Brad Ruben: Cybersecurity, DMARC, and How Agents are Using AI

Speaker A: Welcome to episode 42 of the Insurance Agency Trendsetters podcast. Welcome to the Insurance Agency Trendsetters podcast where we explore how insurance agents can leverage technology to create better relationships with our prospects, customers and agency team members. We believe tech should help us serve customers better and more efficiently, not replace the human to human interaction that's made the independent insurance agent a trusted advisor to clients. You'll hear from industry experts and agents who are on the leading edge of marketing tech and providing world class customer experiences. It's time to level up the industry and you're the trendsetters who can. Welcome everyone. It's great to be back, George. It's great to see you and I hope uh, you're doing well and things are warming up here. We're getting closer to spring, so life is looking up.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love the springtime, Charlotte. I'm a beach person, so I love that time of year and being down at the beach. And when the summer comes, I'll give the summer to the, to the tourists. But springtime, I love it. And today we're going to talk about speaking the sun. We're talking about sunny California. We're going to talk about my friend Brad Rubin with my Archway. And Brad's been a good friend of mine for many years and I want to just let you know he is a great person for IT and helping your agency out with cyber security. And we'll talk a little bit about DMARC today and what that means to the agency. Some agents may not know what that is. We'll get Brad to define that. But Brad, it's great to have you on man, and thanks for being with us today and tell everybody here that's uh, in the listening audience a little bit about yourself and about the business. And then I'm going to get into how you got started.

Speaker C: Sure, sure. Thanks George. Thanks, Charlotte. So let's see, uh, Archway, we're an IT support company that only works with independent insurance agents. I always joke we have no normal clients, only independent agents. And what we find is that the technological requirements, the cybersecurity requirements, they're different for an independent agent. And independent agents really rely on their computer systems. So so much more than other professions, I would imagine. Even though I've never worked with other professions or I've worked very little with other professions, I know one thing, Brett.

Speaker B: When the Internet goes down, we're doomed.

Speaker C: That's true, that's true. Uh, I once had somebody, I was trying to convince somebody, uh, to go to the cloud and he said to Me, what happens if the satellites go down? And I said, no, the stuff is not really in the clouds. It's not.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: That's a term.

Speaker A: It doesn't work on a sunny day. Right.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Oh, that's why the Internet goes down now. I know. I got to figure it out now. I never thought of that.

Speaker C: Huh. Yeah. So. Yeah. So we support about 300 and I think, last count, 368. Independent agencies all over the country. Small, large. In between, I have a staff of close to 90 people.

Speaker B: Yeah, one of my favorite people there, Sue Ann.

Speaker C: Oh, Sue Ann's the best. The herder of cats. And yes. Yeah, she's, uh, awesome. I. For many years, I was. I was calling on her to come work for us back when we were really small, and she basically said to me, brad, I'll come work to you free with you if you stop calling me. My mother has a black belt in Jewish nagging, so it hasn't, uh, fallen far from the tree.

Speaker A: So, Brad, what are some of the challenges that you see with these independent agency clients or some common challenges that you've run into with their IT that you've been able to help them with?

Speaker C: Yeah, one is just cyber security and cyber compliance. Part of that is checking the boxes, so making sure that you've got all the things in place so that when you're filling out your cyber forms for your state or for your insurance carrier, and no matter what an IT guy tells you, if you have to have cyber insurance, period, and stop, um, nothing is 100% insecurity. And we'll get you close. Right. But Chubb got hacked. CNA got hacked. These are big organizations with large IT departments and big security budgets.

Speaker B: I've got a question real quick. Let's talk about that. Sure. Just a second. Some of these contracts we're getting on the carrier side on the cyber. I, uh, don't know if you read some of these, but as I've reviewed these, some of the verbiage they're putting in there that they're holding the agent accountable for, I think it's just virtually impossible for the agent to do. Um, how we get around that, because I don't know, they probably got. They have attorneys that are writing these things, and they get it out there. But I've had several come across my desks that I've seen, and I've read the description of what they're requiring the agent to do. I'm just like, that's impossible.

Speaker C: Like, we'll see an app that says, are you ISO 9000 compliant. Exactly.

Speaker B: That's a great example.

