Hmmpost

As I sit tapping away at the keyboard, listening to ZZ Top belt out “Legs” it is a couple legs past 10pm PST on New Year’s Eve and time to reflect on the big changes in our professional lives starting, well, pretty much now. Before this post is done and published we’re going to cross into a new year. I don’t write here about our offline business very much other than to refer to it as our “offline business” – in fact the number of times I’ve mentioned specifically what this business does and/or how it might be related is in at best a scattered few posts. Nowhere in the site about page or my bio at TD Scripts does it indicate what our offline business is about either. Is there some reason I’ve kept this business a bit mysterious? Yes, a couple reasons. But before we get to those reasons, let me tell you briefly about the business. My wife and I have owned and operated an insurance agency since 1994. I am licensed to do business in both Washington and Oregon (non-resident). It’s mostly our gig together, although we have had some hired help, mostly part time over the years. I’m not one of those in your face, let me quote you ASAP insurance agents and thus haven’t written about this here because there isn’t much internet-related stuff we’ve done to talk about. What the business is and what we do is not that relevant to the vast majority of post topics I write and publish here. It’s not that I’m trying to avoid promoting or even mentioning our offline business or anything, it’s that we just aren’t doing that much online where it makes sense to bring it up here. Also, without going through the site demographics (but I do intend to do that), I’m not sure exactly what percentage of readers here are locals which is where we’re doing the bulk of our insurance business. I know a few readers are nearby like Sterling but even he’s not exactly in our backyard. He’s still a good 45 minute drive or so away. I’m also careful, very careful, that my clients might not perceive that this blog – if any of them have ever connected the dots (to my knowledge, not yet) — in any way has anything to do with them and/or our business with them. This site, even the pen name you all are used to me using online, only has my heart, energy and passion in common. Almost nothing else online has anything to do with our offline business. Conversely what happens online is very rarely mentioned to our insurance clients offline. Client’s lives are very private and confidential between us and them and it’s wrong to write about our business with them in any way that is other than very, very generic without their knowledge or consent. If you happened to be one of our clients the last thing I’d want for you to do is go online and Google your name and find something here at MakeYouGoHmm (or our other online properties) about you without your knowledge and consent. I’ve been very careful about making sure this doesn’t happen. It’s part of demonstrating our trust level with clients that what we know about them stays with us and companies that have a need to know basis to conduct business. It’s our client’s business how little or how much they want their names to be used online. I have and will continue to respect that immensely. I haven’t even used my own name online to date very much, so why should I not treat clients the same? The answer is I should give them even more consideration than given myself – and will continue to do so in 2009 and beyond. But there are some times when businesses we insure might want us to provide a little spotlight on them and what their business is and does. Sort of promotional and personal. Especially in these economic times. So we might be able to use our business website to help from time to time promote some of the businesses we do business with. Now back to those reasons for me keeping the offline business away from this blog. For one, this is a business where we have barely used the internet to establish and foster client relationships since 1994. This doesn’t mean we’re behind on technology or anything, quite the opposite. We were among the first in representing our primary insurer (company) that started capturing and using email in the nineties for communication. At the time this was so controversial that I actually received a cease and desist order from the company threatening to terminate our agency appointment if we continued. A couple years later I was at a meeting when myself and other similar business owners were told by a company executive that we were “behind the times” if we didn’t have a program for collecting email addresses. Smile, I did. I still have that letter and have thought about framing it and putting it inside the foyer of our office. I may do that in light of the big 2009 changes upon us. I think some clients would get a kick out of it. It’s one of those stories I’ll probably never tire of telling. We did have a business presence website on our own domain – basically a one page deal – for several years. I also own and operate the city’s domain where we are located for over 10 years now. Our original business website and domain has since been deactivated because I hated the domain name and fact that we were handcuffed as to what we could do there without jumping through a bunch of company hoops. The domain was way too long to remember and type. It wasn’t the type of thing that clients were going to remember easily – and thus we didn’t even bother telling many clients about it, much less use it as any sort of marketing. Big change #1: we’re going totally independent After almost 15 years our agency is going totally independent in 2009. What does this mean when we already have been an independent contractor? That word independent in the insurance world can have an asterisk depending on the type of companies the agent is appointed to do business with and the contracts they sign. An independent agent has one major difference from an agent who is captive or as was our case for many years: semi-captive. State Farm and Allstate insurance agents, for example, are captive agents. These agents cannot place business “outside” with other carriers by contractual obligation. Yes, even if the best premium price with an equally stable financial company involving their client’s risk is elsewhere. The contract with our primary carrier has been semi-captive in that it required us to place all business that qualified with them, regardless of price (premium). I’ve never liked this aspect of the contract. That we were forced by contract to place business with a single company when we could find a less expensive rate from an equally respected company elsewhere. Now we can do what other independent agents have been used to doing: match client needs with the best companies and rates in their area. So if you reside in the state of Washington or Oregon and are looking for an online-savvy independent insurance agent – hey, a softball pitch here - who has this as a guiding principle drop me an email and we’ll see if we can find a good match for your insurance needs. This is nearly a complete reboot of our offline business. We are starting almost, almost completely over. This means we’re going from a very comfortable monthly income (in our offline business) to almost $0/month since the primary carrier we’re separating from is keeping all the client files. We have always been commission only, but the longer you are in business the more renewals you tend to amass. We aren’t going to have those renewals any more from that carrier. The carrier even get our primary business phone number, by contract, that we’ve used since 1994. The contract also allowed