Podcast appearances and mentions of debbie dechambeau

Episode 72 - If you've been listening to the last few episodes, we've been breaking down the steps you need to consider before starting a business. The concepts shared in these episodes are the foundation of building a successful business, no matter what kind. Bottom line in business is You Don't Know What You Don't Know You see, too many people jump into starting a business without doing any planning. Then they wonder why they aren't finding success, as if business should just fall from the sky! For some people even if they don't plan, they might get lucky but the majority of people put in a lot of hard work, time, money and sweat equity to get their dream of owning their own business off the ground. For many people it's trial and error It's figuring out what to do as they run into trouble or finding answers when they least expect to.  Even if you do extensive planning and research before you start your business, you will hit obstacles, but the more you are prepared with your foundation, the better chance of success you will have. In this episode I want to recap the top 5 things I think you should focus on when planning to open your business. I've talked about these before, but I'm hoping that if they have their own episode, you'll pay attention. Quick recap Marketing Plan Focus Business Team Capital Contracts What's your end game Ideas To Consider Have a plan. You can take courses on how to create a business plan, and your plan can be 30 pages or 3 pages. I've even heard of a one page business plan, but it's hard to get a lot of details on one page!   There's two things I think are essential in your plan.  The first is marketing. And I think this needs to be very well defined. Maybe you need to do a little market research to test your idea before you can create a solid marketing plan, but without this, you are doomed. I also think that when you define your marketing plan up front and look at the costs for each tactic you want to implement, then you can budget accordingly which is the se cond part of the plan that I think is essential. I'll get back to that part but let's talk about marketing first. The second is financial - For someone like me, this is the toughest part because while I understand math and some accounting, financial projections aren't something I can easily wrap my head around. I see this part as start up costs - what you need to really open your doors, how much capital do you need to pay yourself or a staff for the first year while you are growing your business and how much reserve do you need in the event things don't go as planned? Map this part out, give it to your banker friends and ask their opinions. This is essential and often overlooked by many startup entrepreneurs. It's why first year entrepreneurs have such a high failure rate. Focus on what you want to do - It's ok to pivot down the road as many companies do, but if you are starting as an agency, an insurance company or a related insurance partner, be focused. Don't try to be all things to all people. It is the greatest component of success for startups. Put together  you business team. I'm not talking about staff but the other professionals that can guide you. Don't hire your family member if they don't specialize in what you need. For example, you need a business attorney, not the family law attorney. Get a good business accountant, and make friends with your banker, payroll, bookkeeper, human resources and even other insurance professionals that aren't doing what you hope to do. This ties into the financial piece, but having enough capital to get you through is essential. This is really the hardest part. So many people want to start but don't have the capital. They bootstrap it which can work but it would be so much easier if there was capital. If you are working as you are thinking about starting a business, get your loan while you are working for someone else because once you become self employed, the lending rules change and it's not easy. In 2023 when everything is out of whack from COVID, getting a bank loan is really difficult so get it before you leave your salaried income. Contracts - Be sure to read all of your contracts thoroughly. I would strongly recommend having them reviewed by your business attorney. It might cost a few extra dollars, but trust me, they'll see things in a different light than you will and offer good tips for negotiation. If you have a partner, have a contract - the more detailed the better. It needs to discuss what is involved if there is a breakup. Better to get it right before you start then pay thousands when no one is talking to each other. A business breakup is no different than a marital breakup. Your business pre-nup is the most valuable document you can create. Have contracts with business vendors, employees and review your insurance company contracts thoroughly. Don't sign on the dotted link just because you get offered a contract. This last one is a bonus idea but I think it is essential to set yourself up with the end in mind. It doesn't matter if the end is 30 years away, be thinking like that. Build a business you can sell if you need to. We don't know what life will bring us tomorrow so if you set it up right from the beginning, you don't need to worry about a surprise obstacle getting in your way.  If you can't tell from the past few episodes, this is my passion. I love helping people get started in business. I'm not as good with someone that already has 100 employees, but for the start up, my heart sings!  If you have questions, feel free to reach out. You can find me on LI and FB. I have a group called The business of insurance, but it's not that active. If you want to be a part of it, let me know and I'll let you in! Thank you for listening to this series on how to start a business. If you know someone thinking about getting started or someone that has been in the business for a short period of time, please share this information with them.  It's free and valuable! SHOW THE LOVE If you haven't done so already, please follow, like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. The terminology for this has been changing, but we want you to get our podcast when new episodes are published, so check the platform where you listen to podcasts and make sure we are in your playlist!  We are on all of the platforms including spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts.and Google Podcasts. SPONSOR Insurancemailboxpower.com CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneur, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful. She also works in the health insurance space, focusing on helping people navigate the Medicare Maze. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

EP -71  If you haven't listened to episodes 65-71, they set the stage for this final episode on things to think about when starting your own insurance business. Regardless if you are starting an agency, an insurance company or a related business to the insurance industry like technology, claims or risk management, the concepts of starting a business are the same. These are discussed in these episodes and can help with your thought processes and planning. Pre-planning, part 2 provides ideas to implement 6-12 months before you are ready to open your doors. If you don't have a year to plan your business, you can fast track these ideas. It's the concepts that you want to consider to assist in starting your business with a greater chance of success. Months 6-9 Define business objectives  Pick a name for your business  Look for office locations  Write a business plan  Month 10 Decide legal form for your business Set up recordkeeping system Establish a relationship with a banker Open a business checking a account Month 11-12 Prepare cash flow projections Define amount of investment you'll need Prepare financial statements Obtain license insurance, permits Secure financing Set up office and operational space Purchase business cards, office supplies Hire staff SHOW THE LOVE If you haven't done so already, please follow, like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. The terminology for this has been changing, but we want you to get our podcast when new episodes are published, so check the platform where you listen to podcasts and make sure we are in your playlist!  We are on all of the platforms including spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts.and Google Podcasts. SPONSOR Insurancemailboxpower.com CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneur, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful. With over 30 years in the industry, mostly on the property and casualty side, she currently works in the health insurance space, with a focus on helping people navigate the Medicare Maze. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals.Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. 

EP - 70 This episode provides additional insight into starting your own business in the insurance industry. We'll cover ideas to help you map out the process over the course of several months so you don't have to do everything at one time. We'll talk about tasks that can be broken down over 12 months or done in 30 days if you don't have much time. Month 1 -2  Define your ideas - what area are you going into? Agency, carrier, claims, Life, health, will you just do something like work comp, airlines or medicare? Maybe you are thinking technology in the form of a CRM for insurance, maybe you'll white label a product that is working in another industry. There are a lot of things in between, these are just examples. But give some thought to your direction. Will you set up your business like everyone else or do you have ideas for being innovative? I don't believe any of this is incorrect, you just need to define what you want to do and make sure you have done the research and have a great plan for moving forward. Month 2-3 Assess the impact on your life and family - I believe this is often overlooked and is an essential component of going into business. A business is like having another child. It is expensive, it takes a lot of your time, it can eat up your resources until you start making sales. Your spouse needs to buy in emotionally and financially. When I started my first agency back in the early 90's I thought I had my husband's support. We agreed that I could tap into our home equity loan which was $25,000. Our marriage was set up where we each paid 50% of everything so I needed that money to pay my portion for awhile.( 2 kids with childcare, mortgage, groceries, and a car payment, along with the business expenses) 6 months into starting my agency, my husband was freaking out. I was making sales, but not enough to pay 50% of my bills around the house. Since I was home based, he thought I was doing nothing all day and that we could stop sending the kids to daycare and same some money. He just didn't get it. Ultimately, we got divorced and while it was over a completely different issue, my being self employed weighed into it heavily. When I went looking for another partner, I wanted them to be in sales and understand being in business. I wasn't going to be with someone else that did not understand you have to make some sacrifices short term for long term success.  I can't stress how important it is to get complete buy-in from your spouse or partner about how the finances and time will be for the next 2-3 years. If you aren't making money after that then you might need to reassess! Month 3-6 Locate sources of business advice and support - in the last episode, episode xxx, we talked about different members of your team. This wasn't people that would be on your payroll but people that you would get advice and wisdom to make sure you are successful. If you missed that episode, please go back and listen to it again. THIS EPISODE OF THE BUSINESS OF INSURANCE PODCAST IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY INSURANCEMAILBOXPOWER.COM How will you announce your new business? How will you thank all the people that support you? Consider insurancemailboxpower.com. This great platform lets you send gifts, cards, direct mail and other marketing pieces to your clients, prospects and those that are supporting you along the way. Since we are talking about getting started in business in this episode, once you decide on your company name and logo, you can create a few custom items to see how it feels. Put the name and logon on a coffee mug, order yourself  some custom pens. Just test it out to see how it feels before you commit to the final copy.  Use my affiliate link and go to insurancemailboxpower.com where you can set up a free 14 day trial  account. Send yourself a few products and see how it feels.  When you sign up for a pro or executive account, I'll share some of my designs with you that have been generating results for me! Continuing in month 3-6 Obtain necessary skills - depending on what type of business you are starting, will depend on the types of skills you need. If you aren't good at sales, take some sales classes. If you aren't good at leadership, take some classes, if you don't know what is involved in running a business, take some classes. Do this before you get started, so you have a better chance of finding success earlier, not after you open your doors. You'll always need to be learning and there are different ways to get the information that you need, but the more you do this before you open the doors, the less mistakes you'll make when the doors open. Research carriers, IMO's, Aggregators,industries etc.If you are going on the agency side, who will you write your business with? I think it is really important that you really do your due diligence here. Get the contracts. Read them. Have your lawyer review them. Sit on them and make sure you ask questions. Don't take anything for granted. It's easy to sign one, it is not always easy to get out of one. It might mean going to a few industry events to ask people who they are using, getting some feedback from others before moving forward. By doing this part before you open your doors, you will save yourself a lot of time and aggravation down the road.  Topics to consider: What are the sales expectations, what technology do they provide?  Can you test ride it?  What type of support is available?  How are commissions paid?  What about overrides and contingencies?  What happens if you want to leave or move to another organization? What happens if you sell your business? There's a lot of information you need before you sign up that will help you to be more successful.  Since there's a lot of information to planning to open your business, we are going to stop here for today. We'll pick up what to do in the next episode.  So until then, KEEP CREATING OPPORTUNITIES   SHOW THE LOVE If you haven't done so already, please follow, like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. The terminology for this has been changing, but we want you to get our podcast when new episodes are published, so check the platform where you listen to podcasts and make sure we are in your playlist!  We are on all of the platforms including spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts.and Google Podcasts. SPONSOR Insurancemailboxpower.com   CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneur, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful. She also works in the health insurance space, focusing on helping people navigate the Medicare Maze. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. 

EP 69 - We get training for being an insurance agent but we don't get training for being a business owner. They are two completely different hats. If you want to succeed in Business you need to have a team. I was recently listening to another podcast with an angel investor and she said the first thing she looks for is who is on the team and what is their experience. You need a team. It's nice to think you can do everything yourself, but something will be lacking if you don't bring on help. So here's what your team should look like. Accountant  Consult with an accountant for guidance on your entity choice. Have your accountant show you how to initially set up your books -  Use your accountant as an advisor to different financial decisions you can make with your business. Meet with them quarterly for business planning ideas Bookkeeper - someone that can help with commissions, payroll, balancing your accounts  Lawyer  Get guidance on your entity structure Let them review and create different documents for you Marketing  Let them help with your webite, branding and a marketing plan Insurance - if you aren't doing commercial P&C on a daily basis, partner with someone that is and let them be your agent. They can talk to you about the newer coverages like cyber and  AI but also make sure you know about the other coverages usually offered in a BOP.,  Banker  Get to know several bankers. They can be your best friend. They work with a lot of other businesses, they have their pulse on what is going on in the economy and they know who is lending, who isn't and where you can find money. Human Resources   Find an outsourced HR firm that you can use. Maybe you need them once a month, or once a year,  having the professionals at your fingertips is a great way to keep yourself out of hot water with employees.  Mentor / Coach  They can save you years of mistakes because they've been there, done that. Rather than trying to figure it out for yourself, they have the answers. SPONSOR Insurancemailboxpower.com CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneur, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful. She also works in the health insurance space, focusing on helping people navigate the Medicare Maze. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

Today's episode is one of several episodes about how to get started in the insurance business. I'm not talking about becoming an agent, I'm talking to those of you that are thinking about starting an agency, an insurance company, or an an insuretech business. There's a lot more to hanging a shingle that says you are open. As part of the planning process for starting a business there are some concepts to consider, these are about yourself. As exciting as it is to start a business, there's a lot to consider. It's not all glamor and glory! Most business owners would agree it's a lot of hard work, a lot more than they expected. It's long days, weekends and holidays. Many business owners lose their marriages over their business. As I mentioned in the last business, 90% of business fail in the first year.  The circumstances around why they fail vary, but often it's with the concepts I'm discussing today.   In the last episode we talked about why business fail:   Lack of a marketing plan  Missed market shifts  Ignoring the customer Lack of financial understanding Poor management Location  Motivation  Life's distractions  Lack of planning  INTRO FOR PART 2 - RECAP THE ABOVE AND THINKING BIGGER AND W HY YOU WANT TO START A BUSINESS The first thing I want to talk about is    Thinking Bigger As you are thinking about starting a business, don't think about something small to just pay your bills or starting something as a hobby while you raise your family. Think in terms of building something that you can be proud of, that you can expand, most importantly, that you can sell! Think in terms of how you will build a team, how you'll grow so that it isn't just you doing all the work all the time. There are a lot of companies that encourage you to grow your business by recruiting - that's not what I'm talking about. Build a business where you own the business and the people on your team are your employees. While the network marketing concept works, I personally don't think that is a good business model at all. You don't have much control and it's not a model that you can scale and sell! One day I'll really talk about how I feel about network marketing and recruiting, but for this purpose, I want you to think about a team that supports you, that helps you to be more successful, that you can delegate to and have them expand your brand. Women who start businesses often have a smaller vision. Don't get mad at me for saying that but after teaching this presentation for over 5 years, it's something that I've witnessed firsthand. Women who start businesses often think about a business that is close to home and around their family and not something that is  scalable. I can't tell you how many women want to start a baking or food business or a party business for kids. I'm not saying that's a bad idea but after many of them have done their market research they realized that it wasn't a business that they could really make a profit or build to sell.  Insurance is a little different. Since COVID, a lot of people have realized that they can run this type of a business virtually, but I'm not sure if that is sustainable long term. Good market research will help to prove that. There are so many different type of insurance businesses that you can start: i.e. an agency, a brokerage, an FMO, an insurance company, a captive, a direct writer. You can focus on life, health, personal lines, commercial, yachts, tech or international. Under the umbrella of insurance, you have a lot of choices! This is why you need a plan. I talk about having a plan all the time but remember fail to plan, plan to fail.  ADVERTISEMENT This episode of the business of  insurance podcast is brought to you by insurancemailbox power. Part of being a business owner is implementing systems and processes that can be automated as much as possible.  As you are planning your new business, you need to be thinking about your marketing. Insurancemailboxpower.com is a great platform for this. You can send post cards to prospects, regular cards to clients and referralpartners You can test the markets with just an investment of a few hundred dollars and send a mailing to a list of prospects.  When you start a new business if you are going solo, there are a lot of balls to manage at one time.  The more you can automate, the more time you will have for business development.  If you want to learn more, go to insurancemailboxpower.com. Sign up for your free 14 day trial and see how you can automate some of your marketing. Understand yourself better:  Why do you want to start a business?  This is the most important conversation you need to have. I mentioned it a little in the last episode, don't go into business because you think you can do it better than someone else….unless you really can.  Here's some reasons why people go into business: Create a career for yourself - while there is plenty of employment opportunities today in 2022, that wasn't always the case. Back in the 80's a lot of people went to college and couldn't get jobs. When we went into lockdown with COVID and a lot of people lost their jobs, and the entrepreneurial type started delivering groceries and filling grocery orders.  People will find work when they need to. Starting an insurance business can be a great career - the question is, are you better as a business owner or as an employee or subcontractor to someone? Some people go into business because There's a demand for what you are selling. Insurance is a product that people need, but not all people know they need insurance. Not all people want to spend the money for something they may never use. If you are connected to a few auto dealerships, it's easy to get auto insurance from new car buyers.There's a demand because people can't drive their car off the lot without car insurance. If you are connected to some mortgage lenders, it is easy to sell homeowners insurance because people can't go to closing without homeowners. I was speaking to someone recently who couldn't understand why she had to pay money for automobile insurance all of her life and she's never had an auto claim. Money spent for nothing is the way she looked at it. So while people need insurance, it's not always an easy sell like a new iphone or a new tesla! Another reason people go into business is because you want to make a difference - wanting to make a difference can be a good reason to go into business, especially insurance, because you can really make a difference in this industry. But are you setting up your business to make a profit while making a difference? Just something to think about. An obvious reason why people want to go into business it to make money - when you work for someone else, they often determine your salary. If you are on a commission basis, then you will determine your salary but not all commission positions pay fairly. And not every position can be sales…..it's a good reason to want to go into business, but it is also important to understand what it costs to get started and the ongoing business expenses of running a business. Money for marketing, taxes, general overhead can be more than you think. The expenses are ok so long as you are generating revenue, but there's a lot that goes into sales and business development! Travel - Many people go into business ownership to be able to work from anywhere. Since COVID, I've somewhat set my business up that way.  In the insurance business that is possible, especially with virtual meetings today but you need to make sure you are in compliance with state laws as you do this. You must also have a strong marketing plan in place where people can find you and send you business regardless of where you work. ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneur, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces two other podcasts, Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.   Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

WHY DO BUSINESSES FAIL? EP 66 - In this episode, we are talking about the top 10 reaosns businesses fail and what you can do to keep your business from failing. This episode is one of several episodes about how to get started in the insurance business. I'm not talking about becoming an agent, I'm talking to those of you that are thinking about starting an agency, an insurance company, or an an insuretech business. These are real issues to consider. It's geared for those of you who are thinking about getting started or those that have started and are looking for ideas to build a better business. Every business has similar issues. It doesn't matter if you are an insurance agency, a contractor or a tech company. If you are running a business you will have similar challenges. So before you open your doors, before you invest in the expansion, give some thought to these concepts and work through them before you take the next plunge!    So to recap reasons why businesses fail: Lack of a marketing plan - Before you open your doors, have a marketing plan - if you take nothing else from this episode, it should be plan, particularly having a marketing plan. Missed market shifts - are you entering an area that is shifting? Is this the time to be a flood expert? Is this the time to sell long term care? Is this the time to be a virtual office or to have a brick and mortar location?  What is your plan to provide great customer service? If you are a solo preneurer, can you handle 20 calls a day, do your accounting, quoting and marketing? While your clients must come first, it's essential to have a plan to manage this Are you overexpanding before you are ready? How much more successful can you be if you just have one location? What do you know about your accounting?   What is your management style? Poor management is the fastest way to have high turnover and lose business. Are you a control freak? Are you meak and mild? If so, take a look at your management style. If you don't have the skillset, takes some classes on how to effectively manage or hire a good manager as soon as you can. Location - Can you prospects find you? Does your office feel inviting? Do you need a location? Motivation - why do you really want to open your own business? Makesure you are doing it for the right reasons. Life's distractions - do you have support if life gets in your way? What does that look like? Lack of planning - I mentioned that you need a marketing plan but you also need a business plan. It doesn't need to be a 50 page document but you do need a plan. Something to track and measure your success. Would you take a trip without a map? It's not different with your business.  Remember, FAIL TO PLAN, PLAN TO FAIL.    Remember, these are all just different reasons why businesses fail. Some of them you can't predict and some of them with some adjustments you can easily course correct. Having a realistic plan will really help you to see great results.  I don't want you to fail, I want you to succeed. But if you don't have experience running a business, these are concepts you need to think about to increase your chances for success!  UNTIL NEXT TIME KEEP CREATING OPPORTUNITIES CHECK OUT OUR SPONSOR: insurancemailboxpower.com This is a mailing service I've been using for over a year now and I love them.  I send all of my birthday cards, thank you cards and marketing post cards from this platform.  My birthday cards are automated. I set it and forget it. The only thing I have to do when I add someone new is to put them into the automation series and the rest is done for me! I have marketing mailings scheduled for several months. I blocked out two days to set everything up and now I just watch the phone ring! Check out Insurancemailboxpower.com and see how you can stay top of mind with your clients and referral partners. Tell them Debbie DeChambeau sent you! ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneur, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces two other podcasts, Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.   Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

SET UP YOUR BUSINESS PROPERLY EP 65 - Today's episode is one of several episodes about how to get started in business. Some of you might be working for someone now and thinking about going off on your own and some of you might just be entering the industry and doing so as an independent. If you are in either of these two categories or if you are someone that works with agents that are working independently, this episode is for you.  I started in this industry on the property and casualty side and quickly moved into commercial insurance when I started. Working with my dad, his personal lines clients were all starting their own businesses and they came to him for advice. We basically learned as we went along what we needed to do to help them. Fast forward 30 plus years, I've had many years of educating business owners about getting started. When I first started in sales, I got involved in teaching insurance to a local SCORE chapter. If you aren't familiar with SCORE, it's called Service Corp of Retired Executives. It's a division of SBA, the small business administration which is a wealth of information for business owners, new and experienced. If you aren't familiar with them, go to sba.gov to learn more. In this particular SCORE chapter, they did a 3 hour program for new business owners. The first hour was on accounting with a local CPA, the second hour was was legal, taught by a business attorney and the third hour was insurance, taught by yours truly!  The legal was mostly entity structures and contracts.  Since I went last, I always heard the lawyer's presentation which is how I learned so much! Fast forward 20 years, I started volunteering with the Maryland Women's Business Center and taught a class called The ABC's of Starting a Business. This class was 4 hours and went over why businesses fail, entity structures and then the next steps to get started in business.  I taught this program for over 5 years. It was my ‘give back' to the business community. I believe I educated over 500 new business owners in this program. The Women's Business Center is also a division of SBA, like SCORE, so we have to work within their guidelines.   Today I'm sharing a segment of that class, on entity structures. I see so many agents asking about them in the different groups I'm in and I want to clarify things about these entity structures that is essential to understand, especially if you are thinking about going the DIY route. I don't recommend DIYing this important segment of starting your business, but some people just want to save a few dollars and don't care about the rest.  Before getting started, my advice to people is to always talk to both your CPA and your attorney.  Why? - Your situation is different than mine as is your risk tolerance. I can't tell you what is right for you because I don't know your situation. So when you take advice from someone in a FB group or a stranger, you are creating potential problems for yourself! Your CPA can guide you better from a tax perspective. Understanding if it makes sense financially to set up one of these entities and getting guidance on how to do it properly from a tax perspective. Make sure your CPA has experience dealing with business owners as well. Some CPAs just do taxes or audits and aren't up on all the issues relating to business owners. You attorney will guide you from a legal perspective. Understanding the risks involved and how to create the proper documents, how to sign your contracts, how to handle multi states. All of these are essential if you are going to be in business for yourself. Make sure your attorney is a business attorney, not a criminal, divorce or personal injury attorney. Just like with the CPA, you want an attorney that focuses on working with business owners because they are usually more on top of the current laws around business owners and doing things properly. When I started in the business back in the 70's we basically had 3 different entity structures to choose from. You were a sole proprietor, partnership or corporation. In the mid 80's the LLC entity structure was beginning to emerge and it really began to pick up speed in the 90's. Now an LLC common place. There are some variations of different entity structures like a PLLC or an L3C or a B corporation. So, knowing which entity structure is right for you depends. For today, I'm only going to focus on the sole proprietor, LLC and corporation.  Let's start with sole proprietor - this is basically you the individual operating as a business owner. It's your name trading as (T/A) or doing business as (DBA) your insurance agency. My first insurance agency was Debbie DeChambeau t/a The DLD Group. I was a sole proprietor when I set up my first agency in 1990.  Being a sole proprietor allows you to deduct your business expenses at tax time, but it does not provide any person legal protection.  You'll get some protection from your general liability or your professional liability policies, but if you lose your case, you could also lose your house and all of your assets, depending on the court ruling. You'll want to check with your state, but most states require you to complete a form with the state that you have created your business and you'll want to get a tax ID number in the name of that business. Once you've done those two, then you go to the bank and open a business account and have all of your business income deposited into that account. You can have it deposited into your personal bank account, but that means you are mixing funds which can become an accounting problem, so it's best to keep them separate and pay yourself when you need to. Again, your accountant can guide you through this better but these are the basics. If you decide to create a corporation, also known as the letters INC, then you are basically setting up a separate entity. I like to think of it as another person, and that's the business. When set up and managed correctly, a corporation protects the personal assets of the stockholders, president, VP, etc, which is usually you, the business owner. When setting up a corporation, you create articles of incorporation, establish bylaws, appoint directors, have a shareholders agreement. These documents must be set up according to the laws of your state and include the right information about your business. When it comes to taxes, the corporation files it's own taxes then the stockholders use that information on their individual taxes. This has long been a complaint of corporations, having to do the business return, then do the individual return. It's where the term, ‘double taxation' is often used. You might have heard the term, don't pierce the corporate veil. This is a test if there is a lawsuit that would protect the stockholders and officers personally. It's essential that everything is done correctly for that protection to prevail.  If you are in the commercial / business side of insurance industry, this is something you probably know well., Those of you in other areas of insurance, might have heard this in passing but never really understood it. If you are going ot be in business this is the one of the most important pieces you should understand By everything I'm referring to contracts, agreements, processes, etc. This is where your attorney can fill you in better, but bottom line, if you are going through the expense of setting up a corporation then it's important to do everything correctly. Before I talk about a limited liability company, let's hear from our sponsor: This episode of the business of  insurance podcast is brought to you by insurancemailbox power.com Part of being a business owner is implementing systems and processes that can be automated as much as possible. Let's talk about onboarding new employees or team members, especially since we are talking about entity structures today.  In an era when a lot of business owners are struggling to find staff, how do you make a new employee feel welcome, make them glad they decided to work with you? Everyone wants to be recognized, so lets talk about how you could go above and beyond to make your employees really glad they are part of your organization.   Let's start with day one - what if you have a coffee mug with their name on it, a box with brownies and popcorn to get them through the first week.  Maybe week 3 you send the employee a water bottle with their name on it and a card letting them know that you are glad to have them on board.  From there, you could set up a system that something is mailed to your employee every month or every other month. Maybe you send a gift card, maybe you send a phone holder, coasters or or a personalized notebook  When you have an account with insurancemailboxpower.com you can set this up and let it run for as long as you want to delight your employees. If you want to learn more, go to insurancemailboxpower.com. Be sure to indicate Debbie DeChambeau sent you. When you sign up for a pro or executive account, I'll share some of my designs with you that have been generating results for me! Now, let's talk about LLC's An LLC is a limited liability company. Many people want to call it a corporation, but technically, it isn't.  As I mentioned earlier, there were very few LLC's prior to the mid 80's. When they were first created, many businesses were hesitant to set them up because the corporate veil hadn't been tested. Business owners were concerned if an LLC  would really protect them like a corporation. In the 90's more and more states allowed them and now they are fairly common place.  An LLC designed to provide the legal protections like a corporation but the tax structure is different with an LLC, it's similar to a sole proprietor.  An LLC can elect to be taxed as a sole proprietor, partnership, S corporation or C corporation. This is one of the reasons a lot of companies are attracted to the LLC. It's also why it is essential to talk to your CPA about this. Some people think an S Corporation is an entity structure….it's a type of tax filing! An LLC should have an operating agreement which states how the business is conducted and how management and ownership is structured.  Not all states allow single member LLC's so it's important to understand the rules in your state and the states that you operate in. It's also important to understand how to run and manage your LLC, not just from an accounting perspective but from a legal perspective. If you aren't looking to protect your personal assets, then consider being an LLC. This is a good reason to work with a business attorney and not DIY it! Understanding that most people set up an LLC or Corporation to protect their assets is one thing, but why go through the work of setting up the business if you don't do it properly. Basically, you'll have wasted a lot of time and money. So do it properly and protect yourself the right way. Work with an attorney and and accountant and understand your obligations and responsibilities with the entity structure you select. A lot of people starting out just set themselves up as a sole proprietorship. It's less expensive. It's when the business owner has assets to protect, having the proper entity structure is essential and managing that entity is imperative. I want to reiterate that I am not an attorney or an accountant. This information is intended to give you an overview of your options. To learn more, go to sba.gov for the best information, then seek out a business attorney and CPA for local guidance.  It's your business. Run it like a business, not a hobby. Do it right! Until next time, keep creating opportunities. ….and support our sponsor! CHECK OUT OUR SPONSOR: insurancemailboxpower.com This is a mailing service I've been using for over a year now and I love them.  I send all of my birthday cards, thank you cards and marketing post cards from this platform.  Check out Insurancemailboxpower.com and see how you can stay top of mind with your clients and referral partners. Tell them Debbie DeChambeau sent you! ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneur, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces two other podcasts, Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.  Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

SMALL THINGS MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE EP 64 - Todays episode was inspired by a recent CE class on Ethics. There were many great ideas shared, in a boring ethics class, but the tips I'm sharing today were from the discussion.  There was actually a list of 50 risk management tips and I've taken 10 of them and offered my thoughts on them from my own experience in the industry. States didn't always require ethics, it's only been a requirement for about 20 years. When I first entered the busines we didn't have to take ethics. It's a good refresher but it can also be boring!  I've titled this episode Risk Management Basics because you might find these ideas fairly basic. The reality is, someone new might not even know these things and a few of them it might take a few years before someone figures them out. Personally, I think they are essential, so if you are new, figure out how to incorporate them into your business and if you aren't doing these things as an experienced agent, now might be a good time to start! Maintain All Licenses Understand the value of professional development Don't promise more than you can deliver Verify Fax Transmissions Use Coverage Checklists Use Standardized proposals Checkall policies and endorsement for accuracy Document coverage rejections Avoid giving recorded statements Fire Bad Clients CHECK OUT OUR SPONSOR: insurancemailboxpower.com This is a mailing service I've been using for over a year now and I love them.  I send all of my birthday cards, thank you cards and marketing post cards from this platform.  My birthday cards are automated. I set it and forget it. The only thing I have to do when I add someone new is to put them into the automation series and the rest is done for me! I have marketing mailings scheduled for several months. I blocked out two days to set everything up and now I just watch the phone ring! Check out Insurancemailboxpower.com and see how you can stay top of mind with your clients and referral partners. Tell them Debbie DeChambeau sent you! ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneur, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces two other podcasts, Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.   Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

THERE IS MORE TO THIS INDUSTRY THAN MAKING MONEY EP 63 - Like teachers, social workers and doctors and nurses, you have the power to make a difference. This episode provides three examples of how people have benefited from having a solid insurance policy and an agent that will works for them. It also talks about a few situations where agents need to do a little more to protect the people they serve. CHECK OUT OUR SPONSOR: insurancemailboxpower.com This is a mailing service I've been using for over a year now and I love them.  I send all of my birthday cards, thank you cards and marketing post cards from this platform.  My birthday cards are automated. I set it and forget it. The only thing I have to do when I add someone new is to put them into the automation series and the rest is done for me! I have marketing mailings scheduled for several months. I blocked out two days to set everything up and now I just watch the phone ring! Check out Insurancemailboxpower.com and see how you can stay top of mind with your clients and referral partners. Tell them Debbie DeChambeau sent you! ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneur, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces two other podcasts, Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.   Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.    

STAYING FOCUSED ON A MONITOR FOR 8 HOURS EP 62 - This episode is about getting CE credits As a CIC, we are required to do annual updates and the classes are usually a deep dive into a topic that you won't find elsewhere. I've done updates every year since 1992. In 2012 I did an update and received a certificate that I had been a CIC for 20 years. To my surprise that meant that I only had to do my CIC update every other year now, instead of every year.  This created CE issues for me because I need 24 hours of CE's a year in my state and since the CIC updates are only 16 hours, I've been scrambling for a few years  to get my 24 in the allotted time. In the past, I just did my update every year and there were my CE's. I never thought twice about it. Over the past 10 years, I've found myself scrambling at the last minute! Before COVID they were all in person.  It was great, you could go to Florida for an update, make a vacation out of it, learn something new, meet some new people and it was an experience, not something that was dreaded. Not everyone likes to travel, or to be out of the office for a few days at a time, so many people do their updates close to home. After doing them for so many years, you get to know a lot of the attendees and it becomes a little like old home week!  I've seen people I worked with in the 80's, 90's and even people I coached in my business development groups in these updates. One of my earlier podcast guests, Laura Bianchini, was scheduled shortly after seeing her at a CIC update! Listen to episode 8 Finding Your Niche   for that conversation! In my area, we had one instructor, Jerry Milton, who was a mainstay. He told a lot of jokes and stories around insurance, keeping  us entertained as we talked about business auto exclusions (I know, boring right) or is it an inland marine or business auto exposure! Sadly we lost Jerry a few years ago just after his retirement, but for anyone who's older listening to this and has taken a few CIC classes, will remember Jerry. RIP Jerry Over the years, the CIC society has updated things a little bit, taking them from 2 ½  days to 2 days but always in person. The classes usually start at 8:00 am and end at 5:15, allowing 10 minute breaks in between and also an extended lunch break because the hotel restaurants often had difficulty feeding 400 people in 60 minutes!. During the morning session and the afternoon session they send around a form to sign that you are there….if you miss signing the form, you don't get credit, so everyone is always watching out for the form. You never know when it is going to be passed around. If you had to get up and take a phone call or use the rest room, you could. If you needed to be out for more than 10 minutes, often you could get an ok from the educational coordinator. Basically if you weren't there, they didn't notice it! Last week with COVID, I did my first virtual CIC update. It's also about time for me to renew my state license, so I needed to get 24 hours of CE's. (or so I thought, but I'll elaborate on that later) Since CIC updates are only 16 hours, I needed two different classes. I decided to do a basic update on life and health, thinking it would be a refresher but hoping they would talk about a few topics that I'm not as confident about (annuities and LTC). I cleared my calendar, no appointments, nothing to do for 2 days but watch my computer monitor and listen to someone talking. First, I need to say that I don't really watch TV, so watching my monitor for 8 hours a day felt a little challenging. When I'm working, I usually have 20 tabs open, looking up something I don't know or doing some other type of research to get answers to my questions. The thought of sitting at my computer for 8 hours was concerning but I had to get the CE's. What caught me by surprise was the pop up quizzes. The three pop up an hour quizzes that apparently if you miss one, you don't get CE's. Seriously! Contrast this with the in person events where you can come and go to the facilities and still get credit but if you miss one pop up quiz you don't get CE's. I wasn't liking that but I really needed my CE's so I was determined to get through it, plus it was a topic I really wanted to know about. I made it through the first 4 hours before lunch and I heard the instructor say that several people hadn't responded to the pop up questions so a lot of people were going to be disappointed when they found out that they weren't going to get CE's.  OMG, how did people miss them……I was (or thought I was) glued to the monitor. I wasn't doing any work, I wasn't talking on my phone. I didn't have any background distractions. Heck, I even held off going to the bathroom until an assigned break. I did look at some of the handouts as they were referenced, which meant looking at a different monitor. But it was fairly close to the main monitor, so I thought I would see any pop up questions or a change in the screen.  ln my mind, I wasn't (or so I thought)  I wasn't one of those people.  But the instructors comment about missing the quizzes stuck in the back of my mind. Before I tell you what happened, I wanted to mention our sponsor, insurancemailboxpower.com This is a mailing service I've been using for over a year now and I love them.  I send all of my birthday cards, thank you cards and marketing post cards from this platform.  Depending on how many I send, I only have to pay for postage.  I'm using a plan that has unlimited postcards, both 4x6 and 5.5 x 8.5. All I pay for is the postage and I send a lot.  I am also in the process of setting up a birthday club. It's a great way for me to stay in touch with people and have their birthday…..think about it…how many birthday cards do you get as an adult? Probably not that many and you probably remember the people that send you a card! Check out Insurancemailboxpower.com and see how you can stay top of mind with your clients and referral partners. Tell them Debbie DeChambeau sent you! Ok, back to my CE rant….. I made it through the first day but it was hard…..there might have been a moment or two where I started to day dream, after all, how much can you absorb about annuities and long term care in one sitting? Day 2 was a little better…at least the instructor made reference to the pop up or would pause in his talking so it was a signal to look at the monitor. Day 2 was about Medicare and Medicaid, which is what I do everyday, so listening to him, seeing if I could pick up a few new nuggets was easier. However, it is also easy to daydream when you could be the one teaching the class!  On Monday I received an email from the National Society that I did not answer all of the pop up questions and therefore I did not earn CE credits!  What! I was shocked. I've been doing my CIC update for over 20 years (actually 30 this year plus the 5 years it took to earn the CIC  designation) Not once did I not get CE credits when the classes were in person! How is it that my first virtual update and I don't get any CE credits? Ugggggg I was pissed. I immediately sent an email back asking which pop up questions I missed. I think this virtual pop up system is flawed. I get that a lot of people will sign on, go play golf then come back and think they should get credit so they have to do something to  keep you honest.  But I think there should be a little grace in missing one or two or maybe 3 over the course of 2 eight hour days.  I feel bad for anyone that had something happen to their stomach and a child needed a glass of water and they missed the pop up question.  I'm sure I'm not the only one that hasn't earned their CE's because they missed a pop up…..but that stinks.  I did some serious soul searching after getting the letter. It was $500 down the tubes….I would never go to the casino and spend that kind of money, I hate throwing it away on CE's!  Then I looked into my state account about how many credits I needed. How was I going to get 24 CE's in less than 30 days? And how much more was I going to have to spend? In my state account, I knew I had a few credit hours because I took my LTC certification in 2021 and paid for the credits when I did my AHIP certification for Medicare. So I knew I had something and maybe didn't need the entire 24.  Well, as I did this, good things began to appear that I either didn't know about or I had forgotten.  For producers in MD that were licensed at least 20 years prior to 2008, you don't need 24 credits, only 8. Ethics was 3 and then I needed a few for life and health and a few for P&C.  Whew….was I relieved. I have an ethics scheduled in a few weeks and am doing another CIC update with the society where I'll get the rest of the P&C credit hours. Or at least I hope I will!. This next update is what the society calls their Mega - in the past it was a week long session of classes that you could take and pick the ones that were of interest to you. I did a MEGA about 8 years ago in Colorado and it was fascinating. This was right as Marijauna was being legalized in CO and one of the sessions was on issues employers faced with the legalization and the impacts with employment liability and workers compensation policies.  Another session I took back then was on cyberliability. That's a topic that has always fascinated me. I remember them talking about a claim where a pizza restaurant had been fined over 50k for sending unsolicited texts messages as a marketing campaign. This was tied to the CAN SPAM ACT which I was well aware of from all the teaching I've done on email marketing with Constant Contact. I hate when I get unsolicited text messages knowing they are violating the CAN SPAM ACT. One day I'll find the time to respond…but if you aren't familiar with it, do your homework.  As usual, I digress! Since COVID, the Mega has pivoted to Virtual and different classes are now offered over the course of 12 months. So you can take 5 classes of your choosing. I took one yesterday on current events and their impact on insurance. For example we talked about WCAG compliance (do you know what that one is?)  (think ADA for your website!) and the apartment building that collapsed in FL and different types of claim situations, outside of the obvious. It was a great class. The instructor told a lot of stories that were engaging and relevant. This class was 4 hours, with two in the morning and 2 in the afternoon with a 2 hour break in between. I was prepared for the pop up questions this time. I wrote down the times of each. After the first 2 hours, I realized that I might have missed one of the pop up questions because I didn't write down the time. I was there, I was engaged, how did this happen again.   I reached out as soon as the second session started only to be told they don't have that information. Ugh…now I have to wait to see if I really did miss one. I hope not, because I was there and I was paying attention….but I did look up WCAG and I'm hoping I didn't miss the question when I was doing the research. I'm talking about CE's because I think virtual is really hard. I don't know how people can love this having to be glued to the monitor for 8 hours straight. It's crazy!  I can't wait to go back to in person when I can doodle when I'm bored and not feel like I have to keep my eyes on the screen so I don't miss a pop up! But here's the good news…..remember earlier I said that I sent an email to the alliance asking which questions that I missed in the Life and Health CIC update. Well, upon further review, they said that I only missed one (which I had notified them about) and I am getting my CE's. The one that I missed didn't go through. I had hit submit but then my screen froze and it didn't go through before it left the screen! So now I just need to get my ethics completed and I'm good for another 2 years.  When it comes to CE's virtual is more convenient but I think in person is really the way to go. We need to be with other people, hear the conversations, build connections because one day the person sitting next to us could be our co-worker, boss or we could be their boss! You never know! Thanks for listening as I rant about CE's and I hope your journey with CE's is more enjoyable! Until next time check out our sponsor, insurancemailboxpower.com and keep creating opportunities!   SHOW THE LOVE If you haven't done so already, please follow, like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. We are on all of the platforms including spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts. If you are listening to this podcast online and don't know how to listen to podcasts on your phone, reach out to our host, Debbie DeChambeau and she'll help you. SPONSOR This episode of the Business of Insurance Podcast is sponsored by Insurancemailboxpower.com Stay top of mind with your clients and referral partners by landing in their mailbox, not their inbox where you might get lost in email jail! CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneurer, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.   Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. 

