Transcript

Dan Pace (00:00)
All right, hello everyone. Dan Pace here from Genuine Technologies and welcome to Just Getting Started, where we explore the entrepreneurial journey of self-improvement and business growth. A journey that can be very personal and unique and yet somehow is one that's shared among many business owners and leaders. So today I'm very excited to introduce us all to Aaron Levine, my guest today. Insurance salesman of 18 years. I don't know how he's been able to keep it fresh for that long, but he somehow does it.

I want to explore how that happens. Avid philanthropist, recently named top commercial insurance service provider of 2025 for his team of 13. Host of Who You Work With Matters. Family man, recent dog owner. Avid golfer too, he got second place in our last golf outing. I don't know how you do it all, but dig into how, dig in why. The first thing of course is you know,

Aaron Levine (00:52)
Isn't there a

phrase that if you want something done, ask a busy person, right? Isn't there like a saying about that?

Dan Pace (01:00)
Definitely

is and you're gonna show us, know why that's true Well, I mean first and foremost, I mean what what do you do with LG insurance? Tell us a little bit about yourself Aaron And why did that start? Why did you start LG insurance?

Aaron Levine (01:13)
Dan, thanks so much.

You know, I needed a job, right? Like that's one way people get into certain businesses. You know, we also find that a lot of people get into different things because they don't have any more choices. They have one way to go. They have one way to go and that's up. And I was certainly in that scenario back in 2009 more or less, although you say 18 years.

I've been licensed and incorporated for longer than actually in business, right? Because ideas generate and I love when people have ideas and start to put ideas into motion, right? Not just ideas onto paper, but putting ideas into motion is great, right? I've always been a ready fire aim type of person when it comes to operating and running my business. you know, I'm always into let's get into it and then we can kind of figure it out later. Now that I'm

20 years older or 18 years older or however many years older, I can look at things a little bit differently about building processes. But when you have no money and you're broke and you need to do whatever you can do to generate some revenue, you're just gonna get after it and learn the hard way, right? So I definitely learned the hard way, learned from the street and have been able to adapt and adopt.

Dan Pace (02:14)
Yeah, at least track.

Aaron Levine (02:35)
and change things as we've progressed over the year. Like my business has had multiple iterations, you know, just like my tech stack has had multiple iterations, you know, with what we're doing and how we're setting ourselves up and what we're investing in and continuing to grow the business. You know, so it's been a journey, but at that time in 2009, when I was getting out of graduate school, I more or less needed

a job and the economy wasn't great. So I went into something that was what we called back then recession proof. Now I talk about the insurance industry being recession resilient based on the market that we're in today. Everybody still needs insurance. You're required by your bank, you're required by your landlord, you're required by other institutions by the law to purchase insurance products.

So there's definitely a commodity basis to it, as well as a low barrier to entry into the insurance industry as an agent, or even as a small business owner, the barrier to entry is low. Now, the barrier to building a knowledge base and being a professional and getting on my level is very difficult and challenging and a long road.

and it's continuous education and growth and learning and sometimes learning the hard way.

Dan Pace (04:02)
I kinda like that you brought up knowledge base. I you're definitely knowledgeable. I mean, I could talk to you about insurance all day. I'm sure you could talk about insurance all day too. But having said, really played out as valuable, the most valuable thing in your business and building your business, just knowing insurance, knowing more than the other guy.

Aaron Levine (04:19)
Right, there's, which said know more than the other guy, and I would say that I, you know, put me against 100 guys, and I think I would probably come out somewhere near the top of that group, because I've actually read and started to understand insurance policy language, which is not easy to do. The conundrum that I'm in is that we're the independent agent. We're the middle person.

We're the agent in between the insurance company and the ultimate consumer of the insurance policy, right? The person that has a need, we connect them with the right insurance company to set up a policy between the insured and the insurance company, right? We don't get to determine the language within some of those policies. We can add, remove things for fee, for cost of premium dollars.

But ultimately, the conversation and the determination of how claims get paid, how language maneuvers is up to the insurance company. So I get asked all the time, what's the impact on this for my insurance policy? Is my premium going to go up if I submit a claim? Can I submit this claim? Do you think it's going to be covered? I'm submitting a claim anyway, even though you don't think it's going to be covered, we're going to do it anyway. That's time. That's experience.