Speaker C: They're not. They didn't spend several million dollars to become ISO 9000 compliant. But the answer to that question is no. But it's no, but we're using this service and this service to store our data. And they are ISO 9000 compliant. Microsoft 365 is many, um, of the large agency management system vendors. Clouds are, Citrix, is Amazon Web Services, is, et cetera. It's a no but answer to that question.

Speaker B: So when you're talking to clients and they're calling you up, what do you usually see in the independent agency world with their it, what kind of situations have you run into and what have you been able to help them out with?

Speaker C: So I think a, uh, big problem that we have in this industry is that we use some pretty specific software in terms of these agency management systems. Some of the newer ones were built 15, 18 years ago. One agency management system was built before. I like to joke, Al Gore invented the Internet.

Speaker B: The Internet, right.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So they've made, uh. Yeah. And they made the, that agency management system. Internettable. That's a word I invented.

Speaker B: It's like Algor on the Internet.

Speaker C: Exactly. And so what we see is that a lot of IT firms that are more generalists, they come in and they like apply patches that are going to break various agency management system vendors software. Because if you follow in insurance at least, and that's the only industry I know, but in insurance at least, if you follow Microsoft's playbook, everything breaks. So you have to be selective about what you follow in Microsoft's playbook and add other features to make, uh, uh, an agency secure and compliant. Yeah.

Speaker B: That's what makes your group really special in expertise in that arena in the insurance world, because you've been dealing with these issues and you know what works and what doesn't. Whereas the average agent is not going to know if they say, oh, new version of Microsoft, they're going to upload the, uh, patch or the update. And then all of a sudden something doesn't work on the management system side and we have an issue.

Speaker C: Yeah, I would say generally agencies were started by men that were salespeople and all they really want to do is go out and sell insurance and they get to a certain size where they need somebody to. We were talking about Suanne to be the herder of cats to collect all the nonsense that the salespeople are creating. Right. And that's usually a woman and it's usually their title first is operations manager. Then they go all the way up to CEO. Right. Um, there. There are far too few, uh, women owned independent agencies out there. But there are some. But anyway, that's what I see is agencies want to service their clients and sell insurance, and they want us or their IT vendor to handle all of the mishigas, uh, a, uh, Yiddish word there. All the stuff, all the IT stuff, so they don't have to deal with it.

Speaker B: Brett, how did you get into this? How did your business start? Give us a little background.

Speaker C: There's. Yeah. So I was building computers in my garage 38 years ago in Reseda, California. I think, uh, Tom Petty wrote about Reseda, California. Not in an enthusiastic way. There's a freeway running through the yard. It was like our. The garage I was working in. And my best friend's father needed a computer and he happened to be an independent agent. And I went out there to install it. And I met the. One of the first comparative raider softwares where they're like, putting in the floppy disks and stuff like that. Yeah. And they had a problem in that, uh, their software was requiring like a 4,000, $5,000 IBM PC in. My computers were cheaper because I built them myself. And so he put a couple in his trunk of his car and he sold them the first day and I was rich. And so anyway, that's how I got into it. Yeah.

Speaker B: Ah, from talking with a friend of ours, Norma Fields. She also kept pushing you to continue on down this path.

Speaker C: Yeah, So I sold my business in 2000. She called me in 2009, uh, and said, brad, I hear you're back in the IT business business. I said, no, I'm not. And she said, I need you to be. She had been referring business to somebody. And, uh, anybody who knows Norma Fields knows it's difficult to, to say no to that.

Speaker B: You can't say no to Norma.

Speaker C: She.

Speaker B: She's going to talk into it.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Good salesperson.

Speaker C: She's great salesperson. And she taught me a lot. And, um. Yeah, so I thought we were going to have this little regional LA IT organization. We had eight, and now we have, like I said, close to three, uh, hundred and seventy all across the country. So crazy.

Speaker B: Yeah, it is now one of the issues that we're finding today. Let's talk about dmarc. Can you define for our listeners what is dmarc? What are the issues there with email?

Speaker C: And look, I am the least technical person in my company, but DMARC is a system that the Internet is using to make sure that an email is actually coming from you.

Speaker B: So that example, a lot of times you might get these fake emails coming in. It's got your domain name on it, but it's really not coming from your domain. And it may say georgeorgesdomain.com but it's really not my domain. I didn't send it. So they're spoofing it.