HOW TO PREP FOR YOUR FIRST NETWORKING EVENT EP 61 - IF YOU ARE NEW TO NETWORKING, THIS EPISODE IS FOR YOU. My name is Debbie DeChambeau, I'm your host, I'm an entrepreneur, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. I want to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  When I'm not helping individuals with insurance, I facilitate business development groups. Before COVID, they were all in person. Today, they are all virtual. I facilitate 5 a week and have been doing this straight through COVID!  For years I've been told I'm a great facilitator, but transitioning the skills to virtual has taken some time. I think I've mastered it, but I'm always observing others and tweaking my skills. I create the agenda's and because I've been doing this for so long and I'm a lifelong learner, I usually add some golden nuggets to help with the topic of discussion. Recently we had a discussion about networking and members were asked to share their best networking tip for someone new to networking. I've compiled them and added some commentary, hoping these ideas will help you become a better networker. If you've been locked down in COVID, if you are new to networking or if you want to be a better networker, I think you'll appreciate some of these ideas. I'm going to share the tip that was provided and then add some commentary to help you understand the context and how you might incorporate the idea into your own style. For this conversation, let's assume that you are going to an event that is specific for networking. It could be an event that has 10 people or 100, the number there really doesn't matter. In my opinion, the number of attendees really doesn't matter. If you are at the right event with the right people, you'll get value. In preparation for this event, here's a few tips that were provided: Networking is a long game and doesn't happen overnight. Plan ahead what you want to get out of the meeting/ goals/ who are you looking to meet/ engage the other person and get to know them vs. them really getting to know you.  If you know who is going to be at the event, research 2-3 people that you really want to meet  Set a goal, maybe to meet 5 new people, force yourself out of your comfort zone  Try to diversify your network - don't be afraid to network outside of your sphere Good reason to follow up with everyone! Plan time for follow up - need a plan for this Block time on your calendar  Connect on LinkedIn / Social Send an email Send a handwritten note Follow up with everyone  Go to the event alone - encourages you to step out of your comfort zone and to talk to people you don't know. Key to networking is to network, don't stand in a corner alone Get there early, be one of the first ones to pick up the name / tag, there's a few people you know, just in case  Force yourself to just show up  Save alcohol and food for later Try different type of events at first to see what works best for you and what feels most comfortable - i.e. big events vs. small; lunches or happy hours  Initially,  you might go to every event, but afterwhile, you'll need and want to be more selective about the events that you attend.  Understand who you are targeting and attend events that are focused on your target market  Have your intro prepared so that it sounds polished but not salsey. Have a simple 5-10 seconds/ 30 seconds and a 60 second intro prepared because you never know what amount of time you'll be allotted.  15 second: My name is Debbie DeChambeau, I'm a medicare broker and I help people navigate the Medicare Maze 30 second: My name is Debbie DeChambeau, I help people navigate the Medicare maze by educating them on their options, answering questions and researching the best plans based on their lifestyle 60 second: My name is Debbie Dechambeau, I am a Medicare broker, working with people that are turning 65, retiring or on disability and in need of Medicare Insurance. I help people understand all of the rules around Medicare and also educate them on their options from original medicare to medicare advantage (you know, those Joe Namath commercials) and everything in between. This includes dental, vision, hearing and cancer. We talk about some of the things they can expect from Medicare and how to plan accordingly. Practicing your introduction NOT SURE WHAT TO TALK ABOUT? Think about the following: FORD - FAMILY, OCCUPATION, RECREATION, DREAMS Try to connect with people on a personal level. If you don't feel a vibe, you probably won't connect professionally Relax and let yourself off the hook. It's about having a conversation that is hopefully memorable. Your conversations don't have to be work related. Remember, the first meeting is a starting point. When you meet with someone that you already know,  ask them how you can help them  ask them to tell you something about what they do that you don't already know. Be patient, know that it's not going to happen overnight, need to build the relationship; Before you get referrals, people need to know, like and trust you. One way to start that is to see what you can do to help someone else. Try to give more than you receive VIRTUAL EVENTS Virtually, put your contact information in the chat.  Save the chat, be sure to follow up

CONTRACTS - DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE SIGNING? Do you know how it could impact your career? EP - 59 For this author, contracts are a sensitive topic. Almost a hot button. My major in college was law enforcement….I was facinated by reading case law, often which is developed because of contracts. As a Certified Insurance Counselor, that's 90% of the training….what does the insurance contract say and how does it relate to what we as the agent do, what the insurance company does and what the insured does. Most people don't ready the insurance policy very often and in and in a digital world, that contract is often sent in the middle several other emails and just gets filed….not like the piece of paper that we once received and put in a filing cabinet.  I'm a stickler for reading contracts and I think a lot of it is my background. As an insurance agent, you have a few important contracts that you are signing, and it's important that you understand what you are signing where you put your signature could impact your career. For this discussion, I'm primarily going to focus on employment contracts, because that is what will impact you, the insurance agent, the most.  I'm at a place in my life that I won't sign another employment contract. In my world, also known as a non compete.  Before I talk more about contracts, I want to introduce you to our podcast sponsor, Insurancemailboxpower.com. I'm so excited to have them as a sponsor and if you haven't checked them out, please take a few minutes to go to insurancemailboxpower.com.  They've agreed to be the sponsor for a few episodes, so I want to provide you with ideas on how you can use this platform to grow your business. Since we are talking about contracts and potential new employees, let's say you are the owner hiring someone new. You want to make the experience of working for your agency one that is welcoming, where the new employee is excited to come to work and be part of your organization. What if you send them a welcome packet before their first day, include a coffee mug with their name on it, include a greeting card that talks about how excited you are to have them on your team and you send them some brownies to get them through the afternoon slump! You could just do that or you could create a drip campaign for all new employees where you sent them some love every few weeks or months depending on your budget and what you feel is appropriate. Maybe you send them a gift card, a personalized pen (with their name on it) a personalized water bottle, game set or even some sweet treats. Insurancemailboxpower.com has a lot of gift items to choose from and they are adding more every week. What is really nice about this is that you can brand what you send with your company information but you can also personalize it with the employees name on it, you can automate the campaign so that once you set it up, you can forget about it. But you can send the goodies throughout the year and make your employees feel like  you appreciate them.  Go to Insurancemailboxpower.com to get your free 14day trial and tell them debbie DeChambeau sent you! Now, let's get back to talking contracts When I first started in the industry, I worked for my dad and as a high school student, I don't think he was worried about anything. Also, he was just learning the business himself, so an employment contract was the farthest thing from him mind.  I stopped working for my dad after about 10 years and the next agency I worked for hired me on as a CSR/Account Manager. I was responsible for servicing the accounts, I didn't have much of a relationship with the clients, other than processing paperwork. I believe I had to sign an employment contract / non compete, but can't remember. It was the next 3 agencies I  worked for that had me sign contracts and it's something I'll probably never do again.  The first contract I had to sign was when I was hired as a producer. Every producer had to sign one and honestly, I was so happy to have the position, so it wasn't an issue. Until some things happened inside that agency that I couldn't stomach any longer and I needed to leave. The issue was I had built a relationship with a lot of people that I was their insurance advisor, they counted on me for my advice and it had taken me awhile to earn their business. The document I signed said I couldn't contact those clients for a certain number of years. This was pre internet, so they couldn't find me as easily as they could today, but I know a few of them tried and did eventually find me. I still couldn't write their business until the time had passed but they were not happy about that!, at all! And I felt I had lost some friends. When I left the first agency, I had an attorney review the contract so I had a full understanding of what I could and couldn't do. Why did I invest the money into having an attorney review? Because I'm not an attorney, I know how to read the contracts but I don't know the laws. I live very close to the MD/VA line. The employment laws between those two states are very different. ….Paying an attorney for one or two hours of service is much better than paying them to defend you in court if you are sued for violating the contract!  Contracts are real life. Employers have you sign them because they are serious about keeping their business. They will sue you if you violate them and then you will have to pay to defend yourself. Depending on how big the company you worked for is, could depend on how vigorously they pursue you….but they have deep pockets. You might not! The second place I worked for I thought was going to be a forever home, so again, signing the contract wasn't as big of a deal, but I did have it reviewed by an attorney before I signed it and the attorney offered a few suggestions to help me modify their contract to make it a little easier on me. They gave up one or two items, but they weren't anything of significance.  When I left the second agency, I again faced the same issue that I faced the first time...I had clients that trusted me, that wanted to work with me and that couldn't because of my contract. The good news / bad news is that I had not written that much business with the second agency before I realized what a crazy business it was. I'm serious when I say crazy…..their staff punched a time clock and literally lined up 10 minutes before it was time to leave waiting to clock out at 5:00. No one gave any extra at that agency. It was like a ghost town at 5:05. Completely the opposite of anything I had ever seen in the companies I had worked for in the past.   On Fridays we started the 5:05 club with the producers because we were the only ones left in the office. The 5:05 club was our in house happy hour. We had some great beer tastings then! The one really good thing about that agency was its location. It was an hour away from my home, but it overlooked National Airport...many of you listening might know it as Ronald Regan Airport, right outside of Washington DC. I saw Bush Sr. leave office and learned that when a president leaves office, they take a helicopter ride around the Capital ...at least up until #45 they did this, I could see that from my office. I also saw the funeral procession for Jacquie Kennedy Onassis as it arrived at Regan Airport. It was a stunning view looking at the Potomac River! It was easy to leave that agency but it was hard to leave that view! When I left that crazy office, I started my first agency. While being my own boss had been in the cards since I worked for my father, it was a lot harder to get started then what someone starting today has to go through.  I had been offered a position with Nationwide Insurance as an agent, but their contract stated that I had to sell a certain number of life products in order to maintain my contract. My issue then as it would be today is that what if their product wasn't the right fit for my client. I've clearly been on the independent side for too long, having access to all of the options that need to be explored for clients! What I remember saying since I started my own agency is that I would never sign an employment/non complete agreement again. I never want to leave the people who have built their trust with me because of a piece of paper. I don't think I am unique with this feeling but at the same time, clients come and go. So it shouldn't be the only driver in what we do but it definitely can have an impact.  There are a lot of industries that require their employees to sign an agreement, it isn't just insurance agencies. I'm perfectly ok with it so long as it's fair. There are some contracts that are very unfair and potentially worth fighting, if you have the resources. If you have listened to some of the earlier episodes, I talked about the business groups that I run in addition to running my insurance agency. For those of you who are familiar with BNI, my business groups are similar, but more about business development and creating opportunities inside and outside of your business. One of my members is a mortgage broker. After about a year of being a member, he decided he was going to start interviewing other lenders to work for because he wasn't having a good experience with the company he'd been with for 15 years. He was very mythological with his interviews and narrowed it down to two companies. The one that he decided to join really impressed him. The CEO flew in to meet him and his wife for dinner, discussed how he could reach him personally if he had issues, confirmed everything that was discussed with respects to office, salary, benefits, etc. .Mike, the mortgage broker, signe the contract and was so excited to work for the new company. He had a new role, felt really comfortable, was transitioning his business then we went into lockdown. Then the new business he brought to the new company wans't getting processed. He was told 60-90 days before he could get anything done. At his old company he was getting things done in 30-60 days. Some other lenders were getting things done in less than 30 days and he was having trouble competing. After 6 months of this, Mike was very frustrated. He decided to leave and was hit with a cease and desist letter from the company owner. The document he signed, which he did not have an attorney review for him, basically said that he could not get out of working for the company for a certain amount of time without having to pay back a certain amount of money and that he could not work for any other mortgage company for several years. I don't have the specifics but the big picture is that he is being held hostage with that company because of the contract he signed. He's now working with an attorney to get out of the contract which has cost him more than a few thousand dollars and he's not finished yet! He's a smart, educated man and he didn't have an attorney review the contract because he didn't think about it. I feel bad for him because I know he's feeling horrible about the situation and his life would be completely different if he had spent a few hundred dollars to get the contract reviewed. I'm sure the attorney would have told him what he was getting himself into and Mike probably would not have signed the contract as written. No body would! Now, you might be thinking, this is mortgage, not insurance and nobody in insurance would do that. Trust me, they will. You just have to decide how much you are willing to spend to defend yourself.  Earlier in the episode I mentioned an agency I went to work for as a CSR when I left my dads agency. This agency had 5 locations and the two managers at one of their locations decided to break off on their own after a few years. I know the agency had them tied up in legal work for close to 10 years. It was a mess! I believe one of the principals eventually left the insurance business completely and is now a legislator in some state out west. He just started his life over!. He also had like 15 kids, so he couldn't really afford a lot of legal bills for too long! Insurance agencies want to protect their business. It's their survival mechanism. As someone who consults with business owners, I understand and agree with this. But there needs to be a middle ground where people can leave and pay for their business at a known price ahead of time.  Not long ago I learned that lawyers don't operate this way, which surprises me, but they are so ethically bound that it does make sense. In the legal world, if an attorney leaves a practice, the firm must send a letter to all the clients, announcing that the lawyer is leaving and giving the clients their choice where they want to go. As a business consultant, I struggle with this because of the impact it can have on revenue, but as someone who sold insurance and had to walk away from friendships and people who trusted me, I love the way lawyers have to do this.  I sold my agency in the late 90's and focused on my business development groups, insurance and marketing consulting along with doing some public speaking for different organizations. In that time period, I had to take a job because of getting divorced and low an behold, another employment / non compete was put in front of me. This one I did sign and without any regret because I was not writing any insurance, My job was to build relationships with realtors and encourage them to use the insurance agency within the real estate company. Since I wasn't selling insurance, I knew there was nothing to worry about with that contract. When management changed and they wanted me to start selling, I knew my time there was short. Also, I really didn't get along with the new management. Not to bash anyone, but I'm about working for an organization where they treat their employees like people who have a brain, not treat them like they are idiots. There I go digressing again! I'm sharing with you some real life examples of contracts but what I want you to take from this is that you will be asked to sign contracts. You must read them, understand them and probably have an attorney review them for you so that you understand what happens if you want out of the contract. It only costs a few hundred dollars to pay an attorney to review it. If you don't have the money for that, ask your future employer if they would pay the attorney bill as part of your compensation if you join the company. If you don't join the company, there's probably a good reason that came out of the contractual review and you would then have to pay the attorney bill yourself but you'll be a happier camper because of it! The contracts you sign are written for a reason. Don't think they'll never enforce it, because if you violate the contract you signed, most likely, you will be sued! If for no other reason, the company will want to make an example of you to deter other employees from doing the same thing! There is one more thing that I want to say about getting your contracts reviewed and that is to make sure you are using the right type of attorney. What a lot of people don't know is that just like most insurance agents specialize in one area, so do attorneys.  So have your employment contracts reviewed by an employment attorney Have your business contracts reviewed by a business attorney If you need to sue someone use a personal injury or litigator type of attorney Hire an attorney that specializes in the area that you need and isn't a general attorney that does what you need once in a while. Read the website. If they say they do a lot, keep looking until you find the specialist! That wraps up this episode of the Business of Insurance Podcast. Don't forget to check out the sponsors website insurancemailboxpower.com. Tell them Debbie DeChambeau sent you. Thank you for listening. Until next time, keep creating opportunities! SHOW THE LOVE If you haven't done so already, please follow, like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. The terminology for this has been changing, but we want you to get our podcast when new episodes are published, so check the platform where you listen to podcasts and make sure we are in your playlist!  We are on all of the platforms including spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts.and Google Podcasts. If you are listening to this podcast online and don't know how to listen to podcasts on your phone, reach out to our host, Debbie DeChambeau and she'll help you. SPONSOR 2021 sponsor: This episode of the Business of Insurance Podcast is sponsored by Insurancemailboxpower.com.  CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneur, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.  Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

EP 58 - A Business Needs Prospects To Grow  What is the best way to find them? Is there a magic formula? That's what we'll be exploring in this episode of The Business of Insurance Podcast. If you are responsible for business development in your firm, then this episode is for you. In many of the insurance groups that I'm in, the one topic I see the most discussion around is marketing. It's one of those aspects of being in business that people need to know about, because without some sort of marketing, there won't be any business coming in the door to pay the bills. In the insurance industry, there are some people talking like the've discovered America, when in fact, a lot of ideas have been happening for decades. Sometimes they are given a new name, sometimes there's a new spin  on how to deliver, but bottom line, there's not a lot that's new in marketing in the past few years.  If you are new to owning an insurance business, it might seem new to you, but most things that people are doing in marketing today have been around for at least 10 years and longer.  With that being said, technology is constantly changing therefore how we implement our marketing is always evolving. Adding marketing to your  business with success is another story.  I think it's important to say that marketing and sales are two different things. Marketing is the tactic to bring awareness and for getting the phone to ring, sales is getting someone to give you their credit card or payment information. Sometimes they are considered one, but in my opinion, they are two different skill sets. One person can and sometimes needs to do both, but without marketing you might not have any sales. You've heard me say this in other episodes, but you need a marketing plan and you must watch out for the shiny object syndrome. If you aren't familiar with the shiny object syndrome, it's when you hear of a new idea and want to implement it, without exploring if it will work with your current marketing plan. Let me explain a few concepts: Understand that a marketing plan, ,also known as a marketing strategy (see I told you some things just get a different description but they mean the same thing) - but a marketing plan is something you create to implement and measure. It's a road map. It shows what you want to do and when and how to get people to notice your business.  Let's just say that you are creating a marketing plan. In your marketing plan, you might decide to focus on referrals. Included in your plan around referrals would be the types of referrals you are going to develop - maybe you'll create some mailings or a system to get them from current clients, maybe you'll implement a plan to go to different networking events to meet new people, maybe you'll implement a plan to reach out to CPA's and develop relationships with them in hopes of getting referrals. Each of these ideas around referrals is a tactic, but you need a plan to make sure you get those referrals.  If I were to ask you how you were going to get new business and you said referrals, that's great but how are you going to do that? That's where your marketing plan comes into play. Let's break down the three ideas I just gave you, referral from clients, referrals from networking events and referrals from strategic partners like CPA's and bankers. If you want to get referrals from clients,  you might want to print cards that say The Greatest Compliment I could ever receive is a referral from you, my client. You might decide that with every new client you get, you send this card to them 2 weeks after the close of business.  Maybe you will also send a postcard 6 months after you get each new client reminding them how much you appreciate their business and that you are never too busy for their referrals.  With this one idea -you need to design the piece or pieces, have it printed and then establish a system for them to get mailed.  You also need to establish a tracking method so that after 12 months you can see if it was successful.  You also want to make sure you block time on your calendar to revisit it after 6 months to see how consistent you've been at executing your plan just for getting referrals from your clients.  It's great to create a plan but if you don't execute it, if you aren't evaluating the data, you are kinda wasting your time! Now let's talk about using networking as a way to generate referrals Will you join organizations? Which ones? Trade associations, local chambers, community groups?  Will you get involved?,How much time will that take and do you have the resources to manage it,  How many events a week or a month will you attend,  What follow up plan will you have for the people you meet after attending those events and  How will you measure your success? As you can see, creating a plan can be involved. In my opinion, the more detailed it is in the beginning, the more you will see and you can measure the success. I've brought up measuring your success a few times already in this episode. It's important. There's a saying in the marketing world...if you aren't measuring, you aren't marketing. I think it is very appropriate for business! Before I talk about another term that is essential in marketing, I want to introduce you to our podcast sponsor. They actually tie in nicely with what we are talking about today as they are another marketing idea for you to explore in your business. The concept isn't new, but it's a new platform to help you personalize, automate and stay top of mind with prospects and clients. It's called Insurancemailboxpower.com.  It's a card, post card and gifting platform with a built in lead development system. Today we'll talk about the birthday card feature. What if you started sending birthday cards and half birthday cards to all of your clients, friends and referral partners? You can put their name on the front and the inside, insert your signature and also brand the card with your contact information on the back! There's no ‘hallmark' on the back or anyone else's information….just yours or whatever you choose to put there., I like to put my logo, web address phone number and tag line on the back as another message branding my company.  When you go to insurancemailboxpower.com, you can get a free 14 day account and utilize all of the products available. Put $10.00 on to your account for postage and send a few cards to yourself so you can see the quality! They have a ton of online training available so you don't have to feel lost when you sign up . Check out Insurancemailboxpower.com and see how you can stay top of mind with your clients and referral partners. Tell them Debbie DeChambeau sent you! Now another term to be familiar with is marketing tactic.  A  tactic might be the networking piece I mentioned above, maybe it's email marketing, direct mail or just door knocking. The tactics are the items in the plan that bring awareness to your business and hopefully make the phone ring.  Here's where things fall apart and this isn't just for insurance professionals, this happens to a lot of people and businesses.It's a big reason why people hire coaches! This is what is known as the shiny object syndrome. Did you jump on clubhouse when it was all the buzz? Did you jump on tik tok with videos. If they were in the plan you created, great. But I'm guessing if you said yes to jumping on Clubhouse, it wasn't really part of your plan, there was just a lot of buzz about it and you didn't want to miss out. Maybe you went back and modified your plan, which is perfectly ok, but hoping on and saying your business need s a presence there is what I call the shiny object syndrome.  I've been teaching about social media since 2005. First We talked about LInkedIn, then Twitter, then FB. Then Instagram, Mixed in there was get on YouTube,your website needs to be mobile friendly, get online reviews, buy online advertising. I've talked about and taught about all of these over the years. The reality of it is, if it's not part of your plan, you don't need to jump on. Maybe you evaluate it to see if it make sense but don't jump on just to jump on. If you have plenty of business, if you have extra dollars to throw at it and you have a lot of extra time, then be my guest, but most people aren't in the position to throw a lot of dollars or time at something with no plan.  There are things going on in the insurance industry that some people think are new and trendy but honestly, they've been thriving in other industries and they are just catching on in the insurance industry. So let's talk about what's been around for awhile. Podcasting Email marketing  Referrals Direct mail Advertising Creating events  / Speaking for leads Trade show booths Writing a book Developing Courses You tube Video Social media -groups The new kid on the block I've talked about a lot of these tactics in different episodes of The Business of Insurance podcast and I'm sure we'll talk about them more in the future! When it comes to marketing your business, I caution you about trying to do everything on your own. When you have a lot of time and not a lot of money, it might make sense to do this, but you have to pay attention to the ROI.  Honestly, if you are in business, you must think like a business owner. The business owners that see the most success are the ones that can delegate. Do you need to know how to create a podcast….it won't hurt, but think about how long it will take you. Researching equipment, sound strategies, editing, promotion, and the list goes on. Hiring someone to do it for you will get it done faster; do you need to know how to create email campaigns? It won't hurt, but  you could be attending a networking event or making 10 prospect calls in the time it would take someone else to create the email for you.  If you are new to the business and working for yourself, please take some classes on how to run a business. Your local SBDC, SCORE and WBC are great resources. Go to SBA.gov for local information.  If you aren't sure who to hire to help you with your marketing, ask other businesses in your area for referrals. Join a mastermind group - just make sure it's not all insurance agents! Create your own board of advisors. It's also a way to make other business connections. Most business owners figure out too late that they should have a marketing plan. They realize too late that if they had had a plan they would have seen greater success sooner.  I know this because I've worked with many many business owners over the years. It's the feedback I get the most. So to recap what I hope you've taken from this episode - create a plan, map out the details of the plan. Set time through the year to review the plan and then modify the plan as needed.  Most importantly, avoid the shiny object syndrome. If a new marketing idea becomes all the buzz, evaluate it carefully to see if it makes sense in your business. Make sure you have the budget and staff to execute the concept properly. Ok, before we wrap up, I'm working on developing The Business of Insurance group on FB. I'd love for you to join. I really want this group to be for business owners who have opened their doors. It's a place to offer support, inspiration and idea sharing, not a group for recruiting, selling or asking about coverages. There's plenty of groups out there for that. There's a link in the show notes or you can seach for the group on FB. SHOW THE LOVE If you haven't done so already, please follow, like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. We are on all of the platforms including spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts. If you are listening to this podcast online and don't know how to listen to podcasts on your phone, reach out to our host, Debbie DeChambeau and she'll help you. SPONSOR This episode of the Business of Insurance Podcast is sponsored by Insurancemailboxpower.com Stay top of mind with your clients and referral partners by landing in their mailbox, not their inbox where you might get lost in email jail! CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneurer, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.   Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

EP 57 Continuing Education for Insurance Professionals. I know, it's a boring topic, but I hope to get you thinking outside the box today. Many of you listening might already be doing this, but let's get more people heading this direction. Welcome to another episode of the Business of insurance podcast My name is Debbie DeChambeau, I'm the host of this podcast, I'm an entrepreneurer, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. I want to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Todays episode is for everyone in the insurance industry, but if you are dealing with clients or helping to train insurance agents, this episode is especially for you.  You see, getting into the insurance industry is fairly easy. You take a test, get licensed with a carrier or broker and start selling or working.  Most people say the license test doesn't really cover what is needed for the types of policies you will offer as an agent. In my opinion, that statement is 100% correct. It just covers the basics and even covers some things that many of us will never use in our insurance career. But we need to know them for the test. Once you get licensed in the insurance industry, you need to update your license every year or two or three, depending on the state you are in. For many people, they just go online, find a course that they can get the proper number of hours and are done with it until next time. It's an afterthought for many, just doing what they have to do to get by.  We are all busy, I get it.  In addition to barely getting annual CE's in, there are many licensed agents that don't have a dual license, they only have the original license. For example ….. someone that started with a life and health license never gets the property and casualty license. Do they need to???? NO!  But here's why I think it's important to have both. You need to position yourself as an advisor to your clients, not think of yourself as a sales person. The insurance industry has a bad reputation, and in some ways well deserved. It's too easy to get in to the business….but if you are in the business to do the right thing for your clients and not just make a sale, then you will position yourself as an advisor, a risk manager. Someone that is looking at all aspects of insurance protection so that your clients understand their options. If you only have one license, it can make it hard to expand your conversation.  It's hard to position yourself as an advisor because you don't know what you don't know. Just like your clients don't know what they don't know. With the internet, people have the opportunity to learn more, but there's also a lot of misinformation on the internet and it's our job to help our clients understand. That's what we get paid for!  A lot of people get their licenses and then consider themselves an independent agent and open their business doors. The licensing class is what they have to run their business! Minimal product training…., minimal industry training...minimal business training. There's a big learning curve in the industry and most people don't realize that until they are in the middle of it.  While it sounds so great to be on your own, working alone adds additional challenges to learning the technical components of the industry in addition to learning how to be a business owner. It becomes a ‘hope and pray strategy' that they are doing things correctly. In the back of their mind they know they have E&O and think they are good. For this reason, I think it's important that you expand your education and think about getting some additional certifications such as  CIC, CPCU or CRM on the property and casualty side to a CLU, CHFC or even a CFP for those with a life and health license. BREAKDOWN OF DESIGNATIONS:  CIC - Certified Insurance Counselor - geared towards the property and casualty independent side - takes a dive into policy forms and provides a lot of real life examples CPCU - Certified Property and Casualty Underwriter - like the name says, it's geared towards the property and casualty side - has historically been pushed on the carrier sde, particularly for underwriters CRM - Certified Risk Manager - there's a version for commercial and a version for personal lines. I think we could all benefit from understanding risk management.  CLU - Chartered Life Underwriter - it's the life/health equivalent of the CPCU CHFC Chartered Financial Consultant - geared towards financial consultants who are more on the life and health side - CFP - Certified Financial Planner - also geared towards financial planners  but more on the investment side - encouraging them to take a risk management approach for helping their clients, not just focusing on investments. My husband obtained his CFP shortly after 9/11. It was a time when the market was down and a lot of people didn't want to talk about investments, so I actually encouraged him to pursue it because I knew the value long term of how it could help him. While I didn't get the Cruts and Crats portion, I did review the property and casualty portion and could see it was in-depth and valuable. This is showing my geeky side, but I really enjoyed doing some of the reviews with him as I learned a lot for my own practice. This is a high level overview of some of the designations. Do some research to see what makes the most sense for your career. There are many other designations, and new ones are popping up all the time - for example, the CPIA which is the Certified Professional Insurance Agent which is for all agents, and focuses on sales processes, ethics and marketing using insurance as the platform. I earned the CPIA designation about 4 years ago and CiC designation  more than 25 years ago…. With the CIC designation, I have to complete a minimum of 16 hours a year doing an approved update so that I can keep using the designation. Yes, every year I have to update my designation by taking 16 hours through programs with the The National Alliance which is the organization that manages the CIC, CRM and many other designations. For this particular designation, you have to do the update before your birthday each year. I always try to take the sessions that are new, trendy, innovative, because a lot of them are the same and are repeated frequently.. For example, I was fascinated by cyber liability sessions back in the mid 2000's. Not enough businesses have cyber liability today and in light of recent hackings, they are probably more aware of it now than ever. So those people that paid attention to cyber liability years ago should be crushing it now! That combined with a good risk management strategy can open a lot of doors and set agents apart from the pack. In a recent CIC update, I took the medicare and medicaid session. Now,I've done that many times. I admire the instructor a lot. I took a session with him back in 2012 or 2013 and he blew me away. It was right  after the Affordable Care Act had been passed and he read the 2000 plus  pages of the document and taught us what we needed to know. We were talking about aspects of the ACT  before anyone. I digress…..The recent sessions I took were around medicare/medicaid and long term care and different uses of life insurance. I've taken several of this type of session many times over the years and I always learn something new. For example, this time I learned about the new hybrid life and long term care policies. Yes, insurance companies have finally figured it out!  What I always find interesting in these sessions is how many property and casualty agents know very little about life and health. These are agents that have been around for awhile. Many of them do this particular session because they are thinking about retiring in a few years and feel like it's time to start learning.  Think of all the missed risk management opportunities with their clients because they didn't know what they needed to know. Now, I would guess the same would apply to a life and health person sitting in on a property and casualty class but it's like the hands are in front of their face saying, no, I don't want to know about this. It's too overwhelming and my brain can't handle it! I'm not saying you need to be an expert...because I do believe in focusing on one area. But you need to know a little bit...you need to know enough to ask a few questions that could lead to an introduction to someone on your team.  Imagine writing car insurance for someone for 10 years and in year 11 they passed away. They left behind a wife and 3 children under 10…..and no life insurance. You talked to them every year updating their car information but because you focused on car insurance, you never asked them about life insurance. You were their trusted advisor……. In this scenario, you probably wouldn't get sued for not asking about life insurance, but there are circumstances that if you don't address certain issues, and then there is a loss, you could get sued.  As an insurance professional, it is to your benefit to position yourself as a trusted advisor. To take the sales notion out of it and make sure your client is aware of what insurance products are available to protect them. It's important for them to know what is not covered, just as much as it is important for them to know what is covered.  Don't make any assumptions.  I also offer this from first hand experience. You see my sister passed away at the young age of 36. She wasn't sick, she just didn't wake up one morning. She left behind 4 children. One under 5, one under 10 and 2 teenagers. She stayed home and did daycare. Her husband worked but they counted on her income as well. Plus, her staying home meant they didn't have any daycare expenses. When she passed, there was no life insurance. Financially, he was devastated. He lost her in come and had to pay for daycare, so it was almost a double whammy from the financial perspective. I was / am an insurance agent. I never talked to them about life insurance because I focused on commercial insurance. Losing a sibling is hard. Knowing that I never asked an important question is harder! Had I had the conversation, how different might their lives have been if there was some insurance to help them out? A lot of times people don't want to talk about other lines of insurance because they feel like it's sales, but the more you know the more you realize that asking the questions builds trust, it positions you as more of a professional than an order taker and someone selling insurance. We need to work on that mindset.  There are some people who have so many designations, you have to wonder if they ever work. While it is impressive, without a doubt and in my opinion they are probably 10 times more knowledgeable than I am, it's hard to be away from the office doing all of these classes to earn the designations!!  But having one or two designations, particularly the right ones, can make you so much more valuable to your clients and set you apart from other agents. I'm not a big fan of actually touting the fact that you have a designation but the knowledge that it provides you will definitely pay off. The insurance designation organizations haven't done a great job educating the public to look for professionals with these designations. The CFP designation is advertised regularly and most people who are looking for a financial advisor are aware to look for someone with that designation.  There are other ways to get an education in this industry. Self study, on the job training, having a mentor and through networking. I don't think that enough organizations have what I like to call focused networking and that's part of the piece that's missing. I few years ago I attended a conference for IAIP. I interviewed several attendees for the podcast and you can hear the conversations in earlier episodes. This is an organization that has been around for awhile but recently rebranded to be more inclusive. It's the International Association for Insurance Professionals, formerly known as NAIW, National Association for Insurance Women. Now, I'll be honest, I'm not a member and when I went to an NAIW meeting many years ago, I felt like the youngest person in the room and I know I wasn't the youngest at the recent event I attended. But, I could see how people might feel that way.  Yet because of the age difference, it might keep people away if there isn't an ongoing effort to bring in young people into the organization and make them feel welcome. But getting involved in an organization like this is a great way to meet people with experience, people that can answer questions and help you build your career. I would encourage you to be a part of at least one insurance organization to meet your peers. Those friendships will be invaluable.  So to recap, consider advancing your career by obtaining a designation or two, instead of just doing CE's to get them out of the way!  Position yourself as an advisor, ask questions like a risk manager and talk about what isn't covered so that people understand their risks. Get involved in an insurance organization. Not with the intent of getting business, although that could happen, but this industry needs professionals and that's what is promoted in insurance focused organizations. That wraps up the conversation about continuing education but I want to spend a minute to talk about marketing. What are you doing to stay in front of your clients and prospects? If you haven't done so already, check out insurancemailboxpower.com. You see, being top of mind is essential. Yes, you can send an email which is probably more cost effective, but you have to deal with spam, being part of 100's of emails that people receive each week and staying compliant with the Can Spam Act. You can stand out today by sending things to the mail box. A post card, a birthday card or even a be different and send a half birthday card. Not many people are doing that today! Check out insurancemailboxpower.com. And see how you can make a difference in your marketing! Tell them Debbie DeChambeau sent you! Thank you for listening to this episode of the business of insurance podcast. SHOW THE LOVE If you haven't done so already, please follow, like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. We are on all of the platforms including spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts. If you are listening to this podcast online and don't know how to listen to podcasts on your phone, reach out to our host, Debbie DeChambeau and she'll help you. SPONSOR This episode of the Business of Insurance Podcast is sponsored by Insurancemailboxpower.com Stay top of mind with your clients and referral partners by landing in their mailbox, not their inbox where you might get lost in email jail! CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneurer, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.   Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. 

This is the continuation of the Life of Andrew Pappas, living in the US and life in his senior years.  Doing things he loved and surrounded by people who really cared about him. The podcast is hosted by Debbie DeChambeau and supported by Lynn Michel Insurance.