That's understanding and having conversations with adjusters, with lots of attorneys, and getting to really dive into how those policies are worded to really figure out what should and should not be covered. But it's many years of experience of handling claims and seeing how these policies react, know, gives me the ability to guide people appropriately and make certain recommendations.

to know whether or not something may or may not be covered with respect to the insurance policy. Because whenever somebody has a claim, they want to make sure that they have the Cadillac or the Chubb policy. When they're buying the insurance, they don't want to pay the Cadillac or the Chubb pricing at the time of purchase, right? We want to buy, we want the Cadillac, but we only want to pay for a Kia, right? I'm using car analogies. That's, you know, but you don't get all those bells and whistles unless you pay.

a little up and no insurance policy covers quote unquote everything. Earthquake is a huge exclusion in the state of New Jersey right now, right? Very few insurance policies cover the cause of loss for an earthquake and all policies exclude flood insurance. But we sell a lot of flood insurance on the side. We don't sell a lot of earthquake insurance on the side. So there's a lot of different things that go into the insurance policies that make my job and my team's job very difficult to

do our best to make sure we're covering as much as we can, but we can never cover all of it.

Dan Pace (07:10)
That experience is definitely a huge difference in fact especially with the compounds over time too to add your value. That's very interesting. I mean it's definitely something that will set you apart too, the experience. I totally agree just with my few years of business. The know-how from past clients really will pay off for the next future clients for sure. I actually wanted to...

Aaron Levine (07:16)
Brought to you by Dunkin' Donuts.

There's a know-how, there's also with what you're

doing right now, we have a shortcut today, right? Since we've been using these large language models and everything else, there's a supposed shortcut to some of this, which you're able to help businesses accelerate their knowledge base and their growth because of that shortcut, right?

Dan Pace (07:49)
Yeah, definitely an interesting point to bring up too. So I knowledge, I mean, I said on our podcast too, knowledge is getting less valuable and the experience will become more valuable because there's no other way to get experience than just to do it. But you can read something, you can ask AI something, AI can learn something, or Google. There's so many ways to get knowledge now though. There's a difference between the two.

Aaron Levine (08:02)
than just to do it.

Our generations are

our college students and our high school students are getting dumber because they're not putting in the work to get to look to get the knowledge. They're taking that shortcut for the knowledge base. And it's going to be real interesting over the next 10 years to see how dumb our young workforce is, is going to be because they're going to use that shortcut. ⁓ you know, it's, it's a little bit, it's a little bit scary. What's that?

Dan Pace (08:33)
It's interesting, it's a double edged sword though. Yeah, it's a double edged

sword because they do get more capable with using those tools because they can do more, but yes, they have to do less to get things done. It's interesting. I'm interested to see the next five to ten years too. That's actually why I got into it so I could see it really first hand.

Aaron Levine (08:50)
I to

be retired in the next 10 years. we'll hopefully I won't have to deal with it. ⁓

Dan Pace (08:53)
Yeah, I getcha.

Well, let's talk about something different that actually sets you apart. And actually, I meant to start with this because this is how me and you met, you know, through philanthropy, through ⁓ the Chef Lou's Army nonprofit work and, you know, giving, essentially giving. I know that's a big part of what you do in your business and, you know, practically a cornerstone. mean, how has that played out from day one, maybe even before day one, actually, of LG and the Only Being Group? Yeah.

Aaron Levine (09:19)
Yeah, so going back before

day one, right? My family has been very charitable for my entire life. I've grown up in a very charitable family from my grandparents to my parents, my cousins, aunts, uncles, everybody in between. We all do what we can to give back. And I spent many years on charitable, on nonprofit boards and being able to give back. I've also used charitable contributions as a tool for growth of

business, right? So we donate quote unquote a lot. We sponsor a lot of events which allows us to be able to donate but also try to get something in return, try to continue to broaden our audience, broaden our reach. So we use events like golf outings as sponsored events but also time to network and be with the right people in the room. Same thing with poker tournaments, you know, and other types of

We love event sponsorship when it comes to charitable organizations. We do a lot of that. And it helps us continue to get our brand out there while making that charitable contribution. So we get that double hit with respect to a lot of those. So I enjoy being able to give back and spending time with people that do give back. It creates a common bond, right? It creates that...

a certain energy with respect to that bond for us to continue conversations. So time on boards, time organizing events, which I've been doing less of because my time is more demanded elsewhere. But then I'm able to offset that with writing checks and sponsoring events so I don't have to put my time into it. They say for charitable organizations, you have time, talent, or treasure. And I either have talent or treasure. I have less time.