Speaker C: Exactly. Yeah. So they're doing what's called spoofing. And it's very easy to do. I could create an email server in 10 clicks and say I'm Georgeeorge's domain.com and there'd be no way for the receiver to not know that it wasn't coming from you. So what DMARC does is it sets up, um, a check and balance so that if your email, say, is hosted on Office365, it says, look, unless this email comes from Office365, it ain't coming from George, so decline it. So there's part of DMARC which is security. Right. But there's another part which is deliverability services like Gmail, Yahoo, I know Charlotte has an AOL account. We discovered that before this started.

Speaker A: And Gmail.

Speaker C: Yeah. And so they're starting to get those emails. If you don't have a DMARC set up, they're starting to reject an email that comes from you. Unless you've got DMARC set up now

Speaker B: to set DMARC up on Office 365. Or is that okay, so you set

Speaker C: it up via your DNS and we use some products that allow us to monitor that for our clients. But if the agency takes away from this, hey, talk to your IT guy and say, do we have DMARC set up? And there's a website called mxtoolbox.com where you can go there, you can type in your domain name, uh, and do what's called an MX lookup and an SPF lookup, and it'll show you whether you've got DMARC set up or not.

Speaker A: Brad, When I first heard about this, it was for those that were sending bulk emails, marketing companies that were sending a lot of emails. But from what you're saying, this is important for everybody to do, even if they're just sending individual emails to people.

Speaker C: Exactly, exactly. It started that way, Charlotte. And now I was talking to an agency owner this weekend who didn't know about this isn't a client of ours. And he said, oh, yeah, some people I've been sending to Yahoo Mail weren't receiving my emails. I was wondering why I said it must be a problem that they're in. So yeah, they're starting to enforce it big time and it's good, it's good for the industry. Right. Nobody likes their email to be spoofed.

Speaker B: So you would suggest that they go to that MX toolbox and check it there and then if they find uh, out they don't have it, what should they do next?

Speaker C: They should talk to their IT vendor and they should also, when they registered their domain a million years ago, they should make sure that they know where they registered that domain. MX Toolbox will tell them that, but it won't tell them their credentials to log in and to make the changes that are necessary. And it's important if you've got an IT vendor or if you don't to know those credentials because what sometimes happens is your DNS expires, maybe they were sending the email to your ex IT guy or whatever and then you don't have any email and your website doesn't work. So make sure you've got your credentials to uh, it's like Register.com or GoDaddy or Network Solutions.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker C: Yeah, or Network Solutions.

Speaker B: You could, if they don't know where they've got it, they could type in who is correct.

Speaker C: Yeah they can, but the MX toolbox will tell them that as well. Okay, yeah, yeah. So whois. I forget where you do that from, but you could do it from like Network Solutions and they'll have a little pull down tab for who is. But mxtoolbox is free and kind of easy.

Speaker B: So let's take that to another level because some of the things that I've heard from agents recently is having another domain or whatever when you're sending emails out because you don't want to get blacklisted or something for something going out. Um, what are your thoughts there?

Speaker C: Okay, so if you're doing like a lot of email marketing, you should be using a tool to do that email marketing like mailchimp or Constant Contact, et cetera. And uh, most of those tools will, will prevent you from getting what's called blacklisted, getting known as a email, a spoofer, et cetera. But if you're just, I don't know, doing them yourself or doing them through Gmail or something like that. Yeah, you're going to get blacklisted and uh, normal emails aren't going to get through the thing I would suggest though. So let's say we've got georgesdomain.com and george's email domain.com you want to make sure that if somebody puts in www.george's email domain.com that it goes to their website. Because a lot of people like me assume your website is the same as your email address. Exactly. And it's very easy again this thing DNS to be able to forward so that whenever any uh, WWW request comes in for your email domain that it automatically sends it over to that. Now there's some people that say um, that it's, I don't know, more secure, you're not going to get hacked as much. Etc, uh, if your email domain is different from your website domain and there might be a itty bitty truth to that, but the thing that I tell people about their website is do not put your email address on your website because or any of your email addresses unless it's an info app. Because what hackers do is they write these programs, these bots we call them, where they look through a million websites and scrape for finding domain email addresses and then they use that as part of their phishing campaigns to go after people.

