just he loved taking care of his clients and he knew there'd be a huge opportunity if you had options for your clients. Farmers, you know, farmers insurance is kind of a tough company to be part of. They like a lot of captives. I'm sure you saw that with Allstate too, but yeah, he just was not happy with how farmers was doing things and the promises they made and stuff like that. So he just had some big balls and said, let's do it. And started just with him and one person. And then I joined and kept on hiring people. Now my agency's got 22 people.

Wow.

And um yeah, it's been it's been a fun ride. We're lucky luck lucky to be in the industry. I'm sure you can agree with that, Sean.

Oh, yeah.

With the economy, sometimes a lot of people in real estate, realtors, mortgage brokers have taken a huge haircut in the you know, the last few years with interest rates and stuff like that. And insurance, we complain a little bit with the hard market, but our incomes have all gone up. So we can't complain too loud.

Yeah, I mean, what type of business, I mean, you know, if you grow, if any other business grows 20% year over year, it's phenomenal. Yeah, it's like unheard of. And like you look over the past few years, even with your growth beyond, you know, what your book of business was, I mean, I don't know what your numbers are, but you're you're gonna go way above that.

Yeah. I mean, you get to that point where I'm I'm at that just in the last few years, it feels like with the the new biz we're generating and the sales guys we're generating, we're doing about 300,000 of new business a month now, which is just really good for us. Some some agencies write ten times that.

Yeah.

But either way, we are writing so much new biz and working on the retention that we can invest more into more salespeople, into getting more VAs and in getting paying our local people more money because that revenue. Keeps coming in and at some point you why not just keep investing it into the business? You don't need to invest in other stuff. You have your own retirement 401k, whatever you want to call it, right here in the business. So uh yeah, it's fun.

Yeah, one thing I find interesting about this discussion because I'm I'm outside looking in, I'm I'm not in insurance, is we've had many, many discussions about the uh the captive or the big box insurance as we've called it versus being independent. And if I could make like an example, like I like to make analogies from time to time. From time to time. Is if you go to the captive or the big box, and it's not with all of them because I don't know them, but I know you can go with one of those companies, get some guaranteed business to start. Um, the products are simple because it's only what they offer, and you're like, I know who I'm selling to and I know what I'm selling. So it's really more or less like you have the products, you have the people, and you're just selling based off of that. Whereas the independent, what I find so interesting about it is when you start, you have absolutely nothing. Like you may have some people to talk to, but you know, you don't have those relationships with your those carriers yet because you're just getting started. But you're not, it's not about that. You're trying to fit the client into your company and say, what's the best program for the client? Maybe I got to talk to three companies, five companies, 15 companies. I don't know. Whereas it always seems like the opposite. If you're at the big box of the captive, it's like, no, we we got one kind of homeowner's insurance and we don't do business insurance. So if the client, if we're gonna insure their house, but they're an entrepreneur and they say, Hey Troy, can you do insurance for my business? Because I love you, and you say no, that's kind of like, well, well, why is that? And it's it's really what I've gathered, is just those big box captives are so dialed in to just saying, we're only doing this and we're only doing that, but we're not doing these other things because it really is the client should fit into us, not we should help the client.

That's exactly right, Tim. I I mean on top of that, they kind of own your ass, the captives, where you see what happened with State Farm, basically cut their commission in half.

Yeah, we're actually we were we were just talking about this the other day.

Yeah, 2028 is like a total reconfiguration of the agency um like structure corporate commission structure.

Oh yeah, you don't own your book of business with the captives either. So, I mean, maybe a little bit somehow, but you're you're right. Um being truly independent, you're able to help more people, you're actually building an asset, and it's by far the better way to go. But it is harder when you start. Like when you're with that big red machine, all state, state farm, whoever, they do help you with leads, help you with you know, it's a it's a huge system. All the marketing, everybody knows them.

Yep.

So, but it's about where do you want to be? I mean, independence, obviously the way to go. Um, it's you know, especially for all the state farm agents out there that are gonna see that huge cut.

Yeah, and look at Liberty Mutual. Liberty Mutual was exclusive agents, and then they totally will pulled the carpet out from those guys and said we wanna we wanna go to independence.

