Building a repeatable process, communication, and becoming an industry expert with Jason Walker (President at Agency Revolution)

Jason Walker 00:00

It was very impatient early on, and that led to, and I'll say it here, some difficult discussions with people that I've gone back to and will continue to go back to and say, "You know what? That wasn't the best version of myself," and it all centered around patience.

Callan Harrington 00:19

You're listening to That Worked, a show that breaks down the careers of top founders and executives and pulls out those key items that led to their success. I'm your host, Callan Harrington, founder of Flashgrowth, and I couldn't be more excited that you're here. Jason, welcome to the show. For our listeners, this is my first time recording in person at somebody's house on the road. So if we have any issues on air, be sure to let Jason know. Jason, thanks for going on the show, man.

Jason Walker 00:53 

Thank you, Callan, appreciate having you here at my house. This has actually made it a lot easier for me. I'm pretty excited about it. We've been talking about doing this for a while. So to actually do it is pretty fun. So Jason, you are the president at Agency Revolution. We've known each other for a while. Why don't you tell everybody a little bit about what you do for Agency Revolution and what Agency Revolution is?

Jason Walker 01:12

Agency Revolution is a digital marketing company, and our goal is to help drive growth and retention on behalf of independent insurance agencies. We do that by providing websites. We actually just made a really cool acquisition at the end of last year, a company called Forge3. And then on the back end, we run a marketing automation solution that helps independent agencies communicate with their customers on an ongoing basis and hopefully grow share of wallet over time.

Callan Harrington 01:40 

So they're owned by private equity. Is that correct?

Jason Walker 01:42 

They are, yes.

Callan Harrington 01:44

I'm excited to dive into how that's been different from some of the other companies I know. You've had a couple of exits in that world, so, and you're the president of them. What are your day-to-day responsibilities?

Jason Walker 01:57

Our team is accountable for, ultimately, our growth and retention of customers. There's a lot of focus on net revenue retention, customer satisfaction, and making sure our company is in the public space. So, conference attendance, speaking engagements, doing things like this with you, podcasts, just making sure that everyone understands the benefit and value of our solutions. And again, what we're trying to do is digitally enable our customer base so they can start to balance the human side with some tech automation.

Callan Harrington 02:32

So where did your career start out? One of the things about Jason, Jason was an English major. I remember when I first heard this, I was like, "Okay, why did somebody get into business who was an English major?" And then I realized more, I was like, "My God, do I wish I was an English major." It would have helped me with writing and everything because you do so much of that. What did you originally set out to do?

Jason Walker 02:56

I had my life planned ever since I saw the movie "A Few Good Men." I wanted to be an attorney. Obviously, I knew that was Hollywood's version or take, so I started to learn more and more about it. Early on, I was mentored by some attorneys, and they said, "Figure out which subject you excel in and continue to march towards that particular subject. When you go to law school, you just have to do something really well, and if you're good at English, that's a bonus because you're going to do a lot of writing and speaking." So that's how I got into the English space because I wanted to be an attorney. That all changed very quickly.

Callan Harrington 03:34

How come?

Jason Walker 03:35

I met my wife.

Callan Harrington 03:37

And she didn't like attorneys?

Jason Walker 03:37

No, I met her in undergrad at The Ohio State University, and we were both English majors, and my outlook on life changed ever since that moment. Sounds kind of like a cute love story, I guess it would be, but I did not want to commit myself to being an attorney at that point. I wanted to try something different and not put so much of myself into school and billable hours.

Callan Harrington 03:58

Gotcha. When you realized you didn't want to do it, where did you then turn to? Because an English degree is very generic. I knew I needed to do something else.

Jason Walker 04:02

I was working at the time for the state of Ohio. It was called the Legislative Service Commission, and I was helping to draft resolutions on behalf of the House and Senate, both sides of the aisle. We were non-partisan, and at night, I decided to get my MBA. So I was going to night school to have something that had some business acumen tied into the ability to speak and write, and I was hoping that I could tie those things together to move more into the private space.