Speaker B: That's a great point Brad. Matter of fact that's one of the things that we did. We took those off for the most part. There may be one or two still on there. But you're right because we're getting all kinds of just junk mail coming in and that's where they were scraping it off the website and pulling it and put into some other list and sending those emails out. And here again a lot of phishing emails. And those phishing emails are getting really good these days.

Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. And what I tell People is Office365 is a great platform for your emails, for your files. You can make it very secure with the Microsoft Authenticator app, which is uh, uh, what you should be using to multi factor authentication. So that we assume as IT people that you're going to give up your password to somebody. MFA stops them from getting in even if they've got your credentials. And that's why that's so important. And Microsoft, I believe in May is going to be requiring that you've got MFA for all of your users and that you don't allow those users to turn off mfa.

Speaker B: Um, some people, yeah, your contracts are requiring you to have mfa, so you bet, uh, you're out of compliance. Right.

Speaker C: So that's something.

Speaker B: Then I go back to agents all the time and I tell them when you get these updates that come over like in an email link and you click that for the uh, and you get this long list of uh, attorney Verbiage, uh, that you've got to read. And then it's four or five pages and it's got a, uh, e signature at the bottom. Just don't go to the bottom and scroll and E sign it. You need to read it because you need to be careful what you're signing really in any contract, but especially in those because it's really telling you that you're agreeing to all this cybersecurity stuff that you, I'm sure you don't even A, know what it is and B, you haven't done it.

Speaker C: There was a software as a service company. I don't know who they were, but they put in their contract that we own your firstborn. And they said 99 points, some point, some percent had no objection or obviously didn't read it. Yeah. Read the font in our agreement. I have jokes in it. They're not good jokes, but I know people read it based on. Oh, that was really a stupid joke, Brad.

Speaker A: And you want them to read it. That's. It's important they know what the agreement is.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker B: Now, I think we had some recent news too, about lock bit getting, uh, locked down from the federal government. The ransomware group, I think they were out of the, out of the Russian territory, if I'm not mistaken. And the Fed, uh, just got in there and locked down their site. But it's amazing. These guys with the ransomware, they've even got, uh, support systems and they tell you how to buy crypt and they walk and they do negotiations on the ransom. There's all kinds of crazy stuff going on in that world.

Speaker C: Yeah. So we have a customer. We got the customer because they were ransomware and they reached out to us and we helped them. And their cyber insurance could not pay the ransom because they were on the, the ransomware group was on the terrorist watch list.

Speaker B: Oh, wow. So the FBI wouldn't let them do it. Homeland Security. Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, the insurance wouldn't do it because they were going to be breaking the law doing it. And um. Yeah.

Speaker A: And oddly enough, the people that do the ransomware are criminals, it turns out. So it's not too surprising. That's the way they raise money.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, they're criminals, but they're also sometimes state sponsored organizations. Yes, but the other thing about these hacks is for an insurance agency, they're only as good as your vendors. So we had this thing with SolarWinds, right. Where um, fortunately we weren't a vendor, SolarWinds wasn't a vendor of ours, but basically Solarwinds is a product that managed service providers like us use to manage our clients computers and they're a reputable company, et cetera. Somehow hackers got into their update service. So if you were one of those IT companies that was doing the right thing and updating your SolarWinds all the time, the updates had a hack in them. So they were being able to hack through to SolarWinds clients. So if you're dealing with a rinky dink vendor, I see insurance agencies using their IT company to host their email. No. Uh, maybe because I've worked with agents for 38 years. I've become that way in my way of thinking. Right. Everything's about how do we avoid risk. And you want to be able to tell your clients when Microsoft gets hacked. Ah, that was Microsoft's fault. When Joe Blow IT company gets hacked and your email gets hacked, that's your fault for choosing Joe Blow IT company to host your email. Right. Anyway, I get off on a soapbox

Speaker A: on this stuff, Brad. I know sometimes agents are afraid to adopt new technology and this is some of the stuff that scares them off. Um, maybe we can talk to them a little bit about how can they be um, more comfortable with adopting the new technology. What's the importance of uh, being willing to adopt new technology for their business

