Practical and in-depth details about how to build a great marketing plan
Chris Paradiso has been running his own insurance agency for almost 20 years, but it wasn’t until about 10 years ago that everything started to really click for him. When Chris started seriously studying and investing in marketing and engaging his marketplace, his agency soared above the competition. In this in-depth discussion Chris provides practical details about the tools and strategies that make an effective marketing plan.
What are other agents & brokers doing to thrive? What are the biggest trends affecting the retail insurance agent & broker? What are the most important strategies and tactics you need to grow faster? Find out here in the Connected Insurance Podcast, where Michael Jans discusses the biggest issues affecting the independent insurance agent and broker with the industries leading figures.
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[Transcript] Chris Paradiso – Owner of Paradiso Financial & Insurance Services
Michael Jans: Today, we have Chris Paradiso. Chris, I want to welcome you to the Connected Insurance Podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. How are you?
Chris Paradiso: Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.
Michael: Yes, good to have you and I know that we’re going to have a lot to talk about. I want to do a little bit of background on Chris Paradiso before we dive into-
Chris: Sure, sure.
Michael: – some of the cool stuff that you’re doing. One of the things I’m really excited about here, Chris, is that you are somebody who has a grasp of modern technology and you run an insurance agency and so you’re really here with some practical and tactical– not just sort of big picture and not just trends, some of which are scary. You’ve got a very practical approach to making exciting things happen. I’m going to start just with a little bit of what has made Chris Paradiso, Chris Paradiso?
Chris: That’s a great question. If you ask me what’s made me as a human being versus an agent, I would tell you my father played a huge role in my life, my family, and by far, they’ve had the largest weight in helping me become the person I am, along with my sister who-
Michael: Which–
Chris: – is in Special Olympics, who came in first in swimming on Sunday, which was a great day. When you talk about being Chris Paradiso in the insurance base, I would tell you great people from Rough Notes have helped me tremendously. A gentleman named Bob Mackoul, Mackoul & Associates, New Empire Group, absolutely instrumental. Dan King from Travelers, who just retired, instrumental. A lot of great mentors.
Michael: Yes, was your dad an agent?
Chris: No, he was a prosecutor and attorney. Back then you could be both because prosecutors made less money than the top that walked the beat. Very few people wanted to prosecute because there was no money in it but he’s still practicing in my office building here at this point.
Michael: How did you get into the business?
Chris: From a gentleman– There was an agency called Wolff-Zackin. If you’re in the financial industry, if you’ve ever heard of a financial needs analysis, that would be Mr. Wolff who created that and sold it for a ridiculous amount of money. I played basketball at a all-black invitationals and came in contact with Mr. Wolff’s son. Just uniquely, we were roommates, we were the only two White players playing in all-black invitationals. We ended up getting along well and our fathers became friends. When I was in high school, he says, “When you graduate college, you’re going to come see me.” Kiddingly, but that’s what actually happened and I started off in the life insurance industry, thanks to him.
Michael: Yes, all right. And then how did you get into PNC?
Chris: I got into PNC from a gentleman named Art Andreoli. He unfortunately passed away a couple years ago. A great insurance professional of life insurance. His sons are in the property and casualty but also in the life. He took me to lunch in 2000 and said, “Chris, you’re doing well but the future of the industry is you need to be a one-stop shop. People do not want to buy life insurance from somebody different than their property and casualty.” He really opened up the door. I literally left that lunch and researched how to get my license and literally, scheduled it 30 days after that.
Michael: While you’re on that subject, let me ask you a question about it. To this day, do you make a point of attempting to cross your PNC clients into a life relationship?
Chris: Absolutely. If you look at statistics, first and foremost-
Michael: Right.
[laughs]
That’s where I was going to get at, it’s like-
Chris: – the Dollars and Sense are huge because if I can sell a client a home, auto, and life, they’ll stay for 10 years as an average. A home, auto umbrella, which should be the minimum, right, is five years. It’s twice as long because of the life insurance. Statistics are pretty solid and once you get that life and you get the home and auto, they’re not going to leave you anytime soon.
Michael: Life insurance has a tremendous effect on retention in a PNC relationship. I have theories on the psychology behind that but that’s for another conversation. Let’s move on. Now, about your agency, whenever I see a FedEx truck with green lettering, I think of Chris Paradiso. I recall once, I think I was on a– I can’t remember what turnpike or highway, there was a FedEx truck that jackknifed on the side of the road and sure enough, it had green lettering and as I recall, I took a picture of it really quickly as my wife was driving by and I sent it to you.