EP 56 - Are You Leveraging The Mailbox For Marketing? Are you taking advantage of snail mail to stand out? Birthday cards, holiday cards, postcards and even newsletters can be sent through the mail and have a big impact on your marketing efforts. Here’s an overview of what we discuss in this podcast episode. Holiday Cards There are many types of cards that you can send. If you want to stand out, consider these types of cards Seasons Greetings, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas Thanksgiving Cards Happy New Year Cards Birthday Cards Some of your clients don’t have their birthday recognized by anyone, getting one from you could be a wonderful gift and a great way to stand out. Send to  Clients Strategic partners Automate sending birthday cards: Email birthday cards - Constant Contact   Snail Mail cards using a new service called Mailbox Power Newsletters My audience is over 65, they appreciate having paper to read while reading morning coffee and not being attached to an electronic device all the time. Sometimes, it is nice to read things that aren't online and getting distracted by what can happen online.  Avoid the rabbit hole Postcards Tips for healthy living Best practices Recipe’s  Outdoor exercise tips Hand Written Note Cards Try to send one hand written note card a day. Make it a challenge for yourself Stay top of mind with your referral partners Referral Thank you card ideas Send 4 cards a year to referral / strategic partners Holiday Heart Healthy, something to get through the winter Welcome to Spring 4thof July Halloween Create Systems so that the activities don’t slip through the cracks. Use a CRM, an excel spreadsheet or a calendar to keep track of your note card activity and contacts. SHOW THE LOVE If you haven’t done so already, please like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. We are on all of the platforms where you listen to podcasts including spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts. We’d love a review on apple podcasts. SPONSOR This episode of the Business of Insurance Podcast is sponsored by Lynn Michel Insurance. Do you know someone turning 65 that needs help with purchasing Medicare insurance? Let Lynn Michel be your business partner. They’ll take care of your client and make you look good in the process.  Lynn Michel Insurance, LLC 301-996-2328 Lynnmichel.com Connect with them on social media  Facebook, LinkedIn,  Twitter CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneur, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.  Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram and Clubhouse @dldechambeau SPECIAL CREDITS Special thanks to Mihir Celly for editing this episode  

EP 55 I PASSED MY EXAM NOW WHAT? Life and Health This is the second part of our series on career opportunities in the insurance industry.  The focus is on the opportunities available to you as a life and health insurance agent. If you passed your property and casualty exam, be sure to listen to episode 54 where I talk about some of your options with that license. Life and health are completely different industries inside of the insurance world and both offer several options. So many people think insurance is all about sales. While it is definitely a component of the industry, there are a lot of other areas where you can work and not do sales. T For example, there’s underwriting, accounting, claims, and I’ve heard one of the departments that makes a lot of money is the actuaries. So if you are a numbers person, it’s something to consider! LETS EXPLORE LIFE OPTIONS DIRECT - Mass Mutual, Northwestern, Prudential - I’m sure there are others but these are some of the bigger names that people recognize Northwestern has a great internship program - Sean, Bob Quinn, Josh The positions I mentioned above from being an underwriter or doing claims would also be available with these types of companies. CARRIER - Another area on the carrier side is selling products to other agents. A very good friend of mine worked for Hartford for many years. He started just out of college.  His role was to work with independent property and casualty agents and help them help their clients. Ironically, when he first started with Hartford, my dad was his first agent client. It’s how we met. He went on to be one of the national leaders with Hartford before retiring. My friend has now started his own off shore insurance company and I hope to bring him on as a guest at some point because I’m really not clear what he’s doing today, but know he’s doing well!  SIDEBAR -except it just goes to show you that the opportunities are unlimited. INDEPENDENT - like the property and casualty agent, you can also be an independent life insurance agency, where you focus on selling life insurance products or some of the other products that I’m going to discuss in a minute. As a solo, you can go to an MGA or other broker that will help you get contracts without production requirements.  Think about approaching a small P/C agency and working with them with life and health. Many P/C people run from Life/health so this could be a win win for both of you! ANCILLARY - Other products that we often think of life insurance professionals selling are term insurance, whole life, final expense. long term care, and a hybrid life/LTC. LTC isn’t really a life product, but the hybrid version today is very exciting in my opinion and worth exploring as an agent.  There’s a lot of cool things you can do with life insurance. I’ll be honest, I’ve always been a basic life insurance agent, not selling anything too sophisticated, but there is a lot that can be done in this arena.  Once I brought my friend from the Hartford on an appointment to see one of my government contractors. He was talking about some sophisticated life insurance planning techniques to help the two business owners. They were talking on the same page although I must admit, I was a little lost in the conversation. There is so much that can be done with life insurance, it’s not just a straight term or whole life sale.  The more assets someone has, the more fun putting together life insurance policies can be because there’s more to work with! WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH HEALTH INSURANCE? GROUP - independent agent, work for a company like Kaiser Generally group health is for businesses. Similar to the last podcast episode when I talked about business insurance. Obviously, if you have a group, it’s a group of employees that work for the company.  2-50 50 and above INDIVIDUAL - this can be a tricky business, but there is a career here. The ACA is different in many states and many states have plans that work around the ACA. Sadly, there is not a lot of commission with the ACA plans and there is also certification, which can scare many people away! The money for you as an agent is earned when you can cross sell products such as dental, life and cancer. During the COVID pandemic, a lot of people are losing their group health insurance, so there is a lot of demand for individual health insurance plans. While they might not be able to afford other insurance products during the pandemic, if you take good care of people, when they do get back to work, they’ll be prospects for other insurance products then! MEDICARE - this is where I am today. I must admit, I love this part of the business, but there’s a lot to it. For one thing, if you want to sell medicare advantage and prescription drug coverage plans  you have to take an annual test called AHIP and you have to re-certify with each insurance company each year to sell and get renewal commissions. With many of the tests, you only get 3 tries and you have to get a 90% or better each time. Honestly, that can be nerve wracking and stressful. And the commissions aren't huge. But there’s a demand for the products and you won’t find someone on every street corner selling medicare like you might with car or life insurance. Most seniors need some sort of dental, vision and hearing plans as well as cancer insurance. When you can sell these products, your commission increases significantly and that’s where the business can be attractive. Medicare is highly regulated with a lot of rules and regulations. For some people, that can be a deal breaker for a career. The opportunity to help people is something I really enjoy so it’s why I love the industry so much. There’s also what we call ancillary products - these would be things like cancer insurance, dental and vision and hospital indemnity policies. Depending on the state and situation, there are many options for these. You probably wouldn’t want to just sell one of them but when packaging them with a life policy or health policy, you are really helping your clients and making some money at the same time.  There are career opportunities for each of the type of products mentioned, You can find positions on both the agency and carrier side. You’ll need someone to design the products, market them whether you are marketing directly to the consumer or marketing to other agents. Underwriting Claims Customer Service Technology How do you know who to work for? Finding the right fit isn't always easy! Most organizations are ethical and work above board, but there are some bad companies out there. Some are known as multi level marketing type companies. They’ve been around awhile and I don’t think it’s a good option, but ...I”m just going to leave it there. Do your research, talk to other agents outside of the company and get their input before putting your heart and soul into them. One of the most important things you can do as an agent is to look at the financial ratings of the companies you represent or work for. If they are struggling financially, do you really want to sell their life insurance policy? What if they aren’t around in 10 years to pay claims on the people you were trying to protect. If an insurance carrier has financial difficulty and can't pay claims, the State Insurance Departments are the back up system. As an agent, it’s not something your clients should have to deal with. This is where integrity is important and you don’t sell insurance just for the commission, you sell the insurance because it is the right thing for your client. You need to understand what is covered, what isn’t covered, what the rate history has been and you should always look at the financial ratings before presenting a product to a client.  I can’t stress this piece enough. I said this for the property and casualty side, but if you try something and find you don’t like it, there are so many other options to consider in the insurance industry. Don’t give up on this career path because the first job or the first boss didn’t work out! Pick one area, learn it and learn it well. Become the expert in the area then move on to something else.  Remember, there is a lot to insurance. It’s not simple and black and white. So many people really don’t give it a chance and so many people really don’t understand what is involved.  Most people don’t choose insurance as a career, most people fall into it. I encourage you to make it a choice as a career.  I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. This episode of The Business of Insurance podcast is brought to you by LynnMichel Insurance. Lynn Michel is an independent insurance agency helping seniors with their medicare benefits from medicare advantage to prescription drug and medicare supplements. If you have someone that needs help and this isn’t your area, please connect with Lynn Michel Insurance. They won’t take your clients from you, their goal is to help you look good! In the US, October 15 - December 7 is annual enrollment period for those on Medicare. If you know someone that is over 65 and currently receiving Medicare benefits, this is the time for them to review their plans and see if there is a new plan that makes more sense for them. During this time, medicare recipients are bombarded by mailers and commercials, so please encourage them to talk to a professional and review their options. If the professionals at Lynn Michel can’t help them, well refer them to another professional that can! If you aren’t focused on the medicare market, let Lynn Michel Insurance be your resource. Check them out at lynnmichel.com or connect with them on social.  That wraps it up for this episode. I hope you’ve taken away a few ideas that you can implement. If you like what you’ve heard, please subscribe but more importantly, please tell a friend or a colleague about the podcast.  Until next time, keep creating opportunities. SHOW THE LOVE If you haven’t done so already, please like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. We are on all of the platforms including spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts. If you are listening to this podcast online and don’t know how to listen to podcasts on your phone, reach out to our host, Debbie DeChambeau and she'll help you. CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneurer, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.     Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

EP 54 - I PASSED MY EXAM NOW WHAT?  Property & Casualty The topic in this episode is a suggestion from one of the apple podcast reviews (iTunes). I’ve also heard from people that are just studying for their test, so I thought I’d create an episode to give you some ideas for your next steps. Even if you have been in the industry for a while, you might listen as a refresher or share with someone you are mentoring.  If you are in sales or thinking about going into sales, I’ve included a few extra nuggets for you towards the end. Since the core of this podcast is why the insurance industry is a great place for a career, I thought I’d take the question and offer some ideas. If you are listening to this and have other ideas, let me know and if I get enough of them, I’ll put together another episode on the topic. I passed my exam, now what Did you get your license before you were hired? Congratulations, a lot of people don’t do this, they get their license once they’ve been hired. I know some investment firms hire you and give you the first 90 days to get your license completed. That will put you behind the 8 ball because those 90 days could have been used for prospecting, and a good sales person will understand this. If you are someone that has chosen a career in insurance, getting licensed is the first step. No matter what direction you go with your career, it’s a big learning curve. The licensing portion is only the basics. A lot of what you learn in the licensing process is not what you will be dealing with in the real world. If you are headed into sales, you need to focus on the sales process first, but I would recommend that you take some other classes about 3-6 months into your career to expand your knowledge. Work towards a certification. It will set you apart from those that haven’t furthered their education,  many but more importantly, it definitely expands your knowledge base. It’s often a way to fast track the OJT. One little nugget Share about your license. Over the years I’ve seen many agents trust their employer with handling their license, from making sure they renewed it to making sure their CE’s were completed. The agents just went about their day to day duties until one day they realized their license had expired or they didn’t do their CE’s and then chaos sets in. My suggestion is that you stay on top of when you need you do your CE’s and your renewal and that you process your license renewal, don’t let your agency or employer be responsible for this.. You worked hard to get your license and you don’t want to take any chances.  Over the years I’ve had a few friends lose their license because they thought their employer had taken care of things, and they didn’t! Nobody wants to go through the licensing process twice! Now that you are licensed, let’s talk about working in the property / casualty side of the house.  CAREER OPPORTUNITIES For today, we'll focus on the agency side of things, not the insurance company side. Most insurance company personnel don’t have to have their license because they aren’t selling anything. At least that is what I think. I’ve never worked on the carrier side, so if I’m wrong, I know someone will correct me and I’ll update the show notes! On the agency side you work for a Direct Writer or an Independent Agency  Personal lines - protecting cars, homes, trucks, motorcycles, campers, boats, You might provide insurance for special art pieces or airplanes, you might need to protect their household staff or international travel needs. Depending on the market you live and work, some of these accounts can be over $10,000 and I’ve seen them over $100k. Some agencies have high net worth divisions that focus on the individuals that have a lot of assets that need protecting. Commercial lines - this is primarily business insurance. Look around you at where you eat, your gym, office buildings, amusement parks and contractors. Special events, franchises and medical facilities all fall into this category. In my opinion, it’s good to specialize in something. If you’ve listened to other episodes,  you’ve heard me say that I specialized in construction contractors when I was selling. At one time I knew every electrical contractor in town because of a special program we had.  Here's how unique the business can be: I heard a really cool story recently and it's how you can make insurance as interesting or as boring as you want. A friend of mine, also an insurance agent, has a client that does a big convention every year. All I know is that it is really big and it makes the client almost 90% of their annual revenue. Each year, they purchase event insurance. This year, as the agent was negotiating the coverage and premium, he kept asking for more coverages. The premium got up to close to $200k for this event.  Since the premium was so high, the agent started asking for everything to be thrown in to be covered. Even pandemic insurance! Not having any clue that we’d be having a pandemic. The policy was written last fall so the pandemic wasn’t even on the radar. His client's event is cancelled. The client is going to receive close to $40 million dollars because of what the agent negotiated. While this is an abbreviated version of the story, it’s an example of a few things in the industry that you’ll learn over time. One, everything is negotiable, you just need to know what to ask for, Two, every risk is different which makes the business so interesting. Whether you are dealing with a special event or insuring a doctors office, you’l have different insurance protections that you’ll want to discuss and that in my opinion is what makes this a great business. Personally, I'm a fan of the commercial side because it’s what I’ve always known and where I’ve always worked. There’s a need for people in both sides of the house and you just need to find a place that you feel comfortable and enjoy.  Let’s talk about the types of places you can work. We have Direct Writers and Independent Agencies Direct writer - someone that works for a company that only represents one company.  Allstate / State Farm / Farmers / Liberty Independent agent - represent multiple companies Small agency Large agency - Willis Tower Watson Consortium - HUB International National NFP Next I want to talk about some of the positions that you’d find on the agency side. The direct writer has a few of these but the independent agent has more of them. The direct writers often received these services from the home office. Sales: There’s inside sales and outside sales; Inside you might be responsible for selling to anyone who calls in or you might be responsible for making cold calls. Some of the bigger agencies might even have a call center, but I’m not a fan of those. I realize it’s a way of running a business, but there’s no personalization there. If you want to build a book of clients that you’ll have with you throughout your career, a call center isn’t the place to be looking!  Most of the time, but not always, personal lines is more of an inside sales position and commercial or business insurance sales is out of the office.   CSR / Account Manager:  Someone that manages the paperwork or client requests, policy changes, reviewing the policies when issued by the carrier.  Some sales might be expected but in many agencies, not required. Many agency principals wish their CSR’s would sell more, but the CSR doens’t usually think of themselves as a salesperson, so this is often a challenge for agency owners. Listen to episode 21 titled Steady Sales with Sheldon Snodgrass. We talk about the concept of helping CSR’s mindset.  There's underwriting i.e. looking at a risk and pricing it. Not done too much on the smaller agency side but larger agencies often have this capacity. There’s pricing policies using rating tools which are mostly online today but larger accounts also have pricing flexibility that smaller accounts don’t have, so larger agencies will often have some underwriters on staff for this purpose.  Marketing: two types on the agency side - and many direct writers don’t have this, it’s mostly on the independent side -  Marketing accounts to the insurance company Marketing the agency - someone who manages the social media, advertising, website, etc. This is a newer role on the agency side, but a critical one. Most of the direct writers do this for their agents Claims: Some agencies have a separate claims department. They want to manage the claim process and have the information flow through the agency before reaching the  insurance company. Some agencies have the ability to pay small checks on their own rather than having to wait for the insurance company to investigate which makes it easier for the insured to get back o their feet.  This varies from agency to agency, city to city and carrier to carrier. Loss control or risk management:  Often times larger agencies will have one or two loss control people on staff. This is a little more of a specialty position but one that is very valuable for agents to provide their clients. For example, a restaurant might need a loss control person to help them with purchasing the proper equipment for safety, for training staff on safety measures or to implement proper protections in the restaurant.  Life & Health: Some property and casualty agencies will also have a life and health division. I’ll talk more about that in another episode, but it’s an option.  As you can see, there are a lot of choices to consider if you want to work in the property/casualty side of the industry.  Insurance companies have similar types of positions. When you work for the insurance company your client is usually the agents, not the consumer. This isn’t the case 100% of the time because if you work for someone like GEICO or USAA, you are selling to the consumer YOU HAVE OPTIONS What I really want to leave you with here is that there are many options. If you are in a position that you don’t like, it shouldn’t be the end of your insurance career. Look for other opportunities like I’ve described here to consider. This industry needs young blood…...don’t give up too fast! There’s one other area I want to cover before I end today's episode and I alluded to it earlier in the episode.   Since many people are attracted to the industry because of sales, I’m going to add some ideas for you to think about while you are still studying for your exam. Outside Sales If you know you will be selling…..start talking about what you are getting into with your friends and family before you even take the exam. Don’t sell anything because that’s illegal, but start talking about it. Also, create your marketing plan. Too many people wait until they are licensed to think about this and you’ve wasted too much time already on prospecting.  A few things you can be doing:. Start building your linkedin connections Start setting up relationships with strategic partners Get involved with a networking group or start your own If your end game plan is to have your own agency, I would recommend that you work for someone for at least 2 years first. Why? There's a lot to learn! Over the years, I’ve taught classes on starting a business and that alone is a big learning curve, plus learning about the industry. Get some experience then think about going out on your own. It’s a lot easier to get carrier contracts today than it was 20 years ago, but there’s nothing better than having a track record when you make the leap!  Find someone with a training program  (pros/cons of going alone) Find someone that will give you some ownership if you make your numbers  Once you decide you want to work in the sales side of the insurance industry, start your marketing that day. Here's two books to get you started: Book Yourself Solid - Gets you thinking about what you are selling and what your messaging is It talks about some simple, effective ways to meet people It works Never Eat Alone - This book isn’t that much different than Book Yourself Solid with the exception that it get’s you thinking about who you know, which you’ll need that list when you start selling, and how to build your network. The reality is, why eat alone if you can eat with someone and potentially create business opportunities.  There are a lot of good books out there but these are two of my favorites. If you are going solo and opening  your own business, I would also suggest you read the E-Myth Revisited. It will get your business mindset off to the right start! Just substitute insurance when they say baker and it will make a lot of sense! That wraps it up for this episode. I hope you’ve taken away a few ideas that you can implement. If you like what you’ve heard, please subscribe but more importantly, please tell a friend a colleague about the podcast.  This episode of The Business of Insurance podcast is brought to you by Lynn Michel Insurance. Do you know someone who is turning 65? They need to consider their Medicare options and Lynn Michel focuses on helping them navigate the complexities of Medicare. If you aren’t focused on this area, let Lynn Michel be your resource. Check them out at lynnmichel.com or connect with them on social.  Until next time, keep creating opportunities. SHOW THE LOVE If you haven’t done so already, please like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. We are on all of the platforms including spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts. If you are listening to this podcast online and don’t know how to listen to podcasts on your phone, reach out to our host, Debbie DeChambeau and she'll help you. CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneur, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.   Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn,  Twitter, or Instagram.  

EP 53 - AUTOMATING YOUR SYSTEMS This is the last episode in our email marketing series. If you haven’t listened to the others, I’d encourage you to start with episode 47 for the email marketing series and if you want to learn a little more about marketing, listen to episodes 44 and 45. The topic today is a little more advanced. With the exception of the concept around birthdays or anniversaries, I would not suggest you introduce this aspect of email marketing until you have your basic email marketing campaigns set up and running consistently.  We are talking about automation.  You might hear the term autoresponders or automation, for email marketing, it’s the same concept. Basically we are discussing  a series of emails that you can schedule in advance that are sent based on a certain trigger.  The trigger might be someone downloads something or it’s a birthday or they sign up for something.  It’s a series of emails that go out on a pre scheduled basis once the trigger has occurred. You might send one email or you might send a series of 10 emails over the course of 3 months. How many and how often are up to you and over time, things you’ll have to measure and probably revise. While for the most part, you set it up and your done, if you aren’t getting the responses you want, that’s where the revisions come in.  Many CRM programs have autoresponders built in. Check with your platform to see how much of this can be done with the system you're already using. If you have an older platform or you aren’t using an agency crm, then I’d suggest that you use an ESP (an email service provider). We talked about ESP’s in episode 48.  Integrate them so you don’t have to use two separate systems.  If you are in the process of looking at a new platform, I’d suggest that you look for a platform that can perform these services for you as part of the features they provide. Keep in mind some of the features that you should look for based on what has been suggested on other episodes in this series. There are many different uses for autoresponders. For this episode, we will focus on 4. Automate electronic birthday cards  Onboarding process for new employees Automated series for new customers Automated series for the digital documents that you give away So let’s start with an easy one: Automated Birthday Cards Sending a birthday card is one of the simplest forms of marketing you can do. I love the idea of sending birthday cards in the mail, but if you don’t have the budget or if your client list is really to big to do this effectively, I’d encourage you to look at automating birthday cards through email. It’s not as effective, but it does work! It’s a touch. It’s better than not doing anything at all.  Here’s how I would suggest you do this. Make sure you have the birthday for all of your clients and referral partners. Each platform is going to operate differently on how you set up the birthday cards. In Constant Contact which is the platform I’ve used the most, I put everyone with a birthday into a list and its triggered with the date of their birthday and then email is sent automatically. Every year, on January 1, I go in and update the card that is sent, I.e. update the graphic and then the email cards are sent automatically the following year on the right date.  Sending birthday emails is automated, it won’t get dropped if you get busy because it’s automatic. All you need to do is remember to change the graphic once a year, but even if you don’t do that, the email will still get sent.  Use marketing automation to onboard new employees Think about this - you bring on a new employee and what happens? They have an orientation on the first day, then paperwork for taxes, health insurance, employee handbook, etc and for the first few days can feel  overwhelming.  Then there’s an orientation about where everything is. They are put in front of a computer and depending on their experience level, they might be handed clients to work with and they are off and running.  Think of your first day on the job. Every company is different, but it’s usually on the first day, a ton of information is thrown at you and then you start working! And then you forget some of it and feel embarrassed having to ask about the simple stuff! But what happens is they forgot about what the kitchen policy is, they forget about what needs to be logged into for the first pay period, they forgot about who they need to contact for taking PTO or working overtime.  Your onboarding emails can cover these topics or whatever is relevant to your onboarding process. As part of your automated onboarding process, drip out the important stuff over a period of days or weeks to remind them of the things they might have forgotten. You could do that in all of them. This helps you to know the new employee is engaged and doing what you want them to do. By sending an automated email series using a platform that has metrics built in will also allow you to check if the new employee is even reading the email, much less taking the action you’ve included. One of the reasons I’m suggesting that you send more emails than less is that too much information in one email can get lost. When the subject line in each email tracks with the content, it’s easier to do a search to get the details. Remember the KISS principle. Plus, if only one email is sent and it’s really long, it’s very likely that it won't  get read in its entirety because it is so long.  So think about your new employee onboarding process. What are the steps that you go through and what could you automate? Once the process is set up, all you need to do is add the new employee’s email address and the rest will happen automatically! Here’s an idea for a sequence - but I’m sure your sequence would be much better. Keep in mind that I’ve been self employed for 20 years, working for myself mostly without a staff and things have changed in the onboarding world, so your list might reflect changes in procedures. Day 1 - welcome - include a video from the different key staff members to help them get oriented Day 2 - list of contact people - maybe include where they can find the list as it is updated or who is leading other departments that they might want to introduce themselves to. Day 3 - overview of kitchen policies - lunch etiquette Day 4 - employee handbook - highlight 3 items that you want them to understand. Give them an activity to complete on the handbook and that way you know they have  read the email! Day 5 - computer policies - email setup, templates, CRM details Week 2 - Frequently accessed websites for work to be performed Wee 3 - Schedule a meeting or lunch with agency owner (include calendly or scheduler link) Week 4 - expense reports, supplies,  Week 5 - 30 day check in - what are we doing well, what do you need help with I’ve listed 5 weeks worth of emails - 5 in one week and then one a week for 4 weeks, but you could do this as long as you need to. My list only includes a few topics but think about what you cover in your initial onboarding meeting. Take some of those topics and drip them out into an email. One of the things you could also do in each email is to have some sort of call to action in each email. I mentioned that for the employee handbook,  An automated series for things you give away Before I dive into this idea, when it comes to attracting new clients, you often need to get them to know like and trust you before they will do business with you.  While a lot of what we do in the insurance business is offer quotes, and we are always hoping to get someone to allow us to give them a quote, it’s very possible that they aren’t actually ready to make a switch to you yet.  They don’t know you well enough, they don’t like you or trust you enough to make the leap.  So your job is to stay in touch with them. You could add them to your regular email campaigns, or you could set up an automated system to keep them engaged, to show a little bit more about who you are and the value you bring to your clients and maybe through that series of automated emails, you’ll win them over sooner. There are many ways for doing this, but today we are talking about email marketing automation so I’m going to focus on email examples  In the last episode we talked about building your list and one of the ways to do it was to give something away.  Once you’ve come up with something to give away (also known as a lead magnet), then you want to drip some emails to them with additional valuable information in hopes of getting that person to trust you enough to do business with you. You can drip emails to a lot of people without having to talk to them and get business when you least expect it. Let’s say you are targeting business owners and you create a booklet about hiring best practices. When the business owner downloads the book, they are then sent to a list that is set up for your automation series and you can send them several emails as a way to stay connected. For example, the first email would be the booklet that you sent them The second email might be talking about contracts for new hires and why working with an employment law attorney is beneficial The third email might talk about  one or two coverages employers need for protecting their employees like WC and covering their equipment while working remotely or on travel The fourth email might have some digital security issues The fifth and final email might be about an event that you have, let’s say a monthly webinar that they could sign up for. The idea around having the monthly webinar series is that if someone downloads your booklet and also signs up for your webinar, they are interested on some level about what you are offering.  The webinar could also be an invitation for a meeting to introduce yourself and learn about their business. From there, you can implement your regular sales practices, but the first few steps, gaining interest have been automated for you.   Your work is creating the booklet which can be done in powerpoint and saved as a pdf, then you write out the emails, set them up in your automation platform and boom, you are done. Well, you’ll need to put the booklet on the website and create the sign up box for downloading the booklet, promote the booklet on social media and set up monthly webinars, but that’s it. You have the opportunity to attract a lot of new clients because of your hiring booklet. And once created, it can be a long term client attraction tool for you. If your company has a marketing department or uses a marketing firm for the website, reach out for ideas on how to get this on the website and automate the process. If you need someone to help you with this, let me know and I’ll introduce you to some of my connections. If you are focused on personal lines, you could create a booklet on safe driving - send a series of emails around this and end with a monthly safe driving session with local police or a local driving school.  I mentioned I’ve done a lot of speaking over the years. This is a tactic I used a lot as a speaker to get the email addresses of the attendees when I had no other way to get to know them. They always want the slides or some sort of handbook. I would then set up a series of emails that took the topic I was discussing further (usually marketing) with calls to action throughout the email series to get the person to contact me and see if it made sense for us to work together.  The beauty is that once you write this up, the work is done for you. I would recommend not creating the wheel every time. For example, if you are speaking to groups about insurance, you could give away your slides or a handbook. You could create a series of follow up emails that they receive after they download your giveaway. You are marketing to them even if you are doing 10 presentations a month and you only had to set up the automation series once! The thing to really think about here is what could you give away that would be worthwhile to the audience you are trying to attract. It’s going to differ for many of you listening, so I encourage you to think outside of the box! Be creative in what you give away. Another use of automation is for onboarding new customers. Once people say yes, and purchase from you, set them up in a series of emails that are sent automatically. This email series would be different from your marketing emails. How many you send, how frequently is up to you but at least 3 within a 3 week period.  So email number one might just be a welcome - thank you for your business and a list of contact people in your agency. Your second email might be an overview of how you work, and other services you provide  Your third email might be a reminder of how to handle claims Your fourth email might be about the monthly email newsletters you’ll be sending to your clients, maybe about a podcast you have created, a youtube channel or even to like your social media pages. It’s ok to have a little self promotion.  Your last email might be to ask them to leave you a review and include the links for the review.  By the way, if you aren’t asking for reviews, you must incorporate that into your marketing plan. I’d almost say get that up and running before you begin any type of email automation! So we’ve talked about creating an automated marketing email series for birthdays, new employees, new customers, and prospects that are interested in a giveaway that you are offering.  I want to reiterate that if you aren’t already doing regular email campaigns, hold off on the automation until you have that process up and running, then add the automated series.  Look at it this way, by creating regular email campaigns, you are taking care of your current clients and prospects. You are touching them with some consistency so they don’t forget you and you are adding value because of the content you are creating. It costs a lot more to bring on a new customer than it does to keep a current one happy so let that be motivation to set up the email campaigns before you start the automation series.  The birthday emails would be the exception and you might also delegate the new employee series to the HR department, but that would be a management function, not necessarily a sales function! I hope you found this series on email marketing beneficial. We’ll be getting back to interviewing professionals in the industry and talking about why it is such a great profession with our next episode.  If you are new to the podcast, please be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast player. Also, if there is a topic you want me to explore, please, reach out to me and let me know! I’m grateful to each of you that listens and to each of you that have sent me messages.  I love helping and I hope this series has helped you get through the crazy times we are dealing with. UNTIL NEXT TIME, KEEP CREATING OPPORTUNITIES SHOW THE LOVE If you haven’t done so already, please like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. We are on all of the platforms including spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts. If you are listening to this podcast online and don’t know how to listen to podcasts on your phone, reach out to our host, Debbie DeChambeau and she'll help you. CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneurer, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.   Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. 

EP 52 -  Collecting Email Addresses to GrowYour List This is the second to last episode in our email marketing series. If you haven’t listened to the others, I’d encourage you to start with episode 47 for the email marketing series and if you want to learn a little more about marketing, listen to episodes 44 and 45. In episode 47 we talked about list segmentation which is about managing your list, but it’s important to always be growing your list as well - why because that is new prospects for you. That’s part of marketing. In episode 47 we also talked about looking at your website for different ways you are collecting email addresses. Today we’ll take that a little deeper. Getting email addresses doesn’t just come from people visiting your website. You can ask on your social media posts, you can have give aways, contests, webinars, workshops, community events, things where people need to sign up for something and give you their email address in the process.   Why do you need to grow your list?  If you are someone that is investing in social media you might be thinking, “do I really need to do worry about email marketing?” My answer to this is  if you aren’t, you might be out of business before everyone else. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and whatever new platform is developed is rented space for you. Today, they are all free. Today, they control what people see, unless you pay them. It’s basically a pay to play game for them. So if you aren't paying, not many people are seeing your content. When FB first started with the business pages, as a trainer, I was telling everyone to create one. Those that did, those early adopters, had their pages seen...for awhile. Then FB went public and then they needed to start making money. So then the business pages weren’t seen as much and if you wanted your business page to be seen, you had to pay. Now its advertising The newest thing is groups. Build your community in a group. For now, everyone is seeing what is posted in your group. Before long, FB will have ads in the groups and you’ll have to decide how valuable it is.  I don’t fault FB. They are a business. Businesses need to make money. In the case of social media, it’s offered to the consumer for free, they get use to things, it’s almost like an addiction but AI decides what the consumer sees. The people you want to target might not be in their sightline.  By having the email addresses, you own it. You aren’t dependent on paying FB or even worrying about if FB exists because you reach your prospects and clients on your terms. Personally, I think that’s much better than having your business dependent on another! It’s really important to understand that social media is rented. You don’t really have people’s contact information. It’s hard for you to reach out to them.  With email marketing, you are in their inbox and as long as you are sending valuable content, they'll keep you there! Ok, enough about that.  I’ve used Constant Contact as my ESP for many years and I’ve been one of their partners for a long time as well. Since I’m not actively doing marketing for others today, I reached out to other CTCT partners in our community and asked them what they see as good ways of growing your list today.  Some of the ideas I’m discussing today are coming directly from them and these are people who are working with clients everyday, helping them with their marketing. If you want to check them out, check out the show notes at thebusinessofinsurance.com where I’ve linked to their websites where they were available.  What can you do to grow your list? Website - This is a no brainer and can be done a few different ways. In episode 47 I suggested you do a website audit.  Where are you collecting email addresses on your website? In my opinion, you should have some form of email capture on almost every page of your website. From giving things away to just getting more information, if you don’t ask, you won't’ collect.  This ties into what Amy Morales of Kapeesh Marketing says because she feels that many small business owners feel embarrassed or too modest to ask customers to follow them online or join some kind of digital marketing effort. Just as these business owners champion "shop small" and "shop local," they should feel empowered and completely capable of asking friends and customers to support them online and join them on an email list. I think some of this is because we don’t want more emails in our inbox so why should we ask other people for their email. I understand this but if you are sending out valuable information, people should be happy to get your emails. It’s the people that send out useless information that people will unsubscribe to.  I’ve seen this a lot over the years myself. I even see it today with the clients in my CEO roundtables at Select Business Team. People don’t want to seem pushy or upset anyone so they don’t ask for the emails and they don’t put the tools on the website or other platforms to get people’s contact information.  Just start with capturing an email, then you can get more sophisticated to capture other information.  Now I’m in complete agreement with Vee Tanner of The Biz Tech Wiz   who says, don’t put ‘sign up to get my newsletter on your website.  That worked 20 years ago, but it doesn’t work today. Not many people are going to knowingly sign up for your newsletter today. Some will, but many of us are in email overload, so we only want emails that we can use or benefit from! I recently started playing pickleball and I’m interested in playing in a particular community so when I found out someone was sending an email in that community about pickleball, I did sign up. It’s valuable to me! So while some people in certain circumstances will sign up when it says sign up for our newsletter, you would be better off calling it something else. If you just have the newsletter then say something like Get Information On Protecting Your Family or if you are focused on the B2B market, say something like  Get Details on Managing Your Business. Ideally you want to say something about staying in touch and offering something to download or get my free checklist or tool that benefits you. Amy Morales says this is what is working and can be done in several different ways. So, what can you give away? This is the million dollar question many of you will ponder.  Throughout this email marketing series, I’ve given you a few ideas but here’s a few more: Fire Escape route planning tool The most overlooked insurance purchases (cancer, umbrella, LTC, event, cyber Hiring a nurse advocate Caring for your Pets The topics for what you can give away are unlimited. It will take time to develop or you can purchase a white labeled piece which will save you a lot of time and probably money if you purchase it this way. Michael Loschke of Arista Advisors suggests that you have to have a compelling value proposition and the key objective is to become a close trusted advisor. He follows the advice of financier and philanthropist, Michael Milken's and suggests creating deep emotional relationships" (something to which every agent/sales pro should aspire) - Health, Wealth and Children. BTW, the latter is often pets for seniors and empty-nesters. ;) Ask people join your list  by phone or email or online zoom, "He’ll say to people, our clients receive special email offers and content on health, wealth, and children. May I add you to our VIP list?" Another way to Build your List is Webinars Webinars - Citrin Cooperman  is a large CPA firm and they have been doing almost weekly webinars on PPP loans during the pandemic. They hit the market early with their webinars and now they are pivoting to other topics but when they started the webinars, no one else was doing them. They kept going when others only did a few. Now they have pivoted but they’ve built up a loyal following because of what they offered during the pandemic. It’s not too late to start doing webinars around the pandemic. One of the hot issues that I’ve been reading about is mental health. Kaiser Foundation put together a return to work guide and a large portion was focused on addressing mental health. Aetna is doing a big webinar in June 2020 and a section is on mental health.  Does mental health apply to insurance?  You decide. While webinars are a great way to offer a service, if you promote the webinars on social platforms, when people sign up for the webinar you now capture their email address. During the webinar, I would offer another opportunity to give them something and have them sign up directly into your email platform to show that they signed up, but you could use their email address from signing up for the webinar and upload into your ESP pretty safely.  Workshops are very similar to webinars but are face to face. In 2020, I’m not sure how many people you will get to attend an in person workshop because of Covid. If you are listening to this podcast in 2021 or 2022, it might not be an issue at all! Like with webinars, your workshop topics can be about anything that will bring people together and help you grow your prospect list and email list. You can advertise them on your social platforms, send snail mail invitations, promote through your referral partners, put up flyers in different venues. Everything is focused on getting people to register or attend so that you can obtain their email address and you can stay in touch with them. There is a larger agency outside of Baltimore that started doing events a few years ago and 20 people showed up, now they have close to 100 people showing up every month. (at least prior to Covid they did) They’ve built their list by having these monthly events with speakers and inviting people - growing their list and their prospects at the same time.  Networking events  - Networking events is another strategy you can implement for growing your list. I like to call it offline to online. They  could be from ones you put together or ones put together by chambers, associations, social organizations or anyone bringing together a group of people for the purpose of meeting others.  One way you could build your list from these events is sending out a nice to meet you email afterwards, and having a link to give them something that they have to sign up for to receive. Or maybe you have a link to a webinar you are offering and you send them a link in the nice to meet you email.  Technically, if you have their email address you might be tempted to add them to your email list and you might be able to do this without getting into trouble, but if they sign up for something themselves, you are pretty much in the clear if you were ever reported. Again, get creative. If you go to a business networking event, maybe you have link to a business resource or maybe, and yes, I’m bringing up podcasting again, maybe you ask the person you met to be a guest on your podcast and you have them sign up on your website to get the details and that puts them into your list.  Another thing you could do is have people text to join your list. I’ve done this at speaking events in the past. I’ll ask the audience if they want to get a copy of the slides. Most people do so I’ll have a text number set up for them to text right there, they put in their email address and then they are emailed the slides. I now have their email address and am building my list! Jason Silver also suggested using a QR code. Other ways you could do this is to put it on the back of your business card. If you are in an office and clients come to your office, you could have them scan the QR code right there to get something.  Next, think about contests Jonathan Blotner - https://blotnermassmedia.com/  Contest marketing - sign up for a chance to win xxx maybe it’s a photo contest, Their friends vote on the best photo and the one with the most votes wins, but the votes have to be verified with their email address.  You might need to work with your marketing team to create and implement this, but I think it’s a great idea.  We’ve talked about giving things away on your website, having contests, having webinars, hosting events and attending events. There are many ways to grow your list but you have to be intentional about doing it.  Part of marketing is about nurturing relationships. Some people will find you on the internet, some people will be referred to you but not everyone is ready to buy when you talk to them. So what is your strategy to get them to like you, to trust you, to try you and get them ready to buy from you.  Email marketing is one tactic that you should be doing consistently. In the next episode I'm going to talk about marketing automation. It is how to take all of the ideas I’m talking about here for growing your list and automating the processes. For the most part, once the process is set up, it works automatically. It’s how you build your list even in your sleep! I hope the ideas we’ve been talking about are helpful.  BEFORE WE CLOSE OUT THE SHOW -  If you like what you’ve heard, please go to iTunes also know as Apple Podcasts and leave a review. It really helps with us getting noticed and helps the Apple Podcast algorithms as well! If you know someone that should hear this content, please share the episode with them. If you want to learn more about marketing, join the FB group called the Business of Insurance. I’ll link to it in the show notes and I look forward to meeting you there! If you want to connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, mention you heard the podcast in your request. It helps me identify the spammers from the listeners! UNTIL THEN, KEEP CREATING OPPORTUNITIES SHOW THE LOVE If you haven’t done so already, please like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. We are on all of the platforms including spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts. If you are listening to this podcast online and don’t know how to listen to podcasts on your phone, reach out to our host, Debbie DeChambeau and she'll help you. CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER   ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneurer, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.   Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.   SPECIAL KUDOS TO OUR CONTRIBUTING CONSTANT CONTACT MARKETERS: Amy Morales of Kapeesh Marketing and Make it Pop: Small Business Marketing Podcast heymakeitpop.com says that many small business owners feel embarrassed or too modest to ask customers to follow them online or join some kind of digital marketing effort. Just as these business owners champion "shop small" and "shop local," they should feel empowered and completely capable of asking friends and customers to support them online and join them on an email list. Most often it is that 1 on 1 conversation with clients and customers where they agree to join a list. Simply asking every client and customer when you shake their hand or meet with them if they're interested in receiving updates from you (and if they agree have them fill out an opt-in form) can be a great, engaged list builder. Jason Silver suggested using a QR code.  Michael Loschke of Arista Advisors suggests that you have to have a compelling value proposition and the key objective is to become a close trusted advisor. We propose offering significant value in the form of useful content. For 10 years, I have repeated financier and philanthropist, Michael Milken's advice for "engendering deep emotional relationships" (something to which every agent/sales pro should aspire) - Health, Wealth and Children. BTW, the latter is often pets for seniors and empty-nesters. ;) Asking by phone or email or online zoom, "Our clients receive special email offers and content on health, wealth, and children. May I add you to our VIP list?" Vee Tanner of The Biz Tech Wiz  don’t put ‘sign up to my newsletter and stay in touch but using ‘download, get my free checklist or tool that benefits you is working Jonathan Blotner - https://blotnermassmedia.com/  Contest marketing - sign up for a chance to win xxx maybe it’s a photo contest, Their friends vote on the best photo and the most votes and the email address verifies the votes.