So it's easier sometimes to write a check as opposed to donate my time to an event or an organization, just with respect to where my time is going with my children and the business and all my other interests out there.

Dan Pace (11:23)
Yeah, the new dog.

Aaron Levine (11:25)
And then, the new dog that I'm out walking two or three times a day, plus everybody else in the house.

Dan Pace (11:26)
No,

I highly, highly agree with the people you meet through charitable networking events and those philanthropic events. I they're some of the best people. It's, they said, the common bond and the fact that they'll kind of get out of their way to do something bigger than themselves in most situations, most organizations. Of course, though, you take that to a whole other level, though, through your professional work as well through

the insurance. I I know you can't necessarily give out free policies, right, but you find a way to give through LG as well, don't you?

Aaron Levine (12:00)
⁓ Yeah, I mean it's it's you know, we're not Will donate to a lot of different organizations, but it's that charitable sponsorship, right? It's those event sponsors ⁓ I Listen I'm always here as a consultant. I'm always available to answer people's questions that's how I started the business by being able to answer questions and provide advice and Be there as as support and we do that for organizations and any professional on the come-up. We're open to

Dan Pace (12:07)
I mean professionally though, like with information. Like not, not.

Aaron Levine (12:28)
to scheduling time to have that conversation and be able to guide people, guide entrepreneurs, guide solopreneurs, guide people interested in starting a business on how to protect themselves from risk. I love emerging opportunities. I love emerging businesses. Startups are great to have conversations with because you get to build from the ground up as opposed to somebody, a business with insurance experience, you're kind of.

Sometimes reinventing sometimes just reorganizing current sometimes taking over current but with a startup and somebody coming from zero revenue Projecting ten million dollars in revenue or beyond It's super exciting to have those conversations as businesses grow to be able to grow with them We have clients for more than ten or fifteen fifteen years. We just had a fifteen year client sell his business were super pumped for them, but

sucks for us, we lost a policy that was on the books for the last 15 years, but they got to that point where it was time to sell and move on. We have other businesses that have started with us paying $300 a year and now spend over $100,000 a year in insurance premiums because they've been able to grow the business significantly. So seeing businesses grow, flourish and thrive is a tremendous benefit to what we do and that's a real feel good moment when you can have that relationship.

and watch something explode.

Dan Pace (13:54)
Yeah, do you get to put in some of your input too since you got to start from ground up, solo. You were solo-preneur too at the start, right? No one else in your office.

Aaron Levine (14:01)
I

was a solopreneur at the start and started with no clients, no money, no furniture in the office. I did rent a space, I committed, right? Committing is important too. I rented an office because at that time you needed physical office space to be able to operate and gain contracts. But yeah, I started.

you know, scrounging for pennies to keep the lights on, to pay the electric bill, to pay the phone bill, and to get things moving. And that's what we did, just kept moving piece by piece. And Chambers of Commerce and different networking groups and different communities and centers of influence is how I started. People that trusted me as a person is how we got started in this business. And we've developed that into taking it to a whole nother level where people seek us.

in our knowledge base and the ability to do business with us.

Dan Pace (14:49)
Yeah, that's a good thing I want to talk on. Obviously, you host the podcast who you work with matters and it's another way you actually do give back to. I've been on that podcast. know Chef Lou's been on the podcast. You've helped multiple charities that you full support financially with that time and that resource to get their message out there. You celebrate the who's. I want to ask you a question about who were the who's that helped you up through those first days? are the chambers, the networking groups?

I'm sure he's got a couple, so maybe keep it brief, but yeah.