Chris: You did.
[laughter]
Michael: Not only are you a personal lines guy, cross-selling your home, auto umbrella into life but you’re a niche commercial player. Tell us how you got into that.
Chris: Well, I stumbled into it from a local gentleman we became very friendly with who had a FedEx route and pretty much brought us all the paperwork, so that we could actually do some research. Figure out how to insure these people, figure out if they could purchase outside of their program, and really got to learn about the industry. But it all started from a small couple man operation. What most people don’t realize is that FedEx does have an independent side and an independent arm to it.
Michael: That’s the green letter, right?
Chris: Yes.
Michael: That’s the green letter, okay.
Chris: Which is going to be changing.
Michael: Oh, okay.
[laughs]
All right. Chris, when I think about you and my relationship with you, it’s very easy for me to think more marketer, Chris’ marketing persona, as opposed to the agency persona. Of course, that’s how I know you mostly and that’s– obviously, you know my position on that, that is imperative today. The ability to communicate with the marketplace, the ability to communicate with your own customer base. How did that happen? When did that come into your life and when did you embrace the passion for marketing, and communications, and customer experience?
Chris: I would say it all started in ’08. I had a meeting with an insurance professional who really opened my eyes to a lot of things. Not as though you haven’t thought about these things, but really pushed me to an uncomfortable zone which– I love stress, I love a competition, so I will never forget that day that I was pushed to that level of uncomfortableness. I started very, very, very actively putting strategy together from websites to email to just being able to communicate in alternative forms with prospects and clients back in ’08.
Michael: Got it, all right. I think you have put your money where your mouth is. It’s not just that you believe in marketing but you have invested in marketing and so I think the personal composition of your agency may look different than the average agency, tell me about that.
Chris: Our make up is, if you’re talking about commercial to personal, about 81% commercial due to we read a lot of large trucking account. 19% personal lines which– it’s pretty hard when you– we wrote a million and a half account to make up on that on personal lines when you’re still writing a lot of homes and autos packages for two grand. It’s not really fair to say that but it is an 20%, 81%, 19% commercial to personal.
Michael: All right, within– This is what I’m getting at. Within the agency, you have marketers, right?
Chris: Yes.
Michael: I think if we look at most best practices today, it’s difficult to find that. Let me give my perspective on best practices is that they’re extremely valuable but they’re also somewhat dangerous because they tend to report on what others did two or three years ago to get successful today and–
Chris: I would agree.
Michael: Okay. There’s some danger in following the past and it’s not a road map for the future and so you, it seems to me, and I’m interpreting Chris, it seems to me that you looked at the future and you said, “In order to get where I want to go I need to invest in communications in marketing,” and you’ve got some people I think on your team who for the most part, that’s what they do and they may not– I don’t even know if the s–
Chris: Yes, there’s two full time people.
Michael: They don’t even sell policies.
Chris: That’s all they do. They’re not licensed and I think that’s the biggest misconception. People say, “Oh, I have marketing people and they’re marketing accounts to insurance carriers as well.”
Michael: [laughs] Yes, okay.
Chris: That’s not the same marketing that I’m trying to express in the senses of having people communicate with the outside world, whether it’s internet, whether it’s traditional, however it might be.
Michael: You say you have two marketers, what do they actually do and how do you measure their success?
Chris: A great question. Let’s first take what they do and I’m going to give a laundry list of things of what they do so we can actually figure out some measurable attributes of what they’re doing. First and foremost, we have an agency app that we feel is very important because the world’s gone mobile and it’s gone mobile a long time ago, this isn’t recent. Getting our prospects and clients to download our app and sharing how to use it is very important. First and foremost, we can measure and we measure every single week, how many people are actually downloading the app.
I think every agency should have an app because the first thing we all do when we get up in the morning is we grab our phone and we go onto Facebook, LinkedIn, whatever it might be and we’re using an app, so that’s one thing we do on a very consistent basis. We write blogs on a regular basis because it’s so very important and vital to search, so blogging is a big deal.
Michael: How frequently do you write it and what would be your ideal?
Chris: My ideal maybe different than somebody else’s, especially somebody who’s starting. If you’re starting, I would tell you first and foremost, the key is you got to be blogging twice a week. Should you be more? Yes, but if you’re starting, it’s like starting off and saying, “I’m going to run a marathon tomorrow but I haven’t ran in the last 10 years,” you just don’t do that. Start off by blogging twice a week.
