Flip Book Role Play Presenter: Vicky Methven Vicky: Hey, Matt, thanks for having me. Matt: Hey, Vicky, thanks. Vicky: I want to be really kind of compact. I want to respect your time. I know you booked us for a 30-minute appointment. I booked an hour so you can ask as many questions as you want, but I promise I'll be out of here in 30 minutes. Matt: Okay. This little old school, I'm gonna use it mainly as a guide, sometimes a little ADD. Sometimes you can throw me somewhere and I want to make sure that I can bring this conversation back to respect your time. Deal? Matt: Okay, deal. Vicky: Okay, no edits. Let's just get to know each other a little bit. Tell me a little bit about your company. A little bit more. I looked online saw that you're an insurance agency. It said you had 10 employees but I haven't verified that. Is that still what you have? Matt: Yes. We have, yep, we started 15 years ago, a small insurance agency. Matt: And we've got about 10 people who work for us. Support roles versus agents. How many people do you have that you would say, aside from yourself, you own it. I know that you "run the business" but you have a couple of support staff generally that help you out? Would you say one or two people? Matt: We've got two or three people that do support roles and everybody else is out in the field. Vicky: Okay, perfect. So, those guys are W2s? Matt: Mm-hmm. Vicky: And your two key people would you say maybe $20 an hour? Matt: Yeah, in that range, yep. Mm-hmm. Vicky: Do you do life, health, disability? It says insurance, but I wasn't sure what kind of insurance. Matt: We're a multi-line agency.
Matt: So, we do all sorts of insurance, property, casualty, life, health, accident, things like that. Vicky: Your client base is mostly businesses like yourselves or do you have a big personal? Matt: We work with individuals and but a lot of businesses. Matt: We work with a lot of businesses. Vicky: Perfect. So, you'll probably understand what I'm getting ready to show you on a level of, "Wow, this is amazing for me and oh, my gosh, I need to introduce you to at least 20 of my clients." Fair enough? Matt: I think so, yeah. Vicky: Perfect. So, let's go through this information a little bit. This small business plan, it's really designed to take people from inception or from start-up to exit strategy. Because what we find is most people go into business because they're good at something and business wasn't necessarily what they were so good at. They just kind of get thrown into that by default, would you agree? Matt: Yep, often. Vicky: I bet you deal a lot with that with your clients. Matt: Yes. Vicky: Awesome. So, what we do with the small biz plan, it's powered by LegalShield and a company called gosmallbiz.com and really what both of them do is they kind of married up because they provide a really comprehensive package for a business owner. So, it's a tool, you know, just like you would buy software for one of your business managers, you would buy her a great bookkeeping program or whatever, a good CRM, whatever that is. Well, what we do is we provide that all-around package and we do it for a company your size for an average of about $1,300 a year. You probably spend more on that on well... Matt: A lot of things. Vicky: A few lunches out with a couple of bad clients, right. Matt: Right, right. Vicky: Awesome. So, what we do is we deal with the things that people deal with every single day. I know that you've probably had your staff come in and say, "Hey, I need your help," or "Hey, how do I solve this problem?" Or, "Hey, I need you to call your lawyer because I'm not really sure about what to do in this situation." Would you agree? Matt: Yep. Mm-hmm. Vicky: And when you reach out to your attorney...i'm gonna make a few notes here. When you reach out to your house counsel, do you have house counsel? Or do you have someone that's like a college buddy or...? Matt: I don't really need...my best friend is an attorney so I can just call him up whenever I need him.
Vicky: Perfect. Awesome, what's his specialty? Matt: He's a general. He does a lot of general kind of business litigation stuff. Vicky: Awesome, I love that because you know the value of having wise counsel, right? So does he charge you hourly? When you retain him to do stuff for you...i'm sure you get the buddy call. Matt: I get the friends and family rate. He does charge me, yeah. Mm-hmm. Vicky: Okay, so what does he charge? About $250 an hour? Matt: Yep, about $250 an hour. Vicky: That's pretty good. That's usually the buddy rate. Matt: Yep. I think he charges other people more than $400 an hour. Vicky: Right, yeah, that's pretty normal. So, question for you, the two ladies that work for you...i met Rachel, is she your...? Matt: Yes. Vicky: She's your business manager? Matt: Yep. Vicky: And who's the other person? Matt: Amanda. Vicky: Amanda and what's Amanda's role? Matt: Well, they do...they both do a lot of administrative paperwork, claims processing, work with our clients. They're on the phone a lot with our clients. And they handle employee issues as well? Matt: They do. Vicky: Okay, awesome, all right. The reason that I'm asking that is and they make what? About \$20 an hour? Matt: Mm-hmm. Matt: In a small business, people like them have to wear a lot of hats. Vicky: Exactly, I have hat rack. I get to wear every one of them in my office because I am never having employees again. I'm kind of done with that. I commend you for doing what you're doing. Matt: It's good and bad. It brings a lot of stress.
