There’s no shortage of options when it comes to industry podcasts, but for many listeners, the go-to show is The Insurance Guys, where Alabama-based co-hosts Bradley Flowers and Scott Howell offer a deep dive into the big issues of the day in a refreshing down-home manner.
Paired with a keen ear for the questions people are asking, their banter and easygoing style—one that counters the often button-down style of many other industry forums—has earned them around two million downloads over the past seven years and an enthusiastic fanbase.
The freewheeling approach is deliberate. “Scott equates it to combining WWE with insurance,” Flowers says. “You’ve got to have that . . . insurance is boring. I often joke that the reason we didn’t make a consumer-facing insurance podcast is we didn’t want Ambien to sue us because we put too many people to sleep. That’s where our personalities come in.”
The result is appealing. “Hands-down the best podcast there is in the insurance industry,” says one listener in an Apple Podcasts review. “Great content, a wealth of knowledge and extremely entertaining. You will want to follow these guys like The Discovery Channel does meerkats!” The show appeals to old-timers and newcomers alike: an agent-reviewer of three years says the two “bring the best and most updated tactics for success in a weekly basis,” while a 40-year veteran enjoys “both the business aspect as well as the social” and “get[s] a kick out of the energy from the guys.”
The Insurance Guys covers the gamut, from nuts-and-bolts issues to niche markets. The variety of topics is reflected in episode titles like “Making Non-Standard Auto Profitable” and “Axe Throwing Insurance.” The straight-talking approach can be seen in titles like “Get Your @$$ Out From Behind That Desk…Unless You Are Sick.”
Over the course of more than 300 episodes, the show’s guest list reads like an industry who’s who, including Joseph Petrelli and Jim Hackbarth (and Troy Korsgaden). Among other big-name interviewees has been entrepreneur and bestselling author Gary Vaynerchuk.
Episodes that deal with operations are always popular. That’s “because so many insurance agencies are not run like a company,” observes Flowers. “Most people that listen to our show, everybody knows how to sell insurance,” he adds. “It’s all the other stuff that people struggle with. One of our best-performing podcasts is one on how we pay our employees, how we structure compensation and things like that.”
Flowers’ friend Jesse Cole, the owner of the Savannah Bananas baseball team known for its unconventional approach to the sports business, was an especially well-received guest. “He just talked about how do you differentiate yourself from your competition and make people remember you,” Flowers says.
Intentional approach
The Insurance Guys men first connected when they were building their own businesses after working as captive agents. Howell came to the industry after graduating from Birmingham-Southern College with a business degree and serving four years in the Marine Corps. For his part, Flowers says he is the only person he knows who had wanted to sell insurance since being a kid (who loved golf, and discovered all the adults he played with were in the industry).
Flowers’ early use of social media in building his business drew the attention of the Wall Street Journal, whose report brought him to the attention of Howell, who hosted a YouTube show for agents. He invited Flowers on as a guest and the two hit it off. When they launched their podcast in 2017, it was, Flowers says, with some selfish motivation: they wanted to get to speak with some of the industry’s heavy hitters for help with their own businesses. “Not coincidentally, those are also people that other insurance agents want to get to know,” Flowers adds. “So, people started listening, and it snowballed.”
The laidback style of the podcast belies some serious behind-the-scenes effort. Flowers and Howell are very intentional about who they have on the show—every potential guest is vetted—and when the episode is broadcast for maximum interest and impact. “If someone has been on a bunch of podcasts, we’ll still do it, but we’ll hold it and release it later,” Flowers says.
Another reason for The Insurance Guys’ appeal is its hosts are in the trenches themselves, running their own agencies. Between them, they employ around 60 people in Mobile (Flowers: Portal Insurance) and Huntsville (Howell: iProtect Insurance and Financial Services). Howell drives to Mobile every couple of months when the pair records another batch of podcasts over two days.
The partners play to their strengths. Flowers handles all the guest selection while Howell is responsible for making sure any conversation doesn’t get so deep in the weeds that listeners may not understand what’s being talked about. (“One time [I and a guest] were talking about API [application programming interface] connections with tech companies, and Scott says, ‘Hey, what the hell is an API?’ But that works because 80% of the listeners are thinking the same thing,” Flowers recalls. “He’s not scared to ask the simple question.”) Flowers appreciates the appeal of Howell’s “wild card, eccentric personality,” while in return, Howell recognizes the importance of Flowers’ “velvet glove touch” when addressing sensitive topics.
In addition to scratching where people are itching, Flowers and Howell want to unsettle some of the industry status quo. “I think that the worst phrase that anyone can utter in the business world is, ‘This is the way we’ve always done it,’” says Flowers. “And I think the insurance industry is the epitome of this . . .” He views himself and Howell “a little bit as, like, the Pied Piper of, ‘Hey, there are better ways to do things, and just because we’ve done things this way doesn’t mean we have to continue to do that.’”
Part of that is due to their having come to the industry from outside. “We were captive insurance agent employees that eventually went independent,” Flowers says. “We were not in the cliques; we were not in the clubs. We were not involved in the associations.” Their willingness to call things how they see them “invokes trust from the listeners,” he believes. “We’re real honest and comfortable in who we are.”
Intranet answers
The success of the podcast has led to other opportunities. “When you talk to as many insurance agents as we do, you see the gaps in the industry,” says Flowers. “You see where there are needs, and so our plan is to fill some of those needs.”
So far, that has included two popular industry conferences among the first gatherings post-COVID-19 shutdown. The partners brought their disruptor eye to the events (most conferences being “stale, pale and male,” says Flowers). That included hiring a celebrity chef to cater lunch and having a DeLorean brought in for photo ops. Despite the success, they have put a pause on further events. “It’s a lot of work, and event planning is not my jam,” says Flowers. Plus, the conference event space has since gotten more crowded. “We may bring it back,” Flowers adds. “We’ll see.”
Meanwhile, the pair is providing other industry help through Mind Your Agency, launched earlier this year. The business offers affordable intranet services to agencies. “And then we’ve got a few more projects up our sleeve that I can’t talk about yet,” says Flowers. “That’s our ultimate goal, to expand outside of just the podcast and more into other things.”
As Flowers notes, their podcast perch gives them a broader view of the industry than many others. So, what do they see as the big pressing issue? “I think the biggest challenge is running your agency like a business,” Flowers offers, “getting out of the mindset of your old-school insurance agency.”
He speaks of the typical scenario of a lone agent selling insurance with the support of three or four customer service reps. “I think we’ve got to get out of that mindset and [start] thinking more like a business where the agency owner is not the bottleneck for everything. Everything’s not funneled through the agency owner—in fact, it’s the other way around: the agency owner only hears about things that are super important and nothing is holding things up.”
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