EP 51 -  PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER If this is your first joining us, welcome. If you are interested in marketing and specifically email marketing, I encourage you to check out episodes 45-now where we’ve talked about creating a marketing foundation, segmenting your list, metrics creating content and today we are going to talk about email campaigns.   I’ve used the term email campaigns in several episodes and said I'd would explain it…..so here’s the explanation. Each time you create an email to send to your list, think of it as a campaign. I’m not talking about an individual email you would send, but one that you are sending to your entire list. One that you are creating for marketing purposes.  Think of it in terms of “what do you want to get from the email campaign”. What kind of action do you want people to take?  What is the result you want to see? An email campaign is pushing content to someone to pull a response from them.  One of the concepts mentioned in this series is that content is king. John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing actually says content is AIR. Your company can’t breathe today if it isn’t creating content. Whether it be articles, ads, video, audio, graphics...it’s all about content.  So when it comes to email marketing, you are pushing that content to your list, to your audience and to new prospects.  You want them to take action on the content that you are creating.  In addition, and this is more of a website tip than an email tip, but you want to drive people to your website as much as possible. There’s so many reasons for this but in a nutshell, the more people you can get to your website, the more likely you are to get new business.  So when we think of content for your email campaigns, also think about creating the content on your website and pushing it out by linking it in your email campaign. Use your email campaign to drive traffic to your website! Let me go back to the hot chocolate example I gave in episode 50 for creating content. What if you wrote an article about the best recipes of hot chocolate. In your email campaign, you talk about one of the recipes then link to the article that is published on your website for the rest. Are you thinking “but that’s not insurance related, why would I put that on my website?” That’s ok…...you are human, most of us drink hot chocolate or make it for our kids, so why not drive traffic to your website with hot chocolate information and maybe they’ll stick around and get a quote while they are there! Your email campaign is pushing content - hot chocolate recipes and your response is getting them to click the link on the email campaign so they go to your website and get additional recipes. While they are on your website, they learn more about you and you have more opportunities to connect with them on other digital platforms. (this is tied to retargeting, FB pixels, google analytics and a few other areas which again, is not the subject of this podcast episode series.) This isn’t an episode about websites, but creating content for your email campaign. I just think it’s important for you to understand that creating content for your website is huge. Driving traffic to your website and having a website that you own is essential, I have not done that at this time for the business of insurance. I don’t want to come across as a hypocrite, telling you to do one thing and doing something different myself, but my decision is intentional. If you go back to the original intent of this podcast, it’s to talk about why working in the insurance industry is such a great career path. I’m not selling anything so I’m not worried about how many people visit my website. I’m not sending out any email campaigns so it’s not essential to me ….at least for right now.  Things could always change I’m saying this because if you look at the website for the business of insurance podcast, it’s very basic, very simple. It’s actually created by my podcast host, Libsyn.  However, I do script out each episode and have some links in each episode for SEO purposes. These are all things you want to be doing on your website and with each piece of content that you create as well. If I wanted to send out an email campaign and drive traffic to my website, I could easily do that because each episode has it’s own url and it is easily sharable. If I want to take an episode url and share it in an email campaign, it’s easy to do. That’s important for the content that you create for your email campaigns. So an email campaign is a little more than sending an email newsletter. It’s a marketing tool that has a goal and a system for measuring your results with a lot of moving parts in the middle.  Hopefully you find that explanation helpful. Other ideas for creating your email campaign.  Create a card or announcement Promote a celebration or a milestone Automated birthday emails - I’ll talk more about this in episode 52 but this is a great use of automation and emails Press release Invitation to an event or webinar Special offers and deals Surveys and polls Business letter Newsletter just information - so long as it is valuable Drive traffic to your website Share on social media What should your email look like Most importantly, it needs to follow your brand - same colors, fonts (if possible) and graphics that reflect your brand.  Less is more -  Don’t put everything into one email campaign. You’ll lose people from overwhelm. Remember the KISS principle. It works well for email campaigns also This is where you have to be a creative writer - or hire someone who is. Use phrases to get people’s attention so they will read what you are sending but you don’t want to be spammy or salesy.  Mobile Friendly Keep your call to action above the scroll line Graphics are good but they need to be relevant They need to be the right size You want to make sure you own the pictures and avoid copyright issues They should be in line with your brand.  You can use Canva to make your own graphics, you can purchase them from Canva and other online sites - I’ll link to the website so you know you are going to the right website.  Watch for app sumo for deals for buying lifetime subscriptions photo companies Make your graphics clickable Link to website Social media Something that allows you measure Make sure you use text labels in case images aren't displayed by the recipients email program. Be sure to test images on different devices (phones, laptops, tablets) Recognized sender - Who will be in the ‘from’ line Producers Owner Marketing Sales Just the agency Compelling subject line Create your subject line after your email campaign is complete. As I mentioned earlier, a good writer will know how to do this.  Take advantage of the pre-header text - it’s another opportunity to capture attention 2 seconds using 2 works to get people to take action today When to send Track in your metrics -  Use common sense.  As your list grows you might need to do this again to see if anything changes Those are the major points you want to think about once your campaign is created.  In this series, The Power of the Inbox, we’ve covered a lot. We’ll be publishing 2 more episodes in this series, one about growing your list and the other about automation. Both topics are a little more advanced.  Up to this point, you’ve been given a lot of information to get your emails created. Have you started?  Share what you are creating. Join the Business of Insurance FB group and lets’ talk.  If you like what we are creating in this episode and other episodes, please go to apple podcasts and leave a review.  Until next time, keep creating opportunities. SHOW THE LOVE If you haven’t done so already, please like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. We are on all of the platforms including spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts. If you are listening to this podcast online and don’t know how to listen to podcasts on your phone, reach out to our host, Debbie DeChambeau and she'll help you. CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneurer, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.   Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

EP 50 - WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT This episode is for those of you who are business owners, marketing and sales.   This is the continuation of the series that started with episode 45 on marketing.  This episode takes a deeper dive into email marketing, specifically about creating content.  What will you write about? It’s one of the most asked questions  If you are just getting started, have  your staff go through their outbox and write down the topic of the last 10 emails they sent to clients. What was the topic?  On the P&C side, they were probably on certificates of insurance, changing vehicles, adding jewelry, claims, and during the pandemic, what’s covered and not covered. Right there you have 6 topics that are insurance related. But do you want your email to be focused on insurance? Do you want your email to be focused on business or the community? There’s no wrong here. Your content needs to be valuable and relevant to your audience,  based on your location, your niche, your agency goals.  This is where planning is essential. What do you want your brand to represent.  For some of you in rural communities, talking about what is going on in the community could be essential. Or creating your own events could be the focus of your emails.  Maybe you mix it up a little and one campaign is about insurance and one is about the community.  If you are focused on the business market, maybe you feature one of your business clients - interview them  If you are focused on the marine market, maybe you write about new trends in the industry.  Maybe you just send out email campaigns based on the holiday of the month. There’s a lot from donut day to peach pie day with some of the better known holidays as well.  Here’s where you start Create a content calendar. This is as simple as taking a piece of paper and dividing it into 2 column with 12 boxes. This is assuming you are sending one email campaign a month, but even with this strategy, you could send more per month., and I’ll show you that in a minute. In the left column, write each month of the year. In the right column, you write down the topic you’ll write about.  You could pick 12 insurance topics from the list I recommended you create a minute ago from sent emails. Another idea is to pick the holidays - you can google yearly holidays and you’ll see many lists of different holidays during the year. You can pick one a month and then create a calendar around that.  Here’s an example of doing something not related to insurance at all but something that might be of interest to many of your clients and prospects. And if you are creative, you can probably incorporate some insurance into some of these as well. Jan National Hug Day, National Milk Day, National Bird Day, National Hot Chocolate Day Feb World Cancer Day, National Cheddar Day, Presidents Day, National Pizza Day Mar International Women’s Day, National Napping Day, World Kidney Day, Spring Equinox April Bicycle Day, Denim Day, National High Five Day, National Siblings Day If you used National Hot Chocolate day, you could offer hot chocolate at your office for the day to anyone that comes by, get a stand in a local park and serve it or at a polar plunge event. You could send out one or two announcements about the event, write an article about the history of hot chocolate, offer different recipes for making hot chocolate, create a contest about who likes it with marshmallows and without. So many opportunities to touch the community and meet new people that could potentially be prospects and clients for you! If you are targeting homeowners, young families and life insurance, maybe you pick bicycle day. What if you raffled off a bicycle, maybe you have a bicycle clinic at your office and invite members of the community to bring their bikes by for a check-up and hire a local bicycle shop to help out. Maybe you have a helmet awareness day on bicycle day to help kids understand how to properly wear them and make sure they are properly fitted.  Now here’s something for those of you focused on business. Start with a theme of the month - then see what other activities you can create around the theme as part of your marketing.    Jan Budgeting - Interview a CPA, a money manager and provide a list of resources for creating a budget. Talk about the benefits of a budget and maybe create a contest for people to create a budget in January and submit to you for a prize drawing in February. Feb Legal - interview a business attorney - what do business owners need to address in contracts - contracts with employees, with vendors, with subcontractors. Consider having a virtual session where your clients can ask questions. You could also bring in an attorney with a niche, maybe an employment law attorney or a bankruptcy attorney for Q&A.  Mar Strategic Partnerships - most businesses grow on referrals. Yes, there is a lot of business that comes from online advertising, but if you were to survey most service businesses, they’ll tell you they get a large portion of their business from referrals. So turn that into a theme. Talk about strategies, networking opportunities, using linked for creating partnerships and paying vs. not paying for referrals.  April Content Marketing - just like I’m sharing my knowledge with you about email marketing, you can do the same with your clients. There’s so much you can talk about with content marketing from email to blogging, podcasting to creating videos. You could have a different topic each week. Bring on a different expert for each topic. If you want to do more than just creating email campaigns using a content calendar, you can expand this to a monthly theme of marketing ideas just based on one topic. For example, let’s take budgeting. That works for both individuals and businesses. In addition to making it part of your email marketing, create a few graphics for social media, Do a FB live or two with different experts on budgeting. When it’s safe to be in groups after the pandemic, offer workshops where people can come in and work on a budget as a group.  Now, you might be thinking, we are an insurance agency, not an event planning organization. That’s true, but remember, marketing is about providing valuable information, using an email campaign to promote is a way to find new prospects. I understand expanding past sending an email campaign might not be right for your agency, but it’s something to consider.  This type of content might not be valuable to everyone, but it will be to most, particularly if you have your list segmented and target the right audience. If you really feel like your agency has to focus on insurance, look up claims around hot chocolate! I’ll bet there’s something out there! What I've done here is provided you with a very simple way to create a calendar. One topic a month one email campaign a month. That’s ok if that’s what your agency decides. Maybe for the first year you send one a month, track the results then decide if you want to add more in year 2.  Can you see how creating the calendar also helps to create a theme? So your task for this episode is to create your content calendar. Start with the month after you are listening to this podcast and find a theme for 12 months. Build it out, decide who will write the content, what it will include, the deadlines for each campaign and then get it scheduled. Who will follow up to keep the project on task? The more you identify this up front, the more success you will see. If no one on your team is marketing for you, hire someone to create your email campaigns. If you need recommendations, reach out to me and I’ll connect you.  That wraps up this episode.  If you like what you’ve heard, please go to iTunes and leave a review. If you know someone that should hear this content, please share the episode with them. If you want to learn more about marketing, join the FB group called the Business of Insurance. I’ll link to it in the show notes and I look forward to meeting you there! If you want to connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, mention you heard the podcast in your request. It helps me identify the spammers from the listeners! Until next time, keep creating opportunities.. SHOW THE LOVE If you haven’t done so already, please like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. We are on all of the platforms including spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts. If you are listening to this podcast online and don’t know how to listen to podcasts on your phone, reach out to our host, Debbie DeChambeau and she'll help you. CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneurer, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.  Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. 

EP 49 - Marketing is about Measuring. When it comes to email marketing, there are several metrics you can measure to determine how well your campaign did. It’s important to set goals for these metrics which will help you track the progress of your campaigns as well. If you are someone that has sent email campaigns in the past, this is something you want to look at for prior campaigns and future campaigns and for those of you that haven’t sent anything yet, this is information for when you do. Inside of your ESP, there should be a place for  you to see different metrics from each campaign. You should be able to see how many people unsubscribed, how many emails bounced, how many email in- boxes were full, how many emails were opened, not opened and how many people clicked on the different links you put inside the email campaign.   TODAY WE ARE FOCUSING ON  Bounces,  Unsubscribes and  Full email boxes.  At the end of this episode I’m going to share one very valuable tip for email marketing.  One of the key indicators of how you're doing with your email marketing is to track and review your unsubscribes. Many people will say it’s how many opens you have, but if people are reading it and unsubscribing, it’s a bigger problem.  If people are unsubscribing, it is usually an indicator of 3 things:  You aren’t sending valuable content You are sending too much content Your audience isn’t interested in what you have to offer any longer It’s that simple. The content you send is important. I spoke about this in episode 47 when I gave the example of an agent in NYC sending emails about drainage problems when most of the people on the list were renters or condo owners. If this agent were to send a lot of email campaigns that weren’t relevant to renters and condo owners, then they’ll lose a lot of subscribers and that is an issue in the long run because your prospect list begins to dwindle, for the wrong reasons. It’s essential that you send relevant, valuable content and while it might take extra work, it’s also important to tailor it to the audience rather than being too generic. Another reason why people unsubscribe is that you are sending too much content. You are in their inbox too much and because they really aren’t seeing the value or they aren’t interested any more, they don’t want to see you.  Look at your own email inbox. How many people send you emails every day or every week?  How many of those do you keep and read or just delete? How many do you completely unsubscribe from? What’s your reason for unsubscribing?   Most likely that’s the reason many of the people you send email campaigns to also unsubscribe.  I’m a believer that if you evaluate your own behavior, most likely, it’s similar to others as well. That will help you manage your email campaigns. The last reason people unsubscribe is that they aren’t interested in what you have to offer any longer. This can be tricky. A realtor friend of mine was talking about her email list yesterday and said she gets people that don’t want to see information she is sending out about upcoming listings, but they do want to know about the happy hours or events that she is hosting. (and she and her team have done some very elaborate outings in the past) One of the ways you can manage this is to put a questionnaire at the unsubscribe box asking questions about why people are unsubscribing and if they still want to get emails related to certain content.  By asking this information and giving people options, it could help to salvage a few unsubscribes.   This also ties to list segmenting which I discussed in episode 47 as well. If you have an email list that you haven't sent any emails out in awhile,  you’ll need to send an introductory email or two and let the reader know what you are doing. Give them the option to unsubscribe as part of the content that you send.  Doing this helps you to set a baseline for unsubscribes.  Pay attention to your clients unsubscribing as well. If you have clients that unsubscribe and then you send an informational type of email campaign (like Covid-19 specific information) they might not get it because they unsubscribed to your list.  If people do unsubscribe, you need to look at why, but then let them go. Don’t worry about the ones that unsubscribe, just keep working to create better content and reduce the number of  unsubscribes. Let’s talk about bounced emails.  There’s a few reasons why emails bounce. One is a great marketing opportunity the others are just numbers and there’s not much you can do. When an email bounces and it’s because the email address is no longer good, it’s a indication that your prospect or client has a new email account. Hence, the marketing opportunity for you because maybe they have a new job or they started their own business or maybe they retired. In some cases it’s going from one email provider like yahoo to another like gmail.  Regardless, it’s your opportunity to reach out to them and get the new email address. It’s your opportunity to talk to them and see what changes are taking place in their life. Maybe create a business opportunity for yourself or one of your strategic referral partners. Other reasons why emails bounce include their inbox is full or they are out of office.  One other reason why they bounce is that the email service provider you are using has been blocked by the company you are sending to. For example, in my CEO roundtables, one of my members is a banker with PNC bank. When I send emails to his PNC account they always bounce because I use Constant Contact and PNC blocks Constant Contact. If I send the emails to his personal email address, then there isn’t an issue of him receiving them. Some companies will let their employees white list emails, but not all will allow that, so it’s important to keep an eye on this type of bounce metric as well. It will tell you when you need to get personal emails and not business emails! HERE’S YOUR VALUABLE EMAIL MARKETING TIP: NEVER, NEVER, NEVER BUY AN EMAIL LIST.  It’s the easiest way to get reported as spam and if you get reported as spam too many times your email account will be shut down and it is a very expensive proposition to get it back online.  If you haven’t heard of this before, you are probably thinking I’m crazy. Well, hopefully not because I’ve seen this first hand. In the early 2000’s I was involved with an international networking organization. They did monthly events and with each event, there were 3 events. Initially, we were encouraged to build our lists as much as possible. Personally, I knew better because of my knowledge on email marketing, but not everyone knew the rules. A lot of people just added names without permission and therefore, they were reporting spam. Well, this international organization was shut down. Everything email was shut down. It took them almost 3 weeks to get back up and running. As a result they implemented strict protocols regarding email addresses, but the damage had been done. Imagine not being able to communicate with clients for 3 weeks because of no email. Buying an email list is basically buying a list of email addresses that hasn’t given you permission to  email them. Some platforms like Mail Chimp require a double opt in, so that email list you bought and uploaded will have to give permission to have you add them to mail chimp. Constant Contact flags you if you try to upload too many emails at one time and will contact you to discuss the emails you have before it lets you send to them. If you aren’t truthful about where the names came from and get a lot of spams, you’ll get shut down by them. It’s not something you want to go through. While the intent of the CAN SPAM act is to have an opt out feature, it’s also better if you don’t get reported for spam.  And here’s a little side note….did you know that most CGL’s today do not provide coverage for the CAN SPAM act? Initially they did, but that’s been added as an exclusion now!  I learned that a few years ago in a CIC update I took! - ok, done with the sidebar, if you aren’t sure, read your carrier’s CGL’s and see what they say about the CAN SPAM act. And if you aren't familiar with the CAN SPAM act, then I’d  encourage you to google it and read about it! WRAPPING UP If you like what you’ve heard, please go to iTunes and leave a review. If you know someone that should hear this content, please share the episode with them. If you want to learn more about marketing, join the FB group called the Business of Insurance. I’ll link to it in the show notes and I look forward to meeting you there! If you want to connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, mention you heard the podcast in your request. It helps me identify the spammers from the listeners! Until next time, keep creating opportunities.. SHOW THE LOVE If you haven’t done so already, please like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. We are on all of the platforms including spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts. If you are listening to this podcast online and don’t know how to listen to podcasts on your phone, reach out to our host, Debbie DeChambeau and she'll help you. CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneurer, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.  Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. 

EP 48 - WHAT ESP SHOULD YOU USE? This is the continuation of the series that started with episode 45 on marketing. Today we are talking about your ESP - your email service provider.  Maybe you have one that you already love but the question is, are you utilizing it to the best that you can. Maybe it’s time to take a refresher course with them. Maybe it’s time to upgrade to another platform.  I’m not going to tell you which platform to use but I am going to encourage you to make sure you are maximizing the performance of the platform you are using. There are a lot of platforms to consider. I am very familiar with a platform called constant contact. I’ve used them since 2001. The platform has grown over the years and they've provided me with training modules for the last couple years and I have done probably 100 workshops using their material. Another popular platform is MailChimp. A lot of people like it because it is free. It is my understanding they do have some good tools built-in but again I'm still a bigger fan of constant contact. I'm partial I'm not going to deny it, but I'm not here to sell you on it either. But if you want to use it let me know when I can get you a good discount code. A few other popular platforms are AWeber and  Emma. I haven’t used either one of these, but I’ve heard good things about them. One factor to consider is free vs. paid. Usually a paid platform comes with great support while a free platform has minimal support. So, depending on your tech level, paying for one that has support might be better than spending hours trying to figure  out one of the free ones. I think these four platforms are good for the beginner email marketer, the smaller agency that doesn’t have a CRM. There are many CRM’s that have built in email marketing platforms. Learn how to use them and use them regularly. Other Platforms If you listen to other podcasts, you might hear advertisements for Click-Funnels and Convertkit, Active Campaign and Hubspot. These are also good platforms, but they have some advanced features that might not be necessary if you are just going to send out one or two email campaigns a month. If you are a coach, selling digital products or if you are experienced at email marketing and you are ready to take it to another level, then these platforms might be worth considering. There’s a few new names on the market that I’m not familiar with at all and they include SendinBlue, Omnisend and Pabbly. So use at your own discretion, but in the research I did for this episode, their name came up more than once. Here’s my advice. If you just want to keep it simple, if you just want to send emails to your prospects and clients, you don’t need a lot of fancy features. You need a platform that provides the following: Metrics such as bounce rates, opens, and click throughs and  one that has good templates that are also mobile responsive and today a template that looks like a letter is good enough. Not too many graphics because it slows things down and not too many colors because it’s just too much. You also want to make sure the platform has the unsubscribe option. (actually that’s essential so that you stay in compliance with the Can Spam Act) You want something that is easy to use - if it’s not, you are never going to be consistent with your marketing. One of the CRM’s I used has email built into it but honestly, it was so difficult to edit. It was easier for me to use a separate ESP Some other features you might want to consider are tagging, automation, A/B testing, and resending.  If you aren’t doing much email marketing now, if you don’t have a big list of email addresses for prospects, if you just want to send emails, then stick with Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, Emma or Aweber. Don’t worry about all of the fancy features that some of the ESP’s provide.  What you should focus on is a platform that doesn’t frustrate you and that fits the basic bill! Most importantly, only choose another ESP if your CRM doesn’t give you the features you can get in a different platform for email marketing. I’m not suggesting that you change platforms but if you aren’t using one, now is the time to do your research.  If you listened to episode 45 where I talked about the special facebook group I’m starting, we’ll talk more about these platforms and if you have any questions, we can discuss them there. Just keep in mind that nothing is perfect! As one platform adds a new feature that makes it hot, the others usually follow with a similar feature, it just takes time to get it created so there’s a lag time.  Do your research but don’t take too long. The idea here is to get started.  It’s not fun to switch platforms but it's better to do it when your list is smaller.  That wraps up this episode.  If you like what you’ve heard, please go to iTunes and leave a review. If you know someone that should hear this content, please share the episode with them. If you want to learn more about marketing, join the FB group called the Business of Insurance. I’ll link to it in the show notes and I look forward to meeting you there! If you want to connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, mention you heard the podcast in your request. It helps me identify the spammers from the listeners! Until next time, keep creating opportunities.. SHOW THE LOVE If you haven’t done so already, please like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. We are on all of the platforms including spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts. If you are listening to this podcast online and don’t know how to listen to podcasts on your phone, reach out to our host, Debbie DeChambeau and she'll help you. CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneurer, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.   Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

EP 47 - THE IMPORTANCE OF EMAIL MARKETING AND SEGMENTING YOUR LIST This episode is being produced for those of you who are business owners, marketing and sales.   Listen to episode 45 before listening to this episode. Episode 46 is also worth listening to. In episode 45 we discuss the marketing foundation, identifying your ideal client,  getting your messaging right and creating some content: Do an email marketing website audit  Do a review of what you are giving away to get email addresses  Look at where the email addresses are going when you collect them.  Today we’ll focus on two areas. Why email marketing is important  Segmenting your list Email marketing is the best form of marketing. On a recent webinar about email marketing. The host showed a picture of a Wall Street Journal article from January 2019   and the headline said “ Email is the hottest form of marketing.” That was even 15 months ago (from the date of this recording). FB, IG, TW, LI were doing well a year ago. So why would the WSJ publish an article like that? You own it  You control it and  You determine where and when it is seen. (i.e. lands in someones inbox)   Facebook, twitter, IG, LI all have algorithms and they decide what you see, when you see it and how much you see. That might not sound fair, but each of them are businesses. Each of them wants to make a profit.  Most importantly, you might use one of those social media platforms but you don’t pay to get on the platform. So what do you expect to get for free?  I'm not going to talk too much about the pro’s and con’s of being on the platform, but from a business perspective, from a marketing perspective, it’s important to understand that these free platforms can do what they want. You then decide if you like their rules and want to take advantage of what they have to offer, and pay them to do so. Learning Tip: You don't own the content on social media platforms. They determine when you see things, who’s posts you see, what your viewing experience is like.  If one of those platforms goes away that audience goes away. Did you know that a few years ago Twitter was in financial trouble? They were considering going out of business? Since our current President uses the platform, a lot more people are using it and therefore, it’s not in trouble right now, but they were talking about closing down a few years ago. It wasn’t long ago that people were spending thousands of dollars to build their following on Twitter.  Imagine a company like yours that spent a lot of money and effort to build a following and then one day twitter went away. That was almost a reality for many people and businesses. What good is it to have a thousand or fifteen thousand followers if you can only connect with them on social media - and then you can only connect when the algorithm says so! Since most of you listening are insurance professionals think of this from a risk management perspective,  How would you advise your clients to minimize a business interruption claim if twitter, FB LI went away. You tell them to get contact information, get the email addresses of the people they are connected with. So truthfully one of the best marketing strategies that you could have is to build your audience on those platforms by having strategies in place to collect their contact information and the easiest first piece of data to collect is their email address.  You have got to get their contact information so that you can be visible on your terms, not on someone else’s terms. Not every email gets read, but by landing in the inbox you are at least seen! It’s a touch. Also email isn't going anywhere. I don't care what anybody says, it's the way that people communicate. Until that changes, email is a super powerful form of communication. Today yes people text, yes, people talk on the phone, yes, people are connecting on social and during this pandemic, virtually,  but the inbox is still there so at least for now and I'm going to say the next five plus years unless something new comes out, email will still be used. And even if something new did come out, people have to adapt to that technology. Back in the 90’s it took people a long time to adapt to email.  Most people are slow to change. For that reason alone, email isn’t going away anytime soon! The second topic for this episode is your list.  In the marketing world, it’s called list segmentation but that’s an industry term. Plain and simple, it’s managing your list. It is important to know that managing your list is essential for your marketing success. Some of you will have more work to do than others when it comes to your list.  In episode 45 we talked about looking at how you are collecting email addresses. They will go into a list of some sort. Maybe it’s just an excel spread sheet, maybe it’s into your CRM, maybe it’s into your ESP. (emal service provider). But once they enter your list, how are you segmenting them or is everyone going into one bucket? How are you dividing them up so that when you send an email campaign (and I’ll explain campaign another time), what buckets are they going into or is everyone going into one bucket or the same list? This is what is important.  So your task for this episode is looking at your list.  Are you breaking people's names out by personal and commercial lines? By Life by Health by home by auto? Are you breaking them out by prospects vs. clients? If you are focusing on commercial insurance, are you breaking them out by industry, like contractors, restaurants, consultants, startups,  What about breaking out your list by referral sources so maybe it's your accountants, maybe it's your lawyers, maybe it's your real estate lenders. By having lists, it opens up additional email marketing opportunities for you. You can customize the content to talk directly to the reader based on their list. For the purpose of this example, let’s say you worked in NYC and most of your clients and prospects lived in the city. What if you were to send an email out about how the grading of the soil around the house can impact flood issues in a basement. If they live in the city, they are probably in a condo or an apartment so this information is not relevant. But if you worked in NYC and targeted prospects outside of the city that live in houses, this content would be relevant. So by segmenting your list of homeowners vs. condo’s vs. renters you would be able to target the right audience with your email..  Here’s another example: Let’s say your agency is in the rural part of the state where most people have farms. If you were to send an email that focused on the 5 things to consider when purchasing condo insurance, do you think your farmers would find it relevant?  Probably not. You’d be better off sending an article about alternative ways farmers can generate income. That will get their attention.  If you don’t have your list segmented, it’s hard to customize your emails  Again, keep in mind these are just examples, but hopefully it makes it clear about why segmenting your list makes more sense for the emails that you send. When you send the wrong content to the wrong list, you begin to lose interest. People will unsubscribe. They’ll potentially report you as spam.. And trust me, you do not want anyone reporting you as spam. It’s the first way to get your email shut down.  I’ll talk more about all of this in another episode. Having a segmented list allows you to focus your email marketing campaigns on the targeted audience. How much you take your list and divide it or segment it is up to you. I will tell you from experience, the more you segment, the more success you will have. It also means more work but that’s what separates the winners from the losers! If you are focused on golf courses and contractors, consider segmenting those two lists because while they’ll have some similar needs as businesses, they also have a lot of different needs that you can focus on in your marketing. You could have each of them in a general business list and then have each of them in the contractor or golf course list. Breaking them out into  separate lists will help you target your messaging so they feel like you are speaking directly to them. Another reason for segmenting your list is that you can personalize who is sending the email.  Let’s say that you have 5 sales people in your office. 4 are focused on commercial and one is focused on personal. Each of the commercial sales people can create a list of their prospects and the emails to those prospects can be specifically from them, not a general email from the marketing person. It provides the sales person with more brand identity so that when they call the prospect,they’ll be more easily recognized and it also keeps the content focused on businesses from going to the stay at home parent. If the agency sends an email from a name the prospect does not recognize, it’s possible that the recipient won’t recognize them as easily when they follow up for the business. All of this takes more work but it is also how you get the best results.  You might be thinking that you are selling insurance and you aren't a content creator or an email marketer. But in this business today we have to be multi talented or we need to hire someone to do this for us.  If you need someone to help you with your email marketing, reach out for referrals.  It’s so important to have good valuable content for your audience but personalizing it creates better results. Here’s a recap of what we discussed today: Understand why email marketing is essential - it’s not going away and it’s not controlled by algorithms. Take a look at your list -  are they segmented and are the email addresses in the right list?  What type of lists make the most sense for you and for your agency.  Do you have personal vs. commercial, prospects vs. clients? Homeowner vs. renter? How many lists or how much you segment is your decision but the better the list, the better the results! That wraps up this episode.  If you like what you’ve heard, please go to iTunes and leave a review. If you know someone that should hear this content, please share the episode with them. If you want to learn more about marketing, join the FB group called the Business of Insurance. I’ll link to it in the show notes and I look forward to meeting you there! If you want to connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, mention you heard the podcast in your request. It helps me identify the spammers from the listeners! Until next time, keep creating opportunities.. SHOW THE LOVE If you haven’t done so already, please like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. We are on all of the platforms including spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts. If you are listening to this podcast online and don’t know how to listen to podcasts on your phone, reach out to our host, Debbie DeChambeau and she'll help you. CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneurer, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.   Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

EP 46 - JOIN OUR FACEBOOK GROUP If you are an agency owner, a sales professional or doing the marketing for your agency or company, this episode and the next few are intended to help you retain your current business and continue to add more clients during these challenging times and beyond. When this podcast first launched, we had a FB group but wasn’t promoted much.   Well with the coronavirus, it’s time to get it rolling again and you are the one that will benefit. It’s a way of giving back. Especially during these difficult times. Here’s the plan: First, it’s not a sales pitch. We aren’t creating programs to sell. We don’t want to do the marketing for you. There’s enough people doing that and we can introduce them at some point.  The goal is to share our knowledge and help you be more successful. So head over to facebook, look for The Business of insurance group on FB and apply.  Why should you join the group? The conversation will focus on marketing. We’ll have guests to answer your questions.  It’s a work in progress. It’s for insurance professionals only, other than the marketing professionals that I invite. You can be an agency owner, a marketer or in sales. I don’t care if you are on the carrier side either. We will do a reference check so if your profile doesn’t say anything about your insurance career, you probably won’t be admitted! (that’s a basic marketing tip) It will be positive group and focused on marketing. If anyone enters the group to sell you something, or recruit you for something, they will be  removed. Log into FB, search for the Business of Insurance group and click to join the group. (like the business of insurance page while you are at it) CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneurer, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.   Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.    

Our guest podcaster, Debbie DeChambeau, talks with Kevin Brandt and Kasey Connors of Trusted Choice about all the resources available to agents through the Big "I", including agency marketing programs and COVID-19 resources.

Our guest podcaster, Debbie DeChambeau, talks with Kevin Brandt and Kasey Connors of Trusted Choice about all the resources available to agents through the Big "I", including agency marketing programs and COVID-19 resources.