Vicky: I couldn't do it again. So, with that \$20 an hour that you're paying them to run your business, do you find that they bring you a lot of $20 an hour issues that you might have to solve with your $100 or $150 an hour time? I mean, every...several times a week, there's something they come in and need help with or they don't know how to solve or it comes up quite a bit. And do you give them access to your $250 an hour buddy to help make those decisions when they're talking to a client about what maybe to say or not to say or when they're talking to an employee about what they should or should not do? Matt: Sometimes. Vicky: Sometimes? Matt: Normally, I'll call him but sometimes I'll say, "Go ahead and call Stuart." Vicky: Okay, so when you call that's essentially costing you $250 an hour plus $150 an hour for your time, right? Matt: I never thought about it that way, but you're right. Vicky: There you go. Kind of a different ROI. And that's really what I'm about is just to kind of show you how we can save that kind of money. So, would you agree that the gals deal with things like supplier disputes or people that haven't paid their bill or questions about when clients call and they're not really sure what they should do, maybe incorporate their business, things like that would? Matt: Yep. Vicky: That's a fair estimation? Matt: That kind of stuff a lot. Vicky: Okay, those are the things that we deal with for our clients every day, all day long. And we do it based on the fact...it's all based on need. So, we don't limit you or your staff on how often you can utilize our service. So... Matt: Are they actual lawyers do you work with? Vicky: Absolutely. We do that because what we do is we have...it's like crowd-based funding almost. So, what we're doing is we're taking a percentage of every dollar that's paid into our services every month and we're giving it to an attorney, to a law firm with over 30 attorneys and paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in the state of Georgia just to be there, be helpful and happy when you call. Plus we have a fleet of business consultants who've been doing every range of business. I know I get issues where people want me to advertise or people are saying, "Oh, participate in this marketing or that marketing strategy or this software or that software." I'm sure you guys get that all the time, right? Vicky: Don't you hate that when those people call and interrupt your day?
Matt: Oh, yes, yeah. Vicky: I know, right. So, you make those decisions or the girls make those decisions based on what? Their experience, their financial scar tissue, if you will. Well, what I'm here to show you is for about \$1,300 a year how we're gonna be able to put a complete package of tools in the hands of your office, so say this is your office. This is your office on us, if you will, right? Vicky: We're gonna give you access to the professionals on an ad-hoc or as-needed basis, so that you can have access to them and the girls can have access to them to make those decisions. So now, instead of bringing you two or three problems a week that are really \$20 an hour problems that you have to solve with \$100 an hour time, they're gonna be able to bring you 2 or 3 solutions where you can just go, "Oh, yeah, pick that one." Matt: So, if we're dealing with a client who's having a bankruptcy or credit problems and we're having a hard time collecting, they come to me, I call my attorney. Can this help in that case? Vicky: Absolutely. We have a schedule of services that we provide for you and basically, the girls are gonna be able to have unlimited consultations. So, the first thing that they're gonna do is they're gonna pick up the phone and they're gonna call an attorney who specializes in that area of law. They're gonna call the law firm and say, "Hey, look, I need some advice on this. What do I do? We've got people that are filing bankruptcy, we want to make sure that we're at the top of the pile. What are our rights and how is this situation gonna shake out? Because I need to make sure that I follow the correct steps." And then the attorney's gonna give them advice based on what their specific need is. They'll get a business attorney who specializes in that to call them back and answer their questions. Cool part is if they're in meetings, they can always say, "Hey, could I schedule a callback time for 4:00 on Tuesday?" And then have our law firms call them back. Matt: Wow. Vicky: So, you know when you call your buddy, even though he's your buddy sometimes it takes him two or three days to call you back. Here's the amazing part is when the girls call the law firm or you call the law firm, they have to call you back within eight business hours. Matt: Eight business hours? Vicky: Eight business hours. I had a guy who's a consultant who actually bought our plan strictly because he couldn't get his corporate attorney to call him back and he had an immediate need. Once he saw the rest of it, he actually didn't think he needed the business consulting services as much on the other side of that until I showed him, walked him through it which I'll do for you and I'll teach the girls how to use it as well. But what we're gonna do is we're gonna be able to marry a research department, business consultants and lawyers to be able just to be that wall of protection around you and your company. And we're gonna do it for about \$1,300 a year, cool thing, we bill it out monthly. Matt: So, what do you mean by business consultants? We talked about the legal, but... So, you're gonna have attorneys to help...and it's on a schedule of services. So, if you look, contracts and document review, here's how I've used this.