Callan Harrington 04:34 

What drove the decision to go to business school, just in general?

Jason Walker 04:37 

It felt like it would help me be able to, I guess, interview with companies and take a stance that wasn't just around being able to speak eloquently. It was understanding what makes a business tick. When you get a general MBA, you go through the legal side, the financial side, the marketing side, so you're kind of picking up on how a business is built, managed, and run. I figured that would be helpful because I knew that I did not want to continue to just work in public service all my life.

Callan Harrington 05:07

Why was that? What was it about public service that just didn't sit with you?

Jason Walker 05:11

Nothing against public service work. It just wasn't right for me. Because I, of course, when I was thinking about being an attorney, I had this grand vision of I would immediately rise to the top. From the perspective of what drives me, it's more of that entrepreneurial spirit. I know your podcast picks up on that a lot, so I guess that's something that ties me to some of the other guests, is having an entrepreneurial spirit, wanting to build something, and immediately seeing the successes from it. It's not that you can't do that in public service, but there are more paths that you have to move through sometimes. I wanted to somewhat fast track my career, and I felt that was the best decision for me to go into the private side, and the MBA would help catapult me into that.

Callan Harrington 05:52

So when did you get your MBA?

Jason Walker 05:56

I think I completed it towards the end of 2007 or actually 2006. Yeah, I completed it in 2006-2007.

Callan Harrington 06:03

Has that still kind of impacted your career today?

Jason Walker 06:07

It has. So I will credit the fact that I was in an MBA program for where I'm at today. It wasn't necessarily based on the education; it was more based on the people that I met. I was able to meet other business owners or those in managerial or VP director roles within particular companies. That gave me access. Of course, I learned a lot, and we always had to speak and give presentations. But I felt like the biggest effect from getting my MBA was building the network.

Callan Harrington 06:39

I believe that makes total sense. Of course, that's a huge debate, and people debate even more about undergrad. Do you go to undergrad? Do you not go to undergrad? I don't know where my career would have gone if I didn't, and I was super fortunate to even be able to do that. But I met so many people through there that I still connect with to this day, people I met in college. I've heard very similar things on the MBA side. Just to get a download on real-world experience, the only other way you could do that is essentially if you're networking like crazy and working your way up in a position. That makes a lot of sense. So when you graduated, where did you go?

Jason Walker 07:17

I started with a company called Auto Dealer Traffic, a local digital marketing company in Columbus, Ohio. I had met the owner's wife, who was in my MBA cohort, and she recognized that I could write well. She said, "My husband needs someone to ghostwrite and talk all things digital marketing in the automotive sector." I said, "All right." So while I was still getting my MBA, I was ghostwriting as well as working for the Legislative Service Commission, so I had a lot going on. Once I wrapped up the MBA, I was offered a job, and the job quickly turned into, "Let's create something that's not just automotive. Digital marketing can be applied to other industries." We created a company and ended up calling it People To My Site, because it was cool to tell people what you did in your business name at the time. We focused on providing digital marketing solutions to local businesses that usually ratchet up to some national enterprise.

Callan Harrington 08:16

How big of an impact do you think being a good writer has had on your career?

Jason Walker 08:22

It still, to this day, matters. The reason why is because we're communicating, whether it's through email, text messaging, giving a presentation, or building a team around culture. It's understanding how to take the spirit of everything that's bottled up inside of you and make sure that you can articulate it in such a way that resonates with someone else. I'm not advocating for creating something that's fluffy. I'm just saying that the ability to communicate, speak, and write well typically allows someone else to then engage with you, and you can find your commonalities very quickly. If you're not able to do that, it's a much longer road in business and in life in general.

Callan Harrington 09:04

I had a teacher in English. I can't even make this up. In college, I was dreading taking, I think, whatever the 201 version of English was. On the first day, this guy says, "I'm going to tell you in the first 10 minutes of class what we're going to do, and I don't care what you turn in, you're getting an A." And he did it. There's no way he still has that job. I thought it was the greatest thing in the entire world. Then later, I'm like, "Wow, man, I learned nothing. I learned nothing from that experience." But now I think about it all the time, and I still read about copywriting and all that. I'm just curious, more about business, more about just being able to have written business skills or storytelling or all of it. When you think of a good writer, what are those pieces that you think are most valuable?