EP 45 - Develop your Marketing Foundation In this episode we discuss the importance of a marketing plan and why you need to have one. We discuss some of the components and offer ideas for building your strategy. While every good marketing campaign starts with a good plan, we also provide you with three items to complete to begin building out a successful email marketing campaign. WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM LISTENING Components of a Marketing Plan Identify your ideal client Develop your messaging Create content Email Marketing Conduct a website audit Identify what you are giving away Review where the email addresses are going once people give them to you SHOW THE LOVE If you haven’t done so already, please like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. We are on all of the platforms including spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts. If you are listening to this podcast online and don’t know how to listen to podcasts on your phone, reach out to our host, Debbie DeChambeau and she'll help you. CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneurer, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.   Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/-p4wsgbh0vM  Billy sits down with Debbie Dechambeau from the Business of Insurance Podcast. The purpose of the conversation is to share a few marketing nuggets that insurance agencies can start using as soon as the podcast is over. Insurance agencies must prepare to address three key issues related to the Pandemic:   Work-from-Home Staff: https://www.inspireanation.org/Video/Audio-Resources   Retention of Current Customers: https://www.inspireanation.org/membershipinformation   Increasing Marketing, Prospecting, and Sales: https://www.inspireanation.org/Data-Super-Center  The Fix My Insurance Agency Podcast is listed as one of the top 15 insurance-focused podcasts in the world by Feedspot; https://blog.feedspot.com/insurance_podcasts/

EP 44 - Things are changing rapidly with the coronavirus, so as business owners, it's time to pivot. It’s time to focus on your business even though everything around  you might seem a little crazy.  If you have been in the insurance industry for awhile, this is not the first time we’ve hit a rough patch. While this one might be more severe, we’ve had situations in the past that have had a big impact on business.  In the 70’s we had the oil crisis when gas was rationed. We could only purchase gas on odd and even days, depending on how your tag ended. We didn’t have the internet then, so if you were in sales, you couldn’t really go see people if you ran out of gas. It could have become an excuse to not sell if you didn’t plan accordingly.  In the early 2000’s we had .com bubble, the 9/11 attacks and around 2007/2008 we had the subprime mortgage crisis.  All of these recessions impacted business.  While not every business survived, most people bounced back. If they didn’t stay in their current profession, they found another. Those that thrived, invested in marketing. They didn’t panic; they didn’t go into wait to see what would happen mode, they took charge and put their name out there.  What is happening today with Coronaviris is unpresented, yet, we will all bounce back. Business will continue, particularly the insurance business.  As insurance professionals, we are needed more now than ever.  As business owners, now is the time to focus on your business.  I’ve done a few episodes on marketing, but today, more than ever, it’s essential that you ramp up your marketing efforts. This is what will separate the winners from the losers.  Don’t freeze. Don’t panic.  If you listen to the news too much, it can paralyze you. Minimize the amount of time you spend on social media. I’m a big music person, so my solution is to crank up the music and dance like nobody is watching! I’m not saying ignore the news because it is changing so rapidly, we need to stay on top, But you can listen for 30-60 minutes and know everything you need to know for the day. Or you can go to your favorite news publication and read 2-3 articles and be well informed.  Things to consider for business survival I’m a believer that you want to first start with the business that you currently have.  No matter how many clients you have, pick up the phone and call them. Start from the back of the alphabet! Divide the alphabet between different staff members. Set a goal for how many calls a day you want made, and when you want all of the calls completed. In my opinion, the sooner the better. You might get some push back about what to say. Start with, Hi!, we are here and wanted to make sure you are ok. If you need us, give us a call.  Sure, you can send an email, but it’s not as personal. They will remember you for calling and checking in on them. Depending on how long this goes on, you might need to make the calls 2-3 times.  In business it costs more to onboard a new customer than it does to keep an old one. That is why I recommend focusing on the current customers first.  As you talk with them, you’ll get different concerns and then as a company you might find a way to address them. Some of the concerns or questions that are asked could be used for marketing pieces in some of the examples I’ll be suggesting in a few minutes.  So have a system to track the calls that have been made and the feedback, concerns, questions that are asked. Then do a recap with your staff. If it is just you, do your own analysis! I believe in the next 10 days, you should be ramping up one or more marketing campaigns. I would suggest a 3 prong approach at first because this is not the time to sit back and wait. I’m going to provide some suggestions that aren’t super expensive to implement. Other than time, it doesn’t cost anything to call people. Marketing Ideas To Consider Virtual Education Sessions Personal lines could do sessions on proper nutrition. Partner with a nutritionist and have a conversation about staying healthy when confined to the indoors. Bring on an estate planning attorney to discuss wills and medical directives, bring on an accountant to talk about how this might impact personal taxes Commercial lines - Bring on an business attorney and talk about business planning; bring on an accountant to talk about financial management and find a marketing consultant to talk about marketing.  Most of the ideas I’m going to mention in this episode would be great tips for your commercial clients and prospects. This is a great time for you to be offering valuable information! It doesn’t have to be just about insurance! You can use platforms like zoom, go to meeting or webex. It’s my understanding that some CRM’s have a platform built in. I have’t seen that but if your CRM has something built in, take advantage of it! Advertising Now is the time to start doing some advertising. I’m going to start with online but I also think there are other ideas that will also work. Online will be Google, FB, LI, IG and Twitter. Other platforms as well if they are relevant to your market such as Yelp, Angie’s List or Manta might be worth investigating.  Google, FB and IG are ideal for personal lines. They can be used for business but I’d do a lot of testing before throwing money towards them when you are trying to attract business clients. If you want commercial business, Google and LI will be your ideal platforms. My recommendation is that you hire someone that specializes in this. If you want to learn to do it in house, there are classes you can take but I’d suggest hiring a marketing consultant to work as an outsourced CMO for a few months until you have it down correctly. You can waste a lot of money doing it wrong. It’s not hard but you need to have the foundation right before investing the money and that’s where the CMO can help.  If you want some direction on where to find people that offer this service, reach out to me, you can find my contact information in the show notes at Thebusinessofinsurance.com I’m not a big fan of advertising in magazines or newspapers, unless it’s a specific trade magazine. For example, if you are targeting golf courses, advertising in a golf magazine is worthwhile. But advertising in the local glossy magazine might not get you the ROI you are looking for. Do you have clients or colleagues doing podcasts? If they’ve been consistent, offer to be a sponsor for a few episodes. You want to be strategic with who they are targeting, but this is an underused way to advertise so it’s worth considering. Direct Mail. I know, you are probably rolling your eyes, but because no one is sending direct mail right now. Think about it. It’s the ideal time to get noticed. Trust me. Most people will be home right now. They’ll have a few more minutes to digest the mail. If you send the right mailers, you’ll see a response. Now is the time to design, create and implement your direct mail strategy. How about sending a 12 month postcard series. Send this to your prospects. Work with a graphic designer to make it look professional or use Canva. Ideally you want it to be on the bigger post cards so that they stand out.  A few ideas, springtime gardening tips, summer grill safety,and  home fire exit plans. They key here is that they don’t need to be about insurance. They can be about things that will be of value to the reader. Even better is tips that are worth saving so they don’t throw away the post card. Partner with a local retailer and offer a discount code on the card for them to make a purchase! Get creative! If you have clients that can help, even better. For example, if you have a client that does home inspections, see if they’ll offer a 15% coupon to all of your customers for doing a deck inspection or a home inspection. People who own their homes should have them inspected every 5-10 years. (Most people think they only get inspected when they buy them, but things go wrong when they own them as well!) Here’s another idea - partner with a local restaurant. Ask them to provide a recipe for one of their dishes, then ask them to provide a discount coupon for something. Maybe buy the dish and get a desert or side dish. It would be a great way to partner with a restaurant and help support them while marketing as well.  You could do the same type of partnership for your commercial clients. Do you know a small payroll service or business coach?  Offer business tips and then a coupon for service.  You are adding value to your prospects while helping your clients as well. All while creating unique marketing pieces. If you are looking for ideas for the series of postcards that you are sending, refer back to the calls you make to your clients above. Ask them a few questions and I’m sure from those conversations you will get a lot of ideas for your postcard series. Online reviews This might be a time to implement an online review campaign. Many people will be home reading emails so now is the time to capture them. Consider platforms like Grade.us, Podium or Get More Reviews. If you want to do some research, look up ‘online review platforms or reputation management software and read some of the articles. Some of the well known platforms like Yelp and Angies list are pay to play meaning that if you don’t pay their fees, they won’t promote you. So proceed with caution with sights like that.  Something else to consider regarding online reviews is Google My business. If you haven’t set up your google my business page, do so now and direct your clients to leave a review there. One of the platforms I referenced above will help with that. Where do most people do their searches today? Google! So it’s important that you are getting reviews on a google platform!  On a side note, and this is more for online management than anything, is to search your business name. Don’t go directly to your website, but search your company. Look at all of the directory sites, is all of the information consistent?  Most likely, it isn’t. Spend some time making this consistent. If your company has the budget, look into Yext. It will make sure all of your directory sites are consistent. The issue with paying for this platform is that once you get it set up, you’ll need to keep paying because when you cancel, everything reverts back to how it was before you signed up with them.  Email Campaigns If your company didn’t do email campaigns before, consider adding them to the mix now. Like with the postcards, they should be valuable. Don’t promote your agency. No one cares about that. What they care about is what you can do for them. I’m winging a few of these ideas right now but for the next 4 weeks you could do the following: Week 1: Exercise Tips to Help During Stressful Times Week 2: Top 10 shows on Netflix and Amazon that your staff recommends Week 3: Places to go outdoors (assuming that we are allowed outdoors in three weeks!) Week 4: Cooking in bulk ideas  Other ideas would be similar to the postcards. Normally I wouldn’t say send an email a week, but during these stressful times, if the content is valuable, you’ll be ok. Watch the metrics, the unsubscribes and the bounces and manage accordingly. If too many people are unsubscribing, cut back. Also re-evaluate your content. On many platforms you can do A/B testing to a small sample to watch the metrics as well.  If you haven’t done any email marketing campaigns before, reach out to a marketing specialist for guidance. It’s not hard, but you really want to make sure that they are valuable. That’s where most people make mistakes! Podcast  Ok, I’m bringing up the podcast again. If you’ve listened to other episodes on marketing, you’ve heard me mention that a podcast is a great sales and marketing tool. You can sit in your office or your home and schedule podcast recordings all day long. Get a zoom subscriptions. It’s $15.00 a month.  You might only need it for one month. If you can get 20 recordings done, you’ve put yourself in front of 20 prospects and created some great content for your website. I haven’t gone into great detail about each of these marketing strategies, but I’ve given you an overview and some ideas on how to get started. If I were to prioritize, 1) make the phone calls. 2) Send out email campaigns to both clients and prospects that have given you permission to send. While those are in motions, design your postcard or online campaign to be launched in the next 2 weeks. I know, it seems like a lot, but trust me, now is the time to be marketing! Now is the time to stand out. Now is not the time to curl up under the covers and wait to see what happens. You are business owners, managers and sales professionals. Business requires marketing.  Pivot and get started. Thanks for listening. If you like the information, please share with another business owner or professional colleague. Until next time, keep creating opportunities. SHOW THE LOVE If you haven’t done so already, please like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. We are on all of the platforms including spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts. If you are listening to this podcast online and don’t know how to listen to podcasts on your phone, reach out to our host, Debbie DeChambeau and she'll help you. CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneurer, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.   Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

EP 43 - This episode provides you with risk management ideas to consider in the event your office needs to shut down due to the coronavirus. Most people will telework but there are areas to address with this from servers to IP protocols, internet access to telephone trees.  Also consider remote calls, remote signatures and communicating with your business customers. The intent of the episode is to get business owners thinking. Better to be prepared than scramble at the last minute.. CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneurer, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.  Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.    

INSURANCE PODCAST WITH CHRISTIAN BRINDLE EP 42  - Our guest, Christian Brindle, is taking his content marketing to another level. His topic is boring to most yet his audience needs the information. Creating content has increased his business in ways that he never expected. Christian and I are part of a few FB groups focused on Medicare. When he was ready to publish his latest book, The Insurance Funnel: 9 Simple Tests Every Insurance Policy Must Pass Before Purchase, he asked if anyone had a podcast that he could be a guest on, I raised my hand. It’s ironic how someone you only know through a social media platform has so much in common with you.  I started in the business working for my father, as did he. We both have podcasts and we are both published authors, except he’s published more books than me! He’s an inspiration for sure! Christian’s podcast, The Everything Medicare Podcast, is published 3 times a week, but when he started,it was very sporadic. He talks about how the podcast has helped his business and why he is now publishing 3 episodes a week.  I’ve listened to many of the episodes. As I move into the medicare space in my insurance practice, I’ve tapped into every resource I can for learning. His podcast is full of a lot of good information. During this conversation, we talk about a lot. From working with family to his podcast sponsor, it’s informative for anyone looking to do some different type of content marketing. What content creation has it done for his business?  The podcast alone has brought in so many referrals that he’s had to get licensed in several states to accommodate the clients. The book is a great calling card to initiate a conversation with his strategic partners and potential clients. The content he has created has quickly positioned him as an expert in the field. Did you enjoy that conversation? If so, please go to apple podcasts (also known to many as iTunes) and leave us a review. If you have friends or colleagues that you think would benefit from the conversation, please share the podcast with them as well. Nothing makes me happier than to hear other insurance professionals creating a podcast or publishing a book. It levels you up, provides almost instant credibility and positions  you as an authority.  For Christians podcast, it was really exciting to hear how it has helped his business. Since I’m now in the medicare space, I started another podcast called Seniors We Love, and while I don’t specifically talk about Medicare throughout each episode, it is sponsored by my agency and as part of the sponsorship, I provide a medicare nugget in each episode. I’ll report back in a year as to how that helped my business.  I originally booked him as a guest to help him promote his book but learning about how he got into the business and the podcast was part of why I enjoyed the conversation so much. If you are thinking about writing a book, find a way to get it done. If it’s an insurance book, write something that you can use as a calling card to get directly in front of your prospects. It will make a difference! If you want to learn more about Christian, go to his business website, ChristianBrindle Insurance Services.com, or connect with him on his social platforms.  Don’t forget to check out his book, The Insurance Funnel: 9 Simple Tests Every Insurance Policy Must Pass Before  Purchase. You can find it on Amazon. Until next time, keep creating opportunities ABOUT OUR GUEST – CHRISTIAN BRINDLE  Christian Brindle is on all of the social media platforms and his books can be found on Amazon. His podcast can be found on Apple Podcasts (iTunes), Spotify, Stitcher and your favorite podcast player.  Connect with him on: LinkedIn  Facebook.   Twitter Website Podcast - The Everything Medicare Podcast Book - The Insurance Funnel: 9 Simple Steps Every Insurance Policy Must Pass Before Purchase CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneurer, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.   Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. 

EP 41 - If you haven’t listened to episode 40,  it would help set the scenario for the conversation in this episode. Welcome listeners from Agency Nation. In January we were added as a content contributor and they are promoting this podcast to their audience. Agency Nation is also producing their own podcast and there are a few other podcasts on the platform, so check it out if you aren’t familiar with them.  The core of this podcast is to talk about why the insurance industry is such a great profession with segments on different professions within the industry, personal development, marketing for those of you in business development and anything else that is beneficial to insurance professionals.  SPONSORED BY PODCAST, INC 2020 We are talking about three areas from episode 40. The first is sales, the second is mastermind and the last area is advisors.  WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM LISTENING What makes insurance agents more than sales people Ideas on training new producers Asking questions that aren't on the insurance application How to position yourself as an advisor and build your network at the same time Leveraging your business relationships How not to burn out your spouse HOW TO LEAVE A REVIEW If you have an iphone or an iTunes account, would you leave us a review?  It provides us the opportunity to get discovered by other agents. Log into your account, look for our podcast Business of Insurance then go to Ratings and Reviews and let us know what you think of the episode. SHOW THE LOVE If you haven’t done so already, please like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. We are on all of the platforms including spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts. If you are listening to this podcast online and don’t know how to listen to podcasts on your phone, reach out to our host, Debbie DeChambeau and she'll help you. CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneurer, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.   Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

PLANNING FOR A NEW SALES PRODUCER WITH REMMIE BUTCHKO EP 40 - Our guest, Remmie Butchko, is the CEO of Georgetown Insurance located in Silver Spring MD. In this episode, he talks about his career first as a producer then as an agency principal and the road to success.   QUESTIONS WE ASK Describe your current position  How did you end up in this profession? What do you like about what you are doing? What do you wish you’d known before you started in this position Where do you see yourself in 5 years in this industry? How would you describe your career right now? ABOUT OUR GUEST – REMMIE BUTCHKO Remmie Butchko is the CEO of Georgetown Insurance. The agency was started by his parents and he is now managing the operation. Connect with him: LinkedIn,  Website Facebook.   Twitter CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneurer, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.  Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

EP 39- A conversation about working in this amazing industry. This industry is actively recruiting for talent but insurance isn’t a profession that many people think about when they are in high school or college. Many people enter this industry by chance or because their parents were in the business. Once they dive in, most people love it. The cool thing about the industry is all of the options.  Today's guest didn’t have the typical career path. Her experience might be helpful to someone wondering what direction to take with a career in insurance.   Episodes 31 and 34, were recorded at the regional conference for the International Association of Insurance Professionals and this is another conversation from that conference. Many of the participants spoke about their careers in the industry as well as the association itself and the benefits of being a member. This is a continuation of those conversations.  Geraldine Plott who provides some great insight into the organization and ideas for you to consider for future personal growth. She also talks about her career path that might provide some of you listening ideas for areas to pursue.  One of the things that Geraldine and many of the other attendees mentioned is that they had to be dragged to a meeting. They didn’t want to go. Yet once they got there, they never stopped going. So many of us are busy, we have a lot of choices and it’s often difficult to attend meetings, much less get involved. Depending on what you want out of your career, being part of an association in some capacity can be beneficial.  Think about finding an organization to get involved with. Maybe it’s the International Association of Insurance Professionals, maybe it’s your state insurance association or maybe it’s a local organization that serves the community. There is so much value when you get involved. We just have to make the time to make it happen.  SPONSORED BY PODCAST, INC 2020 Will we see you at Podcast Inc? If you have a larger company, let’s say more than 50 employees, or maybe you have multiple locations or a sales staff that is always on the road, how are you communicating with everyone?  As the company grows, it’s easy to loose the small business feel where everyone knows the owner of the company and gets to talk to them. When you have multiple locations or a remote staff, it’s easy for communication to feel out of reach. This conference is about creating podcasts for internal communication. Getting the CEO, the HR department, the Marketing department and other department heads to talk to the rest of the employees through a podcast.  Often times these conversations happen at annual meetings or quarterly roundtables, but when this happens, you have a limited amount of time and everyone is vying to get their message heard. It’s difficult to go too deep into a conversation because of time.  Take your sales meeting and turn it into a podcast. Take your Managers meeting and turn it into a podcast.  Record the conversations, make them available to your staff and increase the communication in the organization. At this conference, we are bringing together companies that want to create podcasts for internal communication and talking about best practices.   We will have sessions on IT considerations for keeping this information inside the organization. We will have sessions on creating systems for HR  and marketing for curating content and guiding teams on delivering. There are many podcast conferences being held across the country but this is the first that specializes in internal podcasting for business.  WHEN:  May 1, 2020  WHERE:  Washington, DC.  If you have a larger company, let’s say more than 50 employees, how are you communicating with staff. As the company grows, it’s easy to loose the small business feel where everyone knows the owner of the company and gets to talk to them.  This conference is about creating podcasts for internal communication.  We are talking about creating a podcast that only your employees will hear…..not the outside world  This is a conference where someone from HR, Marketing and specifically communications and IT need to attend.!  If you have an agency with multiple locations, are part of an insurance company or a vendor in this space, we’d love to see you there if it makes sense for your company.  Go to podcastinc.co to get additional details. This isn’t just for the insurance industry, there will be other industries in attendance such as banks, non profits and government agencies. We will have limited seating, so if you think this will make sense for you, don’t wait too long to register.  SHOW THE LOVE If you haven’t done so already, please like or subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast player. We are on all of the platforms including Spotify, IheartRadio and Apple podcasts. If you are listening to this podcast online and don’t know how to listen to podcasts on your phone, reach out to our host, Debbie DeChambeau and she'll help you. KEEP CREATING OPPORTUNITIES CONNECT WITH THE PODCAST ON SOCIAL FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK PAGE TWITTER ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance podcast is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA - an entrepreneurer, business advisor, insurance professional  and content creator. Her goal is to inspire you to think differently and explore ideas that disrupt the status quo.  Debbie has an extensive business and marketing background with a focus of helping insurance professionals be more successful.  She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and produces three other podcasts, Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed and Seniors We Love.   Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

EP - 36  What happens when your life is turned upside down because you have to care for a family member?  In this episode, our host, Debbie DeChambeau, talks about the challenges and joys of caregiving and how it can impact a professional life. She provides ideas for talking to your clients and prospects about taking steps to prepare for the difficult times. This isn’t an episode on financial planning,  just thinking bigger. You’ll find ideas for helping your clients and having an advisor mindset, not just selling the product they want to buy.  As insurance agents, you know a lot. The longer you are in the business, the more you learn. It’s an industry that is not stagnant and with new technology new exposures arise. Insurance companies develop products to protect these exposures, and the products evolve over time. It’s an industry that keeps you on your toes because of all of the changes.  The core theme of this episode is that you know more than your clients and it’s important that you share your wisdom as much as you can to offer strategies and ideas to help them make educated decisions.  Check out our other podcasts Seniors We Love and Business In Real Life

Did you know that people are turning 65 at a rate of 10,000 people per day and that number isn’t expected to decrease for a few years?  That’s a lot of people turning 65. A lot of the people who have had Great accomplishments throughout their lives Their stories might not have been told and if they have been, they might not be remembered. Welcome to seniors we love, a podcast designed to honor the people who have made a difference in our lives. Who might not have gotten the recognition they deserved any other way.  It’s where we share stories of people who have made a difference  Mixed in we talk about some of the difficulties they’ve experienced and some of the joys of their adventures. Trailblazers in their own subtle way. I hope throughout this podcast to share those stories of people who really made a difference and mixed in between some of the stories will probably be some of the difficulties of the senior life that people experience  My name is Debbie DeChambeau and I am the host of this podcast and in 2019, I am also a caregiver. I didn’t plan to be a caregiver. I didn’t go looking for it.  People tell me they don’t know how I do what I do. It’s something I have heard all of my life. Honestly, I just do what I think needs to be done and I keep moving forward. I’m a survivor. I don’t think twice about it. I focus on having a positive attitude  and I think in many ways that’s what keeps me going In many ways I might have set myself up for it because I am so caring. I’m not afraid to jump in and try to figure it out. And I’m not that good at saying NO.  My sister passed away in November, 1999. She was 34 and left behind 4 children. A year after her death, her husband was floundering so I was asked to care for her two youngest children for awhile. I went from two kids to four overnight. I figured it out. I was raising 4 children for over a year. What a challenging time that was in my life. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I managed the care for my biological father during the last year of his life. You see he ended up in the hospital once a month and would be there for a week at a time. It was an hour away, but I drove there every day, met with the doctors, coordinated the care then came home to take care of the 4 kids. He would misbehave in the middle of the night and they would call me to come and sit with him because they didn’t have anyone else. While caring for him was different than the caring I’ve done for others, his taught me a lot that has helped me over the past 10 years. I also have a step father. Actually if you want to learn a little more about me outside of this podcast episode, go to episode 1 of Divorce Exposed, another podcast I host and you’ll get a lot of my backstory.  I digress.  When my step father passed away, he had a brother that he looked after every month. This was my Uncle Merrill. On the way to the funeral, I learned how much my dad was helping his brother. I said to my uncle, if you ever need any help, let me know, I live in a big house and I’m happy to help. It was my way of letting my dad know how much I was part of his family. Another story for another podcast. Little did I know that within 6 months he would be living with me. He was with me for almost 10 years. I was his caregiver and I’ll talk more about him in another episode. My mom and I have had an interesting relationship over the years. For the first 30ish, she was an alcoholic. Once she was in recovery, we made up for all of the lost years. I always told her there was a room for her in my home when she needed it and that I would never put her in a nursing home. I don’t believe in that.  3 years ago, my mom moved in with me. It was a short visit because she had fallen off the wagon and it was like reliving my teenage years. Fast forward 3 years and she is again in recovery but she’s also very sick and currently in hospice. I’m her caregiver. It’s so much more than I ever imagined. I’m good at providing medicine, doing laundry and keeping people doing the right thing. I’m not so good at some of the other duties of a caregiver. I really don’t like changing the porta potty or cleaning the wounds. With my sisters children, I had a husband who helped and I was 20 years younger! With my uncle, he did almost everything for himself, or at least tried to.  My mom is a primadonna. She wants everything done for her. That might be because she currently weighs 79 lbs. And  is also a fall risk so she can’t do much. But she doesn’t make it easy. Living with my mom for the first time in 30 years has been quite an adjustment. I’ve learned so many things about her that I was never aware of. Or maybe I just forgot or didn’t see them because of the alcoholism.  There’s a reason we didn’t get along when I was a teenager, but I don’t think I was the issue! (wink wink) Because of the caregiving I’m doing for my mom, I decided to create this podcast. I’ve learned so much about her and I think it needs to be shared. Not in a negative way, but in a way that inspires others.  I want to showcase how amazing people are. The little things that make a difference that don't always get talked about. I’m also an insurance agent. I started working for my step dad when I was 15. After my sister passed, I stepped away from the industry for awhile. I kept my license and did my required continuing education credits each year. I’m a certified insurance counselor, so I’ve taken a lot of classes. I kept my insurance license because I didn’t know what the future would hold.  While caring for my mom and trying to figure out her medicare benefits, I was so  overwhelmed. I figure if I’m having trouble with this stuff, how can seniors and other caregivers figure it out. I’m an insurance agent and I’m struggling. I realized why I kept my insurance license all these years. I’m now back in the insurance business as a medicare agent. I’m a resource for anyone eligible for medicare, helping them navigate the confusing waters. It’s a world filled with acronyms. Mops, QMB’s DSNPs to SEP’s. And the list goes on for the acronyms! I started my own insurance agency called Lynn Michel Insurance. Lynn is my middle name, Michel is my youngest son's middle name. He hates that name so I’m hoping to showcase how beautiful it is! I’m also hoping he’ll decide to join me in the business one day. If nothing else, It’s a lot shorter than DeChambeau!  So if you know a senior that needs a review of their medicare insurance, I’d love to be the person you talk to. Technically, I’ve been an insurance agent for the past 40 years, and at the time of this recording I’m almost a year in the medicare space. Being new is a good thing. I’ll be thorough, do the research and provide you with the options that you are looking for. Everything is fresh because of all the studying I’ve been doing. While everything is highly regulated by CMS (centers for Medicare and Medicaid services) and I mean highly regulated, I’ve also completed the certifications for Part C and Part D. Talk about complicated. So if you need someone to talk to about medicare, go to LYNNMICHEL.com or call me at 301-996-2328.  As a caregiver and as an insurance agent, I understand this complicated world of looking out for the Seniors We Love. I’m super excited to share these stories with you. I hope they motivate and inspire and provide talking points for your family as we remember the seniors we love.  If you have someone you want me to talk about, please reach out to me at seniorswelove@gmail.com  Seniors we love is my 4th podcast. If you want to listen to my other podcasts they are titled Divorce Exposed, Business In Real Life, The Business of Insurance and I hope to release Single and Over Sixty soon. I’ll link to them in the show notes which you can find at seniorswelove.com

Welcome to Seniors We Love, a podcast designed to honor the people who have made a difference in our lives. Who might not have gotten the recognition they deserved any other way.  Most of us go through life making a difference, even if only in small ways. Most people have accomplishments that are never recognized. These might include running the school school PTA, volunteering for 10 years at the local food bank, coaching Little league or simply walking through the community cleaning up trash. It could be a small invention or traveling to remote places or caring for others. Everyone has a story. There are so many seniors who shouldn’t be forgotten.  Their activities deserve to be remembered, cherished and celebrated.  For example, there is a lake in the community where I live. Someone started a group to clean up the lake twice a year. This person promotes the event, recruits the volunteers, They work tirelessly to find sponsors to provide the materials from gloves to bags, ladders and pick up trucks. This person's story should be remembered.  Another one of my neighbors was very involved in having a church built many years ago. While I knew he was attended the church, I didn’t know how involved he was in the design. He was a boater. If you look up in the church, you can see the bottom of a boat. Very clever. I didn’t learn that until I attended his funeral but how cool would it have been to hear the story and have it available for others over the years! I want to know: what was the motivation behind behind what they do  Where does the passion come from   Why are they giving their time And a lot more You see, that's the kind of stuff I think we really want to know. Maybe they are a grandmother and they want to teach their grandchildren about taking care of mother earth. Who’s talking about them and remembering them. For all the people that walk around the lake or attend the church, do they know the backstory?  Do you have seniors like this in your life that have a story that isn't being told? Please reach out to me as I  want to talk about them or to someone who can talk for them and share their story.  That’s what seniors we love podcast is going to be about. Mixed into the conversation will be things that seniors need to be thinking about or things that caregivers might need to think about for their seniors. At some point we might talk about taking away the keys or we might talk about health insurance or we might talk about final expense planning or we might talk about hospice. Topics and conversations that relate to seniors that many of us might not be aware of. My name is Debbie DeChambeau and I am your host. This is my 4th podcast and If you want to listen to my other podcasts they are titled Divorce Exposed, Business In Real Life, The Business of Insurance and I hope to release Single and Over Sixty soon. I’ll link to them in the show notes which you can find at seniorswelove.com I’m super excited to share these stories with you. I hope they motivate and inspire and provide talking points for your family as we remember the seniors we love.  If you have someone you want me to talk about, please reach out to me at seniorswelove@gmail.com  This episode of the Seniors We Love Podcast is brought to you by Lynn Michel Insurance. If you have a senior in the US, most likely they are on medicare. It’s a health care plan with many options that many seniors aren’t aware of. From DSNPS to Troop, MOP to PDP, the acronyms alone can be confusing. When you work with an agent for prescription drug or part D coverages, they go through some stringent certifications. This applies to part C, Medicare Advantage as well. Talk to Lynn Michel and get all of your questions answered about your health care options through Medicare. Call them at 301-996-2328 or check out their website lynnmichel.com (spell it out) Enjoy Seniors We Love. Tell your friends and family so that we can spread the word about the important people in our lives  

ARE YOU PROTECTING YOUR MEDIA? EP 35 - In this episode of The Business of Insurance Podcast, Debbie DeChambeau discusses concepts that agency principals and marketing professionals need to consider around the content being created. With marketing platforms changing faster than most people can keep up with, it is often hard to understand their impact right away. For example, if your employee creates their own brand on social media in an effort to attract new business, do you own it or is it theirs? If an employee is hosting your podcast and decides to leave, can you replace them? What about your video’s? Do you owe them any compensation for the media that continues to run online after they leave? These are just a few of the issues we discuss in this episode.   JOIN OUR FACEBOOK AND LINKEDIN GROUP FACEBOOK GROUP WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM LISTENING Conversations you should be having with your marketing team and legal counsel How to put all the marketing information in one location  What are the obligations surrounding the voice or face of your digital media? ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. Coming soon. Single and Over Sixty and Seniors We Love

INTERNSHIPS, LEADERSHIP AND UNDERWRITING Ep 34 - The core of this podcast is to talk about Insurance and what an amazing industry it is. From talking to company employees, association staff and those that are contributing to the industry.  Our guests in this episode are both underwriters and members of IAIP. From their start as interns to their adventure into the agency side, they provide a unique perspective into many aspects of the insurance industry. In this conversation we discuss: Internships and how they are a great introduction into the insurance company side of the business Leadership programs offered by IAIP Which side is your bread plate and which side is your water glass? The value of being Voluntold (no, it's not a typo!) Why you need a concise elevator pitch RESOURCES International Association of Insurance Professionals  Facebook Group ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  Coming soon. Single and Over Sixty and Seniors We Love

TAKE YOUR ONLINE CONNECTIONS OFFLINE EP 33 - Today we are talking about growing your business using an old fashioned tried and true method, by referrals.  WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM LISTENING Specific strategies for building your referral marketing plan Ideas for getting in front of the people that can refer you business Suggestions on how to have an effective first meeting with your strategic partners who can refer you business Tactics for adding value that will build effective relationships that will generate referrals If you think this information would benefit a friend or co-worker, please share with them.  RESOURCES Check out episode 17 where we take a deep dive into podcasting for insurance professionals Check out episode 32 where my guest provides great tips on using LinkedIn for business. JOIN OUR FACEBOOK GROUP ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  Coming soon: Seniors We Love

  EP 32 - If you are an insurance professional, an agent bringing in new business or the principal of an insurance agency, this episode is for you. If you aren't in the insurance business, but want to learn more about LinkedIn, you will find a lot of value in this podcast episode. Our guest today is Karen Yankovich. We met last fall at a podcast conference. She is a LinkedIn expert helping professionals build a profile and utilize the platform for business development.  She is a fellow podcaster and is the host of Good Girls Get Rich, so I’d encourage you to listen to her podcast for other tips around LinkedIn and marketing! QUESTIONS WE ASK What should the focus be on the LinkedIn profile? When is the best time to post? Why are keywords valuable for LinkedIn? How can we find business using LinkedIn? Is LinkedIn still relevant today? JOIN OUR FACEBOOK GROUP FACEBOOK GROUP RESOURCES Transcription service that is reliable and reasonably priced - Rev.com  Karen’s podcast - Good Girls Get Rich Get free tips on linked #linkedinquicktips Check out upcoming LinkedIn workshops  Freelinkedinworkshop.com ABOUT OUR GUEST – KAREN YANKOVICH Connect with Karen on her digital platforms:  Website LinkedIn, Facebook.   Twitter Podcast - Good Girls Get Rich Instagram ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  Coming soon. Single and Over Sixty and Seniors We Love

Want to launch a podcast, but not sure if it’s “right” for you? Well, this episode is a must listen! During my conversation with fellow podcasters, Charlie Birney, Debbie DeChambeau and Stephen Hart, we cover topics like content creation, how to leverage podcasts for marketing yourself/business, best practices to land podcast interviews, sponsorship, and more. Listen in, then get social with Charlie, Debbie, and Stephen. Let them know I recommended you reach out ;-)

Episode 11:  Well, someone has to take fido in the divorce. Is it worth going to court over? If you have children, I think the dog should be with them.  I’m not a psychologist, but there’s a popular saying, a boy and his dog, and there is truth to that statement! INTRODUCTION What I really want to talk about today is how the pet can help you through your divorce. And I’m talking about my own situation because we lost our pet this week and this is my way of working through the grief. I cleaned the water bowl for the last time. Our last pet was Patches. He was a black lab with some greyhound in him and he was huge. He was my youngest sons 16th birthday present. Unfortunately, shortly after my sons birthday, my marriage fell apart, so the emotions are spinning today on so many levels. In all fairness, I think it’s important for me to say up front that I’m not a dog lover. I’ve had one the past 30 years mostly because of my kids, but I don't think I would have gotten a second dog after my first passed. DUSTY But it was me that wanted the first dog, who we named Dusty. I don’t remember where we got him from but I saw him and had to have him. It might have been the hormones in me, wanting a baby and not being successful, but it was me that said “can we take him home?” Dusty was a black lab, as all of our dogs have been. He was a trooper and ironically, I did get pregnant shortly after getting him. This thing called a boy and his dog is so true. My boys were so attached to the dog. After awhile, I wasn’t in love with the dog any more but did the motherly duties and made sure he was taken care of. He died shortly after my first divorce of old age. RASCAL When my second husband and I bought a house together we got a rescue within weeks of moving into the house. At the time, my boys were 9 and 12. I could see that they really needed a dog, and so did my husband. The three of them were dog lovers. I went along with the program because of them.  We let the boys pick him out. His foster name was rascal and we thought that was appropriate for him and kept the name. Rascal liked to run away and we were always traipsing through the neighborhood, shaking the cookie jug, looking for him. My boys were responsible for walking him after school and my husband walked him before bed. Sometimes I would go along as it made for a great opportunity to have a conversation. When my youngest was turning 16, he asked for a dog. We had many conversations about it and I wasn't thrilled because I knew I’d be doing a lot of the caring. One day my husband had one of his clients call me about a black lab they needed to give away. I figured that since my husband had her call me that he was ready for a second dog. I made arrangements to get the dog and while picking him up, they had a second one they also needed to get rid of. I wasn’t thrilled about 3 dogs,but I knew my husband would love one for his birthday so, boom, we had 2 puppies and an old dog. Both my son and my husband celebrated birthdays in October, so it was a perfect gift for both of them. If you’ve listened to other episodes on my marriage, you know it was around when my son turned 16 that my marriage came to an end. Because of what happened, my son had to move out and all of a sudden I had to care for and train 2 puppies on my own. Fortunately I had a neighbor down the street that loved dogs and she volunteered to walk the two puppies regularly. I don’t know what I would have done without her. Within two months, they had outgrown the cage and we discovered that they were going to be really big dogs. The stress of my marriage falling apart was so overwhelming for me that caring for all of the dogs was too much. Within 6 months of getting the two puppies, I gave one of them away. I gave my husbands away and kept my sons. And that begins the story of patches. PATCHES Standing on his back legs, he was over 6 feet tall. But thought he was a lap dog. He never stopped trying to cuddle in my lap. I’ve always been the type not to allow dogs on the furniture or the bed but he never stopped trying for my lap!  His head alone filled my lap! Patches was amazing. He could sense when I was upset and he was always there to offer putting his head on my shoulder when I was crying (which was a lot) He’d be upstairs and could sense me crying downstairs and come down and comfort me. I attribute a lot of getting through the first year of my divorce to him because of being able to hug him! As we were negotiating the divorce, my husband wanted the dogs but I won out because of the boys. I told him he could take them for visitation whenever he wanted, but he never asked. Funny, he made  a big deal out of getting custody but never followed up to see them. Typical. When life resumed a little and my son was living back with me, it was his responsibility to take care of Patches. He needed to walk him, make sure he was fed make sure he was bathed and take him to the vet, Unfortunately he didn't do many of those on a consistent basis. I'm the one who purchased the dog food I'm the one who made sure he got looked after, even if it was me harping on my son to make sure that he took them. Eventually my son understood that I was not going to harp on him to walk the dog he had to do it without being told. He stepped up to the plate and did a good job. But I’d continue to buy dog food, I continue to make sure he was fed.  I continued to make sure he had what he needed which wasn't much but I'm the one who made sure it all got taken care of. We had to put rascal down a few years later but rascal had done a great job teaching patches the ropes. Part of why I wanted to get a dog when we did was so that rascal could help with the training. Score for rascal for doing a great job! A BOY AND HIS DOG One of the things I observed during and after the divorce was how much my son needed the dog to help him through the process as well. The divorce was really hard on my son and the dog was a good distraction and provided a lot of comfort. I also feel like in some ways now that patches is gone, there’s final closure. No more reminders of that horrible time in our lives and why my marriage ended. I've been divorced now for almost 10 years and I've been a caregiver more than half of that 10 Some of those years were extremely difficult, but patches was always there to comfort me. Over the years, patches has been amazing. I've had a revolving door with people and he’s warmed up to all of them. As much as he was a big dog with a big bark, he was afraid of people, particularly little children. I know that sounds weird,  but it’s the truth. I can’t remember exactly when it began, but I attribute it to one of my tenants. He had a son that was autistic and the boy loved the dog. I don't know if he cast magical powers over patches, but whenever he would her screaming kids, he would pull me the other way. He wanted nothing to do with kids making noises. The only thing I can attribute it to is the autistic boy that would play with him. THE VISITORS I cried a lot when I had to have my oldest son removed from the house because he wouldn't put his guns away. That is a long story for another time, but my heart was broken and the dog was always there for me to comfort me and make me feel a little bit better. When my mom moved in a few years ago, she had fallen off the wagon after 30 years. When I approached her on it, she drank more and started being verbally abusive, so I had to ask her to leave, That was just one year after asking my son to leave, so I was devastated. Tough love was killing me. The dog was there helping me through more difficult times. When my uncle passed, it was hard because my uncle loved that dog. Just like a dog is good for a boy, a dog is good for a senior. My uncle would feed the dog and talk to the dog and it was great to watch. When my uncle passed, I felt like I'd lost something and patches again came to my rescue. Because I work from home, I'm was around the dog a lot. I'd pull in the driveway and hear him barking. He was always near me when I was working or watching TV. When I went up to bed he'd followed me up when I came down in the morning he be waiting for me. I now rent out rooms in my house to guests and they have always been very fond of patches. He did a great job of receiving them as well. One of my guests brought his wife and family for a few days around the holidays and his youngest son had never seen or never had a dog before. I’ve seen my guest FaceTiming with the dog and his son! I was witnessing the boy and a dog scenario from a distance! THE AGING PROCESS As patches begin to age and my son spent less and less time at home, we began to have conversations about what the next steps were for patches. Over the last six months I've been taking care of my mom who's now in hospice and my bandwidth is limited and being able to do anything with the dog. My son wanted to go out and walk the Appalachian trail which was creating a little bit of tension over what we were going to do with the dog. Erik didn't feel that patches would ever find a home that was good enough and patches had a lot of tumors and other medical issues that would make it hard to place him. Our conversation, though difficult, was about taking him out of his misery. It was just a matter of when. I was out of town for 3 days and when I returned, I noticed patches wasn’t in his bed. I texted my son to see if he had the dog with him and didn't get a response so I called him the next day and he said he had taken care of it. I'm not sure if I cried because I knew how difficult this was for my son or how sad I was that he was no longer around. I didn't expect it to happen when it did. I didn't have any warning, I just came home on Thursday night and patches was gone. On Friday I spoke with my son and I confirmed the patches had gone to puppy heaven. I cried during the conversation. My son said he’d gotten most of his crying out the day before. While I know it was the right thing, it doesn't make it any easier for me. What I'm feeling right now is so much gratitude for that dog for helping me through so many difficult times. I'm actually a little surprised at how emotional I am because I'm not a dog lover but that dog was there for me that dog was there for the boys I love my boys. CLEANING Today I spent a lot of time cleaning up after patches after all he's a big black lab that sheds everywhere I won't miss the dog hairs I will miss him greeting me at the door I will miss him waiting at the bottom of the steps waiting for me to go up to bed or waiting at the bottom of the steps when I come down in the morning so that I could feed him I will miss that.I won't miss the dog poop in the yard I won't miss having to walk him in the rain and in the snow, but you will always have a special place in my heart.  I'm not sure any other dog will ever have that same place for me. My son is already talking about getting another dog and I'm not sure that's going to work for me but it's his life and if he wants to move out and get his own dog that's perfectly okay.I'm really not sure I'm going to have another dog in my house because I can't stand cleaning up after them. It was my son's dog there is definitely the boy in the dog connection and he loves that dog that dog went through everything with him and with me. IN MEMORY Patches you are such a good dog and a wonderful part of this family. I am forever grateful for your love and compassion.  I won't miss cleaning up the dog hairs, but I will miss seeing you waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs So if you're going through a divorce don't discount the power of having a dog around whether you're a dog lover or not. It really does make a difference.and if you have kids who are attached at the dog find a way to keep the dog in their lives as much as you can, because it really does make a difference. RESOURCES Check out our resource page ABOUT THE HOST This episode of Divorce Exposed is hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts The Business of Insurance, Business in Real LIfe and coming soon, Seniors We Love, Single and over Sixty. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