So, you're gonna have attorneys to review contracts and documents for you, but you know what R&D means, right? What? Matt: Research and development. Vicky: You've never been to one of my sales classes, absolutely not. It means rob and duplicate and I swear you've done it, right? We all do it. We Google it, we rob it, we duplicate it, we re-write it and then we utilize it and we pray to God that it works. Matt: Right. Vicky: Because you probably didn't run it by your buddy, right? Because you're smart, you've been in business a long time, right? Matt: Right. Vicky: That's what we do. So, what we can do here is now you can use these business consultants that we utilize through GoSmallBiz and you can literally go in. I use mine all the time. I enter into my Q and A and I tell them for instance, I had a client in Hawaii who needed a commercial lease, okay? She does residential property management and one of her clients wanted her to manage a commercial property. She went to GoSmallBiz. She popped into the consultation tab and she simply said, "I need some examples of a commercial lease in the Honolulu marketplace." They went to work, found some information, got her back the templates and then she R&D'd it, she robbed it, duplicated it, made it what she wanted, then she picked up the phone and she contacted her provider law firm and she said, "I need advice on this, could you please review this commercial lease? Did I get it right, did I mess it up, is it protecting me? These are the things I want it to do, could you help me out?" They told her the things that she should change, bing, bang, she was good to go. Matt: So, streamline the process? Vicky: Absolutely and the cool part was that was not done at any out-of-pocket. Now, had she called the law firm and not had access to the business side, right? She would have had to Google it or she would have called the law firm and said, "Hey, would you please draw me up a commercial lease?" If she drew up a commercial lease with the law firm, she's been using a 25% discount off the service. So, anything outside of the scheduled coverage, because we give you a schedule of benefits just like any insurance policy would give you. So, we're gonna give you that schedule of benefits and if you step outside that and need more you're gonna be able to get a 25% discount off those hours with the law firm. But this way, she was no out-of-pocket. I call it the more time the money or the more money than time. Matt: This came up last week because I needed a confidentiality agreement. Vicky: There you go. Matt: And I didn't have one. And I had to call my buddy the attorney and luckily, he had one but... Vicky: Right. Matt:...that's the kind of thing you might have to disturb him...
Vicky: Well, here's the thing. You had to call your buddy. So now, you don't have to call your buddy because guess what, the ladies out front, they know exactly how to get it. They can get it, they can have it reviewed, they can have it all done and you can go back to doing what you bill out \$150 an hour for. Good ROI, right? Vicky: Exactly. Matt: How about human resources? I see that on here. Matt: I'm the human resources department sometimes and I don't really know what I'm doing. Vicky: Okay, well, none of us do, right? Here's a for instance, you guys probably need, you deal with client information all the time so you need that NDA which is what you needed. You have an employee handbook because you have staff, so you need templates for that so you can utilize it on both sides of the house. Matt: Okay. Vicky: So, you can use the business consultants through GoSmallBiz. They can help you with templates, job descriptions, HR stuff, they'll help you develop NDAs, discuss with you what you may or may not need, privacy, right? Matt: Right. Vicky: You need privacy practices because you deal with a ton of confidential information. So, you're gonna be able to get those forms and documents and then you're gonna be able to talk to your law firm and say, "Okay, what can I say to this employee? What am I legally allowed to say to that guy? What kind of questions can I ask about any previous L&I claims? What are the things that we can do?" Labor and industries, that's a huge issue, OSHA problems. We don't think about that but even in our office we have issues that cause problems that can create a Workers' Comp claim easy. Just computers, I mean, look at carpal tunnel, right. That was a big thing for a long time. So, any of those kinds of things we're there to help you with. And it's not limited. You don't have a schedule of hours. So, the girls can deal with that. What are some of the other things that you have? If there were two or three things on your desk that bugged you this last week, what might those be? Matt: Well, we're always trying to become more efficient with how we manage our customer data and marketing in the internet, using the internet to do marketing, our clients, but keeping track of customer information, customer, keeping that confidential. Matt: And all that. Vicky: So, privacy? Matt: Privacy. Vicky: So, privacy, marketing. So, who do you reach to for that stuff? Do you reach to the girls? Do you say, "Hey, find me some stuff." Do you have them Google it?