Jason Walker 09:55

Yeah, I think it's all of it, but it's hard to get there. Just a quick backstory on me. As an English major, I started to go down the route of creative writing, and I took poetry classes. I actually did very well, to the point where it was recommended that I go into more of an honors path. I did not choose to do that because I would have had to spend another half year to a full year in college, and I wanted to get done in four years in undergrad. But that entire experience helped me to narrate and to be able to tell a story from beginning, middle to end. Then, when I was getting my MBA, I learned how to write more from a business perspective and understand that there is a difference between technical writing and creative writing, but being able to bridge those two together is important to all of those forums that I just mentioned to you, whether it's podcasts, speaking engagements, writing something as an article. You need to be able to tell a story to drive some emotion but ultimately, at the end, give something away that someone else can take with them. You have to have that technical writing mastery, and you have to have that creative writing mastery. I am not a master, but I at least had both sides of that equation in my education.

Callan Harrington 11:04

Going back to People To My Site, what were some of the challenges? Because People To My Site grew pretty quickly, and of course, I know about People To My Site because I ended up joining this company later, which ultimately became where we started to work together. What were some of the challenges as you were growing that?

Jason Walker 11:18

Everything was being done for the first time. There was no real playbook for us at People To My Site, and so your challenges were on the table in front of your customer, and your successes were on the table in front of your customer. The fact that we were bootstrapped to revenue, so everything that we did would ultimately allow us to scale and grow our business, hire people, do some cooler marketing initiatives, things like that. I would say it’s that whole startup vibe and mentality of "get your hands dirty, and your customers are going to experience it all with you." Building relationships with those customers that had some personal element to it as well was very important for us to be able to survive.

Callan Harrington 11:58

How did you like that? You mentioned you were in public service, right? Public service, a lot of that, I have to assume, was just laid out for you. Business school, similar, right? You've got a structure that you're following. Now you're in a startup world where there is no structure, and it's figuring it out. It's like, do they like this? Are they not? We're going to take our swing and see how it goes, and you're bootstrapped, so that means you don't have endless resources where, if something goes wrong, you've got a whole team that can help you pull that together. How did you like that?

Jason Walker 12:29

I loved it because, actually, drawing back in a nice way to wrap and weave this, now that I'm thinking about it, the fact that I was a creative writer, for instance, you can create your own narrative and story. If you figure that out very early on when you're building a business, then you can embrace that and say, "Well, then I kind of have control of the destiny or the outcome." So, for me personally, I enjoyed that experience. It's scary, it's stressful, you lose a lot of sleep over it, but at the same time, I'm being given a clean slate where I can create.

Callan Harrington 12:58

That's probably one of the best pieces, right? Whenever I'm recruiting somebody, it's like, "Look, you gotta be comfortable building into the unknown and know that you're going into the tunnel, and you might not find your way out. You might usually do, but you might not." Some people, it's like, "I'd rather do anything but that." And some people are just drawn to it. It's like, you almost can't do it any other way. As you guys were growing that, when was it that you were just kind of like, "Okay, I think we have something here"?

Jason Walker 13:25

We went into a couple of verticals. The most successful initially was franchise companies, usually business-to-business franchise companies. So an example that actually sticks with me today is a print and imaging company that we worked with. A lot of print and imaging shops all across the country were helping small businesses, and then they all roll up to one franchisor. The moment that I looked and said, "Okay, today we're conducting a webinar about our product," which means it's productized, and talking about a beginning, middle, and end as far as the journey of the business customer that we're selling to, and ultimately, what they'll be able to get out of our products, the benefits that are created, and talking about some kind of ROI, not exact mathematics. Then looking back and saying, "Well, today we have 100 people that are participating, and in this family of franchises, we've already got 50 to 60 customers, and I kind of have an understanding, if I've got 100 of these, at least 10 to 20 are going to convert today," it's that moment where you're like, "I literally have a program that I'm selling into a business, and if I wanted to, I could scale up and repeat this." So I would say that it was probably working with that print and imaging franchise business that told me I could do this over and over and over again, and I don't need to just stick with franchising.