LEADERS UNDERSTAND THE VALUE OF HARD WORK WITH JESSICA PRUITT EP 31 - Jessica Pruitt president of Lebanon Insurance agency. She was recruited from a fast food restaurant, worked her way through different departments and is now owns  the insurance agency. Jessica discusses the work she did over the years that she thinks positioned her for being the right person to run the agency. Her office is located in a part of Virginia that is somewhat old school, so she had to deal with prospects and clients wanting to speak to a man. Some finally agreed to work with her and some took their business elsewhere. She’s persevered and grown the business as a woman and is beginning to make a name for herself in her community. INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF INSURANCE PROFESSIONALS This podcast was recorded at the regional conference for International Association of Insurance Professionals. For those of you that have been around for awhile, you might know it as NAIW, but they did a rebranding a few years ago to open it to both men and women. I had to privilege to interview several of the attendees of the conference. Watch for those conversations in future episodes. The most impressive benefit for being part of this organization is their focus on leadership training. Personally, that in itself is worth the investment of this organization. Most of our leaders don’t get trained, they just end up in the role. To be an effective leader, there are some important skills that you need to develop, and IAIP has a program for building leadership. IAIP offers a training unique to insurance professionals, both on the agency and company side, so if you are not familiar with them, check them out. Their national conference is in Las Vegas June 6-8th OF 2019. I’ll link to their website in the show notes, but I really think it’s worthwhile to investigate. I wouldn’t look at this as a networking event, although I believe that meeting with your peers in the industry is an added benefit, but the training and the leadership component, is invaluable. CHECK OUT IAIP CONFERENCE HERE If you like what you hear in this podcast. Please share with a friend or coworker! This is one of many episodes you’ll hear from the International Association of Insurance Professionals regional conference in March of 2019. ABOUT THE REGIONAL CONFERENCE I mentioned that I found that conference by accident. I was doing some research on insurance speaking opportunities  and the IAIP regional conference showed up. Ironically, I was planning a weekend vacation to the beach for my birthday and discovered the conference 4 days before I was scheduled to leave. I reached out to the conference organizers, said I’d be in the area and asked if I could interview some of their guests. The members  were so accommodating. We did our recordings in a penthouse suite overlooking the ocean. If you are familiar with Ocean City MD, we were at The Dunes Hotel. One side was The Ocean the other side was the bay, and Jolly Rogers. I haven't been to Jolly Rogers since my kids were very young and had no idea how big the park was. Seeing it from the top floor of The Dunes Hotel was super special. I’ll include a few pictures in the show notes at The Business of Insurance .com You’ll hear a variety of stories in upcoming episodes of women pioneers in the insurance industry. I know that you’ll find them inspiring. Technology is changing the way we do business but when you hear some of the stories from those who have been around awhile, the slow changes might make more sense to those of you newer to the business of Insurance! THE BUSINESS OF INSURANCE FACEBOOK GROUP One last note, I’ve started a FB group called The Business of Insurance. Its will be a group for running your agency from leadership to sales, marketing to management and everything in between. CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE BUSINESS OF INSURANCE FACEBOOK GROUP If you are more of a LinkedIn user thaN FB, don’t worry, that group will be live shortly. ABOUT OUR GUEST – JESSICA PRUITT Jessica Pruitt  is the owner of Lebanon Insurance Agency. Connect with her on: Her website LinkedIn Facebook  ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  Coming soon. Single and Over Sixty and Seniors We Love

DIFFERENT MARKETING IDEAS FOR INSURANCE EP 30 - This episode is a follow up conversation to episode 29. If you didn’t listen, I would encourage you to listen to my conversation with Ben Page before listening to this one, so that the concepts will make more sense. Normally I would offer my thoughts at the end of the episode, but since our conversation was so long, and believe it or not, I edited out about 15 minutes worth, I decided to make it a two part series to be more respectful of your time. Aside from selling ideas, Ben brought up several topics from social media, online reviews, writing a book and referrals that I think we could explore a little bit. This will be a higher level look at those topics and maybe one day I’ll take a deeper dive into more of them.   REFERRALS So let’s start with referrals. I love talking about referrals. It’s the core of what I’ve spent the past 20 years doing. Helping professionals see the opportunities that come from a solid referral strategy. I thought I’d elaborate on the process a little here. It’s important that you get in the habit of telling people that you get most of your business from referrals. Remind people because they will forget. For those clients that you get from referral remind they regularly because they understand the value of doing business through referrals. If someone found you online, educate them on your referral process. I’m not suggesting that you pay for referrals or have any type of a contest for referrals. Personally I think that’s a little tacky. While there’s nothing wrong with sending a starbucks gift card or something like that when you receive a referral, I like to see that as a surprise, not something that is promoted. You want quality referrals, not just a referral from anyone with a license. The more you educate people on the type of clients you want to work with the more you will see that type of business referred to you. I also want to be clear about the educating people on referrals component. There’s a sleazy way to do this and a casual professional way to do this. The sleazy way is to ask for 5 names of people you can call. Ugh….I hate that and would never do something like that. I know some of you listening have done this and think it’s ok. It doesn’t work in my world. What I like is to plant the seed. Educate people and remind them, because they forget. Be casual but consistent and you will see referred business. It’s like I say on this podcast, if you like what you are hearing, please tell a friend or coworker. I’m asking for referrals, in a very subtle way. STRATEGIC PARTNERS In one of the other podcasts I produce called Business In Real Life, I did an episode on strategic partners. If you want to listen to it, I’ll link to it in the show notes, or look for the podcast and go to episode 7. You can also go to my website, selectbizteam.com and look for it there as well. That episode is about creating a marketing plan for  your strategic partners. For example, making a list of the strategic partners for your industry. As an insurance agent selling business insurance, these would include business bankers, business attorneys, CPA’s that work with businesses and financial advisors that do a lot of 401k type of business. If you are selling personal insurance, you might have realtors, mortgage professionals, financial advisors and and maybe a home builder  as your strategic partners. Start by making a list of 20 people in each profession. You could have 100 names that you are working with, but that’s ok. You’ll weed some out because they aren’t a good fit or they don’t do enough business to support the type of clients you work with. Once you’ve made your list, see who else knows them by checking LinkedIn, FB and other social platforms. Next step start inviting them to coffee. Have a list of questions you want to ask them about how they run their business and find out what types of clients they are looking for. You need to discover who they refer to , what it would take for them to refer to you and how you can best help them. Maybe you’ll offer a comprehensive review for their clients and have it approved through them before you show the client or maybe you offer to create an event together and invite a few clients to introduce to that strategic partner. The point is to start the conversation. For some, you might need to have a few, for others, you’ll only have one and for the last group you’ll find an opportunity to do something right away! The other part about working with strategic partners is tracking. This is the essential component of referral marketing. TRACKING THE DATA That’s a good segaway into talking about CRM’s. Ben brought this up in our conversation and I really think it’s worth elaborating on here. Old school, pre computers, we used 3x5 cards. We had several boxes we stored them in and made notes on them. It took a few minutes to write things out, but it was easy to take them with us, we didn’t need any electricity to make them work and the information didn't get lost in cyberspace somewhere! It was a system and I’m a big believer in systems. Today, all of that has been streamlined into the computer in the form of a CRM - client relationship management system.  Ben mentioned that a lot of agents are frustrated with the CRM their agency has so they use sticky notes, write things in a book or have an excel spreadsheet. They have several systems because there isn’t a good electronic tool to organize the sales function. When I first started using computers, I loved a program called ACT. I haven’t really found anything to replace it but their original online version was so bad that I had to move away. I’ve heard they’ve gotten better, but I’ve moved to a different platform today. Everything I do is in the cloud, so I needed something that would be mobile with me!  I’m currently using something called Zoho. I don’t love it, but it’s something I started using about 10 years ago. I went through the process of trying a lot of free programs and I must say, they didn’t have the customizing capability that I wanted. INFORMATION FOR YOUR CRM If you aren’t using a CRM or are thinking about it, I would suggest you start with an excel spreadsheet. Write out all of the data that you regularly collect on prospects. The basics like name, address, company, etc. are standard but what else are you collecting. Do you have their Date of Birth, spouses and children's names, do you collect their CPA, their financial advisor, their attorney information? I’d work with a spreadsheet for a few weeks, making sure you have all the information you want, then look for a CRM that allows you to customize the program to match your spreadsheet. A CRM is really just a glorified spreadsheet, but it also has some other features built in that make it more powerful than a spreadsheet. MANAGEMENT CRM OPPORTUNITIES From an agency principal perspective, having a good CRM is essential. Producers might come and go but having a CRM with a lot of prospect information is invaluable. Requiring your producers to use your CRM keeps all of the information in one location so that anyone can access it. If you have a producer that leaves, you’ll still be able to pursue the prospect because all of the information is in your CRM. One of the things you can do with the CRM is keep track of conversations. As an insurance agent, that’s essential and it’s also valuable for someone in sales. Your CRM should be able to identify who made the note, the date entered and allow for a follow up date to be set from that conversation. The better CRM’s will sync with your calendar and notify you each day of what tasks you need to complete. Now lets say you are tracking birthdays to send cards or call on their birthday….set the calendar in the CRM and you’ll be reminded. The right CRM will allow you to print out the calls and tasks for the day. This will keep the producer on task and not let any opportunities slip through the cracks. It also lets the agency manager see what is in the producers pipeline which can help with projections from a work flow and financial perspective. EMAIL MARKETING A good CRM will have a good email marketing component or will sync with one of the more common email platforms like Constant Contact or AWeber. You can set up ‘drip’ campaigns for prospects to stay in front of them throughout the year if you didn't win their business last time. I’ve had many people tell me that they use their google or outlook calendar to keep track of to do’s and prospects. That’s good for the individual producer but unless everyone has access to that calendar, a lot of information could get lost, so in the big picture, I don’t think thats the best route for an agency. TEST DRIVE YOUR CRM Do your research. As I mentioned in episode 29, SalesForce is a great program, but it’s not super easy to learn and can be very expensive. It can be modified to fit your business, but at a cost. HubSpot has a CRM that is free but I’d only consider that if you are a solo agency. It’s also very limited. I haven’t used the paid version so I can’t really comment on it. If you use hubspot, I’d love your feedback on the CRM tool they have available. Ask your peers what they are using. Take a test drive before you make a solid investment. Give a lot of thought to how you will use your CRM from seeing what’s in the pipeline and where the prospect is in the sales process to keeping track of strategic partners;  track your wins/losses; size of sales; marketing activities to develop the business and how many touches before you actually obtained a meeting. There’s so much data you can get from a good CRM that can help with your sales activities. Having all of this in one location allows the sales manager or the business owner great data or making decisions about managing the sales team and forecasting business. I think finding the right CRM can take awhile so if you aren’t using one now, just use the spreadsheet and try a few out before you make the big leap. This isn’t something you want to keep switching because it’s time consuming to set up and to learn to use effectively. GOOGLE MY BUSINESS Another area Ben mentioned and this was briefly, but I think its essential is online reviews. A simple place to start is Yelp and also GMB also known as Google My Business. If you haven’t set up these two accounts, please do so before the end of the week! Particularly GMB. That’s really an episode in itself. But think about it,  where do most people search….hopefully you said Google. Having your GMB account set up helps people find you easier. One of my clients is an accountant and she just moved to Delaware and will be working in both MD and Delaware. We had a conversation about GMB and the next week she set up her account in Delaware. She had 3 calls within 30 days for business in Delaware and that is the only type of advertising she did and I wouldn’t really call that advertising…..she just created her account and that’s how she was found. I would also recommend that you have your clients go to GMB and leave reviews. Unless something happens to Google, they’ll be seen there for awhile! IS THERE A BOOK IN YOUR FUTURE The last topic I want to talk about is writing a book. Stay with me….this might not be as unrealistic as you think. First of all, while it might seem like everyone is writing a book these days, there is no reason why you can’t be one of them. I mentioned in my conversation with Ben, that I use my book as a marketing tool. If I have a prospect I want to meet with, I’ll package up the book, and mail it to them with a note. ”Please enjoy and let me know what you think.’ I’ll call them a week later to make sure they received the book and then ask if I could have 5 minutes of their time to introduce myself. 80% of the time they say yes and then we take the conversation further. I was one of 5 co-authors of my book and we each had a different reason for writing it. Having a few co-authors made it easy to complete. Each of us had different tasks and the cost of production was reduced because there were several of us. So if you like the idea, consider bringing a few people together to write the book. BOOK MARKETING There’s a whole marketing strategy behind writing a book if you want to get recognized on Amazon and other book publishing platforms. If you use the book as I am, you don’t really need to worry about the marketing strategy but we were #1 Amazon best sellers for a short time! You can also use the book as a platform to get on other podcasts or as a guest blog post. Publicity is good for your agency! Wondering what would you write about….well, insurance is fairly boring so you might want to find something a little more exciting. What’s your niche in the business? Are you working with start up business owners? Companies with multiple locations? What if you wrote a book that talked about sales or marketing strategies for that specific niche? What if you wrote about leadership or HR issues? Risk management isn’t a bad idea either. I know some of this seems boring but so many people don’t know about these things. Don’t write a novel, just a small book maybe 20-50 pages. You could have it look like an ebook or you could make it odd shaped. I’m not suggesting that a book is going to make you famous, but it’s a unique way to create authority for yourself and deliver a calling card that is different than most of your competitors. SELF PUBLISHING There’s something called Create Space which is an amazon platform and you can self publish there and just order the number of books that you need. If you want to know more about any of the ideas I’ve mentioned in this episode, let me know. You’ll find people talking about referrals a lot, but CRM’s, online reviews and book publishing aren’t as mainstream! WRAP UP I’ll wrap up this episode with a thank you for listening. I hope some of the ideas got your attention. If I were to suggest you do one thing from this conversation it’s to make sure your agency has set up its GMB page. It’s simple to do. Just like you post on social media, be sure to post on your GMB page. Update the photo’s regularly too! ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  Coming soon. Single and Over Sixty and Seniors We Love

EPISODE 11 - NESTING: An innovative way to keep your children from having to go back and forth with visitation. It’s not for everyone, but I believe it’s a concept that we need to explore more and try to figure out ways to make it work. I understand that parents don’t always get along hence they divorce, but that’s not the children's fault. Why do they have to pack up every other weekend to go visit mom or dad? Why do they have to have their life disrupted because their parents couldn’t figure things out. Could this be one of the reasons why we have so many issues with millennials today? Parents are over compensating for the divorce. It’s complicated and there isn’t one right or wrong answer, but the parenting issue needs to be at the top of the divorce discussion. My guest is Cheri Morris who is a divorce coach with Dear Divorce Coach. She’s an attorney who pivoted her career into coaching, based on her own divorce. I love what she is doing and the approach she is taking. I’ll link to her contact information in the shownotes. The first time you get divorced, there’s a lot of questions, a lot of overwhelm. How you handle it is somewhat influenced by who is initiating the divorce. If it’s you, the emotions might be very different than if it is your spouse who wants the marriage to end. It’s a process, with phases that many of us go through. We can’t see them when we are in the middle of it, but others on the outside that work with divorcing people will tell you that they see many of the same patterns. A coach can help you through this and keep things in check. At the end of the conversation we talk about the difference between a therapist and a divorce coach. I have to admit, before this conversation I didn’t think you’d need both, but now I believe you might. Hiring a divorce coach is an added expense to the divorce process, but it can be one that brings a lot of value to the end results as well. It could also save you a lot of money by staying out of court through some practical negotiating strategies. If you are going through a divorce and have children, get them into therapy right away. You might be ok with the divorce, but they need help processing what is going on! Please don’t ignore this important piece, no matter what their age. It’s particularly important for teens and early twenty somethings. . That should be something you do before you start processing the paperwork with an attorney! If you like what you hear in this podcast, please share it with a friend or family member. The divorce rate is over 50% in the US and a lot of people are thinking about divorce long before they actually take the first step. Knowledge is power and hopefully each episode provides some value for helping those who are married or contemplating divorce. You can listen to this podcast on the website at DivorceExposed.com or  iTunes if you have an iphone, Spotify if you have an account and if you are a droid user,  go to your app store, you can download any number of podcast player apps where you will also find the podcast such as Stitcher and Google Play. If you ever can’t find the podcast on a particular player, please let me know. DISCLAIMER The most important thing to remember is that I am not an attorney, financial advisor or a therapist. If you are going through difficult times and feel you need help, please reach out to someone, either a friend, family member or a professional and get support. I’ve listed some resources on the resources page of the website and encourage you to check there or reach out to your friends and family for referrals. Your life matters and getting help is the best thing you can do for yourself. POST DIVORCE GROUP One of the other things I am hoping to do is put together a virtual support group that will focus on helping you move forward, put everything into perspective and help you get your life back. It won’t be a complaining session but an opportunity to create a plan and move forward with confidence. If this is something you are interested in, send me an email to  divorceexposed@gmail.com ABOUT OUR GUEST – CHERIE MORRIS Cherie Morris is a divorce coach working with individuals and couples. She practices as a parent coordinator and using her legal training to approach issues with logic and reason. Learn more about Cheri here or connect with her:   Website Facebook Twitter   RESOURCES Check out our resource page ABOUT THE HOST This episode of Divorce Exposed is hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts The Business of Insurance, Business in Real LIfe and coming soon, Seniors We Love, Single and over Sixty. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. REMEMBER YOUR INSURANCE Debbie is an insurance agent. While she can’t talk to you about specific financial investments, she can provide you with information or introduce you to someone that can answer your questions that you can trust. Part of going through a divorce is reviewing your insurance coverages. From life, health and disability, your personal items are often overlooked because you are focused on so many other issues like alimony, child custody or where you will live. Sometimes there are issues in the policy that are impacted when there are new residences that get overlooked. You want to make sure you have everything issued properly, before, during and after the divorce process. If you would like some assistance in this area, either just to brainstorm an idea or have your policies reviewed. Reach out to Debbie as she has been in the insurance industry for over 25 years. If she can’t help you, she will put you in touch with someone that you can trust.  

DO YOU QUOTE INSURANCE OR OFFER SOLUTIONS? A CONVERSATION WITH BEN PAGE Episode 29 - Taking control of the conversation instead of just doing what everyone else is doing will set you apart from your competitors. Creating your own process takes time and effort, but in the long run, you will develop clients that want to work with you because of how you treat them, not just because of the price you offer. When talking to a prospect, if you are offering proposals because that’s what they are expecting makes you just like everyone else. Develop some targeted questions that aren’t just underwriting based and begin the process of WOWing your prospects and clients. 2019 started with big goals for the podcast and one of them was to publish a new episode every week. For a few weeks, I was consistent, but my mom has been very ill and has been in the hospital more than she’s been out. I’m the only child left,  so I’ve been there managing her care. One of the benefits of being self employed is that my schedule is flexible, but realistically, there are only so many hours in a day. I really want to get back to my weekly publication, so hang in there with me please! As an insurance agent, the lessons learned from caregiving make great stories to share with your clients to make sure they have the proper aging plans in place! No one thinks they are going to end up in a nursing home ….. But are they doing the proper planning in the event something like this happens. If this isn’t an area you are familiar with, please meet with a few estate planning attorneys and elder law attorneys and learn about some of their processes. I mentioned this in another episode, but this is extremely valuable information for you to help your clients that will potentially lead to life and long term care insurance for you. Regardless, it’s good advice to be sharing with your clients if you see yourself as an advisor and not just an agent selling policies.   Why consider International Association of Insurance Professionals? A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of attending the regional conference for International Association of Insurance Professionals. For those of you that have been around for awhile, you might know it as NAIW, but they did a rebranding a few years ago to open it to both men and women. I actually found the organization by accident because I was looking for something completely different, but one of the things I learned is that they focus on leadership training. Personally, that in itself is worth the investment of this organization. Most of our leaders don’t get trained, the just end up in the role. To be an effective leader, there are some important skills that you need to develop. IAIP offers a training unique to insurance professionals, both on the agency and company side, so if you are not familiar with them, check them out. Their national conference is in Las Vegas June 6-8th OF 2019. I’ll link to their website in the show notes, but I really think it’s worthwhile to investigate. I wouldn’t look at this as a networking event, although I believe that meeting with your peers in the industry is an added benefit, but the training and the leadership component, is invaluable. CHECK OUT IAIP CONFERENCE HERE Lastly, before I introduce our guest, I want to thank Wade Galt for his review of the podcast on iTunes. This is the first review and it’s from someone that I don’t know and haven’t spoken with. As much as I’m grateful for the review, I’m flattered by how you perceive the information I’m providing here. I’m not in my 20’s or 30’s but I’m well aware of technology and how it can be used in business and I’m hopeful that every generation listening to this podcast receives value because there’s an old saying that applies to almost everything in life and that is ‘what’s old is new’! Technology provides a lot of opportunities but a strong solid referral strategy passes the test of time. If you are new to the podcast and haven’t listened to the back episodes, check out episode # 24 which is also about sales.   ABOUT OUR GUEST – BEN PAGE Ben Page is an insurance agent, agency principal and a published author. Learn more about him at his website or connect with him on social. LinkedIn Facebook YouTube Check out his book on amazon ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  Coming soon. Single and Over Sixty and Seniors We Love

YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW WITH NICOLE ORISME Episode 28 - Today’s episode is a little different. It’s an edited replay from one of my other podcasts, called Business in Real Life. I feel like this is a topic that is beneficial to insurance agents so I’m sharing it on this podcast. If you are an agency principal, particularly one that is somewhat new or focused on personal lines instead of business insurance, you might not be as up to speed on HR issues as you need to be. This conversation will provide you with some of the issues that you need to be aware of that will help keep you out of hot water. If you are selling or servicing insurance and focus on business clients, this information will also be valuable. It will give you some talking points with your prospects and clients that can set you apart from your peers. If you aren’t in either of these categories, I still think you’ll find some great nuggets in this conversation. Our guest is Nicole Orisme, President of NLH Contracting. She started her business a few years ago and has grown rapidly every year. She helps her clients with creating employee manuals, discusses the proper strategies for hiring and firing employees, and does things from an HR perspective that most business owners aren’t aware of. One of the things we discuss is that hiring help, not just in the HR capacity but making the decision to hire someone to do some of the lower paying tasks sooner than later. With technology today, we often feel that we shouldn't hire anyone. Afterall, we can answer our own phone, we can answer our own emails, we can schedule our own meetings. When you are feeling overwhelmed with your work or business and you are trying to figure out why, we have a good exercise for you to consider. It might seem overwhelming, but you only need to do it for one week. Create a chart where you write down what you are doing every 15 minutes. Then take a look at the end of the week at how long things are taking you. Are there tasks on that list that should be done by a minimum wage person or lower wage person that your hourly wage? Most of the time, the answer is yes. The reluctance is to not hire because you might not have the revenue to support it, but what we have heard over and over from this exercise is that you actually double your productivity because you can focus on more revenue generating tasks instead of spending your time doing lower skilled tasks. Something I’ve been saying for a long time is that we need to bring back receptionists and administrative assistants. Before voicemail and email, it was rare to see the business owner answer the phone or open the mail. That was assigned to someone else. With the evolution of technology, those professions have been minimized but the successful business owner understands that having help is how to succeed faster. While voicemail is efficient, how much easier is it for you to read a quick message and call someone back? Sometimes people can leave 5 minute messages, and if you get 5-10 of those a day and you’ve just spent over an hour just listening to voice mail messages. How much did that cost you in productivity? How much time do you spend just unsubscribing or deleting the junk emails? All of that takes time which is time you could be doing tasks that generate revenue or grow your business in some capacity. I share this not to have you rush out and hire someone, but take a look at what you are doing and see if the tasks match your wage level. Does it make sense to make a change? Just something to ponder. Do you have your HR processes in place?  If not, you might want to contact someone that specializes in HR. You don’t need to have someone on staff full time, you can easily outsource this department and pay by the hour or a flat fee for their services. The goal here is that you want to make sure that you are doing this part of running the business correctly. For those of you in sales, knowing a few HR companies can also be a great strategic alliance for you. They have clients that need insurance and you have clients that need  HR! WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM LISTENING When you go into business and have employees, you have a lot of issues that need to be addressed. These include: Payroll Handbook Benefits administered correctly Compliance Employee manuals Independent Contractors Risk of not having the proper documents in place. Making sure you are following FLSA Hire an assistant sooner than later! ABOUT OUR GUEST – NICOLE ORISME Nicole Orisme who is the owner of NLH Contracting.  Her website is the same as her company name: NLH Contracting.com.  Connect with her on Linkedin Facebook If you need advice from an experienced human resources consulting firm, contact Nicole.  She and her team can keep you out of a lot of hot water! LIKE THE SHOW One of the ways that we grow this podcast is with people like you sharing with your friends and coworkers. Do you have a spotify account? If so, you can now find this podcast on that platform as well If you really like the show and want to help even more, please go to iTunes and leave a review. This works best if you have an iTunes account. SCHEDULE A CALL One of the benefits of listening to this podcast and finding the show notes is that you can schedule a 30 minute call to get some feedback on a current business challenge. It gives us an opportunity to talk, and see if it makes sense to work together. If you want to schedule a call, click here to access my calendar and schedule a time that works for you. ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  Coming soon. Single and Over Sixty and Seniors We Love  

Spreaker Live Show #183 for March 20th, 2019Show Duration: 50 minutes- Host: Rob Greenlee, VP of Podcaster Relations of Voxnest that operates Spreaker. I am a 14+ year podcaster that started out on the radio. This is the official podcast of Spreaker platform. @robgreenlee - rob(at)voxnest(dotcom)- We stream LIVE every Weds at 3pm PST / 6pm EST from SpreakerLiveShow.com-You can now get the show on Google Podcasts App on Android- You can hear this show on Amazon Echo Smart Speakers now via the New Spreaker Skill- If you want to send me an audio promo for your show, I would be happy to play it on the show. - Just create an MP3 and give me a brief description of your show in an email to me at rob@spreaker.com- Spreaker Blog Topics: http://Blog.Spreaker.com On the show this week:- The Power of Joining or Starting Podcaster and Listening Communities- In The Interview: We are discussing Creating a Podcast Business Plan as Most Podcasts are actually small businesses. Guest is Debbie DeChambeau *Play clip from the interview- Podcast Promo of the Week: Multilinguish Podcast by Babbel - for the Language Curious - Featured Podcast Promo of the Week → The Live Drop w/Mark Valley - Stories from the Elusive World of Intelligence Collection and Espionage - If you want to send me an audio promo for your show, I would be happy to play it on the show. Just create an MP3 and give me a brief description of your show in an email to me at rob@spreaker.com- Podcasting & Spreaker’s Events Calendar - Listener Comments Let's get into the show:-The Power of Joining or Starting Podcaster and Listening Communities Spreaker has published a terrific blog post about this topic at Blog.Spreaker.comThe two platforms that dominate for building these communities are Meetup and Facebook or mix of both, but Google Groups does still exist but is a little old schoolThe one exception is “Telegram” a platform that has gained traction in Spanish speaking countries.Generally Meetup excelled in event discovery by attendees, but Facebook was more appropriate for group discussion. Totally makes sense to me.Seems like the power is to use both Meetup and Facebook GroupsOrganizers discussed in the blog post generally feel like Meetup is great for RSVPs but those people aren’t as likely to show up. Those that find out about events on Facebook do tend to show up more. Meetup attendees are notoriously flakey”. I agree, I have run Podcaster Meetups in Seattle for Years.Attendance will vary a lot based on month of the year, venue and purpose of the eventCommunities attract all levels of podcasterBeing an Event Organizer can have many professional benefits - building your leadership brand can help your podcast grow too. On the listener community side, I would recommend to create just a Facebook group for your listeners to engage with each other and ge listener feedback on topics and building intra-listener relationships. -Podcast Promo of the Week: Multilinguish Podcast by Babbel USA Team: Are Not multilingual, but language-curious? Explore how language connects us all — from the producers at the language-learning app Babbel. In season 1, we dig into unsolved linguistic mysteries, sexist robots, the best travel advice you've never heard, if language affects our worldview, which accents are sexiest, and more! New episodes every Tuesday. Play Audio Clip --> Featured Podcast Show Of The Week: The Live Drop -- Join host Mark Valley as he ventures into the elusive world of intelligence collection and espionage to spot, assess and debrief: spies, spy catchers, analysts, diplomats and occasionally the actors who portray them. A new episode each week brings stories and analysis from the Cold War to the present. Drop in at thelivedrop.com - In the most recent episode Mark talks to Tom Pecora is a 24 year CIA veteran and senior clandestine security manager the CIA’s War on Terror, and a career in Clandestine security operations. - -- play clip here-Listener Comment - Linda Irwin I have used licensed Epidemic Sound to create entire music shows on Spreaker that feed to Spotify. Those generally have more listens than my comedy shows.-Podcasting & Spreaker Event CalendarNABShow.com - Las Vegas - April 6-11th, 2019, Voxnest and Spreaker will be there in force with a booth again this year.I will be speaking at the Eliances.com GRANDtable Event in Phoenix, Arizona at Arizona State University on April 2nd at 8am PSTOutlier Podcast Festival at Austin, TX - Keynoting - May 17th - 18th - Outliercs.com The Audiocraft Podcast Festival (Sydney NSW, Australia: May 31 - June 2) has announced its initial lineup, Our very own Jonathan Zenti (Voxnest/Meat) will be joining the speakers list down under. -The Interview:I am joined on the show today by Debbie DeChambeau, Select Business Team, llc, she is a podcaster with a few of her own business podcasts and was a Presenter of a session at Podfest Multimedia Expo in Orlando on the topic of “Business Planning for Podcasters” and thought that would be a great topic for the show… Checkout Debbie’s Business in Real Life Podcast → https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/business-in-real-life/id1137499088?mt=2Business of Insurance Podcasthttps://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/business-of-insurance-podcast/id1318390091?mt=2Play InterviewIs Your Podcast Going To Be a Business or Hobby?Do Most Podcasters NEED a Content and Business Plan?Parts of the Plan (Cover sheet, exec summary, company description, market and competitive analysis, marketing, operations, management/HR, financial, supporting docs)If your Podcast is a Hobby: Do you still need a Content and Business Plan as Hobby podcasts if done good can become a business. So you need to prepare for that and in the competitive content marketplace of today a plan/strategy gives you an advantage. Do research and talk to others who have succeeded. SometimesBuilding Yourself a Business Team (accountant, bookkeeper, business attorney, insurance, banker, marketing outsourced HR, business coach)Other Resources to Help with Process?There's so much to cover here, but don’t have enough time. How should a podcaster proceed - other trainings, resources and listening to your podcast?How can a Podcaster Find you “Debbie”.Spreaker/Voxnest Links:https://Voxnest.comhttp://blog.spreaker.comhttp://SpreakerLiveShow.comhttps://Spreaker.comEmail: rob at voxnest.comSend Questions and Comments to:Twitter: http://twitter.com/spreaker using #SpreakerLiveTwitter: http://twitter.com/VoxNestTwitter: http://twitter.com/robgreenleeTwitter: http://twitter.com/alexeum Tech Support: support at spreaker.com

Spreaker Live Show #183 for March 20th, 2019Show Duration: 50 minutes- Host: Rob Greenlee, VP of Podcaster Relations of Voxnest that operates Spreaker. I am a 14+ year podcaster that started out on the radio. This is the official podcast of Spreaker platform. @robgreenlee - rob(at)voxnest(dotcom)- We stream LIVE every Weds at 3pm PST / 6pm EST from SpreakerLiveShow.com-You can now get the show on Google Podcasts App on Android- You can hear this show on Amazon Echo Smart Speakers now via the New Spreaker Skill- If you want to send me an audio promo for your show, I would be happy to play it on the show. - Just create an MP3 and give me a brief description of your show in an email to me at rob@spreaker.com- Spreaker Blog Topics: http://Blog.Spreaker.com On the show this week:- The Power of Joining or Starting Podcaster and Listening Communities- In The Interview: We are discussing Creating a Podcast Business Plan as Most Podcasts are actually small businesses. Guest is Debbie DeChambeau *Play clip from the interview- Podcast Promo of the Week: Multilinguish Podcast by Babbel - for the Language Curious - Featured Podcast Promo of the Week → The Live Drop w/Mark Valley - Stories from the Elusive World of Intelligence Collection and Espionage - If you want to send me an audio promo for your show, I would be happy to play it on the show. Just create an MP3 and give me a brief description of your show in an email to me at rob@spreaker.com- Podcasting & Spreaker’s Events Calendar - Listener Comments Let's get into the show:-The Power of Joining or Starting Podcaster and Listening Communities Spreaker has published a terrific blog post about this topic at Blog.Spreaker.comThe two platforms that dominate for building these communities are Meetup and Facebook or mix of both, but Google Groups does still exist but is a little old schoolThe one exception is “Telegram” a platform that has gained traction in Spanish speaking countries.Generally Meetup excelled in event discovery by attendees, but Facebook was more appropriate for group discussion. Totally makes sense to me.Seems like the power is to use both Meetup and Facebook GroupsOrganizers discussed in the blog post generally feel like Meetup is great for RSVPs but those people aren’t as likely to show up. Those that find out about events on Facebook do tend to show up more. Meetup attendees are notoriously flakey”. I agree, I have run Podcaster Meetups in Seattle for Years.Attendance will vary a lot based on month of the year, venue and purpose of the eventCommunities attract all levels of podcasterBeing an Event Organizer can have many professional benefits - building your leadership brand can help your podcast grow too. On the listener community side, I would recommend to create just a Facebook group for your listeners to engage with each other and ge listener feedback on topics and building intra-listener relationships. -Podcast Promo of the Week: Multilinguish Podcast by Babbel USA Team: Are Not multilingual, but language-curious? Explore how language connects us all — from the producers at the language-learning app Babbel. In season 1, we dig into unsolved linguistic mysteries, sexist robots, the best travel advice you've never heard, if language affects our worldview, which accents are sexiest, and more! New episodes every Tuesday. Play Audio Clip --> Featured Podcast Show Of The Week: The Live Drop -- Join host Mark Valley as he ventures into the elusive world of intelligence collection and espionage to spot, assess and debrief: spies, spy catchers, analysts, diplomats and occasionally the actors who portray them. A new episode each week brings stories and analysis from the Cold War to the present. Drop in at thelivedrop.com - In the most recent episode Mark talks to Tom Pecora is a 24 year CIA veteran and senior clandestine security manager the CIA’s War on Terror, and a career in Clandestine security operations. - -- play clip here-Listener Comment - Linda Irwin I have used licensed Epidemic Sound to create entire music shows on Spreaker that feed to Spotify. Those generally have more listens than my comedy shows.-Podcasting & Spreaker Event CalendarNABShow.com - Las Vegas - April 6-11th, 2019, Voxnest and Spreaker will be there in force with a booth again this year.I will be speaking at the Eliances.com GRANDtable Event in Phoenix, Arizona at Arizona State University on April 2nd at 8am PSTOutlier Podcast Festival at Austin, TX - Keynoting - May 17th - 18th - Outliercs.com The Audiocraft Podcast Festival (Sydney NSW, Australia: May 31 - June 2) has announced its initial lineup, Our very own Jonathan Zenti (Voxnest/Meat) will be joining the speakers list down under. -The Interview:I am joined on the show today by Debbie DeChambeau, Select Business Team, llc, she is a podcaster with a few of her own business podcasts and was a Presenter of a session at Podfest Multimedia Expo in Orlando on the topic of “Business Planning for Podcasters” and thought that would be a great topic for the show… Checkout Debbie’s Business in Real Life Podcast → https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/business-in-real-life/id1137499088?mt=2Business of Insurance Podcasthttps://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/business-of-insurance-podcast/id1318390091?mt=2Play InterviewIs Your Podcast Going To Be a Business or Hobby?Do Most Podcasters NEED a Content and Business Plan?Parts of the Plan (Cover sheet, exec summary, company description, market and competitive analysis, marketing, operations, management/HR, financial, supporting docs)If your Podcast is a Hobby: Do you still need a Content and Business Plan as Hobby podcasts if done good can become a business. So you need to prepare for that and in the competitive content marketplace of today a plan/strategy gives you an advantage. Do research and talk to others who have succeeded. SometimesBuilding Yourself a Business Team (accountant, bookkeeper, business attorney, insurance, banker, marketing outsourced HR, business coach)Other Resources to Help with Process?There's so much to cover here, but don’t have enough time. How should a podcaster proceed - other trainings, resources and listening to your podcast?How can a Podcaster Find you “Debbie”.Spreaker/Voxnest Links:https://Voxnest.comhttp://blog.spreaker.comhttp://SpreakerLiveShow.comhttps://Spreaker.comEmail: rob at voxnest.comSend Questions and Comments to:Twitter: http://twitter.com/spreaker using #SpreakerLiveTwitter: http://twitter.com/VoxNestTwitter: http://twitter.com/robgreenleeTwitter: http://twitter.com/alexeum Tech Support: support at spreaker.com

TIPS FOR THE NEW PRODUCER WITH KOURTNEY MORTIMER Episode 27 - What’s it like to be fresh out of college and selling insurance? Our guest today talks about some of the challenges and opportunities she’s having. Kourtney Mortimer was a marketing major in college and after one summer internship, she knew a desk job wasn’t in her future. After 3 interviews she was hired as a producer with a wonderful agency. They’ve provided her with a lot of opportunities, from sales training to networking. Her energy is contagious and we should all be so lucky to have a Kourtney in our office! TOPICS WE DISCUSS Being young and selling insurance Best practices for insurance agency marketing Selling your niche or selling the business that comes to you OTHER EPISODES FROM IA&B FUTURES CONFERENCE Marketing Magic with Sydney Roe of Agency Nation episode 15 Closing The Gap with Chris Cline of Westfield Insurance episode 16 The One Thing with Steve Harvill Episode 18 Attitude with Sam Glen episode 20 Listening with Sandra Biagini of Progressive Insurance episode 25 INFORMATION ON THE NEXT IA&B CONFERENCE This is another episode in our IA&B Futures Conference series. If you missed this conference in 2018, I would encourage you to put it on your must attend list in 2019. The date has been set for October 8th and 9th 2019. If you go to the IA&B website you can get the details.  ABOUT OUR GUEST – KOURTNEY MORTIMER Kourtney is an account manager with Reed, Wertz, & Roadman. She‘s a arising star with a passion for golf. Connect with her:   Website LinkedIn Twitter ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  Coming soon. Single and Over Sixty and Seniors We Love Check out or page on Facebook, The Business of Insurance

Should You Trademark Your Business Name? Episode 26 - This is a replay of an interview that I did on another podcast I produce called Business In Real Life. Our guest is an intellectual property attorney and the information was great for business owners. Since you, the business of insurance podcast listener might be working with other business owners, or you might be a business owner yourself, I thought I would share the episode here. It’s so important to understand why intellectual property needs to be protected and why it needs to be done correctly. You’ve heard me say this more than one, but position yourself as an advisor to your clients. And as an advisor, it’s important to know about IP law. How insurance protects and doesn’t protect, although we don’t discuss the insurance aspect here. In the beginning of the recording, I talk about some real cases. Make sure your clients aren’t making the same mistakes. If you are an agent looking to create content, this is a topic not a lot of people are talking about, but it’s really important! Radiance Harris has been practicing IP law for nearly a decade. She is different than many attorneys because her pricing is based on packages. Decide what you need and you can see on her website what it will cost you. It’s a unique model for a law firm and we talk about why she set up her practice this way as well. QUESTIONS WE ASK RADIANCE What is intellectual property? Why does a company need to protect their IP What happens if a company just puts a ™ after their content? How likely is a business to be sued if they violate a trademark or copyright? RESOURCES Are you interested in learning more about Select Business Team? Check out where we have teams.  If we don’t have one in your area, we can help you start one in your area. Give us a call to discuss further at 301-996-2328 or schedule a meeting on our calendar Click here to access calendar   ABOUT OUR GUEST - RADIANCE HARRIS Radiance Harris is the founder of Radiance IP Law. Her firm specializes in protecting intellectual property. Connect with Radiance: Radiance IP Law Website Facebook Twitter - @radianceharris Instagram - @radianceharris ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts  Business In Real Life  and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.