Matt: Have them Google it, yeah, you find a lot on the internet. Vicky: I have people tell me they Google legal things. I'm like, "Seriously? I Googled that on Google the other day and Google hasn't passed the bar in any state." Just saying. So, one of the things that you're gonna do is you never have to Google it anymore if you have a marketing issue. So, say someone wants you to buy their service or someone wants you to have a paid version of LinkedIn or whatever it is. You're gonna be able to use...yourself or the gals reach out to our staff at GoSmallBiz and they're gonna go do the research for you. And it's vetted by two professionals in that industry. We've got people that were CFOs of Fortune 100 companies, marketing, you name it and there's a staff there because it was staffed up by a guy named Fran Tarkenton. You might have met him. Matt: Oh, yeah, yeah. Vicky: I doubt it. You're too young to know him. Matt: I know the name. Vicky: You know the name? Well, then you're getting close to my age. I can always tell, right. The 30- somethings, they still don't know unless they're into football. But he was in business for so long and had so many different businesses, he got to leverage celebrity status but knows that most people can't do that. So, he assembled what I call a stable of brilliant people and has put that out there through GoSmallBiz to help us all so we don't have to maybe have all that financial scar tissue. Because you know. You've got...you've learned lessons the hard way, right? Vicky: They should cost you money? Matt: Right. Vicky: Have you ever had employees cost you money? Matt: Oh, sure. Vicky: Right. So, that's kind of what we're here for. So, we're gonna be here. We're gonna put all of those services around your company. See, remember, I need to keep on-track. I probably should just mark my pages but we're gonna help with every single one of these areas. And as needed, whenever you need them. There's no limit on the usage. You can call as often as you want. There's gonna be a schedule of benefits for how many letters they'll write. So, motivational letters. Do you ever have any times when maybe you can't get something done because you've got software down or the computer guy was supposed to fix your computers or maybe the city wouldn't let you advertise the way you wanted to advertise. Have you ever had those problems? Matt: Oh, sure, yes. Vicky: So, what do you do? Matt: Google it. Vicky: Right, well, here's the thing. You're gonna have a law firm to write motivational letters for you, the kind that motivate people to do what they should have done before you had to call your lawyer.
I know my brother used to say, "Hey, I need you to call this person because he ran a company for my dad." And I would always call and say, "Hi, this is Vicky Methven and I represent Mr. Nasher." Well, I wasn't really a lawyer but they kind of didn't know it. So, it worked a little. Vicky: But what I want you to know is we're gonna have your back with consultants and attorneys to just go take care of the stuff that you didn't have time or resources to take care of before. And sometimes you're gonna go out-of-pocket somewhere else but I did a five-year look back on my spending as a business owner and I had a $15,000 a year legal budget. It was in my line item. It was not a big deal, I expected to spend it and probably more. What I realized after I found out about this service was when I did a look back 95% of every dollar that I spent would have been covered under the 100% coverage of this plan. So, it's $1,300 a year for the plan that you need and that would cover your company. We're gonna provide you with some lawsuit protection. We're gonna be able to take care of all of those things for you and then I'm gonna be your agent. I'm your agent for life, so you better like me. Matt: Email marketing, yeah, that's something I need to do better. You mentioned LinkedIn. Vicky: Absolutely. Matt: At the end of the day I got to be getting more customers. That's the most... Vicky: Just one more customer. Matt: The only time I spend on this kind of stuff is time that I'm not spending getting more customers. So, all I need is your EIN number and whatever form of payment you want to do, you want to use, we'll get this set up, you can introduce me to the girls. I'll show them how to use it. Matt: So, just all this for $1,300 a year? Vicky: Yep, absolutely. And here's the thing, if it becomes a bill, not a benefit, if we're not saving you that amount, don't keep it. Matt: There's no obligations? Vicky: Nope. It's a month to month billing cycle. You can pay for a year upfront if you like. Most of my clients do because $1,300, what, a couple of bad dinners out with a client. So, as long as you've got your EIN number and whatever form of payment you want to use we can get the paperwork done and you can introduce me to the girls on my way out. Matt: Okay. Vicky: Awesome. Matt: Sounds good. Thank you. Vicky: Thanks so much.