The other thing is, is make sure you’re consistent. If you’re writing blogs on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 10:00 and noon, pick and be consistent with writing blogs during those times. That’s the best advice.
Michael: How do you select the content about which you or somebody on your team will write?
Chris: Okay. We have four personas created for our blogs and most people may not understand what a persona is. I would ask anybody who’s listening, who would send me an email, I could send them an outline on how you define your persona.
What a persona is is basically an outline of your ideal customer. For example, I’m going to take one of my personas. It’s a husband and wife, married, 42 years old. Wife is a stay-at-home mom, has three children. They have a house about 4000 square feet. The gentleman owns his own manufacturing business, and has a lake house, and collects cars, loves snowmobiling or jet skiing.
Michael: [laughs] Okay.
Chris: Annual income is in excess of $350,000. Their kids are in private school. You see how all these little details, they help create a story and we’re trying to relate and tell a story of the ideal customer or prospects we’re looking to write. We have four personas and we stick to those four personas and we do go off of them, for example, seasonal. For example, right now we’re in motorcycle season, right?
Michael: Yes.
Chris: We’re in classic car season. In November, we’re in snowmobile season. We stick to those four personas and then we also stick to our seasonal marketing. So in the summer, it will be motorcycles, classic cars, and jet skis, boats. In the winter, it will be snowmobiles, things of that sort.
Michael: All right. Le’t circle back to your ideal customer with the large home, and all the toys, and the kids in private schools, whatever his name is. Fred and Nancy. How do you select a story, or a content, or a blog post that you think they’ll be interested in?
Chris: It’s really what we’re trying to attract first and foremost and adding the story of, for example, maybe a claim that may have taken place. We try to actually blend our story in with actual claim stories, so when we get our claim specialist takes down claims, they actively share with our marketing people to be able to help integrate those types of claims into a blog.
Michael: Got it.
Chris: For example, the gentleman decided to go off and buy some properties and he decided to buy DP1s and ended up having somebody move out and the dishwasher lined blue, which ended up causing a claim but as we know on a DP1 that is not a covered loss. What did Fred learn from purchasing that insurance? Not all insurance is equal and/or the same, right?
Michael: Yes.
Chris: Price plays a role but sometimes, the cheapest is the most expensive. We get in to telling that story.
Michael: Got it, all right. I’m going to get into the weeds on this because I want this to be as practical as possible. Let’s say, somebody, maybe a producer becomes aware of a claim, who actually writes the blog? Is it the producer or is it one of your marketers?
Chris: Our marketing people. Our producers don’t write any of the blogs.
Michael: Got it and how does the marketer find out? Where do they get the information? Is it their job to pursue that from the rest of the team or-
Chris: Yes.
Michael: – is the rest of the team, are they primed to share stories?
Chris: No, it’s a combination but it’s really perceived coming from our claim specialist and say, “Hey, this is an interesting story. This is a unique type of claim.” We’ve had some very unique claims. Stories sell, people want to read stories, so a true story like that and filling them in with the details as every insurance agents has one of those wow factors, like, “Wow, I would’ve never imagined a claim like this.” But you got to share those stories.
Michael: Got it, okay. Your marketers blog, presumably they– are they also responsible for some of your social media posting?
Chris: They are responsible for about 80% of my social marketing. We believe that visual content marketing is king. People can argue that, I get it. Everybody says, “Will, content is king.” Well, your content’s not being read without the visuals. The world’s gone visual, so visual content marketing to us is king. We create an awful lot of our visuals. We don’t go out and purchase, we go out and create. We take a lot of pictures and if we’re going to get some stock photos, we’re going to make sure we’re going to the right areas, that we’re not stealing things and going to put ourselves in a bad situation.
Michael: Which platforms do you find most useful for your agency?
Chris: I brought on a graphic designer, so we use a paid tool and I forget the name of it but it’s not a cheap, but for years we used picmonkey.com. Very easy tool that you can draw pictures in there, and create verbiage and put them on, and create your own branded visuals to put out in the social world.
Michael: What do you find as the most valuable social media platforms for the agency?
Chris: I would say it would depend. If you told me you have a prospect and you want to learn more about them in order to write them, and I know that kind of sounds odd, but learning from life insurance and being trained in life insurance, I was always trained, if you get in someone’s house and you don’t sell them, it’s a lack of trust because everything they love is on the walls. Well, with that being said, it’s Pinterest. Pinterest is an extremely powerful tool. If you’re on Pinterest, I can learn everything about you in three minutes.