Callan Harrington 14:40

How do you do that? How do you build that repeatable process, that repeatable product?

Jason Walker 14:46

You figure out, first and foremost, how much time and expense, from a monetary perspective, is going into that first program that you built. You can do it back of a napkin, you can do it on a spreadsheet, or whatever. You can start to figure out the efficiencies that you can gain if you wanted to add one more person. Because what you should not be doing is building a business and saying, "Well, if I'm going to go after franchise number two, I've got to hire the same amount of people to do it and add the same amount of software, et cetera, et cetera." So you start to figure out, "If I were to do this again, I want to be able to do it with 1.2 people and still have the same number of customers or more." So you're looking for efficiency gains within the business, and you're truly tabulating all of the processes and the steps that you go through from a marketing perspective, a sales perspective, a service perspective, renewing those customers, talking people off that ledge of quitting your program. So you're trying to figure out, in all of those instances and moments, where could you add a little bit more fuel and get the same or more as a result? So for me, it is about walking through the entire process, documenting everything that you do with your customer today, and then saying, "If I were to add the second customer, how would I be able to benefit from it and scale up?"

Callan Harrington 16:02

Do you find that helps you in your role today?

Jason Walker 16:05

Yes, because still today, as President of Agency Revolution, I'm thinking about, "Okay, we sit at a few thousand independent insurance agencies as customers, and we work with some of those that appoint them, like carriers, big enterprise brands. If we're going to grow this from the two to three thousand independent agencies up to in our market, it's about 36,000 to 40,000 independent agencies total addressable market. How do I back into the math of being able to work with the percentage where we can service the customer in the right way, while making sure that we're able to continue to employ more people and create good living wages, et cetera?" The same process of tabulation is conducted in the background in order to be able to grow that business. But you're doing it with partners because you're larger. You've got your VPs, you've got your directors, your managers, and then you've got your frontline individuals who are doing the good work in front of our customers.

Callan Harrington 17:01

So People To My Site ultimately became Shipyard and brought in a couple of organizations together. What was that formation like, and how did things change at that point?

Jason Walker 17:12

We went from focusing on an enterprise with a distributed channel of local businesses, like your franchises of the world, and we brought in a layer that was agnostic to the space, so you could work with enterprises across lawn and gardening. We worked with a large brand, a fast food restaurant, we worked with a large brand. My point is, we're working with these local franchisees, and we ultimately started working or bringing in that more fortune side of the business, these large enterprises that may or may not have distributed sales channels. So it was marketing, it was advertising, and it was done digitally as well as offline. It was expanding the business. But for me, I will admit, sometimes it was uncomfortable because I was very much regimented around large enterprises with distributed sales channels where we built a repeatable program across each one of those locals.

Callan Harrington 18:26

Why was it uncomfortable for you?

Jason Walker 18:27

I think because I didn't have the experience at the time, and we were expanding our client base into something that I wasn't quite adept at building sales and service models around. So by default, I was like, "All right, I guess I'll jump into this," kind of like I did when I left public service and got into the private side.

Callan Harrington 18:37

When you go through a situation like that, how do you make yourself comfortable with it? What are some of the things that you do to bring yourself up to speed to be able to do that role?