EP # 37  BUSINESS AND MARKETING PODCAST WITH RADIANCE HARRIS Are you leaving money on the table for your competitors? If you are a business owner or thinking about going into business, this topic is something you need to be aware of. We are talking about protecting your Intellectual Property. Our guest, Radiance Harris  is an award winning attorney and specializes in this niche area of law. So think about your business name, your logo, the content you create. What would happen to your business if someone decided to use it?   Companies are out there protecting their intellectual property every day. One big area that you’ll find companies that protect their photographs. Did you know that there are programs that search the internet to see if you are using someone else’s pictures without their permission? Companies protect their pictures by sending letters whenever they find someone that has used an image without permission. One company hired person to help with website graphics. Without checking on the sources of the pictures, they went up on the company website. Then they received a letter demanding over $15,000. For unauthorized use of the pictures. He was eventually able to negotiate the fee down to $3,000. But that was a costly mistake for a new employee to make. Many people don’t know this is an issue, but it is. Radiance Harris has been practicing IP law for nearly a decade. She is different than many attorneys because her pricing is based on packages. Decide what you need and you can see on her website what it will cost you. It’s a unique model for a law firm and we talk about why she set up her practice this way as well. QUESTIONS WE ASK RADIANCE What is intellectual property?Why does a company need to protect their IPWhat happens if a company just puts a ™ after their content?How likely is a business to be sued if they violate a trademark or copyright? RESOURCES AVAILABLE TO YOU Are you interested in learning more about Select Business Team? Check out where we have teams. If we don’t have one in your area, we can help you start one in your area. Give us a call to discuss further at 301-996-2328 or schedule a meeting on our calendar Click here to access calendar  Sponsor information: Connect with our sponsor Brandon Frye at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage ABOUT OUR GUEST - RADIANCE HARRIS Radiance Harris is the founder of Radiance IP Law. Her firm specializes in protecting intellectual property. Connect with Radiance: Radiance IP Law WebsiteFacebookTwitter - @radianceharrisInstagram - @radianceharris ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts The Business of Insurance and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

INSURANCE PODCAST WITH SANDRA BIAGINI Episode 25 - In this episode of The Business of Insurance Podcast, our guest, Sandra Biagini of Progressive Insurance, talks about how she helps her agents. In addition, we explore the training she received for the position as well as some of the resources she has in her toolbox. Something exciting about this conversation is that she was promoted the morning of this recording. She was super excited, as she should have been. At the end of the conversation, we review some of her tips for successful sales. This is another episode that was recorded at the IA&B Futures conference last fall. We’ve had several other episodes from the conference. If you’ve missed them, check out episodes 15 , 16, 18 and 20. They are all great conversations! If you didn’t attend that conference, or if you didn’t know about it, mark your calendar for October 8-9 of 2019. You can get more details on the IA&B website and we’ll provide a link in the show notes of the businessofinsurance.com website as well. I think you’ll find it worth the investment.  If you aren’t sure what or who IA&B is, they are the insurance association for the delmarva area of the US One last thing, if you like what you hear, please share this podcast with a friend or colleague. Someone you think would benefit from the content. TOPICS WE DISCUSS How listening adds value  Sales tips for agents Don’t be afraid to fail ABOUT OUR GUEST – SANDRA BIAGINI Sandra Biagini - Progressive Insurance Link to article with her sales tips RESOURCES Link to the IA&B conference October 2019 Other episodes mentioned in this episode Marketing Magic with Sydney Roe - Episode 15 Closing the Gap with Chris Cline - Episode 16 The One Thing with Steve Harvill - Episode 18 Attitude with Sam Glen - Episode 20 ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts  Business In Real Life  and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.

ARE YOU AN AGENT OR AN ADVISOR? Episode 24 - How you position yourself with your clients makes the difference on being perceived as any 800 number or an ongoing valuable advisor. If you are an insurance professional, an agent bringing in new business or the principal of an insurance agency, this episode is for you. In this episode of the Business of Insurance podcast, we are talking about life insurance and other planning that everyone should be discussing with their clients. It’s easy for us to tell people that we can save them money on their insurance, but what we are really doing is protecting them from a financial loss. Can you really put a price on doing that? Sell on Advice and you put yourself on the same level as an attorney and an accountant. We should be providing the same level of information that other professionals offer. You might already be doing this, but how consistent is your process?   IDEAS WE DISCUSS IN THIS EPISODE Look at the big picture. Get out of the commodity game Create resources that you can recommend to your clients Develop questions you can ask that will position you differently from other agents Create a system inside your CRM to prompt these questions Take classes on products outside of your comfort zone By doing the right thing as an advisor, you will actually save people more money than they could imagine because they had the proper financial instruments in place. ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.

CONVERSATION WITH STEPHANIE KATZ, CETA BENEFITS CONSULTING Episode 23 - Our guest today isn't running a typical insurance business. The company offers a variety of services with a national network of resources built from her commitment to networking and association involvement.  The conversation ranges from how she started, the types of clients she works with and her offline strategy of growing her business. It’s something you really want to pay attention to. While video and social are frequently discussed as being the essential form of marketing today, there are some offline strategies that can be extremely effective. If you are responsible for business development or you are thinking about opening your own agency, you’ll get some great ideas from this conversation. WHAT WE DISCUSS:   Online vs. Offline marketing Employees vs. 1099 business model Is There Really Work Life Balance Do you need to get involved with organizations you join? CONNECT WITH STEPHANIE LinkedIn Contact Information RESOURCES Select Business Media - If you want to create a podcast as a sales tool or want to continue the conversation after an event, talk with Select Business Media about how to create a podcast that will generate revenue for your business. Upcoming Webinars - Click here to see what upcoming webinars we have scheduled for podcasting. They are hosted on our sister companies home page or you can find them in eventbrite! ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts  Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.

Debbie DeChambeau calls in to discuss the ins and outs of podcasting and how your business can get started, easily.

INSURANCE PODCAST - COMPLACENCY EPISODE 22 - This episode is for those over 45. If you are  younger, the information is relevant, but this conversation is geared to those of you who are feeling comfortable in what you are doing. Maybe even a little complacent! Steps you can take to make a difference in your business today: Have an up to date website Continually add content Create systems for streamlining workflows Build a marketing strategy before investing too much money into marketing - understand who you are targeting and the ROI you want to measure for each tactic implemented. What is your system for creating online reviews What does your business look like online (not just your website) TECHNOLOGY Technology is here to stay. It is revolutionizing a lot of industries, not just insurance. It’s creating opportunity and that’s what we should embrace. We discuss the changes in technology and what we need to be aware of and the impact it can have when you are ready to sell your business. Learn about technology so that you can better protect your clients Invest in technology and invest in your business RESOURCES PODCASTS RECOMMENDED Below you will find the website link for some of our recommended shows. You can download all of these podcasts on your phone, you don’t need to keep returning to the website to listen (unless you want to) Apple phones:  look for your apple podcasts app. It’s purple and pre-installed. Droid phones:  Download google podcasts or Stitcher apps. There are also many apps available in your app store. This is just a short list of what is available and the ones on Debbie’s frequently played list: Social Media Marketing Podcast with Michael Stelzner - You will find a broad range of marketing topics discussed. This organization also does an annual marketing event that you might want to consider attending. Mixergy Startup Stories - This isn’t a marketing podcast, but founders are interviewed and many of them are spearheading new technologies and business growth ideas Perpetual Traffic - This is more of a hands on how to podcast but always good information Entrepreneur on Fire - JLD has been one of the most successful podcasters to date and he’s always interviewing innovative leaders who share an abundance of information. ONLINE DIRECTORY SCAN  - YEXT Free Business listings tool EPISODES WE REFERENCE - Ep 7  ROBERT KLINGER Building Community As An Insurance Agency - They have a recording studio in their office! ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts  Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.

BUSINESS AND MARKETING PODCAST WITH SHELDON SNODGRASS EPISODE 21 - Today we are talking with Sheldon Snodgrass who is the founder of steadysales.com a sales training organization that focuses on the insurance industry. Sheldon helps sales minded service professionals. While many sales trainers focus on those in outside sales, Sheldon has some unique offerings for customer service representatives. After serving as a 1st Lieutenant in the US Army, he obtained his MBA then opened the doors to his company. He has gift with how he helps his clients and he shares several of those ideas in this episode. QUESTIONS WE ASK What brought you to the insurance industry? What type of marketing are you doing to find new clients? What is your biggest business challenge? When are you publishing your book? WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM LISTENING The mindset of a CSR around sales Ideas on how to get rid of typical sales language How an old fashioned ‘tic’ sheet can impact results Selling from a place of integrity BOOKS RECOMMENDED Daniel Pink To Sell Is Human Drive The link for these books is to our affiliate program with Amazon. If you choose to purchase these books, we will receive a small amount of revenue.  ABOUT OUR GUEST – SHELDON SNODGRASS Sheldon is the owner of The Steady Sales Group. Connect with him on: LinkedIn Website ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts Business In Real Life and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.

EPISODE 36 WITH RUSSELL LACEY OF ELECTRIC ADVISORS Thank you for joining us today for episode 36 of the the Business In Real Life podcast. Our guest is Russell Lacey of Electric Advisors.  This is an unusual conversation in that it’s more educational about his business than information about how to be successful in some capacity. For some of you, it might even come across as boring, but trust me when I say it’s information that many business owners might not be aware of. If you aren’t a business owner listening to this, but you work with business owners, then you will also want to hear this because you can share the knowledge with your clients and prospects and position yourself as a valuable resource. If you want to reach out to Russell, his contact information is in the show notes, or you can search for ElectricAdvisors.com and you’ll find him on the website. We have a lot of listeners from around the world so I’m not sure this information will apply outside of the US and for that I apologize.   This conversation was recorded in 2018 but isn’t being released until 2019. If you listened to the episode about rebranding, I discussed my struggle with the podcast name...and as a result, I didn’t release many episodes in 2018. Russell got slighted in that struggle I was having but that doesn’t mean the conversation isn’t important. I’ve known Russell for close to 20 years and watched him build this business from the beginning. As social media was taking off, I’d offer suggestions on how he could leverage it. Like many businesses, he went through a trial and error period, figuring out what was working and what wasn’t in the digital space. In this episode he talks about what he’s doing today for business development and I think you’ll be surprised at what is working! We start the conversation with him talking about his business. WHAT YOU’LL LEARN: How an energy broker can help small to midsize businesses save on energy costs Old fashioned outreach tactics that work How to educate your customers when they don’t know they need you ABOUT OUR GUEST – RUSSELL LACEY Russell Lacey is the President of Electric Advisors. Learn more at electricadvisors.com Connect with him: LinkedIn Facebook. Twitter - @eapowerchoice ABOUT THE HOST This episode of Business In Real Life is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau. She is the owner of Select Business Team, llc and has an extensive background in insurance, business and marketing. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts The Business of Insurance  and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram or follow FB business page at Select Business Team.  

INSURANCE PODCAST WITH SAM GLEN AT THE IA&B FUTURES CONFERENCE 2018 Episode 20 - Welcome to another episode of the Business of Insurance podcast. If you are a returning listener, welcome back. If you are new to the podcast, welcome and enjoy! Be sure to download this podcast on your favorite podcast player so that you don’t miss any episodes! If you aren't sure how to listen, scroll down and we've provided instructions. ABOUT THE HOST My name is Debbie DeChambeau and I am an insurance agent talking about the benefits of working in this amazing industry called insurance. I’m a podcaster who helps insurance organizations create podcasts as a sales opportunity and I help conferences keep the conversation going after the event has ended. Debbie also hosts Business In Real Life podcast and Divorce Exposed.  Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. Check out her book Renewable Referrals INFORMATION ON THE NEXT IA&B CONFERENCE This is another episode in our IA&B Futures Conference series. If you missed this conference in 2018, I would encourage you to put it on your must attend list in 2019. The date has been set for October 8th and 9th 2019. If you go to the IA&B website you can get the details.  OUR GUEST Our guest today isn’t in the insurance industry but is a motivational speaker with a twist. He’s a self taught artist and brings art creation into his presentations.  Sam has taken his struggles and turned them into something positive. He’s been through what many of us go through and has found a way to work through the down cycles through positivity, by managing his attitude. I know it might sound a little woo woo but as someone who focuses on always having a positive attitude myself, I completely relate to what he is talking about. I’m not going to go into my life struggles here, but trust me when I say that for as long as I can remember, and this goes back to my teenage years, I have intentionally focused on a positive attitude. I believe it’s what has gotten me through some difficult times and continues to impact my daily life today. Being positive, being happy takes work because sometimes life can be challenging! If you are working in the insurance industry, you might occasionally experience some of those challenges. Sam has written several books about how attitude affects the workplace, leadership and relationships. We also talk about Courage, how it is relevant today, finding courage in each other and how we need courage every day. Here's the artwork he created during his presentation. OUR SPONSOR If you listened to my conversation with Sydney Roe and and Steve Haravill, you probably heard me mention that I also facilitate CEO roundtable groups. Now you might be thinking that you are’t a CEO but I believe that you are the CEO of your life, therefore, you are a CEO. I’m looking to put one together in 2019 for insurance agents. Depending on the interest level, we might have one just for agency principles and those in the C suite (those of you in operations, management and in leadership roles)  and one for producers. If I have enough other professionals, I’d be happy to coordinate that but for now I’ll stick with the C suite and producers. Consider them an informal board of advisors. You see, the sooner you surround yourself with your peers, the sooner you will learn things and experience growth. As I put these together, I’ll make sure that there is some geographical distance between participants. If you are interested, connect with me on LinkedIn or send me an email to Debbie@selectbizteam.com.   My experience in the insurance business, my knowledge of marketing and my exposure to running business provide you with ideas that will help you catapult your business. This episode is brought to you by Constant Contact. It’s an email marketing tool that allows you to stay in compliance with sending mass emails as well as lets you create beautiful templates that match your agency brand.  Try Constant Contact free for 30 days. Click here for your free trial. HOW TO LISTEN TO PODCASTS Do you have an iPhone? Look for the purple podcast app and download. Do you listen to Spotify? Search for The Business of Insurance on the platform. Do you have a droid phone? Download the Google Podcast app and search for The Business of Insurance podcast or download the Stitcher app. Both work on the phone. There are other podcast players in your phone store that you might like better that what we've indicated above. Try a few and see what you like best! How did you find this podcast?  Maybe through a social media post, maybe a search in your podcast player? Maybe we interviewed one of your friends. Could you do us a favor? Go to iTunes, stitcher or google podcasts or spotify and leave a review - we’ve included instructions on the website, thebusinessofinsurance.com If you like what we are talking about, please tell a coworker about the podcast! You’ll make our day  

ARE YOU ACCOUNTABLE? Episode 19 - In this special episode, we are taking the conversation from episode 18 with Steve Harvill a little bit deeper and talking about accountability. We’ll be exploring issues in the business environment as well as how some individuals struggle with accountability and provide ideas to improve accountability. RESOURCES WE DISCUSS The Five Minute Journal Evernote Episode 18 - Conversation with Steve Harvill Be part of a Mastermind Group HOW TO LEAVE A REVIEW If you have an iphone or an iTunes account, would you leave us a review? It provides us the opportunity to get discovered by other agents. Log into your account, look for our podcast Business of Insurance then go to Ratings and Reviews and let us know what you think of the episode. Subscribe on iTunes, and leave us a rating or review ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts  Select Business Team and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.

INSURANCE PODCAST WITH STEVE HARVILL Episode 18 - Meet Steve Harvill. He’s the owner of Creative Ventures, a published author and a speaker for the first day of IA&B Futures Conference. He presented on the 21 Secrets of Million Dollar Sellers. He is a scientist by education and uses his leadership experience and empirical data to reinforce his assertions, providing actionable steps for attendees. In our conversation he provided what he hopes attendees took from the presentation and also shares his thoughts on leadership. QUESTIONS WE ASK What should people do about information overload at a conference? What is leadership? How do you test your theories? WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM LISTENING Why a mastermind is worth considering Using a dental association for market research Leadership skills involved in creating shoes for Michael Jordan READY TO BE PART OF AN INSURANCE MASTERMIND We are in the process of creating a virtual mastermind meeting for owners and producers in 2019. Click here to get the details on our upcoming Insurance Mastermind as they become available.  We won't spam you or sell your information! CONSTANT CONTACT SPECIAL OFFER Click here for your free 30 day trial of Constant Contact ABOUT OUR GUEST – STEVE HARVILL Steve is the owner of Creative Ventures, a published author and a trainer of sales professionals. He's the author of 21 Secrets of Million Dollar Sellers. Connect with him: Website YouTube Facebook.   Twitter HOW TO LEAVE A REVIEW If you have an iphone or an iTunes account, would you leave us a review? It provides us the opportunity to get discovered by other agents. Log into your account, look for our podcast Business of Insurance then go to Ratings and Reviews and let us know what you think of the episode. Subscribe on iTunes, and leave us a rating or review ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts Select Business Team and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram or follow the podcast Facebook page

PODCASTING AS A SALES TOOL Episode 17 - Welcome to another episode of the business of insurance podcast. In the last episode, I was talking with Chris Cline of Westfield Insurance. He was a sponsor and an attendee of the IA&B futures conference and he is the podcast host for his insurance companies podcast called Closing The Gap. Half of the episode was talking about how agents can use podcasts and the other half was talking about how Westfield approaches its agents to provide added value that goes far beyond selling insurance. If you haven’t listened to that episode, I would encourage you to do so. Click here to listen to my conversation with Chris I’m trying something new with the IA&B series. I’m going to take a deep dive into one aspect of the conversation with the guests I interview. With Chris, I’m going to talk about podcasting. Not  about how to get started because you can learn more about that in a webinar I’m hosting in December which I’ll let you know more about at the end of this episode or you can check it out in the show notes at thebusinessofinsurance.com. REGISTER FOR A PODCAST WEBINAR If you want to learn more about how a podcast can open doors for you, join us for a free webinar. Click on the date to access the registration and webinar details. Friday December 7, 2018  12:00 EST Monday December 17, 2018 12:00 EST Friday January 4, 2019  12:00 EST Monday January 14, 2019  12:00 EST In this episode, I’m going to talk about using a podcast as a sales tool and I’m going to give you some specifics to think about. A podcast is like a sales tactic that you make an investment in. Like attending a trade show or advertising in a magazine. Except in this case, you are creating a podcast to get in front of prospects. In my opinion, aside from being a great sales tool, your marketing department can do so much with the content of a podcast that they will love you for coming up with this idea! I’m not going to dive into that part, but if you want to learn more about the concept, listen to my interview with Sydney Roe. In that conversation, we covered what you can do with a podcast fairly well. If you don’t have a marketing department, we should talk! If you are intrigued about starting a podcast as a sales took keep in mind that this shouldn’t be a advertisement about your agency. If you want to mention your agency as the sponsor, that would be a fantastic. But other than as a brief infomercial, your agency should not be the focus. If you are looking for an example of adding your agency as the sponsor, listen to the last episode where I am talking with Chris. In the middle of the conversation I talk about Constant Contact for 30 seconds. They were my sponsor and I gave them a plug. It was genuine and authentic, hopefully it didn’t come across as salesy! . You can create the sponsorship ad however you want and maybe I’ll cover that in another episode. If you create a show about you and your agency you are defeating the purpose if what I”m talking about here. The podcast that I’m talking about creating should be something that would be appealing to your niche. (you could make this general, but honestly, the niches are in the riches) You want to focus on the people that you want as your clients. Yes, there are people out there who talk about themselves all day long but that’s not what I’m referring to here and I don’t think that is the way you want to use the podcast as a sales tool. In my conversation with Chris at Westfield, he said they use the podcast to provide value to their agents. I think what they are doing is great, they are providing information. To me, that’s more of a marketing tool and I think Chris would agree. If they used it to interview agents that they wanted to represent them, then it would be more of a sales tool, in my opinion. Are you wondering how you can do this? I’m going to give you some examples for both personal lines agents and commercial lines agents. My intent is to inspire. There are so many possibilities. If you target your niche right, you can focus on high end prospects and really hit a home run. Think about this…..As a sales person, one of the biggest challenges is getting in front of prospects who don’t know you. Right. You call them, they don’t call you back. You email them and it’s crickets, you send them snail mail and you end up in the round filing bin! If you think about the concept, people need to know, like and trust you before they will do business with you. If you can’t get in front of them to talk to them, how can they get to know and like you? The trust part generally follows after that! One of the best ways to get people’s attention is to appeal to their ego. When you reach out to them and ask them to be a guest on your podcast, I guarantee you, that if you position your ask correctly, 80% or more people will say yes! Think about it...what’s your hit rate for cold calling? What about the advertising you do! How many dollars do you invest with the publication only to be recognized? So let’s start with commercial agents and I’m going to give you 3 examples in completely different industries. Let’s say you are selling to construction contractors. What if you created a show around company culture and how it impacts the organizations hiring, employee retention, safety programs, etc. You might talk to companies about how they find employees, what they are doing to attract them to work for them, or what does their safety program consist of. Imagine a contractor with a tight safety program and no losses. They are your ideal clients from an underwriting perspective! Another idea for contractors would be a show around finished projects or a project that has just begun. What their role in the project, what challenges did they face and what successes did they have. Feature them as the contractor on a project and then take pictures of their work to promote with the podcast. If you have a smartphone, this is easy! Let’s say you are selling to government contractors - specifically those in technology. Your podcast could be around getting government contracts and the ins and outs. Maybe it’s a panel type of show where you bring on a government contractor and a contracting officer to discuss the success each has working together. what challenges your host has in getting the contracts. What if your target market is accounting firms. Your podcast could be very similar to how this one started out (listen to episode 1 with our original plan and what you’ll see more of outside of the series) What does the accountant love about the industry and why do they think others would enjoy working as an accountant. Everyone has a story about how they got to where they are. If it is the prospect you want as a client, get the story recorded and promote the agency! Another idea for accountants that is similar to the panel idea for govcon is to bring a business owner and an accountant together, maybe it’s the businessowners accountant and talk about how they work together, what they love and what they wish would work a little better! Depending on your spin, you could make it a bit like a reality show. Most accountants are fairly conservative, so you’d have to be creative in finding the fun! You double your prospecting with both on the panel! Let’s say you are focusing on medical supplies. You could create a show around how the owner got started or you could create a show around marketing challenges of medical supply companies! big pharm. So many possibilities! What do you think? Are you inspired? Think about who you really want to be doing business with, who’s your niche? Golf courses, car dealerships, surgeons. The possibilities are endless! If you don’t have a niche, then we need to have another conversation but assuming you do, or you have an industry you want to target, that’s what you want to create your podcast around. It’s an incredible door opener. There are some people who are already producing shows in these niches so you might partner with them to do the interviews so that you can get in front of the prospect but run the show under someone else's brand! Now let’s talk about creating a podcast for those of you in personal lines. The first thing I would have you think about is, What is your passion or interest. Pets, sports, boating, hiking, golf, cars? Creating a podcast around something you love will make it more fun and keep you going. If you don’t have any hobbies or passions, then here’s a few ideas to get you thinking. What if you created a podcast about the non profits in your community? You could interview the volunteer coordinators, executive directors or CFO’s about different aspects of the non profit. Another idea around the non profits would be to interview the volunteers or donors. Why did they choose that non profit and what’s their passion. The non profit would love the extra attention that they’d potentially receive from your podcast and would most likely be eager to be interviewed. Now you are in front of them, building a relationship with them and when everything is over you can mention insurance. You could also do a podcast around the events in your area. From music festivals to car shows, running events to charity balls. All of these events will have people there. Interview them. Get their contact information and tell them you will follow up with them when the episode goes live so that they can hear themselves. With their contact information, you can now call them and talk to them about their insurance. So let's break down a couple of these examples so you can see the bigger potential.. Some running events have over 1,000 people. But even if they only had 100, that’s not a bad number. Obviously you can’t interview all of them, but imagine if you did a podcast on runners. They all have a story. I started running at 54 and I never had any desire to run. I was somewhat guilted into running, then I became hooked and I just ran my first (and only) marathon. I just ran the NYC marathon, which was really cool. I’ll put a picture of my medal on the business of insurance fb page if you are curious.. I can’t speak for all runners, but most of us have a story. Why do we get up at the crack of dawn or run in the freezing cold or the hot humid summer. What has running done for the runner and why do they keep going? From an insurance perspective, once you finish your interview you could ask about disability insurance. They get injured. Not all are out of work for months, but it’s an ice breaker to get the conversation started! You can design a short show or a long show but it will put you directly in front of your prospects. Every running race has at least 100 people and dozens of volunteers. Many cities have a race almost every weekend, providing you with an unlimited list of prospects! Something to think about. What if you did a podcast around charity events in your area. Interview the attendees. Why are people attending the event and what is their connection. Not all attendees will have a direct connection but usually people attend these events because someone or something in their life has been impacted by the organization and they are there to support it. If you play your cards right, you might even be able to get a press pass to the event! If you are looking for other ideas on what to create a podcast about that would put you in front of a lot of people, look at meetups in your area. Hopefully one of the activities will inspire you. The podcast you create is designed to put you in front of people who can potentially become your clients. Create a show about something they are interested in and they’ll talk forever. Now you know them and they know you. They will feel like you care about them and they’ll most likely let you have a conversation with them about insurance. Are you feeling inspired? Ready to go start a podcast? If you are spending hours dialing for dollars with no success, consider a podcast! My intent with this episode wasn’t to tell you how to create a podcast but to get you thinking about how you can use the podcast as a prospect/sales tool. Getting started with a podcast isn’t difficult nor is it expensive. Depending on your recording ability, there might be an expense (or your time) involved with post production, but it is minimal. If you want to learn more, check out my webinar that coming in December. It’s free, all you need to do is register. Go to the business of insurance and look for this episode for the registration link. If you are listening to this after December, check a few of the recent episodes and you’ll probably find  a link to another webinar. I plan to do at least one a month in 2019. PODCAST WEBINARS If you want to learn more about how a podcast can open doors for you, join us for a free webinar. Click on the date to access the registration and webinar details. Friday December 7, 2018  12:00 EST Monday December 17, 2018 12:00 EST Friday January 4, 2019  12:00 EST Monday January 14, 2019  12:00 EST   HOW TO LEAVE A REVIEW If you have an iphone or an iTunes account, would you leave us a review?  It provides us the opportunity to get discovered by other agents. Log into your account, look for our podcast Business of Insurance then go to Ratings and Reviews and let us know what you think of the episode. Subscribe on iTunes, and leave us a rating or review   ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts  Select Business Team and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

INSURANCE PODCAST WITH CHRIS CLINE OF WESTFIELD INSURANCE AT THE IA&B FUTURES CONFERENCE 2018 Episode 16 - If you are hearing this podcast for the first time, we are in the middle of a series that we’ve created around the IA&B Future’s Conference held in September of 2018. The first episode in this series was with Sydney Roe. It’s episode 15 and you can find it on your favorite podcast player, or on our website at the business of insurance.com. Our guest in this episode, is Chris Cline of Westfield Insurance. He was a sponsor and an attendee and we are discussing how podcasting is being leveraged in the insurance industry as well as the role insurance companies can play with agencies that shouldn’t go unnoticed. WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM LISTENING What is the impact of company culture? How insurance agents can leverage podcasting Why insurance agencies should partner with their insurance companies and look at the resources they provide, not just the policies they provide Who’s changing the game in conferences Investing in the next generation What most agencies want to learn more about PODCAST WEBINARS If you want to learn more about how a podcast can open doors for you, join us for a free webinar. Click on the date to access the registration and webinar details. Friday December 7, 2018  12:00 EST Monday December 17, 2018 12:00 EST Friday January 4, 2019  12:00 EST Monday January 14, 2019  12:00 EST ABOUT OUR GUEST – CHRIS CLINE Chris Cline is with Westfield Insurance and is the host of Closing The Gap podcast. Connect with him: LinkedIn, Westfield Website Follow Westfield on facebook.   Twitter Closing The Gap podcast HOW TO LEAVE A REVIEW If you have an iphone or an iTunes account, would you leave us a review?  It provides us the opportunity to get discovered by other agents. Log into your account, look for our podcast Business of Insurance then go to Ratings and Reviews and let us know what you think of the episode. Subscribe on iTunes, and leave us a rating or review ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is produced and hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts  Select Business Team and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on  LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.

INSURANCE PODCAST WITH SYDNEY ROE OF AGENCY NATION AT THE IA&B FUTURES CONFERENCE 2018 Episode 15 - This is the first episode for the Insurance Agents and Brokers Futures Conference. This two day event was geared for agents under 40 or agents with at least 20 years left in their career! We spoke with attendees, speakers and sponsors, and those conversations will be published over the next few weeks. Our first guest in this series is Sydney Roe, with Agency Nation, which is part of Trusted Choice. Agency Nation understands marketing….and Sydney shares some of her wisdom in this conversation. If you are in the insurance industry and haven’t heard of Agency Nation, look them up as soon as you finish listening to this podcast. There was no planning for this conversation, it is completely random, but you’ll hear it’s jammed packed with wisdom, great information and of course we had a lot of fun! QUESTIONS WE ASK If an agent had $5,000. To spend on marketing, what would you recommend? What are some of the services Agency Nation offers? What does tiling a foyer have to do with online trainings? What inspires you to ‘crush it?’ WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM LISTENING The magic of repurposing content Connecting - online and offline The value of attending live events The power of social when you meet people in person The stop ratio from online training How podcasting creates unique marketing pieces PODCAST WEBINARS If you want to learn more about how a podcast can open doors for you, join us for a free webinar. Click on the date to access the registration and webinar details. Friday December 7, 2018  12:00 EST Monday December 17, 2018 12:00 EST Friday January 4, 2019  12:00 EST Monday January 14, 2019  12:00 EST ABOUT OUR GUEST – SYDNEY ROE Sydney Roe is with Agency Nation, a division of Trusted Choice. She’s helping agents understand their marketing in the digital space. Connect with her: Agency Nation website LinkedIn, Facebook.   Twitter YouTube HOW TO LEAVE A REVIEW If you have an iphone or an iTunes account, would you leave us a review?  It provides us the opportunity to get discovered by other agents. Log into your account, look for our podcast Business of Insurance then go to Ratings and Reviews and let us know what you think of the episode. Subscribe on iTunes, and leave us a rating or review ABOUT THE PODCAST HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts  Select Business Team and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

Debbie DeChambeau is a book author and a professional marketer. In this episode of The Author Inside You, Debbie shares some insightful tips on marketing your book, and the ups and downs of being a co-author. debbie@selectbizteam.com facebook.com/debbie.dechambeau?ref=br_rs linkedin.com/in/debbiedechambeau/ twitter.com/dldechambeau

Debbie DeChambeau is a book author and a professional marketer. In this episode of The Author Inside You, Debbie shares some insightful tips on marketing your book, and the ups and downs of being a co-author. debbie@selectbizteam.com facebook.com/debbie.dechambeau?ref=br_rs linkedin.com/in/debbiedechambeau/ twitter.com/dldechambeau

INSURANCE PODCAST WITH MARY BETH FRANKLIN Episode 14 - Welcome to another episode in the 2018 NAIFA Greater Washington Success Summit series. Earlier this year we had the opportunity to create a podcast series for the 2018 NAIFA Greater Washington Success Summit. This is the 6th episode in the series where we are talking with the  lunch keynote speaker, Mary Beth Franklin. She is a contributing editor at Investment news and specializes in topics on retirement income planning. TOPICS WE DISCUSS IN THIS EPISODE Spousal survivor benefits for pre-retirement clients born before 1954 Positioning yourself as an advisor and strategies for building trust Medicare - understanding how much you pay for medicare depends on your retirement income and the 5 income tiers In this episode we take a little bit of a deep dive into a topic that I am passionate about which is more women in the industry. We discuss ideas on why the industry stats are so low and possible solutions for bringing more women into the industry. This is a similar conversation I touched on in episode #8 with Laura Biachini. We need more women in this industry. INFORMATION FOR NAIFA GREATER WASHINGTON 2019 SUMMIT Mark your calendar for the 2019 Summit on February 5th. For those of you new to the industry or considering a career in insurance, this is a great opportunity to learn from your peers. Here is the link for registration information and details on the event. Just in case you aren’t familiar with NAIFA, it’s an association that focuses on insurance professionals and financial advisors, providing education, networking and ongoing support to members. If you want to learn more about NAIFA, click here. HOW TO LEAVE A REVIEW If you have an iphone or an iTunes account, would you leave us a review? It provides us the opportunity to get discovered by other agents. Log into your account, look for our podcast Business of Insurance then go to Ratings and Reviews and let us know what you think of the episode. Subscribe on iTunes, and leave us a rating or review ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts  Select Business Team and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. ABOUT OUR GUEST – MARY BETH FRANKLIN Mary Beth is a contributing editor at InvestmentNews, a former senior editor at Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine and speaks on Social Security & Retirement. She writes regularly about the latest research and thought leadership o n retirement income planning. Connect with her on: LinkedIn Twitter  

INSURANCE PODCAST WITH BROCK JOLLY Episode 13 - Earlier this year we had the opportunity to create a podcast series for the 2018 NAIFA Greater Washington Success Summit. This is the 5th episode in the series where we are talking with the original founder. Mark your calendar for the 2019 Summit on February 5th. For those of you new to the industry or considering a career in insurance, this is a great opportunity to learn from your peers. Click here for details to the 2019 NAIFA Greater Washington Summit DO YOU ATTEND ASSOCIATION MEETINGS? One of the comments I hear regularly is that it’s mostly older people that attend. I agree, you will find a lot of silver and gray hair in those rooms. But think about it...how much knowledge and wisdom is behind the hair color? My guess is each person has 20+ years of experience. They may or may not be as technical as those a few years younger, but they have knowledge that you can’t get anywhere else. Smart young professionals understand this wisdom and attend association meetings to build relationships with people who have been around the block a few times, and meet others that understand the value of attending.   Marketing has changed a little, but people skills and product knowledge remains constant. Get to know others that have paved the path before you and you will find success faster than trying to figure out everything on your own! My suggestion is to attend an event and make a point to meet 3-5 new people that you can connect with. Reach  out to them, stay connected and you will find yourself doing business together in some capacity and all of a sudden, the people you thought were your competition are actually your partners. I can’t stress building relationships with your peers outside of your office.  While it shouldn’t be your only marketing effort, it could be your biggest business opportunity at some point in your career! In addition to organizing this summit, Brock is The College Funding Coach showing families how to send their children to college without going broke. Looking for a new marketing idea? Take a look at what he is doing! In  our conversation, he provides some insight for why he keeps organizing this event and what he hopes attendees will receive. TOPICS WE DISCUSS IN THIS EPISODE Opportunities for introspection Receive value from speakers, vendors and other attendees Time well spent NAIFA ABOUT OUR GUEST – BROCK JOLLY  Learn more about Brock Jolly at The College Funding  Coach or connect with him on LinkedIn HOW TO LEAVE A REVIEW If you have an iphone or an iTunes account (or apple podcasts), would you leave us a review?  It provides us the opportunity to get discovered by other agents. Log into your account, look for our podcast Business of Insurance then go to Ratings and Reviews and let us know what you think of the episode. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts and leave us a rating or review ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts  Select Business Team and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

INSURANCE PODCAST WITH THOMAS BOLEY Welcome to another episode in the 2018 NAIFA Greater Washington Success Summit series. This podcast was created so that you, our listeners, could get a feel of the summit and gain a little insight even if you couldn’t be there!    In each episode of this series, we talk with speakers and sponsors about how they help advisors and have them share a few nuggets they hope attendees took away from their conversations. We also talked with some of the attendees asking them to share the value they received from attending. This was a summit filled with practical ideas that you can implement in your business or use to discuss with clients. My guest for this episode is Thomas Boley of Capital Insurance Partners and was a vendor at the summit. Just in case you aren’t familiar with NAIFA, it’s an association that focuses on insurance professionals and financial advisors, providing education, networking and ongoing support to members. WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM LISTENING Best use of subject lines in your emails Benefits of a property and casualty agent working with financial advisors Networking Opportunities ABOUT OUR GUEST – THOMAS BOLEY Thomas Boley is an account executive with Capital Insurance Partners.   Why is a property and casualty agent hanging out at a conference filled with life and investment professionals? It’s an amazing opportunity to meet a ton of strategic partners - other insurance agents that don’t do P&C. It's a built in referral opportunity He just needs to follow up and build the relationships and before long, he’ll have a pipeline that has no end! It’s a great strategy and I would encourage a lot more P&C only agents to network with Life/Health only agents. There’s gold in those connections. Connect with him: Website LinkedIn, Facebook.   HOW TO LEAVE A REVIEW If you have an iphone or an iTunes account, would you leave us a review?  It provides us the opportunity to get discovered by other agents. Log into your account, look for our podcast Business of Insurance then go to Ratings and Reviews and let us know what you think of the episode. Subscribe on iTunes, and leave us a rating or review ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts  Select Business Team and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.