Speaker C: from a security point of view? I always say raise your hand if you love TSA security. Nobody likes it, right? But you want everybody getting on the plane, just walking straight on the airplane. I know, I know. So your people and yourself that get annoyed by having multi factor authentication and security awareness testing and training. I'm sorry, that's non negotiable. You have to deal with this and if you can't deal with it, you can't work at this insurance agency, period. End stop. Um, now in terms of adoption of new technology, right, And a new agency management system, new software products that are out there. The good thing about us is we don't sell hardware, Software, Internet or VoIP. So if I'm making a recommendation to one of my clients, they know that it's not because I'm ringing my cash registers in our company. But I do tell agents if you like a double root canal, you'll love switching agency management systems. So you have to be, you have to have a compelling reason to switch an agency management system. And sometimes there are compelling reasons to switch an agency management system. But I would also say when you're going to add a software product, you need to, it doesn't, it shouldn't come as an Edict from above, right? You shall use this product. You need to get buy in. Um, prior to that product, get them on the demos, get them asking your people asking questions about the product before you just say, we're going to be rolling out at agency Management system on Thursday. Here it is and here's your support numbers. That's a way for a product to fail. I was at an ACT conference and this guy, the agency owner stood up and he's yeah, we've tried eight different CRM products, customer relationship management products and none of them have worked. Somebody stood up. I don't think it was me.

Speaker A: It was a common denominator.

Speaker C: There's always, there's only one common denominator here. Right. And we do see agencies collect software right in that and sign long term commitments on these software products. Um, I always suggest, hey, let's get the most out of the products that you've got right now before we start adding another product.

Speaker B: Um, yeah, I think Brad, to that degree I've had, I couldn't tell you how many times I've had agents call up and say, yeah, I really think I need to move systems and all that. I'll ask a question why? And they'll go down a couple things and they go, well, have you really looked into what you have? And do you have all the updates to the current software package that you're using or management system you're using? And then once we go over the one that they have and we show it to them, they're like, I didn't know those features were there. But because the release notes and what goes on and here again the vendors may not do a great job of updating that to the clients and giving the information they need to check it. But, but the owner, the agency owner needs to take, or somebody in the agency needs to take responsibility for keeping up with those software packages that they're using and the new feature sets so that they know what they are. Because just like you said, switching management systems, that's work, that's a lot of work. And there may be a need for it at some point in time. But before you do that, I would really say, hey, take a look at what you have just to make sure you're using that system 100%.

Speaker C: Yeah, a lot of these agency management systems that I don't want to name names but they're like toolbox. You can create what I could create with very unhandy, a rickety shack, that five mile an hour window blow down. Or you can create the taj Mahal with that. Right. And so it's really important that you've got either people within your organization that have the capability of improving that management system and automating with that management system, or that you, you find a partner, I think, like you guys to help the agency along because there are a lot of great software salespeople out there and they will not tell you these are the five things you're going to absolutely hate about our product.

Speaker B: They don't lead with that, Brad.

Speaker C: They don't lead with that. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker A: You've never seen a demo you didn't love?

Speaker C: Software salespeople. What's the difference between them and used car salespeople? The used car salespeople knows they're selling you junk. The software salesperson might be selling you junk. He just doesn't. He or she just. He doesn't know it. Right.

Speaker B: But there are a lot of good, there are a lot of good software packages out there going back to the release notes and things. In the old days, you'd have a document with everything in it and you'd have to read it, which was boring. But now, one of the things I really love, and I'm not going to mention names here, but some of the vendors are doing a great job, ah, of when they're coming out with new releases and they're doing a video, they got a little video piece where they go over, hey, in this new release we've got coming out, we got these, this feature set coming. We're going to show it to you. They'll show a demo on the screen of what it does. And they say, this is, uh, currently in beta. It's going to be released in whatever date. And if you'd like to see this, uh, contact us or we'll be updating your system on such and such time frame. And they do a great job that I love that. I think that is for me, I'm visual, I like seeing. Yeah, well, I said, now I got a better idea what that is.

Speaker C: Yeah. One of the things we've been talking about, and I'll get to video, I promise, is we like to introduce our, introduce our agencies to technology that can help them sell more insurance. And, uh, most of these agency management systems, all they are back office systems. One of the products we like to introduce our agencies to is like a product like Vidyard, which allows them to create videos and embed them in their emails and their messaging, et cetera, and personalize those videos, et cetera, because you're Absolutely right. Getting an email. Everybody gets an email. Getting a personalized message from the agency owner or the personal lines manager, etcetera, saying, hey, I was thinking about you, et cetera, et cetera is really effective.