Jason Walker 18:46

Read. Actually attend, as an attendee, specific sessions when I would go to conferences. I would sit through sessions and just be able to hear from those that were, whether or not they were senior to me, they might have been in that particular space longer than me. I wanted to hear what they were experiencing and understand the good and bad in the deployment of specific technologies, or, in our case, digital marketing solutions, to a subset of what maybe we're trying to go after as a customer. Just understanding and hearing from experience that wasn't mine helped to open my mind to what's possible. It was also working with partners, and you, for instance, when we partnered, and we might get into that a bit, but you brought a particular skill set and an understanding and knowledge and expertise that I did not have and probably would never have because your career was built a little bit differently. So everybody that I was working with and partnering with on the leadership team brought perspective that helped give me comfort, and I fed off of that. Then that allowed me to play in my lane further, faster, and more confidently.

Callan Harrington 19:42

I think it's such good advice. As you mentioned, the tactical area is when you're at a conference, go sit in the sessions. You learn more about the pain points that are going on, what's happening in the industry, what are the trends, what's on people's minds. I mean, they're gold mines for all of that. I think that's excellent advice. So what ultimately happened with Shipyard?

Jason Walker 20:06

Shipyard recognized what I was pointing out and said, "Well, there are two aspects of our business. One is more about servicing enterprises that are more fortune level, that may not have a distributed sales channel. Then there is this part that I was growing up on and running at the time, which was working with distributed sales channels of businesses, local companies, on behalf of an enterprise." So we started to push into financial services insurance at Shipyard. We were fortunate enough, and are fortunate enough to be here based in Columbus, Ohio, where there are a lot of different insurance carriers that have independent agencies under them. We were fortunate enough to be able to start working with one that had about 12,000 of the independent agencies of the 36,000 to 40,000 that are out there. We built a very succinct business model, to the point where we shed ourselves of some of those companies I talked about where we got our start. We just said, "You know what, we're going to go full force into this insurance space because there's a ton of work to do here." We called that Smart Harbor. We went through an offshoot of Shipyard, its own business and brand, Smart Harbor, still playing off of the whole nautical theme, and we went straight into the insurance space. There was no looking back at that point. I'm glad that we did that because I believe in focus. Like you said, when you start early on, you're a generalist, but as you continue to mature in your career, it's okay to embrace the fact that there is a place for you, and there might be an industry for you. I found that in insurance with my partners, and we grew that business to the point of exit, which was a great experience along the way.

Callan Harrington 22:27

Why is focus so important?

Jason Walker 22:29

Because if you do not focus, you water yourself down, you water the brand down, you water your value proposition down. You don't look like you actually know enough about any given industry. When you're building a program and a product that's repeatable, a SaaS-based product, to say, "Oh, well, I offer this to dentists and car dealers and franchising and you insurance agencies," it becomes questionable whether or not you actually understand and are entrenched in the industry that you say you can help. So I don't believe in watering down the value proposition and trying to just bite off too much that you can't chew it all. Focus has always been something that's helped me and my partners win. I feel like it's a formula we can stick to.

Callan Harrington 23:10

Yeah, I think that focus helps so much, especially in the early stages. As you get bigger, you can create a whole business unit that's as big as any one of these companies that focuses on and goes really deep into that industry. But I think you're right, even at the smallest level, the biggest challenge is, in the beginning, you just don't want to cut anybody out. A lot of times, you're just whoever's got a pulse you're signing that contract. When you're living off of revenue, that's important, and it takes a little bit to get there. But once you're in there, everything becomes so much easier. Who you're talking to, your branding, your conferences that you attend, your training material, everything just becomes so much easier, and you could always broaden later. That makes so much sense.

Jason Walker 23:59

Well, and I think that's also a nice jump to where we started, which is working with Agency Revolution. Agency Revolution is part of FMG Suite, a company, and FMG is one of the largest, if not the largest, players in digital marketing solutions and platforms offered to financial advisors. So, to your point, when you grow and you're growing at scale, you can start to consider other industries. FMG Suite came to Agency Revolution several years ago and acquired them to continue to build out in something that was adjacent, at least working within insurance. And that's when that can happen. When we were at Smart Harbor, we could only handle the insurance space at that time. There was no ability for us to be able to expand. But now I'm working in a company that has that ability to expand. That's a perfect example.