INSURANCE PODCAST WITH BRIAN HANEY EP - 11  This is another episode in the 2018 NAIFA Greater Washington Success Summit series. The summit was held in January where we recorded several conversations with attendees, vendors and speakers throughout the day. In each episode of this series, we talk with speakers and sponsors about how they help advisors and have them share a few nuggets they hope attendees took away from their conversations. We also talked with some of the attendees asking them to share the value they received from attending. If you are new to this podcast, Episode 2 and 3 are also recordings from the summit. I would encourage you to listen to them, as well as all of the episodes, but those two episodes are specifically from the summit series. My special guest for this episode is Brian Haney of The Haney Company, He was honored as a part of NAIFA’s 4 under 40 for his efforts in the industry and his contributions to the community. Giving back is an important part of business. Everyone is different in the amount of time that they can give and how they give. Some people can give a day or two a year and some people give several hours a week. Regardless of the amount of time that anyone can give, the mere effort of trying to help others is an important contribution. This inspiring conversation about Brian’s perspective on being intentional as he gives back both personally and professionally to the community both locally and globally. TOPICS WE DISCUSS IN THIS EPISODE Importance of getting out of the office and networking with your peers Attending conferences instead of doing online training Giving back to the community How the insurance and financial profession provides opportunities to pursue your passions NAIFA ABOUT OUR GUEST – BRIAN HANEY Brian Haney of The Haney Company in Silver Spring, MD. Connect with him on: LinkedIn Follow her/him on facebook.   Twitter HOW TO LEAVE A REVIEW If you have an iphone or an iTunes account, would you leave us a review?  It provides us the opportunity to get discovered by other agents. Log into your account, look for our podcast Business of Insurance then go to Ratings and Reviews and let us know what you think of the episode. Subscribe on iTunes, and leave us a rating or review ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts  Select Business Team and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram.  

INSURANCE PODCAST WITH SEREDA FOWLKES In this episode of the Business of Insurance podcast, I’m speaking with Sereda Fowlkes, an Allstate Agency owner who talks about her journey in this industry. We talk about the early days in her career when she worked inside a Sears store and her experience working for a direct writer.   This is an episode that was recorded for another podcast I host called Select Business Team and Sereda is a member of one of our business teams. Our conversation takes a deep dive into being an agent, buying insurance and running a business. It has a lot of great nuggets, so I’m sharing it with this podcast platform since we are talking insurance! QUESTIONS WE ASK What are the real benefits of having an insurance agent instead of purchasing insurance from the internet How does a big brand insurance company help it’s agents sell their business? What can business owners look for as added benefits to assist employees? WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM LISTENING Different ways having an insurance agent can be beneficial Concerns about consumers buying online The value of supplemental insurance Why agents shouldn’t overlook selling life insurance ABOUT OUR GUEST – SEREDA FOWLKES Sereda Fowlkes is the owner of Fowlkes Insurance which is affiliated with Allstate Insurance Company. Her website is Fowlkes Insurance Services, Inc. Connect with her on: LinkedIn, Follow her on facebook.   Twitter If Sereda inspired you to get a quote on your insurance, connect with her here HOW TO LEAVE A REVIEW If you have an iphone or an iTunes account, would you leave us a review?  It provides us the opportunity to get discovered by other agents. Log into your account, look for our podcast Business of Insurance then go to Ratings and Reviews and let us know what you think of the episode. ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts  Select Business Team and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. If you are an agency principal, join our FB discussion group where we talk about how to build a better agency.

INSURANCE PODCAST WITH LILY DOMINGUEZ Today we are talking with Lily Dominguez, who is a CSR with Brock Insurance, located in Bethesda MD. Brock Insurance is an independent insurance agency that represents a number of different insurance companies. In today's conversation, Lily talks about her experience, her position and her future opportunities. This episode of the business of insurance provides those of you considering a career in insurance the opportunity to hear what the typical day for a customer service representative at an independent insurance agency looks like. From counseling to sales, education to risk management, a customer service representative is an important position. In our last episode #8, titled Finding your Niche, I talked with Laura Biachini, about how she started as a CSR and moved into the account executive role. The knowledge she gained as a CSR helped in her success as a account exec. As we talk with Lily, we talk about the day to day specifics and the opportunities in front of her as a CSR. QUESTIONS WE ASK What did you know about insurance before you started? What does a typical day look like for you? How did you do to prepare for this career? WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM LISTENING The opportunities the insurance industry offers Working for  a direct writer vs. an independent agent How sales are involved in the CSR role Tips for getting your  first insurance designation ABOUT OUR GUEST –  LILY DOMINGUEZ Lily is a CSR with Brock Insurance Connect with Lily: Brock Insurance website LinkedIn Facebook HOW TO LEAVE A REVIEW If you have an iphone or an iTunes account, would you leave us a review?  It provides us the opportunity to get discovered by other agents. Log into your account, look for our podcast Business of Insurance then go to Ratings and Reviews and let us know what you think of the episode. Subscribe on iTunes, and leave us a rating or review ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts  Select Business Team and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. If you are an agency principal, join our FB discussion group where we talk about how to build a better agency.

INSURANCE PODCAST WITH LAURA BIANCHINI EP8 - In this episode of The Business of Insurance podcast, we are talking with Laura Bianchini of Moody Insurance located in Germantown, MD. Laura provides us with her take on why being an insurance agent is such a great industry to be a part of. Starting as an automotive technician and evolving into someone selling to businesses insurance throughout the US, Laura is a perfect example of why the industry is a great place to build a career and why it is so beneficial for women. QUESTIONS WE ASK What is the difference between a high risk agency and a standard agency? What was it like transitioning from an account manager to a sales person Why being an account manager before being a salesperson can be beneficial Why being a female is a plus in the insurance business WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM LISTENING Education requirements for entering the industry The typical day of an insurance agent What it looks like working as a salesperson in the insurance business How the internet impacts insurance purchases ABOUT OUR GUEST – LAURA BIANCHINI Laura Bianchini is a Senior Account Executive with Moody Insurance. If you are interested in talking to her about insurance, here are the best ways to connect:   LinkedIn, Connect with Moody Insurance on Facebook.   Twitter Website HOW TO LEAVE A REVIEW Try to list a few resources talked about and end with both subscribe and how to. Subscribe on iTunes, and leave us a rating or review   ABOUT THE HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. She is the co-author of Renewable Referrals and hosts two other podcasts - Select Business Team and Divorce Exposed. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. 

EP 7 - Our guest today is Robert Klinger of Klinger Insurance Group. We recorded in his new video studio and during our conversation he explains why he built the studio and how he hopes it will help the community. The tagline for this insurance agency is Creative Solutions for an Ever Changing World and as you will hear in our conversation, as an agency they truly follow their mission. We talk about how his military career impacts the systems in his agency, his new foundation and the education process he feels every agency needs to be part of. QUESTIONS WE ASK What are the challenges for people entering the insurance industry? What do you look for in  new hires? What gets you excited about insurance? WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM LISTENING Why service is so important Ideas for creating a great work environment Marketing strategies ABOUT OUR GUEST – ROBERT KLINGER  Robert Klinger is the owner of Klinger Insurance Group. Connect with him on: LinkedIn For Klinger Insurance, LinkedIn for Robert Klinger Follow her/him on facebook.   Twitter YouTube Instagram ABOUT THE PODCAST HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. In addition to hosting this podcast, she is the host of the Select Business Team podcast and Divorce Exposed podcast. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. 

Today’s episode of the Business of Insurance Podcast is for those of you who are responsible for bringing in new business. What I’m talking about today will work for anyone selling insurance, but my examples today will be focused on the personal lines producer and account manager, specifically those of you selling homeowners I’m part of an insurance group on FB and I see people ask for the best way to find new clients all of the time. As someone that has been teaching about referrals for over twenty years and who has co-authored a book on referrals, I have a lot of wisdom to share in this area. So lets say that you are selling homeowners insurance and you want to write more policies. Ideally, you want to connect with the professionals that are talking to people buying and selling houses. In most states, this would be the realtor, lender and settlement attorney. I call these strategic partners or referral partners. My recommendation is to get to know mortgage lenders first. Now remember, for this episode, I’m focusing on the agent that is looking for more homeowners insurance, but know that this strategy will work for any producer or account executive. You are probably thinking you should start with the realtor, but in my opinion, that's one of the biggest misconceptions among insurance agents. They would be the logical first choice, but in my experience, most realtors don’t bring up insurance. Insurance is at the end of the transaction and is usually handled by the lender. The realtor is focused on making sure the buyer has financing, the settlement attorney, home inspection and contractors that are used for the repairs that result from the home inspection. In my experience, Insurance is at the bottom of the initial conversations. I’m in the metro DC area, and settlement  / title attorneys handle the closings (and I know that is different is some parts of the country). So the realtor will often list the settlement/title attorney in the contract but the realtor doesn’t usually bring up insurance. I’m not saying the realtor never brings it up, but it’s the lender that’s going to make sure the policy is in place before they buyer goes to closing, which is why I recommend you focus on lenders first. One exception to this is if you have a great vacant home policy that you are marketing. In many instances, the seller will move out while the house is on the market, not realizing the vacancy clause in their homeowners policy. Depending on how long the home is empty, there could be a problem and many realtors are not aware of this. For realtors who focus on selling homes, connecting with them to promote your vacant home policy could be a good opportunity. For this conversation, I’m focusing on the mortgage lender. But remember, the strategy I’m talking about will work for any strategic or referral partner.   The first thing you should do is make a list of all of the mortgage lenders in your area.I would recommend you make a list of 100. (if that seems overwhelming, start with 50). To build your list, look on LinkedIn, in magazines  where they might be advertising and do an online search. You can also ask the realtors you know who they like to work with. Look at those that work for credit unions, banks and private lending companies. You’ll want to weed out those that have insurance agencies attached to their companies at first. It’s not that you don’t want to know them, but sometimes they are encouraged to give business to the in house firm so if you are looking to ramp up referrals, focus on those that are more independent and save those lenders for later. It’s important to keep in mind that not every lender is going to be ideal for you. You’ll want to prioritize them by those you can best serve. You might want lenders who focus on first time home buyers or lenders who have special programs for jumbo loans. Part of the lenders you want to focus on ties back to the markets you have to provide insurance. If you are targeting a lender that mostly does million dollar plus loans and you don’t have a good carrier for that home value, you’d be spending a lot of time building the relationship but not being able to help their referrals. So identify the types of homeowners policies you are able to write and sort your list of lenders accordingly.  In some scenarios, this will be difficult to determine without talking to them, but as you meet with a few, you’ll have more of a feel of what they can offer and know which lenders to focus on first. Ideally, you want to focus on lenders that are active - those that are out hustling for business, not those that are sitting back waiting to retire. You’ll also find some don’t have the same personality mindset that you have and you might choose to focus your attention on those that are like minded first. This is why we start with a large list because some of them will get weeded to the bottom or off of the list completely. Once you’ve weeded your list, you are going to want to meet them and build a relationship with them so that when they have clients going to closing, you are the one being recommended. Next you’ll want to create a strategy of how to meet them. There are a number of different ways you can do this. Connect with them on linkedin, see if they are on other social platforms as well and connect with them there. If you are on twitter, you might want to make a special list just for your lenders so you can easily see their posts and retweet and comment. Invite them to coffee / lunch Attend real estate functions - generally there is a real estate board or association in your area and the lenders will be there because they want to meet the realtors. Check out a meeting or two just to make sure there are enough lenders showing up, but I think you’ll be surprised at how many are there. Create your own event just for lenders Types of events - happy  hour, themed office parties; You can also ask the realtors for an introduction or go to open houses that are sponsored by lenders to meet them. Both of these strategies will provide you with a warm introduction or at least make the first contact feel warm because there is a connection. You can also do the reverse, invite a realtor you know and introduce them to a lender you want to meet. One of the ways people conduct their first meetings is to learn about how each person conducts business and what type of business each person is looking for. Yes, you might wonder how you will find business for a lender, but you will if you learn to ask the right questions. The lenders job is to help you there. You might also discover that the lender wants introductions to financial advisors or other realtors that you know. The more you are able to help the lenders, the more they will keep you top of mind and refer their clients to you. I’ve created a guide that you can use to prepare you for this type of conversation. It provides questions that you can ask but more importantly, it provides you with questions that you should know the answer to so that you can talk intelligently to your strategic partners. DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE COPY HERE There are so many steps that go into creating a strong referral program but getting started with meeting your strategic partners is the first step. Start by building your list. In future episodes, we’ll talk more about how to stay in touch once you meet for the first time, tracking your relationships, how to give back to your strategic partners and the little touches that make you stand out when you receive referrals. If you would like to talk about creating your own referral strategy, connect with me on LinkedIn or send me an email to debbie@selectbizteam.com and let’s see if our working together is a good fit. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Business of Insurance. If you like what you are hearing, please go to iTunes and leave a review! ABOUT THE PODCAST HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. In addition to hosting this podcast, she is the host of the Select Business Team podcast and Divorce Exposed podcast. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. 

Today we are talking with Jason Ernest who is the President and CEO of Insurance Agents and Brokers.  This is an insurance association for Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania insurance agents. In this episode we are talking about independent agency challenges and innovative tools IAB is providing as solutions. If you are an insurance agent or agency owner, I would strongly suggest you consider membership in your association. They offer a lot of value but this particular association is positioning itself as a partner for the agency principal, not just an association that offers trainings and advocacy. QUESTIONS WE ASK What must agencies do to stay relevant and successful in this competitive environment? Does IAB have a strategy for attracting young talent to the industry? Where do you see the independent agency system?  WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM LISTENING What agents need to do to make the phone ring The two R’s that agencies need to stop depending on Why some restaurant workers make ideal insurance agents How to leverage IAB to keep you focused on growing a profitable agency ABOUT OUR GUEST - JASON ERNEST Jason is the President / CEO of IAB - Independent Agents and Brokers. Connect with IAB on LinkedIn Facebook   Twitter  ABOUT THE PODCAST HOST This episode of the Business of Insurance is hosted by Debbie DeChambeau, CIC, AAI, CPIA. Debbie is an insurance agent with an extensive business and marketing background. Her focus is helping insurance professionals be more successful. In addition to hosting this podcast, she is the host of the Select Business Team podcast and Divorce Exposed podcast. Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. 

Audience Takeover is how I will describe this episode. It was my second time recording with a live in-studio audience and once I opened the microphone for questions and comments the conversation went left. It was CRAZY, in a cool kind of way! LOL! It proved one thing to be absolutely true, everyone is affected by a couple's decision to divorce. Don’t miss this monumental episode of That Anita Live. Debbie Dechambeau is not only a divorcee herself, but she is also the product of divorce. From all of her parents and stepparents she has nine (yes, 9!) siblings. Her story will amaze you. During our conversation she shared how, everyone (not just the bride and groom) should brace for divorce. Why? Because divorce takes a serious toll on the entire circle, not just the couple. Everyone from the grandparents to the aunts and uncles to little league coaches and dance instructors – everyone. If ever you’re impacted by divorce, consider how you will continue to interact with in-laws, church members or neighbors, all the people that knew you as a couple before the divorce and remember self-care is key to staying emotionally fit on your journey to emotional healing.Enjoy the interview! Host: Anita Washington, That Anita Live   Topic: How To Brace For Divorce   Guest: Debbie DeChambeau Guest’s Website: http://DivorceExposed.com

In this episode of Small Biz Power, we're focusing on the power of podcasting to grow your business.  My guest is Debbie DeChambeau, a Business Growth Strategist, National Speaker, Published Author and Podcast Host. Debbie has spent her entire career helping entrepreneurs: from creating business plans to implementing risk management programs and developing marketing blueprints.  Now she spends her time helping organizations create podcasts to spread their message and reach a larger audience. Debbie and I have been working together on a podcasting for profits system for business.  Read more about that HERE. In this episode we talk about how simple it is to start a podcast, why more business owners should be doing it (but aren't) and the ultimate ROI on a podcast.  Watch the full episode below or download the audio version to listen on the go!  Speaking of audio, Small Biz Power is expanding to include audio-only interviews as well.  Just click HERE to subscribe so you never miss an episode!  

Interested in starting your own podcast?  This week Lorraine chats with Debbie Dechambeau of the Select Business Team about the basics of podcasting. She also shares some ideas on how to use your podcast as a business tool.  If you enjoy the topic, be sure to check our blog at www.roundpeg.biz  for more on this topic.

Welcome to divorced exposed where we provide insights for staying married and inspiration for surviving divorce. Most of us get married thinking it will last forever…..and then reality sets in…we change, we grow and so often, we stop doing it together. Some couples manage to work through the tough times and some couples throw in the towel - or at least one person does - and at some point, the big D word enters the picture. At divorce exposed, we want to provide insights for staying married and inspiration for surviving divorce. My name is Debbie DeChambeau and I am your host…. Today’s episode is for someone thinking about getting divorced or who might have just found out that their spouse wants a divorce.  Today we are talking about getting legal advice so that you know your legal rights and  how to find an attorney. Before I get too far into the episode I wanted to let you know a couple of things. First, I’ve started a FB group that I hope you will join. I’ve linked to it in the show notes or you can find it under Divorce Exposed. We have a FB page and a FB group. Join us on both. I’d love to keep the conversation going in the group and get your thoughts on the ideas that I bring up in this podcast. Just keep in mind that the idea behind the group isn’t to banter about bad marriages but to share insights for staying married and inspiration for surviving divorce. Also, if you like what you hear in this podcast, could you go to iTunes and leave a review? I’ll leave instructions in the resources portion of this episode just in case you aren’t sure how to do this. Your review really makes a difference in iTunes promoting the podcast for us. And the most important thing to remember is that I am not an attorney, a therapist of a financial advisor. If you are going through difficult times and feel you need help, please reach out to someone, either a friend, family member or a professional and get support. I’ve listed some resources on the resources page of the website and encourage you to check there or reach out to your friends and family for referrals. Your life matters and getting help is the best thing you can do for yourself during this difficult process. How do you find the right attorney as you begin the divorce process? You will find a lot of information online, but having an attorney that is licensed in your state, who knows the laws specific to your state and who has experience in family law matters is the best thing you can do for yourself during this difficult time. There are many people today who are able to end their marriage without hiring an attorney but my recommendation is that you at least have an initial consultation with an attorney to get professional advice so that you get what you are entitled to and you don’t give up more than you need to. The first thing is to understand the type of attorney you want. Just because someone is an attorney doesn’t mean that is who you want to hire for your divorce. Hire yourself a family law attorney or a divorce attorney. Basically it is the same, they just use different lingo.  Make sure they are with a practice that focuses on family law and divorce and stay away from other types of attorneys like personal injury, estate planning and criminal. They usually don’t know the law for divorce like someone that specializes in the area. And using a specialist is going to get you the biggest bang for your buck. I would also look for an attorney that is in the jurisdiction that you want to get divorced. For example, I live in Montgomery County and Frederick County is 10 minutes away.  There are attorneys in Montgomery County that practice in Frederick County but if they aren’t in the courthouse all the time and don’t know the judges, I wouldn’t recommend hiring them.  As crazy as this might sound, when an attorney is familiar with the judges because it is where they practice all the time, it can make the process a little smoother.  It’s a minor detail, but one that I think shouldn’t be overlooked. I know an attorney that bicycles with some of the judges every month. I don’t believe this influences any decisions that the judge makes but it can’t hurt when the attorney knows how the judge thinks and how this can impact the presentation of a case. I would also suggest that you hire someone that has a partner or at least a staff member. One of the things that you will want as you are going through your divorce is to have questions answered, sometimes in a timely manner. If your attorney is a solo practitioner, their time is limited. It doesn’t mean that they aren’t good, but if they have other cases, they will get to you in your turn and sometimes that might be too long for comfort.  If the attorney you hire has a staff, while the attorney is in court, the staff person can answer questions and move your case along giving you better peace of mind. You will probably be frustrated enough dealing with your spouse during this process, feeling frustrated with your attorney, someone you are paying, shouldn’t happen but by understanding what to look for, you can minimize this possibility. So where do you find an attorney…. I would start by asking your friends / family who they have used, who do they know. If you are speaking with someone that actually used them, ask them how they handled the case and if felt they received fair treatment.   Another place that you can find an attorney is online - but remember to look for divorce attorney or family law attorney and check out the reviews.There is a lawyer review site called AVVO.  You might also want to look at yelp, google my business and other social media platforms for reviews as well. As with many reviews, you’ll get some good and some bad so read between the lines and make sure that you meet the person yourself. Some lawyers  will offer a free consultation or apply the fee for the consultation to your retainer if you hire them. But I would not recommend hiring someone without the first meeting. You want to make sure it feels right before you hire them. I would also suggest that you interview 2-3 attorneys before you make your final decision. One other thing to keep in mind when you are interviewing attorneys is that once an attorney has met with you, they can’t represent your spouse.  I’m not suggesting that you meet with every attorney so that your spouse can’t hire one, but know that this is an agreement within the legal field to avoid conflict of interest. I know that when I went to hire an attorney, they wouldn’t represent me because they had represented my ex-husbands wife. I thought that was a stretch, but it was their choice. As you prepare for the first meeting, I would do a little bit of research ahead of time so that you are prepared with different questions you should ask. You might be nervous talking to the attorney or as you talk about getting divorced, you might get upset, which is perfectly understandable. By having your questions prepared, you’ll get more value from your consultation. I would also suggest taking someone with you to take notes because it can be an emotional experience and you don’t want to forget what the attorney is telling you.  I’ll put together an episode around this in the next few weeks, to give you some guidance, but the more prepared you are for the meeting, the better you will feel afterwards. Having an attorney that you feel you can communicate with is important.  Divorce is never fair and the process can be just as bad as the final outcome. I’m not saying that your attorney should coddle you, because that could get expensive, but having an attorney that sets expectations can help you to manage yours and if you can’t communicate, it will be even tougher. There are two things you want to accomplish before you begin the divorce process.  You want to know your rights, and how the law will apply to you. What can you / can’t you do and what can/can’t your spouse do. The sooner you know your rights, the sooner you can begin to plan accordingly.  If you are the one that wants to end the marriage, you will probably begin to take steps to simplify the process as you move forward. If you are the person who really didn’t want the divorce and are being somewhat blindsided, pull up your bootstraps because you could be in for a very bumpy ride. People get crazy during divorce - sometimes for spite, sometimes out of desperation, sometimes because the other person just insites it. Keep this in mind and try not to let it happen to you. Having the right attorney and knowing your rights is essential. There are different ways that you can get divorce, not every divorce has to end up in court and not every case has to end up costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. For example, you might hire a mediator instead of each of you getting your own attorney or you might decide that collaborative divorce is a better process. We will talk about these different ways to negotiate your divorce in an upcoming episode. But for this episode, I wanted to encourage you to get legal advice before you start the process so you can somewhat manage your expectations. There are two other professionals that you should probably talk to as well as you go through the divorce process - two that aren’t always talked about as much. You probably don’t need to talk to them right away but I would meet with them before you begin your divorce negotiations. The first is an accountant and the second is a financial advisor. Your accountant will talk to you about the tax implications of different things you might want to do as part of the divorce. Understand how child support, alimony, and how you claim dependents will impact your taxes moving forward. If you sell property, if you have investments, how will these be divided and what is the best way for you to move these assets to minimize tax consequences.  All of this is negotiable as part of the divorce settlement, so go into the process with knowledge.    Also talking with your financial advisor can help with future investments and things that you might want to consider negotiating. There is a new professional designation for financial advisors called Divorce Financial Planners and another called Certified Divorce Financial Analyst.  These are individuals that have extended their studies to help facilitate people going through divorce and addressing the needs from a financial perspective. You might want to look for this designation as you seek out a financial planner to help you through this process.  Remember, an attorney focuses on the law but your investments can have a different type of impact on your future, so I would recommend you have a conversation with these types of professionals as well.   Remember, the goal of this episode was to encourage you to seek legal advice before you begin the process of getting divorced and to help you understand the type of attorney you should hire. As we bring this episode to a close, I hope that you feel empowered to talk with an attorney and get the advice that you need.  Getting divorced is never an easy decision and talking to an attorney can be scary, but it’s important to get the information that applies to your state from a professional who deals with this regularly. And on a more positive note, if you are in or near NYC, why not get yourself some new photo’s.  Maybe you need a few pics for your online dating site, maybe you just need a professional headshot.  My good friend, Rick Becker of Becker Studios is great and you’ll love the results! If you aren’t going through divorce, maybe it’s time for a happy couple photo! You can get his information in the resource portion of the show notes and also on our resource page of the website. Thank you for listening to this episode of Divorce Exposed - If you like what you’ve heard on today’s podcast and want to hear more, please go to iTunes or your favorite podcast platform and subscribe to our podcast. We’d love your feedback  

BUSINESS AND MARKETING PODCAST WITH DEBBIE DECHAMBEAU Do you want to stand out and get noticed?  If so, do what people have been doing for centuries.  Send a hand written note.  Yes, I know, with technology, sending note cards can seem obsolete, but think about it.  How many emails do you get every day vs. snail mail?  How many emails do you just delete, delete, delete just to clean up your inbox? Now, think about how many hand written notes you get in your regular snail mail box?  When you get them, what do you do?  If you are like most of people, when it’s hand written envelope, you pay attention.  You feel like it might be a special piece of mail.  And you probably open it and read it! Now, can you say that with every email you get?  My guess is probably not. If you are inclined to open a handwritten note, how do you think the person you send one to will feel when they receive one from you?  It’s a powerful tool that will help differentiate you from the crowd and if you aren’t already writing and sending them, it’s something you might want to consider starting. Click here for your Note Card Idea Sheet I know your time is valuable and you have a lot of podcasts to choose from so we hope you’ll find value in today’s episode where today we talk about handwritten personal note cards. This is a two part episode…yes, I know what you are thinking, is there really that much to say about handwritten personal notes.  Well, actually there is. Part 1, this episode, will hopefully is to inspire you and share all the different ways you can use a personal hand written note Part 2 includes Ideas on how how you can actually get your personal handwritten notes done from what type of paper to what to say. A special gift to help you get your personal notes completed. Basically paper to scripts. Provides FAQ’s for writing notes so make sure to listen to that one as well. If you are a listener and like what you are hearing on the podcast, could I ask you a favor? Could you go to iTunes and leave us a review. If you aren’t sure how, see the resources section below. Don't have an iTunes account?  Leaving a review on our FB page would be terrific! Select Business Team brings business owners of service professions together to discuss the back office issues of running a business. We interview our members who are business owners and they share their real life experiences of running a business.  (when talking to business owners: The ideas we share with you in this episode are valuable to any business owner. ) If you would like to join a Team or start one of your own, reach out to me at debbie@selectbizteam.com and let’s have a conversation. I’m a big fan of hand written notes, and I have been for as long as I’ve been in the business world.  When I first started selling, I made it a habit to send hand written notes.  I studied a lot about sales and went to a lot of Tom Peters programs.  He frequently talked about hand written notes. Thanking people makes them more likely to continue a relationship, which has the potential to lead to more opportunities for you. Except for the cost of paper and a stamp, showing gratitude is free.  Showing gratitude helps us treasure good experiences, deal with conflict and build better relationships. Over the years I’ve also been inspired by Brian Buffini  for sending note cards. If you aren’t familiar with Brian, he’s built a real estate coaching business.  While I’ve never been in real estate, I’ve attended several of his events over the years because he’s very motivational and his system is simple…and it works. He teaches his clients to send 5 note cards a day.  A lot of people find that task overwhelming, but think about it.  If you can send 25 a week, think about how many people you are touching, how many people will remember you. In my opinion, if you aren’t sending any personal handwritten notes today and think this is a good strategy for you,

Thank you for joining us today for the Select Business Team podcast as we talk about gift giving. I know your time is valuable and you have a lot of podcasts to choose from so we hope you’ll find a lot of value in today’s episode. Select Business Team brings business owners of service professions together to discuss the back office issues of running a business. We help business owners look at areas of the business that increase profits. My hope with every podcast is to get you thinking a little differently about how you operate your business. To not necessarily do what everyone else is doing but to find a way to stand out and be remembered. Be different, adapt to technology, create systems and make sure that you are making a profit. When it comes to marketing, this is just as important. Since my core focus in business is referrals, the topic I’m discussing today really resonates with me. When I sold insurance, this is something I did regularly. When I started Select Business Team, I did this a little bit but over the years, I’ve really gotten out of the habit. With this episode, I’m making a point to get back into it and make it a regular marketing tactic. I’m talking about gift giving Did you give gifts to your clients, to your strategic partners, to your prospects between Thanksgiving and New Years Eve?  If so, if you asked the person today what you gave them that they would remember? My guess is they’d pause, run a few ideas around and maybe they’d guess correctly.  The real question is, WAS YOUR GIFT MEMORABLE?’ Was is something that jumped out at them? Something that they’ll remember in 2 months, In 2 years? In today’s podcast, I want to talk about 4 areas of gift giving. The first is promotional products or swag vs. personalized and customized gifts, The second is why you are giving gifts, The third is when you give gifts We’ll finish up with some different strategies for getting business from gift giving. If you like what you hear, please go to iTunes and leave a review.  If you aren’t sure how, check out our website at selectbizteam.com/makeitunesreview .  Or, check out the  resources section the show notes for this episode. Also, if you find this topic valuable, please share the podcast with a friend or co-worker.  Someone who would benefit from the ideas. Let's get this show started. Separate from gifts, what types of swag or promotional items do you give away to clients, prospects and strategic partners? Are you giving pens, calendars, fruit or food baskets?  Logo’d apparel or items like measuring tapes, key chains or memo pads? A lot of companies do this and don’t really measure the results. They know they are suppose to do this. They hope it has an impact, but for the cost of the swag, was there a measurable return? As I look around my own office, I have a small clock that has a picture frame attached. I’ve had it for years and it has the logo on it from the company that gave it to me. To be honest with you, I know think the company is a credit card company, but I don’t really know for sure. I also have a pad of sticky notes with another company. It has the name and logo and what they do but no contact info. It would be nice to have their number so I could easily call them. I like having the sticky note pad, but I’m not sure the branding would ever have me call them! This is part of the thought process you want to go through when selecting and putting your logo on promotional products. Here’s a Thought What if you took the budget you have for promotional items and bought fewer gifts? But they are special and personalized to the recipient and are only delivered to a few people that would have the most impact.  And, you didn’t give them during the holiday season, but you gave them at a different time of year. Just because.  What if you only gave 10 gifts - 5 to the top 5 prospects on your list and 5 to your best strategic partners.

Thank you so much for joining us today.  I’m going to share a personal story with you and the lessons learned from my recent journey. I share this because I have always believed in planning, in being proactive and having a back-up plan. But sometimes life gets in the way and the overwhelm from everything can create a sinking ship. I’m not looking for any sympathy from todays episode, just sharing to hopefully help you think a little differently about the realities of being a business owner. For those of you that have started a business, you know that being a business owner is hard work, particularly if you are a solo. For many, it means 18 hour days, financial stress, emotional highs and lows all for the ability to follow a dream, to be the boss and determine your own destiny.  It can also be very lonely. Your friends and family don’t always understand what you are doing and why you need to put in so many hours.  They don’t always understand the worries you have of closing the sale, how you’ll pay yourself or if the customer is unhappy with something how you are going to make it right and still make money. People go into business for different reasons and people want different things out of having a business. It's a personal choice and while I do a lot of consulting in this area I see so many people struggle to make it work. Today I’m going to share some personal experiences and the lessons learned to hopefully help you the business owner. It's Lonely At The Top I frequently say ‘ it’s lonely at the top’ and it’s something that I’ve heard many people say as well as I’ve experienced it myself.  When I started my first business, my husband at the time thought that meant I’d be home more, have more time for him and more time to do things around the house so he could do less. Unfortunately, he didn’t understand I needed to be out meeting people during the day and doing the work at night. He didn’t understand it took money to get things rolling, he thought I should should be contributing financially to the household sooner than I did.  When I need to work weekends now, my friends don’t understand why I can’t join them for a fun girls night out. One of my friends recently asked me why I travel so much, not understanding that it is all business! (ok, a few trips are to see family). What becomes a bigger challenge for businessowners is when life gets in the way. One of my clients recently had a fire in his studio, then his landlord sent a letter non renewing his lease, a few months later he lost his dad, then his wife was diagnosed with cancer and his biggest clients went out of business. All of this took place over the course of 12 months. He hadn’t planned for any of this. He’s definitely feeling overwhelmed because it is a lot to process at one time. Having one of these issues is enough to deal with but to be hit with one after another becomes too much. Then there is the caregiving issue. For men, this isn’t usually as relevant because often they have a woman in their life to handle these issues. Please note that I said usually and I might be stereotyping a little. But as a general rule, women are the caregivers. When a woman starts a business it is often done around the family. If the kids need afternoon carpool, mom stops working to make it happen. If the aging parents need care, it's usually the daughter that responds. The Sandwich Generation What happens when a lot of people need the business owner at one time? It's called the sandwich generation - a time when someone is raising children and caring for parents or seniors at the same time. Children alone can gobble up all of your time, but add parents to the mix and it doesn’t take much for everything to fall apart. While I'm not in the sandwich generation at this point, I've been there. Shortly after starting my business in 2001, I was raising 4 children (two of my own and two of my sisters) and my father would go into the hospital every month for a week a...

Business and Marketing Podcast with Debbie DeChambeau Welcome to episode 15 of the Select Business Team podcast. In most of our episodes, we interview our members about their business and their business experiences, but it's just your host talking about different ways to meet new strategic partners, when they won’t otherwise respond to your inquiries.  How can you help the people you have identified as your strategic partners get visibility and more clients before you really know them.  Basically, how can you add more value to the relationship? Do you reach out to people that you think might be good strategic partners and suggest you get together because you think there is synergy and want to explore ways that you can work together?  If you are reaching out to someone who is just starting out in business or in sales, this can be very flattering, but if they are busy, this can be very time consuming. When I refer to strategic partners, I’m talking about people in other professions who are going after the same customer base as you.  For example, strategic partners for a realtor might be divorce or estate planning attorneys, mortgage lenders and apartment leasing agents. For a banker, a strategic partner might be a business attorney, a CPA and a business coach.  If you are developing a list of strategic partners, you might want to listen to episode 7 of the Select Business Team podcast where we talk about creating a referral marketing plan for strategic partners. In this episode: We are assuming you already have that list of strategic partners developed, but if you don’t, keep listening because you will get some great ideas and maybe even get some inspiration for getting started! If reaching out to people you don’t know for the purpose of developing potential relationships is part of your marketing strategy, one of the questions you need to ask is how do you set yourself apart from everyone else and get their attention? How do you stand out and get them to say yes to meeting with you? What if you could provide an attractive offer as a way to get to know them.  Something that would make it difficult for them to say no to because it’s exposure for them, either by way of you promoting them or by an introduction you want to make. 5 Ideas Invite them to be a guest author for your company blog Ask them to be a guest on your podcast and interview or have a conversation with them. Follow them on social media and share some of the content they promote – when doing this, put your own comment in to personalize it some. Promote them in one of your email newsletters – Remember that not everyone will land on your blog or podcast so when you push your content out via email,  you have a greater chance for more people to see it. Offer to provide a product or service that you offer free of charge to them In this episode we provide several examples and elaborate on these 5 ideas, so take a few minutes to listen and grab something for taking notes. If you would like more information, give us a call or send us an email. RESOURCES Are you ready to try my email service provider for 60 days?  Click here to get started.  No credit card, just your name, email and website address. Select Business Team - A lot of business today is created from what you do for others….the more you help them, the more they will help you. At Select Business Team, it is the core foundation of what we do. While we might talk about how to most effectively run a business, we also talk a lot about how we can create opportunities for each other on the Team. A lot of being able to create opportunities for others comes from really understanding what they do in business, what types of clients they work with and what the outcome of their services means to their clients.  Send us an email if you would like to learn more about how we can help you build your business through referrals. ABOUT THE HOST - DEBBIE DECHAMBEAU