Yeah. Hey everyone, this is Tim, your favorite BRICS and risk co-host. But don't tell Sean. I hope you're enjoying this episode, and I'll get right back to it in a moment. Our audience grows through word of mouth, so if you would please take a moment of your time and give us a review on the platform you're on, that would be fantastic. Please also help spread the BR word by sharing your favorite episode with a friend. We greatly appreciate your time and trust. Now, back to the show.

Whoa. It's uh so everything's changing. Everything over time changes, but every every data point along the way in the last five, ten years is a point towards independent model as being the better opportunity avenue.

But you know what, Sean? I do get kind of scared too, because usually if State Farm does it, everyone's taking notice. Well, and that's what I think of our our carriers that we represent too.

Well, and that's that's usually there's a trend. So, you know, one one is always the first, and then the others follow to a certain extent. But I I did I did a post on LinkedIn about this saying that it was really um it wasn't one day where State Farm decided to do this. It was really over the last 30 years of what they've developed and how they've built their agency um staff. And two key components of that is that you don't own your book of business, right? So they really have the avenue to really do whatever they want with their agents because they don't have ownership. That's number one. Number two is because of that, you have a lot of agents that can't sell their book of business as a retirement tool. So what are you gonna do? Yeah, those agents are gonna use their agency as an annuity. So they're just going to sit on their agency and just not be worried about growing, not be worried about anything else. Right. Just maintaining and using that as an annuity to pull money out rather than retiring. And so I think State Farm looked at it like, whoa, what what's going on? We have you know 20,000 agents nationwide, and we have I'm making this up. Uh we have 14,000 that are that are producing.

So we have a whole so yeah, it's like almost like like a quarter of them are are not. I know, but those aren't real numbers.

I'm just you know what those yeah, those agency owners were proud of it. They're like, we don't work very much on the old contract, so we're killing it. We don't have to deal with the new contract, like the new agents, and they they thought they were untouchable and state farms like, oh, really? Let's see about that. Now you're all on a brand new contract. It's gonna screw all of you. The ones that were working hard on the old contract, and the ones that weren't, and the new ones.

So I guess my point in saying that is that yes, uh there is a trend where there's someone out in front and things follow behind, but I think in this instance, because the the ownership piece, they really had the uh ability to dictate terms. If someone, if one of your age if you're one of your carriers, Troy, tried to do that, what are you gonna do tomorrow? You're gonna divert business away. I mean Yeah, you have other carriers you can start. So so I think it works in in that model in terms of being allowed to do that under the state farm brand, but I don't know if you can get quite what they did in an independent model.

Hopefully not. Yeah. You gotta start using more AI, right? More AI, more AI.

All right.

That's all these big companies, all their layouts.

Oh, they do.

It's AI. Do you really believe it as all AI? Yeah. Or is it an easy excuse? Yeah.

All right. So if you weren't busy enough with Pinnacle and your family, you started another business uh five years ago called Savital. And what you do is from what I saw, is you provide trained VAs to other businesses. So why why even start another business at all, especially with a successful independent insurance brokerage?

Yeah, there was no real intent to start a business. It was um, I had a great guy that I worked with, and I knew he wanted more. He was an A player out of Islamabad, Pakistan. His name's Mo Mubaras, but we call him Mo. Um and I was just like, hey, Mo. And he did a great job at Pinnacle. So it was it just happened, happenstance, and uh I was like, How many more Mo's can we get? He said unlimited. So we started with um uh five people and now we have almost 300 P VAs. I help out a lot of businesses around the country, a lot of insurance agencies because I eat my own dog food. I have eight that work in my agency, answering phones, doing the quoting and re-quoting and and um marketing all the service work that needs to be done. Um so half of our clients are insurance clients, but other ones are pretty much any business. So it's been uh it's been a fun ride too. Um but people are people, it's not easy. We have a lot of competition, and you can you can definitely hire VAs off of Fiverr for like three bucks an hour. We're more like $15 an hour, but um you get what you pay for. So yeah.

Well, there's training, there's education, there's all these other pieces that I think when they get signed up with you, and I'm just guessing, but it's it's you kind of have them vetted and you have them gone through an orientation so that when they land in an insurance office, it's not like you spend the next six months trying to get them going.

