00:16:28:15 – 00:16:53:06

Oh, well, happy Monday, September 21st. Let me hang on. Take to her September 21st, 2026. Does it seem crazy? We are in September of 2026.

00:16:53:08 – 00:17:13:11

No. Stop stop stop stop stop stop. We just getting old? just go so fast. I don’t even know what to say. Its all blurring together. I know it is. It is. You know, it is such a cool time to be alive. I know it’s so true. Okay, so I gotta tell you a little talking about cool time of your life.

00:17:13:11 – 00:17:37:16

My dad is 84, okay? And he had a 1980 something laptop. I think it had to in 1980s. I had to know. It could have been. I know they have laptops, but it was it was old. It was an old Macintosh laptop. And he asked me for some help and I went and helped him a little bit, and it was like, I think I was counting rocks to make the calculator work, one of those type things.

00:17:37:16 – 00:17:54:10

Yeah. I said, dad, you need to get you a new laptop. I can help you. And we looked through some different Mac laptops. Not that I’m a mac person, but I’m a mac person. But we know you’re a mac person. And so they have the different levels, and it makes it pretty easy because it’s not brand war.

00:17:54:13 – 00:18:10:18

And I said, let me know if you want me to help you. And I, we kind of looked through everything. And so and of course, you know, we work from home a couple days there. And so the next day dad comes through and he says, I bought a new laptop. I said, you did what I said. He said, I bought a new laptop.

00:18:10:20 – 00:18:34:01

Well, I said, my first question was, what website did you buy the laptop from? So technology it. And he did. He bought a new Mac Neo I think is the it’s a low small ones that he doesn’t need much more than that. But I was just like, did you buy through Apple? Yes. Can I say Apple I think so do we have to pay them or something?

00:18:34:01 – 00:18:57:28

No, it’s not like we’re making these like now this anyway. Yeah, exactly. Free advertising but oh my I so proud of him. And it just that that you know 2026. And he’s living and just doing. It’s just cool. It’s just cool. Technology has helped him out. And so I just said isn’t it funny to think of the day like you would have had to go down to the computer store?

00:18:58:01 – 00:19:18:19

Oh yeah. I had Sears laughing over the whole, you know, holiday weekend a couple weeks ago for Labor Day. Yeah, but that I had a couple of movies that I wanted just to, to watch. And do you remember, like every Friday you would try to get into the video store by 4:00 in the afternoon? Yes. So you could get the movie.

00:19:18:19 – 00:19:42:15

Here’s the bad part. I can’t remember what was Blockbuster’s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And say you would get there early enough that you would get their one of the three copies they had of this correct. Big time movie. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. And if you didn’t rewind, you were in trouble. Yeah. And that was even a thing to think. How much time we spent like that would be an hour out of your day, and you’d have to have grab pizza on the way home.

00:19:42:22 – 00:20:08:04

Now, you download the movie, you figure out what you want to watch and have pizza delivered. Exactly. I mean, I guess you get pizza delivered another time, but yeah. Anyway, here we are. People love this time. This is just enjoy it. It’s so great. This is cool. Okay. We have a few things coming out. Catalyit speaking of technology, speaking of technology, we love Catalyit.

00:20:08:07 – 00:20:24:13

It’s a BIGiOK member benefit. We encourage all of our members to take advantage of it. I’m going to I’m going to remember on one of these Monday mornings, I’m going to get the statistics of how many of our members use that because they said we are actually doing very, very well. Lots of people are taking advantage.

00:20:24:19 – 00:20:48:28

And it’s what did you say was free? Free is free. It’s a big I okay member benefits. It is a very huge database information. Yeah great. Incredible. I use it like Consumer Reports. They’re having speaking of tech, they’re having an upcoming webinar. Well, they’re calling it a conference, which it is. It’s two days and it’s just a couple of hours where it then take up your whole day.

00:20:49:04 – 00:21:13:16

They call it Get Lyit which I think is hilarious because they’re Catalyit. that take us back to the ‘60s Anyway, skip on just maybe. You ready? So we’ll we’ll provide links. That is October 28th, 29th and go ahead and get signed up for it. But last year where it was really, really good, I noticed when I registered for it that you can actually go back and watch 2025.

00:21:13:17 – 00:21:35:00

You can watch the whole thing, which they had some interesting things I might go back and review. So take advantage of that. And so we’ll have the link on our website too. So it’s easy those easy access I think Matt Smith is going to do a he’s working on a master class, seminar for Catalyit on AI.