for them an option on our physical office location but they aren’t executing that right (yet). If they do, there is a spot right next door and we’ll lease that in a heartbeat. So our main business phone line is changing, our signage, business cards, logos, etc, but not our office location. This should be a very interesting year. We could fail with this change. Badly. As mentioned earlier in this piece, the economy is not stellar. We’re gambling that by going independent and helping clients find the best companies with great rates, we’ll be better positioned in the future. Ask me in a year or two if this was a smart move and I’ll be better able to answer. Scary? You bet. But exciting too. The disadvantage of being an independent agency – and to be fair, I have to bring this up - is one of company loyalty from both sides: agent and client (insured). Clients who move their business around more frequently will lose loyalty discounts for companies that offer them. Agents who have less profitable books of business seem to tend to receive less leeway by non-captive companies and the fewer number of clients with each company means less premium in the pool for the agency to draw from to establish overall profitability (one big claim can devastate a smaller agency’s profitability). Since we’re still very new to the independent side, this is partly based on how much emphasis is being placed on profitability with the carriers we’ve started talking to. Add to the above that insurance carrier underwriters at renewal periods tend to treat accounts a little better who have longer history versus those who are newer and less established when it comes to deciding to non-renew over increases in claim activity. It’s not a risk-free proposition to switch insurance companies only over price if that happens to be when bad times fall upon you and a few claims roll in. So just because we will be able to find clients the best possible price we’re still going to do our due diligence making sure that the company with the good rates is highly rated and a good about paying claims in a timely and fair manner. We aren’t going to go with some fly by night outfit just to get clients the absolute lowest price. As an independent we’ll try to measure risk, price, company and individual client needs against this principle. It may be in a client’s best interest to stay with an insurance carrier that has a higher premium for this loyalty factor even though our agency would not be contractually obligated to keep this business with said company. This is a major procedural business change for us and will be interesting to see how we balance this with each client individually. I suspect from experience that customers will tell us that they want the lowest rate coupled with our established, personalized agency service over company loyalty discounts, as that’s what we’ve been hearing. The decision, of course as always, will be up to them. Big change #2: increase offline business internet presence This brings us to our second big change and one of the reasons I’m writing about this here and now: a (much) bigger internet presence. We’re working on a separate, brand new website, one which I’m building mostly myself from the ground up, including all the backend scripting for our agency related functions. I am planning a business blog on this new site and am hoping it won’t suck like a lot of the business blogs I’ve seen. I notice a lot of our local area insurance agents don’t even have blogs, so am hoping to capitalize on that inequity somewhat. I would like our blog to be both professional but also personal because that reflects our service level. And it should be informative and comment on insurance-related issues. I would also like to use this blog as a platform for communicating how our independent agency gig is going with our clients. Where in the past I wouldn’t have done so here, I might also meta comment on a few posts like I’ve done with the group blog I contribute to at VTOR. It won’t be every other post or annoyingly frequent as I believe strongly that a little goes a long way on the web. Those who are interested in following in greater detail my virtual world happenings should know by now that VTOR is the best place to do that, not here, and likewise those who want to follow our independent insurance related experiences will do it at the new blog (and it’s not live as of this writing, so no link). That brings us to big change #3. Well, big change if you read this blog and for some reason decide to start reading the insurance agency blog too. Big change #3: hi, my name is Todd, nice to meet you The biggest change at our new business blog for readers of Hmm will be my name. And forgive the liberal use of the third person in this section, it’s awkward for me too, but readers here that visit/read the new business blog will not see me writing under the pen name of ‘TDavid’ – ever. It will be my first name which I’ve rarely used here or anywhere else online. In fact, I’ve demanded that ‘TDavid’ or ‘TD’ be used and not my legal name when it has anything to do with our online business ventures to date. When it involves insurance-related matters things will be different going forward. It goes beyond the business blog and website though, I’ll also be signing up for services that ‘TDavid’ may also be signed up for and some that ‘TDavid’ doesn’t use (either at all or very often) like Facebook which requires your real name. LinkedIn is another. Not sure about MySpace. Twitter? Maybe. Friendfeed? Doubtful at the start. The thing is that there is going to be some crossover here and there and it will be interesting to see how to deal with essentially three online personalities: ‘TDavid’ that most people know me as online is still going to be around, TD Goodliffe and various other virtual world identities and the introduction and promotion for our offline business under my legal first name. I’m going to try to avoid having a personality disorder in 2009, but in some ways I’m concerned that might happen, which is another reason I’ve been ‘TDavid’ online. Just to be clear, I’ll still be writing as ‘TDavid’ here and anywhere that doesn’t have to do directly with our insurance business but since my picture is going to appear from time to time under my legal name, I want to be sure to disclose why this will be happening and that I’m not trying to be two completely different people or anything, I’m just trying to keep different businesses separated. You might see some overlap between the same entity under different names, just as there have been with my virtual world adventures, I guess is the one sentence way to describe this change. With that in mind, I’d still appreciate if you would continue to refer to me as TD or TDavid on this blog, BTW – and please not the hatcheted name without the ‘T’ in front. Let’s save the Todd stuff for the business site/blog and the TD Goodliffe (or other virtual name) for the virtual world side. If you were playing Everquest II with me as my character Humosorf and we were role-playing, that’s the name I’d expect to be used there as well. This will all be much easier to explain in this business than our insurance business which I’m not sure how or when I’m going to try and do so. Little steps first and too many other priorities ahead of that. Anyway, I’m hearing fireworks outside. Woohoo, 2009 is here! Change has arrived. Are you ready? Let’s seize those golden 2009 opportunities and make the best of them. If you can help other people even more in 2009 like I’m excited that we’re going to be able to do, then go for it. Thank you for reading and Happy New Year!