Right. We definitely have training programs where we're gonna teach them the basics of insurance. Now, we can't teach them every management system because there's hundreds of those for insurance agencies. So that's impossible. But you can teach them how how to learn how to be proactive. Our people speak great English, they have four-year college degrees, and we're a managed service, so we have a manager that's sitting alongside of them, helping ramp them up as well, doing weekly check-ins. Um and it it's start part of it's setting expectations. That's whether you work with Savitel or any VA company. If you hire a local person at your agency, and they sit in the office next to you, and you shut the door and talk to them maybe five minutes every other day, they're probably gonna fail. So just like you're hiring a local person, you have to treat this person like a real human being and check in with them, talk to them multiple times throughout the day, have morning video check-ins, evening check-ins, evening end of the day emails, just keep stay involved. If there's something they can do better, you have to stop and train them on what they need to do better. Because even if it only takes you a minute to change this error they constantly make, you're going to have to, you know, if you do that every single time, that's hours and days of your life, and it's gonna piss you off every time you change it. Stop. Tell the VA. Even if it takes 10 minutes, teach them okay, now we're gonna do it this way every single time, okay? Do you understand? Then you'll never have to deal with it again.

Yeah.

But a lot of times clients think it's a magical um idea where, hey, we're gonna have plug this person in and they're gonna do all of our quoting or manage our CRM, and I'm never have to talk to them. And that's just not the way it works.

So, what's your setup, Troy? So, how many VAs and how many employees do you have?

Okay, we'll talk at Pinnacle. Um Pinnacle got 22 employees. Yep. Eight of them are virtual assistants. Oh, okay.

So like a third.

So we got 14 local people.

Okay. And so the the VAs, just to break it down, uh, they're doing uh service work, quoting, re-quoting, uh working on uh retention and that sort of thing. And then uh and then the balance of your uh in-office employees, are they primarily salespeople, or how is that shake out in terms of their roles?

Sales and service people.

Okay.

So with our rapid growth, we need to be hiring more and more service people all the time. And that kind of goes into the flywheel, I like to call it, where if you hire more VAs, it's gonna free up more capacity for your local team to sell more, which will bring in more revenue, which means you can pay your local team more money and get more salespeople. And from there you get more VAs, and it just keeps just keeps going and spinning faster and faster. So it's like we we can't even slow down right now. And uh if if you have some time, I'd love to talk to you a little bit about some of the cool things we do with our sales team, because I'm really proud of that, and we're just humming along right now.

Um Yeah, I mean, if we can dive into that, I'd love to hear some of the sales stuff.

Yeah. So I hopefully I can all right. I'm gonna put this. This is one thing we do. So the first time you do 100K of new business, it's like a Super Bowl ring. Yeah, it's like a Super Bowl ring. So it's not they're not cheap either. They're worth a thousand dollars. Oh wow. So you know, we give our new sales guys a hard time until they get that. Um we also have these customized like wrestling championship belts. In fact, see if I can be one of the most chilling right here.

Awesome, bring it over. There's a randy Randy Macho Man Savage on it. Oh no. Oh hell yeah. Look at that. Jeez.

So hold on. Yeah, anyway. Yeah, we have these cool belts. I don't know if it's yeah, that's pretty cool. There you go. Yeah, nice. World's greatest insurance agency, dollar signs. That's if they had another 100k. That's awesome. Um, and we go out and we celebrate all the time. Like, we're gonna try to go to um Manny's because we've just been hitting record-breaking months every month. Manny's is like the nicest steakhouse downtown. So we're gonna be taking a limo um down to Manny's. We're gonna bring our belts, have our rings on. We're all gonna drink um um have our suits on and stuff like that. And we're just gonna celebrate and be loud and boisterous and and have a good time.

Wait, how many how much do you have to sell to get a green jacket?

That's a good idea. I mean, we're always looking for new ideas.

Yeah, the green jacket. I'm thinking of like uh with the masters. So like the the winner before has to present and put the jacket on the next guy. So you have the the winner of the month has the jacket, and then the next, then if there's a new winner, that person has to present.

Well, their color, your colors are a little bit more like yellowish, orange, reddish, orange. Yeah. I was hoping. I think you're gonna have to go orange, man.

We we know a we know a company that can make you uh custom suits. We know a great company. Yeah, yeah.