Aaron Levine (15:18)
The list is endless. The list

is endless. I've had a lot of who's in my life. I still have a lot of who's in my life, right? I'm a big fan of the books that I enjoy reading, right? The Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy. The Buy Back Your Time from Dan Martell, bringing people in to replace you in certain capacity so you can focus on those

higher value things has always been in the works, right? Before reading the books, I've been participating in that. I've always had mentors and people that I looked up with and I was never afraid to have those conversations about my business and about where the business is going and what we wanna do to also then be able to learn from people that have already experienced it. There's no playbook.

that says open here, this is how you open and operate an independent insurance agency. Here's how you get contracts. Here's how you process claims. Here's how you process endorsements. There's no really good playbook for that. I'm sure there are some out there, but it's really a lot of trial by fire and everybody has a different flavor, a different personality, a different culture that they wanna bring to their businesses. So I've been able to work with a lot of really good people to learn from.

both inside and outside of the insurance industry. I'm up to 93 or 94 on the Who You Work With Matters series podcast, which I enjoy, right? I enjoy having those conversations. Every single one of those people on the podcast becomes, is or becomes a who, right? They become a resource that we can reach out to and speak to, you being one of them, Chef Lou being one of them, right? Learning about his business and talking more about Chef Lou's army and where things were in 2020.

to when I interviewed him, 2023 when I interviewed him, and just seeing how people continue to evolve and stay relevant. If we keep talking about Chef Lou, he continues to evolve and does whatever he can do to stay relevant in his business, in the property that he owns, in the menus that he puts out on Main Street in Manasquan to make sure he keeps people coming back again.

So there's so many different people that we continue. I've had insurance mentors from 25 years ago. My dad's insurance agent 25 years ago became a mentor of mine, right? He welcomed me in to teach me the ropes and be a resource for me until I was able to get to a point where then I become the resource to that older generation. That's kind of a cool changing of the guard when...

the young gen that was looking up is now the older gen is looking up to that young gen because we've been able to surpass them. And I think that, you know, that's not looking down on anybody, that's looking up on, you know, being able to continue to succeed and then build that trust so that, okay, great, you know, now I can rely on you after I've given you all my knowledge, let me help, you know, we can pay it forward.

Dan Pace (18:18)
Yeah, that's totally major. You need to look forward. mean, it's succession planning, especially in the chambers and organizations that are going to be ongoing. It's really important that they are doing that next generation, bringing them up. It's awesome that you got to see that in your life. I see it in a couple of chambers, organizations I'm involved in. hopefully, in some ways, I'll be that next generation too, right? Actually, that brings me to...

Actually, I wanted to bring up the professional insurance agents as well. You are now president of that too, right? That was a... President-elect, okay. I wasn't sure when that kicks in.

Aaron Levine (18:48)
I'm president, I'm president elect. I'm not president yet. I'll be president in June of,

June of 2026. So I'm like the first vice president, president, elect, whatever you want to call it. So June of 2026, that'll be, I've been involved in that. I'm looking at my wall. You can't see it over there. Maybe I'll turn my camera. I don't know if it's going to work, but on that, on that wall over there, you can see these are some insurance related pieces that I,

Dan Pace (19:00)
So how's that played though? You've been involved in that since early on or midway?

Aaron Levine (19:17)
that I have, now I gotta screw up my camera. But one of the pieces on there is when I was president of the Young Insurance Professionals in 2016 to 2018. So now I'm be president of the full New Jersey Association in 10 years later. So kinda cool to see that. So I've been involved for a long time and that was a big piece of who's coming up to be able to meet peers in your same age group that

are also learning or have been in the business for a little bit longer than you that you can rely on and trust. And I just interviewed and we released a podcast episode for Andrew Harris Jr. who is somebody that I became friends with in the industry 15 years ago, 12 years ago. And he and I grew up together in totally different ways, but is someone that I can call because he's that next level smarter than me when it comes to policy language.

So there's a couple guys that are next level smarter than me when it comes to policy language or for sales processes or for even different industries. I can call somebody that's a subject matter expert in manufacturing or in agriculture and be able to get right to the source, right? My chat GPT is calling individual people that are smarter than me to get the answers, to take the shortcut with those who's as opposed to typing it into a query.

Dan Pace (20:40)
Yeah, definitely. It's a human chat, GPT, what we had beforehand. ⁓ Actually, on that topic, I mean, when you first started LG, what insurance products did you have back then? It was probably a much smaller list than what's around today. And on top of that, I also want ask, what don't you sell insurance-wise? When someone comes to you, you're like, I don't do that. I got to talk to this guy or something.