Speaker B: Yeah. I think to that point, we just implemented one, uh, agency, and he did a welcome video. We put that in there. So new clients, he's got this welcome video. He talks about a couple things. And then. Then it's a series of videos, actually. So first one goes out on the second, then the third. That's awesome. And we ran it for 30 days. He called back, he said, george, that stuff is working. Just. He said, we're getting calls from all kinds of people that we never even thought they'd call us. They said, man, saw the video. That was great. I didn't know you did this, or I want to ask you about this because you mentioned this in the video. And I'm thinking he.

Speaker C: And they would have never read that in the email.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. He said it was in the email. We've been doing that all along. But he said, because we put the video in, he said, people watched it, now they're calling back. And I said, they're probably sitting there on their phone. They've got nothing to do. They're sitting there watching the video of you talking to them. Are they at the gym? On the treadmill. And they're getting it and they're paying attention.

Speaker A: It's just so much more personal. You really. It allows you to make a connection that you just can't make with printed page.

Speaker B: And Charlotte, it goes back also, I think, to the sales process. Right. Because now we'll talk about a product called Loom. Uh, you can put that on your browser and you can have the quote information on the screen, and you can record that and be talking to the client and say, I want to go over this with you. And maybe, uh, it's a business owner. They've got a couple of partners, and one partner saw it with, the others didn't. Then they can take that video and show it to the others. And it's not lost in translation as you're sharing it out. And I think that really helps the sales process. And to that point, it's personal. You can make it personal.

Speaker C: Yeah. And to go on the flip side of this and to talk about stuff that's not personal, we should talk about ChatGPT a little bit, I think.

Speaker B: Yeah, great.

Speaker C: Uh, yeah, Steve Anderson, I had him on my insurance hacks podcast, and we were talking about AI and we were talking about ChatGPT, and he said it solves the blank page problem. And I never heard it expressed that way, but that's one of the big ways that we're using AI is we need to write a statement of work. And a statement of work used to take me a day. Uh, yeah, yeah. And so you, uh. And we pay for the $20 version of it, et cetera. So it's a little more current, I think, than the ChatGPT 3.5. But, yeah, it's been very helpful in us writing content. It's not. You better read what it writes, because some of the stuff it writes are just wrong. But it's. But it solves that blank page problem. And we're a big user of HubSpot, and we'll record phone calls and things like that. And it has this AI summary of my phone calls that's pretty much better than what I could have typed to that point, too.

Speaker B: Let's talk about that for a second, Brad. To that point. And we can even use this. To date, I've seen a product called Meat Geek, where you put it on there, and what it does, it'll take the call that we're having today, and it'll summarize that at the end of the call into a document that you can use for your notes. The days I remember, you remember the days of everybody's yearning a committee. And everybody's around the table, and somebody's got to be the secretary. Nobody wants to be the secretary. So it comes down to vote on the secretary. Everybody puts their head down and they just don't want to. And then somebody gets nominated because they

Speaker C: left the room and they come back. Now they're the note taker. Right.

Speaker B: So now I'm like, okay, yeah, that's fine. Let me put this microphone up here, and I'm gonna be the secretary. I'm gonna type in. Put it in Meat Geek, and I'm just gonna put it up here. And then at the end of the. At the end of the session, it's all typed up, and you send it out to everybody. They're like, wow, how did he do that?

Speaker C: Yeah. George is a genius. Yeah.

Speaker B: No, being the secretary.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And we. There. There's just a lot out there. Right. But if I were to tell the agents who are not really chatgpt, hey, when you're trying to write something and you don't know how to get started on that something. ChatGPT, uh, and the iterative portion of ChatGPT, oh, the customer has named this and Then can you please add that? And so it'll add that in and. Oh, uh, but I, you know, this is seven days a week, not five days a week. Okay. It'll regenerate based on that or make it more humorous or make it more tactical. It's pretty incredible.

Speaker A: Yeah. And it really is just the next step in what all of technology was supposed to do, which is to allow us to do things more quickly and to take the burden of doing things off of us having to do them manually and allow them to be done mathematically.

Speaker C: I may be on the wrong side of most techies, but this stuff terrifies me because we are just looking at the very tip of the iceberg. We're going to have a zoom, um, call like this someday and it's going to be our holograms.