We'll get you the name. Oh, yeah.

Um I do like that idea because you can get a good custom suit for I mean, we're trying to keep the budget in the oh, these guys are budget friendly.

Uh the the these guys, this is not a high-end suit. This is like, do you want your logo? Do you want a Pete Pinnacle plastered from head to toe? Exactly. You got that.

You want you want a tattooed pinnacle suit? We we got the company.

I I do want to get that information. I think that's a great idea. All right, so yeah, just get go ahead, guys.

I was gonna say, here's a question. So with your VA company, has that kind of just grown organically through your relationships or did you door-to-door it? Like, how have you even grown that one?

That's a good question, too. And that's not easy. Like I said, it's no business is easy. Um just connections within the the independent insurance space, um, is how we kind of got got that going. Um, we're part of the big eye of Minnesota. They use they have one of our VAs full-time that does work with them. So now we're integrated in other big eyes around the country. But it helps when they're using eating, eating the dog food, you know, they're using one of ours and they can recommend us. Um, we're always trying to you know market online, find ways to funnels and stuff like that, but that hasn't ever really hit. But it's more been just word of mouth, get it out there, uh, take care of our current clients because if you take care of them, they'll probably get more VAs if you can show an ROI, and they're gonna refer their colleagues to you as well.

Listen, insurance agents, no insurance agents. So I mean, every every week we're on the phone. What are you doing? Who you what are you doing for this? How are you using this? You know, and so I just get guessing Yeah.

Every insurance agency needs VA, in my opinion. And how what percent, Sean, would you say use VAs? Maybe five percent tops?

Uh I gotta believe it's more than that. Uh maybe ten percent? I yeah. I couldn't think it would be more than ten. I think ten would be the top uh that are using it. Yeah.

Yeah. And that goes for pretty much every industry, which is another one of our problems. I mean, we say we can help out every industry when we can. However, if you can help everybody with everything, yeah, you don't really have a niche. Um, but you're right. I mean, every agency I talk to, the number one problem they have is they need help.

Yep.

They need help, and why not hire a uh an offshore person to make that local person you have that needs the help twice as efficient, twice as effective. You're gonna save on payroll, that local person is gonna be happier, and you're gonna make more revenue.

Well, it's very it's very similar to AI. It's it's if you can give your employees a tool or tools that are gonna help them, that are gonna pull the agonizing, suffering uh the parts of your business or your whatever your role would be within the agency, if you can take some of that aggravation away to make their job easier and better and they enjoy to come into work a little more, you know, what's that worth?

Yeah.

Do you guys know Jeff Gallo? Uh yeah. Yeah, he's a local guy.

He's a local guy, and he reminds me of you a little bit, Sean, but he's got a ton of VAs too, just super high energy, yeah. Billy guy. And um, he's kind of inspired me to go all in on the VA thing because I think he's got like 10 now, 10 or 12. He's just going crazy on it.

Oh wow.

Um, yeah, take those those boring tasks off off the local team's plate, and then everyone wins. And even with AI, you said it reminds you of AI. AI still needs someone on top of the AI to use it. Yeah. Um, you know, because we can buy all these softwares and programs and things, but if we don't spend the time on using it or implementing it or monitoring it, we're just burning money.

Yeah.

Yeah. All right. So hold on, Ed. Yeah. The reason why we had you on here, I gotta dive back in here, was a post that you had on Facebook, and it was your your license, right? You remember this? Oh, yeah. It was your door-to-door certification that you went to your township or local municipality and said, I want to be a licensed rep.

You're like, I want to go to Tim's house and I want to kick his no-soliciting sign down and show him my card, and I guarantee you'll talk to me.

So this goes back to way back when you started uh in sales. Um talk to us about that and why either you're making a push for it now, and talk a little bit about your experiences and like do you bring staff along? Are you showing staff that you can do this?

Talk to us so many good ideas.

Talk about that, uh, like a couple degrees deeper about what you have going on there.

