The Digital Broker Podcast

On this episode of The Digital Broker, Ryan Deeds interviews Andy Priesman, founder of Cover Desk, about virtual assistants. By listening to this episode, you will learn how an assortment of back-office work can eat into your employees’ time, decreasing your agency’s output, how virtual assistants are capable of relieving your agency of these tasks, and which of your agency’s tasks you should consider outsourcing first.

On this episode of The Digital Broker, Ryan Deeds interviews Justin Goodman, founder of Total CSR. By listening to this episode, you will learn which operational problems forced Justin to develop Total CSR, how the platform grew to help insurance agencies train CSR’s, producers, and employees in any position, and how a good onboarding process helps insurance agencies at large attract more employees and keep them in jobs longer.

On this episode of The Digital Broker, Ryan Deeds and Mark Alberto talk about the role of an IT department at an insurance agency. By listening to this episode, you will learn, how the expectations and responsibilities of the average IT department have grown, which challenges, old and new, continue to affect an IT department, and how to mitigate these issues with better hiring, better leadership, and better training.

On this episode of The Digital Broker, Ryan Deeds reflects on leadership and the key responsibilities of a leader. By listening to this episode, you will learn which responsibilities are exclusively a leader’s, how employee engagement is a function of leadership, and how favoritism, absenteeism, and hypocrisy tarnish the credibility of a leader.

On this episode of The Digital Broker, Ryan Deeds talks about change management. By listening to this episode, you will learn why change management is essential to operational excellence, why so many change initiatives fall apart, and how to fortify your change management strategy by repeatedly asking yourself these five important questions.

In this episode of The Digital Broker, Ryan Deeds talks to Michael Furlong, CEO and co-founder of Indio Technologies. By listening, you will learn why Indio bet on empowering the insurance agent and broker when everyone else was betting on technology to replace them, which key decisions allowed for Indio's growth, and what the company's plans are for the next 3-5 years.

In this episode of The Digital Broker, Ryan Deeds talks to Ron Glozman, CEO and founder of Chisel AI, about artificial intelligence and its applications in the field of insurance. By listening to this episode, you will learn how AI is already helping people in the insurance industry and how it actually can create employment opportunities by relieving human beings of soul-sucking work.

In this episode of The Digital Broker, Ryan Deeds interviews Ron Glozman, CEO and founder of Chisel AI, about the company’s journey from inception to present-day operations. By listening to this episode, you will hear the story of how a textbook-crunching app became an insurance policy checking tool and how the artificial intelligence behind the tool, specifically natural language processing (NLP), can help insurance agencies expedite processes such as policy checking, saving the agency time, energy, and money.

In this episode of The Digital Broker, Ryan Deeds interviews Jay Weintraub, CEO and co-founder of InsureTech Connect, about the brand new Agency Connect event at this year’s InsureTech Connect conference.

In this episode of The Digital Broker, Ryan Deeds examines the challenges of implementing technology at insurance agencies. You will learn which biases prohibit insurance agencies from implementing new technology effectively, how to reset your expectations of technology, how your operations team figures in the implementation of any technology, and how to define the problem and the solution in terms of a quantifiable metric.

In this episode of The Digital Broker, Ryan Deeds and Azia Hurley talk about Millennial employees at insurance agencies. You will learn why Millennial and non-Millennial employees sometimes don’t get along, how a mentorship program is key to integrating Millennial hires, how career pathing helps Millennial talent develop, and other ways to motivate and incentivize Millennial employees.

In this episode of The Digital Broker, Ryan Deeds and David W. Clausen talk about how growth works at insurance agencies. You will learn how insurance agencies grow in leaps which are preceded by an inflection point that forces leadership to make a decision, what to take into account when making those decisions, how partnerships and technology assist in the growth process, and how to keep your eyes open for growth opportunities.

In this episode of The Digital Broker, Ryan Deeds interviews David W. Clausen about David’s successful history of generating leads online. David is the CEO of Coastal Home Insurance Solutions. You will learn how you can grow your own digital presence by sticking to the very basics of online marketing and why you should test your way to success, being on the lookout for what works and what doesn’t.

In this episode of The Digital Broker, Ryan Deeds and Melissa Wilder talk about the details that complicate coverages and how to spot them. You will learn, what kind of “little” things can wreck a coverage; where to find them; and how they vary from niche to niche, how to protect yourself against oversights, and what other resources you can consult to make sure you’re up-to-date on coverage details

In this episode of The Digital Broker, Ryan Deeds and Melissa Wilder discuss the perfect renewal process of an insurance agency. By listening to this episode, you'll learn what stage(s) in the renewal process typically fall apart, how to prevent it, and what to keep in mind when deciding whether to remarket