Michael: Now, is Pinterest an important platform for your agency to post on or are you using it fundamentally for research?
Chris: Both. We post on there every single day and we research on there every day, and we add a third attribute to Pinterest is for search engine optimization, getting our website to be found through back linking and hashtagging but we take all of our visuals and we place them in the Pinterest world. Which you can’t forget is 81% of users in the Pinterest world are women, which is an extremely powerful tool to connect with women because women are decision-makers as a whole on personal lines insurance.
Michael: All right, I want to– Okay. I want to play a real quick game of word association, okay? Short answers but– [laughs] I’m going to ask you to be short but really smart, okay?
Chris: Okay. That might be hard for me, Michael.
[laughter]
Michael: Okay. Well, let’s start with this one. I’m going to name social media platforms and give me your quick insight and usefulness about them. Okay, start with Pinterest first.
Chris: Start with Pinterest?
Michael: Yes, and anything else you asso–
Chris: Extremely useful tool for personal lines sales.
Michael: Okay. Facebook.
Chris: Everybody is there that I want to sell insurance. By far, one of the easiest platforms to generate business.
Michael: All right. Do you use Facebook advertising?
Chris: I do.
Michael: Okay. Twitter.
Chris: A great way to connect with untouchable people such as CEOs and/or people with big names
Michael: Yes, okay. LinkedIn?
Chris: Absolutely intricate in order to build relationships with prospects that you may have never been able to meet or get in front of.
Michael: Got it. Instagram.
Chris: It is a visual world and it’s all about visual branding, so my one word would be branding.
Michael: I want to circle back to that in a moment. I’m going to ask you, are there any others that–?
Chris: Yes. The most ingenious tool that’s not being used out there is Google+, and it’s for one thing, niche marketing.
Michael: Okay. All right. Okay, now I want to circle back to this concept, this principle that I think for your shop it’s a uniting principle and that’s the notion of a brand guideline.
Chris: Yes, absolutely.
Michael: You have developed one and I think it probably gives alignment to your team so that they sort of color within the lines and they say the the right staff and it has the right impact and the right energy. Tell us a little bit about– What was the process you used to develop your brand guidelines? And maybe you want to share from your perspective what that even means.
Chris: Well, the brand guideline is everything to having social success. If your social media marketing without a brand guideline, I would tell you, in your having success, you’re limiting your success because you could have massive success if you just got a guideline of your brand. For example, it all starts with colors and if you said, “Hey, I want to be even more basic than that.” It starts with a logo.
Everything you place in the world of YouTube and/or the social world, which we did leave out YouTube, which I do consider a social platform but some people would not, but it starts with a logo. Your logo needs to be on everything you’re placing out into the social world. I don’t care if they’re quotes, I don’t care if there’s pictures of staff, I don’t care if there’s pictures of your staff with your customers. Everything you put out there into the social or internet world, you should be using your logo.
Michael: To you, what are the other elements of a successful brand guideline for an agency?
Chris: I would tell you, your colors play an enormous role along with your guidelines. Guidelines, meaning, what are the size of the picture? What is the size of the font of the lettering? Not only size of the font, what is the actual look? Is it block? Is it cursive? When I tell you, it’s very, very, very detailed, it’s detailed so much so that if somebody sees a visual picture of Paradiso Insurance, you’re going to see that they all have similarities. Basically, we’re trying to give you the theme of being like Apple, we are everywhere. Or like GIGO, GIGO is everywhere, right?
Michael: Yes.
Chris: Which we don’t have marketing budgets that they have, so we have to make that image be as though we’re everywhere.
Michael: Chris, there’s an element in good brand guidelines and I know that this is part of yours, that seems to indicate– what is it that you stand for? In other words, when I see your postings on LinkedIn, for example, there’s a consistency of message. The content has to say the right thing. What is it that’s important to you in that part of your brand?
Chris: Well, I think your brand’s got to be more than just your industry, meaning, well, most agencies or we give great service. We don’t survey our people but we say it, right?
Michael: Right.
Chris: But the brand is much more than that. Who are you? What do you stand for? We believe in our military, we believe in our country. We take some political views as, for example, when the football player– I won’t say his name to give him credit but he refused to stand. Why I chose to stand was one of our, by far, most active blogs that we’ve ever written for being visual. Why? We’re connecting with people who believe in what we believe in and that’s who I want to insure. I want to insure the military men and women, I want to insure people who have respect for veterans, for our flag, or for the charities that we get behind.