Well, it comes down to marketing and kind of analog, using some of my carriers. My carriers are giving us a ton of money now. It's gotten to be a soft market real quick, yeah, from a hard market. So they're like throwing money at us, and I'm like sponsoring the kids' little league teams. Um, in the magazines of the neighborhoods I'm gonna be knocking on. Nice. So these, you know, those those magazines where I'm like uh featured and all over those. I have this cyber truck with my brand on it. So I'm and I hand out all these little mini cyber trucks with my brand that looks exactly like it. So we really leverage that. Um getting back to um things a little bit different that we're doing with the door-to-do now. Maybe I shouldn't have said that. One of my carriers is giving me some extra money because they're really getting aggressive now on wanting to write home. But they're they're only um super competitive on like the brand new home. So I they're giving me money and gave us the progressive aprons and the I love insurance and everything. This is all my idea. And we're going door to door dressed as like Flo or Brian or whoever.

Oh wow.

Taking my whole team and just flooding these neighborhoods, and we've been out doing it and we're getting 20, 30 leads a night in like a couple hours.

Oh man. Troy, uh are you okay with me uh putting that in our clips?

You said you didn't know if you could talk about it, but it sounds interesting and cool. Yeah, I mean, only thing I don't because it's kind of like a special thing progressives for me. So I don't know. If we'd want to publish it and like, well, you're giving money to Troy.

Yeah.

So maybe let's just say one of our care, one of my carriers. I don't care though, whatever. Okay. All right. It's too much work. Don't edit it.

Yeah.

Nice. Okay, cool. Well, listen, at least you know the homes to hit, right? So like you're going, you're knocking on doors that are brand new. I mean it exactly. It kind of makes it easy in that way is you you know what your competitive advantage is and you're targeting those specific potential clients.

Yeah, and what I do, we laminate these cards with an exact quote of somebody in the neighborhood with ASI Progressive Home.

Yeah.

And just black the name out and say, this is literally one of your neighbors' policies. It's $997 a year. And the thing is, most are paying three, four thousand dollars a year. That's just the market we're in.

Yep.

But Progressive Home is super competitive in those areas. So we just show it to them. It's like, you want to see what you want us to show you what we can do?

Yeah.

So we're just leveraging the progressive brand. And even if we can't write it with progressive, we're just getting them in the ecosystem, put them with model owners or whoever. But um yeah, we're it it definitely works going back to the analog, knock on someone's door, show them the card, show them we're legit. They know Pinnacle now because we're all over with all the different marketing that we're doing.

Um and what's the response been? You say you're getting 20 or 30 quotes when you go out, maybe on a given night or whatever. And they're free. I know, but like how much would people pay for 30 leads a night? Yeah, you know what I mean? But but are you getting the people that I have a no-soliciting sign out front or you know?

Like, sorry, Mr.

Gardy.

Or then uh I must have missed it. Or the vast majority.

Are the vast majority like, oh yeah, I've seen you before? Oh yeah, I'll I'll have you take a look. Like, what's is that by and large the the majority of people you're hearing?

A lot of times I do skip over the no soliciting just because I don't want the the smoke. I try to do everything. And I do have my little card or whatever, show them license with the city, and so it's hard for them to object if I've followed the that rule, even though pretty much my entire life I never got a license because you you're not really selling anything at the door anyway when you're just talking to people about insurance and asking for their number to call them later. That's how it works. I'm not doing I'm spending three minutes with them.

Right.

I find out I'll give you my pitch. Hey, I'm Troy, Pinnacle Insurance. We're in the neighborhood, and we can save most people money because we're independent on their auto and home insurance. Um I betcha I could save you money. And then I shut up, and then they're like, okay. And then I pull out my notepad and I just write down their name, phone number. Oh, that's really smart.

Yeah. So you're just trying to um you're trying to put a face with a name, uh, get contact info, and let them know the purpose of your visit is to save the money on their insurance. And then you walk away with that info, you're like, that's a pretty hot lead because they gave me all their info. Now my job is I have another uh, you know, follow-up system, let's call it, to call them and/or email text. You know, everyone prefers communication differently. Yeah. And then they're in it, they get all your stuff, and then you're like, hey, remember me? I was the guy who actually showed up at your door. And they're probably like, yeah, like no one shows up at my door. What's up, Troy? What's my number? Tell me what my number is. So it's exactly it's smart. Um, one answer that you gave to some of our questions I thought was very interesting. So we always ask people that we have on, what's your biggest struggle? And you said, no struggles. It's just a game. So why why that mindset? Why why did you answer the question that way?