Callan Harrington 24:59

It's a perfect example because they started out on that financial advisor side and then acquired into it, and they had the resources to be able to do that. I think it's an excellent example. So you sold Smart Harbor, which was a spin-out of the Shipyard, to a private equity company. What did you do then?

Jason Walker 25:16

I started a consultancy. The reason why I started the consultancy is because while running Smart Harbor, we were good at digital marketing solutions and building out programs on behalf of independent agencies. But every time we would talk to an agency, they would say, "Either I'm not interested because of these reasons, or I am interested, but can you tell me how to solve for the things that you don't sell or provide?" Agencies were always talking about the next thing to help them grow and retain their business. So I wanted to understand, in totality, what does an independent insurance agency need? What do they want in order to improve the lives of those that are working at the agency as well as their customer base? So I started a consultancy called Agency InsurTech, and the entire goal was to consult independent agents and then work across the lines with independent insurance carriers and then work with the insurance technology firms that were supporting the agents in order to create a better, harmonious world. That was the focus for the next three years after selling Smart Harbor.

Callan Harrington 26:18

That method helps so much. What I mean by that method in particular is one of the things that I found was if I sold marketing solutions, I didn't care at all about the accounting side of the house, but the business is a full business. If you're selling to the owner, the owner is dealing with all of that. When you got this more well-rounded experience, how much did that help you in what you're doing now?

Jason Walker 26:43

Incredibly. I can also admit with Agency Revolution, I'm already going out on speaking engagements. It's a new year, and I'm talking about the bigger picture. I'm not just talking about what we do as a brand. What we do as a brand fits into that life cycle of the customer, the life cycle of the agent. But I'm also able to acknowledge the other pain points that an agency has, and the places where, if they put our product and or some other product into their mix, it truly can impact each portion of the organization. Not always is someone trying to figure out renewing and retaining customers or marketing and selling to customers. They might be trying to figure out pieces that apply more to the finance organization within the agency or the risk management and solution side of the business. Just being able to speak at that level, again, creating a beginning, middle, and end and a narrative allows the other party to say, "All right, this guy understands this industry, this business, and is not just trying to peddle the next product." That's, I think, the evolution of just the career itself.

Callan Harrington 27:47 

If you could go back, if I'm hearing you, it took you going out and starting your own consultancy to get this well-rounded experience. If you could go back and do that when you were at Shipyard and Smart Harbor, how would you go about doing that?

Jason Walker 28:01

I started to catch on really late, right before we exited Smart Harbor, to the fact that agents are asking for more. I felt like, "Okay, Smart Harbor can only do so much." So if I were to go back and run that experience again, knowing what I know, I would figure out how to be someone who is helping make connections between technologies that ultimately then fit our portion or our websites that we're selling into that mix of the customer life cycle, the agent life cycle. So I would want to be front and center to advise agents on, "These are the things that you need to do. This is how we fit into that picture. But here's how it works well-rounded for you." To have that conversation would have elevated us, I believe, from a SaaS-based business selling one product, or maybe a couple of products, into more of an advisory solution with a SaaS product on top. That is where I feel like I am now with Agency Revolution because I'm able to take both sides of that business. We've got products to sell, but we also have a vision to discuss that is applicable to the independent agency and the business that they're trying to perpetuate.

Callan Harrington 29:07

So if I'm hearing you correctly, it's how does this fit into the whole pie as opposed to just selling a piece of the pie? We're selling the whole pie. We may not do the whole pie, but we're giving you the whole thing, so you don't have to go out and piece all this together on your own.

Jason Walker 29:21

Yeah, in my consultancy, part of it was kind of tongue in cheek. I would talk about like I'm a glorified matchmaker. What I was getting at was I'm trying to bring all the players together on some unified platform and solution technologies and then demonstrate how that ultimately benefits everyone within that value chain. That now is where I'm graduated, where I have graduated, and where I hope to take Agency Revolution.

Callan Harrington 29:47

You started your own business, you ran a successful consulting company. Why leave?