Speaker A: How do you know it's not now?

Speaker C: Exactly. Exactly.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. There's absolutely technology out there that can create a video of you talking. That's not create that already. But the truth is that any media can be used for good purposes or nefarious purposes. And. But just to try to avoid it all is really not a good decision. And, and honestly, I think the key is to not feel like as an insurance agent, you've got to be the IT expert there. I think it's really, this is an area that I encourage people to outsource often because they just can't maintain the expertise that someone would have.

Speaker C: So, uh, George knows this, but six years ago, my home burned down in a wildfire out in Southern California. And fortunately, I had an agent, an independent agent. And I was always complaining to him. My rates go up every year. I've never had a claim, and this is ridiculous. I want cheaper insurance. No, you don't. No, you don't would be his answer. And then when I called him, he saw, uh, my caller id. He says, see, that's the way he answered the phone. He knew. He knew the area. And meanwhile, all my neighbors are fighting with their insurance, and we were well taken care of. And it was all because of our independent agent and me outsourcing my insurance and my financial. I'd be in a corner over here in the fetal position asking for my mommy right now if it wasn't for my insurance. Through that whole thing, I tell people this just to remind them of what a great job, um, a great service. Independent insurance agents, absolutely. I am, I am a fan, not only because they provide an income to me, uh, but because they provide a valuable service and they don't get told this Enough.

Speaker B: Yeah, Brad, that's. That was a difficult time for you. But I say this, that would make a great. Another great podcast session. Just talking about the process of what happened and how you went through that and what the independent agent did and how the community helped out. That was.

Speaker C: Yeah. Uh, I'll tell you what happened was we had an Internet provider. I won't name their name. And they kept billing me for Internet service at the house and I kept calling them and sending them letters that we don't need Internet at the house, that doesn't exist anymore. And then they took me to collections. And so I called like, NBC is on your side. And they're like, they didn't believe me at first and I had all my records because we put everything on the cloud side. It was a bit of data and they said, hey, can you come by your property on Tuesday at 3:00pm? Sure. So I go and there's a camera crew waiting for me. And they put me on like, NBC is on your side and stuff like that. And immediately I'm getting gift cards from this Internet service provider. They're sending me chocolates and stuff.

Speaker B: That make it. That'd make a good discussion, Brad. I think. Ah. And even to that degree, when people sit back and think about what did you have in the house? And do we have a record of it? And you got to go through all that. There's. When. When that event happens, that's a major event.

Speaker C: It's pretty amazing when you wake up one day, George, and you've got three pairs of pants. No, I had three T shirts and a pair of pants.

Speaker A: Hm.

Speaker C: My laptop.

Speaker B: Wow. Unreal.

Speaker A: It's pretty crazy, Brad, as you said, obviously a lot of professionals depend on independent insurance agents, and independent insurance agents need to depend on expertise in the IT world. How would they get in touch with you if this is something that they have a need for and would like to talk to you about taking over their it?

Speaker C: Yeah, uh, they don't need to talk to us about taking over their it. I find every conversation with an independent agent, I learn as much from them as they learn from me. But my mobile number is 805-469-4510 and my email, bradyarchway, uh, dot com. Of course you can visit our website and there is some little place for you to schedule a call with me as well.

Speaker B: Excellent, Brad, it's been a pleasure, man. We greatly appreciate you being on It's. It's always great talking to you.

Speaker C: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. IT'S been a. It's been a blast.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Tell Suanne I said hello.

Speaker C: I shall.

Speaker B: And we'll probably see at the next, uh, convention, whatever that may be.

Speaker C: Yeah, she'll be at Net View. I'll be at Hug, uh, talks off user group. So we'll be on two separately because.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think they cross over this year.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, they do. They do. And Carlsbad's a lot closer than New Orleans for me. True. All right, guys, thank you so much.

Speaker B: Thanks a lot, Brad. Have a great day. Thank you so much for being here and hope everybody enjoyed this time with my buddy Brad Rubin.

Speaker A: Thanks for joining us on the Insurance Agency Trendsetters podcast. If you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on itunes and be sure to click subscribe so you don't miss any upcoming episodes. You can find show notes for each episode@insuranceagencytrendsetters.com as well as links to contact Charlotte and George. We'll see you next time on the podcast.