It's a mentality. I'm just extremely lucky to be in my situation now, and and you gotta kind of play games with yourself and and realize we're just here to have fun, and hopefully you can give back and and change other people's lives within your company. Um it's just a mindset thing. I don't want to you know say my life is hard and it's a struggle because you know, I talk to my wife about this all the time too. It's like, man, we can go to our kids' events, we can we can do anything, we can take time off whenever we want. Um let's just embrace it and enjoy it and realize there's no reason to be stressed or or struggle through this. You know, we're we're lucky we have a great opportunity.

Well, it's being appreciative, right? So you're you're fortunate, right? You're fortunate to like come into the agency and grow the agency and you've had a lot of success, and just being appreciative of of what you have. And you know, insurance can be a drag sometimes. Like right now, I don't know if you're dealing with travelers, but we're having uh a tremendous um difficulty with some of the issues going on um with the billing and such. And that can really pull down an agency. You know, your staff can really, you know, come in and you're dealing with this, and tomorrow it gets worse, and there's no real resolution that's on the table. Um, and I think trying to keep that positive mindset for for your for yourself, but also for your team, so that they don't get swallowed up in um oh yeah, all of the the negative stuff going on, just keeping a north star of positivity um can really help weather these storms.

Yeah, you know that there's clients can be rude sometimes. And I you know, I'm always talking to my team, we have your back. That's one of our core core values, we have each other's back. So even to the point where we let clients go, if they're too re rude to our our service team, like the the travelers example, if they're unreasonable, we had nothing to do with it. But if they're still being rude to us, we can let them go. We you know, if people leave us, or clients leave us. Minnesota's a state where a lot of people are leaving, sadly, and we lose a lot of clients to you mean moving out of state?

Mm-hmm.

Oh, okay. Re really good people are leaving our state all multiple times a week. Um and it is what it is, but I tell my team all the time, we can't control this. People shop us all the time, too. It's the captives are getting really aggressive now and they're trying to get business, so we lose clients. And I just try to tell them not to beat themselves up. As long as we're talking to our clients and being friendly, that's all we can do.

Yeah, your your quote was great as well. You said, if you're green, you're growing. If you're ripe, you're rotten. Is that your quote or is that from someone?

That was an old southwestern quote. Oh, no way. Nice. Yeah, my book company. It was isn't it true though?

Yeah.

Um you gotta keep uh trying to grow, add new business, um, add new um new staff. Um because you can't plateau. If you decide to stop growing and you just sit there, you'll start contracting, you'll start dying.

Yeah.

So and it's more fun that way. I'm sure you guys would agree.

Yeah, it is. I mean, we're always look there's always something.

Even this podcast, the same thing. Every time we talk to someone such as you, it's the first time we're meeting, we always learn something. There's always a different perspective, there's always another way. You know, everyone's talking AI, you're talking door knocking, like it's fresh. And it's it's fresh. It's all different. I love it.

But it's that 1%, like if you try to grow or get 1% better every day, you're heading in the right direction. Yeah. If at the end of the day you're like, oh, we're good where we're at, we don't need to do anything different, you know, that and and you become complacent, that's like the first tell of a of a death spiral in my eyes.

Yeah.

Yep. 100%, Sean.

Awesome. Well, Troy, it's been awesome having you on today. Uh sorry, had a couple of quirks in the beginning, but we got through it no problem. You were an amazing, push through amazing guest, great conversation. So before we shut this one down, why don't you tell our bricks and riskers where they can learn more about you and everything you got going on?

Sure. Um, Troy Thompson, Pinnacle Insurance of Minnesota, or Google Um Savitel, S-A-V-V-I-T-A-L. Feel free to call me. My cell is 612-408-9000. Love to connect with anybody about anything.

Awesome.

Thank you, Troy. Appreciate you guys.

Yeah. That's all we have for this one, folks. Thank you for tuning in again to another episode of Bricks and Risk. See you next week. Thank you for joining us on another episode of Bricks and Risk. Our goal is that you walk away with one or two valuable nuggets, and we greatly appreciate you sharing your time with us today. You can find all BR episodes on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and anywhere else to get your podcast content. Until next time, keep learning and keep growing.