Aaron Levine (20:42)
The human chat,

I mean, so I'm going to answer that part first. It's, you know, health insurance is one thing we don't get involved in too, too much. We're starting to do a little bit more of it for organizations that are multi-state that can be worked into a PEO model, a professional employer organization, where we kind of wrap things up. So when there's multi-state employees, like my agency is a multi-state employer, we have a team member in Syracuse, New York. We have a team member in Pennsylvania.

that reside and live and work in different addresses. So we actually just formalized an office in Syracuse, New York, which is kind of cool. So I'm looking forward to getting that posted and using that on some of our social engine, SEO and social media to promote that. Not that I want that to be a main sales hub, but it's cool when you get to branch out and open a different office in different states. But when you're dealing with multiple states and state laws and...

⁓ things get very tricky. You workers compensation policies are different in every state, right? With respect to audits and reporting, have obviously medical insurance is a little bit different in every state plus payroll taxes and everything else in between. So, you know, if we have a multi-state organization or an organization of 25 or more, we will work with them and maybe look at a PEO to see if there's an appropriate solution through that. But straight health insurance, we kind of...

shy away from a little bit unless it's the right fit. It has to be truly the right fit for us or an existing client for our property and casualty business for us to expand into that. But life insurance, disability insurance, long-term care insurance we get into, we're very knowledgeable about that. Personal homes, high net worth, families and lifestyle type policies we're great with working with. So.

There's not much that we can say no to, but when something that comes across our desk we know we can't do well, we'll push it off to somebody that can do it better than we can. So there's definitely some of that. I forgot the other part of the question.

Dan Pace (23:02)
I

your first products and how has that grown? Was it not big packages that you put on, like a whole bunch of different policies at once, or was it really one by one that you added these in?

Aaron Levine (23:12)
Yeah,

it depends. depends on what we're working on, right? Because we have three different divisions within the office. We have the personal alliance team, we have a commercial team, and then we have the life disability and long-term care team as well. you know, it really depends on what we're working with, what the prospect originally came in for, what we've prospected them for or against, right, whether it's audit-based. But when we first...

Dan Pace (23:34)
Well as the business developed though, how

did these get put in? Or like, made available? As it was one by one.

Aaron Levine (23:37)
just one by one. Early on, we're

taking all comers early on. That's what people do when you're young in the business, you take whatever you can get and you try to figure everything out. And that's part of the learning curve. That's part of the learning experience.

Dan Pace (23:48)
So a customer came on with a need and

then you put on the product and then kept their product going forward.

Aaron Levine (23:52)
Yeah, because

there's a lot of there's a lot of ability to use wholesalers and third parties to gain access to different markets. ⁓ But it's a game, right? If you look at my career as a video game, level one was truly level one. You know, you're fighting to get that $250 policy and help the small person out and do what she can do. Now, will we write the $250 policy? Yeah, we'll still write that as an accommodation because that's, you know, we want to help people that want to be helped. But

Dan Pace (23:59)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Levine (24:22)
You know, we're, we try to spend more time on, things of that are going to bring in profitability and better, you know, higher revenue opportunities to, for, for our teams. Cause we also have that capacity and the capability to write very complex insurance programs. Right. You can't write a complex insurance program when you don't know what you're doing and which takes years. That's that knowledge, that time under tension and really becoming an expert in what we do.

to then be able to put complex things together. Because you have to understand the risks, understand the moving parts of the policy to really be able to dissect it and reinvent it to figure out and do the best we can do with respect to ensuring somebody's businesses.

Dan Pace (25:05)
This totally makes sense. I especially the one by one part of it, because I've seen that in my business too, especially with the AI, you can touch on everything, right? So as people come to me with a specific thing, that's when I can kind of really dig into it. Otherwise, I'd just be spinning my wheels constantly, right? Actually, when did you bring on, when did you become LG? Like when did you become more of a team than just Aaron Levine?

Aaron Levine (25:15)
Yeah.