Our brand states who we are and what we stand for. A quick five of them would be family, shop mall, shop local. We believe in charitable and giving back to our community. We believe in our military. These are just some of our– It’s our foundation and last but not least, would be customer experience because the one thing we focus within our brand is, our brand is created around our community and our clients. When people say, “What kind of culture do you have?” Our culture is focused on our customers and our prospects. It’s not focused on our employees. I don’t mean that in disrespect.
We focus on our staff and our teammates that, “Hey, I may sign your check but your check and its amount is written by your customers, not by Chris Parodiso or Paradiso Insurance.” Our culture is a big part of our brand which is focused around customer experience and centered around our customers.
Michael: If I were in Connecticut, which as you know happens from time to time and I had stumbled across one of your customers, what would you love them to say about their experience with you? What is the ideal customer experience for a Paradiso customer?
Chris: That they understand their coverage and they’re comfortable calling us when they’re in need.
Michael: Got it.
Chris: I think that is critical because the difference between a good and a great agency I think is, are we there when they’re in need? Are we going to show up when they have a house fire? Yes, we’re going to be there, right alongside with them looking for the contents that they’d be looking for. It’s happened, it will always happen, I will never change that. I think we need to be there when they need us most.
Michael: How do you communicate to them so that they actually do understand their coverage?
Chris: Well, I think one thing right now that’s intricate and I would say if you want to say you want to be different but you really want to explain coverage and the importance of coverage, I would tell you video presentations– I’m sorry, video proposals. Absolutely intricate because there’s so much business being done on the phone and by email. Why should you not visually create a video, which there’s a great tool out there called Loom. L-O-O-M and it’s free and you can create a video proposal for a client, where they can see you, you highlighted and went through line by line all the coverages and it never goes away, it can stay in your management system. What better way to explain coverage?
Michael: Right, okay. Do you have a template that you use? If it’s a policy that you sell hundreds or thousands of, do you share the same video proposal or do you personalize each one?
Chris: No, every single one is personally done by the salesperson.
Michael: Got it, all right.
Chris: You’re talking to them, you’re saying their name, their address. Making sure they know that you’re specifically speaking to them. It’s a three-minute video. It explains their home and auto, and umbrella, why they need an umbrella. It’s quick, it’s to the point, it’s in front of them, it does not get any better in showing people what coverages they have, and why they have them, and what they need.
Michael: Right, okay. Chris, I know you’re also a believer in communicating to your existing customers throughout the year and delivering ongoing value and that you obviously are a passionate believer in email marketing. Tell us a little bit about the kind of message that you deliver to your customers throughout the year.
Chris: First and foremost, I think we need to realize and I don’t say this lightly, I love the independent agency owners because I think they’re passionate believers in their communities but I think what we’ve done, our industry has done a poor job at is communicating with existing customers and even worse, on onboarding new customers. We’ve created a 28-point touch onboarding system. Which is 28 touches by email, along with six touches by print. That’s going to happen in the first nine months that a new customer is with us.
Michael: What kind of–?
Chris: What are some of the touches? One of the touches is going to be a thank you video from me and my family. Thanking you for choosing to do business with Paradiso Insurance because you have a lot of options.
Another one is going to be please download our app. We are here for you 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Through the app, you can communicate to us, you can file a claim, you can pay your bills. We’re going to ask you to leave a review for us. Day seven, you’re going to get an email with a survey, we want to know your experience. Day 15, you’re going to get the Paradiso promises by video. You’re also going to get them in the mail 60 days from your policy in print. You’re also going to get a thank you letter written to you by whatever agent and/or CSR that wrote your account.
We do tag team the emails with the print but I will tell you some of the best emails we have are our surveys. We survey you within the first 30 days that you come on board and/or renew and we survey you 90 days prior to renewal. Why 90 days? Because if we’ve screwed up in our experience or they’ve had a bad experience, or we didn’t call them back, or we failed, they’re going to sell that out.
We instantly, when we get that, we pick up the phone and call them and we also, not only do that, we send them a thank you for filling out the survey and we give them a gift card because we always reward for people filling out our surveys, so that they continue to fill out our surveys. We can’t get better if they don’t tell us what we’re failing at or not doing well. Those are a few touch points.
Michael: Yes, all right. I want to switch gears on technology here for a moment, okay?
Chris: Sure.
Michael: Well, I know that you have a passion for technology and how it can help todays insurance agent or broker. From previous conversations we’ve had, I know you have some interest in the developing AI or artificial intelligence, bot contributions that maybe made, some would say to disrupt, but some also could say to enhance. What are you keeping your finger on the pulse of there in the bot world?