Jason Walker 29:52

Because it wasn't fulfilling the itch around what I know I was missing: people. I was missing working with others that are better and smarter than me, that can ultimately drive something more than I can on my own. Not that there was anything wrong with the consulting world. It was flexible. I could create my own hours. It was great. Pay is good when it's good, all of that. But what I was missing was the ability to build something greater than myself, and by jumping back into this product side, I have that again. I have that in an age where I feel like even those that I'm speaking with, working with, partnering with, we all have similar experiences, and I have more of a seat at that table that I used to covet or want when I was earlier on in my career. So it feels like right timing for me.

Callan Harrington 30:41

How does that impact you? How does having that seat impact you? How has that changed?

Jason Walker 30:45

I'm creating thought leadership in the space. I'm able to influence discussions for the right reasons instead of just trying to peddle a product. That's not interesting to me anymore. It used to be, and there's a lot of cool stuff that goes along with that. But to have a seat at the table means you've got experience, you've got an understanding of where you've been challenged in life and where you've been successful. You have a better appreciation for the target audience that you're working with. You have friends in the space. You have partners in the space. It all just kind of comes together again at the right time.

Callan Harrington 31:22

That might be the biggest endorsement for never burning a bridge.

Jason Walker 31:25

Oh my God, yeah. I can't say anything better than that. You cannot.

Callan Harrington 31:28

It's one of those things, especially if you go deep into a particular industry. Those always come back. They always, always, always come back. So I think that's excellent advice. What's next?

Jason Walker 31:40

I'm going to spend some time here at Agency Revolution, building a successful company. This is new for me, like you pointed out, private equity-backed or part of something much bigger than ourselves. I feel like we're just at the tip of the iceberg, and I hate saying that, but it's the truth. When you think about it, we're selling websites that aren't just websites anymore. They're actionable sales, marketing, and customer service tools. We're doing marketing automation. But then there are thoughts of, "Okay, well, we're kind of the bookend solutions. What can we potentially affect in the middle on behalf of our customers so that they can just get more value out of our products over time?" So thinking about things like sales enablement is top of mind for us, and to be able to help that customer journey from the moment we bring them into the funnel to the moment that they sign up, and then we need to renew and retain them. There's also the conversation in our space, in the insurance space, and I know it's at varying degrees in other industries, but connectivity, and what is able to be done with data based on that connectivity. So you've got things called management systems in the space, policy admin systems, your conventional CRMs, and then a bunch of other tools. If all of these solutions could harmoniously work together, which sounds like a great concept, but it's actually happening, what could we do with the data in order to better predict and prescribe on behalf of the businesses that we support? That's kind of what's next. It's a big shiny object goal, but it's not too far off. I believe that of the companies that are out there, and I had plenty of time to assess all of these companies as I was consulting, Agency Revolution is positioned to do that, and I'm happy to be a part of it and provide my contribution to it.

Callan Harrington 32:20

If you could have a conversation with your younger self, at any age, and give them advice, what would that conversation be? What would that advice be?

Jason Walker 32:32

It would all be around patience. You know me, Callan. We would have so many conversations working in the sales capacity together. I was very impatient early on, and that led to, and I'll say it here, some difficult discussions with people that I've gone back to and will continue to go back to and say, "You know what? That wasn't the best version of myself," and it all centered around patience. When you think about how long we work and how long we are in the trenches together with other people, everything seems to kind of work itself out, as long as you are being thoughtful about it, and you're willing to let others lead and drive in addition to yourself, and it requires patience. So be patient, younger version of myself, because if you focus on the things that you can impact and change, and then allow certain things around you to just unfold and give yourself some time, I think it would be an even better day for you, Jason younger, if you were to advance now taking on that recommendation. So yeah, it's all around patience. I think you can wrap other things up into that, like we've talked about. Patience allows you to focus, and focus allows you to be very much in the industry and the people that you're working with. So it all kind of trickles down from there.

Callan Harrington 33:56

I love it, Jason. This has been a blast. Thanks for coming on the show, man.

Jason Walker 34:01

Thank you, Callan. Really appreciate it.