Hahaha

⁓ I mean, tried to hire people as soon as I could, as soon as I could afford it. I remember my first couple of team members and I had a few hires early on, you know, we were paying, we were paying $12 an hour and finding employees on Craigslist, right? That's what we were doing back then. you know, we got, and we got lucky over time and now we pay, you know, ⁓ more healthy salaries with benefits and have been able to continue to grow and expand the team. But for the last

I don't know 13 years for I don't even know how long Margaret's been with me for probably probably 13 years now. And Josh has been with me for over 10 years. So we've been able to add team from the ground up, which I always loved, you know, being able to bring people on new and exciting and and grow with them and let them take roles and responsibilities because that was that's that's it as we needed more people. Then we try to get ahead of that. We need people to take responsibility and grow.

and learn and get ahead of where we are has been always the case. So yeah, so I mean, listen, we were incorporated as A. Levine Financial Services back in 2007. I wanted to get my name out of the business, you know, and then we take it to the next step as we're kind of doing business as the luxury group. We want to have that luxury feel. We define luxury as a great state of comfort and ease, right? If you look at the definition of luxury, it's comfortable.

and it's easy. want to make the process easy and we want to make the experience comfortable, right? We want to provide the luxurious experience to people that want to do business with us or else they can go down the street to somebody else and get a crappy experience as well. You ask any insurance service provider, any insurance agent, how they stand out and differentiate themselves from the competition, they're going to tell you it's because of their exceptional service model, right? For us, it's our marketing. For us, it's our technology stack.

our processes and our capabilities, our depth and breadth, and also our responsiveness is kind of last on that list, although it's kind of primary. I just hate being responsive and service as number one. I want processes and technology and capabilities as the top of that list.

Dan Pace (27:40)
I have feeling as I do more of these types of podcasts and videos I want to see that reoccurring because I mean anyone can learn this topic and seems like anyone can go get a job maybe get their experience and they can match that but like the service and how you interact with people is just that's not what we matched ever again you know there'll only be yeah there's only gonna be one way Aaron Levine works

Aaron Levine (27:55)
That's difficult. can't replace

that. And I talk to business owners, right? I do a lot of speaking on personal branding. And I business owners that say, I wish my salespeople could do this. I wish my salespeople could do that. said, your salespeople will never be able to speak and sell the same way that you do. They will never be at your level or else they're gonna go out on their own and start their own business.

Right, it's very difficult to have salespeople that you're training get to your level, get to our level. There's always gonna be a potential gap in that. Now, over time, people are gonna get better, and at a certain point in time, you want your salespeople and your teammates to be a step above you, right, with respect to knowledge on certain items. I tell people all the time that,

you my team is smarter than me when it comes to putting these policies together, then I'm gonna let you speak to them instead of speaking to me, because I don't wanna speak out of turn. And that's the truth. On certain things, my team is better and smarter than me, because this is what they do on a daily basis, all day, every day. And I don't focus on that all day, every day. Give me something complex, and I'll talk circles around you, you know, and be able to do those complex items.

but dealing with certain things, my team is gonna be much better and that's a great feeling to have for any business owner is to get to that point where your team is better, but my team's never gonna be able to speak the same way that I speak.

Dan Pace (29:27)
That's kind of funny, I'm just thinking of this book, Ryan Holiday. I know he actually just picked up one of his books too. This one is the obstacle, not the obstacles, way, I'll send you the name later, but actually one of the he talks about is you can either be somebody or do something. And it's like the do somethings will have to go out of their way, they'll have to kind of, as you said, have to aim fire, then, not really what, ready fire aim. They'll have to act and learn while they're going rather than.

Aaron Levine (29:51)
Ready, fire in.

Dan Pace (29:53)
do as they're told and follow the path and be that exact person for life insurance, be the exact person for health insurance, whatever vertical they're in. But the world needs both though, too. It needs that expert that can do the thing in line and the person that can aim, I can't forget it, they're doing a different ready, fire, aim, right? Just go at it. Get things started, right? ⁓ That's great that you mentioned that. Yeah, I got maybe two more questions and I'll let you go, but I think you some good nuggets on this.

Aaron Levine (30:11)
You need both. You need all types of people.

Dan Pace (30:22)
uh... you know what's going on now in LG insurance what's the new what are you getting started now as i say constantly constantly reinventing your business so what's reinventing now

Aaron Levine (30:28)
You know, that's a great question.