00:21:35:00 – 00:21:57:06

And I think that’s just what he’s doing. And I just kind of looked at some of the information there, and it really digs deep into, you know, well, here’s AI and it would work really good if you dot dot, dot. Well, he goes in and says, okay, here’s how you make it work for what you’re doing. And how do you make put it into part of your production, which I think it’ll be, it’ll be really good.

00:21:57:09 – 00:22:19:00

Yeah. Well, Matt, Matt’s kind of a brainiac. That would be a really interesting class all by itself to take. So. Yeah, Yeah. Education, we have obviously a whole lot of our classes take advantage of free education. Would you say free? Free at the institute’s at at the institute or if you need a designation.

00:22:19:07 – 00:22:36:07

Sometimes people get start getting down to the end of the year and then like, oh, I need to get caught up on my education. This is a good time designation. Micro-certs all kinds of things. We are getting great feedback on it, so take advantage of that. You can go to our website, BIGiOK.com/ Education, a la carte.

00:22:36:09 – 00:22:59:25

Yeah, could do that then. Speaking of tech, yes, we’re also going to talk about ACT agent Council for technology. That’s through our national association, which is not new. It’s been around for quite a while. I feel like they’re I feel like they’re new and improved. They have stepped it up a bit. Yeah, right. Casey Connor took over that, I don’t know, about a year ago.

00:22:59:25 – 00:23:23:02

And, boy, she kind of took the bull by the horns. So I’m actually really proud of her. I think it’s really cool. So one of the things I offer is what are agents actually using AI for? And it’s a report that shows the most current AI use in is still fairly basic. So for those agencies that aren’t really using it and they haven’t quite, quite grasped what it is, and sometimes it’s just overwhelming so you don’t use it.

00:23:23:02 – 00:23:47:21

We’ve always done it this way, so let’s not do it. But there’s things that you can utilize AI for. So email, writing and content research I love this policy summaries. Holy cow. If you’re comparing two policies you’re not going to find anything better. Frankly, I use it for legislation. It’s interesting. Whenever I get, you know, someone will send me like, what do you think about this bill?

00:23:47:21 – 00:24:12:08

And it’s, I don’t know, just 47 pages long and on top of half of its legalese, half of it is like, where’s a thous And it’s almost like reading the King James Bible sometimes. Yeah. So anyway, I use it for that, I digress. And then workflow automation, like it’ll give you better ways to do workflow. Insurance specific applications.

00:24:12:11 – 00:24:30:15

Some of the takeaways communication in writing and an entry point workflow. So interesting. So so our encouragement is that if you are an agency just on the cusp of it, I would look at this report and kind of see where you want to land, and it’s going to give you a lot of information and links to get to the next step.

00:24:30:16 – 00:24:48:07

So, are we sending out that report or do we just have it posted on our website? We are going to send a link, probably in an email. So that link will be available. But with now you’re finishing the report and you talk about that, then you can go back up to catalog and get signed up and that’s it.

00:24:48:10 – 00:25:19:18

That’s it. You know what, Jerry, I forgot to mention at the start, like our Young Agents’ Conference was incredible. It was good. Oh, I should have mentioned that. Kudos to Shania. Kudos to the Young Agents Board chair. Oh, his. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Super cool. Chris River spirit is beautiful. I think it’s a it’s a neat place to have a conference, but they just hit it out of the park, so kudos to that.

00:25:19:18 – 00:25:44:28

I think the young agents really had a good time. And yeah, they do know how to have a good time. Yeah, we’ll give them we’ll give them some kudos for that. So congratulations. You can check that off the box. However that’s not all. And that’s not all right October 29th. The young agents are having their community service project and it’s sponsored by Foremost insurance.

00:25:44:28 – 00:26:06:10

So thank you Foremost. And you can register for it. So that way they just kind of know how many are going to show up at BIGiOK.com/events So yeah put that on your calendar. It is that Free To Live Pet Sanctuary. Sanctuary. Yeah. Sanctuary I almost don’t want to go there because you know, that’s how you come home with a cute puppy.

00:26:06:11 – 00:26:08:20

You.

00:26:08:23 – 00:26:29:29

Should because it’s a good thing to do. So my dog agents. Yeah. You. I adopted my dog, too. Yeah. Me too. My cat. That my dog. So. Which they love each other. So they love each other so much. So. Yes, I do so. Oh, man. Next week we’re going to be at the end of September. So here we go.

00:26:29:29 – 00:26:37:16

We’re going to be ready for October. Have a lot going on. Crazy crazy. All right okay. Have a good week. You as well. Thanks.