Chris: Well, I think the bot world right now– I love Forrester Research and Ellen Carney, so I spend a large amount of time emailing, calling her to figure out– she studies buying habits in the insurance space, which is very, very, very helpful for us to understand what’s going on, how are people looking to buy insurance, and what is actually taking place, what kind of experience are they having.
Bots is a very interesting topic, it’s been around since 2004, most people haven’t even heard of it, until about 18 months ago and still like 80% of people have no idea what it is. But I think it can do two different things. I think it’s going to disrupt the industry and it already has, like with what’s going on with Alexa and I think the biggest is it could be a huge attribute.
Right now, today, May of 2017, I would tell you most bots, the issue comes down with the costumer experience. 68% of people leave a bot, leave unhappy because they have not– the technology isn’t there to give a great customer experience. I like to explain it but the people say, “Jeez, can you explain? I don’t really understand what it is.” Have you ever had an Alexa and you say, “Alexa,” and it’s playing music and it’s playing really loud, “Alexa, turn down the music.” It doesn’t turn it down. “Alexa.” You have to say it 10 times. That is very frustrating and that is exactly the frustration with a bot.
If you’re communicating with a bot on your website, what kind of experience can it give you? Can it answer your questions? Right now, they’re not there. I would say they’re probably 90 to 120 days out. I don’t think they’re that much further out. By the time people are listening to this, I think bots will have come even farther. They are close to giving a good customer experience. I would tell you probably not until next year that it’s going to be a great customer experience.
Michael: How do you see that either disrupting or enhancing the insurance experience?
Chris: Well, like I said, it would do both and how, it’s going to disrupt because it’s going to continue to bring more people to be online. Those bots that are going to be on websites are going to– how is it going to disrupt? Those that don’t have it, don’t understand it, don’t research it, I think it’s going to be hard to attract new business and/or retain business because a bot is either going to be able to as right now that we’re beta testing and working with a company out of Canada. A bot is going to be able to– you’re going to be able to communicate with that on my website, it’s going to put it in a rater and come back with a quote.
Those that don’t have that, the disruption part is, I think it’s going to hurt those that are ignoring it. How it’s going to continue to help is really, I think it’s going to help service customers. I think it’s going to generate new business but I think it’s going to help agencies cut cost with just doing insurance certificates, insurance cards, and things of that sort. I don’t think that it’s that far away. I think it can be very intricate to helping your bottom line of your agency because it’s going to allow people to self-service and that’s what people want today.
Michael: All right. If you were going to deliver a message to today’s agency or brokerage leader, the owner and I’m going to ask you to try to– let’s put it on a billboard, okay? The fewer words, the more powerful. [chuckles] If you were going to deliver one message to this industry, what would it be?
Chris: Invest in marketing. Invest in technology.
Michael: [laughs] Okay, very good. [laughs] Two things that you know that we feel very, very strongly about. Thanks for that. All right. Chris, I’m going to wind it up here but tell us, what’s in your near future? Do you have speaking engagements? Where can people see you? What has you excited about? What’s coming up in Chris Paradiso’s life?
Chris: Quite a few speaking engagements. Going to be a little bit all over the country. Doing two two-day workshops up in Canada, speaking at the PIA, opening up a three-hour session to the PIA of New Jersey in Atlantic City.
Come September, October, November, it’s a little bit everywhere to what state aren’t we in, which is kind of interesting. If they want to find me and if you want to learn some more about marketing in the insurance base, everything we do is free, it’s at www.paradisopresents.com. We constantly put up content to show agencies why they should be using LOOM and how to use it, what hashtags to be using. Just insurance marketing tips for insurance professionals. Just trying to help the industry and help the independent agent.
Michael: If you were going to gift one book to every listener of this audience, what would it be?
Chris: It would be Looking from the Outside In by Forrester Research. I think we get caught up and not putting ourselves in the customer’s shoes and that’s a bad slip up.
Michael: Got it, all right. Chris, as always it’s a pleasure spending some time with you. Next time I’m in Connecticut, I think dinner’s on me, so–
Chris: I can’t wait.
Michael: [laughs]
Chris: I thank you for having me. I’m excited. You got to let me know when you’re coming out to-
Michael: I always do.
Chris: – the great state of Connecticut.
Michael: I always do. All right. Chris, thanks so much. It was a pleasure talking to you. Have a wonderful day.
Chris: Thank you. Thanks for having me.