We just launched a new website, right? We were adding to the old website for years. So we just launched a brand new site in June or July of 2025, and we're continuing to update that and get that to the next level. For me personally, it's continuing the podcast journey. So I appreciate again, you having me as a guest here. I love having these conversations because as a guest, I also learn a lot, right? I learn.

while being a guest, learn while being a host. Sometimes when I'm the host, I'm busy thinking about questions to ask and I'm not always listening to the guest, right? Because it's like, I gotta figure out where am I taking this conversation? Which path do I wanna lead it down? So I lose certain things, but even as a guest listening to the questions you're asking me, I get to learn a lot. So it's continuing our knowledge, continuing to learn for me. We have some cool events coming up.

that we're putting together for financial advisors and estate attorneys. We're just trying to continue to provide value, provide education opportunities, market better, market more. And obviously you and I have a project on one of the burners right now that I need to reinvigorate and find time to put into the mix, probably when the website has hit the next iteration, is to bring some automation to our site, right? I want to be able to quickly...

access resources and documents and be able to send those to prospects and clients. We had our marketing team created 47 one-pagers for different types of products that we're able to put together, different industries, different products. So we wanna be able to have some, capability to use some AI on our website and use our website as a knowledge base for people to search. We wanna show up.

in search labs more often when people are searching for insurance related questions. So there's things that I would like to see, a lot of them digitally, to continue to get better and stay ahead of the competition on a digital footprint. I think it's always been important to us. We've always been there. Our Google rankings are pretty good. We'd like to continue to charge that. And then as we add offices in other states, right now in New York and maybe soon Pennsylvania.

We want to be able to expand our footprint that way and use the digital to our benefit, I think is important for us right now and continue to tighten up our processes with our team so that we can be better. We want to be faster. We want to be better is going to be important to what we do.

Dan Pace (33:07)
this. ⁓

I want to touch on the SEO part. There's someone that works with SEO. I will compliment your SEO on your website. It's just amazing. I can't wait to see what you add into that with the New York. Whoever your who is for SEO, give them some compliments.

Aaron Levine (33:21)
Yeah. that's, know, and Caitlin's doing a great job with continually, continuously adding, adding content, and making sure we're obviously still using keyword rich. We have a client recently that came on board. And when I said, Hey, where'd you find us? And she said, I asked Claude, right? I'm like, that's so cool. Right. So people want to write content for chat and for Claude. And really you're still, I'm in the, I'm in the mindset of we're still writing content for Google, even though chat and Claude are going to pick all.

Dan Pace (33:24)
Is it good? Yeah.

Aaron Levine (33:50)
Chat and Claude are gonna pick all that up. And it's just writing it to say, we're the best in Monmouth County. Claude needs to recommend us. We wanna put that vibe out there, because then Claude will recommend us, and Claude's also looking at your reviews on Google and some other websites. So really continuing to tie that together, I think is huge. But I'd like to be able to show up more as a knowledgeable resource.

for Search Labs and Clawd and Chat. When people are asking industry specific or certain specific insurance related questions, it'd be cool to become a resource. And I think that's where you come in, right? That's where your knowledge and your expertise comes in to help us tweak some of our blog posts and some of our writings to maybe become, to work our way into Search Labs and into Clawd and Chat and be that resource that gets clipped up front early on and often.

⁓ I think would be super valuable. Plus when people go to our website, be able to use our site as a knowledge base because then they trust us, right? To want to buy from us in the future is the goal. I think having the human element of video content allows people to realize that there's humans behind this and it's not just a website that people are going to be clicking and buying insurance from. They're going to be clicking and buying and connecting with an agent to properly set people up and appropriately set up insurance policies.

Dan Pace (35:14)
totally agree with the video aspect, know, just showing that live face is getting to be a lot more valuable, because everyone, not everyone, but a lot of people are running towards the AI avatars, and it doesn't hit the same, you know?

Aaron Levine (35:24)
doesn't it doesn't hit the same and it's also you know once you start watching enough AI videos you start learning gestures of how the AIs and the bots are are moving their faces and and and their hands and you know you can start picking up on what's a and what's not but man some of those AI generated videos are very difficult to to tell if they're if they're real people or not

Dan Pace (35:48)
Yeah, 100%. But also once you do find that it's an AI, it's just so much trust goes out the window, it seems like. Even though it's... Even though in a way it's kind of to benefit them, to make it more autonomous, make it easier in some ways. You can see how it's trying to. But, it's just, it hasn't landed yet. Maybe one day that'll get perfected, but you know, I'm not holding my breath for it, honestly.

Aaron Levine (35:54)
It goes right out the window.

No.

Yeah, unfortunately, I think it's gonna get worse.

Dan Pace (36:12)
I like, as you said, making

the information that's already on your website or you can call and easily findable. That should be put through an AI now. That's great. I want to touch on as a little bit of value that I can add to this podcast. Making SEO or your articles more for AI. It really isn't anything different than what you're doing for Google. It's just you need to focus a little more on the headings and your subheading and just labeling the metadata out a little more so AI reads it better.

and organizes it better. That's really the only difference I've found so far. Other than that, it's what question are you answering that your customers are also asking, which has always been the case,

Aaron Levine (36:53)
that's always been the case, right? Answerthepublic.com I think is the website, right? Anybody can go to that starting a business. Just start writing content to answer the public, right? I think that's the website that pulls Google search data and writing content based off of that for your industry is gonna get you where you need to go to build that knowledge base.

Dan Pace (37:12)
Yep. All let

me give you one more question. Easy one and totally open-ended. But you have a nice story or client that really shows what LG's value that you guys bring, that the teams value. If just one, you know?

Aaron Levine (37:23)
yeah, great. Cool.

Great question. mean, you know, my team's value, my team goes above and beyond, right? we'll take those Saturday calls. There's all good and dandy. but if you look in the, let's go back to post Sandy environment when we had a catastrophic event in our, in our region, in our area, you know, this is more of an Aaron Levine thing. My team was there in the background, but we went and hooked up a generator to our.

power in our office so that we can get our phones on and make phone calls, right? So that's one thing and then we see issues in other areas right now and I'll offer my personal service if any other agents in my network need some assistance with making phone calls or getting things done. We'll try to help people out that way as well. But showing up is important. I told somebody today that face to face is still number one.

I think that gets us to the next level as opposed to digital video calls or just emailing and texting, right? Being face to face is important for our larger clients. But come claim time, if there's an opportunity for us to show up in person and share a little empathy, and just be there to help, not that we can physically do anything or make the insurance company write a bigger check, but we can help the process by just being

Relevant being in person and being there for the clients and their greatest time of need, right? We sell a policy we sell it to make a commission so we can earn money We earn our keep come claim time when they and we help the insurance company live up to their their promises or their proposed promises To the insureds that the claim gets paid and the client can get their life put back together as soon as possible You know, so just showing up. think it's the most important thing for us It always has been and it it always will be

Dan Pace (39:08)
Awesome. I actually going to try to sneak in a question for one last business lesson, but I think that's it right there. Just show up. So yeah, awesome.

Aaron Levine (39:14)
Just show up. Be

in person. Be relevant. Be in person. I think it's so valuable for younger people, for anybody in business. Being in person is gonna get you so much further. Everybody might want a remote job so they can be home and sneak out and go to the beach and do laundry and do this and do that. But man, if you're young or you're just starting a new career or starting with a new company, being in person...

every day is going to get you to where you want to be. If you want to grow and excel and be promoted, you're not going to get that by being a remote worker. You're going to get that by being close. You know, it's like my grandmother used to say, was, you know, the bee, the bee that's closest to the hive gets the honey, right? So you have to be close to the hive to get the honey, which is, which is an important lesson for anybody in life and in business.

Be close, be relevant, and that's where you're gonna be noticed.

Dan Pace (40:12)
It's great to do so much community service and stay close to the community in the process. Awesome. Well, I think with that we'll close it. So thank you for your time here. Thanks for getting started with everything you've done in the past 18 years or a little bit before that. All the iterations, all the new products, everything that came together piece by piece. Coming on here gives some valuable experience.

Aaron Levine (40:14)
Stay close. Exactly.

Dan, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. I look forward to working with you again soon.

Dan Pace (40:39)
Great. Enjoy your day. Alright, and stop.